Watergate lookout reinvented himself but couldn’t shake links to notorious past
Alfred C. Baldwin III, who has died aged 83, was a former FBI agent who served as the chief eavesdropper and lookout for the Watergate burglars, but then became a key government witness in the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.
Like Watergate conspirator James McCord Jr, whose death in 2017 was not widely reported for two years, Baldwin did not want his death in January publicised. It has been confirmed by his lawyer after being reported in an updated edition of the book The Watergate Burglars.
A gregarious Marine Corps veteran from a prominent
Connecticut family, Baldwin reinvented himself as a teacher and lawyer in the years after Watergate, working as a state prosecutor in
Hartford for nearly a decade until his retirement in 1997. But he remained best known as a supporting player in the cast of petty crooks, dirty tricksters, FBI veterans and former spies involved in the plot to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington.
‘‘You’d think after 25 years, it would be over,’’ he told the Hartford Courant in 1997, after he was subpoenaed as part of a defamation lawsuit against Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy. ‘‘There are other things in life.’’
When McCord and four others broke into the Watergate office building on June 17, 1972, Baldwin was watching from across the street, keeping an eye on the DNC’s sixth-floor headquarters from his room at a Howard Johnson hotel. He became the only member of the team not charged with a crime, agreeing to co-operate with federal investigators in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
According to a 1992 report in The Washington Post, Baldwin’s testimony gave prosecutors enough evidence to indict the five burglars as well as two other conspirators, White House operatives Howard Hunt and Liddy. Before testifying at trials and congressional hearings, Baldwin also went public with his story, helping to show that the break-in was far more than a ‘‘third-rate burglary’’, as Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler initially called it.
In an interview published in October 1972, he revealed that the June break-in was actually the second Watergate burglary, after McCord and his team bugged two phones at the Democratic office over Memorial Day weekend. Over the next three weeks, Baldwin monitored some 200 phone conversations, taking notes that were passed to McCord and shared with Nixon campaign officials.
In the lead-up to the second burglary, he was looking out the window of his hotel room when he saw the lights flicker on across the Democratic office. He was not worried until a
FBI agent b June 23, 1936 d January 15, 2022
‘‘You’d think after 25 years, it would be over. There are other things in life.’’
Al Baldwin on Watergate in 1997
few armed men stepped onto the balcony, and he radioed to ask what the burglars were wearing.
‘‘Our people are dressed in suits,’’ a voice replied. ‘‘Well,’’ Baldwin recalled saying, ‘‘we’ve got problems. We’ve got some people dressed casually, and they’ve got guns.’’ Police, who had been tipped off by a Watergate security guard, took the burglars into custody as Baldwin watched.
Alfred Carleton Baldwin III was born in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduating from university, he served in the Marines for three years, and was recruited to the FBI, resigning three years later after marrying and moving back to Connecticut.
His marriage to Georgeann Porto soon ended in divorce. Baldwin moved between jobs, before joining the Campaign to Re-Elect the President (Creep) in May 1972. In his first assignment, he was a security guard for Martha Mitchell, whose husband John had stepped down as attorney-general to work on the Nixon campaign. They never hit it off.
‘‘Al Baldwin is probably the most gauche character I have ever met in my whole life,’’ Mitchell said in a Watergate deposition, complaining that Baldwin had taken off his shoes and socks at her hotel suite.
As the Watergate scandal wore on, the administration repeatedly tried to cover up the burglary and wiretapping scheme. Dozens were convicted, and as impeachment appeared inevitable Nixon resigned, leaving office on August 9, 1974.
Baldwin said he struggled to find work after Watergate before landing a job as a substitute teacher in New Haven. He received a masters degree in education from Southern Connecticut State College (now a university) and later returned to the law, working as a state prosecutor.
Baldwin remained puzzled by Watergate details for years. He became convinced that the operation was a ‘‘well-planned’’ setup, concluding that McCord and other CIA veterans had intentionally set out to remove Nixon from office. Whatever the motivation, he was convinced that the US had failed to learn from the scandal.
He said he was once asked by a college student if he had any advice that resulted from his experience in the episode. ‘‘Yeah,’’ he said, ‘‘don’t trust anyone but your parents.’’ – Washington Post