Last Watergate figure out today

Press, 20 January 1979, Page 8

Last Watergate figure out today

’NZPA-Reuter Washington The former United States’ Attorney-General, John Mit-j chell, the last key Watergate! scandal figure still in jail,-’ will be freed today (NZi time) from a Federal prison! camp in Alabama. Mitchell, who is 65, the! highest ranking member of; the Nixon ’ Administration! jailed in connection with the' scandal, is expected to walk’ out the front gate of the-minimum-security prison to I the airport in’ nearby Montgomery, Ala-; bama. From there, the Parole (Commission has said, he- | will travel to Washington — the city where he met his downfall and where he now hopes to build a new life I that could include remarriage. I The release on parole of (Mitchell, the only former ’ Attorney-General to serve a prison sentence, completes another chapter in a scandal that toppled former President Richard Nixon. Watergate began with a break-in on June 17, 1972, at the Democratic Party’s headquarters in the Watergate office complex. Other irre-

gularities during the 1972 Nixon re-election campaign were also tied in with Watergate. Twenty-five men were jailed for Watergate or related crimes and only two served longer than Mitchell’s 19 months: Gordon Liddy (52 months) and a former Central Intelligence Agency man. Howard Hunt (32 months). John Erhlichman and H R. Haldeman, the other two former high-ranking Nixon aides sentenced with Mitchell for helping cover up the White House’s role in Watergate, have been oui for some time now. Once Mr Nixon’s closest confidant, Mitchell is now at an age at which most Americans take it easy while they wait for their monthly pension cheque. Friends, however, say that’ he will not be doing that. They expect Mitchell, a widower, to marry again, and almost certainly go back to work. They do not see him trying to make money, as other Watergate figures have done, by writing or lecturing about his political experiences.

;1 He cannot go back to (being a lawyer since he was . disbarred because of his I , Watergate sentence. But hej . has an abundance of market-j ! able knowledge acquired in , his pre-political days as a ; highly-paid bond lawyer,. • advising states and cities I 1 how to finance multimillion! idollar construction projects.