CREEPy: The Watergate Burglary

History Improv’ed

What role did US President Richard Nixon play in the Watergate burglary and illegal wiretaps? What were the burglars hoping to find? And were the people who labeled this stuff ‘Dirty Tricks’ and ‘Deep Throat’ moonlighting as pimps?

Links To Further Yer Book-Learnin’

Despite saying he was “not a crook”, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) was the only president to ever resign the presidency. His party had stopped supporting him after his criminal acts were revealed. Huh. Imagine that.

G. Gordon Liddy (1930–2021) was a lawyer, FBI agent, and criminal convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping for his role in the Watergate scandal. But the man did know how to rock a mustache. He could have hidden the microfilm in there.

Everette Howard Hunt Jr. (1918– 2007) was a CIA man and author who became one of the “White House plumbers” who identified government leaks to outsiders. But these plumbers got Nixon in deep, um, sewage.

John Newton Mitchell (1913–1988) was the 67th Attorney General of the United States under Nixon. A convicted felon and a terrible husband, he was perhaps most memorably portrayed on stage by frequent History Improv’ed guest Matt Roberto.

Robert “Bob” Upshur Woodward (1943-) is an American journalist who teamed up with Carl Milton Bernstein (1944-) to expose the Watergate burglary and its cover-up by all the president’s men. They really should write a book about that.

William Mark Felt Sr. (1913–2008) was an FBI officer and the most famous anonymous source for Watergate investigative reporters. Washington Post editor Howard Simons gave Felt the pseudonym Deep Throat in 1974, after a 1972 porn movie. No word on whether Simons hoped to parlay his Washington Post gig into a career at MAD Magazine.