On the evening of June 17, 1972, a security guard at the Watergate, a Washington complex that included a hotel, apartments, and offices, noticed something amiss about an office door. He called the police, who responded and arrested five burglars inside the office, the headquarters of the Democratic Party (National Archives 1). Thus began the most serious political scandal in American history, one that would topple President Richard M. Nixon, change American political and media culture, and give the world the suffex "-gate" as a shorthand for scandal.
It was clear from the outset that what the security guard had come upon was no ordinary burglary. As later recounted by journalist Bob Woodward, who with his colleague at the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein, would play a central role in exposing the scandal, the responding police apprehended "five men in business suits û not your ordinary DC burglars û pockets stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, sophisticated electronic and photographic equipment. The team of burglars had ties to the CIA, to the Nixon re-election committeee and the White House" (Woodward 1). As was later learned, the five men had come not to steal something from the Democratic headquarters, but to repair electronic surveillance equipment, "bugs," that had been planted in the headquarters some three weeks earlier.
1972 was a presidential election year, and it was obvious from the outset that some sort of political skulduggery was involved. Nevertheless, what came to be known as simply as Watergate unfolded only very gradually. Frequently, as with the discovery of the June 17 break-in, it was revealed only as a result of accidents. Although the break-in was discovered and reported fully four and a half months before the 1972 election, it never developed into a major story during that period. The figures immediately involved in the break-in were not indicted until mid-September, their trials began the...