Tucson, Arizona Sunday, 27 July 2003
The Associated Press
From left, Samuel Dash, former Senate counsel; John Dean, counsel to Nixon; and Jeb Magruder met earlier this month in Los Angeles. |
President knew about the break-in before it happened, Magruder says
WIRE REPORTS
WASHINGTON - President Nixon personally ordered the burglary at the Watergate Hotel in June 1972, a trusted aide has now revealed, resurrecting the scandal that led to Nixon's political ruin and forced him from the nation's highest office.
Jeb Stuart Magruder, who was Nixon's assistant communications director before moving to the re-election committee, said he was privy to a telephone conversation between Nixon and John Mitchell, the campaign chairman, in which the president urged Mitchell to proceed with a break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate.
The revelation, if true, places the Watergate burglary in a new historical light. Though never concretely established, it generally was felt Nixon was not involved in the break-in itself, only in the cover-up - an involvement that forced him to resign from office on Aug. 9, 1974.
Nixon subsequently was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, on Sept. 8, 1974, and the complete story of Watergate never came to light.
Magruder previously had gone no further than saying Mitchell, the former attorney general, approved the plan.
Jeb Magruder says no one ever asked him directly if Nixon himself authorized the break-in. |
Magruder, in a PBS documentary airing Wednesday and in an Associated Press interview last week, says he was meeting with Mitchell on March 30, 1972, when he heard Nixon tell Mitchell over the phone to go ahead with the plan.
The break-in occurred 2 1/2 months later, on June 17, 1972.
Whether Nixon had advance knowledge has gone unanswered for three decades since former Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee first asked at hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"
Magruder, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and perjury charges stemming from the break-in and spent seven months in prison, explained his three decades of silence on Nixon's culpability by saying Friday: "Nobody ever asked me a question about that."
Some historians doubt the allegation by Magruder, who was Nixon's deputy campaign director, an aide to Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, and deputy communications director at the White House. Stanley Kutler, an expert on Nixon's White House tapes, called it "the dubious word of a dubious character."
Magruder made the assertion on a PBS documentary, "Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History." He elaborated in the AP interview.
The way Magruder tells the story, Nixon knew everything from the beginning.
Magruder says that on March 30, 1972, he met with Mitchell and discussed a plan by G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, to break into the Democratic Party headquarters to bug the phone of Democratic Party Chairman Lawrence O'Brien.
Magruder said Mitchell asked him to call Haldeman to see "if this is really necessary." Haldeman told him "yes," Magruder said, and then asked to speak to Mitchell. Mitchell and Haldeman talked, and then "the president gets on the line."
Magruder said he knew it was Nixon "because his voice is very distinct."
Magruder said he heard Nixon tell Mitchell, "John ... we need to get the information on Larry O'Brien, and the only way we can do that is through Liddy's plan. And you need to do that."
Mitchell got off the phone, Magruder said, and told him: "Jeb, tell Maury Stans to give Liddy $250,000 and let's see what happens." Maurice Stans was Nixon's commerce secretary and later was chief fund-raiser for the re-election campaign as head of the finance committee.
Magruder concedes he did not hear every word while Nixon was on the phone with Mitchell, but says he "heard the import."
Mitchell, Haldeman, Stans and Nixon are all dead.
Magruder insisted in the AP interview that he was not asked previously whether Nixon personally authorized the break-in.
Referring to the Senate Watergate hearings, he said, "If you look at the testimony, you won't find anything." Magruder said he testified truthfully and would have told the truth had he been specifically asked if the president had been involved.
Former White House counsel John Dean said he was surprised when Magruder recently told him that Nixon gave advance encouragement to the break-in.
"I have no reason to doubt that it happened as he describes it, but I have never seen a scintilla of evidence that Nixon knew about the plans for the Watergate break-in or that the likes of Gordon Liddy were operating at the re-election committee," Dean said.
Historian Kutler, author of "The Wars of Watergate" and several other books, said he is skeptical. He is an expert on Nixon's White House tapes, crucial evidence in the 1974 vote by the House Judiciary Committee to recommend Nixon's impeachment. Nixon resigned within days of that vote.
If there had been such a phone conversation between Nixon and Mitchell, Kutler said, there should be a White House tape recording of it.
After Magruder's prison time, he became a Presbyterian minister. In all, 25
people went to jail for their roles in the break-in or the attempt to cover
it up.