Jeb Stuart Magruder
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Jeb Magruder | |
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Personal details | |
Born | Jeb Stuart Magruder November 5, 1934 New York City, New York, U.S. |
Died | May 11, 2014 Danbury, Connecticut, U.S. | (aged 79)
Political party | Republican |
Education | Williams College (BA) University of Chicago (MBA) Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv) |
Jeb Stuart Magruder (November 5, 1934 – May 11, 2014) was an American businessman and high-level political operative in the
He served President Richard Nixon in various capacities, including acting as special assistant to the President for domestic policy development, and later as deputy director of the president's 1972 re-election campaign, Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP). In August 1973, Magruder pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to wiretap, obstruct justice and defraud the United States. He served seven months in federal prison.[2]
Magruder later attended Princeton Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. He spoke publicly about ethics and his role in the Watergate scandal. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he gave interviews in which he changed his accounts of actions by various participants in the Watergate coverup, including claiming that Nixon ordered the break-ins.[1]
Early life
External videos | |
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1973 Watergate Hearings; 1973-06-14; Part 1 of 6, 1:04:59, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC[3] |
Jeb Stuart Magruder was born and grew up on
After two years at Williams College, he served in the
Magruder started at IBM after college, but dropped out of its training program after only a few days.[5] He went to California and married a Berkeley student,[9] Gail Barnes Nicholas, then took a job with the Crown Zellerbach, selling paper goods in Kansas City.[5] Later, he started his own consumer products company. Later, he earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Chicago.[10]
Marriage and family
He married Gail Barnes Nicholas[9][11] on October 17, 1959,[12] in Brentwood, California.[13] The couple had four children.[14] They were divorced in 1984.
Magruder married Patricia Newton on February 28, 1987, in Columbus, Ohio. They were divorced in May 2003.
Business career and politics
In the late 1950s, Magruder moved to Kansas City with Jewel Tea, in a transfer for work. He became involved there as a campaign manager for the Republican Party during the 1960 election campaign, working as chairman of an urban ward.[15]
Magruder moved to Chicago for his
In Chicago, he again, was involved with the Republican Party. Magruder was a ward chairman, for Donald Rumsfeld's 1962 Illinois's 13th congressional district United States House of Representatives Republican primary campaign.[5] Rumsfeld won the primary and the seat in Congress.
In 1962 Magruder moved from Booz Allen Hamilton to
Magruder became involved with the Illinois organization of the
In mid-1966, he returned to California, to begin a job with the Broadway Stores.[18] In mid-1967, he served as Southern California coordinator for the Richard Nixon presidential campaign. He left early in 1968 due to internal organizational problems.[19]
Magruder entered partnership during early 1969 with two other entrepreneurs to start two new businesses, and became president and chief executive officer of these firms.[20]
Joins White House staff
Magruder was appointed to the
Committee to Re-elect the President
Watergate scandal |
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Events |
People |
Magruder served in the White House until the spring of 1971, when he left to manage the
The 1972
Manages 1973 Inaugural
Magruder worked as inaugural director from October 1972 to arrange Nixon's
Watergate scandal
Magruder, in his role with CRP, was involved with the Watergate matters from an early stage, including its planning, execution, and cover-up.
Liddy plan
Magruder met with White House Counsel John Dean and John Mitchell on January 27 and February 4, 1972, to review preliminary plans by G. Gordon Liddy (Counsel to CRP) for intelligence gathering ideas for the 1972 campaign. The Watergate burglaries would evolve from those meetings. From the day they met in December 1971, Magruder and Liddy (who had been hired by Mitchell and Dean) had a conflicted personal relationship.[25]
Cooperates with prosecutors
During April 1973, Magruder began cooperating with federal
Magruder originally testified that he knew nothing to indicate that President Nixon had any prior knowledge of the Watergate burglary.
In his book, An American Life: One Man's Road to Watergate (1974), he wrote,
I know nothing to indicate that Nixon was aware in advance of the plan to break into the Democratic headquarters. It is possible that Mitchell or Haldeman told him in advance, but I think it's likelier that they would not have mentioned it unless the operation had produced some results of interest to him.
[page needed] This book was published before Magruder's sentencing on May 21, and before Nixon resigned as the president.
Magruder had testified that he thought that he was helping establish a legal
After Watergate
After his prison term, Magruder published a Christian-oriented memoir, From Power to Peace in 1976. He earned a
In 1990 Magruder was called as senior pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of
Continued controversy
In 1990 Magruder consented to interviews with authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin while the two were conducting research for their 1991 book Silent Coup: The Removal of a President (St. Martin's Press). Magruder admitted that he had lied to prosecutors, to the Senate's Watergate Committee, and in his 1974 book An American Life: One Man's Road to Watergate, concerning aspects of the early cover-up.
To Colodny and Gettlin, he said that he had called John Dean several hours after the (second) Watergate break-in was discovered, and that Dean set in motion several cover-up strategies. This version of events tallied closely with that of Liddy, as set out in his 1980 book Will. Books published earlier by others, however, such as Magruder's in 1974 and Dean's Blind Ambition (1976), had become the accepted 'truth' of the cover-up. These versions had very profound and damaging effects on the reputations of senior figures such as Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Mitchell.[29]
To Colodny and Gettlin, Magruder admitted specifically instructing Liddy on the second Watergate break-in, something which he had earlier denied. At the time these interviews were conducted, Magruder was a Presbyterian minister in Columbus, Ohio.[29][page needed]
In 2003 Magruder was interviewed again, by PBS researchers and the Associated Press. According to his account in a PBS documentary, Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History, and in an interview with the Associated Press, he asserted that Nixon knew about the Watergate burglary early in the process, and well before the scandal broke.[citation needed] During the 2003 interviews, Magruder said that he had attended a meeting with Mitchell on March 30, 1972, at which he heard Nixon tell Mitchell by telephone to begin the Watergate plan. This account, however, has been contested by Fred LaRue. LaRue, who was the only other person present at the meeting in which the alleged telephone call from Nixon to Mitchell occurred, has said that no telephone call from Nixon to Mitchell took place during this meeting.[citation needed] Magruder is the only direct participant of the scandal to claim that Nixon had specific prior knowledge of the Watergate burglary, and that Nixon directed Mitchell to proceed with the burglary. These statements contradict Magruder's earlier accounts that the cover-up had reached no higher in the Administration than Mitchell.
In his 1974 book, Magruder had said that the only telephone call from the White House during this meeting came from H.R. Haldeman's aide, Gordon C. Strachan. Sixteen years later, in the August 7, 1990 interview with Colodny and Gettlin, Magruder changed his account, claiming that the telephone call from the White House came from Haldeman himself. In 2003, Magruder changed his account again, saying that President Nixon had telephoned Mitchell at the Key Biscayne meeting.
Later years
Magruder retired first to
Death
Magruder moved to be near family in Danbury, Connecticut in 2012, and died at age 79 on May 11, 2014, due to complications from a stroke.[33]
References
- ^ a b Martin, Douglas (May 16, 2014). "Jeb Magruder, 79, Nixon Aide Jailed for Watergate, Dies (Published 2014)". The New York Times.
- ^ "One-time Nixon aide Jeb Stuart Magruder, convicted in Watergate, dies". Los Angeles Times. May 16, 2014.
- ^ "1973 Watergate Hearings; 1973-06-14; Part 1 of 6". Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. June 13, 1973. Retrieved January 20, 2018. Episode Guide
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-02-21.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-9821-3918-6.
- ^ Magruder, p. 17
- ^ Magruder, pp. 21–24
- ^ Magruder, pp. 18-29
- ^ a b "McGruder, Gail Barnes Nicholas". KAPPA KAPPA GAMMA. Retrieved 18 August 2022.
- ^ Magruder, p. 36
- ^ "Gail Barnes Nicholas, Born 03/05/1938 in California". CaliforniaBirthIndex.org. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
- ^ "Jeb S. Magruder Obituary (2014) The Gazette". The Gazette (Colorado Springs). Legacy.com. Retrieved 18 August 2022.
- ^ Magruder, pp. 29–33
- ^ "Director of Nixon Inauguration". The New York Times. 20 January 1973. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
- ^ Magruder, p. 35
- ^ Magruder, pp. 41–43
- ^ Magruder, pp. 43–45
- ^ Magruder, pp. 46–51
- ^ Magruder, 51–54
- ^ Magruder, pp. 54–55
- ^ Magruder, pp. 9-10
- H.R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power, New York: New York Times Books, 1978, p.9
- ^ Magruder, pp. 298–303
- ^ Magruder, pp. 310–318
- ^ Magruder, pp. 185–197
- ^ Gold, Victor (August 28, 1973). "Jeb Magruder, Superstar (Published 1973)". The New York Times.
- ^ Magruder, pp. 210–215
- ^ "washingtonpost.com - watergate scandal and deep throat update, jeb magruder". www.washingtonpost.com.
- ^ a b Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991
- ^ Marx, Matthew (2007-07-23), "Watergate figure hospitalized after Rt. 315 crash", The Columbus Dispatch[permanent dead link]
- ^ "News Briefs", The Columbus Dispatch, 2007-07-28
- ^ Decker, Theodore (2007-07-26), "Ex-Nixon aide charged in two crashes", The Columbus Dispatch
- ^ Brammer, Jack. "Watergate figure Jeb Stuart Magruder, who later became a minister in Lexington, dies at 79 | Faith & Values". Kentucky.com. Retrieved 2014-05-16.
Sources
- Graff, Garrett M. (15 February 2022). Watergate: A New History. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-9821-3918-6.
- Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991
- Jeb Stuart Magruder, An American Life: One Man's Road to Watergate, New York 1974, Atheneum
- published before Magruder's sentencing on May 21, and before Nixon's resignation.