what, according to nixon, has caused him to change his mind about “persevering”?

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Nixon Ordered Tapes Destroyed

Past George Lardner Jr. and Walter Pincus
Washington Post
Staff Writers
Th, October 30, 1997; Folio A01

The mean solar day afterwards White House counsel John West. Dean Iii started talking to Watergate prosecutors, President Richard M. Nixon ordered his secret White House tapes destroyed, according to newly transcribed conversations from the Nixon era.

It was Monday, Apr 9, 1973, months before the hush-hush White House recording system would be disclosed at Senate hearings. Neither Nixon nor his top aide, White House Primary of Staff H.R. Haldeman, knew for sure that Dean had begun telling prosecutors what he knew about the burglary and subsequent efforts to thwart investigators.Only the twenty-four hours earlier, Dean, who had coordinated the Watergate coverup, had told Haldeman he was considering some limited disclosures to authorities.

"Well, the hell with Dean," Nixon told Haldeman that Mon forenoon in the Oval Part. "Frankly, I don't desire to accept in the record discussions nosotros've had in this room on Watergate." In some other conversation later in the day, the president agreed with Haldeman that they ought to "get rid" of the recordings.

These previously unpublished conversations, amidst hundreds transcribed for The Washington Mail and Newsweek, show Nixon quickly grasping the dangers his tapes contained. The tapes, which have been in the custody of the National Archives for two decades, besides reveal new insights into the president every bit a manipulative, chief pol overseeing every detail: blessing a "shakedown" of the milk anteroom for cloak-and-dagger campaign donations, fixing the price of ambassadorships, orchestrating "dirty tricks" against opponents, thanking the donor of hush coin for the Watergate burglars.

Equally the Watergate crisis mounted in the bound of 1973, the tapes likewise show Nixon trying i ploy later on another to continue the scandal from engulfing his presidency and, in the process, calculating how to handle the tapes. After deciding to go rid of them, he then changed his heed. Alert to the adventure they posed, he however soon became forgetful again, even promising a "full pardon" for his implicated top aides as the recording machines continued to pick upward his words.

Until now, it has been widely believed that Nixon didn't consider destroying his tapes until after White House aide Alexander Butterfield publicly revealed their existence to the Senate Watergate Commission on July 16, 1973. Nixon asserted in his memoirs that he decided against it afterwards long discussions with his aides in the wake of Butterfield's testimony. He was persuaded, he wrote, that destroying them then would "create an enduring impression of guilt," far more damaging than any revelations they contained. He also assumed, as one historian has written, that they were equally sacrosanct equally any presidential document, fully protected by the legal doctrine of executive privilege.

What Nixon failed to mention in his memoirs was his initial decision to destroy the tapes, before whatever outsider learned of them, and how that decision — which might have saved his presidency — was eroded by a want to apply them, selectively, for his own defense and for his autobiography.

Forced to resign in disgrace in Baronial 1974, Nixon spent the rest of his life trying to put the tapes behind him, litigating against fresh disclosures and winning status as an elder statesman with a series of memoirs, strange policy pronouncements and advisedly scripted appearances.

Only the more than 200 hours of newly transcribed tapes reflecting "abuses of governmental power" — as the National Athenaeum has categorized these conversations — volition serve every bit a counterweight to that carefully burnished image. 60 hours of tapes had previously been released starting in the 1970s.

Nixon'south first instinct was to destroy them. He did non follow that instinct, and they helped destroy his presidency.

At the White Business firm on April 9, Nixon did not elaborate on incriminating discussions he'd had with Dean. Simply other newly transcribed tapes prove that in subsequent weeks he fretted over a long talk they had on March 21, 1973. During that session, Dean had warned Nixon of "a cancer on the presidency" and tried to bring the point home by emphasizing that the original Watergate defendants were demanding hush money — perhaps as much equally $1 one thousand thousand.

"We could get that," Nixon had told Dean in a taped conversation that became public during the 1974 House impeachment inquiry. "And you could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten. ... Information technology would seem to me that would exist worthwhile."

During the previously undisclosed Oval Office conversations betwixt Nixon and Haldeman, nearly 3 weeks after Nixon'southward talk with Dean, the president recalled that he and the counsel had "discussed a lot of stuff." But Nixon then mused that some tapes might be worth keeping to prove that he never ordered the June 17, 1972, Watergate pause-in and bugging of Democratic National Commission headquarters in the Watergate complex.

"Maybe nosotros ought to keep the [tapes for] the whole goddamn campaign period," Nixon told Haldeman on April 9. "We tin can testify we never discussed anything pertaining to the crummy Watergate. ... When yous think of all the discussions nosotros've had in this room, that goddamn thing never came up."

Haldeman threw cold water on the idea. "Who you going to bear witness it to?" he asked. Nixon'south opponents, Haldeman said, "could also contend that, you know — "

Nixon finished the judgement for him: " — that nosotros destroyed stuff?"

"Well, you discussed that," Haldeman replied.

By that afternoon, the affair seemed settled. Haldeman told Nixon he would review the tapes, "pull out what we desire, and become rid of the balance of it." The discussion was elliptical, but they appeared inclined to preserve conversations pertaining to "the national security."

"And we want to get rid of the balance of it," Haldeman repeated.

"That's right," Nixon agreed.

At that point, Haldeman tried to explicate to Nixon how the taping system was triggered automatically by the Secret Service "locator signal that tells what part you're in." If Nixon wasn't in a detail room, the record recorders remained off. The two men tentatively decided to dismantle the system and install a new telephone recording device that Nixon could activate with a switch. The meeting ended with Nixon, notoriously inept with mechanical devices, sounding a bit uncertain well-nigh how to operate the gadget Haldeman showed him.

Suspicions about Dean had intensified the mean solar day before, when the adolescent-looking lawyer called Haldeman at Nixon's retreat in San Clemente, Calif., to say that his lawyers wanted him to run across with prosecutors. Dean has said he tried to assuage Haldeman by telling him the prosecutors were pursuing merely those who had authorized the Watergate bugging, such as old attorney general John Due north. Mitchell, not those involved in a coverup. Haldeman had warned Dean to hold off because "once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's going to be very tough to become it back in," co-ordinate to Dean's subsequent accounts,

The tapes and the taping arrangement came upwardly again on April 16 and Apr 18, at the president's morning meetings with Haldeman. Nixon had changed his mind. He didn't desire to get rid of the tapes but yet and he wanted to keep the machines going. Nixon had just discovered that Dean was pointing an accusing finger at Haldeman and domestic affairs adviser John D. Ehrlichman, and the president wanted his 2 top aides to work out "sort of a game plan."

"Incidentally," Nixon asked Haldeman on April 16, "is this [taping] equipment working at the present time, or has it been removed, do you know?"

"I think it'due south still working," Haldeman told him.

"Fine," Nixon said.

On April 18, Nixon told Haldeman to "take all these tapes" and review them, "as a service to the [futurity Nixon] library." He too wanted Haldeman to determine how dissentious they were and whether whatever might be helpful.

"In other words, I'd like it if there's some material at that place that'south probably worth keeping," Nixon told his chief of staff. "Most of information technology is worth destroying."

The president also fabricated articulate that he did not want to close the "damn" system downwards. "You know what I mean," Nixon said. "You never know what conversation is [going to be] interesting and so forth and so on."

Haldeman agreed. "[It's] non a bad affair for you to have," he told Nixon.

Nixon'south change of heart may accept been spurred by the uneasy session he'd had with Dean on the nighttime of Apr xv. The Watergate prosecutors — Earl Silbert, Seymour Glanzer and Donald Campbell — had notified the high command at Justice that Dean was helping them build an obstruction of justice case against Haldeman and Ehrlichman. In an interview concluding week, Dean said he believed the prosecutors were going to keep his cooperation to themselves, because once senior Justice officials learned of his aid the news "would get right back to Nixon."

Equally Dean feared, the high command, Attorney General Richard 1000. Kleindienst and Banana Attorney Full general Henry E. Petersen, promptly told the president. The newly transcribed Nixon tapes even evidence Petersen, on a White House telephone in Nixon's presence, getting a rundown from Silbert on the afternoon of Apr xv.

"Substantially, it's unbelievable," Silbert told Petersen. "We have an obstruction instance against Haldeman and Ehrlichman in the sense that they knew everything that was going on." Alluding to hush coin set bated for the Watergate defendants, Silbert added, "I mean the $350,000 comes from Haldeman."

Nixon summoned Dean for a meeting in the Sometime Executive Office Building that night. The president reported in his memoirs that Dean "seemed almost cocky," confident he would get immunity. By Dean's business relationship, Nixon was posturing, trying to rehabilitate himself by telling Dean that their March 21 meeting was "the first time" Nixon had gotten "the whole flick."

"It was a lie," Dean wrote in his book, "Bullheaded Ambition," but he went forth with it. "Yes, sir," he said. And so Nixon leaned toward Dean and said with a soft express joy: "Yous know, that mention I made to you nigh a 1000000 dollars and and then forth every bit no problem. ... I was merely joking, of course, when I said that."

Nixon evidently wanted to keep the tape of that April xv meeting. On April 18, as Petersen subsequently told special Watergate prosecutors, the president offered to let Petersen listen to it. But it was never found. The Undercover Service testified at subsequent court hearings that the Old Executive Office Edifice recording machine probably ran out of tape earlier that weekend.

Haldeman listened to numerous tapes in the weeks ahead. For example, on Apr 26, 1973, Haldeman chosen Stephen B. Bull, a Nixon assistant, and asked him to pull "that stuff" out of the files "for the catamenia from March tenth to March 23rd," according to the new tapes. "I don't know what form it's in," Haldeman said, "simply put it in some kind of pocketbook so information technology isn't obvious. And also become a machine that is technically capable of listening to information technology."

Haldeman continued to review the tapes even after Nixon forced him and Ehrlichman to resign on April 30. (Dean was fired.) Haldeman'southward papers testify that he also collected dissentious notes and memos reflecting the coverup on return visits to the White Firm, in line with Nixon'due south instructions to put "the vulnerabilities" downwards on paper. In a handwritten summary dated May 7, 1973, Haldeman advisedly described it as "Notes from P[resident'southward] file" and "fully privileged."

The reviews kept Haldeman acutely aware of the taping system even as Nixon once once more grew inattentive to its presence. The two men met in Nixon'south Quondam Executive Office Building hideaway suite on May eighteen, 1973, and the president distastefully recalled how Kleindienst, "that tower of jelly," and Petersen had told him April 15 that Haldeman and Ehrlichman should resign immediately. "A bunch of [expletive] stuff," the president told Haldeman, so added:

"What I hateful to say is this. We're talking in the confidence of this room. I don't give a [expletive] what comes out on yous or John or even on poor, damn, dumb John Mitchell. In that location is going to be a full pardon."

"Don't — don't even say that," Haldeman warned.

"Y'all know it," Nixon went on, oblivious of the microphones. "You know it and I know it."

"No, don't say that," Haldeman protested again, to no avail.

In the midst of all this turmoil, Nixon expressed a corking sense of being cornered by his enemies. Even if he fired the whole White House staff, he told press secretarial assistant Ronald Fifty. Ziegler on Apr 27, "that isn't going to satisfy these goddamn cannibals! ... Hell, they aren't after Ehrlichman or Haldeman or Dean. They're after me! The president. They hate my guts. That's what they're after."

Nixon fought ferociously to forbid the tapes from falling into the hands of Watergate prosecutors, even to the point of triggering demands for his impeachment when he fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the "Saturday Dark Massacre" of Oct. 20, 1973. He finally lost the legal battle in the Supreme Court the next summer and, presently thereafter, his presidency. The tapes had brought him down.

"I had bad communication, bad advice from well-intentioned lawyers who had sort of a cockeyed notion that I would exist destroying evidence," Nixon said years later in a videotaped interview. "I should have destroyed them."

Special contributor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

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