Thursday, October 4,1973
University Daily Kansan
2
Dirty Tricks Wrong, Segretti Says
WASHINGTON (AP) - Donald Segretti yesterday catalogued his inventory of tricks used against 1972 Democratic presidential candidates, apologized and said they had no place in election campaigns.
"I don't call any of the things I did at that time prank's." Segretti told the Senate Watergate committee. "I don't think there was a problem, but I never you call it in the political system."
Segretti, a 32-year-old lawyer from Los Angeles, said he had been recruited for his activities by Dwight Chapin, then President Nixon's appointments secretary. Segretti said that he had kept in frequent contact with Chapin.
HE SAID agents had worked for him in six locations and had personally employed diverse tactics like phony letters containing fake charges, planting a stink bomb in campaign headquarters, inserting classified advertisements under fictitious
names and distributing signs, bumper stickers and pumpholders under the names of
At one time, he said, he paid 11 persons and later agreed that the figure was 28. He said his people had operated in Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C.
"WERE YOU aware it is unlawful to send malicious and libellous letters?" asked Sen.
"I'm certainly aware of it now," said Segretti, who earlier this week pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts, which carry a possible penalty of three years in jail and a $3,000 fine, stemming from a false mailing.
Sergetti had he said then-presidential counsel John Dean III about his activities last October when the Washington senator asked him a number of details. After the story was published, the
White House dismissed comment on the allegations.
WHEN HE appeared before the grand jury, Segretti said, the original federal Watergate prosecutors asked him questions about how he was paid, although they had discussed it briefly beforehand. A juror brought up the question, Segretti said.
He corroborated testimony that he had been paid $4,500 in salary and expenses by the University of Southern California lawyer, after being hired by Chapin and Gordon Strachan, another White House aide. He had been friends with the two men while attending the University of Southern California.
SEGRETTI was the second witness in the "dirty tricks" phase of the Watergate hearings. Committee staffers said the next witnesses would be Robert Benz and Douglas Kelly, two Segretti agents in Florida.
Segretti said so far as he knew President
Nixon had been ignorant of his activities.
He agreed with the assessment that his entire sabotage operation had had the weight of a feather in its effect on the election outcome.
WHILE HE conducted his activities from the last half of 1971 until the Democratic National Convention in 1972, Segretti used aliases. Once in New Hampshire, he didn't use them, and he said he was pulled out of the state.
"Who thought up the dirty tricks?" he was asked.
"I think to a major extent I did," said Segretti.
Not long after Segreti finished a 10-pass prepared statement which ticked off a long list of hoxes, the committee itself was boxed. A telephone caller's report of a break-in on a San Francisco hotel Sam Ervin J., D-N.C. to break off the morning session. No bomb was found.
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