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Kenneth Dahlberg, Who Didn't Lie About Watergate, Has Died

"There aren't a lot of people in the world who have been war heroes, created a high-flying business, and uttered the words that would bring down a presidency," our Minnesota Public Radio colleague Bob Collins writes today.

"Ken Dahlberg was one of them."

Now, Dahlberg has died at the age of 94.

As Bob reminds his News Cut blog readers, Dahlberg was a World War II fighter pilot and recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross who went on to become "the Midwest finance chairman for the Committee to Re-elect the President during President Richard M. Nixon's 1972 campaign."

And it was Dahlberg, Bob writes, who didn't lie when Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward called to ask about money from the CEO of Archer Daniels Midland that had been funneled through the campaign to the Watergate burglars. Dahlberg confirmed he had handled the CEO's check.

"It was the turning point in the Watergate investigation, the first proof that the Watergate burglars were financed by a money laundering scheme that was tied to the Oval Office," Bob says.

Bob interviewed Dahlberg in 2008. Here's a link to that story.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.