G. Gordon Liddy

In Talking to Myself, Studs Terkel presents the transcript of a fascinating conversation he had with two longtime Chicago hoodlums, Doc Graham and Kid Pharoah, in which he sought their professional take on the Watergate break-in. They thought it was a botched job, one which was inadvisedly entrusted to amateurs, and both considered G. Gordon Liddy to be the only honorable man involved, given that he went to prison rather than testify against Nixon.

Liddy was the guest speaker at a weekend retreat held by my MBA program at the University of Illinois, ten years ago. Liddy said he considered going to prison to be merely part of his job of protecting the president, no matter the cost. In effect, he was Christ, dying for Tricky's sins. (Actually, the Christ inference is purely my own; Liddy actually equated himself to being the good soldier, taking a bullet for his commanding officer.) What struck me most about Liddy's talk is that, when asked if he felt sorry for what he had done (managing the illegal break-in, refusing to testify, going to prison), he responded in the negative, saying instead that he only felt sorry for getting caught.

That's what struck me the most back then. Ten years later, what strikes me most is that Liddy was ever asked to address us in the first place. Here was a convicted criminal, a defiantly unscrupulous man, speaking to a freshly-scrubbed batch of tomorrow's business leaders, and being treated with reverence, as a man of honor. It really makes me wonder what my MBA program's administration could possibly have been thinking when it was decided that a man like Liddy was an appropriate choice as a speaker and guest.

Is it really any wonder than Enron, Worldcom and the Wall Street scandals occurred? While I know that the MBA classes of '93 had little significant impact on any of those messes, the choice of Liddy as an honored guest is quite symbolic of the values being imparted to business students, today and in the past.