After the Tall Timber (22 page)

Milt led the way upstairs, down a corridor of offices locked for the night, into the studio. An announcer was just doing the nine o’clock news: “George Bush and Edward Kennedy have slim leads in the Illinois primary.” Liddy and Milt sat beside each other at a sort of conference table. They put on earphones. Rosenberg, in introducing Liddy and his book (“A book of multiple value, I think, of compelling value. Excellent autobiography”), turned to Liddy and said, “It reveals qualities in yourself that you may not be aware of.” Liddy said that, as a young man unsure whether to become an operatic tenor or a lawyer, he had taken, as did so many of his generation, the Johnson O’Connor aptitude tests. They had suggested that his talents might lie in publishing or in something literary. “It appears, after all these years,” he said, “that they were right and I was wrong.”

Rosenberg spoke awhile: “My summary of your vita to date includes your years with the FBI, some of them spent just in our backyard. Gary, Indiana,” and mentioned the plan to kill Jack Anderson. “But it did not get executed,” he said. “
He
did not get executed,” Liddy corrected, mildly. Rosenberg spoke of “values that are based on Machiavelli but suggest Nietzsche,” of matters of “
Weltanschauung
versus
Uebersicht
,” of “Some values perhaps that are of a different modality from those that inform our way of life?” A moment’s silence. “My turn?” Liddy asked. He spoke of his perception that the crisis in the country at the time of Watergate consisted not of “gentle little girls in bare feet carrying daisies” but of campus riots, burning cities, and so forth. “In that context, with that perception, always distinguishing between mere protesters and bomb throwers,” he said, he had taken the actions that he took. A listener called in to ask how Liddy could possibly justify the break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. “We did not know what we had there in Dr. Ellsberg,” Liddy said. Commercials. A jingle: “Crunchies. Delicious. They’re everything they’re cracked up to be,” “Are you aware of anything I have asked you, Gordon,” Rosenberg asked, while their microphones were turned off, “that might make you uncomfortable in any way?” Liddy said no, it was always stimulating to talk with Dr. Rosenberg.

“A document of our time,” Rosenberg resumed, speaking of
Will
, when he and Liddy were back on the air. He mentioned Liddy’s marriage and genetics. Liddy said that Charles Lindbergh had spoken of similar considerations in his marriage to Anne Morrow. (Anne Morrow Lindbergh had appeared that week, on
60 Minutes
, to promote her book about her husband.) They spoke of “Social Darwinism”; then, of spying for political purposes. “It’s as American as apple pie,” Liddy said. “It’s right out of
The Last Hurrah
. It’s the way the game is played.” When the subject of Liddy’s childhood interest in Naziism came up, Liddy mentioned that, before the war, the custom in all American public schools was to pledge allegiance to the flag with a straight-arm, palm-down salute. Rosenberg asked Liddy whether he thought his book was “the definitive history” of Watergate; and Liddy replied, “No. I’m probably disqualified from writing the history. I’m too close to it. Where do I get off doing that? I might be wrong. You see what I mean.” Liddy made a distinction between the purposes of what he called Watergates I and II. “In the second break-in, the focus changed,” he said, “from the spoken to the written word. We were sent to photograph all files.” Rosenberg asked, given the uselessness of those files, whether Watergate resulted from “a Matterhorn complex. They had to break in because it’s there.” Liddy said no. Commercials. When the microphones were off, Liddy asked, “Going well?” Rosenberg replied, “How could it not?”

On the air, Rosenberg alluded to Machiavelli once again. “You might conclude that it’s all right to be a good soldier of the Prince,” he said, “but you’d better find a Prince who’s ruthless enough, as yours was not.” “I’d say that’s a pretty good summary,” Liddy said. Nearly an hour and a half had passed. The program was turned over entirely to phone calls from listeners: “I’m a practicing attorney. I’ve read only the review in
Time
. I’m a free thinker and a humanist. How many misguided souls like you are still at large in government?”; “I feel you were very seriously used. Knowing your nature to be blunt and brutal, I think you were being used, and I think it’s sad.” One man called to inquire what Liddy thought of “the Ehrlichman thesis,” that McCord was a double agent, sent in to bring the Nixon administration down. Liddy replied that he did not think so, that he was not a subscriber to the conspiracy theory of history. Then, someone asked what he called the “nitty-gritty question,” one that prompted considerable speculation in almost every book about Watergate: why the tape on the lock of the door to the Watergate complex had been placed horizontally (so that it was visible even on a shut door) instead of vertically. Liddy explained it very carefully. All maintenance men, he said, taped locks horizontally, for the simple reason that vertically placed tape would not hold. “But try it. Put it on vertically, and see if it holds. You’ll find it pops right off.” More questions, theories about CIA conspiracies, theories about the death, in an airplane crash, of Mrs. E. Howard Hunt. “Look, what you have here,” Liddy said, “is the phenomenon of obsession with the details of enormously publicized events.” And that was that. Rosenberg returned to matters of philosophy and statecraft.

Liddy said he thought that, as a result of the Vietnam War, Americans were permitting their foreign policy to be conducted both timidly and as though they inhabited a safe and benign world. “We can no longer afford the luxury of that illusion,” he said. Rosenberg said, “You’re left with a very dark vision of the future.” Liddy asked him to imagine a bad neighborhood, and a man, looking like a wimp, with a fat wallet, walking toward a man with a machine gun. “Let’s not be the guy who looks like a wimp,” he said, becoming, for the first time in his trip, overtly hortatory. More talk. “You’re a very interesting man,” Rosenberg said, at the end of the program, “and a totally honest one.” Outside, on the sidewalk, he said, “Come back again, and let’s talk about prison conditions.” Liddy said he would.

The next morning, Liddy left his hotel to shop for suspenders. On account of his tooth, he had by now not eaten solid food in nearly a week. He could not further tighten his belt. A woman walked up to him and said, perfectly amiably, “Death to the CIA.” As he walked, with a newspaperman, outside the Commodities Exchange, a man, who identified himself as a commodities broker, shook Liddy’s hand and said he admired him. “You’re in a riskier business than mine ever was,” Liddy said. Suddenly, in a corridor, a young man emerged from an office and greeted Liddy with considerable affection. It was Dwight Chapin, the former White House appointments secretary, who went to prison for a Watergate-related felony. He is now editor of something called
Success Magazine
, which is published by the biggest public contributor to the Nixon campaign, R. Clement Stone. Stone had hoped to be ambassador to London. So had another large contributor, Russell Firestone. According to Ervin Committee records, Firestone had written to Chapin, after a meeting with President Nixon, “Thank you for permitting me to bask in the radiance of his presence.” Neither man became ambassador to London.

Liddy’s stay in Los Angeles coincided with a Southern California balloon race. Steve Harvey, a young reporter who had for several days been covering the balloon race for the
Los Angeles Times
, was assigned for a day to cover Gordon Liddy. “I do off-beat features,” Harvey said, with a little shrug. At eight o’clock in the morning, Liddy and the young reporter set off from Liddy’s hotel, L’Ermitage, by limousine for an interview on the Mikael Jackson radio show. “I thought you’d be out there with the balloons,” Jackson said, when Liddy introduced him to Steve Harvey. “I had to interrupt the balloons,” Harvey said. They entered the studio, a small gray room, with a dartboard whose target was a large photograph of Ayatollah Khomeini, and with various signs (a picture of a cymbal, for instance, captioned “status cymbal”) and other
objets
strewn about. On Jackson’s desk, beside his microphone, was a book,
How to Live With Your Teenager
. The news was coming through a speaker: “Secretary of State Cyrus Vance has resigned  . . . with a ‘heavy heart’  . . . says he will support the President on other issues.” A voice said, through the intercom, “I have that Vance resignation, if you want it on tape.” “Thanks,” Jackson said. “I’ve got it live.” Then, he turned to Liddy. “Welcome back,” he said. “Is it cold out there? Is it raining?” No. “So my forecast here is entirely wrong.” A red light flashed, airtime.

“This is really gonna be a wildly busy morning,” Jackson said, in English-accented (he was born in England), staccato American slang. “We’ll have Dick Gregory calling in, from his fifteenth day of fasting in Teheran. Jack Nelson, calling in from Washington. Also, coming up, our food critic, Elma Dells.” Then, his interview with Liddy: “You were dangerous, brave. To what end?”; “Are they all childish games?”; “Was it all worth it? Did it serve any purpose?”; “This is better written than the first book”; “How do you feel about Carter now?” During a break, Jackson sang along with a commercial for Gallo Salami. “Is it going all right?” Liddy asked. “A little tight,” Jackson said. “We don’t have the rapport we had last time.”

On the air again, in reply to a question about Secretary Vance, Liddy was saying, “He’s a lawyer.” “Liar?” Jackson asked. “Lawyer,” Liddy said. They discussed the failed mission in the Iranian desert. Liddy compared it to Dieppe, and other early failures of World War II. “What matters in life, sir?” Jackson asked, abruptly. “Doing one’s very best,” Liddy said, then recalled Winston Churchill’s advice to a class at Eton, “Never give up. Never. Never. Never. Never.” “I can see the mail now,” Jackson said, drumming his fingers on the desk during another break. “How come you didn’t attack G. Gordon Liddy?”

On the air, more conversation. Many listener phone calls. Several hostile callers, attempting to
spring
their angry remarks after some innocuous opening sentences, gave their views away with the sarcastic tone of the first syllable. “He’s not much better than other people in government,” one caller said, after a fairly long and abstract meditation. “He’s nothing but a
pansy
.” Liddy called this a “declarative statement,” and asked, “What is your question?” “You could never have this on the BBC,” Jackson said during the next commercial break.

In Liddy’s hotel room, the interviewer for Los Angeles
NewsCenter 4
looked at Steve Harvey, and at me, with some suspicion. “You fancy yourself a hero,” she said to Liddy. “But a lot of people went to jail because you remained silent. What would you say to them, Mr. Liddy?” “Who?” Liddy said, genuinely bewildered. The interviewer changed the subject. What did Liddy think of ABSCAM? He said that, as a lawyer, he sensed entrapment in it. “What would you say to the many people who regard themselves as being had by Richard Nixon?” the interviewer asked. “Who?” Liddy said again. “Many people regard you as a morally bankrupt man,” she began again. Silence. “Do you see yourself as a morally bankrupt man?” “No,” he said. “I do not.” Whom did he support for President. Liddy declined to answer. “I might get myself into a position of a gratuitous endorsement, and that would be harmful to the candidate,” he said. “Come now, Mr. Liddy, isn’t that a cop-out?” she said. “When you’re peddling your book, when you’re doing a TV interview to sell your book, in effect don’t you think it’s a cop-out not to react?” “I have just reacted,” Liddy said. “I understand that I have not reacted in the way you want me to. I’m sorry.” “In all honesty, Mr. Liddy, why should anyone buy a book by a criminal?” Liddy gave his O’Henry, Villon, Defoe answer. The interviewer asked what he thought of “the world situation in the next few months.” He said it looked grim. War? “Not in the next few months, but sooner rather than later.” What kind of war? “War over natural resources in the Middle East.” The interviewer asked the cameraman to stop the camera.

Liddy and the interviewer talked about military preparedness for a while. Liddy spoke of the bad neighborhood, the fat wallet, and the wimp. The interviewer at once asked that the camera be turned on again. “Mr. Liddy,” she said then, “do you think Cy Vance is a wimp?” “No,” he said. “I think Cyrus Vance did the honorable thing. When you disagree with a policy, you resign over it. A time came when he could not publicly support the President, he resigned.” “Is it more fun writing a book than conducting spy missions?” she asked. “It’s not fun at all,” Liddy said. “Both are hard work.” The interviewer asked, “Mr. Liddy, if Richard Nixon were still President, would the hostages still be in Teheran?” Liddy gave his “The
Shah
would still be in Teheran” reply. “Do you think the country’s attitudes are changing more in line with the Liddy view of how things should be done?” “I hope so,” he said. The interviewer gave up.

As she and the cameraman were leaving, the cameraman turned to Liddy. “I have to agree with you,” he said. A friend of his, a reserve officer, had made a trip to inspect a military base, and had told the cameraman, “The equipment out there is all junk.” “The skies are black,” Liddy said, shaking his head, “with chickens coming home to roost.” The interviewer later called both Steve Harvey and me, to ask what sort of pieces we were doing. (“We’re keeping them honest,” Harvey said to me.)
NewsCenter 4
that night simply reported that the book was out. Of the interview, there were just the lines about Nixon and the Shah.

At noon on the first Friday in May, Gordon and Frances Liddy were due on the playing fields of the St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., where this year’s Track & Field Meet of the District of Columbia Special Olympics was being held. The Special Olympics, which have occurred annually all over the country since 1968, consist of sports events for retarded or otherwise damaged children. At 10 A.M., Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who was one of the most enthusiastic founders of the national program, had administered the Special Olympics Oath. A runner had lighted a special torch. Races and games had begun all over the field. Gordon Liddy was to be one of the honorary judges or, more precisely, awarders of ribbons. The events are so organized that as many children as possible will receive ribbons of some sort. The three top competitors in each of many simultaneous and successive events are encouraged to climb on pedestals in front of a reviewing stand, where an announcer calls out their names through a microphone. Judges, with handfuls of first-, second-, and third-prize ribbons, stand in front of the pedestals. The children naturally are of various heights and ages. Not all of them understand what the ribbons are for or that, given the height of the pedestals and the height of the judges, taller children must lean downward to have ribbons pinned on their T-shirts. Three judges, one of whom was an army colonel, were pinning ribbons somewhere on the clothing of a very rapid succession of winning children. Since the work of pinning and congratulating is a strenuous and not unathletic business, the adults worked in shifts. Liddy’s shift was in the afternoon.