In the early hours of 17 June 1972, a chance discovery by Frank Wills – an African-American nightwatchman at the Watergate Office Building in Washington DC – began a sequence of events that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. In the course of his rounds, Wills noticed a door in the Watergate’s basement garage whose locking mechanism had been stuck open with duct tape. Thinking little of it, Wills removed the tape. Checking the door later, he discovered it had been re-taped open – by burglars presumably – and called the police.
By a further quirk of fate, the nearest available police were casually dressed, undercover officers in an unmarked vehicle, whose arrival at the Watergate did not immediately alert the burglars’ lookout man stationed in the Howard Johnson motor lodge across the street. The burglars – including a former CIA electronic eavesdropping expert, who now worked for Nixon’s re-election campaign – were caught red-handed in the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
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