A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  Graham’s remarkable ability to overlook or trivialize the unpleasant, particularly when it involved powerful friends whose favor he curried, continued to draw fire. On the evening of Billy Graham Day, NBC News correspondent Herbert Kaplow observed that “if indeed you can tell a man by his friends, politicians seem to feel that with enough friends like Billy Graham, a fellow can do pretty well in American politics.” Expressing a similar sentiment, the Charlotte Observer noted that “the President and the Chamber of Commerce draw honor to themselves by honoring Mr. Graham. He, in turn, moves closer to the places of power, anointing those who are there.” Not everyone felt comfortable with this cozy symbiosis of Church and State. A few days before the grand celebration, Union Seminary President John C. Bennett charged that Graham’s frequent resort to the Second Coming as the only viable solution to serious social problems “enables him to chastise America without disturbing the particular respectable forms of power in our midst, especially those responsible for the use of power by our nation abroad. He has a personal message that may help many individuals to live free of private burdens of sin and guilt and aimlessness, but he lets down those who see themselves as the victims of institutionalized injustice and those who are outraged by many acts of their Government abroad. When people claim to be above politics, it is axiomatic that they in effect support the status quo. This is true when they do nothing, but it is far more true when they advertise their close relations with the powerful.” Bennett, of course, was a social and theological liberal and could thus be dismissed by Graham’s supporters, but not all the criticism came from the opposing camp. On the same day Billy and the President were praising each other in Charlotte, Diane Sawyer, assistant to press secretary Ron Ziegler, sent her boss a memo drawing attention to an editorial in the Charlotte Observer in which it was noted that some of Graham’s fellow Southern Baptists felt the evangelist “is too close to the powerful and too fond of the things of the world, [and] have likened him to the prophets of old who told the kings of Israel what they wanted to hear.”

  Without question, Graham had a remarkable talent for tickling the ears of those he admired, and a strong tendency to admire the famous and powerful. He was never a liar who blatantly said things he did not believe, nor a demagogue who cynically manipulated audiences for personal or party ends, but his desire to please often combined with his innate conservative instincts—abhorrence of disorder, belief in self-reliance and self-control, trust in authority—to produce a soothing balm when an astringent was needed. When chastised for an unconsidered remark, he could be abjectly repentant. Religion writer George Plagenz called his hand on his crowd-pleasing comment about poor people and rats, noting, “It is one thing to be in favor of self-reliance. It is quite another to be insensitive to the plight and feelings of those who for various reasons are not self-reliant.” Graham dashed off an apology, admitting he had been wrong and urging Plagenz to “kick me in the pants” whenever necessary. More telling, he quit using the line. Still, he never shed a tendency to make statements whose logic and sense of proportion sometimes bordered on the bizarre. Without a hint that the upheaval spawned during the sixties might have more complex causes, he observed, “It is interesting to note that as soon as prayer was taken out of the schools . . . drugs, sex permissiveness, and even crime entered the schools.” That assertion, however weak the chain of causation it posited, was common in conservative religious circles. It was vintage Graham, however, to reflect on Lieutenant William Calley’s notorious massacre of a Vietnam village and declare that “we have all had our My Lais in one way or another . . . with a thoughtless word, an arrogant act, or a selfish deed,” as if that heinous atrocity were just a notch or two further up the scale from grumpiness.

  Knowing he could count on Graham to cast whatever he did in as favorable a light as possible doubtless pleased and reassured the President, and he rewarded his loyal friend with numerous attractive perks: an invitation to an evening at the White House with Beverly Sills; dinner aboard the Sequoia with Nixon and his inner circle of Henry Kissinger, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, Donald Rumsfeld, and Harry Dent; an overnight stay in the First Family’s private quarters, with instructions to Julie and Tricia to “pick an appropriate movie” for viewing after dinner. In every case, aides had orders to give Graham full VIP treatment; on one occasion, after an aide failed to place the evangelist in the first limousine to arrive for a group of guests at a presidential party, Haldeman dispatched a memo noting how awkward and embarrassing that had been and asked that such a breach of protocol not recur.

  In return for such care and cultivation, Nixon sought and received Graham’s sincere friendship and goodwill, which translated into the priceless political coin of obvious approval and palpable, if coyly unspoken, endorsement. But he got more than symbolic benefit from Graham. Because of his peerless reputation and international contacts, Graham was able to serve in an informal ambassadorial role in situations in which a member of the diplomatic corps might have been less effective. “We thought highly of his abilities in that regard,” Haldeman acknowledged. “He had contact at a very personal level with people of enormous diplomatic importance. He was astute in those situations, in the sense of his being a keen observer and understander of people. People tend to confide in him more than they would to other people. He draws out their inner feelings. That can be enormously important diplomatically.”

  A key instance of this occurred after the United States began to assume a more positive stance toward the People’s Republic of China in 1971. This action, eventually regarded as one of the crowning achievements of the Nixon presidency, caused considerable unease among many of his conservative supporters in America and galloping anxiety in Taiwan. Graham proved a valuable ally on both fronts. At Nixon’s request, he assembled a group of over thirty conservative religious and business leaders, at least a third of whom had close ties to BGEA, for an extensive briefing on the China situation from Henry Kissinger in the hope and expectation that they would convey a favorable reading to their sizable constituencies.

  A second opportunity to serve came at the initiative of Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. A November 1971 memo from Haldeman to Kissinger reveals that the Chiangs had asked Graham to come to Taipei to discuss the change in American policy portended for their small and vulnerable Republic of China (ROC). They were “deeply troubled,” Haldeman said, and “Billy Graham is the one person from this country that they will listen to and would like to meet with.” Nixon approved a visit and Graham agreed that he would “try to explain things to them in whatever way we want them explained, and also meet with the missionaries in Formosa, among whom there is now a problem of strong resentment and anger towards the U.S.” At Haldeman’s request, Kissinger prepared a briefing paper for Graham to study before meeting with the President, at which time he expected Nixon to cover “other, more sensitive points.” If he had any questions about the briefing paper, he was told that “Al Haig will be able to help you.” The more sensitive points Nixon was to provide in his pretrip briefing were removed from the Nixon archives, ostensibly for reasons of national security, but the key points of the “talker” Kissinger prepared for Graham were that the President sent his warmest personal greetings, regretted deeply that the United Nations had decided to strip Chiang’s republic of its representation in that body, pledged to honor America’s long-standing diplomatic ties and mutual-defense commitments to the ROC (“You should avoid being drawn out,” Graham was instructed, “on the particulars of our military assistance, such as levels of assistance and projections into the future”), and would work to preserve the ROC’s standing in such organizations as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The President asked Graham to convey his recognition of the pains the Chiangs must be feeling over the dramatic shift in American policy, and to assure them that “no secret deals have been or will be struck” that permit “improvement in relations with Peking at the expense of the vital interests of our
allies in Asia, especially the Republic of China.” When asked about this incident in early 1989, Graham professed barely to remember it and felt it could not have been significant. “The President may have asked me to give them greetings,” he conceded. “You know, I preached Chiang’s funeral at the Washington Cathedral. Mrs. Chiang was a very devout Christian. Ruth goes out to see her on Long Island. She and her sister studied here in Montreat for a time.”

  Graham’s memory for other events of this period tend to follow a similar pattern. Mention of amply and precisely documented meetings, letters, telephone calls, and public statements were met with verbal and facial expressions of vague puzzlement and turned away by denial, modest acknowledgment of a faulty memory, or a shifting of the subject to some extraneous personal recollection. Nowhere was this tendency more obvious than in discussion of Richard Nixon’s second election in 1972, a sequence of events that marked what was probably the closest Graham ever came to succumbing to the classic temptations offered by “the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” (Matt. 4:8).

  24

  “Billy, You Stay Out of Politics”

  In late November 1970, Nixon told Haldeman, “On the political front, it is important to start an early liaison with BG and his people. He was enormously helpful to us in the Border South in ’68 and will continue to be in ’72.” Early in 1971, following a conversation with the President, H. R. Haldeman wrote himself the following note: “Graham wants to be helpful next year. . . . Point him in areas where do most good. He thinks there are real stirrings in religious directions, especially re young people. . . . I call him and set up date. No other level—can’t have leak.” Two days later, he scribbled a follow-up reminder: “Must mobilize him and his crowd.” If the archival records are to be trusted, what followed was a close collaboration between Billy Graham and the White House that not only helped reelect Richard Nixon, but contributed importantly to the emergence, eight years later and under different leadership, of the New Religious Right. On the same day he penned the “must mobilize” memo, Haldeman prepared a “talking paper” for a conversation he expected to have with Graham. In that conversation, according to Haldeman’s notes, Graham mentioned the crucial importance of the 1972 election and discussed what he regarded as a significant move to the right among religious people. Haldeman apparently felt it was possible to “mobilize him and his troops,” but not if the administration began making too many concessions to liberal critics. “He’s willing to do it,” Haldeman wrote, “if we take firm line. Feels we’re not getting firm enough line to the right.”

  A busy crusade schedule limited what Graham could do during 1971, though he did apparently make some effort to persuade the administration’s leading Republican critic, Mark Hatfield, not to challenge Nixon for their party’s nomination in 1972, with the understanding that the White House would provide full support for his campaign for reelection to the Senate. The White House staff, however, clearly regarded the evangelist as a front line heavyweight; in an August 1971 memo, Haldeman recommended setting up a group of eight to ten loyal “Conservatives for the President,” who would “support the President down the line from a conservative viewpoint,” to counterbalance criticism Nixon was receiving from “some of the conservative publications.” Such a group should include, he thought, “Hobie Lewis, [National Review editor] Jeff Hart, Clare Luce, Billy Graham, etc.” The staff also saw to it that Graham continued to receive rewards commensurate with the value the President placed on his friendship and support. When his old friend and admirer, William R. Tolbert, was elected president of Liberia, Kissinger recommended that Billy attend the inauguration as the President’s personal representative. The other dignitaries representing America were the U.S. ambassador to Liberia, New York Stock Exchange chairman Bernard Lasker, and Mrs. Nixon. In deference to Graham’s stature and tight schedule, Alexander Haig assured him that an aircraft would be provided to return him to the United States immediately after the required appearances in Liberia and that “he would have complete service with respect to accommodations, appropriate briefings, and the complete satisfaction of all his personal and official requirements.”

  In February 1972 Graham and Nixon met for more than an hour to discuss how and where he could be of greatest use to the campaign. In his summary of this meeting, Haldeman recorded that “it was agreed that Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and New York were most important, since California and Texas are already covered.” Graham assured the President he would try to be helpful “in every possible way” and was promised solid briefings on domestic and foreign political matters so that he would always know where the administration stood on crucial questions. This would include another meeting at which Kissinger would brief key Evangelical editors, broadcasters, and denominational leaders about ongoing developments in the new policy toward communist China, apparently to gain support for the shift in policy. Haldeman’s report also shows that Graham used the meeting to ask at least two specific favors of the President. Despite meeting what seems to have been resistance, he wrested a promise from Nixon to include a religion writer in the press corps for his momentous trip to China. He informed the President that the religious community would be deeply offended if no religion writer made the trip and assured him that the consensus choice of the religious press was David E. Kucharsky of Christianity Today. On a second matter that affected both CT and Decision, Graham complained that a recent change in postal rates had raised the cost of mailing religious publications by 400 percent, while pornographic literature suffered a hike of only 25 percent. “Needless to say,” Haldeman told John Ehrlichman, “the President was horrified to learn of this state of affairs and wants to know what we are doing about it.”

  Haldeman was assigned primary responsibility for maintaining regular contact with Graham. Nixon directed him to call Graham “about once every 2 weeks to discuss the political situation,” explaining that “I would prefer not to get into these matters as directly with him but I do want a continuing contact kept with him so that he doesn’t feel that we are not interested in the support of his group in those key states where they can be helpful.” In yet another February memo, Nixon aide Lawrence Higby noted, “Two that we can’t let drop—Bob [Haldeman] needs to call the Secretary of Treasury John Connally and Billy Graham about once a week and just fill them in on what’s happening and maybe raise a point or two with them. Let’s make sure we put some sort of reminder in here on a weekly basis.” Gordon Strachan, and perhaps others, fed Haldeman a steady stream of talking papers at least biweekly from mid-February until the election in November. These recommended that Graham be given advance notice of such matters as John Mitchell’s leaving the attorney general’s office to head the President’s reelection campaign, details of Nixon’s forthcoming trip to Moscow and Poland, the administration’s strategy for dealing with busing on a regional basis, and the appointment of Patrick Gray as FBI chief. In exchange for this kind of insider information, the White House sought his reaction to Kissinger’s secret diplomatic forays, his sense of whether George McGovern could actually capture the Democratic nomination, his assessment of the effectiveness of the administration’s “recent attacks on certain members of the media” (including “Pat Buchanan—type comments”), and any suggestions he might have for the role Pat Nixon should play during the President’s trip to Russia.

  It may not be possible to establish with certainty how many of these “talkers” were acted upon until all the tapes made by the Nixon’s infamous recording system are finally released for public inspection, but telephone logs and other archival records referring to conversations with Graham on the same date or shortly following the date of the talking papers strongly suggest that a substantial proportion of the recommended calls were indeed made. Haldeman confirmed that “I definitely made a good number of calls. I’m not sure just how frequently; ordinarily, it was not weekly, but it was probably more than monthly. Some weeks, it was more than once a week. That was probably true of the Pr
esident as well.” Sometimes the calls came from Nixon himself. Charles Colson recalled that “Nixon would call different people whose judgment he respected to get their opinions and also to see how the public was reacting to different issues. He was probably looking for affirmation, but also, I think, he was sounding out people whose judgment and insights he respected. He and Billy had a close personal relationship. Nixon would call Billy because he felt like talking to him. He’d use Billy as a kind of sounding board to find out what was happening on campus or across the country.” Haldeman and Ehrlichman agreed with this assessment. “Billy was definitely in [Nixon’s] inner circle,” Haldeman said. “The President had enormous admiration and affection for him and relied on his counsel. Billy’s political acumen is very high, and he had a talent for seeing the best of everything that is happening—not choosing to see the bad.” Ehrlichman saw part of Nixon’s interest as purely pragmatic: “Nixon felt Dr. Graham represented and spoke for a substantial segment of religious America. He was interested in his views on various subjects. It would be very important for the President to know how Dr. Graham and the people he talked to felt about, for example, abortion. This is purely hypothetical, but Dr. Graham might say, ‘I was at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, and eight out of ten people I talked to raised the issue of abortion.’ That kind of thing.” Like Haldeman, however, Ehrlichman agreed that Nixon’s respect for Graham was unfeigned. “I think the President saw Dr. Graham as an icon of sorts. He had unqualified admiration for him. If anything, he overestimated his influence on the American people.” With a wry chuckle, he added, “He certainly didn’t underestimate it.”