On June 20, 1972, three days after the fateful Watergate break-in, White House chief-of-staff H. R. Haldeman met with his chief, President Nixon, to discuss (as Haldeman’s notes on the meeting reveal) a “pr offensive” to distract attention from Watergate. We probably never will know what they said because 18 and a half minutes of the subpoenaed tape of that conversation were destroyed by a series of at least five manually administered erasures. But we know something about how Mr. Haldeman prepared for the meeting and what he probably knew going into it.
The day before, Mr. Haldeman had called Jeb Stuart Magruder, his protegé, whom he had placed as deputy director of the Committee to Reelect the President. In a book due out in a few weeks, Mr. Magruder describes the call.
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