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Watergate "Bagman" found dead

Jul 29, 2004 4:41 PM

A key player in the Watergate scandal which brought down US president Richard Nixon's administration has died.

Fred LaRue was found dead in his room at Biloxi's Sun Tan Motel on Wednesday morning. He was 75.

An aide to Nixon in 1972 at the time the Watergate scandal broke, LaRue was arguably one of the president's most vital defenders.

He always denied Nixon authorised a break-in at Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel.

Jeb Magruder, Nixon's assistant communications director at the time, said only a year ago that the president personally gave the go ahead in a telephone call to his campaign chairman John Mitchell.

LaRue called Magruder a "congenital liar" and insisted Nixon had no knowledge of the plans.

After the story broke, LaRue was convicted and jailed for delivering pay-off money to those in the know about the Watergate break-in earning himself the nickname of the "Bagman".

His death leaves the identity of Deep Throat, the source who led Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to break the Watergate scandal, a mystery.

In a recent interview LaRue denied that he was Deep Throat as some had suggested.

"Who in the hell would it have been? There were not that many people who knew the inside and out of what was going on. I don't think it would have been Magruder. It wasn't me," LaRue said.

"I don't think there was a Deep Throat. I think Deep Throat was an amalgamation of a lot of people. I think it was something to sex up the book, you know. I just don't think there was one." (The book was All the President's Men.)