FRED THOMPSON, the potential frontrunner for the 2008 Republican nomination, had a less than heroic role as a mole for the Nixon White House during the Watergate hearings in the 1970s, according to a contemporary.
Thompson's claim to fame as a young lawyer was asking an aide to Richard Nixon whether there was a taping system at the White House. It was the key to incriminating the president with his own "expletive deleted" words.
The former senator for Tennessee and TV actor in Law & Order is expected to announce shortly that he is running for president. But entering the race late has not shielded him from scrutiny.
According to Scott Armstrong, a former investigator for the Democrats on the Senate Watergate Committee, Thompson often leaked information to Nixon's team. "Thompson was a White House mole," Armstrong told The Boston Globe. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation."
In Thompson's memoir, At That Point in Time, he admitted tipping off the Nixon White House that he was going to ask about the tapes, although he had "no authority" to do so.
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Thompson had been a staunch supporter of Nixon and had hoped the tapes would exonerate the president, a theory he said "proved totally wrong". But the impulse to protect Nixon may not harm him with the conservative base of the Republican party.