“Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1972, Larry O’Brien has long been said to be the target of the Nixon White House ‘plumbers,’ the off-the-books squad of political dirty-tricksters, break-in artists and wiretappers arrested in the Watergate office building on June 17, 1972. But O’Brien’s name is not on the list of bugging targets released Monday by the National Archives and Records Administration, on order of Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. And that throws a wrench into generally accepted answer to the affair’s central question: What were the burglars doing in the Watergate?”
