James McCord

James Walter McCord Jr. was born at Waurika, Oklahoma, on January 26, 1924, and finished high school at Electra, Texas, in 1940. He kept books at the Electra State Bank, joined the FBI in March 1942 as a radio technician, served as a bombardier in the Army Air Corps from November 1943 to November 1945, took a business degree at the University of Texas in 1948, and was an FBI special agent in Washington, San Diego, and San Francisco from October 1948 to February 1951. He joined the Central Intelligence Agency on August 22, 1951, and served in the Office of Security until August 31, 1970. The agency's summary of his service records two years as an investigator, seven years "engaged in research and report writing," appointment in May 1957 as deputy chief "of a research staff of some six professional and clerical personnel," two years abroad as "Chief of a regional staff of some ten professional and clerical personnel providing a full spectrum of security support," a year at the Air War College from August 1964, command of the technical security division from 1965 to 1968, "some 40 professional and clerical personnel," and from October 1968 command of the physical security division of about 70, which "produced for the Agency a physical security posture of pre-eminent quality within the US Government." A personnel form of July 2, 1970, records his separation as "Retirement (Involuntary) Under CIA Retirement and Disability System," at grade GS-15, step 8, salary 24,228 dollars, "pursuant to a request from the Head of the Security Career Service." Richard Helms wrote to him at Rockville on August 19: "Your faithful and loyal support has measured up to the high ideals and traditions of the Federal service."¹ On an Atomic Energy Commission security questionnaire of May 1962 he reported official trips to Britain and the Continent every year from 1955 to 1961.² An agency cable after his arrest shows it had been "concerned with McCord's emotional stability prior to his retirement."³

From June 1962 to June 1964 he was chief of the agency's Regional Security Support Staff in Frankfurt. The director of security told the inspector general in 1975, answering a question from the Church Committee, that "neither Mr. Hunt nor Mr. McCord were in charge of Mexican operations at the time of the Kennedy assassination."⁴

The Arrest

McCord was among the five men arrested inside the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate on June 17, 1972. "On June 17, 1972, I recorded on the Metropolitan Police records the fact of my CIA retirement," he wrote in 1974. "There was no effort made to hide that fact." The agency's cables of the same day record that Michael Mastrovito of the Secret Service "agreed to downplay McCord's Agency employment." In the days after, Lee Pennington, a retired FBI inspector paid by the Office of Security, visited Mrs. McCord and "found her burning papers and documents." Pennington's report reached the agency, was written up, and "for more than a year and a half, it lay in the CIA files like a paper bomb." In November and December 1972 Pennington gave his case officer "a memorandum allegedly written by McCord about Jack Anderson and others."³⁵

Havana

In July 1974 the agency's operations directorate examined whether McCord had had a part in the effort to free three officers of its Technical Services Division "who were jailed as a result of the NCNA Havana audio operation compromise." Ted Shackley, chief of the East Asia Division, reported on July 5 that the operation against the New China News Agency in Havana was STESCALADE, that a similar one against the Bank of China there, STVOLUME, "was planned but never executed," that the files "contain no reference to McCord," that a further file of "sensitive non-CS record material" on the operation existed but was not accessible to his division, and that a contingency plan "for the provision of black air transport for the three TDS detainees in the event of their release" named no one. A Western Hemisphere officer on the file thought it "plausible" that "the Office of Security and TSD might have tried to work something out in terms of a rescue operation." A note on the routing sheet reads: "O/Sec has turned up material on McCord's involvement and we will be getting a memo on this. Something should go forward from O/Sec to FBI correcting our earlier reports to the Bureau, per DCI instructions." The officer who traced the file asked "that he not be credited as the source of this."⁶

The Letter

In March 1973, awaiting sentence, McCord wrote to Judge John Sirica that "there was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent," that "perjury occurred during the trial," and that "others involved in the Watergate operation were not identified during the trial." He wrote that members of his family "have expressed fear for my life if I disclose knowledge of the facts in this matter."⁷

The Letters to Langley

On July 29, 1972, McCord "sent an unsigned letter to Mr. Richard Helms, then Director of Central Intelligence, enclosing correspondence purportedly addressed to his attorney expressing concern over a 'ploy' to lay Watergate at the doorstep of CIA." From December 22, 1972, he wrote a series of unsigned letters to Paul Gaynor of the Security Research Staff, "with whom McCord was formerly associated," referring to the "tremendous pressure" to put the operation on the CIA, "alleged wiretaps on his home, McCord's decision to release his lawyer, and more litany on attempts to involve the CIA in the Watergate." The agency "retained this correspondence on file, recognizing that it came from McCord, but nothing was done to bring it to light until after the subcommittee commenced its hearings on May 11, 1973." McCord told the subcommittee that at the Monocle restaurant on December 21, 1972, his lawyer Gerald Alch had proposed a CIA defense, "that they would doctor McCord's CIA records to show a recall to duty; that the new Director, Dr. Schlesinger, 'would go along with it.'" Alch denied it "in the strongest of terms" and said Hunt's lawyer William Bittman had first raised such a defense. "This subcommittee cannot unravel the direct conflict of evidence in the testimony of Mr. McCord and Mr. Alch."⁸

Pennington

The Senate committee's minority staff, under Senator Howard Baker, found that the agency "had in its possession, as early as June of 1972, information that one of their paid" informants had witnessed the destruction "of documents which might show a link between McCord and the CIA," and that when the FBI asked in August 1972 about a "Pennington" the agency answered with the name of a different employee. The information reached the committee only on February 22, 1974, after an employee of the Personnel Security Division copied the memoranda into his own safe for fear they would be destroyed. A five-inch reel of tape labeled "McCord Incident/18-19 June 1972" was found in the Office of Security on March 1, 1974, and had not been played for the committee when it reported. Howard Osborn, the director of security, retired on February 26.³

McCord answered the Washington Star on July 3, 1974: "There was no breaking and entering, no burglary, and no destruction of evidence. This 60-year old gentleman, Lee Pennington, was a personal friend; he came over to bring food to my family; they invited him in; he destroyed no evidence; and in fact the documents in question, the papers in my CIA retirement folder, were still there when I returned home three days later." He copied the letter to Pennington, who "is planning legal action against your publication."⁵

In June 1976 McCord asked the agency under the Freedom of Information Act for documents and "a copy of a deposition which according to the request the DCI is to present to a District Court on 8 July 1976" in the suit of R. Spencer Oliver, the Democratic official whose telephone had been tapped at the Watergate, against the Committee to Re-elect the President. The privacy staff found that "no one is aware of what McCord is referring to." Bruce Solie of the Office of Security identified Oliver for them from a 1972 newspaper article, and noted that "action by the Office of Security may be later requested if it is determined that the DCI or the Agency has any involvement in the 'Spencer Oliver vs. CREEP' lawsuit."⁹

McCord died at his home in Douglassville, Pennsylvania on June 15, 2017, at 93. His death was not reported for nearly two years.¹⁰