The Wars of Watergate
Page 93
William Ruckelshaus, Seattle, Washington, August 21, 1986
William Safire, Washington, D.C., February 6, 1986
James St. Clair, Boston, April 10, 1987
Donald Santarelli, Washington, D.C., August 26, 1987
Father Don Shea, Washington, D.C., May 15, 1986
David Shepard, Madison, Wisconsin, April 4, 1988
Earl Silbert, Washington, D.C., February 10, September 30, 1988; February 23, 1989
John Stennis, Washington, D.C., June 25, 1985; June 27, 1985 (telephone)
Robert Stripling (telephone), March 24, 1989
Mike Wallace, New York, December 12, 1986
Clay Whitehead, McLean, Virginia, May 25, 1988
Charles Wiggins, Los Angeles, February 5, 1985
Tim Wyngaard, Washington, D.C., May 15, 1985
Jerome Ziefman, Washington, D.C., February 5, 1986
ABBREVIATIONS
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation Papers
FL Gerald R. Ford Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
HBC House Banking and Currency Committee Papers
HJC House Judiciary Committee
H.R. House of Representatives
LC Library of Congress, Manuscript Division
NA National Archives
NCF Nixon Central File
NP Nixon Papers
NPF Nixon Personal Files
NTSB National Transportation Safety Board Papers
NYT New York Times
PPPUS:GF Personal Papers of the President of the United States: Gerald R. Ford
PPPUS:LBJ Personal Papers of the President of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson
PPPUS:RN Personal Papers of the President of the United States: Richard M. Nixon
SJC Senate Judiciary Committee
SSC Senate Select Committee to Investigate Presidential Campaign Activities
SSF Staff Secretary Files (Ford and Nixon Papers)
U.S.S. United States Senate
TT Tape Transcript
U.S. v. M United States v. Mitchell, et al.
WGSPF Watergate Special Prosecution Force
WHCF White House Central Files (Ford and Nixon Papers)
WHT White House Transcript
WP Washington Post
WSJ Wall Street Journal
NOTES
PROLOGUE: TRIUMPH AND FOREBODING: ELECTION NIGHT 1972
1. Haldeman Notes, September 11, 1972, Haldeman Papers, Box 46, NP; Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (paperback ed., New York, 1979), 2:218–22.
2. David Frost, “I Gave Them a Sword”: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews (New York, 1978), 183.
3. TT, President, Dean, and Haldeman, September 15, 1972 (5:24 P.M.–6:17 P.M.), U.S. v. M, NA.
4. PPPUS: RN, 1973, Speech, April 30, 1973, 333; Buchanan to Nixon, December 8, 1972, Haldeman Papers, Box 230, NP; Garment to Haldeman, January 19, 1973, Garment MS, LC; Garment Interview, May 29, 1985.
I: BREAKING FAITH: THE 1960S
1. Kim McQuaid, The Anxious Years: America in the Vietnam-Watergate Era (New York, 1989), offers an insightful synthesis of the period.
2. PPPUS: LBJ, 1963–1964, April 21, 1964, 1:513; Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York, 1969), 334, 335–37; Louis Heren, No Hail, No Farewell (New York, 1970), 253. Paul K. Conkin, Big Daddy from the Pedernales: Lyndon Baines Johnson (Boston, 1986), offers a recent sensitive portrayal of Johnson.
3. Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York, 1984), 144; George Reedy, Lyndon B. Johnson: A Memoir (New York, 1982), 123. See Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power (New York, 1982), for a lengthy discussion of the negative aspects of Johnson’s earlier career.
4. NYT, May 27, 1964, July 18, 1964.
5. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (Signet ed., New York, 1968), 502; Goldman, Tragedy of Johnson, 228; Matusow, Unraveling of America, 143.
6. Lloyd A. Free and Hadley Cantril, The Political Beliefs of Americans (New Brunswick, 1967), 173.
7. Reedy, Johnson, 138.
8. PPPUS: LBJ, 1963–1964, September 25, 1964, 2:1126.
9. Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York, 1971), 68; John M. Orman, Presidential Secrecy and Deception (Westport, CT, 1980), 98; William C. Berman, William Fulbright and the Vietnam War: The Dissent of a Political Realist (Kent, OH, 1988), 29. Also see The Pentagon Papers (New York, Bantam Books, 1971). In June, Bundy had told the President that the “defense of U.S. interests is possible, within these [i.e., the current] limits, over the next six months.” In other words, the war was not to be widened during the campaign. Matusow, Unraveling of America, 149, citing Pentagon Papers.
10. Berman, Fulbright, Chapters 2, 3; Goldman, Tragedy of Johnson, 176.
11. Berman, Fulbright, 23–26, 69–70; David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Penguin ed., New York, 1983), 496–503, 510.
12. Berman, Fulbright, 24, 26–27; Goldman, Tragedy of Johnson, 182–83; Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 509. In his memoirs, Johnson cited the Fulbright-Cooper exchange, in effect blaming Congress for its future failure to withdraw consent for widening the war. But he never mentioned Nelson’s challenge. Johnson, Vantage Point, 118–19. Fulbright later publicly apologized to the Wisconsin senator. AP dispatch (FBI spying), Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times, July 17, 1988.
13. New York Herald Tribune, May 23, 1965.
14. Matusow, Unraveling of America, 154; Kathryn J. Turner, Lyndon Johnson’s Dual War: Vietnam and the Press (Chicago, 1985), 176–77.
15. Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston, 1980), 578; Michael Davie, LBJ: A Foreign Observer’s Viewpoint (New York, 1966), 36–37; John Tebbel and Sarah Miles Watts, The Press and the Presidency: From George Washington to Ronald Reagan (New York, 1985), 493.
16. Goldman, Tragedy of Johnson, 439.
17. Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 778.
18. David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (New York, 1979), 6. Johnson, Vantage Point, 530; Eugene McCarthy, Up ’Til Now (Orlando, FL, 1987), 178; PPPUS: LBJ, 1967, June 27, 1967, 1:656; Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York, 1976), 315–16. Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston, 1982), 86–87, presented a concise condemnation of the treason of the intellectuals—according to Kissinger.
19. Kearns, Lyndon Johnson, 8; Tebbel and Watts, Press and the Presidency, 490; PPPUS: LBJ, 1968–1969, January 17, 1969, 2:51; Harry McPherson, A Political Education (Boston, 1972), 261.
20. Turner, Johnson’s Dual War, 181–82, 179. The fickleness of the press sometimes was inexplicable. During Johnson’s January 17, 1967, press conference, reporters raised no questions regarding Vietnam.
21. Reedy, LBJ, 140; Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag: A Republican’s Challenge to His Party (Boston, 1972), 100–01.
22. Orman, Presidential Secrecy, 108; Kearns, Lyndon Johnson, 393; Goldman, Tragedy of Johnson, 159–60, 201–02, 523–24.
23. PPPUS: LBJ, 1963–1964, October 9, 1964, 2:1266.
24. Kearns, Lyndon Johnson, 251; Chalmers M. Roberts, First Rough Draft: A Journalist’s Journal of Our Times (New York, 1973), 252; Valenti, Human President, 367.
25. Heren, No Hail, No Farewell, 209–10.
26. Johnson, Vantage Point, 148; PPPUS: LBJ, 1966, May 17, 1966, 1:519.
27. Kearns, Lyndon Johnson, 20–21; Berman, Fulbright, 15.
28. George Herring, “The War in Vietnam,” in Robert A. Divine (ed.), Exploring the Johnson Years (Austin, TX, 1981), 39–40; Peter W. Sperlich and William L. Lunch, “American Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam,” Western Political Quarterly, March 1979, 32:21–24.
29. Congressional Record, 89 Cong., 1 Sess. (September 2, 1965), 22761–63. Two years later, Nixon persisted in his belief that China pulled the strings in Vietnam but then dropped hints that perhaps the United States should “change” China. “Taking the long
view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations.… The world cannot be safe until China changes.” Richard M. Nixon, “Asia After Viet Nam,” Foreign Affairs, October 1967, 46:111, 121.
30. Orman, Presidential Secrecy, 106.
31. Philip Geyelin, Lyndon B. Johnson and the World (New York, 1966), 306; Valenti, Human President, 134; Herring, “The War in Vietnam,” in Divine (ed.), Johnson Years, 55.
32. McPherson, Political Education, 271–72; Goldman, Tragedy of Johnson, 511.
33. Larry Berman, Planning a Tragedy (New York, 1982), 128; Herring, “The War in Vietnam,” in Divine (ed.), Johnson Years, 37–38; Valenti, Human President, 300–01; Moorer Interview, June 25, 1985; Turner, Johnson’s Dual War, 182; McPherson, Political Education, 420–21; NYT, February 6, 1968.
34. Geyelin, LBJ and the World, 15.
35. Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers (New York, 1957), 29–30; Fred I. Greenstein, “A President Is Forced to Resign: Watergate, White House Organization, and Nixon’s Personality,” in Allan P. Sindler (ed.), American Politics in the Seventies (Boston, 1977), 68–70.
36. Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power (New York, 1960), 212–13; Fred I. Greenstein, “Political Psychology: A Pluralistic Universe,” in Jeanne N. Knutson (ed.) Handbook of Political Psychology (San Francisco, 1973), 458.
37. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President (New York, 1967), 221–23; PPPUS: LBJ, 1965, June 17, 1965, 2:680.
38. Kearns, Lyndon Johnson, 399–400; Geoffrey Hodgson, All Things to All Men: The False Promise of the Modern American Presidency (New York, 1980), 73.
39. Johnson, Vantage Point, 532–33; Washington Star, April 27, 1964.
40. Matusow, Unraveling of America, 391.
41. Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet in Vietnam and Washington (paperback ed., Garden City, 1978), 508; Herring, “The War in Vietnam,” in Divine (ed.), Johnson Years, 50–51; Culbert, “Johnson and the Media,” ibid., 233–34.
42. Herring, “The War in Vietnam,” ibid., 50–51.
43. Matusow, Unraveling of America, 392; William O’Neill, Coming Apart (Chicago, 1971), 375–76.
44. McCarthy Speech, March 23, 1968, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times, March 24, 1968.
45. PPPUS: LBJ, 1968–1969, March 31, 1968, 1:469–76; ibid., April 1, 1968, 1:476–81; Kearns, Lyndon Johnson, 395.
46. PPPUS: LBJ, 1968–1969, April 1, 1968, 1:482–86.
47. Goldman, Tragedy of Johnson, 520; Turner, Johnson’s Dual War, 248.
II: MAKING MANY NIXONS: 1913–1965
1. Earl Mazo, Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait (New York, 1959), 10.
2. H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (New York, 1978), 76; Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston, 1980), 483, 589, 597; Fawn Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (New York, 1981), 353.
3. Compare, for example, Mazo and Brodie. A detailed and balanced account of Nixon’s life prior to his presidency is in the first volume of Stephen E. Ambrose’s projected trilogy: Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913–1962 (New York, 1987). Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (New York, 1970) is especially insightful.
4. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (paperback ed., New York, 1979), 1:25.
5. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:17–24.
6. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:24–26.
7. Brodie, Nixon, 133–39.
8. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:30–31.
9. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:31–33.
10. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:33–36.
11. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:39–42.
12. William Costello, The Facts About Nixon: An Unauthorized Biography (New York, 1960), 38.
13. Mazo, Nixon, 48.
14. Earl Mazo and Stephen Hess, Nixon: A Political Portrait (New York, 1968), 38–42.
15. Costello, The Facts About Nixon, 38–58, passim. The 1946 campaign repelled Nixon’s old girlfriend, who also said that she followed his later career with great dismay. Brodie, Nixon, 125.
16. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:53–54.
17. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:57–63.
18. Russell Lynes, The Lively Audience (New York, 1985), 421.
19. Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York, 1978), 557; Weinstein, “Nixon vs. Hiss,” Esquire, November 1975, 74. Stripling Interview, March 24, 1989, confirmed details of Nixon’s own exaggerated role in the Hiss affair. Nixon has admitted to only one mistake: his failure to pursue Mrs. Hiss. Chambers had told him she was the “red hot” of the couple, and that often wives of Communists were the more extreme. Nixon added his own gloss: “[I]t has been my observation that in the political arena, men often tend to be pragmatic; they are willing to compromise.… Women seldom will do so. They tend to be total idealist, true believers, whether the cause is on the left or the right.” Richard Nixon, “Lessons of the Hiss Case,” Address to the Pumpkin Papers Irregulars, October 31, 1985, typescript, 9. Courtesy of Mr. Nixon.
20. Testimony of Witnesses, Hearings, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 93 Cong., 2 Sess. (July 15, 1974), 3:44. Hereafter cited as HJC, Testimony of Witnesses.
21. Costello, Facts about Nixon, 68–72; Mazo, Nixon, 64–75. Mazo wrote that Marcantonio actually hated Douglas, often referring to her with an obscene five-letter word. After he heard that Boddy had linked her to him, Marcantonio chuckled and reputedly told a Nixon friend: “Tell Nicky to get on this thing because it is a good idea.” Ibid., 74n. Marcantonio apparently was familiar enough to call Nixon “Nicky.”
22. Mazo, Nixon, 84–85.
23. Mazo, Nixon, 65–66; Piers Brendon, Ike: His Life and Times (New York, 1986), 217.
24. Costello, Facts about Nixon, 118; Mazo, Nixon, 7, 67–68; Kenneth Davis, The Politics of Honor: A Biography of Adlai E. Stevenson (New York, 1967), 282, 300; John Bartlow Martin, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois (New York, 1976), 693; Stephen Whitfield, “Richard Nixon as a Comic Figure,” American Quarterly, Spring 1985, 37:125.
25. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:112–33, is essentially a distillation of the account he gave earlier in Six Crises. Cf. Costello, Facts About Nixon, 103–12; Mazo, Nixon, 131–36; Ambrose, Nixon, 286–95. Mazo also suggested that without the speech, “Eisenhower might have lost.” Such hyperbole can be matched to Hollywood producer Darryl Zanuck’s remark to Nixon after his speech: “The most tremendous performance I’ve ever seen.” John E. Hollitz, “Eisenhower and the Admen: The Television ‘Spot’ Campaign of 1952,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, Fall 1982, 66:25–39.
26. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:120. “Controlling his temper with difficulty, Ike refused to be stampeded by such rudeness into such incontinence.” Brendon, Ike, 223. Either the story changed through the years, or the standard for acceptable language did. Traditionally, Nixon was reported to have told Eisenhower “to fish or cut bait.” Costello, Facts About Nixon, 105–06.
27. Nixon’s remark on his relationship with Eisenhower is from an undated interview with Joseph Alsop, quoted in Michael R. Beschloss, Mayday: The U-2 Affair, (New York, 1986), 154.
28. Mazo, Nixon, 150; William B. Ewald, Jr., Eisenhower the President: Crucial Days, 1951–1960 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1981), 185–87; Beschloss, Mayday, 114.
29. NYT, October 18, 1956, November 6, 1956. See Mazo, Nixon, 152, 157, for Nixon’s 1954 talk of leaving politics. The Eisenhower letter to Nixon on the succession is in Eisenhower to Nixon, February 5, 1958, Eisenhower Library, and Dulles Memorandum, February 8, 1958, Dulles MSS, Seeley Library, Princeton University. Also see Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York, 1984), 272–73, 275.
30. Beschloss, Mayday, 178–81; Ambrose, Nixon, 520–28; Nixon, Memoirs, 1:250–63; Charles Mohr, “Remembrances of the Great ‘Kitchen Debate,’ ” NYT, July 25, 1984. Mohr reported that reporters recognized Nixon’s domestic political purposes, as they sang on their plane to the tune of “California, Here I Come�
��: “Moscow Kremlin, here I come. What a place to campaign from.”
31. Beschloss, Mayday, 183.
32. Nixon, Memoirs, 1:264.
33. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, 319–20, 512, 601; Robert Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review, 1982, 87:122.
34. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, 559–60.
35. PPPUS: Eisenhower, 1960–1961, August 24, 1960, Press Conference, 658.
36. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President, 593–94. Ambrose concludes: “The result of all these structural difficulties, and of Eisenhower’s ambiguity toward Nixon, was that Eisenhower’s contribution to Nixon’s campaign was worse than unhelpful—it actually cost Nixon votes, and probably the election.” Ibid., 594. Alsop’s report is in Beschloss, Mayday, 154. Eisenhower’s remark is in Ewald, Eisenhower the President, 312. Nixon asked Eisenhower to raise the question of Kennedy’s health. Ike’s Press Secretary, James Hagerty, denounced this as a “cheap, lousy, stinking political trick.” Brendon, Ike, 398.
37. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (New York, 1964).
38. Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York, 1962), 340.
39. Sidney Kraus (ed.), The Great Debates (Bloomington, 1962), 391–93; 417.
40. Kraus, Great Debates, 396–97.
41. Edmund F. Kallina, Jr., Court-House over White House (Orlando, 1988), is a substantial scholarly study challenging the notion that Daley “stole” the election. Ambrose, Nixon, 605-08, praises Nixon’s behavior following the election and has high praise for the conduct of his campaign. Also see Nixon, Six Crises, 397; Nixon, Memoirs, 1:278; Beschloss, Mayday, 341. A friend told Nixon shortly after the election that if it hadn’t been for the Hiss case, he would have been elected. Nixon replied that without that case, he probably would not have been nominated. Richard Nixon, “Lessons of the Hiss Case,” 10. Daley’s remark is in Ben Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy (New York, 1975), 33. Nixon told a friendly writer that Eisenhower urged him not to challenge the election, but the writer sadly noted that “this was the first time I ever caught Nixon in a lie.” Brodie, Nixon, 433. Timothy Crouse, a journalist hostile to Nixon, conceded that Nixon had valid complaints about the press. The Boys on the Bus (paperback ed., New York, 1974), 194. Helms Interview, September 23, 1988.