Tim Gratz and Donald Segretti Options

[John Simkin]

Donald Segretti was born in San Marino, California on 17th September, 1941. He studied law at the University of Southern California. Fellow students included Dwight L. Chapin, Ron Ziegler, Herbert Porter and Gordon Strachan. They became members of a group called "Trojans for Representative Government".

After leaving university Segretti became a lawyer in California. His friend Dwight L. Chapin found employment at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in Los Angeles. A senior figure at the agency was was H. R. Haldeman. In 1968 Haldeman went to work for Richard Nixon as the president's chief of staff. Dwight L. Chapin was appointed as Special Assistant to the President. Chapin had special responsibility for acts of political sabotage and espionage against the Democratic Party. Chapin recruited Segretti as part of this "dirty tricks" campaign.

During their investigation of the Watergate Scandal the journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein discovered that Segretti had attempted to smear leading politicians such as George McGovern, Edward Kennedy, Edmund Muskie and Henry Jackson. This included a faked letter on Muskie's letterhead falsely alleging that Jackson had had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old.

On 27th October, 1972, Time Magazine published an article claiming that it had obtained information from FBI files that Dwight Chaplin had hired Segretti to disrupt the Democratic campaign. The following month Carl Bernstein interviewed Segretti who admitted that E. Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy were behind the dirty tricks campaign against the Democratic Party.

In 1974 Segretti pleading guilty to three misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal campaign literature and producing faked documents. He only served four months in prison but he lost his California license to work as a lawyer.

In his book, The Taking of America, Richard E. Sprague argued that Segretti, along with Dennis Cassini, supplied money to Arthur Bremer before he attempted to assassinate George Wallace.

Segretti eventually returned to work as a lawyer. In 1995 he became a candidate as Superior Court judge in Orange County, California. However, he was forced to withdraw when local newspapers pointed out his connections to the Watergate Scandal.

In 2000 Segretti served as co-chair of John McCain's campaign in Orange County.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsegretti.htm