After the Fall

by Kasey S. Pipes

  The deal hinged on Nixon’s ability to secure his papers from the government. The Presidential Records and Materials Preservation Act—the legislation Ford had signed—did not give the federal government ownership of the documents, but it did give the government possession. Nixon’s litigation challenged this, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Two years after he had made the announcement about the arrangement with USC, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that the law dealing with the Nixon papers was legal because Nixon represented a “legitimate case of one.” Later that year, employees of the General Services Administration began storing the Nixon filed deep inside the National Archives in Washington.

  This impasse was enough to keep matters from moving forward at USC Indeed, from 1977 until 1981, little progress had been made toward creating a Nixon library on the college’s campus. Then in 1981, a chance encounter between two unlikely allies changed the plans for the Nixon library. While attending an event in New York on July 28, 1981, Nixon spoke with Duke President Terry Sanford. Sanford was a liberal who had served as governor of North Carolina and had seconded the nomination of John F. Kennedy for president in 1960. Yet he saw the value of having the archives of Duke’s most famous alumnus on campus. On the spot, he asked the former president about placing his library at Duke. Nixon demurred and changed the subject to football, joking that Duke should hire his friend George Allen as its coach.

  But the library itself was no joking matter. And Nixon was far more interested than he had let on to Sanford. Nixon still fondly remembered his law school alma mater as the place that gave him a chance. He had survived on a $250-per-year scholarship provided by the school, supplemented by working in the law library. He would never have gone on to a successful political career had it not been for Duke. Plus, Duke had a prestigious academic reputation. With the USC negotiations lagging, why not consider Duke?

  In early August, Stan Mortenson, Nixon’s lawyer, visited the campus on two separate occasions to see if Duke would indeed make sense for the Nixon library. He liked what he saw and reported back favorably to his boss. Meanwhile, President Sanford pitched the idea internally at Duke. There, the reaction was not so positive.

  “We know more about presidential papers than Terry Sanford,” jeered Duke professor Lawrence C. Goodwin when the proposal became public. “We know what presidential libraries are. They’re not archives; they’re shrines.”2

  Goodwin was not entirely wrong. Modern presidential libraries are not only places to host the archives, but they are also museums with exhibits extolling presidents’ virtues, with gift shops where photos and t-shirts of the presidents can be purchased. Did Duke—a traditionally left-leaning institution—want a Nixon museum on its campus? The answer coming back to Sanford from the faculty was a resounding no.

  “It would be an albatross around Duke University for years to come,” Duke professor H. Sheldon Smith told the Washington Post, “an object of censure, scorn, and derision.”3

  Sanford persisted. He understood the risks, but he also saw the benefits. “I would have been ashamed of myself if I would have been afraid to propose this,” he said publicly of the proposal. “I think it indicates integrity, courage, and institutional self-confidence on Duke’s part. I think it would hurt our image if we turned it down.”

  Sanford was about to learn the truth in Kissinger’s famous joke that academic politics is so vicious because the stakes are so low. In the summer of 1981, college professors at Duke left their comfortable offices and the editing of their syllabi for the opportunity to take shots at the former president. And to someone like Sanford, who had spent his life and career toiling in the vineyard of the Left, it proved to be too much.

  When the Duke Academic Council took a formal vote on the project, Sanford’s efforts came up short. The proposal was voted down 35–34.

  The house where Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. (Jeremy Thompson)

  At this point, there were few options left for the homeless Nixon library. One possibility was San Clemente, the California town where the Nixons had lived for so long. A beautiful plot of land overlooking the ocean was chosen. “We were looking for a focus for tourism,” San Clemente mayor Scott Diehl said, “and we thought the Nixon Library could do that for us.”4

  Nixon followed events closely through his longtime aide Ken Khachigian, who faithfully attended hearings at San Clemente City Hall. But as with USC before, the initial excitement over the plan devolved into a long grind of years of negotiations.

  The reflecting pool on the grounds of the Nixon Presidential Library. (Jeremy Thompson)

  Things began encouragingly when the San Clemente City Council voted in 1984 to approve preliminary plans for the library. But controversy soon ensued as the 16.7-acre site was to be connected to a 253-acre commercial and residential development that was being called the Marblehead Coastal Plan. The strategy was that the developer of the site, the Lusk Company in Irvine, would receive approval from the city for the entire project and then donate the land for the library on top of a bluff overlooking the ocean.

  The city of San Clemente had hoped to agree to terms with Lusk in July 1987. But a council member urged delay, saying, “Nixon needs us more than we need him.” Khachigian reported the comment back to Nixon. And it was too much for him.

  “To hell with ’em,” Nixon raged. “We’ll go to Yorba Linda.” So the site of Nixon’s birthplace was purchased and some buildings were cleared so that a presidential museum could be built. On November 7, 1987, the Los Angeles Times reported that Nixon would build a “twenty-five million dollar library next to the house where he was born” in Orange County. The Richard Nixon Elementary School, located next to the site of Nixon’s boyhood home, had experienced declining enrollment for years. The city and the school district agreed to demolish the building to make room for the Nixon presidential library. This would give the library six acres of land on which to build.5

  Nixon, for his part, seemed genuinely excited to be going home to Yorba Linda. But John Whitaker, executive director of the Nixon Foundation, made sure the press knew how disappointed the Nixon team was in the four-year process they had just been through in San Clemente. “We expected it to take some time but never that long,” he told the Los Angeles Times. But at long last the search for a home had ended. Now planning and fundraising could begin. But one challenge remained—Nixon’s papers. The former president had still not been able to reach an agreement with the federal government over the status of his presidential papers. They were still in Washington. This meant that the Nixon Library and Museum would be mostly a museum. The pre-presidential papers and post-presidential papers would be located in the new facility in Yorba Linda. But the post-presidential papers were controlled by the family and not open to researchers. So tourists and history buffs would be the main target of the new facility, not researchers or scholars.6

  Meanwhile, it was becoming clear that Richard Nixon’s career could not yet be consigned to a museum. He still had plenty to say.

  Chapter Twelve

  Navigating the Turbulence

  “The leader must organize his life . . . to make the big plays.”

  By the fall of 1981, Nixon had already published three books and was editing his fourth. Leaders represented a bit of a departure for Nixon. Rather than take an issue such as foreign policy and hope that key people like Reagan would read it, he had decided to take key people in history and write profiles defining the characteristics that made them great. Nixon had worked closely with his old friend and aide Ray Price in New York. Price and Nixon loosely structured their book on the model of Churchill’s Great Contemporaries, and the idea was for Nixon to write about and reflect on people he had been with in the arena.

  “I had to have known them. . . .” Nixon said of his criteria in choosing the figures in the book, and they had to have “made a difference—by building their nation, by saving it, or by moving the world in some other singular way.” Nixon also
noted that each of the people in the book had been in “the wilderness” and had returned to “lead his nation out of a moment of supreme crisis.”1

  Nixon’s choices were revealing. He included chapters on his hero Charles de Gaulle and on Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur (whom Nixon wrote about in a chapter including his thoughts on Japan’s Shigeru Yoshida), Konrad Adenauer, Nikita Khrushchev, David Ben-Gurion, and Golda Meir, among others. Nixon told anecdotes about each leader and included some of his or her axioms. But permeating each chapter was Nixon’s own personal take on what made the leader in question successful and what defines leadership in general. And Nixon shrewdly offered his own personal reminiscences about each figure, which helped bring the book to life.

  Telford Taylor, reviewing the book for the New York Times, couldn’t help but like Nixon’s eye-witness viewpoint of the leaders in the book: “By far the most interesting passages are those in which Mr. Nixon describes his personal encounters with his subjects. While some of these accounts are routine, those dealing with de Gaulle, Adenauer, and especially Khrushchev, Zhou Enlai and Leonid Brezhnev (to whom Nixon devotes a portion of the chapter on Khrushchev) are fascinating.” Taylor quoted from the Khruschev chapter:

  In their personal diplomacy Khrushchev and Brezhnev were similar to Lyndon Johnson. They felt compelled to reinforce their words with some sort of physical contact. Khrushchev’s tactile diplomacy was almost always menacing. . . . When Brezhnev reached out to touch or grab my arm, he sought to implore, not to bully. But should these gentler means fail to persuade me, Brezhnev could also apply sheer muscle. What struck me most about Brezhnev was his emotional versatility. At one moment he would speak with what seemed to be perfect sincerity about his deep desire to leave a legacy of peace for his grandchildren. In the next he would assert with unequivocal determination his right to control the destinies of other nations all around the world.

  Taylor wrote that parts of the book represented something close to Nixon coming into his own as a writer and historian. “Furthermore,” he wrote, “the style of these parts is fluent and poised—not unduly self-laudatory and with few wasted words. Indeed, this reviewer came away from the book with a sense that Mr. Nixon was far more relaxed—and successful—when dealing with foreign potentates than when confronting domestic problems in Washington or California and that his own most pleasant memories are for the days in Paris, Bonn, Moscow, and Peking. It is noteworthy that the only American leader on whom Mr. Nixon focuses is General MacArthur.”2

  It was indeed noteworthy. Nixon had not included his former boss Dwight Eisenhower, yet he had included MacArthur, who had famously ridiculed the idea of Ike becoming president by calling him “the best clerk” he had ever had. The omission was not lost on the public—or the Eisenhower family. “I hate the association of the name Eisenhower with the name Nixon,” Milton Eisenhower later said in expressing the family’s reaction to—and even gratitude for—Ike’s exclusion from Nixon’s book.

  Toward the end of the book, Nixon managed to take shots at some familiar suspects. Years before conservatives were complaining about “fake news,” Nixon accused television of having “shortened the public’s attention span.” He also portrayed the media as an entity filled with a “pervasive left-wing bias.” Academia came under fire, as well. Tenured professors too often lived in the “stratosphere of the absurd.” And bureaucrats were not spared either. Nixon accused federal civil servants of being “institutionally lethargic,” and even worse, “politically active for liberal causes.” He made this argument decades before conservatives would attack “the deep state” for continuing to implement the Left’s policies no matter which party won the elections.

  A leader, Nixon was saying, had to overcome the bias of the media, the academy, and even the civil service to get things done. He did not explicitly apply this analysis to his own presidency. He did, however, write that a leader must not be judged until enough time has transpired. Quoting de Gaulle, who was quoting Sophocles, Nixon wrote of the leaders in his book—as well as of himself—that “one must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.”

  The book represented another milestone as Nixon added “historian” to his list of accomplishments. The reviews were ambivalent, but the book sold briskly. And on its publication in 1982, Nixon sent out copies to friends, and even rivals. Invariably, he would autograph the book with a specific note to the recipient. Occasionally, Nixon would receive a note back. One that may have surprised him came from his rival in the 1972 presidential race—George McGovern. The note simply read, “History will remember you as one of the great peacemakers of the twentieth century.”3

  * * *

  By early 1982, the Reagan administration was beginning to experience internal controversy.

  In January of that year, National Security Advisor Richard Allen found himself in hot water when news was leaked of an FBI investigation into possible bribery. Allen had essentially intercepted a payment from a foreign reporter. The Japanese media outlet routinely paid for major interviews and the check was supposed to be a thank you for Mrs. Reagan. Allen grabbed the check as a way of keeping Mrs. Reagan out of trouble. Eventually, the investigation showed that he had violated no laws. But the leaked story had done the damage, and Allen was forced out in January 1982.

  Meanwhile, David Stockman, Reagan’s Office of Management of Budget director, fell prey to the ancient Washington temptation of a fawning profile from the press. In his case, it came during a series of interviews with William Greider for a story that eventually ran in the Atlantic Monthly. Stockman appeared dismissive of the 1981 tax cuts package. “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers,” he told Greider, referring to Reagan's economic agenda. The article appeared in December 1981 and created a frenzy of talk in Washington about how Reagan’s own team didn’t believe in Reaganomics.

  In January 1982, Nixon wrote to Reagan to reassure him. And, as only a former president can, he told the current president that the fault lay with the staffers. Nixon wrote that “the problem all conservative administrations face is that those who are loyal are not bright and those who are bright are not loyal.” In case Reagan should wonder whom he was referring to, Nixon was explicit. “Allen is loyal but unfortunately not bright enough,” he wrote. “Stockman is bright, but as anyone who reads the entire Atlantic Monthly interview article as I have would conclude, he is simply not loyal to the Reagan economic policy.”4

  Nixon himself was not wild about Reaganomics, but few issues could get him riled up more than staff disloyalty. It outraged him to read Stockman—a former advisor to Reagan’s 1980 presidential rival John Anderson—essentially questioning his boss in print.

  Still, Nixon was largely pleased that Reagan’s major domestic policy agenda had been accomplished with the passage of the tax cuts. Now the president could cast his eye overseas.

  But even there, trouble loomed. Nixon’s friend and personal choice to head Reagan’s foreign affairs was losing support. Al Haig had always been an acquired taste. He possessed a competent management style but had an abrasive personality. And ever since the assassination attempt—when Haig was perceived to have essentially declared himself temporary president—many in Reagan's inner circle had grown suspicious of the secretary of state. Haig had never been accused of having a small ego. But now questions were growing about whether Haig could be a team player and subordinate his own interests to those of the president.

  Late in the spring of 1982, events in the Middle East forced Reagan’s hand. Israel had invaded Lebanon. Reagan, possessing a far shrewder mind on foreign affairs than his critics realized, understood the Israelis’ thinking. For years, terrorists from the Palestinian Liberation Organization had used Southern Lebanon as a staging ground to launch terrorist attacks into Israel. From Israel's point of view, the counterattack against Lebanon was not an invasion of a sovereign country, but was a strike against rogue terrorists. In their minds, it was an act of de
fense—not an offensive measure. Indeed, the Israelis called it “Operation Peace for Galilee.”

  Haig shared this view for the most part. He went to the president and urged him to say nothing publicly. Reagan was sympathetic with Haig’s position and with the goals of the Israeli operation. But he also understood how it would look in the eyes of the world—like the invasion of a sovereign nation. The president initially gave Haig what he wanted. No statement came from the White House in the initial hours of the attack. But a day later, Reagan’s instincts had been proven correct. Israel was being widely condemned for the attack. The leader of the free world could no longer remain silent. On June 6, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick joined the other members of the United Nations Security Council in passing a resolution demanding that Israel withdraw from Lebanon.

  Enraged, Haig called Nixon to vent. In his mind he had been undermined by the president, and he believed he should resign as secretary of state. Nixon pushed back. He told his old friend to relax and let things play out. But Haig was never one to be an observer.

  On June 13, he appeared on a Sunday morning talk show and was asked about the possibility of American troops being sent to Lebanon to help restore the ceasefire. “We’re going to have to look very, very carefully at what will be necessary to provide a stable situation in Southern Lebanon,” Haig responded.

  It would be his last public comment as secretary of state. The president had finally had enough. Earlier that week, Haig—ignoring Nixon’s advice to lay low—had complained bitterly to new National Security Advisor William Clark about how he had been undermined. It was that display of histrionics that sealed his fate. Clark reported the conversation back to Reagan.

  One of the great myths about Ronald Reagan is that he was blindly staff-driven and never questioned or challenged subordinates. Yes, he hired people he trusted and he delegated authority. But if someone lost his trust, he didn’t hesitate to make a move. Al Haig found that out the hard way on June 25. He was summoned to the Oval Office, where the president gave him a document. As he read it, Haig saw that it was Reagan’s acceptance of his resignation. Haig had just been fired.