WASHINGTON REPORT: A Handle on Haldeman
Getlein, Frank
WASHINGTOH REPORT A HANDLE ON HALDEMAN One of the most spectacular theatrical productions in our century was Max Reinhardt's Everyman staged on the steps and platz of Salzburg Cathedral. In...
...and again, "Erlichman...
...If it be objected that this kind of of corporate shuffle is against journalistic ethics, it need only be recalled that the Post is the country's leading strikebreaker, union-buster and scab paper and as such may be presumed to have no journalistic ethics that would actually bother anyone...
...Did he collect extra fees for answering newsmen's questions on the rival networks, or did those networks pay NBC for the use of its property...
...First theory: the Post owns Newsweek and Newsweek had bought the bag...
...In Washington, that meant the evening Star got the nod, not the morning Post...
...They're still lying away like they always did, but now they're doing it for big-time bucks instead of the pittances they were picking up when Haldeman and Erlichman were two of the finest public servants Richard Nixon ever fired in the hope of saving what could be saved...
...It seems reasonable that a special edition for $1,000 will be sold to Rabbi Korff...
...The common ownership decided that since the corporation had paid, the corporation would use the purchase where it would do the most good, which was clearly in the Post ahead of time rather than just in Newsweek ahead of Time, the weekly newsmagazine...
...You can't exactly call their act death and transfiguration, because there doesn't seem to have been any transfiguration...
...Stonewall by Post on how it got the goods...
...Teapots...
...and so on until the story of us all worked itself out...
...For example, he fingers a John Dean assistant, Fred Fielding, as the Deep Throat character in the newspaper romance that ran concurrently with and only occasionally interfered with the legislative and judicial process that brought the crew to as much justice as they're likely to get this side of the Reinhardt finale...
...It is not really difficult at all to see how Haldeman could have been lying then and is still lying now...
...He liked bombing people, easily surpassed the record previously held by Dean Rusk for bombings participated in by a Secretary of State and would have been totally out of character rejecting the chance to wrap up the nuke record as well...
...The apparent answer is that Haldeman present contradicts Haldeman past...
...Truth is what serves Nixon's purposes...
...Needless to say, it never occurred to me that Nix4n did not order the burglary, did not initiate the cover-up or did not personally or by deputy preside over the tape wipe-out...
...While we are assured by the Kissinger personal press gang that he was the tenderest and wittiest of men in private, on the public record, he was incapable of turning down a proposed bombing anywhere...
...Following the theoretical style of Haldeman's advertisement for himself, it is easy to construct not one but two theories of how the Post got the goods...
...When, at last, you have passed out from under the spell of the master, as Haldeman allegedly has, you don't regain your capacity to distinguish truth from nontruth, you just automatically fall into a different pattern of lying...
...and again, "Jedermann...
...On the basis of Haldeman's hint, it seems to me we can assert positively that Fielding was not Deep Throat for the simple reason that if Haldeman knew Fielding was Deep Throat, Fielding would have died swiftly and mysteriously...
...Second theory: Haldeman himself surreptitiously sold the bootleg copy to the Post in order to disrupt what he and his ilk mistakenly regard as a united front of radical-liberals on the Post and the Times...
...Tumult among the subscribing papers...
...Tempests...
...The book was published by the New York Times's own book company and the Times itself took over the distribution of daily and weekly publication excerpts, giving first refusals to regular subscribers to the Times News Service...
...I used to think of that magnificent spectacle in the midst of a rather shabbier one some years later and in another country, the Watergate Theater right here in Washington...
...Elsewhere on the death and transfiguration for cash front, the role of Henry Kissinger posed problems, as it often does...
...It was generally assumed that Haldeman let his hair grow out of the gauleiter clip in order to deceive a jury into thinking him human...
...Part of the price of being a Nixonian is that you lose the ability to see truth, let alone tell truth...
...Kissinger appeared on ABC and I asCommonweal: 165 sume CBS as well to deny various Haldeman hints...
...In that case, he need only have arranged to meet a Post bagman in some garage at midnight, pretend to be the ghost of Haldeman past, hand over the scrivening and grab the bag...
...until those Katzenjammer Kids of the Nixon White House were tagged by justice in the middle of their unregenerate lying and tucked away as an example to us all of what happens if you hang around with people like Richard Nixon...
...But as anyone who has followed the 17 March 1978: 164 reversal is called de for the pro, and we would d with consideran be made for lime, the basic down the arms i the Mid East, i, but Israel is nd Egypt is in example, Egypt eady growing at ural production, percent of the imbalance exists t can war planes support the adisiasm, and only athing space in the (area can be DX hemical the takes his peace i into eternity, u can't exactly , because there iration...
...They played hard ball in those days, as they were all fond of saying...
...Unexpectedly, Haig was telling the truth for a change, though not intentionally...
...In the play, of course, Everyman makes his peace with man and God and goes consoled into eternity...
...The apent contradicts ding a jury of pparent present may be telling is followed the Haldeman variation on the Nixonian theme knows in his bones, the truth is not in Haldeman anymore than it is in his master and creator...
...I could visualize Death as Sam Ervin, Peter Rodino or Judge Sirica, crying from their respective high places, "Haldeman...
...This special offering is addressed to die-hard Nixonites...
...Since there is so little of substance in the book— the principal hard fact seems to be that Haldeman now hates Nixon the way he used to hate the Republic, the Constitution and all honest people for the love of Nixon—the only worthwhile speculation must center, on the manner of its publication...
...And the head Nixonian of all is selling some copies of his impending $20 book for $50 with autograph, $250 with autograph plus certificate from publisher that the autograph is genuine...
...He could have done this while on Christmas holiday from the minimum security prison which minimally protects us from him for his term...
...He says now—or, really, implies: there is hardly a declarative sentence in the book—that Nixon instigated the whole thing, presided over the cover-up from the beginning and personally wiped out, or tried to, the famed 18V4 minutes of incriminating evidence on tape...
...Will we ever know...
...The despicable Haig, it will be recalled, blamed the tape-gap on "sinister forces...
...To wit: If Haldeman was lying under oath back there in the touring company "Jedermann" days, how can we know he is not lying now...
...They're >ut now they're f the pittances and Erlichman Richard Nixon :ould be saved, crew to do the pretty epistemvas lying under y "Jedermann" now...
...A few days before the first excerpts were scheduled, the Post published large excerpts of its own, derived, it said, from something close to the whole book, not quite...
...The same analytical technique disposes of the Haldeman hint that the Russians proposed a US-USSR joint nuclear attack on China's nuclear plants and installations and that Kissinger turned it down...
...But Kissinger is under exclusive contract to NBC...
...Other hints, innuendos and sly suggestions by nondeclarative Haldeman are false on their face...
...This was not without interest, but only in a media age like our own could the interest be as intense as this...
...In that climactic scene in which Death Comes For Everyman, the figure of Death appeared on the battlements on the handy mini-mountain nearby and cried as if at the other end of a tunnel, "Jedermann...
...Baleful mutterings of possible suits...
...Suppose, though, that he bought a wig, instead, such as the one used by Howard Hunt in another part of the show, preserving the gauleiter look out of old affection...
...The epistomological problem posed by Haldeman lying yesterday, lying today, lying forever is solved by the simple consideration that not only was Nixon directly involved in all those crimes, but, obviously, so was Haldeman...
...Since everybody, including a jury of his peers, knew he was lying then, his apparent present agreement with that verdict suggests he may be telling the truth now...
...No such luck with the Nixonians...
...Haldeman is the latest of the scurvy crew to do the reprise on ancient themes and he poses a pretty epistemological problem...
...frank getlein...
...He's probably saving that aspect of life in Robbers' Roost for his second book...
...He said then that neither Nixon nor he himself knew anything at all about either the break-in or the cover-up...
...Scornful denunciation by Times of what it termed Post's "second-rate burglary...
Vol. 105 • March 1978 • No. 6
