Joseph Ungaro, 76; question to Nixon elicited famous ‘I’m not a crook’ quote

Joseph Ungaro, 76, a former managing editor of the Providence Evening Bulletin whose question to President Nixon at an editors meeting in 1973 elicited his “I’m not a crook” reply, died Sunday at a hospital in South Kingstown, R.I., of an undiagnosed illness, his family said.

At an annual convention of the Associated Press Managing Editors organization in 1973, Ungaro asked Nixon if he had accurately reported his income taxes. Nixon’s famous declaration came after he had gone on to answer a subsequent question about the Watergate scandal. At the end of that reply, he doubled back to Ungaro’s question, saying: “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”

Nixon later agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. A reporter for the Providence newspaper, Jack White, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for reporting on Nixon’s tax troubles.

A native of Providence, R.I., Ungaro graduated from Providence College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. For the last decade, he worked at Stars and Stripes.