| birth_place Brooklyn, New York | death_place | charge Conspiracy (crime) burglary illegal wiretapping | conviction_penalty 20 year imprisonment, later commuted by President Jimmy Carter | conviction_status Released | occupation Lawyer FBI agent politician radio personality | religion Roman Catholic | spouse Frances Ann Purcell (deceased) | parents Sylvester J. Liddy and Maria Abbaticchio | children Alexandra Liddy Bourne, Grace Alfarata Liddy, Commander James Gordon Liddy, USN (SEAL) (Ret.), Thomas Purcell Liddy and Colonel Raymond Joseph Liddy, USMCR }} George Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1930) was the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit that existed during several years of Richard Nixon s Presidency. Along with E. Howard Hunt Liddy masterminded the Watergate 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 Nixons resignation in 1974; Liddy served four and a half years in prison for his role in the burglary. Liddy later joined with Timothy Leary for a series of comedic debates on various college campuses, and also similarly worked with Al Franken in the late 1990s. Liddy is currently a radio talk show host. His radio show as of 2009 is radio syndication in 160 markets by Radio America (United States) and on both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio stations in the United States.Sirius Satellite Radio Weekends at 6:00am Eastern on Channel 144. 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

Youth, family, education

File:G. Gordon Liddy c 1964.jpg Liddy was born in Brooklyn, New York lt;ref>Liddy, G. Gordon; "The G. Gordon Liddy Show"; November 2, 2009; hour #2 to Sylvester James Liddy and Maria Abbaticchio; his maternal grandfather was of Italian descent. Liddy was raised in Hoboken, New Jersey and West Caldwell, New Jersey He was named for George Gordon Battle, a New York City attorney at law and Tammany Hall DA nominee who had mentored Liddys father. Liddy spent grades 1 through 3 at the Academy of the Sacred Heart. He was enrolled in the fourth grade at SS. Peter and Paul parochial school. He was enrolled in St. Aloysius parochial school where he entered the sixth grade in September 1941. In 1944, Liddy graduated from St. Aloysius parochial grammar school. In September 1944 Gordon Liddy entered St. Benedict's Prep. School in Newark, New Jersey and graduated from St. Benedicts in June 1948, at seventeen.

College, military, joins FBI

He was educated at Fordham University 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 a burst appendix. He returned home in 1954 to study law school at Fordham University School of Law earning a position 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".Rick Perlstein Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America Charles Scribner's Sons 2008, page 583 At age 29, Liddy became the youngestBureau Supervisor at FBI national headquarters in Washington, D.C. earning multiple commendations from Hoover.He left the FBI in 1962 to practice the international law in Manhattan Liddy worked as a lawyer in New York City and a prosecutor in Dutchess County, New York In 1966, he organized the arrest and unsuccessful trial of Timothy Leary As an assistant district attorney, he once fired a pistol 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 Nixons 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 "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 Party (United States) opposition.Knight P. (2003) Conspiracy Theories in American Historyhttp://books.google.com/books?idqMIDrggs8TsC&pgPA434&dqCRP+Liddy+Brookings&eic1UFSZOJJp_qtgOj7uihAg#PPA434,M1 p. 344]. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1576078124, 9781576078129. These included kidnapping anti-war protest organizers and transporting them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention (which at the time was planned for San Diego , as well as luring mid-level Democratic campaign officials to a house boat in Baltimore where they would be secretly photographed in compromising positions with prostitute . Most of Liddys ideas were rejected by Attorney General John N. Mitchell but a few were given the go-ahead by Nixon Administration officials, including the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg s psychiatrists office in Los Angeles Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the [[New York Times]]Liddy, G. Gordon (1996). Will St. Martins Press, 171 At some point, Liddy was instructed to break into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel

Watergate burglaries

Liddy was the Nixon Administration liaison and leader of the group of five men who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Complex with the intent to plant listening devices. Liddy did not participate in the break-in himself, insomuch as he did not actually enter the Watergate Complex rather, he admitted to supervising the break-in from another hotel across the street. For his crime which he coordinated with E. Howard Hunt Liddy was convicted of conspiracy (crime) burglary and illegal wiretapping. Liddy was sentenced to a 20-year prison term and was ordered to pay $40,000 in fines. He began serving the sentence on January 30, 1973. On April 12, 1977, President Jimmy Carter commuted Liddys sentence to eight years, "in the interest of equity and fairness based on a comparison of Mr. Liddys sentence with those of all others convicted in Watergate related prosecutions", leaving the fine in effect.lt;/ref> Carters commutation made Liddy eligible for parole as of July 9, 1977. Liddy was released on September 7, 1977 having served a total of four-and-a-half years of actual incarceration.

After prison

File:G. Gordon Liddy.jpg of 1990]] In 1980, Liddy published an autobiography, titled Will which sold more than a million copies and was made into a television movie. In it he states that he once made plans with Hunt to kill journalist Jack Anderson (columnist) based on a literal interpretation of a Nixon White House statement "we need to get rid of this Anderson guy".lt;/ref>lt;/ref> In the mid 1980s Liddy went on the lecture circuit, and was listed as the top speaker in the college circuit in 1982 by the [[Wall Street Journal]] He later joined with LSD proponent Timothy Leary on a series of debates which were popular on the college circuit as well; Leary had once been labeled by Liddys ex-employer Richard Nixon as "the most dangerous man in America.". 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. In Miami Vice he acted with John Diehl who would later go on to portray Liddy himself in Oliver Stone s 1995 movie Nixon (film) making him one of the few actors who have acted with their own portrayers. Liddys other TV guest credits include [[Airwolf]] [[MacGuyver]] and the shortlived [[The Highwayman (TV series)|The Highwayman]] Also in the early 1980s Liddy joined forces with former Niles, Illinois Police Officer and co-owner of The Protection Group, Ltd., http://www.bugsweeps.com/info/bus_week.html Thomas E. Ferraro, Jr.], to start up a private security and countersurveillance firm called, G. Gordon Liddy & Associates The firm was not a success, however, and it filed for bankruptcy on November 12, 1988.lt;/ref> In 1992, Liddy emerged to host his own talk radio show. Less than a year later, its popularity led to national syndication through Viacom s Westwood One Network and later on, Radio America (United States) in 2003. In addition to Willand the nonfiction books When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country(2002) and Fight Back! Tackling Terrorism, Liddy Style(2006, with his sonlt;/ref> Cdr. James G. Liddy, J. Michael Barrett, and Joel Selanikio), Liddy has published two novels: Out of Control(1979) and The Monkey Handlers(1990). Neither novel sold as well as the autobiography, leading some to refer to the first as Out of Print.

Controversial statements

* August 26, 1994 - Now if the [[Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives|Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms]] comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; theyre going to be wearing [[bulletproof vests]]." ... "Theye got a big target on there, ATF. Dont shoot at that, because theyve got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots.... Kill the sons of bitches. {{cite web|url=http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2505 |title=Did MSNBC Know Liddys History? |publisher=Fair |date= |accessdate=2005-04-29}} * September 15, 1994 - If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight give them a firefight. Just remember, theyre wearing flak jackets and youre better off shooting for the head. {{cite web|url=http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/liddy.php |title=The G. Gordon Liddy Interview - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views) |publisher=Right Wing News |date= |accessdate=2010-02-15}} Liddy claimed that his detractors omit some important context: {{cquote|I was talking about a situation in which law enforcement agents come smashing into a house, dont say who they are, and their guns are out, theye shooting, and theyre in the wrong place. This has happened time and time again. The ATF has gone in and gotten the wrong guy in the wrong place. The law is that if somebody is shooting at you, using deadly force, the mere fact that they are a law enforcement officer, if they are in the wrong, does not mean you are obliged to allow yourself to be killed so your kinfolk can have a wrongful death action. You are legally entitled to defend yourself and I was speaking of exactly those kind of situations. If youre going to do that, you should know that theyre wearing body armor so you should use a head shot. Now all Im doing is stating the law, but all the nuances in there got left out when the story got repeated.}} Additionally, 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 Hitlers 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."lt;/ref>

Acting career

G. Gordon Liddy has acted in several films, including [[The Highwayman (TV series)|The Highwayman]] [[Street Asylum]] [[Camp Cucamonga]] [[Adventures in Spying]]and [[Rules of Engagement (film)|Rules of Engagement]] He also appeared in the television shows [[Airwolf]] [[18 Wheels of Justice]]and [[MacGyver]] had a recurring role on [[Miami Vice]] and guest starred in Al Franken s TV show [[LateLine (sitcom)|LateLine]] On April 7, 1986, Liddy appeared at [[WrestleMania II]]as a guest judge for a boxing match between Mr. T (with Joe Frazier and The Haiti Kid versus Roddy Piper (with Bob Orton and Lou Duva . Liddy appeared on a celebrity edition of the NBC TV show [[Fear Factor]] also the showss series finale, on September 12, 2006 (filmed in November, 2005). At 75 years of age, Liddy was the oldest contestant ever to appear on the show. Liddy beat the competition in the first two stunts, winning two motorcycles custom built by Metropolitan Chopper In the final driving stunt, Liddy crashed and was unable to finish. He is a commercial spokesperson for Rosland Capital selling gold in television commercials.

Personal life

G. Gordon Liddy is Catholic Church and was married to Frances Ann Liddy (nee Purcell) from Poughkeepsie New York for 53 years. She was a former economic analyst and educator, who died on February 5, 2010.lt;/ref> He has five children and twelve grandchildren. He currently lives in Fort Washington, Maryland Maryland

References

External links

*http://www.liddyshow.com Official Website] *http://www.nndb.com/people/349/000023280 G. Gordon Liddy] at NNDB * Category:1930 births Category:Living people Category:American burglars Category:American lawyers Category:American memoirists Category:American people of Italian descent Category:American political pundits Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Disbarred lawyers Category:FBI agents with criminal convictions Category:Fordham University School of Law alumni Category:Maryland Republicans Category:Nixon CRP alumni Category:People from Brooklyn Category:People from New York City Category:People from Hudson County, New Jersey Category:People from Prince George's County, Maryland Category:United States Army officers Category:Watergate figures de:Gordon Liddy eo:Gordon Liddy fr:Gordon Liddy nl:Gordon Liddy ja:ジョージ・ゴードン・リディ fi:G. Gordon Liddy sv:G. Gordon Liddy