Richard Nixon and the Pornography of Power

Love him or hate him, there was a grandeur to the Richard Nixon he permitted the public to know. Awkward perhaps, but still masterful at defining the historical moment and placing himself at the center of it. That is the Nixon honored by five presidents and most of the world’s top leaders at the time of his death. But it is a Nixon in whom it is no longer possible to believe having read this astonishing and revealing book made up of transcripts of 200 hours of secretly recorded White House tapes.

No wonder Nixon fought so hard--until the end of his life--to keep them forever from public view. They are devastating to the memory of a man who for reasons both good and bad was one of our most important presidents. Devastating not merely for revealing definitively that Nixon was in on the cover-up of the Watergate break-in from the very first hours after the burglars were caught, that he obstructed justice by bribing witnesses and that he all too easily betrayed even those closest to him. We already knew that. What is startling about the cumulative impact of these transcripts, unrelieved as testaments to treachery both petty and large, is the inescapable conclusion that mendacity was the man. How else to explain these tapes, in which the 37th president of the United States never once utters a principled comment on any subject that is unencumbered by self-serving deceit and the incessant attempt to manipulate others?

Nor can this material, nearly 650 pages of transcripts, be dismissed, as were early fragments of the Watergate tapes, as the mad ramblings of a man besieged. This section of the tapes (there are still more than 1,000 more hours to come) begins a year before the 1972 Watergate break-in with news of Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. Nixon is at the height of his popularity and as secure in his power as he had ever been. Yet for the next year leading up to Watergate, the president is heard ordering up some of the more fanciful of the dirty tricks that are his enduring shame.

During the very first hour of these recordings, Nixon talks about blackmailing ex-President Lyndon Johnson by releasing secret documents on the Vietnam War, as well as breaking into the Brookings Institution, the Washington think tank: “Bob [Haldeman]? Now do you remember [presidential aide Tom Charles] Huston’s plan? Implement it,” the president says, referring to a bizarre plan for spying on American citizens that J. Edgar Hoover scotched and Nixon later denied ever hearing about.

The contrived innocence of Henry Kissinger is also swept away from the start, for it is Kissinger who encourages Nixon in this effort: “Now Brookings has no right to have classified documents.” Nixon gets even more agitated and repeats, “I want it implemented . . . Goddamnit, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.”

The hate and paranoia are evidenced on almost every page. Take the matter of Nixon’s extreme anti-Semitism, which appears early with the drumbeat regularity of a true fanatic. There is a persistent insistence that Jews control all the centers of power in society: the IRS, the banks, the law firms and, of course, the media.

“The Jews, you know, that are stealing everything.” “. . . Bob [Haldeman], please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats. . . . All right. Could we please investigate some of the [expletive]? . . . What about the rich Jews. . . . You see, IRS is full of Jews. . . .”

Even though he relied heavily on such Jewish advisors as Kissinger, Murray Chotiner and Leonard Garment, Nixon was convinced that, as a group, Jews could not be trusted. Oddly, the press reports on the tapes have barely touched on what is an obvious and indelible stain on the Nixon psyche.

By extension, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Council on Foreign Relations, all thought to be heavily Jewish influenced, became targets of choice. Of Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post: “Screw around with her television license.” And in another of his frequently testy asides, “I’m going to get that Council [on] Foreign Relations. I’m going to chop those bastards off right at the neck.” Nixon was constantly checking out Kissinger for leaks and thought he was working with Max Frankel of the New York Times. Nixon: “Henry is compulsive on Frankel. He’s Jewish.” On the other hand, they considered bringing in former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to front an investigation, because, as Nixon puts it, “I’ll tell you why he would be good. He’s a Jew [unintelligible] and he’s got business with the government.”

Nixon was haunted by the phobias of small-town America toward the Eastern establishment, and his obsession seems to be rooted in the treatment accorded him back in the time of the Alger Hiss case. Hiss, a respected former State Department official, was a favorite of the establishment, and Nixon was forever stigmatized as having been an irrational McCarthyite because he had pushed for a congressional investigation into Hiss’ actions. This perplexed him no end, for in Nixon’s mind he had tried mightily to prove his worth to the same folks who attacked him. As vice president, he had done battle with Sen. Joseph McCarthy in defending then-President Dwight Eisenhower and, after losing races in 1960 for president and in 1962 for governor of California, Nixon relocated to a prestigious Manhattan law firm. During that period, he worked hard at becoming an accepted member of the establishment that he came to believe would never accept him.

Ironically, Nixon’s great foreign policy achievement, the opening to China, had been inspired by a lengthy Council on Foreign Relations study project. And in his choices of William Rogers for secretary of state and Kissinger for national security advisor, he certainly picked well-known members of that establishment. But in his rambling conversations with trusted aides Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Nixon revealed an abiding mistrust of those he presumed to be at the center of real power in America.

The odd thing revealed in these tapes is that even though Nixon was the president of the United States and reelected by a commanding majority, he was never secure in his ascension to power. So much so that he easily unraveled at the slightest presumed indignity or act of betrayal by those well-connected.

The most striking example of how that insecurity fed his paranoia was proved early in his administration, when Ellsberg turned over the secret Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. Even though Nixon well understood that the Pentagon Papers’ history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam dealt with the record of Democrats, he nonetheless became convinced that the publication of the documents was intended as an attack on him. Indeed, what these tapes reveal is that the entire Watergate fiasco was the result of a preoccupation with Ellsberg and not with anything to be found at Democratic Party headquarters.

There is no evidence here that Nixon knew in advance of the Watergate break-in, although there is also no question that he was up to his eyeballs in the cover-up from the day the burglars were caught. But what fueled his paranoia was his awareness that he had authorized a break-in at the California office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist led by E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy and carried out by the same Cubans who broke into the Watergate Hotel. Nixon was well aware that at his instigation, those “plumbers,” as they were called, had engaged in other bits of chicanery, including a nine-month surveillance of the private life of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Nothing was beneath Nixon; anything could be turned to advantage. When George Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer, Nixon asked his trusted aide Charles Colson, “Is he [Bremer] a left winger, right winger?” and Colson replied, “Well, he’s going to be a left winger by the time we get through.” To which offer of deception Nixon answered, “Good. Keep at that, keep at that.” Colson replies, “Yeah. I just wish that, God, that I’d thought sooner about planting a little literature out there.” And the president of the United States just laughs and says, “Good.”

It was Colson to whom Nixon turned to develop an enemies list of people to be “destroyed” as well as to build a counter-Washington establishment. Nixon instructs Haldeman to “Give Chuck [Colson] access to the IRS stuff . . . the FBI stuff. You let him go ruthless until you kill these people.” Haldeman suggested that longtime Nixon aide Chotiner could do the job of building a “Nixon-Washington establishment,” but Nixon, in a rambling response, rejects Chotiner: “Maybe he is not--Judaism. It’s Jew.” Haldeman agrees that Chotiner is not up to the task and Nixon adds “Yep, it’s the Jew business.” Colson is the guy because, as Nixon points out, he is possessed of a “killer instinct.” Haldeman adds that, with that indispensable quality, Colson “can build himself into a damn good position as the kingpin of the power structure.”

As the paranoia thickens and intrigues abound, a lyrical madness seems to seize the Nixon inner circle, feeding first on imagined and then, after the defection of John Dean, Howard Hunt and others, real betrayal. Enemies are everywhere. The entire personnel of the CIA and FBI are suspect. At one point, Nixon threatens, “I’ll fire the whole Goddamn Bureau.” He is particularly after one Mark Felt, who is in a top position at the FBI and is thought to be Nixon’s nemesis and the source of unflattering leaks. “Is he a Catholic?” Nixon asks Haldeman, who replies that Felt is Jewish. “Christ, put a Jew in there?” Nixon exclaims, and Haldeman adds, “Well, that could explain it, too.” The rambling dialogue continues, with Nixon saying, “It could be the Jewish thing. I don’t know. It’s always a possibility.” Nixon adds another target: “We’ve got to go after Common Cause.” When Haldeman suggests that the Ford Foundation is worse because it funds Common Cause, Nixon agrees, and Haldeman responds, “Rip in there, scare the shit out of them.”

Dean had warned them that many of these activities were illegal, as he would soon tell the prosecutors. The tapes leave no doubt about the persistent obstruction of justice using private slush funds to pay off Hunt and the others. Dean tells Nixon that Hunt is involved in continual blackmail and at one point that he wanted $122,000 “by the close of business yesterday” or as Dean quotes Hunt, “I will bring John Ehrlichman down to his knees and put him in jail. Uh, I have done enough seamy things for he and [Egil] Krogh [another of the “plumbers”], uh, that they’ll never survive it.” Dean states clearly to the president, “That’s an obstruction of justice.” But Nixon tells him to pay anyway.

Nixon raised the money from private sources, including Thomas Pappas, a Greek American businessman who was linked closely to the fascist generals ruling Greece at the time. Haldeman tells Nixon that Pappas is “one of the unknown J. Paul Gettys of the world right now.” Nixon says, “Great. I’m just delighted,” and Haldeman adds: “And he’s able to deal in cash.” Dean warns Nixon that that’s the sort of thing the Mafia can do, “washing money,” but “we are not criminals.” Nixon’s answer is a classic: “That’s right . . . how much money do you need?” An ever-helpful Haldeman advises Dean that “the easy way is to pay it to Vegas and run it through the [casinos?] out there and it gets lost pretty easily.” Of course, there was always money to be made by selling ambassadorships, as Nixon reminded his staff: “[M]y point is that anybody that wants to be an ambassador, wants to pay at least $250,000.”

At almost every meeting, presumed enemies are targets with the random ordering of a shotgun blast, with Nixon doing the shooting. When the IRS wouldn’t cooperate, he says of the top men: “Out with them, every one of those bastards. . . . They’re probably on the take. . . .” “I want a list of all their [the McGovern campaign’s] contributors and supporters and I want some investigations made. . . .” “I don’t want him [the investigator] to be soft on the Jews.” “Plant one. Plant two guys on him [Ted Kennedy]. This will be very useful. Just might get lucky and catch that son-of-a-bitch and grill him for ’76.” “I wouldn’t want to be in [Washington Post lawyer] Edward Bennett Williams’ position after this election.” And Haldeman adds, referring to Williams, “That’s the guy we have to ruin.”

Nixon was forever convinced that the national security argument would provide cover for all of these mad antics. But Colson is pessimistic, telling Nixon the Watergate case has to be kept out of the Senate hearings “It’s gotta be kept in the grand jury. . . . [Y]ou could declare war on Cambodia or Thailand or Mexico, but it’s not going to divert attention from this son-of-a-bitch.” The national security gambit is not working to chill the Senate investigation, perhaps because the opening of China has taken the sting out of the Cold War. Hoisted on his own petard, Nixon is left to defend secrets that the senators do not believe relate to valid security matters. But it’s all unraveling too fast.

Ehrlichman tells Nixon that Watergate burglar James McCord testified to the U.S. attorney that he and Hunt went to Las Vegas with motors left running on the plane on the ground to race over and bust in Las Vegas Sun Editor Hank Greenspun’s safe. Ehrlichman adds: “Sometime between now and 2:00 o’clock Monday afternoon [when Hunt testifies], you have to sink [Atty. Gen. John] Mitchell and that every minute counts.” Nixon: “I have to sink Mitchell? How do I do it?” Nixon adds that he can count on Mitchell not to “piss” on the White House: “This is a decent man,” one of the few instances in which that word is employed.

One of the more pathetic moments in “Abuse of Power” occurs the night after Nixon gives his big speech announcing the firing of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He waits patiently for the calls to come in, and none is received, probably because of a miscommunication with the switchboard. Finally Haldeman calls and Nixon, in a slurring conversation, says to the man he has dumped, “But let me say you’re a strong man, Goddamnit, and I love you.” But being Nixon, he suddenly breaks the mood and asks Haldeman to check reactions to the speech: “I don’t know whether you can call and get any reactions and call me back--like the old style. Would you mind?” Haldeman says he can’t. Nixon seems genuinely moved by his firing of Haldeman, who had been with him for decades. But later that same night in another phone call, Nixon is told, “Well, you’re going to miss them,” and Nixon responds: “Oh, well, the hell with missing them. You can fill any position.”

Nixon soon has a problem with Haldeman’s lawyer, who turns out--what else is new?--to be an anti-Semite who will not work with Nixon’s lawyer Garment: “Bob’s lawyer, basically, is anti-Semitic. That’s part of the problem,” reports Alexander Haig, who has replaced Haldeman. Garment is pulled off the case but never told why and remains an Nixon apologist even in his recent memoir.

Clearly, Jews like Garment were shielded from the anti-Semitism that runs through the Nixon of these tapes, but it is difficult to imagine how. It infects everything that comes up, even, for example, in the Robert Vesco scandal that engulfs Nixon toward the end. Nixon’s own brother and nephew had worked for Vesco, who was indicted on perjury charges for denying he gave an illicit $200,000 contribution to the Committee to Reelect the President. Mitchell and Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans are indicted along with him, and all Nixon can say is, “Vesco is a cheap kike, it’s awful.”

Nor does this anti-Semitism seem to have been noticed by Kissinger, who emerges as a major kiss-up, constantly telling Nixon that Watergate doesn’t matter and will soon be forgotten: “Well, Mr. President, no one can undo the achievements, none of these packs of jackals.”

Kissinger relies on his trademark realpolitik to assure the president that the damage from Watergate “can be contained”: “I grant you that the people who did the bugging are bad guys. That’s why they need protection.” That that protection involves an obstruction of justice does not trouble the still highly regarded former secretary of state.

But Nixon can’t resist pulling Kissinger’s chain and reminding him of his own complicity: “Now, there’s one area, of course, where you and I have to be concerned about it and where we’ve got to stand firm as hell. As you know, Henry, we did do--we did do some surveillance with the FBI on those leaks, you remember?” At another point, Press Secretary Ron Zeigler tells Nixon that Kissinger is distancing himself from responsibility for the plumbers, and Nixon replies, “Bullshit! He knew what was going on in the Plumbers’ activities. Don’t let him give you that crap. He was--he was clear up to his ankles himself. . . . Look, I--I don’t like these activities as much as Henry. Henry was the one that was, Christ, pounding the desks, squealing about it and so forth.” But in the end, Nixon resolves to save Kissinger, believing that his secretary of state will preserve Nixon’s foreign policy legacy. To Kissinger’s protestations, he offers up his own basic ethical code: “I think any individual would do anything to save himself.”

But it’s not working, and Nixon mentions that even longtime spiritual advisor Billy Graham “is jumping ship.”

In the waning hours of these taped sections, Nixon’s depression spirals out of control, relieved, or perhaps more accurately accentuated, by ever more disparate figments of good news. One break is that Seymour Hersh of the New York Times, perhaps the most gifted, even left-wing, investigative reporter in the mass media, is going after John Dean’s finances. As Nixon puts it: “I just don’t know whether the press will go after it, although this fellow Hersh has been digging.” And most bizarre of all, Kissinger attempts to cheer up Nixon with the news that Norman Mailer is doing an article on Watergate: “Well, he says . . . for the first time in his life, he’s beginning to like you.” Mailer must have smelled blood.

After reading “Abuse of Power,” you wonder: Why did this have to happen? Richard Milhous Nixon has been the subject of countless portraits, but none is more compelling than the one that emerges from these grotesque and riveting pages: Nixon raw, in his own words, a president unmasked. Here is a man who was popular as a leader, successful in his politics, facing only imagined enemies, with no objective basis for his fears and mistrusts, no real justification for the pornography of his words and deeds. You are forced to conclude that what we are confronted with is a fundamentally flawed human being whose obsessions began to eat away at all that was decent and responsible. Unfortunately, his tragedy was not merely personal. It was ours as well.