Watergate began as a strange little burglary story: five men arrested inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in a Washington office complex. It ended with a president boarding a helicopter after becoming the first in American history to resign. The photographs and television frames of Watergate have a chilling power because so many of them look bureaucratic rather than cinematic: taped locks, courtrooms, microphones, committee tables, boxes of transcripts, tired faces, and finally, Richard Nixon’s raised arms before departure.
#1: The Watergate Complex Exterior
A photograph of the Watergate complex looks almost too calm for the scandal it produced. The curved buildings on the Potomac were modern, expensive, and ordinary enough to make the break-in feel even stranger. On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee offices there. At first, it looked like a botched political burglary. In retrospect, the building became the opening shot of a constitutional crisis with very good real estate.
