After the Fall

by Kasey S. Pipes

  Praise for

  After the Fall

  “In a fast-moving, richly researched volume that breaks new ground, Kasey S. Pipes describes that most improbable of political journeys, the post-presidential return of Richard Nixon, this time to the private role of advising Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton on foreign policy. Drawing on private Nixon family records, letters, and memos, Pipes shows the former president was far more active in helping shape America’s grand global strategy—and more successful—than previously realized, even as he suffered political exile. The story is a must for anyone wanting to understand Nixon’s life after Watergate.”

  —Karl C. Rove, deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration and author of The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters

  “Kasey S. Pipes’s After the Fall is a book worth reading; it is also a book worth thinking about in deeply reflective ways. At one level it is an insightful chronicle of Richard Nixon’s return to grace as he deftly uses his foreign policy expertise as the vehicle to establish new relationships with policy makers, politicians, and the public. Pipes’s depiction of the eulogies for Nixon by Senator Dole and President Clinton reads as an evocative exclamation point for this groundbreaking story of Nixon’s successful twenty-year return journey. Yet at another, more reflective level it is a study in the power of resilience, determination, and character in shaping a life—Nixon’s, to be sure, but more broadly perhaps, our own as well.”

  —Larry Taylor, U.S. Ambassador to Estonia, 1995–97

  “Three and a half years after departing the White House in disgrace, on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, Richard Nixon contemplated the future. ‘I had to decide,’ he wrote, ‘what to do with the rest of my life.’ The road less traveled in Nixon scholarship is the twenty-year span following his presidency. In After the Fall, Kasey Pipes fills in the missing parts of this journey. Its apt subtitle is The Remarkable Comeback of Richard Nixon. Nixon’s regeneration was remarkable. So is this book.”

  —Carl Cannon, Washington Bureau Chief, RealClearPolitics

  “Based on his exclusive access to Nixon’s post-presidential papers, Kasey Pipes has written a fascinating account of Richard M. Nixon’s last and greatest personal crisis: rebuilding his credibility after Watergate. Pipes has mastered and carefully weighed the facts, and he tells the story well.”

  —Bruce Buchanan, professor emeritus, Department of Government, the University of Texas at Austin

  For Lacie, Lincoln, Crosby, and Betsy

  and

  In Memory of Brett Foster

  When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.”

  —John 8:7

  Foreword

  “Failure,” Truman Capote wrote, “is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” In every life and in every story the fruits of victory are planted with the seeds of defeat. Every setback teaches lessons; the question is, will the defeated listen and learn?

  What follows is the story of the final years of the great political tragedy of American history. Richard Nixon’s fall from power was Shakespearean. So was the man himself. In some ways, he symbolized the American story: born to a family of little means, finding his way in the world through his own hard work and intellect, and reaching the top of the greasy pole in Washington, D.C. But then at the height of his power, he lost it all.

  Entire libraries’ worth of books have been written about Watergate. But comparatively little has been written about what happened after Nixon left the White House.

  This book is not a book about power; it is a book about the loss of power. What does the most powerful man in the world do once he is forced into exile? What happens when the flame turns to ash? Like Napoleon Bonaparte at Elba, Nixon was a restless soul. But he didn't dream of military takeovers; he dreamed of relevance. He wanted to redeem himself and be able once again to use his greatest gift—his mind. He envisioned not a rehabilitation of his career, but a redefining of his life. He not only wanted to be accepted again, but he also wanted to help shape foreign policy for years to come. How Nixon achieved both of those goals is told in this book. And in many ways the achievement of those goals represented the greatest triumph of all for Nixon—overcoming Watergate.

  It should also be noted that this book doesn’t deal with the specifics of Watergate. The entire ordeal predates the period of time covered in this book. Watergate is mentioned in these pages only when Nixon wrestles with the aftermath of the scandal. In these pages, we see Nixon unconfined and unbound by the trappings of presidential power.

  Few books have been written about Nixon’s post-Watergate years. Robert Sam Anson’s Exile, Stephen Ambrose’s Ruin and Recovery, and Monica Crowley’s two books about her time with Nixon largely represent the canon on Nixon’s post-presidency. And none of them covers the entire twenty years from Watergate until his death in 1994. This is the first book ever to do so.

  The chief reason why this rich quarry had not been mined previously is because the Nixon post-presidential papers are privately owned by the Nixon family. Although they reside at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, under a deposit agreement, they are not accessible to researchers unless researchers are granted access by the family.

  In 2008 I was fortunate to secure special permission from both Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower to use the post-presidential papers in writing this book. That access allowed me to become the first researcher to pore through the final twenty years of Nixon’s papers—including his memos, letters, and notes from meetings.

  Those papers revealed a man who was singed by the fire of Watergate, yes. But Nixon ultimately was strengthened by a lifetime in the fire. He was determined to make the most of the time left to him on this earth.

  The story in the pages that follow is the story of resilience, of resolve, and yes, of redemption. As Charles Krauthammer—a columnist Nixon enjoyed reading—once wrote, everyone experiences challenges: “The catastrophe that awaits everyone from a single false move, wrong turn, fatal encounter. Every life has such a moment. What distinguishes us is whether—and how—we ever come back.”

  This is the story of how Nixon faced the aftermath of his catastrophe—Watergate—and of his remarkable efforts at a comeback.

  A Note from the Author

  I had thought writing a book about Nixon’s post-presidency would be difficult. I was wrong; it was almost impossible.

  But as I tried to navigate through the mist of the darkest period in Nixon’s life as best I could, I had one constant to serve as my compass and guide—Nixon’s post-presidential papers. These papers, housed at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, are not open to researchers. They are owned by the family and had never before been shared with a historian. For the first time ever, the family granted access to a researcher. Once I obtained the family’s blessing to use these records, I made the strategic decision to focus mostly on them in the research and writing of this book.

  This proved to be the right decision, which became clearer when I began doing interviews for the book. Some of Nixon's associates declined to talk to me. Several others did, and they are quoted throughout the book. But from start to finish, the papers guided the book. I used the interviews mainly to find out more about what I had found in the papers. While people’s memories can falter, documents—though they too must be carefully studied for context, intent, and motive—tend to be the most reliable resources.

  The Richard Nixon Research Library houses Nixon’s post-presidential papers, but they are owned by the Nixon family and are not accessible to researchers without the family’s permission. (Jeremy Thompson)


  The research I conducted at the Nixon Library, as well as the interviews that I conducted, enabled me to make numerous discoveries about the final twenty years of Nixon’s life—a remarkably active period for the former president.

  I was able to examine Tricia Cox’s personal account in her diary of her father’s resignation and its immediate aftermath. Cox writes in a very vivid manner and her firsthand account of these events is replete with great attention to detail and fascinating vignettes. Her story of the exchange with George H. W. Bush has never been published before; it demonstrates how difficult Watergate was for the people who were living through it.

  I was also able to review Nixon’s own post-resignation diary entries about his failing health and near-death experience in the hospital. These entries showed how frightened the man was and how close he believed he was to death. Though much has been written about Nixon’s surgery, Nixon’s own thoughts at the time are new territory.

  Former Nixon staffer Ken Khachigian has granted very few interviews since his time with Nixon. He moved to San Clemente to work with Nixon during the early days following his resignation and was able to paint a portrait of what the former president looked and sounded like following the traumatic resignation.

  I was able again to rely on Nixon’s own diary as he described his return to health and the beginnings of his career as an author.

  And I was able to interview key Nixon associates for new material on the Frost-Nixon interviews. Khachigian gave me the never-before-reported story of how Nixon’s on-air “confession”—which the Frost movie portrayed as an accident on Nixon’s part—actually came about. This is all new territory.

  I discovered from Nixon’s letters and memos that he was far more involved in advising Ronald Reagan's campaign than had previously been known. The ex-president sent the campaign ideas and even made successful appointment recommendations once Reagan won the election.

  Nixon’s private papers reveal that he continued to be a powerful influence on the Reagan White House. He cultivated relationships with key Reagan advisors like Mike Deaver. The idea of the Saturday morning radio address was actually Nixon’s idea. More importantly, he worked through aides like National Security Advisor Bud McFarlane to shape Reagan’s negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev. Until now, we haven’t fully appreciated Nixon’s role in advising Reagan on how to use the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in those negotiations and how those negotiations shaped the course of U.S.-Soviet relations and changed history. Again, these are all new discoveries.

  He continued as an outside counselor to President Bush and later President Clinton. But Nixon's pace did begin to slow in the 1990s.

  Although trying to influence policymakers remained a large part of his post-presidential work, Nixon also worked with friends to help refurbish his own legacy. I discovered that he was more deeply involved in the writing of a biography of himself and in its sale to a publisher than has ever before been reported, and that Nixon actually provided questions for an interview of himself on CBS. And he made peace with old enemies. Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern both went out of their way to help their former adversary as he climbed his way out of exile.

  In addition, I uncovered numerous personal writings in which Nixon reflected on his life, his fall from grace, and his attempts to get back up again.

  The papers showed a Nixon insistent on forging ahead. “Remember Lot’s wife,” he would sometimes remind friends, of the Old Testament story, saying, “don’t look back.” He was determined to look ahead. Did he have nefarious ulterior motives, as his critics claim? I’ll leave it to others to read and decide for themselves. But I imagine anyone in his position would try and stage some kind of a comeback. In that sense, his motives were simply human.

  What I discovered in working through Nixon’s letters and documents from 1974 to 1994 was a man with a restless mind who never stopped working. Indeed, he never stopped working as a way to keep his restless mind sharp. This twenty-year period was the most prolific part of Nixon’s life in terms of his own writing. He wrote eight books—not including his memoirs—and his books, while touching virtually every public policy issue, mostly focused on foreign policy. As this book demonstrates, many of these ideas had a direct impact on national policy.

  The papers I spent so much time with ultimately showed a man who never stopped thinking, writing, and influencing  from the dawn of his exile to the dusk of his life.

  Kasey S. Pipes

  January 10, 2019 Washington, D.C.

  Chapter One

  The Beginning of the End

  “That’s enough.”

  “Hey, you’re better looking than I am, why don’t you stay here?”1

  A forced smile creased the man’s face as he spoke to the young aide who had been sitting in the leather chair behind the oak desk and working with the television crew as it tested the lights and sound. It was a few minutes before nine o’clock in the evening (EDT).

  “Blondes, they say, photograph better than brunettes,” the man said, settling gently into the leather chair. He sat at the oak desk, nervously fingering a stack of papers as he looked around the room. As the technicians found the right camera angle and artists touched up his makeup, the man rested his face on his left hand and continued his banter with the young aide.

  “You are a blonde, aren’t you? A redhead?” The man’s view was obstructed by the glare of the television lights.

  “Brunette, sir.”

  Richard Nixon becomes the first president of the United States to resign from office. At this point, he has not had time to think much about what he will do as an ex-president. (Courtesy of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum)

  “Well, we’re the same.” Dressed smartly in a dark blue suit and tie with a small American flag pin on his left lapel, the man looked down at the stack of papers that he held with both hands. Then he looked straight ahead.

  “Do you have an extra camera in case the lights go out?” he asked, squinting his eyes.

  The man continued to banter with the group of aides. Mild anger appeared only once when photographer Ollie Atkins took too many pictures.

  “That’s enough,” he said curtly. “My friend Ollie always wants to take a lot of pictures.” The coerced smile returned to his face. He began to practice reading from the text in his hands.

  “Good evening, this is the thirty-seventh time I have spoken to you from this office where so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of our nation.” The man behind the desk stopped and waited for feedback from the television crew, who assured him that he looked and sounded fine. It was almost time.

  He turned his attention back to his photographer, a stern tone coursing through his voice: “Ollie, only the CBS crew will be allowed in here…. No, there will be no picture.” He waved his hand from left to right for emphasis. “Did you take one just now? That’s it.”

  Then the man turned his attention to another group of people: “Now, all Secret Service . . . are there Secret Service in the room?” He waited for an answer and performed another wave of the hand: “Out.” With most of the room now cleared of staff members, a few more moments of banter with the television crew ensued. The red light went on, the camera rolled, and Richard Nixon announced to the world that he was resigning from the presidency.

  It was 9:01 p.m. on August 8, 1974.2

  Chapter Two

  In Exile

  “It’s only a beginning.”

  One of the last people to leave the White House the next day had been one of the first to know the end was coming. Nixon’s elder daughter, Tricia Cox, had visited her father in July at “La Casa Pacifica,” his home in San Clemente, California. The large Spanish-style Mission Revival mansion was perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. For years, a small seven-hole golf course on the property had been managed by Republican Party volunteers. No more. That July, Tricia and her husband, Ed, walked to the course and found it “wasted, neglected, ugl
y, dead.” She remembered, “Ed and I came upon it on our first stroll around the grounds, and its quality of finality, of hopelessness smote us with an almost physical intensity. Ed tried to overcome this feeling with nervous levity. He said, ‘Looks like someone forgot to water the golf course.’ ”1

  The symbolism was not lost on Tricia: if Nixon’s friends couldn’t take care of his house in San Clemente, there was little hope that his friends could save his presidency in Washington.

  Now just one month later, she prepared to join her father as he entered his exile. After delivering his resignation speech on the night of August 8, Nixon left the Oval Office and walked past the Rose Garden and into the residence where his wife, Pat, along with Tricia and Ed and his younger daughter, Julie, and her husband, David, embraced him.

  “As I patted him on the back, I could feel the perspiration that had drenched his coat,” Tricia said.2 Later on as the family made its way down a hallway, they could hear a crowd outside. Initially the family thought it was a group of supporters. But when they moved closer to the window to listen to what the crowd was chanting, they heard jarring shouts from Pennsylvania Avenue: “Jail to the Chief!”

  The next morning—Nixon’s last day in office—Edward and Tricia decided to walk through the grounds of the Rose Garden, where they had been married just three years before.

  Their stroll would not provide the solace they were seeking.

  A fierce sun beat down on the couple as they entered the garden first created by Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Edith. As guests began walking to the East Room for the president’s farewell to the White House staffers, many of them came through the Rose Garden. A procession line of sorts developed as staff members and other attendees spotted Ed and Tricia and sought to comfort them. Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman George H. W. Bush extended his hand and recalled “what a lovely wedding” the couple had had in the Rose Garden.