He’s a former FBI agent, a best-selling author, a one-time part-time actor and currently host of a syndicated radio show heard daily by some 8 million to 10 million Americans.
He also was one of the masterminds of the 1972 Watergate burglary that forever changed American politics, as well as the 1971 burglary at the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers fame). He also served a longer sentence — more than four years — than anyone else involved in the Watergate scandal.
Ladies and gentleman, please welcome to Israel, and the radio studio at the Jerusalem Post, G. Gordon Liddy — a genuine American original, a staunch and outspoken supporter of Israel.
Liddy, “delighted” to be working with the Jerusalem Post, will bring his daily, very conservative radio program the G. Gordon Liddy Show — to the country for a week, starting Monday.
Next week he will interview a host of Israeli leaders and talk to his listeners on some 200 radio stations around the United States from the Post’s building in Jerusalem.
Asked if he is afraid to come to Israel now, at a time of State Department travel advisories and a complete lack of tourism, Liddy emphatically replied “Nooo.”
“I’m a life member of the American Special Operations Association, a former wartime artillery officer in our Army, and a former bureau supervisor of the FBI,” he said, in signature staccato. “I don’t like to say a lot of self-serving things, but I once captured at gunpoint one of only two people in history who had twice been on the FBI’s 10 most-wanted list, and I did it at gunpoint by out-drawing him.
“I’m not going to be afraid to go to Israel, for heaven’s sake. If someone starts shooting at me, and there is a gun nearby, they are going to be damned sorry.”
Although plans to do the show in Israel were hatched well before Sept. 11, Liddy feels the U.S. attacks make his coming to Israel more “pertinent and important.”
“The U.S. citizenry now understand to some degree what every Israeli citizen has been going through for so many years at the hands of the terrorists,” Liddy said.
On one of his Web sites, Liddy describes what he views as his overall purpose in public life as follows: “to look through the night of nitwittery, cut through the political correctness, and blow away the bravo sierra [b.s.] to find the good, the true, the prudent and wise so you can act upon it to the benefit of your personal, family, working, community and national life as an American citizen.”
Asked whether his listeners are now interested in what is happening in Israel, considering that U.S. forces are involved in fighting to Israel’s east, Liddy said Americans are concerned about the Jewish state because of Osama bin Laden’s attempts to link the attacks to U.S. support for Israel.
“The terrorists are saying there will be no peace in the U.S. until they feel secure in — quote — ‘Palestine’ — end quote. That is code for the extinction of the Israeli state, and the driving out and killing of all Jews in what they claim as ‘Palestine,’ ” he said.
Liddy said that the United States “has no business forcing the representatives of the legitimate democratic government of Israel to parley with a man who is a terrorist, who — while he talks peace in English for CNN — turns around and says in Arabic to his Arabic brethren, ‘Don’t listen to that.'”
“Yasser Arafat’s plan is still the same, and that is the extinction of Israel,” Liddy said. “He is a terrorist himself. He harbors terrorists, he gives them aid and succor, and that means he falls under the definition that President Bush has said of a regime that must be ended. Why, if it is a regime that must be ended, should Israel continue these fruitless discussions with him?”
Asked why Bush, whom Liddy avidly supports, does not see this, the G-man placed the problem squarely on Secretary of State Colin Powell’s shoulders.
“Powell counseled Bush’s father against military action to eject Iraq from Kuwait, and then stopped the war when he had it won, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Now he is giving him [the younger Bush] the same advice.”
Asked what role Israel should play in the U.S. war on terror, Liddy said: “They should give all the superb intelligence assistance they can to the United States. They should keep their guard up, continue their policy of killing those who mastermind killing in Israel, and resist U.S. State Department Arabists when they would have them engage in futile blabber with the likes of Yasser Arafat.”