RN

by Richard Nixon

  Since there was no way that we could possibly accommodate, much less seat, more than a few hundred people inside, Pat arranged for the construction on the South Lawn of a canopy that was itself larger than the whole White House. Then she found and rented enough china and crystal that were sufficiently elegant for an occasion of this importance. Hundreds of bottles of champagne were chilled in ice-filled aluminum canoes, and crates of strawberries for the dessert mousse were run through the blenders at the Pentagon kitchens because the White House simply could not handle such large quantities. Pat was busy for weeks making the preparations and supervising the arrangements for everything from individual place cards to the flower centerpieces on each of the 126 tables.

  We wanted to arrange excellent entertainment for after dinner, and Pat and her staff worked with Sammy Davis and Bob Hope and our long-time California friend, television producer Paul Keyes. Her only condition was that she did not want a “girlie” show; she felt that would be inappropriate for the men and their families. The result was a beautifully produced, tasteful, and deeply moving program that everyone who saw it will always remember.

  On May 24, the day the POW dinner was held, the flag flying over the White House was the same one that had flown at Clark Air Force Base on February 12 when the first group of POWs returned from Hanoi.

  In the afternoon Pat and the girls attended a tea for the wives. Tricia recorded the scene in her diary:

  Mama, Julie, and I attended a reception honoring the wives of the POWs prior to the dinner at the White House.

  The press attended the reception too, and while we were scattered through the reception room surrounded by the wives, the reporters surrounded us. Instead of asking us questions about the occasion or even showing a humane concern about the POW families, the press immediately and gleefully bombarded us with Watergate questions.

  Finally the POW wives could support this attack no longer and they, unasked, began telling the reporters how fine Richard Nixon was. They said things like, “He is the greatest President our country has ever had” and “If it were not for him our husbands would still be prisoners.”

  While the women were having tea, I addressed the men in the State Department Auditorium. My speech was interrupted many times by applause, but I was surprised at the reaction to one particular sentence. Only two weeks earlier Daniel Ellsberg’s trial had been dismissed, and he had gone free. When I said, “And let me say, I think it is time in this country to quit making national heroes out of those who steal secrets and publish them in the newspapers,” the men leaped to their feet and shouted their agreement.

  It had rained all day and much of the evening, and the South Lawn was soggy when the first guests began arriving for the dinner. Many of the women’s long dresses got splattered with mud, but nothing could dampen the high spirits of that night. Pat had decided to open the entire White House, so the men and their families wandered through all the rooms, examining the decorations and taking photographs.

  Before the dinner an invocation was offered by Navy Captain Charles Gillespie, the POW who had acted as their chaplain in Hanoi. Then the POW chorus of thirty-five men sang a hymn that one of them had written in prison.

  Everyone stood at attention as a fanfare announced an all-service honor guard for the presentation of the colors. In place of the full-size American flag, there came a tiny flag held aloft on a short staff. It was the flag that had been secretly made by Air Force Lieutenant Colonel John Dramesi in a North Vietnamese prison, fashioned from a white handkerchief, patches of red underwear, gold trim from a blanket, blue cloth from an old jacket, and string from a Red Cross package. As the honor guard entered, all eyes turned toward the tiny patchwork flag, and beginning with the front tables, a cheer grew and grew until it filled the canvas tent.

  During most of the dinner Pat and I walked around from table to table, posing for photographs and signing autographs. When I came to the table at which John Stennis was seated, he turned to the men and said, “You fellows wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the guts of this man.”

  When the dinner was over, I rose to begin the toasts. “The most difficult decision that I have made since being President was on December 18 of last year,” I said, and before I could continue there was a thunderous burst of cheering and applause. “And there were many occasions in that ten-day period after the decision was made when I wondered whether anyone in this country really supported it. But I can tell you this: after having met each one of our honored guests this evening, after having talked to them, I think that all of us would like to join in a round of applause for the brave men that took those B-52s in and did the job, because as all of you know, if they hadn’t done it, you wouldn’t be here tonight.”

  I said that I wanted to propose a toast not just to Pat as First Lady but to all the brave wives and mothers of the prisoners. Tricia noted in her diary, “When all the men rose to toast their wives and families, all the sacrifice. poignance, sadness, past and future, was caught in that moment.”

  General Flynn responded to the toast: “I would like to state . . . that we do not consider ourselves a unique group of men. Rather we are a random selection of fate. . . . Mr. President, concerning your decision on December 18, I would like to assure you, sir, that we knew you were in a very lonely position. The decision was contested, but I would like to also report to you that when we heard heavy bombs impacting in Hanoi, we started to go and pack our bags, because we knew we were going home, and we were going home with honor.”

  The men presented me with a plaque inscribed to “Our leader—our comrade, Richard the Lion-Hearted.”

  Bob Hope opened the entertainment. All the stars of the show had entertained the men in South Vietnam, many of them as part of Hope’s annual Christmas shows. John Wayne got the biggest hand when he said to the POWs, “I’ll ride into the sunset with you anytime.” Just before he left the stage, he looked down at me sitting in the front row of tables and said, “I want to thank you, Mr. President, not for any one thing, just for everything.”

  There were famous pop and country singers, comedians and motion picture personalities on the program, and the place of honor at the end was for Sammy Davis, Jr. He sang and danced and, with tears in his eyes, had special praise for the women whose prayers had “brought you cats home.”

  Then I introduced Irving Berlin. His age and failing health had made it impossible for him to participate in any other part of the evening, but as he began the first notes of his most famous song, his voice came out loud and strong. Many now wept openly as we repeated the stirring and simple verse over and over until, at the end, some of the men almost seemed to be shouting so that the words could be heard all the way to Hanoi: “God bless America, my home sweet home.”

  The show did not end until after midnight and the dancing went on until after two o’clock, but Pat and I went upstairs around 12:30. I kissed her goodnight and then went to the Lincoln Sitting Room. As I sat before the fire, listening to the sounds of the music and laughter coming up from downstairs, I felt that this was one of the greatest nights in my life. There were no words then, and there are really none now, that could describe the joy and satisfaction that I felt at the thought that I had played a role in bringing these men back home, and that they, who were so completely courageous and admirable, genuinely seemed to consider the decisions I had made about the war to have been courageous and admirable ones.

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper that the wife of one of the POWs had handed to me. It was a short handwritten note on Statler-Hilton stationery:

  Dear Mr. President:

  When I was living in solitary confinement and conditions were especially bad, men would often send notes of encouragement to others who were under great pressure. The notes were hidden in the bath areas and were a great comfort to the recipient. The standard message was “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

  Don’t let the bastards get you down, Mr. President.

>   Joy and Bob Jeffrey

  The contrast between the splendid lift of this night and the dreary daily drain of Watergate suddenly struck me with an almost physical force. When Tricia and Julie came upstairs from the party a little later, I invited them to join me in the Lincoln Sitting Room. Tricia made a diary note of that meeting:

  We went down expecting that he wanted to talk over the splendid event and what had led up to it and made it possible.

  When we saw his face, we realized that his spirit was troubled. It was obvious that his low spirit was more than the natural letdown that frequently follows the conclusion of a speech or an event where much energy has been expended. He began to talk quietly, without undue passion, about the press’s rather negative reception of all the POW ceremonies in Washington. He correctly stated the reason for this apathy: in giving a good play to the ceremonies they feared they would build him up.

  He called Paul Keyes and thanked him for arranging the entertainment. They joked for a few minutes, but it was almost painful for us to see how sad Daddy’s face looked despite the laughter in his voice.

  After he hung up we were all silent for a moment and then, very simply, he said to Julie and me, “Do you think I should resign?”

  It was not what he said but the way he said it that produced an internal earthquake in us. Instead of saying it with levity, he said it with a seriousness that produced a wave of exclamations such as “Don’t you dare!” and “Don’t even think of it!” from us.

  He really wanted us to give him reasons for not resigning. This was not difficult for us to do: we said he should stay in office because he had done nothing wrong. There was no reason to resign. The country would not thrive as well with anyone else in office. He smiled at us and tried to say something to cheer us up, but it was almost more than I could bear to stay there and see his sadness on what should have been a night of jubilant triumph for him as it was for everyone else.

  And so the evening concluded—an evening representing a great historical and personal achievement for Daddy, marred by a great personal tragedy. I could not help but think how man lives in the hope of perfection, but lives in the reality of imperfection in himself and in those around him.

  THE MAY 22 STATEMENT

  John Dean’s news-making accusations against Haldeman and Ehrlichman failed to gain him immunity from prosecution.

  He later claimed that he had been very careful not to try his case in the press, and he testified before the Ervin Committee that he had not done so. But the New York Times reported flatly that Dean’s attorney was behind the leaking.

  On May 4 Dean had informed Judge Sirica that he had a safe-deposit box full of classified documents taken from the White House, which he planned to use to buttress his Watergate case. We had no idea what the documents might be. The only clues were the press reports noting that one of these documents was forty-three pages long and carried one of the highest security classifications in the government. Fred Buzhardt took the security classification and the number of pages mentioned in the press leaks and started searching until he found what he was sure was the document: the June 1970 Interagency Intelligence Report—the Huston Plan.

  In April Dean had promised me categorically that he would not reveal anything involving national security matters, but now he seemed to be willing to breach that promise if it would help him gain immunity from prosecution.

  Justice Department officials who had seen the document said that it involved a national security matter and did not relate to Watergate. But Senator Ervin pounced on the chance to make news. He told reporters that it was an “operation to spy on the American people in general,” and he cited it as evidence of the administration’s “Gestapo mentality.”

  Even so, I was almost relieved that this was Dean’s bombshell document, because I was certain that we could completely defend and explain it in a way that people would understand.

  A few days later General Vernon Walters, Deputy Director of the CIA, notified us that several of his “memcons”—memoranda of conversations—dating from June 1972 were about to be subpoenaed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which was investigating the question of CIA involvement in the Watergate break-in and its aftermath. One of Walters’s memcons covered the conversation held among Helms, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and himself on June 23, 1972. Other Walters memcons covered subsequent conversations with John Dean and with Pat Gray. The subject of all the memcons was Watergate. Walters brought the memcons to the White House to get a ruling on whether they were covered by executive privilege. The minute we saw them we knew we had a problem.

  Walters’s memcon of the June 23 meeting with Haldeman and Ehrlichman noted that Haldeman had commented on the embarrassment being caused by Watergate and then said that it was my desire that Walters go to see Pat Gray and suggest that he not push the inquiry further, particularly into the Mexican money that appeared to have financed the break-in.

  One of the things that made the memcons so troublesome was the fact that Walters was one of my old friends; he would not have contrived them to hurt me. In addition, his photographic memory was renowned, and he was universally respected as a scrupulous and honest man.

  Buzhardt, however, noticed that the June 23 memcon had not actually been written on June 23, but five days later, on June 28. During those five days John Dean had approached Walters and asked if the CIA could help put up the bail for the Watergate defendants to get them out of jail and pay their salaries if they were convicted. He had also asked obliquely if the CIA might assume some of the responsibility for the break-in. Walters had reacted to Dean’s overtures with dismay and alarm; he had refused, insisting that he would do nothing unless he received a direct order from me. In fact, Dean had undertaken this approach to Walters without my knowledge, and he dropped his request.

  Buzhardt postulated that on June 28, when Walters wrote the memcon of the June 23 meeting, he had unconsciously reconstructed the conversation from the perspective of what he felt Dean was trying to do, rather than from what Haldeman and Ehrlichman had actually said.

  It had been almost a year since that conversation; so much had happened in the meantime. But I was certain that the motive could not have been as transparently political as it looked. What could we have been thinking? It must have been concern over the perennial competition between the FBI and CIA. I saw Haldeman on May 10 and 11 and again on May 18. He was positive beyond a doubt that that had been our motive. He told me again, as he had when we met on April 25, that I had told Dean on March 21 that we could raise a million dollars but it would be wrong and it would not work.

  Back in April I had talked to Haldeman and Ehrlichman about the difficulty of recalling events that were many months past. “How do you remember back that far? . . . You remember the things you want to remember.” Now we ourselves rationalized the implications of Walter’s memcons; we confusedly reconstructed events around our recollection of our motive—we remembered what we wanted to remember.

  I was relieved by Haldeman’s certainty. I asked whether he could recall even the slightest hint of political concern in calling in the CIA. He said he was positive that there had been no political concern whatever.

  By mid-May we were inundated with new charges. In addition to all the Watergate allegations and accusations, the 1969-70 wiretaps were now public; so was the Plumbers unit, and we knew that Dean had a copy of the Interagency Intelligence Report. No distinction was being made between legitimate national security concerns and exclusively Watergate problems. In the April 30 speech I had dealt in a very general way with the broad concepts of responsibility and blame. Now I could see that we were going to have to provide a detailed response to the many specific Watergate allegations.

  In a statement issued from the White House on May 22 I described the 1969 wiretaps and the events that had created the need for them. I also described the 1970 Interagency Intelligence Report and the establishment of the Plumbers. Then I turned to Watergate. I denied prior knowledge of th
e break-in, and I made a blanket denial of any awareness of or participation in the cover-up. I said that we had called in the CIA to make sure that no secret CIA operations were uncovered by the Watergate investigation and that the investigation did not lead to any inquiry into the Special Investigations Unit. I stated, “It was certainly not my intent, nor my wish, that the investigation of the Watergate break-in or of related acts be impeded in any way.” I said flatly that it was not until “my own investigation” that I had known of any fund-raising for the men convicted of the break-in at the DNC. And I said that I had not authorized any offer of executive clemency for any of these defendants. Thus I set more traps that would be sprung by the tapes months later.

  The May 22 statement came as a shock to the American public. It was the first time that a President of the United States had publicly admitted that there had been such things as government-approved break-ins. At that time the activities that were later revealed by the 1975 Senate study of intelligence activity were not yet widely known outside some political and journalistic circles in Washington. Thus there was no cushion of preparation, no context of public awareness and acceptance, for my contention that what I had approved in the Huston Plan and the wiretaps was not only objectively justifiable but based on the precedent of presidential decisions and practices as far back as FDR. In 1973 Newsweek said that the Huston Plan was “the most wide-ranging secret police operation ever authorized.” Later William V. Shannon wrote in the New York Times, “There was nothing really new or unprecedented in the methods proposed in the 1970 plan.”