Posted on 06/07/2009 5:11:55 PM PDT by Steelfish
US Watergate 'plumber' dies
AFP/File – File picture shows an exhibit of police evidence from the break-in at the Democratic National Committee … Sun Jun 7
MIAMI (AFP) – Bernard Leon Barker, one of the last surviving "plumbers" who broke into the Watergate building in a scandal that led to the 1974 resignation of president Richard Nixon, died in Florida at age 92, the Miami Herald reported.
Barker and four colleagues working for a special White House office were caught breaking into Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington in June 1972.
The team known as the "plumbers" -- tasked with stopping information leaks -- broke into the DNC office to plant microphones.
The "burglars" however were surprised and later charged and convicted along with two White House advisers.
Barker, the son of Americans living in Cuba, enlisted in the US Army during World War II and flew in bombing raids over Germany. He was shot down and served 18 months in a prisoner of war camp, the Herald reported.
After the war he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and helped organize anti-communist Cuban exiles in south Florida who participated in the failed Bay of Pigs operation in an attempt to topple the Fidel Castro regime in 1961.
The exiles landed on a Cuban beach in April and were defeated after sustaining massive losses. Barker survived and managed to return to Florida.
Barker's old boss at the CIA later recruited him for the special White House "plumbers" operations.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
No relation to Joe the Plumber.
Hey I almost wish we had Nixon back. He was a patriot.A bit on the paranoid side, but no danger of giving the country over to some caliphate...
RIP
It is always good to know a plumber, just in case.
Or more specifically, they were tasked with stopping Democrat congressional staffers from leaking information to the UN that was then being provided to the North Vietnamese -- info like our negotiating strategies in the Paris Peace Accords.
Or at least this is what I've heard. Does anyone know any more about the pre-Watergate activities of the "plumbers"?
Nixon wasn’t paranoid. He thought he might be ousted by a congressional coup. Look what happened!
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