Watergate Figure Hosts Talk Show From Scene of the Crime

G. Gordon Liddy returned to the Watergate on Wednesday, exactly 20 years after the botched burglary that he masterminded. But this time he received the red-carpet treatment.

“It was sort of like old-home week here,” said the convicted Watergate conspirator, who now hosts a radio talk show. “They welcomed me with open arms and said, ‘We’ll give you a key. Please don’t break any locks.’ ”

It was not the first time he had returned to the scene of the burglary that ultimately drove President Richard M. Nixon from the White House, but this time he was accompanied by more than 100 reporters, photographers and fans seeking autographs. They jammed a small conference room to watch Liddy, 61, broadcast his talk show from the building that lent its name to the political scandal.

He noted during the program that he had only one qualm about the break-in he orchestrated.

“I certainly regret that the mission failed,” he said. “I had every intention that it succeed.”

The event Wednesday marked an anniversary reunion of sorts, with phone calls from numerous Watergate players, including convicted Nixon White House aide Charles W. Colson.

Even the three Washington police officers who first responded to the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972, showed up to celebrate.

Throughout his trials and more than four years in prison, Liddy stuck to his code of loyalty and silence. He once offered to stand on a street corner and be shot if it would help Nixon’s cause.

Eventually, he was convicted of organizing the burglary and wiretapping the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex, and later refusing to testify about it.