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main goal was to place a bug on the frequently used phone that was in the area of the DNC that
housed the offices of R. Spencer Oliver, his secretary, and the Chairman of the State Democratic
Governors organization.
In March, 1974, financier Robert Vesco told CBS’s Walter Cronkite in an interview, that six
months before Watergate, a group had come to him who “were going to attempt to get initial
indictments of some high officials using this as a launching board to get public opinion in their
favor and using the press media to a great degree. The objective was to reverse the outcome of
the public election.” There had been an article in the Washington Post pertaining to a secret
contribution to the Republican Party, and this group of Democrats had went to him, seeking
more information to use against Nixon. The three people that Vesco dealt with, “were names that
everyone would recognize (who) held extremely high posts in past Administrations.” Vesco told
New York Times writer Neil Cullinan, that Watergate was intentionally created to stop Nixon.
Nixon aide Bruce Herschenson said that the Watergate plot was deliberately sabotaged “by a
non-elected coalition of power groups.” Former CIA agent, James W. McCord, Jr., the security
chief for the Committee to Re-Elect the President, has been accused of being a double agent, and
used to bring Nixon down by sabotaging the break-in at the Watergate Hotel.
There is evidence to believe that the police had been tipped off on the night of the break-in.
Detective Lt. Carl Shoffler, and three other officers, who usually went off duty at midnight, just
happened to stay on for the next shift, and was parked just a minute away from the hotel
complex. When the security guard, Frank Wills, found the tape on the door, and called the
police, it was those officers who came immediately to arrest the White House ‘plumbers’
(Special Investigations Unit). To top it off, McCord and Shoffler were friends.
McCord had entered the Watergate while it was still open, and put some tape on one of the
doors so it wouldn’t lock. The tape was put on horizontally, so that it could be seen between the
doors. When the ‘plumbers’ arrived hours later, instead of the doors being open, they were
locked, which indicated that the piece of tape had been discovered. They left, since there was no
longer any assurance of a successful operation. McCord told them to go back and pick the lock,
since the police had not been called. E. Howard Hunt and his Cuban accomplices, did this, and
left tape on the door for McCord to get in. About five minutes later, he joined them. He was
supposed to remove the tape from the door, but he didn’t; however, he told the other ‘plumbers’
that he did. He also instructed them to shut-off their walkie-talkies, so the static wouldn’t be
heard, which means they were inside the office without being able to hear any outside
communications taking place. They were caught, when Wills discovered the door taped for a
second time.
Afterward, on March 19, 1973, McCord wrote a letter to Judge John J. Sirica, which turned
the Watergate affair into a national crisis, by saying that Attorney General John Mitchell was
involved, that campaign money was used to pay the ‘plumbers,’ and that the White House was
trying to blame the CIA; when in fact the White House had engineered the entire operation, and
Nixon covered it up. This came after Nixon held a press conference to say: “There is no
involvement by the White House.”
In the years since Watergate occurred, one simple fact seems to have emerged, and that is,
that Nixon probably had no prior knowledge of the break-in. White House Counsel John Dean III
ordered it and “deceived the President of the United States into joining a conspiracy to obstruct
justice in order to cover up a crime that Nixon had not committed.”
If it wouldn’t have been for the discovery of the Watergate tapes, Nixon may very well have
survived the scandal. Gen. Alexander M. Haig, Jr., an aide to National Security Adviser Henry