Mug shot of Bernard Barker. [Source: Bettmann / Corbis]
About two weeks after the burglary of the offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters (see May 27-28, 1972), burglar Eugenio Martinez is startled when fellow burglar Bernard Barker bursts into his Miami real estate office. Martinez is talking with fellow burglars Felipe de Diego and Frank Sturgis when Barker comes in, according to Martinez, “like a cyclone.” Team leader E. Howard Hunt had been in Miami and given Barker some film to develop. The film was shot during the burglary of the DNC offices. Barker, unaware of the film’s source, took it to a public business, Rich’s Camera Shop, to have it developed. Barker wants everyone to go with him to retrieve the film. Martinez and the others “cover the door,” as Martinez later recalls, while Barker is inside the shop. “I do not think he handled the situation very well,” Martinez will recall. “There were all these people and he was so excited. He ended up tipping the man at the store $20 or $30. The man had just enlarged the pictures showing the documents being held by a gloved hand and he said to Barker: ‘It’s real cloak-and-dagger stuff, isn’t it?’ Later that man went to the FBI and told them about the film.” Martinez is angered by the amateurishness of the operation, but does not feel he can confront Barker, his close friend, on the issue. Barker is “just blind” about Hunt, Martinez recalls, and does not see how poorly the plans are going. Barker has been Hunt’s “principal assistant at the Bay of Pigs, [Hunt’s] liaison with the Cubans, and he still believed tremendously in the man.” Martinez decides to quit, but before he can do so, Barker tells Martinez that there is another Watergate operation in the works. Not wanting to jeopardize the new operation, he agrees to go on one “last mission.” [Harper’s, 10/1974]