One thing the Mideast trip did was to put the whole Watergate business into perspective—to make us realize that all the terrible battering we have taken is really pygmy-sized when compared to what we have done and what we can do in the future not only for peace in the world but, indirectly, to effect the well-being of people everywhere. This, I suppose, is what we must always keep front and center regardless of what happens in the future.
On June 13, while I was in Egypt, Fred Buzhardt had suffered a heart attack. Once I was assured that he was going to pull through, I tried to assess the impact his illness would have on our legal situation. This was a particularly busy and important period because we had briefs to file and oral arguments to prepare for the tapes case before the Supreme Court. We also had to prepare for the pretrial hearings in the Watergate cover-up case on defense motions for documents, and to respond to demands for documents from the district court that was hearing the Ellsberg break-in case. There were several other lesser legal battles also being waged. We were trying to assert a claim of executive privilege in a suit brought by Common Cause; and we were getting ready to file an appeal on Sirica’s decision to release a section of the September 15, 1972, tape that he himself had earlier judged did not relate to Watergate—one in which I had talked about IRS information on our opponents. And as if these were not enough, the Ervin Committee was still demanding more information, Kissinger was returning to testify on the wiretaps before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee was continuing its rapacious demands for more tapes. Buzhardt’s enforced absence would be a serious blow.
There was at least one relatively bright spot: there were reports of behind-the-scenes problems at the House Judiciary Committee. The leaks from both members and staff had become so frequent that Democrats as well as Republicans were expressing their disapproval. An anonymous committee member was quoted in the Washington Post, “I think we are a little embarrassed by what we have done.”
On June 21, two days after my return from the Mideast, the House Judiciary Committee finished hearing all the evidence on all the charges against me; it ran over 7,000 pages and ultimately filled thirty-eight large printed volumes. The quantity of the evidence was overwhelming, but its quality was weak; most of it had little or no direct bearing on my own actions.
There were also other optimistic signs. Washington columnists noted that John Rhodes, for the first time in weeks, was beginning to emerge as a leader in my behalf. The House pro-impeachment Democrats were now reported to be pushing hard for an early House floor vote because they felt the committee’s slow pace had let the momentum slip. The Washington Post ran a front-page story that the committee had begun to polarize.
On June 22 I telephoned Louisiana Democrat Joe Waggonner. A veteran of seven terms in the House, Waggonner headed an informal group that sometimes numbered as many as a hundred House Democrats, mainly Southerners, who had often given me support on key issues. He had been a great source of strength to me throughout the whole Watergate period; hardly a week went by that he did not call to reassure me of his continued support. But he was always totally realistic, and he never tried to encourage me falsely. Now he was saying that he had seventy anti-impeachment votes in his group that he thought were pretty solid. The only thing that might change them, he said, would be if for any reason I were held in contempt of the Supreme Court. Other than that he did not think there was any chance for an impeachment. He ended this conversation, as he did every one I ever remember having with him, by saying, “God bless you.”
I calculated that if Waggonner had 70 Democratic votes, we would need only 150 Republicans to make a majority against impeachment. That was not an unrealistic goal. On June 22 and 23 I reflected on the tentative new sources of support showing up in Congress, and even in the House Judiciary Committee itself.
Diary
Thank God some of our Republicans on the committee led by [Charles] Wiggins [of California], are standing up. This may be the new factor that could change this situation—change it, that is, with the one caveat—that what happens in the Supreme Court is going to put us to a real test.
I still hope and feel, however, that there would be a fairly good chance this time that the Court, as it looks down to the future of this country and the future of the presidency and for that matter the future of the Court itself, will not want to set such a devastating precedent. But the Court all lives in Washington, are affected by the Washington stories, and the poison they see in the Washington Post must really seep in. It’s very difficult for people to read it every day and not be affected by it.
In thinking today, after my call with Joe Waggonner, when he said that unless there was contempt of the Supreme Court we would win the impeachment, I realized that we really are looking at about thirty days in which the climactic decision with regard to whether we are able to stay in office or whether we will have to, in effect, refuse to comply with what might be an order of the Court which would violate the constitutional precepts which I have laid forward, will have to be made. What I have to do in these next thirty days is to live every one of them up to the hilt and not be concerned about what happens in between. We just have to be sure that we do everything we can to be worthy of whatever responsibilities we have.
The more I think about this whole impeachment process the more I remember what Ayub Khan said: “Trust is like a thin thread. Once you break it, it is almost impossible to put it together again.” This is why as time has gone on, when we add up the Dean week which was just a year ago—and the tape issue—and then Agnew—and then following that up with the two-tapes business—the tax business—and all of the other assaults—the Rebozo thing—the eighteen minutes—it’s just miraculous that we are still in the game at all.
We can only thank God for the strength of the family, as I have often said—of some of our close friends, and the iron will of Haig, who I think is the strongest man in the whole group—supported, of course, by Ziegler, Buchanan, and others.
I had a very good talk with Bob Haldeman. He is really a tower of strength. I told him that I knew he must be worried about what was going to happen in September and what he must be going through, and that I felt for him very, very deeply, just as I felt for John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell. He said, well, he just lived day by day and didn’t think about the outcome in the end.
When I think, incidentally, of my feeling of depression last night I suppose that something might happen in the future with regard to the Court that would end in eventual impeachment, I thought of all of the others who must be going through much worse—sleepless nights and so forth—people who don’t have strong physical or emotional faculties as I have. It’s really remarkable that we have so many among our own group who have stood up under a terrible battering, and have taken the worst shots that they could get and have still survived.
I talked to Henry. He seemed to think the mood, as he puts it, had changed. Of course, he has said this before. And, Henry, of course, always puts in the caveat, “unless something big develops.”
I also talked to Al Haig. He says he really feels better than he has for a year.
As I analyze things on this rather rainy Sunday, June 23, I must say that we are probably, as Al says, stronger than we were a couple of months ago, and we shall now see what happens as we go to the Soviet Union, come back, and as the tension then focuses as it will almost totally on the whole impeachment process. At least the Mideast trip tended to break the momentum and to focus attention on other subjects. Al feels that the press wants to do that—that they are rather tired of the other subject. I trust he’s right, although I think that we will find that many of our opponents will not play that game because they desperately want to get us out.
My family and I tried to make the time we spent together as happy and carefree as possible. I worried about the girls constantly. They were young, and they needed freedom to live their own lives; instead they were having to fight my battles day in and day out. Thei
r constant thoughtfulness was a source of great comfort to me. Julie would often leave her copy of the New English edition of the New Testament on my bedstand, opened to some consoling passage. And Tricia would come to the Lincoln Sitting Room at some of my lowest times and just sit with me while I read or worked, in a quiet tribute of love and support.
I was in the Mideast on Father’s Day, but there was a telegram for me from the girls: “Dear Daddy, Happy Father’s Day. We are so proud of you and love you very much. Julie and Tricia.” My sons-in-law joined to send me a telegram: “Mr. President, A triumphant Father’s Day. Our admiration and love. Ed and David.”
Because of the demands of Ed’s job, he and Tricia stayed in New York and did not make many official appearances. It became a favorite sport of insatiable gossip columnists to fabricate rumors of a “rift” between me and Ed, or even between Tricia and Ed. It finally reached the point that Tricia was forced to issue a statement denying that her marriage was about to break up. In fact, she and Ed seemed to grow stronger and draw closer the more they were forced to endure. In March, without informing me beforehand, they jointly wrote a courageous and eloquent magazine article in my defense.
Julie and David were directly in the blast of the hurricane for the entire final year of my presidency. Living in Washington ensured that they could never escape from the ceaseless media scrutiny or from the stifling atmosphere of the threatened impeachment. Both Julie and David were sturdy young people, but after more than 160 public appearances, many of them searing Watergate sessions, they would have had to be unintelligent and insensitive not to feel the effect. In February 1974 David wrote to me about it:
Julie has undoubtedly mentioned my low spirits this past week. In a nutshell, nothing in my life prepared me for the thunder clap of criminal charges pressed against people I know and respect and essentially on grounds growing out of dedication to your case. . . .
I never accepted that life could be so unfair and it’s unquestionably just the beginning. I spent the better part of this week wrestling with my feelings on the situation. I hope I haven’t been misunderstood. Last night I discovered an appropriate thought, “There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moment of our first great sorrow when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and recovered hope.” The quote was from George Eliot, of course. I wondered when it was you experienced your “despair so absolute”—14 years ago, 1 year ago—ours may have been last week. But the point of the passage and of your experience is hope. Under these circumstances hope means determination. We are happy with any part of redeeming the work you have done for America and we aren’t alone either, come what may.
It hurt me to see Julie daily grow quieter and more inward. But the only time I recall that she ever let me know of her despair was when we went to Camp David after the release of the Blue Book transcripts. “Everything is so dreary,” she said quietly. By the next day she had bounced back, and within a week she and David decided to hold a press conference in response to the storm of criticism of the transcripts and the calls for my resignation that were now coming from friends and enemies alike.
At one point during their press conference a reporter for CBS began talking about the “sins of the fathers” being visited on their children. His implication was that their spontaneous decision to hold the press conference was part of a calculated move to shield me from reporters. Julie’s eyes flashed, but the steel in her character helped her restrain emotion as she said:
I am going to try to control myself in answering the question, because it really does wound me. . . . I am here because Helen Smith had fifty-five calls from the media. . . . Now if the media has a hang-up, an obsession about resignation and feels they must be reassured by members of the family, I feel as a daughter it is my obligation to come out here.
I have seen what my father has gone through, and I am so proud of him that I would never be afraid to come out here and talk to any members of the press about resignation or anything else, even though it goes against my grain because I know he does not want me out here because he does not want anyone to construe that I am trying to answer questions for him. I am not trying to answer questions for him. I am just trying to pray for enough courage to meet his courage.
Pat was, as always, the strongest of all. She worked to keep our spirits high when we were together as a family, while she showed the world that beneath the woman who was loved universally for her warmth, her easy elegance, and her genius for personal understanding, there was a strength of character unmatched, I believe, in the history of American politics.
She was, as Jerry Ford proclaimed her, “First Lady of the World,” and on March 11 she made what was to be the last of her trips as my representative abroad. This time she visited Brazil and Venezuela, where she captivated everyone who saw her. Yet on the plane back reporters immediately started pressing her about Watergate, wanting to know just how much pain she had suffered in the last year, just how bad it had been for her. “I really don’t wish to speak of it. It’s just a personal thing,” she said. “Why bring that into the trip?” She repeated what she had said before: that she loved me and knew that I was an honorable, dedicated person.
She worked hard to be an example of dignity under attack. And still they would not let up.
SUMMIT III
In January 1974, the Soviets had agreed to announce the date of Summit III, scheduled to be held in Moscow in the summer. I evaluated this decision either as an act of faith on their part that I was going to prevail over impeachment, or as an indication of their interest in seeing détente continue regardless of who was President.
What was probably the most crucial and hardest fought battle of Summit III took place not in Moscow but in Washington, where the activities of the anti-détente forces reached almost fever pitch just as I was getting ready to leave for the Soviet Union. The liberals were now in full cry with what had become the currently fashionable outrage over Soviet repression of political dissidents and their restriction of Jewish emigration. The conservatives of both parties were still united in their determination either to limit trade with the Soviets or to ban it altogether. The military establishment and its many friends in Congress and the country were up in arms over the prospect that Summit III might actually succeed in producing a breakthrough on limiting offensive nuclear weapons or a limited nuclear test ban.
This convergence of anti-détente forces would have existed regardless of any domestic political problems. But Watergate had badly damaged my ability to defuse, or at least to circumvent, them as effectively as I otherwise might have been able to do.
When Kissinger went to Moscow on March 24 for four days of talks aimed at setting the agenda for Summit III, he reported that Brezhnev seemed to be confronting some of the same problems as we were of military opposition to a permanent agreement to limit offensive nuclear weapons. Thus we knew from the outset that it would be very difficult to produce a major SALT breakthrough at Summit III.
The U.S. military opposition to a new SALT agreement came to a head at the meeting of the National Security Council on the afternoon of June 20 when Secretary of Defense Schlesinger presented the Pentagon’s proposal. It amounted to an unyielding hard line against any SALT agreement that did not ensure an overwhelming American advantage. It was a proposal that the Soviets were sure to reject out of hand.
After the arguments on both sides had been stated, I intervened: “I think we should try to use this time to frame a more practical approach to this problem. We have to accept the fact that Secretary Schlesinger’s proposal simply has no chance whatever of being accepted by the Soviets, so we should try to work out something consistent with our interests that will.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Schlesinger, who was sitting next to me, said, “But, Mr. President, everyone knows how impressed Khrushchev was with your forensic ability in the kitchen debate. I’m sure that if you applied your skills to it you coul
d get them to accept this proposal.”
In my diary that night I recorded: “The NSC meeting was a real shocker insofar as the performance of the Chiefs, and particularly of Schlesinger, was concerned. His statement that he knew that Khrushchev had been very impressed by my ‘forensic ability’ and that, with my forensic ability, I could sell the idea that he presented, was really an insult to everybody’s intelligence and particularly to mine.”
Jerry Ford broke the silence that followed Schlesinger’s remark and moved the discussion into the broader area of the defense budget. After this had gone on for a few minutes, I made a statement about the way I viewed the development of détente over the two years remaining to me in the White House.
Diary
Ford is on the kick that we ought to have a huge increase in the defense budget, and that that will give us a bargaining position with the Soviets. He’s right in one way, of course, and wrong in another, because we aren’t going to be able to bluff them in this particular case.
My great concern, as I said at the meeting, is that whoever might succeed me in this office might not fight these bloody battles that I have had to fight over these past five and a half years—for ABM, for big defense budgets, for the Trident submarine, etc. We could have someone who, despite all the white-hot talk that the United States has to be number one and so forth, would cave in to the peacenik views that the establishment press would undoubtedly be expressing once they got one of their own in office.
That is why it is very important, if we possibly can, to get some constraints on the Soviets at this time. Because later on, if we get into a runaway race, it may be that they will be uninhibited and we will be inhibited. As I tried to point out at the NSC meeting, when the President of the United States makes a decision, it’s very different from a decision made by the General Secretary of the Soviet Union. We can be very sure that his decision is one that will and can be carried out. He doesn’t have to be too concerned about his public opinion, if at all. When the President of the United States makes a decision, however, he can’t ever be absolutely sure that his decision will be carried out. It’s certainty versus the uncertainty that weakens, not our actual bargaining position so much, but makes it essential that we take this factor into account in negotiating the terms of any deal that we make with the Soviet. Because if we have an agreement which constrains us both, it means that we will be constraining them in something that they will inevitably do. When we constrain ourselves, it may be that we are constraining ourselves in an area where we wouldn’t be doing anything anyway. This, of course, was exactly the situation with regard to the ’72 agreement.
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