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G. Gordon Liddy: An Appreciation
If you had told me, back when I was 18, that the October 1980 issue of Playboy magazine would change my life, I would have thumbed immediately to the centerfold and said, “Well that’s good news.” But I did notice on the magazine’s cover, just below the “Girls of Canada” notice, that there was a “Tough, Sizzling Interview with G. Gordon Liddy.”
It was during my first semester in college and I confess that I probably knew more about the girls of Canada than I did Mr. Liddy, but still, I was drawn to the description of him as “The Sphinx of the Nixon Administration.” So I began reading the interview and was absolutely blown away by A) his eloquence, B) his irrepressible sense of humor, C) his encyclopedic knowledge of history and philosophy, and D) his ability to make an irresistibly devastating case against both the animating philosophy of the left and the catastrophic results that invariably follow the implementation of that philosophy.
Wanting to know more, I went straight away to the bookstore and purchased a copy of his autobiography, Will, and read it cover to cover. Several times. The story of a very young George Gordon Battle Liddy who suffered not only from physical ailments, but also from a series of nearly paralyzing fears, paralleled in some sense my own experience many years earlier when, beset by asthma, the sound of thunder or fireworks sent me cowering for cover. In fact, you couldn’t have got me on anything faster than the merry-go-round at the local amusement park, even if both our lives depended on it. Liddy’s description of facing down those crippling fears, one by one, rang familiar with my own experiences.
Indeed, the more I read of his remarkable life, the more it resonated and even helped kindle my own aspirations to service and honor, to contribute both physically and intellectually to my country. Sound corny? Too bad. People have aspired to a great deal less, and a few have managed to underachieve a great deal less, as the local news of shootings and assaults reminds us on an almost hourly basis here in Memphis.
There was something, however, that seemed almost anachronistic about G. Gordon Liddy. His sense of personal honor, which fueled his steely refusal to “turn” on his superiors or cohorts in the Watergate break-in was, in retrospect, something from another time. Hell, we currently have adults tripping over themselves like gossiping little schoolgirls just to rat out an offensive comment someone made as a child.
Imagine being hauled before a Senate Committee where you will be ordered, on national television and on pain of imprisonment and ruin, to place in jeopardy your friends, colleagues, and superiors who had commanded your respect and earned your allegiance in a cause you believed to be just. What would you do?
Senate Committee Chairman Sam Erwin: “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
G. Gordon Liddy: “No.”
As Liddy later recounted it, “The good Senator’s eyebrows started working up and down so hard I thought they’d fly right off on their own power.” Apparently, no one had ever done that to them before. Since they couldn’t elicit testimony from someone who was not under oath, Liddy rather quickly and decisively spared everyone the monotony of hearing him intone the 5th Amendment repeatedly. And off to prison he went.
What happened then? As Liddy described it in a speech he gave in 1981 at McNeese State University, where I sat in the audience, “I kept getting expelled from one prison after another until Jimmy Carter expelled me from the prison system altogether.”
Much has been said and analyzed about his work in the Nixon Administration, his role in Watergate, and his steadfast refusal to aid in the prosecution of those involved in the break-in. In that 1980 Playboy interview, conducted shortly after his release from prison, he made an interesting case that ranged all the way from the distinctions of malum prohibitum vs. malum in se, to reminding the reader of the context in which the Watergate break-in occurred, e.g., members of the Weather Underground bombing the US Capitol, violent uprisings in American cities, etc., to the subsequent fall of Cambodia and the successive failures of the Carter Administration as the natural consequence of the left’s ascendency over a Republican president. And they say history doesn’t repeat itself.
The headlines of Liddy’s passing predictably focused on his role in Watergate and subsequent radio career. A writer for whom I harbored a great deal of respect was a guest on his radio show several years back and commented on what it was like to talk with a man who very nearly brought down the country. I thought it a bit overwrought at the time, and still do, especially since the country is now being brought down in real time.
For this writer and broadcaster, whose attention to current affairs, the human drama of history itself, and whose innate desire to serve our country was awakened by reading a long ago interview, I’m left with a sense of appreciation. For his service to our country, both in uniform and throughout his public life, I remain grateful. As a veteran, I offer my respect and my prayer for the peaceful repose of the soul of G. Gordon Liddy. God speed, sir.
Published in General
I read Will in high school and loved it, much to the chagrin of my Nixon-hating mom. Even as a teen I was a troll, and I asked her to start calling me “J. Conrad Gabriel.” She went nuts. Rest in peace, Mr. Liddy.
I also loved his radio shows, especially his gun reviews….”Mrs. Liddy got a new gun…she really likes the way it feels in the hand…”
Oh come on – every teenaged guy had his life changed by Playboy.
Kidding aside, I often thought about this issue of the mag as the Liddy interview was that powerful. I never knew how to search for it as I didn’t know if it had been done in the 70’s or 80’s. So thank you!
I read “Will” as well around that time and did not come away with any such appraisal of him.
I thought he was a psychopathic, egomaniacal, incompetent burglar who had to be the center of everyone’s universe.
Breaking into the democrat party headquarters was among the stupidest things in the world to do.
Nixon was an extremely popular President, even though he was a disaster for his socialist policies, for establishing ties to communist China, and for signing the 55mph speed limit into federal law.
Liddy’s criminal behavior was unconscionable, unnecessary, and dangerous to our nation.
To hell with him.
Agreed. That damage this man ended up causing to America is immense.
James Rosen has a great book about John Mitchell. As expected, it has a lot about Watergate. Liddy came off as a bit of a nut (and John Dean came off worse)
I read his biography and I was totally addicted to his radio program.
The fact that he survived Mrs. Liddy and her remarkable gun collection (as a convicted felon he was prohibited from owning guns in his own right) is, in itself, a testimony to something.
But nothing could match the nuclear opprobrium reserved by G. Gordon for John Dean. And G. Gordon embraced the idiosyncratic. The hand over the candle schtick became his signature for a reason. If he thought he was faced with a moral imperative, that would be his mission come hades or high water. He was a tool in the Watergate break-in, not its lead proponent. Looking back, it is paraded as a solitary act with no precedent. In fact, it was one of a thousand such acts and is remarkable because, unlike other presidents in such a situation, Nixon did not have the ruthlessness and clout or the cult of personality to smother the scandal in its crib. Katherine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post, would hold huge parties and apologize over and over for that Watergate kerfuffle.
I stopped listening to G. Gordon’s radio show because he treated Mrs. Liddy disgracefully on air at times, tomcatting and excusing himself by saying Mrs. Liddy is about the grandchildren, now. To think that way is dishonorable, to publicly parade it to a broad audience was a complete lapse of moral character.
May he rest in peace.
Well, this will be an interesting conversation. We need to hear the author’s response to Skyler.
I had no idea about this. Thanks.
Please don’t be so overt about this controversial dynamic we have in this forum.
Oh, he’s entertaining. That’s his pathology.
Je ne comprend pas.
Sorry it took awhile for me to respond. Immediately after writing this, I left for work in the world of retail, which is a lot like putting your brain in blender.
When I wrote this, I was under no illusion that there would be anything approaching unanimity on a person whose role in history was controversial to say the least. Suffice to say that my opinion differs from yours, and leave it there. You’re a good guy, a gentleman and a veteran. I’ve no interest in locking horns on this since the odds of either of us changing the other person’s mind is exactly zero. I do appreciate you taking the time to read the article and weigh in with your thoughts.
You might find my response anti-climatic, but I don’t always go eye-for-an-eye. Not everyone agrees with everything I write or say, and that’s perfectly okay.
Are you sure you are licensed to operate on the Internet?
I don’t . “We disagree for unspecified reasons” is sometimes the only honest, pragmatical end to an honest debate.
I liked his radio show. Especially when he often referred to himself as “virile, fit, potent, and fecund.”
Somehow that managed to stick in my head for the 25 or so years since he said it.
Interesting. Same facts, different conclusions.
I agree. These are diametrically opposed opinions, honestly held, and there’s no point in discussing it further. I said what I wanted to say.
The problem is, it’s usually extremely lame to do this in this type of forum if you started with a really aggressive argument / language, or you throw out a million points all of the time.
A really benign and simple version of this is the debate around John McCain. You can’t get anybody to explain in plain English how John McCain moved the ball forward for libertarians and conservatives. They think he’s so wonderful, but they can’t do that. It’s absolutely amazing. Then the conversation just stops or they dissemble. In that situation, it’s sort of doesn’t matter, but when you’re talking about complicated policy or civic issues, it’s not right. Sometimes it can’t be helped because of the dimensions of the Internet compared to a verbal conversation, but it should mostly be avoided here. The worst version of it is a Never Trumper that doesn’t really follow current events.
Gordon Liddy like Patrick Buchannan was a character from an earlier Conservative Republican worldview seeped in the Cold War Manicheanism and moral certitude about America’s values. He responded to the threats posed by the Left (Internal and External) with a hyperbolic intensity and loyalty that excused dirty tricks in defense of American policy that allowed him to be manipulated by John Dean to commit a break in for personal reasons known only to John Dean.
1972 like 2020 was a wretched election that saw mass protest, unprecedented violence, and treason in support of a totalitarian ideology at a time of war. It was also an election that saw mass vandalism and burglaries of hundreds of Republican election offices around the country. Most sane people believed that the Republic was at an end. It is surprising that we only had one G. Gordon Liddy doing dirty work for President Nixon. Without Watergate and the Democrat policies of 1972-1976 (abandoning South Vietnam and engaging in extremist and unpopular policies) there might have never been a Reagan in 1980.
Rest in Peace.
After learning what the Democrats in government did to Trump and seeing what they want to do to us… And how they infected every agency in the federal government, I look at watergate as small fry in the fall of the American republic.
I ordered several stacked and packed calendars for my husband… I enjoyed the gun pictures. His radio show was quite interesting.
After the revelations that continue to be made about what was done to Trump, it does kinda make Watergate look somewhat insignificant. And I was a full-on grownup for Watergate…I watched the hearings.
I vaguely remember him, and the way the media made a big point of portraying it as something negative that he and his wife wouldn’t kiss in public when he got out of prison.
Of course at the time I obediently assumed, in response to media conditioning, that his cause was evil and that he was a nut. I’d like to read this book, Will, to see how he looks, and how Watergate looks, to me now.
His cause wasn’t evil, but he was a nut and his methods were quite unwise.