H. R. Haldeman

• Born: October 27, 1926
• Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
• Died: November 12, 1993
• Place of death: Santa Barbara, California

White House chief of staff under President Richard M. Nixon

Major offenses: Conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice

Active: 1970-1973

Locale: Washington, D.C.

Sentence: One to four years’ imprisonment; served eighteen months

Early Life

H. R. Haldeman (HAWL-deh-man) grew up in Los Angeles, the child of a well-to-do heating and air-conditioning contractor. His father, Harry F. Haldeman, was a supporter of the Republican Party, a political loyalty that was passed on to his son. Haldeman attended public schools in California. He was active in the Boy Scouts, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. He attended the University of Redlands for two years while enrolled in the Navy’s reserve program and then, when World War II ended, transferred to the University of California at Los Angeles, graduating in 1948. One of his classmates was John Ehrlichman.

In 1949, Haldeman became an account executive in an advertising agency in New York. He moved back to California in 1959 to manage the California office of his firm. He had already begun to take an active role in Republican politics, supporting Richard Nixon’s vice presidential campaign in 1952. He was one of Nixon’s earliest political supporters and worked on his behalf in five political campaigns—first as an advance man and ultimately as campaign chief of staff in Nixon’s successful race for the presidency in 1968. Shortly after election day, Nixon selected Haldeman to be his chief of staff in the White House.

By 1970, under Haldeman’s direction, the administrative structure of the White House staff had assumed the pattern that it was to follow for the most of the remainder of Nixon’s presidency. Haldeman, as chief of staff, directed a small staff of his own, substantially controlled the president’s scheduling for both trips and appointments, and met almost daily with the president’s chief policy advisers—Ehrlichman on the domestic policy side and Henry Kissinger on the foreign policy side. As decisions were made, Haldeman attempted to coordinate them with the federal bureaucratic departments outside the White House. Most presidents since Nixon have utilized this organizational pattern or a very similar one, although few chiefs of staff have wielded as much power as Haldeman did.

Criminal Career

On June 17, 1972, five burglars, later shown to be affiliated with and to have been paid by the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP), broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel. Their purpose was to bug the telephones and offices in order to obtain political intelligence. They were caught and arrested by the District of Columbia police.

Soon after the Watergate burglary occurred, Haldeman was drawn into the administration’s attempt to cover up its connections to the burglars. Nixon himself had restricted access to information about the burglary and its genesis, and Haldeman was probably unaware that the president himself was in on the plan. The basic scheme of the cover-up was to buy silence from the burglars by funneling campaign funds to them while trying to divert the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) inquiry into the matter by getting the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to claim that the investigation would disclose foreign intelligence secrets. By concealing his role in these plans and by subsequently lying to the Senate Watergate Investigating Committee, Haldeman committed perjury and obstructed justice. He, Ehrlichman, and John Dean, the real architect of the cover-up, were all forced to resign from their White House positions in 1973.

Legal Action and Outcome

On January 1, 1975, Haldeman was convicted of one count of conspiracy, one count of obstruction of justice, and three counts of perjury, the latter for his false testimony to the Senate Watergate Investigating Committee. He was initially sentenced to two and a half to eight years’ imprisonment, but the sentence was later reduced to one to four years. He was released by order of the trial judge after serving only eighteen months of his sentence at the minimum security federal prison at Lompoc, California.

Impact

H. R. Haldeman’s resignation crippled the Nixon administration; Nixon was forced to endure the remainder of the Watergate struggle with a less coordinated staff who were unfamiliar with the details of Watergate and the cover-up. However, the organizational structure for the White House staff that emerged during Haldeman’s tenure as chief of staff has become the starting point for subsequent presidents. Haldeman’s fate in the Watergate affair has served as a warning to later administrations that the people who occupy the position of chief of staff have to be selected for their familiarity with the legal and political constraints that operate in American government.

Bibliography

Ambrose, Stephen. Nixon. 3 vols. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987-1991. This is an illuminating and balanced discussion of Nixon, his personality, career, and presidency. The Watergate material is found in volume 3, Ruin and Recovery.

Dean, John W. Blind Ambition: The White House Years. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976. Dean recounts his career and his involvement with the Watergate conspiracy and admits his participation in the cover-up.

Haldeman, H. R. The Ends of Power. New York: Times Books, 1978. Haldeman’s memoir of his White House service. In it he takes responsibility for creating the atmosphere in which Watergate took place.

Safire, William. Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975. A fascinating but laudatory view of the accomplishments of the Nixon administration before Watergate destroyed it.

White, Theodore H. Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon. New York: Atheneum, 1975. Excellent history of the Watergate affair; Haldeman’s role thoroughly discussed.