by Ron Kampeas, Associated Press
COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) - It’s been 30 years and they still haven’t cleaned the ashtray.
The National Archives marked the coming 30-year anniversary of Watergate on Thursday by briefly displaying artifacts of the bungled burglary that ultimately brought down President Nixon.
On display were tools and other belongings seized by police after they arrested five burglars in the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex at 2:30 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 17, 1972.
The Howard Johnson Inn where the burglars stayed across from the Watergate is gone, but its ashtray bears the same butt stains it did when it was seized.
Archivists stringently maintained each item as they found it.
But the Duracell batteries that powered the eavesdropping taps - two in phones and one in a smoke detector - are long gone. “They were leaking like anything,” said archivist David Paynter.
Much in the collection bespeaks the 1970s: long sideburns in the photos and clunky electronics. Still, some items seem jarringly new, like a gleaming array of lock-picking devices that once belonged to burglar Virgilio Gonzalez.
Burglar Bernard Barker’s address book is open to the “H” page.
A penciled entry shows three vertical lines with a slash through them and underneath, “WH-202-456-2282" and another phone number.
They were the White House and home numbers for E. Howard Hunt - the lines and slash representing his initials, “HH.” He was the ex-CIA man and Nixon aide who masterminded the burglary and eavesdropping of the president’s political rivals.
Neither number answers now, although 456 is still the White House prefix.
A few dozen items were displayed ahead of Monday’s anniversary, among hundreds of items stacked in temperature- and humidity-controlled rooms on the fifth floor of the archives’ campus in suburban Maryland.
A lineup of conspirator photos used in the trials suggested how the news swept quickly from an inside-page police blotter item to the front page, stunning a nation.
Propped next to four black and white mug shots of fatigued, baffled burglars - Barker, Gonzalez, Rolando Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis - is an official color White House portrait of Hunt, looking self-assured.
The other burglar arrested that night was James W. McCord, another ex-CIA man who joined Nixon’s re-election team.
On the occasion of the anniversary, the Discovery Channel showed a portion of post-resignation Nixon’s interview with journalist David Frost.
In that segment, Nixon acknowledged that “I brought myself down” with the Watergate scandal. But he refused to bow to his enemies.
“If they want me to get down and grovel on the floor - no, never,” Nixon told Frost.