Tapes reveal ugly side of Nixon
“People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”
President Richard Nixon, Nov. 17, 1973
Richard Nixon may not have been a crook, but he was something far worse – a scoundrel.
His presidential accomplishments were significant.
Nixon normalized relations with China; he helped lesson tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union; he helped to institute affirmative action; and he was a strong supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.
That was the good Nixon. But, then, there was the bad Nixon.
Saturday marked the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s final fall from grace.
On Aug. 9, 1974, when he waved goodbye before he boarded that helicopter that took him off into the sunset, he knew, he’d obstructed justice, and he had thrown the country into a constitutional crisis.
Now, in 2014, Nixon is being revealed as having far more flaws than we’d thought.
HBO is currently presenting a shocking documentary that’s a thorough examination of the leader of the free world, who was also a dishonest, small-minded, petty, paranoid, racially insensitive, vindictive man.
Nixon by Nixon: In His Own Words, is a distillation of some of the 3,700 hours of recorded tapes from his own recording system.
Nixon thought that his every word could somehow have historical significance. Ironically, it was those words, and his refusal to release them, that led to his downfall.
Many of his public statements were in direct contradiction to the statements he made to his confidants in the Oval Office.
On Vietnam? While Nixon always expressed confidence that the United States would win, and allow the Vietnamese to fend for themselves, he’s heard telling his National Security Advisor – Henry Kissinger – “South Vietnam can never even survive anyway.”
When Daniel Ellsberg famously released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, Nixon launched into a vicious tirade about Jews.
“Jews are born spies. You notice how many of them there are? They’re just in it up to their necks. Second, most Jews are disloyal. Generally speaking you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you,” he tells H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, the White House Chief of Staff.
After a federal court ruled that all of the Pentagon Papers could be released, Nixon was convinced there was a conspiracy against him.
He calls on the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, to feed him the names of other people who were supposedly in on the plot.
He then plans his attack.
“They’re using any means. We are going to use any means. Is that clear? I don’t give a (expletive deleted) about the law. I really need a son-of-a-bitch who will work his butt off and do it dishonorably,” he tells Haldeman.
At that point, Nixon’s disdain for law was growing.
He even plotted a break-in of the Brookings Institution, a liberal Washington think-tank, because he felt it, too, was in possession of secrets involving Vietnam.
“I want the Brookings Institute safe cleaned out. Get it done. I want it implemented on a thievery basis. Godddamit, get in and get those files,” he told Haldeman.
During his time in office, Nixon made two appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Several women’s names were floated as possible appointees.
Yet in private discussions with his Attorney General, John Mitchell, he expressed his wish that none of his serious candidates would be a woman.
“I’d like to get them off the woman kick if we can,” he told Mitchell.
But he reserves his strongest words for African-Americans and Mexican-Americans.
After nominating a Mexican-American, Romana Banuelos, to become U.S. Treasurer, he tells White House Counsel John Ehrlichman, “At the present time (Mexican-Americans) steal, they’re dishonest – they do a lot of other things but they do have some concept of family life at least. They don’t live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like. We’re gonna put more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls…”
I’m glad he resigned, but somebody should have washed his mouth out with soap – first!
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net