Gordon Liddy

Gordon Liddy, ca.1964

Gordon Liddy 2004

George Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1930 in Hoboken , New Jersey , † March 30, 2021 in Mount Vernon , Virginia ) was an FBI agent and American government official who co-organized some of those illegal ones during the tenure of President Richard Nixon Activities that have come to be known under the collective name of the Watergate Affair . Liddy has the particular breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic Party in Washington Watergate complex planned and monitored on June 17, 1972, the failure of which became the starting point for the greatest American political scandal of the 20th century.

Life

Origin and first activities

George Gordon Battle Liddy was born in Hoboken, New Jersey. He graduated in 1952 and then joined the army . There he was two years in the Korean War Artillery - Officer used. Upon his return in 1954, he studied law at Fordham. Then he went to the FBI.

In 1962 he left the FBI and then worked as a lawyer. In this capacity he organized the arrest and the initially unsuccessful trial of Timothy Leary in 1966 . In the following years he became a fanatical pursuer of Learys, but reconciled and befriended Learys in the late 1980s. Both held a joint series of lectures across the United States.

White House employment and the Watergate scandal

In the summer of 1971, Liddy, who had previously worked for the Treasury Department , got a job in the White House through Justice Secretary John N. Mitchell . There he was supposed to officially work for the domestic political staff of Nixon's advisor John Ehrlichman , but unofficially for a small and secret police and spy group called the Special Investigations Unit, which later went by her nickname "Plumber" (" Plumbers ”) became known. The team, which was based in an underground section of the Executive Office Building of the White House, included Liddy, Ehrlichman employee Egil Krogh , David Young (a former employee of Henry Kissinger ) and former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt . The "plumbers" had been formed on direct instructions from Nixon soon after the publication of the top-secret Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War by the New York Times and other media outlets.

The primary task of the "plumbers" was to prevent government officials from continuing to pass on documents kept locked to the media. In addition to the - legal - closing of these "leaks" (hence the name), the "plumbers" also undertook non-transparent activities at an early stage, which were intended to discredit Nixon's political opponents. Because of their penchant for espionage and covert operations, Liddy and Hunt, formally subordinate to Krogh and Young, became key figures in the “plumbers” who ensured that illegal activities were controlled directly from the White House .

The climax of these operations was on September 3, 1971, when Liddy and Hunt personally supervised the break-in of Dr. Lewis J. Fielding, the psychiatrist to Daniel Ellsberg , the man responsible for publishing the Pentagon Papers . The break-in had promised to get incriminating information from Ellsberg's file, but nothing had been found in this regard. Liddy and Hunt, who, like Krogh and Ehrlichman, were later given prison terms for their role in the fielding operation, had the break-in carried out by some of the same men around the Cuban-American Bernard Barker , who was caught at the Watergate break-in nine months later and were arrested.

After being adjusted the work of the "plumbers" unit in December 1971. Liddy joined the staff of the White House to the Committee for the Re-election of the President (the Committee to Re-elect the President - CRP). Officially, he became the CRP's legal advisor, and later of its finance committee. Actually existed - with the agreement between the White House and John N. Mitchell , who in the spring should be in 1972 director of the CRP - again Liddys main task is to spy on political opponents, mainly Democratic presidential candidates such operations Edmund S. Muskie and George McGovern to perform . In order to get a proposed budget for these activities of one million dollars approved, Liddy presented his sometimes hair-raising plans under the name "Edelstein" ("Gemstone") to Mitchell on two occasions in January and February 1972.

These included - in addition to the placement of spies on the staff of Democratic candidates (Operation "Rubin") and the use of a spy plane for the same purpose (Operation "Smaragd") - the electronic surveillance of the election party conference of the Democrats in Miami Beach from a houseboat (Operation “Crystal”), the sabotage of the air conditioning in their conference center (Operation “Turquoise”) and the use of prostitutes to sniff out party congress delegates (Operation “Saphir”). Other simulation games concerned the use of agents provocateurs at election campaign events of the Democrats (Operation “Granat”), the covert financial support of the candidacy of a black Democratic politician to bring the party into a supposedly embarrassing situation (Operation “Coal”), and the kidnapping alleged ringleader in the run-up to anti-Nixon demonstrations announced by a group for special operations (Operation "Diamond").

On the same occasions Liddy suggested breaking into election campaign offices of democratic candidates (Operation "Opal") and taking photos of documents found there (Operation "Topas"). However, it remains controversial whether the democratic headquarters in the Watergate building was also mentioned as a target. However, it is documented that during the presentations, Mitchell showed his disdain for Liddy's plans and asked him to make more realistic suggestions. Nonetheless, on March 30, 1972, following intervention by the White House, which had repeatedly expressed its interest in having the CRP conduct an espionage operation, Mitchell obtained approval for a scaled-down “gem” operation.

As early as the first days of April 1972, Liddy then received funds from the CRP's coffers, which he used to tackle his illegal activities. Even in the preparatory phase, he had repeatedly resorted to his "plumber" colleague E. Howard Hunt , with whom he was now a close friend. In particular, Liddy Hunt used contacts to the Fielding intruders around Bernard Barker and used them several times for his actions in the following months. This included an attempt to provoke clashes with Vietnam protesters at the funeral for long-time FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover in order to cast a bad light on the protest against the war in the Far East, as well as the two break-ins at headquarters of the Democrats in the Watergate complex on May 28 and June 17, 1972.

Due to clear overlaps in terms of personnel and content, the "gemstone" actions controlled by Liddy are misleadingly referred to as "plumber" operations in some representations, while those involved such as Liddy and Hunt as well as the Watergate investigators and the authors of the specialist literature are usually clear here Make distinctions. Liddy was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role at Watergate for conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping. He was released after four and a half years after President Jimmy Carter commuted his sentence.

Next life

In 1980 Liddy's autobiography ("Will") appeared, which was also made into a television adaptation. Liddy did not shy away from the public and gave numerous interviews in which he presented his extremely conservative, if not to say reactionary, political views. Since 1992 he has hosted his own radio talk show and has appeared regularly as a political commentator on Fox News , the largest US news channel.

Between 1986 and 2006 he also took on around 20 film and television roles as an actor. In Miami Vice he played the former CIA agent Capt. William Maynard , who supports the Contras with mercenaries in Nicaragua . In the series Airwolf , MacGyver and Der Nachtfalke he was seen in guest roles, in 2000 he had a minor supporting role in the war film Rules - Seconds of Decision . From 2000 to 2001 he played the villain Jacob Colder in the series Highway to Hell - 18 wheels made of steel .

In Oliver Stone's film Nixon (with Anthony Hopkins as Nixon) Liddy was portrayed in 1995 by John Diehl , who also worked for Miami Vice .

After the publication of cables from US embassies by WikiLeaks , Liddy spoke out in favor of putting Julian Assange on the “kill list”, which also included Anwar al-Awlaki .

Fonts

• Want. The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy. St. Martin's Press, New York 1980.

literature

• Fred Emery: Watergate. The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon. Touchstone, New York 1990.
• Stanley L. Kutler: The Wars of Watergate. The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon. Knopf, New York 1990.
• J. Anthony Lukas. Nightmare. The Underside of the Nixon Years. Viking, New York 1976.

Web links

Commons : G. Gordon Liddy  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• G. Gordon Liddy in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Embodiments of G. Gordon Liddy in film and television

Individual proof

1. ^ G. Gordon Liddy, planner of Watergate burglary, dies at 90