It was 30 minutes after midnight on June 17, 1972, when Frank Wills, a security guard patrolling the parking garage at the Watergate office complex in Washington, noticed masking tape covering locks on a stairwell door.

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Wills thought perhaps the maintenance crew had taped the doors to keep them from locking. The 24-year-old ripped off the tape, then went for his shift break across the street to the restaurant at the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge for carryout.

By DeNeen L. Brown

DeNeen L. Brown, who has been an award-winning staff writer in The Washington Post Metro, Magazine and Style sections, has also worked as the Canada bureau chief for The Washington Post. As a foreign correspondent, she wrote dispatches from Greenland, Haiti, Nunavut and an icebreaker in the Northwest Passage. Twitter

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