Nixon’s White House ‘strip’

Press, 1 September 1977, Page 9

Nixon’s White House ‘strip’

NZPA New York A forthcoming book by H. R. (Bob) Haldeman, chief of staff in the Nixon White House, will include a bizarre episode in which Mr Nixon stripped off his clothes in the Oval Office (the main Presidential office), sat down stark naked behind his desk, and asked Haldeman, “Now, what’s on the agenda?” according to a New York journalist. A New York “Daily News” columnist, Liz Smith, said in an article yesterday hat Haldeman, now jailed after conviction in the Watergate scandal that toppled Mr

Nixon, will “tell all” in a book to be published this coming northern winter.

Miss Smith wrote that the book will show that Mr Nixon was “flaky and falling apart in the final days of Watergate.” Haldeman’s book, “The Ends of Power” written with a ghost writer, Joseph Dimona, will be published by New York Times Books in January. A spokesman for the publisher said: “We neither deny nor confirm the accuracy of the story.” “One of Haldeman’s stories will have Richard Nixon coming into the Oval Office, stripping off all his clothes, sitting down naked behind his desk and asking his crew-cut aide, ‘Now, what’s on the agenda’,” the “News” article said.

“And that is said to be just the fruitcake part — it’s deemed as nothing compared with the real goods and guts Haldeman is said to have spilled in a five-week taped talkfest with ghost writer Joseph Dimona before Haldeman went off to jail for conspiracy in the Watergate mess.”

Quoting unmarked “insiders,” the article said that Haldeman was upset about Mr Nixon telling David Frost in a television interview that Haldeman was “one of the finest public servants . . .

Yet this same Nixon refused to take his calls at the end and did not bother to pardon his aides while there was still time, after sacrificing them.”