Speaker 1: We have a mystery story out of Washington. Five people
Speaker 1: have been arrested and charged with breaking into the headquarters
Speaker 1: or the Democratic National Committee in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night Watergate. Before Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
Speaker 1: before Deep Throat, before the cover up, there was the
Speaker 1: Watergate break in itself and the arrest of the five
Speaker 1: men who did it. At the time, almost nobody understood
Speaker 1: the significance of those arrests, or how they would lead
Speaker 1: to the fall of President Richard M. Nixon, or how
Speaker 1: they very nearly didn't happen at all. Welcome to a
Speaker 1: special bonus episode of Flashback. I'm Sean Braswell. Today we
Speaker 1: consider another extremely fateful moment from history, the summer night
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two when five burglars were arrested at
Speaker 1: the exclusive Watergate condo and off As Complex in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Sometimes the fall of a powerful leader takes
Speaker 1: years of resistance and political organizing. Sometimes it takes a
Speaker 1: bloody coup, and sometimes it's as simple as a single
Speaker 1: man doing nothing one night in a local bar. They
Speaker 1: were called the bum Squad. Late on a Friday night
Speaker 1: in June two Sergeant Paul Leaper of the Washington d C.
Speaker 1: Police Department and two fellow officers were dressed up as
Speaker 1: hippies and cruising the streets of Georgetown in an unmarked
Speaker 1: light blue Ford Sedan. They weren't looking for a good time.
Speaker 1: They were looking for criminals. It was after midnight and Leaper,
Speaker 1: a tenure veteran of the force, was about to head
Speaker 1: home after putting in two hours of overtime. Then an
Speaker 1: alert came in over the radio. Nicole comes out of
Speaker 1: one two am. The guard thinks he has a burgery
Speaker 1: at the water Day some of that effect. This is
Speaker 1: Sergeant Leeper in telling the story to a group of
Speaker 1: students at North Marion High School in West Virginia. We
Speaker 1: respond to the front of the Watergate complex. We get
Speaker 1: out of the car, we parked legally, we don't have
Speaker 1: any red light and sawn on me and they like
Speaker 1: that nor It's a non marked cruiser and it's a
Speaker 1: fulky looking cruiser. Don't look like a police cruiser should
Speaker 1: Leeper and his colleagues didn't look like cops either. The
Speaker 1: Watergate burglars had stationed to look out across the street
Speaker 1: at the Howard Johnson motor lodge. He reportedly saw the
Speaker 1: bum Squad roll up, but didn't give them a second glance.
Speaker 1: He was watching a horror movie on TV at the time,
Speaker 1: Attack of the Puppet People, and so the bum Squad
Speaker 1: entered the building and proceeded to make one of the
Speaker 1: biggest arrests in American history, catching five men breaking into
Speaker 1: the Democratic National Committee's offices on the sixth floor. The
Speaker 1: burgle is forced to stairwell door, then taped its latch
Speaker 1: open at as the police found nothing. Then they spied
Speaker 1: five men crouching behind some disks. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: The Bump Squad was not the first to get the
Speaker 1: call to investigate that night. The vehicle responsible for that area,
Speaker 1: Squad Car eight, had been contacted by the dispatcher first,
Speaker 1: but was unable to respond. Why Sergeant Lieper again, where
Speaker 1: all the scout car the patrol car that run that area.
Speaker 1: He kind of begs off, He says, I'm low on gas.
Speaker 1: I can't They calls to the dispatcher Squad Car eighties
Speaker 1: lack of gas became part of the Watergate saga. Who
Speaker 1: knows how things might have played out had a uniform
Speaker 1: police officer in a patrol car turned up at the
Speaker 1: watergate that night instead of the bum squad. Maybe the
Speaker 1: lookout could have worn the burglars in time. It's an
Speaker 1: amazing what if from history, But it's even more interesting
Speaker 1: than that. For decades, no one really examined squad car
Speaker 1: eighties low on gas claim. Then a few years ago
Speaker 1: a historian biographer named Craig Shirley looked more closely at
Speaker 1: what happened that night. Shirley spoke with the owner of
Speaker 1: a nearby bar that was a favorite hangout of Washington's
Speaker 1: police officers at the time. Officers would often stop there
Speaker 1: for free meals and free drinks, even while on duty.
Speaker 1: The owner told Shirley that squad Car eighty was not
Speaker 1: low on gas. Its officer had started drinking bourbon and
Speaker 1: coke around midnight. By the time the call to investigate
Speaker 1: came into the walkie talkie. Lying on the bar, he
Speaker 1: could barely walk. The bar owner, no stranger to inebriated officers,
Speaker 1: told him he should tell the dispatcher that he was
Speaker 1: out of gas and couldn't respond, and so that's what
Speaker 1: he did. Shirley subsequently tried to confirm the identity of
Speaker 1: the officer and squad car a d that fateful evening,
Speaker 1: but he got nowhere. He told me that he ran
Speaker 1: into the Blue Wall of silence, not to mention a messy,
Speaker 1: haphazard archive with no pertinent records at the Metropolitan Police
Speaker 1: Department of the District of Columbia. Watergate ended the presidency
Speaker 1: of Richard Nixon, and it changed American political life and
Speaker 1: profound ways. Among other things, the Supreme Court rule that
Speaker 1: the president is not above the law and forty eight
Speaker 1: people who are convicted, including two of Nixon's attorneys general
Speaker 1: and his chief of staff. And to think it might
Speaker 1: have all turned on some bourbon and coke. Now that's
Speaker 1: a strong drink. Thanks for listening, and please stay tuned
Speaker 1: to this feed for more bonus episodes on fateful moments
Speaker 1: from history and the weeks ahead. Flashback is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Sean Braswell, senior writer and executive producer
Speaker 1: at Ozzie. It was edited by Maybe mcgoren and produced
Speaker 1: by Tracy Moran. Chris Hoff engineered our show. Make sure
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