He is mentioned in the “notable people” section near the bottom of San Marino’s Wikipedia page, and on Wednesday afternoon, “Donald Segretti, political operative, involved in Watergate” returned to his home town to address an Honors U.S. History class at his alma mater. “That was a while back,” Segretti said with an easy smile as he began his presentation to the class of over twenty students.
Segretti graduated from San Marino High School in 1959 before attending USC, where he took a degree in finance four years later. He matriculated to the University of California, Berkeley, and received a law degree in 1966.
“That was a terrible time in our country,” said Segretti, who provided a time line narrative of his life to begin his presentation I the hour-long class.“ The Civil Rights movement was going on. The Vietnam War.”
Segretti was drafted and reported to Fort Ord for basic training.
“I didn’t like it,”Segretti said. “I didn’t want to be there and I didn’t want to go to Vietnam.”
With his law training, Segretti decided to enlist in the Judge Advocate General’s Corp, the legal branch of the United States Armed Forces.
“They didn’t tell me that if you were a JAG officer you had a 100% chance of going to Vietnam,” Segretti said, even extracting a laugh from a generation that is basically unfamiliar with the concept of a draft.
Following his military discharge, Segretti received a phone call from some of his old USC classmates.
“They asked me what I was doing,” Segretti said. “I told them I was going to go back to California and they asked me if I wanted to work for the President of the United States.”
Those two friends—Dwight Chapin and H.R. “Robert” Haldeman—were later convicted of perjury for their roles in the Watergate scandal. Segretti served four months of a six-month sentence for three misdemeanors for his work on Nixon’s reelection campaign, now famously known as CREEP—the Committee to Re-elect the President.
“The idea that was sold to me at the beginning was to disrupt the Democratic Presidential primary campaign,” Segretti explained. “Things morphed from doing a few things to going a little deeper. They were probably things I should not have done.”
Segretti told the class that he participated in disrupting Democratic fundraisers that were taking place in Washington.
“Four months later, I got a call from my White House contact,” Segretti said. “They told me to stop what I was doing. “That was right after the Watergate break-in.”
“Next think I knew I was getting knocks on my door asking how involved I was in the campaign,” Segretti continued. “Matters were being leaked and my name popped up. It got way off track and people thought I might have orchestrated the Watergate break-in.”
“I eventually pled guilty to a couple of misdemeanors,” Segretti said, his tone turning more serious. “Which caused me a lot of grief and heartache.”
During a question-and-answer period with the students, Segretti was asked if he knew what he thought was omitted in the 8-1/2-minute gap on what are now known as Nixon’s Watergate Tapes.
“I don’t know,” Segretti said with a smile. He did say that many years later he learned that it was probably innocuous information that was erased.
He also surmised that Nixon probably had no involvement in the Watergate break-in, but helped cover it up to protect those who were.
“My view is that Nixon did not know about the break-in,” Segretti said. “I think he was told by John Mitchell and then he covered it up. It was a Shakespearian tragedy.”
Answering this reporter’s question, Segretti said he has never watched the movie “All the President’s Men,” which tells the story of Watergate and how the scandal was uncovered by two reporters from The Washington Post.
“It was very painful time,” Segretti said. “I just wanted to get on with my life.”
A pause.
“Maybe some day,” he said, a smile re-emerging across his face.
Another student asked Segretti if he felt morally challenged at the time of his involvement.
“No, it just happened gradually,” he said. “We knew it was not right, but we didn’t know it was illegal. We believed it was the way politics was done. One of the lessons you can take away from my few minutes here is to think through in your own mind, is this morally right or wrong, and don’t be swayed by anyone else. I have thought about this point a lot.”
Segretti said he greatly enjoyed the days of his youth that were spent in San Marino.
“This was an idyllic community,” he said, a broad smile appearing on his visage. “I didn’t know that until I left and neither will you. Appreciate your time here. You won’t know how nice it is until you leave. It is very different in some ways but it is also the same in many ways. There is much more diversity here now.”
When one student asked his opinion of the current political climate, Segretti said “they are both bad, but the 60s were worse. There were so many protests and riots. Maybe it’s because I was living through it.”
When asked why he ventured from his home in Orange County to speak to the class, Segretti acknowledged that for many years he didn’t talk about his involvement in the Nixon Administration.
“But I I have a soft spot in my heart for San Marino,” he said. “I went here. And it has been so long in the past. I was invited and said ‘Sure. Some other school? Maybe not.”
During a conversation prior to his presentation, Segretti said that he was at one time a contributor to The Tribune during an overseas trip that was partially sponsored by this newspaper and took place when he was a teenager.
