Considering this is now April 2019, that's nearly two years of your death not being widely reported. That would allow for a lot of mail to keep coming in your name before it is acknowledged that you've passed away. You have to wonder if the lights stayed on.
The Watergate break-in was a long time ago, but there are still plenty of us around who remember it. It eventually so dominated the news that a cover-up was traced back to President Richard Nixon that was going to lead to articles of impeachment being drawn against him. Rather than suffer through that process, and maybe actually removed from office, President Nixon removed himself from office and resigned on August 9,1974. The world didn't end. Just his presidency.
McCord's raiders consisted of himself and four expatriate Cubans who broke in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in Washington D.C.'s Watergate complex on June 17, 1972, fittingly hard by "Foggy Bottom," a Washington neighborhood whose name derives from the morning mist that comes over its southern boundary, the Potomac River.
The objective of the break-in was to reset listening devices that had already been planted in the office of the Democratic Party. But this time, a keen-eyed security guard, Frank Wills, noticed there was tape placed over the door latch that was visible when the door was closed. The tape did prevent the lock from engaging in its catch, so the door could be closed but not locked. But the tape, by being placed horizontally over the mechanism, rather than vertically, left it exposed for someone to see. And Frank Wills did see it, called the police because there were burglars on the premises, resulting in the arrest of the gang of blunderers.
The unit McCord lead was called the "plumbers" because they were charged with "plugging leaks" from the White House, information reaching people who weren't supposed to be reached. The president was running for a second term in the upcoming November 1972 election, and anything that could be learned about what the Democratic Party was up to would be seen as gaining a strategic advantage. Information is always a prized commodity.
Watergate as a subject and its aftermath, could be a semester's curriculum. And even 47 years after the break-in, it is still providing stories.
James W. McCord Jr. was eventually sentenced to a four-month Federal prison term, a greatly reduced sentence owing to his cooperation with prosecutors. He was man with many backgrounds, but few specific details. He served in the Army Air Force in WW II, was an F.B.I. employee and then a C.I.A. operative, retiring from the C.I.A in 1970 and then starting his own security firm, McCord Associates. He was hired by the Committee to Re-elect the President in 1972.
Mr. McCord wrote a memoir, "A Piece of Tape—the Watergate Story: Fact and Fiction" (1974). The tape of course referred to what lead to the discovery of the second break-in.
Perhaps it was his secretive life that kept news of his passing from being more widely known, intentionally or not. But the circumstances, as explained by the redoubtable Robert D. McFadden in the NYT obit, tell us Mr. McCord passed away June 15, 2017, but the news never reached any reporting agency for some reason. A book was written in 2018 that referred to his passing, but even then the news didn't leak out any further. A website reported his passing on March 31, 2019. The NYT confirmed the death through the Department of Veterans Affairs and its Nationwide Gravesite Locator application.
The obvious irony to all this is that the break-in's objective was to plug information leaks in 1972. That failed, but news of Mr. McCord's passing did not itself leak out on a widespread basis for nearly two years. Mr. McCord probably did get to heaven, and was there for nearly two years before the devil of afterlife publicity found out about him.
At the end, whether he meant to or not, he kept a better secret than he did on the evening of June 17, 1972.
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