The Man Who Went After Richard Nixon’s Dirty Millions Breaks His Silence: ‘He Was Pissed!’

On March 24, 1972, a crew of bank robbers infiltrated—and then spent the weekend going through the vault of—United California Bank in Laguna Niguel, California. Their target? A stash of $30 million that was rumored to belong to Richard Nixon, who’d allegedly acquired the loot from Jimmy Hoffa as a re-election campaign “donation” (read: bribe) designed to net the imprisoned Teamsters boss a presidential pardon. The basis for this Friday’s Finding Steve McQueen—which stars Travis Fimmel, William Fichtner and Forest Whitaker, and focuses on gang member Harry Barber’s central role in the plot—it proved to be the largest bank heist in U.S. history at the time, resulting in a haul of $12 million.

And speaking to me a week before the film’s premiere, Barber makes it clear he’s finally ready to set the record straight.

“I’m telling you the whole story. It wasn’t ‘can we?’ It was ‘do you want to?’ This is how good we were,” the 77-year-old former bank robber asserts from his home in Southern California, where he’s worked as a general contractor ever since his release from prison—which came about after he evaded FBI capture for eight years.

Read more at The Daily Beast.