At about midnight on June 17, 1972, Bruce Givner, a 21-year-old inmate, turned off the lights as he left the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington, DC.
Today, as Americans mark the frustrated robbery that would end U.S. President Richard Nixon, Givner can definitely say, “I was the last person legally in the Watergate offices the night they broke up.”
The Ohio native had stayed up late in the offices, long after everyone had left, taking advantage of the DNC’s long-distance plan to call his friends, parents and ex-girlfriends and current girlfriends.
“I probably started around 7pm, and I just talked and talked and talked,” said Givner, now a 71-year-old California tax attorney. “I was talking to at least a dozen people, maybe more.”
With the toilets located in an area that would have locked him out of the office, he decided to step on the balcony and pee in the planter because “he thought this wouldn’t hurt the plants.”
What Givner did not know was that all his actions were being monitored by a group of possible thieves who were planning to enter the DNC offices and that he was thwarting his plans, and that in doing so he could have been changing the situation. course of American history.
“I’m not a thief,” said U.S. President Richard Nixon at a meeting of editors-in-chief of the Associated Press on November 17, 1973, while facing investigations into Watergate. A year later he had resigned. (The Associated Press)
Givner is just one of dozens and dozens of people who played some sort of role, direct or indirect, in the Watergate attack, the most notorious robbery attempt in U.S. history.
On that date, 50 years ago, five men were arrested for assault and charged with attempted robbery and attempted interception of telephones and other communications.
But the real drama came later, with the discovery that they were working for the Committee to Re-elect the President, or CREEP, and hoped to find material to help the Republican Party get Nixon re-elected for a second term.
Nixon’s subsequent attempt to obstruct justice by thwarting the FBI’s investigation would lead to unprecedented televised political hearings, criminal convictions of the president’s top aides, and his eventual downfall.
The entrance to the Watergate Hotel. Five of the men who broke into the Watergate complex were eventually arrested for the attack. (Mark Gollom / CBC)
The original door
Half a century later, interest in Watergate does not seem to have diminished. It continues to be the subject of books, podcasts and entertainment, with a new series on the scandal called Gaslit starring Julia Roberts and Sean Penn earlier this year and another, The White House Plumbers, starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux, in way.
Since then, the suffix “door” has stuck to the scandal of the day, and any major new political controversy that arises is often compared to Watergate in terms of scope or severity.
But the rupture itself that triggered the chain of events is also a source of fascination, as the milestones of the famous rupture still remain in some form or form.
Others acted as vigilantes across the street at the Howard Johnson Hotel. (Illustration: CBC, Source: Google Earth)
The Howard Johnson Hotel, where former FBI agent Alfred Baldwin was watching the Watergate thieves in Room 723, is no longer there. It had been converted into a dormitory for George Washington University students, but was sold to a developer and is now a mixed-use building combining apartments and shops on the ground floor.
Watergate itself is a huge spiral complex that includes an office building, a hotel and condominiums. The Watergate Hotel, where G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt directed the entrance from Room 214, where they could look directly at the DNC office, fell into disrepair. It remained vacant for a long time until it underwent a six-year, $ 125 million U.S. renovation, reopened in 2016, and strengthened its ties to political history.
The Watergate Hotel has embraced its links to political history. (Mark Gollom / CBC)
“We really accept that. We don’t shy away from that,” said Ali Le, marketing director at the Watergate Hotel.
“It’s something that happened here. So in rebuilding and changing the brand, it’s something we wanted to have as part of our identity.”
For example, room 214 has become the “scandal room”, decorated to “evoke the spirit of the 70’s” while including items such as binoculars, a typewriter and two custom gowns. of “concealment”.
“No need to enter” is inscribed on guests’ key cards, and receptionists hand out pens that say “stolen from the Watergate Hotel.”
What was room 214 at the Watergate Hotel, where G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt looked at the DNC headquarters, has now become the “Scandal Room,” where guests find memories of the Nixon era and the style of the seventies. (Watergate Hotel)
The former DNC office is now a historic site
As for the site of the aggression, the Democratic National Committee office has long since moved. This office is currently occupied by Sage Publishing.
But the publisher has also said that Watergate’s legacy is not forgotten. One room is called the Nixon Room and contains memories of the Watergate era, including framed papers from that era that denote different aspects of the scandal.
It has a plaque that says “Historic Site” and states that the thieves were arrested “at this point in the Watergate office complex.”
The former DNC office is now occupied by Sage Publishing. But the publisher has also made sure Watergate’s legacy is not forgotten, including a plaque showing where the thieves were arrested. (Mark Gollom / CBC)
Khaalid Wilson, a computer scientist at Sage, said the thieves also went through what is now the dining room, where wooden round tables, vending machines and microwaves have replaced files, office chairs and Party documents. Democrat.
“I’ve been here since 2017,” Wilson said. “There are always people who want to come and see the suite. Before, the flats used to be open because people would go up and walk.”
June 17 was actually the second time thieves had entered the DNC office. The first time was on May 28, when a Liddy-led team came in to plant insects on employees’ phones. The purpose of the second collision was, in part, to address some of the issues with these surveillance devices.
But those plans were being thwarted by Givner.
“[He] he stayed and stayed and stayed, “Liddy once said about the intern on ABC News.” It’s a Friday night. He was a dedicated Democrat. “
Is it possible, then, that this delay led to the arrest of the thieves?
“I’m 100 percent sure I have no idea,” Givner said.
Not the team A
When he left the building at 12:05 a.m., Givner met Frank Wills, the building’s security guard, and they both crossed the street to Howard Johnson’s to grab some burgers with cheese and smoothies.
However, when Wills returned to the building, he noticed a piece of tape covering the latch of a door during his rounds.
“At first, he thought it was something the cleaning team had done,” said Ken Hughes, a research specialist at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and author of Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, The Chennault Affair. and the Origins of Watergate.
“And so, he took it out. And when he came back later, he found that it had been cut, so it was kind of … a mess.”
Former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy, who planned the robbery, is seen in Washington during a break in his trial in January 1973. (William A Smith / The Associated Press)
Willis then called the police. A team of plainclothes officers arrived and arrested the thieves: James McCord, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio R. Martinez, Bernard L. Barker and Frank Sturgis, all linked to the CIA.
“[The burglary crew] it wasn’t the A team. It was the amateur team, “said Paul Magallanes, who was one of the FBI agents assigned to the case.
“This particular matter came under our jurisdiction. So when it happened Monday morning, it was chaotic.”
“We work for the same man”
Due to Magellan’s Hispanic origin, he was assigned to speak with some of the Cuban-born thieves. He said they were all polite, well dressed but gave little information. However, one of the thieves, Martinez, a CIA agent who had worked for the agency during his efforts to infiltrate Cuba, said something that caught his ear.
“He said,‘ We’re working for the same man, ’” Magallanes recalled Martinez telling him. “I asked him what he meant by that. He said, ‘Well, you know, you work for the government. I work with the government. And the government and the man, the president, will take care of us. ‘
“I was shocked and amazed at what he was saying to me. But he didn’t say specifically what he was talking about.”
(Martinez would later be pardoned by President Ronald Reagan, making him the second person, along with Nixon, to be pardoned for his role in Watergate.)
Some of the police evidence in the U.S. National Archives of the Watergate Theft on June 17, 1972. On the back are enlargements of photos of the arrest of the thieves, from left: Eugenio Martinez, Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker and Frank Sturgis. In the foreground are lights, film, a tool bag, a raincoat and attack equipment used in one of the most famous robberies in political history. (Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images)
Magallnes would continue to interview some of the key players, including Judith Hoback Miller, the CREEP accountant.
“That was a very important interview. That really opened up the case. Then we had clues to continue that were important.”
Yet, 50 years later, some mysteries remain about the aggression.
There was no real …