Aide Says Nixon Ordered Watergate Break-In
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Three decades after Watergate, a former top aide to President Nixon now contends that Nixon ordered the break-in that led to his resignation.
Jeb Stuart Magruder previously had gone no further than saying that John N. Mitchell, the former attorney general who was running the Nixon reelection campaign in 1972, approved the plan to break into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office building.
Magruder, in a PBS documentary scheduled for broadcast Wednesday and in an Associated Press interview last week, says he was meeting with Mitchell on March 30, 1972, when he heard Nixon tell Mitchell over the phone to go ahead with the plan. The break-in occurred June 17, 1972.
Magruder pleaded guilty to conspiracy and perjury charges stemming from the break-in and spent seven months in prison.
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