1970's Government and Politics | The Government and Watergate

A Third-Rate Burglary.

At 2:00 A.M. on Saturday, 17 June 1972, four Cubans and a member of the Committee to Reelect the President, James W. McCord, were arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, located in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. The presence of McCord immediately raised suspicions of political intrigue, but on Monday, 19 June, the president's spokesman, Ron Ziegler, characterized the break-in as nothing more than a "third-rate burglary" and dismissed its importance. The burglary would lead to the first resignation of a president in American history and expose to the public a dark underside of politics they scarcely knew existed. Public cynicism about politics after Watergate would not only affect Nixon but the presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.