Unexpurgated Liddy

At first glance, it seems to be a hazardous exercise in dej`avu: nearly the entire new issue of Harper's devoted to a Watergate retrospective. In the absence of new bombshells, what could sustain interest in 65 more pages about the scandal? First-person articles by some of the principals, for one thing, and Harper's managed to come up with some fresh and remarkable copy. "Plumbers" G. Gordon Liddy, Eugenio Martinez and Bernard Barker tell their stories in print for the first tune. E. Howard Hunt contributes a brief essay on hush money. Former Nixon Aide Herbert L. Porter writes a cautionary tale about how easy it is to be caught in perjury. Such diverse commentators as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Eugene McCarthy, Art Buchwald and exAgnew Press Aide Victor Gold comment on the myopia of power.

The magazine's biggest coup was landing Liddy's 5,500-word article, written in a Washington jail cell last July. Liddy has been the mum man of Watergate, responding only with silence to prosecutors, judges and journalists alike for over two years. He was so determined to remain mute that when he attended a writing course in prison, he insisted that his work not be published.

Permissive Flab. Even now, Liddy hardly tells all; he does not even use the word Watergate. But he does provide a fascinating peek into his psyche, writing what could be taken as a justification of the spying activities that he proposed and supervised. He perceives a radical threat to the "constitutional system" because the right of peaceful assembly "to seek redress of grievances was corrupted into violence, and freedom of expression into license." Words such as fatherland crop up repeatedly, along with Liddy's conviction that the U.S. is smothering and softening in permissive flab. He praises the "tough, disciplined, confident esprit of the German soldier" at the start of World War II and urges a reawakening of "duty, loyalty, patriotism." His conclusion is no less fervent: the fatherland "asks only that we do our duty as her [sic] son or daughter, as we understand that duty."

Barker and Martinez are more informative about their roles in the burglaries. Perhaps their most striking revelation is the assertion that at least some CIA officials had continuing knowledge of the plumbers' activities. Martinez says that he reported at least twice a week to his CIA "case officer." There is also an indication that Hunt may have been fibbing to his superiors at the White House; when Martinez complained that the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist yielded nothing, Hunt replied, "Yes, I know, but they don't know it." Hunt may also have doublecrossed his Cuban underlings. Barker complains that Hunt persuaded the pair to remain silent before the grand jury, and then extracted a grant of immunity for himself by agreeing to come clean. Says Barker: "Hunt will have to live with his own problem. I feel sorry for him."

What made those cloak-and-dagger conservatives tell their stories in an unsympathetic Eastern liberal publication? One incentive was money: Liddy's wife received $5,000 for his article, the other contributors less. A more important factor--particularly in Liddy's case--was Harper's promise to let the Watergate figures say whatever they chose. That offer was first communicated through their lawyers at the plumbers' trial last summer by Harper's Washington Editor Taylor Branch and Writers George Crile and Marie Nahikian. "Liddy had received some 300 offers, but ours was the only one he accepted," says Crile. "The reason was that others wanted to pry out some more Watergate dope and we wanted to get his philosophy."

Some of the articles were originally solicited not for the magazine, but for a new version of Harper's Weekly, the monthly's famed relative (1857-1916), which Editor in Chief Robert Shnayerson had planned to revive to cover Nixon's impeachment trial. The weekly, now scheduled to appear on newsstands early in November, will resemble the Watergate issue in its emphasis on stories written by people in the news rather than professional journalists.

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