The Watergate scandal may pale in comparison to more recent federal crimes, but at the time, a botched hotel break-in was enough to make the sitting president resign. It’s probably because the scandal itself was so shallow (in modern terms) that it makes for the perfect satire.
The HBO limited series helmed by the writers ofVeep, Alex Gregory and Peter Hyuck,White House Plumberswas directed by anotherVeepalum, David Mandel. As with the Julia Louis-Dreyfus-led comedy, it mercilessly pokes fun at the people on the Hill. Except this time, the resident DC laughingstocks are based on real people.
The Watergate scandal was pioneered, with President Nixon’s approval, by E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who are portrayed in the series as bumbling buffoons.Played by Woody Harrelsonand Justin Theroux respectively, the actors performances reach their most outlandish in this series of high-profile high jinks.
With absurdity cranked to ten, the story of Watergate comes to light from the perspective of those who orchestrated it and sank it to the ground. With a prestigious cast including Lena Headey, Domhnall Gleeson, and Kathleen Turner, here is a character guide toWhite House Plumbers.
E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson)
Hunt, played byWoody Harrelson, was a former CIA operative, who was most notably involved in the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba. While there is a running gag in the show that he also orchestratedthe Kennedy assassination, there is not enough evidence to prove this claim. Hunt grew up in a conservative family in New York. After graduating from Brown in 1940, he served in the US Navy, working his way up to the CIA.
Throughout his life, he wrote numerous books, some under pseudonyms. As depicted in the show, he and his wife Dorothy had four children together, and he would later remarry and have two more children with Laura Martin. After retiring from the CIA, allegedly because of his poor reputation with the Bay of Pigs, Hunt was brought in by Nixon’s White House lawyer to help discredit the man behind the Pentagon Papers leak.
While Hunt did not successfully complete this task, he managed to impress Nixon’s team enough that he was asked to join CREEP, the Committee to Re-elect the President. Alongside G. Gordon Liddy, Hunt’s job was to sabotage the DNC so that Nixon would win his re-election in a landslide. And even though that is what happened, he later resigned once Hunt and Liddy’s scheme came to light.
That scheme involved hiring a group of Cubans Hunt once worked with tobreak into the Watergate Hoteland bug the rooms of DNC members. Most elements of this plan fell apart during its execution, and Hunt was sentenced to low-security federal prison where he spent thirty-three months.
G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux)
Before conspiring with Hunt to orchestrate Watergate, G. Gordon Liddy, played byJustin Theroux, was born in Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from Fordham University in 1952, when he joined the US Army. Returning to Fordham for law school, he soon became a lawyer and workedfor the FBI.
The series depicts Liddy as a strict, militaristic appreciator of Hitler, who even played his speeches on phonograms during social dinners. He was known for reckless behavior while working in the FBI, going so far as to run a background check on his future wife. He later described this action as a “routine precautionary measure.”
After working on the Nixon administration in various roles, he was moved to the Committee to Re-elect the President alongside E. Howard Hunt. The show makes a point to show that Hunt was the “strategic” one, while Liddy’s plots came off too far-fetched. They involved kidnapping members of the anti-war movement, as well as hiring sex workers to fraternize with Democratic politicians.
Dorothy Hunt (Lena Headey)
Dorothy Hunt is a more tragic character in the series.Game of Thrones’Lena Headeyplays Hunt’s wife. She spent her days taking care of her and Howard’s four children, while also typing up the many novels her husband transcribed. When the Watergate scandal came to light, Hunt and Liddy wanted help from the White House to keep quiet. Nixon’s team gave them various payments of hush money, which soon became Dorothy’s job to spread throughout all the Watergate defendants.
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While she was flying across the country to deliver the payments, her plane tragically crashed and she was killed. Because the scene of the crash was swarming with FBI agents moments after the crash, a conspiracy was soon created that Dorothy was murdered.
This wasn’t alleviated by the fact that right before boarding the doomed flight, she took out a $225,000 flight insurance policy. Was Dorothy murdered? The series seems to allude to yes, but there isn’t enough evidence to know for sure.
John Dean (Domhnall Gleeson)
John Dean worked as President Nixon’s White House Counsel from 1970-1973. He became a lawyer after earning his degree at Georgetown and was the man in charge of Hunt and Liddy’s operation. The series depicts him, portrayed byDomhnall Gleeson, approving of their request to have a million-dollar budget, which had been a number Hunt threw out on a whim.
Except when push came to shove, he abandoned his cause to become the key witness in Congress' Watergate investigation. Dean discovered he was being primed by higher-ups to be the Watergate scapegoat. So instead, he turned on the president, the plumbers, and anyone else involved, in exchange for a plea deal with one single felony charge.
After serving four months behind bars, he was disbarred. With the worst of Watergate behind him, Dean wrote a memoir about hisWhite House experiences,Blind Ambition, which later became a TV miniseries in 1979.
James W. McCord Jr. (Toby Huss)
McCord, played byToby Huss, was brought onto the plumbers as an electronics expert, whose expertise was supposed to help them break into the Watergate Hotel. He served as a bombardier for the US Army Aired Forces during WWII.
After workingfor the CIA, he went on to become a bodyguard for Attorney General John Mitchell and head of security for Nixon’s re-election campaign. During the night of the Watergate break-in, McCord and four others were caught and arrested on-site. Their arrests directly led to the Watergate scandal becoming national news. He served four months in prison and then launched his own security firm.
Dita Beard (Kathleen Turner)
The legendary actressKathleen Turnermakes a small but indelible feature toWhite House Plumbers. She didn’t play much of a role in Watergate, but her connection to Nixon’s Attorney General, John Mitchell, brought her into the plumber’s orbit.
While working as a lobbyist for International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), the dark-humored Republican typed up a memo noting that her company made a donation to the RNC for $440,000 in exchange for an antitrust ruling to go their way. She mentioned Mitchell in the memo, which leaked to the press. With Mitchell’s name corrupted, and his proximity to the president, John Dean enlisted Hunt and Liddy to clean up the situation.
In their usual fashion, the White House plumbers concocted a plan to play up Dita Beard’s heart condition and sabotage her testimony. After a generous bribe, Beard later denied the memo’s authenticity. This saved Mitchell (and Nixon) from one scandal, only for them to crumble from the next one.
Egil Krogh (Rich Sommer)
There’s something meta about the inclusion of Egil Krogh inWhite House Plumbers, as he is the inspiration behind the entire show. Played by theMad MenandVeepalumRich Sommers, the series was adapted from Krogh’s memoir,Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House. Previously, he was a lawyer and the Senior Fellow on Ethics and Leadership at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. After working in the Nixon campaign, he eventually became the president’s deputy assistant and the one officially in charge of the White House plumbers.
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He approved of Hunt and Liddy’s first assignment, but would not condone a wiretap. This led to him being fired from the special unit, and when the Watergate scandal came to light, Krogh owned his actions fully. He turned himself to prosecutors, not looking for any kind of deal, and pleaded guilty. Krogh was sentenced to six years in prison, though he only served less than five months before his release.
Frank Sturgis (Kim Coates)
Kim Coates, star of FX’sSons of Anarchy, plays one of the five Watergate burglars who was arrested on-site. Frank Sturgis served in the US military and worked as an undercover CIA operative during the Cuban Revolution. Unlike Hunt, he was actuallyinvolved in several conspiraciessurrounding JFK’s assassination, as well as the assassination of Portuguese Prime Minister Francisco de Sá Carneiro. For his Watergate crimes, Sturgis served fourteen months in prison and afterward worked as a police informant in Miami.
Kevan Hunt (Kiernan Shipka)
While the popularMad Menalum doesn’t make a big splash in the series, she plays the favorite daughter of E. Howard Hunt. As Hunt cannot be described as a family man, it wasKiernan Shipka’sKevan Hunt whom he always had a soft spot for. After Watergate becomes a full-fledged scandal and Dorothy’s plane crashes, Hunt gives his daughter Kevan the ledgers detailing the federal payoffs he and the plumbers received.
He asks her to burn them, but instead, she keeps them inher college dorm. As their relationship grows strained, she threatens to turn them over to the prosecution if Hunt doesn’t turn himself in. Nowadays, Kevan Hunt makes a living as a mystery novelist and has since repaired her relationship with her father.
John Mitchell (John Carroll Lynch)
The famous character actorJohn Carroll Lynchplays the 67th Attorney General of the United States, and the chair of both of Richard Nixon’s presidential campaigns. Born in Detroit, he earned a law degree at Fordham and served as a naval officer in WWII. While he was known for personifying Nixon’s “law and order” attitude, he was one of the few Cabinet members convicted of a crime.
Beyond bribing ITT, he too participated in the Watergate scandal. While he testified to Congress that he had no knowledge of the Watergate break-in, evidence soon proved otherwise, that he was involved in the break-in scheme and even approved of wire-tapping. After being sentenced to up to eight years in prison, he wound up serving nineteen months.
But the darkest chapter of Mitchell’s story involves his wife. Mitchell enlisted a former FBI agent to detain her against her will, so she couldn’t speak to the press. After she struggled against five men, she was forcibly sedated and required five stitches. So much for law and order.
