Miami’s Watergate mystery man at heart of newly revealed CIA report

Was a Miami man the CIA’s secret mole inside the team of burglars who broke into the Democratic National Committee's offices inside Washington's Watergate office complex 44 years ago, triggering a political scandal that ended an American presidency? Justice Department prosecutors and Senate investigators suspected he was, according to a newly declassified CIA document released Tuesday.

The prospective mole was anti-Castro activist Eugenio Martinez, one of the five burglars arrested while trying to tap a telephone inside the Democratic offices, who also was on the CIA payroll as a $100-a-month informant on Miami’s Cuban exile community.

Prosecutors were so convinced that Martinez was really a spy, relaying reports on the burglary team’s activities to the CIA, that they demanded to see the agency’s entire secret dossier on him.