LIDDY SPILLS WATERGATE-ERA TRICKS TO TAX COURT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710004-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 16, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: August 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/16: CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710004-4
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
17 August 1985
LIDDY SPILLS WATERGATE-ERA TRICKS TO TAX COURT
MINNEAPOLIS, MN
G. Gordon Liddy, the ex- CIA operative who zipped his lips during the
Watergate trials, opened up recently when the Internal Revenue Service took him
to tax court, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune reported Saturday.
Refuting an IRS claim he owed more than $150,000 in back taxes and penalties,
Liddy detailed how he spent more than $340,000 as director of covert activities
for President Nixon's 1972 campaign, the newspaper said in a copyright dispatch
from Washington.
Judge Samuel Sterrett later ruled Liddy owed taxes on $45,630 rather than the
IRS figure of $176,800 and rescinded a $51,766 fraud penalty imposed by the IRS.
Sterrett said he believed Liddy's testimony, even though he had shredded most
of the supporting evidence after the Watergate break-in,
Liddy, who spent 4 years in prison for his part in the Watergate break-in,
ran t
r r
tnid of expenditur
$30
es
device to $300 for cruel political cartoons of Sen Edward Kennedy, D Mass.,
drawn by a CIA artist.
Many of the tactics were as unsuccessful as they were bizarre. The
expenditures included:
-$500 for photos of Kennedy sailing near Hyannis Port, Mass., days after the
Chappaquiddick car accident that resulted in the death of a woman in the
senator's car. Liddy hoped to make Kennedy look heartless, he said.
-$2,270 to hire prostitutes at the Miami convention. The prostitutes were
instructed to engage mid-level Democratic officials in intimate conversations
about political strategy.
-$500 paid to Nixon campaign employee Donald Segretti for a dirty trick on
Maine Senator Edmund Muskie's campaign. Liddy also gave his operatives $2,200 to
lease office space adjacent to Muskie's headquarters.
''We considered Senator Muskie to be a formidable candidate and a real threat
... " Liddy told the tax court.
He said the same of Kennedy.
-(Our) perception at the time (was) that if Senator Kennedy, virtually up to
the day before the convention, had said to the Democratic Party, 'I would like
the nomination,' because of what had happened to his two brothers he might very
well have gotten it."
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/16: CIA-RDP90-00552R000403710004-4