In June 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate Complex in Washington DC.
At the time, sitting President Richard Nixon was running for re-election.
The burglars turned out to be members of Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President, and, it would later emerge, were there to steal documents and tap the office phones.
The burglars were caught red-handed by a building security guard.
Nixon swore he had nothing to do with the break-in. Campaigning proceeded, then the polls. He was re-elected for his second term, in a landslide victory.
It was only an extensive investigation by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that revealed the President’s direct connection with the wire-tapping and burglary.
They were helped, in their probe, by the anonymous whistleblower known as Deep Throat (later revealed to be FBI associate director W Mark Felt.)
In March 1974, a grand jury declared Nixon an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Watergate Scandal. In July, the Supreme Court ordered him to turn over the illegal recordings.
In August, he released the tapes, and resigned.
Woodward is known to have an uncanny ability to get people to talk about things they shouldn’t be talking about.
He and Bernstein would go on to write a bestselling book, All the President’s Men (1974), about how they broke the scandal. The book was adapted as a film, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, in 1976.
Their reporting earned The Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1973. Woodward would later lead reportage on the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001, helping the Post win a Pulitzer for National Affairs the following year.
