the 'public' strauss was highly critical of nietzsche, in fact, his comments essentially summarize the strauss with which folks are familiar, chastizing nietzsche's atheism, nihilism, relativism...
recall that strauss' project is said to have involved renewal of western political philosophy and restorartion of traditional values...
above is what political conservatives (encapsulated, quite incorrectly in some instances as 'neos') identified as 'straussians' have embraced, their strauss appears as the polar of opposite of the contemporary postmodern intellectual current for which portions of nietzsche's thought is an influence and a precursor...
now the so-called neo-cons may or may not be sincere in championing the 'public' strauss, now belief that this is the 'true' strauss makes them really bad straussians, after all, strauss 'teaches' that authors do not really mean whatever it is their explicit writings state, ya' gotta do that esoteric reading thing to understand their actual intent and message, ya' know, over, under, sideways, down (wait, that's the yardbirds), but what it mostly involves is 'creative' readings, including intentional misreadings...
strauss claimed that a philosophical treatise's 'truth' is located - *always* so - in the center of a book or essay amidst a lot of irrelevant stuff that leads the non-philosopher reader to miss it, but not an 'overman' the likes of strauss...
subjecting strauss' writings to an esoteric reading leads one to the same two-tiered result that strauss' esoteric readings of other thinkers led him to...
on one hand an anti-relativist and conservative strauss that his disciples tout - a strauss for the unsophisticated many, on the other a nihilist strauss whose 'truth' is recognized only by a sophisticated few...
as indicated above, his disciples are really bad straussians if they actually believe the surface level interpretation of his writings but then, if they don't believe that stuff, they are deceptive and devious liars, forget the 'noble lie' crap...
in any event, check out shadia drury's _the political ideas of leo strauss_, peter levine's _niezsche and the modern crisis of the humanities_, and laurence lampert's _leo strauss and nietzsche_ for fairly varied assessments of strauss as esoteric nietzschean... mh