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youths, or, as he put It, "to fears of drug induced dementia were added pot induced pregnancy." He even
foresaw that if citizens' fears about drugs were properly stimulated, "there would be reenacted at
Millbrook the classic motion picture scene in which enraged Transylvanian town folks storm Dr.
Frankenstein's castle." Even though Liddy was mixing his myths up a bit (Transylvania was the haunting
place of the vampire Dracula, not of Frankenstein's monster). He correctly perceived the connection in
the public imagination between the drug addict and the medieval legend of the living dead. And it was
this connection of fears that Liddy set out to exploit with his midnight raid.
In planning the night operation, Liddy explained, "We hoped to find not only a central supply of LSD
belonging to Leary, but also his guests' personal supplies of marijuana and hashish... it was necessary to
strike quickly, with benefit of surprise, if the inhabitants were to be caught in their rooms and any
contraband found in the rooms established as possessed by the tenants." To avoid the necessity of having
to depend on testimony of witnesses, Liddy planned to wait until Leary and his friends were all asleep in
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G. Gordon Liddy: The Will To Power
their rooms, then, to catch them red-handed, "We would perform a classic 'no knock' entry-that is, kick in
the front door." After that, Liddy himself was to lead "a quick charge upstairs by the bulk of the force of
deputies, who were then to fan out and hold the inhabitants in their rooms pending a systematic search."
All, however, did not go as Liddy planned. Instead of retiring at about eleven P.M., as Liddy presumed,
the residents of the estate gathered at about that time in the living room and began showing a film. Liddy
recounted in True magazine in 1974: "The deputies assumed that the movies were pornographic, and
there was some competition for the assignment to move into binocular range to obtain further
information ... [but] presently the lucky man returned to report in a tone of complete disgust, 'it ain't no
dirty movie; You'll never guess what them hippies are watching. A waterfall.' "
The film did not finish until nearly one A.M., by which time most of the deputies were extremely cold
and exhausted. Finally, the raiding party moved in on the sleeping foe. Liddy introduced himself to Dr.
Leary, who meekly surrendered. And some incriminating marijuana and LSD were indeed found on the
premises. However, because Liddy had not fully advised Leary of his rights, as they were defined by the
United States Supreme Court in the Miranda decision that year, the judge dismissed the charges against
Leary and his followers. Though Liddy viewed the Supreme Court as an "unelected elite" that had
usurped power in the United States, he acquiesced in the decision. After all, he had successfully
"exposed" Leary in the newspapers of Dutchess County (and Leary subsequently left the county), and he
had established his own reputation as a drug fighter.
By successfully waging his crusade against drugs (albeit in a county which had few, if any, criminal
addicts), Liddy established a formidable reputation for himself in the county. The next logical step was
gaining power. Liddy saw life itself as a contest for power. He said, on a national television broadcast
some years later, "Power exists to be used ... the first obligation of ... someone seeking power is to get
himself elected...... In this contest for power Liddy posited that the man with the strongest will for power
would win. He wrote his wife, philosophically, "if any one component of man ought to be exercised,
cultivated, and strengthened above all others, it is the will; and that will must have but one objective-to
win." In June, 1968, Liddy first attempted to win the race for office by running against the incumbent,
Albert Rosenblatt, for the Republican nomination for district attorney of Dutchess County. He had little
support from Republican politicians and was defeated in a party caucus by a vote of 25 to 4.
Liddy next turned the focus of his attention to the Republican nomination for Congress from the
Poughkeepsie district. Openly challenging Hamilton Fish, Jr., who held the Republican seat, he mounted
a bitter primary campaign in the summer of 1968, which the Democratic opponent, John S. Dyson,
described as "hyperadrenaloid and bitterly anti-communist." He traveled from fraternal lodge to fraternal
lodge in Dutchess County, relentlessly pursuing the theme of vampire-addicts jeopardizing the life and
safety of Dutchess County citizens. Law and order became his battle cry; his campaign advertisements
contained such slogans as "Gordon Liddy doesn't bail them out-he puts them in" and "He knows the
answer is law and order, not weak-kneed sociology." Despite the vigor of his campaign, he was defeated
in the primary by the incumbent, Hamilton Fish, by only a few thousand votes.
Liddy had lost a few battles in 1968, but not the war. Victory, he realized, proceeded from a superior
mind-set, and not from any temporary configuration of voters: "The master who instructed me in the
deadliest of the Oriental martial arts taught me that the outcome of a battle is decided in the minds of the
opponents before the first blow is struck." Liddy, in a letter to his wife published in Harper's magazine in
October. 1974, credited the "mind-set of the ... SS division Leibenstandarte" for the Nazi victories, and
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G. Gordon Liddy: The Will To Power
contrasted this with "the ill-disciplined, often drugged dropouts that make up a significant portion of the
nation's armed forces today. He entered the congressional fray again in 1968, this time as a candidate for
the nomination of the New York State Conservative party. And as the strongest law-and-order candidate
of Dutchess County, he easily won this nomination.
Liddy now presented Hamilton Fish with a serious problem in his bid for reelection to Congress. The
public-opinion polls showed in September, 1968, that it was going to be an exceedingly close race
between Fish and Dyson. As the Conservative candidate and the locally celebrated prosecutor who had
"captured Timothy Leary," Liddy threatened to win enough votes among conservative Republicans to
ensure Fish's defeat and a Democratic victory. Though Liddy himself could not win the election, he had
cleverly maneuvered himself into a position to make a deal. Gerald Ford, then the Republican leader in
the House of Representatives and a friend of Hamilton Fish's, went that fall to Poughkeepsie and
personally arranged for Liddy to endorse the candidacy of Hamilton Fish. In return for abandoning his
Conservative campaign Liddy was promised a high position in the Nixon administration, if Nixon was
elected. Liddy also agreed to head Nixon's campaign effort in Dutchess County.
After Nixon's victory in 1968 Hamilton Fish returned to Congress, and Gordon Liddy also went to
Washington. In 1969 Liddy was appointed special assistant to the secretary of the treasury. He served
directly under Eugene T. Rossides, who had direct responsibility for all the law-enforcement activities of
the Treasury Department, including the Customs Bureau, the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms unit, the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]