CLEARWATER
Nearly half a century ago, Martin Kelly made the mistake of his life.
He was a senior at the University of Miami when he decided to take part in what would become one of the most infamous political scandals in U.S. history: Watergate. He was just 22.
“I was politically ambitious. I was a young guy who had just got his feet wet in the political arena,” Kelly, now, 69, told the Tampa Bay Times. “And I made a very dumb decision.”
Kelly, who goes by his middle name Doug, accepted an offer from political operative Donald Segretti to pull pranks on Democratic presidential candidates on the 1972 campaign trail.
The work was done on behalf of President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign. Nixon would later resign, and be pardoned in 1974, after the dirty tricks Kelly pulled — and far more illegal acts — came to light.
Kelly, however, was not involved in the most infamous incident, the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Watergate Hotel that gave the scandal its name.
In the end, 49 officials were indicted or jailed, including Segretti. None of the tricks Kelly pulled were illegal — but they were definitely colorful.
In one incident, he hired a female student at Miami to streak naked in front of the hotel of Democratic candidate Sen. Ed Muskie, shouting, “I love Ed Muskie.” He testified in front of Congress about that episode; a photo of him led the Oct. 5, 1973, front page of the New York Times.
Kelly stayed in Florida after the scandal and bounced back with a career in security consulting. He has lived in Clearwater for about a decade with his wife, Kelly. (Yes, her legal name is Kelly Kelly.) He has two adult children from a past marriage and she has one.
This month, he released a book about his experiences, Dirty Trickster, Corporate Spy. He spoke with the Times for about an hour on a range of topics. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity:
How did you end up involved in the Watergate scandal?
In late fall of 1971, I got a call from Karl Rove, from the Florida College Republican Executive Committee. He asked me to do something for the Committee to Re-elect the President. He asked if I would go to a rally at the University of Miami for Sen. Ed Muskie, the frontrunner for the Democratic primary. He wanted me to plant questions for Muskie … They wanted not only to derail his chances in Florida but to get him on record on his positions in Miami, as opposed to elsewhere … So, I picked up a tape recorder and had some questions, and then I sent the tape to Karl. That was my first real exposure to negative campaigning, opposition…
