Scandal Continues to Reverberate Among Participants and Bit Players

WASHINGTON â€”  Charles Colson found God, G. Gordon Liddy found talk radio, Hillary Rodham found the White House.

Long after the Watergate break-in, bit players and principals in the drama still feel its lingering effects and debate how to apportion blame. New lawsuits pop up, old memories stir and passions flare anew even as the decades pass.

An update on some Watergate figures:

* Charles W. Colson, special counsel to the president, served 207 days for obstruction of justice. His experiences in prison led him to start Prison Fellowship, a Virginia-based Christian counseling program that operates in more than 600 prisons. God “used that experience--Watergate--to raise up a ministry that is reaching hundreds of thousands of people,� said Colson, 65. “So I’m probably one of the few guys around that’s saying, ‘I’m glad for Watergate.’ � Colson set up the White House “plumbers� unit, named for its purposes of plugging leaks to the media, which engaged in illegal acts. He has written several books, including “Born Again.�

* John D. Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s domestic counselor imprisoned for 18 months for his part in the Watergate conspiracy. Ehrlichman, 72, retired last year from an Atlanta engineering consulting firm and began a new project: Watergate. He’s working with a private TV producer on a Watergate documentary that promises new revelations. Alas, it won’t be ready in time for the anniversary of the break-in on June 17. “We want to be very careful and thorough, so we’re taking our time,� he said. Ehrlichman has written six books and has another novel underway.

* G. Gordon Liddy, counsel to the financial arm of the Nixon reelection campaign, spent more than four years in prison for his role in the Watergate and Daniel Ellsberg-psychiatrist break-ins and for refusing to testify. Liddy, 66, tools around Washington in a Corvette with “H2OGATE� license plates. “I am proud of the fact that I am the guy who did not talk,� he says. “I resisted all three branches of the U.S. government in attempting to get me to be a little rat like John Dean.� Liddy’s syndicated radio talk show is one of the most popular in the country. He’s defending himself against two Watergate-related lawsuits stemming from his claims that the burglary was instigated by Dean to expose a Democrat-run escort service.

* John W. Dean III, presidential counsel, served 127 days in prison for the cover-up. He is now an investment banker in Beverly Hills. Dean, who has consistently denied any role in the burglary itself, is still in fighting form at age 58. He’s suing Liddy and the authors of a 1991 book, “Silent Coup,� over their claims that he instigated the burglary. His suit says he’s particularly incensed at “vicious [and false] drivel pertaining to Mrs. Dean.� In depositions for the case, Dean repudiated parts of his own Watergate best-seller, “Blind Ambition,� saying that they were concocted “out of whole cloth� by his ghostwriter. As for Liddy’s harsh words toward him, Dean says, “Some of these people have just never grown up.�

* H.R. Haldeman, White House chief of staff who served 18 months in prison. He died of abdominal cancer in 1993 at age 67. He still had more to say about Watergate, however. In 1994, “The Haldeman Diaries� were published containing detailed contemporaneous recollections from the man who was one of Nixon’s closest advisors. In them, Haldeman writes about Nixon’s request that he and Ehrlichman resign, saying that Nixon told him that “he’s prayed hard over this decision and it’s the toughest decision he’s ever made. He made the points on why he had to have our resignations. . . . Then he went through his whole pitch about how he’s really the guilty one.�

* Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, reporters for the Washington Post whose coverage of the Watergate scandal brought them the Pulitzer Prize. Woodward is an assistant managing editor at the Post, still digging for news in Washington. His latest book, “The Choice,� created a stir with its revelation that Hillary Rodham Clinton consulted a psychic researcher who led her through imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt. Woodward is sitting on a huge scoop: the identity of Deep Throat, his anonymous Watergate source. Bernstein, who left the Post in 1977, lives in New York and has published several books.

* Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s longtime personal secretary. Woods, 79, remained on Nixon’s staff until 1976. She is retired and lives in Alliance, Ohio, where she says she doesn’t get asked about Watergate much anymore. “Every once in a while I get notes and things from some of the people who were with us, but not much. Everybody gets sort of separated,� she said. Woods has always denied that she caused the full 18 1/2-minute gap in a crucial Watergate tape, but acknowledged in court that she inadvertently wiped out four or five minutes of the tape.

* Alexander Butterfield, the aide who revealed that Nixon’s conversations in the White House had been taped. Butterfield, 71, retired as chairman of a management consulting firm in 1994 and lives in San Diego. He finds it strange that, despite the evidence on the tapes, “people still don’t understand the directorial role of Richard Nixon� in the Watergate cover-up. “I guess, to his credit, he never changed his story intimating that his aides were the ones that caused all this,� Butterfield said. He is writing his memoirs.

* Hillary Rodham, a low-level lawyer on the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry staff. America’s future first lady signed on to the Watergate probe in 1974 when she was a 26-year-old lawyer not long out of Yale Law School who would soon marry former schoolmate Bill Clinton. She later recalled her days on the Watergate investigation as “one of the greatest personal and professional opportunities I’ve ever had.� Her job was to ensure proper legal procedures were followed, including the handling of subpoenas. Nowadays, Rodham Clinton and her aides are on the receiving end of subpoenas from Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr.