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Following judicial routine, Sirica ordered presentencing investigations for all seven defendants. But going beyond normal procedure, he let the convicted men know that the severity of sentences would depend heavily on the degree to which they cooperated with probation officers and investigators still probing the Watergate crimes. One potential truth-baring forum looming ahead at the time was that of Sam Ervin's Senate Select Committee. Sirica welcomed the hearings despite the fact that they could complicate some criminal prosecutions. "Not only as a judge but as one of millions of Americans who are looking for certain answers," Sirica said, he hoped the Ervin committee could "get to the bottom of what happened in this case."
The combination of the impending hearings, twinges of conscience, and Sirica's not very veiled hints at severe sentences was too much for one of the previously uncommunicative conspirators. On March 20 Sirica stepped out of his chambers and into his office reception area to find James McCord standing there with a letter in his hand. A clerk told the startled judge that McCord wanted to see him privately. Sirica, who never allows a defendant or convicted individual to approach him privately before sentencing, quickly retreated to his chambers and ordered McCord to leave. He said McCord would have to hand any communication to his probation officer on a lower floor.
For Sirica, it was an awkward situation. Perhaps McCord was offering incriminating information on others. But what if the envelope contained money, and some sinister plot to frame the judge was under way? Should he have any private dealings at all with McCord, if only to accept a letter? Should he just turn the envelope over to Government prosecutors and let them open it? But what if it contained something McCord did not want even the prosecutors to know?
Sirica resolved the matter instinctively, reverting to a career-long tendency to get everything possible on the official record. He summoned his two law clerks, a court reporter, a bailiff, and the probation officer with the letter. Sirica would open it only in their presence and he would read it immediately into the record. As he did so, the implications of McCord's message immediately hit Sirica. "I knew this might throw light on things we suspected but didn't know," he explained later. "It convinced me I'd done exactly the right thing in asking all those questions."
Three days later, Sirica acted on another of his habits: when in doubt, make matters public. He read the McCord letter to a crowded courtroom. McCord had written that he feared "retaliatory measures against me, my family and my friends," said he did not trust the regular investigatory agencies enough to give them the information but felt he must disclose that: 1) political pressures from high