Tonight, a long excerpt from Antoine Coppolani's excellent biography, Richard Nixon , published by Éditions Fayard in October. I had already reviewed a good book on Nixon, by Romain Huret (https://brumes.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/de-quoi-nixon-est-il-le-nom/). Coppolani's massive work (a biography that I would call definitive in French:1200 pages, 3500 notes) does not contradict Huret's main analyses. Even if the author is mainly interested in “big history”, and re-evaluates with great seriousness and remarkable fairness the balance sheet of President Nixon, he occasionally evokes certain particularly heartbreaking anecdotes. The following seems to me to be particularly representative of the universe of illegal "coups" in which the Presidency of the United States dabbled, with Nixon, but also with his immediate predecessors Kennedy and Johnson (who had confessed to Nixon, at the beginning of 69, during the transfer of power between them, that he had bugged him the whole campaign).
It's early 1972. United States President Richard Nixon is completing his first term and is considering running for re-election. He created a structure, the CRP, responsible for preparing for re-election. At the head of this institution, Jeb Magruder, 35, close to the Secretary General of the White House, Haldeman. Around him are named former CIA officers, Hunt, McCord and, above all, a former FBI agent, former Prosecutor, the man by whom everything was to happen, Gordon Liddy. Liddy, of whom Haldeman's deputy Gordon Strachan said "He's a little Hitler, but at least he's a Hitler on our side. The scene that follows is truly appalling and speaks for itself. That illegal actions followed this meeting of January 72 is not surprising if one considers that all this was done with the knowledge of the American Minister of Justice in person.
in Richard Nixon , Antoine Coppolani, Fayard, 2012, p. 846-849