![]() ![]() ![]() The president himself was not informed of some key facts of the situation, such as the prior criminal activities of those involved at the Watergate had been undertaken earlier for the White House. ![]() The tapes and related records clearly establish that this initial conspiracy was formed and directed by Haldeman, Mitchell, and John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s top domestic adviser, who had commissioned the earlier criminal activities of Liddy, Hunt, and their men. Unintentionally, within days of the Watergate arrests, Haldeman drew the president into a conspiracy to obstruct justice by covering up what had actually transpired there. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, with their team of amateur operatives. This is not to say that the president was uninvolved, for clearly he did not want Watergate to destroy his former attorney general and campaign manager, John Mitchell, who he correctly suspected had approved the illicit operation undertaken by former White House aides G. Haldeman-that Watergate did not directly involve the White House, or him. He incorrectly concluded, however-based on less than complete information from White House chief of staff H.R. Broadly speaking, what I found was that at the outset, Nixon considered Watergate merely a political embarrassment that would pass. The object of my search was an explanation of why Nixon would risk his presidency with the concocted defenses he ultimately offered-defenses based not in fact but in his effort to twist and distort events. ![]()
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