my first guest right here of all of the characters involved in the Watergate
scandal there were none as fascinating as my next guest he has served four and one half years in
prison for his involvement and recounted his philosophy of life and personal story in the
book entitled will which was also a television movie please welcome G Gordon Liddy [Music]
thank you uh for being on the show in the in the past couple of months I've
been reading things about you traveling and appearing at colleges with uh Timothy Leary
yes Tim and I have debated I think eight times so far matter of fact
we did it on Broadway here not long ago in Manhattan this is a musical
well sometimes I I expect it to be anything when you when you're debating with Tim anything can
happen and I mean anything well the reason I I said that I was just being silly of course
but it sounds like a very odd combination you and Timothy Leary what is the history of this
relationship well the relationship began when I busted him twice uh back in the 1960s and then
he went his way which included Afghanistan and everything else and I'm with mine which included
nine different federal prisons and we both did a lot of lecturing uh separately and a fellow down
in Texas said you know it's a natural to bring these two fellows whose philosophies are 180
degrees opposed yeah now what what do you discuss or debate when you're on stage uh the powers of
the state which I represent and individual Freedom which Tim represents there's always
been a tension between those and we uh really chew it up are you too friendly now I would say so yeah
I still think he's dead wrong but Tim is a uh oh uh uh got a great Irish wit and he's nice to be
around yeah would you uh would you ever consider uh using some of the preparations that he uh
I'm not even sure what some of those preparations are anymore he uh denies that he uses controlled
dangerous substances asserting that he can never be arrested for it because he uses stuff that
is so new the government hasn't caught on to it yet is uh is is he uh got something going pretty
much all the time I mean is he you know is there somebody else driving most of the day with Kim
isn't all that unusual anymore you go out there and confer with uh NBC Executives and and you
feel terribly out of place I mean I keep thinking that a soda straw is something you sip your soda
with and the NBC Executives keep wanting to stick it up my nose all the time but it's it's just is
that true have you had that experience actually I've had it often yeah really NBC Executives have
offered you uh we're talking about cocaine here I guess huh uh you mean the Colombian
nose candy yeah no they haven't offered it to me but uh the way I understand it is the the
um the question is do we have enough of this stuff around to handle all the problems that we have to
deal with this afternoon um um that's a whole different topic area yes it is that um uh when
you guys are out lecturing or performing what are the uh what kind of questions what are some
of the most common questions that are directed to the two well they always asked him you know what
is this latest stuff that the government hasn't caught on to uh they'll able to ask me anything
from questions about Watergate to I remember one young lady got up and asked me my opinion of group
sex which took me about it a little bit you know I asked her about how big a group she had in mind
do you um
um I I was thinking there about what are these new substances that Mr Leary Mr Leary is keeping that
very close to his vest because once it becomes known the government puts it on the list and then
he has to go find another one now um I I would think that some of the questions you get would be
uh the rat story and then uh also about burning your hand with a candle or lots of mileage on
it all right I tell you what we're going to pause here for a commercial and we'll come back and take
up those two topics with Mr Gordon ready right after this welcome back to the show G Gordon Lydia
is with us and uh we're talking uh about among other things you're touring with the Timothy Leary
and I brought up the two uh stories about one a rat and the other about burning yourself do you
want to talk about these I think everybody knows about them by now but if you'd want me to I'd be
happy what do you want to know they said great stories first of all let's let's start let's start
with the rat you want to start with a rat yeah well you start with the rest well I was afraid
of a lot of things when I was a child just about everything with a possible exception of my mother
and I wasn't too sure about her you know and uh one of the things was rats and I had learned
through my reading that American Indians used to devour parts of the bodies of Brave Warriors and
attempt to overcome their fear of other tribes and things like that so when my sister's cat slew a
rat uh I cooked it and I ate the left rear haunch of it and there went the fear of rats that was
when I was 11 years old with respect to burning that was because I was afraid of pain and fire
because when I was a child I picked up a hot coal and so I did some of that to overcome the fear of
fire and paint hmm nothing unusual nothing unusual about that I've been
I've been told that that is a process known to psychologists as desensitization yeah
um but these are dramatic examples of that well this is a dramatic show is it not oh see you bet
um but now a lot of people say we just say I was talking to you or a member of your family about
Paul Shaffer and I said this guy will put his hand in a flame or he'll eat rats that person talking
about Paul hypothetically here would be described by many as being nuts now do do you do people
consider you to be uh you know maybe of having stuff it depends you know on the circumstances my
roommate in France his father was putting a Nazi concentration camp and he had to flee the Germans
and he lived on rat meat for a year and a half that's how he kept alive it depends on why you
do it uh I suppose if your friend over here did it for a hobby you might uh think it was odd of him
but if you do it for some feeling of necessity I don't think it's set off but in your case it
really wasn't for necessity it was for a necessity because you see I didn't want to be afraid of
rats any more than I'd want to be afraid of you yeah and of course I'm afraid of him either yeah
what about um uh now I'm wondering now how you got along in prison because were you frightened
in prison no um I had uh the Armament of my education when I was in prison and prison
you know is is an odd place the prisoners run the prisons the guards don't run the prisons
and uh when I found myself in one prison for example uh with a problem with the persons who are
running it I just reverted to type and wiretapped them and used the evidence that I gathered to
take them into court and defeat them then I got expelled from that prison the reason I was in nine
different prisons in this country is because I kept getting expelled from one prison into another
one a bad attitude huh more than a little yeah now but you started out I'm I'm just guessing I don't
know the details here you started out in what they call the minimum security operation I started out
by direction of my good friend John sorica in a Maximum Security Prison complete with electric
chair oh so so you were really in uh pretty deep water here to be Making Waves weren't you yes
and I created a few tidal waves that's right did you have um did you have weapons in inside prison
and how does a person get a weapon you can get anything you want inside of prison anything if
you're willing to pay for it and have the assets to pay for it the way I got uh weapons well some I
bought and uh some I stole and some I had made for me by friends good heavens and we're like Firearms
with actual guns I had uh I had a steel bar with sharp edges with which I could break your legs
I had a uh a pickaxe handle with a jagged hunk of Rusty Steel on the end of it with which I could uh
make you very unhappy and of course I had a knife you always have a knife yeah a shank
as it's called shank for you kids watching at home it's a shame um we're gonna pause
excuse me sir we'll be back to continue this discussion with Mr Liddy after that's right
thank you uh welcome back we just have a minute in this segment and then after the station
identification will continue at length when you were in prison what was the reaction of the other
inmates to you well the reaction whenever you go into another prison is always the same they
don't know what they have to deal with and they have to find out what kind of a person you are
so you will be tested my advice to those of you out there who are contemplating entering prison
is the minute you walk in if someone says good morning and there's a cloud in the sky
which gives you an excuse pick up a mop ringer handle break his head and then they know where
you're coming from so to speak that's the accepted response to good morning
it had better be yeah that's if you want to remain remain a a member of the male sex now you're
uh you're speaking I mean I I have no no reason to doubt you you were in prison for uh and you
could have been in for longer couldn't you 21 and a half years yeah oh uh also you could have
probably been in for shorter if you would want to do uh I could have been released virtually
uh within 24 hours now why did you choose to take the well there were several reasons first of all
uh I was the captain of the ship when she hit the reef my responsibility was damage control and so I
sought to do that by my silence secondly I uh was taught by my father that a man does not seek to
extricate himself from difficulty at the expense of his friends and Associates so your feeling was
I got myself into this I'll take the punishment it's all part of the game all right uh how did
your uh how has your family uh held up under uh the stress and trials of the Watergate and then
the incarceration and now the book and the TV film and so forth well you know there's an old saying
that what uh doesn't kill you makes you stronger and that seem to work with my family I've got
uh two swimming Champions one world-class water polo player one captain of the swimming team yeah
one pre-med student they all do very very well you're a very methodical person I'm guessing
from what little you've told us here tonight and also what I read about you this afternoon
and even into selecting your spouse to be yes you did some genetic research on this
woman well you know when you when you uh when you look at a girl if you can't tell
whether she's got good genes or not you really ought to be in the husband business you know
if you can't tell if she has comes from good stock then you again if if the poor creature is a
fugitive from the Board of Health and it's obvious uh then I would suggest not marrying her if on the
other hand she's tall and uh smart and beautiful um then you got yourself a good candidate uh what
how did she demonstrate her intelligence well I walked in one day and uh she was amusing herself
I thought doing a crossword puzzle I amuse myself during the Times crossword puzzle and I found that
instead she was doing differential calculus for fun this thoroughly intimidating me yeah that
that does sound like fun though you have to well you have to give her that you have to understand
that at the time she was working for IBM and she was designing computer languages and she was only
25 she was the one that they sent to uh Indiana to wire the mainframe computers for the US Army
and to also teach the United States government how to run them hmm that was when she was 26.
um this whole thing now uh it's been 10 years almost to the month to the week here of the
uh the Watergate break-in is there uh well actually we had a successful one
which anniversary is never celebrated that actually is a few days ago this would be
the that's the one I celebrated you say you celebrate the other one I'll celebrate so
um is there now the one that the June what was the date the 17th of June yeah is there anything about
this mess that you look back on and find amusing now I that was well yeah there were lots of things
amusing I remember it took us three times times before we got in the first time successfully and
the second time that we unsuccessfully we're in Howard hunt got trapped in a room and the guards
kept coming by swinging their flashlights so being the old OSS and CIA guy that he is he hid in the
closet the closet happened to be a a liquor closet he was in there for eight hours and things got
urgent and Howard found a bottle of red which was only one-third full and by the end of the evening
that by let me just put it this way if you ever go to the Watergate Hotel under no
circumstances order Scotch no [Applause] [Music] go good with rap wouldn't it
oddly enough after the book came out the the Washington star made a survey of the top chefs
of Washington all the Hope Cuisine and they they said lyddie there's one thing about Lydia is he
does not know how properly to cook rat and they gave their recipes and told what wine
you should have with it and everything and it's quite true I really don't know
um this this whole thing here um now when you when I uh introduced you there was a
smattering of some people booed a little bit and uh and I'm sure that this comes
out John sarika's children are everywhere some of them are undone but the uh [Music]
see lots of them foreign and this afternoon uh I was reading a little thing about you
that said that in other times under other circumstances you might have in fact been
regarded as the ultimate Soldier uh and even a hero uh which I'm guessing is probably how you
would like to be remembered but objectively if you can be objective how do you see you
being Remembered in history by this country well I don't know that I'm going to be that
that much remembered I think that as distance lends proportion the historians are going to
view the Watergate incident uh with decreasing importance it was really just sort of a footnote
and so you don't see a an eternal place for yourself in the grand scheme of things no I
think the place for me in the grand scheme of things is the same as your place and the place
of everybody here and that is we shall provide a diet for the worms [Applause]
time to go uh interesting experience meeting you
I appreciate your time sir Gordon Liddy ladies and gentlemen and uh
but we'll be right now
[Applause]