excerpts
https://www.dailynews.com/2019/06/14/the-man-who-stayed-late-the-watergate-story-youve-never-heard/
Los Angeles Daily News
PUBLISHED: June 14, 2019
The man who stayed late: The Watergate story you’ve never heard
50 years ago, an intern from UCLA messed up the break-in.
On May 28, 1972, burglars broke into the Watergate Hotel. That night, they planted listening devices inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters on the sixth floor.
The Plumbers, as they would later become known, were interested in listening to and stealing secrets from the Democrats. They planned a second break-in for June 16, 1972. The goal was to plant more listening devices and to snap some photographs of important DNC paperwork.
That day also happened to be Givner’s third on the job.
He was assigned to work the phones, calling cities around the country to make sure Democratic committees were prepping for the upcoming convention.
Here’s the thing about Givner: He was very proud of his position with the DNC. That Friday night, in 1972, he stayed in the office after everyone left because he wanted to call his family and friends to tell them where he was and what he was doing.
“The place was empty,” he said. “I kicked my feet up on the metal desk.”
At the time, the DNC used a phone system called W.A.T.S. (Wide Area Telephone Service) that allowed for free phone calls. Givner was happy to use that access.
Sometime between 7 and 9 p.m. he finished up his official work and took out his personal phone book. He called old girlfriends (two of them). He called friends from Lorain. He called professors from UCLA. He called his parents.
In all, he gabbed for more than three hours.
And as he gabbed, the burglars waited.
“I didn’t know I was screwing up their timing,” he said.
Sometime after 10 p.m., Givner had to go to the bathroom. He knew he couldn’t leave the DNC office because the door would lock behind him. So he walked out on the balcony and peed into a planter.
He didn’t know he was being watched.
Richard Ben-Veniste, a Watergate prosecutor, later said of the fateful urination: “A Watergate leak to rival Deep Throat.”
That’s the quote on Givner’s book jacket.
Busted
How would history have been different if, in 1972, Bruce Givner had more friends? Or fewer?
Nobody can say. What is known is that just before midnight Givner ran out of people to call. So he hung up the phone, turned off the lights, and walked downstairs.
He was leaving the building at 12:05 a.m. on June 17, 1972, when he was stopped by security guard Frank Wills.
If you recognize Wills’ name, you’re a Watergate junkie.
In the minutes before he stopped Givner, Wills had discovered tape over the latches on some of the doors leading into the Watergate’s stairwell. He pulled off the tape and made a note in his log book. He also called his supervisor, but couldn’t reach him.
Wills asked Givner to enter his name on a sign-out sheet.
“You don’t need to sign me out,” Givner explained. “I didn’t sign in.”
The two men struck up a conversation. They agreed they were hungry and decided to head across the street to get burgers in the Howard Johnson’s restaurant. It was a to-go order.
Givner rode off on his motorcycle and Wills went back to his post inside the Watergate.
Then history unfolded.
On a routine check of the stairwell, Wills found that the door latches had been taped again. He called the police and three undercover cops came out to the hotel.
The lookout in the hotel across the street, who by this time was watching “Attack of the Puppet People,” missed the cops’ arrival. He didn’t alert the burglars.
During the pre-dawn hours, five men were arrested in the DNC office. Eventually, because of events that followed those arrests, President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace.
From 10/15/1999 ( premiere USA TV series episode "Stargate SG-1"::"Past and Present" ) To 5/10/2006 ( ) is 2399 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 5/28/1972 ( ) is 2399 days
by me, Kerry Burgess, February 18, 2023
Carefully documented in my journal, the one that was private, was that this all started for me on May 10, 2006
The fantastic stuff I've described all these years never existed in my mind before that day
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 10:45 PM Pacific-timezone USA Monday 06/08/2026
