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A prank we played on Henry Kissinger is given an odd and nasty twist for no apparent reason. Ordinary, glossy movie promotion pictures of Jill St. John, one of Henry's beautiful dates, were put into file folders, then given captions by several of the staff as we rode together on Air Force One. and periodically sent to Henry by messenger. Miss St. John was, in fact, fully clothed in all the photos. Haldeman has written that the pictures were nudes and that I forged "presidential memos to Henry complete with Nixon's 'bizarre demands' for certain types of action." That's a spicy little newsworthy story, but it just isn't true.
Other subjects suffer from a factual parallax. And there is a recollection gap in Haldeman's account of my suggestion to Nixon that he listen to his tape of his March 21, 1973, meeting with John Dean to determine the dimension of his problem with Dean. Haldeman writes: "At that point I thought Ehrlichman didn't even know about the tapes." In fact, I did not know of the taping system then. But I had been told that Nixon had taped that one meeting with Dean. Haldeman had told me.
Because I saw the play and knew the cast so well, it's hard for me to judge how useful or interesting The Ends of Power will be to the casual reader. I confess that parts of it were hard for me to follow, in spite of my familiarity with the subject. With all its factual inaccuracies, the book does give valid and important insights to anyone interested in the Nixon mystery. Unfortunately, these revelations are unduly restrained and limited in scope.
Bob Haldeman was in a unique position to write a truly valuable book about Richard Nixon. I hope that The Ends of Power is not his last word.