They were spearheaded by James W. McCord Jr., a security coordinator for the Nixon campaign, whose confession to the judge shortly before his conviction sparked the White House revelations of crimes and cover-ups that culminated in Nixon’s resignation in 1974, which followed Mr McCord on scandal senior advisor to the president and has been reduced to less than four months’ imprisonment from one to five years.
In 1977, the four Cuba-born burglars each accepted an out-of-court settlement of $ 50,000 from the Nixon campaign. They said they were misled into believing they had acted with state sanction on behalf of a White House administration that was concerned about American security and sympathized with Cuban refugees.
In 1983, after his pardons were denied by Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, Mr. Martínez, who was still with the CIA at the time of the Watergate break-in, found himself pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.
The pardon granted because Mr Martínez was considered the least guilty of the defendants restored his right to vote. Despite the ordeal, he was proud of a Watergate souvenir – a golden lucky clover with the words “Good luck Richard Nixon” in Spanish written on it.
Eugenio Rolando Martínez Careaga was born on July 7, 1922 in what is now the Artemisa province in western Cuba. Before Castro’s rise, he was exiled as a critic of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. He later returned to Cuba, but left the country again in 1959 to oppose Castro’s newly established regime.
“My mother and father were not allowed to leave Cuba,” he wrote in a memoir published in Vanity Fair. “It would have been easy for me to get them out. That was my specialty. But my bosses at the company – the CIA – said I could be caught and tortured, and if I talk I could jeopardize other operations. So my mother and father died in Cuba. This is how orders go. I follow the instructions. “
He is survived by three daughters, Alicia Garcia Bernaza, Eneida Lopez and Yolanda Toscano; one son, Danny Martínez; and four grandchildren.
