Who were the leaders of the "Watergate Break-in"?

The two former officials of President Nixon's re-election committee, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt Jr. were held to be the leaders of the 1972 "Watergate Break-in". These men (Liddy and Hunt) organized and directed the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in May and June 1972. After five of Liddy's operatives were arrested inside the DNC offices in June 1972, subsequent investigations of the Watergate scandal led to President Nixon's resignation in 1974. Liddy and Hunt were both convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping in federal court.

Liddy, Hunt, and others were a team of covert operatives, and they were charged with identifying government sources with national security information that they could obtain and provide as "leaks" to outside parties. Hunt and Liddy plotted the Watergate burglaries and other clandestine operations for the Nixon administration. With the ensuing Watergate scandal, they hoped that they could overcome any problems by pointing to others and lying to the American public. Their efforts all failed.

Notwithstanding their actions in the 1970s, these two guys, after they served their time in prison, found some celebrity and fame doing popular debates, writing books, and hosting radio or TV shows.

More Info: www.britannica.com

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26 Comments

Marianne Frederick Halterman

This was the most depressing time to be working in Washington, D.C. The night that Nixon resigned, he was on the President's yacht with Bebe Rebozo...Mrs. Nixon was in a limousine with two agents, and slowed down as it passed me, standing beside the curb with my bicycle on the road to Potomac Park, she was crying and pounding on the partially open window of the car, sobbing, "My husband is a good man, my husband is a good man..." The agents put up the window and the car sped away. I will never forget that evening.

Howard Groopman

dejayel, The question asked who were the leaders, NOT who was arrested. Easy question if one was alive at the time and followed the story.

maidofstardust

They forgot the ringleader was Nixon, here. But between the Vietnam war & what he did, it permanently fueled the birth to all of us who grew up that year to become diehard liberal thinkers and new world futurists. And the best thing he did was allow the creation of the EPA. It makes him now the third worst president we have had, to date, in my eyes.