Wiretapping of the Democratic Party's headquarters[edit]not my own article just thought i woulkd share it
In January 1972, G. Gordon Liddy, general counsel to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP), presented a campaign intelligence plan to CRP's Acting Chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder, Attorney General John Mitchell, and Presidential Counsel John Dean, that involved extensive illegal activities against the Democratic Party. "This was, in fact, the opening scene of the worst political scandal of the twentieth century and the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency.".[13]
Mitchell viewed the plan as unrealistic, but two months later is alleged to have approved a reduced version of the plan which involved burgling the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C., the ostensible purpose of which was to photograph documents and install listening devices. Liddy was nominally in charge of the operation, but has since insisted that he was duped by Dean and at least two of his subordinates. These included former CIA officers E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, then-CRP Security Coordinator (John Mitchell had by then resigned as Attorney General to become chairman of the CRP).[14]
Two phones inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee headquarters were wiretapped. One of those phones was the phone of Robert Spencer Oliver who at the time was working as the executive director of the Association of State Democratic Chairmen and the other was the phone of the secretary of Democratic National Chairman Larry O'Brien.[15]
After two attempts to break into the Watergate Complex failed to yield information of value, the order for yet another break-in was given to Liddy by Jeb Magruder, either acting on his own or on orders from Dean.
Shortly after midnight on June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate Complex, noticed tape covering the latches on some of the doors in the complex leading from the underground parking garage to several offices (allowing the doors to close but remain unlocked). He removed the tape, and thought nothing of it. He returned an hour later, and having discovered that someone had retaped the locks, Wills called the police. Five men were discovered and arrested inside the DNC's office.[14] They were Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis, who were charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. On September 15, a grand jury indicted them, as well as Hunt and Liddy,[16] for conspiracy, burglary, and violation of federal wiretapping laws. The five burglars who broke into the office were tried by Judge John Sirica and convicted on January 30, 1973.[17]
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