Word: nixons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Once again, Haldeman claims no direct knowledge of who erased that 18/^ minutes from the tape, but he nonetheless accuses Nixon. "My own perception had always been that Nixon simply began to erase all of the Watergate material from the tapes when he started to worry that they may be exposed," Haldeman says. This was the first taped post-burglary conversation. Haldeman believes Nixon set out to censor it, but since he "was the least dexterous man I have ever known," he discovered that "it would take him ten years" to wipe out all the incriminating words. Indeed, court-appointed...
...tape from three days later, Haldeman adds some spectacular-but unverified-ramifications to the White House efforts to persuade top CIA officials to intercede with the FBI in order to impede the FBI's investigation of the money found on the arrested Watergate burglars. That tape, in which Nixon instructed Haldeman to ask the CIA to do this, put the lie to Nixon's repeated claim that he had not tried to block the criminal investigation into Watergate and had wanted only to protect any CIA secrets involving national security. It showed his real fear was that...
Haldeman says he was puzzled in that conversation when Nixon told him what to tell the CIA: "Look, the problem is that this will open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing again." When Haldeman did ask CIA Director Richard Helms that day to intercede with the FBI, he reports he at first got nowhere. Helms insisted that no CIA operation would be compromised if the FBI traced the money through a Mexican bank. But then Haldeman did as he was told by Nixon, warning that "the Bay of Pigs may be blown...
...then-secret attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. The CIA had withheld this information from the Warren Commission, even though it could have had a bearing on any conspiracy theory that Castro might have plotted Kennedy's death. The book's implication is that Nixon knew this secret and held it over Helms. Haldeman also suggests that Helms had something on Nixon. In the vaguest of hints, he implies that as Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon may have been a chief instigator of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion plans, later carried out by Kennedy. The invasion plans...
There are many lesser, but intriguing, stories in the book. Haldeman claims the White House taping system was originated so that Nixon could have a check on anyone who might later misrepresent what was said in the Oval Office-and one of his main concerns was Kissinger. Nixon, Haldeman writes, "knew that Henry's view on a particular subject was sometimes subject to change without notice." Nixon did not destroy his tapes because at first he felt he would never have to give them up and later he thought they could be used to discredit John Dean. Haldeman flatly...