Nixon Staff Debated Destroying Tapes

As President Nixon lay in a Bethesda Naval Hospital bed recovering from viral pneumonia, his closest aides were debating how to destroy his notorious tapes, a new book of Watergate memoirs says. Former presidential lawyer Leonard Garment writes that the debate raged for days after the tapes’ existence came to light in July 1973. The aides finally went to the hospital, talked with Nixon, Garment writes, and there was agreement “the tapes could not lawfully be destroyed,” as the Senate Watergate Committee planned to subpoena them.