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Like Miss Woods, White House Attorney Buzhardt was also pressed hard when he took the stand and was questioned by Watergate prosecutors. Often pleading a lack of memory, he finally conceded under questioning that he had first learned in early or mid-October that there was some difficulty with the Haldeman portion of the tape, although he claimed not to have been aware of the full 18-minute problem until mid-November. His reason, too, for not telling the court about this much sooner was that he thought the Haldeman conversation was not under subpoena. Sirica seemed openly skeptical. The subpoena had asked for the tape of a "meeting of June 20, 1972 in the President's Executive Office Building office involving Richard Nixon, John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman from 10:30 a.m. to noon (time approximate)." Cox amended the subpoena on Aug. 13 to make it unmistakably clear, extending the time covered from 10:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. and noting "Ehrlichman and then Haldeman went to see the President."
Rehearsing Testimony. The courtroom scene turned tense again when Rhyne was allowed to question Buzhardt. He established that neither Buzhardt nor White House Attorney Leonard Garment had actually represented Miss Woods at her first court appearance, but were representing the President. Garment interjected to agree. Then Rhyne said flatly that Garment and another White House counsel, Samuel Powers, "had spent hours rehearsing her on her testimony." Garment immediately objected to the term "rehearsing" —and Sirica called all the attorneys to confer for some 25 minutes at his bench. Without explanation, Buzhardt then was excused from the stand.
The animosity between attorneys was evident throughout the week's hearings. Rhyne seemed strangely friendly with Prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste, who had interrogated Buzhardt. Several times when Garment or Buzhardt raised objections, Rhyne, seated at a table apart from them, muttered: "Those sons of bitches." Just what the estrangement means in terms of Miss Woods' relationship with the President in the whole tapes tangle was not yet clear. But she obviously was not taking the rap for the full obliteration of the Haldeman tape as it apparently had been assumed she would.
Humble Beginnings. There was a certain poignancy in her predicament. Early in the first Nixon Administration, Miss Woods openly mistrusted the tactics of some of the Nixon aides, notably Haldeman, whose insensitivities contributed to the Watergate excesses. Now she, too, seemed caught in the morass.
Until recently, she was the envy of secretaries throughout the land—a spunky, hard-working woman who had risen high from humble beginnings. The daughter of a second-generation Irish American who worked in a pottery factory, Rose Mary Woods grew up in Sebring, Ohio (pop. 5,000), and learned her stenography in high school. Except for Older Brother Joe, who became an FBI agent