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WASHINGTON (AP) – G. Gordon Liddy, a Watergate robbery mastermind and radio show host after his release from prison, died Tuesday at age 90 at his daughter’s home in Virginia.
His son, Thomas Liddy, confirmed the death but did not disclose the cause except to say he was not linked to COVID-19.
Liddy, a former FBI agent and military veteran, was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping for his role in the Watergate robbery, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. He spent four years and four months in prison, including over 100 days in solitary confinement.
“I would do it again for my president,” he said years later.
Liddy was outspoken and controversial as a political agent under Nixon. He recommended assassinating political enemies, bombing a left-wing think tank and removing protesters from the war. His colleagues in the White House ignored these suggestions.
One of his undertakings – the burglary at the Democratic headquarters of the Watergate building in June 1972 – was approved. The heist went awry, which led to an investigation, cover-up, and Nixon’s resignation in 1974.
Liddy was also convicted of conspiracy in the September 1971 robbery of the psychiatrist’s office of Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers.
After his release from prison, Liddy became a popular, provocative and controversial radio talk show host. He has also worked as a security consultant, writer and actor. His appearance – piercing dark eyes, bushy mustache, and shaved head – made him a recognizable product spokesperson and TV guest.
On the air, he offered advice on how to kill federal gun officers, walked around with car tags saying “H20GATE” (Watergate), and looked down on people who cooperate with prosecutors.
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, George Gordon Battle Liddy was a frail boy who grew up in a neighborhood populated mostly by Americans of German descent. From friends and a German maid, Liddy developed a curiosity for German leader Adolf Hitler and was inspired by listening to Hitler’s radio speeches in the 1930s.
“If an entire nation could be transformed, raised from weakness to extraordinary strength, so could one person,” Liddy wrote in “Will,” his autobiography. His personal story was intriguing enough that “Will” was the basis for a 1982 TV movie starring Robert Conrad.
As a boy, Liddy decided it was essential to face his fears and overcome them. When he was 11, he roasted a rat and ate it to overcome his fear of rats. “From now on, rats could fear me as they feared cats,” he wrote.
After attending Fordham University and stint in the military, Liddy graduated from Fordham University Law School and then joined the FBI. He unsuccessfully ran for Congress in New York in 1968 and helped organize Nixon’s presidential campaign in the state.
When Nixon took office, Liddy was appointed Special Assistant to the Treasury and served under Secretary of the Treasury David M. Kennedy. He then moved to the White House and then to Nixon’s re-election campaign, where his official title was General Counsel.
Liddy was the head of a team of Republican agents known as “plumbers,” whose mission was to find embarrassing information leaks for the Nixon administration. Among Liddy’s specialties were gathering political intelligence and organizing activities to disrupt or discredit Nixon’s Democratic opponents.
By recruiting a woman to help him carry out one of his ploys, Liddy tried to convince her that no one could force him to reveal his identity or anything else against his will. To convince her, he held her hand over a flaming cigarette lighter. His hand was badly burned. The woman refused the job.
Liddy became known for offbeat suggestions such as kidnapping organizers of war protests and taking them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention; the murder of investigative journalist Jack Anderson; and the firebomb of the Brookings Institution, a left-wing Washington think tank where classified documents leaked by Ellsberg were stored.
Liddy and his colleague Howard Hunt, along with the five people arrested at Watergate, were charged with federal charges three months after the June 1972. Hunt and his recruits pleaded guilty in January 1973, and James McCord and Liddy have been found guilty. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.
After the failed break-in attempt, Liddy recalls telling White House attorney John Dean, “If anyone wants to shoot me, tell me where to stand, and I’ll be there.” , Okay?” Dean reportedly replied, “I don’t think we’ve made it yet, Gordon.”
Liddy claimed in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that Nixon was “insufficiently ruthless” and should have destroyed the tapes of his conversations with key collaborators.
Liddy has learned to market his reputation as an intrepid, if at times overzealous, advocate of conservative causes. His syndicated radio talk show, broadcast from Virginia-based WJFK, has long been one of the country’s most popular. He has written bestselling books, appeared on television shows like “Miami Vice,” was a frequent guest speaker on college campuses, started a private franchise, and worked as a security consultant. For a while, he teamed up on the speaking circuit with an unlikely partner, 1960s LSD guru Timothy Leary.
In the mid-1990s, Liddy told radio listeners with guns to aim for the head when encountered by officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. “Head shots, head shots,” he said, explaining that most officers wear bulletproof vests under their jackets. Liddy later said he did not encourage people to chase agents away, but added that if an agent attacks someone with lethal force, “you have to stand up for yourself and your rights with lethal force.”
Liddy has always been proud of his role in Watergate. He once said, “I’m proud of the fact that I’m the one who didn’t speak.”
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