H.R. Haldeman, President Nixon’s chief of staff who served 18 months in prison for helping cover up the Watergate break-in, died Friday. He was 67.
Haldeman died at 8 a.m. at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., of an abdominal tumor, his son Hank said. He had been ill for only a month.
Haldeman was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury and was sentenced to a 2 1/2- to eight-year term by U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica. The June 1972 break in of Democratic Party headquarters at Washington’s Watergate Hotel eventually forced Nixon from the White House.
Haldeman had been in advertising when he met Richard Nixon in the 1950s.
After the 1968 election, Haldeman was Nixon’s chief of staff and thereby the gatekeeper to the Oval Office, a post he valued. Other than John N. Mitchell, who had been Nixon’s campaign manager and attorney general, no one was closer to the president.
