G Gordon Liddy

Howard Hunt, Liddy masterminded the first break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in 1972. The subsequent cover-up of the Watergate scandal led to Nixon's resignation in 1974; Liddy served four and a half years in prison for his role in the burglary.
Liddy later became an American radio talk show host, actor and political strategist.

Liddy's radio talk show is now syndicated in 160 markets and on both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio stations in the United States. He has also been a guest panelist for Fox News Channel in addition to appearing in a cameo role or as a guest celebrity talent in several television shows.


Early years
Liddy was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Sylvester J.

Liddy and Maria Abbaticchio; his maternal grandfather was of Italian descent. Liddy was raised in West Caldwell, New Jersey and educated at Fordham University. He was named for George Gordon Battle, a New York City attorney who had mentored Liddy's father.
Liddy has said that, as a child, he grew up in a German-American community that included many admirers of Adolf Hitler, and that listening to Hitler's speeches "made me feel a strength inside I had never known before." As an adult, however, he came to condemn Nazism and Hitler as "evil".He graduated in 1952 and joined the United States Army, serving for two years as an artillery officer at the time of the Korean War, but did not leave the US due to an injury. He returned home in 1954 to study law at Fordham, earning a spot on the Law Review.

Graduating in 1957, he went to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover, but his work at the agency prompted a supervisor to describe him as "a wild man" and a "superklutz". At age 29, Liddy became the youngest Bureau Supervisor at FBI national headquarters in Washington, D.C., earning multiple commendations from J.

He left the FBI in 1962 to practice International Law in Manhattan.
Liddy worked as a lawyer in New York City and a prosecutor in Dutchess County, New York. As an assistant district attorney, he fired a gun into the courtroom ceiling during jury summation. He ran unsuccessfully for the post of District Attorney and then for the United States House of Representatives in 1968, but used his political profile to run the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon in the 28th district of New York.
White House years
In 1971, after serving in several positions in the Nixon administration, Liddy was moved to Nixon's 1972 campaign, the Committee to Re-elect the President (officially known as "CRP" but to opponents known as CREEP), in order to extend the scope and reach of the White House "Plumbers" unit, which had been created in response to various damaging leaks of information to the press.At CRP, Liddy concocted several plots, some far-fetched, intended to embarrass the Democratic opposition. (where classified documents leaked by Daniel Ellsberg were being stored), kidnapping anti-war protest organizers and transporting them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention (which at the time was planned for San Diego), and luring mid-level Democratic campaign officials to a house boat in Baltimore where they would be secretly photographed in compromising positions with call girls.

Most of Liddy's ideas were rejected, but a few were given the go ahead by Nixon Administration officials, including the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.
At some point, Liddy was instructed to break into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel.
For his role in Watergate, which he coordinated with Hunt, Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping, and received a 20-year sentence.

In it he states that he once made plans with Hunt to kill journalist Jack Anderson, based on a literal interpretation of a Nixon White House statement "we need to get rid of this Anderson guy". In the mid 1980s Liddy went on joined lecture circuit, and was listed as the top speaker in the college circuit in 1982 by the Wall Street Journal. He later joined with fellow ex-con Timothy Leary on a series of debates which were popular on the college circuit as well.Liddy remained in the public eye with two guest appearances on the 1984-89 television series Miami Vice, playing the role of "Capt. Real Estate," a character loosely based on himself.
Also in the early 1980s Liddy joined forces with former Niles, Illinois Police Officer and co-owner of The Protection Group, Ltd., Thomas E.

Ferraro, Jr., to start up a private security and countersurveillance firm called, G. The firm was not a success, however, and it filed for bankruptcy on November 12, 1988.
In 1992, Liddy emerged to host his own talk radio show.

Neither novel sold as well as the autobiography.
Contrary to popular belief, Liddy has remained a Roman Catholic throughout his life.
In Oliver Stone's 1995 movie Nixon, Liddy was played by John Diehl.
Controversial statements
During Liddy's tenure as a radio talk-show host, many controversial statements have been attributed to him, including causing the release of John Dean's home phone number in 1993 on the radio when Dean was threatening to sue Liddy for defamation and Liddy called Dean's home on the air to only reach his answering machine that announced the phone number. Some of his comments led to condemnation by then President Bill Clinton who was under constant attack by conservative talk radio.
August 26, 1994 - Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests." ...Kill the sons of bitches.

September 15, 1994 - If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they're wearing flak jackets and you're better off shooting for the head.
Liddy claimed that his detractors omit some important context:
I was talking about a situation in which law enforced agents comes smashing into a house, doesn't say who they are, and their guns are out, they're shooting, and they're in the wrong place.

You are legally entitled to defend yourself and I was speaking of exactly those kind of situations. He also appeared in the television shows 18 Wheels of Justice and MacGyver, had a recurring role on Miami Vice, and guest starred in Al Franken's TV show LateLine.

Liddy appeared on a celebrity edition of the NBC TV show Fear Factor on September 12, 2006 (filmed in November, 2005).