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as burglarizing abandoned houses, involve much fewer risks and potentially much higher profits. The
proposals for putting addicts in concentration camps for life, thus, if actually carried would have an
infinitesimal effect on decreasing violent crimes against persons. The "Attila the Hun Law" was never
enforced with any great enthusiasm against addicts-or even against pushers. The purpose was to provide
Rockefeller with a law-and-order image that would satisfy even the most retrograde member of the
Republican party. And Rockefeller played the politics of fear so adroitly in the national media that
President Nixon borrowed from him many rhetorical images and the statistical hyperbole linking heroin
and crime in the public's mind. In his brilliant coordination of information and misinformation about
addicts, Rockefeller succeeded in making the heroin vampire a national issue and himself vice-president,
even if in the next two years the laws themselves proved unworkable.
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G. Gordon Liddy: The Will To Power
Agency of Fear
Opiates and Political Power in America
By Edward Jay Epstein
Chapter 3 - G. Gordon Liddy: The Will to Power
Until the late 1960s, the "drug menace," despite the apocalyptic metaphors associated with it, served
mainly as a rhetorical theme in New York State politics. The addicts arrested in occasional police sweeps
were almost always booked, for the statistical record, then released in what became known as "revolving
door" arrests. G. Gordon Liddy, however, foresaw a more durable purpose in the drug menace: the
public's fear of an uncontrollable army of addicts, if properly organized, could be forged into a new
instrument for social control.
George Gordon Battle Liddy, named after a New York political leader, was born on November 30, 1929,
in Brooklyn, New York. Brought up a staunch Catholic, Liddy was educated at St. Benedict's Preparatory
School in Newark, New Jersey, and at Fordham University, where he made a reputation for himself as a
fervent antiCommunist. Upon graduation in 1952, Liddy immediately enlisted in the Army, with the aim
of becoming a paratrooper. An appendicitis attack, however, disqualified him from airborne training, and
instead he fought a more prosaic war in Korea as a lieutenant in the artillery. Discharged in 1954, he
returned to Fordham Law School, where he distinguished himself on Fordham Law Review and
graduated in 1957.
For the next five years Liddy realized a childhood ambition by serving in the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover.
After the gunpoint capture of one of the ten most wanted fugitives in 1959, Liddy became the youngest
supervisor in the entire FBI and was attached to J. Edgar Hoover's personal staff at FBI national
headquarters, in Washington. Combining a skill with words and a zeal for anticommunism, Liddy served
as Hoover's personal ghostwriter, writing law-and-order articles for various magazines and preparing
speeches for the director to give at public functions. He quickly became well versed in the use of
dramatic metaphors and symbolic code words in the rhetoric of law and order. From his vantage point on
the director's personal staff he also became familiar with the extralegal operations of the FBI, such as
break-ins and wiretaps. Despite his admiration for Hoover, he realized during these years of service that
the FBI was an inefficient and bureaucratic agency and was somewhat less than an effective national
police force. In a memorandum to President Nixon ten years later he analyzed the deficiencies of the FBI
and concluded that because it conformed too closely to rules and to congressional measures of
performance, it could not be counted on as a potent instrument of the presidency. Disappointed in the
FBI, Liddy resigned from Hoover's staff in 1962 and went into private law practice with his father,
Sylvester L. Liddy, in New York City. (The exact nature of his private practice during these years has
never been ascertained.)
Since his wife, Frances Purcell Liddy, came from a lawyer's family in Poughkeepsie, New York, he
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G. Gordon Liddy: The Will To Power
decided to move there in 1966 and apply for a job as an assistant district attorney in Dutchess County.
Raymond Baratta, then district attorney of Dutchess County, interviewed Liddy and found him "militant
but soft-spoken." Liddy carried with him sealed recommendations from the FBI, and Baratta, impressed
with his energy, decided to give him the position he sought. Liddy quickly became famous, if not
notorious, in Poughkeepsie as a gun-toting prosecutor. During one criminal trial he even fired off a gun
in the courtroom to dramatize a minor point in the case. He also proved himself a local crusader against
drugs. Joining forces with the chief of police in Wappingers Falls, he traveled from high school to high
school in the county, lecturing on the dangers of narcotics and employing the rich rhetoric of Captain
Hobson. The police chief, Robert Berberich, recalled in 1975 that Liddy carried with him samples of
"everything but heroin" for his lectures. In speeches before church groups and fraternal orders in 1966,
Liddy also warned, in a variation of Hobson's yellow-peril theme, that the addicts of New York City
would eventually make their way up the Hudson Valley and contaminate Poughkeepsie with their vice
and crime. As the "legal advisor" in 1966 to the Poughkeepsie police department he also went along on
every marijuana and narcotics raid that he could find or inspire, and his colleagues in the district
attorney's office found him brilliant in presenting what otherwise would be routine arrests to the local
newspapers. Despite his constant efforts to alarm the citizens of Dutchess County, Liddy found that "the
menace ... was still thought of as principally a threat to others."
On a cold midnight in March, 1966, Liddy finally found a way to shatter the illusions of Dutchess
County and gain national publicity for himself. The coup began with a raid on the home of Timothy
Leary, a former psychologist at Harvard who had gained some prominence (and notoriety) from his
experiments with the hallucinogenic drug LSD. After being dismissed from Harvard for distributing LSD
to students, he made the mistake of renting a large mansion in Liddy's bailiwick a, Millbrook, New York.
LSD was neither an addictive drug nor one associated with crime, but Leary's presence in Dutchess
County provided Liddy with a golden opportunity. "For some time, the major media had been covering
the activities of Dr. Timothy Leary," Liddy subsequently explained in Trite magazine. "Leary's ability to
influence the young made him feared by parents everywhere. His message ran directly contrary to
everything they believed in and sought to teach their children: 'tune in' (to my values; reject those of your
parents), 'turn on' (drug yourself); 'drop out' (deal with your problems and those of society by running
away from them)." In other words, Liddy realized that Leary could be portrayed as a Pied Piper, using
mysterious drugs to turn the young against their parents. He also noted, "Local boys and girls have been
seen entering and leaving the estate ... fleeting glimpses were reported of persons strolling the grounds in
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