WILLS, FRANK (4 February 1948–27 September 2000), security guard who discovered the Watergate break-in. On the night of June 17, 1972, Wills was working the graveyard shift at the Wa- tergate complex in Washington, DC, for which he was paid $80 a week. He was patrolling the parking lot when he noticed masking tape covering the locks on a stairwell door. At first he as- sumed the tape must have been left by a maintenance crew earlier in the day. He removed the tape and went on break. When he returned the tape had reap- peared. Wills then called the police to report a possible burglary in progress and jotted down a quick note in the secu- rity log: “1:47 AM Found tape on doors; call police to make inspection another inspection.” (The log is now preserved in the National Archives.) When officers arrived, Wills accompanied them to the sixth floor, where they found the door to the Democratic National Committee offices pried open. Inside they discov- ered five men, wearing suits and rubber gloves and carrying bugging equipment, walkie-talkies, and $2,300 in cash.
Gradually the magnitude of what Wills had discovered was revealed to the public, culminating in President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Wills be- came a minor celebrity after testifying against the burglars. He was sought af- ter for interviews and appeared on the cover of Jet magazine. He hired a law- yer who acted as his agent, promising to bring him wealth and fame for a twen- ty-five percent commission.
Though Wills wasn’t named in Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book about the Watergate scandal, All the President’s Men, Woodward would later describe him as “the only one in Wa- tergate who did his job perfectly.” Wills made a cameo playing himself in the 1976 film adaptation and was the only person of color in the cast. The brief opening sequence shows Wills in the dark, turning a doorknob, discovering the masking tape, and ripping it off.
In 1973 Wills quit his job at the Watergate after being denied a raise. He had trouble finding new work as a security guard and suspected he may have been blacklisted by employers who were either pro-Nixon or feared the publicity and possible federal retaliation.
He began to speak bitterly of his fame. His friends joked that everyone was making money off the Watergate scandal but him. He told the New York Times in 1973, “When you’re Black and you do something wrong, everybody’s always criticizing loud, but when you’re Black and do something good, nobody pays any attention.”
Over the next decade Wills worked odd jobs—he was a salesman for activist and nutrition guru Dick Gregory’s health formula for a spell—but grad- ually fell on hard times. In 1982 Wills was arrested for shoplifting a $12 pair of sneakers. He claimed to be hiding the shoes from his son who was shopping with him because he wanted to buy them as a surprise. He was sentenced to one year in prison but was released early because of overcrowding.
After his release he moved to South Carolina to care for his aging mother. He lived in her home after she died but could not afford electricity. He died in 2000 at the age of fifty-two.