RN

by Richard Nixon

  I could hardly believe my ears. Why hadn’t the White House consulted us before doing such a thing? Only later did we find out that communications between Caracas and Washington had been cut for a critical period immediately after the riot that afternoon. The last message the State Department had received before the cutoff was a flash report that the local security system had completely broken down, that anti-American mobs were on the loose, and that I was under attack. Eisenhower had acted on the basis of this message. We immediately tried to rectify the situation by issuing a statement that the Venezuelan authorities had the situation well in hand and that we saw no need for outside assistance.

  The next morning I felt that we should leave Venezuela as soon as possible. The junta members were pleading that I attend the luncheon they had planned in my honor that afternoon, and they guaranteed that they would deliver me safely to the airport immediately afterward. I accepted their invitation, even though I still had trepidations about their ability to maintain security.

  From the moment they arrived at the embassy to escort me to the luncheon, however, I realized that my fears had been unnecessary. It looked as if they had come to declare war rather than take me to lunch. The courtyard was filled with tanks and jeeps and armored cars. There were twelve truckloads of troops flanking our limousines. The security extended even to the food; they had replaced the caterer lest our food be tampered with.

  After the luncheon, we were escorted to our cars. The limousine in which I was riding with the Provisional President was an arsenal on wheels. The floor was piled with submachine guns, revolvers, rifles, tear gas canisters, and ammunition clips; there was hardly room for our feet. I saw that the junta had decided to make a symbolic point by taking me along the same route I had traveled the day before. This time, however, the streets were almost empty and heavily patrolled by armed soldiers. The few civilians I saw were holding handkerchiefs to their faces. At first I thought this was a protest sign, but when I saw the police wearing gas masks I realized that the whole area had been tear-gassed.

  The airport was like a ghost town; the terminal was empty and eerily silent. After shaking hands with our hosts, Pat and I went up the steps to our plane. At the top we turned and waved briefly to the small group standing below.

  A large crowd came out to greet us when we landed at National Airport in Washington. Eisenhower was there, along with the Cabinet, the leaders of Congress, and the diplomatic corps. Tricia and Julie were waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs, and they could hardly contain their tears of joy.

  For several weeks after our return from South America, neither Pat nor I could appear anywhere in public without people standing up to applaud. For the first time I pulled even with Kennedy in the Gallup presidential trial heat polls. The positive reaction to the Caracas incident was naturally satisfying. But I never forgot how lucky we were to get out alive from what I had thought was going to be the most boring trip we had ever taken.

  THE RESIGNATION OF SHERMAN ADAMS

  Congress was in an ugly mood in the summer of 1958. The Republicans were fighting each other more than they were fighting the Democrats, and the Democrats were frantically digging up every possible issue they could throw at us in the fall elections. I paid little attention in June when charges were brought against Sherman Adams by the Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. It appeared that some of Adams’s hotel bills had been paid by a New England industrialist named Bernard Goldfine. The Democrats charged that Adams had done favors for Goldfine and claimed they had uncovered a case of influence-peddling in the White House. Goldfine denied the charges, and on June 11 Jim Hagerty, speaking on behalf of the President, characterized the allegations as “completely false.”

  Stories of Adams’s immense influence with Eisenhower and his cold and abrupt personal demeanor were a standard feature of many Washington dinner parties and gossip columns. For the Democrats he was a natural target as the President’s Chief of Staff. Two days after Hagerty’s flat denial, Adlai Stevenson accused Adams of “hypocrisy.” Such criticism was to be expected from the Democrats. But many of Adams’s most vocal and unrelenting critics turned out to be Republicans.

  The day after Stevenson made his attack, Barry Goldwater, who was running for re-election to the Senate, called Adams a political liability. Unfortunately for Adams, he was not able to depend on compensating support from liberal Republicans. He had been so successful and so evenhanded in his role as Eisenhower’s “no man” that he had few friends when he came under serious attack.

  The next day, June 15, a story appeared in the New York Post that excited public opinion more than the accusations about hotel bills: the Post reported that Goldfine had given Adams a vicuña coat. Most people did not have the slightest idea what a vicuña coat was, but it sounded expensive.

  With Eisenhower’s approval, Adams testified before the subcommittee. He admitted to a lack of prudence in his dealings with Goldfine, and he made a favorable impression as an honest man who would not intentionally use his public influence for private profit. Eisenhower stood by him staunchly. At a press conference the next day, he replied to a question about Adams by saying: “I need him.”

  But Eisenhower’s personal popularity was not as high as it had been, and he was increasingly plagued by his lame-duck status. His defense of Adams had surprisingly little influence on Republican leaders. Bill Knowland, the Minority Leader in the Senate, called for Adams’s resignation, and Republican state chairmen around the country clamored for Adams’s head.

  Meanwhile the story grew more troublesome. It turned out that Gold-fine had paid bills for and given presents to several senators and governors; the hotel bills for Adams and his family amounted to over $3,000; and the subcommittee found that Goldfine had deducted some of the money spent on Adams as business expenses.

  A temporary respite occurred when it was discovered that Goldfine’s hotel room had been bugged by a House committee investigator who had been found listening in an adjoining room, along with Jack Anderson, then an assistant to columnist Drew Pearson. The investigator was forced to resign.

  Then the controversy resumed when, on July 10, it was revealed that Goldfine had paid not only Adams’s hotel bills but also those of Senator Fred Payne, a Republican coming up for re-election in Maine.

  On July 14, in the midst of this political turmoil, the Middle East erupted. King Faisal and other members of the royal family of Iraq were murdered during a successful military takeover. Fearing that Syria would follow suit and cross the frontier into Lebanon, Lebanese President Camille Chamoun asked for American help. On July 15, Eisenhower ordered the Marines into Lebanon. He asked me to come to his office that morning. He was pacing the floor, and for the first time he conveyed to me his frustration with the Adams situation. He said, “Here on a day that I am making a decision that could involve the United States in war, I have to be worried about this damned Goldfine–Adams business.” He said nothing to indicate any lack of support for Adams, but I could tell that his patience was wearing thin. He asked me to keep him advised of anything I thought he should know about the situation.

  Just before Congress adjourned in late August, Eisenhower and I talked about the Adams case. “Some people have been telling me that the issue has quieted down considerably in the past few weeks,” he said.

  I felt I had to be completely frank with him about the political implications. I said that the Democrats would inevitably make the Adams case a major campaign issue and Republican candidates would eventually have to take sides. I told him that most of our candidates would probably come out against Adams.

  He thought for a moment, then said, “Well, Sherm could use that as a good reason for his resigning—that he did not want his presence in the administration to be an embarrassment to the Republican Party or to me.” He then suggested, “Why don’t you have a talk with Sherm after Congress adjourns? See how he feels about this, and let him know what he’s go
ing to be up against once the campaign begins.”

  When Congress adjourned on August 24, I kept a long-standing promise to Pat and the girls and took them by train to The Greenbrier in West Virginia. Every vacation we had planned since coming to Congress in 1947 had been cut short, but this time I really thought it would be different.

  On the morning we arrived, however, Eisenhower called from the White House: “I wonder if you could talk to Sherm now that the Congress is out.” He had heard that the Adams issue might be brought up at the Republican National Committee meeting in Chicago in a few days and had asked the RNC Chairman, Meade Alcorn, to try to avoid a public discussion of Adams. “I was really hoping,” Eisenhower said, “that we could get the matter resolved before then.”

  I had a brief meeting with Eisenhower the next day, August 26. He asked me to talk bluntly to Adams about the political realities of the situation we faced. He did not authorize me to say that he wanted him to resign, but it was clear that he wanted the result of our conversation to be Adams’s resignation.

  I gave Adams my straightforward appraisal of the present situation from a political standpoint. I told him that most of the candidates and party leaders across the country believed that he should resign.

  “Who will take my place? I’ve never heard anyone suggested,” Adams said bluntly.

  I replied that only Eisenhower could answer that question, and I had not discussed it with him. He pressed me further to try to determine whether I was expressing my own views, reporting on the views of others, or actually reflecting the President’s position.

  Before I left, Adams pinned me down with a direct question: “What do you think is the President’s view?” I replied, “He hasn’t told me to tell you this, Sherm, so I am only expressing my personal view. But I believe that the President thinks you are a liability and that you should resign.”

  Adams rather abruptly terminated the conversation by saying, “Well, I will have to talk to the boss myself.” From the way he talked about “seeing the boss,” it seemed clear that he was not going to take my hints and that he intended to hang on as long as he could.

  Sherman Adams had earned the reputation of keeping icy cold no matter how hot the situation. In this case, however, I could see that the strain was beginning to tell. While I was in his office he took a bottle of pills from his desk, poured a couple of the tablets into his hand, and swallowed them with a glass of water. I felt deeply sorry for him.

  I went to the Oval Office to report to Eisenhower on our meeting. I told him that I had just talked to Adams as he had asked, but that Adams was clearly not going to budge without first talking directly to him personally.

  Adams saw Eisenhower that same afternoon. I was called over to the Oval Office a while later and found the President hitting 5-irons on the South Lawn. He made no mention of Adams, but said, “I’m going to play some golf this afternoon, Dick, and I wonder if you would like to join me.”

  We drove out to Burning Tree. Ann Whitman, Eisenhower’s personal secretary, had warned me that he was in a “sour mood,” and it showed up in his golf game. He told me it was the worst round he had had in months.

  On the ride home he finally opened up: “Sherm won’t take any of the responsibility. He leaves it all to me. Still, I can’t fire a man who is sincere just for political reasons. He must resign in a way I can’t refuse.” He added, “I think Sherm must have misunderstood what you said. You had better write me an aide-mémoire on your conversation.”

  When I mentioned that Adams had raised the question of his replacement, Eisenhower’s face flushed, and he said curtly and coldly, “That’s my problem, not his.” He looked out the car window for a minute and then said, “He has a heart condition. He might use that as a reason for resigning.” Then he told me to ask Meade Alcorn to report the facts to Adams. He said, “I want Alcorn to really lay it on the line with him.” He did not make a personal judgment on Adams except to say, “It’s incredible, because with all these things that have been coming out one by one in the press, Sherm sees no wrong whatever in anything that he has done.”

  Later that evening I went back to The Greenbrier to rejoin Pat and the girls. Eisenhower went to his summer White House in Newport, and Adams went to his vacation home in New Brunswick.

  Meade Alcorn was able to forestall any public action by the Republican state chairmen and campaign officials when they met in Chicago. He did, however, take a confidential poll, and found the overwhelming majority in favor either of Eisenhower’s firing Adams or of Adams’s voluntarily submitting his resignation. On September 4, Eisenhower phoned Alcorn from Newport and said that he had received some disturbing messages from party leaders and contributors concerning “the matter we discussed the other day.” They had apparently told him that an association between a man like Goldfine and the chief assistant to the President was a reflection upon the White House that Eisenhower should not allow to continue.

  Eisenhower was upset. He told Alcorn to work with me to settle the matter as quickly as possible. “I want to solve this as soon as we can after the Maine election so that it isn’t hanging around during the campaign,” he said. “This is the way I feel. It doesn’t seem as if Sherm is going to do anything about it, and I am going to leave this entirely in your hands.”

  Adams was called back from his vacation in Canada on September 15. At eleven that morning Alcorn came to my office at the Capitol so that we could plan our strategy. The halls were swarming with reporters who sensed a crisis brewing, so I suggested to Alcorn that he meet with Adams alone. If the two of us left my office and went to the White House together, the reporters would follow us and it might become impossible to accomplish our objective of giving Adams a dignified opportunity to resign.

  Alcorn met with Adams at two o’clock that afternoon in Adams’s White House office. After the meeting Alcorn called to report that it had been a long and difficult session; Adams had hung on, stubborn to the last. Finally, Alcorn convinced him that we were acting at the direct request of the President.

  On September 22, Sherman Adams flew to Newport and met with Eisenhower. He officially informed him that he had decided to resign, and Eisenhower said that he would accept the resignation but only with the deepest regret. Adams flew back to Washington, and that night announced his resignation in a nationally televised speech.

  I called Adams’s resignation a tragic loss to the country. I am convinced that he was personally an honest man who would not in any circumstances have allowed any decision he made to be influenced by his friends or by any gifts he received. Adams had come to Washington as a man of modest means, and as far as I knew he left with less than he had when he arrived. But he had not heeded one of the oldest political maxims: it is not necessary to prove guilt of the men around the President—the appearance of guilt is enough to destroy their usefulness.

  Sherman Adams was cold, blunt, abrasive, at times even rude. But I never doubted that he always did what he believed “the boss” wanted and expected him to do, and he kept the complicated wheels of the executive office turning during more than one major crisis.

  Why hadn’t Eisenhower himself talked to Adams, his closest associate and the top man on his staff? Why did he use Alcorn and me for this painful task? General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff in World War II, provided an important insight into Eisenhower’s personality and his technique of leadership one night when he was reminiscing about his years with Eisenhower. He was very tired, and he uncharacteristically began showing his emotions. Tears began to stream down his cheeks, and he blurted out his pent-up feelings. “I was just Ike’s prat boy,” he said. “Ike always had to have a prat boy, someone who’d do the dirty work for him. He always had to have someone else who could do the firing, or the reprimanding, or give any orders which he knew people would find unpleasant to carry out. Ike always has to be the nice guy. That’s the way it is in the White House, and the way it will always be in any kind of an organization that Ike runs.
”

  Over the years a story spread that Adams and I were deadly enemies, the two major rivals for power in the Eisenhower White House. The fact is that we were neither friends nor enemies. We worked together in harness for the President. I was probably not Adams’s first choice for Vice President, and certainly Adams was jealously protective of his prerogatives during the time of the President’s major illnesses. But Adams was not against me; he was for Eisenhower.

  What was it that Eisenhower saw in Sherman Adams that made him choose him in the first place?

  I once asked Eisenhower if there was a single quality he valued above all in selecting a man for a top position on his staff. He thought for a long time—so long that I wondered if he had forgotten my question. Then he looked at me and said, “Selflessness. Selflessness is the most important attribute a member of any organization can have. He must always consider that his first responsibility is to do his job well, regardless of whether it serves his own self-interest or not.”

  Adams had this quality. He had no political ambitions; he did not seek any other position; unlike many White House aides, he was not trying to advance his own career. All he was interested in was serving “the boss” as best he could. And ironically, it was this interest that made Adams so many enemies. In making the President look good, Adams made himself look bad. But it was also this quality of selflessness that made him—except for his tragic misjudgments in his relationship with Goldfine—such an outstanding and successful chief of the White House staff.