G Gordon Liddy, the former FBI agent who helped engineer the Watergate break-in that led to the resignation of US president Richard Nixon in 1974. The FBI identified two co-conspirators in the burglary: E Howard Hunt, a former high-ranking CIA officer only recently appointed to the staff of the White House, and G Gordon Liddy, a former FBI officer who worked for the campaign to re-elect Nixon. Some laundered money had been in the possession of the one of the burglars when he was arrested. Ultimately it emerged that more than $500,000 had been raised in cash and paid out for the equipment that was used in the burglary and for the salaries and expenses of those involved before and after the break-in. Photograph: APĮventually Judy Hoback and a colleague agreed to talk to the FBI about the links between the burglars and the campaign for the re-election of the president and how some of the funding it had raised had been spent. Reporters Bob Woodward (right) and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting of the Watergate case won a Pulitzer Prize, sit in the newsroom of the Washington Post on May 7th, 1973. The arrest of the burglars and the discovery that some had had previous associations with the Central Intelligence Agency, particularly in relation to its activities against Fidel Castro in Cuba, alerted reporters, most notably Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the Washington Post, that what became known as “Watergate” was not just about an ordinary break-in. The listening devices that had been planted either had not worked properly or had been located in the wrong place – so a second visit was needed. There had been a break-in a month earlier, which had also gone awry. It subsequently emerged that June 17th was not the first occasion the burglars had entered the offices. Tape was left on a door, which alerted a security guard that something was amiss. The break-in itself, which was aimed at planting listening devices and accessing private documents, was an amateurish affair. Why it was felt that such dirty tricks were necessary has been a topic of debate ever since. Richard Nixon was way ahead in the polls when the burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic Party on the night of June 17th, 1972. Photograph: Consolidated News Pictures/AFP via Getty Images The Watergate office building in Washington DC in April 1974. The ensuing scandal over the burglary and the subsequent cover-up would eventually bring down the president and see several of his most senior aides go to jail. The office complex where the break-in took place was known as the Watergate building. Set out in the payroll accounts – the information that her boss was anxious would remain confidential – were details that one of the burglars, Jim McCord, was employed as a security officer for the campaign to re-elect the president. The target of the burglars was the office of the rival Democratic Party. Judy Hoback was a bookkeeper working for the finance committee of the campaign to re-elect the Republican US president Richard Nixon. He told her when she returned to the office the following morning to immediately lock up the payroll information and not let anyone near it. She called her boss in the organisation for which she worked. ![]() Fifty years ago this Saturday news bulletins in Washington reported that a group of men had been arrested overnight while trying to carry out a burglary in an office/residential/hotel complex in the city.Īt her home in the suburb of Bethesda in nearby Maryland, Judy Hoback immediately had “bad vibes”.
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