The Original Watergate Stores Read online

  One of the bugging devices found at the scene of the Democratic National Committee offices was described as being about the size of a silver dollar and capable of being hidden underneath a telephone or a desk.

  According to police the break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices yesterday was the third incident there since May 28.

  On that date, according to police, an attempt was made to unscrew a lock on the door between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m.

  According to one police source, at least some of the suspects registered as guests at the Watergate Hotel on that date.

  On June 7, police said, a safe at the Committee headquarters was reported broken into and $100 in cash and checks stolen. That break-in occurred about 9 p.m. but there was no door jimmied since the suite was unlocked and people were still working there.

  Within hours after the arrests, the suite was sealed off and scores of metropolitan police officers directed by acting Chief Charles Wright. FBI agents and Secret Service men were assigned to the investigation.

  Caddy, one of the attorneys for the five, said he met Barker a year ago over cocktails at the Army Navy Club in Washington. “We had a sympathetic conversation — that’s all I’ll say,” Caddy told a reporter.

  Caddy said that he was probably the only attorney whom Barker knew in Washington.

  Caddy, who says he is a corporate lawyer, attempted to stay in the background of yesterday’s 4 p.m. court hearing. He did not argue before Superior Court Judge James A. Belson himself but brought another attorney, Joseph A. Rafferty Jr., who has experience in criminal law, to do the arguing.

  In that 30-minute arraignment, Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert, the No. 2 man in the chief prosecutor’s office, unsuccessfully urged the court to order the five men held without bond.

  Silbert argued that the men had no community ties and would be likely to leave the country to avoid trial. He said they gave false names to the police after they were arrested and refused to cooperate.

  “They were caught red-handed,” Silbert said. With such strong evidence against them, their apparent tendency to travel abroad and their access to large amounts of cash, the men should not be released, Silbert said.

  Silbert called the men professionals with a “clandestine” purpose.

  Rafferty said the five men didn’t have firearms and didn’t harm anyone, and should be released on bond.

  In setting the bond at $50,000 for the Miami men and $30,000 for Martin,

  Judge Belson also placed restrictions on their movements.

  He required the four Miami men to stay in the Washington area and check in daily with the court, if released. Martin would have to check in weekly if released, Belson ruled.

  Griegg, deputy party chairman, called it “obviously important” that some of the suspects come from the area around Miami and Miami Beach, where the Democratic National Convention will be held next month.

  Contributing to this story were Washington Post Staff Writers Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Bart Barnes, Kirk Scharfenberg, Martin Weil, Claudia Lery, Abbott Combes, and Tim O’Brien.

  GOP Security Aide Among Five Arrested in Bugging Affair

  By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

  Washington Post Staff Writers

  Monday, June 19, 1972

  One of the five men arrested early Saturday in the attempt to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters is the salaried security coordinator for President Nixon’s reelection committee.

  The suspect, former CIA employee James W. McCord Jr., 53, also holds a separate contract to provide security services to the Republican National Committee, GOP national chairman Bob Dole said yesterday.

  Former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, head of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, said yesterday McCord was employed to help install that committee’s own security system.

  In a statement issued in Los Angeles, Mitchell said McCord and the other four men arrested at Democratic headquarters Saturday “were not operating either in our behalf or with our consent” in the alleged bugging attempt.

  Dole issued a similar statement, adding that “we deplore action of this kind in or out of politics.” An aide to Dole said he was unsure at this time exactly what security services McCord was hired to perform by the National Committee.

  Police sources said last night that they were seeking a sixth man in connection with the attempted bugging. The sources would give no other details.

  Other sources close to the investigation said yesterday that there still was no explanation as to why the five suspects might have attempted to bug Democratic headquarters in the Watergate at 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, or if they were working for other individuals or organizations.

  “We’re baffled at this point . . . the mystery deepens,” a high Democratic party source said.

  Democratic National Committee Chairman Lawrence F. O’Brien said the “bugging incident . . . raised the ugliest questions about the integrity of the political process that I have encountered in a quarter century.

  “No mere statement of innocence by Mr. Nixon’s campaign manager will dispel these questions.”

  The Democratic presidential candidates were not available for comment yesterday.

  O’Brien, in his statement, called on Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst to order an immediate, “searching professional investigation” of the entire matter by the FBI.

  A spokesman for Kleindienst said yesterday. “The FBI is already investigating. . . . Their investigative report will be turned over to the criminal division for appropriate action.”

  The White House did not comment.

  McCord, 53, retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1970 after 19 years of service and established his own “security consulting firm,” McCord Associates, at 414 Hungerford Drive, Rockville. He lives at 7 Winder Ct., Rockville.

  McCord is an active Baptist and colonel in the Air Force Reserve, according to neighbors and friends.

  In addition to McCord, the other four suspects, all Miami residents, have been identified as: Frank Sturgis (also known as Frank Florini), an American who served in Fidel Castro’s revolutionary army and later trained a guerrilla force of anti-Castro exiles; Eugenio R. Martinez, a real estate agent and notary public who is active in anti-Castro activities in Miami; Virgilio R. Gonzales, a locksmith; and Bernard L. Barker, a native of Havana said by exiles to have worked on and off for the CIA since the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

  All five suspects gave the police false names after being arrested Saturday. McCord also told his attorney that his name is Edward Martin, the attorney said.

  Sources in Miami said yesterday that at least one of the suspects — Sturgis — was attempting to organize Cubans in Miami to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention there next month.

  The five suspects, well-dressed, wearing rubber surgical gloves and unarmed, were arrested about 2:30 a.m. Saturday when they were surprised by Metropolitan police inside the 29-office suite of the Democratic headquarters on the sixth floor of the Watergate.

  The suspects had extensive photographic equipment and some electronic surveillance instruments capable of intercepting both regular conversation and telephone communication.

  Police also said that two ceiling panels near party chairman O’Brien’s office had been removed in such a way as to make it possible to slip in a bugging device.

  McCord was being held in D.C. jail on $30,000 bond yesterday. The other four were being held there on $50,000 bond. All are charged with attempted burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other conversations.

  McCord was hired as “security coordinator” of the Committee for the Re-election of the President on Jan. 1, according to Powell Moore, the Nixon committee’s director of press and information.

  Moore said McCord’s contract called for a “take-home salary of $1,200 per month and that the ex-CIA employee was assigned an office in th
e committee’s headquarters at 1701 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.

  Within the last one or two weeks, Moore said, McCord made a trip to Miami beach — where both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions will be held. The purpose of the trip, Moore said, was “to establish security at the hotel where the Nixon Committee will be staying.”

  In addition to McCord’s monthly salary, he and his firm were paid a total of $2,836 by the Nixon Committee for the purchase and rental of television and other security equipment, according to Moore.

  Moore said that he did not know exactly who on the committee staff hired McCord, adding that it “definitely wasn’t John Mitchell.” According to Moore, McCord has never worked in any previous Nixon election campaigns “because he didn’t leave the CIA until two years ago, so it would have been impossible.”

  As of late yesterday, Moore said. McCord was still on the Re-Election Committee payroll.

  In his statement from Los Angeles, former Attorney General Mitchell said he was “surprised and dismayed” at reports of McCord’s arrest.

  “The person involved is the proprietor of a private security agency who was employed by our committee months ago to assist with the installation of our security system,” said Mitchell. “He has, as we understand it, a number of business clients and interests and we have no knowledge of these relationships.”

  Referring to the alleged attempt to bug the opposition’s headquarters, Mitchell said: “There is no place in our campaign, or in the electoral process, for this type of activity and we will not permit it nor condone it.”

  About two hours after Mitchell issued his statement, GOP National Chairman Dole said, “I understand that Jim McCord . . . is the owner of the firm with which the Republican National Committee contracts for security services . . . if our understanding of the facts is accurate, added Dole, “we will of course discontinue our relationship with the firm.”

  Tom Wilck, deputy chairman of communications for the GOP National Committee, said late yesterday that Republican officials still were checking to find out when McCord was hired, how much he was paid and exactly what his responsibilities were.

  McCord lives with his wife in a two-story $45,000 house in Rockville.

  After being contacted by The Washington Post yesterday, Harlan A. Westrell, who said he was a friend of McCord’s, gave the following background on McCord:

  He is from Texas, where he and his wife graduated from Baylor University. They have three children, a son who is in his third year at the Air Force Academy, and two daughters.

  The McCords have been active in the First Baptist Church of Washington. Other neighbors said that McCord is a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, and also has taught courses in security at Montgomery Community College. This could not be confirmed yesterday.

  McCord’s previous employment by the CIA was confirmed by the intelligence agency, but a spokesman there said further data about McCord was not available yesterday.

  In Miami, Washington Post Staff Writer Kirk Schartenberg reported that two of the other suspects — Sturgis and Barker — are well known among Cuban exiles there. Both are known to have had extensive contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, exile sources reported, and Barker was closely associated with Frank Bender, the CIA operative who recruited many members of Brigade 2506, the Bay of Pigs invasion force.

  Barker, 55, and Sturgis, 37, reportedly showed up uninvited at a Cuban exile meeting in May and claimed to represent an anticommunist organization of refugees from “captive nations.” The purpose of the meeting, at which both men reportedly spoke, was to plan a Miami demonstration in support of President Nixon’s decision to mine the harbor of Haiphong.

  Barker, a native of Havana who lived both in the U.S. and Cuba during his youth, is a U.S. Army veteran who was imprisoned in a German POW camp during the World War II. He later served in the Cuban Buro de Investigationes — secret police — under Fidel Castro and fled to Miami in 1959. He reportedly was one of the principal leaders of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the exile organization established with CIA help to organize the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

  Sturgis, an American soldier of fortune who joined Castro in the hills of Oriente Province in 1958, left Cuba in 1959 with his close friend, Pedro Diaz Lanz, then chief of the Cuban air force. Diaz Lanz, once active in Cuban exile activities in Miami, more recently has been reported involved in such right-wing movements as the John Birch Society and the Rev. Billy James Hargis’ Christian Crusade.

  Sturgis, more commonly known as Frank Florini, lost his American citizenship in 1960 for serving in a foreign military force — Castro’s army — but, with the aid of then-Florida Sen. George Smathers, regained it.

  Contributing to this story were Washington Post Staff Writers E.J. Bachinski, Bill Gold, Claudia Levy, Kirk Scharfenberg, J.Y. Smith and Martin Weil.

  Bug Suspect Got Campaign Funds

  By Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

  Washington Post Staff Writers

  Tuesday, August 1, 1972

  A $25,000 cashier’s check, apparently earmarked for President Nixon’s re-election campaign, was deposited in April in a bank account of one of the five men arrested in the break-in at Democratic National Headquarters here June l7.

  The check was made out by a Florida bank to Kenneth H. Dahlberg, the President’s campaign finance chairman for the Midwest. Dahlberg said last night that in early April he turned the check over to “the treasurer of the Committee (for the Re-election of the President) or to Maurice Stans himself.”

  Stans, formerly secretary of Commerce under Mr. Nixon, is now the finance chief of the President’s re-election effort.

  Dahlberg said he didn’t have “the vaguest idea” how the check got into the bank account of the real estate firm owned by Bernard L. Barker, one of the break-in suspects. Stans could not be reached for comment.

  Reached by telephone at his home in a Minneapolis suburb, Dahlberg explained the existence of the check this way: “In the process of fund-raising I had accumulated some cash…so I recall making a cash deposit while I was in Florida and getting a cashier’s check made out to myself. I didn’t want to carry all that cash into Washington.”

  A photostatic copy of the front of the check was examined by a Washington Post reporter yesterday. It was made out by the First Bank and Trust Co. of Boca Raton, Fla., to Dahlberg.

  Thomas Monohan, the assistant vice president of the Boca Raton bank, who signed the check authorization, said the FBI had questioned him about it three weeks ago.

  According to court testimony by government prosecutors, Barker’s bank account in which the $25,000 was deposited was the same account from which Barker later withdrew a large number of hundred-dollar bills. About 53 of these $l00 bills were found on the five men after they were arrested at the Watergate.

  Dahlberg has contributed $7,000 to the GOP since l968, records show, and in l970 he was finance chairman for Clark MacGregor when MacGregor ran unsuccessfully against Hubert H. Humphrey for a U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota.

  MacGregor, who replaced John N. Mitchell as Mr. Nixon’s campaign chief on July l, could offer no explanation as to how the $25,000 got from the campaign finance committee to Barker’s account.

  He told a Post reporter last night: “I know nothing about it…these events took place before I came aboard. Mitchell and Stans would presumably know.”

  MacGregor said he would attempt this morning to determine what happened.

  Powell Moore, director of press relations for the Committee for the Re-election of the President, told a reporter that Stans was unavailable for comment last night. Mitchell also could not be reached for comment.

  In a related development, records made available to The Post yesterday show that another $89,000 in four separate checks was deposited during May in Barker’s Miami bank account by a well-known Mexican lawyer.

  The deposits were made in the form of checks made out to the lawyer, Manual Og
arrio Daguerre, 68, by the Banco Internacional of Mexico City.

  Ogarrio could not be reached for comment and there was no immediate explanation as to why the $89,000 was transferred to Barker’s account.

  This makes a total of $114,000 deposited in Barker’s account in the Republic National Bank of Miami, all on April 20.

  The same amount — $114,000 — was withdrawn on three separate dates, April 24, May 2 and May 8.

  Since the arrest of the suspects at 2:30 a.m. inside the sixth floor suite of the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate, Democrats have tried to lay the incident at the doorstep of the White House or at least to the Nixon re-election committee.

  One day after the arrests, it was learned that one of the suspects, James W. McCord Jr., a former FBI and CIA agent, was the security chief to the Nixon committee and a security consultant to the Republican National Committee. McCord, now free on bond, was fired from both posts.

  The next day it was revealed that a mysterious White House consultant, E. Howard Hunt Jr., was known by at least two of the suspects. Hunt immediately dropped from sight and became involved in an extended court battle to avoid testimony before the federal grand jury investigating the case.

  Ten days ago it was revealed that a Nixon re-election committee official was fired because he had refused to answer questions about the incident by the FBI. The official, G. Gordon Liddy, was serving as financial counsel to the Nixon committee when he was dismissed on June 28.

  In the midst of this, former Democratic National Chairman Lawrence F. O’Brien filed a $l million civil suit against the Nixon committee and the five suspects charging that the break-in and alleged attempted bugging violated the constitutional rights of all Democrats.

  O’Brien charged that there is “a developing clear line to the White House” and emphasized what he called the “potential involvement” of special counsel to the President, Charles Colson.