Watergate's forced lock is auctioned for $ 62,500

The lock of a forced door in 1972 at the Democratic Party's headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington was sold for $ 62,500 late Thursday, auction house Nate Sanders announced.

Forced entry into these offices has resulted in the largest case of political espionage and the biggest political scandal in US history.

The discovery (by a vigilante) of this forced lock and the subsequent arrest of the five thieves generated a chain reaction that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon," the auctions said, which had set the exit price at $ 50,000. The object was sold with documents certifying both its provenance and the fact that it was extracted from the door of apartment 600, accessible by ladder 2 on Virginia Avenue, 2600, the address of the office building inside the six-building Watergate complex.

The frustrated robbery happened in the early hours of June 17, 1972. A lengthy investigation by two Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, found that the men with listening equipment had been sent by the Nixon administration.

By this espionage operation and subsequent attempts by his family to obstruct justice, Richard Nixon was forced to leave the post in mid-1974. He remains the only president in the history of the United States to resign.