Everything about G Gordon Liddy totally explained
George Gordon Battle Liddy (born
November 30,
1930) was the chief operative for the
White House Plumbers unit that existed during several years of
Richard Nixon's Presidency. Along with
E. Howard Hunt, Liddy masterminded the
first break-in of the
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 served four and a half years in prison for his role in the burglary.
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 in addition to appearing in a cameo role or as a guest celebrity talent in several television shows.
Early years
Liddy was born in
Hoboken, New Jersey, to Sylvester J. Liddy and Maria Abbaticchio; his maternal grandfather was of Italian descent. Liddy was raised in
West Caldwell, New Jersey and educated at
Fordham University. He was named for George Gordon Battle, a New York City attorney who had mentored Liddy's father.
Liddy has said that, as a child, 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'd never known before." As an adult, however, he came to condemn
Nazism and Hitler as "evil".
He graduated in
1952 and joined the
United States Army, serving for two years as an
artillery officer at the time of the
Korean War, but didn't leave the US due to an injury. He returned home in
1954 to study
law at
Fordham, earning a spot on the Law Review. Graduating in
1957, he went to work for the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under
J. Edgar Hoover.
Liddy left the FBI in
1962 and worked as a lawyer in
New York City and a prosecutor in
Dutchess County, New York. In
1966, he organized the arrest and unsuccessful trial of
Timothy Leary. He ran unsuccessfully for the post of District Attorney and then for the
United States 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.
White House years
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 plots, some far-fetched, intended to embarrass the
Democratic opposition. These included firebombing the
Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. (where classified documents leaked by Daniel Ellsberg were being stored), kidnapping
anti-war protest organizers and transporting them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention (which at the time was planned for San Diego), and luring mid-level Democratic campaign officials to a house boat in Baltimore where they'd be secretly photographed in compromising positions with call girls. Most of Liddy's ideas were rejected, but a few were given the go ahead by Nixon Administration officials, including the break-in at
Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Ellsberg had leaked the
Pentagon Papers to the
New York Times.
At some point, Liddy was instructed to break into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel.
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 a total of five and half years in prison, including over 100 days in solitary confinement, before his sentence was commuted by President
Jimmy Carter.
After prison
In 1980, 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 joined lecture circuit, and was listed as the top speaker in the college circuit in 1982 by the Wall Street Jounal. He later joined with fellow ex-con
Timothy Leary on a series of debates which were popular on the college circuit as well. Liddy remained in the public eye with two guest appearances on the 1984-89 television series
Miami Vice, playing the role of "Capt. Real Estate," a character loosely based on himself.
Also in the early 1980s Liddy joined forces with former
Niles, Illinois Police Officer and co-owner of The Protection Group, Ltd.,
Thomas E. Ferraro, Jr.
, to start up a private security and
countersurveillance firm called,
G. Gordon Liddy & Associates. The firm wasn't a success, however, and it filed for bankruptcy on 12 November 1988.
In
1992, Liddy emerged to host his own talk radio show. Its immense popularity led to national syndication in under a year through Viacom's Westwood One Network and later
Radio America in
2003. The show reflects Liddy's politically conservative viewpoints and highly provocative though engaging style.
In addition to
Will and the nonfiction books
When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country (2002) and
Fight Back! Tackling Terrorism, Liddy Style (2006, with his son Cdr. James G. Liddy, J. Michael Barrett, and Joel Selanikio), Liddy has published two novels:
Out of Control (1979) and
The Monkey Handlers (1990). Neither novel sold as well as the autobiography.
Contrary to popular belief, Liddy has remained a Roman Catholic throughout his life, but often disagrees with the preachings of the American Catholic Church, particularly during the Vietnam War.
Controversial statements
During Liddy's tenure as a radio talk-show host, many controversial statements have been attributed to him, including causing the release of
John Dean's home phone number in
1993 on the radio when Dean was threatening to sue Liddy for defamation and Liddy called Dean's home on the air to only reach his answering machine that announced the phone number. Some of his comments led to condemnation by then President Bill Clinton who was under constant attack by conservative talk radio.
- August 26, 1994 - Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they're 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.
Liddy claimed that his detractors omit some important context: » I was talking about a situation in which law enforced agents comes smashing into a house, doesn't say who they are, and their guns are out, they're shooting, and they're in the wrong place. This has happened time and time again. The ATF has gone in and gotten the wrong guy in the wrong place. The law is that if somebody is shooting at you, using deadly force, the mere fact that they're a law enforcement officer, if they're in the wrong, doesn't mean you're obliged to allow yourself to be killed so your kinfolk can have a wrongful death action. You are legally entitled to defend yourself and I was speaking of exactly those kind of situations. If you're going to do that, you should know that they're wearing body armor so you should use a head shot. Now all I'm doing is stating the law, but all the nuances in there got left out when the story got repeated.
Acting career
G. Gordon Liddy has acted in several films, including The Highwayman, Street Asylum, Camp Cucamonga, Adventures in Spying and Rules of Engagement. He also appeared in the television shows 18 Wheels of Justice and MacGyver, had a recurring role on Miami Vice, and guest starred in Al Franken's TV show LateLine.
Liddy appeared on a celebrity edition of the NBC TV show Fear Factor on September 12, 2006 (filmed in November, 2005). At 75 years of age, Liddy was the oldest contestant ever to appear on the show. Liddy beat the competition in the first two stunts, winning two motorcycles custom built by Metropolitan Chopper. In the final driving stunt, Liddy crashed and was unable to finish.
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