Watergate Dates

June 17, 1972
Break-in at the Watergate Hotel

Listen to Bryant Gumbel's June, 1992 Today Show interview with former Nixon aide Charles Colson, as he reflects on the break-in.

Watch police take the break-in suspects into custody. 407kb

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Frank Wills, a young security guard working the graveyard shift at the Watergate Hotel, finds a piece of masking tape stuck to the lock of a door as he makes his rounds. He removes the tape and discovers that several more doors have been taped to remain open. Upon his return to the first door, he finds that the tape he removed has been replaced. Wills telephones police at 1:47 a.m.

Police follow the trail of masking tape to the Democratic National Committee headquarters and arrest the suspects at 2:30 a.m. Among the arrested are three Cuban-Americans who describe their occupations as "anti-communists," and former CIA agent James McCord, a security consultant for the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP).

The stage is set for a national drama that will last more than two years, glue a nation to its television sets and result in the only presidential resignation in the history of the United States.