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Like the Watergate story, Nixon is still mysteries within mysteries to everyone. No one man, not even Haldeman, completely understands him. Although a parade of biographers has begun to place tiles in the mosaic, there are still huge blanks. A less imperfect portrait eventually will be seen, but it will always be less than a whole description, because, as Haldeman says, Nixon is the Man of a Thousand Facets. Each of us was presented with the aspect Nixon instinctively deemed most advantageous at a given time. None of us can be free of Watergate's surprises until the last White House tape is played and we learn what Nixon was saying to others in our absence.
For example, I was surprised to read in this book that Nixon probably ordered the Fielding-Ellsberg break-in in 1971. Haldeman relates that about two weeks after I walked into jail in 1976, he and Nixon were out at San Clemente, talking about Nixon's memoirs. Nixon was worried about what to write about his part in the Fielding breakin. "Maybe I did order that break-in," Haldeman quotes him as saying. Since Nixon represented to the court during my trial that he had had nothing to do with the genesis of that breakin, his statements to Haldeman are startling.
Based on what Nixon has said to me in the past and what Haldeman now implies, I expect to hear a 1971 tape some day in which Richard Nixon tells Charles Colson that Howard Hunt's plan to break into Dr. Fielding's office is approved.
When I told Nixon in 1972 what I knew of that breakin, he instantly voiced his approval of it. I heard him instruct an Assistant Attorney General not to investigate it. After I was fired in 1973, I had a talk with Nixon about the fate of Egil Krogh, who was then being prosecuted for his part in the Fielding breakin. I urged Nixon to pardon Krogh, on the ground that the young man had been involved in an effort which I had heard Nixon expressly ratify. Nixon readily agreed that Krogh should be pardoned. Somewhere on a tape is that promise to me that Krogh would not be penalized. (That is, I believe, the one default I will never be able to forgive Richard Nixon.)
In the preface to The Ends of Power, Bob Haldeman warns us that he and his collaborator are disciples of the School of the Imagined Quotation, after Woodward and Bernstein. At first, the irony of that amused me; but as I got into the book, I found myself saying—within their quotation marks —things I know I never said. That did not amuse me.
In this same preface, Joe DiMona is given thanks for his extensive research work supplementing Haldeman's personal recollections. In my view, the hypothetical Watergate charges and the research are the book's major weaknesses. There are material, factual errors which impeach its substance.
I have a hunch how some of the mistakes occurred. If I may resort to the reconstructed quotation technique everyone seems to be using with such financial success these days, it "probably" went something like this:
Joe DiMona: Look, Bob, we can't write a book about Watergate without telling the readers why those fellows burgled Larry O'Brien's office.
Bob Haldeman: But Joe, I don't know what their motive was. And I can't be saying I do because I've often sworn that I don't.