21. According to his friend Pat Hillings, Nixon tried to fend Chennault off during a Taiwan visit as late as 1967. Yet he kept up the contact in 1967 and 1968 and in September 1968 was writing to her in “Dick-Anna” terms. The authoritative scholar on Chennault, Catherine Forslund, speculated in her study that Nixon sometimes disparaged Chennault as a political maneuver. (Hillings: JA, p. 365; Forslund, op. cit., p. 14–; “Dick-Anna”: ibid., p. 28.)
22. A blind memo in the “X” Envelope, probably written by Walt Rostow, read: “The damage was done via Thieu in Saigon, through low level Americans.” There is evidence elsewhere in this redacted material that the White House ordered investigations of Americans other than Chennault. Chennault told historian Herbert Parmet that “the full story was far from known, that more confidential messages went from Washington to Saigon through couriers and not through Ambassador Diem. . . . Asked to name the other couriers, however, Chennault refused.” (Blind memo: Nov. 4, 1968, “X” Envelope, supra.; story far from known: Parmet, Nixon, op. cit., p. 522.)
23. It was previously thought that Chennault merely sent a letter to Nixon in Kansas City. Yet her calendar bears the entry “10/16 to meet R. Nixon in Kansas City, MO.” (Re: letter: Safire, op. cit., p. 90, and detail at Forslund, op. cit., p. 29–.)
24. In her 1980 book Chennault said she responded by telling Mitchell she thought it unwise to “try to influence the Vietnamese.” This seems at odds with her interviews with the author, cited earlier, in which she said she was told to promise the South Vietnamese they would get a better deal with Nixon in the White House. (not “try to influence”: Chennault, op. cit., p. 190.)
25. A report from Rostow to President Johnson, ten days after the event, said that the “phone call to the Lady was at 1:41 P.M. EST. . . .” Agnew had arrived in Albuquerque at 1:15 P.M. EST. Another Rostow report, drawing on FBI surveillance, states that Chennault left her Washington apartment at 1:45 P.M. EST. In his reconstruction of the sequence of events for the president, Rostow referred to having received “new times” on Agnew’s movements. The initial FBI report contained contradictory times. It also offered an earlier time—1:30 P.M.—for Chennault’s departure from home. (Rostow ten days after: Rostow to president, Nov. 12, 1968; re: Rostow and Chennault 1:45 P.M.: Rostow to president, Nov. 2, 1968, both in “X” Envelope; initial FBI report: Cartha DeLoach to Clyde Tolson, Nov. 19, 1968, FBI 65-62098-266.)
26. Chennault told both this author and another researcher that she did not remember having received a call from New Mexico. She speculated that if she had been overheard referring to New Mexico, she was probably meaning to refer to New Hampshire, home state of Robert Hill, one of those she had nominated to Nixon as go-betweens. The documentary record, however, seems to be more reliable on this matter than Chennault’s memory. (Other researcher: conv. Catherine Forslund.)
27. It was Nixon who called Johnson, not vice versa, as is often reported. Having spoken with the president, the Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen had passed word that “something had to be done in a hurry to cool him off.” According to William Safire, Dirksen thought Johnson was “ready to blow his stack—and blow the whistle on the Nixon campaign’s attempt to defeat his peace efforts by getting President Thieu to hold back. Anna Chennault’s name was mentioned.” The message was so troubling that Nixon was roused from his bed and agreed to phone Johnson. (RN made call: Forslund, op. cit., citing LBJ sources, including Defense Communications Operations Unit; Safire, op. cit., p. 93, and MEM, p. 320, contradicting, for example, Witcover, op. cit., p. 442; “something had to be done”: Safire, op. cit., p. 93.)
28. Anna Chennault insisted to the author in a 2000 interview that she had not spoken with Agnew while he was in Albuquerque. Clearly, however, Agnew was involved with the Vietnam issue and in touch with Nixon on the subject of a possible breakthrough in the peace talks. Nixon refers in his memoirs to a conversation with his running mate—in early October—in which Agnew briefed him on information he had learned on the subject from Johnson’s secretary of state, Dean Rusk. On October 24, at a rally in St. Louis, Agnew said a development in the Paris peace talks was “fully expected.” (Chennault insisted: int., March 2000; Agnew briefed Nixon: MEM, p. 324; Agnew/St. Louis; Jules Witcover, White Knight: The Rise of Spiro Agnew, New York: Random House, 1972, p. 270.)
29. Chennault said she was pressured not to talk by Herb Klein, Nixon law firm colleague Tom Evans, Senators Everett Dirksen and John Tower, and Robert Hill. (Chennault, op. cit., p. 193–; int. Herb Klein.)
30. Chennault did not reveal what she knew for a long time, but it is not surprising that Nixon’s people were nervous. Interviewed before the 1969 inauguration by Tom Ottenad, a reporter on the trail of the story, she said: “You’re going to get me in a lot of trouble. . . . I can’t say anything . . . come back and ask me that after the inauguration. We’re at a very sensitive time. . . . I know so much and can say so little.” In September 1969 she asserted: “Whatever I did during the campaign the Republicans, including Mr. Nixon, knew about.” In 1974 she further amplified that statement: “From the first conversation [with the South Vietnamese] I made it clear I was speaking for Mr. Nixon. . . .” By 1979, with Nixon long disgraced, she was starting to offer more detail. The blanket denials of the Nixon side had upset her, but, she said resignedly, “It was a very vicious campaign. Politics is a very cruel game.” Tom Corcoran said in 1981: “People have used Chennault scandalously, Nixon in particular, I know exactly what Nixon said to her, and then he repudiated her.” (Jan. 1969 int.: Boston Globe, Jan. 6, 1969; Sept. 1969 int.: Washingtonian, Sept. 1969; 1974 int.: Howe and Trott, op. cit., p. 48; 1979 int.: Washington Star, Aug. 20, 1979; Corcoran: WP, Feb. 18, 1981, cited at Forslund, op. cit., p. 52, fn.)
31. Two of Nixon’s more forthright aides have expressed dismay. “It was not one of American politics’ finest hours,” wrote William Safire. Herb Klein, talking with the author of his reported postelection role—calling Chennault to warn her to keep quiet,—said it was “not something I was proud of.” He justified it to himself, he said, because the Nixon side believed Johnson’s peace initiative to be politically motivated. (Safire, op. cit., p. 91; Chennault, op. cit., p. 193; int. Herb Klein.)
32. Within two weeks of the 1968 election, Drew Pearson wrote of “unconfirmed reports that South Vietnamese leaders had even slipped campaign cash to Nixon’s representatives,” a notion not inconceivable perhaps in light of the evidence that Nixon took money from the Greek dictatorship that year. (See chapter 22.) A consultant to the House Judiciary Committee Impeachment Inquiry, Renata Adler, has written at length suggesting that this was the case four years later, in the 1972 campaign, and that it constituted the great secret of the Nixon presidency. The House Banking Committee, she noted, discovered “kickbacks by Vietnamese importers to American exporters” involving Swiss bank accounts. She also asked why as the Watergate crisis deepened, Nixon aides scurried to return a small contribution from a Philippine national, $30,000—via Anna Chennault. Adler’s thesis seems based more on deduction than on evidence. Chennault, for her part, has denied all knowledge of election contributions by the Saigon government. (Pearson: WP, Nov. 17, 1968; Adler: Atlantic, Dec. 1976, New York Review of Books, Dec. 2(?), 1977; ints. Renata Adler; $30,000: E, 1, p. 721; 23, p. 11155; Stans, Terrors, op. cit., p. 371.)
Chapter 24
1. Tom Wicker followed Nixon’s career as a senior correspondent and columnist for the New York Times. His book One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream, was published in 1991. (New York: Random House).
2. Haldeman’s family was in fact of Swiss origin. (Michael Medved, The Shadow Presidents, New York: Times Books, 1979, p. 306.)
3. The wireman, John Ragan, was hired by Robert Hitt, the Republican official who, along with his wife Patricia, made an appearance in the Anna Chennault Vietnam peace talks sabotage episode, reported in the previous chapter. (Wise, American Police State, op. cit., p. 12.)
4. This is the detective’s repo
rt referred to at p. 303–. Robert Kennedy was reportedly provided with information on the Nixon visits to Hutschnecker, passed on by the singer Frank Sinatra, in those days a Kennedy supporter. Perhaps fearful of counterrevelations about his brother John, not least concerning the long-secret fact that he had Addison’s disease, the younger Kennedy did not use the report. A copy survived, however, and was supplied to Drew Pearson in 1968. (Kelley, op. cit., pp. 279, 530, citing WP.)
5. The patient was William Block, a commercial photographer and one of several Hutschnecker patients Pearson interviewed. The doctor denied having made such comments and, without naming Block, suggested in his book The Drive for Power that Pearson’s source was a “very sick former patient of mine.” To rebut Robert Winter-Berger, who said Hutschnecker had talked about Nixon at a dinner party (see p. 94), he also insinuated that Winter-Berger was ill. Taking everything into consideration, the author is skeptical of the doctor’s denial of such quotes. (WP, Nov. 20, 1968; Hutschnecker, Drive for Power, op. cit., pp. 8, 25.)
Chapter 25
1. The author sent interview requests to both Nixon daughters. Julie Nixon Eisenhower did not reply to repeated letters, while Tricia Nixon Cox wrote courteously declining. (Julie: Robbyn Summers to Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Aug. 25, 1998, May 13, June 28, July 23, 1999; Tricia: corr., May 13, June 10, 1999.)
2. Nixon later relented, and black tie became acceptable at many dinners. (Thomas, Dateline, op. cit., p. 125.)
3. It was illegal under the 1966 Foreign Gifts Act for U.S. government officials to keep gifts from foreign officials worth more than a hundred dollars, and there were rancorous claims and counterclaims when it turned out the Nixons’ record keeping on such largess was at best poor. “If she lies to me,” Pat’s press secretary burst out in frustration at one point, “I have to lie to you.” None of the Nixons’ foreign gifts was turned over to the Protocol Office during the presidency, and the president’s attorneys reportedly argued that he might be exempt from the Gifts Act. Legal wrangling over them continued for years afterward. A General Services Administration probe concluded that virtually all gifts to the Nixons had been returned or accounted for by 1978. Tricia was allowed to keep two wedding gifts, a silver vase given by Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie and a rare temple carving from South Vietnam’s President Thieu. (Cheshire with Greenya, op, cit., pp. 87–140; WP, Sept. 22, 1974; Knight News Service, Apr. 4, 1979.)
4. The massacre had occurred on March 16, 1968. The young veteran who sparked the first serious inquiry was former helicopter gunner Ronald Ridenhour, who wrote to the House Armed Services Committee. The story made its way into the press thanks to the investigative efforts of Seymour Hersh, then a freelance journalist. (Ridenhour: Mollenhoff, op. cit., p. 543; NYT, May 11, 1998; Hersh break: Obst, op. cit., p. 159.)
5. White House ombudsman Clark Mollenhoff had written to Nixon in January 1970, urging presidential supervision of the My Lai investigations. Haldeman later told him there was “no need to give such a project . . . priority.” Mollenhoff recalled that Haldeman was “unconcerned . . . unless it threatened to embarrass the President or the administration.” (Mollenhoff, op. cit., p. 77.)
6. The official in charge of the program in Vietnam in 1969, future CIA Director William Colby, was to deny the assassination activity. A number of veterans of Phoenix have contradicted him. One of the officials behind the program, John Paul Vann, had conferred with Nixon in the Oval Office that year. Vann reportedly encouraged Colby to pursue the Phoenix program. (Colby: William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978, p. 311–; veteran contradicted: Prados, Secret Wars, op. cit., p. 309; Vann: Sheehan, op. cit., p. 732.)
7. The detailed allegation of plotting against Sihanouk was made by a former U.S. Navy yeoman, Samuel Thornton, who served at naval headquarters in Saigon in early 1969. Henry Kissinger has said Washington was not involved in Sihanouk’s overthrow, “at least not at the top level.” (Thornton: Hersh, Price of Power, cit., p. 179–; Kissinger: Shawcross, op. cit., p. 222.)
8. The Senate Intelligence Committee received conflicting testimony on whether Track II ever ended. It could find no trace of a new Nixon order that, Kissinger claimed, terminated it. CIA Deputy Director Thomas Karamessines testified that Track II “was never really ended . . . what we were told to do was to continue our efforts.” (U.S. Senate, Assassination Plots, op. cit., p. 253–.)
9. The box had been a gift from lobbyist Robert Keith Gray, on January 25, 1969. (HD, p. 21.)
Chapter 26
1. See supra., p. 314.
2. See supra., p. 227–. In an interview with the Senate Watergate Committee, Davies admitted being acquainted with Caulfield and Ragan but said he knew nothing about wiretaps. (Int.: John Davies, by Michael Herschman and Wayne Bishop, July 18, 1973, Box B 343, E, NA.)
3. ITT was deeply involved with the CIA throughout Latin America, especially in Chile, where it owned the telephone network. (Hersh, Price of Power, op. cit., pp. 260, 264.)
4. Criticizing the Times for revealing the Cambodia bombing, Nixon would claim it was “directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans because it required the discontinuance of a policy that saved American lives.” In fact, the bombing continued for a full year after the offending story ran. (Newsweek, March 22, 1976.)
5. There were prosecutions of both guardsmen and students, but no one went to prison. In 1973, civil litigation resulted in payment to students and their families, and twenty-eight guardsmen signed a statement “deeply regretting” the shootings. (Newsday, May 4, 1995.)
6. While Butterfield recalled briefing the president in the evening, an early White House tape suggests this occurred early in the morning. (Butterfield: Journal of American History, vol. 75, March 1989, p. 1252; WH tape: recording of 8:00 A.M., Feb. 16, 1971, reported by AP, Oct. 5, 1999.)
7. Rose Woods, Charles Colson, and Haldeman apparently expressed suspicion of Butterfield. It remains just that: their suspicion. (Haldeman and DiMona, op. cit., p. 203–, and int. Colson, in Argosy, March 1976, p. 32.)
8. Although Kissinger claimed he was informed of the tapes only in the spring of 1973, a Haldeman diary entry states that Nixon told him in November 1972 to “let Henry know that obviously the EOB and the Oval Office and the Lincoln Room have all been recorded for protection. . . .” Haldeman may not have passed on the message. (Spring 1973: Kissinger, Upheaval, op. cit., p. 110; Haldeman entry: HD, p. 538, entry for Nov. 19, 1972, and see Washington Times, Oct. 18, 1996; message not passed?: Prologue, vol. 20, Summer 1988, p. 87.)
9. Nixon was to authorize massive financial concessions for the dairy industry, apparently as a reward for two million dollars in campaign contributions, an abuse that became yet another element in the wider Watergate scandal. A House Judiciary Committee summary concluded that the president ordered the concessions “on the basis of his own political welfare.” Nixon refused to cooperate with the committee. (R, Summary of Information, July 19, 1974, p. 149–.)
10. Nixon Library archivist Susan Naulty challenged the reported content of this September 8, 1971, White House tape. Naulty said the charge of anti-Semitism was “very questionable,” citing statements defending Nixon by Jewish groups and the airlift of arms to Israel during the 1973 Middle East War. A check of the tape by the author’s researcher in 2000, however, established that the president did indeed refer gratuitously to “the Jews . . . stealing . . .” In a conversation recorded five days later, moreover, he again made abusive remarks about Jews. (Naulty: Washington Times, Jan. 28, 1997; check for author: report of Robert Lamb, June 27, 2000; five days later: WHT, Sept. 13, 1971, transcribed for author—Jews described by Nixon as “cocksuckers.”)
11. Former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who did campaign in the presidential primaries in 1972, was “aghast” when told of this tape evidence in 1996. Jesse Jackson said his people had no truck with such schemes. (Independent [London], Nov. 29, 1996.)
12. As reported later in this chapter, it was steel
workers who formed the vanguard of the construction workers’ assault on student protesters in New York in May 1970. There was an inquiry into the episode, which may explain why a year later Nixon and Haldeman deemed it wiser to turn to the Teamsters Union when recruiting thugs. (Steelworkers in NYC: NYT, May 9, 1970.)
13. Hoffman suffered his injury and was arrested on the afternoon of May 3. He was taken to the Kennedy Stadium, where thousands of others were being held, and then fled to New York, where he was rearrested hours after the Nixon-Haldeman conversation. While parts of the tape of the conversation are of poor quality, the use of the word “got” in the portion about Hoffman may indicate that Haldeman already knew of the injury inflicted on May 3. (Sequence of events reflected in AP picture captions, May 6, NYT, May 7, 1971; Hoffman int. in San Francisco Examiner, Sept. 30, 1981; see also Benjamin Spock, Spock on Spock, New York: Pantheon, 1989, p. 192, for his recollection and the extent of Hoffman’s injuries.)
14. A Newsday investigation listed Lanza as “Family soldier . . . arrests for bookmaking and policy (twice); convicted of bookmaking and policy (twice); never jailed.” The Glaziers Union official convicted of extortion, just a month earlier, was Sidney Glasser. Charley Johnson, of the Brotherhood of Carpenters, was said by witnesses to the Senate Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field (the “Rackets Committee”) in 1959 to have drawn four concurrent salaries from his union. Thomas Gleason, of the International Longshoremen’s Association, had attended an ILA meeting along with Tough Tony Anastasia and Frank (“Machine Gun Sonny”) Campbell. (Lanza: Newsday, March 1, 1969; companions: Scanlan’s, Sept. 1970.)
Chapter 27
1. That Rebozo and Nixon were together en route by air to Camp David, and on the day mentioned by Watts, is confirmed by the April 24, 1970, entry in Haldeman’s diary. Three aides—William Watts, Roger Morris, and Anthony Lake (later President Clinton’s national security adviser)—opposed the Cambodia operation and resigned when it went ahead. (Camp David trip: HD, p. 154; staff resignations: Kissinger, White House Years, op. cit., p. 493–; ints. William Watts.)
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