Watergate's Forgotten Hero: Frank Wills, Night Watchman

by Adam Henig

Overview

Nearly everyone who played a significant role in the Watergate saga has been scrutinized except one key participant: night watchman Frank Wills.

On the morning of June 17, 1972, in Washington D.C, the twenty-four-year-old security guard was on duty at the Watergate Office Building when he detected a break-in. A high school dropout with only a few hours of formal guard training, Wills alerted the police who caught five burglars, ultimately igniting a national political scandal that ended with the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

The only African American identified with the Watergate affair, Frank Wills enjoyed a brief moment in the limelight, but was unable to cope with his newfound fame, living the remainder of his life in obscurity and poverty. Through exhaustive research and numerous interviews, the story of America's most famous night watchman finally has been told.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476684802
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	06/09/2021
Pages:	213
Sales rank:	183,829
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.43(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Adam Henig’s writings have appeared Time, Tampa Bay Times, Washington Independent Review of Books, BlackPast, San Francisco Book Review and History News Network.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Foreword JaQwan J. Kelly 1

Preface 3

1 "Impenetrable" Security 7

2 The Break-In 10

3 Savannah 19

4 North Augusta 33

5 Job Corps 42

6 Watergate 50

7 Metro Police 59

8 The Caper 67

9 Opportunity Knocks 80

10 Delusions of Grandeur 90

11 From Bad to Worse 109

12 Downward Spiral 128

13 "I've Done My Work" 144

Epilogue 159

Chapter Notes 165

Bibliography 183

Index 195

Editorial Reviews

In the plethora of works on the 1970s and the Watergate scandal, Frank Wills is often only mentioned in passing (and even then, rarely named) or relegated to obscurity in footnotes. Yet, as the 24-year-old security guard who first discovered evidence of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C., Wills played a singular role in the unraveling of America’s biggest political scandal. In this absorbing biography, Henig offers the first serious and systematic examination of Watergate through the lens of Wills. ...this book convincingly portrays the Watergate figure as a 20th-century hero. ...this is a powerful, tragic biography of a man who, in the words of Bob Woodward, was ‘the only one in Watergate who did his job perfectly.’ A remarkably well-researched and definitive account of an unheralded American hero.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2021-09-04
A historian explores the life of a forgotten 20th-century hero in this biography.

In the plethora of works on the 1970s and the Watergate scandal, Frank Wills is often only mentioned in passing (and even then, rarely named) or relegated to obscurity in footnotes. Yet, as the 24-year-old security guard who first discovered evidence of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C., Wills played a singular role in the unraveling of America’s biggest political scandal. In this absorbing biography, Henig offers the first serious and systematic examination of Watergate through the lens of Wills. Despite the historical marginalization of Wills, the African American security guard became a national sensation as Richard Nixon’s presidency crumbled in the aftermath of the Watergate break-in. From making the cover of Jet magazine to appearing in nationally televised interviews, Wills had a brief flirtation with fame. But his celebrity quickly turned into a subsequent lifetime of tragedy where he “lived in the shadow of Watergate” and never missed an “opportunity to express his bitterness and disappointment” with his involvement in the scandal. Essentially blackballed from Washington security jobs by employers who resented him for not keeping quiet or who feared the loss of federal funding by retaliatory Republicans if they hired him—and undermined by the actions of his lawyer/agent in the heyday of his fame—Wills spent the latter decades of his life in poverty. After contracting AIDS, he suffered an early death from lymphoma and a brain tumor. Marshaling an impressive body of research that utilizes private interviews with Wills conducted by author Alex Haley, conversations with the security guard’s family and friends, and a myriad of archival and print sources, this book convincingly portrays the Watergate figure as a 20th-century hero. In addition, the work avoids the trappings of hagiography in its acknowledgments of Wills’ personal shortcomings. And while some of the tangential passages of historical context are at times more distracting than illuminating to Wills’ story, this is a powerful, tragic biography of a man who, in the words of Bob Woodward, was “the only one in Watergate who did his job perfectly.”

A remarkably well-researched and definitive account of an unheralded American hero.

Kirkus Reviews