The Ends of Power by H.R. Haldeman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The original plans, apparently, were aimed toward the Democratic convention wherein the prostitutes and kidnappings would flourish, as well as electronic bugging of candidates' suites."
"Then the rest of the money went to CRP in a bizarre way: a man wearing gloves furtively receiving the briefcase full of cash and handing over no receipt."
"'Let me ask you this, to be quite candid. Is there any way you can use cash."

I recommend H.R. Haldeman's The Ends of Power (1978) to anyone who does not believe that politics is the dirtiest area of human activity. Being an old geezer, I am pretty cynical about humankind, yet I still felt soiled reading this book. The author, a long-term Chief of Staff in Richard Nixon's White House, arguably the closest to Nixon member of his cabinet, shows people in the very highest echelons of government constantly busy lying, cheating, covering-up, bribing, entrapping, and figuring out how to most efficiently destroy other people. How do they find the time to achieve successes in, say, foreign policy, as Mr. Nixon undoubtedly did? How do they find time to think about improving the lives of American citizens? Yeah, right...

The book is focused on the Watergate drama. In the Author's Note, he writes:

"In my view, all of us at the White House involved in Watergate did a lot of things wrong. Some criminal, some harmless, some willful, some accidental, some shrewdly calculated, some stupidly blundered, but each wrong."

The Watergate affair that lasts from June 17, 1972, when burglars are apprehended in the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington, DC, to August 8, 1974, when president Nixon resigns, is such an incredibly complex mesh of events, motivations, causes and effects, human errors, and random happenings that even though I have read several books on Watergate, I still have only the most rudimentary understanding of the affair. Haldeman's book makes some things clear for me, but - at the same time - it brings so many new aspects and factors to light, that I can't say my understanding has increased much.

I find the later chapters more clear and much more readable than the earlier ones, which intimidate the reader with an abundance of details; the chapter Beginning of the End is most captivating and seems better written than the rest. The Conclusion helps in that it provides a "big picture" overview of the entire scandal.

Recursion is my favorite motif in mathematics, computer programming, and also in art, so I particularly like that at one point in the book the author most likely uses the content of the tape recordings of his conversation with president Nixon, which was about the content of the tape recordings of his much earlier conversation with president Nixon. This could provide a fascinating setup for a thriller.

I recommend this 43-year-old book without hesitation - a worthwhile, if depressing read.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.

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