In the mid-1990s, the Discovery Channel aired a five-part series on Watergate, calling it a “refresher course” on the audacious White House scandal that drove President Nixon from office.

It might be time for a sequel.

There was a time when the shadowy cast of characters behind the break-in of the Democratic national headquarters were household names, as familiar to Americans as those on a lineup card — G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, John Ehrlichman, on they went.

But the years have not been particularly kind to Watergate.


How else could James Walter McCord Jr. — the former CIA operative who helped lead the infamous break-in and later tied it directly to the White House — slide into such obscurity that his death, at the age of 93, went unnoticed for nearly two years?

Without fanfare or a public announcement, McCord died June 15, 2017, at his home in Douglassville, Pa.

His death was first noted on the website Kennedys and King, an activist group lobbying for full disclosure of all records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed his death on its national gravesite locator site, and the Washington Post, which broke much of the Watergate scandal, obtained his death certificate and reported that he died of pancreatic cancer.


Of all the Watergate characters, McCord was the most puzzling, a retired CIA operative who cloaked himself in several layers of mystery and somehow ended up on a security detail for Nixon’s reelection team.

Carrying briefcases and walkie-talkies, McCord and four Cuban nationals who made up a clandestine burglary team known as the “plumbers” broke in to the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building. While McCord and the others scoured the offices, Liddy and Hunt — equally compromised ex-spies — ran the operation from another hotel room.

But the break-in was as sloppy as it was bold, and the five plumbers were arrested when a security guard noticed the door ajar to the Democratic headquarters, a piece of tape covering the lock. Liddy and Hunt fled but were arrested the next day.

McCord later said that it was never altogether clear to him what they were looking for and that he was working on vague directions to take photos of anything that appeared to be related to money. Watergate was a single chapter in Nixon’s larger quest to get dirt on his political opponents, whether it was their sex lives, tax records, drinking habits or marital problems. But it quickly became the story, a desperate effort by a deeply paranoid president trying to hold on to power.


1 / 17 In this June 25, 1974, photo released by the White House, President Nixon listens to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger aboard the plane that brought the president to Belgium. Within two months, Nixon had resigned, and in June 1975, the feisty former president defended his shredded legacy and shady Watergate-era actions in grand jury testimony that he thought would never come out. On Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011, it did. (Ollie Akins / White House Photo) 2 / 17 Rose Mary Woods, President Nixon ‘s personal secretary, is flanked by attorneys Charles Rhyne, left, and William Rhyne, father and son, as she arrives at U.S. District Court in Washington for another appearance regarding the presidental tapes. (AP photo) 3 / 17 Senate testimony by former White House aide John Dean, shown here in 1973, helped lead to President Nixon ‘s resignation in 1974. (Associated Press) 4 / 17 Columnist James J. Kilpatrick in 1974 with Nixon. (White House photo) 5 / 17 This was the scene in the hearing room of the House Judiciary Committee in Washington on July 25, 1974, as the panel began another day of debate on the impeachment question. The members of the committee are seated in two rows with Chairman Peter Rodino (D-N.J.) in the center of the back row. Counsels for the panel are seated in foreground with their backs to the camera. (Associated Press) 6 / 17 The Senate Watergate Committee approached its role with awe and a sense of heavy responsibility to the nation. This is a general view of the Senate Watergate Committe hearings on August 3, 1973. From left are: Lowell P. Weicker, Jr, Edward J. Gurney, Fred Thompson, Howard H. Baker Jr, Rufus Edmisten, Sam Ervin, Sam Dash and Joseph M. Montoya. Daniel K. Inouy was absent. Testifying is Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters. (Associated Press) 7 / 17 Senate Republican leader Hugh Scott, left, Sen. Barry Goldwater, center, and fellow Arizona Republican John J. Rhodes speak to reporters after the meeting in which they told President Nixon to quit over Watergate. (Associated Press) 8 / 17 Rose Mary Woods demonstrates how she said she erased a portion of a Nixon-Haldeman tape. (Associated Press) 9 / 17 In this June 21, 1974 , photo, former Nixon White House aide Charles W. Colson arrives at U.S. District Court in Washington to be sentenced for obstructing justice. (Bob Daugherty / Associated Press) 10 / 17 President Nixon tells the nation that he will resign effective at noon the next day: August 9, 1974. (Associated Press) 11 / 17 This is a view of the paperback version of the transcripts of White House tapes that was released to journalists. The 1,308 pages of transcripts as distributed for news media use filled a book 2 1/2 inches thick. (UPI) 12 / 17 In this Aug. 30, 1976, photo Mark Felt appears on CBS’s “Face The Nation” in Washington. Felt, the former FBI second-in-command, revealed himself as Deep Throat 30 years after he tipped off reporters to the Watergate scandal that toppled a president. (Associated Press) 13 / 17 E. Howard Hunt, left, arrives with two unidentified men at U.S. District Court in Washington on Jan 8, 1973. Hunt helped organize the Watergate break-in that led to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of the Nixon presidency (Associated Press) 14 / 17 Former White House aide John Dean holds a copy of a letter that he said exonerated him from unethical conduct in a law firm where he was once employed. This testimony came in Dean’s second day before the Senate Watergate Committee. (Associated Press) 15 / 17 President Nixon is shown pointing to the transcripts of the White House tapes in this April 29, 1974, photo, after he announced during a nationally televised speech that he would turn over the transcripts to House impeachment invesigators. For nearly a quarter-century, only prosecutors and archivists had listened to 3,700 hours of conversations recorded secretly by Nixon. The government released 201 hours of the tapes in 1996, opening a rich vein of information for historians and Watergate addicts. (Associated Press) 16 / 17 President Nixon says goodbye to members of his staff outside the White House as he boards a helicopter for Andrews Air Force Base after resigning the presidency Aug. 9, 1974. (Associated Press) 17 / 17 On the day of his resignation, Aug. 9, 1974, President Nixon waves goodbye from the steps of a helicopter as he leaves the White House. (Chick Harrity / Associated Press)

Indicted, McCord pleaded guilty and then, to get out from under a potential 45-year prison sentence, handed prosecutors what they were seeking — a road map connecting the White House to the crimes.

“There was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent,” McCord wrote to the court. He later told the court that John Mitchell, the reelection committee chair and Nixon’s former U.S. attorney general, had approved the break-in.

“Even if it meant my freedom, I would not turn on the organization that had employed me for 19 years,” he wrote. “I was completely convinced that the White House was behind the idea and ploy which had been presented, and that the White House was now turning ruthless.”


McCord served four months in prison.

Born Jan. 26, 1924, McCord grew up in small-town Oklahoma, the son of a public school teacher. He was in the Army Air Force during World War II, and later earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas and a master’s from George Washington University. Little is known about his years with the FBI and CIA. What he did, and where he did it, is equally unclear.

In the years after Watergate, McCord slipped back into anonymity. He ran a security firm in Colorado and later dabbled in alternative energy.

A list of survivors was not available.


40 years past Watergate: A legacy evolves — and questions linger »