In a Nutshell

The political scandal that shamed the White House and brought down the President

What was ‘Watergate’?

At 2.30am on 17 June 1972, five burglars were discovered in the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate Hotel, about a mile from the White House. The break-in, which took place five months before the US presidential election, sparked a series of events that changed the course of the country’s history.

THE FALLEN PRESIDENT The day’s papers signal Nixon’s imminent resignation ABOVE:

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Why was this burglary different to any other?

The break-in was a bungled follow-up to a forced entry the previous month, when the same men stole copies of top-secret documents and wiretapped the phones. When the wiretaps failed to work, they returned to finish the job. An FBI investigation revealed all five had links to the White House, in a chain of connections that went as high as Charles Colson, special counsel to President Nixon, and showed them to be members of the Committee to Re-elect the President – nicknamed CREEP.