Word: haldeman
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Talking Paper. Attention will undoubtedly shift this week to Nixon's other former close aide, Bob Haldeman, who is scheduled to follow Ehrlichman before the Ervin committee. Haldeman was directly implicated last week by his assistant, Gordon Strachan, a precise, apparently candid witness, who served as Haldeman's liaison with the Nixon re-election committee...
Pointedly praising John Dean's credibility, Strachan said that before the Watergate break-in he had passed along to Haldeman a memo noting John Mitchell's approval of "a sophisticated political intelligence-gathering system." It called for a budget of $300,000. Strachan also prepared "a talking paper" on this plan for a meeting between Haldeman and Mitchell on April 4. Haldeman had indicated that he had read both papers, Strachan said...
Three days after the Watergate arrests, Strachan testified, Haldeman had ordered him to "be sure our files are clean." He went through Haldeman's files, took out the two papers and several others and shredded them. Later he told both Dean and Haldeman that he had done this-"and Haldeman did not disapprove." Since no other intelligence plan was under consideration at the time, that would make Haldeman aware in advance of at least the broad outlines of Liddy's operation-and a party to the destruction of evidence at the beginning of the cover...
GORDON STRACHAN, 30, former aide to H.R. Haldeman, was the week's final witness and had time only to make an opening statement. In it he testified that Haldeman was advised more than two months before the Watergate break-in that the C.R.P. had set up a "sophisticated political-intelligence-gathering system." Following the breakin, "after speaking to" Haldeman, Strachan said he destroyed several documents that might have proved embarrassing to the White House staff - including the memorandum that had informed Haldeman of the intelligence system...
Strachan declared to the committee that he would disclose further information when cross-examined that would be "politically embarrassing to me and the Administration." But he stopped short of implicating Haldeman in either the Watergate break-in or coverup, and is likely to be a target of sharp inter rogation on this and other subjects this week. But the questioning will probably be brief, since committee members are anxious to get to the big guns next in line: John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman...