Watergate Chronology

1971

• June 13
  The New York Times begins publishing the Pentagon Papers -- the Defense Department's secret history of the Vietnam War. The Washington Post begins publishing the papers later in the week.

• September 9
  The White House "plumbers" unit - named for their orders to plug leaks in the administration - burglarizes a psychiatrist's office to find files on Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

1972

• May 28
  Bugging equipment is installed at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington DC. It transpires later that this is not the first Watergate burglary.

• June 17
  Five burglars are arrested at 2.30am during a break-in at the Watergate:
  • Bernard Barker
  • Virgilio Gonzalez
  • Eugenio Martinez
  • James W. McCord
  • Frank Sturgis

  James W. McCord is the security director for the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP).

  • Read the Washington Post's original report of the break-in.
  • Watch CBS News with Walter Cronkite report on the break-in:

• June 19
  A GOP security aide is among the Watergate burglars, The Washington Post reports. Former attorney general John Mitchell, head of the Nixon reelection campaign, denies any link to the operation.

• August 1
  A $25,000 cashier's check, apparently earmarked for the Nixon campaign, wound up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar, according to a report in the Washington Post.

• August 30
  Nixon claimed that White House counsel John Dean had conducted an investigation into the Watergate matter and found that no-one from the White House was involved.

• September 15
  The first indictments in Watergate are made against the burglars: James W. McCord, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez and Virgilio Gonzalez.

  Indictments are also made against E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.

• September 29
  The Washington Post reports that John Mitchell, while serving as Attorney-General, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance widespread intelligence-gathering operations against the Democrats.

• Oct 10
  FBI agents establish that the Watergate break-in stems from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon reelection effort, according to a report in The Washington Post.

• November 11
  Nixon is reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60 percent of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.