FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats

"'When a rally is scheduled at 7 p.m. at a local coliseum by a particular candidate, you call up and represent to the manager that you're the field manager for this candidate and you have some information that some rowdies, some hippies or what-have-you are going to cause trouble. So you ask him to move the rally up to 9 o'clock -- thereby insuring that the place would be padlocked when the candidate showed up at 7.'"

Shipley said he was asked by Segretti to fly to Atlanta to enlist their Army colleague, Kenneth Griffiths, in the project, but that he never made the trip. However, when visiting Griffiths last Christmas, said Shipley, "Griffiths mentioned to me that Segretti had been in contact with him and that Griffith had expressed absolutely no interest at all."

The last time he heard from Segretti, said Shipley, was on Oct 23.1971, when "he called from California and asked me to check into Muskie's operation in Tennessee...I just never did anything about it"

"At one time during these conjectural discussions," Shipley continued, "Segretti said it might be good to get a false ID to travel under, that it would be harder for anyone to catch up with us. He mentioned he might use the pseudonym Bill Mooney for himself...

"Segretti said he wanted to cover the country," Shipley continued, "that he would be more or less the head coordinator for the country. But some of the things he proposed to do didn't seem that damaging, like getting a post office box in the name of the Massachusetts Safe Driving Committee and awarding a medal to Teddy Kennedy -- with announcements sent to the press."

"The one important thing that struck me was that he seemed to be well-financed," Shipley said. "He was always flying across the country. When he came to Washington in June he said he had an appointment at the Treasury Department and that the Treasury Department was picking up the tab on this -- his plane and hotel bill."

Segretti later told him, Shipley said that "it wasn't the Treasury Department that had paid the bill, it was the Nixon people. He said, 'Don't ask me any names.'"

(According to travel records, Segretti criss-crossed the country at least half of 1971. Stops included Miami, Houston, Manchester, N.H., Knoxville, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Portland, Ore., Albuquerque, Tucson, San Francisco, Monterey and several other California cities.)

(Federal investigators identified the following jurisdictions as the locations of the most concentrated Nixon undercover activity: Illinois, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, California, Texas, Florida, and Washington, D.C.)

Segretti told him one other major element about his covert work, said Shipley: "He intended to go into a law firm near Los Angeles by the name of Young and Segretti -- he said it was a cover, that he would be doing only political work."

According to the California Bar Association, Segretti's law office is at 14013 West Captain's Row, Marina Del Rey, California.

There in an apartment surrounded by comfortable furniture, piles of photograph records, tomato plants, a stereo receiver, a tape deck and a l0-speed bike, Segretti was found last week by Post special correspondent Myers.

Questioned whether he knew Alex Shipley, Roger Lee Nixt, Kenneth Griffiths, or Peter Dixon, Segretti asked, "Why?" Informed that they had said Segretti attempted to recruit them for undercover political work, he replied "I don't believe it." Then he declined to answer a series of questions except to say either, "I don't know," "No comment," or some similar response.

At one point, Segretti said: "This is all ridiculous and I don't know anything about this." At another point he said: "The Treasury Department never paid my way to Washington or anywhere else." Biographical details about Segretti, who stands about 5 feet 8 and weighs about 150 pounds, are minimal.

From Army colleagues and classmates at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California in Berkeley, it is known that he was raised on the West Coast.

After receiving his law degree, he served as a Treasury Department attorney in Washington for less than a year, according to friends , and then entered the Army as an officer in the Army Judge Advocate General Corps.

A Treasury Department spokesman confirmed that Segretti, in 1966 and 1967, worked as an attorney in the office of the Comptroller of the Currency here.

About a year of Segretti's Army service, friends said, was spent in Vietnam, with American Division headquarters in Chulai and U.S. Army Vietnam headquarters at Longbinh.