Hougan started with the burglary’s oddities. The tape on the doors that led a guard to the burglars was replaced after he first removed it. The lookout across the street was watching television. McCord, a skilled security man, made mistakes an amateur might avoid. To Hougan, McCord was sabotaging the operation for reasons of his own and the CIA’s. [1][3]
His second argument concerned the target. Hougan said the phone the burglars tapped was not Larry O’Brien’s but one used, through an extension on a secretary’s desk, by people arranging dates with women from a call-girl ring near the Watergate. A burglar had a key that fit only that secretary’s desk. On this reading, the White House wanted political intelligence, but the operatives on the ground had another agenda. [1][2]
Hougan was a serious journalist, a former Washington editor of Harper’s, and the book was reviewed as a work of real research. A federal judge later wrote that the call-girl theory, “or some part of it, may be correct.” [1][2]
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