Nixon Saw Watergate as ‘Routine,’ Tapes Show : Politics: In newly released recordings, the former President gives little weight to the break-in that later led to his resignation.

WASHINGTON —  Four days after the 1972 Watergate break-in, former President Richard Nixon told top aides he was inclined to dismiss the importance of the Republican operatives being caught inside Democratic national headquarters, newly released White House tape recordings showed Monday.

“The reaction is going to be primarily in Washington and not the country because I think the country doesn’t give much of a ---- about bugging,” Nixon said at an Oval Office meeting.

“Most people around the country think it’s probably routine, (that) everybody’s trying to bug everybody else--it’s politics.”

The new batch of tapes, released by the National Archives, cover three hours of excerpted Watergate conversations in the weeks before and after the June 17, 1972, break-in. The incident led to Nixon’s resignation two years later, after it was shown he had directed a massive cover-up that included his attempts to obstruct the FBI’s investigation.

No transcripts of the tapes were made, and the audio quality of many was poor. Most of the conversations dealt with post-break-in strategy sessions in the White House and contained little that was not previously known. But the fresh tapes also suggested--as Nixon long has claimed--that he had no advance knowledge of the Watergate burglary.

The newly released tapes had never before been heard publicly nor used in any Watergate-related prosecution. The 25 conversations they covered were not among the recordings used by the House Judiciary Committee in its 1974 impeachment proceedings, or those used in federal court in the later criminal trial that resulted in convictions of Nixon’s top aides.

Two days after the recording of the June 21, 1972, tape released for the first time Monday, another taped conversation obtained by federal prosecutors--and used in court--became the so-called “smoking gun” tape that forced Nixon to resign. That June 23, 1972, recording showed Nixon had lied about his post-Watergate conduct and in fact had directed a strategy to block the FBI’s investigation of how the break-in was financed.

The Archives released the new tapes under provisions of a 1974 law by which Congress ruled that all of Nixon’s presidential papers and secret recordings should be held and processed by the federal government to prevent their destruction. Only a small portion of all 4,000 hours of White House recordings have been processed and catalogued so far, and Monday’s release--like previous releases--deleted all references to national security matters or unnecessary references to private individuals.

The new batch contains a June 20, 1972, conversation in which H. R. Haldeman, then Nixon’s chief of staff, privately fills in the President on details he has learned about the burglary and the GOP operatives who were arrested. Nixon, in a thoughtful tone, merely says, “Oh.”

The next day, after Nixon makes light of the burglary attempt, then-presidential aide Charles W. Colson agrees with his assessment, according to the tape.

Colson, referring to the American people, says: “They think political parties do this all the time.”

Nixon and Haldeman then decide that the White House should continue to characterize the break-in as “a third-rate burglary.”

Colson, however, grows more serious on the tape and recalls that he was responsible for hiring E. Howard Hunt as a White House consultant. Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who was finance counsel to Nixon’s reelection committee, planned and directed the ill-fated break-in but escaped immediate arrest.

“Well, I don’t think it will go away,” Colson says of reaction to the burglary. “But I don’t think we should do anything reckless.”

Haldeman then says Liddy is willing to take all the blame, and quotes him as saying: “If you want to put me before a firing squad and shoot me, that’s fine.”

After putting Liddy forward as the fall guy, “then we ask for compassion,” Haldeman suggests on the tape. Liddy, a former FBI agent and ex-prosecutor, would be labeled as “a poor, misguided kid who read too many spy stories . . . a little bit nutty,” Haldeman says.

Liddy subsequently spent the longest time in prison of any Watergate figure--52 months on contempt of court charges for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury after his conviction for burglary and conspiracy.