Donald Segretti

Donald Henry Segretti (born September 17, 1941, in San Marino, California) is a former political operative for then-U.S. President Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (CREeP) during the early 1970s.

He holds a B.S. in finance from the University of Southern California (1963) and a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law (1966). While at USC he became associated with Dwight L. Chapin, Tim Elbourne, Ron Ziegler, Herbert Porter and Gordon C. Strachan, all of whom joined the "Trojans for Representative Government" group.

Watergate

Segretti was hired by friend Dwight L. Chapin to run a campaign of dirty tricks (which he dubbed "ratfucking") against the Democrats, with his work being paid for by Herb Kalmbach, Nixon's lawyer, from presidential campaign re-election funds gathered before an April 7, 1972, law required that contributors be identified. His actions were part of the larger Watergate scandal, and were important indicators for the few members of the press actively investigating the Watergate scandal in the earliest stages that what became known as the Watergate scandal involved far more than just a simple break in.