ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, October 18, 1996 TAG: 9610180059
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: COLLEGE PARK, MD.
SOURCE: Associated Press
Richard Nixon revealed to Henry Kissinger, then his national security adviser, that their conversations were secretly recorded, apparently to keep him from taking credit for successes in foreign policy.
This was in November 1972, when the secret White House taping system was supposedly known to only a handful of staffers.
Nixon, who hated personal confrontation, instructed chief of staff H.R. Haldeman to tell Kissinger ``you don't make the decisions, and when they are made, you waver the most.''
Haldeman's handwritten note, which recorded his instructions from the president, was part of 28,000 Nixon administration papers made public Thursday by the National Archives here. Nixon's lawyers had opposed their release for years but chose not to fight when a review board decreed there were no grounds to suppress them further.
Haldeman mentioned the circumstances in his diary, published posthumously in 1994. Kissinger was claiming he was responsible for the newly re-established opening to China, Haldeman said.
``I should let K know,'' Haldeman wrote on Nov. 19, 1972, using ``K'' for Kissinger and ``P'' for president, that ``obviously EOB and office and Lincoln have all been recorded for protection so P has complete record.'' The references were to the Executive Office Building in the White House complex and the Lincoln Bedroom in the mansion.
Describing Nixon's reaction in the book, Haldeman said ``I should let henry know'' that the conversations had been recorded ``so the president has a complete record of all your conversations The P, I should tell him, has written the total China story for his own file.''
Actually, the taping system did not cover the Lincoln Bedroom. Microphones were turned on automatically whenever the president was in the Oval Office, his EOB hideaway office, the Cabinet Room and the main residence at the Camp David, Md., retreat.
Other documents reveal that Haldeman devised a plan in 1970 to get then-Sen. Bob Dole to make a speech extolling ``the amazing approval rating of the president in spite of all the things against us.''
This was at the height of the Vietnam War when demonstrations were wracking the country. There was no indication what Dole, now the Republican presidential nominee, did in response to the White House request.
The memo from Haldeman was addressed to Jeb Stuart Magruder, then a White House assistant who later became embroiled in the Watergate scandal when he worked for Nixon's re-election committee.
Although 28,000 documents were released by the National Archives, many others were still held back.
Stanley Kutler, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said documents which might shed further light on the Watergate scandal had not been released on grounds that they were political rather than governmental.
But, ``those who thought that these pages somehow would reveal a lighter, kinder Nixon turn out to be quite wrong,'' Kutler said. ``They confirm the Nixon that we know - a man driven by spite, vindictiveness and anger.''
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB