G. Gordon Liddy, undercover agent convicted in Watergate scandal, dead at 90

G. Gordon Liddy, the Watergate operative who went to prison instead of testifying after bungling the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972, died Tuesday. He was 90.

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Liddy died at his daughter’s home in Fairfax County, Virginia, his son, Thomas P. Liddy, told The Washington Post. He did not provide a cause of death.

Liddy is best remembered for his role in the plot to bug the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex, the newspaper reported. The scandal led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in August 1974.

Liddy would later go on to a career as a television star and talk show host, the Los Angeles Times reported.

G. Gordon Liddy has died at 90. His bungling of Watergate break-in triggered a crisis that led to President Nixon's resignation. https://t.co/UM81k5hv5v
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 30, 2021

Unlike other defendants in the scandal, Liddy seemed to revel in the attention. He drove around Washington in a Volvo with license plates reading H2OGATE and openly discussed the Watergate burglary on talk radio and late-night television, the newspaper reported. He also accepted villainous television roles that appeared to trade on his reputation.

“I played only villains, and that way, as Mrs. Liddy says, I don’t have to act. I just go there and play myself,” Liddy told Playboy magazine in a 1995 interview.

Liddy played villains on shows like “Miami Vice,” “MacGyver” and “Airwolf,” the Times reported.

Liddy’s total loyalty was welcomed, but even Nixon was a little unsettled by the operative’s methods, calling him “a little nuts.”

“I mean, he just isn’t well screwed on, is he?” Nixon told H.R. Haldeman, his chief of staff, a week after the June 17, 1972, break-in.

Liddy’s mistakes in the Watergate complex break-in allowed his former colleagues at the FBI to connect the crime to the Nixon White House, the Post reported.

He accepted personal responsibility for the bungled effort, saying he was “the captain of the ship when she hit the reef.”

“I was serving the president of the United States and I would do a Watergate again -- but with a much better crew,” Liddy once said.

Liddy refused to testify at either the Watergate hearings or at his own criminal trial and was convicted.

“My father didn’t raise a snitch or a rat,” Liddy explained to the Times in 2001.

Liddy’s 20-year prison sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and he was freed after 52 months in prison, the newspaper reported.

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