How the name of a Watergate burglar got into the JFK assassination files

The greatest tragedy and the greatest scandal in 20th-century American politics have intersected in the latest batch of files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy released Tuesday night.

Included in the newly unredacted papers is an August 1966 memo recommending the award of a “certificate of distinction” for James McCord, who would gain infamy six years later as one of the five Watergate burglars.

It was previously known, including from prior releases of the JFK files, that McCord — who died in 2017 at the age of 93 — was leading an agency team engaged in technological experiments. But many of the details of those experiments were kept secret until Tuesday’s release.

According to the files, McCord’s division was experimenting with technology to “track hidden listening devices,” using methods of “fluoroscopic scanning” and X-rays.

The 1966 memo, first flagged by Steven Portnoy of ABC News Radio, revealed that McCord & company “conceived and developed a unique technique in fluoroscopic scanning which is considered to be a major breakthrough in the detection of clandestine microphones and other devices targeted against the agency.”

On the night of June 17, 1972, McCord — who resigned from the CIA the prior year and subsequently had been hired to work for the Republican National Committee and President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign — was arrested along with Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis after breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate to bug the facility.

At an initial court hearing, McCord gave his occupation as a “security consultant” who had recently retired from government service.

“Where in government?” the judge asked, according to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s account in their best-selling book “All The President’s Men,” later made into a film of the same name.

McCord responded, “CIA,” stunning Woodward, watching in the gallery.

The disclosure by McCord of his agency past led the Washington Post’s initial story about the break-in, which made the front page of the June 18, 1972, Sunday edition.

McCord was ultimately convicted of eight counts of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping.

Three days before his scheduled sentencing, on March 21, 1973, he submitted a letter to federal Judge John Sirica stating that “[t]here was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent” and that others involved in the break-in “were not identified during the trial, when they could have been by those testifying.”

The McCord letter kept interest in the Watergate scandal alive and the resulting investigation and revelation that Nixon had authorized payments to the burglars and ordered the CIA to head off the FBI probe of the break-in on spurious national security grounds led to the 37th president’s resignation on Aug. 8, 1974.

Ultimately, McCord was sentenced to one to five years in jail for the break-in, but only served four months.

President Trump signed an executive order three days into his second term calling for an action plan on releasing the outstanding JFK files.

Prior to Tuesday’s release, the National Archives and Records Administration claimed that about 98% of the documents had been made public.

The release Tuesday scrubbed redactions on many of the files that had previously been released to the public, shedding light on new details about the CIA’s surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination.

The released files also include instructions the CIA gave to its operatives on how to conduct wiretaps as well as details of how the spy agency surveilled phone lines of Cuban and Soviet facilities.

Trump has also directed his administration to release files on the 1968 assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Those files are due at a later date.

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Stephen Collopy

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