What Led to the Release of President Nixonã¢â‚¬â„¢s White House Tapes to the Senate?
Nixon Ordered Tapes Destroyed
By George Lardner Jr. and Walter Pincus
Washington Postal service
Staff Writers
Thursday, Oct 30, 1997; Page A01
The twenty-four hour period after White Business firm counsel John W. Dean III started talking to Watergate prosecutors, President Richard M. Nixon ordered his hush-hush White House tapes destroyed, according to newly transcribed conversations from the Nixon era.
It was Monday, April ix, 1973, months before the underground White House recording system would be disclosed at Senate hearings. Neither Nixon nor his elevation aide, White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, knew for certain that Dean had begun telling prosecutors what he knew about the burglary and subsequent efforts to thwart investigators.Merely the day earlier, Dean, who had coordinated the Watergate coverup, had told Haldeman he was considering some express disclosures to government.
"Well, the hell with Dean," Nixon told Haldeman that Monday morning in the Oval Office. "Frankly, I don't want to accept in the tape discussions we've had in this room on Watergate." In another chat later in the day, the president agreed with Haldeman that they ought to "become rid" of the recordings.
These previously unpublished conversations, among hundreds transcribed for The Washington Post and Newsweek, show Nixon quickly grasping the dangers his tapes contained. The tapes, which accept been in the custody of the National Athenaeum for two decades, also reveal new insights into the president as a manipulative, main politico overseeing every detail: blessing a "shakedown" of the milk lobby for surreptitious campaign donations, fixing the cost of ambassadorships, orchestrating "dingy tricks" against opponents, thanking the donor of hush money for the Watergate burglars.
Equally the Watergate crisis mounted in the spring of 1973, the tapes as well show Nixon trying one ploy later on another to keep the scandal from engulfing his presidency and, in the process, computing how to handle the tapes. Afterward deciding to get rid of them, he then changed his mind. Alert to the gamble they posed, he nevertheless shortly became forgetful again, even promising a "total pardon" for his implicated top aides every bit the recording machines continued to pick up his words.
Until now, it has been widely believed that Nixon didn't consider destroying his tapes until later on White House aide Alexander Butterfield publicly revealed their existence to the Senate Watergate Committee on July 16, 1973. Nixon asserted in his memoirs that he decided against information technology later long discussions with his aides in the wake of Butterfield'southward testimony. He was persuaded, he wrote, that destroying them then would "create an indelible impression of guilt," far more damaging than any revelations they contained. He also assumed, as one historian has written, that they were equally sacrosanct as any presidential certificate, fully protected past the legal doctrine of executive privilege.
What Nixon failed to mention in his memoirs was his initial decision to destroy the tapes, before any outsider learned of them, and how that decision — which might have saved his presidency — was eroded by a desire to employ 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 every bit an elder statesman with a series of memoirs, foreign policy pronouncements and carefully scripted appearances.
Merely the more than 200 hours of newly transcribed tapes reflecting "abuses of governmental power" — as the National Athenaeum has categorized these conversations — will serve as a counterweight to that carefully burnished image. Sixty hours of tapes had previously been released starting in the 1970s.
Nixon's start instinct was to destroy them. He did not follow that instinct, and they helped destroy his presidency.
At the White House on April 9, Nixon did not elaborate on incriminating discussions he'd had with Dean. But other newly transcribed tapes bear witness 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 as $1 meg.
"We could go that," Nixon had told Dean in a taped conversation that became public during the 1974 Firm impeachment research. "And you could get it in cash. I know where it could be gotten. ... It would seem to me that would be worthwhile."
During the previously undisclosed Oval Office conversations between Nixon and Haldeman, nearly three weeks after Nixon's talk with Dean, the president recalled that he and the counsel had "discussed a lot of stuff." Simply Nixon then mused that some tapes might be worth keeping to prove that he never ordered the June 17, 1972, Watergate burglary and bugging of Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex.
"Maybe we ought to go on the [tapes for] the whole goddamn campaign flow," Nixon told Haldeman on April 9. "We can prove we never discussed annihilation pertaining to the crummy Watergate. ... When you lot think of all the discussions we've had in this room, that goddamn matter never came upwardly."
Haldeman threw common cold water on the idea. "Who you lot going to bear witness it to?" he asked. Nixon'southward opponents, Haldeman said, "could too argue that, you know — "
Nixon finished the judgement for him: " — that we destroyed stuff?"
"Well, you discussed that," Haldeman replied.
Past that afternoon, the matter seemed settled. Haldeman told Nixon he would review the tapes, "pull out what we want, and get rid of the residual of information technology." The give-and-take was elliptical, simply they appeared inclined to preserve conversations pertaining to "the national security."
"And nosotros desire to become rid of the residue of information technology," Haldeman repeated.
"That's right," Nixon agreed.
At that point, Haldeman tried to explain to Nixon how the taping organization was triggered automatically by the Secret Service "locator betoken that tells what function you lot're in." If Nixon wasn't in a particular room, the record recorders remained off. The two men tentatively decided to dismantle the system and install a new phone recording device that Nixon could actuate with a switch. The meeting ended with Nixon, notoriously inept with mechanical devices, sounding a scrap uncertain about how to operate the gadget Haldeman showed him.
Suspicions nearly Dean had intensified the twenty-four hours earlier, when the adolescent-looking lawyer called Haldeman at Nixon's retreat in San Clemente, Calif., to say that his lawyers wanted him to see with prosecutors. Dean has said he tried to assuage Haldeman by telling him the prosecutors were pursuing only those who had authorized the Watergate bugging, such equally erstwhile attorney general John N. Mitchell, not those involved in a coverup. Haldeman had warned Dean to concur off because "once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it'southward going to exist very tough to become information technology back in," according to Dean'southward subsequent accounts,
The tapes and the taping system came up again on April 16 and April 18, at the president'due south morning meetings with Haldeman. Nixon had changed his heed. He didn't want to get rid of the tapes only 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 two 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 information technology been removed, exercise you know?"
"I call back it's nevertheless 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 [future Nixon] library." He besides wanted Haldeman to make up one's mind how damaging they were and whether any might be helpful.
"In other words, I'd like it if at that place'south some material in that location that's probably worth keeping," Nixon told his master of staff. "Most of information technology is worth destroying."
The president also made clear that he did not want to shut the "damn" system downwards. "You know what I mean," Nixon said. "You never know what conversation is [going to be] interesting and and so along and then on."
Haldeman agreed. "[It's] not a bad matter for yous to have," he told Nixon.
Nixon's change of middle may take been spurred past the uneasy session he'd had with Dean on the night of April 15. The Watergate prosecutors — Earl Silbert, Seymour Glanzer and Donald Campbell — had notified the high command at Justice that Dean was helping them build an obstacle of justice case confronting Haldeman and Ehrlichman. In an interview concluding week, Dean said he believed the prosecutors were going to keep his cooperation to themselves, because one time senior Justice officials learned of his assist the news "would get right back to Nixon."
Every bit Dean feared, the high command, Attorney General Richard Grand. Kleindienst and Banana Attorney General Henry E. Petersen, promptly told the president. The newly transcribed Nixon tapes even show Petersen, on a White House phone 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 confronting Haldeman and Ehrlichman in the sense that they knew everything that was going on." Alluding to hush money ready aside for the Watergate defendants, Silbert added, "I hateful the $350,000 comes from Haldeman."
Nixon summoned Dean for a meeting in the Onetime Executive Office Edifice that night. The president reported in his memoirs that Dean "seemed nigh self," confident he would get immunity. By Dean'southward account, Nixon was posturing, trying to rehabilitate himself by telling Dean that their March 21 meeting was "the start time" Nixon had gotten "the whole picture show."
"It was a lie," Dean wrote in his volume, "Blind Ambition," but he went along with it. "Yeah, sir," he said. Then Nixon leaned toward Dean and said with a soft laugh: "Yous know, that mention I made to you about a 1000000 dollars so forth as no problem. ... I was just joking, of course, when I said that."
Nixon apparently wanted to keep the record of that April 15 meeting. On April 18, as Petersen afterward told special Watergate prosecutors, the president offered to let Petersen mind to it. But it was never constitute. The Hush-hush Service testified at subsequent courtroom hearings that the Quondam Executive Role Building recording automobile probably ran out of tape earlier that weekend.
Haldeman listened to numerous tapes in the weeks alee. 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 menses from March 10th to March 23rd," according to the new tapes. "I don't know what class information technology's in," Haldeman said, "but put it in some kind of pocketbook and so information technology isn't obvious. And too go a machine that is technically capable of listening to information technology."
Haldeman continued to review the tapes even afterward Nixon forced him and Ehrlichman to resign on Apr 30. (Dean was fired.) Haldeman's papers show that he also collected damaging notes and memos reflecting the coverup on render visits to the White House, in line with Nixon'south instructions to put "the vulnerabilities" down on newspaper. In a handwritten summary dated May 7, 1973, Haldeman carefully described information technology as "Notes from P[resident's] file" and "fully privileged."
The reviews kept Haldeman acutely enlightened of the taping system even equally Nixon once again grew inattentive to its presence. The ii men met in Nixon's Old Executive Office Building hideaway suite on May 18, 1973, and the president distastefully recalled how Kleindienst, "that tower of jelly," and Petersen had told him April xv that Haldeman and Ehrlichman should resign immediately. "A agglomeration of [expletive] stuff," the president told Haldeman, then added:
"What I mean to say is this. We're talking in the conviction of this room. I don't give a [expletive] what comes out on yous or John or even on poor, damn, dumb John Mitchell. At that place is going to exist a total pardon."
"Don't — don't even say that," Haldeman warned.
"You know information technology," Nixon went on, oblivious of the microphones. "Y'all 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 dandy sense of being cornered by his enemies. Fifty-fifty if he fired the whole White House staff, he told press secretary Ronald L. Ziegler on Apr 27, "that isn't going to satisfy these goddamn cannibals! ... Hell, they aren't subsequently Ehrlichman or Haldeman or Dean. They're after me! The president. They hate my guts. That's what they're later on."
Nixon fought ferociously to forestall the tapes from falling into the hands of Watergate prosecutors, fifty-fifty to the point of triggering demands for his impeachment when he fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the "Saturday Night Massacre" of October. 20, 1973. He finally lost the legal battle in the Supreme Court the next summer and, soon thereafter, his presidency. The tapes had brought him downwards.
"I had bad communication, bad communication from well-intentioned lawyers who had sort of a cockeyed notion that I would be destroying evidence," Nixon said years later in a videotaped interview. "I should have destroyed them."
Special correspondent Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
© Copyright 1997 The Washington Mail service Company
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