June 28, 1972

Remember Hunt's White House safe? Hunt had retained it after he no longer worked regularly at the White House, and that's where he put various Plumbers and Watergate evidence immediately after the June 17 arrests. Then they had extracted the safe. But what to do with what was inside?

Dean, by June 28, had already passed along to FBI agents the items he felt were safe to give up to law enforcement. Now, Dean and Ehrlichman decided to give the rest to Patrick Gray. After all, they could then say they had turned over everything to the FBI, right? Gray was given sealed envelopes, told that the material was not related to Watergate, and that none of it should ever be exposed for political reasons. Gray -- remember, he's the Acting Director of the FBI -- would take the materials, sit on them for six months, and then burn them. And that's how that particular batch of evidence, which included the diplomatic cables the Plumbers had forged to falsely incriminate JFK in the murder of South Vietnam's Diem, was handled by that group of lawyers.

Meanwhile, the FBI finally made Gordon Liddy.That one took a while, but once the FBI finally got the address books from DC police and started investigating them, it was only a matter of time -- because Liddy's CRP phone number was in one of them, albeit listed under an alias. On June 28, the FBI showed up at CRP to talk to Liddy, who began a silence that he wouldn't break until he got out of prison and wrote a book. It did, however, finally cost him his job with the campaign committee.