Watergate Hearings - testimony of James McCord (Jim McCord) May 22, 1973
Watergate Hearings - testimony of James McCord (Jim McCord) May 22, 1973
Watergate Hearings - Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, May 22, 1973 - testimony of James McCord (Jim McCord). Caucus Room, Russell Senate Office Building, Washington DC
Watergate Hearings - testimony of James McCord (Jim McCord) May 22, 1973
Senator Howard BAKER. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, Mr. McCord, I am very grateful, I think you supplied a great deal of additional information & it raises a great number of new questions & I am sure my colleagues on the committee will want to pursue that or other questions, so I will not detain you long in this first series of questions. I think that your further elaboration & extension of your state of mind or motives in the several operations & especially the Watergate operation now appears more clear, at least to me. Let me try to paraphrase the essence of your motivation, if I may, & if I am wrong for goodness sakes tell me so, but I want to know if this is the general message that you are giving us. One, you had a long background of experience w/ Government agencies, the FBI & the CIA. You had become accustomed to activities related to sensitive matters, security matters, and to taking direction & accepting at face value the representations of the orders or the purported orders of very high officials in the Government, particularly the Justice Department & the White House. That for a variety of reasons, when you were called on to enter the Democratic National headquarters in Washington at the Watergate complex for a variety of reasons, inc your general knowledge of threats against the CRP, threats against General Mitchell & his family, threats against others, pipe bombings, fire bombings, threats of violence & the like, coupled w/ your concern for national security matters, if that is the proper way to characterize it, that you decided on the assumption that your authority was complete, that you no longer need to concern yourself with the legality of it, that based on this information that you had, & based on the assurances which were forthcoming, that it seemed appropriate that you undertake that entry. Is that a fair statement of your general motivation at the time? Mr. McCORD. I would think so, yes, sir. Senator BAKER. Mr. McCord, did you have any motivation to enter the Democratic National Committee for political purposes as distinguished from security purposes? It is not important in terms of the facts and the proof but it is important in terms of your state of mind. Mr. MCCORD. Let me answer it in a couple of sentences, if I may. I was fully aware that others had such motivations. My own motivations I have stated here. I had a role to play in the sense of an electronic component of the team and I played that role.
Watergate Hearings - testimony of James McCord (Jim McCord) May 22, 1973
Senator BAKER. Mr. McCord, speaking of electronic surveillance, do you know of or did you ever investigate the bugging of Republican headquarters of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President headquarters here, New York, or elsewhere? Mr. MCCORD. Yes, sir. Senator BAKER. Would you describe that for the committee? Mr. MCCORD. It was a regular ongoing activity at the offices, in Washington and at the New York arm of CREEP, which was referred to as the November Group; they had offices I believe on Park Avenue in New York. It was done on a regular basis, it was done frequently at the end of the day or the beginning of the day or during sensitive conferences that we're going on, in order to determine if in fact there was any activity of this sort targeted against the Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Senator BAKER. Did you discover any incident of that sort? Mr. McCORD. There was one incident on June 16 of some concern at the New York office of CREEP. There had been earlier signs of possibly some illegal activity at those offices prior to June 16, which I could describe, if you would like. Senator BAKER. I'd like. Mr. MCCORD. On the afternoon of June 16, 1972, about mid-afternoon, I received a call from the head of the office of the November Group in New York City, who stated that he and his entire office staff were quite concerned about an incident that had just occurred. He went ahead to relate that one of the secretaries at the office had received a call from a male individual in Los Angeles, Calif., and that she had immediately told that party that she would call him back on the WATS line, which is a leased line, call him back on that line and immediately did so. She called him, as I recall, at the Beverley Wilshire Hotel, although I cannot be absolutely certain, at the phone booth there. And during the conversation that the two of them had, about a few minutes into the conversation there was a click over the phone which was heard by her and by the male on the other end of the line, and what appeared to be a tape recording was played over the telephone line which was, as she described it when I talked with her, an anti-Nixon and antiwar harangue. Senator BAKER. Mr. McCord, could I interrupt you for a moment? Mr. MCCORD. Yes, sir. Senator BAKER. I understand this to be a call that was initiated from New York on a WATS line; that is, a flat rate monthly telephone line all over the country? Mr. MCCORD. Yes, sir. Senator BAKER. To a number in California? Mr. McCORD. Yes, sir. Senator BAKER. Can you say whether or not the situation you described does in fact constitute a tapping or an intrusion into that circuit by someone unauthorized? Mr. MCCORD. It clearly appeared to be. I had not the slightest doubt about it & neither did the telephone company in New York when I called them that afternoon. Senator BAKER. Did you ever locate the, source of that tap?