The Ends of Power

Rating:
Summary: Might be the best of the "insiders" view on Watergate ...
Review: I must second the review of the reader from Malibu...a must read! Haldeman shows again (like in the "Haldeman Diaries") his human side and not the rigid company man that he's always made out to be. The break-in and subsequent cover-up (or as Haldeman says "containment") are explained with an insiders perspective and in what I must say, the best and most clarifying way that I've read (there's still a lot on Watergate that I haven't read though...). The only critique that I might make is I wonder how much of this was J.Dimona? S. Ambrose's "Ruin and Recovery" explains that Haldeman, in later years, refuted this book and it's conclusions and, if true, that would be a shame as the conclusions drawn from this book make the most sense given the advantage of over 20 years perspective. Even though this was published in 1979, many copies are still available and can be gotten for very reasonable prices ... so I'd again recommend this book highly.

Rating:
Summary: Might be the best of the "insiders" view on Watergate ...
Review: I must second the review of the reader from Malibu...a must read! Haldeman shows again (like in the "Haldeman Diaries") his human side and not the rigid company man that he's always made out to be. The break-in and subsequent cover-up (or as Haldeman says "containment") are explained with an insiders perspective and in what I must say, the best and most clarifying way that I've read (there's still a lot on Watergate that I haven't read though...). The only critique that I might make is I wonder how much of this was J.Dimona? S. Ambrose's "Ruin and Recovery" explains that Haldeman, in later years, refuted this book and it's conclusions and, if true, that would be a shame as the conclusions drawn from this book make the most sense given the advantage of over 20 years perspective. Even though this was published in 1979, many copies are still available and can be gotten for very reasonable prices ... so I'd again recommend this book highly.

Rating:
Summary: Cool, Efficient, and Slick
Review: I reread *The Ends of Power* for two reasons. First, Sidney Blumenthal's recent *The Clinton Wars* recreates the White House when President Clinton was impeached. Richard Nixon was threatened with impeachment for more serious actions and resigned to avoid it--a neat contrast. Second, Professor William Gaines and his journalism class at the University of Illinois announced in May 2003 that Deep Throat, Bob Woodward's mysterious informant in *All the President's Men,* was John Dean's assistant Fred Fielding. In two tidy pages (136-137), H. R. Haldeman reaches the same conclusion. His brief is necessarily sketchier than that of the Gaines group, but his thinking is similar. On this topic, Haldeman is less sentimental, more objective and more briskly intelligent than Leonard Garment and John Dean, who ride hobby horses.

How does the rest of *The Ends of Power* hold up? The prose, probably Joseph DiMona's, is serviceable but slick. Most of the text is an explanation or defense of Watergate. The most insightful idea is Haldeman's linkage of Viet Nam to Watergate; however, as its title indicates, the book does not pretend to be a full account of Nixon's presidency. As Haldeman presents them, the facts are not apparently self-serving. They may thus be more subtly self-exculpatory.

Haldeman exhibits little moral feeling. There is no sense here of the country's having been done a great wrong or of the fact that Nixon's abilities--which the text names--were wasted by this ethical void. Watergate was surely a more consequential breach of behavior than oval office trysts, though the anguished evasions of Nixon and Clinton may appear eerily alike.

On the positive side, one feels that Haldeman succeeds, with a compression equal to his argument about the identity of Deep Throat, in making Nixon humanly understandable, even likeable. Longer and more balanced accounts of Nixon's administration do this task less effectively, and at greater length.

There is no index in *The Ends of Power.* That is outrageous and unforgivable!

Rating:
Summary: He Only Followed Orders
Review: This is HRH's memoir of his years in the Nixon White House, and the overwhelming failure known as Watergate. HRH was not a lawyer or politician; he was in advertising when he first became a volunteer for Nixon in 1956 (p.49). HRH was not alarmed by the Watergate break-in. Nixon used wiretapping in his first term, and it was also used by LBJ and JFK; it was widespread in business (p.5). HRH blames Watergate on John Mitchell's neglect of his duties at CRP (p.10), which left Magruder in charge. Nixon told HRH it was "unimportant", when in reality Nixon blew up in a towering rage; HRH was being deceived by Nixon (p.13)!

HRH sealed Nixon's doom by meeting him on June 23, 1972 to discuss getting the CIA to stop the FBI's search into CRP money. Tell the CIA "this will open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing again", said Nixon. Helms and Walter denied any CIA connection with Watergate (p.34). But at least one of the burglars was still on the CIA payroll, and was reporting about the proposed break-in even before it happened; the first lawyer for the burglars was reportedly CIA-connected. When the CIA at first refused to tell the FBI to back off, HRH played Nixon's trump: "this entire affair may be connected to the Bay of Pigs". Turmoil followed; HRH was absolutely shocked by Helms' violent reaction. And so the CIA asked the FBI to not investigate the Mexican bank and the CRP money. Years later the mystery of the "Bay of Pigs" connection was cleared up by reading Daniel Schorr's "Clearing the Air"; it was a code word for the assassination of JFK (pp. 37-39).

HRH said he protected Nixon by not following "petty vindictive orders" (p.58). But Charles Colson encouraged Nixon's dark impulses, and acted on them. ...In retrospect, there were many indications along the way that could have caused him to wonder what was really going on. His responsibility was the operation of the office of the President; he chose not to know anything else at the time.

"The Hidden Story of Watergate" mentioned that Nixon planned a reorganization of the government that aimed to give him unprecedented control. This must have scared the Ruling Class much more than members of the Federal Bureaucracy! Nixon was only the President, not the absolute ruler of America. HRH gives a rationale for Nixon's termination, but doesn't seem to realize it!

Page 226 tells how Nixon would "have Buckley write a column" to push a policy. I always suspected Buckley was a hired voice who echoed opinions. I wonder who has this job today?

The "Conclusion" sums up his views on "Watergate". "Most of us would have been willing to sacrifice ourselves, if necessary, to save the Presidency that we believed in. But we couldn't even do that because we didn't know the real situation." "I can see that my loyalty to President Nixon and my assumption that I knew all that I needed to know led me to some serious errors of judgment." Yet if he had the chance to do it all over again, he would! Like the Bourbons, he remembered everything but learned nothing.