Word: nixons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Haldeman's explanation of Watergate's remaining who-and-why mysteries is credible, his book's most surprising tales concern two sensational foreign policy conflicts that are more difficult to believe. Their authenticity was, in fact, sharply challenged last week by both of Nixon's Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger and William Rogers...
Haldeman reports that "there were several overtures by the Soviets to the U.S. for a joint venture in the surgical strike. Nixon turned the Soviets down, but was then informed, to his horror, that the Soviets intended to go ahead on their own." Haldeman says U.S. diplomacy cleverly defused the danger. Kissinger first sought to signal the Russians that the U.S. might actually come to China's aid. He did so, says Haldeman, through Walter J. Stoessel Jr., U.S. Ambassador to Poland, who astonished Chinese diplomats at a party in Warsaw by suggesting that the U.S. wanted to resume...
...papers, and that never took place." Kissinger said that there was some tension over a Russian base in Cuba but it was far less dramatic or ominous than Haldeman's account portrays-and was nothing like another missile crisis. Haldeman contends that if there had been no Watergate, Nixon would have achieved his goal of "a full generation of peace in the world and prosperity without inflation at home." There was, says Haldeman, "greatness in him." But if Haldeman argues that Nixon's character assets ("intelligence, analytical ability, judgment, shrewdness, courage, decisiveness and strength") outweighed his flaws...
Haldeman portrays himself as continually giving "active encouragement" to the "good" side of Nixon and treating the "bad" side with "benign neglect." As chief of staff, Haldeman says, he often ignored "petty, vindictive" orders from Nixon (such as one to give mass lie detector tests to employees of the State Department as a means of finding security leaks). Haldeman now regrets that he did not challenge Nixon more "frontally" to check his dark impulses. But he also notes wryly that other Nixon associates who had done so, including HEW Secretary Robert Finch and Communications Director Herbert Klein, quickly lost influence...
...contrast, Haldeman contends, the crafty Colson became a Nixon intimate by deliberately appealing to Nixon's vindictive instincts. And that volatile combination of the unchecked worst in both Nixon and Colson, Haldeman suggests, was the cause of Watergate...