Jeb Stuart Magruder (November 5, 1934 – May 11, 2014) was an American businessman and high-level political operative in the Republican Party who served time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal.

In August 1973, Magruder pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to wiretap, obstruct justice and defraud the United States.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, he gave interviews in which he changed his accounts of actions by various participants in the Watergate coverup, including claiming that Nixon ordered the break-ins.

[7] He later earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1958 from Williams College, where he competed on the varsity swimming team and set several regional records.

[5] He went to California and married a Berkeley student,[9] Gail Barnes Nicholas, then took a job with the Crown Zellerbach, selling paper goods in Kansas City.

Magruder was a ward chairman, for Donald Rumsfeld's 1962 Illinois's 13th congressional district United States House of Representatives Republican primary campaign.

[19] Magruder entered partnership during early 1969 with two other entrepreneurs to start two new businesses, and became president and chief executive officer of these firms.

[20] Magruder was appointed to the White House staff in 1969, as special assistant to the president, and moved with his family to Washington, D.C.[21] He worked for Nixon operatives H.R.

Magruder served in the White House until the spring of 1971, when he left to manage the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP, also known as CREEP), first as director.

By early 1972 in the election year, Attorney General John N. Mitchell took over as director of CREEP and Magruder acted as his deputy.

As Mitchell became preoccupied with a scandal involving the ITT Corporation and by his efforts to restrain his outspoken wife Martha, Magruder took on more of the management of the CREEP.

[24] Magruder, in his role with CRP, was involved with the Watergate matters from an early stage, including its planning, execution, and cover-up.

In exchange, Magruder was allowed to plead guilty in August 1973 to a one-count indictment of conspiracy to obstruct justice, to defraud the United States, and to illegally eavesdrop on the Democratic Party's national headquarters at the Watergate Hotel and Office Building.

During this time, Magruder also engaged in a speaking tour on college campuses and in other public spaces, inspiring some critics to suggest he had profited from the scandal and his decision to turn state's evidence.

[26] On May 21, 1974, Magruder was sentenced by Judge John Sirica to ten months to four years for his role in the failed burglary of Watergate and the following cover-up.

"[citation needed] In the end, he served three months of his sentence at a Federal minimum security prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, and was moved for the remaining four months (before Sirica's pardon) to a "safe house prison" at the Fort Holabird Base in Baltimore Harbor, along with Chuck Colson, John Dean and Herb Kalmbach, due to threats on the four by inmates at Allenwood.

In his book, An American Life: One Man's Road to Watergate (1974), he wrote, I know nothing to indicate that Nixon was aware in advance of the plan to break into the Democratic headquarters.

In his book Magruder wrote about former attorney general John Mitchell and Fred LaRue meeting in late March 1972 in Key Biscayne, Florida.

In 1990 Magruder consented to interviews with authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin while the two were conducting research for their 1991 book Silent Coup: The Removal of a President (St. Martin's Press).

[29] To Colodny and Gettlin, Magruder admitted specifically instructing Liddy on the second Watergate break-in, something which he had earlier denied.

Sixteen years later, in the August 7, 1990 interview with Colodny and Gettlin, Magruder changed his account, claiming that the telephone call from the White House came from Haldeman himself.