Why Didn Nixon Burn the Tapes?
In Peter Morgan’s play Frost/Nixon (now a movie), television interviewer David Frost’s first question, “Why didn’t you burn the tapes?”, serves as a dramatic turning point, a demonstration that former President Richard Nixon∇, out of power and in disgrace, was still master of the situation. “So much for our ‘surprise opening,’” says a character on Frost’s interview preparation team. “Nixon, the battle-hardened trial lawyer, flicked it away as though it had been no more than a fly.” Actually, the answer Frost got was quite revealing, newsworthy, and historically important: Nixon in fact had told his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman∇, to destroy most of the tapes in April of 1973, months before Watergate investigators learned of their existence. If Haldeman had done so, Nixon would probably not have had to resign–and Haldeman probably would have gone down in history as the highest-ranking official to be proved guilty of the Watergate cover-up. Haldeman, needless to say, didn’t carry out th
