Word: haldeman
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Heard Tapes. Haldeman had heard one tape in late April while still on the White House staff. Amazingly, he was allowed to take four other tapes in early July to a Maryland house where he was staying, after he had resigned and just before the existence of the secret recording system was revealed. Haldeman decided to listen to just one of the tapes, which he held for 48 hours...
Increasingly becoming the most aggressive committee interrogator, Republican Senator Lowell Weicker protested that it was "grossly unfair" that Haldeman could hear the tapes when other prospective criminal defendants could not. Complained Democratic Senator Herman Talmadge: "Why would a private citizen be more entitled to listen to those tapes than a Senate committee of the United States Congress?" Chairman Sam Ervin, noting that Nixon had conceded that the tapes were subject to different interpretations, said he would be "scrupulous in considering whether I should accept Mr. Haldeman's interpretation...
Interpretation seemed to be the key element added by Haldeman. Up to a point, his description of the conversations on the two tapes he reviewed indicated that Dean, who had taken no notes at any of his Watergate talks with the President, had remembered parts of the talks remarkably well. Haldeman said that Dean apparently had confused two of the meetings because some topics Dean had thought were raised at a March 13 meeting with Nixon actually showed up on the March 21 tape that Haldeman had heard. Allowing for this mixup, the Dean and Haldeman versions include the following...
...these individuals to meet their demands. He asked me how much it would cost. I told him that I could only estimate, that it might be as high as a million dollars or more. He told me that that was no problem, and he also looked over at Haldeman and repeated the statement. The President then referred to the fact that Hunt had been promised Executive clemency. He said that he had discussed the matter with Ehrlichman and that [Charles] Colson had also discussed it with him later. He expressed some annoyance at this...
...Haldeman: Dean did make a remark about a "cancer growing on the presidency." Dean also "outlined his role in the January planning meetings and recounted a report he said he made to me regarding the second of those meetings. He felt Magruder was fully aware of the operation, but he was not sure about Mitchell. He said that his only concerns regarding the White House were in relation to the Colson phone call to Magruder, which might indicate White House pressure, and the possibility that Haldeman got some of the fruits of the bugging via Strachan...