Newsweek: US ambassador to Prague was involved in Watergate-linked violence

Newsweek has reported that the recently appointed American ambassador to Prague, Stephen B. King, was allegedly involved in violence in connection with the Watergate affair in the early 1970s. The magazine wrote on Tuesday that Mr. King, a former FBI agent, was working as a security aide for the committee to re-elect Richard Nixon as president when he allegedly slapped and restrained Martha Mitchell, the wife of Nixon’s campaign director, whom he was tasked with monitoring.

Mr. King told Newsweek this week that he would not respond to the old story with respect to the privacy of the Mitchell family and in light of responses he made to the allegations in past decades.

The allegations did not come up in Mr. King’s confirmation hearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August of this year, Newsweek said.