Fred LaRue , a high - ranking Nixon administration official who served a prison term for his role in Watergate and was among those rumored to be Deep Throat , has died .
prison term
fred larue high ranking nixon administration official serve prison term his role watergate rumor deep throat die
Fred LaRue , a high - ranking Nixon administration official who served a <m> prison term </m> for his role in Watergate and was among those rumored to be Deep Throat , has died .
http : / / www . foxnews . com / story / 2004 / 07 / 28 / nixon - aide - fred - larue - dies - at - 75 /
Nixon Aide Fred LaRue Dies at 75
Published July 28 , 2004
Fred LaRue , a high - ranking Nixon administration official who served a <m> prison term </m> for his role in Watergate and was among those rumored to be Deep Throat , has died .
He was 75 .
His body was discovered Tuesday by a maid who entered his hotel room in Biloxi , Coroner Gary Hargrove said .
The coroner said he believes LaRue died Saturday of natural causes .
LaRue was known as the "bagman" who delivered payoffs to keep participants in the Watergate break - in quiet , and served 4� months in federal prison for conspiracy to obstruct justice .
LaRue served as special assistant to John Mitchell , the former attorney general who later headed President Nixon's Committee to Re - elect the President .
LaRue was present at a 1972 meeting with Mitchell and Nixon aide Jeb Stuart Magruder at Nixon's vacation home in Key Biscayne , Fla . , where the plan to break in Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington allegedly was hatched .
LaRue said he advised against the burglary .
LaRue discounted rumors that he was Deep Throat , saying the mysterious source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the Watergate story was probably a combination of several people .
Woodward says Deep Throat was an individual and not a composite , and promised to reveal his identity only after the source is dead .
Among the other people who have been cited as possible Deep Throats are Earl J . Silbert , an original Watergate prosecutor ; Alexander Haig , who was Nixon's chief of staff and Ronald Reagan's secretary of state ; L . Patrick Gray , the acting FBI director who lived four blocks from Woodward ; and deputy White House counsel Fred Fielding .
All have denied it .
After his political career ended in scandal , LaRue returned to his home state of Mississippi to work in his family's oil company and with its real estate holdings .
In an interview last summer with The Sun Herald newspaper , LaRue said Magruder lied when he claimed President Nixon knew about the break - in .
Magruder claimed Nixon approved the plan in a telephone conversation with Mitchell .
LaRue believed no such conversation occurred , saying he screened all the telephone calls on the getaway to Key Biscayne .
"I'm exceedingly angry about it .
I don't recall any phone call .
I don't think there was one , " he said .
If the president had approved the plan , LaRue believes that Mitchell would have told him .
"There's absolutely no way , because of my unique relationship with John and Martha Mitchell , that he would not have told me that when I was in Key Biscayne , " LaRue said .
"Absolutely no way .
I had dinner with the Mitchells four or five times a week .
It was not just a political relationship .
It was a very personal relationship . "