Introduction

Wright patman was a populist who hated wall street banks and the politicians who coddled them. The watergate affair wasn't really any of patman's business, but he had a couple of questions anyway. He wanted to know why were the burglars who broke into democratic party headquarters at the water gate carrying thousands of dollars in hundred dollar bills? And why were the serial numbers on those hundred dollar bills in sequential order? Why had one of those burglars received a deposit of 89 thousand dollars in checks from a mexican bank? For patman, all that money was a huge red flag. It suggested that this was not a third rate burglary, as the white house was