Half the president's men

National | PBS airs Jeb Magruder's new Watergate accusation against Nixon—but doesn't talk to the only other person who knows whether the charge is true | Joe Maxwell

DONNING HIS BLUE SKIPPER'S cap, 75-year-old Fred LaRue begins a morning ritual that includes endless coffee, Southern beach breezes as slow and smooth as his drawl, and polite pigeons at Mary Mahoney's cafŽ on the Gulf Coast. He long ago served his four-and-one-half-month prison term for paying hush money after the failed June 1972 Watergate break-in. Now life is quiet for this long-time Mississippi oilman.

Then emerged Jeb Magruder's revelations last month about the Nixon-era Watergate scandal. Mr. Magruder helped run Richard Nixon's reelection campaign, which included the botched burglary of the Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate Building. When President Nixon resigned in August 1974, he acknowledged his attempt to cover up White House involvement in the burglary plan yet denied knowing of it in advance. No evidence ever has proved otherwise.