Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon Lawyer Who Paid ‘Hush Money,’ Dies at 95

(Bloomberg) -- Herbert Kalmbach, President Richard Nixon’s personal attorney who paid “hush money” to Watergate burglars and later served prison time for breaking campaign-finance laws and selling ambassadorships, has died. He was 95.

He died on Sept. 15 in Newport Beach, California, according to a death notice published in the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 29. No cause was given.

A longtime fundraiser for and friend of the president, Kalmbach became Nixon’s lawyer after turning down an offer to become undersecretary of commerce in the first Nixon administration.

As the 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Washington’s Watergate Hotel metastasized into a political scandal that would bring down the president, Kalmbach emerged as a shadowy figure who controlled millions of dollars in campaign money.

Kalmbach was a featured witness at the nationally broadcast Senate Watergate hearings in 1973, where he told of raising and distributing more than $200,000 to the burglars on the orders of John Dean, counsel to the president.

During a 1974 federal prosecution of five defendants, the presiding judge, John Sirica, said the payments were “to hush up these people,” while Kalmbach, a cooperating witness, insisted in his testimony that the money was for “attorney fees and family support.” He broke down in tears on the stand, the Associated Press reported.

Clandestine Meetings

Kalmbach told the Watergate committee about following White House orders to give hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to men he’d not previously met, in covert meetings in hotel and bank lobbies. Asked by Senator Herman Talmadge of Georgia if he knew what the purpose of the money was, Kalmbach replied, “I did not.” In retrospect, he told the committee, he felt he’d been “used” by Nixon’s advisers.

He also dispensed campaign funds to pay Donald Segretti for “dirty tricks” meant to discredit Democratic candidates in a 1970 election, Time magazine reported in 1974, describing Kalmbach’s role as “the White House’s financial Mr. Fix-It.”

Herbert Warren Kalmbach was born on Oct. 19, 1921, in Port Huron, Michigan, according to Marquis Who’s Who. The family moved to Pasadena, California, after his father died when Kalmbach was a teenager, according to the Time profile.

He served as a Navy flier during World War II and attended the University of Southern California, graduating in 1951 from its law school.

He married the former Barbara Helen Forbush, a one-time Rose Bowl Princess, in 1948.

Nixon’s Fundraiser

Kalmbach was admitted to the California bar in 1952 and became president of Los Angeles Security Title Insurance Co. He opened a private practice in Newport Beach in 1957.

Politically active since the 1950s, Kalmbach raised money for Nixon’s losing races for president in 1960 and California governor in 1962. He was associate finance chairman of the 1968 Nixon for President campaign and raised at least $20 million for Nixon’s 1968 and 1972 presidential runs.

Kalmbach’s law practice thrived after he was named the president’s lawyer in 1968. It grew to 14 attorneys from two and moved to plush offices in downtown Los Angeles, according to a 1972 Washington Post article. The client list came to include United Airlines, Marriott Corp. and Travelers Insurance Co.

The law firm handled routine matters for Nixon such as wills and taxes along with the purchase of an oceanfront estate in San Clemente, California, that became the president’s “Western White House.” The firm also claimed a large tax deduction for Nixon’s vice-presidential papers that was eventually disallowed by the Internal Revenue Service.

Donning Ambassadors

Kalmbach made trips abroad on Nixon’s behalf, meeting with ambassadors in Europe and the Caribbean to remind them to contribute to the Republican Party.

That role helped lead to his downfall when, in 1974, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of soliciting $100,000 to promote J. Fife Symington Jr., ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, to a European nation, the New York Times reported in 1974.

Kalmbach was convicted of other charges related to political fundraising, a felony and a misdemeanor for setting up a secret $3.9 million congressional campaign fund in 1970. He served six months in prison and was fined $10,000. His Watergate-related activities didn’t number among the charges.

Upon his release in 1975, Kalmbach made one of his very few statements to the press, calling Watergate “a most unfortunate episode in our nation’s history.”

His California law license was suspended in 1974 and reinstated in 1978. As of 2014, he was listed as of counsel at Baker & Hostetler LLP in Costa Mesa, California.

His survivors include his daughter Lauren Kinsey of Newport Beach, California, and son Kurt Kalmbach of Coto de Caza, California, according to the death notice. His wife Barbara died in 2005 and son Kenneth died in 1980.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Miller in New York at smiller244@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Caroline Salas Gage at csalas1@bloomberg.net, Charles W. Stevens at cstevens@bloomberg.net, David Henry, Ros Krasny