TIME Coverage 1972

The Bugs At The Watergate

(TIME, July 3, 1972) -- Five men wearing fingerprint-concealing surgical gloves and laden with a James Bondian assortment of cameras, tools, intricate electronic bugging gear and $6,500 in crisp new bills, most of which were serially numbered, are found in the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

The Watergate Probe

(TIME, July 24, 1972) -- Douglas Caddy, the lawyer for the five men arrested in the break-in, was charged with contempt of court for refusing to answer questions from the grand jury. Caddy mysteriously appeared to represent the five suspects when they were jailed -- even though at the time none had phoned anyone about the arrests. Officials also believed they had traced some $100,000 that financed the purchase of the electronic eavesdropping equipment found in the DNC offices to the Republicans' Committee for the Re-election of the President (C.R.P.).

Watergate, Continued

(TIME, August 14, 1972) -- The Justice Department has little luck getting any answers from former C.R.P. staffers G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, who before they apparently moved into political surveillance were part of a White House team called "the plumbers," because they were assigned to investigate the source of leaks to the press. The Justice Department investigation into the C.R.P.'s finances raises questions about concealing the identities of wealthy donors during the campaign.

The Watergate Issue

(TIME, Aug. 28, 1972) -- Watergate now promises to be the "scandal of the year." Justice Department officials find the receiving end of the bugs planted in the DNC offices across the street in a Howard Johnson's motel room. As the Watergate five were being arrested, three members of the security intelligence squad with the C.R.P. were clearing their records and tapes out of the motel.

Watergate Roils On

(TIME, September 11, 1972) -- Maurice H. Stans, Nixon's chief fundraiser and finance chairman of the C.R.P., comes under fire from the General Accounting Office for campaign finance violations. Citizens lobby Common Cause charges the C.R.P. with violation of the Corrupt Practices Act which requires the disclosure of campaign contributors' identities and the amounts they give. Nixon rejects a proposal by the Democrats to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate affair.

The Watergate Taps

(TIME, September 18, 1972) -- On top of bugging the Democratic National Committee offices, DNC documents were stolen, photographed and returned. Former DNC chairman Larry O'Brien, who is now George McGovern's campaign chairman, claims that not only were his phones tapped, but logs had been kept of his calls, written up into memos and circulated. An investigation by O'Brien's attorney, Edward Bennett Williams, disclosed that the Watergate Five had unsuccessfully attempted to enter and put wiretaps in McGovern's Capitol Hill headquarters.

Seven Down On Watergate

(TIME, September 25, 1972) -- After a three-month investigation the Justice Department obtained the long-awaited indictments of the Watergate Five who broke in and bugged the DNC, as well as G. Gordon Liddy, one-time White House aide and former counsel to the C.R.P.'s finance division, and E. Howard Hunt, a former White House consultant. Not charged was former FBI agent Alfred C. Baldwin, who monitored and transcribed many of the Democrats' conversations. The grand jury investigation did not address allegations of mishandled campaign funds.

More Fumes From The Watergate Affair

(TIME, October 23, 1972) -- Information in the Justice Department's files reveals a direct link between the White House and a Los Angeles attorney named Donald H. Segretti. Segretti was paid more than $35,000 from the C.R.P.'s funds to subvert and disrupt Democratic candidates' campaigns during the election year. TIME also learned that Bernard Barker, the former CIA agent who led the raiding party into the Watergate, recruited nine Cubans from Miami in May and assigned them to attack Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers to the public.

Denials And Still More Questions

(TIME, October 30, 1972) -- TIME reports that Jeb Stuart Magruder, one of the Nixon committee's deputy directors, authorized the use of campaign funds to finance the wiretapping at the DNC headquarters in the Watergate when he worked at the C.R.P.. Magruder had been an assistant to Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, and was later an assistant to Herb Klein, Nixon's director of communications.

How High?

(TIME, November 6, 1972) -- The question of the week was "How high up does the responsibility for the Watergate affair go?" Dwight Chapin, deputy assistant to the president, admitted setting up a political intelligence platoon and hiring Donald Segretti. Nixon's personal attorney Herbert Kalmbach also admitted to FBI agents that the money he paid Segretti came from C.R.P. funds kept by finance chairman Maurice Stans. No hard evidence is found to support the charge that H.R. Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, was one of the people with control over a fund that financed spying and disruption.