Word: mccord
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When the Watergate hearings finally opened under the glare of TV lights in the palatial Senate Caucus Room, the question-and-answer ritual seemed half-remembered from past confrontations. Then, with unexpected suddenness, James McCord Jr., one of the convicted Watergate burglars, tried to tie the scandal to former Attorney General John Mitchell and to Richard Nixon: "I felt the President of the United States had set into motion this operation." It was, admittedly, only hearsay testimony, and Nixon, through his press secretary, once again vigorously denied his involvement. Even before the hearings started, however, the week had brought news...
...scandal. Another maudlin television speech from behind Presidential Seal. John Mitchell, once stern-faced on the ramparts, the hero of Mayday 1971, reduced to a petty criminal, a hang-dog and pathetic figure. The names, a new one every day: Dean, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kliendienst, Krogh, Barker, Sturgis, Alch, McCord, Liddy, Hunt, Chapin, Caulfield. Piecing together the stories, the leaks and the testimony, waiting for that last link, the one piece of firm evidence: "The president ordered me to do this, I bugged them on the president's orders...
Meanwhile, the Watergate witnesses themselves are challenging the veracity of each other's testimony. James W. McCord Jr., who has implicated "the very highest levels of the White House" in the controversy, was challenged by Gerald Alch, his former attorney...
Alch said last week McCord's testimony was falsified in an attempt to "get Nixon." McCord, a former CIA official, testified of White House pressure to portray the Watergate break-in as a CIA plot. In exchange for corroborating that story, McCord would have received executive clemency, John J. Caulfield, former White House staff testified. The CIA had previously been linked to a 1971 break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist...
...McCord will be followed as a witness by John J. Caulfield, the implicated White House official...