Friday, January 4, 2008

DONALD SEGRETTI

The name Donald Segretti is nearly synomymous with the term "dirty tricks."
In fact, Segretti, who helped run Richard Nixon's re-election campaign, is one of the few campaign professionals actually jailed (he served four months) for his campaign trickery, namely distributing forged campaign material against the Democrats. He was also disbarred by the state of California.
An example of his falleged forged campaign material is a fake memo under the letterhead of then Sen-Edmund Muskie claiming that Democratic Sen. Harry Jackson had fathered a child with a 17-year-old woman.
Segretti was played by Robert Walden in the 1976 film All the President's Men.
In this 1972 Washington Post story by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, it is detailed how the FBI found that Nixon aides had illegally sabotaged the Democrats. Segretti's work is said to have played a role in Muskie's breaking down and crying while campaigning in front of the Manchester Union Leader newspaper office in New Hampshire.
According to The Post, three people said they were approached by Segretti and asked to help sabotage, for pay, the Democratic campaigns. Segretti initially denied making the offers. Here is an excerpt:


Asked by The Washington Post to discuss Segretti, three FBI and Justice Department officials involved in the Watergate probe refused. At the mention of Segretti's name, each said -- in the words of one -- "That's part of the Watergate investigation." One of the officials, however, became angry at the mention of Segretti's name and characterized his activities as "indescribable." Segretti, visited in his West Coast apartment last week by Washington Post special correspondent Robert Meyers, repeatedly answered questions by saying, "I don't know." "I don't have to answer that." And "No comment." After 15 minutes,
he said: "This is material for a good novel, it's ridiculous," and chased the reporter outside when he attempted to take a picture. According to the three
attorneys interviewed by The Post, Segretti attempted to hire them in 1971 as undercover agents working on behalf of President Nixon's re-election. All three said they first met Segretti in 1968, when they served together in Vietnam as captains in the Army Judge Advocate General Corps.
One of the lawyers, Alex B. Shipley, a Democrat who is now assistant attorney general of Tennessee, said Segretti told him, "Money would be no problem, but the people we would be working for wanted results for the cash that would be spent."



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