Word: mccord
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sirica was still skeptical when the Government's main witness, Former FBI Agent Al fred C. Baldwin, admitted at the trial of Liddy and McCord that he had monitored many of the conversations of Democrats on a radio receiver in the Howard Johnson's motel across the street from the Watergate. But Baldwin also insisted that he could not recall to whom at the Nixon re-election committee he had delivered records of the intercepted talks. "Here you are an FBI agent and you want the court and jury to believe that you gave [them] to some guard you hardly...
With the jury out of the courtroom, Sirica dismissed as "ridiculous, frankly" the claim by McCord's attorney, Gerald Alch, that McCord had helped bug the Democrats in hopes of detecting plans of radicals for acts of violence against Republicans during the campaign. If McCord really believed that, Sirica suggested, he should have called police, the FBI or the Secret Service. Well, could McCord's defense be based on the claim that he had no criminal intent? "You may argue it," Sirica told Alch. "Whether the jury will believe you is another story...
...jury did not, finding both McCord and Liddy guilty on Jan. 30 of burglary, wiretapping and attempted bugging. At a bail hearing for the two conspirators...
...combination of the impending hearings, twinges of conscience, and Sirica's not very veiled hints at severe sentences was too much for one of the previously uncommunicative conspirators. On March 20 Sirica stepped out of his chambers and into his office reception area to find James McCord standing there with a letter in his hand. A clerk told the startled judge that McCord wanted to see him privately. Sirica, who never allows a defendant or convicted individual to approach him privately before sentencing, quickly retreated to his chambers and ordered McCord to leave. He said McCord would have to hand...
...Sirica, it was an awkward situation. Perhaps McCord was offering incriminating information on others. But what if the envelope contained money, and some sinister plot to frame the judge was under way? Should he have any private dealings at all with McCord, if only to accept a letter? Should he just turn the envelope over to Government prosecutors and let them open it? But what if it contained something McCord did not want even the prosecutors to know...