The Legacy of Watergate and the Nixon Presidency: Nixon's Curse 3031434730, 9783031434730

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THE EVOLVING AMERICAN PRESIDENCY

The Legacy of Watergate and the Nixon Presidency Nixon’s Curse Michael A. Genovese

The Evolving American Presidency

Series Editors Michael A. Genovese, Political Science & International Relations, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA Todd L. Belt, Graduate School of Political Management, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

This series is stimulated by the clash between the presidency as invented and the presidency as it has developed. Over time, the presidency has evolved and grown in power, expectations, responsibilities, and authority. Adding to the power of the presidency have been wars, crises, depressions, industrialization. The importance and power of the modern presidency makes understanding it so vital. How presidents resolve challenges and paradoxes of high expectations with limited constitutional resources is the central issue in modern governance and the central theme of this book series.

Michael A. Genovese

The Legacy of Watergate and the Nixon Presidency Nixon’s Curse

Michael A. Genovese Political Science and International Relations Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, CA, USA

ISSN 2945-6150 ISSN 2945-6169 (electronic) The Evolving American Presidency ISBN 978-3-031-43473-0 ISBN 978-3-031-43474-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43474-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: E4C/getty images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

To: Tom and Tania Dan and Kathleen Graham and Allyson Lorene Grace Sophie Jessica Steve

Acknowledgments

So many people helped in my journey toward completing this book. To them, my deepest thanks. Noura Alavi and Levon Najarian served as outstanding graduate assistants; Juliana Angel and Mitchell Evans were excellent research assistants; and over the years, countless friends, associates, and students helped me fine-tune my thinking about Richard Nixon. I couldn’t have done it without you.

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Contents

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1

Introduction

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The Rise and Presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon Nixon on the Public Stage What Manner of Man? Child is Father to the Man Nixon in the White House Organizing Power Nixon’s Staff Nixon’s Cabinet Foreign and Defense Policy Vietnam as Root of All Evil Vietnamization The War Spreads: Cambodia and Beyond U.S.–Soviet Relations The Road to (and from) Détente Opening Doors to China Conclusion

5 7 12 14 18 26 26 29 29 33 35 36 40 41 42 44

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The Watergate Crisis The 1972 Landslide The Roots of Watergate Cambodia: Nixon Turns Up the Heat The War at Home

45 46 50 52 52

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CONTENTS

Plugging Leaks The Wiretaps The Huston Plan The Pentagon Papers The Plumbers Dirty Money Dirty Tricks The Break-In The Cover-Up Begins Uncovering the Cover-Up All Fall Down The Ervin Committee The House Faces Impeachment The Ongoing Battle for the Tapes The Resignation The Pardon 4

Nixon’s Curse: A Nation Divided Against Itself Presidential Corruption Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) Warren G. Harding (1921–1923) Richard M. Nixon (1969–1974) Ronald W. Reagan (1981–1989) William Jefferson Clinton (1993–2001) Donald J. Trump (2017–2021) “A Republic, If You Can Keep It” Watergate, and the Vagaries of Modern Democracy The Legacy of Watergate: A New Path Remembering, Misremembering, and Learning

53 54 55 57 57 63 64 68 69 74 81 83 87 88 91 95 97 97 101 103 105 105 108 110 112 122 123 131

Conclusion

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Index

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List of Tables

Table Table Table Table

2.1 3.1 4.1 4.2

Richard Nixon’s psychological characteristics Vote on impeachment articles The Global Rise of the Imperial Executive Trust in government in the United States by party: 1958–2022

18 89 115 117

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This short book represents the culmination of forty years of work. It is my fourth book on Richard Nixon, and is an attempt to “finally” come to grips with and understand Nixon’s impact on America.1 Nixon mattered. He profoundly altered the political landscape of both our politics and our deeper political culture. And while on his watch Nixon instituted several significant reforms that benefited the country, overall, Richard Nixon had a distinctly negative impact on the nation. Presidents do good, presidents do harm. But some do more good than harm, while others drag the nation down. For the most part, Nixon dragged the nation down. If Nixon had a profound impact on our politics, he also had a significant impact on my life. Richard Nixon is the reason I became a political scientist. His rise in politics paralleled my own life and emergence as a political being. His history overlaps with mine; his life corresponds with my public awakening. He burst onto the scene in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. I was born in 1950. My memory of politics begins with the 1960 presidential race between Nixon and John F. Kennedy. I remember a debate at Saint James grammar school in Springfield, New Jersey, when I tried to persuade my 1 Chapters 2 and 3 are adapted from two of my earlier books on Nixon: The Nixon Presidency: Power and Politics in Turbulent Times (Greenwood Press, 1990); and The Watergate Crisis (ABC-CLIO, 2nd Edition, 2020).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. A. Genovese, The Legacy of Watergate and the Nixon Presidency, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43474-7_1

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classmates to support (the Catholic) Kennedy. And I remember being allowed to stay up late on election night to watch the early returns. I even vaguely remember Nixon’s self-pitying press conference after losing the race for governor of California in 1962. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” Nixon angrily told the assembled reporters. It was the end of Nixon; he was finished. Or so we thought. The world trundled on. Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963; Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April of 1968; and on the night of my high school graduation, Bobby Kennedy was killed. Three bullets wiping out “my” generation of leaders, creating a cavernous void. A void that Richard Nixon “filled.” This void allowed for the unlikely 1968 return of Richard Nixon, who during—and due to—the growing unpopularity of the war in Vietnam, offered himself once again to the American people, this time, with a “secret plan to end the war.”

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2 Presidential Election of 1968. Map. 270towin. https://www.270towin.com/1968_E lection/.

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Nixon became President during my freshman year of college. He quickly became a source of our youthful anger against “the establishment” and the war in Vietnam. In an effort to win that unwinnable war, Nixon extended the war into neutral Cambodia, sparking a groundswell of opposition across the nation’s colleges and universities. And then on May 4, 1970, national guardsman shot and killed four people and wounded nine others at Kent State University. My fellow students gunned down on an American university campus. Ten days later, two more students were killed at Jackson State University. At my own college, Saint Mary’s College in California, we shut down the school, canceled classes, and eventually, canceled the rest of the school year. It was a heady time to be a college student. Antiwar protests, the free-speech movement, the rise of both the women’s and environmental movements, the birth of hippies and the rise of the counterculture, and oh, the music! We invented a new form of music to reflect a new reality. And of course, there was the drugs. And the sexual revolution. “Sex and drugs and rock’n’roll” became a mantra of that generation. And I was there, blaming most of society’s ills on the evil monster in the White House, Richard Milhous Nixon. To us, he was a loathsome figure, the embodiment of everything that was wrong with America. And yes, I was in the middle of all that, one of the college campus antiwar leaders. But I sometimes parted company with my contemporaries. Where their opposition seemed to be all anger and emotion, I took seriously the deeper political implications of what Richard Nixon represented. I grew up with the typical “love of America” message delivered by my parents and teachers and I took their idealistic and aspirational words to heart. I believed in America, believed in democracy, and defended the Constitution and the inherent goodness of the American people. When I marched against the war in Vietnam, I often marched carrying a small American flag, believing that “they” were traitors to America, and I—and many of my contemporaries—were the true defenders of democracy and justice. And this triggered something in me. How did it happen; how did we lose our way; what led us astray? My attention turned to Richard Nixon. I felt compelled to understand America by understanding Nixon. Thus began my quest to unpack the mystery of Richard M. Nixon. If only I could understand him, I could understand how to purge America of this sickness and return to the values my parents and teachers inculcated in

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me. I’m still—fifty years later—trying to do that. So, what happened and what does it mean? I will try to explain Richard Nixon to an audience that—for the most part—knows Nixon merely as a distant historical figure, buried deep in the past. But Richard Nixon is still very much with us. In Chapter 2, I will review Nixon’s rise in politics, his political career, and his character and personality. I will also briefly review his tumultuous presidency. In Chapter 3, I take a deep dive into Watergate. Finally, in Chapter 4, I take the long view, the view from 30,000 feet, to examine Nixon’s impact on America. As the great American philosopher Bette Davis once said, “Hang on boys, we’re in for a bumpy ride.”

CHAPTER 2

The Rise and Presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon

The subtitle of this book, Nixon’s Curse, is provocative. Harsh, to say the least. But is it merited? Did Nixon bequeath to posterity a curse with which we are still living? This book makes the case that Richard Nixon did grave damage to the United States. Looking back over the past fifty years, we can see the effects of Nixon’s handiwork, the damage done. From the decline of public trust in government to the gutter politics that has become politics-as-usual, to the renewal of race as a dividing force, to our politics-as-war attitude, our hyper-partisanship, our cynicism, even our ruthlessness. Richard Nixon made modern American politics. The Nixon presidency is one of the most written-about, analyzed, discussed, and examined, yet least understood, administrations in American history. Apart from Abraham Lincoln, he is perhaps the most written-about president in history. And while we have a great many Nixon personality studies (e.g., David Abrahamsen’s Nixon vs Nixon), policy studies (e.g., William Shawcross’s Sideshow), memoirs (e.g., Nixon’s own RN ), and Watergate books (e.g., Leon Jaworski’s The Right and the Power), a comprehensive overview of the Nixon presidency and its impact

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. A. Genovese, The Legacy of Watergate and the Nixon Presidency, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43474-7_2

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remains to be written. How, in short, do all the pieces fit together? How do the issues, people, and events interrelate? How do we explain Nixon’s rise to power, his accomplishments, his landslide presidential victory in 1972, and ultimately, his downfall? What did Nixon mean to and for America? While much remains to be uncovered, and many mysteries are yet to be resolved, we need to look at the big picture as best we can piece it together to make sense of Richard Nixon and his era. Was he the embodiment of America, or an aberration? At a time when the newsweeklies dominated American life, Nixon filled the cover of TIME Magazine a total of fifty-five times—more than a year’s worth of covers over the course of his political career, more than any other figure in history. He was the hinge upon which the American Century turned, the figure who ushered out the expansive liberal consensus of the New Deal and the Great Society and brought to the mainstream a darker, racialized, nativist, fearmongering strain of the Republican Party and American politics that would a half century later find its natural culmination in Donald Trump. Yet all of that would be overshadowed by a one-word scandal that would ultimately lead to the first congressional impeachment hearings in a century and would force Nixon ignominiously from office. In the fifty years plus since the June night five burglars entered a then new and trendy hotel and office complex on the banks of the Potomac River, “Watergate” has become the scandal that has defined and labeled all other scandals; “gate,” the suffix of choice to denote all scandals.1 It fundamentally upended Americans’ relationship with their government and revealed a cynical abuse of power that fueled an epic loss of trust and faith in the institutions that had long presided over American life.

1 Introduction, page xviii.

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Nixon on the Public Stage

“Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy debate in Chicago while being televised,” September 26, 1960, National Archives Catalog No other person in the post-World War II period has been more central to America’s political history than Richard Nixon. He is the one political figure about whom few people are neutral. He is loved and hated, glorified and vilified, honored and mocked. He is seen by some as a criminal and by others as a leader victimized and misunderstood. Nixon was the quintessential post-World War II American figure. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to call the quarter century from 1950 to 1975 the Age of Nixon. The period of his rise and fall coincides with the American rise to superpower status, the era of postwar U.S. dominance. His fall coincides with the decline of American hegemony. He was president in trying, turbulent, exciting times: the Age of Nixon. But who was Richard Milhous Nixon, and how will history judge the thirty-seventh president of the United States, the only president to resign

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from office? Much is still unknown about Richard Nixon, this most private of public figures, this introvert in a profession that rewards extroverts. Winston Churchill’s description of the Soviet Union applies equally well to Nixon: “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Coming from humble beginnings, the young Nixon’s rise in politics was meteoric: election to the House of Representatives in 1946 at the age of thirty-three; reelection in 1948; election to the U.S. Senate in 1950. From Nixon’s early campaigns, he developed the reputation as a hardhitting, sucker-punching, slashing campaigner. His attack style and “go for the jugular” approach became a Nixon trademark. So harsh was the Nixon campaign style that journalist Walter Lippman described him as “a ruthless partisan [who] does not have within his conscience those scruples which the country has a right to expect,”2 and former Democratic rival Adlai Stevenson later said that “Nixonland was, a land of slander and scare, of sly innuendo, of a poison pen, the anonymous phone call, and hustling, pushing, shoving – the land of smash and grab and anything to win.”3 After a series of Nixon attacks alleging that Harry Truman was soft on communism, Truman, in an interview with Merle Miller, said “All the time I’ve been in politics there’s only two people I hate, and [Nixon’s] one. He not only doesn’t give a damn about the people, but he also doesn’t know how to tell the truth. I don’t think that son of a bitch knows the difference between telling the truth and lying.”4 Because of the hard-hitting nature of the Nixon campaign style, and due to the use of questionable tactics, it was during his pre-presidential years that Nixon was first called Tricky Dick, an appellation which would plague him throughout his career. Nixon burst onto the national scene in the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s. As a young congressman, he was catapulted onto the national scene by the Alger Hiss case. The notoriety from this case put Nixon in the forefront of the Republican party and secured for him the nomination as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice-presidential running mate at the age of thirty-nine. The future, it appeared, belonged to Richard Nixon.

2 Quoted in Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Atheneum, 1975), p. 87. 3 Quoted in New York Times Staff, eds., The End of a Presidency (New York: Bantam, 1974), p. 17. 4 Merle Miller, “Plain Speaking,” Rosetta Books, 2018.

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During the 1952 presidential race, Nixon the attacker found himself on the defensive. On September 18, 1952, the headline in the New York Post read “SECRET NIXON FUND.” The story revealed a “slush fund” of over $18 million set up by sixty-six of Nixon’s wealthy friends. At first, Nixon attacked the source calling the story a communist smear and saying that it was “completely false.” He finally admitted that there was such a fund, but claimed that the money went to pay his political, not personal, expenses. In an effort to save his political life, a desperate Nixon went on television on September 23, 1952, to defend himself. The speech followed the popular “Milton Berle Show” and attracted approximately fifty-eight million viewers, the largest TV audience up to that time. In what became known as the Checkers Speech, Nixon not only defended his use of the secret fund, but gave an accounting of his personal finances, questioned the ethics of his opponents, spoke at length about his humble beginnings, his modest lifestyle, and wife Pat’s lack of a mink coat (“but she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat”), and also told the story of Checkers: One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don’t, they will probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the nomination. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign, we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying that they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that had been sent all the way from Texas – black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, this six-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids like all kids loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”5

While critics considered the Checkers speech “a crude exploitation of sentiment,” for Nixon it was a political success. The Republican national headquarters was deluged with telegrams and mail supporting Nixon. More importantly, Eisenhower was impressed. After a few nervous days, Eisenhower and Nixon met in Wheeling, West Virginia, where Ike gave Nixon his blessing, “You’re my boy,” Eisenhower said to Nixon, at which

5 Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Warner, 1979), pp. 85–151.

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the young vice-presidential candidate wept openly. In the general election of 1952, Eisenhower and Nixon won 55 percent of the popular vote. In addition, the Republicans gained control of the House and Senate. And Richard Milhous Nixon, at the ripe young age of thirty-nine, had been elected vice president of the United States. After two uneventful terms as vice president, Nixon was the obvious choice for the Republican presidential nomination in 1960. His opponent in the race was the young, charismatic Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. The 1960 race was notable for, among many things, the NixonKennedy debate. It was the early days of television, and politicians were still struggling to figure out how best to use this new technology. In the debates, Kennedy appeared poised, in command, confident. Nixon, by contrast, seemed pale, nervous, a bit unsteady. Nixon went on to lose the election in a razor-sharp contest, and Nixon believed that television— and his appearance, especially in contrast to the handsome Kennedy—had cost him the election. There might have been something to Nixon’s lament. Many commentators believe that 1960s debates (especially the first debate) were a victory of style over substance, and that those who saw the debate on TV felt that Kennedy was the winner, while those who heard the debate over radio gave the victory to Nixon. After the defeat, Nixon returned to California where in 1962 he ran for Governor of California. He lost to incumbent Democratic governor Pat Brown. After the defeat, a bitter Richard Nixon went before the press to announce that “you [the press] won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. Because gentleman, this is my last press conference.” It was Nixon at his smallest self. The mask came down and a resentful, bitter, and insecure man was revealed. And it truly seemed the end for Richard Nixon in politics. The next several years were, for Nixon, wilderness years. He resolved not to give up, not to let “them” (liberal press, Eastern elites) derail him from his ultimate goal. Thus began the quiet phase of Nixon’s rebirth. Behind the scenes, Nixon made the rounds of Republican fundraisers, dinners, candidate appearances. He began to toil in the fields of Republican state and local politics, building up support and IOUs. Quietly, doggedly, Nixon paid dues, reclaimed the attention of his party, became a player once again. Nixon’s 1968 rivals for the Republican nomination proved underwhelming and Nixon, more by default than groundswell support, seemed

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to back into the nomination. At a time when the nation was divided over the war in Vietnam, a “new” Nixon promised to “bring us together.” As the election approached, events seemed to overshadow the candidates. The war in Vietnam was dragging on, and the war at home accelerated with massive antiwar protests and social upheaval. The universities were the scene of protests. Young people rejected convention, and the hippie movement flourished. Urban riots and racial unrest persisted. Political assassinations of President John Kennedy in 1963 and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968 sent shock waves through the nation and the world. This “spectacle of violence” transformed the idealism of the Camelot era into a disenchantment and cynicism which threatened the bonds that held the nation together. Nixon was able to remake himself and appear to be many things to many people in this unsettled and unsettling period. He was, in Gary Wills’ words, “the right man for a period of resentment,” who became “a virtuoso manipulator of discontents.” In this time of despair, disenchantment, conflict, and frustration, Richard Nixon—a “new” Richard Nixon—returned to the public arena. Gone was the aggressive, attacking Nixon. The new Nixon appeared calmer, more self-assured, thoughtful, compassionate, a healer of the nation’s wounds, a man who had learned from past mistakes. But was the new Nixon the real Nixon?6 In the general election, Nixon benefited from the failure of the incumbent administration—of which his opponent Hubert H. Humphrey was vice president—to deal with the myriad of problems that plagued American society. Nixon also benefited from a weakened Democratic party. The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the primaries, the challenge to the Democratic establishment by Eugene McCarthy, the seemingly endless war in Vietnam, and the disastrous debacle during the Democratic Convention in Chicago, where protests and riots in the streets only added to the woes and conflicts going on within the convention hall, all conspired to put the Democrats on the defensive. By election eve the election was too close to call. When victory finally came, it was by a narrow margin. Nixon won by a 43.6–42.7 percent margin over Humphrey, with George Wallace getting 13.5 percent of the vote. Nixon’s popular vote was 31,783,783 to Humphrey’s 31,266,006, 6 Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1968 (New York: Atheneum, 1969), p. 148.

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a mere plurality of only 517,777 votes. Nixon had lost the presidency by 113,000 votes in 1960, now, eight years later, he won by only a slightly greater margin. Nixon would be a minority president who was selected by the smallest vote percentage (43.6 percent) since 1912, when Woodrow Wilson won with only 41.9 percent of the vote. And, the House and Senate would be controlled by the Democrats, the first time in over one hundred years that a new president would face a Congress where both houses were controlled by the opposition party.

What Manner of Man? Each time the nation chooses a president, there is uncertainty regarding just who this new person is. Politicians—more than the rest of us— wear masks. They reveal very little about themselves, relying instead on a created persona that may or may not match the inner person. And while we do get clues about the inner lives of presidential aspirants, we rarely get to see very deeply beneath the tip of the iceberg. Plus, what type of person is most likely to be attracted to the world of politics? As politics is a place of power, those attracted to power gravitate toward politics. T.S. Eliot, in The Cocktail Party noted that, “Half the harm that is done in this world is done by people who want to feel important.” And power makes people feel important. Enter Richard Nixon (and many, perhaps most politicians). The French have a proverb: “Happy people do not make history.” Those who make history tend to have rough edges, strong needs, they push and pull, make demands, have huge needs. Happy, secure people go into politics to serve, most others, to “feel important.” Behind the public persona, the politician’s mask, who is Richard Nixon? What moved and motivated him, what forces animated his behavior? Perhaps this incident, related by Ellen K. Coughlin, best captures Nixon the man and the politician: When his father died in 1956, Richard Nixon was campaigning for the vice presidency of the United States. Soon after attending the funeral, the candidate was off again on a swing through upstate New York. The first stop was Buffalo. He began a speech there with the words, “My father...” and then his voice faltered, and he clung to the podium as if deeply moved.

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He began again. “I remember my father telling me a long time ago: ‘Dick... Dick, Buffalo is a beautiful town.’” “It may have been his favorite town.” Later, he moved on to Rochester, where he told the same story, substituting only the name of the city: “Dick, Rochester is a beautiful town.” And then to Ithaca, where the performance was repeated once again.7

Richard Milhous Nixon was a complex, multidimensional figure, a man of many strengths, weaknesses, and contradictions. There were, as cartoonist Herblock oversimplified, two Nixons—the good Nixon and the bad Nixon—and they existed side by side within the man. Simple, easy descriptions do not apply to Richard Nixon. Longtime friend and speechwriter Raymond Price saw his former boss as a paradox. Journalist Theodore White also noticed the paradoxical quality of Nixon when he wrote of “the essential duality of his nature, the evil and the good, the flights on panic and the resolution of spirit, the good mind and the mean trickery.” And former White House aide William Safire described Nixon as a complex man with multiple layers, best seen as a layer cake, with the icing (Nixon’s public face) “conservative, stern, dignified, proper. But beneath the icing one finds a variety of separate layers which reveal a complex, sometimes contradictory, paradoxical human being.” According to Price, those close to Nixon often referred to his “light side” and his “dark sides,” and over the years, the light side and the dark side “have been at constant war with one another.” Because of this, Price opined, “he has always needed people around him who would help the lighter side prevail.” “Interestingly,” Price added, “the extent to which the dark side grew not out of his nature, but out of his experiences in public life.” The light side-dark side assessment of Nixon is frequently referred to especially by Nixon insiders. This light side-dark side quality of Nixon made him a sort of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde personality. Nixon’s chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, once described him as “the weirdest man ever to live in the White House,” and Domestic Policy chief John Ehrlichman described his former boss as “the mad monk.” Nixon has been a fascinating subject for analysis precisely because he is so 7 See Ellen K. Coughlin, “Putting Richard Nixon on the Couch,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 13, 1979, p. 3.

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puzzling. As columnist Hugh Sidey has said, “He is an absolutely sinister human being, but fascinating. I’d rather spend an evening with Richard Nixon than with almost anybody else because he is so bizarre. He has splashes of brilliance. He is obscene at times; his recall is almost total; his acquaintanceship with the world’s figures is amazing. He is a fascinating human being.”8 In trying to answer the question “Who is Richard Nixon?” one runs into the problem inherent in all efforts at psychobiography.9 In probing the inner workings of presidents, we would be better served by “getting them on the couch” so as to probe, in a serious and analytical way, the psychological makeup of our subjects. But we have no such opportunity. Ours is the task of psychobiography at a distance; of trying to take the measure of our subject without evidence sufficient for validation. If handled carefully, these problems can be managed, and we should not abandon our efforts because the mountain seems—and is—so hard to climb. Personality is important, and while it is difficult to study presidential personality, it is also necessary to do so. In presidential politics, both the individual and the institution mold and shape behavior. Presidents face pressures to conform to certain role expectations, but as an institution, the presidency is less bound by role and is more responsive to variations of individual presidents than other offices. As former Lyndon Johnson aide George Reedy once observed, “The office neither elevates nor degrades a man. What it does is to provide the stage upon which all of his personality traits are magnified and accentuated.”10

Child is Father to the Man One can see in Richard Nixon’s childhood, several recurring patterns or themes, which may have led to the development of psychological traits that later affected his adult behavior. The extent to which these traits and characteristics developed early in life, and impacted upon Nixon’s 8 See Michael A. Genovese, “The Nixon Presidency: Power and Politics in Turbulent

Times,” Greenwood Press, 1990. 9 In a 1988 discussion with Archibald Cox, I confessed that I was trying not to write a Nixon psychobiography, but that so much of what Nixon did seem to emanate from who he was, to which Cox replied, “Of course, with Nixon character is everything.” (Loyola Marymount University, April 22, 1988). 10 George Reedy, “The Twilight of the Presidency,” Signet, 1971.

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behavior as president, is revealed in Nixon’s relationship to his father and mother, the role illness and death played in his childhood, and the view of the world Nixon developed out of his childhood experiences. In many ways, Garry Wills’ comment that “Nixon’s background haunts him” rings true. From his relationship with his parents, young Richard’s early development was, in David Abrahamsen’s words, a tug-of-war between “two contrasting emotional antagonists, one parent unusually quiet and unyielding, the other often unruly and violent.” As a boy, Nixon was caught in the middle of two very different parents. This forced him to walk a “tightrope” emotionally. Several psychobiographers characterize the home and family environment in which he grew as unhealthy and not conducive to the development of high self-esteem. The relationship of Frank and Hannah Nixon was described by Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose as “a union of opposites.” Richard Nixon’s father, Frank, is variously described as “gloomy and argumentative” and “tyrannical” (Wills); “a chronically angry man, ulcerridden from the early years of his marriage, who invited hatred in his own family,” who “punished his sons savagely,” as “volatile, unpredictable and explosive,” (Brodie); and as “a tyrant who intimidated his children. He spanked them on the slightest pretext.” He was “unpredictable.” “His children feared him” (Abrahamsen). In his autobiography, RN, Nixon writes of his father as a man with a “quick tongue and a ready pair of fists” who was a “natural fighter.” When Frank was in one of his “black moods,” young Richard knew to avoid him. Frank, his son Richard wrote, “had a brusque and bristly exterior.” Nixon’s mother Hannah was almost the opposite of Frank. Hannah is remembered as “saintly” (Wills); “shy and quiet” (Barber); “the epitome of self-control” (DiClerico); and Nixon himself, on the eve of leaving the presidency, spoke of his mother as “a saint.” A devout Quaker and pacifist, Hannah Nixon was the source of almost all of young Richard’s security and affection. But this security was interrupted at key moments in young Richard’s youth when Hannah was forced to leave Richard with his father while Hannah took their tubercular sons to Arizona. Also, at the age of twelve, Richard was sent to live with an aunt for six months for reasons that are still unclear. These separations had a deep impact on young Richard Nixon. These parents of vastly different style, temperament, and outlook pulled Nixon in different directions. This was complicated by the

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extended periods of separation from his mother Nixon was forced to endure. David Abrahamsen sees the result of this tug-of-war in Richard producing confusion, ambivalence, and identification problems. As Abrahamsen writes, “Nixon had a double personality, a person who simultaneously seems to display entirely different thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and character.” These behavior traits were imprinted on Nixon in childhood and extended into his adult life. It created, in Abrahamsen’s terms, “an emotional conflict therein.” There was “an abyss between his higher, noble intentions and his aggressive, lower inclinations.” Death also seemed to have an impact upon Richard Nixon. Two of his brothers died of tubercular meningitis: the first, seven-year-old Arthur, with whom Richard was very close, died when Richard was twelve; the second, twenty-three-year-old Harold, died when Richard was twenty. Some psychohistorians note Nixon’s reaction to the death of his two brothers as “survival guilt.” This guilt may have led to an unconscious self-destructiveness that may have resulted in Nixon behaving during the Watergate affair in a way that invited his own demise. He becomes, in David Abrahamsen’s terms, “his own executioner. He punishes himself by arranging his own failures.” His own doctor, at the height of the Watergate crisis, said that the president had a “death wish,” and his head Secret Service guard said, “You can’t protect a President who wants to kill himself.” Essentially, Richard Nixon had a warm, loving mother who abandoned him from time to time, and a tough, harsh father whom he could never please. This seems to have taught Nixon that the soft and the nurturing are unreliable, that toughness and aggression are manly, and the world is a harsh and cold place. Unable to attain a self-image that gave him satisfaction in what he was, he seemed constantly striving, compensating, and working hard to attain a sense of achievement and place based on what he did. He would face a hard world always ready to do battle. He attempted to attain a sense of self in outside achievements: winning. Nixon is often portrayed as a man of inadequacy. His lack of trust in people stemmed from a “view of human nature which was jaundiced” and reflected in Nixon’s comment that “most people are good not because of love but because of fear. You won’t hear that in Sunday School, but it’s true.” Throughout his rise in politics, Nixon ran negative, confrontational, and aggressive campaigns. His attack style, developed in the

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early campaigns for the House and Senate seats, and later in his vicepresidential years, proved highly successful. Nixon seemed a natural at the politics of confrontation. Throughout the many psychobiographies of Richard Nixon, several themes seem to dominate (see Table 2.1).11 A childhood marred by sickness and deaths in the family, a self-image of insecurity and low selfesteem developing from his relationship to a stern, demanding father and a saintly mother, led to a personality development that most psychobiographers see as unhealthy. From James David Barber’s active-negative categorization to Bruce Mazlish’s characterization of a boy unloved, to Eli Chesen’s compulsive-obsessive personality diagnosis, to David Abrahamsen’s conclusion that Nixon has a “psychopathic personality and character disorder,” to Fawn Brodie’s view of Nixon as “self-loathing,” and “paranoid,” we see a psychiatric profile both disturbing and, perhaps, frightening. But if Nixon possessed these pathological characteristics, how did he rise to such heights, how did he achieve so many personal and political successes? In general, Nixon’s psychobiographies argue that many of Nixon’s psychological characteristics aided him in his political career! He was, by all accounts, a brilliant, hard-working man, and those “negative” psychological characteristics drove him to achieve, to engage in hard work and obsessive striving, to succeed, to win at all costs. Thus, he sought in politics to compensate for his feelings of weakness by winning, and by ambitious striving to succeed, by beating an opponent. In this way, politics served as a temporary way of satisfying his feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem. Politics gave Nixon a way to attain, through outward gratification, some of the things he lacked internally. Nixon’s White House tapes can serve as a lens into the mind of the President. They reveal the personal, hidden side of Nixon, the side he withheld from the public. One thing the tapes reveal is Nixon’s racism and hatreds. He was especially contemptuous of blacks, Jews, and wealthy eastern elites. His was often a politics of resentment.

11 See James D. Barber, The Presential Character (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-

Hall, 1985); David Abrahamsen, Nixon vs. Nixon: An Emotional Tragedy (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977); Fawn Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (New York: Norton, 1984); Eli Chesen, President Nixon’s Psychiatric Profile (New York: Peter H. Wyden, 1973); and Bruce Mazlish, In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Inquiry (Baltimore: Penguin, 1972).

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Table 2.1 Richard Nixon’s psychological characteristics Author

Characteristics

Source

Abrahamsen

Psychopathic Personality Type Orally and anally fixated, obsessive–compulsive longings, passive-aggressive, secretive, egocentric, manipulative, paranoid personality, suffers from character disorders Active-Negative Type Vague self-image, insecure, low self-esteem, lack of trust, need to manage aggressiveness, driven to compensatory behavior, feelings of inadequacy Man of Paradox Self-loathing, paranoid? Sense of being unloved, impulse toward self-destruction, severely defective conscience, self-hatred Compulsive-Obsessive Type Feeling of uncertainty, need to prove manliness, need to control Fear of Being Unloved, Self-Absorption Capacity for denial, low self-esteem, compensatory behavior, feelings of inferiority; compulsiveness, need for control, projection, repressed hostility, lack of trust, death wish

Childhood

Barber

Brodie

Chesen

Mazlish

Childhood

Childhood

Childhood

Childhood

In the summer of 1971, Nixon lashed out against “the Jews.” He told Chief-of-Staff Bob Haldeman that “the Jews are all over the government,” and that “most Jews are disloyal.” He continued, “Bob, generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you.”12

Nixon in the White House Richard Nixon began his presidency in a hole. Not all presidencies are created equal. Some come to office with high public demand for governmental action. Others come to office in times of crisis, recession, or division. Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the presidency during the Great Depression, when the public demanded action, Congress was ready to act, with his political opposition on the defensive. Additionally, the 1932 election was a landslide both for FDR and his party. In 1933, the 73rd

12 George Lardner Jr. and Michael Dobbs, “New Tapes Reveal Depth of Nixon’s AntiSemitism,” The Washington Post, October 6, 1999, p. A31.

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Congress (1933–1935) gave Roosevelt a 313–117 partisan advantage in the House, and a 59–36 advantage in the Senate. With these numbers, one would expect Roosevelt to be a success in achieving landmark legislature and indeed he was. By contrast, Nixon came to office in tumultuous times with the nation deeply divided over the war in Vietnam, civil rights, the counterculture movement, and Nixon faced a Congress with Democratic majorities in both the House (243–192) and Senate (57–43). Thus, expectations were low. Entering office with these low expectations, President Nixon had to devise a strategy for governing, one that downplayed the pursuit of landmark legislation, but nonetheless gave Nixon opportunities to govern. To this end, Nixon devised a strategy for centralizing power into the White House. This was rather easily done as Nixon and his National Security advisor Henry Kissinger went so far as to “lock out” the Secretary of State from key policy discussions and decisions. The vortex of foreign policy power was thus a two-man show. Domestic policy posed a different set of concerns. Nixon realized there was little hope of working with Congress on legislation, so he targeted his legislature proposals carefully. Early on, he flirted with Disraeli-like reforms, most notably a family assistance plan (a type of guaranteedincome) but his hopes for bipartisan support ended when Democrats on the left and Republicans on the right abandoned his proposed legislation. In point of fact, Nixon had only marginal interest in domestic policy. He believed that the country could get by domestically without much presidential leadership. In 1967, Nixon confessed to Theodore White, that “I’ve always thought this country could run itself domestically without a President, all you need is a competent cabinet to run the country at home. You need a president for foreign policy.” After early failures with Congress, Nixon readjusted and settled on an administrative approach 13 to governing at home. If you can’t govern with Congress, govern without them; go around them; govern via executive orders, proclamations, regulations, and rulemaking. This form of direct presidential action can be effective but has its limits. Landmark legislation remains the Gold Standard, but with that avenue all but shut off to Nixon, he decided that going around Congress was his best approach.

13 Richard Nathan, The Plot That Failed: Nixon and the Administrative Presidency, John Wily & Sons, 1975.

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While Nixon was a Republican with conservative instincts, he was no idealogue. Nixon could, where politically necessary, shape-shift from far right to far left policies. Nowhere was this policy flexibility more evident than in the area of economic policy. There was one area of domestic policy in which Nixon took a keen interest: civil rights. Nixon saw an opportunity to recalibrate the party system and devised what was called the “Southern Strategy” to achieve this goal. Prior to 1964, neither party was a strong advocate for civil rights. While the civil rights movement sparked interest and protests, it was not until Lyndon Johnson that a major party embraced civil rights as a central element of the Democratic Party platform. Nixon entered the presidency at a time of social and political unrest. One element of that unrest was reflected in the civil rights movement that gained momentum in the late 1950s and emerged as a powerful force in American politics in the 1960s. The movement reflected the demands of black Americans for equal rights and opportunities and challenged the white power structure in America.14 In part, Nixon owed his election to the forces opposing the civil rights advances. In the 1968 general election, Nixon won the presidency by narrow margin, in part with the help of third-party candidate Governor George Wallace of Alabama, who attracted normally Democratic votes away from Hubert Humphrey and won five Southern states. With Nixon carrying five other southern states, he was able to squeak by Humphrey with 43.6 percent of the popular vote to Humphrey’s 43.2 percent. Nixon received less than 10 percent of the black vote in the 1968 election. The white South had indeed helped Richard Nixon carry the prize of the presidency. How would Nixon repay this debt? While Nixon claimed not to owe political debts to any side, in fact, Nixon owed a great deal to the whites of the Deep South.15 His debt was paid in what became known as the Southern strategy. A study of Nixon and civil rights by scholar Hugh Davis Graham concludes that “From the documents in the Nixon archives one reconstructs a different picture of evolving civil rights policy. It is characterized chiefly by neglect and inattention, by ill-prepared reactions (with some few striking exceptions) to poorly anticipated legislative confrontations,

14 Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 435. 15 Ibid.

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by divided leadership with no one clearly in command. Perhaps most important, although not surprising, one detects no generally coherent theory of civil rights to govern the new Republican Administration’s policy choices.”16 While Nixon seemed a moderate on civil rights, in terms of the private Nixon, we get just a few glimpses of how he felt about blacks and racial equality. One of the few insiders to reveal how Nixon may have felt is John Ehrlichman, who wrote that “twice in explaining all this [racial equality] to me, Nixon said he believed America’s blacks could only marginally benefit from Federal programs because blacks were genetically inferior to whites”17 (emphasis in original). In handwritten notes taken by Chief-of-Staff H. R. Haldeman in a March 5, 1970, meeting with the president, Haldeman notes that “P-has concluded blacks really want tokenism instead of results – based on meeting today with black admin officials.” While Nixon could point to several positive steps taken to promote civil rights (moving forward—slowly—on affirmative action early in his presidency, developing plans to increase minority participation within the construction trade, the Philadelphia Plan, attempts to eliminate discrimination against women and minorities in college and university hiring, voluntary councils to promote Southern desegregation), overall, the Nixon approach to civil rights was “withdraw and retreat.” By 1970, when the Justice Department had won control of the civil rights issue, there emerged a marriage of John Mitchell’s Southern strategy to Nixon adviser Daniel P. Moynihan’s advocacy of benign neglect on civil rights. The full weight of this marriage crushed efforts to stay the course on civil rights. The Southern strategy was an effort to pander to white Southern voters in an effort to woo them away from the Democratic party. This meant retreating on black civil rights and giving special favors to Southern segregationists. As Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver saw it, the Southern strategy represented “a deal” between Nixon and the Southern segregationists. As they put it:

16 Hugh Davis Graham, “The Incoherence of Civil Rights Policy in the Nixon Administration” (Paper presented at Hofstra University conference on the Nixon presidency, November 1987), pp. 5–6. 17 Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 223.

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The essential Nixon bargain was simply this: I’m president of the United States, I’ll find a way to ease up on the federal pressures forcing school desegregation... this was a long-range strategy. Nixon clearly hoped to woo Southern support so ardently that there might once again develop a solid political South – but this time committed as firmly to the Republican party as it once had been to the Democratic party. It was a cynical strategy, this catering in subtle ways to the segregationist leanings of white Southern voters – yet pretending with high rhetoric that the real aim was simply to treat the South fairly, to let it become part of the nation again.18

“Benign neglect” represented a belief, presented to the president by Daniel Moynihan in a memo written in early 1970, that “the time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of ‘benign neglect.’ The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over by hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.”19 While Nixon and Moynihan insisted that this was merely an effort to deflate the hot rhetoric of the race issue, critics saw it as another piece of a policy of civil rights retreat. Benign neglect and the Southern strategy fit together as parts of the civil rights policy that did indeed mark a backing away from the federal government’s affirmative role of promoting civil rights. Nixon knew that, as notes taken by Bob Haldeman in meetings with the president reveal, “there’s no political gain in integrating!” On top of that, the president was doubtful that integration was a good idea at that time. Notes taken by Haldeman in an August 4, 1970, meeting with the president reveal, Nixon said, “Law does not require integration not sure integration will work serious reservations re interracial playgrounds not right for this year – maybe in 10 years.” The Southern strategy was in part developed by Kevin Phillips, who worked for John Mitchell in the Justice Department and later published The Emerging Republican Majority (1969). This book laid out a blueprint for a realignment of the American voting public toward the

18 Reg Murphy and Hal Gulliver, The Southern Strategy (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), pp. 2–3. 19 Memo quoted in Nixon, RN , p. 437. See also, Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (Mariner Books, 2002), pp. 471–94.

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Republican party. Nixon was well aware of Phillips’s thesis and attempted to develop policies designed to implement Phillips’s vision of a new American majority consisting of a combination of the Nixon and Wallace vote of 1968 along with the social policy conservatives and white ethnics. While administration officials denied that there was a Southern strategy, an examination of the Nixon presidential papers reveals that indeed this is precisely what motivated the president. In notes taken by John Ehrlichman at a November 28, 1972 meeting with the president, Ehrlichman writes “[President] – continue The Southern Strategy.” And Southerners were aware of the strategy, as a Republican state chairman from Georgia, Wiley A. Wasden, Jr., wrote to Nixon’s liaison to the South, Harry Dent, in 1969 that “maybe the southern strategy is beginning to work.” While the Nixon policy on civil rights emerged piecemeal, nowhere was it more evident than in the attempt to limit the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act promoted voter registration among blacks in the South and began to give the black community some hope for gaining political power. On June 26, 1969, Attorney General John Mitchell testified in Congress against renewal of the Voting Rights Act and suggested a muchweakened bill in its place. Journalists Evans and Novak said that this was “by far the most ominous break with civil rights that the administration had yet attempted.”20 In addition, six weeks after taking office, Nixon pulled general voting registrants out of Mississippi, and the administration began to deliberately underenforce the Voting Rights Act.21 An area in which Nixon took a more constructive role was “black capitalism,” or as it later became known, “minority business enterprise.” Nixon felt that this was an area in which he could satisfy some of the demands of the black community, while not alienating whites, especially in the South. In the 1968 campaign, candidate Nixon endorsed efforts to promote black capitalism, and the reaction was generally favorable. On March 5, 1969, President Nixon announced the signing of Executive Order 11,456, which created a new agency, the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE), within the Department of Commerce. With the 20 Evans and Novak, Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power (Random House, 1971), p. 150. 21 McClosky, Truth and Untruth: Political Deceit in America (Simon & Schuster, 1972), pp. 152–72.

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signing of this order, Nixon announced, “I have often made the point that to foster the economic status and the pride of members of our minority groups, we must seek to involve them more fully in our private enterprise system.”22 Yet once again, the early efforts of the administration gave away to the demands of the Southern strategy, and by 1971 the president had all but forgotten minority business enterprise as an issue. By late 1971 Nixon had virtually no constructive plan for promoting civil rights or minority economic development.23 Hugh Graham concluded, “The direction of civil rights policy seemed to be determined by its political play.”24 And conservative A. James Reichley noted, “It would be hard not to conclude that [Nixon’s] judgment [on civil rights and busing] was heavily influenced by his immediate political interests.”25 To put this into context, in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson made civil rights a cornerstone of his Great Society program. It was a huge political gamble. Up until that time, the Democrats profited greatly from maintaining partisan support in the South. Since FDR, the South, or “the Solid South,” almost exclusively elected Democrats to office. And while this FDR coalition of Southern segregationists and northern liberals certainly made for strange bedfellows, it was electoral magic. Johnson put all that in jeopardy and did so with the clear understanding that it would do grave political damage to the Democrats.26 And yet, proceed he did. On the night the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, LBJ aide Bill Moyers, finding Johnson depressed, asked him why, after this great success, he was so glum, to which the President replied, “I think we’ve just delivered the South to the Republican Party for the rest of my life, and yours.”27

22 Arthur I. Blaustein and Geoffrey Faux, The Star-Spangled Hustle: The Story of a Nixon Promise (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1972), p. 130. 23 Blaustein and Faux, The Star-Spangled Hustle, pp. 212–13. 24 Graham, “The Incoherence of Civil Rights Policy,” p. 18. 25 Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change, p. 204. 26 Michael O’Donnell, “How LBJ Saved the Civil Rights Act,” The Atlantic. 27 Ted Gittinger and Allen Fisher, “LBH Champions the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Part

2,” National Archives, 36 (2) (Summer 2004); See also: Michael Beschloss’s books on Johnson’s telephone tapes, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964,

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Nixon came to the same conclusion, but how to make it happen? How best to peel the South from the solid Democratic coalition into the Republican Party? Nixon’s answer was the Southern Strategy, whereby he would play into the segregationist sentiments of white Southerners by appointing extreme conservatives to the Supreme Court,28 signaling his opposition to forced blessing, and retreating from full enforcement of Civil Rights laws. This political transformation—a realigning of Southern voters—gave Republicans a consistent advantage once enjoyed by the Democrats and shifted the center of power toward segregationist policies. On the economy, Nixon revealed his lack of commitment to conservative principles, and his determination to travel down whatever road seemed to advantage his own political fortunes, when he instituted wage and price controls in 1971. To get inflation under control and freeze wages, Nixon abandoned a core tenant of capitalism and gave the federal government enormous powers to regulate the economy. A domestic area where Nixon advanced a more liberal agenda is in environmentalism: Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring spawned a nascent environmental movement in the United States, and by the 1970s the movement was showing signs of political strength. On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was held, and public sentiment on issues of environmental protection rose significantly. Nixon, while not sympathetic to the cause, and largely interested in promoting a pro-business agenda, nonetheless saw the writing on the wall. A democratic-controlled Congress passed several new measures to advance the environmental agenda, believing—perhaps even hoping—that Nixon would veto the bills thereby creating a backlash against the Republicans. But Nixon dashed these political hopes and enacted into laws several key pieces of legislation, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. In reading the political tea leaves, Nixon gave the Democrats their victory, a victory he cared little about and thus was able to avoid blame and focus on what to Nixon were the real political issues.

and Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997, 2001). 28 This strategy failed to get several of Nixon’s nominees confirmed, but it signaled to the South where Nixon’s and the Republican Party’s sentiments were.

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Organizing Power The presidency is not simply one man; it is also an institution. With the growth of the positive role of the federal government since the 1930s, and with the rise of presidential power, an institution has grown around the president to serve his managerial, policy, and personal needs. This institution consists of the president’s close personal staff, the peripheral staff, the cabinet, and the “permanent government,” the bureaucracy. The growth of the administrative presidency has led some scholars to question what actually shapes a president’s administration: the president or the presidency, the individual or the institution.29 How a president organizes his administration and who he chooses to serve determines, to an extent, what will be done.30 In that sense, organizational and personnel decisions matter; they are not neutral. Presidents have tremendous latitude in determining how and for what purposes their administrations will be organized. In general, the president’s choice of a managerial style will be based on a combination of the following: (1) Personal Experience; (2) Personality; and (3) Policy Area Characteristics.

Nixon’s Staff Nixon’s presidential team grew primarily out of his campaign organization.31 It was a group with little experience in electoral politics (with the exception of Robert Finch, secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), but it was a team of Nixon loyalists. No “team of rivals” here. The original design, according to Bob Haldeman, was to have a “five equal assistants’ concept,” with Haldeman as the administrative head, John Ehrlichman to organize the domestic agenda, Henry Kissinger in charge of foreign policy, Bryce Harlow to head congressional relations, and Pat Moynihan in charge of urban affairs.

29 Bruce Buchanan, The Presidential Experience: What the Office Does to the Man (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978). 30 James P. Pfiffner, The Strategic Presidency: Hitting the Ground Running (Chicago: Dorsey, 1988). 31 Rowland Evans, Jr. and Robert D. Novak, Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power (New York: Random House, 1971), Chapters 1, 2, and 3.

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Haldeman quickly moved into the role he served during the campaign: chief of staff, protector of the president’s time, and promoter of Nixon’s interests. Because of Nixon’s inclination, desires, and personality needs, a very formal, structured, and hierarchical system developed around the president. Nixon once said, “I must build a wall around me,” and Haldeman would serve as the chief gatekeeper, protecting and isolating the president with his “zero-defect system,” Haldeman’s term for his tight management approach. Haldeman’s skills and temperament were the ideal match for Nixon. He would and could do the president’s dirty work, organize his time, protect him. But while Haldeman seemed just what the president needed, James Shepley saw another dimension to the relationship: “When Nixon’s need met Haldeman’s abilities, you had an almost perfect formula for disaster.” Haldeman did what Nixon himself could not. Whereas Nixon disliked personal confrontations (he was unable to fire anyone; in fact, Nixon once called FBI director J. Edgar Hoover into his office in order to fire Hoover, but by the end of the meeting the president ended up giving Hoover an increase in the number of agents the FBI could hire), Haldeman seemed to enjoy being confrontational. Haldeman was Nixon’s tough side in action. Haldeman used to say that “every president needs a son of a bitch, and I’m Nixon’s. I’m his buffer and I’m his bastard. I get done what he wants done and I take heat instead of him.” While most presidential observers warn of the danger of isolation, this was actually what Nixon sought.32 John Ehrlichman once said, “We’ve [the White House staff] got the reputation… of building a wall around the President. The fact is that he was down under his desk saying, ‘I don’t want to see those fellows,’ and we were trying to pull him out.”33 Nixon demanded that Haldeman protect him from the outside world and control the flow of people and information. Haldeman once said of Nixon, “He doesn’t want to organize, he wants to be organized.” This gave Haldeman unprecedented power in the Nixon White House. With Haldeman installed as chief of staff, all others in the presidential orbit soon played a secondary role. John Mitchell, Nixon’s 1968 32 See: Dan Rather and Gary Paul Gates, The Palace Guard (New York: Harper and Row, 1974). See also, Michael Medved, The Shadow Presidents (New York: Times Books, 1979). 33 Kenneth W. Thompson, The Nixon Presidency, UPA, 1987, p. 132.

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campaign manager and attorney general, was at first an exception. Nixon liked Mitchell’s toughness and decisiveness. He was more than a member of the president’s cabinet; he was a trusted adviser. In the first two years of the administration, Mitchell had a significant influence over policy, guiding the president on issues from desegregation to Supreme Court nominations, to the 1970 decision to invade Cambodia. John D. Ehrlichman, a Seattle zoning lawyer and a college friend of Haldeman’s at UCLA, was another longtime Nixon campaign worker. With Haldeman’s support, Ehrlichman moved smoothly and quickly from the relatively obscure post of counsel to the president, to the center of power as coordinator of domestic policy. In a very real sense, the seeds of the Nixon administration’s selfdestruction were sewn early, as the organization of power built into the Nixon presidency was a mechanism that often fostered the negative aspects of the Nixon personality, the paranoid style. These negative aspects of the president—Nixon the loner, isolated, seeing adversaries as enemies, seeing political competition as war, distrusting, demanding loyalty—were nourished in the atmosphere of the White House organization he created. The structure built around the president fed into his dark side. No one better exemplified the Nixon dark side than Charles (“Chuck”) Colson. Jeb Magruder called him “an evil genius.” Colson shared Nixon’s desire to go after the “enemies.” Magruder placed a great deal of blame on Colson for the White House mood that led to Watergate; he wrote, “I would have to say that – granting always Nixon’s central responsibility for what happened in his administration – Colson was one of the men among his advisers most responsible for creating the climate that made Watergate possible, perhaps inevitable.” Haldeman recognized the sinister impact Colson had on the president, writing that “Colson encouraged the dark impulses in Nixon’s mind, and acted [emphasis on original] on these impulses instead of ignoring them and letting them die.” How well was President Nixon served by his staff? It is easy to say that his staff system served him poorly. It fed his darkest side and starved his best side. But it was a system that Nixon wanted, insisted upon; it fit his perceived political and personality needs.

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Nixon’s Cabinet Cabinet government, the idea that the heads of the major administrative organs meet with the chief executive as a policy council and collectively govern, has never existed in the American political system. While most presidents pay lip service to the benefits of the cabinet, few make full use of them. In recent decades, cabinets have been of little importance in the areas of advice and policy making, as presidents prefer to use their staffs in making important political decisions. Presidents often come to doubt the loyalty of their cabinets, as they feel the cabinet develops divided loyalties. While the staff is seen as loyal only to the president, the cabinet secretary is seen as dividing loyalty between the president who appointed him or her, the department or agency the official administers, the congressional committee most responsible for funding and issuing legislation for the department, and the client group that the department serves. Ironically, the cabinet official is probably better situated than the White House staffer to give the president good political and policy advice. After all, who has their tentacles in more places than an astute cabinet member? But presidents, placing a higher value on personal loyalty than balanced political advice, opt for the staff over the cabinet. Nixon was no exception, and if anything, turned more toward his staff and further away from his cabinet than most. Nixon never really liked the personnel or organization of his cabinet and quickly distanced himself from the cabinet and relied very heavily on his top personal staff. At first, Nixon did flirt with giving his cabinet real power, intending to reverse the highly personalized power then centered in the White House. The new president wanted to concentrate on foreign affairs and would leave the domestic side to the cabinet.

Foreign and Defense Policy The Nixon years were a time of dramatic, bold, innovative approaches and overtures in the field of foreign and defense policy. They were years when the conventional wisdom was challenged, and conventional solutions were eschewed for a new strategic approach to foreign policy. It was an era that brought about an opening of relations with China, détente with the Soviet Union, a strategic arms limitation agreement with the Soviets; a period when America’s military involvement in Vietnam

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and Southeast Asia was expanded, then ended, and when a relatively new approach and orientation was introduced into American foreign policy thinking. Under Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, a reexamination and reorientation of the United States’ role in the world produced a different vision. There was a recognition of the limits of power and an attempt to match America’s strategic vision with its limited resources. Had it not been for Watergate and the self-destruction of the Nixon presidency, there is no telling how the early stages of the Nixon foreign policy revolution might have changed the United States and the world. Nixon promoted a far-reaching, forward-thinking approach to foreign policy that had an impact on the world. As Crabb and Malachy note: “Nixon’s impact was felt in several ways – in the theoretical framework which his foreign policy initiatives were cast (the so-called ‘Nixon Doctrine’), in the specific content of the policies themselves (for example, in détente and the normalization of Sino–American relations), and in the process by which these policies were formulated, especially regarding the role of Kissinger and his White House staff.”34 The foreign policy Nixon promoted was full of irony and contradiction. How could one of America’s premier anticommunists open the door to China and promote détente and arms control with the Soviet Union? How could the politician who kept promoting an “America first” attitude negotiate a deal with the Soviets that effectively granted them nuclear equality with the United States? And how could a president who promoted American hegemony relinquish economic power and prestige? What accounts for these metamorphoses? Even Nixon’s most skeptical critics recognized that his was a different approach to American foreign policy. Nixon had a vision—a new strategic orientation—and attempted to take the steps necessary to bring this vision to fruition. One could argue that Nixon’s vision was inappropriate or incorrect, but that Nixon had an integrated, complex, and sophisticated worldview seems clear. Nixon came to office at a time when U.S. foreign policy was ripe for reexamination. The post-World War II consensus that had guided the nation for twenty-five years was collapsing, and America’s role in the

34 Cecil V. Crabb and Kevin V. Mulcahy, Presidents and Foreign Policy Making (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), p. 237.

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world was going through some convulsive changes. By the late 1960s, an era of U.S. foreign policy domination was coming to an end. For the years immediately following World War II, the United States served as the dominant, hegemonic power of the West. It was the beginning, many thought, of the “American Century,” a period in which the United States would provide a benevolent global leadership and a steady direction. Empire was costly, but in the 1940s and 1950s, the United States had the resources to spend. By the 1960s, America’s role was proving a burden—a burden costly in lives and resources. By the time Richard Nixon took office, American limits became evident. The combination of the war in Vietnam and the multiple changes taking place in the world left the United States without an acceptable road map for the future. Strategically the United States was adrift. Vietnam deeply divided the American people. Relations with the Soviet Union were in flux. As the Soviets approached strategic parity with the United States, questions of how best to deal with the Russians proved confounding. Containment? Coexistence? Confrontation? These questions confused the United States at a time when the assumption regarding monolithic communism was being reexamined because of deep rifts between the Soviet Union and China, and trouble with the communist satellite states. Tight bipolarity seemed to be giving way to a kind of global pluralism, and the United States was without a plan for dealing with these changes. Globally, the United States’ leadership was being challenged. Twenty years after World War II, the world was a vastly different place. Europe and Japan were thriving. The Soviet Union had approached military parity with the United States, and the limits on power became more and more pronounced, brought home by the inability to win the war in Vietnam. America’s vulnerability, as evidenced by our dependence on foreign oil, rose as America’s power declined relative to the rest of the world. The postwar world America had done so much to create seemed to be closing in on the United States. Nixon and Kissinger attempted to deal with relative decline by developing a slightly more modest set of international commitments (the Nixon Doctrine), developing a new international system (Nixon’s ambitious “Grand Design” or “structure of peace”), exerting dramatic international leadership (shuttle diplomacy), and refashioning U.S. relations with the two most powerful communist nations (détente with the Soviet

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Union, opening the door to China). In light of the new limits on America’s capabilities and resources, the United States could not bear the international burdens it had accumulated for the last twenty-five years.35 Now, the United States would have to settle for less, set clearer priorities, redefine the national interest. But could this be done while still playing the role of hegemon? Could the United States continue to lead but at a reduced cost? Facing a changing world, with more limited power, Richard Nixon nonetheless attempted to refashion and redesign America’s foreign policy and the international context in which the United States operated. It was a new, global vision that surprised many, and one which promised a “new structure of world peace.” Nixon had a vision of a “structure of world peace” that was bold, innovative, at times confusing, and always controversial. In attempting to build this new structure of peace, Nixon and Kissinger overly relied on secrecy and personal diplomacy, failing to institutionalize their vision, but their daring approach brought some extraordinary breakthroughs and stunning policy reversals. The cumulative impact of Nixon’s foreign policy innovations was, in journalist Tad Szulc’s words, to set the United States “on a wholly new course in its foreign relations.” These policies, irreversible in many areas, marked a momentous shift in America’s posture toward allies and adversaries alike. Basic relationships were realigned, and progressively, new truths were recognized.” He adds that “during the Nixon years the United States went a long distance to adjust its position to the global realities of the 1970s.”36 Nixon wanted to redesign the international arena, not merely respond to it. His strategic sense sought to exploit opportunities that existed in the changes taking place in the world. He took the world as it existed and attempted to redefine the bonds that linked nations together. In global terms, Nixon attempted to adapt American power to the end of an era of U.S. dominance. As America’s military and economic resources were

35 While Nixon has denied that his policies were designed to face an era of relative decline, he certainly acted as if that were precisely what he and Kissinger were aiming at. Now Nixon has especially harsh words for the politicians and academics who speak and write about decline; see Richard Nixon, 1999: Victory without War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988). 36 Tad Szulc, The Illusion of Peace (New York: Viking, 1978), pp. 7–8.

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found insufficient to maintain hegemony, U.S. interests and goals had to be readjusted. The “structure of peace,” Nixon noted in 1972, “has to be built in such a way that all those who might be tempted to destroy it will instead have a stake in preserving it.” Nixon’s structure of peace tried to draw the different nations of the world into the status quo, sought to give them a stake in preserving that status quo, and tried to build disincentives into the process. To Nixon, restoring America’s power involved several interconnected steps. First, military strength had to be maintained. This did not mean superiority, but as Eisenhower sought, sufficiency. Second, the war in Vietnam had to be ended, and ended with honor. The United States could not appear to be abandoning an ally to communism. Third, the Western alliance had to be rejuvenated. Fourth, American self-confidence had to be restored. The Vietnam War had shattered America’s optimism. Fifth, American leadership had to resume a leadership role. Preoccupation with Vietnam had diverted America’s attention from the rest of the world, and the American president had to resume the role of leader of the Western world. Sixth, a new approach to diplomacy and international relations toward the communist world was needed. This would eventually lead to détente with the Soviet Union and improved relations with China. Seventh, America had to reorder its foreign policy priorities. No longer could the United States afford to squander its limited resources in both manpower and materials on peripheral concerns. Finally, a new international order had to be constructed that would promote stability. An integral part of the restoration and reordering of American power was the Nixon Doctrine. First discussed by the president on July 23, 1969, the Nixon Doctrine rested on the belief that a type of retrenchment was necessary to allow for the more efficient and effective use of American power. It was also recognition that the United States could no longer serve as policeman of the Western alliance. In this sense, it recognized the limits of American power.

Vietnam as Root of All Evil Nixon’s Grand Design for peace was a complex, ambitious formula that required short-term and long-term plans. Premier among the short-term plans was ending the long, internally divisive war in Vietnam. But for Nixon and Kissinger, Vietnam became a personal test of will as well as

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a test of America’s credibility. As such, getting out of Vietnam proved more difficult than either Nixon or Kissinger had anticipated. “Peace with honor” proved elusive. For Nixon’s Grand Design to work, American power had to remain a credible force in world politics. Thus, Vietnam became an important—and annoying—piece in the large puzzle Nixon and Kissinger were trying to put together. Vietnam was the war Nixon inherited. When he came to the presidency, the war was stalemated, with no victory in sight. It caused a tremendous amount of domestic strife—protest marches, civil disobedience, the emergence of a counterculture among the young. But how long would it be before Vietnam became his war? And if it did, would Nixon be dragged down as Johnson was? As the “plan” to end the war evaporated, the protest movement accelerated. The marches became bigger, the crowds, more middle-class, and Nixon began to feel the heat and take it personally. The chief goals of Nixon in Vietnam were to get out of Vietnam, preserve American honor, get the American prisoners of war home, and hopefully, give South Vietnam a chance for independence from the North. It was the last goal that proved to be America’s undoing, because the North Vietnamese would not accept a divided nation. They wanted victory and were determined to achieve it regardless of cost. But Nixon knew the war had to be ended and ended soon, lest he be dragged down by it. “I’m not going to end up like LBJ, holed up in the White House afraid to show my face on the street. I’m going to stop that war fast,” he said.37 Vietnam became the overriding issue of the first term. In effect, everything else—internationally and at home—was predicated on ending the war in Vietnam. But how? In late January of 1969, Nixon decided that he could not simply pull out of Vietnam, but he couldn’t continue to prosecute the war as Johnson had. He would execute a gradual withdrawal of American fighting forces—thereby diffusing the antiwar movement at home; he would seek a negotiated agreement with the North—something which allowed the United States to preserve its honor; and he would dramatically increase the bombing in Southeast Asia—thereby bombing the North into an agreement.

37 George C. Herring, America’s Longest War (New York: Wiley, 1979), pp. 217–51.

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Vietnamization An American troop pullout was part of what Nixon called Vietnamization, a plan promoted by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird that called for turning the war over to the South Vietnamese. Vietnamization fit into the Nixon Doctrine, and it was seen as a sign of good faith being sent to the North. But the North read this signal as a sign of weakness, and Nixon’s announced troop withdrawal only strengthened the resolve of the North. Like his predecessors, Nixon had misunderstood and misread his opponents. The three-pronged strategy of Vietnamization (U.S. troop withdrawal, a bombing increase, and negotiation) was not to work. It was hoped that Vietnamization would ease the pressure on the administration from congressional doves and the antiwar protesters, thus giving Nixon more time to pursue a negotiated settlement giving the United States “peace with honor.” Nixon called on the “great silent majority” to support him in his efforts and called for national unity, saying in a November 3, 1969, speech: “Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” Vietnamization was doomed from the start. There was no way that the South could assume fighting responsibility for the war. But Vietnamization had a strong domestic component, and Nixon hoped that announcements of troop pullouts would soften the antiwar criticism and allow the other parts of the Vietnam strategy to take effect. The negotiating strategy the United States pursued with the North was based entirely on the mistaken belief that the North Vietnamese were interested in—or were at least willing to consider—a negotiated compromise on the future of their nation. But the North wanted victory, not compromise, and when President Nixon announced the first troop withdrawals, the North was confident that it could outlast Nixon and win the ultimate victory. They were correct. The administration had weakened its own bargaining position with the North by announcing unilateral troop withdrawals. Had it used the withdrawals as a bargaining chip, the North might have reacted differently, but now, everything was dependent upon the ability of the South to take up all the fighting. The North was confident it had little to fear. Peace negotiations, held in Paris, produced a clear and unalterable position from the North: no end to the war until and unless the United States withdraws its troops and its support for the Thieu government of

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the South. While the North knew the United States had massive military superiority, Hanoi also knew that the United States had backed itself into a corner and felt that it, not the United States, was negotiating from a position of strength. To force the North to the bargaining table and to a negotiated settlement, Nixon was prepared to expand the war into Cambodia and Laos and increase bombing of North Vietnam. One of the early options that was ruled out was to use tactical nuclear weapons against the North. But Nixon decided instead to order a massive bombing of the North and ultimately the mining of North Vietnam’s ports as well as a naval blockade of the ports. So, while American combat troops were being withdrawn, B-52s began massive bombings of the North. “I refuse to believe,” Kissinger is reported to have said, “that a little fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point.”38 The bombing targets included Hanoi and Haiphong, as well as other cities, main roads and passageways to the South around the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and the railroads linking the North to China. Between 1969 and early 1973, the United States dropped on Vietnam an average of a ton of bombs each minute. It would be what Nixon and Kissinger called “a savage blow.” But in the end, it would not be enough. Nixon hoped to strike fear in the hearts of the North Vietnamese. This was to be done by massive bombing and the “Madman Theory.” Nixon told Bob Haldeman that he wanted the North Vietnamese to believe he might do anything to win the war, including possibly using nuclear weapons.39

The War Spreads: Cambodia and Beyond In 1969, despite Nixon’s repeated promises to wind down the war, the president expanded the war into Cambodia. Nixon widened the war by secretly bombing North Vietnamese bases inside the neutral nation of Cambodia. In 1970, Nixon sent troops into Cambodia. Nixon’s goal in Cambodia was to disrupt enemy supply lines and attack the North Vietnamese in their “safe” havens inside of Cambodia. But to

38 Szulc, The Illusion of Peace, p. 150. 39 Haldeman, The Ends of Power, pp. 82–83.

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keep this mission secret, the military had to set up improvised command chains outside of normal military channels, file false reports, and create a dual reporting system. For the operation to be a success, the president felt that the bombing had to be kept secret. On March 18, 1969, the first B-52 raid against Cambodia took place.40 Bombing missions continued into Cambodia until August 1973, when Congress forbade all such bombings.41 The decision to expand the war in Cambodia from bombing raids to a land invasion was reached after extensive discussion within the administration. The policy alternatives—do nothing or invade Cambodia with American troops—were both fraught with problems. Secretary of State William Rogers and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird spoke against the invasion, arguing that an invasion meant widening the war, incurring the wrath of Congress and fueling the protest movement while promising only limited military gains. On April 30, 1970, the president went on national television and shocked the nation with his announcement that he had ordered American troops into Cambodia. “The time has come for action,” the president said. The president said he was outraged that the enemy had violated the neutrality of Cambodia by setting up sanctuaries there and said that “American policy has been to scrupulously respect the neutrality of the Cambodian people.” He continued by saying that “neither the United States nor South Vietnam has moved against these enemy sanctuaries, because we did not wish to violate the territory of a neutral nation.”42 Nixon went on to say that “we live in an age of anarchy both abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last five hundred years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed.” With so much in the balance, the president issued a warning. “If, when the chips are down the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.” He continued: 40 The secret bombing of Cambodia was the basis of one of the impeachment charges against President Nixon. The article was voted down by a 26–12 margin. 41 Szulc, The Illusion of Peace, pp. 54–55. 42 When the president spoke these words, American B-52s had been flying bombing

missions over Cambodia for over thirteen months.

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“We will not be humiliated. We will not be defeated,” and “it is not our power but our will and character that is being tested tonight... if we fail to meet the challenge, all other nations will be on notice that despite its overwhelming power, the United States, when real crisis comes, will be found wanting.”

The military impact of the invasion of Cambodia was such that it damaged the communists, but not fatally. It did buy time for Nixon as he pursued Vietnamization, but since Vietnamization did not stand the test of time, such an expenditure of arms, men, and, at home, political capital, proved extremely damaging to the president. Because of the Cambodia invasion, the war at home heated up beyond anything the president expected. The campuses immediately erupted. Nixon’s comment about “bums blowing up campuses” was published and further fired up the already outraged protesters. Four hundred fortyeight colleges declared themselves “on strike.” Some rioted. Police had to protect the White House from the over one hundred thousand protesters who converged on Washington. A siege mentality enveloped the White House. Then on May 4, tragedy struck. At an antiwar demonstration at Kent State University, in Ohio, National Guardsmen opened fire on a group of protesters and bystanders. Fifteen people were wounded; four were killed. The biggest student strike in U.S. history followed. On May 9, over two hundred fifty thousand demonstrators descended on Washington, and across the country campuses shut down. The president’s response was brief and insensitive. In a statement read to the press by Ron Ziegler, the president said that “this should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence, it invites tragedy. It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the nation’s campuses – administrators, faculty, and students alike – to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strongly against the resort to violence as a means of such expression.”43 Two weeks later, two more students were killed at Jackson State College in Mississippi. The pressure on Nixon was enormous. Nixon seemed near the breaking point on May 8 when a series of bizarre incidents occurred. He spent nearly the entire evening and early morning 43 Evans and Novak, Nixon in the White House, pp. 277–85.

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on the telephone, calling officials, friends, relatives; some of them he called several times. (According to White House logs, the president called Bob Haldeman seven times, and Henry Kissinger eight times, the last call taking place at 3:38 A.M.) He wanted to know what they thought of him, how they viewed events of the past weeks. In all, Nixon made fifty-one calls the evening and morning of May 8–9. The president had trouble sleeping so just before 5:00 A.M. he ordered his limousine, and he and valet Manolo Sanchez drove to the Lincoln Memorial, where a group of antiwar protesters were camping out. Upon arriving at the Lincoln Memorial, the president got out and began talking to some of them. Nixon defended the invasion of Cambodia, saying that he hoped it would bring a quicker end to the war. Then he began to reminiscence about his youth, urged the young people to travel, and then he was gone. From there, Nixon ordered his driver to go to the Senate Building, where, upon finding the building locked, Nixon went to the House, where a custodian let the president in. Nixon went to the seat he had occupied as a congressman and told Manolo Sanchez to sit in the Speaker’s chair and make a speech. Then, Nixon went to the Mayflower Hotel for breakfast, after which he returned to the White House at 7:30 A.M.44 In the long run, the bombing and the invasion of Cambodia backfired on the president. A limited military success, the event sparked a storm of domestic protest, led to a major political setback as Congress passed a resolution prohibiting funds from being used in Cambodia, and with the invasion, Vietnam became “Nixon’s war.” The secret bombing of Cambodia set in motion a series of events that would lead the administration down a path of illegality and impropriety that culminated in Watergate and the resignation of a president. During the 1968 campaign, candidate Nixon promised to end the draft. Since 1940, in times of peace and conflict, the United States filled its military needs by drafting young men into the service of the nation. Nixon hoped to weaken the antiwar protests by ending the draft, and replacing it with a lottery system, then, in 1973, announcing the end of the draft and the creation of an all-volunteer army. While this did spell some relief for the President, antiwar protests continued.45 44 Szulc, The Illusion of Power, pp. 284–85. For Nixon’s own version, see: Nixon, RN , pp. 459–66. 45 David E. Rosenbaum, “Nixon Ends Draft, Turns to Volunteers,” The New York Times, January 28, 1973, p. A1.

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U.S.–Soviet Relations In the aftermath of the Second World War, as U.S–Soviet rivalry heated up, the United States sought to maintain massive economic and military superiority and the political clout it hoped would go with that superiority. American policy in the first twenty years of the Cold War reflected a confidence in superior resources, and the United States was able to pursue a policy of containment based on resources that seemed limitless. But the war in Vietnam made America aware of very real limits on power, and as Richard Nixon ascended to the presidency, he, more than most, saw the long-term consequences of a changing world and America’s changing relationship to that new world. In the span of twenty years, America’s Cold War consensus seemed to be eroding, her resources limited, the Western alliance shaky, the Russians had achieved near nuclear parity, and the emerging nations were not as compliant as before. It was a new world, and it required new insights.

“Richard M. Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev aboard the Sequoia,” June 19, 1973, National Archives Catalog

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Nixon recognized the need for what he called “a new era of international relations,” and “a new approach to foreign policy.” The postwar period, Nixon said, was over. The era of American predominance had passed. A “new structure of world peace” was needed. At the center of any new structure were American–Soviet relations. Given Richard Nixon’s anticommunist background, it is hard to imagine how a new attitude of détente could evolve, but indeed, a new attitude and relationship was developed during the Nixon years. From staunch anticommunist to father of détente—at least in his overall approach to foreign policy—there truly may have been a “new” Nixon. Nixon wanted to move from an “era of confrontation” to an “era of negotiation” while not abandoning containment as the strategic foundation of American policy. Through a complex web of interrelated agreements, Nixon hoped to pursue containment by other means—less ambitious and less costly means.

The Road to (and from) Détente During the Nixon presidency, the United States and the Soviet Union did a slow, awkward mating dance that moved the two superpowers closer but ended in frustration and disappointment for both countries. Called détente, it held forth the promise of an improved relationship. From the early stages of détente in 1969, to the high point of the May 1972 summit, this short-lived era of good feeling was a brilliantly conceived but poorly implemented strategy; it was conceptually sound, but overly personalized; a hope for the future that was oversold for personal and political reasons. When reality set in, bitter disappointment followed as the public turned against détente. Each side had a different conception of what détente meant and required, and the process deteriorated very quickly as each side became disillusioned. By 1978, détente had become a dirty word in the United States, and by the 1980 campaign, the victorious candidate campaigned against détente.

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Opening Doors to China Nixon’s opening of China, often cited as the greatest diplomatic success of his presidency, was a bold, risky diplomatic stroke that transformed the Asian political balance to the United States’ advantage. The risks of such a move at first appeared great, domestically, and internationally, but Nixon and Kissinger saw a strategic window of opportunity and seized it. Decades of hostility between the United States and China, as well as a career built on the shoulders of staunch anticommunism, made Nixon an unlikely choice to bring about rapprochement. But in a dramatic style characteristic of the Nixon-Kissinger approach to foreign policy, a new link was developed between the United States and China. In the long run, it would change the international balance of power. Begun and executed under a cloak of secrecy, and with the close collaboration of Nixon and Kissinger, a bold step toward normalized relations took place. There are a variety of reasons why Nixon chose to improve Sino-American relations at this time. Domestically, Nixon the conservative anticommunist could afford politically to make the move because no one could accuse him of being soft on communism. Also, after decades of poor relations, the time seemed right for a rapprochement, if both sides so desired. The fact that the 1972 election was not far off also offered a tantalizing inducement for the president. In national security terms, Nixon hoped to use improved SinoAmerican relations to pressure the Soviet Union into moderating their behavior. This might be the leverage Nixon needed to gain certain concessions from the Soviets. Also, if tensions could be reduced with China, some of the military pressure on the United States might be eased in Asia. Creating a new and more favorable military and strategic balance in Asia, as well as exploiting the split between Beijing and Moscow, presented a variety of beneficial options and possibilities for the United States. Rapprochement was thus deeply rooted in the Nixon-Kissinger conception of global diplomacy and their efforts to change the international balance of power.

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“President Richard Nixon shaking hands with Chairman Mao TseTung,” February 21, 1972, National Archives Catalog China, after decades of relative international isolation, was also ready for more normalized relations. Motivated in large part by the deteriorating Sino–Soviet relationship (there were serious border clashes in 1969), China sought to move closer to the United States in an effort to distance itself from the Soviets as well as to further weaken Soviet influence in Asia. After a variety of early, delicate, and tenuous moves46 in which simply making contact with the Chinese proved difficult, the United States and China agreed to talk. All of this was done in secret, as neither side was ready for public exposure. On July 17, 1971, Henry Kissinger, pretending to be sick with a stomach problem while in Pakistan, made a secret trip to China to meet with Premier Choi En-lai to arrange a Chinese-American summit.

46 Bernard Kalb and Marvin Kalb, Kissinger, Little Brown and Company, 1974, p. 216.

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“Playing the China card” had a significant impact on U.S.–Soviet relations. If détente between the Soviet Union and the United States made China edgy, rapprochement between China and the United States would have the same impact in Moscow. It was a deft game of playing one nation off against another.47

Conclusion Nixon, fashioning himself as a conservative reformer in the image of Benjamin Disraeli, both at home and abroad, brought new thinking and new politics to the political arena. It required a deft political touch as well as a broad strategic sense. But in the end, Nixon’s domestic reforms were largely unfulfilled (the exception being the Southern Strategy), and his foreign policy innovations were never fully actualized (the exception here being the China policy). Did Nixon try to do too much? Did he fail to recognize the roadblocks ahead? With a narrow 1968 victory, a Congress controlled by the opposition party, and a public enraged over the war in Vietnam, did he fail to calibrate his policies to the times? If Nixon gets a mixed evaluation on policy, he succeeded beyond expectations in the 1972 reelection. Was his landslide a mandate for the second term? If so, Watergate brought victory to a crashing halt.

47 Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger, Chapter 9.

CHAPTER 3

The Watergate Crisis

While the 1972 presidential election was a landslide of epic proportions, threatening thunderstorms lurked on the horizon. The Watergate breakin posed no problem during the election, the cover-up was holding, and the administration was busy making plans for a second term. But two political reporters from the Washington Post , Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, and a determined District Court Judge in the Watergate breaking case, John Sirica, then a Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, proved an irritant at first, and a direct threat in the early months of the new term. What Nixon’s Press Secretary Ron Ziegler characterized as a “thirdrate burglary attempt,” contained during the ’72 election, came back to haunt Nixon in the second term. Slowly, like the drip-drip of

This chapter utilizes numerous quotes from the White House Tapes as well as the materials available at the Nixon Library. For those wishing to read a more comprehensive and more fully cited version, see Michael A. Genovese, The Watergate Crisis, ABC-CLIO, 2020.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. A. Genovese, The Legacy of Watergate and the Nixon Presidency, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43474-7_3

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water torture, piece-by-piece, story after story, the Watergate cover-up— amateurish as it was—began to unravel, eventually directly threatening Nixon’s political future. How did this third-rate burglary become a national scandal? And how could this brilliant and experienced president so misread the political tea leaves to end up self-destructing?

The 1972 Landslide

Watergate was up to that time, the most serious scandal in the history of U.S. presidential politics. It was a “stress test” on the system of the rule of law and checks and balances. Plus, it was unusual in presidential history because, for the first time, the president himself was deeply involved in the crimes of his administration. Watergate was a different kind of scandal. Richard Nixon was a different kind of president.1 1 Much of the material in this chapter is taken from Michael A. Genovese, The Nixon Presidency: Power and Politics in Turbulent Times (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990).

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The roots of Watergate extend back to the war in Vietnam and the divisiveness it caused at home. Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 in the midst of that long divisive war, in part, due to his promise to end the war. But when he became president, he realized that getting out of Vietnam would be no easy task. Public protests against the war exerted pressure on Nixon to bring the war to an end. But the president could find no way to get out of Vietnam “with honor.” The war dragged on, and antiwar protests spread. Out of his determination not to be destroyed by the war, as his predecessor Lyndon B. Johnson was, Nixon proceeded on a path of leak plugging, write tapping, a secret war in Cambodia, and a series of criminal acts that in the end led to his downfall and fed the already significant erosion of public trust in government. “Watergate” is a generic term that originally referred to the break-in of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters located in Washington, D.C., at the Watergate office complex, but it soon came to be an umbrella term, under which a variety of crimes and improper acts are included. Watergate caused the downfall of a president. It led to jail sentences for over a dozen of the highest-ranking officials of the administration. It was a traumatic experience for the nation. Why Watergate? The Watergate scandal revealed Richard Nixon to be a tragic Greek mythic figure, Shakespearean in scope, whose fatal flaw leads to his destruction. Richard Nixon would bring about his own downfall. How could it have happened? How could someone as smart and experienced as Richard Nixon behave so criminally and so stupidly? How could someone so adroit and practiced in the art and science of politics behave so foolishly? How could Richard Nixon have done it to himself? Essentially, Watergate involved three separate but interconnected conspiracies, centered in four different areas. The first conspiracy was the Plumbers conspiracy, involving a variety of steps taken in the first term to plug leaks and “get” political enemies, illegal wiretapping, the breakin of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, and other acts, done in some instances for ostensible “national security” reasons, and at other times for purely political reasons. The purpose of this conspiracy was to destroy political enemies and strengthen the president’s political position. The second conspiracy was the reelection conspiracy, which grew out of lawful efforts to reelect the president, but degenerated into illegal efforts to extort money, launder money, sabotage the electoral process, spy, commit fraud, forge, and burgle, play “dirty tricks,” and attack

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Democratic front-runners. The purposes of this conspiracy were to (a) knock the stronger potential Democratic candidates (Hubert Humphrey, Ted Kennedy, Edmund Muski, and Henry (Scoop) Jackson) out of the race; (b) accumulate enough money to bury the Democratic opponent by massively outspending him, and (c) thus guarantee the reelection of Richard Nixon. This conspiracy was conscious, deliberate, and organized. The third conspiracy was the coverup conspiracy, which began almost immediately after the burglars were caught at the DNC headquarters in the Watergate. The criminal conspiracy was designed to mislead law enforcement officers and protect the reelection bid of the president, and then after the election, to keep the criminal investigations away from the White House. To this end, evidence was destroyed, perjury committed, lies told, investigations obstructed, and subpoenas defied. The purpose of the cover-up was to contain the criminal charges and protect the president. This conspiracy was less conscious, almost instinctive. One can divide Watergate activities into four categories: the partisan arena, the policy arena, the financial arena, and the legal arena. The partisan activities include acts taken against those of the opposition party and those deemed to be “enemies” of the administration. They include acts such as wiretapping and break-ins, the establishment of the Huston Plan, the Plumbers, and the break-ins, the establishment of the Huston Plan, the Plumbers, and the enemies list, forged State Department cables, and political dirty tricks. Policy activities include the stretching of presidential power beyond legal or constitutional limits. Examples include the secret bombing of Cambodia, the impoundment of congressionally appropriated funds, attempts to dismantle programs authorized by Congress, the extensive use of executive privilege, and underenforcement of laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When Nixon’s defenders answer charges against the president by saying that “everybody does it,” they are most often referring to this area of behavior. In the financial area, both Nixon’s political and personal finances deserve mention. On the political front, the “selling” of ambassadorships, extortion of money in the form of illegal campaign contributions, and laundering of money must be included. In Nixon’s personal finances, such things as “irregularities” in income tax deductions and questionable “security” improvements in his private Florida and California homes, paid for with tax dollars, are included.

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Finally, in the legal arena, illegal activities of the Nixon administration include obstruction of justice, perjury, criminal cover-up, interference with criminal investigations, and destruction of evidence. It was the criminal cover-up that eventually led to Nixon’s forced resignation.

“Meeting in the Oval Office concerning Congressman Ford’s nomination as Vice President,” October 13, 1973, National Archives Catalog But categorizing and classifying Watergate behavior does a disservice to the drama and suspense of the unfurling of this political mystery. The story of Nixon’s rise and fall, his choices at several important points in the story, of his ultimate collapse, are what makes this drama so poignant and tragic. Watergate was a series of criminal and unethical acts committed by Richard Nixon and members of his administration that were designed to increase Nixon’s political power, punish potential “enemies,” sabotage the electoral process, and cover up evidence of crimes. Acts such

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as obstruction of justice, burglary, conspiracy, lying under oath, wiretapping, misprison of perjury, and dirty tricks were involved. It took a vigilant press, a determined court system, two special prosecutors, House and Senate investigations, a federal grand jury, an aroused public, a good deal of luck, and ultimately, Nixon’s own tape-recorded words to finally force the president to resign. A number of crimes and “dirty tricks” had taken place before the 1972 reelection bid, but these acts did not become public until after the ’72 election. In this sense, a clear and lengthy pattern, some would say policy, of deceit, manipulation, and crimes can be traced back to the early days of the administration. But these events came to light after and as part of an investigation into a bizarre event that took place at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate office complex.

The Roots of Watergate To understand Watergate, we must always keep in mind that Watergate did not occur in a vacuum. The series of steps that led to the downfall of Richard Nixon took place in the middle of a divisive war in Southeast Asia, amid domestic protests against the war in Vietnam, during a reorientation of relations between the United States and Soviet Union as well as with China, and during continued troubles in the Middle East and elsewhere. All presidents are compelled to juggle several political balls in the air at once and we should keep in mind that as Nixon was making decisions about Watergate, he was also dealing with a vast array of other complex issues. Vietnam was a war Nixon inherited. When Nixon came to the presidency, the war was stalemated, with no victory in sight. It caused domestic strife, protest marches, civil disobedience, the emergence of a counterculture among the young, and a growing distrust of the government and the military. The war was tearing the nation apart.

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“President Richard Nixon points to a map of Cambodia during a Vietnam War Press Conference,” April 30, 1970, National Archives Catalog A great deal of Nixon’s success in the 1968 election was attributed to the failure of Lyndon Johnson and Democrats to win or effectively prosecute the war in Vietnam. This left the Democrats deeply divided and allowed candidate Nixon to talk of a “plan” to end the war. Nixon was, in 1968, the peace candidate. Nixon’s “plan” to end the war wasn’t much of a plan at all. His early efforts at a negotiated compromise didn’t work—North Vietnam wanted victory, not capitulation. The chief goals of Nixon in Vietnam were to get the United States out of Vietnam, preserve American honor, get the American prisoners of war home, and, he hoped, give South Vietnam a chance for independence from the North. It was the last goal that proved America’s undoing, as the North Vietnamese would not accept a divided nation. They wanted victory and were determined to achieve it regardless of cost. Nixon knew that the war had to be ended soon lest he be dragged down by it. “I’m not going to end up like LBJ, holed up in the White

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House afraid to show my face on the street. I’m going to stop that war fast,” he said.2 Vietnam became the overriding issue of the first term.

Cambodia: Nixon Turns Up the Heat As discussed in Chapter 2, when President Nixon engaged in the secret bombing of Cambodia, then invaded that country, the United States erupted. Opposition to Nixon grew and became more heated. The war in Vietnam was undermining Nixon’s ability to govern, both at home and abroad, and as events spiraled out of control, Nixon seemed hemmed in. The fallout from Cambodia meant that pressure on Nixon increased and he “had” to find a way out. This opened doors to illegal behavior that would lead to the end of Nixon, but at the time seemed necessary if he hoped to govern.

The War at Home The domestic upheaval created by the war in Vietnam had a profound impact on the Nixon administration. As the war dragged on, the public became increasingly dissatisfied with the way Lyndon Johnson, then Richard Nixon, handled the war. Johnson was driven from office, declining to run for reelection in 1968 because of opposition to the war. Richard Nixon won the presidency as the “peace candidate.” But the war dragged on and the antiwar movement picked up numbers with each passing day. Nixon seemed to take the antiwar marches personally. He knew that the growing antiwar movement was narrowing both his time and his options in Southeast Asia. President Nixon was determined not to be their victim. He would act. But these acts planted seeds of illegal and immoral activities that would eventually lead to the president’s downfall.3 2 George C. Herring, America’s Longest War (New York: Wiley, 1979), pp. 217–51. 3 In November 1969, the My Lai massacre—in which American soldiers killed more

than 350 South Vietnamese villagers—became public knowledge. Although the massacre took place in 1968, Nixon had to deal with the public outrage. His response way to spy on Ronald Ridenhour, who made the massacre known to the army and later to Congress. The revelation of the My Lai massacre proved to be a turning point in public opinion as the “middle class” began to turn against the war. See Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power (New York: Summit, 1983), p. 135; and Clark R. Mollenhoff, Game Plan for Disaster (New York: Norton, 1976), Chapter 9.

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Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew became the administration’s point man in its “war” against antiwar protesters. In May 1969 Agnew said, “In my judgment, the war in Vietnam would be over today if we could simply stop the demonstrations in the streets of the United States.” Later Agnew said that “a society which comes to fear its children is effete. A sniveling, hand-wringing power structure deserves the violent rebellion it encourages. If my generation doesn’t stop cringing, yours will inherit a lawless society where emotion and muscle displace reason.” Agnew promised that the administration would “separate them from our society with no more regret than we should feel over discarding rotten apples from a barrel.” To prosecute the war successfully, Nixon needed a stable base of domestic support, which the antiwar movement was undermining. So began a series of domestic activities aimed at stifling dissent and protest. It was the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency. H.R. Haldeman wrote, “I firmly believe that without the Vietnam War there would have been no Watergate.”4

Plugging Leaks The failure of the president’s Vietnam policy, the mounting pressure of domestic protest, the seeming disloyalty of some administration officials, Nixon’s predisposition to see adversaries as enemies, and the leaks of information to the press, all came together and helped create a siege mentality in the Nixon White House. A form of paranoia began to creep in and distort the judgment of administration officials. One of the irritants to Nixon and Kissinger was the profusion of information being leaked to the press. Leaking information was an art deftly used by Nixon and Kissinger. At his first staff meeting in January 1969, Kissinger declared, “If anybody leaks anything, I will do the leaking.” But others were leaking information, and both Nixon and Kissinger believed that some of the leaks endangered national security and undermined the administration’s position. The president and his national security adviser set out to plug the leaks. In an effort to stop the leaks, Nixon ordered that the administration employ investigations, interviews, lie detector tests, sworn affidavits, and

4 H.R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (New York: Times Books, 1978), p. 79.

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depositions. Finally, the administration engaged in wiretaps and breakins. As the president wrote, “It was decided that when leaks occurred Kissinger would supply [FBI director] Hoover with the names of individuals who had had access to the leaked materials and whom he had any cause to suspect. I authorized Hoover to take the necessary steps including wiretapping to investigate leaks and find the leakers.” And the president wanted “maximum secrecy on this wiretap project.”5

The Wiretaps The president’s need to protect the privacy of executive branch information and Nixon’s near paranoia about loyalty and secrecy led to a series of warrantless wiretaps in 1969. In early May 1969 in an article in The New York Times , journalist William Beecher revealed the secret of the bombing of Cambodia. The revelation, according to Nixon speech writer William Safire, “drove Henry Kissinger up his basement office wall.”6 Nixon and Kissinger were furious. Kissinger spoke to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover several times that day, insisting that the FBI find the source of the leak. According to a Hoover memorandum, the White House would “destroy whoever did this if we can find him, no matter where he is.”7 Nixon and Kissinger were so outraged at the leak and the failure of the FBI to find the leaker, that after only three months in office, they took matters into their own hands and instituted a series of wiretaps aimed at discovering the source of the Beecher leak. The fact that so early in his first term the president decided to bypass the FBI and act independently of the other agencies of the government and the law speaks volumes to Nixon’s distrust of others, even the FBI. Newspaper reporters, (e.g., Beecher), Nixon administration officials (e.g., NSC staffer Morton Halperin), and others (e.g., Defense Department aides) were tapped with the approval of the president. Kissinger and NSC aide Alexander Haig supplied the names of suspected leakers, and at least one of the taps (Halperin’s) was installed before Attorney General John Mitchell signed an authorization for the wiretap. 5 Richard M. Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), pp. 387–88. 6 William Safire, Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), p. 166. 7 Hersh, The Price of Power, pp. 86–87.

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All the participants were aware of the need to keep the wiretaps a secret, and each knew of the danger if the existence of the taps was revealed. In notes taken by Bob Haldeman at a 1969 meeting with the president, John Ehrlichman, and Kissinger, Ehrlichman gives the following cautionary advice: Re taps impt. For K. To get the files out of his office Thru E & Mitchel find someone to read taps Maybe use Huston etc. for this Work out a scheme minimize what done thru Hoover esp. newsmen shld be done outsider K. shldn’t be reading these.8

Other reporters were added to the list (e.g., Hedrick Smith, Marvin Kalb, Joseph Kraft). All the taps were installed without warrants. But afterward, when the wiretaps were revealed, the president, Kissinger, and Haig had conflicting stories about who ordered what, and all had partial memory lapses concerning the events.

The Huston Plan In his speech on the Cambodian invasion, the president spoke of being in an “age of anarchy,” and Nixon was determined not to let the age get the best of him. In his memoirs, Nixon wrote of 1970 as a time when the nation was faced with an “epidemic of unprecedented domestic terrorism” and of “highly organized and highly skilled revolutionaries dedicated to the violent destruction of our democratic system.” In June 1970, the president ordered a reassessment of the government’s domestic intelligence-gathering capacity. Haldeman assigned aide Tom Huston, a former defense intelligence officer, to oversee the project. On June 5, 1970, CIA director Richard Helms, FBI director Hoover, National Security Agency head Vice Admiral Noel Gayler, Defense Intelligence Agency head Lieutenant General Donald Bennett, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and the president met to coordinate activities against domestic disturbances. After several meetings, the group (called the 8 All references to notes taken by H.R. “Bob” Haldeman who served as the president’s chief of staff, are taken from the National Archives holdings of presidential material, Arlington, Virginia (Now part of the Nixon Library Collection).

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Intelligence Evaluation Committee) arrived at an action plan, called the Huston Plan. This plan, which Senator Sam Ervin later described as evidence of a Gestapo mentality,” called for the opening of mail and tapping of telephones without warrants, breaking into homes and offices, and spying on student groups. Huston admitted to Nixon that “covert [mail] coverage is illegal and there are serious risks involved,” and that surreptitious entry “is clearly illegal; it amounts to burglary. It is also highly risky and could result in great embarrassment if exposed.”9 On July 14, 1970, Bob Haldeman sent Huston a memo that read: The recommendations you have proposed as a result of the review, have been approved by the President. He does not, however, want to follow the procedure you outlined on page four of your memorandum regarding implementation. He would prefer that the thing simply be put into motion on the basis of this approval.10

The president approved the plan. It was not long before J. Edgar Hoover had second thoughts. “The risks are too great,” Hoover told Nixon through Huston. “These folks are going to get the President into trouble.” Nixon reluctantly withdrew his approval. While the Huston Plan died, the idea of developing an expanded domestic intelligence operation run out of the White House did not. Through the Justice Department and John Mitchell, a new Intelligence Evaluation Committee was formed, and through the CIA, domestic intelligence-gathering, which is illegal under the CIA charter, expanded, in the form of Operation Chaos.

9 William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Random House, 1975), pp. 111–16; and Tad Szulc, The Illusion of Peace (New York: Viking, 1978), pp. 294–96. 10 Quoted in Barry Sussman, The Great Cover-Up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate (New York: Signet, 1974), pp. 207–9.

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The Pentagon Papers On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing articles based on a then top-secret DOD report on the origins of the war in Vietnam. It led to an unprecedented effort by the administration to exercise prior restraint and censorship against the press. The study, a forty-seven-volume report entitled “History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy,” became known as the Pentagon Papers. It included a detailed account of how President Johnson had misled Congress and the public about Vietnam. The Nixon administration, through the Justice Department, got the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York to issue a temporary injunction, based on national security grounds, ordering the Times to cease publication of stories about the report. Other papers also received copies of the Papers and began to publish them. These newspapers were also ordered to cease publication. The case quickly got to the Supreme Court, and on June 30, 1971, the Court ruled against the government, allowing publication of the Pentagon Papers. The vote was 6 to 3, and it rejected the administration’s claim of an inherent power to prevent publication of material on national security grounds. As the administration went to court to try to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret effort to discredit and defame Daniel Ellsberg who had released the papers was also going on. Colson said, “The president on numerous occasions urged me to disseminate damaging information about Daniel Ellsberg, including information about Ellsberg’s attorney and others with whom Ellsberg had been in contact.”11

The Plumbers Frustrated by the Supreme Court decision to allow publication of the Pentagon Papers, frustrated by the FBI’s failure to stop information leaks, suspicious of the loyalty of the FBI, CIA, and other government agencies, paranoid about events surrounding the antiwar movement and domestic dissent, and generally displeased with the quality of government work, the Nixon administration decided to take matters into its own hands. In 1971, a special White House secret apparatus was organized to deal with 11 Sussman, The Great Cover-Up, p. 213.

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matters such as plugging leaks. The Special Investigations Unit, known as the “Plumbers,” because their job was to plug leaks, met in Room 16 of the Old Executive Office Building. This clandestine group began to do more than originally charged. Four days after The New York Times published its first story about the Pentagon Papers, Kissinger, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and the president met in the Oval office to discuss Daniel Ellsberg. Kissinger was worried that Ellsberg might have other material and described him (according to John Ehrlichman) as a drug user, a genius, and a threat to national security. He had to be discredited, prosecuted, and stopped. Nixon felt that the FBI and other agencies were inept, uncooperative, and disloyal, thus the only recourse was for the White House to set up its own intelligence gathering and covert operations capacity. To head this secret unit, David Young, a former NSC associate of Kissinger’s, and Egil (“Bud”) Krogh, a lawyer on Ehrlichman’s Domestic Council Staff, were chosen. Neither man had experience in covert operations, but their loyalty was unquestioned. Young and Krogh hired more-experienced hands such as E. Howard Hunt (CIA) and G. Gordon Liddy (FBI). Krogh, who emerged as leader of the Plumbers, saw his role in expansive terms. “We were going after an espionage ring, not just Daniel Ellsberg!”12 And indeed, such steps as firebombing the Brookings Institution and burglaries were seriously discussed. One of the first acts of the Plumbers, though, showed how small and petty the Nixon people could be. In 1971, E. Howard Hunt and Chuck Colson forged top-secret State Department cables in an effort to falsely link President John Kennedy to the assassination of South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem. They then tried, unsuccessfully, to get Life magazine to run stories based on these fake cables. One of the biggest jobs of the Plumbers related to the Pentagon Papers and efforts to embarrass and discredit Daniel Ellsberg. On June 28, 1971, Ellsberg was indicted for theft of government property and violation of the Espionage Act. The administration was determined to convict Ellsberg, but more than that, wanted to discredit him and, if possible, link his activities to the Democrats. In late August, Hunt and Liddy went to Los Angeles to “case” the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis J. Fielding, located in

12 Quoted in Hersh, The Price of Power, p. 397.

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Beverly Hills. On Labor Day weekend, Hunt and Liddy, and “three Cubans” (Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez, and Felipe DeDiego) broke into Fielding’s office in the hope of finding information damaging to Ellsberg. Nothing of use was found. John Ehrlichman ordered a “covert operation” (he was convicted for ordering the break-in), with the stipulation that it be “done under your assurance that it is not traceable.” In his memoirs, Bob Haldeman related in detail a post-presidency conversation with Nixon concerning the breakin. As Haldeman recounts the conversation, Nixon spoke as if he had ordered the break-in, saying at one point, “I was so damn mad at Ellsberg in those days. And Henry was jumping up and down. I’ve been thinking and maybe I did order that break-in.” Haldeman then recounts how Nixon took steps that set-in motion a “devious attack on Ellsberg and leakers,” at one point telling Chuck Colson, “I don’t give a damn how it is done, do whatever has to be done” and “I don’t want excuses. I want results. I want it done; whatever the cost.”13 So obsessed were the Nixon people with getting Daniel Ellsberg, that at a San Clemente, California meeting between Nixon and Matthew Byrne, the judge in the Ellsberg case, Ehrlichman called Byrne aside and tentatively “offered” him the directorship of the FBI, if he handled the Ellsberg case in the right way (Byrne later threw the case out of court). Colson said that he saw the release of the Pentagon Papers as “the pivotal point” of the Nixon years. “When that happened,” the ground rules began to change. That was when the Nixon people had, in Colson’s words, “crossed that line.” Egil Krogh agreed, citing the events surrounding release of the Pentagon Papers as “the seminal event of the Nixon term that resulted in the downfall of that administration.” Krogh concluded that “what was done in 1971 set a precedent, a pattern that I think those who went on to work for the committee to Re-Elect later on felt was appropriate conduct. They felt that if the White House would be willing to condone that kind of activity for national security purposes in 1971, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to condone it in 1972 and 1973, for political purposes, and that’s exactly what took place.”14

13 Haldeman, The Ends of Power, pp. 114–16. 14 Commentary by Charles Colson and Egil Krogh, Hofstra University Conference on

the Nixon Presidency, November 1987.

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The campaign organization, the Committee for the Reelection of the President, known as CREEP, was first run by Jeb Magruder, but the real head was Attorney General John Mitchell. In close contact with the White House, Mitchell called most of the shots from the outset. He established one of the most highly organized, and up to that time most well-funded presidential campaigns in American history. Beyond the normal and expected work of the president’s reelection effort, a subterranean operation of illegal money collection and “dirty tricks” was employed. In an effort to accumulate enough money to run the campaign, the president’s money collectors went beyond the bounds of pressuring potential donors to the murky world of extorting funds. Though Nixon claimed that he did not know about the dirty tricks campaign, a May 5, 1971, White House tape recording indicates otherwise. One- and one-half years before the election, the dirty tricks campaign was already underway. Nixon and Haldeman were discussing some of Colson’s tricks against Muskie, joking about oranges sent in Muskie’s name to some protesters, when the conversation turned to more serious tricks. Haldeman told the president Colson “got a lot done that he hasn’t been caught at,” adding, “We got some stuff that he doesn’t know anything about, too.” Haldeman responded to a question from Nixon, saying that Dwight Chapin, Nixon’s appointments secretary, had established a link with “a guy that nobody, none of us knows except Dwight… who is just completely removed. There’s no contact at all. He’s starting to build it now. We’re going to use it for the campaign next year.” (They were referring to Donald Segretti.) “Are they really any good?” asked Nixon. Haldeman replied that “this guy’s a real conspirator type... thug-type guy... This is the kind of guy that can get out and tear things up.” In the 1972 campaign, Nixon was determined to use all the tools available to him to “get” his political opponents. As early as July 1969, Nixon, in White House notes taken by Bob Haldeman, discusses the use of dirty tricks:

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req. mts dirty tricks dept. use power of WH more ruthlessly in deadly battle use all weapons15

Nixon was a man haunted by memories of past failures and fears of enemies. He saw the world as a hostile place and politics as a dirty, harsh business. Thus, Nixon would approve the dirty tactics and “hardball” politics of his campaign team. As John Dean’s memo of August 1971 stated: “This memorandum addresses the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration. Stated a bit more bluntly how can we use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies?”16 Because Ed Muskie was the Democratic front-runner, the Nixon people went after him first. A memo written by Pat Buchanan reads, “We ought to go down to the kennels and turn all the dogs loose on Ecology Ed.” Buchanan added, “The President is the only one who should stand clear, while everybody else gets chewed up.”17 The predatory strategy worked. Muskie, who had trouble getting his campaign on track, dropped out of the race shortly after the New Hampshire primary; Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, and the rest followed until Senator George McGovern, whom Nixon considered his weakest potential opponent, got the nomination. The president could not have been more pleased if he had picked his opponent, which in a way, he had. As McGovern’s campaign self-destructed, the Nixon camp moved forward. But a curious event took place in mid-June. In the early morning hours of June 17, five men were arrested inside the office of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex. A young security guard making his rounds discovered a piece of tape horizontally covering the lock on the door. He removed the tape but did not call the police. Later, while on another set of rounds, he discovered another piece of tape on the same door. He called the police. The D.C. police arrested five men in the sixth-floor offices of the DNC. The men were wearing rubber surgical gloves, and carrying walkie-talkies, 15 All White House notes come from the Nixon Presidential Papers, accessed by the author in 1988 and 1989. 16 Stanley I. Kutler, The Wars of Watergate (New York: Knopf, 1990), pp. 4, 104–7. 17 Quoted in Schell, The Time of Illusion, p. 146.

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electronic eavesdropping equipment, cameras, and other tools. One of the men, James McCord, a former employee of the CIA, was the security chief of CREEP. Later, two others, who were in the Howard Johnson hotel across the street from the Watergate, were arrested in connection with the break-in: a former CIA operative and consultant to the Nixon White House, E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy, general counsel to CREEP. Among the belongings of those arrested were papers linking the suspects to the White House. While newspapers reported the story, and links between the burglars and the Nixon White House seemed possible, the break-in had little impact on public opinion. On November 7, 1972, Richard Nixon was reelected in an enormous landslide. In spite of its “minor annoyance” value, Watergate did not damage the president. He won a reelection victory, getting 97 percent of all electoral votes, and over 60 percent of the popular vote. The jubilation at containing damage from Watergate was short-lived. After the election, a slow stream of news stories built up to an avalanche of bad news that revealed a wide range of criminal and unethical acts committed on behalf of the president. On January 8, 1973, the trial of the Watergate burglars began. The White House was hoping for continued silence from the conspirators. On January 12, James McCord and CREEP “undercover agent” John Caulfield met in the evening on an overlook of the George Washington Parkway, and Caulfield assured the burglars of executive clemency “from the highest level of the White House.” Nixon lawyer and fundraiser Herbert Kalmbach later admitted that on January 19, Mitchell, John Dean, and Fred LaRue asked him to raise hush money for the defendants. At the trial, Magruder and Herbert Porter, Magruder’s assistant, perjured themselves, testifying that Liddy was given money only for legitimate political intelligence gathering. On January 25, McCord, who was resisting the clemency offer, met for a third time with Caulfield, who told McCord he was “fouling up the game plan.” But the game plan was starting to collapse under pressure from several directions.

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Dirty Money “Money,” as former California Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh used to say, “is the mother’s milk of politics,” and the Nixon team collected and spent more money (over $60 million) than any previous campaign in presidential history. “Remember 1960,” Nixon told Haldeman, “I never want to be outspent again.” The effort not to be outspent was led by former Commerce secretary Maurice Stans, along with Nixon’s personal lawyer Herbert Kalmbach as chief fundraiser. The money was collected in two stages, reflecting changes in the campaign reform laws. Money collected before April 7, 1971, did not fall under the stricter reporting requirements of the new regulations, so there was a major effort to get the money “pre-April 7.” In spite of frantic efforts to get as much money as possible before the reporting requirements went into effect, some money came in “late.” On April 10, a former Republican State senate majority leader named Harry L. Sears gave Stans an attaché case containing $200,000 in $100 bills. The money was illegally treated as “pre-April 7” money and proved an even greater embarrassment when it was revealed that the money was a contribution from Robert Vesco, the international financier and fugitive from American justice. Stans and his fundraising associates sought contributions from corporations dependent on the largesse of the government. Such campaign contributions from corporations were illegal, but this did not deter Stans. The pitch made to these corporate executives was “finely calibrated depending on who they were and how much fund-raisers thought they could get.”18 This approach brought in millions. By suggesting that those corporate contributions would help and that failure to contribute would hurt badly, the president’s reelection team was able to extract political tithes from some of the biggest companies in the nation. Even a partial list is impressive: American Airlines, $55,000; Braniff Airways, $40,000; Ashland Oil, $100,00; Goodyear Tire and Rubber, $40,000; Gulf Oil, $100,000; Northrop, $150,00; and Phillips Petroleum, $100,000. This who’s who of corporate America illegally contributed to the Nixon reelection effort, and all were convicted after the 1972 campaign. 18 J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years (New York: Viking, 1973; Penguin, 1988), p. 128.

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In an effort to prevent tracing the money to the source, most of the money was laundered. The laundering took several forms. American Airlines sent money from a U.S. bank to a Swiss account of an agent in Lebanon, back to another U.S. bank, and then to CREEP. Other firms gave money from slush funds, and some airlines sold bogus tickets and sent the cash to CREEP. The most common route to launder money was through Mexico. In fact, it was to protect the money-laundering operation in Mexico that President Nixon first became actively involved in the criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice on June 23, 1972, less than a week after the Watergate break-in. Illegal corporate contributions proved to be an excellent source of money, as did the “selling” of ambassadorships. Several big donors were promised ambassadorships in exchange for campaign money. J. Fife Symington gave over $100,000, but the promised post of Spain or Portugal fell through (Herbert Kalmbach pled guilty to a charge of promising a federal job to Symington in exchange for money). Vincent P. de Roulet paid over $100,000 for Jamaica. Walter H. Annenberg received Great Britain after a $250,000 contribution. Mrs. Ruth Farkas, after donating $250,000 and being promised Costa Rica, complained to Kalmbach, saying, according to the grand jury testimony, “Well, you know, I am interested in Europe, I think, and isn’t two hundred and fifty thousand dollars an awful lot of money for Costa Rica?” After giving a total of $300,000, Mrs. Farkas was appointed ambassador to Luxembourg. As notes taken by H.R. Haldeman at a meeting with the president and Maurice Stans on March 21, 1972, indicate, Stans and Nixon discussed possible appointments and how much money each donor gave. The notation on Farkas was: “Mrs. Farkas 250? Where’s the play on her?”

Dirty Tricks In 1971 a file entitled “Political Enemies Project” (the “enemies list”) was kept by the president’s special counsel Charles Colson. Along with John Dean, Colson compiled a list that contained 575 names. On September 9, 1971, Colson came up with twenty names for “go status.” The list included United Automobile Workers leader Leonard Woodcock, Congressman John Conyers, journalist Daniel Shorr, actor Paul Newman, and others. The White House tried to get the IRS to audit the taxes of

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those on the list. Nixon was involved directly in this, as a tape of a conversation between the president, Haldeman, and Dean, on September 15, 1972, dealing with Washington Post attorney Edward Bennett Williams indicates. President Nixon: I would not want to be in Edward Bennett Williams’ position after this election…we’re going after him. Haldeman: That is a guy we’ve got to ruin. President Nixon: You want to remember, too, he’s an attorney for the Washington Post. Dean: I’m well aware of that. President Nixon: I think we’re going to fix the son of a bitch. Believe me. We are going to. We’ve got to, because he’s a bad man. Dean: Absolutely… I’ve tried to… keep notes on a lot of the people who are emerging… as less than our friends. President Nixon: Great. Dean: Because this is going to be over someday… We shouldn’t forget the way some of them have treated us. President Nixon: I want the most comprehensive notes on all of those that tried to do us in… They didn’t have to do it… I mean if… they had a very close election everybody on the other side would understand this game. But now they are doing this quite deliberately and they are asking for it and they are going to get it. We have not used this power in the first four years… We have never used it. We haven’t used the Bureau and we haven’t used the Justice Department, but things are going to change now… They’re going to get it right. Dean: That’s an exciting prospect. President Nixon: It’s got to be done. It’s the only thing to do.19

The full enemies list included Senators Ted Kennedy, Edmund Muskie, and Walter Mondale; the presidents of Yale and the Harvard Law School; the heads of the World Bank, Ford Foundation, and Rand Corporation; four ex-cabinet members; two ex-ambassadors; a Nobel Prize winner; and actors Carol Channing, Steve McQueen, Burt Lancaster, Shirley McLaine, and Gregory Peck, along with football star Joe Namath. On August 16, 1971, John Dean sent Bob Haldeman a memo entitled: “How to Deal with Our Political Enemies and How We Can Use

19 All direct quotations of presidential conversations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the White House recordings of the president, usually referred to as “the tapes.”

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the Available Political Machinery to Screw Our Political Enemies.” Dean wanted to address “the matter of how we can maximize the fact of our incumbency in dealing with persons known to be active in their opposition to our Administration.”20 The word enemy is unusual in American politics. Normally one thinks of adversaries, opponents, or rivals, but not enemies. Yet to Nixon, the word enemy fit. He did see his opponents as enemies and attempted to move the machinery of government against them. The Nixon administration made government into an instrument of revenge and retaliation. Members of the administration were involved in other subterranean tricks such as fake-letter-writing campaigns to inflate the level of support for the president’s policies, discussions of plots to murder newspaper columnist and Nixon critic Jack Anderson, and plots to sneak LSD into Daniel Ellsberg’s soup prior to a speaking engagement. One of the most insidious activities in the campaign of dirty tricks and sabotage was what became known as the “Liddy Plan.” As chief legal counsel for CREEP, G. Gordon Liddy cast his net over a wide array of activities, the most notorious of which was the plan that bears his name. In an effort to further disrupt and divide the Democrats, Liddy was to develop an intelligencegathering/undercover operation. On January 27, 1972, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Liddy went to the office of Attorney General John Mitchell and presented a plan that was frightening or should have been. At the meeting with Liddy and Mitchell were John Dean and Jeb Magruder. Liddy, with charts and an easel, presented a plan, code-named “Gemstone,” of sabotage and surveillance of unprecedented proportions. With a $1 million price tag, the Liddy Plan called for mugging squads to beat up demonstrators at the Republican Convention, teams to kidnap leaders of the demonstrations and hijack them to Mexico until the Republican Convention was over, electronic surveillance against the Democrats at their Washington headquarters and convention sites, prostitutes to be employed to lure prominent Democrats onto a yacht equipped with hidden cameras and recording equipment, break-ins to obtain and photograph documents, shorting-out the air conditioning at the arena in Miami where the Democrats were to have their convention, and other sordid acts.

20 Theodore H. White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Atheneum, 1975), pp. 135–36.

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John Dean called the plan “mind-boggling.” The attorney general, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the land, rather than throwing Liddy out of his office, as he would later admit he should have, rejected the plan, not on its merits, but as too expensive, and asked Liddy to draw up a scaled-down version. As John Dean testified before the Senate Watergate Committee, Mitchell “took a few long puffs on his pipe,” and told Liddy, “The plan… was not quite what he had in mind and the cost was out of the question and suggested to Liddy he go back and revise his plan, keeping in mind that he was most interested in the demonstration problem.” On February 4, 1972, Liddy returned to Mitchell’s office with a scaleddown plan costing half a million dollars. Again, the attorney general demurred. Liddy was asked to come up with another proposal. Almost two months later, on March 30, 1972, a third meeting with Mitchell was held in Key Biscayne, Florida. Toward the end of the meeting, Mitchell, who by that time had resigned as attorney general to become director of CREEP, turned to the revised Liddy plan. While everyone at the meeting expressed reservations, Mitchell finally approved the plan, but gave Liddy only $250,000. Among the targets was Larry O’Brien, chair of the Democratic National Committee, whose office was located in the Watergate office complex. Within a week, Liddy was off and running. He received $83,000 in cash from CREEP’s Finance Committee, purchased bugging and surveillance equipment, and began planning the first break-in of Watergate. In attempting to figure out why Mitchell approved the revised Liddy plan, and why so many others in the administration and CREEP went along with it, Jeb Magruder offers that it was “approved because of the climate of fear and suspicion that had grown up in the White House, an atmosphere that started with the President himself and reached us through Haldeman and Colson and others, one that came to affect all our thinking, so that decisions that now seem insane seemed at the time to be rational.” He continued, “It was all but impossible not to get caught up in the ‘enemies’ mentality.”21

21 Jeb Magruder, An American Life: One Man’s Road to Watergate (New York: Atheneum, 1974), p. 185.

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The Break-In Out of this atmosphere of dirty tricks, dirty money, and dirty politics came the plan to break into and bug offices in the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. While the roots of the DNC break-in can be found in the need for campaign intelligence, things sank so low, that the dirty tricks and break-ins were eventually seen as a necessary part of the reelection plan. As part of Liddy’s intelligence-gathering plan, information was to be obtained by what Liddy called a Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) operation. One such operation, code-named Gemstone, was to get information on what the Democrats had on the Republicans, and more specifically on Nixon. The “primary purpose of the break-in was to see if O’Brien had embarrassing information linking President Nixon’s close friend Bebe Rebozo to loans from Howard Hughes” that went to Nixon. “It was a planned burglary,” said Magruder.22 Thus, while most political professionals scoffed at the break-in, suggesting that it had to be a renegade operation because everyone knew that there was nothing of value at the DNC, there was a reason: the fear that Larry O’Brien had the goods on a Hughes-Nixon deal. To get this information, Liddy and his accomplices first broke into the DNC headquarters on May 27, 1972, and installed wiretaps. When the taps did not work properly, a second surreptitious entry was required. On the night of June 16 and morning of the 17th, Liddy and his cohorts returned. Did Nixon know about or order Gemstone, the Liddy Plan, the effort to bug the DNC? There is no direct evidence to suggest that he knew of the plan in advance. But even though Nixon may not have ordered the break-in, he created an atmosphere in which planning such crimes was tolerated and even encouraged. Haldeman gives us an indication of the atmosphere when he recounts an example of what he calls “classic Nixonian rhetorical overkill” when the president ordered him to get the tax files of leading Democrats: “There are ways to get it,” Nixon said, “Goddamnit, sneak in, in the middle of the night.”23 On January 14, 1971, Nixon sent Haldeman a memo suggesting they needed more information on DNC chairman Lawrence O’Brien. The memo read in part: “It would 22 Jeb Magruder, comments at Hofstra University Conference, November 1987. 23 Haldeman, The Ends of Power, p. 170.

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seem that the time is approaching when Larry O’Brien is held accountable for his retainer with Hughes,” and “perhaps Colson should make a check on this.”

The Cover-Up Begins The arrests at the Watergate, occurring less than five months before the 1972 election, might have been a political embarrassment, perhaps even a scandal, but the White House quickly went to work to cover up the crime and contain political damage from the president and his reelection. Initially, the story of the arrests at the Watergate attracted little attention. On June 18, the day after the arrests, the story appeared on page 30 of the New York Times . Few seemed to notice or care. At the time, the president and Haldeman were in Key Biscayne, John Mitchell and Jeb Magruder in California, and John Dean in Manila. But within hours of the break-in, the cover-up began. On the morning of June 18th, G. Gordon Liddy called Magruder in Los Angeles and told him of the arrests at the Watergate. Liddy told Magruder that “the four men arrested with McCord were Cuban freedom fighters, whom Howard Hunt recruited. But don’t worry; my men will never talk.” The cover-up was immediate and reflective. Magruder told the Senate Watergate Committee, “The cover-up began that Saturday when we realized there was a break-in.” Or, as John Mitchell said, “What’d they expect us to do – advertise it?”. The cover-up, in Magruder’s words, “was immediate and automatic; no one even considered that there would not be a cover-up. It seemed inconceivable that with our political power we couldn’t erase this mistake we had made.”24 Upon hearing the news of the arrests from Liddy, Magruder immediately informed John Mitchell, and the cover-up was under way. In a flurry of activity, steps were taken to sever links between the burglars and the White House. Magruder had one of his assistants remove the Gemstone file from his office. Liddy removed files from CREEP headquarters. Haldeman aide Gordon Strachan used the White House shredder to destroy incriminating documents. Liddy even went so far as to volunteer to John Dean that he, Liddy, would wait on a corner and be killed if it became necessary! As Dean recalled: “he told me that

24 Jeb Magruder, Hofstra University, November 1987.

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he was a soldier and would never talk. He said if anyone wished to shoot him on the street, he was ready.”25 E. Howard Hunt’s name was expunged from the White House phone directory. Hunt removed $10,000 from his White House safe. John Ehrlichman ordered that Hunt’s safe be opened and the contents removed. Dean ordered Hunt to leave the country but later rescinded the order. A quick payment scheme for the burglars was put into action. According to Magruder, the guidance began with a June 19 meeting with Mitchell, LaRue, Assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian, Dean, and himself. At the meeting, Magruder asked what to do with the Gemstone file. Mitchell suggested that it might be a good idea if Magruder had a fire in his home that evening. At the June 19 meeting, according to Magruder, it was agreed that the president’s reelection would suffer if the truth about the break-in and bugging became known, and a plan to cover up this act evolved out of the meeting. On Saturday afternoon, June 17, John Ehrlichman called presidential press secretary Ron Ziegler, who was with the president and Haldeman in Florida, and told him that Howard Hunt was arrested at the Watergate and that Hunt could be traced to the White House. On the 18th, Ehrlichman again called Florida and discussed McCord and Hunt’s involvement in the break-in with Haldeman. Ehrlichman was worried that it could open a can of worms, which could lead prosecutors to Haldeman, Mitchell, himself, and a host of illegal activities that could not stand the light of day. On June 18, the president, then in Key Biscayne, called Chuck Colson. Nixon had reason to believe that Colson was involved in the DNC break-in. After all, Colson was considered the administration’s hit man. According to testimony given by Colson, Nixon was so upset at McCord’s involvement in the break-in that Nixon threw an ashtray across the room. Nixon knew that McCord was a link to CREEP and the White House, and ultimately to Nixon himself. Also on June 18, Nixon put Ehrlichman in charge of Watergate, and Ehrlichman assigned Dean to the operational role in handling the problem. The following day Nixon telephoned Colson, and they spoke for an hour about the break-in. According to Colson’s testimony to the House

25 See Fred Emery, Watergate (New York: Touchstone, 1994), p. 165.

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Judiciary Committee, he told the president that administration officials were holding meetings in Washington to determine how best to handle the problem. When the President returned to Washington on June 20, the cover-up was already in motion. That morning, The Washington Post ran a story that proclaimed: “White House Consultant tied to bugging figure.” The Howard Hunt link was being pieced together. If Hunt could be linked to his sponsor, Colson, it was a very short step to the president. June 20 was the first time Nixon had the opportunity to meet with the top people involved in the break-in and cover-up. On that day, the president held meetings or discussions with Haldeman, Mitchell, Colson, and others. He discussed Watergate with these aides, and when the White House taping system was revealed during the House investigation, a search for tapes of these meetings proved fruitless. Meetings with Mitchell were, according to a White House spokesman, not recorded; plus, there was a mysterious 18½ minute gap in a Haldeman conversation on Watergate, and a 38-second gap in the Dictabelt recording Nixon made of his daily recollections. On this, the most important day for the president, the day when he first discussed Watergate with the top principals, the recorded evidence is mysteriously gone. By June 23, less than a week after the arrests, the president was directly leading a criminal cover-up. In a discussion between Haldeman and Nixon, the substance of which was not revealed until August 5, 1974, the president’s chief of staff informed Nixon that the break-in occurred because Liddy was under pressure to “get more information,” to which the president responded, “All right, fine. I understand it all. We won’t second-guess Mitchell and the rest. Thank God it wasn’t Colson.” Haldeman then informed Nixon that the FBI was beginning to close in on the source of money used for the illegal activities, saying “the FBI is not under control,” and suggested that “the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters, [deputy director, CIA] call Pat Gray [acting director, FBI] and just say ‘stay the hell out of this’ … Pat wants to [end the investigation]… he doesn’t have the basis for doing it. Given this, he will then have the basis.” The president then ordered Haldeman to tell CIA director Richard Helms that “the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And… that they [the CIA] should call the FBI in and [unintelligible] don’t go any further into this case period!”

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Later that day in another meeting with Haldeman, Nixon ordered Haldeman to tell Helms that “Hunt… knows too damned much… If it gets out that this is all involved… it would make the CIA look bad, it’s going to make Hunt look bad, and it is likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs things which we think would be very unfortunate – both for the CIA and for the country… and for American foreign policy. Just tell him [Helms] to lay off… I would just say, look it, because of the Hunt involvement, whole cover basically this.” At 1:30 p.m. on June 23, Haldeman and Ehrlichman met with Helms and Vernon Walters of the CIA and persuaded them to approach Gray in an effort to limit the FBI investigation into the break-in. Later that afternoon, Haldeman again met with the president to report on his meeting with Helms and Walters. He told the president that though he didn’t mention Hunt, he did tell the CIA officials that “the thing was leading into directions that were going to create potential problems because they were exploring leads that led back into areas that would be harmful to the CIA and harmful to the Government,” and that Helms “kind of got the picture.” He said Helms told him, “We’ll be very happy to be helpful [unintelligible] to handle anything you want… Walters is going to make a call to Gray.” At almost the precise moment Haldeman was having this conversation with the president, Vernon Walters called L. Patrick Gray and told him that if the FBI pursued its investigation into Mexico, it would be jeopardizing some of the CIA’s covert operations. He suggested that the investigation be limited to the suspects already under arrest. Gray complied. Thus, the criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice, to interfere with an FBI investigation, began less than a week after the arrests in the Watergate. This put the president right in the middle of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. The national security excuse was a ruse. The top people in the administration were covering up a crime. In his memoirs, Richard Nixon explained that the events surrounding the June 23 meeting were the first steps toward the end of his presidency. Admitting that he did enlist the CIA’s help in limiting the FBI investigation, Nixon nonetheless defends his actions as a pragmatic way of dealing with a potential problem, not as a criminal cover-up.26

26 Nixon, RN , p. 646.

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On June 30 John Mitchell abruptly resigned as head of CREEP for “personal reasons.” But Mitchell was not out of the picture. He simply moved across the hall to rejoin his old law firm and from there continued to lead the cover-up. Meetings frequently took place involving Mitchell, Magruder, and LaRue in which, as Magruder recalls, “We did not discuss the Watergate affair in terms of perjury or burglary or conspiracy. We would refer, rather, to ‘handling the case’ and ‘making sure things don’t get out of hand.’”27 From the day after the burglars were caught at DNC headquarters, until the November presidential election, President Nixon and his top aides conducted a plan of concealment, cover-up, and containment. The goals were to prevent any damaging information from getting to the prosecutors and to make sure that no explosive scandals interfered with the reelection of the president. Within weeks, in an effort to contain and cover up, efforts were made to buy the silence of the defendants in the Watergate break-in case with promises of executive clemency and money. (John Dean testified that he told Mitchell of “the need for support money in exchange for the silence of the men in jail.” Liddy and his associates eventually received over $500,000.) Officials of CREEP were pressured to commit perjury, and an effort was under way to interfere with the FBI investigation. In early July, suspicion grew of a possible connection between the burglars and White House officials. U.S. District Court Judge John Sirica, who was overseeing the Watergate grand jury, raised a number of questions, but his prodding seemed to be going nowhere. The president tried to distance himself from the break-in, denying any complicity for himself or any White House officials in the illegal acts. At an August 29 press conference, Nixon, responding to a question on Watergate, said that “what really hurts, is if you try to cover it up.” When, on September 15, an eight-count indictment in the Watergate case was handed out, the charges were limited to Hunt, Liddy, and the five burglars. The charges included stealing documents, tapping telephones, and planting eavesdropping devices. The president’s strategy was working; no one close to the president was implicated. Why a cover-up? Why didn’t the president come clean early and cut his losses? Why was there virtually no discussion of not covering up?

27 Magruder, Hofstra University, November 1987.

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According to Jeb Magruder, on the Monday after the break-in, he met with Mitchell and suggested that they come clean on Watergate immediately. But Mitchell, after a discussion with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, told Magruder that they could not come clean on Watergate because they had “other reasons” to keep the lid on the story. Indeed, “other reasons” made the cover-up necessary. Covering up the break-in itself was not the key; what was important was to keep a lid on all the other illegal and unethical activities that might be revealed if the “can of worms” were opened. The real enemy was an enemy from within. That is what had to be kept hidden, the dirty tricks and dirty money and crimes of the past several years: warrantless wiretaps, the Fielding break-in, the extortion of campaign funds, sabotage of elections, campaign crimes, and a host of other crimes. There simply could not not be a cover-up.

Uncovering the Cover-Up While most of the press initially played down the Watergate story, two reporters for The Washington Post , Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, began to piece the story together, finding many loose ends that pointed toward involvement by higher-ups in the Nixon administration. On October 10, they published a story linking John Mitchell to illegal campaign acts. In spite of scathing attacks from the president’s men, the Post, on October 25, published another damaging article, this one linking Bob Haldeman to the scandal. Slowly, things were closing in on the president. In an effort to control the Watergate investigation, the president, through John Dean, closely monitored the Justice Department’s investigations. Dean was allowed to sit in on questioning of White House and CREEP officials, and as Dean later told the president, “I was totally aware what the bureau was doing at all times. I was totally aware what the grand jury was doing. I knew what witnesses were going to be called. I knew what they were going to be asked.” When Nixon asked why Henry Peterson (the assistant attorney general who was in charge of the Watergate investigation) was “so straight with us,” Dean replied, “Because he is a soldier.” This greatly aided the administration in its efforts to keep the investigation limited. Thus, witnesses could be encouraged to commit perjury and conceal information, and Dean could keep track of how well the cover-up

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was holding together. Additionally, Peterson kept reporting to the president on the status of the investigation. Peterson did not know that the information he gave Nixon was going to aid in the cover-up because he did not know that the president was involved in the cover-up. At one point, Nixon told Ehrlichman and Ziegler, “I’ve got Peterson on a short leash.” Following pressure from Nixon, Peterson, and his colleague Earl Silbert, kept the investigation “on a very narrow course.” By late December, James McCord sent John Caulfield a letter warning: “If the Watergate operation is laid at the CIA’s feet, where it does not belong, every tree in the forest will fall. It will be a scorched desert. The whole matter is at the precipice now. Just pass the message that if they want it to blow, they are on exactly the right course.”28 Shortly after the election, the defendants began to fear that they were vulnerable, that Nixon did not need their silence as much as he did prior to the election, and that they might be “forgotten.” Hunt began pressuring Charles Colson. He spoke of the financial needs of the defendants. But Colson, who was taping the call, tried to get Hunt to back away. Hunt refused. Colson gave the tape to Dean, who played it for Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The threat was clear. Dean was told to “tell Mitchell to take care of all these problems.” Hunt wrote a nine-hundred-word indictment of the way they were being handled by the administration. The defendants, he wrote, had committed the burglary “against their better judgment,” but the administration was guilty of “indecisiveness at the moment of crisis.” They failed to “quash the investigation while that option was still open,” and leveled a laundry list of other charges, including “failure to provide promised support funds on a timely and adequate basis; continued postponements and consequent avoidance of commitments.” Then Hunt listed some of the potentially damaging information he possessed: “Mitchell may well have perjured himself”; the Watergate crime was “only one of a number of highly illegal conspiracies engaged in by one or more of the defendants at the behest of senior White House officials. These as yet undisclosed crimes can be proved”; that “immunity from prosecution and/or judicial clemency for cooperating defendants is

28 New York Times Staff, The End of a Presidency (New York: Bantam, 1974), p. 161.

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a standing offer”; and that “congressional elections will take place in less than two years.” The deadline given Colson was extended to November 27, but the defendants would meet before that time to “determine our joint and automatic response to evidence of continued indifference on the part of those in whose behalf we have suffered the loss of our employment, our futures, and our reputations as honorable men. The foregoing should not be interpreted as threat. It is among other things a reminder that loyalty has always been a two-way street.”29 The president of the United States was being blackmailed. The threat worked. Almost immediately, $50,000 was delivered by LaRue to Hunt’s lawyer. Shortly thereafter, LaRue said he needed more money. Haldeman told Dean to give LaRue “the entire damn bundle, but make sure we get a receipt.” It was a comment reminiscent of the great line from The Godfather, “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.” On December 8, Hunt’s wife, Dorothy, was killed in a plane crash. She was carrying $10,000 in $100 bills. Hunt became increasingly despondent and wanted clemency. Colson began to push for clemency to Ehrlichman, who, according to Dean, took the matter up with the president and then gave Colson an assurance that the president had promised clemency for Hunt. A few days later, the president and Colson discussed Hunt’s clemency. Nixon endorsed the idea for Hunt and Liddy but said he “would have difficulty with some of the others.” Colson pointed out that the others “can’t hurt us.” But Hunt and Liddy could: “direct meetings, discussions are very incriminating to us… They’re both good healthy right-wing exuberates.” On January 8, 1973, it appeared that the administration would be able to hold the cover-up together. As the Watergate trial approached, Dean, meeting with the president, laid out the scenario for the trial. According to notes taken by Haldeman, Dean told the president: Hunt take guilty 3 counts After Silbert opening stmt w/say no higher-ups involved rest w/go to trial-Rothblatt wild man w/ Cubans

29 Lukas, Nightmare, pp. 257–59.

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Liddy go-hope for error-lots of procedures etc. All will sit mute and if immunized after-w/take contempt better cause won’t take stand McCord will testify-but he has no firsthand knowledge Grt Concern that commitments won’t be honored prob w/funds-LaRue on this

Three days later, the Watergate trial began. Everyone was back on the reservation, just in time. The defendants all pleaded guilty except for Liddy and McCord. On June 30, after deliberating for only ninety minutes, the Watergate jury, found Liddy guilty on all six counts and McCord guilty on all eight counts. Sentencing was postponed. On February 2, Judge Sirica said that he was “not satisfied” that the full story on Watergate had been disclosed. In spite of Sirica’s skepticism, the cover-up was holding. But as each problem was temporarily solved, a new one sprang up. On February 7, by a 70-0 vote, the Senate established a select committee, headed by North Carolina’s Sam Ervin, to investigate Watergate and related campaign abuses. In response to the committee, the president, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, and aide Richard Moore met at the LaCosta resort in California on February 10 and 11. In meetings that lasted between eight and fourteen hours, the group agreed on a strategy; CREEP, not the White House, would assume primary responsibility for Watergate defense matters, John Mitchell would coordinate this, and, as Dean later recalled, they would “take a posture of full cooperation but privately… attempt to restrain the investigation and make it as difficult as possible to get information and witnesses… The ultimate goal would be to discredit the hearings.” H.R. Haldeman’s notes of February 11 reflect this: public stance of cooperation but stand ready to quietly obstruct paint as partisan but not from W.H.

The “La Costa Strategy” became part of the cover-up attempt. Starting on February 27, John Dean began a series of meetings with the president to discuss the cover-up. Dean warned the president that the containment policy might not hold up forever. (The tape of this conversation

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was subpoenaed during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry, but the White House could not find the tape.) On the morning of February 28, Dean told the president, “We have come a long road on this already. I had thought it was an impossible task to hold together but we have made it this far and I am convinced we are going to make it the whole road and put this thing in the funny pages of the history books rather than anything serious.” But on that day, Pat Gray’s confirmation hearings to be director of the FBI began. Gray ended up telling much more than he intended. In what proved to be a major embarrassment, Gray admitted that he repeatedly turned over FBI files on the Watergate investigation to Dean, in spite of the fact that Dean and other White House officials were suspects in the investigation. Gray also admitted that Dean had been allowed to sit in when the FBI questioned witnesses, and that Dean “probably lied.” Nixon did not want Dean to testify. He knew too much. Thus, executive privilege was invoked. Nixon’s view of executive privilege, the “right” of a president to refuse to answer or have his staff answer to the Congress, was unusually broad, almost absolute. The president stated on March 12: “Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the President personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government. If the President is not subject to such questioning, it is equally appropriate that members of his staff not be so questioned, for their roles are in effect an extension of the Presidency.” The Judiciary Committee was unpersuaded and voted unanimously to demand Dean’s appearance. The president could not afford to have Dean testify, and he eventually withdrew Gray’s nomination. As Dean’s role became more exposed, he began to have doubts about whether the cover-up could be maintained. On March 13, he warned the president, “There are dangers… There is a certain domino situation. If some things start going, a lot of other things are going to start going.” The president, as usual, was more graphic: “Sloan starts pissing on Magruder and then Magruder starts pissing on who, even Haldeman.” Everyone, Dean noted, was looking to “cover his own ass.” Each day seemed to bring a new damaging revelation. By midMarch the president spent more and more time dealing with, or—more accurately—reacting to, each new problem. The criminal investigation continued, the Senate was about to start its hearings, the press dug deeper, and the public was turning slowly against the president. A new public relations strategy was needed.

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On March 17, the president pressured Dean to write a report that “basically clears the President,” in which Dean could “make self-serving god damn statements.” But Dean did not write his Watergate report clearing the president. Dean feared that he was being set up. He was right. The March 21 meeting between the president and John Dean was pivotal in the Watergate saga. In what has been called the “Cancer on the Presidency” meeting, Dean gave Nixon a comprehensive overview of the complicity of Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Magruder, Colson, Kalmbach, Strachan, and himself in the Fielding and Watergate break-ins and the cover-up, telling the president, “A lot of these people could be indicted.” Dean told the president of the danger and reviewed the genesis of Watergate: Dean: I think, I think that, uh, there’s no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we’ve got. We have a cancer-within-close to the Presidency that’s growing. It’s growing daily. It’s compounding, it grows geometrically now, because it compounds itself. Uh, that’ll be clear as I explain, you know, some of the details, uh, of why it is, and it basically is because (1) we’re being blackmailed; (2) uh, people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly that have not have had to perjure themselves to protect other people and the like. And that is just – And there is no assurance – President: That it won’t bust. Dean: That that won’t bust. President: True.

Dean gave the president details of the Watergate crimes, many of which Nixon already knew. Dean described the Liddy Plan, Mitchell’s role, the Ellsberg’s break-in, the dirty tricks, the Watergate break-in, and perjury by administration officials. Then, Dean turned to the cover-up, reminding the president he “was under pretty clear instructions not to really… investigate this.” Dean went on to discuss the money demands of the Watergate defendants. These payoffs were, to Dean, Dean: The most troublesome post-thing, uh, because (1) Bob is involved in that; John is involved in that; I am involved in that; Mitchell is involved in that. And that’s an obstruction of justice. President: In other words the fact that, uh, that you’re, you’re, you’re taking care of witnesses. Dean: That’s right. Uh… But, now, here, here’s what’s happening right now.

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Dean then briefed the president on some of the other problems they faced. In the March 21 meeting, the president was fully informed on Watergate, its roots, and the continuing cover-up. He was told of potential criminal liability among his top people and was warned that the cover-up was cracking. The cancer on the presidency was growing, warned Dean. Rather than clean up the mess, Nixon got deeper into a cover-up. He instructed others on how to commit perjury, approved of hush money to maintain the silence of the Watergate defendants, and orchestrated a new cover-up plan. Nixon was now in charge of the management of the Watergate cover-up. The following day, the president, Dean, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell met in the Oval Office to devise a way of dealing with the upcoming Senate hearings. They discussed a way to limit testimony, using executive privilege as a means. The president, responding to a suggestion by Mitchell, said, “All that John Mitchell is arguing, then, is that now we use flexibility in order to get on with the coverup plan.” All the participants knew that they could not fully testify. As Nixon said to Mitchell, “I know we can’t make a complete cave-in and have the people go up there and testify. You would agree on that?” “I agree,” responded Mitchell. Toward the end of the March 22 meeting, Nixon assured everyone, “We will survive it,” and complimented Dean for being a “son-of-abitching tough thing,” and the president added: “I don’t give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up or anything else, if it’ll save it – save the plan. That’s the whole point.” Then the president, commenting to Mitchell, said, “Up to this point the whole theory has been containment, as you know, John,” and Mitchell answered, “Yeah.” The following day, everything changed. On Friday, March 23, an unexpected crack in the cover-up developed. In open court, Judge John Sirica dropped a bombshell when he made public a letter written to him by convicted Watergate burglar James McCord. McCord’s letter charged that the Watergate defendants were under “political pressure” to plead guilty and remain silent, that perjury had been committed, and that higher-ups were involved. The following week McCord testified for four hours in a closed-door session before the Senate Watergate Committee. He declared that Colson, Dean, Magruder, and Mitchell had prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in.

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Dean began to feel the noose closing around his neck and feared that Nixon would serve him up as the fall guy. The McCord letter and his fear that Nixon was setting him up, plus the continued pressure to write a “Dean report,” led Dean to consider a trip to the prosecutors in hopes of getting a deal. Finally, on March 26, when Haldeman told Dean that the White House was cutting Magruder and Mitchell loose, he realized that everyone except the president was expendable. Dean, fearing that Magruder would crack, called criminal lawyer Charles Shaffer. On April 2, Dean’s lawyers told the prosecutors that their client was ready to cooperate, and on April 8, Dean began to talk. Magruder, seeing the writing on the wall, also decided to cooperate with prosecutors.

All Fall Down April was a particularly bad month for the president. With Dean and Magruder talking to the prosecutors, he had to see that the cover-up was likely to collapse. In mid-April, the world began to shatter for Nixon. He called April 14 “the day when everything began to fall apart.” The president had devised an “hors d’oevre strategy,” as Nixon told Haldeman and Ehrlichman, “Give ‘em an hors d’oeuvre and maybe they won’t come back for the main course.” But who would be a tasty hors d’oeuvre? John Mitchell. On April 14, Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman decided to try to get Mitchell to take the fall for Watergate. He refused. Ehrlichman’s unsuccessful effort to persuade Mitchell to take the rap for the president led Mitchell to conclude that he was “too far out” and would not take the fall. Mitchell defended himself by pointing out that the genesis of Watergate came from pressure exerted from within the White House, not from his office. If Mitchell would not shoulder blame and protect Nixon, who would? It was decided that John Dean would be made a presidential scapegoat, the sacrificial lamb. The new strategy devised by Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman was to have Dean write a report that “basically clears the President and the White House staff of involvement.” If Dean would submit such a report, the president could go public and say, “Look, this is what I relied on. Dean deceived me.” But Dean refused, suspecting that he was being set up, and instead continued to talk to the Justice Department in hopes of getting a deal from the prosecutors and tell all. On April 14, the president, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman discussed their own complicity in the cover-up. The president began by saying that

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“Dean only tried to do what he could to pick up the pieces, and everybody else around here knew it had to be done.” “Certainly,” Ehrlichman said. Later Ehrlichman, the only one of the three who was not aware of the taping system then in operation, said, “There were eight or ten people around here who knew about this [the totality of the criminal activities], knew it was going on, Bob knew, I knew, all kinds of people knew.” “Well, I knew it, I knew it,” Nixon added. The president’s desperate efforts to save the cover-up seemed doomed the following day, April 15, when Attorney General Richard Kleindienst informed Nixon that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were “being drawn into the criminal case,” and that Dean was their chief accuser. Kleindienst advised the president to dismiss his two top aides. At 9:00 on the evening of the 15th, Dean met with the president and told him, according to Dean’s testimony to the Senate, that he “had gone to the prosecutors,” told them of his own involvement and that of others but had not discussed with them the president’s role in Watergate. The president asked Dean a number of leading questions that made Dean think the conversation was being taped, and Nixon said of his March assurance to Dean that he could get $1 million “to maintain the silence of the defendants,” that “he had, of course, only been joking.” The president knew Dean had to go, but he was still hoping to pin the blame on Dean. When they met on April 16, Nixon gave Dean two draft letters, one requesting a leave of absence, the other a letter of resignation. Dean refused to sign either, again fearing he was being set up. The following morning the president discussed the John Dean problem with Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Dean has “decided to save his ass,” the president said. And on April 17, Haldeman records in his notes that he told Nixon, “I must admit the guy (Dean) has really turned into an unbelievable disaster for us.” “I’m trapped,” the president concluded, “I’ve trapped myself.” In an April 30 television address, the president, bowing to the inevitable, announced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He also announced John Dean’s dismissal. He denied any personal involvement in the break-in or cover-up but conceded that “there had been an effort to conceal the facts.” Nixon claimed that he was misled by subordinates into believing that no one from his administration or campaign organization was involved. In his memoirs, Nixon admits that the April 30 speech was less than truthful, giving the impression that he was unaware of the cover-up until

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March 21. Instead of “exerting presidential leadership,” Nixon admitted embarking upon an “increasingly desperate search for ways to limit the damage.”30 The president was unprotected; his “Berlin Wall” of Haldeman and Ehrlichman was gone. If Nixon was isolated before, he was even more alone and isolated in May as the Senate Watergate hearings began. At this time, the Nixon high command took a new shape. General Alexander Haig assumed Haldeman’s role as chief of staff. Bowing to pressure to appoint a special prosecutor in the Watergate case, new Attorney General Elliot Richardson announced that former solicitor general and Harvard Law professor Archibald Cox would serve in that capacity. Cox immediately went to work accumulating evidence.

The Ervin Committee When the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (the Ervin Committee) opened its hearings on May 17, the president was already in a precarious position: Dean, Magruder, and McCord were talking, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman had been fired, the president’s popularity was slipping, and the press was pursuing lead after lead on Watergate. The fact that the Senate hearings would be televised nationally only made matters worse. The hearings got off to a slow start, with the committee calling witnesses on the periphery of power. Everyone was waiting for John Dean. Finally, on June 25, Dean took the chair and began to read a prepared opening statement in a monotone voice: “To one who was in the White House and became somewhat familiar with its innerworkings, the Watergate matter was an inevitable outgrowth of a climate of excessive concern over the political impact of demonstrators, excessive concern over leaks, an insatiable appetite for political intelligence, all coupled with a do-it-yourself White House staff, regardless of the law.” Thus began a 245-page statement in which Dean blew the lid off the administration. The portrait Dean painted was devastating: wiretapping, burglary, enemies lists, secret funds, money laundering, dirty tricks, Plumbers, surveillance, character assassination, obstruction of justice, a

30 Nixon, RN , p. 850.

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cover-up. But all Dean had was his word—no documentation, no corroboration. Dean’s assertion that the president was right in the middle of the mess came down to his word against the president’s. Could this dilemma be resolved? The answer fell into the lap of the committee on July 16 when several staff members questioned Nixon staffer Alexander Butterfield in preparation for his appearance before the committee. In that questioning, Butterfield revealed the existence of a White House taping system. Butterfield was rushed to give testimony. Minority counsel Fred Thompson asked, “Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?” “Are you aware of any devices that were installed in the Executive Office Building office of the President?” asked Thompson. “Yes, sir.” The president had secretly tape-recorded all conversations in the Oval Office, the president’s office in the Executive Office Building, the Lincoln Room, and at Camp David. It was a bombshell. The tapes could confirm or shatter Dean’s charges against the president. It was no longer Dean’s word against the president’s. There was proof. The Senate immediately requested the tapes, as did the special prosecutor. Nixon refused. The Senate and special prosecutor subpoenaed several specific tapes, and Nixon still refused, citing executive privilege. The Senate Watergate Committee and Archibald Cox took the president to court over the tapes. On August 29, Judge John Sirica ruled that the president must turn over the subpoenaed tapes. The president appealed the ruling, and on October 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Sirica’s order. The president appealed the Supreme Court. The Senate committee continued to hear from witnesses. Mitchell, Ehrlichman, and Haldeman all contradicted Dean and pointed the finger at Dean as being the real culprit in the cover-up. But as the Senate’s investigation wound down, the battle for the tapes heated up. As if things weren’t bad enough for President Nixon, the Justice Department was also investigating charges of corruption against Vice President Spiro Agnew. Allegedly, Agnew had taken cash payments— bribes—in exchange for government contracts while Agnew was an official in and later governor of Maryland. According to the charges, Agnew was accepting bribe money while he was vice president. An investigation by the U.S. attorney in Baltimore found approximately fifty possible criminal violations, including bribery, extortion,

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conspiracy, and tax evasion. After reviewing the evidence, Agnew’s attorneys negotiated a plea bargain: Agnew would resign as vice president, plead nolo contendere (no contest) to a single charge of income tax evasion, the Justice Department would enter the evidence into the public record, and Agnew would escape a prison sentence. Walter Hoffman, the judge in the case, told Agnew that the no-contest plea was “the full equivalent of a plea of guilty.” On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew resigned as vice president. Nixon nominee, Congressman Gerald Ford, was easily confirmed and was sworn in as vice president on December 6, 1973. The battle for the tapes continued, with the president insisting that Archibald Cox, who was technically a part of the executive branch, cease from pressing the president to produce the tapes. In an effort to get a compromise, Nixon offered Cox a surprise deal: The Stennis Plan. Under this plan, Nixon would let the seventy-two-year-old conservative Democrat Senator John Stennis of Mississippi, who was still recovering from a gunshot wound, verify the accuracy of a transcript of the tapes, but not turn them over to Cox. Part of the deal included an insistence that Cox ask for no more tapes. Cox refused, and on October 20, in what came to be known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” Attorney General Richardson, ordered by Nixon to fire Cox, refused to do so and resigned. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus refused as well. He too resigned. Finally, Solicitor General Robert Bork was named acting attorney general, and he carried out Nixon’s order to fire Cox, abolish the special prosecutor’s office, and have the FBI seal Cox’s offices to prevent removal of any files. A tremendous public outcry followed, as did the introduction of twenty-two bills in Congress calling for an impeachment investigation. On October 30, the House Judiciary Committee began consideration of possible procedures in the event of an impeachment. Nixon finally agreed to turn over some of the tapes. On November 1, 1973, Leon Jaworski was appointed as a new special prosecutor. He too sought the tapes. As pressure on the president mounted, calls for his resignation appeared. On November 17, the president, in a televised press conference, said, “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.” The president was determined to try one last public relations offensive; this one called “Operation Candor.” Nixon would publicly promise to deliver everything, but stall, stall, and stall. Although the president

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promised on November 20 that there were no more Watergate “bombshells waiting to explode, on the very next day Nixon’s lawyers told John Sirica of a “gap” problem in the tapes. Operation Candor was dead when Judge John Sirica revealed that there was an 18½ minute gap in the important June 20, 1972, tape of a conversation between Nixon and Haldeman, a meeting held three days after the Watergate break-in. Alexander Haig, Nixon’s chief of staff, blamed the gap on “some sinister force,” but a panel of experts concluded that it was the result of five separate manual erasures. Judge Sirica recommended a grand jury investigation into “the possibility of unlawful destruction of evidence and related offenses,” adding “a distinct possibility of unlawful conduct on the part of one or more persons exists.” The 18½ minute gap caused another public outcry. Nixon dug in. The president announced that he would not hand over any more tapes because it would violate confidentiality and could have an adverse effect on the Watergate trials. On February 6, with only four dissenting votes, the House of Representatives adopted H.R. 803, which directed the House Committee on the Judiciary, under Chairman Peter Rodino (D-New Jersey), to begin an investigation into whether grounds existed for the House to impeach President Nixon. On March 1, a federal grand jury indicted seven former top presidential aides—Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Mardian, Parkinson, and Strachan—for attempting to cover up the Watergate investigation by lying to the FBI and the grand jury, and for paying hush money to the original defendants. The grand jury also turned a briefcase over to Judge Sirica, the contents of which were kept secret, but which related to the president’s role in the scandal. Based on this material, the grand jury named Richard M. Nixon, president of the United States, as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the case. The House joined the Senate and special prosecutor in seeking White House tapes, but the president continued to resist. Finally, on April 29, in a national television address, Nixon announced that he would supply the Judiciary Committee with “edited transcripts” of the subpoenaed conversations. Nixon said this action would “at last, once and for all, show that what I knew and what I did with regard to the Watergate break-in and cover-up were just as I have described them to you from the very beginning. As far as the president’s role with regard to Watergate is concerned, the entire story is there.”

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But the entire story was not there. The transcripts later proved to be incomplete and inaccurate. At the time, however, they appeared impressive indeed. The president, in his speech, had the camera pan to a table containing stacks of binders that appeared to contain thousands of pages. In reality, this was a public relations ploy. Many of the large binders contained only a few pages of text. Among the many White House omissions is this portion of the March 22, 1973, conversation between Nixon and Mitchell. The president says: “I don’t give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it’ll save it – save the plan. That’s the whole point… Up to this point, the whole theory has been containment, as you know, John.” This incriminating material does not appear in the White House transcript, but it is in the House Judiciary Committee’s version. There were many other inaccuracies. Nixon’s sanitized version was not acceptable, and the fight for the tapes continued. Leon Jaworski was methodically building a criminal case against administration officials, but a problem remained: What to do about the president? The charges against Mitchell, Haldeman et al. hinged upon a conspiracy in which the president was actively involved. The question was: could the president be indicted in a criminal case, or was impeachment the only means with which to deal with charges of criminality? Jaworski asked his staff for legal memoranda on this question. The conclusion reached was that while there was a question of “propriety,” there was “no constitutional ban to indictment.”31 Jaworski, however, decided that while there was clearly enough evidence to indict Nixon, he would not indict a sitting president.

The House Faces Impeachment In this highly charged atmosphere of eroding public confidence in the president, in which every day seemed to bring a new, more damaging revelation, the House Judiciary Committee prepared to open the public phase of its impeachment inquiry. The case against the president had been building for over a year, but the case was made up primarily of circumstantial evidence linking the president to the scandal, with accusations from Dean, Magruder, and others. The direct evidence was still fairly thin. 31 Richard Ben-Veniste and George Frampton, Jr., Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977).

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On February 21, Committee counsel John Doar submitted a report to the committee entitled, “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment,” which reviewed the history of impeachment and its application to the case at hand. Doar concluded that impeachment was a remedy to be applied in cases of “serious offenses against the system of government.” A long, often heated, sometimes eloquent debate over the evidence against the president ensued. Under the glare of national television, Chairman Peter Rodino of New Jersey guided the hearings through these difficult times with even-handedness. He knew that if the impeachment of Richard Nixon were to be legitimate and appropriate, it would require a bipartisan vote in favor of impeachment. On July 19, Doar summarized the case against Nixon for the committee. “Reasonable men,” he said, “acting reasonably would find the President guilty.” Doar spoke of Nixon’s “enormous crimes” and accused the president of “the terrible deed of subverting the Constitution.” Minority counsel Albert Jenner supported Doar’s conclusion. On July 27, the committee voted on Article I of impeachment, which accused the president of engaging in a “course of conduct” designed to obstruct justice in attempting to cover up Watergate. This article passed by 27-11 vote, with 6 Republicans joining all 21 Democrats in the majority. The following day, Article II, charging Nixon with abuse of power, passed 28-10, and on the following day, a third article of impeachment, charging the president with unconstitutionally defying a congressional subpoena for White House tape recordings, passed 21-17. Two other articles, dealing with concealing the bombing of Cambodia and with income tax evasion, both failed by a 26-12 vote. The vote against the president—especially on Articles I and II—was bipartisan (see Table 3.1). The Judiciary Committee would recommend to the full House that it vote to impeach Richard M. Nixon, 37th president of the United States. On only one other occasion, in the impeachment of Andrew Johnson over 100 years earlier, had the House faced such a situation.

The Ongoing Battle for the Tapes Everyone seemed to want Nixon’s White House tapes. The Senate, the special prosecutor, then the House, all wanted the actual tapes to see who was telling the truth. But the president refused to part with the tapes,

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Table 3.1 Vote on impeachment articles* Article

I II III IV V

For

Obstruction of Justice Abuse of Power Contempt of Congress Bombing of Cambodia Income Tax Evasion

Against

Dems

Reps

Dems

Reps

Total

21 21 19 12 12

6 7 2

0 0 2 9 9

11 10 15 17 17

27-11 28-10 21-17 12-26 12-26

*Source Adapted from Impeachment of Richard Nixon, Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, August 20, 1974

citing various executive privilege, the need for confidentiality, and other reasons. By a vote of 20-18 (essentially along partisan lines), the Judiciary Committee rejected Nixon’s offer of written transcripts instead of the actual tapes, and informed the president that he had “failed to comply with the Committee’s subpoena.” The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Taking the case placed the Court in the center of a legal and political battle. Plus, it was not a foregone conclusion that the president would obey a Court ruling. He had already warned that he would only obey a “definitive” ruling, and Charles Alan Wright, Nixon’s lawyer, said, “The tradition is very strong that judges should have the last word, but” he added, “in a government organized as ours is, there are times when that simply cannot be the case.” The case, United States of America v. Richard Nixon, revolved around the question of who decides whether a president obeys a subpoena—the Congress, the courts, or the president himself? Nixon’s lawyer, James St. Clair, maintained that, “The president is not above the law. Nor does he contend that he is. What he does contend is that as President the law can be applied to him only one way, and that is by impeachment.” On July 24, in an 8-0 decision (Justice William Rehnquist, who at one time worked in the Nixon administration, recused himself from the case), the Supreme Court ruled that President Nixon must give the tapes to Judge Sirica. They were evidence in a criminal case. While acknowledging a heretofore-unrecognized constitutional basis for the claim of executive

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privilege, the Court ruled that in this case, the president was required to turn over the tapes. The decision read in part: A President and those who assist him must be free to explore alternatives in the process of shaping policies and making decisions and to do so in a way many would be unwilling to express except privately... The privilege is fundamental to the operation of government and inextricably rooted in the separation of powers under the Constitution... Nowhere in the Constitution... is there any explicit reference to a privilege of confidentiality, yet to the extend this interest related to the effective discharge of the President’s power, it is constitutionally based.

But this privilege was not without limits. The court noted: Neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances. The President’s need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts. However, when the privilege depends solely on the broad undifferentiated claim of public interest in the confidentiality of such conversations, a confrontation with other values arises.

On August 5, Nixon, backed into a corner, finally released the tapes, and his fate was sealed. The June 23, 1972, tape became known as the “smoking gun,” providing undeniable evidence of Nixon’s criminal complicity. When its content became known, the president’s defense collapsed. The president admitted that some of the tapes “are at variance with certain of my previous statements.” Nixon had lied, covered up, and obstructed justice, not for national security reasons, but to protect himself. There was no way Nixon could survive. Even his staunchest supporters turned on the president. It was over. Impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate were now certainties. Public opinion, which had been turning against the president since January, was now overwhelmingly against him. The June 23 tape not only revealed that Nixon was directing a criminal cover-up in the first week after the break-in, but also showed Nixon to be a small, petty person. This tape, and others, contained revealing personal glimpses into Nixon the man, and much of what was revealed showed a dark side of Nixon never before seen by the public.

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The Resignation The final days were a nightmare for Nixon. He became progressively alone and isolated. He began to drink heavily. Son-in-law Edward Cox later remarked, “the president was up walking the halls last night, talking to pictures of former presidents – giving speeches and talking to the pictures on the wall.” Theodore H. White said the president was “an unstable personality” and “a time bomb which, if not defused in just the right way, might blow the course of all American history apart.” Chief of Staff Haig ordered the president’s doctors to deny Nixon all pills.32 In the final days, a virtual palace coup took place. With the president behaving in an unstable manner, Haig took over day-to-day operations of the White House, and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger ordered all military commanders to accept no orders from Nixon unless Schlesinger himself countersigned the order. As those around the president began to see resignation as the only viable alternative, a slow, delicate process of coaxing Nixon to accept the inevitable began. With his popularity in the low 20 percent range and falling, with impeachment and conviction a certainty, all that remained was for the final decision to be made. In the late afternoon of August 7, Hugh Scott, minority leader in the Senate, John Rhodes, minority leader in the House, and Barry Goldwater, elder statesman of the Republican party, met with Nixon in the Oval office. Al Haig warned them, “He is almost on the edge of resignation and if you suggest it, he may take umbrage and reverse.” In the meeting, the word resignation never came up. Instead, the three Republican leaders discussed Nixon’s waning support in the Congress. Scott told Nixon the situation was “gloomy.” It sounds damn gloomy,” Nixon replied. Goldwater said it was “hopeless.” Without using the words, the three visitors made it clear that Nixon would be impeached and convicted. When they left, Nixon went upstairs in the White House to tell his family it was over, and according to his daughter Julie, asked, “Was it worth it?”33 In a fifteen-minute television address delivered on the evening of August 8, 1974, the president announced that “I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.” In the speech, Nixon showed little 32 Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, The Final Days (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), pp. 395 and 100–2, 204, 230–70, 437–39, and 498. 33 Bernstein and Woodward, The Final Days, 441–46.

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remorse, and cited as his reason for leaving that: “In the last few days it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing in office.” He added, “I regret deeply any injuries that may have been done in the course of the events that led to this decision. I would say only that if some of my judgments were wrong – and some were wrong – they were made in what I believed at the time to be in the best interest of the nation.” Nixon neither protested his innocence nor admitted guilt. The next morning, the Nixon family went to the East Room for a farewell to the president’s staff. He then walked to a helicopter for the first leg of a journey that would take him to San Clemente, California. When the plane was midway across the American heartland, he was no longer president of the United States.

“Richard Nixon Letter of Resignation,” August 9, 1974, National Archives Catalog

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“President Richard Nixon departing the White House on the Presidential Helicopter for the Last Time as President,” August 9, 1974, National Archives Catalog Shortly before noon, on August 9, 1974, Nixon’s letter of resignation was delivered to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It read in its entirety: “Dear Mr. Secretary: I hereby resign the office of President of the United States. Sincerely, Richard Nixon.” He was the first president ever to resign from office. Upon being sworn in as president, Gerald Ford said, “Our long national nightmare is over,” and said that the wounds of Watergate were “more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars.” The Judiciary Committee filed its report with the full House. In the end, all thirty-eight members recommended impeachment. On August

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20, the House accepted the committee’s report and recommendations by a vote of 412-3, without taking any action on it. The ten Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who earlier voted against all the impeachment articles issued the following statement: Our gratitude for his having by his resignation spared the nation additional agony should not obscure for history our judgment that Richard Nixon, as President, committed certain acts for which he should have been impeached and removed from office.

They added: We know that it has been said, and perhaps some will continue to say, that Richard Nixon was “hounded from office” by his political opponents and media critics. We feel constrained to point out, however, that it was Richard Nixon who impeded the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate affair by wrongfully attempting to implicate the Central Intelligence Agency; it was Richard Nixon, who created and preserved the evidence of that transgression and who, knowing that it had been subpoenaed by this Committee and the Special Prosecutor, concealed its terrible import, even from his own counsel, until he could do so no longer. And it was a unanimous Supreme Court of the United States which, in an opinion authored by the Chief Justice, whom he appointed, ordered Richard Nixon to surrender that evidence to the Special Prosecutor, to further the ends of justice.

The tragedy that finally engulfed Richard Nixon has many facets. One was the very self-inflicted nature of the harm. It is striking that such an able, experienced, and perceptive man, whose ability to grasp the global implications of events little noticed by others may well have been unsurpassed by his predecessors, should fail to comprehend the damage that accrued daily to himself, his Administration, and to the Nation, as day after day, month after month, he covered up the truth about his role in the Watergate cover-up so long and so tightly within the solitude of his Oval Office that it could not be unleashed without destroying his Presidency.

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The Pardon Would Nixon, as an ex-president, have to face criminal charges? After all, the charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice named Nixon as an “unindicted co-conspirator.” The answer came less than a month after Nixon left office. On Sunday, September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford called a news conference in which he announced that he had granted former President Nixon “a full, free, and absolute pardon… for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed, or may have committed, or taken part in during the period” of his presidency. Some suggested that Ford and Nixon, or Ford and Haig, made some sort of deal: resignation in exchange for a pardon. But no proof exists, and all parties to the decision deny that any deal, implicit or explicit, was made. But the pardon, granted in the absence of formal criminal charges, leaves some unanswered questions, and creates disconcerting problems. To what extent was Nixon criminally guilty? Is a president above the law? How does one accept a pardon for acts he claims never to have committed? The Republicans took a beating in the mid-term elections following Nixon’s resignation. Fighting an uphill battle against the recent legacy of Watergate, the Republicans had little hope of doing well. In the House, the Republicans lost forty-eight seats, and in the Senate lost five seats. Numerically this may not seem drastic, but one must remember that the Democrats already had large majorities in both chambers. But the story was not over. The United States would now have to contend with the dark legacy of Watergate.

CHAPTER 4

Nixon’s Curse: A Nation Divided Against Itself

What Did Richard Nixon Do to Us? Watergate is more than the story of one man or one constitutional crisis, it is the story of how we changed, how our politics changed, what was done to us, and what became of us. This chapter will attempt to provide a clearer understanding of the implications of Watergate for American democracy.

Presidential Corruption Let us begin by putting Watergate in historical context. Just how bad— comparatively—was Watergate? American politics—like politics everywhere—has always had its seamy side. Was Watergate similar to or different from other examples of presidential corruption across time? And how did Watergate affect the character and morality of American political life and public expectations of it? Many years ago, management expert Chester Barnard reminded us that the chief role of the executive in any group is to manage the values of the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. A. Genovese, The Legacy of Watergate and the Nixon Presidency, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43474-7_4

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organization.1 Presidents, no less than corporate executives, set the moral tone for their organizations, give clues as to acceptable or unacceptable behavior, and establish norms. Presidents demonstrate by word and deed the kind of behavior that will be tolerated, and the standards applicable to the organization. Presidents also may have an impact on the moral climate beyond their administration. They can use the “bully pulpit” to speak to the values of society. They can elevate or degrade, exemplify integrity, or behave corruptly. For this reason, presidential corruption is an important issue.2 Where does Watergate rank in the history of presidential corruption?3 Political corruption is a difficult subject to research because, if successful, so much remains hidden from view. Keeping the corruption secret is one of the chief goals of the perpetrators. Additionally, there is no accepted definition of what constitutes political corruption. Corruption, when successful, remains hidden from public view. Thus, there may be presidents who should be on this list but were never caught. For still others, allegations were not supported by sufficient evidence. In those cases, hints of corruption could not be verified, and remain merely allegations. Several points seem especially relevant when thinking about political corruption. First, political corruption relates to the conduct of a public official in his or her public capacity. This removes private or personal scandal such as one’s private sex life, unless said behavior has public consequences. Second, corruption involves behavior that violates law or social norms. Third, it involves gain of some sort (e.g., money, power, position). Fourth, it thus involves a violation of a public trust. The world’s great thinkers were concerned about who should rule; and what sort of person ought to, as Max Weber said, “have his hand on the wheel of history.” What skills, characteristics, traits, and training make for a good ruler? For Plato, only a philosopher-king deserved to be trusted with power. Such a ruler went through years of training and was repeatedly tested as they rose in stature and power. Only then were

1 Chester Barnard, Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). 2 James Madison, The Federalist, nos. 10 and 51. 3 Ibid., nos. 56 and 57.

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they worthy of leadership.4 This leader was taught about justice and was expected to rule justly. Plato was among a long line of philosophers concerned with who could both be trusted with power, and who could exercise power justly and efficiently. To the ancients, statecraft and soulcraft were connected. Leaders needed to be taught virtue. Only then might they be worthy of power. This changed with Niccolò Machiavelli, the sixteenth-century Florentine diplomat and philosopher.5 A student of history, Machiavelli looked at how leaders actually behaved, and how they gained and used power. He had little concern for standards of Christian goodness but a great concern for the exercise of power. While it might be useful to teach virtue, it was more important to learn how to gain and use power. Leaders were enmeshed in a world of high-stakes politics where power was the currency of importance. And if the leader were a truly virtuous man, his adversaries might take advantage of him, and his people could fall under the yolk of an oppressor. Statecraft, to Machiavelli, needed to be divorced from soulcraft. Regardless of time, the problem of political corruption has been persistent and vexing. No system has mastered the problem of eliminating corruption. When the American framers met in Philadelphia to invent a new government, they harbored no illusions about changing human nature so as to produce a virtuous ruler. The concern of the framers was: could one grant the government power, yet also control power? The great fear was best expressed by Alexander Hamilton. He wrote: When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed considerable talents having the advantage of military habits – despotic in his ordinary demeanor – known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty – when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity – to join in the cry of danger to liberty – to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion – to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day – it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”6

4 Plato, The Republic. 5 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince. 6 Alexander Hamilton, “Objections and Answers Respecting the Administration,”

August 18, 1792.

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The framers were aware of the possibility of political corruption, and knew that systematic corruption, or “a long train of abuses,” could undermine stability or lead to revolution. How then did they seek to control corruption? The answer was found in what James Madison referred to as the “new science of politics.” Virtue was not enough, and democracy was dangerous, yet embracing an autocratic model was unacceptable. Thus, the framers were forced to conceptualize a new science that would govern politics. The founders premised their political system on the belief that interest and virtue would guide, though not in equal proportions. Interest trumped virtue. The framers did not reject virtue; rather, they thought that one could not rely exclusively on virtue alone to triumph over interest. Thus, interest became the dominant force that animated human behavior, and virtue was secondary. The new science of politics would not rest on the belief that virtue would triumph but on a more jaundiced or “realistic” conception of how humans actually behaved. The framers were less concerned with the way men ought to live, but with how they actually did live. They were concerned less with shaping character than with the reality of human nature. In forming a government with such baggage, the framers drew, not on the language of ethics but on the language of natural science. Newtonian balance or equilibrium kept power in check. Separating power meant that if power was dispersed and fragmented, there would be no single source of power, but many. This system set ambition against ambition and allowed one branch to check another. The framers relied on a structural model of government that recognized self-interest as “normal” among men, and allowed self-interest to prevail. In this way, a balance of powers might be achieved. The framers knew that, as Madison warned, “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” and in the absence of virtuous rulers, only a properly constructed state could control the ambitions of self-interested rulers. While elections were to serve as one control, Madison knew that “experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” For the founders, the primary precaution was found in the way the three political branches were arranged so as to allow ambition to emerge but set ambition against ambition.7 The founders set up a Separation-of-Powers,

7 Madison, The Federalist, nos. 10 and 51.

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Checks and Balances system that allowed for the emergence of institutional self-interest where ambition would counteract ambition, and law was the only legitimate basis of action.8 How well has the founders’ model served the nation and controlled abuses in the presidency? Let us turn to the most prominent cases of Presidential corruption in American history. There are six examples of significant presidential corruption in U.S. history. Most scholars who examine the topic list Grant, Harding, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Trump as the most corrupt presidencies in U.S. history.

Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) The first presidential administration that was confronted with significant charges was the Grant administration. In the aftermath of the Civil War and impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and during the period of reconstruction, the nation turned to the military hero of the Civil War as president: Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was a political novice, and once in office, fell prey to the manipulations and corruption of several of those he appointed to key governmental positions. Grant was an outsider, an amateur in politics, and a lax manager. Several members of his cabinet, his vice president, personal secretary, members of his staff, and even members of his family were implicated in wrongdoing. At forty-five, Grant was the youngest president elected up to that point. Grant had several key shortcomings: lack of political experience, a superficial understanding of the workings of government, trust in his appointees, poor judgment of character, and a conception of the presidency as primarily an administrative office where “except on rare occasions he was, as President, disposed to accept without question the work of the Congress as the authoritative expression of the will of the American people.”9 Grant largely abdicated power to a newly assertive Congress. He was a weak executive as well, granting his cabinet substantial control of policy. To staff his administration, Grant often chose business and political figures

8 Madison, The Federalist, nos. 10 and 51. 9 W.E. Binkley, The Powers of the President (Doubleday, 1937), p. 159.

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whose ethical compasses were sometimes out of kilter. Several of these men took advantage of the president, resulting in what Jack Mitchell called, “a story book of scandal, a veritable tomb of venality, a catalogue of corruption.”10 The best known of the Grant scandals was the Credit Mobilier affair. This scandal, which began prior to Grant assuming the presidency, centered on taking money from a railroad in exchange for favorable legislation, a quid pro quo. Greedy railroad executives made extravagant profits while building a transcontinental railroad, and to head off congressional investigations, they gave sweetheart stock deals to several key members of Congress. Among those receiving stocks was Schuyler Colfax, Grant’s vice president. Though his administration may have been corrupted, Grant himself was incorruptible. He was victimized by those around him. On December 5, 1876, a clerk read the president’s final annual message to the Congress. Grant’s words were a confession and admission of a man who, in the end, realized he was not big enough for the job. “It was my fortune or misfortune,” he began, “to be called to the office of the Chief Executive without any previous political training… Under such circumstances it is but reasonable to suppose that errors of judgment must have occurred.” He added, “Mistakes have been, as all can see, and I admit.” It was, he insisted, not his own acts but those of his assistants who were “in nearly every case selected without a personal acquaintance with the appointee.” He concluded that “Failures have been errors in judgment, not of intent.”11 Grant’s friends, not his enemies, undermined his presidency. At the end of his life, Grant admitted, “I have made it a rule of my life to trust a man long after other people gave him up.”12 Grant stood by his friends and family when they were accused of profiting from corruption in hoarding U.S. gold reserves, profiting off goods sold to Indians, making corrupt contracts with railroads, and other shady deals. The cost of such 10 Jack Mitchell, Executive Privilege: Two Centuries of White House Scandals (Hippocrene Books, 1992), Chapter 4. 11 James E. Sefton, “Ulysees S. Grant,” in Encyclopedia of the American Presidency, ed. by Levy and Fisher (Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 700. 12 Mitchell, Executive Privilege, p. 106.

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personal “loyalty” was not only an administration that seemingly endorsed the sordid capitalism of the Gilded Age but the loss of Grant’s “moral authority” as president.

Warren G. Harding (1921–1923) Prior to Watergate, many scholars regarded the Harding administration as the most corrupt in U.S. history. During and immediately after Harding’s brief presidential tenure, a trail of fraud, bribery, criminal conspiracy, cover-up, and even suicide was revealed. Harding’s Interior Secretary Albert Fall gained the distinction of being the first cabinet official in history to go to jail for acts committed while in office. Charles R. Forbes, head of the Veterans’ Bureau, was caught skimming profits on war surplus supplies and taking kickbacks. Forbes’ assistant, Charles Cramer, committed suicide (he left behind a suicide note addressed to President Harding, but the president never opened it); the personal aide to Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty, Jess Smith, also committed suicide; and a number of other officials were involved in crimes, shady behavior, and cover-ups. Harding was a man of limited political talent but a striking personal presence. He rose to national prominence in the aftermath of World War I with a promise to “return to normalcy.” But Harding was a poor judge of friends and associates. A college classmate joked: “The difference between you and George Washington is he couldn’t tell a lie, and you can’t tell a liar!”13 This character flaw would prove Harding’s undoing as he became the victim of predatory “friends” who used Harding to enhance their own personal fortunes. Though Harding was not a participant in the acts of corruption committed during his watch, he did create an atmosphere in which his subordinates believed they could get away with corruption, and he failed to exercise control and discipline over his administration. Of the many scandals of the Harding administration, three stand out as particularly vexing: The Veterans’ Bureau graft, the attorney general crisis, and the Teapot Dome Scandal. Charles Forbes, Harding’s director of the Veterans Bureau who was his friend and poker partner, controlled a budget of nearly a half billion dollars. While telling the president he was building hospitals for injured 13 Hope Ridings Miller, Scandals in the Highest Office (New York: Rando House, 1973), pp. 201–2.

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World War I veterans, Forbes proceeded to enrich himself at the veterans’ expense. He sold government medical supplies to private contractors, took kickbacks, and accepted bribes from hospital building contractors. When his activities came to light, Forbes was forced to resign. A Senate investigating committee began looking into the affair, and Forbes’ assistant, Charles Cramer, a suspect in the case, locked himself in his bathroom and shot himself. Later, a federal attorney found Forbes guilty of conspiracy to defraud the government, and he was sentenced to two years in Leavenworth Penitentiary and fined $10,000. The scandal at the Veterans Bureau was soon followed by a crisis in the attorney general’s office. Attorney General Harry Daughtery’s Justice Department became known as the “Department of Easy Virtue,” as Daugherty was seen as the central figure in a web of corruption that spread throughout the administration. Daugherty was suspected of all manner of nefarious operations, but his accusers were having trouble nailing him. Finally, in 1923, the House of Representatives attempted impeachment against Daugherty. The investigations into Daugherty’s activities uncovered a series of shady deals, one of which led a fellow conspirator, Jess Smith, to commit suicide. This led Harding to confide in a journalist: My God, this is a hell of a job! I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my God damn friends; they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights.14

The most infamous scandal of the Harding administration was Teapot Dome.15 The case revolved around the leasing of oil rights on government-owned land. Harding’s secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, granted leasing rights without competitive bidding to Edward L. Doheney to drill in Elk Hills, California, and to Harry F. Sinclair for rights to the Teapot Dome area in Wyoming. After an investigation, it was revealed that Fall had received $100,000 from both Doheney and Sinclair, and Fall was eventually convicted of bribery and sentenced to prison. 14 Quoted in Michael Nelson and Sidney M. Milkis, The American Presidency (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1990), p. 243. 15 Burl Noogle, Teapot Dome (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982); J. Leonard Bates, The Origins of Teapot Dome (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963).

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Some revisionists, after reexamining new historical evidence, have drawn a harsher portrait of Harding’s involvement. Leon McCartney, for example, suggests that Harding knew a great deal more than previously believed and that he had direct knowledge of the leases that caused so much legal trouble.16 Harding, like Grant, was a lax manager, and under his nose, subordinates took advantage of him. Harding was not himself implicated in the corruption, but he did create an atmosphere in which swindling the government became an attractive option for his subordinates. Harding, like Grant, was asleep at the moral wheel of government.

Richard M. Nixon (1969–1974) At the time it was uncovered, Watergate was the scandal to top all scandals. It was unusual in presidential history because for the first time the president himself was deeply involved in the crimes of his administration. Watergate was a different kind of scandal. Richard Nixon was a different kind of president. As we discussed Richard Nixon and Watergate in the previous chapter, we can move on to the other cases of presidential corruption, and we will eventually place Watergate within the larger context of presidential corruption.

Ronald W. Reagan (1981–1989) The Reagan presidency was unusual due to the fact that the administration was deeply involved in both types of corruption: greed for money and greed for power. And President Reagan was deeply involved in the latter. Reagan made it a habit of railing against the government. “Government,” he often said, “isn’t the solution. Government is the problem.” But during the Reagan years one of the problems clearly was the government, and the illegal uses to which government power was put. The quality of character of several of Ronald Reagan’s appointees was sufficiently low, and the number of people caught with their hands in the governmental cookie jar so high that commentators routinely

16 Shelley Ross, Fall from Grace (New York: Ballantine, 1988), 269.

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spoke of “the sleaze factor.” The House Subcommittee on Civil Service reported that over 225 Reagan appointees faced allegations of criminal or ethical wrongdoing,17 in total number, the greatest volume of presidential corruption in history.18 And while Reagan was not personally implicated in the goings on of the sleaze factor, he would later engage in acts of questionable ethics and dubious legality. What was unique about Reagan is that he combined some of the worst elements of the Grant and Harding presidencies, with the worst of the Nixon years. Both greed for money and greed for power were at work here. In the sleaze factor, a veritable kleptocracy took root in the administration. The list of luminaries who were in ethical trouble is long, and only a listing of some of the top cases is attempted here. Richard Allen, Reagan’s first National Security Adviser, was forced to resign for accepting gratuities. Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan was indicted (but not convicted) of defrauding the government. The EPA crisis of 1982 led to the head of the Superfund, Rita Lavalle’s, conviction for perjury, and forced others to resign. Investigations into Attorney General Ed Meese’s behavior involved wide-ranging and complex charges and a series of bizarre twists and turns. He was linked to several scandals: Webtech, conflict of interest investigations, and other charges that led to the appointment of a special prosecutor. Mike Deaver was convicted on three counts of perjury. Aide Lyn Nofzinger, Reagan’s White House political director was convicted of influence peddling. The Housing and Urban Development Scandal scandal implicated HUD secretary Samuel Pierce and numerous other officials accused of approving HUD grants for political, financial, and personal favors, and of influence peddling on a massive scale. The Savings and Loan crisis, the bailout of which cost taxpayers an estimated $160 billion, was linked to Reagan policies. Why all these ethical lapses during the Reagan years? Several factors stand out: the ethical climate of the times in which “a culture of greed” emerged; the president’s celebration of self-interest; Reagan’s lax attitude about ethical violations; the president’s failure to set a high ethical standard (he even vetoed an ethics bill in 1988); and the president’s lax management style, contributed to an atmosphere where those who

17 Shelley Ross, Fall from Grace, p. 269. 18 Robert Roberts, White House Ethics (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1988), p. 175.

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wished to violate ethical and legal standards had opportunities to accumulate wealth and they saw little reason to suspect that “the boss” would catch and punish them. What Suzanne Garment called “the Scandal Olympics”19 reached its peak in the Iran-Contra scandal. It was a two-edged scandal: Iran and Contra, and the president was deeply involved. Each of these two foreign policy scandals deserves criticism, but together they comprise a massive scandal, that nearly brought down the Reagan presidency. The Iran crisis involved a plan to trade arms to a terrorist nation in exchange for U.S. hostages. The Contra Crisis involved the illegal financing of a war in Nicaragua.20 And what of Reagan’s involvement? The president approved the secret arms for hostage trade with Iran. It is not certain if he was aware of the diversion of funds to the contras. When news of the scandal broke, the president went into a three-month cocoon,21 and the administration appeared as if it might topple. But after the dismissals of key advisors, Oliver North and John Poindexter, a presidential inquiry (the Tower commission), congressional hearings, and a special prosecutor’s investigation, the president survived. A cover-up began at the early stages of both Iran and Contra scandals. Secrecy was of the utmost importance as the truth had to be kept from both Congress and the American people.22 False chronologies were submitted to Congress, lies were told, evidence shredded, and even a presidential finding authorizing covert arms for hostage trade, dated December 5, 1985, was destroyed by Admiral Poindexter.23 The coverup intensified after the broad dimensions of the scandal were revealed because, as Attorney General Ed Meese testified at the Oliver North trial, he feared the impeachment of the president.24

19 Suzanne Garment, Scandal (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 198. 20 See: Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus, Landslide (New York: Houghton Mifflin,

1988); Theodore Draper, A Very Thin Line (New York: Hill & Wang, 1991). 21 Mayer and McManus, Landslide, Introduction. 22 Mayer and McManus, Landslide, pp. 325–328. 23 Theodore Draper, A Very Thin Line, p. 501. 24 Theodore Draper, “Revelations of the North Trial,” The New York Review of Books, August 17, 1989, p. 54; See also, Transcript of the trial, United States of America versus Oliver L. North, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, March 28, 1989.

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Just how deeply was Reagan involved? Did he actively direct the operations? Or was he a hapless victim, duped by an overzealous staff? It is hard to tell. Reagan’s defense, a claim of ignorance, is in part undermined by the facts. Reagan’s involvement runs from claims that “Reagan knew everything,”25 to Reagan’s own “I don’t recall,”26 to “It was my idea to begin with.”27 The dilemma can be wrapped up in Reagan’s three answers to one question. Asked by the Tower Commission whether he had approved shipments of arms to Iran, the president first said that he had given oral approval to aide Bud McFarlane. Upon finding out from Chief of Staff Donald Regan that this was illegal, he went back and told the Commission he did not give prior approval. When these two responses raised questions about the president’s honesty, the president went back and claimed ignorance: “I’m afraid that I let myself be influenced by others’ recollections, not my own.” But the president did sign several presidential findings, authorizing arms sales to Iran and which spelled out what was going on, participated in a number of discussions with key officials, and actively helped solicit funds from third parties to help the contras. The administration further lied to Congress and the American people provided Congress with a false chronology of events, destroyed evidence, knew of crimes and failed to report them, illegally used profits from the arms sales, engaged in a criminal cover-up, violated several laws including the Boland amendment, and withheld evidence. They further, traded arms for hostages, illegally funded a revolutionary force in Central America, set up an illegal shadow government, known as the Enterprise, and diverted government money for private use.

William Jefferson Clinton (1993–2001) Bill Clinton: America’s lovable scalawag. He was the nation’s bad-boy president who turned a sex scandal into accusations of criminality, and finally, impeachment. Through it all, Clinton maintained strong public support and survived an onslaught of criticism from conservative critics

25 Oliver L. North, Under Fire (New York: Harper Collins, 1991) excerpt in Time Magazine, October 28, 1991, p. 36. 26 Reagan to Tower Commission, and at Poindexter trial. 27 Reagan, May 15, 1987, to a group of newspaper editors.

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who pointed to Clinton’s moral failures” as proof he was undeserving of the presidency.28 Clinton’s legal troubles can be traced to his pre-presidential years when a land deal (Whitewater), that took place while Clinton was governor of Arkansas, was investigated by conservatives after Clinton became president. Additionally, as president, Clinton faced accusations from a former Arkansas state employee, Paula Jones, who accused then-Governor Clinton of sexual harassment. The Jones’ lawsuit was filed in 1994. Another Clinton scandal was the Monica Lewinsky crisis. Lewinsky was a White House intern. She and President Clinton had a consensual sexual relationship. The special prosecutor (Ken Starr) who was investigating Whitewater—over which no charges were filed—expanded his investigation into Clinton’s sex life, and at one point, while the President was testifying in the Paula Jones case, the president was blindsided with a question about Lewinsky. Clinton lied under oath. It was later alleged that he sought to obstruct justice by interfering with the investigation into the Lewinsky affair.29 Starr issued a report to Congress, lurid and explicit in details of the President’s sex life. The report was less a criminal referral and more a diatribe of moral outrage. The report was so lurid that some in the general public turned against Clinton’s accuser, and sympathy for Clinton superseded criminal accusations. In effect, he may have been saved by the excesses of his accusers.30 The Republican-controlled House, in a party-line vote, impeached Clinton, but the Senate, also controlled by Republicans, failed to convict. Was Clinton deserving of impeachment and conviction? Did he perjure himself? And did he escape because his accusers overplayed their hand?31

28 Nigel Hamilton, “Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency,” Public Affairs, 2007. 29 John F. Harris, “The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House,” Random House,

2005. 30 Jeffrey Toobin, “A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President,” Random House, 2000. 31 Michael Isikoff, “Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story,” Crown, 1999.

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Donald J. Trump (2017–2021) It didn’t take long for Donald J. Trump to run afoul of the law. In fact, from the moment he took the oath of office, Trump was in direct violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution. But that was only the beginning. And while other presidents took years to earn their way onto the list of America’s most corrupt presidents, Trump made the list after less than eighteen months in office. Trump was a disruptor who prided himself on busting established norms and pushing the limits of power. “I have an Article II,” he often said, “and that means I can do anything.” The rules—or so he believed—did not apply to him. In his pre-presidential years, he played fast-and-loose with the law, and he brought that same operating mode into the White House.32

“Donald Trump at Save America Rally,” January 6, 2021, AP Trump is the first chief executive to monetize the presidency. Unlike all recent presidents, he refused to release his tax returns, thereby hiding 32 Michael D’Antonio. “The Truth About Trump,” St. Martin’s Griffin, 2016.

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many of his business connections, to whom he owes money, and to which foreign interest he might be indebted. He also used the office for financial gain.33 Charges against Trump were voluminous.34 Did he abuse power by withholding aid to Ukraine until they agreed to investigate likely 2020 rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter? The House impeached him over this. Did he engage in contempt of Congress by refusing to comply with subpoenas? Did he obstruct justice in the Mueller investigation? And finally, and most importantly, did the President commit sedition in acts relating to the January 6 insurrection?35 He was impeached, but not convicted over his efforts to extort from the newly elected President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and his announcement that his government was investigating Vice President Joe Biden—Trump’s likely rival in the 2020 presidential election—and possible acts of corruption, in exchange for the Trump administration releasing funds already voted on by lawyers, but being withheld. The January 6 crisis resulted in Trump’s second impeachment by the House. It was the most serious act of presidential corruption in U.S. history. Possible sedition. Other presidents feathered their own nests, protected their own interests, sat back while underlings robbed the treasury, interfered with the administration of justice, and abused power. No president, no other president, engaged in seditious behavior against the United States of America. For nearly fifty years, scholars have concluded that Watergate was the most grievous presidential scandal in history. Now, with President Trump and the January 6 insurrection, the old consensus is breaking down, and increasingly, scholars point to the Trump presidency as the most corrupt in U.S. history.36 After Watergate, the president was compelled to resign. The Courts, Special Prosecutors, and House of Representatives Judiciary Committee all played key roles in bringing Nixon down. So too did public opinion (eventually), the Republicans in Congress (at the end), and the press.

33 Michael A. Genovese, “How Trump Governs,” Cambria Press, 2017. 34 Stephen Gilpin, “Trump U: The Inside Story of Trump University,” OR Books, 2018. 35 Jonathan Karl, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” Dutton, 2021. 36 Maggie Haberman, “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Unmaking of America,” Penguin, 2022.

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Nixon simply couldn’t go on. Impeachment and conviction were certainties. The system—to a degree—worked. But with Trump, the system did not work. A new conservative media (led by Fox News) held out “for” Trump, despite evidence to the contrary, the public—at least a majority of Republicans—continued to support Trump and his “big lie” (that the 2020 election was stolen), and the Republicans in the Senate rescued Trump from post-impeachment convictions.37 This does not let Nixon off the hook. Instead, it compels us to ask: was Watergate and the Nixon presidency the beginning of “the great unravelling” that led to Donald Trump? To answer that question, we must examine what Watergate meant to us, did to us, and how it changed us. Is Watergate the root of our current evils?38

“A Republic, If You Can Keep It” In Federalist Number 1, Alexander Hamilton, in calling for the ratification of the proposed new constitution, asked a troubling question that vexes us still: ...whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.39

“Reflection and choice,” or “accident and force”? For most of human history, reflection and choice (democracy or a republic), have been the exception; “accident and force” the norm. But the framers of the U.S. Constitution were determined to push back the jungle and carve out room for a civilization based on consent, rights, and freedom. At the time of the founding, few believed that this new government had a chance to survive.

37 Jackie Calmes, “During Watergate, Republicans Made the System Work. Not Now.” The Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2022, p. AII. 38 Peter Baher and Susan Glasser, “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” 2017– 2021 (Doubleday, 2022). 39 Hamilton, Madison, Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. By Michael A. Genovese (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 33.

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The framers created what we today call a liberal democracy, or, a government based on the rule of law, individual rights, a separation of powers, of a constitution, democratic norms, and limited government. They created a constitutional republic. Over time, that republic morphed into a democracy, thus creating a tension between our republican form of government and our democratic political culture. Today, republican forms of government, or liberal democracies, are being challenged by a form of nationalistic populism that sees the liberal democracies as corrupt, dominated by elites, and not representative of the people’s views or interests. Across the industrialized world, countries face a crisis of governing due to the rise of “democratic discontent.” Liberal democracies, once seen as the solution to the problem of governing are increasingly seen as the problem to be solved. Those with “passionate intensity” now dominate the public space, calling liberal democracies “weak,” and “unable to govern.” A brand of Illiberal Democracy or autocracy is on the rise. The old order is often attacked as corrupt (a swamp) and dominated by selfish elites who squeeze resources out of the system for their benefit and not for “the people.” The response of liberal democracies has been largely defensive. More of the same, rather than reform has been the conventional response. Globalization is a process that has been going on for centuries, drawing the world closer together and connecting us in multiple ways. We are today more interdependent and interconnected than ever before. This connecting process will continue. With new technological developments, and change in communication and travel, we are beginning to form a global community. The Politics of Globalization is changing the political landscape both at home and internationally. In Western democracies, officeholders are losing their authority to govern. Their legitimacy is being undermined. Their skills are being questioned. It is not altogether their fault.40 Globalization is creating a crisis of governability. There is a growing gap between what the electorate demands from governments and the governments’ ability to satisfy those demands. It is no secret why this gap exists. Governments no longer have the capacity to direct policy outcomes

40 Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and It’s Discontents (Norton, 2003).

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as they once did. In an age of globalization, major policies require multilateral agreements, and such agreements are difficult to achieve in our fractious world. Publics see governments as failing to deliver, corrupt, or merely incompetent. Increasingly, political leaders are unable to satisfy the demands of their citizenry because the power to shape events will be slipping through their hands. This will ratchet up the pressures on leaders while also increasing the instability of most regimes.41 The reaction against globalization in the West can further be seen in the rise of illiberal democracies across the globe. Liberal democracy— limited government checks and balances, individual rights, political, and religious freedom, the rule of law—is giving way to illiberal democracy— a system with free elections where once elected governments impose centralized control while failing to protect the rule of law or individual and property rights. The battle between liberal and illiberal democracy is stark and consequential. American notions of politics are grounded in Age of Reason/ Enlightenment assumptions that are being challenged in an age of globalization and hyper-change. Some citizens believe that their governments, their society’s elites, and their evolving political cultures, do not serve their needs nor represent their interests. A period characterized by angry voters who display insurgent, antigovernment, and anti-establishment sentiments presents a stark contrast between the liberal values of the status quo and the demands of voters who see governments as serving and representing “them,” or “the other.” Populist movements have challenged the established order42 and threatened regime change in several countries.43 Anti-immigrant, anti-globalization, and anti-diversity forces, are on the rise, and liberal governments are on the defensive. 41 Jonathan Tepperman, The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World of Decline, Tim Duggan Books, 2016; Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, Broadway Books, 2019; Larry Diamond, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency; David Runciman, How Democracy Ends (Profile Books, 2019). 42 For a primer on the rise and meaning of populism, see: Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (Pelican, 2018). 43 For an examination of the contemporary rise of authoritarian populism, see: Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

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This has led to a growing belief that the old order should be shattered, as it is too slow to move, too supportive of cosmopolitan values, and too skewed toward “them.” In France, the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere, voters want to “take back their countries.” Liberal governments have not—and perhaps cannot—respond quickly or forcefully enough to the forces unleashed by globalization and hyperchange. Angry and impatient for results, voters sometimes gravitate to the illiberal alternative—electing strongmen who can lead with strength. In this context, the promise of the leader as a savior can be appealing. The model? Identify an enemy (immigrants, governmental weakness, cosmopolitanism), bring in the savior, and throw out the status quo. In this context, Putanism (a strong leader riding on the shoulders of the people, blaming “them” for our troubles) may become the go-to option.44 Consider the rising tide of non-liberal leadership abroad in the West (Table 4.1): Deadlocked democracies, ineffective governments, the perceived failure of liberal democracy, gives rise to robust forms of “democratic” Table 4.1 The Global Rise of the Imperial Executive Country

Party leader

Party

Russia Turkey Hungary France U.S The Philippines The Netherlands U.K Germany Austria Poland Czech Republic Venezuela Italy

Putin Erdogan Orban Le Pen Trump Duterte Wilders Farage Petry Hofer Kaczynski Andrej Babis Hugo Chavez Giorgia Meloni

United Russia Justice and Development Fidesz Natl Front (Tea Party) Republican PDP – Laban Party of Freedom UKIP AFD Freedom Party Law and Justice Action of Dissatisfied Citizens Party (ANO) United Socialist Party of Venezuela Brothers of Italy Party

44 See: Anne Applebaum, “Why We Should Read Hannah Arendt Now,” The Atlantic, March 17, 2022.

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leadership without the tempering effect of checks and balances and the rule of law. If limited government is the enemy, the solution is to give the leaders power. But such a step is both a governing philosophy and a prescription for action that makes societies vulnerable to the vagaries of personal power. The numbers are clear and concerning—at least to those who value liberal democracy and hope to strengthen and grow democracies across the globe. In many countries, support for liberal democracy is in decline, the threat of autocratic or illiberal democracy is on the rise,45 and populist forces increasingly see western or liberal democracies as the problem.46 Breaking faith with liberal democracy may be a rational response to the decline of middle-class fortune. Workers were hit hard by the 2007 recession, and as the economies recovered, the benefits seemed to go to the upper class while working-class wages remained stagnant. The complaint of the rich getting richer and the poor and middle class facing stagnation led to the rise of populist revolts on the left (Bernie Sanders and the Occupy movement), and right (Donald Trump and the Tea Party). Their legitimate anxiety may have been exploited by ambitious politicians, but their grievances were often real. With neither political party addressing these grievances, faith in the system eroded.47 Regarding the fragility of the public’s commitment to democracy, it should be remembered that for most of human history, democracy held little sway with elite and general audiences. From Plato on, the case for democracy only became viable in the eighteenth century, and the muchvaunted announcement of the victors of democracy over all other forms of government48 occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and proved premature.

45 See: Thomas B. Edsall, “Trump’s Took Kit Does Not Include the Constitution,” The New York Times, February 8, 2018; Edsall’s essay discusses evidence from Bright Live Watch’s survey on faith in democratic principles. 46 See: Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017); and Jon B. Judis, The Populist Explosion: How The Great Recession Transformed America and European Politics (Columbia Global Reports, 2016). 47 Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom (Tim Duggan Books, 2019). 48 See: Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 2006).

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Much of the suspicion of democratic forms stems from the decline of “trust” in government. Where trust is low, support for democracy understandably declines49 (see Table 4.2). Western democracies are increasingly plagued by a contagion of anger, fear, and political backlash. The middle class, often seen as the backbone of stability, is threatening to turn against established liberal democracy and embrace a form of illiberal democracy as a solution to their perceived troubles. No democracy is immune. Increasingly, voters are becoming alienated, turning against established orders, and reaching out in search Table 4.2 Trust in government in the United States by party: 1958–2022

Source Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/americans-viewsof-government-decades-of-distrust-enduring-support-for-its-role/pp_2022-06-06_views-of-govern ment_1-01/

49 Donald F. Kettl, Can Governments Earn Our Trust? (Polity, 2017).

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of a savior to lead them out of this malaise. Many believe that governments no longer serve their interests, and they are “mad as hell and not going to take it.” Uncertainty, disaffection, resentment, and insecurity are spreading in Western democracies as the glue that once bound us together is losing its adhesive qualities. This growing anger is largely the result of globalization and rapidfire change, changes that have left a crisis of governability in their wake as governments grope for effective responses. This creates a widening gap between what voters want and what governments are capable of delivering. Governments seem to no longer have the capacity to direct policy outcomes as they once did. Forces such as “the market” and technology, interdependence, and interconnectedness seem to conspire against governmental control, and voters feel their governments no longer serve their needs or interests, fail to deliver on promises or are corrupt and incompetent. Leaders are unable to satisfy these demands because a considerable amount of power has slipped through their hands. Decisions no longer rest primarily with the nation-state but must be painstakingly agreed to by multiple actors in government and the private sector. Leaders are weaker as power has dispersed and must be shared with new claimants: the force of the market, developing nations, regional powers, religious groups, tribal loyalties, and technological change. Leaders are now primarily deal-makers, negotiators, facilitators, agenda-setters, and conveners. Our image of the bold leader courageously charting a new course, who through skill and force of will achieves great results (the “Great ‘Man’ Theory”), has given way to the meeting-caller and the consensus-builder—not a very romantic image of leadership, but one seems to fit the current reality. The British magazine The Economist went so far as to assert that “A specter is haunting the rich world. It is the specter of ungovernability,” and warned that “opinion polls everywhere show increasing numbers of people losing patience with democratic niceties and hankering after a strongman.”50 Most of the revolt against the established leaders came from the middle and working classes. In the United States, these people tend to be white,

50 The Economist, “Coalitions of Chaos,” August 3, 2019, p. 50.

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male, less educated, blue-collar workers who feel threatened by globalization and changes going on in their societies. Their discontent has spawned a populist movement that tends at times toward the xenophobic, is largely nationalist, is anti-government and anti-establishment, is usually anti-immigrant, and often anti-elitist. As The Economist noted, “support for xenophobic populism is strongest among those who are older, nonuniversity-educated, working-class, white, and male.” They are Donald Trump’s “silent majority,” and Marine Le Pen’s “forgotten people.” The result is a rise in angry voters, a decline in political and social stability, and a move to the political right. These voters are anxious and afraid about losing their social position and status. Many feel vulnerable to the rapid-fire changes going on around them. There are forces at work that they neither can understand nor control. Their jobs seem threatened by outsourcing or immigrants. Their wages remain stagnant, and they are marginalized. They see their societies changing, with people of different origins, colors, and religions “taking over.” And they feel powerless to change things. The result is a steady decline in trust of government, an antigovernment, anti-immigrant surge, and a revolt against the establishment and its governing elites. The “lamestream media” is merely a tool of governing elites and does not represent them or speak to their needs. The plutocrats, the donor class, politicians, and the hordes of immigrants are the enemy. They are in a battle for the soul of their nation. And there is no shortage of would-be saviors willing to stoke the embers of fear. All Western democracies are facing some form of this revolt. In the United States, the symptom is Donald Trump. But the root causes are deeper than one person. In January 2016, over 50 percent of all likely Republican voters supported an outsider or hard-right candidate for president. Donald Trump’s immigrant-bashing, anti-Muslim statements, and generally derogatory tone, something that would have excluded him from consideration for president 20 years ago, now win applause and adulation. In fact, the more hateful Trump’s message, the more he seemed to win support. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a self-consciously illiberal state is developing, with Vladimir Putin as a role model.51 In Poland, Jeroslaw Kaczynski, of the Law and Justice Party, is becoming the poster 51 The brand attractiveness of the word “democracy” is still strong, as reflected in Putin’s need to wrap himself in the cloak of democratic legitimacy reveals.

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child of illiberal, Putin-style democracy. Even in Great Britain antiimmigrant and anti-European Union sentiment, at first the key issue for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), led by Nigel Farage, found Conservatives and Prime Minister David Cameron championing their cause, making a “Brexit” from the EU. Even in northern Europe, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark—once firmly established liberal bastions—are swinging more to the right. These nations are being animated by anti-immigrant, anti-elite, sometimes racist, nativist, and populist sentiments, and are being threatened to one degree or another by the rise of “strongmen,” and the emergence of illiberal democracy. Is an age of the imperial executive upon us? Across the globe, executives rise as legislatures decline in power. “Presidentialism,” once seen as the solution to our governing problem, is becoming the problem we need to solve in the twenty-first century. The rise of post Cold War democracies led to the emergence of presidentialism, and while presidential systems vary, the goal was to develop some form of executive leadership that was tethered to checks and balances, democratic elections, legislative oversight and controls, and circumscribed powers under a constitution in a rule of law system. This form of liberal democracy became the “go-to” system of government that virtually all older and emerging democracies embraced. But “the end of history” ended rather quickly. The danger of an Imperial Executive, about which Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. warned us in the 1970s (an Imperial Presidency), began to surface, and the presidential halo became tarnished as strong executives sometimes abused power. And yet, as governments failed to live up to the demands and expectations of citizens, the people continued to demand strong leadership to solve problems. As executives became increasingly identified as “the government,” new popular demands required an extension of executive power. Often, this power grab was aided by enabling legislatures who, in an age of hyperchange, could not keep up with the executive’s ability to act first while leaving the legislature behind. These strong leaders soon became problems themselves. As Emilio Zapata warned us, “A strong leader makes for a weak people.” The executive is a truly “modern” institution built for speed. Executives have an impressive adaptation capability, as only one person needs to decide, and the institution (normally) follows. Executives can act, preempt others, and set the stage and tone of action. They can move quickly.

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Legislatures, on the other hand, are slow and deliberative bodies. They are built on bargaining, compromise, and deal-making. They move slowly. There are multiple veto points in the legislative process. Thus, they face an adaptation crisis. Often, they are forced to react to an executive’s acts. Legislatures were built for a quieter, slower time. They are eighteenth century institutions operating in the twenty-first century.52 The danger we face is that liberal democracies are morphing into illiberal democracies, and with the centralization of power in the hands of one person, the risk of a Putanist-style democracy looms large. A strong leader armed with the support of the people can sweep away checks and balances and act boldly, governing in the name of the people.

“Insurrection by Trump Supporters in Washington D.C.” January 25, 2021, AP There is thus a Goldilocks Dilemma: this executive is too hot, this one too cold. We can’t seem to get it just right. But if liberal democracies are too cold, illiberal democracies are often too hot. 52 R.R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution (Princeton University Press, 2014), p. xvi.

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Where liberal democracies restrain power, illiberal democracies unleash it. It is tempting to demand that the executive be given commensurate power to meet the demands of our times. But the risks exceed the rewards. An executive unhinged is an executive to be feared.

Watergate, and the Vagaries of Modern Democracy In the social sciences, “path dependency” theory asserts that past events and decisions establish a precedent, a way of operating, or a pathway, and these past decisions constrain and shape later choices and decisions. In short, history matters. It asks us to be conscious of ways the past influences the present and the future. A path-dependent approach is useful in that it explains what happened and why, and how past decisions set parameters for the future, and serves as a starting point, a point of departure, as we navigate a path into the future. The status quo has staying power. What has been established is known, we grow accustomed to it, we often resist change. The old Yiddish saying, “the only person who likes change is a wet body,” is generally true. Uncertainty causes anxiety, and our comfort level with the present—always an imperfect present—establishes a pattern of behavior, institutions to support it, norms and practices that sustain it, and constituents who profit from it. Change is hard. While change is hard, there are times and conditions in which a door to change opens. Such times are referred to as “critical junctures,” where momentum builds, ideas for change become attractive, the need for change is strong, and a growing constituency demands change. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the Tea Party movement of the 2010s represent such junctures, and policy changes established new paths, with institutions, norms, practices, and interests created to support, implement, and preserve the new path. Path dependency thus illuminates why old orders are persistent (even impenetrable), long lasting, and hard to change. They also help us understand why and how change occurs. If we take Watergate as a critical juncture in the path of modern politics, we can better understand its impact and staying power on contemporary affairs.

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The Legacy of Watergate: A New Path Did the great dismantling of civility in politics really begin with Richard M. Nixon and Watergate? Is it fair to put all or even most of the burden on one man and one scandal? Is it even possible for one man to define and embody his age, impose his personality on an era, infect the body politic? Could one man’s hatreds, resentments, insecurities, strengths and weaknesses, strategic brilliance, and petty retributions, really be, or become, those of a nation? The man is Richard Nixon, a “brilliant and tormented man struggling to forge a public language that promised mastery of the strange new angers, anxieties, and resentments wracking the nation in the 1960s.”53 Did he create, or did he merely represent the fracturing of America? Although it occurred fifty years ago, the long arm of Watergate reaches out to us today, strangling the body politic in its infectious grip. We are today still paying a price for the crisis that was Watergate.54 Journalism Professor Michael Schudson notes that, despite Richard Nixon’s “campaign against memory,” in ways large and small, he remains very much with us. Schudson adds, “The recall of Watergate is surrounded with cries about the dangers (or, much more rarely, the virtues) of forgetting. In talking about Watergate, people frequently express an anxiety that in our society, historical memory is currently fighting a losing battle against the siren song of the present.”55 And yet, we should never forget; and we can never forget. Richard Nixon just won’t go away. He is in our memory, our consciousness, and our history, and he remains a prominent, if often hidden and reviled, part of our political landscape. He continues to be one of the most fascinating characters in modern American history, and managed to reemerge from oblivion to become a figure of note.56 He is the political equivalent of an automobile accident—we know we should 53 Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Schribner, 2008), p. xii. 54 David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (New York: Norton,

2003). 55 Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (New York: Basic Books, 1993), pp. 52, 58. 56 Robert Sam Anson, Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard M. Nixon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984); and James C. Clark, Faded Glory: Presidents Out of Power (New York: Praeger, 1985), Chapter 28.

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look away, yet our gaze is drawn to visit all the gory details of the disaster. Nixon was more than Watergate and he should be judged by the totality of his life and career, not simply on the basis of the Watergate scandal. Sound advice, yet as much as one might wish otherwise, the overwhelming weight of Watergate will always overshadow the successes of the Nixon administration. Opening doors to China, ending the Vietnam War, negotiating détente with the Soviet Union, all add to Nixon’s reputation as a skilled foreign policy leader, yet lurking over his reputation hangs the scandal of Watergate a scandal that will always taint the reputation of Richard Milhous Nixon. Watergate spawned a “politics of scandal” that has even to this day deeply infected the American body politic. Coming as it did in the wake of the contentious war in Vietnam that split the nation apart and planted the seeds of distrust and discontent in the nation, Watergate deeply fractured an already shell-shocked country. Political scientist Paul Quirk views the “politics of scandal:” American politicians, journalists, and citizens devote extraordinary time and energy to controversies about matters of moral and legal propriety. To some degree, these controversies are the inevitable consequence of maintaining and enforcing strict standards of proper conduct. Nevertheless, the preoccupation with scandal has reacted a point of pathological excess. Scandals destroy, or threaten to destroy, useful political careers, striking evenhandedly Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, elected and appointed officials. They distract attention and disrupt government, potentially distorting public policy or undermining the ability to deal with crises. They promote cynicism and alienation among citizens.57

This politics of scandal elevates every charge—however trivial—into a crisis, with the suffix “gate” added onto the end of any word to raise the scandal takes it to the Watergate level. Be it Travelgate and Monicagate (Clinton), WMDgate (George W. Bush), Pardongate (Ford), or Sleazegate (Reagan), Huntergate (Biden), one’s political adversaries scamper in front of the TV cameras to pronounce and denounce the latest crisis of government. It is the ambiguous “gate” that has become the shortcut accusation against any and all political opponents. And it replaces the

57 Paul J. Quirk, “Coping with the Politics of Scandal,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 28 (Fall 1998): 898–902.

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accusation with the production of evidence against an adversary. Any politician who can be “gated” is put on the defensive and is in part, presumed guilty. Post-Watergate, the politics of scandal has inaugurated an age of “politics by other means” in which electoral losers attack opponents on ethical grounds, regardless of the basis of the changes.58 It has become good and common politics, to level charges of ethical violations against one’s opponents, and the cable media circus is happy, even anxious, to accommodate.59 The political culture that nurtures the rot of this dysfunctional brand of political warfare is the culture of mistrust that allows mere charges to become taken as fact. In short, we expect “them” to be venal and corrupt, so they must be. As scholar Suzanne Garment noted, in the first 15 years after Watergate “more than 400 relatively senior federal officials and candidates for federal office… have been publicly accused in the national press of personal wrongdoing.”60 In short, scandal has become routine.61 The snowball that was Watergate began rolling down the hill, picking up scandal after scandal in its destructive wake. The scandal siege began with Watergate, then spawned a vicious cycle of recrimination and the development of “gotcha” politics, and the politics of personal destruction. It was not enough to beat an opponent at the polls; one had to utterly destroy the enemy. Politics was morphing into war and in war, victory meant destroying your enemy.62 Even the language of politics changed. From Sarah Palin repeatedly using violent references to talk-radio shock-jocks openly spreading hatred, political discourse often became another version of hate speech. And while 58 Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter, Politics by Other Means (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002). 59 John B. Johnson, Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2000); and Larry J. Sabato, Mark Stencel, and S. Robert Lutcher, Peepshow: Media and Politics in an Age of Scandal (Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield, 2001). 60 Suzanne Garment, Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics (New York: Anchor, 1992), p. 3. 61 Michael A. Genovese and Victoria Farrar-Myers, Corruption in American Politics (Amherst: Cambria Press, 2010). 62 Matthew N. Green and Jeffrey Crouch, Newt Gingrich: The Rise and Fall of a Party Entrepreneur (University Press of Kansas, 2022).

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the United States has had periods of inflated and bombastic rhetoric, in the modern era such references become an accepted part of political discourse. While it would be unfair and inaccurate to blame all society’s ills on Richard Nixon and Watergate, it seems quite reasonable to trace several political maladies back to Watergate. Nixon rose by exploiting society’s cleavages rather than uniting the nation. He rose by channeling anger, drawing battle lines, and dividing the nation. It would be the “silent majority,” as represented by Nixon, against “them.”63 In the long run Nixon got his wish in ways he never could have imagined. And in doing so, he wrote the playbook that Donald Trump would more effectively put into practice than did Nixon. Did Richard Nixon do this to us, or did we create the Nixon who would do our bedding for us? Were we his victims or his puppet masters? Did Nixon fight his personal demons or ours? Did he take dirty politics to a new level? Are we paying a price today? In terms of presidential power, the legacy of Watergate has ironically turned out to be the opposite of what one might have expected. Richard Nixon’s outrageous claims of power (“when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”) may have, for a time, been reviled and discredited, yet it was precisely that attitude that animated and sustained the pretensions of the Bush administration in the war against terrorism,64 as well as his war against the separation of powers and the rule of law regime. And it was upon this flimsy claim that Donald Trump would expand and develop nearly fifty years later: “I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Watergate has had a profound and largely negative impact on American politics in the 50 years since that scandal was uncovered. It has spawned a corrosive distrust in government among the American people, led to a series of laws enacted to prevent future Watergates that have made it more difficult to govern, unleashed a hostile and highly investigatory press,

63 Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Scribner, 2009). 64 James P. Pfiffner, Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008); Michael A. Genovese, Presidential Prerogative: Imperial Power in an Age of Terrorism (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).

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increased the partisan sniping in the political culture of “gotcha” politics, and led to a more divisive relationship between the president and the Congress. The presidency of Richard Nixon has left a scar on the body politic and undermined the fragile consensus that for decades characterized and animated American politics. The delicate bonds of trust so necessary for a properly functioning democracy, have degenerated into a slash-and-burn type of politics in which a “take no prisoners” attitude dominates. It is no wonder that trust in government is down, and anti-government movements such as the Tea Party have risen. Nixon and Watergate, by themselves, did not cause the degradation of American politics and erosion of public trust, though they contributed mightily to both, but Nixon and Watergate did recast the story of American public life from a narrative of assumed good intentions to one of deep suspicion. Watergate raised a series of legal and moral issues. It spoke to who we are and what we believe. It tested our system and ourselves. Would the United Sates remain a limited government under the rule of law, or was it to become an imperial nation with an imperial presidency? Watergate spawned a variety of legislative responses. In the aftermath of Nixon’s abuses, Congress went through a period of legislative activism that resulted in the passage of the Budget Control and Impoundment Act (1974), the War Powers Act (1973), the Case Act (1972), the Federal Election Campaign Act (1974), the Ethics in Government Act (1978), the Presidential Records Act (1978), the National Emergencies Act (1976), the Government in Sunshine Act (1976), the Federal Corrupt Practices Act (1977), and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (1974). Many of these efforts were designed to limit and shrink imperial executive claims to republican proportions. Some believe the reaction against presidential power went too far. Most conclude that the reforms were marginally effective, at best. One defense of Nixon that says that Watergate is “just politics,” or “everybody does it,” is both false and dangerous. It is false because even though past presidents did engage in immoral and illegal behavior until Trump, not one came close to Nixon in volume, type, or degree of presidential involvement. Nixon’s was a systematic abuse of power and subversion of law. Such an attitude is also dangerous because it breeds disrespect for the government, and contempt for America’s political institutions.

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While the United States is far from perfect, and past presidents are not without sin, historian C. Vann Woodward sums up the difference between Nixon and his predecessors nicely: Heretofore, no president has been proved to be the chief coordinator of the crime and misdemeanor charged against his own administration as a deliberate course of conduct or plan. Heretofore, no president has been held to be the chief personal beneficiary of misconduct in his administration or of measures taken to destroy or cover up evidence of it. Heretofore, the malfeasance and misdemeanor have had no confessed ideological purposes, no constitutionally subversive ends. Heretofore, no president has been accused of extensively subverting and secretly using established government agencies to defame or discredit political opponents and critics, to obstruct justice, to conceal misconduct and protect criminals, or to deprive citizens of their rights and liberties. Heretofore, no president had been accused of creating secret investigative units to engage in covert and unlawful activities against private citizens and their rights.65

After the fall of Nixon, one often heard the celebratory refrain: “the system worked!” The existing structures, safeguards, guardrails, and procedures protected liberty and reestablished the rule of law. After all, Nixon was caught and forced to leave office. But a haunting doubt remains. Did the system really work, or did other forces bring about the revelations of abuses of power and criminal conduct by the president and his inner circle? “The system” is the complex web of interrelated governmental and non-governmental actors and institutions that serve as a potential check on power. In Watergate, the system included the media, Congress, the courts, the public, the CIA, the FBI, the Justice Department, the special prosecutor’s office and the grand jury. How well did the system perform its power checking function? The media began like a lamb but ended like a lion. While they were manipulated by Nixon during the 1972 campaign and generally gave him positive coverage, after the election, as the Watergate story got closer to the president, a herd mentality developed and they pounced on the story, as well as the president, pursuing it, and him, relentlessly.

65 C. Vann Woodward, Responses of the President to Charges of Misconduct (New York: Dell, 1974), p. xxvi.

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The Congress, especially in the Ervin and the House Judiciary Committees, played an important role in the Watergate investigation. While they moved slowly and methodically, as the evidence of abuse and crimes became more fully known, they moved against the president. The courts, especially Judge John Sirica and later the Supreme Court were clearly a key in discovering the facts and pressing for compliance with the law. The public, at first giving Nixon a landslide reelection victory and indifferent to early reports on Watergate, in the end, turned on the president. The FBI and CIA were used and manipulated by Nixon, as was the Justice Department. The grand jury was essential in getting to the bottom of Watergate. Finally, the special prosecutor’s office played an indispensable part in the process. In the end, the system had to act in concert to expose the crimes of Watergate. For so many to act in concert is highly unusual. This speaks to the great difficulty of controlling a determined or runaway president. The system is vulnerable when, even with all the institutions and interests working against the president, it was the “luck” of a White House taping system that finally strengthened the hands of the Congress, the special prosecutor, and the press in their efforts to bring out the truth and bring down the president. This suggests that the system may be a rather weak check on presidential abuses of power. Further, Watergate demonstrates how vulnerable the system can be when in the hands of unprincipled or unscrupulous leaders. More than anything else, the system worked because of luck, accident, and ineptitude. After all, the first break-in of the Watergate was botched, as the bugs weren’t properly installed. This necessitated a second break-in, at which time the burglars were caught. And they were caught because a piece of tape, used to keep the door’s lock from catching, was placed across the lock in such a way that it could be easily seen from the outside. But even this did not alarm security guard Frank Wills who simply removed the tape when doing his rounds. When the burglars returned to the door, and saw that the tape was gone, they replaced the tape across the lock in such a way that again it could be seen on the outside. When Wills made his second set of rounds and saw the tape across the same door for a second time, he was alerted to the break-in and called the police.

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If Nixon had not taped himself, there would have been no “smoking gun” and Nixon would probably have survived politically. Certainly, the dimensions and depth of Nixon’s abuses of power and crimes would not have been revealed without the tapes. Plus, if the cover-up had been better managed, it might have held together. If Nixon had destroyed the tapes before their existence had become known, he would not have to defy the subpoena—one of the acts on which an article of impeachment was based. Nixon and his chief-of-staff Bob Haldeman recognized the role luck played in Watergate as evidenced by this March 20, 1973, taped exchange on how Watergate was discovered. Nixon: ... a lot of bad breaks. Haldeman: Yeah. Nixon: We got a bad break with the judge, for example. Haldeman: Monumental bad breaks and a string of ‘em – one leading to another. Nixon: This judge, that... Haldeman: ...one lousy part time night guard at the Watergate who happened to notice the tape on the, on the locks on the doors. If he hadn’t seen them – the thing probably would never have busted if you hadn’t had Watergate – you wouldn’t have had Segretti. You wouldn’t have had any of that stuff.

In another sense, “the system” refers to the two-hundred-year-old constitutional framework and the assumptions upon which it is based. This Madisonian system, described in Federalist No. 51, believed that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” that by separating power, checks might protect the liberty of the citizens, and prevent one branch of government from trampling on the others, undermining the republican government. The founders saw human nature neither in excessively benign Lockean nor unmercifully harsh Hobbesian terms. Humans were capable of great good but also of great evil. The founders knew man’s darker side and sought to control this while also empowering government. In a way, it was precisely for the Richard Nixons of the American future that the separation of powers and checks and balances were created. One principal instrument the founders thought might check executive abuse was the impeachment process. Long before Watergate, impeachment proved a cumbersome and often ineffectual means to prevent or punish abuses of power.

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In Watergate, the impeachment process itself was shown to have limited utility. It can be used only in extraordinary circumstances, and although the United States does have periodic accountability (elections), and ultimate accountability (impeachment), the government and people do not have an effective formal system of daily accountability (routine and continuous). Informal means—public vigilance—must bear the burden of constant oversight of government. Clearly impeachment did not stop Donald Trump, the only president in history to be impeached twice. Finally, we should not forget that it was “the system” that allowed Richard Nixon to rise to the highest office in the land, in spite of the many clues from his earlier career as to what “the real Nixon” was like. It was the system that Nixon used and manipulated for so long. And it was the weakness in the system that allowed for so long, Nixon to abuse power. Thus, the system both nourished and eventually revealed the crimes of Richard Nixon.66

Remembering, Misremembering, and Learning The battle to shape history’s judgment of Richard Nixon began the moment he left office. The former president wrote a number of books on foreign affairs and public policy, consulted widely—if in private—with presidents, leaders, and opinion-makers, and attempted to control and shape his legacy with his presidential library in Yorba Linda, California. Initially, the library—held by private hands run by Nixon loyalists and not a part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) system of official presidential libraries—presented a highly sanitized and distorted version of the Watergate saga that the Los Angeles Times called “a self-serving, oh-really-it-wasn’t-so-bad exhibit designed to portray the scandal as a series of presidential misjudgments followed by a ‘coup’ to run Richard M. Nixon out of office.”67 Scholars treated the Nixon library as a bad joke. The original Watergate exhibit designed in 1990, was a distorted version of history designed to put the former president in the best possible light. In 2007, after bitter negotiations, the NARA finally assumed control of the library. Then, things changed.

66 Rick Perlstein, Nixonland. 67 Editorial, Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2011.

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In 2011, a new Watergate exhibition opened. It was a more realistic exhibit, one that presented both sides of the story, leaving it to the viewer to draw a conclusion. And for most, the conclusions drawn put the former president in a decidedly negative light.

Conclusion

The abuses of Watergate were at the time, the most pervasive and systematic subversions of the democratic process in the history of the United States. Never before have so many done so much to so many at so high a level in violation of so many laws and norms of this nation. Watergate went beyond the presidential corruptions of the past, for while most previous corruption involved crimes or greed for money, Watergate was systematic and comprehensive and aimed at the rights of citizens and the democratic electoral process itself. And the president was right in the middle of the corruption. It would be roughly fifty years until the crimes of Watergate were surpassed by the Donald Trump presidency and the violent insurrection against the government on January 6, 2021. Among the casualties of Watergate is a president who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator by a grand jury and who was eventually forced to resign his office. He was also disbarred, a vice president who pleaded no contest to income tax evasion and was forced to resign (he too was disbarred), an attorney general who went to jail, a president’s chief-ofstaff who went to jail, a president’s chief domestic advisor who went to jail, a president’s appointments secretary who went to jail, a president’s personal attorney who went to jail, and the list goes on. Over two dozen administration figures went to jail because of Watergate. Thomas Paine once said that in America, the Constitution is king. The downfall of Richard Nixon struck a blow for the concept that no man is © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. A. Genovese, The Legacy of Watergate and the Nixon Presidency, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43474-7

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above the law, not even a president. Though Nixon attempted to justify his actions in a 1977 interview with David Frost by saying, “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal,” this view was rejected by nearly all segments of the American system, only to be revived by the OLC memos during the presidency of George W. Bush and acted upon by Donald Trump. The words of the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis remained operative: “if government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds the contempt for law.” Reverence for the laws, Abraham Lincoln said, should “become the political religion of the nation.” What responsibility do “we, the people” bear for Watergate? If Watergate was due, in large part, to the personality and politics of Nixon, were those who elected him accomplices in the ensuing abuses of power? After all, Nixon the politician had been on the political scene since 1946; his slashing campaign style, his character flaws, his ethical lapses, and his duplicity were a part of the public record. All the elements in Nixon that led to the abuses of Watergate were observable in his previous political behavior. There is an old saying, “In a democracy, people tend to get the government they deserve.” Did the American people “deserve” Watergate? This sobering possibility was brought home forcefully by historian Henry Steele Commager, who, in 1976, chillingly observed: The basic problem posed by Watergate and all its attendant horrors is neither constitutional nor political; it is moral. It is not a problem posed by an administration in Washington; it is one posed by the American people. After all, we can never get away from the most elementary fact: the American people reelected Mr. Nixon by a majority of nearly eighteen million votes. Either they did not know what kind of man he was, in which case they were inexcusably negligent or inexcusably naïve, or they did know what kind of man he was and did not care or perhaps liked him as he was – as some Americans still like him the way he is. The latter explanation is probably nearer to the truth. Did he not – indeed, does he not – represent qualities in the American character that are widespread and even taken for granted? In himself and in the curious collection of associates he gathered around him, he represents the acquisitive society, the exploitive society, and the aggrandizing society. He represents what is artificial, meretricious, and manipulative. He represents the American preference for the synthetic over the real, for advertising over the product, for public relations over character, for spectator sports over active games, and for spectator politics over participatory democracy. He represents, too,

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the widespread American conviction that anything can be bought: culture, education, happiness, a winning football team, or the Presidency.1

After Watergate, Congress passed a variety of laws designed to discourage future Watergates and abuses of power. As important as these laws were, they are not sufficient to the task, as we saw during the Trump presidency. Laws are not self-executing. A nation of laws depends on the people to enliven the law. A dedicated citizenry is the only hope against tyranny. As Judge Learned Hand said, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” Of all the checks designed to balance the American political system, none is more powerful than an informed, and aroused citizenry. There is no hope unless there is a rebirth of what Thomas E. Cronin calls “citizen politics.” Richard Nixon exposed one of the vulnerabilities of the political system. “The system” alone will not protect us; we must be ever vigilant. The era of cynicism that Watergate spawned, ushered in a period of a deep political combat, one that paved the way for the rise of Donald Trump. Democracy cannot long endure the contempt of the people. Rather than recapture their democracy, many people dropped out. Rather than right wrongs, many threw stones (verbal and otherwise). Swept up in a culture of mistrust, democracy almost became the chief casualty of Nixon’s age of cynicism. After Watergate, scandal moved from the periphery to the center. We became scandal-happy, searching for scandal in every policy or partisan dispute. Richard Nixon just won’t go away. Try as we might to purge him from our body politic, the toxic sludge of his presidency continues to pollute our politics. He haunts us still. Fifty years after leaving office in ignominy, he remains ubiquitous in both American politics and culture. The seeds he planted—some good, some bad—have borne their fruit. In his play, Life of Galileo, Bertolt Brecht has one of his characters note that “unhappy is the land that has no heroes,” to which Galileo responds, “No, unhappy is the land that needs heroes.”2 While heroes 1 Henry Steel Commanger, “Watergate and the Schools,” in American Government: Reform in the Post-Watergate Era, ed. by David C. Saffell (Cambridge, MA: Winthrop, 1976), p. 6. 2 Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo (Methuen Drama, 2013).

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and role models can serve as constructive examples for admiration and emulation, when we turn to heroes to save us, we give up on ourselves and democracy. Emilio Zapata reminded us that a strong leader makes a weak people. Philosopher Eric Hoffer reminds us that “a society that can get along without leaders is the one that’s producing leaders.”3 When we cede power and responsibilities to strong leaders, we put democracy in jeopardy. Liberal democracy requires us all to be leaders. Illiberal Democracy expects us to sit back and merely observe.

The Road to January 6 Watergate remains, fifty years later, a dark chapter in American history. And it has shaped our politics ever since. As veteran journalist Dan Balz noted: Watergate, along with the Vietnam War, marked a dividing line between old and new, ushering in a changed landscape for politics and public life – from a period in which Americans trusted their government to a period in which that trust was broken and never truly restored.4

Watergate is a dividing line. The level of trust in government and in each other has declined dramatically; the level of polarization and partisan hatred has risen significantly. And where did all of this lead. To Donald J. Trump. To again quote Dan Balz: Those who have studied Watergate see a line that travels from that scandal to the Trump presidency. Part of this is because of the similarities between Nixon and Trump – the self-pitying nature of their personalities, the venality exhibited during their presidencies, the demonization of their opponents. Nixon sought to undermine the Constitution to assure that he would win the 1972 election and then covered it up, for which he paid the price of forced resignation. Trump sought to undermine the Constitution to overturn an election he had lost in 2020. He didn’t cover up

3 Eric Hoffer, Interview with Eric Sevareid, CBS, September 19, 1967. 4 Dan Balz, “Watergate Happened 50 Years Ago. Its Legacies Are Still with Us,” The

Washington Post, June 12, 2020.

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his efforts, though exactly what was going on still hasn’t been told in full. Instead, he attempted to build his case on a foundation of lies.5

Almost fifty years separates Watergate from the January 6 insurrection. But the ideological distance between these two events is as close as two coats of paint. The logic of Watergate is the logic of the Trump presidency. The justifications used by Nixon are the justifications supplied by Trump. They were as bogus in the 1970s as they are in the 2020s. And yet, such justifications persist. Like fictional zombies, the ideas are constitutionally dead, but somehow, they keep coming back to life. But Nixon and Trump trumpeted robust defenses of unilateral presidential power, claims that strayed far and wide from constitutional moorings. For Nixon it was his comment during the post-presidency David Frost interview: When the president does it, it means it is not illegal; for Trump, it was found in a comment at the Turning Point USA Team Student Action Summit in Washington, D.C.: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Upon analysis, defense for both of those propositions falls apart faster than a third-grade science project. Presidential assertions, notwithstanding, the rule of law and the constitution still apply, and presidents are not above the law. It is hard to imagine the Trump-encouraged January 6 insurrection happening in the 1970s. Events of recent years—the rise of illiberal regimes across the globe—gave a patina of legitimacy to autocrats and gave a context to Donald Trump’s crimes against democracy. Yet the meager fig leaf justifications supplied by both Nixon and Trump proved insufficient to overcome the rule of law and the demands of a liberal democracy. But if Nixon’s and Trump’s ideals and justifications are democratically dangerous, they are also persistent and ongoing. Those uncomfortable with the difficult work of bringing a liberal democracy to fruition turn to the false comfort of an autocrat, a strongman, someone who promises to jettison checks and balances and exercise power and get things done. Liberal democracies are slow and frustrating. It takes a lot to get them moving. And yet, perhaps Winston Churchill got it right when he noted that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Far from perfect, yet still the best of all. 5 Balz, The Washington Post, 2020.

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Watergate opened a door to demagogues and rogues. And even though Nixon was stopped, he pointed the way. And we still grapple with Watergate’s legacy. Watergate undermined public confidence and trust in government, spawned a political culture of mistrust, and created a cynicism that has poisoned our politics. Nixon’s warped sense has become the norm of today’s politics. An illustration? On September 7, 1972, two months before the ’72 reelection, with Nixon well up in the polls, he looked to the future. He began to discuss Senator Edward Kennedy for whom Nixon harbored a deep loathing. The president turned to his chief-of-staff Bob Haldeman and said of Kennedy, “Ruin him for ’76. It’s going to be fun.”6 It’s going to be fun. Like the neighborhood bully who takes pleasure in picking on the weak or stepping on frogs, it was fun. On assuming office after Nixon’s resignation, Gerald Ford addressed the nation and said that “our long national nightmare is over.” But it wasn’t. If anything, it blossomed and grew into autocratic tendencies that paved the way for a Donald Trump to emerge. That is Nixon’s curse upon us. Both Nixon and Trump put self above country. They shared a jaundiced view of politics and people. Politics was to accumulate power, people were to be used for self-gain. And while one should not draw a straight line from Nixon to Trump, clearly, the seeds of a Trump presidency were planted in the Nixon Years. In Notebook E, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” When you are up on a pedestal, you make an inviting target; people will shoot at you. In Nixon’s case, as he admitted in his 1977 interview with David Frost, “I gave them a sword.” Indeed, he had. Nixon’s demise was a direct result of Nixon’s actions. His peak—the 1972 landslide reelection—was the result of actions that led to downfall—his tragedy.

6 Nixon White House Tapes, September 7, 1972; conversation between Richard Nixon, Bob Haldeman, and Alexander Butterfield.

Index

A Accountability, 131 Administrative presidency, 26 Agnew, Spiro, 53, 84, 85 B Balance of power, 42, 100 Balz, Dan, 136 Barber, James David, 15, 17, 18 Bernstein, Carl, 45, 74 Brecht, Bertolt, 135 Brezhnev, Leonid, 40 Buchanan, Patrick, 61 C Cabinet, 19, 26, 28, 29, 101, 103 Cambodia, 3, 28, 36–39, 47, 48, 51, 52, 54, 88 Campaign 1960 1968, 23, 28, 39 1972, 60, 63, 128 Central Intelligence Agency, 94

Chavez, 115 Chesen, Eli, 17, 18 China, 29–33, 36, 42–44, 50, 124 Civil rights, 11, 19–25, 122 Clinton, Bill, 108, 109 Cold War, 40, 120 Colson, Charles, 75 Commager, Henry Steele, 134 Congress, 12, 18, 19, 23, 25, 37, 39, 44, 48, 57, 78, 85, 89, 91, 92, 101, 102, 107–109, 111, 127–129, 135 Contras, 107, 108 Corruption, 84, 97–106, 111, 133 Courts, 50, 57, 59, 80, 84, 89, 90, 128, 135 Cox, Archibald, 45, 83–85 Credit Mobilier, 102 Cronin, Thomas E., 135 D Dean, John, 61, 62, 64–67, 69, 70, 73–84, 87

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. A. Genovese, The Legacy of Watergate and the Nixon Presidency, The Evolving American Presidency, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43474-7

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INDEX

Department of Defense, 54 Department of Justice, 21, 22, 56, 57, 74, 81, 84, 85, 104, 128, 129 Department of State, 48, 58 Détente, 29–31, 33, 41, 44, 124 Domestic Council, 58 Domestic policy, 13, 19, 20, 28 Duterte, 115

E Economic policy, 20 Ehrlichman, John, 13, 21, 23, 26–28, 55, 58, 59, 70, 72, 74–77, 79–84, 86 Eisenhower, Dwight, D., 8–10, 33 Ellsberg, Daniel, 47, 57–59, 66, 79 Emoluments, 110 Enemies list, 48, 64, 65, 83 Environmental Policy Agency (EPA), 106 Ervin, Sam, 56, 77, 129 Executive privilege, 48, 78, 80, 84, 89, 90

F Fall, Albert, 103, 104 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 27, 54, 55, 57–59, 71–73, 78, 85, 86, 94, 128, 129 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 138 Ford, Gerald, 85, 93, 95, 138 Foreign policy, 19, 26, 29–33, 41, 42, 44, 72, 107, 124 Founders, 100, 101, 130 Framers, 99, 100, 112, 113 Frost, David, 134, 137, 138

G Gemstone (Operation), 66, 68–70 Globalization, 113–115, 118, 119

Goldilocks Dilemma, 121 Goldwater, Barry, 91 Grand Design, 31, 33, 34 Grant, U.S., 101–103, 105, 106 Gray, L. Patrick, 71, 72, 78

H Haig, Alexander, 54, 55, 83, 86, 91, 95 Haldeman, H.R. “Bob”, 13, 18, 21, 22, 26–28, 36, 39, 53, 55, 56, 58–60, 63–65, 67–72, 74–84, 86, 87, 130, 138 Hamilton, Alexander, 99, 112 Harding, Warren G., 101, 103–106 Harlow, Bryce, 26 Helms, Richard, 55, 71, 72 Hersh, Seymour M., 52, 54, 58 High crimes and misdemeanors, 128 Hoffer, Eric, 136 Hoover, Herbert, 54 House Judiciary Committee, 71, 78, 85, 87, 129 Humphrey, Hubert H., 11, 20, 48, 61 Hunt, Howard, 58, 59, 62, 69–73, 75, 76 Huston Plan, 48, 56 Huston, Tom Charles, 55, 56

I Illiberal democracy, 113, 114, 116, 117, 120, 136 Impeach (ment), 6, 78, 85, 87–91, 93, 94, 101, 104, 107–109, 111, 112, 130, 131 Imperial presidency, 120, 127 Insurrection (January 6), 111, 137 Internal Revenue System (IRS), 64 Iran, 107, 108

INDEX

J Jackson State College, 38 Jaworski, Leon, 5, 85, 87 Johnson, Andrew, 88, 101 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 14, 20, 24, 34, 47, 51, 52, 57

K Kennedy, Edward (Ted), 138 Kennedy, John F., 1, 7, 10, 11, 58 Kent State University, 3, 38 Kissinger, Henry, 19, 26, 30–34, 36, 39, 42, 43, 53–55, 58, 93 Kleindienst, Richard, 82 Krogh, Egil (Bud), 58, 59

L Laird, Melvin, 35, 37 Laos, 36 Lewinsky, Monica, 109 Liberal democracy, 113, 115–117, 120, 136, 137 Liddy, G. Gordon, 58, 59, 62, 66–69, 71, 73, 76, 77 Liddy Plan, 66–68, 79 Lincoln, Abraham, 5, 134

M Machiavelli, Niccolo, 99 Madison, James, 100 Magruder, Jeb, 28, 60, 62, 66–70, 73, 74, 78–81, 83, 87 Mao Tse Tung, 43 Mardian, Robert, 70 Mazlish, Bruce, 17 Media, 94, 112, 125, 128 Middle East, 50 Mitchell, John, 21–23, 27, 28, 54, 56, 60, 62, 66, 67, 69–71,

141

73–75, 77, 79–81, 84, 86, 87, 102

N Nathan, Richard, 19 National Security Council (NSC), 54, 58 New York Times , 54, 57, 58, 69 Nixon Doctrine, 31, 33 Nixon, Richard, 1–66, 68, 70–76, 78–95, 97, 101, 105, 106, 111, 112, 123, 124, 126–131, 133–138 North, Oliver, 107

O O’Brien, Lawrence, 68 Operation Candor, 85, 86

P Paine, Thomas, 133 Pentagon Papers, 57–59 Personality, 4, 5, 13, 14, 16–18, 26–28, 91, 123, 134 Plato, 98, 99, 116 Plumbers, 48, 58, 83 Press, 2, 10, 38, 50, 53, 57, 70, 73, 74, 78, 83, 85, 111, 125, 126, 129 Price, Raymond, 13 Putin, Vladimir, 115, 119, 120

Q Quirk, Paul, 124

R Reagan, Ronald, 101, 105–108, 124 Real politic, 25

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Reichley, James, 24 Rodino, Peter, 86, 88 Rogers, William P., 37 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 18, 19 Ruckelshaus, William, 85 Rule of law, 46, 113, 114, 116, 120, 126–128, 137 S Safire, William, 13, 54 Saturday Night Massacre, 85 Schlesinger, Arthur, 120 Schlesinger, James, 91 Schudson, Michael, 123 Segretti, Donald, 60, 130 Senate Watergate Committee, 67, 69, 80, 84 Separation of powers, 78, 90, 113, 126, 130 Sirica, John, 45, 73, 77, 80, 84, 86, 89, 129 Southern strategy, 20–25, 44 Soviet Union, 8, 29–33, 41, 42, 44, 50, 124 Starr, Ken, 109 Summit, 1972, 41 1973, 59 Supreme Court, 25, 28, 57, 84, 89, 94, 129

T Teapot Dome, 104 Thieu, Nguyen Van, 35 Truman, Harry, 8 Trump, Donald J., 6, 101, 110–112, 115, 116, 119, 126, 127, 131, 133–138 Trust, 5, 6, 16, 18, 28, 47, 98, 99, 101, 102, 117, 119, 127, 136, 138

V Vietnam, 2, 3, 11, 19, 29, 31, 33–36, 39, 40, 44, 47, 50–53, 57, 124 Vietnamization, 35, 38

W Washington Post , 45, 65, 71, 74 Watergate, 4–6, 16, 28, 30, 39, 44–50, 53, 61, 62, 64, 67, 69–83, 86, 88, 93–95, 97, 98, 103, 105, 111, 112, 123–138 Western alliance, 33, 40 Woodward, Bob, 45, 74

Z Ziegler, Ron, 38, 45, 70, 75