Bernard Barker
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Bernard Leon Barker (born 17 March 1917) was a former member of the Cuban secret police under the Batista regime. He joined Operation 40 and the Bay of Pigs invasion. Later, he was recruited by his former CIA boss, E. Howard Hunt, as one of the "Plumbers", the Nixon White House's so-called "Special Investigations Unit". In 1972, Barker was one of the five burglars paid by the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP), Nixon's re-election campaign fundraising committee, for a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and subsequently was convicted in the Watergate scandal. The others were Frank Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez and James McCord.
Along with the other Watergate burglars, G. Gordon Liddy, and E. Howard Hunt, Barker was charged with, and pled guilty to, wiretapping, planting electronic surveillance equipment, and theft of documents.
Barker also worked with CRP to get money into the Nixon campaign coffers off the books; it was via his bank account that twenty-five thousand dollars from Archer Daniels Midland Chief Executive Dwayne Andreas was obtained by CRP in violation of campaign finance laws.
Barker was said by some to be implicated in the JFK assassination, together with other Watergate figures like Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt, after a Dallas police officer supposedly recognized him during the time of the Watergate scandal, however this theory is not widely held.
In September 1971, Barker had begun his work for the Nixon administration when he was recruited by Hunt for obtaining background information on Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was under watch for releasing what came to be known as the "Pentagon Papers", a series of articles featured in the New York Times in 1971 detailing administration secrets concerning the Vietnam War. Barker had been recruited along with Eugenio Martínez to help Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy break into the office of Dr. Lewis J. Fielding, Ellsberg's psychiatrist. The mission's purpose was to find discrediting information on Ellsberg. The mission was completed, but largely unsuccessful in finding any damaging information about Ellsberg. On March 2, 1974 Barker was indicted for the break-in. [1] He was released pending appeal after serving one year of a two-and-a-half to six-year sentence.
After Barker's release from prison, he worked as a building inspector for the city of Miami, Florida, earning $18,512 per year. He elected early retirement in 1982 rather than fight proceedings seeking his dismissal for loafing on the job.
