Nixon Encore

New tape, old story

Haldeman: Colson's gonna... do it with the Teamsters.

Nixon: They 've got guys who'II go in and knock their heads off.

Haldeman: Sure. Murderers ... It's the regular strikebusters types ... They're gonna beat the [expletive deleted] out of some of these people. And, uh, and hope they really hurt 'em. You know ... smash some noses.

It was all sickeningly familiar, from the macho posturing to the crude, scatological stammering. But this time the conversation between President Richard Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, so drearily reminiscent of those played during the Watergate conspiracy trial of 1974, was from a newly disclosed tape. The recording, of a five-minute conversation between Nixon and Haldeman, was made on the White House taping system in May 1971. The subject: a plan to bring in what Haldeman called Teamster "thugs" to intimidate demonstrators then descending by the thousands on Washington to protest the Viet Nam War. The transcript was revealed last week by freelance Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh in the New York Times. It strongly suggests that Nixon authorized illegal operations by White House subordinates to counter growing antiwar protests and silence political enemies.

There is no evidence that the President's men actually conscripted Teamsters to bloody the heads of demonstrators. But the tape confirms for the first time that Nixon knew about the political sabotage campaign conducted by White House Henchman Donald Segretti 18 months before the hotly contested 1972 election, a charge Nixon has repeatedly denied. As Haldeman tells his boss: "This kind of guy can really get out and tear things up." Segretti was imprisoned in 1973 for conspiracy and distributing false campaign material.

Haldeman also tells the President of plans to use "hardhats and Legionnaires" against antiwar demonstrators and describes how White House Operative Charles Colson surreptitiously sent one group of protesters a supply of oranges under the name of then Democratic Presidential Front Runner Edmund Muskie. The episode is thought by some to have been the beginning of a White House campaign of innuendo and slander against the former Maine Senator.

Nixon declines to comment about the new revelations. He is protected from fur ther prosecution for any crimes committed during his presidency by President Ford's full pardon in 1974. Haldeman, now living in California, said, "I really don't care what's on the tapes. They're ten years old." But the former President's lawyers, in their continuing effort to keep the 4,000 hours of unreleased Nixon tapes private, may raise a ruckus over how the newly disclosed transcript found its way into the Times. Hersh, who is writing a book about former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, has been doing research at the National Archives--where a team of twelve archivists is reviewing the remaining Nixon tapes. The former President's lawyers may cite the apparent leak in arguing that material in storage at the Archives is not safe and should be removed --causing further delay in the process of transcription. Even so, the new addition to Watergate lore may not be the last. Predicts one former top Nixon aide: "That's nasty stuff. There'll be more.''

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