Washington -- Once this was the stuff of solemn Senate committee hearings, during which all the president's men were grilled under oath and in stentorian tones about that burglary of the Democratic Party's offices at the Watergate complex 20 years ago yesterday.
But this being the '90s, the case has shamelessly changed venues to the arena where truth, justice and the American way now apparently play themselves out: the radio talk show.
Which explains, admittedly only partially, why break-in mastermind G. Gordon Liddy, the three policemen who arrested the burglars and assorted other Watergate insiders and hangers-on found themselves literally back at the scene of the crime yesterday to remember -- not to mention, revise -- the scandal that riveted the world and ultimately brought down the Nixon presidency.
"It is 17 June of 1992, 20 years since I was last here at Watergate," deadpanned Mr. Liddy as he began yesterday's live broadcast of his regular midday radio show airing here and in Baltimore (on WJFK 1300-AM). "They greeted me last night and asked if I would refrain from picking and breaking their locks this time."
As some 50 reporters and fans crowded into a room at the Watergate hotel -- which adjoins the Watergate complex where the break-in actually occurred -- Mr. Liddy hosted a slightly raucous but mostly weird three-hour show that reunited him either in person or by phone to such cohorts and opponents as former White House aide Chuck Colson and a lawyer for the Senate committee that he steadfastly had stonewalled.
At 61, he's a bit grayer and balder than during his Watergate days, but that only serves to make his bushy mustache and circumflex eyebrows even more startling. Even if you had trouble telling Haldeman from Ehrlichman or keeping your Kroghs straight from your Kalmbachs back then, there was never any mistaking which one was G. Gordon Liddy: He was the one who, to show how tough he was, held his hand over a flame until it charred black. The one who refused to sing and thus served the longest sentence -- 52 months -- of any of the Watergate figures.
He grooves and goofs, on the Watergate thing, turning it into a personal cottage industry of sorts: His Volvo bears the vanity plate, "H20GATE," his 5-month-old, Washington-based talk show has a weekly feature called "Pop Goes the Weasel," in which he takes potshots at former Nixon counsel John Dean 3d.
