Nixon: Gap in tapes was an "accident"

In this file photo, President Nixon holds a White House news conference on March 15, 1973.

/ AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi

The legacy of President Richard Nixon is one of history's most documented. Today, four months after a judge ordered the release of Nixon's grand jury testimony in the Watergate cover-up trial, the transcript was made public.

Throughout his two-day session with the attorneys in June 1975, the former president is reluctant, wary of entrapment, sometimes impatient, occasionally self-pitying -- but always insistent that he acted responsibly.

Among the subjects covered, the infamous 18 1/2 minute gap in an Oval Office tape recording of a conversation between the president and his chief of staff Bob Haldeman three days after the break-in at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party.

The former president says he "practically blew my stack" when he learned of the gap - not so much because of the missing information as the fact that the prosecutors even had the tape.

He testifies that he told his chief of staff, General Alexander Haig, "let's find out how this damn thing happened," and adds later than in his view, "it is very simple...it was an accident."

In another part of his testimony, Nixon says a Vietnam peace initiative would have come sooner if the New York Times had not published the Pentagon Papers, saying "the ending of a war and the killing of Americans was delayed."

The Nixon Library also released more audio material today. It includes his recollection, dictated a few hours later, of a totally-out-of-character moment - his visit to protesters at the Lincoln Memorial.

Early on May 9, 1970, just days after students protesting the Vietnam War were shot by National Guardsmen at Kent State, Nixon paid an impromptu pre-dawn visit to the memorial.

He recalls the small group of 8 or 10 people growing larger, and beginning to engage him:

"One spoke up and said 'I hope you realize we are willing to die for what we believe in.' I said I... can certainly realize that, if you realize that many of us when we were your age were also willing to die for what we believed in... We were trying to build a world in which you will not have to die for what you believe in, in which you are able to live for."

Nixon told the protesters he too had searched for answers.

"I just wanted to be sure that all of them realized that ending the war and cleaning up the safe streets and air and water was not going to solve the spiritual hunger which all of us have and has been the great mystery of life from the beginning of time."

As morning dawned, he told them he had to leave, but paused to pose for a picture with a man he described as "a bearded fellow from Detroit."

"I knew he had come a long way for this event, that he too that he and his colleagues were terribly frustrated and angry about our policy and approach to it. And I said I just hope your opposition doesn't turn to a blind hatred of the country. Remember this is a great country for all of its faults."

Then, saying he thought the Secret Service was becoming concerned, Richard Nixon and the protesters went their separate ways.

You can listen to a portion of the tapes below:

[stn_sage]

It was NO ACCIDENT!
Renactment at the time, clearly showed, that Nixon's secretary
would have had to be TRYING to make that mistake...in order for
it to have happened the way she claimed! And, that in itself,
shows, it was not a mistake!
The press needs to stop trying to rewrite history to protect
the guilty!

[pjk12354]

The gap was Nixon listening to Alice's Restaraunt........

[TogetherinParis]

Nixon, goaded by George H.W. Bush for personal reasons (JFK had fathered Bush's eldest), ordered the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Bush was justifiably angry with Kennedy. Bush skipped out of his last year in high school to join the ONI, where JFK was then working. Bush's girlfriend came by on her way to Charleston, S.C. to attend boarding school. Jack got himself transferred down to Charleston, just 5.6 miles from Bar's dormitory.
Bush's group of henchmen, later dubbed The Plumbers, consisted mostly of the enforcers from his family estates and railroad confiscated by Fidel Castro in 1959. (That financial loss was so catastrophic, it made the front page of the NY Times.) George H.W. Bush had known most of his Plumbers, or Secret Team, since his high school summer vacations in Cuba in the 1930's.
Bush had stayed at ONI until it was reorganized as CIA. Bush was in charge of a small part of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a failure he bitterly resented. In CIA, Bush obtained a drug developed by the outfit: joy juice. It's a clear liquid with a consistency like vodka. Merely a whiff of the joy juice can make one unsteady. And a few inhalations result in amnesia and loss of will-power. Thus it allows one to easily convince anyone to do anything while at the same time, the person being so convinced has absolutely no memory of that event. George W. Bush obtained enough "joy juice" to rape hundreds of young teenage girls without their ever knowing anything.
The joy juice, in a very low dose, causes symptoms that Rick Perry exhibits during many debates. Perry should carry a fan with him onstage or switch microphones with Romney. Similarly, Mr. Cain's sudden accusers can be multiplied at will to testify against him. The identical drug was used to frame Wilbur Mills, Patrick and Teddy Kennedy. Getting someone to write a false suicide note was also possible with 'joy juice', as exemplified by the murder (official suicide) of Mr. Vince Foster who was both a good and decent man.
Of course, the highest use for 'joy juice' would have to be the ability to indoctrinate assassins so thoroughly and so anonymously, that no one is allowed in US politics today, except with the permission of Marco Rubio, George W., and George H.W. Bush. Given President Obama's working for Bush (under Kissinger) as his first job out of Harvard, his luxurious lifestyle as a 'community organizer', his lack of meaningful opposition in his early elections, and his overwhelming republican support and funding in the Democratic primaries and caucuses, it is apparent that Obama is a Bush mole.

[Overruled1]

No, they lined up after Lincoln was assassinated by agents of the south and England.

[OnceALiberalNowAModerate]

Tricky Dick

A Liar even in death. The first completely untrusted-worthy
Republican. But certainly not the last!! Liars ... All Of Them!