H.R. Haldeman, a former top aide to President Richard Nixon, testifies before the Senate Watergate Committee in Washington in this 1973 file photo.SANTA ANA, Calif. – Newly declassified segments from the dairy of President Richard Nixon’s chief-of-staff provide a detailed, subtle portrait of the disgraced president as H.R. Haldeman recounts both moments of high-stakes diplomacy and unscripted daily life that would never make a White House memo or official document.
More than 40 years after Haldeman made his last audio diary recording, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum in Yorba Linda on Thursday released 285 segments from entries spanning from 1970 to 1973. At the time, Nixon was engaged in delicate diplomacy that would lead to treaties to limit nuclear armaments and a reopening of China to the world.
The segments include a reference to top-secret intelligence briefings the Nixon administration provided to China, and reveal Nixon’s private musings as he wrangled with the then-Soviet Union over limiting nuclear weapons.
Mixed in among the accounts of top-level diplomacy, however, are revealing nuggets of daily life: Haldeman surprising Nixon as he smoked a Russian cigar after long negotiations with Soviet leaders, for example, and Nixon’s team struggling to stay sober at a Chinese banquet as they felt obligated to drink toast after toast with top communist officials.
This combination makes the diaries unique and reveals almost as much about Nixon as they do about him, said Luke Nichter, a Nixon expert and history professor at Texas A&M University.