‘I was a puppet’: How I found myself in the middle of the Watergate scandal and what really worries me about Washington now

While Donald Segretti was returning from Vietnam shortly after being drafted, he received a call from an old friend at the University of Southern California asking if he would like to work for the President of the United States.

This seemed like a great opportunity, but unfortunately it led to him becoming a member of the Committee for Re-election of the President (CREEP) and his name becoming synonymous with Watergate.

Half a century later, at 84, Segretti is as compelling as he was when 60 Minutes called him “the most unlikely of political saboteurs.”

He has studiously stayed out of the spotlight ever since and is one of the few remaining players from the infamous scandal.

He has successfully rebuilt his life, still works as a bankruptcy attorney in California, and is happy to be living a productive life after being caught in the Watergate vortex.

In a rare interview with the Daily Mail, Segretti described how he was ‘thrown to the wolves’ amid the drama engulfing the Nixon administration.

On October 10, 1972, he was named for the first time as an ‘undercover Nixon agent’ who was paid by the White House and CREEP to carry out dirty tricks against Democratic presidential candidates.

The 5ft 4in young lawyer then found himself at the center of a media feeding frenzy, being tracked by the Washington Post to his apartment in Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles, testifying at the Senate Watergate hearings and serving four months in prison.

The whirlwind began after he spent a year as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, presiding over military courts in Vietnam.

He had previously been to USC; Their acquaintances included members of the Representative Government Trojans who performed dirty tricks on college selections and later became Nixon White House staffers, where they became known as the ‘USC mafia’. Segretti also served briefly at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

‘I joined that crowd in Washington DC. It was a nightmare. These were not good years,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘I was so young in comparison, I was persuaded to work for the group in the White House. What I was told turned out to be very different and I was really mauled and beaten by most of the media at the time.

‘So I didn’t call them; they called me. You know, I was stuck in the middle of something that I had no idea about, I didn’t know the background or who these people were.

Richard Nixon announced his resignation from the White House on August 9, 1974.

The scandal broke after the robbery of the DNC headquarters in the Watergate building, in which Segretti had no involvement.

‘I realized what I was in the middle of and left them. The management at the time wasn’t very happy with me and kind of interrupted me, so I was on my own. So I was sort of thrown to the wolves.’

‘Over time, obviously with courage, hard work, persistence, I got through it and everything went well. Over the years, I built a good life for myself and worked as a successful lawyer. ‘I’m still practicing a bit, but it was a terrible time for me.’

Segretti had nothing to do with the infamous robbery of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC.

Instead, he targeted Democratic presidential candidates in the 1972 primaries, using agents who identified him as ‘Don Simmons’.

The dirty tricks were aimed at derailing Ed Muskie, the leading candidate of the Democratic Party, who was ahead of Nixon in the polls, especially while the President was seeking re-election.

In the most famous case, stolen Muskie campaign stationery was used to send letters to voters saying that Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey had previously been arrested for drunk driving and that another Muskie rival, Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson, had fathered a child with a 17-year-old girl.

The stories were false and designed to look like a dirty trick campaign by Muskie, thus damaging his reputation.

Other Segretti tactics were less serious; Including booking unwanted guests and entertainment for Muskie events. He stood across the road and watched them arrive.

In a famous scene from the Hollywood movie ‘All the President’s Men’, in which Segretti is played by Robert Walden, Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein, played by Dustin Hoffman, arrives at the doorstep of Marina Del Rey.

The character Segretti calls his dirty tricks “Nickel and dime stuff.” Stuff with a little “intelligence” added to it.’

It also introduces the term ‘shit’, which was coined at USC to refer to political jokes.

Segretti told the Daily Mail that he never watched the entire film because his memories of that period were too painful.

‘Everything was so painful,’ he said. ‘I never really sat down and watched.’

Donald Segretti later successfully re-established his life as a lawyer in California.

Segretti in the midst of the Watergate storm in the 1970s

‘Actually it was [pranks]’ he added. ‘I didn’t know anything about Watergate but they [the media] confused this. I had no knowledge of 99 percent of what the hell they were doing. [the Watergate conspirators] We were doing it.”

The media ‘oppressed me,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t really anyone they knew. ‘It was very bad.’

His view of Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein is that they are “opportunists, to put it nicely.”

When it came to the televised Senate Watergate Committee hearings in 1973, Segretti was honest about the acts of political sabotage he had committed.

‘I was trying to survive, to get through it, and I did,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t easy or pleasant because I’m generally a relatively shy person.

‘Suddenly I was caught in the middle of something far beyond my control. Their dynamic was huge and I was right in the middle of it.

‘This was a demonstration, a political demonstration. I looked across the table and the senators were all wearing makeup, TV makeup. All the questions were placed within a certain framework. It was a show. ‘I was one of the puppets.’

The star witness of the hearings was Nixon’s White House Counsel John Dean.

“He was for John Dean,” Segretti said. ‘I’m sorry, my perspective may differ from most people’s.’

In 1974, Segretti pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges stemming from distributing illegal campaign literature about Muskie dirty tricks.

He spent four months in prison; the second half of this was in an unfamiliar setting.

‘I walked in and it was like I went into a witness protection program and there were maybe 12 other people there and they looked at me and greeted me in Italian because most of them were mafia, mafia from the east coast,’ he said. ‘Everyone was nice to me. ‘They couldn’t understand why I was there.’

His California law license was suspended for two years as authorities took note of his remorse and cooperation with Watergate investigators.

Donald Segretti after appearing before the Watergate grand jury in 1973

A newspaper announces the resignation of President Richard Nixon

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Washington Post investigative journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal

Twenty years later, in 1995, Segretti ran for a Supreme Court judgeship in Orange County, California, but the specter of Watergate was still looming.

“At one point I was told you would be a great judge, so I ran for judge, but the press covered everything,” Segretti said. ‘I said it wouldn’t work, it just wouldn’t work, there’s no honor in doing that, he’s not fit for that office, it wouldn’t make sense.

‘They numb a lot of bad things, and most of them are unfounded.

‘But they focused on it that way and, you know, when they write something in a newspaper, whether it’s true or false, it gets printed and if you’re an individual who doesn’t have anything behind you, it becomes fact. Fiction becomes reality.’

By 2000, Segretti was the Orange County co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign. There were no dirty tricks.

‘Believe me, we did nothing like this,’ he said. ‘I ran a very simple campaign. Unfortunately, we did not receive the nomination at that time.

‘And that was my last involvement with politics. ‘It can be very cruel and disgusting.’

Donald Segretti is still working as a lawyer at the age of 84

He added: ‘I worked hard, with courage and perseverance I built a comfortable practice, got married, started a family, had a wonderful daughter and grandchildren, and lived a productive, quiet life.

‘I do employment law, I still deal with some insolvencies to help people who are in trouble and help them get through difficult times in their lives. ‘I used my experience at that time to understand what people were going through and help them.’

These days he’s watching what’s going on in Washington ‘from the states’ and is shocked by some of what he sees.

‘I was horrified,’ he said. ‘I have certain points of view on many issues, but the first is that there is too much money in politics. We’re letting the wrong people in. The wrong people are running for office. Many of the wrong people were elected to office.’

He is concerned about some Supreme Court decisions, including Citizens United, which allowed money to be poured into political campaigns, and ‘decisions about giving more power to the executive branch, decisions about the President’s immunity from certain actions, I disagree with all of that.’

Segretti added: ‘We have moved away from the country that used to exist, the way it was created and the thought behind it.

‘So it’s a very frustrating time for this country, and although Watergate was a turning point in some ways, what’s happening now is profound and will outlast some of the lessons of Watergate.’

When asked to compare Nixon and President Trump, he said: ‘They are completely different. For all his flaws and many flaws, Nixon, deep down in his heart, wanted to do what was right for the country. I think Trump has different views. It’s all about Trump and his family. I think this is a rather dogmatic statement. Maybe it’s not entirely true. ‘They are both flawed, but in different directions.’

Segretti described himself as “an old-school Republican – I loved Eisenhower”

Segretti said he “broke up” with Nixon long ago but remains a Republican.

‘I’m an old-school Republican. “I loved Eisenhower,” he said.

‘We don’t have a strong two-party system. Democrats are on a tangent. They haven’t done much to maintain checks and balances and it’s all about the power between the two sides. They seem to sacrifice what is good for the country.

‘I think right now we’re seeing the problems with our government right under our feet. I hope that America will renew itself in the long and medium term, but we are going through a very difficult period in the short term. We have some institutional deficiencies. ‘I don’t think we have good leadership in either party.’

Meanwhile, Watergate seems like a long time ago.

‘I closed the topic about this,’ he said. ‘Many times I tell my clients when they are experiencing trauma in their lives, let’s close it out and look forward and move on. That’s what I did and I hope others do the same.’