It is late at night on June 17th 1972 1972, as 24-year-old security guard Frank Wills makes his midnight rounds

at the Watergate Hotel and Office Complex here in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of downtown Washington DC.

Somewhere on level B2, Wills finds that a door easily pushes open without twisting its handle.

Paper has been stuffed into the latch. Wills removes the paper,

closes the door, and continues his rounds. But he soon finds tape covering the latches of

other doors leading from the underground parking structure to the offices.

He mutters to himself quietly.

He'll need to have a word with maintenance.

At 12.30 a.m.

he cuts the lights out in the hall, but circling back an hour or so later,

Wills is startled to discover that the door latches he'd stripped of tape are once again covered. He immediately notifies the police. Someone

is inside the building. Hello all and glad to be here with you. Thanks for listening in. In the

sweeping history of American politics there is a litany of scandals.

Presidential, congressional, presidential,

judicial, each in its own fashion emblematic of our past, but largely consigned to the

history books. This is not the case with Watergate.

Though it happened more than 50 years ago,

what went on during those two and a half

torturous years, 1972 to 1975,

left a bone bruise on American society and we are still limping it off today.

From the botched burglary to the political cover-up to the first and only pardoning of an American

president.

...