A first-person account of Watergate by Angelo Lano (FBI: 1960-1989) in The Grapevine, published by The Society of Former Agents of the FBI.
Watergate: Forty Years Later (.pdf)
The nature of an FBI agent’s work is anonymous.
Usually it involves collecting facts, often with a team of agents whose names will disappear in a myriad of files over the ensuing years and decades leaving only the larger story for future generations to study.
When I became an FBI agent, I fully expected and hoped to remain one of those “anonymous” team members who would fade from the scene into obscurity with only the case record remaining.
As fate would have it – that was not to be.
For me, the Watergate story began routinely enough on the night of June 17, 1972 when the telephone rang at my home.
The caller was Ernie Belter, an FBI agent and Washington Field Office Technical Supervisor.
Belter told me rather matter-of-factly that five men had just been arrested, trying to burglarize an office at the Watergate Complex.
Bob Kunkle, the SAC, wanted me to get the facts along with the identity of the burglars, and report back to him.
Kunkle assured me that it all could be wrapped-up “in a couple of hours.” . . . (read the rest)
FBI Reading Room: Watergate
On June 17, 1972, several people broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters; they were discovered by an on-site guard and were arrested by local police. Subsequent investigations by the FBI, Congress, and the media showed that these intruders were connected to the campaign staff of President Richard Nixon. The White House under Nixon worked to cover-up this connection, and subsequent revelations led to articles of impeachment being drawn up against Nixon and his subsequent resignation in 1974. These files, released many years ago, document the FBI’s investigation into the break-in and related issues between 1972 and 1979.