Paul Gaynor
Chief of the CIA Security Research Staff, who paid Lee Pennington 250 dollars a month and received James McCord's unsigned letters in the winter of 1972, until the staff's abolition in August 1973.
Paul F. Gaynor was chief of the Security Research Staff of the Office of Security of the Central Intelligence Agency, the unit in which James McCord had served as deputy chief from 1957. He appeared before the House subcommittee of Lucien Nedzi in 1973 under that title.1
Pennington
Gaynor retained Lee Pennington, a retired FBI inspector, "at $250 per month until December of 1973." The Senate minority staff found that "the Pennington information was known within the CIA at least at a level as high as the Director of Security, according to the" chief of the Security Research Staff, and that Pennington "may have been a 'domestic agent,' possibly in violation of the CIA's charter." Gaynor testified in executive session on February 24, 1974. "The Agency has advised that the Security Research Staff was abolished in August of 1973."2
The McCord Letters
After his arrest McCord "address[ed] a series of letters to Mr. Paul Gaynor, of CIA, with whom McCord was formerly associated in his active duty CIA days. That correspondence commenced on December 22, 1972, and in it McCord referred to the 'tremendous pressure' to put the operation on the CIA. The follow-on correspondence consisted of an undated note and others dated December 29, 1972, January 3 and 5, 1973 regarding alleged wiretaps on his home, McCord's decision to release his lawyer, and more litany on attempts to involve the CIA in the Watergate. None of this mail was signed. The record indicates that CIA 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. Why this material was not given to the FBI or the Department of Justice earlier was not responded to satisfactorily by CIA witnesses."12
Sources
- U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Special Subcommittee on Intelligence. Inquiry into the Alleged Involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Watergate and Ellsberg Matters. 93rd Cong., 1st sess., October 23, 1973, witness list and pp. on McCord correspondence. ↩
- U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. "Minority Report on CIA Involvement, Submitted at the Request of Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr.," in The Senate Watergate Report, Dell, 1974, vol. 2, pp. 732 ff. (S. Rept. 93-981, 1974), "Pennington Matter." ↩
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