Bob Woodward Investigative Journalist





1973: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at The Washington Post during the height of the Watergate investigation.

5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats' Office Here



According to Democratic Party lore, this file cabinet, which is now used by the staff of the DNC Web site, is one of those the Watergate burglars broke into.

By Alfred E. Lewis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 18, 1972; Page A01

Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here. ... Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

They were surprised at gunpoint by three plain-clothes officers of the metropolitan police department in a sixth floor office at the plush Watergate, 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, where the Democratic National Committee occupies the entire floor.

There was no immediate explanation as to why the five suspects would want to bug the Democratic National Committee offices or whether or not they were working for any other individuals or organizations. ... A spokesman for the Democratic National Committee said records kept in those offices are "not of a sensitive variety" although there are "financial records and other such information."

Police said two ceiling panels in the office of Dorothy V. Bush, secretary of the Democratic Party, had been removed. ... Her office is adjacent to the office of Democratic National Chairman Lawrence F. O'Brien. Presumably, it would have been possible to slide a bugging device through the panels in that office to a place above the ceiling panels in O'Brien's office.

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The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers