HBO’s latest satirical drama series, White House Plumbers, follows the increasingly disastrous manoeuvering of a group of low-level operatives, known informally as the “plumbers,” who were inadvertently responsible for the only time in history that a sitting U.S. President resigned from office.
And it’s all based on a true story.
White House Plumbers is inspired by an infamous political scandal.
The titular White House Plumbers was a real-life covert team officially known as the Special Investigations Unit that was established during Nixon’s presidency, and tasked with preventing and responding to the leak of classified information. The unit’s first assignment was to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, by burgling the office of his psychiatrist Lewis Fielding in order to find incriminating evidence—ultimately to no avail.
Following that ultimately fruitless mission, two of the so-called “plumbers,” E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, went on to orchestrate the burglary and wiretapping of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office building, as part of the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP. No, we don’t make up these acronyms.) Hunt and Liddy hired five amateur thieves to carry out the break-in… and it’s safe to say, things did not go their way.
The botched burglary became known as the Watergate Scandal, and led to a full investigation into corruption in the White House, culminating in the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Hunt is portrayed in the series by Woody Harrelson, while Liddy is played by Justin Theroux.
White House Plumbers specifically takes its cues from the book Integrity by former “plumber” Egil Krogh, who authorized the burglary of Fielding’s office. However, he refused to authorize the wiretap, and was subsequently fired from the Special Investigations Unit. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Krogh was implicated and pled guilty to federal charges. He was disbarred from practicing law, but spent only four months of his six-year sentence in prison.
Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the United Kingdom covering pop culture, relationships and LGBTQ+ issues. His work has appeared in GQ, Teen Vogue, Man Repeller and MTV.
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