The Tapes That Doomed Nixon’s Presidency (50th Anniversary)

Fifty years ago, on July 16, 1973, the country was rocked by the revelation that President Richard Nixon had been secretly recording his conversations in the White House. 

Pressed by Senate investigators, a Nixon aide, Alexander Butterfield, revealed that the president had installed an extensive taping system and that the machines had recorded “everything.” Butterfield’s words electrified the nation, watching live on TV...

Indeed, the tapes effectively doomed his presidency, giving prosecutors reams of evidence to sift through in the cascading Watergate scandal. Worse, they revealed a president speaking so coarsely that it embarrassed many Americans. It was a political disaster and a cautionary tale as well. Since then, no president has taped his official meetings. more  The 18.5 minute gap.

White House Plumbers...

...A Delightfully Funny Retelling of the Watergate Scandal

The Watergate scandal is not exactly new territory for screenwriters. From the 1976 classic All the President’s Men to, just last year, the excellent Gaslit, the story of the bungled covert operations that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 has been raked over time and time again.

So White House Plumbers, created by Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck – two writers who have previously worked on Veep and David Letterman’s 90s Late Show – needed to be pretty good to justify its existence. Thankfully, it was.

The five-episode comedy drama focuses on E Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), ex CIA and FBI agents respectively, who were hired by Nixon’s White House to run a dirty tricks unit. more

The White House Plumbers, or The Buttcrack Buggers

This five-part limited series imagines the behind-the-scenes story of how Nixon’s political saboteurs, E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux), accidentally toppled the presidency they were zealously trying to protect… and their families along with it. 

Chronicling actions on the ground, this satirical drama begins in 1971 when the White House hires Hunt and Liddy, former CIA and FBI, respectively, to investigate the Pentagon Papers leak. After failing upward, the unlikely pair lands on the Committee to Re-Elect the President, plotting several unbelievable covert ops – including bugging the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex. Proving that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction, White House Plumbers sheds light on the lesser-known series of events that led to one of the greatest political scandals in American history.

From the producers of Succession and Veep...White House Plumbers comes to HBO Max on May 1, 2023. more

The Hero of Watergate - Security Guard, Frank Wills ...his sad story.

Frank Wills - Security Guard
The Hero of Watergate

A native of Savannah, Georgia, Wills moved to Washington D.C. in 1971. He took an $80. per week job as a security guard with a company called GSS manning the midnight-to-7 a.m. shift at the Watergate office complex.

Wills' claim to fame...
Wills (24 years old) stumbled upon a "third-rate burglary" taking place in an office leased to the Democratic National Committee.

In the early morning of June 17, 1972, while making rounds, he noticed a piece of adhesive tape covering the door latch on a door between the basement stairwell and the parking garage. Wills suspected the cleaning crew (they left earlier) had taped over the door latch to prevent it from locking. He removed the tape and went on with his duties.

Meanwhile… James McCord, the leader of the buglers and a former CIA employee, noticed the tape was missing. Rather than calling off the intrusion, he just re-taped the door.

Wills made his rounds again – at approximately 1:55 am – and saw the tape had been replaced. It was not the cleaning crew! Wills called the police.

If Wills had not performed his security guard duties diligently, there probably would not have been a Watergate scandal.

The result... Eavesdropping alters American history, and a president resigns.

Washington DC police arrested five men wearing surgical gloves and carrying bugging equipment in the sixth-floor offices of the Democratic National Committee.

Recognized...
Wills received recognition for his efforts. He received an awards from the Democratic Party and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (the Martin Luther King Award - its highest honor). He played himself in the movie "All the President's Men" starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman - written by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

For a while, he was sought after by the Washington press corps. Attorney Dorsey Evans was his agent. Reporters were charged as much as $300 for interviews. Some paid. Plans were made for him to lecture, but were abandoned as his 15 minutes of fame waned.

Forgotten...
In 1973 - he left GSS due to their unwillingness to provide paid vacations. He had trouble finding full-time employment after that. In the Washington Post he was quoted as saying... "I don't know if they are being told not to hire me or if they are just afraid to hire me." By the late 70's, he had moved in with his ailing mother.

In 1983 Wills was sentenced to a year in prison for shoplifting – a pair of sneakers.

On the 25th anniversary of the break-in (1997) Wills was bitter. In a Boston Globe interview, he said: "I put my life on the line. If it wasn't for me, Woodward and Bernstein would not have known anything about Watergate. This wasn't finding a dollar under a couch somewhere."

Gone...
Frank Wills died broke on September 27, 2000 at age 52 in a hospital in Augusta, Georgia. Brain tumor.

Bob Woodward said, "He's the only one in Watergate who did his job perfectly."

50 Years Ago Today – Watergate

The full story is here.

Watergate Break-In 50th Anniversary Video

Former Counsel and staff of the Senate Watergate Committee, along with the special prosecutors, lawyers and journalists who played a role in the political scandal, mark the 50th anniversary of the break-in. video

Spend the night at the Watergate

7 Movies to Watch on the 50th Anniversary of Watergate

Just coincidence? 

You decide.

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” This observation, attributed to Mark Twain, is particularly apt as the 50th anniversary of the “third rate burglary” at the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate building office that led to the only resignation of a US President, coincides with the 2022 televised hearings of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

50 years of Watergate in pop culture (podcast - 28 minutes)

Watergate related news the Security Scrapbook has followed over the years.

G. Gordon Liddy, convicted Watergate conspirator, dies at 90

G. Gordon Liddy, the political operative who supervised the Watergate burglary, which brought down President Richard Nixon, died Tuesday, his family said. He was 90.

Liddy's family said in a statement that he died Tuesday morning at his daughter's home in Mount Vernon, Virginia. It did not give a cause of death. His son, James, said that the cause was not related to Covid-19, and that he had been dealing with Parkinson's disease.

Liddy was one of the organizers of the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the office building with the name that would forever be linked to one of the biggest political scandals in American history...

Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in 1973 and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Years later, he declared, "I'd do it again for my president."...

In an interview with WHYY "Fresh Air" in 1980 after the publication of his autobiography, Liddy described unusual ways of overcoming fears as a child, including rats.

He went to the waterfront to confront the rats, but they would swim away. When his sister's cat killed a rat, he decided to eat it. "And so I cooked and consumed part of the rat. And thereafter, I had no fear of rats," Liddy said. more

James McCord, 93 - RIP

James McCord, a retired CIA employee who was convicted as a conspirator in the Watergate burglary and later linked the 1972 break-in to the White House in revelations that helped end the presidency of Richard Nixon, died June 15, 2017, at his home in Douglassville, Pa. He was 93...

McCord served in the CIA for 19 years, including as security chief at the Langley, Va., headquarters, before his supporting, at times sensational role in the events that precipitated the first resignation of a U.S. president.

He had retired from the spy agency and was privately employed as head of security for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President — commonly called CREEP — when he became entangled in a scheme to burglarize and bug the Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington.

McCord had once taught a college course on how to protect buildings from intrusions, and he helped lead the operation. more

Quote of the Week – Bob Woodward on J. Edgar Hoover

"FBI director J. Edgar Hoover didn’t object to Nixon’s wiretapping because it was illegal, he objected because wiretapping was his job!" — legendary journalist Bob Woodward, who spoke Thursday night to a packed house at the University of Utah’s Kingsbury Hall.

Nixon Watergate Era Poster

Vintage (1973) Waterbug Workshop, Boston.

Poster by David Campion.

The Martini Olive Bug, or who was Hal Lipset?

He was a private investigator in San Francisco, and chief investigator for Sam Dash on the Senate Watergate Committee...

Francis Ford Coppola considered the implications of the professional eavesdropper when he made The Conversation... It should come as no surprise that Hal Lipset was hired as technical consultant for the picture.

Lipset spoke in Congress using the famous "bug in the martini olive" and other secret surveillance devices that he and his staff pioneered...

In 1964, Time Magazine wrote, "Hal Lipset, a seasoned San Francisco private eye, maintains a laboratory behind a false warehouse from where his eavesdropping ‘genius,' Ralph Bertsche, works out new gimmicks such as a high-powered bug that fits into a pack of filter-tip cigarettes..."

His first chance to go public on the national scene occurred the previous year when he was invited to testify before the Senate Constitutional Rights Subcommittee... "First I thought I’d dazzle them with an array of miniature devices they had never seen before; then I would surprise them by playing back my own testimony from a recorder I had hidden before the hearing."

The great idea worked too well. Lipset’s appearance was seen as a clever but ominous sign of   snooping running amok.
... the next time he was invited to Washington to speak before a Senate subcommittee - this one in 1965 to hear testimony specifically on eavesdropping - he renewed his efforts...

"We came up with the "bug in the martini olive" idea, it didn’t seem all that unusual. The martini glass was simply another example of how ingenious these devices could be."

The glass held a facsimile of an olive, which could hold a tiny transmitter, the pimento inside the olive, in which we could embed the microphone, and a toothpick, which could house a copper wire as an antenna. No gin was used - that could cause a short.

It was the bug in the martini olive that made Lipset "the real star of the day," as UPI reported. Hardly an ominous indication of private snoopers taking over the world, this little olive with its toothpick antenna became a "playful" and charming toy.
                                  ---
This is the very condensed version of his story. The full story is here,  as excerpted from his biography, "The Bug in the Martini Olive," by Patricia Holt, Little Brown, 1991 ~Kevin

Relive Watergate by Living in Watergate

Watergate will forever be notorious as the site of the Democratic National Committee break-in. Now for $1.33 million, you can buy your place in its history.

That’s the asking price of the four-bedroom residence where then-Attorney General John Mitchell lived when planning the infamous break-in of 1972. The apartment, located in one of the Watergate’s three residential towers, measures 3,150 square feet and includes a private elevator entrance.

The buildings that make up the Watergate complex have a long list of A-list residents influential in politics, public policy, the arts and business. Current owners include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former Sens. Bob and Elizabeth Dole, and Jacqueline Mars, heiress to the Mars candy fortune. We take you behind the scenes in the Washington landmark. more

Fun Facts
• John Mitchell was the person who evaluated the results of the first Watergate burglary and ordered the five men to return to fix wiretaps and photograph more documents.

• "If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell,
there'd have been no Watergate."
 ~Nixon

The DNC Hack — Worse than Watergate

A foreign government has hacked a political party’s computers—and possibly an election. It has stolen documents and timed their release to explode with maximum damage. It is a strike against our civic infrastructure. And though nobody died—and there was no economic toll exacted—the Russians were aiming for a tender spot, a central node of our democracy...

What’s galling about the WikiLeaks dump is the way in which the organization has blurred the distinction between leaks and hacks. Leaks are an important tool of journalism and accountability. When an insider uncovers malfeasance, he brings information to the public in order to stop the wrongdoing. That’s not what happened here.

The better analogy for these hacks is Watergate. To help win an election, the Russians broke into the virtual headquarters of the Democratic Party. The hackers installed the cyber-version of the bugging equipment that Nixon’s goons used—sitting on the DNC computers for a year, eavesdropping on everything, collecting as many scraps as possible.

This is trespassing, it’s thievery, it’s a breathtaking transgression of privacy. more

What's in The Washington Post basement?

Nixon tapes and Cold War spy photos.

Deep in the basement of the Washington Post newsroom, national security reporter Walter Pincus is rediscovering 40 years worth of handwritten notes, White House telephone records and declassified spy photos. As the Post prepares to move into a new building in December, he’s digging up details on many of the historical stories he’s worked on. (Jorge Ribas and Jayne W. Orenstein / The Washington Post) more

Is Someone Listening? - Infographic History of Electronic Surveillance

Is Someone Listening? - Infographic History of Electronic Surveillance
 

Source: SecurityDegreeHub.com

Watergate - Ben Bradley Dies at 93

Ben Bradlee, the former top editor of The Washington Post who oversaw the paper's coverage of the Watergate scandal, has died, the newspaper said Tuesday.
He was 93.

Nixon Offered To Illegally Wiretap New York Mayor John Lindsay

The disclosure that Nixon offered to wiretap Lindsay comes via the detailed diaries of Dr. W. Kenneth Riland, who was Rockefeller’s osteopath and confidante.

He also treated Nixon and gained his confidence, too. (more)

Lawmaker Lunacy Comes Off Half Cox'ed

The son-in-law of the late President Richard Nixon gave a lesson during a visit to Syracuse Wednesday on the difference between Watergate and the New York Republican Party's recent bugging scandal. One tactic was legal. The other was not, said Ed Cox, the chairman of the New York State Republican Party and the husband of former first daughter Tricia Nixon...

It was exposed recently that Assembly Republicans, led by Oswego County's Assemblyman Will Barclay, had a private investigator put a GPS tracking device on a car driven by Assemblyman Edward Hennessey, D-Suffolk County to track his whereabouts.

They admitted to it in court...
Cox, who was in Syracuse Wednesday, said the two investigations are not the same.
First of all, Assembly Republicans admitted to bugging the car. 

Secondly, it was legal, he said (although he admits he doesn't know any more about the law than what he's been told by a reporter.)

He talked about bugging the car as if it was the Republican Party's responsibility. He said it is part of the "self-policing, democratic process" for one party to investigate the other party's candidate before the election.

"Watergate was using illegal means - breaking and entering and illegal bugging - in order to find out what was legal political conversation. It's just the opposite," he said.

Cox said politics in New York is a competitive sport. "It ain't bean bag," he said...

What would he say if someone bugged his car?

Under the same circumstances, he said, "Sure that would be fine with me." (more)

Nixon Tapes Released for 40th Anniversary of Resignation

Forty years ago this Friday, Richard Nixon became the first and only president of the United States to resign from office. He signed his resignation agreement, boarded a helicopter for San Clemente, Calif., and largely retreated into the shadows of history.

A decade later, he sat down with former White House aide Frank Gannon to share his own account of his final days in the Oval Office. Segments culled from those 30 hours of interviews were aired publicly just once, on CBS News. This week, The Richard Nixon Foundation and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum are releasing a series of clips of those interviews in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the resignation.

In the first installments of the video series entitled “A President Resigns,” the disgraced president recalls learning that the infamous tape that became known as “the smoking gun” had been released. The tape revealed that Nixon had been aware of the break-in at the Watergate, despite his repeated denials. (more)

Watergate Figure - Deputy Director of CREEP - Magruder Dead at 79

Jeb Stuart Magruder, a former official in the administration of President Richard Nixon jailed for his role in the Watergate scandal, died May 11 from complications from a stroke, according to a funeral notice published by a Connecticut funeral home.

Magruder, 79, joined the Nixon administration in 1969 as special assistant to the president for domestic policy development. He joined Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign and was involved in the campaign's efforts to gather intelligence on its political opponents.

In that job, Magruder helped authorize the unsuccessful June 17, 1972, break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington's Watergate office complex. The arrest of the five burglars that night triggered a coverup by the campaign, which spread to the White House and was enthusiastically embraced by Nixon. Nixon resigned in August 1974 after continued revelations about his role in the scandal and other issues. (more) 

Fun Facts:
Magruder's first major political job was managing the successful 1962 primary campaign of Donald Rumsfeld for the Republican nomination, preparing for the congressional election in the 13th district of Illinois, to the United States House of Representatives.

After his fall from grace, became a Presbyterian minister.

History - Nixon's Plumbers Tap More Pipes

Jeff Stein provides new information that suggests the Nixon White House may have bugged the Pentagon telephones of senior American military officials.

Why is this man laughing?

Stein managed to track down Dave Mann, a former member of the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Force, who in 1971 stumbled upon a classified report claiming that listening bug signals had been detected emanating from offices in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The signals had been picked up by a technical surveillance countermeasures (TSCM) team during a routine sweep of the Pentagon, in search of unauthorized interception devices. 

Mann ran some tests to verify the TSCM team’s report, and discovered that the bug signals originated from the personal office telephone line of General William Westmoreland, who was then the US Army’s Chief of Staff.  He also discovered that the telephone of his assistant had been compromised, as well as the telephone lines belonging to the US Army’s assistant secretary, its logistics director, and at least one general. 

Mann’s personal conclusion was that the phone lines were most likely bugged with the cooperation of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, which was at that the time considered an operational wing of the FBI, under Director J. Edgar Hoover...

Mann, who is now semi-retired from the military and lives in Tennessee, told Stein that “there was a lot —and I mean a lot— of pressure to prove GRAPPLE TRIP to be a fluke or a miswired telephone”. Which is precisely what happened: the investigation concluded that the bug signals were emitted due to “crossed wires in the telephone system”.  (more)