$200,000 Watergate settlement

Press, 24 February 1977, Page 6

$200,000 Watergate settlement

NZPA Washington Lawyers for former Presi- ■ dent Richard Nixon’s 1972 i campaign fund have agreed! to pay SUS2OO,OOO in an out-, jof-court legal settlement to! four men recruited for the ; Watergate burglary. “This settlement proves■ what we have been saying all along, that the Cubans were tricked into participating in the Watergate entries,” their lawyer, Daniel Schultze, has ■ said. The civil case had been scheduled to go on trial today 7. The original lawsuit filed; bv Bernard Barker. Eugenio Martinez. Virgilio Gonzales.! and Frank Sturgis asked S2M in damages, mainly from former officials of the 1972 Committee to Re-elect the President (known as Creep). The list of defendants in the rise read like a. who’s who of the Watergate scandals which drove Mr Nixon from office. They included the former Attorney-General. Mr John Mitchell, the former Commerce Secretary Mr Maurice Stans, a retired Central Intellegence Agency official. Howard Hunt, Mr Gordon Liddv, and Mr Jeb Stuart Magruder. All served as officials of the Committee to Re-elect; the President, now known as the 1972 Campaign Liquidation trust. The men alleged in the suit that they believed they were working for the National Security Agency or the CT V when recruited for the June 17, 1972. break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters. All four said they had participated in CIA operations aga; ist the Castro Government in Cuba, including the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. All served more than a vear in prison after pleading guilty to charges stemming from their part in the burglary. ’ |