Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 18, 1993 TAG: 9305180160
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"The reaction is going to be primarily in Washington and not the country because I think the Nixon country doesn't give much of a s--- about bugging," Nixon said at an Oval Office meeting.
"Most people around the country think it's probably routine, [that] everybody's trying to bug everybody else - it's politics."
The new batch of tapes, released by the National Archives, cover three hours of excerpted Watergate conversations in the weeks before and after the June 17, 1972, break-in. The incident led to Nixon's resignation two years later, after it was shown he had directed a massive cover-up that included attempts to obstruct the FBI's investigation.
No transcripts of the tapes were made, and the audio quality of many was poor. Most of the conversations dealt with post-break-in strategy sessions in the White House and contained little that was not previously known. But the fresh tapes also suggested - as Nixon long has claimed - that he had no advance knowledge of the Watergate burglarly.
The newly released tapes had never before been heard publicly nor used in any Watergate-related prosecution. The 25 conversations they covered were not among the recordings used by the House Judiciary Committee in its 1974 impeachment proceedings, or those used in federal court in the later criminal trial that resulted in convictions of Nixon's top aides.
The new batch contains a June 20, 1972, conversation in which H.R. Haldeman, then Nixon's chief of staff, privately fills in the president on details he has learned about the burglary and the GOP operatives who were arrested. Nixon, in a thoughtful tone, merely says, "Oh."
The next day, after Nixon makes light of the burglary attempt, then-presidential aide Charles W. Colson agrees with his assessment, according to the tape.
Colson, referring to the American people, says, "They think political parties do this all the time."
Nixon and Haldeman then decide that the White House should continue to characterize the break-in as "a third-rate burglary."
Colson, however, grows more serious on the tape and recalls that he was responsible for hiring E. Howard Hunt as a White House consultant. Hunt and G. Gordon Libby, who was finance counsel to Nixon's re-election committee, planned and directed the ill-fated break-in but escaped immediate arrest.
by CNB