12/3/2023 0 Comments Deep throat watergate![]() ![]() “I keep feeling about my country and the way people suffer over there,” Gonzalez told Judge John Sirica. THE UPSHOT: Gonzalez, an anti-Fidel Castro activist, insisted during his trial that he had been told the Watergate operation would advance Cuban liberation. Howard Hunt, who had played a key role in the CIA’s disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. HIS ROLE: A Cuban refugee and locksmith by trade, Gonzalez was one of the five burglars arrested at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. Locksmith Virgilio Gonzalez sitting in his back of van workshop 20 years after his role as the lock-picking Watergate burglar. In 1974, he published a book about his involvement in Watergate, titled A Piece of Tape-The Watergate Story: Fact and Fiction. POST-SCANDAL: McCord kept a low profile following his release from prison. “Perjury occurred during the trial in matters highly material to the very structure, orientation and impact of the government’s case, and to the motivation and intent of the defendants.” “There was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent,” McCord stated in the Maletter to Judge John Sirica, who presided over the Watergate trials. His sentence was reduced after he implicated White House officials in the cover-up. THE UPSHOT: McCord was convicted on charges of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping, but only served four months of his original sentence of one to five years. During the burglary, McCord, then security director of the Committee to Reelect the President (or CREEP), left a piece of tape on the latch of a stairwell door, inadvertently alerting a security guard to the burglary in progress. HIS ROLE: A former CIA officer and FBI agent, McCord was one of the five burglars arrested at the Watergate complex, and the “ chief wiretapper” of the operation. ![]()
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