James McCord

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James Walter McCord, Jr. (born July 26, 1924 in Waurika, Oklahoma) was the electronics expert involved in two break-ins of the Watergate complex. McCord was also a former CIA agent. He and four other accomplices, Frank Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez and Bernard Barker, were arrested during the second break-in, which ignited the Watergate scandal. He attended Baylor University and was a graduate of George Washington University. He was interviewed and then hired by Jack Caulfield in January 1972 "for strict, solely defensive security work at the Republican National Committee and the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP)". One of the first men convicted in the Watergate criminal trial, McCord led the June 17, 1972 early-morning burglary of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C.. He was convicted on eight counts of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. He later wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge John Sirica stating that his plea and testimony, some of which he claimed was perjured, were compelled by pressure from White House counsel John Dean and former Attorney General John N. Mitchell. His letter set off the Watergate scandal in earnest by implicating many higher-ups in the Richard Nixon administration for covering up the conspiracy that led to the burglary. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

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