The Haldeman maneuver didn’t really work for Nixon.
Trump has a more fanatic following.
Maybe they’ll fall into line.
As if I needed another reminder of my age, Donald Trump brings Bob Haldeman to my mind.
Haldeman was indignant 46 years ago during the Watergate hearings. John Dean had not lied, exactly, but he had misled the world by leaving out something important.
Dean had remembered talking with President Nixon about Watergate burglars. They had been caught and put in jail. They were being pressured to name names. They were about to tell an angry Judge John Sirica just who had ordered them to break into Democratic headquarters.
And they were demanding money from the Nixon people to keep quiet.
John Dean had discussed that demand with his boss, the President of the United States. And he told the Senate Committee on Watergate how that talk had gone:
I told the president about the fact there was no money to pay these individuals, to meet their demands. He asked me how much it would cost. I told him I could only make an estimate, that it might be as high as a million dollars or more.
He told me that that was no problem. He also looked over at Haldeman and repeated the same statement.
Well, that wraps it, I thought at the time. I was young.
Then it was Haldeman’s turn at the witness table. He denied being in that conversation at all.
President Nixon had been secretly recording conversations and this one was on tape. The President refused to let the Senate listen to the tapes, and he refused to let special investigators listen to them.
But Haldeman had been allowed. Even though he wasn’t there – he explained Dean was lying about that – he had heard everything in that conversation on tape and he could let the committee and the world know precisely what Dean had left out.
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