I finished Anthony Summers' The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.
In this post, I'll talk about something interesting that Summers
mentions on pages 62-63, then I will offer my overall impressions of
Summers' book.
After Richard Nixon graduated from Duke Law School,
he went to New York City to look for a job as an attorney, and he was
interviewed by a panel that included John Foster Dulles, who would later
be President Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State. Nixon didn't get
the job, but he would return to New York in 1945, after his time as a
Navy officer. According to Summers, Nixon would say that he dealt with
naval contracts during that time, whereas his wife, Pat, stated that
Nixon was working at the Bureau of Aeronautics. David Wise, who wrote
about intelligence, deemed those years in Nixon's life to be a mystery.
But John Loftus,
whom wikipedia calls as an "American author, former US government
prosecutor and former Army intelligence officer", and whom Summers
states was "a former prosecutor with the Justice Department unit
investigating Nazi war crimes", claims that Nixon during that time was
reviewing Nazi documents that had been captured. According to Summers,
Loftus appeals to interviews with "retired intelligence officers"
(Summer's words) in arguing that "Allen Dulles...told [Nixon] to keep
quiet about what he had seen and, in return, arranged to finance the
young man's first congressional campaign, against Jerry Voorhis"
(Loftus' words). Allen Dulles was the brother of John Foster Dulles and
would later be head of the CIA. Summers refers to pages 221 and 557 of
a book by Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews.
What
exactly did Dulles want Nixon to keep a secret? Summers states:
"According to some chroniclers, the Dulles brothers had links to the
Nazis dating back to pre-war business contacts. Loftus, who had access
to contemporary records, claims Allen Dulles maintained such contacts
even during the war and that proof of the ties lies in captured German
documents, still classified to this day." Nixon's opponent in the 1946
congressional race, Jerry Voorhis, would say that someone from a "large
New York financial house" (Voorhis' words) came to California and urged
that Voorhis be ousted. Summers appears to wonder: Could this have
related somehow to Allen Dulles?
One would have to check Loftus'
book to see what documentation he provides for his claims. The reason
that I'm highlighting this passage is that it exemplifies why I enjoyed
Summers' book. For one, it contained stories and speculations about
Nixon that I did not find in other books that I read for My Year (or
More) of Nixon. Second, I liked the sense of intrigue, especially when
it was discussing what many would probably regard as a rather mundane
time in Richard Nixon's life. Nixon at one time was negotiating
contracts (see here), but could he have been doing other things soon after his time in the Navy----interesting things?
Now
for my overall impressions of Summers' book. The book is definitely
worth reading. As I have said, the book says things about Nixon that I
did not read in other books about him. For instance, Summers argues
that a Chinese lady named Marianna Liu may have been romantically linked
to Nixon during Nixon's marriage to Pat. Summers does not seem to
think that the two of them slept together, but just that they had some
sort of romantic connection. (I should also note that Don Fulsom, who
argues in Nixon's Darkest Secrets that Nixon may have had
somewhat of a homosexual relationship with his friend, Bebe Rebozo,
stops short of suggesting that Nixon and Bebe actually slept together.
As far as alleged physical contact between Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo goes,
the furthest it seemed to have gone was them holding hands under a
table, according to one eyewitness, and Nixon putting his arm around
Bebe.)
The book is very negative about Richard Nixon. The only
positive thing about Nixon that I remember from Summers' book is that
Nixon stood against racism in his younger years, and as President
increased funding on civil rights enforcement, but Summers also goes
into some of the racist things that Nixon said. Overall, the book
argues that Nixon was a liar, was corrupt, broke the law on numerous
occasions, was physically abusive to his wife Pat, was involved in a
plot to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and was drunk and high,
sometimes during significant events during his Presidency, when vital
issues were at stake. On some things, Summers presents a rather complex
picture of Richard Nixon. For example, Summers basically implies in
one passage of his book that Nixon as President was lazy, yet elsewhere
(if my memory serves me correctly) he depicts Nixon as working hard.
When a book makes negative claims about a figure, seeing the author's
documentation is important. In terms of documentation, I'd say that
Summers does fairly all-right. He cites eyewitnesses, but there is also
hearsay in his book: he refers to someone saying something that someone
else said. Hearsay is not admissible in a court of law, but I have a
hard time thoroughly dismissing its reliability. Summers also cites
secondary sources.
Summers argues that Nixon could have been
physically abusive to his wife, Pat. Overall, Summers relies on
hearsay: Seymour Hersh's investigative reporting, in which Hersh claimed
to have talked with a source that said Pat was taken to an emergency
room, and a doctor who corroborated that this was so; a friend of a
former Los Angeles reporter, Bill Van Patten, who related to the friend
that Nixon beat Pat; what Governor Pat Brown and Brown aide Frank Cullen
heard; and the claim by John Sears, who was an aide to Nixon and would
later be campaign manager to Ronald Reagan, that Nixon's family lawyer
told him (meaning Sears) that Nixon hit Pat. Summers also argues that
Nixon was the type of person who would do something like
that---- one who was aggressive, had a temper that could manifest itself
in violence, got drunk, blamed others, and had difficulty dealing with
stress. Later in the book, on page 464, Summers refers to an Executive
Protection Service officer who claimed that agents one time rushed to
Pat near the end of Nixon's Presidency because Nixon had hit her. This
is an actual eyewitness, and yet his claim has been questioned. John
Taylor, who worked for Nixon after Nixon's Presidency, states the
following in his post here:
"Summers'
principal source was a former uniformed Secret Service agent who would
rarely if ever have been in the White House family quarters. I learned
about him after one of Nixon's former pilots overheard the man bragging
in a bar about his coming star turn with a British TV crew that was
promoting the Summers book. The man's allegations were probably known to
Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, who had a family connection with the
source, and Pulitzer Prize winner (and thoroughgoing Nixon critic)
Seymour Hersh. Neither reporter published the charge."
When is an
eyewitness reliable? Summers refers in one place to an eyewitness whom
he does not consider reliable, mentioning criminal activity by the
eyewitness. Yet, I seriously doubt that every eyewitness whom Summers
cites was pure, especially some of the ones who claimed that Nixon had
ties with the mafia, or was a leader in a plot to kill Fidel Castro.
Summers in his notes in the back mentions times when eyewitnesses
contradict each other----one may say that Nixon was drunk at
such-and-such an event, whereas another says the opposite----and Summers
more than once tries to navigate his way through conflicting accounts.
Moreover, while Summers refers to the eyewitness testimony of John
Ehrlichman, Conrad Black made clear that, when considering what
Ehrlichman said, we should remember that Ehrlichman was bitter against
Nixon after leaving the Nixon White House. Some say that we should rely
primarily on documents, and Summers does do that, at times. I wouldn't
toss out consideration of eyewitness testimony, but perhaps there
should be clearly stated criteria for determining what is true and what
is false: corroboration, looking at motive, etc.