After the Tall Timber (21 page)

After Liddy’s session at the dentist’s, an interviewer at the UPI radio station said, in welcome, “I expected your eyes to be blue.” He asked whether Liddy would like coffee or lunch. Liddy asked for yogurt, on account of his tooth. A little refrigerator, in the rather shabby office, turned out to contain five flavors of yogurt. The interviewer asked whether they might begin to tape at once. Liddy asked whether he might eat his yogurt while they talked. “Sure,” the interviewer said. “This isn’t NBC. This is UPI. Just don’t slurp on the microphone.” Then, they talked, of “morality or ethics, and the rule of reason,” of “free will versus individual responsibility.” “What’s your highest value?” the interviewer asked. “Country, family,” Liddy said, then more softly, “friends.” When Liddy emerged from the radio station, the limousine stood empty at the curb. Danny, who had been sent to fill a prescription made out by the dentist, had apparently vanished. So had Mindy. When they came back, it turned out that Mindy had been making phone calls. Danny, in addition to filling the prescription, had bought a copy of Liddy’s book.

On
News Center 4
, as Liddy appeared in the studio, Tom Snyder, the host, was interviewing Irving Schiff, the New Haven “tax refusenik,” who, on what he says are constitutional and other grounds, has paid “not one dime in income taxes since 1973.” “That’s kind of a dangerous thing,” Snyder said. Schiff reminded him that the American Revolution was provoked by “taxation without representation.” He started to give five reasons not to pay income taxes. “One, it’s patriotic. Two, it will improve your social life, talking about it. Three, if I were to pay my taxes the government would merely waste more money.” He spoke of the “subterranean underground” of people who conduct their transactions in cash, to avoid records for tax purposes. He spoke of the fake “churches, trusts, and charitable clubs” being formed to avoid paying taxes for “the Disneyland on the Potomac.” “People are dropping out in droves,” he said. Next, Snyder interviewed the actress who played the heroine, Joanna Tate, on the soap opera
Search for Tomorrow
, which had run for twenty-seven years. “It’s not everyday life,” the actress said, of the program. “That would be boring.” Commercials. An announcement that an interview with Liddy was coming up. “First, we’re going to cook,” a television chef said, and made an omelette. Commercials. Then, Tom Snyder said, by way of introduction, “Today, Gordon Liddy is not afraid of anything.”

By late afternoon, Liddy had two New York interviews remaining, before he left for Chicago and the West: one, with Scott Kaufer and Paul Slansky of the
Soho News
; the other, with Judy Klemesrud of
The New York Times
. The
Soho News
reporters arrived at Liddy’s room in the Waldorf. Slansky at once asked Liddy to review Richard Nixon’s book,
The Third War
, for the
Soho News
. Liddy thanked him but said that, during the next few weeks, he would have no time “to do so in a scholarly and thoughtful way.” “I’ve not read the
Time
excerpts,” Slansky said, “I’ve just read the book.” It became clear at once that these were by far the most competent interviewers Liddy had had so far. They asked him what questions he had been asked the most, and then asked no one else’s questions. They asked him when he had decided to write the book. “After it was absolutely clear that nothing could be salvaged at all,” Liddy replied, “and I realized that, for historians, my book would have to be a primary source.” They asked him whether Maurice Stans, finance chairman of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, and certainly the biggest political fund-raiser in history, had known about the Watergate. And Liddy (in perhaps a strong instance of his credulity) said, “He didn’t know. You see, he didn’t need to know.” They asked whether he liked the press to think him crazy, “just to keep them off the trail.” He replied, “To a little extent, I’ll have to admit I’ve exploited it a bit”; and added that a lot had “sprung from the anticipation of my caricature.” In answer to a question, Liddy was saying, “People who like to kill are sick people,” when, at the door, there was a loud, peremptory knock. There was a startled pause. A voice bellowed, “Room checking!” They asked him, about the Watergate scandal, “Is there anybody who could have been removed who would have stopped it?” He replied, “No. You’d have had to blow away a cast of thousands.”

They asked him what he read, whether he helped his wife with “domestic chores,” what he thought of a Nixon quote about him on the tape of June 23, 1972 (“just locker-room talk,” he said, calmly), whether he cared about the pennant races, “Do you think people draw the wrong conclusion from your fascination with things German?” To the last question, Liddy gave quintessentially a writer’s reply. “I think my book is my best shot,” he said. Just before they left, Slansky and Kaufer asked him to record the following messages for their home answering tapes: “Hi. This is G. Gordon Liddy. Please leave your message when you hear the tone. Or I’ll kill you”; “Hi. This is G. Gordon Liddy. Please leave your message when you hear the tone. Or I’ll break your knees.” Curiously enough, though Slansky and Kaufer leaked the contents of these answering tapes to
The New York Times
People column, which published an item about them, they did not use one word of their interview, which was also taped, in the
Soho News
, but ran a brief, friendly item, “Ten Reasons to Like G. Gordon Liddy,” instead.

En route to the airport, Danny announced that he was “twenty percent through” Liddy’s book. “It reads easily. It’s written fluidly,” he said. Mindy reported that she had heard a radio interview with former Vice President Agnew, in which he claimed, apropos of Liddy’s book, that a high government official had warned him (Agnew) that he must resign from the vice presidency, that he faced “assassination” unless he resigned. Liddy asked whether Mindy had remembered to bring two copies of his book, which he wanted to inscribe to the two dentists who had worked on his teeth. She had. One of the dentists, she said, had called St. Martin’s Press to find out how Liddy was, and the switchboard operator, thinking the call was from a crank, had said, “There’s a dentist on the line.” Liddy signed the books.

Traffic was slow, because, Danny said, it was Earth Day. Liddy mentioned an interview in which he had met Jan Teller, daughter of the scientist Edward Teller. Before Liddy went on the air, Ms. Teller had sewed on a button that had fallen off his jacket. “We had a heck of a good conversation,” he said. He recalled an interview with National Public Radio. “A bit adversarial,” he said. “Politely so, however.” Danny turned on the car radio. “The Casper Citron Show with G. Gordon Liddy.” Why, Citron asked, had Liddy waited until the statute of limitations had expired, even for people he did not like. “Otherwise, it’s not a matter of principle,” Liddy said. “It’s a matter of vindictiveness.” Why should anyone buy a book by a convicted felon? “Think of O’Henry, Villon, Daniel Defoe,” Liddy said. “They all did time.”

On Tuesday night, shortly after eight, Gordon Liddy stood outside the doors of O’Hare Airport in Chicago. At nine, he was scheduled to begin a two-hour interview with Dr. Milton Rosenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, who happens also to run the city’s most popular nightly talk show. Taxis, limousines, and private cars passed Liddy on the ramp. There was no sign of the limousine hired by St. Martin’s Press. Liddy stood for some minutes beside his suitcase and his garment bag. Then he went inside, to see whether the chauffeur might somehow have missed him at the baggage claim. A tall dark man, carrying a suit jacket, with loosened tie and open shirt collar, walked up to Liddy, shook his hand, and, addressing him by name, offered him a ride into the city. Liddy thanked him, but explained that he was looking for a limousine that had been hired for him. The tall man offered his own driver and limousine. He was going to the Drake Hotel, he said. Liddy called the agency that should have sent his car. They said they had sent it. Liddy waited another ten minutes under the lights, in the dark outside O’Hare. He looked at his watch. The tall man and his limousine were still there. At his insistence, Liddy and I got into the backseat. The tall man sat, beside the uniformed chauffeur, in front.

“I gotta tell you, you’re one of the few stand-up guys in the world, in the entire world,” the man said, leaning his elbow over the front seat and further loosening his tie. “And you can use my limousine. I just happen to think that your conduct, okay? regardless of the circumstances, the sacrifices, whatever reasons possessed you, I respect you immensely. Immensely. I respect your family. Whatever you may think of the President, for better or for worse. Out of respect for the man, and on behalf of his office, you made the sacrifice. Not many in the entire world would do the same.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Liddy said. Then he muttered something about the exemplary conduct of prisoners of war, returning from Hanoi, and that “nobody makes a continuing fuss over them.”

“I’m not talking about
groups
,” the tall man said, firmly. “I take things on an individualistic basis. I’ve seen an awful lot. I’ve known so many miscreants. I’m chairman and chief executive of a company, okay? I have money, a lot of emoluments. But I’ve seen some terrible, terrible weak links.” He paused and looked out of the window. “My business is jukeboxes, vending machines. Also hearing aids, bandages, crap like that. The worst part of business, the most tragic part of business, okay? you make your first mistake and guys start copping out on you.
And they were partners at the time
.” He looked out of the window again. “In any business you sometimes have to cut corners,” he said. “In consultation with your partners. I heard that clown Hunt, forgive me for being subjective and personal, but I can tell you,
one man on my team like you
 . . .”

Liddy took up the reference to Hunt. “I happen to have been surrounded by the spectacularly weak,” he said.

“No,” the man said, again firmly. “So many miscreants. Such terrible, terrible weak links. Now a classic example is Joel Dolkart, of Gulf & Western, who’s indicted for stealing two million dollars. And then started to cop out on Charlie Bluhdorn. Who built a very fine conglomerate, I might add. And the miserable miscreant plea bargains. Now who pays for that?” Silence. “The shareholders. And this lousy bum walks the streets.”

“In the FBI, we knew,” Liddy said, taking up the reference to plea bargains, “if a fellow knows something, he’ll tell you. If he doesn’t, he’ll make it up.”

“Sometimes I think there’s only two stand-up guys in Chicago. That’s Adolph,” he turned to the driver, who was black, “and me. Tonight, I’m taking a judge, and his girlfriend, to dinner. An impecunious judge. You know what I’m talking about. So many miscreants. Such bad judgment retrospectively.” He turned, and again leaned his elbow over the seat-back. “There was a man in our organization, okay? I refer to as our John Dean. He talked his stinking guts out. One day I looked at him in the office, I said, ‘So help me God, you are our John Dean.’ ”

Liddy said nothing.

“Look, I mean, I started work, I was eleven, as mail boy for a bank. Then there was a man, the man was an absolute genius, an absolute financial genius. A friend. When I tell you he gave me checks for x, y, and z deal, ‘your interest.’ And I never even knew what x, y, and z deal was. One day, he said, ‘I’ve made a tender offer. B. F. Goodrich. Two and a half million dollars for each of us. I was scared shitless, to be honest with you. The banker said, ‘Will you tell that Jew bastard to get out of B. F. Goodrich, or we’ll stop his line at the bank.’ So we gracefully withdrew. But there was one half a million dollars, for each of us, in one day. In one afternoon. That’s some story.”

“It’s the American way,” Liddy said.

“I don’t know if it’s the American way or not.” Another pause. “My son got married a week ago Saturday. Both sons are in law school. In Chicago. You know, the joy; my greatest aspiration as a young husband and father was the fear How am I going to educate my children. My greatest achievement was to educate my sons. As for my daughter, so far her grades are not good enough. We have this joke, I may have to build or buy a college for her education.”

“They can’t take what’s in your head,” Liddy said.

“That. And. Or. Experience.” A long silence. “Especially in a community like that. I mean a prison. I think there’s a time, when people should talk. But when all the other rats jump off the ship, and one man does not, that man has character. I don’t say this because you’re here, because we’ll probably never see each other again. But for you to make the sacrifice you did, for
honor
’s sake. You’re, in my opinion, the only good thing that came out of Watergate.”

“I’m an educated man,” Liddy said. “I was compensated for it.”

The limousine stopped at the Drake Hotel. The man gave both Liddy and me his address and phone number, “as a courtesy.” He told the driver to take Liddy directly to the radio station. “This is Adolph,” he said, earnestly, in farewell. “You should get to know him.”

Adolph set out into the nighttime traffic. “Are you taping tonight, or are you going on live?” he asked. Liddy said live. Adolph mentioned the failure of Liddy’s own limousine to show up. “Here’s our card,” he said. “In case you need (chuckle) dependable service.”

The radio station building was a two-story yellow-brick structure, in a remote, poorly lighted area of the city, among vacant asphalt lots. A guard just inside the entrance took Liddy’s garment bag and suitcase and put them in a supermarket shopping cart. It was not clear to what use the supermarket cart was ordinarily put inside a radio station. A young woman appeared, the
Milt Rosenberg Show
’s producer, and led the way down a corridor to a small, dingy cafeteria. She brought Liddy some coffee, in a paper cup. They sat down at a table.

“You’re the cool one,” said a friendly, professorial voice from the doorway. Milt Rosenberg. “The last time you were here”—when Liddy had come to promote his thriller—“you never mentioned you were writing this book.” “
You’re
the cool one,” Liddy replied, greeting Rosenberg with obvious pleasure. “The last time I was here, you never mentioned that you have a title. I didn’t know you were Professor.” They talked a while. Liddy kept addressing his host as “Dr. Rosenberg.” “Let’s strike a bargain,” Rosenberg said. “You are Gordon. I am Milt.”