G. Gordon Liddy Went Hollywood After Masterminding Watergate

While most are already familiar with Watergate, HBO’s White House Plumbers aims to shed light on the lesser-known series of events that led to one of the greatest political scandals in American history. At the center of the five-part satirical drama are disgraced former president Richard Nixon’s unwitting political saboteurs, G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux) and E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson), who accidentally toppled the presidency. Beginning in 1971, the limited series imagines the behind-the-scenes story of how the unlikely duo plotted unbelievable covert ops, including bugging the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex, leading to their ultimate downfalls — and Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

Of all the real-life players, Liddy was considered the mastermind behind the Watergate burglary. Beginning as a leader of a White House clandestine “plumbers” unit — which was established to plug information leaks — Liddy was a lawyer for a former FBI agent who became a strategist for Nixon’s re-election campaign. In concert with Hunt, Liddy engineered two break-ins at the DNC’s Watergate offices in 1972. Though six Cuban expats (and a Nixon campaign security official) successfully planted bugs and photographed documents on May 28, 1972, police caught them when they returned to the scene a few weeks later on June 17.

Orchestrating the botched operation from a Watergate hotel room, Liddy and Hunt fled but were soon arrested and indicted on charges of burglary, wiretapping, and conspiracy. The only Watergate defendant who refused to testify about his Nixon-related activities, the mustachioed Liddy received the longest sentence: six to 20 years in prison. However, he only served 52 months behind bars because President Jimmy Carter commuted his term in 1977 “in the interest of equity and fairness,” against the other guilty parties.

“I have lived as I believed I ought to have lived,” Liddy told reporters after his release, per The New York Times, insisting he had no regrets and would do it again. “When the prince approaches his lieutenant, the proper response of the lieutenant to the prince is, ‘Fiat voluntas tua,’” he said, using the Latin of the Lord’s Prayer for “Thy will be done.” He later proudly drove around Washington in a Volvo with license plates reading H2OGATE, per the Los Angeles Times.

Upon his release from prison, Liddy had been disbarred from his law practice and began a writing career, releasing his first spy thriller, Out of Control, in 1979, followed by his autobiography, Will, which spawned an NBC TV movie in 1982. His other releases include a 1990 novel, The Monkey Handlers, a 2002 nonfiction book, When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country, and a guide to fighting terrorism, Fight Back! Tackling Terrorism, Liddy Style in 2006.

In addition to giving several college lectures, the politico also ventured further into the entertainment world, appearing on Miami Vice and MacGyver, among other bit acting roles. “I played only villains, and that way, as Mrs. Liddy says, I don’t have to act. I just go there and play myself,” he told Playboy magazine in 1995. He also launched his own syndicated far-right-wing radio program, The G. Gordon Liddy Show, in 1992, calling himself “G Man.”

Liddy, who had Parkinson’s disease, retired in 2012 and had been in declining health when he died in March 2021 at age 90. His wife of 53 years, Frances, predeceased him in 2010, and he is survived by five children and 12 grandchildren.