page_title: Bernard Barker
section_title: Joins White House plumbers
hierarchical_section_title: Bernard Barker / Joins White House plumbers
caption_attribution_description: Scope and content: This address book lists "HH," initials for Howard Hunt, a White House consultant. After confirming that the telephone number listed here was indeed at the White House, the FBI linked the Watergate break-in to the White House during the investigation's earliest hours. General notes: Exhibit History: "American Originals," December 1997 - December 1998, National Archives Rotunda, Washington, DC, Exhibit No. 624.0217. "Recent America," June 1984 - December 1985, National Archives Rotunda, Washington, DC, Exhibit No. 533.0374.
context_page_description: Bernard Leon Barker was a Watergate burglar and undercover operative in CIA-directed plots to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
context_section_description: In September 1971, his former CIA superior, E. Howard Hunt, recruited him for the "Plumbers", the Nixon White House's  "Special Investigations Unit". He was recruited by Hunt to find background information on Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was under watch for leaking the "Pentagon Papers", a series of articles featured in The New York Times in 1971 detailing U.S. government secrets concerning the Vietnam War's history. Along with Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, Barker broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis J. Fielding, in Los Angeles. The mission's purpose was to find discrediting information on Ellsberg. The mission was completed, but largely unsuccessful in finding any damaging information about Ellsberg.
  In 1972, Barker was one of the five burglars paid by the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP), Nixon's re-election campaign fundraising committee, for a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and subsequently was convicted in the Watergate scandal. The others were Frank Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez and James McCord. Along with the other Watergate burglars, G. Gordon Liddy, and E. Howard Hunt, Barker was charged with, and pleaded guilty to, wiretapping, planting electronic surveillance equipment, and theft of documents.
  Barker also worked with CRP to get monies which went into the Nixon campaign coffers off the books; it was via his bank account that $25,000 from Archer Daniels Midland Chief Executive Dwayne Andreas was obtained by CRP in violation of campaign finance laws.
  On March 7, 1974, Barker, along with Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, Liddy, Martinez, and Felipe de Diego, was indicted for the Ellsberg burglary. Barker was released pending appeal after serving one year of a two-and-a-half to six-year sentence.
caption: Address Book of Bernard Barker, discovered in a room at the Watergate Hotel, June 18, 1972
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