Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Saturday, Aug. 2, 2003

Magruder has “demonstrated that he’s a mouse trying to grow up to be a rat,” says radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy.

In an interview with NewsMax.com, Liddy said Magruder’s comment on a television documentary this week on the left-wing Public Broadcasting Service that he had overheard Nixon himself give a direct order for the breakin was “a complete fabrication.”

Further, he said, Magruder is “directly contradicting himself.”

Liddy, who served a prison term for his own role in the Watergate burglary, notes that Magruder had published a book in 1974, “when his memory was its freshest,” in which he said (page 282 of the 1975 paperback edition), “I know nothing to indicate that Nixon was aware in advance of the plan to break into the Democratic headquarters.”

Liddy quotes a reference in Magruder’s nearly 30-year-old book to speculation that Attorney General John Mitchell or White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman told Nixon in advance about the break-in. But (again Magruder’s quotation as read by Liddy to NewsMax), “I think it’s likelier that they would not have mentioned it unless the operation had produced some results of interest to him.”

“If he had overheard a conversation in which Richard Nixon authorized it ... just a year or two later, he would have remembered it and he would have put it in his book,” Liddy told us.

Magruder claims no one ever asked him that question. Liddy says that is preposterous.

“Do you believe that the FBI agents, the investigators from the Senate and all the rest of it would all be so completely lax as to never ask him such a question? Of course, he was asked that question!” an incredulous Liddy declared.

If Magruder were telling the truth now, he would be admitting to a crime beyond those for which he went to prison years ago. It is a felony to lie to the FBI, though Liddy believes the statute of limitations probably have run out on that charge.

Fox News Channel's White House correspondent James Rosen, in an op-ed piece Wednesday in the New York Post, cited transcripts from the Senate Watergate Committee showing Magruder was grilled by the late Sen. Herman Talmadge, D-Ga., and Minority Counsel (later Senator) Fred Thompson on this very question.

“To my knowledge, the president had no prior knowledge of the bugging plan,” and such knowledge by Nixon “would be difficult for me to believe,” Magruder then testified under oath.

Further, Rosen notes historians have long ago concluded that Magruder repeatedly bore false witness against Mitchell, “a man he professed to revere as a father figure.”

Additionally, a UPI dispatch on Thursday quotes John Taylor, who runs the Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, Calif., as saying a review of the White House Daily Diary for the day in question and tape recordings (the infamous “Watergate tapes”) show no such telephone call or meeting as described by Magruder.

What would prompt a man to contradict himself with such a serious charge 30 years after the fact?

Other than the obvious fact that Nixon is no longer around to defend himself, Liddy speculates that Magruder is “retired, he’s back home, has nothing to do, nobody’s paying any attention to him, and now he’s all over television with this fabricated story.”

As for PBS, whose left-leaning proclivities have been documented by NewsMax.com, Liddy says the TV network “ignore[s] what really happened.”

The “G-man” refers his interviewer to court cases where he has fended off lawsuits lodged against him by Nixon White House Counsel John Dean and by Ida “Maxie” Wells.

The latter was secretary/administrative assistant to R. Spencer Oliver, then the chairman of the state Democratic Governors Association. The thrust of the suit involved Liddy’s endorsement of the 1991 book, “Silent Coup,” wherein it was alleged that Dean had actually ordered the break-in to look for photos involving a prostitution ring, as well as political dirt. The jury found Liddy did not defame Wells by alleging her involvement in the scandal.

Dean's suit against the G-Man dragged on for 8 years, Liddy recalled for NewsMax, mainly because Dean himself kept putting off going to court. Dean withdrew the charges in 2000.

Liddy has said after visiting “Silent Coup” co-author Len Colodny for four days and reviewing paperwork, he realized he had been “out of the loop.”

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