by Renata Adler
By late afternoon, Liddy had two New York interviews remaining, before he left for Chicago and the West: one, with Scott Kaufer and Paul Slansky of the Soho News; the other, with Judy Klemesrud of The New York Times. The Soho News reporters arrived at Liddy’s room in the Waldorf. Slansky at once asked Liddy to review Richard Nixon’s book, The Third War, for the Soho News. Liddy thanked him but said that, during the next few weeks, he would have no time “to do so in a scholarly and thoughtful way.” “I’ve not read the Time excerpts,” Slansky said, “I’ve just read the book.” It became clear at once that these were by far the most competent interviewers Liddy had had so far. They asked him what questions he had been asked the most, and then asked no one else’s questions. They asked him when he had decided to write the book. “After it was absolutely clear that nothing could be salvaged at all,” Liddy replied, “and I realized that, for historians, my book would have to be a primary source.” They asked him whether Maurice Stans, finance chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, and certainly the biggest political fund-raiser in history, had known about the Watergate. And Liddy (in perhaps a strong instance of his credulity) said, “He didn’t know. You see, he didn’t need to know.” They asked whether he liked the press to think him crazy, “just to keep them off the trail.” He replied, “To a little extent, I’ll have to admit I’ve exploited it a bit”; and added that a lot had “sprung from the anticipation of my caricature.” In answer to a question, Liddy was saying, “People who like to kill are sick people,” when, at the door, there was a loud, peremptory knock. There was a startled pause. A voice bellowed, “Room checking!” They asked him, about the Watergate scandal, “Is there anybody who could have been removed who would have stopped it?” He replied, “No. You’d have had to blow away a cast of thousands.”
They asked him what he read, whether he helped his wife with “domestic chores,” what he thought of a Nixon quote about him on the tape of June 23, 1972 (“just locker-room talk,” he said, calmly), whether he cared about the pennant races, “Do you think people draw the wrong conclusion from your fascination with things German?” To the last question, Liddy gave quintessentially a writer’s reply. “I think my book is my best shot,” he said. Just before they left, Slansky and Kaufer asked him to record the following messages for their home answering tapes: “Hi. This is G. Gordon Liddy. Please leave your message when you hear the tone. Or I’ll kill you”; “Hi. This is G. Gordon Liddy. Please leave your message when you hear the tone. Or I’ll break your knees.” Curiously enough, though Slansky and Kaufer leaked the contents of these answering tapes to The New York Times People column, which published an item about them, they did not use one word of their interview, which was also taped, in the Soho News, but ran a brief, friendly item, “Ten Reasons to Like G. Gordon Liddy,” instead.
En route to the airport, Danny announced that he was “twenty percent through” Liddy’s book. “It reads easily. It’s written fluidly,” he said. Mindy reported that she had heard a radio interview with former Vice President Agnew, in which he claimed, apropos of Liddy’s book, that a high government official had warned him (Agnew) that he must resign from the vice presidency, that he faced “assassination” unless he resigned. Liddy asked whether Mindy had remembered to bring two copies of his book, which he wanted to inscribe to the two dentists who had worked on his teeth. She had. One of the dentists, she said, had called St. Martin’s Press to find out how Liddy was, and the switchboard operator, thinking the call was from a crank, had said, “There’s a dentist on the line.” Liddy signed the books.
Traffic was slow, because, Danny said, it was Earth Day. Liddy mentioned an interview in which he had met Jan Teller, daughter of the scientist Edward Teller. Before Liddy went on the air, Ms. Teller had sewed on a button that had fallen off his jacket. “We had a heck of a good conversation,” he said. He recalled an interview with National Public Radio. “A bit adversarial,” he said. “Politely so, however.” Danny turned on the car radio. “The Casper Citron Show with G. Gordon Liddy.” Why, Citron asked, had Liddy waited until the statute of limitations had expired, even for people he did not like. “Otherwise, it’s not a matter of principle,” Liddy said. “It’s a matter of vindictiveness.” Why should anyone buy a book by a convicted felon? “Think of O’Henry, Villon, Daniel Defoe,” Liddy said. “They all did time.”
On Tuesday night, shortly after eight, Gordon Liddy stood outside the doors of O’Hare Airport in Chicago. At nine, he was scheduled to begin a two-hour interview with Dr. Milton Rosenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, who happens also to run the city’s most popular nightly talk show. Taxis, limousines, and private cars passed Liddy on the ramp. There was no sign of the limousine hired by St. Martin’s Press. Liddy stood for some minutes beside his suitcase and his garment bag. Then he went inside, to see whether the chauffeur might somehow have missed him at the baggage claim. A tall dark man, carrying a suit jacket, with loosened tie and open shirt collar, walked up to Liddy, shook his hand, and, addressing him by name, offered him a ride into the city. Liddy thanked him, but explained that he was looking for a limousine that had been hired for him. The tall man offered his own driver and limousine. He was going to the Drake Hotel, he said. Liddy called the agency that should have sent his car. They said they had sent it. Liddy waited another ten minutes under the lights, in the dark outside O’Hare. He looked at his watch. The tall man and his limousine were still there. At his insistence, Liddy and I got into the backseat. The tall man sat, beside the uniformed chauffeur, in front.
“I gotta tell you, you’re one of the few stand-up guys in the world, in the entire world,” the man said, leaning his elbow over the front seat and further loosening his tie. “And you can use my limousine. I just happen to think that your conduct, okay? regardless of the circumstances, the sacrifices, whatever reasons possessed you, I respect you immensely. Immensely. I respect your family. Whatever you may think of the President, for better or for worse. Out of respect for the man, and on behalf of his office, you made the sacrifice. Not many in the entire world would do the same.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Liddy said. Then he muttered something about the exemplary conduct of prisoners of war, returning from Hanoi, and that “nobody makes a continuing fuss over them.”
“I’m not talking about groups,” the tall man said, firmly. “I take things on an individualistic basis. I’ve seen an awful lot. I’ve known so many miscreants. I’m chairman and chief executive of a company, okay? I have money, a lot of emoluments. But I’ve seen some terrible, terrible weak links.” He paused and looked out of the window. “My business is jukeboxes, vending machines. Also hearing aids, bandages, crap like that. The worst part of business, the most tragic part of business, okay? you make your first mistake and guys start copping out on you. And they were partners at the time.” He looked out of the window again. “In any business you sometimes have to cut corners,” he said. “In consultation with your partners. I heard that clown Hunt, forgive me for being subjective and personal, but I can tell you, one man on my team like you . . .”
Liddy took up the reference to Hunt. “I happen to have been surrounded by the spectacularly weak,” he said.
“No,” the man said, again firmly. “So many miscreants. Such terrible, terrible weak links. Now a classic example is Joel Dolkart, of Gulf & Western, who’s indicted for stealing two million dollars. And then started to cop out on Charlie Bluhdorn. Who built a very fine conglomerate, I might add. And the miserable miscreant plea bargains. Now who pays for that?” Silence. “The shareholders. And this lousy bum walks the streets.”
“In the FBI, we knew,” Liddy said, taking up the reference to plea bargains, “if a fellow knows something, he’ll tell you. If he doesn’t, he’ll make it up.”
“Sometimes I think there’s only two stand-up guys in Chicago. That’s Adolph,” he turned to the driver, who was black, “and me. Tonight, I’m taking a judge, and his girlfriend, to dinner.
An impecunious judge. You know what I’m talking about. So many miscreants. Such bad judgment retrospectively.” He turned, and again leaned his elbow over the seat-back. “There was a man in our organization, okay? I refer to as our John Dean. He talked his stinking guts out. One day I looked at him in the office, I said, ‘So help me God, you are our John Dean.’ ”
Liddy said nothing.
“Look, I mean, I started work, I was eleven, as mail boy for a bank. Then there was a man, the man was an absolute genius, an absolute financial genius. A friend. When I tell you he gave me checks for x, y, and z deal, ‘your interest.’ And I never even knew what x, y, and z deal was. One day, he said, ‘I’ve made a tender offer. B. F. Goodrich. Two and a half million dollars for each of us. I was scared shitless, to be honest with you. The banker said, ‘Will you tell that Jew bastard to get out of B. F. Goodrich, or we’ll stop his line at the bank.’ So we gracefully withdrew. But there was one half a million dollars, for each of us, in one day. In one afternoon. That’s some story.”
“It’s the American way,” Liddy said.
“I don’t know if it’s the American way or not.” Another pause. “My son got married a week ago Saturday. Both sons are in law school. In Chicago. You know, the joy; my greatest aspiration as a young husband and father was the fear How am I going to educate my children. My greatest achievement was to educate my sons. As for my daughter, so far her grades are not good enough. We have this joke, I may have to build or buy a college for her education.”
“They can’t take what’s in your head,” Liddy said.
“That. And. Or. Experience.” A long silence. “Especially in a community like that. I mean a prison. I think there’s a time, when people should talk. But when all the other rats jump off the ship, and one man does not, that man has character. I don’t say this because you’re here, because we’ll probably never see each other again. But for you to make the sacrifice you did, for honor’s sake. You’re, in my opinion, the only good thing that came out of Watergate.”
“I’m an educated man,” Liddy said. “I was compensated for it.”
The limousine stopped at the Drake Hotel. The man gave both Liddy and me his address and phone number, “as a courtesy.” He told the driver to take Liddy directly to the radio station. “This is Adolph,” he said, earnestly, in farewell. “You should get to know him.”
Adolph set out into the nighttime traffic. “Are you taping tonight, or are you going on live?” he asked. Liddy said live. Adolph mentioned the failure of Liddy’s own limousine to show up. “Here’s our card,” he said. “In case you need (chuckle) dependable service.”
The radio station building was a two-story yellow-brick structure, in a remote, poorly lighted area of the city, among vacant asphalt lots. A guard just inside the entrance took Liddy’s garment bag and suitcase and put them in a supermarket shopping cart. It was not clear to what use the supermarket cart was ordinarily put inside a radio station. A young woman appeared, the Milt Rosenberg Show’s producer, and led the way down a corridor to a small, dingy cafeteria. She brought Liddy some coffee, in a paper cup. They sat down at a table.
“You’re the cool one,” said a friendly, professorial voice from the doorway. Milt Rosenberg. “The last time you were here”—when Liddy had come to promote his thriller—“you never mentioned you were writing this book.” “You’re the cool one,” Liddy replied, greeting Rosenberg with obvious pleasure. “The last time I was here, you never mentioned that you have a title. I didn’t know you were Professor.” They talked a while. Liddy kept addressing his host as “Dr. Rosenberg.” “Let’s strike a bargain,” Rosenberg said. “You are Gordon. I am Milt.”
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 t
o 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.
