McCord’s letter exposing pressure and co-conspirators in the Watergate case

James McCord’s letter to Judge John Sirica made the defendants’ silence itself evidence of a larger Watergate story. In it, McCord alleged pressure to plead guilty and keep quiet, perjury at trial, and the omission of other participants from testimony. The letter did not name those people in the passages the reporters first examined, but it challenged the account of the case as a bungled break-in involving only the men already before the court—and made the question of who else knew or planned the operation newly urgent.

A letter after sentencing

On the morning of March 23, Bob Woodward was walking near The Washington Post’s editorial-page offices when the paper’s cartoonist, Herblock, stopped him with news heard on the radio: McCord had written to the judge. Woodward had not heard the report. The last time a radio broadcast had brought him Watergate news, he recalled, the story about H. R. Haldeman’s secret fund had broken open. The remembered scoop gave the new report an immediate charge, but Woodward waited for details rather than assuming what the letter contained.

In the newsroom, Howard Simons was waving a wire-service text. McCord said that several members of his family feared for his life if he disclosed what he knew. He framed coming forward as a matter of justice and of restoring faith in the criminal justice system. The letter accused unnamed people of applying political pressure to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent; it also said perjury had occurred at trial and that testimony had left out others involved in Watergate. These were allegations presented in a letter, not yet facts independently established by the reporters.

McCord requested a meeting with Sirica after sentencing. He said he could not feel confident speaking to an FBI agent, testifying before a grand jury whose prosecutors worked for the Department of Justice, or talking with other government representatives. The request placed the judge, rather than the ordinary investigative channels, at the center of his intended disclosure. Woodward wondered whether McCord could prove the charges; the image of John Mitchell being led away by marshals crossed his mind. The letter thus raised both the possibility of further revelations and the problem of whether McCord’s claims could be substantiated.

From accusation to names

The letter’s public significance quickly outran what was known about its contents. That Sunday, the reporters found that McCord had not yet explained his intentions publicly. Prosecutors doubted that he knew much, presidential aides who returned calls offered no information, and some called back in hopes of learning from the reporters. The White House lid, as the account describes it, remained tight.

A press conference by Samuel Dash, chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee, gave the story a new direction. Dash said he had interviewed McCord in two long, tape-recorded sessions over the weekend. He reported that McCord had “named names” and begun “supplying a full and honest account” of the operation, but offered no concrete details. Bernstein questioned the value of announcing expectations before the committee’s public hearings, where McCord was expected to testify: if charges leaked before they could be proved, the press could damage the investigation.

Bernstein tried to find a committee source who could identify what McCord had said. After half a dozen unsuccessful calls, a Los Angeles Times dispatch supplied the names: according to the report, McCord had told Dash that Jeb Magruder and John Dean knew about the Watergate bugging operation in advance and had taken part in planning it. Bernstein considered the Magruder allegation unsurprising, but had heard no real hint that Dean had helped plan the operation. If the man appointed by the President to investigate the break-in had also been one of its planners, the consequences appeared vast. The White House categorically denied the charge against Dean; its statement did not mention Magruder, whom the account says the Nixon men had cut loose.

Verification and the struggle over credibility

The Post could not simply adopt the Los Angeles Times account. By evening Bernstein had called more than forty people, including senators, committee staff members, lawyers, sources at the Committee for the Re-election of the President and the White House, Justice Department officials, McCord’s friends, and even his minister. He found no confirmation. He and Simons planned to report what the Times had said while making clear that the Post could not verify that McCord had made the allegations. When a lawyer claiming to represent Dean threatened a libel suit, Simons instructed Bernstein to quote the threat and identify the lawyer. The episode made the cost of publishing an unconfirmed accusation part of the story itself.

Simons also told Bernstein to get accustomed to being beaten on stories: the Post no longer dominated Watergate coverage. The next morning, however, Bernstein and Woodward found three people on Capitol Hill who confirmed the Times account. One, a Republican politician, called McCord’s allegations “convincing, disturbing and supported by some documentation.” At the White House, Ron Ziegler announced that the President had personally phoned Dean to express “absolute and total confidence” in him. The simultaneous confirmation of the reported allegations and the emphatic public defense of Dean sharpened the contest between disclosure and denial without resolving every question about the evidence.

The widening scandal

McCord’s letter entered a conflict already reaching beyond the defendants’ trial. The day before Woodward heard of it, a court had thrown out subpoenas seeking records from Post reporters and executives. Earlier, Democratic Party chairman O’Brien had sued the Committee for the Re-election of the President for $1 million, citing Charles Colson’s potential involvement in the break-in and arguing that the developing facts pointed toward the White House. That earlier challenge had asked how many other attempts there had been and who was involved; McCord’s charges now supplied a new route into those questions, by alleging pressure, false testimony, and omitted participants.

The Post’s dispute with the White House had also become a struggle over which institution’s account the public would trust. After the Chapin connection brought Watergate to the doors of the Oval Office, the White House prepared to fight back, and the Post became its target. Newspapers around the country reported the administration’s anger, a confrontation that risked lending the Post’s allegations greater currency. Telephone records published by The New York Times then showed calls associated with Donald Segretti to the White House, Dwight Chapin’s home, and Howard Hunt’s home and office, giving the broader allegations documentary support that was harder to dismiss as hearsay. McCord’s letter belonged to this accumulating sequence: each disclosure prompted denials, further reporting, and demands for corroboration.

The later public reckoning altered the tone of the official response. In his April 30 address, Richard Nixon accepted the resignations of Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, said responsibility belonged at the top, and declared that there could be no whitewash at the White House. The following day, Ziegler apologized to The Washington Post and to Woodward and Carl Bernstein for his earlier criticism, acknowledging that the White House had been wrong. Those later developments did not, by themselves, prove each charge in McCord’s letter. They did show how far the controversy had moved from the administration’s initial effort to contain the break-in: the letter had made pressure and concealed participation central questions, while forcing the public account of Watergate into an increasingly consequential contest over evidence and responsibility.