RN

by Richard Nixon

  He was extremely agitated about charges that while he was President he had used his influence to get his friends special deals for land acquisition and federal loans for their geriatrics center in Texas. Several times during breakfast he returned to this subject. But he also had some fascinating afterthoughts on the Vietnam bombing halt and on his dealings with the Soviets.

  Late that night I dictated some recollections of our meeting; this was one of the handful of detailed dictations I made before I began keeping an almost daily dictated diary in November 1971.

  Lyndon Johnson was such an intensely physical man that it is probably impossible for words to convey what being with him was like. I think this dictation gives at least some sense of the range of impressions and emotions a conversation with him might generate:

  He seemed to have gotten considerably heavier, and I noted that when he got excited he breathed very hard and on the [geriatrics center] point even seemed to have tears in his eyes.

  He reviewed in detail his attitude on Vietnam negotiations and his relations with the Russians. He again told me, as he had in California, that his major mistake as President was in “trusting the Russians” too much. He said that he thought that Eisenhower got along well with the Russians for the first six or seven years of his term due to the fact that “they feared Ike” because of what Dulles had threatened to do in Korea [use the A-Bomb]. He thought the reason Ike had difficulties in the last year was because some of the fear had been dissipated. He thought the same thing had happened to Kennedy when he tried to placate the Russians up until the time of the Cuban missile crisis. He thought that he had gone through the same experience during his years in office.

  He recounted that Kosygin at Glassboro had indicated that the Russians would be willing to help out on Vietnam and had set out a proposition which Johnson said he would like to consider. Johnson suggested that they meet again in New York. When they met Johnson had studied the Kosygin proposition with Rusk and McNamara and made a counterproposal which Kosygin said was “different from his but in the ball park.” Johnson confidently expected that something would happen. Two weeks went by without result. Rusk called Dobrynin in and was stonewalled on the matter. Two weeks later Thompson [U.S. ambassador in Moscow] called on Gromyko and got a cold shoulder. Nothing at all came from this initiative.

  He said at the time of the bombing halt Harriman told him “at least twelve times” that they had assurances from the North Vietnamese that if the bombing were halted, the “understanding” with regard to shelling cities would be carried out. He felt that the Russians had given a similar assurance along these lines.

  He said that all the bombing pauses were a mistake and he had accomplished nothing. Each one of them was undertaken only because of some assurance that he received, either through Russian or other sources, that there would be a positive reaction from the other side. He said that he did not want to call a bombing halt late in the campaign unless he was absolutely convinced he had a “deal.” He knew he would be charged with having done it for political reasons.

  He spoke with considerable bitterness about Look’s article on his brother. He told the story of one of his big financial supporters, who also had a brother who got into lots of trouble; [the man’s] mother insisted on his doing something for the brother and he finally gave him a job driving a truckload of dynamite across the state. “He stopped at a roadside stand, had a couple of beers, propositioned the waitress to marry him, and went off down the road, and then a tree moved in front of him.”

  He spoke warmly of Agnew and said that he had a high opinion of him when he had been governor of Maryland. Agnew apparently had given him strong support on his foreign policy.

  He felt that newspapermen are just naturally vicious and are not happy unless they are attacking somebody. He felt that he was free from such attacks during his first year in office only because Goldwater was his opponent and that as soon as Gold-water was out of the way it was inevitable that they would take him on. “The press just isn’t happy unless they are attacking who happens to be President” was his conclusion.

  He gave me at least a twenty-minute monologue on the geriatric center, referring very movingly to his having determined to build such a center due to the fact that the mayor of his home town had spent the last years of his life in a rest home which was just like a “hawg pen” and that his mother also spent some time in such a place.

  He told the story about his going on the ticket [in 1960] and said he did so because Sam Rayburn insisted that he had to stop Nixon since Nixon had “called him a traitor.” Johnson recalled that while I was Vice President, I had called him up to the rostrum in the Senate one day and shown him the speech which they were referring to. Johnson had shown it to Rayburn later, and Rayburn simply brushed it aside and said that I had said it another time. In any event Rayburn believed that was the case until he died.

  As we were leaving he spoke very warmly of the courtesies we had extended him and to his girls and to Lady Bird.

  THE FIRST YEAR

  By the end of 1969, after almost a year in the White House, I felt that the administration was operating as an effective team.

  Bob Haldeman had proved that, contrary to accepted belief, it is possible to make the White House run efficiently, to get the most out of people, and to prepare for decisions with sufficient information in sufficient time. Haldeman should get the credit for this, because he was made to pay the price for it. From the outset there were conflicts between the Cabinet and the White House staff, as there are in every presidency. Stories spread about Haldeman’s alleged rudeness to Cabinet members and party leaders. Most of the stories were apocryphal, although I am sure that some were not. Haldeman was a quick, cogent thinker with limited tolerance for those whose decisiveness and dedication did not match his own. He had great expectations, and he drove the White House staff to meet them.

  There were conflicts of viewpoint and clashes of personality in the Nixon administration, but no human organization ever has been or ever will be free of them. The most important of these conflicts—because of its potential effect on policy—involved Bill Rogers, Henry Kissinger, and Mel Laird. When three such distinctive personalities and temperaments were added to the already volatile institutional mix of the State Department, the NSC, and the Pentagon, it was inevitable that there would be fireworks. To Rogers’s credit, it must be said that in many cases his primary concern was simply to be kept informed of what was going on. He had to testify before several congressional committees, and the secrecy with which our decisions customarily—and usually necessarily—were surrounded often placed him in an embarrassing position. I once jokingly remarked that Laird did not have this problem because he would answer questions and state his views whether he was informed or not.

  Rogers and Laird occasionally carried on sensitive dealings and negotiations without coordinating them with the White House. In some cases this was inadvertent, when they lacked information about our secret diplomacy; sometimes it was done to preclude Kissinger’s or my own disapproval; and sometimes, I think, it was done just to show themselves, their departments, and the press that they were capable of independent action. In some cases the results were harmless or even positive, but in a few cases the outcome threatened to undercut our policy and credibility with foreign countries.

  Eventually the relationship between Kissinger and Rogers took on a fairly combative aspect. Kissinger bridled at my assignment in 1969 and 1970 of all Middle Eastern problems to Rogers. He felt that Rogers was overly influenced by the pro-Arab elements of the State Department, and that he did not have the necessary skill or subtlety or a sense of broad foreign policy strategy. Kissinger also worried when foreign policy power seemed to become dispersed, and he was concerned by Rogers’s direct access to the Oval Office. Rogers felt that Kissinger was Machiavellian, deceitful, egotistical, arrogant, and insulting. Kissinger felt that Rogers was vain, uninformed, unable to keep a secret, and hopelessly dominated by the State
Department bureaucracy. The problems became increasingly serious as the years passed. Kissinger suggested repeatedly that he might have to resign unless Rogers was restrained or replaced.

  Since I valued both men for their different views and qualities, I tried to keep out of the personal fireworks that usually accompanied anything in which they were both involved. In this regard, Haldeman rendered valiant service since he ended up as a sort of DMZ between the two, and between them and me. Finally, even Haldeman had difficulties mediating the strongly held views of these proud and powerful men, and by the end of 1969 I was beginning to include John Mitchell in many foreign policy decisions so that he could provide a stabilizing personal influence.

  The clashes between my liberal and conservative domestic advisers were perhaps more cerebral but no less dramatic or deeply felt. During the summer and fall I had gradually moved John Ehrlichman into the position of coordinating all domestic programs and issues. He had a strong creative streak and a refreshingly acerbic sense of humor, and I considered him to be the ideal choice to bring to domestic policy the same intellectually wide-ranging but organizationally disciplined approach that Kissinger had brought so successfully to foreign policy.

  On the personal side, the biggest surprise of the first year for Pat and me was that we had not been prepared for the paradoxical combination of loss of privacy and sense of isolation that we experienced in the White House. When I was Vice President we had had many official obligations, but at the end of the day we went home to our family in a residential area of Washington where we did our shopping in the local markets, and had a large circle of friends with whom we could unwind and relax. But the President and First Lady soon discover that everything they do or say is potentially news. They are surrounded by Secret Service agents, staff members, communications teams, medics and doctors, transportation aides, and scores of reporters and photographers whose only job is to try to get a word with them or a picture of them. Any moments of real privacy suddenly seem especially precious, and increasingly Pat and I liked to spend time at Camp David, in Key Biscayne, and at our home in San Clemente, California.

  At the same time I discovered how isolated from the reality of American life a President can feel in the White House. For all its cosmopolitan self-confidence, Washington is a parochial city preoccupied by politics and gossip—which at times in Washington are the same thing. Like other Presidents before and after me, I felt a need to get out of the White House and out of Washington in order to keep some sense of perspective.

  Looking back over 1969, I saw it as a beginning—a solid beginning. We had held our own. The new year would begin a new decade, and I looked forward to the opportunity to leave the turbulent 1960s behind and begin a new era of creative and peaceful progress for America and the world.

  1970

  From a political standpoint, my approach to the question of civil rights for black Americans was similar to my approach to the question of Israel. In each case, I was in the unique position of being politically unbeholden to the major pressure group involved, and this meant that I was more readily trusted by opposing or competing groups; this, in turn, meant that I had more flexibility and freedom to do solely what I thought was the right thing.

  During the 1960s, particularly under President Johnson, there had been great strides in making the laws ensure the guaranteed rights of every American. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, almost every legislative roadblock to equality of opportunity for education, jobs, and voting had been removed. But passing legislation in Washington was one thing; enforcing it throughout the country was another. Expectations had been raised too high, and some black extremists now advocated and engaged in violent action in their efforts to pressure the federal government to hasten the rate of real progress.

  Two weeks after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, the first new outbreaks of racial violence occurred. The Harlem riots of 1964 were followed by the 1965 Watts riot, in which arson, looting, sniping, even killing suddenly became the preferred tools of many of the new activists of both races. George Wallace used the inevitable white backlash to build a formidable third party candidacy in 1968.

  When I came into office in 1969, the black extremists were still riding high. Despite the laws, the money spent on the problem, and the significant progress that had in fact been made, black Americans appeared to be more dissatisfied with their lot at the end of the 1960s than they were at the beginning, and tensions between black and white had never been higher. I felt that as a Republican and a moderate conservative I had a better chance of achieving an accommodation between the races than a Democrat or a liberal who was publicly committed to one particular constituency. In formulating my policies I tried to strike a moderate balance. Inevitably I dissatisfied the people on both extremes. As I told members of my staff at one of our early meetings, “I could deliver the Sermon on the Mount and the NAACP would criticize the rhetoric. And the diehard segregationists would criticize it on the grounds that I was being motivated solely by public pressure rather than by conscience. So let’s just tackle the problems instead of talking about them. We will be judged by what we do rather than what we say on this issue.”

  Finally, I knew that we had to attack the problem on a number of fronts. I felt that while education would be the most difficult and the most important, there were also questions of jobs, of welfare reform, of encouraging minority business enterprise, and of housing.

  A few weeks after the inauguration, Pat Moynihan brought Rev. Ralph Abernathy, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and several of his associates to the White House. I had first met Abernathy in 1957 when he was Martin Luther King’s chief lieutenant. While he may have been a good lieutenant, I could see that he had not developed into a good general; he lacked the vision and the wisdom that King had had in such a remarkable degree. Most of the Cabinet and key members of the White House staff assembled in the Roosevelt Room to meet with Abernathy, but the long session was a shambles because he was either unprepared or unwilling, or both, to have a serious discussion. Instead he postured and made speeches. He began by reading a list of demands and spent the rest of the time restating them in more colorful ways. Nonetheless he seemed pleased that we had made this effort and at the end he thanked me profusely for taking the time to meet with them. When he left the Cabinet Room he walked into the briefing room and told reporters that he had just sat through “the most disappointing, the most fruitless of all the meetings we had had up to this time.”

  Moynihan was embarrassed and outraged. He came into the Oval Office and paced the floor and said, “After the way you and the rest of us listened and indicated our sincere desire to find solutions to the problems, he goes into the press room and pisses on the President of the United States. It was unconscionable and I promise you it will never happen again.”

  Moynihan had been surprised by Abernathy’s conduct, but I wasn’t. I said, “The problem as I see it, is that they don’t think that I care. We must demonstrate to them that we do care by our actions and not just by our words.”

  It was ironic that Moynihan, who was among the strongest advocates of civil rights programs in my administration, provided the very words over which we were subsequently accused of being reactionaries in a memo he wrote to me early in 1970. In it he set forth a number of positive initiatives he felt we should undertake. In a section clearly referring to the desirability of cooling inflated rhetoric, he wrote:

  The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of “benign neglect.” The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over by hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.

  The phrase benign neglect was seized upon out of context to characterize the administration’s attitude toward blacks and other minorities. It was a term that caught on and was played back to us every time we
tried to do something constructive in the civil rights area. Moynihan was deeply distressed by this incident and offered to resign. Of course, I refused his offer.

  A good job is as basic and important a civil right as a good education, and many blacks and members of other minorities were being prevented from getting good jobs because of the policies of the major labor unions which excluded them from membership or discriminated against them in hiring and promotion. Therefore the first problem we addressed was unemployment. I asked Secretary of Labor George Shultz to see what could be done. He proposed a plan which would require all contractors working on federally funded construction projects to pledge a good faith effort toward the goal of hiring a representative number of minority workers.

  Shultz pointed out that of the 1.3 million construction workers in the United States, only 106,000 were black, and 80 percent of those were in the lowest paid category of laborers; of the 130,000 building apprentices in the country, only 5,000 were black.

  As Vice President I had been chairman of Eisenhower’s Committee on Government Contracts, which made substantial progress in using persuasion and publicity to encourage companies with government contracts to hire more minority workers. I felt that the plan Shultz devised, which would require such action by law, was both necessary and right. We would not fix quotas, but would require federal contractors to show “affirmative action” to meet the goals of increasing minority employment. For example, in Philadelphia the goal would be to increase it from 4 percent to 26 percent between 1969 and 1973. Other cities would have other goals.

  Congressional conservatives joined organized labor in vehemently opposing this plan. They considered it heretical for a Republican President to propose such a thing—and heresy is rarely politically popular. Right up to his death in September 1969, Everett Dirksen urged me to abandon it. In a meeting in the Cabinet Room with the legislative leaders he said, in his characteristically colorful way, “As your leader in the Senate of the United States, it is my bounden duty to tell you that this thing is about as popular as a crab in a whorehouse. You will split your own party if you insist on pursuing it. And, Mr. President, I do not think that I myself will be able to support you on this ill-conceived scheme.”