On the night of June 17, 1972, a security guard discovered a door taped open at a Potomac River office complex called the Watergate. Police responded and arrested five men who had broken into the offices of the Democratic National Committee.
The Watergate burglars had been dispatched by aides to President Richard M. Nixon to gather intelligence on his political opponents. In an attempt to cover up the break-in, the president and his top advisers would spend the next two years ordering wiretaps on reporters, misusing the Internal Revenue Service, FBI and CIA for political purposes, and prompting a showdown with the Supreme Court, all of which came to be known collectively as “Watergate.”
Two young reporters from The Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, with the support of executive editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Katharine Graham, covered the story. They broke news with the help of “Deep Throat,” the most famous anonymous source in U.S. history; in 2005 Mark Felt, former FBI associate director, revealed that he was the source. The Post investigation ultimately led to Congressional hearings, Nixon’s August 1974 resignation and criminal convictions of more than 30 government officials.
To mark the 40th anniversary of Watergate, Washington Post Live convened the major players— Woodward and Bernstein, Bradlee, Nixon White House counsel John Dean, co-director of the White House Special Investigations Unit (popularly called the "Plumbers) Egil “Bud" Krogh, House Judiciary Committee member William Cohen, the Senate Watergate Committee's chief minority counsel Fred Thompson, special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste and associate minority counsel for the House Watergate Committee William F. Weld. This forum was held June 11 at the Watergate Office Building, where the historic scandal began with a strip of duct tape.
