One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon

by Tim Weiner

  White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman: Convicted of perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice; served eighteen months in prison.

  White House assistant to the president for domestic affairs John D. Ehrlichman: Convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice, conspiracy to violate civil rights, and perjury; served eighteen months in prison.

  White House counsel John W. Dean III: Pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Watergate cover-up; served four months.

  White House special counsel Charles W. Colson: Pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice; served seven months.

  White House deputy assistant to the president Dwight L. Chapin: Pleaded guilty to lying to the Watergate grand jury; served eight months.

  White House aide to Ehrlichman and liaison to federal law enforcement Egil Krogh Jr.: Pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate civil rights in his role overseeing the Plumbers; served four and a half months; license to practice law restored by the state of Washington.

  Nixon attorney and financier Herbert W. Kalmbach: Pleaded guilty in connection with the sale of ambassadorships to wealthy campaign contributors; served six months; license to practice law restored by the state of California.

  CREEP deputy director Jeb Stuart Magruder: Pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice, fraud, and wiretapping; served seven months.

  CREEP finance director and former commerce secretary Maurice Stans: Pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor violations of campaign finance laws; fined $5,000.

  CREEP adviser and presidential aide Frederick C. LaRue: Pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice; served five and a half months.

  Watergate burglary overseer E. Howard Hunt: Convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping; served thirty-three months.

  Watergate burglars Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzales, Eugenio Martinez, and Frank Sturgis: Pleaded guilty to conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping; their sentences ranged from twelve to fifteen months.

  Watergate wiretapper James W. McCord Jr.: Convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping; broke the case with his letter to Judge Sirica; served four months.

  Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy: Convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping; served fifty-two months, the longest sentence of all.

  Acknowledgments

  One Man Against the World exists thanks in great part to three people: Stephen Rubin, the courageous president and publisher of Henry Holt and Company; Gillian Blake, Holt’s extraordinary editor in chief, who gave every word meaning; and my brilliant literary agent, Kathy Robbins, who has stood by me for twenty years.

  At the Robbins Office, David Halpern contributed mightily. At Holt, thanks to Chris O’Connell, Meryl Sussman Levavi, Jenna Dolan, Eleanor Embry, and Caroline Zancan.

  The collected works of Richard Nixon include 2,636 hours of taped White House conversations open to the public. The struggle to wrestle them from Nixon—and the continuing effort to transcribe them—has been an epic battle. The last 340 hours of tapes were released on August 21, 2013, nearly forty years to the day after their existence was revealed at the Senate Watergate Hearings. The talented Cynthia Colonna helped me immeasurably in transcribing hundreds of crucial Nixon tapes.

  All Nixon historians stand on the shoulders of Stanley Kutler, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1994, Kutler sued the National Archives and the Nixon estate to force the release of the White House tapes. He won. He worked tirelessly for more than twenty years to bring the truth of the Nixon administration out of the past and into the light of day. Stanley died in April 2015. I wish he could have read this book.

  Harry Robbins Haldeman produced handwritten and dictated diaries that describe in minute detail the mind of Richard Milhous Nixon. Haldeman’s candor can be checked meticulously against contemporaneous documents and records. Haldeman almost always got it right—and his reflections have a mordant sense of humor. Without his diaries (online and in the public domain at the Nixon Library’s website), replete with passages declassified as recently as November 2014, no accurate account of Richard Nixon’s presidency would be possible.

  The memoirs of members of the Nixon administration are often self-serving, and sometimes demonstrably false. An exception is John W. Dean III’s The Nixon Defense, published in August 2014. Dean—who, like Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello, plotted to destroy his master—may not be the most reliable narrator of the Nixon tragedy, but his book is essential. With the help of forty-two Nixon Presidential Library archivists and six personal assistants, Dean transcribed a multitude of previously unpublished tapes. His book is a straightforward script of the conversations and confrontations that preceded Nixon’s downfall.

  Timothy Naftali led the Nixon Presidential Library for four crucial years until November 2011. He is an unsung hero of American history. I am grateful to him, his successors, and every staff member of the Nixon Library, who will serve generations of Americans throughout the twenty-first century.

  The editors, historians, and archivists of The Foreign Relations of the United States series produce the official diplomatic history of America, published continuously since the Civil War. Their work is unique and invaluable. Laboring tirelessly—often against strong opposition from the CIA—they have printed fifty-six thick volumes of declassified documents on the foreign policies of the Nixon administration, all available online. Since 2007, these have incorporated the transcripts of hundreds of hours of conversations among Nixon, Kissinger, and their top military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials.

  My mother, Professor Dora B. Weiner, is a distinguished historian. She taught me how to read and write. I am forever grateful to her.

  I love my wife, Kate Doyle, who works with all her heart and soul in the name of human rights, and our daughters, Emma Doyle and Ruby Doyle, who know that American democracy is a work in progress—and that work may take a long time. We are all in it for the long haul. I dedicate this book, and my life, to them.

  Notes

  The page numbers for the notes that appeared in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

  Please note that some of the links referenced in this work are no longer active.

  Abbreviations

  Abrams Papers

  Abrams Papers, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC

  CIA

  Central Intelligence Agency, declassified documents

  Cong. Rec.

  Congressional Record

  FAOH

  Foreign Affairs Oral History Collections, online at http://adst.org/oral-history/.

  FBI

  Federal Bureau of Investigation, declassified documents

  FRUS

  Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976

  JFKL

  John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, MA

  Kissinger Papers

  Kissinger Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC

  Kissinger Telephone

  Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Nixon

  Conversations

  Presidential Materials, National Archives Washington, DC. Many key Kissinger conversations quoted in this book are available online at the Nixon Presidential Library, http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/textual/telcons.php. The National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group, also holds a substantial collection, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/

  LBJ Library

  LBJ Presidential Library, Austin, TX

  Moorer Diary

  Admiral Thomas H. Moorer diary, declassified sections in FRUS and in “The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam,” online at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jcs-vietnam.htm

  Nixon Library

  Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum

  NWHT

  Nixon White House Tapes. A selection of the tapes is online at the Nixon Library’s websit
e at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/tapeexcerpts/index.php

  President’s Daily Diary

  Nixon Library online, http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/dailydiary.php

  Public Papers of Richard Nixon

  Available online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/richard_nixon.php

  Author’s Note

  “I gave them a sword”: Nixon interview with David Frost, broadcast May 19, 1977, broadcast on American public television stations, online at http://www.wgbh.org/programs/FrostNixon-The-Original-Watergate-Interviews-489/episodes/FrostNixon-The-Original-Watergate-Interviews-7381.

  “a cancer within”: John W. Dean to Nixon, March 21, 1973, NWHT, White House.

  1: “A great, bad man”

  “the world leader”: Jan. 2, 1971, entry in H. R. Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, online at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/haldeman-diaries/haldeman-diaries.php.

  “an indefinable spirit”: Richard M. Nixon, State of the Union address, Jan. 22, 1970, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.

  “Nixon has a genius”: Martin Luther King Jr. letter to Earl Mazo, cited in Clayburn Carson et al., eds., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Symbol of the Movement, January 1957–December 1958 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 481.

  “We are still dealing with governments” and “Those Chinese are out to whip me”: May 27, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “They particularly won’t believe me”: April 17, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “the environment is not an issue that’s worth a damn to us”: Feb. 9, 1971, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “in the long run … a catastrophe”: Shultz interview in Gerald S. Strober and Deborah Hart Strober, Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 51.

  “Nixon never trusted anybody”: Helms interview with Stanley I. Kutler, July 14, 1988, Box 15, Folder 16, Wisconsin Historical Archives, Madison, WI, cited by permission of Professor Kutler.

  “When the president does it”: Nixon interview with Frost.

  “it was ‘me against the world’”: Robert Finch interview, in Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 49.

  “He hears the train go by at night”: Nixon address accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, Aug. 8, 1968, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.

  “He had a lemon ranch”: Richard Nixon, farewell address, White House, Aug. 9, 1974, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.

  “The last thing my mother, a devout Quaker”: Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), p. 295.

  “the zeal”: Hoover testimony, March 26, 1947, House Un-American Activities Committee, online at http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/.

  “my closest friend”: May 3, 1972, NWHT, White House.

  “the security of the whole nation and the cause of free men”: Nixon, Six Crises, p. 37.

  “The Hiss case brought me national fame”: Ibid., p. 69.

  “even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen”: Ibid., p. 416.

  “For sixteen years, ever since the Hiss case”: Live footage of Nixon’s “last press conference” is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMSb-tS_OM.

  2: “This is treason”

  “In those years in limbo”: Watts oral history, FAOH.

  “When Mr. Nixon and I called on President Suharto”: Green oral history, FAOH.

  “was bound to be crucified”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: New American Library, 1977), p. 263.

  “increasingly attracted”: Bui Diem with David Chanoff, In the Jaws of History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 237–44.

  “He was in Washington when Castro took over”: Woods to Haldeman, Oct. 13, 1968, Nixon Library, Nixon Presidential Returned Materials Collection: White House Special Files.

  “between three and five million dollars”: Woods to Nixon, “RE: Telephone call from Bob Hill—re Mexico,” Sept. 29, 1968, Nixon Library, Nixon Presidential Returned Materials Collection: White House Special Files.

  “someone in Johnson’s innermost circle”: Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 326.

  “I immediately decided” … “a cynical last-minute”: Ibid., p. 327.

  “It appears Mr. Nixon will be elected”: Director, NSA, to [classified], “Thieu’s Views on Peace Talks and Bombing Halt,” partially declassified Dec. 17, 2010, LBJ Library.

  “Nixon was playing the problem”: Rostow to Johnson, 6:00 a.m., Oct. 29, 1968, LBJ Library.

  “He better keep Mrs. Chennault”: Oct. 31, 1968, LBJ Tapes, LBJ Library.

  “South Vietnam is not a truck”: Thieu quoted in conversation between President Johnson and Robert McNamara, Nov. 1, 1968, Washington, DC, FRUS VII: Vietnam, July 1970–January 1972.

  “The Republican nominee”: Oct. 31, 1968, LBJ Tapes, LBJ Library.

  “It’s clear as day!”: Notes of meeting, Nov. 2, 1968, Washington, DC, FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “a message from her boss”: Rostow teletype to President Johnson, Nov. 2, 1968, LBJ Library.

  “This is treason”: Nov. 2, 1968, LBJ Tapes, LBJ Library.

  “The deal was cooked”: Habib oral history, FAOH.

  “I do not believe”: Telephone conversation among President Johnson, Secretary of Defense Clifford, Secretary of State Rusk, and the president’s special assistant (Rostow), Nov. 4, 1968, 12:27 p.m., FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “These messages started” … “And it is a sordid story”: Nov. 8, 1969, LBJ Tapes, LBJ Library. The bitterness lingered through Inauguration Day, January 20, 1969. LBJ’s administrative aide James R. Jones, later the American ambassador to Mexico, watched it firsthand. LBJ said that Nixon was “a son of a bitch, but he’s the only son of a bitch we have as President, so we have to support him. He never trusted Nixon but he wanted him to succeed. Johnson had an enormous sense of the history of the presidency and the night before the inauguration I remember he admonished all of us… He said: ‘This plane, the United States, has only one pilot. When we go through rough weather, if everybody on the plane starts trying to take the controls and beating the pilot over the head, that plane is going to crash.’” On inauguration morning, the presidential limousine waited at the White House for the drive to the swearing-in at the Capitol Building. “Johnson and Nixon in the back seat,” Jones remembers. “All the way up there, Nixon, all he wanted to talk about was losing Texas and how he didn’t intend to lose Texas in ’72.”

  “We were tapped”: Nixon to Haldeman, June 28, 1972, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.

  “he had sent two secret emissaries”: CIA Saigon station, “President Thieu’s Comments on Peace Talks,” Nov. 18, 1968, LBJ Library.

  “The ‘X’ Files”: Memorandum for the record, W. W. Rostow, May 14, 1973, LBJ Library.

  3: “He was surrounded by enemies”

  Inauguration Day: Huston oral history, Nixon Library.

  “I really need”: July 1, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “This country is going so far right you won’t even recognize it”: This remarkable statement by Attorney General Mitchell was reported by Kandy Stroud of Women’s Wear Daily as “overheard” during a 1970 cocktail party at the Women’s National Press Club. It was part of a long and evidently tape-recorded rant against students, professors, and the New Left shortly after the May 1970 killings of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State University.

  “Attorneys General seldom directed Mr. Hoover”: Nixon testimony, U.S. v. Felt, Oct. 29, 1980, United States District Court for the Southern District, New York.

  “I had a strong intuition about Henry Kissinger”: Nixon, RN, p. 341.

  “It was a bizarre way”: Rodman oral history, FAOH.

  “There was an absolute conviction”: Haldeman oral history, Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 183.

  “the greatest military man I had ever met”: Alexander
M. Haig Jr. Oral History Interview, Nov. 30, 2007, Nixon Library.

  “I had clearly crossed the line for the first time”: John W. Dean, keynote address, “Presidential Powers: An American Debate,” April 25, 2006, Center on Law and Security, New York University School of Law.

  “convinced that Nixon’s drinking could cost him any chance of a return to public life”: John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 37–38.

  “house detective”: Ehrlichman, “Transcription of Tape-Recorded Interview,” White House, Dec. 17, 1971, Nixon Library.

  “From the first time he ran for office”: Ehrlichman interview recorded by CNN in 1988, transcript at www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-16/ehrlichman4.html.

  4: “He will let them know who is boss around here”

  “to understand … these were horrible decisions”: Haldeman oral history; Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 181.

  “Sedov said”: Kissinger, memorandum of conversation, Washington, Jan. 2, 1969, FRUS XII: Soviet Union, January 1969–October 1970. NSC Files: Contacts with the Soviets Prior to Jan. 20, 1969. Kissinger and Sedov met at the Pierre Hotel, headquarters for the Nixon transition team.

  “Our lines of communication”: Nixon inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1969, Public Papers of President Richard M. Nixon. Nixon’s handwritten notes from meetings held January 20 and 21 include the following. Of domestic and international issues, including China, he wrote in part, “Chinese Communists: Short range—no change. Long range—we do not want 800,000,000 living in angry isolation. We want contact” (Box 1, President’s Handwriting File, January 1969, Administrative Files, White House Special Files, President’s Office Files, Nixon Presidential Library and Museum).

  “In the second week of the administration”: Haig oral history, Nixon Library, Nov. 30, 2007.

  “This will be a great symbol”: Vietnam, Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, Jan. 25, 1969, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.