Watergate break-in 'silly,' Nixon tells grand jury
US: Disgraced US president Richard Nixon described the Watergate
break-in which eventually led to his resignation as "silly" and
"incredible," in grand jury testimony released Thursday.
Nixon, speaking 10 months after being forced out of the White House
in 1974, also recounted how he became enraged when he learned about an
18.5 minute gap in a key tape recording.
The details were included in the transcripts of two days of grand
jury testimony from June 1975, released by the Nixon presidential
library in California in response to a legal challenge.
Nixon described his anger on learning that a long section had been
erased from an audio recording of a post-Watergate White House meeting,
which could have been key in showing what he knew about the Watergate
break in. "I practically blew my stack," Nixon, known as "Tricky Dicky",
said, before going on to question whether the tape was needed to be
handed over to investigators, as subject to a subpoena.
Nixon resigned in August 1974 for his administration's role in a June
1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the
Watergate complex in the US capital and the subsequent cover-up. He
became the only US president ever to do so.
In other testimony, the late ex-president, who died in 1994, lamented
the actions of Patrick Gray, acting head of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), who was initially in charge of investigating the
Watergate break-in.
"I believe it is tragic that at this time of this silly, incredible
Watergate break-in, he took the papers from Hunt's safe and burned
them," he said, referring to Howard Hunt, one of the White House
"plumbers" who engineered the Watergate break-in.
The 37th US president oversaw the creation of a private presidential
library in his name in Yorba Linda, some 35 miles (55 kilometers)
southeast of Los Angeles. The library unveiled a new, permanent section
on the Watergate scandal in March, as part of its overall exhibition,
aiming to give a more balanced view of the infamous affair. LOS ANGELES,
Friday, AFP |