Colonel William A. Phillips

Eugenio Rolando Martínez Careaga[1] (alias Musculito, July 8, 1922 – January 30, 2021) was a member of the anti-Castro movement in the early 1960s, and later was one of the five men recruited by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt in 1972 for the Memorial Day weekend Watergate burglary at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in Washington, D.C. He later worked as a real estate agent.[2]

Weeks after the initial break-in, on June 17, 1972, the men were arrested by District of Columbia Police inside DNC headquarters during what they said was a second entry into the building to correct problems with the first break-in. Martinez and the others were convicted in the ensuing Watergate scandal. The others were Frank Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker and James McCord. After completing his 15 month prison term,[3] Martinez was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.[4] Martínez was the only person aside from Nixon to receive a pardon for his role in the scandal.[3]


On August 31, 2016, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained CIA internal documents, through a FOIA request, that stated Martinez was a paid asset of the Agency at the time of the break-in. Although his connection to the Agency was acknowledged, until this release the CIA had maintained that his service had ended and he no longer had an association with the Agency for at least two years prior to the incident at the Watergate Hotel.[2] He died on January 30, 2021, at his daughter's home in Minneola, Florida at the age of 98.[5]

In popular culture

Martinez was portrayed in All the President's Men, the 1976 film retelling the events of the Watergate scandal, by Dominic Chianese.

The 2012 novel The Cassandra Project (ISBN 978-1-937008-71-0) by Jack McDevitt and Mike Resnick, set in 2019 and correctly predicting that Martinez would be the last surviving Watergate burglar at that time, has him divulge to a character that the true purpose of the Watergate burglary was to obtain the notebook of another character (supposedly a close friend of both John Ehrlichman and Larry O'Brien) relating to discoveries made by a secret moon landing, and the DNC wiretaps were a diversion.

References

  1. ^ Sam Roberts, "Eugenio Martínez, Last of the Watergate Burglars, Dies at 98," The New York Times, February 2, 2021.
  2. ^ a b CIA author classified (August 22, 1973). "Subject: Eugenio R. Martinez" (PDF). Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 3, 2016. Retrieved December 5, 2017. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  3. ^ a b "Eugenio Martínez, Watergate burglar whose bungled break-in led to Nixon’s fall, dies," Los Angeles Times, February 12, 2021.
  4. ^ Welch, William M. (November 26, 1987). "Power To Pardon Unquestioned And Often Used By Reagan". Associated Press. AP. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
  5. ^ Smiley, David (February 1, 2021). "Eugenio Rolando Martínez, Watergate burglar and former CIA asset in Miami, dies at 98". MiamiHerald.com. Miami Herald. Retrieved February 2, 2021.

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