After the Tall Timber

by Renata Adler

  From a strictly Watergate point of view, these may all have been facts of historic consequence—particularly the information about Strachan. There had always been a missing link (specifically, a missing memorandum in a numbered series of twenty memoranda) in the chain of evidence from Watergate to Strachan; as there had always been missing pieces (specifically, just what facts Liddy had told him) in the link to Kleindienst. The information about Mardian, whose indictment rested on quite other evidence, was entirely new. Liddy, of course, had details of many other kinds, but Liddy’s allegations about the three men, if he had spoken at the time, would have led, directly and inescapably, to the President; and it is Strachan who would inevitably, by implicating Haldeman, have implicated the President, for having authorized the break-in after all. In that event, on the plane of the historical what-if, if Liddy had, at the time, told all he knew, it is almost certain that President Nixon, immediately after the 1972 election, would have taken responsibility for the break-in, explained it somehow, and gone on to serve out his constitutional term. It was, after all, the cover-up, prolonged, intricate, disintegrating over a period of more than twenty months, that became finally intolerable; it took more than two years of extraordinary events and processes before a mechanism for removal of the President was in place. Of that long disintegration of the cover-up, Liddy, who tries carefully to distinguish what he speculates about from what he knows as fact, has only an impression. A sweep of Jeb Magruder’s hand toward a desk drawer which held Republicans’ derogatory information about Democrats caused Liddy to believe that the purpose of the break-in was to find what derogatory information the Democrats had about Republicans. Liddy does not dwell at all upon these, his Watergate scoops, such as they are (three historic felonies at the highest level, one sweep of the hand). And in the course of all his travels, no interviewer. Watergate reporter, or reviewer mentioned any but the last, the sweep. And few mentioned that.

  What they did all mention, and want to talk about, was Liddy as a Nazi sympathizer; Liddy as a racist believer in genetics; Liddy as a burner of his own hand; Liddy, and this with the greatest fascination, as a man prepared to kill. Also, increasingly and perhaps surprisingly, Liddy as a philosopher about the human condition and Liddy as a commentator on American political affairs. He was asked, everywhere, what he would do in President Carter’s place about foreign policy, what were his thoughts on the nature of good and evil, how people ought to raise their children (the Liddys have five, two daughters, three sons, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two), what is the relation between hope and death, free enterprise and regulation, military preparedness and the democratic system, and so on. Some interviewers addressed him in the most respectful terms, as a kind of statesman. Others seemed to bait him as a dangerous fanatic. Others still to treat him as though there were no distinction, as though statesman, fanatic, writer, presumptive killer were all essentially the same.

  “Tell me, Mr. Liddy,” a distinctly hostile television interviewer asked him, in Los Angeles, right after the failed helicopter rescue mission to Iran, “if Richard Nixon were still President, would our hostages still be in Teheran?” She spoke with an air of wariness and triumph, as though she had risked the violence of a madman to provoke an item of sensational news. “If Richard Nixon were still President,” Liddy replied, amiably and without hesitation, “the Shah would still be in Teheran.”

  All over the country, interviewers asked him who he thought had really killed President Kennedy. “I’m not a believer in conspiracy theories of history,” he would say. “Such a conspiracy would have had to be too large. So many people could never keep a secret.” He was often asked the identity of Woodward and Bernstein’s informant, Deep Throat. Each time, he replied that he was virtually certain, just as any reader of All the President’s Men would be certain, that there was no single such person, that it was a literary device to cover a variety of sources. And then he would add that since he was in prison during most of the period covered by the book, he could know no more about the matter than anybody else.

  Sometimes, in fact quite frequently, in the middle of Liddy’s most reasoned and polite replies, there would emerge what Michael Denneny, Liddy’s young editor at St. Martin’s Press—a friend and student, as it happens, of Hannah Arendt and Harold Rosenberg at the University of Chicago; also, a founding editor of the gay magazine Christopher Street—would characterize as the imp. A passage in Liddy’s book, for instance, describes a time in his childhood when, ashamed of having wept over a wounded squirrel, he decided to nerve himself for the army, in case that war should last long enough for him to join it, by helping to kill and pluck chickens in a neighbor’s chicken coop. “How,” an outraged and trembling lady asked him in San Francisco, “can you equate the killing of chickens with the taking of a human life?” “Well, madam,” Liddy said, “you have to begin somewhere.”

  Dick Cavett, who devoted three successive programs to interviews with Liddy, seemed particularly mesmerized by the subject of killing. Exactly how, by what means, he asked within the first minute of the first program, had Liddy planned to kill Jack Anderson? With a knife, Liddy said, or by breaking his neck. Gasps. “Just like that,” someone in the audience whispered. In returning constantly to that sort of question (“But aren’t you glad you didn’t kill John Dean?”), Cavett seemed almost unaware that, at least on the evidence of his autobiography, or of the public record, Liddy was not in fact a violent man. And that if he were, it would be remarkably imprudent to interview him in this way. Having referred, for instance, to “your almost unbearable appetite for violence,” Cavett asked, “Can you see how people would be uneasy to have you out on the streets?” “You’re so likeable,” Liddy said, soothingly. “There’s just no problem with you at all.” Cavett said he meant other people. “If they’re your friends,” Liddy said, “then I’m sure they’re likeable, too.” Even Cavett laughed at this. “See me after class,” he said. But on occasions when the lady in Portland, and now, doubtless, the Cavett audience, and the lady in San Francisco as well, saw the reptile, and Frances Liddy would detect the twinkle, Denneny and others thought they saw the imp.

  In 1978, Liddy had published a rather good, conventional thriller—in no way related to Watergate, or even to politics. Its hero was of complicated Italian background. His mistress was Chinese-American. Among other plot developments was an inspired alliance, for good purposes, of the Mafia and the tongs. St. Martin’s Press had published that thriller, called Out of Control, and sent Liddy on a book tour to promote it. Interviewers had inevitably wanted to discuss Watergate. Liddy had refused. With Will, which rapidly became, as Out of Control was not, a best-seller, there was of course another book tour. There were, at the same time, two other tours: a journalistic circuit, in which one reporter after another tried to find in Liddy’s book, and in his person, “news value” of some kind; and a people’s tour, in which various groups asked Liddy to address them, and individuals, on the street or even in late-night phone calls (the Liddys’ number has never been unlisted), asked Liddy’s views, or told him theirs, on the basis of the kind of man they, in the years since Watergate, had thought him to be. In the first week, the week of the Time excerpts, the journalistic tour tended, not surprisingly, to predominate. Soon afterward, it gave way to the other two.

  “It’s twenty-five after seven now,” David Hartman said to his Good Morning America audience. He still sat on a sofa between chairs occupied by G. Gordon Liddy and Jack Anderson. “In his autobiography, Will, G. Gordon Liddy said that he urged that Jack Anderson be killed. Before the break, we were discussing that.” During the break, Liddy and Anderson had in fact been discussing other matters. Liddy had complimented Anderson for his black belt in karate. Anderson had modestly pointed to his own increasing waistline. Hartman had asked Anderson why he would appear on a program that would almost certainly sell copies of Liddy’s book. Anderson had said, “This book must be read.” Liddy had said, “I’ve certainly sold a lot of his co
lumns in the past.” “Mr. Liddy,” Hartman continued, “what did Richard Nixon know?” Liddy said he had no idea and that he declined to speculate. “I want to ask you something else,” Anderson said, dropping for almost the first time in the course of the broadcast the subject of killing, “I wrote at the time that you were an admirer of Adolf Hitler. Is that true?” “No,” Liddy said, and began the story of the German maid in his childhood. More conversation. Commercials. “It’s seven-thirty,” Hartman said. “Most people wouldn’t consider G. Gordon Liddy to be a very nice man . . . .” Weather. Commercials. News. Commercials. Time. More weather report. “It’s twenty minutes before eight right now,” Hartman said. “This is the first time these two gentlemen have met.” Anderson told a long anecdote about President Nixon’s having embarrassed Henry Kissinger on the yacht Sequoia. “Well, what is your question?” Liddy asked. Anderson said that Nixon’s “deep abiding resentment” of the press might have contributed to the notion of killing him, Jack Anderson. Liddy said that, although Nixon reciprocated the press’ “deep abiding animosity” toward him, the whole matter had nothing to do with that but with the question of whether Anderson had in fact compromised a CIA source abroad.

  “Mr. Liddy,” Hartman suddenly said, “what in your opinion is the value of human life?” Liddy said, “The value of human life is sacred.” Hartman asked whether Liddy’s case had not been a matter of blind obedience. “I don’t believe in blind obedience,” Liddy said. “I do believe in reason, and you must be answerable to your conscience. Ultimately, it comes down to a matter of individual conscience.” “How then,” Hartman went on, undeterred and still referring to the idea of killing Jack Anderson, “are you different from those German soldiers who said they were just following orders?” “I wasn’t following orders, was I?” Liddy said. “I proposed it.”

  Anderson left, to return to Washington. Commercials for two ABC soap operas, One Life to Live and All My Children. The program resumed. “You wanted to be a dangerous man,” Hartman said. “No,” Liddy said, “let me explain to you. When I was a little child . . .” Conversation about childhood fears. Hartman read aloud a passage from Liddy’s book: “That sounds like someone who is really desperate.” Liddy said, “I was.” More conversation. “You really are not afraid to die,” Hartman said. “No. I mean we’re all gonna die,” Liddy said. Talk about the episode of killing chickens. “You don’t seem simply to be just willing to kill,” Hartman said. “It’s almost killing as a celebration.” No, Liddy said. Talk about why Liddy had waited to write the book until after statutes of limitations had run out, even for associates he no longer liked or admired. Liddy said he had been taught that “One does not seek to extricate oneself at the expense of friends or associates, whether they are erstwhile or not.” More talk. “Thank you, Mr. Liddy. It’s four minutes, almost four minutes before eight. We’ll be right back,” Hartman said. Liddy went off, by NBC limousine, to the Today show.

  Immediate mention, by Today host Tom Brokaw, of killing and G. Gordon Liddy. “Killing takes up a very small part of the actual book,” Liddy said. Brokaw, who had not read it, continued. “This is a nation, Mr. Liddy, of laws, not of men,” he said. “We do not respond to just what our superiors tell us, whether it’s here at NBC or even in the government.” [“I don’t know about him,” said one of the men looking at screens and flicking dials in the control room, “but here at NBC we do exactly what our superiors tell us.”] Security for Liddy’s appearance on the Today show had been so tight that no newspaper reporters were allowed in the studio; a few stood behind the men at the control-room dials.

  “Do you have any contemporary heroes?” Brokaw asked. “Let me think a minute,” Liddy said. “No. They’re all dead.” Who were they? “Leonidas, Catherine de Medici, Machiavelli, Caesar, MacArthur, Patton.” Conversation. “We have E. Howard Hunt who is waiting offstage here,” Brokaw said. “There’s a certain tension in the air.” (“If there’s any flicker in his eyes, stay with him, stay with him,” said the director in the control room. The camera was on Liddy. There was no flicker. The camera moved to Brokaw.) “A few minutes ago, we heard some bizarre Watergate stories from Gordon Liddy,” Brokaw said, reading from a cue card, “and we’ll be talking again with him in a moment. Coming up, our TV critic, Gene Shalit.” Shalit appeared on the screen.

  “There’s a lot of press out in the corridors,” he said. “A lot of newspaper reporters. I was interested in Liddy’s heroes. The first one, I agree with. When he first said Leonidas, it didn’t click. I thought he meant a ballet dancer at the Music Hall. Well, I don’t have any heroes in public life. My heroes are in the arts.” A brief meditation. “What does heroes mean anyway? Edwin Newman said a ‘sung hero’ was a sandwich in a Chinese restaurant. People are no longer larger than life.” Some news, regarding Ezer Weizmann’s resignation from the Israeli cabinet, and the acquisition, by Norton Simon and his wife, Jennifer Jones, of a single painting for $3.7 million. Some commercials. “It’s eight-thirty, good morning,” Brokaw said. Then he asked Liddy what he would say to people, “and I suspect I might be one of them,” who thought Liddy’s autobiography, his whole story perhaps, might be “a media hype.” “Well, I did the fifty-two and a half months,” Liddy said. “There’s nothing manufactured about that.” Brokaw asked whether Liddy thought Charles Colson’s religious conversion, in the years after Watergate, had been genuine. “I can’t look inside the man’s head,” Liddy replied. “I have no idea.” Brokaw asked, “Would you ask your children to grow up to be like you?” “No,” Liddy said. “I want them to grow up to be the way they want to be.” More conversation. “Let him out. Get the other guy in,” the man in the control room said. As E. Howard Hunt entered the studio to be interviewed, Liddy and two reporters went down in the elevator and out to the street.

  On the sidewalk, at Rockefeller Plaza, a young black woman said, “Congratulations. I agree. It all depends on where you stand.” Liddy and the reporters crossed Fifth Avenue and walked toward the Westbury to have breakfast. Liddy now said that, in spite of the guards and the tight security, just as he was entering the Today studio, a worried man, carrying a briefcase, had approached him. “He said, ‘Mr. Liddy, I need your counsel,’ ” Liddy recalled. “I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’ve been disbarred.’ ” It turned out that the man had a complicated theory that a popular White House physician who had resigned in a controversy over drug prescriptions, was in fact a Soviet agent. None of the NBC staff knew the man with the briefcase. A guard had finally spotted him and sent him away. “I mean, here’s this guy with a theory that the President is the Mongolian candidate,” Liddy said, “and he’s the only one who gets through security.”

  A passerby waved, and Claire Crawford, a reporter for People magazine, which was planning a cover story on Liddy for its next issue, asked Liddy how strangers generally reacted to him. “Some people say, ‘I’m proud of you,’ and some say, ‘I hope your dog dies,’ ” Liddy said. “Nobody seems to be neutral. Although a lot of people behave as though they know they’ve seen my face somewhere, but they can’t quite place who I am.” Ms. Crawford said she knew the syndrome well. She had once been working on a piece about Spiro Agnew, when he was Vice President and at the height of his popularity. A passerby had looked at him intently, puzzled, then brightened and approached. “I know you,” he had said, enthusiastically. “You’re Ed McMahon.”

  On Saturday morning, two days after Liddy’s New York network interviews, I took a cab from Washington National Airport to the Liddys’ house, in Oxon Hill, Maryland. The driver, who was black, said he was going to take the afternoon off to drive to a wedding in Philadelphia. He asked whether I might be going to a wedding in Oxon Hill. I said no. Then, seeing that he had on the seat beside him a copy of the Washington Post, opened to a feature story, in the Style section, on G. Gordon Liddy’s book, I said I was going to the Liddys’ house. He whistled, then paused. “Believe it or not, I was locked up with him,” he said. “In the D.C. jail.
I wanted to meet him, but I never got to.” Another pause. “I admired him for two reasons. Number one, he helped a lot of inmates. And number two, he didn’t talk.” Then, the driver wrote down his name, address, and phone number, in case his passenger, or Liddy himself, should ever want to call.

  Oxon Hill is a quiet, well-kept suburban town where a lot of present and former military people live. The Liddys’ house, on Ivanhoe Road, is of wood and brick, with an ivy-covered chimney. A sign in the yard advertised lawn mowing. There were two cats, both in the last stages of pregnancy, and one dog, a hound of some sort, which kept at a considerable distance from the house. The Liddys have four cars, all old and with a lot of mileage on them: a Jeep; an improbably worn and unkempt Cadillac; a Volvo, which their daughter Alexandra keeps at the College of New Rochelle, where she is a nursing student; and a battered Ford. On this Saturday, People was paying for Alexandra and the other two absent children, Jim, a senior at Mercersberg Academy, and Tom, a junior at St. Albans, in Washington, to come home. Grace, who was taking a semester at the University of Maryland, and Raymond, a student at a local public school, were already at home. Claire Crawford, the reporter, and a photographer from People were expected at noon.