Gordon Liddy

Gordon Liddy was a former FBI agent and prosecutor whose career in law enforcement ended in a Watergate conviction. He was part of the White House Plumbers, the group that investigated leaks to the news media, and his association with the committee’s money and operatives placed him inside the chain of events that the reporters were trying to reconstruct. At trial, he made himself equally visible: telling jokes, hinting at legal strategy, and finally standing impassive as the jury found him guilty on every count.

Identity and covert operations

Liddy’s position at the Committee for the Re-election of the President connected him to Sally Harmony, his secretary there. Reporters pursuing accounts of what committee employees knew heard that Harmony might not have told everything she knew to investigators. A Justice Department attorney confirmed that prosecutors were suspicious of her testimony but lacked evidence to charge her with perjury. The allegations remained vague: people referred to her as protecting others, but the reporters could not establish what she had lied about. Her connection to Liddy therefore supplied a lead, not proof of his role in any particular statement or concealment.

A confidential legal stipulation later gave the reporters more concrete evidence of Liddy’s operational connections. It showed that he and E. Howard Hunt had traveled to Los Angeles under false names on September 4, 1971, and again on January 7 and February 17, 1972. The trips fell within the period when both men were working at the White House, and preceded the Watergate break-in. The evidence established coordinated, concealed travel, though the passage does not specify what the two did on those trips.

The same reporting identified Liddy as one of the four men in the Plumbers, alongside Hunt, David Young, and Egil Krogh. Their work was to investigate leaks to the news media and report to John Ehrlichman. Their office was in the basement of the Executive Office Building, across from the White House. Liddy’s place in this group linked him to an operation whose stated purpose was leak investigation, while the false-name journeys with Hunt pointed to activity extending beyond ordinary public-facing duties.

Money, silence, and the widening investigation

The reporters’ questions about campaign money brought Liddy into the account before the trial. When Bernstein urged former campaign treasurer Hugh Sloan to tell what he knew, he raised the cash handed over to Liddy and aides to John Mitchell. Sloan replied that matters were worse than the published account suggested and explained that he had left because he suspected the worst. He did not then publicly detail what the cash was for; his lawyers had advised him against statements that could be used in civil litigation.

Sloan described an unwritten discipline within the committee: employees were not explicitly ordered to stay silent, but the message was to hold ranks and keep the ship together. His testimony does not identify Liddy as the person who issued that message. It does, however, place the cash transfers to Liddy within a campaign environment where preserving unity and withholding information had become important themes.

Later, James McCord’s testimony supplied a new connection between the committee and the defendants: the cash payoffs to the Watergate conspirators had come directly from the Committee for the Re-election of the President. That disclosure made it possible that money from the secret fund had been used to buy silence after the arrests. McCord identified Kenneth Parkinson and Dorothy Hunt as conduits for the payments. In this developing account, Liddy’s significance lay not only in his presence among the men convicted in the break-in, but also in the questions surrounding the campaign cash that had reached him and the alleged effort to keep the defendants quiet.

A public performance at trial

During the 16-day trial, Liddy and James McCord were often accessible to reporters during recesses, talking with them in the corridors. Liddy entertained a group of journalists with a story about a military plane accidentally dropping a bomb in the red-light district of a Mexican border town. He recounted the officials’ request that the bombing stop in exchange for closing the brothels, then laughed so convulsively that his face turned bright red. The anecdote made him an animated presence in a trial otherwise marked by guarded witnesses and questions left unanswered.

Liddy also turned a courtroom setback into a private performance. After his lawyer, Peter Maroulis, had an objection overruled by Judge John Sirica, Liddy took Bob Woodward aside and said, “Peter just took their queen.” Woodward asked whether Liddy meant the judge had made an error that could force an appeals court to reverse convictions. Liddy did not explain; he praised Woodward’s chess ability, beaming and bouncing slightly with his hands in his pockets. The exchange conveyed confidence and insinuation, but left the supposed legal advantage unconfirmed.

That showmanship continued during the closing argument. The prosecutor portrayed Liddy as the “Mr. Big” of Watergate, emphasizing the contrast between his past as an FBI agent and prosecutor and his place among the defendants. As the prosecutor spoke, Liddy rocked slowly in his chair with a smile on his face. He gave the jury a quick, animated wave, repeating the gesture he had made on the first day of trial. The wave made the courtroom image of Liddy part of the story: a former lawman publicly cast as the man who had crossed to the other side.

Conviction and significance

The jury took less than 90 minutes to find Liddy and McCord guilty on all the counts against them. As the clerk read the verdict, Liddy stood impassive, arms folded defiantly, while the word guilty was repeated six times. Judge Sirica ordered him jailed without bond. Before being escorted away, Liddy embraced Maroulis, patted him affectionately on the back, and gave a final wave to spectators and reporters.

The verdict settled Liddy’s criminal responsibility on the counts tried, but did not answer the broader questions about who had hired the spies or why. Bernstein and Woodward’s account of the trial emphasized the questions never asked, answers never given, witnesses never called, and lapses of memory. Liddy’s conviction thus closed one part of the case while leaving the campaign’s wider structure and the source and purpose of its money under investigation. His courtroom bravado offered a sharp contrast to that unresolved record: he could make a spectacle of himself, but the verdict did not make the larger story complete.