Years later, Liddy explained what was going through his mind as he volunteered to kill an American reporter on an American street on the orders, supposedly, of the American president: “I know it violates the sensibilities of the innocent and tender-minded, but in the real world, you sometimes have to employ extreme and extralegal methods to preserve the very system whose laws you’re violating.” Liddy’s observation, given in a 1980 Playboy interview, is as concise a summary as we’ve ever seen of the mindset that led Nixon’s men so corruptly and thoroughly into more chaos.
