Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 6

A controversial issue that dogged Richard Nixon in his 1960 and 1962 political campaigns was a loan that one of magnate Howard Hughes' companies made to Nixon's brother, Donald.  The loan was so that Donald could expand his business, and Nixon's mother, Hannah, put up a piece of her property as collateral.  There were allegations that Nixon as Vice-President gave Howard Hughes governmental or political favors in exchange for the Hughes Tool Company's loan to Donald.

Aitken does not believe that Nixon gave Hughes any governmental or political favors, even though Aitken does acknowledge that Hughes may have been making the loan in order to get more influence with Vice-President Nixon.  Aitken notes that Attorney General Robert Kennedy's investigation into the matter uncovered no misdeeds on the part of the Nixons.  Aitken also states that the notion that Hughes gave Donald the loan in exchange for favors from the government presumes that Vice-President Nixon had more power over certain government offices than he had.  Aitken observes that the affair turned out to be a catastrophe, since Donald failed in his businesses, so "the resulting embarrassment all round destroyed any prospects for influence peddling" (page 287).  Moreover, Aitken appears to buy Richard Nixon's story that he (Richard Nixon) was surprised by the loan and encouraged Donald (to no avail) to give back the money.

Stephen Ambrose also gives Nixon the benefit of a doubt.  As I said in this post about volume 1 of Ambrose's biography of Nixon: "Another scandal concerned Nixon’s brother Donald, who received money from business magnate Howard Hughes when his (meaning Donald’s) restaurant was in trouble.  There was speculation that Hughes was doing this to get governmental favors from Richard Nixon when he was Vice-President, but Ambrose, as he considers Eisenhower Administration documents, sees no evidence for this."

I have read other books that say differently.  I think particularly of the works of Fawn Brodie, Anthony Summers, and Don Fulsom.  Brodie refers to the account of Noah Dietrich, who was the executive Vice-President of the Hughes Tool Company, and who related that Richard Nixon requested help from Hughes through Washington lobbyist Frank Waters.  Dietrich told his story after he had become estranged from Howard Hughes.

Brodie states that the loan was made in a roundabout way to hide Howard Hughes' name: it went from Dietrich to a Canadian branch of the Hughes Tool Company to Waters, whose name would be on the loan, and then the check was "made out to Hannah Nixon", who "then loaned $165,000 to Donald and used the remaining $40,000 to pay off a loan she had made jointly with him" (page 437 of Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character).

Brodie, Summers, and Fulsom all contend that Hughes may have gotten a governmental favor in return for the loan.  The Internal Revenue Service had been denying Howard Hughes' request that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute be tax exempt, but the IRS changed its mind a few months after Donald Nixon received the loan.  Fulsom's telling of the story calls the Howard Hughes Medical Institute "Hughes's then shady 'medical institute'" (page 87 of Nixon's Darkest Secrets).

Fulsom actually goes a step farther than Brodie.  Fulsom refers to people who claim that the money didn't even go to Donald, but rather to Richard.  One of these people was C. Arnholt Smith, a friend of Nixon, and the other was "veteran California reporter Frank McCullough" (page 162).  Smith said that he thought the loan was intended to help Richard Nixon when Nixon was "a relatively poor man" (Smith's words, quoted on page 162), and Fulsom notes that Nixon soon thereafter put down $75,000 on a new house in Washington, D.C., before he sold his "old home" (page 162).  And McCullough said that Hughes himself told him that the money was for Richard, not Donald, and that it had a political intent.  Incidentally, this sort of accusation was around in 1962, for Nixon accused his opponents of claiming that he himself received some of the money from the Hughes loan.

At the same time, Fulsom earlier in the book states that Donald was an annoyance to Nixon on account of Donald's mischief, such that Nixon as President "bugged Don's phones and put a full-time Secret Service tail on him" (page 88).  Does Fulsom see the Hughes loan as an example of such embarrassing mischief, only later in the book to entertain another possibility (that the loan was for Richard, not Donald)?

One other issue that I want to mention: What about the land that Hannah Nixon put up as collateral?  Brodie calls it a "vacant lot" (page 435), whereas Richard depicted Hannah as sacrificing a piece of lucrative property, as putting up "practically everything she had" (Nixon's words, quoted on page 300 of Aitken).  Obviously, Richard puts Hannah in more of a sympathetic light!

Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 1

I started Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life.  Jonathan Aitken was a member of Parliament in Great Britain as well as the Minister of State for Defense.  His biography of Nixon came out in 1993, and Aitken was convicted of perjury later, in 1999 (see here).  This book is considered to be rather pro-Nixon, and I one time read an online commenter who remarked that two of Nixon's greatest defenders in recent history were convicts: Conrad Black and Jonathan Aitken.  Aitken in his book, however, narrates that he was not a Nixon fan at first, but he gained admiration for the man through his interactions with him, and he was impressed by Nixon's knowledge and kindness, notwithstanding Nixon's social awkwardness and clumsy mannerisms.

I was initially reluctant to read Aitken's book because I already had enough books by or about Nixon to read.  Plus, when I read that Aitken relied heavily on interviews with Nixon, I wondered why exactly I should read Aitken's book, since I already got Nixon's perspective through Six Crises and his memoirs.  What more was there for me to learn of Nixon's own perspective?

I checked out Aitken's book, however.  One reason was that I was in the mood to do so, the same way that I was in a mood to read Conrad Black's book, even though I was initially reluctant to read Black's biography of Nixon because I already had enough to read.  Another reason is that I had read about the extent of Aitken's documentation and interviews, especially when it came to controversial times in Nixon's career, such as his 1946 congressional race.

Now that I've checked out Aitken, I am glad that I decided to read it.  Stephen Ambrose praises Aitken's book, saying that Aitken had access to documents and people that many other biographers of Nixon did not have.  I saw that in my latest reading.  More than one of the biographies about Nixon that I had read quote an essay in which Nixon as a student at Whittier College expressed his liberal religious views about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Nixon himself in his memoirs quoted that particular essay.  But Aitken quotes more essays that Nixon wrote as a college student at Whittier, on such topics as creation and evolution, the nature of the soul, and worldwide disarmament (Nixon expressed support for it).  Nixon in some of those essays relates how he evolved in his views from his Quaker religious conservatism and biblical literalism, to a more liberal outlook.  (Aitken goes on to say, however, that Nixon remained quite religious.)  As Aitken notes, those documents are not widely available.  (Whether or not that's still the case, I don't know.)  But you can read more about them in Aitken's book!

I was thinking about some of the other books about Nixon that I read when I was reading Aitken.  Don Fulsom in Nixon's Darkest Secrets says that "Young Dick favored his mom ('My mother was a saint,' he tearfully asserted, in his farewell speech to his White House staff) while, for unknown reasons, his siblings did not" (page 69).  Fawn Brodie says that Nixon's mother would really eviscerate her children when she gave them her little lectures after they misbehaved, making them feel horrible about themselves.  Brodie and Anthony Summers both refer to someone who claimed to have seen Hannah Nixon holding a switch while her son Richard was playing the piano.  But Aitken quotes Nixon's youngest brother, Ed, saying that: "She had a temper too, but controlled.  She knew how to throttle my Dad if he was hurting one of us unintentionally...she was the great defender of hurt feelings in our family...she always looked beyond an action thinking in terms of consequences two or three moves ahead, but she often did not say much at the time because she had a proper sense of privacy" (page 14).  Apparently, Richard was not the only Nixon child who spoke highly of his mother!

Fawn Brodie paints a picture of conservative Whittier trying to keep the Mexicans outside of the town at bay, appealing to that to explain Nixon's later love for Latino people and culture.  (For Brodie, Nixon was repudiating Whittier's stuffiness.)  Aitken, however, says that there were Mexican students where Nixon went to school.

I'm not pointing these things out to say "gotcha," as if Aitken's story refutes the other stories, or vice-versa.  Rather, I believe that reality is complex, which is why it is difficult at the outset to tell a satisfying, completely accurate tale of what really happened, or what a person or situation was like.

Something that I liked about Fawn Brodie's book is that she talked some about how people who knew Nixon in his younger years reacted to the Watergate scandal years later.  Aitken offers similar anecdotes.  Aitken said that Nixon called his Whittier College mentor and coach, Chief Newman, when Nixon was feeling down in 1975.  (I didn't know Chief Newman was still alive then!)  Aitken also talked about some of Nixon's professors.  One Whittier professor was a liberal and encouraged his students to think outside of the box, and his love for reading was contagious!  He disagreed with how Nixon conducted his political campaigns, and yet he and Nixon continued to stay in touch for years.

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 11

I finished Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character.  On pages 513-514, Brodie states:

"Pat Nixon told Jessamyn West that in the early years Julie and Tricia could make their father laugh, and 'he could make them laugh.'  The fun, the laughter, what Pat described as 'the good times,' had long since disappeared in the relationship between Nixon and his wife.  But he did write her notes.  Dianne Sawyer, secretary in the White House, who accompanied the Nixons to San Clemente in their retirement and remained there until the memoirs were finished, has said that Nixon wrote many notes to Pat, which she was privileged to read, although she would not indicate the number or divulge the nature of the contents.  (She has taken 'a private oath' not to write or give interviews about her experience, at least while the Nixons are alive.)  Publication of these notes to Pat, or even a description of their feeling and content, may reveal a tenderness to Nixon which he has otherwise resolutely kept hidden.  In any case the very recourse to notewriting tells us more of the warping of Nixon's capacity for love."

One thing that this passage tells me is that nobody can write a fully-orbed biography of another human being.  Fawn Brodie, with all of her speculations about the psychology of Richard Nixon, cannot capture the full man.  Nixon, after all, wrote many letters to Pat.  Brodie may call that "the warping of Nixon's capacity for love", but the fact that he wrote letters to his wife may indicate that he did care about her, even though Brodie tells story after story about how that may not have been the case.

Now that Richard and Pat Nixon are dead, I wonder how much Diane Sawyer has chosen to talk about her time working for Nixon.  You can read here her responses to the Broadway play, Frost/Nixon, which later was made into a movie.  Someone played her in that.  Also, if I'm not mistaken, ABC News not long ago did a story on Nixon's love letters to Pat when they were courting.  As far as I can remember, though, Diane Sawyer did not give any indication that she knew much about the topic of Nixon's letters to Pat.  Perhaps she didn't think that was the time or the place for that!

Now for my overall impressions of Brodie's book: it was all right.  I didn't read anything earth-shakingly surprising.  I'm not sure if any anti-Nixon book can surpass Anthony Summers' The Arrogance of Power!  Summers drew from Brodie's work and even recommended it, but he had a lot more stories than she did.  Brodie's book has had a mixed reputation: it has been lauded for its interviews, but it has been criticized for its psychological speculations, and also for some of the negative things that it says about Nixon.  One criticism that I have read is that Brodie implies that Nixon had a homosexual relationship with his friend, Bebe Rebozo.  But she did not say that explicitly.  She simply said that they were friends, and that Nixon did not want people to think that he had a homosexual relationship with Rebozo.  She also mentions some of the homophobic things that Nixon had said.  I guess one can draw his or her own conclusions from that, but Brodie did not go as far as, say, Don Fulsom, who told about a lady who saw Nixon and Rebozo holding hands under the table.

Overall, I did find Brodie to be a good writer, and sometime in the future I may read her biography of Thaddeus Stevens, the radical Republican who was played by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie Lincoln.

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 9

In Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, Fawn Brodie argues that Richard Nixon had a troubled marriage with his wife, Pat.  This is not new in terms of the books about Nixon that I have read.  Brodie stops short of believing that Nixon was physically abusive of his wife, for Brodie states on page 454 that "There are also unsubstantiated reports that the resulting private quarrel at home was searing and violent."  But she does depict Nixon as rather dismissive and lacking in affection towards Pat.

I'd like to share three items about this topic.

1.  In my post here, I asked about what the reaction of Nixon's daughters was to their parents' relationship.  I wondered how Julie and Tricia could be so supportive of their father, if he was as bad of a husband as many writers say.  I'm planning to read Julie Nixon Eisenhower's biography of her mother, Pat Nixon, after I finish Brodie's book, so it will be interesting to see what Julie writes.  On page 455, though, Brodie states the following:

"Julie, then fifteen, and Tricia, seventeen, it must be remembered, had been brought up with parents who were inordinately proud of the family tradition of self-control and who continually tailored the facade of family happiness...Of Julie's wretchedness we learn more from Earl Mazo than from her father.  He was told that she said, 'All I want is for everyone to love everyone and be happy.  I can't study or do anything when one of us is not happy.'"

The context here was the family's discussion about whether Nixon would run for Governor of California in 1962.  Pat was against it, Tricia was for it, and Julie said that she would support whatever her father decided.

It was after Nixon lost that particular election that he allegedly got violent with Pat.  The "unsubstantiated reports" that Brodie mentioned on page 454 were about this alleged incident.  Anthony Summers, on page 233 of The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, portrays Julie's recollection of this time frame as rather shadowy----as if Julie remembered something, but was in the dark about what was really taking place:

"Pat, Julie was to write, was watching television in the den when the television ran the 'kick around' speech.  At the point where Nixon attacked the press, she shouted 'Bravo!'  When her father came home, Julie recalled, 'We were waiting tearfully in the hallway at the front door.  Mother spoke first.  She said brokenly, 'Oh, Dick.'  He was so overcome with emotion that he brushed past and went outside to the backyard.  That afternoon was the first and the only time my parents gave way to their emotions simultaneously, and it bewildered Tricia and me....'

"Domestic life for a top politician is rarely what most families would consider normal.  What happened to bewilder the children that sad Wednesday in November 1962, however, may have been something they never learned of as children."

I don't know Julie, but I doubt that she would publicly endorse Summers' narration.  I'm interested in reading Julie's book to see what she does say about her parents' relationship, however.  Some of the reviews on Amazon dismiss her book, implying that it is a rather idealized portrait of her parents.  But I have read books that are quite critical of Nixon, and they treat Julie's book with a measure of respect----as if her voice is important----and some of the passages that they cite from her book seem to me to be rather honest, in that Julie acknowledges that things were not always rosy in her parents' marriage.  I'll see what my impressions of her book are!

(UPDATE: Brodie later in her book speculates that Julie became angry with her father, especially near the end of Watergate, and Brodie notes that Julie wrote a biography about her mother Pat, not her father.)

2.  Columnist Jack Anderson was a thorn in Richard Nixon's side.  There were even people in Nixon's Administration who wanted to assassinate Anderson, if you can imagine that!  Don Fulsom, in his anti-Nixon book, praises Anderson as a champion of righteousness, a muckraker, and an inspiration to muckrakers.  You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when I read in Brodie's book that Anderson argued that Richard Nixon actually had a good marriage.  After quoting people who claimed otherwise, Brodie states on pages 467-468:

"Jack Anderson, on the other hand, privy to much Washington gossip, described the Nixon marriage as a good one.  He believed Nixon 'loved his family very much.'

"[']At no time have I ever had a suspicion, save from irresponsible sources trying to make something out of nothing, that Nixon did not love her or in any way degraded her.  He held his wife in esteem and affection as far as I have been able to learn.  She apparently had a healthy attitude about him...a little like my wife.  Whenever I get to thinking that I'm important she always says the right thing to pull me right back down to earth.[']

"'Nixon's closeness to his wife,' Anderson said, 'was the only healthy thing about him.'"  Brodie's source for this is her own interview with Anderson on April 19, 1975.

How could Anderson's impression be so different from that of many others----eyewitnesses, journalists, etc.?  Perhaps Anderson saw something different----he highlighted the affection between Nixon and his wife rather than making a big deal out of what many deemed to be Nixon's slights or signs of disrespect.  And, since Anderson mentions his own marriage, perhaps he was looking at Nixon's marriage through those lens: he believed that there was enough similarity between the marriages, that he may have projected elements of his own marriage onto that of the Nixons.  I'm just speculating here!

3.  I recently watched a clip in which Frank Gannon asked Nixon why he did not mention Pat in his speech to the White House staff after he had resigned from the Presidency.  Some have made a big deal about this, since Nixon in that speech was reading about the death of Theodore Roosevelt's wife, without even mentioning his own.  Was Nixon slighting or disregarding Pat?  Nixon clearly indicated to Gannon that he did not care for that claim, then he went on to say that he did not mention Pat out of consideration for her.  He realized that she was saddened by the resignation, and he feared that she would break down publicly had he mentioned her in his speech.  Unfortunately, I cannot find that clip right now.

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 8

What I noticed in my latest reading of Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character was that Fawn Brodie did not criticize John F. Kennedy.  At least she hasn't in what I have read of her book thus far.

I've become somewhat accustomed to seeing snark about Kennedy in some of the books about Nixon that I have read.  After talking about Kennedy's advice to Nixon on the importance of writing a book, Stephen Ambrose said that Kennedy did not really write Profiles in Courage, and that his father pressured the Pulitzer Committee to give JFK the Pulitzer.  I read in one book about Nixon (though I forget which one) that JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, may not have been just lucky when he managed to thrive during the Great Depression.  Don Fulsom is rather positive about JFK, noting that the mob hated him, and yet he acknowledges that JFK had mob connections at some point.  Anthony Summers goes more deeply into JFK's mob connections, even talking about how some bruisers were at polling stations pressuring people to vote for Kennedy.  Summers also tells a humorous story about when a Kennedy associate in 1960 was doing investigative work on the wild weekend parties that Nixon attended at Bebe Rebozo's home, but he decided not to pursue that line when he learned that Kennedy, too, was at the parties!  And Nixon, and also biographers about Nixon, have claimed that there were ghost votes for Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential election.

I'm reading Brodie's book, and I don't see much of that.  She acknowledges that JFK was a womanizer, but I suppose that this was such common knowledge by the time that she wrote the book that she decided not to omit it.  But she appears to take for granted that Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage.  She says that Joseph Kennedy luckily dodged the negative consequences of the Great Depression.  While Nixon charged that candidate Kennedy was briefed about the U.S. Government's plots against Fidel Castro, and that Kennedy was really low when Kennedy was publicly accusing the Eisenhower Administration of doing nothing against Castro, Brodie seems to think that Kennedy had not been told about the U.S. Government's plots.  Overall, she portrays Kennedy as a witty person who came across as more authentic than Nixon did.  As far as negatives go, she says that Nixon was healthier than Kennedy because of Kennedy's bad back, and that Nixon was a better orator, even though Kennedy improved by the time he got to the first debate.  But I don't see the snark about Kennedy that I saw in many of the other books about Nixon that I read.

Why didn't Brodie share much dirt on Kennedy?  Anthony Summers wrote an anti-Nixon book, and he didn't shy away from that!  Brodie talks about how Kennedy drove women wild.  Could she have had a crush on the late President Kennedy?  I don't know.

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 5

On page 294 of Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, Fawn Brodie talks about an investigative reporter by the name of Drew Pearson:

"Both [Joseph] McCarthy and Nixon had been castigated by Drew Pearson, Washington gadfly columnist and radio commentator.  Although Pearson had been called a liar by FDR, Truman, and a score of congressmen, he was nevertheless widely feared for the general accuracy of his exposures and his willingness to risk libel suits.  Only long after his death was he recognized as one of the nation's most courageous investigative reporters."  Brodie then goes on to describe the time that Senator Joseph McCarthy beat Pearson up (and I mean literally).

Pearson worked with another famous investigative reporter, Jack Anderson.  On page 277, Brodie refers to a discovery that Pearson and Anderson made in her attempt to argue that Nixon indeed benefited some of the wealthy contributors to his controversial fund: "Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson discovered that two oilmen contributors, who had been refused government permission to explore for oil on a military reservation, were now beneficiaries of a Nixon bill to open up that reservation for exploration."

Don Fulsom in Nixon's Darkest Secrets states that Jack Anderson may have had a religious motivation for his muckraking: "A strict moralist, Anderson's stated lifetime goal was to keep government honest.  A devout Mormon, he viewed his reportorial undertaking as a noble summons from the Almighty" (page 85).  I did not know that Anderson was a Mormon.

I suppose that my attitude towards investigative reporters is love-hate.  It does give me pleasure when wrongdoing is exposed.  When I was growing up, relatives of mine would lament the hypocrisy in the political and religious systems and would say, "Now, when the two witnesses come on the scene, that will be exposed," or "When God is judging these people at the White Throne Judgment, their misdeeds will be exposed."  (The two witnesses are those two prophets in Revelation 11.)  My Dad one time said, "60 Minutes does a better job preaching the Gospel than those Armstrongite churches," or something to that effect.  He was praising 60 Minutes for uncovering wrongdoing.

On the other hand, investigative reporting can mix facts with rumor, and it can wrongfully ruin people's reputations.  This was a concern that was expressed about Drew Pearson, according to this wikipedia article.  Moreover, Nixon did not like the way that his secret plans for negotiating with foreign leaders would end up in Jack Anderson's column, for that sort of hindered the negotiations by tipping the foreign leaders off to our strategies.

The Arrogance of Power 6

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.

The Arrogance to Power 4

President Richard Nixon wanted to pressure the CIA to limit the FBI's investigation into Watergate, and his rationale to CIA director Richard Helms was that one of the Watergate conspirators, E. Howard Hunt, who had worked for the CIA, might go on blabbing about the Bay of Pigs, which was a failed attempt under the Kennedy Administration to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro.  H.R. Haldeman, a close aide to President Nixon, would write in his book The Ends of Power (which he co-wrote with Joseph DiMona) that "Bay of Pigs" could have been a code-word for the Kennedy assassination.

What did the Bay of Pigs have to do with the Kennedy assassination?  Don Fulsom, in his book Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President, states that the connection was probably that "the cast of characters employed in the 1960 plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and kill Fidel Castro and the cast of characters employed in the plan to assassinate Kennedy in 1963 were the same" (page 130).  You may have seen Oliver Stone's JFK, which posits that prominent elements of the U.S. government and anti-Castro Cubans were involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  According to this narrative, the anti-Castro Cubans were upset the Kennedy left them hanging in their attempts to overthrow Castro, whereas certain forces within the U.S. government did not particularly care for Kennedy's (alleged) desire to scale back on America's involvement in the Vietnam War, to reach an understanding with the Soviet Union, and to shatter the power of the CIA.  Meanwhile, there were American business interests that profited off of war, and that also did not care for losing their investments in Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power.  Oliver Stone was also open to the possibility that the mob was involved in the JFK assassination, albeit at a "lower level".  Some believe that one reason that Nixon appealed to the Bay of Pigs in encouraging the CIA to limit the FBI's Watergate investigation was that Nixon was essentially telling the CIA that, unless it acted, the way that its Bay of Pigs operation led to the Kennedy assassination could be exposed.

Oliver Stone in the movie Nixon may have the same idea as Fulsom: that Nixon meant the Kennedy assassination when he mentioned the Bay of Pigs because some of the anti-Castro Cubans and intelligence agents involved in the Bay of Pigs  participated in the plot to kill President John F. Kennedy.  Both Fulsom and Anthony Summers argue that Nixon, during the Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, was involved in plots to overthrow Fidel Castro.  After I first watched the movie Nixon, I read reviews that said that Stone was alleging that Nixon felt somehow responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy, since Nixon was an integral part of the plots against Castro, the plots that some believe boomeranged into the Kennedy assassination.  Fulsom actually goes a bit farther than this.  On page 151 of Nixon's Darkest Secrets, Fulsom states: "Was Richard Nixon really in Dallas on November 22 for a PepsiCo convention, as he said, or could his presence have been some sort of signal to his friends in the Mob and the CIA and among the Cuban exiles----the eventual chief suspects of JFK assassination conspiracy theorists?  Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana proudly told relatives that, as the mastermind of the JFK assassination plot, he and Nixon had a preassassination meeting there to discuss the plot."  Fulsom refers in the footnotes to a book by Chuck and Sam Giancana.  Can we trust Sam on this, or was Sam merely saying it as a way to sell more books?

But back to Haldeman's claim in The Ends of Power that Nixon meant the Kennedy assassination when he referred to the Bay of Pigs.  Anthony Summers, in a note in The Arrogance of Power, interacts with Haldeman's later retraction of that claim.  Haldeman would blame that claim on his co-author, Joseph DiMona.  But Summers does not buy Haldeman's retraction because of indications that Haldeman was intimately involved in the composition and editing of his book (The Ends of Power), and Haldeman was quite particular about what went into his book and what came out.  Summers also notes that Haldeman told him (meaning Summers) in 1989, when Summers was working on a book about J. Edgar Hoover, that he (Haldeman) was merely speculating that Nixon's reference to the Bay of Pigs related to the Kennedy assassination.  Haldeman had not yet retracted the claim.

What interested me in reading Summers is that what Haldeman said in The Ends of Power (according to Summers) differs significantly from the narrative that some of the anti-Castro forces involved in the Bay of Pigs later participated in the Kennedy assassination.  Summers states on page 199 of The Arrogance of Power: "If the Cuban leader decided to retaliate, Haldeman surmised, then the U.S. plots to kill him 'may have triggered the Kennedy tragedy.'  The CIA, he suggested, 'desperately wanted to hide that dark possibility.'"  What this seems to suggest is that, according to Haldeman, the Bay of Pigs could have been associated with the Kennedy assassination because the Bay of Pigs made Cuban leader Fidel Castro mad, and so Castro may have retaliated by contributing to the assassination of Kennedy.  In this scenario, it is not anti-Castro forces that were responsible for Kennedy's death, but Castro.

This is actually a fairly popular idea.  I remember watching the Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, and (if I'm not mistaken), Ramsey Clark, who had served as President Lyndon Johnson's Attorney General, stated that Johnson expressed to him a belief that Castro was somehow behind the Kennedy assassination.  In the movie JFK, a bullying government agent tells one of Jim Garrison's assistants that Oswald didn't pull the trigger, but Castro did (which is not to be taken literally, but simply expresses the belief that Castro was behind the shooting of Kennedy).  And, in a documentary about the Kennedy assassination, Jack Anderson (whom Fulsom praises in his book) posits that a combination of the mob and Fidel Castro participated in the plot to assassinate JFK.  I wouldn't be surprised if the mafia played both sides (pro and anti) when it came to Fidel Castro.  Remember David Ferrie's rant in JFK, in which he said that Castro was almost on "our" side, and everyone is always switching sides?

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 31

On page 977 of Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black characterizes Nixon's typical political strategy as follows: "Nixon's courage...depended on him being alone, on feeling entirely deserted, on going to ground and then surprising the adversary with a dramatic speech or initiative that brought instant redemption: Checkers, the silent majority, Cambodia, the economy in 1971."  But Black argues that this would not have worked so well with Watergate, for the attacks just kept coming, plus "There had been too much petty lawbreaking, sloppy legal bungling, shabby compromise and evasion, and too little loyalty in the inner circle" for Nixon to wage a long battle.

I have three points.

1.  Nixon's typical strategy is not surprising, in light of Nixon's introversion.  Nixon did not accomplish a great deal through cooperation with the Congress, for a number of Democrats in the Congress were against him, and Barry Goldwater himself implied that Nixon had failed to develop relationships with people on the Hill.  But Nixon's strategy was to bypass that when he could by appealing to the American people.  That didn't require a great deal of back-slapping or formation of relationships, for Nixon would simply give a speech to a bunch of people whom he did not know.  If I were in public life, my strategy would probably be the same as Nixon's.  Or at least Nixon's strategy makes sense to me, since I am an introvert who has difficulty forming and keeping relationships.

I can't make a blanket statement about Nixon's strategy, however, for relationships did help Nixon to advance politically.  Thomas Dewey was instrumental in getting Nixon to be appointed as Dwight Eisenhower's running-mate in 1952.  Nixon got a lot of IOUs when he campaigned for Republican officials throughout the nation.  And yet, even here, Nixon's strategy was to dazzle people with speeches, which is quite different from developing relationships with people.  Still, I'd say that relationships, on some level, played some role in Nixon's political advancement.  Nixon at least had enough social competence not to alienate his benefactors!

2.  A while back, I watched Nixon's 1952 Checkers Speech on YouTube, then I watched part of his 1974 resignation speech as President.  It was depressing to watch the latter after the former, let me say that!  In the Checkers speech, Nixon was young, energetic, fresh, convinced of his innocence, and fighting.  In the resignation speech, he had bags under his eyes, and he appeared depressed and defeated.  In the former, Nixon saved his political career, so there was a happy ending for him.  In the latter, Nixon's career as an elected official was coming to a dismal end.

3.  The passage from Black with which I opened this post depicts Nixon as one who fought alone, as if Nixon was an underdog.  That particular image of Nixon has long resonated with me.  But how about Nixon as a well-connected bully?  That repulses me!

On pages 210-211 of Nixon's Darkest Secrets, Don Fulsom talks about Nixon's alleged physically violent acts against people.  He quotes Jim McManus, a White House reporter who said that Nixon slammed his shoulder against him.  McManus said, "One doubts that [Nixon] ever picked on anyone whose relative status----or gender----guaranteed a counter-attack."  And Nixon biographer Fawn Brodie talked about Nixon slapping Zita Remley, a Democrat who alleged that people in 1946 called Democrats and said that Nixon's opponent in the congressional election, Jerry Voorhis, was a Communist.  Brodie states: "There were no cameras or newsmen to catch the happening, and Mrs. Remley, fearful of losing her job, told only a few friends."

If this is true, then it is horrible.  Nixon could arguably have caused Remley to lose her job, had he wished, since, as much of a loner as he was, he still was politically powerful and well-connected, and thus had the pull to get her fired.  To attack someone who cannot attack back is bullying.  Incidentally, the same can be said about other abuses of power, such as sexual harassment (not that Nixon engaged in that).

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 30

On page 957 of Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black states:

"Nixon's plucky and generally very popular daughter, Julie Eisenhower, had gone out speaking in support of her father.  She invariably made a very good impression, and even Norman Mailer acknowledged that his demonized view of Nixon did not allow for loyal and attractive daughters."

As I read this, I thought about Don Fulsom's claim in Nixon's Darkest Secrets that Richard Nixon was physically and verbally abusive to his wife, Pat.  On what does Fulsom base this claim?  On page 69, Fulsom quotes a statement by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that "There was a serious empirical basis for believing [Nixon] was a wife-beater, and had done so----at least hospitalized her a number of times...I'm talking about trauma, and three distinct cases."  What specifically led Hersh to this conclusion, we are not told, but Fulsom is quoting from this article in which Hersh explains why he chose not to write a story about this topic.  On page 71, Fulsom refers to Time magazine reporter Frank McCullough, who came to Nixon's home in 1950 to interview him and heard Nixon call his wife a "dumb f***ing b***h".  McCullough promised Nixon that he would not report this in the magazine, but McCullough did tell Fulsom about it in a 2010 telephone conversation.  And, on page 212, Fulsom appeals to anonymous sources: "In the mid-'60s, clued-in Capitol Hill reporters, including yours truly, heard from completely reliable sources that Nixon had also beat Pat when he was a member of Congress."

Whether or not you consider that to be solid evidence is up to you.  I know that Anthony Summers, in The Arrogance of Power, also argues that Nixon was physically abusive towards his wife, and it will be interesting to see how he supports this claim.  But suppose that Nixon indeed did physically and verbally abuse his wife.  How could his daughters have been so loyal to him?  If Nixon abused his wife, did that take place away from the children?  Was his daughters' loyalty to and love for their father merely an act?  Did Julie write that glowing book about her father and mother just to make money?  I'm very reluctant to question the loyalty and love that Nixon's daughters had for their father.  I don't know them, but their loyalty comes across to me, a simple observer, as authentic.

People nowadays can listen to some of the Nixon tapes online, and I've heard a few of them on YouTube.  I've read some people who comment that Nixon was loving towards his wife, Pat, and they base that on what they heard of Nixon's interactions with her on the White House tapes.  They are entitled to their impressions, but allow me to offer mine, as unreliable as they might be.  Whenever I listen to Nixon's conversations with Tricia, Julie, or Pat, the ladies come across to me as rather nervous, like they don't want to rock the boat.  I could be completely wrong about this, but I know that I tend to talk fast when I am nervous in social situations, as if that will somehow mitigate my nerves.  Tricia, Julie, and Pat, at least on the tapes, seem to me to talk rather fast.  You can judge for yourself by going to YouTube and typing in their names.  Does that mean, however, that they were intimidated by Nixon because he was an abuser?  Not necessarily.  All kinds of people can be intimidated by their father or husband, even if the father or husband is not abusive.  And maybe they weren't even nervous, for there are women who can talk fast without being nervous.  I'm just offering my impressions as a listener, and I may be off-base.  After all, people with Asperger's (like myself) are supposedly inept at reading people!

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 29

On page 912 of Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black calls Nixon "This most suspicious, morose, generally joyless of men..."  I thought about this characterization as I was reading Don Fulsom's anti-Nixon book, Nixon's Darkest Secrets.  Fulsom talks about the times that Richard Nixon was drunk.  Nixon liked to have drinks with his friend, Bebe Rebozo.  According to Fulsom, there were times when a drunk Nixon would awkwardly hit on women.  Fulsom refers to Nixon ex-aide John Ehrlichman's story in Witness to Power about Nixon hitting on an attractive blonde secretary, whom an editor said was reportedly Shelley Scarney, the future Mrs. Pat Buchanan.  (UPDATE: According to Anthony Summers, Shelley Buchanan said that she did not recall this incident.) On page 199, Fulsom quotes investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who said that Nixon at a Miami restaurant stopped a nice-looking woman and offered her a White House job.  While I have read elsewhere that Nixon was rather Spartan as a Duke Law School student, Fulsom contends that Nixon even in his younger years had a problem with alcohol.  Fulsom refers to a schoolmate of Nixon's at Whittier College, Philip Blew, who told about a time when Nixon got drunk.  Blew said: "The affair turned into a spree...and we, in effect, had to pour Dick into bed."

I can understand why a "suspicious, morose, generally joyless" person would drink.  (And this is not to suggest that Black would agree with Fulsom's contention that Nixon had a problem with alcohol.)  Life can get pretty drab.  Many would like the sort of life that they see on TV, where romance is often easy, and adventure is commonplace, and they look to alcohol to give them the fun that they want.  Moreover, being unhappy due to resentments can influence people to seek some solace in alcohol, as can being afraid on account of the ups and downs of life.  Alcohol can also give people confidence that they ordinarily may not have.  I remember hearing one recovering alcoholic talk about his observations while people-watching at a local restaurant: guys come in with two left feet, they have a few drinks, and suddenly they're Fred Astaire!  But the recovering alcoholic then went on to ask: Why can't they be Fred Astaire without alcohol?

I can still identify with much of what I said above, and I've not had a drink for six years.  (Yesterday marks the sixth year anniversary of when I quit drinking.)  But I can also see the other side: that sobriety can lead to a quality of life that alcoholism can inhibit.  People who used to spend their time holed up in their rooms drinking become sober and go on to do enjoyable things, such as studying a field of interest, or traveling.  People who used to feel lonely find fellowship in a twelve-step group.  People who used to deal with their resentments and fears by drinking now deal with these things by talking them out with a sponsor, and also by relying on a higher power.  People who could not hold on to a relationship or a job now do both.
The thing is, could such a dream have been realized for somebody like Nixon?  Can it be realized for me, for that matter?  Nixon did enjoyable things: he traveled, he read.  But my impression from reading all of these books about him is that he did not like to share a lot with others.  That being the case, did he really have much of a way to deal with his resentments and his fears?  Speaking for myself, I am often afraid to share my problems because I fear being criticized.  That has happened in the past!  I doubt that I will take a drink anytime soon, since life for me is much more predictable and manageable when I do not drink.  But I wish that I had more joy inside of me.

I'd like to think that Nixon in his later years found more joy.  As I read Monica Crowley's books about her time working for Nixon during the 1990's, I noticed that Nixon even then had his pettiness and resentment, and yet he also seemed to have more fun.  He enjoyed spending time with his grandchildren.  His relationship with his wife, Pat, looked a whole lot better.  He liked opening up his lawn to people on Halloween and joking around with the celebrants.  Did Nixon find some way to feel happy, without relying so much on alcohol?

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 26

I have three items for my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.

1.  On page 822, we read: "[White House counsel John] Dean had set up his own investigation unit and had caused the investigation of the call-girl ring associated with the 'Happy Hooker' Xaviera Hollander, but this achieved nothing useful, since there were as many Republicans as Democrats in it, an unsurprising revelation."

The reason that this stood out to me is that Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin argue in their controversial book, Silent Coup, that John Dean's investigation of the call-girl ring was the motive behind the break-in at the Watergate hotel, as Dean allegedly was seeking information about the prostitution ring and was trying to cover things up, since his wife was supposedly connected with someone in the ring.  Dean would sue Colodny and Gettlin for libel.  It's interesting to me that Black essentially acknowledges that Dean was investigating the prostitution ring.  Black doesn't seem to buy into the idea that this was the motive behind the Watergate break-in, however, for Black appears to accept the prominent narrative that the Watergate break-in was aiming to collect information about Democratic National Committee chairman Lawrence O'Brien.  For Black, Dean was investigating the call-girl ring, but it was with the intent of finding dirt on Democrats.  According to Black, the problem, in terms of Dean's goal, was that Republicans were using the ring's services, too!

2.  On page 825, we read: "The tapes of these June 23 conversations were released on August 5, 1974, and became known as the 'smoking gun,' but they were not as damaging as they seemed when presented two years after the fact as a sort of last straw.  [FBI director L. Patrick] Gray had expressed a concern, denied by [CIA director Richard] Helms, about a CIA covert operation.  Helms told [Nixon aides] Haldeman and Ehrlichman that he would cooperate if given written instructions and an adequate explanation, by which he clearly meant that there would have to be an adequate reason to ask the FBI to desist.  No such instructions were given; no such request [Deputy Director for Central Intelligence Vernon] Walters spoke again to Gray.  The FBI did not desist, and didn't principally have carriage of the matter anyway.  It appeared two years later, and was represented by the press, as an attempt to obstruct justice, and it would have been if it had been pushed, but it wasn't pushed."

The topic here is the charge that President Richard Nixon obstructed justice by encouraging the CIA to restrict the FBI's investigation into Watergate.  Nixon's claim was that he was doing this because some of the people involved in the Watergate break-in were connected with the CIA, and Nixon didn't want the investigation into Watergate to blow the lid on any covert operations.  Black contends that, because Nixon didn't press the matter with the CIA, he wasn't really attempting to obstruct justice.

The low-key manner in which Black describes this topic contrasts with what I was recently reading in Don Fulsom's Nixon's Darkest Secrets.  Fulsom notes that Nixon wanted CIA director Helms to know that Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt could start blabbing on about the Bay of Pigs, if Helms did not limit the FBI's investigation into Watergate.  Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman said in The Ends of Power (written with Joseph DiMona), and Fulsom agrees, that "Bay of Pigs" meant the Kennedy assassination.  Fulsom says that the connection between the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy assassination was probably that "the cast of characters employed in the 1960 plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and kill Fidel Castro and the cast of characters employed in the plan to assassinate Kennedy in 1963 were the same" (page 130).

Fulsom refers to the testimony of Haldeman and John Ehrlichman (in their books) that Helms really erupted when they brought up the Bay of Pigs, to the surprise of Haldeman and Ehrlichman!  Haldeman quotes Helms as saying: "The Bay of Pigs has nothing to do with this! I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs."  Fulsom later refers to Haldeman's statement in The Ends of Power that Haldeman told the President that Helms "got the picture" and said he'd "be very happy to be helpful" (Haldeman's words).  But Fulsom narrates that Helms then "had second thoughts and was refusing to cooperate with Nixon's gambit" (pages 135-136).  Fulsom then dryly relates: "For that insubordination, he was eventually banished to be the ambassador to Iran."  Fulsom depicts Nixon as more heavy-handed in his treatment of the CIA than Black does.

3.  On pages 826-827, Black states: "For the reelection committee to pay the legal costs and living expenses of part-time and full-time employees is quite in order.  It has been assumed that this was 'hush money,' payments made in exchange for silence about CREEP or White House involvement.  In all the voluminous material, it is not clear that was even the implicit intended nature of the payments, at least at the outset.  As time went by, what amounted to blackmail was attempted by some of the defendants, and some was paid.  But it is not clear that submitting to blackmail constitutes obstructing justice.  It was, however, both shaming and demeaning to the presidency."

This seems to correspond with Black's overall take on Watergate, at least in what I have read so far: that Nixon did foolish things, things that were beneath the Presidency, and yet he arguably did not do anything that would deserve impeachment.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 24

For my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I'll use as my starting-point something that Black says on page 764:

"Nixon's last newsworthy act of 1971 was a commutation of sentence for James R. Hoffa, the former Teamsters' Union president who had served four years of a thirteen-year sentence for jury-tampering, having been the chief target of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.  Nixon assured the reelection of his friend and supporter, Teamster president Frank Fitzsimmons, and then had Hoffa released, provided he did not engage in union activities for eight years, appeasing Hoffa's followers in his union but assuring Fitzsimmons's position.  This had the additional benefit of a symbolic affront to the Kennedys, and a direct irritation to AFL-CIO chairman George Meany.

"With the leaders of organized labor...all was politics, and Nixon was trying to divide and conquer.  It wasn't a particularly admirable sequence of events, in the one case or the other, but, contrary to subsequent mythology, Nixon did not inherit a pristine system of presidential disinterest in the fermentation of American life, in all its creative and cynical spontaneity, that bubbled and erupted beneath him.  And John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson weren't saints either."

The reason that this passage stood out to me is that it overlapped with topics that I was reading about in Don Fulsom's anti-Nixon biography: Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President.  Richard Nixon's friendship with Fitzsimmons is obviously important to Fulsom, for Fulsom shows five pictures of Nixon with Fitzsimmons in the pictures section of his book.  Why would Fulsom deem this to be important?  Because Fulsom argues that Fitzsimmons had connections with the mob.  Fulsom says on pages 29-30 that "The president and Fitz quickly colluded on a plan for Hoffa's release, and they started an alliance that was sealed with cold cash----huge payments involving the Mob in return for White House kindness."  Moreover, on page 35, Fulsom states that "Newly released FBI documents show that, in 1978, federal investigators sought to force former president Nixon and Teamster boss Fitzsimmons to testify about events surrounding Hoffa's disappearance."  But the investigators said that upper Justice Department people were hindering this from happening.

Fulsom claims that Nixon received support from mob people, as far back as his 1946 race for U.S. Congress.  Why?  According to Fulsom, Senate investigator Walter Sheridan offered an opinion about why the mobster Meyer Lansky was supporting Nixon: "If you were Meyer, who would you invest your money in?  Some politician named Clams Linguini?  Or a nice Protestant boy from Whittier, California?"  There was also the hatred that many mobsters and mobster-affiliated people had towards the Kennedys.  As Fulsom says on page 23, "Robert Kennedy had been trying to put Hoffa in jail since 1956, when RFK was staff counsel for a Senate probe into the Mob's influence on the labor movement."  While John F. Kennedy himself initially had some support from certain mobsters, according to Fulsom, much of the mob would not care for his administration's tough stance against organized crime.  According to Fulsom, the Nixon administration would be much softer on the mob.  Page 30 of Fulsom's book says: "From 1969 through 1973, more than one half of the Justice Department's 1,600 indictments in organized crime cases were tossed out because of 'improper procedures' followed by Attorney General John Mitchell in obtaining court-approved authorization for wiretaps..."  Page 44: "Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, finally put the squeeze on a federal judge to slice Marcello's prison term to six months" (see here to read about Marcello).  Page 30: "...when the New York Times disclosed that FBI wiretaps had uncovered a massive scheme to establish a national health plan for the Teamsters, with pension fund members and top mobsters getting lucrative kickbacks, [Attorney General] Kleindienst again came to the rescue, rejecting the FBI's plan to continue taps related to the scheme."

Fulson also contends that Nixon's close friend, Bebe Rebozo, had ties to organized crime.  He refers to a Miami police report saying that Rebozo was close to Meyer Lansky.  On page 54, Fulson shows a declassified FBI memo that said that "A Philadelphia source who is in a position to provide reliable information was told by a third party that this individual within the last two weeks, observed fugitive Robert Vesco in the Bahamas in the company of former Nixon aide Bebe Rebozo" (the memo's words, only they were all capitalized in the memo).

Regarding the release of Jimmy Hoffa, Folsom refers to an FBI memo that refers to an informant saying that there was a $300,000 payoff from the mob to the Nixon White House to secure Hoffa's release.  But, in the memo itself (which is on page 25 of Fulsom's book), all I see about this is what follows: "Source advised that approximately one to two weeks before the Christmas before HOFFA was released from prison, ALAN DORFMAN and JIMMY HOFFA, JR. delivered $300,000 in cash to the Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C., in a black valise and turned this money over to [blacked out].  The purpose of this money was to guarantee the release of JIMMY HOFFA from the Federal Penitentiary."  Does the memo say that the money was for the Nixon White House?  It depends on what it said before it was blacked out!

Do I buy any of this?  To be honest, I do wish that Fulsom cited more primary sources.  Often, when I check in the back to see Fulsom's source for something, it turns out to be a secondary source, such as Anthony Summers' The Arrogance of Power.  I'd have to look at Summers to see if he cites a primary source!  But I wouldn't be surprised if Nixon had support from mobsters or people with mob connections.  In the world of the powerful, I'm sure that there are many with money and influence who have had relationships with the mob or with mob-affiliated people, on some level.

Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician 2

I have three items for my blog post today on Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972.  The setting for the three items will be the year 1965.

1.  On page 63, we read about Pat Nixon's boredom:

"Her husband and younger daughter worried about her.  Julie recorded in her diary how she and her father 'took a long walk along Madison Avenue' and agreed 'that Mother needed something to do.'"

Pat Nixon loved living in New York City, with all of its activity and its stores.  Yet, she found herself bored.  As a very private person, she didn't really care for campaigning, with "all those smiles, all those empty phrases, all those strangers" (page 63).  She was like her daughter Tricia in that respect, whereas Richard Nixon made himself campaign even though he didn't enjoy it, and their daughter Julie actually did like campaigning.  But now that Pat wasn't involved in campaigning, she was bored, and her participation in charity work was not satisfying her.

This reminds me of Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, which was about how a number of women become bored with their responsibilities as mothers and housewives, since they need a channel for their creativity and intelligence.  I think that Pat enjoyed being a mother, for she loved her daughters very much, but Pat wanted more to do.

I also found it sweet that Richard Nixon and Julie were concerned about Pat----and Nixon highlighted to Julie the importance of people making a contribution in order to be happy.  I gather from my reading for my Year (or More) of Nixon that Nixon was not always a considerate husband to Pat: he could be dismissive to her, he treated her as an afterthought, and some (such as Don Folsom) have even argued that there were more serious issues than that (which I will discuss when I get into Folsom's book).  But, in this part of Ambrose's book, Nixon was considerate, caring, and empathetic.  As Ambrose highlights in his Foreword, Nixon could be both cold and considerate.  He was a paradox.

2.  On page 67, we read about Nixon's relationship with his writers:

"Steve Hess, who had been helping Nixon with his writing before 1965, explained some of the factors in Nixon's success in his relationship with writers.  The first was Nixon's high regard for the writing process.  Nixon had found writing Six Crises to be difficult; he told Hess 'it was one of the hardest and most satisfying things I've ever done.'  So he respected writers and their craft.  Second, Nixon worked closely with his speech writers, going over drafts word by word, questioning, judging, inserting, drawing a blue pencil through a line----the most intimate kind of work.  Third, Nixon was always generous with his praise.  After a major speech, he would call Safire, or Buchanan, or Hess, or whoever helped him write it, to say thanks.  Even better, he would refer to a specific line written by his aide, and point out how well it had gone over with the audience, and thank the writer again.  For a speech writer in politics, this is a most unusual, and wonderfully heady, experience.  Fourth, Nixon was personally fond of his writers, and showed it."

Surrounding this passage, there is more about Nixon's thoughts on his speech writers, William Safire and Pat Buchanan, as well as Nixon's generosity towards Hess.  Ambrose says that Safire was not the sort of person one would expect Nixon to like, for Safire "was a young Jewish intellectual with a quick wit and a way with words, with a sardonic approach to the hoopla of politics and an honest man's disapproval of the corruption of politics" (page 67).  Yet, Safire and Nixon liked each other.  Safire at times disagreed with Nixon's strategy, as when Nixon was attacking the Governor of Rhode Island for tolerating a Marxist professor at Rutgers University who said he would welcome a Vietcong victory.  Safire said Nixon was using "early-fifties-style anti-Communism" (Ambrose's words on page 74).  Nixon apparently did not get mad at Safire for saying this.  Nixon just replied: "Oh, I know you and the rest of the intellectuals won't like it...But somebody had to take 'em on.  Imagine a professor teaching that line to kids."  Regarding Pat Buchanan, Safire says that Nixon "liked Buchanan's eccentric mind, his passionate involvement, his wide-ranging knowledge of politics, and his speech-writing ability" (page 67).  And, on Nixon's generosity to Hess, Nixon paid Hess $5,000 of the $10,000 Nixon got from an article on Vietnam for the Saturday Evening Post.  As Hess said, back in those days one could go to Europe and remodel his house with $5,000, plus the article under Hess' name would have gotten Hess only $1,000!

This was all good stuff, but what I most liked was how Nixon came to respect writers after he himself had experienced the ardor of the writing process.  Nixon liked to call writing Six Crises his seventh crisis.  Of course, that was before Watergate!

3. Nixon was trying to rekindle a relationship with Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union, even though Khrushchev was out of power.  But Khrushchev apparently didn't want to see Nixon!  On page 65, Ambrose comments on Nixon's debate with Khrushchev back when Nixon as Vice-President visited the Soviet Union: "The story that accompanied the photo contained ample reminders of the glorious moment when Nixon had been the man who stood up to Khrushchev, at a time when Khrushchev's name was enough to frighten half the world to death."

This sounds like Ambrose is praising Nixon, and perhaps he is.  But Ambrose also criticizes Nixon a lot in this book, sometimes quite sarcastically!

Six Crises 7

In my latest reading of Richard Nixon's 1962 book Six Crises, Nixon talks about his visit as Vice-President to Latin America, where he was attacked by Communist-inspired mobs.  I'd like to comment on two items:

1. On page 204, Nixon talks about a time when he was in Peru and a person in the mob spit in Nixon's face.  Nixon relates that he wanted to tear the man's face to pieces, but someone restrained Nixon "from handling the man personally."  Nixon states, however, that he still got to give the person who had spit in his face "a healthy kick on his shins", and Nixon goes on to say that "Nothing I did all day made me feel better."

Don Fulsom, in his anti-Nixon book Nixon's Darkest Secrets (which I will read and blog about at some point in the future), says on page 205 that "probably no other American politician [than Nixon] actually punched, slapped, shouldered, shoved or upended as many folks who'd ignited----usually without malicious intent----his volcanic temper."  On page 204 of Six Crises, we see an example of Nixon kicking in the shins someone who (actually with malicious intent) had spit in Nixon's face, and getting satisfaction out of doing so.  On page 568 of Nixon: The Education of a Politician, Stephen Ambrose tells a story about Nixon during the 1960 Presidential election.  Nixon was upset because John Ehrlichman made a blunder that caused Nixon to waste a whole day of campaigning, plus Nixon was probably still sick with the flu and was very tired.  Nixon lost his temper in the back-seat of the car and was repeatedly kicking the back of campaign-aide Don Hughes' seat, leading Hughes to leave the car angrily.  Moreover, on a note that's unrelated to violence but which may pertain to Nixon's temper, Ambrose states on page 652 that "few people managed to stay on Nixon's staff for very long" because people tended to fall out of Nixon's favor pretty quickly.

In Six Crises, we see Nixon losing his temper more than once, and Nixon acknowledges this, attributing it to being tired or frustration.  The incident on page 204 of Six Crises is the only time in the book (at least in what I have read so far) when Nixon refers to an act of violence that he committed.  Overall, Nixon narrates that he was quite restrained when he was attacked by mobs in Latin America.  Nixon chose to continue standing for the Venezuelan national anthem rather than attacking back, for example, because he wanted to show that he respected the anthem.  And Nixon sought to identify and to respect the humanity of the protesters: he said that they were teens around the age of his daughter Tricia, and that he hated that they were being exploited by the Communists.

Nixon was someone who could be quite measured and reflective----who could reasonably look at situations from different angles.  Yet, Nixon had a temper, which sometimes (or, if Fulsom is correct, more than sometimes) was expressed through violence.

2.  On pages 190-191, Nixon favorably refers to an Argentinian leader who devised "a formula for the development of Argentina's vast oil resources by privately-owned companies while retaining 'ownership' of the oil by the people..."  This sounds like a combination of privatization with nationalization.  I'm not sure how exactly that worked, but I admire Nixon's apparent openness to the idea.  Overall, Nixon appears in Six Crises to be sensitive to the problems of poverty and inequality of wealth in Latin America.  I respect that, and I hope that he had that sensitivity when he was President.