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Haldeman was free of personal ambition, or at least his ambition was fulfilled in the position he occupied. And yet there resided in this almost inhuman detachment the seeds of the eventual destruction of the Nixon Administration. Haldeman had no deep experience in national politics, no feel for the propriety, scope and limits of presidential prerogative. He sought unquestioning obedience from his staff. He selected miniature editions of himself—people with no political past, whose loyalty was determined by a chain of command and whose devotion was vouchsafed by the opportunity to play a part in great events. The White House staffs attitude to the President resembled that of an advertising agency—whence most came—to an exclusive, temperamental client. They were expediters, not balance wheels. And once the machine started skidding, they accelerated its descent rather than braking it in time.
Haldeman's relations with me had ingredients for friction. A conservative middle-class Californian, with all the sentiments and suspicions of that breed, he had rarely met a man of my background (though he overestimated how close I really was to the despised Establishment). He had stuck with Nixon after the gubernatorial defeat of 1962 and genuinely believed in Nixon's mission. It was bound to be irritating to him to see a member of the Rockefeller team, one who had consistently opposed Nixon, garner so much publicity. But he rarely showed jealousy.
Haldeman's attitude to me was fundamentally a reflection of Nixon's. When Haldeman harassed me, I could be sure that it was to carry out some design of the President's. Nixon was convinced that my special talents would flourish best under conditions of personal insecurity; he periodically saw to it that I developed some doubts about my standing with him.
But any tensions caused by these practices had largely evaporated in early 1973, once I had decided to resign. In the second half of April 1973, therefore, my feelings toward both Haldeman and Ehrlichman were tinged with sadness. We had been colleagues during turbulent years. I knew and liked their wives and children. They ruminated on their chances of survival but not on the circumstances that had produced their dilemma. And I am not sure that they really fully understood.
They had not seen their conduct as a "coverup" but as a means to protect the Administration from opponents working against the national interest as they conceived it. Or they were more skillful actors than I think possible.