Watergate

Watergate, an apartment complex in Washington, D.C., was the site of a botched burglary of Democratic National Committee (DNC) offices on June 17, 1972, perpetrated by nonaligned covert operatives—known as the Plumbers—working for President Richard M. Nixon, who had originally won the presidency in 1968 with law and order as a major plank in his platform. The name of the apartment complex became synonymous with the journalism that doggedly pursued the president's cover-up of the break-in and with Nixon, the only president in U.S. history to resign.

[Page 825]Two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, investigated the burglary, in which the Plumbers were planting listening devices in the office of DNC chairman Lawrence F. O'Brien, and their gumshoe work kept the story alive. The ...