Word: mccord
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...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...
...everything possible on the official record. He summoned his two law clerks, a court reporter, a bailiff, and the probation officer with the letter. Sirica would open it only in their presence and he would read it immediately into the record. As he did so, the implications of McCord's message immediately hit Sirica. "I knew this might throw light on things we suspected but didn't know," he explained later. "It convinced me I'd done exactly the right thing in asking all those questions...
Three days later, Sirica acted on another of his habits: when in doubt, make matters public. He read the McCord letter to a crowded courtroom. McCord had written that he feared "retaliatory measures against me, my family and my friends," said he did not trust the regular investigatory agencies enough to give them the information but felt he must disclose that: 1) political pressures from high
...officials had been "applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent"; 2) perjury masking the motivations of the defendants had occurred during the McCord-Liddy trial; and 3) "others involved in the Watergate operation were not identified during the trial, when they could have been by those testifying." After he had read the letter and watched newsmen rush for telephones, the import struck Sirica again, almost like a physical blow. He felt pains in his chest, ordered a recess in the proceedings and retired to his chambers to rest...
...When McCord later detailed his charges to Government and Senate investigators, he claimed he had been told that former Attorney General John Mitchell had approved the Watergate wiretapping plans, that all the defendants had been given regular installments of payoff money to keep quiet, that he and others had been promised Executive clemency in return for their silence after serving short prison terms, and that this offer came from the White House. McCord's sources of information were Liddy and Hunt, making his own testimony hearsay and thus legally inconclusive in a criminal case. But the fact that McCord...