Watergate Trivia
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48 free Watergate trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Five men in business suits were arrested inside Democratic National Committee headquarters at 2 a.m. on June 17, 1972. Twenty-six months later Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign. In between came the Plumbers, Operation Gemstone, hush money, a secret taping system, an 18-and-a-half-minute gap, the Saturday Night Massacre and a unanimous Supreme Court. These 48 questions cover the burglars and who sent them, the Washington Post's reporting and Deep Throat, the Ervin hearings, the fight over the tapes, the impeachment articles, the resignation and Ford's pardon, plus the legacy: -gate, "follow the money", the Presidential Records Act and the Frost interviews. Early rounds are for anyone who has seen All the President's Men; later rounds are for people who know who Alexander Butterfield is. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What on a door latch exposed the Watergate burglars?
A strip of tape
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.
Q 02The Watergate break-in grew out of which covert campaign plan devised by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt?
Operation Gemstone
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.
Q 03Where did Bob Woodward hold his late-night meetings with his secret Watergate source?
A parking garage
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.
Q 04Who was Bob Woodward's reporting partner on the Watergate story at The Washington Post?
Carl Bernstein
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.
Q 05What nickname did Washington Post editor Howard Simons give Bob Woodward's anonymous Watergate source?
Deep Throat
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.
Q 06Which FBI deputy, unmasked only in 2005, was Bob Woodward's key anonymous informant on Watergate?
Mark Felt
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.
Q 07Which attorney general appointed Archibald Cox as Watergate special prosecutor?
Elliot Richardson
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.
Q 08Who, as acting attorney general, carried out Nixon's order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox?
Robert Bork
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.
Q 09Who replaced Archibald Cox as Watergate special prosecutor in November 1973?
Leon Jaworski
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.
Q 10How did Richard Nixon leave the White House grounds after resigning on August 9, 1974?
By helicopter
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.
Q 11Which vice president resigned in October 1973 over a bribery and tax case unrelated to Watergate?
Spiro Agnew
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.
Q 12In 1971 a White House team burgled the office of Lewis Fielding, psychiatrist to which famous leaker?
Daniel Ellsberg
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.
Q 13The White House "Special Investigations Unit" became known by what nickname?
The Plumbers
Q 21Which White House aide revealed the existence of Nixon's secret taping system to Senate investigators in July 1973?
Alexander Butterfield
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.
Q 22Which North Carolina senator chaired the Senate Watergate Committee?
Sam Ervin
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.
Q 23Which aide told Nixon there was "a cancer within" the presidency?
John Dean
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.
Q 14G. Gordon Liddy gave the White House's secret investigations unit which code name, taken from a rumored Nazi SS network?
ODESSA
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.
Q 15Before Watergate, E. Howard Hunt had helped arrange a 1954 CIA coup in which country?
Guatemala
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.
Q 16Despite the Watergate arrests, Nixon carried 49 states in November 1972 against which Democratic nominee?
George McGovern
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'.
Q 17Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis had once smuggled guns to, and fought alongside, which future enemy of the CIA?
Fidel Castro
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.
Q 18Which night security guard discovered the Watergate break-in and called the police?
Frank Wills
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.
Q 19Larry O'Brien, whose office the Watergate burglars targeted, later ran which sports league, whose championship trophy bears his name?
NBA
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.
Q 20Nixon had which predecessor's White House recorders torn out?
Lyndon B. Johnson
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.
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.
Q 24Which former attorney general went to prison for his part in the Watergate cover-up?
John Mitchell
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.
Q 25The wife of Nixon's campaign chief was cut off mid-call while phoning which UPI reporter in June 1972?
Helen Thomas
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'.
Q 26What name stuck to the 1972 tape on which Nixon agreed to use the CIA to block the FBI's Watergate inquiry?
The smoking gun
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.
Q 27The 18-and-a-half-minute gap in Nixon's White House tapes erased his conversation with which aide?
H. R. Haldeman
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.
Q 28Which secretary to Nixon said she had accidentally erased part of a subpoenaed White House tape?
Rose Mary Woods
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.
Q 29Which judge presided over the Watergate burglars' trial and later ordered Nixon to surrender his tapes?
John Sirica
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.
Q 30Which Watergate burglar's March 1973 letter to the trial judge said that perjury had been committed and others were involved?
James McCord
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.