Watergate plotter dies at 90 By News Reporter
THE former FBI agent who led the Watergate burglary to steer Richard Nixon back into the White House has died, aged 90.
Rogue political adviser G Gordon Liddy remained forever unapologetic about the failed plot to bug phones at the HQ of Nixon’s Democrat rivals in the 1972 race.
The burglars were caught inside Washington’s Watergate building, leading to an attempted cover-up and finally President Nixon’s resignation in disgrace in 1974.
Liddy – the only conspirator who refused to cooperate with the authorities – served four-and-ahalf years in prison before his 20-year term was commuted by President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
The Hitler sympathiser later drove a Rolls-Royce with the registration H20GATE and said: “I’d do it again for my president.” His time as a special adviser for the president had followed stints in the US army and at law school, then five years with the FBI.
Liddy joined the Nixon administration in 1971. His ideas – dismissed as crackpot by colleagues on the re-election team – included plotting to kill opponents and kidnapping antiVietnam War protesters to photograph them with prostitutes.
But the phone-tap went ahead, ending Nixon’s career. After release from jail, Liddy wrote a best-selling autobiography and ran a conservative radio show.
He also appeared in the 2000 film Rules of Engagement, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L Jackson, and the TV police series Miami Vice.