What Nixon knew

last updated 8 January 2015

Washington, D.C.

One of Richard Nixon’s aides said that the late president personally ordered the 1972 Watergate break-in. The former aide, Jeb Stuart Magruder, long held that it was Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, who approved sending burglars to tap phones at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate hotel. But in a PBS documentary broadcast this week, Magruder revealed that he heard Nixon give Mitchell the green light over the phone. Magruder, who served seven months in prison for his role in the scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation, said he never meant to keep Nixon’s role secret. “Nobody ever asked me,” he said. Historian Stanley Kutler said the claim was nothing but “the dubious word of a dubious character.”