Is White House Plumbers based on a true story?

The HBO series gives a brand new look at the Watergate scandal – but how much of it is true?

By James Hibbs

Published: Tuesday, 23 May 2023 at 12:00 am

New HBO satirical drama series White House Plumbers will soon arrive on Sky Atlantic in the UK, and it sees Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux in the lead roles.

The pair play political operatives E Howard Hunt and G Gordon Liddy, who are charged by President Nixon with stopping press leaks after the Pentagon Papers are published in 1971.

The series gives an in-depth look at a period in American history, but is it based on a true story and how much of what it details is real?

Read on for everything you need to know about the true story behind White House Plumbers.

Is White House Plumbers based on a true story?

"Woody
Woody Harrelson as E Howard Hunt and Justin Theroux as G Gordon Liddy in White House Plumbers.
HBO

It is. White House Plumbers is based on the 2007 book Integrity by Egil ‘Bud’ Krogh and Matthew Krogh, which itself documents the real-life events surrounding the Watergate scandal which played out between 1972 and 1974.

Bud Krogh was a lawyer who worked for the Nixon administration and who served four and a half months of a six-year sentence after approving the Watergate scandal burglary.

This is far from the first dramatisation of the events surrounding the scandal – just last year Julia Roberts starred in the Starz series Gaslit, which was also based on the scandal.

Other dramatisations include 1976 film All the President’s Men, 2017’s The Post and 2008’s Frost/Nixon.

How close to real life is the show’s version of events?

"Justin
Justin Theroux as G Gordon Liddy & Woody Harrelson as E Howard Hunt in White House Plumbers.
HBO

The series starts off with a title card which says: “The following is based on a true story. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, because nearly everyone was found guilty.”

The show does follow through on this, with most of the events depicted being based on the real events. However, there were some elements changed for dramatic effect.

David Mandel told The Hollywood Reporter that “it is a true story but, like any true story, you can find discrepancies just in that sort of Rashomon way of how people in the same room will tell it differently”.

He also admitted that “you obviously can’t tell everything, otherwise it would be a long, boring story” and said that he therefore had to “chisel away and create the story that’s interesting”.

Mandel gave an example: “Here’s a meeting and other people were in it; let’s just have two other people there, instead of six. You’re making choices like that. But the things that are happening happened. We’re not trying to rewrite what happened.

“Occasionally, we don’t know what they said. Maybe both of them weren’t there. So you take liberties to tell a dramatic story. But at least when you’re taking those liberties, you’re taking them in the name of the story you’re trying to tell and who these guys were.

“I have no doubt there will be somebody going, “That’s not what happened!” But that’s not the exact point of the show.”

Some of these changes which have already been noted include the show’s opening sequence. In the scene, Liddy, Hunt and their team are seen attempting their second break-in, but it fails because they didn’t have the right lock-picking tools.

CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali reported that this actually happened on the first attempt, while the second failed because they accidentally bugged an empty conference room, because they couldn’t find the correct office.

Meanwhile, TV Guide reported that while in the series the plumbers’ first mission, breaking into a psychiatrist’s office to get files on military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, sees them unable to find the file and trashing the office, in real life they reportedly did find the file.

Ellsberg said that they left the file as they didn’t find it enlightening, and that he didn’t believe the room was trashed.