Reply #30: Former Aide Contends Nixon Ordered Burglary

[w4rma]

30 Years Later, a Watergate Allegation
Former Aide Contends Nixon Ordered Burglary

Thirty years after the Senate select committee hearings on Watergate riveted the nation and doomed the Nixon presidency, a key figure in the scandal says he has a fresh and explosive revelation: Richard M. Nixon personally ordered the burglary of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex.

Jeb Stuart Magruder -- then a "callow" campaign aide, now a retired Presbyterian minister in Ohio -- says in a new documentary for PBS that he heard Nixon's voice on a telephone as the president instructed then-Attorney General John N. Mitchell to go ahead with the break-in.

" 'John . . . you need to do that,' " Magruder said he heard Nixon say at the end of a phone call in which Mitchell discussed the matter with his boss.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51085-2003Jul26.html