NEW BOOK 50 YEARS AFTER: Garrett Graff's "Watergate: A New History", published by Avid Reader Press

Parts of a new post uploaded today are taken from something that appeared in the Friday cover in Politico Magazine and some of the emphasis on his career has been shifted fast-forward to this image that might remind readers of a podcast host today Joe Rogan (Liddy conducts his radio talk show from the Watergate Hotel in June 1992. | AP Photo). . .

Here's a quotation from the new book: "George Gordon Battle Liddy, who died last year at age 90 after having reinvented himself as a syndicated radio host — helping to launch in the 1990s the soon-to-be-archetypal right-wing talk show that wrapped him in patriotic motifs and positioned him as one of last bulwarks standing athwart a nation gone soft — had no business being anywhere close to the American presidency. Journalist Fred Emery would later describe Liddy as “an exceptionally articulate man with rambunctious right-wing views.”

G. Gordon Liddy's career and evolution outlined different paths taken today by new characters who attained and got hired to fill certain positions in our lifetimes now: reelection campaign operatives, numerous senior law enforcement roles, oddball teams assembled to root out leaks and undermine the president’s enemies, unlikely clandestine operations, assignments to overthrow governments operating under State Department cover to work dissidents, assess political parties and spread propaganda + plans involved specially equipped surveillance planes, kidnappings, illegal, laundered campaign donations, sex workers, wiretaps and spies galore.

In popular culture "the group would be known to history by a label given off-hand by the grandmother of another aide, David Young: When she asked him what he was doing in the White House, Young explained, simply, he was helping the president stop some leaks. She replied, proudly, “Oh, you’re a plumber!”

This essay been excerpted from his new book, Watergate: A New History, published by Avid Reader Press © 2022.

the Friday Cover

How G. Gordon Liddy Bungled Watergate With an Office-Supply Request

The story of Operation Gemstone, his totally bonkers, Nazi-themed dirty tricks wish list

By Garrett M. Graff | Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) is the executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Cybersecurity and Technology Program and a former editor of Politico Magazine. He can be reached at garrett.graff@gmail.com.

02/11/2022 04:30 AM EST

"f you had to choose one moment when the whole Watergate scandal was set into motion — that first, singular fatal crack in the foundation — you might as well pick G. Gordon Liddy’s hunt for an easel.

Even now, 50 years later, it’s hard to identify the moment when the burglary and arrests at the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate on June 17, 1972, tipped from an odd sideshow to the main event. As inevitable and foregone as President Richard Nixon’s fall might seem in hindsight, what’s remarkable looking back at the events of 1972 to 1974 is how close he came to getting away with the whole thing — how well the cover-up held for so long and how narrowly he came to barreling right past the embarrassment of what his press secretary called a “third-rate burglary.” Months later, after all, he was reelected by the largest presidential landslide in American history. . ."

That was 1968 and this event took five years -- A packed room awaits the start of the Senate Watergate Committee hearings in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 24, 1973. | AP Photo

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INSERT: "...Now, in Watergate, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Garrett M. Graff explores the full sweep of the scandal that would come to define all others, from the release of The Pentagon Papers in 1971—the first signs of trouble for the White House—and the 1972 DNC break-in to the denials, trials, hearings, and eventual downfall of the Nixon Administration three years later—the implications of which we still feel today. Watergate, Graff shows, is a much bigger and much weirder story than America remembers. . ."

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Plane in the Sky, the first definitive narrative history of Watergate, exploring the full scope of the scandal through the politicians, investigators, journalists, and informants who made it the most influential political event of our modern era.

---- Publisher https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Watergate/Garrett-M-Graff/9781982139162 

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