The Wars of Watergate (87 page)

Presidential lawyer Charles Alan Wright, Senator Ervin, Nixon, Senator Baker, and Haig, just prior to Cox’s firing. (National Archives)

Newly appointed Attorney General William Saxbe (left), Nixon, and Solicitor General Robert Bork after the “Saturday Night Massacre,” (National Archives)

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino (left) and Committee Counsel John Doar, May 1974.
(Washington Star)

James St. Clair, Nixon’s lawyer during the impeachment process, May 1974. (National Archives)

Nixon and Anwar Sadat in Egypt, June 1974, just after passing beneath banner proclaiming “We Trust Nixon.” (National Archives)

Senators Hugh Scott and Barry Goldwater and House Republican leader John Rhodes, after discussing impeachment and resignation with the President, August 7, 1974. (National Archives)

Pro- and anti-Nixon demonstrators in front of the White House on the night of Nixon’s resignation announcement, August 8, 1974.
(Washington Star)

Rose Mary Woods, the “fifth Nixon” and the President’s personal secretary, on the day of Nixon’s resignation. (National Archives)

Nixon and family at the East Room farewell ceremony, August 9, 1974. (National Archives)

Nixon’s departure. (National Archives)

Vice President and Mrs. Gerald Ford return to the White House after Nixon’s departure, August 9, 1974. (National Archives)

For Richard Nixon, the opening of the new year heralded the “campaign of my life.” The passing of the old year kindled introspection in him, as it had a year earlier. “Do I fight all out or do I now begin the long process to prepare for a change, meaning, in effect, resignation?” he asked himself. The President reflected not just on his personal fate but on his obligations, as he saw them, to constitutional government. A resignation, he believed, would establish a dangerous precedent that later Congresses might use as leverage against presidents. That path conveniently would relieve Congress of its constitutional responsibility for impeachment. The course was obvious:
“fight.”
Fight, otherwise the media and Congress would become overly dominant, and “our foreign policy initiatives” would collapse, Nixon thought. But characteristically, the President exposed his personal motives; resignation, he realized, “admits guilt.”

Nixon was determined to conduct the Watergate war with style and substance. “Above all else: Dignity, command, faith, head high, no fear, build a new spirit, drive, act like a President, act like a winner,” he wrote. “Opponents are savage destroyers, haters. Time to use full power of the President to fight overwhelming forces arrayed against us.”
¹

But Nixon also realized that he must absolve himself of guilt. And most immediately, that involved his dealings with the Special Prosecutor, who continued to demand presidential tapes and documents. The tapes had become the tarbaby of the confrontation. For one side, they loomed large as evidence of criminality and, more important, as authority for legitimating
the growing assault on the President’s standing. For Nixon’s cause, those very reasons made it imperative to resist the demands.

The President’s combativeness surfaced in his State of the Union message on January 30, 1974. He sounded the incumbent’s familiar chord: America was better off after five years of his Administration. He painted a dismal picture of the state of the nation in 1968: at war in Southeast Asia, alienated from China, its cities burning, its college campuses like battlegrounds for political rather than intellectual encounter, crime and drugs on the increase—all in sharp contrast, the President proudly noted, to where he had led the nation since. But what was at stake was the future—and the present. Nixon offered the standard prescriptions for ensuring national greatness, but he also inserted a “personal word” regarding the lingering issue of the day. It was time, he said, to bring the matter to an end. “One year of Watergate is enough.”

Nixon claimed that he had given the Special Prosecutor “all the material that he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent.” He promised to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee, consistent with his “responsibilities to the Office of the Presidency of the United States.” He would not, he insisted, do anything to weaken the office for his successors; moreover, he had “no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do for the people of the United States.”