Almost exactly a year after the Pentagon Papers were released to the public, and generated their litigation, the hapless burglars were caught breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate in Washington. Old Washington hands, and people tuned into politics, still recall that the legendary “Plumbers” offered a thread of connection between the two happenings. The “Plumbers” were a clandestine operation, aimed at the task of unearthing information about Daniel Ellsberg, the curious figure who had helped to assemble – and then leak – the Pentagon Papers. Apparently, the plumbers had broken into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist, in the hope of finding some information that could illuminate his political connections – or perhaps turn up other evidence, of a personal nature, that might not be exactly edifying. The disclosure revealed the dark underside of operations long carried out beyond the law, as the intelligence services got round the barriers cast up by the procedures of the law. Was there a suspicion that heroin was entering the country through the diplomatic pouches being sent to an embassy in Washington? Then the attempt to use the conventions of law as a screen for wrongdoing would be combated by other methods, pursued in like measure outside the conventional, legal channels. After a while, that style of operating seemed to spill over into political intelligence.