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I finished H.R. Haldeman’s (and Joseph DiMona’s) The Ends of Power.  In this post, I’d like to highlight something that Haldeman says in the book’s afterword.  This afterword appeared in a later edition of the book, after a number of people had offered their thoughts on The Ends of Power.

On page 413, Haldeman states the following:

“My own viewpoint has changed from that of more than a year ago when I started work on this book, shortly after the Nixon-Frost TV interviews.  Despite the popular mythology, I was neither enraged by those interviews nor did I ‘turn against President Nixon’ after seeing them…Unlike my reaction after the TV interviews last year, I now feel that President Nixon has provided many of the answers I had hoped for and felt were missing.”

I often got the same impression in reading The Ends of Power as those who bought into what Haldeman calls “the popular mythology”: that Haldeman was upset by what Nixon was saying in the Frost interviews.  Sure, there was one place in the book where Haldeman tries to be a good soldier, where he says that he himself was dispensable, for the important person was the President of the United States.  But I detected that Haldeman was upset because he believed that Nixon in the Frost interviews was blaming Haldeman and John Ehrlichman for the coverup, to save his own reputation.  I wouldn’t characterize The Ends of Power as thoroughly bitter against Nixon, however, for it does say positive things about him.

What puzzled me about Haldeman’s characterization of Nixon’s comments in the Frost interviews was that it did not seem to me that Nixon’s side of the story blamed the cover-up (if that’s the right word) solely on Haldeman and Ehrlichman.  By “Nixon’s side of the story,” I mean what Nixon said in his memoirs.  What Haldeman said in The Ends of Power did not strike me as dramatically different from what Nixon said in his memoirs: that Nixon wanted the CIA to limit the FBI’s investigation into Watergate.  According to Nixon in his memoirs, Nixon thought that he had a national security (rather than a political) reason for that, but, when he listened to the tape of his consideration of the idea, he was not so sure.  Haldeman is a bit more brazen in saying that Nixon was in on the cover-up from the beginning, and yet Haldeman acknowledges that Nixon may not have seen it as a cover-up.  Both slightly differ in their account, yet they’re still telling the same basic story (at least about the contents of the “smoking gun” tape).  Haldeman’s praise of Nixon’s account in the presidential memoirs redresses my confusion.

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On page 411 of The Ends of Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona) states the following:

“By presenting Nixon, or attempting to, as 100 percent pure and good, we were setting him up for a disastrous fall when it was demonstrated that he fell short of that absolute—-as all humans must.  Had he been more accurately portrayed as he really was, complete with flaws, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have succeeded mightily because his reality, the total balance of light and dark, was more than enough to place him in the topmost echelons of great American presidents.  The problem was that there was no way to present an objective portrayal of Nixon as he really was.  There was only the adversary process of the opposition portrayal of absolute bad and our portrayal of absolute good.  Neither was on the mark.  We were much closer to right, but the opposition had more resources than we did in getting their story across.”

Politics is ridiculous when one side tries to demonize the other, while portraying its own side as infallible.  We see that too often on both sides, Republican and Democrat.  It’s so phony.  How stupid do politicians think Americans are?

Are there ways to see the human side of politicians, good and bad?  Well, yes.  Biographies can give a fairly decent picture of that—-not perfect, mind you, but fairly decent.  At least when I read a biography, I usually don’t walk away thinking that a person is totally good or totally bad.  This also applies to biographies that I have seen on television.

But then there are people who claim that what we read in biographies is not the full picture of who these politicians really are—-that there are sinister things that politicians do behind closed doors.  They’re probably right.  I wouldn’t say that certain politicians are actually lizards, as some conspiracy theorists suggest, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a number of politicians who are selfish, cynical, and just plain corrupt.

What discourages me about political mudslinging is that it takes attention off of important issues.  Case in point: the health care debate.  Maybe President Obama was wrong to go around the country telling people that, under his plan, they would be able to keep their health insurance plans if they liked them.  Perhaps Obama made a mistake there.  But that’s not as important to me as the need to cover the uninsured, both because people need access to affordable health care that does not bankrupt them, and also because covering the uninsured can save the health care system money.  All politicians are flawed.  There’s no question about that.  The question should be what policies will help people.

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On pages 370-371 of The Ends of Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona) states the following:

“A Presidential chopper was sitting on the helipad waiting for us.  I wouldn’t be seeing that again…The Pentagon.  Vietnam War, May 8, 1972.  Sitting in the Oval Office debating with Henry Kissinger on a military move to end that war.  Past.  Gone.”

Haldeman debated with Kissinger on military strategy?  What qualified Haldeman to do that?  Kissinger had a Ph.D. pertaining to foreign policy and an academic career in that field.  Haldeman was a former advertising man.

I hope that I don’t come across as an intellectual snob here, because I’m not.  I think that people from all walks of life can learn things and come up with valuable ideas.  It just interests me that, in the realm of politics, we often see academics debating issues with people who don’t have academic qualifications in a field, simply because the latter have power.  This is especially the case with the person at the top, the President: Presidents usually don’t have doctorates in economics, sociology, or foreign policy, yet we entrust ourselves to their judgment on these issues.  They may listen to academics, but the Presidents are the ones who get to decide what they will do.

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On page 367 of The Ends of Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona) refers to President Richard Nixon’s exhortation to Haldeman to read Nixon’s book, Six Crises, especially the part of the book’s introduction in which Nixon talks about the agony of trying to make a decision, and the peace that comes after the decision is made.

Do I feel fine after I have made a decision?  Overall, I’d say yes.  We’re often presented with imperfect options in life, and we find that we have to choose one of them.  When I resolve to pick one of them, notwithstanding the problems in my choice, I feel all right.

One area in which this is a challenge, however, is religious faith.  I don’t feel good waffling among belief in God, agnosticism, and atheism, but I also don’t feel good within any of those options.  Within atheism, I feel hopeless.  Within theism, I feel as if I’m turning off my mind for the sake of naivety and embracing a God who doesn’t fully accept me because I fall short of his standards.  Within agnosticism, I feel rudderless and without a solid foundation.  There are times when I feel good just ignoring religious issues altogether.  “Why fret?” I wonder.  “Just enjoy life right now.”  But there are times when I think that I need a solid foundation, or a divine friend to lean on.  I’m just not sure if I can find answers in evangelical Christianity, or even the mainline versions of Christianity.

NOTE: I'm not saying that everyone who believes in God is naive, shuts off his or her mind, or embraces a God who conditions his acceptance on people's obedience to his commandments.  I'm talking more about where I am right now, and how I read the Bible, than I am about other people's faith.  

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On page 319 of The Ends of Power, by H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona), we read of Haldeman’s reaction to an instruction that President Richard Nixon gave to him.

“[Nixon said:] ‘I want you to go in the other room and call Colson and check out two things.  First, find out exactly what he discussed with Hunt’s lawyer when he met with him in January.  Specifically, I want to know whether he mentioned the President in any way when he talked about clemency for Hunt.  And I want to know precisely how Colson raised the point and what he said.’  Since I didn’t know that Colson had discussed clemency with Hunt’s lawyer in January, this order came as a bit of surprise, but I was used to that.  It was Nixon’s habit to assume that I knew what he was talking about, or that I would somehow find out.  He didn’t often waste much time explaining to me.”

One characteristic of some people with Asperger’s (or so I have read) is that they blurt things out without offering much context for what they are talking about.  I’m not sure if this is true of all people with the syndrome, for there are people with Asperger’s who are known for delivering monologues, and I wouldn’t be surprised if those monologues provided context.  But I know that, in the case of myself and certain other people with the syndrome whom I have encountered, we tend to say things without providing much context for what we are saying.  And people look at us quizzically, wondering what exactly we are talking about.

This is something for me to work on, insofar as I can.  I think that one reason that I may not offer a lot of context is that I don’t like to talk.  Another reason may be that I don’t feel that people give me much of a chance to provide context, for they lose interest in what I am saying and turn their attention onto something else, or I get cut off.  In this case, maybe one thing for me to work on is to try to hold people’s interest.  Perhaps I can dramatize what I am saying!

In writing this, I’m not dogmatically suggesting that Nixon had Asperger’s.  As a lawyer and a politician, there were plenty of times when he provided context for what he was talking about.  But perhaps he preferred not to do so when he did not have to.

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In The Ends of Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona) offers an idea about the identity of the mysterious “Deep Throat,” the Nixon Administration official who secretly leaked Watergate information to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  Bob Woodward would identify FBI official Mark Felt as Deep Throat, but Haldeman and DiMona wrote The Ends of Power prior to this revelation.

Haldeman speculates that Deep Throat was Fred Fielding, an assistant to White House Counsel John Dean.  First of all, on the basis of what Woodward has said, Haldeman notes that Deep Throat was in the Executive Branch and had access to the Committee to Re-Elect the President, the FBI, and the Justice Department when Watergate was going on.  According to Haldeman, this would only fit Dean or Dean’s associate.

Second, Haldeman believes that identifying Deep Throat as Fielding would account for the erroneous information that Deep Throat leaked, information that “every White House staffer knew was wrong” (page 187).  For example, Deep Throat said that Attorney General John Mitchell investigated Watergate and that E. Howard Hunt (one of the people involved in the break-in) was assigned to gather information, and Haldeman believes that this claim was wrong and “comical”.  According to Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Dean did the investigating, plus why would Hunt be assigned “to investigate his own break-in” (page 188)?  Haldeman notes that Dean said that he kept Fielding “out of things” (Dean’s alleged words) when Watergate was going on, and Haldeman believes this would explain how Deep Throat had incomplete or distorted information.

Do these criteria fit Mark Felt?  I guess it depends on when Mark Felt worked for the FBI, and whether that overlaps with the time that Deep Throat was feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein.  Felt was in the Executive Branch, yet he was not a close adviser within the Nixon Administration, and (assuming that Felt worked for the FBI when Deep Throat was divulging information) that would be consistent with Deep Throat’s incomplete knowledge.  As Ann Coulter notes, however, Felt had left the FBI before the story about the 18 and 1/2 minute gap (which Deep Throat supposedly fed Woodward and Bernstein) came out (see here), so she is skeptical about Felt being Deep Throat.  At the same time, Felt probably had contacts within the Executive Branch, and perhaps one of them could have given Felt that information.

(UPDATE: This article indicates that Felt was working for the FBI during some of the time that he was leaking information to Woodward, and also that Haldeman himself feared that Felt would leak information.)

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On page 276 of The Ends to Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona) says the following about President Richard Nixon’s valet, Manolo Sanchez, and how his serving Nixon coffee made a lot of racket on Nixon’s tapes:

“Manolo is well known—-and damned—-by all listeners to the tapes as the creator of the thunderous, ear-splitting crashes which usually occurred as the sound was turned up in order to hear a low pitched voice.  The thunder was caused by Manolo delicately placing a cup of coffee on Nixon’s desk in which the microphones were installed.”

I laughed out loud when I read that!

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In my latest reading of The Ends of Power, by H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona), Haldeman talks about the time when President Richard Nixon wanted to ban The Washington Post from his daughter Tricia Nixon’s wedding.  Before, at Julie Nixon’s wedding, an anti-Nixon reporter went to the event and wrote a rather negative story.  Richard Nixon was angry about that, and he didn’t want the same thing to happen again.

In Haldeman’s narration in The Ends of Power, Haldeman had developed a fairly decent relationship with Kay Graham, who owned The Washington Post.  According to his telling, this began after he had been seated next to her at a dinner.  Haldeman narrates on page 245:

“I talked to her at length, trying to show that we were reasonable men at the White House, and therefore her treatment of us at the Post should be reasonable.  I think I made some headway; at least it was a start.  Mrs. Graham told me to be sure to call her directly anytime I felt the Post was not being fair in its treatment of us.”
Haldeman states that he did not take advantage of this offer, until Nixon decided to ban the Post from Tricia’s wedding.  Haldeman says on pages 246-247:

“I…explained [to Kay Graham] the Nixon family concern with what might happen if a certain reporter were assigned to the wedding, and asked if anything could be done to avert it.  I tried to appeal to her personal side, citing the family’s natural desire that the wedding be a happy occasion.  I didn’t mention my orders from the President that the Post was to be banned altogether because I hoped we could work out something that would solve the problem.”

Kay Graham responded that she couldn’t “interfere with the decision of who covers a story” (Graham’s alleged words, quoted on page 247), and that she couldn’t allow the White House to dictate the Post‘s press coverage, but that she understood.  Haldeman narrates that the problem of the reporter was solved, and the Post was not banned from Tricia’s wedding.

I like this story because it is about the of building bridges between different people, being fair and acknowledging people’s humanity, and using diplomacy.  Haldeman was effective because he appealed to Nixon’s humanity in his conversation with Kay Graham, and also because he did not raise an issue that could raise barriers rather than lowering them (in this case, Nixon’s desire to expel the Post from Tricia’s wedding).  And it helped that he was dealing with a lady who herself could be reasonable and fair-minded.  But would this relationship have developed had Haldeman not been seated next to her at that dinner, had he not been given the opportunity to humbly make his case to her, had he not permitted her to see him as a person, not as some character she knew about who worked at the White House?  Would the barriers have still been there had they not gotten to meet each other and to have a discussion?

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For my blog post today about The Ends of Power, by H.R. Haldeman and Joseph DiMona, I will use as my pivot-point something that Haldeman says on page 191.  Haldeman is talking about the idea that there was a CIA connection with the Watergate break-in, and Haldeman states that Charles Colson, an aide to President Richard Nixon, was investigating that.  According to Haldeman, Colson was finding information, but Colson then decided to terminate the investigation due to new-found religious commitments.  Colson had become a born-again Christian, and “he had apparently decided to turn the other cheek, as the Bible suggests, and ignored almost completely all the facts he had uncovered about the CIA involvement” (page 191).

I have two items:

1.  One reason that people probably bought this book was that they were curious about Haldeman’s take on Watergate.  Haldeman, after all, was President Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff and a close adviser.  In The Ends of Power, Haldeman explores different ideas about why the Watergate break-in occurred.  One idea was that those who broke in were trying to find information about Democratic strategies for the 1972 Presidential election.  Another idea was that the CIA was seeking a way to undermine Nixon’s Presidency, since the CIA feared that Nixon might interfere politically with its operations.  Haldeman also mentions the argument that Democrats knew about the break-in in advance and allowed it so as to discredit Nixon’s Administration, as well as the notion that the CIA sought to sabotage the break-in because it feared that the bugging of Lawrence O’Brien’s phone would uncover CIA connections with magnate Howard Hughes.  Haldeman does not believe that a break-in to uncover Democratic strategies would have been particularly wise, since Nixon was ahead of George McGovern in the polls, and the Democratic National Committee headquarters was not the place to find McGovern’s strategies.  But Haldeman offers arguments for the possible role of the CIA, appealing to people in the CIA who were involved in the break-in, as well as bizarre occurrences during the break-in that may indicate CIA sabotage.

The explanation for Watergate that Haldeman settles on goes as follows: Nixon desired information on DNC chairman Lawrence O’Brien, for Nixon was upset that O’Brien was harping on the ITT scandal (see here), and Nixon wanted to find information about O’Brien’s links with Howard Hughes.  According to Haldeman’s theory, Nixon ordered Colson to dig up information about O’Brien, Colson handed the mission over to E. Howard Hunt, and Hunt conferred with G. Gordon Liddy, who decided to tap O’Brien’s phone at the Watergate.  Meanwhile, the “Democratic high command” (Haldeman’s words) expected the break-in, and the CIA was monitoring and sabotaging it.

2.  Haldeman’s discussion of Colson’s religiosity intrigued me.  Haldeman mentions religion earlier in the book, when Haldeman says that he (meaning Haldeman) used to drink but quit for religious reasons.  Now, on page 191, Haldeman mentions Colson’s conversion.  Haldeman refers to Colson’s religiosity later in the book as well, for Haldeman notes Colson’s work in prison ministry and says that he believes that Colson is a changed man.  At the same time, Haldeman wonders if Colson might be blackmailing Nixon.  Haldeman notes that Nixon, in David Frost’s interviews of him, did not mention Colson once, and Haldeman is curious about whether or not that was due to blackmail.

Since Haldeman quit drinking for religious reasons, that must mean that religion was important to Haldeman, right?  How, then, did Haldeman react to Colson’s religiosity?  I detect some sadness on Haldeman’s part that Colson did not continue to investigate the possible CIA role in the Watergate break-in.  Did Haldeman believe that Colson in that case was misapplying the biblical command to turn-the-other-cheek, or rather that the biblical command itself was impractical?  Moreover, later in the book, Haldeman appears to miss the old Colson.  “There may never be his like again”, Haldeman says in page 219.

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On page 145 of The Ends of Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona) states:

“Ironically enough, given my own involvement in the White House taping system, I hate wiretapping because I hate prying into anyone’s private life.  I remember when J. Edgar Hoover called me at the White House and said he was sending over the transcripts of the Martin Luther King tapes.  The FBI had bugged King’s hotel room when the Kennedys were in power and caught King enjoying extramarital trysts.  I don’t blame the Kennedys completely for that wiretapping because I know how much Hoover was personally obsessed with King.  When I received the FBI Director’s call, I said I didn’t want to see the transcripts.  The man was dead.  But Hoover, no great fan of the Civil Rights movement at any time, wanted the White House to see them to show that King wasn’t ‘such a saint as they’re making him out to be today.’  Presumably, we would inform Civil Rights leaders that their idol had feet of clay.  Hoover sent the material over.  I took one glance at the top page and pushed it back into the envelope.  I found the content of that first page almost as disgusting as Hoover’s attempted use of the transcripts.”

I have to admire someone who respects people’s privacy and does not feel a need to catch up on the latest gossip.  I’m not entirely like this, for I enjoy reading biographies that get into how people were—-the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I do find that I don’t want to know what people are saying about me, however, but that is primarily so that my own feelings can be spared.  But I think that letting people be is a fine rule of life.  At the same time, I also believe that people going about their merry way and living their own lives, without concern about what is going on in the lives of others, can be quite lonely (not that tapping phones is a solution to this!).

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On pages 110-111 of The Ends of Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona) offers an opinion as to why President Richard Nixon did not have personal friends, such as Herb Klein and Bob Finch, close to him in his Administration, whereas Haldeman actually did serve close to Nixon:

“Nixon viewed Klein and Finch in human terms, as people, which meant he would have had trouble dealing with them on an official basis.

“He didn’t see me as a person or even, I believe, as a human being.  I was a machine.  A robot.  Shortly after it came out I saw the movie Star Wars: there is a robot, a metal machine clanking along doing what it’s told by a computer-like mind.  From Nixon’s viewpoint, that’s what I was.  And I was a good machine.  I was efficient, I didn’t require a lot of ‘oiling’—-and he wasn’t good at ‘oiling’; or what LBJ called ‘schmoozing.’”

I wouldn’t exactly treat what Haldeman says here as absolutely true, though there may be some truth in it.  Granted, Nixon may have treated Haldeman in an impersonal manner, but I read in The Final Days that Nixon regarded Pat Buchanan almost as a son, and Buchanan was a fairly influential adviser within the Nixon Administration.

But this passage from The Ends of Power got me thinking: would I like to work with friends in an official capacity?  I was watching The Wonder Years recently, and there was an episode in which Paul got Kevin a job at a Chinese restaurant.  Paul was the assistant manager, and Kevin was chopping onions!  I was thinking to myself that this would not be a bad set-up.  You have a friend getting you a job, which means that you’re more of a shoe-in: you’re not submitting an application, only to be forgotten, or to be given the brush-off.  And, because your boss is your friend, your boss may be more understanding.  I’m not saying that therefore you can be a bad worker, but rather that you’re not walking on eggshells as much as you may be if you were going into a new, unfamiliar setting where you knew nobody, and you were afraid of making mistakes.  (I say “you” here, but that may not be appropriate, since some people reading this are not as timid as others.)

But there are downsides to working with friends in an official capacity.  It can destroy the friendship.  For example, if I were to write a book, I would prefer for it to be edited and critiqued by someone I did not know.  I would take criticism harder and more personally were it to come from a friend.  But, from someone I did not really know, I wouldn’t care as much.  On the other hand, though, perhaps there are situations in which criticism can come from a friend much more smoothly: the friend may know how to be diplomatic with you, or how to offer constructive criticism that is tailored towards your unique personality.  (Again, I can’t really say “you” here, since some people are stronger and more receptive to criticism than others.)

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On pages 106-107 of The Ends of Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona) talks about President Richard Nixon’s social awkwardness, contrasting Nixon with President Lyndon Johnson:

“The awkwardness was sometimes also a problem for the President in the conduct of his official duties.  Contrast, for example, his relations with Congress with those of his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson.  LBJ was rough-tongued, but at the same time he could charm or bluster you into anything.  He was an absolute master at Congressional persuasion.  Nixon was not at his best at this vital art.  Johnson could envelop a Congressman in charm, make him come out doing what Johnson wanted and at the same time lay in a very tough threat of what would happen if the Congressman didn’t do it.  Nixon tried the same approach, but the charm wasn’t there—-and the threat would be left hanging bald, bare, and glaring.”

If one is socially awkward (like yours truly), is it a good idea for that person to imitate someone who is more socially adept?  I’ve heard people answer “yes” to that.  And, sometimes, it can work.  One time, a friend and I were walking to class in the bitter cold, and my friend remarked, “Still winter.”  Later that day, I saw another classmate, and I was walking with him unsure of what to say, so I adopted what my friend had said earlier that day: “Still winter.”  The classmate laughed and said, “Yeah.”

But there are times when trying to imitate someone else may not flow smoothly.  It’s like when I was taking gym as a youngster: the gym teacher or a student would demonstrate an athletic skill to us, and it would look so easy.  Then I would try it, and I’d botch it up!  Well, trying to imitate people’s social mannerisms can have that result, as we see in Haldeman’s description of Nixon’s attempts to imitate Lyndon Johnson.  What may be easy for somebody else may be more difficult for me.

And yet, I should be willing to learn from others.  If my social repertoire is limited, then watching and learning from what others say and do may allow me to give it some content—-as long as I remember what is appropriate to a given context (what I observe in one context may not be appropriate in another context).

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My main topic for my blog post today on H.R. Haldeman’s (and Joseph DiMona’s) The Ends of Power will be change.

The topic of change came up more than once in my latest reading.  Disputing biographies about him, Haldeman narrates that he was not interested in politics when he was in college, that when he initially became involved in politics it was on behalf of a leftist, and that he turned to politics because he was bored with his advertising job.  Haldeman also states that he gravitated towards Nixon because Nixon was in the center of things, and he admired Nixon’s courage in the Hiss case and the Checkers Speech.

Haldeman also talks some about his temperament and his management-style.  Haldeman states that he was much more easygoing when he was in advertising, but that he was a harsh iron-wall within the Nixon Administration out of a desire to do his job well.  He sought results, and he was very particular about who would meet with the President because he did not want to waste the President’s time.  You would think that Haldeman is saying that he’s actually a fun guy, and that he chose to become harsh or strictly-business out of professional necessity.  But Haldeman also seems to be saying that he is who he is.  He says that he prefers to spend time with his family rather than going to parties.  He contrasts himself with John Dean, Alexander Butterfield, and Ron Ziegler, saying that they liked to have fun, whereas he was strictly business on trips.  Haldeman expresses regret at his harsh management style, but he also tells the story of when Nixon’s friend, Bebe Rebozo, was trying to encourage Haldeman to be more diplomatic, even as Rebozo was snapping his fingers at a busboy.  Haldeman states, “I, of course, couldn’t have changed my character any more than Nixon could his, and so Bebe’s mission was a failure” (page 89).

Can people change?  Sometimes, change is not something that we choose, but rather it’s something that happens to us:  Haldeman’s boredom with advertising and his search for something exciting comes to my mind.  Circumstances may also lead us to change: Haldeman could be easygoing within advertising, but he felt that he had to be down-to-business and harsh as Nixon’s Chief of Staff.  But change may be inhibited by our preferences and desires: Haldeman liked spending time with his family rather than going to parties, for example.  And change can also be hindered because we continue to see the rationale behind the status quo, viewing that as the best option out there: Although Haldeman would acknowledge flaws in his management style, he still believed that there was a rationale for it (i.e., not wanting to waste the President’s time, desiring results, etc.).

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I started H.R. Haldeman’s The Ends of Power, which Haldeman co-wrote with Joseph DiMona.  Haldeman was White House Chief of Staff to President Richard Nixon.

Why did I decide to read this book?  Well, Haldeman has somewhat fascinated me.  I suppose that he has ever since I read Eli Chesen’s President Nixon’s Psychiatric Profile, which noted Haldeman’s 1950′s style haircut, and also the fact that Haldeman was a devout Christian Scientist.  Moreover, I have long read and heard that Haldeman was rather intimidating, and I often wonder what is underneath people who put on a tough front.

So far, The Ends of Power gets into some of the intricacies of Watergate.  Reading this book is similar to my experience of reading volume 2 of Nixon’s memoirs, which talked a lot about Watergate.  This is not because Haldeman necessarily agrees with Nixon’s account: Haldeman agrees with Nixon in some areas, but disagrees with Nixon in others (i.e., what was discussed on the 18 and 1/2 minutes erased from the tape).  Rather, the two are similar because of their ambiguity.  Both of them, on some level, agree that the break-in at the Democratic Committee’s headquarters was a mistake, and Haldeman takes some responsibility for it, even though he says that neither he nor Nixon ordered it or even knew about it until after it occurred.  (UPDATE: Later in the book, however, Haldeman says that Nixon wanted information about DNC chair Lawrence O'Brien, and that this might have been an impetus for the break-in.) And yet, both Nixon and Haldeman say that they don’t have much of a problem with bugging because Democrats did that, too.  The initial reaction of Nixon and Haldeman, according to their accounts, was that the break-in was stupid, since what was at the DNC headquarters?  But they stop short of criticizing the mindset that was allegedly behind the break-in: the use of bugging to gather information on one’s political opponents.  I’m just speaking based on my reading of Haldeman so far.

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On pages 137-138 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves talks about the children of prominent Nixon White House workers who were protesting against the Vietnam War.  (I mean that the children were protesting, not the workers.)  Reeves states:

"Two of Ehrlichman's children were demonstrating at their schools.  Haldeman's daughter Susan was demonstrating at Stanford in Palo Alto, California, along with Ehrlichman's son Peter.  Vice President Agnew's fourteen-year-old daughter Kim wanted to join the crowds, but he was able to stop her.  William Watts, a Kissinger assistant working on the November 3 speech, came up from his National Security Council office for fresh air and saw his wife and daughter walk by outside the White House fence holding their candles."

This was interesting to me, the same way that the political ideology of Richard Nixon's daughters, Julie and Tricia, has been interesting to me.  By and large, Julie and Tricia stood by their father's Vietnam policy.  But the children of some prominent people within the Nixon White House, such as H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Vice President Spiro Agnew, were against the war.  What was that like: for the children to disagree with their father politically?  Did that disrupt the children's relationship with their father?  Were these children like Patti Davis, one of Ronald Reagan's daughters, who was allegedly resentful of her father's conservatism, and seemed to make no bones about challenging her father in public?

I was not able to do a thorough research project on this question, but I found a couple of things.  This passage from the book Anti-Americanism: Historical Perspectives talks about how disagreement about the Vietnam War was common in a number of conservatives' families.  William F. Buckley, Jr. was defending a hawkish approach to the Vietnam War, but his son Christopher got student deferments from the draft.  Pat Buchanan's brother, Brian, participated in anti-war protests as a Xavier College student.  (Come to think of it, I do recall Pat talking in Right from the Beginning about debates he would have about the Vietnam War at his father's meal-table.)  Susan Haldeman not only protested against the Vietnam War, but that passage states that she actually visited Chile to support its leftist leader, Salvador Allende.

The thing is, though, from what I have read online, it does not seem to me that Susan Haldeman expressed any public hostility towards her father.  Rather, she seemed to be loyal to him.  Her brother Peter wrote, "In the spring, just before my father resigned, a reporter had tracked down my sister at college; the interview ran in a local paper under the headline 'Susie Haldeman Calls Her Father a 'Fun Guy.''"  I recently found H.R. Haldeman's The Ends of Power at a local library giveaway, and, while I did not read all of it, I stumbled upon one part of the book where Haldeman talks affectionately about his children.  He says that they liked the comic strip Doonesbury (which, as you may know, is very left-wing), and H.R. Haldeman requested from its writer, Gary Trudeau, some originals of the strips that made fun of him (H.R. Haldeman), so that Haldeman could frame them.  I realize that H.R. Haldeman would repudiate parts of The Ends of Power and blame them on his co-author, but I'd like to think that this story is true and that he had a good relationship with his children, even though there may have been political disagreements.

The Arrogance to Power 4

President Richard Nixon wanted to pressure the CIA to limit the FBI's investigation into Watergate, and his rationale to CIA director Richard Helms was that one of the Watergate conspirators, E. Howard Hunt, who had worked for the CIA, might go on blabbing about the Bay of Pigs, which was a failed attempt under the Kennedy Administration to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro.  H.R. Haldeman, a close aide to President Nixon, would write in his book The Ends of Power (which he co-wrote with Joseph DiMona) that "Bay of Pigs" could have been a code-word for the Kennedy assassination.

What did the Bay of Pigs have to do with the Kennedy assassination?  Don Fulsom, in his book Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President, states that the connection was probably that "the cast of characters employed in the 1960 plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and kill Fidel Castro and the cast of characters employed in the plan to assassinate Kennedy in 1963 were the same" (page 130).  You may have seen Oliver Stone's JFK, which posits that prominent elements of the U.S. government and anti-Castro Cubans were involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  According to this narrative, the anti-Castro Cubans were upset the Kennedy left them hanging in their attempts to overthrow Castro, whereas certain forces within the U.S. government did not particularly care for Kennedy's (alleged) desire to scale back on America's involvement in the Vietnam War, to reach an understanding with the Soviet Union, and to shatter the power of the CIA.  Meanwhile, there were American business interests that profited off of war, and that also did not care for losing their investments in Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power.  Oliver Stone was also open to the possibility that the mob was involved in the JFK assassination, albeit at a "lower level".  Some believe that one reason that Nixon appealed to the Bay of Pigs in encouraging the CIA to limit the FBI's Watergate investigation was that Nixon was essentially telling the CIA that, unless it acted, the way that its Bay of Pigs operation led to the Kennedy assassination could be exposed.

Oliver Stone in the movie Nixon may have the same idea as Fulsom: that Nixon meant the Kennedy assassination when he mentioned the Bay of Pigs because some of the anti-Castro Cubans and intelligence agents involved in the Bay of Pigs  participated in the plot to kill President John F. Kennedy.  Both Fulsom and Anthony Summers argue that Nixon, during the Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, was involved in plots to overthrow Fidel Castro.  After I first watched the movie Nixon, I read reviews that said that Stone was alleging that Nixon felt somehow responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy, since Nixon was an integral part of the plots against Castro, the plots that some believe boomeranged into the Kennedy assassination.  Fulsom actually goes a bit farther than this.  On page 151 of Nixon's Darkest Secrets, Fulsom states: "Was Richard Nixon really in Dallas on November 22 for a PepsiCo convention, as he said, or could his presence have been some sort of signal to his friends in the Mob and the CIA and among the Cuban exiles----the eventual chief suspects of JFK assassination conspiracy theorists?  Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana proudly told relatives that, as the mastermind of the JFK assassination plot, he and Nixon had a preassassination meeting there to discuss the plot."  Fulsom refers in the footnotes to a book by Chuck and Sam Giancana.  Can we trust Sam on this, or was Sam merely saying it as a way to sell more books?

But back to Haldeman's claim in The Ends of Power that Nixon meant the Kennedy assassination when he referred to the Bay of Pigs.  Anthony Summers, in a note in The Arrogance of Power, interacts with Haldeman's later retraction of that claim.  Haldeman would blame that claim on his co-author, Joseph DiMona.  But Summers does not buy Haldeman's retraction because of indications that Haldeman was intimately involved in the composition and editing of his book (The Ends of Power), and Haldeman was quite particular about what went into his book and what came out.  Summers also notes that Haldeman told him (meaning Summers) in 1989, when Summers was working on a book about J. Edgar Hoover, that he (Haldeman) was merely speculating that Nixon's reference to the Bay of Pigs related to the Kennedy assassination.  Haldeman had not yet retracted the claim.

What interested me in reading Summers is that what Haldeman said in The Ends of Power (according to Summers) differs significantly from the narrative that some of the anti-Castro forces involved in the Bay of Pigs later participated in the Kennedy assassination.  Summers states on page 199 of The Arrogance of Power: "If the Cuban leader decided to retaliate, Haldeman surmised, then the U.S. plots to kill him 'may have triggered the Kennedy tragedy.'  The CIA, he suggested, 'desperately wanted to hide that dark possibility.'"  What this seems to suggest is that, according to Haldeman, the Bay of Pigs could have been associated with the Kennedy assassination because the Bay of Pigs made Cuban leader Fidel Castro mad, and so Castro may have retaliated by contributing to the assassination of Kennedy.  In this scenario, it is not anti-Castro forces that were responsible for Kennedy's death, but Castro.

This is actually a fairly popular idea.  I remember watching the Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, and (if I'm not mistaken), Ramsey Clark, who had served as President Lyndon Johnson's Attorney General, stated that Johnson expressed to him a belief that Castro was somehow behind the Kennedy assassination.  In the movie JFK, a bullying government agent tells one of Jim Garrison's assistants that Oswald didn't pull the trigger, but Castro did (which is not to be taken literally, but simply expresses the belief that Castro was behind the shooting of Kennedy).  And, in a documentary about the Kennedy assassination, Jack Anderson (whom Fulsom praises in his book) posits that a combination of the mob and Fidel Castro participated in the plot to assassinate JFK.  I wouldn't be surprised if the mafia played both sides (pro and anti) when it came to Fidel Castro.  Remember David Ferrie's rant in JFK, in which he said that Castro was almost on "our" side, and everyone is always switching sides?

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 26

I have three items for my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.

1.  On page 822, we read: "[White House counsel John] Dean had set up his own investigation unit and had caused the investigation of the call-girl ring associated with the 'Happy Hooker' Xaviera Hollander, but this achieved nothing useful, since there were as many Republicans as Democrats in it, an unsurprising revelation."

The reason that this stood out to me is that Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin argue in their controversial book, Silent Coup, that John Dean's investigation of the call-girl ring was the motive behind the break-in at the Watergate hotel, as Dean allegedly was seeking information about the prostitution ring and was trying to cover things up, since his wife was supposedly connected with someone in the ring.  Dean would sue Colodny and Gettlin for libel.  It's interesting to me that Black essentially acknowledges that Dean was investigating the prostitution ring.  Black doesn't seem to buy into the idea that this was the motive behind the Watergate break-in, however, for Black appears to accept the prominent narrative that the Watergate break-in was aiming to collect information about Democratic National Committee chairman Lawrence O'Brien.  For Black, Dean was investigating the call-girl ring, but it was with the intent of finding dirt on Democrats.  According to Black, the problem, in terms of Dean's goal, was that Republicans were using the ring's services, too!

2.  On page 825, we read: "The tapes of these June 23 conversations were released on August 5, 1974, and became known as the 'smoking gun,' but they were not as damaging as they seemed when presented two years after the fact as a sort of last straw.  [FBI director L. Patrick] Gray had expressed a concern, denied by [CIA director Richard] Helms, about a CIA covert operation.  Helms told [Nixon aides] Haldeman and Ehrlichman that he would cooperate if given written instructions and an adequate explanation, by which he clearly meant that there would have to be an adequate reason to ask the FBI to desist.  No such instructions were given; no such request [Deputy Director for Central Intelligence Vernon] Walters spoke again to Gray.  The FBI did not desist, and didn't principally have carriage of the matter anyway.  It appeared two years later, and was represented by the press, as an attempt to obstruct justice, and it would have been if it had been pushed, but it wasn't pushed."

The topic here is the charge that President Richard Nixon obstructed justice by encouraging the CIA to restrict the FBI's investigation into Watergate.  Nixon's claim was that he was doing this because some of the people involved in the Watergate break-in were connected with the CIA, and Nixon didn't want the investigation into Watergate to blow the lid on any covert operations.  Black contends that, because Nixon didn't press the matter with the CIA, he wasn't really attempting to obstruct justice.

The low-key manner in which Black describes this topic contrasts with what I was recently reading in Don Fulsom's Nixon's Darkest Secrets.  Fulsom notes that Nixon wanted CIA director Helms to know that Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt could start blabbing on about the Bay of Pigs, if Helms did not limit the FBI's investigation into Watergate.  Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman said in The Ends of Power (written with Joseph DiMona), and Fulsom agrees, that "Bay of Pigs" meant the Kennedy assassination.  Fulsom says that the connection between the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy assassination was probably that "the cast of characters employed in the 1960 plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and kill Fidel Castro and the cast of characters employed in the plan to assassinate Kennedy in 1963 were the same" (page 130).

Fulsom refers to the testimony of Haldeman and John Ehrlichman (in their books) that Helms really erupted when they brought up the Bay of Pigs, to the surprise of Haldeman and Ehrlichman!  Haldeman quotes Helms as saying: "The Bay of Pigs has nothing to do with this! I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs."  Fulsom later refers to Haldeman's statement in The Ends of Power that Haldeman told the President that Helms "got the picture" and said he'd "be very happy to be helpful" (Haldeman's words).  But Fulsom narrates that Helms then "had second thoughts and was refusing to cooperate with Nixon's gambit" (pages 135-136).  Fulsom then dryly relates: "For that insubordination, he was eventually banished to be the ambassador to Iran."  Fulsom depicts Nixon as more heavy-handed in his treatment of the CIA than Black does.

3.  On pages 826-827, Black states: "For the reelection committee to pay the legal costs and living expenses of part-time and full-time employees is quite in order.  It has been assumed that this was 'hush money,' payments made in exchange for silence about CREEP or White House involvement.  In all the voluminous material, it is not clear that was even the implicit intended nature of the payments, at least at the outset.  As time went by, what amounted to blackmail was attempted by some of the defendants, and some was paid.  But it is not clear that submitting to blackmail constitutes obstructing justice.  It was, however, both shaming and demeaning to the presidency."

This seems to correspond with Black's overall take on Watergate, at least in what I have read so far: that Nixon did foolish things, things that were beneath the Presidency, and yet he arguably did not do anything that would deserve impeachment.

Nixon Reconsidered 5

For my blog post today about Joan Hoff's Nixon Reconsidered, my topic will be the so-called "madman theory."

What's the "madman theory"?  According to Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman, in his book The Ends of Power, Nixon during the 1968 campaign mused about how he could end the Vietnam War as President by making the North Vietnamese think that he was a madman who could do anything, including drop the nuclear bomb.  The notion that Nixon held to a "madman theory" is widely accepted.

Hoff appears to be skeptical that Nixon embraced the "madman theory," however, and she lists the following considerations:

1.  Only Haldeman mentioned Nixon saying anything about it.  Nixon himself told Hoff that he didn't remember using the term in a conversation with Haldeman, and that he rarely discussed with Haldeman "substantive foreign policy matters" (Hoff's words on page 177).  Hoff also says that Nixon would have been imprudent to use the term "madman theory" in discussing his diplomacy, since Nixon called the anti-war protesters irrational.  Nixon did say, however, that, if he discussed the threat of "excessive force" in the Vietnam War, that had to do with Nixon using Kissinger as the "good messenger" (Nixon's terms) who would be a foil to Nixon's well-known anti-Communism.  That sounds to me like the substance of the madman theory----within a "good cop, bad cop" context----even if Nixon did not use the exact term.

2.  Hoff speculates that the term "madman theory" may go back to Henry Kissinger.  In 1959, Daniel Ellsberg delivered two lectures to Kissinger's Harvard seminar, and they were entitled "The Political Uses of Madness."  Ellsberg discussed how Adolf Hitler used "irrational military threats" (Ellsberg's words) in a political manner, and Ellsberg went on to criticize Hitler's strategy.  Hoff states that "there is some indication in even his earliest books that Kissinger accepted such an approach as diplomatically feasible," but that there is nothing in Kissinger's memoirs that indicates Kissinger's support for the "madman theory" (page 178).  According to Hoff, this is probably because Kissinger was trying to depict himself as a great negotiator.

3.  Hoff refers to an example of Kissinger encouraging the use of force, while Nixon was very hesitant.  "On April 15, 1969," Hoff narrates, "North Korea shot down a United States Navy EC-121 reconnaissance plane, killing all thirty-one men aboard" (page 173).  Contrary to what Kissinger would assert in White House Years, Hoff states, we can see in military documents that Nixon at first was all for "striking the North Korean airfield responsible for the attack on the American plane" (page 174).  But Nixon changed his mind on this, concluding that such an attack would be unfeasible, due to the dearth of enough U.S. planes and ships in the area, and the potential unwillingness of Japan and South Korea to serve as a base for the U.S. (since they wouldn't want to be involved in a conflict between the U.S. and North Korea).  Hoff states, "It would have taken up to a week to mount an effective air strike, with effective backup power, in case North Korea decided to deploy its 400 MIG jets" (page 175).

Kissinger, by contrast, supported an air-strike.  Kissinger did not believe that the North Koreans would attack back, plus he thought that an air-strike would show the Soviet Union, China, and North Vietnam that Nixon meant business.  Nixon in his memoirs says that Kissinger told him: "If we strike back, even though it's risky, they will say, 'this guy is becoming irrational----we'd better settle with him.'"  Kissinger was the one supporting the "madman theory" in this case, not Nixon, Hoff argues.

Hoff narrates that Kissinger during the Ford Administration would similarly "overreact."  In 1975, the Khmer Rouge "captured a U.S. merchant ship and its forty-man crew", and President Gerald Ford acted on Kissinger's advice by attacking Koh Tang, the island where the ship and crew were believed to be (page 176).  Kissinger supported this measure as a way to maintain the United States' worldwide prestige, after "sixty hours of negotiating had failed" (page 176).  But the attack ended up being a disaster.  Forty-one Americans died, fifty were wounded, and many Cambodians were killed on account of a bomb while they were evacuating.  Moreover, the Cambodian government released the crew prior to the U.S. attack, meaning the attack was useless.  Hoff states that the U.S. should have negotiated with Cambodia through the UN or neutral channels.

But let's return to the North Korea incident.  As I look in volume 1 of Nixon's memoirs, and I read Nixon's account of the North Korea incident, it seems to me that Nixon identified with Kissinger's motives for wanting the U.S. to attack North Korea, for Nixon himself was concerned about U.S. prestige abroad.  Nixon also narrates that he initially supported a retaliatory attack.  But Nixon says that he came to believe that an attack would not be feasible, and he states that Kissinger himself came around to backing off from his support for an attack.  Kissinger saw that (among Nixon's team) only Vice-President Agnew, Attorney General John Mitchell, and he supported an attack, whereas Secretary of State William Rogers, Secretary of Defense Mel Laird, and most of the other top national security people opposed it.  (It's interesting to me that Agnew and Rogers were involved in these discussions, since there were many times that they were marginalized or kept outside of the loop.)  According to Nixon, Kissinger concluded that "we could ill afford a Cabinet insurrection at such an early date in the administration", and also that "congressional and public opinion were not ready for the shock of a strong retaliation against the Communists in North Korea" (page 475).  Nixon agreed to a plan of continuing intelligence flights, while backing them up with "fighter escort," and also of launching another round of attacks on North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia, just to show North Vietnam (and North Korea) that the U.S. still meant business.  Nixon also expresses a sense, based on intelligent reports, that what North Korea did was an isolated occurrence.

I've not yet read the entirety of Henry Kissinger's White House Years, but his account of the EC-121 incident is on pages 315-321.  Essentially, Kissinger portrays Nixon as failing to act decisively and to demonstrate solid leadership during this crisis, which occurred so early in Richard Nixon's Presidency.  Rather, according to Kissinger, Nixon was dithering and was considering options.  Kissinger admits that he himself (meaning Kissinger) "favored some retaliatory act, but was less clear about what it might be" (page 317).  Kissinger also sees Nixon's point that "we could certainly not sustain a prolonged ground war" if North Korea responded (Kissinger's words, page 319), but Kissinger says that he did not believe that North Korea would escalate the situation if the U.S. retaliated.  Like Nixon in his memoirs, Kissinger narrates that he (meaning Kissinger) ultimately backed off from supporting retaliation because there was "no Congressional support" for it, plus Nixon's team was divided.  Kissinger states on page 320: "I never had had an impression that Nixon had his heart in a retaliatory attack.  He had procrastinated too much; he had not really pressed for it in personal conversation; he had not engaged in the relentless maneuvering by which he bypassed opposition when his mind was made up."

While Hoff disputes elements of Kissinger's account of the EC-121 incident, what is interesting to me is that Kissinger's account appears to be more consistent with Hoff's portrayal of Nixon than Nixon's own account of it in his memoirs, even though Hoff does not appear to be a huge fan of Kissinger (or such is my impression----she seems to portray Kissinger as a glory hog who could offer some pretty bad advice and whose accounts are not always trustworthy).  Kissinger depicts Nixon as someone whose heart wasn't into retaliation, which is consistent with Hoff's contention that Nixon was not a supporter of the "madman theory."  Nixon, however, seems to be implying that he would have supported bombing North Korea to secure America's reputation, but he did not deem it to be feasible at the time.  Circumstances were holding him back, in short!