Tapes Show How Nixon’s Self-Image Aided Cover-Up

“I ordered that they use any means necessary, including illegal means, to accomplish this goal,” Richard Nixon confessed to his cronies in 1973 as the horrors of Watergate began to unfold. But then Nixon added: “The president of the United States can never admit that.”

As a new batch of White House tape transcripts made available this week demonstrates, the great Watergate cover-up that led to Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 was inspired by Nixon’s convoluted character as well as the desperate need to obstruct the wheels of justice.

“Nixon’s inability to confront the truth about himself was institutional as well as personal,” writes University of Wisconsin historian Stanley Kutler in his forthcoming book, “Abuse of Power,” based on 201 hours of Watergate tapes.

Kutler won a court battle that forced Nixon’s family to release the tapes; last year, the National Archives in College Park, Md., made it possible for the public to listen to them. But the scratchy and otherwise poor audio quality of the tapes leaves many listeners unable to understand what they have heard. Kutler hired a company to listen to them repeatedly and transcribe them.

Master of realpolitik that he was, Nixon realized that his own public reputation was enhanced by the exalted view many Americans held of the presidency.

As Nixon himself later acknowledged, it was the cover-up more than the overt acts of Watergate that drove him from the White House. And some scholars have suggested that if he had early on disclosed the White House’s connection to history’s most notorious bungled burglary, a forgiving public might have allowed him to salvage his presidency.

But these latest tape transcriptions of various conversations during the period from 1971 to 1973 make clear that whatever the legal and political barriers to such a course, Nixon’s self-image and his identification with the office he held also stood in the way.

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“You’ve got to be always thinking in terms of the presidency, and the president should not appear to be hiding and not be forthcoming,” Nixon told White House counsel John W. Dean III on March 16, 1973. Dean eventually abandoned his scheming to shield Nixon from the scandal and became instead the most devastating single witness against his former chief.

Even though he perceived the potentially fatal danger of trying to suppress exposure of the Watergate outrages--”Far worse than the facts here is the cover-up,” he told his close aide John D. Ehrlichman--Nixon continued to resist disclosure as a threat to his cherished reputation.

Instead, Nixon sought to placate his foes by putting the blame on one underling or another, justifying his conduct by recalling how President Eisenhower, under whom Nixon served as vice president, had fired his chief of staff, Sherman Adams, after Adams had been tainted by accepting a vicuna coat from a favor seeker.

“He [Adams] did a lot that made it pretty easy to do so,” Nixon acknowledged. “But . . . Eisenhower felt, properly so, that the presidency had to be protected. And I feel the same way. I mean . . . you cannot figure the president is covering up this goddamn thing.”

However, the tapes also reveal Nixon discussing other actions unbecoming a president. For example, he says he wants nominees for ambassadorships to contribute $250,000; he thanks a Greek American businessman for providing hush money to the Watergate burglars, and he agrees that it was wise to have his own people, rather than the FBI, follow Edward M. Kennedy for several months.

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Whether in his unyielding strategy of avoidance and denial Nixon actually deluded himself is not clear, even from the tapes. But he certainly was willing to deceive almost everyone else--including such renowned allies as the evangelist Billy Graham.

When Graham called to cheer him up while the Senate committee led by Sam J. Ervin Jr. of North Carolina was investigating the Watergate scandal, Nixon airily sought to pin the blame on his reelection campaign organization. “I can assure you nobody in the White House is in [on this],” he said, “but the campaign, they sometimes do silly things.”

Nixon also received sympathy from his advisors. “It’s inhuman, Mr. President,” his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, said of the charges made against him. “You’re carrying a bigger load than any president has.”

Nixon could not have agreed more. “Good God, we were going to Russia and China and ending the war and negotiating,” he said. “I wasn’t even thinking about the goddamn campaign, you know. That’s the tragedy. I wish to Christ maybe that I had. But if I’d been spending time in the campaign,” he added, “maybe we couldn’t have pulled off Vietnam.”

The last taped conversation took place July 12, 1973, according to Kutler. The next day, Ervin’s committee learned of the existence of the tapes, and Nixon’s system of electronic memory fell silent forever.

But his final recorded words sounded two characteristic themes: defiance and self pity. “As far as I’m concerned we have a constitutional crisis,” he told Kissinger about his refusal to grant the Senate committee’s request for documents he claimed were shielded by executive privilege. “ . . . It’ll be a goddamn ding-dog battle, and . . . if we lose, I’ll burn the papers.”

Moments later he lamented being forced that spring to dismiss his two top aides, Ehrlichman and H.R. “Bob” Haldeman. “I cut off two arms, “ he said. “Who the hell else would have done such a thing? Who ever has done that before? I cut off two arms,” Nixon complained, adding, “and then they went after the body.”