The Wars of Watergate (123 page)

31.
Philip Geyelin,
Lyndon B. Johnson and the World
(New York, 1966), 306; Valenti,
Human President
, 134; Herring, “The War in Vietnam,” in Divine (ed.),
Johnson Years
, 55.

32.
McPherson,
Political Education
, 271–72; Goldman,
Tragedy of Johnson
, 511.

33.
Larry Berman,
Planning a Tragedy
(New York, 1982), 128; Herring, “The War in Vietnam,” in Divine (ed.),
Johnson Years
, 37–38; Valenti,
Human President
, 300–01; Moorer Interview, June 25, 1985; Turner,
Johnson’s Dual War
, 182; McPherson,
Political Education
, 420–21;
NYT
, February 6, 1968.

34.
Geyelin,
LBJ and the World
, 15.

35.
Edward S. Corwin,
The President: Office and Powers
(New York, 1957), 29–30; Fred I. Greenstein, “A President Is Forced to Resign: Watergate, White House Organization, and Nixon’s Personality,” in Allan P. Sindler (ed.),
American Politics in the Seventies
(Boston, 1977), 68–70.

36.
Richard Neustadt,
Presidential Power
(New York, 1960), 212–13; Fred I. Greenstein, “Political Psychology: A Pluralistic Universe,” in Jeanne N. Knutson (ed.)
Handbook of Political Psychology
(San Francisco, 1973), 458.

37.
Robert Sherrill,
The Accidental President
(New York, 1967), 221–23;
PPPUS: LBJ, 1965
, June 17, 1965, 2:680.

38.
Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson
, 399–400; Geoffrey Hodgson,
All Things to All Men: The False Promise of the Modern American Presidency
(New York, 1980), 73.

39.
Johnson,
Vantage Point
, 532–33;
Washington Star
, April 27, 1964.

40.
Matusow,
Unraveling of America
, 391.

41.
Peter Braestrup,
Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet in Vietnam and Washington
(paperback ed., Garden City, 1978), 508; Herring, “The War in Vietnam,” in Divine (ed.),
Johnson Years
, 50–51; Culbert, “Johnson and the Media,”
ibid.
, 233–34.

42.
Herring, “The War in Vietnam,”
ibid.
, 50–51.

43.
Matusow,
Unraveling of America
, 392; William O’Neill,
Coming Apart
(Chicago, 1971), 375–76.

44.
McCarthy Speech, March 23, 1968, Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times
, March 24, 1968.

45.
PPPUS: LBJ, 1968–1969
, March 31, 1968, 1:469–76;
ibid.
, April 1, 1968, 1:476–81; Kearns,
Lyndon Johnson
, 395.

46.
PPPUS: LBJ, 1968–1969
, April 1, 1968, 1:482–86.

47.
Goldman,
Tragedy of Johnson
, 520; Turner,
Johnson’s Dual War
, 248.

1.
Earl Mazo,
Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait
(New York, 1959), 10.

2.
H. R. Haldeman,
The Ends of Power
(New York, 1978), 76; Ronald Steel,
Walter Lippmann and the American Century
(Boston, 1980), 483, 589, 597; Fawn Brodie,
Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character
(New York, 1981), 353.

3.
Compare, for example, Mazo and Brodie. A detailed and balanced account of Nixon’s life prior to his presidency is in the first volume of Stephen E. Ambrose’s projected trilogy:
Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913–1962
(New York, 1987). Garry Wills,
Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man
(New York, 1970) is especially insightful.

4.
Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(paperback ed., New York, 1979), 1:25.

5.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:17–24.

6.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:24–26.

7.
Brodie,
Nixon
, 133–39.

8.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:30–31.

9.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:31–33.

10.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:33–36.

11.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:39–42.

12.
William Costello,
The Facts About Nixon: An Unauthorized Biography
(New York, 1960), 38.

13.
Mazo,
Nixon
, 48.

14.
Earl Mazo and Stephen Hess,
Nixon: A Political Portrait
(New York, 1968), 38–42.

15.
Costello,
The Facts About Nixon
, 38–58,
passim.
The 1946 campaign repelled Nixon’s old girlfriend, who also said that she followed his later career with great dismay. Brodie,
Nixon
, 125.

16.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:53–54.

17.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:57–63.

18.
Russell Lynes,
The Lively Audience
(New York, 1985), 421.

19.
Allen Weinstein,
Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case
(New York, 1978), 557; Weinstein, “Nixon vs. Hiss,”
Esquire
, November 1975, 74. Stripling Interview, March 24, 1989, confirmed details of Nixon’s own exaggerated role in the Hiss affair. Nixon has admitted to only one mistake: his failure to pursue Mrs. Hiss. Chambers had told him she was the “red hot” of the couple, and that often wives of Communists were the more extreme. Nixon added his own gloss: “[I]t has been my observation that in the political arena, men often tend to be pragmatic; they are willing to compromise.… Women seldom will do so. They tend to be total idealist, true believers, whether the cause is on the left or the right.” Richard Nixon, “Lessons of the Hiss Case,” Address to the Pumpkin Papers Irregulars, October 31, 1985, typescript, 9. Courtesy of Mr. Nixon.

20.
Testimony of Witnesses
, Hearings, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 93 Cong., 2 Sess. (July 15, 1974), 3:44. Hereafter cited as HJC,
Testimony of Witnesses.

21.
Costello,
Facts about Nixon
, 68–72; Mazo,
Nixon
, 64–75. Mazo wrote that Marcantonio actually hated Douglas, often referring to her with an obscene five-letter word. After he heard that Boddy had linked her to him, Marcantonio chuckled and reputedly told a Nixon friend: “Tell Nicky to get on this thing because it is a good idea.”
Ibid.
, 74n. Marcantonio apparently was familiar enough to call Nixon “Nicky.”

22.
Mazo,
Nixon
, 84–85.

23.
Mazo,
Nixon
, 65–66; Piers Brendon,
Ike: His Life and Times
(New York, 1986), 217.

24.
Costello,
Facts about Nixon
, 118; Mazo,
Nixon
, 7, 67–68; Kenneth Davis,
The Politics of Honor: A Biography of Adlai E. Stevenson
(New York, 1967), 282, 300; John Bartlow Martin,
Adlai Stevenson of Illinois
(New York, 1976), 693; Stephen Whitfield, “Richard Nixon as a Comic Figure,”
American Quarterly
, Spring 1985, 37:125.

25.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:112–33, is essentially a distillation of the account he gave earlier in
Six Crises. Cf.
Costello,
Facts About Nixon
, 103–12; Mazo,
Nixon
, 131–36; Ambrose,
Nixon
, 286–95. Mazo also suggested that without the speech, “Eisenhower might have lost.” Such hyperbole can be matched to Hollywood producer Darryl Zanuck’s remark to Nixon after his speech: “The most tremendous performance I’ve ever seen.” John E. Hollitz, “Eisenhower and the Admen: The Television ‘Spot’ Campaign of 1952,”
Wisconsin Magazine of History
, Fall 1982, 66:25–39.

26.
Nixon, Memoirs
, 1:120. “Controlling his temper with difficulty, Ike refused to be stampeded by such rudeness into such incontinence.” Brendon,
Ike
, 223. Either the story changed through the years, or the standard for acceptable language did. Traditionally, Nixon was reported to have told Eisenhower “to fish or cut bait.” Costello,
Facts About Nixon
, 105–06.

27.
Nixon’s remark on his relationship with Eisenhower is from an undated interview with Joseph Alsop, quoted in Michael R. Beschloss,
Mayday: The U-2 Affair
, (New York, 1986), 154.

28.
Mazo,
Nixon
, 150; William B. Ewald, Jr.,
Eisenhower the President: Crucial Days, 1951–1960
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1981), 185–87; Beschloss,
Mayday
, 114.

29.
NYT
, October 18, 1956, November 6, 1956. See Mazo,
Nixon
, 152, 157, for Nixon’s 1954 talk of leaving politics. The Eisenhower letter to Nixon on the succession is in Eisenhower to Nixon, February 5, 1958, Eisenhower Library, and Dulles Memorandum, February 8, 1958, Dulles MSS, Seeley Library, Princeton University. Also see Stephen E. Ambrose,
Eisenhower: The President
(New York, 1984), 272–73, 275.

30.
Beschloss,
Mayday
, 178–81; Ambrose,
Nixon
, 520–28; Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:250–63; Charles Mohr, “Remembrances of the Great ‘Kitchen Debate,’ ”
NYT
, July 25, 1984. Mohr reported that reporters recognized Nixon’s domestic political purposes, as they sang on their plane to the tune of “California, Here I Come”: “Moscow Kremlin, here I come. What a place to campaign from.”

31.
Beschloss,
Mayday
, 183.

32.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:264.

33.
Ambrose,
Eisenhower: The President
, 319–20, 512, 601; Robert Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,”
American Historical Review
, 1982, 87:122.

34.
Ambrose,
Eisenhower: The President
, 559–60.

35.
PPPUS: Eisenhower, 1960–1961
, August 24, 1960, Press Conference, 658.

36.
Ambrose,
Eisenhower: The President
, 593–94. Ambrose concludes: “The result of all these structural difficulties, and of Eisenhower’s ambiguity toward Nixon, was that Eisenhower’s contribution to Nixon’s campaign was worse than unhelpful—it actually cost Nixon votes, and probably the election.”
Ibid.
, 594. Alsop’s report is in Beschloss,
Mayday
, 154. Eisenhower’s remark is in Ewald,
Eisenhower the President
, 312. Nixon asked Eisenhower to raise the question of Kennedy’s health. Ike’s Press Secretary, James Hagerty, denounced this as a “cheap, lousy, stinking political trick.” Brendon,
Ike
, 398.

37.
Marshall McLuhan,
Understanding Media
(New York, 1964).

38.
Richard Nixon,
Six Crises
(New York, 1962), 340.

39.
Sidney Kraus (ed.),
The Great Debates
(Bloomington, 1962), 391–93; 417.

40.
Kraus,
Great Debates
, 396–97.

41.
Edmund F. Kallina, Jr.,
Court-House over White House
(Orlando, 1988), is a substantial scholarly study challenging the notion that Daley “stole” the election. Ambrose,
Nixon
, 605-08, praises Nixon’s behavior following the election and has high praise for the conduct of his campaign. Also see Nixon,
Six Crises
, 397; Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:278; Beschloss,
Mayday
, 341. A friend told Nixon shortly after the election that if it hadn’t been for the Hiss case, he would have been elected. Nixon replied that without that case, he probably would not have been nominated. Richard Nixon, “Lessons of the Hiss Case,” 10. Daley’s remark is in Ben Bradlee,
Conversations with Kennedy
(New York, 1975), 33. Nixon told a friendly writer that Eisenhower urged him not to challenge the election, but the writer sadly noted that “this was the first time I ever caught Nixon in a lie.” Brodie,
Nixon
, 433. Timothy Crouse, a journalist hostile to Nixon, conceded that Nixon had valid complaints about the press.
The Boys on the Bus
(paperback ed., New York, 1974), 194. Helms Interview, September 23, 1988.

42.
Nixon,
Memoirs
, 1:285–92; Nixon,
Six Crises
, 416. Hubert Humphrey had the same opportunity to announce Nixon’s election in January 1969, but Johnson sent him to Norway to represent the United States at the funeral of former UN Secretary General Trygve Lie.

43.
Years later, Nixon revealed that Whittaker Chambers had been among the most persuasive of those who favored his candidacy. “I do not believe for a moment that because you have been cruelly checked in the employment of what is best in you, what is most yourself, that that check is final. It cannot be,” Chambers said. He conceded that the Democrats probably would control the White House for some time. If so, he observed, “that changes your routing and precise destination. It does not change the nature of your journey. You have years in which to serve. Service is your life. You must serve. You must, therefore, have a base from which to serve.” Nixon, “Lessons of the Hiss Case,” 11.

44.
Haldeman,
Ends of Power
, 76.

45.
NYT
, December 22, 1963.

46.
Time, Inc. v. Hill
, 385 U.S. 374 (1966); Garment Interview, May 29, 1985;
NYT
, April 28, 1966; Leonard Garment, “The Hill Case,”
New Yorker
, April 17, 1989, 104.

47.
Nixon’s remark on Ike reported by William Ewald, an Eisenhower speechwriter, quoted in Brendon,
Ike
, 409. In the extraordinary post-mortem rambling on the Hiss case that Nixon offered in 1985, he also noted that if he had not run for governor in 1962, he “very possibly” would have run for the presidency in 1964, been defeated, and permanently condemned as a two-time loser. Nixon, “Lessons of the Hiss Case,” 12. Nixon to Johnson, November 5, 1964; Johnson to Nixon, November 12, 1964, LBJ Library, “Famous Names File.”