But the plan to audit McGrory that year backfired: She got a larger refund because she had under-reported her considerable charitable giving. And it certainly did not soften her coverage of the Nixon White House. (She was fond of expressing her dislike for Nixon with an old quote: “If he were a horse, I should not buy him.”) McGrory’s apartment was also broken into a number of times during this period. McGrory had her theory on the unsolved crimes, saying she had been “fooled completely” into thinking that the break-ins had been the work of “honest thieves” rather than administration henchmen.
President Nixon and his aides continued to curse McGrory in bitter personal terms in late-night Oval Office discussions, placing her name prominently on Nixon’s infamous “enemies list”; she was the only woman among the list’s 20 original targets, her name marked with two check marks and an asterisk for authoring what the administration called “daily hate Nixon articles.” When the list was revealed amid the Watergate scandal in June 1973, McGrory called being included one of her highest honors.
The above excerpt was originally published in Politico Magazine.
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