(CNN)G. Gordon Liddy — a former FBI agent, organizer of the Watergate break-in and radio show host — has died at age 90, his son confirmed to CNN.
Liddy died Tuesday morning in Mt. Vernon, Virginia, and though he suffered from a “variety of ailments,” his death was not Covid-19 related, his son, Thomas Liddy, told CNN in a phone call. He had received the coronavirus vaccine three weeks ago.
Liddy, who worked for the reelection committee for President Richard Nixon, is infamously known for having overseen the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex on the night of June 17, 1972.
Liddy said later that “I certainly regret that the mission failed.”
He was convicted for his part in organizing the break-in on charges of burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping and served four-and-a-half years after President Jimmy Carter commuted his original 20-year sentence to eight.
Liddy later went on to host a radio show and hold an acting career.
The Watergate break-in became the ostensible reason for Nixon’s political downfall, and in the days following the arrests Nixon would be the architect of a series of schemes to insulate the White House from responsibility for the bungled political espionage plot.
In late 1971, Attorney General John Mitchell, soon to head the reelection committee, and White House chief of staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman decided that Liddy should be hired to lead an espionage program against the Democrats.
Liddy had been involved in the harassment of Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
Leading up to the 1972 election, Liddy served as general counsel to the Committee to Re-elect the President and devised a plan with the codename “Gemstone”: use kidnapping, burglary, surveillance and prostitutes to gather intelligence on political rivals, according to the Gerald R. Ford Museum.
The committee’s director called for the elaborate, expensive plan to be pared down, but the break-in at the DNC headquarters made it through the revision …
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