
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 13, 1993                   TAG: 9311130032
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WATERGATE FIGURE HALDEMAN DIES

H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, who served 18 months in prison for his involvement in the Watergate scandal but said he believed that his role as President Richard Nixon's chief of staff was the "mountain top experience" of his life, died Friday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 67.

A son, Hank, said that the cause was an abdominal tumor and that his father had been ill for a month.

Haldeman resigned as the White House chief of staff on April 30, 1973, and was convicted two years later on charges of perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of justice in trying to cover up the Nixon administration's involvement in the Watergate scandal.

He was sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison, but the sentence later was reduced to the 18 months that he served at the minimum security federal prison in Lompoc, Calif.

Since December 1978, when he was released from prison, Haldeman worked a businessman and business consultant. He had some real estate interests and held the franchises on eight Sizzler Family Steak Houses in Florida.

Watergate, one of the most far-reaching political scandals in American history, began on June 17, 1972, when seven men who worked for the Committee to Re-elect the President were arrested in a predawn burglary while trying to plant electronic eavesdropping devices at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in the Watergate office and housing complex in Washington.

Information that was developed in several investigations led to impeachment proceedings against Nixon, who resigned from the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974, still protesting his innocence.

Although Haldeman said that his admiration for Nixon's abilities as a statesman never diminished, he asserted in his 1978 book, "The Ends of Power," that Nixon "initiated the Watergate break-in" and participated in its cover-up from "Day 1."

In the national anguish over Watergate that developed in the aftermath of the disclosures, Haldeman was frequently depicted as deeply involved in the administration's conduct of political espionage, which it carried out against those regarded as actual or potential enemies of the president.

But Haldeman insisted, both in his book and in public statements, that he had little interest in such things and really knew relatively little about them, compared with other Nixon aides Charles Colson and Haldeman's longtime friend, John Ehrlichman.

Colson, special counsel to the president, "encouraged the dark impulses in Nixon's mind," according to Haldeman. And he said that Ehrlichman, the president's chief adviser on domestic matters, had "the more devious approach."

by CNB