![]() ![]() 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. The FBI Vault file covers Felt’s personnel file from 1941 to 1978 and a 1956 investigation into an extortion threat made against Felt.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. When asked how he would like to be remembered, Felt said, “I’d like to be remembered as a government employee who did his best to help everybody.” Felt was eventually pardoned in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan. When the case went to trial, former President Nixon testified on Felt’s behalf. He was convicted in 1980 on conspiracy charges for authorizing government agents to break into homes without search warrants in a hunt for bombing suspects in 19. “I thought I was doing the right thing,” he saidįelt, who retired from the FBI in 1973, had his own legal problems. ![]() When King asked Felt whether he felt he had done anything wrong in going outside approved channels to get information out, Felt was unequivocal. “I’m proud of everything that Deep Throat did,” Felt, then 92, told CNN’s “Larry King Live” in 2006, his first public interview on the subject. The bookkeeper, Woodward said, had details of who controlled and received money.įelt, who joined the FBI in the early 1940s, was its associate director at the time of the burglary.įelt said he was unhappy with the way the administration meddled with the investigation into the break-in, which led him to divulge information to the newspaper. “He confirmed these things and it eliminated a lot of doubt that I think we might have had.”īut Woodward said Bernstein’s discovery of the bookkeeper for Nixon’s re-election campaign was “the real turning point in the coverage of Watergate.” “He gave us this assurance that we knew we were right,” Bernstein added. “He did contribute key details at various points.” “We had uncovered the story,” Bernstein said at a program put on by the Post. On Monday, Woodward and Bernstein spoke of Felt’s contribution to their coverage. Woodward, Bernstein and Felt kept the identity of “Deep Throat” a secret until 2005, when Felt told Vanity Fair he was the source. The film “All the President’s Men” made famous the late-night parking garage conversations Woodward had with the mystery man. “Deep Throat” became a part of the American lexicon. ![]()
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