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George Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1930) was the chief operative for President Richard Nixon's White House Plumbers unit. Along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy masterminded the first break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in 1972. The subsequent cover-up of the Watergate scandal led to Nixon's resignation in 1974. Liddy later became an American radio talk show host, actor and political strategist. Liddy's radio talk show is now syndicated in 160 markets and on both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio stations in the United States. He has also been a guest panelist for Fox News Channel.
Biography
Liddy was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, raised in West Caldwell, New Jersey, and educated at Fordham University. He graduated in 1952 and joined the United States Army, serving for two years as an artillery officer in the U.S. during the Korean War. He returned home in 1954 to study law at Fordham. Graduating in 1957, he went to work for the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. That same year he married Frances Ann Purcell. Liddy tells a story of an unusual encounter he had with Hoover: while paying the director a courtesy call, the purpose to which Hoover had only briefly alluded, the latter launched into a bizarre 45 minute tirade against Eleanor Roosevelt. In this tirade he said that the former First Lady was an enemy of the Bureau and a subversive. Liddy later said, "Despite the irrelevance, I found this fascinating." He joked that afterwards another young agent approached him saying he was also going to have a meeting with the legendary director and wanted to know how to make a good impression. Liddy put on his best poker face and told his colleague to just let Mister Hoover know how much he loved and admired Eleanor Roosevelt.
Liddy left the FBI in 1962 and worked as a lawyer in New York City and Dutchess County, New York. In 1966, he organized the arrest and unsuccessful trial of Timothy Leary. In his autobiography, Will, he recounts finding the Leary mansion to be filled with hippies tripping on LSD and sitting in piles of their own feces. He ran unsuccessfully for the post of District Attorney and then for the House of Representatives in 1968, but used his political profile to run the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon in the 28th district of New York.
In 1971, after serving in several positions in the Nixon administration, Liddy was moved to Nixon's 1972 campaign, the Committee to Re-elect the President, (officially known as CRP but to opponents known as CREEP), in order to extend the scope and reach of the White House "Plumbers" unit, which had been created in response to various damaging "leaks" of information to the press. At CRP, Liddy concocted several far-fetched plots intended to embarrass the Democratic opposition. Most were rejected, but one caught the eye of Nixon operatives in the White House, and Liddy organized the ill-conceived break-in of the Democratic National Campaign headquarters in the Watergate complex. Liddy and E. Howard Hunt also broke into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office as Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers and the Plumbers were hoping to find information they could use to discredit him.
Attempting to find a solution to the heat coming down on the Nixon administration, Liddy suggested several far fetched ideas as a distraction. One of which included Liddy just "getting assassinated on some street corner".
For his role in Watergate, which he coordinated with Hunt, Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping, and received a 20-year sentence. He served four and a half years in prison before his sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter.
In 1982, Liddy published an autobiography, titled Will, which sold more than a million copies and was made into a television movie. The book received reviews that were typically laudatory of Liddy's writing ability and sense of humor, if not of his personal character. In it he states that he once made plans with Hunt to kill journalist Jack Anderson, based on a literal interpretation of a Nixon White House statement "we need to get rid of this Anderson guy".
In the mid-1980s Liddy went on joint lecture tours with fellow ex-con Timothy Leary.
In 1992, Liddy joined the talk circuit and then became host of a syndicated radio program (first through Unistar, and later CBS, before joining Radio America in 2003) espousing extremely conservative views, which was characterized by his highly provocative style.
The made-for-TV movie, The Highwayman, marked Liddy's acting debut. He also appeared on the TV series Miami Vice. Movie credits include: When Nature Calls (1985), Super Force (1990), Street Asylum (1990) and Adventures in Spying (1992).
Liddy describes himself as having been sickly as a child, and possessed of many irrational fears. To confront and overcome these fears, Liddy performed various acts that would "kill the fear". Examples include catching, cooking and eating a rat (in order to overcome a phobia to rats) and climbing a tree during a thunderstorm (in order to overcome a phobia to lightning).
One of Liddy's most famous feats of endurance involved holding his hand on a candle flame until the flesh on his hand was burned. According to the book All The President's Men, he did this once at a dinner party and afterwards somebody asked "What's the trick?". He replied, "The trick is not minding."
For many years Liddy was agnostic, but has reverted back to Roman Catholicism.
Controversial statements
During Liddy's tenure as a radio talk-show host, many controversial statements have been attributed to him, some of which would eventually lead to condemnation by then-President Bill Clinton.
- August 26, 1994 - Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests." ... "They've got a big target on there, ATF. Don't shoot at that, because they've got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots.... Kill the sons of bitches.
- September 15, 1994 - If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head.
Acting career
G. Gordon Liddy has acted in several movies, including The Highwayman, Street Asylum, Camp Cucamonga, Adventures in Spying and Rules of Engagement. He also appeared in the television show 18 Wheels of Justice, had a recurring role on Miami Vice, and guest starred in Al Franken's TV show LateLine.
Trivia
- Despite their political differences, Liddy and Al Franken are friends. Franken has been on Liddy's radio show multiple times. Liddy shares a similar friendship with noted feminist Camille Paglia, who has also appeared several times on his show. Liddy is friends with yet another well-known liberal: Lanny Davis. A lawyer, a friend of the Clintons, and an outspoken supporter of President Clinton during his controversial second term, Davis has been on Liddy's radio show numerous times, and for many years, when Davis appeared on Liddy's show, he would be boasted as "The liberal's liberal" and "Defending the Indefensible – The Clinton Presidency", and would have a special spiel played after Jan Hammer's Miami Vice Theme (the theme song from 1992 until 1998) started the show, as it did originally. Liddy made a guest appearance on Whoopi Goldberg's television talk show in 1993.
- Liddy's show initially was a four-hour format, with Review and Comment on the News in the second hour, and the other three hours could be call-in or guests. On Listener Appreciation Day, there would be no guests and call-in's for the three call-in hours. The show later switched to a format where a news commentary took the first segment of each hour.
- During the Review and Comment on the News segment of his radio show, Liddy will not say the full name of the Washington Post. He instead bleeps out the name, saying, "Washington's quaint little alternative newspaper, the Washington *bleep*." Liddy claims that he does this in order to avoid being sued by the Post for trademark infringement, although trademark law does not prohibit such mentions. (Liddy will occasionally mention the full name of the Washington Post, if the newspaper itself is involved in a controversial or newsworthy matter.)
- Liddy has described that, as a child in the 1930s, he grew up in a German-American community that included many admirers of Adolf Hitler, and that listening to Hitler's speeches "made me feel a strength inside I had never known before." As an adult, however, he came to condem Nazism and Hitler as "evil". *
- Liddy was stationed at Coney Island during his two years in the US Army, and never saw combat.
- Liddy claims that he is the only white man ever to have engaged in weight training with the Fruit of Islam (the paramilitary wing of the Nation of Islam). This occurred while he was in prison.
- Liddy is portrayed in the 1999 Watergate satire Dick by humorist Harry Shearer as an especially high-strung, secretive crook.
External links
- * Liddy's website
- * G. Gordon Liddy -- An interview
- * FAIR Article on G. Gordon Liddy Talk Show Statements
1930 births | Living people | American criminals | American radio personalities | Irish-Americans | People from New Jersey | Roman Catholics | Television talk show hosts | United States Army officers | Watergate figures | Miami Vice actors | Members of the Pershing Rifles
"G. Gordon Liddy"