Frederick LaRue, 75; Had Key Role in Coverup of the Watergate Break-In

Frederick C. LaRue, a Mississippi oil heir who became the first person found guilty of participating in the Watergate coverup and was among those rumored to be the mysterious Deep Throat, has died at 75.

LaRue’s body was found Tuesday by a maid at the Biloxi hotel where he was staying. The Harrison County, Miss., coroner, Gary Hargrove, told the Associated Press that LaRue is believed to have died Saturday of natural causes.

A close friend and associate of John Mitchell -- President Nixon’s attorney general and later his reelection campaign director -- LaRue became a trusted member of the administration in 1969, even though he did not have a salary, a title or a listing in the White House directory.

Described as a skillful behind-the-scenes operator, he was present at a key meeting in 1972 between Mitchell and Nixon aide Jeb Stuart Magruder when the plan to break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington allegedly was approved.

LaRue became a central figure in the Watergate coverup as the “bagman” who delivered hush money to participants in the bungled break-in.

On June 27, 1973, he pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiring to obstruct justice and began cooperating with prosecutors. He served five months in federal prison.

He remained an ardent defender of Nixon, speaking out as recently as last year to assail Magruder’s assertions in a PBS program that the president ordered the illegal entry and bugging at the Watergate.

LaRue had experienced scandal and tragedy before he ever entered Nixon’s inner circle. His father, Ike Parsons LaRue, had served jail time for banking violations. Later, in 1954, he struck oil in Mississippi. Young Frederick worked in the oil field alongside other relatives for several years, until it was sold for a reported $30 million in 1967. That same year he shot and killed his father in a hunting accident in Canada.

Various reports suggest that the LaRues never had control of the oil fortune or that they squandered it in bad investments. When Frederick LaRue’s name started appearing in newspapers in connection with the Watergate controversy, he told a reporter that he was “no millionaire.”

The family wealth, however, established him as a power in Mississippi politics in the 1960s. He was a major contributor to Arizona Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater’s failed 1964 presidential bid. In 1967 LaRue became a generous friend of the Nixon campaign. When the Republican National Convention came around the following year, he was a key Southern strategist in the Nixon election drive.

In 1972, after Mitchell resigned as attorney general to head the Committee to Re-Elect the President, known as CREEP, LaRue became a hard-core member of the “Mitchell group” at CREEP, along with Robert C. Mardian and Henry S. Fleming. He also worked closely with Magruder, the deputy campaign manager. They became so close that they were often referred to as one person, “Magrue.”

LaRue was with Magruder, Mitchell and Mardian at a campaign stop in Los Angeles when the Watergate burglars were arrested, on June 17, 1972. G. Gordon Liddy, one of “the plumbers” -- the nickname for the clandestine White House operation that carried out the burglary -- phoned Magruder and LaRue during breakfast to break the news. Magruder took the call.

“He said, ‘That’s Gordon Liddy. He wants me to go out to some air base and talk on a secure phone,’ ” LaRue, recalling Magruder’s words, told the Biloxi Sun Herald last year. “I said, ‘Go get the damned pay phone. That’s just as good, and find out what he wants.’ ”

According to Magruder’s testimony before the Senate Watergate committee -- an account reportedly confirmed by LaRue -- he and LaRue worked in lock-step with Mitchell and Mardian from that day forward to concoct and maintain a coverup story.

“I joined in that coverup, at least by acquiescence,” LaRue said in a statement after he admitted the government’s charges against him.

He also joined Mardian in destroying documents and financial records pertaining to the Watergate operation. Additionally, LaRue received more than $300,000 in cash, which he distributed to Watergate defendants and their lawyers.

James W. McCord Jr., one of the men arrested at the Watergate complex, said at the time that the money was paid to ensure that all the defendants would plead guilty and remain silent.

Of the seven defendants, McCord and Liddy refused to plead guilty, but all were found guilty of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping.

Although the first to plead guilty in the coverup case, LaRue was the last defendant to be sentenced. He served most of a six-month sentence before returning to Mississippi.

He was often mentioned as among those thought to be Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward’s shadowy inside source, Deep Throat. Other candidates included Alexander Haig, Nixon’s chief of staff and later President Reagan’s secretary of State; Earl J. Silbert, an original Watergate prosecutor; and L. Patrick Gray, the acting FBI director, who lived near Woodward.

LaRue denied the distinction, as did all the others, and conjectured that the legendary source was actually an amalgamation of figures close to the scandal.

“Who ... would it have been?” he mused in an interview with a Biloxi reporter recently. “There were not that many people who knew the inside and out of what was going on. I don’t think it would have been Magruder. It wasn’t me.”

Woodward, who said he would reveal Deep Throat’s identity after the source died, could not be reached Wednesday.