|
|
 | | From: | Erik L. | | Subject: | Rose Mary Woods - Nixon's secretary | | Date: | 23 Jan 2005 22:10:21 GMT |
|
|
 | COLUMBUS, Ohio (Jan. 23) - Rose Mary Woods, the devoted secretary to President
Nixon who said she inadvertently erased part of a crucial Watergate tape, has
died. She was 87.
Woods died Saturday night at a nursing home in Alliance, Roger Ruzek, owner of
a funeral home in Sebring, said Sunday. He did not know the cause of death.
The 18 1/2-minute gap in the tape of a June 20, 1972, conversation between
Richard Nixon and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman was critical to the question of
what Nixon knew about the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate
complex three days earlier - and when he knew it.
Woods, who moved to northeastern Ohio after leaving the disgraced president's
staff in 1976, never talked much about her years with the only American
president to resign the office.
But Nixon considered her a member of the family. He wrote in his memoirs that
it was Woods he asked to inform first lady Pat Nixon and his daughters in 1974
that he had decided to resign on Aug. 9.
''My decision was irrevocable, and I asked her to suggest that we not talk
about it anymore when I went over for dinner,'' Nixon said.
When the time came for the family to privately say goodbye to Nixon before he
climbed aboard the helicopter headed for Air Force One, Woods stood by with
Mrs. Nixon, daughters Tricia and Julie, and their husbands.
''Rose ... is as close to us as family,'' Nixon said.
Woods, the granddaughter of an Irish stowaway, was born in Sebring, 20 miles
southwest of Youngstown, on Dec. 26, 1917, and was raised in a strict Roman
Catholic family.
She worked as a pottery company secretary in Sebring, then moved to Washington
to become a typist on Capitol Hill, where she caught the eye of a rising
Republican star, Congressman Richard Nixon of California.
Nixon biographer Jonathan Aitken said the two hit it off immediately. Nixon,
elected to the Senate in 1950, hired Woods as his secretary.
''She was intelligent, literate, clamlike in her discretion. Technically
superb, she possessed the high-speed skills of shorthand and typing necessary
to keep up with her boss's often frantic and always demanding schedule,''
Aitken wrote.
''One of the reasons why Woods struck up such a good rapport with her boss was
that their characters were similar. Disciplined in her emotions yet passionate
in her convictions, Woods was intuitive, protective and obsessive about
privacy.''
Nixon defended his loyal employee when fingers pointed at Woods, who had spent
weeks transcribing subpoenaed White House tapes.
''I know I did not do it,'' Nixon said. ''And I completely believe Rose when
she says that she did not do it.''
She denied she caused the full 18 1/2-minute gap, testifying later that she
inadvertently erased four or five minutes. The phone rang while she was
transcribing the tape, she said.
She accidentally hit the record button. A picture in which she demonstrated her
action - stretching one foot forward while reaching back to get the phone -
became one of the most famous images of the era.
A panel of experts set up in the 1970s by federal judge John Sirica, who
presided over the Watergate criminal trials, concluded that the erasures were
done in at least five - and perhaps as many as nine - separate and contiguous
segments. The panel never figured out what was erased.
Who erased the rest of the tape? No one knows.
Alexander Haig, who succeeded Haldeman as chief of staff, blamed the gap on
''sinister forces.'' Experts later examined the tape and found as many as nine
deliberate erasures. They said Woods could not have done the whole thing.
In an interview on the 25th anniversary of the 1972 break-in, Woods said she
was rarely asked about Watergate anymore.
''Every once in a while I get notes and things from some of the people who were
with us, but not much,'' she said.
''Everybody gets sort of separated.''
Support the Orange Revolution.
Erik L.
|
|
| | From: | fakeemail at fakeprovider.com | | Subject: | Re: Rose Mary Woods - Nixon's secretary | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 23:22:43 GMT |
|
|
| I heard it took her 18 minutes to die.
|
|
|
