loses appeal of defamation suit reinstatement. (Photo from LiddyPage.) \nWASHINGTON - Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy has lost his bid to ward off a lawsuit by a woman he linked to an alleged call-girl ring at the Democratic National Committee at the time of the 1972 burglary which ended up bringing down President Richard Nixon.
Without comment, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal in which Liddy claimed the woman should have been considered a public figure who would have to prove actual malice to win her lawsuit, says APBNews.com
Liddy - who served four years and four months in prison for arranging the June 17, 1972 Watergate break-in - argues the purpose of the break-in wasn't repairing an earlier, malfunctioning telephone tap, or to gain information the Democratic Party might have had on the Republican Party, but to gather information on a connection inside Democratic headquarters to an alleged call-girl ring.
Liddy has said in public speeches that DNC secretary Ida M. Wells's desk contained photographs of prostitutes shown to visiting men. Wells filed a $5 million lawsuit against Liddy in 1997, APBNews says, alleging he defamed her by suggesting she procured prostitutes for DNC visitors.
A federal judge in Maryland ruled in Liddy's favor, saying Wells was an "involuntary" public figure who had to prove Liddy spoke with malice - knowledge that what he was saying was false or not caring whether they were true. But the 4th U.S. District Court of Appeals reinstated the suit and ruled Wells remained a private figure who only needs to prove a statement was defamatory, false, and negligent, APBNews says.
During the Supreme Court appeal, Liddy's attorneys argued the 4th Circuit ruling would stifle discussion of public events by making it easier to sue, APBNews says.
Liddy himself was a latecomer to the theory that a call-girl connection was the motive behind the Watergate break-in. He had originally believed, and said so in his autobiography, Will, that the reason for the DNC break-in was to find what, if any, derogatory information the Democratic Party had on the Republican Party, and not to gain any derogatory information on the Democrats.
But in the early 1990s, two investigative journalists, Len Colodny and Robert Gittlin, published Silent Coup: The Removal of a President. Using exhaustive documentation and interviews with key Watergate figures, including Liddy and former Attorney General John Mitchell, the authors argued the real Watergate target was a desk rented by an attorney said to have had ties to a call-girl ring - and that the key players in the drama had no actual idea of that target.
Silent Coup also argued that White House counsel John Dean, long considered the hero who exposed the Watergate cover-up, had actually set both the actions leading to Watergate and the cover-up in motion because his then-fiancee had ties to either the attorney or the alleged.
Nixon himself had suggested a motive other than politics behind the Watergate break-in. In his own autobiography, RN, he recalled vacationing in Florida when the break-in occurred and reading about it in a newspaper the morning after. He wrote he was stunned because the break-in seemed senseless enough, but that, "Anyone who knew anything about politics knew" that national party headquarters wasn't the place to go for derogatory information either way.
Silent Coup became something of a best-seller despite the authors' contention that several major media organizations - including the Washington Post, whose Watergate reporting legend Bob Woodward is heavily criticized in the book - went out of their way to try to smother it. At about the same time, Liddy's autobiography was republished with a new afterword in which Liddy elaborated on the Colodny-Gittlin thesis.
Nixon resigned in August 1974, shortly after the infamous "smoking gun" tape emerged, showing him giving tacit approval to a suggestion that the CIA call the FBI off the Watergate trail.
