The Arrogance of Power
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14. It is not clear to what degree the anti-Onassis operation was driven by the U.S. government, the U.S. oil companies, and by Onassis’s business competitor Stavros Niarchos. Maheu’s associate Gerrity claimed Nixon “ran the thing, but he was never more than a front for the multinational oil companies. You have to remember, one of his main jobs was to raise campaign contributions for the Republicans.” According to Drew Pearson’s sources, Nixon had received massive backing from U.S. oil interests in the 1952 campaign. (Pearson: Abell, ed., op. cit., p. 228–.)
15. One member of the team was Lou Russell, who had worked with Nixon during the Hiss case and who would one day be linked to the Watergate break-in. Another was Horace Schmahl, the intelligence-linked investigator who reportedly admitted having been involved in setting up Alger Hiss, see p. 73. (Undated Washington field office document, FBI 105-20653, Report of Agents Morgan and Kellogg, Oct. 23, 1958, number censored.)
16. Ironically, Onassis would in 1970 give a substantial contract to Nixon’s brother Donald, then with the Marriott Corporation, for in-flight catering on Olympic Airlines aircraft. That deal was brokered by Nixon’s friend Thomas Pappas, who had also arranged for an illegal Greek cash contribution to the Nixon campaign in 1968. Pappas failed, however, to persuade Onassis to contribute to the 1972 campaign. (Donald contract: NYT, June 4, 1970, WP, Feb. 16, 1972; Pappas, 1968: Kutler, Wars of Watergate, op. cit., p. 205–, and ints. Elias Demetracopoulos; Onassis, 1972: Gratsos to Dorsen, Dec. 7, John Doukas to William Mayton, Senate file, Box 11 [Pappas, Onassis], WSPF.)
17. Sam Giancana was found shot dead in 1975, when he was due to be questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Santo Trafficante, whom some suspected of ordering his murder, died of natural causes in 1987. When Maheu referred to dismemberment, he was speaking of John Rosselli, whom he had used to bring the CIA, Giancana, and Trafficante together. Rosselli’s corpse, its legs sawn off, was found crammed in an oil drum in 1976, soon after he had given testimony to the Intelligence Committee. He had been due to testify again. Rosselli’s attorney Leslie Scherr believed that the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, which also questioned his client, suspected the Watergate break-in was sparked by fear that the Democrats had learned of Nixon’s involvement in the Castro plots. (Deaths: Summers, Not in Your Lifetime, op. cit., p. 365; Scherr: Rappeleye and Becker, op. cit., p. 307.)
18. As quoted in Newsweek (May 19, 1986), Nixon referred to “poison sticks.” This makes no sense. The author guesses that he actually used the Yiddish word shtick, which has come to mean “stuff” in colloquial American.
19. Robert Geddes Morton, who headed Pepsi-Cola’s bottling operation in Cuba, was reportedly not only a key contact in the CIA’s invasion plan but also involved in the Castro plots. Morton, a British subject, was jailed by the Cuban regime but released in 1963 after diplomatic intervention. Since Morton was a Pepsi vice president, Nixon’s friend Donald Kendall, head of Pepsi’s overseas operations, probably knew something of this. He too may therefore have discussed the plots with Nixon. (Louis and Yazijian, op. cit., p. 171; Martino, op. cit., p. 139, et al.)
20. Anderson got his information from John Rosselli, the California mobster Maheu had used to contact the Mafia bosses. Under heavy pressure from law enforcement and immigration authorities, Rosselli had decided to get the story of the plots out, with emphasis on his own “patriotic” role, in the hope of forcing the powers that be to remove some of the pressure on him. He met with Anderson on January 11. The CIA did later try to intervene on Rosselli’s behalf. The mobster was not deported, as seemed possible, but he did go to prison for nearly three years. The judge reduced the jail term after hearing pleadings about Rosselli’s part in the CIA plots. As mentioned in Note 17, above, the mobster was savagely murdered in 1976, after testifying about the plots. (Rappeleye and Becker, op. cit., p. 296–.)
21. Because of his own compromising relationship with Howard Hughes, Nixon had earlier been concerned that an IRS matter involving Hughes should not be pursued. In parallel, however, Nixon had pushed for information on Lawrence O’Brien, the former close aide to John F. Kennedy, whom he regarded as the most effective Democratic political operator. Most recently, on January 14, he had told Haldeman it was time to hold O’Brien “accountable for his retainer with Hughes.” Haldeman reacted by passing on the president’s message, virtually word for word, to the White House counsel John Dean. (Summary of RN previous concern: Emery, op. cit., p. 28–; RN, Jan. 14: RN to HRH, Jan. 14, 1971, HRH Box 140, NA.)
22. As officially reported, Justice Department files on the Castro plots consist of reports arising from a 1960 wiretap episode involving Giancana and Maheu and its sequel, involving CIA objections to prosecutions and a 1962 briefing of Attorney General Robert Kennedy. (U.S. Senate, Assassination Plots, op. cit., pp. 77–, 130–.)
23. Maheu was involved throughout the first phase of the CIA-Mafia plots, which lasted from August 1960 to March 1961. According to the CIA inspector general’s report, Maheu “knew nothing” of the second phase of the plotting, which began in April 1962. (U.S. Senate, Assassination Plots, op. cit., pp. 74–, 83–; CIA Inspector General, Plots to Assassinate Castro, op. cit., p. 120.)
24. Oliver Stone used Haldeman’s notion that “Bay of Pigs” was code for the Kennedy assassination in his 1995 movie Nixon. Soon afterward the writer Christopher Matthews reported that Haldeman had disowned the theory. When terminally ill, Matthews said, Haldeman claimed the theory had been not his but that of Joseph DiMona, his collaborator on the book. The disclaimer was repeated by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, in a cover story critical of the Stone movie. Haldeman, however, wrote in a special note for the paperback version of his book that he and DiMona “worked on it together from the beginning up through the final version. The writing style is DiMona’s. The opinions and conclusions are essentially mine.” DiMona has insisted that Haldeman was responsible for the controversial passage. “It is preposterous,” he wrote, “to think that Bob Haldeman, of all people, would allow any writer to ‘invent’ information or erroneous theories, to be published in a book under his name . . . the ‘theory’ survived no less than five drafts of the most meticulous editing known to man, during which Haldeman made extensive changes of every kind, as well as minutiae. If untrue, why wasn’t the theory deleted?” DiMona accounts for the disclaimer by noting that having been highly critical of Nixon in his 1978 memoir, Haldeman spent the rest of his life “disavowing” the negative parts. This author can contribute to the dialogue, having himself spoken with Haldeman in 1989. After a long formal interview focused on my project at the time, a book on J. Edgar Hoover, I raised some points that had long interested me, including the Bay of Pigs interpretation. Then Haldeman did not disown the passage but made it clear that it was merely his speculation and that as for Ehrlichman, Nixon’s insistence on obtaining the CIA’s Bay of Pigs material remained a puzzle to him. It does seem improbable that Haldeman, ever insistent on detail, would have allowed the insertion of material with which he did not agree. His interest in accuracy was obvious during my exchanges with him. My view that the Haldeman passage amounts merely to informed speculation is bolstered by the analysis of the scholar Paul Hoch, who, like Haldeman, had discussed the issue with former CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr. (Stone: Eric Hamburg, ed., Nixon: An Oliver Stone Film, New York: Hyperion, 1995, p. xv; Mathews: San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 6, 21, 1995; Thomas: Newsweek, Dec. 11, 1995; paperback: H. R. Haldeman and Joseph DiMona, The Ends of Power, New York: Dell, 1978, p. 422; DiMona: int. Joseph DiMona by Julie Ziegler for author, and Dec. 8, 1995, fax shared with author by Dr. Gary Aguilar; see also WP, Feb. 15, 1978, citing DiMona years earlier as saying: “you don’t write anything for Haldeman. He changed my book right down to the end. He rewrote, revised, edited . . .”; Hoch: letters to David Marwell, Assassination Records Review Board, Dec. 6, and to Dr. Aguilar, Dec. 23, 1995, provided to author.
Chapter 18
1. As described elsewhere, Nixon would be supplied with se
xually compromising information on Kennedy during the 1960 campaign and reportedly hoped to use it. As president, the White House tapes show, he tried persistently to catch Edward Kennedy with a woman not his wife. “Jack,” he said in old age, of the late president’s womanizing, “was the original sexual harasser,” “Kennedy got away with it; I don’t think Clinton can. Although he has that same . . .—here a pause and an attempt at a Massachusetts accent—‘viga.’ ” (tried persistently: Haldeman and DiMona, op. cit., p. 60; “harasser”: Crowley, Nixon in Winter, op. cit., p. 329; ‘viga’: Monica Crowley, Nixon Off The Record, New York: Random House, 1996, p. 33.)
2. Kennedy suffered from Addison’s disease, a chronic affliction that would likely have proved fatal had it not been brought under control by then-new medication. While long rumored, the fact that Kennedy was an Addison’s sufferer was kept from the public until many years after his death in 1963. (Summers, Not in Your Lifetime, op. cit., p. 9.)
3. Edwards added that Nixon sometimes swore “like an army sergeant.” The candidate, whose swearing on the Watergate tapes would one day create a furor, said in the 1960 campaign that presidents should never use “gutter language.” (Kansas City Times, Oct. 13, 1960.)
4. Hughes confirmed in 1996 that this incident happened as described. (Int. General Don Hughes by Gus Russo.)
5. In Six Crises and in his memoirs, Nixon wrote as though he never doubted the need to debate Kennedy and made no reference to the vacillation reported by others involved. His surprise announcement that he would do so may reflect the influence of Arthur Burns, Eisenhower’s economic adviser and a Nixon confidant, who suggested he debate Kennedy—but “just once, and thus finish off that nice young man from Harvard. . . .” “I couldn’t have given him worse advice,” Burns said in the eighties. Other aides, including Murray Chotiner, counseled Nixon not to take part. (RN wrote: Nixon, Six Crises, op. cit., p. 323; MEM, p. 216; “just once”: int. Arthur Burns in Miller Center, eds., op. cit., p. 151; Chotiner: Katcher, op. cit., p. 165.)
6. Asked to comment on the Eisenhower comment during the first debate with Kennedy, Nixon said it was “probably a facetious remark.” The journalist Walter Trohan, however, said Nixon told him privately it was the “unkindest Eisenhower cut” of all. (“facetious”: RN-JFK debate transcript, Sept. 26, 1960, transcript in Senate Committee on Commerce, Final Report, supra., p. 81; “humor”: Robert Finch Oral History, Columbia University, p. 58; “unkindest”: Trohan, op. cit., p. 368–.)
7. A 1992 study of the health problems of U.S. presidents tended to support Nixon’s account in his memoirs that in 1960 he was urged by Eisenhower’s personal physician and his wife Mamie to influence the president against campaigning on his behalf. The diary of the physician, Dr. Howard Snyder, shows that Eisenhower was suffering serious heart rhythm and blood pressure problems at the time and that Snyder was concerned about the additional stress of campaigning.
During the 1968 campaign, when Eisenhower was seventy-seven and in ever poorer health, Nixon worried that the former president might die without having endorsed him. He got word through to him, however, and Eisenhower, by then in the hospital, made a generous statement of support before the convention. (Illness 1960: MEM, p. 222; Robert Gilbert, Mortal Presidency, New York: Basic Books, 1992, p. 115, citing Snyder’s medical diary on Eisenhower—but see Satire, op. cit., p. 623; endorsement 1968: Goldwater, op. cit., p. 216; AP, July 18, 1968; endorsement text, JFRP; PAT, p. 242.)
8. Nixon had submitted to being made up as early as 1954, and his office was issuing his makeup type, a blend of shades 22 and 23, to reporters as late as 1957. By the following year, however, when he visited London, he was resisting makeup. He refused the services of BBC makeup staff, saying his military aide would look after it if necessary, until told he might cause a strike by TV technicians. (1954: Bassett unpublished ms., supra., March 13, 1954; 1958: int. and corr. Leonard Miall.)
9. Of those polled, 29 percent thought the candidates had come off even, and 5 percent were undecided. (TW60, p. 294.)
10. After the disaster of the first Kennedy debate, Nixon took expert advice on makeup, although he still preferred his Lazy Shave. He even wore makeup to a friend’s wedding when he learned it was being televised. Before the 1968 campaign he said he wanted to hire talk show host Johnny Carson’s makeup man. As president, according to congressional doorkeeper William (“Fishbait”) Miller, he wore pancake makeup to the Capitol for his State of the Union address. “I would feel sorry for him,” Miller wrote, “because he would be nervous and the sweat would just pour over his top lip . . . he would lick it off rather than use a handkerchief.” To minimize his perspiration, Nixon had the air conditioning turned up to the maximum when he gave televised “fireside” addresses from the White House. “Put him on television, you’ve got a problem,” said his 1968 TV adviser Roger Ailes. “He’s a funny-looking guy. He looks like somebody hung him in a closet overnight.” “If the country wants a new face,” Nixon told Irv Kupcinet in 1968, “I’m dead.” (Took advice: Wise, Politics of Lying, op. cit., p. 376; preferred Lazy: Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 25, 1967; wedding: int. Norma Mulligan by FB, FBP, re: wedding of William Rogers’s son; Carson: Saturday Review, Dec. 16, 1967; at Capitol: Miller, op. cit., p. 342; “fireside”: Halberstam, The Fifties, op. cit., p. 731; Ailes: Wise, Politics of Lying, op. cit., p. 377; RN, Kupcinet: Look, March 5, 1968.)
11. Lasky is best known for his books JFK: The Man & the Myth and It Didn’t Start with Watergate, published in 1977, which trumpeted “the many sins—by his enemies—against Richard Nixon.” Behind the facade of regular journalist, Lasky was on “Dick” terms with Nixon from as early as 1949, during the Hiss episode. Dwight Chapin recalled finding him in 1962 in a cigar smoke–filled office with Murray Chotiner, “like a classic picture of the Tammany Hall back room.” The Rockefeller brothers put up sixty thousand dollars to underwrite a controversial biography of Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg when he was running for governor of New York in 1970. “If nobody else will print it, Lasky will,” Haldeman said on a 1971 White House tape. Many White House memos referred to the planting of stories with Lasky, and Nixon’s 1972 reelection committee offered him twenty thousand dollars to write speeches. In January 1975, as Nixon made his first tentative moves to emerge from the obloquy of Watergate, Lasky was one of those who flew to California to celebrate his birthday. It was through Lasky that Lucianne Goldberg, who found notoriety in 1998 for her role in the Clinton sex exposé, became a Nixon spy in the Democratic camp. (“Many sins”: Lasky, op. cit., back cover; “Dick”: Levitt and Levitt, op. cit., p. 135, and see MO, p. 491; de Toledano, ed., op. cit., p. 13; Chapin: Strober, eds. Nixon, op. cit., p. 340; Goldberg: Miller, ed., Breaking of the President, op. cit., p. 503; “If nobody”: HRH to Mitchell-Nixon, July 6, 1971, WHT; 1972 Tittle-Kicklighter memo, June 6, 1973, FBI WFO 139 166; planting stories: Schorr, op. cit., p. 183; 1975: unidentified June 17, 1975, Vera Glazer clip; Lucianne Goldberg: WP, Feb. 4, 1998; Michael Isikoff, Uncovering Clinton, New York: Crown, 1999, p. 191.)
12. Citing an article in the National Review, Lasky said a first wave of mailings, during the primary campaign, had been organized by a Kennedy worker named Paul Corbin. Nixon repeated the allegation in his memoirs. Corbin was described by Kennedy biographer Arthur Schlesinger as a “raffish and outrageous rogue . . . a fixture in Robert Kennedy’s political operations . . . prone to reorganizing the truth.” While the author has not attempted to verify the National Review article, it seems Corbin was capable of perpetrating such abuses. Readers should note, though, that the mailings in question were directed not at Nixon but at a fellow Democrat, Hubert Humphrey, during the primary phase of the campaign. (Lasky, op. cit., p. 35; MEM, p. 775; Schlesinger, RFK, op. cit., p. 196–.)
13. The “first marriage” claim—that Kennedy married a Florida socialite named Durie Malcolm in 1947—arose from an entry in a privately printed history of Malcolm’s family. It stated flatly that among her several husbands was “John F.
Kennedy, son of Joseph P. Kennedy, one time Ambassador to England.” There is conflicting evidence on whether this information first reached FBI Director Hoover in 1960 or during the Kennedy presidency, in 1961. In 1997 John Kennedy’s close friend Charles Spalding told author Seymour Hersh the marriage to Malcolm had indeed occurred and that he had “removed the marriage papers” at Kennedy’s request. Malcolm has denied that she married Kennedy. While there were problems with Spalding’s account—he was seventy-nine when interviewed and had short-term memory lapses—other evidence persuaded Hersh the story was credible. (Hersh, op. cit., p. 326–.)
14. The statements about the alleged Democratic surveillance and eavesdropping are elements of a tangled tale. The two detectives not cited in the main text were former federal agent John Frank and former Washington police inspector Joseph Shimon. Frank said Bellino did run investigations for the 1960 Kennedy campaign committee and that he was given assignments by him but that he could not remember what they were. Shimon said Angelone asked him for help in a bugging operation against Nixon supporters based in Washington’s Wardman Park Hotel. It is interesting to note that Frank was an associate of Horace Schmahl, the private investigator who allegedly claimed he helped frame Alger Hiss. Shimon was a witness to the CIA-Mafia Castro assassination plots. Bellino had once shared an office with Robert Maheu, a central figure in the CIA-Mafia plots and an aide to Howard Hughes. The interconnections of the characters in the 1960 eavesdropping allegations are curious, and the truth about their actions and motivations will probably never be fully known. The White House tapes show that Haldeman and Nixon discussed the exploitation of “some allusions to some probable Kennedy wiretapping in 1960” as early as February 1973, months before the claims by the alleged participants surfaced. (Frank-Shimon: report and affidavit, Box 120, Korff Papers, Brown University; Frank-Schmahl: see p. 73, chapter 8, Note 10; Shimon, plots: int. Joseph Shimon; Hougan, Spooks, op. cit., p. 279; Maheu-Bellino: Maheu, op. cit., p. 40; RN-Haldeman: WHT, Sept. 6, 1973, AOP.)