NIXON TROUBLESHOOTER A KEY WATERGATE FIGURE
By Doug Button

Herald Sun (Australia)
August 15, 2006 Tuesday
FIRST Edition

Robert Mardian
Lawyer
Born: October 23, 1923
Died: July 17, 2006

ROBERT Mardian was among the most intriguing minor players in the
Watergate scandal.

He was a high Justice Department and Nixon campaign official who
was convicted for his part in the scandal, only to have the sentence
overturned on appeal.

He led the administration’s pursuit of alleged subversives and
troublemakers.

But he was also briefly rumoured to have been "Deep Throat", the secret
source who helped bring about the resignation of the 36th US president.

The son of an Armenian immigrant from what had been then the Ottoman
Empire, Robert Charles Mardian was born in Pasadena, California.

He was a member of the large Californian contingent in and around
the Nixon administration.

In 1972 he was appointed a lawyer and "co-ordinator" for Nixon’s
re-election committee, the infamous CREEP (Committee To Re-Elect
the President), which was behind the break-in attempt on June 17,
1972, at the Democrats’ national offices in the Watergate building
in Washington, D.C.

Despite his enthusiasm at the Justice Department for bugging and
surveillance operations, Mardian insisted he had known nothing of
the incident. Prosecutors contended that, on the orders of CREEP’s
director, Mardian phoned one of the burglars, telling him to contact
the Attorney-General to have the leader of the group released from
custody before his identity was discovered.

Thus Mardian became one of the Watergate Seven indicted on March 1,
1974, five months before Nixon quit.

In January 1975, he was convicted on one count of conspiracy to hinder
the Watergate investigation.

The following year his conviction was quashed.

Mardian, 82, died in San Clemente, California.