I've been using tape recorders in all kinds of journalistic situations for almost ten years, all kinds of equipment, ranging from ten-inch studio reels to raisin-sized mini-bugs -- but I have never even seen anything like the system Wong's Secret Service experts rigged up for Nixon in the White House. In addition to dozens of wireless, voice-activated mikes about the size of a pencil eraser that he had built into the woodwork, there were also custom-built sensors, delay mechanisms and "standby" switches wired into telephones that either Bull or Butterfield could activate.
In the Cabinet Room, for instance, Nixon had microphones built into the bases of the wall lamps that he could turn on or off with harmless-looking buzzers labeled "Haldeman" and "Butterfield" on the rug underneath the cabinet table in front of his chair. The tapes and recording equipment were installed in a locked closet in the basement of the West Wing, but Nixon could start the reels rolling by simply pressing on the floor buzzer marked "Butterfield" with the toe of his shoe -- and to stop the reels, putting the machinery back on standby, he could step on the "Haldeman" button. . .
Any serious description of Nixon's awesome tape-recording system would take thousands of words and boggle the minds of most laymen, but even this quick capsule is enough to suggest two fairly obvious but rarely mentioned conclusions: Anybody with this kind of a tape system, installed and maintained 24 hours a day by Secret Service electronics experts, is going to consistently produce extremely high quality voice reproductions. And since the White House personnel office can hire the best transcribing typists available, and provide them with the best tape-transcribing machinery on the market, there is only one conceivable reason for those thousands of maddening, strategically spotted "unintelligibles" in the Nixon version of the White House Tapes. Any Kelly Girl agency in the country would have given Nixon his money back if their secretaries had done that kind of damage to his transcripts. Sloppiness of that magnitude can only be deliberate, and Nixon is known to have personally edited most of those tape transcripts before they were typed for the printer. . . Which doesn't mean much, now that Nixon's version of the transcripts is no longer potential evidence but sloppy artifacts that are no longer even interesting to read except as an almost criminally inept contrast to the vastly more detailed and coherent transcripts that House Judiciary Committee transcribers produced from the same tapes. The only people with any reason to worry about either the implications of those butchered transcripts or the ham-fisted criminal who did the final editing jobs are the editors at whichever publishing house decides to pay Richard Nixon $2 million for his presidential memoirs, which will be heavily dependent on that vast haul of Oval Office tapes that Gerald Ford has just decreed are the personal property of Richard Nixon. He will have the final edit on those transcripts, too -- just before he sends the final draft of his memoirs to the printer. The finished book will probably sell for $15; and a lot of people will be stupid enough to buy it.
The second and more meaningful aspect vis-à-vis Nixon's tape system has to do with the way he used it. Most tape freaks see their toys as a means to bug other people, but Nixon had the SS technicians install almost every concealed bug in his system with a keen eye for its proximity to Richard Nixon.
According to Butterfield, Nixon was so obsessed with recording every move and moment of his presidency for the history books that he often seemed to be thinking of nothing else. When he walked from the White House to his office in the EOB, for instance, he would carry a small tape recorder in front of his mouth and maintain a steady conversation with it as he moved in his stiff-legged way across the lawn. . . And although we will never hear those tapes, the mere fact that he was constantly making them, for reasons of his own, confirms Alex Butterfield's observation that Richard Nixon was so bewitched with the fact that he really was The President that his only sense of himself in that job came from the moments he could somehow record and squirrel away in some safe place, for tomorrow night or the ages.
There is a bleeding kind of irony in this unnatural obsession of Nixon's with his place in history when you realize what must have happened to his mind when he finally realized, probably sometime in those last few days of his doomed presidency, just exactly what kind of place in history was even then being carved out for him.
In the way it is usually offered, the sleazy little argument that "Nixon has been punished enough" is an ignorant, hack politician cliche. . . But that image of him walking awkward and alone across the White House lawn at night, oblivious to everything in front or on either side of him except that little black and silver tape recorder that he is holding up to his lips, talking softly and constantly to "history," with the brittle intensity of a madman: When you think on that image for a while, remember that the name Nixon will seem to give off a strange odor every time it is mentioned for the next 300 years, and in every history book written from now on, "Nixon" will be synonymous with shame, corruption and failure.
No other president in American history has been driven out of the White House in a cloud of disgrace. No other president has been forced to preside over the degrading collapse of his own administration or been forced to stand aside and watch helplessly -- and also guiltily -- while some of his close friends and ranking assistants are led off to jail. And finally, no president of the United States has ever been so vulnerable to criminal prosecution, so menaced by the threat of indictment and trial, crouched in the dock of a federal courtroom and so obviously headed for prison that only the sudden grant of presidential pardon from the man he appointed to succeed him could prevent his final humiliation.
These are the stinking realities that will determine Richard Nixon's place in American history. . . And in this ugly context, the argument that "Richard Nixon has been punished enough" takes on a different meaning. He will spend many nights by himself in his study out there in San Clemente, listening over and over to those tapes he made for the ages and half-remembering the feel of thick grass on the Rose Garden lawn adding a strange new spring to his walk, even making him talk a bit louder as he makes his own knotty, plastic kind of love to his sweet little Japanese bride, telling it over and over again that he really is The President, The Most Powerful Man in the World -- and goddamnit, you better never forget that!
Richard Nixon is free now. He bargained wisely and well. His arrangement with Ford has worked nicely, despite that week or so of bad feeling when he had to get a little rough with Gerry about the pardon, threatening to call in the L.A. Times man and play that quick little tape of their conversation in the Oval Office -- the one where he offered to make Gerry the vice-president, in exchange for a presidential pardon whenever he asked for it -- and he had known, by then, that he would probably need it a lot sooner than Gerry realized. Once their arrangement was made (and taped), Nixon just rode for as long as he could, then got off in time to sign up for his lifetime dole as a former president.
He will rest for a while now, then come back to haunt us again. His mushwit son-in-law, David Eisenhower, is urging him to run for the U.S. Senate from California in 1976, and Richard Nixon is shameless enough to do it. Or if not in the Senate, he will turn up somewhere else. The only thing we can be absolutely sure of, at this point in time, is that we are going to have Richard Milhous Nixon to kick around for at least a little while longer.
Rolling Stone #111, October 10,1974
PART 3
Traveler Hears Mountain Music Where It's Sung
Renfro Valley, Ky.-- The Bluegrass country is cold and brown in the winter. Night comes early and the horses are taken inside to sleep in heated barns. The farmers sit around pot bellied stoves and pass the time with a banjo and a jug and sometimes a bit of talk. Not many visitors in the winter. Not much to do, either.
Here in Rock Castle county the biggest event of the week is the Saturday night show in a little spot on the map called Renfro Valley, a big barn and a recording studio on U. S. highway 25, about 50 miles south of Lexington.
Ten years ago they flocked to this place
like pilgrims to the shrine-- not just from the nearby Bluegrass towns, but from all over the nation. They came for the country music and the All-Day Sings and to get a look at the Old Kentucky Barn Dance they'd heard so often on their radios at home. It got so big that 15,000 people showed up one summer Saturday night, and a national magazine sent down a team of cameras to record the scene for posterity.
Now perhaps 150 will show up. They come down from Berea and Crab Orchard, and Preachersville, and from places like Egypt and Shoulderblade across the mountains. Not many from out of state. Not even enough to justify using the barn, which is closed until spring, when the crowds will pick up again.
Only the locals show up in the winter. They come with guitars and bass fiddles and old songbooks, and they gather in the studio to do a radio show that you can still hear in some cities, but not in so many as you could a few years back. The show starts around 7 and winds up at 9:30 -- just about the time the hillbilly singers and the Bluegrass banjo champs are warming up at Gerde's in New York's Greenwich Village.
Folks around here don't have much time for strangers. You ask what goes on at Renfro Valley and they shrug and say, "Not much." You want to find a restaurant after 8 p.m. and -- if you can find anybody to ask -- they'll direct you to Lexington, an hour's drive.
You have a thirst and they tell you, "This here's a dry county." Pause. "Yep, dry county." Another pause. "Maybe if you go up the road a piece to where you find a sort of restaurant, maybe somebody there can fix you up."
So if you want entertainment in these parts, you go to Renfro Valley and you go early. The studio is warm and the music is every bit as real as the people who sing it.
"Well, now, for all you folks out there in radioland, I want to say that we got a little gal visitin' with us this evenin'. Little Brenda Wallen, from up in Winchester, I believe. . ."
And little Brenda sings: "Beeyooteeful lies, beeyooteeful lies. . . each one a heartbreak. . . in perfect disguise. . ."
Then the Hibbard Brothers quartet, lean mountain faces and huge hands poking out of gabardine sleeves -- "O, what a time we will have up in heaven. . ."
A murmur of approval from the audience. A flashbulb pops near the back of the room. Things are picking up. The Farmer Sisters take their turn at the mike, with a rippling version of "You're the Reason."
A few cheers from the crowd, a quick burst of fiddle music from a man beside the piano, then somebody holds up a hand for silence. Time for the commercial.
"This here's a long one," says the announcer, glancing at a yellow script in his hand, "so let's do it all at once and get it over with." Snickers from the audience. Everybody grins as the commercial is read very earnestly into the mike that will carry it out to the Good Lord only knows where.
The announcer finishes and heaves a sigh of relief, also into the mike. Everybody laughs and the show goes on. Meanwhile, the Greenbriar Boys are tuning their instruments at Gerde's; in a few hours there will be a long, button down line outside the hungry i in San Francisco, waiting to hear the latest hillbilly sensation.
It's 9:30 in Rock Castle county and the Old Kentucky Barn dance is over until next week. Only a few people remain in the studio. One of them is John Lair, a local boy and a onetime Chicago disk jockey who came back home to put Renfro Valley on the map. Red Foley got his start here. So did the Coon Creek Sisters, from a place back in the hills called Pinch 'Em Tight Holler.
Lair seems genuinely puzzled by the term, "Bluegrass music." He thinks it's a misnomer.
"It's plain old mountain music," he insists. "Same stuff they've been singing for more than a hundred years." He chuckles and shakes his head. "You go up to Lexington and call it Bluegrass music and you'll have a fight on your hands."
Lair says goodnight and leaves to go home. Outside, the parking lot is almost empty. A visitor has two choices -- drive up to Lexington for something to eat and maybe a good fight, or hurry to the nearest motel.
A few miles up the road is a town called Nicholasville, where motel owners won't even answer the door after what they consider a decent hour. When I stopped a man on the street and asked him why this was, he said he was the chief of police and offered to rent me a bed in his house.
I went back to one of the motels, went into the office, turned on the light, picked a key off the desk and located a cabin by myself. The next morning it took me 20 minutes to find somebody to pay -- and then I was told I wouldn't be welcome there in the future because my car had a license plate from Louisville. They don't care much for city boys, specially when they're roamin' around late at night.
If you drive thru Kentucky and plan to spend the night, get your room early. And if you like a toddy before bedding down, remember that 86 of the 120 counties are bone dry until you make friends. Grog shops are few and far between, and a man without foresight will usually go to bed thirsty.
Winter mornings are bleak. Almost always you wake up to a gray sky and a good country breakfast: fried sausage or ham, fried eggs, fried potatoes, and a plate of biscuits with butter and apple jelly. Then, after a pot of coffee, you move on.
No matter which way you go you'll drive thru a lot of cold, barren country to get there. North, thru the heart of the Bluegrass, west toward Louisville, east into the mountains, or south to Tennessee.
Not much speed on those narrow highways, plenty of time to look off across the white fences and wonder how the cows find anything to eat in the frozen fields. Time to listen to the sermons on the radio or the lonely thump of a shotgun somewhere back from the road.
Not much to hurry about in the Bluegrass, specially in the winter when the trees are bare and the barns are white with frost and most folks are inside by the stove.
The Chicago Tribune, February 18, 1962
A Footloose American in a Smugglers' Den
In Puerto Estrella, Colombia, there is little to do but talk. It is difficult to say just what the villagers are talking about, however, because they speak their own language -- a tongue called Guajiro, a bit like Arabic, which doesn't ring well in a white man's ear.
Usually they are talking about smuggling, because this tiny village with thatched roof huts and a total population of about 100 South American Indians is a very important port of entry. Not for humans, but for items like whisky and tobacco and jewelry. It is not possible for a man to get there by licensed carrier, because there are no immigration officials and no customs. There is no law at all, in fact, which is precisely why Puerto Estrella is such an important port.
It is far out at the northern tip of a dry and rocky peninsula called La Guajira, on which there are no roads and a great deal of overland truck traffic. The trucks carry contraband, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of it, bound for the interiors of Colombia and Venezuela. Most of it comes from Aruba, brought over at night on fast trawlers and put ashore at Puerto Estrella for distribution down the peninsula on the trucks.
I arrived at dusk on a fishing sloop from Aruba. And since there is no harbor I was put ashore in a tiny rowboat. Above us, on a sharp cliff, stood the entire population of the village, staring grimly and without much obvious hospitality at Puerto Estrella's first tourist in history.
In Aruba, the Guajiro Indians are described as "fierce and crazy and drunk all day on coconut whisky." Also in Aruba you will hear that the men wear "nothing but neckties, knotted just below the navel." That sort of information can make a man uneasy, and as I climbed the steep path, staggering under the weight of my luggage, I decided that at the first sign of unpleasantness I would begin handing out neckties like Santa Claus -- three fine paisleys to the most menacing of the bunch, then start ripping up shirts.
As I came over the brink of the cliff, a few children laughed, an old hag began screeching, and the men just stared. Here was a white man with 12 Yankee dollars in his pocket and more than $500 worth of camera gear slung over his shoulders, hauling a typewriter, grinning, sweating, no hope of speaking the language, no place to stay -- and somehow
they were going to have to deal with me.
There was a conference, and then a small man stepped forward and made motions indicating that I should put my gear on an ancient truck which started with a crank. I was taken to an abandoned hospital, where I was given a sort of cell with a filthy mattress and broken windows to let in the air.
There is not much for the tourist in Puerto Estrella, no hotels, restaurants, or souvenirs. Nor is the food palatable. Three times a day I faced it -- leaves, maize, and severely salted goat meat, served up with muddy water.
The drinking was a problem too, but in a different way. At the crack of dawn on the day after my arrival I was awakened and taken before a jury of village bigwigs. Its purpose was to determine the meaning of my presence. These gentlemen had gathered in the only concrete-block house in town, and before them on the table was a cellophane-wrapped bottle of Scotch whisky.
After an hour or so of gestures, a few words of Spanish, and nervous demonstrations of my camera equipment, they seemed to feel a drinking bout was in order. The Scotch was opened, five jiggers were filled, and the ceremony began.
It continued all that day and all the next. They tossed it off straight in jiggers, solemnly at first and then with mounting abandon. Now and then one of them would fall asleep in a hammock, only to return a few hours later with new thirst and vigor. At the end of one bottle they would proudly produce another, each one beautifully wrapped in cellophane.
As it turned out, three things made my visit a success. One was my size and drinking capacity (it was fear -- a man traveling alone among reportedly savage Indians dares not get drunk); another was the fact that I never turned down a request for a family portrait (fear, again); and the third was my "lifelong acquaintance" with Jacqueline Kennedy, whom they regard as some sort of goddess.
The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time Page 48