Firstly, it can refer to the five men caught on June 17, 1972, burglarizing the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in the Watergate complex, along with their two handlers, E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who were Nixon campaign aides.
The indictments marked the first time in U.S. history that a president was so named.
[2] The period leading up to the trial of the first Watergate Seven began on January 8, 1973.
[3] The term "Watergate Seven" was coined a few months later, in April 1973, by American politician, lawyer, and political commentator Rep. Ed Koch (D-NY), who, in response to U.S.
Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr.'s indicating that one of the men in the Watergate bugging case had been ordered in the spring of 1972 to keep certain senators and representatives under surveillance, posted a sign on the door of his United States Congress office saying, "These premises were surveilled by the Watergate Seven.