“I know it violates the sensibilities of the innocent and tender-minded, but in the real world you sometimes have to employ extreme and extralegal methods to preserve the very system whose laws you're violating.”

-- G. Gordon Liddy, in a Playboy magazine interview years ago, vis a vis his discussion with other operatives on how to assassinate journalist Jack Anderson. It's detailed in Mark Feldstein's recent article, “The Nixon White House plotted to assassinate a journalist 50 years ago,” in The Washington Post. I know a lot about Nixon, and Watergate, but I never knew this story. Seems insane, and Liddy seems more sociopath than I realized. Feldstein quotes the above after writing, “Liddy offered to stab Anderson to death and make it look like a routine robbery by stealing Anderson's watch and wallet.” Apparently a few days after Howard Hunt briefed Charles Colson on the matter, the hit was canceled, or at least put on pause, so they could bug Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. It's possible that Frank Wills not only helped expose the underbelly of the Nixon administration, he might've saved Jack Anderson's life, too.