Dick Smyser, 81; His Query Prompted ‘I Am Not a Crook’ Response

Dick Smyser, 81, who posed the question that led President Nixon to say “I am not a crook” at the height of the Watergate scandal, died Monday of congestive heart failure at a hospital in Oak Ridge, Tenn., according to the Oak Ridger, the newspaper he led for 45 years.

Smyser was president of the Associated Press Managing Editors Assn. in 1973 and 1974 and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1984 and 1985. During the managing editors group convention in Orlando, Fla., Smyser asked Nixon about the huge demands on the presidency.

“To what extent do you think this explains possibly how something like Watergate can occur?” he asked.

Nixon described his busy schedule, concluding with: “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.”

Nixon resigned Aug. 9, 1974, facing likely impeachment over the cover-up of the break-in of Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate hotel in Washington.

Smyser, who retired in 1983, was hired as managing editor before the Oak Ridger printed its first edition on Jan. 20, 1949. It was the first newspaper for the “secret city” the federal government created as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.