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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/27/national/27WATE.html

Ex-Aide Says Nixon Agreed to Break-In at Watergate

By The Associated Press

Sunday 27 July 2003

WASHINGTON, July 26 (AP) - Three decades after Watergate, a
former
top aide to President Richard M. Nixon says that Nixon personally
ordered
the break-in that led to his resignation.

The aide, Jeb Stuart Magruder, previously had said only that John
Mitchell, the former attorney general who was running the Nixon
re-election
campaign in 1972, approved the plan to break into the Democratic
National
Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex near
the
White House and tap the telephone of the chairman, Larry O'Brien.

Mr. Magruder, in a PBS documentary that will be broadcast
Wednesday
and in an Associated Press interview last week, says he was meeting
with
Mr. Mitchell on March 30, 1972, when he heard Nixon tell Mr. Mitchell
over
the phone to go ahead with the plan.

The break-in occurred about two months later, on June 17, 1972.

Mr. Magruder, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and perjury
charges
stemming from the break-in and spent seven months in prison, explained
his three decades of silence about Nixon's culpability by saying,
"Nobody
ever asked me a question about that."

Some historians said they doubted the statements by Mr. Magruder,
who
was Nixon's deputy campaign director and deputy communications
director
at the White House. Stanley Kutler, an expert on Nixon's White House
tapes,
called it "the dubious word of a dubious character."

John Dean, the former White House counsel, said he was surprised
when Mr. Magruder recently told him that Nixon had encouraged the
break-in in advance.

"I have no reason to doubt that it happened as he describes it,"
Mr. Dean
said, "but I have never seen a scintilla of evidence that Nixon knew
about the
plans for the Watergate break-in."

In all, 25 people went to jail for their roles in the break-in or
the attempt to cover it up.