48 Fun Facts About Watergate

What on a door latch exposed the Watergate burglars?

A strip of tape: a night guard peeled it off, assuming a worker had left it, then found the latch taped again on a later round and called the police.

The Watergate break-in grew out of which covert campaign plan devised by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt?

Operation Gemstone: the first draft, pitched to the attorney general, included kidnapping protest leaders and hiring sex workers to entrap Democrats, and was sent back as too costly.

Where did Bob Woodward hold his late-night meetings with his secret Watergate source?

A parking garage in Rosslyn, Virginia: Woodward says he asked for a meeting by moving a flowerpot with a red flag on his balcony, and a historical marker was later put up outside.

Who was Bob Woodward's reporting partner on the Watergate story at The Washington Post?

Carl Bernstein was 28 and Woodward 29 when the paper teamed them on the break-in story, and their reporting won The Washington Post the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

What nickname did Washington Post editor Howard Simons give Bob Woodward's anonymous Watergate source?

Deep Throat punned on 'deep background', the terms on which the informant spoke, and on a notorious 1972 adult film; his identity stayed secret until 2005.

Which FBI deputy, unmasked only in 2005, was Bob Woodward's key anonymous informant on Watergate?

Mark Felt had been passed over for the FBI's top job when J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972; he kept his secret for 33 years and admitted it at the age of 91.

Which attorney general appointed Archibald Cox as Watergate special prosecutor?

Elliot Richardson had promised the Senate that the prosecutor would be removed only for cause; five months later, ordered to fire him, he resigned instead.

Who, as acting attorney general, carried out Nixon's order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox?

Robert Bork, the solicitor general, did the firing after his two superiors refused; in 1987 the Senate rejected his own nomination to the Supreme Court.

Who replaced Archibald Cox as Watergate special prosecutor in November 1973?

Leon Jaworski, a Texas lawyer who had prosecuted Nazi war crimes for the US Army, took the fight for the tapes straight to the Supreme Court; Nixon resigned sixteen days after the ruling.

How did Richard Nixon leave the White House grounds after resigning on August 9, 1974?

By helicopter: after a farewell to his staff in the East Room, he flew off the White House lawn shortly before his resignation took effect at noon.

Which vice president resigned in October 1973 over a bribery and tax case unrelated to Watergate?

Spiro Agnew pleaded no contest to tax evasion and quit ten days before the Saturday Night Massacre, leaving Nixon to choose the man who would soon take over the presidency.

In 1971 a White House team burgled the office of Lewis Fielding, psychiatrist to which famous leaker?

Daniel Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers; when the burglary came to light during his espionage trial in 1973, the judge dismissed every charge against him.

The White House "Special Investigations Unit" became known by what nickname?

The Plumbers: the unit was set up after the Pentagon Papers leak to stop government secrets reaching the press, which is the joke in the name.

G. Gordon Liddy gave the White House's secret investigations unit which code name, taken from a rumored Nazi SS network?

ODESSA: Liddy stamped the unit's papers with the German initials of a rumored escape network for former SS men, the one a best-selling thriller turned into The Odessa File.

Before Watergate, E. Howard Hunt had helped arrange a 1954 CIA coup in which country?

Guatemala: Hunt went on from that coup to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, where he worked with the Cuban exiles he would later recruit as burglars.

Despite the Watergate arrests, Nixon carried 49 states in November 1972 against which Democratic nominee?

George McGovern won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, a rout that inspired the bumper sticker 'Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts'.

Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis had once smuggled guns to, and fought alongside, which future enemy of the CIA?

Fidel Castro: Sturgis ran guns to his rebels and served in his revolution, then defected and spent years plotting against him with the Cuban exiles he joined at the Watergate.

Which night security guard discovered the Watergate break-in and called the police?

Frank Wills, 24 at the time, was hailed as a hero and played himself in All the President's Men, but he got no promotion and later struggled to find steady work.

Larry O'Brien, whose office the Watergate burglars targeted, later ran which sports league, whose championship trophy bears his name?

NBA: as commissioner from 1975 to 1984 he oversaw the merger with the rival ABA, and the trophy handed to each season's champions was named after him.

Nixon had which predecessor's White House recorders torn out?

Lyndon B. Johnson's recorders came out on Nixon's orders, but in 1971 he had his own hidden system installed, and its tapes supplied the evidence that ended his presidency.

Which White House aide revealed the existence of Nixon's secret taping system to Senate investigators in July 1973?

Alexander Butterfield, the deputy who had helped install the recorders, gave the secret away to committee staff behind closed doors, then repeated it on live television three days later.

Which North Carolina senator chaired the Senate Watergate Committee?

Sam Ervin liked to call himself a simple country lawyer, though he held a Harvard law degree and was regarded as the Senate's leading expert on the Constitution.

Which aide told Nixon there was "a cancer within" the presidency?

John Dean gave the warning on March 21, 1973; Nixon fired him nearly six weeks later, and that summer Dean told the televised Senate hearings that the president had approved the cover-up.

Which former attorney general went to prison for his part in the Watergate cover-up?

John Mitchell had personified Nixon's 'law and order' stance as head of the Justice Department; convicted over the cover-up, he served 19 months in a federal prison.

The wife of Nixon's campaign chief was cut off mid-call while phoning which UPI reporter in June 1972?

Helen Thomas heard her cry 'Get away' before the line went dead; when Martha reached her again days later, she told the reporter she was 'black and blue'.

What name stuck to the 1972 tape on which Nixon agreed to use the CIA to block the FBI's Watergate inquiry?

The smoking gun: recorded six days after the break-in, it proved Nixon had joined the cover-up from the start, and its release in August 1974 cost him his last support in Congress.

The 18-and-a-half-minute gap in Nixon's White House tapes erased his conversation with which aide?

H. R. Haldeman, his chief of staff, was talking with Nixon three days after the break-in; experts later found the gap came from at least five separate erasures, which no single slip could explain.

Which secretary to Nixon said she had accidentally erased part of a subpoenaed White House tape?

Rose Mary Woods showed how it might have happened, stretching for a phone with her foot held on a pedal, a pose the press mocked as the 'Rose Mary Stretch'; it could account for five minutes at most.

Which judge presided over the Watergate burglars' trial and later ordered Nixon to surrender his tapes?

John Sirica, nicknamed 'Maximum John', doubted the burglars had acted alone and handed down provisional sentences to make them talk; Time named him its Man of the Year.

Which Watergate burglar's March 1973 letter to the trial judge said that perjury had been committed and others were involved?

James McCord, a former CIA officer, wrote it days before sentencing, fearing a long prison term; the judge read it out in open court, and the cover-up began to come apart.

Who chaired the House Judiciary Committee during its 1974 impeachment inquiry into Nixon?

Peter Rodino, a congressman from Newark, recalled that once the committee had passed its articles of impeachment he went into a back room, called his wife and cried.

Which charge formed the first article of impeachment against Nixon, approved by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974?

Obstruction of justice passed by 27 votes to 11 after six Republicans crossed over to join every Democrat on the committee; two more articles followed within three days.

Which justice, a former Nixon Justice Department official, sat out the 1974 tapes case, leaving the Supreme Court to rule 8–0?

William Rehnquist stepped aside because he had worked in Nixon's Justice Department; the three other justices Nixon had appointed all ruled against him, and the chief justice wrote the opinion.

Who declared 'our long national nightmare is over' in an eight-minute East Room speech on August 9, 1974?

Gerald Ford had reached the vice presidency and then the presidency without a national election, so he told the country: 'I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers.'

Nixon's 1977 paid television interviews were conducted by which British journalist?

David Frost paid Nixon $600,000 and a share of the profits for the interviews, which the American networks had refused to touch, calling them checkbook journalism.

Which star of All the President's Men bought the screen rights and played Bob Woodward?

Robert Redford paid $450,000 for the rights, and the production rebuilt the Post's newsroom in California, down to boxes of real trash shipped from Washington; Alan J. Pakula directed.

Which phrase from the film All the President's Men, found nowhere in its source book, entered the American lexicon?

Follow the money is spoken in the film by the reporters' secret informant, yet it is nowhere in the book, and the screenwriter and Woodward each credited the other with inventing it.

Nixon's edited transcripts replaced profanity with which two-word phrase?

Expletive deleted appeared hundreds of times in the transcripts Nixon released in April 1974, and protesters outside the White House were soon waving signs that read 'Impeach the (expletive deleted)!'

Which Nixon 'hatchet man', jailed over Watergate, became a born-again Christian and founded Prison Fellowship?

Charles Colson, of whom it was said he would walk over his own grandmother for Nixon, served seven months in prison; in 1993 he won the $1 million Templeton Prize and gave it to his prison ministry.

Which Hollywood star appeared on the list of Nixon's political enemies that came to light during the Watergate hearings?

Paul Newman was nineteenth of the twenty names on the original list, put there for backing an anti-war Democrat, and he called making it his greatest accomplishment.

Which deputy attorney general, earlier the first head of the EPA, refused to fire Archibald Cox and lost his own job?

William Ruckelshaus went the same night as his boss, leaving the department's third-ranking official to carry out the order, in what the press called the Saturday Night Massacre.

Which Democrat defeated Nixon's successor in the 1976 presidential election, two years after the Nixon pardon?

Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia governor little known outside his state when the primaries began, ran as a Washington outsider and won with 297 electoral votes.

Which post-Watergate law declared White House papers the property of the public?

Presidential Records Act: a president's papers had been his private property, a custom Congress voted to end in 1978 after Nixon sought to destroy records of his time in office.

Which adviser convinced an initially unworried Nixon to fight publication of the Pentagon Papers?

Henry Kissinger argued that letting the leak pass would set a precedent for future secrets; it has also been suggested that he wanted distance from the leaker, a former colleague at RAND.

Which Nixon aide said the embattled nominee to head the FBI should be left to 'twist slowly, slowly in the wind'?

John Ehrlichman, Nixon's domestic policy chief, wanted the stalled confirmation left to drag on; he later served a year and a half in prison for his own part in the cover-up.

Which acting FBI director burned files from E. Howard Hunt's safe and later resigned over it?

L. Patrick Gray said he was told at the White House that the papers should never see the light of day; six months later he burned them in a fireplace at his Connecticut home.

Which CIA director was asked by White House aides, days after the break-in, to help block the FBI investigation?

Richard Helms was called to the White House with his deputy; five months later, after the election, Nixon told him he would not be kept on and sent him to Iran as ambassador.

Which Republican elder statesman led the delegation that told Nixon on August 7, 1974, that his Senate support had collapsed?

Barry Goldwater went in with the Republican leaders of the House and Senate to tell Nixon the votes to save him were gone; the next evening the president announced his resignation.