Bonus Episode 4: The Drunk Cop Who Brought Down a President

If not for the fateful inaction of a single Washington, DC police officer, Watergate might never have happened.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
We have a mystery story out of Washington. Five people
have been arrested and charged with breaking into the headquarters
or the Democratic National Committee in the middle of the
night Watergate. Before Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
before Deep Throat, before the cover up, there was the
Watergate break in itself and the arrest of the five
men who did it. At the time, almost nobody understood

(00:31):
the significance of those arrests, or how they would lead
to the fall of President Richard M. Nixon, or how
they very nearly didn't happen at all. Welcome to a
special bonus episode of Flashback. I'm Sean Braswell. Today we
consider another extremely fateful moment from history, the summer night

(00:54):
in nineteen seventy two when five burglars were arrested at
the exclusive Watergate condo and off As Complex in Washington,
d C. Sometimes the fall of a powerful leader takes
years of resistance and political organizing. Sometimes it takes a
bloody coup, and sometimes it's as simple as a single
man doing nothing one night in a local bar. They

(01:19):
were called the bum Squad. Late on a Friday night
in June two Sergeant Paul Leaper of the Washington d C.
Police Department and two fellow officers were dressed up as
hippies and cruising the streets of Georgetown in an unmarked
light blue Ford Sedan. They weren't looking for a good time.
They were looking for criminals. It was after midnight and Leaper,

(01:43):
a tenure veteran of the force, was about to head
home after putting in two hours of overtime. Then an
alert came in over the radio. Nicole comes out of
one two am. The guard thinks he has a burgery
at the water Day some of that effect. This is
Sergeant Leeper in telling the story to a group of

(02:04):
students at North Marion High School in West Virginia. We
respond to the front of the Watergate complex. We get
out of the car, we parked legally, we don't have
any red light and sawn on me and they like
that nor It's a non marked cruiser and it's a
fulky looking cruiser. Don't look like a police cruiser should
Leeper and his colleagues didn't look like cops either. The

(02:25):
Watergate burglars had stationed to look out across the street
at the Howard Johnson motor lodge. He reportedly saw the
bum Squad roll up, but didn't give them a second glance.
He was watching a horror movie on TV at the time,
Attack of the Puppet People, and so the bum Squad

(02:46):
entered the building and proceeded to make one of the
biggest arrests in American history, catching five men breaking into
the Democratic National Committee's offices on the sixth floor. The
burgle is forced to stairwell door, then taped its latch
open at as the police found nothing. Then they spied
five men crouching behind some disks. But here's the thing.
The Bump Squad was not the first to get the

(03:08):
call to investigate that night. The vehicle responsible for that area,
Squad Car eight, had been contacted by the dispatcher first,
but was unable to respond. Why Sergeant Lieper again, where
all the scout car the patrol car that run that area.
He kind of begs off, He says, I'm low on gas.
I can't They calls to the dispatcher Squad Car eighties

(03:31):
lack of gas became part of the Watergate saga. Who
knows how things might have played out had a uniform
police officer in a patrol car turned up at the
watergate that night instead of the bum squad. Maybe the
lookout could have worn the burglars in time. It's an

(03:51):
amazing what if from history, But it's even more interesting
than that. For decades, no one really examined squad car
eighties low on gas claim. Then a few years ago
a historian biographer named Craig Shirley looked more closely at
what happened that night. Shirley spoke with the owner of
a nearby bar that was a favorite hangout of Washington's
police officers at the time. Officers would often stop there

(04:16):
for free meals and free drinks, even while on duty.
The owner told Shirley that squad Car eighty was not
low on gas. Its officer had started drinking bourbon and
coke around midnight. By the time the call to investigate
came into the walkie talkie. Lying on the bar, he

(04:36):
could barely walk. The bar owner, no stranger to inebriated officers,
told him he should tell the dispatcher that he was
out of gas and couldn't respond, and so that's what
he did. Shirley subsequently tried to confirm the identity of
the officer and squad car a d that fateful evening,
but he got nowhere. He told me that he ran

(04:56):
into the Blue Wall of silence, not to mention a messy,
haphazard archive with no pertinent records at the Metropolitan Police
Department of the District of Columbia. Watergate ended the presidency
of Richard Nixon, and it changed American political life and
profound ways. Among other things, the Supreme Court rule that

(05:17):
the president is not above the law and forty eight
people who are convicted, including two of Nixon's attorneys general
and his chief of staff. And to think it might
have all turned on some bourbon and coke. Now that's
a strong drink. Thanks for listening, and please stay tuned

(05:41):
to this feed for more bonus episodes on fateful moments
from history and the weeks ahead. Flashback is written and
hosted by me Sean Braswell, senior writer and executive producer
at Ozzie. It was edited by Maybe mcgoren and produced
by Tracy Moran. Chris Hoff engineered our show. Make sure
to subscribe to Flat sh Back on the I Heart
Radio app or listen wherever you get your podcasts. M

(06:20):
M