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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
Subject
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
Publisher
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
Date
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1983
Identifier
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gannix
Description
An account of the resource
The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Oral histories
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
United States
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
OHMS Object Text
Contains OHMS index and/or transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable.
5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 1. gannix_0331 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon gannix_0331 1:|11(4)|25(2)|50(2)|70(2)|83(2)|96(15)|111(16)|113(16)|130(15)|149(2)|168(1) 0 https://youtu.be/ZPaZXOoJLtQ YouTube video English 21 Introduction This is the first in a series of several tapings which will extend over several months and several hours with President Nixon. Frank Gannon introduces Richard Nixon and summarizes the topics to be covered by the interviews. 46 First Memory To begin at the beginning, do you have a first conscious memory? Nixon recounts his first memory of a childhood horse and buggy accident. 1946 ; accident ; campaign ; Don Nixon ; Francis Anthony Nixon ; Hannah Milhous Nixon ; injury ; Joe McCarthy ; memory ; Wayne Morse McCarthy, Joseph, 1908-1957 ; Morse, Wayne L. (Wayne Lyman), 1900-1974 ; Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885-1967 155 Nixon's Mother Your -- in your memoirs, you wrote about your parents that whoever said that opposites attract was describing the two of them. Nixon speaks about his mother's character during his early childhood. 544 Nixon's Father Your father -- many of the people who remember him think of his most prominent characteristic as his temper, and I gather that even in the store you had to sort of insulate him from the customers. Nixon describes his father and discusses his personality, parenting techniques, and his relationship with Nixon's mother. 33.889444,-117.818056 Richard Nixon's Birthplace (Yorba Linda, Ca.) 1338 Extended Family It was a remarkable family. Nixon relates stories about his extended family and their role in his childhood. He also briefly talks about the use of the plain speech in his family and its role in the Hiss Case. A Psalm of Life ; Abraham Lincoln ; Alden Beeson ; Alger Hiss ; Almira Milhous ; Billy Graham ; Christian Sinding ; Christmas ; Edith Milhous Timberlake ; Edvard Grieg ; Elizabeth Milhous ; Elizabeth Milhous Harrison ; entomology ; Esther Chambers ; Gary Cooper ; Griffith William Milhous ; Hannah Milhous Nixon ; Harold Beeson ; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ; Hiss Case ; Jane Milhous Beeson ; Jessamyn West ; Life of Christ ; Lindsay, California ; Mamie Eisenhower ; Martha Milhous Gibbons ; Milhous Family ; Mohandas Gandhi ; Mount Baldy ; music ; Olive Milhous Marshburn ; Oscar Marshburn ; piano ; Plain Speech ; Poetry ; preacher ; Priscilla Hiss ; Quakers ; religion ; Sheldon Beeson ; The Friendly Persuasion ; Tim Timberlake ; Whittaker Chambers ; World War I ; Yorba Linda, California Chambers, Whittaker ; Cooper, Gary, 1901-1961 ; Eisenhower, Mamie Doud, 1896-1979 ; Gandhi, Mahatma, 1869-1948 ; Graham, Billy, 1918- ; Grieg, Edvard, 1843-1907 ; Hiss, Alger ; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 ; Longfellow, Henry W. (Henry Wadsworth), 1895-1986 ; Milhous, Almira, 1849 - 1943 ; Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885-1967 ; Sinding, Christian, 1856-1941 ; West, Jessamyn 2543 Early Education and Music Lessons Eisenhower used to urge you to refer more to God in your speeches, and yet you resisted. Nixon discusses his Christian upbringing, including his early education at home and music lessons. He talks about the role music played in his life. 3277 Childhood--Market Do you -- the -- the Nixon market was a successful operation added to the service station. Nixon shares stories from his childhood when his parents owned a gas station and grocery store. He also describes his mother's baking. 3841 World War I / Baseball This was a time when a lot of important historical things were happening, in the outside world at any rate. Nixon recounts important events during his childhood, including Armistice Day, getting the family's first radio, and going to his first baseball game. 4236 Arthur's Death This -- this was the time, and you've subsequently written about the sadness of it, that your brother Arthur died. Nixon describes his brother Arthur's early death and how it affected his family. 4698 High School Activities--Dramatics and Debate You started school, or started high school, in 1926. Nixon recounts high school challenges in academics and extracurriculars. He describes his first dramatic appearance and learning how to debate. 1926 ; acting ; Aeneid ; debate ; drama ; education ; geometry ; H. Lynn Sheller ; Jenny Levin ; Ola Florence Welch ; speaking ; Whittier High School Interview GANNON: This is the first in a series of several tapings, which will extend over several months and several hours with President Nixon. In the subsequent sessions, we' ; ll talk about some of the domestic and foreign leaders that he' ; s known and get his insights into their lives and careers. In this first session, we will begin at the beginning with his early life and political career. To begin at the beginning, do you have a first conscious memory? NIXON: Well, curiously enough, my first memory is of running. I recall that when I was about three or three-and-a-half years of age that my mother was driving a horse and buggy, a very fast horse. She was carrying my younger brother, who was then one, Don, on her lap, and a neighbor girl, who was about twelve, was holding me. The buggy turned a corner and the horse took off and the neighbor girl dropped me. I fell out of the buggy. I got a crease in my scalp, and I jumped up afterwards, and I was running, running, trying to catch up, because I was afraid to be left behind. Incidentally, I had a wound from that for many years thereafter. I wasn' ; t able to part my hair on the left due to the fact that I had about fifteen stitches down that scalp. GANNON: Didn' ; t you--in the 1946 campaign, didn' ; t you--weren' ; t you going to mention that in a--in a biography and didn' ; t your press secretary suggest that you not? NIXON: Oh, yes, the suggestion was made that, " ; Oh, you can' ; t tell them that you got hit in the head by a carriage or wheel, because they' ; ll think that that' ; s why there' ; s something wrong with your head." ; And so I haven' ; t told that story too often lately. GANNON: Didn' ; t--actually, that did work against Wayne Morse, didn' ; t it? NIXON: Yes, Joe McCarthy in--I thought--one of his attacks that I thought was out of line--they weren' ; t all out of line but this one certainly was--he said, " ; The trouble with Wayne Morse is that he got kicked in the head by a horse sometime," ; and that was why he was a little nutty. GANNON: Your--in your memoirs, you wrote about your parents that whoever said that opposites attract was describing the two of them. We have some photographs of your mother here. The first one, I think, was taken as a girl in Indiana and the next one is a group portrait, very characteristic of the times, taken in Whittier, when she was a teenager, and the last one, I think, is also of her at that same time. It' ; s remarkable how much she looks like Julie, I think, in these pictures. NIXON: Yes, she does. GANNON: Do--what do you think of--what characteristics do you think of when you think of your mother in that period, in the early years? NIXON: Well, I have said that she was quite a remarkable woman, and I guess most of us say that about our mothers and really feel it, and each of them is, each in a different way. But I think in her case those characteristics that stand out, among many, are, first, great strength, great kindness. She had a soft manner about her in her speech and the way she acted. I never recall the time when she raised her voice in anger about anything, but she could be very, very convincing in speaking very, very softly about something with which she disapproved. And in addition to that, she had a great capacity for love which extended far beyond her husband, whom she loved dearly, her children, for whom she would do anything. She--that capacity for love seemed to emanate to everybody, to her sisters, to those she cared for when my brother was sick, and all of this made her develop characteristics that some friends used to say--they used to tell me, you know, " ; Hannah," ; which was her name, " ; is a Quaker saint." ; GANNON: Did--I think you wrote somewhere that were she alive today that she wouldn' ; t support the strong law and order ethic that underlies a lot of contemporary politics. NIXON: She had too much compassion to do that. That' ; s true. As a matter of fact, I recall an incident at the time that we had the grocery store, and we were working there and one of our customers, whose children were good friends of mine in school and of Don' ; s, my brother' ; s, she found had been shoplifting. And under the circumstances the sheriff came by, and she mentioned it to him, and he said, " ; Well, you' ; ll have to report this." ; And she says, " ; I won' ; t do it, because it will be terrible for her and for her children." ; So one day when the lady came in and what she picked up, incidentally, was so small--it was just a kleptomaniac problem, because they weren' ; t poor, not by the standards of those days. She had a pound of butter and a little--a--and some eggs and some cheese and she had slipped it into the bag and she took it out and had it--checked it through. My mother followed her out of the car and she said, " ; I wonder if you would like to pay me for those things?" ; The woman burst into tears and said, " ; Please don' ; t tell my husband. He would kill me and it will ruin the boys." ; And my mother said, " ; Don' ; t be concerned." ; She says, " ; How much do you think you' ; ve taken?" ; And the woman estimated about seventy-five dollars' ; worth. She says, " ; I' ; ll pay you back." ; And for the next year she paid her back at five dollars a month until it was all paid. The boys never heard about it. Her husband didn' ; t hear about it, and, of course, she didn' ; t continue to come in the store. But that was the way my mother would do it. She would never enforce the law if some other way you could work the thing out. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, gentlemen. Could we fix the mike cable just for a second? Keep rolling tape. Go ahead and fix that mike. That' ; s perfect. If it' ; ll hold, that' ; s perfect. Okay, Frank, we' ; ll come up to camera two and keep right on going. GANNON: Your mother was a very community-minded woman, but she was also intensely private, even, I think, in her praying. NIXON: Oh, she certainly was. She never believed in wearing religion on her sleeve. We went to church a great deal, I must say, and she insisted on that, as did my father. I recall, for example, we used to go to Sunday school and church in the morning on Sunday, and Christian Endeavor at church in the evening, and then even go to prayer meeting sometimes in the middle of the week. But, on the other hand, when it came to praying, first, we always had silent grace at table, except on occasion she would have each of the boys repeat a verse so that she could be sure that we were learning our verses. And when she prayed, she would often go, as the Bible indicates you should, into the closet and close the door. She never prayed publicly. GANNON: Your father--many of the people who remember him think of his most prominent characteristic as his temper, and I gather that even in the store you had to sort of insulate him from the customers. NIXON: Well, he was argumentative. He was combative. He was competitive. He--he was a character. There' ; s no question about that, the very opposite of my mother in that respect. And she often had to soothe ruffled feathers of customers who came in because my father would pick arguments with them. He loved to talk about politics, or anything, for that matter. And she sometimes, when people would come into the store that he was having a running argument with, one or the others of us would rush up to wait on that customer to assure my dad didn' ; t get to them. And that' ; s the way we handled him. But, on the other hand, don' ; t get the wrong idea about him as a real man. He, too, was remarkable in his way. You know, he--my mother understood him. My mother was quite well educated for those times. She was proficient in Greek and in Latin and in German. She also knew something about the piano, helped me a bit in that respect. She had been to college for two years and then got married before finishing. My father only went through the sixth grade. GANNON: We have a photograph here of him, taken, I think, shortly after he moved to Whittier. He' ; d had a lot of interesting jobs before that, hadn' ; t he? NIXON: Well, as a matter of fact, he went only to the sixth grade not because he was dumb, but because his mother died of tuberculosis when he was about eight or nine years old. And from then on he was shunted from family to family, and he worked in every kind of a job. He worked as a streetcar motorman in Columbus, Ohio. He worked in the wheat fields in Colorado. He worked in the oil fields. He was a excellent carpenter. As a matter of fact, he built the house that I was born in. He was the greatest fireplace maker that Yorba Linda or anybody ever had. He used to make fireplaces for all the people when they were building fireplaces in their houses. And then, of course he was one who was always ahead of the times. He bought the first tractor in Yorba Linda, and then he contracted out to all the others to do work with tractors when others were still using horses. He was one who bought the first--built the first service station and store between Whittier and La Habra when people--other people didn' ; t see that this was a real money-maker. So, as I say, we--I think that the boys, all of us, inherited from our mother certainly some of her Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0331/bmac
OHMS Object
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https://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0331/ohms
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
Duration
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86 minutes
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<a href="http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0331/bmac">http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0331/bmac</a>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 1.
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gannix_0331
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
Date
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1983-02-09
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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United States
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moving image
OHMS
-
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
Subject
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
Publisher
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1983
Identifier
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gannix
Description
An account of the resource
The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Oral histories
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
United States
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
OHMS Object Text
Contains OHMS index and/or transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable.
5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 2. gannix_0332 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|9(10)|120(4)|209(2)|213(10)|222(6)|240(2)|268(11)|298(13)|331(14)|350(4)|376(13)|389(18)|407(14)|423(13)|446(1)|457(13)|482(11)|501(4)|512(14)|531(15)|542(13)|560(2)|577(2)|590(16)|609(8)|634(1)|645(13)|670(4)|689(2)|700(16)|720(12)|736(8)|751(6)|767(15)|779(3)|790(17)|817(3)|828(13)|862(3)|873(14)|892(3)|901(12)|933(15)|952(1)|968(14)|993(15)|1004(14)|1023(2)|1044(6)|1070(2)|1079(13)|1101(14)|1124(3)|1135(5)|1151(18)|1162(14)|1189(16)|1208(4)|1227(5)|1239(14)|1262(4)|1319(2)|1344(5)|1388(8)|1400(10)|1411(11)|1429(2)|1438(17)|1450(3)|1465(13)|1479(1)|1492(14)|1502(16)|1533(2)|1578(15)|1598(2)|1622(15)|1633(2)|1643(14)|1654(2)|1681(7)|1709(2)|1725(12)|1755(1)|1770(2)|1779(12)|1817(2) 0 https://youtu.be/hixE2gGN5Lc YouTube video English 11 Interview Discussion -- and he, telling of his cam -- of his election to the Senate, and it was very, very close. Nixon finishes telling a story to Gannon and the two discuss the use of profanity in the interview and what topics they will cover as cameras and sound systems are adjusted. 364 Dating Ola Florence Welch --you mentioned your girlfriend, Ola Florence Welch. Nixon describes his high school girlfriend, Ola Florence Welch, and her father. 480 Sports and Debate You -- at this time you were active in sports in high school. Nixon recounts his high school sports career and its end due to a scar on his lung. He also discusses debate topics from his early school years. 829 Women in Politics Do you think that the changing times -- that it is possible today for women in politics to -- for -- for -- for a male, for a man politician, to debate a woman on purely -- on the -- the -- the substance of the issue? Nixon discusses the growing role of women in politics and other professions and talks about working with Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi. 1261 Introversion in Politics You -- in high school you were named the manager of the student body, and I think you've said at one point that that experience proved to you that you would never want to become a salesman of any kind. Nixon describes his role as manager of the student body in high school. He also considers his own introverted and private personality and the personalities of other presidents. 1705 Harold's Illness We -- we've been talking about your years in high school, and I think it was during that time that Harold's -- that Harold became ill, and it was diagnosed as tuberculosis, which started a long -- Nixon relates his brother Harold's struggle with tuberculosis and the years that his mother nursed Harold in Arizona. 2293 Time in Prescott, Arizona In Prescott, when you would go there for the summers, you worked. Nixon recounts the time that his mother and brother Harold lived in Prescott, Arizona. He speaks about visiting Prescott and about living at home in California without his mother. 2723 Considering Harvard Did you consider going -- when it came time to go to college, did you consider going east to college? Nixon speaks about his decision to stay in Whittier to attend college and how his life may have been different if he had instead gone to Harvard. college ; Duke University ; grocery store ; Harold Nixon ; Harvard Club of California ; law school ; LeBaron Russell Briggs ; New York City ; Phi Beta Kappa ; Radcliffe College ; Whittier College ; Yale Briggs, Le Baron Russell, 1855-1934 2909 Working in the Grocery Store You -- one of the reasons, as you say, that you had to stay at home was to work in the store, and I know you had taken over the vegetable department at that point. Nixon describes his work in the family's grocery store during college and his diverse group of friends in Whittier. Alexandro Lauros ; Bill Brock ; butcher ; Don Nixon ; football ; Francis Anthony Nixon ; grocery store ; hamburger ; Jesus Lauros ; Los Angeles, California ; market ; Nate George ; racial diversity ; racism ; Tomika Dubasha ; Tony Lauros ; vegetables ; Whittier, California 3151 Whittier College--Orthogonian Society What were the four b's? Nixon recounts his experiences with the social societies of Whittier College and founding the Orthogonian society with his friends. Beta Theta Phi ; Colorado College ; Dean Triggs ; Franklin Society ; fraternity ; Glee Club ; Hannah Milhous Nixon ; hazing ; initiation ; Orthogonians ; pneumonia ; Voltaire ; Whittier College Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885-1967 ; Voltaire, 1694-1778 3488 Whittier College--Professors Which of the professors do you remember? Nixon describes his professors at Whittier College. He talks about his love of Leo Tolstoy that developed at the time. 3830 Whittier College--Debate Team -- do you remember any of the debate topics that -- Nixon tells about his experiences traveling with the Whittier College debate team, including a visit to a speakeasy. He also recounts the first time he stayed in a hotel with his family. Adolf Hitler ; alcohol ; Arthur Nixon ; Brigham Young University ; campaign ; Charlie Milhous ; dictatorship ; Don Nixon ; economy ; Francis Anthony Nixon ; free trade ; Germany ; Hannah Milhous Nixon ; inter-Allied war debts ; Joe Sweeney ; politics ; Prohibition ; protectionism ; speakeasy ; Tom Collins ; U.S. Grant Hotel ; Whittier College ; World War I Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945 ; Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885-1967 4251 Whittier College--Football You've said that, next to your father, the man who had the greatest influence on your life was Chief Newman, your football coach. Nixon speaks about his time on the Whittier College football team under Coach Chief Newman. American Indian ; Arizona ; Bill Brock ; Herbert Harris ; Herschel Coffin ; Paul Smith ; racial diversity ; racism ; Rose Bowl ; segregation ; Shakespeare ; steak ; Wallace Newman ; Whittier College Coffin, J. Herschel (Joseph Herschel), 1880- 4566 Harold's Death It was at this time that, when you were in college, that your brother Harold died, that he got much sicker and then -- Nixon recounts the last days and death of his brother Harold and its effect on his family. death ; Harold Nixon ; illness ; medicine ; pneumothorax ; prayer ; Prescott, Arizona ; religion ; Rose Hill Cemetery ; tubercular meningitis ; tuberculosis Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885-1967 4943 Religion When you went to college, your mother warned you against losing your faith. Nixon discusses his religious beliefs. Billy Graham ; Charles Darwin ; creationism ; evolution ; faith ; Francis Anthony Nixon ; Hannah Milhous Nixon ; Herschel Coffin ; Jesus Christ ; Leo Tolstoy ; Quakers ; religion ; resurrection Coffin, J. Herschel (Joseph Herschel), 1880- ; Darwin, Charles, 1809-1892 ; Graham, Billy, 1918- ; Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885-1967 ; Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910 5168 Uncle Lyle's Visit At this time, when you were in college, your uncle Lyle came to visit, and I--I know you tell the story of-- Nixon recalls a visit to the beach where his Uncle Lyle first saw the ocean. Don Nixon ; Lyle Nixon ; Mack Sennett ; ocean ; Seal Beach Sennett, Mack, 1880-1960 Interview NIXON: --and he, telling of his cam--of his election to the Senate, and it was very, very close. And I remember calling him that night. And he says, " ; Well, I' ; m gone." ; That' ; s the way--" ; I' ; m gone" ; --and then he finally won. And later he told a group of us at Charter Marching about the incident. He said that he--that his manager told him, his manager in Louisville got a call from this guy out in the mountain country, and he said, " ; Tell" ; --he said, " ; How' ; s it going down there?" ; And he says, " ; Well, it' ; s mighty close." ; And this guy in the mountain country out in his district said, " ; Well, you tell the senator we' ; re praying for him." ; And he--he--" ; You son-of-a-bitch, you get back to stealing and stop praying!" ; GANNON: [Laughs.] That' ; s very good. NIXON: That' ; s a great story. I can tell that. GANNON: Absolutely. NIXON: Oh, I' ; m going to tell it. And I' ; ll say, " ; You S" ; --I' ; ll say, " ; S.O.B." ; I think " ; son-of-a-bitch" ; can be said on this program, can' ; t it? GANNON: Yes. NIXON: Is that done on television? GANNON: No-- NIXON: Well, " ; S.O.B." ; GANNON: --but we can-- NIXON: " ; S.O.B." ; GANNON: We' ; ll make--we' ; ll place television history. OFF SCREEN VOICE: You can do anything you want. NIXON: What' ; s the matter with that? OFF SCREEN VOICE: You can say " ; son-of-a-bitch." ; GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: I think--no. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: I think that is done, and I think ' ; hell' ; can be said also, like, " ; Give ' ; em hell," ; and that sort of thing. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: But that' ; s a great story. The way I had it originally, he said, " ; You son-of-a-bitch, stop praying and get back to stealing." ; OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: Isn' ; t that a great story, though? GANNON: Yeah. I had not heard that before. NIXON: That' ; s one of the great stories. GANNON: All the more reason to get these things down. NIXON: Oh, yeah, I' ; ve got a lot of those if I can remember if I just…. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] GANNON: I' ; m going to talk a little more about sports in high school and then about Harold' ; s illnesses in Prescott, but not his death. NIXON: You' ; re not going to get to his death yet? GANNON: No. We' ; ll talk about the illnesses and going to Prescott and then talk about-- NIXON: And my mother taking care of him? GANNON: Yes, and--including the chauffeur, George the chauffeur. NIXON: You want that? GANNON: Oh, yes. NIXON: Okay. GANNON: That' ; s good stuff. And then go to college and then talk about Whittier, about the college and about the courses and about sports, and then--then come to Harold' ; s death-- NIXON: Mm-hmm. GANNON: --at its time. NIXON: Mm-hmm. GANNON: And that you had to quit high school football because of--that' ; s what I' ; ll come in on--because of the--having to go into x-ray-- NIXON: Fear of tuberculosis? GANNON: And--yeah. NIXON: Well, actually I can say this, that they did find a scar on my lung-- GANNON: But it was from-- NIXON: --because I' ; d had pneumonia at three years of age. GANNON: Pneumonia, yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Frank. [unintelligible] Okay. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Thirty seconds to studio. It' ; ll be ten seconds before you get your cue. NIXON: But Arthur was a handsome child, wasn' ; t he? GANNON: In describing your dramatic-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me. Sorry. I want you to anticipate the cue just a little bit. Let' ; s take it from-- GANNON: In describing your dramatic debut, you mentioned your--your girlfriend, Ola Florence, Ola Florence Welch. What-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me. One second. [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: We' ; ve got a problem here. One more time. When you feel the light change, Frank, you can start to talk. That' ; ll anticipate itself. GANNON: Okay. GANNON: When you mentioned your dramatic debut in the Aeneid in the size eight silver boots-- NIXON: Size nine. GANNON: Size nine silver boots, you mentioned your girlfriend, Ola Florence Welch. What--what did it mean to have a girlfriend in Whittier, California, in 1927 or [192]8? What did boyfriends and girlfriends do? NIXON: Well, they didn' ; t do what they do today. Oh, for example, we' ; d go to the movies, miniature golf. There--there were the very simple things. Sometimes you' ; d go to the beach or you' ; d go to the mountains, no drinking, and in our case no smoking. Needless to say, no pot, drugs of any sort. Dancing, we learned to do that, me reluctantly. She was a very good dancer. But we had a good time. We had a good time. GANNON: Were they affectionate attachments or were they just friendships? NIXON: Oh, yes. They were quite affectionate, yes. Those--despite the--the--the difference in years and customs and so forth, affection was just as great in those days as it is now. GANNON: Was her family a Quaker family? NIXON: Oh, no. Her family were Episcopalian, and her father was the chief of police, not the chief, he was acting chief of police, a captain of police, actually, and they had come from Tombstone, Arizona, where he had been chief of police. He was a very well-read man. He--he was particularly interested in psychiatry and Freud and used to talk to the two of us about the subconscious and the unconscious, et cetera, et cetera. I never took psychology in college, but I learned to read about it because of the influence of the man we called Captain Welch. GANNON: That was very advanced at the time, wasn' ; t it, to be reading Freud then? NIXON: Yes, it was not only advanced, it wasn' ; t done very much in Whittier, and maybe that' ; s one of the reasons they never made him chief of police. GANNON: You--at this time you were active in sports in high school. The--the--the high school had a big swimming pool, and, I think, tennis courts. You played water polo. You ran track, and you also played football, but you--in the--it was the 130-pound middleweight-- NIXON: Mm-hmm. GANNON: --squad, but you had to stop because of-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --when Harold contracted tuberculosis the health of the other brothers were--was looked at. NIXON: Well, as a matter of fact, just to put my sports achievements in the proper context, I went out for everything. I went out, in addition to football and basketball, I went out for track. I did make the water polo team. I learned to swim, fortunately, and that' ; s something that has served me well through the years since then. But I was not that good at athletics. I wasn' ; t big enough for football. But in--when I went over to Whittier High School after two years at Fullerton, I was big enough--at least I no longer could play for the 130-pound team. I weighed about 150, so I wanted to go out for the varsity, and I took a suit out and was ready to go out and was looking forward to it, and Doctor Coffin, who was the--our doctor for Harold at that time-- GANNON: An unfortunate name. NIXON: That' ; s right. Doctor Coffin examined Donald and me. He found in Donald' ; s case, unfortunately, incipient tuberculosis, and Donald had to go to Arizona for one year with Harold before he recovered from that. Fortunately, he had no consequences. In my case, to my consternation, not because I feared it, but he found that I had a scar on the lung, and therefore he advised against continuing football. Well, I turned in the suit. I remember it was a very difficult thing to do. So that was the end of my football career, but I took it up again when I went to Whittier College, when I went out for football for four years, made a letter only in my first year when we had only eleven eligible men and they had to play me. GANNON: At this--at this time in high school, you were active in debate. NIXON: The scar, incidentally, was because I had had pneumonia when I was three years of age and almost died. And the scar is still on my lung, but it' ; s no problem. Excuse me. GANNON: The--a couple of the debate topics. It interests me to see, not so much in high school, but in college I know the subjects that you debated and that you researched formulated opinions--formulated opinions that you carried on through. I think in high school the subjects weren' ; t as earth-shaking. One had to do with insects and one had to do with renting. NIXON: In fact, let me tell you that was in grade school, not even high school In grammar school, the boys debated the girls, and I remember it to this day. It was a real competition and I--it was always difficult thereafter. That' ; s one of the problems I had with Helen Gahagan Douglas. I just--you just can' ; t really be as effective in debate when you' ; re debating a woman, let' ; s face it. And so I' ; d had experience at an early point. The two debates I remember that we had, one was it' ; s better to rent than to buy, and I had the affirmative of that, the boys did. And I felt very badly about it, because I--I thought that owning a home was the best thing on earth, and I talked to the old man about it. And he gave me very good advice because, as I said, he was very competitive. And he wrote something out for me, and I used it, and the debate was very effective. He said it' ; s--he did--he laid off the whole--the issue that of course the other side would use, that you should own your home because what does it mean spiritually and all that sort of thing. And he just stayed right on the economics. He said when you own your home, you have to pay for repairs, you have to borrow money, and then you have to pay the interest on it. If you lose a job, then you lose the home, and therefore it is a very great risk. Much easier, he said, and better to rent. Then the landlord has to make the repairs. If you lose your job, you just move on and let the land--leave the landlord holding the sack. Well, it was perhaps a little bit frivolous to attack it that way, but we won the debate on that particular issue. The other one was tough, too. It resolved that insects are more beneficial than harmful, and we had the positive of that, or the affirmative. Well, my God, when you think of things like mosquitoes and all the other terrible insects, flies, how could you possibly say that they were more beneficial than harmful? But I knew that my Uncle Tim, of course, was an expert on this. And so I went over to see him-- GANNON: He was the entomologist. NIXON: That' ; s right. He was an entomologist. We--he--he was always out at the family reunions with--wearing his glasses and a hat and going around catching bugs or butterflies. He had the greatest butterfly collection in all of California, incidentally, a famous one. Anyway, I said, " ; Uncle Tim," ; I says, " ; what about this?" ; He says, " ; Oh, you' ; ve got the best side of it." ; And so he told me that, sure, there were some bad insects, but, he said, on the other hand, in order for plants and trees to grow, there must be pollenization. There cannot be pollenization without insects. And plants and trees exude oxygen. Without oxygen, we would all suffocate. Ergo, if you do not have insects, you do not have plants and trees, and you don' ; t have oxygen, we' ; ll all die. Well, I' ; m oversimplifying what a great entomologist told me, but we won on that issue, too. So I learned very early--go to the experts. GANNON: Do you think that the changing times--that it is possible today for women in politics to--for--for--for a male, for a man politician, to debate a woman on purely--on the--the--the substance of the issue? Has that-- NIXON: It' ; s difficult. GANNON: Has that changed? NIXON: It' ; s quite difficult, actually. Oh, I know that in these days women insist on ERA. They--they want not only the rights but the responsibilities of men. They want to be drafted into the arms forces if men are drafted into the armed forces, and carry a gun if men do, and so forth and so on, but that ethic which we grew up with, I did at least, I think it carries over a great deal more than we think. And, after all, women are different. Oh, sure, they compete equally now. When I went Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0332/bmac
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88 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 2.
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gannix_0332
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-02-09
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 3. gannix_0333 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|11(15)|32(6)|47(6)|70(4)|91(4)|106(2)|123(2)|134(12)|149(2)|160(1)|175(2)|194(4)|208(15)|224(16)|235(12)|260(6)|280(14)|291(2)|304(16)|317(14)|339(6)|367(11)|395(7)|395(8)|398(2)|409(4)|420(14)|437(4)|445(1)|458(3)|476(2)|488(12)|503(15)|540(2)|591(2)|604(5)|632(2)|646(2)|664(1)|675(14)|689(14)|701(14)|718(2)|733(14)|744(1)|755(13)|771(15)|790(2)|802(16)|820(5)|836(6)|853(2)|868(1)|879(3) 0 https://youtu.be/SAD9oe8eCCE YouTube video English 5 Duke University--Advice -- about twenty of them were wearing them. Nixon relates advice given to him by professors and fellow students during law school. 281 Duke University--Whippoorwill Manor Can you describe what life was like in Whippoorwill Manor? Nixon describes living in an inexpensive house called Whippoorwill Manor during his time at law school. Bill Perdue ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; FBI ; Freddy Albrink ; Great Depression ; Lyman Brownfield ; Milky Way ; roommates Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 490 Taking the Bar Exam What were your options as you finished law school? Nixon discusses taking the bar exam and finding employment after graduating from law school. 819 Dating Pat Nixon Wasn't it -- it was after you were back in Whittier that you became involved in amateur dramatics and had the lead in, what was it, " ; The Night of January 16" ; ? Nixon speaks about his early relationship with Pat Nixon. 1515 Working at the Office of Price Administration Do you think you had a career as a bureaucrat, a government bureaucrat? Nixon describes his work with the OPA and his feelings about government employment. 1726 Navy--Enlisting How did your family feel when you decided to enlist in the Navy in -- for the Second World War? Nixon recounts his decision to join the Navy and his family's reaction. He also talks about his training and early assignment to Ottumwa, Iowa and subsequent decision to request sea duty. 2083 Navy--Sea Duty You shipped out on the S. S. Monroe to -- Nixon describes his sea duty with the Navy during World War II. Nixon also relates learning to play poker while in the Navy at Green Island and tells about the time he had a royal flush. 2805 Navy--Dining and Working with the Seabees / Writing Home What was Ni -- what was Nixon's hamburger stand? Nixon recounts making hamburgers for flight crews and eating and working with the Seabees. He also talks about keeping in touch with family back home and celebrity visitors during the war. Interview NIXON: The scholarships were only contin-- [Garbled]--about twenty of them were wearing them. Only the first day, however, because, I' ; m telling you, that faculty was an excellent faculty. They came from Harvard and Stanford and Columbia and Cal and so forth and so on. And by the time they got through brutalizing that first year class, they had them scared to death. And they didn' ; t wear their keys the next day. I remember one in particular--Brian Bolich was the professor of property, he was a Rhodes Scholar and had studied in London, and he--he came in--this is right in the middle of the recession--Depression, we could call it that then, in 1934--and he said, " ; Well, young men," ; and--he said--he said, " ; Well, ladies and gentlemen," ; he says, " ; I have a little advice for you before we start this course. Marry for money and practice law for love." ; Well, that got us off with-- GANNON: That' ; s advice you didn' ; t take. NIXON: That' ; s advice we didn' ; t take. But it got us--it made us realize that it was going to be tough once we finished law school, to get out and get a good job. GANNON: Didn' ; t one of your other professors give you advice about your writing style that-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --helped you much--or that stuck with you much later on? NIXON: Yeah. Well, one of my professors was David Cavers. David Cavers taught conflicts. He was also the editor-in-chief, or the faculty advisor for Law and Contemporary Problems, which was our law review. And one summer I did an article for Law and Contemporary Problems under his guidance. I remember what an impressive fellow he was. He had been first in his class at Harvard Law School, which we knew was--meant that he was one of the top echelon. And I' ; d go in to see him as we' ; d look--as he was critiquing my drafts. He would sit there. He would smoke cigarettes, and great big smoke rings would come out. And I was fascinated by that. At the same time, he' ; d be grading papers, he' ; d be reading my copy here and advising me. He could do three things at the same time, and each equally well. And I said, " ; Well, that' ; s a genius." ; And I realized that I certainly wasn' ; t in that class. GANNON: Didn' ; t he--he took some of your writing and talked to you about the--the--the length-- NIXON: Well, when he saw it, you know, when it took me--he was very--actually, complimentary. I worked awfully hard, but it was slow. And he said, " ; It should flow more freely." ; And he--he said, " ; You' ; ve got constipation in writing. You' ; ve got to let it flow out more easily." ; But writing has always been difficult for me. I' ; ve never been able to let it just rip out, as some people seem to be able to do it. Cavers did something else that was very nice that I remember. In our first year, I recall that I didn' ; t--couldn' ; t go home for Christmas, of course. And he and his wife invited two of us for Christmas dinner at their house, and I remember it was so nice. They had chestnut dressing. And another dish that they had that I had never had before, and never had it as good since, she took these little tiny onions and served them in a cream sauce. And for them to take two law school students far away from home and do that, I thought was beyond the call of duty. GANNON: Didn' ; t one of your--one of the upperclassmen give you some-- NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: --advice about your-- NIXON: Well, I was scared-- GANNON: --whether you' ; d succeed or not? NIXON: --that first year, because, as I said, we--they--they pulled no punches, and--the faculty. The faculty was very tough on us, and they deliberately wanted to scare us. They thought by scaring us we' ; d work harder. And they were right. They ei--you either worked harder or you quit. But one evening, late, in the library--I mean, one evening, I guess it was around eleven-thirty, I was working in the library, studying. And Bill Adelson, a big hulking fellow, a lawy-- who later became a lawyer in Maryland, came by, and he says, " ; Nixon," ; he said, " ; what' ; s the matter? You look a little worried." ; And I said, " ; Gee, Bill, I' ; m scared." ; I said, " ; I--all these guys, and this course is so hard," ; and so forth and so on. " ; I don’t know if I' ; m ever going to keep this scholarship." ; This was just before mid-year exams. He looked at me with his cynical look--says, " ; Don' ; t worry, Nixon. You' ; re gonna do all right. You know what it takes to learn the law?" ; I said, " ; No." ; " ; An iron butt. And you got one." ; GANNON: Can you describe what life was like in Whippoorwill Manor? NIXON: Well, in Whippoorwill Manor, four of us lived. And we lived there for five dollars a month. Not each-- GANNON: Well, it was essentially-- NIXON: Not each-- GANNON: --just a-- NIXON: Not each. GANNON: --a shack, almost, wasn' ; t it? NIXON: Not each. It' ; s five dollars for the four of us a month. What it was was a house, a lady lived there with her daughter, and we lived in one room. The reason that she wanted us there was it was in the middle of the Duke forest, and she was glad to have people there for security purposes. And so they had this one room, and there were two iron beds, double beds, and two of us, Perdue and I, slept in one bed, and Brownfield and Albrink slept in the other bed. There was a big pot-bellied iron stove in the middle. In the middle of the winter each--we' ; d stuff paper into it the night before we went to bed. We crawled in at midnight, never before then. And then first one up in the morning would light the--the fire so that it heated up the room, took the chill off. Then we would get into our clothes and walk the mile and a half that it took back--to get back to the campus. We shaved over at the--in the men' ; s room at the campus and took our showers later in the day when we went out to play a little handball or something like that. But it was worth it to do it for five dollars a month. GANNON: Didn' ; t you live on Milky Ways at this time? NIXON: The devastation of my teeth and the--and the prosperity of my dentists over the year--yes. For three years--this--you' ; ll find it hard to believe--I had a Milky Way for breakfast. Period. And it did do damage to the teeth, but it certainly was good for the pocketbook, ' ; cause it only cost five cents. GANNON: There' ; s a story I' ; ve heard about the inability of your group at the time to resist anything free, and that Albrink may have--Albrink may have taken it to the limit when there was a free test offered at the hospital and he signed all of you up for it. NIXON: Ha! I had forgotten about that, but we--you know, you hear about the--the Depression was such a sad time. But I look back on that Depression in Whittier, I look back on law school and the rest, it wasn' ; t a sad time. We had a good time. We had to work pretty hard. People weren' ; t beating on our doors--there weren' ; t--I don' ; t remember people coming around, except for those that were trying to get agents for the FBI, who were looking for jobs and so forth. That' ; s one of the reasons I could relate so well to Eisenhower. When Eisenhower, when he came home to Abilene and made his announcement for running for president, and he described his early life in Denison and then later Abilene, Kansas, and he said, " ; We were poor then, but the glory of it was we never knew it." ; And I would say that in our case we never felt put upon because we didn' ; t have that much, that we had to work, that we had to live on Milky Ways or twenty-five-cent lunches and that sort of thing, or live at Whippoorwill Manor without inside plumbing. It' ; s just a different attitude. I' ; m not sure that that ethic is, however, not un--gone. GANNON: What were your options as you finished law school? What did you --what did you want to be when you grew up? NIXON: Well, I think--I think then that I had the idea that I wanted to be a lawyer, but also probably to go into politics. Because I discussed it with Dean Horack, who was my faculty advisor. You see, I worked in the library there, I did research work for Dean Horack. One summer I mimeographed a whole case book by hand for Douglas Maggs on constitutional law. And during the course of that I got to know these professors pretty well, and I' ; d ask them for their advice. And Dean Horack said, " ; Don' ; t go to New York. If you' ; re interested in politics, go home. Practice law at home. You may not get as much money, but that' ; s the only way if you want to do anything in the political area." ; So I eventually went home. But we went before that--I--I made a try at some other things. Went up to New York and we--I was interviewed up there, along with the others, at various firms. The only one that showed any interest in me was a very good one, Donovan, Leisure, Newton and Lombard. I met all the senior partners there, including " ; Wild Bill" ; Donovan, whom I later met when he was ambassador to Thailand after I was vice-president in 1953 and then again, before he died, when I saw him at Walter Reed in 1958. But they wrote me about a month after I was there, asking if I was still interested and I replied at that point that I had made a decision in another direction. Another one was the FBI. They were recruiting. And I met with the recruiter, as did several of us. And didn' ; t hear anything from them. Years later, I was talking to Edgar Hoover at a dinner at Alice Longworth' ; s house, and I sort of gigged him a little. I said, " ; You know, I applied for the FBI and couldn' ; t get in." ; Well, Hoover, of course, is very political, and--but I think this is not apocryphal. I think this is actually what happened. He called me a couple of days later. By that time, I was vice president. And he said, you know, " ; I' ; ve checked the records," ; and he said, " ; I found that--that in the year 1936, as a matter of fact, you were approved for special agent, but we were unable to offer you a position because the Congress had not increased our appropriation." ; Which is probably the only time Congress didn' ; t approve one of his increases in appropriation. So I ended up going back home. GANNON: And you joined a law firm. First you had to pass the California bar, which-- NIXON: A tough, tough challenge. Because the California bar--I had not studied California law at Duke. I didn' ; t know anything about the California code, evidence, corporations, things like that. I took a cram course, which was a four--we--a four-month cram course, and I only had six weeks to do it. So I went up to my grandmother' ; s house, and I locked myself in there with no interruptions. I studied hard and took the bar. GANNON: You said at one point that you went there because she made--it was quiet. You could sit in the upstairs room and she would bring you creamed chipped beef. NIXON: She was a fine cook, as were all of my aunts, and my mother as well. But she made chipped beef in a different way. I' ; ve never had it since. You now, these days you get che--chipped beef in a restaurant, they just take big slices of beef and chipped beef and then cream it off, and it' ; s some pretty gooey stuff. But she would do it so meticulously. She' ; d chop it up very, very fine, and then she' ; d stir the flour in and then the cream and so forth, and serve it on toast. And it was a real delicacy. GANNON: You' ; ve told the story about getting word about-- NIXON: Oh, yeah. GANNON: --the results of the exam, the size of the envelope indicating whether you' ; d passed or failed. NIXON: Well, we--once you took the bar exam, it' ; s pretty scary taking it, and it' ; s even scarier waiting to see whether you' ; ve passed. See, the bar exam was three days of written examination. Seven hours a day. And everything that you have learned in three years of law school is all on the line for those three days. And so I thought back, " ; My God, I wonder if they can read my writing." ; I--I' ; ve never been a very legible writer. And I wondered if I knew enough, and so forth and so on. So I waited and waited and waited. And I' ; d been told that when you receive notice of the bar that it would be received by mail. And if it were a large envelope, give up. Because a large envelope would simply have application blanks for you to apply to take it again. If you had passed, it would be a small envelope. Well, we watched and watched and watched for it. And my mother opened--went to the mailbox. It was Rural Route 1, Box 75A on Lufinwell Road. And she came in, and tears were coming down her cheek because I had told her about the large and small envelope, and she handed me a brown manila envelope. It wasn' ; t very big, but it wasn' ; t small. So I took it, and I went into the bathroom to open it. I opened it up, and I had passed. And I came out, and everybody cheered and so forth. And if we' ; d been a drinking family, we' ; d have had a drink. But, as it was, we celebrated in milk. GANNON: Wasn' ; t it--it was after you were back in Whittier that you became involved in amateur dramatics and had the lead in, what was it, The Night of January 16? NIXON: The Night of January 16 and Dark Tower and-- GANNON: And it was at the rehearsal for Dark Tower that an important event occurred. NIXON: Yes, that was the occasion when I first met Pat. And she was a beautiful girl. And striking and vibrant, and--and there was no question about her being the dominant force as far as that play was concerned, and as far as my life was concerned. So I asked her for a date after I had taken her home from the rehearsal. And she said, " ; Well, I' ; m very busy." ; And then I said to her, " ; Well, I think you should go. I think we should go out because, you know, I' ; m going to marry you someday." ; Well, it was very uncharacteristic for me to say something so impulsive, because I usually put things down on a yellow pad, pros and cons and so forth and so on. And here' ; s the biggest decision of my life, certainly up to that time. But, also, like most successful politicians, I--I have intuition. And when you have intuition you just do it. I always believe in making the big play, and so I made the big play, and this time it worked. GANNON: Was it love at first sight, then? NIXON: For me, yes. For her, I think it took a little more time. GANNON: You were--you courted through-- NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: For several months. NIXON: Yes. We liked the same things, we liked the beach, we liked the mountains, we liked good movies. We liked good music. We went to Hollywood Bowl on every occasion we possibly could. GANNON: You' ; ve said something I can sympathize with, that when you would go to the beach, which you both liked, you had to sit covered up because--because you would burn badly. NIXON: I burn very badly. As a matter of fact, she used to laugh that we always took an umbrella with us, and we' ; d take the umbrella out. And even with the umbrella, I would have to keep on a T-shirt. I could not leave my back exposed, or I' ; d have the most terrible sunburn. And so--and she didn' ; t have that problem at all. GANNON: How did you propose? NIXON: Well, I was proposing from the moment I met her. That wasn' ; t necessary. It was just a question of when she would--when she would accept, and it finally happened out, I think, at Dana Point, as a matter of fact, looking out over-- GANNON: Is that--that story is true, then-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: --that in the gazebo at Dana Point-- NIXON: At Dana Point, as a matter of fact, she finally said yes, and that was it. GANNON: What do you think made her say yes at that point? NIXON: I wouldn' ; t try to judge. I think there were a number of considerations, perhaps, but she' ; s--we got along very well. It was--there was a lot of mutual respect. And also a lot of very deep affection. But she was, of course--an interesting thing about her, incidentally, she was a very remarkable person, too. The women in my life have all been remarkable. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, Pat, and my daughters. And--and in her case, she never told me, we never talked about what we had done, where we had been, what we had been through. It was always about the future. Never about the past. I didn' ; t know till years later, for example, that she had worked as a movie extra in Hollywood. And I--I didn’t know, for example, until shortly after we were married that she' ; d spent a couple of years in New York working as an x-ray technician in order to work her way--help work her way through school. I didn' ; t know that she' ; d been a teller in a bank. She never had told me about some of her family problems, the tragedy of her mother, who died of cancer when she was about nine years of age. Her father, who died when she was sixteen. She never told me, for example, that she worked at Bullock' ; s Wilshire as a salesgirl. And that she could have done all this and still graduated from USC with honors. And, incidentally, she also worked there for Dr. Roth, professor of sociology, as a research assistant. To do all that, to take care of her brothers, as she cooked for them and so forth after her father died, and nursed him when he was sick, and then to come out as she did, this is quite a story in itself. GANNON: What did you talk about? NIXON: Well, we--I think we talked more about the future. We--we talked about places we wanted to go. She wanted to travel, I wanted to travel. She had an adventurous spirit. I did, too. We talked about the--we, of course, were both very fond of movies. This was before the days of television and so forth. And there were very good movies to see and good ones to talk about. We did not talk politics. Not at that stage. GANNON: Isn' ; t it true that until you went to get the wedding license, the marriage license, that you didn' ; t know what her real name was? NIXON: Oh, that' ; s true. Her name actually was Thelma Ryan. She didn' ; t like that name, and so she took the name very early on of Pat Ryan, because that' ; s what her father called her. Her father was Irish. Her mother was born in Germany. I remember when I saw Adenauer. He was very impressed by Pat. And he said to me, " ; Tell me her background." ; And I said, " ; Well, she' ; s half Irish and half German." ; And he snapped his finger and said, " ; That' ; s the best combination of all--German strength and Irish beauty. And she' ; s got both." ; And he' ; s--she--her mother--let' ; s see. Where were we there? GANNON: We were talking about the name. NIXON: Yeah, yeah, well, her father--she was born on the sixteenth, but very late at night, and her father, then, when she was born, said, " ; She' ; ll be Saint Patrick' ; s babe in the morning." ; And so from then on, he called her Pat. So she took the name Pat. And, as a result, she has--when our daughters were born, she said, " ; We' ; ll not" ; --both Tricia and Julie--don' ; t give them a second name. They may not like the names we give them. Let them have their choice. GANNON: This is a--this is your wedding picture taken at the-- NIXON: Riverside Inn. GANNON: Yes. NIXON: Double-breasted suit. GANNON: You remember the day? NIXON: Yes, and I remember the--the--the trip. We went to Mexico. We took that whole honeymoon trip. We spent two weeks in Mexico. We had a great time. We did it on a hundred and fifty dollars. Portal to portal. GANNON: Hadn' ; t your friends prepared a-- NIXON: Our friends took care of us. GANNON: --a special surprise for you? NIXON: Yes, as a matter of fact, they gave us a lot of canned goods to take along, because they knew we were going to stay in auto courts and have to take--and the difficulty was that they took all the wrappers off the cans, so when we got down and we' ; d open the cans, we didn' ; t know whether we were going to have peas, beans, spam, sausage, what have you. But that made it a lot of fun, too. GANNON: After a while as a--of being a lawyer in Whittier, you got a--through an old law school professor, through Cavers, you got an offer to go to Washington as a--essentially as a bureaucrat in the-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, Frank. GANNON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] We just hit the end of the second reel. Maybe we should make a--maybe we should wrap here and pick up in the morning. What do you think? You want to put up another reel? NIXON: Well-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Oh, I' ; m sorry, Mr. President. NIXON: What do you think? I think we could do a little bit more. GANNON: Maybe not a whole reel, but-- NIXON: Let' ; s do a half a reel, about a--' ; cause how much--let' ; s get through--GANNON: Get through ' ; 46. NIXON: --get through ' ; 46. GANNON: Yeah, let me-- NIXON: I mean--through the election. I think we should. We--we' ; re rolling on that, and then we can get to the other, and we can be on schedule. GANNON: Yes. NIXON: It' ; s coming along fine. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: Good. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, that' ; s two minutes. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Right. [unintelligible] We' ; ll be starting with camera one. Thank you. GANNON: Do you think you had a career as a bureaucrat, a government bureaucrat? NIXON: No, I could never have stayed in government. Not that I didn' ; t learn something at OPA. But it seemed to me that, as I was in government and saw what they did, that it was very important not to have government run things. I don' ; t mean that there weren' ; t so many dedicated people there, and particularly during the wartime period. But, on the other hand, it was very discourag--discouraging to me when my superior, David Lloyd, told me on one occasion that I could get a promotion from a P-3, which got thirty-two hundred dollars a year, to a P-4, where you make thirty-eight hundred dollars a year, if I' ; d build a little staff. Well, I said no, I didn' ; t need a little staff. I had--could do what I was doing without it. This was--learning to write letters about tire rationing and that sort of thing. That turned me off. But also another thing that turned me off was what I considered to be unnecessarily arrogance, frankly, of little people in big jobs. I mean, the way they seemed to really delight in turning down some poor guy at a service station and so forth when he' ; d write in about his tires that he needed for his ration and so forth and so on. I could see then, and, incidentally, it' ; s something that happens through government today, too, that you put little people in big jobs, and they want to push other people around. Now I was--I--I thought O.P.A. was necessary. However, it gave me a very good feeling about why government should be limited to what is necessary and what it really can do and not be expanded. GANNON: How did your family feel when you decided to enlist in the service, in the Navy? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Hold on just one second. Frank, I' ; m sorry. Keep the tape rolling. Raise that hand for one second. GANNON: Recognize that young man? NIXON: [Mild laughing sound.] NIXON: What' ; s the matter, a hair get out of place, or--' ; kay. OFF SCREEN VOICE: How is that, Roger? NIXON: All right. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, stand by. We' ; re still rolling. Five. GANNON: How did your family feel when you decided to enlist in the Navy in--for the Second World War? NIXON: Well, I' ; m sure that both my mother and my grandmother--grandmother disapproved, but they never told me that. That wouldn' ; t be the Quaker way. They--while they believed deeply in pure pacifism, they understood that others might not believe that way. And they accepted and respected that kind of belief. GANNON: We have a photograph here of the young lieutenant. Do you--you did your training at-- NIXON: Quonset Point, Rhode Island. And learned to stand straight, and to keep my shoes clean, and I was pretty good in all the courses, actually. In fact, I did well enough that they was--asked if I wanted to stay for air combat intelligence, which I didn' ; t want to do, so I asked for ships and stations. And was assigned to Ottumwa, Iowa, in the middle of Iowa, where there was no ship, and no station yet. Right in the middle of a cornfield. In fact, the only time I' ; ve ever had a gun in my hand, you know, when I was growing up, I never went fishing, except once, and then quit. I--we didn' ; t hunt, and the only time I ever had a gun in my hand was at Quonset. And remember, as officers, we' ; re all given .45s. That was part of our equipment. But we had to go out on the range and learn how to shoot them. And I took ten shots at the target. I didn' ; t hit it once. And so I carried the--the--the .45 with me. I didn' ; t ever use it abroad. I had it with me, if necessary. And I don' ; t have a gun in the house up to this point. I wouldn' ; t know how to use it. GANNON: It' ; s a good thing you weren' ; t called on to-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: And then you did--from Ottumwa, you did get overseas. NIXON: Well, from--from Ottumwa, a notice again came on the board there indicating that officers who were twenty-nine years of age or younger--and I had just turned twenty-nine--could apply for sea duty. So I applied for sea duty. I' ; ll never forget--I felt very badly about the way this was handled. Two or three of us did that because we were anxious to--to get out to sea, to, you know, do something more close to the war effort. And Dorris Gurley--that name shouldn' ; t fool you--it' ; s " ; D-O-R-R-A" ; --" ; D-O-R-R-I-S," ; it wasn' ; t a W.A.V.E.--a very vigorous man--was my commanding officer. And I remember he was very hurt when my application came across his desk. He said, " ; Why didn' ; t you tell me about this?" ; And I says, " ; Well, Commander, I was--should have, but, you know, I didn' ; t want you to feel that you were being put upon or anything like that. I didn' ; t want to ask for--you for a favor." ; So he went out of the room, and he came back with a Coca-Cola, and he had one in his hand. " ; Here," ; he said. " ; Drink this. You' ; re not going to get those out there in the Pacific." ; GANNON: How did you--how did you say goodbye to your family? NIXON: Well, it was a rather painful occasion. I recall that we were all at the Union Station in Los Angeles. And my grandmother was there, my mother and my father and the brothers. It was not tearful. Just sort of sad. Because, you know, in that war you never knew what was going to happen. I guess they all felt, well, this may be the last time you see somebody. GANNON: Did you think you' ; d come back? NIXON: Oh, yes. Yes, I had no--never had any fear of that. Let me--let me say one thing, too. I don' ; t want to give the impression that, as far as I was concerned, that when I applied for officers' ; training, when I was in OPA, or when I applied for sea duty, when I was in Ottumwa, or when I applied for going up the line, when they put me in Nouméa, New Caledonia, that I was a real brave fellow and wanted to get up there where the action was. It--it was just simply a--an innate feeling, inner feeling that it was vitally important to be where the action was. Not to show your courage, but that that was your responsibility. You had to be there. I felt that if I didn’t get where the action was, I would not have done my duty. Now, let me say, there are thousands, yes, millions, who never got up the line. And they certainly did their duty. But I felt I, at least, had to try, or otherwise I would regret it. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Let me interrupt one second. Keep rolling. [unintelligible] NIXON: Get back to the picture. GANNON: Yes, we want to--these pictures shouldn' ; t be rolling. NIXON: Yeah, I want to see that other picture. GANNON: These pictures shouldn' ; t be rolling. NIXON: Who was that? Was that picture with the nurse? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, sir. GANNON: I think so. NIXON: I can' ; t believe it. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Don' ; t turn. NIXON: I think I recognize that one. GANNON: We should go to the top, with just the president and a--next to the palm tree. NIXON: Now this one here is-- GANNON: Hold it. Wait a minute. No. NIXON: --nurse? GANNON: We' ; re going to bring the--we' ; ll bring the--we' ; ll start with this one and then bring them back up. NIXON: Good God, where' ; d you get those pictures? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, we' ; re coming out on Two. NIXON: Where the hell did they get those pictures? GANNON: From your--in your-- NIXON: Did I bring them home? NIXON: See, where-- NIXON: --who would have had them? NIXON: Did I have them? GANNON: Some of them were--I don' ; t know. NIXON: Yeah, but who-- GANNON: Some of them were snapshots. NIXON: Yeah, but I mean, who would have brought them? GANNON: I don' ; t know. NIXON: Who would have brought them? It had to be me, and I don' ; t even remember them. Somebody else must have-- NIXON: I remember her. I got something with her and Lindbergh. See if Lindbergh isn' ; t in that next picture. That' ; s what I was going to say. GANNON: Oh, okay. GANNON: You shipped out on the S. S. Monroe to-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: Where did it-- NIXON: Well, the--the-- GANNON: --go to? NIXON: It was one of the " ; president" ; liners. It was a luxury liner fitted out for two hundred and fifty luxury passengers, and we had three thousand on it. We lived--the officers were in bunks, three high on the walls and so forth and so on. Took seventeen days to get to Nouméa, New Caledonia. And I remember the most unpleasant experience on that was not the fact that we had to wear life belts at times and so forth and so on, but was the fact that I was, of course, allergic to seasickness. And they used to bet--we only had two meals a day. And my friends who were sitting at our table used to take bets among each other as to how long I’d stay at the table. I seldom got through a full meal. But I didn' ; t lose much weight on the way. GANNON: We have some pictures here--from I guess they' ; re from different points of your time in the Pacific. Do they--do you recollect any of the places or people? NIXON: That could be Guadalcanal, I think. I think I' ; m standing alone there, and that' ; s the way we did--of course, it was in the tropics and you didn' ; t wear a coat. I remember that, I think. GANNON: The next picture, I think, is Green Island. NIXON: Now where am I? The second man? GANNON: Third. We' ; re going to zero in on you in the-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: --during the Solar Tope. NIXON: Yeah, I remember that one very well. Yes, and that' ; s Augie Kontz, the commanding officer is next to me and Harry von Loo, who was a great United Airlines pilot, who' ; s further over, if you can move it back again. Looks to me in that picture that I had that five o' ; clock shadow problem then as well as later. And that, incidentally, is a nurse there. Let me tell you an interesting thing in that respect. I recall--now what in the world is this? GANNON: This looks like--this is S.C.A.T. headquarters. NIXON: Yes. GANNON: Let' ; s hold that, and-- NIXON: But where? GANNON: --and-- NIXON: But I recall, for example, when I see that nurse, I was reading Lindbergh' ; s diaries, wartime diaries which are fascinating, and he kept a marvelous diary, and he recounts in there his going to Green Island. And he recounts there the great excitement when a nurse came in on one of the S.C.A.T. planes, and that all of the men, thousands--New Zealanders--really--it was the First--Third New--New Zealand Division was there. And I remember as well. In fact, Lindbergh came in on the same plane with the nurse. And nobody was paying any attention to him--I did. But everybody was hooting and hollering and cat-calling and so forth, ' ; cause, my goodness--whistling. Here was this nurse. I tell you, she could have been a chimpanzee. As I remember, she wasn' ; t that pretty anyway, but she was a female, and they hadn' ; t seen one for a long time. That night, incidentally, the commanding officer invited me to have dinner with him and three or four other--half a dozen others--with Lindbergh. And, believe it or not, I turned it down because I was the host for the poker game that night. And I just--I think back to turning down a chance to sit down with Lindbergh to have a poker game. I think it' ; s--I just cannot imagine it happened. And years later I was glad that he could be a guest at the White House when I was president. He was a fine man. GANNON: How did a Quaker boy from Whittier become a poker shark? NIXON: I learned it on-the-job training, so to speak. And that' ; s usually very expensive. But I seem to have a pretty good sense for poker, and I had pretty good instruction from my roommate, Jimmy Stewart, who was from New York and very suave and sophisticated, knew Sherman Billingsley and all of the beautiful people and all that sort of thing. And so I learned pretty well. GANNON: What was your technique? NIXON: Well, the technique was--in my case was to play it very close to the vest. I didn' ; t--I knew when to get out of a pot. I didn' ; t stick around when I didn' ; t have the cards. I didn' ; t bluff very often. I just bluffed enough so that, when I really had the cards, people stayed in. Whenever I bluffed, in other words, I let it be known that I had bluffed and lost so that I could stay in. And, of course, my most vivid experience--and this is something that I--I imagine very few people, certainly any of our listeners have--have probably never had this experience--I' ; ll never forget. In a stud poker game one night, I drew a hand--I understand it' ; s--would be at the odds of six hundred and fifty thousand to one that this could happen. I drew the ace of diamonds down, and then, in order, exact order, came the king of diamonds, the queen of diamonds, the jack of diamonds, the ten of diamonds. A royal flush. Four of them showing. Well, I played it pretty well. There were pairs--a couple of the other fellows had pairs, and instead of raising, I just sort of checked, you know, or stayed in or called and so forth and so on, till finally there was a pretty fair pot. But at the end--this was one of those times, you know, when the--after--at the end I, of course, placed a big bet, and most everybody checked out. They thought maybe I had it. But this is one of the times you don' ; t have to show it when you' ; re not called. But I had to show it. And I turned over the ace and everybody just--nobody' ; d ever seen it before. And they' ; ll never see it again. GANNON: In your memoirs you wrote--you quoted Gladstone, I think, saying that, " ; A great prime minister must be a great butcher." ; Do you subscribe to the theory that a great president must be a great poker player? NIXON: It helps. The Russians, of course, are chess players. I never understood chess. It' ; s much more complicated, much more complex. But many of the things you do in poker are very useful in politics. And very useful in foreign affairs. I--I--one of the problems, you see, in foreign affairs particularly, in dealing with great leaders abroad, particularly those that are adversaries, is--is the--the almost insatiable tendency of American politicians to want to put everything out on the table. Their inability to know when to bluff, when to call, and above everything else, how to be unpredictable. Unpredictability is the greatest asset or weapon that a leader can have--of a major country. And unless he is unpredictable, he' ; s going to find that he loses a great deal of his power. GANNON: Do you recognize this young man? NIXON: I don' ; t remember that picture, but I' ; m going to see these later. GANNON: You' ; re going to get another look at him. NIXON: I know who it is. I can' ; t remember that--where that was. I don' ; t know who would' ; ve taken the pictures. GANNON: What was--there' ; s another-- NIXON: Oh, there' ; s our group. That' ; s the Green Island group. Oh, I see on the left there, [Hollis Dole]. You see, on my right, Hollis Dole. Hollis Dole was an officer. I was the commanding officer of the, I would say the officer in charge of that detachment, and it was a wonderful group, let me say. They were--here' ; s [Red Hussey] down there and [Massingill], who was a bartender from Texas, et cetera. But I--and there' ; s the doc back there. The doctor was with us--he was--always used to say at the end of a day, " ; Well, another day, and another fourteen dollars." ; That' ; s what doctors with flight pay got in those days. But let' ; s come back here to this situation with regard to Hollis Dole. Hollis Dole was my roommate at Vella Lavella. And Vella Lavella, incidentally, was a P.T. boat harbor as well as being a S.C.A.T. base. GANNON: Did you ever meet John Kennedy? NIXON: And--and that place, Vella Lavella, years later when I met John--when John Kennedy and I had debated for the first time at McKeesport--McKeesport, Pennsylvania, about the Taft-Hartley bill, we rode back on the train together and talked all night. And we talked about what we had done in the Pacific or where we had been. I asked him if he' ; d ever been in Vella Lavella. He said, " ; Absolutely." ; He' ; d been in there many times. And I said, it' ; s very possible we met there, because I went aboard a PT boat and met all the officers, but they were just lieutenants, and I was just a lieutenant. They didn' ; t remember me and I didn' ; t remember them, but we laughed about the fact that we might have met. But in any event, at Vella Lavella we had some problems, particularly insofar as some insects--I guess you wouldn' ; t call them that--centipedes were concerned. There were centipedes there. They were also all over the island, particularly in Vella Lavella. I remember this particular thing. Hollis Dole' ; s my roommate. One night, some way, a centipede had gotten underneath the mosquito netting and I felt something on my hand. It woke me up. And I flipped my hand like that, and the centipede dropped on Hollis Dole and bit him right here in--here, and he was bleeding. The blood was coming down, just streaming down. This centipede was this long. They' ; re huge out there. And Dole said, " ; Oh, my God." ; Dole knew something about centipedes. He says, " ; I' ; m gonna be out for at least three days." ; Because those centipede bites can sometimes even be fatal. They are always very painful. So Dole went into the hospital for three days and then came out. And years later he came into government, and I saw him in the Oval Office at the White House. He was in the Department of the Interior. So we met again. Then Massingill is sitting down there in the middle. Tex Massingill, probably the second man over on the left in the first line. And I remember Massingill was our crew chief, for loading and unloading planes. And one day we had a huge number of planes in. We brought in supplies, we took out litters and sitters, you know, wounded and so forth and so on. And we--this crew could--was very overburdened, and the night before, Massingill had been bit by a centipede. And he came in, huge swelling here. And I said, " ; But, uh, Tex," ; I said, " ; you can' ; t possibly work today, can you? You got bit by a centipede." ; He said [in a Texas accent], " ; Yeah." ; He said [in a Texas accent], " ; Don' ; t worry about it, Lieutenant. They grow twice that big down in Texas." ; And went through the rest of the day. Well, we had some good times there. Let me say none of those in that first two rows--the officers are standing in back--graduated from college. They were high school graduates. Because I had to censor their mail, I knew about--that they all had girlfriends or mothers or someone, although I was very careful not to try to censor it too carefully. But they were the most extraordinary ordinary men I' ; ve ever known. Devoted, dedicated, and all wanted to go home, but only after they' ; d done their job. GANNON: It sounds like the platoons that you see in the movies, the war movies. NIXON: Well, it was a war movie. GANNON: What was Ni--what was Nixon' ; s hamburger stand? NIXON: Well, I think that' ; s been exaggerated a bit in the--what happened was I found out that you could get some hamburger meat on occasion for flight crews. And also I found that you could liberate some from time to time. The Seabees sometimes did that, and I ate in their mess. And so I knew how to make hamburger from my old days. And the flight crews would come in, and I--I set it up so--and I fried the hamburgers there and gave them hamburgers when they came in. And on occasion we' ; d give them a bottle of Australian beer. Now, understand, this is the end of the flight, not before. And that was excellent beer. That wasn' ; t very often, however. So, consequently, I was about the most popular officer in the South Pacific because of that hamburger stand. GANNON: How-- NIXON: They were pretty good. GANNON: How were things liberated? NIXON: Well, the Seabees--people wonder why I was so much for the hard hats. I talk about remarkable men, and they were remarkable. I remember one time on Green Island we were--they were making an airstrip there, and it--there was an air raid signal. But some of them were false. And these big Seabee guys, they' ; d be in the big bulldozers, they' ; d ignore the signals, and they' ; d keep working there, even in the middle of the night with their lights on in order to get the airstrip finished. Boy, they were something else. Most of them were from the east. This was the Twenty-Second Seabee Battalion. And I got to know them very well, and I ate with them because I was the head of a small detachment--Army, Navy, Air Force were all members of it. I, being a naval officer, was the officer in charge, being a lieutenant and the ranking officer. And so I was able to select which mess we would use. Well, I turned down the Marine mess because the Marines can fight, but they couldn' ; t cook. They were terrible cooks. I turned down the Army mess because they were almost as bad cooks as the N--as the Marines. The only other mess was the Seabee mess, and it was the best. It wasn' ; t because their cook was so good, but the Seabees, you know, they had access to a lot of things. They could put in a--they could put in some flooring in your tent. They--they could make various utensils and so forth. And so they would trade for meat and other vittles for their mess. And what they didn' ; t trade, they stole. And they were very good. GANNON: Did you-- NIXON: They liberated, I mean. GANNON: Right. You did finally get up the line and see some action. NIXON: Well, these were really what you call action areas, but let' ; s be quite candid abi--about it. I think the most lively place I was in was Bougainville. There were about thirteen or fourteen days when we had air raids every night. One night it was pretty close. The Japanese plane used to come over. The way you could tell it was a Japanese plane is the motors were not synchronized. They go [rising and falling plane sound], " ; Dee-dee-dee-dee." ; Even without the air raid, you knew it was a Japanese plane coming over. And they were really harassing us because our Air Force had knocked down most of their power. One night was no air raid, and we heard this plane. It had come in very low. And we heard the bombs dropping as they came down the runway. [Growling sound] " ; Rrrrrrrrr." ; They were dropping. And we dived out of our cabin into the foxhole. As soon as we got out, we saw that our whole tent had been sprayed with bullets. It was a close one. GANNON: Why was SCAT called Murder, Incorporated? NIXON: Because we lost a lot of planes. It wasn' ; t our fault, though. You see, we didn' ; t have the navigation devices and all that sort of thing. These were DC-3s operating over enemy waters and enemy territories. But also operating against very, very tough weather conditions on occasion. And it wasn' ; t that bad. I was never afraid to ride it. But we-- GANNON: What did you do? NIXON: I was what we call an operations officer. I deter--I determined how big the load should be, how many passengers we could take, made up the manifest, the flight times, checked the planes in and out and that sort of thing. Sort of routine. GANNON: How did you keep in touch with home? Did you get letters or write letters back? NIXON: Oh, yes. Every day. I wrote letters every day of the fourteen months I was there, numbered them all, and Pat wrote to me every day, numbered them all. I must say the--the most important thing of all was getting the mail. I remember, incidentally--that reminds me of the only ti--the other person I saw--I saw two celebrities in the South Pacific. One day in Nouméa, I was riding on a road from Nouméa up to a base further north, and sirens were heard, and we pulled off to the side. I was in a jeep, and riding in--in a weapons carrier, sitting very straight, was Eleanor Roosevelt. And I thought that was really great. Here she was, out here where the action was. And then up on Bougainville one day, How--Harold Stassen came through. And, of course, I was interested in him because, although I was not in politics yet, I wa--had interest in it. I knew he' ; d been the youngest governor, the boy wonder, in Minnesota. He was attached to Halsey' ; s staff, and I remember meeting him. I shook his hand. And he said, " ; I' ; m just up here checking to see how the mail is. Is the mail coming in all right?" ; And I said, " ; Yes, sir, Governor. The mail' ; s coming in fine." ; That was the first time I met him, and from that time on, I was a Stassen man, until after 1948, when he didn' ; t make the nomination for president. GANNON: It didn' ; t take much to convince you. NIXON: Very little. Oh, contacts are very simple. As a matter of fact, you talk about Jerry Voorhis, as we will a little later. The first time I met Jerry Voorhis, he wouldn' ; t remember, I' ; m sure. But I remembered it very well. It was in 1935. Between my first and second years at Duke, I went home, and [Jack Betit], who had won the constitutional oratorical championship at Whittier High School two years before I had, had gone on to Pomona College, where he became national champion of--of the constitutional oratorical group. And Jack Betit invited me and a--about twelve or fifteen other young people of voting age to his barn. Now, really, it was a barn converted into sort of a playroom. And sitting there in the middle was a young person who was running for Congress. He was smoking a pipe. He was a professor, or lecturer, at Pomona College. It was Jerry Voorhis. I remember how impressed I was. He was highly idealistic. I don' ; t remember what he talked about, but I can say this. He impressed me. He impressed everybody else there, and if I had voted in 1936, which I did not, I would have voted for him. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Gentlemen, just continue to look at each other and talk. I' ; m going to make a light change and pull out here. GANNON: Well, we’ve come to the [inaudible]. NIXON: We' ; ve still got some more, isn' ; t there? GANNON: I think we' ; re getting more into the--we' ; re getting--we--we' ; re--we' ; re out of, or getting out of, the flow of anecdotes and getting much more into specific chunks-- NIXON: From now. GANNON: Yes-- NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: --getting much more into specific chunks of-- NIXON: Yeah. Which should go faster. GANNON: --history. Yes. NIXON: The anecdotes may prove to be the most interesting thing they got, though. GANNON: Yeah, and-- NIXON: What do you think? GANNON: I think so, and we' ; ve got them, so that whatever--whatever--however it' ; s edited, they' ; re there. NIXON: Now, let' ; s see, you' ; ve got the--now we' ; ve got to get home. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0333/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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55 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 3.
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gannix_0333
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-02-09
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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United States
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moving image
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Dublin Core
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 4. gannix_0334 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|1(1)|2(5)|18(3)|29(2)|46(2)|62(5)|90(3)|103(2)|119(16)|131(13)|145(18)|169(1)|182(15)|197(7)|214(13)|232(1)|246(2)|258(12)|282(8)|298(2)|313(7)|327(6)|341(4)|355(5)|371(19)|389(6)|402(2)|419(16)|431(2)|445(2)|460(1)|472(2)|487(3)|515(2)|531(3)|542(3)|556(8)|567(16)|586(2)|603(2)|615(17)|624(17)|634(13)|654(6)|667(7)|681(8)|697(7)|708(2)|721(14)|731(10)|748(2)|771(13)|789(8)|807(5)|818(13)|829(18)|841(2)|852(4)|862(3)|877(8)|893(13)|910(17)|925(5)|935(16)|952(8)|962(2)|973(16)|987(2)|1001(2)|1012(14)|1031(1)|1050(2)|1064(1)|1084(8)|1100(16)|1113(12)|1127(16)|1143(2)|1156(1)|1166(2)|1181(16)|1202(17)|1213(3)|1227(8) 0 https://youtu.be/dhwWEfl-8A8 YouTube video English 112 Loud Voice / Interest in Sports I believe you started life endowed with something very useful for any politician, a very strong voice. Nixon speaks about having a strong voice from infancy. He also talks about his interest in sports and his feelings about boxing. 449 Waterloo Bridge / Albert Upton / Homecoming Bonfire In talking about apple pies, you once said that your mother's apple pie reminded you of a movie, of W -- " ; Waterloo Bridge" ; . Nixon relates anecdotes about meeting Jimmy Stewart, learning under literature professor Albert Upton, and planning the homecoming day bonfire as the chairman of Whittier College's pep committee. 664 Dentistry / Jewish Emigration from Russia You also, in college, you played basketball -- -- didn't you, as a -- Nixon recounts breaking a tooth in college and needing dental work before his 1972 election night victory speech. He also talks about discussing policy about Jewish emigration with the Soviet Union. 1972 ; Admiral Rickover ; anti-Semitism ; basketball ; dentist ; Dr. Chase ; Inaugeration ; Jackson-Vanik Amendment ; Jewish emigration ; KGB ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Pat Nixon ; Raoul Wallenberg ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; Whittier College ; Yuri Andropov Andropov, Iï¸ U︡. V. (Iï¸ U︡riĭ Vladimirovich), 1914-1984 ; Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Rickover, Hyman George ; Wallenberg, Raoul, 1912-1947 1146 Fireside Chats To go back somewhat in time, when you were in college and in law school, did you listen to the fireside chats, did you listen to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio? Nixon describes listening to the radio while in law school and discusses the effectiveness of President Roosevelt's fireside chats and President Reagan's similar optimism. abdication ; Duke University ; Edward VIII Duke of Windsor ; fireside chats ; Franklin Roosevelt ; Great Depression ; New Deal ; radio ; Ronald Reagan Maggs, Douglas Blount, 1899-1962 ; Reagan, Ronald ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 ; Windsor, Edward, Duke of, 1894-1972 1451 Remembering Historical Events We know where you and some of your Duke colleagues were now, by the -- by the radio in 1936. Nixon recalls where he was when some important historical events took place, including when World War II began, V-J Day, the death of President Roosevelt, and the German invasion of Russia. He also describes the two times his pocket was picked and his views on drinking alcohol while president. alcohol ; Budd Company ; campaign ; champagne ; China ; Duke University ; football ; Franklin D. Roosevelt ; Germany ; Julie Ward ; Los Angeles Times ; maotai ; Mark Renter ; Napoleon Bonaparte ; Neva Renter ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Pat Nixon ; Pearl Harbor ; pickpocket ; president ; Russia ; Times Square ; Victory over Japan ; whiskey ; World War II ; Zhou Enlai Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, 1808-1873 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 2067 President Roosevelt / Uncle Lyle's Visit / Practical Jokes Was President Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, a master of the media, or -- or did he have a friendly press, or was it a combination of the both, the two? Nixon considers the media opinion of Franklin Roosevelt. He then shares stories about a visit from his Uncle Lyle and living in Whippoorwill Manor at Duke University. He discusses his views on humor during political speeches. Belgian war relief ; Checkers Speech ; Don Nixon ; Duke University ; Everett Dirksen ; Fletcher Knebel ; Francis Anthony Nixon ; Franklin D. Roosevelt ; Freddy Albrink ; Gridiron speech ; Herbert Hoover ; humor ; Jack Knight ; Lyle Nixon ; Lyman Brownfield ; Lynn Sheller ; media ; Milky Way ; ocean ; radio ; Russian war relief ; Seal Beach ; Secretary of Commerce ; Wasserman test ; Whippoorwill Manor ; Whittier College ; World War II Dirksen, Everett McKinley ; Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964 ; Knebel, Fletcher ; Knight, John Shively, 1894-1981 ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 2717 Southern Viewpoint When you went to Duke, it was your first time in the East. Nixon describes encountering southern viewpoints for the first time while attending law school and reevaluating his views on southern Civil War generals. He also recounts Winston Churchill's opinion on Robert E. Lee. 2904 Green Island / Poker We have a photograph from the South Pacific taken -- do you recognize it? -- I think -- taken on Green Island. Nixon recounts his time in the South Pacific with the Navy. He shares stories about the arrival of a nurse and learning to play poker. He also relates his presidency to his poker strategy and determines what kinds of poker players other presidents would be. 3767 New York City Do you remember your first impressions of New York City? Nixon describes being in New York for the first time, including going to the opera and purchasing a worthless fox fur. He also talks about returning to Whittier and buying a car. Alexsei Kosygin ; Bill Perdue ; Bolshoi Theatre ; car ; Charles De Gaulle ; Clint Harris ; Edward Nixon ; Hannah Milhous Nixon ; lawyer ; New York ; Oldsmobile ; opera ; subway ; Tobacco Road ; Whitier Gaulle, Charles de, 1890-1970 ; Kosygin, Aleksey Nikolayevich, 1904-1980 ; Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885 - 1967 4107 Sports Commentary Do -- you told me once about the -- that when you were courting Mrs. Nixon, you went -- your -- your loyalties were sorely tested because you took her to the USC-Duke game. Do you remember that? Nixon describes going to football games with Mrs. Nixon and how he would have liked to work as a sports commentator. Antelope Al Krueger ; baseball ; Del Webb ; Doyle Nave ; Duke University ; football ; Howard Jones ; Joe Theismann ; New York Yankees ; Office of Price Administration (OPA) ; Robert Riggins ; Super Bowl ; University of Notre Dame ; University of Southern California ; Wallace Wade ; Washington Redskins Jones, Howard H., 1885-1941 ; Krueger, Alvin John 1919 - 1999 ; Riggins, John, 1949- ; Theismann, Joe ; Wade, Wallace, 1892-1986 ; Webb, Del E., 1899-1974 4430 Time in the Navy Do you remember your first plane ride? Nixon talks about his time in the Navy, including his first plane ride, an attack on Green Island, and his least favorite assignment. Interview GANNON: I believe you started life endowed with something very useful for any politician, a very strong voice. NIXON: Well, in fact, my Aunt Ollie reminded me of the fact, after I was elected to Congress, that my loud voice was something I had had from the beginning. She said--she vividly recalled when she used to visit us in Yorba Linda when I was a baby that my father would be out on a tractor in our lemon grove, and I would be crying, and I would cry so loud that he' ; d come in off the tractor raging at my mother and saying, " ; Hannah, if you can' ; t keep that boy quiet, I' ; ll have to get off this tractor and do it for you." ; GANNON: You had talked about reading the Los Angeles Times cover to cover, and particularly the sports pages. Were there any particular sports you followed, or did you have any particular heroes in those days? NIXON: Well, I followed practically all sports, baseball and football and so forth and so on. Now, boxing is something I don' ; t care for today. I' ; ve never seen a professional boxing match, but I was fascinated by the accounts of the Dempsey-Carpentier fight, where Carpentier, the Frenchman, was considered to be a war hero, and Dempsey, I think unfairly, as I learned later, was considered to be a slacker. Dempsey, of course, knocked out Carpentier, who basically wasn' ; t heavy enough to fight Dempsey, in the fourth round, although Carpentier staggered Dempsey in the third round, according, at least, to the report I read. I think the most exciting one that I read about, though, was the Dempsey-Firpo fight. I mean, they built that up. The hype was fantastic. Firpo, " ; the Wild Bull of the Pampas," ; fighting Dempsey, and that was the fight where Firpo, after being knocked down a couple of times, knocked Dempsey down and even out of the ring. And after having been knocked out of the ring--I' ; m sorry. Let' ; s start that one over again. Was the--the fight that I remember even more vividly was the Dempsey-Firpo fight, because they built up Firpo with a terrific hype, the fact that he was the Wild Bull of the Pampas from Argentina. Incidentally, I met him many years later, in 1958, in Argentina. And that Dempsey, of course, would be the giant killer. Well, it turned out that way, but it was a dramatic fight because Dempsey knocked Firpo down about eight times, and Firpo knocked Dempsey down certainly at least two or three times, and in the second round, Dempsey, of course, knocked him out, but it was one of the most dramatic fights of all. I don' ; t know why, after having followed those fights, I didn’t become a boxing fan, but some way it just never appealed to me. GANNON: Do you think in terms of--how do you feel about the current controversy in--after the death of the young Korean fighter in the Mancini fight, do you think boxing should be-- NIXON: Well-- GANNON: --stopped? NIXON: Boxing turns me off, frankly. I would say that the only thing about boxing is that Howard Cosell is a great announcer for boxing. I--I frankly don' ; t think that baseball and football are his bag. He wouldn' ; t agree with that, but he is superb when it comes to boxing. GANNON: Why is that? What makes a good boxing announcer? NIXON: It' ; s a--it' ; s a combative feeling. It' ; s the feeling that you’re there, but some way it just seems to me that, particularly today, the way the boxer--boxers beat each other senseless, the way they' ; re managed--well, I' ; ll tell you one thing that made--turned me off on boxing particularly. I knew Joe Louis. He supported me in 1960, and this man, who perhaps was the greatest, maybe even greater than Dempsey or Muhammad Ali, this man was so mismanaged by his managers, ripped off, that he died owing several million dollars to the Department of--Internal Revenue Service. And when I thought of that, what he had done for his race, what he had done for boxing and so forth, I thought, something wrong with this thing. It is not a sport. So, my feeling today is you' ; re not going to outlaw boxing. You' ; re not going to get away with it any more than you can outlaw the drinking, but, as far as I' ; m concerned, I outlaw it in my own mind. I don' ; t ever intend to follow it, and I don' ; t ever watch it on TV. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Can we stop one second? I need to fix the mike cable. [Unintelligible]--the audio system in--[unintelligible]. GANNON: We' ; ll go to apple pie. NIXON: Uh-huh. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] While we' ; re on hold here for a second, Frank, when do--how soon before you need the nurse picture? GANNON: Oh… OFF SCREEN VOICE: Is that the first picture we' ; re going to see? GANNON: It' ; s the first picture, not for several minutes, I' ; d say. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, fine. We' ; ll--[unintelligible] GANNON: Mm-hmm. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay. You can even say to me, " ; Let' ; s go to the [unintelligible] picture--[unintelligible]. Okay? GANNON: Mm-hmm. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stand by, everybody. Five seconds back to studio. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Hold it. Five to studio. Here we go. GANNON: In talking about apple pies, you once said that your mother' ; s apple pie reminded you of a movie, of W--Waterloo Bridge. NIXON: Yes. I remember the movie because it was a very moving movie. Jimmy Stewart was in it, and I recall that he was trying to court a rather flashy showgirl type in New York and in London and--let' ; s start again. I recall the movie because Jimmy Stewart was in it, and he was courting a rather flashy showgirl type, and in trying to get it across, he came--he was, of course, sort of a country boy in the service and so forth, he told her that he felt about her the way he felt about his mother' ; s apple pie. And then he said, " ; My mother made wonderful apple pie, and when she died, I have never had apple pie again. And that' ; s the way I feel about you." ; GANNON: You mentioned that Albert Upton, a professor at Whittier, was a--was a very iconoclastic man-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --who created a-- NIXON: Well, at Whittier, he certainly, of course, wouldn' ; t have been an atheist, but I would say he was skeptical. He was the one who had me read Tolstoy, of course, and approved of the fact that I, of course, read Rousseau and a lot of other people in my French classes. On the other hand, Upton had--who was a professor of English, and a very good one--he had a very, very high regard for the Bible, not just for religion, but more as literature. He said it was some of the great literature of all time. And he said probably the greatest book ever written was the book of Ecclesiastes. And so, when I was in the Pacific, we didn' ; t have much to read, but the Bible that my grandmother had given me when I had graduated from college I read virtually every day, to my great profit. GANNON: Even as a college student, you had the competitive instinct and spirit that has characterized you throughout your career. As president of the pep club, I read that you set a--a highly competitive goal for yourself. NIXON: I certainly did. You see, Whittier, of course, was a Quaker school, and it was not, of course, just a coincidence that our homecoming day was on Armistice Day every year. And one year we' ; d play Occidental, one great rival, and another day--year we' ; d play Pomona. This was the year that we were playing Pomona, and I was chairman of the pep committee. And we always had a bonfire, and the chairman of the pep committee had the responsibility of building the bonfire, and it was traditional to put on the top of the bonfire a privy. Those were the days when you had outside privies. Well, up to that time, they had had one-hole privies and two-hole privies, but never a three-holer. And so, with a couple of my colleagues in the class on the pep committee, we scoured the country, we found a marvelous three-hole privy, and we liberated it and took it and put it on top of the bonfire. It was the greatest bonfire we' ; ve ever had at Whittier. GANNON: Did you win the game? NIXON: We did that year. Yes, we did. GANNON: You also, in college, you played basketball-- NIXON: [Laughs.] GANNON: --didn' ; t you, as a-- NIXON: Well, I think that' ; s an exaggeration. I think I pointed out that I was really not very good at any of the sports. On the other hand, when I did play basketball in my freshman year, in a game against La Verne College, I was trying to guard a very good forward from La Verne, and I guarded him fairly closely--it was fairly--and he came down into the front of my mouth with his elbow like that, and broke a tooth. Well, as a result of that, I had a terrible problem, because I had to get the tooth, of course, fixed. GANNON: A visible tooth? NIXON: It' ; s--it' ; s--no, the tooth right in the front like this. And so, consequently, my tooth experiences since there have been very inter--interesting. One, for example, involved Pat. I remember when I met her that the tooth had been, of course, replaced and attached to another one with a gold band, and she didn' ; t think that was attractive. She always had a thing about teeth. She believed in having teeth looking very good, and she insisted after we were married that we put some of our hard-earned money into getting a porcelain cap, one that didn' ; t show the gold. And then, years later, in 1972, on Inauguration--no, on election night it was--I was sitting there listening to the returns and having a bite to eat, and the cap broke, and Doctor Chase had to come in and down in the basement of the White House, he hurriedly put in a Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0334/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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86 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 4.
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gannix_0334
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-02-09
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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United States
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moving image
OHMS
-
Dublin Core
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
OHMS Object Text
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 5. gannix_0335 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|31(5)|46(15)|67(12)|79(15)|97(17)|110(13)|134(8)|147(4)|172(7)|198(2)|212(5)|226(1)|239(3)|255(1)|267(14)|278(2)|290(14)|306(11)|319(4)|338(1)|350(15)|361(6)|376(5)|388(2)|401(12)|418(9)|434(2)|446(18)|460(1)|482(2)|512(6)|523(16)|533(14)|545(6)|556(15)|575(5)|587(2)|602(2)|617(14)|630(15)|643(13)|660(2)|675(13)|696(2)|708(3)|723(14)|740(2)|757(14)|769(5)|782(12)|798(6)|811(4)|825(11)|842(7)|865(6)|878(2)|890(19)|910(5)|925(2)|938(3)|953(12)|972(11)|993(9)|1006(6)|1021(2)|1028(15)|1042(12)|1056(3)|1066(17)|1076(4)|1087(3)|1100(8)|1113(3)|1125(1)|1136(16)|1152(2)|1165(2)|1176(14)|1187(14)|1200(2)|1212(1)|1226(10)|1235(15)|1249(1)|1260(15)|1274(4)|1282(16)|1314(16) 0 https://youtu.be/SsoKdEhj4hQ YouTube video English 70 Beginning Political Career You've said that it was a letter that brought you into politics. Nixon talks about a letter from family friend Herman Perry inviting him to appear before a committee selecting a candidate to run for Congress, which began his political career. Bill Carroll ; California State Assembly ; Congress ; Engineering and Research Corporation (ERCO) ; Fund Crisis ; Gerald Kepple ; Herman Perry ; Jerry Voorhis ; Office of Price Administration (OPA) ; Whittier College Voorhis, Jerry, 1901-1984 400 Committee Selection How did you find out the result of the committee's deliberations? Nixon recounts his selection by the Committee of 100 to run for Congress in 1946. 568 First Congressional Campaign Was Mrs. Nixon enthusiastic about the possibility of going to Congress? Nixon describes his first Congressional campaign against Jerry Voorhis. He also relates the birth of his daughter Tricia during the campaign and discusses which politicians have had the most exciting personalities. 1172 1946 Congressional Campaign--Funding How did you get funding? Nixon talks about obtaining funding for campaign expenses and tells a story of going to a constituent's home to raise funds. He describes Voorhis's difficulty in the election due to receiving endorsement by Communist organizations. 1900 1946 Congressional Campaign--Debates In the debates, didn't you particularly challenge him on the subject of his effectiveness as a congressman for the district? Nixon speaks about his debates against Voorhis during his first campaign and his campaigning techniques. He also explains the claims that Voorhis was a Communist and their effect on the election. 2621 1946 Congressional Campaign--Winning But you did win. Nixon recounts winning his first congressional election and celebrating his win. 2846 Meeting John F. Kennedy When you got to Washington, one of the other members of the freshman class elected in 1946 was John Kennedy of Massachusetts. Nixon speaks about meeting and working alongside President Kennedy during the beginning of their congressional careers. 3169 House Un-American Activities Committee / Meeting President Truman You were assigned to the House Labor and Education Committee, but you were also assigned to a second committee, the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was exceptional for a freshman. Nixon recounts his appointment to the HUAC. He describes meeting President Truman and entering the Oval Office for the first time. 3458 Herter Committee Joe Martin, who was the speaker of the House, gave you another surprise shortly with the appointment to the Herter Committee, which turned out to be a very -- an important step in your career, and really your first opportunity to exercise your interest in foreign affairs Nixon explains his appointment to the Herter Committee by Joe Martin. He describes first trip to Europe with the committee. 3774 Communism / Foreign Affairs Did you find the Communist presence powerful? Nixon describes the communist presence in Europe during his first visit with the Herter Committee. He also considers his effectiveness at foreign affairs, which he attributes to his upbringing and ability to connect with individual people. 4304 Chinese and Russian Relations / International Languages It seems that in the last several months the relationship with China that you forged and opened as -- opened and forged as president, has been drifting and loosening, and the Chinese, in fact, are talking with the Soviets. Nixon discusses the likelihood of China and Russia working together and what that would mean for the United States. He recommends English and French as important languages for international citizens to learn. 4598 Self Evaluation You've recently written a book on leaders called " ; Leaders" ; . Nixon discusses what makes one a good leader and analyzes his own leadership capabilities and time as president. 5048 Historical Figure Dinner Party If you could have been present at -- at any event in history, what event would most have interest you -- interested -- would most interest you to put yourself back in time and watch as a -- as a fly on the wall? Nixon considers which historical event he would most like to observe and which deceased historical figures he would invite to a dinner party. Abraham Lincoln ; Benjamin Franklin ; Charles De Gaulle ; Cicero ; Edward Gibbon ; Jesus Christ ; Napoleon Bonaparte ; religion ; Saint Augustine ; The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ; Theodore Roosevelt ; Thomas Jefferson ; Voltaire ; Winston Churchill Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo ; Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Cicero, Marcus Tullius ; Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790 ; Gaulle, Charles de, 1890-1970 ; Gibbon, Edward, 1737-1794 ; Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826 ; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 ; Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, 1808-1873 ; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919 ; Voltaire, 1694-1778 Interview GANNON: --taken a little better care of. NIXON: And Willis Cove and it' ; s near this? GANNON: Yes, you' ; ll--you' ; ll see it if you look off. It' ; s called Anguilla because it means " ; eel," ; and it' ; s shaped like an eel. NIXON: Well, I' ; ll tell you, there' ; s nothing primitive about this place. GANNON: No. NIXON: It' ; s one of the most ex--Los Hermanos is one of the most expensive places in the world, not just the U.S. And it' ; s terrifically good. GANNON: Let' ; s start with--let' ; s start with the--the letter from Herman Perry again. Then--then the two a.m. phone call and Tricia' ; s--do you mind talking about Tricia' ; s being born, and the minks next door? NIXON: Yeah. We don' ; t want to go too long. That' ; s fine if you think it' ; s good. GANNON: And then--and then we' ; re into the ' ; 46 campaign. NIXON: If it' ; s--if it' ; s good. GANNON: Then that' ; s the last-- NIXON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Ten seconds. GANNON: I think it' ; s-- GANNON: You' ; ve said that it was a letter that brought you into politics. Is that true? NIXON: A letter from Herman Perry, who was in college with my mother at Whittier College, who was then the head of the Bank of America branch in Whittier, one of the town fathers there, one of those who urged me to run for the state assembly before I came east to go with the OPA. GANNON: In 1941? Before the war? NIXON: Before the war, in 1941. What had happened there was that Gerald Kepple, the assemblyman, was decided--had decided not to run because he was going to be appointed to a judgeship, and they looked around, and they decided that, as a young, coming fellow who was very active in community affairs, that I might be a good candidate. It was--it was quite an honor to be asked. GANNON: And you said yes? NIXON: No, I said that I' ; d like to think about it, and then I opted to answer the other letter that I' ; d received with--from Tom Emerson with regard with going to the AP--OPA. GANNON: I' ; m sorry. I meant that you said yes to the-- NIXON: Oh, I' ; m sorry. GANNON: --to the--to the later Perry letter. NIXON: Oh, yes. With the Perry letter, yes. I called on the phone, as I recall, and he, of course, made it very clear that he didn' ; t have the nomination to offer, that they had a committee, and that you' ; d have to fly out there to appear before the committee. And then I got to work and wrote letters and all that sort of thing, setting up the stage for going before the committee. One of the real problems I had was finding a way to get out there. I was settling these contracts with not only the Martin Aircraft Company, but also with Engineering Research Company, and I was right in the middle of negotiations, and airplane tickets were hard to come by, and I remember the controller of E.R.C.O., Bill Carroll was his name, said that he' ; d go down, pick up a ticket for me, and he went down to the airport, picked up a ticket on one of the airlines to go to California. It was American Airlines, as a matter of fact, and then he billed me from his credit card when he got the bill. Years later, during the famous fund crisis, one of my critics pointed out that I had borrowed money from a contractor in order to run for Congress. And that' ; s what that' ; s all about. GANNON: Was this--was the group that Perry represented the Republican organization? NIXON: No. They were all Republicans, but this was a--a Committee of 100, as they called them, citizens getting together who wanted to find a candidate who could beat Jerry Voorhis. GANNON: Who was the incumbent. NIXON: Jerry Voorhis was the incumbent, had been the incumbent for ten years. He had just slaughtered every Republican candidate up to that time, and everyone up to that time had been ultra-conservative. Now, Perry was a conservative, but he was also a realist. And the other people in this committee, they weren' ; t big businessmen. Basically, they were insurance people, real estate people, one was an auto dealer, et cetera, et cetera, but they were people that knew that you had to have a progressive stance in order to beat Jerry Voorhis even in that district, which was more conservative than Voorhis was. And so, consequently, a group of a hundred representing the various cities in the district sort of put themselves together, a--and then they proceeded to interview candidates. Of course, one of the apocryphal stories out of that campaign was that this committee put an ad in the paper asking if people wanted to run for Congress and to apply to the committee. There was never any ad. There was a news story to the effect that they were going to interview candidates, and finally six finally showed up in Whittier, appearing before that committee at the William Penn Hotel the night I did, the first night. And it was after that first night that the decision was made, at least I learned it was made, in my favor. GANNON: How did you hear? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, gentlemen. I have to inter-interrupt for one second. [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Keep rolling tape. OFF SCREEN VOICE: We' ; ll come back to you, Frank, on camera one. GANNON: Right. NIXON: Oh, that' ; s Herman, all right. I don' ; t recognize some of the others. GANNON: Sorry? That' ; s the right one. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay. NIXON: Jesus, what memories. GANNON: I' ; m going to ask you how you got the-- GANNON: How did you find out the result of the committee' ; s deliberations? NIXON: I--When I went out and appeared before the committee, I made a ten-minute speech, as did the other six candidates, and I was in my uniform, of course, and I did rather well, I--apparently. GANNON: You made the speech-- NIXON: I was the last speaker. GANNON: You made the speech in--in uniform? NIXON: Yes. Oh, yes. I didn' ; t have a suit, not at that time, and I flew back to Middle River, and to continue with my work with the Navy, and late at night I had a call from a man that I had met out there, Roy Day, who was the Pomona representative on the ticket--on that committee. And he shouted on the phone. He said, " ; Dick! The nomination is yours! The committee has voted for you," ; so much to so many. I remember it was about three to one. Well, of course, I was very excited, but I hadn' ; t heard from Herman Perry. He was the one that didn’t call me. About ten minutes later, Herman Perry called, and he told me the same thing. And, incidentally, I practiced then a lesson I learned from my mother many, many years before. I remember once she said that George Washington once said that a gentleman has never heard a joke. And so when Herman told me, it was news. And I have learned that with politics all my life. Somebody will say, " ; You have won this or that or the other thing," ; and when he thinks he' ; s telling you for the first time, he is, and you must let him think he is. GANNON: We have a photograph of some of your early supporters, some of the members of the Committee of 100 in 1946. NIXON: And that' ; s Herman Perry right in the middle. GANNON: That' ; s the man who brought Richard Nixon into politics. NIXON: He certainly is. He was a marvelous man. He didn’t live until I became president, but his son did, Hubert, and he was very active in all my campaigns. GANNON: Do you recognize any of the other-- NIXON: I can' ; t from--from here. Let' ; s see. GANNON: You recognize him. NIXON: That one I can pick out, but I must say [unintelligible]. GANNON: He looks like a kid. NIXON: Well, he was. [Laughs.] Thirty-two at the time. No, I can' ; t remember the others. I can' ; t recall them. There' ; s Chief Newman. I recognize him in the back row. GANNON: That was your football coach. NIXON: And there' ; s [Tom Buley] on his right. Chief, you--is, of course, the swarthy-complected--my football coach. GANNON: Did he play an active part in campaigning for you? NIXON: Oh, yes. He wasn' ; t political, but, on the other hand, the word got around, everybody that played at Whittier College--" ; Well, Dick' ; s the one," ; and so forth and so on. And I had a strong group of supporters there, not only in that campaign, but in the senate campaign, the vice presidential campaign, the presidential campaigns, from then on. GANNON: Was Mrs. Nixon enthusiastic about the possibility of going to Congress? NIXON: Oh, yes, very much. She was very much for it. She knew that my interests were in that direction. She liked adventure. She thought that it was very important to live an exciting life, and, frankly, going to Congress was--would be exciting, she thought. GANNON: Wasn' ; t--Tricia was born just about the time of the campaign? NIXON: Tricia was born in February of the next year, and, incidentally, it was an occasion that I don' ; t like to be reminded of. The doctor had told me and her that Tricia would be born in about two days--two or three days. And actually first babies usually are born late, you know. In this case, she was born a bit early. And I was over in Los Angeles, meeting with a group of my political supporters at the University Club in Los Angeles, when the telephone rang and she said, " ; You' ; re the father of a baby girl." ; So I rushed home, but I wasn' ; t there when Tricia was born. GANNON: Mrs. Nixon, I think, helped you in the campaign after-- NIXON: Oh, did she help. She--we--we had very little money. You see, we weren' ; t the organization candidate. Not that the organization was against us. They didn' ; t have any other candidate, but this was before the nomination, and she worked in the office. She did envelopes and passed out literature and all that sort of thing. She had a very interesting experience, as a matter of fact. We had limited funds and the--at one time somebody came in and took a whole lot of our--of our campaign literature out, and then came in and took out some more. We found out that it was just being thrown in the wastebasket. In other words, it was just one of the opposition playing a prank. So she watched very closely. After that, she let them have--take only one at a time. GANNON: Was Voorhis a good congressman? NIXON: I thought that he was. He was a very sincere congressman, and, incidentally, he was very effective. After Tricia was born, I remember that he sent us a baby book, which was common in those days. I wrote him a little note thanking him for it. Also, I remember seeing him on the House floor. The only time prior to the time of my going to Washington as a congressman that I saw the House in session was when I graduated from Duke. My grandmother came back with my mother and father and two brothers in a Chevrolet car, and six of us went in that car up to Washington. I had to get a ticket to get in to see the House of Representatives. And we got it from Jerry Voorhis' ; office, because he was the congressman of the Twelfth Congressional District, in which Whittier was located. I remember we got there late in the afternoon , and there were only four on the floor, which was a shock and a disappointment. I was to learn later that it was quite common at the end of a day. and the speaker on that occasion speaking was John Stephen McGrority, who was sort of a halfway poet and so forth, who was a liberal congressman from California, a Democrat, who was for the Townsend Plan. Incidentally, my old man was for the Townsend Plan, too, because he believed that it was very important to do something about older people in their retired years. One of the few listening was a young congressman--to Jerry Voorhis--that I had met in [Jack Betit' ; s] barn just three--two years before that. And I remember so well, after John Stephen McGroarty finished his speech, and the speaker said, " ; The House will now stand in recess until twelve o' ; clock tomorrow," ; that Voorhis gathered up a whole lot of papers that he was working on all the way--all the time, stayed there to hear his colleague finish his speech, and he went walking out of the room, the chamber, very, very speedily. And I sort of thought, " ; Well, there is a very conscientious man." ; You know, Voorhis was a very decent man. His problem was he wasn' ; t effective, and his political problem was he was a liberal, ultra-liberal as a matter of fact, in a relatively conservative district. And that was the fundamental reason why in 1946 he lost. There were other reasons, but that was the main one. GANNON: How did you beat him? NIXON: Well, first, in all fairness to him, the tide was running in our favor. It' ; s very possible that--that I would have won if I hadn' ; t campaigned at all, although I doubt it because he was very good at constituent relations, not only baby books to me, but agriculture books to the farmers and all that sort of thing and so forth and so on. He handled his mail very well. He always answered it. He was good to his constituents, but I think what happened that really gave me the lift was that after the primary, when he was substantially ahead of me--since we were both filing on both tickets, we could tell who was ahead--that after that, I challenged him to debate. The way it came about is that we were invited to a joint appearance before one group, and then I--after that debate, which was in south Pasadena, the League of Women Voters, I challenged him to more. We had three more. They drew increasingly great crowds. And in debate, first, it created interest in the campaign. Second, it made me known, and up to that point he was more--better known than I was. He should never have accepted the challenge, incidentally, from a political standpoint, but he was good sport enough to do it. And, third, it enabled me to point up what were our real differences, which were philosophical. He was pro-labor in a district which was not anti-labor but thought that the labor laws, as I did, had to be modified to an extent to avoid some of the very terrible strikes that came immediately after the war. He was--he had been a socialist years before, and that was reflected in his thinking. He was for more and more government enterprise, and I was more for private enterprise. I think, however, the advantage I had Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_335/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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89 minutes
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<a href="http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_335/bmac">http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_335/bmac</a>
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https://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0335/ohms
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 5.
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gannix_0335
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-02-09
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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United States
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moving image
OHMS
-
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
Description
An account of the resource
The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Oral histories
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
United States
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
OHMS Object Text
Contains OHMS index and/or transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable.
5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 6. gannix_0336 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|7(7)|24(6)|37(19)|48(10)|59(14)|72(1)|87(10)|104(3)|117(15)|129(1)|142(1)|155(3)|166(13)|177(5)|186(6)|195(13)|209(14)|226(2)|237(17)|249(16)|274(1)|283(17)|294(3)|306(14)|316(2)|328(15)|341(7)|350(2)|359(12)|370(5)|380(13)|397(5)|408(5)|418(13)|435(12)|447(16)|465(19)|477(13)|489(15)|508(3)|530(10)|543(3)|555(2)|568(11)|580(10)|595(5)|604(14)|619(7)|631(15)|645(5)|655(13)|667(13)|680(15)|697(13)|707(6)|721(14)|739(14)|750(8)|763(8)|777(7)|788(9)|800(2) 0 https://youtu.be/LJsGcS8tVjU YouTube video English 203 HUAC Subcommittee--Questioning Whittaker Chambers When was the first time you saw Whittaker Chambers? Nixon recounts working on the Alger Hiss case with the House Committee on Un-American Activities and speaking to Whittaker Chambers about Hiss. 1000 HUAC Subcommittee--Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss Confrontation When was the first public confrontation between the two? Nixon describes bringing Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers together, first privately and later during the public confrontation aired on television, attempting to determine if Hiss knew Chambers. 1308 HUAC Subcommittee--Evidence Against Alger Hiss What were some of the other elements of the case that -- that led to his conviction? Nixon recounts evidence against Alger Hiss, including the Pumpkin Papers that indicated that Hiss had engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union. 2060 HUAC Subcommittee--President Truman and Public Opinion How could the Truman Justice Department have ignored the implications for Hiss of the material that Chambers turned over at the first deposition hearing, given that Truman, who was embarrassed by it politically, had dismissed it -- Nixon relates President Truman's opinion about the Alger Hiss Case as a " ; red herring" ; and also discusses the changing public opinion about the case. 2583 Communism in the United States Let me read you a -- a short quote from Lillian Hellman, writing in one of her books about this time, about the anti-Communist atmosphere led first by the House Un-American Activities Committee and then by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Nixon considers the effects of the HUAC's actions and his opinions on communist infiltration of the United States. 3108 HUAC Subcommittee--Whittaker Chamber's Motivation One of the statements from Chambers testimony, one of his several testimonies before the committee, that you used to use in speeches at the time, had to do with -- was his -- Chambers' summation of the web they had become-- Nixon talks about the speculation that revenge was Whittaker Chamber's motivation for testifying against Alger Hiss. He shares Chamber's response to these allegations before the committee. 3301 Joseph McCarthy You went to the 1948 Republican Convention as a -- not as a delegate, but as an honored guest, as a member of Congress. Nixon describes his support of Harold Stassen's 1948 campaign for president. He also discusses the role that Joseph McCarthy had in Stassen's campaign and his later work against communism. He considers his own political career through the Hiss case. Interview NIXON: You know--anyone who' ; s a movie buff at all would all recognize Sunset Boulevard. You know, that movie--with that old house, the swimming pool and everything. The waving the--I just thought I described it pretty well with the musty feeling, you know--the smell. Yup. They wouldn' ; t believe it if--unless--it' ; s jus--absolute truth. And scary as hell. GANNON: Did you--did you ever look into the-- NIXON: No. GANNON: --the--the fate of the two wives? NIXON: Oh Christ, do you think so? No way, we just got the hell out of there and left. I think it' ; s probably true. He probably killed them both. GANNON: We may have the beginning of a major scoop on--on the-- NIXON: I don' ; t know. GANNON: When was the--when was the first time you saw Whittaker Chambers? NIXON: Well, I remember the date very well. It was August the third of 1948. On that occasion, he came before the Committee on Un-American Activities. I had not known before he came who he was or what he was going to testify to. At that time, Bob Stripling, who was the committee' ; s chief investigator, was trying to find witnesses who might corroborate or dispute the testimony of Eli--uh--Elizabeth Bentley, who had testified both before the Senate committee, of which Bill Rogers was the head aide, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, about a very broad infiltration of the federal government by Communists. Now, let me explain here that in the year before that, in the years before that, the Committee on Un-American Activities had had numbers of hearings about Communist infiltration into other segments of American life. They had hearings on infiltration into Hollywood. I didn' ; t participate too much in those hearings. That' ; s the famous Hollywood Ten. They were Communists, without question, but that was as--about as far as it went. Whether or not they influenced movies was the question, and I think-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: We' ; re going to go -- we' ; re going to roll tape now. Thirty seconds to studio. We' ; re going to [unintelligible]. GANNON: Weren' ; t we? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] camera one. We had a problem on [unintelligible]. Here we go. [unintelligible] camera two [unintelligible.] GANNON: When was the first time you saw Whittaker Chambers? NIXON: Well, the date was August 3, 1948, my second year in Congress, and he came before the committee after Bob Stripling, our chief investigator, had made a search for witnesses who might corroborate possibly or dispute the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley, who had testified before the committee. GANNON: This was the House Un-American Activities-- NIXON: House Un-American Activities Committee--who had testified before the committee about a number of Communists who, she said, had infiltrated the government of the United States. Now, this opened up an entirely new vista for the committee, before--because up to that time, including the time I was a member of it in 1947, the committee was investigating Communist infiltration in the motion picture--the famous Hollywood Ten, and in labor unions, into education, even into churches and that sort of thing, but never yet to any degree in government. So, when Mr. Chambers came before the committee and ran off a list of several that he said belonged to a Communist group in the government in the thirties--Lee Pressman, who was the general counsel for the C.I.O., John Apt, Victor Purlow, et cetera, that was something new. But what was particularly new insofar as the press was concerned, and insofar as we, too, on the committee were concerned, was when he mentioned Alger Hiss. Alger Hiss, the mention of him did not particularly ring a bell with me at the moment, but it certainly shortly thereafter, because we got a wire from Alger Hiss demanding to be heard by--by the committee and totally denying Chambers' ; accusations. And so we knew that we had a problem on our hands. GANNON: Here' ; s a photograph of Chambers. What impressed you about him, or how did--how would you describe him? NIXON: Unkempt, disorderly, unimpressive, except when he spoke. He spoke in a monotone, but he was obviously a brilliant man, a genius without question. He, of course, was a senior editor at Time magazine, had written some of their great editorials. Jim Shepley told me the greatest editorial ever written in Life on religion was written by Whittaker Chambers. GANNON: Was he a good witness? NIXON: He was a good witness on the facts, not a good witness in terms of presenting them. He was just unimpressive. GANNON: The next day, as you say, you got the cable and Hiss asked to come down. I think we have a photograph of Hiss testifying. What--how did he impress you? What was your-- NIXON: Well, he impressed us exactly the opposite of Chambers, and he impressed the press, who were very much on his side, incidentally, and which made it easy for him, he impressed the press in exactly the same way. Hiss was a--was good-looking, suave, sophisticated, Ivy League dressed, Ivy League manner. He was everything that an elegant Washington executive should be in the New Deal era. And with his clipped words and his very professional way of answering questions, a very careful way, he was a very effective witness. GANNON: What did he say? NIXON: Well, he' ; d never known a man by the name of Whittaker Chambers, that it was totally false, that he was mystified by how it happened, and of course demanded that the committee clear his name, in effect. GANNON: How did--what did you then do? NIXON: Well, the fat was in the fire. The--the committee was in, virtually, panic. I remember we had a meeting thereafter, and we all said to Stripling, " ; How did we get into this spot?" ; And Stripling said, well, he had checked Chambers out, and Chambers had a good reputation, that he felt that he seemed to be a credible witness. On the other hand, the other members of the committee said, " ; Look. The committee' ; s got enough problems. Let' ; s drop this case and get on with something else." ; And I must say that I was very disturbed myself, because right after the committee' ; s hearings I went to the House dining room, the old House dining room, I should say. And there they used to have a round table where all the Republicans used to sit around the table together, and I sat there, and Joe Martin was there on that occasion, and Halleck. And a reporter from the Chicago Daily News came in. He was a--not a left-winger at all. In fact, I considered him one of the most fair and objective reporters who was covering the committee' ; s activities. And he was virtually shaking with rage. His face was all red, and he said, " ; This is the most terrible thing that you would allow that man Chambers to come in and testify against Hiss without seeing whether or not Chambers knew the man. You should have done it in executive session." ; Well, of course, I was pretty shaken by that, too, because here I was, a young congressman, I--trying to do a good job with a committee that I knew had a reputation for irresponsibility already. And so I must say I ba--was tempted to do what most of the committee wanted to do, drop the case and get on with something else and admit that we were wrong. But somehow I remembered--I had a feeling. You know, sometimes it' ; s like gut instincts you' ; ve got. Any successful politician' ; s got to have gut instincts or you' ; re never going to make it. And I said, " ; There' ; s something about that fellow that doesn' ; t ring true." ; And I began to think of it. He was too smooth. You know, the British have a saying that, " ; He' ; s too clever by half." ; And I thought, why was it that he was so careful when he said, " ; I have never known a man by the name of Whittaker Chambers." ; He didn' ; t ever say that he didn' ; t know Whittaker Chambers. And I felt, too, that he gave the appearance of one who was trying to make his case from a legal standpoint. In some way, it didn' ; t ring true, but I couldn' ; t be sure, because I thought maybe it was just his manner that had made me suspicious and not the subject of what he said. So I asked the committee chairman, Parnell Thomas, I said, " ; Let' ; s take some days off." ; He said, " ; Well, do you want to take the responsibility?" ; And I said I would, so he appointed me chairman of a subcommittee to question Chambers further. And so I was the chairman of the subcommittee, and we went to New York. There were two other members of the committee who went with me, and we went up to New York, and I spent the whole night the night before we got there, on the fifth, or the seventh, I should say. You see, Chambers appeared on the third. Hiss appeared on the fifth and denied it all and said he didn' ; t know Chambers. And then on the seventh we were in New York at the Foley Square building, where I now have an office. He then came before us--Chambers came before us. I spent the whole night before the hearing putting down questions of everything that one man would know about another if he really knew him, and I took Chambers over that ground. Two hours of it. I grilled him. GANNON: What kind of questions did you-- NIXON: Oh, what did he look like, what did his wife look like, where did he live, can you describe his houses, what were his eating habits, what did he like, what kind of clothes did he wear, did he have a car, what were his hobbies, and the answers came back in a matter-of-fact, not exciting way, but that made it even more impressive. Chambers, it seemed to me, was talking about somebody he knew. And when we came to what are his hobbies, for example, he said, " ; Well, he was an amateur ornithologist." ; And then he said--his eyes lighting up, he said, " ; I remember how excited he was one day when he came back to the apartment in which we were both living at that time and said that he had seen a prothonotary warbler on a walk down through a Washington area by the canal." ; And that didn' ; t sound like a man who had just studied the other fellow and said, " ; Well, he' ; s an am--ornithologist." ; But it sounded like somebody who was recounting a conversation that he' ; d had. Well, so it went. So, under those circumstances, I felt that we had at least a prima facie case that indicated that Chambers knew enough about him that he must have known him. And I wasn' ; t satisfied, however, so I went up to see Chambers at his farm. And I remember sitting on the porch of his farm with him, and he was sitting there with--wearing galluses and very unkempt, no way that you would imagine the present-day elite class of Time senior editors looking, all spruced up in their fancy clothes, ready to go out to the next cocktail party and that sort of thing. And so Chambers was talking to me about things in general, and I mentioned the fact that I happened to be a Quaker. And he said, " ; You know, Mrs. Hiss was a Quaker, too." ; And--and he snapped his finger, and he said, " ; You know, this reminds me of something else. I remember when she talked to Alger she might often use the plain speech." ; Now, I was a Quaker. Chambers was a Quaker convert, and I knew that anybody who uses the plain speech, of course, to use that term, you had to know what it meant. But beyond that, it was the way he said it, not the fact that he knew that she was a Quaker, but the way he said--said it that indicated to me that he was talking about somebody he knew, rather than somebody he' ; d read about and studied for the purpose, for some dark, evil reason in the recesses of his mind--was trying to do in. So we went back again, this time to Hiss. I, as chairman of the subcommittee, was calling the signals at this point. We went over the same ground with him, and as the answers came back from him with regard to the places he lived, with regard to his car, with regard to all of these matters, we recognized that he--that Chambers had been right. We asked him, for example, what his hobbies were. And then McDowell, Congressman McDowell of Pennsylvania, when Hiss said that he liked birds, li--he was an amateur ornithologist, McDowell said, " ; Oh, that' ; s interesting." ; And he leaned forward in his way, and he says, " ; You know, I' ; m fond of birds, too." ; He said, " ; Tell me, did you ever see a prothonotary warbler?" ; And Hiss said, " ; Oh, yes, I have, down on the canal," ; he says, " ; a beautiful bird with yellow coloring," ; and so forth. And there was silence in the committee room, because that' ; s exactly what Chambers had said. Well, it still didn' ; t prove the case, because it was always possible Chambers had studied his life and made it all up so that it would fit into the pattern. So, as we went along there, it--finally Hiss realized that we were onto something, and he finally said that it' ; s possible that this man Chambers was the same man as a George Crosley, a freelance writer he used to know for the Nye Committee--that used to--used to know when Hiss was one of the staff people working for the Nye Committee on disarmament, and he had known him then, and it might be that this Chambers was the same fellow as this Crosley, a deadbeat who had stayed in his apartment on one occasion. He just gave it to him, loaned it to him, and then he' ; d thrown him out because he wouldn' ; t pay the rent. In other words, our pointing out to Hiss that Chambers knew all these things about him put him on notice that he had to find some way to explain how somebody could have known all these things. And so he invented, as it turned out later, the name Crosley. GANNON: When was the first public confrontation between the two? NIXON: Far more important than the public confrontation, which was on August the twenty-fifth, was the private confrontation. That was what broke open the Hiss case, broke it open, and set in motion a chain of circumstances which eventually brought Hiss' ; s indictment and his conviction of perjury. GANNON: Where was that? NIXON: It took place in Room 1400 at the Commodore Hotel. GANNON: In New York? NIXON: In New York. We had Hiss and Chambers both invited to come there, and they were in the room--Hiss was in the room first, and he was seated there. I pulled the blinds open so that there would be no problem in terms of identification when the two were to meet for the first time. And so after Hiss had sat down, I called the committee to order, and then I told Lou Russell, who was the committee investigator, one of them, to bring Chambers into the room. And he brought Chambers into the room, and as Chambers came into the room, one thing occurred to me right away. Not once did Hiss turn around to look at this man that he said he had never seen before, that he didn' ; t know. He just stared straight ahead. That told me something, but I didn' ; t want to judge too quickly. So I asked Hiss to stand, and I asked Chambers to remain standing, and then I said to Hiss, " ; Now, this man is Whittaker Chamber. I ask you, have you ever seen this man before?" ; And Hiss said, " ; Well, would you ask him to say something?" ; And Chambers said--I said to Chambers, " ; Will you please state your name, your occupation?" ; And he said, " ; My name is Whittaker Chambers." ; Hiss interrupted. He said, " ; Would you ask him to open his mouth wide. And--no. He said, " ; Would you--would you ask him to read--to say something more?" ; And so I found a copy of Newsweek magazine that was there on the table, and I had Chambers read from that, and after he' ; d read awhile, Hiss said, " ; Could he open his mouth wider?" ; And he turned to me, he says, " ; You know what I mean, Mr. Nixon. I want to s--look at his teeth." ; And so Chambers opened his mouth, and he said, " ; I remember that the Crosley that I knew had very bad teeth. I wonder if you' ; d ask him, Mr. Nixon, if he' ; s ever had anything done to his teeth." ; And I said, " ; Have you, Mr. Chambers?" ; And Chambers said, " ; Oh, yes. I' ; ve had considerable dentistry." ; And Hiss then said, " ; Well" ; --I said, " ; Then can you prepare to identify him, then?" ; He said, " ; Well, no. I wonder if you could ask him the name of the dentist who did the work on his teeth." ; And Chambers gave a--gave the name of the dentist down in Maryland who had done the work on his teeth. And I said, " ; Now are you prepared to identify him?" ; And Hiss said, " ; Well, I--I can' ; t make an identification yet. I would like to ask the--to--to talk to the dentist to see what he has done." ; And then I broke it open right then. I said, " ; Mr. Hiss, do you mean to tell me that before you can identify this man that you would have to check with his dentist to see exactly what he did to his teeth?" ; And Hiss changed the subject, and soon thereafter he agreed that this was the man he had known as George Crosley. Then we had a public confrontation after that, on the twenty-fifth, and that was on television. GANNON: That was one of the most dramatic events of the time to that time, wasn’t it? NIXON: It was--it was-- GANNON: It was the first-- NIXON: --the first-- NIXON AND GANNON: [in unison] televised-- NIXON: --hearing of any significance. It was very dramatic. GANNON: I think we have a clip of that. NIXON: And so there they met before the television cameras. It went on and on and on. What had happened was the press that was all in Hiss' ; s corner after Hiss first came before the committee, not only because they thought Chambers was wrong, but because Hiss was more their favorite than--because they thought that Hiss was more liberal, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, the press finally, after that hearing, began to change because of the way that Hiss dodged and turned and so forth and so on. I once, for example, when we went through the dentist business in the public hearing, I said. " ; Tell me, Mr. Hiss, have you ever seen Chambers with his mouth closed?" ; He said, " ; No. I only remember him when his mouth was open." ; And everybody laughed, and the chairman gaveled down, and so forth and so on, and the people in the press, who had been very much pro-Hiss, began to get more and more concerned that maybe there was something wrong. GANNON: What were some of the other elements of the case that--that led to his conviction? NIXON: Well, for example, Chambers said that the Communist operator, who had worked with this ring of Communists in the government, had given him a rug, and it was established that Hiss did get a rug. Colonel Bykov was his name. One of the key elements was a car. Chambers had told how Hiss had given his car to a Communist Party operative for the Communist Party at a time when he got a new one. Hiss had had to admit that he did--that--that he had--he said he had sold Chambers a car, and then he said he' ; d loaned him a car. And finally it turned out that we found the bill of sale when he had s--given the car, in effect, to this Communist--to this Commu--to this car dealer who turned out to have a Communist background. And I remember when we showed the bill of sale to Hiss, we asked him if that is--if that was his signature. It was, of course, a photostatic copy. And he said, " ; Well, could I see the original?" ; And I said, " ; Well, do you have to see the original in order to know whether it' ; s your signature, to be sure?" ; He said, " ; I could be surer." ; And the press tittered, the people in the audience. He began to lose them. And so it went from then from bad to worse as far as he was concerned. It was obvious that he know who Chambers was. It was obvious that, frankly, that he had not been fully forthcoming in his testimony. GANNON: When did the so-called Pumpkin Papers material emerge? NIXON: That was later. The way that came about, ironically, was Hiss' ; s friends proved to be his worst enemies. After this hearing, Chambers went on Meet the Press. Somebody on Meet the Press asked Chambers whether or not Hiss was a Communist. And Chambers said, " ; Alger Hiss was a Communist and may still be." ; See, Hiss had said during the hearing that he wanted Chambers to make his charges public, away from the privilege of a committee hearing, so that he could bring suit against him. He didn' ; t bring suit for two weeks, and the Washington Post, one of his greatest supporters, had a sort of querulous editorial that said, in effect, " ; Put up or shut up. Mr. Hiss should sue." ; And so he did sue Chambers. After suing Chambers, what happened was that the--the--there were depositions taken, and the--Hiss' ; s lawyers were very, very rough on Mrs. Chambers and made her cry. This is what Chambers recounted to me later. And as a result of that, the case took on a totally new dimension, new evidence came into being. GANNON: What kind of new evidence? NIXON: Well, the way it came into being is interesting. We had thought our part in the case was over, over because we had brought the two together, we had destroyed Hiss, inso--inso--certainly as far as his veracity was concerned about whether he knew Chambers or not. But, on the other hand, we had no further evidence of what, if anything, he had done as a Communist. Being a Communist is one thing, but I remember one time we asked Chambers in one of the hearings whether or not, as had been claimed by some of the pro-Hiss people--if--if this weren' ; t just a--a sort of study group, and Chambers had answered, " ; It was in no wise a study group. Its purpose was to infiltrate the government of the United States in the interest of the Soviet Union." ; But he didn' ; t say how. In fact, he had denied, in effect, that it was an espionage group, in those hearings and others. So, after-- GANNON: What--what would have been the point of infiltration without espionage? NIXON: It would be very hard--well, to influence policy, to influence policy. In other words, to get a pro-Communist policy in the Department of Agriculture, in the Department of State, and so forth. But espionage, of course, involved spying and turning information over to a foreign power. But, going further then, after this last deposition, the lawyers for Hiss had demanded of Chambers--to Chambers that he produce some documentary evidence, some hard evidence proving that Hiss was a Communist, proving that what he said was true. Now, this is a civil proceeding, you understand. So, Hiss--Hiss' ; s lawyer having done that, they had made a very grave mistake. They had underestimated Chambers. Chambers realized after they had cross-examined his wife so brutally that they would do nothing without--until they destroyed him. So he went up to New York. He had left some papers there, documents and other materials as well which had been turned over to him and--and through him, of course, to--supposed to be turned over to the top Communist operative. He got them out and had taken them to the next deposition and turned them over to the federal--turned them over to the defense lawyers, and the defense lawyers, of course, called in the Department of Justice. Now we' ; re ahead of our story, ahead of our story because the next time we heard about this, we in the committee, was that I, without knowing anything about Chambers having turned over this documentary evidence--these were several score typewritten pages of State Department documents and so forth. And without our having known that, I saw a little article in the Washington Daily News, the paper that' ; s now defunct, indicating that the Justice Department was about ready to drop the Hiss-Chambers case investigation. And--and then an article in another paper to the effect that the Justice Department was considering indicting Chambers for denying that he was espionage--engaged in espionage or what-have-you. So--let' ; s start again on that. I saw an item in the paper indicating that the Justice Department was going to drop the Hiss-Chambers case, a very small one. So I got ahold of Stripling, and we went up to see Chambers. I showed him this item. He said, " ; That was what I was afraid was going to happen." ; He says, " ; Let me tell you something. I just dropped the bombshell in a deposition hearing." ; And they said, " ; What was the bombshell?" ; He said, " ; The judge has ordered us all to say nothing. I--I cannot say anything without risking contempt of court, so I can' ; t tell you." ; I said, " ; Well, in view of this, however, you--I hope you haven' ; t given them everything." ; He said, " ; No, don' ; t worry. I wouldn' ; t be so foolish. I have another bombshell." ; And I said, " ; Let me tell you something. I don' ; t know what the first one is, and I' ; m not going to ask you to be in contempt of court by telling us, but whatever the other bombshell is, you keep that. Don' ; t give it to them. Give that to the committee." ; We went back to Washington. All the way back Stripling and I talked. What could the bombshell have been? We didn' ; t think of espionage, but we couldn' ; t--we--we--we thought it had something to do with tying Hiss closer in to Communist Party membership, some way of proving it, a written way. In any event, I came back, and that following day I was to leave with Pat on a trip, along with other congressmen, to Panama, a junket, as a matter of fact, that was available to members of Congress at that time, to go to Panama after the Congress recessed. I rather wondered, e--actually, if I really should go, but I had cancelled a vacation the year before when we had gone to the--on the Herter Committee trip. We hadn' ; t had a vacation for years, as a matter of fact, and I thought it was about time, that I owed her one. So I decided to go ahead with it, but that night I got Stripling in before I left, and I signed a subpoena for everything else that Chambers had. And I said, " ; Deliver this to Chambers. Have this served on him. Let' ; s find out what else he has." ; So I took off with Pat. We got on the--the ship, and the next day the whole thing broke wide open. I got a wire from Bert Andrews and another one who was covering the-the case for the New York Herald-Tribune. GANNON: He was a reporter. NIXON: A reporter from the New York Herald-Tribune, a very fair reporter, one very interested in the outcome of the case, who had been following it from the beginning, and one of the very few reporters, one of about three out of a press corps of fifty who wasn' ; t totally on Hiss' ; s side. In any event, he said, " ; You' ; ve got to come back," ; because Stripling apparently had shown him the new evidence. I got one from Stripling, and Forrestal, the Secretary of Defense, arranged to have a PBY fly into a quiet lee side of an island near Cuba. I got off of this boat, was let down to--into a lifeboat, which was rowed over to this flying boat, and was flown back to Miami. I got into Miami, and as I got off the flying boat, there were all sorts of reporters around, and they said, " ; Congressman, do you have any comments on the Pumpkin Papers?" ; I said, " ; Pumpkin Papers? What are you talking about?" ; I thought it was a joke. And they said, " ; Well, they found some papers in a pumpkin at Whittaker Chambers' ; farm." ; And I said, " ; Oh, my God, we really have a lulu on our hands this time." ; I--I got into a DC-3. It wasn' ; t commercial. It was one of the Air Force DC-3s, it reminded me of my days in the Pacific. I sort of sat on a bucket seat, and all the way up I wondered, " ; What in the world is this all about?" ; I got in. Stripling met me, and he took me into the committee rooms, and there it was, a whole pile of documents, with copies of the typewritten documents that Chambers had turned over in the deposition hearing. And then the reels of tape of the--which were basically photostatic copies of papers which were on microfilm. And he had already had them developed, and so we looked through those piles of tapes. And in them there were certainly, I imagine, some innocuous things, but there were three--three pieces of paper with Hiss' ; s handwriting on, in which he had summarized various State Department documents, and there were--several of them were mocked--marked " ; Top Secret." ; So we knew that we had there, certainly, evidence, the hard evidence that we had lacked before, but evidence that went far beyond anything we' ; d even dreamed of. Before, we had thought of Hiss being a Communist, possibly even just a member of a study group, possibly simply a member of a group trying to infil--trying to influence the policies of the United States in a way that was more favorable to the Soviet Union, but never of espionage. And this involved espionage. GANNON: How could the Truman Justice Department have ignored the implications for Hiss of the material that Chambers turned over at the first deposition hearing, given that Truman, who was embarrassed by it politically, had dismissed it-- NIXON: As a red herring. GANNON: --at the very beginning as a red herring, but as the evidence against Hiss grew and as his partisans began to fall away, did the Truman attitude change or the attitude of the Justice Department? NIXON: The Justice Department was in a box here. I mean, after all, it was a political administration. An election was coming up within a matter of months. This was August of 1948, and Truman honestly felt that the committee was a disaster, that--he felt it had been irresponsible in times past. He felt that, as he put it, that it was a red herring, a red herring in order to divert attention from the failures of what he called the " ; Terrible Republican Eighty" ; of Congress, of which I was a member. That' ; s what he honestly felt. Truman was certainly not pro-Communist in any manner--manner or means. He was a strong anti-Communist. I don' ; t think he had any brief to carry for Hiss. But, on the other hand, he was caught in a terrible dilemma. He had called this--these committee hearings a red herring. After the first hearings, when it appeared that Hiss was going to come through scot-free and the committee was going to be embarrassed, and now, as a good politician--he felt as a good politician, he had to stick to it. He did stick to it, and the Justice Department at least played his game for a while, but we forced their hands, and Chambers forced their hands by coming up with this new evidence. And from that time on, the press, even though it was strongly pro-Hiss, first, because it was a big news story, but, second, because they felt they had some responsibility in the matter. They kept hammering and hammering until finally justice was done. GANNON: Do you think Truman ever changed his mind? NIXON: About Hiss' ; s guilt, yes, if he had any. About whether the committee was engaged in a red herring activity, no. I have a--I think one of my most interesting recollections is a conversation I had with Bert Andrews, who had sources not only within the committee but in the White House itself, because he was considered to be one of the top reporters in Washington in those days. He was the chief of the bureau for the New York Herald-Tribune. GANNON: He was very critical of the committee, too, wasn' ; t he? NIXON: He had written a book that had won him a prize in which he had given the committee the devil for some of its procedures in government loyalty checks, and he had given the State Department the devil for the same thing, for--for firing some people and forcing some people to leave because of the loyalty issue. So, therefore, his credentials were very good in that respect, but he was an honest reporter. But he had a line within the White House, and he said that his sources within the White House was in the Oval Office. When a Justice Department representative took some of these documents in to show them to Truman, the so-called Pumpkin Papers, the reproductions of the documents on microfilm and the typewritten papers and the rest, which were later proved to have been written on a typewriter by Priscilla Hiss, which Hiss' ; s--Hiss owned. That was another one of the physical things. You see, the typewriter, the rug, the car, these physical things were the hard evidence that brought him down. And when Truman saw these documents, he looked at them, and he got angrier and angrier, and then he started to pace the floor, according to the aide who was there, and he said, " ; The son-of-a-bitch, he betrayed his country, the son-of-a-bitch, he betrayed his country." ; That' ; s how he felt about Hiss, but he went out in the press conference--no, but then--not in the press conference. But then the aide said, " ; Well, are you going to change your evaluation as far as this hearing is concerned?" ; " ; Not at all. Not at all." ; He said, " ; As far as that committee is concerned, they aren' ; t interested in--in Hiss. They' ; re simply interested in discrediting this administration. These hearings, the purpose of them is a red herring," ; and he went out even after that and told a press conference he still considered the hearings to be a red herring, even after it became public knowledge, when Hiss had to back down and say, yes, he had known Chambers, even though he claimed he had known him as Crosley, even after the papers came out which indicated that Hiss had very possibly been involved in espionage, and later, of course, it was proved by a jury or admitted by a jury or held by a jury that he had been. GANNON: He was convicted of perjury. NIXON: That' ; s right. Truman never changed his view that the committee' ; s hearings were a red herring, because he was referring to our intent, which he considered to be political, and he ignored what we finally had brought to public attention, the fact that he was guilty. GANNON: Alger Hiss is still trying to exonerate himself. How do you think that' ; s possible? How can one, for all these years, in the face of such overwhelming evidence and the conviction by a jury--how can he do this? Can he still believe in his innocence? NIXON: Well, he may believe in his innocence. I don' ; t think he does believe in his innocence, because I believe is--the one who started out as very pro-Hiss, Allen Weinstein, came down on the other side with the conviction that Hiss had been guilty of perjury. I believe that he was, and that Hiss knows it. But-- GANNON: This is the man who wrote the book about the-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: --the perjury-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: --about the Hiss-Chambers case. NIXON: A--uh--a professor. I think that as far as Hiss is concerned, it' ; s--I' ; m not really able to judge his motives except he' ; s determined to stand by what he said so many years ago. GANNON: How did you feel when he was reinstituted by the Massachusetts bar a couple of years ago? NIXON: Not surprised. You have to understand that the Hiss case, you see, went far beyond, far beyond the usual congressional investigation of Communist subversives or what-have-you, or even espionage. The Hiss case was considered by Hiss' ; s supporters and defenders as being an attack on the whole elite establishment, an attack on the Foreign Service of the United States, an attack on those who were for the U.N., attack on the Roosevelt foreign policy. I recall, for example, being at a dinner at Virginia Bacon' ; s house in Washington, D.C. She was one of the great hostesses, and Paul Porter was there, a good liberal Truman Democrat, and this was right after the Pumpkin Papers had come out, and somebody was needling Porter a little because they knew he had been strongly pro-Hiss. " ; Well, now, don' ; t you believe--aren' ; t you going to have to admit that--that the committee had done an honest job, at least, and a good job in exposing this?" ; And he said, " ; No." ; He says, " ; I think these committee' ; s--this committee' ; s hearings, the Un-American Activities Committee' ; s hearings were a disaster. I think they were very detrimental to the country, because they cast reflections on the Roosevelt foreign policy." ; Well, of course they cast reflections on the Roosevelt foreign policy, but that, it seemed to me for a lawyer to say, went a bit far. But that was perhaps typical, typical of people in the Foreign Service, typical of people, and particularly those who were very closely associated with Harvard and the other great universities to find a fellow like Hiss being involved in this sort of thing. If it had been the other way around, if it had been Chambers, this rather unkempt, rather disorderly-looking fellow with the poor teeth and the rest, not in the top social set, if he had been the one, I do not think you would have had the same reaction. But then, and even now, years later, I think people think that--they identify me as one who attacked the establishment, helped to bring, unfortunately, some disrepute to the whole foreign policy establishment of the United States. GANNON: Let me read you a--a short quote from Lillian Hellman, writing in one of her books about this time, about the anti-Communist atmosphere led first by the House Un-American Activities Committee and then by Senator Joseph McCarthy. She wrote, " ; It is now sad to read the anti-Communist writers and intellectuals of those times, but sad is a fake word for me to be using. I am still angry that their reason for disagreeing with McCarthy was too often his crude methods. Such people would have a right to say that I and many like me took too long to see what was going on in the Soviet Union, but, whatever our mistakes, I do not believe we did our country any harm, and I think they did." ; Do you believe that the people that were investigated and criticized by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the McCarthy investigations did harm to the country? NIXON: I think that I would put it another way, taking Miss Hellman' ; s point of view, that when she says that those who were Communists, who did infiltrate the government of the United States, and in some cases did turn over information to the Soviet Union, as the atom spies did, for example, I think they did very great harm to the United States. I, of course, as you know, did not agree with McCarthy' ; s methods. I did my very best to get him to be more responsible but was unable to bring him into line. On the other hand, I have no apologies for--whatever for the work we did on the Hiss case. One of the reasons that Eisenhower said that he selected me for a running mate was--was that he was impressed by my--by what I' ; d done on the Hiss case, because I got him, but got him fairly. Now, let me say, it wasn' ; t that personal. It wasn' ; t just me. Others participated in it, too, but those who say that, " ; Well, it doesn' ; t--it isn' ; t going to make any difference if there are a few Communists in the State Department and pass this little bit of information or the other to the Soviet Union." ; It makes a very great deal of difference because that' ; s part of a whole Soviet move, not only toward the United States, but everyplace else in the world. Espionage, subversion, subversion for the purpose of influencing policy. That' ; s part of the Soviet Union' ; s great objective, and we have to be on guard, in a responsible way, to see that people under their control, influenced by them, even innocently influenced, are not in government positions. GANNON: How widespread do you think Communist infiltration in the government was in those years and the pre-war and immediately post-war years? NIXON: Very significantly, particularly during the period of the--of--of World War II, when we were allies. Then, frankly, it was considered proper, even fashionable, you know, to take a sort of a pro-Soviet line. Thereafter, it became certainly less the fashionable, shall I say, and it became legally dangerous to do so, because the Soviet Union during the Cold War period was considered to be a potential enemy of the United States. But there is no question that there was infiltration, and there is no question, in my view, that Truman' ; s loyalty checks, which were carried on by Eisenhower, that they were necessary. Some of them were not, perhaps, conducted in a way that would meet all the standards that we would have liked, but something had to be done. You just couldn' ; t leave those people in those positions. And, as you know, for every Hiss who was exposed, found guilty, and went to prison, there are many others who left office because they didn' ; t want to--to, frankly, testify or sign a loyalty oath, or what-have-you. GANNON: Do you think that there is Communist infiltration in the government today? NIXON: Oh, I would not be surprised. Let me put it this way--I would be surprised if there were not. I would say that I do not think it is widespread, because, after all, both the Republicans and the Democrats know that, in terms of a political issue, it would be dynamite to have a high appointee, or even a low one, be exposed for any Communist activities. But certainly don' ; t think for one moment that the Communists don' ; t continue to try, not only in government, but in business and so forth. Let me say, at the present time, one of the grave problems we have is industrial espionage. I mean, you--we read of cases every day, the--every few days here, you know, of industrial espionage, or this one or that one who turned over information. That' ; s part of the--of the whole thrust of Soviet foreign policy. GANNON: Did you address the problem when you were president? NIXON: Not specifically. I was, too, frankly, busy trying to handle the foreign policy problems that we had dealing with the Soviet Union at the very highest level, dealing with China, delling--dealing with the Mideast, and, of course, the primary concern, at least for the first four years, of ending the war in Vietnam in an honorable way. As far as Communism within the government was concerned, Communist activities or industrial espionage and so forth, I did not take any personal role in that. I didn' ; t have any time to concentrate on it. GANNON: In view of the way the Communist empire has--has imposed itself since the post-war years, since the dropping of the Iron Curtain, since Czechoslovakia in 1968, since Afghanistan, since Poland, how is it possible for someone in the West today who enjoys the freedom that--that goes with living in the West, and particularly in the United States, to be a spy for the Soviet Union unless it' ; s--unless it' ; s purely for money? But is it--how is it possible to be an ideological Communist with one' ; s allegiance in Moscow today? NIXON: Hard to understand, but it happens. I guess it happens because there are people, particularly among the intellectual people--this idea that Communists are all working stiffs or minorities and the rest is just fatuous nonsense. That isn' ; t the case. There are few in those areas. Primarily, the Communists in most countries are the intellectuals. They' ; re the better-educated people. They' ; re the idealists and so forth, but they' ; re the idealists who have given up on Western society, given up on U.S. democracy, on European democracy, and whatever. In fact, Foster Dulles, who was one of those who had vouched for Hiss when Hiss was named the president of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, of which Dulles was one of the trustees--Foster Dulles, after Hiss' ; s conviction, made a very eloquent statement where he said, " ; The great tragedy of the Hiss case" ; --I will paraphrase it--" ; is that our ideals no longer have the appeal to our young people that they should have in order to retain their loyalty." ; And that' ; s the key to it. It' ; s--it' ; s--but let me say it is a real problem. There are--there are numbers of people in the intellectuals community who see the danger on the left--on the right, but do not see a danger on the left. And they s--they think that all liberation or revolutionary movement against any, what they call " ; dictatorial society" ; , " ; authoritarian" ; , or other ways on the right, should be supported, even, like, for example, similar to that is the way the--that most of the American establishment--that many in the American establishment came down on the side of the North Vietnamese Communists, who were among the most brutal vicious people--aggressors in the history of civilization. And they' ; ve proved it, of course, since they moved into South Vietnam, and since their colleagues have moved into Cambodia and slaughtered three million Cambodians. But it' ; s something I can' ; t explain. GANNON: One of the statements from Chambers' ; s testimony, one of his several testimonies before the committee, that you used to use in speeches at the time, had to do with--was his--really Chambers' ; summation of the web they had become-- NIXON: I--I recall. I think I know the one you' ; re speaking about, but let me tell you that came about. I was trying to find out what might have motivated Chambers, because Hiss' ; s defenders--this is after Hiss denied that he knew him--said, " ; Well, Chambers must have had a grudge against him. Chambers has got to--got--have some secret hatred for this man that would make him do this sort of thing." ; And one time, sitting up there at Chambers' ; farm on the porch, I said, caught him--tried to catch him unaware, and I said, " ; Tell me." ; I said, " ; What do you say about the charge that people say that you' ; re doing all this because you' ; ve got some secret beef against Ch--Ch--Hiss, something growing out of your relationships in the past?" ; And he said, " ; How could I have any motive which would lead me to destroy myself?" ; And that seemed to be an answer, and so when he came before the committee in that long session--it lasted about six hours, as I recall--Chambers was on, Hiss was on, and it got late in the day. It was about five o' ; clock. We were tired. The press was tired. I' ; m sure Chambers was, and--and--and I finally asked him the critical question. I said, " ; Mr. Chambers, will you tell this committee, is there some motive you have, some motive of revenge that has led you to testify against Mr. Hiss as you have?" ; And then he answered. GANNON: I have-- NIXON: And I think-- GANNON: I have a copy, if you' ; d read it. NIXON: I think I can remember it, but if I could have it. He answered in his usual monotone, but it is per--perhaps the most moving statement I' ; ve ever heard before a committee. " ; The story has spread that, in testifying against Mr. Hiss, I am working out some old grudge or motives of revenge or hatred. I do not hate Mr. Hiss. We were close friends, but we are caught in a tragedy of history. Mr. Hiss represents the concealed enemy against which we are all fighting, and I am fighting. I have testified against him with remorse and pity, but in the moment of history in which this nation now stands, so help me, God, I cannot do otherwise." ; He completed the statement. There was a dead silence in the room for at least a minute. And anybody that heard that statement certainly was disabused, if he had it before, of any idea that Chambers had testified against Hiss because of some revenge motive. GANNON: You went to the 1948 Republican Convention as a--not as a delegate, but as an honored guest, as a member of Congress. You were a Stassen man, and you have subsequently said to friends that if you had been Stassen' ; s campaign manager in ' ; 48, he would have won the presidency. NIXON: Well, as a matter of fact, Stassen was the most interesting candidate. He was also one who could relate to World War II people because he had been a veteran in World War II. He was young, he was charismatic. Many people think since that time he was dull, but he really wasn' ; t at that time. And he was smart, very, very smart. Dewey, I think, was one of the most capable men ever to run for the presidency, and would have made a great president, without question, or a great chief justice, or anything, but no one would suggest that Dewey could excite people, at least not in his later years. He didn' ; t have that capability. Taft, another enormously capable man, an intellectual giant and a giant in terms of just sheer character and belief and not a reactionary. As a matter of fact, Taft was a progressive. He was an isolationist, basically, deep down, but he had very progressive, advanced views on aid to education, on health care, and on housing. In fact, some of the conservatives on the right only stuck with him because they thought he was more, shall we say, isolationist, and that--that held them in line. They didn' ; t agree with his domestic views. And so there you had Taft, and there you had Dewey. I would say that of--of the--of the lot that we had there at the convention, Stassen, if he could have been nominated, would have been the strongest candidate. I think he would have won. GANNON: You weren' ; t his manager then-- NIXON: Oh, no. GANNON: --but Joe--but wasn' ; t Joe--McCarthy was-- NIXON: Joe McCarthy was his floor manager, and I remember Joe McCarthy, after Stassen had made his run for it and didn' ; t get enough votes on the first ballot, and finally it went over to Dewey--I saw him, I can remember vividly, at the entrance to the auditorium. Particularly--it' ; s funny the things you remember. The sweat was just pouring down his cheeks and so forth, and his shirt was wet, and he was saying, " ; Well, fellas, we' ; ve had it. There' ; s no way that Stassen can make it, and now let' ; s go out and work for Dewey." ; Now, let' ; s understand that was a different time in McCarthy' ; s history. He hadn' ; t even thought of the Communist issue then. I don' ; t think he' ; d thought of it. He was engaged in other activities. He had come to the Senate, and we were good friends in 1946. The Communist issue had not come up until later with him, after the ' ; 48 elections. GANNON: Was he sincere in his anti-Communism? NIXON: I' ; ve often thought about that question, and my answer is, at first, no. At first I believe that he just saw it as an opportunistic issue. He thought it was a good one after he saw what had happened in the Hiss case, and he was making speeches. This was during the--the campaigns, of course, that followed thereafter. And so he was making speeches and wanted to get a new lead for a speech, and speaking out in West Virginia to a group of women, he threw out the fact that there were fifty Communists in the State Department, and then continued to up the number, referred to them as card-carrying, and so forth. And from then on, it was almost impossible to restrain him and to make him be responsible. But once he got into it, and once they began to take him on, he found there were some of those against whom he made charges who were actually guilty. And that, of course, made him deeply sincere about those. But at the beginning, no. He started with opportunism, ended with extremism, and his extremism destroyed him. GANNON: The controversy that surrounded the Hiss case must have been very tough and rough, not just on you, but on--on Mrs. Nixon as well. Did you consider leaving politics after ' ; 48 or after the--your term, your ' ; 48 term, ended in 1950? NIXON: Not then. At a later time, in 1954, after we went through a brutal campaign, and it didn' ; t seem to get us any credit. We just seemed to take slings and arrows from everybody, although we knew we' ; d done a good job and probably saved a few seats, as the Gallup Poll indicated we had, by our campaigning. Then I was very depressed, and Mrs. Nixon was relieved when I indicated, in our house at forty-oh-one--forty-eight-oh-one Tilden Street one time around the fireplace, " ; Well, this was the last campaign." ; After this one, I must say, though, taking the Hiss case on was not pleasant. It was not something I welcomed doing. After all, I had--I had come to Congress, I was quite respected as a congressman, not universally liked because I was a conservative among a liberal media sect and so forth, but people considered me a responsible conservative. I had joined a group, along with Jack Javits, headed by Russell Davenport, for forward-looking programs for health and in other areas. I' ; d been on the Herter Committee and had made very effective speeches for foreign aid. I had supported the Greek-Turkish aid program. I had supported reciprocal trade. I had supported the Marshall Plan. I was considered to be a responsible internationalist in foreign policy. It seemed to me I had a very--a very good career and a relatively non-controversial career--career, and everybody likes to be kind of non-controversial. You don' ; t like to get up in the morning and see a Herblock cartoon showing you climbing out of a sewer, and he had worse, on occasion, with me. You don' ; t like your family to see it, because children grow up, and those images become in--seared onto their brains and in their minds and their souls. And so, after the Hiss case, the Hiss case certainly left a great mark on all of us because what happened there was that many people in the media never forgave me for that. I' ; m not critical of them. I understand why. They--they--they thought some way that I was attacking their whole way of life, what they stood for and so forth. I mean, they weren' ; t Communists. They probably disapproved, if they thought he was guilty at all, of what Hiss had been charged with, at least, but, on the other hand, they just didn' ; t like the idea of somebody coming along and demonstrating that there was some Communist infiltration in the government. I think--I think Herbert Hoover perhaps hit a raw nerve when he wired me right after Hiss was convicted. And I think I can recall the wire exactly, when he said, " ; Congratulations on the result in the Hiss case." ; He said, " ; The--the stream of treason in our government has finally been exposed for all to see in a way they understand." ; So, he thought, in other words, that there had been a stream of--of treason. Others thought it, but there were many others who, perhaps like Paul Porter, if there was a stream of treason they thought it was time to forget it and to go on to other things. GANNON: Thank you. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0336/bmac
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64 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 6.
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gannix_0336
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-02-09
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 7, 1983, part 1. gannix_0343 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|47(7)|49(15)|55(8)|105(2)|125(7)|155(19)|177(13)|190(5)|204(12)|216(14)|228(17)|242(12)|256(7)|267(12)|282(11)|295(1)|308(4)|318(1)|332(1)|345(1)|359(9)|371(13)|388(6)|402(15)|413(13)|428(7)|442(5)|453(4)|465(8)|476(13)|491(2)|502(3)|515(5)|527(12)|538(5)|548(14)|554(13)|556(5)|571(5)|585(6)|596(6)|610(3)|618(15)|627(5)|637(16)|650(17)|665(1)|676(3)|690(16)|702(13)|714(13)|728(3)|740(1)|753(4)|765(2)|775(11)|792(2)|804(14)|818(11) 0 https://youtu.be/y2MIDoNu0gY YouTube video English 253 Vietnam War--Beginning There's a striking photograph taken in Saigon in 1956. Nixon discusses the beginning of the United State's involvement in Vietnam and compares it to the French involvement. 695 Vietnam War--Assassination of President Diem When President Eisenhower left office, there were roughly a thousand American troops. Nixon relates the events that led to the assassination of President Diem during Kennedy's presidency. 969 Foreign Leader Assassinations In 1971, could you have prevented the assassination of President Allende of Chile if you had directed American policy towards Chile differently? Nixon discusses assassinations of foreign leaders by presidential administrations during war and peace. 1372 Pope John Paul II Assassination Attempt Do you think that Bulgarian intelligence was behind the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II? Nixon considers the role Bulgarian intelligence may have played in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II and how it may have affected American relations with the Soviet Union. 1527 President Kennedy Ordering Fidel Castro's Assassination Did--did John Kennedy--did President Kennedy order the assassination of Fidel Castro? Nixon discusses the likelihood of President Kennedy ordering the assassination of Fidel Castro and the effects that such an assassination may have. 1784 President Diem We have some film of you with President Diem in 1956. Nixon shares his first and later impressions of President Diem. He talks about the effects of Diem's assassination. assassination ; Big Minh ; coup ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; foreign relations ; General Maxwell Taylor ; Indonesia ; Leaders ; Ngo Dinh Diem ; Nguyen Cao Ky ; Nguyen Van Thieu ; Philippines ; vice president ; Vietnam Dương, Văn Minh, 1916-2001 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Ngô, Đình Diệm, 1901-1963 ; Nguyẽ̂n, Cao Kỳ ; Taylor, Maxwell D. (Maxwell Davenport), 1901-1987 ; Thiệu, Nguyễn Văn, 1923 - 2001 2016 Vietnam War--President Johnson In 1963, when Lyndon Johnson inherited the Vietnam War, there were sixteen thousand American troops there. Nixon relates the escalation of the Vietnam War during President Johnson's presidential term. He also discusses Johnson's honesty with the American people about the war. Barry Goldwater ; Franklin Roosevelt ; Great Society ; Korea ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Nguyen Cao Ky ; Vietnam Goldwater, Barry M. (Barry Morris), 1909-1998 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Nguyẽ̂n, Cao Kỳ ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 2539 Vietnam War--President Johnson's Bombing Halt In August 1968, Lyndon Johnson promised you that he would not announce a bombing halt before the November presidential election. Nixon recounts President Johnson's announcement of the bombing halt before the 1968 presidential election and its ineffectiveness. 2875 Vietnam War--Taking Office / Bombing Cambodia It's November 1968, you're president-elect, you're looking at options for Vietnam, you have been elected with a--or you've been given a free hand, arguable a mandate for change, the war is divisive and unpopular, men are dying, Thieu is unpopular and corrupt. Nixon discusses decisions he made during the beginning of his presidency, including bombing neutral Cambodia and authorizing wiretaps on White House staff and journalists. Cabot Lodge ; Cambodia ; communism ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Haiphong ; Hanoi ; House Judiciary Committee ; J. Edgar Hoover ; Japan ; John F. Kennedy ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; New York Times ; Nguyen Van Thieu ; Norodom Sihanouk ; nuclear weapons ; Vietnam ; wiretap Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Hoover, J. Edgar (John Edgar), 1895-1972 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Lodge, Henry Cabot, Jr., 1902-1985 ; Nguyễn, Văn Thiệu, 1923-2001 ; Norodom Sihanouk, Prince, 1922-2012 Interview OFF SCREEN VOICE: I need to record a second. There' ; s a slight color-- GANNON: [Clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: --or difference from the last time, so I' ; m just going to record for a second and then play it back against the old tape and match them, and they [unintelligible]. GANNON: Okay. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay. GANNON: What was the difference, though, because--wasn' ; t its w--weren' ; t its component members, in other words, its--its people--weren' ; t they always sort of the-- NIXON: The leaders? GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: So what--what-- NIXON: During the war-- GANNON: --what was the difference-- NIXON: --[unintelligible]--group, you know. That' ; s right, the intellectual elite and all that stuff. [Sighs.] GANNON: Since it was the [unintelligible]-- NIXON: That' ; s always the problem. GANNON: Why did they suddenly-- NIXON: Become hawks? GANNON: Change. NIXON: Be--be what? GANNON: Be-- NIXON: W--w--change how? GANNON: Become soft, and become, uh-- NIXON: Uh, well, they--they were mixed, you know what I mean, let' ; s face it-- GANNON: There' ; s a striking photograph taken of a ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1953. A gust of wind entangled the American and Vietnamese flags just as the--the winds of war were shortly to-- GANNON: --bitterly entangle the fates of the-- GANNON: --two nations. You were there. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Sorry. Let' ; s do it one more time. We need to start that over. NIXON: They didn' ; t have the camera on. GANNON: Have you seen this picture? It' ; s really a stri-- GANNON: That' ; s right, it was in ' ; 56, wasn' ; t it? NIXON: No, no, no, no. I wasn' ; t-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Frank. NIXON: --in Hanoi in ' ; 56. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Frank. NIXON: Let' ; s hold a minute here. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: All right, well, we don' ; t care. NIXON: You think this is Hanoi. You' ; re sure it' ; s Hanoi and not Saigon. GANNON: Let' ; s do Saigon. NIXON: I think you' ; d better say Saigon. You see-- NIXON: --if it' ; s the Vietnamese flag, it would-- GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: --be Hanoi. GANNON: Yes. NIXON: It would be the French flag. GANNON: Yes. NIXON: The tricolor. So I would say this is ' ; 56. That' ; s right. GANNON: [unintelligible] Yeah. NIXON: Because that' ; s after we were in, too, and that-- GANNON: Yes. NIXON: --that' ; ll make the answer shorter. [Clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, all set? NIXON: [Clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, here we go. GANNON: There' ; s a striking photograph taken in Saigon in 1956. A gust of wind entangled the Vietnamese and American flags just as the gusts of the winds of war had bitterly, and were soon to bitterly--more bitterly, entangle the fates of the two nations. You were there as vice president. Looking back today at the American experience in Vietnam, at the billions of dollars, the millions of refugees, the hundreds of thousands of wounded, the fifty-seven thousand Americans dead, and at the fact that, in a matter of a couple of months in 1975, South Vietnam fell-- GANNON: --and the Communists took over in the end anyway--looking back today, do you think it was worth it? NIXON: Yes, I think it was, when you consider what we were trying to prevent. We were trying to prevent a Communist takeover of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. You mentioned, as you properly should, the number of people that it cost. I would say, however, that in addition to the Americans who died, in addition to the South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese, the Cambodians, that if you add it all up, that figure--let' ; s start again on that. I got another thought there. I' ; ll start again. Uh--[clears throat]--is this--no-- GANNON: This is the photograph. NIXON: Now where are the flags? See-- GANNON: They--they--we-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Let' ; s start it at the top. GANNON: We missed the-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: You want to start at the top again? Or you want to pick it up right here? GANNON: Can we do that? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Uh, I have to change the shot if we' ; re going to do a pickup here. So let me [unintelligible]. NIXON: Yeah, I--I get the feel of it now. OFF SCREEN VOICE: You want to take it from the top, uh, or pick it up? Uh, Frank? GANNON: Let' ; s pick it up. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, then give me a two-shot tighter on two, please. Thank you. NIXON: Now you--aren' ; t you--you want me to start? Or you' ; re going to--are you going to-- GANNON: You-- NIXON: --ask the question again? GANNON: No, you can-- NIXON: Um--[clears throat]. Yes, I would have to say that I--wait a minute. Yes, I believe it was. It is true the cost was enormous--for us, for the South Vietnamese, for the North Vietnamese, the Cambodians, and the Laotians, in terms of lives lost, but what we were trying to do was to prevent a Communist takeover of those countries. And when we see what has happened since the Communists have taken over--three million, for example, estimated killed and starved to death in Cambodia alone--that is far more than the total casualties, civilian and military, suffered by all those in Vietnam. That was worth fighting against. The tragedy is that we lost it in the end. GANNON: Our subject in this conversation with former president Richard Nixon is the American involvement in the war in Vietnam. The American involvement in Vietnam bega--began seriously under President Eisenhower. You were the vice president then. Why did we go into Vietnam in the first place? NIXON: Well, first, let' ; s get the history a little more accurately. The American involvement in Vietnam began before President Eisenhower came in in 1953. In 1949 and ' ; 50 and ' ; 51, the Truman administration, recognizing very properly that what happened in Vietnam would affect us all over Asia, made a major commitment to Vietnam, to the French in Vietnam, and by the time that President Eisenhower came in, one-third of the cost of the French in Vietnam was being borne by the United States. President Eisenhower continued the program which President Truman had initiated. GANNON: You visited Vietnam in 1953, before the American involvement had begun seriously and before we had become involved in the--in the war that the French were still fighting. In fact, you not only visited Saigon, but you visited Hanoi. What were your impressions in those last halcyon days of the cities, the country, and the people of Vietnam? NIXON: Well, as you already implied, this was the time when the French were still in Vietnam, and it was interesting to see what they had right and what they, in my opinion, had done wrong. We have to give them credit that when they were in Vietnam--this is in both Hanoi and in Saigon--they had built some fine hospitals and schools. They had also built sanitation systems. They had produced certainly a rather substantial standard of living for that part of the world. On the other hand, insofar as the mistake that they made, it was that they were trying, in effect, to stay in Vietnam rather than to prepare the Vietnamese to rule themselves. And--and under the circumstances, that simply would not survive against the onslaught from Ho Chi Minh, who stood for an independent, free Vietnam. GANNON: How were we better than the French, or were we better than the French? NIXON: Well, in respect, I think the French made a very serious mistake. And that was in having a virtual gulf between themselves and the Vietnamese. I saw that very clearly, for example, when I was in Hanoi and visited the battlefields. One day at noon, I ate lunch with the French officers, and they had a fine food in perhaps the best French tradition, with a good bordeaux wine to finish it off with. Then I asked to go over to the Vietnamese mess, where the Vietnamese officers were. That idea didn' ; t particularly appeal to my host, but I insisted, because I wanted to see what they were doing. And as we approached the Vietnamese mess, the--as it is called in the service, there was a terrible stench. And I turned to my French escort and said, " ; What is that? What are they eating?" ; And he sort of picked up his nose a bit, rather haughtily, and he says, " ; Probably monkey." ; Now that little story indicates their attitude toward the Vietnamese--not that they all had that, but it was one where they were superior, where they were not building up the morale, the dignity, and so forth which was essential if the Vietnamese were ever to govern themselves and to carry the fight alone. Now, as far as the U.S. was concerned, we did not make that kind of mistake. On the other hand, the mistake we did made, particularly after President Eisenhower left office, was rather than doing as President Eisenhower did, supporting the government of Vietnam in its efforts to handle the insurgency, the Vietcong and the Vietminh who were conducting guerrilla war against them--that--instead of doing it that way, in the next period they took over the war--in effect, Americanized it. And that was, of course, a fatal mistake. GANNON: When President Eisenhower left office, there were roughly a thousand American troops. Under President Kennedy, the number substantially increased. Why and how did that happen? NIXON: Well, first, the military personnel that were there during the Eisenhower period were not combat troops. They were training troops. They were not involved in combat. President Kennedy raised the number to sixteen thousand, because he saw that, unless it was raised, there was a possibility that the Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese, would not be able to hold the line. And he authorized, in 1962, the Americans to in--to join the Vietnamese in combat units. Consequently, in his last year in office, 1963, there were about five hundred American casualties. GANNON: On November second, 1963, American newspapers carried the headlines about the overthrow of President Diem in South Vietnam. It was subsequently revealed that the coup which ousted him was at the least inspired and at the most manufactured in Washington. Was President Kennedy responsible for the murder of President Diem in 1953? NIXON: No, I wouldn' ; t say that. I' ; m sure that he did not intend it. I would be very surprised if he were not greatly shocked by it. However, I think, looking at it very objectively, as, for example, Marguerite Higgins, an outstanding journalist with the New York Herald-Tribune, and a Kennedy supporter, wrote after she had investigated the situation--looking at it from that standpoint, it is quite clear that the policies which the Kennedy administration adopted toward Vietnam led to the coup, which inevitably led to the assassination of Diem. They set in motion the events which led to it. And--and in this case, General Maxwell Taylor, I think has put it very well when he indicated, in effect, that they greased the skids for Diem' ; s downfall, and, of course, having done that, that' ; s a--the Vietnamese do not play very gently. Diem was one casualty. GANNON: Could President Kennedy have prevented the murder of President Diem? NIXON: He could have only prevented it had he not listened to and taken the advice of some of his advisors, who were urging that he dump Diem. They were urging that he dump Diem for the reason that they believed that Diem was corrupt, and that also he was too much of a dictator. They didn' ; t recognize that the choice was not between Diem and somebody better, but between Diem and somebody much worse. And so he took that advice. That was a very great mistake, and I' ; m sure that he regretted it, because President Kennedy, I am confident, would not have ordered or approved the assassination of Diem. GANNON: President Kennedy and the Kennedy administration denied any, uh-- NIXON: Complicity. GANNON: --complicity, any--more than any complicity--any involvement in or any encouragement of or any knowledge of the Diem coup. Does that mean that they weren' ; t telling the truth when they said that? NIXON: Well, I won' ; t get into whether or not they deliberately misled on that particular point. However, the facts would indicate--the facts of--from people who were there--that there isn' ; t any question but they set in motion the events which led to the assassination of Diem. Let me--let me make the point very clear. We have to understand that the Vietnamese military depended on the United States for support. Without our support, they would be unable to carry on the activities that they were engaged in in trying to prevent the Communist takeover. When the U.S. indicated that we would support them, as was indicated, in the event that they did initiate a coup, that inevitably put in motion the events which led to Diem' ; s assassination. Now, that is the historical record, and I don' ; t think any rewriting of history can excuse those who gave Kennedy that very bad advice. GANNON: In 1971, could you have prevented the assassination of President Allende of Chile if you had directed American policy towards Chile differently? NIXON: No. I think we have to distinguish between what happened in Chile and what happened in Vietnam. In Vietnam, we have to understand that Diem was our friend. He was our ally. In Chile, Allende was no friend. As a matter of fact, he had joined Castro as a potential enemy of the United States and Latin America. And the second point that should be made is this--that while after Allende was elected by a plurality, not a majority, of the vote, it is true that we, like previous administrations, did everything we possibly could to see if the majority parties who were non-Marxists or anti-Allende could get together and prevent his being elected as president by the parliament. We failed in that effort, and it was two years later that Allende brought himself down. Marxism simply didn' ; t work there. The country was an economic and political disaster area, and the coup which came there came from within the country. Let me put it very directly in terms of the contrast. In Vietnam, a coup against Diem could not have occurred without the support of the United States, because those troops, those generals depended upon the United States. In the case of Chile, the coup did occur and would have gone forward without our support in any event, because Allende had created a situation where the whole country was rebelling against what he had done to it. GANNON: It--it has since been revealed in Senate Intelligence Committee--in a s--hearings, Senate Intelligence hearings, that President Kennedy and/or the Kennedy administration were involved in assassinations or assassination attempts against Castro, Patrice Lumumba, Rafael Trujillo, President Diem, General Schneider in Chile. Do you think that there are any circumstances in which a president of the United States should desire or seek the assassination of a foreign leader? NIXON: Well, I think we' ; d have to separate desire from seeking it. I am sure that every president at some time is going to say, " ; Gee, I wish that fellow were gone, or he was off the stage one way or another," ; but as far as seeking the assassination of a foreign leader in peacetime, and I want to distinguish that, I would say I cannot imagine any president of the United States seeking that. And in the case of Diem, well, it was wartime. It was a different situation than we would normally think of as--for example, during World War II. GANNON: What about--speaking of World War II, what about Hitler, or what about--what about Idi Amin? If the director of C.I.A. had come into the Oval Office and said to you, " ; We have an absolutely foolproof, untraceable way in which we can remove Idi Amin from the scene, which would involve his murder," ; would you have approved it? Would you have acquiesced in it? Would you have said, " ; Do it, but for God' ; s sake, don' ; t tell me" ; ? Or would you have forbidden it? NIXON: I would have forbidden it, and may I say that while I was president I don' ; t recall any instance where the C.I.A. or any people outside the C.I.A. area suggested that the administration participate in an assassination plot. Apparently that sort of thing did occur in the early sixties. However, I again emphasize I do not believe that President Kennedy personally approved an assassination plot. I would say that, as far as the Hitler situation is concerned, you have to separate that in terms of it being a period of war. Now, during war, we have to understand--is that everything is done to try to eliminate the capacity of the other to wage war. That is why, for example, at the present time, American missiles are aimed at Soviet command centers, and Soviet missiles are aimed at Washington, D.C., and also at our command centers. If those missiles should land, it' ; s going to eliminate whoever happens to be the leader of either country. GANNON: Given the record of the C.I.A., do you think that they--during your administration, do you think th--they would have been capable of developing a foolproof and/or untraceable plot of any kind? NIXON: No. The record of the C.I.A., certainly in our administration, was very spotty, if I can use British understatement. In terms of what it was able to accomplish, I had very little confidence in them. And I had very little confidence in their intelligence reports. For example, they were always greatly underestimating what the Soviet Union was doing in terms of its missile development. For ten or--years straight, I remember that their estimates were too low. I think during the earlier period, immediately after war, during the Eisenhower period when Allen Dulles was in charge of the C.I.A., it was far more competent than it was later. Now, that is not to reflect negatively on people like Richard Helms and others who served the country with great dedication. I' ; m simply saying that they s--in my opinion, did not have the capability that they could have had. And I wouldn' ; t have counted on them to carry out such a mission as that, assuming I might have ever ordered one. GANNON: Do you think that President Kennedy' ; s involvement with the assassination attempts on Fidel Castro led directly or indirectly to President Kennedy' ; s assassination? NIXON: Well, of course, there is the conspiracy theory. I particularly find in my visits to Europe, to France, that they--they believe very confidently that that' ; s exactly what had happened. It could have happened, in--in view of the fact that Oswald, of course, had been to Cuba, and it is one theory that I think you could make a case for. My guess is it probably did not happen that way. After studying it at considerable length, I believe that Oswald was acting alone. GANNON: Do you think that Bulgarian intelligence was behind the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II? NIXON: Possible. And it' ; s also possible, of course, as some have suggested, if--that if Bulgarian intelligence or K.G.B. was behind the assassination attempt, that the Soviet intelligence, K--K.G.B., had to know about it, and that Andropov, who was, of course, in Soviet intelligence and had been the head of the K.G.B., had to know about it. I would only say, in respect to Andropov, at least, I think he' ; s perfectly capable of that, but I think he' ; s too intelligent to have been involved in it. GANNON: If you were president, and it were proven that the Bulgarians were behind the assassination attempt on the pope, and that the K.G.B., with Andropov as its head, were behind the Bulgarians, and he was now in the position he' ; s in, and you were president, what impact would that have, if any, on your dealings with him? There are stories that in the White House and in the State Department now, some forces are trying to soft-pedal the investigation into the so-called " ; Bulgarian connection," ; because, should it pan out, that would mean that the--there would be problems in President railing--Reagan dealing with Andropov. If he' ; s--if the finger of suspicion points directly at Androfo--Andropov, what does that mean for an American president in his dealings with him? NIXON: That puts a very tough question to an American president. But under the circumstances, the American president, of course, would have to take them on directly about what had happened--obviously would condemn it. They, of course, would deny it. But even though it were proved that that was the case, we have to realize a fact of life. The Soviets lie, they cheat, they engage in assassination plots and murder plots all over the world. But they are there, and we have to deal with them. That doesn' ; t mean that we have to lie and cheat and assassinate, but it does mean that in dealing with them, we recognize those with whom we are dealing--recognize that, under the circumstances, we have to be just as tough and even doubly tough at the conference table if we are not to be taken over. GANNON: Did--did John Kennedy--did President Kennedy order the assassination of Fidel Castro? NIXON: No. I do not believe that he could have done that. Uh, I w--I--a moment ago, I said that Andropov was capable of it. I do not think that President Kennedy was capable of having ordered the assassination of Castro. GANNON: What about in terms of the documents and conversations that were revealed in the--in the s--1970s in the Senate intelligence hearings, the w--which--which virtually proved that--although there were no--there--there--there were no tapes, so there was no absolute proof--but that President Kennedy was involved in the conversations concerning the assassination, and, indeed, the techniques, including the bizarre techniques, the exploding cigars and things like that, that the C.I.A. was planning in order to kill Castro? The--the theory, of course, being that Kennedy' ; s pride and prestige was seriously hurt by the threat Castro had posed. NIXON: Well, let me go back historically to how this all relates to Vietnam. I think it' ; s very important for us to understand this. President Kennedy, as you recall, in his very eloquent inaugural in 1961, said, " ; We will fight anytime, anyplace, in defense of freedom." ; His first broadcast out of the Oval Office two weeks after he was inaugurated with re--was with regard to Laos, when he said that the United States would keep its commitments to Laos. Then came the Bay of Pigs, which was a failure--a--a failure, in my opinion, because of failing to carry out the plan that President Eisenhower had directed, and which President Eisenhower told me later would never been approved without the use of air power, which, of course, was denied in adequate amounts. And then after that, President Kennedy met Khrushchev at Vienna. And Scotty Reston of The New York Times reported that sk--Khrushchev bullied him, Khrushchev following the usual Leninist dictum, which says, " ; Probe with bayonets. If you find mush, proceed. If you find steel, withdraw." ; Now, President Kennedy was not a weak man. He was not a soft man. He was a tough guy, and after all these things happening, he was determined that Khrushchev, and the Communists generally, should not assume that they had found mush. Now that, of course--if--you have to understand that to understand why he felt it was important to increase the number of Americans in Vietnam. That was why he thought it was important to as--have these Americans participate in military exercise, even though it cost some casualties. And--and, unfortunately, I think that was one of the reasons that he was led into the mistake of supporting the coup which brought down Diem, because he had become convinced by his advisors, I think very improperly, that if coup--if Diem left, that they' ; d have a stronger government. Now, with all this background in mind, we have to understand that President Kennedy may have felt he needed a victory. However, while he might have pr--toyed with the ideas, as we all do from time to time, we n--we may discuss things--I think, if push came to shove, between a rock and a hard place, President Kennedy would not have said, " ; Go out and knock this fellow off in order to make me look tough" ; --I don' ; t think he would have done it, not because he was not tough enough to do it, but because he would recognize that doing it would lead to repercussions that would be perhaps more detrimental than it would be positive in the long run. You have to remember that removing a leader from a position, even though it' ; s a Castro, does not necessarily solve the problem. The problems that brought him into power are still there, and the forces that brought him into power are still there. Castro wouldn' ; t be able to survive in Cuba today unless he had some support. I don' ; t believe he' ; s got majority support, but he had some, and that was the case back then as well. GANNON: We have some film of you with President Diem in 1956. FILM NARRATION: The two leaders conferred for an hour and a half. Mr. Nixon extended President Eisenhower' ; s warmest personal congratulations, well-earned by a man and his people who had shown astonishing progress and spirit through two difficult years. At President Diem' ; s invitation, the visitor from Washington joined him in facing the vast assemblage outside. GANNON: The argument has been made that President Diem was an appallingly corrupt dictator who had little, and deserved less, popular support. You have written a book about leaders. What were your impressions of Diem then, and what is your assessment of him as a leader now? NIXON: At first, as far as corruption is concerned, we have to understand--and this does not excuse it, but we have to understand that corruption is endemic in that part of the world--in the Philippines, in Indonesia, the other countries in that area. As far as Diem is concerned, I would not say that he was any more corrupt than those that have succeeded him, for example. The second thing we have to understand, insofar as public support is concerned, and I' ; m glad we showed this film--that he had a great deal of public support. I was there. I saw it. Now, you can trot a lot of people out in order to welcome a visiting vice president, but, while you can get them out, you can' ; t get them to cheer spontaneously. And there was no question that Diem had a mystique, a strength. He was able to stay in power for nine years, and when he was there, for example, from 1954 to nineteen-fifty--' ; 61, when President Eisenhower left office, he was very much in control. We did not have to have any American combat troops serving with his units, and he had the insurgency very well under control. I think that, if we had continued to support him, we would not have had the musical chairs which eventually led to the enormous American commitment there of five hundred and fifty thousand men. GANNON: Getting rid of Diem was supposed to po--to pave the way for victory. That was the rationale for the coup. What were the results of the coup? NIXON: Well, General Maxwell Taylor put it very well when he said it led to chaos. And I can--I can say from personal experience I know what happened. I was in Vietnam in ' ; 53. Again in ' ; 56. This was the first anniversary of Diem' ; s ascension as the leader of Vietnam. And then I was there in 1963, 1964, nineteen sixty-f--I' ; m sorry. I was there again in 1964, ' ; 65, ' ; 66, and ' ; 67--four times in the sixties. Each time there was a new leader. 1964--it was Big Minh. I don' ; t remember who was there in 1965. I don' ; t recall who was there in 1966. I think it was Ky. 1967--it was finally Thieu. And that meant--the weak leadership that you had meant that the South Vietnamese simply didn' ; t develop the capability of fighting this war themselves. It also required an enormous American commitment, which would not have been necessary had we had a strong leader like Diem in charge, who could have developed the capability of his own people to defend themselves. GANNON: In 1963, when Lyndon Johnson inherited the Vietnam War, there were sixteen thousand American troops there. Five years later, in 1968, there were more than a half million American troops. How did that happen? NIXON: Well, it happened because the North Vietnamese, who, incidentally, going clear back to 1961, had stimulated, inspired, and controlled the Vietcong in the South, despite the fact that they always denied that that was the case--the North Vietnamese were able to launch very, very effective attacks, using the Vietcong as well, against the existing governments in South Vietnam. As a result of the commitment of sixteen thousand we already had there, President Johnson felt that we at least had to defend them. He didn' ; t want to withdraw and have the whole situation collapse. And he had to escalate the number we had there, because the enemy was escalating its attacks. And at the same time, we were not doing a good enough job, in my opinion, of preparing the South Vietnamese to do the fighting on their own. Let me explain how it happened, in my opinion. I go clear back to the Korean War. I remember hearing American military people telling me in 1949 and 1950, " ; The R.O.K.s won' ; t fight. The R.O.K.s can’t fight." ; And they could fight. The No--the South Korean army today is one of the best armies in the world. But Americans usually are a very impatient people. We believe we know what' ; s best. We believe we can do it faster and quicker, and so we move in and take over. And Ky, Vice President Ky, General Ky, or Marshal Ky, as he was called in Vietnam, put it very well when he said that what the United States did was, in effect, to steal their war, or take it over. And that was the mistake. I must say that I recall very well that Johnson, during his campaign against Goldwater, said that--pledged to the American people that he was not going to have American boys go thousands of miles across the Pacific to do things for--for Asian boys that Asian boys should be doing for themselves. And later on, President Goldwa--I mean, President Johnson, of course, had to eat those words. GANNON: We, in fact, have a film clip of that speech, which was made--that particular speech, which was made in August 1964 to the American Bar Association. GANNON: [Clears throat twice.] GANNON: It' ; s…chilling as late as 1964 to hear President Johnson talk about two hundred American lives lost in Vietnam. NIXON: And that would be about ten thousand casualties when you consider the wounded. GANNON: The wounded. Did Lyndon Johnson lie to the American people about our involvement or about his intentions regarding our involvement in the war in Vietnam? NIXON: No, not consciously, not in my opinion. I think Lyndon Johnson believed, as sometimes we all like to do, what he wanted to believe. He wanted desperately to believe that this war could be fought on the basis of gradual escalation. He wanted desperately to believe that it was possible to have his Great Society and a war at the same time. He was, without question, a man of peace. On the other hand, he, I think, rationalized himself into believing that the war was going much better than it was ever going, and he rationalized into believing that his way of conducting it, which was the worst of both worlds--neither going all-in or all-out--was not working. GANNON: I asked you whether President Johnson lied. Let me put it another way. Given all the good intentions he had and all the things he was weighing in his mind when he talked to the American people and to Congress about our involvement in Vietnam, did he always tell the truth? NIXON: Well, that' ; s another way of saying " ; Did he lie?" ; and when we say " ; Did he tell the truth?" ; certainly what he said was not true. But when you say " ; Did he lie?" ; --did he deliberately s--get up there and say, " ; I know this is not true, and I' ; m saying something else" ; --no, I don' ; t think Lyndon Johnson did that. He' ; s--he was a very practical man, very earthy, and despite some of the rather negative things that have been written about him, a--a patriotic man. He wanted to do what was right. He was a peace-loving man. I think in this case he wanted so desperately to believe that things were going well, so desperately to believe that what he was doing would bring a peace, and also a peace not at the cost of surrender to the forces of the Communists. He wanted so desperately to believe that that when he said it he did not think that he was lying. It happened, however, what he said--that his optimistic reports about how well the war was going, his optimistic statements to the effect that we were not going to commit more American boys to do the fighting that should be done by Asian boys--all of these things, of course, I think, did not happen to be true. But I don' ; t believe that Lyndon--Lyndon Johnson deliberately was lying. GANNON: Does--does not telling the truth at all times come with the job of being president? NIXON: Well, when you ask did Lyndon Johnson lie about our involvement in Vietnam, I--let me put it in historical context. He didn' ; t lie any more than Franklin D. Roosevelt lied. When Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1940, and I remember it very well, said in his campaign against Willkie that we were not going to have our boys fight in foreign wars--now, Roosevelt, at that time, all the records have since shown, was very deliberately and passionately working to get the United States into the war in Europe, because he recognized that, and in retrospect very properly--that we had to do so, that we could not allow Hitler to overrun Europe without it having been a great threat to the United States in the long run. On the other hand, as far as Roosevelt was concerned, it would have to be said that he was misleading the American people. And I think, in this case, Johnson may have misled the American people, but it was no more a lie in the moral sense than it was in the case of F.D.R. GANNON: In August 1968, Lyndon Johnson promised you that he would not announce a bombing halt before the November presidential election. In October, with his candidate, Hubert Humphrey, trailing you in the polls, President Johnson went on television and dropped a bombshell of his own. We have a film of that moment. GANNON: In your memoirs, you wrote, " ; Announcing the halt so close to the election was utterly callous if politically calculated and utterly naïve if sincere." ; Which was it, callous or naïve? NIXON: Well, I don' ; t think that you could ever say that Lyndon Johnson was naïve. He used to know pretty much what he was doing at all time, and he was a con--consummate politician. I would have to say, in retrospect, that he was motivated to a certain extent, I' ; m sure, by political considerations, and he was egged on, ironically, by some of his advisors who were more violently anti-Nixon than he was. I don' ; t mean that he wasn' ; t pro-Humphrey, but I mean that as far as some of his advisors were concerned--people like Clark Clifford and George Ball and Averell Harriman--they egged him on to make this kind of announcement before the election, having in mind the fact that it could tip the scales in Humphrey' ; s favor. I think, under the circumstances, as one of the newspaper articles wrote--one of the newspaper reporters wrote after he heard this speech--it w--happened to be very close to Halloween, and he said that last night--that President Johnson had given Pres--Mr. Nixon a--a trick and Hubert Humphrey a treat. And that' ; s the way it turned out. It almost won the election for Hubert Humphrey. GANNON: Weren' ; t you furious to--at the last minute, at the eleventh hour, after all you' ; d been through and with the presidency so--finally so close, to risk having it taken away from you by what you had to have seen as a cynical partisan action on Johnson' ; s part? NIXON: Well, before we go so far in characterizing it as being totally cynical and partisan, let us understand that Lyndon Johnson also was thinking of his place in history. He didn' ; t want this election to go by--he didn' ; t want to see me elected and then to bring the peace that he was unable to achieve. And I think, therefore, he wanted to believe that a bombing halt would work. He later told me that it didn' ; t, of course, and that he was misled on it by Mr. Harriman. But, on the other hand, I would say that there' ; s no question, in the heat of the campaign, that I was very distressed, and all of my associates were, to think that this should be pulled out of the hat right before the election at a time that it was bound to give Humphrey, as we said a moment ago, a treat, and give me a trick, which would defeat us. GANNON: Did you let him know that you were distressed? NIXON: I let him know, actually, through my associates. I had others call him or his--or his advisors and let them know that we were quite disturbed. He was very sensitive about it, incidentally. He was sensitive then, when Bob Finch had made some statement to the effect that he didn' ; t have all the ducks in a row because President Thieu didn' ; t go along with the bombing halt, and that' ; s the only reason that perhaps it did not succeed in tipping the election scales, because disillusionment set in within a couple of days thereafter, just before the election. That he--I talked to him on the phone, and--and he was violent in his criticism of Finch and what he had said. But later on, about a year later, I had breakfast with Johnson in the White House, and he said to me, he said, " ; I want you to know that I didn' ; t do it for political reasons." ; And then I remember how vehemently he talked. You know, he was a very physical man. He sort of grabbed me by the elbow and hit the table, and he said, " ; You know, Harriman told me at least twelve times that he had an absolute commitment from the Russians that they would lean on the North Vietnamese and that the North Vietnamese would negotiate seriously and reduce their attacks on the cities and their attacks in the South." ; And he said they--he said all the bombing halts were a mistake--that was a mistake, they were all a mistake, and we never got anything but words from the other side. GANNON: It' ; s November 1968, you' ; re president-elect, you' ; re looking at options for Vietnam, you have been elected with a--or you' ; ve been given a free hand, arguable a mandate for change, the war is divisive and unpopular, men are dying, Thieu is unpopular and corrupt. Why didn' ; t you do one of two things--either do what had to be done militarily in order to win and end the war by victory, or develop a--a sort of withdrawal-with-honor option, cut our losses, and--and get us the hell out of Vietnam? NIXON: Well, first, the--you have two options. One is called the option to the right, and the other is called the option to the left. The option to the right, unfortunately, had been completely taken away from us by the bombing halt. By reason of the bombing halt, I was bound by it, even though I had not negotiated it. And so the negotiations were going on in Paris, and I sent Cabot Lodge over there to indicate how serious we were, to try to find a negotiated settlement. And so as far as taking military action was concerned, I felt that that option had been rea--had been taken away from us. Let me say also that, while you say that I was elected with a mandate, we have to realize that both houses of the Congress were under the control of the Democrats. This was very difficult--different from the situation that President Johnson had after 1964. He had two-to-one majorities in both the House and the Senate. He could have done anything that he wanted in Vietnam and gotten away with it, he--just provided he' ; d leveled with the Congress and leveled with the country. And that, in Eisenhower' ; s opinion and in mine, too, was his great mistake--gradual escalation. And as a result, we had five hundred thou--a--five hundred thousand in Vietnam rather than sixteen thousand when he came into office, with, of course, enormous more casualties. Now, as far as the other particular option is concerned, the option to the left, I know that there were those among my political advisors who said, " ; Look, Kennedy started the American commitment in Vietnam, at least the commitment to combat units and combat advisors. Johnson escalated it. Now you can end it and put the blame on them for what happened in Vietnam." ; In other words, bug out. I couldn' ; t do that, and, frankly, I never considered it. I said, in effect, this is not Kennedy' ; s war, as some would suggest, or Johnson' ; s war. It was America' ; s war. I knew what would happen. I had been there. I had been there going back to 1953. I was there in ' ; 53, ' ; 56, and four times in the sixties, and I knew that if we were to get out of Vietnam then, the Communists would overrun it. I also knew that if we got out under those circumstances, it would have a devastating effect on our other allies in that area--the Thais, for example, the Filipinos, and so forth. And I also knew, and this is a conviction I have even today, I knew it would have a devastating effect on the American morale, on our willingness to play a credible role in the world, because there' ; d be instant relief for a while, and then there would be a turning inward and say, " ; Why did we have this loss of life for nothing?" ; GANNON: What would it have taken to win militarily in Vietnam in 1969, or was a military victory impossible given the guerrilla nature of the war? NIXON: In 1969 a military victory over the North was not impossible. In fact, if I have a regret, it was that I was unable to do early in 1969 what I later did in 1972--to bomb and mine in the Haiphong-Hanoi area, because we could have brought the North Vietnamese military capability to its knees. And without the North Vietnamese support, the South Vietnamese would have been able to handle the Vietcong in the South. There was no question about that. Incidentally, there were some--what I call " ; super-hawks," ; who thought we should have gone further. They said that we could bomb the dikes in North Vietnam, particularly in the winter--in the wet season. And others said we could use tactical nuclear weapons. I ruled both of those out, for two reasons. One, because I didn' ; t think it was necessary in the event we went on the military option. I thought that the bombing and mining, which I had advocated, incidentally, in the sixties after visiting Vietnam, that that enough would quarantine North Vietnam, which was the phrase that I used. On the other hand, I felt that if we used nuclear weapons, or if we caused hundreds of thousands of deaths of innocent people in North Vi--in North Vietnam in order to win the war, it would be a pyrrhic victory. It would have had devastating consequences all over Asia, including particularly in Japan, which is the big prize in Asia today, as it was then. GANNON: In your inaugural address in 1969, you said, " ; Let us take as our goal--where peace is unknown, make it welcome ; where peace is fragile, make it strong ; where peace is temporary, make it permanent." ; Less than two months later, you authorized secret bombing of neutral Cambodia. Why did you expand in secret the war you were talking about ending in public? NIXON: Well, let us understand first that secret military actions in war are not uncommon. In fact, they' ; re very desirable. President Eisenhower, for example, ordered all kinds of disinformation with regard to where the Americans and the other forces would land on the continent when he went into Normandy. It was deliberately to mislead them, and I would say that, as far as this is concerned, we have to recognize that this was wartime. Now, the reason for it' ; s being secret--and the--first, the reason it was done. The North Vietnamese, despite the fact that we were adhering to the conditions of the bombing halt and were not bombing--they were violating whatever conditions that they were supposed to agree to. They were shelling cities. They were infiltrating more troops, and--and what--what particularly concerned us--they were sending in great numbers of combat forces into the Cambodian sanctuaries. The net result of all that was to increase our casualties. And, as I saw those casualty lists every week grow, I knew that we had to do something. I knew that we couldn' ; t break off the Paris talks, not yet. But I knew we had to do something in order to stop that. Now, the point is--why not do it openly? Well, the reason, interestingly enough, was that the North Vietnamese claimed that they didn' ; t have any forces in South Vietnam. They claimed they didn' ; t have any in Cambodia. They said it was all local civil war. Now, that was, of course, not true. But for that reason, we knew that if we bombed secretly, they could not object, and they didn' ; t. Also, the other reason we had to bomb secretly is that we did not bomb what is called " ; neutral Cambodia." ; We bombed enemy-occupied territories in Cambodia. Now, Sihanouk, Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, as a matter of fact, wanted the Vietnamese out of that area, but he, since he was neutral, would have to object in the event that we openly bombed. All right, let' ; s look at what happened. We conducted very successful bombing raids. It reduced our casualties because it--it inhibited the North Vietnamese from making their hit-and-run attacks on our troops on the border in that area, and it' ; s only unfortunate that the leak of the fact of--that bombing was taking place--that it became public, which made it necessary for us to discontinue it, because Sihanouk, of course, had then to object to it. And as a result of that leak--it cost American lives. Discontinuing the bombing gave them a privileged sanctuary from which to make their runs at our forces in Vietnam. GANNON: Are you saying, then, that the reporter who wrote that story, based on a leak, in The New York Times, which in that case published that story, caused American lives--cost American lives? NIXON: He certainly did, without question, and he isn' ; t going to be able to rub the blood off his hands simply by rewriting history. GANNON: As you say--or--you say that secrecy is needed in wartime. How did you feel, then, several years later when the House Judiciary Committee considered, although it voted down in the committee--by a vote of, I think, twenty--twenty-six to twelve, a fourth article of impeachment which said that you should have been tried, convicted and impeached, and removed from office because in 1969 you had lied to Congress about the secret bombing of Vietnam--of--sorry, of Cambodia? NIXON: Well, first, I would say that the Judiciary Committee, in this instance, I think, showed some responsibility. I' ; m only surprised that that many members of the Judiciary Committee, in view of what happened in Cambodia later--and--no, strike that. I--I' ; m only surprised that that many on the Judiciary Committee would even consider that an impeachable offense. The second point is that, if the time ever comes when an American president cannot do what is necessary as commander-in-chief to defend the lives of American servicemen, then, believe me, we' ; d better give up on this country. I hope that American presidents in the future will have the wisdom and the guts to do what is necessary to protect our men when we commit them to battle. If we aren' ; t able to do that, then we shouldn' ; t send them into battle. And that' ; s exactly what I was doing. GANNON: Almost--as you say, almost from the start of your administration, you were plu--you were plagued with a spate of leaks of classified information, and in the early months you authorized wiretaps to be placed on members of the White House staff and on journalists. Looking back today, were those wiretaps justified? NIXON: Oh, yes, they were justified. They didn' ; t produce anything in terms of finding out who was doing the leaking, although they might have had the effect of, perhaps--that we couldn' ; t even estimate--of discouraging some of those who might have intended to leak if they didn' ; t know that they might be tapped. GANNON: In fact, though, the results were the contrary. The--the leaks not only continued but--but multiplied. How is it that, since these taps were placed and, indeed, were extended as was felt necessary, why didn' ; t they--I think at one point you described them as a dry ho--you described the results as a " ; dry hole, globs and globs of crap." ; How was it, since J. Edgar Hoover had said that taps were the most effective way to catch a thief--why didn' ; t these taps provide something, produce something? NIXON: Well, I think it would indicate that those who were leaking were doing it quite deliberately. It was not simply a--a question of being careless or speaking when they were drunk, or what have you, as--or speaking to a friend. They doing it--they were doing it quite deliberately, and if they were doing it deliberately, they had to be sophisticated enough to know, in view of what had happened before in previous administrations, that they might be tapped. So they didn' ; t-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: --talk on their telephones. Let us understand the magnitude of the wiretapping that was done, since so much has been made out of it. The total that were wiretapped in this instance were fourteen government officials and four newsmen, a total of eighteen. In fact, the number of wiretaps--these are what we called " ; national wiretaps" ; --and, understand, this is during wartime--the number of wiretaps that we had in that period was the lowest average of any time since the Korean War back in 1953. And it' ; s ironic to note that the highest number of-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0343/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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60 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 7, 1983, part 1.
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gannix_0343
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-04-07
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 7, 1983, part 2. gannix_0344 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|9(13)|32(15)|51(2)|66(8)|80(13)|91(2)|107(7)|120(1)|125(15)|137(14)|153(14)|165(9)|179(17)|192(1)|204(13)|218(16)|230(15)|241(13)|253(11)|267(12)|272(2)|281(8)|293(14)|308(6)|320(14)|333(14)|347(14)|362(9)|377(3)|387(7)|397(13)|411(10)|425(5)|438(2)|448(11)|460(2)|471(15)|484(2)|495(16)|507(5)|517(1)|525(17)|538(1)|548(15)|563(4)|570(13)|571(15)|583(3)|595(4)|611(12)|621(13)|637(11)|652(14)|668(5)|675(11)|689(3)|700(3)|715(4)|735(5) 0 https://youtu.be/w9d4IcmXRUc YouTube video English 9 Wiretaps / First Speech About Vietnam --these national security wiretaps was in the last year of President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy's administration, in 1963. Nixon discusses using wiretaps on journalists and White House staff in order to stop information leaks. He also recounts his first speech about Vietnam as president in 1969. Bobby Kennedy ; China ; information leak ; John F. Kennedy ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; National Security Council (NSC) ; State Department ; Vietnam ; wiretap Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Kennedy, Robert F., 1925-1968 196 Anti-War Protests During the summer of 1969, the domestic anti-war protest began to heat up. Nixon shares his thoughts about the harmful nature of anti-war protests during the Vietnam War. Anatoly Dobrynin ; Dien Bien Phu ; Henry Kissinger ; Ho Chi Minh ; Le Duc Tho ; Moratorium Day ; National Liberation Front (NLF) ; Nguyen Van Thieu ; protest ; Soviet Union ; Vietnam Dobrynin, Anatoly, 1919-2010 ; Hồ, Chí Minh, 1890-1969 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923 - ; Lê, Đức Thọ, 1911-1990 ; Nguyễn, Văn Thiệu, 1923-2001 623 Men Avoiding Military Service One American politician said that the best young Americans during that period went to Canada, not to Vietnam. Nixon discusses his respect for the soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War. He also addresses those that avoided service and examines the mindset of those that opposed the war. Cambodia ; draft evaders ; foreign relations ; Korea ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Quakers ; racism ; Vietnam ; World War II Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 1195 Silent Majority Speech Your November third speech was one of the most extraordinary moments of your presidency, even one of the most extraordinary moments of contemporary political history. Nixon recounts giving his " ; Silent Majority" ; speech, including his refusal to give an advance copy to the press and the speech's reception by the American people. Camp David ; Henry Kissinger ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; media ; National Security Council (NSC) ; October Moratorium ; Silent Majority ; speech ; Vietnam Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kissinger, Henry 1923- 1673 Military Action in Cambodia On April twentieth, 1970, you went on television and announced--gave a--a very optimistic progress report about Vietnamization. Nixon speaks about his decision to take military action in neutral Cambodia Bernard Montgomery ; Cambodia ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Fishhook ; George S. Patton ; Leo Tolstoy ; Lon Nol ; Norodom Sihanouk ; Omar Bradley ; Parrot's Beak ; Patton ; Pentagon ; Phnom Penh ; Tet Offensive ; Vietnam ; War and Peace Bradley, Omar Nelson, 1893-1981 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Lon Nol ; Montgomery of Alamein, Bernard Law Montgomery, Viscount, 1887-1976. ; Norodom Sihanouk, Prince, 1922-2012 ; Patton, George S. (George Smith), 1885-1945 ; Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910 1998 College Campus Protests / Kent State Shootings As you left the Pentagon that morning, a very dramatic scene developed. Nixon describes anti-war protests on college campuses and recounts the events of the Kent State shootings and the responsibility he felt for the event. He also discusses some of the support he received from the " ; silent majority." ; anti-war protests ; Archie Bunker ; bums ; Cambodia ; Governor Jim Rhodes ; hard hats ; Kent State University ; National Guard ; Silent Majority ; Stanford University ; Vietnam Rhodes, James A. (James Allen), 1909-2001 2644 Pentagon Papers On June thirteenth, 1971, you looked at your Sunday New York Times. Nixon recalls the release of the Pentagon Papers to the public by Daniel Ellsberg and reflects on the harm that their release caused. 3115 Daniel Ellsberg Despite the extenuating circumstances and whatever his intentions may have been, in your opinion, did Daniel Ellsberg betray his country? Nixon imparts his belief that Ellsberg should have gone to prison for the release of the Pentagon Papers. Interview NIXON: --these national security wiretaps was in the last year of President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy' ; s administration, in 1963. Now, that doesn' ; t mean that what they did was wrong. It doesn' ; t mean that what has happened in the past justifies what happened--what we did. What I am suggesting here is that the reason we wiretapped was that the leaks were making it very difficult to conduct our foreign policy. We had a lot of things going on then. We had, for example, the--a new relationship that we were attempting to develop with the People' ; s Republic of China. It was just in its early stages. We had relationships with the Soviet Union. We were having, of course, discussions on a confidential basis with regard to Vietnam, but I should point out that the leak which disturbed me the most happened to be the leak of thes--of the secret bombing-- GANNON: You-- NIXON: --because it cost American lives. GANNON: Because it cost lives. You made your first speech to the American people on the subject of Vietnam on May-- NIXON: Twenty-seventh. GANNON: --f--I think--May f--in May-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --of 1969. It' ; s a speech that you are not happy with. Why not? NIXON: [Clears throat.] Well, it was a speech that had been prepared by the N.S.C. staff, and it was written in the typical State Department kind of unintelligible rhetoric. Now, I don' ; t consider myself to be a particularly brilliant writer, but I' ; ve had enough experience, I think, to know how to get s--say something very simply to get it across. And from that time on, all the speeches I made during the war, I took as much assistance as I could get from the State Department and the N.S.C. staff, but I rewrote them all to put them in language that people could understand. GANNON: [Begins to speak.] NIXON: Oh, that was--excuse me, go ahead. GANNON: Go ahead. NIXON: No--as far as the substance of the speech was concerned, I think it should be noted, too, that it was a--a very conciliatory speech, but it was one that did not have the impact that I would have liked in rectifying what Johnson had done. What had happened there is that he had never gotten across to the American people as to why we were in Vietnam. He tried to, but he never made it as plain as he might. Too many American people had the impression we were in Vietnam solely for the purpose of seeing that Vietnam had an opportunity to have a democratic government. Now, that was important to us, but that wasn' ; t the major reason. He didn' ; t point out the great stakes that were involved in Vietnam, and he had not leveled with the American people on what it would be required to bring this to a successful conclusion. I felt it was necessary to do that, and it was later on that I was able to make those points more effectively. GANNON: During the summer of 1969, the domestic anti-war protest began to heat up. It was clear that the honeymoon with the new administration was over. October fifteenth was designated as Moratorium Day, and the idea was that the fifteenth of each succeeding month would be another Moratorium until it had--that had affected your actions and you' ; d withdrawn the troops and ended the war. How did this escalating domestic protest affect your thinking about the war or your conduct of the war? NIXON: Well, the protests had exactly the opposite effect from what the post--protesters intended. They protested against the war. Well, we were all against the war. We wanted to end it. It was a question of how. They wanted to have peace, and they wanted to stop the killing, of course. What happened here was that, by their protests, they prolonged the war because they encouraged the enemy, and the enemy themselves said that, when they congratulated those that were running the October fifteen Moratorium and said, " ; May your October offensive be very, very successful." ; And it did have that effect. Now, let me say, another reason, however, that I was particularly concerned about this protest, the one on October the fifteenth, is that we had a synchronized, orchestrated policy in place that we thought would bring meaningful negotiations with the North Vietnamese. I had written a letter to Ho Chi Minh, one which he gave a curt reply to, but which at least opened a channel. GANNON: Was this known publicly? NIXON: Oh, yes. It became known then. And it became known shortly thereafterwards. I had also initiated talks with the Soviet Union through a contact with Ambassador Dobrynin, in which I laid it on the line as to where we stood with regard to their involvement in supporting the North Vietnamese. I thought that they could bring some pressure to bear, of course, on the North Vietnamese. Dr. Kissinger, in August of that year, had begun the first of twelve secret trips that he took to Paris to negotiate in a private channel with the North Vietnamese, Le Duc Tho. In addition to that, I had taken other actions, on the diplomatic front and otherwise, to indicate that, one, on the one side, we wanted to make a reasonable settlement, provided it was one that did not require us to overthrow the Thieu government or the government selected by the people of South Vietnam. But, on the other side, that if we were unable to get that kind of a settlement, that we were prepared to take the military action to bring the war to a conclusion. But that became an empty threat, believe me, after the October fifteenth Moratorium, because what happened then was it encouraged the enemy not to negotiate seriously, and they didn' ; t for a considerable amount of time after that. And, of course, with all of that kind of disruption in the nation' ; s capitol and across the country, because this wasn' ; t the only place it had occurred, I knew that it would take--tear the country apart to escalate militarily, as I had hoped we would--we would--would be able to do in the event that the enemy continued to be intransigent. GANNON: Do we know that the North Vietnamese or the NLF followed our domestic political scene and were aware of the anti-war protests? NIXON: Oh, yes. We were very much aware of that. GANNON: How--how do we know that? NIXON: We know it, too, from a historical standpoint. The war in Vietnam, as far as the French was concerned, was not lost in Vietnam. It was lost in Paris. The French still, after the great loss in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, had substantial military superiority, and they could have won it had their political base stood up in Paris. Now, the North Vietnamese, if nothing else, are historians. They think historically, as do most Communists and Communist leaders, and when they saw what had happened in France, they thought the same thing could happen in the United States. They couldn' ; t win on the battlefield in Vietnam. They couldn' ; t win, particularly as Thieu was beginning to develop the South Vietnamese forces which could carry the ba--carry the load themselves even after we withdrew. And so, what they could not win on the battlefield against American and Vietnamese forces, they hoped to win in Washington, D.C. And that is why they conducted these campaigns of propaganda and demonstrations and so forth all over the nation--in order to force capitulation in Washington, to win politically what they could not win militarily. GANNON: We have on film some scenes from typical anti-war protests of those years. GANNON: As you say, these protesters unwittingly upset the plans you had put in motion for peace. How do you feel about these protesters today, looking back on that experience? NIXON: Well, now, first of all, that' ; s about as untypical a picture of those protesters as I could possibly imagine. That shows the kind of protest that the media tried to paint of the protest movement generally--peaceful people walking along carrying coffins, demonstrating peacefully. Let' ; s understand what kind of protest it was. It was violent. Some of it was peaceful, but a lot of it was violent. Near Washington, D.C., hundreds of thousands of dollars' ; worth of damage was done. We have to understand, too, that all over the nation, for example, in 1969 alone, there were, as I recall, forty thousand bombings or threats of bombs. In that period, too, there were over two hundred and fifty cases of arson, and there' ; d been eighty-six people killed. This was a rough period. This was not a non-violent protest. [Pause ; begins to speak again.] GANNON: [Begins to speak ; pauses.] I' ; m sorry. NIXON: Excuse me. GANNON: One American politician said that the best young Americans during that period went to Canada, not to Vietnam. How do you react to a statement like that? NIXON: Well, I was in Vietnam in July of 1969, and I had been there, of course, on six other different occasions. I went out among the troops in the battlefield. I was enormously impressed and, frankly, moved by them. They' ; re just fine young men. And I realized as they were there that over two-and-a-half million young Americans served in Vietnam. They came back, as we know now, usually unappreciated and sometimes even condemned, ostracized, and under the circumstances it had to be a very bitter experience for them. But I can tell you what I feel about it--our best young men didn' ; t go to Canada. They went to Vietnam. Oh, these young fellows, most of them, didn' ; t have college educations, not because they were stupid or dumb, because probably they didn' ; t come from families who could afford it. But they served their country. They did their job, and I feel that the country owes them what they have not received to date--that is, appreciation for what they have done. GANNON: How do you feel about the--the mindset behind a statement like " ; Our best young men went to Canada, not to Vietnam" ; ? NIXON: Well, this is what we call the " ; higher morality." ; It' ; s the idea that there are some people who are better educated than others, and certainly better educated than whoever happens to be the elected leaders of the country, who should determine what is just and what is unjust in terms of America' ; s political and military commitments around the world. And if they determine that something is unjust or unwise, then they consider that those who protest against it, even though they violate the law, are heroes, and those who serve are really people that do not deserve our appreciation. Well, I don’t accept that. We can' ; t have a country that can be a major force for good in the world, as the United States in my view has been and will continue to be, if we have that kind of anarchy in the intellectual community. GANNON: It' ; s also been argued that Vietnam was a racist war on our side, to the extent that, whereas middle-class and upper-middle-class white young men were able, for various reasons--either by going to Canada or obtaining student deferments--were able to avoid service. The average soldier was black, was Hispanic, was poor, was uneducated. Is there validity to that charge? NIXON: To a certain extent, yes. It wasn' ; t intended, of course, but that' ; s the way the draft law had been written, and--and under the circumstances, people could avoid service--it wasn' ; t illegal to--by getting education and through other kind of deferments. I--I think in the future, of course, in the event--and I hope we don' ; t ever have that--have to face up to that again--that that has to be modified or rectified, because it isn' ; t right to have some people pay the price and others, frankly, have a free ride. I recall, for example, a--a--a confrontation I had in the 1970 campaign. I was in New Jersey, I believe it was, and--and I was going in to address a meeting of--one of the political meetings in--in a governor' ; s race or something I--up there. No. I' ; m sorry. This is New Jersey in 1970. I was addressing a political meeting, and--and a young fellow came up to me and grabbed me by the arm, said he was a student. Well, I guess he was, although from his age I think he had been in college a long time. But he said, " ; Stop this war in Vietnam." ; And I said, " ; Have you ever been to Vietnam?" ; I sa--he said, " ; No." ; I said, " ; Well, look. There are a lot of young people out there in Vietnam fighting so that you won' ; t have to go." ; GANNON: Do you think that a white middle-class or upper-middle-class young American at that time who took advantage of that position--of the loopholes in the law to avoid service was a less good American for doing that? NIXON: No, not at all. I--I' ; m not going to sit here and judge them as they judged those who served, or as they may judge me. No. The draft law is the law, and I don' ; t--I don' ; t think that we have to assume that an individual isn' ; t going to do what' ; s in his best interest. Who wants to go out there and get his tail shot off? Who wants to take that kind of risk? Who wants to have his life interfered with? So they had a right to do that. I understand that. What I do not understand, however, is for some like that to have engaged in demonstrations, to take out, if they had a sense of guilt, their sense of guilt by attacking those who did serve, in effect, by attacking what they call " ; an unjust war" ; and, in effect, looking down on those who were stupid enough to have not avoided service. GANNON: Do you think that the Communists were behind, in any way, the anti-war movement? NIXON: Oh, there' ; s no question that they were behind it. However, I would have to say that the anti-war movement had a life of its own. It was made up of a number of different groups. For example, there were those I just referred to, individuals who just didn' ; t want to get shot at, and I don' ; t blame them a bit. I understand those. And then there were some very honest pacifists, the Quakers, for example, of which I happen to be one--not a very good one--but, nevertheless, they don' ; t--they' ; re against all wars. But there are two kinds that I don' ; t have any use for whatever. One, there are those who got the United States into the war in Vietnam, the brightest and the best, who urged that we get in and then had the war conducted their way, gradual escalation, and win it in economic areas rather than on the battlefield and so forth, and then, once it began to go sour, they turned on Johnson and later on me and sabotaged my efforts, particularly, to get us out on an honorable basis. And then, finally, there is one other group. These are people that were not in government, but they are--they are--our--what we call our " ; better intellects" ; in the country, in the great universities, in the foundations. Most of them, of course, in the media as well are in this category, who felt always that they, in effect, were the best thinkers about American foreign policy. They supported what we did in World War I. They supported what we did in World War II, to a certain extent even in Korea, but when it came to Vietnam, they bugged out. And as a result of that, they in effect left a legacy which I think they’re finding very hard to live down, because they know they failed the country, failed to exert the leadership that they could in a very desperate time. Let me point out why. It--it isn' ; t because I question their patriotism. It isn' ; t because I question their sincerity, but I question their judgment, just as I question the judgment of the protesters. They wanted to end the war. Well, if they wanted to end the war, what they should have done was to support the government that was trying to end it and the only government we had at that time that was trying to end it, rather than to sabotage our efforts to end it, which we were trying to do on an honorable basis. And I question their judgment in another way--when they said that the war was won--that it didn' ; t make any difference who won. History has disproved them. What has happened to Vietnam since the United States left? What has happened since the South Vietnamese, after holding on for two years, were denied the support they needed to resist the--the f--the-the attack from North--what has happened there has demonstrated that the cause that we were there--even though we may not have conducted ourselves too well in achieving it, was a just cause. We were attempting to prevent what has happened since, and I make the point again that I have made on previous occasions. More people since the fall of Vietnam and the fall of Cambodia were killed, in Cambodia alone, and starved to death--two to three million--than were killed in the twenty-five years that the French, the Americans, and the South and North Vietnamese had fought in Vietnam. So we were on the right side, and these people in the great educational institutions, in the media, some even in the business community and the rest, that had this " ; higher morality" ; --they carry a great burden for bugging out on the leadership position which they should have provided here. Rather than opposing, they should have supported what we were trying to do. GANNON: Your November third speech was one of the most extraordinary moments of your presidency, even one of the most extraordinary moments of contemporary political history. You went on television and defined a whole new political constituency and then rallied it to do something that few thought possible to support continued fighting of the war. We have a clip from that famous [" ; Silent Majority" ; ] speech. GANNON: How did you plan and write that speech, and did you have any idea it would have the effect that it did have? NIXON: Well, first, we got to look a little at the background. We had had the October Moratorium, as I pointed out earlier. That had destroyed any chance for us to escalate militarily, and another Moratorium was planned, or they called it something else, a " ; mobilization," ; I believe, on November the fifteenth. So, under the circumstances, I knew it was necessary to address the nation. I think what made the speech a success was, first, the tactics I used in presenting it. I remember I drove my staff right up the wall. They came to me almost every hour and said, " ; The press is really complaining that they don' ; t have an advance copy." ; I said, " ; Don' ; t give them an advance copy, because I want to talk directly to the American people." ; I knew that ninety percent of the press was against what we were doing in Vietnam, and I knew that if they got an advance copy they would destroy--by putting out earlier what I was going to say and by giving their arguments against it, they would destroy the effect of it. So I gave no advance text. I also did not give an advance text to members of my staff, unti--except just a few minutes before I went on I informed everybody concerned what I was going to say, without going into all--detail in every respect. I did most of the writing, with a great deal of help, incidentally, from our N.S.C. staff, from Henry Kissinger and others, but I did the writing at Camp David, and that' ; s where, very late at night--I think it was two a.m. in the morning--the " ; Silent Majority" ; theme came into my mind. Not that it' ; s so brilliant, but, as I pointed out in that speech, here we had demonstrations going on all over the country. We had people indicating that our brave young men, our best young men were going to--were not in Vietnam but-- GANNON: Going to Canada. NIXON: That' ; s right. They were going to Canada rather than--than Vietnam. But under the circumstances, I therefore tried to accomplish three things. First, I deliberately in advance did not try to put down speculation as to what I was going to say. Some senators were speculating that I was going to announce a major withdrawal of forces. Others said I was going to announce a cease-fire. Others said that I was going to announce more conciliatory attitudes toward the demonstrators, toward the North Vietnamese, and so forth and so on. I didn' ; t discourage a--any of that at all. So, by the time I went on, it built the biggest audience that I' ; d had up to that time in the presidency, and I think the biggest audience that any president has had up to that time. And they heard it directly from me rather than through the media, which, of course, would not have presented it the way that I wanted to come through. And, after hearing it from me, it had a dramatic effect, because the mail just poured in, not as stimulated as some of our critics would indicate. But it poured in spontaneously such as you' ; ve never heard. It--it had just three major themes in it. One, I did what I felt Johnson had not done adequately. I tried to tell the American people what the stakes were, that it didn' ; t involve just what happened to the people of Vietnam, but what happened to the people in the rest of Southeast Asia, what happened to the United States as well. Second, I told them what we were trying to do in the way of bringing the war to a conclusion, a program of Vietnamization. That means, in effect, that we were going to withdraw American forces at the same time that we were training the South Vietnamese forces to take over their own defense. And that program eventually was carried out, and carried out successfully. And, third--I made this point very clear--that our policy was not going to be changed. It wasn' ; t going to be affected by demonstrations in the street. I pointed out that I didn' ; t question the right of people to demonstrate, but, on the other hand, that as far as a president is concerned, he must make up his mind after getting the best advice from his associates as to what is best and then follow that course of action. And that is why I concluded with the line, " ; Our policy isn' ; t going to--in effect, going to be made in the streets. It' ; s going to be made under our constitutional process by the administration," ; and I called on the Silent Majority to support them, and the Silent Majority was out there. Our approval rating went up to sixty-eight percent right after that, right in the midst of a war and in spite of huge demonstrations. What I was really trying to get across was this--that despite the fact that the media was overwhelmingly against the war, despite the fact that many members of Congress were making great noises to the effect that the war ought to come to a conclusion on any terms whatever, and despite the fact that we had demonstrations, thousands of them, that were very loud--that that was not the voice of America. The voice of America was the Silent Majority, and that sustained me, as a matter of fact, throughout the four years until we got the peace agreement in January of 1983--I mean, 1973. GANNON: In addition to enhancing impact and preventing leaks, was one of the reasons you kept the text of the speech from your staff because you suspected that many, if not a majority, of them would have disagreed with the decisions you had made? NIXON: Well, there' ; s no question that some of them would have disagreed with it. However, I didn' ; t--I wasn' ; t paranoif--I wasn' ; t paranoiac enough, as someone has suggested, to distrust them and feel that they' ; d run out and give it to the press. But I also knew that it' ; s a great s--temptation to any staff member who' ; s got a friend in the media, and the media fellow says, " ; Look. Just for my own information, just so I don' ; t say what is wrong here, could you just give me a little fill-in, just guide me in the right way?" ; Of course, that' ; s a come-on, and there--there' ; re so many suckers in Washington then, and there still are today, that can be taken on by that--taken on--that could be taken in by that kind of approach. So I just wasn' ; t going to take any chances. It was better for them not to know. And if there' ; s going to be any leaks, then I would be responsible because I was the only one that knew. GANNON: On April twentieth, 1970, you went on television and announced--gave a--a very optimistic progress report about Vietnamization. You announced that a hundred and fifty thousand troops were going to be withdrawn over a period of time. Ten days later, on April thirtieth, you went on television and shocked everybody by announcing an American military action into Cambodia. Your critics said that the only thing that changed between those two days, the twentieth and the thirtieth, was that you saw the film Patton twice. What did change, and why did you feel it was necessary to expand the Vietnam War into neutral Cambodia? NIXON: Well, first, the business about Patton. I recommend everybody to see it if you can still see it on a cassette or someplace. I like Patton not because of what it told about war, but what it told about people. The character sketches of not just Patton, but Eisenhower, who doesn' ; t even appear on film. You only see him through references by others--Montgomery, Bradley. It' ; s like War and Peace. War and Peace, Tolstoy' ; s great novel, I liked because of what it told about people rather than about war and peace. But what really had happened, of course, that required the action that we took in April thirtieth was that in Cambodia, so-called " ; neutral Cambodia," ; there was a chance that it was going to become very unneutral, because what had happened was that Sihanouk, who, of course, had run a neutral government and had a relatively neutral policy, tilting it s--more, of course, to the Communists than to us, but nevertheless relatively neutral--he had been overthrown by a very pro-Western government under Lon Nol. Once that happened, then the North Vietnamese launched a major attack in Cambodia aimed at Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia, and they threatened to overrun all of Cambodia, which would have meant that these sanctuaries bordering on Vietnam that we had bombed in 1969--that they would be expanded to the whole country. This would be a threat to our forces in Vietnam that I considered to be unacceptable. We already had very high casualties as a well a-- as a result of those hit-and-run raids. Now, when you say we " ; invaded neutral Cambodia," ; that' ; s like saying Eisenhower invaded France when he went into Normandy, or that the British invaded Holland when they went across at the time that those were German-occupied territories. All we did was to move into that part of Cambodia that was totally occupied by the North Vietnamese and by the Vietcong, by the enemy. There--as far as we knew, and nobody, I think, has really questioned this, there were no civilians, only a few, if any at all. And so the purpose there was to knock out these sanctuaries, to save American lives, which we did. And, second, to allow our withdrawal program, which I had announced ten days before, to go forward, because in the event that the North Vietnamese had been able to take over all of Cambodia, we would have had to increase the number of people--Americans in Vietnam in order to avoid a total defeat for the South Vietnamese. GANNON: The next morning you went to the Pentagon for a briefing on the military action in Cambodia. While you were there, you decided to go for broke and take out all the sanctuaries. What made you make that decision? NIXON: Well, they showed a map of Cambodia in the briefing, and I noted the two sanctuaries we--we went into. One was called the Fishhook, and the other was called, int--interestingly enough, Parrot' ; s Beak, both of them digging into South Vietnam, of course. And I noticed there were four others, and I said, " ; What about those?" ; And they said, " ; Well, we don' ; t know that we have the capability of doing it. We think we have, but we wonder" ; --the general who was briefing me on it--" ; about the political effect of going in." ; I said, " ; Listen, the--leave the politics to me." ; I said, " ; If we can do it militarily, I want them all taken out. We' ; re going to get just as much political heat for taking out some as we can for taking out all." ; Let me say, in that respect, the military are not particularly imaginative or creative, generally, in war. That isn' ; t to reflect on them as people. It’s just the way they were, and particularly in this war, because they had become gun-shy during the Johnson years, when they had to fight with one hand, in effect, behind their back, when they couldn' ; t come up with imaginative ideas because it would be turned down because of the political effect that we--it would have. I made it very clear in this briefing that, from now on, politics was not going to determine the way we conducted this war. We were going to do what was right to bring it to an end, to continue our withdrawal program, and to save American lives. It was a good decision, and it eventually worked, of course, because we did save lives, and we also prevented a Tet Offensive for that year. GANNON: As you left the Pentagon that morning, a very dramatic scene developed. You were surrounded in the lobby by well-wishers, and, in an impromptu exchange of remarks, you referred to the protesting college students as " ; bums." ; Given the intense reaction to your Cambodian action, wasn' ; t that a very provocative remark? NIXON: Well, let' ; s understand how it happened. I not only was surrounded by well-wishers, but one woman came up to me, and she said, " ; Thank you very much for ordering the incursion into Cambodia, because my husband is serving out there with the units that are under attack, and by what you' ; ve done, I think you may have saved his life." ; And I said, " ; You know, I' ; ve been to Vietnam," ; and I said, " ; Those men that are serving out there, you can be very proud of them. They are the greatest." ; I said, " ; You know, our college students are the luckiest people in the world. Here they are in the United States while others are serving out there, and here they are burning books and" ; --wait a minute--is it " ; pomming" ; ? Not " ; pomming." ; No--no--I' ; ll s--I' ; ll start again. " ; And here our college students, in contrast, they' ; re the luckiest people in the world, but what are they doing? They' ; re blowing up the place. They' ; re burning books. And I said, " ; That' ; s simply hard to understand. They' ; re--they' ; re really a bunch of bums." ; Now, in other words, I was not referring to all demonstrators as being bums or all college students being bums. I was referring to those who were blowing up the campuses and also that were burning books and so forth and so on. But let' ; s look at the context of that, too. Up until that time, in--in the whole year of 1969 until April of 1970, we' ; d had a c--we' ; d had a number of bombings, the number of--no, strike that. Until nineteen seventy--until April of nineteen--I' ; ll start again on that. From the time I came into office in 1969 until April of 1970, at that time there had been a total of eighteen hundred demonstrations on college campuses. But worse, there' ; d been two hundred and fifty cases of arson. There had been over six hundred injured, two-thirds of them being police, and, in addition to that, there had been at least eight killed. And then I' ; d had one very dramatic episode just three or four days before which brought it home to me. The demonstrators had burned a research institute at Stanford University. A visiting Asian scholar, a noted anthropologist, had a twenty-five-year research project that he' ; d been working on there burned, destroyed, a whole lifetime' ; s work. And it just seemed to me this was so senseless, so mindless. I understood people being against the war, but bombing and burning and destroying like that--it seemed to me was totally unacceptable. They were bums, and I' ; d say it again, if I were to s--if I had a chance. GANNON: Within a matter of days, campuses all across the country were either up in turmoil or being closed down. Marches on Washington were planned or underway, and then an event happened which added a whole new dimension of tragedy to this situation. At Kent State O--Kent State University in Ohio, National Guard troops fired into a group of student demonstrator--gu--student demonstrators and killed four of them. There' ; s a--how did you first hear about this? NIXON: Well, in fact, I was in the E.O.B. going over some scheduling decisions I had to make, and Bob Haldeman came in from his office, from--the--next to the Oval Office and told me they had just gotten this news with regard to a possible--deaths--he didn' ; t know how many at that point. And I must say that it was a--as shocking an event as I had during the time I was in presidency. GANNON: There' ; s a striking photograph of that event at Kent State which seems to summarize all the anguish that people felt. How do you feel when you look at this photograph? NIXON: Well, I feel as I did when I saw it, because I did see it in the newspaper. It was a--it was an emotional, wrenching experience for me, certainly the most emotionally wrenching experience I had during the entire period of the presidency, more so even than the resignation. Because you see that--a girl like that--you see, of course, the young man down there, probably dead, and--and you think of your own children. I remember, for example, one of the girls who was shot and killed at Kent State--her--her father made a statement to the effect--" ; My daughter was not a bum." ; And I thought of my own daughters. I--I thought back of--their learning to talk and to walk, and their first birthdays, and the trips we took together, going to the ballgame with one and to the circus with others, and so forth and so on, getting them through the teenage years, getting them through college, and so forth and so on, and then [makes " ; whish" ; sound]--all gone. And I therefore felt great responsibility for what had happened. I also felt a great deal of anger for those who had done what brought about this sort of thing. And let' ; s understand that this was not just a case of a group of hard-nosed military people shooting down innocent students. Some of those that were killed were certainly innocent. One was even a bystander. But before this happened, Kent State had been virtually a battleground. The governor, Governor Rhodes, had had to call in the National Guard because of the arson that was going on all over town. Just a couple of days before this, they threw lighted flares into the R.O.T.C. building, burned it to the ground, a million dollars' ; worth of damage. When the fire department came, they cut the hose with machetes so that they couldn' ; t put out the fire. And then they threw rocks at the firemen and injured several of them. Then, when all the demonstrations were banned by court order, they continued, and when the National Guard was trying to quell the ju--demonstrations, they threw rocks at the Guard and threw the tear--the tear gas canisters which had fallen among them, they began to fall--throw those at the--at the Na--at the Guardsmen and drove them back onto a hill. And then, unfortunately, a tragic thing occurred. These young Guardsmen, who were the same age they were, as a matter of fact--one of them fired, and four people were dead. It was a tragedy. It is one that I of course feel a--a great res--felt great responsibility for, but I understood and therefore particularly was disturbed by those that had brought it on, in my opinion, by the kind of actions that they were inspiring. GANNON: Your action into Cambodia also elicited considerable support. There' ; s another photograph, which I think is a--a favorite of yours. What does this photograph remind you of or bring back to you? NIXON: Oh. Oh, yes, I see that. These are what you call the " ; hard hats." ; I' ; ve already indicated that it was very difficult to keep the country together during this war. I could only do it because of the support of the Silent Majority and because of the support of a number of members of the Congress in both the House and the Senate, Democrat and Republicans, and they constitute a majority who did support what I was trying to do, although the minority made most of the news. But we had the opposition of the media. We had the opposition of the best minds in the universities. We had the b--opposition of many in the business community. All of the so-called, or most of the so-called " ; intellectual elite," ; the so-called " ; better people," ; were against what we were doing in Vietnam. They thought it was an unjust war, that we shouldn' ; t be there, and that in any event we should get out, whatever the cost might be. And yet among those that did stand by me were those that weren' ; t supposed to be listened to. The hard hats, of course, are working people. They are members of--of the unions who get out and work on the buildings and so forth. Most of them don' ; t have college educations. Most of them are considered to be Archie Bunker-type that are too stupid to pay any attention to. But, believe me, they have guts. They got backbone. One of the great problems in--sometimes in our education today--we' ; re overeducated people sometimes, and what we do is to strengthen the brain and weaken the backbone. Well, these people had brains, a lot of them. They didn' ; t have the opportunity to develop, as some of our people in college did, but they still had a strong bent of patriotism and support of our men--many of whom, of course, they knew--in Vietnam. And so, under the circumstances, I appreciated what they' ; d done. Without their support, we couldn' ; t have hung on as long as we did, because the so-called " ; better people" ; bugged out. GANNON: On June thirteenth, 1971, you looked at your Sunday New York Times. On the left-hand side of the front-hand page, you read about the coverage of your daughter Tricia' ; s wedding. Then, in the middle of the page, you saw a headline about a series of government documents that the Time--that the Times was about to begin publishing. This was the first appearance of what became known as the Pentagon Papers. Did you have any idea that this was coming? Were you prepared for it? And what were the Pentagon Papers? NIXON: No idea whatever. I was very surprised and shocked, and, of course, Henry Kissinger was just as surprised. I remember he called me at Camp David, expressing consternation that this had occurred. The Pentagon Papers--about seven thousand pages of classified secret and top-secret documents, and a study which had been made from those documents, prepared during the Johnson administration by Secretary of Defense McNamara, as to how we got into the war in Vietnam, how it was conducted. It was f--and, frankly, a critique of the war. That' ; s what the Pentagon Papers was. GANNON: The finger of suspicion quickly pointed to Dr. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department employee who was a consultant to the R.A.N.D. Corporation and had access to those documents. He admitted that he had taken them and distributed them. We have a clip of his--of one of his press conferences. GANNON: What are your feeling about Daniel Ellsberg and what he did? NIXON: Well, Daniel Ellsberg--I do not question what he was trying to do in terms of his sincerity, if a--if a my use a very overworked term. But I certainly question his judgment, and I question the basic, frankly, morality of what he did. After all, he is putting himself above the president of the United States, above the Congress, above our whole system of government when he says, in effect, that he would determine what should be made public, and also from that clip--it indicates that he not only--was not satisfied with what he had done in terms of putting out the records of what had occurred before this administration, our administration, had come into power, but that he would like to get out the records with regard to what we had done in Cambodia and in Laos, which he again, speaking, says was in violation of the U.N. Charter and so forth. Now, it is not for him, who was a former government employee, to make that decision. I think his--I think his decision was wrong. I think he was wrong, for example, on--insofar as his evaluation of the situation. But assuming he was right, that is not our system--it is not our system for people who have been in government to take secret documents and illegally to make them available to the newspapers and, in effect, thereby to give aid and comfort to the enemy. So, some people say--was he a traitor or was he not is really beside the point. There' ; s no question that these documents were valuable to the North Vietnamese and valuable to the Russians, as Dean Rusk said, and also that they gave aid and comfort to the enemy. GANNON: There is an argument that the Pentagon Papers were sort of a red herring, that in fact they were verbose, wordy, academic, that most of the material was already available in non-classified places, that they were the best argument for studying the classification of documents, and, as a matter of fact, in the wake of the publication of the Pentagon Papers, your administration initiated a entire government-wide study of reclassification. What about the argument that the Pentagon--looking back, do you think the government' ; s reaction to the publication of the Pentagon papers was an overreaction? NIXON: Not at all. I wish we could have done more, because if you ever give the seal of discip--not at all. I wish we could have done more, because if you ever give the approval to this kind of action, you' ; re going to have a chaotic situation in the government. You simply aren' ; t going to be able to run it. I would say, too, that when people suggest--and I think Secretary of Defense Laird said that ninety-five percent of them probably didn' ; t need to be classified. Five percent is enough to break a code. And, for example, looking at that, I remember the D.I.A., the Defense Intelligent Agency, in expressing their concern about the Pentagon Papers, made the point that it would--that some of the more recent ones could have resulted in breaking our code, or at least one of our codes. Second, as far as the C.I.A. was concerned, they made the point that some of their sources were revealed, and, in fact, some of their sources did dry up, and third, very interestingly enough, careful reading of some of the Pentagon documents would indicate that a Russian agent would have been able to find that we had successfully bugged Brezhnev' ; s automobile, because some of the information in there came from a conversation that took place in his automobile. And, further, that we had broken the North Vietnamese code. Now, put yourself in the position of the Russians, who, from reports we had received, received a copy of this--a full copy of this even before the New York Times got it. Or the position of the North Vietnamese. They get this information. They know that their codes have been compromised. They' ; re able to change them. And also, if they' ; re reading our secret codes, they' ; re able to develop their policies accordingly. Just let me sum it up. The Pentagon Papers, even if they should not have been classified--it was a breach of the law for Mr. Ellsberg on his own to determine what should be made public. That was a violation of the law. GANNON: Whatever the extenuating circumstances and whatever his intentions may have been, in your opinion, did Daniel Ellsberg betray his country? NIXON: In his--in my opinion, Daniel Ellsberg gave--put the question again. GANNON: Despite the extenuating circumstances and whatever his intentions may have been, in your opinion, did Daniel Ellsberg betray his country? NIXON: I would put it another way. Daniel Ellsberg, whatever his intentions, gave aid and comfort to the enemy. And under those circumstances, that is inexcusable. And I would say, second, as a result of what he did, he, who was a self-proclaimed anti-war activist, although, as Henry Kissinger pointed out, he had been a super-hawk at the beginning of the war--that Daniel Ellsberg, as an anti-war activist--what he did encouraged the enemy. It had the effect, again, of making the enemy more intransigent at the conference table by bringing home to them the fact that there was division in the war here. And under the circumstances, it prolonged the war, and it cost American lives, without any opinion--without any question, in my opinion. GANNON: Because Daniel Ellsberg stole the Pentagon Papers and because The New York Times published them, do you think that American lives were lost in Vietnam? NIXON: I think the war was prolonged. I think that the negotiations which were very much underway at that point, in secret channels, and Dr. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho--I think these--those negotiations did not make the progress they could have made. There is no doubt in my mind but that that gave enormous boost to the idea that the North Vietnamese had that they could win in the United States, particularly in Washington, D.C., the victory, politically, that they could not win on the battlefield. And it made them resist making the decision they eventually made--to agree to a settlement. GANNON: In your memoirs, you write that one of the most moving events of your presidency was at the time when all the P.O.W.s came to Washington for the dinner you gave them at the White House. That afternoon, you had all the P.O.W.s to the State Department auditorium for a briefing in which you filled them in on the things that had happened during their captivity. During that briefing, you referred, not by name, but very clearly, to Ellsberg, and the reaction on the part of the P.O.W.s was very dramatic. We have a clip of that event. GANNON: What do you think should have been done to Ellsberg? NIXON: Well, I think what should have been done unfortunately failed because our legal processes didn' ; t turn out to be as acceptable as they should have been. He should have gone to prison for what he did. GANNON: One of the reasons he didn' ; t was because over Labor Day weekend--well, if--I shouldn' ; t say that, because one can' ; t prejudge what the jury would have decided. But the reason the case was dismissed--one of the reasons the case was dismissed was because over Labor Day weekend, 1971, two White House aides broke into the office of his psychiatrist, presumably to look into the medical records, to find out about his motivations, about his sources, about things he was privy to, and what he intended to do with this material. Looking back, do you think that the Ellsberg break-in was justified on national security grounds? NIXON: I would say, as far as the break-in is concerned, I cannot recall it ever having come to my attention or my having approved it. And, as I look at what happened there, breaking into a psychiatrist' ; s office, it seems to me to be a bizarre move to take. However, we have to understand that, as far as those who did undertake it was concerned, that we had some indications that Ellsberg was a somewhat unstable personality. Henry Kissinger said that he was brilliant--he knew him at Harvard--but that he tended to be erratic and emotionally unstable. And Ellsberg had also indicated, in this clip we just saw, that he would like to get out information with regard to some of the current activities we were engaged in. Now, let us understand, at this very time, that--that the Pentagon Papers, for example, came out two weeks before Henry Kissinger took his secret trip to China. If that trip had been exposed, his cover would have been blown. We might not have had the China initiative. That' ; s one reason for secrecy there. It took place at a time that Kissinger was engaged in secret conversations with the North Vietnamese in Paris. As a result of this particular exposure, that is, the Pentagon Papers exposure, as I' ; ve already indicated, I believe that they became more intransigent at the conference table. At least when we look at the records there, they certainly cooled off on any m--c--any moves that they might have been made in terms of a reasonable settlement. So, under the circumstances, it is, I think, understandable as to why people who had the responsibility, which--Bud Krogh and his associates--he was the young man who was in charge of that particular investigation--understandable that they wanted to do everything that they possibly could to find out what made him tick. They considered that he was a potential leak in the future and that a leak in the future might jeopardize one of our major foreign policy initiatives. GANNON: How did you feel when Bud Krogh went to prison and Daniel Ellsberg went free? NIXON: Well, I thought it was a terrible miscarriage of justice. I mean, Bud Krogh was an outstanding servant of our administration. He did a magnificent job in everything we gave him to do. He was one of my favorite young men, among many young men in that White House staff. And I am delighted now that he is back in the practice of law and very, very successful. He certainly deserves everything that he has. He has not been made a national hero, and Ellsberg has. He would not be welcomed, I' ; m sure, as Ellsberg' ; d be, in the--the high areas of our great university think tanks and so forth. But, as far as he' ; s concerned, he' ; s a real man. I wouldn' ; t say that for Ellsberg. GANNON: I think we can--sorry, go ahead. NIXON: Do we--I want to--yeah. Go ahead. No, no. GANNON: Can we go on for a minute? OFF SCREEN VOICE: We just ran out of tape. We' ; ve got to change reels, if you want to change [unintelligible]. GANNON: Let' ; s--why do--we' ; re up to the time. Why don' ; t we break? NIXON: Then we can-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: We have two minutes of tape on the machine, but I' ; m afraid it' ; ll tear at the end. I' ; d rather change reels if [unintelligible]. NIXON: Okay. GANNON: Let' ; s break. NIXON: We can do it. I have--I have a thought--I--I' ; ll catch it when I get back. GANNON: Okay, we' ; ve done two hours. Let' ; s break for lunch and come back. NIXON: Okay, fine. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0344/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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63 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 7, 1983, part 2.
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gannix_0344
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-04-07
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 7, 1983, part 3. gannix_0345 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|37(2)|49(15)|61(14)|72(2)|86(2)|100(3)|139(2)|155(2)|166(12)|169(14)|169(15)|171(6)|186(2)|199(7)|217(3)|232(3)|247(5)|257(12)|272(2)|285(6)|297(13)|312(11)|326(15)|339(16)|358(8)|373(3)|387(15)|402(11)|415(14)|428(11)|442(3)|452(9)|467(17)|487(7)|500(17)|513(3)|524(6)|537(13)|551(12)|563(15)|575(17)|590(13)|605(6)|615(8)|628(16)|640(5)|652(2)|665(2)|679(10)|694(3)|704(15)|714(13)|729(10)|739(12)|757(5)|769(4)|780(7)|794(13)|805(13)|818(15)|820(7)|832(16)|845(6) 0 https://youtu.be/6i8kabg_K9k YouTube video English 51 Vietnam--President Johnson Looking back, where do you think Lyndon Johnson went wrong on Vietnam and--and why? Nixon considers mistakes President Johnson made in office and the difficulties that he had during his term. 337 White House Dinner for Prisoners of War Looking at these POWs must be a very emotional thing for you. Nixon recounts welcoming home prisoners of war with the largest White House dinner. He also discusses his belief that he publication of the Pentagon Papers prolonged the Vietnam War. Abraham Lincoln ; First Amendment ; media ; Pentagon Papers ; Prisoners of War (POW) ; The New York Times ; torture ; Vietnam ; White House dinner Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 522 War Critics Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark Different war critics went to North Vietnam and to Hanoi. Nixon reflects on the effects that anti-war messages from Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clark, and others had on the Vietnam War and why these messages attract media attention. 979 Vietnam--Torture The fact that the P.O.W.s were tortured, does--does that--couldn't that be the result of the--the intensity of emotion that their captors felt for them? Nixon discusses the brutal nature of the Vietnam War and the aggression that the North Vietnamese people showed to American soldiers and South Vietnamese civilians. 1190 1972 Peace Negotiations Around the fall of 1972, the North Vietnamese indicated that they were prepared to reach a peace agreement before the presidential election in November, and negotiations reached a new pitch. Nixon discusses the peace agreement negotiations with the North Vietnamese in 1972 and his feelings about Congress's refusal to honor parts of the agreement. 1639 Vietnam--Effect of Resignation In a recent article in The New Yorker, William F. Buckley wrote in passing--it was a diary that he kept, and he wrote in passing that if Richard Nixon had been president, had stayed on as president, that we wouldn't have had boat people. Nixon considers how the Vietnam War may have gone differently if he had remained in office instead of resigning after the Watergate scandal. 1832 Vietnam--Christmas Bombing / Soviet Summit When did you realize that you weren't going to get a preelection peace settlement, and what did you do as a result of that realization? Nixon describes his decision to initiate bombing of North Vietnam in December of 1972 after realizing that preelection peace settlements would not happen. He also considers this decision in relation to the Soviet Union's actions. 2266 Christmas 1972 When you initiated the Christmas bombing, there was an enormous uproar and furor. Nixon describes the public response to the Christmas bombing and recounts the Christmas holidays of that year. 2609 Announcement of End of the Vietnam War On January twenty-third, 1973, you went on national television from the Oval Office, and you made the following statement. Nixon recounts giving the announcement that the Vietnam War was ending and discusses the true outcome of the peace agreements. 3116 Vietnam--End of the War Some political commentators today say that now that we have recovered from the trauma, and it's taken this long--of the first war America lost--that people are going to become intensely interested in it again, and indeed, there's going to be a populist revision and people are going to look around to answer the question, just as in--in the forties they asked, " ; Who lost Europe?" ; and in the fifties they asked " ; Who lost China?" ; --that a--an important political question in the 1980s is going to be " ; Who lost Vietnam?" ; Nixon looks back upon the end of the war, talking about how it will be considered in history and the effects of fighting in Cambodia. He shares his regret that he did not begin fighting in Cambodia earlier. Interview NIXON: --we just haven' ; t got the time. GANNON: Well, we can--we' ; ll get the basic stuff down now, and then we--at--at a--at a--at the last taping-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] makeup there. NIXON: Hm? GANNON: At the last taping, where we' ; ve--because we' ; ve got-- NIXON: Mm-hmm. GANNON: --some more sessions, so we can come back and, uh-- NIXON: If you want to fill in something? GANNON: If we feel that something we' ; ve left out is very important, or-- NIXON: Okay. GANNON: The best thing is to do it right now, and use what we get. NIXON: Having in mind, too, you don' ; t have to have everything. GANNON: No, no. NIXON: There are just some good things you' ; re not going to get in. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: [Clears throat four times.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Ten seconds to studio. [unintelligible] GANNON: Looking back, where do you think Lyndon Johnson went wrong on Vietnam and--and why? NIXON: Well, I think Lyndon has received a bad rep, if I may say so, from the instant historians. Lyndon Johnson was a devoted patriot. He was a consummate politician, and he was devoted to peace. The problem was that he sometimes couldn' ; t separate himself in each of his different identities. For example, he was devoted to the Great Society. He knew also that he had to bring the war to a successful conclusion. But he put it very bluntly, in his colorful way, once when he said that he didn' ; t want to have the Congress of the United States debating " ; that bitch of a war in Vietnam" ; rather than the woman he really loved--the Great Society. And that' ; s Lyndon Johnson, vintage Johnson. And so what happened was he tried to have it and eat it, too, as they say. He wanted to have peace, but he didn' ; t want to pay the price. He wanted the Great Society above everything else, and yet he didn' ; t realize that if he didn' ; t handle Vietnam, the Great Society would be cast into disrepute a--as well. Another point that he went wrong on was in trusting some of the people he inherited from President Kennedy. Some of them were good, like Dean Rusk, and honorable. Others were not. The problem was that Johnson didn' ; t know which were and which weren' ; t until too late, and some of those that got us into Vietnam, and then proceeded to mismanagement--mismanage it, carried over into Johnson. He later, in his rather earthy way, said to me once, he says, " ; They screwed me," ; and I think really what he was objecting to, not so much that they screwed him, because he played pretty rough himself at times, but because he was unable to do anything about it and didn' ; t recognize it until it was too late. And then the third thing, I think, I think would be summed up by something that Winston Churchill wrote in his History of the First World War, which I think was his best of his two--the better of his two world war histories--where he says--said, " ; In war, a commander may have a policy of audacity or one of patience or" ; --let me see. I' ; ll repeat there. That--Winston--I think a--another place where he made a mistake was summed up by the way that Winston Churchill wrote it in his book about the First World War, when he said a commander could either have a policy of audacity or one of what he called " ; prudence," ; but he could not have both at the same time. And Johnson did not have an audacious policy, one of using that enormous power that he had, together with the huge mandate he had in--with both houses of Congress, to bring the war to a quick and sharp conclusion. And, on the other hand, he temporized and escalated on a cautious basis, gradual escalation, and then misled the country as to what was happening. All of this brought him neither the victory that he wanted nor the peace with honor that he wanted. And it was a great tragedy, because Johnson was devoted to peace. He was devoted to his country. GANNON: Who were some of the people who screwed Johnson? NIXON: I think it wouldn' ; t be useful to name names of some of the higher-ups, but I would say what we' ; re talking about are people--and they are the most important of all--at the second level in the bureaucracy, in State particularly, a few in Defense, et cetera, who at the beginning went along in this macho business that--" ; Well, we' ; ve got to be strong and hold the line everyplace in the world against Communism," ; and then, when push came to shove, didn' ; t want to do what was necessary to stop Communist dir--insurrection and revolutionary warfare in Vietnam. And then, when they began to see the media turning against it, they turned, too. And, as a result--let me put it bluntly with regard to Johnson. We sometimes hear today, people say, the conservatives, " ; Let Reagan be Reagan." ; Johnson' ; s problem was nobody told him, " ; Let Johnson be Johnson." ; If Johnson had been Johnson in Vietnam, he would have finished it before I ever got to be president. And maybe if he' ; d finished it, I would have never been president. So--who knows? GANNON: Looking at these P.O.W.s must be a very emotional thing for you. NIXON: Yes. It was one of the great events in the White House, the biggest dinner ever held. We held it outside on the lawn for six hundred and fifty of them and their wives. But also, I thought back to all the times that I' ; ve talked to their wives, their mothers, their children, and so forth, when they were in captivity. I think back to what they had done for their country and what they went through--some of them there five, six, seven years, going through torture, and real torture. And I think what men they were, and I' ; m proud that the country could produce such men, because they were really heroes in a war which had very few heroes. For example, you hear this-- GANNON: Y-- NIXON: --t--yeah, excuse me. You wanted to-- GANNON: We were going to--the New York Times. We were going to talk about the New York Times-- NIXON: Yeah, yeah. [Unintelligible] want to finish that [unintelligible]. GANNON: --and the P.O.W.s. NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: Loo-- NIXON: I' ; m sorry, yeah. GANNON: Looking--looking--looking at these P.O.W.s must be a very emotional-- NIXON: Well-- GANNON: --thing for you. NIXON: Yes-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me. Excuse me a second. Just keep rolling, everybody. Frank, just take that question over. [Unintelligible in background] GANNON: Yes. NIXON: Yeah, I see, we wanted to-- GANNON: Sorry. NIXON: I--I was leapfrogging. But that part is a good part to include in the later point. Go ahead. [Makes sound.] GANNON: Looking at these P.O.W.s must be a very emotional thing for you. NIXON: Yes, it is, when I think what they went through--torture, all those years in captivity. I know this from having talked to their wives and their mothers over those years before they came home, and I also think of how I just wish we could have got them back sooner. And I must say that I couldn' ; t possibly disagree more with what the publisher of The New York Times, or somebody representing The New York Times, had said in that famous Pentagon Papers case, that the right of The New York Times under the First Amendment to print these top-secret documents, the Pentagon Papers, should take precedence over the right of P.O.W.s to come home a little sooner. Let me say I think that' ; s obscene. I believe in the First Amendment, but as Lincoln said about the right of--of--excuse me. Wait--I' ; ll start that--I--I--I--I believe, of course, in the First Amendment, but we have to realize that this was wartime, a--and in wartime, I don' ; t believe anything can take precedence over the responsibility of the nation and the commander-in-chief to bring home their P.O.W.s and to save any American lives. And anything that prolonged that war, which I believe the printing of the Pentagon Papers did, and its publication certainly, I think, cannot be justified on First Amendment grounds. GANNON: Different critics went to North Vietnam and to Hanoi. Jane Fonda broadcast over Radio Hanoi urging American bomber pilots not to run--to do bombing runs over North Vietnam. She, Ramsey Clark, the former attorney general, other anti-war leaders, met with various groups of P.O.W.s and came back and reported that they were being well-treated. We have two clips of Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark just after they had come back from a visit to North Vietnam. NIXON: [Under his breath.] Jesus. GANNON: How do you feel when you see film like that? NIXON: Well, I frankly am not surprised at Jane Fonda, because you--you kind of expect a celebrity, a movie star, to be a bit erratic a--at times. But I just can' ; t believe that Ramsey Clark would talk that way, a former attorney general, whose father was a fine attorney general and a great justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, making such absolutely stupid, asinine, false comments. And I just hope that he sometimes does talk to some of these P.O.W.ses who returned. Talk to Jeremiah Denton, who described what had happened to the P.O.W.s in a book was--which was entitled When Hell Was in Session. Look at the analyses made by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, which indicate that over sixty percent of the prisoners were tortured. Get the story with regard to some of those that saw Ramsey Clark and that saw Jane Fonda. One of them, who had a broken arm, was hung by his arm like this until he agreed to see her. He didn' ; t want to do so. Another who refused to see Ramsey Clark and Jane Fonda had both of his legs broken because he wouldn' ; t do so. And, in addition to that, they did such things as to take them and pull their fingernails out in order to get them to see visiting delegations to show how humanely they were being treated. No, they were not treated in that way. And may I say also that, when Ramsey Clark talks about bombing hospitals and dikes and so forth, he knows much better than that, because all bombing, of course, is inhumane in a sense, because some people, civilian or otherwise, may be killed. But, on the other hand, that is simply not the record. GANNON: If you met Ramsey Clark or Jane Fonda at a--at a reception, or if you met them today, would you shake hands with them? Would you talk to them? And what would--what would you say to them? NIXON: Well, I don' ; t think I' ; m going to be confronted with that problem, so therefore I' ; m not going to answer the question. GANNON: Do you think that because of Jane Fonda' ; s and Ramsey Clark' ; s visits to North Vietnam, the war was prolonged, the casualties were increased, and, as you say, the P.O.W.s were tortured? NIXON: Yeah. Ironically and tragically, yes, and I say that--" ; tragically" ; -- from their standpoint. I don' ; t question that both Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark wanted to bring the war to an end, just as I wanted to bring it to an end and as Johnson wanted to bring it to an end. But, on the other hand, what they did gave aid and comfort to the enemy by causing division in the United States, by causing more support against the war in the United States, and, above everything else, by encouraging the North Vietnamese to hold on. Like when you hear Jane Fonda say, " ; I hope that Nixon is defeated," ; and so forth, well, you can see what that does to the North Vietnamese as they loo--sit across the table from Henry Kissinger. They' ; re going to say, " ; Well, maybe he will be defeated. We' ; ll wait for McGovern." ; And they did do that for quite a while. It was only when they thought McGovern was down the tube that they finally negotiated seriously. But, believe me, as a result of what Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark and others who went over there, who said they went for the purpose of stopping the war, as a result of what they did, they prolonged it. And they were responsible, without intending it. But they were responsible for the deaths of Americans who were killed. GANNON: You say that people should expect actresses to--or celebrities to be erratic. Why, then, do--do the political--does the political involvement of celebrities have such impact, and why does the media give it such coverage? NIXON: Because the media likes actors. Now, fortunately, I' ; m glad they like one actor--President Reagan. But he is much more than an actor. He is a--he is a world statesman, in my view, and has demonstrated that, and he uses that enormous acting capability to communicate very effectively with the American people. But, let' ; s face it, the actor, whether he' ; s in politics or anything else, is a much more interesting, capable performer than one who is not an actor. And I say that as one who was definitely not an actor. GANNON: The fact that the P.O.W.s were tortured, does--does that--couldn' ; t that be the result of the--the intensity of emotion that their captors felt for them? Does that necessarily apply to the entire--to--to the enemy or to the nature of the enemy in that conflict? NIXON: Oh, no. As a matter of fact, I' ; ve heard that argument. Well, that was an exception. After all, these people had been bombing innocent people in hospitals, and therefore it was justified, or, at least, if not justified, it is understandable that they' ; d want to torture those that had been doing it. But let me tell you--that was a way of life for these people. The North Vietnamese were as brutal, as cruel, as any aggressors in history. And just two or three examples that come to mind. I remember, for example, reading that, after 1968, that in Hue, a town that they overran in Vietnam--that they uncovered a mass grave with twenty-eight hundred people in it, and many of them had been buried alive. I recall another incident in the great offensive that they launched in 1972. If they came into a village that they felt might have people that were supporting the other side, our side--was concerned, they would take action against them. And, in one case, they took a--fifty men and a hundred and fifty of their children and their wives out together in a--in an area. They buried the fifty men alive, but, even worse, made their wives and children watch when they buried them alive. Others, they disemboweled while they were alive and made their wives and children watch. You could go on and on. The point is that the atrocities and engaging in atrocities was a way of life for these people. Like in our case, when Calley, in that famous Calley case, engaged in actions against civilians which were beyond and in violation of the rules of engagement as we laid them down, he was prosecuted. I refused to pardon him, and he had to pay the price for it. In North Vietnam, he would have got a medal for that. That' ; s the difference between the two. GANNON: Is it a--would you say it is a racial--maybe not use these words, but that it is a racial stereotype to say that the North Vietnamese are a vicious, brutal people? NIXON: Well, let me say that the Vietnamese as a people, traditionally, in Asia have considered to be the most militaristic, the most aggressive. And there is a different attitude, or has been historically, in Vietnam, in China, for that matter, a different attitude toward human life and so forth than in some other areas. Let us all understand that those who happen to be of European background and so forth shouldn' ; t say, " ; Now, that never happened with us." ; You look back at the earlier stages in European history, and there are some pretty horrible examples of brutality, and even of our own history in our treatment of Indians and the rest. But let me say that in--in today' ; s world there is no bru--more brutal example of--of what I would say would be inhuman treatment than what was visited not only upon our vee--on our P.O.W.s, but also on civilians in South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese. It was deliberate, it was ordered, and those that did it were commended for it. GANNON: Around the fall of 1972, the North Vietnamese indicated that they were prepared to reach a peace agreement before the presidential election in November, and negotiations reached a new pitch. Henry Kissinger came back, and at the end of October he went into the White House briefing room and told a anxiously waiting nation and world about the state of the negotiations. We have a clip of that briefing. NIXON: We' ; ve got to get the offensive in, May eighth, before [unintelligible]. NIXON: You going to come back to that? GANNON: What did the announcement, which turned out to be premature, that " ; peace is at hand," ; do to your ability and to Henry Kissinger' ; s ability to negotiate a peace to end the war? NIXON: Well, Henry Kissinger realized right after that conference that he had overstated and had, in fact, mis--uh--spoken what he intended. And what it did, of course, is that when he said, " ; Peace is at hand," ; before the election, the North Vietnamese said, " ; Well, now they have to have peace before the election." ; And so they got more intransigent as a result, rather than reaching the agreement that was needed to be reached on some of the outstanding issues between them and the South Vietnamee--ese. GANNON: There are widespread stories in articles and memoirs of the time that during this period, under the enormous pressure of going back and forth and trying to negotiate an end to the war, that Henry Kissinger became extremely emotional, that he threatened to resign several times, or re--submitted his resignation, that he became almost pathological in his dislike and distrust of President Thieu, that he became almost obsessive in his commitment to signing the agreement on a certain deadline. Is there any truth to those reports? NIXON: Well, I think he would be the first to say that it was a very emotional period for all of us and that he would be the first to say that he was, at times, emotional, but I must say in his defense that there were reasons for that. You mentioned the fact that he was pathologically--almost pathologically concerned about Thieu' ; s intransigence. Let me say he was even more concerned about North Vietnam' ; s in--intransigence. It was tough. He' ; d been negotiating with them, with the Chinese, with the Russians, and so forth. It was a superhuman job, and I don' ; t know how he kept his senses about him to the extent that he did. But I remember after one of his trips--I think it was just before the " ; peace is at hand" ; statement--he came in and told me of the very great problems he was having with the North Vietnamese on a little piddly change in the agreement that the South Vietnamese wanted. And he said, " ; They' ; re just shits, the North Vietnamese. They' ; re just tawdry shits. When it comes to negotiating, they make the Russians look good, just" ; --" ; they make the Chinese look good, just like the Chinese make the Russians look good." ; Let me repeat that. I remember his coming in, and he just threw up his hands, and he said, " ; You know, they' ; re just shits. When it comes to negotiating, they make the Chinese look good, just like the Chinese make the Russians look good." ; Now, Thieu was difficult, but there were reasons for him to be difficult. He mistrusted the North Vietnamese, and facts proved him to be right. He thought they were going to break the agreement. He also had to prepare his population for it. And so, consequently, he wanted to buy as much time as he could to get the right kind of a deal. It was only after I gave assurances that he--that we would back him up, and also when I put some very heavy pressure on him that if he didn' ; t go along, we would have to make agreement by our--on our own, that he finally did agree to the peace agreement which we eventually signed. GANNON: Is it at all arguable that a more even-tempered negotiator than Henry Kissinger might have had a--or that the presence of a more even-tempered negotiator might have had an effect on the progress of the peace talks, and that an agreement might have been reached earlier? NIXON: No. No, I would disagree with that totally. I think Kissinger did--did a monumental job on that. See, it was hour after hour after hour that he had to negotiate. When you' ; re negotiating with Communists--I' ; ve done a little of it over my period of time, too--they just want to wear you out. And Henry had enormous stamina and enormous patience. No. I would have to say I am just surprised he was able to do as well as he did. GANNON: The--uh--you-- NIXON: And, also, he got a deal. GANNON: You mentioned the assurances that you gave President Thieu. They later became controversial. Is it constitutional, is it legal, for a president, unilaterally and in advance, to make commitments of American military action? NIXON: It depends on the circumstances. In these circumstances, I believe so, because the military action which was pledged was for the purpose of keeping a peace agreement which we were to agree to and which I was sure that Congress was going to approve, or the Senate would approve. And if, in order to keep that agreement, in order to keep our commitments under the agreement, it was necessary to use military force, I think it would be justified. And I was simply indicating that that' ; s what I intended to do. If they signed the agreement, we, on our side, would see that it was kept, because the agreement provided, among other things, you know, that we would provide to the South Vietnamese an equal amount of arms as was provided to the North. And that part of the agreement was not kept later, t--as you well know. GANNON: How did you feel when the Congress refused to honor those assurances that you had made? NIXON: Well, I thought it was a tragedy, just as much was the tragedy in that year, 1973, and 1974. And I knew, or at least I thought I knew, that eventually would lead to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, because you u--must understand that when people say, " ; Well, that agreement was no good" ; --that for two years after the peace agreement of 1973--for two years the South Vietnamese kept every provincial capital despite the fact that the North had new equipment that they received from the Russians, were launching offensives, breaking the agreement virtually every day. That' ; s an indication of the fact that, had the Congress not cut the legs out of--from under Thieu by cutting back on the tanks and other materiel that he needed so that the North Vietnamese had a four-to-one advantage in heavy artillery and tanks when they launched their final offensive, South Vietna--nam would be free today, and we wouldn' ; t have had the boat people and the other tragedy that has been visited upon that poor country. GANNON: In a recent article in The New Yorker, William F. Buckley wrote in passing--it was a diary that he kept, and he wrote in passing that if Richard Nixon had been president, had stayed on as president, that we wouldn' ; t have had boat people. Is that true? NIXON: Well, I would hope so. As a matter of fact, even though I was under, as you know, a rather sustained and eventually fatal attack on the Watergate issue--that I was trying as best I could to serve what I considered to be the responsibilities of the presidency. That' ; s why, for example, in 1973, when Israel was about to go down the tube, I nevertheless ordered an alert of American forces, which was a very risky things to do around the world, and ordered a huge airlift to--to Israel to save them. That was when Watergate, of course, was beginning to heat up. I am sure that if I--if I had been able to stay in office, that, first, I would have done something in order to prevent what eventually happened. But, second, it wouldn' ; t have been necessary to do anything due to the fact that I had already established my credibility with the North by what I had done just three weeks before the Soviet summit in 1972, when I ordered the bombing and mining of Haiphong, even though it might risk the summit, and what I did--the most difficult military decision of my whole presidency, at the--at the time of the Christmas--so-called Christmas bombing of 1972, which brought the whole war to an end through the peace agreement. Those actions indicated that I was willing to take any political risk in order to prevent the North Vietnamese from winning the victory that they wanted to win. GANNON: People often wonder how Watergate weighs on you in these years after your resignation. Would you say that the knowledge that because of Watergate you had to resign and because of your resignation Vietnam fell is part of the--the--the legacy you take from Watergate? NIXON: Yes, to an extent. It may have fallen anyway, had we stayed in there. I should point out that, before Watergate became an issue, however, it was getting to be a very dicey problem. You may recall that early in January, right after our overwhelming election victory in November, that the Democratic caucus in the House voted by a margin of two to one--a hundred and fifty to seventy-five--and in the Senate by a margin of almost three to one--thirty-six to twelve--to withdraw from Vietnam in return from--for our prisoners of war, which, of course, would be a total capitulation, and which would' ; ve resulted in even the denial of two years of non-Communist government for the South Vietnamese. Fortunately, we were able to prevent that, because, within a week after they passed those resolutions, on January the ninth, my sixtieth birthday, I received a call from Henry in Paris that we had made the deal, which I announced on the twenty-third. GANNON: When did you realize that you weren' ; t going to get a preelection peace settlement, and what did you do as a result of that realization? NIXON: Well, I can' ; t say specifically, except I would speculate about four to five days before the election. This was after the " ; peace is at hand" ; statement. It was when the reports that Henry was having, insofar as his meetings with Thieu were concerned--that they weren' ; t going that well, and that he was unable to bridge the gap which existed between Thieu and the North Vietnamese. And then, at that point, when it was so clear that I was going to win overwhelmingly, there was nothing that the North Vietnamese could do to affect the election--let me put it another way. Curiously enough, as long as it was--as the election was a close thing, of course, and a hope that they might win, that was a deterrent to them, a deterrent for any--for their agreeing to anything. Why deal with Nixon? Wait for McGovern and get it all, because he was offering terms that had already, as a matter of fact, been turned down by the North Vietnamese, but which went much further than what--anything that we had offered. The other thing is that, as you got closer to the election, however, and it appeared that we were going to win overwhelmingly, I think they realized that I was not going to make any further concessions. And so they said, " ; Well, we' ; ll wait till afterwards," ; and then hope to wear us out then, and that' ; s what happened, of course. GANNON: Why did you initiate the Christmas bombing, the massive bombing of North Vietnam, beginning just, I--I think, on December eighteenth, right before Christmas, in 1972? NIXON: Well, let' ; s contrast that with the earlier bombing. The first bombing that took place, bombing and mining, was on May eighth of 1972. That was three weeks before the Soviet summit. That was initiated because of a--a huge North Vietnamese invasion, with twenty-four divisions, of South Vietnam, and people said, " ; Oh, don' ; t bomb, don' ; t mine, because we' ; ve got to have the Soviet summit." ; And I said, " ; Look. No president can go to Moscow and sit in there in the Kremlin and negotiate with Brezhnev with Russian tanks rumbling through the streets of Hue and Saigon." ; So we bombed, we mined, and they still had the summit. GANNON: Did you think they wouldn' ; t--did you think the summit would be cancelled? NIXON: Oh, I though it was a very close thing, and Henry thought it was about twenty-five percent only--chance that they would go forward with it. GANNON: If you had known in advance for sure that the Soviets would cancel the summit, and that would mean that the S.A.L.T. agreement would have fallen away--if you had known for sure in advance that they were going to cancel it, would have--you still have made the May eighth speech and announced the bombing of Hanoi and the mining of Haiphong? NIXON: Absolutely. Absolutely, because if we had gone there to the Kremlin with Vietnam having fallen or in the process of falling, Brezhnev would be looking right down my throat, and we wouldn' ; t have gotten even the deal on S.A.L.T. that we got. And many people, of course, among my friends in the hawk community think that wasn' ; t a good deal either, although I happen to think it was. No, absolutely not. I remember John Connolly, who, in his rather colorful Texan way, put it to me. He said, " ; Look," ; when I asked him what he would do about this particular matter, about risking the summit and so forth--he said, he said, " ; You can lose the summit" ; --he was speaking politically--" ; but you cannot lose this war." ; He says, " ; If you lose this war, you' ; re going to lose the election." ; And he said, " ; Go ahead and bomb and mine," ; he said, " ; and then stuff it right down their throats. I don' ; t think they' ; re going to cancel." ; Well, he proved to be right, and I' ; m glad he did. GANNON: Throughout your administration, almost from the very first days, you initiated a policy of linkage, where you insisted to the Soviets that, in order to get things that they wanted, they had to help us or agree to things that we wanted. One of them was their help in pressuring Hanoi to end the war. How much did they ever do that, and how much did they really want to help us? How much did the Soviets really want to help us end the war? NIXON: Well, they were between the rock and a hard place on that one. They wanted good relations with us, not simply because of arms control, but because they were very interested in what we would be able to do together in the economic area, where they really wanted to have cooperation, and a lot of things were developing there that were very promising for them and for us as well. On the other hand, while they wanted good relations with the United States at that level, they could not afford as the leader of the international Communist movement, to be caught not supporting a war of liberation by their allies in North Vietnam in South Vietnam, particularly because they didn' ; t want to give the Chinese a chance to say that the Soviet had turned off on the--and backed down from their support of North Vietnam. And so, under the circumstances, they were in a very difficult position. On the other hand, my view is that they came down, not very heavily but at least in a way that was helpful, on the side of better relations with us. I think, in other words, without the Soviet Union nudging the North Vietnamese, we wouldn' ; t, probably, have made the progress we did before the election and thereafter. And I think that after the election, while we don' ; t have any specifics on this, I think that they perhaps did use their influence toward getting an agreement. Now, having said that, however, I th--I think that it was more a question not of their going to the North Vietnamese and say, " ; Look here. Make a deal." ; I don’t think that' ; s the way it is. But I think the way it happened was--and the same thing, I think, happened with the Chinese-- the Soviet Union and the Chinese did not encourage the North Vietnee--namese to stick it to us. And that made a very big difference, because the Chinese, because of our initiative toward China, while they were still supporting, vocally and orally and publicly the North Vietnamese, weren' ; t giving them the needle that they normally would de--prob--be giving, of provocation, and neither were the Russians. And I think, as the North Vietnamese, who are very suspicious anyway--as they looked at the Soviet and they looked at our meeting and clinking glasses with the Soviet in Moscow, as they saw us meeting with the Chinese in China--and, of course, eventually they became enemies of the Chinese--that probably gave them a little pause, and they didn' ; t want to be out there alone. So all of these factors, I think, helped bring it about. GANNON: When you initiated the Christmas bombing, there was an enormous uproar and furor. One senator said you had taken leave of your senses. One--another commentator said that it was Stone Age tactics. Why did you do it, and why did you do it in such force at such a time? NIXON: Well, I would say that as far as the bombing was concerned, it was without question the most difficult military decision that I made, because everything seemed to be going so well. We had won the election overwhelmingly. The peace agreement seemed to be on track--we--at least we thought it was. And then what happened was that, for reasons that we could not understand, the North Vietnamese backed off of the position they' ; d taken on October twelfth, before the election, backed off even on the matter of our P.O.W.s. They weren' ; t going as far as we had insisted they were going with regard to their being returned without any conditions whatever. There were other matters that many people think are not important, but they were very important, certainly to the South Vietnamese, and we considered them also important to us. So, under the circumstances, what I saw here was that the North Vietnamese were waiting for the Congress to get back. They had pretty good intelligence insofar as what was going in our Congress, and they probably anticipated what I indicated happened a little earlier in this broadcast--that the Congress was going to put great pressure on us just to bug out without any agreement whatever, such as we had initi--had already reached earlier, before the election. So, under the circumstances, I decided that it was time to get it over with, and get it over with before the Congress got back. And so we bombed, and we mined. Now, let me say one other thing. When they talk about Stone Age tactics and carpet bombing and Christmas bombing, all of these charges are, one, wrong, and two, mythical. First--well, perhaps the Stone Age thing--I don' ; t know what they mean by that. But as far as Christmas bombing, of course we didn' ; t bomb on Christmas. We took a forty-eight-hour period when we didn' ; t bomb. Not that that doesn' ; t mean that we didn' ; t bomb before and afterwards. But the second point is--insofar as carpet bombing is concerned, Anthony Lewis and other commentators practically went out of their minds, because they said we were bombing thousands of innocent people and hospitals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Not true. Our--we lost some B-52s because we insisted that it not be area bombing. It was very precise. It was on military targets only, and the North Vietnamese later admitted that less than nine hundred people were killed, civilians who were living right in the area. Now, that' ; s too many, but, on the other hand, this was not aimed at ci--at Northern--at civilian populations. It was only on military targets. It was effective. It brought the North Vietnamese to the conference table, and they made an agreement. And it ended the war as far as we were concerned and at least temporarily as far as the South Vietnamese were concerned. GANNON: What was that Christmas of 1972 like for you? Your daughters and their husbands were away. You and Mrs. Nixon were alone in Florida. The press was almost unanimously against you. Congress was up in arms. What was it like to spend Christmas of 1972 at Key Biscayne for Richard Nixon? NIXON: Pretty dreary. The weather wasn' ; t that good in Florida, either, at that time. You know, sometimes it can be rather poor even in December, but that wasn' ; t the real problem. Weather doesn' ; t bother me that much. But--well, like Christmas calls. You know, usually I get a lot of telephone calls on Christmas. I don' ; t recall but about one or two that year, from members of the Cabinet and so forth. I don' ; t mean that they were all opposed to the bombing, but I mean they probably knew it was a very tough time and everybody was terribly let down, terribly depressed. We' ; d won a great election victory. Peace was at hand, and then all of a sudden--boom--we were catching hell from all sides. Obviously, I, did--frankly, didn' ; t torture myself, and Mrs. Nixon didn' ; t either, by watching the TV. If we had, we probably would have lost our Christmas dinner, which was not a bad one, incidentally--prepared by the Filipino chefs. But, anyway, we survived it, and--but I would say it was perhaps as depressing a Christmas as we--certainly as depressing a Christmas as we had during the White House years, more so than the Watergate Christmas. GANNON: Did you feel that people deserted you? NIXON: No. I understood what had happened. By that, I meant that if people--see, I try to put myself into the position of the person sitting in front of that tube and--and hearing the commentators go on and on about the horrible bombings and so forth, or murder, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And--and if they hear all that, then obviously they' ; re going to be very confused, and some of them are going, at least temporarily--going to lose their support. They' ; re going to think, " ; Maybe the guy is out of his mind. Maybe he is just a brutal barbarian," ; et cetera, et cetera. I understood it, but what sustained me in that period was that I was convinced it was the only decision we could make, I--convinced it was right. I was also convinced that it would break the deadlock in the negotiations. Henry Kissinger agreed that that was the case, and, thank heaven, we proved to be right. GANNON: On January twenty-third, 1973, you went on national television from the Oval Office, and you made the following statement. GANNON: How did it feel, at last, to make that announcement? NIXON: Well, it-s a--you have many mountaintop experiences as president, and you have some very deep in the valley, too, as you know, but that--that had to be not only the greatest experience as president but also, th--I think, of all my public life--greater than being inaugurated for president the first time or the second time, or even winning the vice-presidency, of course, with President Eisenhower, a pretty good partner, winning the presidency in ' ; 52 and ' ; 56. And the reason for it, I suppose, is that I was so deeply involved in the Vietnam issue. You see, people forget--some do, I think--that I' ; ve lived with the Vietnamese and with this issue for thirty years now, in this year, 1983. It was 1953 I first went there, and I didn' ; t think of Vietnam as just a nation far away, a people we know very little about, as one former secretary of state once described one country. But I thought of them for the good people they could be. I knew of the suffering they had undergone. I knew of the sacrifice that had been made, first by French and then by Americans, to ke--to prevent the Communists from taking over. I knew of the brutality of the North Vietnamese. I knew, for example, from a conversation what I had with a Catholic bishop of Da Nang in 1956--this was after the two countries--after the partition of Vietnam--that was when the North Vietnamese took over in the Hanoi area, that fifty thousand civilians at least, most of them Catholics, were executed and four or five hundred thousand were starved to death. I knew that all these things had happened. And then another thing that' ; s in a very personal sense as a president, and only a president goes through. You know, I signed the letters that went to the next-of-kin. I didn' ; t see them all. I couldn' ; t. I of course developed the letter. It was a form, but it was all, of course, from the White House to the next of kin. And also, I had, on Christmas--it was my practice quite often during the war to make Christmas calls, and--and I called the next-of-kin, the wives--the widows, I should say--sometimes the children, sometimes the fathers of people that had died there. And--and those were heart-rending experiences. And then, of course, I had thought of the P.O.W.s who were also to come back. And I guess what I am really trying to say is that, for me, it wasn' ; t just a political experience or a--a diplomatic experience--and those can be great--like going to China is a great diplomatic experience, a very highlight--but this was an emotional experience that--that completely overwhelmed all the rest. And to think that finally, after, frankly, twenty-five years of war in that poor country, we were going to have peace, an uneasy one, but peace, and that what we had fought for and sacrificed for for so long had been achieved. Believe me, it was an experience that I have--had never had before and, of course, do not expect to have again. GANNON: How would you answer the critics who say that, in fact, it was a--it was a rather misleading speech in that you knew, or you certainly anticipated, and--as indeed was the case in a couple of days, that the North Vietnamese were going to break the accords, and to have been accurate or absolutely truthful, you should have said, " ; We now have a very fragile peace in South Vietnam, but in order to make sure it lasts we' ; re going to have to continue very heavy, substantial bombing of two neutral countries, Cambodia and Laos, for at least the next several months with the risk of substantial casualties and losses during that time." ; Would that have been a more accurate context into which to put the January settlements? NIXON: It might have been accurate in retrospect, but it wasn' ; t at the time. After all, this statement was made on the twenty-third. The agreement wasn' ; t signed till the twenty-seventh, and I wasn' ; t about to say on the twenty-third that " ; We expect, after we sign this agreement, to start bombing Ca--Laos and Cambodia." ; The reason we bombed Laos and Cambodia later, and that was in February, of course, and in March--the reason was that the North Vietnamese, not, frankly, to our surprise, continued to violate some of the provisions of the agreement. At least we thought they were provisions to the agreement, although Cambodia and Laos wasn' ; t covered in them as specifically as we would have liked. And so, therefore, in order to preserve the peace in South Vietnam, we had to bomb their sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos. GANNON: There are schools of thought that, although you were sincerely dedicated to the proposition that the peace agreements could work, that others, Henry Kissinger among them, really only saw them, as the phrase became, as " ; a decent interval" ; between the withdrawal of American forces and the inevitable, and some people felt, desirable, fall of South Vietnam. Is there any validity to that argument? NIXON: Well, others may have thought it, but I did not think that at all. And I wouldn' ; t have made that kind of a deal if I' ; d thought so. Let me say to those who say, however, that we should not have made the agreement and we should have just continued to bomb until we had bombed the North Vietnamese back into the Stone Age--let me say that that was no longer politically viable. Witness, before Watergate, what the Democratic caucus had done in early January. That shows you that--that--that we were--we were doing all that we could do politically in order to ma--to hold on as long as we did. The second point is this. Oh, I knew the agreement was fragile, but, on the other hand, I also felt that with the credibility that I had in the minds of the North Vietnamese--witness what I had done in May of 1972, when I bombed and mi--ordered the bombing and mining of Hanoi and Haiphong, and the so-called Christmas bombing of 1972--I thought that that very threat would be enough to at least keep them from launching a major offensive. And let me say that, for the balance of my service as president, it did, and, as a matter of fact, for two years after the peace agreement, the North Vietnamese, while they were violating the cease-fire and so forth and so on, did not conquer a provincial capital. Let me just understand one thing. You talk about who lost Vietnam. The American soldiers didn' ; t lose Vietnam. Neither did the South Vietnamese lost Vietnam. It was lost because the Congress of the United States, egged on by the media and by the best and the brightest in the intellectual establishment, et cetera, cut back on the aid, military aid, to South Vietnam, to balance what the Russians were doing for the North. And I would say to future presidents and so forth, whatever our foreign policy is, anyplace in the world, particularly in small countries like this, let' ; s just be sure it' ; s an even fight. Let' ; s be sure we do as much for our friends and allies as the Soviet Union does for its allies. If we don' ; t, we are going to lose without ever having a major war. GANNON: Some political commentators today say that now that we have recovered from the trauma, and it' ; s taken this long--of the first war America lost--that people are going to become intensely interested in it again, and indeed, there' ; s going to be a populist revision and people are going to look around to answer the question, just as in--in the forties they asked, " ; Who lost Europe?" ; and in the fifties they asked " ; Who lost China?" ; --that a--an important political question in the 1980s is going to be " ; Who lost Vietnam?" ; Do you think--and the--and--in--in populist terms, the answer is going to be Congress, the media, the universities, the corporate boards? Do you think that there is going to be a bitter revisionism in which people are going to look to point a finger and say, " ; Who lost Vietnam?" ; and--and who are they going to point the finger at? NIXON: I rather doubt it. I think there should be. I think there will be a few who will write that and a few who will s--perhaps, say it. But we have to understand here that, as far as the intellectual leadership of this country is concerned, that in a figure of a percentage of at least ninety percent, they felt, one, at the end, we--it was a mistake to be in Vietnam in the first place ; two, that it was conducted improperly--they didn' ; t like the bombing or anything else ; and three, that we shouldn' ; t have go--we should have gotten out earlier ; and, in any event, four, good riddance. Now, it is true that they have a bit of a guilt complex now, somewhat a guilt complex, when they see the genocide that has been visited upon the Cambodians and the murder and the repression that has been visited upon, of course, the South Vietnamese as well as the Laotians. But, on the other hand, even that they rationalize by blaming the Nixon administration for brutalizing the Cambodians. We were trying to prevent those who either starved to death or killed three million, or two million Cambodians, whatever the case might be. And here they blame us for doing it. GANNON: Isn' ; t it true, though, that-- NIXON: So, it does show you that, as far as the intellectual leadership of this country is concerned, that on Vietnam I think they had a vested interest, as it turned out, in defeat there. And now they have a vested interest in seeing that history is not rewritten to report what actually happened. GANNON: Isn' ; t it true, though, that in Cambodia at the beginning of the American extension of the war into that neutral country, there were about six thousand Khmer Rouge forces? As the American bombing went in and more and more of the country was devastated and more and more of the people were forced to make choices, they swelled the ranks of the Khmer Rouge, so that when the Communists finally took over, there were sixty thousand of them, and it was--they were able to impose this deadly, genocidal, brutal rule, so that it really was the American extension of the war which led to the swelling of the Khmer Rouge, which led to the-- NIXON: No, I don’t buy that. That' ; s the Shawcross argument, and I ca--I can only say that, looking at Cambodia and what happened there, there' ; s no question in my mind that Cambodia, just like the Vietcong in--the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Vietcong in South Vietnam--they--they developed, of course, their own capabilities. It is true that they expanded their--their control over parts of the country, but the--but the idea that we drove them back into the country that brutalized them, why, that' ; s nonsense. They were that way before we ever came in. And let us understand, too, let' ; s understand, when we talk about what the United States did, as far as Cambodia is concerned, we weren' ; t going in there to kill Khmer Rouge. We were going in there to knock out Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, who were using neutral Cambodia as a launching pad to kill Americans and our South Vietnamese allies. And my only regret, incidentally, about the so-called incursion of Cambodia is I didn' ; t do it earlier. I wish I' ; d have done it earlier in January, and I should have done it--of nineteen--early in January 1969, shortly after I became president. I think it might have raised a lot of problems then, because, you remember, the election was pretty rough. You remember what happened to Hubert Humphrey at Chicago. He had demonstrations. I had some pretty rough demonstrations. And under the circumstances, therefore, remembering, too, what happened on Inaugural Day when the Secret Service wouldn' ; t even let me ride in an open car down to the inaugural stand because of the demonstrators, thousands of them, out there. Under the circumstances, to take that sort of action then might have been difficult, but, in retrospect, had I had it to do over again, knowing that the North Vietnamese had no intention whatever of honoring the conditions or agreements, whatever they were, about the bombing halt--having all those things in mind, what should have been done was to move in on their sanctuaries in Cambodia earlier and knock them out. GANNON: It seems that a most common denominator of your retrospective thought about Vietnam is that, if you have one regret, it' ; s that at every point you regret that you didn' ; t move earlier, harder, faster. Is that true? NIXON: Yes, that' ; s true, having in mind the fact that it would not make sense to move earlier, harder, and faster if it proved to be, shall we say, disproportionate to what you might gain. I know that you usually think of Clausewitz as being one who simply is an advocate of total war, which is not true. He was a very sophisticated observer about warfare generally. He makes the point, and other military analysts have made the same point, that force must always be used having in mind the goal to be gained and the risks and the costs in the event you use that amount of force. That is why bombing dikes, I think, would have proved to be counterproductive throughout Asia. Using tactical nuclear weapons, the same. I think, however, insofar as bombing and mining North Vietnam is concerned, or moving into the Cambodian sanctuaries--that was a possibility in 1969, except for the fact that we were hamstrung by the bombing halt, and also by the American opposition. We had to lay the foundation for it, which we did do, by developing our Vietnamization program and by also developing our withdrawal. Let me say finally, in that respect, an argument against the proposition I' ; ve just laid down--why did w--didn' ; t we do it earlier--is that in those early days, also, we were thinking about an initiative toward the Russians, we were thinking about an initiative toward the Chinese. I did not yet know how they might react. I don’t mean that they would intervene, but I thought it was vitally important in my presidency to make a breakthrough in China, and also to make some move toward negotiation, rather than a confrontation, with the Russians. I didn' ; t want to take action in Vietnam early in the administration which might abort those initiatives before it started. So there are arguments the other way, too. GANNON: Within a couple of months in 1975, South Vietnam ended, not with a bang, but with a whimper. We have some film of those last days in Saigon. GANNON: Was America humiliated in Vietnam? NIXON: The United States, in the minds of the world--yes, I think, was humiliated. But let me distinguish--not our fighting men. They didn' ; t lose this. I think what happened there was that the United States, insofar as its being a nation with the will and with the credibility to stand by its friends when the going got particularly difficult, that that was, of course, very seriously eroded by what happened there in Vietnam. Let me say, incidentally, as I look at that, I saw them getting on those boats in the Saigon River--but I think of the boat people. Thousands and thousands, of course, as you know, tried to escape from South Vietnam by boat, and the last number I saw, at least forty thousand drowned. We don' ; t know how many starved to death in these overloaded boats and so forth and so on. But I should point out that, with all the talk about Thieu' ; s, and earlier, Diem' ; s, corruption and repression and so forth--that at least under them they had some freedom. They had some free press. They had some free parliaments, freely elected parliaments, and so forth. They had some opposition. And now they have none. And I should also point out that there were never any boat people. All the traffic was from North to South. And I should also point out that there were reasons for these people to leave. I--we talk about atrocities, and we think of people being, for example, buried alive and disemboweled and so forth and so on, but one that really, really touched me, I mean, very deeply, I--I suppose--to show you the ends to which they go, the cruelty of these people--one poor devil who was a barber had been found--that he had cut their hair of several American servicemen, and--and so they took him and chopped off his hands, like that. That' ; s what these people were going away from, and that' ; s what they' ; re having today. GANNON: Do you think that there are still American--missing American in actions in Indochina? NIXON: Oh, I think so. I would be surprised if there were not. Unfortunately, I have no idea as to how possibly you can do anything about it. GANNON: I think that' ; s our, uh-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0345/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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66 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 7, 1983, part 3.
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gannix_0345
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-04-07
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 8, 1983, part 1. gannix_0350 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|8(5)|20(4)|33(5)|46(2)|58(7)|71(13)|86(4)|109(15)|122(2)|136(14)|148(14)|162(12)|174(14)|189(2)|202(2)|214(9)|226(12)|239(13)|251(2)|264(3)|278(5)|288(14)|300(13)|317(6)|329(15)|342(4)|354(15)|367(6)|379(5)|396(5)|407(6)|429(6)|443(6)|455(13)|477(2)|490(9)|515(8)|531(14)|545(14)|558(11)|573(14)|587(14)|602(3)|615(16)|629(8)|640(18)|652(4)|666(15)|685(1)|704(17)|724(13)|734(14)|766(4)|783(14)|793(13)|805(8)|816(5)|825(14)|836(4)|847(7)|858(3)|869(16) 0 https://youtu.be/1_1hzl2ehpA YouTube video English 35 Recognizing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Now that the war in Vietnam is over, long over, in order to heal the wounds of war and to begin reestablishing some kind of new American presence and policy in Southeast Asia, should we recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam? Nixon explains why he believes that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam should not be recognized by the United States. 88 Secrecy During Presidency Some critics claim that your administration was obsessed with secrecy. Nixon discusses the reasons behind the emphasis on secrecy during his presidency, including leaks and the effect of secrecy on foreign relations. 683 Media / American Establishment Do you think you ever got fair treatment from the media? Nixon discusses the " ; mutual contempt" ; he shares with the media and the American establishment due to their conflicting political views. 1600 Domino Theory One of the—for a number of years, one of the arguments in favor of the—or one of the arguments for the necessity of fighting the Vietnam War was the Domino Theory, that if South Vietnam fell, the rest of the nations in Southeast Asia and Asia and the Pacific Basin would fall like a row of dominoes. Nixon examines the Domino Theory about the spread of communism and how the theory applies to Third World countries after the Vietnam War. Angola ; China ; communism ; Dean Acheson ; Domino Theory ; El Salvador ; Europe ; Gerald Ford ; Harry S. Truman ; Indonesia ; Iran ; Iraq ; Israel ; Japan ; Middle East ; Nixon Doctrine ; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ; Soviet Union ; Sukarno ; The Real War ; Vietnam Acheson, Dean, 1893-1971 ; Ford, Gerald R., 1913-2006 ; Sukarno ; Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972 1980 El Salvador Is it worth American lives to buy time for El Salvador? Nixon explains his views on providing military support for El Salvador and illustrates the Nixon Doctrine. 2390 Agent Orange / Bombing Vietnam How do you react to the charges that we caused, largely during your administration—that we caused serious health damage to our own troops in Vietnam by the use of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange? Nixon recommends that financial settlements be made for soldiers if their health was affected by Agent Orange and discusses the decision to bomb Vietnam. Adolf Hitler ; Agent Orange ; atom bomb ; Dresden ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; German ; Haiphong ; Hanoi ; Harry S. Truman ; Hiroshima ; Nagasaki ; nuclear weapons ; Vietnam ; World War II Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945 ; Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972 2535 General Westmoreland In a—in a—a television documentary, General Westmoreland has been charged with suppressing intelligence estimates and leading a conspiracy to conceal from the president, the Congress, and the people, the actual number and placement of enemy troops in Vietnam in order to convey the impression that we were winning a war that we were in fact losing. Nixon talks about meeting General Westmoreland and his disagreement with charges that Westmoreland misled the government on the Vietnam War. conspiracy ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Vietnam ; William Westmoreland Childs Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Westmoreland, William C. (William Childs), 1914-2005 2609 Justification of the Vietnam War / Veterans Looking back on the American experience in Vietnam from your perspective as—as commander-in-chief and president of the United States and as someone who was there from the—from a very early point, before we even became involved in a military sense—looking at the billions of dollars, the millions of refugees, the hundreds of thousands of casualties, the fifty-seven thousand American dead in Vietnam, and the fact that in a matter of a couple of months the whole thing went down the tubes anyway and the Communists—the Communists won— Nixon explains his opinion that the Vietnam War was a just war and discusses the recognition of veterans. Cambodia ; communism ; France ; Laos ; Ngo Dinh Diem ; Nguyen Van Thieu ; Ronald Reagan ; veteran ; Vietnam ; Vietnamese boat people Ngô, Đình Diệm, 1901-1963 ; Nguyễn, Văn Thiệu, 1923-2001 ; Reagan, Ronald 2876 Draft Evaders and Anti-War Protesters What would you say if you found yourself trapped in an elevator on a—in a ten-story building with a—someone who went to Canada to avoid the draft? Nixon shares his opinions about draft evaders and anti-war protesters, including Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark, and how he responds to their criticism. Abraham Lincoln ; anti-war protests ; Cambodia ; Canada ; Carl Sandburg ; Civil War ; draft ; Jane Fonda ; Jimmy Carter ; media ; Prisoners of War (POW) ; Ramsey Clark ; Sweden ; Vietnam Carter, Jimmy, 1924- ; Clark, Ramsey, 1927- ; Fonda, Jane, 1937- ; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 ; Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967 3283 Vietnam and Watergate One final question on Vietnam. Nixon describes the role that Vietnam played in his decision to resign from office. He also relates the most emotional moments from his time as president. Bob Haldeman ; Daniel Ellsberg ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; George McGovern ; Les Arends ; Melvin Laird ; Pentagon Papers ; resignation ; Vietnam ; Watergate ; White House Plumbers ; Winston Churchill Arends, Leslie C. (Leslie Cornelius), 1895-1985 ; Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Ellsberg, Daniel ; Haldeman, H. R. (Harry R.), 1926-1993 ; Laird, Melvin R. ; McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922-2012 Interview OFF SCREEN VOICE: Go. GANNON: Now that the war in Vietnam is over, long over, in order to heal the wounds of war and to begin reestablishing some kind of new American presence and policy in Southeast Asia, should we recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam? NIXON: Oh, under no circumstances. There' ; s really nothing in it for us in terms of our policy toward Southeast Asia, even though some of those countries down there per forma [" ; pro forma" ; ?] suggest that that be done. But there' ; s a geopolitical reason that we must not do so, and that is that the Chinese are violently against the Vietnamese government because the Vietnamese government at the present time is totally under the control and s--being supported by Moscow. So, at this point, we should stay right where we are. GANNON: Some critics claim that your administration was obsessed with secrecy. Some claim that it—it—it stems from—from your own character, that you have a secretive nature and that this carried over into the operations of your administration. Thinking about the leaks of information--leaks are endemic in Washington. They—they always have existed. They always will exist. Shouldn' ; t you have accepted leaks as a fact of life and not become so concerned with them that you had to resort to things like wiretaps and—which—which turned out to be unsuccessful anyway? NIXON: Well, I think there are two parts to that question, as I understand it. First, that we were obsessed with secrecy. As a matter of fact, you' ; re being too kind. I was paranoiac, or almost a basket case with regard to secrecy, and Henry Kissinger as well, because, believe me, if you think I was tough on these leaks, he was even tougher at times because he thought it was jeopardizing his negotiations. The second point we should have in mind is that we were strongly urged to do something about leaks by two of our predecessors. I remember so well the first conversation I had with President Johnson after the election in 1968. We were in the Oval Office, and he had read in the paper that I had planned, after my talk with Kissinger, to reinstate the regular meetings of the N.S.C., which he had put on the back burner and had little private meetings which were totally secret. He said, " ; You will live to regret this." ; He said, " ; You" ; --" ; Things are going to leak out of those meetings when you have people sitting around in the back of the room, the note-takers and the rest." ; He said, " ; You know, sometimes I couldn' ; t even tell Hubert things." ; He says, " ; He' ; d leak because he wouldn' ; t know he was doing it. He just liked to talk." ; So he urged me not to do it. He also said a very interesting thing which I didn' ; t really understand till later. He says, " ; You know, I couldn' ; t have been president without J. Edgar Hoover' ; s assistance in trying to track down some of these things." ; And then I remember too well, as well, that when we were in office, that I went out to brief Eisenhower with regard to a new initiative that we were trying to implement through the N.S.C. system with regard to the Mid East. He was very interested in it. A couple of days later it was in the press. Eisenhower didn' ; t call me. He called Kissinger, and he said, " ; Shape up your shop. If you don' ; t stop these leaks, you' ; re not going to be able to have a policy." ; So that tells you what they think. Now, the other point that you make with regard to--why secrecy, why should we care about whether or not people leak. In other words, aren' ; t--aren' ; t the people entitled to know? And my answer is-- the people are, but not the enemy, not our opponents. And by that, I mean that--and I' ; ll put it quite bluntly--without secrecy, we would not have had the opening to China. No way the Chinese would ever have done that in public forums, because they had the Russians that they feared in this respect. They had a number of other internal problems, those that opposed any rapprochement with the United States. It had to be done secretly, and that was an enormously important event which could not have been accomplished without those secret trips that Kissinger took and the secret negotiations we had through the White House channels. Without secrecy, we wouldn' ; t have had the meetings in Paris which reached the agreement with the North Vietnamese and brought the peace agreement which ended the American involvement in Vietnam. It couldn' ; t have been accomplished without secrecy, because people will say things secretly that they won' ; t say publicly when they' ; re talking to a much broader--broader constituency. And without secrecy, as a matter of fact, we wouldn' ; t have had the negotiations with the Russians that led to the first Strategic Arms Control Agreement. So, I am simply suggesting to my successors in this office--have an open administration to the extent that you can. It' ; s much more popular, particularly with the members of the media. But remember, the most important thing to do is to make progress in solving particularly great international problems. You cannot make progress at times in public forum. Let the media know—unless letting the media know is going to abort an initiative you' ; re attempting to undertake. GANNON: This makes logical sense, but isn' ; t it really deeply basically inconsistent with the--the ethic of democracy? Let' ; s take a worst case. Let' ; s assume that there is a president who either has bad intentions, which I guess would be the very worst case, or a well-intentioned president who has a--a policy that turns out to be disastrous. If he has the ability to carry it out behind the scenes in secret, to carry it to fruition, how--then--we then--we then have to live with the results of that. How can you balance the need for secrecy in order to get things done with the kind of checks and balances that are built into the democratic system and keep it on an even keel? NIXON: Well, let me say with regard to secrecy that there are some you do confide in. For example, when I had the secret bombing of Cambodia, I did inform Senator Russell and Senator Stennis, both Democrats, because I knew that they, as key Democrats, could keep a secret. And, incidentally, they proved it. But let me say, too-- GANNON: Your critics, though, would charge that you chose the two key Democrats who you knew in advance would, because of your relationship with them and because of their background, would approve your-- NIXON: Oh-- GANNON: --your-- NIXON: Not necessarily, not-- GANNON: --your actions. NIXON: --particularly in the case of Senator Russell. He was very much disenchanted with the war, even though he is always known to be a hawk. No, I chose them because I knew they' ; d keep their counsel, and I couldn' ; t say that, frankly, for some of the Republicans. On the other hand, in terms of the--of how we are to operate, we have to have in mind that it' ; s most important for a president, for an administration, in the field of foreign policy, to be effective. We have to have in mind, too, that it is a fact of international life that, in the world we live in, negotiations that are private are a way of accomplishing things. And this is particularly true, may I say, particularly true when you' ; re dealing with totalitarian states. Secrecy to the Soviet Union, to the Chinese and so forth--it' ; s a way of life for them, and if you don' ; t move in those secret channels, you' ; re always going to be fighting things out propagandawise. Let me say--[laughs]--it was very difficult for me. I' ; d liked to have gone out and huffed and puffed in front of the media about all the great things I was doing to bring rapprochements with China and get a lot of plaudits and kudos in The New York Times and Washington Post and CBS, NBC, and ABC. But, on the other hand, what I wanted to do was have results. And if I' ; d had those kudos, we wouldn' ; t have had the results. So, I say it is very important, of course, to inform the country once you have made a breakthrough. It is very important, too, to submit to the Congress to the extent that the Congress has responsibility for the--for approval of the programs. But, on the other hand, the negotiations of--in these particular cases have to be, in many cases, accomplished through secret, or, should I say, private channels. GANNON: What about the critics who would say that in your conduct of the war, you purposely avoided the democratic processes which would have involved going to Congress or informing larger numbers of Congressmen, because you knew, which turned out to be the case in 1972 and 1973, that if you went to them, they would essentially stop the war. They would stop the funding. If they knew what you were intending to do, they would have stopped it. NIXON: No. That was true. I wou--I think we should say, in the Johnson years--I mean, in the Johnson years, we went in, as some people have said, by stealth, and the Congress, it approved very early on sort of a general approval of a--a program in this instance. But it w--Johnson did not inform them along the way. But let me say, on the contrary, in my case, if you look over the record, I addressed the country over and over again, publicly, on television, on these issues, with regard to--with our withdrawal program, with regard to our training of the Vietnamese, with regard, too, to our incursion into Cambodia, and explained what we were doing. I was going over the heads, I may say, of the media, most of whom were opposed to anything except a bug-out, and I was going over the heads of some of those in Congress who would have opposed anything except a bug-out. But, on the other hand, there was no question but that the Congress was well-informed of what we did and could, at any time prior to the time we reached the peace agreement, put thumbs down on it. They didn' ; t do that, because I had the support of the country. It' ; s very important to recognize that the president of the United States is not just speaking for the Congress. They are the people' ; s representatives, because they also have been elected, but he represents--he' ; s the only person in this country--he and the vice prepi--president--who represent all the people, and he has a right and should go over the heads of the Congress, over the heads of the media to the people when he believes that the people' ; s support may override congressional opposition. GANNON: Do you think you ever got fair treatment from the media? NIXON: Possibly, some say--I mean, as president, I assume you' ; re asking, not the earlier years. I--I would say that some would say that I got fair treatment on the China initiative, and perhaps it was one that many of the media considered to be a great adventure, and I think some of them honestly thought it was a major achievement. As Henry Kissinger used to ruefully say, he says, " ; Well," ; he said, " ; they' ; re supporting it, but they' ; ve--they really are sorry we did it. They only wish that one of theirs had done it." ; No. As far as the media is concerned, let me understand, I hold no personal grudges. I--I know that some people say, do--do I hate the press. I was asked that once in a press conference. I said, " ; No. I--I--you only hate people you respect." ; I don' ; t mean I don' ; t respect many in the media, but those in the media, for example, on the war issue, who supported Kennedy' ; s getting us involved in Vietnam, which was proper, in my position--in my opinion, who supported Johnson, when Johnson was campaigning against Goldwater, and Johnson' ; s Vietnam position, and then who deserted ship, in effect, once the public opinion began to turn against the war, and then sabotage me, in my opinion, or tried to, when I was trying to bring the war to an honorable conclusion--as far as those in the media, and they are several of them--there are several of them--I don' ; t have any respect for them. I don' ; t hate them. It’s just a matter, I would say, of mutual contempt. I' ; m sure they share the same feeling toward me. GANNON: You talk about a--people who wanted to " ; bug out" ; of Vietnam. What--what--what is a bug-out? NIXON: A bug-out is what, for example, the Democratic caucuses in both the House and the Senate voted for in 1972. It, in effect, says, " ; Bring back our prisoners of war. If we get those from you, we will withdraw all of our support from the South Vietnamese," ; so that the North Vietnamese would be able to impose their government on the South with, of course, all the consequences that have come from that, as we have well seen. I think Mel Laird put it pretty well once, though, when the prisoner-of-war issue was beginning to get very, very hot. He said, " ; Look, we can' ; t be in the position of fighting these war--this war in order to get back our prisoners of war." ; And I must say that he was exactly right. So, a bug-out basically is w--something where we say, " ; The war in Vietnam is wrong. We shouldn' ; t be in there in the first place. It' ; s been conducted the wrong way. It' ; s costing more than it can possibly gain. So the thing we have to do is to get out and let Vietnam--South Vietnam fend for itself," ; which would have meant a Communist takeover, which of course is what happened when we cut back on them, which was, incidentally, a modified bug-out. Whenever your friends don' ; t have the support and tanks and arms and so forth that your potential enemies have, they' ; re going to lose. GANNON: Why do you think so many of these people, who were smart, sophisticated, involved, aware people, were, in your judgment, so wrong in their assessment of why Vietnam wasn' ; t important to us? How was it possible for the--the--the leaders of Congress, the leaders of--in--in the universities, the thought leaders--indeed, arguably, the American Establishment wanted us to bug out. Why were they--how could they be so wrong? NIXON: When you describe these people, they are what we call " ; the best and brightest," ; " ; the best and the brightest" ; in the media, in the universities, in the foundations, even in the--some parts of the business community, and, of course, in the Congress. It' ; s been difficult for me to understand. I think part of it was because they were turned off by, frankly, the horrors of war, war being in living color on television night after night. This was the first war fought on color television, as you know. They were turned off, too, by what they considered to be the excesses of the Vietnamese government. They had a double standard. They could see the danger on the right--they saw it in Vietnam, they saw it, for example, in Iran, they saw it in Cuba--and yet who would say, for example, that Cuba is better off under Castro than it was previously? Who would say, for example, today that Iran is better off under Khomeini than it was under the Shah? And in the case of Vietnam, who could really say that Vietnam is better under the Communists than it was under Thieu? It seems to me that, when you look at it that way, it is difficult to understand how the best and the brightest, because they were overwhelmed by seeing the horrors of war, because also they felt that the war was very divisive at home, and it was, that they said, " ; Well, get it off our plate and turn to other things." ; And let me say the fact that it was divisive at home, I think, was a major factor, because in the university communities and the rest, college faculties and so forth just didn' ; t want to stand up to the activist students and particularly the professors. GANNON: Do you think--talking about the American Establishment, do you think it is " ; the best and the brightest" ; ? Do you think it is the brightest but not the best? NIXON: The American Establishment certainly can' ; t be faulted on brains. We have more college graduates per capita than any country in the world. We have excellent institutions. The whole world comes to America now, just as Americans used to go, for example, in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, for example, to Germany, for example, in the field of science, to Britain if you wanted to learn something about political science, and the rest. In terms of the best, in terms of character, in--in I would say that I think that the American university community has got to look very carefully at what has happened. What--what is the situation today, for example, when a Jeane Kirkpatrick or a Bill Buckley happens to be denied the right to speak on a university campus and then your faculty just didn' ; t have the backbone to face down the demonstrators and so forth and let them speak, and why an Ellsberg goes there and is recog--is received like a hero? Now, what I am saying here is that, as far as the American establishment is concerned, it certainly is very bright, but in terms of responsibility, of facing up to the real world, of distinguishing--and these are hard distinctions a make--to make--distinguishing between governments that don' ; t meet our standards but understanding that the choice often is not between something perfect and something imperfect, betw--but between something which is not good--between something that is much worse. It' ; s on these scores that I think the American Establishment has really forfeited its right to lead. And I trust--and, incidentally, having said that, there are a substantial minority who know this and are attempting to turn it around. I hope they prevail. GANNON: If it follows that the best--or that the brightest people make the smartest choices, why is the American Establishment liberal? NIXON: Of course, the brightest people don' ; t always make the right choices. This is not just a modern phenomenon. It goes back through history. We often find that as far as leaders are concerned, some of them have been intellectual geniuses, others have not--but far more important than a high I.Q. is good judgment. Far more important than whether you lead your class is whether or not you have the strength and the character in a crisis to stand up against the mob. I would say, above everything else, far more important than doing what is fashionable--and these days so many people are affected by what is in fashion, the trendy business--is to do what is right. As I' ; ve often said, a--the responsibility of a leader is not to follow public opinion, what is trendy, but to change it when he believes it should be changed. Not to follow the polls, but to change the polls. And I would say that, in terms of much of the American Establishment, it' ; s--that is the case. I would say, finally, in this respect, we have to understand that most of the American Establishment coming out of the universities and so forth--it' ; s liberal, and generally those coming out of universities have a liberal background. GANNON: Why is that? NIXON: It is because you--you have--from--historically, from way back, that those who--who sit in the great universities and so forth are not in the real world. It' ; s an unreal world. Let me say, I speak with great respect about looking back at my own professors, at--at college and in law school and many that I have known. But generally speaking, they do not live in the real world, and when they see the real world and what you have to do, to make choices between the perfect and the imperfect, or, I should say, between what is not perfect, from what is-- and something that is worse, it is this that really makes it very difficult for them. And also there is this to be said. Generally speaking, when you look at the universities and so forth, as--they' ; re basically idealists, which is to their credit. They basically are critics, and they see everything wrong around them, as they should, and they' ; re very critical of that. But way out there they see also--they--they are usually taken in by those who offer panaceas. That' ; s why Communism appealed, let' ; s face it, or Marxism, or socialism, as it even appeals today. In practice, it' ; s been a disaster, but, on the other hand, in the earlier years, in the thirties, and the forties and fifties, before it self-destructed by how it failed to perform, it had enormous appeal among the intellectual elite. I haven' ; t given up on them. After all, they are intelligent, and I do feel that over a period of time, that I don' ; t expect them to be conservative. I don' ; t ex--certainly would hope they would never be reactionary. I would always hope that they would be for progress, but i--within a democratic framework. But I would think they would be less naïve about what the--how the world works. GANNON: If there is one most common denominator of the American Establishment, my guess is that it is dislike of Richard Nixon. What is it about you drives the Establishment up the wall? NIXON: I don' ; t know whether I' ; m the best qualified. You really ought to ask them. People often say, " ; Your press relations are bad. Get a new press secretary." ; That isn' ; t the problem. I could have the best press secretary in the world and that isn' ; t going to change the attitude of the press. I think there are two things, one--or maybe three. One, they don' ; t agree with what I stand for. I am a conservative, I hope an intelligent one. Un--[coughs]. And I-- GANNON: Isn' ; t that redundant? NIXON: Oh, yeah. Not necessarily. I would say I am not reactionary and tha--therefore not a very good target for them. I' ; m usually not reckless and therefore not a good target. I think, for example, a second point that has turned them off is almost historical. I can--I' ; ll never forget my old friend Bert Andrews, who was an intellectual, a very--one of the top reporters for The New York Herald-Tribune in Washington--he was the head of their office--after we' ; d broken the Hiss case and after I had stayed on the ticket through the fund broadcast, he' ; d had a couple of belts, and I was feeling pretty good after that broadcast, and I said, " ; Well," ; I said, " ; I guess things are going to change. We' ; re going to get a better press." ; He said, " ; No, you won' ; t." ; He said, " ; Let me tell you something about my brethren in the press." ; He said, " ; They don' ; t mind if you' ; re stupid. As a matter of fact, they like it. You make a better target. They like the dummies, frankly, in a way, because it gives them something that they can really cut up pretty good." ; He said, " ; And, as a matter of fact, when you' ; re wrong, they can take you on, because that puts them on the side of the right. But," ; he says, " ; there' ; s one thing that they cannot tolerate. There' ; s one thing that really turns them off. And that is if you embarrass them by proving they were wrong." ; He said, " ; They were ten-to-one against you on the Hiss case. You proved them wrong. That embarrassed them. And then on the fund--on the Eisenhower train, they had voted forty to two that you ought to get off the ticket. With one broadcast you proved them wrong." ; He says, " ; Mark my word. It isn' ; t they hate you individually, but you have embarrassed them, and from now on they' ; re going to be after you." ; Now, that sounds a little petty, and perhaps it' ; s way overstated, but I would say that, as far as the media is concerned, I probably have t--don' ; t handle myself in a way they like. They like fashion, and I' ; m not a fashionable person. They like the trendy people. I am not a trendy person. They like froth, and I' ; m more one who believes in substance. So, basically, under the circumstances, however, I think it really gets down to the fact that I am a conservative, and also, curiously enough, a conservative who is not an isolationist, who is not a reactionary, who is for progress, who is an internationalist. As a matter of fact, I think really many of them privately resented the fact that I went to China and that their boy hadn' ; t done it, whoever their boy was. Now, having said that, let' ; s simply say that that' ; s all in the past, and looking to the future, I hope that when--as time goes on, that they will take a more tolerant attitude, or at least a more objective attitude upo--toward conservative Republican presidents, or Democratic presidents, for that matter, if they happen to be conservative. GANNON: One of the--for a number of years, one of the arguments in favor of the--or one of the arguments for the necessity of fighting the Vietnam War was the Domino Theory, that if South Vietnam fell, the rest of the nations in Southeast Asia and Asia and the Pacific Basin would fall like a row of dominoes. Now, several years after the fall of Vietnam, the end of the war, the fall of Vietnam, the dominoes still seem to be in place. Does that mean that the Domino Theory was wrong? NIXON: No, not at all. You have to understand historically how the theory developed. It developed first and was first expressed by President Truman and Secretary of State Acheson back in 1948 and ' ; 49 when the French were still there. And in that period and in 1953 when I traveled throughout that area, and in 1956 when I was there again, and again back in 1964 when I was there again--in all of that period of time we have to understand that Communism, the idea, ha--still had appeal. These were new nations, many of them. They were just trying the great experiment of self-government. They were trying to find the best way to quick progress. They saw the Soviet example, and they did not see the fact that Communism didn' ; t work. Now, since that period, particularly in the mid-sixties, the late sixties and the seventies, that has all changed. So the Communists don' ; t have the appeal that they had, for example, in Indonesia and the Philippines and Malaysia and Thailand that they had back in 1953 and ' ; 54 when the Domino Theory was first suggested. So what happened here is that by holding the ring in Vietnam against Soviet- and Chinese-supported revolutionary warfare, we bought time for those nations to develop their own systems. We bought time for the Communist systems to self-destruct. Let' ; s take Indonesia as the best example. Indonesia in the year 1962, throughout, Sukarno, who was left-leaning and was getting taken in by sort of the Communist ideas and--put in a non-Communist, a strong non-Communist government. That would not have happened, in my opinion, had the United States failed to hold the line in Vietnam, beca--and Indonesia was the most important country in that area. There' ; s a hundred and fifty million people and it has a thousand miles of strategically located islands. GANNON: Was it worth destabilizing our government, having hundreds of thousands of American casualties, fifty-seven thousand American dead, in order to hold the line for Indonesia, to buy time for the Indonesians? NIXON: It wasn' ; t just Indonesia. It' ; s a question of the whole area of what I call revolutionary warfare, because we have to understand the dominoes are just not in Southeast Asia. GANNON: Is--is one American life worth buying time? NIXON: It is if it' ; s going to affect us. Let' ; s well understand that here sits the United States. Now, I think most people say, well, the United States certainly should risk an American life to save Europe. And most people in America would say we should risk an American life to save Israel. And maybe they would say we should risk American lives to save Japan, because of its economic importance to us and so on. Having said that, however, we have to understand that, as we look at Europe, the United States, and Japan, they cannot survive if, basically, the Third World--and that' ; s a very big term--Latin America, Africa, the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and South Asia--if that comes under Communist domination, we will be surrounded, squeezed, because our supplies will be cut off and so forth and so on. So, in the long term, we simply have to stand firm. We don' ; t fight everyplace. In fact, we try not to fight at all. We should help others fight their own battles, the so-called Nixon Doctrine. But, on the other hand, we have to recognize that what happens in Indonesia, what happens in El Salvador, what happens in Iraq and Iran does matter. GANNON: Where is the domino--where are the dominoes today, and what should we be doing? How-- NIXON: I-- GANNON: How-- NIXON: I-- GANNON: How-- NIXON: I--I pointed that out in--in considerable detail in my book The Real War. The real war is being fought today not between the superpowers and not between N.A.T.O. and the United States, for example, and the superpower, because there is no war. There' ; s the absence of war there at the present. But the real war is being fought i--in the so-called Third World, Third World, which has the minerals, which has the energy supplies, the oil and so forth, which has the raw materials that is essential for an industrial survi--society to survive. It' ; s Latin America. It' ; s Africa, both black Africa and North Africa. I--it' ; s the Persian Gulf. It' ; s the Mid-Eastern area. It' ; s South Asia and Southeast Asia. That is where the Communists, particularly the Russians, the Chinese now being supportive but playing a--a less expansionist role than it did previously. But that is where by--war by proxy, through using Cuban troops, war through supporting revolutionary warfare, and so forth and soon--where it' ; s being conducted. And so what we have seen since the fall of Vietnam--we' ; ve seen Angola. We’ve seen it work there through support of war by proxy, when the United States Congress refused to honor President Ford' ; s request that we do something to save that--to prevent that from happening. Angola, Ethiopia, Yemen--these are places far away. They don' ; t seem to matter, but when that begins to develop in other areas, it' ; s going to matter very much. GANNON: Is it— NIXON: And, of course, Nicaragua. GANNON: Is it worth American lives to buy time for El Salvador? NIXON: Oh, certainly. It' ; s a--it' ; s a small country. I' ; ve been there. Sad in many ways, and yet hopeful, too. There are four million people in El Salvador. They' ; re very good people. I was there in 1955. But certainly there were reasons for a revolution to occur, but a revolution which brings more repression and more corruption than they had previously is not what the people of El Salvador deserve, and that' ; s what we' ; re trying to prevent. But I think President de Gaulle, many years as a matter of fact, was very prophetic when he said, " ; What we have to understand is that the countries of Central America are only incidents on the road to Mexico." ; So Nicaragua was gone, despite the editorials in our great newspapers to the effect that the Sandinistas were not at the--under the control of the Russians, or at least didn' ; t depend it--upon it, and are not today, and so forth--they are. There' ; s no question about that. Nic--uh-- GANNON: Direc-- NIXON: El Salvador-- GANNON: Directly, or just in terms of inspiration? NIXON: I think [unintelligible]-- GANNON: Do you think Moscow is calling the tune or just setting the-- NIXON: I think m--I think--I' ; ll put it this way--without Moscow, the Sandinista government could not survive for even one month. And that, I think, tells the story. The--El Salvador, now, it can go. Now, call it " ; domino," ; call it what you want, but the effect on Guatemala, where there are also dissident elements or terrorists or guerrilla elements, you know, who are trying to overthrow the government--let me say in this respect, I hold no brief for the Guatemalan government, for the Nicar--for, certainly, the previous Nicaraguan government, for the El Salvador government. They had their faults, and some of them were very glaring faults. But, on the other hand, what I do say is that it' ; s the old story. It' ; s the choice between them and somebody worse, or them--rather than between them and somebody better. It doesn' ; t mean that we simply say there we support these governments, right or wrong. We must, of course, use our influence to move them into an age of reform. That has to be the American position, always, and that' ; s the real way to practice human rights. But it' ; s no way to practice human rights to say because this government or that one denies human rights, some human rights, to get rid of it and then to bring in a government that allows no human rights. That' ; s what' ; s happened in Cuba, and that' ; s what happened in Nicaragua, and that' ; s a bad choice. GANNON: If it came to an up-or-down decision, and you were president, would you send American troops to El Salvador to save it? NIXON: No, sir. There' ; s where the Nixon Doctrine--which I' ; d like to s--take just a second on, applies. Under the Nixon Doctrine, which I announced in Guam in 1969, I said the problem is that in Korea and in Vietnam, the United States provided the arms, we provided the economic assistance, and most of the men in order to help them defend their freedom from Communist domination. I said, in the future, the United States should provide for our friends who are threatened by Communist insurrection. We should provide arms, we should provide training, we should provide economic aid. But, on the other hand, we should not provide the men, except for technicians who--for training, because if they are unwilling to and unable to fight themselves and win, we shouldn' ; t do the fighting for them. And that is the rule that should apply in El Salvador. GANNON: Isn' ; t-- NIXON: Now there is one exception to the rule. GANNON: Isn' ; t that what' ; s happening, though? We' ; re providing this, and they' ; re getting creamed. For whatever-- NIXON: I think-- GANNON: --reason, they can' ; t-- NIXON: I think they' ; re going to survive. GANNON: Do you think so? NIXON: I think they' ; re going to survive if we provide the arms. You understand, we have to provide the arms, we have to provide economic assistance, and we also have to provide technical training. Now, understand, those that are fighting against them are not fighting with pitchforks. They' ; re a pretty tough bunch, and they have some very modern weapons, and they' ; re not just ones that have been captured from the government forces. A lot of them have been--are Soviet imports, and, of course, Cuban, and so forth and so on. There' ; s one exception insofar as the so-called Nixon Doctrine is concerned, and that is if a foreign government intervenes, then we have to have a reevaluation, and that, of course, is what happened in Korea. The reason the United States went into Korea is that North Korea attacked South Korea. It was not just a civil war. And the same happened in Vietnam. If the North Vietnamese had stayed out of South Vietnam, there would have been no necessity to keep any American forces there, because it was North Korea--North Vietnamese tanks that rumbled into Saigon when it capitulated, not VC tanks, believe me. GANNON: Should President Reagan, then, get on the hotline and tell Yuri Andropov to cool it in El Salvador? NIXON: Well, I believe that when a summit occurs, as it in--inevitably will, that it must not be one just zeroed in on the very important area of arms control, but it should be the whole world, the relations of the United States and the Soviet Union economically, the relations of the United States and the Soviet Union to the Mid East, to other areas where our interests happen to collide. We' ; re not going to agree on everything, but we at least can set up a process to avoid war over disagreements. They call that " ; linkage" ; and so forth. And people say, " ; Well, why don' ; t you get arms control alone? Wouldn' ; t that be enough?" ; And the answer is--not at all. Important--you have to remember that wars do not come because of the existence of arms. They come because of failure to resolve--to--political differences that lead to the use of arms. Therefore, since the purpose of arms control ostensibly is to prevent war, that purpose is not served unless you go to the heart of the question. You have arms control, but then you leapfrog that to the differences that might bring war, and you try to cool those. And we' ; ve got to make it very clear to the Soviet that, as far as we' ; re concerned, we can have arms control, we can have better trade relations, we can even help them in non-strategic areas in trade, if they' ; re willing, of course, to cool it in areas that might affect us detrimentally. GANNON: How do you react to the charges that we caused, largely during your administration--that we caused serious health damage to our own troops in Vietnam by the use of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange? Do you--and do you think that the government should make financial settlements for soldiers or--or people whose health was affected by Agent Orange in Vietnam? NIXON: I have not studied that, but if--if a--an independent study indicates that the government was responsible, of course--course they should make financial settlements. Obviously. GANNON: What is it--what does it feel like--it' ; s probably an impossible question to answer, but it' ; s not an impossible question to ask, and I think it occurs to people. What does it feel like to make a decision that leads to the bombing of people? You were under fire in the South Pacific. You--you experienced the--the--the terror and the--the helplessness of that. When you’re in the air-conditioned Oval Office and you' ; re looking at maps, and you' ; re making a decision about sending out a bombing run, do you think--can you think about the people in the--in--in--in the non-air-conditioned jungles that--that are going to be under those bombs? NIXON: Yes, you did. I must say that, in terms of Vietnam, however, I at least was able to order the bombing, recognizing that our bombing was very carefully restricted to military targets. In fact, our pilots, many of them, as I pointed out, may have lost their lives due to the fact that we did not allow any area bombing, including the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. And the records will show that we did carry that out. I remember, though, that President Eisenhower, who had a much more difficult decision, told me that one of the most heart-rending decisions he made was to approve the bombing of Dresden in World War II. Dresden was not a military target, and in one night, thirty-eight thousand people were burned to death because of a firebombing. But the purpose was to discourage the Germans and to bring down Hitler. And it' ; s an awful close question--was it worth it? So I say every president has that problem, but in our case it was not nearly as difficult as the one that President Eisenhower had or that President Truman had when he ordered or approved the bombing with atom bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. GANNON: In a--in a--a television documentary, General Westmoreland has been charged with suppressing intelligence estimates and leading a conspiracy to conceal from the president, the Congress, and the people, the actual number and placement of enemy troops in Vietnam in order to convey the impression that we were winning a war that we were in fact losing. How do you react to those charges against General Westmoreland? NIXON: Disgraceful. He' ; s filed a libel suit. I hope he wins it. He should. I think that as far as he' ; s concerned--I know him. He was an outstanding commander. He' ; s a by-the-book commander. He would never allow himself to be used politically, I' ; m sure. I saw him out there in Vietnam to--on a couple of my trips. Now, it is true that what, of course, taints him is the fact that the Johnson administration, as we' ; ve pointed out earlier, did not level with the American people as much as it should have, due to pol--domestic political considerations with regard to what was going on and so forth. But you can' ; t blame that on West--General Westmoreland. He would never have done it. I know the man. GANNON: Looking back on the American experience in Vietnam from your perspective as--as commander-in-chief and president of the United States and as someone who was there from the--from a very early point, before we even became involved in a military sense--looking at the billions of dollars, the millions of refugees, the hundreds of thousands of casualties, the fifty-seven thousand American dead in Vietnam, and the fact that in a matter of a couple of months the whole thing went down the tubes anyway and the Communists--the Communists won-- NIXON: A couple of years, I should say. GANNON: --was it worth it? NIXON: Well, was it worth it--I' ; ve, of course, obviously, often asked myself that question during the times I had to make the decisions with regard to Cambodia, with regard to the bombings, and so forth and so on. And particularly I asked myself that question when I met with the next-of-kin of people who had lost their lives and so forth. My answer is that the United States and Vietnam, as we know, going back over twenty-five years, have been entwined together. Fate brought us together in that area after the French left Vietnam. I know a case can be made, and it is made by many, that we shouldn' ; t have gone along with the policy of trying to help Vietnam prevent a Communist takeover, but when you say, " ; Was it worth it?" ; my answer is, when you see what has happened since the Communist takeover, there' ; s no question about who was on the right side. More people, for example, many more people have been killed and starved to death in Cambodia, between two and three million, than have been lost by the French, by the Americas, by the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese in twenty-five years of warfare in Vietnam. And there were no boat people, may I say, when our governments, the ones we were supporting, Thieu, et cetera, Diem--there were no boat people. The traffic was all one-way. Nobody went north. They all came south if they possibly could. The question is who was it on the right--were we on the right side. Were we on the right side? I have no doubt about it when I see what we were trying to prevent. When I see the terrible holocaust that has been visited upon the people of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, I say that any government with any moral sense whatever was justified in trying to prevent that from happening. And I think history will record, when we get further away from the trauma of defeat, that at--as President Reagan has said, it was a just war, if any war at all is just. GANNON: Do you think that the Vietnam vet has got a fair deal? NIXON: No, not at all. A fair deal, certainly, in terms of education and perhaps jobs and so forth, and some would even question that. But that isn' ; t the important thing. More important than anything else for a s--for a veteran after he has served there--to be--come back and to be respected, to be appreciated, and many of these fellows came back, and they almost had to slink around in their communities, particularly if they went into the universities and the colleges and so forth, in order to get the education that they were denied due to the fact--for having--going out there. I do not think, in other words, that the Am--that the Vietnam veterans have been properly recognized. That' ; s changing some now, and I hope it changes a great deal more, and that those lucky people, particularly, who didn' ; t serve in Vietnam, quite legally, continued their college education, demonstrated against the war and thereby prolonged the war without intending to do so--I think they should be the first to get in and say, " ; Thank you, fellows. You did your job, and the country owes you a debt." ; That' ; s the way I feel about it. GANNON: What would you say if you found yourself trapped in an elevator on a--in a ten-story building with a--someone who went to Canada to avoid the draft? What would you say to them now? What would you talk to them about? NIXON: I don' ; t know that I can really reconstruct what could happen. I don' ; t know what he would say, what I would say. He would probably be very bitter toward me, because in this case--and I don' ; t want to make an invidious comparison--I was like Lincoln in the Civil War. People talk about the fact that Lincoln, of course-- GANNON: I think another comparison would come to his mind-- NIXON: Yeah-- GANNON: --but that' ; s-- NIXON: No, but the point is--I remember Sandburg tells a very moving story. Lincoln was sitting in the White House one day, and a--a soldier came to the front gate. He had fled to Canada rather than serving in the Union forces. He wanted a pardon, and Lincoln said, " ; No, I will not pardon him. He must go back and serve with his unit until the war is over." ; That was my attitude toward those that ran to Canada and so forth. I understand why they did it. Some disapproved of the war. Some didn' ; t want to take the risk of it. I understand those things, but on the other hand, let me just say, I think they' ; ve got to recognize--I don' ; t mean that they should bear this guilt and wring their hands about it, but let them at least compensate for it by paying proper respect to those that did go. You ought to remember, a few thousand went to Canada and Sweden or what-have-you, but two-and-a-half million Americans went out there to Vietnam. And I' ; m mighty proud of them, and--and I think we all should be proud of them. GANNON: Do you think those-- NIXON: Because they were on the right side. GANNON: Do you think those thousands that went to Canada and Sweden are as good Americans as the million that w--that served? NIXON: I don' ; t know what has happened to them since. At the time they made that decision, no. I think those that served were the better Americans of the two. GANNON: Would you allow them just to reenter the society, perhaps to--to expiate just by honoring the people who did serve-- NIXON: Oh, sure. GANNON: --or should they have to do something more? NIXON: No, that' ; s done now. I mean, the point is, President Carter, of course, has--in effect, very early on, made the decision that they should all come back. GANNON: Did you agree with that decision? NIXON: I wouldn' ; t have, no. But, on the other hand, that' ; s done now, and I think the best thing now is to put that aside. These--these people, I think, deep down, deep down, many of those that went--they--they must have a feeling of remorse, and particularly a feeling of remorse when they see what has happened in Vietnam, in Cambodia. And that is where our intellectual elite, I think--I think their problems are sort of two-fold. They' ; re going through quite a trauma. One, it was a war that most of them in the first instance supported, and then they turned against it. They sabotaged my efforts to get them out. They said it wasn' ; t possible to have peace with honor. When we did get the peace with honor, I think it embarrassed them, but I think--think beyond that, that--that these people have got to have a feeling of remorse, remorse about what happened because, it happens, they were on the wrong side. GANNON: Talking about the--the draft evaders and deserters, and talking about people like Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark, you' ; re very hard to interview because you' ; re so--you--you appear to be so magnanimous or so calm, and yet it doesn' ; t make sense that you--that you can' ; t be passionate and furious about what these people did and the damage that they caused, from--from your point of view, and it' ; s--it' ; s--in a way, it' ; s been through your career, it' ; s--it' ; s--a--and it' ; s got you the worst of both worlds, because to your opponents, it proves that you' ; re phony and hypocritical, and to your supporters, it robs them of the catharsis of seeing you share the anger that they feel at the things that get them angry, which is why they support you. Don' ; t you feel more passionately about these things? NIXON: Yes, I feel quite passionately about it, but I' ; ve always had the feeling that you--that it serves no purpose to answer hate with hate. You see Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark and their faces contorted and all the rest, and so I' ; m supposed to ret--respond that these people are so terrible and I hate them and so forth. I may feel that. GANNON: Don' ; t you think they are? NIXON: I may feel that, but I am not going-- GANNON: Do you? NIXON: --to express it. GANNON: You say--say--if you-- NIXON: No. GANNON: Again, you' ; ve put the qualifier in. You may feel that. NIXON: No, what they-- GANNON: Don' ; t you--f--from-- NIXON: I-- GANNON: --from everything you say, you have to feel that. NIXON: I have very strong feelings about them and what they--I did at the time, what they--particularly what they said about our P.O.W.s, for example. That really infuriated me. On the other hand, it would have not served any good purpose to get down in the gutter with them on that kind of thing. I stayed above it, and I think I am going to continue to stay above it. GANNON: What does that--does that take an internal toll to--to have the--the calm and discipline that you have, outwardly? What does that do inside? NIXON: Well, it tears you up some. It' ; s a lot of turmoil. But, on the other hand, I think th--I think a leader has to be somewhat different from those that attack him. I' ; ve--I' ; ve taken quite a banging from the media, from the best and the brightest, over the years and so forth, and sometimes, like in 1962, when I told some of the press what I thought of them, I--except for incidents like that, I have not responded in kind. I' ; ve never cancelled, for example, a--a--a subscription to a newspaper because of bad cartoons and editorials. If that were the case, I wouldn' ; t have any newspapers to read. But, on the other hand, I--I think that--let me put it this way. Wh--wh--when you get down in the ring there, when you answer hatred with hatred, you destroy yourself. I think they are destroying themselves with it. GANNON: One final question on Vietnam. You resigned the presidency because of Watergate. Without Vietnam, many of the attitudes and elements of Watergate wouldn' ; t have existed. From that point of view, do you feel that you were in any way the last--the last American casualty of Vietnam? NIXON: You know, some people have written that. It' ; s an intriguing thesis. I guess I would have to respond this way. As you' ; ve already implied, if it had not been for Vietnam, there would have been no Pentagon Papers. There would have been no Ellsberg case. There would have been no Plumbers. There would have been probably no wiretapping, because most of that was really directly related or indirectly related to the need to keep a--a very tight ship during it--during wartime. There would have been no demonstrations, certainly, no demonstrations about Vietnam. So that' ; s one side of it. In that sense, I suppose I could be called a casualty. And then, in another way, too, I guess it would have to be said that, had it not been for Vietnam, the outrage about Watergate would not have been as virulent as it was. After all those--the best and the brightest had been embarrassed by the fact that we ended the war, when they said it couldn' ; t be done, and ended in an honorable way, that we went to China, that we had then arms negotiation with the Soviet Union--some of the things which they had not achieved, and then we won an overwhelming election victory against their candidate, or the candidate of most of them, Senator McGovern, and, as--as they looked at those events, I--I think they began to be concerned, as they should have been, about whether they were to continue to have the role that they had--traditionally have, of being those who controlled and directed a--public opinion and affected the decisions of government in the future. And I would say, in that case, that consequently, when Watergate came, that it was manna from heaven. Now, let me make it clear, Watergate was wrong. It was stupidly handled, and as far as--and we should have been attacked on it. But I would say that when you car--you compare it with what happened previously--and this does not justify it--the virulence of the attackers was to a certain extent due to the fact that we had been through the Vietnam syndrome and probably because we had succeeded when they said we couldn' ; t succeed. Perhaps that' ; s a--a theory that some won' ; t buy. But, incidentally, as far as the last casualty is concerned, I' ; d like to bring all this esoteric talk--and of course this is that--that psychohistory that I--as you know, I have very little use for. Who--I remember the last casualty, and I would say that it was one of the most moving experiences I had in the White House. I am--am known--I' ; m considered to be, as you' ; ve already implied, a non-emotional person. I know, for example, that it' ; s often said that pol--politicians, political leaders, are monsters of self-control. Well, that isn' ; t quite true. I--Winston Churchill, for example, when he was dictating his great speech about--" ; We will fight on the beaches. We will fight in the cities. We will fight in our homes. We will never surrender" ; --the tears were streaming down his cheek, and I remember Eisenhower used to tell me that when Churchill would argue his case before Eisenhower in the high councils, the tears would flow down his cheeks. Well, I am not that way. But I am an emotional man. I--I just believe in controlling it, and I' ; m pretty good at it. I recall only three incidents when I was unable to control my e--emotions when I was president. One was when Eisenhower died. I don' ; t know yet why it happened, and yet I do, in a way. Mel Laird was in the office. We were discussing the next withdrawal program for Vietnam, or--which had not yet occurred but we were g--wh--wh--which was going to occur in a few months after that, and Bob Haldeman interrupted us. He came in, which he never does normally when I' ; m talking to anyone else, and I knew it was something important. He said, " ; Mr. President, the general has just died." ; And all of a sudden, I--I burst out into tears, and I suppose I should have said something for the ages or that sort of thing, but all I could say was, " ; He was such a strong man." ; And the second occasion was one that is a--also been well-publicized, of course--was at the time I resigned, the day I made the resignation speech. I met with my supporters, Democrats and Republicans who had stuck with me on Vietnam and when I went to Russia and to China and so forth, and stuck with me during the Watergate period. And I had to tell them about resigning, and it was a very emotional s--moment. The whole Cabinet Room was packed, and people were hanging on every word, and so I thanked them for what they had done and for the years that we had worked together, because many of them went back over thirty years with me, back to 1947 when I came to the Congress. And finally, as I was reaching the conclusion, I was saying something to the effect that, " ; I only regret that I have let you down." ; And I looked across the table, and there was the--Les Arends, who was the minority whip for the Republicans, an old friend, a dear friend from Illinois, and I remember he had his face in his hands and the tears were coming down his cheeks. He was sobbing, and I couldn' ; t control myself. I had to leave the room. Fifteen minutes later, I had to go on national television and make the speech. I still don' ; t know how I did it. The other incident is not known. It involved the last casualty, the really last casualty in Vietnam. The officer--I believe he was an officer--might have been an enlisted man--I don' ; t recall--he had been killed the day before the cease-fire went into effect in Vietnam. And so I was receiving his widow and his two children in the Oval Office. It was difficult. They were such fine-looking people, very dignified, and I tried to tell them in simple words, as simply as I could, how much we appreciated what he had done and how much we regretted the loss-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: --that they had suffered. And I said that in the long run, " ; I think you should know that the nation will recognize that it owes him and all those who died and served with him a very great debt that we can never repay." ; Well, they got up to leave, and as we got to the door, the daughter--I guess she was about eighteen years old, a pretty thing, sort of vivacious, and reminded me of both Tricia and Julie--and she said, " ; May I kiss you?" ; Well, I must say, I broke up. I thought of all the thousands of children of the men who had died, and-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0350/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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62 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 8, 1983, part 1.
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gannix_0350
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-04-08
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 8, 1983, part 2. gannix_0351 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|9(2)|53(5)|55(6)|57(4)|72(3)|86(3)|98(2)|108(15)|124(16)|142(15)|157(5)|169(2)|189(17)|207(14)|222(6)|233(13)|248(6)|260(8)|273(14)|286(14)|300(6)|311(12)|322(14)|345(2)|360(15)|380(15)|391(17)|405(5)|423(5)|435(16)|449(6)|458(7)|462(16)|474(3)|485(17)|501(2)|504(2)|507(7)|522(2)|536(14)|549(6) 0 https://youtu.be/75UFnHyA__E YouTube video English 9 Interview Discussion --I must say that, after that conversation, I couldn't have disagreed more with what John Lindsay said when he said our best young men went to Canada Nixon finishes relating an emotional story about meeting the family of the last casualty of Vietnam (begun on the April 8, 1983, part 1 interview). Preparations are made for the next part of the interview. 258 Vice President Selection In this conversation with former President Nixon, we'll cover his vice-presidential years from 1953 to 1961. Nixon discusses his selection for vice president by President Eisenhower and the attitudes that he and Mrs. Nixon had about his selection. 456 Joining President Eisenhower You got the word that you had been chosen, and—or when you got--when you got the word that you had been chosen, you went to Eisenhower's hotel room to meet him. Nixon describes meeting with President Eisenhower when asked to join his ticket as vice president. 678 Nomination for Vice Presidency From that meeting, you went to the convention hall, where you met Mrs. Nixon. Nixon recounts being announced as the candidate for vice president at the Republican National Convention. He also discusses Eisenhower's personality and taking a vacation with him to begin planning their campaign. Barry Goldwater ; campaign ; cooking ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; fishing ; Gene Milliken ; Joe Martin ; Pat Nixon ; Republican National Convention ; vice president Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Goldwater, Barry M. (Barry Morris), 1909-1998 ; Martin, Joseph William, 1884-1968 ; Millikin, Eugene Donald, 1891-1958 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 1055 Fund Crisis The—you kicked off your campaign with a whistle-stop train tour up the coast of California, in California, and the first day out a--you got zapped by a bolt from the blue. Nixon describes the Fund Crisis during his campaign for vice president. 1388 President Eisenhower's Reaction to the Fund Crisis What was Eisenhower's reaction when he got word of the—of the Post story, because, of course, one of the things you were running on was—or running against, was the— Nixon discusses the response to the Fund Crisis, hearing from President Eisenhower, and deciding to make a television speech to answer the charges. 1714 Checkers Speech So you decided to—to make a national television speech. Nixon relates writing and giving the Checkers speech, describing his decision to include the coat, and dog imagery and how the speech ended. 2373 Reaction to the Checker Speech What was Eisenhower's reaction to the speech? Nixon describes the reactions of Eisenhower and Mrs. Nixon to the Checker's speech. campaign ; Checkers speech ; Darryl Zanuck ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Murray Chotiner ; Pat Nixon Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Zanuck, Darryl Francis, 1902-1979 Interview NIXON: --I must say that, after that conversation, I couldn' ; t have disagreed more with what John Lindsay said when he said our best young men went to Canada. He was dead wrong. I know where our best young men went. They went to Vietnam. They served with honor, and the country is eventually going to honor them, I trust, in the way that they deserve. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, hold positions, everybody. I need to make a quick [unintelligible] stop here, and then we' ; ll continue, so don' ; t leave your positions. [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Coughs ; clears throat.] NIXON: Well, now you' ; ve got what? Under the-- GANNON: We' ; re, uh-- NIXON: Took a little more time than you expected, huh? GANNON: Well, I decided just to take the first hour [unintelligible]. OFF SCREEN VOICE: We went further, but I' ; ll tell you, that was [unintelligible]. GANNON: I don' ; t--I-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: I wasn' ; t [unintelligible]. GANNON: I--I need a few minutes to-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Your lip is fine. It' ; s not perspiring, if that' ; s-- NIXON: No, no-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Oh, oh, okay. NIXON: Oh--I see. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Every once in a while, you' ; re--you' ; re wiping-- NIXON: I think I' ; ll go out and get a cup of coffee, if I can. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, can we unwire the president here? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Yes, all right here [unintelligible]. OFF SCREEN VOICE: One second. OFF SCREEN VOICE: We’re going now to the-- GANNON: I' ; m going to [unintelligible]-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: tape playback. GANNON: --do the same. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Uh, Frank? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Cough.] NIXON: Eleven thirty-five, twelve thirty-five-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stand by. One. GANNON: In this conversation with former President Nixon, we' ; ll cover his vice-presidential years from 1953 to 1961. Why were you chosen as Eisenhower' ; s vice president? What did you bring to the ticket? NIXON: Well, he told me years later that what he thought I brought to the ticket was, first, a bridge to younger people, and he was making a great effort to win younger people ; second, a possible way to build a bridge between him and the regular Republicans, because he knew that I had considerable support among those regular Republicans ; and third, and I think this may have been the decisive factor because at that time domestic Communism was a major issue, he felt that I had credentials in this area. As he put it to me, " ; You got Hiss, and you got him fairly." ; And he felt that I therefore would be a good answer to the extremists like Joe McCarthy who didn' ; t care that much about fairness, in his opinion. I think these factors were those that made him make that decision. And, finally, I think, another factor was that he had been told, particularly by Tom Dewey, that I was a pretty good speaker. GANNON: How did you and Mrs. Nixon feel about the prospect of becoming national figures, leaving the Senate and becoming a vice president if the ticket won? NIXON: Well, her attitude was quite negative actually--not negative in the sense of not being willing to go out and do the campaigning, which she had done so well for the House and Senate, but negative in terms of the fact that we had just been through the Senate campaign, we were looking forward to six years in Washington with our young daughters, a little more peace, not out there fighting battles and so forth. And she knew very well that the ' ; 52 campaign would be tough and that from then on we' ; d be living in a fishbowl. And she didn’t care that much for all that public notoriety. GANNON: How did you feel? Were you excited by the prospect? NIXON: Mixed emotions. I would have to say yes, because, after all, I was only thirty-nine years old and to even be considered for vice-president, particularly running with General Eisenhower, for whom I had enormous respect, was to me something that you only dreamed about. But, on the other hand, I--I was aware of the fact that I was building a career in the Senate, that I had plenty of time, and I wasn' ; t so sure that I wanted to make this move at this relatively early age into a position that--and I had studied a lot of history--that Harry Truman had said was about as useful as a fifth tit on a cow, and Theodore Roosevelt said it' ; s like taking the veil. On the other hand, to answer it, with all these things measured, did I want to do it? The answer is yes. GANNON: You got the word that you had been chosen, and--or when you got--when you got the word that you had been chosen, you went to Eisenhower' ; s hotel room to meet him. What was that--what was that meeting like? NIXON: Well, for me, quite an emotional meeting, because I had met him before, at the Bohemian Grove in California after I had been nominated for the Senate in 1950, and then in Paris, when I had called on him and had an hour with him when he was serving at S.H.A.P.E. as Supreme Commander. GANNON: Didn' ; t you write that at that meeting you were impressed because he was wearing an Eisenhower jacket? NIXON: He was not only wearing an Eisenhower jacket, but he was so erect and vigorous and young. What impressed me, too, was another factor that Winston Churchill says is one of the most important attributes that a political figure can have. He said, " ; When you meet another person," ; he said, " ; if you really want to impress him, try to make him feel after you have met him that he has done well rather than that you have done well." ; And I was really quite impressed by the way that Eisenhower, when I met him, rather than talking about himself--he did answer my questions with regard to S.H.A.P.E. and the rest--that he was very interested in what I had done, asked me about the Hiss case, said he had read Ralph de Toledano and Victor Lasky' ; s book Seeds of Treason, congratulated me on being very fair. I thought right then, he' ; s a pretty coonie fellow. GANNON: So you go into the--into the suite at the Blackstone Hotel-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --he shakes your hand, and asks you to join his ticket? NIXON: Yes. He--I must say that I had a little bit of an uneasy moment, because when I walked in, I didn' ; t know, really, what to call him. He' ; d just been nominated for president, and when I had met him previously at the convention, he had attended the California delegation, and of course I called him " ; General." ; So I shook his hand and I said, " ; Hi, Chief," ; and I could tell he didn' ; t like it. Now the reason I used the term " ; chief" ; was not in a derogatory sense, but that is what Herbert Hoover had always been called, and I thought it was a compliment. But President Eisenhower, incidentally, didn' ; t like that kind of a familiar term. I should point out that in the entire period of his presidency, I never called him " ; Ike." ; I always called him " ; Mr. President." ; And also, after he left the office, I didn' ; t call him " ; Mr. President." ; He wanted to be called " ; General." ; But I was one of the few of his intimates, as I did become an intimate later on, who never called him " ; Ike." ; GANNON: Did he consider " ; general" ; a higher calling than " ; president" ; ? NIXON: I think he did. I think he did. But, in any event, we sat down, and he--he was quite formal, a--a--and he said--asked me if I would be willing to join his cru--this crusade. Well, I said, of course I would be honored to do so. And then I remember a rather poignant incident that occurred. As we were talking, all of a sudden he snapped his fingers, and he says, " ; Oh--forgotten something. I' ; ve got to resign from the Army." ; And he called in his secretary--dictated a letter resigning from the Army, and I thought, " ; Here is fifty years, changing from one career to another," ; and I also thought in the back of my mind, " ; I hope he isn' ; t going to be too disillusioned when he gets into the ring in politics," ; because I knew with Harry Truman on the other side, with Adlai Stevenson, with his rather cutting rhetoric, that it would not be an easy campaign even for Eisenhower. GANNON: From that meeting, you went to the convention hall, where you met Mrs. Nixon. We have some film of your arrival at the convention hall and then your nomination as vice president in 1952. GANNON: That' ; s your one suit, eh? NIXON: Hmm. NIXON: I remember, incidentally, when that demonstration was going on, and it went on and on and on, that I kept telling Joe Martin, I says, " ; Can' ; t you calm them down?" ; He turned to me with that sort of Irish twang of his, and he says, he says, " ; An old saying," ; he says. " ; Get in the hay while the sun is shining." ; And you see there Pat, Mrs. Nixon, kissing me. What had happened was that I was at the Stockyards Inn when I got the word, and she was having lunch with a friend of hers. She got the word--when she got it, incidentally, dropped the sandwich on the floor, she was so surprised--and here we are together. GANNON: It must have-- NIXON: I can--she hasn’t changed, but I don' ; t think I was ever that young. [Both laugh.] GANNON: Will you ever be that young again? NIXON: Possibly. GANNON: That must have been a heady moment for you, for both of you, to--to be standing in front of a national convention and--for the first time. Of course, you' ; d been in the House and you' ; d been in the Senate, so you' ; d campaigned, but to hear all those people cheering for you to become a national--to become the vice president. NIXON: Well, the first time, of course, is the one that is always the mountaintop experience. Not that everything else is downhill, but there is nothing that equals it. For example, people ask which--which election gave me the biggest thrill. It wasn' ; t being elected president. It was being elected to the Congress. That was really a big thrill. GANNON: So you remember. NIXON: And the same thing is true here. I addressed this convention, and--and then I addressed the 1956 convention, the 1960 convention, 1964, when I introduced Goldwater, 1968, ' ; 72. All were memorable. The excitement of the crowd and so forth--it really gives you a lift. It turns on the adrenaline if it wasn' ; t already there. But nothing like the first time. Nothing like the first time. GANNON: We have a photograph of the two nominees at the--that night receiving the acclaim of the convention. Do you remember that moment? NIXON: Oh, I remember it very well. That' ; s a very famous picture, too. It was used all over the country on posters and that sort of thing. GANNON: You look very happy. NIXON: Well, I was happy, and I--I must say, though, that I sensed when I held the general' ; s arm up that he resisted it just a little. Oh, he didn' ; t indicate displeasure, but that--he didn' ; t quite like it. And later on I learned that, in watching him over the years, that Eisenhower didn' ; t like people to manhandle him, to grab him, and so forth. He had a great sense of dignity and also of privacy. He wasn' ; t the average politician in that respect. I remember, too, that he was very different in another way. He had a famous smile, and he appreciated a good joke, but it really turned him off if a joke was off-color--really turned him off. He felt that that was an insult to the presidency, to the office that he held, and he never would laugh at one. And, also, he didn' ; t like any humor when it was a serious situation or a serious subject. I recall vividly very early on a briefing of the legislative leaders with regard to our civilian defense program, and all the numbers were put out about the number of missiles that might fall on the United States and all that sort of thing, and why we had to have a civilian defense program, and Senator Gene Milliken, who had a wry sense of humor, from Colorado, after the briefing was continued, he--concluded, he said, " ; Well, you know, after hearing this briefing, Mr. President," ; he said, " ; I think what we all ought to do is to paint our asses white and run with the antelope." ; And Eisenhower--everybody else laughed, but not Eisenhower. He sort of smiled a bit, and he said, " ; Well, Gene," ; he said, " ; let me say we may not have time to paint our asses white if the bombs begin to fall and we aren' ; t prepared for it." ; GANNON: After the convention, you--you went to Colorado for a fishing vacation with Eisenhower to plan the campaign, and this--this film of that--that event. Was that one of your favorite vacation memories? NIXON: No, I don' ; t think it was one of mine, except for the dinner that Eisenhower cooked. He was a gourmet cook, and he wouldn' ; t allow anybody else up there with him. There were about ten of us that were up there at this camp in the mountains, and he cooked, I remember, a--a--a beef sirloin and potatoes. He let somebody else peel the potatoes. That was the only thing he didn' ; t do. But otherwise, he did it all. It was marvelous. But also he insisted that I learn to fish. I had never hunted or fished in my life, and so, having to learn to fish, and trout fishing, fly casting--that was really starting in the major leagues when I should have, probably, started with something much easier. And I remember he got me out there and showed me how to cast. I tried it about six or eight times, but when I brought the thing back and it caught him in his jacket once, he gave up on me and I gave up. I' ; ve never tried it since. GANNON: The--you kicked off your campaign with a whistle-stop train tour up the coast of California, in California, and the first day out a--you got zapped by a bolt from the blue. A headline in the New York Post newspaper said, " ; Secret Nixon Fund: Secret Rich Men' ; s Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary." ; This was the--the first shot in what became known as the " ; Fund Crisis." ; What was this secret rich man' ; s fund? NIXON: Well, first, the headline was very misleading in three characteristics: the fund was not secret, it was not a rich man' ; s fund, and the purpose of the fund was not to keep me in a style far beyove--far above what I could afford. As a matter of fact, it was a routine fund, which were very common in the Congress then, and even more so today, which took care of political expenses that could not be properly charged to the government. For example, and this is hard to think, if you were to tell a senator today from California that the government only paid for one round trip a year between Washington and California, he' ; d say, " ; I really can' ; t serve in the office." ; Today, I think it' ; s ten or twelve that they allow. But, in any event, this fund of eighteen thousand dollars had been set up after I won the Senate campaign so that I could conduct a year-round campaign and get back to California. It paid for some of my travel expenses. It--it paid for some of my mailings. It paid for some extra office help to handle the huge volume of mail that I received as a new senator from California. Absolutely nothing went for personal purposes. It was not secret. It was--Mr. Dana Smith and--my finance chairman in the ' ; 50 campaign--sent over--several thousand letters to supporters all over the state. And it was not a rich man' ; s fund, either. As far as that' ; s concerned, there were some rich men that contributed to it, but the limit on the contributions was five hundred dollars. The average contribution was two hundred and forty-three dollars. Nevertheless, all that being said, once the headline appeared, it really created a firestorm. GANNON: It later turned out that there was a--a Stevenson Fund, that Governor Stevenson had a fund of his own. What were the differences between the Nixon Fund and the Stevenson Fund? NIXON: Well, it' ; s interesting to--how we learned about the Stevenson Fund. After I had gone on--on my campaign train up into Portland and it was decided that I return to Los Angeles to make a nationwide broadcast, the so-called " ; Checkers speech," ; as it later came to be known--on the way down, as I was working on my notes, Murray Chotiner, my campaign manager, slipped into the seat beside me, says, " ; I don' ; t want to interrupt you," ; he says, " ; but, you know, I kind of smell a rat here. Here Stephen Mitchell" ; --who was the Democratic National Chairman--" ; has asked you, has demanded that you get off the ticket. Several newspapers have. Several of the leading Democratic officials have. But Stevenson is not saying a word. I smell a rat." ; And sure enough, the next day, it was a--the rat exposed himself. What had happened--I don' ; t mean Stevenson was the rat, but, in any event, the next day it became known that contractors doing business with the state had contributed to a Stevenson Fund. Stevenson office immediately put it--out a story to the effect--well, this fund was different, because it was solely for the purpose of supplementing the salaries of people on his staff who couldn' ; t otherwise serve in state government if they didn' ; t have this sa--salary supplementation, and it indicated that the fund was eighteen thousand dollars only. Well, the press, in one of the rare t--times when they did not have a double standard, asked Stevenson for a press conference so that he could explain his fund, just as I was going to explain mine on television. They petitioned him, as a matter of fact, and he just flat turned it down. It was only years later, long after Stevenson was dead, that his authorized biographer, John Bartlow Martin, disclosed that the fund was much bigger and very different from the one that had been admitted in the campaign. It was for eighty-four thousand dollars. The major contributors put up five thousand dollars. They did so with the expectation, no promise, but expectation, that they might get business from the state. It was not used solely for political purposes. It was used, for example, to pay for Stevenson' ; s annual Christmas parties. It was used for the purpose of hiring an orchestra for a dance that his sons were having. And under the circumstances, therefore, the fact that it was being used for personal purposes as well as political purposes totally distinguishes it from my fund. Now, in retrospect, therefore, it seems that--that I have the best of the argument, but Stevenson had the media with him. And so it took a--a--it took a broadcast which went over the heads of the media, in fact, over the heads of the politicians, to win the day. GANNON: What was Eisenhower' ; s reaction when he got word of the--of the Post story, because, of course, one of the things you were running on was--or running against, was the-- NIXON: The mess-- GANNON: --scandal-ridden corruption of the-- NIXON: --the mess in Washington. GANNON: --mess in Washington, the Democratic administration. How did he react? NIXON: Well, I wasn' ; t there, but all that I knew--that I didn' ; t hear anything from him. Sherman Adams called. Jim Hagerty called. I didn' ; t take their calls. I wasn' ; t going to be fobbed off on some aide. Even though I was just thirty-nine years of age, I knew better than that, but I heard, for example, that Herbert Hoover had made a supportive statement. I had a nice wire from Warren Burger, who later became chief justice. I had a wire from Jerry Ford, who later became president, and a very warm statement made by Bob Taft, when he said he didn' ; t see what was wrong. And he says, " ; This is something that seems to be a regular pattern, and the only question is whether or not he was affected by his votes, and it appears that he was going to vote the way most of his supporters wanted him to vote anyway. He' ; d been elected by them. These were his supporters." ; But nothing from Eisenhower. GANNON: Were you surprised or hurt by Eisenhower' ; s silence? NIXON: Uh--not hurt to an extent, but then, as I thought it through--not necessarily surprised or hurt, because I realized he was not a politician. A--and I realized, too, from what I later heard that he was under terrific heat. There were some people on his staff who did not approve of my being on the ticket in the first instance. They preferred a more liberal candidate than I was, and also Eisenhower was very sensitive about the media. He' ; d always had a very good press when he was in Europe, and he was very sensitive about it. And so, consequently, when he learned that the press had taken t--a poll and, by a margin of forty to two, said that Nixon should get off the ticket, as Stephen Mitchell had demanded, and as the New York Herald-Tribune, a Republican paper, as well as the Washington Post, a Democratic paper, had demanded, he then told the press in an off-the-record session that there was going to be no attempt here to whitewash Nixon, that he had to come out clean as a hound' ; s tooth. He also made the point that he had confidence that--of my integrity. So that' ; s all I heard. This was not from him directly. It' ; s what I was reading in the play--in the papers. In other words, he was saying, in effect, though--I could read between the lines--not that I was innocent till I was proved guilty, but that I had to prove my innocence. In other words, there was the presumption of guilt. I had to prove that I was clean as a hound' ; s tooth. GANNON: When did you finally hear from him or d--or did you finally hear from him? And wh-- NIXON: Well-- GANNON: --what did you decide to do? NIXON: Well, the way it worked was this. Murray Chotiner had suggested to me that I should use the money that was allocated for a vice-presidential TV program to answer the charges. Tom Dewey called me, told me--he said, " ; Eisenhower' ; s advisors are a hanging jury as far as you' ; re concerned." ; And he said, " ; I think what you ought to do is to go on TV and ask the people to indicate whether they support you or not," ; which was--which was exactly the way Murray had come down. So, up to this time, I still hadn' ; t heard from Eisenhower, and finally in Portland, I got a call from him. It was a very friendly call. He says--d--said, " ; I understand it' ; s rather difficult." ; And I said, " ; Yeah, it hasn' ; t been easy." ; He then went on to say that he wanted me to make the decision as to whether or not I should stay on the ticket and so forth. He said, " ; After all, you' ; ve got a lot of support in this country." ; He said, " ; I don' ; t want it to appear that I have knocked you off and condemned an innocent man." ; I then went on to say, well, I' ; d be willing to leave if it would serve his interests or the interests of the ticket, but he said no, that was not the way it should be done, that I should make the decision. Well, the conversation went on for a while, and finally, he s--came up with the same suggestion that Tom Dewey had made, except he elaborated on it. He said, " ; Not only answer the fund, but," ; he said, " ; tell the country everything you have ever received, how much money you have earned, what it' ; s been used for, what your worth is," ; and so forth. He said, " ; I advise that that be done," ; which was shrewd advice. And I said, " ; Well, General, I' ; ll be glad to do that because I' ; ve got nothing to hide." ; I said, " ; But once I' ; ve made the broadcast," ; he said, " ; then can we make a decision?" ; He said, " ; No," ; he says, " ; I think we should take three or four days to see how it goes." ; I said, " ; Well, General," ; I said, " ; the problem here is the indecision." ; I said, " ; We' ; ve really got to get it decided because otherwise it' ; s going to be ballooned bigger than it i--even is at the present time." ; And then I sort of blew my top a bit, and I says, " ; You know, there comes a time you either have to shit or get off the pot." ; Well, from me, a thirty-nine-year-old senator to say this to the supreme commander of Europe forces, a great war hero whom I admired enormously, a presidential nominee who was going to be president, was pretty shocking. He took it rather well, though, and his last words were, " ; Keep your chin up." ; So that was that. GANNON: So you decided to--to make a national television speech. NIXON: Yes. GANNON: You had to go back to Los Angeles to do it, and you' ; ve described the moments just--just as you were getting ready to go to the studio, you received a phone call from a Mr. Chapman. NIXON: Yes. Mr. Chapman was Governor Dewey' ; s code name. You know, even in those days I guess people were afraid that they were being tapped or what-have-you, and I wouldn' ; t put it past some of our friends on the other side. But, be that as it may, he called and said, " ; This is Mr. Chapman." ; I knew it was Dewey, and I was scheduled to go out on the television, to the studio, in thirty minutes, and I was working on my notes. The speech, incidentally, was to be in three sections. I should make--lay the groundwork for that. First, I was going to explain the fund, as I' ; ve explained it earlier. Second, I was going to release all material with regard to everything I had earned and what I owned and what I didn' ; t own and so forth, which of course virtually qualified me for--for food stamps, if we' ; d have had food stamps in those days, because I didn' ; t have much. And, third, I was going to go on the attack and take on Stevenson for his fund and also point out why it was very important to have Eisenhower rather than Stevenson as president. I had it all worked out and had made the notes and so forth. So this call came in from Dewey, and Dewey said, " ; Dick," ; he said, " ; I--I don' ; t agree with this, but," ; he said, " ; I think you should know that Ei--Eisenhower' ; s advisors have all met, and they unanimously agree that you should resign from the ticket." ; I said, " ; Well," ; I said, " ; it' ; s a little late to hear that." ; He said, " ; I think probably that' ; s what you should do." ; And he said, " ; I think further that what you should do is resign from the Senate, and then what you should do is to announce you' ; re going to resign from the Senate and then run for reelection so as you can be vindicated in reelection." ; It was getting a little unreal at that point, because Dewey was a pro, he was a friend, and so forth. So I just didn' ; t say a word. There must have been about a two-minute, or at least one-minute silence, and then Dewey said, " ; Well, what are you going to do?" ; I said, " ; Governor, I don' ; t know what I' ; m going to do. Just tell your friends to listen to the broadcast." ; End of conversation. Well, that was a rather traumatic experience, and I went to the studio, and I must say I--just before going in at--or getting a little preparation for it, we were sitting in the control room, and Mrs. Nixon, Pat, was sitting with me, and I said, " ; Gee, I just don' ; t think I can do this." ; She put her hand over and says, " ; Yes, you can." ; She' ; s a very strong person. So we walked out to the set together, and I made the famous fund speech, or infamous, as my critics would say. GANNON: Two of the most famous images from that have to do with Mrs. Nixon' ; s coat and the cocker spaniel puppy--we have--that--that gave the speech its name. We have two clips from the speech. GANNON: What made you think of those two images, the coat and the dog? NIXON: Well, I thought of them going back on the plane from Portland to Los Angeles, because time was rushing down. I only had two days to prepare this speech of--nationwide television, which of course was not being written by anywe--uh--s--uh--else [anyone else]. I had written everything out on my own, as I always did at those times. And I couldn' ; t sleep. I tried to doze off--it was a night flight--and I reached into the pocket in the airplane, which in those days-- I don' ; t know whether they still do it or not--you could get cards which you could mail to your friends from the airplane. And I got these cards out, and I made notes, and it occurred to me that as far as the dog was concerned--I knew a little about political history. I remembered that FDR, whom I always admired as a great politician, had really decimated his opponents i--in--in one of his campaigns when, in Boston, he made a speech and he was answering some of the attacks and said these attacks were unfair against him, and then he went on to say, " ; And I suppose next they' ; re going to be attacking my dog Fala." ; So I remembered Checkers, and that' ; s why I said what I did about Checkers. Now, the mink coat, of course, had to do with my old sparring mate, Harry Truman. In the Truman scandals period, one of the women, or girls, should I say, working in the White House, a White House secretary, had received a nine-thousand-dollar mink kert--coat. Incidentally, today that' ; d only buy a muff, but then that was a pretty good mink coat. And so, under the circumstances, that had been quite a scandal, and Truman, of course, had defended it. He always stood by his people. So I made the point, which was true, that Pat didn' ; t have a mink coat, but she did have a respectable Republican cloth coat. Incidentally, one other thing that occurred to me on that, and I had to check it out with my old professor, Paul Smith--I remember that Stephen Mitchell, the Democratic chairman, who could really use a knife pretty good and twist it, had said after my statement with regard to my fund--he says that, in that usual arrogant way of the Eastern elite, he said, " ; If a man can' ; t afford public life, he shouldn' ; t go into it," ; inference being that only people like Stevenson, who of course was a millionaire, should be allowed to run for office, at least high office. And I said, " ; Well, with regard to that, after all, as Lincoln said, ' ; God must have loved the common people, because he made so many of them.' ; " ; Well, those three lines had dramatic impact, because there were a lot of common people in the country. There were a lot of people in Texas, incidentally, that liked the fact that that dog came from Texas, and we carried Texas, finally. And, of course-- GANNON: [Laughing.] Your dog. NIXON: --there were many people that resented what had happened about the cloth--about the--the mink coat. Later on, we got a lot of dog collars for Checkers as we campaigned around, and dog food enough to last three or four years, but nobody ever gave Pat a mink coat. I did buy one for her after we left the presidency. GANNON: As this next clip shows, the--the speech ended on sort of an unfinished note. You just faded out in mid-sentence. GANNON: What--what happened there? NIXON: Well, I was cut off because I didn' ; t give the address of the Republican National Committee, and, consequently, I was really let down after the broadcast. I should point out that the reason that I was unable to do that and didn' ; t finish quite on time was that I didn' ; t see Ted Rogers, who was my television man, give the one-minute signal. Also, although after that I think the--after the broadcast, there were various anti-Nixon newspapers, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and others, who said this had--the whole broadcast had been--speech had been written out in advance, had been practiced before television, I' ; d looked at tapes and so forth. Let me say I have never seen a tape of myself. I had written every line of this myself. I had--as was my practice, I timed it in my mind, and I have always been able to know from just looking at what I have written and thinking it through without ever uttering it out loud about exactly how it' ; ll come out. I could time it down to even the second. And in this instance I missed the signal, and I consequently w--thought that the speech was a failure because I hadn' ; t told wh--where to send their wires. As it was, incidentally, the wires went to the Republican National Committee, they went to Eisenhower and his train, they went to the hotel we were staying in, to my home in California, to my office in Washington--hundreds of thousands of them. GANNON: What was Eisenhower' ; s reaction to the speech? What happened as a result of it? NIXON: Well, that was one of the problems, that we almost blew the whole thing. I got back to the hotel. The wires were piled up, but no word from Eisenhower. Nothing. And the first call that I took was from Daryl Zanuck, incidentally, the motion picture producer. I knew then that it had been a success, because he is--was a real pro. He said, " ; There' ; s never been political television like that. There' ; ll never be one like that again," ; and so forth. But, in any event, what had happened--Eisenhower had sent a wire, but it had been lost because there were so many. And, consequently, there was a period there when I hadn' ; t heard from Eisenhower, and when some sort of a garbled media report of what he' ; d said--that one broadcast wasn' ; t enough and that he was going to have to hear more--I blew my stack and told Murray Chotiner, I said, " ; Look, I' ; m going to resign from the ticket if that' ; s the way they want to do it. I' ; m not going to make another broadcast. I' ; m not going to go through this any more." ; Chotiner took my resignation and tore it up and so forth, but, in any event, we finally did get Eisenhower' ; s wire, which was a very gracious one, and I met him in Wheeling, Virginia--West Virginia for the reunion. GANNON: How did--how did Mrs. Nixon react to the speech? NIXON: You know, Mrs. Nixon, my mother, my father--what average people don' ; t realize is that it is much harder on the families than it is on the man in the arena. The man in the arena can fight, as I was trying to fight in that broadcast. He can express himself, but the family just have to suffer in silence. But she was a very intelligent person. She was very strong. She' ; s a fighter, I can assure you, and she wouldn' ; t hear to any suggestion that I should resign. She said two things. She said, one, she said, " ; If you resign, the Republicans are going to lose" ; -- NIXON: --which was a pretty good indication of her political shrewdness, and second, " ; If you resign, i--it' ; s going to mar the lives of our girls." ; And so, consequently, she had considerable impact on me. But after this fund episode, she lost all heart for politics. She felt it had been unfair. She felt that it was an enormous, unnecessary invasion of privacy for us to reveal how little we had and how much we owed, which we had to do in the broadcast. She wasn' ; t angry at Eisenhower. She understood, but, boy, was she mad at some of the people around him in the media, who were convicting me before I had a chance to state my side of the case. And she was angry at them not because she thought that they were being rough on me--I think she was angry on that, too, because she is loyal and was always to her family--but she was angry because she thought they were so stupid, and she was right about that, too. GANNON: You finally went to Wheeling and met Eisenhower for a sort of laying-on of hands. We have--we have two clips from that Wheeling rally. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0351/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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44 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 8, 1983, part 2.
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gannix_0351
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-04-08
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 8, 1983, part 3. gannix_0353 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|1(1)|18(4)|35(9)|50(2)|62(7)|74(14)|90(2)|101(2)|112(6)|124(1)|134(2)|145(12)|157(13)|173(8)|201(6)|246(9)|258(5)|278(2)|291(12)|303(16)|316(11)|336(8)|347(11)|361(15)|372(14)|385(5)|397(14)|403(3)|415(15)|434(12)|450(14)|472(3)|484(11)|496(11)|509(6)|521(5)|531(12)|544(13)|569(2)|579(5)|589(5)|602(13)|615(13)|630(13)|648(2)|659(16)|681(4)|702(5)|714(15)|726(13)|740(16)|754(8)|768(9)|779(2)|798(15)|812(5)|826(9)|846(6) 0 https://youtu.be/se79Un47lY8 YouTube video English 77 President Eisenhower Campaign Speech / Wheeling Rally In Eisenhower's speech, he read a telegram that surprised you. Nixon recalls a speech in which Eisenhower read a telegram from his mother and an emotional moment with friend Bill Knowland while campaigning for vice president. Art Summerfield ; Bill Knowland ; Bill Rogers ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Francis Anthony Nixon ; Hannah Milhous Nixon ; National Committee Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Knowland, William F. (William Fife), 1908-1974 ; Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885-1967 ; Rogers, William P. (William Pierce), 1913-2001 ; Summerfield, Arthur E. (Arthur Ellsworth), 1899-1972 277 Post Fund Crisis What—what lessons did you draw from your experience in the—in the fund crisis? Nixon shares lessons he learned during the Fund Crisis. He relays his and President Eisenhower's opinions of Adlai Stevenson. 588 McCarthyism From 1946 until 1957, Joseph McCarthy represented Wisconsin in the United States Senate. Nixon describes McCarthyism's origins in the Alger Hiss case. 944 Beginning of Joseph McCarthy's Anti-Communist Work You've said that to understand Joe McCarthy, you have to understand the Hiss case. Nixon discusses the beginning of Joseph McCarthy's work against communism. He shares his feelings about McCarthy's excessive claims of communism in the State Department. 1261 Speaking Against Joseph McCarthy You came to bro—to break with him in a very spectacular way in 1954. Nixon relates giving a speech against Joseph McCarthy as he began to overstate the threat of communism within the government. 1817 Effects of Joseph McCarthy's Claims Do you think innocent people were hurt by McCarthy? Nixon shares his opinion about the harm and good that Joseph McCarthy's claims of communism did to the government. Alger Hiss ; Allen Dulles ; atomic bomb ; Bill Bundy ; CIA ; communism ; Donald Maclean ; Douglas MacArthur ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; espionage ; Ethel Rosenberg ; France ; Francois Mitterrand ; Guy Burgess ; Herbert Hoover ; Hiss Case ; James Bryant Conant ; Joe McCarthy ; John F. Kennedy ; Julius Rosenberg ; Lillian Hellman ; McGeorge Bundy ; nuclear weapons ; Owen Lattimore ; Robert La Follette ; Soviet Union Bundy, McGeorge ; Bundy, William P., 1917-2000 ; Burgess, Guy, 1911-1963 ; Conant, James Bryant, 1893-1978 ; Dulles, Allen, 1893-1969 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Hellman, Lillian, 1905-1984 ; Hiss, Alger ; Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; La Follette, Robert M. (Robert Marion), 1895-1953 ; MacArthur, Douglas, 1880-1964 ; Maclean, Donald, 1913-1983 ; McCarthy, Joseph, 1908-1957 ; Mitterrand, François, 1916-1996 ; Rosenberg, Ethel, 1915-1953 ; Rosenberg, Julius, 1918-1953 2514 Communist Infiltration Do we need a responsible McCarthy today to expose the amount of Communist infiltration into government? Nixon considers the likelihood of communist infiltration or moles within the government and what should be done to prevent this. 2682 Public Speaking At—you mentioned before that you never look at yourself on television. Nixon imparts his decision to avoid watching or listening to himself in order to maintain the natural style of public speaking that he learned in school. 2876 Mrs. Nixon By—along those lines, by the end of 1954, with Joe McCarthy on the skids, you were pretty much installed as the bad guy of American politics. Nixon discusses the effects his political career had on his family and relates the negative ways that the media portrayed Mrs. Nixon as " ; Plastic Pat." ; 3376 1954 Campaign / Beach Boys / James G. Watt Have—have you ever wished that you, after 1954--the 1954 elections, which we're about to talk about, that were very bitter and brutal and—that you didn't run again, that you had just retired and maybe moved back to California or New York and become a lawyer and spent some time with your family, with the girls as they were growing up and with Mrs. Nixon? Nixon briefly answers questions about campaigning despite difficulties, his lack of Beach Boys records, and his opinion on James G. Watt. Beach Boys ; campaign ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; family ; James G. Watt ; music ; Pat Nixon ; Ronald Reagan Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Reagan, Ronald ; Watt, James G., 1938- Interview GANNON: In Eisenhower' ; s speech, he read a telegram that surprised you. What was that? NIXON: Well, he read one that didn' ; t surprise me. It was from Art Summerfield, the chairman of the National Committee, because I' ; d heard from a lot of them after the speech myself, and the telegram indicated that they were unanimously in favor of my staying on the ticket. After all, they weren' ; t stupid. After they heard the public reaction, they followed what the public wanted, or seemed to want. But the other one was one that--that he read from my mother. It was the first one he r--read, and I must say it was a rather moving experience for me to hear it. GANNON: We-- NIXON: He did not show it to me beforehand. GANNON: So you were hearing it for the first time? NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: I have a copy. Would you read it? NIXON: It reads: " ; Dear General, I am trusting that the absolute truth may come out concerning this attack on Richard." ; She always called me " ; Richard," ; never " ; Dick." ; " ; And when it does, I am sure you will be guided right in your decision--to place implicit faith in his integrity and honesty. Best wishes, from one who has known Richard longer than anyone else, his mother." ; Well, Bill Rogers later told me that he was enormously impressed by the fact that my mother had written that out herself and that it was done so well, so tersely, and so eloquently, but my mother was quite a person, too. GANNON: There' ; s a famous photograph-- NIXON: Incidentally, my father, I think, would have said something else, because he--he was sort of--had--I remember that after this fund thing was all over, he put it in his own rather terse way. He says, " ; Well, it looks like the Democrats have given themselves a good kick in the seat of the pants." ; GANNON: There' ; s a famous photograph taken at the Wheeling rally, after all the speeches and all the--the emotions of that week. As you were shaking hands with a group of people, you saw Bill Knowland and--your California Senate colleague and friend, and when you came to him, you--you just broke down, and--and he put a comforting hand around you. The--did you feel bad that having stood up as tough as you had for--throughout the whole crisis, that at the end you--you let yourself go? NIXON: Yes. I have always sort of prided myself on self-control, and I am emotional, but I don' ; t believe you should share emotions. I am a great believer in privacy--or expose them, i--in the way--I know that you' ; re--that--all yo--in the political science classes and the rest these days you not only expose your emotions, but you' ; re supposed to put them on to convince people that you' ; re human and all that sort of thing. But in this case, I guess what happened is that I had never had an emotional downturn or outbreak or anything. I hadn' ; t let it get away from me during the critical days when I was trying to make the decision. But once you have fought the battle, and once you have won, then you have a letdown. And Bill Knowland came up to me, and he said, " ; Great speech, Dick," ; and all of a sudden it all came down on me, and--I got over it pretty fast, though. GANNON: What--what lessons did you draw from your experience in the--in the fund crisis? In your memoirs--or, I' ; m sorry, in Six Crises, you wrote, " ; I had been deserted by so many I had thought were friends, but who had panicked in battle when the first shots were fired." ; NIXON: Well, what you learn in--any time you come u--under an attack is who your friends are and who they aren' ; t. I--I mentioned some of those that did write and wire me before the broadcast. After the broadcast, everybody did. But before the broadcast, there were a lot of people that jumped ship, people that I thought were my friends. I also realized after this broadcast and after the fund crisis was over, that in politics--and I think I had known this before, but I realized it an--even more--that you cannot expect others to save you. You' ; ve got to save yourself. I didn' ; t--don' ; t resent the fact, in retrospect, that Eisenhower said, " ; Look. It' ; s not my decision. It' ; s yours." ; After all, " ; he' ; s the commander of this outfit," ; as Bert Andrews said to me after he heard that I might resign from the ticket since I hadn' ; t heard from Eisenhower. And he had the right to call the shots the way he wanted. I remember Bert Andrews put it, u--on the telephone with me, very well. He said, " ; Look. He' ; s the man who commanded five million troops in Europe. He' ; s the nominee for president, and he' ; s going to be the next president of the United States. He' ; s going to make the right decision, but he' ; s going to make it in his own way and at the right time. You know what the decision is going to be. It' ; s going to be favorable. The broadcast decided that, but don' ; t try to second-guess him." ; I realized that that was the case, and I realized that, from now on, that' ; s the way Eisenhower was going to run his presidency. GANNON: What was your opinion of Adlai Stevenson? NIXON: Not high. I guess that' ; s no surprise to our audience, and I know that his opinion of me was perhaps lower. I respected him as one who had been successful enough to be nominated for president of the United States. But he had a--a superficial, fatuous air about him that just turned me off. It turned many on. The media loved him, because the media loves froth. They like fashion. They liked the titillating humor that he used, even though he used to laugh at his own jokes. He--he was one who, I think--Oscar Wilde put it once, " ; like the man who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing." ; What concerned me most about Adlai Stevenson, however, was the fact that I thought he would be a disaster as president--not because of what he believed, because I wasn' ; t sure what he believed. I think that he would believe whatever was in fashion. I don' ; t think he had profound beliefs. But because of his indecisiveness, he had a Hamlet-like quality. Will Rogers, I think, summed it up very well. He said that where Stevenson was concerned--that he considered everything very carefully before making the wrong decision. And that is a man we don' ; t need in the White House. I always felt that, and so I could campaign with him with good conscience and with great verve. Incidentally, Eisenhower shared that. Eisenhower couldn' ; t stand Stevenson. For example, in his eight years as president, Eisenhower never had Stevenson to the White House and turned down a suggestion on one occasion that Foster Dulles made that he should be brought to the White House for purposes of enlisting Stevenson for a bipartisan support of Eisenhower' ; s foreign policy. The same was true of Harry Truman. Let me explain. Eisenhower was not a hater, but, on the other hand, he could not take personal affronts. I mean, I' ; ve taken stuff that--people have hit me and smashed me, and you go out, and you meet them again, and all that sort of thing. You forgive, although you may not forget. But Eisenhower, if people attacked him personally, just couldn' ; t take it. And Harry Truman, of course, had suggested that Eisenhower run as a Democrat in 1948 and then took him on unmercifully in 1952, said he didn' ; t know more--any more about politics than a pig does about Sunday, and that Eisenhower some way had been involved in the decisions with--that divided Europe at Yalta and that sort of thing, which of course was not true. He never forgave Truman, never allowed Truman in the White House. But, incidentally, getting back to Stevenson, I remember that after Eisenhower had his heart attack, that his doctors told Sherman Adams--they said, " ; Don' ; t raise Stevenson' ; s name with him. It raises his blood pressure." ; GANNON: From 1946 until 1957, Joseph McCarthy represented Wisconsin in the United States Senate. Today, McCarthyism has become sort of a--a catch-all epithet. What--how would you define McCarthyism? NIXON: Well, first, in order to understand McCarthyism, you' ; ve got to really go back to the Hiss case. The reason the Hiss case sent the Establishment right up the wall was that, up to that time, those that talked about Communism in America were considered to be nuts or demagogues or worse. There were several reasons for that. They said, first, that as far as Hiss was concerned, that he was probably telling the truth, that he was not a Communist, even after the evidence became overwhelming that he was, or at least that he had served the Communist purpose. Second, there were those that said, well, even though he might have been a Communist and turned over papers, secret papers, documents, and so forth, as he did in great volume, to Communist espionage agents, it didn’t make any difference because, one, the papers weren' ; t important, even though they weren' ; t declassified, even at the point that--ten years later. Or, second, and this was really distorted reasoning--because the Soviet Union had been our ally. They overlooked the point that Hiss remained a Communist at the time that Chambers left the Communist Party during the period of [the] Hitler-Stalin Pact, when certainly you couldn' ; t say that Stalin and Communism was an ally of the United States. And then, third, there was a deeper reason. I--it had to do with the fact that people thought that the Hiss case and the investigation of Hiss and his eventual conviction reflected on a whole generation of people that had supported the Roosevelt foreign policy. I never forget an evening in Washington when one of those Washington hostesses--not in the great tradition of Germaine de Staël and the others who had their salons back in the nineteenth century, in the eighteenth century, who used to get people together for serious talk--but in the tradition of getting controversial people together ar--in a rooms to see what fireworks would happen. But in this case, one of the guests was Paul Porter, a Washington lawyer, a very good lawyer, a Democrat, a liberal, and I was there with him. And the Hiss case--this was right after Hiss had admitted he knew Chambers, after first denying that he had known him, and after the evidence was overwhelming that he was not only a Communist but had delivered papers to a Communist espionage agent. And I remember Paul Porter got red in the face, and he pounded the table--this was at the conclusion of dinner--says, " ; I don' ; t give a damn if Hiss admits he was a Communist or whether he was. These investigations are doing a great deal of damage to the country because they reflect on the Roosevelt foreign policy." ; Now, that was simply ridiculous. I was a supporter of the Roosevelt foreign policy. I was a supporter of the Marshall Plan. I was supportive--this was later on, which was a continuation of the rest. I was a bipartisan supporter, but here it was, the attitude of this whole generation of people who had a vested interest in opposing anybody who was exposed to Communism. GANNON: I think since we only have a couple of minutes-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] GANNON: --we should probably cut now. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, we can stop tape here. We' ; ll take it for--a lunch break. Forty minutes. Forty-five minutes, we' ; ll roll tape. GANNON: --Hyannis, I mean, that' ; s really surprising. NIXON: And Joe Kennedy was a great supporter of his. GANNON: Of his, yeah. Of course, they' ; re trying to-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Just look right into this camera. GANNON: Me looking at it, or looking at the president? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Looking into--well, no--you' ; re going to just pick up [unintelligible]. GANNON: Just picking up the questioning. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Fine. Just go right into the interview when you get the cue. NIXON: I want to pick up-- NIXON: --with the Hiss--to get the-- NIXON: --transition there, though, the-- GANNON: What? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Four, three-- NIXON: You' ; ll--you introduce me [unintelligible]. I want to finish the Hiss thing. GANNON: What do you want to-- NIXON: Yeah, I' ; ll just--well, I' ; ll pick it up then. You want me to--you know what I mean, we were talking about Hiss [unintelligible]. GANNON: Yes, you want to just start that. NIXON: I haven' ; t quite finished. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: [Clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Four, three…you going to start talking, Frank? GANNON: You' ; ve said that to understand m-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Wait--I' ; ll give you--hold on-- GANNON: We' ; ll--I' ; ll say that you said that to understand McCarthy-- NIXON: ' ; Cause we did that-- GANNON: --you have to understand Hiss. NIXON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Hey, Frank-- NIXON: Well--you said that earlier, but you can ask the same question. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Frank. NIXON: Then you can--you' ; re going to be cutting, in any event. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Go. GANNON: You' ; ve said that to understand Joe McCarthy, you have to understand the Hiss case. NIXON: Well, up until the Hiss case, as I think I was trying to point out earlier, it was said that those who were engaged in the fight against Communism in the United States were either demagogues or reckless or worse. After the Hiss case, they couldn' ; t say that any more, because it was clearly demonstrated there that Hiss not only was a Communist, but that he was in a high place in government--he was at Yalta, for example, with Roosevelt, and had been the Secretary-General of the UN conference in San Francisco, but, in addition to that, that he had turned over top-secret information to a Soviet espionage agent. And so, under the circumstances then, they could no longer brush off Communism in government as being a red herring or what-have-you. That' ; s why Truman went forward with the loyalty program after the Hiss case came to public attention, even though Truman even called the Hiss investigation a red herring right to the last because he thought it was more political than anything else. And that, of course, led to McCarthy. McCarthy, in the first instance, was not one who held himself out to be or was an expert on Communism in the United States, or abroad, for that matter. He was a Wisconsin progressive, so to speak. He was one, for example, in 1952, who supported Harold Stassen for--I' ; m sorry. He was one who had supported Harold--Harold Stassen for president in 1948. GANNON: As did you, didn' ; t you? NIXON: As-as I did. That' ; s right. GANNON: Did you meet him then? NIXON: And we worked together--oh, yes. We worked together at that convention. I was not a delegate, but I was there as a congressman, and I remember--I remember Joe McCarthy so well --vividly. After it was clear that Stassen wasn' ; t going to make it--it was quite clear even before he got there, but then, when the die was cast and it was going to be Dewey, I remember him standing outside the convention hall, and the sweat just pouring down his cheeks and everything, and his just shaking his head, because he was a fighter. He said, " ; Well, he isn' ; t going to make it. We' ; re all going to have to be for Dewey." ; And he wasn' ; t enthusiastic for Dewey. He was more, curiously enough, for Taft than for Dewey, although he came from the Wisconsin progressive background. But, coming back to how he got into the Communist business, at ' ; 48, it was not then. But after the Hiss case, a--a lot of politicians saw that, from a political standpoint, there were gold in those hills, as they might put it, and also from the standpoint of the country, that it was a legitimate issue and we ought to root the Communists out of government, if there were more there, and expose those that had been there in the past. So McCarthy made his famous speech in West Virginia. I think it was in Wheeling, West Virginia, as a matter of fact. And in that speech--this was in 1951. I was in California at the time and read it with great trepidation in the papers when I noted he was--said that there were fifty-six--I think that was the number, but it' ; s irrelevant. He changed the number about every other day thereafter, usually upping it. Fifty-six card-carrying members of the Communist Party in the State Department--I saw that, and I practically threw up my hands, because, first, I knew very well, apart from the fact that there might be and probably were--and I' ; m convinced there were--some with Communist sympathies in the State Department, that under no circumstances would a card-carrying C--Communist be in the State Department, because the Soviet espionage apparat doesn' ; t put card-carriers in a position where they can be exposed. They would be covert Communists, for example, as Hiss was. Hiss was not a card-carrier. At least he didn' ; t have a card. He paid dues, but he did not--was not an open Communist, so to speak. So, under the circumstances, when McCarthy called me after that speech and asked me if I could furnish some information about what our investigations had showed, I said I' ; d be glad to p--help him, but I said--I urged him strongly. I said, " ; You' ; d--you' ; d better get off this wicket and make it clear that you' ; re talking about those who may have Communist backgrounds, who had been in Communist fronts, who had supported the--the--the Communist Party in various ways, for example." ; And I said, " ; There you' ; ll be on safer grounds, because I think you' ; re--I don' ; t think you' ; re going to be able to prove that there were card-carrying Communists in the State Department." ; Joe was never one to back off. That was his problem. Now, in the first instance, then, I think he saw the Communism-in-government issue as a political issue only, but I will say, and I--I believe this to be true, that he was totally sincere about it and became convinced that he--that it was a real problem once he dug into it, because there were facts there--not the way that he presented it. He overstated it. He was reckless, but, on the other hand, he was onto something, and those who were supporting the Communists knew it, and so did the political opposition. GANNON: You came to bro--to break with him in a very spectacular way in 1954. How did--how did you get the news that you were going to be the man to jettison Joe McCarthy? NIXON: Well, what had happened there was that all through 1953, after McCarthy was re-elected to the Senate in 1952, McCarthy was expanding his charges. He first, in 1952, had con--er, condemned the previous Democratic administrations by the term, " ; twenty years of treason." ; And then in 1954-- GANNON: Did you approve of that? NIXON: Absolutely not. I-- GANNON: Did you try to st--t--to-- NIXON: On the contrary. Bill Knowland and I both made it clear, I on one occasion and Bill Knowland on another, that there was only one party of treason in the United States, which was the Communist Party. And it wasn' ; t the party that was involved. And here Joe again was overstating. But be that as it may, in 1954, after he became dissatisfied with what he considered to be the Eisenhower administration' ; s failure vigorously to pursue the loyalty program of rooting them out from the State Department and other areas and so forth, he made a speech saying that--that there were twenty-one years of treason--that included the Eisenhower administration. Well, that was enough for Eisenhower. Eisenhower was already turned off on McCarthy for a variety of reasons. First, he didn’t like his manner. McCarthy was a very physical, vigorous kind of a fellow that' ; d pat you on the back, and he was a very familiar person, familiar with Eisenhower or anybody else, and Eisenhower didn' ; t like that. The second thing--he didn' ; t like the fact that McCarthy had attacked George Marshall, whom Eisenhower venerated. The third thing--he felt that Ei--McCarthy by his charges was diverting attention from the accomplishments of the Eisenhower administration, the Eisenhower crusade, and he didn' ; t want the country debating that issue rather than addressing what he was trying to accomplish--ending the war in Korea and then moving forward with our various p--domestic initiatives. And, finally, he felt that McCarthy, as he often put it to me--that rather than proceeding as I had in the Hiss case in a way that Eisenhower described as being " ; objective" ; and " ; fair" ; and so forth, that McCarthy was swinging wildly, and that he was therefore doing more harm to the cause than good. Those were the reasons. GANNON: Wasn' ; t it cynical to have waited until McCarthy began to attack the Republican administration to--to stop him than to--than to do it earlier when he was--he was just as irresponsible? NIXON: Well, let me say that it wasn' ; t that cynical because McCarthy had not become that big an issue. It wasn' ; t necessary to address it. And we also have to have in mind, too, that in that period of 1953, before McCarthy went over the brink and took on the Eisenhower administration as well as previous administrations, that in that period I--McCarthy, we all had to admit, had great public support. A poll taken--the Gallup Poll in January of 1954 indicated fifty-two percent support for McCarthy and only about thirty percent against. Well, it was pretty hard to take that on unless you had sound grounds. And so Eisenhower, though, who, like so many others in positions of leadership, has always followed the motto, " ; Never make any mistake in a hurry" ; --he waited. But once he made his decision, then he decided that somebody had to answer McCarthy. The reason that I was chosen was that Adlai Stevenson had not only attacked McCarthy and indicated that Eisenhower was pussyfooting about the issue and so forth, and also attacked Eisenhower for his foreign policy and defense policy and the rest, he' ; d done it before a cheering partisan audience, and we had, of course, equal time, or were going to get from the networks for that, and he had to select somebody to appear on it. And I remember so vividly a meeting of the legislative leaders when the decision had to be made as to who had to appear, and there somebody suggested the national chairman might do it, and, no, that wouldn' ; t do. He wouldn' ; t get it across. And somebody suggested the majority leader, and Eisenhower looked across the table. He says, " ; You know, I think we ought to use Dick a little more. After all, he knows this issue. Nobody can--can s--can charge him with being a pinko, and therefore he' ; s the one to address it." ; Well, I wasn' ; t about to be eager to address the issue. After all, a lot of my friends were McCarthy' ; s friends and so forth. I had just come back from a very successful trip to the Far East in which I got, even from the antagonistic press, rather high marks, i--i--including a very favorable article in The New York Times at the conclusion. And to get back into the partisan business of having to not only take on McCarthy but to divide the Republicans, didn' ; t appeal to me at all. But Eisenhower asked me to do it, and I did do it. GANNON: On March thirteenth, 1954, you made this-- NIXON: That' ; s the speech. GANNON: --speech. I don' ; t think you ever mentioned him by name, but it was quite clear who you were talking about. We have a clip from that speech. NIXON: I remember that speech well. Incidentally, I have never seen this film before, because I don' ; t watch myself on television. As I look at that, and I am sure as others look at it, they' ; ll think I must be reading from a teleprompter, but I have never used a teleprompter in all my life. What happened there is I wrote the entire speech out. I went over to the Carlton Hotel, I remember, rented a room, locked myself in for three days and wrote it, got it all in my mind and delivered it just like that--straight into the camera. Eisenhower, incidentally, after the speech, was very, very nice. He called me from Camp David, and he said, " ; You know, I am not one who believes that you ought to butter up your people, but," ; he said, " ; I thought that was a really outstanding job." ; Eisenhower, in that respect, incidentally, was like my old coach in college, Chief Newman. The Chief was a great coach and a great leader of men, but when somebody made a spectacular play and when he was being taken out of the game after the play, most coaches go up and throw their arms around them and clap them--them on the back and so forth. And the Chief just sat there, stoic intrin--Indian that he' ; s--was, and never went up and congratulated them. And somebody asked him, " ; Why don' ; t you do it, Chief?" ; And he said, " ; Look," ; he said, " ; he was doing his job, and also there were a lot of blockers out there that made that run possible." ; Eisenhower felt that I was doing my job, and you don' ; t congratulate people or even thank them for doing the job they were supposed to do, although Eisenhower was usually very generous in a very personal way, as he was there. But in any event, that particular section about the rats had a great, great impact. GANNON: Why did you-- NIXON: I didn' ; t mention McCarthy. GANNON: How did you choose that language? Why did you choose that language? NIXON: Well, I was just trying to think of a way to get it across, and it just came to me as I was writing, the idea they' ; re all a bunch of rats. I must have seen it in some speech that somebody had made or heard it on see--on the Senate floor, or something like that. And then I began to try to formulate it in a way that people could understand. And in saying that, of course, I did not mention McCarthy by name, but I was referring to anybody who was investigating Communists, that it was very important to bend over backward to be absolutely accurate, because otherwise you' ; re going to hurt innocent people, but beyond that, you may take on people, as McCarthy did--he' ; d taken on Eisenhower himself, when he shot wildly, which was wrong. GANNON: Do you think innocent people were hurt by McCarthy? NIXON: Relatively few. That’s been greatly exaggerated. They mention Owen Lattimore, people like that. Let me say that, as far as Owen Lattimore is concerned, even his apologists have got to agree that Owen Lattimore was way over on the left, a--and, whether knowingly or otherwise, that he more th--often than not supported the Communists' ; side. GANNON: Owen Lattimore is one of the more prominent examples, though. Didn' ; t McCarthy recklessly i--in hearings just list--come out with lists of names of people, not necessarily accusing them, but in the context of that time even to be mentioned by him was enough to cause-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --great hurt and harm and even ruin-- NIXON: Generally-- GANNON: --careers and lives. NIXON: Generally, however, let me say, it wasn' ; t the naming of names. If--if that was the case, whoever was named had an opportunity to come back. But it was the general way that he did it, like he said there are fifty-seven card-carrying Communists in the State Department. Well, he never named any names, but the point is that raised a cloud over the whole darned State Department, and that is something that was totally wrong. I remember one name in particular that he mentioned that indicates where he did have an innocent man. He was raising hell about Bill Bundy, Bill Bundy, who now, I believe, is the Carnegie Foundation of International Peace. But, in any event, Bill Bundy was then with the C.I.A. He is a--was a brother of McGeorge Bundy, who later became Kennedy' ; s national security advisor. And he was going to have a Senate investigation of the C.I.A. because Bill Bundy had contributed five hundred dollars to the Hiss defense fund. I remember Allen Dulles came around after an N.S.C. meeting one day and asked me for--as a personal favor if I couldn' ; t stop him, because, he said, " ; You know, we can' ; t have the C.I.A. investigated." ; And he said, " ; You have seen," ; as I had, " ; Bill Bundy at some of our meetings, and he' ; s just not a Communist." ; I said, " ; I know that. I know that." ; So I talked to Bill, and Bill said, " ; But why did he contribute" ; --when I--I--after I had tal--when I talked to Joe after that--Joe McCarthy--I got him off the Senate floor, and I said, " ; I wish you' ; d lay off this. I think you should. I know Bundy. I' ; ve seen him. And I can vouch for him." ; But he said, " ; Why did he contribute to that traitor Hiss?" ; And I said, " ; Joe, Bundy went to Harvard, and, you know, everybody in Harvard since c--who was approached, or virtually everybody, to contribute to the Hiss defense fund--they support their own." ; I remember, for example, that President Conant, who, incidentally, was appointed to go to Germany by Eisenhower and that McCarthy opposed, was certainly an anti-Communist. But President Conant said that he couldn' ; t possibly imagine how any member of the Commu--of the Harvard faculty could be a Communist. Now the point that I make is--was making to Joe was the fact that someone had contributed to Hiss' ; s defense fund when he had gone to Harvard didn' ; t indicate that that fellow himself was a Communist, because he just may have just been mistaken. He may have contributed before Hiss was totally exposed. Well, in this case, my intervention with McCarthy worked, but that is an example of an innocent person who was attacked because McCarthy had not done an adequate job of investigating. GANNON: Do you think--the image that people have of McCarthy is someone sort of threatening and truculent. What was he like personally? NIXON: McCarthy personally was a very charismatic figure. I say " ; charismatic" ; because he--he had a--a vigorous, magnetic personality. He had been a very successful candidate in Wisconsin against a La Follette, and believe me, the La Follettes were very, very effective political properties in that state and in the nation over a long period of time. He had a strong handshake, and--almost like a vise, as a matter of fact. He was a very, very strong man. He had a marvelous sense of humor. He was an interesting man to sit around and talk to, not about Communism, but about things generally. He was a great ladies' ; man. My goodness, you--the--s--around that Senate, I' ; m telling you, the secretaries and the rest were panting to go out with Joe McCarthy because, of course, he was a bachelor for most of the years, at least, that I knew him. A--and of course, as you know, he was a great favorite of the Kennedys--went out with one of the Kennedy sisters, used to spend time at Hyannis Port playing touch football and the rest. So he was an attractive personality personally. He was, however, one who, when you got down to a serious discussion of an issue that required very, very careful investigation to avoid doing harm to in--to innocent--because charging someone with being a Communist in this period, when the Russians were basically our enemies in the Cold War, was indeed a very serious thing. And in that respect, McCarthy lacked judgment and was subject to criticism and unfortunately I was the one that had to carry the message. GANNON: In terms of the civilized fabric of American society, did Joe McCarthy do more harm than good? NIXON: I know that that is a proposition th--that is generally accepted, I think, by most observers in this country. I would have to question it. I--I think that in terms of the individuals, uh, the--as it finally turned out, that I cannot--I cannot name the individuals who were harmed. As I say, some certainly had the potential of being harmed and so forth. However, I would say that McCarthy did more harm that good in a more general sense. He hurt the cause that he claimed to be serving. When one becomes the issue himself, rather than the issue itself that he' ; s trying to address, then he hurts that cause. And that' ; s what McCarthy did. McCarthy became the issue, rather than Communism the issue. And all the work that we had done on the Hiss case, for example, after McCarthy, every time there was an investigation of Communism, a legitimate investigation, people would shout and holler McCarthyism. So in that respect he certainly did more harm than good. Incidentally, just to point it up, I--I' ; ll never forget--I was so, of course, honored to receive a wire from Herbert Hoover after the conviction of Alger Hiss. And he said, " ; Thanks to your efforts" ; --as I recall it--" ; the stream of treason in our government has finally been exposed for all to see." ; That was after the Hiss case. Then came McCarthy. He blurred the issue. He overstated it. By overstating it, he injured the issue, and from that time on, it became almost impossible to do effective work in investigating those who might be in that stream of treason. That' ; s where he did the harm. GANNON: Let me read you something that Lillian Hellman, the playwright, wrote about the Communists, McCarthy, and the Communist-hunters, including Richard Nixon, of the McCarthy era. She said, " ; People would have a right to say that I, and many like me, took too long to see what was going on in the Soviet Union, but, whatever our mistakes, I do not believe we did our country any harm, and I think they did." ; Do you think they did our country harm? NIXON: Well, for her to say that they did no harm is just fatuous nonsense, and she knows better because she, from what I' ; ve heard, is an intelligent person. GANNON: She' ; s written a whole--she' ; s written a whole book called Scoundrel-- NIXON: Oh, I know. GANNON: --Time to say that-- NIXON: I know. GANNON: --that isn' ; t the case. NIXON: A b--a book--very favorably reviewed, as we would expect from those that review books in The New York Review of Books and the other respected publications in this area. But let' ; s look at the situation. When we look at harm in terms of the national security of this country, what about the secrets with regard to the development of atomic bombs? Now, sure, the Russians got one, but they would have gotten it later had it not been, certainly, from the secrets they got, not only from the Rosenbergs and others in the United States, but also from the British group, the--Maclean and Burgess, the others who were exposed and some of whom had--had' ; ve--have admitted it. Let' ; s look, for example, at what has happened just recently, to give you an example in a broader sense of what could happen. When they say that Communists in government don' ; t do any harm or Communists that--that it' ; s just another idea and all that sort of thing--not to be concerned about--here we have Mitterand in France, who has four Communists in his cabinet, having to get--to send out of the country a hundred and fifty Soviet diplomats due to the fact that they were stealing French technical material that could be effective in helping the Soviet develop their military capabilities. Now, let' ; s look at the facts. The Communists are engaged, day after day, in espionage. That' ; s their business. It' ; s a vocation for them. With us, contra--espionage, and we engage in some, too, is an avocation. With them, it is a policy, a--and there' ; s no question that they' ; re trying desperately to get industrial secrets, technological secrets, and so forth. That' ; s one side. Another side, I think, however, is even potentially more profoundly d--different, and also dangerous. And that is, if you can get someone who is under Communist discipline in a government position, he is able subtly to affect policy. And, third, just to give you an example, General MacArthur once told me, and this is now part of the historical record in any event, that he was confident that one of the reasons they suffered the losses they did when the Chinese attacked after he moved toward the Yalu was that there had been leaks from our side to the Russians, which of course got to the Chinese, and that it cost American lives as a result. Now, what I am talking about here are facts, and I would say that, as far as Miss Hellman are [sic] concerned, when she says that those that were members of the Communist Party--certainly maybe ones that were members, as she was--a writer--a--an unpopular idea, but we' ; ve got to accept that--that' ; s one thing. I--doesn’t bother me a bit. I don' ; t care how many speeches they make, and--whether in Hyde Park or--or out here in--in New York City. But I care very much as to whether they' ; re in government or whether they' ; re in an industrial plant or what-have-you. GANNON: Do we need a responsible McCarthy today to expose the amount of Communist infiltration into government? NIXON: I think we have now, and I would say this in both administrations, whether they were Democratic or Republican--I think there is awareness now in the country as a result of Soviet, frankly, overplaying their hands, not only here but in France and England, and, you know, Sweden--there have been a number of instances in which they' ; ve had to throw out the Russians. I think that we have, in the Justice Department and in the regular channels, the F.B.I. and so forth, an adequate program of investigating and ferreting out these people. There was a time when we didn' ; t have such an adequate program. After the w--a--after the war and so forth, World War II, when people s--had the naïve belief that these people were--were sort of obnoxious because of their ideas, but we could afford to tolerate that, but they really weren' ; t a danger to the country--they are a danger to the country, and they must be, of course, exposed, investigated, and so forth. I think it can be done, however, with the existing government officials without having it done by somebody in the United States Senate. GANNON: Do you think there are moles, highly placed moles, in the State Department today or--or in the C.I.A.? NIXON: I would be surprised if there were not, and I think that anybody in a position of power, be he a Democratic president or a Republican president or a Democratic secretary of state or a Republican secretary of state or head of the C.I.A., had better well assume that that might be the case, because when you look at how effectively they were in the government in the World War II period and thereafter, before World War II, here, Britain and the rest, and how nobody knew it--let me say we' ; ve got to be very sure that they' ; re not there. So I would just assume there are, and that' ; s why, I think--another reason why it' ; s necessary to run a very tight shop in terms of revealing everything you know, because, unless you' ; re very sure, it may be sent right on the enemy. GANNON: How--how can one act on an assumption like that, though, because if you--if you--if you don' ; t assume that you can' ; t trust your closest friends and highest aides and closest colleagues, how can anything get done? NIXON: Well, first of all, your closest friends and highest aides and closest colleagues, that' ; s one thing. When we' ; re talking about a mole, I would seriously doubt that one of those would be able to pass that kind of a test. GANNON: At--you mentioned before that you never look at yourself on television. Why is that? NIXON: Many years ago--I always have to think historically--when I was a sophomore in high school, I had a marvelous teacher. They had a class called " ; Oral English." ; I never took a--a course, incidentally, in public speaking or political science. They didn' ; t have any in Whittier College, or in high school, for that matter. But this was called " ; Oral English." ; The teacher' ; s name was H. Lynn Sheller, I remember, and he had a very--for that period of time, a very unique way of teaching. That was a period when the old-style oratory--this was before the days of television--was very much in vogue, and you were supposed to know how to gesture and all that, and they taught that. And he didn' ; t teach any. He said, " ; Look. Speaking is conversation. Above everything else, be natural. Speak naturally. Don’t use any gestures unless you--unless it just comes naturally. Don' ; t practice anything. Don' ; t practice before a mirror, because the most important thing in conversation is to be yourself, to be natural." ; And I knew from that day forward, and I believe even today, that it was best not to listen to myself on radio, not to watch myself on the television and the tape and so forth. Oh, I know it' ; s bad advice. I shouldn' ; t be giving it to others because I know that most political people these days, they make a speech, they practice it in the television, they look at the tape, they get rid of their idiosyncracies, the bad gestures, and so forth and so on, but by the time they get through it may be a superb upf--performance, but over the long haul, in my view, it is not going to come through effective. Now I don' ; t hold myself out as being the most effective person, but it is me, for whatever it' ; s worth. And I am sure that I--that if you do look at yourself on television, you begin thinking of your image and how you are appearing, rather than in terms of what you really are. You' ; ve got to be yourself. And, therefore, don' ; t be too consumed by looking at yourself. GANNON: Will you cross a room to turn a television set off if--if-- NIXON: Always. GANNON: --as you come on? NIXON: I always do. No, I walk out. GANNON: You do. NIXON: I do, yes. I' ; ve never--I' ; ve watched these things today because we have to in ever--in order to have the running commentary, but I haven' ; t seen my acceptance speeches on television. I haven' ; t seen my inaugurals on television. I have never seen the fund speech, not the whole thing, on television--my resignation speech. And, frankly, I don' ; t intend to. I' ; m doing it here-- GANNON: [Laughing.] Nixon tapes? NIXON: I have to do it here now, because I understand we have to c--make comments on the program. GANNON: By, uh-- NIXON: In other words, what I' ; m saying is--this may be helpful to some of our younger people who plan to be president someday, or at least run for it--that--or whatever--is the most important thing is not to be self-conscious. The moment you begin to practice in front of a mirror or watch yourself on the tube or listen to your voice, you' ; re going to become artificial. You' ; re going to become something that you really aren' ; t, and if you can' ; t win it being what you are, you shouldn' ; t win it. GANNON: By--along those lines, by the end of 1954, with Joe McCarthy on the skids, you were pretty much installed as the bad guy of American politics. We have a--a Herblock cartoon that appeared in The Washington Post that summed up a lot of the cartoons that were done on you at the time. How did it feel to be arguably the most vilified man in American politics? NIXON: Well, it didn' ; t bother me that much, but, believe me, it bothered the family. I say it didn’t bother me because I thought that was just part of the price you had to pay, but, you know, with our youngsters growing up, and they learned to read at a fairly early age, and, of course, a Herblock cartoon, you don' ; t have to read, a--and seeing a man come out of a sewer or what-have-you, but--and Mrs. Nixon was greatly concerned about it, and she became more and more turned off by politics as to whether it was really worth it, because she had known--she was so magnificent on our trips abroad, you know. She--on one occasion, for example, on one of our trips--and this is hard for some people to believe--she used to go to hospitals while I would have--and children' ; s homes and orphans' ; homes and old folks' ; homes, et cetera, et cetera, schools, while I was having meetings with the V.I.P.s and so forth. And one time in one country, she went to a leper colony and shook hands with lepers. And it' ; s the first time it had ever been done by any visitor of that sort. It was safe, as she later pointed out. But, having said that, she knew how hard we' ; d worked. She knew that--that under the circumstances--that we weren' ; t getting any credit--credit for the positive thing and that Eisenhower was looking good, which she l--which she loved, but that, as far as many on his staff were concerned--they were blaming me for anything that went wrong, that I was doing all the tough campaigning and getting a lot of heat and very little credit. And, naturally, she didn' ; t like that. And I must say, at times it bothered me, particularly when I got tired. GANNON: You point out that from a very early time, Mrs. Nixon really was a pioneer in terms of doing things that--in--in prior administrations the wife of a vice-president would have gone shopping while her husband was doing things on--on official trips. And in the White House, she had a very active--she was a very active First Lady. That never came across, though, and indeed, the--the--she was called " ; Plastic Pat" ; by--in--in some of the press. Why do you think she was misunderstood in this way? NIXON: Well, she was called " ; Plastic Pat" ; because she was my wife. If she had been the wife of a liberal, my God, they would have canonized her. But because she was my wife, they had to find ways to knock her, and she never got any credit for the things that she did, her foreign travels on her own. She went to Africa. She went on to earthquake zones in Peru and so forth, and did things that were rather dangerous. She was active in the programs for bringing parks to the people, for literacy, et cetera, et cetera. Part of the reason, too, was that she did not seek the publicity, and she didn' ; t really care whether or not she got it. But I must say, one of the reasons that she didn' ; t receive it, without any question, was that you can be sure that our friends in the media, whoever they may be, were [laughs] not going to give her any credit if they thought it might help me. I understand that. That' ; s part of the game--not right, but that' ; s the way the worl--real world is--political world. GANNON: How does that make you feel? NIXON: Oh, I don' ; t particularly like it, particularly where she' ; s concerned, you know, because she did work so hard. But, let me say, the American people are not stupid. I--it' ; s quite remarkable, despite--that she had not had a particularly positive press, not nearly what she deserves--that--that she has been in the top ten of the most admired women for years, after we even left Washington. The Good Housekeeping poll, for example--she has never been off of that, and the reason is that people remember her as being dignified, they remember her as one devoted to her family. They remember her, too, as one--she may not have weared--worn designer gowns, but she was blessed with natural beauty. She really didn' ; t need them. GANNON: What quality do you think of Mrs. Nixon as having that people would be most surprised if they knew, but don' ; t know about? NIXON: Well, perhaps a good sense of humor. She' ; s fun. You know, she has a good time. She doesn' ; t believe in, however, in public demonstrations of-of affection and that sort of thing. We never held hands in public. She isn' ; t a public kisser. I am not either, for that matter. And--and I think another thing they might be surprised at--they shouldn' ; t be, but they might be--is that she probably is one of the most intelligent women ever to have been First Lady. She had a remarkable, of course, career in school, worked her way through college and through the University of Southern California, graduated with honors, taught for a couple of years. She' ; s a very smart person. And also the fact that in dis--political discussions, she doesn' ; t say much, but she can always go to the heart of her matter. She' ; s got an enormously good intuition. I think these are factors. The average person just thinks of her as somebody that went along for the ride and so forth--Plastic Pat, as they called her, although I' ; m sure some of them didn' ; t believe it. You see, when you--the people that give that kind of image are basically the women reporters. You know, we talk about men reporters, but the women reporters are more bitchy than the men and that isn' ; t because they' ; re women, but that' ; s the way it is. I don' ; t mean they' ; re all-- GANNON: W-- NIXON: --like that. GANNON: Why is that the way it is? NIXON: Well, because basically it--it is just natural for them to stick a needle in, and, fortunately, I am glad that, after the beginning, when they were giving Nancy Reagan hell, that they' ; re now beginning to see that she' ; s quite a person and giving her credit for what she' ; s doing in the drug control and other areas. And she does deserve credit. In fact, I can' ; t think of any first ladies who have--in recent times who have gotten the approval that they should have gotten. Jackie Kennedy did because she was glamorous and because she was married to Jack Kennedy, but Mrs. Johnson didn' ; t get the approval that she should have, and she worked her tail off in that job. I don' ; t think that--that certainly--that Mrs. Nixon did. GANNON: Was Mrs. Nixon hurt by the lack of appreciation--not that she sought appreciation specifically, but by--the lack of it can sometimes be hurtful. NIXON: No, I--I wouldn' ; t say so. She--she was not surprised. You know, after all, we grew up very--very young. Many of these people came into high office without having really experienced some of the tough times that we did. They hadn' ; t gone through the terrible, brutal beating I took during the Hiss case, during the fund, during the campaign of ' ; 54, ' ; 56, ' ; 58, sixties, Caracas, and so forth and so on. She had been through a lot, so, consequently, she rather expected things to be as they were. She expected them to be rather bad, and they were bad. GANNON: Have--have you ever wished that you, after 1954--the 1954 elections, which we' ; re about to talk about, that were very bitter and brutal and--that you didn' ; t run again, that you had just retired and maybe moved back to California or New York and become a lawyer and spent some time with your family, with the girls as they were growing up and with Mrs. Nixon? NIXON: Not really. At the time, I felt that way, but--but--but that' ; s one of the downers you have. You see, I--you got to understand that I worked fairly hard. I didn' ; t have a speechwriter, not in ' ; 52, not in ' ; 54, not in ' ; 56. So I had help, but I had to do the work, and I worked long, long days and so forth, and at the end of a campaign, frankly, I was bushed. In the ' ; 54 campaign, I was out carrying the load. The Eisenhower cabinet was a non-political p--cabinet, just like the Reagan cabinet, except, for example, for Mr. Watt. And so, consequently, somebody out--had to be out there leading the charge, and I did it, and I was glad to do it. And Eisenhower, incidentally, was very appreciative of that. He wrote me at least three letters during that ' ; 54 campaign saying, " ; I appreciate what you' ; re doing." ; GANNON: Do you have a lot of Beach Boys records at home? NIXON: The Beach Boys? No, I don' ; t follow that sort of thing. I--I' ; ve noticed those--some of the argument about it. FGDo you--do you--do you think that-- NIXON: Rock music. GANNON: Do you think that Secretary Watt is--is a net minus or plus for the Reagan administration? NIXON: You know, I' ; m not even going to get into that. I--all that I know is that he is one who' ; s making a lot of news, and--and of course, the problem is that poor Watt--he gets out there and leads the charge in defending Reagan, " ; Let Reagan be Reagan," ; and attacking the opposition, and he catches hell for it. So that makes all the rest of the Cabinet gun-shy. And the difficulty is that, when the campaign comes along, here' ; s Reagan going to have to do it by himself. Who' ; s going to be out there taking on the opposition? GANNON: Which is what you did for Eisenhower. NIXON: That was my job, and I did it and did it gladly, and I think I did it quite well. At least he thought so, which was the most important thing. Incidentally, I must say, in 1954, it was a tough campaign-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: --and some of Eisenhower' ; s associates thought that I was campaigning too hard against the opposition, but Eisenhower didn' ; t. He wanted me to take them on. And what happened was that Gallup, in his last poll before the election in ' ; 54, indicated that the Democrats were going to have a mini-landslide. He didn' ; t put it that way, but if you projected his numbers, we would have lost thirty-five seats in the House of Representatives. Now, when we lost only sixteen and only two in the Senate--" ; only two," ; I said--that was too many, because we lost control of both--the--Gallup later said, after the campaign, that my campaigning and some that Eisenhower did at the last three or four days, that it turned the tide and closed the gap. So we got a little credit. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0353/bmac
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59 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 8, 1983, part 3.
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gannix_0353
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-04-08
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 8, 1983, part 4. gannix_0354 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|10(8)|26(2)|42(13)|58(13)|85(5)|98(11)|120(13)|131(14)|147(9)|164(3)|177(15)|188(15)|201(2)|214(13)|237(6)|252(11)|264(7)|278(14)|291(12)|302(17) 0 https://youtu.be/UIIJi8SA-Cc YouTube video English 4 1956 Election --idered it, had a long talk with Mrs. Nixon about it, but that was one of those times I didn't go through what Churchill described as " ; black dog" ; —that's a period of depression. Nixon talks about the uncertainty of remaining on President Eisenhower's ticket during the 1956 election and the results of the election. Adlai Stevenson ; Africa ; Austria ; campaign ; Central America ; depression ; Dump Nixon ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Foster Dulles ; Fund Crisis ; Harold Stassen ; Herbert ; Hungary ; Latin America ; Pat Nixon ; travel ; Winston Churchill Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Dulles, John Foster, 1888-1959 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Stassen, Harold E. (Harold Edward), 1907-2001 295 President Eisenhower's Heart Attack Did you think you were going to become president during— Nixon recalls hearing about President Eisenhower's heart attack. Australia ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; General Slim ; Harold Stassen ; heart attack ; Jim Shepley ; stroke ; Sydney ; World War II Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Shepley, James R., 1917- ; Slim, William Joseph Slim, Viscount, 1891-1970 ; Stassen, Harold E. (Harold Edward), 1907-2001 390 Views on Politics I think you—you've written somewhere that polit—that most people in polit—are in politics because what they can do—what people can do for you or what people can do to you. Nixon expresses his views on the nature of people within politics. government ; politics 509 Sherman Adams Incidentally, in this—I think the most—one of the most amusing conversation that President Eisenhower had—he—he was checking with all of his friends as to whether I should stay on the ticket. Nixon describes remaining on the ticket as vice president due to write in votes from New Hampshire. He also describes the removal of Sherman Adams as President Eisenhower's chief of staff and his own reluctance to remove people for political reasons. Beetle Smith ; campaign ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; George S. Patton ; Jerry Persons ; New Hampshire ; Sherman Adams ; Styles Bridges ; Watergate Adams, Sherman, 1899-1986 ; Bridges, Styles, 1898-1961 ; Patton, George S. (George Smith), 1885-1945 ; Persons, Wilton B. (Wilton Burton), 1896-1977 ; Smith, Walter Bedell, 1895-1961 825 Loyalty to Aides Your counsel in the White House, I think, said that your loyalty to some of your aides spoke well of you as a man but ill of you as a president. Nixon discusses the importance of presidents' ability to be " ; good butchers" ; and remove people from their cabinet. He considers his own and other presidents' varying abilities to do so. Alger Hiss ; Beetle Smith ; Benjamin Disraeli ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Franklin D. Roosevelt ; H.R. Haldeman ; Harry S. Truman ; Henry Peterson ; Sherman Adams ; Theodore Roosevelt ; World War II Adams, Sherman, 1899-1986 ; Disraeli, Benjamin, 1804-1881 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart), 1809-1898 ; Haldeman, H. R. (Harry R.), 1926-1993 ; Hiss, Alger ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 ; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919 ; Smith, Walter Bedell, 1895-1961 ; Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972 1029 Campaigning Without President Eisenhower It seems that—looking back over the vice-presidential years, it seems that time after time, from Eisenhower's ambivalence in the fund crisis, his using you to—to jettison McCarthy, his ambivalence to the " ; Dump Nixon" ; movement, his using you--pushing you out to do some heavy partisan campaigning in '58, which had to hurt your prospective chances to be the nominee in '60, and then the—the ultimate irony in the '60 campaign, when you really needed him, his—his main contribution was the—" ; Give me a week and I'll think of something." ; Nixon recounts President Eisenhower's health issues that prevented him from supporting Nixon more during the 1960 presidential campaign. 1960 campaign ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; General Snyder ; heart attack ; John F. Kennedy ; Mamie Eisenhower ; missile gap ; Pat Nixon ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; stroke Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Eisenhower, Mamie Doud, 1896-1979 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Snyder, Howard McC. (Howard McCrumb), 1881-1970 Interview NIXON: --idered it, had a long talk with Mrs. Nixon about it, but that was one of those times I didn' ; t go through what Churchill described as " ; black dog" ; --that' ; s a period of depression. But after you' ; ve had tremendous effort devoted to a cause, there is a letdown. It' ; s that--those are when you' ; re depressed. You make mistakes, and that is the time never to announce anything you' ; re going to do. I didn' ; t announce anything publicly, and I rebound fairly fast. So I came back after that, and within a few months, we were in Central America on a Central American tour. We had positive things to do that Eisenhower gave us to do--Central America in ' ; 55, another round-the-world trip in 1956, a trip to Austria to welcome the Humbar--Hungarian refugees in ' ; 56, Africa in ' ; 57, Latin America in ' ; 58. Doing something positive is the way to--to recover from such things. Let me put it another way. You say I was considering--sort of abused, and I was, and let down, not by Eisenhower but by some of the critics after I had carried the load that others weren' ; t carrying. What cures you of it? The most--the thing that it cures you of it the most is to quit thinking about yourself. I realized I was thinking about myself, and then I realized the bigger cause. I was doing my job, and I thought it was helpful. Eisenhower thought it was helpful, and as long as I kept my eye on that, I no longer had fits of, shall we say--well--I--going to throw it all in and-- GANNON: It' ; s " ; grey dog." ; NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: After all you' ; d been through and all the--the loyal soldiering you had done for Eisenhower and the party, as the 1956 presidential elections approached, there was a " ; Dump Nixon" ; movement that developed in the party, and in which Eisenhower was at least passively involved. Why--why was that? Why were you--after all you' ; d done, why were you unpopular? NIXON: Well, the reason that Eisenhower was involved was that some of his associates, and Harold Stassen in particular, were bombarding him with polls showing that I was less popular than others might be on the ticket, that I would be a bigger drag. GANNON: Were you? NIXON: No. There were other polls that indicated the contrary. As a matter of fact, if I had thought that I would be a drag I would have gotten off without any question. But I knew there was another side to this. If I had left the ticket, just as if I had left the ticket during the fund crisis, it would have split the Republican Party right down to its gut, and Eisenhower wouldn' ; t have won. That is my view, at least. But, in any event, Eisenhower read about these things, and that' ; s when he talked to me, and Foster Dulles did separately, about possibly not being on the ticket in 1956 and maybe taking a cabinet post, secretary of Defense, and Dulles also said secretary of State after he, Dulles, decided to retire at the age of seventy. GANNON: Were those suggestions as naïve as they sound today? NIXON: No. I think they were well-intentioned. I--I don' ; t think that Dulles had anybody' ; s interests at heart but my own, or Eisenhower either. I think what had happened was, in Eisenhower' ; s case, he--now, I' ; m--have to say he was thinking of himself, too, as he should' ; ve--but he felt from the polls he saw that I was a drag, and second, he knew I was young enough to take a cabinet post, and, as he pointed out, Herbert Hoover had gone from secretary of Commerce to president. He didn' ; t see any reason why, in a cabinet post, I couldn' ; t be in--gain experience in management, which would qualify me better to run for president later than simply being his vice-president. That was the argument he made. GANNON: How did you feel about the outcome of the ' ; 56 elections? It was another landslide, but it had some bitter elements. NIXON: Well, in the ' ; 56 elections, it was not going to be a landsk--slide until two weeks before. Two weeks before it was going to be comfortable. The polls indicated that, because it was a r--a rerun of the Eisenhower-Stevenson campaign, Stevenson was not as effective even in this campaign as he had been in the ' ; 52 campaign. About his only issue was that Ei--Eisenhower' ; d had a heart attack and that Eisenhower, therefore, might die, and that if he did, that they were voting for me for president. But that rather ghoulish suggestion backfired. It seemed to be reaching a bit much. And-- GANNON: Did you think you were-- NIXON: --fifty-- GANNON: I' ; m sorry. Did you think you were going to become president during-- NIXON: No. GANNON: --Eisenhower' ; s heart attack? NIXON: I never felt that. I remember when I-- GANNON: Or the stroke. NIXON: When I heard about it--well, when I heard about the heart attack, as a matter of fact, the thing that ran through my mind, and I told this to Jim Shepley--I said, " ; Maybe it isn' ; t a heart attack." ; He called me on the phone from Denver. Because I remembered General Slim, who was one of the World War II generals from Australia. I had met him in Australia in 1953. And I remember to this day very vividly--we sat in the government house looking out over the bay down in Australia, in--in--in Sydney, Australia, and his first words to me--he said, " ; How' ; s Ike? How is his tummy? I always remembered Ike had a bad tummy," ; and then I thought, " ; Well, maybe it' ; s just a stomach upset." ; Jim said, " ; It' ; s a heart attack." ; So that was that. And I was rather numb about it, but I didn' ; t expect that--anything to happen. Incidentally--and others did. I remember--believe me, when the president has a heart attack, the vice-president becomes a very popular figure, not only the media--of course, they put the death watch out in front of the place, and I had to evoi--evade or avoid the press as much as I could. But on the--but--the other hand, the parade of politicians. I acquired a lot of new friends there. Harold Stassen came in and pledged his support to me for president and so forth. It was then, however, in ' ; 56, later, that Harold Stassen led the charge to get me removed from the ticket. So, that' ; s politics. GANNON: I think you--you' ; ve written somewhere that polit--that most people in polit--are in politics because what they can do--what people can do for you or what people can do to you. NIXON: Mm-hmm. GANNON: Is that a fair summary of American politics? NIXON: Exactly. Exactly. GANNON: Isn' ; t that a--sort of a cynical prescription? NIXON: No, it' ; s--it' ; s--it' ; s--call it cynical, call it what you will. It' ; s a fact of life. I mean, the--the--the idea, the thing that they' ; re taught in--shall we say, among the brightest and the best--that people are in politics and do things because--they' ; re doing it solely because of their interest in better government and so forth, not for their own advancement, not thinking of themselves, and so forth. I wish it were that kind of world, and to an extent we' ; re all motivated by that--I hope we are, but, on the other hand, in the political world, and it' ; s true of all worlds, let' ; s face it, you--if you are facing somebody or dealing with somebody that can do something to you or for you, you' ; re going to treat him a lot differently than if he' ; s somebody that doesn' ; t matter in your future. And so, unless you have either the power, which means the power to do something for somebody or to do something to him, believe me, you have very little leverage from--with people. Now, there are a few, let me say, where there are deep, loyal friendships that overrides all of that, but, believe me, I could count most of those on perhaps two hands --that I think of these types. For the rest, and there are a lot of good people among them, but they' ; re looking out after themselves. " ; Can you do something for me?" ; Or to you? In other words, when I was up, I always knew it because they were flocking around. When I was down, they were gone, and I had just a few who stuck with me all the way. That' ; s life. GANNON: In nineteen fifty-- NIXON: Incidentally, in this--I think the most--one of the most amusing conversation that President Eisenhower had--he--he was checking with all of his friends as to whether I should stay on the ticket. And, incidentally, what kept me on the ticket in 1956 was not anything that I did, not a--but the voters of New Hampshire. Styles Bridges, who didn' ; t like Sherman Adams, felt that Sherman Adams was trying to get me dumped. I don’t know if that was true. So Styles s-- GANNON: Sherman Adams was Eisenhower' ; s chief of staff. NIXON: He was his chief of staff, and so what happened is that Bridges, who had a lot of s--of clout in New Hampshire, went up there, and he helped stimulate a write-in campaign for me of twenty-seven thousand votes. After that, that decided it. Eisenhower felt that I was not a liability, and, incidentally, to show that that was not just a--a--a fluke, a few weeks later there were thirty-four thousand who wrote my name in in Oregon. So, I did have some grassroots support. Now, that didn' ; t indicate--because these were Republican primaries--that I had the support of a majority, but it did indicate that that twenty-seven thousand in New Hampshire and that thirty-four thousand in Oregon would be turned off in the event I was dropped from the ticket, and Eisenhower was practical enough, I think, to realize that. GANNON: Some people have said that the--the traumatic experience--talking about Sherman Adams--when Eisenhower a couple of years later used you to take the message to Sherman Adams that he had to go, that he had to be fired from the White House staff, that the memory of that experience affected your condec--conduct years later in Watergate, when the same situation in some ways was created or existed, but there was no Nixon for Nixon to do what Nixon did for Eisenhower. NIXON: It probably had some effect, yes. I--I felt, after it was done, wh-- GANNON: Why was it done? Why did it have to be done? NIXON: Political reasons. Sherman Adams was an honest man, in my opinion. He was a selfless man. He was abrasive. He was no friend of mine--no enemy either. He was just a friend of the president' ; s, and he did what the president wanted, and he was blamed many times when he said no abruptly, in his abrupt way, and he could be nothing but abrupt. He was blamed when actually he was just doing what Eisenhower wanted him to do. Beetle [Bedell] Smith, who was Eisenhower' ; s chief of staff in Europe during the war and a great chief of staff, was my neighbor when I was vice-president. And th--this was the period just before the 1956 elections, and Beetle was sick at that time. He' ; d had ulcers and so forth, and he was very thin, and a couple of drinks would loosen his tongue a bit in an uncharacteristic way. And I remember one night we were sitting having scotch and soda, and Beetle got very emotional, a--and he said, " ; I want to tell you something about Ike. Ike' ; ll never do anything for anybody else." ; He says, " ; I was just Ike' ; s prat boy. Ike always have [sic] to have a prat boy." ; Now, what he meant by that was t--in effect, that Sherman Adams was his prat boy. I was his prat boy. Doing--he says, " ; Ike has to have somebody do the dirty work that he doesn' ; t want to do so that he can look like the good guy." ; So it was Beetle Smith, for example, that had to carry the bad news to Patton, as you remember in the movie Patton. Coming back to Sherman Adams, however, he was getting a lot of heat from the Republicans, but Re--Republicans were going to lose in 1958 in any event, not because of a--a vicuna coat or whatever it was--according to Jerry Persons, it was a cheap vicuna, too, which made it even worse. But he was going to--we were going to lose because the economy was bad. It was a bad recession--not as bad as this last one, but the worst one since World War II, except for the one we' ; ve just going through now. But, nevertheless, the Republicans were all running to the hills and raising hell generally, and finally Eisenhower felt that he could--couldn' ; t afford to keep Beetle any longer, and his friends, as he called them, his Augusta friends, all said that Sherman Adams had to go. So he left. It didn' ; t do any good. It didn' ; t do any good at all. They--all it did was to take Adams out as a target, and then our Democratic opposition concentrated more on the economy. I would have rather had them talking about Adams than about unemployment, frankly. And so, after that, I felt--I felt reluctant to--to dump anybody when he came under attack, unless I became absolutely convinced that the individual was guilty. I mean, I--if--if--when people come to me and say, " ; You' ; ve got to dump him for political reasons" ; --that isn' ; t enough reason, in my opinion. I didn' ; t think it was. Now, in retrospect, probably that is short-sighted. GANNON: Your counsel in the White House, I think, said that your loyalty to some of your aides spoke well of you as a man but ill of you as a president. NIXON: That was Henry Petersen. That' ; s right, the--the attorney general. But in any event-- GANNON: Is that a fair judgment? NIXON: What? GANNON: Is that a fair judgment, do you think? NIXON: I--it may be. It may be. GANNON: In y--in your-- NIXON: As a matter of fact, we' ; ve got to face it. I--we have the famous t--the famous dictum of Gladstone, the great Liberal prime minister--capital " ; L" ; --in England, Disraeli' ; s great rival back in the nineteenth century, when he said, " ; The first requisite of a prime minister is to be a good butcher." ; I must admit I wasn' ; t a very good butcher, but, frankly, neither was Eisenhower. It was difficult. But if you don' ; t--if you' ; re not yourself, you' ; ve got to have somebody in your staff who is, who can carry it out. Take Haldeman. Haldeman got a lot of heat because he was doing things for me that I didn' ; t do for myself. He had to be tough, say no when people wanted me to dedicate this or something else, when they--and then take the heat rather than have me blamed. The same was true of Adams. Adams got a lot of--he got a--he got a lot of criticism for doing exactly what Eisenhower wanted him to do. And, therefore, I' ; m pretty sympathetic with Adams. He was a fine chief of staff. GANNON: Is the--is the difference that you didn' ; t have the temperament to be a good butcher, whereas Eisenhower had the temperament as long as he had someone else to actually go and--with the cleaver? NIXON: Eisenhower, in his military experience, knew that it was necessary to make changes of command. As a matter of fact, the records of World War II indicate time and again that if he had an officer, even a--a--an officer of field rank, a general, who wasn' ; t doing the job, Eisenhower was absolutely ruthless in having him removed. But he never did it himself. Eisenhower, as Beetle Smith well put it, always had to be the good guy. GANNON: Did Eisenhower believe that loyalty was a two-way street? NIXON: Yes, he did, but, on the other hand, he--he had the military belief that the most important attribute that a junior officer, government official, or whatever--subordinate can have, as he put it one time with me, was selflessness. That means that the subordinate must always feel that he' ; s expendable, that all of us are there to serve the chief, and, frankly, I' ; m inclined to think that is the case. I--I think--I think sometimes--and incidentally, we' ; ve got to say the same is true of Truman. Truman wasn' ; t a good butcher. Truman stood by his people, stood by Hiss too long, stood by some of the others who were involved in the scandals, and that hurt him. I--Roosevelt was a good butcher. Roosevelt was ruthless. That' ; s the second Roosevelt I' ; m talking to, as the first one as well. Eisenhower was not, but Eisenhower knew how to get it done. He had the process, and he didn’t hesitate to make the decision that he considered to be in his best interest and, in his view, also the best interest of the country. GANNON: It seems that--looking back over the vice-presidential years, it seems that time after time, from Eisenhower' ; s ambivalence in the fund crisis, his using you to--to jettison McCarthy, his ambivalence to the " ; Dump Nixon" ; movement, his using you--pushing you out to do some heavy partisan campaigning in ' ; 58, which had to hurt your prospective chances to be the nominee in ' ; 60, and then the--the ultimate irony in the ' ; 60 campaign, when you really needed him, his--his main contribution was the--" ; Give me a week and I' ; ll think of something." ; He contributed a gaffe, and--and--and then--not doing much campaigning for you. It seems-- NIXON: Now, that' ; s part--may I say--may I interrupt you there. That' ; s part of the mythology. Eisenhower wanted to do more, and he did--did make about three effective speeches at the last, particularly knocking down--trying to knock down Kennedy' ; s charges about a miss-a missile gap, which Kennedy, of course, had to repudiate after he got in and found out we had about a fifteen-to-one advantage over the Soviet rather than being a gap. But Eisenhower really wanted to do more. He had become very, very irritated by Kennedy' ; s attacks, particularly in the missile gap area and on dealings with the Russians. And I remember as if it were this day I--my going into the office at the White House, and Eisenhower was enthusiastic about his schedule. One of the places he wanted to go was downstate Illinois and also into Missouri, where he had invitations, as well as all over the country. Particularly those two he picked out. And as I left the office, I was met by his doctor, and--General Snyder, and he says, " ; Can I talk to you, Mr. Vice President?" ; I shaid [sic]--said, " ; Sure." ; And we walked over--around in the Rose Garden there, and he said, " ; I want to beg you," ; he said, " ; don' ; t let him do it." ; By that time, Eisenhower' ; d--of course, had had his stroke as well as his heart attack. He said, " ; I am very concerned about his condition, and I think a campaign--too much campaigning' ; ll kill him. Don' ; t let him do it." ; That was only the half of it. Mamie Eisenhower called Pat, Mrs. Nixon, and spent a half-hour on the phone with her on that same day, almost in tears. She says, " ; You know, I' ; m so worried about Ike. He' ; s--can’t sleep. His blood pressure is up. His face is flushed." ; He says, " ; I' ; m just afraid if he campaigns, it' ; s going to kill him." ; So I had to go in and tell Eisenhower that--I really had to lie this time--[laughs] and you have to sometimes--that I really didn' ; t think that he ought to do it. I couldn' ; t put it on the basis of his illness. He would never accept that. But I said I thought possibly we would be better off if he didn' ; t campaign in these areas, because otherwise it' ; d appear that I couldn' ; t carry the load myself. He' ; s too smart, of course, to believe that, and I think he was deeply hurt, and therefore even more disappointed than otherwise would have been the case when we lost the election in ' ; 60, because if he had gone to downstate Illinois--we only lost it by eight thousand votes--we would have won it. Had he gone to Missouri--we only lost it by ten--we would have won that. And as a result, we' ; d have won the presidency. GANNON: I think we have reached the end of our hour. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0354/bmac
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, April 8, 1983, part 4.
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-04-08
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 12, 1983, part 1. gannix_0358 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|32(13)|45(12)|60(3)|76(2)|88(13)|103(6)|113(11)|125(3)|141(4)|157(16)|171(5)|182(13)|196(10)|211(4)|224(13)|240(2)|255(4)|272(2)|285(10)|300(5)|310(2)|321(2)|332(7)|347(6)|361(2)|379(16)|395(3)|406(3)|418(13)|431(10)|443(11)|458(5)|477(2)|486(6)|499(3)|513(7)|522(13)|536(15)|550(3)|567(3)|577(7)|588(13)|603(2)|609(5)|619(4)|632(5)|650(15)|662(13)|678(2)|689(12)|706(15)|714(14)|726(2)|740(17)|758(2)|768(4) 0 https://youtu.be/7u10zV40TS0 YouTube video English 51 Trusting the Soviet Union Today we're talking with President Nixon about the subject of the Soviet Union and the West. Nixon discusses the difficulties that the differences in the goals of the United States and the Soviet Union can cause while working with them. Charles E. Bohlen ; communism ; foreign relations ; Manlio Brosio ; Nikita Khrushchev ; North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; Yuri Andropov Andropov, I͡U. V. (I͡Uriĭ Vladimirovich), 1914-1984 ; Bohlen, Charles E. (Charles Eustis), 1904-1974 ; Brosio, Manlio, 1897-1980 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 288 Cause of the Cold War What do you think about the fairly widespread theory that one of the reasons for the Cold War is because we acted--in the p--post-Second World War period when we had the power of the atomic bomb uniquely ourselves--that we acted suspiciously and vindictively towards the Russians, and--or towards the Soviets, and that--that turned them into what they became--that, in effect, we created the Cold War by our paranoia and our anti-Communist f--Red Scare fears? Nixon explains his disagreement with the theory that the United States' fear of communism led to the Cold War. He discusses the Soviet Union's part in the Cold War and creating peace. Afghanistan ; atomic bomb ; Baruch Plan ; Britain ; Cambodia ; Cold War ; communism ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; France ; Geneva ; Germany ; Jimmy Carter ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Marshall Plan ; nuclear power ; nuclear weapons ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; World War II Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Carter, Jimmy 1924- ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 866 Yalta Conference Yalta is one of the most controversial events of the modern history. Nixon addresses what went wrong during the Yalta Conference. Alger Hiss ; Charles E. Bohlen ; communism ; foreign relations ; Franklin D. Roosevelt ; Russia: Soviet Union ; Winston Churchill ; Yalta Conference Bohlen, Charles E. (Charles Eustis), 1904-1974 ; Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Hiss, Alger ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 1071 Maintaining Détente with the Soviet Union President Carter talked about the golden rule in dealing with the Russians. Nixon describes the beginning of negotiations with the Russian government and how to continue to work with the Soviet Union. Afghanistan ; Anatoly Dobrynin ; Andrei Gromyko ; arms control ; Berlin Agreement ; Cienfuegos ; Cuba ; foreign relations ; Golda Meir ; Golden Rule ; Henry Kissinger ; Jimmy Carter ; Jordan ; nuclear weapons ; Pakistan ; Russia ; Solidarity ; Soviet Union ; Syria Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Carter, Jimmy 1924- ; Dobrynin, Anatoly, 1919-2010 ; Gromyko, Andreĭ Andreevich, 1909-1989 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Meir, Golda, 1898-1978 1494 Weaponry Do you think that the Soviets are developing biological and chemical weapons now? Nixon discusses the response to rumors of chemical and biological weapon production by the Soviet Union and how to ensure that the Soviet Union does not go against SALT agreements. biological weapons ; chemical weapons ; nuclear weapons ; Soviet Union ; Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) 1692 Yuri Andropov What's your assessment of Andropov? Nixon provides his assessment of General Secretary of the Communist Party Yuri Andropov. Alger Hiss ; communism ; Joseph Stalin ; KGB ; Kim Philby ; Leonid Brezhnev ; media ; Nikita Khrushchev ; nuclear weapons ; Soviet Union ; Yuri Andropov Andropov, I͡U. V. (I͡Uriĭ Vladimirovich), 1914-1984 ; Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Hiss, Alger ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Philby, Kim, 1912-1988 ; Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 1919 First Trip to Russia Now that Soviet summit meetings between presidents of the United States and leaders of the Soviet Union have become almost commonplace, people have become fairly blasé about them, but when you first went there in 1959 to meet Khrushchev, when you were vice president, that was a very dramatic event that riveted the world's attention. Nixon recounts going to Russia for the first time and meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, who welcomed Nixon to the country but had issues with the Captive Nation Resolutions recently passed by Congress. Alexsei Kosygin ; Crimea ; Foster Dulles ; Franklin D. Roosevelt ; Joseph Stalin ; Kremlin ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Moscow ; Nikita Khrushchev ; secret service ; Soviet Union ; Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) ; Tommy Thompson ; World War II: Captive Nation Resolutions ; Yalta Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Dulles, John Foster, 1888-1959 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Kosygin, Aleksey Nikolayevich, 1904-1980 ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 ; Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 ; Thompson, Llewellyn, 1904-1972 2539 Kitchen Debate The--your relationship only went--only went downhill from that high point, I guess. Nixon recalls going to the American exhibition with Khrushchev and the subsequent conversation that became known as the Kitchen Debate. grocery store ; Kitchen Debate ; missiles ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Russia ; Soviet Union Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 3012 Visiting Khrushchev's Dacha / Boat Cruise After this, he wanted to take you out to see his country house, his dacha. Nixon describes visiting Khrushchev's summer home and taking a boat ride where he met some of the Russian people. Captive Nations Resolutions ; communism ; dacha ; Kitchen Debate ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Moscow ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Russia ; Secret Service ; Soviet Union ; Tommy Thompson Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Thompson, Llewellyn, 1904-1972 Interview NIXON: [unintelligible] NIXON: --speech in 1976, people said that he had--had done it several times and had watched it and then did it. That, of course, is the assholes that--who were producing it wanted to take credit. GANNON: Wanted to get the credit for it. NIXON: And they should-- GANNON: [unintelligible] They had written and rehearsed it. NIXON: --never have put it out. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: Yeah. They rehearsed him. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: Right? GANNON: Yeah. That was Panayi and-- NIXON: Wasn' ; t that awful? GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: [Clears throat.] I don' ; t mind their doing it. I mean, I--e--everybody' ; s got to do it his own way. GANNON: Today we' ; re talking with President Nixon about the subject of the Soviet Union and the West. Mr. President, can we trust the Russians? NIXON: Well, I recall talking to Manuel Brosio, the former Secretary-General of NATO, a great Italian diplomat who served six years in Moscow before he came to the United States. And he told me in the late sixties, before I became president, very, very vigorously, when many Europeans were clamoring for détente--he said, " ; I know the Russians. They are liars. They are great actors. They are cheaters. And they lie and they act because they consider it' ; s their duty to do so." ; He says, " ; You cannot trust them." ; Now, having said that, however, he did not go on to say that you should not deal with them. And my answer to this whole proposal or question as to whether or not the Russians can be trusted is, very simply, only if we make agreements which are in their interest to keep, self-enforcing agreements, and only if everything we do with them positively is linked to something else which will cost them if they break the agreement. But you can' ; t trust them on the basis that, well, we' ; re sincere and they’re sincere. That is totally irrelevant where the Russians are concerned. GANNON: Why do they lie and cheat? Why--why are they insincere? NIXON: The reason is that their goal is very different from ours. To simplify it, our goal is peace as an end in itself, and their goal is victory, and whether it' ; s peace or war, it' ; s a means to the end, the end of victory--the Soviet or Russian or Communist domination of the world. And under Marxist-Leninist teachings, you use any means to achieve that great goal. And if it requires that you lie and you cheat, you lie and you cheat. Now, under the circumstances, we simply do not follow that particular type of quote, " ; morality," ; unquote, and under the circumstances, however, in dealing with them, it doesn' ; t mean that we have to lie and cheat, but we must be aware of the fact that they will when they can get away with it. But, on the other hand, you can deal with them, and they will keep a deal if you make it on the basis that will serve their interests and ours. GANNON: Are they sincere as people? As Andropov sits in the Kremlin, does he think of--does he look at a question and say, " ; Now, I' ; ve got to lie and cheat in order to achieve our Leninist--our good Leninist ends here," ; or do they sincerely believe that what they’re doing is right? Do they have a different definition of morality? NIXON: I do not think that morality is really relevant as far as they' ; re concerned. They are thinking in terms of the total Communist world, a Communist society for everybody, equality and everything else that Communism in its ideal state is supposed to produce. And they believe, therefore, that anything they do to achieve that is therefore justifiable. I recall, for example, a conversation with regard to the whole idea of whether or not they were sincere that I had with Ambassador Bohlen, our former ambassador to Russia and a great Russian expert, and he was concerned--this was in the early sixties, after he had become ambassador to Paris--by statements out of Washington in the early sixties that some Washington people in the government were convinced that Khrushchev was sincere in his desire for peace. And he said, " ; That is so stupid, and it is so wrong." ; He said, " ; He is a Communist. He can no more be sincere than this table" ; --there was a coffee table between us--" ; can be sincere. He is a materialist, and he will therefore be what--for whatever is necessary to achieve his ends. Sincerity has nothing to do with it." ; GANNON: What do you think about the fairly widespread theory that one of the reasons for the Cold War is because we acted--in the p--post-Second World War period when we had the power of the atomic bomb uniquely ourselves--that we acted suspiciously and vindictively towards the Russians, and--or towards the Soviets, and that--that turned them into what they became--that, in effect, we created the Cold War by our paranoia and our anti-Communist f--Red Scare fears? NIXON: Well, that is a theory that just doesn' ; t stand up when you examine what happened. We have to remember that the Baruch Plan, for example, offered the Soviet Union the opportunity to join with the United States in the developing of nuclear energy. They turned it down. We have to understand that the Marshall Plan, for example, was offered to the Communist countries as well as to the European countries, and the Soviet not only wouldn' ; t take it themselves, but they wouldn' ; t let some of their Eastern European satellites take it because they were not interested in that kind of agreement or cooperation with the West. President Eisenhower' ; s famous " ; open skies" ; proposal, which he made, as you may recall, at the time of Geneva in 1955--that proposal, in which the--the two would join together in opening up their countries in terms of inspection so that we could not cheat each other and so forth--they turned that down. What we have to bear in mind is that when what was called the " ; containment policy" ; was developed, first under President Truman and continued under President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles, it made a great deal of sense. Then the United States has unquestioned superiority. and it was that superiority which avoided World War II, or World War III, I should say, it--because at the time, after World War II, when the policy of containment and the policy of massive retaliation was adopted, we have to remember that Europe was very weak. There was always the possibility that forces of revolution which were inspired and controlled and subsidized by the Russians would take over. It was necessary, in effect, to give them time--the European countries, the French and the British and the Germans, to develop--and the Italians as well--their own defense. We bought that time through the policy of containment. It made sense. I would just also comment on this whole idea that, as far as the Russians are concerned, that we caused them to become as aggressive and as adventurist as they are. They didn' ; t need any help from us. That' ; s the way they are. They say it. They said it even in the period of so-called " ; détente," ; when I was talking with Brezhnev. There' ; s no mistaking about that at all. I think we have to have in mind that, as far as they' ; re concerned, they have certain goals, and they' ; re out to cheat them. No--they have certain goals, and they' ; re out to achieve them. I can recall very well people asking me on occasion, " ; What is the situation with regard to the Russians? Is there a chance that we can get them to accept our views, our ideals, and so forth?" ; And then they go on to say, " ; Perhaps if we could only convince them that we are sincerely for peace, then they would not be as warlike as they are." ; Let me tell you--I know the Russians. We don' ; t have to convince them that we' ; re for peace. They know that. We have to convince them they cannot win a war. And once we do that, the basis is set for negotiation that will be responsible on both sides. GANNON: Did they take advantage of-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me one second, gentlemen. I have to cut in. I' ; m sorry. Keep rolling. NIXON: [Clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, Steve-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Frank, you want to lead in on that-- GANNON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: --aggressiveness of the Russians. [unintelligible] GANNON: [Clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: --Frank, and then go to the president. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stand by. GANNON: How do you feel about the widespread argument that the Cold War was, at least in part, if not entirely, a product of American post-Second World War paranoia, Red Scare fear and suspicion, and at a time when we uniquely had atomic power, we forced them into a defensive Cold War posture? NIXON: Well, I don' ; t agree with that particular theory. It' ; s somewhat similar, incidentally, to the theory that the holocaust in Cambodia was caused because the United States, which was trying to prevent a Communist takeover, brutalized the peaceful Cambodian peasants. Let me say that, as far as the Soviets were concerned, they didn’t have to be forced to or educated to be aggressive. That is what they believe in, and that is what they have been trying to achieve ever since World War II. Under the circumstances, I think what really happened here is that many people have overlooked, who have this particular theory, how the West really has bent over backwards in terms of reassuring the Soviet Union and trying to get their cooperation. The Baruch Plan, which of course was presented during the---Truman' ; s presidency, with regard to the sharing of atomic energy and so forth, Eisenhower' ; s " ; open skies" ; proposals, the Marshall Plan itself, which the Russians and the Eastern European Communist countries turned down--they turned it down because the Russians insisted that they do. What really happened here is that the United States in effect held the ring with its superiority in nuclear power, behind which the European countries--the British, the French, the Germans and the Italians, the major ones as well as others--could restore their economies and their strength and thereby not be, in effect, vulnerable to Soviet subversion. I would just say that, finally, as far as all this theory to the effect that what we really have to do is to convince the Russians that we' ; re for peace and that they will be for peace--is--that' ; s just nonsense. I know the Russians. We don' ; t have to convince them we' ; re for peace. They know that. We have to convince them that they cannot win a war, we' ; ve got to convince them that they cannot win without war, and once we have done that, then we can build a peace that will last, but only then. GANNON: Do they take advantage of their knowledge that we' ; re for peace? NIXON: Oh, whenever they possibly can. They, for example, took advantage of President Carter. Now, President Carter is no silly, sappy dove. He has a good service background in the Navy. He' ; s a good, strong person in my view, but he felt that if he could only convince the Russians by unilaterally cutting back on our arms programs that we were for peace, as he put it in his famous Notre Dame speech, that they would do likewise--in other words, follow the Golden Rule with them. Well, he cut back on the B-1, and he cut back on the Minuteman III production line, and he--he delayed the cruise missile and the MX missile, and so forth. And what did the Russians do? As we cut back, they built up. That was the unilateral approach. It didn' ; t work. Fortunately, at least as far as our defense program was concerned, Afghanistan opened his eyes, and he turned around. But let us clearly understand--we have tried that way, the way of trying to convince the Russians by our restraint that we are for peace, that we are for disarmament. And all they do is take advantage of it. GANNON: How could a man who isn' ; t a silly, sappy dove say that he had learned more about the Russians in the week after the--involving the invasion of Afghanistan than he had in all of his life to that point? NIXON: That has nothing to do with some--whether somebody is silly or sappy. What it has to do is the way, unfortunately, that many educated Americans look at the world today. Let' ; s face it--the Americans generally a--are a people who have good intentions. Oh, we make our mistakes and the rest, but we would like the rest of the world to share our values, and we believe that our values are so good that they are ones that should be shared and that others may agree to. But in the real world, it doesn' ; t work that way, and sometimes it takes time to find that out. GANNON: Yalta is one of the most controversial events of the modern history. What do you think happened at Yalta? How would you describe the Yalta Conference? NIXON: Well, those who were there--and here again, I--I would go back to Ambassador Bohlen, who knew something about Soviet-American relations then and later--those were there believe that what went wrong at Yalta was not what was agreed to, but the fact that the Russians did not carry out the agreement--agreement with regard to, for example, elections in Poland and that sort of thing. Once it was agreed to, they didn' ; t even follow it out whatever. Now, whatever the case may be, what we have to understand is that making an agreement which was not self-enforcing was the mistake--trusting the Russians, if I may--may use that term. That if they--we signed an agreement with them, that they would follow it in spirit and letter just as we would--that was the mistake at Yalta. That mistake having been made, it must not make again--we must not make it again. GANNON: You don’t think, then, that Franklin Roosevelt was operating either under diminished physical capacity or that he was suffering from pro-Communist or, indeed, Communist, advisors? NIXON: Well, there isn' ; t any question about his own anti-Communist ideas, there' ; s--as far as Franklin Roosevelt is concerned. There, however, is some question with regard to advisors, advisors who were not pro-Communist, but advisors, I would put it, who were naïve about the Communists. Maybe there were some who were pro-Communist, but I think the latter, what--what Lenin has referred to as the--the " ; useful idiots," ; those who don' ; t know better and should know better. That was the real problem. GANNON: Do you discount Alger Hiss' ; s role at a--as a Roosevelt advisor at Yalta, then? NIXON: I do not know what his role was, but the fact he was there is not reassuring, because there' ; s no question but that he was a Communist at that time, and certainly that could have had some effect. I would say further that with regard to Roosevelt at Yalta, I talked to Winston Churchill about it, and he tried to be diplomatic about it. But he said there was no question, and he has written this as well, but he said it very emphatically to me--that President Roosevelt was not at his best at Yalta. And what happened was that Roosevelt, in effect, joined with Stalin and supported Stalin' ; s views against Churchill, and Churchill fought a valiant but losing battle in attempting to deal with the Russians on a realistic, tough-minded basis, and that was the tragedy. GANNON: President-- NIXON: But I--let us--let us make it clear--I am not going to judge those who were advising Roosevelt on the basis of whether they were pro- or anti-Communist. That has nothing to do with it. What--it has something to do with it, but the real problem is something very different, and that is--and much more serious, looking at today' ; s problems--and that is they were naïve about the Russians and what they might do. And that is going to be our greatest danger in the future. GANNON: President Carter talked about the Golden Rule in dealing with the Russians. Didn' ; t you have a Nixon version of the Golden Rule for dealing with the Russians? NIXON: Oh, yes. I had a very interesting conversation in the first state dinner that we had for Golda Meir. She was very concerned a--about what she thought was the soft-headed views of some Europeans who were " ; slobbering over it," ; as she put it--the idea of détente. And she just wanted to be sure that we weren' ; t taken in by the Russians, because she grew up in Russia, and she remembered that the Russian drunken policemen used to come by every Saturday night and beat her father up because he happened to be a Jew. And so she had strong emotional feelings against them, but also she didn' ; t trust them generally. And then, in order to reassure her a bit, I said, " ; Well, let me give you a definition of détente that is a little different." ; I said, " ; There is the Golden Rule of the Bible, ' ; Do unto others as they do unto you.' ; " ; I said, " ; That isn' ; t the way you deal with the Russians. The International Golden Rule--and particularly one which must apply whenever you' ; re dealing with an adversary like the Russians--is, ' ; Do unto others as they do unto you.' ; " ; She started to nod, and Henry Kissinger said, " ; Plus ten percent." ; GANNON: With the invasion of Afghanistan and the suppression of Solidarity in Poland and other activities throughout the world, hasn' ; t détente been discredited in the last several years--certainly since you' ; ve left the White House? NIXON: Discredited in the sense of how it was managed, but when you look at it historically, not in the sense of how it worked when it was properly managed. And what I am suggesting here is that the period of what is called " ; détente" ; really began in 1969. That was when I, in my inaugural, said that we were going to enter a period of negotiation rather than confrontation with the Russians, and we began then negotiations at the ambassadorial level, at the foreign minister level with Dobrynin, the ambassador here, and with Gromyko, the Foreign Minister, with Kissinger on our side, and I participating on occasion, and also by letters, an exchange of letters with Brezhnev. Now, in that period of time, détente produced the Berlin Agreement, which was very much in our interest, and, we believe, in theirs as well, but particularly in ours because we got away from those over-and-over-again incidents of crises on the Berlin Autobahn. It also had a very significant effect in deterring Russian adventurism. They tried to put submarines into Cienfuegos in 1970 in Cuba. We objected, and we said, " ; If you don' ; t knock that off, then we' ; re not going to continue to negotiate on arms control and trade," ; and other things that they wanted. They knocked it off. They, uh--w--it was effective, certainly, in restraining them in Jordan in 1970, when the Syrians and the Jordanians were having a go at it, and we were supporting the Jordanians since the Syrians were the invaders, and the Russians were supporting the invaders. They stepped out of that, or kept out of it, I think, because--I' ; m sure--because of their desire to have a summit meeting, which was to occur almost two years later. The same is true of Indo-Pakistan. When--the--there is no question in my mind but the fact that we had our summit meeting scheduled by that time, that they restrained the Indians, or at least did not egg them on at a time that India would have gobbled up West Pakistan if the s--Russians had stood by and allowed them to do so. But we made it very cl--clear that, unless they were--would cooperate with us in bringing about a ceasefire--that there would be no summit, and that had a--its necessary effect. What I am suggesting is this: détente will only work if it' ; s combined with deterrence, and by " ; deterrence" ; --that means you must have the military strength to make it clear that whoever engages in aggression will find that the costs are far greater than anything he' ; s going to gain. And détente will only work provided, too, I--you have everything linked. Arms control must be linked with conduct. That' ; s the way we practiced it, and it worked. Now, when it is practiced in a way that it' ; s two for them and one for us, like, for example, we will cut back on our military expenditures, we' ; ll cut back on our programs, without any reciprocal action on their part, then, of course, it is a disaster. But properly managed, détente with deterrence is the only acceptable option for the West and for the world today. GANNON: If they--isn' ; t--isn' ; t that ultimately ill-fated, though? Because if they sit back and are prudent and disciplined and just wait and depend on the cyclical nature of American politics, so that a conservative, strong, hard-headed détente president will be followed inevitably, sooner or later, by a softer, more accomodating president--if they just sit back and wait, they' ; ll eventually get what they want. Indeed, now, it' ; s arguable that they have a strong conservative president who can' ; t even get his strong defense / hard-headed détente program through Congress. NIXON: Well, it' ; s easy to make that kind of judgment or appraisal, and to say, " ; Well, détente won' ; t work." ; And my question is--what' ; s the option? The option is--to détente--the alternative is simply unacceptable. The Russians are there. It is true, as many have said, that they will lie, they will cheat, they' ; re out to do us in--but they are there. They are a superpower, and it is irresponsible, with our--our being in a position of superpower as well, that we not do everything that we possibly can to avert a confrontation that would escalate into nuclear war that would destroy each other and most of the rest of the world. And until you find some option to détente, détente, hard-headed détente, as I have suggested, then it seems to me that that is the path to pursue. It is not easy, and I' ; m not going to suggest that there--there are times when they may not gain more than we do, but I believe that what has to develop here is a bipartisan, within the parties and between the parties, approach to this so that we will have continuity, so that we don' ; t have hard-headed de--détente followed by a soft-headed, woolly-headed détente. That is the worst of both worlds. GANNON: Do you think that the Soviets are developing biological and chemical weapons now? NIXON: Well, the evidence is mixed, but I think we have to assume that they are. GANNON: What should we do, then? NIXON: And that is something that has to be taken up at the very highest level. When a summit meeting does occur, as I am convinced it should, and will, then that has to be very high on the agenda, and it' ; s got to be made very clear that that will not be tolerated, but you don' ; t go in there and say, " ; Please won' ; t you quit using biolog--biological and chemical warfare--weapons?" ; Rather than approaching it that way, you say, " ; If you' ; re going to use them, we' ; re going to," ; and we have to have a program ready to go, and then we should initiate it. GANNON: Can we--since it' ; s very hard to prove or to verify whether or not they' ; re being manufactured, and since, as you would have us operate from the premise that they do lie and they cheat in order to further their goals, could we depend on any assurances they gave at a summit that they weren' ; t doing it? Don' ; t we have to have a program of our own now as--in--in terms of preventive medicine? NIXON: Well, we should develop a program if we don' ; t get some assurances. But I think that, on the other hand, we have enough in place that a program could get going very, very fast. And I think what we have to bear in mind is that this is an area which could and should very properly be a subject for negotiation. Unfortunately, it isn' ; t possible to have verification in many of these areas. But, again, it seems to me that the only alternative to not proceeding in this way is simply a runaway race in biological and chemical and environmental warfare, and that could be, believe it or not, even more devastating than nuclear war. GANNON: Do you think the Soviets cheat on SALT? NIXON: There again, the evidence is mixed, and I know that many people believe that they have in the military, and some claim that they have not. But that misses the point. It isn' ; t a question of whether they cheat. What they have done in SALT, without any question, is doing everything they could allowed by the agreements. And what the United States unfortunately has done is not doing what we could under the agreements--for example, canceling the B-1 bomber. It was permitted under SALT. Stopping the Minuteman III production line--that was permitted under SALT. Not going forward with the MX missile or the cruise missile as fast as we could--both of which were permitted under SALT. If those actions had not been taken, the United States would not be in a position of inf--inferiority, particularly in land-based missiles, which, first, destroyed Senate--Senate support for approval of SALT II, and, second, makes it necessary for us to catch up at the present time. So, as far as the Soviet cheating in this area and that area, we have to be concerned about that, but what we also have to be concerned about is our own failure, when we knew that they were moving forward, to go forward with our own programs. GANNON: What' ; s your assessment of Andropov? NIXON: Well, he is a very intelligent man. He--very--certainly tough, strong, ruthless. Let us understand right at the beginning that one of tho--one of--s--s--I heard someone--someone talking back there. What we have to understand right at the beginning is that all of this really sappy kind of writing that was done after he came into power is a terrible reflection on our media, on some of our so-called " ; Soviet experts," ; and on ourselves. The fact that [makes popping sound] great deal was made out of--out of the knowledge, apparently, that he spoke English, that he was well-mannered, that he was quite civilized, that he liked Western music, that he might even like Scotch whisky and the rest--as if that had anything to do with the kind of leader he was going to be. It had as little to do with the kind of leader that he was going to be as the kind of observations that were made about Khrushchev when he came into power. I remember very well some of the news magazines were pointing out that he spoke poor Russian, that he wore ill-fitting clothes, that he drank too much, and, therefore, that he was going to be a very ineffective and poor leader, not in the league with Stalin. What we have to understand is that the clothes they wear and their personal habits and whether they are elegant or not has nothing to do with whether or not they are going to be formidable leaders. I--it' ; s--it' ; s sort of the same attitude Americans have toward the--the Communists generally--so many Americans. They have the feeling that they' ; re all supposed--the--the--supposed to be like Bolsheviks with--bearded and dirty working-class types. That isn' ; t the type that they are--not here and not abroad. That is why it was so hard for many to--Americans to understand an Alger Hiss or, for that matter, a Philby, or any of the other--those who came from the intellectual classes, with fine manners and the rest. We come back to Andropov--intelligent, tough, ruthless, more formidable because he is younger, and also because, I think, of a better sense of public relations than Brezhnev. On the other hand, a pragmatist, a--a pragmatist who was head of the KGB knows better, perhaps, than any other Russian leader--leader--better than Stalin, better than Khrushchev, better than Brezhnev--the weaknesses that the Soviet Union has. And he, knowing those weaknesses, the economic weaknesses, the ideological weaknesses, the fact that the system isn' ; t working--I think that that means that, as a pragmatist, he will recognize the necessity to have some kind of accommodation with the West--not a surrender, but an accommodation. GANNON: There are rumors, although he is younger than most of the other Soviet leaders, that he is not in good health. Do you have any opinions or information about that? NIXON: No. There are rumors, and I would assume that that was the case, because he has missed some meetings. On the other hand, let' ; s not allow that to mislead us as to how effective he can be. That may only mean that he' ; s going to be in a hurry to accomplish the goals that he has to accomplish, and if he is in a hurry, then let' ; s give him the opportunity to turn in a different direction than that of simply building on the past, building their strength and--and not doing anything to reduce the dangers of nuclear conflict that' ; s going to destroy his country as well as others. GANNON: Now that Soviet summit meetings between presidents of the United States and leaders of the Soviet Union have become almost commonplace, people have become fairly blasé about them, but when you first went there in 1959 to meet Khrushchev, when you were vice-president, that was a very dramatic event that riveted the world' ; s attention. Through a very unique stroke of luck, we have some film that I don’t think has ever been seen before--I don' ; t think you' ; ve seen it before--that was taken by one of your Secret Service men who was with you on the trip. One of the films he took, which we have, was seated in the front seat of your limousine as you drove into the Kremlin for the first time. So, through his film, we can see today what you saw that first time going into the--the citadel--of the--into the enemy' ; s--into the heart of the enemy' ; s citadel. As we see that, do you recall any of your thoughts? NIXON: Are they going to put it on? GANNON: Mm-hmm. [Nods.] NIXON: Oh. GANNON: You can even see the flags flying on the car. NIXON: Mm-hmm. NIXON: Well, this was my first visit to Moscow. And I' ; ve made five since then. I remember that I was extremely well-prepared, because this was the first visit to Moscow of anybody of my rank. President Roosevelt went to Russia, but that was in Yalta in the Crimea, not to the Russian capital. I had heard about Khrushchev. I knew that he was a very, very capable, tough, unpredictable leader who would test my mettle and who would be taking advantage of any lack of knowledge that I might have. And so, f--consequently, I was looking forward to seeing him, to see what made him tick. GANNON: What were--what were your goals? What did you want to accomplish by the trip? NIXON: Well, I was there, actually, to open an American exhibition, which was the first one that was being held in the Soviet Union, and one that had had a very, very great impact. The tickets were being scalped--that is done there as well as it is here--and the Russian people were very, very impressed by the exhibits they saw, so impressed that T.A.S.S. had several articles before we got there indicating that this exhibit was really not indicative of what life was really like in the United States, but only of how the millionaires lived and that sort of thing. So I knew that I had to lay a little of that to rest, so I was prepared to make a speech, and I just assumed that, as far as Khrushchev was concerned--that I--I would listen to his views. I was not president. I could not negotiate with him, but I would listen to his views, and, to the extent possible, reassure him as to our own motives, where he may have had a--misinterpreted them or misunderstood them. Well, as it turned out, it wasn' ; t quite as peaceful as it was predicted it might be. I must say, however, that I had done a great deal of homework, and I was prepared to talk on any number of issues that he might r--raise. And I found, finally, that he rose--he--he raised every issue there was. GANNON: Again thanks to your Secret Service man, we have some film of your first meeting with Khrushchev in the Kremlin. GANNON: How well had your briefings prepared you for what he turned out to be like? NIXON: Quite well. I think they may have underestimated his quickness, his unpredictability. They did indicate that he was going to be very tough and that he' ; d take advantage wherever he possibly could, that he could put on quite an act if necessary. But I think that they underestimated his intelligence, underestimated, probably, again, for a reason it' ; s always hard for me to understand--he didn' ; t happen to have a college education, he grew up as a pig tender, he didn’t speak very good Russian, and consequently we think, well, such a man therefore can' ; t be all that capable. That has nothing to do with capability. I th--I remember very well Foster Dulles commenting on that, when news magazine articles came out to the effect that Khrushchev was one who spoke poor Russian and drank too much, and wasn' ; t going to last long--not in Stalin' ; s league, and he says, " ; Look. Don' ; t believe this. Anybody that gets to the top in that Soviet hierarchy, fighting and murdering and conniving his way to the top, is a very strong person and one who is formidable, and you have to learn to deal with him on that basis." ; And he was dead right. That' ; s true of Khrushchev. It' ; s true of Kosygin. It' ; s true of Brezhnev, and I know it' ; s true of Andropov. The weak do not get to the top in Communist countries. GANNON: Khrushchev seemed amiable enough in these films of your first meeting. NIXON: He was very amiable whenever people were around. He was a great actor, as are most of the Russians, and whenever people were around, when the cameras were on, he was gracious. He wanted to prove that he was a good host. GANNON: What was the first meeting like? NIXON: Well, it changed from night into day, or day into night, I should say. All the sunshine smile and the rest--we sat down opposite each other at a table there in his relatively modest Kremlin office--the same office, incidentally, that I was later to sit down with--many years later--with Brezhnev, on two occasions, in 1972 and 1974. And he began to berate me, to my great surprise, about a resolution that had been passed in the Congress just before I left, a resolution called the Captive Nation Resolutions. It wasn' ; t anything new. It' ; s been passed every year since World War II, and it simply indicated the support of the American Congress and the American people, the moral support, of those peoples living in Eastern Europe and referred to it as " ; the captive nations." ; GANNON: Wasn' ; t that an undiplomatic thing to do, though, just before this trip? NIXON: Had nothing to do with diplomacy. The Congress always passed it, and always at that time of year. It had nothing to do with my trip, but Khrushchev thought that it was deliberate. He said, " ; Why would you have done this? Why would you have had your Congress do this before this trip? It' ; s created the wrong atmosphere." ; And I tried to point out, " ; Look. We didn' ; t do it. The Congress did it," ; which was absolutely true. We didn' ; t have control over it, and, incidentally, let me point out this was not a resolution that required the signature of the president. This was a resolution that was passed by the Congress. It was a state of the Congress--they pass them all the time down there, and usually nobody pays much attention to them. It' ; s simply for the folks back home. But no matter how much I tried to explain it to him, and--pointing out that we did have many people in our country of Polish background, and Rumanian [" ; Romanian" ; ] background, and Hungarian background, and so forth and so on, who were concerned about those living under Communist governments in Eastern Europe--that--that under the circumstances, while they felt strongly about it, we would not, of course, have a--have a--had a resolution passed for the purpose of embarrassing him or raising a provocative issue before I arrived there on a so-called goodwill trip. But it didn' ; t get across to him, and, finally, after I had explained, however, how the resolutions were passed, and after--he just held up his hands. " ; I can' ; t believe that, that that' ; s happened in that way," ; he said. " ; Well, after hearing all this conversation, I can only say that, as far as the resolution substance is concerned, it simply has no basis in fact whatever." ; Let me think a minute. I' ; ve got it. I' ; m trying to shorten this down. He said, " ; After hearing all this conversation about the con--about the resolution, about the captive peoples, and about how it was done, I have only one reaction." ; And I said, " ; What it is--what is it?" ; He said, " ; This resolution stinks. It stinks like horse shit, and there' ; s nothing that stinks worse than pure horse shit." ; Well, the translation was made, and--by Trianosky, the translator--he blushed as he did it, because at first he wasn' ; t going to do it, but our ambassador, Tommy Thompson, was sitting there, and he smiled when he heard it in Russian, and Trianosky had to translate it exactly as he said it. And so I remembered that, when he mentioned horse shit, when I had grown up in California, grew up in an agricultural area--that a neighbor one time had a load of pig manure brought in, and it--the stench was overpowering, much worse than horse manure. And so I said, " ; Well, I' ; m very interested to hear what you say, but I have to disagree on one point," ; and his ears perked up a bit. He said, " ; There' ; s one thing that smells worse than horse shit, and that' ; s pig shit." ; He said, " ; Well, you may be right on that, but you' ; re not right on anything else." ; GANNON: The--your relationship only went--only went downhill from that high point, I guess. NIXON: Well, it went down for a while. We went ther--then from the Kremlin after this meeting, which was just hammer and tongs--that was only the prelude of what was to come later. And although the rhetoric wasn' ; t quite as, shall we say, " ; earthy," ; later, as it was on this occasion, it was really tougher, because we began to talk about things that were a lot tougher than manure. We went over to the American exhibition, and it was there that the first time that he had ever appeared on American television and worldwide television with a leading American figure took place. GANNON: We have some film. This was--this opening of the American exhibition, or your confrontation with him, became one of the most famous events of modern political history, the--the famous Kitchen Debate. We have some film of you and Khrushchev in that Kitchen Debate. GANNON: At what point did you figure out that you had a tiger that you had better get by the tail? NIXON: Well, I could see that he felt that he was really playing to his audience, and he di--was not thinking, however, that he was playing to an American audience then, because this film that you just saw, or that we just showed, was there as an exhibit. It was in color film, as a matter of fact, and one of the things we talked about prior to this particular interchange that you' ; ve just seen was with regard to the fact that in color television that we had made advances which they had n--of course had not yet reached in the Soviet Union. And that was what led him to make the s--statement to the effect that--" ; Look. We' ; ve existed only forty-two years, and you' ; ve existed a hundred and eighty years, and this is the level of where you are now," ; as he looked around at the exhibit--you saw his gestures there--he said, " ; but in seven years we' ; re going to catch you, and we' ; re going to pass you, and then wave goodbye." ; You could see what a great actor he was. He' ; s always playing to the audience, but he was playing to his Russian audience. But I knew that there were Americans watching that, too--the American press. I had no idea this was going to be shown later in the United States. And so I thought it was time that--we had to right the balance just a bit, but I still had to be the host. He was at a higher level than I. I was still vice-president, and he was, of course, at the General Secretary level. So how could I be a good host and yet take him on in an effective way? And that' ; s why when--as we walked on, I tried to think of how I could set the record straight with regard to his charges to the effect that the United States was ahead now, but that they were going to catch up, and they were going to pass us, and that we would follow and do likewise. GANNON: How a-- NIXON: S-- GANNON: Sorry. Mm-hmm? NIXON: So, the next time, as we went along, it got a little worse, however. I thought he had probably given his best shot here, but we next went by a model American grocery store. It was nothing compared to the supermarkets we have here, but it was a pretty good store and have--have--had been one of the most successful exhibits in the whole American exhibition. The Soviet people looked at all these marvelous products, the diversity--not everything the same as it is there, the diversity of freedom is what--is its hallmark. And as we went by the grocery store, I just casually mentioned to him that I had grown up in a family where my father had a small grocery store and that my brothers and I had worked in it, as we worked before and after school in order to help work our way through school. And after the translation weez [sic]--it was made, he said, " ; All shopkeepers are thieves." ; I said, " ; Well," ; I said, " ; that' ; s apparently true in the Soviet state as well." ; I said, " ; I was down at the market here" ; --I had gone there very early in the morning just to see what it was like. And I said, " ; I noticed that--as--here were the bureaucrats who run--who worked for the state were--had a pair of scales, a set of scales, on which products were weighed, and then the customers--there was another s--set of scales, and they would weigh the--they--the products on their set of scales as well. So maybe the state can' ; t be trusted either." ; Well, that at least got one little jab back in. GANNON: How acrimonious was the Kitchen Debate, in fact? NIXON: Well, the part that we saw earlier was not acrimonious, and that was widely presented in the United States as being the Kitchen Debate. It was really very low-key on my part, because it did not involve, incidentally, the strength of America--military. Military, as you' ; ll note--this was a--this was a discussion of economic progress. And then we got to the kitchen--that was something else again. This was a house--it was a whole house, not just a kitchen, but we happened to be in the kitchen area, and we began to discuss washing machines, and when we discussed washing machines, I happened to make the point, casually again, that in--under our system--that there were many different kinds of washing machines and that people could have a choice. He says, " ; That' ; s not a good idea. In the Soviet Union we make only one kind. Everybody has the same kind. That' ; s much more efficient." ; Then I just casually mentioned, " ; Well, it' ; s really very much better to be talking about washing machines than it is about the--the relative strength of our missiles," ; because I knew that he had been making some very provocative comments about Soviet progress in missiles and how they had--were ahead of the United States. And then he practically blew up, and he said, " ; But your generals are trying to threaten us. They' ; re threatening us by their talk about their power," ; and so forth. And then we went at it hammer and talks--hammer and tongs--with regard to the relative strength of the United States and the Soviet Union. But the key point that I made, and what was the real Kitchen Debate, was that it missed the point as to which was the stronger of the two. I said the important thing for us to bear in mind is that both of us are strong, because I wanted at least to give him a position, which I knew he' ; d desperately need, where I weres [sic] recognizing, and the United States was recognizing, his equality. I said, " ; We are both strong. What we have to do is to diplomatically work out methods whereby that strength will not u--be used in a destructive way." ; GANNON: After this, he wanted to take you out to see his country house, his dacha. We have some film of that country house. GANNON: Do you want…to describe…your-- NIXON: Well-- GANNON: --first impressions? NIXON: That film, incidentally, brings back many memories. It does not really capture the beauty of the house, its location, and its size. It' ; s actually bigger than the White House. I--it was a magnificent former residence of either a czarist noble or perhaps one of the czars themselves had lived there. But the new czars--they lived as --as well as the old. As a matter of fact, I--I think there was a--a story, probably apocryphal, to the effect that Brezhnev was showing one of these beautiful dachas to his mother, and she was remarking about how nice it was, and she says, " ; But what if the Communists come back?" ; But, in any event, the situation with regard to this particular dacha--was concerned was that we got there after the--we' ; d had this acrimonious confrontation at the so-called Kitchen Debate, when Khrushchev recognized that he perhaps had been a little too belligerent, and he tried to compensate for it. And so, after we' ; d had a--a luncheon, in which we threw our glasses into the fireplace and shattered them after sh--after drinking champagne, he--he was simply as hospitable as he possibly could be. He said, " ; You really have got to go to the dacha." ; We had been scheduled to meet for lunch there the following day. He said, " ; You' ; ve got to s--go there and spend the night. It' ; s much cooler, much more pleasant than in Moscow." ; So he insists that we go, and that' ; s why we arrived in the evening, and then he arrived the next day. GANNON: But when he arrived, he took you on a boat ride, and, again thanks to the--your Secret Service man' ; s film, we can see some of that boat ride, which looks more like a--in some aspects looks more like a campaign trip than a pleasure trip. GANNON: This must have been all planned. Didn' ; t they tell you that it was--that these things were spontaneous? NIXON: Well, as I look at that film, I recall vividly what happened. I knew that it had been planned. I--nob--I could tell pretty well it wasn' ; t spontaneous, and I knew that, as far as millions of average Russians are concerned, they didn' ; t have the opportunity to be out there swimming in that river. And later Tommy Thompson, our ambassador, said, " ; Well, those are all party types." ; Those were the elite of the party that were allowed to swim there in that area and so forth. But I must say that Khrushchev made the best of it. You can see him waving his hand. He' ; s doing that for purposes of our photographers, the American photographers, to show that he was a man of the people, and he used to look down at these people, and he would nudge me, and he said, " ; Look. Do they look like captives?" ; --referring to the Captive Nations Resolutions. " ; You see, the captives" ; --" ; the slaves," ; he called them--" ; they' ; re very, very happy." ; And I said, " ; Well, you always make political propaganda." ; He says, " ; Oh, no. I don' ; t make political propaganda. I just tell the truth." ; GANNON: Do you think it was planned right down to the baby that was handed you? NIXON: Oh, I think-- GANNON: Are they that--are they that calculating and detailed? NIXON: No, I do not think that, as far as the handing of the baby to me--that that was done. I think that was just something spontaneous that happened, a--and that does show that, when we talk about the Russians lying and cheating and so forth and so on, we' ; ve got to be a little more precise. What we understand and what we must understand, very simply, is this: the United States and the Soviet Union can never be friends. However, that does not mean that Russians and Americans cannot be friends. Russians are basically a strong--as they proved in World War II--courageous people. They' ; re very emotional. They can be very hospitable, and most of them, I found, when I got out of Moscow on my various trips there, into--into Asian Russia and Novosibirsk in Siberia and Sverdslosk in the Urals and Alma-Ata way down in--near the Chinese border--and Samarkand near the Persian border, and Kiev in Minks [may mean " ; Minsk." ; ]--you would find an outpouring of real warmth from people. What we have to understand is that, as far as the leaders are concerned, they can be Communist one moment and Russian the next, and sometimes it' ; s an act, but sometimes it isn' ; t. So, with all these things in mind, that doesn' ; t--that means that it is very possible for them to be very human when they' ; re acting as Russians. On the other hand, when they' ; re acting as Communists, you must be sure that--you c--may be sure that they can be very ruthless. GANNON: I think we' ; re at the end of our first hour. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] We have to stop and change the tapes. We' ; ll take five minutes. Gentlemen, you want to-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0358/bmac
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57 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 12, 1983, part 1.
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gannix_0358
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-05-12
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 12, 1983, part 2. gannix_0359 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|128(4)|183(6)|197(15)|213(2)|231(1)|246(16)|276(5)|295(14)|306(2)|325(14)|342(6)|353(16)|395(8)|427(10)|439(2)|479(1)|490(14)|506(9)|521(13)|540(9)|560(12)|572(13)|584(6)|605(12)|623(13)|652(1)|668(3)|686(3)|705(7)|717(2)|727(15)|743(13)|755(4)|770(14)|794(2)|803(13)|822(3)|849(1)|865(3)|880(14)|892(10)|910(3)|936(4)|946(13)|963(14)|996(10)|1008(6)|1029(2)|1037(12)|1057(2)|1076(5)|1093(6)|1109(13)|1128(3)|1159(14)|1182(14)|1202(16)|1217(3) 0 https://youtu.be/kHbJBmTCLTc YouTube video English 83 Debating with Nikita Khrushchev How acrimonious was the--the Kitchen Debate? Nixon discusses confrontations and debates with Nikita Khrushchev, including the Kitchen Debate, and what he hoped to achieve with them. Alexsei Kosygin ; Anastas Mikoyan ; Berlin ; Chancellor Konrad Adenauer ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Harold Macmillan ; John Foster Dulles ; Kitchen Debate ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Nikita Khrushchev Adenauer, Konrad, 1876-1967 ; Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906-1982 ; Dulles, John Foster, 1888 - 1959 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Kosygin, Aleksey Nikolayevich, 1904-1980 ; Macmillan, Harold, 1894-1986 ; Mikoi͡an, A. I. (Anastas Ivanovich), 1895-1978 621 Luncheon with Khrushchev At the dacha on the river, after the boat ride, you came up and saw long tables sat under the trees for luncheon, almost a Chekhovian scene, peaceful, bucolic--and as the luncheon progressed, he--he began an eerie nuclear confrontation. Nixon recounts the lunch and conversation that he had with Nikita Khrushchev at his dacha after the Kitchen Debate. He also talks about eating different foods during diplomatic meetings. Anastas Mikoyan ; China ; dacha ; food ; foreign relations ; Joseph Stalin ; Kitchen Debate ; maotai ; Nikita Khrushchev ; nuclear weapons ; Pat Nixon ; Rocky Mountain oysters ; whitefish Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Mikoi͡an, A. I. (Anastas Ivanovich), 1895-1978 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 942 Visiting Poland Were you prepared for the reaction that you got in Poland on your way home? Nixon recalls the positive reception that they received from the Polish people while visiting their country. Anwar Sadat ; Cairo ; Caracas ; Leningrad ; Nikita Khhrushchev ; Novosibirk ; Poland ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; Sverdlovsk Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Sadat, Anwar, 1918-1981 1207 Nikita Khrushchev's United States Visit / Meeting Eisenhower When Khrushchev made his visit to the United States the next year, I think he made it clear on several occasions that you were not one of his very favorite people. Nixon describes Khrushchev's visit to the United States and the interactions that he had with President Eisenhower. American Legion ; Aspen, Colorado ; Berlin ; Camp David ; China ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; foreign relations ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Soviet Union ; Veteran of Foreign Wars (VFW) Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 1543 Support of Khrushchev's Visit Is it true that you have the distinction of being the man who introduced Khrushchev to Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, and J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI? Nixon recalls introducing Nikita Khrushchev to Allen Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover. He also talks about the opinion others had about Khrushchev's visit and Khrushchev's own feelings about Nixon and Eisenhower. Allen Dulles ; Anastas Mikoyan ; Christian Herter ; CIA ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; espionage ; F Street Club ; FBI ; J. Edgar Hoover ; John Foster Dulles ; KGB ; Mary Caroline Herter ; Nikita Khrushchev Dulles, Allen, 1893-1969 ; Dulles, John Foster, 1888-1959 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Herter, Christian Archibald, 1895-1966 ; Hoover, J. Edgar (John Edgar), 1895-1972 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Mikoi͡an, A. I. (Anastas Ivanovich), 1895-1978 1867 Likelihood of War If you had to lay odds on the likelihood of a major great-power war, say, in the next twenty years, what would you--what odds would you choose? Nixon explains why he does not expect a war with the Soviet Union and how he feels the United States should continue to avoid one. Adolf Hitler ; communism ; Holocaust ; Joseph Stalin ; Judaism ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Soviet Union ; war ; Yuri Andropov Andropov, I͡U. V. (I͡Uriĭ Vladimirovich), 1914-1984 ; Brezhnev, Leonid Ili'ch, 1906-1982 ; Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 2084 Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union How did the Soviet leaders you've met and dealt with indicate or demonstrate their anti-Semitism? Nixon recounts the anti-Semitism of Soviet Union leaders and progress made to allow Jewish emigration to the United States. anti-Semitism ; Jackson-Vanik Amendment ; Jewish emigration ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Soviet Union Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906-1982 2303 Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy Getting back to the 1960 election, you say that your ability to get along with Khrushchev really had nothing to do with your ability to--to lead the--the country, or the w--the two countries, to war or peace. Nixon relates Khrushchev's support of Kennedy in the 1960 elections and their meetings after Kennedy became president. 1960 election ; Bay of Pigs Invasion ; Cuba ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; James Reston ; John F. Kennedy ; Mary Caroline Herter ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Vienna Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Reston, James, 1909-1995 2540 Bay of Pigs Invasion's Failure If you had been president in 1961, he would have had prior experience with you and would have known that you were not that way. Nixon discusses the events that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion and why he feels that the invasion failed. Adlai Stevenson ; Bay of Pigs Invasion ; Berlin ; Cuban Missile Crisis ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; John F. Kennedy ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Soviet Union Brezhnev, Leonid Ili'ch, 1906-1982 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Stevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing), 1900-1965 2859 President Kennedy After the Bay of Pigs Invasion Did you try to get to President Kennedy either with advice about how to deal with Khrushchev based on your experience or to urge him to follow through on the Bay of Pigs plan as it had originally been conceived? Nixon discusses the response of President Kennedy and Allen Dulles to the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Allen Dulles ; Bay of Pigs Invasion ; Berlin ; CIA ; Cuba ; Fidel Castro ; foreign relations ; John F. Kennedy ; Nikita Khrushchev ; nuclear weapons ; Soviet Union Castro, Fidel, 1926- ; Dulles, Allen, 1893-1969 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 3086 President Kennedy's Indecisiveness How would things have been different if the Bay of Pigs invasion had succeeded? Nixon speculates on how things may have been different if Fidel Castro were not in power. He considers why Kennedy acted indecisive about the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Adlai Stevenson ; Angola ; assassination ; Bay of Pigs Invasion ; communism ; Cuba ; Ethiopia ; Fidel Castro ; John F. Kennedy ; Ngo Dinh Diem ; Soviet Union ; United Nations (UN) ; Vietnam Castro, Fidel, 1926- ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Ngô, Đình Diệm, 1901-1963 ; Stevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing), 1900-1965 3328 Fidel Castro One of the diplomatic hot potatoes that was thrown you in the--at the end of the Eisenhower administration was meeting Castro when he came to Washington. Nixon describes the personality and communist nature of Fidel Castro. Chile ; communism ; Cuba ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Fidel Castro ; foreign relations ; Nicaragua ; Salvador Allende ; Soviet Union ; World War II Allende Gossens, Salvador, 1908-1973 ; Castro, Fidel, 1926- ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 Interview GANNON: --most of them. NIXON: Well, who are they? GANNON: Well, there' ; s a few exceptions, but-- NIXON: No, but who are they? Th--I mean [unintelligible] they' ; re all-- GANNON: Chuck. NIXON: --programmed-- GANNON: Chuck. NIXON: --and packaged the same way. GANNON: Chuck Percy. NIXON: [Clears throat.] Well, you take George Bush. [Whispers:] He' ; s not an--an interesting person. GANNON: [Nods.] Yeah. NIXON: Interesting person, isn' ; t that it? GANNON: That' ; s what people-- NIXON: Glenn. GANNON: That' ; s what-- NIXON: Glenn is an interestin-- GANNON: Well, that' ; s their big problem on their side. The only one-- NIXON: [unintelligible] GANNON: --who' ; s got potential, I think, there is-- NIXON AND GANNON:[In unison] Hart. NIXON: Mm-hmm. Cranston? Good God. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Thirty seconds. [unintelligible] NIXON: It' ; s ridiculous--shouldn' ; t even be in the Senate. GANNON: Fritz Hollings. NIXON: Huh? GANNON: Fritz Hollings--you can' ; t--can' ; t even understand him. NIXON: [Clears throat.] Like Bernie Maybeck. [Coughs ; clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Five. GANNON: How acri-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] want to take that again. Let' ; s get-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: --over there to Frank' ; s side and set up-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: I think the hair thing--they should be done properly, but what I was thinking with Downey was it looks so artificial-- GANNON: Artificial…. NIXON: All pasted, you know, there' ; s--he' ; s got a bad hairdo man. GANNON: Hm. NIXON: I think. [Laughs.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Two. GANNON: How acrimonious was the--the Kitchen Debate? Did--did he get mad at you? Did you get mad at him? NIXON: No. I don' ; t think it was a question of anger, certainly not on my part. After all, I was the host, and I didn' ; t want to have an international incident on a goodwill trip, which this was supposed to be, basically. GANNON: Di-- NIXON: Uh-- GANNON: You had to suppress that because you were the host, but did it--did it annoy you? Did you feel that he was going outside the--the--the bounds of propriety or protocol, or were you just fascinated by it? NIXON: More the latter. I really expected him to be, as I said, very unpredictable and going to take advantage all the way that he possibly could. I recall one of the favorite anecdotes of Chancellor Adenauer. He said that Khrushchev was trying to bully him when Adenauer had been in Moscow, and when Adenauer--what--made what Adenauer thought was a very reasonable proposal. Khrushchev said, " ; You can go to hell." ; And Adenauer said, " ; Well, if I go to hell, you' ; ll be there to meet me when I get there." ; And what he was really trying to tell me--Adenauer--by that anecdote was, " ; Don' ; t let him get away with too much." ; And so what I had to do was find a way to respond, but nar--a way to respond without creating an international incident, and also one that would maintain my hospitality as a host. And I think I finally was able to accomplish that fairly well. GANNON: Do--do you think he was genuinely out of control, or was it--was he calculating the effect of what he was doing as he was doing it? NIXON: No question about the latter. He--he is a man that does not lose his temper. He uses his temper, and he did throughout. He puts on a show, but he is cold when it matters. He' ; s also one who never really is under the influence of alcohol, or wasn' ; t when he made any decisions. He' ; s a pretty good drinker, but when it really mattered, after we had luncheon later, whenever we were having any substantive discussions out at the dacha--we sat there for four or five hours--five, six hours, as I recall, and he sipped hardly anything at all. When it really counts, he' ; s cold sober, and when it really counts, as I say, he is not one that lets his temper run away with him. He was very calculating, and so he was deliberately, probably trying to provoke me, but also trying to show off, for the great numbers of the American press who were there, his belief that the Soviet Union, if it was behind the United States economically, was going to catch up because its system was superior. He believed that then, and, second, that as far as military strength is concerned, that he had missiles on the way that were going to give him superiority over the United States. GANNON: Because the actual Kitchen Debate was spontaneous and unexpected, there is only a--the briefest--seven-, eight-second film clip of the two of you standing at the rail looking into the--into the kitchen. That became a fairly famous photograph or picture because of some of the--some of the other people involved. NIXON: Well, that was where the real Kitchen Debate took place, not before the television cameras in the television studio that had been set up earlier that we' ; ve already seen. And there, as you will note from the photograph, you will see the man standing on his left I--is a young party worker. His name was Brezhnev. I didn' ; t know till I met Brezhnev in 1972--I didn' ; t know until then that Brezhnev was the man that was in that photograph, because when you go to the Soviet Union, at least at a high a level as I did, you--you don' ; t talk to anybody but the top man, or two men, if--the case might be, if there is another one like a Kosygin along with a Brezhnev that you talked to. When I talked to Khrushchev, except for an occasional word with Mikoyan, one of his deputies, I didn' ; t talk to anybody else. And so Brezhnev was there, and I didn' ; t e--wasn' ; t even aware of who he was. He didn' ; t peep once during this whole conversation, but he watched it very, very closely and was fascinated by it, as I' ; m sure most everybody else was. GANNON: You had done a lot of studying of Khrushchev, and you' ; d talked to Macmillan and Adenauer and Dulles and--and pored over CIA and State Department profiles of him. Do you think he' ; d studied you? Do you think he' ; d done the same? NIXON: Oh, I' ; m rather confident that he had. Not quite the same in one sense, though--he was going, certainly, to do that when he went to see President Eisenhower, and that trip was being laid on right while I was there in Moscow. But I was, after all, one that he knew was not able to negotiate with him. But I think he knew something about my background. He knew that I was a lawyer, for example. He knew that I had grown up in a relatively poor family, although he never liked to admit that I was as poor as he was at--on occasion. And he knew that I had been in the Congress, and he also knew that I had a reputation as being an anti-Communist, because he used to say to me, he said, " ; You know, y--you don' ; t know anything about Communism," ; and so forth, " ; except the fear of it." ; GANNON: " ; The fear of it," ; yes. That' ; s--that' ; s--that was e--uh--an exchange in the first debate, wasn' ; t it? NIXON: That was in the first debate, but when you come to-- GANNON: Didn' ; t you-- NIXON: --the second debate-- GANNON: You told him he mustn' ; t be afraid of ideas. NIXON: Well, no. What I said was something a little different from that. I said, " ; Yes" ; --I sa--I indicated that there should be an exchange of ideas, and I said, " ; After all" ; -- and this is what really set him off--I said, " ; You don' ; t know everything." ; And then he snapped right back, " ; Well, you don' ; t know anything exc--about Communism except the fear of Communism." ; Coming back, though, to the Kitchen Debate, there, after having talked about the relative progress in color television in the first controversy, and then, after having talked about shopkeepers being thieves in the second, when we looked at the model grocery store, and after having talked about washing machines at the earlier part of the so-called Kitchen Debate, we finally got down to what this whole visit was about, as it finally turned out. And that was the relative military strength of the United States and the Soviet Union, a--and it was there that he insisted th--that, as far as their missile strength was concerned, that they were strong. He accused us, the United States, of attempting to use our strength in order to blackmail him and bull--bulldoze him and so forth and so on, and it was s--simply a hammer-and-tongs interchange with regard to the relative military strength of the Soviet Union and the United States. The point that I made, however--and again, I felt it was very important to emphasize this rather than to get into a debate as to who had the most missiles or the most planes or the most submarines--the point I made was that that missed the point, that what really mattered was that we should recognize that both were strong and that that was the basis, then, for negotiation from the basis of equality. But it was very hard to get across to him, because he f--kept repeating that our military people did not accept that proposition, that all they wanted was superiority. GANNON: Did you get the sense--or at what point did you get the sense that this was political dynamite for you, that this confrontation with the leader of the Soviet Union was going to have a tremendous political impact at home, where you were already gearing up for the presidential election in two years? NIXON: No, I didn' ; t have that feeling at the time. Frankly, all I was doing was simply counterpunching. I wasn' ; t going for a knockout. And, under the circumstances, therefore, I didn' ; t have any time to think about whether it' ; s going to have some political effect in the United States. I just wanted to be sure that I properly represented the view of the administration, the views of President Eisenhower, and the position of the American people in this first historic meeting with the leader of the Soviet Union. And also that I did not get engaged in, and I repeat again--to meeting him on his ground, of arguing about who had the most, et cetera, and who threatened the other, but trying to put it over on our ground, that that was beside the point, that we both had to recognize that we were strong, a--and respect each other for that strength, and then negotiate on areas like Berlin, which was then the major subject of confrontation between the two. GANNON: At the dacha on the river, after the boat ride, you came up and saw long tables sat under the trees for luncheon, almost a Chekhovian scene, peaceful, bucolic--and as the luncheon progressed, he--he began an eerie nuclear confrontation. NIXON: Well, before the nuclear confrontation evolved, we should point out that he was the perfect host. He joked with Mikoyan, who was seated beside Mrs. Nixon, and he noted that sh--he was-- Mikoyan was talking to her, and he said, " ; Look, you crafty Armenian, don' ; t you try to monopolize Mrs. Nixon," ; and then he put a--drew his line across the table between Mrs. Nixon and Mikoyan, and he said, " ; Look. This is an iron curtain. Don' ; t you step across it. She belongs to me." ; So I though--thing--was thinking this was going to be a very pleasant meeting, and that, after we finished our lunch--that he and I would probably go to one of the conference rooms in the dacha and have a meeting. But it didn' ; t work out that way. The conversation went on and on. Incidentally, we were well prepared for it, however, or at least I say forti--that we were fortified, because one of the earlier courses was a great delicacy. He described it to me as being frozen Siberian white fish, and he said that it was Stalin' ; s favorite fish because it gave him steel in his backbone. And he took a couple of helpings of it, and I took a couple of helpings at w--as well. I think it helped--it helped us both to survive four hours of conversation which was toe-to-toe all the way. GANNON: Wasn' ; t this--wasn' ; t this fish that--in fact, was raw and had rotted, and that the s--one of the reasons it was supposed to put steel up your backbone was because, if you could stand the smell--that you--you could stand anything? NIXON: I didn' ; t notice the smell particularly. All I noticed is that we loaded it down with onions, and it didn' ; t make any difference how it tasted. GANNON: How do you handle, when you' ; re, say, in the Mid East, and sheep' ; s eye is presented to you as the--the guest of honor? Do you eat it-- NIXON: Eat it. GANNON: --with relish? NIXON: Eat it. That' ; s right. GANNON: Or with onions? NIXON: That' ; s right--eat it with relish. I' ; ve eaten sheep' ; s eyes. In--in China, as a matter of fact, on one occasion I recall having their famous maotai. It was green, and after I had had some of it--this was in one of the provinces--my host, with a delightful look in his eye, said, " ; Well, that had snake' ; s venom in it." ; So-- GANNON: Did it make you meaner? NIXON: No. GANNON: Have you had Rocky Mountain oysters? NIXON: Oh, yes. I' ; ve had that in the United States, in the Ozarks. And, incidentally, they' ; re very good. They--they taste like scallops, really. I mean, they--they' ; re very nice. GANNON: What--what happened during this dacha conversation? NIXON: Well, what happened was that, after we got past some of the amenities at the beginning, he then began to carry on where we had left off in the so-called Kitchen Debate about the relative strength of the United States and the Soviet Union, and I think--well, we went into a number of areas. Insofar as missiles are concerned, he made, to me--what to me was a very, in a way, frightening statement or observation. He said that he favored having--developing missiles and relying on them rather than airplanes. He said the difficulty with airplanes and using pilots to drop bombs is that you have the human factor, and sometimes a pilot might not want to drop an atomic bomb. He says, " ; With missiles, you don' ; t have that human factor. You just fire them. It' ; s very m--much more impersonal." ; Then he went on to say that he had no use for navies whatever. He said, " ; I--in the missile age," ; he said, " ; navies are going to become obsolete." ; He said, " ; Ships will simply be fodder for sharks." ; He always spoke in very colorful terms. The same was true of aircraft. He said, " ; As far as aircraft are concerned, they' ; re going to become irrelevant as well." ; He says, " ; They’ll just be sitting ducks for the missiles that we' ; re going to develop." ; So he talked in pretty frightening t--terms, incidentally, with regard to missile strength and the rest. GANNON: What were your impressions of the Soviet people that you met on this trip? NIXON: You' ; re talking about the leaders? GANNON: No, the--the p--the people-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --themselves, outside of the-- NIXON: Well, I think I have often made the point that, when we talk about Communist leaders and the people who live in the countries that they lead, we must always differentiate. As a matter of fact, you' ; ve got to take the leader and look at him as two pe--as two people. He is a Communist and, in the case of Russia, he is a Russian, and sometimes he acts like a Russian and sometimes like a Communist. You must have in mind always that, when things really count, he' ; s going to be a lot more Communist than he is Russian. GANNON: Were you prepared for the reaction that you got in Poland on your way home? NIXON: No, not at all, and in fact we didn’t expect any kind of reaction at all in Poland, because we had understood before we stopped there that the Polish government had not published the parade route--the motorcade route, I should say--from the airport to the guest house that we were going to stay in, and it was a Sunday. We thought that most of the people, on their one day off a week, would be doing something other than coming out and gawking at a vice-president coming in after a trip to Moscow. And the first indication that I got that it would be a little different there than it had been in Moscow--let me say, parenthetically, that when we got out of Moscow on that trip, we found that in Leningrad and in Novosibirsk in the heart of Siberia, and also in Sverdlovsk --we found a great outpouring of warmth from the Russian people, as distinguished from the leaders themselves. In any event, the first indication that I got that it was going to be different in Poland was when the honor guard, the Polish honor guard, were loaded on a fatbeg--flatbed truck, and, as we were leaving the airport to drive into the city, I saw the honor guard personnel--some of them were clapping, and some of them were holding up the " ; V" ; sign, like that. And I just thought, as I went by them, that they wouldn’t be very reliable troops in the event that there was a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. And then, once we got into the streets, something hit the side of the car, and I thought it might have been a stone or something of that sort, because it had been in Caracas just a year before, but it was a bouquet of roses, and then flowers began to pelt the motorcade all the way in. There was a quarter of a million people there, totally spontaneous. Those who observe it, and I agree--while it was not the biggest crowd we have been welcomed by, it was certainly the most emotional that I have ever seen, and one that moved us beyond belief. GANNON: Were the Polish leaders embarrassed by it? NIXON: Oh, yes. I think they were very embarrassed, and somewhat surprised, because they didn' ; t want--not because, I think, really, they would have minded having their people welcome an American in that way, but also primarily because they didn' ; t want to irritate the Russians, because what had happened is Khrushchev had just been in Poland about a few weeks before that, and they had tried to put on a big welcome for him, and it was very amusing that, when members of the press asked the people that had thrown flowers into the cars--asked them about it, they said that--" ; This time we bought our own flowers." ; The other time, when Khrushchev came in, the state had bought the flowers for them and told them to throw them into the cars, and some of them didn' ; t even throw them in then. It' ; s the old story, too--you can really tell about the difference between crowds. I remember in 1974, when we went into Cairo. There was a huge crowd, over a million people on the way from the airport and to the guesthouse, and they were cheering and chanting and smiling and laughing, and Sadat said to me, he says, " ; They are cheering for you. They' ; re cheering for the United States." ; He says, " ; You know, we can always get out a crowd, but you can' ; t make them smile." ; And so it was in Poland. This was a smiling crowd, but not all smiling. I would say hundreds of them had tears running down their cheeks, because they were simply moved with joy that an American was there. There' ; s a strong feeling among the Polish people about Americans generally, probably because so many of their relatives live in the United States. GANNON: What do you think you represented to them? NIXON: Hope. Hope that they might have an opportunity someday not to have a Soviet-controlled or subsidized government imposed upon themselves, a--and also respect and affection. They--the United States to them is a nation that offers freedom, hope--it' ; s what they would like their own country to be. GANNON: When Khrushchev made his visit to the United States the next year, I think he made it clear on several occasions that you were not one of his very favorite people. NIXON: Oh, yes. He took every opportunity to embarrass me, as the case might be. Right from the time we met in the White House in the Oval Office with the--President Eisenhower, he said to President Eisenhower that, while he didn' ; t have any question about President Eisenhower' ; s desire for peace, he did have a question about my desire for peace. He didn' ; t say that specifically, but he said, " ; Some of the people around you--we don' ; t have that same confidence," ; and he glared at me in the process. The same was true in--when we went up to Camp David. We got up there, and we were meeting with President Eisenhower in Aspen, which is the presidential cottage there, and Khrushchev was very belligerent as long as I was present because he felt that I had not been friendly in speeches that I had made to the American Legion and the VFW two weeks before he arrived there, because I had referred to my own visit to the Soviet Union and so forth. What he missed, the point he missed, was that in those speeches I had urged those organizations, both of which were going to pass resolutions condemning his visit--I had urged them to give him a friendly welcome. But he just overlooked that and considered to me--to be beyond the pale in that respect, and, consequently, President Eisenhower very properly suggested that I not participate in the meetings thereafter, but it was just the--more of the same then. He was just as tough with Eisenhower as he was with me. The famous Eisenhower smile and so f--didn' ; t work, which was no surprise to Eisenhower. He was a pretty realistic fellow. Incidentally, we had one amusing anecdote in that respect. We were having luncheon, and I was trying to, you know, lighten things up a bit after a very heavy conversation had occurred previously, and I asked Khrushchev, I said, " ; Where do you go on your vacations?" ; He says, " ; I like to go to the Crimea," ; and President Eisenhower said, " ; Well, I always liked to go down to Georgia, like to play golf," ; and so forth. He says, " ; The only problem, though, is that when I go on vacation I am always interrupted by the telephone." ; Translation was made, and Khrushchev took umbrage about that. He says, " ; Well, we have telephones in the Soviet Union, too. We don' ; t have as many as you do, but we' ; re going to have more. We' ; ll pass you in that way, too." ; So, you see, every opportunity--he had this inferiority complex, and he was determined to show that the Soviet Union, while behind now, was going to prevail in the end and pass the United States, as he put it. GANNON: What was Eisenhower' ; s impression of this rather spontaneous and belligerent man? NIXON: Well, his im--impression was that of a realist, I would say. He had to listen to those--and there were some of his advisors who felt that maybe, just maybe--that he could reassure Khrushchev and dispel some of the doubts that Khrushchev had about the U--United States thr--being a threat to him. But Eisenhower saw through it very soon. After the Camp David meeting, and they were unable to get any kind of a statement out--well, the statement they got out later was referred to as " ; the Spirit of Camp David," ; which was a nothing thing. They couldn' ; t agree on anything. Eisenhower, frankly, gave up on him. GANNON: Rather than dispelling his doubts about whether we might have been a threat to him, wouldn' ; t it have been better to reinforce those concerns? NIXON: Oh, let me make it very clear. I think, after Eisenhower had gone the extra mile in making it clear that we s--were seeking peaceful resolution in Berlin and other issues, that Eisenhower, by that cold manner of his, which he makes very apparent at times, left no doubt in Khrushchev' ; s mind that Eisenhower was not one that could be pushed around. But I would say the main thing that impressed Khrushchev was sending him around the United States, because he was enormously impressed, I am sure, by the thousands and thousands of cars that he saw in parking lots, by the b--the houses that he saw, et cetera. By the--he came back convinced that the United States was not a paper tiger. And, incidentally, he passed that on to the Chinese, and that may have been one of the reasons for the Sino-Soviet split, although there were others as well. GANNON: How did--in these meetings, how did Eisenhower' ; s cool manner reflect itself? NIXON: Well, more by what he didn' ; t say than what he did say. Eisenhower was not one to engage in a lot of rhetoric with people, but he would just become--when he didn' ; t agree, he' ; d just put on the silent act. He was very-- GANNON: Did it have an effect on Khrushchev? Did he seem to withdraw, or-- NIXON: Khrushchev didn' ; t know what to do with it. He--uh--I was not present at all the meetings, of course. I was only present at the initial ones, but from the--what I had heard later, Eisenhower just felt that he was intransigent, and so he gave up on that--at least--diplomacy course at the present time. GANNON: Is it true that you have the distinction of being the man who introduced Khrushchev to Allan Dulles, the director of the CIA, and J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI? NIXON: Yes. As a matter of fact, that was at a dinner, and they were both invited to it, at the White House--a state dinner. And I remember when I introduced him to Hoover, he immediately perked up, and he says, " ; I think we know some of the same people." ; I think the reason he said that was that Hoover, of course, is well known--had always told the Congress that he had people planted within the Soviet KGB--a double agent. GANNON: Did he, do you think? NIXON: Oh, y--no question about it. Well, as a matter of fact, Hoover used to tell me that, both before the presidential years and even before that, that they had a man, a s--a--a double agent, who used to bring a hundred thousand dollars a year to the Communist Party in the United States. That was his job to bring it. He was the bag man. Now, on the other hand, that man might have been a double agent the other way, too. So who knows what. But I think it was a very astute comment on Khrushchev' ; s part. " ; We know some of the same people, so don' ; t trust anybody." ; GANNON: Was there--was there u--unified support behind the trip? Was John Foster Dulles, for example, in favor of Khrushchev' ; s coming here? NIXON: Well, Dulles by that time was no longer living, of course. The decision with regard to his coming here was made later. Dulles did support my going there, because he had been present at a meeting I had had at the F Street Club, the--a fine private club in Washington, where Mikoyan was present, and he felt that I had handled myself rather well in a, quote, " ; debate," ; or discussion, with Mikoyan, a very clever, intelligent, tough-minded second man to Khrushchev. And m--and Dulles gave me excellent advice with regard to handle--how to handle the meetings when I got to Khrushchev. He was the one who said over and over again, he said, " ; I could not agree more with those," ; because all sorts of columns were written when it was announced I was going to go to Russia--that if I could only reassure them--reassure the Russians that we were for peace and dispel some of their fears that they were being encircled and the rest, that that would be--that would serve the cause of peace. And Dulles--it was he who said, " ; Don' ; t ever believe that." ; He said, " ; They" ; --he said, " ; We don' ; t have to convince them we' ; re for peace. They know that." ; GANNON: Khrushchev later said that he had done everything he could to defeat you in the race for president in 1960. What do you think he meant by that? NIXON: I think one of the things he meant, apparently, was that he did not release some American crewmen, a flight crew that had come down in the Soviet Union when they got off course, and under the circumstances that might have had some effect. I mean, had he released them before the election, that could have helped. I think another point that wa--he was perhaps making was that, after the U-2 incident--that he did not go forward with the plans to have Eisenhower visit the Soviet Union. I think, incidentally, that that was a great loss. I think Eisenhower would have had a great ef--impact in the Soviet Union, and I think the reason that Khrushchev had it knocked over--my bis--visit had been quite effective--I think he feared having Eisenhower come to the Soviet Union for the impact that Eisenhower would have on the Russian people. And so I think the--also Khrushchev felt that his conduct when he was in this country, conduct indicating that he couldn' ; t get along with me, might frighten American people to voting against me, because of the fear that I couldn' ; t get along with Khrushchev. I remember Mrs. Herter, the wife of s--who--who succeeded Dulles, Secretary Chris Herter, a former congressman--that she said to me on one occasion--this is before the election--that she, in talking to many of her friends, had heard over and over again the concern expressed that, because Khrushchev and I didn' ; t get along, that we might not be able to make progress toward peace. And, of course, that missed the point altogether. Getting along with Khrushchev does not mean being belligerent, whether it' ; s with him or any other Russian leader, but it does mean being strong. War is going to come, or defeat without war, which is the greater likelihood, not because we are strong but because we are weak and because we give the impression to the Soviet leaders that they can make gains without some cost to them. It' ; s only when they become determined that the cost of war is going to be far greater than anything they could gain that we will have any meaningful negotiations to reduce its danger. GANNON: If you had to lay odds on the likelihood of a major great-power war, say, in the next twenty years, what would you--what odds would you choose? NIXON: I don' ; t think there' ; s going to be a war. I wouldn' ; t want to bet on such a thing, because it' ; s--I don' ; t want to lose that bet, or win it, for that matter. I don' ; t think there' ; s going to be a major war for a number of reasons. First, because taking the Soviet leaders at their most aggressive worst, whatever that may be--they are not fools. They are not madmen. A--an Andropov is not a Hitler, just as Brezhnev was not and Khrushchev was not. So, I think, under the circumstances, we' ; re going to find that they have some incentive to avoid war. They want to conquer the world. They want Communism to dominate the world, but not a world of destroyed cities a--and of dead bodies. So they want to win without war. That is what they' ; re trying to do, and that is the great danger that we confront. Now, having said that I do not believe there will be a war, there are two conditions. One, that the United States continue to develop the military strength across the board that will deter Soviet military action. And second, and this is even more critical, in the peripheral areas--I' ; m referring to the Mid East, to Latin America and to Southeast Asia, as distinguished from Europe, where I think-- there will not be a major Soviet offensive there--in those peripheral areas, to find ways in which the United States and the Soviet Union can negotiate about their differences there, having in mind the fact that we' ; re never going to agree. All we can ever agree upon with the Soviet is how can we be adversaries without allur--lowing our adversarial relationship to escalate into war. And that is possible. GANNON: You say that Khrushchev and Brezhnev and Andropov are not crazed like Hitler was. Are they less evil than he was? NIXON: In the sense that certainly what we--what we would call Hitler' ; s mania with regard to the Holocaust that was visited upon the Jewish population not only of the so--of Germany but the rest of Europe--you do not have that mania in the Soviet Union, although they are anti-Semitic. Most of the Russian leaders that I have met, deep down, are anti-Semitic. As far as repression is concerned, I do not think that the Soviet Union is--has been any less repressive that Hitler' ; s Germany was. Millions have been killed by Stalin. In later years, however, not as much. So, consequently, it' ; s changed to that extent. GANNON: How would the Soviet leaders you' ; ve met and dealt with indicate or demonstrate their anti-Semitism? NIXON: Oh, just by a comment here and there, but not so much by what they did demonstrate but by--wait a minute. Why don' ; t you repeat that question, because I don' ; t think that makes the point. Make it again. GANNON: How did the Soviet leaders that you' ; ve met indicate or express or demonstrate their anti-Semitism? NIXON: Nothing in what they said, but really in what they did. In terms of their attitude toward Jewish emigration, they--they simply set up barriers which were almost impossible to overcome, and I would say that as far as the progress we made during the period of so-called détente, that there we' ; d had considerable success, but only because we convinced them that it was in their interest to lower the barriers which allowed Jews to emigrate so that they could accomplish progress on other fronts. I just used to make privately, and--in every meeting I had with them in ' ; 72, ' ; 73, and ' ; 74, I would emphasize the point that their intransigence on Jewish emigration had a very detrimental effect on my ability to get support for progress in other areas that had to do with détente. And that had its effect, because when we came into office, for example, in 1969, the year before only six hundred Jews were allowed to emigrate. In 1973, it got up to thirty thousand. In 1974, of course, it went down again because the Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which openly conditioned Jewish emigration on Soviet conduct. And that was a mistake. GANNON: You were under tremendous domestic political pressure to raise that issue. Considered objectively, do you think that the issue of Jewish emigration was important enough to have used it to sort of pull in your détente chips on that issue? NIXON: I was interested in results. I wasn' ; t interested in making a big political ploy out of the fact that I was hammering on the table in my meetings with Brezhnev and demanding that Jews be allowed to emigrate. I knew that doing that would have a counterproductive effect, and it has had a counterproductive effect. It did have whenever that kind of practice was followed. I knew the best way to get them to cooperate would be to do it privately, very, very firmly, but making it clear that it was in their interest, because of their concern about progress on other issues, to be more liberal insofar as emigration was concerned. I was never able to get that across to most of the people in the American Jewish community, unfortunately, and never got much credit for what we were able to accomplish, because sometimes, I' ; m afraid, people would prefer to have the issue rather than progress in doing--in resolving the issue. GANNON: If it weren' ; t for the domestic political pressure, would you have raised it? Would you have considered it--with Brezhnev? Would you have considered it objectively an important enough issue to have taken a lot of time and to have demanded or required or made it a condition for other concessions-- NIXON: Well, lets-- GANNON: --or other arrangements? NIXON: Let' ; s--let' ; s make it very clear, I never made it a condition. I didn’t believe it should be a condition. It was an internal matter within the Soviet Union. However, I did feel that, under the circumstances, it was important, from a very personal standpoint, knowing the situation there, from a moral standpoint, to make progress on it. And I thought it was in the interest of the Soviet Union itself to make progress on that issue. GANNON: Getting back to the 1960 election, you say that your ability to get along with Khrushchev really had nothing to do with your ability to--to lead the--the country, or the w--the two countries, to war or peace. But that would have been a very potent political issue, the idea that Khrushchev had spread the word through his actions or through his words that he couldn' ; t get along with you, that therefore you would be a risky leader. Was that used against you in the campaign? Was that an issue, or did the Kennedy forces spread that word? Mrs. Herter was on your side, but if it reached that level, it must have reached the other side. NIXON: No, as a matter of fact, when Khrushchev told Kennedy that he, in effect--had supported Kennedy in the campaign and voted for him and so forth and so on, I think he really meant what he had said, that he did favor Kennedy over me, because he had taken my measure, and he was convinced that, while I might turn out to be reasonable, I would be very, very hard to push over. He would never have tried with me what he did to Kennedy at Vienna, you know, where--when Kennedy met with him in their first, and, as a matter of fact, their only summit. He would never have been able to do that with me. But, be that as it may, I do not think it had a detrimental effect as far as that very close campaign in 1960 was concerned. It might have had the contrary effect, because when Kennedy raised the issue that the United States--that President Eisenhower ought to consider apologizing to Khrushchev for the U-2 incident, I was able to nail him on that issue, and he had to with--back down from it. No, the American people in 1960 weren' ; t that dovish. They wanted a strong president. As a matter of fact, ironically, Kennedy gained not from being more dovish than I did, but from appearing to be more hawkish on the issue of Cuba, because in our last debate, as some will recall, he m--a--advocated that the United States should support the forces of liberation inside and outside of Cuba, and I had to take the position, which was against what I really believed, that the United States shouldn' ; t do that, because I knew we were already doing it. It was a covert CIA operation, which later ended up in the disaster of the Bay of Pigs, because it wasn' ; t carried out the way that Eisenhower had laid it down. And I think that that very issue--any--any one of a number of issues could make a difference of--of the twelve-thousand-votes shift that would have determined a different president in 1960, but that very issue certainly disconcerted some of my strong anti-Communist supporters, when they thought that I was softer on Castro than Kennedy, and it was just the other way around. GANNON: What happened when Kennedy and Khrushchev met in Vienna? NIXON: I was, of course, not privy to the conversations, but I did read a report by James Reston on it, and Reston said that Khrushchev was--was brutal, belligerent, as he had been in this picture that we saw here, and that it shook Kennedy. Now, Reston was a supporter of President Kennedy, and I don' ; t mean that Kennedy was frightened, but I do mean that it caused him considerable concern, and, under the circumstances, he had to regain and recoup in some way, and that may have been one of the reasons why the Cuban confrontation became absolutely essential. He couldn' ; t leave an impression, after that meeting kin--in Vienna, that Khrushchev could bully him. GANNON: The--it' ; s--it' ; s widely believed that Khrushchev took away the impression from that meeting that Kennedy was, in fact, not a strong leader, and that that--that did lead him to--to probe and to test further. NIXON: To put the missiles into Cuba. GANNON: If you had been president in 1961, he would have had prior experience with you and would have known that you were not that way. Does it follow that there wouldn' ; t have been a Cuban missile crisis? Does it also follow, from what you' ; ve said, that there would have been a Bay of Pigs, but it would have been successful, because you would have gone--carried it out as it was f--originally planned? NIXON: Well, of course, I' ; m not the best witness on that. Certainly the Bay of Pigs would have been carried out very differently. Once we committed the United States, we would certainly not have allowed that particular venture to fail, particularly when it' ; s right next door. There was no excuse. It wasn' ; t many, many miles away. It was right next door, and we had the capability within the area through air support and so forth to make that succeed. And once we had taken that step--and Eisenhower had that same view. He said he would never have approved an operation of that sort without air support. As far as the Cuban confrontation is concerned, my guess is that Khrushchev would have been quite unlikely to have tried to sneak missiles into Cuba if he felt that he had to deal with me. And, incidentally, after that confrontation, Kennedy' ; s hand was strengthened with Khrushchev. Let me say, in that respect, too, when you look at the difference between Khrushchev and Brezhnev, my guess is that Brezhnev would not have put missiles into Cuba. K--Khrushchev was a--a greater gambler. He was more emotional--he--then--and--more emotional and more of a risk-taker than Brezhnev. Brezhnev was more cautious. That would be my guess, just in retrospect. GANNON: Why did Kennedy, who was not--not weak in terms of his perception of the Communist threat and was a military man himself and was not im--averse to the application of force--why did he let the Bay of Pigs fail? NIXON: Bad advice. I think that if he had followed his own instincts, he would never have let it fail. But he caught a lot of hell from his more liberal advisors. They were divided on it, Adlai Stevenson and some of the rest, and so, under the circumstances, Kennedy felt that--well, once it became known that it was an American-supported initiative--that we mustn' ; t go too far. And that, of course, is a great, great mistake. I remember Churchill wrote in his volume on the First World War--multi-volume work on the First World War--he said that a commander in war can either follow a policy of audacity or one of caution, but he cannot find--he--he must not follow one that tries to be both. And in this case, the audacious policy was the only one that could succeed there. And by mixing it with the policy of restraint, it failed on both sides. GANNON: You had known Kennedy for numbers of years. Was it characteristic of him to vacillate and--and take indeci--or to be indecisive and to--t--t--to sort of mix conflicting advice and come out with a-- NIXON: No, not characteristic at all. GANNON: Why did he do-- NIXON: I think it was--I think it was-- GANNON: --it, then, on the most important issue-- NIXON: It wasn' ; t characteristic. It would have been characteristic, for example, of Adlai Stevenson. Adlai Stevenson, basically, was a Hamlet-like person. He--he--he always commiserated about and talked about and--all these decisions, the difficult decisions he had to make, and so forth. He--he was very thoughtful, but it was very hard for him to decide anything. Eisenhower was a decisive man. He made great decisions, not in--not off the top of his head and not impetuously, but, after consideration, he decided something, and it was done. Kennedy was also decisive, but Kennedy in those early years sat on what I would say--a somewhat schizophrenic group of advisors. Some were hawkish, so to speak--those who supported, for example, what he said in his inaugural speech to the effect--" ; We will fight anyplace, anywhere in defense of freedom," ; and so forth, and when he went to Berlin--" ; We are all Berliners," ; and so forth and so on. Now, these were very strong statements, in fact, statements that put the United States on the line, perhaps in areas that we would not be able to--even to support--we didn' ; t have the ability to do so, but they were made. On the other hand, he had advisors who felt that this was the time to have a more conciliatory attitude toward the Soviet Union, and Kennedy in those early period--in that early period, I think, ran into that problem. And President Johnson had the same problem. Some of Kennedy' ; s more dovish advisors stayed on with Johnson, and Johnson, as a result, reaped the detriments of both worlds by failing to have a policy that was aggressive enough and strong enough to bring the war in Vietnam to a successful conclusion earlier. GANNON: Did you try to get to President Kennedy either with advice about how to deal with Khrushchev based on your experience or to urge him to follow through on the Bay of Pigs plan as it had originally been conceived? NIXON: Well, I saw him right after the Bay of Pigs, and he asked what would--what would h--I recommend, and I said, " ; Well, I would go in now." ; I said--I said, " ; I would find some reason to go in--for example, perhaps something that--th--th--that the--that Castro is doing to our base there in Cuba or something of that sort, but find some reason to go in." ; But I said, " ; I would certainly try to find a way to go in now." ; And Kennedy said he had thought of that, but that some of his advisors had urged him not to do so because they thought that Khrushchev was in a very, very cocky mood at the moment and that, if we did something in Cuba, he might do something in Berlin. Now, the point about all that, where I think his advisors were wrong, is that Khrushchev was not a madman either. He was one that would take risks. He was bold, but, on the other hand, he at that time knew that the United States had a preemptive first-strike capability against the Soviet Union. Despite all of his huffing and puffing about his missiles, we had at least a fifteen-to-one advantage in the Kennedy years, and we were looking down their throat. He wouldn' ; t about--have gone into Berlin or anyplace else knowing that the United States could knock out his nuclear capability with a preemptive strike. And so I think that those that were s--were frightened or fearful of what Khrushchev would do simply missed the mark. He was going to talk big, but when it came to action, he would never have called Kennedy' ; s hand--not in Berlin and certainly not in Cuba. GANNON: There' ; s a fascinating short film of you taken in the Oval Office with Kennedy when you went to visit him at the time of the Bay of Pigs. How--what kind of spirits did you find him in? Was he--was he up, or was he depressed? Was he worried? NIXON: Well, he was worried, of course, im--as he--as--expectedly. He was--and, of course, he was looking at some of the things that had gone wrong, and he was really taking off at his advisors, and I w--didn' ; t blame him a bit. He thought that he' ; d gotten bad advice from the military, he' ; d gotten bad advice from the CIA, and everybody else. But Allan Dulles, you know, when he saw me the day of the Bay of Pigs, in fact, the day before I saw Kennedy in the Oval Office--he took the r--responsibility, as--and the blame, as any big man would. He said, " ; I almost told the president." ; And I [sic] said, " ; I will never forgive myself for not doing it. I almost told him that if he makes this decision to go in, it must not fail. But I didn' ; t do so." ; GANNON: Do you believe that he didn' ; t, in fact, tell him? NIXON: Oh, yes. Yeah. I think he did not tell him. No, because there was no question--Allan Dulles was in a very emotional state at that time. I remember he came to the door. He was coming there to brief me because I was going to take a trip later, abroad. And I asked him if he' ; d like a drink, and I said, " ; I certainly need one." ; I didn' ; t know at that time it had failed, and I said, " ; Well, what has happened?" ; And I [sic] said, " ; This is the blackest day in my life. The whole operation has failed. We have lost everything." ; He did make the point, too--he said, " ; Now, Kennedy was very courageous in overruling some of his dovish advisors and going in in the first place." ; And then he, Allan Dulles, took the responsibility. He says, " ; I didn' ; t tell him that it must not fail, and I should' ; ve." ; GANNON: How would things have been different if the Bay of Pigs invasion had succeeded? NIXON: Well, it' ; s rather iffy to even speculate about such a question. Certainly it would have meant that we wouldn' ; t have the problems we have today in Central America. After all, it isn' ; t what Castro' ; s done to Cuba. It' ; s the fact of what Castro has done outside of Cuba. Cuba is a Soviet base in the Americas, and so he is exporting his revolution and making trouble in Central America and other n--countries. And also Castro is a willing proxy puppet of the Soviet Union. Why are Cuban trip--troops in Angola? Why are they in Ethiopia? Why are they in other countries in Africa? Who' ; s paying for it? The Russians. And if you didn' ; t have Castro there--he is the best puppet the Soviet have got. If you didn' ; t have him there, the world would be very different. GANNON: It' ; s--it' ; s still hard to figure out why Kennedy, who was a strong and decisive man and who knew that his presidency, the early reputation of his presidency, was on the line, allowed himself, after the thing began to clearly fail, to be pulled back and forth still by these schizo--by the schizophrenia of his advisors, especially when you consider that someone like Stevenson--according to a number of the memoirs and records of the time, he had great contempt for Stevenson' ; s Hamlet-like qualities and had put him off in the UN so that he would be harmless there. Why did Kennedy have what appears to be a failure of will or decisiveness on this most crucial, vital hemispheric issue? NIXON: Well, I--I can' ; t say why, but I--I think that is the best explanation. I--I know that his failure to act there was not because he himself was not a decisive person. He' ; s a strong, tough fellow. There was no question about that. He was tough in his campaigning. His war record would indicate that, certainly, a--and I don' ; t think there' ; s any question that, if he had followed his own intuitions, it would have turned out very differently. But he didn' ; t do so. GANNON: Did he pay attention to his presidency? Is it possible that this issue just sort of crept up on him? As a lot of people claim that he never really focused initially--again, was torn by his advisors on Vietnam, and it wasn' ; t until what turned out to be shortly before his death, after the Diem coup, that he really began to focus on Vietnam, and a--a number of the Kennedy supporters say that he would have been very decisive in getting out of it. He would have--when he had focused on it, he would have seen that it was a bad thing, and he would have got out. Is it arguable that he just wasn' ; t concentrating on the Bay of Pigs until it was too late? NIXON: I suppose it' ; s arguable, but-- GANNON: Was that characteristic-- NIXON: I' ; m not an ex-- GANNON: --of him? NIXON: I wouldn' ; t think it would be characteristic, and I would not go along with those who try to say that, if Kennedy had only understood what Vietnam was all about, he wouldn' ; t have gone in or wouldn' ; t have got out--or he would have gotten out. He was a world thinker. I know that from knowing him long before he was president. He didn' ; t think in small terms, in parochial terms. He knew how important Vietnam was and that our failing there could have massive effects on other parts of the world. He knew that the war in Vietnam wasn' ; t about Vietnam, but it was about Southeast Asia generally, and about our relations with the rest of Asia, and I just don' ; t believe that his--that those who are trying to say that he was misled on--and he was misled and thereby misled the country into supporting the Vietnamese government, sending the first sixteen thousand combat troops there. I--I don' ; t go along with that at all. GANNON: Did Kennedy ever talk to you about Stevenson? NIXON: No. No. GANNON: One of the diplomatic hot potatoes that was thrown you in the--at the end of the Eisenhower administration was meeting Castro when he came to Washington. What were your impressions of him? What kind of a person, man, did you find him to be? NIXON: Charismatic, intelligent, strong, and also one who had a total lack of understanding of how the--how an economy works, one who, I wrote afterwards in a report to President Eisenhower, who was either a Communist or totally naïve about Communism. And I quickly reached the conclusion it was the first. GANNON: What made you reach that conclusion? NIXON: What he did, his conduct in Cuba, his failing to go forward with regard to elections, his actions against those who had opposed him, the show trials, everything that he did. In other words, there was no question about where he stood. GANNON: Wasn' ; t there a lot of anti-Castroism, though, before that became clear in America? A lot of people didn' ; t want to meet him when he came pres--at that time--a lot of political leaders, including the president. And you were sort of sent to feel him out and get--get an impression. Do you think that, if he had been treated differently, if he' ; d been accorded more honor and respect and his revolution praised instead of condemned or ignored, that he might have, if not become an ally, at least become a neutral? NIXON: Well. we hear that sort of nonsense about Nicaragua, that if only we had treated the new government, the Sandinistas, properly, that they would not have been tilting toward the Soviet Union and so forth and so on and not have been Communists. We hear the same thing with regard to the Soviet Union after World War II, that if only we had been more tolerant and not made them fearful of us, that then they would have come along and helped us build a new era of peace and prosperity and communication in Europe. And on Castro--that if only we had treated him properly--the same with Allende and Cuba--that we could have weaned him away from the Communist support. And that isn' ; t the real world, because when you look at Castro' ; s background, how he came to power, and who supported him in that period, there' ; s no question that Castro, in retrospect, was a dedicated Communist operative from the beginning. And there' ; s nothing that we could have done that would have changed that. GANNON: It' ; s been written that you were one of the principal-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE GANNON: --it' ; s been written that you were one of the principal proponents, if not indeed the creator, of the plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs during the last year of the Eisenhower administration. Is that true? NIXON: No. I was pretty busy at that time developing my campaign for 1960. There' ; s no question that I supported the idea, along with Allan Dulles and others in the administration. GANNON: Were you aware of it from an early point? NIXON: I was aware of it from an early point, but as far as how it was to be done, how they were to be trained, how they were to be supported, I was not privy to that. I knew that we did have a program. GANNON: In your presidency, one of the most frustrating things was trying to get from the CIA the report of--the CIA' ; s internal report about the Bay of Pigs. Why did you want to have that? NIXON: Well, I felt it was very important. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0359/bmac
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 12, 1983, part 2.
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Frank Gannon
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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United States
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 12, 1983, part 3. gannix_0360 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|8(13)|19(16)|50(6)|76(16)|88(2)|99(9)|110(14)|124(5)|137(16)|149(4)|171(2)|186(2)|197(12)|214(3)|227(3)|252(17)|268(4)|278(14)|290(8)|304(13)|322(16)|339(7)|352(1)|363(17)|375(16)|388(14)|399(12)|415(3)|429(13)|446(3)|461(1)|475(4)|487(4)|501(4)|512(12)|527(2)|543(1)|556(4)|571(3)|582(15)|613(12)|624(1)|636(14)|651(8)|665(5)|679(3)|695(3)|703(12)|718(16)|731(3)|746(10)|759(11)|772(16)|787(5)|801(3)|819(1) 0 https://youtu.be/kCGxRITfrTY YouTube video English 3 Bay of Pigs Report --from a political standpoint as well as from others as well, due to the fact that it seemed to me, as the campaign was developing, that that might become an issue. Nixon finishes speaking about his request for reports on the Bay of Pigs Invasion for his campaign. Bay of Pigs Invasion ; bombing halt ; campaign ; Lyndon B. Johnson Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 200 Leonid Brezhnev and Nikita Khrushchev Thirteen years after your meeting with Khrushchev in the Kremlin, you were back as president of the United States for a meeting with Khrushchev's successor, Brezhnev. Nixon compares Leonid Brezhnev to the former Secretary of the Communism Party, Nikita Khrushchev. 613 Negotiations with the Soviet Union The--this first summit produced two major agreements, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Agreement and the-- Nixon recalls negotiating treaties during the first summit with the Soviet Union and discusses the tactics used by Brezhnev in these negotiations. 1002 Moscow Visit / Wiretapping Another trip to a dacha was planned as part of the summit activities. Nixon compares his visit to a dacha and the Moscow River with Brezhnev to the same trip with Khrushchev. He also talks about wiretapping during diplomatic visits. 1319 Talks about Vietnam At the--in your meetings with Khrushchev at the dacha, he gave you that--that eerie nuclear workover over luncheon. Nixon recounts the discussion about Vietnam he had during the Soviet Union summit with Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Podgorny. 1895 Madman Theory / Dinner at the American Embassy What do you think they thought of you? Nixon speaks about the Soviet Union officials' negotiation techniques and his own application of the " ; Madman Theory." ; He also talks about serving Baked Alaska to Brezhnev during a dinner at the American embassy. 2177 Visiting Kiev From Moscow, you went on to Kiev. Nixon relates visiting Kiev from Moscow and considers the differences between Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union. 2411 Alexei Kosygin What--what was Kosygin like? Nixon describes Alexei Kosygin and shares a story about Kosygin swimming with Fidel Castro. 2619 Accomplishments of First Summit with the Soviet Union At the summit in 1972, did Brezhnev say anything about the Chinese? Nixon discusses the lack of conversation about China during the summit, Soviet interest in the presidential elections, and the major accomplishments of the first summit. 2965 Leonid Brezhnev's Visit to the United States The second S--U.S.-Soviet summit was held in the United States. Nixon recalls Brezhnev's arrival and travels in the United States for the second summit with the Soviet Union. Camp David ; foreign relations ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Mayor Sam Yorty ; Nikita Khrushchev ; summit Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906-1982 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Yorty, Sam, 1909-1998 3119 Summit II Negotiations Wasn't--your position in Summit II was considerably different from in the first s--s--from what it was in the first summit. Nixon relates discussions about China during the second summit with the Soviet Union. He also describes riding around Camp David in a car given to Brezhnev. arms control ; Cadillac ; Camp David ; China ; Chrysler ; foreign relations ; Jewish emigration ; John Dean ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Lincoln ; Mao Zedong ; nuclear development ; nuclear weapons ; Secret Service ; Soviet Union ; summit ; Watergate Brezhnev, Leonid Ili'ch, 1906-1982 ; Dean, John W. (John Wesley), 1938- ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 Interview NIXON: --to have that-- --from a political standpoint as well as from others as well, due to the fact that it seemed to me, as the campaign was developing, that that might become an issue. What--what I' ; m--what I' ; m referring to is that, as I saw the Bay of Pigs--the--the Bay of P--the--well--start again. I felt it was important, that with all the attacks we were going to be un-- be subjected to during the campaign, that we have a report as to what happened in the Bay of Pigs, and the other report that I wanted was on the bombing halt that was negotiated--ed by President Johnson and the terms of that bombing halt. I felt we had to have all the facts with regard to how those particular events were developed. GANNON: I think we' ; ve come to the end of our hour. Little digression there. NIXON: Yeah, I wondered. GANNON: Well, we' ; ll see. GANNON: --got the film of you with Castro, so we' ; ll use that in the " ; leader" ; section. NIXON: Yeah. And we want to cover the Bay of Pigs for the sixties se-- NIXON: But then, tomorrow, then we' ; ll come around to--in view of all that, what-- GANNON: The alert, and the-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --actu--the--the war itself. NIXON: ' ; Cause--but then you have ' ; 74 summit, where he poli--where he--he said that he didn' ; t do it, didn' ; t support the Israelis. He had tried to c--restrain them, and all that sort of thing. Do you want to get that in today, or not? GANNON: [Sighs.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Uh, Frank? NIXON: Well, we' ; ll see. GANNON: Let' ; s see. NIXON: See how it goes. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Uh, Frank? NIXON: ' ; Cause that was in the-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Have we started a new subject that would require a wide shot, or should we just come up to you on the tight shot [unintelligible]? NIXON: [Coughs ; clears throat.] GANNON: Let' ; s, uh--no, just a tight shot. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, we' ; ll come up camera one. Stand by. NIXON: All right, here we go. [Clears throat.] Two-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Five-- NIXON: Two-twelve. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Three-- GANNON: Thirteen years after your meeting with Khrushchev in the Kremlin, you were back as president of the United States for a meeting with Khrushchev' ; s successor, Brezhnev. What were your impressions of Leonid Brezhnev as you walked into his office? NIXON: Well, naturally, I was thinking, perhaps, of how he differed from Khrushchev, because it was exactly the same office and the same table there, bare, no particular paintings or anything on the wall, nothing distinctive at all about it. But the men were quite different. Uh-- GANNON: How did they differ? NIXON: Well, first, let me say how they did not differ, because that' ; s just as important. They were both dedicated Communists. They were both ruthless. They were both very tough. As I have often pointed out, in Communist countries, the weak never get to the top. Sometime you may elect, in--in a free country, a weak person, but in that jungle it' ; s dog-eat-dog, and only the fittest survive at the top. And so it was with Brezhnev. He was a tough, ruthless leader, just as was Khrushchev before him. There were differences, however. As I talked to Brezhnev, I found that, while he was intelligent, he was not nearly as quick as Khrushchev. He was not nearly as unpredictable, although at times he could be pretty tricky as well. But he was a little more obvious about it than Khrushchev. He didn' ; t have Khrushchev' ; s scintillating sense of humor. He had a sense of humor, but Khrushchev could just move from one thing to another very fast. He dropped off proverbs practically every two or three minutes. He always had colorful phrases, which Brezhnev seldom had. I remember whenever Khrushchev in our talks would say this or that or the other thing wouldn' ; t be agreed to by the Soviet Union and it wasn' ; t going to happen, he said, " ; That isn' ; t going to happen un--until a shrimp learns to whistle," ; or " ; until you can s--see your ears without a mirror." ; You didn' ; t hear Brezhnev talking that way. He--his humor was a--a little more obvious. I would say one other thing about the--the Khrushchev-Brezhnev differences--that while Khrushchev would at times be somewhat even vulgar, Brezhnev was crude at times, but not to the point of Khrushchev, not in an embarrassing way. He was just earthy, like Lyndon Johnson. I never thought of Lyndon Johnson as being a vulgar man. He never was, but he was an earthy man. And Brezhnev was very much like Johnson in that respect, and like him in another respect--very physical. He was a grabber. He' ; d always grab you when he wanted to make a point, either by the knee or by the arm. Incidentally, speaking of Johnson' ; s tendency to do that, I recall President Eisenhower having a go with Jerry Persons, who succeeded Sherman Adams as chief of staff. Persons told me about this later. And he said that Johnson--President Eisenhower had agreed to see the then-majority leader of the Senate, Johnson. Johnson was coming into the Oval Office, and Eisenhower wasn' ; t feeling too well that day, and he said, " ; Well, I' ; ll agree to see him, Jerry, but on one condition. You stand between him and me at the desk, because I don' ; t want him to grab my arm. My bursitis is kicking up." ; And he would have had to say that with Brezhnev, because Brezhnev was a grabber as well. All in all, another point I should make is that I think Brezhnev was more cautious than Khrushchev. Khrushchev was more imaginative, more creative, as a matter of fact, in a way, a more interesting person, but in a way also, in the short term, more dangerous. Maybe not in the long term. Brezhnev probably was just as dangerous, because he was more cautious. But in the short term, Khrushchev could be counted upon to do something risky, something impulsive, like, for example, putting missiles into Cuba. I do not think that Brezhnev would have done that. That' ; s the difference between the two and what they would do. GANNON: What--do you have an example of the difference between earthiness and crudity? NIXON: Well, as far as the--as Khrushchev' ; s conversation was concerned, I have already indicated the confrontation we had when I first went into the office and we--we compared the different kinds of manure, horse and pig, for that matter. I--I would--I don' ; t think you--you would have seen Brezhnev do that. GANNON: The first night in Moscow they gave a very grand banquet for you in the Kremlin. Do you remember that night? NIXON: Oh, very well. I had just met with Brezhnev in his office, and it had been a pretty testy go, although not nearly as testy as was the case with Khrushchev thirteen years earlier. Brezhnev was very respectable. And, incidentally, this brings me to another fundamental point between--the difference between not only the men but their times. Khrushchev had a definite inferiority complex, because his country was weaker. He knew that. By the time we met with Brezhnev, that inferiority was gone. He didn' ; t have to constantly huff and puff and brag in a bellicose way, as Khrushchev had. And that made for a much better, more, I would say, forthcoming discussion than would have been otherwise, although they--it was pretty tough at times. Well, we went into this beautiful room. It' ; s in the Kremlin, a--and we have to remember the Kremlin was the religious center of the czarist Russia as well as the political center. In fact, it was primarily the religious center. And I recall we were sitting at this beautiful table, Khruschev obvi--Brezhnev obvious, uh--Brezhnev opposite me, and behind him was a magnificent mural, a fifteenth-century mural, of Christ and the apostles at the Last Supper, and Brezhnev noticed me looking at it, and he said, he said, " ; You know, that was the Politburo of those times." ; And I looked at it, and I said, " ; Well, y--that would seem to indicate that you, the general secretary, and the pope have a great deal in common." ; And he laughed. He usually responded to humor very well. Incidentally, I was almost t--tempted to ask him who was the Judas of the day, but I thought better of it and didn' ; t. GANNON: He might have responded by asking you how many battalions the pope had. [Unintelligible.] NIXON: [Laughing.] That' ; s right. GANNON: The--this first summit produced two major agreements, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Agreement and the-- NIXON: Offensive. GANNON: --the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty, the SALT Treaty. You have said that a leader shouldn' ; t go to a summit unless he knows exactly what' ; s going to come out of it. How much did you know these agreements were going to come out of the summit, or--or how much negotiation actually was left to do face-to-face between you and Brezhnev? NIXON: Well, first, I should point out that we had negotiated at a distance through our representatives long before that, and I knew what was going on every bit of the way. Henry Kissinger conducted those no--negotiations with great skill and great brilliance and great tenacity, and, of course, he had gone to the Soviet Union and met for four days with Brezhnev, nailing down some of the final agreements. So the negotiations had taken place, but not face-to-face. When we got face-to-face, we assumed, or I assumed, that all we would do would be pretty much to put our signatures on the final product, which had already been prepared. But there were a few loose ends left to work out. Well, for example, with regard to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Soviet Union had an ABM system around Moscow, and we, of course, were just building one, or starting to build one as a result of winning, by only one vote in the Senate, an ABM system for the United States that we were going to put around some of our Minutemen sites. GANNON: What is an ABM system? NIXON: An ABM I--means an anti-ballistic missiles that will shoot down incoming missiles, and they wanted to protect Moscow, which is their command center from which they order strikes from--around the whole world. In any event, the critical question there was how close or how far away the missiles should be--the ABM system, sh--I should say--should be from Moscow. And it had been a point of contention, because we wanted it as far away from Moscow as possible. We wanted--but they wanted it closer in. And so, under the circumstances, then, as we were talking, Brezhnev said to me, " ; Well, I--it is our understanding that what we have agreed to is that these missiles be two" ; --these ABM, our ABM system--" ; be twelve hundred kilometers from Moscow." ; And I knew that wasn' ; t right. And I said, " ; Fifteen hundred." ; He said, " ; No. I thought it was twelve hundred." ; And I said, " ; Fifteen hundred." ; And he said, " ; All right, it' ; s twelve hundred" ; --" ; All right, it' ; s fifteen hundred." ; No, I' ; m sorry. Let' ; s start again. He said, " ; It' ; s our understanding that we are to put our ABM system twelve hundred miles from Moscow," ; and I said, " ; No. That' ; s not correct. What I understand we' ; ve agreed to is fifteen hundred miles." ; " ; But why fifteen hundred miles? Do you want us to put it in the Urals?" ; And I said, " ; No. It' ; s my understanding--fifteen hundred miles." ; And then he just dropped it like that. Okay, fifteen hundred is all right. And I remember Henry Kissinger passed me a little note. He said this whole summit was worth that one interchange. In any event, Brezhnev was trying, of course, to slip a fast one by us, but thanks to Kissinger' ; s good preparation and my being well--b--being briefed fairly well on it, we were able to say no. We hardlined it, and he took the fifteen hundred. GANNON: There was another-- NIXON: And then there was another interplay, incidentally, with regard to the offensive weapons. You understand, the ABM Treaty, the defensive weapons, was one part of it. That became a treaty, and that was permanent. And, on the other hand, the offensive limitation was a temporary one. It was to be for five years. That was what I had understood would be the agreement that the Russians had worked out with Kissinger at the second level. And when--when I--when we--when we came to that discussion, Brezhnev, all of a sudden, said, " ; Why don' ; t we make it ten years?" ; And Kissinger immediately stepped into the conversation. He said, " ; Look," ; he said, " ; we only agreed to five years. We both did, because you only wanted eighteen months, and now we have five years." ; The reason, incidentally, we didn' ; t want to go to ten years was that we couldn' ; t be in a position of--of b--in effect, freezing ourselves into any position that would be inferior to the Russians. In five years, we had to determine whether we were going to get control on their offensive weapons, which were moving up much faster than ours. GANNON: Aren' ; t we inferior to them now? NIXON: In land-based missiles, yes. Not overall. Overall, we' ; re ahead on the sea, we' ; re ahead in the air, but the land-based are the most--are the heaviest, they' ; re the most accurate, they' ; re the most decisive. They' ; re--they' ; re frankly the--the key to any nuclear strategy. GANNON: Why did they-- NIXON: They' ; re the only ones that have a first-strike capability. GANNON: Why did they adopt this kind of negotiating tactics, because, if something had been agreed on beforehand, and in a--in a negotiation the difference between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred were--were transposed, couldn' ; t you come back and say, even if you had agreed to something unexpectedly--couldn' ; t you come back and say that, in all the negotiations beforehand, that this was simply a mis--a misspeaking? Or does the president have the power to actually make an irreversible commitment in a negotiation like that one-on-one? NIXON: Oh, certainly, the president has the power, without any question. GANNON: Could you not come back-- NIXON: And so-- GANNON: --and say-- NIXON: And so--and so did he have the power. I think the reason they did that was that they were simply testing me. They were trying to see how much--how badly I wanted a deal. They had probably tried it out on K--on Kissinger earlier, and he said, " ; Well, no, I can' ; t, because I cannot without consulting the president." ; He was always very good at s--doing that, and so they had--they made a run at me, basically, and appealed to the highest court, and when they found that I took exactly the same line, they backed down. They probe everyplace they can, and, as Lenin used to say--he said, " ; Probe with bayonets." ; He said, " ; If you find mush, proceed. If you find steel, withdraw." ; And in this case, they found steel, so they withdrew. GANNON: Another trip to a dacha was planned as part of the summit activities. Was it the same one that Khrushchev had taken you to? NIXON: Exactly the same one--the same river, everything. We went at a different time of day, however. I--we had just finished a very long day of negotiations, and we were scheduled to go out there a little later that night for dinner. And as we finished our discussions, Brezhnev grabbed me by the arm as we went into the elevator, and he says, " ; Look," ; he says, " ; I want you to see the Moscow countryside in the daytime," ; because he n--knew, of course, that we had gone out the previous time to spend the night. And so we got into his limousine. The Secret Service were practically petrified, because they weren' ; t with us, and we took off at about a one-hundred-kilometer-a-mile clip down the middle of the Moscow roads, with all of the people, of course--b--the other people in the private cars off to the side. And we went out to the dacha. When we got there, I--he showed me around, as I, of course, recalled exactly how it looked before. And it was very interesting. And they had me stay, incidentally, in the same bedroom. It' ; s an--it' ; s an interesting thing. The Chinese and the Russians are very different, but they tend to go with the same ploy with regard to physical arrangements. For example, in 1972 I stayed in a fine guesthouse in Peking. When I came back in 1976--they had me in exactly the same guest house when Mrs. Nixon and I came back. In this case, we went there in 1972, and we had exactly the same dacha that we had had th--thirteen years before, and the same was true, incidentally, with regard to our Kremlin suite, the magnificent Kremlin suite which Brezhnev had shown me as we came in 1972, the one that was made available to us then--exactly the same one right down to the caviar and the cucumbers on the dining room table that we had in 1972. It was there in 1974. GANNON: Were the hidden microphones the same? NIXON: Well, as far as the microphones are concerned, we always assumed that they were there, and, incidentally, we assumed that they were in China. I had a practice in that time, in ' ; 72, ' ; 73, ' ; 74, of dictating into my Sony dictator my recollections at the end of a day. In order to do that, I turned on what we call a scrambler, and it makes a lot of noise and so forth which scrambles it so that the microphones, which are usually, we assume, up in the ceiling, or perhaps in the phone or something like that, couldn' ; t pick it up. Consequently, when my secretary, years later, had to transcribe some of that, it was a little difficult to hear it because of the scrambler. If you have any doubt about it, however, one of the White House secretaries who was on that trip told me of a very amusing incident thereafter. She just happened to casually, as she went in one day for lunch and saw all the cucumbers and the other fine things that they served around there, said, " ; You know, gee, I' ; d--really wish I could get an apple." ; And about ten minutes later, in walked a maid very innocuously and put a whole basket of apples right on the table for her. GANNON: Wasn' ; t there--wasn' ; t there a story about Kissinger wanting to get Xeroxed copies of something? NIXON: Yes. Well, this was Kissinger' ; s meeting with Gromyko, and he told me about this later with great glee, because Henry has a very good sense of humor. He' ; s a very serious negotiator, but he' ; s got a sharp sense of humor, and he uses it effectively. And he said he and Gromyko were talking, and Gromyko, when he saw this piece of paper that they were discussing that Henry had brought along, he said he' ; d like to have copies. And so Henry took the piece of paper and held it up to the chandelier and said, " ; Six copies, please." ; GANNON: At this first Moscow summit as president, just as Khrushchev had taken you out on the Moscow River for a dr--a boat ride, didn' ; t Brezhnev do the same thing? NIXON: Yes. In this case, he--he took me, however, in a hydrofoil. That was the new kind of boat that they had, and--and he was very, very proud of it. He--he--he kept pointing to the thermometer-sorry. He kept--he was very proud of it. He kept pointing to the speedometer, which would show us going at around sixty to seventy-five kilometers an hour, which would mean about forty--forty knots, which was real fast. You know, it gets up above the water and just sails right along. I was glad there were no sunken logs rising to the surface at that point. And, uh-- GANNON: Were there any swimmers that time? NIXON: This time, no ploy like that, because there had been no discussion of captive peoples. Oh, we had one little in--interesting interchange. I recall I asked him about the Moscow River, because I had remembered the swimmers from before, and I said did he ever swim there. He says, " ; Oh, no!" ; He says, " ; I prefer to swim down on the Black Sea. The water is much warmer. Here' ; s i--it' ; s much colder. They get you right here," ; and he pointed to his groun--groin. [Both laugh.] He pointed to his groin. GANNON: At the--in your meetings with Khrushchev at the dacha, he gave you that--that eerie nuclear workover over luncheon. Were you treated any better by Brezhnev and his comrades in 1972? NIXON: Only in the sense that we were treated very, very toughly, but privately. You see, the--the Khrushchev treatment was rather interesting because the wives were there--Mrs. Nixon and Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Brezhnev and so forth and so on. And they sat there as spectators, eyes agog and so forth and so on, as anybody would. In this case, however, we were going up to dinner. The dinner was--was to be held later, and this--we--we were preparing to go up to dinner, and what happened was that, before dinner, Brezhnev suggested that we should have a little talk. So we went into a room, and here I was confronted, on the other side of the table, with Brezhnev, Kosygin, and Podgorny, Podgorny being the president of the Soviet Union, at least insofar as his title was concerned. And Kissinger, of course, was on our side, and one of his associates. And then for three-and-a-half hours they just pummeled me on Vietnam. One would talk, and then another would talk, and another would take up the cudgels, and when either Brezhnev or Podgorny was--had the floor, Brezhnev--no, sorry. When either--when either--let me start again. One would talk, and then the other, and so forth. I' ; ll take that sequence again. They just pummeled me with arguments. First one would talk, and then another would talk, and then another one, and sometimes all of them talked at once. It just reminded me of the scrambler back in the--we had back in the hotel room, or, I should say, in the room at the Kremlin, our apartment there. And--and on occasion, when Podgorny had the floor or when Kosygin had the floor, Brezhnev would get up and pace the floor. That was something he usually--he did quite often. He' ; d get up and pace the floor, like Douglas MacArthur used to pace the floor on occasion when he got very, you know, involved in a subject. As a matter of fact, Brezhnev used to tell Kissinger on occasion, he said, " ; Every time I get up--stand up, I make another concession." ; That was a slight overstatement, incidentally, but he made good use of it. But the whole thrust of it was to take me on there on the issue of Vietnam. See, you have to lay the groundwork there. We went to Moscow three weeks after bombing and mining the Hanoi-Haiphong complex, and we thought, when that decision was made, that there was a very good chance that we would never go at all. In fact, right after the decision was made, Henry said there was only a 10 percent chance that they would not call off the summit. The next day he raised it to twenty, and the following day to thirty, and then we were all, frankly, relieved and somewhat surprised that they finally raised no objection at all, and we went. But, in any event, here they were getting in their licks on Vietnam. And one point that was made during the course of the conversation, I remember--it was Podgorny, who is the nominal president of the Soviet Union--was saying, " ; We--we don’t understand, and international opinion does not understand how you could possibly support an unelected leader of South Vietnam." ; And I said, " ; Who elected the leader of North Vietnam?" ; He said, " ; All the people." ; I says, " ; Go ahead." ; But the point was made. And then, on another occasion, when Kosygin had taken it up--he' ; s a little bit more subtle than either Brezhnev than Podgorny, certainly the most intelligent overall of the three--but he made the point, he said, " ; In the event that the United States continues to handle the Vietnam issue from a position of so-called strength," ; he said, " ; you must be aware of the fact that the time may come when the North Vietnamese will no longer refuse to ask some of their allies and friends to assist them." ; Well, I knew that had gone too far, and I said, " ; That threat doesn' ; t frighten me a bit, but go ahead and make it." ; And then he backed down. He said, " ; Well, I didn' ; t intend it as a threat. I was simply stating what the facts might be." ; Well, after this had gone on for about an hour, and I was just listening and not reacting, I decided we ought to break the momentum just a little bit, and they were all smoking--I think they were all smoking, at least, and they used to always offer their cigarettes to me, and this time I had come prepared. I had a--a package of something called cigarillos--I don’t happen to smoke cigarettes--cigarillos with me. I don' ; t smoke them either, but I pulled them out--they looked like cigarettes, cigar tobacco--and offered them around. Well, that stopped the conversation, because they didn' ; t want them. They liked their own cigarettes, and so they thanked me profusely and didn' ; t take them, but at least it broke the momentum of the conversation. But then they took it up again. GANNON: What--was there any result? NIXON: Well, the result was that I finally answered, and that ended the meeting. And the answer was very tough. I said, " ; Now, look. You' ; ve talked about the fact that the United States is responsible for deaths in Vietnam and that sort of thing. You' ; ve talked about your standing by your allies. Let me say, we' ; re going to stand by ours, but let' ; s understand one thing." ; I said, " ; A great American general, General Sherman, once said that war is hell." ; And I said, " ; Nobody knows better than you, the people of the Soviet Union, that war is hell after what you went through in World War I and World War II. But let me tell you the hell that you have been responsible for in South Vietnam. Twenty thousand civilians have already been killed since that offensive was launched on May the eighth--twenty thousand civilians killed primarily by guns and tanks furnished by the Soviet Union." ; I said, " ; Now we' ; re not going to tolerate that. Let' ; s understand that right at the beginning." ; Then we went up to have dinner. That stopped the conversation. GANNON: Well, the dinner must have been uncomfortable. NIXON: On the contrary. It' ; s just like Khrushchev--they were like--he was like Khrushchev in this way. They--they move from a period of confrontation and negotiation to one of belligerence to total Russian hospitality. They--they had the very finest, as you can imagine, caviar and all the other fine Russian dishes, wines, and so forth. We joked a little about Kissinger being there. Kissinger, incidentally, is--is--does not drink. Well, he just barely tastes it. Like any good diplomat, he knows that isn' ; t very smart. And so I made my usual joke. " ; Well, let' ; s be sure that we give Henry plenty of vodka so that--and Gromyko plenty as well, so that they can work out the negotiations," ; and they' ; d all laugh at that. Uh--the--uh--go ahead. GANNON: Is that where--is that where you had the discussion about the relative merits-- NIXON: Uh-huh. GANNON: --of different kinds of dictation techniques? NIXON: Well, there was a lot of conversation at the dinner. Just to give you an idea of the--the temper and so forth and so on, I--on--on rather personal habits and so forth--and I asked Brezhnev about whether he used the Dictaphone. Now, as a matter of fact, the reason I asked him was that I was hoping I might be able to give him one a--as--as a minor state gift. We had already agreed to give him another luxury car for his collection of luxury automobiles. He says, " ; Oh, no, no, no." ; He says, " ; I--I never want to use a Dictaphone machine." ; He said--he said, " ; I don' ; t like to dictate into an impersonal machine," ; and then, with a little sort of a wink, he said, " ; I' ; d much rather dictate to a pretty girl." ; And he said, " ; You know, when you wake up in the middle of the night and want to make a note, it' ; s always very useful to have somebody there in the room to give it to." ; GANNON: What do you think they expected to accomplish from this triple-teaming of you on the subject of Vietnam? Do--they must have known that you were not going to cave under that kind of pressure. What do you think they wanted to say or achieve? NIXON: Well, first, they were making a record. They were making a record for themselves and among themselves, each proving that he was tough. They were making a record, and this would, of course, they knew, get back to their hierarchy, for their hierarchy that they were standing by their ally. They were making a record also for the North Vietnamese. I think that was the main purpose. I do not think that they had any illusions that they were going to change me, because they--after what I had done, ordering three weeks before the summit, knowing it would risk the summit, the bombing and mining of Haiphong, I think they were totally aware that no matter--no rhetoric, warm or soft, was going to change me. GANNON: What do you think they thought of you? NIXON: I think they--whether they like or disliked is irrelevant. That' ; s, again, one of the problems we have in dealing with the Soviets. We are so obsessed, we Americans, with the idea, " ; Does he like me? Am I handling myself in a way that will give him a warmer feeling toward me?" ; And all that is--is nonsense in dealing with these people. These people are total materialists. It isn' ; t whether they like you or not. It' ; s whether they respect you. And I don' ; t mean by that you go out and spit in their eye and swear at them and embarrass them and the rest, but in the final analysis, their decisions will be made coldly and objectively depending upon whether they respect their adversaries. They' ; ll push you as far as they can, but no further. And I think they felt that I couldn' ; t be pushed around, but also I think they respected the fact that, after our long negotiations leading up to the first summit, negotiations on Berlin, which were successful, negotiations where we got them to take their missiles, or their missile submarine base, out of Cuba and Cienfuegos, negotiations that kept them out of intervening in the war g--between Syria and Jordan on the side of Syria in 1970, and negotiations which got them to participate with us in bringing a ceasefire between India and Pakistan--I think, in view of that background, they thought, " ; Well, he is strong and tough, but reasonable." ; And so, having recognized that they weren' ; t going to get something for nothing, they recognized that they had to give something in order to get something, and that was the basis for what I think were very successful negotiations, right for us and right for them as properly implemented. GANNON: H. R. Haldeman has written about talking to you about what you both called the " ; Madman Theory," ; which you applied vis-à-vis the North Vietnamese particularly--that you as a--an inveterate anti-Communist couldn' ; t be depended upon not to do something extreme if provoked and therefore that was supposed to get them to--to give concessions at the negotiations. Was that applied vis-à-vis the Soviets? Did they think that with your finger on the button you just might do something? NIXON: Well, apa--apart from what Bob Haldeman has said, certainly that was Henry Kissinger' ; s view. Kissinger felt that it was very important, not, of course, to think like a madman, but on occasion to leave the impression to a potential adversary that you might engage in very tough action and always to give that impression, and, above all, never to indicate--and Eisenhower used to say this--don' ; t ever indicate to your potential adversary what you won' ; t do. Don' ; t say, " ; Look. I' ; m not going to put in forces. I' ; m not going to do this. You can count on me to do this and that and the other thing." ; Leave them always a little uncertain that, if they push you too far, you' ; re willing to take great risks. And my May eighth decision, my bombing in December--the bombing in December of--after the elections of 1972--while those were very difficult decisions politically. they were effective in bringing the war to Vietnam to an end, but also they were effective in establishing credibility with the Russians and any other nation that might want to test us in the international area. GANNON: Did you make any special arrangements for the dinner you gave for Brezhnev at the American embassy? NIXON: Not particularly special. I didn' ; t think it was particularly special, because, you know, we had a--a usual dinner--oh, we flew in beef from Kansas City, as I recall, and we had some California wines and that sort of thing, the usual thing, just as we had in China. We were making very sure we did exactly the same things we did for the Russians that we' ; d done for the Chinese. But when the dessert came around, it was one of my favorites--it was Baked Alaska. And Brezhnev brightened up, and he says, " ; Oh, the Americans are really miracle workers. They’ve learned how to set ice cream on fire." ; Now, I just wondered if, probably, they don' ; t make Baked Alaska, too, because they use a lot of flaming dishes. But it was a nice compliment, in any event, and our chef, Delacruz, was just overwhelmed by it. GANNON: From Moscow, you went on to Kiev. What--what were your impressions of--of Kiev like? NIXON: Well, Kiev, of course, is in the Ukraine, and the Ukrainians have always had a history of not--not being pro-Russian. As a matter of fact, when the German armies moved into the Ukraine in--shortly after the invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, the Ukrainians welked--welcomed them with flowers and open arms and so forth, and only because of the repression, which was very stupid--the viciousness, in many cases, of the Nazi soldiers, did they turn against the Germans, because they wanted to be liberated from the Russians--the Communists, particularly. But in the Ukraine--I must say, Kiev was very different from Moscow. In Moscow, as we drove through the streets--there were crowds, but they were kept three blocks away, and it w--a--and the crowds were very unresponsive. They--they seemed to be fearful to come close at all. But every time you get away from r--the center of the Soviet Union--the political center, Moscow--i--it' ; s a lot more free, to use that term in the broadest sense, in Leningrad, in Siberia, and certainly in the Ukraine. I remember there--I remember on one of the streets we went through there were balconied apartments, and people w--women and children and so forth were leaning on the balconies, waving their handkerchiefs and scarves and that sort of thing. There was really an emotional welcome. GANNON: Wasn' ; t there a point when you wondered whether you were ever going to get out of Moscow? NIXON: Well, that' ; s a--that, of course, was--perhaps the most memorable part of the visit to the Ukraine was just getting there. We went out to the airport. Brezhnev did not go on that trip, because he was the general secretary, but only the political leaders were going. So Kosygin and Podgorny, the president, were accompanying me. And we got into the plane, and we were waiting for the takeoff, and there was a little bit of a wait, and Kissinger and Haldeman and I were sitting going over schedules, and, all of a sudden, back into our compartment walked Kosygin, with Brezhnev, with the most woebegone-looking Soviet general, beribboned and so forth, I' ; ve ever seen. He was the ch--ch--chief of Soviet civil aviation, as I learned later. And Kosygin said to me, or Podgorny said to me, he says, " ; I' ; m sorry, Mr. President, but we' ; ve got some engine trouble," ; and this--they introduced the general to me, and they said, " ; What do you want us to do to him?" ; And I said, " ; Promote him." ; And they said, " ; What?" ; And I said, " ; Promote him." ; I said, " ; Promote him for finding the trouble on the ground rather than waiting until we got into the air." ; Incidentally, we' ; d had a similar situation, now that you mention it, with Khrushchev. When we went on that Moscow boat trip that we saw a film of here earlier, we were going down the river, and the pilot of the boat ran into a sandbar. And Khrushchev was furious. He gave that poor devil a look that I know must have practically frozen him. And he--he' ; s probably out digging salt in Siberia, if he' ; s even living today. But, in any event, I tried to play it down by pointing up something that had happened to me just a month before. I said, " ; Well, Mr. Chairman, don' ; t be concerned about that." ; I said, " ; This can happen." ; I said, " ; I have a very good friend" ; --that happened to be s--Bebe Rebozo--" ; who' ; s a very good boatman, and he ran into a sandbar down in the Keys of Florida just recently. So it can happen to anybody." ; Khrushchev didn' ; t smile one bit. He just made a snarly look at this other fellow. But, in any event, we saved the life of the general, and probably his promotion on that plane. GANNON: What--what was Kosygin like? NIXON: Kosygin--very intellectual. He--he--he was not crude at all. Highly sophisticated, one who also understood business very well. He was the businessman of the group. He understood economics extremely well. I think Macmillan once told me that Kosygin was one who could be the chairman of a--of a--of a major-- GANNON: I.C.I.? NIXON: Uh--what' ; s that? GANNON: I think he s--didn' ; t he say I.C.I.? NIXON: Yes. GANNON: Imper--Chemical Industries. NIXON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Pick up-- GANNON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Pick up there. [unintelligible] NIXON: I--I think--I think--I think it was Macmillan who once told me that--he said Kosygin could be the chairman of one of their big chemical industry complexes or something of that sort. He is a--he was a very cold fish in that respect. And also I sensed that he, deep down, was at times, even more Russian than Communist, although a dedicated Communist. I remember I sat with him-- between him and Podgorny, as a matter of fact--when they took us to the Bolshoi, and we saw Swan Lake, and I was remarking to him what a beautiful building the Bol--Bolshoi was. And I found that this is one thing, incidentally, we totally agreed on. He compared it to the Canadian center where he had seen some ballet when he had visited Canada, a great modern building--modern like the Kennedy senator [" ; Kennedy Center." ; ] and also like the--uh--uh-- NIXON AND GANNON: [In unison]--Lincoln Center-- NIXON: --here in New York. And he said he much preferred the Bolshoi to it, and he also remarked that, as far as the--the--Swan Lake was concerned, which he had seen many times, and I had as well, that the section he liked the best was the Dance of the Four Swans in the second act. But this little byplay doesn' ; t tell us any more than that he liked ballet, as I did, and Tchaikovsky, as I did, but also that he didn' ; t like modern architecture and I didn' ; t, either. So we had some agreement. GANNON: Didn' ; t he tell you there a story about his meeting with Castro? NIXON: No, the meeting with Castro--he didn' ; t tell that. He did tell that story, but not there. That occurred, as a matter of fact, on the flight to Kiev, on the airplane. It was a fascinating story, I thought. He had seen Castro in 1967--no,wait a minute--yes. he had seen Castro, he said, in 1967, so it must have been then, and he--they had gone swimming in Havana in--at the great Varadero beach, which is a long, long, great beach, one of the great beaches of the world, where you have to go out a long, long way before the water gets over your head. And he said he and Castro walked out through the waves--waded out until finally they were able to float and the water was over their heads. And Castro remarked to him, he says, " ; Well," ; he says, " ; we are now in international waters." ; And Kosygin replied, " ; That' ; s okay." ; He said, " ; I know Johnson, and he' ; s not going to do anything against me." ; GANNON: At the summit in 1972, did Brezhnev say anything about the Chinese? And did he bring up your--did he refer to your trip to China, which had been just three or four months earlier? NIXON: Minimally. Not particularly surprisingly, however. He--it was in 1973 when he hit the hardest on the China initiative, but that' ; s another story that we may get to when we get to that particular summit. But in 1972 he said very little. For example, he did mention it in that very testy meeting that we had at the dacha, when he said that--he made the point that what we were trying to do in terms of our offensive, in--in terms of our supporting the Vietnamese, was to--of course, to embarrass them on their China policy--embarrass--I mean, embarrass--well, forget that. GANNON: Did--do you think--although Brezhnev didn' ; t mention China, do you think it was ever not on his mind for a minute? NIXON: Oh, absolutely. The reason he didn' ; t mention it was it was on his mind very much, but he wasn' ; t about to show any concern about it, having in mind the fact that we had just been to China in February. The--the only one passing comment, which was a theme that Khrushchev had used thirteen years before, and which Brezhnev used again in ' ; 73 and again in ' ; 74, was a comment to the effect, just in passing, that " ; we Europeans," ; as he put it, referring to us as Europeans as well, and the Russians Europeans--we Europeans are very different than the Chinese, the Asiatics. GANNON: Did he make any references to the upcoming presidential elections or to Senator McGovern? NIXON: No, not with regard to McGovern, but he made several references with regard to his hope that I would be reelected. He toasted my reelection. There was no question, first, that he believed I was going to be reelected. They follow the American polls closer than we do, and through Ambassador Dobrynin, who is perhaps the ablest ambassador who' ; s been in Washington for the last twenty-five years, they get a very good rundown on what' ; s happening in American politics. Let me say again--I don' ; t mean that when he toasted me as the next president and--and he hoped that I would be reelected and all that sort of thing--I don' ; t mean that he was doing it out of any sentiment. He didn' ; t do that because he liked me. He was saying that because he thought objectively that I was probably going to win and that he was going to have to deal with me, and, consequently, recognizing what he could do nothing about, he was going to make the best of it. GANNON: In their--in his heart of hearts, do you think he would have preferred McGovern, or is there any truth to the--or validity to the theory that they--that the Soviets prefer a dependable, conservative anti-Communist president to--President Carter presumably being the case in point--to a more sympathetic but erratic and undependable liberal? NIXON: That' ; s a very close question. I know of both of those theories. I think that at that time, in the year 1972, that Brezhnev did want a dependable president, one who could deliver on whatever deals were made, one that could carry the country with him. I think, on the other hand, there are times when the Soviet would welcome having a president who was naïve, or at least they consider to be naïve, one that they could take liberties with and so forth. The difficulty with the latter, however, is that they know that the American political scene is a volatile one, it' ; s a fast-changing one, and they know that the country may be dovish today and become very hawkish tomorrow. So, I think--I think that, generally speaking, the pragmatic men in the Kremlin prefer leaders in the United States who are strong--not belligerent, but strong--pragmatic, as they are, and also ones that can carry the country with them. At least that' ; s my observation, but it could be wrong. GANNON: What do you feel was the principal accomplishment of the first summit in 1972? NIXON: Well, the major accomplishment, of course, was the arms control agreement that we reached on defensive weapons and limiting--the five-year limitation on offensive weapons. Another accomplishment, too, and it' ; s hard to know how much of a role this played in bringing the war to Vietnam to an end, but at least it helped, was in the last meeting I had with Brezhnev--his agreement to send a major Soviet leader to North Vietnam. I think what happened there was not that the Soviet Union pressed North Vietnam to make a deal. But what happened was that, as a result of our visits to both China in 1972, early, and to Moscow, later in 1972, the North Vietnamese realized that their major supporters had other fish to fry with the United States, and, consequently, they realized they didn' ; t have as strong a support as they' ; d had previously, and that helped bring about the peace agreement in 1973--January. GANNON: The second S--U.S.-Soviet summit was held in the United States. How did--how did Brezhnev take to his first introduction to American life? NIXON: Well, he is a natural politician. He handled himself much better than Khrushchev. Khruschev came over very defensive, with that inferiority complex, although Khrushchev would have been a good American politician, too--perhaps at a different time. On the other hand, Brezhnev was very confident, very self-confident. He loved walking down the lines of people that we had out there at the--on the South Lawn, shaking hands and all that sort of thing. And he--he particularly liked Camp David. I remember that we gave him one of the Camp David jackets just as a memento, and he consisted on ra--wearing it all the time he was there. And after we' ; d gone to San Clemente, he wanted to come back to Camp David for a day or two because he liked it so much, before going back to Moscow. You see, Khrushchev, when he came over, tried to go public. He went to, for example, California, and was embarrassed by Mayor Yorty, and then he went to San Francisco and the rest. Brezhnev wasn' ; t about to make that mistake. That' ; s one of the reasons, I think, he insisted on staying with me in San Clemente and in Camp David. He never got himself in a position where he could be embarrassed. GANNON: Was it true that he wanted to go to Detroit and to Houston, but because of f-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me one second, Frank. Sorry. GANNON: Sorry. GANNON: Is it true that Brezhnev wanted to go to Detroit and to Houston, but, because of the fear of demonstrations against him, th--those visits had to be scrubbed? NIXON: There was some talk of that sort, but I didn' ; t want any untoward incidents to c--to occur, either. So, under the circumstances, I did not press the invitations that he had received in that respect. I think it was best to do exactly what he did. He went away with a very good impression of the U.S., and, like Khrushchev, he was enormously impressed by what he saw on the freeways of California, which I enabled him to see, in part, by having him ride on the other side of the helicopter rather than on the place of honor. GANNON: Wasn' ; t--your position in Summit II was considerably different from in the first s--s--from what it was in the first summit. Politically, you hadn' ; t been able to deliver because of congressional opposition on the Jewish emigration issue, on most-favored-nation treaty status, on some trade agreements, and Watergate at that time was about to--to burst. The Dean testimony was--indeed, the John Dean testimony was delayed for a week for the--for the summit. How much were you inhibited or constrained in your negotiations because of these political factors? NIXON: Those factors did not have any significant effect on those negotiations. Summit II was too early to have any further agreements on arms control. What we did get out of Summit II was an agreement to attempt to reach a settlement by 1974 on offensive weapons, and we had a--a--a general agreement with regard to the prevention of nuclear war, with the set of principles and so forth, which I think had considerable public support. But otherwise I do not think that there was any significant problem there. It was at Summit II--the main recollection I have of that from a substantive standpoint was the fact that Brezhnev made no bones about his concern on the Chinese issue. GANNON: In what circumstances? NIXON: Well, we were meeting at that time in San Clemente, in my office alone, just the two of us, not with a lot of other people around, a significant point to make. I do not think he would have made that point with his other Soviet colleagues even around him. Only his translator was there, Viktor, who, of course, was totally his man. And he--he said that he was convinced that the Chinese were a mortal danger insofar as war was concerned. He pointed out what others had pointed out in the Soviet leadership from time to time--that Mao had once said that they didn' ; t fear war because you could kill three hundred thou--three hundred million Chinese and still have four hundred million left. And he made that point. I then said, " ; Well, how can you really be concerned? I' ; ve been to China." ; I said, " ; Economically, they' ; re very weak, and they' ; re very backward, therefore, industrially, and in terms of their nuclear power." ; I said, " ; It' ; s going to take a long time for them to have the power that you have that would be at all threatening." ; I said, " ; How long do you think it' ; s going to take?" ; And he held up his hands like that. And I thought, " ; Well, he--what' ; s he doing, surrendering, or what?" ; I said--I said, " ; How long?" ; He said--he says, " ; Ten years. In ten years" ; --he was saying this in 1983--" ; they will be equal to us, or almost equal--enough to be a real threat." ; Well, of course, that' ; s not proved to be true, but it did show what he thought at that time. And so he was urging wherever possible that we have a common front to control the Chinese danger and particularly the Chinese nuclear development at this point. Of course, I didn' ; t give an inch on that--give an inch on that particular item. GANNON: Was Brezhnev wearing his Camp David jacket when you gave him his car? NIXON: Oh, yes. Yes. We--that was a pretty sporting event. We gave him, this time, a Lincoln. We' ; d given him a Cadillac, I think--yes it was a Cadillac in Moscow, and I think we gave him a Chrysler the next time around. So he had one--one each of the Big Three. GANNON: Were--you were telling him something? NIXON: [Laughs.] Er, no. So we gave him the--the--this Lincoln he wanted to try. And so I got into the seat with him, and the Secret Service were petrified again, at any--because they don' ; t let a president drive the car or anybody else drive except one of them. But, in any event, we went around a one-lane road which goes around the perimeter of Camp David, and it' ; s a very steep drive, and I' ; ve gone down it in a golf cart. And it--it can be very dicey if the brakes on the golf cart are not particularly up to s--speed. But in this case, he went down that hill about fifty miles an hour, and I was just thinking, " ; My God, if one of the Marines comes aro--up that--up that road the other way, we' ; re going to hit him." ; But fortunately we didn' ; t. He--this--he turned as we went around the corner at the bottom, because it makes a hairpin turn to go back up the hill. The car turned, squeaked around there, and the tires screaming, and then we went up the hill and then finally came to a stop back up, and he' ; s--he' ; s--turned to me, and he smiled, and he says, " ; This car holds the road very well." ; And I was just thinking--it takes something sometimes to be a diplomat. GANNON: What--do you have any recollections-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE GANNON: --of the flight on Air Force One, his impressions of Air Force One--out to San Clemente? NIXON: Well, he loved it. He loved talking to some of the Americans I had aboard--particularly to John Connolly. He and Connolly hit it off well. They' ; re both strong, macho-type men, one a Texan, one a Russian, and so they had a good talk. And he was particularly impressed when I took him to the window to look at the Grand Canyon. I said, " ; You' ; ve probably seen this in movies." ; He says, " ; Oh, yes, yes, I' ; ve seen it many times in Russian movies." ; Then I said, " ; John Wayne," ; and he jumped up out of his seat with a pair of six-shooters--boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. GANNON: When you went from--you landed in California, you--at El Toro Marine Base, you got onto Marine One, the president' ; s helicopter, and went down to San Clemente. You mentioned that you sat him by the window so that he could look out instead of sitting in the place of honor where he couldn' ; t see. What did you want to accomplish by that? Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0360/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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57 minutes
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<a href="http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0360/bmac">http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0360/bmac</a>
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 12, 1983, part 3.
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gannix_0360
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-05-12
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 12, 1983, part 4. gannix_0361 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|18(12)|35(4)|47(6)|59(5)|75(5)|89(14)|104(3)|114(14)|128(7)|138(5)|151(3)|165(13)|187(16)|203(6)|218(2)|235(3)|252(2)|273(11)|289(4)|312(11) 0 https://youtu.be/g2DWiJmFzNM YouTube video English 5 Party for Leonid Brezhnev Well, I wanted him to see the development in this country. Nixon recounts Brezhnev's visit to the United State for Summit II during which he stayed with the Nixon family and attended a party. He also discusses Brezhnev's sense of humor and his and other foreign diplomats' interest in women. Barbara Sinatra ; Camp David ; Frank Sinatra ; Habib Bourguiba ; Harold Macmillan ; Henry Kissinger ; Hollywood ; Indonesia ; Jill St. John ; John F. Kennedy ; La Casa Pacifica ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Nancy Reagan ; National Security Council (NSC) ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Pat Nixon ; Ronald Reagan ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; State Department ; Sukarno ; Tricia Cox ; Tunisia ; White House Bourguiba, Habib, 1903-2000 ; Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906-1982 ; Cox, Patricia Nixon, 1946- ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Kissinger Henry, 1923- ; Macmillan, Harold, 1894-1986 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Reagan, Nancy, 1921- ; Reagan, Ronald ; Sinatra, Barbara ; Sinatra, Frank, 1915-1998 ; St. John, Jill 368 Brezhnev's Personality After the--after this poolside party, you gave a very small dinner for Brezhnev in your dining room. Nixon describes Brezhnev during his visit to the United States, including the differences between the Russian man and the communist politician aspects of his personality. He also talks about Brezhnev's cigarette case and friendship with Chuck Connors. baseball ; China ; Chuck Connors ; cigarette case ; communism ; dacha ; Henry Kissinger ; Israel ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Manolo Sanchez ; Middle East ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Pat Nixon ; Soviet Union ; Viktoria Brezhneva Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906-1982 ; Connors, Chuck, 1921-1992 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 976 Wiretapping Foreign Diplomats If Brezhnev had held up paper to one of the chandeliers at Camp David and said, " ; Can I have eight copies of this?" ; would they have been brought in ten minutes later? Nixon describes the practices of bugging foreign diplomats and embassies, though there was not taping equipment in Camp David, the White House living quarters, and Casa Pacifica. bug ; Camp David ; Casa Pacifica ; CIA ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Henry Kissinger ; John F. Kennedy ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Pentagon Papers ; State Department ; wiretapping Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906-1982 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- Interview NIXON: Well, I wanted him to see the development in this country. I wanted him to see the possibilities that were open to him in the field of economic cooperation. I didn' ; t need--I didn' ; t think he needed to see, if Khrushchev needed to see, that the United States was not a paper tiger--tiger. He knew that. But I wanted him to see the possibilities of us moving together, even though we disagreed totally in philosophy and in the ne--economic area. Unfortunately, due to congressional reaction and so forth, we weren' ; t able to make much progress, that year, at least, and--nor the next, for that matter. GANNON: Why do you think he felt so strongly about staying with you personally at La Casa Pacifica? NIXON: He wanted to avoid an incident. He knew what had happened to Khrushchev. GANNON: Where did he stay? NIXON: Well, he stayed in Tricia' ; s bedroom. It was--it' ; s--it' ; s not a very big room, as a matter of fact, but a very beautifully decorated--in feminine colors and so forth, and this big bear of a man in that girl' ; s dressing room was really something to see. GANNON: You gave a poolside party for him that you have since described as being sort of a Hollywood Who' ; s Who. Do you think he understood the difference between the guest list there and the guest list at the White House? NIXON: Oh, yes. The guest list at the White House was primarily business types and political types and the rest, and he was very impressed by them as well. But at the poolside party--it was a celebrity party, and after all, he loved the Western movies and the Westerns and so forth and so on, and he liked meeting those movie stars. He liked meeting Governor Reagan, for example--I think more because Reagan had been a movie star, although they seemed to have a very good, pleasant conversation when they met there. GANNON: Actually, we have some film of that party, which I think shows Brezhnev talking to the Reagans. GANNON: Do you remember what they talked about? Or what you--do you remember what you said to him there in introducing them? NIXON: There are the Sinatras, I see--Frank Sinatra, and Barbara, his wife. No, I don' ; t really remember. But he--as you may recall, President Reagan mentioned that, in a letter that he wrote to Brezhnev--what he talked to him about--in which he said that Brezhnev had spoken very warmly about his desire to have peace, et cetera. GANNON: Brezhnev was also, as--as a famous photograph attests, much taken with Henry Kissinger' ; s date, Jill St. John. NIXON: Well, yeah, Brezhnev was pretty much of a ladies' ; man. I mean, he--he was always kind of bragging about that. He had a sort of a macho attitude and so forth. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Nixon did not particularly appreciate that aspect of him, and--I mean, not that she' ; s prudish about it, but he--he made one crack at--at an airport, I recall, when we went down the line, and there were a lot of--several pretty girls who were there with flowers and so forth, welcoming us. This was in m--in Russia. And he turned to me with a little wink, and he said, " ; Would you want to take one of these with you?" ; And she didn' ; t apprec--preciate that, and I understand it well. But, as far as Brezhnev is concerned, I remember at Camp David we had a little incident there which indicated that he had pretty good taste insofar as his ladies were concerned. I went over to pick him up--he was staying at one of the guest cottages called Dogwood--to bring him over to dinner, and he--a--a f--a big--I say " ; big" ; --she was a very handsome, full-b--bosomed Russian girl came out, and I shook hands with her. I was introduced to her, and his aide said it was his masseuse. And--and then I happened to put my hand up to my nose, and she was wearing Arpege, which is someone I' ; ve oi--[The preceding phrase is unclear.]--one of my wife' ; s favorite French perfumes, a very expensive one. So he had good taste. GANNON: Do--do your intelligence briefings tell you, or does the gossip that you get from the N.S.C. or the State Department tell you whether a leader with whom you' ; re negotiating plays around with women? NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: Does that--do you take that--is--does that have any practical--other than gossip--interest? Because everybody' ; s interested…. NIXON: No. You--you--you' ; ve got to know what people are interested in. I--I--I don' ; t--I must say--I--I don' ; t go so far as to say that when you know that that you provide consorts for them when they come, although that has been known to happen in some countries. And it has also been known that--that some of the leaders--when they go to these countries, they ask for that. I remember Bourgiba, the president of the country of Tunisia, was speaking about Sukarno, the president of Indonesia, coming to Tunisia and speaking very deprecatingly of him. He said, " ; You know, here is this man coming to my country, and we had a lot of important things to talk about, and you know what--the first thing he said when we met? He wanted un femme," ; a girl. Well--so they furnished a girl. GANNON: There' ; s--there' ; s a story that the usually unflappable Harold Macmillan was flapped when John Kennedy, in one of their meetings, told him that, unless he had sex three times a day, he got a headache. NIXON: Well, he can take Extra Strength Tylenol for that. GANNON: After the--after this poolside party, you gave a very small dinner for Brezhnev in your dining room. What was that like? NIXON: A very emotional affair. At the dinner, now he' ; s a Russian again. When we' ; d met earlier, he was a Communist, speaking about the Chinese. But he was a Russian. I proposed a toast at the end of the dinner, pointing out that this house was relatively small, but it was ours. The dining room seated only ten people, and ins--in short, that I hoped that what we did would help to bring peace for our children, for his children, and for our grandchildren, and for the children of the world. Well, he was very moved by that, and he--he got up out of his chair, and there were--tears were coming down his cheeks, and he gave me a bear hug--had a very responsive toast in which he endorsed that proposition. He wanted to feel, in a way--he wanted to feel that what he did, even though he still had uppermost the idea of extending Communist domination in the world, preferably without war--but he wanted to have the feeling that what he did contributed to a better world for children and grandchildren. A--and so, in that respect, he--he was very much--a--and then after that, after dinner, he wanted to see Mrs. Nixon and me alone. And he took us aside, and he had a little box with him about this big, and he took out a scarf, a beautiful scarf. He said it had been made by artisans in his home village, and he said, " ; Every stitch in this scarf represents affection from the people of Russia for the people of the United States and from Mrs. Brezhnev and me to you and to Mrs. Nixon." ; So, there' ; s the Russian speaking. Now he wasn' ; t giving us that little scarf because he thought that might have an effect in softening me up for negotiations about China and so on and so forth. He was giving it because there was a warmth about the man at times. So, as I say, as Communist, I could not have been more opposed to him. As a Russian--I could not help but like him--as a Russian, as a person. GANNON: Within a couple of hours after this display of Russian sentimentality, weren' ; t you exposed to some of his Communist side in a very direct way? NIXON: Yeah. I' ; d gone to bed, not because I wanted to go, but there was nothing more to do. He excused himself right after dinner. We didn' ; t sit around for coffee or brandy, and he said he' ; d had a very long flight and he wanted to go--and I s--rest, and I said, " ; Well, of course," ; because I knew the flight time had changed and so forth, and--however the case might be, I knew he was tired, or at least he said he was. So I went in, and I was reading in bed, and about ten o' ; clock, Manolo, our help, our--my aide, knocks on the door and said, " ; He wants to talk," ; and so Kissinger--I asked him what it was about, and he says, " ; Who knows about these people?" ; So I got dressed, and Brezhnev said to me, with a sort of apologetic smile, he says, " ; I couldn' ; t sleep," ; and so Brezhnev, Kissinger, and I, along with Gromyko and Dobrynin, all went up to our tiny little library on the second floor at Casa Pacifica. In fact, it' ; s the only area where there is a second floor. And from ten o' ; clock till one o' ; clock in the morning, we went through the same kind of an exercise we had gone through at the dacha in 1972, this time on the Mideast. He was insisting that the United States and the Soviet Union impose a statement of principles on the Israelis and on the Arabs. Now, what he really wanted was to get the Soviet Union into a position of having influence within the--the Mideastern area, and also to, of course--to put Israel into a position where it had to cave with regard to its demands for security before it could make peace. Well, we couldn' ; t agree to anything like that. So it went on and on and on until he finally gave up around one o' ; clock in the morning and said he' ; d have to go back empty-handed. GANNON: Was Brezhnev different away from his colleagues, away from the Kremlin? NIXON: They all have a tendency, and Brezhnev is no exception, to be more forthcoming, not quite as stiff, away from their colleagues. I think before their colleagues they feel they' ; re being watched. They have to put on a show. They' ; ve got to prove that they' ; re very tough. They' ; ve got to show off. Away f--it' ; s--it' ; s like, for example, the same thing with congressmen and senators on television. One of the reasons that I' ; m not for televising sessions of the House and Senate or even of committees is that--that the congressmen and senators have got to show off, a--and showing off, they don' ; t necessarily do what is best for the cause, whatever it may be. They' ; re talking to the audience rather than to the issue. And so it was with Brezhnev. He' ; d be showing off in front of his colleagues--and so it was with Khrushchev--but you get in a private conversation and the hair comes down a g--a bit, they begin to be more forthcoming. I don' ; t mean that they' ; re going to be--make a deal that they wouldn' ; t make publicly, but at least you can talk to them. They will--there' ; s more running room for conversation. So, therefore, whenever possible, I tried to see him--as a matter of fact, any leader of a Communist country, or of another country, for that matter--alone, with a translator if necessary, and nobody else, at least for a time. I find that you usually make more progress in that kind of a meeting than in one where you have a whole bevy of people around you, because we all have a tendency--every leader--to attempt to prove himself, prove his manhood, so to speak, before his associates. GANNON: Did you find that his--his jokiness, his sense of humor, was more unrestrained away from Russia? NIXON: Oh, I think so. No. He wouldn' ; t--he didn' ; t--particularly after sort of the fool Khrushchev made of himself on occasion, he wasn' ; t about to be undignified in the presence of his own people. For example, when he' ; s w--at the White House, we were signing documents and that sort of thing--he spilled some champagne on his--happened to-- GANNON: There' ; s a famous film of that. NIXON: That' ; s right-- GANNON: Yes. NIXON: --on his tie, and he held his handkerchief up in front of the television camera, and he clowned it around a bit. And then, when we were signing the documents, he would look over at me signing, and then he' ; d sign as if he were racing to see who could sign the first, or last, or whatever the case might be. He' ; d never do that in the Soviet Union. Now that, of course, was still in public, but I just think it was different. He was a little bit less constrained. GANNON: Do you feel that his cigarette box held any deep insights into his character? NIXON: [Laughs.] He had a--he had a problem with regard to smoking. He shouldn' ; t have smoked, because he had a cough on occasion, and--and he had other problems, too--health problems, and his doctor had told him not to smoke. So they rationed him on cigarettes, and he very proudly showed me his beautiful cigarette box. Incidentally, that was one of the differences between him and Khrushchev. Khrushchev would never have had a fancy cigarette box, and Khrushchev wore open shirt whenever he could, or--and wouldn' ; t dream of wearing cufflinks. He usually wore the short-sleeved shirts, but Brezhnev and all of his colleagues--by the time we got there in ' ; 72, they all had beautiful gold cufflinks, and, in this case, this cigarette box which he showed me. And it had a timer on it. Every hour it' ; d pop up a cigarette. He was supposed to smoke only eight a day, or nine, or whatever the case might be, however he was up. So he' ; d--his timer--and he' ; d start smoking it. Then he had another package of cigarettes down in here, and in--in about--like another fifteen minutes he' ; d reach in, pull this package out, and smoke it, too. So, in other words, it didn' ; t help much. But I think he considered it a game, in any event. I don' ; t think it had any s--psychohistory meaning, as some of our amateur psychologists would agree. GANNON: If you were, and I know that the last thing you would be is a psychohistorian, how would you psychoanalyze--psychohistoricize Brezhnev in terms of his background and in terms of his--the qualities of his personality and leadership? NIXON: Well, I have so little, frankly, respect for psychohistorians that I don' ; t even think I can comment on that. I saw him for what he was. I--I saw him as a self-assured leader of a very strong people, and one who would take advantage when he could--one, on the other hand, who recognized that he lived in a real world where sometimes it' ; s best to make a deal rather than to, frankly, risk making war. And under the circumstances, that' ; s about the way it seemed. But I--I' ; m not going to get into that psychohistory business. GANNON: Was it his interest in Western movies that led him to his dealings with Chuck Connors, The Rifleman? NIXON: Well, Connors had been--Chuck Connors had been in Russia. In fact, we had sort of worked that out as--in part of our exchange program. And Chuck Connors, who was a former baseball player--he was a fair baseball player before he went into the movies and a great big fellow, and so when he saw Khrushchev--I--I mean, when--where Chuck Connors saw Brezhnev ready to take off in the helicopter--he happened to be out there at the pad--San Clemente--Brezhnev waved to him, and Chuck Connors rushed over to him and just bodily lifted him up in the air, and they laughed. It was--Brezhnev was not a bit embarrassed. GANNON: If Brezhnev had held up paper to one of the chandeliers at Camp David and said, " ; Can I have eight copies of this?" ; would they have been brought in ten minutes later? NIXON: Well, we didn' ; t have any taping equipment at Camp David, and, as a matter of fact, we also did not have television cameras, as far as I know, any time. I mean, the--no administration. There was taping. Johnson taped, and, of course, Eisenhower taped, and Kennedy, and the rest, but the point is that what K--Henry was referring to was something very different. He was referring to a television camera up there in that chandelier, which very possibly they did have, a--and which, incidentally, could tell you a great deal in the event that television cameras were in the bedroom, because they often used them for purposes of blackmail. GANNON: If people know-- NIXON: We--we' ; ve never gotten that sophisticated. GANNON: Or that lucky. [Both laugh.] If--if--since people know that every so often a diplomat is--an American diplomat, is expelled for having been caught en flagrante delicto in such a case, they have to know that they' ; re being set up. How do--how do people get caught in such an obvious way? NIXON: Well, part of it is stupidity, and part of it is--I think I' ; d just leave it to stupidity. I--I can' ; t say that it' ; s all emotion and affection and love--not really. GANNON: Do you think that the--that the State Department or the CIA didn' ; t have Brezhnev bugged in Blair House or at Camp David or even at the Casa Pacifica? NIXON: No. They didn' ; t--no, sir. I wouldn' ; t have allowed it. No, at C-- GANNON: Are you sure you would have known about it? NIXON: Oh, yes. I think so. Oh, maybe not, but I think so. No, Camp David did not have any taping equipment. Neither did Casa Pacifica. Now, in Johnson' ; s period, the ranch was taped. I don' ; t know what the situation was in Kennedy' ; s period. But Camp David, the White House living quarters, Casa Pacifica were never taped. GANNON: Is it not, then, our policy to--to bug foreign leaders who come… here? NIXON: We bug them, but we don' ; t do it here. For example, it' ; s been quite well known that both in this country and in the Soviet Union we attempt to bug each other' ; s embassies, and we attempt to bug a lot of other embassies in this country, and should, because that' ; s expected to be done. As a matter of fact, there' ; s also evidence to the effect that Brezhnev' ; s car was bugged. GANNON: By us. NIXON: By us. That' ; s right. Not here in this country, but in the Soviet Union. A--and one of the reasons that the release of the Pentagon Papers caused great concern in the CIA was that one of the items in the Pentagon Papers could only have come from the fact that we had Brezhnev' ; s car bugged. GANNON: If--if all this bugging is going on all over the world, why do we draw a line at--when--at--at our own shores when they come here, when presumably what we learn could be very useful in terms of the way they' ; re discussing negotiations that are going on? NIXON: Well, I' ; m not the best one to comment on that. [Laughs.] GANNON: I think we have reached a--a point where we should-- NIXON: [unintelligible] GANNON: --just before Summit III, where we should probably-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Don' ; t take your mikes off, gentlemen. Just continue to converse. I need to get a couple of cutaway shots here. GANNON: The--actually, you answered my question, t--because the evidence about the bugging of the car was pre-Nixon--was Johnson. The--the--the Pentagon Papers' ; evidence of-- NIXON: Oh, sure. GANNON: --bugging of Brezhnev' ; s car-- NIXON: Mm-hmm. GANNON: --was under Johnson. NIXON: But that was--that was abroad, though. GANNON: Yeah. In Russia. NIXON: In Russia. Oh, sure. But I hope we still do it. GANNON: Now what about the--between--between you and me, what about the Indian Cabinet Room? NIXON: Oh, that was bugged, of course. Oh, sure, but I' ; m--I' ; m going to put it a different way. I say we just learned--an absolutely unimpeachable source. Then you can press me, and I say, " ; Because we ha--" ; Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0361/bmac
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23 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 12, 1983, part 4.
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gannix_0361
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-05-12
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 13, 1983, part 1. gannix_0365 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|6(15)|18(2)|31(15)|50(7)|69(5)|85(7)|100(2)|119(13)|146(6)|168(6)|182(10)|196(4)|208(5)|235(2)|261(13)|287(18)|302(6)|319(6)|333(13)|347(8)|364(5)|380(16)|392(14)|410(1)|429(14)|444(12)|459(3)|481(2)|490(9)|505(12)|529(13)|545(4)|557(13)|568(9)|581(13)|595(13)|609(6)|633(3)|649(3)|659(3)|678(2)|691(1)|702(3)|713(12)|726(12)|748(2)|759(2)|778(4)|798(8)|812(3)|822(4)|837(5)|849(8)|871(16)|894(4)|913(5) 0 https://youtu.be/NL8LMwNCt2w YouTube video English 48 Visiting Kiev You'd visited many parts of the Soviet Union already, but on--in this summit, you went to Kiev for the first time. Nixon recounts the need to change planes due to technical difficulty while traveling to Kiev and a similar incident during the boat ride on his first trip to Russia. Alexei Kosygin ; Bebe Rebozo ; Kiev ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Nikolai Podgorny ; Soviet Union ; summit ; Ukraine Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Kosygin, Aleksey Nikolayevich, 1904-1980 ; Podgornyĭ, Nikolaĭ, 1903-1983 ; Rebozo, Charles G. (Charles Gregory), 1912-1998 206 Economic Inequality in the Soviet Union The--the interior of Air Force One is like a cross between Star Wars and the presidential suite at the Connaught Hotel. Nixon discusses the luxurious lifestyles of leaders in the Soviet Union and how this sharply contrasts with those of average citizens. 483 Foreign Plumbing Did you have troubles with Soviet plumbing? Nixon recounts difficulties that some visitors had with the plumbing in China and the common problem of staying in rooms that have been recently remodeled and repainted. He also talks about the end to his first day in China. 639 Jackson-Vanik Amendment Moving on to Summit III--you approached Summit III at a considerably more disadvantageous position than any of the others. Nixon describes American political opposition during the third summit with the Soviet Union and discusses the Jackson-Vanik Amendment. 932 Difficulties During Summit III Well, naturally, the Soviet leaders were aware of the fact that I didn't have the support at home that I'd had--had, for example, in 1972 and even in 1973. Nixon relates going to Moscow for the third summit with the Soviet Union while uncertain if he would remain president. 1220 Phlebitis What was the condition of your leg? Nixon explains his difficulties with phlebitis during his presidency and his belief that he could continue on as Eisenhower and Roosevelt did despite their health complications. 1558 Relationship with the Media Did you--do you think the media misses you? Nixon describes the media attention that he received as president. 1659 Summit Discussion in Crimea There was another argument that in your--not just your diminished physical capacity, but also in your diminished political capacity you shouldn't have gone to the third Soviet summit, and the fact that it didn't produce anything, or much of major importance, was taken as proof of this. Nixon talks about visiting Brezhnev's villa in Crimea during the summit. He shares some difficulties he had with his leg and covers the changing political discussions during the visit. 2088 Time with Pat Nixon in the Soviet Union In this summit, you also visited Minsk, and there was a very moving moment when you were taken through the village of Khatyn, which had been obliterated by the--by the Nazis, and after walking through this memorial, they--they sat you down in--in almost a surreal scene, a--a--a single desk, to sign the guest book--a single desk at the end of a paved area with just a flo--low green fields on either side. Nixon describes the media attention on the third summit, including coverage of a visit to the village of Khatyn and the attention that Mrs. Nixon received. He also speaks about spending time with her during the summit. 2418 Value of Third Summit All things considered, the tremendous political pressure, the tremendous personal physical pressure you were under--was the third summit worth it? Nixon considers the importance of the third summit with the Soviet Union. He also talks about changes in Brezhnev between the summits, including his health. doodling ; Jack Brennan ; Leonid Brezhnev ; missiles ; Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) ; Ronald Reagan ; Soviet Union ; summit ; threshold test ban ; Yuri Andropov Andropov, I͡U. V. (I͡Uriĭ Vladimirovich), 1914-1984 ; Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906-1982 ; Reagan, Ronald 2668 Summit Negotiations What would--what would an Andropov-Reagan summit be like? Nixon weighs in on different methods of maintaining foreign relations and what he thinks a summit with Reagan and Andropov would be like. He also talks about hotlines and Johnson's advice for summits. Alexsei Kosygin ; foreign relations ; Gerald Ford ; hotline ; Jimmy Carter ; John F. Kennedy ; KGB ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Ronald Reagan ; Soviet Union ; summit ; Vietnam ; Yuri Andropov Andropov, I͡U. V. (I͡Uriĭ Vladimirovich), 1914-1984 ; Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906-1982 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Kosygin, Aleksey Nikolayevich, 1904-1980 ; Reagan, Ronald 2923 End of the Third Summit The--what was the farewell at Summit III like? Nixon discusses the ending of the third summit in the Soviet Union and saying goodbye to Brezhnev. April in Portugal ; communism ; Eddie Cox ; Gerald Ford ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Nikolai Podgorny ; nuclear weapons ; Pat Nixon ; Soviet Union ; St. George's Hall ; summit ; Tricia Cox ; Viktoria Brezhneva Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Cox, Patricia Nixon, 1946- ; Ford, Gerald R., 1913-2006 ; Kosygin, Aleksey Nikolayevich, 1904-1980 ; Podgornyĭ, Nikolaĭ, 1903-1983 3179 Relationship with Brezhnev Did you like Brezhnev? Nixon describes his relationship with Brezhnev and other communist leaders and about saying his final farewell to Brezhnev. Nixon also speaks about his feelings while returning home from the Soviet Union and when traveling in general. China ; communism ; Donald R. Heath ; foreign relations ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Mao Zedong ; Pat Nixon ; Russia ; Saigon ; Soviet Union ; Zhou Enlai Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Heath, Donald R. (Donald Read), 1894-1981 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 Interview OFF SCREEN VOICE: Roll tape. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Coughing.] GANNON: You' ; d visited many parts of the Soviet Union already, but on--in this summit, you went to Kiev for the first time. What were your impressions of Kiev? NIXON: Well, I have very pleasant memories of Kiev and the Ukrainian people, but I think my most vivid memory is getting there, not being there. We went down on a Soviet plane, and I recall that there was quite a delay before the plane took off from the airport in Moscow. And finally back into our cabin came President Podgorny and Kosygin, along with a Soviet general. He had all kinds of ribbons, but he was white, absolutely white, pale. And so Kosygin said, " ; Well, Mr. President, we' ; re sorry for this delay, but there' ; s been some mechanical difficulties, and I' ; m afraid we' ; re going to have to change the plane." ; And he said, " ; What do you want us to do with the general?" ; And I paused a minute, and I said, " ; Promote him." ; They said, " ; What? Promote him?" ; And I said, " ; Yes," ; I said, " ; promote him--promote him for finding the trouble on the ground rather than waiting until we got into the air." ; And they all laughed and took it in good style, and then we changed to another plane and off we were to Kiev. I learned later, incidentally, that in the United States this was being televised live and that the television just didn' ; t come through. They didn' ; t show the change of planes. And I found out the reason that happened was the Soviet technician, obviously a good Communist, just pulled the plug on the television so that it didn' ; t show. It showed us taking off and flying off and getting on, but not the shift in planes. Incidentally, the--the Soviets, in this case--to show they had developed a bit of a sense of humor and more confidence--were very different from Khrushchev was in a similar incident. We were going down the Moscow River in 1959. That' ; s prior to the time we had all the rallies of the captive peoples and so sorth [sic] and so on. And the boat that we were on hit a sandbar, and it got stuck. I thought Khrushchev was going to kill the boatman. He glared at him and--tough--and the fellow was just scared to death, shaking like a leaf. And I reassured Khrushchev and told him about a good friend of mine--happened to be Bebe Rebozo--that just about a month before we came to the Soviet Union, he had gotten stuck on a sandbar, and he had been running boats for at least twenty years, ever since he was just a kid. And I said that we just laughed about it, but I can assure you Khrushchev didn' ; t laugh. He was very, very embarrassed. So we shifted boats in the middle of the river and went on to our rallies. GANNON: The--the interior of Air Force One is like a cross between Star Wars and the presidential suite at the Connaught Hotel. What is the interior of Soviet One like? NIXON: It' ; s very good, and--and quite similar--if anything, I would say, as, certainly, impressive and in some ways more impressive even than ours. GANNON: How so? NIXON: Well, in terms of the decorations and so forth. After all, it' ; s the--we have to understand that in the Soviet Union, when everybody' ; s supposed to be equal and all that sort of thing, that the new class--the new czars, I would like to call them for the moment--live even better than the old czars. The gulf is much bigger between the new leadership than it is previously, and, believe me, they live well. Their dachas are magnificent. The huge swimming pools that they have, for example, down in Orianda and Yalta--we could put four or five of ours in it, and--and they' ; d be lost. And so it was with their planes. They' ; re luxuriously appointed. GANNON: How--how do they, then, relate to the people, if there is this tremendous gulf? NIXON: They don' ; t. GANNON: They don' ; t? NIXON: No. They just act as if those who serve them and so forth are non-persons. I know, for example, that, as always is my custom, and I' ; m sure it' ; s the custom of any American politician--after a dinner, you usually shake hands with the waiter and so forth, and in many cases, where security will allow it, you go into the kitchen and so forth. As--and I used to do that in the Soviet Union, but as far as Brezhnev was concerned--and the same was true of Khrushchev before, although Khrushchev was more a man of the people than Brezhnev--but as far as Brezhnev was concerned, he didn' ; t resent my doing it, but, on the other hand, he just didn' ; t have any contact of that sort whatever. There' ; s just a great gulf. GANNON: How does the Soviet man on the street feel about this? Are--are they aware of the--the rich lifestyle? NIXON: I don' ; t think they have any particular feeling about it, because that' ; s what they were used to before. They--that' ; s their history. The czars didn' ; t have much to do with the common people and so forth. Incidentally, this is not true just in the Soviet Union. It is true also in other Communist countries, too. I well remember a visit to Warsaw in 1959, and on that visit I visited a great steel plant, a modern, new steel plant that had been built, and my Soviet guide, the manager of the plant, showed me all through the plant and constantly was telling me about the machinery and what it was like. I couldn' ; t have cared less. I don' ; t unders--know what m--steel machinery is all about, and I would try to meet some of the workmen and shake hands with them, and he would just ignore them. And after we got back into the car to go back to the guest house, I--I vividly recall my translator, who was, of course, a s--a Polish foreign office man, and who probably was not a Communist, just a career fellow--he said, rather sadly, he said, " ; One of the problems with our factory managers in a Communist state is that they know all about machines and nothing about people." ; And that, incidentally, to me, is one of the fatal weaknesses in the Communist-Marxist systems. They know all about machines, but as far as people are concerned, people are just another machine. GANNON: Given the--this p--very luxurious lifestyle of the Communist leaders, are they impressed or are they unimpressed with what they find when they come here--the--the creature comforts that--to the average Easter--East European or Soviet, the streets here are paved with gold. Is that true of the leaders? NIXON: Well, I think they are impressed, although certainly Camp David is nothing compared to the dacha, nothing. It' ; s very nice. It' ; s very comfortable and very safe, and Khrushchev loved being there, because he likes the country, and-- GANNON: Brezhnev. NIXON: I' ; m sorry--Brezhnev liked it, but, on the other hand, there' ; s no--there' ; s nothing to compare with what they have. They--our apartment, for example, in the Kremlin is so magnificent that you--you wouldn' ; t dream of trying to compare the Queen' ; s Room, for example, at the White House with it. There' ; s just no way. GANNON: Why-- NIXON: Or--or, for example, Blair House. Blair House is a beautiful old American house, but it is nothing compared to the Kremlin. There is one difference--our plumbing is better. Americans are very good at plumbing. GANNON: Did you have troubles with Soviet plumbing? NIXON: Not particularly. They--they have learned, but in Europe generally--you will usually find that in European countries plumbing is not one of their strong suits, but they' ; re very good in other areas that are probably more important than whether the bathroom thing works properly or not. GANNON: In--I think in China there wasn' ; t a problem with the plumbing, but there was a--there was a-- NIXON: Well, we had-- GANNON: --a related problem. NIXON: --had a little problem there. GANNON: Isn' ; t that the " ; baboon syndrome" ; ? NIXON: I didn' ; t--well, they called it that--the members of the press--but I didn' ; t want to have our Chinese hosts be concerned about it. I remember very well that, our first night there, I, after a long banquet and all that sort of thing, went up to my room. I couldn' ; t sleep. You know, that--your changing of time and so forth is--makes it very difficult to go to sleep and to get adjusted to it. So I took a hot bath, which I never do. Usually I just take showers. And after taking the bath, I found some Great Wall cigars there in the guest room, and I sat there in my bathrobe smoking a Great Wall cigar at the end of my first day in China. That' ; s the way that it ended. GANNON: What is a Great Wall cigar like? NIXON: It was-- GANNON: Is it a great cigar? NIXON: It was really quite adequate. Let me put it this way--ever since we have broken relations with Castro in Cuba, we don' ; t have very many good cigars. Perhaps the Cuban-leaf ones made in other countries, and maybe those from the Canary Islands are almost as good, but there' ; s nothing like a good Cuban cigar. Unfortunately, that' ; s one--a very good reason at some time to renew relations. The Great Wall cigar is adequate. I' ; m not that much of a connoisseur. GANNON: I distracted you-- NIXON: And I would say that, in terms, though, of my bathroom, I had no problems, and I was surprised when some of the members of the staff and the press were complaining about developing some sort of rash after using the bathrooms and so forth. And apparently what had happened was that our hosts traditionally--this happens in the U.S., too. I remember so well that Mrs. Nixon and I always had such a terrible time going into little towns, and even big towns, and find that they' ; d repainted their best suites and the rest, and the smell of the--the paint just practically knocks you down. And Jack Kennedy told me he had the same problem in 1960 when he was campaigning. But in this case, our Chinese hosts--they had--they had painted, and lacquered, as a matter of fact, the toilet seats, and so, as a result, people got on the toilet seats, and they developed a rash. Ours--that did not happen. I had no rash. And, incidentally, I am subject to allergies, so I am delighted that our hosts hadn' ; t done it to that one. GANNON: Moving on to Summit III--you approached Summit III at a considerably more disadvantageous position than any of the others. Watergate was about to overwhelm you. A--a convergence of domestic political opposition had occurred, and, just as you were flying to the Soviet Union, word about the phlebitis in your leg that had struck during your Mideast trip a couple of weeks earlier hit the American press. What was the nature of the--the--the American political opposition to the summit? NIXON: Well, Henry Kissinger described it as one of those rare occurrences in history. He said it was something like an eclipse of the sun--and " ; an unholy alliance," ; I think was another way that he described it. What happened there was that w--we had a convergence of forces in opposition to détente and to meeting with the Soviet and making agreements with the Soviet. On the one hand, we had the pro-détente liberals who were anti-Nixon politically, and they didn' ; t want the summit to succeed or détente to go forward at that particular time because they felt that that might be a victory which would avoid the possibility of resignation or impeachment. On the other hand, you had the anti-détente conservatives who were pro-Nixon politically, but they were against détente, period. And so you had the liberals, who were usually against--usually for détente, against me for political reasons, and those who were conservative, who were for me politically but were against détente. It came together. And the Soviet had to be aware of that, and--and being aware of it, they had begun to be somewhat de--disillusioned with détente. And that was the third force. What happened was that they had expected, in 1972, progress on the economic front. That was destroyed by the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which tied any economic cooperation to Jewish emigration, which, incidentally, hurt the cause of Jewish emigration in addition to destroying the chance to get m--most-favored-nation, MFN, for the Soviet Union and progress on that front. And the Soviet were certainly disappointed on that score. GANNON: Did you try to talk to Senator Jackson or Congressman Vanik to talk them out of that on these grounds? NIXON: Oh, I talked to the senators, our senators, Senator Jackson and the rest, but to no avail. GANNON: Why not? Why didn' ; t they see the-- NIXON: Now I don' ; t-- GANNON: --that it was hurting what they wanted to accomplish? NIXON: I cannot speak for all of them, but Senator Jackson is a patriot. There' ; s no question about that. But, one, he was one who did not trust the Russians--neither did I, but I felt we had to deal with them, and I thought we could do it a--competently. And, second, he was one that was very close to and very influenced by the American Jewish community. He was their champion, and they contributed enormously to his unsuccessful campaign for the nomination. He was--they were his major financial backers. I do not suggest-- GANNON: The nomination for president? NIXON: That' ; s right. I do not suggest that, and would not suggest, because he is a patriot, and he stood with us on ABM and other critical issues when many of the liberals would not, but, on the other hand, I do not suggest therefore that he--he did this because he was bought. He was not, but he deeply believed in the cause of Jewish emigration and therefore supported the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, of which he was one of the co-authors. And--and it paid off very well for him politically. GANNON: Why were they-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me. I have to interrupt just one second. Keep the tape rolling, everybody. This is only going to take a second. I want [unintelligible] to adjust the mike cable, please. All right. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Sir, I' ; ll just blot you down. Perspiration on the upper lip. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Stand by. [Unintelligible] the leg-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] coming off the chair. NIXON: Got it? OFF SCREEN VOICE: That' ; s that one. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] the silver one or the black one? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Yeah, it' ; s the one that' ; s coming down the leg of the chair. OFF SCREEN VOICE: As long as the tape--yeah, it looks good there. OFF SCREEN VOICE: You need it to go this way more? GANNON: --with the president. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, fine. Leo, can you more around to that side and just give the cue on your own? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Or I can do it. Want to come back to this? GANNON: Tom' ; ll give you-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Is this better? NIXON: I see it. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, five. NIXON: Well, naturally, the Soviet leaders were aware of the fact that I didn' ; t have the support at home that I' ; d had--had, for example, in 1972 and even in 1973. And I would not have been surprised if that had not influenced them to an extent on two scores. One, that with my lack of support at home--that I would be willing to make a deal that I otherwise wouldn' ; t make, which was not about to be the case. I wasn' ; t there to go to s--to give away the store and didn' ; t do so, despite their attempts to make me give ground on the key issues that we were discussing. GANNON: Did they try to take advantage of your weakness? NIXON: Well, I th--I think it' ; s possible. It is possible that they were motivated by that, but it' ; s also possible that they were motivated by another factor that I think was even more important. And that is that they felt they had not gotten enough out of détente in terms of the economic progress and the other things that had been expected and which, of course, had been torpedoed by reason of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment and other--and other factors which we perhaps had in mind. I think that the Soviet leaders, therefore, came to the summit disillusioned to an extent. Not Brezhnev--Brezhnev still wanted to have something big happen, but I think his hands were somewhat tied because his military leaders and so forth, probably, were--felt that they didn' ; t have to make a deal at this point. GANNON: Do you think that they thought you were going to survive through the end of your presidency? NIXON: I don' ; t know what they thought, but I know what they said. And they couldn' ; t have been more forthcoming on that, all in varying conversations and apart from each other, which would lead me to say that they really believed it. When I first met Brezhnev, for example, in our private meeting prior to the other meetings, the first thing he said was that he was glad to hear from his ambassador that the political situation in the United States was better--that he was confident that I was going to survive. He said that also at the end of our meetings. He said he was confident that I would survive and--through--and would see me, of course, at the mini-summit which we planned then, which would be six months later, and at the next summit, which might take place in the United States. Gromyko, who is perhaps a better observer since he had served as ambassador to the United States, told me the same thing when we were in Orienda on a boat. He said that he felt the political situation was improving. Now, whether they believed that or not is another question, because they may have said that, having in mind the fact that i--if I did survive, it would help them in the future. And if I didn' ; t, it wasn' ; t going to hurt them a bit to say the nice things at this point. But I think they did feel at this time that there was a chance that I would survive, at least. GANNON: You don' ; t think, then, they were trying to psyche you out when they took you into the Kremlin through a particular gate? NIXON: Well, that was very interesting. I recall, as--for example, the arrival being so different from what it had been previously. I had been to Moscow now officially three times, and in this particular instance was the first time that the chief man was there to greet me, because in 1959 it was Kasloff, a deputy prime minister, who came to the airport to meet an American vice-president. In 1972, it was Podgorny, who was obviously my opposite number. He was president. Brezhnev was general secretary. But this time Brezhnev himself, the real power, was there. And I remember him bounding across the tarmac and throwing his arms out in a--in a very expansive welcome. And as we were driving into the Kremlin gates, he said, " ; These--this is exactly the same gate from which Napoleon left Moscow after his defeat." ; Well, I suppose that the psychohistorians would say he was trying to give me a message, but then he immediately followed that up, once we sat down in the Kremlin, after he had shown us through our apartment, exactly the same one we' ; d stayed in in 1972--he followed it up by indicating that he was pleased to hear that we were going to survive and he hoped this would be a very good summit. GANNON: As--as you entered that Napoleon gate, did you think that you were going to fill out your presidency through 1976? NIXON: I was pretty fatalistic about it. I knew that there were great forces arrayed against me. I felt, however, that I wanted to continue to act as effectively as president as I possibly could till the very last. I was neither pessimistic or optimistic. I said, " ; What will be will be." ; GANNON: What was the condition of your leg? NIXON: Well, that condition had developed on the first trip, the trip that had been taken--taken place just a month or so before to the Mideast. We first saw it in Salzburg, and I remember when Dr. Lukash saw it, he was amazed at how swollen it was. It was the left leg, and what happens with phlebitis, the kind I had--it isn' ; t that painful, at least in the first instance, on the outside. It' ; s because it' ; s a--it' ; s the big vein that runs down here, and it makes your leg and ankles swell up a great deal. GANNON: Is it painful? NIXON: When you walk around, it' ; s quite painful, due to the fact that the--the--the skin in the ankle' ; s so tight, it comes down over the shoes. You can hardly keep your shoe on. First of all, it' ; s hard to put a shoe on, and then once you walk it' ; s--it is extremely painful. So walking became very, very painful. GANNON: Is it dangerous? NIXON: Oh, it' ; s very dangerous. There are two types, a--as I understand it as an--one who di--is not medically trained. The kind of phlebitis that is painful, in other words, where the veins are exposed and--and y--and you see them there--that' ; s very painful but not particularly dangerous. I mean, you can operate and that sort of thing. But in this case, this is the deep vein, and it makes the leg and so forth swell, and if a clot--phlebitis basically is--causes blood clots--if a clot breaks off and hits the lungs, it kills you. And so they were concerned that it might break off. I never gave it any thought. It was like the resignation thing or what-have-you or impeachment. To me, I had the job to do--oh, not that I' ; m that brave or anything of that sort, but I was certainly--when I was in the Mideast, I made it clear I didn' ; t want the doctors to say anything about it, even though it was painful, and I didn' ; t want anything to come out here on this trip as well. But I had--I had made it clear that at a time that I was potentially crippled politically, I couldn' ; t indicate that I was crippled physically, because, then again, the media and so forth and my opponents would jump on that--said, " ; Aha! He' ; s crippled mentally as well!" ; And we have to remember, leaders have to--have to survive physical ordeals. I remember what Eisenhower went through at the time of his stroke. It was terribly painful, painful for him in a mental way, because he couldn' ; t get the words out. He' ; d try to say " ; window," ; and he' ; d say " ; mirror" ; instead. He' ; d try to say " ; ceiling," ; and he' ; d say " ; floor." ; And, nevertheless, he went to a big summit meeting with Latin American leaders and really endangered his life and had hours and hours of conversation. He went on television. It was a terribly brutal thing, and I' ; ll never forget how angry I was when Newsweek magazine at that time counted the number of flubs that he allegedly had in one of his speeches at a press conference and put it in the magazine. I threw that magazine clear across the floor. Well, in any event, what I am suggesting here is that if Eisenhower could do that and if Franklin Roosevelt, for example, for years could be an effective political leader despite the fact that he was crippled by polio, what' ; s a little phlebitis? GANNON: The--those differences--those conditions, though, are different, because the--FDR' ; s condition was an ongoing one-- NIXON: Stable. GANNON: --that--that he had coped with, that was stable. Eisenhower' ; s condition--was he--do you think he was in--sufficiently impaired that he should have considered resigning? NIXON: No. GANNON: If, for example, he had meant to say, " ; Don' ; t bomb." ; and had--had said " ; bomb," ; that would have-- NIXON: No. No. It wasn' ; t that way. Eisenhower--Eisenhower would have resigned. In fact, he considered it when he first learned about the stroke, and he says, " ; If I can' ; t do this job, Mamie and I are going to be farmers again." ; I remember that very well. I mean, Sherman Adams reported that to me the day that I learned about the stroke. No, Eisenhower--there was nothing wrong with his mind. And that' ; s the important thing. Eisenhower' ; s actions after he had the stroke, in his last two years, were decisive. He was just as strong a leader as he was before. He just couldn' ; t--he just couldn' ; t speak as well as he could. I used to say to him, and try to get him to laugh about it a bit, that his problem was that his mind ran faster than his mouth and usually with politicians it' ; s the other way around. GANNON: Some writers claim that your exposing yourself to the d--the danger and the tension and the pressure and the physical exertion of the Mideast trip and the European trip and the Soviet summit after you discovered you had this phlebitis, which was potentially life-threatening, indicated almost a--a death wish--that the fatalism in terms of the political problems you had amounted almost to a death wish. NIXON: No, that' ; s ridiculous. I' ; m not that kind of a--a suicidal type of person, but I--I think I' ; m--I' ; ve always been--one of the reasons that I think most of our media " ; friends" ; --quote-unquote--rather miss me is that they just can' ; t resist psychoanalyzing because they think I' ; m a very complex and therefore interesting person. GANNON: Aren' ; t you? NIXON: And--and in this case, I' ; m not going to disillusion them. GANNON: Did you--do you think the media misses you? NIXON: The media? Oh, they would never admit it, but media generally, the media people--there' ; s no question that most of them don' ; t particularly care for me, because I' ; m a conservative, and they' ; re liberals. And I think, unfortunately, they feel I' ; m a fairly intelligent conservative, and that they can' ; t bear, because they think only liberals are intelligent. Conservatives are supposed to be know-nothings. I think what it really gets down to is, though, that they got to have a story, and sometimes they like to have somebody around who is controversial, who says something, who does something that is controversial. It makes a big story. For example, I think, I think, in--in fairness to the media, I think they--they enjoyed and appreciated my trip to Russia in 1959. Scotty Reston and others who generally have not been known to be supporters spoke rather glowingly of that trip, because it was a great adventure, and I would say about the only time they were really enthusiastic about my presidency was on the China trip, because it was a great adventure for them, even though they wished somebody else had done it. GANNON: Why did they wish someone else had done it? NIXON: Oh, because they didn' ; t want me to have the success. GANNON: Was it given to you only begrudgingly? Do you feel you got the su--do you feel you got the credit from the China trip that you deserved? NIXON: The credit is irrelevant. What was done was done for major historical and geopolitical reasons. And as far as credit is concerned, you just don' ; t ask for any of that. GANNON: There was another argument that in your--not just your diminished physical capacity, but also in your diminished political capacity you shouldn' ; t have gone to the third Soviet summit, and the fact that it didn' ; t produce anything, or much of major importance, was taken as proof of this. NIXON: Well, when you say it didn' ; t produce anything of any major importance--when you compare, for example, the much-praised test ban that was negotiated during the Kennedy administration, which only covered atmospheric tests, with the threshold test ban, which covered the kind of tests that are taken--are made, these days, the one--the below-ground test, and covered all kinds of tests that could not be h--hidden by--the threshold test ban, which covered all tests above a hundred and fifty kilotons. The reason that we couldn' ; t make it comprehensive was that below a hundred and fifty kilotons you would have to have some sort of verification which the Soviet would never agree to. But that was a major achievement. That was worth going to Moscow for. No, I think that--I think certainly m--my critics, understandably, would have preferred that I not have gone to the Mideast, yet it was a very worthwhile trip. It set the stage for some developments in that area that are positive for a new relationship--putting a seal on a new relationship with Arab countries as well as some reassurance to Israel. And the same is true of this. It--it--it continued the pattern of summits, which I think were important, and it set--it also laid the groundwork for the summit which President Ford had, the so-called mini-summit that we had agreed to in Moscow, when he had the arms control agreement at Vladivostok for offensive arms. So what I am suggesting here is that I thought it was important to go. I thought not going--not going would have created enormous problems because it had been agreed to long before, and it would have--not going would have meant, " ; Well, you ought to just resign if you can' ; t do the job." ; I think we' ; d better get on to some of the other things. We' ; re g--getting too far. GANNON: During--during the summit, you went--Brezhnev took you down to his villa in the Crimea. How was your leg there? NIXON: It was--it wasn' ; t too bad except when we went walking, and, uh-- GANNON: Didn’t it involve-- NIXON: And-- GANNON: --a lot of walking and climbing? NIXON: It involved a lot of walking, because he wanted to show me the beauty of the place. It was another one of these residences of a former czarist noble and so forth, and that was the first time that he asked me about it. He said, " ; How is your leg?" ; He' ; d read about it, of course, because there had been a story after I went to the Mideast. Dr. Lukash had indicated that I had risked my life, and--and he--I think he believed that. And later on, of course, after I left office, I had a very serious operation. It wasn' ; t the phlebitis that almost killed me--it was the operation! But, in any event, we recovered. GANNON: During your time in--in the Crimea, you had a long private conversation with him in his cabana by--by his pool there in which you discussed China. Had he changed his position? NIXON: Attitudes had very much changed. Very interesting to analyze the Soviet on China. 1972, right after we had been to China, he was very careful not to raise it particularly, just in passing. He didn' ; t want to show any concern about it, although I knew that he was deeply concerned about it. I think one of the reasons they were so anxious to have a summit is that we had one with China. And the second point is that, in 1973, China was a major subject of concern. That was when he told me out in San Clemente that he felt the Chinese would be a serious nuc--nuclear threat in ten years, which I did not believe and still do not believe, and, of course, ten years have passed, and it hasn' ; t happened. GANNON: Do you think he really believed it, or was he just trying to dramatize the problem? NIXON: I don' ; t know. I th--I think he was concerned, however. I think he was--I' ; m not sure that he believed that. As a matter of fact, he' ; s too intelligent to look at the Chinese economy and think that it could produce that much that soon. But I think what happened was that he was trying to develop a closer relationship with us vis-à-vis the Chinese and, making the point, he was overstating. But in 1974 it was interesting to note that he spoke very disparing-jingly--disparagingly about the Chinese. He said that th--they were a very backward people, that seventy-five percent of them were illiterate, that eighty-five percent of them lived in agriculture am--and were not in industrial production. and that it would be at least fifteen years or so before they developed a significant nuclear capability. And then he made a very interesting point, though, in following that up. He said, " ; Really, the only two nations in the world that really matter are the Soviet Union and the United States." ; He said, " ; Look at Europe. I mean, Europe is divided and it doesn' ; t have the power. But we matter. We can change the world." ; And that is when he made a proposal which we could not accept--that we would set up a joint U.S.-Soviet agreement, an agreement--a condominium sort of effect, where either one would come to the defense of the other in the event it was attacked. Well, of course, that would have driven the Chinese up the wall. It would have driven the Europeans up the wall. It simply couldn' ; t be agreed to on--on that kind of a basis. But I th--I think that in--when he made that point, he also expressed his views about nuclear war generally. And I thought it was very interesting when he said, " ; Look. If there is a nuclear war, it will destroy the white races. All that will be left will be the blacks and the yellows." ; And I think that was his a--his conviction. And, incidentally, he is quite right. I don' ; t mean by that that there won' ; t be some white people left, maybe in Latin America. But in the event of war, assuming that it is nuclear, the nuclear power is in the Soviet Union, it' ; s in the United States, it' ; s in Western Europe, and a lot would be left the other way. So I think he was simply making that point quite vividly. GANNON: Did you raise again the question of Jewish emigration? NIXON: Oh, yes, and he went into great detail, pointing out that they were trying to make progress on the area, but he--and he gave me facts and figures which I passed on to Henry Kissinger for further negotiation. But his--his attitude there was, again, one that I' ; ve already described. He simply felt that they were doing a--everything they could. GANNON: In this summit, you also visited Minsk, and there was a very moving moment when you were taken through the village of Khatyn, which had been obliterated by the--by the Nazis, and after walking through this memorial, they--they sat you down in--in almost a surreal scene, a--a--a single desk, to sign the guest book--a single desk at the end of a paved area with just a flo--low green fields on either side. And you sat there for several minutes and wrote a very moving inscription about building a monument to peace for children of--of the future. Were you as--and it was much noted that you sat there for several minutes. Were you as moved by that experience as you seemed to be? NIXON: Well, you know, I noted the media made a great deal out of the fact that I must have been terribly moved and that sort of thing, and it' ; d make a lot better story to say yes. But of course it isn' ; t true. It' ; s--it' ; s like famous last words before people die and all that sort of thing. Most of it' ; s made up. But here, in this case, what happened was that it was almost a mile to walk through the m--memorial. It was the village streets and so forth and so on--cobblestone--and I--by the time I got there I was totally lame, and--and I had to sit down, and my ankle is all swollen over my shoe, and I just simply couldn' ; t move. So, consequently, I was trying to let it heal a bit before I had to stand up again and walk back to the car. And then, obviously, I was thinking about what I was going to say, and what I wrote I thought was a--at least partially eloquent. GANNON: You were able to avoid the press during a lot of the summit because, of course, you were in meetings, and so you were isolated from them, and Ron Ziegler took care of the press conferences. But Mrs. Nixon, who had an independent schedule, was surrounded by them all the time, and it must have been very difficult for her, knowing about your leg and knowing that, whatever else she did, all they wanted to do was ask her about Watergate. Did she express her concerns about that or her frustration? NIXON: No. Her comment usually was an airy, " ; Well, it' ; s just for the birds." ; She wasn' ; t about to be-- GANNON: About Watergate? NIXON: Yeah. And--yeah, when they' ; d ask about that, and--and she' ; d say, " ; Well, I' ; ll be glad to talk about the trip." ; I said, " ; I think we' ; re more concerned about what' ; s going to happen to our children and grandchildren than about what a--a break-in that occurred in Watergate." ; And that would shame them just a little bit to--you know, to concentrating on these great issues that we were discussing that involved the future rather than something that happened in the past. But she handles them in a very cool, detached way, which used to drive them right up the wall. That’s why they called her a Plastic Pat. It wasn' ; t because they didn' ; t think she was intelligent. She' ; s far more intelligent than most of them, with--much better educated--much better record in school than most of the press ladies. GANNON: Was it-- NIXON: Not that they aren' ; t bright, some of them--one or two. GANNON: Was she concerned about your continuing on with your leg in the condition it was? NIXON: Yes, to an extent, but she tended to be somewhat fatalistic, too. She never suggested, for example, that--" ; Well, you shouldn' ; t take these risks," ; and so forth and so on. And I think one of the reasons was she knew that I probably wouldn' ; t pay any attention. She knew I was inter--determined to go through, and once the decision is made, why, she supports it, and supports it very effectively. GANNON: Did you get a chance--any--d--on trips like this, do you get any chance to be alone together? NIXON: Not very much, although I must say Brezhnev was quite considerate down there. We were--after a long, long day of--of conversations in which we were negotiating about the threshold test ban that we agreed to and a--about a limitation on MIRVs, which was the major purpose of these negotiations in which the Soviet Union, as had been in the case in 1970 when we first opened that issue with them, and again in 1972 and ' ; 73, which they refused to negotiate on because they were behind, and--and they didn' ; t want to negotiate until they had caught up--but after that long day, Brezhnev said, " ; Let' ; s have dinner alone tonight." ; I mean, he over at--at his dacha, which was a magnificent one, next to ours, and we together. And so we had dinner alone, which we welcomed, and we sat out on a balcony afterwards and looked out over the Black Sea. And it was really a--a beautiful sight, a beautiful evening--clear, clear night, and there was a half-moon. And I remember she looked at it, and she said that when--ever since she was a little girl, she always--whenever she saw the moon, she always saw the American flag in the moon. And she says, " ; I never saw a man in the moon or a little old lady in the moon. It' ; s always the American flag." ; And I looked at the moon, and, sure enough, the American flag was there. Obviously, of course, it could have been there because our astronauts had been there. But it was interesting to note that. Of course, I reflected afterwards, " ; I guess we all see in the moon whatever we want to see." ; GANNON: All things considered, the tremendous political pressure, the tremendous personal physical pressure you were under--was the third summit worth it? Did it produce anything of-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --sufficient significance? NIXON: I think it' ; s produced--it produced, as I have already indicated-- but I think the third summit produced, first, the threshold test ban. Second, it produced, unfortunately, an agreement for cooperation in economics and technical areas, a long-term agreement which was not implemented. And that is something which I think must be a top-level subject in another summit, when it occurs, between President Reagan and Mr. Andropov, because the Soviet need it, and, under the proper circumstances, properly linked, we should provide it. The threshold test ban--whether or not that is going to be finally approved by the p--the administration and so forth remains to be seen, because they' ; ve raised the problem of verification on that and whether the Soviet may or may not be violating it. So I--I think it was worth doing in that respect. I should point out, incidentally, that there were other interesting things that happened on that summit in a personal way. I always watch my opposite numbers to see how they doodle. I draw squares and diamonds and that sort of thing. I' ; m a very--I--I don' ; t-- GANNON: You' ; re a Republican doodler. NIXON: Probably a square doodler, but I noticed that, for example, in 1972, when we were having our first discussion with Brezhnev about missiles. We--the argument was as to whether or not a big missile could be put in a smaller hole. Now, obviously, it can happen, or technically. But, in any event, he said no, and what he would do, he drew there, while we were talking about it, he would draw holes and then missiles as--to see whether or not they could go in the holes and so forth and so on. And down here, when we were meeting in a cabaña looking out over the s--Black Sea, he doodled--in this case, he drew a heart with an arrow through it. I--I don' ; t know what s--that signified, but that was when we were failing to reach agreement on a proposal to limit MIRVs, which we had proposed and which they had rejected--rejected, at least, on any meaningful basis. We had another interesting conversation, too. We were driving back from Orianda, down on the Black Sea, to the area where--the airport where we were to take off to go into Minks [may mean " ; Minsk." ; ], and as we were driving along, Brezhnev, who, after all, was two years older now and not quite as well as he was previously--he smoked more, drank less--and he' ; d begun to talk about age, and he spoke of Brennan, Jack Brennan, who was my military aide at that time, who was a young fellow, and very good-looking. He said, " ; You know, he' ; s very young and very handsome." ; I said, " ; Yeah, the girls notice that, too." ; And then he said, " ; But, on the other hand, while he is young and he' ; s handsome," ; he said, " ; we older people can probably do things for future generations that some of these younger people are unable to do." ; And then he--he always changes pace fast. He said, " ; You know, that reminds me, too, of--of older people, and one of my favorite stories." ; He said, " ; There was a sixty-year-old man, and the sixty-year-old man went to his doctor, and he was concerned because he felt that his sex drive had diminished. And the doctor examined him and said, ' ; No, it' ; s no problem.' ; He said, ' ; Just a question of age.' ; I said, ' ; This happens as you get older.' ; And the fellow said, ' ; Yeah, but my neighbor is sixty years of age, and he says his sex drive hasn’t diminished at all.' ; The doctor says, ' ; That' ; s no problem.' ; And the fellow said, ' ; What should I do?' ; He said, ' ; Just go out and talk the same way your neighbor does.' ; " ; GANNON: What would--what would an Andropov-Reagan summit be like? When you th--when you think of the succession of leaders that the Soviets have seen, where Khrushchev dealt with Kennedy and Kosygin dealt with Johnson and Brezhnev with you and Brezhnev with Ford and Carter, they' ; ve certainly seen a spectrum of personalities and perceptions of the Soviet Union. Andropov is a tough, hard former KGB chief, vigorous, ruthless, b--as you describe him. Reagan is a--an intelligent man but certainly doesn' ; t have that kind of background. How--how would that mix work? NIXON: Well, everyone has to do it his own way. I mean, in the case of President Reagan, he would tend to have meetings with larger groups, which is altogether appropriate because they like to have meetings with larger groups, too, sometimes. And so Reagan would have his advisors there. The second thing is people should not underestimate Reagan in terms of negotiations and give-and-take. He' ; s--he--first, he' ; s had a lot of good practice negotiating with senators and congressmen. GANNON: Are they-- NIXON: And that' ; s-- GANNON: --as tough as Andropov? NIXON: And that' ; s a big league. Well, certainly as intelligent, many of them are. Some of them are not that intelligent, but many of them are as intelligent. And when they' ; re arguing for their constituencies, they can be just as tough. I--I would say, however, that they are not going to be as ruthless. It' ; s going to be a--it' ; s a bigger league. This is the big leagues when you' ; re negotiating with an Andropov. But, by the same token, the way it' ; s done is that prior to the time they meet, that is when the work is done. And that' ; s why a summit should take place not on a quickie basis, just to get acquainted and shake hands and so forth, because Andropov will take that and bank it and gain the credibility and so forth that he wants from that sort of a meeting and there' ; ll be no progress. What has to happen here is a very well-prepared summit where at another level the negot--all the major issues are negotiated, and you meet at the summit level for the leaders to work out any final details and, above everything else, to know each other. As far as summits are concerned, it' ; s very important to notice that--to make note of the fact that a summit really gives credit--no. A summit is essential if a hotline is going to be effective, because when you have a conversation, as you do in a general sense on a hotline, it' ; s very important to know who you' ; re talking to. GANNON: A hotline isn' ; t a phone, is it? NIXON: No, of course not. GANNON: You don' ; t actually talk? NIXON: But it' ; s a conversation whereby messages are sent back and forth. But a message means a lot more when each individual knows the other person, knows how far he can be pushed. He will not underestimate him, or overestimate him, as the case might be. So it' ; s very important for people see that Reagan, whom they’ve seen on television being so gracious and--to his critics and unflappable and Mr. Nice Guy--to see that beneath that velvet glove is an iron fist--very important for them to see that, to see that he' ; s reasonable, to see, on the other hand, that some of the rhetoric that they may have heard does not indicate that he wants to destroy them and that he can be dealt with. All of these things can get across in a summit. They can be important, but that isn' ; t enough. That' ; s atmospherics. That' ; s spirit. That is important. What is essential prior to the summit is that on major issues like arms control, trade agreements and so forth--they all be tied into a packaged. GANNON: Wasn' ; t Lyndon Johnson very bitter about summit spirits in--when he talked to you in 1969? NIXON: Yes. He said they were totally useless. He pointed out that--that Kosygin had made promises to him about Vietnam at a time he had met him in Glassboro--1967--didn' ; t keep any of the promises whatever. GANNON: Did he give you advice for dealing with them? NIXON: He said just be tough with them. He says that--be sure they don' ; t have any illusions on that score. GANNON: The--what was the farewell at Summit III like? You were certainly going back to a very difficult and maybe even uncertain political future. Could you tell that in the way Brezhnev said goodbye? NIXON: Well, first of all, they had a--as they had in 1972, a--a brilliant reception in the great St. George' ; s Hall for the media, for all the delegates, and so forth and so on and so on that were there, and all the caviar was piled up as it was previously, and a fine orchestra was playing. And I was very impressed, incidentally, at their thoughtfulness. In 1972, they played " ; April in Portugal," ; a song that' ; s not very well-known here, but which was--everybody had known, who knew us well, that it was Mrs. Nixon and my favorite song. And this time they were playing all the songs from Tricia' ; s wedding, which, of course, had been televised in the Soviet Union, which took place in the White House in 1971, and we were impressed by that. As a matter of fact, it might have been that Mrs. Brezhnev--I mean, despite the fact that--that he' ; s a--Brezhnev has a reputation of being quite a ladies' ; man, he is very devoted to her, and she told me that she recalled so vividly when Tricia had come with her husband, Eddie Cox, to Moscow in Christmastime of 1972 and, she said when she came off the flai--plane, she said she was so beautiful, she said she reminded her of a white winter snowflower. She apparently was wearing something white. But, in any event, all this was, of course, impressive. They were trying to do it in the right way. But, in any event, as we were leaving, I knew that Brezhnev was disappointed. He had said, for example, when I told him that it was essential down in Orianda that we try to negotiate reductions of nuclear arms. He said, " ; We should" ; --he said, " ; We should destroy the evil that we have created." ; And I think he meant that. So that shows that, as far as that' ; s concerned, he was thinking in those terms. And--and then he also said we must--it is important that we do something of vast historical importance. He wanted to have an impact on history. He was disappointed that we hadn' ; t been able to accomplish more than we had, and he was looking forward, therefore, to the mini-summit that we had set for six months later and which was finally, of course, attended to by President Ford. GANNON: That was going to be the--what, you called it the " ; halfway house" ; ? NIXON: We called it the halfway house, yes, and we kidded a little. I said, " ; Well, we could have it in Switzerland, or we could have it in Austria." ; And I said--and he said, " ; Well, not in Israel." ; And so, in any event, we--it was agreed to be a halfway house. But then, finally, we--we finished the great reception, and we left Moscow. We--we all rode in a c--in--in--in one car. We all piled into the same car--I mean, Podgorny and--and in this case, Podgorny and Kosygin and Brezhnev. Brezhnev sat in the jumpseat--didn' ; t say anything much on the way out. He was obviously in sort of a downbeat mood, and so, when we got to the airport, he w--went with me to the plane. And as we got into the plane--as--just before we got to the plane, I was saying to him, " ; Well, I wish you were coming with me." ; And he said, " ; You know, I was thinking exactly the same thing as we were riding out here today." ; I think he would have liked to have come, and I think he had a feeling that--of disappointment that we hadn' ; t accomplished more, but of anticipation that maybe we could accomplish more in the future, because he did want to leave his mark on history. I don' ; t mean by that that he was simply sappily interested in peace at any price. I mean he wanted to have his Communist idea prevail in the world, but, on the other hand, he wanted to have s--do something, as he put it, " ; of vast historical significance," ; and that had not yet been accomplished. GANNON: Did you like Brezhnev? NIXON: Uh--as a Russian, yes. I would put with him the same way--I would describe Brezhnev the same way I would--would describe Mao and Chou En-lai. I liked Mao as a Chinese. I liked Chou as a Chinese. I liked Brezhnev as a Russian. I didn' ; t like him as a Communist, and I didn' ; t like Chou or Bra--Mao as a Communist. GANNON: Do you think-- NIXON: And that' ; s what we always have to do. We must separate these individuals. They are--they are people who have two personalities. They' ; re either Russian or they' ; re Communist. And at--and in--in a particular evening, they can be one at one time and one at another time. GANNON: Do you think he liked you as--as an American rather than a capitalist? NIXON: I don' ; t know. I think in his case it was irrelevant, a--and I think that' ; s another point that should be made. They--they do think materially. I--I think we should--I think what we all have to have in mind is that whether he liked me or not wasn' ; t going to make any difference as to whether he was going to gree something or not--agree to something. That isn' ; t what brings people together. GANNON: Doesn' ; t that undermine, though, the point you made about the importance of building up personal relationships? NIXON: No, the personal relationship that I described is a very hard-headed one. That' ; s to avoid the possibility of miscalculation. The personal relationship is not something that is going to assure agreement. Agreement is only assured by interest, a convergence of interest, not a convergence of affection. It isn' ; t based on affection whatever. GANNON: In the films of your departure, you shake hands with him, say goodbye, walk up the ramp, and at the top you wave goodbye to the crowd, and then you sort of lean over and--and--and give a special--looks like a s--a salute to him. Did it cross your mind then, even though you' ; d ag--agreed to meet at the halfway house in six months--did it cross your mind that that might be the last time you' ; d see him? NIXON: No. GANNON: That' ; s a decisive answer. NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: When you got on the plane--many Americans, after they' ; ve visited the Soviet Union, and they' ; re--they' ; re out of the--the rather oppressive and repressive atmosphere there, feel--feel relieved. Knowing what you were going home to and that Brezhnev wasn' ; t going to be coming along with you, were--were--were you relieved or were you sort of depressed about what was coming when you got home? NIXON: Not particularly depressed or relieved at all. My--when I get onto planes, and this is something I' ; ve been doing ever since 1953 when Mrs. Nixon and I took a seventy-day trip to Asia, and we stayed in some godforsaken places, and before air--the days of air conditioning, and the heat of what was then the summer of those places in Southeast Asia and the like, and after-- GANNON: Was there no air conditioning there at all? NIXON: Only in the--in the only one place that there was air conditioning on that trip in 1953 was the ambassador' ; s bedroom in Saigon, Ambassador Heath' ; s bedroom. Everyplace else, they didn' ; t have it. But we survived it. But you' ; d have strange food and strange bread and sleeping under mosquito nettings to avoid the mosquitoes and centipedes or whatever the--else might be around, and then you' ; d finally get on that airplane. Now, airplane food, and particularly airplane food cooked by the Air Force, is pretty terrible. Well, let' ; s say it' ; s--it' ; s always safe, but it' ; s almost unpalatable. And I must say that we' ; d get on there, we' ; d sit down, and we' ; d start to eat some of that ham or whatever they had on there, and I' ; d say, " ; Well, we' ; re home again," ; which meant that every time we got on the plane we were home again. It was a little bit of America. And so we went home to what we went home to. GANNON: Did you find on the-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE GANNON: --your first trip to Europe, in 1969, the following White House precedent--they were actually bringing the president' ; s bed with you so that everyplace you slept, you slept in the bed from the White House? NIXON: Yeah. What happened were--is that I was astonished when I arrived, in all places, at Claridge' ; s Hotel, which was our first stop on the European trip, and I had stayed in Claridge' ; s many times before, every time I had gone to England. It was my favorite hotel there. And I walked in and saw a couple of Filipino aides tearing down the bed and putting it up. And I said, " ; What is going on here?" ; They said, " ; Well, we' ; ve been instructed that we always take the president' ; s bed with him." ; " ; You take the president' ; s bed with him?" ; They' ; d been doing that. They apparently did it for Johnson and for Kennedy and so forth. Just said, " ; You can work better if you sleep in your own bed." ; I said, " ; Well-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0365/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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63 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 13, 1983, part 1.
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gannix_0365
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-05-13
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 13, 1983, part 2. gannix_0366 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|20(1)|49(10)|88(8)|100(4)|110(13)|124(17)|138(14)|149(5)|162(8)|172(16)|187(15)|203(2)|215(16)|228(12)|244(13)|259(9)|270(15)|282(2)|291(10)|304(6)|318(10)|337(3)|349(2)|359(14)|374(5)|385(16)|401(9)|418(5)|429(4)|445(9)|460(5)|474(6)|486(13)|500(5)|509(19)|526(16)|549(1)|565(2)|575(15)|589(10)|606(16)|618(6)|632(14)|647(3)|658(4)|668(10)|686(4)|702(2)|718(13)|733(9)|747(14)|773(8)|784(16)|800(6)|816(8)|832(11)|847(4) 0 https://youtu.be/Nsc6-hF1WTg YouTube video English 1 Bringing Bed / Yom Kippur War " ; --that’s one thing we're going to change." ; Nixon speaks about learning that his bed was brought along on his presidential travels. He relates Brezhnev's denial that he encouraged Arab states in the Yom Kippur War. 194 Diplomatic Relations with the Soviet Union The Soviet leaders talk a lot about peace. Nixon discusses how to avoid war with the Soviet Union and what could be gained from a summit between Reagan and Andropov. 617 Madman Theory You've talked about the--what has been called the Madman Theory, involving Nixon--that, with your background of strong anti-Communism, Henry Kissinger was able to talk to the Russians and to the North Vietnamese and say that, if--unless you negotiate in a serious way, Nixon is just erratic enough that he might do something dangerous. Nixon relates his adoption of the Madman Theory as a means to ensure that his pursuit of peace would be taken seriously. Afghanistan ; Cambodia ; Christmas Bombing ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; foreign relations ; Haiphong ; Henry Kissenger ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Madman Theory ; Poland ; Ronald Reagan ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; summit ; Vietnam ; World War II Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Reagan, Ronald 846 President Reagan Does Reagan have the kind of credibility going in that you had? Nixon considers the abilities of Ronald Reagan to lead the United States and control international relations. foreign relations ; Jimmy Carter ; MX missile ; Ronald Reagan Carter, Jimmy 1924- ; Reagan, Ronald 941 Decision to Visit China Moving on to China--what--what was it that set Richard Nixon, the inveterate anti-Communist and supporter of Taiwan and friend of Chiang Kai-shek over many years, down the long road to Peking? Nixon discusses the pursuit of a diplomatic relationship with the People's Republic of China. Carlos P. Romulo ; Charles de Gaulle ; Chiang Kai-shek ; China ; communism ; foreign relations ; Henry Kissinger ; Japan ; Konrad Adenauer ; Lin PIao ; Mao Tes-tung ; Peking ; Philippines ; Soviet Union ; travel ; Vietnam ; Zhou Enlai Adenauer, Konrad, 1876-1967 ; Chiang, Kai-shek, 1887-1975 ; Gaulle, Charles de, 1890-1970 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Lin, Biao, 1908-1971 ; Mao, Zedong, 189 -1976 ; Romulo, Carlos P. (Carlos Peña), 1899-1985 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 1469 Communications with China Did you--did you use intermediary governments in your initial relations with Peking? Nixon explains the use of intermediary governments to communicate with China and recounts when he received an official invitation to China. He also discusses the efforts of Kissinger and the effect that the decision to go to China had on his approval by the American people. China ; China initiative ; communism ; Courvoisier brandy ; Ethiopia ; H.R. Haldeman ; Haile Selassie ; Henry Kissinger ; Mao Tse-tung ; media ; Nelson Rockefeller ; Nicolae Ceasescu ; Pakistan ; Peking ; Romania ; Taiwan ; Yahya Khan ; Zhou Enlai Ceaușescu, Nicolae ; Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, 1892-1975 ; Haldeman, H. R. (Harry R.), 1926-1993 ; Khan, Agha Mohammad Yahya, 1917- ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Mao, Zedong, 1893- 1976 ; Rockefeller, Nelson A. (Nelson Aldrich), 1908-1979 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 2022 André Malraux on China Visit In--before you went to China, André Malraux came to the White House and talked to you about what you would find. Nixon recounts advice from André Malraux on his upcoming trip to China. He also speaks about informing Chiang Kai-shek of the trip to China and his regret that Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer were not alive to see the trip take place. Abraham Lincoln ; Andre Malraux ; Charles de Gaulle ; Chiang Kai-shek ; China ; Konrad Adenauer ; Mao Zedong ; Taiwan ; Zhou Enlai Adenauer, Konrad, 1876-1967 ; Chiang, Kai-shek, 1887-1975 ; Gaulle, Charles de, 1890-1970 ; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 ; Malraux, André, 1901-1976 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 2429 Arrival in China What were your thoughts as the--as Air Force One first--f--came over the Chinese mainland and you--for better or for worse, you were there--you had done it? Nixon relates his arrival in China, where he was received by an honor guard and shook Zhou Enlai's hand for the first time. Beetle Smith ; China ; communism ; Foster Dulles ; Geneva Conference ; honor guard ; Korea ; Mao Zedong ; Moscow ; Pat Nixon ; Peking ; Star Spangled Banner ; Vietnam ; Zhou Enlai Dulles, John Foster, 1888-1959 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Smith, Walter Bedell, 1895-1961 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 3001 Meeting Chairman Mao We have a--some film from Peking Television of your first meeting with Chairman Mao. Nixon describes meeting Chairman Mao during his first visit to China. China ; David Ben-Gurion ; foreign relations ; Henry Kissinger ; Israel ; Mao Zedong ; Peking ; Six Crises ; Zhou Enlai Ben-Gurion, David, 1886-1973 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 3218 Chairman Mao and Zhou Enlai Could you tell anything about the--from the relationship between the two—from--between Mao and Zhou Enlai--about the division of labor between them in terms of running China? Nixon examines the relationship between Mao and Zhou Enlai. He also discusses their knowledge about him before he arrived in China, including knowing his favorite films. Dwight D. Eisenhower ; George S. Patton ; Henry Kissinger ; Leo Tolstoy ; Mao Zedong ; National Security Council (NSC) ; Omar Bradley ; Six Crises ; State Department ; War and Peace ; Zhou Enlai Bradley, Omar Nelson, 1893-1981 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923 - ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Montgomery of Alamein, Bernard Law Montgomery, Viscount, 1887-1976 ; Patton, George Smith, 1885-1945 ; Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 Interview NIXON: " ; --that’s one thing we' ; re going to change." ; And I really--I really ripped up Haldeman pretty good on that. He took it well. I said, " ; No more." ; I said, " ; I have slept in those Claridge beds before. They' ; re not the same, but I have slept in beds everyplace, and I am not going to have you carry the bed around in a separate plane so I can have the same bed to sleep in." ; We' ; re all a little different. GANNON: At Summit III, did Brezhnev address the question of whether he had encouraged the Arabs-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --in the 1973 Yom Kippur War? NIXON: He was very defensive about it and said that, as a matter of fact, he not only had not encouraged them, but he tried to deter them. But, in my view, I just ignored it. I said, " ; Well, let us not let the major powers be drawn into conflict about what happens in the Mideast," ; and I compared the Mideast with the B--with the Balkans. I said we mustn' ; t let that happen. And--so I just let him--I let him, of course, deny that it happened. I didn' ; t try to argue with him about it, but-- GANNON: Was there any question but that it had happened, that they had encouraged the Arabs? NIXON: I don' ; t--I don' ; t think it was a question of their encouraging them, but I think there was a question of them n--of them not, perhaps, discouraging them. GANNON: Good. NIXON: Now, incidentally--you through? GANNON: If you want to go on-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: We have to change tapes here. [unintelligible] We' ; ll just change the tapes. You want to take five? Okay. [unintelligible] GANNON: [Unintelligible] leaders. NIXON: Yeah, see, that' ; s my point. GANNON: Yeah, yeah. NIXON: The ' ; 73 war-- GANNON: There' ; s not that much in and of itself. NIXON: The ' ; 73 war, the substantive part, in other words, why the--the--the--the questions you remember, about the Mideast, the Jewish lobby. That' ; s what I would suggest. And then the others can go in the leaders section. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Uh, Frank, uh--we want a shot of you for the question. GANNON: Yep. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay. [unintelligible] Keep the-- NIXON: The way I want to get at this question is that do you-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Do we have it now, Roger? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: Do you really-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: Do you really think the Soviet leaders-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: That' ; s it. NIXON: --were for peace, and that gets the-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: --other thing in. I think that' ; s it, though--see what I mean? GANNON: Mm-hmm. NIXON: And that gets it--we' ; ll see if--I think it may fit in. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: S--stand by. NIXON: [Clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Four. Three. Two. One. GANNON: The Soviet leaders talk a lot about peace. Your conservative critics, the anti-détentists who' ; d say that somewhere in the bowels of the Kremlin there is a safe wherein is a piece of paper with a number--with the number more of Soviets or Communists that would have to survive after nuclear war than the Americans, and as soon as they--or than Westerners--and as soon as they reach that number they' ; ll push the button. Do you think that the--the Soviets, for all their talk about it, really do care about peace? NIXON: Well, we, to our credit, are for peace as an end in itself. They are for peace as a means to an end. They' ; re for victory. However, that does not mean they want war. They realize that if war comes, it would be so destructive that victory would be meaningless. So what they want to do is to develop the strength so that they can win without war, and that means develop strength that will be credible--that if war comes that they would come out ahead, whatever that may mean. But if you ask about their attitude toward war, they have deep feelings about that, because they went through World War II--I mean the present leadership. The new leadership, when--further on--maybe they will not have it. But I remember the conversations that we had on our last summit un--trip--a conversation in an airplane, and on one occasion they were talking about the terrible situation during World War II. And Brezhnev spoke of war in wintertime, how terrible it was because the corpses' ; d be frozen in such grotesque shapes. And I said, " ; Just like a tragic ballet." ; And then Gromyko said, " ; Well, in summer, when it' ; s hot, and the bodies rot, it' ; s just as bad." ; And so they' ; d been through a lot. They don' ; t want to have that happen again. So they--I think they have mixed emotions, but there' ; s no question that they want to avoid war if they can. They want to win without it. GANNON: There' ; s going to be a lot of--increasing pressure for a summit, especially as the ' ; 84 presidential election gets nearer. Is there anything to be gained by a Reagan-Andropov summit at this point? NIXON: Well, the first thing to be gained is to reduce the possibility of either miscalculating with regard to the other. That' ; s why it' ; s important that they know each other, so that, one, they don' ; t get the impression that either the one or the other is going to be belligerent and engage in a rash act and therefore is totally unreasonable, or, on the other hand, which is even worse, in my view--to get the impression that the other, in the c--in this case President Reagan, might be susceptible to being pushed around. Therefore, to have that kind of hard-headed talking, which is the kind of talking we had with Brezhnev in 1973 in San Clemente with regard to the Mideast, which meant that when I called the alert and then sent him a hotline message, he thought that it might be credible. GANNON: This was the nuclear alert in 1973? NIXON: Nuclear alert in 1973. An alert works--a hotline message works best when your opposite number knows you and believes that--that you are not a rash person, but that you are not one that will take action u--unless you are prepared to follow through. I think it' ; s very important to get that across. So that' ; s one purpose, but beyond that purpose there must be agreements. I think there probably will be an arms control agreement of some sort. I think it' ; s very important, however, not to make that the centerpiece of the summit, even though many will try to do so, because what we have to understand is that arms control should never be an end in itself. The purpose of arms control is to reduce the danger of war. If you were to cut nuclear arms in half, as President Reagan is trying to do, and if they were to agree to that, you' ; d still have one hell of a war if you had disagreements on political issues that lead to war. Historically, we will find that it is not the existence of arms that leads to war, but failure to resolve political differences that lead to their use. That' ; s why there should be no arms control agreement unless that is linked to political issues and political conduct. Otherwise, it does not serve the purpose of reducing the danger of war. The second point we should have in mind is that a summit provides an opportunity to move forward in the areas that we were beginning to move in in 1972, ' ; 73, and ' ; 74 in the economic area. Now, there are many that suggest that that' ; s a great mistake. The Russians are in deep economic trouble--which they are--they have other problems--and that we shouldn' ; t bail them out. I' ; m not for bailing them out, but, on the other hand, we have to realize that the greatest advantage of the West--I speak of the United States, Western Jeurope [sic]--Europe, and Japan--Europe and Japan--have over the Soviet bloc is economic, about a four-to-one advantage. We should use that advantage as a carrot and a stick, and, incidentally, before that summit, it w--it' ; s very important that President Reagan, to the extent possible, get cooperation and agreement among our European allies and the Japanese--that they will support a united front on the economic area. What I am suggesting here i--is that we ought to try to accomplish at the summit level two general principles. One is we should take the profit out of war, and by taking the profit ah [may mean " ; out of" ; ]--war what we have to do is to have arms control agreements based on equality of strength, so that any a--potential aggressor will know that he will lose more than he may gain from war. That is why the U.S. defense buildup is essential, essential in order to get an arms control agreement and essential in order to take the profit out of war. But you must combine that with what I call another pillar for peace, and that is you must increase the rewards for peace. And by the rewards for peace, I mean to give the Soviet Union an economic stake in avoiding war. That doesn' ; t mean technological trade that will build up their military, but it does mean in other areas to provide economic cooperation in ways that will give them a stake in maintaining the peace. GANNON: You' ; ve talked about the--what has been called the madman theory, involving Nixon--that, with your background of strong anti-Communism, Henry Kissinger was able to talk to the Russians and to the North Vietnamese and say that, if--unless you negotiate in a serious way, Nixon is just erratic enough that he might do something dangerous. Is there a Madman Theory that applies with someone as--as amiable and someone with no foreign policy background like President Reagan? Are they going to f--fear him? NIXON: Well, it isn' ; t just what I would call a madman theory. I think that overstates it. I remember Johnson telling me in nineteen s--' ; 59--or ' ; 69, I should say--that Johnson told me when he came to the White House that he felt that one of his mistakes was to give the Soviet an impression that we wanted peace and we would pay almost any price to get it. He said--he said, " ; One of th--the advantages that Ike had" ; --he referred--he always called him " ; Ike" ; --I never did. But he said, " ; One of the advantages that Ike had--Ike had was that the Russians were afraid of Ike, afraid of him because he had been the great commander in World War II, and because of his military background, and just because of the kind of man he was," ; even though Eisenhower was a very amiable, pleasant, grandfatherly type, but they knew that beneath that exterior was a very cold, tough fellow. GANNON: Do you think they were afraid of you? NIXON: Oh, yes. Well, they were afraid of me, though, not because of my appearances and not because of my speeches, but because of what I had done. There is nothing that added more to my credibility, certainly with the Russians, and with others as well, than that I took great risks in order to bring the war to Vietnam to a--to a conclusion, to assure the withdrawal of our forces. The incursion into Cambodia--the purpose of that was to shorten the war, to make sure that our withdrawal program could go forward on schedule, and to save American lives, and it worked. The fact that w--we--three weeks before the summit meeting in Moscow, which we wanted,--which they wanted as well--that we bombed and mined Haiphong after there was a great North Vietnamese offensive supported by Soviet tanks and guns, which we could not tolerate--I remember people said, " ; Well, you can still go to Moscow even though Saigon is lost." ; I said, " ; No way." ; I said, " ; We--I can' ; t be sitting across the table from Brezhnev when Soviet tanks are rumbling through the streets of Saigon." ; And that' ; s why we did what we did, and despite all the predictions by some of our Soviet experts to the effect that they would then have no choice but to cancel the summit, it made them, really, I think, more eager to have it. A--and the other thing which I think may have had some impact on their thinking was that even after the elections of 1972, the December bombing, which was the critical action that was taken in order to bring--break the b--deadlock in Paris and have the peace negotiation. That was a very difficult decision, but it was necessary. Now, all of these actions--you don' ; t take them in order to prove that you' ; re a madman or that you' ; re a tough guy or macho and the rest. It' ; s simply--you take them when it is in the interest of your foreign policy, and also to make sure that you are a credible leader, a credible leader when you meet with others or when they take actions that you want to oppose. GANNON: Have any of the presidents since you taken any similarly tough actions vis-à-vis the Soviets? It seems that with Afghanistan, with Poland, with the extension--use of surrogate troops into other parts of the world, that we' ; ve just acquiesced. NIXON: [unintelligible] GANNON: Does Reagan have the kind of credibility going in that you had? NIXON: Well, let me say, fortunately, President Reagan, and President Carter before him, didn’t have a war, which would have given them the opportunity to take action in defense of our own forces, which I had and which I used. On the other hand, I think what President Reagan has done in terms of rearming the United States--that that gives a message. I don' ; t think that the rhetoric is nearly as important as that, and his fighting a bloody battle with the Congress in order to get the MX through and in order to get his military budget approved--it' ; s that kind of action that has effect on the Soviet, not a lot of flamboyant words. You see, they' ; re masters at propaganda, and they see through it. GANNON: Do you think President Reagan can be pushed around? NIXON: No, I don' ; t think so, not in the international area. In the domestic area, all presidents have to do some compromising from time to time--in other words, take a half a loaf or get nothing. And in this area, people should not misinterpret his having to give ground on his economic programs because he simply didn’t have the votes, didn' ; t control the House of Representatives--they should not feel that because he gave ground there that in dealing in foreign policy, where he does have more of a free hand, he' ; s going to be a compromiser--a compromiser where our interests would not be served by it. GANNON: Moving on to China--what--what was it that set Richard Nixon, the inveterate anti-Communist and supporter of Taiwan and friend of Chiang Kai-shek over many years, down the long road to Peking? NIXON: Well, what brought us together--what brought the Chinese and the Americans together was not a con--convergence of ideas but a convergence of interests. I begin with that proposition, and then to determine how that came about, we have to understand that my history in that part of the world goes back a long way. I was first in the Far East in 1953--traveled to Japan, all the countries outside, on the perimeter of China. And I saw then what the Chinese were doing, in terms of exporting revolution to Indonesia, to the Philippines, to Thailand, to--to Vietnam, and so forth and so on. And then I also had an opportunity to continue to follow what was happening in Asia during that period, to talk to Asian leaders, to talk to people like Romulo of the Philippines, who was still living and still a foreign minister, a strong anti-Communist but one that felt that some dialogue between the United States and China should take place under the proper circumstances. And then, in 1963, when I took a trip abroad, I saw, independently, de Gaulle and Adenauer, and each independently raised the question with me that the United States should probably reconsider its relationship with the People' ; s Republic of China. Here are two strong anti-Communists--had no illusions about the Chinese--but they felt that we should do so. In 1967, I took another trip to the Far East, and after that I wrote an article for Foreign Affairs indicating that, looking to the future after Vietnam, it was important to reevaluate the US-Chinese relationship. I remember one of the first memorandums I sent to Henry Kissinger in 1969 after being inaugurated--it was a week after being inaugurated--was to initiate on a private basis a study of our relationship with Peking and with Taiwan and so forth. And so events began to follow events. Those who were surprised in 1971--in fact, the announcement was made on July the fifteenth of 1971 that I would be going to China--simply hadn' ; t been following. They hadn' ; t read the article in Foreign Affairs in 1967. They hadn' ; t paid any attention to the fact that we had relaxed travel ext--restrictions. We had allowed trade where we hadn' ; t allowed it previously. They didn' ; t pay that much attention when the ping-pong team came here--or ours went there, I should say. And they--and interestingly enough, their surprise, I think, is--is rather surprising, because when d--Henry Kissinger was in China, or on his way to China, in July of 1971, I made a speech in Kansas City. It was a rather long speech, about our relationships in the world generally and particularly with the People' ; s Republic of China, and hinted very strongly there that we should make moves toward normalization and so forth. And yet when we asked for the television time to make that three-minute announcement with regard to the trip to China on July 15, 1971, none of the television commentators, with all their brilliant investigative sup--reporters, saw--were able to make any predictions. One suggested it was probably about another withdrawal from Vietnam, and another suggested it might have been with regard to some problems we were having with Europe. The point was, I had tried to give them the message, but very carefully, of course, not breaking the secrecy pattern which we had. But now, having said all that, what brought us together was not, I emphasize, the fact that I had changed my view with regard to Chinese Communism. I had not. What brought us together were our interests and not because of agreement on ideas or any change in ideas. GANNON: How does one go about--there must have been a lot of secret, behind-the-scenes diplomacy. You were sending signals, but there had to be a lot going on that--that even the most astute commentator who didn' ; t know couldn' ; t have seen. NIXON: Well, I think first we have to understand why it was necessary to have it secret. And I will make the blunt statement--without secrecy, we would never have had the China initiative. It was not possible. They had to have it far more than we. They had to have it, because there was great opposition within the Chinese hierarchy itself to any new relationships with the United States. And, as a matter of fact, Lin Piao, who had opposed it, took off, as Chou with a little smile told me when we first met, on a trip which was to take him to Moscow, and his plane disappeared, which tells us one thing or may tell us something else. GANNON: Do you think they liquidated him because of his opposition? NIXON: I would not be surprised. That was the implication, at least, that I got from the conversation. GANNON: Do you think-- NIXON: But be that as it may, what happened there was that Mao Tse-tung and--this is--in this case, Chou En-lai, had made a command decision that, despite the fact that ideologically the United States was their major enemy--we' ; re a capitalist country, they' ; re a Communist country--that as far as their strategic interests were concerned, that a new association with the United States was absolutely essential, because while we disagreed totally on ideology, we had one common concern, and that was the growing Soviet threat--threat to China--and its expansionism in other areas. And the Chinese knew that there was no country in the world except the United States which would be able to contain that threat in the event it were aimed at China. And that is what brought us together, in one sense. But I should go further than that. If anybody would read my article in Foreign Affairs and other statements I' ; ve made prior to and since that initiative was undertaken, they would note that I always come through with this theme: even if there were no Soviet Union, it was essential that the United States move now and--move when it did, I should say--in rapproachment with China. And the reason for that is fundamentally that one-fourth of all the people in the world live in the People' ; s Republic of China. It has enormous natural resources, and the Chinese people, as Chinese, are among the most capable people in the world. Look what they' ; ve done in Taiwan. Look what they--in non-Communist areas, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, San Francisco--you name it. And once that power is mobilized, it is going to be an enormous force in the world, for good or for bad. I think de Gaulle hit it, i--in his usual way, in 1969, most effectively when he said, cryptically, " ; Better for you to recognize China now when they need you than to wait until later when their power is such that you will need them." ; And so, in order to build the kind of a world that we want our grandchildren to live in in the twenty-first century, it was essential that the United States, the most powerful and prosperous in the three wor--free world, have a new relationship with the People' ; s Republic of China. And finally, I would say, for some of those who object to that initiative, if it had not been undertaken, and if China, due to the fact that they did not--not have any guarantee of their security from the United States vis-à-vis the Soviet, had been forced back under the Soviet umbrella, the geopolitical relationship and balance in the world would be almost hopelessly against us at this time. It was necessary to do for that reason, but, apart from that, it was essential to do for the next century. GANNON: Did you--did you use intermediary governments in your initial relations with Peking? NIXON: Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, the Rumanians played a very significant part--Ceaucescu. I had discussed it with him in 1967, and he was very helpful, and his ambassadors were, and they carried messages back and forth. Curio--curiously enough, a--another one who carried a message--this isn' ; t so well-known--was Haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia. I had discussed China with him, and Chou En-lai was telling me about Haile Selassie coming there and telling--talking to him and Mao, and Mao asked Chou En-lai--Mao always liked to say outrageous things--he said, " ; Do you think that the--that the devil of capitalism should sit down with the devil of Communism?" ; And then he said Haile Selassie went on and indicated he thought it would serve a useful purpose, or words to that effect. Incidentally, when Chou En-lai told me that, I said, " ; You know, I think many of the people in the media think the only reason that I didn’t wear a hat when I came to China is that I couldn' ; t get ' ; em over--get one over my hand--i--is--I think that--and then, when Chou En-lai told me that, I just responded by saying, " ; You know, I think many people in the media thought that the reason that I didn' ; t wear a hat when I came to China--that I couldn' ; t find one that would fit over my horns." ; And he, who always appreciated a little joke, laughed uproariously at that. But, in any event, Haile Selassie, Ceaucescu, but above everybody else, the Pakistani, Yahya Pakistan played a very important role, and, of course, as we all know, it was the Pakistani who helped provide the cover for Henry Kissinger. That' ; s where he had a so-called " ; bellyache" ; a--and had to be--go to the hospital, and all the press, of course, took off and enjoyed the Pakistani scenery while he flew into China secretly, and then our bombshell announcement came out. GANNON: Whose idea was the bellyache? NIXON: I think it was--it was--I think we agreed to it together, after very, very intensive negotiation. GANNON: What was your reaction when you finally heard that the invitation to come to Peking was being extended from Chou En-lai? NIXON: Well, we had had several messages, feelers, on it up to that time, and--and each one of them we had to reject. Chou En-lai had sent messages indicating that he had heard from the Pakistanis. Ceaucescu sent us a message indicating that he' ; d heard from the Chinese, but in each case the Chinese were conditioning any meeting or any change in relationship on our, frankly, dumping Taiwan, and they were also conditioning any meeting that might occur between me and Chou En-lai on our agreeing to have Taiwan as the major subject of discussion. And I could not agree to that, so we kept saying no, it would have to be without conditions, in effect. And finally the message came through that Chou En-lai would welcome us. GANNON: Who brought you the news? NIXON: And the news was brought by Henry Kissinger. It was after a state dinner, and I was up in the Lincoln sitting room going over my notes for the next day' ; s meetings, and Henry came in huffing and puffing. He--he must have run all the way from the Situation Room, which is about two hundred yards away from the sitting room in the president' ; s--and he said, " ; This is the most important message between heads of government since World War II." ; And then he read the message as I read it, he beamed, and the message, in effect, said, " ; We will welcome the president of the United States to meet with Chou En-lai, a--and then we will also welcome Dr. Kissinger to come to prepare for the meeting." ; And he said, " ; This message" ; --he had a--w--with their great sense of humor and their subtlety, it ended with an interesting clause. He says, " ; This message is somewhat different from the usual diplop-matic [He probably means " ; diplomatic." ; ] message because it' ; s from a head to a head through a head." ; " ; From a head" ; --head of state Chou En-lai--" ; through a head," ; of course, was Yaya Pakistan--" ; to a head." ; The message, of course, since we had no relations with China, didn' ; t come from the Chinese. The Pakistani ambassador had delivered it to Henry Kissinger, and then Kissinger to me. So it was " ; from a head, through a head, to a head." ; GANNON: Did you celebrate? NIXON: Oh, yes. That was one of those occasions that I thought it was important to. I usually have nothing to drink, particularly in those years when we had such intensive schedules after dinner. But somebody had given me, that year, a--a bottle of Courvoisier brandy. It was supposed to be, oh, several--twenty, thirty years old. And so I went down to the hall, opened the brandy, and put a little in a snifter for Henry and for me, and we both tipped our glasses to what we thought was a rather historic meeting. GANNON: How much was the opening to China, the initiative to China, Henry Kissinger' ; s policy, and how much was Richard Nixon' ; s policy? NIXON: It was both. We came ac--we came to the conclusion independently, however. After all, I had never discussed the China initiative with Henry Kissinger. He was not my advisor. He was Nelson Rockefeller' ; s in 1960s--in the 1960s and in 1967. And when I--but he went along with it and f--and agreed with me, with the conclusion that I had reached, that there was no question that he independently had arrived at the same conclusion. But i--if--if--if he had not had a president who wanted to move in that direction, there was no way it could have been accomplished, and he, of course, has been the first to acknowledge that. GANNON: If you had not had a Henry Kissinger, could it have been accomplished? NIXON: Yes. Not as, I--I don’t think as e--effectively, as well. Henry was a master at intrigue. He went to Paris twelve times without being discovered, and--and he was able to get into China there and be there three days without having it get out. But I must say that--and he--and he handled the negotiations with Chou En-lai brilliantly. On the other hand, I had made the determination before I ap--appointed Henry Kissinger as my chief advisor in the foreign policy field--I had made the determination to move in that direction, and I would have implemented it another way. GANNON: With the presidential election coming up at the end of 1972, were you unaware of the fact that this announcement of the opening to China was going to be an enormous political coup for you? NIXON: Well, many thought it would be, but it really wasn' ; t. That' ; s--that' ; s, again, people in the media writing with their hearts rather than their heads, because it--it gained us some and lost us some, but perhaps overall it was a wash. As a matter of fact, I remember so well that H--Henry and I disagreed on this, not just as a matter of appraisal. But he said, " ; You know, you' ; re going to go way up in the polls when the China announcement is made." ; Bob Haldeman thought so, too. I said, " ; I' ; m not so sure of that." ; I said, " ; It' ; s going to cost us some, too." ; And it did. The polls didn' ; t move up at all after the Jula--July fifteenth announcement, and, curiously enough, even after the dramatic visit to Peking in 1972, the polls did not go up. And the reason was that those who favored the initiatives for the most part were liberals, who were against me politically a--and would, frankly, have been just as happy if somebody else had done it. Those who opposed the initiative were conservatives. They were disillusioned. Those--and b--those who favored it and those who opposed it both did so for mistaken reasons. I mean by that, those who favored the initiative felt that, " ; Well, finally this old red-baiter Nixon has learned that the Chinese are not all that bad." ; In other words, in effect, " ; He' ; s got a little soft on Chinese Communism." ; Those who opposed the initiative, those that were pro-Taiwan and so forth, felt that I had deserted them, also because they thought, well, I had getten--gotten soft on the Chinese Communists and so forth. And they were both wrong on that score. It had nothing to do with my attitude toward Communism. I was still against it, as I had always been. It had to do with my analysis of the long-term interests of the United States and of our current problems in terms o--of our competition with--in other ways with the Soviet Union. GANNON: In--before you went to China, André Malraux came to the White House and talked to you about what you would find. What do you remember from his visit? NIXON: I had met Malraux for the first time when I went to Paris in 1969, and he was one of de Gaulle' ; s great supporters, more liberal than de Gaulle, but admired de Gaulle as a great man, as I did. And I noted then that he had had a--a stroke. Well, it was a stroke which had left him paralyzed on one side. It was very difficult for him to talk, but I had read some of his books. He' ; s a brilliant writer. And I gave a dinner for him and saw him before dinner at s--at some length. And even with his--it was just painful to watch him talk, you know, with his m--mouth drooping down like that, but--but the words came out in a torrent as he described China. I asked him, " ; What are they like?" ; , because he knew Mao and he knew Chou En-lai and the rest. And he says, " ; Mao has a vision. He is possessed by a vision. The man is a sorcerer," ; and he went on and on as to what Mao was like. And then, finally, after he had described him, he said, " ; It' ; s worth the trip." ; GANNON: Did he talk about the--the problem of the aging of the Chinese leadership? NIXON: Well, that was his conclusion with regard to Mao. He said, " ; Mao is a colossus, but he' ; s a colossus facing death. And as he looks at you, he will think, ' ; How young you are.' ; " ; And I thought that was interesting, because at that time I was fifty-nine. GANNON: Did--in your-- NIXON: In other words, what was interesting to me is that you would expect Malraux to say, well, as he looked at me, " ; Here is the representative of the great United States. Here is the anti-Communist. Here is the capitalist," ; et cetera. But no. He said, " ; As he looks at you, wh--what--what he will think about--how young you are, because he is a colossus, but he is a colossus facing death." ; GANNON: Did--I--did you feel that, unlike a lot of people, he had a sense of the adventure of what you were doing? NIXON: Yes. Let us understand that the decision to go to China was a difficult one for us--difficult for me because I knew Taiwan. I had great respect for Chiang Kai-shek, for Madame Chiang Kai-shek. I knew of the Taiwan miracle. It' ; s a miracle like Japan, what they have done there. Taiwan today, for example, with seventeen million people, exports more than the People' ; s Republic of China, with a billion people. That' ; s an indication of how--what an economic success it was. GANNON: How did you break the news to Chiang Kai-shek? NIXON: It was broken through diplomatic channels. GANNON: Should you not have done that personally, given your-- NIXON: No-- GANNON: --ties with him, and-- NIXON: It--it wasn' ; t--it would not have been the appropriate thing to do. We had to do--we had to treat them all the same, and so in-- GANNON: Surely that was a special relationship, though. NIXON: In each--in each--but in each case--in each case, we felt that it was important not to treat one different from the others. We had to think of them, we had to think of the Japanese, we had the British, and so forth and so on. So we decided to do it through routine challenge--channels in all cases. GANNON: You--in your account of the meeting with Malraux, you des--you describe a d--a dream that Lincoln had and related it to your going to China. NIXON: Yes. This--this dream of Lincoln' ; s is one that most biographers have carried, and I think therefore it is probably on the mark, although much of the stories about any great man like Lincoln are apocryphal. In this case, it was supposed to be a dream that he had that he recounted to his cabinet the day before he was shot, and Lincoln often had dreams before great events. And he said this was a dream that he had had before Gettysburg--he' ; d had it before another great victory and so forth, and he said that--and it was repeated that night. And it went something like this, that he was on a singular indescribable vessel moving with great rapidity toward a distant, indistinguishable shore. And I repeated that to Malraux, and Malraux said, " ; Well, that is--is very interesting." ; And he said, " ; As far as Mao is concerned, his shore is death." ; He said, " ; And as far as you are concerned, you must avoid the shoals on either side." ; So that was the--s--some of the conversation. GANNON: Did you regret that de Gaulle, who would have been able to understand the enormity of the--o--of--of what you were doing, wasn' ; t alive to see the opening to China? NIXON: Yes. Yeah, and, may I say, and Adenauer as well, because Adenauer and de Gaulle independently, anti-Communist though both were, were sophisticated enough and geopoliticians enough to understand why it was necessary, something which it' ; s very difficult for some of n--some of our good hard-line super-hawks who see the whole world in black and white and think that the only way that you' ; re going to deal with Communism is to isolate it and collapse it. Well, I wish that were the case, but it is not going to happen that way. Peaceful change is the only thing we can hope for, and that' ; s what we must always work for. We must never accept the division of the world as it is. They don' ; t, and we shouldn' ; t either. GANNON: How did Malraux take his leave that night? NIXON: Well, he--it was a rathy--rather moving scene. I escorted him to the north porti--portico, and his car came up, and he said--as he said goodbye, he said, " ; I am not de Gaulle." ; He said, " ; Nobody is de Gaulle, but if de Gaulle were here he would wish you well on your mission. He would salute you for what you are doing." ; GANNON: What were your thoughts as the--as Air Force One first--f--came over the Chinese mainland and you--for better or for worse, you were there--you had done it? NIXON: Well, I am not one of those that is given to try to develop profound historic thoughts because of some new adventure. GANNON: Did you see it as an adventure? NIXON: No. I saw it in a different way, not as an adventure, which trivializes a very important event. I knew it was a very important event historically. I knew it was a very important event from the standpoint of the interests of the United States, the interests of building a more peaceful world, for our children and grandchildren primarily, rather than just for ourselves. Also, however, I' ; ve--knew it was an adventure, just as many other Americans did, because China was an unknown land. I' ; d read about it all my life. It was a land of mystery, and the fact that we hadn' ; t had communication with them for twenty-five years built up that mystery. And I remember Mrs. Nixon and I, as we were sitting in the plane looking down on this huge expanse of tiny farms and so forth and so on--it--we had a--a feeling about it that we had never had before. We had been already to seventy countries together, and I was to go to many more--as I' ; m now over ninety in the number of countries--and there was nothing like going into other countries that we experienced here going into China, because it was new, because it was exciting, and because it was very, very important. For example, we had been to Moscow in 1959. That was a very important visit, and coming to Moscow on that trip was a time of excitement, but nothing compared to what we felt as we went into China. We knew that we were at a watershed event in hum--human history. GANNON: We have some film of your arrival at Peking in your first meeting with Chou En-lai. In fact, all we' ; ve got now is this still. Do you want to--can you describe what was going on there? NIXON: Yes. I think that event was one that symbolized the trip more dramatically than anything else. As you' ; ll note, I am shaking hands with him, and that' ; s not unusual, because you always shake hands when you step off the plane with whoever is receiving you. I recall, incidentally, as I came down the steps before I shook hands, however, that he was clapping as I came down the steps, and I, of course, returned the clapping, and because I had learned that long before visiting other Communist countries. They always re--respond. Whenever you clap, they clap at the same time. And so, as we shook hands, it had particular symbolism, because I knew from the briefing papers that Chou En-lai wsa very sensitive about the fact that in 1954 at the Geneva Conference--that Foster Dulles had not--had refused to shake hands with him. He told an amusing anecdote about that--told me about the fact that Beetle Smith, who was-- GANNON: Chou En-lai told you? NIXON: Yeah, Chou En-lai did. He tol--told me an amusing anecdote about that. He said that Beetle Smith, who was there with Dulles that--he said he wouldn' ; t shake hands either, but what he did was that he held a coffee cup in his right hand and then gave him his sleeve on--on his left hand and he had to shake hands that way. He was rather amused by it at that time. So he--he considered that to be a very important handshake. And I remember as we drove in to the guest house through Peking. He said that handshake was over the vastest distance in the world, twenty-five years of no communication, which was a dramatic way of putting it. Now, incidentally, let me say, however, that if some of those--and they are legion--who believe that Foster Dulles was much too tough at that time, just so that they don' ; t get the wrong idea, I well understand why Dulles didn' ; t shake hands. It was a different time. We have to remember, in 1954, that was only shortly after Chinese troops had killed over fifty thousand Americans in Korea. It was at a time when Communist China was in expansionist policy. They were intervening through their--s--supporting guerrilla activities in the--in the Philippines, in Malaysia, in Thailand, Singapore. And so, under the circumstances, there was plenty of reason for Dulles not to be buddy-buddy with somebody who was a proclaimed enemy, not by what he said, but by what they were doing against our interest. But the situation had changed on them. China at the time we made this trip was no longer in an expansionary phase. They were supporting the Vietnamese, but not nearly as much as the Russians, who had taken over there as the main supplier of arms to the Vietnamese. They were primarily, at this time--at the time we went there, concerned about their own security, their strategic security, conc--and of course the possibilities for progress within the country. So, under the circumstances, I thought it was proper that we should begin with a handshake. GANNON: We have film also of your reviewing the honor guard at the airport in Peking with Chou En-lai. This is another case where it' ; s just a still, if you can comment on it. There, you see-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: Mao was a member of the honor guard. There we are. And that, in fact, is film. NIXON: The interesting thing to note about that guard is the size of the men. Chou En-lai, who had a great attention to detail despite the fact that he is one of the busiest men in the world, a head of government of the most populous country in the world, personally picked people for a honor guard of that sort, as I later learned. As you will note, Chinese are supposed to be not as tall as we are, but most of those people were over--all of them, I think, were over six feet tall, and they were magnificently trained. I remember that, as you ' ; ll note, the reviewing officer looks each one in the eye, and, in their case, instead of looking straight forward, as most do in other countries, their eyes followed me as we went around. And so there was a feeling of motion that was almost hyponotic as we went down the line. GANNON: Did--did he choose tall people and--and have this hypnotic sense to impress you with the strength of the Chinese armed forces? NIXON: No. He didn' ; t do that. I don' ; t think the guard was one that was just for me. I think that was their regular honor guard. But honor guards generally are, except in this country where we have honor guards with multicolored uniforms and so forth--Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, all mixed in, which is ridiculous, incidentally-- GANNON: Why? NIXON: Well, because it' ; s not nearly as impressive as having one uniform. I much prefer it, and you should have an honor guard uniform. GANNON: Does an honor guard make an impression that--that makes any difference to a visiting head of state? NIXON: I think it does. There' ; s probably--I think it particularly makes an impression on heads of state from smaller countries. After all, they--they expect to be treated with great respect, and an honor guard is part of the--the drill. It' ; s more important than the quarters you stay in, the proper honor guard, the guns that go off, the national anthems, and so forth. I must say, to me, as impressive any--as anything there was not so much the honor guard but to hear the Chinese band play " ; The Star-Spangled Banner," ; and to play it well. " ; The Star-Spangled Banner" ; is a difficult song to play, and, boy, we have heard it mangled in some countries beyond belief. You could hardly recognize it. But the Chinese, curiously enough, musically, are fairly close to us. They seem to understand it, and they played it beautifully, just as they played " ; M--America the Beautiful," ; the same army band at the state dinner that they gave in the Great Hall of the People. They played it perfectly. GANNON: What goes through your mind as you' ; re standing there at an airport arrival ceremony and the anthem is played? Are you thinking about what you' ; re going to do next or say next, or does it—does it actually have a--an emotional impact or a--a--a psychological impact to hear your anthem played in a foreign country? NIXON: Well, you know, I suppose this sounds a little corny, but I don' ; t--I can hardly recall a time, either in a foreign country or on the great ceremonies on the South Lawn of the White House, when standing there at attention, hearing the anthem played, the flags furled, and so forth, when a little chill doesn' ; t go up your back. It always has that effect on me. GANNON: We have a--some film from Peking Television of your first meeting with Chairman Mao. How did you get word that—that you were going to be summoned to his presence? NIXON: Well, we didn' ; t know that we would see him at all. In fact, when they made out the schedule, there was no indication that we were to have an appointment with him. We had heard that he had not been well, and all inquiries that were made, that Henry had made previously, were to the effect that no decision had been made as to whether or not we would see him. And so we arrived in the guest house and--wondering whether we were going to see him, and because some people thought--some of those who were covering the trip, the press, has already begun to speculate that Mao might snub us by not receiving us, which would have been quite a snub, because he had received Haile Selassie and people of that sort. But that wasn' ; t the way it happened. I was actually--had taken off my clothes and sitting in my shorts prior to going in and taking a shower when Henry came in, again rather breathless, and said, " ; Mao wants to see you right away." ; So we rushed down and got into the cars and went over to his c--residence in Peking. I remember the usual Chinese entrance, a gateway. A sort of--red was the color I recall, which, of course, was quite appropriate. GANNON: What--what were your first impressions on meeting him? NIXON: Well, he said he didn' ; t talk very well and some said—the Chinese indicated that was because he' ; d had laryngitis, because--it was obvious, however, that he' ; d had some sort of a stroke. But he talked well enough. He could be understood well enough. GANNON: In his pictures he looks fairly— NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --voluble— NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --and vigorous. NIXON: W--well understood. Sometimes the words didn' ; t tumble out as well as they might. I would like to have known him when he was much better. But compared to what he was in 1976, when he had had another stroke and when--he talked so poorly then that he just couldn' ; t get the words out. And I remember how painful it was even to watch him when he couldn' ; t get words out. He' ; d get one of the girl secretaries standing in back of him taking down every word that he said, and he' ; d grab the notepad, and then he' ; d write out what he was trying to say and hand it back to her, and then she' ; d translate it. He' ; d hear the translation, it' ; d be wrong, and he' ; d say, " ; No!" ; and grab it again and write it out. But this time, no problem like that. He--we had a very easygoing conversation. One thing that impressed me about his room was that it was very similar to that of Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion, the founder of the Israeli state, had a room just cluttered with all sorts of books, books open here and there and on the desk and so forth and so on. You know, you hear these days that the mark of a great executive or a good executive is a clean desk. That' ; s not true. That--if you have a clean desk, you usually have an empty head. And in this case, the--Mao' ; s room was a clutter of books. He obviously was a f--man who did a great deal of reading. As he indicated, too--he' ; d read my book Six Crises, which Chou En-lai had had translated into Chinese before even it was agreed I’d make the visit. Some way or other, I think what appealed to them in that book is it was about struggle, and struggle, of course, is the theme that Mao and the Chinese Communists constantly emphasized at that period. GANNON: Could you tell anything about the--from the relationship between the two—from--between Mao and Chou En-lai--about the division of labor between them in terms of running China? NIXON: Well, there was no question that Chou En-lai ran China. There was no question, however, that Mao was still chairman of the board, but he was st—he was not the chief executive officer in terms of carrying out things. But Chou En-lai was very deferential to Mao, deferential because every word that Mao uttered was gospel, and I noted, for example, that after that first meeting with Mao that Chou En-lai would often quote Mao as to what he' ; d said in that first meeting. But Mao made the point very clearly when he said, " ; Look. I' ; m not here to discuss the details. That' ; s for the prime minister to discuss." ; He said, " ; I am here to talk about philosophy, general philosophy," ; and then he proceeded to do that. GANNON: Were they friends, do you—do you think? NIXON: Yes. I do not think close friends. I don' ; t think there was a great deal of affection there. There was respect on both parts. Each needed the other. I think that' ; s the way that it worked. GANNON: How well-prepped on you were they? NIXON: Oh, quite well. They, for example, had read what I had written. Example is that I had made th--a speech, for example, in Kansas City, which should have told the American press what to expect, and it got, I think, just minimal coverage in the American press. I don' ; t think television covered it at all to speak of, but when Henry Kissinger saw Chou En-lai, Chou En-lai had that speech, which had been covered in the Chinese press, in front of him there and asked Henry whether he had seen it. Henry had not seen it, because it was not one that was--been prepared by the State Department or by the N.S.C. It was one that I had prepared by myself. And so he gave him a copy of it. Chou En-lai gave Henry Kissinger a copy of the speech I had made in Kansas City that the American press had paid no attention to, but which indicated very clearly that we were going forward on some sort of a Chinese initiative. So it does show you they paid attention to what we were saying and doing. GANNON: Weren' ; t they even aware of your taste in films? NIXON: Yes. They' ; d done their homework, because they--first, they had a movie theatre and--where they said we could see anything we wanted to see--that is, of films, and--of their films. But Henry told me that Chou En-lai had h--read or heard that I had enjoyed the movie Patton, and so he had it s--produced and shown for him. Of course, he understood English, so it was--understood a lot of English, a lot more than he ever let on. He never spoke in English, however. GANNON: What do you think Chou En-lai learned about you from having watched Patton? NIXON: Oh, nothing particularly. The Patton—the Patton movie was interesting to me not because of the war, but because of what it told us about the people. It was a fascinating study of Eisenhower, who never appears in person, of Bradley, of Montgomery, of Patton, and the rest. Just like Tolstoy' ; s War of Peace--War and Peace, which is a great book, but I read it when I was in college, and my interest in it was not what it told about war and peace, but what it was--told about the characters, that Tolstoy was a master at describing. I mean, the people seemed to walk on the pages. GANNON: Do you think that anybody who wants to understand you has to read S— THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE GANNON: --ix Crises? NIXON: No. They--they don' ; t have to really read anything. They could observe what I have done and judge for themselves. I do not believe that any individual--what he writes should be the conclusive factor that determines how people are goig to praise him. After all, whatever anybody writes is through his own eyes and so forth. And what a person writes, I think, reveals very little. GANNON: Didn' ; t Mao' ; s writings, though, reveal a lot and have a great, great impact? NIXON: Not much about him. It revealed a lot about the Chinese Communist revolution. I remember speaking to Mao about his writings, and I said, " ; The chairman' ; s writings" ; --I spoke— Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0366/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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58 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 13, 1983, part 2.
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gannix_0366
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-05-13
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 13, 1983, part 3. gannix_0367 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|1(1)|9(7)|24(11)|39(2)|49(13)|60(14)|68(6)|72(4)|86(3)|97(3)|109(4)|121(3)|133(6)|149(12)|165(1)|177(15)|194(15)|210(16)|245(7)|261(5)|280(3)|301(11)|320(11)|333(2)|343(16)|355(10)|366(12)|381(3)|394(5)|408(13)|419(7)|428(12)|443(15)|452(5)|466(2)|475(14)|489(12)|500(3)|512(14)|529(5)|543(3)|555(4)|565(7)|576(3)|595(3)|606(14)|616(13)|627(9)|642(3)|657(1)|685(2) 0 https://youtu.be/xzSP_iJkPNc YouTube video English 71 Chairman Mao's Leadership --the way it came about was that--perhaps in reference to my own writings, I said, " ; Well, the chairman's writings are very important." ; Nixon recounts his impression of Mao and his views on government leadership. China ; Edward Heath ; Hubert Humphrey ; John F. Kennedy ; Leaders ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Mao Zedong ; Nikita Khrushchev ; Peking ; Tudeh Party ; Zhou Enlai Heath, Edward ; Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 468 Comparing Chairman Mao and Zhou Enlai When he was talking about liking rightists, Mao, in that self-deprecating way of his, said, " ; You know," ; he said, " ; sometimes I think that people like me sound like big empty cannons. Nixon examines the differences and similarities between Mao and Zhou Enlai. He also looks at them objectively as leaders. Britain ; Charles de Gaulle ; Chinese Revolution ; communism ; France ; Germany ; Japan ; Konrad Adenauer ; Leaders ; Mao Zedong ; Shigeru Yoshida ; Walter Robertson ; Winston Churchill ; World War II ; Zhou Enlai Adenauer, Konrad, 1876-1967 ; Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Gaulle, Charles de, 1890-1970 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Yoshida, Shigeru, 1878-1967 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 795 Compromising for Relationship with China Should the United States deal with regimes or leaders whose policies include internal murder? Nixon disputes claims that beginning a diplomatic relationship with China despite its communism and past brutalities compromised the United States. Adolf Hitler ; China ; communism ; Cultural Revolution ; Dresden ; foreign relations ; Franklin D. Roosevelt ; Germany ; Joseph Stalin ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; Winston Churchill ; World War II Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945 ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 ; Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 1169 Zhou Enlai's Health What was Zhou Enlai's health like in your observation of him on this trip? Nixon recalls Zhou Enlai's health during his visit to China. He also talks about drinking the Chinese liquor maotai during toasts. Andre Malraux ; Bill Rogers ; Dwight Chapin ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Great Wall cigar ; Henry Kissinger ; Long March ; maotai ; Marshall Green ; Nancy Wensheng Tang ; Zhou Enlai Chapin, Dwight L. (Dwight Lee), 1940- ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Green, Marshall ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Rogers, William P. (William Pierce), 1913-2001 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 1496 Chinese Gymnastics Exhibition We have a picture from that gymnastic exhibition, which I think you in your diary of the China trip--you commented what a tremendous impact and impression this sight made on you. Nixon describes being struck by the strength and discipline of China's large population while attending a gymnastics exhibition and compares this to the abilities of American youth. Adolf Hitler ; Ayub Khan ; China ; communism ; gymnastic exhibition ; Hitler's Youth ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Pakistan ; Peking Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; K̲h̲ān, Muḥammad Ayyūb 1665 Women of China During your time in Peking, you got to sit next to one of the great charmers in the history of the world, Mao's wife. Nixon discusses meeting the wives of Chairmen Mao and Zhou Enlai as well as the treatment of women in China. Alger Hiss ; Chinese Revolution ; Christian Science Monitor ; Deng Yingchao ; foreign relations ; Hiss Case ; Hong Kong ; Jack London ; Jiang Qing ; Madame Chiang Kai-shek ; Madame Mao ; Manila ; Mao Zedong ; Priscilla Hiss ; Soong May-ling ; Walter Lippmann ; Whittaker Chambers ; Zhou Enlai Chambers, Whittaker ; Chiang, May-ling Soong, 1897-2003 ; Deng, Yingchao, 1903-1992 ; Hiss, Alger ; Jiang, Qing, 1914-1991 ; Lippmann, Walter, 1889-1974 ; London, Jack, 1876-1916 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 2071 Progress in China How significant is something like that? Nixon addresses the changing culture within China as it progresses, something that he argues poses a major threat to communism in the country. He also talks about working together with China and other countries to bring about progress such as the cure for cancer. cancer ; China ; communism ; fashion ; Mao Zedong ; social change ; Ye Jianying ; Zhou Enlai Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Ye, Jianying ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 2423 Taiwan Did Mao and Zhou talk about Chiang Kai-shek, and how did they refer to him? Nixon discusses the relationship between the United States and Taiwan and its affect on the relationship between the United States and China. Chiang Kai-shek ; communism ; Mao Zedong ; Peking ; Shanghai Communiqué ; Soviet Union ; Taiwan ; Zhou Enlai Chiang, Kai-shek, 1887-1975 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 2688 Relationship with China and the Soviet Union How do you evaluate the China relationship in the years since you left office? Nixon considers the United States' relationship with China after his time in office and also considers the effect that a war between China and the Soviet Union would have. Afghanistan ; China ; Gerald Ford ; India ; Japan ; Jimmy Carter ; Mao Zedong ; nuclear weapons ; Peking ; Ronald Reagan ; Soviet Union ; Vietnam ; Zhou Enlai Carter, Jimmy, 1924 ; Ford, Gerald R., 1913-2006 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Reagan, Ronald ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 Interview NIXON: --the way it came about was that--perhaps in reference to my own writings, I said, " ; Well, the Chairman' ; s writings are very important." ; And he said, in his self-deprecating way--he was always speaking in self-deprecating ways. Anybody who is--does not have a superi—fer—infer--anybody who does not have an inferiority complex usually can speak in a self-deprecating way. And he said, " ; Well, I never wrote anything that was worth much." ; I went on to say, " ; But what the chairman wrote changed China and changed the world." ; He said, " ; I haven' ; t" ; --and then, with a smile, he said, " ; Well, I haven' ; t been able to change anything except a few places around Peking." ; GANNON: In your book Leaders, you write of Mao that--and your impressions of him, that his willpower somehow seemed a physical characteristic. How did--how did you form that impression? NIXON: Mao is one who has great animal magnetism. That' ; s something you would not ascribe, incidentally, to Chou En-lai. Chou En-lai was subtle, sophisticated, suave, smooth, cerebral. Mao was emotional, physical, something very difficult to describe, but it' ; s there. You can sense it. Khrushchev was the same way, incidentally. He also was a very physical presence. I' ; d say the same thing for Lyndon Johnson. I wouldn' ; t say that about Kennedy, for example. That' ; s the differences between various people. GANNON: Do you think Mao Tse-tung had problems justifying to his own people dealing with a—a right-wing anti-Communist from the United States of America? NIXON: Oh, certainly, but he was not a bit defensive about it. I remember when we were talking, with his usual twinkle in his eye, he said, " ; I voted for you in your last election." ; I assumed that he meant by that that he favored me over Senator Humphrey, or Vice-President Humphrey. But then he went on to say--he said, " ; You know, I like rightists, right-wingers." ; He said, " ; I am always comfortable when the right comes to power." ; And he was referring to the Germans, to Heath in England, and so forth. And he-- GANNON: Did he mean this, or was he being humorous? NIXON: No, I think he meant it. I think he found that the right was more dependable. Let me--let us understand how Mao' ; s mind worked and how Chou En-lai' ; s mind worked. Let me start again. Let' ; s understand how Mao and Chou En-lai looked at China in 1972, at the time this new relationship with the United States took place. Why is it that Mao was to say that he liked right-wing governments, because right-wing governments were the very antithesis of what he stood for? And the answer is that as far as the Chinese are concerned, their primary interest is China, always China. That' ; s number one. Their secondary interest is philosophy. It doesn' ; t mean that Mao Tse-tung was not a very d--dedicated Marxist, Communist--call him what you want. And the same is true of Chou En-lai. But where there is conflict between the ideology and their security, their security comes first. And so, as far as they were concerned, in Iran, they liked the shah of Iran even though he was anti-Communist, and they did not support the Tuda Party, which was the Communist party--party in Iran. And as far as we were concerned, we were their ideological enemy, but, on the other hand, as far as the security of China was concerned, we were absolutely indispensable to that security. And so, as far as the Soviet Union was concerned, the Soviet Union was Marxist, Communist--call it what you will. So was China, but the Soviet Union threatened China' ; s security. And so every time you look at the Chinese, you' ; ve got to think of them in those terms. They' ; re going to be thinking of China, what is going to be good for China. And if a right-wing regime is going to be more in their interest than a left-wing regime, they' ; ll just put the r--left-wing regime right down the shaft. GANNON: On that point, we are going to break for a Chinese meal. NIXON: All right? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Thirty-five minu— OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] seconds. NIXON: When he was talking about liking rightists, Mao, in that self-deprecating way of his, said, " ; You know," ; he said, " ; sometimes I think that people like me sound like big empty cannons. We talk about overthrowing everybody--' ; We will overthrow the imperialists, and we' ; ll overthrow the revisionists, and we' ; ll o--overthrow the capitalists.' ; " ; He said, " ; After all, if we overthrow everybody, we' ; re not going to have any friends left. So sometimes we have to get along with the rightists," ; and that--of course he meant us. GANNON: You' ; ve described in your memoirs and in Leaders the differences between Mao and Chou En-lai. What were the main differences that you noticed between the two men? NIXON: Well, Mao, I would say, first, was fundamentally f--well, let' ; s start again. That' ; s—I—I don' ; t want to give the answer to the question. Well, Mao basically was a physical creature. I—I say that in not a condescending way or a condemnatory way, but in terms of simply appraising him for what he was. He was more emotion, whereas Chou En-Lai was more intellectual, more brain. That doesn' ; t mean that Mao was not a fairly learned man. After all, he wrote great pro—great poetry, at least great poetry from the standpoint of the Chinese and the revolutionary forces, and also read a great deal. But he primarily was one who approached problems in an emotional way. He appealed to the heart. Chou En-lai, however, appealed to the head. I think that was the fundamental difference between their approaches. The second thing is that Chou En-lai was a highly sophisticated, highly civilized person. Mao, on the other hand, was just what he was--a former peasant, very earthy, very down-to-earth. Chou En-lai was, however--we must have in mind, not, because he was simply a civilized person, a weak person. I remember Walter Robertson, the former assistant secretary of state during the Eisenhower years, telling me once about a story that he' ; d heard about Chou En-lai--that Chou En-lai was absolutely ruthless, that one time he came out of a room in which he had just killed one of his rivals calmly smoking a cigarette. And there' ; s no question that Chou En-lai, along with Mao, were responsible for the killing or starving to death of millions of Chinese. So, under the circumstances, therefore, we' ; re not dealing here with a great humanist, even though he had humanist and humanitarian appearance. Having said all that, though, I would now come to a general appraisal of Chou En-lai. Many times, I guess more often than not, people ask me, " ; Who was the greatest man you ever met? Who' ; s--?" ; And here, in answering the question, if the question is who was the best person, that' ; s one thing. Who was the best president, the best king, the best leader, that' ; s something else. Who was the indispensable man? Churchill was indispensable, for example, for Britain at the time of World War II. De Gaulle was indispensable for France during the period that he served. And Adenauer was indispensable for Germany. Yoshida was indis--dispensable in creating modern Japan. In terms of comparison with these others, we would not say that Chou En-lai was indispensable to the Chinese Revolution. Maybe Mao could have done it with somebody else, although Chou was very effective. But I would say in terms of rating and comparing Chou En-lai with the other world leaders that I have met, there was one area that he was, without question, number one. He was the greatest diplomat I' ; ve ever met. He was suave, poised. He had enormous stamina. He was always prepared. He was very tough when necessary, appeared to be conciliatory when necessary. Always appeared to be reasonable, but never gave in on anything he possibly could where he thought that giving in would not serve his interests. I think perhaps the phrase that best describes him is one that Churchill used in describing Parnell, the great Irish patriot of the nineteenth century. He said that he was " ; a volcano under an ice cap." ; And I think that this probably describes Chou En-lai. Beneath there was a volcano, but on top there was an ice cap, and that made him the effective diplomat that he was. GANNON: How—how can you talk with such admiring objectivity about a man who had the blood of several millions of people on his hands? NIXON: Oh, I' ; m—I' ; m admiring him for his capabilities as a diplomat, for his capabilities as a leader at the time that I dealt with him. I' ; m not admiring him in terms of his past record. That is something else again, just as I am sure he didn' ; t admire, for example, the United States for what he considered to be our " ; capitalist exploitation of the masses." ; I totally disagree with his appraisal of our system and what we have done, a--and I--certainly he disagrees with my appraisal. GANNON: Should the United States deal with regimes or leaders whose policies include internal murder? Should h--say if Hitler had tried—had wanted to reach some kind of a sensible understanding in terms of U.S. interests with Franklin Roosevelt. Should he have treated with Hitler— NIXON: Uh— GANNON: --regardless of the internal arrangements? NIXON: Well, there didn' ; t seem to be any possibility that that h--would happen at that time, but I think Churchill is--turning the subject around--put it fairly well in contest when he was criticized in the House of Commons for making " ; common cause with Communist Russia" ; after Hitler invaded Russia. And I think Churchill said something to the effect that--let' ; s see, what was it? GANNON: That h--he would make a pact with the devil if-- NIXON: No. No, let' ; s see. No, I think I' ; m going to miss that one there. But I--but I—w--where Churchill—where Churchill defended his making common cause with Stalin, even though he had previous [He probably means " ; previously." ; ] been—been intensely critical of him, putting Stalin and Hitler in exactly the same boat, and after the war, incidentally, he continued to criticize him--but at that particular time, when Hitler was the major enemy, he made common cause with him. GANNON: How did you--or how do you answer your critics at the time, particularly your conservative critics, who said that by going to China you legitimized this brutal, anti-American regime and that, in fact, their policies hadn' ; t changed—th—the--the masses of murders that had—had occurred in the f--forties and fifties were—and the Cultural Revolution were perhaps past, but that they still have a brutal, murderous, oppressive regime there? NIXON: Well, the—the Russians haven' ; t changed. The Chinese haven' ; t changed. Eastern Europeans haven' ; t changed, except moderately, i--in terms of their treatment of their own people. A--and over a period of time, however, change possibly may take place. What I am s--simply suggesting here--that clearly, apart from whether they have changed or not, looking at the fundamental responsibility of a president of the United States responsible for the security of this country, failing to have a rapprochement with the People' ; s Republic of China at that time would have been inexcusable and unacceptable, because, frankly, we needed them just as much as they needed us. And if we didn' ; t have that rapprochement today, I repeat, we would be in an impossible position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. You take the Soviet Union, you add the billion people that are in China with its enormous resources, and the whole balance of power in the world tips irreparably against us. And that is what we are helping to prevent. GANNON: What does it feel like to sit across the table from a man who had killed someone with his bare hands and walked out of the room smoking a cigarette? Does it occur to you that he could do it to you under similar circumstances? NIXON: I don' ; t think of that, and I doubt if he thought of me in terms of the way he had heard me described, as the " ; capitalist devil." ; We were both pragmatic. We both had other things to think about that were, we thought, of higher priority than what had happened in the past. And that' ; s the way we approached it. GANNON: Is this attitude toward these leaders and regimes an exception to your conservatism? NIXON: No. No, I would say that in the whole foreign policy area, that I believe what--it is most important is that it be an effective foreign policy and one that will always ha--put emphasis on our primary responsibility, and that is to have our system survive. It must survive, because the United States, whatever our faults may be, is the hope of the world. We are the main force that deters the only major nation that threatens war or defeating other nations without war, and we are the nation that will certainly defend freedom wherever we possibly can when it' ; s within our capabilities. GANNON: But if we compromise our principles, doesn' ; t that make our survival not worthwhile, or the same nation isn' ; t surviving? Can' ; t--don' ; t— NIXON: That' ; s— GANNON: --you have to stand up at a certain point and be—be w--willing to die for what you believe in? NIXON: As a matter of fact, war compromises principles. War is evil. All war is wrong. All killing is wrong. The question is, for example, when Eisenhower ordered the bombing of Dresden, which was a civilian target, and forty million Germans burned to death in one night, that certainly was immoral, but it would have been more immoral to allow Hitler to rule Europe. That' ; s what it gets down to. GANNON: What--what was Chou En-lai' ; s health like in your observations of him? NIXON: I had heard that— OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, just one second. On that last one, you said forty million [unintelligible] died in one night. Do we want to say…forty thousand. NIXON: Yeah, we' ; ll repeat that. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, let' ; s do a pickup on that. We don' ; t need the question [unintelligible] again. [unintelligible] NIXON: No, I' ; ll—I' ; ll just [unintelligible]. GANNON: That' ; s a long question. NIXON: No, no, no, no, no. I' ; ll—I' ; d—I' ; ll cover it. GANNON: Pick up Eisenhower' ; s decision. NIXON: Mm-hmm. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay? NIXON: Ready? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] any time. NIXON: Well, you take Eisenhower' ; s decision for the bombing of Dresden in World War II. It was a civilian target, and the firebombing of Dresden cost forty thousand German lives in one night. Now, that was immoral, but it would have been more immoral to allow Hitler to rule Europe. And those are decisions that leaders have to make, and sometimes they are terribly difficult. That was a difficult one for Eisenhower, as he often told me thereafter. GANNON: What was Chou En-lai' ; s health like in your observation of him on this trip? NIXON: Well, his stamina was unbelievable. We' ; d have these long, long meetings. You see, every meeting is twice as long as it would normally be, because while he understood English, and quite a bit of it, he' ; d never spoken it, so you had to have the translation. And we' ; d go on for two or three hours in the morning and three or four hours in an afternoon, and then he would spend half the night working with Kissinger on the details of memoranda and so forth, and agreements that we had discussed earlier in the day. GANNON: When did he sleep? NIXON: He slept, apparently, after midnight. I talked to Miss Tang, who was one of the translators, Brooklyn-born, brilliant, and she said that he got along on four or five hours-- GANNON: Isn' ; t that redundant? NIXON: --forty-f--four or five hours a day. I noticed on occasion he took a little white pill during the day. I don' ; t know what it was. And, of course, as we know, later on he died with what was diagnosed as either cancer or a form of cancer, leukemia. But his stamina, as I said, was unbelievable. Oh, a couple of things indicated to me that he was not in as good health as he was. He--at the big state dinner when we were toasting each other in maotai, which was the fiery Chinese brew, which he--and he proved how fiery it was by pouring a bit into a saucer and lighting a match to it, and it practically exploded. He told me one amusing story, too--that it was so strong it' ; s been known--that when one fellow had drunk too much maotai--he lit a cigarette--he blew up. And so, as he was talking about maotai, he said that during the Long March he had on occasion had as many as twenty-four cups--that' ; s a small cup--about twenty-four ounces in one day. He said, " ; Now," ; he said, " ; I limit myself to two or three ounces." ; GANNON: What does it taste like? NIXON: It' ; s just like wood alcohol. It is a--it' ; s a fiery brew. GANNON: Did you--how did you handle it during the— NIXON: I just sipped it. GANNON: --toasts going on? NIXON: As a matter of fact, you can practically get drunk smelling it, and what happened was—is--the custom is, Chinese-style, that after you propose a toast you go around the entire table of twenty or thirty of the honored guests and tip with each one. You hold up your glass, s--look them in the eye--next one. And I went around, and so did he, and I noted when each of us had finished our round of twenty-four drinks, we still had half a glass left. That' ; s how we stayed sober for the talks that were to take place later that night. GANNON: André Malraux had told you that the Chinese would be struck by the age of your party. Was that— NIXON: Age— GANNON: Did that turn out to be the case? NIXON: Age constantly came into it. I know that Chou En-lai one time, to my surprise, said how impressed he was by our advance team, and they were an excellent team. They did a marvelous job of advancing. Dwight Chapin was one of them, and he was only t--thirty-three at the time. I thought that was young. But Chou En-lai also mentioned Marshall Greene, who was the assistant secretary of state for Asia, and Marshall Greene was fifty-one, but he thought he was young, too. You see, Chou En-lai was seventy-three at that time and still had the vigor of somebody of twenty-three. He—he—he was a man of enormous physical vigor and mental discipline. Another thing that Chou En-lai impressed me with was his attention to detail. Now, usually we say leaders shouldn' ; t pay much attention to detail, and sometimes many of us get too immersed in detail, but I recall, for example, that he checked over every item on the menu at the state dinner to be sure that it had been prepared exactly the right way. And I understand the reason that he did that was that he was a very good chef himself. I pointed out to him that Eisenhower had also been very proud of his cooking ability, which pleased him a great deal. Another incident that proved that--Bill Rogers was telling me that on one occasion when he was having a meeting with Chou En-lai, they brought in The Daily World, or whatever it was called—the—the—the Chinese Communist daily newspaper--which was to come out the next day. And he personally edited it while he was talking to Rogers about some of the other matters that we had to discuss at that time. A--and I recall particularly when--the day when we went to the Great Wall--it had been snowing, and we were attending an event in the gymnasium, a big gymnastic event, and I noticed that about halfway through the event that Chou En-lai got up and left, and I just assumed, " ; Well, he' ; s seventy-three years old. He probably had to go to the men' ; s room." ; That wasn' ; t it at all. As a matter of fact, he came back, and what he had done--he went out personally to check to see whether the people he had ordered to go out to sweep all of the roads clear of snow had done so, so that the roads' ; d be clear when we went to the Great Wall. And they were pristine clear. How he did all those things and yet saw the forest and not just the trees in our conversations was a very remarkable achievement. I can understand why one of the major Taiwan leaders--the government there--said rather wistfully after they had lost China--he said, " ; If we had had Chou En-lai on our side, we would have won." ; GANNON: We have a picture from that gymnastic exhibition, which I think you in your diary of the China trip--you commented what a tremendous impact and impression this sight made on you. NIXON: Yes. I recall the event very well, and I also recall as I look at that picture what I heard when I was in Pakistan in 1965 from Ayub Khan. He was a strong anti-Communist. He had just come home from Peking be--because he had become disillusioned by the administration--the Johnson administration' ; s treatment of mem [sic] by them leaning too much to India and the rest and was turning toward China himself. And I said, " ; What was your impression of it?" ; He said, " ; Primarily people, millions and millions of people--the enormous potential strength of it." ; And there in that picture, as we were there that night, I saw these people, but what impressed me more than the fact that they were young and vigorous, which they were, was that they were so totally disciplined, and I could see what an enormous force that would be under the control of any leader who was opposed to us and why it was therefore important to attempt to influence that force in a way that would not be against our interest. Nothing brought home to me more vividly than that night, seeing that demonstration of not only vigor but also of discipline, the vital necessity of not only beginning the China initiative but nurturing it from there on out. GANNON: Do you think American youth has vigor and discipline today? NIXON: A lot of it has. Let me say, let' ; s not be unimpressed, even though I know that in—that most of our elitists in the educational community would not approve of what I' ; m just going to say--let us not be unimpressed with some of the bands and other things that we see at football games and the rest. No. Our—our—our young people are capable of discipline, and we wouldn' ; t want them to be like the Chinese people. We wouldn' ; t want them to be like Hitler' ; s youth. We want them to have individuality, but it is also important for them to bear in mind that, in order to keep the freedom which allows the diversity and individuality, it' ; s necessary sometimes to be totally disciplined and to give up some freedom in order to keep all freedom for the future. GANNON: During your time in Peking, you got to sit next to one of the great charmers in the history of the world, Mao' ; s wife. What—what were your impressions of her? NIXON: Well, frankly, of course, she was not in her prime when I saw her, but I rather wondered why he had married her. But it—it was his fourth wife, and I understand, according to some probably unfriendly critics of Mao, that she seduced him, s--from his third wife. Whatever the case might be, she was very, very intense. What I remember most about her that night was that she was sweating. The sweat was pouring down from her head and so forth. And I—I sort of wondered what was the matter and she apologetically said that she had been having some influenza. But I think it was tension, and, as distinguished from the grace of Chou En-lai and the warm hospitality of Mao, despite the fact that I knew that ideologically we were total enemies, she was one that made no bones about the fact that she didn' ; t like us. I remember she turned to me in the middle of one of the performances and said, " ; Why did you wait so long to come to China? Why didn' ; t you come before?" ; And I just ignored it and just kept looking at the performance. She was also interested--it showed, at least, that she' ; d--had followed what had happened in America--she was interested in what happened to Jack London. Some way that had appealed to her. She said, " ; D--What did he die of ?" ; And I sai--not being a London expert, I guessed pretty good. I said, " ; I think it was alcoholism." ; She asked about Walter Lippman, whose--incidentally, she had read some of his columns in The Christian Science Monitor, which shows that some of the papers are distributed there. And I made a point which I hoped got back to Mao. I assume that it did, assuming she was still on speaking terms with him, which I can' ; t be sure of. But I said, " ; Well he' ; s over eighty, but I talked to him on the phone recently," ; and I had, on his eightieth birthday, and that he' ; s still very sharp. And so much for that. GANNON: Was she the only leading powerful woman you met in China? NIXON: On that trip, yes, although I would say this. I—I did meet Chou' ; s wife, Chou En-lai' ; s wife, and she was a gracious, charming, sophisticated woman, although--in her own right, as I learned when I saw her in ' ; 76 and paid a courtesy call on her--Chou En-lai had died just before I got there in ' ; 76--in her own right, she was a Communist Party leader. But she was more Chinese in meeting her d—her—her guests, as the case might be. But, generally speaking, I remember many, many years ago, during the time of the Hiss case, when we were questioning Alger Hiss and then his wife, Priscilla Hiss, that Chambers made an interesting observation. He said, " ; When you meet a Communist cub--couple, generally you will find that the woman is the red-hot of the two." ; And I have generally found that that' ; s true, not just of Communism, but of politics generally. Women are less compromising. They' ; re more idealics--idealists, more ideological, and they' ; re more intense. They' ; re less forgiving, and certainly she fit that right to a " ; T" ; . I compared her in my mind' ; s eye, too, with the other great Chinese woman, who was the wife, I say--I t--I compare her with another woman, who was the wife of a great Chinese leader, Madame Chiang Kai-shek. And she' ; s a Wellesley graduate, highly sophisticated, gracious, charming, and very tough and very intelligent in standing up for the views that she believed in and in representing her husband around the world. They were two very different people, but one, Mao' ; s wife, was, frankly, one that s--simply turned me off--turned me off because of her attitude, not just what she stood for. She just didn' ; t have any grace. Chou En-lai had grace, and Mao, in his own way, had some charm, but this woman--nothing. GANNON: Do you count it as one of the--among the worst offenses of the Chinese revolution that it suppressed the beauty of some of the world' ; s most beautiful women? NIXON: I think it was a great mistake, and I think they' ; re going to have to rectify it, and already are. In some of the books that I read before I went there, old China hands--those that presume to be experts, and I don' ; t think anybody' ; s an expert--the more you know about China, the less you know about China. It will always be that way. But, in any event, they wrote to the effect that the Chinese Communists were trying, of course, to make a w--a new man in China, but they were also trying to put the women into that same category. And it was very difficult, because women traditionally in China have played a--a very interesting role. Oh, it' ; s subordinate in a way, but also independent in a way. You know, you see Chinese women in--in the great cities like Hong Kong and Manila, et cetera, and they have--they have the grace, the charm, the beauty. Some of the great beauties of the world are Chinese. They love color. And in--and what--and when you go to China, and particularly in 1972, I didn' ; t see any color at all. The women translerter--lators were dressed in these Mao suits, big baggy pants and so forth. They looked just like the men--the short-cut hair, no style, no makeup. And then it subtly began to change. By 1976, just a tiny bit of color would show out under the Mao coat or--or jacket on the dress beneath. And, curiously enough--not that this is terribly important, but it does show you they had to compromise some--when I went there in 1982, they still had women translators, but they were dressed, believe it or not, in very, very beautifully tailored slack suits, beautifully colored, and in the evening they wore nice dresses. I asked one of them where they got it, and she blushed a little. She says, " ; I got it when I was in Hong Kong." ; Although the Chinese themselves are very good at fabrics, as we are learning with having to compete with them. GANNON: How significant is something like that? Can the--can a--can the length of a hemline or a--a piece of blouse beneath a cuff indicate major social change? NIXON: Only if you put it in its total context and its proper context. What it does indicate--that the Chinese Communists found that it was impossible to force their system, impersonalizing everybody, equalizing everybody, on the mass of the Chinese people. It just isn' ; t working. So subtle changes are taking place. How significant they are remains to be seen. It' ; s--it' ; s the same thing with regard to--such as the fact that now, compared with 1972--in 1972, as you went along the streets of Peking and the other cities, everybody was walking. Hundreds of thousands walking, sh--or, I should say, shuffling. By 1982, most of them were on bicycles, and a few cars and so forth. In 1972, no TV--1982, several million sets of TV and importing s--some--and exporting, I should say, some sets in Southeast Asia, which they proudly told me then. What does this mean? Part of it is material progress, and that can happen in a Communist country as well as any other. But in terms of allowing more diversity, more freedom, even in such things as clothes--that must tell us something as well. GANNON: On the--the principle that it' ; s hard to keep people down on the collective farm after they' ; ve seen Paree, does this kind of liberalization--will it present a problem to the Communist leadership? Can you--can you give an inch and not have people take a mile when you' ; re giving them this kind of freedom and diversity? NIXON: That' ; s the problem they have. It' ; s the great dilemma. It' ; s a great dilemma in a broader sense. Let' ; s put it in its economic context. In 1972, I remember some of the fatuous suggestions to the effect that--I saw it in one column in--particularly, that I won' ; t quote for the moment as far as to who wrote it, but I remember it so vividly. He said, " ; When President Nixon goes to China, the first question that Mao Tse-tung is probably going to ask him is ' ; Will the world' ; s richest nation help the world' ; s most populous nations [sic], and how can it help it?' ; Well, that, of course, misinterpreted why they came to a rapproachment with us and why we went there. It did--it not--did not have, at that time, anything to do with economics, and the Chinese didn' ; t raise economic questions whatever with us. We had to raise it with them in terms of economic cooperation. That was 1972. But now it' ; s changed a great deal. China is still concerned about its survival, and that requires that the United States be strong enough and have the will to deter Soviet aggression and Soviet threats against them or anybody else. That' ; s on the survival side. But China also is concerned about progress. It' ; s a terribly poor country. In order to have progress, they need more diversity. They need more freedom. They need more private enterprise. For example, you mentioned collective farms. The only agriculture that is productive in China today are on small plots that are being given to the peasants to run on their own where they can make a profit. In some of the cities, you will find privately-owned and privately-operated groups, and so forth and so on. The problem the Chinese have with this, however, is that if they are going to have more progress, they' ; ve got to have more freedom. In order to keep power, they have to have less, because the moment you set up private plots, privately-owned concerns, more freedom and diversity for people, and so forth, the more you set up the potential power centers that will not continue to accept the domination of a one-party state. GANNON: Did you ever meet Marshall Yeh, the military leader, on this trip? NIXON: No. On my last trip in 1982, I asked to meet him, but he was not well. And shortly thereafter he resigned his top position, but I have vivid memories of him in 1972, because he was the one who accompanied me on the trip to the Great Wall. He was a perfectly delightful man--knew some English, was one of Mao' ; s associates in the Long March and was particularly interested, I recall vividly, in what we were doing about cancer. I didn' ; t know why he was asking that question, and it was r--seemed to me rather ironic it was cancer that killed Mao later. GANNON: Chou En-lai. NIXON: I--no. It was cancer that killed Chou En-lai later. And I would say that one of the benefits of our relationship, or I would say that--I think one of the most useful things we' ; ve--have in--we did set up--out of that summit we did set up a joint cancer research activity between the two countries, because who knows? You know, we think we' ; re so smart in this country. We' ; ve got, certainly, the best medical care in the world and, we think, the best doctors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but if there is an answer to cancer, it may not be in the United States. Maybe it' ; s somebody in China, might be somebody in Africa, might be somebody in Latin America. And my view is, let' ; s share all that wisdom and some way find that one individual who will find that answer. GANNON: Did Mao and Chou talk about Chiang Kai-shek, and how did they refer to him? NIXON: It was sort of a mixed reaction. I think as Chinese, they respected him. As Communists, they hated him, because he was their enemy. But they spoke to him with a considerable amount of respect. I remember Mao, in a rather interesting sideline--he said, " ; You know, I noticed that our old friend Chiang Kai-shek does not like your coming here. He always calls us bandits." ; And I said, " ; Well, what does the Chairman call Chiang Kai-shek?" ; He says, " ; Oh, we call him ' ; bandits' ; [sic], too, sometimes. We abuse each other." ; But then he went on to say, " ; But I should remind you that our friendship with him goes back much further than yours." ; GANNON: What do you think will happen in U.S.-Taiwan relations? NIXON: The United States will and should continue to provide defensive weapons for Taiwan. But the level of assistance should be directly related to the offensive threat. That is what the Shanghai II Communiqué, which settled, at least temporarily, this burning issue a few months ago, provides. On the Chinese side, looking at Peking, it is important, then, if they want the level of arms to Taiwan reduced, they must reduce the threat. And the United States should continue to insist, as we did in--in the Shanghai Communiqué in 1972--and this is--also is the line in all other statements between the two countries--that the issue between Peking and Taipei be settled peacefully. I also should point this out, however. I have no concern about any danger that Peking is going to launch an amphibious war against Taiwan. They have the Russians to worry about. They--they' ; d be out of their minds to do that. The second point I should make is this, and this is something that our friends in Taiwan and some of the friends of Taiwan in the United States have overlooked. The greatest and the most indispensable--I' ; m sorry. A second point, and--there is another point that should be made, and that is this is something that our friends in Taiwan and the friends of Taiwan in the United States have often overlooked--that the most inf--dispensable factor in guaranteeing the security of Taiwan is a good relationship between the United States and Peking. If we have that relationship, that may restrain them. If Peking has a relationship like that with the Soviet Union, then Taiwan is in mortal danger. I do not see any solution working out in the near future. Perhaps some sort of a commonwealth status in which Taiwan retains its economic and social f--character, as Hong Kong, of course, must as well. Maybe that will happen. I' ; m not prepared to say. But at the present time we should keep the issue where it is. Taiwan is in no danger. It will continue to have its own economic system and continue to prosper, and I think that as long as we do not provoke Peking by either our statements or at--our actions in providing more than is needed for defense to Taiwan, Peking--they' ; ll huff and puff, but they will do nothing. GANNON: Do you think there' ; s a danger that a Democratic or a--a liberal Republican president would withdraw our support from Taiwan, and what would the impact of that be? NIXON: Well, there is the danger, but it would be a very great mistake, a great mistake, because if we, in effect, say to Peking, " ; Look here. We' ; re withdrawing all our support. We' ; re breaking our economic relations," ; which is what we really have at the present time, primarily, " ; and whatever military support that we' ; re giving," ; it would simply encourage Peking to move on Taiwan, to move on it recognizing that they would have no problem as far as we' ; re concerned. No, that' ; s not the thing to do. I don' ; t think it' ; s going to happen for that reason, even though some might be tempted to do it. GANNON: How do you evaluate the China relationship in the years since you left office? NIXON: Well, I think we have to look at it in the long view, and then in the short view, too. In the long view, it has not accomplished as much as I would have hoped, but more than many expected. For example, ten years ago there was no trade between China and the United States. Last year it was five and a half billion. Ten years ago, there were no Chinese students studying in the United States. Last year, there were twelve thousand. Ten years ago, there were no American tourists in China. Last year there were over a hundred thousand. Now, that is some progress in those particular areas. I--in terms of the--of the geopolitical relationship, the strategic relationship between the two, it' ; s had its ups and downs. After all, Mao died. Chou En-lai died. We' ; ve had new presidents in the United States. You' ; ve had Cord--Ford and Carter and now Reagan, and--and consequently you don' ; t have the--the smooth road that you would normally expect under those circumstances. But I would say that, as far as that relationship is concerned today --that, well, what brought us together, the Soviet threat, is really because of the fact that the Soviet Union now has at least parity with the United States overall in nuclear strength. While that threat is greater than it was ten years ago, in terms of the Chinese mind it could be slightly less, although that is something that is--I don' ; t think anybody can judge at this point. So, under the circumstances, I think it' ; s important for us to recognize that, in order to keep the Chinese-American rapproachment healthy, it is necessary to add to it another factor. It' ; s a factor that' ; s already there, but that is in a very, very minimal state of growth, and that is the economic factor. I don' ; t think it makes any sense, for example, for the United States to have more liberal trading policies, insofar as technology is concerned, with India, which is more under Soviet control or--than Peking, to put it mildly, than we have with--with Peking. I think it' ; s very important for us to expand dramatically--for us, the Japanese, and the Europeans--our economic ties with the People' ; s Republic of China, having in mind that the Chinese leadership will continue to look west if, one, they c--believe that the United States has the will and the power to help guarantee their survival, and, two, from the positive standpoint, they will continue to look west if they feel that, in order to have progress it is better to turn west, and everything that we can offer, than to turn east toward the Russians. And so I think if we play it that way, the key is in our own hand as to whether the rapproachment will grow or whether it will wither and die and they will turn toward the Russians. GANNON: Do you think that their fears of the Russians are justified? Do you think that the Russians would jump them if they had the chance and thought they could beat them? NIXON: The question is whether or not the Soviet leaders, looking, as they usually do, down the long haul rather than short-term--whether they feel that they must neutralize China now when China is weaker, and particularly weaker in terms of nuclear capability, because right now the Soviet Union could have a successful first-strike, preemptive strike, against China, or whether they wait until China becomes a formidable force. My view is that the likelihood of their doing it is--is v--is relatively small. I don' ; t--I--but I think at times they might be tempted. But that brings us to another point. It' ; s very important not to give them provocation. Now, I know that some of our China watchers and Soviet watchers say, " ; Gee, wouldn' ; t it be great if these two fought each other, and then we' ; d have the two great Communist powers destroying each other." ; And the answer is it wouldn' ; t be great at all. The answer is that if those two powers do fight, it will escalate into a world war. Also, putting it another war, if you allow tensions between Peking and Moscow to grow and develop and be exacerbated to the point that Moscow feels it has been provoked and has a right to attack China, then the question is--what do we do? W--we going to stand with them? Can we allow the whole geopolitical balance in the world to be changed by having the Soviet Union take over China? GANNON: Is that why a Sino-Soviet war would become a world war? NIXON: No. A Sino-Soviet war could become a world war for that reason potentially, assuming that the United States would react, and I am not suggesting they would or wouldn' ; t. But it would for another reason. In the event that there' ; s a Sino-Soviet war, it is bound to escalate into nuclear war. And I am convinced that nuclear war is not going to be contained whenever it happens. GANNON: In what way? NIXON: Well-- GANNON: I mean, who--what other nuclear-- NIXON: --when the nuclear--when the nuclear-- GANNON: --power would become involved? NIXON: When the nuclear genie gets out of the bottle and those things start flying around, and with all these alarm systems going off and the rest, I just have no confidence at all it ever be contained [sic]. GANNON: Do the--is the--are there any contacts now between the--the Soviets and the Chinese? Do you see the possibility of a-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --rapproachment developing? NIXON: Yes. There' ; s no question about the fact that there are contacts, and the Chinese always make it very clear to us that there are. They, at the same time, say they have no illusions about the difficulty of reaching a rapproachment. But we should not object to those contacts. If they can reduce the possibility of border incidents that might escalate into war or give the Soviet a provocation, we should welcome that. But when you look at the conditions the Chinese have laid down, the possibility that the Soviet will be able to satisfy them are remote, because the Chinese have said the Soviet have got to quit supporting Vietnam--and Vietnam is an enemy of China at the present time on its southern border--that they' ; ve got to get out of Afghanistan. Well, the Soviet Union ca--can' ; t get out of Afghanistan because that basically is a counter-revolution. They can' ; t allow a counter-revolution to succeed. The Chinese are concerned about the Soviet ties to India, because India on the south is more--there' ; s certainly considerable Soviet influence, at least Soviet support for the Indian armed forces, and under the circumstances they' ; re concerned about-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: --that. And then they' ; re concerned about forty or fifty Soviet divisions on the northern border. Now, I do not see the Soviet Union taking action that will alleviate their concerns in these areas, and only if they take that kind of action are you going to have a total rapprochement. But let' ; s have one other thing in mind. If the Chinese should give up on us, if they think we lack either the power to deter Soviet aggression or the will to do so in the event that it occurs, then they, because of their primary concern about China and its survival, will have no choice but to make a rapprochement with the Soviets. So the key is in our hand--in our hands, not only in that respect, but, as I' ; ve pointed out earlier, in terms of giving them a positive incentive not to turn toward the Russians, a positive incentive by saying, in effect, by more trade and contact between China and Japan, Western Europe and the United States, that is the way they can have the-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0367/bmac
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55 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 13, 1983, part 3.
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gannix_0367
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-05-13
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United States
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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United States
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 13, 1983, part 4. gannix_0368 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|19(3)|32(7)|50(8)|64(5)|79(4)|89(16)|101(3)|111(14)|127(10)|141(14)|157(8)|182(15)|201(5)|212(13)|227(6)|237(16)|255(2)|265(12)|287(1)|308(4)|319(10)|339(6)|354(4)|368(2)|382(4)|393(5)|406(5)|416(10)|446(4) 0 https://youtu.be/WBcPp52kLXA YouTube video English 2 Soviet Union and China --economic progress which they desperately need in order to become a major economic power and a major military power. Nixon discusses the relationship between the Soviet Union and China and what may happen if they were to become allies. Alexsei Koygin ; China ; communism ; foreign relations ; hotline ; Japan ; Korea ; Mao Zedong ; Nikita Khrushchev ; nuclear weapons ; Peking ; Soviet Union ; War World II ; Zhou Enlai Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971 ; Kosygin, Aleksey Nikolayevich, 1904-1980 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 261 China's Concern about the Pentagon and Anderson Papers Were they aware of or concerned about your problems with the Pentagon Papers? Nixon recounts the Chinese government's concern that their agreements may become public as the Pentagon and Anderson Papers had. Anderson papers ; China ; CIA ; communism ; foreign relations ; Henry Kissinger ; India ; Jack Anderson ; Japan ; media ; National Security Council (NSC) ; nuclear weapons ; Pakistan ; Pentagon Papers ; State Department ; summit ; Yahya Khan ; Zhou Enlai Anderson, Jack, 1922-2005 ; Khan, Agha Mohammad Yahya, 1917- ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 545 Spying on the White House Did you find out how Anderson got the papers? Nixon describes the leak that led to the release of the Anderson papers and other attempts of spying on the White House. He also discusses the view of the media on reporting these leaks. CIA ; Daniel Ellsberg ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Franklin D. Roosevelt ; Henry Kissinger ; information leak ; Jack Anderson ; Lyle Wilson ; media ; National Security Council (NSC) ; Pentagon Papers ; spy ; State Department ; United Press International (UPI) ; Vietnam ; wiretapping ; World War II Anderson, Jack, 1922-2005 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Ellsberg, Daniel ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 ; Wilson, Lyle C. (Lyle Campbell), 1899-1967 869 Last Meeting with Zhou Enlai Your--can you describe your--your last meeting at the China trip with Zhou Enlai? Nixon recalls his final meeting with Zhou Enlai and the poetry that Zhou Enlai shared with him during the visit. China ; Mao Zedong ; poetry ; Zhou Enlai Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 1114 Meeting Chinese Leaders When you--when you went back for your second trip, did you meet Chairman--the ill-fated Chairman Hua? Nixon talks about meeting Chinese leaders Hua, Deng, and Hu and shares his impressions of them. China ; communism ; Deng Xiaoping ; foreign relations ; Hu Yaobang ; Hua Guofeng ; Japan ; progress ; Shigeru Yoshida ; Six Crises ; tea ; The Real War Deng, Xiaoping, 1904-1997 ; Hu, Yaobang ; Hua, Guofeng ; Yoshida, Shigeru, 1878-1967 1364 Interest in China Did you have the--the best Chinese meals you've ever had when you were in China? Nixon describes the best Chinese meal that he ever had. He discusses his enjoyment of China and its people but addresses claims that he acted in the interests of China before the United States. China ; communism ; food ; foreign relations ; Harold Lee ; Hubert Humphrey ; State Department ; Zhou Enlai Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978 ; Lee, Harold B., 1899-1973 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 Interview NIXON: --economic progress which they desperately need in order to become a major economic power and a major military power. GANNON: Could we survive if the Soviets and the Chinese got back together again? NIXON: Oh, yes. I am never one that says the United States can' ; t survive even apart from the rest of the world, but it would be a much more dangerous world, a very dangerous world. And the other point of the matter--if the Chinese and the Russians got back together again, in what position does that put Japan? See, China' ; s very close to Japan. Russia' ; s very close to Japan. Japan is today and will be for the next f--f--twenty-five to fifty years the real big prize in Asia, much bigger than China, because Chin--uh, Japan has a GNP equal to that of the Soviet Union today and by the end of the century may have equaled that of the United States. GANNON: Does the American foreign policy establishment understand that? NIXON: I think so. I--I think that the American foreign policy establishment does not downgrade what Japan means, but let me say it' ; s very important for us always to have in mind that with all of our interest in China, that Japan is the big prize, and we' ; ve constantly got to make it clear that we will work with the Japanese to provide the nuclear umbrella that they themselves, because of what they went through in World War II, will never provide on their own, and shouldn' ; t. GANNON: Is there a--a hotline between the Kremlin and the Forbidden City like there is between the Kremlin and the White House? NIXON: I don' ; t know whether there is today. I must say that I was amused, now that you mention that, however, that, in speaking of hotlines, that Chou En-lai told me of an amusing incident that occurred during the period in 1959 when relations between Peking and Moscow were getting very cool. And Kosygin tried to call Chou En-lai on the hotline phone. GANNON: Uh--s--s--' ; 67. NIXON: Is it ' ; 67? GANNON: ' ; Cause ' ; 59 would have been still Khrushchev. NIXON: You' ; re right, you' ; re right, you' ; re right. That' ; s right. ' ; 67. Okay. I recall an inc--I' ; ll start again. Speaking of hotline, I recall an incident, a very amusing one, that Chou En-lai told me about the hotline, supposedly, that existed between Peking and Moscow. And, as we do, he referred to the hotline as a telephone line, which it isn' ; t. It' ; s really a telegraphic line, but, nevertheless, he said that what happened was that Kosygin was trying to call Chou En-lai in 1967 on the phone, and the telephone operator said, " ; I cannot connect you." ; And he--Kosygin said, " ; Why not?" ; " ; You' ; re a revisionist, and I will not let h--him talk to a revisionist." ; And she hung up on him. GANNON: W--why were the Chinese so concerned about secrecy? Why was it so vital to their approach? NIXON: They were concerned for two reasons. One, they were concerned about the internal objections to any rapprochement with a great capitalist country like the United States. After all, they had been taught since infancy about the fact that the United States was evil. Many of them had fought against the United States in Korea. Mao' ; s son, one of his sons, was killed in Korea, and Mao, incidentally, after that happened, was very phlegmatic about it. He said, " ; Well, the personal things don' ; t enter--enter in." ; This was part of the struggle and so forth, but nevertheless it' ; s a fact. Now, here is this government making a--a rapprochement with the United States. That was one factor. The other, however, and I think this was the more overriding factor--they knew that if before it was signed, sealed, and delivered, that the Russians would mount a massive worldwide propaganda campaign against them. They wouldn' ; t mind about that campaign being launched in the free world, but they would mind for it being launched in the Communist world, because they are competing with the Russians in Africa and Latin America and other places as the leader, c--of the international Communist movement. And under the circumstances they just didn' ; t want to take that risk. Above everything else, they didn' ; t want the Russians to know. GANNON: Were they aware of or concerned about your problems with the Pentagon Papers? NIXON: Oh, very much so, far more concerned than most of our American media people were, and most of our congressmen and senators, for that matter. M--in my earliest conversations with Chou En-lai, he mentioned the Pentagon Papers. I think he mentioned it primarily because he wanted to be sure that what we were discussing then on such a matter as our relations with the Japanese--he wanted to be sure that what he said didn' ; t get out. Let me use that as an example as to why he wanted our talks confidential. In our talk about Japan, he took the traditional Communist line that all treaties with capitalist powers were immoral and should be renounced and that the Japanese-American treaty of mutual defense, which of course provides a nuc--nuclear umbrella for Japan, should be renounced by Japan, that being the position of the Japanese Communist Party. However, in our conversations, we had a good tough talk about that. And I said, " ; Look. We can renounce that treaty, but suppose we get out of the Pacific. We can get away from those Japanese waters, but someone else will be there. And, under the circumstances, do you want to run that risk?" ; He didn' ; t say anything about it, but it' ; s quite obvious that he was going to go along with our continuing to have that kind of treaty. Well, that' ; s an example of the kind of thing he didn' ; t want out. But the point--the point was that, insofar as the Pentagon Papers were concerned, he mentioned that, and he also mentioned that he had read about a leak that occurred, the so-called Anderson papers. Now what that involved was a leak of a National Security Council discussion in which I had told people in our government that they were to tilt our policy toward Pakistan, at a time that India was about to jump Pakis--West Pakistan--stan, after having already gobbled up East Pakistan. And under the circumstances, the--the leak, of course, had occurred. It appeared in Jack Anderson' ; s column, and it really raised the devil among our supporters. You see, India is much more popular in the Congress and in the country generally than is Pakistan, and we got editorials condemning us and all that sort of thing. Nevertheless, what we did there saved West Pakistan. Pakistan wouldn' ; t being--existence today unless we' ; d moved a carrier fleet in there, unless we had tilted toward Pakistan and unless, which we did do, we had made it very clear to the Soviets--this was in December of 1971, before we were to meet them in ' ; 72--that if they didn' ; t join us in attempting to control--to control the Indians and to bring about a cease-fire in the area, that the possibilities of our summit would be seriously reduced. We had to make it very clear, in other words, that--that we would not allow a client of ours, i.e. Pakistan, to be taken over by a client of the Soviet Union, i.e. India. Not that we didn' ; t have some good relations, or some relations, at least, with India as well, but I must say that one of the reasons that Chou En-lai was so interested in the Pakistan issue--that Pakistan was very close to China, and of course it was Pakistan--that government, Yahya--that had been the primary intermediary in working out the relationship between the U.S. and Ch--the new Chinese-American relationship. So we had a number of things going there. Just coming to the point, though--he was concerned about the Pentagon Papers. He was concerned about the Anderson papers, and I assured him that we would do everything we possibly could to see that anything that we said between each other would not become public. GANNON: Did Jack Anderson' ; s publication of those papers do harm to the national security or vital interests of the United States? NIXON: It could have, but I didn' ; t allow it to happen. It could have, because there were some in our government who felt that we should back off, that supporting Pakistan as against India didn' ; t make sense because Pakistan had only seventy million people and India had seven hundred million. Well, that' ; s like saying that supporting Israel against its--hundred million Arabs doesn' ; t make any sense. Israel only has two-and-a-half million, but you support whoever happens to be right, and that' ; s what we did. GANNON: Did you find out how Anderson got the papers? NIXON: Oh, yes. An investigation took place, and it was a most amazing discovery, hard to believe that it happened, but it was a yeoman, a --a Navy yeoman, and he got the papers because he worked for the NSC. And he had traveled with Kissinger on some of his secret trips. He went through wastebaskets. He went through briefcases. He stole the papers--however, not for Anderson, but for the Pentagon. Y--and I must say, when I learned about it, I said to Kissinger, " ; You know, I don' ; t mind the Pentagon spying on us. I just assume that every government--every government agency tries to find out what the White House is doing. And--but," ; I said, " ; I do certainly mind a yeoman taking such papers that he got for the Pentagon and then making it available to the press in a way that' ; s going to hurt our foreign policy." ; Let me put it this way. For the Pentagon to learn what we were doing didn' ; t concern me because I felt that they would probably keep it quiet. They were going to think of the national interest. But for it to go to Jack Anderson--I knew, obviously, he' ; s going to print whatever he can. He couldn' ; t care less about the national interest. No media person really can, or does. GANNON: D--what other agencies do you assume are spying on the White House? NIXON: Oh, I think they all try. By spying on the White House--let me say that that is probably a crude term. What we' ; re talking about is getting information. The State Department wants to know what' ; s happening at the White House. The N.S.C. staff tries to find out what the State Department staff is doing. They try to find out what the CIA is doing, and so forth. Where it happens is at--usual--at lower levels, and they go to their parties, and their mouths--ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, all the time, and it' ; s really a sickening damn discussion, but it' ; s--does happen. GANNON: Did you plug this particular yeoman leak? NIXON: We couldn' ; t do anything about it. Of course, we transferred him. It' ; s an interesting thing. People said, " ; Well, why didn' ; t you" ; --why didn' ; t we do--well, of course this was a violation of the law. He could have been sent to prison for it. We didn' ; t prosecute him because we didn' ; t want to embarrass the Pentagon. And--just as simple as that. So we just transferred him to Oregon, I think it was, and he couldn' ; t do any harm out there among the-- GANNON: That' ; s punishment enough, huh? NIXON: --pine trees. NIXON: Well, I wouldn' ; t say that. Oregon is still a very important state. GANNON: What--did you confront the people--whoever in the Pentagon that he was working for with what they were doing? NIXON: I didn' ; t, but it was done, and they were very embarrassed, and they--each of them, of course, was trying to protect his own tail, and they were going to fire this one and that one and the other thing. It was a--at least let me say it was not a very admirable performance on the part of anybody concerned. It happened, and it was just one of those thing where, basically, quote, " ; we covered it up." ; And we covered it up because it would not have been in the national interest to have the Pentagon embarrassed. GANNON: Are there-- NIXON: And also to have the nation embarrassed, to have the whole world know that the Pentagon' ; s spying on a White House. GANNON: Are there any reporters who--or many reporters who do care about the national interest and take it into account in what they write? NIXON: Oh, I am sure there are. There were many, I remember, during World War II. It was without question. When it was a war that everybody believed in, the reporters certainly were trusted by Franklin Roosevelt, and by Eisenhower and the rest, and they kept that confidence because they didn' ; t want to risk American soldiers and so forth. But times changed. During the Eisenhower years, I felt things were pretty well--there were many reporters--oh, people like Dick Wilson of--and Lyle Wilson of UPI, people of that sort, that I knew were totally trustworthy, and things of that sort. But as time has gone on, in the television age and the highly competitive age of the investigative reporting and the rest, this whole attitude of honor among reporters--it' ; s just nonsense for anybody in government to believe it. You' ; ve got to believe that a reporter--his first responsibility is to the story, a--and he' ; ll do anything to get it, and anything also to get it published. That doesn' ; t mean they' ; re disloyal. It doesn' ; t mean they' ; re bad Americans. It means that that is what they' ; re taught, and that' ; s what goin--and that' ; s the only way they' ; re going to get ahead. I understand. It' ; s self-interest. It' ; s not so much they' ; re against the country or against us. I must say, in the war period--that is when it unfortunately reached a very high level--there were just a number of reporters that felt during the Vietnam War that the war was, quote, " ; unjust," ; and wrong and immoral. And that therefore, that--from their position of higher morality, they had an obligation to do what they did. So, consequently, instead of condemning Ellsberg, who' ; s--took out the Pentagon papers, they made him a national hero. And the same was true of those who disclosed other confidential information. In other words, disclosing information if it' ; s for a good purpose is moral. If it' ; s for a bad purpose, that' ; s something else again. GANNON: Your--can you describe your--your last meeting at the China trip with Chou En-lai? NIXON: Well, I don' ; t remember it vividly today. I can only recall it from having checked my memoirs on it, which I wrote at least a few years closer to the time it occurred. But I remember it was a very personal meeting. Mao, as I pointed out, was a poet, but Chou En-lai was also. His widow sent me a collection of his poetry after he died, and I have a beautiful boun--bound volume. And if I ever get the time to learn some Chinese, I' ; m going to try to read it. But he t--he--he started the conversation by saying that he noted I had a poetic turn of mind, and I don' ; t know what he referring to [sic]. And then he noted that the toast I had made at one of our dinners--I referred to the fact--this was at the conclusion of our week in China--that we' ; d made great, great progress. But then I went on to say that i--it is impossible, of course, in one week to build a bridge across a gulf covering fifteen thousand miles and twenty-five years of no communication. And then he started talking about Chinese poetry and how it related to my trip, how it dealt with some of these problems. GANNON: In your memoirs, you quote a couple of the poems that he mentioned to you. Could-- NIXON: [unintelligible] GANNON: --you read those? NIXON: I should have memorized them, but I think I can get it better if I read them. Well, he referred to the fact that in our dining room in that beautiful state guest house they had a poem of--from Mao on the wall. It was a--you know, they--they put the poem--the calligraphy, it looks like modern art, except it has a lot more form to it than most modern art I' ; ve seen. And he said, " ; This was about the Lushan mountains," ; and the last sentence of it read, " ; The beauty lies at the top of the mountain." ; And then he went on to say, " ; You' ; ve risked something to come to China." ; He said, " ; There' ; s another Chinese poem which reads, ' ; On perilous peaks dwells beauty in its infinite variety.' ; " ; And I said, " ; Well, we' ; re at the top of the mountain now." ; And then he went on to say, " ; Well, that' ; s one poem. Another one which I would like to put up, but I couldn' ; t find an appropriate place, is in praise of the winter plum blossom. In that poem, the chairman meant, ' ; that one who makes an initiative may not always be one who stretches out his or her hand. By the time the blossoms are full-blown, that is the time they are about to disappear.' ; " ; He took a book from his pocket. He read the poem. He made delicate gestures with his hands as he read. " ; Spring disappears with rain and wind and comes with flying snow. Ice hangs on a thousand feet of cliff, yet at the tip of the topmost branch the plum blooms. The plum is not a delic--delicious girl showing off, yet she heralds spring. When mountain flowers are in wild bloom, she giggles in all the color." ; And then he said, finally, that I might not be around at the time that this initiative reached its ultimate conclusion, that I had taken great risks to come in the first instance, but that under any circumstances that at least we had opened this initiative. GANNON: And that was your--that was your parting from Chou En-lai? NIXON: Another page here--I can' ; t find it. GANNON: Oh, s-- NIXON: [unintelligible] GANNON: When you--when you went back for your second trip, did you meet Chairman--the ill-fated Chairman Hua? NIXON: Yes. GANNON: What--for those who remember him, what--what was he like? NIXON: Stolid, tough--they [sic] all tough--strong, unimaginative. I thought he was a good party operator, but I did not think he had any kind of charisma that would have him last too long. GANNON: Did he have any personality? NIXON: Very little, very little. He was--obviously had turned out to be a ha--a caretaker. GANNON: What about--on the--on the next trip, you met Deng Xiao-ping, and also met him when he came to this country. NIXON: Yeah. As a matter of fact, I met him three times. I met him when he came to this country, then met him again a couple of years later, and then met him again in 1982. GANNON: What’s he like? NIXON: He' ; s a man of considerable ability. A little man physically. He' ; s getting older now, and he recognizes, however--and this is very unusual for older people to recognize--that younger men must take his place. He told me that, and consequently he' ; s preparing his successors, which most leaders--Churchill couldn' ; t do that, Adenauer couldn' ; t bring himself to do that, de Gaulle couldn’t bring himself to do that, but he did. It seems to be an Asian characteri--characteristic. Yoshida did the same thing in Japan. He prepared his successors. But in this instance, Deng still runs the show. He' ; s still the top man. When you go there, they all defer to him. He' ; s tough, intelligent, abrasive--tends to be at times. He wasn' ; t with me, but I' ; ve heard that he' ; ll blow up at times. And I would say that he' ; s taking, and realizes he' ; s taking, considerable risks in moving China away from--even though it isn' ; t a very big step--away from traditionalist Marxist dogma. But he feels it' ; s essential for China to move forward economically. And he knows that they can' ; t move forward economically if they keep China in a Communist-Marxist state--straitjacket. That' ; s what he recognizes. But he faces the dilemma that I' ; ve already described--more freedom for the Chinese risks his power. In order to con--keep power, you' ; ve got to have less freedom. I think, however, they will opt for more freedom, due to the fact that China will otherwise continue to be a backward, poor, weak country. GANNON: Have you met the new leaders? Do any of them-- NIXON: Both the-- GANNON: --stand out? NIXON: They' ; re both impressive people. I--the prime minister--sophisticated, handles himself with poise, intelligent. He' ; s got great self-confidence. I saw him in the morning, and usually, you know, they serve you tea, and I have drunk more tea in China. Fortunately, it' ; s very, very light and very, very nice, as a matter of fact, very soothing, much more so than the coffee that we serve. But in this case, and he' ; s the only Chinese I' ; ve ever saw [sic] do it --this was at ten o' ; clock in the morning--he drank a full bottle of that Chinese beer. That' ; s very strong beer, very good beer. And it didn' ; t affect, however, his ability to talk [unintelligible] at all. It showed that he had total confidence that he' ; s willing to drink beer with what was continued--what was at least supposed to be a distinguished state guest. The party chairman was particularly impressive-- Hu. He is even shorter than Deng--I think he must be only five-one. More charismatic than the prime minister. Also, I was interested to note, a great reader of books. He had read not only Six Crises, but he had read portions of The Real War, which I didn' ; t realize had ever gotten that far. And he had read portions of my memoirs. I was very impressed by that, of course. No way to--there' ; s no way you can more effectively impress a [sic] amateur author than to tell him you' ; ve read his books, let alone pay attention to them. GANNON: Did you have the--the best Chinese meals you' ; ve ever had when you were in China? NIXON: Well, I like all Chinese food. This was not--doesn' ; t have quite the variety, I would say, that you would find in a great Chinese restaurant in New York or San Francisco, or, for that matter, Hong Kong. On the other hand, I would have to say that the Chinese dinner that Chou En-lai had prepared for me, a private dinner that he gave for us in 1972, was the best Chinese food I really ever had. It was a Peking duck dinner, and he served the plates himself--you know, the Chinese style where he served it. And I really think he may have done some of the cooking himself. It was absolutely superb. GANNON: Cynics would say that--that more than being charmed by the Chinese, you were seduced by them, and that your--your--your clear warmth and enthusiasm for them indicates that they sort of took you in a little bit. How would you answer that? NIXON: No, anyone who knows me well knows that that' ; s a pretty difficult task, to seduce me by manners and all that sort of thing. After all, I' ; ve been--I mean, attempts for seductions on me have been made by experts, and none of them have succeeded. And in this instance, I--I simply reciprocated the warm hospitality that Chinese give to everybody. They' ; re very good at it, but I think they had no illusions that because they were furnishing a beautiful state guest house, and beautiful banquets and dinners and entertainments and so forth--that as a result of that I was going to be seduced. And the whole point is, when people say I was seduced by them, what did I do for them? What did I do for them that I did not do in the interests of our own country? And the answer is [unintelligible]. GANNON: Gave them tremendous legitimacy. NIXON: We gave legitimacy, which, of course, they had to a certain extent already without us. We--they ga--we gave the legitimacy which could only be given by the fact that the United States was there. I would say, however, that they might have looked at it a different way. I remember my--my late friend Harold Lee, in Hong Kong--this was in the late sixties, at a time long before I had concluded that we should make the move toward China. I said--again, there was some talk in American papers that we should recognize China. And he said, " ; You know, those stupid people in the State Department that are talking about recognizing China--they don' ; t understand the Chinese mind, how it works. He said, " ; If they say they will recognize China, the Chinese will respond, ' ; You recognize us? The question is will we recognize you.' ; " ; And when you get down to it, we have to realize it was a two-way street here. It was a two-way street. Putting it very bluntly, and--I would summarize it all with this simple way. What brought us together was not the fact that we had common ideas or ideals, but that we had common interests. Our interests brought us together. Our ideas would keep us apart. And as long as those interests draw us together, then we have to learn to live with the differences in our ideas. And that' ; s the s--also true of the Russians. GANNON: Sometimes when you talk about China, there' ; s almost a--a mystical undercurrent to--to what you say. Do you feel that in any way--that you were sent here, put on earth, to open the way to China? NIXON: Well, I think that would be a slight overstatement. The--if I did feel it, I' ; d never admit it. I would say, however, that my reading of history tells me that leaders are usually put in places where they have power when they can serve certain purposes. Some leaders can serve some purpose--purpose, other leaders can serve others. I think perhaps of the Americans on the scene at that time, I was the w--appropriate and logical person. I happened to be the right man in the right place at the right time. I was the right man because I happened to be president. I was in the right place due to the fact that I had the power of that office. It was the right time because of the convergence of interests of the two. And also in terms of being the right man, I could do it where my friend and former competitor Hubert Humphrey could not have done it. The very fact that I had a reputation which nobody should question and could question of being anti-Communist, which I was then, am now, and rem--intend to continue to be, made it possible for me to make a move that a liberal like Hubert Humphrey, who did not have that opportunity, could never have made. So, in those--in that sense, it was one of those cases where history made the man and the man was able to make history as a result. GANNON: Thank you very much. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] GANNON: Four choruses of " ; Happy Birthday." ; NIXON: [Laughs.] NIXON: All right. OFF SCREEN VOICE: We need the microphone and stuff on. NIXON: On--oh, I thought you said take them off. OFF SCREEN VOICE: That' ; s all right. NIXON: Well, this-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: It doesn' ; t have to be as fancy this time. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Oh, that' ; s all right. [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Can you turn off the back lights? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Yes. NIXON: You know, I think the China thing, though, des--it' ; s going to deserve a-- GANNON: I think [unintelligible]. NIXON: --a separate program. Huh? GANNON: At least an hour, yeah. There' ; s no point--again, I made a command decision. There' ; s no point in rushing it in order to get into that Middle East stuff. We will do that. NIXON: Oh, sure. GANNON: And, uh--it' ; s just too important. NIXON: Another thing about the Middle East, too, is-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0368/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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30 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 13, 1983, part 4.
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gannix_0368
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-05-13
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 27, 1983, part 1. gannix_0372 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|37(13)|53(4)|64(5)|81(4)|96(6)|108(5)|122(3)|133(4)|146(13)|157(8)|171(2)|190(9)|204(9)|217(5)|225(11)|235(9)|248(13)|261(8)|276(13)|293(5)|305(2)|315(14)|330(2)|347(8)|357(7)|368(3)|402(3)|411(15)|419(6)|435(13)|444(17)|455(14)|468(1)|503(3)|512(15)|523(13)|534(5)|547(4)|561(9)|571(11)|583(8)|596(13)|609(10)|625(2)|641(5)|652(4)|663(14)|678(2)|692(5)|711(14)|723(4)|735(8)|747(18)|763(5)|776(4)|790(13) 0 https://youtu.be/SCb7T7GKElk YouTube video English 26 Differences between the Soviet Union and China Did--did you find that the Chinese treated your party differently from the Russians? Nixon compares the treatment they received in China to that in Soviet Union and talks about how the Chinese seemed to better create equality. China ; foreign relations ; maotai ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; Zhou Enlai Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 208 Six Crises / Women in China / Sino-Soviet Split What do you think Zhou Enlai learned about you from reading Six Crises? Nixon talks about the impressions that Zhou Enlai and Mao had of his book, Six Crises. He also discusses Mao's wife and the role of women in China and relates a story about the relationship between the Soviet Union and China. Alexsei Kosygin ; communism ; Forbidden City ; hotline ; Jiang Qing ; Long March ; Mao Tse-tung ; Pat Nixon ; Six Crises ; Soviet Union ; women ; Zhou Enlai Jiang, Qing, 1914-1991 ; Kosygin, Aleksey Nikolayevich, 1904-1980 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 609 Chairman Mao's Hands You made a--a diary note about Mao Zedong's hands. Nixon recalls observations that he made about Mao's hands and other nuances of the personalities of people that he met as president. China ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Mao Zedong ; Pope Pius XII ; Zhou Enlai Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Pius XII, Pope, 1876-1958 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 784 Last Meeting with Zhou Enlai Do you recall your last meeting with Zhou Enlai? Nixon recounts the last meeting that he had with Zhou Enlai during his trip to China, during which Zhou Enlai read poetry written by Mao. He also considers the importance of visiting China. China ; foreign relations ; Mao Zedong ; poetry ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; Zhou Enlai Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 1063 Meeting André Malraux Before you went to China in 1971, the French writer André Malraux came to the White House and spent some time with you, and also, I think, had dinner there. Nixon discusses meeting André Malraux and the advice about going to China and meeting Mao that Malraux offered. He also talks about the visions that Malraux claimed that Mao was having and a dream that Abraham Lincoln had before his death. Abraham Lincoln ; Andre Malraux ; Carl Sandburg ; Charles de Gaulle ; China ; CIA ; Mao Zedong ; Pakistan ; State Department ; Vietnam ; Zhou Enlai Gaulle, Charles de, 1890-1970 ; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 ; Malraux, André, 1901-1976 ; Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 ; Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 1733 Visiting Leningrad When you were in Leningrad during the first Soviet summit, what were your impressions of that town? Nixon recounts his visit to Leningrad while in the Soviet Union for the first summit, during which he was read the diary of a girl whose family died there. Civil War ; foreign relations ; Leningrad ; Leonid Brezhnev ; Moscow ; Soviet Union ; summit ; World War II Brezhnev, Leonid Il'ich, 1906-1982 2005 Russian Desire for Peace Do you think that the----that the Russian people really have the same desire for peace that you feel the American people have? Nixon discusses the sincerity of the Soviet Union's desire to work with the United States for peace. communism ; foreign relations ; Moscow ; Oleg Troyanovsky ; Russia ; World War I ; World War II 2298 Meeting Ben-Gurion / Israel's Security Do you remember your first meeting with Ben-Gurion? Nixon talks about meeting Ben-Gurion and his views for the future of Israel. He also discusses his own views on what Israel should do for long-term security and his opinion of Moshe Dayan. David Ben-Gurion ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; foreign relations ; Israel ; Jewish ; Jordan ; Menachem Begin ; Moshe Dayan ; Palestine ; Plato ; religion ; Ronald Reagan ; Time Magazine ; Tricia Cox Begin, Menachem, 1913-1992 ; Ben-Gurion, David, 1886-1973 ; Cox, Patricia Nixon, 1946- ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Reagan, Ronald,Dayan, Moshe, 1915-1981 2657 Golda Meir / Women in Power Did you consider that you had a special relationship with Golda Meir? Nixon recounts his relationship with Golda Meir. He also discusses women in leadership roles. David Ben-Gurion ; foreign relations ; Gamal Abdel Nasser ; Georges Pompidou ; Golda Meir ; Henry Kissinger ; Holocaust ; Indira Ghandi ; Israel ; Judaism ; Julie Eisenhower ; Knesset ; Leaders ; Margaret Thatcher ; phlebitis ; United Nations (UN) ; Watergate ; women ; Yom Kippur War Ben-Gurion, David, 1886-1973 ; Eisenhower, Julie Nixon ; Gandhi, Indira, 1917-1984 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923 - ; Meir, Golda, 1898-1978 ; Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 1918-1970 ; Pompidou, Georges, 1911-1974 ; Thatcher, Margaret Interview OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stand by. NIXON: We can do the double ones, but I think--gives you more time to prepare, gives me more time to prepare. And then you don' ; t have that much to think about. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: See what I mean? GANNON: Well, and you can--you can-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Ten seconds. [unintelligible] GANNON: You can build up for it, and-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --and you' ; re not-- --bifurcating your-- NIXON: That' ; s right. [unintelligible] GANNON: Your psych-- NIXON: When you do one-- GANNON: [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Three, two-- --one. Frank? GANNON: Did--did you find that the Chinese treated your party differently from the Russians? NIXON: Yes, I did. I can' ; t say whether or not it was an act or not, but I noted, for example, that when I was in China, when they had the big state dinner, the one that was on television here with Chou En-lai and I clicking glasses, the famous maotai--that not only were the top people in our party there, but everybody who had come over with us was there. The stenographers, the aircraft mechanics were all present, being treated exactly the same as the others. I would say that, as far as the Chinese are concerned, they tend certainly to practice what they preach--equality. I' ; m not sure it wasn' ; t just an act for us, but certainly all the time we were there there was equal treatment for everybody who came, as well as for the V.I.P.s. GANNON: The Soviets don' ; t practice that? NIXON: When I was in the Soviet Union, I never recall an occasion when lower-level people were included. It was always high-level, and I didn' ; t have any opportunity to meet any of their lower-level people--in the government, that is. I would say, however, as far as China--the Chinese were concerned, I did have an opportunity to meet some of them, because they not only had our lower-level people, but they had many of theirs. They had people that were described as workmen and artisans and so forth. Again, I must emphasize that the Chinese are very skillful at propaganda, and it could not have been on the level. But I' ; m inclined to think that there is more of a tendency there to have equality in practice as well as preaching it. I think perhaps we can get a good idea of how the Chinese feel about it by a conversation I had with the chairman of the Chinese congress in 1976, when I went back for the first time after our visit in 1972. We were in a long plane ride, and he was railing about the Soviets--how they were revisionists. And he said, " ; They are no longer Marxists." ; He said, " ; What they are doing is making millionaires out of actors and of artists and athletes, and that is not, certainly, in the Marxist tradition." ; GANNON: Do you think the time will come when the Chinese will make millionaires out of actors and athletes? NIXON: The problem that the Chinese have in that respect is that as they begin, certainly very gradually, to liberalize to an extent and to allow people, for example, to have their private plots in agriculture, their own private businesses and so forth, inevitably classes, economic classes, will result. The Chinese will not want it to happen, but it will result, and under the circumstances we will probably see--probably not going as far as it did in the Soviet Union, but I think it' ; s going to come. GANNON: What do you think Chou En-lai learned about you from reading Six Crises? NIXON: Well, I was frankly quite surprised when in our conversation with Mao Tse-tung he mentioned that he had read Six Crises, and then, in a rather deprecating way, but self-deprecating as well, he says, " ; It' ; s not a bad book," ; which was a very high compliment coming from him. Chou En-lai had had Six Crises--and I learned it only when I got there--he had had it translated into Chinese. And I wondered why, and then as I talked to him I discovered why. It wasn' ; t because of the political issues I discussed, because he disagreed with my political views certainly totally. It was because the book was about struggle and also that it was about defeats as well as victories. He used to come back time and again to the theme that adversity is the best teacher and the greatest teacher. He would refer to the Long March and how they were all strengthened by that march. And then he--he very generously referred to my own career. He said, " ; It is really quite remarkable that after two defeats, the defeat for president in 1960 and then governor in 1962, you came back." ; He said, " ; That is very rare, not only in America, but in a--but in any other country." ; And I responded to that by saying, well--that I had learned more from my defeats than I had from my victories, but then I went on to say that, " ; I hope when my life is over, I' ; ll have one more victory than defeat." ; And he kind of summed it all up by saying that those who travel on a smooth road all their lives don' ; t gain strength. GANNON: When you were in-- NIXON: Let me repeat that. And he summed it all up by saying that those who travel on a smooth road all their lives do not become strong. GANNON: When you were in China, Mao' ; s wife was still in pow--powerful, if not in power. Did you find that she was deferred to or feared or--or jeered by the people you met? NIXON: Well, I was there twice, of course, when she was still in the public arena. She is no longer there. She, of course, is in so-called " ; house arrest," ; I would say. In 1972 and 1976, she was obviously feared. I did not sense that she was respected. I didn' ; t find that any of the Chinese I talked to referred to her with respect, if they referred to her at all. But they feared her because of who she was--not only because she was Mao' ; s widow, or wife, or widow, as it later turned out--no, strike that. They feared her not only because she was Mao' ; s wife, but because in her own right she had a powerful position within the party, and she was a very tough cookie. GANNON: Did--you' ; ve told a story about your visit to the Forbidden City and an incident that happened there. NIXON: Well, when we talk about the influence of Mao' ; s wife, it of course leads us to reflect on the position of women generally in China, and, for that matter, in the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. They talk a great deal, of course, about the fact that there is no discrimination whatever, not only in races and religions, et cetera, but also between men and women. But as a matter of fact, I found that in the Soviet Union and in China, that on all the visits I have made to both places, I have never met a woman in a high position. There' ; s not a woman on the Soviet Politburo, and, as far as I know, there were none, certainly, that I had the opportunity to meet in my various visits to China. That doesn' ; t mean that women do not have power, and I think the Chinese were illustrating that and--with their rather delightful sense of humor when they took Mrs. Nixon and me to a famous palace there. A boy emperor had used that palace, and they took me into the throne room. There was the throne where the boy emperor sat. Behind his throne was a screen, and sitting behind the screen was his mother. And they pointed out that when petitioners came to the throne room and petitioned the emperor for something, the mother would respond from behind the screen. And then they turned and delightedly laughed, and they said, " ; You know, that was the beginning of the back-seat driver." ; I would say at the present time, I didn' ; t see any front-seat drivers in either Moscow or Peking. But I would not say that women were not influential. As back-seat drivers, they can have great influence--not only there, but anyplace else in the world. GANNON: Chou En-lai seemed to have some kind of sense of humor, at least about the Sino-Soviet split. You' ; ve mentioned a story he told you about a hotline exchange. NIXON: One of the things I found particularly delightful about the Chinese is their very subtle sense of humor. They' ; re very easy--they laugh easily. They like to tell stories on themselves, and I remember so well when Chou En-lai was talking about the hotline that he said they had--that China had with Moscow. He said, " ; Of course, it became cold after 1959," ; when Moscow withdrew aid from China. But in 1969, there was a very serious border dispute in which lives were lost on both sides. And with great delight, Chou En-lai told me this story. He said Kosygin called Peking on the hotline, and the operator answered. He said, " ; I want to talk to Chairman Mao. It is urgent." ; And the operator said, " ; I will not connect you. You are a revisionist," ; and hung up on him. Then the--the--he called again on the hotline--Kos--and he said--and then Kosygin called again on the hotline, and he said, " ; Since I can' ; t talk to Chairman Mao, I' ; d like to talk to Premier Chou En-lai." ; She said, " ; You are a revisionist. I will not connect you," ; and hung up on him again. Well, the message that got through to me on that was that the discipline that the Chinese Communists are famous for was shown operating right there. They had without question brainwashed the operator and everybody else. They all were putting out the same line. GANNON: You made a--a diary note about Mao Tse-tung' ; s hands. What did you notice about his hands? NIXON: Well, when you think of Mao, you think of him in many different ways. He was an ideological leader. He was one who changed a nation and affected the world. There were people who worshipped Mao, not only in China, but in revolutionary areas across the world. He--he was also one who was responsible for the deaths, in one way or another, of millions of his own people. But when you went in to see him, what impressed me and others in our party was that he had hands--the--rather than being the hands of a peasant, and he came from peasant stock--were the hands of a literary man. They were very delicate, very fine and very expressive. His gestures were very expressive. GANNON: Do you-- NIXON: Incidentally, not that either would appreciate it, but his hands reminded me of the hands of the first pope I met, Pope Pius Pacelli, the twelfth [Pius XII], who had very delicate, almost saintly hands. I would describe Mao' ; s the same way. GANNON: Mao' ; s--at least his hands were saintly. NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: D--y--one of the interesting things about you, it seems to me, from seeing your diary entries and your writings, is that you' ; re sensitive to this kind of nuance of personality. Do you consider yourself a--a sensitive person to that kind of thing, or do you think all leaders observe that kind of thing? Do you think Mao sat at night talking about your hands, or that Brezhnev noticed your doodles on a pad while you were negotiating? NIXON: Very hard to know what they would have thought or what they did. I think Chou En-lai would. He was a very observing kind of person. I' ; m not sure Mao would' ; ve. I--I would say if a leader is consumed with himself, he isn' ; t likely to notice too much about whoever he is negotiating with. I think, as far as I was concerned, I' ; ve always found that--that you learn a lot by observing people, not just by listening to what they say, but how they say it--their manners and so forth. Not that that is decisive, but it tells you something about them. Also, I think I like to do that because it' ; s very interesting to do so. It' ; s very dull just to sit and talk in front of translators and notetakers and the rest. You might as well write it down. You' ; ve got to get the feel of the room, the feel of the person. GANNON: Do you consider yourself a sensitive person? NIXON: No one can judge himself. Some think I' ; m not, and some think I am. GANNON: Do you recall your last meeting with Chou En-lai? NIXON: Yes, I recall it quite vividly. We were meeting in the marvelous guesthouse where we stayed when I went to China in 1972 and again in 1976. And he was in a rather contemplative, philosophical state of mind at that point. He was reflecting on the trip and what it meant, and what it could mean in the future. And Mao, who, incidentally, as I should say--incidentally, while most people are aware that Mao was a poet, many are not aware of the fact that Chou En-lai was as well. His widow gave me a book of his poems when I saw her after his death in 1976. A--and so he was quoting some of Mao' ; s poetry to me as we were meeting there, and one poem that he thought was particularly beautiful--and I did as well--I have here with me. Let me read it to you as to what it was. He pointed out before quoting this poem that it was in my dining room, in the upstairs dining room of the suite in which I was staying, i--in Mao' ; s calligraphy. And it read as follows: " ; The beauty lies at the top of the mountain." ; And then he went on to say, " ; You know, you have risked something to come to China, but there is another Chinese poem that spells that out, and it reads as follows: ' ; On perilous peaks dwells beauty in its infinite variety.' ; And then he said, " ; There is another poem that I would also have liked to have put up in your suite. It is, again, one of Mao' ; s." ; And he pulled out the little red book, Mao' ; s red book--it was in that--a--and read what he called, " ; The Ode to a Plum Blossom." ; It' ; s actually a very beautiful poem, and the meaning which he gave to it is quite interesting. " ; Spring disappears with rain and winds and comes with flying snow. Ice hangs on a thousand feet of cliff. Yet at the tip of the topmost branch the plum blooms. The plum is not a delicious girl showing off, yet she heralds spring. When mountain flowers are in wild bloom, she giggles in all the color." ; And then he said, " ; What this poem really means is that he who takes the initiative is not one who will then reach out and stretch out his hand, because by the time the flowers are in full bloom, they are ready to wither and die." ; And then he said, " ; You have undertaken this initiative. You have undertaken it at considerable risk. You may not be there to witness its--its success, but we will welcome your return." ; Incidentally, he proved to be quite perceptive. I returned to China in 1976, and at that time I was out of office and Chou En-lai was dead. GANNON: In your last toast--do you want me to--? NIXON: No, that' ; s all right. [unintelligible] I' ; ll put it right here. GANNON: In your last toast in China, in Shanghai, you said, " ; This was a week that changed the world." ; Was that hyperbole, or how much hyperbole was it? NIXON: Well, first, I believed it to be true. I believed it to be true because I knew that the world balance of power had shifted as a result of the initiative that we had undertaken along with the Chinese. And an indication of the fact that it did change the world i--is just to imagine what would be the situation in the world today if we had not gone and if the Chinese, not because they wanted to but because they had no other choice, were back in the arms of the Russians? The world balance of power would be against the West, and I think almost in--in over-- in a way that would not be overcome. GANNON: Before you went to China in 1971, the French writer André Malraux came to the White House and spent some time with you, and also, I think, had dinner there. Do you remember that day, his visit? NIXON: Vividly. I remember, too, meeting him for the first time. President Ga--de--[Clears throat.] Vividly. I remember, for example, meeting him for the first time, when President de Gaulle visited the American Embassy residence in 1969. He introduced me to Malraux, and I noticed then that Malraux--whose books I had read--not all of them, but some of them, before--had suffered a debilitating stroke, and when he came to the White House it was just painful to watch him talk, because his whole left side of his face was drooping, and the words could hardly come out. But when he talked about China, and when he talked about Mao, a torrent of words came out, even though I knew it was painful for him to get the words out. GANNON: What did--whose idea was it to invite him? NIXON: It was mine. It was mine, because he had written several of the books about China that I had been exposed to, and I wanted to meet him, to get his views. GANNON: What did you--you had the State Department and CIA and other briefings, and your own years of experience. What did you think you could learn from Malraux? NIXON: I could learn from Malraux something that I couldn' ; t get from the State Department people. After all, he had been to China. He knew Mao. He knew Chou En-lai, a--and also I knew, from the fact that he was very close to de Gaulle, that he was a thinker in global terms and not just in parochial terms. It' ; s very hard to find thinkers of that type who have that kind of experience. I wanted to see what this man, with all of his experience, had to advise with regard to the visit to China. GANNON: What did he have to say? NIXON: Well, he said--he started right out by saying this trip was inevitable. And I said, " ; Even in spite of Vietnam?" ; He said, " ; Even so." ; He said, " ; The Chinese have never helped anybody. Not Pakistan, not Vietnam. Chinese foreign policy is a brilliant lie. The Chinese don' ; t believe it. They believe only in China, only in China." ; And then after that introduction, he went on to talk about the trip, as to what it meant, and particularly about Mao. GANNON: Did--how did he prepare you for Mao? And did he turn out to be right? NIXON: Hard to know whether he turned out to be right, because he was giving basically an introspective evaluation of the man, rather than the things that you could learn from reading what Mao had said and what he had done over his lifetime. For example, he said that, " ; When you meet Mao, you will be facing a colossus, but a colossus facing death. He is a man--when you are talking to him, you will think he is addressing you, but he will be addressing death. It' ; s worth the trip." ; And then he went on to say that--he said, " ; You, Mr. President, operate in a rational framework. Mao does not. There is something of a sorceror in the man. He is inhabited by a vision. He is possessed by it." ; GANNON: What was the vision? NIXON: Wait a minute--the, uh--hold just a second. I think--there' ; s--it' ; s got to be another entrée here. [Coughs.] We don' ; t get into that, but it--I' ; ll--I' ; ll pick it up the way--well, when he--and when he said that, I said, " ; Well, it' ; s interesting to note that many great leaders have been known to be somewhat visionary." ; And then I told him Carl Sandburg' ; s description of Lincoln' ; s last Cabinet meeting, the day before he was assassinated. And Lincoln said that he' ; d had a dream the night before, a dream that he had always had during the war years before a great victory. And the dream was that he was on a singular indescribable vessel moving with great rapidity toward a distant, uncertain, invisible shore. And I said that--wait a minute--we missed something here. You see what I' ; m getting at is that we had the--the--the--the--it wasn' ; t the vision, it was--this is what happened later. You see what I mean? GANNON: Mm-hmm. This was at the end of the conversation. NIXON: No, but--that--this--this is the end. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: You see, there wasn' ; t--or did you have something else you wanted in there? GANNON: Didn' ; t he--he talked about Mao as being the last of the emperors. I thought that was interesting. NIXON: All right, fine. [Coughs.] Let' ; s pick up there again. Let' ; s see. How far back do you want to go? You want to go to the beginning of it again? GANNON: Let' ; s-- NIXON: Eh, we can. All right, fine. Let' ; s--let' ; s try to--to pick up. Y--is it--the first question was with regard to what--I remember--I remember he started right out by saying that this trip was inevitable. And I said, " ; Even with Vietnam?" ; And he said, " ; Even so." ; He said, " ; The Chinese have never helped anybody--not Pakistan, not Vietnam. Chinese foreign policy is a brilliant lie. The Chinese don' ; t believe it. They believe only in China, only in China." ; And then he came to Mao, and his description of Mao was, I thought, fascinating. He said, " ; You will be meeting a colossus, but a colossus facing death." ; And then he went on to say that--" ; You will think that he is talking to you, but he will be addressing death." ; He pointed out that Mao considered himself to be the heir of sixteenth-century Chinese emperors. When someone asked him whether or not he was the heir of sixteenth-century Chinese emperors, he says, " ; Of course I am." ; He said, " ; The man has a fantastic destiny, and" ; --oh, scheis--" ; the man has had a fantastic destiny" ; --now if we can pick up from there. GANNON: That he was a sorcerer. NIXON: Yeah. No, we' ; ve left something out here. Let me--let me come back--just give one more shot at it, and then we won' ; t have to do it again. " ; Y--you" ; --" ; you will think you' ; ll" ; --" ; you will think that he is talking to you, but he will be addressing death. It' ; s worth the trip." ; He said someone asked Mao whether or not he considered himself to be the heir of the sixteenth-century Chinese emperors, and he said, " ; Of course I am their heir." ; " ; The man has had a fantastic destiny, and he is acting out the last act of a lifetime." ; And then he made a very interesting observation about what kind of a person Mao was. He said, " ; You operate from a rational point of view. Mao does not. The man has something of a sorcerer in him." ; GANNON: What--did he reach some kind of conclusion about Mao' ; s vision or--or what the purpose of-- NIXON: W--wait a minute. GANNON: --receiving you was? NIXON: " ; The--the man has" ; --let me--I--I get your point. " ; The--the man has something of the sorcerer in him. He is inhabited by a vision. He is possessed by it." ; GANNON: Did he explain what that--what he thought that vision was, or did you get a sense of what he thought it was? NIXON: No, I th--that was not the point that--let me see here, we c--we' ; re off again. We have to get off of this. " ; He is possessed by it." ; And when he said that, I said, " ; Well" ; --I replied to Malraux that often I--that--when he--when he said that the man was possessed--goddamn it, we got this thing wrong. ' ; Cause we' ; ve gotten confused. GANNON: Just up to the--to the-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --to Lincoln. NIXON: Yeah, yeah. Well, you' ; ve got that already, don' ; t you think, or you want to use it again. All right, fine. GANNON: [unintelligible] We stopped it. NIXON: Okay. All right, fine. He said, " ; You operate" ; --he said, " ; You operate from a rational fram--you op--now I got it. " ; You operate within a rational framework, Mr. President. Mao does not. There is something of a sorcerer in the man. He is inhabited by a vision. He is possessed by it." ; And then I said, well, it had been my observation that many times great men are somewhat visionary, and I pointed out that Carl Sandburg, in his biography of Lincoln, wrote about Lincoln' ; s last meeting with his Cabinet. And Lincoln told his cabinet that he' ; d had a dream the night before, a dream that he had had several times before, before great victories during the Civil War. And the dream was that he was on a singular indescribable vessel moving with great rapidity toward a distant, uncertain shore. And I said that the point that we have to bear in mind is that I do not know where or what the shore is, but I do know that what we must try to do is to avoid the shoals. And then Malraux responded, " ; Yes. Both you and Mao must avoid the shoals. Neither of you know what or where the shore is, but he knows that his harbor is death." ; And after that, the dinner broke up, and I escorted him to his car. And before he got into the car, he turned to me, and, speaking very warmly, he said, " ; I am not de Gaulle. No one is de Gaulle, but if de Gaulle were here, I know what he would say. ' ; Everyone who understands what you are embarking upon salutes you.' ; " ; GANNON: When you were in Leningrad during the first Soviet summit, what were your impressions of that town? NIXON: Well, Leningrad is very different from Moscow. Moscow is very grey. Leningrad is more of a European city--beautiful buildings, more color than in Moscow. And the people are more forthcoming than they were in Moscow. But I think the most vivid impression I had of Leningrad was a visit to the cemetery there. It' ; s a huge cemetery, over a hundred thousand buried in a mass grave, many of them killed during the siege in World War II, but most of them buried there apparently had been starved to death. We were running late that day when the guide took us through the cemetery, pointing out the various points of interest and so forth. And my aides kept pushing me and saying we would have to cut off the last event scheduled on the cemetery visit, which was to go to a small museum which they had there. But when they told the girl guide who was with us, she practically broke into tears, because she wanted me to visit the museum, and so I overruled the aides, as I often did. We went into the museum. And what she wanted to show me was a diary. It was the diary of a twelve-year-old girl by the name of Tanya, and she read for me--she read for me pages from the diary. And the entries were certainly ones which moved me very greatly. She reported day after day as members of her family died. First, her grandmother died, and then her uncle, and then one of her aunts, and then her father, and then her mother, her brother, and her younger sister, and the last entry read, " ; All are dead. Only Tanya is left." ; And the girl turned to me, and there were tears in her eyes. And, I must say, in mine, too. And when I spoke on Russian television to the Russian people, in closing my remarks I quoted from that diary. And I went on to say that what we were trying to do was to build a new world, a new world in which the children and grandchildren would grow up and not have to go through what Tanya had gone through. I know later that it seemed to have had some impact on the Russian people. I can' ; t tell, because I didn' ; t get to s--talk to him, but Brezhnev said that he had tears in his eyes when he heard it. Now, let me make it clear--it could have been a setup in order to get across a point that they wanted to get across. But, on the other hand, a setup has no credibility unless it has a grain of truth in it. And in Leningrad, we have to bear in mind that more people lost their lives there in World War II than the United States lost in all the wars fought in our whole history, including the Civil War. So they have been through a lot, and they don' ; t want war again. And I think--I think perhaps--excuse me, that' ; s enough. GANNON: I--is--is somebody as--as tough and as experienced as you really moved by--by something like that, by an experience like that? A lot of people would take that as an example of the kind of hokey sentiment that they feel you--you use but don' ; t feel that you really believe or are moved by, touched by. NIXON: No, I seldom--as I think e--even my critics would recognize, I--I seldom resort to anecdotes or sentimental thing just for the purpose of making a point. I only recount this because it tells us something about the Russian people, how they felt--maybe something about Brezhnev. It may also tell something about me. No. There' ; s no question that it would move me, or I couldn' ; t possibly have--have recounted it as I did in my television speech. GANNON: We move on to the Middle East. NIXON: No, you--I think you had a--one--didn' ; t you [unintelligible]? GANNON: The--the top of the world. NIXON: Mm-hmm. GANNON: De-- NIXON: [Unintelligible]--the attitudes. GANNON: A--apro--apropos Tanya. That' ; s right. Do you think that the--the--the-- NIXON: The Russian people. GANNON: --the Russian-- NIXON: Want peace. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: [Unintelligible]--Americans, and so forth. GANNON: Do you think that the----that the Russian people really have the same desire for peace that you feel the American people have? Do they operate in the same kind of context of information that enables them to have that kind of desire for peace? NIXON: Let me again make it clear that I did not have the opportunity to talk to Russian people hour f--after hour, as I did to their leaders. But from the opportunity to observe them in my travels, particularly outside of Moscow, there is no question in my mind b--that not only they do not want war, that they want peace, but also they want, if possible, friendly relations with America. I base this on several examples that I could give, but two, perhaps, will suffice. 1959--I recall so well traveling through the Ural Mountains, and we got to a point at the top of the mountain, which was described as the top of the world--at the top of the world, because the rain on one side of the mountain went into Asia, the rain on the other side of the mountain fell into Europe--a very historic and important point. And when we arrived there, children came out and threw wildflowers into our car, and they shouted, " ; Friendship! Friendship!" ; Now the Russian word for " ; friendship" ; is druzhba. In fact, over and over I would hear the Russians who had already been trained and so forth for our arrival shouting, " ; Mir [e] druzhba," ; which mean " ; peace and friendship." ; But these children were saying, " ; Friendship!" ; Our escort on that occasion was [Troyanofsky,] who now is the Russian ambassador to the United Nations here in New York. And Troyanofsky, as we went on, said, " ; The first word in the English language that Russian children learn is ' ; friendship.' ; " ; Now, again, this may be a setup, but I think it had some meaning. I recall another vivid example. This was when I was out of office. The year was 1967. I was in Samarkand, which is next to Persia--a very interesting city. And I visited a market there. There had been no publicity whatever that I was coming, because I was out of office. I was just another tourist. But a one-legged Russian veteran--he turned out to be a veteran when I talked to him--recognized me, and he rushed up to me and threw his arms around me, and I--he said, " ; We love the Americans." ; He said, " ; I shook hands with Americans at the Elbe. We do not want war with America." ; It was not a setup. I am sure of that. You ask a--when someone asks me whether or not the Russian people want peace as much as we do, my guess is they want it more, because they know what war is far more than we do. War, fortunately, has never been visited upon the American homeland. Russia has been invaded, in World War I and World War II, and not just thousands and hundreds of thousands, but millions have died. They' ; ve been wounded. They' ; ve starved to death. And so there' ; s no question but that they want peace. Now the question, however, is whether or not their leaders in a Communist country--leaders who are not affected by polls, leaders who do not come up for election by the people--whether they have to reflect the views of people. And I would say in this respect they don' ; t have to, but in the long run, to a certain extent, they will reflect those views, or otherwise, even they may not survive. I think that explains why the Soviet leaders constantly prepare for war, but they always talk about peace. And, unfortunately, too often in the United States, we talk about war and prepare for peace. And the Soviet can' ; t understand that. GANNON: Isn' ; t some commissar in the bowels of the education department in Moscow letting his side down if the first English language word that Russian students learn is " ; friendship" ; ? NIXON: It' ; s possible, although I would certainly say that the--I would certainly say in this instance I sensed no negative reaction from Troyanofsky or any other Russians on that point. Naturally, it was--it served our purposes. GANNON: Do you remember your first meeting with Ben-Gurion? NIXON: Oh, yes, I remember Ben-Gurion well. He had been described to me previously by President Eisenhower, and President Eisenhower said, " ; When you meet him, you will conclude, as I did, he looks just like an Old Testament prophet." ; He is not a very big man, or was not a very big man--only five-three, as I recall, but he had a huge head, with his hair flowing and so forth, and his eyes were sparkling and almost fierce, certainly hypnotic, I thought. I could see how he had been a very effective leader. He came out to our home, and he was very, very kind, I remember, to Tricia, who was studying the Hebrew / Christian religion in her c--course at the Friends School. And he proceeded to describe the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament and so forth for a half-hour, which made me realize that he was a very thoughtful person. Incidentally, Ben-Gurion was a very remarkable person in many ways. He knew nine different languages, and he learned Greek after he was fifty years of age, because he wanted to read Plato in the original. He also was a very wise man--wise, in my opinion, because he used to say, when he opposed those who wanted Israel to expand into other territories, that that would be a great mistake. He used to say, " ; Israel is a unik--unique state." ; He--strike that. He used to say, " ; What makes Israel unique is that it is Jewish and democratic. If it expands and takes over other territory, it will no longer be Jewish, and it can no longer be democratic. It can no longer be Jewish because the non-Jews were--will outnumber the Jews. It can no longer be democratic because it will not be possible to keep the non-Jews under the government without resorting to means that would not be democratic." ; GANNON: What do you think, then, that he would think of today' ; s Israel? NIXON: Ben-Gurion today would take the line that Israel should, in order to have security--should give up demands on territory. He would be concerned about Begin' ; s policy of annexing the West Bank, Galilea--Galilee, and Judea, because--he would be concerned because already there are three hundred thousand non-Jews within Israel itself. They are increasing in population at a far greater rate than is the Jewish population, and if Israel expands to include occupied territories, it, in the long term, he would think, would become neither Jewish nor could remain democratic in order to keep control of the people. GANNON: Do you think that that vision of Israel is the right vision? Do you share that view? NIXON: In terms of Israel' ; s short-range security, no. Short-range, if I were an Israeli leader, I would say that, " ; We' ; ve got to have buffers around us, and if we don' ; t have friendly buffer states that we control, we will have friendly populations that we will dominate." ; But in the long term that' ; s a disastrous policy, because in order to mainkain--maintain control over the occupied territories, it is necessary, inevitably, to have two classes of citizens. It is necessary to resort to repression, and in the long term--it' ; s been the history of nations and the conflicts between nations from the beginning of time--occupied territory always plants the seeds for more war. And a policy of continued war is good in the short term, but in the long term, it' ; s disastrous. GANNON: If you were the prime minister of Israel, how would you get from the short term to the long term? NIXON: I would negotiate very, very hard, but in the--I would, however, not be afraid to negotiate about the territory. I would see to it, for example, in the negotiations, that certain guidelines were laid down. One, Israel cannot tolerate the setting up of an armed Palestinian state right in its gut. But, two, on the other hand, I think it is possible to have the Palestinians in the occupied territory have self-government, preferably in association with g--with Jordan, as President Reagan has recommended, but possibly even in another way. Israel deserves a neutral state and one that is not unfriendly to it on its border. And that would be better than having Israel dominating those occa--occupied territories with all of the cost that it will take to keep those people under control. GANNON: Did you know Moshe Dayan? NIXON: I met him and, of course, was very impressed by--by him, when I visited Israel right after the June war in 1967. Of course, everybody remembers the patch over his eye. He was on the cover of Time magazine. And--and when you see him with the patch over his eye, you think of him as a--a warrior type, but the interesting thing to me was that he was not that at all in conversation. He was not that way. He was a very sensitive man, very philosophic in his approach, and so forth. I think he would have taken more Ben-Gurion' ; s view, rather than Begin' ; s view, with regard to Israel' ; s future today. GANNON: Did you consider that you had a special relationship with Golda Meir? NIXON: Yeah, quite special, quite special, because i--it--we both came into office at about the same time, and we both left office b--th--at about the same time. We also shared something else--we both had phlebitis. I didn' ; t know that she had it at the time that I visited her, and I don' ; t think she knew that I had it. GANNON: Do you recall your first meeting with her and your first impressions of her? NIXON: Oh, I recall it very vividly. She came to the Oval Office--I believe it was in 1969. A--and what impressed me about Golda Meir was the contrast between her and Indira Gandhi. The contrast was really quite vivid. Indira Gandhi was a very intelligent woman, a very strong leader, but she wanted in her leadership--b--g--wait a minute. Indira Ganadhi--Indira Gandhi was a very intelligent woman and a very strong leader, but she was one who acted like a man, with the ruthlessness of a man, but wanted always to be treated like a woman. That wasn' ; t the way Golda Meir was. Golda Meir acted like a man and wanted to be treated like a man. I remember so well when we sat down in the chairs in the Oval Office, and the photographers came in, and they were running their tape and so forth, and we were shaking hands, and she was smiling, and making the right friendly comments--" ; How are you? How' ; s the family?" ; and the rest. Photographers left the room. She crossed her leg, lit a cigarette, and said, " ; Now, Mr. President, what are you going to do about those planes that we want and we need very much?" ; And from that time on, we had a very good relationship. It wasn' ; t that she was not one who was very feminine, because she could be. She used to wear her hair in a bun. She told my daughter Julie the reason she did it was that her husband liked it that way, even though that wasn' ; t the fashion, at least in--in certain places. She--she was very feminine in another way. She never forgave. She never forgave those that had opposed her, she thought--where they thought--she thought it was unjustified. She never forgave Ben-Gurion because he had opposed her when she was on her way up. She never forgave Pompidou, because Pompidou had said some disrespectful things about Israel and her--she thought so--a couple of years previously. But there is no question that she was a very strong, intelligent l--leader in her own right. GANNON: Would you ordinarily treat a woman leader different from a man? NIXON: You just do. It' ; s--it' ; s very difficult not to. And I--I have-- I have--I--I--for example, with Indira Gandhi, it was--when she was in to see me, as she was on occasion, and when I saw her in India, I treated her not only as a woman but as a lady. I thought that was the proper thing to do. Now, we had some good talks, but, on the other hand, it wasn' ; t the same as with Golda Meir. A much more healthy situation when a--a--a woman asks no quarter and gives no quarter because she' ; s a woman Incidentally, that is exactly the impression I got when I met Margaret Thatcher. She' ; s--she is not like Indira Gandhi. She' ; s exactly like Golda Meir in that respect. GANNON: Do you think women bear grudges longer and harder, and more intensely than men? NIXON: Yes, they do. I--i--it isn' ; t that they bear grudges. I' ; d put it another way around. They' ; re highly idealistic. They are--they' ; re more loyal. They do not forgive disloyalty. They' ; re very, very hard losers. Men tend to be more pragmatic. Men tend to flit from flower to flower. The woman tends to be very loyal, a--and she does not forgive whenever she feels that somebody has done her in. GANNON: Is there a risk involved, then, in having a woman leader in a country in terms of this kind of personality? NIXON: I don' ; t think so. I--I think what happens is that, once a woman gets into a position of leadership--that she develops--that--that she w--that--that she grows into that position, and she develops the abilities to handle the situation. I know that Margaret Thatcher is charged often with being too abrasive and too single-minded, too unpragmatic, but, on the other hand, she' ; s a very effective leader. GANNON: Are you a sexist? NIXON: I don' ; t know what that means. GANNON: Maybe that answers the question. NIXON: No. I would say, too, with regard to Golda Meir, she had a very good sense of humor, which most people were not aware. I remember that, after I appointed Henry Kissinger secretary of State, that somebody had said to her, " ; Well, now both Israel and the United States have Jewish foreign ministers. She says, " ; Yes, but mine speaks English." ; And she' ; s--[unintelligible]. GANNON: Golda Meir became the prime minister of Israel at the age of seventy. What do you think drove her? What motivated her towards power and towards leadership? NIXON: It' ; s hard to--to judge anybody in terms of how they are motivated, unless you are much closer to an individual in a personal way than I was even to her, although I knew her much better than I did most leaders, because of our many contacts. I think what drove her, first, was a--a deep dedication to her country, a--a deep dedication to the need and the right of the Jews, particularly those--the victims of the Holocaust and so forth, to have a homeland. After all, you--we have to remember, she was born in Russia. She remembered vividly, for example, and told me about it--the times when, on Saturday nights, drunken Russian policemen would come by their house and beat up her father because he happened to be a Jew. And then she went to the United States. And then she came from the United States to Israel. And she came there because she wanted to do something for the Jewish people around the world, and she wanted to build a strong country in Israel. I think that' ; s what motivated her. I don' ; t think--I don' ; t think in her case it was a question of her wanting to be prime minister just to be prime minister. She wanted to be prime minister so--so she could do something, a--and I know, for example, when my daughter Julie interviewed her, she asked her, " ; How does it feel to be the first woman prime minister?" ; And she says, " ; I don' ; t know. I' ; ve never been a man prime minister." ; GANNON: One of--to my mind, the most uncharacteristic thing that you have ever written is something you wrote about Golda Meir in Leaders. You were talking about your toast to her at the Knesset in 1974, and you wrote, " ; It was an emotional moment for her, and it also was for me. That toast was truly from the heart. I could have said, " ; To Golda, with love," ; and I think she would have known I meant it." ; Did you love her? NIXON: Yes, in the--in the sense that we had shared so much together. I admired her. I knew her as a person and not just as a leader. I knew her human qualities, her very fine human qualities--her warmth, her generosity, and so forth. And when you speak about love, not in the very personal sense that we think of love in marriage, but when you think about love between individuals, men and women at high levels and so forth, it has to do with far more than agreeing on policy. It has to do with those personal qualities, the whole man or the whole woman. And in that s--respect, certainly I loved her. GANNON: Do you recall your last visit to her when--in 1974, when both you and she were out of power, and it turned out to be the last time you saw each other? NIXON: Yes, I recall it very well. I recall visiting her at her home, and-- GANNON: What was her home like? NIXON: Very simple. It kind of reminded me, curiously enough--and neither would appreciate this particular reference, e--although both are dead. Neither would appreciate it if they heard it. It reminded me of Nasser' ; s home, very humble. It was nice, comfortable, but--and she made the coffee herself, which was another way she demonstrated that--her rather womanly qualities. But I think the high point of that visit was when I addressed the Knesset, and in addressing the Knesset, I paid a tribute to her. I said that in twenty-seven years, meeting over eighty heads of state in government, I have never met one who is more dedicated, more determined, and more intelligent than Golda Meir. She was deeply moved, and responded in kind. Now, the reason that meant a lot to her was that she had been thrown out of office just two weeks before. A--and the Israelis, they' ; re pretty cold about people. Whether they' ; re up or down makes a great deal of difference. But that Israeli audience, I think, was moved by that toast. GANNON: In this last meeting, with her just out of power and you, within a matter of months, to be out of power because of Watergate, did she refer to your domestic political troubles? NIXON: No, not really. She--she, as a matter of fact, I think, rather stuck her neck out, because she said that, in effect--that she had appreciated what I had done, and she used--she wrote it thereafter, and she told many people who interviewed her that without the decisions I had made in the June war--I' ; m sorry--without the decisions I had made in the 1973 war--that Is--Israel could not have survived. But in her return reply toast, she said, " ; I want to raise my glass to a good friend and a great president." ; And to refer to me as a great president in the context of Watergate was sticking her neck out pretty far. GANNON: Do you think history will assess Golda Meir as a major figure? NIXON: Oh, without question. And not just because she was the first woman prime minister of--of Israel and one of the first great woman leaders of the modern period. Because you ha--we have to understand that she went back quite a ways. She had been foreign minister. She had been very active, of course, in the U.N., representing Israel there, as well, on occasion when she spoke there. And as prime minister, she presided over a very difficult time, the war of 1973. But I think history will record--although she was thrown out of office after the war was over--history will record that--the fact that she had developed a good relationship with me helped to save Israel at that time. Otherwise, h--had we not had that relationship, the possibility of my going as far as I did in ordering the airlift and the alert, the alert which kept the Russians out--that might not have happened. The personal relationship had a great deal to do with it. GANNON: I think we' ; ve reached the end of our first hour. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, guys, let' ; s, uh, hold there. Everybody stay in position. Frank, if you and the president will just continue to talk to each other for a second [unintelligible]. GANNON: [Clears throat.] NIXON: Sorry we got that--that Mao thing mixed up, but I had a--I was trying to think of something else to put in there, but I--cut it down. I think it' ; s all right, though. GANNON: Yeah. There' ; s one thing I--I meant--I meant to ask you about her. I wanted to get you to talk about--to tell the Tito and Churchill-- GANNON: --anecdote, about--I was going to ask you-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Turn the lights down-- GANNON: --if-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: --for ten minutes. NIXON: Oh, the--Tito? GANNON: Yeah, I was going to ask you if she seemed to have changed out of power, and that you had told the story about what Tito told you [unintelligible]. NIXON: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. GANNON: I think that' ; s-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0372/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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57 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 27, 1983, part 1.
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gannix_0372
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-05-27
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 27, 1983, part 2. gannix_0373 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|76(2)|117(5)|131(17)|145(2)|158(10)|172(12)|189(19)|202(8)|221(5)|236(5)|256(3)|265(14)|278(11)|290(16)|303(15)|315(13)|329(6)|341(3)|355(7)|371(7)|385(2)|394(2)|410(6)|421(13)|438(9)|450(8)|462(6)|475(16)|500(11)|515(3)|526(12)|537(17)|551(9)|562(14)|576(16)|591(11)|602(13)|618(11)|639(6)|650(4)|662(9)|673(13)|685(7)|707(11)|722(3)|739(14)|755(2)|768(4)|782(13)|795(11)|808(5)|820(6)|831(4)|844(17)|856(1)|867(17) 0 https://youtu.be/D88YSaKVulA YouTube video English 114 Granting Political Asylum to Chinese Visitors Should we have--the--the Sino--the Sino-America--the Sino-American relationship was strained recently when we granted asylum to a Chinese tennis star. Nixon discusses the changing relationship between the United States and China and how to avoid straining that relationship when granting political asylum, as happened with a visiting tennis player. China ; foreign relations ; Peking ; political asylum ; tennis Hu, Na, 1963- 244 Golda Meir as Prime Minister of Israel / Women as Leaders Didn't President Pompidou raise a--a question about Golda Meir's feminine qualities? Nixon speaks about Golda Meir's role as Prime Minister of Israel. He also considers the abilities of women as political leaders, including the likelihood of a female president of the United States. Bill Rogers ; Egypt ; George Pompidou ; Golda Meir ; Holocaust ; India ; Indira Gandhi ; Israel ; Josip Broz Tito ; Judaism ; Margaret Thatcher ; poker ; Soviet Union ; Winston Churchill ; women ; World War II Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Gandhi, Indira, 1917-1984 ; Meir, Golda, 1898-1978 ; Pompidou, Georges, 1911-1974 ; Rogers, William P. (William Pierce), 1913-2001 ; Thatcher, Margaret ; Tito, Josip Broz, 1892-1980 882 President Nasser Why was the Suez such a turning point in world history? Nixon recounts the difficulties caused by attacks on the Suez Canal. He also speaks about his first meetings with President Nasser. Aswan Dam ; Britain ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Egypt ; France ; Gamal Abdel Nasser ; Israel ; Pat Nixon ; Soviet Union ; Suez Crisis Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 1918-1970 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 1217 President Sadat Was President Sadat more like President Nasser than not? Nixon describes the reception of Sadat as Egypt's president after Nasser. He discusses attending Sadat's funeral with Presidents Carter and Ford. Anwar Sadat ; Betty Ford ; Camp David ; communism ; Egypt ; Gamal Abdel Nasser ; Hubert Humphrey ; Israel ; Jehan Sadat ; Jimmy Carter ; King Hassan II ; Middle East ; Morocco ; Pat Nixon ; Rosalynn Carter ; Shah Faisal Carter, Jimmy 1924- ; Carter, Rosalynn ; Faisal, King of Saudi Arabia, 1906-1975 ; Ford, Betty, 1918-2011 ; Ford, Gerald R., 1913-2006 ; Hassan II, King of Morocco, 1929-1999 ; Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978 ; Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 1918-1970 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Reagan, Ronald ; Sadat, Anwar, 1918-1981 ; Sādāt, Jīhān, 1933- 1713 Shah of Iran How did President Carter react to the story about the--the shah's funeral, because, after all, he was--he had a vested interest in that story in that he had not let the shah come-- Nixon relates attending the Shah of Iran's funeral. He discusses his respect for the shah and how he would have worked to prevent his removal from power. 2307 Iran Hostage Situation If you had been confronted with the worst case from that point of view, and the shah had been overthrown and hostages taken, and you were president, would you have taken him into the United States? Nixon discusses how he may have handled the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the Iran hostage crisis had he been president at the time. He also talks about his own rescue mission attempt on the Son Tay prison camp in Vietnam. Allen Dulles ; Bay of Pigs Invasion ; CIA ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; foreign relations ; Foster Dulles ; Hanoi ; Iran hostage crisis ; Jimmy Carter ; Lebanon ; Operation Ivory Coast ; Prisoners of War (POW) ; Son Tay ; Vietnam Carter, Jimmy 1924- ; Dulles, Allen, 1893-1969 ; Dulles, John Foster, 1888-1959 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 2740 Attending the Shah's Funeral Do you think that the government should have picked up the tab for your going to the shah's funeral to represent the country as you did? Nixon describes attending the Shah of Iran's funeral on his own expense and his reluctance to travel on official missions for the United States. 2918 President Sadat's Policies Do you think that if President Sadat had been dealing with anyone other then Prime Minister Begin that he could have achieved a broader, more comprehensive peace settlement? Nixon discusses Sadat's attempts for peace with Israel and how he approached foreign relations. He also speaks about his last meeting with Sadat. Interview GANNON: --except they wouldn' ; t offer it. NIXON: No, I don’t think--I don' ; t think he could. I don' ; t think even Henry-- GANNON: There' ; s too much…policy there. NIXON: That' ; s right. Well, he knows he' ; s-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Uh, c--cue them on one, Roger? NIXON: [Clears throat.] GANNON: I' ; ll lead in to the Churchill-Tito. NIXON: Fine. NIXON: Do you want to get the tennis star thing in while you' ; re doing it? GANNON: Yeah, we' ; ll s--why not start with that? NIXON: Yeah. Churchill-Tito I hadn' ; t thought of. GANNON: That' ; s a good story. NIXON: We already got the " ; plus ten percent," ; didn' ; t we? GANNON: Yes. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stand by, uh, Frank. NIXON: That' ; s a--you should work into this, too. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Ten seconds to studio. Stand by. NIXON: And the Golda Meir. GANNON: Mm-hmm. The Golden Rule. NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: The Golden Rule. NIXON: How about--and then-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Four. NIXON: --w--did we-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Three. NIXON: --get in the--did we get in the Pompidou description of her as a-- GANNON: No. NIXON: --a woman? GANNON: No. NIXON: I mean--are you sure? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: Would you like that? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Do it again. NIXON: You know what I' ; m referring to? GANNON: Yes. NIXON: That was a famous story, you know. Her--" ; W--w--we have trouble in two parts of the world." ; I think it' ; s worth getting in. GANNON: [unintelligible] NIXON: Because it' ; s about Indira Gandhi, too. [Clears throat.] Pompidou-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] light change. [unintelligible] We' ; re going to cue you, okay? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Keep your eyes on me. GANNON: Yes. OFF SCREEN VOICE: After the light change [unintelligible]. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Ten seconds out. Roll tape. NIXON: It' ; s a good, funny story. And you' ; re right-- NIXON: --the more I think of this stuff from a commercial standpoint-- NIXON: --not that-- GANNON: This is the-- NIXON: All they want' ; s froth. Shit, they don' ; t care about-- GANNON: It' ; s not f--but as you said, you can learn a lot from-- NIXON: Well, I have to say that. I don' ; t believe it. [Unintelligible] I say it. GANNON: Is it--is it ironic that the Sino-American relationship, which began with a table tennis match, should have reached some rocky shoals with the granting asylum to a tennis--Chinese tennis star? Should we have done that? NIXON: Well, I have often thought how ironic it is that the--let me start again. GANNON: Le--let me start again. NIXON: Yeah, yeah, because I wanted to-- GANNON: Sh-- NIXON: --tell that story. GANNON: Should we have--the--the Sino--the Sino-America--the Sino-American relationship was strained recently when we granted asylum to a Chinese tennis star. Should we have done that? Did that strain the relationship in an unhealthy way? NIXON: Well, it seems rather ironic to me that what, as far as the public was concerned, indicated that there was going to be a new relationship, was when the Chinese received an American table tennis team in Peking, and then, ten years later, in 1982, that relationship is strained when the United States allows a Chinese tennis star who is visiting the United States to stay here. Now, the difficulty with the handling of the matter, from the Chinese point of view, is not that a tennis star or anybody else comes to the United States and stays here. A--as a Chinese friend recently told me, from Peking--he says, " ; After all, we' ; ve got too many people! We don' ; t mind your taking a lot of them." ; I--I think what really turned them off was that the tennis star was portrayed as being giving--being given political asylum, and that, of course, was a loss of face for them. To think that one who was a tennis star, and therefore, perhaps, receiving better treatment than many others--wanted to leave China and come to the United States was a loss of face. I would say that in the future it' ; s very important to handle such matters with great discretion. There are going to be times in the future, I' ; m sure, where visiting Chinese may want to stay, but we should work it out so that it doesn' ; t embarrass the Chinese government for another reason. I think it' ; s vitally important that we continue to have this people-to-people contact. Ten years ago, no Americans were visiting China. Last year, a hundred thousand went there. Ten years ago, there were no Chinese students in the United States. Last year, there were twelve thousand. I want there to be--to increase in that way, because, while that isn' ; t going to change our relationship immediately, over the long haul that people-to-people contact brings us closer together. GANNON: Didn' ; t President Pompidou raise a--a question about Golda Meir' ; s feminine qualities? NIXON: Well, when we speak of Golda Meir and the fact that she is very tough and strong and acts like a man, it' ; s always reminded me of a conversation that we had with President Pompidou in the Azores. This was in 1971, and at that time we were having problems in South Asia between India and Pakistan, and also in the Mideast, and Bill Rogers, who was sitting by Pompidou, was trying to lighten up the conversation at dinner, and he reflected on the fact that th--things were going pretty well in the world except in stu--in two areas. And, he said, in both areas women are in power. He said, for example, " ; In South Asia, between India and Pakistan, we have Indira Gandhi in power. And then in the Mideast, in Israel, we have Golda Meir, another woman." ; Pompidou sort of raised his eyebrow and said, " ; Are you sure?" ; GANNON: Did--didn' ; t Pompidou, though, in fact, have a very strong respect for her qualities? NIXON: I should not leave the impression that President Pompidou said that in a--a downgrading way, or in an im--as a matter of fact, disrespectful way. He respected her. He described her to me as " ; un femme formidable," ; and he' ; s--he felt that she was a strong person, a very formidable person, and he respected that. And this fact--he was simply saying that he appreciated the fact that she did not try to use her w--feminine wiles in order to get her things across. Pompidou did not like Mrs. Gandhi. I know that. I think he respected and maybe even liked Golda Meir. GANNON: Did you like Mrs. Gandhi? NIXON: I didn' ; t think of her in terms of liking or disliking. I thought of her in terms of representing a country, India, with six hundred million people, that was a very important country in that part of the world and with which the United States wanted to have as good relations as possible. And under the circumstances, therefore, I respected her, but that I n--I never knew her on a personal level. Let me put it this way. I didn' ; t know her personally in a way that I would like her or dislike her. GANNON: Are there leaders that are susceptible to feminine wiles and other leaders--could there be an advantage to a country of having a female leader when it came to a summit conference or a face-to-face meeting? NIXON: Well, I think there is a tendency on the part of many men not to want to push a woman too far in a meeting. Let' ; s face it. There are different rules. Oh, I know in these days, in--anybody who says that, he' ; s supposed to be a sexist, or whatever they call it, and this and that and the other thing. But I do know that most of the leaders I have met have great respect for women, and they' ; re going to treat them differently from w--the way they treat men. The way I' ; d put it is this way. I--I' ; ve played a little poker in my time, and, believe me, don' ; t ever let me in a poker game where I' ; ve got to be easy on somebody else. Unless you can be ruthless in a poker game, you' ; re going to lose. And in negotiations, it' ; s, I think, s--to some advantage to have a woman on your side, because you need every inch that you can get in the negotiations, and if she can win you an inch by the fact that her opponent or your opponent is going to treat her a little differently, a little more respectfully, not as toughly as he would a man, that' ; s something to be said for it. GANNON: Do you think we' ; ll have a woman president in this century? NIXON: Possibly. A woman vice-president, certainly. I would expect a woman vice-presidential candidate to make a pretty good run at it in eigh--' ; 84--the possibility of there being one. I think in ' ; 88, there probably will be a woman vice-president--more likely, incidentally, Republican than Democrat. GANNON: Why is that? NIXON: Because the Republicans have been running very poorly among women in recent years, and that' ; s a way to reach out. I' ; m not sure that it would help, but many people think that it would, because you' ; ve got to remember there are many women that don' ; t want a woman vice-president, just as many men don' ; t. But be that as it may, there are many women that do. I think what really is going to count is whether a woman comes along who is strong enough that people would th--feel comfortable that she would make a leader--one like a Margaret Thatcher, for example. I would say by the end of the century, the likelihood of a woman president is considerable. But before that happens, a woman must be vice president or Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense. Those are the three top jobs that are stepping stones to the presidency. Until that happens, no woman is going to go, ec--unless they come from those stepping stones, directly to the presidency. But it will happen, inevitably. GANNON: Do you think the fact Golda Meir had lived in the United States before she went to Israel affected her conduct at all as Israeli prime minister? NIXON: I--it affected her conduct only in the sense that she understood the United States better than some other Israelis might have understood it. She knew America. She knew the political forces that operated here. She knew how to talk to Americans, and that certainly im--improved her chances to get along. GANNON: Did it ever--do you think it ever created a situation where she had divided loyalties or divided instincts? NIXON: Oh, no, not at all. Never. Golda Meir was for Israel first, last, and always. There was no question about that. Now, she happened to believe that the United States having a policy that favored Israel was in the U.S. interest as well, but, believe me, if the choie had to be between the U.S. and Israel, if she ever had to make that choice, it would have been Israel. No question whatever. GANNON: Did--d--despite your special relationship with her, d--did you--do you feel that she mobilized or appealed to American Jews or to the Jewish lobby, the political lobby in America, to affect your decision-making? NIXON: Oh, I am sure she did, and-- GANNON: Were you--did you feel that? NIXON: Well, I--I don' ; t--it isn' ; t a question of whether I felt it. The fact is that American Jews support Israel, and I understood that. And the fact is that every Jewish prime minister that I have known has enlisted American Jews to bring as much pressure as possible in the political process on American presidents. That' ; s understandable. I don' ; t object to it. Now, a president must not go along with it on occasion, because some--l--let me--let me explain something about what is called " ; the Jewish lobby" ; in this country. In the first place, Jews, understandably, in the United States, because of what happened in World War II, because of the Holocaust, are going to pe--put first priority on the survival of Israel. Now, as good Americans, as they are, they believe that America' ; s survival and security is directly related to Israel' ; s. In other words, their belief is that being for Israel first means that does not mean you' ; re putting America second, because they think it goes together. An American president, however, has to approach it in a different way, in my opinion. He' ; s got always to think first of what is best for America, and that' ; s true whether it has to do with the Israelis or whether it has to do with the Irish or the Germans or what-have-you, or the Poles, et cetera. Usually what is best for America is also best for Israel, and vice versa. But a--on occasions--for example, an American president must make a decision that does not, in effect, give the Israelis a blank check. And one example of that is a decision that I made. I decided early on in our administration that we were going to seek good relations with Egypt and other--others of Israel' ; s neighbors. Many of my Israeli friends didn' ; t like that, because they wanted a special relationship with Israel and Israel only. But I have always said that Israel' ; s interests are better served to have the United States a friend of Israel' ; s neighbors and potential enemies than to leave a vacuum which the Soviet Union would fill. I still believe that, and I think that should be American policy today. GANNON: I' ; ve heard you tell a story about when--when you talked to President Tito about his observation of Churchill out of office. NIXON: Well, when you--when you see Golda Meir--you look back on her, and the last time I saw her, she was in her early seventies, you wonder how she must have felt when she was out of power. I recall one of my favorite stories, as a matter of fact, was told to me by Tito' ; s wife when she was on a state visit with Tito to the White House in the early seventies. And she remarked about the last time that Tito had met with Churchill, and Churchill looked at Tito and observed the fact that Tito was drinking his Scotch and smoking the big cigars, and Churchill at that time was not in the best of health and couldn' ; t drink as he used to, and he also noticed his black hair, Tito' ; s black hair, incidentally, which obviously had been colored, but nevertheless it was black. And he said, " ; What keeps you so young? What keeps you so young?" ; And then, without waiting for an answer, " ; I know what it is--power. Power is what keeps a man young." ; And Churchill--after he left office, I know he tended to shrivel, because I saw him after he left office. The power was gone. But not Golda. Golda was still as strong and as vital when I saw her after she had been thrown out of office as she was in office. She didn' ; t need the power to be in office--to exude power. GANNON: Why was the Suez such a turning point in world history? NIXON: Well, it was a turning point primarily not for what it did to Israel and Egypt and the relations between those two, but for what it did to Europe and particularly to the French and the British. It came at the wrong time. As a matter of fact, there isn' ; t any question in my mind, in retrospect, and there' ; s no question, in my view, that Eisenhower felt the same way in his later years, that the Israelis, the British, and the French were justified in attacking the Egyptians when they tried to take over the Suez Canal. But, on the other hand, it came just a few days before an American election, and it came right after the Russians had moved tanks into Budapest and were shooting down the workers who were rebelling against the Communist government there. And we couldn' ; t be in a position, or at least we felt we couldn' ; t, of condemning the Soviet Union for using force to resolve a situation in Budapest and then approving our allies, the British, the French, and the Israelis, who were not allies but at least were supporting our point of view, using force to resolve what was a political problem with Egypt. So, under the circumstances, President Eisenhower took the position that we would oppose it, and we forced their withdrawal. Now, what happened is it didn' ; t help us with Nasser. He had been anti-U.S. before. He banked that and then kept on being anti-U.S., because that served his purposes in the radical Arab world. It hurt us with Israel, but not permanently because we continued to help them. But it had a devastating effect on France and Britain. From that time on, France and Britain could no longer play a decisive role on the world stage, and that was not a good thing. I hope the time returns when they might be able to play a more decisive role that they do today. GANNON: What do you remember about your meeting with Nasser? NIXON: Nasser, I had heard before I had met him, from friends who had visited him, was very different from the public impression of him. The first time I really met Nasser I didn' ; t see him at all. I heard his voice. I heard it on the radio. Now, this is on a trip in 1957 I took as vice-president, and as I visited the coffee shops and the bazaars and so forth, there were pictures of Nasser--I wasn' ; t in Egypt, but they were in Tunis, and they were in Morocco, and they were in the Sudan, and they were in Libya. This was before Qaddafi, of course. And his voice hypnotized people. So I knew his voice before I ever got there, and I felt I knew him. But when I met the man, he was not the flame-throwing kind of revolutionary radical that I had expected. He was very soft-spoken--very handsome man, incidentally--very reasonable--reasonable except when he spoke about Israel, and then, of course, he could be very aba--runees--unreasonable. Spoke very warmly of Eisenhower. This, now, is in 1963 that we' ; re talking about. I am convinced that if Nasser had concentrated his enormous abilities and energies on building a better Egypt, rather than in foreign adventures in Yemen and other parts, that he would have contributed enormously to Egypt' ; s future. As it was, he--rather than concentrating on what was good for Egypt within, he believed in exporting his brand of revolution abroad. GANNON: Do you think America played him wrong--that if--that if our policy had been accommodating and more sensible, he wouldn' ; t have turned to the Soviets as he did? NIXON: In my view, I think the decision with regard to the Aswan Dam was wrong. We did it because he was tilting toward the Soviet and was making unkind remarks about us, but I have a different view than many of my friends in the foreign policy establishment with regard to the use of America' ; s ec--economic power. It' ; s the area where we have the greatest advantage. It' ; s the area where we should take some risks. It the area where we should not insist that we will give aid only to those that are one d--hundred percent for the U.S. Let' ; s use that power to get a foothold. We won' ; t win ' ; em all, but we' ; ll win more than by saying no and then letting the Russians come in and build that dam. That was a tragedy for Egypt, as it turned out, and it certainly was not helpful to us in that part of the world. GANNON: You' ; ve written that Nasser was defensive about the amount of Russian involvement in building the dam. NIXON: Well--quite defensive. As a matter of fact, he said, " ; W--we' ; re building the dam." ; And he sent his plane, with his own pilot--it was a DC-3--down to the Aswan Dam to look it over. We got there--incidentally, we were there in the summer, and it was about a hundred and thirty degrees in the shade, so we visited it at midnight, when it was only a hundred degrees--and I remember the huge, huge searchlights on the bulldozers down in the bowels of the earth. This is while the dam was under construction. I did not notice--and fortunately Mrs. Nixon did, because she' ; s very observant--who was riding those bulldozers. They weren' ; t Egyptians. They were Russians, but the Egyptians were very sensitive about Russian involvement. GANNON: Was President Sadat more like President Nasser than not? NIXON: No, very, very different from him. I remember when Nasser died, I was in the Mediterranean on one of our carriers, and I asked one of the people with us there what kind of a fellow this new man Sadat was. And they said, " ; Well, he' ; s sort of a colorless clod compared to Nasser. He' ; ll never be able to fill his shoes." ; Well, he did not fill Nasser' ; s shoes, but he left his own footprints, of course, on history a very different way. Nasser was a man of the people and from the people--charismatic--he touched the heart. Sadat, on the other hand--highly intelligent--was one somewhat apart from people. He was above them to an extent, and I think people sensed that. He was a man of high intelligence, of great boldness, and great courage, and he was very different from Nasser in a fundamental respect. Instead of engaging in foreign enterprises as Nasser had, he concentrated on what was best for Egypt, and that is why he made the famous trip from Cairo to Jerusalem. Incidentally, one who influenced him enormously in that direction was King Faisal. Faisal leaned on Sadat to break off from the Russians, telling him he couldn' ; t trust the Russians. Faisal, of course, was strongly anti-Communist. GANNON: Do you--why do you--why do you think that Sadat is revered in the West but is very highly criticized in the Mideast? NIXON: There are several reasons. The first reason is that Sadat broke ranks with other Arabs in going to Jerusalem. He broke ran--ranks with other Arabs in making a deal at Camp David. They resent that. GANNON: Didn' ; t he call them " ; monkeys" ; and " ; hissing vipers" ; ? NIXON: As a matter of fact, they not only resented his doing that, but it was what he did after that. I talked, for example, to Hassan, the king of Morocco, and to other leaders in that part of the world, and they all, to a man, said that he had not leveled with them about it, and that his rhetoric, they thought, went m--far overboard when they criticized his going to Camp David. And, incidentally, I' ; ve never used--heard him use this kind of language, but they said that he referred to them as " ; monkeys" ; and " ; hissing vipers." ; Well, they' ; re a very emotional people--the Arabs are--and very sensitive people, and they never forgave him for that. I think another reason he may not have been revered is that they had the feeling--the Egyptian people--that he was not really one of them, that maybe he' ; d grown away from them. As a matter of fact, I don' ; t believe that was the case, but the appearance was there, because he lived very well. His wife, who is a--is a lovely lady, was beautifully groomed, a beautiful woman, as a matter of fact, but she did not relate as much to the people, although she was very active in supporting hospitals and charitable causes and so forth, as some others might have. At least that is what I have heard. But in any event, there' ; s no question that when Nasser died, there was an enormous outpouring of affection and grief, and when Sadat was assassinated, the streets were quite still in comparison. GANNON: You went to that funeral, didn’t you? NIXON: Yes. I would say that--when s--people would ask me to appraise Sadat--that I can report that this was one man that three former presidents talked about among each other and all agreed upon, to a man. We had a long plane flight from Washington to Cairo, over ten hours. It was all night long. We didn' ; t have any bunks in the plane, so we talked all night, except for getting a few snatches of sleep from time to time. GANNON: Was it the first time the three presidents--Ford, Carter, and Nixon--had been together? NIXON: I--it was the first time--not really the first time, no. It was the first time that Ford, Carter, Nixon, and Reagan had been together, but the first time we were together was at Humphrey' ; s funeral. We were there--although we never had any talks then. This was the first time we' ; d ever had a talk. So all night long we talked about Sadat and the Mideast and what he meant. We agreed that he was one of the most intelligent men we' ; d ever met. We had agreed that he was one of the boldest and most courageous men, and we agreed, too, that he had shown great vision, vision in looking over the problems of the moment and looking to the future in making his trip to Jerusalem and agreeing to what he did to--at Camp David. But I knew him in another respect that the other two did not know him. And I told them this on the plane, and I thought they were quite moved by it. That was not the first time I had gone to a funeral in Cairo. It was only about a year before that I had gone to the shah' ; s funeral, which was in Cairo. And when I was there, I--I was the only dignitary of any rank who came to the shah' ; s funeral, because here the shah, who--before everybody was bowing and scraping before him, the heads of state in government and so forth, because he was rich and powerful and so forth, and now they all avoided him because he was out of power. And I never forgot that, as I was standing there in the big tent where all the V.I.P.s--usually ambassadorial level, not head of state level--were standing, Sadat came walking in , resplendent in his uniform--general' ; s unif--uniform. He saw me, his eyes lit up, and he walked over, held both hands out, and said, " ; How good of you to come. How good of you to come." ; And I said, " ; Mr. President, it was very courageous of you to receive the shah after virtually every other country did not grant him sanctuary." ; And he said, " ; Courageous, sir? It isn' ; t courageous to stand up for a friend." ; And that loyalty went further than that, even. I remember I had a long talk with him after the funeral up at Alexandria--that is, the summer palace--and we were talking far into the night. And when we were talking about what had happened at Camp David and so forth, he referred to his friend Jimmy Carter. Now, let' ; s understand when this was. This was at a time before the elections in 1980, when Carter' ; s stock was very, very slow, when it appeared that Reagan was going to win, and when he knew I was for Reagan, because I had told him so, and told him that I thought Reagan would be very reasonable toward him, despite the fact that he was a little concerned that Reagan seemed to be totally pro-Israel, as he had in some of his statements. But he refused the opportunity to do what most politicians do--do--to say what he thought I might want to hear, that Carter was not all that good. He said, " ; My friend, Jimmy Carter." ; Now that' ; s Sadat. That' ; s quite a man. GANNON: How did Jimmy Carter react to you or treat you on this plane ride, the first time you' ; d had a chance to talk to him personally as a f--as an ex-president? NIXON: Oh, very well. He' ; s a--he was a--a gentleman, and--and--and Mrs. Carter, who was on the plane, was a lady. We hit it off very well, I thought. GANNON: Did you consider bringing Mrs. Nixon? NIXON: No. She can' ; t take these long flights. She could, but--you understand, it was even hard on me--ten hours on an airplane without a bunk and so forth. She can' ; t do that any more. GANNON: How-- NIXON: And Mrs. Ford did not come either. GANNON: How did President Carter react to the story about the--the shah' ; s funeral, because, after all, he was--he had a vested interest in that story in that he had not let the shah come-- NIXON: Well- GANNON: --into the U.S. NIXON: To President Carter' ; s credit, he didn' ; t react negatively when I told that story. I think, deep down, President Carter felt very badly that he could not let the shah stay in the United States, because of his concern about what would happen to the hostages. And I understood that. Deep down, President Carter had said some very flattering things about the shah just a year before the shah was overthrown--had praised him as one of the great statesmen of the world. And so, under the circumstances, I think that he felt very badly that this had happened. It was a political decision on his part, and I think, frankly, he admired Sadat for standing up and doing what Carter really would like to have done except for the political consequences as far as the hostages were concerned. GANNON: Do you think that the shah was the President Diem of the latter day--that the--that the United States, openly or covertly, destabilized him? NIXON: I would say that as far as what happened to the shah is concerned, that I think the shah' ; s own appraisal of what brought him down is the best evidence. I saw the shah the last time in Mexico, at Cuernavaca, Mexico. He was then in the last phases of terminal cancer, although he would never admit it or talk about his own problems at all. But he was quite thin and quite pale, but his head--still as active and sharp as it' ; d always been. He' ; s a very intelligent, introspective man. And he said that what concerned him about the way he was treated by the United States was not that the United States was for him or against him but was the uncertainty of the policy. He says, " ; There' ; s nothing worse when you are confronted with revolutionary and rebel forces and uncertainty insofar as support is concerned." ; One day, for example, he said, statements would come in, public and private, from Washington indicating total support, urging him to stand firm. The next day there would be some story leaked from a high-level aide, printed all over the world and par--given particular credence in Tehran, to the effect that lower-level or second-level people in the administration were meeting with Khomeini and others who were out to knock the shah o--off--or out, as the case might be. And then the next day i--i--there would be a story to the effect that, in the event that the shah left Iran or was overthrown, the United States would be prepared to accept any government that the people chose. Well, he said, all of this had the effect of encouraging his enemies and, of course, discouraging his own supporters. He said that was a mistake, and I believe it was a mistake, too. As a matter of fact, what happened to the shah, I think, could only be interpreted in that part of the world, and in other parts of the world as well, is that it is dangerous to be a friend of the United States, and it may pay to be an enemy. I think what we have to understand is that the shah was the best friend of the United States in that area and the whole Persian Gulf area, and it was Israel' ; s only friend. The shah, we must remember, in the 1973 war, furnished oil for our Mediterranean fleet when the other countries in the area had cut it off. And the shah tied down the Iraqi forces by supporting the Kurds against the Iraqis so that they never got involved in the ' ; 73 war. And I know that the kah--the shah, when he spoke in Mexico about what had happened--that he--he could not understand why it was that, among his critics in the American media, there were some of Jewish background--not all, but some who were among his most violent critics, because they were liberals, and they thought he was too reactionary and the rest. And he just couldn' ; t understand that, because he was the only friend that Israel had in that whole area of the world. GANNON: Why did you go to his funeral? NIXON: First, because I knew him better than any world leader I had met in thirty--over the past thirty-seven years of public life--in and out of it. I met him first back in 1953, when I was a young vice president and he was a very young shah--in his early thirties--a--and I met him over ten or twelve times after that. I found him to be a very sensitive man, a very intelligent man, one who understood the world as well as any leader that I had met, who--who could talk about India or Pakistan or China or Latin America with, frankly, as much perception and sophistication as any American leader could possibly talk about it. And I had great respect for him. And I think the r--major reason I went, though, I must say, was because I was concerned that our own government, again, I suppose, because of the hostage situation, was not going to be represented at the funeral by a high--high-level person. GANNON: Were you concerned that your going might embarrass President Carter? NIXON: No, not at all. As a matter of fact, i--it occurred to me that as--President Carter probably, deep down, wished he could have gone, but he couldn' ; t. He didn' ; t feel that he could, because of the hostage situation. No. I went because the shah was my friend, he was a friend of the United States, and I thought that some high-level individual from the United States ought to be there. You see, the important thing that we' ; ve got to get across to the people in countries that are wavering between standing with us or going in the other direction or remaining neutral is that the United States is not a fair-weather friend, that we will stand by our friends and allies when they are down as well as when they are up. Now, that may not make good diplomacy, but I think it--in the short run, but in the long-term I think it' ; s absolutely essential if we' ; re going to build the kind of support and respect and confidence in the United States that we need to have. GANNON: The shah is--is generally accepted as having been a very repressive and oppressive ruler. His Savak tortured and killed. He lived in considerable splendor and opulence while there was terrible poverty in his country. In your book Leaders, you write that he was not ruthless enough in quashing those who threatened his nation' ; s stability. Do you think he should have been more ruthless? NIXON: Yes, I do, particularly in view of the fact that his opponents were not those who were basically more liberal, but--because basically they were reactionary. They were the true reactionaries. L--let' ; s look at the shah for just a moment, and look at him very fairly. He actually was a progressive, a progressive in a number of ways. He instituted a land reform program. He instituted a literacy program. He sent thousands of students from Iran to the United States, and particularly to the United States, to study, and in other countries as well. He liberated women. The irony was that those he liberated, the women and the students he sent abroad--they came back and joined the revolutionary forces. And the irony was that the shah, being progressive, was attacked as being reactionary and conservative on these particular issues, whereas his opponents were the reactionaries. Putting it very bluntly and very simply, the shah was trying to move Iran into the twentieth century. His opponents, Khomeini et al., wanted to move Iran back into the Dark Ages, and that' ; s what they' ; ve done. Now, there was some repression, true. Now there is total repression. There may not have been enough land reform. Now there n--is none whatever. What I am simply suggesting is this--that when we look at the shah, we have to look at him in terms of what he confronted, and he conturned --confronted revolutionary forces there that were not working, in my view, for what was best for Iran, and certainly not best for ourselves. And, most important from the United States standpoint, instead of having a friend in Iran, we now have one that is not only not a friend, but one that is--considers us to be the Great Satan. GANNON: Could you say that if you had stayed in office that you would not have allowed the shah to fall? NIXON: I would not have, no. I would have been steadfast throughout. I--I would have made it very clear down through the bureaucracy that where--there was to be absolutely no c--contact with those that were trying to overthrow him. I would have had a very good study made of Khomeini' ; s background and would have found that--exactly what kind of person he was, because by studying his background, they could have known that he was going to do exactly what he was going to do. The man i--i--is a radical reactionary. He' ; s not a progressive in any sense of the word. GANNON: If you had been con-- NIXON: You see, the choice basically was not between the shah and somebody better. The choice bas between him and somebody worse, and it' ; s very easy for me to make that choice. GANNON: If you had been confronted with the worst case from that point of view, and the shah had been overthrown and hostages taken, and you were president, would you have taken him into the United States? NIXON: Absolutely. I would have--take him into the United States, and, as far as the hostages was concerned, I would have handled that a little differently, too. I don' ; t say this in criticism of President Carter, because he certainly went through a lot on the hostage situation. He believes it may have cost him the election. I don' ; t think it did. I think the economic issues were the major ones. But be that as it may, it didn' ; t help him. But as far as the hostage iss--situation was concerned, American foreign policy can never be made hostage to hostages. That' ; s why hostages are taken--for purposes of blackmail. And we mustn' ; t let that happen. And, for example, the--when President Carter was asked about the hostage situation, he went overboard in saying that our first and then only concern was the safety of the hostages. Now, that is a concern, but our major concern is what happens to Iran, what happens to the relations between the United States and Iran. And in this respect, I would never have said, as President Carter did, that " ; I rule out the ru--use of force in order to get the hostages back." ; All that did was to encourage those that had captured them and were holding them in captivity not to give them up. I remember President Eisenhower, during our administration and--and the vice-presidential days, used to say on occasion that he had learned as a military commander that it' ; s very important never to tell your enemy what you' ; re going to do, because then he' ; ll be ready for you. But he says it' ; s just as important never to tell him what you' ; re not going to do, because then that will encourage him to do things he otherwise might not do. And in this case, it was a mistake, in my view, to do that. The other thing I would say is that, with regard to the hoskage--the hostage rescue operation, that President Carter and the Pentagon--I assume they are the ones that joined in the decision--made a mistake and are not, again, following out an Eisenhower dictum, and that dictum is that when you make a play of that sort, you always assume the worst. Y--and you cannot assume that your intelligence i--is going to be absolutely accurate. I have a very interesting reaction in that respect that Eisenhower had at the time of Lebanon in 1958. As everybody will recall, in 1958 in Lebanon there was a crisis because the government there was under attack. There was a possibility that the Soviet Union might intervene, and Eisenhower had to make a decision as to whether or not to send Marines in in order to establish peace. And I remember the briefing that occurred in the Oval Office, and Eisenhower heard Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, and Foster Dulles, the secretary of State, brief him, and to recommend that we send in a Marine group in order to keep order. And in they--when they gave their report, they indicated that they did not think there would be any intervention from the standpoint of the Russians and that it would be a peaceful operation. And Eisenhower sat back, and after they had given this report, he said, " ; Foster, let me ask you something. Let us assume our intelligence is wrong. Are you prepared to take the next step?" ; And Foster Dulles thought a long time. He said, " ; Well, Mr. President, I' ; m 90 percent sure that there will be no problem. But if there is, yes, we should be prepared to take the next step." ; The point of that anecdote is that Eisenhower would never have made the mistake of the Bay of Pigs, when the intelligence proved to be wrong, and there wasn' ; t the wa--uprising that--that he had--they had hoped at the time, and when it was necessary to have committed more air strength than had been planned, or at least not to cut back on what had been planned. In other words, in the hostage situation, rather than sending enough helicopters plus one, you should say twice--send twice the number to be sure that if there were, as there turned out to be, mechanical or other difficulties, you' ; d be pared--be prepared to carry out the operation to a successful conclusion. GANNON: If you had still been in office, would you have taken the risk of the rescue mission? NIXON: Oh, yes. Oh, I think President Carter deserves high marks for taking that risk. I took a similar risk, somewhat, during the Vietnam War. We had the Son Tay operation, where we had intelligence reports with regard to a prison camp for our POWs, and we sent in a--a magnificently trained group to rescue them. It came off--after all the training and so forth that they had had and the support we gave them, it came off perfectly. Unfortunately, they had moved the POWs from the camp, and it was found empty. GANNON: Did you direct that they follow that worst-case dictum and send in-- NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: --twice as many--as-- NIXON: Oh, we were ready. Oh, yes, we were ready. In fact, we lost a helicopter or two, but there were plenty there, and we--as a matter of fact, we lost no men on it, because we were prepared. No, that didn' ; t fail because of lack of preparation or because of lack of equipment. That failed only because our intelligence was faulty in terms of not finding out that the P.O.W.s had been moved from that camp to a place in Hanoi. GANNON: In practical political terms, could you have resisted the tremendous domestic feeling and pressure against the shah at the time? If you had been in office and had invited him into this country, wouldn' ; t that have created a--almost an unmanageable national uproar? NIXON: It might have, but I would still have done it, because in the long term a president on occasion has to stand against what appears to be the best opinion of the brightest and the best in the media, who, of course, would try to create that uproar, and I' ; m not--I would not say that you would find that, when the American people really realized what the stakes were, that they would have opposed what the president did in that respect. I think, in retrospect, that the American people perhaps would respect a president for his--doing what he felt was right and what was in the interest of the country. I must say I was quite moved by the fact that after I went to the shah' ; s funeral--I went at my own expense, of course--and took this long trip and came back--that I received a great volume of mail from the United States, from all over the world as well, saying, " ; Thank you very much for standing by a friend." ; Now, I' ; m not sure that' ; s the majority opinion, but, in any event, there' ; s still a lot of support in the world and in the United States for doing the right thing, even though it has some political costs. GANNON: Do you think that the government should have picked up the tab for your going to the shah' ; s funeral to represent the country as you did? Even unofficially? NIXON: Absolutely not. I never asked the government to do that. For example-- GANNON: But--do you think they should have offered? NIXON: No. No, they wouldn' ; t and I wouldn' ; t expect them to, because basically if they were to pick up the tab for that, why didn' ; t they send me on an official mission? No. As a matter of fact, in all of my travels abroad, I don' ; t ask for government support. Secret Service has to go along by law, but I--for example, my several trips to China since I' ; ve been out of office, my trips to the--the Mideast, and also my trips over to Europe have all been at my own expense. I--I want to be--if you go as the representative of the government, then of course you have to do what the government wants. And I want to be independent to do whatever I want and to say whatever I want when I come back. GANNON: Would you accept a government mission if it were--if you were asked to take one? NIXON: No, if I thought it would be appropriate, like f--well, for example, let me say I was a member of the delegation that went to Sadat' ; s funeral, and we rode in a government plane down there. From Sadat' ; s funeral, however, I did not stay--I didn' ; t--not come back with Ford and Carter on the plane. I went on around to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Tunisia, and Morocco after I had attended the funeral. I did that at my own expense. GANNON: There' ; s a great story about that, that they didn' ; t know that you were going to peel off and--and go off on your own, and that the w--when they found out you were gone was when the door was about to close, and they looked around and found you weren' ; t there. Did you plan to shake them up a little bit by just disappearing? NIXON: No. I--I didn' ; t plan to shake them up, but I--I couldn' ; t inform them that I was going to make this kind of a trip, since it was being done on my own. And I c--I couldn' ; t inform them without getting involved in a lot of diplomatic double talk and so forth and so on. But I did inform--let me make it very clear, I did inform the--Secretary Haig, because the State Department did furnish me briefing materials for the trip. But I didn' ; t--but I did not want--I did not want the trip--l--let me explain. The major reason I couldn' ; t inform them is it wouldn' ; t have been proper, before going to a funeral and before the funeral was completed, to announce that after the funeral I' ; m going to go visit other countries in the area, particularly when the other countries in the area--none of them at that particly time had good relations with Sadat, and none of them had attended the funeral. So I had to wait until after the funeral and then just to take off. GANNON: Do you think that if President Sadat had been dealing with anyone other then Prime Minister Begin that he could have achieved a broader, more comprehensive peace settlement? NIXON: Doubtful. President Sadat didn' ; t think so. We' ; ve referred to his various abilities, his intelligence, and his determination, and his vision, et cetera. He was also a pragmatist. I remember the last time I saw him, a--at his suite in--here in New York on his last visit to the United States. Begin at that time was pretty low in American public opinion, because he--I think that was right after he' ; d bombed the Iraqi reactor, or something like that, and people were referring to him as being crazy. In fact, there was a column that morning in one of the papers saying he was crazy. And I said, " ; What do you think, Mr. President? Is this Begin crazy?" ; He says, " ; Oh, he' ; s crazy, but he' ; s crazy like a fox." ; And I said, " ; Wouldn' ; t you prefer to have somebody else to deal with, somebody who would be, perhaps, easier to deal with and not as intransigent and difficult as he apparently was at Camp David?" ; He thought a moment. He says, " ; Oh, no. I prefer to deal with him. He' ; s tough and he' ; s strong, but I know that once we make the deal, he will be able to deliver on it." ; And he says, " ; I' ; m not sure that some of the others would." ; So I would say that, as far as Begin is concerned, it' ; ll be hard to make a deal with him, particularly when he says that Galilee and Samaria belong to Israel and so forth. But, on the other hand, once he makes it, he is certainly one that can get support from it, because those who oppose a deal in Israel are not the liberals but the conservatives, and Begin, of course, represents them. GANNON: Some observers say that because of Begin' ; s aggressive and tough and--and, as some people see it, unpleasant personal characteristics, he does Israel' ; s cause harm with United States public opinion. Do you think that' ; s true? NIXON: I think he does in many respects. For example, I do not think that, if it had been Golda Meir or Rabin--that the whole Lebanese operation would have received the bad press that it did in the United States that it did with Begin, because Begin was so hard-nosed and tough all the way through. On the other hand, there' ; s a lot of grudging respect for him, too, in this country. I mean, d--this country doesn' ; t like to lose. This country likes to--to see another nation stand up for its rights. A--and so, under the circumstances, I think Begin has some support. But I think in--in overall terms, his personality was not particularly a pleasant one for most Americans, particularly when Israel was engaged in what many considered to be--was inconsistent with Israel' ; s basic ideals. GANNON: Some observers feel that President Sadat was naïve in his policies. The--the distinguished Arab journalist Mohamed Heikal says that he was naïve in that, when he traded R--Russian support for American support, he confined himself to having to negotiate to Israel. And even Henry Kissinger, apropos Sadat' ; s throwing the Soviets out in 1972, said, " ; He should have let us known it--known us--he should have let us known it in advance. We would have paid him well for it." ; Was--how sophisticated was Sadat in planning his policies, thinking them through? NIXON: I never think of Sadat as being a particularly sophisticated person. He' ; s intelligent, but I think he is a man who sometimes is moved by impulse. I think what happened when he flew to Jerusalem--he just decided that there was a bottleneck there, that--that a big play was required. It was risk for him, but he believed in taking risks, risks for peace. It' ; s very important for all of us to remember that it takes a--a--a cer--it takes courage to fight war, but it also takes courage, a different kind of courage, to wage peace. Sadat understood that. He was willing to take risks for peace, and it paid off. As--I think as far as the Russians were concerned, what happened there is that one of the reasons that he had them leave, as he told me when I saw him in 1974, he says, " ; We just gave up on them, we gave up on them," ; because they weren' ; t providing the economic and military support that he thought that they had promised. And let me emphasize, too, that Sadat was influenced to a certain extent, I am sure, and maybe to a great extent, by Faisal, because Faisal was very anti-Soviet, and Faisal constantly remonstrated with Sadat with regard to having too much Russian influence in Egypt and tried to wean him away, and that played a role as well. So maybe it just possible that Sadat should have played it in a tougher way and have said that the United States had to pay a price in order for him to throw the Russians out. But that was characteristic of Sadat. He did what he thought it was right. And, incidentally, it was the right decision. And let me say another thing that set up Sadat' ; s doing what he did with regard to renewing relations with the United States. That occurred because Sadat was convinced, after the ' ; 73 war, where, you' ; ve got to understand, the United States supported Israel with an airlift at a time that Israel was about ready to be overrun by the Egyptians and the Syrians that--nevertheless, he--every--shortly after that--pe--the ceasefire ended that war--resumed diplomatic relations with the United States. And I think he did that because he realized that the United States could do something for him in terms of peace that the Russians were unable to do in terms of waging war. And he also did that because he was convinced that, while there was no question about my being pro-Israel, he felt that being I--that being pro-Israel, as far as I was concerned, did not mean that I would be anti-Arab or anti-Egypt. As a matter of fact, he had a very candid talk with me on that ' ; 74 trip a--about the American political scene. He' ; d followed our elections pretty closely, a--and he realized that, except for Eisenhower, I was the only American president since World War II who had been elected without substantial Jewish support. He thought that I would support Israel, but he thought I would not be unfair to Egypt or anti-Arab as a result of that support. And he was right. That' ; s why among--those are among that factors that got him to move as he did. GANNON: On that last trip, the 1974 trip, did he mention Watergate to you at all? NIXON: He did not mention it, but his--his wife, interestingly enough, spoke to Mrs. Nixon about Watergate. Now, understand, this is before Camp David, before the so-called " ; détente" ; between Egypt and Israel. But she said that they in Egypt just couldn' ; t understand Watergate at all, and that they thought it was a conspiracy, and that she and many Egyptians thought it was a Jewish cons--conspiracy. I don' ; t think that was the case, incidentally, but that does show that there was still a strong anti-Jewish sentiment back in 1974, which of course still is the— THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: --[the]re to an extent but changed by the new relationship created by Camp David. GANNON: How did Mrs. Nixon handle the diplomatic confidence of that nature? NIXON: Well, she handles it very properly. She listens and she nods and, of course, does not make comments of her own, because she wasn' ; t asked to. GANNON: There' ; s a very vivid film of you and Sadat standing by the pyramids on the ' ; 74 trip. Do you remember that scene? Was it as dramatic to live it as it is to watch it? NIXON: I had been to the pyramids before, but being there with Sadat, of course, was a different kind of experience, different in kind, particularly, even though the place was the same. And as you stand there, you think of Egypt' ; s past, which is a great past. We think of China being an old country and-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0373/bmac
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 27, 1983, part 2.
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Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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United States
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 27, 1983, part 3. gannix_0374 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|10(7)|42(17)|65(6)|87(8)|105(13)|120(14)|131(13)|141(14)|155(5)|169(3)|183(11)|198(4)|211(12)|222(14)|237(8)|248(14)|258(5)|270(3)|283(3)|293(10)|306(12)|322(8)|334(8)|345(7)|357(16)|367(14)|380(1)|395(13)|407(2)|419(3)|430(8)|444(9)|457(4)|466(14)|477(9)|489(14)|500(16)|513(3)|525(8)|536(3)|548(13)|561(11)|573(11)|584(11)|597(13)|609(11)|623(5)|633(7)|647(5)|661(5)|673(6)|683(6)|695(5)|706(7)|723(4)|734(4)|751(12) 0 https://youtu.be/9-caQh51z2g YouTube video English 3 Progress in Egypt / Interview Discussion --the Chinese having an old civilization, and I--Egypt goes back much older. Nixon discusses the long history of Egypt and its attempts to move forward. Gannon and Nixon then have outside discussion during interview preparation. 235 King Faisal Over the years, you met King Faisal several times, both in Saudi Arabia and in the United States. Nixon recounts meeting and working with King Faisal of Saudia Arabia. He discusses Faisal's political policies regarding the oil embargo and attempts to create a progressive country while remaining true to it history. Nixon also speaks about the success of the House of Saud. 1018 Importance of Saudi Arabia How would you describe the American stake in Saudi Arabia? Nixon describes the importance of Saudi Arabia to the United States, particularly due to its oil reserves. Afghanistan ; Cambodia ; Christmas Bombings ; Haiphong ; Japan ; Jimmy Carter ; oil embargo ; Saudi Arabia ; Soviet Union ; summit ; Vietnam Carter, Jimmy, 1924- 1267 Assassination of King Faisal Do you remember how you heard about the assassination of King Faisal? Nixon discusses the reasons behind the assassination of King Faisal and other leaders in the Middle East. Anwar Sadat ; communism ; Egypt ; Jordan ; King Faisal ; Libya ; Morocco ; Muammar Gaddafi ; Saudi Arabia ; Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ; Soviet Union ; television ; Tunisia Faisal, King of Saudi Arabia, 1906-1975 ; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, 1919-1980 ; Qaddafi, Muammar ; Sadat, Anwar, 1918-1981 1626 King Assad / King Hussein / King Hassan / President Bourguiba On your June 1974 trip to the Middle East, you went for the first time to Syria, a country that you hadn't visited before. Nixon describes several Middle Eastern leaders, accounting their work as political leaders and his relationships with them while president. 2454 American Perception of Arab Leaders If these Arab leaders are so great and so important and influential, why is it that they are either unknown to most Americans or that they are thought of as sort of grown men wearing bed sheets? Nixon discusses the American perception of Arab leaders and the relationship between the United States and the Middle East. 2802 Yasir Arafat / Israeli Invasion What's your opinion of Yasser Arafat? Nixon gives his opinion on Yasser Arafat. He also discusses the relationship between the United States and Israel and the moral stature of Israel. 3165 American Middle Eastern Policy Did you ever have second thoughts or doubts or concerns about the effectiveness of Henry Kissinger, a Jewish secretary of state, formulating Mideast policy for your administration? Nixon considers the effectiveness of Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State. He discusses the importance of maintaining close relationships with countries in the Middle East despite tension between Arab and Israeli initiatives. Egypt ; foreign relations ; Henry Kissinger ; Israel ; Judaism ; Middle East ; Pentagon ; State Department ; Syria Kissinger, Henry, 1923- Interview NIXON: --the Chinese having an old civilization, and I--Egypt goes back much older. It' ; s one of the oldest civilizations in the world--two or three thousand years older in terms of history than even China. And as you look at the pyramids, you think of modern-day Egypt, a terribly, terribly poor country, overpopulated, but people with a great potential, a great potential. The--the Egyptians are the educators, or at least that' ; s been my observation--the educators of the whole Mediterranean--southern Mediterranean-Mideastern area. And Sadat was trying desperately to move Egypt up economically. He died, unfortunately, before much progress had been made in that direction. But as we stood there in the pyramids, you naturally think of the past, and you think that a man like Sadat and those who follow him, like Mubarak--that they also must think of their past every time they look out their windows and see the pyramids and think of the greatness of Egypt in the past. That must renew their dedication and their determination to build a bigger and better Egypt in the future. GANNON: We’ve reached the end of our hour. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Just stay for one second, gentlemen. Talk to each other. Lights. GANNON: Do you remember that it was hot as hell and your leg hurt? NIXON: Oh, yes. We' ; ll get that in another place. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: If you want the-- GANNON: Yes. No. NIXON: --whole thing-- GANNON: No. NIXON: I had the phlebitis in terms-- GANNON: No. NIXON: --of another compact. GANNON: I think for the--yes. I think for the fade-out on this, the f--picture of--the--the film of standing with the pyramids in the background and that--I think the way you did it is just right for ending the Sadat story. And we got the shah in. He was a little out of order, but we got him. NIXON: That' ; s right. That' ; s enough. GANNON: Got him in good. NIXON: Well, the main thing is the line is " ; It' ; s dangerous--" ; OFF SCREEN VOICE: Thirty-five minutes. NIXON: " ; It' ; s dangerous to be a friend of the United States, and it pays to be an enemy." ; That summarizes it all. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible, in background.] NIXON: Be sure that stays in. You see, that' ; s a k-- NIXON: --that' ; s a kind of a quote that people can understand. NIXON: Did you read this? GANNON: Yes, we' ; ve got Middle Eastern food in honor of our--we--we have the sheep' ; s eyes for you, Mr. President. GANNON: --we ate for lunch there may be a-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: You better keep your eyes on me, Frank. NIXON: Burp? OFF SCREEN VOICE: I' ; m going to be counting down, and I' ; ll cue you. [unintelligible] NIXON: Is that--some burps, you mean? GANNON: No, there may be a steady flow of people out to the-- NIXON: Can. GANNON: --the head. [Both laugh.] NIXON: [Coughs.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stand by. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, ten seconds out. GANNON: Over the years, you met King Faisal several times, both in Saudi Arabia and in the United States. What kind of a leader was he? NIXON: I would have to rate him very, very high. Without question, he was the ablest leader of the Arab world that I' ; ve ever met, and I would rate him, in terms of all the leaders I' ; ve met, and I' ; ve met perhaps over three hundred heads of government and heads of state over the past thirty-seven years. I' ; d put him in the top ten. He' ; s that good. GANNON: Did he have a--a sophisticated understanding of the--the forces throughout the world or just in his region? NIXON: That is--that was the reason that I would rate him so well. He was one who knew his country and knew it well. But he was one also who knew the world. He knew Europe, he knew America, he knew Asia. He could talk as well about other countries in other areas--s of the world as he did the Mideast. And he also had a deep appreciation of the East-West conflict. He had one hang-up, however, on which I--we did not agree. He always referred to the Zionist Communist conspiracy, e--even though the Soviet Union, it seemed to me, was trying to do Israel in, as he would have liked to have done it in, too, on occasion. But a--apart from that, he was a very clear thinker, and I--he played a great role, of course, when he helped to wean Sadat away from the Russians, one for which we should always be grateful to him. GANNON: Did his belief in this Zionist-Communist conspiracy unbalance his judgment, do you think? NIXON: Not to the point that, for example, he couldn' ; t receive me. After the war of 1973, I had strongly supported Israel. We had saved Israel from defeat, certainly, or helped to save it, through the airlift and through keeping the Russians out. But he appreciated the fact, as he told me, that while he knew and understood that I was pro-Israel, that I was an American president that was not, because I was pro-Israel, anti-Arab. And all that he asked for was that the United States have an understanding of the Arab world, an appreciation. And that' ; s why we developed a very good relationship. I would say, further, with regard to Faisal, he was two different men, as I remember him. I met him first when he was, I think, minister of finance in Prince--in King Saud' ; s government, and he was in New York at the Waldorf-Asori--Astoria. I was in New York at the same time, and I found that he would like to get together for a meeting. And he was dressed in Western clothes and spoke impeccable English and so forth, and spoke about his concern about Mideast relations and so forth. Then when I saw him in 1974--he was king then, and he looked altogether different and sounded altogether different. He wore the hair--heavy Arab gowns that the men wear, the crown. He spoke only Arabic, never English. He was totally a man of the Saudi Arabian country empire at that time. He was a man, basically, who was two kinds and two different people in another sense. He was a progressive, progressive in terms that he wanted to move Saudi Arabia into the twentieth century, but, on the other hand, he was conservative, conservative in the best sense. He wanted to retain the best of the past. That' ; s why he wanted to retain, basically, Saudi Arabian culture and religion. And it was a very intelligent thing to do, because, rather than making the mistake that some leaders in that area have made, of--of rooting out the past so that people don' ; t have any roots in the past--keeping the best that is in the past and building on that, he avoided the--the re--rebellion that might have occurred by--i--if they thought they were being moved too fast into the modern. GANNON: King Faisal had rather a--an unhappy, almost forbidding countenance. What was he like as a man? NIXON: Well, a--again, it depends what period of time we' ; re talking about. He' ; s very different. When he was in his Western clothes in the Waldorf, he was basically a man of the West. And then, there in his own kingdom, he was as Arab as any Arab as I' ; ve ever seen. He was a man that seldom smiled. I remember one of his friends told me that whenever King Faisal smiled, it was like--as if someone had bitten into a lemon and found it to be sweet. He was also, incidentally--and this always impresses anybody who meets with somebody else--he was a very good listener. One of his favorite quotations was that God gave men two ears and one mouth, and the reason was that men were supposed to listen twice as much as they talked. But he not only used the proverb, he practiced it himself. And there' ; s nothing that impresses the other fellow more than when you listen to what he has to say rather than insist that you' ; ve got to do the talking. GANNON: Do you think that he intended the oil embargo during the 1973 war to have the revolutionary and revolutionizing effect on the West, and particularly on America and the American economy, that it did? NIXON: I think that he must have had very mixed emotions about it. He felt he had no choice but to do that, in view of the fact that the--the United States had gone all-out in support of Israel against the Egyptians and against the Syrians, and, after all, Saudi Arabia a--Arabia at that time, and at the present time, supports those countries, as against Israel. I think, however, that we have to give him credit for attempting to mitigate the effect of that embargo at a later time. In fact, Saudi Arabia and its oil minister, Yamani, were very, very helpful in getting the embargo removed eventually, but certainly moderated at a later time. GANNON: How would you describe the effect of--both long-term and short-term, on the United States of the Arab oil embargo in 1973? NIXON: Well, it was very detrimental in terms of the perception of--that Americans have of--of Saudi Arabia, the other oil-producing countries. After all, we don' ; t like to sit in gas lines and have the price of gasoline go up and all--and go through all the things that we did during that embargo. And, of course, I was president at that time, and I' ; ve noted recently that they' ; ve got several billion ration tickets that they' ; ve ha--now got to destroy, because I wouldn' ; t let rationing go ahead, thank God, when some were recommending it in the administration. But, nevertheless, that perception of the Saudi Arabians as being basically anti-American, which was really not it so much as they--they' ; re anti-Israeli--and I think Saudi Arabia, we have to recognize, too, had another problem. Saudi Arabia is not a very populous country. It' ; s a very big country, and it' ; s a very rich country, but almost half its population is Palestinian, and so, under the circumstances, I think Faisal felt that the embargo had to go forward or the Palestinians would' ; ve been in an uproar. GANNON: Do you think that the results of the oil embargo contributed to your downfall a year later? NIXON: Well, a number of things contributed to it. It didn' ; t help. In fact, the fact that the recession began to develop--the oil embargo, of course, created more inflation, and that, combined with the worldwide food shortage in 1973, 1974, helped to create the inflation which later led to the recession. So, it contributed to it, probably. GANNON: You met King Faisal when you were in the Mideast on your tour in 1974. Did you talk to him about the possibility that you might not survive in office in terms of what would happen with American policy in the Middle East, or did he raise it? NIXON: [Clears throat.] No, he didn' ; t raise that. That just left--he just left that unsaid. I was consequently very surprised when we met the press after our formal talks, and he stepped right up to that issue in a way that left little to the imagination. He first praised me quite fulsomely, and perhaps more than he should have, in terms of what my policies had done toward producing peace in the world, " ; peace and progress," ; as he called it. And he said, " ; I urge all Americans and all people in other countries to support President Nixon in the greatest initiative toward peace in world history--one of the greatest, certainly." ; And then he went on to say, " ; And those in America and those in other parts of the world who oppose him are, in effect, opposing the cause of peace." ; And he concluded it by saying--and he said, " ; Mr. President, so hand-in-hand and shoulder-to-shoulder, we will go forward together in working for a world in which there will b--pea--there--there will be peace and progress and justice." ; Well, it had quite an impact on the press corps, because by that time I think many of them, understandably, not only were against me, but they w--were hoping that everybody else would be as well and were waiting for the day--for the downfall. But it didn' ; t help him. The point is that, as far as Faisal was concerned, he could have buttered up to the press by saying nothing or even, still, giving a little jab in terms of my problem being my own and being rather harmful to relations. But his standing up the way he did was just the kind of a man he was. GANNON: The--the House of Saud seems to enjoy special prestige and success. What do you think it is that sets it apart from the other ruling houses or the other rulers in the Middle East? NIXON: Well, one thing that sets it apart is that they' ; re very rich. They' ; re the richest country in the Mideast. But it' ; s more than that. Basically, Saudi Arabia is the religious center of the Mideast, and also, in looking at Faisal, and in looking also at his predecessors, Khalid and Saud--whatever we want to say about them, they were deeply and profoundly religious men. The same, of course, is true of Fahd, who is now king, and a man also whom I knew very well and very favorably--met him in Washington first when he was not even crown prince, just a minister, and then met him later when he was crown prince, and have been in correspondence with him since he has ascended the throne. That' ; s part of the reason. The other reason is that the Saudis have played, because of their wealth, a--a very significant role with other countries. After all, they subsidize, or did subsidize, the Egyptians. That' ; s one of the reasons Faisal had great influence with Sadat. But they subsidize the other Arab g--governments to a very substantial amount and therefore can influence them. Now, I must say there are those, and understandably, in this country and other parts of the world who think that the Saudis are much too cautious, that they' ; ll never step up to anything. But I would only suggest th--that the reason they are that way i--is that--that whoever is king in Saudi Arabia is sitting on, basically, a--a potential explosive situation, due to the fact that there' ; s such a heavy proportion of the population which is Palestinian and potentially ra--radical. But above all, I think the reason that the present House of Saud has prestige far beyond the population of the country is not so much its money but because, while it supports progress for the future, it has not made the mistake of rooting out the past, and therefore its progress is going to b--be built on the solid culture that the Saudis think is very important to them and to the other countries in the Arab world. GANNON: How would you describe the American stake in Saudi Arabia? NIXON: Well, the stake, of course, is enormous, due to the fact that Saudi Arabia has not only present oil but also great reserves in oil which are among the greatest in the world. Now, that is important to us, but it is indispensable to Japan and indispensable to most of Europe, except for the British, of course, who now have North Sea oil. At the time, for example, o--of--of the embargo--one of the reasons in 1973--one of the reasons that our European friends didn' ; t want to go along on that, and, of course, didn' ; t, is they were mortally afraid of the effect that an embargo would have on them. Now, the United States, if an embargo were to come--if, for example, Saudi Arabia and the other oil-producing states in the Persian Gulf were cut off from us, if that supply were cut off, we could get along. It' ; d be tough, but we could. Japan could not, and much of Western Europe could not. So, therefore, Saudi Arabia holds the oil pipeline which is essential for the manufacturing capabilities of much of Europe and of Japan and, to an extent, of the United States. GANNON: Are there circumstances in which America' ; s--America would go and fight to protect that pipeline if it were threatened? NIXON: Well, I think one of the reasons that after the Afghan invasion by the Soviet Union, President Carter announced the doctrine for that part of the world, that the United States would be prepared to intervene, and asked for ap--approval by the Congress, and approval was given, for a force which would be available in the area to handle such contingencies. I would say that certainly the United States is developing that kind of capability. Now, when the question is asked as to whether or not we would go to war in order to save our oil pipeline, I think that poses a very difficult one. I' ; m not prepared to say what others would do. I certainly would suggest that our European friends, the Japanese, and the United States would have such an enormous stake there, that we could not stand by and allow that whole area to come under control of a power that would be antigonist--antagonistic to us. GANNON: When you were president, would you have sent in troops if--if that were the case--if it were threatened, say, by the Soviets? NIXON: [Clears throat.] They would certainly think so. Th--they' ; re nor--it isn' ; t a question of whether--whether people thought that I would, but as far as the Soviet were concerned, they weren' ; t about to make a move of that sort, particularly after what I had done in Vietnam. I had proved my credibility by taking the risks we did politically in the invasion of Cambodia, as it is--as it was called, the May eighth bombing and mining of Haiphong, the bombing in December of 1972. All of these things create credibility, and I do not think that the Soviet Union would have tried to test me in that way. But there was another reason, too. We have to recall that with all of the problems of so-called " ; détente," ; that--that the very fact that summit meetings were going on an annual basis deterred the Soviet Union from engaging in aggressive conduct in that part of the world or any other part of the world that might be detrimental to the interest between the two countries. GANNON: Do you remember how you heard about the assassination of King Faisal? NIXON: Oh, yes, I read it in a news report. It didn' ; t--which was--which had come in in the morning. That was all. I-- GANNON: You' ; ve written in your book that he was perhaps the--the only modern leader assassinated by or because of television. What did you mean by that? NIXON: Well, the irony in Faisal' ; s case was, as I have often pointed out, he was a progressive--progressive in the sense that he had a great program for literacy, he abolished slavery, he provided education for women, and of course a great program--because they had the funds for it--to build hospitals and roads and schools and all that sort of thing. He moved this basically nomadic desert empire into the position of being a modern state. On the other hand, deep down, he was a conservative, and deep down--and he has told me this in our conversations--he didn' ; t like television. He thought it was a corrupting influence. But also, as a pragmatist, he realized that many of the younger people in Saudi Arabia did like it, but also he realized that if Saudi Arabia were going to be a modern state, it had to go forward with some of these modern appliances. And what happened was--the irony of it all--was that he, one who opposed television, was assassinated by an extremist who was opposed to having any television in Saudi Arabia. So he is the first, and I hope the last, leader who has lost his life because of television, having in mind the fact that it shouldn' ; t have happened to him. Let me say, incidentally, that brings up another very important point to make which many people miss. When people think of Faisal, and when they think of Sadat, and they think of the shah and those who opposed them, most liberals jump to the conclusion that they--that the shah was forced out of power and that Faisal was assassinated and Sadat was assassinated because they may have been too conservative. It' ; s just the other way around. In all cases, in the case of the shah, it was not the liberals who drove him from power, it were [sic] those who wanted to turn the clock back. In the case of Faisal, it was a conservative reactionary who assassinated him, and the c--same was--case of Sadat. I remember Faisal--even he did not see the danger--that the real danger was not on the left, but on the right. I recall he expressed great concern to me when I was there about his own air force. He said that many of his young air force pilots had been trained in the United States, and he had sensed that many of them had come back inoculated, as he thought, with the virus of Western liberalism, and he f--feared that therefore they might engage in, frankly, revolutionary activities. It didn' ; t work out that way. He lost his life not because the left opposed him, but because the right did, even though he was more on the right than he was on the left. And I think throughout that part of the world, we should make another observation. We can speak of the danger of Communism in that part of the world, and it is not to be, certainly, underestimated, because the Communists will always come to power, and they' ; ll always profit from chaos, and there' ; s a lot of chaos out there, and they' ; ll do what they can to m--pick up the small change even, in the way that they usually do. But, on the other hand, if there were no Communism, if Russia didn' ; t even exist and was not trying to move into that part of the world, there would still be a major problem. The problem is on the right. In Morocco, in Tunisia, in Jordan, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, you will find that, as far as the opposition forces to those governments, all of which are so-called, quote, " ; moderate" ; governments--the opposition forces are forces that are on the right, like the revolution in Iran. As a matter of fact, I would say the most destabilizing potential force in the Mideast today is not Soviet-supported activities, but the kind of attitudes and activities and so forth that are represented by Khomeini in Iran a--and by Qaddafi in Syria. I mean, b--b--by Qaddafi in Libya. GANNON: How do you think history will assess King Faisal' ; s role and contribution? NIXON: Oh, far better than his contemporaries. It has to assess him well, because he was a big man. I mean, a--and there were--and, incidentally, I am not alone in this appraisal. Many other leaders have told me--they don' ; t publicly, as I do--but they had enormous respect for Faisal. I--I' ; ll put it this way. He' ; s one of the few men in the world it was worth traveling eight thousand miles to see. He' ; s just worth talking to, because he was so intelligent and had the wisdom that he did, but I think they will--they will app--un--they will appreciate him in this respect--that he recognized in that part of the world, which is so backward, which needs progress, he recognized the need for progress and supported it--for--for liberating women, for moving ahead on the literacy problem, for moving ahead in all the areas of industrialization and so forth. But he also recognized that in building the new future, you must also retain the best of the past. GANNON: On your June 1974 trip to the Middle East, you went for the first time to Syria, a country that you hadn' ; t visited before. What were your first impressions of your first visit to Syria? NIXON: Well, a lot different than the background that I had received with regard to what Syria might be like. I don' ; t mean the briefing papers said this, but much of what I had read in the press and some people who had been there observed it--they always refer to " ; the crazy Syrians," ; and that this fellow Assad was a bit of a nut, totally irrational, you couldn' ; t do anything with him, and so forth, and that--another thing that was said was that there was no country in the world which was more anti-American than Syria. And so, consequently, when the trip was laid on and we went to Syria after being in Saudi Arabia, I was a little concerned about the kind of reception we would get. And I remember sitting in the cabin of the plane, making some notes for the arrival, and all of a sudden the plane really gave a lurch, and I thought we' ; d hit an air pocket, and the pilot came back and he said, " ; There' ; s some S--Soviet jets outs--out there." ; And I looked, and, sure enough, they were buzzing the plane. Well, we were relieved when we found out that, while they were Soviet jess--jets, they were operated by Syrian pilots, and that they were simply an escort to escort us into the airport. So, we arrived there in Damascus, and I must say it was one of the most fascinating places I' ; ve ever visited. I had not known until this trip that Damascus is the oldest continually populated city in the world. I' ; d known it from this description in the Bible. I had not known that it went back that far. And I must say, apart--as contrasted to the anti-Americanism that was expected, or I expected, they were very pro-American. The people would clap when we came out of meetings. They lined the streets, although there wasn' ; t a great deal of publicity about our being there, and so forth. I think, however, it posed quite a problem to Assad, because I remember he told me after he had witnessed--after we had ridden in from the airport and saw all these people on the side there, he--he said, " ; I hope you noted the warm welcome you received." ; And I said I did. He said, " ; Well, it does pose a problem, see." ; And then he told me what had happened when he had talked to his eighteen--eight-year-old son just after we came in, and his eight-year-old son had seen me shaking hands with Assad at the airport. He said, " ; Father," ; he said, " ; how possibly could you do that?" ; He said, " ; Isn' ; t Nix--that Nixon, the Zionist, you were shaking hands with? That evil man who sided with Israel against us in the Jordan war in 1970, the man who saved Israel with the airlift in 1973? How could you possibly shake hands with him?" ; And Assad went on to say, he said, " ; You' ; ve got to understand, even though he' ; s only eight, that as far as our children in this country--they have been taught to hate capitalism. They have been taught to hate America, and particularly they' ; ve been taught to hate Nixon, because Nixon is the one that sided with Israel and also helped Israel in 1973 and avoided a defeat that we otherwise would have inflicted upon them. And then he said, " ; I replied to my son with one of our favorite proverbs. ' ; Better for the blind man to see with one eye than not to see at all.' ; " ; Now the question is, why would Sada--why would Assad, after all of this propaganda, anti-American propaganda--why would he want to tilt his policy a bit more our way? And I think that the reason is that, deep down, Assad and the Syrians are not pro-Russian. They like the Americans a lot better. They' ; d like to have a foot in our camp as well. They depend upon the Russians, but that is the reason that he, I think, was glad to see us there, and he welcomed the opportunity to agree, as we did agree, to a resumption of relations and particularly to economic cooperation, which unfortunately has aborted considerably since we left. GANNON: One of the other leaders in that region that you have known for many years, from his time as a very young man, is King Hussein. What are your impressions, or what do you remember from your various meetings with King Hussein? NIXON: Before getting to that, it' ; s another interesting thing to note that in both Egypt and Syria we had a very interesting reaction in terms of the difference between the Russians and the Americans. And I got this report from Manolo Sanchez, who worked for us and who accompanied me on the trip. And Sanchez would go into the kitchens and check the food and that sort of thing and talk to some of the people, and the waiters and so forth, and cooks. And he said that in Syria--said when he went in there, they said, " ; Thank God the Americans here [sic]. Now we hope the Russians go." ; And he--he said they didn' ; t like the Russians, because the Russians were--lived apart, and they were sour and mean. And when we got there to Egypt, he ran into exactly the same thing, and Assad told us that the Americans made more friends in six months, because we had renewed relations, of course, in 1973, after the ' ; 73 war, than the Russians had made in six years. And I think what it had to do with was the way Americans conduct themselves abroad. Whether rightly or wrongly, we are a very friendly people. W--we' ; re a very outgoing people, and the Russians were dour, under their Communist rules and so forth. They weren' ; t allowed to fraternize. And so we have something going for us in that respect. But with regard to Hussein, he has been described as a survivor, and he certainly is. I' ; ve known him for twenty-five years. He came to the Eisenhower White House, and then I have known him off and on through the years, both there and in--in his own country. And he is a man, first, of great intelligence. He' ; s very shrewd in--politically, but he is a man who is sitting on a powder keg, because, again, about half of his people are Palestinian or Palestinian background. And, in fact, as far as the Jordanians are concerned, if he is to survive as king, he' ; s got to get along with both. And that is why he has to be more cautious than some in the West would like him to be. They want him to step up there and run over to Jerusalem right away. Well, if he does that right away without getting some sort of better understanding with regard to relations in the future and as far as the West Bank is concerned, he' ; s going to risk physical or political suicide or both. Another thing about him that many are not aware of in the West is that he' ; s an enormously courageous man. I' ; m referring to it not politically primarily, but particularly physically. For example, in 1970, when there was--were very serious problems within Jordan--groups rebelling, particularly Palestinian types--he led the lead tank himself and operated it. H--he is absolutely fearless. And when his critics say that he isn' ; t fearless enough in making some sort of agreement with Israel and stepping forth, I would say better to have him there as a moderate leader, which he is, as one who is not anti-Israel--and that' ; s true of him as well--than to have him out of there and have a radical Palestinian in charge in Jordan. Let' ; s don' ; t push him to take action until he gets something from Israel that will be understood by his own people. GANNON: How would you describe King Hassan? NIXON: Hassan of--of Morocco is--is quite an outstanding leader in his own right as well. Let' ; s first understand that Morocco is a very important country. It isn' ; t recognized as being important as it is, not simply because it is basically a Moslem or Arab country, which it is. Because of its location, Morocco is one of the most strategically important countries in the world. It borders on the Straits of Gibraltar. It is the bridge between Africa and Europe. It is also a bridge between the Arab world and the rest of--of Africa and the Arab world and the Mideast. And so, under the circumstances, it' ; s a very important country. Now, coming to him himself, I met him for the first time in 1957. I was a--a young vice-president then, travelling in that area, and he was a very young crown prince. And his father, who was then the sultan--later became Muhammad V, the king of Morocco--had his crown prince a--accompany me as we drove through the streets of Casablanca and Rabat and these other cities. There were thousands and thousands of people out. I followed my usual practice in my vi--that I had in my vice-presidential days of stopping the car from time to time and moving into the crowds and shaking hands and going into the bazaars and the coffee shops. Now many times when I did that when I was in other countries, the people just didn' ; t understand it--I mean, the people I was traveling with. But not him. He loved doing it himself. He mingled with the people, and he still does, now that he is king. Another thing happened on that trip that was very interesting. It rained for the first time in a year, and they' ; d had a terrible drought. And that night the king of Morocco, King Hassan--I mean, Muhammad V, the father of the present king, proposed a toast to me. And he said, " ; To the man with the green feet. That means wherever he walks, the grass grows." ; And I understand that' ; s th--about the best toast you can get. The other point of interest insofar as the background is concerned is that when his father, Muhammad V, came to the United States in 1957 for his state visit, that was the only occasion in eight years that I ever was the host at a White House dinner. And that was because that was the day that President Eisenhower had his stroke. So that night I was the host of the dinner, along with Mrs. Eisenhower. Now that King Hassan has grown up--he' ; s no longer a young prince, he is now a mature king--I would evaluate him this way--highly intelligent, but I think one of the most impressive things about him is that he has a better understanding of Europe and European politics than any Arab leader that I have met, with the possible exception of Faisal. Faisal would be about equal. He' ; s very sophisticated. He travels a lot in Europe, and he handles the situation within his own country, I think, quite well. He has the polisarios who are rebelling against him, but instead of going out and fighting them in their turf out in the deserts, he' ; s taken the best part of the disputed Spanish Sahara. He' ; s built a wall around it and stays behind the wall. It' ; s one of the few walls in history that has worked. GANNON: How would you describe President Bourguiba? NIXON: Bourguiba is one of the real survivors in the area. He' ; s been in power as long as anybody can remember. Very charismatic, very outspoken, very warm and friendly. He' ; s--he--when I visited him last, in 1982, he threw his arms around me he was so glad to see me, because I had seen him also in 1957. And he is very courageous in terms of Arab-Israel relations. He is one of the first of the Arab leaders who began to make moves toward a more moderate stance toward Israel. And he' ; s done that, even though--even in--even though in his country, in Tunis, they have a problem as far as the radical right is concerned. Bourguiba in Tunis has the radical right. They are his danger. His danger is not on the left. Hassan' ; s danger is on the right, not the left. This is interesting to say about Hassan. Hassan has been thought of as a very rich--is--which he is--monarch, living very well, which he does, and you would think that therefore his danger would be on the liberals, on the left. But his danger is not there because he is progressive in terms of trying to move the country into the modern era. His danger is on the right--those who want to move Morocco back as, for example, Khomeini has moved Iran back. And it' ; s to our interest, above everything else, to be--do everything we can to see that leaders like Hassan, and like Bourghiba, and like the king of Jordan, and, of course, the Saudis--that they have as much support as we possibly can, so that moving our way will demonstrate to the peoples of those countries that that' ; s a better way than moving back, as Khomeini has moved the Iranians. GANNON: If these Arab leaders are so great and so important and influential, why is it that they are either unknown to most Americans or that they are thought of as sort of grown men wearing bed sheets? NIXON: A part of it is at their own fault. They have been very inept in terms of their public relations. They--they don' ; t--they have not demonstrated the understanding of the United States, and particularly our media, that they should. They come over here and hi--hire high-priced PR firms who--who don' ; t understand it either and just take their money and pocket it, and--and, I f--feel, in many cases don' ; t do much good for them, although there are some exceptions, of course. Another reason f--we have to be very candid about it--is that this country is basically very supportive of Israel, and it is generally assumed that Arab leaders are opposed to Israel. Now, that' ; s not true of the king of Morocco, despite some of the impressions that fray--it' ; s not true of Bourguiba. It' ; s not true of the king of Jordan. It is true, certainly, of the Saudis. They are very strongly anti-Israel. But, on the other hand, the fact that--that so many Americans have been indoctrinated--the idea that to be pro-Arab means that you' ; re anti-Israel I think causes some of the problem. And that' ; s simply got to change, because these are a--men that--that--that deserve certainly a--a better hearing insofar as the United States are concerned. I' ; d say further that one impression that I made in my toast in Saudi Arabia, and I followed this same theme in the toasts in the other countries that I visited on that trip in 1974 and again when I went back last year--I constantly made the point that I was pro-Israel. I mean I didn' ; t duck that because they all know that. But I made the point that being pro-Israel doesn' ; t mean that you' ; re anti-Arab. And then I made this point, and this, I think, touched them. I said, " ; It is not natural for Americans and Arabs to be enemies. It is natural for us to be friends." ; They appreciate that, and I believe that. And I think that if we can just get that across and then if we can some way take some of the poison out of the Israeli-Arab antagonism by finding some even halfway solution for the West Bank, providing some kind of self-government, defusing that issue so that it can' ; t be exploited by the radicals on the right or by the Soviet Union--that that is going to change the whole Arab world in terms of its perception in the United States. GANNON: Do you think that if the Arabs had better or most sophisticated public relations that American support for Israel might be changed or attenuated? NIXON: I' ; m not very high--I never have been--on public relations moves. Public relations firms--I--I know they' ; re necessary. I think sometimes they' ; re a necessary evil, and some of my very good friends operate them. But generally speaking, as far as that particular matter is concerned, it' ; s essential for these countries themselves and their leaders to understand America. The most effective proponent of any of these countries in the United States is the man himself as they perceive him. He is the one who can best present a proper image in America. I--I' ; m just sorry, for example, that Faisal has passed from the scene. If he had been able to come to the United States, as he would have if he had lived, and certainly if I had survived he' ; d have been there very fast--but if he' ; d have been able to come to the United States, with his sophistication, with his wisdom, and so forth, he, with one visit, could have substantially altered the perception of the Amer--of the Western world, particularly of the United States. And let' ; s get another example of that--Sadat. Now, one of the reasons that Sadat, who was the only leader of that part of the world, except for Israelis, many of whom have been in the top ten--the only reason he has been in the top ten of those most admired in the world among Americans who answered the poll--the reason was, first, that he had gone to Jerusalem and therefore he was not considered to be anti-Israel. But second because of his personality. People are able to see him. He' ; s a charismatic figure. And, consequently, I--I think it' ; s--it' ; s very important for some of these leaders to be exposed to the American public but to be exposed under circumstances where they can present their own case. Hussein does a good job in that respect, incidentally--handles himself well with--part--part of the reason being, of course, that he speaks English. But time will--it takes some time to work this out. But we' ; ve got to defuse the Palestinian-Israeli thing before there' ; s going to be widespread acceptance of these Arab leaders for what they really are--that they aren' ; t just a bunch of nuts wearing bed sheets and so forth and so on. They are different from us, a--and we should not try to change their cultures or their religions. They like theirs and we like ours, but, on the other hand, we' ; ve got to recognize they go their way, we go ours, and, as I' ; ve often said, it' ; s not natural for Americans and Arabs to be enemies. Let us be friends. GANNON: What' ; s your opinion of Yasir Arafat? NIXON: I do not know him, except from what I' ; ve seen on television, and what I read in the newspapers, but I think I could best describe him as being a cat on a hot tin roof. He' ; s jumping all over the place, and the reason is that he sits on what is called the P.L.O. There are various segments of that. Now, many people have painted him as being a moderate among the Palestinians. Deep down, perhaps he wants to be, and deep down he knows that' ; s the best way to get some kind of acceptance by Israel of some kind of self-government on the West Bank. But, on the other hand, he cannot cut the umbilical cord with what he' ; s called his hard core, the Al Fatah group, a--and the moment that he, for example, made any kind of conciliatory statements with regard to Hussein being allowed to join the talks on the Reagan plan for the West Bank, the al-Fatah group raised hell with him, and he had to back off, because their only answer is to wage war. Now, he' ; s obviously an intelligent man. He knows that waging war has not worked for them as was--any time, and it certainly didn' ; t work the last time when the Israelis wiped them out in Lebanon. But while he is ac--I would say, a cat, then, on a hot tin roof, he also is a cat with nine lives, because how he' ; s able to survive out there in that hotbed of intrigue and differences and so forth--it' ; s hard to say. GANNON: Do you think the Israelis lost moral stature by the invasion of Lebanon and the Beirut massacre? NIXON: Before going into that, I think it' ; s important to--to really tackle a subject that' ; s often raised. I mean, you say, " ; Why don' ; t we talk to Arafat? Why don' ; t we talk to the P.L.O.?" ; And the answer is we can' ; t. We can' ; t because, like it or not, we have cast our lot with and for Israel, and their not recognizing Israel means they' ; re not recognizing us. And so, therefore, unless--till they do that, it would be a mortal affront to I--I--Isr--Israel for us to deal with the P.L.O. However, there is another ground. We should try to influence them, and I say " ; we" ; in the broadest sense of the word. We should not object to our European friends and our friends in the Ara--ma--on the Arab world [sic], particularly the Saudis, talking to Arafat. In fact, we should encourage it, having in mind the fact that maybe over a period of time he and the Palestinians can be moved away from the totally intransigent line that they have at the present time. Now to your other question. GANNON: Do you think that the Israelis lost moral stature, or how much moral stature did they lose by the invasion of Lebanon and the massacre in Beirut? NIXON: Immediately after the massacre, it seemed like it had been almost a death blow, but since then, as it' ; s gotten to more perspective, and since then, when the Israelis faced up to the problem and had a very extensive inquiry which resulted in the defense minister, Sharon, having to resign his post--and being appointed to another one, of course--I think that that has tended to mitigate the strong feeling in the West, and particularly in the United States, that they had lost moral stature, that they were as bad as their enemies, in effect, by--by condoning, or seeming to condone, or allowing to happen, the terrible massacre that occurred, a--even though it could be excused--maybe not excused but certainly understood, having in mind the fact that millions of Jews were massacred in Germany, oh, and in Poland, and in Europe, and so forth and so on. One massacre doesn' ; t make--which is wrong doesn' ; t make another one right, and they know that. I think what has happened here is that among many of Israel' ; s younger people, as well as some of the thoughtful older ones, there is a feeling, a--deep-set feelings, that this policy of continuing war in the long run is going to be disastrous to what I--Israel wants to be, what it means to itself and what it means to the world--that if Israel is going to continue to have to fight its neighbors, then war inevitably leads to repression. War basically i--is a brutal, brutal business. It results in killings, and--and when you let that beast out, sometimes massacres occur, just as they did with us, with My Lai, although we of course reprimanded and prosecuted those who were engaged in it. Let me put it--let me describe it this way. The massacre there was not something that the Israelis approved, but they might have avoided it. But it isn' ; t like the situation with the--with the North Vietnamese in Vietnam. There the killing of civilians, assassination, murder, rape, everything--that was a matter of policy. This was not a matter of policy. This was opposed to Israeli policy, and that' ; s a big difference. So I' ; d say that, as far as this is concerned, this has set a lot of Israelis to thinking about the future of their country, as it should, and, in my view, we' ; re going to have more things like that in the future, because it is one of the fallouts from war--are events of this sort. And so, therefore, we have to take some risks for peace rather than just continuing to be involved in war. GANNON: Did you ever have second thoughts or doubts or concerns about the effectiveness of Henry Kissinger, a Jewish secretary of State, formulating Mideast policy for your administration? NIXON: Well, there are many who thought it was a great mistake at the time he was appointed. But I had great confidence in Henry Kissinger, because I knew that he was fair-minded. I knew, too, that while there was no question about his being devoted to the survival of Is--of Israel--that--that he thought in geopolitical terms and that he felt it was very important to support my policy, which has been mine throughout my li--my public life--my policy, which is we stand for Israel, we will support Israel, but that does not mean that we will not also seek better relations with the Arab s--states. And Henry carried that out extremely well. For example, on his shuttle trips, we--we developed closer relations with Egypt, even to a certain extent with Syria, a--and with some of the other countries. Now, I must say there are some out there who don' ; t trust him because he is Jewish. I think, however, they' ; re mistaken in that respect. GANNON: A--aren' ; t there also some who don' ; t trust him because they feel he said different things to different people in the different countries? NIXON: That is correct. I have heard that, and maybe that' ; s just one of the costs of being a diplomat. GANNON: Why is that the U.S. State Department is considered to be pro-Arab and throughout your administration thwarted in some cases, directly or indirectly, some of your pro-Israeli Middle Eastern initiatives? Wouldn' ; t one expect the foreign policy establishment, as represented in the State Department, to be pro-Israeli? NIXON: Well, first of all, the State Department is not just one entity. It' ; s--the--the State Department is made up of individual Foreign Service Officers, and there' ; re some over there that are very pro-Israeli. The majority of them, as are the great majority of those in the Pentagon, however, are pro-Arab as well, and I emphasize that point. The--the State Department people, and I think the Pentagon people, too, are not pro-Arab and therefore anti-Israeli, but they feel it is very important that the U--that for geopolitical reasons that the United States not alienate a hundred million Arabs, particularly when they sit on as much of the strategic oil of the world as they do. And even apart from that, if there were no oil there at all, that' ; s a lot of people, and they cover a lot of important territory--the gateway to Africa, the gateway to the Indian Ocean, et cetera. And so, I think, too, in--in--in defense of some of the State Department people, who may be called the Arabists--we have to have in mind they believe, as I believe, that it is vitally important from Israel' ; s standpoint that the United States have good relations with Israel' ; s neighbors rather than bad relations, because we will restrain their neighbors. The Soviet Union, if we leave a vacuum, would not. It would egg them on. So that' ; s the way I would look at it. GANNON: Can--do you think that there can ever be a truly bipartisan American Mideastern policy, given the-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, Frank. We want to do a pickup on that question. You hit your microphone, and it made a sound. [unintelligible] GANNON: ' ; Kay. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Switch two on the line, and--I' ; m sorry, switch one on the line. Okay, go ahead. NIXON: Well, generally speaking, Democratic candidates will get a very heavy majority of the Jewish vote. Republican candidates simply don' ; t. Eisenhower' ; s highest percentage of the Jewish vote was about 38 percent in 1956. My highest percenta-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: [percenta]ge of the Jewish vote was 32 percent in 1972, at a time I got about 68 percent of the non-Jewish vote in the country. President Reagan got about 36--35, 36 percent in his landslide in 1980. He won’t get that much the next time around, due to the fact that people probably feel that a Democratic candidate will be more pro-Israeli than Reagan, although Reagan is, as I have pointed out to many of our friends in the Jewish community--is the most, in my view--the most pro-Israeli president in the White House, deep down in this heart, since Harry Truman. Not that Eisenhower wasn' ; t-- GANNON: How about since you? NIXON: In my case, I was, but, on the other hand, in my case-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0374/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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58 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 27, 1983, part 3.
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gannix_0374
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-05-27
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 27, 1983, part 4 . gannix_0375 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|11(11)|21(13)|36(11)|48(13)|58(16)|74(6)|90(10)|111(5)|126(12)|142(16)|159(5)|174(11)|186(10)|201(2)|213(5)|227(4)|237(13)|248(4)|260(16)|271(13)|283(8)|314(16)|329(11)|341(11)|351(17)|366(1)|380(5)|391(13)|406(5)|428(14) 0 https://youtu.be/P6IPpJos8oQ YouTube video English 1 Accusations of Anti-Semitism --i--it is well known that I took--that one of the reasons I was able to take a situation in 1969, in which we had no relations with Egypt and some of the other countries because of what happened in the '67 war and reestablished a dialogue with the Arabs and so forth--I was never considered to be simply one who was going to give a blank check to Israel, and--and some Jewish voters resented that. Nixon describes anti-Semitism within the United States and addresses why he has been accused of anti-Semitism. Adolf Hitler ; anti-Semitism ; anti-war protest ; Egypt ; Golda Meir ; Henry Kissinger ; Herbert Hoover ; House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) ; Israel ; John Connally ; Judaism ; Leonid Brezhnev ; media ; New Deal ; Ronald Reagan ; Russia ; Soviet Union ; Vietnam ; World War II Brezhnev, Leonid Ilʹich, 1906-1982 ; Connally, John Bowden, 1917-1993 ; Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Meir, Golda, 1898-1978 ; Reagan, Ronald 586 Nuclear Proliferation Do you think that Israel has the bomb, the atom--atomic bomb? Nixon considers the likelihood of Israel's possession of atomic weapons and the importance of preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons despite the difficulty of doing so. 878 October 1973 In October of 1973, when you received word that war had broken out in the Middle East, you were up to your ears in domestic problems. Nixon recounts the hectic nature of October 1973, during which the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East and the Watergate trials coincided. 1696 Arms Control in Libya Do you think that if the Libyans got the bomb--that that would draw America and the Soviet Union together? Nixon discusses the common interest of the United States and the Soviet Union to prevent nuclear war and the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Libya and other countries. arms control ; Balkans ; Libya ; nuclear weapons ; Soviet Union ; summit ; World War I Interview NIXON: --i--it is well known that I took--that one of the reasons I was able to take a situation in 1969, in which we had no relations with Egypt and some of the other countries because of what happened in the ' ; 67 war and reestablished a dialogue with the Arabs and so forth--I was never considered to be simply one who was going to give a blank check to Israel, and--and some Jewish voters resented that. It was a case of all or nothing. Understand, most of the intelligent ones don' ; t think that way. They know who was Israel' ; s friend when it counted, and Golda Meir was one of my best press agents in that respect. But, on the other hand, there is a tendency among Jewish voters to be far more pro-Israel than Israel' ; s leaders, because it' ; s--with them it' ; s all black or white. Now, when you come down to it at the present time, you take Reagan--compared with the Democratic candidates, he' ; s not going to be able to out-promise any of them with the Jewish voters, and so, consequently, they will be that way. Now, another reason that Jewish voters in this country tend to be more for a Democrat than a Republican is that Jewish voters generally are more liberal, they--and the Democratic Party is more liberal than the Republican Party. So, under the circumstances, therefore, you--you--you have that thing sorting out. Going back to it, we have to recognize that where this really began was in the New Deal period and in the World War II period. Before World War II, the Jewish vote was more Republican than it was Democrat--I' ; m r--I mean--before Franklin Roosevelt, I should say. Herbert Hoover got a majority of the vo--of the Jewish vote. But since World War II, having in mind that some Republicans were in America First and isolationist and the rest, since then it has just been assumed among many Jewish voters that the only respectable person to vote for is a Democratic candidate because the Republicans are not considered as pro-Israel. I may have helped a bit on that, and, as I said, Reagan certainly feels that way. GANNON: You' ; ve talked about the home-grown strains of anti-Semitism in Russia and in Eastern Europe. Do you think that there is a home-grown American strain of anti-Semitism? NIXON: Oh, yes. There' ; s some. Yes. And some of it is due to competition economically. Let' ; s face it--it isn' ; t because they are Jews, but because they work harder. That--many of--many of the Jews do better in law school. They do better in medical school. Th--they do better in business. They do b--better in finance than do their Gentile counterparts. And, believe me, there' ; s nothing like being beaten in--in business or in a professions to make you more anti-somebody, or at least jealous of them. Now that, of course, is unfortunate, but you have to have in mind that this is a--just a fact of life. GANNON: Why do you think some Jews feel that you are anti-Semitic? NIXON: Well, part of the reason is that I' ; d--am--that I have made it very clear, one, that I have never had the--I' ; m not in a position of doing things because of the power of the Jewish vote. And I think it' ; s very important to do that. I have made it clear that I am going to do whatever is best for the country, and I think part of it may go back, I would have to say, to my service on the Un-American Activities Committee, when it was a fact that, apart from Alger Hiss, many of those who were investigated by the committee, in government and out, had Jewish backgrounds, because of their liberal persuasion and so forth and because of what happened in World War II. So, under the circumstances, those of us who were on the committee, mayno--many of us unfairly--even though I have supported Israel on every vote and every speech ever since then--are designated as being anti-Semitic. Another thing, too--I have made it very clear that I didn' ; t appreciate the f--the fact that during--during the Vietnam War, at a time when I was asking the country for support of Vietnam, some of those who violently opposed what we did in Vietnam--demonstrated against us--were just as violently urging us to support Israel. And I made the point over and over again that if we failed in Vietnam, in supporting one country and so forth, it would slop over and it' ; d make it very difficult to enlist the support in case Israel came under attack. And I think that did not particularly go down with some of the Jewish voters. But that' ; s part of the life. GANNON: Henry Kissinger has described some of the factors he felt that he had to take into account in dealing with you because of your attitudes toward Jews. He wrote, " ; Nixon shared many of the prejudices of the uprooted California lower middle class from which he had come. He believed the Jews formed a powerful, cohesive group in American society, that they were predominantly liberal, that they put the interests of Israel above everything else, that on the whole they were more sympathetic to the Soviet Union than other ethnic groups, that their control of the media made them dangerous adversaries, above all, that Israel had to be forced into a peace settlement and could not be permitted to jeopardize our Arab relations." ; Taking those elements, do you think that the Jews form a powerful cohesive group in American society? NIXON: Powerful, but not cohesive, because I have--I had a lot of support among many very intelligent and, I think, perceptive Jews, who--who saw that I was, frankly, the best friend that Israel had because of the very fact that I had the strength to do things that others would talk about. GANNON: Do you think the Jews are predominantly liberal? NIXON: Oh, yes, for reasons that are--that are very understandable, growing out of the World War II experience and having in mind the fact that that, to a certain extent, is their credit. I mean, they--for example, the Jews generally have been very pro-civil rights. I understand that, because they consider themself to be a minority group. However, ironically, though, the Jews are very much against the quota system, because there they realize that if you have a quota for blacks, you may have one for Jews, and if you have one for Jews, there' ; ll only be one United States senator and not seven. GANNON: Do you feel that Jews put the interests of Israel above everything else? NIXON: No. I' ; ve already covered that, the--I think, very well. GANNON: Do you think, on the whole, that they are more sympathetic to the Soviet Union than other ethnic groups? NIXON: Way back. There--there was a period, during the war period, when the Soviet Union was carrying the brunt of the fighting against Hitler, when a great number of American Jews were far more sympathetic to the Soviet Union than maybe some other Americans were. However, I would say that at the present time that is not the case. GANNON: Do you think that their control--that Jewish control of the media makes them dangerous adversaries? NIXON: Oh, it makes--Jewish control of the media--first, it is not total. It is significant, particularly of television at the managerial level and at the top level, but as far as the--as adversaries are concerned, the answer is that if they are against you, then of course that' ; s going to be very--a very difficult load to--load to carry. I think Secretary Connolly found that out in his campaign for the presidential nomination. He seemed to have very good support in the media until he made a speech in--which was interpreted by many as being quite pro-Arab, his so-called " ; Mideast speech." ; And from that time on, he felt, at least, and I ha--would tend to agree, that his media support turned very strongly the other way. Now, I don' ; t think it' ; s because they thought he was anti-Semitic. I don' ; t believe that at all, but he just wasn' ; t taking the line that they could. GANNON: Do you feel that you suffered because of--in the media because of Jewish anti-Nixon feeling? NIXON: No, not because--no, that isn' ; t true. The--that isn' ; t the case. It isn' ; t Jewish anti-Nixon feeling. It' ; s media anti-Nixon theel--feeling. I mean, basically the media, apart from whether it' ; s Jewish or not--the media generally is liberal, just as--just as the university community is genul--generally liberal, and so forth, and basically I' ; m not a liberal. I' ; m a conservative. GANNON: Do you feel that Israel has to be forced into peace settlements so as not to jeopardize our Arab relations? NIXON: No, that' ; s incorrect, of course. I think that Israel i--i--i--the--the very fact that in 1973 at--in San Clemente, when Brezhnev for three hours tried to get me to agree to join him in imposing a settlement on Israel which would' ; ve forced them to give up all the occupied lands without any guarantees in return, and I resisted that, is a pretty good answer to that. GANNON: Do you think that Israel has the bomb, the atom--atomic bomb? NIXON: I don' ; t know, but most experts believe they do. And I would say it' ; s really irrelevant as to whether I think so or the experts think so. There is no-- GANNON: [unintelligible] Does it worry you if they do? NIXON: I--there' ; s no question about this score. They have the capability, if they don' ; t have it, of getting it very, very fast because they' ; re a very highly developed industrial society. GANNON: If the Mideast goes nuclear, can Armageddon be forestalled for very long? NIXON: One of the reasons that developing some sort of--of progress in the whole Mideastern relationship, defusing the Palestinian issue and so forth--one of the reasons, too, in the broader sense of developing some kind of arms control agreements between the major powers, the Soviet Union and the United States and so forth, is that the greatest danger, perhaps, in the future of nuclear war is not going to come from the United States or the Soviet Union, both of whom, because of the am--great amount of nuclear power they have, fear its use and would be deterred to use it. The greatest danger is going to ha--come from a nation that is smaller, that is desperate, and that just wouldn' ; t care, and this lets the genie out of the bottle. It' ; s proliferation of nuclear weapons that concerns me at the present time and should concern the Russians, should concern the Americans. And so, as I look at it, looking at the Israelis--certainly I would think they would be more responsible than many others, but let us suppose the Libyans get it. Now, they are a little crazy, I think--certainly the leadership is, and that is why we' ; ve got to get this thing under control before it' ; s proliferated out there, because the danger of a nuclear explosion then and--which would spread worldwide is simply unacceptable. GANNON: Isn' ; t it too late, though, to stop proliferation? There' ; s so much material out there. Is it really practical? It' ; s like the argument of calling in handguns--that there--there' ; s just so many out there. NIXON: Very difficult. But it--unless--unless the--I would say this. Unless the two major countries find some way to control themselves, then the--there will be no inhibiting effect on other countries. No, I don' ; t think you can say that because these weapons are so terrible they' ; re not going to be had by others. But, on the other hand, if the United States and the Soviet Union can find some agreement between themselves, it will have some restraining effect. GANNON: In October of 1973, American nuc--American forces were put on worldwide nuclear alert. How close did we come to nuclear war in October of 1973? NIXON: I don' ; t think we came very close, actually. I think what happened is that the alert was in response to the Soviet Union putting its airborne divisions on alert, putting eighty-five ships into the Mediterranean, ships equipped with helicopters and landing barges and the rest, and Brezhnev indicating to me through a message that unless we would join him in sending American forces in, along with Russian forces, to help keep the peace in that area that he would move in unilaterally. We had to respond with a--an alert in order to keep them out. GANNON: At the time when you-- NIXON: Well, and when you s--I--it--we [unintelligible] and I--I--when--when--when--sometimes when people ask, " ; Well, when you called the alert" ; --which, incidentally, was not just the nuclear forces--even just as important, all of our conventional forces in the Mediterranean, the fleet, which was quite powerful--they were also put on alert. And when the follow-up question there is often, " ; Well, suppose that the--suppose the Russians had moved in with divisions, airborne divisions, and otherwise, into the Mideast, would you have used the nuclear option?" ; And my answer to that is that it isn' ; t important what I might have done. The important thing is Brezhnev thought I might. And he thought I might because of the record, the track record, I had already established. And when people say, " ; Would you have done this or that and the other hand--other thing in a case like that?" ; my answer goes back to my poker-playing days. When you got a hole card, you never show it unless they call you. GANNON: In October of 1973, when you received word that war had broken out in the Middle East, you were up to your ears in domestic problems. Congress was debating the War Powers Act. The special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, that you' ; d appointed was causing a lot of trouble with his requests for White House files and tapes. You were waiting for the court of appeals ruling on whether you were going to have to surrender White House tapes. Vice President Agnew was about to have to resign, and you were going to have to choose a new vice president. How did you manage, with all those things going on, to keep abreast of the international crisis? NIXON: Well, it was not easy. As a matter of fact, in that period, from October sixth to November seventh--October sixth was when the war started, and October seventh was when we renewed relations with Egypt and when Kissinger started on his shuttle again--in that period there were--three great crises converged, and it was the most tumultuous period of the American presidency for any thirty-day period that I can certainly recall. I, of course, had all these political problems as a result of the Watergate business and so forth, so that I was really fighting with one hand rather than two. And so it was like a juggler trying to juggle three balls with just one hand. Just thinking back to the calendar of what happened then, one thing right after another--on October the sixth, we learned that the Syrians and the Egyptians had launched a surprise attack on Israel. I say " ; surprise" ; --it was no surprise to me that our intelligence didn' ; t discover it, because they' ; re really not that good. But I was very surprised that the Israelis didn' ; t, because they have the best intelligence in the world, and they were totally surprised. That was on the sixth. Three days later, on the ninth, President--Vice President Agnew resigned after a long investigation. And then three days after that, we got word that the Egyptians and the Syrians were having great success on the battlefield and that it was going to be necessary--at least we--it was requested by Golda Meir that we resupply the Israelis for the tank losses and others that they had ha--had had, and airplane losses. Then the next day, on the tenth of October, we had these three issues coming up again. On the tenth of October, I nominated President, or Vice President Ford--he was then, of course, vice pres--i--in the Congress--I nominated him for Vice President to succeed Agnew. The Watergate thing came to attention that day, because that was the day that the circuit court of appeals ruled against us in the tapes case by five to two, and on that day, too, I had to bring the Defense Department in line and have them go forward on a massive airlift to Israel, which was the biggest airlift, incidentally, since the Berlin airlift and turned out to be much bigger in terms of tonnage that was delivered. That would seem enough, however, but it wasn' ; t the end. We went on through the month. On the eighteenth of that month, I finally worked out what I thought would be a successful compromise insofar as the tapes were concerned, one that would be in substantial compliance with the decision of the court, when I got Senator Stennis to agree to review all the tapes that they had--had been requested and then to furnish to the Senate Watergate Committee and to the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, summaries of anything that was relevant to their investigations. The--the following day--I was very encouraged on the nineteenth when Senator Ervin of the Ervin Committee and Senator Baker, who was the Republican member of that committee, and leader, came in and they agreed to it. They were enthusiastic about the program. And I thought we were out of the woods on that issue. But, unfortunately, that was not the case. The following day, the twentieth, was all three balls in the air, it seems, at one time. Early in the morning we received notice from Brezhnev that he wanted Kissinger to come to Moscow, because--prior to that time, on the eighteenth, he had requested for the first time that we join him in sending American combat forces in with Russian cambat--combat forces--into the Mideast in order to keep the peace, and we weren' ; t going to be suckered on that one. But Kissinger was to go over to Moscow to see if he could work out a ceasefire. So I sent Kissinger off on the morning of that day. Later in the morning, Archibald Cox had a press conference, and he refused to accept the Stennis compromise and demanded that he have access to more tapes on a fishing expedition. I thought that this was in violation, frankly, of his charter, so I directed the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to fire him. Elliot Richardson refused to do so, although we had been--I' ; d assumed from the conversations he had had earlier, because he--he had been told about the compromise earlier, that he would do so in f--in--if Cox was unreasonable. Later that day, Elliot Richardson came in to see me to submit his resignation. Now, I had known him for many years. He had been in the Cabinet, and he had been in various high positions and so forth throughout, which is fine, and he did a very fine job in them, but in this particular case I urged him not to stay on but simply to d--delay his resignation. I pointed out that Kissinger was in the air going to Moscow. I pointed out that if he were to resign--that it would have a--a very detrimental effect insofar as the Russians were concerned. It would give them the idea that we were in disarray. And he refused, however, and he decided that he was going to have to resign. I' ; ve often wondered why he didn' ; t stay on at least that long, and I th--I think, in fairness to him, it was the fact that he' ; s a--he was a pretty good politician, and he wasn’t about to go down with what he considered, as a politician, to be a sinking ship. But-- GANNON: Do you feel, though, that he rejected an appeal based on the national interest-- NIXON: Yes, he did. GANNON: --at a time of war and-- NIXON: [Makes sound.] GANNON: --peace? NIXON: Well, he--he rejected it, but each of us was probably con--approaching it from a different standpoint. But, on the other hand, my concerns were borne out by what happened after he left, because, needless to say, it caused a firestorm in the press. About five newspapers that previously had supported us asked for my resignation. There were twenty impeachment resolutions went in. GANNON: This was the Saturday Night Massacre? NIXON: This is the so-called " ; Saturday Night Mask--Massacre," ; and Brezhnev has bound to have heard about that in the Soviet Union. GANNON: Why-- NIXON: So-- GANNON: Why didn' ; t you change your timetable and instead of ma--asking him to stay on until after the war was settled, why didn' ; t you wait to fire Cox until after the war was settled? NIXON: We couldn' ; t, because we thought the Stennis compromise had been agreed to. Everything was in place. It had to move then. We couldn' ; t wait. So, under the circumstances, we could have done a lot of things differently, but we didn' ; t at the time. So, a--after the twentieth, then, we then came to the twenty-fourth, and the worst happened, as, unfortunately, I had a sense it might, in the event that there appeared to be too much disarray. I think Brezhnev was really testing us. He' ; s--he--he knew I was in deep trouble, and he sent a message--this was after Kissinger had been there and we thought a fe--ceasefire was in place--saying that in the event that I would not agree to sending in a joint force of Americans and Russians in the Mideast--that he was going to intervene unilaterally. Well, the message itself wouldn' ; t have bothered me that much, but then I got the intelligence reports that there were eighty-five Soviet ships in the Mediterranean, that on those ships, among other things, were helicopters and landing barges, and that three Soviet airborne divisions, fifty thousand men, were--had been placed on alert. We could not allow the Soviet Union to intervene unilaterally there because if they had we would have been forced to intervene. I knew that Senator Mansfield had told us earlier in the month, right after the war, he said, " ; We don' ; t want another Vietnam there." ; But another member of Congress, who was in the majority, on the Democratic side, made it very clear, to the con--on--a--in--in contrast. He said, " ; We want to be sure that Israel i--continues to have support." ; And I said, " ; I will not let Israel go down the tube," ; and I knew that under the circumstances we could not stand by and let the Soviet Union move in. And that would risk a world war. So under the circumstances, therefore, I approved an alert--alert of our forces, nuclear and conventional. A couple of days after that, Brezhnev backed down, and finally the ceasefire went into place. But this is all by now the twenty-sixth of October, only twenty days after the Yom Kippur War began. November first--the tide had changed by that time. The ceasefire was in place. Golda Meir, shortly after that, flew into Washington--thanked me very generously for the support we had given. And November the seventh, after a time elapsing of six years, Egypt and the United States normalized their relations, and Henry Kissinger started on his very successful shuttle trip. Summarizing it all, I think it' ; s very important to note here two things. One, this is not a demonstration of détente failing but succeeding. Unless I' ; d had the personal relationship with Brezhnev, unless he knew from what I had said to him at Camp David that we would not stand by, unless I had developed that kind of relation--and unless he was looking forward to another summit the next year, I--I do not think that we would have been successful in keeping them out. That helped. The second point is that we handled the whole situation in a way that saved Israel, but at the same time did not totally alienate the Egyptians, because the Israelis, by the time the ceasefire occurred, had al--totally surrounded the Egyptian Third Army, which was on the other side of the Suez Canal. So they held back, and Egyptians were appreciative of that. And so, as a result, this was one of those wars which ended with peace without victory, and peace without victory is virtually the only kind of peace you can have that will survive in that kind of a situation. You can have too great a victory. If it is too great, what happens is you plant the seeds for another war. GANNON: Under this enormous pressure, with all these things going on and these--all these balls in the air, how did you manage to keep your emotional and--and mental bearings or equilibrium? NIXON: Well, it' ; s not easy, but you did. GANNON: How do you react to some of the commentators who say that you were so distracted and so distraught during this period because of Watergate that you only became involved at--at erratic points in this Mideast crisis and that most of the policy was Henry Kissinger' ; s or General Haig' ; s? NIXON: Well, I think the same people would say that--that Henry Kissinger was the one who started the China initiative, and that my participation, for example, was very limited in terms of that and other things and so forth. That--the same ones would say that, as far as the December bombing, which brought the war to Vietnam to an end and brought back our P.O.W.s--that that was simply a reaction of an erratic man and so forth. And in this instance, all I could say is the record speaks for itself. I know the critical point where I made the decision, and it' ; s here where I think I was decisive in overruling the recommendations I received from the Pentagon and that Kissinger brought in to me--this was after Golda Meir had begged us to send in some supplies. We had to do it by air, because the Soviet Union was sending in massive supplies by air. And Kissinger came in and said that--that the Pentagon was recommending three C-5-As. I said, " ; How many do we have?" ; He said, " ; About twenty." ; I said, " ; Why don' ; t we sent twenty?" ; He said, " ; Well, because they think that--that politically that' ; s going to be more than the traffic will bear." ; I said, " ; We' ; re going to get just as much heat for sending twenty--three as for sending twenty." ; I said, " ; Send everything that flies." ; I don' ; t think that many people thought that was a very rational decision, but it--you never make a small play when the stakes are big. You make a big one. We played for all the stakes, and we won. Now, that was--that was my major participation, I would say. GANNON: Do you think that if the Libyans got the bomb--that that would draw America and the Soviet Union together? NIXON: I would put it another way. There will at some point be a major Soviet-American summit. Very high on that agenda, clearly apart from Soviet-American arms control agreements, should be what can the Soviet Union and the United States do to cool the situation in other areas of the world, peripheral areas, because Libya is like the Balkans in World War I. And under the circumstances, to allow these people to have it and then to have them draw the Soviet Union and the United States into war is something that is not in our interest or theirs. This has nothing to do about whether the Soviet wants peace or war. They want the world, but, on the other hand, we have to re--recognize they do not want a nuclear war any more than we do. So, under the circumstances, we should join together at least to prevent that kind of action, which would draw us in. GANNON: That finishes our afternoon hour. OFF SCREEN VOICE: If you' ; ll hold in that position, gentlemen, just keep [unintelligible] for a second. NIXON: Well, we got through most of it there. GANNON: Got through a lot, yes. The only th--matter of fact, the only major thing we didn' ; t get to was the Salzburg and the-- NIXON: Phlebitis? GANNON: Alexandria, but that' ; s easy to fill in. We did get through the Sadat through Assad, and the--and the MIGs. NIXON: Mm-hmm. Well, we didn' ; t get the phlebitis thing in. That' ; s not big. GANNON: We already got for--some for the European trip--for the Soviet trip. NIXON: Mm-hmm. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Change lights. NIXON: All right. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Thank you. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0375/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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31 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, May 27, 1983, part 4 .
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gannix_0375
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-05-27
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 10, 1983, part 1. gannix_0379 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|1(1)|12(2)|27(6)|44(4)|64(12)|80(3)|103(15)|119(11)|138(7)|151(14)|164(7)|177(14)|191(5)|201(14)|215(1)|226(15)|239(14)|253(3)|334(2)|374(11)|388(1)|411(6)|428(2)|442(5)|459(17)|475(4)|492(2)|510(2)|522(7)|536(4)|546(12)|560(2)|576(4)|587(5)|600(17)|613(15)|626(12)|643(14)|661(4)|676(2)|687(14)|702(13)|716(4)|732(3)|748(2)|764(2)|778(11)|800(15)|815(6)|829(3)|841(5)|852(6)|863(13)|874(13)|887(2) 0 https://youtu.be/VRjvSUDTUEw YouTube video English 72 Arriving in Egypt What was your reception in Egypt like? Nixon recounts the warm welcome that he received in Egypt. He also talks about the difficulty he experienced due to phlebitis on the trip and the high tea that he shared with Sadat. 714 Events of Watergate Ten or a dozen years from now, when one of your grandchildren, Alexander or Christopher or Jennie, is old enough and asks you, " ; Granddad, what was Watergate?" ; how will you answer? Nixon describes the events of Watergate as he would explain them to his grandchildren were they to ask. He talks about considering paying blackmail to keep the events quiet. 1175 Harm of Watergate When anyone would ask me what was Watergate, I think we should indicate, too, what it was not. Nixon considers the relative wrongdoing of Watergate in comparison to other high profile political scandals. He also discusses the amount of " ; dirty tricks" ; used in his 1972 campaign compared to others. 1450 Covering Up Watergate How--looking back now, how--how do you tell yourself that somebody as wary, as canny, as experienced as you got dragged into the Watergate cover-up the way--the way that you did? Nixon recounts his decision to cover up Watergate after having been less involved with his second presidential campaign when the break-ins occurred. He discusses the resignation of John Mitchell as a factor in the occurrence of Watergate. 1961 Bugging in the White House Why did you bug yourself? Nixon explains why he kept recording equipment in his office and discusses other presidents who had bugged the White House before him. He tells a story about President Johnson's attempt to record a conversation with Bobby Kennedy. 2232 Keeping White House Recordings Why didn't you burn them? Nixon discusses his reasons for keeping the recordings from his office and expresses his regret that they were not destroyed. He talks about his disapproval of the profanity in the tapes. 2546 Conspiracies to Remove President Nixon Do you think there was, or could have been, a CIA conspiracy to remove you from office? Nixon examines and largely discounts conspiracy theories, including that the CIA and Republican groups were attempting to have him removed from office. 2936 Pressures of Watergate / Involvement You were under such tremendous, enormous, emotional, physical, mental pressures during Watergate. Nixon relates the pressures he was under during the Watergate scandal and how they compared to previous difficulties during his political career. He addresses how involved he was in the cover up of Watergate and the legality of his activities. Alger Hiss ; Bob Haldeman ; bug ; campaign ; China ; CIA ; FBI ; Fund Crisis ; Hiss Case ; information leak ; J. Edgar Hoover ; John F. Kennedy ; Keystone Cops ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Marilyn Monroe ; Martin Luther King, Jr. ; media ; Soviet Union ; Vietnam ; Watergate ; White House Plumbers ; wiretapping ; World War II Haldeman, H. R. (Harry R.), 1926-1993 ; Hiss, Alger ; Hoover, J. Edgar (John Edgar), 1895-1972 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; Monroe, Marilyn, 1926-1962 Interview GANNON: What was your reception in Egypt like? NIXON: Well, when I arrived at the airport, I was really somewhat disappointed, because I had been told before that we were--could expect a very warm reception. As we got to the top of the ramp and looked down, it reminded me of Peking and Moscow--no people there, just the VIPs, a very good hon--honor guard, the usual red carpet, Sadat standing down below to welcome us. He was very friendly and courteous and so forth, and a--as we got into a big open car, I--I rather wondered why he had insisted on that, because our Secret Service didn' ; t want to have an open car because of security reasons. But he wanted an open car, because there were no people. So we got in the car and we began to move out of the airport onto the main highway. And as we moved onto the highway, it was like hitting a tidal wave. It was just a sea of humanity surged around us, people by the thousands, shouting, and they were saying, " ; Long live Nixon! Long live Sadat! We trust Nixon! Egyptian-American friendship!" ; Over and over again the shouts came. And the crowd was, by all accounts, one of the biggest, certainly, that I' ; d ever seen, and certainly one of the most enthusiastic. The only one approaching it in enthusiasm was the one in Warsaw in 1959--emotional, enthusiastic, and friendly. GANNON: How much does a crowd mean, though? Can' ; t you--isn' ; t it possible in almost in any country to bring out a lot of people in one place at one time? NIXON: No question about it whatever. They can keep them away or they can bring them out. But Sadat made a very interesting comment in that respect. After we arrived at the guesthouse, he said, " ; You know, you can always get people out, but you can' ; t make them smile." ; And he said, " ; Those people were smiling." ; I noted, for example, as we were riding along, he tried to say something to me over the din of the crowd, and he kept pointing to his heart, a--and I was a little worried then because I had heard that he' ; d had a couple of small heart attacks, and I wondered if he was suffering pain. And then I finally heard what he said. He said, " ; This is from the heart. They trust you. They love you. They are so happy you are here." ; GANNON: Some of the signs over the road said, " ; We trust Nixon," ; and the American press particularly said that the--a lot of the trip was planned because of the d--intended domestic impact, because of Watergate. How did you read the signs " ; We trust Nixon?" ; NIXON: Well, the signs had nothing to do with Watergate. They had to do with what the Egyptians felt about me and the policies that I had instituted after the war in 1973. They felt that after a long period, six years, of no communication between the United States and Egypt--or no relations, I should say--that we were again friends. They knew that I was pro-Israeli, because we had saved Israel in 1973 with the airlift, but they knew that I was not anti-Egyptian--on the contrary, that I thought it was possible and also necessary to be friends with the Israelis and also friends with the Egyptians and the Arabs. And they meant that they trusted me as one who would be fair, something that they had not had, they thought, in any U.S. administration for some time. GANNON: One of the events during this summit was a long train ride to Alexandria, where for several hours you and he stood in an open car waving at people, which I think drove both security forces a little crazy. NIXON: Well, as a matter of fact, it was a three-hour train ride. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] We' ; ve got to pick up that question, Frank, your--I think your clipboard must have hit your microphone or something. [unintelligible] NIXON: Heh. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Let' ; s just do a pickup on Frank. One, you get a tight shot on Frank. Three seconds, Frank, and you can do your question over, please. GANNON: One of the parts of that trip was a--a long, several-hour ride, train ride, to Alexandria in an open train, which I think drove both security forces a little crazy. NIXON: Well, the train ride, of course, was one of the highlights. I should say that the estimates of crowds from the airport into the guest house at Cairo was over a million. That was by press that was not particularly interested in seeing a large crowd be--coming out. They grew and grew all the way along the way, as we went to the pyramids--went there and came back. And then I really think the top was the train ride, and the welcome also in Alexandria which followed it. That very day, over three-and-a-half million people, by conservative estimates, were there at the train stations, along the sidings and so forth, and of course, in Alexandria itself. Actually what we rode on was a flatbed c--car. They didn' ; t have any kind of an open car, as you have for a parade in an automobile. And so we stood there in the flatbed car, and we had to stand there, because the people were along the side waving and shouting and so forth. It was a little difficult for me, because I had had this phlebitis attack in Salzburg, and after standing for three hours, when I got to the guest house, I had to have somebody help pull my f--shoe off, because my ankle was swollen so. But, believe me, it was worth it. I didn' ; t feel any pain while we were there noticing the crowds, and, of course, responding to them. GANNON: It was-- NIXON: There was--there was a rather-- GANNON: Let' ; s star-- NIXON: It' ; s-- GANNON: You want to start that again without any interrupting? NIXON: Yeah. Incidentally, there was a rather eerie event there. As we were going along, there was a place where the highway ran parallel to the train track, and here was a hearse going along, keeping right up with the train. And I had a thought in the back of my mind. I wondered if some way it had leaked out, because I had warned Haig and the others--I said, " ; Don' ; t tell anybody I' ; ve had this phlebitis attack." ; I wondered if it had leaked out and they had the hearse there, thinking that something might happen to me. But then I checked with his Secret Service and ours, and they said what had happened was they had the hearse there because on that same track they had had a few assassinations about two weeks before. So it was a rather dicey trip, but it turned out all right. GANNON: Did you ever feel that you were in danger, that your life was being endangered by what you were doing on that trip? Even if you didn' ; t feel pain, did you--did you feel that by extending yourself the way you did that the phlebitis might take you at any time? NIXON: No, not really. I' ; ve always been very stoical, very fatalistic about danger, whether it' ; s the possibility of somebody shooting me or the possibility of having a heart attack or something of that sort. If it will happen, it will happen. The thing to do is to go on and do the best you can. People think it' ; s a little stupid, and perhaps it is, but there' ; s nothing you can do about it. So I would also say that those who constantly worry about--" ; Somebody' ; s going to attack me," ; or " ; Maybe I' ; m going to exert myself, I have a physical condition" ; --they only make it worse. When you worry, you bring it on. Don' ; t worry. What will happen will happen. GANNON: There are people who think that you' ; ve made a pact with the devil and--and plan to outlive us all. I--A, is that true? B, do you--do you think about death? NIXON: No, I don' ; t think about death. As far as outliving people, I--I don' ; t want to outlive everybody. I would like to outlive a few of my enemies, and I think that worries them a bit. GANNON: What was--what was tea at--at Sadat' ; s palace in Alexandria like? NIXON: Well, that tea was very interesting because it was such a contrast to what Sadat had shown me as we left Cairo. Cairo is a huge city, and it has some of the worst slums in the world. And as we drove through the slum areas--you know, railroad tracks there, as they do in this country, they go through the worst parts of town--as we drove through it, he said, " ; I want you to see the worst as well as the best of our country." ; And then--so when we got to Cairo there, at his palace there, out on a lawn on an afternoon we had British high tea. Believe me, it was more British than the British--the liveried servants, the quiet, very civilized conversation, low tones--everything was done just right. But I thought an ominous thought at that point. I thought that--of the tremendous contrast between the wealth that was there, displayed there, and the slums that I had seen. And I also felt at that time that it was very important that in our programs toward Egypt--and I felt it then, I feel it even more today--that rather than concentrating so much on military assistance, there should be more economic assistance. It' ; s one of the poorest countries in the world. They need assistance, and we should help them. GANNON: In reading what you wrote about that, something appealed greatly to me. You said it was the--at that tea was served the most exquisite and extensive collection of pastries that you' ; d ever seen. NIXON: When we think of tea in this country, unless we' ; ve been to Britain, we think of a--of a tea bag, which makes a most horrible brew, incidentally. It isn' ; t done with class or style or what-have-you. But in Britain, tea is really an extra meal, and you have all sorts of cakes and cookies and pastries and so forth, and set out so well--i--it' ; s really very, very high living. And I must say, I have seen it in Karachi, where they are more British than the British, I' ; ve seen it in Sydney, Australia, and also in Auckland, New Zealand, where they' ; re more British than the British, but, believe me, nothing to equal what I saw in Cairo. Incidentally, I think I should say that the welcome in Egypt, I think, was due to three things. First, what we have already touched upon, the fact that they felt that I was fair, that they could trust me to be fair. And second, they thought I was a friend. They want to be friends with Americans. They didn' ; t like the Russians. They wanted to be friends with Americans. Third, because they wanted peace, and--and, as Sadat said to me, " ; They are aware--our people are--that you have worked for peace, not only with us and in this area, but with the Soviet Union, with China," ; and so forth. But there was another factor. I don' ; t think there' ; s any question but those millions we saw, over six-and-a-half million in those three days in Egypt, realized the United States was a rich country, and they s--thought that, possibly d--that good relations with the US would bring a better economic life for themselves. They probably thought I was carrying a good bag of money. GANNON: Ten or a dozen years from now, when one of your grandchildren, Alexander or Christopher or Jenny, is old enough and asks you, " ; Granddad, what was Watergate?" ; how will you answer? NIXON: Well, it will depend, first, on what they' ; re learned in school, whether I will have to disabuse them of what they may have learned there or start afresh. If I were to start afresh, it would be, I s--think, somewhat along this line. Watergate was a botched-up attempt to break in and to bug the Democratic National Committee. When I say it was botched up, I am referring to several things. One, I could never understand why anybody would want to bug a national committee. I know national committees. There' ; s nothing in the Republican National Committee worth knowing. You go to the Campaign Committee, and I' ; m sure the same thing is true of the Democratic National Committee. The second was the way that it is done. I remember reading about it when the report first came out, when I was in Miami, and I saw the Miami Herald, and I read about six men wearing surgical rubber gloves who had been caught trying to bug the Democratic National Committee. And I instantly thought, " ; Six men doing the job that one professional could do?" ; I also was mystified by the fact that it was later indicated that the CIA had advance knowledge of the break-in. They never told me. The Democratic Committee had ad--advance knowledge of the fact that a break-in was to occur, and Jack Anderson, the columnist, had advance knowledge. As a matter of fact, it was so clumsily done that I would have to say that a pretty good case could be made, as some have made it, that it was deliberately botched-up, that they wanted to get caught. So much for that. And so I would also say Watergate was illegal, and that it was wrong, and that it was--very, very stupid thing to do. But whatever the stupidity of Watergate, the original break-in, or attempt to break in, I should say, which failed, was that was exceeded by our reaction to it. It was stupidity at its very highest. Looking back, I don' ; t understand why it happened that way. I think I do understand, but the reasons were apparently that the people on our White House staff and in the committee, with perhaps the best of intentions, felt that it was very important not to allow this particular break-in to be escalated into a way that it would affect so-called " ; higher-ups." ; A--and so, consequently, they tried to contain it. Now, there was no reason to be concerned about it affecting a higher-up. After all, that wasn' ; t going to affect the election. We were leading McGovern, who was going to be the Democratic candidate, by a margin of two to one when that occurred. We were going to win going away anyway, because I wa--just come back from the great triumph of the Moscow summit. And, of course, we were making progress in ending the war in Vietnam. But, nevertheless, they felt that. And so, as a result, they tried to come up with various schemes to contain it, to keep it from touching people higher up. And we didn’t concentrate on doing what we should have done, to clean it up right then when we could' ; ve. After the election, now, of course there was even less excuse for not doing something about it. My notes and diaries made when we were at Camp David when I was trying to bring the war to Vietnam to an end, to reorganize the government, prepare the--the inaugural speech, to select new members of the Cabinet, my notes indicated that over and over again I said, " ; Let' ; s get a report on this thing. Let' ; s clean it up, because the election is over now." ; But nothing was done. And then we simply compounded those failures. We even considered giving clemency to those that had done it so that they wouldn' ; t talk about those higher up. We didn' ; t do it, but we considered it. We talked about it. We even considered, as the infamous t--or notorious tape of March twenty-first, 1973, indicated, considering playing--considered playing-- paying blackmail. We didn' ; t do it. We decided not to, as that tape also disclosed. But, nevertheless, we talked about it. And the problem was that all of that was, of course, exacerbated by the fact that what we talked about, even though we didn' ; t do it, was on tape. And so what happened was that the way we handled it--and we' ; re responsible for it--the way we handled it took what was basically a misdemeanor, a--a break-in in which nobody was hurt, and made it the crime of the century--I must say, with the assist o--of the media and the assist of our very, may I say, intelligent and ruthless Democratic opponents. GANNON: Do you think people should have been shocked or surprised or appalled, as people were, that in the Oval Office, or in the Office of the President, whichever of your offices it was, that you even considered paying blackmail? NIXON: Oh, yes. I think they would be surprised. They would not be surprised if they had studied politics generally. Tha--they wouldn' ; t have been surprised if there would be a discussion of that, because, let' ; s face it, many administrations have had problems, and in--instead of allowing those problems to become politically negative, they try to avoid it. I mean, Lyndon Johnson' ; s handling of the Bobby Baker case, for example, was certainly no attempt to bring all the facts out into the open. I think one--another point that should be made about the-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Excuse me. One second. I need to make a quick stop here. NIXON: We' ; re gonna stop-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Keep [unintelligible], please. NIXON: [Unintelligible] look at the watch now, huh? GANNON: Yes, now you can. NIXON: [Clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Sorry, gentlemen. I' ; ll be right with you, okay? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, sir, your right eye is tearing a little in the corner. [unintelligible] NIXON: Is it pulling it off? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Yes, in the corner there? NIXON: Right here? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Right in this corner. NIXON: Oh. OFF SCREEN VOICE: The other corner. NIXON: Okay. OFF SCREEN VOICE: --you just keep it more in this direction, I think that' ; s what they want. NIXON: Well, it m--must be from that-- GANNON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: It could possibly be. NIXON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: You might have s--a little bit of that hay fever. NIXON: I got a little of that hay fever. Oh. Oh, it doesn' ; t make any difference. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Inaudible.] NIXON: Well, thanks for putting the tears on. GANNON: Yeah, where is it when we need it? This is too soon. NIXON: I had a little sneezing spell when you put the powder on today, I forgot to mention. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay. NIXON: I' ; ll just start out when we finish here. GANNON: Are we going to pick up with the president? GANNON: Yes. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, well, come up. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] asking a question. OFF SCREEN VOICE: I think-- GANNON: Or--no, I was asking-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Just lean forward. I' ; ll pull your coat down. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Coat. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Now lean back [unintelligible]. NIXON: Mm-hmm. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, stand by, everybody. Ten seconds out, and we' ; ll pick up on the [unintelligible]. Ray [unintelligible]. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: The president--on the right temple--a hair. On his right side. See it? GANNON: Lower down. OFF SCREEN VOICE: No, down lower. GANNON: Right on the sideburn, yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: That' ; s it. NIXON: I wonder if it' ; s-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Ten seconds. NIXON: --we really should try to have everything so perfect like this. I think it' ; s sort of silly. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, let' ; s-- NIXON: [Clears throat.] They ready? GANNON: Er--not yet. You going to start? NIXON: You ready? Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Take two seconds, Mr. President, and then start. NIXON: One. NIXON: When anyone would ask me what was Watergate, I think we should indicate, too, what it was not. No one was killed at Watergate. No one profited from Watergate, our scandal, as compared with the Teapot Dome scandal and the Bobby Baker scandal and the Truman Five-Percenter IRS scandals and the Abscam scandals. No election was affected or stolen by it, as some believe the election of 1960 was stolen. As a matter of fact, Watergate cost us votes. It didn' ; t gain us any. I would say that what happened here was that because of the way we handled it, however, it allowed our opponents in the media and our opponents among the more partisan Democrats to exploit the issue a--and to indicate to the public at large that the whole administration was shot through with corruption, that we were repressive, that we were frightening people, that we were bugging people by the hundreds, by the thousands, that we were engaging in, quote, " ; dirty tricks" ; at every opportunity. And so much of that, of course, was untrue. GANNON: When you say no one was killed at Watergate, what--what do you mean by that? NIXON: I mean by that, very simply, that when you think of any kind of an incident of this sort, a so-called " ; high crime," ; you think of somebody dy--losing his life or somebody losing a great deal of money or something of that sort. This was not in that category. I--it was a political shenanigan--wrong, illegal, and very stupidly handled, true. GANNON: Are you aware of the bumper strips th--referring to Chappaquiddick--" ; No one died at Watergate" ; ? NIXON: No, as a matter of-- GANNON: " ; No one drowned at Watergate." ; NIXON: I--I' ; ve seen those bumper strippers. " ; No--no one" ; --those bumper strips--" ; No one drowned at Watergate." ; And I guess the implication there is to point out this is in contrast to the Teddy Kennedy situation as far as Chappaquiddick was concerned and what some think was a cover-up. GANNON: How--do you think it was a cover-up? NIXON: I would say that I don' ; t know what the facts are, and that would lead--make a prima facie case that it could have been. GANNON: You' ; re aware that the--the judge in the case said that Senator Kennedy couldn' ; t have been telling the truth? NIXON: Yes. No--no reason to judge him at this point. I mean, he' ; s--he' ; s paid more of a price that anybody will guess, and as far as I' ; m concerned that' ; s all in the past. GANNON: How extensive--you say that--that the dirty tricks were not done at every opportunity. How extensive, in on--a ten-point dirty tricks scale, looking at politics over the last thirty years, do you think that the Nixon Campaign 1972 dirty tricks were? NIXON: I' ; d say about one or two. I recall, for example--I' ; ve been the victim of dirty tricks, including bugging i--in 1962. There was no question about that. There' ; s a very famous character, a real professional, delightful fellow, as a matter of fact, named Dick Tuck, and he used to sabotage our campaign schedules and send people the wrong way and disrupt our meetings and so forth. He did it in 1962, in that campaign, and he did it again in--of course, he had done it als--he--no--strike that. He did it in 1960 in the presidential campaign, and then he did it in spades in 1962, when I was running against Pat Brown. But the media being, shall we say, not particularly in my corner, just called that fun and games. And then when Segretti, our so-called " ; dirty tricks man," ; whom I frankly had never had the opportunity of even meeting-- when he tried to practice some of these things on our Democratic opponents, they became high crimes and misdemeanors. It' ; s just a double standard. This sort of thing happens in campaigns. I don' ; t particularly like it, I--particularly when it happens to me, and I don' ; t like to see that be interjected in what should be partic--ticularly a high-level presidential campaign. But it' ; s going to happen because people are human. GANNON: You say you were bugged in 1962. Who bugged you? NIXON: Oh, the opposition. GANNON: Do you think that Lyndon Johnson bugged your campaign in 1968? NIXON: We had reports to that effect, as a matter of fact, directly from J. Edgar Hoover. So I would assume that that was the case. GANNON: How--looking back now, how--how do you tell yourself that somebody as wary, as canny, as experienced as you got dragged into the Watergate cover-up the way--the way that you did? NIXON: Well, th--there' ; s no excuse for anybody, as you say, and I can' ; t make the self-serving statement that I am so canny and experienced and all that sort of thing, although I have lived quite a bit. There' ; s no excuse for what happened, but there could be a reason. I just made a basic mistake at the beginning, the beginning of that year, that campaign year. You know, I have always been criticized throughout my political career for running my own campaigns. I ran my own campaign in ' ; 46. I did it in ' ; 50 when I was elected to the Senate. I did it in ' ; 52, and ' ; 56. Oh, I had campaign assistance, but everybody knew that I was watching every jot and tittle of everything all the way along the line--' ; 68 also. I was constantly th--our campaign people thought, interfering with how it was going, but I was watching everything. Came 1972, and here I was going to China in 1972, we were negotiating an arms control agreement with Russia, we were trying to end the war in Vietnam, and so forth. And I decided, " ; Well, this is one time I' ; m not going to get involved in the campaign. I' ; m going to delegate it all." ; That was a mistake. I--I should have watched it. If I had been watching it, believe me, we wouldn' ; t have ever bugged that--but if we had done it, it would have been more successful. But we would never have done it-- GANNON: There' ; s-- NIXON: --and never handle it that way afterwards, because, as I say, that compounded it. It was not the initional break-in that caused the problem. It was the failure to move on it as we should, and I would say that, had I been running it, and I was responsible, then I would have known where to turn. But since I wasn' ; t running it, I then had the problem of feeling--and I think, in retrospect, I' ; d probably do it again--that I should stand by my friends. I don' ; t know who was responsible, but I was bound to stand by them and try to avoid it moving higher up. GANNON: There has never been any evidence that you knew about the plans for the break-in in advance. In fact, there' ; s significant evidence that you didn' ; t know. Why do you think, though, that from the very earliest of the first polls taken after the break-in--public opinion polls--I think something--in the first one something like 46 percent of the people felt that you had known about it in advance and that it was just normal kinds of politics? NIXON: I think for the very reason that I' ; ve indicated. It was pretty generally known among the people that I ran a tight ship. It was pretty generally known, because criticism had been made of the fact that I constantly ran my own campaigns, that I was in control. Bob Haldeman wrote, as a matter of fact, that anyo--that " ; anybody who watched the Nixon administration would figure nothing like that' ; s going to happen without his knowing about it," ; although he does not say that I knew about it. GANNON: Given-- NIXON: Of course, I didn' ; t. GANNON: Given the way that you' ; ve described the development of the events, the kind of information you were get in the kind of time frame that you were getting it, would you do the same things again? Would you make the same decisions again? NIXON: No, in retrospect, what I would have done at the beginning was to sit down, I think, with all of our campaign people and say, " ; Now look here. We' ; re going to win this election. I--if we' ; re going to have to take some heat about this thing, let' ; s take it. Now, I want to get all the facts and get it out," ; rather than continuing to do what I did do. You see, the problem was that in that period--we' ; re talking in the period around June twentieth or the balance of the year--I wasn' ; t thinking that much about Watergate. Oh, there' ; s a lot of--on--on the tapes, but only an infinitesimal percentage of what is on tape is about that. My main concern was ending that war. We were negotiating. We were sending messages to c--to continue our various initiatives, to keep them alive and healthy, with China, with Russia, and the rest, and, frankly, I just didn' ; t concentrate. That was the mistake. I should have remembered, however, something that Winston Churchill wrote. I--I read quite a bit and read quite a bit before I ever became president. And he said something that every leader in the future should have in mind. He said it has been his observation that the great leaders do the big things well, but they tend to stumble on the little things. You can' ; t do all the little things, but, believe me, in this case a little thing became a big thing, and, of course, destroyed us. GANNON: One of the theories postulated is that one of the reasons that you didn' ; t sit down with all the campaign people and say, " ; What happened?" ; and " ; Let' ; s get this out," ; is that you were afraid to ask that very question, because you were afraid that it would lead--that the answer would involve or implicate people who were your friends and long-time associates. NIXON: I' ; d have to say that was true. I--I' ; m--I think that subconsciously I didn' ; t want to know. If, for example, one of my t--top people, long-time associates, because he didn' ; t have control of the situation, had made a stupid mistake, I didn' ; t want them to become involved. Very tough thing--I--I remember, for example, speaking of books and so forth, the--another quotation that is of considerable interest. It was one that--about Gladstone, who, of course, was a great Liberal prime minister of Britain in the nineteenth century, and he made the comment to the effect that the first requisite of a good prime minister is to be a good butcher. I wasn' ; t, frankly, a good enough butcher, I must say. I--I recall very well when Henry Peterson, who took over the investigation of the Watergate issue, after the second term began--he came in to see me, and he laid before me some accusations that had been made against Haldeman and Ehrlichman, a--and I said, " ; On the other hand" ; --I said, " ; However, those aren' ; t proved." ; I said, " ; I--I can' ; t fire somebody simply because of the appearance of guilt." ; And he responded, he said, " ; Mr. President, that speaks very well of you as a man. It does not speak well of you as a president." ; And so I would say, perhaps, and I' ; m not referring to Haldeman or Ehrlichman, but anybody else in a campaign organization--that' ; s a decision that every president at times has to confront--is he going to be human and compassionate or is he going to be ruthless and cold? I must say, looking back, I' ; ve got to admire Harry Truman in a way for the way he stood by his people even though he--they were political liabilities. It' ; s a close call. GANNON: Some of your critics think it was very ignoble of you when you wrote in your memoirs that Watergate wouldn' ; t have happened without Martha Mitchell. What did you mean by that? NIXON: John Mitchell is one of the ablest men in politics that I' ; ve ever known, and a very able lawyer, a--a very careful man. He' ; s also a very honorable man. I can never imagine that John Mitchell would ever have approved the Watergate break-in, and, assuming he didn' ; t approve it, would have allowed it to slip by through the cracks if he had been concentrating on the campaign. And whether that was ignoble or not, there was no question that Martha M--Mitchell had a problem, a very deep problem. Some thought it was just alcohol and drugs and so forth, but it--it was even more than that. She was emotionally unstable, a--and it just drove John Mitchell crazy. He couldn' ; t concentrate on it at all, and that' ; s why he resigned from the campaign committee shortly after Watergate had broke. GANNON: Do you think that the media exploited her instability? NIXON: Shockingly. I' ; ve never forgiven them for it. GANNON: Why did you bug yourself? NIXON: [Laughs.] The amusing thing about that is that, had the tape system that we had been exposed apart from Watergate, nobody would have given it a second thought. I remember the headlines--" ; Nixon Bugged Himself." ; Well, as a matter of fact, what really, I must say, at first amused me and then it angered me, was to see the hypocritical, sanctimonious statements by people representing the Kennedy camp and the Johnson camp saying, oh, they had never had a taping system. They were horrified that there could ever have been a taping system in the White House. Now, come on, who are they kidding? Franklin Roosevelt, it' ; s now revealed--he did taping. Ei--even Eisenhower did on selective cases. There are two hundred reels of tapes in the Kennedy library. There are thousands of hours of tapes in the Johnson library. Taping was done ostensibly--in my case it was done for the purpose of having it for the historical pur--record. And under the circumstances, then, when we said did we bug ourselves, it was for the historical record and not for any other purpose. I must say that, in Johnson' ; s case, when I came in to the White House on that first day in, January twentieth, I saw this taping equipment around--it hadn' ; t been removed--that he had put in. He had it not only in the Oval Office and also in the Cabinet Room, but also in the Reception Room where people who were to come in to see him were sitting, so that he could hear what they said about him before they came in to see him. Of course, we didn' ; t install any in any places like that. We had it only in the Oval Office, in the Cabinet Room, and in the EOB, which were all recognized to be formal places. But I would say that the place that I was most surprised to find it--when I looked under the bed, just happened to, to--looking for my shoes, a couple of mornings later, and I found all the--a lot of--all the taping equipment right under the bed. He even had the bedroom taped. Incidentally, just so there won' ; t be any improper in--connotation about that, Johnson often saw people in his bedroom. I saw him there the only time I went to the White House from the time I was vice president till I became president. Is--had a cup of coffee with him there after a Gridiron dinner. GANNON: In your memoirs, you tell a story about Bobby Kennedy going in to see Johnson. NIXON: Johnson had a practice of using his taping system in--in a very deliberate way. Let me explain the difference between his taping system and the one Kennedy had, and the one that Eisenhower hid--had, and ours. In their cases, it was manually operated. In other words, when they had somebody coming in that they wanted to make a record of, they turned the tape on. They didn' ; t tell people, but they turned it on so that they' ; d have the record. In our case, it was voice-activated. Everything was taped, which, of course, was probably stupid, and yet perhaps a bit more honorable, because if you weren' ; t going to tell the individual that he was being taped, far better for it to be done on a general basis rather than on a selective basis. Well, on this day Bobby Kennedy was scheduled to come in to see Johnson. This is the day that Johnson was going to get his revenge. Johnson didn' ; t particularly like Jack Kennedy. He hated Bobby Kennedy. J. Edgar Hoover has told me that chapter and verse. And so here was his opportunity. After Bobby Kennedy had been so rough on him while Kennedy was president--Jack Kennedy was president--he was going to get back at him. He was going to have the pleasure of telling Bobby Kennedy that he, Johnson, was not going to support Bobby Kennedy for president. After the meeting was concluded, and apparently it was a pretty hairy confrontation, a--and Johnson called in the fellow that was running the taping system and says, " ; I want you to transcribe the tape." ; The fellow came back ashen-faced. He couldn' ; t do it. It had been scrambled. And what had happened, apparently, they thought, was that Bobby Kennedy, who knew Johnson and also knew himself, had carried a little scrambling device in with him, and he put it on so that it scrambled the conversation. GANNON: Why didn' ; t you-- NIXON: Too bad we didn' ; t have a scrambler for some of ours. GANNON: Why didn' ; t you burn them? NIXON: I must have had several thousand letters on that since leaving office. It was stupid. Should have been burned, because a--at that particular point, once they were exposed, then they could not be used for historical purposes. They were going to be used for purposes that I did not think were appropriate. There were several reasons they weren' ; t burned. First, when the taping system was disclosed, it was the wrong time. I was in the hospital with pneumonia, and I just couldn' ; t make a tough decision like that. Second, I had bad advice, bad advice from well-intentioned lawyers who had the--sort of the cockeyed notion that I would be destroying evidence. But these tapes at that point hadn' ; t been subpoenaed by anybody, and the best evidence were the individuals themselves who were there. But, on the other hand, they listened to them. I--I think there was a third reason, however. I think that I felt that the tapes were probably an insurance against people who had participated in meetings and who, in the light of the Watergate thing, might go out and lie about what had been said. I had listened to the tapes involving John Dean on June fourth, and I felt that they were an insurance against that kind of per--of--of, shall we say, misrepresentation. GANNON: So, looking back and balancing all this, if you knew then what you know now, can you say that--that you would have destroyed them? NIXON: Oh, yes. I should have destroyed them. GANNON: Still would have done it. NIXON: It should have--they should have been destroyed, and they should have been destroyed for another reason. If I had thought--let' ; s face it, i--i--if I had thought they revealed criminal activities, I would have been out of my mind not to destroy them. So I would have destroyed them not because I thought there were criminal activities on them, but because it was an invasion of the very purpose of the tapes, which were for historical purposes and not to hold people that had come into the president' ; s office and talked freely to those words that they had spoken so many years before. That' ; s just not right. GANNON: You' ; re the man who criticized Harry Truman for using phrases like " ; Give ' ; em hell," ; or using the word " ; damn" ; and said that he was a bad example to the youth of America. How do you reconcile that kind of position with the language, your language, that appeared on the White House tape, all the " ; expletives deleted" ; ? NIXON: Well, one thing that I would have preferred is to not have had that term " ; expletives deleted." ; That leaves an implication that probably they were worse than they were. They were bad enough as it was, and eventually, of course, everybody will know what it was, if they don' ; t already know. The point that I should make is that, as far as profanity is concerned, I' ; m, I must admit, a bit old-fashioned. I never swear in public, in all of my public life, and I never swear in front of women. As a matter of fact, let me make an exception. On occasion, just in the family sometimes, I' ; ll--" ; damn this" ; or something of that sort, and Mrs. Nixon really shapes me up right away. She says, " ; That' ; s a bad example for the girls." ; And she' ; s right. On the other hand, we all know, or I would say any sophisticated person knows, that profanity for many people is a way of blowing off steam. That doesn' ; t make it right, but, on the other hand, it' ; s done. And I would say that while the tapes show our profanity, that isn' ; t the first time a few expletives haven' ; t been hurled around the Oval Office. I was there when President Eisenhower was ranting a bit, as he had occasion to de--he--face would flush about " ; those moss-back Republicans," ; " ; those damned moss-back Republicans," ; and how they were holding back some of the programs that we wanted. Now, I met with Jack Kennedy right after the Bay of Pigs disaster, and, I m--mean, he knew all the four-letter words. And I didn' ; t blame him one bit. I wa--I was--really appreciated the fact that he felt that I was a good enough friend that he could let his hair down. And I' ; m not going to indicate what he said. And, of course, L--Lyndon Johnson' ; s earthy language, shall I say, was legendary. Mine was different. It was on tape and different from Johnson and Kennedy, because, as far as their tapes are concerned, they' ; re safe in their libraries, and the expletives will be deleted. In my case, they will not be. GANNON: So you will--you will be known warts and all? NIXON: That' ; s right. And I' ; m embarrassed by it, because it gives an indication that--I think of, basically, hypocrisy. But, on the other hand, I think that a public man does have a responsibility to set an example. I don' ; t think he should swear in public. I don' ; t believe that men should swear in mixed company. That' ; s old-fashioned, I agree. But, on the other hand, I--I must say we' ; re not going to be able to outlaw profanity in private among men, particularly when they' ; ve served in the armed ferv--services and particularly when they served with the Navy and Marine Corps, as I did. I heard all the words. GANNON: Do you think there was, or could have been, a CIA conspiracy to remove you from office? NIXON: I don' ; t know. I know many people think so. I would say that I' ; ve had it--found it difficult to understand why the CIA, which apparently had advance knowledge of the break-in, didn' ; t inform me. I' ; ve found it difficult to understand how it could have been that at least two of those involved had CIA connections and, nevertheless, that it was not brought to my attention as t--far--the break--break-in occurring. I must say, too, the CIA had motive. It was no secret that I was dissatisfied with the CIA, with its reports and particularly with their appraisals of Soviet strength and our other problems around the world. GANNON: Do you think they feared you? NIXON: No question about it, and they had reason to. I was going to shape up that organization and the Defense Department--the whole government, for that matter--but particularly that one. At one occasion I said I thought we could cut a third of the people out of the CIA and do a better job. I didn' ; t want to weaken it, as unfortunately it was castrated in the post-Watergate era. I wanted to strengthen it. I wanted to get rid of some of the deadwood and so forth. And they knew it. So they had a motive. I' ; m not prepared to say whether there was a conspiracy or not. I would only say that it should make a fascinating study for an investigative reporter. He--he won' ; t win any prizes by writing anything that would not be anti-Nixon, but, on the other hand, it would, perhaps, be historically interesting. GANNON: If there was such a conspiracy, do you think that reporter would--would ever live to write about it? Is it the kind of thing that will ever come out? NIXON: I have a feeling that all of this talk that the CIA is going to knock off those that will, shall we say, reveal some of their covert operations--those in this country--I think that' ; s exaggerated. I think that may have been the case t--in times past--not now. GANNON: Do you think that you had--do you think that you had control of the CIA when you were president, that it was responsive to you, and that--that you knew what it was doing and that it--that it wasn' ; t doing anything you didn' ; t want it to do? NIXON: I think the CIA under Dick Helms tried to reflect what the president wanted. I know, for example, that there were no plots to assassinate a foreign leader while I was president. They knew that I would never have approved such a thing. My concern about the CIA was basically its--its competence. I just thought that they had a lot of deadwood, a lot of the Georgetown types and so forth, that were holdovers from previous administrations, and I wanted to clean them out and strengthen it. And I' ; m sorry I didn' ; t get that chance. GANNON: In your memoirs, you refer to a--a conversation with John Connally early in 1974, when he told you that the Arizona--what he called " ; the Arizona Mafia" ; was out to get you. What do you think he meant by that? NIXON: I think what he meant was that in addition to the understandable opposition of the Democrats, the partisan Democrats--not all, but the partisan Democrats--that I had better worry about my right flank as well. What he meant was that there were several Republicans who wanted me out of office and Ford in. Let me say, I know Ford was not one of those. I know that, because I know the man. He' ; s an honorable man. He would never countenance it. However, I would well understand that some--not in a conspiratorial way--but that some might have felt that I was a liability, which probably I was at that point, politically--that I was a liability and that they' ; d be better off with Ford in and me out. And so, consequently, i--it is possible that Connolly' ; s report was correct. But I am not prepared to say. I just don' ; t know. GANNON: Why do you think it was called the Arizona Mafia? NIXON: I don' ; t know--possibly because the--the group was probably conservative-oriented, which would be surprisingly--you would think mostly, usually, it would be the liberals who would' ; ve wanted me out. GANNON: You don' ; t think it referred to Senator Goldwater-- NIXON: It-- GANNON: --or to Congressman Rhodes? NIXON: I would doubt that. I--I--I d--just don' ; t know. As far as Goldwater was concerned, he, of course, denied that he had any part of that sort of thing. GANNON: Do you have any sense that there was from the--say, the beginning of 1974, or earlier, a concerted effort to--if not to railroad you or if not to--to at least grease the skids? Henry Kissinger has written that one of the ironies of your selection of Ford, who wasn’t your first choice, was that while you thought because of his good relations with Congress he' ; d be able to make your case there, the opposite was the case. He was so acceptable to them and so unthreatening to them that by choosing him you almost made it inevitable that you would be replaced. NIXON: I think Kissinger makes a very shrewd point. Usually he' ; s the first to admit he is not a political expert, but in this case it is a shrewd observation. They felt certainly that they would be better off with Ford than with me. And that had, perhaps, something to do with it. GANNON: Do you think there was plotting going on during--formal or informal--during the year? NIXON: I think " ; plotting" ; is too strong a word, because everybody' ; s going to interpret that in the most sinister way. I think what happened is it was simply a coalescence of forces. There were some Republicans that wanted me out because they thought I was a political liability. They could get along better with Ford than with me. There were some Democrats, partisan Democrats, that wanted me out because they wanted to reverse the situation, the result of the elections of 1972, in which they had suffered such a shattering defeat. And I think, under the circumstances, they all kind of ended up not working together in one huge sinister plot but each in parallel ways coming together and in the end, of course, bringing about the inevitable result. GANNON: You were under such tremendous, enormous, emotional, physical, mental pressures during Watergate. A lot of people thought it would kill you. It would have killed a lot of people. Why do you think it didn' ; t? Wh--how do you--why and how do you think you survived? NIXON: Well, curiously enough, I' ; ve had a lot of practice. I' ; ve gone through some pretty tough crises--the Hiss case, when I fought the whole Washington establishment and the media, the fund, when everybody was--thought that I could not survive on the ticket, 1956, the attempt to keep me off of the ticket, two shattering defeats, one for the presidency and then one in 1962 for governor of California. Having been through all of that--that toughens your hide a bit. And as far as being able to survive this, I felt I was on the right side. I was sustained by what I thought was the right cause, and I must say, too, that I g--drew great strength from my family. The way they stood by me was really something very inspiring, very heart-warming. GANNON: Was this pressure different in quality or quantity from these earlier pressures? NIXON: Different certainly in quantity, because whatever the earlier pressures were, they finally ended. This was so intense for so long. And this, of course, reached enormous public attention. For example, Watergate for months on end led the three network programs--not one, not two, but all three, day after day after day. There were headlines in papers across the country, day after day after day. That takes its toll. But I stood up under it rather well, and I' ; m rather surprised that I' ; m still here. GANNON: You' ; ve described all the things that--or some of the things that Watergate wasn' ; t and described your--a number of the elements of your role in it. What do you think you were guilty of? NIXON: Well, I was guilty of--not malfeasance, malfeasance means an intent to do something wrong, but misfeasance, failure to take wh--a situation like this and to deal with it effectively. L--let us understand what Watergate is not, because I think it' ; s very important for us to realize that once the Watergate thing broke, then those in the media who had a vested interest in my being driven from office and our partisans on the other side immediately expanded that to indicate that corruption infected the whole administration. For example, it was a repressive administration, and they made a great deal out of the fact that there were wiretaps. Now, let' ; s look at the wiretaps very objectively and very fairly. A lot of myths about it. One, that they were illegal. They were not illegal. Wiretapping without warrants was legal for every president up till 1972, and we discontinued it then when the Supreme Court said warrants would be required thereafter even though the president had ordered it for national security purposes. And every president since World War II had used wiretaps. Second myth--we were wiretapping our political opponents, we were wiretapping across the country--radical groups, and so forth and so on. A myth. Believe it or not, there were only a total of nineteen wiretaps--five newsmen who printed stories which had s--top-secret material in it and fourteen government officials who had had access to that same kind of material, or whom we thought had access. That was all there were. The purpose of the wiretaps was to avoid leaks of that sort in the future, to find out who was leaking. And, incidentally, that purpose was legitimate. I should point that that wasn' ; t always the case. For example, during the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, Martin Luther King was wiretapped. Why? Because, as J. Edgar Hoover once said, he was wiretapped at th--apparently at the Willard Hotel because a sex orgy might have been going on there. They wanted, apparently, for reasons that I' ; m not aware of and I can' ; t understand, to find a way to embarrass him. And speaking of newsmen, people think that that' ; s the first time newsmen were wiretapped. I--I should remind them that there' ; s a record on file o--of a reporter being wiretapped during the Kennedy administration because it was learned that he was going to write a book on Marilyn Monroe that might have derogatory comments in them about the Kennedys. Now, understand, I' ; m not saying this in condemnation of anything that others did. Maybe they had reasons that I am not aware of. I am simply saying--one, what we did was not illegal. Two, it was justified because it was very important to stop the leaks so that we could continue negotiations that led to the opening to China, that led to the settlements with the Soviet Union, and the ending of the war in Vietnam. And finally, I would say that as far as the wiretaps are concerned, the idea that this was a repressive administration simply doesn' ; t add up. Now, of course, some ask, " ; What about the Plumbers?" ; Who were the Plumbers? Was this a big w--conspiracy of people flo--floating out across the country intimidating people and the rest? Four people for less than a year trying to plug leaks. It was a sort of a Keystone Kop operation. " ; Plumbers" ; is a pretty good name for it, and very ineffective, as it turned out, as were the wiretaps. GANNON: Didn' ; t the--the June twenty-third tape show that your involvement in Watergate went beyond sort of this--sort of a passive malfeasance, because on that tape you ordered Bob Haldeman to go to the CIA and ke--to tell them to tell the FBI to keep out of the Watergate investigation? Didn' ; t that go over the edge and actually involve you? NIXON: Well, let us understand how the June twenty-third tape came about, how that conversation--it had been long conversation about scheduling-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: --about another trip that I was going to have to take and so forth. And at the very end, Bob Haldeman said that he had had a meeting with John Dean, that John Dean had come up with a scenario that might confront the Watergate investigation. He felt that it was important to contain it because it was getting into areas that might be embarrassing to us. He then went on to say that the FBI that was conducting the investigation thought the CIA was involved, as, of course, former CIA, at least, agents and operatives were involved, and that if the CIA could let the FBI know that they did not want the FBI to continue an investigation that might expose some of their activities, that then the FBI would draw back. I made a very stupid mistake. I said, " ; Fine--go ahead and do it. We’ve done some things for-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0379/bmac
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57 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 10, 1983, part 1.
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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United States
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 10, 1983, part 2. gannix_0380 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection tem record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|10(10)|27(2)|46(4)|59(9)|74(9)|87(6)|98(11)|114(6)|133(13)|144(15)|160(6)|178(15)|192(4)|203(12)|211(9)|227(8)|239(11)|251(14)|263(7)|275(15)|292(5)|300(2)|332(6)|346(11)|357(10)|369(13)|384(2)|398(9)|413(8)|427(10)|442(3)|460(7)|470(11)|486(13)|502(10)|520(5)|534(12)|555(2)|570(1)|585(5)|597(15)|617(7)|630(10)|644(3)|656(13)|668(15)|680(4)|705(8)|718(4)|736(14)|747(12)|765(10)|778(2)|789(5)|805(4)|819(1)|831(8) 0 https://youtu.be/kWWYlXi5NrU YouTube video English 9 CIA Watergate Investigation --Helms. There's no reason why he shouldn't do something for us on this." ; Nixon recounts giving the CIA approval to continue their investigations into the Watergate break-ins. He also considers whether it would have been better for the country had the cover up been successful. Bob Haldeman ; CIA ; FBI ; John Dean ; John Ehrlichman ; Pat Gray ; Ray Price ; Richard Helms ; Watergate Dean, John W. (John Wesley), 1938- ; Ehrlichman, John ; Gray, Louis Patrick, 1916-2005 ; Haldeman, H. R. (Harry R.), 1926-1993 ; Helms, Richard ; Price, Raymond K. (Raymond Kissam), 1930- 250 Exploiting the IRS People do think about, for example, in the crimes of Watergate, about your taxes--that you paid vir--little or no taxes during the years that you were president and were probably a paper millionaire. Nixon addresses claims that he did not pay taxes and used the IRS to harass his enemies. He talks about instances when the IRS was used against himself and his friends. Bay of Pigs Invasion ; Billy Graham ; Don Alexander ; Harry Truman ; Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ; John Dean ; John F. Kennedy ; John Wayne ; Joint Committee on Taxation ; Larry O'Brien ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Pat Brown ; Secret Service ; taxes ; Watergate Alexander, Donald C. (Donald Crichton), 1921-2009 ; Brown, Edmund G. (Edmund Gerald), 1905-1996 ; Dean, John W. (John Wesley), 1938- ; Graham, Billy, 1918- ; Hughes, Howard, 1905-1976 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; O'Brien, Lawrence F. ; Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972 ; Wayne, John, 1907-1979 747 Lessons from Watergate / Appropriate Punishment In China, you told Zhou Enlai that you always learned more from your defeats than you did from your victories. Nixon considers what he learned from the Watergate scandal and what would have been an acceptable punishment for his actions. Gilbert and Sullivan ; leadership ; Ronald Reagan ; Watergate ; Zhou Enlai Reagan, Ronald ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 968 Remaining in Office When you got back from the Middle East and from Russia in June of 1974, how did you see your position in terms of impeachment? Nixon recalls his feelings about remaining in office after a visit to the Middle East and the Soviet Union during the Watergate scandal. 1377 Conflict with Media You say that the--the opponents were the partisan Democrats and the media. Nixon relates his adversarial relationship with the media going back to the beginning of his political career and through the Watergate scandal. He also talks about his strong disagreements with the media's views on the Vietnam War and his attempts to achieve peace with honor. 1692 Motivations for Impeachment You flew to San Clemente in mid-July. Nixon discusses the reasons that the media and Congress called for impeachment proceedings to investigate the Watergate cover-up and considers what percentage simply wanted him out of office. 1896 John Ehrlichman / John Dean When did you learn that John Ehrlichman had been convicted for the Ellsberg break-in? Nixon recounts hearing about the conviction of John Ehrlichman and his feelings towards Ehrlichman and John Dean. He discusses maintaining friendships through the Watergate scandal. 2304 House Judiciary Committee Calls for Impeachment What was your reaction when John Doar called for your impeachment before the House Judiciary Committee and the hearings were set for the twenty-fourth of July? Nixon describes his reaction to the House Judiciary Committee's call for his impeachment, including his outlook on what the result would be and the entry in his memoirs about that evening. 2597 Impeachment Did the worst happen in terms of the support of the three Southern Democrats on the Judiciary Committee? Nixon recalls learning of the decision by the House Judiciary Committee to impeach him and how it felt to know that he would not survive as president due to this impending impeachment. 3076 Decision to Resign So as you flew back to Washington from San Clemente, you had no hope whatever that you would survive as president for more than a matter of days or weeks, or months at most? Nixon discusses making the decision to resign from the presidency rather than waiting for the Senate hearing or for the House Judiciary Committee to vote on his impeachment. He also talks about the possibility that General Haig orchestrated his resignation and about sharing his decision to resign with his family. Interview NIXON: --Helms. There' ; s no reason why he shouldn' ; t do something for us on this." ; But let us understand, as far as my motive was concerned, you just don' ; t look at it in terms of words said at a time. You look at it in terms of what you did and what you did later. Just two weeks later, after this conversation, the director of the CIA, Pat Gray, called me on the phone. He said that he thought that some people on the White House staff, I think he said, were wounding me by their conduct. And then he went on to say that he had--was concerned about this contacting the CIA. I said, " ; Have you talked to them?" ; He said, " ; Yes." ; He said, " ; They say they' ; re--they have no interest in suppressing or limiting the investigation." ; I said, " ; Fine. Go right ahead with your investigation." ; I didn' ; t stop there. I called in Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and I said, " ; We cannot have a cover-up." ; I said, " ; I want to stop this. Be sure that the word gets out to everybody to continue." ; What I am saying here--yes, we considered the possibility, and I had hoped, for example, that the CIA would find th--that they didn' ; t want the investigation to go forward. But when I was informed that they were not concerned about its going f--f--forward, I didn' ; t hesitate one bit. GANNON: Isn' ; t it true, though, that--that you--the information as it was presented to you and on which you made your decision was--that it was a political reason? That Dean was afraid that the money would be traced to the committee and that' ; s why you approved calling in the CIA in the first place, whatever the other CIA involvements may or may not have been? NIXON: It was primarily political, as it turned out. My recollection at a later point was of the conversation with Pat Gray, in which I said, " ; Go ahead with the investigation," ; and, consequently, that' ; s why I left the impression, which was incorrect, but what I remembered at the time, that it was not political. It was primary political there, but, on the other hand, I would never have approved it unless there had been indications that the CIA might be interested. So there was a subsidiary reason--lone as well. GANNON: How--how-- NIXON: I--I didn' ; t tell--I didn' ; t s--in effect, say, " ; Look--get the CIA to get into this thing whether they' ; re interested or not." ; I said, " ; If they are concerned, then of course the FBI should not go forward." ; GANNON: Even given that it was months later and a lot had intervened and that the Gray phone call did direct your--direct the conduct, how could you forget such a--a central thing, that the initial cause was political? NIXON: It' ; s difficult to understand, but--and again--no excuse that--perhaps, will explain it. I had a lot of things on my mind. I remembered it as well as I could, and, as a matter of fact, before I went public on that particular thing, I called Bob Haldeman on the phone, and I said, " ; Look. What do you remember about it?" ; And he remembered it eza--exactly as I did. Neither of us, of course, had refreshed our memories by l--listening to the tape. GANNON: Do you think the country would be better off if the cover-up had succeeded and Watergate had never surfaced, or, at least, had never have gone as far as it did--led to your resignation? NIXON: Ray Price, one of my biographers and my long-time speechwriter, and a very honorable man who would feel that any kind of a cover-up is wrong, morally, et cetera--believes that that' ; s the case. I am not able, really, to be the best judge of that. Certainly I--I think that under the circumstances, from a personal standpoint, it would have best--been best that Watergate not be expanded to the point that it was. In other words, to have a misdemeanor become the crime of the century didn' ; t make any sense, and to have s--people today talk about not the crime of Watergate but the crimes of Watergate simply didn' ; t make sense. It was that, of course, that brought us down. GANNON: People do think about, for example, in the crimes of Watergate, about your taxes--that you paid vir--little or no taxes during the years that you were president and were probably a paper millionaire. NIXON: Well, just look at my presidency. Except for Harry Truman, I think I am the only president in this century who left the White House with his net worth less than when he came in. Now that would tend to knock down the thing that I had ba--profited from my service in the White House. There was a story, for example, that the--seventeen million dollars had been se--spent on my place in San Clemente and the one in Florida. I sold the place at the height of the market five years after I left office for two-and-a-half million dollars. And, as a matter of fact, what the u--the GSA had put in there reduced the value. I' ; ll give you an example. Our--in California, gas heat is cheaper than electric heat. We had a gas heating system in it. The Secret Service thought that a gas heating system ran the risk of fire. They changed it to electric, a--and so it reduced the value. Enough of that. Coming back to the tax situation, that, of course, was a really low blow, a low blow because I was very scrupulous about my tax returns throughout my life. I--I--I majored in tax law when I was in law school. However, I, of course, didn' ; t prepare my own tax returns. I left it to my staff people, who were supposed to be expert in the field. They made a mistake that was understandable. What happened was that I gave two million dollars worth of my vice presidential papers--they were appraised at that--to the government. That was common. Johnson had advised that he had done it. He told me that. He suggested that I do it, and previous government officials had been doing it for years. It was a legitimate tax deduction. Then, in January--and then in 1969, at the end of the year, I signed a bill--I signed it--in which the Congress revoked that right to tax exemption. Now, as a matter of fact, at the time I signed that bill, I didn' ; t have any feeling at all, and I wasn' ; t doing it with relationship to my own gift of papers, because I had made my gift in March of that year. It had been delivered. My papers had been brought back down from Ne--New York and delivered to the government. So what happened? What happened is that our tax man felt that there had to be a deed to the papers. He wrote a deed out, he signed it himself, in my behalf, and dated it at the time that they were delivered. Now, lawyers do that on occasion. In this case, it was made to appear that this was all a fraud in order to avoid the payment of the taxes. So I paid the three hundred thousand dollars in taxes that I otherwise would have been able to take as a deduction, as Johnson and others had done previously. When I left office, intres--interestingly enough, my tax attorneys begged me to reopen the case. They said they would take it on a contingency, and they could get the s--the decision reversed. But I had agreed at that time, when the matter came up, to accept whatever the Joint Committee on Taxation would agree to, what they would recommend. They had recommended that I pay the tax, and I did. That happens. GANNON: When people talk about Watergate, they also think about how your administration used the Internal Revenue Service to harass people and how you even had a--a written-down enemies list of--of opponents to go after and hurt. NIXON: I don' ; t think, incidentally, that the thought is that I had a written-down enemies list. I think they said there was a--I think it' ; s been claimed that there was an enemies list within the bowels of the administration, and so forth and so on. GANNON: That John Dean had prepared. NIXON: That John Dean had collected, whatever that might be. And I wouldn' ; t be surprised. Every administration has its friends and its enemies. We always divide press, everybody else, up in those categories. You reward your friends and punish your enemies, if you can. GANNON: Did you use the IRS to do that? NIXON: [unintelligible] Certainly not. As a matter of fact, what happened here was simply a natural reaction of anybody in that office. I got reports--complaints, as a matter of fact--from friends of John Wayne and Billy Graham that they were being harassed by the Internal Revenue Service on their tax returns, and they thought they were being harassed because they were my friends. Now, they didn' ; t tell me that, but, you know, the word gets to me. When I learned this, I hit the ceiling. And so I said, " ; Get the word out, down to the IRS, that I want them to conduct field audits" ; --and that' ; s the way--that' ; s the term, the technical term they use--" ; of those who are our opponents if they' ; re going to do our friends." ; And I suggested that one they ought to look into was Larry O' ; Brien, who had received very heavy fees from the Hughes organization. What happened was that the word went to the IRS. The IRS, as it turned out--is often the case--did nothing. They made a big hullaballoo about the fact that we had attempted to use the IRS for political purposes. And then a f--months later, Don Alexander, the head of the IRS, put out a report saying the IRS had not audited anybody for political purposes, not one. So, what I am say--saying here is that what I suggested was simply a reaction to what I thought was IRS policy that was unfair. I wanted them to be even-handed on it, and I must say that I probably should have gone f--further in--if I wanted to be political, in view of what had happened to me, because I knew from an IRS auditor in California that they got orders directly from Washington to audit my returns in 1961, when I was running for governor of California. That' ; s the way it works. GANNON: If you had had more control, would you have used it? Would you have used the IRS to s--in--in sort of a tit-for-tat way? It had been done to you, and therefore--does--does that power go with the office? NIXON: Oh, I would have been tempted. No. I--I don' ; t want to indicate that I was simply going to turn the other way when an opportunity might present itself like that. But what I am saying here is this. We are charged with--we are charged in this Watergate period with enriching ourselves. We did not. We are charged with abusing the IRS and abusing other people and using the IRS for that purpose. We talked about it and so forth, but it did not happen. As far as this administration is concerned, oh, it isn' ; t pure, but, on the other hand, it was one that w--that--that is being held to a different standard than previous administrations. I' ; m not suggesting that because it was done in the past that makes it right now. I--I don' ; t take the line that--that one n--one right--well, what is it? GANNON: Two wrongs make a right. NIXON: That two wrongs make a right, but I do say that two wrongs make two wrongs. I just want a single standard. GANNON: Do you mean to say that when you were in the Oval Office talking to John Kennedy when he called you in to ask for your advice and your support at the time of the Bay of Pigs--that--that you knew he was pushing the audit of your income tax returns? NIXON: Oh, I didn' ; t know that he was pushing it. I assumed that he wasn' ; t. No, I was assuming that was done by some of the very good political operatives that he had in his organization. No, I' ; m not sure that--I th--I doubt if he would do it. I doubt if he would do it. I think, however, he--he--he could play hardball. I don' ; t think he would have minded a bit if an audit came up that was embarrassing to me. I--I know--know, for example, that one of the tapes which, incidentally, have come out since it' ; s finally been revealed that the Kennedy people did tape, was a telephone call that he made to Pat Brown after Pat Brown beat me for governor. He wasn' ; t interested in my s--political success, and I don' ; t blame him one bit. I wouldn' ; t have been either. He considered to--me to be one that almost beat him. He didn' ; t want me to come back again. GANNON: In China, you told Chou En-lai that you always learned more from your defeats than you did from your victories. What did you learn from Watergate? NIXON: From Watergate, I think, first, a leader, much as he is interested in--as a matter of fact, obsessed by big issues, must not overlook the little issues that may become big. Second, once you have a problem, far better to deal with it quickly rather than to procrastinate, because a problem, if not dealt with quickly, is going to expand and become something not only different in size but different in kind, as was the case with Watergate. And third, I--I would say a leader in those cases where the whole White House itself, the presidency, is involved, sometimes it' ; s necessary for him to put his own survival and survival of the institution above his personal loyalties. That' ; s a tough one. The last one would be the hardest for me, and I think it' ; d be very hard for President Reagan, for example. He' ; s a--one of his fine qualities is he--he' ; s loyal to his friends. GANNON: If, following the Gilbert and Sullivan line, " ; the punishment had fit the crime," ; what do you think would have been the proper--unless you think resignation was--what do you think would have been the proper punishment for what you did or the way you became involved in Watergate? NIXON: Well, I don’t know as it serves any purpose even to speculate on that. There were some who suggested that a proper way to handle it would have been a resolution of censure by both houses of the Congress. But, on the other hand, that didn' ; t happen. GANNON: We' ; ve reached the end of our hour. GANNON: It' ; s up--I would say ten minutes. It' ; s up to you. NIXON: Ten minutes is fine. GANNON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, we' ; ll take ten minutes here-- NIXON: The movie. OFF SCREEN VOICE: --and come back-- GANNON: Yes. OFF SCREEN VOICE: --and do an hour. GANNON: When you got back from the Middle East and from Russia in June of 1974, how did you see your position in terms of impeachment? NIXON: Well, I guess, first, I saw it through the eyes of others. Things seemed to be better. The media seemed to be less vicious than usual, or--r--and some were even quite objective. Our own people in the Congress felt that the vote count was going fairly well, and the mood was simply better. But some way I didn' ; t share that. I just had an intuition that beneath the surface things were not going that well, despite the fact that we had had good publicity out of the Middle East and fair publicity even out of the visit to the Soviet Union. And I guess I can put my finger on it in a couple of ways. You know, politicians--I guess like women, and--and women politicians particularly would have it--that we just have intuition, sixth sense. I remember so well in 1948 I campaigned around the country as a young congressman for the Dewey ticket. He was going to win by a landslide. Everybody said he was going to win. I just sensed it wasn' ; t going right, and I remember telling a editorial meeting of the Kansas City Star about three weeks before that I didn' ; t feel good about it. They thought I was crazy. Well--doesn’t show that I' ; m so smart, but I sensed it. In this case, I think I was worried for reasons. First, for the reverse reason that we were doing better. I knew that if the opposition felt we were doing better, they would panic. And by panicking, that meant bad news for us. They could not afford--I' ; m referring now to the partisan Democrats, who were out to get me, of course, and the media--they could not afford to fail now. Millions of dollars had been spent on the Watergate investigation. They had a vested interest in conviction. And so, under the circumstances, as they saw the w--news get better, they had to do more to bring me down. And then something had happened while I was in the Soviet Union. Here I was, negotiating with Brezhnev about arms control and missiles and the rest, and a story came out of Washington to the effect that Rodino, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had made a comment, which he didn' ; t expect to be published, but which revealed something--in which he said that all twenty-seven members of the Judiciary Committee--the Democrats--were going to vote for impeachment. This is before the hearings were even held. And so that concerned me. I was concerned, too, by the fact that my political position, not being as strong as it was--that maybe there would be softness in the Republican ranks. But--but all of these things caused me to worry. And then another factor--I knew that with the opposition worrying, they' ; d put in their first team, and, believe me, they did. Carl Albert, the speaker of the House, was a very fine man. We' ; d come to Congress t--together. He was very bipartisan, supporting me on my--Vietnam and other issues and so forth. But he was not partisan enough, and so they gave the job to Tip O' ; Neill, who was the majority leader. Now, I' ; ve known every Speaker since World War II, including Sam Rayburn, one of the great ones. I would say that Tip O' ; Neill is certainly one of the ablest, but, without question, he is the most ruthless and the most partisan speaker we have had in my lifetime. The only time he' ; s bipartisan is when it will serve his partisan interest. He plays hardball. He doesn' ; t know what a softball is. So, under the circumstances, when I heard that he was taking over shaping up the Democrats, I knew that we were in trouble. Those are the things that worried me before going to California. And yet, I must say, on the twelfth of July, just before taking off for California, we had a bill-signing ceremony in the Oval Office, and Jerry Ford came up to me afterwards, and he' ; s usually not an overly optimistic type--although he' ; s not the pessimistic type, either--but he said, " ; Look," ; he said, " ; we' ; ve got this thing made. We' ; re going to win by over fifty votes in the House." ; And then Bryce Harlow, who was a real professional--served with Eisenhower, served with me as well--came up--said, " ; You' ; ve got it won, boss." ; Well, I felt pretty good, and yet, some way, it didn' ; t feel right. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me for interrupting. I' ; m sorry. I' ; ve got a key light problem on Frank. Can we correct it? Thirty seconds. Keep the tape rolling. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Various inaudible voices.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: On the two-shot, he' ; s just much darker than the president. We must' ; ve lost a key somewhere. NIXON: [Sighs.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: How about over near the [unintelligible] door [unintelligible]? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Various inaudible voices.] GANNON: [Exhales.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: That' ; s it. If we can freeze it there, we' ; re in good shape. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Various inaudible voices.] GANNON: Can you--you had talked about the s--the microscope and the p-- NIXON: --dia thing? GANNON: Yeah. We talked about--ask--that they--they thought they-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Everybody back in position. [unintelligible] Get ready to go. [unintelligible] NIXON: Huh? GANNON: They said that they--they thought they treated it like a microscope but in fact that treated it like a proctoscope. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, tape still rolling, and locked. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Everybody in position. Is that ladder out of the way now? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, Frank. Start on five-second countdown and cue Frank. NIXON: That was a good line. That' ; s your line. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Here we go. Five. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Four, three. GANNON: You say that the--the opponents were the partisan Democrats and the media. It' ; s easy to understand why the partisan Democrats were the opponents, but why were the media the opponents? NIXON: Well, my fights with the media, of course, are legendary. It goes back a long time, from the time I started with the Hiss case, the fund crisis, coming back after defeat, when they wrote me off and af--read them off--I had read them off after 1962. So, consequently, it is sort of assumed that the media and I are not friends, that we' ; re always adversaries. Now I think we' ; ve got to put that into context. First, it is not personal. I have some good personal friends in the media. It is not general. I--there are some people in the media that I respect, that I think are objective, single-standard-type reporters. But, on the other hand, I--I would have to say that the great majority of those in the media, in the Washington press corps, both television and print media, were against me. They have been in the past. They were before Watergate, and, of course, even more so during Watergate. Now, the reasons for that, I think, are several. One is I' ; m a conservative, and an effective conservative, in their view, and they are liberal. I' ; m speaking of those that are against me. The second reason goes to the war. We just totally disagreed on the war. I was insisting on and worked for peace with honor. And they wanted peace at any price. They didn' ; t think that at that point we should even continue to try to get peace with honor. And then I think there was this subtle reason, the subtle reason that, in 1972, when the country was voting for me 62 percent, 78 percent of the Washington media heavyweights were for McGovern. I had beaten them and beaten them very badly. They knew that after the election that I would th--owe them nothing but a good kick in the seat of the pants. I don' ; t think they felt that I was going to repress them. But, on the other hand, they would like to see that verdict of 1972 reversed. And so what happened was along came Watergate. They had the big guns, but we passed them the ammunition, and they proceeded to shoot it right back at us. And I know that--I' ; ve talked to people in the media. You know, we do talk on occasion, and they say, " ; But it' ; s the responsibility of the media to look at government generally, and particularly at the president, with a microscope." ; I don’t mind a microscope, but, boy, when they use a proctoscope, that' ; s going too far. GANNON: [Laughs.] You--you used the example--[laughs]. You used the example of peace with honor versus peace at any price. A lot of the people in the media--a lot of people would say that that' ; s a quintessential Nixonism, to--to equate the two as if the opposite of what you wanted, peace with honor, was peace with any price, which sounds sort of furtive and a bit--like appeasement, dishonorable--peace with honor as opposed to dishonor. Their argument would be that it was a--an unfortunate, unhappy war which was--was unwinnable, that our commitment was--was wrong, and that the honorable thing to do precisely was to cut our losses in a coherent way and pull out. They would say that that' ; s a kind of devious setup on your part, and that--and that' ; s one of the reasons, throughout your career, why they' ; ve opposed you. Do you see any of that? NIXON: No. They' ; re absolutely wrong, and history shows that they' ; re wrong--what happened in Vietnam. They felt that we should bug out. I always knew that if we bugged out of Vietnam, if we failed to prevail there and the Communists came in--first, that it would be a disaster, that a bloodbath would come to all of Southeast Asia, and that' ; s happened, and second, that it would be harmful to the United States in other parts of the world. And third, it would encourage the Soviet Union to engage in aggression in other places as well, and that' ; s happened. So, I would say when I was for peace with honor, I--I meant by that give the South Vietnamese, which we did through the Paris Peace Agreement, a chance to survive on their own, but not to bug out simply because the war had become unpopular. I--I must say I--I respect their right to disagree with me, but on this I think that my position has been vindicated by what' ; s happened. GANNON: This isn' ; t really a question of position, though. G--do you see that, in terminological terms, to say that you were for peace with honor implies that anybody who wasn' ; t with you was somehow dishonorable, or for peace with dishonor, even if peace was a desirable end, and that this was the kind of thing that got their back up in dealing with you? NIXON: Maybe it got their back up, but I--in my view, to let down an ally and to allow a bloodbath to occur, that was dishonor, and I repeat it right now. GANNON: You flew to San Clemente in mid-July. What did you expect to do on that trip? NIXON: Well, I thought we would have an opportunity on that trip to sort of catch our breath after the--the visit to the Soviet Union and the rather intense pressures that we' ; d been under. I knew, too, that the Judiciary Committee was going to begin its hearing shortly--its public hearings--and we had to be prepared for that. So, under the circumstances, I--it was a good time for us to take a rest and to look at things from afar in a more objective way. GANNON: Getting back to the--what we were just talking about, the media, on a--on a--on one of my favorite ten-point scales, a ten-point bipartisan scale, h--how much would you say, in terms of the Democrats in Congress and the media, that there was a genuinely disinterested bipartisan element, or not even bipartisan--that they genuinely were--felt that Watergate was a serious abuse, that it needed to be investigated, and that it--that it--the best way was to investigate it--was through an impeachment proceeding. How much was there that pristine devotion to finding out what the president knew and when he knew it, and how much was partisan determination that it--that it had gone too far, and they had to get rid of you or otherwise they would suffer? NIXON: It was a combination of both. Let me say I--I realize that there were some in the media and some in the Congress who felt that--for a variety of reasons, because they had disagreed with me in Vietnam, because they thought I was too strong in terms of what I was going to do in the second term--that they felt that it was very important to get me out of there. Let me unders--let me make it clear as to what--what--why they were concerned. I had not h--I had not held any punches back. I made it clear after the election that with the war out of the way, having run--having won by 62 percent, I had a mandate. I was going to reorganize the government. I--I was going to cut down on the bureaucrats. I was going to return more power to the states and the people. I was going to shape up the place. They knew that. The media knew it. The bureaucracy knew it. The elitists knew it. The establishment knew it. They didn' ; t like it. And so, under the circumstances, I can understand why, whatever their devotion to being honorable and so forth are concerned, those partisan instincts might ha--might prevail. But, in fairness, of course there were some who weren' ; t partisan at all. They just thought I should be out, because they thought I should never have been in. GANNON: But if you had to guess a percentage of people who were in it for the partisan advantage or because they felt they had to get rid of you in order to justify themselves, as opposed to the people who genuinely thought it was an appalling thing and that you should be removed because of it--what would be the percentage in the media and the Congress? NIXON: I would say that--that in--just lumping them all together, that in the media it was perhaps about 75 percent that just-- GANNON: Partisan. NIXON: --welcomed the opportunity to get me out of there, about 25 percent who felt--had this pristine motive that you referred to. In the Congress, perhaps fifty-fifty. GANNON: When did you learn that John Ehrlichman had been convicted for the Ellsberg break-in? NIXON: On the flight to California. I--I remember it was a--a very shattering bit of news to get on that plane flight. Here Ehrlichman had been convicted, and I thought back as to how unfair life is, how terribly unfair. Here' ; s Daniel Ellsberg. Daniel Ellsberg had illegally taken thousands of pages of documents, secret documents, from the Pentagon. He had turned them over to the New York Times. They were published in the New York Times, the so-called Pentagon Papers. As a result of their publication--I know that it encouraged the enemy, that it slowed down our negotiations to end the war and cost thousands of American lives. John Ehrlichman had the responsibility, along with those who worked with him, to attempt to expose this man, to see that he was brought to justice, but also to discourage others from doing likewise and to be sure that this man did not do something else in the future. Now, I--I could never understand why they thought that going into his psychiatrist' ; s office would give them some information that would be useful. And yet that' ; s--assuming that' ; s debatable--but they did it certainly with--with the intention, probably, of seeing--of recognizing he had done something that was illegal. He had said he was going to do more, which he had, and we had to find out in order to do our job, which was to not only end the war but to carry on an effective foreign policy. And after all that, what happens? Here John Ehrlichman' ; s going to prison--Daniel Ellsberg not only goes free, he' ; s made a hero in the media and a hero on college campuses all over the worl--country. Now, that' ; s just wrong. GANNON: John Ehrlichman has since--so you th--you think that Ehrlichman got a bum rap? NIXON: Yes, I do. GANNON: He' ; s since written a book in which, among other things, he claims that you had a serious drinking problem. He claims that you manipulated the Watergate period to make yourself look good, to position yourself well. How did--when he resigned, you said that he was one of the two finest public servants it had ever been your privilege to know. How do you feel about him today? NIXON: I felt that then, about his public service. I still feel that. And I understand why he, or Bob Haldeman, for that matter, to a lesser degree--after having to go to prison, they felt unjustifiably, and so forth, after all that they had done--how they would be bitter. I understand it. GANNON: How do you feel about John Dean, in twenty-five words or less, today? NIXON: I don' ; t need twenty-five words. He did what he did to save himself, and I understand that. GANNON: In your memoirs, you' ; ve--you' ; ve--in your memoirs, you quote your daughter Triciar' ; s--sorry. In your memoirs, you quote your daughter Tricia' ; s own diary about the arrival at San Clemente and the walk she and her husband took around the gold course. Can you-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --tell that story? NIXON: When the plane finally landed in San Clemente, I was already a bit down, because of hearing the news about Ehrlichman' ; s conviction, and I went into the house, and we had [a] pleasant dinner. It was a beautiful day, beautiful time, and Eddie and Tricia went out for a walk. When they came back in, they were rather subdued. They didn' ; t tell me why. I learned later why. Right next to my house in San Clemente, Bob Abplanalp owned the property. And some friends out there-- they called them " ; Friends of the President" ; --had built a three-hole golf course. And Eddie and Tricia went out to walk on the golf course. It was all grown up with weeds. There were cattails growing in the sand traps, and Tricia was very, very depressed about that. I--I later told her--when she told me about it, I said, " ; You know, i--in politics, friendship is a very fleeting thing. Unless you can do something for somebody or something to them, the friendships evaporate very quickly. Very few stick around." ; It was obvious that those who had been friends, who helped to build that gold course, felt that I could do nothing for them and nothing to them. That was an indication of how power goes away. GANNON: Isn' ; t that a terribly empty, and--and even cynical, attitude--that politics is only what you can do to or for people? NIXON: Well, there are some saving graces, however. I said that that is generally the case, but there are also some others who are with you through thick and thin, a--and those are the ones that you remember. But I' ; ve--I' ; ve often written, incidentally, after campaigns--and I' ; ve been in so many over the years--I write to the winners, but I also write to the losers, because, having lost, I know that' ; s when you appreciate it. And in every letter I write to the losers, I said, " ; You know, when you win, everybody' ; s your friend. When you lose, you find out who your true friends are. Just count me in the latter." ; GANNON: Did you find out in Watergate who your true friends are? NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: Did you have many major disappointments or many major surprises in terms of who weren' ; t or who were your real friends? NIXON: Not particularly, no. No. Let me say that it was very difficult to remain a Nixon friend after Watergate. After all, wh--while the polls showed we still had maybe 25 to 30 percent support, we have to understand that I was simply an unpopular figure, and people generally don' ; t want to stick out their necks for somebody who' ; s d--down. We' ; re all that way to an extent. GANNON: What was your reaction-- NIXON: I--the reason I am not that way is that, having been down, I can understand people that are also down, and I want to help them. But a lot of people just only play winners. That' ; s particularly true in what I call the Wall Street crowd. Douglas MacArthur often told me that. He said, " ; These people here, Mr. Vice President--they are the coldest, most cynical people in the world. They aren' ; t conservative. They aren' ; t liberal. They' ; re just for whoever happens to be on top." ; GANNON: What was your reaction when John Doar called for your impeachment before the House Judiciary Committee and the hearings were set for the twenty-fourth of July? NIXON: Well, what had happened, of course, that the day before John Doar made what I understood from the reports was a masterful request for and advocacy of my impeachment--this was all, of course, in closed session. Our own attorney, James Sinclair, who was supposed to be a very fine lawyer, had made what we had heard was a very eloquent defense. But what concerned me was that when he made that defense, the committee then took a vote and denied him the opportunity to make his defense on television. I knew then that we were in deep trouble, because it was the public opinion that would affect the Congress if it got close. Once I heard about Doar, I knew that things were moving along. I--I--that gut reaction that I' ; d had--I said, " ; This fellow is awfully good. I don' ; t know how we' ; re going to be able to stand up against this juggernaut." ; It was just rolling toward us, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. GANNON: Did you ever f--feel, given the weight of numbers, that--it was a Democratic-controlled Congress--that you could actually defeat impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee. Was that ever a real option? NIXON: Oh, yes, there was an option, but not of defeating it, but of not losing it in a way that we would lose in the House. L--let me explain exactly how it would have worked. The Democrats had a majority in the House, as we all know. We had only a hundred and ninety Republicans. On the other hand, we could always count on--assuming even we had some Republican defections, which I expected--not many, but some--we could always count on fifty Southern Democrats, what I called the Joe Waggoner group, conservative Southerners who stood with me on Vietnam and all the other critical issues. Now, in this case, however, with the Judiciary Committee voting--members of the House, I knew from experience, usually voted the way that the members of the Judiciary Committee, or any other committee, voted in committee. In other words, if you had, for example, a member of the House from Alabama--he would be very greatly swayed in his vote by how the member of the House on the Judiciary Committee from Alabama recommended that he vote. So, under the circumstances, Joel Waggoner told me flat out, and he was all for us. He said, " ; If we can get just even one vote--we hope to get three Southern Democrats, but if we can get just one, we can still give you enough Democratic votes to avoid the House voting impeachment" ; --the full House. " ; If, however, we lose all, there' ; s no way" ; --no--that' ; s right. " ; If we lose all three of the Southern Democrats, there' ; s no way that I can hold more than thirty or thirty-five." ; So it was right down to that count, and when I heard about Door' ; s argument, I thought, " ; Well, it' ; s going to be tough for any of those Democrats to stand up against that kind of elements." ; GANNON: All three. GANNON: Did they? I have a--a--when you-- NIXON: We' ; ll come to that later. GANNON: Okay. NIXON: After I--well, after I heard that, incidentally, I--I did a lot of soul-searching and on occasion, as is now known, I would dictate very late at night, usually eleven, twelve o' ; clock, a diary note. They were never transcribed, incidentally, at the time. They were transcribed only after I began working on my memoirs. But I recall particularly the diary note that I wrote then. It--I reread it recently, and it indicated a mood which was to an extent almost resigned to defeat, but, on the other hand, held out just a smidgen of hope. GANNON: In fact, you quote it in your memoirs--I have a copy, if you' ; d read it. NIXON: " ; I intend to live the next week without dying the death of a thousand cuts. This has been my philosophy throughout my political life. Cowards die a thousand deaths. Brave men die only once. I suppose it could be said that this is our seventh crisis in spades, because the next month will be so--as--as hard a month as we will ever go through. But we can only be sustained by two things. One, the belief that we' ; re right. We are fighting, as all agree, an assault on our entire system of government. And, second, we will be sustained by the fact that at the end it will be over, and even if it is over in the terms of an impeachment, we will just have to live with that. By this time next week, we may have both the court and the committee vote. We can only hope for the best, plan for the worst." ; GANNON: Did the worst happen in terms of the support of the three Southern Democrats on the Judiciary Committee? NIXON: It happened, certainly, very dramatically, but I--I--I would say that in order to get the feeling of that particular day that it happened, it' ; s well to put the whole day into context. It was July the twenty-third. I went over to the office that morning, and we got a report out of Washington, a very disturbing one, not about Democrats, but about a Republican. Larry Hogan of Maryland was running for governor of Maryland in a primary. His campaign wasn' ; t getting off the ground. We had counted on him, he was a conservative Republican, but he had announced at an emotional press conference that he was going to vote for impeachment. He was a member of the Judiciary Committee. Well, that shook me. Now, our people in Washington say that they tried to make me feel better by saying that' ; ll--everybody was jumping on him for being so political. But I knew better. His colleagues in the House, watching what Larry was doing, when he was down at the grassroots running for governor, would say, " ; Well, if Nixon' ; s a liability to him, we better watch out. He might be a liability to us." ; And so I was worried about that, not because he had defected, but because others would be inf--influenced by the f--reasons he might have defected. Then came the afternoon. And then the real shocker came in. Bill Timmons, who was the head of our legislative group, called in. He said that we had lost all three Southern Democrats. I don' ; t know that I was particularly surprised, because I had sensed that things weren' ; t going right. But then Al Haig came in, and he said, " ; You know, we just had a message from one of Wall--Wallace' ; s people saying that George Wallace might be able to influence Congressman Flowers, who' ; s from the state of Alabama, on the Judiciary Committee, and if you' ; d call him, maybe that would do it, because he has great affection for you, and respect," ; and so forth. Well, I decided to call him. So, at three o' ; clock I picked up the phone. Operator got him in Montgomery, Alabama. He said at first it was very difficult for him to hear me. And finally, when the connection came through, he said, well, he hadn' ; t had a chance to really-- to study this whole matter. He said, " ; I' ; m praying for you." ; He says, " ; I' ; m s--very much so--sorry. I' ; m very sorry that this ordeal had to be brought upon you, but I don' ; t feel that I can really talk to Flowers because he might resent my doing so. If I change my mind, however, I' ; ll let you know." ; The call had taken only six-and-a-half minutes, but as I hung up the phone, I knew it was all over. I turned to Al Haig. I said, " ; Well, there goes the presidency." ; That night, incidentally, I put it in writing. I worked till over--oh, after two a.m. in the morning on a speech on the economy, my last major substantive speech as president, that I was giving in Los Angeles the next day. And at the top of my outline of that speech text, I wrote, " ; Lowest day of the presidency." ; But it wasn' ; t the lowest day. The worst was yet to come. The next morning, understandably, I didn' ; t wake up at my usual early hour. About nine o' ; clock, I woke up. I called the office and asked Al Haig how things were going. This is really the first time in this whole period that he sounded really down. He said, " ; Well, not good." ; He said, " ; The Supreme Court has just come down with the decision. It' ; s nine to nothing, no air in it whatever. We have to comply." ; So we decided we had to comply. So, under the circumstances, then-- GANNON: This was a decision about having to turn over tapes-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: --to the special prosecutor? NIXON: What had happened was the spresh--special prosecutor wanted s--not only sixty-four tapes but even more than that. We had resisted that. We felt that that was going too far, that it was a fishing expedition, and the Court held against us. GANNON: Wasn' ; t the June twenty-third, 1972, tape, the smoking gun tape, among these seventy-four? NIXON: It was. GANNON: And you knew that? NIXON: It was, that' ; s right. And I--I told Haig of my concern. I had told him about it before. I told him of my concern, and we both thought that Fred Bozart, our lawyer, should listen to it. He listened to it. He was concerned about it, and I--he called back and told Haig that he thought it would be very hard to explain it and so forth, having in mind the fact that the only mitigating--and it was a very substantial mitigating factor-- was that two weeks later I had said, " ; Go forward with your investigation," ; since the CIA had indicated that it was not concerned about the investigation revealing any of its operative--operations. So I said to Al Haig when we got that word, " ; Well, it looks pretty bad." ; He says, " ; No, we can cope with it." ; He was--he was a strong man, but, of course, we couldn' ; t, and didn' ; t. I should point out, however, that it was not the June twenty-third tape that brought me down, because the very next day, before the tape' ; d ever be made public--before it was made public, I was swimming in the Pacific at a--at a beach. As a matter of fact, it' ; s called the Red Beach. It' ; s the Marine Corps landing beach where they practice their amphibious landing, one of the great beaches of the world. And when I came in, and I--the phone rang in the trailer in which I was changing my clothes, and I put on my windbreaker with the presidential seal on--picked up the phone, and Ron Ziegler informed me that the Judiciary Committee had voted, as I had expected then, by a margin, with all three Southern Democrats voting for impeachment. That meant, in other words, there was no question that the full House would vote for impeachment. I didn' ; t have any particular feeling about it, though. I was prepared for it. I expected it. GANNON: You didn' ; t--you had to have some-- NIXON: Nope. Well-- GANNON: --feeling. NIXON: Well, if it had been a surprise, if it had been a surprise, I' ; d have had a feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I--you see, I did--I didn' ; t have any feeling about it, because the--the situation is--is--in a case like that is--and I--I must say that--let me explain how I oper--I always believe you must prepare yourself for the worst. Then, when it comes, you don' ; t get a shock from it. I knew the numbers. After all, I had served in the House. I had worked with the House in eight years as vice president. I had worked with them out of office, in office. I knew how they' ; d operate. I knew the minute that that Wallace call was finished was--it was all over. And--and Al Haig, when he said, " ; We can cope with this," ; and I said, " ; Well, in a way--only if there' ; s a miracle." ; But you know something about miracles in politics. Miracles don' ; t happen in politics. They don' ; t happen unless you make them happen. I' ; d made a miracle happen when I saved myself in the fund controversy way back in 1953. I made a miracle happen, after losing for president and losing for governor and reading off the press, by coming back. But now there was nothing that I could do to make that miracle happen. It was--reminded me of something that Tricia once said about the whole Watergate business. It was like trench warfare in World War I--charge after charge over the top, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions dying, only a few yards gained, and then lost. And that was the way it was with us with Watergate. We couldn' ; t gain anything. No matter what we did, there wasn' ; t going to be a miracle. We couldn' ; t make one happen. GANNON: So as you flew back to Washington from San Clemente, you had no hope whatever that you would survive as president for more than a matter of days or weeks, or months at most? NIXON: From the twenty-third of August on, I knew that-- GANNON: Of July. NIXON: Sorry. From the twenty-third of July on, I--I knew that we could not survive. However, when I got back to Washington, in my usual methodical way--people think it' ; s methodical and I guess it is--I decided I should put down the pros and cons of what options I had. And I had a sheet of paper on that which refreshed my memory--rather interesting when I read it today, so many years later. It indicated--one, I could resign now ; two, I could wait until the House voted impeachment and resign then ; or, three, I could, despite the House voting impeachment, go to trial in the Senate, which would take about six months. Now, resigning now was the option I didn' ; t want to do, above everything else, personally. I--I' ; m a fighter. I--I just didn' ; t want to quit. Also, I thought it would be an admission of guilt, which, of course, it was, and also I felt that it would set a terribly bad precedent for the future. I hoped no other president ever resigns under any circumstances. The second option was no option at all, to wait until the House voted impeachment, because what I would do then would be to put all of my good supporters on the spot and make them vote for impeachment, which they didn' ; t want to do. You don' ; t put them through that sort of thing. The third option, go through the Senate, with a hearing--I mean, a trial, I should say--for six months--I knew that that was unacceptable--unacceptable because from the standpoint of the country--the country couldn' ; t afford to have a crippled, half-time president, particularly in this time when--I recalled that, in 1973, when things weren' ; t b--as bad as they were now--the Soviet Union at that time was very difficult during that ' ; 73 war in the Mideast. I just couldn' ; t risk it, I felt. So, after making those notes, I, in my own mind, decided, " ; Well, there' ; s no choice." ; And so the next day, on the first day of August--this was a week before I finally made my resignation speech--I got in Haig and Ziegler and told them that I felt that there was no choice but to resign. Haig felt that, under the circumstances--that I probably should resign right away and leave town before the June twenty-third tape came out. Well, first, I didn' ; t--just wasn' ; t going to go skulking away like that, a--and Ziegler strongly recommended, well, I should take the time over the weekend to inform the family and also to see what the reaction to the tape was. I didn' ; t have any hope about the reaction, because I knew--I didn' ; t feel that they would see it in the context that I had--I felt it ought to be seen in. But that' ; s what we finally decided to do. GANNON: Some people, including people very close in your inner circle, later felt that General Haig was orchestrating a--your departure from at least this point, if not before. Do you see the fact that he--when you told him you were going to resign and were going to wait a couple of days to do it, and he suggested doing it right away--do you see that as supporting that theory at all? NIXON: Well, some of my very close friends feel that. I don' ; t agree with them. I--I' ; ve never felt that he was orchestrating it. I think all he orchestrated was the resignation when he knew that I was going to resign. And I think it was very clear on the first of August that the decision had been made. He knew that. And from then on, he felt he was carrying out my--my wishes, and if he orchestrated that, he was doing something that was very proper indeed. GANNON: Did you tell your family that you had decided to resign as early as the first of August? NIXON: Not till the next day. That, of course, was the most difficult thing to do of all. That night--this is the night that I told Haig and Ziegler that the decision had been made--Bebe Rebozo came up from Florida. I went out on the Sequoia with him. I told him, and--and I' ; ve never seen him--he' ; s rather swarthy in complexion anyway, with his Spanish background, and he just turns white. He says, " ; You can' ; t do it. You can' ; t do it, for the good of the country," ; and so forth. I said, " ; Well, you' ; ve got to help me with the family. And then--so the next day, I had to tell the family. I--I--it was a painful day, a very--I remember going over to the White House in the evening, and I was sitting in the Lincoln Sitting Room reading a few things, working on some correspondence and other things that simply had piled up, and had to be acted upon. Tricia came into the room. And I remember, when she came in, it sort of reminded me of other times she' ; d come in. She had a way, during the years before she was married, of sometimes just coming in the room when I would be working or reading there, and just sitting. She wouldn' ; t talk. She wouldn' ; t say anything. We kind of communicated in silence. That was her way, and it was mine. She just wanted to be near me when things were good, or, as a matter of fact, when they were tough. And so she came in, and I said, " ; Well, I' ; ve decided that we' ; re going to have to resign for the good of the country." ; And I said--she--she interrupted me. She says, " ; For the good of the country," ; sh--" ; you must not resign." ; She' ; s pretty firm, despite her rather fragile, frail appearance. And after I said, " ; No, I' ; m afraid it has to be done" ; --and then, unlike Julie, she has very great problem controlling her--she has no problem in controlling her emotions. She controls them very well. And she sort of got up, and she came over to me, put her arms around me, kissed me on the forehead, and tears coming into her eyes, and she said, " ; You' ; re the most decent man I' ; ve ever known." ; And I said, " ; Well, I just hope I haven' ; t let you down," ; but I knew I had. GANNON: I think we' ; ll break for lunch now. NIXON: Well, that went fairly fast. OFF SCREEN VOICE: O--okay. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0380/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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61 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 10, 1983, part 2.
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gannix_0380
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-06-10
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 10, 1983, part 3. gannix_0381 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|15(4)|63(8)|78(1)|88(11)|104(11)|122(4)|142(2)|157(10)|178(2)|198(2)|209(14)|222(7)|237(4)|261(9)|277(3)|289(4)|299(9)|314(7)|327(13)|344(2)|365(4)|380(14)|391(10)|406(9)|416(12)|430(3)|453(12)|466(7)|478(12)|494(8)|512(1)|522(14)|535(2)|549(12)|561(6)|576(6)|585(14)|611(1)|624(14)|634(14)|649(11)|662(6)|677(10)|696(5)|708(11)|719(2)|732(12)|743(4)|753(15)|767(4)|779(10)|793(2)|801(12)|815(16)|832(11)|846(14)|859(3) 0 https://youtu.be/8xk95JTH6Us YouTube video English 122 Power of the Media / Woodward and Bernstein You talk about the--the media having a vested interest in your impeachment and events having reached a point of no return, where, unless you were impeached, they were going to look very bad. Nixon discusses the power of the media in the United States and argues that it is easily abused. He also gives his opinions of Woodward and Bernstein and their source, Deep Throat. 571 Deciding to Resign / Visiting Camp David You've described your daughter--your daughter Tricia in the Lincoln Sitting Room that night. Nixon recounts sharing his decision to resign the presidency with his family and spending a weekend with them in Camp David. 859 Preparing to Resign the Presidency When you went back to Washington on the Monday, the transcript for the June twenty-third tape, the smoking gun tape, was released. Nixon discusses planning to resign from office and informing those close to him while maintaining secrecy within his cabinet to prevent leaks. Al Haig ; cabinet ; China ; David Eisenhower ; Gerald Ford ; Henry Kissinger ; information leak ; James R. Schlesinger ; Jim St. Clair ; Julie Eisenhower ; Ray Price ; resignation ; Ron Ziegler ; Rose Mary Woods ; smoking gun tape ; Tricia Cox Cox, Patricia, 1946- ; Eisenhower, David, 1948 - ; Eisenhower, Julie Nixon ; Finch, Edward F., 1946 - ; Ford, Gerald R., 1913-2006 ; Haig, Alexander Meigs, 1924-2010 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Price, Raymond K. (Raymond Kissam), 1930- ; Schlesinger, James R. ; St. Clair, James D., 1920-2001 ; Ziegler, Ronald L. (Ronald Louis), 1939-2003 1336 Final Days in the White House What was the family dinner like that night, Tuesday night? Nixon speaks about his last days in the White House and the final family dinner there. He recounts a letter that his daughter Julie left for him that evening. 1557 Family's Opinion on Resignation / Final White House Dinner Didn't your family, in fact, continue to argue, even the next day, against the-- Nixon speaks about the strongly negative reaction to his decision to resign the presidency by his friends and family. He also talks about photographs taken during the family's final evening in the White House. Camp David ; Colonel Ted Guy ; David Eisenhower ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Eddie Cox ; Grand Rabbi Yitzhak Aharon Korff ; Harvard ; Julie Eisenhower ; media ; New York ; Ollie Atkins ; Pat Nixon ; photographs ; Prisoners of War (POWs) ; resignation ; Rose Garden ; Rose Mary Woods ; Tricia Cox Atkins, Oliver F., 1916-1977 ; Cox, Edward Finch, 1946- ; Cox, Patricia, 1946- ; Eisenhower, David, 1948- ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Eisenhower, Julie Nixon ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 2083 Meetings with Henry Kissinger and Ron Ziegler One of the--one of the most memorable and--and subsequently controversial events of these days was your meeting with Henry Kissinger that night, which ended in your praying with him in the Lincoln Bedroom. Nixon discusses praying with Henry Kissinger and giving Ron Ziegler a tour of the White House after his last family dinner there. 2312 Meetings on Final Day as President On your--on the morning of your last day as president, you met with Vice President Ford. Nixon recalls meetings that he had with Gerald Ford, the congressional leadership, and his supporters in the Cabinet Room on his final day as president. 2771 After Resignation Speech / Signing Resignation What did you--what did you do after the speech? Nixon describes returning home for his final evening in the White House after giving his resignation speech. He recounts spending his last morning in the White House signing his resignation of the presidency to the secretary of state and saying goodbye to White House staff and friends. 3315 East Room Speech What do you recall from your--that East Room speech that last morning before you left the White House? Nixon describes the final speech that he gave in the East Room before leaving the White House and addresses the fact that he didn't mention Mrs. Nixon in the speech. Francis Anthony Nixon ; Hannah Milhous Nixon ; Julie Eisenhower ; Pat Nixon ; resignation ; Tricia Cox Cox, Patricia Nixon, 1946- ; Eisenhower, Julie Nixon ; Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885-1967 Interview GANNON: I will--yes--no, I' ; m going to ask that. NIXON: Now? GANNON: First--yes, first, but then we' ; ll pick up with the-- NIXON: With the Lincoln, yeah. GANNON: With [unintelligible] Lincoln. NIXON: And then the family. [Clears throat.] GANNON: You talk about the--the media' ; s vested interest in bringing you down--that they had reached a point of no return where they--they had to bring you down or suffer terrible embarrassment themselves. How strong is the media, really, in the final analysis? Can it accomplish something like bringing a president down? NIXON: Oh, yes. The media is--is a very strong-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, sorry. There' ; s a spot on the president' ; s right lapel. NIXON: [Clears throat.] GANNON: I was afraid of that. It' ; s the s-- NIXON: Which way? GANNON: It' ; s the--there' ; s a spot on your right lapel. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible} get it, Rog? NIXON: That' ; s right. Right there. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] GANNON: No, it' ; s--won' ; t--it' ; s-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] GANNON: --needs wet. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] I need moist--moisture. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Moisture. NIXON: That get it? OFF SCREEN VOICE: That' ; s it. OFF SCREEN VOICE: That' ; s it. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Good. That' ; s all. Keep going. GANNON: Got moisture. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Let' ; s take it from the top. Here we go. NIXON: [Clears throat.] OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Change your lights back. GANNON: You talk about the--the media having a vested interest in your impeachment and events having reached a point of no return, where, unless you were impeached, they were going to look very bad. In final analysis, how important, how powerful is the American media? Do they have the power to bring down a president that they don' ; t like? NIXON: Much more power than most people would like to think. I think we have to understand tha--is th--no, let' ; s start this again. Well, they have much more power than most people would like to think. When we think of the media in this country, the problem is that they have a sense of self-righteousness, a double standard, on issue after issue after issue. They can find everything wrong with somebody else, but they will not look inside and ever admit that they could be wrong themselves. And what was involved here in the Watergate thing was the unfairness of it. Oh, there was a legitimate thing to investigate, but they refused to balance it. They allowed their advocacy to get ahead of their reporting, which is their job to do. You know, President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, wrote about and warned against the power of the military-industrial complex. I didn' ; t get a chance to make a farewell address, but when I get old enough and decide to retire--and I' ; m not planning it at the moment--but when I get that old, if I make a farewell address, I think I would warn against the media-elitist complex. You know, the media is always talking about the imperial presidency, the power in the imperial presidency. I think we ought to hear a little bit of discussion of the imperial media and its power. You see, presidential power is limited, limited by the courts, limited by the Congress. The media' ; s power is unlimited. And some would say, " ; But what about libel suits?" ; Forget it. After the Supreme Court' ; s decision in Sullivan versus New York Times a few years ago, a public figure cannot collect in a libel suit against newspaper or television unless he can prove malice. And there' ; s no way that that' ; s going to be possible. GANNON: Isn' ; t the media s-- NIXON: So I would say that, as far as the media is concerned, all we can hope from them, if they' ; re going to be responsible, is self-analysis, self-criticism, and--and some of them are trying, with their ombudsmen and the rest. The other thing is competition. But what we see in terms of newspapers across the country is, more and more places, there' ; s only one paper. Take Washington, D.C. Since the Star left the scene, the Washington Post is the only major newspaper being printed in the most important capital in the world. I wouldn' ; t like to leave the fate of this country to the editors of the Washington Post. GANNON: Do you think that the First Amendment has been misused or abused by reporters? NIXON: Oh, no question about it. It' ; s used basically as a license. L--let' ; s face it--Sullivan versus New York Times is, in effect, a license to lie, because they can tell an untruth, print an untruth, which some of them consciously do if it' ; s going to sell newspapers or what-have-you, or win a prize. And then they can always get behind the barrier under that case of saying, " ; Well, I didn' ; t intend any malice. I had no malice." ; GANNON: Isn' ; t--that' ; s a terribly cynical approach, though, to people who are--who are doing their best, who are going to work, who are trying to--maybe trying to sell papers, certainly, but are trying to tell the truth. NIXON: Oh, the--let me say right at the outset of this conversation, I made it clear that I was not speaking personally. I was not speaking generally. I am simply speaking of what I have found to be an unfortunate majority at the present time. I think it could change. There are a lot of very good, responsible reporters, particularly in the writing press--not yet that much in television, because television is so consumed with ratings and the rest. They' ; ll do almost anything to get a story. GANNON: Do you count Woodward and Bernstein among the--or which of--in which of the two camps of reporters do you count Woodward and Bernstein? NIXON: Well, it would be obvious, see, where I would count them. I think that their reporting--I have not read their book, from--but from those that were interviewed and then misquoted in their books, I' ; d say that it was not that responsible. It was advocacy journalism. GANNON: Is there any way to--to get some kind of a--a handle on this situation? Should the media be investigated? It--should it be controlled? NIXON: No. I may disagree, for example, with what some president does with his power, but I don' ; t want to abolish the presidency, or I don' ; t want to control it. The same is true with the press. I believe in a free press. I do not want government control under any circumstances or government censorship of either radio, television, or newspapers. But I am simply suggesting here that all of the media should look within themselves, look through that microscope at themselves, look in the mirror now and then, rather than looking out there to others. GANNON: Do you think there was or is a " ; Deep Throat" ; ? NIXON: I haven' ; t the slightest idea. The--I' ; ve read in newspaper accounts the speculation about this one or that one. They even thought Al Haig was Deep Throat. That' ; s ridiculous, of course. And if all the charges as--are as ridiculous as that, I would gather it was probably a composite. In other words, it might have been simply a fictitious character that they had to use in order to give more credibility to th--what they were trying to report. GANNON: In terms of the enormous credibility and fascination that Deep Throat assumed as a result of that reporting, if it is in fact a composite, or if he doesn' ; t exist at all, is that a serious abuse of--or how serious an abuse of journalistic power is that? NIXON: It' ; s a terribly serious abuse. It' ; s making i--something up. It is starting with a point of view and then developing the facts--the fiction, in other words--to make the point of view survive. In other words, it' ; s basically making fact out of fiction-- GANNON: Do you-- NIXON: --and that' ; s wrong. GANNON: Do you think that, without the character of Deep Throat, the Watergate story would have built and continued to build the way it did? NIXON: It might have, because, as I said, while they stuck the knife in and twisted it pretty good, we gave the knife to them. So, under the circumstances, that could have happened. On the other hand, there' ; s no question but that that kind of reporting, with the enormous credibility that people gave to it--that here was this sinister individual, an inside mole who was reporting to the newspapers and so forth, and giving them all the scoop--that made it appear all very credible. GANNON: You' ; ve described--you' ; ve said that Mrs. Nixon was reading the book, or--or excerpts from the--the Woodward-Bernstein book The Final Days when she had her stroke, or you' ; ve been reported as saying that. Is that true? NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: Do you see any cause and effect there? NIXON: I couldn' ; t give a medical opinion, but my gut reaction is that it had an enormous impact. Certainly, as far as I' ; m concerned, I have nothing but contempt for them. GANNON: You' ; ve described your daughter--your daughter Tricia in the Lincoln Sitting Room that night. How--how did Mrs. Nixon learn about and how sh--how did she react to your decision to resign? NIXON: Well, the way she learned about it was through Bebe and Rose Woods. We thought that it was important that everybody concerned, if possible, get the word and be able to think about it before we all got together. And so she came down--we all met in the Lincoln Sitting Room, as I recall. She came down with Tricia, Julie, Eddie Cox, and David, and I had the twenty-third tape transcript brought over, because I thought that it was important that they see just what the problems were, because that was causing concern. Let me say, had there not been the twenty-third tape transcript, we would have still had to resign due to the fact that, before that transcript ever was made public, as we know, the three Democrats had been lost on the committee. But, nevertheless, this was the final blow, the final nail in the coffin, although you don' ; t need another nail if you' ; re already in the coffin, which we were. And so they read it. They thought about it. Eddie and David are both lawyers, as you know, and they said, " ; Well, it depends on how you ascribe the motives." ; And they made the point, which I tried to make, too, that what I did two weeks later indicated that, while at the time we were trying to get the F--the CIA to at least try to stop these--FBI' ; s investigation, that at a later point I made it clear that if there were no CIA concerns that--then the FBI should go forward. But nevertheless they realized that it was a problem. I then indicated to all concerned that I felt that I had no choice but to resign. And I said, " ; I have to resign for the--the good of the--of the country." ; And Eddie Cox made a very interesting observation. He said, " ; No." ; He said, " ; You' ; ve got to realize that today the most important function a president has in the field of foreign policy. And even though you would be crippled, agreed, and could serve only half-time, with your experience, that would be better than having Ford." ; He felt Ford was very competent, but he said he had no experience, or not as much experience, in foreign policy. And then I went on to say, " ; Well, but you' ; ll have Kissinger. He' ; ll be there." ; He says, " ; Look. Kissinger' ; s brilliant, but mark my word, unless he has somebody with him who knows as much as he does and will back him up, he won' ; t be as effective." ; Well, under the circumstances, that sort of finished that subject. We decided to go to--think it over and go to Camp David for the weekend. GANNON: How did Mrs. Nixon react during this, when she learned of your decision? NIXON: She was very quiet about it, listening to the others, which she usually does. But she came down very emphatically against resigning. I mean, we have to remember that during the fund crisis, I was the one that felt that, " ; Well, I ought to give my resignation to Eisenhower," ; and she says, " ; You can' ; t do it," ; says, " ; You can' ; t do it, because of its effect on the children. You can' ; t do it because Eisenhower' ; ll lose the election." ; She says, " ; These people are just dumb who think that if he does this to you that they' ; re going to be able to survive and get your supporters to support them in the final campaign." ; And on this occasion she was a fighter to the last. She was the last to give up. She was the last to give up in the fund thing, the last to give up in 1960, and she was the last to give up this time. Very hard for her. GANNON: It must have been a very eerie weekend at Camp David, with all of you there with this enormous thing hanging over you, knowing that the-- NIXON: It was. GANNON: --the decision had been made. NIXON: It was an eerie weekend. Well, we saw a movie, and we took a walk on the paths up there, and-- GANNON: Do you remember what the movie was? NIXON: I don' ; t remember the movie, no. I--I didn' ; t much care for the movies. They were just a good way to relax. It wasn' ; t Patton. It was something else, I think some--something that one of the girls had picked. I remember I went for the swim in the pool, and there' ; s a sauna right next to it, and Eddie Cox was in the sauna with me. And he took that place, because we weren' ; t discussing it out in the room there. We wanted to sort of make it a pleasant last weekend. We thought it was going to be that. Eddie Cox says this--" ; I want to tell you again--I know you' ; ve made this decision." ; But he said, " ; But I want to tell you that I know these people that are after you, because I--and you' ; ve got to be sure that you realize what you' ; re up against." ; He said, " ; There' ; s only one thing for you to do." ; And I said, " ; What is it?" ; He says, " ; Fight ' ; em! Fight ' ; em! Fight ' ; em!" ; GANNON: When you went back to Washington on the Monday, the transcript for the June twenty-third tape, the smoking gun tape, was released. What--what was the reaction? NIXON: Well, I should point out that before it was released, a statement had been made, which Ray Price, who had started work on the resignation speech on Thursday, and then I had turned him off to do this work--he had worked on a statement on this. And Jim Sinclair and the other lawyers had been up to get a statement out accompanying the tape. Well, Al Haig brought that to me the last day at Camp David to look at it. When I saw the statement, I was really almost horrified, because it made a very good case for the lawyers, which it should, saying they were not informed of this prior to the time they made their presentation to the committee, but it made a very poor c--case for me, their client, by not emphasizing, as I thought, enough what I had done two weeks later. I mentioned this to Al Haig, and I' ; d written out a few words to correct it, and for the first time he--he got a little abrupt with me, and I understand why. He said, " ; Nope. We can' ; t do a thing more with it. If we don' ; t take it just the way they fixed it, they' ; re going to jump ship." ; I said, " ; Well, to hell with it. Let ' ; em write anything they want. I' ; ve made my decision anyway." ; So, when we got back to Washington, he knew the decision was made, as he' ; d knowed it--known it before, and we decided that night to go out for one last ride on the Sequoia. That also was a rather eerie ride, I may say. We talked about everything but what Tricia has called, quote, " ; the subject," ; end quote. We talked about a movies that Julie had seen with David. I don' ; t even remember what it was. We talked about how Rose was--who--she was with us during these last days--how she was handling some impertinent inquiries from the press in her usual, very effective way. And so the evening ended rather pleasantly, and I went down below to stretch out, and because I' ; d had [a] pretty hard weekend, I thought, thinking about all these things. Rose took the call from Al Haig with regard to the reaction to the tape, and she came into the r--bedroom down below where I was stretched out, and she read from her shorthand notes. It' ; s about as we expected. I kind of winced as some of the names were read off of those that had left now--left my support. I understood it, but they--I sort of--I felt--I looked back to the times I' ; ve campaigned for them and worked for them and supported them and written them and--kind of tough, although I did understand it. Didn' ; t hold it against them. And--but then she read off that the Cabinet, however, was standing firm for the most part, and then she left the room. And so I just turned off the light and closed my eyes. GANNON: At the Cabinet meeting the next morning--you told the assembled Cabinet on the Tuesday morning that you weren' ; t going to resign. Why did you do that if--had you changed your mind? NIXON: No. I told them quite deliberately. I knew the cabinet well. I knew, from what I had heard from Al Haig and others, that some of them felt that they would like an opportunity to present their views and, in effect, to lobby me to make a decision in that way. I respected the Cabinet, but I wasn' ; t about to allow them to get me to resign. It had to be my own decision, taken in my own way, at the right time. That was one reason. I didn' ; t want to give them that opportunity. The second reason was even more important, however. I could not afford a leak. There couldn' ; t be a period of even forty-eight hours, because the resignation couldn' ; t take place, I knew, in at least a couple of days, in which it was known that I was going to resign. And I knew that as far as the cabinet was concerned, as good as they were, that there' ; d be a leak out of there in that big a meeting. I know that many of them probably didn' ; t appreciate the fact that I didn' ; t tell them, just as many of them didn' ; t appreciate it when I didn' ; t tell them I was going to China. But, on the other hand, there are times when you have to keep your counsel, and I felt that this was one of those times. I regretted it, because I would like to have told them. But I didn' ; t think it was the proper thing to do. Right after the Cabinet meeting, I asked Henry to come in, and I told him, of course, because we had to inform foreign governments and all that sort of thing. He said, well, he f--he supported the decision, he regretted it, but we--he simply--it just wasn' ; t--it was asking too much to ask me to be " ; dishonored," ; as he put it, by having to go to trial for six months before the Senate. GANNON: Had you told Vice President Ford, or informed him, that the decision was imminent and that he might become president on very short notice? NIXON: Yes. That--he' ; d--that--was kept informed throughout, not by me, but by Haig. And then, after this particular day, I, of course, by telephone, discussed the matter with him. GANNON: Are you aware that after this cabinet meeting, Secretary of Defense Schlesinger went back to the Pentagon and met with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then issued an order that no alert, or alert of American forces, could be declared without his countersignature, and he' ; s since said it was because--or it' ; s since been said that he said it was because he feared your stability and that you would either use a foreign crisis to maintain yourself in office, or that you would use domestic troops in order to main--retain yourself in office as, in effect, a coup. NIXON: Incredible. GANNON: Why did he think that, though? NIXON: I don' ; t know. I don' ; t know. I have great respect for him. I appointed him to several very important positions, as everybody knows. But I can' ; t understand why he would do that, because that just isn' ; t the way I' ; d operate. There--there was nothing in my mind whatever like that. I had made the decision, actually, to resign on the twenty-third of August. It was just a question of, frankly, programming it the right way. GANNON: Does it frighten--that for three days, although you didn' ; t know it, if for some reason you had had to declare an alert it wouldn' ; t have happened because of the intervention of this order? NIXON: Oh, I think it would have happened. Weakened as I was then, let me say, I had handled Schlesinger before when he didn' ; t want to send the planes to Israel. And I said, " ; Look. You send them. Send everything that flies, damn it." ; And he did. And in this case, I would have shaken him up pretty damn good. I' ; m ss--I' ; m glad it wasn' ; t necessary. GANNON: When did you inform General Haig that you had actually reached this decision? NIXON: Well, that afternoon--the--the afternoon after the Cabinet meeting, I had Haig and Ziegler come over, and I said, " ; Well, the things are moving very fast now. I think that we should do it on Thursday," ; and I then proceeded to give several suggestions with regard to the content of the resignation speech--passed them on to Ray Price. Things were moving very fast. GANNON: This was on the Tuesday afternoon? NIXON: This was the Tuesday afternoon, and I said to General Haig that--that I would resign, but it would be with dignity and with no rancor. And he said, " ; You will be as worthy" ; --he said, " ; your exit will be as worthy as your opponents are unworthy." ; And then I thought a minute, and I said, " ; Well, Al, I really screwed it up, didn' ; t I?" ; He didn' ; t have to answer. GANNON: What was the family dinner like that night, Tuesday night? NIXON: Very quiet. We didn' ; t talk that much about the situation. Let me say Mrs. Nixon was very perceptive, however. I learned later that, after our night on the Sequoia, that even though they hadn' ; t been officially told the decision was final, she had started to sort the clothes and start the packing. Incidentally, for three days, from Monday night until we left on Friday morning, she didn' ; t sleep at all--packing five-and-a-half years of clothes and other mementos preparatory to leaving. With us sometimes, as it is between people that are very close, you don' ; t have to say it publicly, or even privately. Things unspoken say it even more strongly. GANNON: That night, after you had been working in the Lincoln Sitting Room, you got back to your room, and, as you write in your memoirs, there was a note on your pillow. NIXON: Well, as a matter of fact, even more interesting--another amusing point. Monday night, after we got back from the ride on the Sequoia, I--I just couldn' ; t sleep, and I--for--understandably, I guess. And so I went down to the Lincoln Sitting Room, about two o' ; clock in the morning, and I lit a fire. It was the middle of the summer, but the air conditioning was on. I always lit fires in the middle of August--it didn' ; t matter. And I sat back, lights off, enjoying the fire, and two men burst into the room, wearing overalls and so forth, and they said, " ; The fire alarm has gone off!" ; Apparently I had not opened the ventilators that--the smoke was out. And so they fixed it and fumbled around and so forth and so on, and they started to leave the room. And the younger one of the two sort of turned, rather deferentially, and said, " ; Mr. President, we just want you to know we' ; re praying for you." ; Then, after the Tuesday night dinner, which was family dinner, and Mrs. Nixon made it very pleasant for us and had the dogs come in and do their usual begging at the White House table and so forth, and we joked about that, but she, too--like me, she' ; d had a lot of practice going through crises, knew how to handle it. And then I worked again in the Lincoln Sitting Room, working on my resignation speech then until very late. Julie hadn' ; t been there at dinner, because she had had to be out with a--a celebration that David' ; s parents were having. I got back into my room, and there was a note on my pillow. GANNON: You ha--you' ; ve reprinted it in your memoirs. I have a copy, if you would read it. NIXON: She often wrote me notes, and she' ; d leave them around. It said, " ; Daddy, I love you. Whatever you do, I will support. I am very proud of you. Please wait a week or even ten days before you make this decision. Go through the fire just a b--little bit longer. You are so strong. I love you." ; Signed, " ; Julie." ; And then a P.S. " ; Millions support you." ; Like her mother, she was a fighter. If anything would have changed my mind, believe me, that would have done it. But it was too late. GANNON: Didn' ; t your family, in fact, continue to argue, even the next day, against the-- NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: --resignation-- NIXON: The following day-- GANNON: --or at least against doing it so soon? NIXON: Against doing it at all, as a matter of fact. They wanted me to delay, to take the heat a little longer, but they felt that in any event it was the wrong thing to do--wrong for the country, as well as for myself personally. David and--and Eddie came in the next day. They were among the first visitors. It was a very busy day, the Wednesday before my last full day as president, and--and I mentioned to David the point that I had made about the party, because I knew he was very interested in politics. And I said, " ; You know, I' ; ve got to do this for the party, because I' ; m a liability." ; And he said, " ; You don' ; t owe the party a damn thing!" ; He said, " ; That' ; s the way Grandpa th--thought, and that' ; s the way you should think." ; He said, " ; After all, you rescued the party from oblivion after 1964. You ran way ahead of them in 1972. You do what' ; s best for you and what' ; s best for the country." ; And Eddie Cox had a little different approach. He made the point that it was vitally important for me to continue in office because of the foreign policy considerations. Is there something else there? GANNON: The tragedy. NIXON: Yeah. The--sorry. And then Eddie Cox came in right after him. Boy, these two boys, they' ; re--they' ; re going to be great advocateses if they ever get before a jury. He said that--he--that--came back to the theme that he had started at Camp David, about those that were in the special prosecutor' ; s office. He says, " ; Look. I know these people. I went to Harvard with some of them. I served with some of them in the New York attorney' ; s office after I graduated from Harvard." ; He says, " ; They' ; re very smart. They' ; re very tough. And they hate you. They hate you with a passion. If you resign, they' ; re not going to let up on you. They will harass you and hound you for the rest of the days of your life." ; I didn' ; t know what to say. I said, " ; Well, it' ; s kind of like the Greek tragedy." ; I said, " ; If it stops in the middle of the second act, the audience throws chairs onto the stage. And all you he--ha--have to do is to recognize that whatever the outcome, you' ; ve got to see it through to the end." ; But I was very proud of the way they presented their case. GANNON: A lot of people feel strongly that one of the most serious crimes of Watergate in a way was a--was a crime of the heart, and it was that you let Julie go out and continue to defend you after you must have known that--that--that--that your case was indefensible. Do you have a feeling about that? NIXON: I was, frankly, not as aware of that as many people would think. I wasn' ; t reading the news summaries at that time, and she never spoke to me about it. Frankly, if she had asked me whether she should go out, I would have told her not to do it. GANNON: The--this night when the--when the decision was finally irrevocable and people accepted it, although they didn' ; t like it, in your family, you had one last dinner. And you asked the White House photographer to be there. Why did you--such a private person as yourself, why did you--how could you ask a photographer to be present, to intrude, at this most intimate moment? NIXON: It certainly sounds uncharacteristic, but, on the other hand, I should point out that Ollie Atkins we considered a friend. He had been with us for many, many years. He had taken pictures of the youngsters for the Saturday Evening Post when they were only that high. We all called him Ollie, and he called the kids by their first names and so forth and so on. The second thing was that I just had a feeling that it was important that the event be recorded. As I said to Tricia and Julie and Mrs. Nixon, I said, " ; After all, there will come a time, years from now, when you will want to see what we went through. And so this is only for our private purposes." ; At least, I thought it was private at that point. GANNON: As you know, nothing--nothing from that period was private, and we have the photographs. Can you describe some of them? NIXON: Well, the-- GANNON: There' ; s one of you with Tricia in the Rose Garden. NIXON: The way that came about was that I got over to the residence after this rather long day, in which I had seen not only Eddie and David but others as well who came in to plead their case. I remember Rabbi Korff coming in. He' ; s like an Old Testament prophets. He urged me to reconsider. He said that " ; It would be a sin against history to allow these jackals in the media and this cabal in the Congress to drive you from office. Don' ; t do it. Don' ; t do it." ; And then another thing that really tore me right to my heartstrings was when Rose came in. She, incidentally, was wearing a pink dress. She always wore her pink dress when she wanted to be defiant to those that were our critics, and she said she' ; d just got a telephone call from Colonel Guy, one of the P.O.W.s--I think he' ; d been a P.O.W. for five years. She said he was in tears, virtually, and he says, " ; Please tell him not to resign. Tell him he didn' ; t give up on us, and we' ; ll never give up on him." ; Pretty tough to listen to that and hang in to the other decision. But I had made it, and that was that. But, anyway, when I arrived in the room, I knew that it was pretty tense. I can always tell with Mrs. Nixon. I remembered at the time of the fund, when we were in Portland just before going down to make the broadcast, she had a terrible, severe pain in her neck. She gets a pain in her neck and very stiff when under tension, and this time I could see the th--throbbing. But when she saw me, she put on a great act. I guess it was an act. She got up, and she came up and threw her arms around me. She said, " ; We' ; re all very proud of you, Daddy." ; Well, I didn' ; t know quite what to say. And Ollie, fortu--fortunately for me, for my emotions, stepped in, and he said, " ; You know, I think it would be nice if we could get a picture of Mrs. Nixon and you in the Rose Garden." ; And she said, " ; No, Ollie. That' ; s too much. I just can' ; t do it." ; And Tricia said, " ; I' ; ll go with you, Daddy." ; So I went down with Tricia to the Rose Garden. It was, incidentally, quite appropriate that she go, because we were able to think back to a happier time, 1971, three years before, when she and Eddie were married in the Rose Garden. We talked about that wedding, what a beautiful and wonderful occasion it was for all of us. And I must say, as I looked at Tricia, she was as beautiful--I think more so-- then and even now than she was then. So then we went back upstairs, and we had a bite to eat. Nobody was very hungry. I can' ; t even remember what we had that night. It was good, but not sensational. It could have been sensational, and we wouldn’t have known. And then I felt that probably we ought to have a family picture, and--because our favorite White House picture had been of the whole family, for formal purposes, distributed during the campaign. And so I-- GANNON: Which was your favorite picture? NIXON: The favorite picture was of the whole family, where both couples and Mrs. Nixon and me and either--on either side. So I said to--I told Ollie that I would--that we would have the picture, and I put on a--somewhat of a false front, and bravado and tried to arrange it in my usual way. " ; You stand here, you stand here. Stand accordion-like so that you won' ; t be cut out of the picture." ; And Ollie, mercifully, was quick, because we were all uptight. Tears were brimming in virtually everybody' ; s eyes, and then, after he snapped that picture, Julie just couldn’t hold in the tears any longer. She rushed over to me and threw her arms around me. She said, " ; I love you so much, Daddy." ; Well, by that time, I couldn' ; t say much either. GANNON: One of the--one of the most memorable and--and subsequently controversial events of these days was your meeting with Henry Kissinger that night, which ended in your praying with him in the Lincoln Bedroom. Do you remember that night? NIXON: Oh, I remember it very well. And he remembers it very well, too, because he' ; s written about it, as I have. What happened is that he came over, and we had to discuss the sending of messages to people around the world we dealt with. There were--I wanted to assure them all that President Ford was a strong man, that he had my total confidence, and that he supported our foreign policy. And so we worked on some of those messages, and then we reminisced about some of the great events of the past. We reminisced, for example, about, particularly, the meeting in that very room three years before, when we got the message about the trip to China, and so I walked down the hall to the kitchen and the same bottle of Courvoisier that we had toasted from three years ago when we got that historic news I found there. Nobody had drunk any th--out of it since then. I brought it back with a couple of snifter glasses, and we proposed the toast, not just to the past but to the future. I must say, we weren' ; t quite as elated this time as we were in--Henry, in his rather gruff way, but very sincere way--he said, " ; If they continue to harass you," ; he said, " ; I will resign, and I will tell the reason why." ; And then I started to esc--escort him out and almost by emotion--right next to the Lincoln Sitting Room is the Lincoln Bedroom, which, incidentally, used to be the Cabinet Room at one point, or the office. And I said, " ; Henry, just wait a minute here." ; I said, " ; On special occasions in times past, for example before we went to China, before I had a major speech or a major press conference, before we went to Russia, I would stop in this room and have a moment of silent prayer, because I just sort of gathered strength just from being in this room where Lincoln had been." ; And I asked him to join me, and we knelt quietly, in the Quaker fashion, for a couple of seconds. Got up--I escorted him out. A few minutes later, I felt a little embarrassed about it, because I thought he might have been embarrassed. And I called on the phone, and I said, " ; Henry, you know that was a very private matter, and I hope it didn' ; t embarra--." ; He says, " ; Not at all." ; He said, " ; This isn' ; t going to leak." ; Of course it did. I was not surprised. GANNON: Were you hurt? NIXON: No. I was beyond the point of being hurt then. GANNON: Later, after that meeting, Ron Ziegler came over to go over some of the--the details of the-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --upcoming speech. NIXON: And then, when--after we-- GANNON: Do you remember that? NIXON: That was--that was not way past midnight, and as Ron was leaving--you know, he had been a loyal f--fellow and so forth and so on, and I sort of thought, " ; You know, I' ; ve really never given him a tour of the upstairs." ; He' ; d seen it, of course, but I wanted him to see it through my eyes. So I had all of the lights turned on in the Queen' ; s Bedroom, in the Lincoln Bedroom, and in the yellow oval room, and so forth and so on. And I walked through the rooms and showed them all to him, and explained a little about the history, and finally took him to the elevator. He seemed to be quite moved by it, and he just said, simply--he said, " ; You' ; ve had a great presidency, sir." ; GANNON: On your--on the morning of your last day as president, you met with Vice President Ford. What was that meeting like? NIXON: Tough for him, and tougher for me. We had worked together for many years. He came to the Congress only a year after I did. And we had fought in many good battles. We had won most, and lost some as well. I told him I thought the country would be in good hands. I told him that it was very important, I felt, for him to keet Hen--keep Henry Kissinger. He agreed. He said he thought we had a fine Cabinet. And then, as we were leaving, I said, " ; I' ; m going to tell you something." ; I said, " ; I remember so well the last c--one of the last conversations I had with President Eisenhower, as a matter of fact, the last conversation I had with him before I was inaugurated. He called me on the phone. He said he wanted to wish me well, and then he went on to say, and his voice broke a bit when he said it--he said, " ; You know, I have only one regret on this great day. This is the last time I can ever call you Dick, Mr. President." ; And I said, " ; Jerry, this is the last time I' ; ll call you Jerry, Mr. President." ; Brought a tear or two to his eyes--I think to mine, too. We shook hands. He left. GANNON: Later in the day, General Haig and Ron Ziegler came in and had brought word of a meeting with the special prosecutor, Jaworsky, in which he had said that he thought you were making the right decision to resign, but that--that there would be no deals. How did you respond to that? NIXON: I don' ; t think it was quite that there would be no deals. As a matter of fact, it was put in a way that he was implying that he would try to do what he could to see to it that there was no further prosecution or harassment and so forth. And based on the previous record, I didn' ; t have much hope that he would accomplish anything. But what irritated me about it was that he th--apparently had coupled the two--that I was resigning so that he would la--lay off of me. I wasn' ; t doing it for that. I--I--I--I sort of--when I-- said--uncharacteristically in that period in which I was trying to control emotions, I sort of blew my stack a little, and I said, " ; You know, suppose you go to prison." ; I said, " ; After all, some of the greatest wor--books have been written in prison. Look at Gandhi. Look at Lenin." ; I don' ; t think either Lenin or Gandhi would appreciate being coupled like that, but I did at that moment. Then afterwards, I said to Ron Ziegler--I said, " ; Ron" ; --he was beginning to be rather introspective at the moment--I said, " ; How can you really support a quitter? Y--say--I know I' ; ve got weaknesses, but I' ; ve never been a quitter." ; [I] said, " ; Let me tell you what happened to me in my first year as a freshman in college. I went out for track--wasn' ; t fast enough and didn' ; t have the wind enough to do too well, but I ran the mile. And I remember I was in a race, and I was running in last place--no way I could win it--but I wasn' ; t about to be last, and I remember that I sprinted the last fifty yards and finished next-to-last. I just wasn' ; t about to be a quitter." ; GANNON: Do you have any special recollections of the two meetings--you had one with the congressional leadership just before you went to make your resignation speech--one with the congressional leadership, and then one with your supporters from Congress in the Cabinet Room. NIXON: Well, the congressional leadership came over to see me in the EOB, and it was a very, shall I say, cool meeting--understandably so. I explained to them what I had intended to do. I expressed my s--appreciation for their understanding, for working with me. It was very brief, because these were not particularly people that were--I was very close to. I remember the most understanding one seemed to be--the two. One was Carl Albert. When he came in, he says, " ; Look, I hope you don' ; t think that I was responsible for this." ; As you know, it was Tip O' ; Neill, who was not at this meeting, who had been the lead horse in leading the charge for impeachment. And Jim Eastland was the other. He didn' ; t say much, but you could just see the profound sympathy in the man. GANNON: Who were the unsympathetic ones? NIXON: I wouldn' ; t say they were unsympathetic. I think, as a matter of fact--let me put it directly. It was hard for me, but it was hard for them, too--for Hugh Scott, that I had known for many years, and Johnny Rhodes, that I had known for many years. Mike Mansfield--I remember so well. I said, " ; Well, Mike, I' ; ll miss our breakfasts." ; And he was puffing on his pipe. He just nodded. But as a--looking back on it, I think what happened was that they--they felt a little embarrassed about even being there, embarrassed because it was such a difficult time. And so I closed the meeting mercifully as fast as I could and then went over to the meeting with my supporters. GANNON: Do you remember that? NIXON: The meeting with supporters was in the Cabinet Room. The Cabinet Room normally seats about twenty, and you can put another ten around if you can. This time they crowded fifty-five into it. They had to pull my chair out from the table in order to let me sit down in order to get everybody around it. It was the most emotional meeting, I guess, that we had, even more emotional than the ones with the family, because with the family, we had the understanding and so forth--the--the quiet understanding--we didn' ; t let our emotions get away. But you could just feel the emotion rising and rising. At first, the room was hot, because so many people were in it. I talked about what we had been through, going back over twenty-five, thirty years, the campaigns we had been through. There were Democrats and Republicans there. I expressed appreciation particularly for their support during the tough days in Vietnam, the support of my China initiative, the support on other tough issues. I don' ; t think they were paying much attention to what I said. They f--just felt the tension in the room. I looked across the table, and directly across from me--Les Arends, the whip on the Republican side, my friend for twenty-five years--he started to cry, and he put his head down on his arms and just sobbed. A--and I just can' ; t stand seeing somebody else cry. So I just sort of abruptly quit talking. I choked up. I said, " ; I just hope I haven' ; t let you down." ; Of course, I knew I had, and somebody pulled the chair back, and I left the room. Well, I went into the little room aw--away from the Oval Office. The broadcast was to be there for the speech, and I had to speak in fifteen minutes. And Al Haig came in. He--very concerned, because--wondered if I' ; d get up for it. I apologized to him. I said, " ; Al," ; I said, " ; that' ; s the first time I' ; ve shown any emotion, as you know, but I just can' ; t stand seeing other people cry." ; He said, " ; Mr. President, every man in that room was deeply moved." ; I don' ; t know how I got myself together, but I did, and went out and read the speech. And that was the resignation speech of Thursday night. GANNON: What did you--what did you do after the speech? NIXON: Well, after the speech, I went over to the residence. Henry was very, very thoughtful. He--he came up to me, and he said he' ; d like to walk to the residence with me. He said, " ; I' ; ve always done this after the big--the important speeches." ; And as we got to the door of the residence, he said, " ; Mr. President, history is going to record that you were a great president." ; I said, " ; Henry, that' ; ll depend on who writes the history." ; I went upstairs, and all the family was gathered in the West Hall. And as I came in, David said, " ; I don' ; t see how you did it! I don' ; t see how you did it!" ; because he had seen the text in advance. And then suddenly they all got up, and they came around, just surrounded me. It was sort of a huddle, sort of a family embrace, saying nothing, and saying everything. And then Tricia said, " ; Daddy!" ; Said, " ; You' ; re--you' ; re wet! Your coat' ; s wet through!" ; And I began to have a chill, and what had happened was that the room had been so hot and the tension was so great that I was perspiring clear through the suit--the same suit, incidentally, that I had worn when I had gone to Moscow and spoken on television to the Russian people just in 1972. Well, soon the chill went away, and I went down to the Lincoln Room and made a few calls to people. Heard the chanting outside. Reminded me of the Vietnam days, except this time the chant was " ; Jail to the Chief! Jail to the Chief!" ; Didn' ; t bother me, however. You know, after all, I' ; d been heckled by experts. GANNON: What--how did you spend that last--or how did you end that last night? NIXON: Well, by the end of the--I--I made calls to people saying goodbye, some of them that I had not been able to see earlier or speak to. And at about two o' ; clock in the morning, I had Manolo come in, and he--I told him to turn off all the lights. And at about that time, I walked from the Lincoln Bedroom down to my own bedroom in the dark. I wasn' ; t afraid of stumbling. I knew every inch of that house. After all, it had been home for five-and-a-half years. Went to bed. Didn' ; t sleep very well. And I woke up with a start the next morning, the last day, wondering if I' ; d overslept, and I looked at my watch. It was only four o' ; clock. Well, I tossed and turned. Then I got up and I walked into the kitchen--thought I' ; d get a bite to eat, and Johnny Johnson, one of the White House butler, was there, and I said, " ; Johnny, what are you doing here so early?" ; He said, " ; It isn' ; t early, Mr. President." ; He said, " ; It' ; s almost six o' ; clock." ; And I looked at my watch--as a matter of fact, it' ; s the same watch I have on here, and it' ; s one of those watches, you know, with the battery in it that' ; s supposed to run for two years. The battery had run out, worn out, at four o' ; clock the last day I was in office. By that time I was worn out, too. So, in any event, I had Johnny--I said, " ; Johnny, I' ; m going to have something different." ; This is about the only really different thing that I did that day from my usual habit. Usually I have a very simple breakfast. For years, I would just have orange juice, cereal, and a glass of milk, or papaya, cereal, and a glass of milk. That' ; s all I had--the same thing day after day for five and a half years, because I' ; m not supposed to have eggs, because of high chlolesterol--cholesterol, or some foolish reason, and so forth and so on. Said, " ; Johnny, I want you to fix me one of my favorite dishes." ; And so what he did was to make up some corned beef hash with poached eggs. I must say, it was a little too heavy for me to eat much of it, but I enjoyed having it. Went back down to the Lincoln Room, and Al Haig sort of knocked on the door. I think it was perhaps, for him, the most difficult meeting we had, and for me it wasn' ; t easy. He brought one piece of paper. There was one line on it. He said, " ; You know, we forgot to do this. Would you sign it now?" ; " ; I hereby resign the office of president of the United States." ; I signed it. He took it out. Then I proceeded to work on my farewell remarks, which were going to be extemporaneous. As you know, all extemporaneous speeches, however, require an enormous amount of preparation. And so I worked on that speech until it was time to go down. GANNON: How did Mrs. Nixon bear up on this last morning? NIXON: Well, after--after we--after Haig had left, and then he came over again to--for a last chat, and I finished my remarks and tried to get them in my head. You see, I' ; d made this speech without any notes. That was--had been my usual practice. And I walked down to the hall there, and we had to say goodbye first to the White House staff. They' ; re wonderful people, you know. They' ; d served us for five-and-a-half years with great dedication and great competence. They' ; re all members of our family. As a matter of fact, I remember vividly my meeting one member of that White House staff. He was a very distinguished man--a white-haired black man. His name was Bruce. They always called him Bruce. I always called him " ; Mr. Bruce." ; And I remembered on that day, on the Thursday that I came over to prepare for my speech, I got into the elevator, and he was just crying like a baby, and he says, " ; Oh, Mr. President." ; And I said, " ; Mr. Bruce, don' ; t worry. Everything' ; s going to be all right." ; So we were--talked to the staff a while, and then I noticed that Mrs. Nixon was wearing sunglasses, and I found that what had happened is that after three days and nights of packing, not breaking at all, never showing emotion, she' ; d finally cried that morning. So then up came, at that very moment, Steve Bull. Steve Bull came up to brief us on the entrance into the Grand Ballroom, where we were to say goodbye to the official administration people, the cabinet and all the other top people in the administration, about three hundred of them. And Steve was giving us--with a little map, as he always did, where we would all stand. And then he said, " ; Now, the three television cameras will be here," ; and Mrs. Nixon said, " ; Not on your life! Not on your life!" ; She said, " ; After what they have done to us, I am not going to let them interfere in this last private meeting with our friends." ; Well, I had to disagree, and I said, " ; No, we have to do it. We' ; ve got to do it for our friends. We' ; ve got to do it for the country." ; And she was a good sport. She did it, and we all walked down together. GANNON: How did--how did you feel as you signed the--that one-sentence letter to the Secretary of State resigning the presidency of the United States? NIXON: I didn' ; t have any special feeling about it then, because I was so numb. After all, in my own mind I had resigned two weeks before. You know, I--oh, I was up and down. I was hoping for a miracle, knowing that I would have to create one, and that it wasn’t any way I was able to do it. And so, from then on, it was simply the water dripping on the rock and wearing it away. And so that was just another drop of water on the rock. It was done then. If it had been a surprising incident, it would have had a reaction. But it didn' ; t have any reaction. Nothing did at that point. I was p--just numb. GANNON: Did you use any special pen to sign it? NIXON: No. No. Just one of my pens from my pocket. GANNON: What do you recall-- NIXON: It wasn' ; t one of those cases where I wanted a special pen, as we do for bills and so forth and hand them out. I wasn' ; t about--if somebody had suggested a special pen, they would have found their tails right outside that room, and Haig had the good sense not to bring in a special pen. Of course, what they would have wanted--for me to use fifty special pens and give them--give replicas of the pens, or the actual signing pens, to the members of the House Judiciary Committee. And I wasn' ; t about to do that. GANNON: What do you recall from your--that East Room speech that last morning before you left the White House? NIXON: A very emotional speech. I--I recall speaking from the heart. Tricia later, in her diary, which she let me see, wrote that for the first time she was glad people were able to see Daddy as he really was. Spoke from the heart, thanked them for what they had done, expressed my pride in the fact that in this administration there had never been an example of anybody profiting financially from having served in office, told them that they must not allow what happened to me to discourage them, in effect, that we learn from our defeats, that life isn' ; t over because you suffer a defeat, just some of the philosophical guidelines that have enriched and at some times I think, guided me in my own life. I tried to share them. I spoke to my parents, my--" ; my old man," ; as I called him, and my mother. I said my mother was a saint and my old man was not just a common man, he was quite an extraordinary man. And that was about it. GANNON: It was noted that in that speech you talked about your father and your mother. You didn' ; t mention Mrs. Nixon. Was there a reason for that? NIXON: That' ; s the most fatuous and, I think, disgusting comment I' ; ve seen. Look--I had just seen Mrs. Nixon. She had been broke--she had broken into tears. She was emotionally uptight. I wasn' ; t about to mention her or Tricia or Julie and have them break down in front of all the people in the country. That would have destroyed her. She had too much dignity. She was always proud of that. That' ; s why I didn' ; t mention her. She knew that I was mentioning her in my heart. That' ; s what mattered. GANNON: Do you know that your--your reticence that you' ; ve referred to several times, about public displays of affection, have led to story--you' ; ve never said, for example, " ; I love her," ; in public. And-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE GANNON: I think a lot of people, instead of seeing that as privacy and emotional resonance--there are stories that, in fact, you have, and have had for a long time, a loveless marriage, one of convenience, one of necessity, one kept together for the children or politics. NIXON: Look. Whn I hear people slobbering around publicly, " ; I love her," ; and all that sort of stuff--that raises a question in my mind as to how much of it is real. It' ; s just the way I am. It' ; s the way she is, too. We just don' ; t go for those public declarations of love. We don' ; t--we don' ; t-- GANNON: You love her? NIXON: Of course. I certainly do, and I respect her, too, and she respects me. We don' ; t hold hands in public. Now, I don' ; t-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0381/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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59 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 10, 1983, part 3.
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gannix_0381
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-06-10
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 10, 1983, part 4. gannix_0382 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|14(11)|26(10)|35(14)|46(6)|56(13)|64(2)|78(4)|91(5)|104(4)|113(7)|123(16)|132(16)|147(4)|160(5)|173(15) 0 https://youtu.be/gpVQmYhFApc YouTube video English 6 Leaving the White House --mind other people doing it, but that's the way we are, and sometimes love, I think, is much greater when you don't make a big point of showing it off and talking about it. Nixon briefly discusses his feelings about displaying affection and speaking about private matters, such as his love for Mrs. Nixon and belief in God, and why he did not do so during his final speech from the White House. He then recounts leaving the White House for the final time and how that felt. Andrews Air Force Base ; Betty Ford ; Clare Boothe Luce ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Eddie Cox ; Gerald Ford ; Herb Stein ; Julie Eisenhower ; Pat Nixon ; poetry ; religion ; resignation ; Secret Service ; The Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton ; Tricia Cox ; Watergate Cox, Edward Finch, 1946- ; Cox, Patricia Nixon, 1946- ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Eisenhower, Julie Nixon ; Luce, Clare Booth, 1903-1987 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Stein, Herbert, 1916-1999 362 Planning for Future / Apologizing You--even at that moment, you were--you were looking ahead and thinking about what some people would describe as a--as a comeback. Nixon addresses claims that he may run for office again and that he should apologize for his actions during the Watergate scandal. apology ; media ; resignation ; Twenty-second Amendment ; Watergate 560 Legacy How do you think you--how would you like to be remembered in history? Nixon considers what he would like to be remembered for and shares that he considers his family to be his greatest memorial. arms control ; Calais ; cancer ; China ; Contemporaries ; draft ; H. H. Asquith ; Henry Kissinger ; historian ; legacy ; Mary Tudor ; Soviet Union ; Vietnam ; Watergate ; Winston Churchill ; World War I Asquith, H. H. (Herbert Henry), 1852-1928 ; Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Mary I, Queen of England, 1516-1558 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 755 Victories as President The--you said--when you were vice president, you said in an interview with Stewart Alsop--you said, " ; A major public figure is a lonely man. I can't confide absolutely in anyone, even in Pat. It's something like wearing clothing. If you let your hair down, you feel too naked." ; Nixon considers loneliness in leaders and himself and what he feels have been victories of his presidency. China ; China initiative ; Henry Kissinger ; leaders ; Pat Nixon ; Soviet Union ; Stewart Alsop ; Zhou Enlai Alsop, Stewart ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Zhou, Enlai, 1898-1976 Interview NIXON: --mind other people doing it, but that' ; s the way we are, and sometimes love, I think, is much greater when you don' ; t make a big point of showing it off and talking about it. It' ; s much deeper, in my view. GANNON: Do you think it' ; s a sign of weakness for a man to say that he loves his wife? NIXON: It depends on the man. No. I think some people--it' ; s--comes very natural. To me it doesn' ; t. It' ; s just like, for example, in a different way, my talk about religion. Eisenhower used to tell me--" ; Look, Dick," ; he said, " ; you should talk about God more in your speeches. There are a lot of people out there, you know, that believe in religion." ; And I said, " ; I can' ; t do it, General." ; I said, " ; That just isn' ; t the way I race. I--I' ; m embarrassed when I do that." ; I am, I think, quite profoundly religious in my own way, but I don' ; t wear it on my sleeve. I don' ; t say--talk about God. That doesn' ; t mean I don' ; t believe in God, and the same with love. It' ; s just the way we are. GANNON: What do you recall the speech over--about your final departure from the White House on August ninth, 1974? NIXON: We were then almost past the point of knowing what we were doing. It was--we were, fortunately, guided by the Secret Service and the rest through the crowd. We went down in--to the Diplomatic Reception Room. Jerry Ford--he' ; s still " ; Jerry" ; then, he' ; s going to be president in two hours--was standing there. Betty Ford was standing with him. I shook hands with him, and I said, " ; When I appointed you, I knew that I was going to leave the country in good hands." ; And he said, " ; Thank you, Mr. President." ; And I said, " ; Goodbye, Mr. President." ; And then Betty Ford said, " ; Have a nice trip, Dick," ; and Mrs. Nixon came through, and we went out to the plane. Julie was not going to be able to go to California with us. Tricia and Ed were, and she was at the bottom, at the ramp leading up to the entrance to the helicopter. He kissed her, got into the helicopter, Mrs. Nixon had already got aboard ahead of me, turned around, and there were all the crowd out there on the lawn, as had been so many cases before, and I kind of raised my hand. I didn' ; t know whether it was a salute or a wave, but that was it. Turned, went in and sat down in the plane, heard the engines whirl up. I closed my eyes. I was pretty tired then, been up all night thinking and so forth. And as the helicopter began to rise, I heard Mrs. Nixon, who was sitting in the seat next to us, speaking to no one in particular, but to everyone. And she said, " ; It' ; s so sad. It' ; s so sad." ; And then, as the helicopter went on, I must say, I didn' ; t have any feeling of bitterness or rancor or self-pity. I found myself thinking of what I' ; d seen in that room. When I made my speech, Herb Stein, marvelous man, great economist, one of the most unemotional men in the world--I remember him--I can see him now, tears just streaming down his cheek. Hard for me to finish the speech without breaking into tears myself. And I thought how much I owed to all of those who had worked so hard, and how much the country owed to them, and how fortunate we were to have such marvelous people, such good people, in our administration. And I--I thought of Julie down there, and Tricia and Ed and Mrs. Nixon, and I--no one, believe me--no one had a finer family. No one could have had a more supportive, loving, kind family, and how s--lucky I was there. And then, as the helicopter moved on to Andrews, it is understandable, I guess, that my thoughts would go to the other times we' ; d gone to Andrews. We went there on the way to China. We went there twice on the way to Russia, to the Mideast, to Europe, around the world--all the great events and initiatives we were ter--participating in. And I found myself thinking, and this is also rather characteristic of me, not of the past, but of the future. What could I do now? What? It seems presumptuous that I even thought it then. What can I do to see that these great initiatives that we began would continue? And that' ; s the way it was. I think perhaps the--the best description of how I felt then, and--and frankly, maybe it' ; s the description of my philosophy generally, was of a little couplet that I received from Claire Boothe Luce. This is in the spring of 1973. Watergate had just exploded all over the place, and she sent me a--one little card, a three-by-five, with this couplet on it. It was " ; The Ballad of Sir Andrew Barton," ; and it read, " ; I am hurt, but I am not slain. I shall lay me down and bleed awhile. And I shall rise and fight again." ; That' ; s the story of my life. GANNON: You--even at that moment, you were--you were looking ahead and thinking about what some people would describe as a--as a comeback. You say there are--there are no miracles in politics except the miracles that you make, and you weren' ; t able to make a miracle over Watergate. Are you making a miracle now? Are there political miracles ahead for you? NIXON: Well, I know that many of my friendly, quote, end quote, " ; critics" ; in the media have thoughts that I' ; m thinking of a comeback in some sinister way. Maybe we could amend the Constitution so that somebody--so that we repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment, which says that one can be elected president only twice, of course, which rules me out as a potential candidate for president. I even saw ridiculous comments to the effect that I might run for Congress in the state of New Jersey or the Senate in the state of New Jersey. My God, I mean, I wouldn' ; t even consider going to the Congress or the Senate at my age. That' ; s for younger people. I would say that my role is--is a very different one, a hard one to fill. Once you' ; ve had power and are able to do things about your ideas, it' ; s very difficult just to have ideas and hope that others are going to do something about it. But as long as I' ; m able to breathe, as long as I' ; m alive, believe me, I' ; m going to continue to work for what I think is a real peace--not the sappy kind of peace and simply the absence of war, but a real peace with our adversaries, and also with our friends. Maybe I can contribute something in that way. And that' ; s about it. GANNON: A lot of people felt, and, I suspect, still feel, that despite the--the terribly draining and emotional things that you went through over the months leading up to the resignation and then the things you have described about the--the days and the day of the resignation itself--that in all the things you said, you never simply said, " ; I' ; m sorry." ; You--I think people also feel that, at a lot of points, if you had j--gone on television and said, " ; Lookit. I--I was involved in a lot of these things. There were a lot of things that were wrong. I' ; ve got a country to run. If you' ; re going to impeach me, go ahead and do it, but here it all is." ; But instead you said, " ; I' ; m not a crook." ; And at no point did you say, or have you said that--something as simple, which is that you' ; ve said that you won' ; t grovel, and there' ; s--but there' ; s a difference between groveling and being sorry. Are you sorry for it? NIXON: My answer to that question and to those who say, " ; Will you apologize? Are you sorry?" ; is simply a fact. There' ; s no way that you could apologize that is more eloquent, more decisive, more finite, or to say that you were sorry which would exceed resigning the presidency of the United States. That said it all, and I don' ; t intend to say any more. GANNON: How do you think you--how would you like to be remembered in history? NIXON: Henry Kissinger said before I left office that he thought history would treat me kindly. No, Henry Kissinger said before I left office that he thought history would rate me as a great president. And my response was that it depended on who wrote the history. A man cannot sit on his own jury. However, if I were to be presenting the case before the jury of history, I think this is what I would say. The instant historians, understandably, are obsessed with Watergate. They see hardly anything else about me except Watergate and rate me very low. I understand that. Historians maybe fifty years from now, I would hope, would see it in more perspective. Yes, there was Watergate, the first president ever to resign the office. That' ; s part of history. But there' ; s also a more positive part. As far as the presidency is concerned, I' ; m the president that opened relations with China f--after twenty-five years of no communication. I ended a war in Vietnam, in which there were five hundred and fifty thousand Americans there when I came in and none when I left. I ended the draft. I negotiated the first arms control agreement with the Soviet Union. I restored balance to the Supreme Court through my appointments. I initiated programs in the field of the environment and hunger and cancer and drugs that I think are very sound building blocks for the future. These are positive achievements. They must be there, along with the negative ones. And I hope that the jury of history would consider that. I' ; d say finally, however, that as far as history is concerned, that my proudest legacy is something else. Winston Churchill, in his book Great Contemporaries, wrote of Prime Minister Asquith, great prime minister at the beginning of World War I, and he said his best memorial is his family. And I would say that my best memorial are my children. And I would say that for Mrs. Nixon in spades, because she made them what they are. GANNON: It was--it was said of Queen--it was said of Queen Mary Tudor--or--that she said when she died and they opened her up, and--they would find the word " ; Calais," ; the town that she had lost in France, written on her heart. What--what would be found written on your heart? NIXON: Easy. " ; Pat." ; GANNON: The--you said--when you were vice president, you said in an interview with Stewart Alsop--you said, " ; A major public figure is a lonely man. I can' ; t confide absolutely in anyone, even in Pat. It' ; s something like wearing clothing. If you let your hair down, you feel too naked." ; And Henry Kissinger has written of you, " ; The essence of the man is loneliness." ; Do you consider yourself to be a lonely man? NIXON: No, I never fret about it. I would say, however, I would be--perhaps amend Dr. Kissinger' ; s comment this way. The essence of virtually every great leader--and I' ; m not saying I' ; m great--but the essence of every great leader I have known--he was a lonely man. GANNON: In 1972, in China, you told Chou En-lai that what you asked for and hoped of in your life was that you would have--you said--in China in 1972, talking to Chou En-lai, you said that you always learned more from your defeats than from your victories and that you hoped that in--at the end of your life you would be able to say that you had had one more victory than defeat. Do you feel that you can say that? NIXON: That will depend on what happens. If, for example, there' ; s a breakthrough in cancer, that' ; s a victory. If, for example, my environmental programs are carried out in a responsible way, that' ; s a victory. If, for example, the China initiative doesn' ; t fall apart, that' ; s a victory. Let me see--if we didn' ; t have the China initiative now, we' ; d be in terrible trouble. And that' ; s why I' ; m doing everything I can to keep it together. If, for example, we' ; re able to build in the relationship with the Soviet Union, to reestablish a hard-headed détente, that' ; s a victory. I consider it a victory, in other words, if we move the world toward peace and justice and progress. That' ; s what I live my life for. That' ; s what I think we contributed toward, and that' ; s why, in the balance of my life, to make sure that I come out with one more victory than defeat, I' ; m going to do everything I can to see that the initiatives we began are not lost, but they are nurtured and that they grow. GANNON: Do you consider that you' ; ve had a good life? NIXON: I don' ; t get into that kind of crap. GANNON: Enough said. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stay there. Don' ; t take your mikes off for one second. I need a shot. Just chat with each other. I need a--I need a shot [unintelligible] a two-shot [unintelligible]. GANNON: Well, that' ; s--that' ; s known as answering a question. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0382/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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23 minutes
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<a href="http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0382/bmac">http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0382/bmac</a>
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 10, 1983, part 4.
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gannix_0382
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-06-10
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United States
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moving image
OHMS
-
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 1. gannix_0386 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|17(4)|33(3)|47(13)|63(3)|74(12)|87(13)|100(12)|111(12)|125(6)|139(2)|154(7)|173(11)|185(13)|208(10)|221(5)|235(5)|255(1)|271(8)|286(11)|298(14)|313(17)|329(9)|344(14)|358(2)|368(10)|389(6)|414(3)|429(11)|443(16)|457(8)|472(8)|485(11)|502(7)|515(14)|525(15)|543(6)|559(10)|573(1)|591(2)|602(8)|614(5)|639(2)|653(3)|669(15)|680(15)|695(6)|707(15)|722(3)|733(6)|744(1)|759(4)|771(2)|788(5)|802(9)|823(5)|837(18)|848(7)|859(10) 0 https://youtu.be/N_OfTk1lE-k YouTube video English 32 Meeting President Truman / Truman's Presidency Do you remember the first time you met Harry Truman? Nixon recounts meeting President Truman and visiting the White House and the Oval Office for the first time. He also gives his impression of Truman's presidency and lays out what he believes are the three great decisions that Truman made in office. 609 Presidents' Reputations Do you think that there is some kind of inexorable law of--of presidential revisionism that if--that if you can wait long enough or live long enough the distance lends enchantment and reputations are revived? Nixon considers the historical revisionism of some presidents' time in office that causes them to be considered more positively in later years. 691 Relationship with President Truman Harry Truman once said that " ; there are only two men in the whole history of the country that I can't stand." ; Nixon describes the dislike that President Truman had for him and the grudge between Truman and Eisenhower. He also talks about more positive times spent with Truman, including donating a White House piano to his library. 1322 Mrs. Truman / Campaigning What was--did you have any dealings at all with Mrs. Truman, any impressions of her? Nixon shares a story about Bess Truman and President Truman's campaigning. He also discusses excessive attacks in campaigns, particularly during the 1952 campaign. 1496 Rosenberg Case There's a book that's recently been published about the Rosenberg case, which, if it's true, upsets the liberal pantheon in that, based on government and other documents, it indicates that the Rosenbergs were, in fact, guilty, al--at least Julius Rosenberg was specifically guilty and Ethel to a--perhaps to a lesser extent. Nixon reflects on the Rosenberg case, including the guilt of the Rosenbergs and the possibility that evidence was altered to make them appear guilty. 1700 Friendship with President Kennedy Do you remember your first meeting and your first impressions of John Kennedy? Nixon recounts meeting and becoming friends with John F. Kennedy while they were both on the same congressional committee. 2240 President Kennedy's Womanizing / Letter from Kennedy It's been written that--or a lot has been written about the patriarch's tremendous influence on the Kennedy family--that Joe set the--the tone and the pace for the entire family, and indeed it was his thwarted presidential ambitions that led him to expect his son Joe, Junior, and then when he died, John, and then when he died, Robert, and now Edward--that the--the mantle sort of fell to them. Nixon discusses John F. Kennedy's reputation as a ladies' man and reads a letter from Kennedy congratulating him when he was selected to run for vice president. 2563 Assassination of President Kennedy You've described your first meetings--meeting with and impressions of John Kennedy--Congressman John Kennedy. Nixon recalls his last conversation with President Kennedy and hearing about Kennedy's assassination while in Dallas. He discusses how he felt about Kennedy's death and his feelings about insanity pleas for assassination attempts. 2981 " ; Kennedy Style" ; A lot has been written and spoken, and--and even sung, about the -- the Kennedy style, that sort of collection of events and attitudes and conduct which for one brief shining moment created Camelot on the--on the Potomac. Nixon considers the attitude of the media and public towards the Kennedy administration and the effectiveness of their leadership compared to his own administration. Interview OFF SCREEN VOICE: All right, Frank. GANNON: ' ; Kay. NIXON: [Clears throat.] NIXON: Tell you when you want to [unintelligible]. GANNON: Do you remember the first time you met Harry Truman? NIXON: Well, I' ; ll never forget it, because it was the first time I was ever in the White House. Having been just elected to Congress in 1946, we were invited to the reception that the president traditionally gave then, and even now, for the new members of Congress, and, for that matter, all members of Congress. I remember we had a little bit of a family problem then, because we were pretty strapped financially after the campaign, but the s--this event was black tie for the men and long dresses for the ladies. And Mrs. Nixon felt she had to have a new dress, and she certainly did have to have one, and I said, " ; Well, go ahead." ; And she said, " ; Well, I' ; m going to get it because it' ; s probably the only time we' ; ll ever be in the White House." ; So she got the new dress. We went. It was a mob scene, of course, with so many there, but we will always remember it. I remember when we met President Truman that he and Mrs. Truman were standing together, in the Blue Room, as I recall. And he shook hands in the way that people often shake hands in receiving lines when they wanted to get you through. He' ; d take your hand and just push you on to the next one, and push you on to the next one. And it went pretty fast. GANNON: What’s your hand-shaking technique? NIXON: I always believe it' ; s very important for even one--ten seconds, for that matter--look them straight in the eye, and then on, and very strong. The fish handshake, I think, is something that I--just turns me off. Now, some people have it. Our British friends usually use it, but I think that an American should shake hands strongly and firmly and look people in the eye. GANNON: What--what were your impressions of him as a--as a man, or as a president, as a leader? NIXON: Well, my impressions, I think, were colored a great deal by my first meeting with him. On this occasion, of course--was not a meeting. It was a handshake. But in July of that year, that first year of 1947, a group of four freshman Republican congressmen met with Truman in the Oval Office. The way it came about is that Charlie Kersten from Wisconsin requested an appointment, and it was given. Incidentally, at the time, since we were members of Congress, we all thought we were important enough to deserve to be invited down to see the president. But as I look back at it in retrospect, I really marvel that Truman ever did it. But then I think that tells us something about him. He was a very good politician. He knew that the Republicans had an overwhelming majority in the House and in the Senate. He needed Republican votes. He also knew something else, that the four of us--and I' ; m sure that our records were checked before we ever got into the Oval Office--had supported the Greek-Turkish aid program, whereas many liberal Democrats had opposed it. He needed us as friends. And then I think he might have been impressed by the fact--he just liked the fact that we had the temerity to ask. And so he sort of appreciated that, because that' ; s the kind of thing he might have done. GANNON: What were your feelings as you stepped over the threshold of the Oval Office for the first time? NIXON: Well, my feelings were, of course, one of profound respect for that place. It' ; s a hallowed place. I' ; d read about it and seen pictures of it. But I think my recollection of the meeting is more of the man than of the office. President Truman, before we went there, was one who had not received a particularly good press. When he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, there were many in the media, and many in the country, for that matter, who said, " ; Can this little pipsqueak from Missouri, poorly educated and so forth, step into the shoes of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was a great heroic figure for so many years?" ; And many wondered whether he could. I would say that nobody could have filled the shoes of Franklin Roosevelt, but Harry Truman made his own footprints in the sands of history. At this particular point, however, having read about him as being somewhat uneducated, rather crude, and--and rather limited, I was impressed by the fact that he had a sense of history. He demonstrated that by taking us over to the globe which was there in the office and turning it to Manchuria and pointing out, which was quite prophetic at that time, how important Manchuria, in terms of its natural resources, could be in the future, and how important that whole area of China could be in the future for this country, and for the world, for that matter. And then he turned the globe a little further to the Soviet Union, and he said, " ; You know, I--I like the Russian people. They got along very well--the Russians soldiers did--with our soldiers at the Elbe." ; He said, " ; As far as I am concerned, they can have any kind of a system they want, provided they don' ; t try to impose it on us." ; He spoke not in a dramatic way, but almost in a matter-of-fact way--that the most difficult decision he' ; d ever made was to drop the atomic bomb--a decision which I think, incidentally, was his greatest decision, the most courageous one, and was totally right. I would say, too, that in terms of his manner, at that point, before he was elected in his own right in 1948, he was somewhat humble, very direct, but not at all overbearing, not at all cocky, as he sometimes later came to be. So, all in all, I would say that he made a good personal impression on all of us. I thought right then that those that criticized him because of his lack of education failed to recognize a truth which I have always felt was the case where many leaders are concerned. Education sometimes can strengthen the brain and weaken the backbone. Harry Truman had a pretty good brain, but I can say that his backbone was strong, and that' ; s what sustained him through those years. GANNON: He was a--a terrifically crusty figure, and I know there was a lot of shock at the time that the--that your White House tapes were revealed about the language that went--that--that was spoken in the Oval Office, and yet the records indicate that Truman, possibly next to Johnson, had the most salty language, and he was also, by the time he left office, a very unpopular figure. And yet for the last ten years or so, there seems to have been a tremendous revision of opinion about him. Do you--do you have any insights into that? NIXON: Well, I would say that, as far as President Truman is concerned, that the revision is taking place for several reasons. One, because as far as those who write that kind of article, who write instant history--most of them are liberal. Most, also, when they do have partisan affiliations, are Democrats. He, in terms of his domestic policy, was very liberal. His Fair Deal was more liberal than the New Deal, and in terms of his partisanship, of course, he was a very partisan Democrat. I think that helped in terms of the revision--the fact that those that are writing it approved of what he was trying to do in those particular areas. In addition to that, I think the fact that Truman was so refreshingly candid--he was an interesting personality. The things that made him unpopular at the last of his service--unpopular because it was combined with the Truman scandals, the war in Korea, which was not being waged effectively, many people thought--those things that made him unpopular then, that crusty, arrogant--what th--many thinks--thought arrogant and too cocky attitude made him far more interesting to instant historians today. So, under the circumstances, I would say that the revision is--that that is part of the reason for the revision. Another part of the reason for the revision is that, whatever you want to say about President Truman, whatever about--we want to say about his manners, about the Truman scandals--" ; the mess in Washington," ; as Adlai Stevenson called it--and so forth, he was a strong president. He made three great decisions, and that' ; s what the man' ; s hired for--to make the great decisions. GANNON: What were the three? NIXON: The three--first, of course, was dropping the bomb, which saved at least a million lives, according to experts--if we had gone to take over Japan through conventional arms rather than the nuclear weapont--weapon that was available. The second one was the Greek-Turkish aid program, the so-called Truman Doctrine, which later developed into the Marshall Plan. It was unpopular, and therefore a difficult decision for him politically because it was unpopular with his liberal wing of his party. But he stood up to them, and with the help of some of us who were Republicans, we got the bipartisan support that was needed. And his third, curiously enough, was going into Korea. Now I was critical of him, as were many Republicans, and I think properly so--of the way the war was waged at times. But the decision to go in was right. It was necessary because, had the Communists been allowed to overrun Korea, Japan would at that early point be a sitting duck for Communist takeover. So I would say these three great decisions are ones that make the revisionism with regard to Harry Truman and his place in history most justifiable. GANNON: Do you think that there is some kind of inexorable law of--of presidential revisionism that if--that if you can wait long enough or live long enough the distance lends enchantment and reputations are revived? It seems to have happened with Hoover by the time Truman came into office. It happened to Truman by the time you were in office. Do you think it' ; ll happen to Johnson? NIXON: Yes, perhaps to a less extent and much further on down the road. I--I should point out th--however, in terms of the revisionism by the historians, that it is more likely to happen to one who is a liberal and one who is a Democrat, due to the fact that most historians are liberals, and, where they do have party affiliation, are Democrats, than it will, for example, to Herbert Hoover. There' ; s been some revision on Herbert Hoover, but not among the elitists. There' ; s been some on Eisenhower, justifiably so, and there should have been long before. But insofar as--as a place in history for a president is concerned, he has twice as good an opportunity or chance to have a higher place as time goes on if he' ; s a--a liberal rather than a Democrat. GANNON: Rather than a Republican. NIXON: Yeah, rather than a Republican. GANNON: How long' ; s it going to take for Nixon? NIXON: Oh, I have no idea about that. I won' ; t speculate. GANNON: Harry Truman once said that " ; there are only two men in the whole history of the country that I can' ; t stand." ; One was a governor of Missouri that he had helped get elected and then screwed him politically, and the other was guess who. Why do you think he disliked you so much? NIXON: Well, the major reason for his dislike goes back to the Hiss case. Certainly when we were there in July of 1947--the four congressmen--he liked us politically because we had given him support on the Republican side that he couldn' ; t get from his liberal Democrats. He liked that. But later on it was my responsibility to conduct the investigation of the Hiss case. That embarrassed Truman. I want to s--make it clear that, as far as Truman is concerned, there was no question that he was an anti-Communist. But where the Hiss case was concerned, he had condemned the Committee on Un-American Activities as trying to bring a red herring into the campaign of 1948. He felt that the--that the investigation was politically motivated, and even though un--evidence was brought to his attention that clearly indicated that Hiss had turned over top-secret documents to Soviet agents, he still persisted in condemning the committee, and therefore condemning me. I remember s--so well being told by Bert Andrews of the New York Herald Tribune that when the so-called Pumpkin Papers were brought to Truman' ; s attention by an Assistant Attorney General of the United States, he looked them over, and he said, " ; The son-of-a-bitch. He re--pr--betrayed his country. The son-of-a-bitch. He betrayed his country." ; And then he went right out that same day in a press conference, and somebody asked him, " ; Do you think--still think the investigation' ; s a red herring?" ; He said, " ; Yeah. It' ; s a red herring." ; That' ; s Harry Truman, vintage Harry Truman--politics in terms of trying to evaluate an investigation of that sort. GANNON: Didn' ; t he think, though, that you' ; d added insult to injury by impugning his patriotism by accusing him of being a traitor? NIXON: Yes. GANNON: Didn' ; t he carry that on through-- NIXON: Yes, he--he GANNON: [unintelligible] something he held against you? NIXON: --felt that was true. It--it wasn' ; t true, of course. As far as the Hiss case is concerned, I earned what he gave to me. Earned it be--it happened that I was right, and of course there was nothing more difficult for a politician than to have somebody else prove him wrong. But beyond that, in this case it happened that his dislike for me was motivated by a wrong impression of what the facts were. The facts were very clear. In a speech in the 1952 campaign at Texarkana, Texas, I made the point that Truman, Acheson, and others in the current leadership of the Democratic Party were traitors to the high principles in which many of the nation' ; s Democrats believed. I didn' ; t say he was a traitor to the country. And so, under the circumstances, it came to his attention. He short-handed it to " ; traitors to the country" ; and said Nixon called him a traitor, even though several of my friends who were his friends tried to set him right. GANNON: Why do you think an otherwise intelligent, tough-minded man remained impervious to this kind of proof that what you had said was not what he had thought you' ; d said, because to the end he carried this idea that you had accused him of being a traitor. NIXON: Well, it wasn' ; t just me that he was that way with. He--he was very personal. He just wasn' ; t a Democrat, and a partisan Democrat, he was a personal partisan Democrat. For example, he never forgave Eisenhower for the fact that Eisenhower, after Truman urged him to run as a Democrat, proceeded to become a Republican a--and then to become a Republican president. And that' ; s why he said that--very disparaging things about Eisenhower. After praising him earlier, he said, " ; He doesn' ; t know as much about politics as a pig does about Sunday." ; And so, under the circumstances, therefore, he--he--he--he had a tendency to do--to--I would say that that' ; s an indication--in talking about Eisenhower, you could say, " ; Well, Eisenhower was a Republican, and he was a Democrat." ; But he had some of the same kind of pithy comments with regard to Adlai Stevenson. He said, " ; He' ; s an indecisive fellow. He doesn' ; t know whether to go to the bathroom, or when. He can' ; t decide." ; So I' ; d say that--that Harry Truman had his likes and dislikes, and they became imbedded in him. He was one who did not forgive, usually. GANNON: How did Eisenhower feel about him? Was that feeling reciprocated? NIXON: Oh, it was reciprocated in spades. That' ; s why Eisenhower never had him to the White House in those eight years. I think it was a mistake not to have had him. For example, I had Johnson and the Kennedy clan and all the rest to the White House when I became president, but, on the other hand, Eisenhower also had very strong feelings. When somebody impugned what he thought, his intelligence, or his integrity, or so forth, he didn' ; t forgive them. GANNON: Do you think Truman disliked you personally? NIXON: No, I don' ; t think so. I don' ; t think it was a question of personal dislike. I didn' ; t know him that well to dislike me personally. GANNON: He didn' ; t know you well enough to dislike you, as--as the saying goes. NIXON: And the point was that he--his--his dislike was basically partisan and political, the Hiss case in the first instance, and the view, too--I--I think you have to have in mind that he was--he was a good Democrat fighting for his candidates. Eisenhower was not a target that would be a very attractive one, because Eisenhower was too popular. I was carrying the load politically for the Republicans, and so, consequently, he zeroed on me--in on me, and I zeroed in on him. But I did not become personal with him. I didn' ; t take him on, for example, for some of the things that he did. GANNON: [Starts to speak.] NIXON: I attacked " ; the mess in Washington," ; of course, and so forth. GANNON: Was Eisenhower a--a long, hard grudge-holder? Was he a good hater? NIXON: Not a hater, no, that--Eisenhower is not--I wouldn' ; t classify him that way, the same way you would classify a--a usual partisan. But, on the other hand, he had a long, long memory, and sometimes, because he was not a politician, or--he would take things personally that a politician would let roll off the back. That was why, also, he didn' ; t want to have Stevenson come to the White House, because he thought Stevenson had said some things that were beyond the pale in the campaign of ' ; 52, and he wouldn' ; t let his staff bring Stevenson in to see him, even when he felt--they felt that Stevenson coming to the White House might help Eisenhower get through a program for foreign aid. That was the way Eisenhower was. GANNON: Your relationship with Harry Truman wasn' ; t entirely grim. I think there were a couple of lighter moments to it. NIXON: Yes, we--we had some lighter moments. One I particularly remember was when I was the Republican speaker at a Gridiron dinner--this is after Truman had left the presidency--and before the dinner, they have a custom of having the head table all get together in a small room just before you go into the main dining room, at the Statler Hilton Hotel, where those dinners were held at that time. I was at that reception, and I saw Harry Truman sort of standing over by himself, alone. Sometimes a former president can become very lonely. And as I saw him standing there, I went over to the bar--I knew the bartender well--and I said, " ; Make Mr. Truman his drink." ; And he says, " ; Oh, it' ; s bourbon." ; So he poured bourbon on the rocks. I took it--it was Jack Daniel' ; s, incidentally, a very good bourbon. I took the drink and took it over to Harry Truman. I said, " ; Mr. President, here' ; s a bourbon for you." ; And he said, " ; Thank you, sir. You' ; re a real gentleman." ; Then we went in to make the speeches, and I made the Republican speech, the usual ten-minute speech, part of it serious, a--and ending usually on what is supposed to be a half-serious, or humorous, note. And so I related that incident to the press people and the other bigwigs that were there for the dinner. The theme of the dinner that night was that " ; Everything Is Made for Love." ; All the songs were " ; Everything is Made for Love." ; And so I said, " ; I know the theme of this particular dinner. I want to tell you an incident that proves that that theme is correct." ; I said, " ; I went in and I saw Harry Truman tonight. I brought him a bourbon, and you know what happened? He took it and thanked me for it. And I can assure you that when Harry Truman will take a glass of bourbon from Dick Nixon and drink it without asking somebody else to taste it first--that' ; s love." ; GANNON: D--do you think the theme was right? Is everything made for love? NIXON: It has--you have to say that now and then. But as far as war and politics are concerned, love plays very, very little part. GANNON: We have some film of an event in your presidency, when you went out to Independence, Missouri, and took with you, to present to President Truman for the Truman Library, the piano that he had played in the White House. Do you have any recollections as you see this film? NIXON: Well, the piano was on the second floor of the White House. NIXON: It was sort of a beaten-up thing in any event, but that wasn' ; t the reason we took it. As a matter of fact, Harry Truman wanted that piano--I am sure he wanted it not because he had played it, which he had, but because his Ma--daughter Margaret had also used it. Of course she had become quite an accomplished singer. And so, under the circumstances, I just loaded the piano onto Air Force One. We flew it out to Independence and presented it to him. And then I see a picture there of me playing the piano, and there' ; s Harry Truman standing behind me clapping. But let me tell you, he--he was not one to go overboard. After all, I had a f--I play by ear now, and I had a few blue notes. I was playing " ; The Missouri Waltz," ; and he didn' ; t say, " ; That' ; s excellent." ; He says, " ; That' ; s pretty good." ; GANNON: What was--did you have any dealings at all with Mrs. Truman, any impressions of her? NIXON: Only at a distance, of course, and meeting her at--at the White House reception, and meeting her, of course, then, and when I went out to President Truman' ; s funeral. I liked her. She was down-to-earth, Midwestern, no airs, very strong. I think she was a very good influence on him. Incidentally, in that connection--this may be an apocryphal story, but it' ; s, to me, one of the most amusing ones. Truman could get very rough in campaigns. They think I' ; m rough, but I campaigned on issues. I would be rough on people on the issues, but as far as Truman is concerned, he could get very, very personal. And at one point, he--out on the stump, he said, " ; The Republican platform ought to be a manure spreader." ; And one of his aides talked to Mrs. Truman, according to this story, and said, " ; Mrs. Truman, you know, it--it would be better i--i--if you could have him say, ' ; fertilizer spreader.' ; ' ; Manure' ; ' ; s a little crude." ; She said, ' ; Look, you don' ; t know how many years it took before I could get him to say ' ; manure' ; !" ; GANNON: Looking back at that ' ; 52 campaign, do you see the--any of the language you use and--used, and particularly the--the line about " ; traitors to the high principles of the Democratic Party," ; as being inflammatory or excessive, because, after all, at that time the whole issue of loyalty and of Communist infiltration was a--was a tough issue being used against the Democrats. Even to use the word " ; traitors to the high principles" ; --was that a--was that a buzzword that-- NIXON: It wasn' ; t intended to be, under any circumstances. As a matter of fact, in that same campaign, an issue that developed was that Bill Jenner, the senator from Indiana, had a--had coined the phrase of " ; twenty years of treason." ; And I made the point that there was only one party of treason in the United States--the Communist Party. So I constantly tried to reassure audiences that the problem was not a party--one party being the party of treason and the other party being the party of loyalty. And I--I must say that in all campaigns the rhetoric gets excessive. I think, for example, a--in retrospect, that I was too rough on Acheson. Acheson was wrong on the issue. He never understood it. He didn' ; t go there enough, if at all, when he was secretary of State. But he was right on Europe, and deserves high mark for the leadership he provided on the Marshall Plan and in other areas. And I was overly rough on him, just as Harry Truman might have been a little overly rough on me. GANNON: There' ; s a book that' ; s recently been published about the Rosenberg case, which, if it' ; s true, upsets the liberal pantheon in that, based on government and other documents, it indicates that the Rosenbergs were, in fact, guilty, al--at least Julius Rosenberg was specifically guilty and Ethel to a--perhaps to a lesser extent. But it also indicates that the government went overboard in framing a case against them. Does that--did that shock you as you read about that, or surprise you, or f--make you feel vindicated? NIXON: No, as far as the Rosenberg case was concerned, of course, that final decision, the decision not to delay the sentence, was President Eisenhower' ; s. I was in the room when it happened. It was in the Cabinet Room, and I recall very well the Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, and Bill Rogers, the Deputy Attorney General, bringing the facts to the president, to his attention, and the decision was made. Not in that room--he made it later-- GANNON: (unintelligible) NIXON: --as he always did. GANNON: Did anybody argue for-- NIXON: No. GANNON: --clemency? NIXON: No. The evidence was clear. There was no question about their guilt, as even this book--in which the authors started out convinced they were innocent and then came around to c--becoming convinced they were guilty. GANNON: Does it bother you, though, that some of the evidence--although they were apparently guilty--that some of the evidence was--was cooked by the FBI to make them appear even more guilty-- NIXON: If we had-- GANNON: --which might have affected the judgment on clemency, at least for Ethel Rosenberg? NIXON: Oh, certainly. If I had known--if we had known that at the time--if President Eisenhower had known it, he might have taken a different view with regard to her. In other words, tainted evidence, even though a person is totally guilty, is a reason to get him off. Take Daniel Ellsberg. Daniel Ellsberg was guilty of t--of illegally taking top-secret papers from the Pentagon and turning them over to be published in a newspaper. And yet, because the evidence was tainted, he' ; s scot-free, making a lot of monies on the lecture circuit, particularly at the elite Ivy League colleges. So, as far as Mrs. Rosenberg was concerned, she was entitled to get off on that basis, too. GANNON: Does it disillusion you about J. Edgar Hoover that presumably he--it wouldn' ; t have been done without his knowledge, if, indeed, without his direction--that the FBI was cooking evidence in such a way? NIXON: Well, I wouldn' ; t--I f--I followed that book that you refer to. And the case they made for cooking the evidence is--is pretty weak. It' ; s--it' ; s a question of, really, a--a matter of judgment, and there isn' ; t any c--if--if you look at the times then, at you took--if you look at the fact that the Soviet Union acquired the atomic bomb two to three years before we thought they could, all the evidence points to the fact they wouldn' ; t have gotten it if it hadn' ; t been for not only our atomic spies, but the British atomic spies. You can see why overzealous prosecutors, and those that are assisting prosecutors, like J. Edgar Hoover, would certainly tilt their prosecution and their investigation in a way toward guilt, rather than toward innocence. Now if you look at it coolly, in retrospect, at this point, certainly we would have preferred that it not be done. But at the time I understand why it was done. And let us understand--Mrs. Rosenberg was guilty. This wasn' ; t a case of somebody not guilty going to the chair. GANNON: Do you remember your first meeting and your first impressions of John Kennedy? NIXON: Well, our first meeting, actually, was in the committee. He was a member of the Education and Labor Committee. He was from a liberal district in Massachusetts, and I was a member of that same committee, and I was a conservative Republican from California. In the new Congress, the way you determine seniority for a committee is to draw straws. He drew straws on the Democratic side. He drew the last straw. In other words, he became the l--became the low man on the totem pole. I drew straws on the Republican side. There were seven new members on the Republican side. I got the last straw, number seven. So I was the low member on the Republican side, and, as somebody might have put it, we were bookends on that committee--political booklends--ends--and literal bookends. On the committee I learned to respect him, and I think he learned to respect me, because by the time the questioning got around to those of us at the end, all the good questions had been asked, so we really had to do a great deal of work in order to have good, precise questions to ask. We worked together, not conspiratorially, but independently, particularly in questioning labor leaders who had infiltrated--labor leaders that--or C--or Communist-leaning labor leader--leaders that infiltrated the labor unions. His questioning was extremely good, and independently I had come to similar conclusions, and so we played each other very well at that point. GANNON: He was a strong anti-Communist then? NIXON: Oh, yes, very strong, very strong. Well, later on, because we were members of that committee, we both received an invitation, with no honorariums, incidentally. This was before the days of honorariums of any significance. Frank Buchanan--I remember him so well--the silver-haired liberal Democratic congressman from McKeesport, Pennsylvania, right outside of Pittsburgh, said y--there' ; s a big civic dinner up there, that they wanted to have the Taft-Hartley bill, which I had supported and Kennedy had opposed--they wanted to have it debated and wondered if we would go up and debate it. Well, independently, he agreed to do so, and I agreed to de--do so. And so we went up to McKeesport, Pennsylvania. I don' ; t recall the debate. I don' ; t think anybody that was there would particularly recall it, because we were nothing then. We were just a couple of junior senators. I think most of those who were there, because the audience was primarily business-oriented, although some labor leaders were there as well--most of them agreed that I had, perhaps, had a bit better of the argument, I think--had the better of it, because, I think, had the better case. And, incidentally, I don' ; t think he had his heart in that case, either. While he came from a liberal Democratic district, he was concerned about the excesses that some labor unions had been guilty of, and he wanted some restraints on them. Well, the debate was over, and it was late at night, and that' ; s before w--there were good airplane flights from Pittsburgh to Washington. And so we took the night sleeper train. I can remember very well that particular occasion, and again we had to do some drawing of straws because the only two bunks left were in the same compartment, an upper and a lower. And I drew, and he drew, and this time I won. I got the lower berth, he got the l--upper berth. Didn' ; t make a lot of difference because we didn' ; t sleep all the way back. We talked, and mainly about what we agreed on. You always do that when you' ; re in Congress, and with people that are personal friends though political opponents. And so we talked about foreign policy, about the problems in Europe, and the problems that might come up in Asia and the rest. I don' ; t remember anything--any discussion whatever of domestic policy. GANNON: Didn' ; t he become a--an unlikely contributor to your Senate campaign? NIXON: Yes. In fact, I should point out that, while our relations were not buddy-buddy--in fact, except for a very few, he didn' ; t have buddy-buddy relations with anybody. He was not that--he was not the gregarious type that Teddy Kennedy is, for example. But they were--they were friendly and personal. GANNON: Who was he buddy-buddy with? NIXON: George Smathers was a very good friend of his, for example. I would say, however, that in terms of--of his--our personal relationship, I could summarize it this way. He invited me, or, I should say, Eunice Kennedy, his sister who was his official hostess before he got married--to his--to his home, his Georgetown home, for a stag dinner, or I think there may have been another one as well. And they were very gracious, and the conversation was very spirited. I recall, too, being invited to his wedding--this was later on--and there were occasions when we had the opportunity of meeting on a--on a--on a very impersonal, social basis. But--but John Kennedy was not one of the group that played handball down in the gym. I did that. He was not one that-- GANNON: Were you any good? NIXON: I was fair, but--not as good as some, but I couldn' ; t play enough. So, in any event, we had a good personal relationship in that respect. I remember, incidentally, to show you how things can change in terms of political affiliations and the rest, the first time that I met his father, Joe Kennedy, the legendary Joe Kennedy, it was in 1960. This was before the nomination, and Joe Kennedy and Teddy Kennedy were standing outside the Colony Restaurant in New York City, and I shook hands with them. And this is the first time I' ; d met Joe Kennedy, and he said, " ; I just want you to know how much I admire you for what you' ; ve done in the Hiss case and in these--this Communist activity of yours." ; He says, " ; If Jack doesn' ; t get it, I' ; ll be for you." ; Teddy didn' ; t say anything, but I hoped that he felt the same way. I saw Joe Kennedy later, incidentally, that same year. I was on my way to California by plane, and he was on the same plane with a beautiful girl. Oh, she was a raving beauty. And so I saw him, and I shook hands, and he introduced her to me as his niece. I don' ; t know whether he had a niece out there or not, but she was a beauty. But as far as--as Kennedy himself was concerned, for example, he used to bring me--he' ; d bring me a book on occasion. I remember particularly, and I still have it in my library--he brought me the book To Light a Candle by Father [James] Keller, about the Christophers. It was inscribed by Father Keller. This is an indication of the kind of relationship it was. GANNON: Did you consider that you were friends? NIXON: Oh, yes, we were friends--not close friends, but we were not enemies by any ch--by any stretch of the imagination. We never had a hard word between ourselves, never. GANNON: You' ; d started to tell about the--the 1950 campaign. NIXON: Well, this--in 1950, he came into the outer office. My secretary buzzed and said, " ; Congressman Kennedy is here." ; And so, of course, he came right in, and he handed me an envelope. He said, " ; You know, I know you' ; ve got a tough campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas, and the family' ; d like to contribute." ; So he handed it to me, and it was a thousand dollars in cash. Later on, I think it was quite embarrassing to him, and he wanted it made very clear that the contribution was from his father and not for him personally. But he was delivering it. There was no question that--whose side he was on, and later on, after the election, when he was speaking at Harvard, he said that he was not unhappy about my defeating Helen Gahagan Douglas, because he had not found her one that he' ; d like to work with in the Congress of the United States. GANNON: Do you think the money was, in fact, from him, or was it from his father? NIXON: Doesn' ; t make any difference. The Kennedy money is all in one pot, and he got--he had a chance to get it. I think--let me put it this way. Unless he had wanted me to beat Helen Gahagan Douglas, that money would never have come, because I didn' ; t know his father at that time. I' ; m sure what happened is that he s--told his father that--" ; Well, this is one of the coming lights here," ; and his father was anti-Communist and felt, because of what I' ; d done in the Hiss case, which was already under the belt at that point, that he' ; d like to be on that side. No, I don' ; t think he was an errand boy for his father. The money may have come from this father, but he wanted it done, too. There was no question about that. He was on my side in that campaign. GANNON: It' ; s been written that--or a lot has been written about the patriarch' ; s tremendous influence on the Kennedy family--that Joe set the--the tone and the pace for the entire family, and indeed it was his thwarted presidential ambitions that led him to expect his son Joe, Jr., and then when he died, John, and then when he died, Robert, and now Edward--that the--the mantle sort of fell to them. It' ; s also been argued, or written, that the fact that he was very open in his--you mentioned his--his niece, but there are stories that, when Gloria Swanson was his mistress, he actually had her on a boat to England with Rose Kennedy, and she simply had to accommodate herself to the--to the women that he brought around. And it' ; s been argued that that influenced the Kennedy family' ; s attitude towards women generally. Do you see anything to that in your observation of him or them? NIXON: No. As far as he was concerned, I, frankly, wasn' ; t particularly interested in what his extracurricular life was. And I must say this. Insofar as the time before he went to the White House, and I can' ; t speak for what happened then--he was quite circumspect about it. I mean, he didn' ; t flaunt it around and run around with the--the babes, particularly after--after he was married. GANNON: Do y--m--my guess is--I don' ; t want to-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --wrong anybody, but that there' ; s not much action on the streets of McKeesport after dark--but after that debate, or in your experiences with him at that time, did you see--with John Kennedy--did you see any of the ladies' ; man that the reports subsequently indicated were there? NIXON: No, I really didn' ; t. As I said, it isn' ; t something that I discussed with him. Maybe we were--we weren' ; t that close. Maybe that' ; s something that a very close friend, like maybe a George Smathers, might have talked with him about, but I--I can never dis--I can never remember a discussion with him about girls. I don' ; t recall his being known having a reputation around the House--the House of Rep--Representatives--that is, around the office building--as being one who' ; s chasing the girls. I am sure, based on what we have read since, that he was rather active, and, he of course apparently came by it through inheritance, through his father, who was quite a swordsman. GANNON: In 1952, when you were nominated at the Chicago convention, John Kennedy wrote you a letter, which you reprint in your memoirs, and I wonder if you' ; d read it for us. NIXON: This is a handwritten letter, incidentally. " ; Dear Dick, I was tremendously pleased that the convention selected you for vice president. I was always convinced that you would move ahead to the top, but I never thought it would come this quickly. You are an ideal selection and will bring a great deal of strength to the ticket. Please give my best wishes to your wife." ; I must say, incidentally, that our communication in that respect was not just one-sided. I--I wrote to him in 1956, after he had tried to gain the nomination on the Democratic ticket, and he made a very good run for it--almost got the nomination but was turned down, probably because he was a Catholic, at that point. But, in any event, I wrote to him afterwards and congratulated him on a very good race, and I think he appreciated that fact. GANNON: Could-- NIXON: That' ; s something that you do in politics. I--I wrote to Hubert Humphrey after he lost the nomination back in 1972. I write, as I' ; ve often said, to losers as well as winners, because I had been both. GANNON: Could you read again just the last? You left out one-- NIXON: Let' ; s see-- GANNON: --section of the very last paragraph there. NIXON: Oh, yes. Want me to read the whole thing again? I--see, I didn' ; t bring my glasses. I forgot about them. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Let' ; s read the whole thing again. NIXON: All right. GANNON: Okay. NIXON: This was a letter that was, incidentally, written by hand, and it said, " ; Dear Dick, I was tremendously pleased that the convention selected you for vice president. I was always convinced you would move ahead to the top, but I never thought you could come this quickly." ; No, th--sorry. " ; Dear Dick, I was tremendously pleased that the convention selected you for vice president. I was always convinced that you would move ahead to the top, but I never thought it would come this quickly. You were an ideal selection and will bring great strength to the ticket. Please give my best to your wife, and all kinds of good luck to you." ; GANNON: You' ; ve described your first meetings--meeting with and impressions of John Kennedy--Congressman John Kennedy. Do you remember your last meeting with President John Kennedy? NIXON: Well, the last meeting was not a meeting. It was a telephone call. We were in Rome at the time on a family vacation in 1963, and he was in Rome on a state visit. And it happened that we were in the same hotel, and he was there for a meeting, and I was, of course, staying there. And he called on the phone. It was a very--just a--a friendly call. He said he hoped we had a good vacation, and I wished him good luck. And six weeks later, of course, he was dead. GANNON: Do you remember how you heard about his death? For--for one generation of Americans, just like for an--for an earlier one--everybody remembers where they were when FDR died and--in your generation. In my generation, I think, everybody remembers where they were when they heard about President Kennedy' ; s death. Do you remember? NIXON: Oh, yes. I was in a taxicab. I had been in Dallas that very morning, as a matter of fact. I' ; d been out there for a board meeting of the Pepsi-Cola Company, of which I--our firm was general counsel. And I remember driving through the streets of Dallas. They were deserted, and the barricades were up for the parade that was to go through the city. I got a cab from the airport--was driving in and--at the--I think it was right at the 59th Street Bridge, where y--from Queens on fifty-nine--strike that. I remember that our cab was stopped at--in Queens just as you come into 59th Street, and--at a stoplight, and a man ran over from the curb and said to the cab driver, " ; Do you have a radio in your car?" ; He said, " ; No." ; He said, " ; President Kennedy' ; s just been shot!" ; Well, we didn' ; t have a radio, and the cab went on, and I--all the way back in--took an--tw--another twenty, twenty-five minutes before we got to the apartment, I wonder what in the world has happened. So we got into the apartment, and I immediately got on the phone. I got J. Edgar Hoover on the line, and I said, " ; What happened? Who was it? One of the right-wing nuts?" ; And Hoover responded, " ; No, it was a Commonest." ; He never said " ; Communist." ; He always said " ; Commonest." ; And that' ; s how I learned it. GANNON: Didn' ; t--you' ; ve written that he later told you that you might have been the target. NIXON: Yes. Hoover told me later that Mrs. Oswald said that she locked her husband the day before into the bathroom because he had a gun and said he was going to get me, because, of course, I was--happened to be in Dallas the day before at this board meeting. Apparently, if this story is true, and I have no reason to believe that Edgar Hoover made it up, it means that this man was a little bit off his rocker and was out to get anybody that he thought was possibly against what he stood for. GANNON: What--what was your personal reaction when you found that President Kennedy was, in fact, dead? NIXON: Well, it was the reaction of, I think, most everybody, that--first, one of sadness, profound sadness, the tragedy of it all, a man so young with so much life ahead, the tragedy for him, for hims--his family, for his supporters and friends, for the free world generally, the tragedy for the country--that a--an assassination could take place and be allowed to take place. That certainly was something that ran through my mind. I didn' ; t have any feeling that there but for the grace of God go I. I had--I had--after all, I' ; m very fatalistic about life in general. And as far as I' ; m concerned, I always feel that what you have to do is to live life to the hilt. You have to--I always start out each day figuring this day may be the last, and live it right to the hilt. If you shortchange life, you shortchange yourself. You never look back, but always go forward. I think President Kennedy, John Kennedy, felt the same way, and the tragedy that he had to have his life snuffed short, to an extent, I think, is balanced by the fact that he lived it to the hilt. GANNON: How do you feel about the use of the insanity plea in assassination attempt cases? For example, John Hinckley has recently and successfully used it in his attack on President Reagan. NIXON: Well, I suppose the--what I consider the responsible su--proposals to modify the plea, so that it just isn' ; t used--made up--" ; temporary s--insanity." ; If you have temporary insanity, you can say that everybody, any cold-blooded murderer, is temporarily insane. At the present time, the plea covers far too many people who, frankly, should pay for their crimes. GANNON: We--we--I think we' ; ve anticipated the answer to this question, but I' ; ll--I' ; ll ask it anyway. We have a ph--a photograph of you and Mrs. Nixon standing next to the catafalque at the Kennedy lying in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol. Do you remember what you were thinking or what was going through your mind as you stood there looking at his coffin? NIXON: Well, I' ; m not one that is going to say that I had profound feelings at such a time and so forth. That isn' ; t the way it was. I--I think my feelings were the same--any person who was, as I had been, a personal friend, one who respected him, although he had been my political opponent--respected him as a man and particularly as president of the United States. I think the primary feeling was one of the tragedy of it all, of a life being snuffed out. Even though he was against me, even though he was an opponent, in our system the better the competition, the better the eventual leader' ; s going to be. And he was a great competitor, and in that sense the loss to the country was irreparable. Then, of course, just the human tragedy of it all. GANNON: A lot has been written and spoken, and--and even sung, about the--the Kennedy style, that sort of collection of events and attitudes and conduct which for one brief shining moment created Camelot on the--on the Potomac. One might expect that you have a--a slightly different approach to the Kennedy style. How would you describe the Kennedy style? NIXON: Well, I would describe it first as being suave, smooth, debonair, and that appealed, of course, to many in the media, who--who are more, frankly, suckers for style than average people, for that matter. GANNON: Are they suave, smooth, and debonair themselves? NIXON: No, but they want to be. They always admire it, but i--in Kennedy they saw somebody that they would like to be and so consequently it--it appealed to them. Also that th--I guess, the Kennedy style had to do with the fact that he was considered to be an intellectual. GANNON: Was he? NIXON: He--I would rate him more so than most in that office. He was a good phrase-maker. He read books. Many don' ; t. And--and whether he was or not is not so important as that he enjoyed the company of--of intelligent people, of intellectuals. He made them feel important, and that was the case. But th--I think another thing that appealed to the media was that he was more than simply a suave, smooth intellectual, or l--Ivy League l--intellectual. He was Ivy League, but he was also Boston Irish, and that was a big difference. I think the fact that--that John Kennedy very much approved of the designation that was given to him by Joe Alsop tells us about--tells us one of the reasons why he had this charisma. He was a " ; Stevenson with balls," ; and therefore he was one that attracted the--the people who wanted a young, courageous man in the presidency and yet one who was smooth and graceful. Basically that' ; s the mark of royalty. GANNON: Do you think that the Kennedys are American royalty? NIXON: Oh, in their minds, certainly. And I think that tells part of the story. And in the minds of many of the media, yes. Nothing else can explain the way that Teddy Kennedy, despite the defeats he has suffered and despite his background, is still a very formidable potential candidate for president of the United States. It' ; s the Kennedy mystique. It' ; s still there. It' ; s going to last as long as one of them' ; s living. GANNON: Do you think that Americans long for the grandeur and the pageantry and the s--and the security of a royal family? Do they look for that in leaders? NIXON: Some do, yes. GANNON: Is that healthy? NIXON: Whether the majority do or not--I don' ; t think it' ; s particularly unhealthy. I--it depends on--on how you--how it' ; s really defined. I would say that, generally speaking, you find that many Americans--that they want their leaders to be somebody different from themselves. The--the present-day politician thinks that the way to lead is to be like the other people, just to be like the man next door. Well, people aren' ; t going to vote for the man next door. They want their leader to be somebody who is different, bigger than life, different from themselves. Not one that is like them. GANNON: Some of the Kennedy people--in fact, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., is the man who gave it the phrase--have said that the Nixon presidency was an imperial presidency. Was that your attempt to give the American people that aspect of a--of a royal family in your kind of leadership? NIXON: No. I would say that--I would say the Kennedy presidency is the one that qualifies as the imperial presidency more than any other. It had the glamour. It had the trappings. It had the--the--the--the phrases and so forth of the imperial presidency. I think in our case we tried to--to be--to run the office in a way that was dignified, but not in a way that made us--made it necessary for people to bow down and--and in effect treat us as the royalty. I never thought of it that way. GANNON: I think the real point of the Schlesinger book was that--that your administration' ; s use of power, your approach to the power of the office, was an imperial one. How would you compare your approach to power and your administration' ; s approach to power to the Kennedy administration' ; s approach to power? NIXON: Ineffective. GANNON: Who--what--which was ineffective? NIXON: Oh, ours. GANNON: Compared to theirs? NIXON: Oh, yes, yes, yes. They--they really know how to use power, and they used it ruthlessly. Well, let' ; s--let' ; s use a couple of examples. You heard about wiretapping, and people would think that the first time anybody was ever wiretapped was in our administration. Now, this is going to surprise a lot of people, but the highest number of wiretaps, even higher than those that were necessarily applied for national security purposes in the Korean War and those that were applied for national security fur--purposes in the Vietnam War--the highest number of " ; national security" ; --so-called--wiretaps was in 1963 by Bobby Kennedy when he was attorney general for John F. Kennedy. And they used the wiretaps were for what I would say were questionable national security purposes. For example, they wiretapped one reporter that they found was writing a book on Marilyn Monroe that might have some derogatory comments about Kennedys in them. I don' ; t think you can find any of that in our case. Some of ours may not have b--should not have been applied, but we tried to have a national security justification for them. Leaks, for example, of classified material was the primary reason we had for wiretapping. The--the handling of the press, for example--there is a great deal of discussion about the fact that we were s--trying to use the power of the presidency to silence the press, and so forth. But let' ; s look at how they used it so effectively. Their--a story appeared, apparently--carried on se--on CBS after the 1960 elections, indicating that the Catholic vote had been stirred up by the Kennedys during the election so that there was a pro-Catholic backlash among Protestants and the rest. And Kennedy was furious, and he called in Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, and took him to t--on the carpet about it. And Stanton said, " ; Well," ; he said, " ; look. We weren' ; t using this for the first time. The print media' ; s used this story before." ; And then Kennedy looked him in the eye and said, " ; Yes, but they aren' ; t lion--licensed by the federal government." ; And inc--of course, predictably, CBS soft-pedaled the story thereafter. Now that' ; s the use of power, and using it effectively. And in campaigning we have some pretty good examples. I think of Dick Tuck and others like him--th--the c--what they did, the way they would foul up schedules, the way they' ; d have demonstrators and hecklers and so forth, to follow us around on the campaign trail. And they made poor Donald Segretti and his little group of collegiate people look like a--like the amateur hour. What I am suggesting is that, while the Kennedy campaign did not develop--did not initiate or invent dirty tricks, they were the most professional in using them of any campaign that I know of. GANNON: You--you tell these stories with such seeming relish. Do you envy this toughness, and almost ruthlessness in-- NIXON: No, I-- GANNON: --campaigning? NIXON: No, the only thing I envy is the effectiveness. I think things sh--I think--I think if you' ; re going to engage in activities for which you are going to be held account, as you should, that they should be effective. That' ; s why, for example, in the field of foreign policy, it turns me off to have congressmen and senators, or other leaders, huff and puff about the Communists and so forth, and then when it comes to doing something effective, they back away. I' ; m interested in a policy being effective above everything else. And let me say, the Kennedys got it done. They got the job done. They were very effective. GANNON: There are those who argue that President Reagan is not u-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE GANNON: --nlike these congress in light of the recent shooting down of the Korean Airlines jet--is not unlike these congressmen you mentioned--that he' ; s talked about the " ; evil empire" ; in the past, that he' ; s huffed and puffed about the Soviets, but that when it came to actually going on television and doing something about it, he talks about suspending landing rights for a certain amount of time. Has his reaction been properly tough in these terms, do you think, in terms of being effective? NIXON: Well, any criticism I would have, I, of course, would make to him personally, because I follow the ground rule of not criticizing the president in the foreign policy area. GANNON: Have you done so? NIXON: No. I' ; m not--I haven' ; t criticized him. My view is that, once it' ; s done, then you look to the future. I think in this case he' ; s between a rock and a hard place. He had to be tough with regard to what Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0386/bmac
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60 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 1.
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gannix_0386
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-06-13
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United States
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 2. gannix_0387 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|14(8)|44(2)|54(2)|72(7)|81(9)|94(14)|107(8)|123(11)|136(7)|149(9)|151(15)|161(13)|178(2)|191(12)|207(8)|220(9)|235(3)|246(18)|262(4)|276(13)|292(4)|303(11)|314(12)|328(9)|340(11)|364(8)|374(13)|385(12)|402(8)|418(15)|443(5)|454(6)|469(11)|482(8)|495(5)|508(2)|523(3)|534(1)|545(6)|560(2)|573(14)|586(16)|600(8)|613(4)|630(14)|647(7)|665(11)|679(8)|693(16)|708(4)|731(17)|750(15)|766(11)|778(6)|793(1)|804(3)|815(4)|835(6) 0 https://youtu.be/Zk5HNFyn9e8 YouTube video English 4 Korean Air Lines Flight 007 --was done. It was an unconscionable action. Nixon discusses the Soviet Union attack on an unarmed Korean passenger plane that passed over Sakhalin Island, considering the motivation for the attack. 345 Preventing War with the Soviet Union There were some criticisms that President Reagan had used this incident to push his own defense program, the--the M.X. and the Pershing. Nixon considers the importance of military strength to deter attacks against the United States but also of attempting to prevent war through communication and foreign relations. 692 Marilyn Monroe / White House Dress Uniforms You--you mentioned Marilyn Monroe. Nixon disregards both rumors about Marilyn Monroe's relationship with the Kennedys and discussion about the White House uniformed guard's dress uniforms. 835 Health Problems of Presidents Did you know when you knew Congressman Kennedy--and then Senator Kennedy--about the health problems, the serious health problems he had that were later revealed? Nixon discusses the abilities of presidents, including John F. Kennedy, to lead effectively despite health problems. He gives his opinion on limiting media coverage of presidential health issues. 1222 Money in Political Campaigns / Financial History What--what kind of role did money play in John Kennedy's career? Nixon discusses the importance that money has in a political campaign and compares his supporters to John F. Kennedy's supporters. He also talks about his own financial history. 1997 Kennedy Campaigning What was it like running against the Kennedy political operation and the Kennedy money in 1960? Nixon describes the campaigning techniques of John F. Kennedy. 2401 1960 Presidential Campaign Tom Wicker, the--the liberal columnist, wrote some years ago, " ; Nobody knows to this day, or ever will, whom the American people really elected president in 1960. " ; Nixon discusses his 1960 presidential campaign against John F. Kennedy and the possibility of voter fraud that may have lost him the election. 3055 Sexual Conduct of Politicians Did you--did you have any idea at the time when you knew him as a senator or a congressman that John Kennedy was the--the ladies' man that he later turned out to be? Nixon discusses the " ; ladies' man" ; reputation that Kennedy and other politicians had and the effect that this reputation may have had on their political careers. Barbara Walters ; Bay of Pigs Invasion ; Estes Kefauver ; extramarital relationships ; Franklin D. Roosevelt ; Henry Kissinger ; John F. Kennedy ; Lucy Mercer ; media ; Richard Russell Kefauver, Estes, 1903-1963 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945 ; Russell, Richard B. (Richard Brevard), 1897-1971 ; Rutherfurd, Lucy Mercer ; Walters, Barbara, 1929- 3253 Drug and Alcohol Use There--there were widespread stories, and--and people have expressed not only moral shock but--but strategic concern about the widespread stories that President Kennedy smoked marijuana in his bedroom in the White House with one of his mistresses, Mary Meyer, and in Timothy Leary's new autobiography he says that he provided Mary Meyer with amounts of the hallucinogen LSD, and she told him that she was turning on people so highly placed in Washington that she couldn't name them. Nixon shares his feelings about drugs and alcohol and considers how the responsibilities of the president prevent using these. alcohol ; anti-war protest ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; John F. Kennedy ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Margaret Mead ; marijuana ; Mary Meyer ; Soviet Union ; Timothy Leary Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kennedy, John F. " ; Jack," ; 1917 - 1963 ; Leary, Timothy, 1920-1996 ; Mead, Margaret, 1901-1978 ; Meyer, Mary, 1920-1964 Interview http://dlgmedia1-www.galib.uga.edu/brown/mp3/gannix_0387.mp3 http://youtu.be/Zk5HNFyn9e8 NIXON: --was done. It was an unconscionable action. But in terms of what he could do, he had to recognize that whatever we might want to say, even after this incident, things remain the same. I mean, after all, those that murder their way to the tops in the K--to the top in the Kremlin are not going to have any qualms about murder in the sky, and that' ; s all this indicates. The Soviet have been this way before. This is the latest example of it, but they are there, and what we have to do is to find a way to give them incentives to keep the peace and incentives against this kind of activity in a hard-headed way. GANNON: Do you think this went to the top in the Kremlin, or do you think it was a local error--callous, brutal, but in--a local error? NIXON: Local error. No, there is--I don’t know Mr. Andropov personally, but from everything that I know about him he' ; s a highly intelligent man. He has a good sense of public relations for one who lives in that kind of closed society. He was trying at this particular time to sort of cool things down between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and they were reaching out in terms of trade and other areas. They need us, let' ; s face it. He' ; s trying to disarm the armament movement in Europe, and in the United States, for that matter. He' ; s trying to help the peace groups. And he' ; s--he' ; s not a stupid man. He' ; s not going to shoot himself in the foot. No. I think he--I wouldn' ; t be surprised to see somebody executed for what happened here, just for stupidity. GANNON: Will we ever know about that? NIXON: No. GANNON: Would they make that public? NIXON: Never. GANNON: But that--that would be the s--the strength of their response to a mistake like this-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: --and the nature of their-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: --kind of response? NIXON: It is possible that it would be that way. On the other hand, there was a similar incident to this about--in nineteen--five years ago, in 1978. A Korean--another Korean plane got off-course. It was downed. Two people were killed. What happened there--that there was investigation, apparently, in the Soviet Union, and at least two of those responsible for allowing the plane in and the handling of the matter were executed. The point is you' ; re more likely to have an execution of one of those on the ground who allowed an intruder to get into Soviet airspace than one who, even mistakenly, shot it down. I am simply saying he would have no qualms about it. My guess is, however, that he is very, very paranoiac about having any intrusion in the airspace, and he would hesitate to take action that would discourage people--his own people on the ground--from avoiding it. GANNON: Is Sakhalin Island like Dr. No' ; s island? Is there something going on there that' ; s so secret that they' ; re--that they' ; re super-sensitive about that particular place? NIXON: I don' ; t know, but I would hope that investigation is being made in that direction. I und--I would think that it is a very, very important base, or otherwise they wouldn' ; t be quite that paranoiac about it. GANNON: Do you think Andropov is capable, if it had come up to him, of making a decision to take out--to take down a--an unarmed passenger plane if he had been told that it was over this sensitive area? NIXON: No doubt about it. No, after all, we have to remember, in the Soviet Union, I don' ; t know of any Soviet le--lu--leader who' ; s been the head of the Soviet Union that didn' ; t murder his way to the top. I don' ; t mean by that individually, here and there, but executions, participating in purges, and so forth. That is one of the requirements for going up in the Soviet hierarchy. He was the head of the KGB. They not only execute people, murder them, entrap them, send them to clinics where they use all ko--sorts of psychological pressures on them, and the rest--psychiatric, I should say. But of course they would do it. They--they will do anything that serves the cause. On the other hand, he' ; s not going to engage in activities that he feels are going to be harmful. Let me put it another way. When we talk about--when we try to influence the Soviet by appealing to their morality, it' ; s like two ships going in the night. They have a different view of morality, a different view of the world, than we have--what is right and what is wrong. For example, a pathetic gesture like taking it to the United Nations, figuring that world opinion is going to make them change. Condemning the Soviet Union in the United S--Nations is like making faces at the Sphinx. It isn' ; t going to affect them. Now, what may affect them, from a pragmatic standpoint, is the realization that if world opinion is totally against them--that then--that will lead to a bigger arms buildup in the world and less progress in areas that they want. But they’re not going to be affected by an argument that it' ; s moral or immoral to have somebody killed. After all, Lenin--every Soviet leader that has ever lived has indicated that there are times when lifes [sic] must be sacrificed for the greater good. Any means to an end. GANNON: There were some criticisms that President Reagan had used this incident to push his own defense program, the--the MX and the Pershing. Do--do you s--see anything to that criticism? NIXON: Well, I hope he did use it for that purpose. I don' ; t know what these idiots are thinking about. When you have this--this--a Soviet leadership exposed for what it is--this incident, which is an indication of the problem that we have--that' ; s a very good argument to develop our strength. And I am--I totally approve of President Reagan asking the American people and our allies abroad to realize the kind of a world we live in. It' ; s very, very dangerous, and we have to recognize that if they' ; re going to engage in this kind of activity, we' ; ve got to have the military strength, because that will deter them. They are not going to be deterred by a resolution in the United Nations. They may be deterred by the fact that we would be able to react or might react more strongly than such a revolu--resolution. So when President Reagan addresses the issue in that way, he' ; s right on, in my opinion. GANNON: But you do distance yourself from the conservatives who--the--if it' ; s not redundant, the right-wing conservatives--but you do distance yourself from the conservatives who argue that he should cut off all relations and take much stronger actions? NIXON: They' ; re out of their minds. I mean, they--they just don’t understand how the real worl--world works. So we break relations with the Soviet Union. I remember de Gaulle said to me once--we were talking about what was called " ; détente" ; --hard-headed détente, as I would call it, not the soft-headed kind that was practiced in the later administration--but de Gaulle said, " ; What is your choice? If you are not prepared to break down the Berlin Wall, then you have to talk. And the thing to do is to be--talk from in a position of strength." ; Now what we have to understand is that when the--the--what I call--they--they call themselves " ; the hard right" ; or " ; the far right," ; et cetera--when they say " ; break diplomatic relations, cut off all trade, isolate them," ; what are they going to build? I know what they think. They think, " ; Well, if we just do that, the rotten system will collapse." ; I wish it were, but it is not going to collapse. They' ; re just going to squeeze their people more. What we have to realize is that this incident itself demonstrates why you have to have contact. If war comes, it' ; s going to come not, in my opinion, by the Soviet Union launching a massive strike. They don' ; t want a world--even though they want to conquer the world, they don' ; t want a world of destroyed cities and dead bodies. It' ; s going to come through accident, through miscalculation, or through third-party small nations drawing the big powers into war. And as far as accident and miscalculation is concerned, you' ; ve got to have more contact rather than less. And this plane incident shows how very close to the edge we are. An incident of that sort--suppose that it involved not a Korean plane but an American transport? It would have been pretty tough. GANNON: What would--what would you have done in a case like that, if it--if it were-- NIXON: Well, I' ; m not going to-- GANNON: --would that have made the response difference? NIXON: I' ; m not going to comment upon what I would have done about that, because that gets me into this, and, as I said, I s--I don' ; t comment upon what the president should do. GANNON: At this point we take a break. NIXON: I' ; m not sure it' ; s useful, Frank, to get all this in, because that' ; s-- NIXON: Now we' ; ve covered Truman' ; s legacy enough. GANNON: Yes, I think that the decisions and-- GANNON: You--you mentioned Marilyn Monroe. Are you aware of the--the widespread rumors that Marilyn Monroe was the mistress of either President Kennedy or Robert Kennedy or--or both, and that her last phone call on the--on the afternoon of her death was to Peter Lawford, and her last words were, " ; Say goodbye to Bobby. Say goodbye to the President. And say goodbye to yourself, because you' ; re a nice guy" ; ? Do you have any knowledge or insight into the relationship between the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe and why this--why th--why the rumors about their fears about her diary exist and whether they might be justified? NIXON: No, I' ; ve never gotten into that. I--I don' ; t read those movie magazines and the reports and so forth. Probably should, but I just have never found time for it. GANNON: One of the--t--one last thing on the--the idea of the imperial presidency. One of the charges ab--against the Nixon administration was the--the uniforms, the dress uniforms, the comic opera dress uniforms for the White House uniformed guards. Why' ; d you do that? NIXON: Well, as a matter of fact, that was done at the staff level. I was pretty surprised when I saw them, and I think just some bright-eyed fellow down below thought that would look great. O--I--all I knew is that I had wanted it upgraded, because, having been to so many foreign countries and then coming back to the United States as vice president, as I had, and to see the--the way that we receive foreign guests in such a very undignified way I know made a terribly bad impression on them, and I said I just wanted it shaped up, because I--I would say at this particular point, the--at the time that I became president, the only more unkempt, if I may use those two words together, security people than the ones at the White House were the ones in the Congress. It' ; s really disgusting to see these overblown, fat people that are basically political hacks running around there to protect the congressmen, and that' ; s the way the White House looked. Th--thank heaven it' ; s shaped up now, and we do a very good job on our protocol. I was only interested in the protocol. As far as the uniforms, I never look at the uniforms. I don' ; t know anything about uniforms. GANNON: Did you know when you knew Congressman Kennedy--and then Senator Kennedy--about the health problems, the serious health problems he had that were later revealed? NIXON: In fact, not only did I not know, but in the discussions I' ; ve had with him, he never mentioned it, which I think is a compliment to him. I understand that throughout the years he was in Congress and in the Senate that he was--had a great deal of pain from what is called Addison' ; s disease, and also a back problem of some sort. But he never talked about it--never talked about his troubles. Not to me. GANNON: Do you feel that his health problems were sufficiently serious that he shouldn' ; t have run--shouldn' ; t have put himself in the position of running for president? NIXON: No. I think the proof of the pudding there is in the eating, and in this respect, where health becomes an issue, and where it should be an issue, is when it may have the effect of not allowing the individual to be an effective leader. But let' ; s look at--look at the history of that here. Franklin D. Roosevelt had had polio. He was crippled. He became one of the outstanding presidents. Whether you like him or not, he was an outstanding president, a great leader. You talk about age. Some thought Eisenhower was too age [sic]. Many think Reagan is--no. Some thought Eisenhower was too old, and many, of course, campaigned against Reagan at an earlier time on the ground that he was too old. The question is not his age, but the question is can he do the job. The same was true of Eisenhower after he' ; d had a heart attack. Many would suggest that--" ; Well, he' ; s had a heart attack. Maybe he can' ; t do the job." ; But he went ahead, he ran, and he did the job. Now in the case of Kennedy' ; s health, I would say also in the case of Johnson' ; s health, because the Kennedy people were trying to make an issue of Johnson' ; s heart attack in the 1960 primary campaigns--but in the case of both, the proof is can they go through a campaign. A campaign is more difficult than being president, and anybody that can go through a presidential campaign is healthy enough to be president. And that' ; s what I say about Kennedy. I say it about Roosevelt. I say it about Eisenhower. I say it also about Johnson. GANNON: Jack Valenti has told a story about being in Texas when President Kennedy gave a speech, and in fact being crouched beneath the podium, and seeing President Kennedy' ; s hand when it was down beneath the podium, and that it was--it was shaking that--o--out--out of control. The press must have seen a lot of this by that point, and must have known about the braces he had to wear. Do you think they should not have reported that? Do you think that the public doesn' ; t need to know that kind of thing as long as, ostensibly, the job is being done in an orderly way? NIXON: You' ; ve stated my position very well. I didn' ; t know about Franklin Roosevelt being crippled until after the war. I think that was proper. He was doing the job all right. As far as President Kennedy was concerned--he was then, of course, as a candidate, and then thereafter as president--the fact that he had Addison' ; s disease, or whatever it was, unless it affected his mind I do not believe it is a legitimate issue. Now I must say I think the press, or the media, perhaps were a little less hard on him, if I may use British understatement, than they were on me on some issues. But as far as the health issue was concerned, I think that was proper. And let me say, too, that in respect to what is called the sex issue. Now, apparently it' ; s been disclosed that there was a lot of hanky-panky going on in the White House in the Kennedy years and so forth, and the bedrooms being used for extracurricular purposes. I don' ; t want to see any of that. I don' ; t want to even see it now. I think what matters is what kind of a president he was. I think the important thing, however, is that a president, whether it involves that sort of activity, or whether it involves profanity or what-have-you--the important thing is for him to set an example and not blatantly to destroy the myth that people need to have about whoever' ; s president. GANNON: Do you think that candidates should be required to make public their medical records in a campaign, or before or during a campaign? NIXON: I don’t believe so, but I don' ; t mind it. I never minded it because mine--naturally, from a personal standpoint, because I--from the standpoint of my opponents I' ; m disgustingly healthy and will probably outlive them all. But, on the other hand, these days when you' ; ve got all these psychiatric experts running around and so forth. I think before we get through we' ; re going to have--to have presidents go through a psychiatric examination, spend two, three days on the couch--I mean with a psychiatrist, not a babe--and then see what happens before you can allow them to be president. It' ; s gone too far, in my opinion. Maybe a routine health examination so that they haven' ; t got terminal syphilis, but beyond that I' ; m not for it. GANNON: Do you think that having undergone psychiatric therapy should exclude a--a person from running for president or should influence people' ; s decision whether or not to vote for that person? NIXON: Well, you had that problem with the Eagleton case, and I would say it would not exclude him unless the--the prognosis after the therapy indicated that there--r--a recurrence might occur of a psychiatric problem. And--but otherwise, these days that would probably rule out half the population among those that would be qualified to run for president, because of--the so-called " ; upper set" ; or the " ; better" ; people and so forth not only go onto the couch themselves but send their kids on the when--couch ins--rather than disciplining them. GANNON: Do you think discipline would be better and more effective? NIXON: Far better. Far better. I think, as a matter of fact, if priests and ministers and parents and teachers were doing a better job, you' ; d put th--nine-tenths of the psychiatrists out of business. GANNON: What--what kind of role did money play in John Kennedy' ; s career? NIXON: Oh, very effective. He, of course, had all the money he needed for personal purposes. He never had to fight his way up. He never had to worry about losing in a campaign for fear that he wouldn' ; t have a job. The second thing is that it provided him the opportunity to--to buy the brightest and the best. Now let me make a differentation [sic] there--not only by buying them, because he was able to pay them, but also, in his case, however, he had the added advantage that once bought, they stayed bought. He was able, to his great credit, to inspire an enthusiasm and a loyalty which, for example, Nelson Rockefeller was unable to do. Nelson Rockefeller bought the brightest and the best, too, but Nelson Rockefeller ended up--when a Rockefeller campaign was over, they went to greener pastures. Not with the Kennedy--once the Kennedy supporter, virtually all were that way in the future. Now, that' ; s on the plus side. You have enough money that you don' ; t have the trials and tribulations of--of life that people who don' ; t have money have, and you' ; re able to buy--a--af--afford a campaign. You' ; re able to buy a good staff. On the minus side, however, sometimes it' ; s very important for a potential leader to go through the fire. I' ; ve often said that before you win, you' ; ve got to lose--that that' ; s how you learn how to win. And so the trials of life can toughen a person up, make you stronger, so that when you have crises you will have already been through enough that you can take--handle them in an effective way. And as far as staff is concerned, I think I' ; m a prime example of the fact that money is not that necessary if you have a good cause. For example, after 1966, when I began to ran--run for president for the second time--and this' ; ll be hard for people to believe today, when people spend millions just to get into the House, let alone the Senate or the presidency or what-have-you--at that particular time I had four paid people on my campaign staff--Rose Mary Woods, my secretary, Dwight Chapin, who handled appointments, Pat Buchanan, who worked with the press, and Ray Price, who was a speechwriter. Four--that' ; s all. Rockefeller had several hundred full, paid staff. We beat him. We beat him because mine were totally dedicated, and then we added to that with volunteers. Another reason why a big staff, bought and paid for, is not always an asset is that the bigger the staff, the less thinking the man does himself. And when you get into that top job, they' ; re not hiring your staff. They' ; re hiring you. And the more you have to make those decisions--write your own speeches, or at least if someone else writes them, edit them--the more you have to think the problem through, the better you will be in handling the problem when it comes up. GANNON: What was it about, do you think--about John Kennedy that--that drew--or kept the people that he drew to him with him? NIXON: I think there were two factors. One was the fact that he, insofar as creative people were concerned--was that he had imagination. He wanted new ideas. He was an intellectual, so to speak, and he appealed to intellectuals, just as Woodrow Wilson, who was an intellectual, appealed. I wouldn' ; t put John Kennedy, or any other president, for that matter, in the category of Wilson, who was, of course, the most dominating intellectual figure in our history. But, nevertheless, he had that appearance to people, and he enjoyed their company, and they appreciated that. I think beyond that, though, in terms of the workers in his campaign--I mean, not just the speechwriters and the idea people and the rest, but those that had to do the grinding work of organizing the campaign, working out schedules, advance men and so forth and so on--what appealed to them was not what he stood for but the method, the macho image that he projected, a--a man that was going to go out and risk all to gain all. In other words, his--his Harvard side appealed to his speechwriters, who rendered great service to him. His Irish side appealed to the campaign workers, and the combination became unbeatable. GANNON: To whom did you appeal? What kind of supporter did--did you attract, and--and what did they--what did they look for and find in you that--that kept them with you in--in that way? Did you have people with the same intensity-- NIXON: Oh, yes. GANNON: --that the Kennedys did? NIXON: Oh, yes, and--and I still have them. In other words, the difference between what we call the Nixon hard core and the Rockefeller hard core is that his is gone now. Oh, there are a few Rockefeller people around, but--but not really that' ; ll carry the torch. Mine are still there, even despite what I have been through. We still have a very good hard core of people, some in government, some outside of government, some in business, some even in the media, and so forth and so on. GANNON: Who are they, and--and why are they for you? NIXON: The--the--the reason that they' ; re for me, I think, is perhaps threefold. First, that I think primarily there are those who were for me because they believed in what I stood for. I always tried to attract people to a cause rather than to the man. I used to, in campaign speech after campaign speech-- I said, " ; Don' ; t vote for me as the man. Vote for what I stand for. If you believe what I stand for, then vote for me." ; And I think the cause, the--my--my--what I would call responsible conservatism at home, my internationalism but hard-headed attitude toward the Soviet threat abroad-- this drew people to me. They saw me as one who could stand f--for and present the cause that they deeply believed in. That' ; s probably the main group there. From the personal standpoint, too, I think that I had appeal, curiously enough, to some intellectuals, but they' ; re very rare. It happens that most of the people with brains don' ; t go into politics in the intellectual side. They go into business. They can make more money. But in those rare instances where you have intellectuals in politics on the conservative side, I had an appeal to them, because my--my appeal was primarily cerebral, rather than emotional. And so, consequently, I didn' ; t have very many, but those that I did have in my speechwriting and other staff were very, very good. I' ; m very proud to have been able to attract them. Those things--and then, of course, there were a certain number who, for what reason or another, had a personal attraction, I assume, but I' ; m not able to speak to that point. GANNON: Two of those three reasons are cerebral and intellectual rather than emotional or charismatic. Are you making a virtue of adversity to--in charismatic terms? If--on a ten-point charismatic--charisma scale, if you were put against--head-to-head with JFK, where do you think you would stand? NIXON: No, I wouldn' ; t--I wouldn' ; t judge that. I--that--that’s something that' ; s--that people have voted on and expressed their judgments, and apparently, I--I think, on that score it would come out about even. That' ; s the way the election came out--thirty-five million to thirty-five million. GANNON: Would--if you had had money, would that have made a big difference to your career? NIXON: I' ; d probably never gotten so high. I--I am convinced, as I said, that money can be a mixed blessing. I think these days, incidentally, it may be more important. I' ; m--I noticed when I was in the Senate I don' ; t think there were more than four or five that were s--in the million class. Today, there may be twenty. Of course, the--the million isn' ; t as big then as it now--isn' ; t as big now as it was then, I should say. But, on the other hand, I think what has assisted me in my political career is that I' ; ve had to go through adversity. You develop strength through adversity. It' ; s like what Chou En-lai said when we met. He said, " ; Men who travel a smooth road never become strong." ; And my road has not been smooth. GANNON: One of the standard operating interpretations about Richard Nixon is that you' ; re obsessed by money, by wealth, by the lack of it, or the lack of enough of it, or impressed with it in other people. Do you see that at all in yourself? NIXON: Well, if I were, I' ; d have some. My--my income is relatively modest, and I don' ; t have any, except from--for--for what I write, because I don' ; t take honorariums, and I don' ; t--I' ; m not a member of any board or any of that sort of thing. I' ; m very comfortable, because my books have been very successful, and my real estate investments, the only thing I' ; ve ever invested in, have come out better than most. But I don' ; t have a great deal, but if I--I were interested in money I would hope that I would have been far more successful than I am. GANNON: It' ; s--it' ; s always struck me as an irony of your career that for someone who claims to be--and in fact, the--the records which you have made public at various times bear out your claims--someone who has had a--a very modest, straightforward and open-book financial history. Indeed, when you write about leaving the vice presidency that you left with an Ol-- NIXON: Forty-seven thousand dollars. GANNON: --forty-seven thousand dollars equity and-- NIXON: And s--and a-- GANNON: An Olds-- NIXON: --secondhand Oldsmobile. GANNON: That was true, but you were very carefully conscious--maybe because you felt it was going to be exposed at some time--about keeping records and-and living very frugally and--and--and honestly. And yet you were surrounded by people in the Congress--take Lyndon Johnson as an example of a man who, from the early forties when he went to the Congress, never was on any other than a government payroll, and he left a fortune when he died, estimated between fourteen and twenty million dollars. There were a number, if not a lot, of people in the Congress at the time you were there who were, without necessarily doing anything illegal, were just--were--were making a lot of money. You didn' ; t, and yet a lot of people still suspect that you' ; ve got an un--you know, an--an listed Bahamian or Swiss bank account that--wh--why--it' ; s ironic that the least likely person against whom these charges should be made is the person against whom they are made. NIXON: Well, of course, it goes clear back to the famous fund controversy, when we had this sixteen-thousand-dollar-a-year fund back in 1952, and when finally when it all came out it was quite clear the fund was for--solely for political purposes, not for personal purposes, as distinguished from the Stevenson fund, which, because he was a liberal and a Democrat, they didn' ; t go after at all--was used even for personal purposes and--and not just for political purposes. Going back to then, I was--I have always, of course, been examined very closely by the media and by my political opponents in this respect. And so I' ; ve had to be like Caesar' ; s wife. But I think that as far as the charge is concerned, it' ; s just routine. I mean, opponents have to go after something, and so they--they can' ; t believe that I could have served all this time in--in the Congress, as vice president, then I was practicing law for eight years at a pretty good amount of money, the--then I served as president for five-and-a-half year [sic]--that I could have, shall we say, as modest amount as I have. And understand, I am very comfortable, but I am not in that multi-multi class that people would expect me to have. But it' ; s--but I--that doesn' ; t mean that the charge isn' ; t going to be made. GANNON: Are you impressed by people who have money? NIXON: Not--no, not at all. Not at all. In fact, most of them are very boring, because they--that' ; s all they want to talk about. I mean, they--I mean, to me one of the most boring things to do is to go to Palm Springs or Palm Beach or Newport and see the so-called " ; beautiful people" ; who have either inherited money--and some have earned it--showing off their gowns and their furs and their diamonds and their jewelry and talking of nothing but money and food and houses, and sometimes a little sex. But it' ; s a bore. GANNON: What was it like running against the Kennedy political operation and the Kennedy money in 1960? NIXON: It was rough, because they were smart, they were rich, they were ruthless. And by " ; ruthless," ; I mean they' ; d do anything to win. You had the operation, for example, of Dick Tuck that I' ; ve referred to. The--the--the media classified it as just " ; fun and games," ; because they were for him. In our case, they took poor Don Segretti, who was a--an--was today' ; s version of amateur hour and made it out as political sabotage. All of it, of course, had nothing, no particular effect on the campaign, although it' ; s quite irritating to be heckled and to have your schedule screwed up and so forth. And by having moles in your operation, which, of course, they were very good at. No. They play--they play hardball. I mean, they play--they may play softball out on the White House lawn over there, but it' ; s hardball, or it may be touch football in the--on the playgrounds, but it' ; s tackle football all the way. GANNON: Did you--could you see the Kennedy money at work against your operation? NIXON: Well, one rather humorous example. In those days, and thank God those days are gone, the--the black vote was greatly influenced by black preachers. And in those days each party used to bid for the support of the black preachers, figuring if you get the preachers they' ; d go out and tell their congregations, and you' ; d get the black vote. Well, Len Hall was our campaign chairman. He was from New York State. And, of course, this kind of thing of buying the black preachers, as they say--we didn' ; t do that in California because we weren' ; t up to speed with regard to what was done back here in the East. But Len Hall--apparently they knew--they had been doing that for years in New York. So he made an attempt to--to, you know, s--subsidize some of the black preachers and so forth, with contributions and so forth, in order to get their support. And he had a pretty good fund to do that. And he came to me one time--he says, " ; My God, I' ; ve never seen anything like it." ; He said, " ; I' ; ve paid these fellows more than they ever got before, and Joe Kennedy' ; s come in there and raised me every time. We didn' ; t get one of ' ; em." ; Now that' ; s just one example, but the main example, of course, i--is in terms of the ability to buy time, to buy advertising, to pay precinct workers, et cetera, et cetera. And the difference was we were f--well-financed in 1960, but they outspent us. And it' ; s a miracle that we did as well as we did. GANNON: Did Hubert Humphrey ever talk to you about his--his running up against the Kennedy political operation and finance operation in--in that campaign, and particularly in West Virginia? NIXON: Very privately. He was--he was not a crybaby, and he' ; d say it in sorrow more than anger, but he said, " ; Boy, it was really something. It was really something." ; And I know now why he felt it was really something to be up against the Kennedy machine, because in West Virginia, for example, a state that he was predicted to win, because it' ; s 95 percent Protestant, because it' ; s very, very much pro-New Deal, and Hubert Humphrey was much more of a New Dealer than was Jack Kennedy, and so forth, and a very poor state, and Hubert made a great appeal to the people on the poor basis, and yet he lost. And one of the reasons, he said, was that--that--the money that was spent. And I' ; ve seen a study which indicated that the Kennedy people spent enough money in West Virginia to pay every voters fifty dollars. Now, whether that' ; s true or not, I don' ; t know. But I know that k--that poor Hubert was outspent. But that wasn' ; t the worst thing. It wasn' ; t just--you can' ; t just buy the voters in-in any state. The worst thing that happened in--in terms of Hubert was--happened to him in Minnesota and in d--Wisconsin. Hubert was from Minnesota, of course. He was campaigning against Kennedy in the Wisconsin primary. It was very important for him to win Misco--Wisconsin, because, after all, Wisconsin' ; s in his back yard. And so it was predicted he would win. So what happened was that just a few days before the election, the Catholic precincts in Milwaukee and other areas of Misco--Wisconsin were flooded with anti-Catholic literature, vicious anti-Catholic literature, postmarked from Minnesota. Everybody thought Hubert did it, and the Kennedy people did nothing to dissuade them. It was only learned after the campaign that an aide to Bobby Kennedy did that mailing. Of course, the press--it was a one-day story to them, because, after all, they have a different standard for a Kennedy than they do even for a Hubert Humphrey. And another thing on Hubert, for example--the--the use of--o--o--of what I call hardball--and, I would say, since it' ; s illegal, a spitball tactic--was that the Kennedy people got Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.--Roosevelt being a legendary name in West Virginia--and they got him to go into the state and make speeches questioning Hubert Humphrey' ; s war record. He wasn' ; t in the service, because he was legitimately not in it. He--he didn' ; t dodge the draft, but they left the implication that he had dodged the draft. And only after the election did they say, " ; Well, we' ; re sorry." ; Hubert, as a result, I u--in his memoirs, he--he didn' ; t want to be too much of a sour grape, but he said that " ; beneath that beautiful exterior was a toughness and a ruthless [sic] which I shall not forget and do not understand." ; GANNON: In Ben Bradlee' ; s book, he indicates that President Kennedy had a--a terrific interest in the military records of some of his opponents--Humphrey, and he mentions Rockefeller, and the--the man who ran against his brother for the s--senate race. NIXON: Yeah. They did the same thing on Rockefeller. As a matter of fact, I think President Kennedy, a--ac--according to one of those--I think it was Bradlee himself said to him, " ; Look. You ought to ream out Rocky a little on his war record." ; GANNON: Tom Wicker, the--the liberal columnist, wrote some years ago, " ; Nobody knows to this day, or ever will, whom the American people really elected president in 1960. Under the prevailing system, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, but it is not at all clear that this was really the will of the people, or, if so, by what means and margin that will was expressed." ; Do you think that you were elected president of the United States in 1960? NIXON: Well, many objective observers believe that I was. I' ; m not going to s--sit here and say that I believe that I was, because I haven' ; t the evidence to prove that I was not or was. I--I will say this, however. There was no question, and these are facts, that there was immense fraud in Chicago, and it was all on that side, not on our side. And there was only eight thousand votes difference in us in Illinois--between us. So it' ; s only a shift of four thousand votes and I would have won Illinois. Then I' ; d have needed only one other state--could have been Missouri, could have been South Carolina. A shift of twelve thousand votes out of seventy million would have meant my being elected rather than Kennedy. The other state, however, where the major charges of fraud was made was in Johnson' ; s state of Texas. And there there were many precincts in heavily Johnson areas that twice as many voters voted as were on the rolls. In fact, there was a--there was a famous story that Johnson used to tell on himself. Kennedy kidded Johnson on occasion, and Johnson didn' ; t particularly like it, of being " ; Landslide Johnson." ; That was because when Johnson went to the Senate the first time, he won by a very, very small amount, and he won, they thought, by some hanky-panky, because he played hardball, too. And then Johnson told this story about a little boy sitting on a curb in a--down in a south Texas town. The little boy was crying, and somebody came up and said to him, " ; Manuel, why are you crying?" ; He said, " ; I' ; m crying because my father was here Tuesday and he didn' ; t come to see me." ; " ; Oh, but Manuel, your father' ; s been dead for ten years." ; " ; I know, but he was here Tuesday and voted for Lyndon Johnson, and he didn' ; t come to see me." ; So, in other words, the voting of dead people and the rest--it occurred. But people say why didn' ; t--" ; If it did occur, why didn' ; t you do" ; --as President Eisenhower and many other [sic] urged me to do--" ; why didn' ; t you contest it?" ; Well, there were clear reasons. I really didn' ; t have any doubt about contesting it. Not really. My heart told me to do it. My head said no. It said no for this fundamental reason. One, it would be--the United States would be without a president for almost a year before the challenges in Illinois and Texas could have been taken--could have been run through. And there was a good chance that we could finance it. Eisenhower was willing to raise money from his friends in order to support that challenge, and I turned it down. The second reason was, and this was because of my travels abroad. I' ; d been to Latin America, and I' ; d been to Africa, and I' ; d been to countries in the Far East that were just starting down the democratic path. The United States is an example of the democratic system. In those countries, an election means very little. You have an election, you either fix it or, if it comes out against you, you have a coup and overthrow them, or charge corruption or what-have-you. If in the United States an election were found to be fraudulent, it would mean that every pipsqueak in every one of these countries, if he lost an election, would simply bring a fraud charge and have a coup. So I felt that, under the circumstances, one, the United States couldn' ; t afford to have a vacuum in leadership for that period of time without knowing who was president, and, two, even though we were to win it, the cost in world opinion and the effect on democracy in the broadest sense would be detrimental. GANNON: So you--you do think it is possible, without reaching a judgment, that you were, in fact, elected the thirty-fifth president of the United States in November of 1960? NIXON: Oh, yes, it was possible. And I think President Kennedy felt it was possible, too. I remember when he came to see me right after the election, when we were both in Florida at the Key Biscayne Hotel. The first words that he a--he spoke after the press left and so forth, he says, " ; Well, I guess it' ; s hard to tell who won this election." ; And I said, " ; Well, it' ; s pretty clear that it' ; s over now." ; I think he was rather relieved when I said that. That meant that, ef--that, in effect, I was telling him I was not going to contest it. GANNON: Do you think he was feeling you out to see what you were going to do? NIXON: At the time I didn' ; t think so, but I--I know they were very sensitive about that particular point. It could be, but I' ; m not prepared to judge that. GANNON: Did you feel that then, or in his later contacts with you, that he was embarrassed or defensive because in fact he might have been a usurper in your chair? NIXON: No. I don’t think he was capable of that. I mean, after all, he plays hard, and he--when Mayor Daley--he talked to him on the phone after the election, and Mayor Daley said that--" ; Mr. President, with a little bit of luck and with the help of some good friends out in the precincts, we' ; re going to carry Illinois for you." ; Well, Kennedy knew what he meant. And I think that, well, naturally, he' ; s not going to formally approve hanky-panky. On the other hand, he knows that under the system that sometimes happens. No. H--he' ; s never--I don’t think he was ever defensive. I think, however, he--he did feel that because the election was so close, it would be useful to have--at least make an offer for me to be in the administration, which of course he did offer, and I turned it down. GANNON: What did he offer you? NIXON: I--U--U--the United Nations or something else that I considered to be relatively unimportant. But symbolically it had been important. GANNON: Do you think he may have done that in order to sort of co-opt you? NIXON: No. I don' ; t think he thought I would take it, but I think he thought that it was the proper thing to do. Well, as a matter of fact, I did the same thing for Humphrey. The election was close, and I offered Humphrey the chance to go to the United Nations, and he turned it down. I--it' ; s--the--that' ; s part of the--that' ; s part of the process.The winner, if he needs the support of the loser, will offer him something, like, for example, after Johnson beat Goldwater, he couldn' ; t have cared less, because he didn’t need--Johnson--he beat him by so much. And I suppose the same would be true after I defeated McGovern. I didn' ; t offer him a job. GANNON: Did you take the fact that Kennedy came to you at Key Biscayne, rather than you going to him at Palm Beach, for this meeting, which he opened by saying, " ; It looks like we don' ; t know who won," ; as a sign that he was trying to placate you or appease you in some way? NIXON: No, I wouldn' ; t say that. I think actually it was just the gracious thing to do. You know, let' ; s understand, he plays hardball, but he has grace. He does the thing that is right in terms of the manners and so forth--he tries to. I try to, too. And in this particular respect, I think what happened here--I offered to come up to see him. We made the appointment by telephone. He says, " ; No, I' ; ve got a car and Secret Service and so forth. Let me come to see you." ; Which was quite true--I didn' ; t have an automobile and so forth. So, under the circumstances, he felt that it was right to--and then, of course, he could well make the point--I still outranked him. He was still a senator. I was still vice president. He was president-elect. So protocol--he should come, although, of course, I would have gone to see him. GANNON: It' ; s--it' ; s one of the canons of the Nixon loyalists that you did, in fact, win the election in 1960. And now, more than twenty years later, shouldn' ; t you study this? Don' ; t you owe it to history, really, to study this and reach a decision about it, because if you did, in fact, win, as you indicate is possible, the way you acted then and since is arguably the most magnanimous and noble conduct in the history of American politics? If you think you didn' ; t win, allowing your supporters to keep this story going is a fairly cynical manipulation of history. Don' ; t you--shouldn' ; t you reach a decision? NIXON: No. No. I' ; m not going to get out and say that I did win and then cast a pall on the whole Kennedy record. I' ; m not going to say that. I will say, however, that I can understand how my supporters would do what they' ; re--they are doing. They believe that, and I would say there is a very good prima facie case, which we didn' ; t have the opportunity to prove because we did not legally contest the election, that we did win it, because as far as the vote frauds were concerned--they were on the Kennedy side. I didn' ; t hear of any cases where the Nixon people were able to--in any state that it mattered, for that matter--where it was the other way around. In Texas and in Illinois--for example in Cook County, in those precincts where more people voted than were on the rolls--they were all Kennedy precincts, never Nixon precincts. That' ; s got to tell you something. GANNON: Do you--sorry, I lost my train of thought there. NIXON: Sex or-- GANNON: Well, I' ; m always thinking about sex. That' ; s probably what did it. NIXON: Sex, profanity-- GANNON: Do you--do you think that the--given the enormous frustration you must have felt to have been so near and yet so far--a hundred and thirteen thousand votes out of seventy-eight million cast for the presidency--do you, looking back--or at the time, did you feel that you were acting magnanimously or nobly in the way you conducted yourself in terms of not calling a recount? NIXON: No. I--I wouldn' ; t classify what I did magnanimous or noble. GANNON: Would you argue with those who did so characterize it? NIXON: No. No. I can understand how others would say it. I think I was acting responsibly. " ; Responsible" ; is my favorite word. You do what is the right thing, and the right thing in that case was to do exactly what I did. GANNON: Do you think that the average politician wouldn' ; t have cried for a recount till the cows come home? Do you think most politicians look at it that way and do the right thing? NIXON: I think they might have. I think that if the shoe had been on the other foot--that Kennedy might have contested it. But I don' ; t know. GANNON: Did you--did you have any idea at the time when you knew him as a senator or as a congressman that John Kennedy was the ladies' ; man that he later turned out to be? NIXON: No. He--he never confided in me about his, you know, adventures in that particular area. GANNON: Were you shocked by these revelations? NIXON: Not particularly. No. No. GANNON: Why not? Didn' ; t they show a disdain of convention and political propriety that' ; s really sort of breathtaking? NIXON: Well, to a certain extent I suppose that' ; s true, but I have--I have always separated an individual' ; s personal life from his political life. You take Franklin Roosevelt, for example. I respect Roosevelt for a great wartime leader. Now, all these revelations to the effect of his long-time affair with Lucy Mercer--I don' ; t care about that. That’s between him and his family. What I am concerned about is how he handled the presidency and what kind of an example he set there. Now, as far as Kennedy is concerned, I will look at his record as president. I will be critical of some of the things he did--the Bay of Pigs, for example, and others. But as far as--as far as his extracurricular activities are concerned, unless that affected his--his handling of the presidency, I' ; m not going to be critical of him. GANNON: When I say these revelations are breathtaking--maybe they’re not that breathtaking. Henry Kissinger said that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Is politics a more sexy or a more highly sexed profession than others? Maybe this goes on all the time. NIXON: Well, I guess quite a few politicians have been swordsmen, and--but that doesn' ; t mean that a lot of businessmen haven' ; t been, and even college professors now and then have a little hanky-panky. GANNON: Didn' ; t you--you once told a story--was it Richard Russell described the campaigning conduct of one of his Southern colleagues? NIXON: Oh, yes--Russell and Kefauver. Estes Kefauver, you know, the great fellow--he was neighbor out in Spring Valley, and I didn' ; t know that he was particularly a ladies' ; man, but apparently he was. Big, raw-boned Tennessee fellow who conducted the investigations of the Teamsters and all that sort of thing. Great hero of all the moralists and so forth, but apparently Russell was aware of the fact that he knew that he had a few affairs. And Russell, who beat him in the Florida primary, was saying afterwards, you know, how tough it was. He says, " ; This fellow, this Kefauver, he' ; d go all over the state." ; He said, " ; He' ; d have a Bible in the one hand and his thing in the other hand." ; He said something other than " ; thing,' ; but I' ; ll-- GANNON: Do you--Barbara Walters said that you were one of the sexiest men she' ; d ever met. What do you think led her to that conclusion? NIXON: Well, maybe she doesn' ; t know many other men. GANNON: There--there were widespread stories, and people have expressed not only moral shock but strategic concern about the widespread stories that President Kennedy smoked marijuana in his bedroom in the White House with one of his mistresses, Mary Meyer, and in Timothy Leary' ; s new autobiography he says that he provided Mary Meyer with amounts of the hallucinogen LSD, and she told him that she was turning on people so highly placed in Washington that she couldn' ; t name them. And President Kennedy apparently joked with Mary Meyer about what would happen if the Soviets staged a sneak attack while he was stoned. Given--is it simplistic or unrealistic to expect that the president of the United States is going to be stone cold straight or sober for every minute that he' ; s in the White House against the possibility that a sneak attack or some kind of crisis that could happen--that he' ; d have to respond to right away? Given the laws of human nature and the laws of probability, should Americans worry if the president, for an occasional couple of hours, is high on some substance or other? NIXON: Well, of course, you can get high on alcohol, and I would say, however, generally, at this time--I felt this way when I was president, and I' ; m sure that others have as well--Eisenhower used to have his couple of drinks and so forth, but you--you are inhibited. You are inhibited wherever you are in that office, whether on vacation or in the office itself with regard to your personal habits. I would say that drugs--that' ; s way beyond the pale, because they do something to the mind that could be even permanent, in my opinion. Alcohol, which of course is more common, is something that has to be taken having in mind the capacity of an individual to take it. Let me say in one respect, probably the biggest drinker in the White House, at least in the post-war period, was Lyndon Johnson. Of course, he did everything big. He drank big, and he was a big man. And I have seen him go through in one night, one of those midnight sessions that we had at the close of the Senate when I was vice president of the United States---I' ; ve seen him go through a couple of bottles of bourbon in eight hours. Never drunk. And people used to complain later, when Johnson was in and the Kennedy people and others had turned against him, who had been for him--and they used to criticize him and say, " ; Well, Johnson drinks." ; It didn' ; t bother me, because I knew Johnson could hold his liquor. GANNON: Have you ever tried marijuana? NIXON: Nope. Never. I' ; ve smelled it once. That was, strangely enough, at the ' ; 72 convention. I was in Florida at the time, and apparently what happened there--right outside Convention Hall there was--a huge group of anti-war demonstrators were there. They all smell--marijuana. And I had--it smelled sweet. And I went in, and I asked the makeup person--I said, " ; What is that stuff?" ; because I got it in my eyes. That was marijuana. That' ; s the only time I ever smelled it. It was never in the White House when we were there, I can assure you--never. GANNON: Would you try it? NIXON: No. No. I don' ; t like--I don' ; t like drugs of any sort--the uppers, the downers, and so forth and so on. Sleeping pills I have taken, because they have to be taken on occasion. When you' ; re traveling or when you' ; ve had a lot to do, you' ; ve got to get your sleep. But beyond that, I think--I just--I just don' ; t want to fool with it. My--I think all of us in politics--with any kind of intense activity we' ; re already very tightly strung. And to add to it just may snap it. GANNON: Margaret Mead said something to the effect that any young person who went through the later 1960s without having tried marijuana wasn' ; t leading a normal life. Would--unless you know--would you be surprised if you found out that your daughters or sons-in-law who were in college or graduate school then had experimented with marijuana or had used it? NIXON: Well, I can' ; t speak for my sons-in-law. I haven' ; t known them all that period of time. As far as my daughters--no question, they would never do it. It' ; s the example at home. GANNON: What about--there have been several alleg-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE GANNON: allegations about your drinking habits. Woodward and Bernstein, Seymour Hersh, Henry Kissinger, William Safire, John Ehrlichman claim that from time to time--not to put too fine a point on it--you got smashed. Hersh claims that he talked to people who listened in on an extension when you were talking to Henry Kissinger when you slurred your words and made extreme statements or demands. And Ehrlichman has written that as early as 1962 he told you that he--unless you got your act into shape, or cleaned up your act in terms of drinking, that he wouldn' ; t work for you in a presidential campaign. How do you respond to this range of-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0387/bmac
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59 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 2.
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gannix_0387
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-06-13
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 3. gannix_0388 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|19(4)|31(7)|46(8)|58(14)|71(8)|83(17)|100(8)|113(14)|126(12)|139(8)|148(14)|164(3)|174(3)|189(11)|202(2)|214(6)|227(1)|238(7)|262(2)|328(5)|342(3)|352(12)|368(14)|382(8)|393(5)|408(6)|426(3)|438(12)|453(5)|466(10)|477(6)|487(11)|505(12)|519(1)|532(12)|547(7)|559(3)|572(8)|592(5)|609(2)|623(6)|639(4)|650(16)|665(3)|679(12)|691(9)|705(10)|719(17)|730(9)|746(8)|761(2)|772(4)|783(11)|794(6)|805(11)|820(12)|832(14)|851(15) 0 https://youtu.be/by45tekd578 YouTube video English 3 Drinking during Presidency --allegation? Nixon addresses claims that he drank while in office, maintaining that he never drank to the point of irresponsibility while president. 73 Bay of Pigs Invasion What was your meeting with President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs like? Nixon recounts going to see President Kennedy after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and offering his advice. 689 Cuban Missile Crisis / President Eisenhower on the Bay of Pigs Do you see the Cuban missile crisis--that outcome of the Cuban missile crisis is usually seen as a--a Kennedy success, in--in--indeed the fruit of the lesson that he learned in the Bay of Pigs failure. Nixon discusses the Cuban missile crisis and President Kennedy's other actions after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. He also talks about President Eisenhower's response to the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Bay of Pigs Invasion ; Cuba ; Cuban missile crisis ; Douglas MacArthur ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Fidel Castro ; Green Beret ; John F. Kennedy ; Ngo Dinh Diem ; Soviet Union ; Vietnam Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; MacArthur, Douglas, 1880-1964 ; Ngô, Đình Diệm, 1901-1963 963 Meeting Robert Kennedy Do you remember the first time you met Bobby Kennedy? Nixon recounts meeting Robert Kennedy for the first time at a football game and compares him to his brothers John F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. 1126 Interview Discussion Well, you know the reason Helms was so concerned about that June twenty-third tape and so forth was-- While preparing between interviews, Nixon and Gannon discuss possible links between the Kennedy administration and the Mafia and assassination plots during Kennedy's presidency. 1223 Letter from Mrs. Kennedy After President Kennedy's assassination, you wrote a letter to Mrs. Kennedy offering your services if she needed them in any way and your support. Nixon reads a letter from Jacqueline Kennedy written in reply to one he wrote to her after President Kennedy's assassination. 1309 Ted Kennedy Do you--do you remember your first meeting with Ted Kennedy? Nixon recalls meeting Edward Kennedy for the first time and discusses his potential for becoming president despite the Chappaquiddick incident. 1794 President Kennedy's Assassination Conspiracy Theories What do you think, or do you have any opinions about the subsequently alleged Castro connection behind President Kennedy's assassination? Nixon considers the potential connection between CIA plans to assassinate Fidel Castro and the Kennedy assassination. 1988 Assassination Plots / CIA Effectiveness How--how do you react to the knowledge that the C.I.A. used the Mafia to set an assassination of Fidel Castro? Nixon relates his feelings about the CIA and his opinions about the effectiveness of assassinating foreign political leaders. 2462 Jacqueline Kennedy In February 1971, you invited Mrs. John Kennedy and her children to come to the White House for a private dinner to see the portraits--the official portraits of President and Mrs. Kennedy that were going to be unv--unveiled. Nixon describes a private visit with Jacqueline Kennedy and her children when they visited the White House to see the Kennedys' official portraits. 2676 President Lyndon B. Johnson Do you remember your first meeting with Lyndon Johnson? Nixon discusses the personality and political career of Lyndon Johnson and describes the first time that he met Johnson, his effectiveness as a senator, his difficulty while vice president, and his presidency. Interview GANNON: --allegation? NIXON: I don' ; t respond to it. The record has been made, and as far as these people are concerned, they' ; re speaking generally from a different vantage point. And I just let the record speak for itself. GANNON: Can you--can' ; t you at least deny it? NIXON: No, I' ; m not going to deny it. I cer--I' ; ve made it clear--I have had drinks on occasion, but I was never in a position--and Henry Kissinger bears this out, incidentally--there was never an occasion when I was not able to exert the leadership functions that I was supposed to exert. That' ; s one of the reasons I was that restrained. GANNON: You' ; re not concerned that a failure to deny might be seen as a tacit admission that you can' ; t deny it? NIXON: No. No. I' ; m not--no. When I say I won' ; t deny it--I' ; m not going to deny that I have not had drinks, because I have. I do deny that I have ever had drinks to the point that I was unable to handle the office in a responsible way, of course. Let' ; s get on with the stuff here. You' ; re taking too long. GANNON: What was your--what was your meeting with President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs like? NIXON: Well, the way it happened was that he called me on the phone, and I was in Washington briefly to get a CIA briefing prior to some travel. And he asked me if I could come down to see him. And I said of course I would come, and we set the appointment for the next day. I should set the background for that, however. When I arrived in Washington, I arrived the day that the Bay of Pigs story began to break in the papers. I had an appointment that evening with Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA. He was going to brief me on foreign policy generally. The Washington Star reported that the landing had taken place. I assumed it had gone all right because I knew that it had been planned in the Eisenhower administration, and I just assumed this was the one that was being carried forward by Kennedy. GANNON: After you left office, you had no knowledge of its being carried forward, though? NIXON: No, but I assumed it would be, because it was well on its way by the time Kennedy became president. Then, when--and when Kennedy reappointed Allen Dulles as head of the CIA, I assumed that Dulles would continue to push for carrying out the particular plan. I' ; ll never forget when Dulles came to the door. I opened the door, and I shook hands, and I said, " ; Come on in, Allen." ; I said, " ; Would you like a drink?" ; He says, " ; I would." ; He says, " ; I really need one." ; I said, " ; Well, what' ; s happened?" ; He said, " ; The whole Cuban venture is a failure. Everything is lost. This is the worst day of my life." ; And then he gave me chapter and verse as to what had happened. He said, " ; The greatest mistake I ever made in my life was not to tell the president that if he went in--that there was a chance it might fail and that he must not lose," ; because what had happened is, as Allen Dulles explained, is that Kennedy had cancelled two air strikes which were essential if it were going to have any chance to succeed--cancelled the strikes because he was concerned about the reaction he was getting from within his own administration, particularly people like Adlai Stevenson, in opposition to what was being done. So I had that background before going in. So I went to the White House, and Lyndon Johnson was in the office at the time, and we shook hands, had a little idle chatter, and we sat down, Kennedy in his rocking chair, I sitting over on a couch, and he proceeded to fill me in. GANNON: How did he look? NIXON: Beaten, very wan, very tired, harassed. I had never seen him look down before--never. But in this case there was no--it was surprising that he would look that way. And I felt, incidentally, complimented a bit that he felt that he could let his hair down. And he really did. He was--he was, I may say, quite outspoken in condemning all the people that advised him--the CIA, the military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of those that advised him. He says, " ; I asked every one of the sons-of-bitches about this. They all assured me it would succeed." ; And then he got up and started to pace the floor, and he used a string of four-letter words that he didn' ; t learn at Harvard, unless he went there in the sixties--he might have learned it then. But, in any event, I felt that it--I felt it was good that he had a chance to vent his frustration and his anger on this occasion. And he said to me--and, incidentally, this tells us something about his past as well. He said that it had been the worst experience in his life to have to talk to some of those men that had been part of the invasion force--their families and so forth. He said it was the worst day of his life--his feeling that he had let them down. And as he told me that, I realize that this is the first time he had ever failed. He had never been through the fire of failure before, and that' ; s why it had such an enormous impact on him. GANNON: What did--why did he want to meet with you? Did he ask for your support? NIXON: Oh, of course. That was the purpose of it. Yes. He hadn' ; t had me down before. No reason to, particularly, but in this instance he wanted the support of the Republicans for what he was not going to do, which was nothing at that particular point. GANNON: Did you--did he ask for your advice, or did you offer advice on what you thought he should do? NIXON: Yes. I said that--he suggested he would be interested in advice. And I said, " ; There' ; s no question about what ought to be done." ; I said, " ; You' ; ve got to get Castro out of there." ; I said, " ; I would find a legal excuse, maybe defending our base at Guantanamo, or saving the lives of American citizens who happened to be residing in or living in Cuba, to go in and take him out." ; And his answer was, well, he couldn' ; t risk that, because he had heard from Chip Bohlen and other experts that Khrushchev was in a very cocky mood, and that if he moved in on Cuba, that Khrushchev might move on Berlin. So we kind of left that there. I then pledged my support, in addition, if he decided to do something in Laos, because his first speech after he became president had been with regard to the Communist attempts to take over Laos. And, you remember, he had said in his inaugural, " ; We will fight any time, any place, in defense of freedom." ; And Laos had been used as an example of where the United States might fight. And then I was really shocked to hear him say, " ; No, we can' ; t do anything in Laos if we can' ; t do something about Cuba ninety miles away. I don' ; t think the American people will support doing something in Laos where we might be confronted with a million Chinese." ; Of course, later on it was he who made the decision to send the first fifteen thousand Americans in to Vietnam. But that, of course, is another part of the story. So, under the circumstances, the conversation went on. GANNON: Did you try to talk him around to your point of view? NIXON: As well as I could. I felt that I had to put it into the hopper. He has a very quick mind. You don' ; t need to try to arm-twist him or that sort of thing. And, anyway, it would have been improper for me to do so. So, as we were leaving, he escorted me out to the car. He was very gracious about it--asked me about the possibility of running for governor--said I didn' ; t plan to--urged that I write a book, which I did do--Six Crises. Then he made a very interesting comment at the end that showed how his vision of the presidency had changed to an extent. In the campaign, he talked quite a bit about domestic issues, of course, because as a Democrat running against a conservative Republican he had to appeal to the liberals. And so he went through the usual liberal clichés about more of this and more for that and the other thing. But then he said, " ; You know, really, who gives a shit whether the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25 when you think of this problem like this? Really, that' ; s all that matters, isn' ; t it?" ; You see, it meant, in other words, that now the he was in the office he realized that overriding these admittedly important domestic issues was the responsibility that a president has, and only the president can fulfill, of projecting the United States as a responsible foreign policy power and to defend the freedom of ourselves as well as others throughout the world. GANNON: Do you think that going through what you call the fire of failure in the case of the Bay of Pigs changed President Kennedy' ; s conduct or his outlook? NIXON: Well, it changed him in one respect. He felt that he had to do something about it later, and after losing in the Bay of Pigs, I think he felt that he had to prove himself in some other area. As a matter of fact, this had to be terribly disillusioning to his own people. I--I' ; ve read since then that one of those who helped train the Cuban--the dissident Cubans who were in the landing force and so forth was saying how terribly disillusioned they were, because they had this image of Kennedy, which was built up in the campaign and which came from his inaugural, that he was a macho fellow, that he would fight any time, any place, and take any risk for freedom around the world. And then they were let down so, and this man described it. He said, " ; It was like their finding that Superman was a fairy." ; And so Kennedy had to change that image, and I think that' ; s one of the reasons, among others, that he decided that the United States should play a strong, positive role in Vietnam. He didn' ; t want to have Vietnam, for example, fall to the Communists, because having failed in Cuba--and, incidentally, that failure was compounded by the fact that after the Cuban missile crisis, he gave Castro a privileged sanctuary in Cuba and said that we would restrain any further attacks by dissident forces based in the United States. This meant that he had to do something in other places in the world. So Vietnam turned out to be the place. GANNON: Do you see the Cuban missile crisis--that outcome of the Cuban missile crisis is usually seen as a Kennedy success, indeed the fruit of the lesson that he learned in the Bay of Pigs failure. Do you see the Cuban missile crisis as a failure, as another failure, or as not a success? NIXON: No. I think I would say--I myself have said that the Cuban missile crisis was one where he, very properly, stood up to the Soviets, where he called their hand, where he instituted the blockade, and where they backed down and took out the missiles. On the other hand, the price that was paid, which many didn' ; t realize at the time, where we took missiles out--claims that they weren' ; t useful any more--we took intermediate missiles out of Greece and Turkey--and also an agreement to the effect that the United States would not support or--any actions from the American shores against Cuba. This gave Castro the privileged sanctuary that he has today, and allows him--presently Cuba is the most awesome military power in the Western Hemisphere except for the United States and possibly Canada--and also allows him to be the most effective Soviet proxy in the world, running around Africa and other places when they should be concentrating on Cuba. GANNON: Did you talk to President Eisenhower about his opinion of the--Kennedy' ; s actions in the Bay of Pigs? NIXON: Oh, yes, and he was as astounded as I was. I think what irritated him was the reflection on his leadership, the idea that all Kennedy was doing was carrying out the Eisenhower plan. And I remember he gritted his teeth, and he said, " ; Can you imagine they suggest that this was my plan? It wasn' ; t my plan." ; He said, " ; I wouldn' ; t have approved a plan for an amphibious action of that sort without adequate air cover." ; And he says, " ; The plan did provide it for, and the reason it didn' ; t work is that he withdrew the air cover." ; No. Eisenhower felt very, very strong about that, and very critical of Kennedy. MacArthur, too--MacArthur' ; s point was he felt that Kennedy did not recognize the prime rule that a great power must follow. You don' ; t start something unless you' ; re prepared to finish it. And he should have thought of that before he went in. But having said all these things, Kennedy having failed in Cuba, I think, led to a certain extent to his doing what he did in Vietnam. And then the Vietnam thing was compounded by the fact that when Diem was murdered, assassinated, during a coup which he--Kennedy--had supported, that led to the musical chairs which exacerbated the Vietnamese problems and the first fifteen thousand combat troops committed by Kennedy, and then escalating from there on. So you can really trace in a way--you can trace, in a way, if you want to follow it historically--the involvement in Vietnam back to Cuba. One failure leads to another. In order to correct one failure, you want to prove yourself strong in another, and you' ; re strong in a place where it' ; s difficult to be strong. Vietnam was one of those. GANNON: To reduce it to an absurdly simple level, could you say that the reason--one of the reasons we went in to Vietnam was to prove that Superman wasn' ; t a fairy? NIXON: Well, there was a macho feeling about it, as I understand it, and as I reflect on it since then. The Green Beret concept--the feeling, too, as I say, that was expressed in the inaugural--" ; we' ; re going to fight any time, any place." ; Well, we didn' ; t do it in Cuba, so we have to do it somewhere else. And I think it could have led to that. Now, understand, I do not criticize Kennedy for going into Vietnam. I think going in was necessary. I think it was proper. I have always supported that. I have never gone along with many in our own administration who have indicated, " ; Well, it was a bad--and all we' ; re trying to do is to be sure that we end it in the right way." ; If it was a bad war, it should have been ended immediately. The point of the matter is it wasn' ; t conducted properly, and that was the great mistake. GANNON: Do you remember the first time you met Bobby Kennedy? What was he like? NIXON: Well, Bobby Kennedy I met when he was working for Joe McCarthy. See, I was an investigator, and so was he. He was very intense, very different from Jack. In fact, Alice Longworth had a priceless comment about the three. I think she said Jack Kennedy was like a debonair--I remember Alice Longworth used to describe the three Kennedy brothers, and she used to revel in how different they were. She said Jack Kennedy was a debonair man of the world, a movie star. And Bobby Kennedy was an eighteenth-century Jesuit priest. And Teddy Kennedy was a gregarious Irish politician. And I think that says it well. Bobby Kennedy was humorless. I' ; ve often heard Jack Kennedy laugh and tell funny things. I didn' ; t know Bobby that well, but from what I' ; ve been reading about him, he was very intense, very hard-working, very dedicated. But he could be dedicated to anything he was in at the particular time. He was totally dedicated to McCarthy and what he was doing, and John McClellan, who was the overall chairman of that committee, said that he had never seen a more dedicated, hard-working man than Bobby Kennedy when he was working for McCarthy and then for McClellan. Another time that I saw him, apart from casual meetings and other occasions, was at a football game. The year was 1960, or, I should say, 1959, and it was the playoff game for the National Football League championship. That was before the leagues--the new league came into being. It was a game in Baltimore between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. The Colts, incidentally, won, and it was a pretty good game. But I remember I was sitting by Bobby in the owner' ; s box, and I was interested in the game. Bobby wasn' ; t interested in the game. He never talked about the game. He wanted to ask me how would--how would Jack do if he entered the California primary. It was a long way off. I said I thought he would do well, which I believed at that particular point. But I could see then that this was a totally political animal. GANNON: We have to break. NIXON: Okay. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: Well, you know the reason Helms was so concerned about that June twenty-third tape and so forth was-- OFFSCREEN VOICE: How' ; s that now? NIXON: --remember this [unintelligible]-- GANNON: It' ; s the Mafia. NIXON: It had to be that that was all in there. GANNON: Yeah. NIXON: And he didn' ; t want to turn it over-- GANNON: Surely it was. NIOXON: --and never did. GANNON: Well it was all over the place. NIXON: And it came later, see, and he just never did give it to us. I didn' ; t know. GANNON: Mm-hmm. NIXON: You don' ; t think that' ; s it? GANNON: Yeah, that' ; s-- NIXON: And Helms is basically a Democrat. GANNON: That' ; s what they' ; re scared of. NIXON: Don' ; t you think so? GANNON: Yeah. The--the Kennedys were scared because it would have tied Kennedy to-- NIXON: Gian-- GANNON: Giancana. NIXON: --cana. GANNON: To Exner--through--through Exner. NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: And-- GANNON: --the CIA would have been up to their keisters in Mafia. NIXON: Mm-hmm. OFFSCREEN VOICE: Hi-ho. NIXON: [Clears throat] Hm. Well also the--you know, I sort of put aside these assassination plots, but obviously there was one. Operation Mongoose. GANNON: Oh, there' ; s no question that there was-- NIXON: See, we didn' ; t know about that. GANNON: And it got to a very far point. NIXON: I didn' ; t know about it as vice president, see. I didn' ; t know about it then. H--Helms never told me about that, see. GANNON: Well, that only came out in the ' ; 75-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: --with the Rockefeller stuff. NIXON: That' ; s right. Hm. GANNON: This damn fly. OFFSCREEN VOICE: Ten seconds. GANNON: Does it bother you? NIXON: No, I haven' ; t seen it yet. I saw it earlier. OFFSCREEN VOICE: Five seconds. GANNON: After President Kennedy' ; s assassination, you wrote a letter to Mrs. Kennedy offering your services if she needed them in any way and your support. Several weeks later, she wrote you a handwritten reply, which you reprint in your memoirs. I wonder if you would read that letter. NIXON: " ; Dear Mr. Vice President, I do thank you for your most thoughtful letter. You two young men, colleagues in Congress, adversaries in 1960, and now look what has happened. Whoever thought such a hideous thing could happen in this country? I know how you must feel--so long on the path, so closely missing the greatest prize, and now, for you, all the questions come up again, and you must commit all you and your family' ; s hopes and efforts again. Just one thing I would say to you: If it does not work out as you had hoed for so long, please be consoled by what you already have--your life and your family. We never value life enough when we have it, and I would not have had Jack live his life any other way, though I know his death could have been prevented, and I will never cease to torture myself with that. But if you do not win, please think of all that you have. With my appreciation and my regards to your family. Sincerely." ; GANNON: Do you--do you remember your first meeting with Ted Kennedy? NIXON: It was a rather curious meeting, as a matter of fact. It was while I was vice president. I had just become vice president in about 1953 or ' ; 54. And my office, the vice-presidential office, was right across the hall from Jack Kennedy' ; s senatorial office, and I used to get to the office quite early in the morning. One day I arrived at my usual early time, and here was a young fellow sitting on a suitcase outside of the Kennedy office door, which was not yet open. It was Ted Kennedy. So I invited him in and had a cup of coffee with him, and we talked a little about wherever he was going to school, and that' ; s how we got acquainted for the first time. GANNON: Did you see a future senator in him then? Could you see the family resemblance? NIXON: Oh, the resemblance, yes. I would say, incidentally, in terms of appearance, that he was the best looking of the Kennedy group. I don' ; t mean that they all weren' ; t good-looking men, but Teddy, I think, in terms of appeal to women, probably was the most glamorous. GANNON: Do you think that he has a--in 1984, or--he' ; s still a young man--in 1988--that he still has a viable presidential future in American politics? NIXON: Oh, without a doubt. He has much of what it takes to go all the way. First, he has money. Second, he has the best brains that money can buy. And third, he also has the Kennedy mystique, which is still around. He is the one that carries the torch for both of his brothers, both of whom were assassinated. I would say, too, that he' ; s a very good campaigner. As I look at the three of them, curiously enough--this will surprise some people--the one who was the most effective senator was not Jack or Bobby, but Teddy. Bobby wasn’t there long enough. Jack was not too well during his Senate years and was campaigning for president a great deal of the time. But Teddy is a very natural politician. He likes the Senate. He likes being on a committee, he has a very good staff, he works hard, and so forth. I would say that his problems are--he has one other asset going for him. Who' ; s going to beat him? Well, maybe one of the Democratic candidates currently on the scene will rise to the top. But at the present time, as somebody has recently said, you' ; ve got about six candidates for vice president running for president on the Democratic ticket. I would say, too, that he' ; s got to pray in 1984, assuming that lightning doesn' ; t strike him through some sort of a draft, that Ronald Reagan wins, because if Ronald Reagan wins in 1984, I think that in 1988 it will be very, very difficult for him to take on an incumbent Democratic president. In other words, he can run in ' ; 88, but I think by that time he' ; s going to be over the hill in age, which brings me, of course, to the last point. His problem is that at the present time one of his major appeals--one of the major appeals of the Kennedys generally has been that they appeal to youth. And there' ; s nothing more pathetic that a middle-aged man trying to act like a teenager. He' ; s got to grow old gracefully and still be young enough in heart and actions and so forth to appeal to youth. But adding it all up, I would say that of all the people on the scene today, he has as good a chance as any to go clear to the top. GANNON: The--the conventional wisdom is that although he' ; s got two other--or two major problems--one is that although he has the looks and the money and the staff that he doesn' ; t have the ambition, the fire in the belly, that the others did. And then, of course, the other is Chappaquiddick. NIXON: Well, I would say there' ; s no question but that Bobby had more fire in his belly than either of the other two. But Jack had enough. Teddy doesn' ; t seem to have it at the present time. And believe me, you' ; ve got to have fire in your belly. You' ; ve got to pay the price. GANNON: Can you fake it? NIXON: Oh, yes. I think so. And I think that that is what his admirers, the rest of sort of the Kennedy entourage that realize they want--or want another one in there--that they' ; ll attempt to have it put on. Anything can be faked, particularly in this age of television. GANNON: Isn' ; t the camera supposed to never lie, though? Wouldn' ; t the camera reveal that? NIXON: I--I don' ; t give that much credence to what the camera can do. It can see through a lot, but I would say that if it comes up to the point where he thinks he has a real chance, he' ; ll get up for it. He' ; s not a weak man. Now, as far as the Chappaquiddick thing is concerned--that' ; s hurt him up to this point. It--certainly the Roger Mudd interview, the famous Roger Mudd interview on Chappaquiddick, hurt him the last time around. But as time goes on, that' ; s going to recede into the background, and people are going to look at the Teddy Kennedy of today, rather than the Teddy Kennedy in his misspent youth. You know, it' ; s an interesting thing. That used to drive Lyndon Johnson right up the wall--the fact that Teddy Kennedy, after the death of this girl at Chappaquiddick--that he seemed to get off so lightly. And he once remarked to a friend--he said, " ; Well, gee, I' ; ve been out with a girl, and she' ; d been stung in the ass by a" ; --strike that. He said that " ; If I' ; d been out with a girl, and she' ; d been stung in the ass by a bumblebee, they would have put me in Sing Sing for life." ; And there is somewhat of a double standard there. I think Johnson had a good beef. GANNON: Do you think he got off lightly--Teddy Kennedy on Chappaquiddick? NIXON: I would say that it seems to be a very light--well, let me put it this way. From a legal standpoint, it would seem so, where death was involved, and the rest. From the standpoint, however, of the political price he paid--who knows? The personal price he paid--who knows? I mean, only he can tell us about that. But he' ; s paid a price. GANNON: Does it say something about the American political process, or the American people, that someone who did something like that, or to whom something like that happened, x-number of years later can be back as a very viable political presidential possibility? NIXON: Well, it says something about the political process generally, not just in the United States. People generally are not going to hold an action against an individual forever. An individual has a chance to come back from adversity. And he has that chance if he' ; s able to wheel it. I do not think, as a matter of fact, that Teddy Kennedy failed in his 1980 bid, or in the earlier bid, solely because or even primarily because of Chappaquiddick. Perhaps without Chappaquiddick he would have been more sure to win, but I think it was the fact that he just didn' ; t seem to be presidential. He didn' ; t answer the other questions as well as the ones about Chappaquiddick. He didn' ; t seem to be decisive enough and strong enough. Now he may be able to overcome that, and if he can overcome that image in--in decisiveness, of knowledge about the issues, the Chappaquiddick thing will get behind him. I think it' ; s possible, particularly in view of the fact that there doesn' ; t seem to be much competition coming up on the Democratic side. GANNON: What do you think, or do you have any opinions about the subsequently alleged Castro connection behind President Kennedy' ; s assassination? NIXON: I know there' ; s been a great deal of speculation as to whether or not Oswald was acting alone or whether he was part of a conspiracy and that Castro was behind that conspiracy due to the fact that Oswald had spent some time in Cuba. I would state, first, that there is a strong hypothetical case for that conspiracy theory. First, Castro had a motive. The motive was that there was a plot to assassinate Castro--no question about that--called the Mongoose Plot. The CIA had drawn up the plans to carry it out. Second, there was no question about Kennedy being aware of it, because he discussed it with other people--aware of the plot. And also there doesn' ; t seem to be much question that Castro was aware of the fact that there was a plot, because two months before the assassination he made a comment to the effect that if the Americans were trying to engage in activities against him--that they should fear for their own lives. I would say, too, that Castro looking at Kennedy might have reached the conclusion--" ; Well, after all, he' ; s capable of having a plot of this sort," ; and, of course, here' ; s the conspiratorial Communist mind working. After all, if Kennedy, a man who had no qualms about supporting a coup which resulted in the assassination of a friend, Diem, in South Vietnam, would therefore have even less qualms about engaging in activities that result in the assassination of an enemy, Fidel Castro. Now, that is, of course, the hypothetical case. Lyndon Johnson put it very graphically to Howard K. Smith when he said Kennedy was out to get Castro and Castro got him first. GANNON: Do you think Johnson believed that back then? NIXON: Possibly he did believe it, because Johnson tended to think sometimes in conspiratorial terms, too. I would say that as far as the hypothetical case is concerned, and I outline this because this has widely been published in this country, and abroad as well, that it is there. However, the factual evidence, and this has been investigated over and over again, is that he was acting alone. So I have to assume that that is the case, and I will say that is the case. I think all of us should say that is the case unless we have facts to disprove that and prove the hypothetical case. GANNON: Didn' ; t Johnson, at another point, referring to the Mafia connection, make some remark about-- NIXON: Well, Johnson said--as a matter of fact, when he became president, he says, " ; I inherited a damned Murder, Incorporated, in the Caribbean," ; because apparently there was a plan to assassinate a few other people as well. GANNON: How--how do you react to the knowledge that the CIA used the Mafia to set an assassination of Fidel Castro? NIXON: Well, the whole assassination game is kind of beyond me, in any event. When I spoke of what we would do about Castro when I spoke to President Kennedy, I was not speaking in terms of assassination. I was speaking in terms--in recommendation action in which the United States would move in and overthrow Castro. Just assassinating Castro I don' ; t think would have done the job, because there are Castroites, more now even than there were then. I think what was necessary would be to support a counterrevolutionary activity that would--overthrown the Castro regime. So, consequently, I must say that I never knew of any CIA assassination schemes while I was president, and, frankly, I would never have approved one. GANNON: Do you think that the--that the knowledge of this tangled web of the CIA' ; s involvement with the Mafia, President Kennedy' ; s involvement with one of his mistresses, Judith Exner, and her also at the same time being the mistress of one of the Mafia leaders--do you think that accounts for the CIA' ; s tenderness about the Bay of Pigs? NIXON: Well, I' ; ve always wondered about why they were so tender. It is well-known that I requested the full file on the Bay of Pigs--what came that brought it on, how it was handled, the preparations for it, how it was handled, and the aftermath. But I was never able to get it from the CIA. And it took till after I left office in 1975 and the Rockefeller Commission investigation that some of this information began to come forth. I didn' ; t know there was an operation for assassination. I didn' ; t--and as a matter of fact, when you speak about Johnson saying he inherited Murder, Incorporated--that really hadn' ; t worked its way into my consciousness either. GANNON: You are nothing if not a tough guy, a tough leader. Why did you take no for an answer from the CIA when you asked for this stuff and they first didn' ; t send it and then sent the wrong stuff? Why didn' ; t you shake them up and get what you wanted? NIXON: Well, it was a little difficult because, after all, I had--I had named Helms as the head of the CIA, and I' ; d either--all I could--about all I could hope to do then was to change him, which, incidentally, I did after the election in 1972, and get a new man in who would do what I felt was proper. As a matter of fact, I do not think that a CIA head should hold himself above the presidency, just as I don' ; t think the State Department Foreign Service should hold itself above the presidency. Anything the president wants is something in terms of information that the CIA should provide for him. As a matter of fact, I was never able to get from the State Department the full disclosure of what commitments were made at the time of the bombing halt that Johnson ordered, that led to the Paris peace talks, which aborted and, of course, delayed the ending of the war rather than brought it closer to an end. GANNON: Does it say something, or anything, about the CIA that having devoted its attention, its purpose, and its considerable resources--I think at one point something--several hundred people were working on Operation Mongoose--that they weren' ; t able to assassinate Fidel Castro successfully? NIXON: The CIA, as has, of course--just as every organization has, some very good people. But in terms of its operational capabilities, I' ; ve never been very high on them, not in my time. I think in the earlier period under Allen Dulles there were some operations that were extremely effective, but later on it became too cluttered up with bureaucracy and so forth--that I never had much confidence in what they could do. But that--incidentally, I don' ; t want to knock them alone. I didn' ; t have much confidence in what some of our military were doing either. They were just muscle-bound by too much money and too much bureaucracy. And the same is true of the State Department. Basically what we' ; re talking about here is the curse of a huge overblown bureaucracy, everybody writing memos to everybody else, and a lot of people with great educations trying to do things rather than getting the people that could do things to take charge. That' ; s the curse of government, and that' ; s what the president is for. He' ; s got to shake these people up and make them--make them brace up. But the CIA--the CIA' ; s capabilities in that area it didn' ; t seem to me were too good. GANNON: You make it sound-- NIXON: In fact, that shouldn' ; t have been too difficult a job, if they were going to assassinate--incidentally, I question the wisdom of assassination, however. I never approved it. I would not approve it now, because I don' ; t think it' ; s effective. GANNON: Do you question its morality? Would you stop it because it' ; s not wise or effective, or because it' ; s immoral? NIXON: Because it' ; s not wise and effective. Let me say that in terms of immoral and therefore becomes ineffective, that' ; s something else again. No, I wouldn' ; t like the morality of it. War is immoral, but sometimes you have to wage war, a defensive war, and maybe that doesn' ; t make it moral, but it certainly isn' ; t immoral to--to resist, for example, a Communist takeover of South Vietnam. It' ; s more immoral to allow the Communists to take it over and hundreds of thousands of boat people drown in the China Sea and millions of Cambodians killed and starved to death. But in terms of the moral problem as far as assassination is concerned, certainly I don' ; t like the idea at all, but what you have to look at here--and I' ; m putting it on the broad context--you have to look at it in terms of what is effective to serve the interests, the broader interests of American foreign policy resisting Communist aggression. And the broader interests, I think, are not served by trying to assassinate a political leader. GANNON: If that had succeeded, though, would you have approved of it and supported it? NIXON: That' ; s a hypothetical question I don' ; t think I' ; d go into. GANNON: You almost--it sounds like the CIA at times has been a loose cannon, almost, and there are people--conspiratorialist, I guess they could be called--who believe that there' ; s almost a parallel government operating out in Langley on its own. Do you worry about the independent sort of super-power in the CIA in terms of reporting to presidents and doing things? NIXON: Yes, I worry about that, and I worry about the independence of the State Department Foreign Service. I worry about the independence of the Pentagon--the professionals over there. There' ; s a tendency of all these huge bureaucracies in the national security field to think that they have a franchise and that they can be bigger than the president and so forth and so on. Now, the military shapes up the best because they realize there' ; s a direct chain of command between the president as commander-in-chief and the military. But, boy, it' ; s hard to shape up the State Department at times, particularly with their propensity for leaking and all that sort of thing. And the CIA does tend at times, in my view, or did--whether the situation is true now under Casey I don' ; t know--but they did tend at times to feel that they were an institution that went on and on and on--that presidents just come and go. GANNON: In February 1971, you invited Mrs. John Kennedy and her children to come to the White House for a private dinner to see the portraits--the official portraits of President and Mrs. Kennedy that were going to be unveiled. Do you remember that visit--that private visit? NIXON: Yes. We arranged it because we knew that she would like to see the portraits. We knew also, and we understood this, that her feeling about privacy was such that she didn' ; t want to come with her children to see it with a huge crowd of tourists and others around. So we arranged it very privately--arranged the visit privately. There was no press present. No pictures were taken. It was just unfortunate. It would have been nice to have had a picture. We didn' ; t have the White House photographer there. And it was a very pleasant evening. The children were just growing up then. They were very young, and they had the problems that young people have. For example, I remember that one of them--I think it was the boy--when Mrs. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, ordered milk for him, said, " ; Well, I' ; ll take some milk." ; He said, " ; I don' ; t like milk in foreign countries. It' ; s so icky." ; But he drank the milk here, and she was a little concerned because he spilled some of it. But what I, incidentally, am particularly delighted at is that both the boy and the girl seem to have grown up very, very well, because it' ; s terribly difficult for children of celebrities, and particularly one in the spotlight such as the children of John Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, to grow up and just be normal, or even, shall we say, subnormal. And they are far more than that I am sure. I remember, too, that when she came in, we were sitting around the little reception area before going in to dinner, and the White House butler who waited on us had been there in the Kennedy White House--Alan. And he asked everybody what they wanted to have for drinks. He came to Mrs. Kennedy, and he said, " ; What would you like, Mrs. Kennedy?" ; And she said, " ; Ginger ale." ; He looked startled and said, " ; Ginger ale?" ; She said, " ; Well, maybe a little vodka." ; And so we had our drinks, and then we went in to dinner, and she talked about campaigning, and she had the same problem that we had. She said she remembered going into hotel rooms all over the country and getting sick, because every time you went into the hotel room they would have painted it the day before to be sure it was nice and fresh. And then on one occasion when the conversation seemed to drift away, she said something rather interesting. She said, " ; You know, I always lived in a dream world." ; GANNON: What--what are your impressions of Jacqueline Kennedy? NIXON: Well, she' ; s--I do not know her well, first. I was--we were invited to the wedding. We were unable to go to the wedding. And I' ; ve only seen her socially on--at least--maybe two occasions. From what I read about her, I would say that she has star quality. She handled herself, of course, in a very effective way at the time of President Kennedy' ; s assassination. and that has made her place in history. And whatever she did before and whatever she did after, it' ; s not going to affect that. That' ; s the way it is sometimes. One big event overwhelms all the negatives, if there are negatives, on either side of that event. GANNON: Do you remember your first meeting with Lyndon Johnson? NIXON: Well, I was flat on my back at the time. I was in the Congress. I' ; d just come to Congress, and I had--was carrying Tricia, our older girl, and slipped on the ice at the little apartment house where we lived out in Alexandria, and broke both elbows. So I had to go to--not to Walter Reed--I went to the Naval Hospital, as a matter of fact--Bethesda. And right across the hall from me was a Texas congressman who was a member of the Ways and Means Committee who had fallen on the ice in Washington crossing one of the icy streets. You don' ; t have ice in Washington that much, and so--and I, from the West, wasn' ; t used to it at all, and neither was he. So we were sharing these opposite suites. And in came this very handsome, vigorous young man bringing a big bowl of chili. It was Lyndon Johnson. This Texas congressman loved a little restaurant out on--near Rockville. He said made the best chili, even better than they made in Texas. And so Johnson had gone out there and got the chili and brought it in to us. So I shared the chili with the congressman and Lyndon Johnson. But I remember he was tall, of course. He was a big man, he was handsome--thinner then than he is now, or was later on. But he cut a striking figure. Also I saw from that time, and it was always true thereafter--he was a fashion plate. And he had cufflinks--most of the rest of us wore just sort of store clothes--well-tailored suits. A very impressive-looking fellow. GANNON: Wasn' ; t--or maybe that was part of the fact that he was considered to be sort of a ladies' ; man? NIXON: Well, I--you know, all this talk about Johnson and Kennedy being ladies' ; men, again, it' ; s something I never discussed with either. I never participated in any of their activities as far as I know, and, frankly, I think it' ; s pretty much irrelevant in terms of their performance in office. My point is this--whether it' ; s being a ladies' ; man, whether it' ; s the health problem, whether it' ; s any other activity of that sort, what is important is what did the man do. He' ; s got to have a personal life. He' ; s got to have a private life. Now, it' ; s only when his private life impinges upon his public life that it becomes a public issue. And if someone who is a ladies' ; man does it so blatantly that it sets a bad public example, that' ; s something else again. And the same is true of whatever it is--philandering, drinking, or if his health is so bad that it impinges on his public performance, as it did with Woodrow Wilson when he' ; d had a stroke and for seventeen months didn' ; t even act as president, or Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was no longer able to act effectively when he went to Yalta. That' ; s when health then becomes the issue. But otherwise, it' ; s not a legitimate issue, and it' ; s one I don' ; t like to discuss. GANNON: One gathers that Lyndon Johnson really had to be experienced to be understood or appreciated. What--what was he like to know? NIXON: Big. Everything about Johnson was big. He was a tall man, a big man. He gestured expansively. He ate enormously, much too much. He had to constantly diet. He could drink like nobody else. I have never seen anybody who could drink so much and not be affected by it. I never saw him drunk. Oh, he' ; d maybe slur a word now and then, but Lyndon was always in total control. He was the man in motion, perpetually in motion. Without question, when you judge Lyndon Johnson, he was the most effective legislative leader of the period that I was around, thirty-seven years or so-- the most effective legislative lea--probably the most effective legislative leader of the century. He had all the moves. He knew how to use power. He was ruthless. He was persuasive mentally, physically, emotionally, and every other way. Overwhelming was the way I' ; d describe him. When I describe him as a man in motion, I have a vivid recollection of Lyndon Johnson. On those occasions when I' ; d be presiding in the Senate and we' ; d have a visitor, as we often would, from a foreign country come to address the Senate--not a joint session but just a session of the Senate, Johnson would escort them in. Now the senators would sit back there. When the visitor was introduced, most of them would clap in that vapid way, you know, sort of like that, like--many times particularly you find this in the East. The British do it the same way, that sort of polite hand-clapping. But Johnson was a cheerleader. He would always go [imitates sound of Johnson clapping] like a machine gun and made everybody else do it. He' ; d look around like that. That was Lyndon Johnson. He was a leader. He was strong. He was quite a man. GANNON: Was he a nice man? NIXON: Yes. Anyone who knew him personally, yes. He could be brutal, I understand. He--I' ; ve talked to some of the girls who were in our White House who were in his, and said that he' ; d send them out with tears because they made a mistake in doing a letter, or didn' ; t carry out an order as he thought it should be. But the next day he' ; d give them a huge gift. He was volatile, et cetera. He was ruthless, he was tough, but he also had a very, very big heart, in my opinion. But, you see, I' ; m seeing him from my vantage point. Whether others who knew him in a different way felt that way, I don' ; t know. GANNON: What--what happened to him, then, because one tends to think, I guess, of his latter days as president, and the last words that come to mind would be handsome, vigorous, decisive, even ruthless. One thinks of him as being sort of sad and an almost melancholy figure. NIXON: Well, he did become sad and melancholy. He was broken. I think you go through several phases here. First, you had the Johnson of the Senate days, and then there was no one that was his equal, and I don’t think there' ; ll be anyone who will be his equal. Let me say that one who has the makings of being as effective is Howard Baker, who, unfortunately, is not going to be leader in the Senate now since he' ; s not running again. But Baker didn' ; t have the ruthless quality that Johnson had. Johnson was not only persuasive, but he liked power, and he used it. When he became president, for example, he would get all of the FBI reports that he possibly could on the various senators, and he' ; d look right in the eye and let them know in no uncertain terms that he knew what they were up to--I mean, in their extracurricular activities. And so he--he used power effectively, and if he couldn' ; t win them by persuasion, he scared them to death, or he rewarded them. He rewarded, he punished, he cajoled. He did it all. That was the Senate days. Then he became vice president. Those were very unhappy days for him--unhappy because he felt from the beginning that he was superior to Kennedy, that he should have been in the office himself. He was a loyal vice president, however. He never cut Kennedy up while he was vice president. But it wasn' ; t reciprocated. Kennedy, the president, did not cut him up, but Bobby really did him in, always putting out little stories about things--gaffes that he presumably had made. And Edgar Hoover, who of course was very close to Johnson, said that--told me on one occasion that in that period--that Johnson was about ready to resign as vice president because Kennedy, in a National Security Council meeting, had berated him, humiliated him right in front of the president. And I would say that in that particular respect that Johnson, I think, liked Jack Kennedy up to a point. He did not respect him as a leader, because he thought he--Johnson--was a more effective leader. He hated Bobby Kennedy. And so it was an unhappy time. But, you know, Johnson gave him a little ammunition. He was fine in the domestic field, where he was so effective--the Johnson Library has example after example where Jackie Kennedy writes memoranda to Lyndon Johnson, the vice president, to ask him to get things done that she thinks need to be done, rather than the president. And that shows you that she knew the man that could get things done. But in the foreign field he was inept then, and later he improved some. But, for example, I think one of his major gaffes--it didn' ; t get a lot of play at the time, but it must have had quite an effect in a certain quarter--a distinguished diplomat from India came in, and Johnson was talking to him. He said, " ; You know, hell, we don' ; t worship cows here in this country. We eat ' ; em!" ; Well, you can imagine the effect he had on some Indian vegetarian who worships cows. But, nevertheless, that was Johnson. Then came the period when he became president, and there for a time he put on an act you wouldn' ; t believe. He went to that grave about once a week. He' ; d find a reason to lay some flowers. He was contrite. He was humble. He was the man, the soft-spoken, very kind man who had taken the mantle of leadership from the martyred president. He always spoke of what he was doing in terms of carrying out President Kennedy' ; s policies rather than in terms of being president himself. And that was a period when he got a very, very good press, because the press basically was pro-Kennedy. One, because they considered him to be one of their own, sort of an intellectual. Two, they considered to be basically, as he was, of course, a domestic liberal. And three, because he was a Democrat, of course. So, anyway, here came Johnson in this period after Kennedy' ; s assassination. And then a change had to come over him. He had won in his own right. He had won the biggest landslide in history. The only one that even approached it was the one that we won--by one-tenth of a percent less than that we won in 1972 over McGovern. GANNON: This was the Goldwater race in ' ; 64. NIXON: Goldwater race in ' ; 64. And so after massacring Goldwater, he proceeded, without realizing it, to massacre himself. Not at first--Johnson' ; s first year after he was elected, year 1965, was a year of achievement even exceeding Franklin D. Roosevelt' ; s famous Hundred Days. The way he rolled that legislation through--the Great Society legislation. A lot of it was bad, in my opinion, but he got it through, and he' ; s got to get a lot of credit for that. What he did then--he' ; s got to get a lot of credit for having the ability to do it. Now it' ; s true that he had enormous majorities in both the House and the Senate, something Eisenhower didn' ; t have when he had both houses, something Reagan does not have, something I never had. But you' ; ve got to give him credit. He did it. And in that period, his approval rating went up, but then Johnson began to be Johnson, and then people began to realize, " ; Oh-oh, now we' ; ve got this Johnson sitting in Kennedy' ; s chair. And who is this meathead, this cornpone, sitting in Kennedy' ; s chair?" ; You know, I speak of bigness. I' ; ll never forget the first time I was in the Oval Office with Johnson--this was after I was elected president in 1968. I had been in the Oval Office with Kennedy--that was the only other time--eight years before, and Kennedy sat in his rocking chair. Believe it or not--I was so surprised--I go into the Oval Office. Here Johnson' ; s sitting in a rocking chair. The difference was it was twice as big as Kennedy' ; s. That' ; s Lyndon Johnson. So, anyway, here was Johnson, and he was a very effective president, but then he began to turn off the pro-Kennedy people. And as a result, the situation began to change. It changed for several reasons. One, he broke it off in Bobby Kennedy by not taking him for vice president, and, in effect, humiliating him, accord--Bobby felt he had, at least. GANNON: Would Bobby Kennedy have wanted to be vice president? NIXON: Oh, no question about it. GANNON: Wouldn' ; t that have put him in a weak position vis-à-vis Johnson like Johnson was in vis-à-vis John Kennedy? NIXON: John--Johnson, whatever people may say about his weaknesses, was a party man. For example, I remember Bobby Baker, who was his top assistant, telling me in 1960--this was when Johnson was running against Kennedy for the nomination--" ; Johnson will never go on that ticket, never go on that ticket. He despises this whippersnapper," ; et cetera. I wasn' ; t a bit surprised when Johnson went on the ticket. He' ; s a party man. And Johnson was a good vice president because he was a party man. He felt that was his job. On the other hand, Bobby Kennedy is a Bobby Kennedy man first--or a Kennedy first and a partisan-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: Democrat second. And he would have done what was necessary. And the way he would do it would be very cleverly. He' ; d just have Johnson cut up through the media, through his leaks, and his controls also, and all of his contacts out in the bureaucracy. And it would have been very effect--oh, it would have been terrible for Johnson. It would have been a terrible mistake for him to let Bobby Kennedy be vice president. GANNON: Don' ; t you--there' ; s a story that you' ; ve told about the meeting in which Johnson broke the news to Bobby Kennedy that he wasn' ; t going to be taken on the ticket. NIXON: Well, it' ; s too bad that we don' ; t have a record of that, but it' ; s no fault of Lyndon Johnson' ; s if we don' ; t. What happened was that Johnson wanted to record the meeting. He had a very, very extensive recording system Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0388/bmac
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59 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 3.
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gannix_0388
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-06-13
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 4. gannix_0389 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|12(5)|33(3)|47(6)|60(14)|71(8)|82(10)|96(15)|107(17)|122(9)|139(7)|158(7)|173(8)|185(17)|198(14) 0 https://youtu.be/XvKQBTsvmPc YouTube video English 8 Lyndon Johnson's Presidency --and so--a--a taping system. He had everything taped. Nixon recounts President Johnson's taping system and speaks about Johnson's attempt to record a conversation with Robert Kennedy informing him that he would not be vice president. Nixon also describes Johnson's personality and his ability to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 494 President Johnson's use of the FBI What--you've-you've said that he said that without J. Edgar Hoover, he couldn't have been president. Nixon recounts how indispensable President Johnson found J. Edgar Hoover and the extent of Johnson's wiretapping during his presidency. 630 J. Edgar Hoover's Sexuality Do you--do you think, or--or do you know, whether J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual? Nixon addresses rumors of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's homosexuality. 701 President Johnson's Assets How did--Lyndon Johnson came to the Congress in the early forties. Nixon considers previous presidents' use of their office to make money. Interview NIXON: --taping system. He had everything taped. He even had a taping system under the bed in the White House. I don' ; t know why, but he did. But he had meetings in his bedroom, so that didn' ; t make any difference. I don' ; t know whether he had any in the bathroom, because, you know, sometimes Johnson loved to sometimes embarrass some whippersnapper or somebody who thought he was pretty smart. And he' ; d receive them while he was sitting on the toilet. He just loved to do that sort of thing. But, in any event, in this case he had the recording equipment, and he had this meeting, and I understand it was brutal, where Johnson told Kennedy, " ; Look, you' ; re not going to be the vice-presidential candidate, and I want you to shape up," ; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In other words, he gave Bobby back in spades what Bobby had been giving him when he, Bobby, was Attorney General, and so forth. And so right after the meeting, Johnson called in his secretary and says, " ; Run off that tape." ; He used to transcribe the tapes. He loved to read his tapes after they were done. I never had any of them transcribed until after the taping system was revealed. And so I didn' ; t know what was on them. In any event, the poor secretary came back. She says, " ; I can' ; t do it. It' ; s garbled." ; And he practically tore the roof off the Oval Office. He raised hell around there. He said, " ; What' ; s happened here?" ; And what had happened was that Bobby was smart enough to know that Johnson was taping him, and he apparently had carried a scrambler in his pocket. He' ; d scrambled the tape. So, anyway, that' ; s one of those stories that still exists in the White House legends. GANNON: I-- NIXON: It tells us something about each. GANNON: I interrupted you. You were talking about the things that happened to Johnson, and one of them was that he didn' ; t take Bobby-- NIXON: Well, he didn' ; t take Bobby. The second was the war. That put the nail in the coffin. You see, Johnson--Johnson had to be a favorite. He wasn' ; t a favorite of the eastern establishment press, which is the most powerful press. He wasn' ; t their favorite in terms of his Texas background. They thought he was basically a bit on the crude side, sort of a cornpone, and so forth. GANNON: Wasn' ; t he, in fact? NIXON: Well, he was a very down-to-earth fellow. I liked him, though. I mean, I don' ; t believe that somebody has to speak with a so-called British accent and all that sort of thing. You know, that sappy accent that many of our Foreign Service people put on, you know, where they sort of burp out their words in order to prove that they are so smart? No, Johnson was what he was. Well, one thing, incidentally, before I get to that, that always used [unintelligible] about Johnson. Johnson used to love to sort of stick it to--after he became president in his own right--to some of these--what he called " ; Fancy Dan" ; bureaucrats, or from the State Department, or some of the other agencies then, from the press, by deliberately using very bad grammar. Now, Johnson knew good grammar. He wasn' ; t that badly educated. He knew it, but he used very bad grammar. He' ; d mispronounce things, like rather than saying " ; hors d' ; oeuvre," ; he' ; d say " ; horse d' ; uv," ; and then he' ; d watch them cringe. But, you know, that was not a usual trait sometimes for people from the Midwest and the others who have a resentment toward these people that wear their education on their sleeves. I remember Bill Jenner. He was the congressman--I mean, the senator from Indiana, very conservative, ultra-conservative--but he had been first in his class at Indiana Law School. He had a marvelous understanding of the English language, but he deliberately would use bad grammar on occasion. I recall the day that Averell Harriman announced he was going to run for president of the United States in 1956. Several of the senators were sitting with me--I was vice president at the time--in a little special dining room we have for members of the Senate there as stags, having lunch. And just as we were finishing, in came Bill Jenner, and he sort of slouched down into a chair, sat down. He said, " ; I just seen Harriman on the TV." ; And somebody said, " ; Well, what was he like, Bill? What do you think of him?" ; He says, " ; He' ; s thin, boys--thin as piss on a rock." ; Well, in any event, that was Bill Jenner. That was Lyndon Johnson. It turned some people off, but that' ; s the way they were. And I kind of admired them for being what they were. But then, getting on, you add the Bobby Kennedy--not taking him. You add the war. You add the Texas style. All of those did him in, but he deserved credit from that same group, we should say, however, for the Great Society program, which was more liberal and more costly than the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the New Frontier put together. So they had to be for that on the issue. And also I must say this. Whatever anybody wants to say about Lyndon Johnson, he did one thing which no one else could have done at that time. Johnson carried out what Kennedy promised, and was unable to carry out. That was particularly in the field of civil rights. He got through the famous, and justly famous, Civil Rights Act of 1964. He got it through, and only he as a Southerner could do it--stop the filibuster and all sorts of things. He was able to do there in the same way what I was able to do going to China. I could go to China. Hubert Humphrey, a liberal, could not. Lyndon Johnson could do this as a Southerner, what Kennedy, the Northerner, could not do. And those who believe in civil rights, as I do, owe him a great deal for biting the bullet then--bringing the South, frankly, back into the Union. That' ; s what he did. GANNON: It' ; s been written that whereas the Kennedys required loyalty of their staff and their followers out of confidence, Johnson required loyalty out of insecurity. Did you see that side of him? NIXON: No. I think that' ; s, frankly, pro-Kennedy historians writing. No. Johnson was not insecure. That' ; s just baloney, all this business about this one being secure and the other being insecure. There was no more self-confident man in the world than Lyndon Johnson. When he--he looked around him, for example, at these--what he called the Eastern Establishment types and so forth, it wasn' ; t a question of his feeling inferior. He felt he was superior to them. Have you ever found anybody from Texas that didn' ; t think Texas was the biggest and the best and that a Texan was the biggest and the best? They believe that. And he believed it in spades. The point was, and the mistake he made, was this. The biggest mistake Lyndon Johnson made after he was elected in 1964 was not to become Lyndon Johnson. You know, these days some of Reagan' ; s conservative critics say, " ; Let Reagan be Reagan." ; Somebody should have said to Lyndon Johnson, " ; Let Johnson be Johnson." ; The real Lyndon Johnson would never have temporized with war in Vietnam. He would not have escalated gradually. He would have moved in, and we would not have had the war as an issue. He would have ended it, and ended it effectively. But Lyndon Johnson was passionately concerned about being liked. He was passionately concerned also about trying to win the Eastern Establishment people. Not that he felt inferior, but he was confident enough that he thought that " ; Well, by golly, I' ; m really better than this other fellow. I can do things that he didn' ; t do. I should be able to win them." ; And of course he couldn' ; t win them, because he was not their kind. He turned them off. Style is so important to those people. That' ; s their bread and butter, and they' ; re suckers for style, and Lyndon Johnson just didn' ; t have it. GANNON: What--you' ; ve-you' ; ve said that he said that without J. Edgar Hoover, he couldn' ; t have been president. What do you think he meant by that? NIXON: Oh, I know very well what he meant. He meant that in this period when we were at war, and when the place was plagued with leaks--that J. Edgar Hoover was indispensable to him. I' ; m confident that' ; s what he meant. And one thing which makes me sure that that was the case--I remember the first, very first piece of mail I got as president was a letter from J. Edgar Hoover, a very thick envelope. It was marked, " ; Top Secret--Eyes Only--for the President," ; and so I slit the thing open. I said, " ; What in the world is this?" ; And it was an intelligence report on Henry Brandon. Well, I knew Henry Brandon. He' ; s a--still is, I think--a reporter for the London Times, very distinguished, very respected. And so I called Hoover, and I says, " ; What the hell is this?" ; He says, " ; Oh, Henry Brandon, oh, yeah. He' ; s a British agent." ; I didn' ; t know what we were tapping a British agent for, so I just took the envelope, threw it in the outbox and marked it for Kissinger. I said, " ; Look into this. I don’t know anything about it," ; and never heard of it since. I' ; m sure Brandon thinks I put the tap on him, but apparently Johnson had it on all the time. Maybe it was put on even before that time. What I am saying is that he felt that Hoover was indispensable in order for him to find out who his friends were and who his enemies were. GANNON: Did that go beyond the proper purview of an FBI director? Tapping potential agents is one thing, but wasn' ; t he, as you describe it, in effect doing political intelligence for a president? NIXON: That' ; s right. That' ; s right. But Johnson was not telling me, I don' ; t think, that Hoover was indispensable to him because of political intelligence. Johnson was speaking to me with regard to the narrow national security thing. I don' ; t think Johnson would have wanted me to know that he had used Hoover to tap Goldwater, or whatever they did do, or to use Hoover, as I have learned since, to tap my plane to do some surveillance on Agnew in the 1968 campaign. That was a totally improper use of power. GANNON: Do you resent it? NIXON: No. GANNON: Why? NIXON: Because I would expect Johnson to do that. GANNON: Do you--you think or do you know whether J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual? NIXON: I don' ; t know. I don' ; t think so. I' ; m not--I can' ; t say that I' ; m a judge on this, and naturally I don' ; t know. I have no experience to know whether he was or he wasn' ; t, but I would--that I' ; d discount it all because that is such a typical line of the--of the left, to attack anybody on the other side on sexuality, on drunkenness, on drugs, and so forth and so on. In other words, they' ; re attacking those on the other side for what they themselves do. And I would say that as far as J. Edgar Hoover is concerned, he was one of the most virile, strong men I ever saw. As a matter of fact, he had a lot of pretty girls pictured on his wall and so forth and so on. GANNON: Are you aware that the most recent, and in some ways the most definitive person to put this into print is John Ehrlichman? NIXON: Well, I wouldn' ; t think that would be a very good source, because Ehrlichman had a thing against Hoover. So I-- GANNON: How did--Lyndon Johnson came to Congress in the early forties. He was a poor boy from a hardscrabble part of Texas. He then continued in Congress, as vice president, as president, and when he returned to Texas--when he died he left a fortune that' ; s best estimated between fourteen and twenty million dollars. How did he do that? NIXON: Well, he had a television station, to begin with, and he--I think he made some very good investments. Let' ; s put it that way. I am not one to sit here and try to judge what he did. I haven' ; t looked into the facts. Many who have looked into it have concluded that he did use the power of his office in terms of getting his television license, in terms of getting information with regard to a good land deal, or here or there or the other place. But let' ; s just say that everybody should judge for himself after doing a thorough study. I don' ; t intend to look into it. Johnson has served his country. The time is over now, and I' ; m going to judge him on his record and not what he did in that area. GANNON: Is it true that there was a different kind of morality, but a different kind of standard applied to these kinds of activities, certainly before Watergate, but probably even before television journalism? That congressmen and senators kept up ties with law firms, that they received gifts from constituents, they got involved in deals, they got tips and that kind of thing. So that it was a real different--it' ; s apples and oranges to compare-- NIXON: Yeah. I agree. I think that' ; s the case. And, incidentally, it was on the Republican side, too. Some of them had pretty good sweetheart deals. And there were some Republicans--more Democrats, I must say. It doesn' ; t mean that all the hanky-panky' ; s on one side, but I would say that in terms of coming into office and coming out richer, there were some Republicans that did and a number of Democrats as well. Johnson was in that group. I--not that it makes me any more moral--it' ; s just that my interests were in other directions. I think I am one of the few that came out with about what--that came out of office without having profited from it. But I' ; ve done very well since. GANNON: I am sorry to say that, in order to record our birthday greetings, we' ; ve got to cut off now. OFFSCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] GANNON: However, it' ; s a good point, ' ; cause next day we' ; ll just pick up the assessment of Johnson. NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --and save the assessment of Kennedy-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --' ; cause [unintelligible] got to be more than-- NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: --just two chunks-- NIXON: Mm-hmm. GANNON: --and then [unintelligible]. NIXON: I' ; ll give you a--two or three lines [unintelligible]-- GANNON: Okay. NIXON: --and you can pick them up very easily. GANNON: Yes. THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] GANNON: Do you want me off? OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] NIXON: I just love that bumblebee story [unintelligible] GANNON: True. NIXON: I added the " ; ass" ; to it. He didn' ; t have that in there. Better on the ass. GANNON: History will never know, because we' ; ll never tell. NIXON: Okay. This--this one here. I' ; ll be " ; Prime Minister Kishi." ; That' ; s the last word. All right, fine. I' ; m delighted to have the opportunity to participate in this eighty-eighth birthday celebration for Prime Minister Kishi. I' ; ve had a very rare privilege in my public life. I' ; ve known and worked with six Japanese prime ministers over the past thirty-seven years, in and out of office. The one that I' ; ve known the longest and the one who is my closest friend is Prime Minister Kishi. I have profited very much from his wise counsel over these years, and also have profited from knowing him as a friend. As we look around the world today, we must recognize a basic fact. Japanese-American cooperation and friendship is indispensable if peace and freedom are to survive in the Pacific and in the world. No one I know of has contributed more to that great cause than Prime Minister Kishi. And I can say very directly to all of his friends gathered here tonight on this historic occasion that whether it is as a statesman, whether it is as a government leader, as a friend, or on the golf course, no one could have a better partner than Prime Minister Kishi. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0389/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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19 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 4.
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gannix_0389
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-06-13
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United States
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, September 7, 1983, part 1. gannix_0393 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|25(13)|47(5)|60(3)|73(4)|92(16)|109(11)|122(12)|134(12)|149(1)|160(8)|175(15)|189(14)|201(11)|215(7)|225(4)|237(9)|250(3)|260(6)|278(6)|291(15)|303(9)|315(15)|328(16)|341(14)|368(14)|382(15)|397(7)|412(3)|426(9)|444(6)|457(10)|469(11)|481(8)|493(13)|513(6)|525(16)|535(3)|544(13)|556(10)|569(8)|582(4)|594(11)|611(5)|623(8)|638(11)|651(7)|661(14)|674(8)|688(10)|701(8)|712(14)|727(16)|744(6)|758(8)|774(10)|787(4)|797(12)|811(9) 0 https://youtu.be/cD5R9BW161U YouTube video English 81 1960 Presidential Campaign Why did you lose the presidency in 1960? Nixon considers factors that caused him to lose the 1960 presidential election, including the debate, his choice in running mate, and the level of involvement from President Eisenhower, who had poor health during the campaign. 507 Losing the Presidential Election How did it feel on election night to--as the results began to come in, or as--as trends began to emerge, to realize that at best you were losing and at worst, because of the substantial vote fraud, that you were possibly, literally, having the election stolen away from you? Nixon discusses the events of the 1960 election night and how it affected his family to lose the presidential election. He also talks about attending President Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. 956 Last Night as Vice President / Commissioner of Baseball How did--do you remember how you spend your last night as--in Washington as vice president? Nixon describes his last night as vice president and making plans as a private citizen. He also talks about being offered a nomination for the Commissioner of Baseball and who he feels will win the World Series. 1925 F Street Club ; Capitol ; Commissioner of Baseball ; Del Webb ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Greg Luzinski ; Howard Cosell ; Jack Dreyfus ; John Wardlaw ; Joseph Strauss ; Lincoln Memorial ; New York Yankees ; Oldsmobile ; Secret Service ; Washington Monument ; World Series Cosell, Howard, 1918-1995 ; Dreyfus, Jack, 1913-2009 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Luzinski, Greg, 1950- ; Strauss, Lewis L. ; Webb, Del E., 1899-1974 1503 Continued Political Ambitions / IRS Investigations Do--when you moved out to California then, did you have--you still had political ambitions? Nixon recounts considering a political future after losing the 1960 presidential election. He discusses the multiple audits by the IRS on himself and his family instigated by Bobby Kennedy at the time. Adams, Duque & ; Hazeltine ; Bobby Kennedy ; Chappaquiddick ; Hannah Milhous Nixon ; Internal Revenue Service (IRS) ; John F. Kennedy ; law ; Rose Mary Woods ; Ted Kennedy Kennedy, Edward M. (Edward Moore), 1932-2009 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Kennedy, Robert F., 1925-1968 ; Nixon, Hannah Milhous, 1885-1967 1749 Running for Governor of California Do you consider running for governor of California to be your greatest--looking back now and--and given that you were--looking back now and, as you say, you were considering running against Kennedy again in '64--do you consider running for governor of California in 1962 your greatest political mistake? Nixon discusses his decision to run for governor of California in 1962 and sharing the news with his unenthusiastic family. Barry Goldwater ; Cap Weinberger ; Cliff Folger ; Douglas MacArthur ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Herbert Hoover ; John Quincy Adams ; Julie Eisenhower ; Len Hall ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Pat Nixon ; Raymond Moley ; Thomas E. Dewey ; Tricia Cox Adams, John Quincy, 1767-1848 ; Brown, Edmund G. (Edmund Gerald), 1905-1996 ; Cox, Patricia Nixon, 1946- ; Dewey, Thomas E. (Thomas Edmund), 1902-1971 ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Eisenhower, Julie Nixon- ; Goldwater, Barry M. (Barry Morris), 1909-1998 ; Hall, Leonard W. (Leonard Wood), 1900-1979 ; Hoover, Herbert, 1874-1964 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; MacArthur, Douglas, 1880-1964 ; Moley, Raymond, 1886-1975 ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Weinberger, Caspar W. 2205 Last Press Conference Why did you hold your last press conference? Nixon describes his decision to give his " ; last press conference" ; when conceding the 1962 gubernatorial election to Pat Brown and the way that the media treated him before and after this speech. 2553 Liberal Media Why do people put up with this? Nixon discusses the liberal nature of news media and how it represents politicians. He also discusses Dan Rather's credibility and the ABC show " ; The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon." ; 3064 Moving to New York / John Birch Society Why did you move to New York after your defeat in the California gubernatorial race? Nixon shares his reasons for moving to New York after losing the election for governor and discusses the heckling that he received from the John Birch Society during his campaign. Interview NIXON: --silly damn thing, anyways. GANNON: It is interesting, though. I mean, it' ; s--it' ; s as vivid as that, the--the light suit, and even--your suit' ; s in shadow, but even not in shadow how much he stands out with the--how much the dark [unintelligible]. NIXON: You see, the other point is that it was--if it' ; d been in color it would' ; ve been different. GANNON: Mm-hmm. NIXON: The light suit in color is fine. GANNON: [unintelligible] NIXON: It' ; s--in black and white-- GANNON: It just fades into the [unintelligible]-- NIXON: In black and white, always wear a dark suit. That' ; s something we should-- Oh, well, hell. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stand by, studio. We go in ten seconds. GANNON: Why did you lose in 1960? Was it--was it the debates? NIXON: Well, when you lose an election by the closest margin in history, where a difference of just twelve--let' ; s start again. Uh-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Let' ; s take it from the top. Keep rolling tape. [unintelligible] GANNON: Can we-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: When I-- GANNON: Why did you lose the presidency in 1960? Was it--was it the influence of the Nixon-Kennedy debates? NIXON: Well, the debates certainly had some effect, as all observers have pointed out. But when you lose an election by a margin of only twelve thousand votes scattered in three critical states, where that many would have made the difference, then any number of factors could have done it. With regard to the effect of the debates, it' ; s interesting to note that the polls between the time before the first debate and between--and then on Election Day remained relatively the same. Kennedy was ahead, actually, fifty-one-forty-nine, according to Gallup, before the debates. He won by approximately fifty-and-a-half to forty-nine-and-a-half. So, when you put all the debates together, assuming that the debates only were affecting the result, you can' ; t say that they were critical. It' ; s a myth to suggest that I was way ahead before the debates and that the debate turned it around. It just didn' ; t happen. I think, of the factors that might have made a difference, and any one could have made a difference, these were the ones that come to mind. One, we were outspent. Kennedy had a lot more money than we did. We were well-financed, but we didn' ; t dream that he would be able to do as well as he could. Second, the media was very, very strongly against us, by a margin of five- to six-to-one. That has been since pretty well documented. Third, there was the economy. Unfortunately, a recession occurred--a very small one, it was true--i--in that year, 1960. And it reached its depth in October, the m--worst possible time, when four hundred thousand more people became unemployed. And, fifth, in the big states, i--it was the fact that the Catholic vote was so overwhelmingly for Kennedy. I got the lowest percentage of Catholic votes of any candidate in history, lower even than Herbert Hoover did against Al Smith in 1928. A--and that made an enormous difference in the big states, like New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania. So, under all these circumstances, then, you would have to say that any one of those factors might have made the difference. But I would also say, in fairness, that John Kennedy was a very good candidate. It was a good contest. It was tough right down to the end. Who knows? GANNON: Do you think it would have been different if you had had a different running mate, if you hadn' ; t chosen Henry Cabot Lodge and/or if Eisenhower had campaigned more for you? NIXON: Well, I wouldn' ; t knock Lodge, in the sense that I think Lodge did the best that he could in the area that we had chosen him for. His expertise was in foreign policy, and he was extremely effective in that respect. I do think, in retrospect, that a better running mate would have probably been Thruston Morton, because of [unintelligible]. GANNON: The senator from Kentucky? NIXON: The senator from Kentucky, who, incidentally, became national chairman for that very campaign. Morton would have helped in the states that could have made the difference. He would have helped in downstate Illinois, where Lodge could not help. He would have helped in Missouri, that we lost by only twelve thousand votes. He would have helped in South Carolina, that we lost by only twelve thousand votes. When you add up those votes, you have a net change of twelve thousand over--overall that would have made a difference. GANNON: How about the Eisenhower involvement, where not only didn' ; t he campaign for you much, but there was the--the gaffe at the end, or the statement, at a press conference that if they gave him a week he could think of something you' ; d done in the administration? NIXON: I don' ; t think there' ; s anything that has ever embarrassed Eisenhower more than the way that so-called " ; gaffe" ; was played. He pointed out to me afterwards that he was just leaving the press conference--he had one every week--and somebody gr--asked a question, as they often do Ronald Reagan as he' ; s walking out of a press conference--you know, he puts his hand to his ear--I hope with a hearing aid he won' ; t have to do that again--and tries to answer them. Well, Eisenhower, in this instance--usually didn' ; t try to answer them, but one of them shot at him, " ; Can you name any single one der--one--any thing that Vice President Nixon has contributed to?" ; and he said, " ; Well, give me a week and I' ; ll give you an answer." ; He said what he meant was that, " ; Next week, ask me the question." ; He just didn' ; t want to answer it then. Well, be that as it may, it had--it did have a detrimental effect, because it was a highlight, one of the highlights, of the first debate, when Sander Vanocur, who was working very closely with the Kennedy group, we found later, asked me that question. Kennedy was prepared to answer it, and I was not. The second point is that I suppose that many people have the impression that Eisenhower was reluctant in supporting me. That was not true. Exactly the opposite was the case. He wanted desperately to get in that campaign. He was insisting, for example, in the last three weeks, particularly because he didn' ; t like what Kennedy was saying about the missile gap. Eisenhower was a military man. He was very proud that the country was strong, and he didn' ; t like this " ; upstart," ; as he often called him, who knew nothing about military activities, or at least in the sense that Eisenhower knew about them, to criticize what he had done militarily. He knew that instead of having a missile gap that it was a missile gap for the Russians, that we had about a fifteen-to-one advantage, which of course Kennedy had to admit at the time we had the Cuban confrontation, after he became president. But, in any event, why then didn' ; t Eisenhower campaign? And the reason was that none of us could really talk about. It hasn' ; t come out. It' ; s come out only lately in books. The problem was that he had had, of course, a heart attack. He had also had a stroke. He had high blood pressure. And Mrs. Eisenhower, after talking to his doctors, called Mrs. Nixon on the phone--had her on the phone for a half-hour before the decision was made as to whether Eisenhower would campaign in those last two weeks and how much and begged with--she said her--Mrs. Eisenhower--Miz Eis--Mrs. Nixon told me that Mrs. Eisenhower' ; s voice was choked. She says, " ; It' ; s going to kill Ike. He just mustn' ; t do it, Pat. He just mustn' ; t do it." ; And she, of course, told me that. That was not all. Eisenhower' ; s doctor talked to me before I went in to see him about the balance of his schedule. And he said to me, " ; Mr. Vice President, I want you to know that I think it would be very detrimental to the general' ; s health. It might risk his life. He wants to do it. Don' ; t let him know that I have said this." ; So I had to go through and--to see President Eisenhower when he said, " ; What can I do?" ; And he laid out the schedule, and I had to make all sorts of lame excuses about why he shouldn' ; t do it. But actually the reason he didn' ; t do it and the reason I did not agree to his going forward and doing it as he wanted to was because of those personal considerations. GANNON: How did it feel on election night to--as the results began to come in, or as--as trends began to emerge, to realize that at best you were losing and at worst, because of the substantial vote fraud, that you were possibly, literally, having the election stolen away from you? How did--what was that night like? NIXON: Well, election night' ; s--after all of the regulars of the campaign and I hadn' ; t slept for about forty-eight hours before that election night, because we' ; d had telethons--we' ; d flown in through Alaska and Detroit and Chicago and so forth. As a result, you' ; re physically drained, emotionally drained, mentally drained. And so you' ; re just numb. The only thing that' ; ll pick you up--if you win. And when you lose, you become more and more numb. And as a matter of fact, insofar as the election fraud was concerned, it didn' ; t really come home to me that night, except for one call I got from Everett Dirksen' ; s administrative assistant. He called and got me on the phone--it was the only call I think I took that night. He begged me--he said, " ; Don' ; t concede. Don' ; t concede in Illinois. Downstate we' ; re coming in right on schedule, and they' ; re not going to be able to override it in Cre--Cook County." ; Well, by that time that I decided to go down and make what was interpreted as a concession statement, then that apparently did have a detrimental effect, because I understand that at that time the people downstate quit counting. They quit watching the polls. And the people upstate, of course, were under the control of Mayor--Mayor Daley. So we lost it by eight thousand votes. So, under the circumstances, I was not aware that night of the immense fraud. I had ideas about it. That came later. The second point, however, I should make, is that what goes through the mind of a losing candidate--and I' ; m an expert on this, having lost a couple of them--is primarily thoughts not about himself, but about his family, the impact on them, his workers, his supporters, everything that he has done. You just really have a feeling. " ; What can I do to justify what we' ; ve been through?" ; GANNON: It' ; s almost painful, looking at the film of that statement when you went down early in the evening, of Mrs. Nixon trying to control her emotions. NIXON: [unintelligible] GANNON: How did she and Tricia and Julie take the impact of that loss? NIXON: Well, for her, because she had campaigned so hard herself--she' ; s one of the great troupers. She' ; s the better campaigner of the two, all of my even most passionate admirers will admit. And so it was a terrible disappointment for her. She didn' ; t want to go down to concede. She says, " ; I don' ; t" ; --and--and one of the reasons she didn' ; t was that the--the media had been very much against us, she thought. She says, " ; I' ; m not going to go down there in front of those people after what they have done and said." ; And, of course, they were against us by a margin of at least five or six to one. " ; But," ; I said, " ; we' ; ve got to do it for our supporters. They' ; re out there, too." ; And so, being the good trouper that she is, she agreed to go down. And it was a brave thing for her to do. Tricia came into the room at a time that we had decided that we’d have to make the concession statements, and--and she bursts into tears, and she said, " ; Oh, Daddy." ; She said, " ; I' ; m not crying for myself. I' ; m crying because you and Mommy have worked so hard." ; And I thought that was a very touching thing to say. Julie was not up at that time. She was only twelve years old. And it was the next morning--I had gone to bed and--hoping, perhaps, that the same thing would happen to me as happened so many years ago, when Charles Evans Hughes went to bed and woke up in the morning and found that he had not been elected president. I felt hope that it' ; d be the other way around, although I didn' ; t expect it. In any event, somebody--I was in a dead sleep, I' ; d only slept about four hours--was shaking the bed, and it was Julie. And she said, " ; Daddy, how did the election come out?" ; Well, that was about as tough a little speech as I ever made. I said, " ; Well, this is the way that it happened. It was very, very close. We--we think we may have even won it, but under the circumstances I' ; m afraid we' ; ve got to lose--we have lost." ; And she tr--started to cry, and then she said something which I thought was quite profound. She said, " ; Well, we may have lost the election, but we won in the hearts of the people." ; And that, of course, was Julie. From then on, she never gave up--Julie, like her mother--like Tricia, too, but even more so--is a fighter. After that, I recall often s--talking to her. I' ; d go in to kiss her good night, and she would say, " ; Daddy, can’t we still win?" ; And this was months later. Even a year later, she said, " ; I still think we' ; ve got to have a recount in Cook County." ; That' ; s Julie. GANNON: How did it feel in January of 1961 to stand on the platform and watch John Kennedy take the oath of office as thirty-fifth president of the United States? NIXON: Well, I suppose one who had lost a very close election, and particularly under the circumstances where there was strong evidence that he might not have lost it, but that it had been stolen that you' ; re supposed to feel rather bitter and all that. I didn' ; t really feel that way. Inaugurations are, for me, and I think for most Americans, almost a--a religious experience. Here, the change is occurring. It' ; s a changing--change occurring peacefully in a great democracy, the greatest in the world, and so one feels, as I did, that you' ; re just fortunate to be th--there, to see and to participate in a moment of history. I must say that, as I heard John Kennedy' ; s speech, I thought it was very effective. And he delivered it as he--as I would have expected--very, very well. It had a great impact. But as far as the content was concerned, may I say, I could just hear Eisenhower' ; s teeth gri--grating--grating because President Kennedy--President-elect Kennedy was saying, " ; The torch of leadership has passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, and with the promise of peace," ; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And when he went on to say that--" ; let the world know that we will fight any place, any time, in defense of freedom," ; I thought back, as I' ; m sure Eisenhower did, to the fact that during the campaign he had urged that Eisenhower apologize to Khrushchev for the U-2 Incident. He had urged Eisenhower not to defend Quemoy and Matsu against the attacks of the Chinese Communists. So, under the circumstances, those thoughts did go through my head, but, on the other hand, they were overridden by simply the feeling almost of awe of being in the presence of such a great moment. GANNON: How did--do you remember how you spend your last night as--in Washington as vice president? NIXON: Well, I remember the day, and the night, as well. Right after the inauguration there was a delightful luncheon at the F Street Club given by Admiral Strauss, Eisenhower' ; s close friend and his nominee for Secretary of Commerce, who had been rejected, much to Eisenhower' ; s displeasure, by the United States Senate. After that luncheon, we went home. I don' ; t remember too much what happened then--had a very light snack at--at night. And then I decided to take a last ride around the Capitol, because I knew the next day I wasn' ; t going to have the car. You see, a vice--former vice president at that point--when he leaves office, he doesn' ; t have a car, he doesn' ; t have Secret Service, et cetera, from that moment. But they did allow it for the--the balance of the day. So John Wardlaw, our driver, drove me through the streets of the city. I' ; d said, " ; Take us up to the Capitol." ; And as we drove through the streets of the city, it was really an eerie sight, a--almost like New Year' ; s in a way, because it was snowing, and as the flakes of snow began to come down I saw the ladies with their marvelous ball gowns trying to get through the snow, stepping over the gutters with the help of their escorts, all in white tie and tails and so forth. You could hear the singing and the noise. It was a great celebration, after all, and I understood that. I would have celebrated, too, if they had been part of that campaign and had won. And finally we got up to the Capitol and I got out of the car, and I walked into the Capitol Building, which was totally deserted at the time. The guard was very surprised to see me, but nevertheless I went on. I went up to my favorite place in the Capitol for what is my favorite view in the world. It' ; s on the balcony looking down from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Memorial down through the mall. And this was the most beautiful sight I' ; ve ever seen. It' ; s always beautiful. We used to put it on our Christmas cards that we sent out as vice president. The snow on the mall--mall--the snow was still falling and hanging on the leaves at this time. I looked out--out across there. You could just see the Lincoln Memorial far off. Of course, the Washington Memorial you could see quite clearly because it was closer and, of course, taller. I stood there for about five minutes, and then-- GANNON: What were-- NIXON: --some way-- GANNON: What were you thinking? NIXON: I--I s--stood there for about five minutes, and then suddenly a thought just rushed into my mind--not consciously, but then it seemed almost to overwhelm me. And it was, " ; I' ; ll be back." ; And as that thought came into my mind, I just turned on my heels and walked very quickly away, back to the car. GANNON: What were the--what were the options that you saw for yourself as you prepared to leave Washington after so many years and become a private citizen again? NIXON: Well, the options were, frankly, very enticing, particularly from a financial standpoint. As I was leaving Washington, despite the fact that I had been in the House for two years--for four years--no. As I was leaving Washington, despite the fact that I had been in the House for four years and the Senate for two years and served as eight years for vice president at a very handsome salary--which was handsome then--of thirty-five thousand dollars a year, my net worth at the end of all that service was only forty-seven thousand dollars and a--a battered old Oldsmobile which needed some repairs. So, consequently, the financial rewards that might be available for our family--the girls were going to be ready for school very soon--was, I must say, somewhat enticing. And they were several. Jack Dreyfus, who had been one of our strong supporters during the campaign financially--I didn' ; t know him well. I' ; d only met him very briefly after he had made a very big contribution--just rode downtown with him once in New York when I was there to make a speech, and he told me that he was particularly supportive of my foreign policy. And he came to see me in Florida. I can remember him to this day. He had an open shirt on, very informal--this very, very wealthy, brilliant man. And he said he thought I should come to New York. He offered me the position of chairman and chief executive officer of the Dreyfus Corporation. Salary seemed very handsome then, tremendously handsome--even now it sounds pretty big--two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, stock options, et cetera. If I had taken it, I would have been a very, very wealthy man at the present time. But I knew that if I did that, that I in effect would not be able to continue to injustice--do justice to him and to do anything in the political arena, although he had assured me that he wouldn’t object to that, particularly if it were in the area of foreign policy. Then there was another offer that appealed to me, I must say, a little bit more. I' ; m somewhat of a baseball fan, as most people are aware, and Del Webb, who was the owner of the New York Yankees, was a little dissatisfied with the leadership in the commissioner' ; s office, and he came to see me in California when I was out there on a trip determining what I was going to do. And he asked if I would mind if he submitted my name as a candidate for commissioner of baseball. I' ; m sure if I' ; d said yes I would have gotten it, because he was a very powerful man. Well, I must say, that meant a lot to me--first, to be offered it, and second, just the idea of being able to spend time going to the baseball games, even traveling with the teams and so forth. But I knew that that wasn' ; t for me, and so I said no to that. And then there were, of course, the offers from law firms and so forth and so on, and I finally decided that I would take an offer, not from the biggest law firm in Los Angeles--the biggest one did make me an offer, a very handsome one--Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher--but it would have required full time with no time off for any political activities. So I went with a smaller firm, the firm which I felt was better suited for what I was going to do. GANNON: We agreed that because of time constraints there would be no digressions today, but I can' ; t resist a quick one just to get you on the record. Who is going to play in and who' ; s going to win the World Series? NIXON: Well, this year, of course, as far as the American League is concerned, Chicago will win the West, a--and I have a feeling that Chicago might beat Baltimore. Baltimore will probably win the East, although you never discount Baltimore. It' ; s going to be Chicago or Baltimore--a slight to Chicago because they’re the new boys in town. In the World Series, it' ; ll be probably the Dodgers in the West. I can' ; t even guess as to the East. I hope it' ; s Montreal. I' ; d like to see the Canadians have the W--World Series. But, in any event, I will predict that the National League, if Chicago wins the American League, will win the World Series, because this year the National League rules, which do not allow for a designated hitter, apply--Chicago--one of its major threats is Luzinski who can only hit as a designated hitter. He can no longer field. His legs are gone, but he can sure hit the ball. So he' ; d be sitting out except as a pinch hitter. Without Luzinski the Chicago White Sox would not be able to beat the Montreal Expors--Expos, or the Los Angeles Dodgers, if they should win it. GANNON: Do you--do you ever regret not taking the baseball commissionership if you had developed that and it had been offered? NIXON: Oh, yes. I regret that. You--I regret, for example, maybe not bec--not having become a baseball writer or football writer or commentator and so forth. it' ; s an interesting life, a fascinating life. GANNON: It' ; s never too late. NIXON: Well, it' ; s a little late now. GANNON: Never too late, though. NIXON: No. They should have a younger, non-controversial person in that job. GANNON: Someone like Howard Cosell. NIXON: Yes, he would-- GANNON: [Unintelligible] both. NIXON: Well, I' ; d like to get him off the air, but that' ; d be something else again. Now, I don' ; t mind him for boxing, but, my God, when he gives his opinions on baseball--huh! GANNON: Do--when you moved out to California then, did you have--you still had political ambitions? NIXON: No, a th--not really political ambitions. As a matter of fact, I moved to California not for the purpose of staying in politics or engaging in politics but perhaps to keep my options open. I would put it that way. I knew that going to New York--that I would be foreclosing political participation. I felt that as the titular head of the party that I should continue to speak out on issues. I would continue to make speeches around the country and so forth. And I felt, because I had a huge number of invitations to go around and do that sort of thing--I thought I owed it to the party. And, consequently, I felt I should take a position which was afforded to me in the Earl Adams fum--in the Earl Adams firm, Adams, Duque, and Hazeltine, a position that would provide adequate income for me but which would allow me the freedom, which they gave me, to participate in political activities. That' ; s why I went to California. GANNON: Did you see it as a viable option, then, that you might run, or--or would run, against Kennedy again in ' ; 64? NIXON: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. After that--after the closest election in history, there was no doubt that I saw it as a viable option, and--and there' ; s no doubt, too, that the Kennedys saw it as a viable option, because they continued to harass me once they got into power. Most things you forgive in politics. You do if it' ; s aimed at you personally, but, on the other hand, when it' ; s y--aimed at your family it' ; s very hard to forget or forgive. And Bobby Kennedy, for example, initiated an investigation of my mother and my brother with regard to the Hughes loan, which she had satisfied, of course, with property that was worth many times--that is worth today many times more than the loan. And they were going to have a criminal investigation. That was revealed in 1972, when some of the Kennedy papers began to come out. GANNON: Did you know it at the time? NIXON: Oh, of course not. I knew nothing about it. I did know something else, though. The Internal Revenue Service three times audited my income tax returns. And I wondered, " ; What in the world is this all about?" ; This was in 1961 and 1962 as I was preparing then to run for governor. And we learned later from a letter that was written by the one in charge of the audit in Los Angeles, who wrote to Rose Mary Woods--said that he was the one who three times messaged Washington, " ; I have examined this. I have conducted a full field audit. There' ; s no change," ; because there was no--no money owed. And he said, " ; Three times I got orders from the very top to continue the audit and try to find something that they could ask for more money." ; That kind of harassment, I thought, was a bit beyond the pale, particularly because the election was close, particularly since I did not contest it. But, on the other hand, they play hardball. They had me down, they knew I wasn' ; t out, and they wanted to put a couple of nails in the coffin. They almost succeeded. GANNON: Could it be argued that your--that the investigations of Ted Kennedy in--during the first several months of your administration were really an equivalent of that? NIXON: Well, I would say that they having done what they had done--we certainly were motivated, I would say, to a certain extent, to investigate what we thought were activities which were politically detrimental as far as they were concerned and not let it be covered up. And certainly that is one of the reasons that--that when we talk about the investigations of Ted Kennedy--what we' ; re talking here, I assume, is the Chappaquiddick-- GANNON: Chappaquiddick, yes. NIXON: That' ; s right. GANNON: Do you consider running for governor of California to be your greatest--looking back now and--and given that you were--looking back now and, as you say, you were considering running against Kennedy again in ' ; 64--do you consider running for governor of California in 1962 your greatest political mistake? NIXON: Yes and no. And I--this is not an equivocal answer, because it is a yes-and-no proposition. From a personal standpoint, yes, because we lost the election. On the other hand, if you look at it historically, if I had not run for governor, I then would certainly have probably been drafted to, even though I had not wished to, to run for president in 1964. And I would have lost. I would have run better against Johnson than Goldwater did. But nobody was going to beat Johnson in 1964. Having run for governor and lost, I was dead as far as 1964 was concerned. Now, let me say, I didn' ; t plan it that way, because I didn' ; t plan to go in and lose so I wouldn' ; t have to run for governor. I didn' ; t plan to go in and be governor so that--I--I didn' ; t--I--I s--lost my train of thought there. I didn' ; t run and lose because I didn' ; t--I--I didn' ; t run for governor and--and-- GANNON: Let' ; s strike that, and we' ; ll start again. NIXON: Yeah. I didn' ; t run for governor and then lose because of my concern that if I didn' ; t lose I' ; d have to run for president in ' ; 64 because I had every i--every view that perhaps I would be the strongest candidate in ' ; 64. But that' ; s the way the thing happened. And so, while I don' ; t go along with the Pollyanna-ish idea everything happens for the best, in this case it did happen for the best for me politically. I would have been--because if I had run again in ' ; 64 and become a two-time loser for president, as Dewey had been after losing in ' ; 44 and ' ; 48, I would have been kaput as far as ' ; 68 was concerned. Now, on the other hand, running for governor was not something I wanted to do under any circumstances. I didn' ; t want to be governor, and, incidentally, my best friends--not all of them, but some of my best friends felt it would be a great mistake. I remember Herbert Hoover and General MacArthur, who lived about five floors apart in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel--when I went to see them prior to making this decision on a visit to New York, I asked for their advice. Each of them, independently, without having talked to the other, said, " ; Don' ; t go to California." ; They urged me to run for Congress, as John Quincy Adams had over a hundred years before. He said--and both of them said this, MacArthur first and then Hoover, whom I saw later in that same day--they said, " ; You should be in Washington, not in California. California basically is a great state, but it' ; s quite parochial. You belong on the national and international scene. You can' ; t do that in California." ; On the other hand, my political friends--like Len Hall, Cliff Folger--said, " ; You' ; ve got to go back. You' ; ve got to run." ; Len Hall' ; s argument--he said, " ; If you don' ; t run and somebody else does and somebody else wins, who' ; s Dick Nixon going to be? He' ; s the guy that lost for president. You' ; ve got to run in order to have a new base." ; So, after all those considerations and the feelings also expressed by some of my California supporters, I finally decided to run. Cap Weinberger, incidentally, the--now the secretary of defense, was then the young chairman of the Republican Party, a moderate Republican in a relatively conservative state at that point. And he was the one that told me I was the only one that had a chance to beat Pat Brown. And Dwight Eisenhower--President Eisenhower, after talking to his friends, wrote me a long letter saying that he had finally determined that I should run. Incidentally, in that respect, one other intriguing possibility that was raised for me before I came to California was raised by [Raymond Mulley], the columnist. Raymond Noley--Mulley had followed politics for years in Britain and the United States, and he urged me to become chairman of the Republican National Committee. He said, " ; There you' ; ll have a forum. You can be the head of the loyal opposition. You' ; re a great organizer. You can organize the party and strengthen it." ; That also was a proposition that I considered but did not follow through on. GANNON: Coming just two years after this searing defeat for president, how did--and--and presumably enjoying the life back in California--how did Mrs. Nixon and Tricia and Julie feel about your re-entry into the political arena? NIXON: Not enthusiastic, if I c--may use British understatement. Tricia and Julie, to an extent, were more resigned to it, because they were--they were still quite young. But as far as Mrs. Nixon was concerned--she was adamantly against it. She said, " ; We' ; ve just been through a campaign. We' ; re just getting back on our feet. We owe time to the girls," ; which we did. " ; We owe time to ourselves. We just can' ; t go through this again so soon.' ; She knew very well sh--what she was talking about. GANNON: How did you-- NIXON: She knew it was tough. GANNON: --break the news to her? NIXON: Well, I had th--we had a family conference. I mean, you have that when you' ; re a candidate for president, or governor, or vice president, whatever the case might be. And in this instance, I went over the pros and cons. And she said, " ; Well, let me just make one thing clear. If you decide to run, you' ; re going to run on your own." ; She says, " ; I' ; m not going to be there campaigning with you as I did when you ran for the House and the Senate and vice president and president." ; And so she left the room, and the girls were in tears. So I went up to my study in our place and sat down in the easy chair, as I usually did, with the yellow pad, and--because I had to have a press conference the next day to announce what I was going to do. I had already indicated that I would. And I was making notes as to why I would not run for governor of California. The light was rather dim, and she came into the room. She came over, and she said, " ; You know, Dick," ; she said, " ; I' ; ve been thinking about this thing. I think it' ; s a terrible mistake for you to run, but if you decide to do it," ; she said, " ; I' ; ll be there with you." ; And she leaned down and kissed me on the forehead and left the room. Well, since she had agreed, I went ahead and did it. But she was right, because we, of course, did lose. GANNON: We have some film of a famous event in Richard Nixon' ; s political career. GANNON: Why did you hold your last press conference? NIXON: You know, my main regret, and, frankly, only regret about that conference, curiously enough--I didn' ; t do it sooner. Those of us, particularly on the conservative side, in politics--we take so much crap from the media. And w--we hyp--hypocritically go through this charade that we think the press is fair, that they' ; re just doing their job, and so forth. They' ; re not fair. They' ; re deliberately unfair. When you--when you look, for example, at the polls taken of Washington correspondents in terms of 1960, they were in the neighborhood of four to five to one for Kennedy. In the case, for example, in 1968, when I was running against Humphrey, the top Washington correspondents, the two hundred--this is in television and also among newspapers as well--the top Washington correspondents were for Hubert Humphrey by 80 percent to 20 percent. In 1972, when 61 percent of the people voted for Nixon, the Washington and national correspondents in television and the media were 82 percent for McGovern. Well, that' ; s got to tell you something. And so I had been going through this through all these years. Oh, I don' ; t mean that I didn' ; t have good friends in the press. I did have some. I don' ; t mean that--too, that all of them were against me all the time. I think particularly when I went to Moscow in 1959 that I got a relatively good press. But, on the other hand, generally speaking, they' ; re just against me--against me because they didn' ; t agree with me. And so I understood that, but, on the other hand, I was not going to continue to go through the charade that I felt they were fair. And so now--in the California campaign it was worse than ever. I made a number of--of what I thought very constructive speeches and proposals about government in California, what we would do about crime, what we would do about jobs, getting more jobs into the state, a better industrial climate, and so forth and so on. Didn' ; t make a blip. Just couldn' ; t get it covered. All they wanted to go into was to whether or not I was running for president again, and particularly badgering me about the Hughes loan--other things which they knew were phony issues--political issues raised by the opposition. Well, in any event, that morning it was all over. I had made a concession statement--in other words, sent out a written statement, congratulated Brown and so forth and so on-- by wire, and I happened to tune in the television, and here was Herb Klein, one of the kindest, most gentle men who' ; s ever been a press secretary--he' ; s really too good for them. He never criticizes them. He never talks to their publishers or their editors or bitches about them in any way. He' ; s always trying to be nice to them, thinking that if he' ; s nice to them, they' ; ll be nice to us. I don' ; t mean he' ; s a soft man, but I mean that' ; s just his way. He' ; s a gentleman. He' ; s a gentleman in a business where there are damned few gentlemen. And so, in any event, here they were, badgering per--poor Herb Klein, saying, " ; Why doesn' ; t Nixon come down and conc--concede?" ; I said, " ; Fine. I' ; ll go down and concede," ; but when I conceded, I was going finally to tell them exactly what they' ; d been up to. I have no regrets about saying that, and, incidentally--one of the best things I ever did politically, because from that time on, and I think perhaps for the first time, the press began to respect me a little more. They were afraid that maybe I' ; d crack them again, and, believe me, I would have if they' ; d come at me. GANNON: There--there are some, perhaps many, who will watch and hear you say what you' ; ve just said and say that this is a classic expression, casebook quality, of Nixon media paranoia. How do you--are you aware of that, and how do you respond to this--this continuing response to your claims, or to your objections, that you are unfairly treated by the media, that this is--that you just have a paranoid blank on this subject? NIXON: No. I' ; m not paranoiac about it at all. I just say let' ; s look at the record, and all the media has to do is to look at its record in 1960, look at its record in 1962, 1968, 1972. And they will find that they have been very heavily prejudiced--I' ; m speaking of " ; they" ; in the broadest sense, the majority--that they haven' ; t given me the same fair treatment that they have given to some of the candidates on the other side who support their political views. It' ; s only a honest statement, and--and anybody who sits there and says, " ; Well, really, they' ; re all very fair, they' ; re treating us objectively," ; is just wrong. I think the problem is this. The media constantly harps on credibility--are political figures credible. Well, I think the media' ; s got to look at their credibility, and, as I say, when you look in 1972 and find eighty-two percent of the media, the top honchos, going for McGovern, and only thirty-eight percent of the people going for him, I don' ; t know who' ; s out of sync here. But for me to sit here and say, " ; Oh, in spite of that, the media were very fair to me" ; --that' ; s just not true. They aren' ; t. And weren' ; t. GANNON: Why do people put up with this? Because if--if reporters are as liberal as you say they are, that certainly doesn' ; t represent the mass of public opinion. Why does the average person sitting at home who is not that kind of liberal accept this kind of liberal treatment of people like yourself, or of news in-- NIXON: [unintelligible] GANNON: --general? Doesn' ; t the market establish itself and demand more neutral or, indeed, right-of-center news coverage? NIXON: The market does. For example, my famous " ; Silent Majority" ; speech in 1969 proved that. The media was about 90 percent to bug out of Vietnam, and yet we went up to 68 percent in the polls when I came out strongly for the silent majority to stand up rather than to bug out. The people are smarter than you think in this thing. I think, too, though--let' ; s look at politicians. Why don' ; t politicians speak up as far as the media are concerned? I mean, those that think they' ; re getting a bad rap? And the reason is the same reason that I--that motivated me up until that conference in 1962. They got the whip hand. You try to answer them. You try to defend yourself, and they' ; ll write it, or they' ; ll go on the air and--and come back at you. They have the last word. And so, under the circumstances, and this is where Herb Klein, professionally, was probably right when he advised, " ; Well, there' ; s no use to take them on, because they' ; ll be even worse." ; That was his view. My own view is--in retrospect, though, as far as I was concerned, they couldn' ; t have been worse, in my opinion--more unfair. At least I got some degree of respect, because, basically, deep down, they' ; re not the bravest people in the world when they write these words. And if you take them on, they then have got to show a little bit of deference-- GANNON: Do you think-- NIXON: --to your views, at least. GANNON: Do you think it' ; s possible for a conservative commentator or reporter or analyst to rise through the ranks of network news as it now exists--which is another way of saying, I guess, do you think that there' ; s any hope that the situation you' ; ve described, as you see it, will ever be changed? NIXON: None at all. It' ; s a fact of life. It' ; s something that commentators have got to recognize as a fact of life. There is not a conservative commentator on the air today. There' ; s nobody that I would even put in the center at the present time. I don' ; t mean by that that Howard K. Smith was not a very responsible man. He' ; s now off the air. John Chancellor at times can be very, very fair in the field of foreign policy and so forth. And I don' ; t mean that they' ; re s--all unfair all the time. I' ; m saying that deep down, as the Rothman-Lichter polls--and they basically are not conservatives--as they' ; ve all indicated, the overwhelming majority of the media feel that way. L--let' ; s look at the polls, for example, of the top media people in television and newspapers in the year 1980. Reagan wins by a landslide. As far as those commentators were concerned--you know how they came out? Carter had over fifty percent, about fifty-one percent. You know who was second? John Anderson. Reagan ran a poor third. In other words, if the media was going to determine who was president, Jimmy Carter would be president today, and the country would be in a terrible shape. Now, my point is this--it isn' ; t going to change, but political leaders like Ronald Reagan who can fight against this thing effectively and go over the heads of the media are the only hope to appeal to that silent majority that is still out there. I still insist that it' ; s very important for anyone who is in politics to recognize that if he filters all of his views through the media, assuming he' ; s a conservative, he' ; s dead. Therefore, he must find ways to go over them and around them, and that' ; s what I was trying to do as president. GANNON: Do you have a twenty-five-word-or-less assessment of Dan Rather' ; s credibility as a reporter-slash-anchorman to fill Walter Cronkite' ; s shoes? NIXON: Well, I think Dan Rather is perhaps the most effective anchorman of all at the present time. He' ; s intelligent. He' ; s tough. He' ; s considered pretty credible. After the rough edges that he had at the beginning, he' ; s gotten a little bit more of the soft-shoe manner that Walter Crankite--Cronkite used so effectively over the years. He comes on with that good automatic smile at the end, when he says--when they usually put one of those softline things on at the end--and it' ; s rather endearing, as I' ; m--I' ; m sure that he hopes it will be. Now, as far as his credibility is concerned, it isn' ; t as high as Cronkite' ; s because of his background of having been more partisan. Cronkite was partisan. There isn' ; t much question about that. I think he' ; d be the first to admit it, because he' ; s an honest man. But, on the other hand, Cronkite was clever enough to know that he didn' ; t want to be--appear to be that way, and Rather is beginning to learn that. I think that he is smart enough and, after all, when he' ; s earning up to two million dollars a year, he isn' ; t going to throw that baby out. So I think he' ; s going to be smart enough to keep his ratings up by not going too far overboard in not providing balance. But, believe me, though, if Ronald Reagan' ; s possibilities of being reelected president depended upon what kind of favorable treatment he' ; s going to get in CBS, he might as well go back to that ranch right tomorrow. There' ; s no way that he' ; d make it. But I think he' ; s going to override them. GANNON: What kind of person do you think becomes a reporter? NIXON: Very intelligent people, people that are publicly oriented, people that want to be in public life, and people that are willing to make great sacrifices in order to succeed. GANNON: On--right after your 1962 election, ABC ran a network show called " ; The Politch--Political Obituary of Richard Nixon." ; How did it feel to sit in front of the tube and watch your own obituary? NIXON: Well, neither you or our listeners will believe this. I didn' ; t see the program. I don' ; t look at programs of that sort. I got reports, of course, from the family, who did watch it, because it had been well-publicized. Incidentally, Howard K. Smith had been the man who presided over that first debate with Kennedy. He did it very fairly. And during my presidential years, I found him to be one of the most responsible reporters, particularly on Vietnam, that we could possibly find. I consider him objective, a good friend at this point. At that time, I think he thought it was news to put Alger Hiss on a program which was entitled " ; The Political Obituary of Richard Nixon." ; I learned later, too, however, that he had put Jerry Ford on to defend me, and, I understand, Jerry Ford did a very good idea. So I was pleased to hear that. So my reaction was, " ; Well, what' ; s new? So now they' ; ve trotted Hiss out." ; And I thought that' ; s just an indication of how low my fortunes were. But all hell broke loose as far as the networks were concerned. I guess ABC got more wires on that than they' ; ve ever gotten before that time, objecting. Eisenhower was furious. He got some of his friends to become motivated on it. And Howard Smith wrote me a letter years afterwards and tried to make it clear that he hadn' ; t done the program simply as a hatchet job. And I don' ; t think he had intended that. He had done it because he thought it was newsworthy. GANNON: Why did you move to New York after your defeat in the California gubernatorial race? Wasn' ; t that burning your--not only burning, but sort of mining your bridges and blowing them up in terms of a political future? NIXON: It was time to move--time to move because, had I stayed in California, I would still be this titular head of the Republican Party. Now, being titular head is about as useful as being the fifth tit on a cow. But, on the other hand, it is a responsibility that you have, and I didn' ; t feel that I could do a very good job on that. The second thing I think was that I--I was tired of campaigning, really worn out from it. I' ; d been through it in ' ; 60. I' ; d been through it in ' ; 62. That year, for example--in ' ; 62--that I ran--' ; 61 and ' ; 62--one of the hardest of all my life, because I wrote a book, Six Crises, I worked in my legal activities, I made speeches around the country, and, of course, did the campaign. So you just get bushed, and at that point I decided that it was time to leave California--get out of the political arena. I know that--I felt that coming to New York there' ; d be no problem being involved in the political arena, because that was Nelson Rockefeller' ; s turf, and I know that--that he didn' ; t play softball either. So that motivated me. I think another motivation was the family. It was very hard for our two girls out there. You see, in that primary campaign in California in 1962, the right wing was out after me--the John Birch Society, for example. I was heckled at stop after stop. I mean, heckling me as being soft on Communism! GANNON: Why were they after--why were you considered--of all people, considered to be soft on Communism-- NIXON: Even-- GANNON: --by the John Birch Society? NIXON: Even after Caracas, after Khrushchev and the kitchen and so forth--because I had been part of the Eisenhower administration and so forth--because I had been part of the Eisenhower administration, and the John Birch Society had criticized Eisenhower as being soft on Communism, and Foster Dulles was a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy, and I defended both. And so they raised the devil about that. And so, under the circumstances, I remember that it was pretty tough in that campaign, because when--when you--when you look at how it happened, I started out with a lead of about ten points over Pat Brown, and Pat Brown was a--was a genial--I thought rather ineffective but not too controversial governor. So that helped him on that side, because there are more Democrats in California. He was not considered to be on the left. If he' ; d been on the left, he would have lost for sure. But, in addition to that, in this primary we had the problem that we were split, and Shell, from the right, got a third of the vote in the primary. And in this case, many of them did not come back. They thought I was too left-wing, which I think is perhaps a pretty good indication of where I stood as well. GANNON: Did you ever-- NIXON: And let me say that, as far as the Birchers were concerned--many of them and their children--children can be very cruel--had been--made it pretty rough on Tricia and Julie at the private school they were attending. And so when I announced that I felt, after talking to Pat, that I thought we should move, they jumped up and down. Tricia went in, I remember, and got all of her homework out of the drawers and threw it away in the wastebasket. She thought we were going that very day. Of course, we didn' ; t. We went toward the end of the year. GANNON: Did you ever support the John Birch Society and/or do you--do you feel that it did any good or does any good today? NIXON: Well, far from supporting it, I would say that I was perhaps its most effective opponent. I did so certainly with a great deal of concern, because some of my friends were in it--Edgar Hiestand, a former congressman from California, Johnny Rousselot--two of my strongest supporters. They joined the John Birch Society, but I could not do anything but take on a society that had called Eisenhower soft on Communism and John Foster Dulles a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy. That was the nuts. I mean, you could just hear them crackling there in the head. They were scary. Matter of fact, I remember one time a lot of the far right had infiltrated the Young Republicans. The Young Republicans are supposed--the young are supposed to be liberal. But not in the Republican Party--they' ; re very, very conservative. And I was speaking to them in San--in Sacramento at their convention, and they began to heckle me about something I was saying on foreign policy and so forth. I brought them up a little short, though. I said, " ; Just remember--I' ; ve been heckled by experts." ; That quieted them down fast. It reminded them of the fact that at one time they had supported me in the kitchen, in Caracas, and so forth. But be that as it may, as far as the John Birch Society is concerned, I would have to say that in their hearts, their motivations, nobody can quarrel with them. I mean, there is a Communist conspiracy. Our policies have not been effective. I think, however, they' ; ve done more harm than they' ; ve done good, because they overstated, like McCarthy who overstated his case. He had a very good case about the State Department having people who belong to Communist front, but when he went so far as to say they' ; re--there were sixty-one card-carrying Communists, he overstated it, and as a result that cleared the rest of them as well. And so it is with the John Birch Society. They give sort of a kooky feeling to the responsible conservatives--responsible hawks--and that doesn' ; t help us at all. GANNON: After you--after your move to New York, you began a fairly extensive series of foreign trips that--that went on from then up until your campaign--you began your campaign for president. You saw--as you traveled abroad, you saw business leaders, political leaders, everybody from President Nasser to Paul Getty. Was this part of a--a conscious plan to keep your political options open, or indeed to build political bases? NIXON: No. That foreign travel was due to two things. It was due, first, to the fact that the law firm I was with, a very fine firm, had some international clients. And so it fitted in with my legal responsibilities. The second was that I was very interested in foreign policy, and I welcomed the opportunity to travel abroad. And I think there was a third factor as well. I received a lot of invitations to come abroad from government leaders that I had known over the years as vice president. And so I welcomed that chance. For example, I went to Europe several times during that period. I was in Asia six times. There were six trips to Tokyo. There were five to Vietnam. The purpose of it was not to travel, until the 1967 trip, for the purpose of simply becoming a candidate again. But, on the other hand-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: --all of that foreign travel helped me enormously, not so much in getting publicity, and I got some, but more in terms of learning what the world was all about, how the world works. So that by the time I ran for president again, in 1968, I was far more experienced, had a better understanding of the world, all the world, than I had in 1960. So I was better qualified in ' ; 68 to be president than I was in 1960. GANNON: What did you learn about the world from J. Paul Getty? NIXON: Well, J. Paul Getty is a fascinating man. I mean, he' ; s the richest man in the world, and so obviously I was-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0393/bmac
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61 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, September 7, 1983, part 1.
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gannix_0393
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-09-07
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moving image
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, September 7, 1983, part 2. gannix_0394 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|9(5)|21(13)|40(4)|57(2)|69(14)|82(8)|92(9)|114(3)|127(10)|139(9)|153(6)|166(8)|182(8)|199(7)|208(6)|220(8)|231(15)|246(7)|263(9)|274(12)|289(3)|297(12)|308(2)|320(12)|335(7)|348(13)|372(10)|385(11)|396(12)|407(9)|421(13)|438(9)|452(6)|461(10)|472(12)|486(7)|495(10)|505(11)|516(9)|525(10)|535(4)|547(13)|558(2)|582(3)|594(7)|608(10)|621(9)|635(4)|648(18)|669(6)|680(7)|694(12)|707(17)|719(10)|732(11)|746(9)|756(11) 0 https://youtu.be/1B8rB2Pk6tI YouTube video English 12 Meeting J. Paul Getty --happy to see him. He had been a contributor--not a heavy contributor--to our campaign in 1960, and so I wanted to express my appreciation, and when he invited us to come to his famous place in London, outside on the outskirts of London, this huge mansion and so forth. Nixon recounts meeting J. Paul Getty and sharing a meal with him. 186 Campaigning for Barry Goldwater Did President Kennedy's death make you reassess your own political situation in terms of running in 1964? Nixon discusses campaigning for Barry Goldwater for the presidency. He shares the difficulties he had supporting Goldwater. 705 Speeches / Nelson Rockefeller You say that that 1964 convention speech was, y--as you look back on it, your best political speech. Nixon considers the best speeches that he has given and heard and when he began to consider running for president again. He also talks about discussing this with Rockefeller and about the devious nature of Rockefeller and other politicians, including himself. 1131 1966 Congressional Elections / " ; Chronic Campaigner" ; As you looked at the political landscape from '64 to '68, what use did you consider making, or what use did you see to be made, of the 1966 congressional elections? Nixon discusses his predictions for and the results of the 1966 congressional elections. He recounts the press conference by Johnson during the campaigns that labeled him a " ; chronic campaigner." ; 1478 Preparing for 1968 Presidential Election How did you use the combination of the publicity from this broadcast and the results of the '66 elections to--to sort of give you a--a r--a running start for that pole vault towards '68? Nixon describes beginning to plan for his presidential campaign in 1968 and his decision to travel before campaigning. 2138 Death of Hannah Milhous Nixon Wasn't it at this time that your mother died? Nixon speaks about his mother, attending her funeral, and the effect that her death had on him. 2705 Decision to Run for President Do you remember, if there was a moment, how and when--at what moment you decided to run for president in 1968? Nixon talks about the moment that he made the decision to run for president in 1968, sharing the decision with his family, and visiting Florida with them. He also discusses his friendships with Bebe Rebozo and Billy Graham and the guidance that they gave him. 3170 Winning the Presidency Why did you win the presidency in 1968? Nixon shares his opinion on why he won the presidency in 1968 and how he felt on election night. bombing halt ; campaign ; Dwight D. Eisenhower ; election night ; electoral college ; foreign relations ; Gallup poll ; George Wallace ; Hubert Humphrey ; John Glenn ; Julie Eisenhower ; Lou Harris poll ; Pat Nixon ; travel ; Tricia Cox ; Walter Mondale Cox, Patricia Nixon, 1946- ; Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 ; Eisenhower, Julie Nixon ; Glenn, John, 1921- ; Harris, Louis, 1921- ; Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978 ; Mondale, Walter F., 1928- ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 ; Wallace, George C. (George Corley), 1919-1998 Interview NIXON: --happy to see him. He had been a contributor--not a heavy contributor--to our campaign in 1960, and so I wanted to express my appreciation, and when he invited us to come to his famous place in London, outside on the outskirts of London, this huge mansion and so forth. Mrs. Nixon and Tricia and Julie and I welcomed the opportunity. And I remember he was very gracious. He had a very, very deep voice. He used to sit and say very, very little. He was kind and well-mannered and the rest, but when he went in to lunch one thing impressed me enormously. It was a magnificent room. We were served on gold plates, gold silverware--ware--it wasn' ; t just gold-covered--gold--solid gold silverware and gold goblets. A gourmet French chef prepared beautiful delicacies. There were vintage wines. So I looked up at the head of the table, and here sat J. Paul Getty, the richest man in the world. You know what he had? Graham crackers and milk. And so I realized that there are other thing [sic] than being rich. We were fortunate to have our health, despite those defeats. GANNON: I think we’ve come to the end of an hour. We' ; ll take a short break. Have some graham crackers and milk. NIXON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: We' ; ll take a ten-minute break here. And everybody back NIXON: --in the end that' ; s the way it happened. GANNON: Hm. NIXON: The campaign didn' ; t change that much. GANNON: Didn' ; t change that much, yeah. Or-- NIXON: But on the other hand, who is to say, for example, what could happen when you stop [unintelligible], stop looking for the-- NIXON: --Catholic vote, you stop looking for the recession-- GANNON: Just a cyclical-- NIXON: [unintelligible] OFF SCREEN VOICE: Five. GANNON: Did President Kennedy' ; s death make you reassess your own political situation in terms of running in 1964? NIXON: Oh, yes, it did. And in part it did because many of my friends talked to me thereafter and said, " ; Well, now, it' ; s very important for you to consider running again." ; I considered it, but only briefly, because when I analyzed the situation I could see that Barry Goldwater was way out in front. He had done a superb job, and his supporters had done a superb job, of mobilizing the party faithful across the country. It seemed to me that it was his turn and that he was going to get it. GANNON: Who else was in the field then? NIXON: Well, of course, Governor Rockefeller. Nelson Rockefeller was still in the fields [sic], and the possibility--remote possibility--that George Romney might get in, and, of course, Bill Scranton made an abortive push right at the last. But any realist would know there was no way anybody was going to get that nomination from Barry Goldwater. I knew it. What I felt was important, and President Eisenhower felt the same thing--that he not get it without having some kind of a contest. We felt he sh--we should have interest in the campaign, and also enough of a contest that some of Barry' ; s rougher edges might be tempered a bit before he got into the final campaign. We didn' ; t do a very good job at accomplishing that, however. He rolled over the opposition so easily at San Francisco that he just got more the way he was. Let Goldwater be Goldwater. GANNON: You wrote in your memoirs that you were almost physically sick as you sat on the platform, having introduced him to the convention in San Francisco in 1964, and listened to his acceptance speech. Why was that, and--and why did you then campaign up and down the country for him right through November? NIXON: Well, you have to know the background. I introduced him. That was the role I had at the convention. It was only a twenty-minute speech, and I would rate it probably the best political speech I ever made. Every line had been written out, carefully crafted. I remember the peroration very well. I said to the audience out there, because I knew that Goldwater had gotten a very, very bad press--I said, " ; You' ; ve heard about this man. You' ; ve heard that he' ; s an extremist," ; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. " ; Listen to him. Judge for yourselves." ; And then I said, " ; Now I present to you the man who, by his work in the vineyards over the years has earned the title of Mr. Conservative, who, by the action of this convention, is now Mr. Republican, and who, with your support, will become Mr. President--Barry Goldwater." ; The place came apart. Goldwater came in and got a huge, huge ovation. And we sat down and waited to hear this man that I had urged the w--the nation, as well as the delegates, to listen to. He started by reading out of the party those that didn' ; t support him, after I in my speech had tried to bring Romney people and Scranton people and Rockefeller people in behind our new candidate. He said, " ; Those that were not for us, we don' ; t want you." ; And then he made a very famous statement. He said, " ; Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue." ; Now, you take those two sentences and read them. They' ; re okay, but not from Barry Goldwater, because they were nailing him with the idea of being an extremist, of being a little kooky on foreign policy, and domestic policy as well. Now, he wasn' ; t a kook, but, on the other hand, every time he opened his mouth he proved their point. And so I sat there and listened to that, and I knew it was down the tube. I th--thought there was very little chance before that, but he had split the party. He was appealing to his own constituency only, and he had given Johnson and the Democrats the opportunity to tag him with the extremist label. GANNON: Didn' ; t you know what he was going to say? NIXON: Oh, my, no. I didn' ; t see the speech. GANNON: Weren' ; t you part of the--didn' ; t they show it around to leaders of the party and-- NIXON: Didn' ; t show it to me. If it--if they had, it would never have been in that speech. GANNON: In the wake of the Goldwater debacle, did you--how did you assess your political chances in terms of coming back and running in 1968? NIXON: Well, I should first point out why I campaigned for Goldwater after that. President Eisenhower, with whom I was in very close contact, and I met with Goldwater and other Republicans at Hershey, Pennsylvania. We were attempting to get him to moderate some of his positions--not to become a mushy moderate, which is the worst thing. Far better to be a liberal or a conservative than to be a mushy moderate--stand for nothing. We didn' ; t want him to do that, but we wanted him at least to be responsible. And so we had a long talk with him. Eisenhower particularly really read the act and said, " ; Barry, you' ; ve got to quit saying these cockeyed things," ; and words to that effect, and so forth, and Barry said, " ; Well, that' ; s the way I am, but I' ; ll try to." ; So we all went out and had a joint press conference, and Barry made it worse than ever. They asked some question about what he would do insofar as the use of nuclear weapons was concerned in Europe. He said, " ; Well, I think we ought to give the responsibility and the power to launch those weapons to our commanders in the field." ; Well, Eisenhower just practically cringed, because he knew that was, first, politically inadvisable, and also militarily the wrong decision. You can' ; t leave that decision, one that would bring nuclear war, in the hands of a field commander in Europe, no matter how good he is. Afterwards, I rode from Hershey back to Gettysburg with Eisenhower in the car. He gritted his teeth. That' ; s-that' ; s what he usually did when--he just gritted his teeth, and his forehead would get all flushed up. He said, " ; You know, before Barry met with us today, I thought he was just stubborn. Now I think he' ; s just plain damned dumb!" ; And--which, again, was only his immediate reaction. Goldwater wasn' ; t dumb. It' ; s just the way he is. He' ; s irrepressible. He says anything that comes to the top of his head, and, consequently, it was not easy. Now, as a matter of fact, in campaigning for him I did it for a number of reasons. One, I knew the party was in trouble. I knew we were going to lose, but defeat is not fatal unless you don’t fight. It was very important to fight. Rockefeller wouldn' ; t help. Scranton couldn' ; t do very much. Most of the other moderates " ; stood it out," ; so-called. I was the only one around that could help, and the candidates around the country--people in the Senate and the House--were begging me to come in. I' ; ll never forget, though--it was pretty tough to come in. I' ; d go into campaign in this state or the other, and the candidate in advance would get the word to me. They' ; d say, " ; Please, please, when you endorse Goldwater, could you put it in another part of the speech? Don' ; t put him with me." ; So, the way I did it--I worked it out that at the very beginning I would endorse all the local candidates and the candidate for the House and the Senate. And then in the peroration I' ; d go all-out for Goldwater. That seemed to cut it all right. In any event, I drew huge crowds in that campaign--actually made more speeches for Goldwater than he made for himself. But I have no regrets about it. It was the right thing to do. The party was still alive, although weakened as a result of the campaign. And from a personal standpoint--and I didn' ; t do it for that reason--but from a personal standpoint, it proved to be indispensable to my winning in 1968, because that hard core of Goldwater people, with Rockefeller deserting them and others not supporting them--they felt a debt to me. So when we came to ' ; 68, I had the support, not only of Goldwater personally, but of those workers out there, because they felt I had stood by them when others had not. In other words, the old saw " ; This is the time for good men to come to their [sic] aid of their parties" ; --that was the time to do it, when the party is down. Easy to support the party when it' ; s on the way up or going to win. GANNON: You say that that 1964 convention speech was, y--as you look back on it, your best political speech. Do you have a memory of one that you consider to be your worst, or least best, political speech? NIXON: No, I--there would be too many candidates there for me to select them out. I have never made a speech that I considered to be basically perfect. I' ; ve never felt one--I' ; ve never made a speech that I felt could not have been improved upon. I felt, for example, that my 1960 acceptance speech was better than my 1968 or ' ; 72 acceptance speeches, although each was quite effective. But, on the other hand, in 1960, if I had it to do over again, I would have perhaps cut three or four minutes out of it--out of the early part, so that I could have greater impact at the end. But who knows? GANNON: Do you have--or maybe it' ; s a busman' ; s holiday for you to go to speeches like this--but do you remember a--a speech that you heard that--that you considered to be the best, that you found moving or inspiring or persuasive? NIXON: Well, there' ; s no question about the first candidate there. That' ; s MacArthur. MacArthur' ; s famous speech--" ; no" ; --" ; old soldiers never die" ; --when he came back from Korea was the most moving speech I' ; ve ever heard. He was a master. GANNON: In the wake of the debacle, the Goldwater debacle in 1964, did you reassess your own position in terms of running in 1968 for president? NIXON: Yes, I did. I first, incidentally, read Nelson Rockefeller out of the party. It wasn' ; t personal, but what really got me down--after Goldwater lost, Rockefeller proceeded to kick him, and he tried to read Goldwater out of the party. And so-- GANNON: How did he do that? NIXON: Well, he just had a press conference, and he said that this election had been a rejection of Barry Goldwater and everything he stood for and so forth and so on. Well, now, you don' ; t do that--particularly not then. Let the election speak for itself. So I had a little press conference, and I said that Rockefeller had not supported the candidate. He was therefore the last one that should speak out now, the last one the party would turn to, and I said the party was not going to turn for new leadership to those that had not supported the candidate in 1964. I also used a rather colorful phrase. I said, " ; He' ; s had his pound of flesh. Let him subside." ; And so that handled that problem. Then in 1965--I guess it was my birthday, 1965--I began to reassess my situation. I have a sort of an old--a quaint old custom on birthdays. I used t--always sit down and make a list of things that I might like to do in the next year. And so I listed various things I would hope to do in the year 1965. And as I did so, the thought occurred to me then that everything that I should do or would do between 1965 and 1968 had to be done in the context of the possibility of running again. I didn' ; t decide to run then, but I opened my mind for the first time to the possibility thereof, because after 1962, for example, the defeat for governor of California--the idea never occurred to me to run again. I thought I was dead, and I still thought I was dead after 1964. But after the Goldwater defeat, after Rockefeller had sat it out, I realized there was the possibility that I might be the one that could bring the party together and possibly win. But I didn' ; t cross that bridge then. I just felt, however, that everything that I would do then had to be--had to fit into that particular pattern. GANNON: What was--what was Rockefeller like? One--one gets the sense that he didn' ; t sit around just crumbling up graham crackers into milk, with all his money and power and ambition. GANNON: Rockefeller was a--a--a very attractive individual, attractive in the sense that he not only was rich, but he--very gregarious. He' ; d usually come up--" ; Hiya, fella!" ; That' ; s the Rockefeller trademark and so forth. It turned some people off. It didn' ; t turn me off. But he--he--you could have a good talk with him. He could be very candid at times, and at other times he could be perhaps a bit on the devious side. He was a good politician, no question about that. I remember very well how blunt he could be. He lived, of course, in the same building that we did. And in 1967, after the 1966 elections, I remember that he talked to me about the possibility of his running in 1968. He made a very interesting point. He was very direct. He said, " ; Look." ; He said, " ; In 1968, it' ; s got to be certainly somebody other than Goldwater." ; He said, " ; You know, Goldwater isn' ; t too smart. He only went to college for two years." ; I was almost tempted to s--ask him, " ; How many years did Lincoln go to college?" ; It was a little bit arrogant and so forth on his part, but he-- GANNON: Was he a snob? NIXON: Subconsciously, yes. He' ; d--not consciously, but when you' ; re that rich and have had everything on a silver platter all your life, it' ; s very difficult not to show just a little bit of that arrogance. It' ; s the subconscious, or even, I should say, unconscious arrogance of unlimited wealth. And he said, " ; Well, Scranton is waiting for a draft, and there' ; s no draft around with his name on it." ; He says, " ; Only you or I can do it." ; And he said, " ; You aren' ; t going to run, or shouldn' ; t run, because you' ; re too smart to do that right at the present time." ; I said, " ; I will run, and then if I can' ; t make it, I' ; ll support you." ; Well, we didn' ; t make any deal. GANNON: You--you say that Rockefeller was a good politician and therefore partly devious. You are a past master politician. How devious are you? NIXON: Well, when necessary, one has to be devious. President Eisenhower, I think, is the best example of that. He--he was devious himself. He used others to do things that he did not want to do himself, and he respected that quality in others as well. GANNON: What is your definition of " ; devious" ; ? NIXON: It means not doing directly something that may lose you support when you can find some other way to do it indirectly that will accomplish the end. GANNON: As you looked at the political landscape from ' ; 64 to ' ; 68, what use did you consider making, or what use did you see to be made, of the 1966 congressional elections? NIXON: Well, the 1966 congressional elections were vitally important to 1968 for a fundamental reason. In 1960 when I ran, I knew that one of the reasons that I lost was that the Republican Party was so weak. After the 1958 elections, we only had fourteen Republican governors out of the fifty. We only had thirty-four Republican senators. We had only a hundred and fifty-five members of the House. I had to run five percent ahead of the ticket in 1960 if I were to win. I did run five percent ahead, but I still lost by that minimal amount. So I realized that in 1968 we had to close that gap some, because after 1964 the party was down to the same level it was in 1958. So we had to increase the number of governors. We had to increase the number of senators, increase the number of congressmen. It wouldn' ; t be equal to what the Democrats had, but the Republican candidate for president wouldn' ; t have to run five percent ahead--maybe two to three percent ahead. And that' ; s exactly what we accomplished in that 1966 campaign. In that campaign, I was pretty perceptive. I must say I didn’t have any polls to base this on. I just sensed this as I campaigned around the country. But a month before the election, I made the flat prediction that we were going to have a great victory. Somebody said, " ; Well, could you give us the numbers?" ; I said, " ; Sure." ; I said, " ; We' ; re going to win forty new members of the House. We' ; re going to elect three new members to the Senate. We' ; re going to elect six new governors and seven hundred state legislators." ; Everybody thought I was crazy--that it wasn' ; t possible. Well, as a matter of fact, after the election was held, and we got the returns that night, it was even a little better than I had expected. We had actually won a hundred--we' ; d actually won forty-seven new House seats, three senators, eight governors, and a great number in the state legislatures. So that gave the party the new life. It created a new plateau, a higher plattoo--plateau for the president campaign--candidate to pole-vault from in order to win in 1968. GANNON: Towards the end of that campaign, President Johnson in a press conference dropped what turned out to be a--a bombshell, and it turned out that he dropped it directly on you. We have a film of that. GANNON: How did it feel like to be called a " ; chronic campaigner" ; ? NIXON: Well, first, I must say that President Eisenhower called me after that, and he said, " ; You' ; ve got to answer this." ; He says, " ; Every time anybody raises that goddamned ' ; Give me a week' ; thing, it just raises my blood pressure." ; He was really t--pretty teed off by it. As far as being called a chronic campaigner by Johnson--he could have called me a lot worse. He knows a lot worse words than that. GANNON: What did you do to capitalize on the positive results, t--to get a--get a--a running start on this pole vault that you described, as a result of the results of the 1966 elections? NIXON: Well, w--we should first understand why Johnson said this. He doesn' ; t use such rhetoric unless something had been effective. And what had happened there is that he came back from Manila, and there was a communiqué about the Vietnam War, which, in a public statement, I just tore to shreds. Bill Safire was very helpful in preparing that statement, incidentally. It was reprinted in full in the New York Times and across the country. And that just sent him right up the cotton-pickin' ; wall. That' ; s why he responded as he did. But after that, I got national television time and made what I consider to be one of my top two or three best television addresses--again, totally without notes--in which I said, in effect, to President Johnson--I said, " ; If you' ; re listening" ; --I said, " ; I want you to know that I know how tired a man can be when he' ; s done all this work in the office. And I know--I--I realize that you' ; re one of the hardest-working men that has ever served as president. And when that happens--that maybe you say things that you might not really--should n--you shouldn' ; t say, you wouldn' ; t have said if you weren' ; t tired," ; and so forth. Well, of course, I figured that' ; d drive him up the wall a little bit more. I understand that it did. GANNON: How did-- NIXON: But the broadcast was very effective and may have helped get the margin up to what we had hoped--the great gains and the victory of 1966. GANNON: How did you use the combination of the publicity from this broadcast and the results of the ' ; 66 elections to--to sort of give you a--a r--a running start for that pole vault towards ' ; 68? NIXON: Well, I--I did something very unique and very unexpected. Everybody after the ' ; 66 elections assumed that now the race for the roses begins, or the brass ring, or whatever you want to call it. I remember that the news magazines had on their covers the winners of 1966, and there, of course, were Romney and Scranton, et cetera, et cetera--others who had won--the new faces, particularly. And then I remember one commentator in particular--and I think other columnists may have made the same point--said that the big loser in 1966, ironically, was Richard Nixon. " ; He, after having labored for the candidates across the country, probably more responsible than anybody else for the great victory, has, in effect, weakened his own chances because there are so many new faces on the scene." ; So I read that. I didn--incidentally, I didn' ; t consider that to be unfair reporting, because I think it was quite accurate that that was the case, because Romney--unless he' ; d have won as he did in 1966, he would not have been a national figure. And so, under the circumstances, I had to determine what was I going to do. Now, my friends all urged me, when we all sat down for--at El Morocco that night in 1966, after midnight celebrating the great victory--we had spaghetti, incidentally, and red wine, and-- GANNON: Why do you remember that? NIXON: Because I didn' ; t go to El Morocco very often. I think that was the only time I went there while I was living in New York. GANNON: Why did you have spaghetti at El Morocco? NIXON: Because late at night it didn' ; t seem to me that anything more exotic would go down. And I like spaghetti. GANNON: Two good reasons. NIXON: That' ; s right. And I thought--and I think it goes well with red wine. In any event, my friends then--" ; Now you' ; ve got to get in. You' ; ve got to announce for president. and so forth, and get the ribbon clerks out." ; I said, " ; No, I' ; m going to think about it." ; And the way that I made the decision is very interesting--a decision that shocked all of my supporters, and also my opponents as well. I had to go on Meet the Press or Face the Nation, one of those talk shows, and, I--as usual, I was preparing the Q' ; s and A' ; s that I thought might come up during the program. And I knew the inevitable question is, " ; Well, now, Mr. Nixon, what are you going to do? Are you going to run for president?" ; or what-have-you. And I tried to think--" ; How in the world can I answer it?" ; And then the thought struck me--this is one of the advantages of preparing things yourself, because it forces you to think a problem through, and the best strategy comes from getting the mind engaged in dealing with a problem. And the thought came--came to me, " ; I' ; m going to answer that question, ' ; I' ; m not going to do anything. I' ; m going to take a holiday from politics--a holiday for six months.' ; Well, I announced it on the program, to the consternation of everybody, because I didn' ; t inform anybody in advance. Some of my friends thought, " ; All is lost. The guy' ; s out of his mind," ; and so forth. But I knew exactly what I was doing. I did it for several reasons. One, Tom Dewey, years before, had given me very good advice. He said, " ; There are times when a person in public life should get out of the public view. People get tired of hearing their politicians over and over again." ; Now, I know this--this isn' ; t something that will be accepted by the pipsqueaks that advise most of our political leaders today. They think unless their man' ; s on the evening news and the morning news and the radio or what-have-you twenty-four hours a day--that he isn' ; t dominating the dialogue. They don' ; t realize that people sometimes would prefer not to have the man on, to go away and then come back in--back and forth. To engage in the great rhythm of politics is very, very important to know. So, first, I knew that it was well for me to get offstage for a while. Second, I was tired of campaigning, of making speeches and so forth. Third, I thought people might be tired of me because I' ; d been out there so long. And then another reason was I wanted the opportunity to think things through. By that I meant that if I had the chance to travel abroad--and I announced at that time--shortly thereafter--that I was going to make trips around the world, to the four big areas of the world--a trip to Asia, a trip to Latin America, a trip to Africa, a trip to Western Europe. I found that after six months of traveling, I would refurbish my foreign policy image--call it what you like, but particularly what I knew about foreign policy. I knew that if I were going to run in 1968, I wanted to be the best prepared candidate in history in what I thought was going to be the major issue, the issue of foreign policy. So all of these reasons certainly motivated me in--in making that decision. And another reason was that I felt that it was probably, from a political standpoint, advisable to let the new men in town--to get out and show what they could do, to see whether they, after hitting in the minor leagues--they could play in the big leagues. And very few could, just as George Romney discovered. He was a fine governor and an excellent candidate at the Michigan level, but he turned out to be a flop at the national level. So these were the reasons that motivated me, and, as it turned out, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. GANNON: Some analysts say that you--you did--you did it for precisely the reason of sort of forcing--flushing out the potential opposition before they were ready, in the same way that some analysts have applied the same analysis to what Senator Kennedy did recently by taking himself out of the race and thereby forcing everybody else in prematurely, at least by what they conventionally would have expected to be their timetable. Did you have--did you have that in mind then, and do you think Senator Kennedy may have had that in mind now? NIXON: No. My primary reason was not that. My primary reason were [sic] the ones I mentioned first, the idea that I was tired of campaigning. I thought the people were tired of me. I thought I should get out of the public scene for a while. And, second, I wanted to travel abroad. I wanted to find out more and more about how the world worked, so that I would be thoroughly prepared in a foreign policy issue. I think all of these were the circumstances that motivated me. The other one was a secondary motivation, which turned out to be very effective. As far as Senator Kennedy is concerned, if he had asked for my advice as to what he should do, I would have told him to do exactly what he' ; s done if he wants to be president. President-- GANNON: Are you saying that he doesn' ; t ask for your advice? NIXON: Not lately. But, in any event, in this particular instance, the best policy for him is to allow his potential opponents to get out there, cut each other up, and then to have the party come to him. He has been seeking it for some time, and under--and he has some liabilities. He' ; s completely aware of that. But if the party has to come to him, that would have a much greater effect. That probably isn' ; t going to happen, although it could happen, but only if it appears from polls that are taken about six months from now, or, I would say, just before the Democratic convention, that he and only he could beat Reagan. If the polls show that, watch out. He' ; ll be the candidate. GANNON: Was this a--a real holiday from politics in terms of everything that was being done to further or develop your candidacy? NIXON: Oh, by no means. As a matter of fact, prior to taking off on my trips I got together with some of my closest friends and political associates, people like Bob Hill and John Lodge and others, in the Waldorf Hotel in New York. We had an all-day session. I said, " ; Look, I' ; m not going to play any games with my closest friends here. I think it' ; s time to start an organization for the presidency in 1968. I want you to do everything you possibly can to develop the--the funds, to raise the funds, to develop the organization, to get the commitments that you can, so that when I do make a decision--that the game play will be there ready to go into force." ; And so, consequently, that' ; s when it all began. The amazing thing, incidentally, in retrospect--I think the remarkable thing, in retrospect, that happened in that year, 1967 and 1968--that we were able to do it with so little. Rockefeller had unlimited money. He had hundreds of people--not just ten, not just twenty, but hundreds of people, paid people, on his staff--pollsters and speechwriters and political operators and local people and the rest. We had four. We had Rose Mary Woods and Pat Buchanan and Ray Price and Dwight Chapin, and Bob Ellsworth part-time. That was it in the year 1967. We had no money. Al Cole, of Reader' ; s Digest, went out and raised money, enough to finance some of my foreign travels. I financed a lot of it from my writing and legal activities and so forth and so on. But with very little money and very small staff throughout that year, we were able to stay even with the Rockefeller forces and so forth. We did it through volunteers. Let me say this. It' ; s very important for candidates to realize that a big staff is not always an asset. The bigger the staff, the less the candidate does his own thinking. The smaller the staff, the more dedicated, first, they will be. But even more important, the more the candidate is going to have to sit on his fanny and do the hard work to think the problem through. And that' ; s what it forced me to do, so that by the time 1968 came around, I was ready. I was ready not simply because I could have a staff to give me this paper or this paper or that paper, or put something on the TelePrompTer for me to read. I was ready because I had it all up here in my head. And so " ; being poor" ; --quote, end quote--at that particular time politically turned out to be an asset, in my view. GANNON: Wasn' ; t it at this time that your mother died? NIXON: She died in September of 1967. That was right after I finished the fourth of my trips. In fact, the trip was to Africa. The African trip was the last one. And I--I remember very vividly how I got the news. I was in the office, actually, doing--working on some legal work, and I had a call from Rose Mary Woods--buzzed me. She said, " ; Your brother Don' ; s on the phone." ; And I said, " ; Well, tell him I' ; ll call him back," ; and--" ; because I' ; ve got some people in the office with me right here." ; and she said, " ; No, you' ; d better take the call." ; She said, " ; Your mother just died." ; Well, it was not a surprise. She had had a stroke about a year or two before, but it' ; s always a shock. And the worst part of it, of course, was telling Mrs. Nixon on the phone, and telling Tricia and Julie. So we got on the plane and we went out to the funeral. Funerals are always difficult, but, of course, in this case, it was perhaps the most difficult one I' ; ve ever attended, because I was so close to my mother, and my father as well. The funeral was held in the little church where I used to play the piano in Sunday school and where we used to go, I remember, with my mother and father twice on Sunday and even to prayer meeting sometimes on Wednesday. So there was a very closely-knit group of friends and family. The--however, the church was simply thronged with people, and there were scores outside, because my mother was one who had no enemies but had--tremendous number of friends. She--she was a very, as I have remarked on occasion, quite remarkable woman, as are most of our mothers. But she was very special. I know, for example, one thing that' ; s rather amusing. My grandmother, her mother, lived two miles up the road from us on Whittier Boulevard--that' ; s now Route 101--and my grandmother and my mother were alike in one respect. In the Depression years, in 1934 and ' ; 35, ' ; 36, ' ; 37, the tramps would come along. And they' ; d have, I understood later, a piece of ribbon hanging on a tree bef--in front of those houses that were soft touches. My grandmother' ; s house always had the ribbon, and no tramp ever stopped that didn' ; t get a meal there. And no tramp ever stopped at my mother' ; s place that didn' ; t get a meal, as well. But that was only one--only part of it. I remembered particularly vivid memories of what she did when my brother Harold was sick. She went to Arizona with him, and in order to make ends meet she took care of him, another boy by the name of Leslie, another one by the name of Larry, and another that we called " ; the major." ; He was a Canadian major that had been gassed in World War I, as a matter of fact. And all of them were there with tuberculosis. Three of them were bed patients, not ambulatory. And she took care of all four--cooked for them, gave them their alcohol rubs in the morning and at night, changed the bed linen, and did it by herself for two whole years. And then, as each one of them died, she' ; d get the news. It was if her own child had died. Harold died last. But, in any event, we got there to the church, and there were no tears up to that point, because I' ; m not given to outward displays of emotion too often. But as I came through the line at the end, the ministers were at the door, and Billy Graham had flown out. He had admi--had liked my mother, and she had admired him. She had heard him and admired him when he was just starting, and he never forgot that. And when I saw Billy, it all--it all--all the emotion just came flowing out, and I started to cry. It' ; s only--that' ; s one of three times that I can remember ever crying in my adult years. The first time was after the fund crisis when Bill Knowland congratulated me for my speech. This was the second time. The third time was when President Eisenhower had died. But in any event, the emotion poured out. We followed the hearse out to Rose Hills, and she was buried there in the same plot next to my father and Harold and Arthur, my younger brother. And so we get on the airplane, and we start to go back, and I--I just thought back over the years--that' ; s the kind of thing that runs through your mind, you know--that we' ; d done, and a lot of memories came back of my association with her--how close she was to me and to the rest of the family, and how much she had meant to us. And I remembered particularly, and it sticks in my mind now, the last time I really ever had a conversation with her. This is before she had her final stroke. She' ; d had a terrible operation. She' ; d had gallstones all her life, and for a long time couldn' ; t afford an operation, and then wouldn' ; t get it--didn' ; t want to pay for it, and so forth and so on. So finally she had the operation. And I remember visiting her there at the hospital, and she looked so tired and so dispirited, and her arms were so thin. I remember out of her nightgown as I looked at her--she lost an awful lot of weight. And I could see that she was depressed, which was unusual for her, because she never shared her problems with anybody else. And as I was getting ready to leave, I said, " ; Now, Mother, don' ; t you give up." ; And all of a sudden this spark came into her eye. She raised up on her elbow, and she looked up at me, and she says, " ; Don' ; t you get up--give up. Don' ; t you give up. Don' ; t let anybody ever tell you you' ; re through." ; And as I left, I wondered why she had said that. And I saw a copy of the Los Angeles Times out in the reception room, and there was a column in it where a columnist had said that " ; President Nixon is" ; --or " ; Vice President Nixon is through. He--there is no way that he can ever recover from his defeats in California a--and for the presidency earlier." ; She apparently had seen that, but I was just thinking very few people in politics have a legacy like that. " ; Don' ; t you give up. Don' ; t let anybody ever tell you you' ; re through." ; GANNON: You' ; ve talked about your--the--the emotional reticence in your family, and your own. Did--did you ever tell your mother that you love her--loved her? NIXON: Well, we don' ; t do that. GANNON: Did you ever-- NIXON: No. GANNON: --looking back, do you ever wish you had-- NIXON: No. GANNON: --been able to express it more? NIXON: No, she' ; d--and--and she didn' ; t engage in that either. We--the affection, the love we have for each other was not--it was not expressed that way. Like, as I' ; ve often said--I think most people are aware--my--my mother always stated things in a very low-key way. Now, these days, if you' ; re a good churchgoer and so forth, you' ; re supposed to say, " ; I' ; m praying for you." ; She never said that. If I was going to make a speech or going through a real difficult crisis, she would write me a note, or she would just say on the phone, " ; I' ; ll be thinking about you." ; Now, because she said that, some of the critics would say, " ; Well, why didn' ; t she say, ' ; I' ; m praying for you' ; ?" ; That was not her way. Love, I think, can be expressed in different ways. And I don' ; t object to the way people today slobber all over everybody else. " ; I love ya!" ; " ; I love ya!" ; Like--like Johnson would, and so forth, and many people in and out of public life. I understand that, but we' ; re all a little different. In our family, we expressed our love through our deeds in a quiet way, rather than feeling that we had to burp it out every time it came into our minds. GANNON: What effect did your mother' ; s death have on you? NIXON: Well, it was an emotional experience that was very substantial, but I think the major effect it may have had was the memory of that last conversation. " ; Don' ; t ever give up." ; I think that' ; s what it was. GANNON: Do you remember, if there was a moment, how and when--at what moment you decided to run for president in 1968? NIXON: Oh, I remember it very well, because that' ; s something--you don' ; t do that very often--run for president, that is. Well, Harold Stassen does, but, on the other hand, in this case it was only the second time I had determined to run for president. And the way it happened was this. I had been thinking about it, of course, and the program was underway in late 1967. Money was being raised. People were being organized. I had been calling on governors and senators and congressmen and so forth and so on--never, incidentally, asking anybody to support me, however. I didn' ; t do it that way. I don' ; t believe in going in to a governor or a congressman or a senator and say, " ; Look, will you support me?" ; I always believe in presenting what I stood for, and then saying, " ; If you feel that I can provide the best leadership to accomplish that particular goal, I would appreciate your support." ; But, in any event, after having gone through all that, I decided to go to Florida and make a final decision, to consider everything, because I--I didn' ; t run for president lightly. I knew what an ordeal it was to go through, and so, under the circumstances, I didn' ; t want to do it again, and I particularly didn' ; t want to put my family through it again. GANNON: How did they react even to the possibility? NIXON: Well, under the circumstances, the reaction was quite different from what it had been when I decided to run for governor in 1962. I remember we had dinner at our apartment, and Julie, with her typical fighting attitude--she said, " ; You' ; ve got to run! You' ; ve got to do it for the country!" ; And Tricia, approaching it in a slightly different way, said, " ; You have to do it because otherwise you' ; ll have nothing to live for." ; And Mrs. Nixon, Pat, was--put it a little different way. I knew that she wasn' ; t very enthusiastic for it, but she said, " ; Just be sure that whatever you do, we love you, and we' ; ll support you." ; And so I took off from Florida. GANNON: Was Tricia right? If you hadn' ; t run for president in 1968, would you have had nothing to live for? NIXON: At that time, yes. Yes, because basically my orientation was to e--engage in political activities, and there wasn' ; t anything else I could engage in at that point that would--that would really be enough of a challenge. You say, " ; Run for House, run for the Senate, run for governor, or be a columnist," ; or what-have-you--that wasn' ; t enough. I think the only other thing for--I think--I think that many people would perhaps question as to whether there couldn' ; t have been a challenge in another way. And I must say, my--my good friend Bebe Rebozo, who' ; s very successful financially, particularly--he' ; s a banker--said--often said--just wish I would be more interested in what I' ; m doing financially, to make some money. But--and I understand that for many people, that' ; s the beginning and end of it all. But it just doesn' ; t interest me. I--I want enough to be comfortable, but to make a great fortune is something that I' ; m not interested in. GANNON: What do you have to live for now? NIXON: Well, that' ; s something we can come to when we get to the end of the program. GANNON: What--why did you go to Florida to make this decision? NIXON: Well, I wanted to be away from New York, away from telephone calls and so forth--be by myself, and my long experience in going to Florida with Bebe Rebozo and so forth was--he understood that. He was a very good friend. He' ; s never one that wanted to sit down and--at the throne and have me confide in him as to what my decision was. I never discussed it with him, as a matter of fact. That' ; s why he was such a good friend. GANNON: Even when s-- NIXON: No. GANNON: Even when you were there? NIXON: No. He' ; s--he' ; s the kind of a fri--a man--very, very unusual. Most people that--that you know, that politicians know--and I understand this--they want to sit with the man and help him decide. But Bebe knew that I was somewhat of a loner--that if I wanted his opinion I' ; d ask it. He never raised a question about it. If I had asked him, he would have given his opinion. But I knew before, without asking him, that he thought I should run. Particularly he--h--he felt that way because he was pretty bitter about what happened in 1960. He wanted to reverse that situation. The other one that was down there was, however--and I didn' ; t know he was going to be there before the trip was scheduled--was Billy Graham. He was recovering from a long bout of some pulmonary infection--had a terrible cough and that sort of thing. And we had a long, long walk on the beach, I remember, about a two- or three-mile walk. He was so tired at the end that he had to sit down for a while and rest. And he was one who always gave me his best advice. And in this instance, he was very strongly of the opinion I should run. He had just come back from a trip around the world. He said, " ; Every place in the world, the U.S. is in trouble. Every place in the world, it is essential that the U.S. provide better leadership than is being currently provided." ; He said, " ; If you don' ; t run and provide that leadership, I think the world is going to be in deep trouble." ; That had considerable impact on me. GANNON: We know the end of the story, because we know you decided to run and--and won. Was there a moment at that time in Florida--that weekend, I guess, in Florida--that tipped the balance, or that you finally decided, " ; This is it, and from now on I go direct" ; ? NIXON: I would say that the moment really was the Billy Graham moment, if there was any one. I don' ; t mean that I was asking Billy Graham to be the judge on high to decide it, but when he talked about the people around the world, when he talked about his own huge constituency--not that he was going to deliver it, because he would never try to do that--the need for the leadership that I might provide. That made an impression on me. In other words, the idea that I would be running not just for personal purposes--that wasn' ; t going to be enough--but for a cause. The important thing to bear in mind here is that for--for one to succeed in running for the presidency, he must, above all, want to be president to do something, not just to be somebody. I had already been somebody. I' ; d been vice president, and I didn' ; t--wasn' ; t going to get any more out of being president, in my opinion. But the important thing was to have a cause and to feel that you are best qualified to bring about the answers to that particular cause. That was really the thing that motivated me. GANNON: Why did you win the presidency in 1968? NIXON: Well, I won, I would say, first, I think, because I did have a cause, the cause being the need for new foreign policy leadership in the United States and in the world, leadership that only the United States could provide in the world. Second, as far as that need was concerned, I in 1968--I think I can say somewhat objectively now, in retrospect--was the best qualified person. I didn' ; t go out telling people that, but most people were aware of that. I had traveled broadly. I' ; d had a lot of experience as vice president under President Eisenhower, and there was no one else on the scene who had that kind of qualification. And, third, I had a hard core of supporters. All of that helped me in terms of winning. GANNON: By the end, it was razor-close. Did you think you were going to win as--as election night arrived, and--and, in view of what they' ; d gone through in 1960 and 1962, how did you prepare Mrs. Nixon and Tricia and Julie for election night? NIXON: Well, what had happened was that right after our nomination and after the nomination of Hubert Humphrey, the polls showed that we were going to win very, very handsomely, or decisively. But I knew that wouldn' ; t last, first of all, because Hubert Humphrey was a very good candidate. My, when you compare him with the likes of Mondale and Glenn and--and these other fellows that are running around looking for the Democratic candi--it' ; s just too bad Hubert isn' ; t alive today, because he can make the eagle scream. But Hubert Humphrey was a good candidate. Second, there are a lot more Democrats than Republicans in the country. Third, I had the additional liability of George Wallace running on the third-party ticket. Now, he was a Democrat, but, on the other hand, all polls indicated he was drawing two votes, because I being a conservative and he being a conservative--two votes from me for every one that he was drawing from the Democratic candidate. And then, fourth, of course, they still had the White House, and that White House almost finished us off with the bombing halt which was called just three or four days before the election. But, be that as it may, I still felt we were going to win. But I must say, I--just before getting on the airplane which was to take us from California back to New York, I got a shock, because somebody came up to me at the airport and stuck a microphone in my face and said, " ; What do you think of the latest Lou Harris poll?" ; which had been taken that morning. This is the election morning and--came out election morning, I should say--it was in the Los Angeles Times. " ; It shows Hubert Humphrey winning fifty-three to forty-seven." ; Well, that was a shift, because no poll had ever shown Humphrey winning yet. The Gallup poll still showed me slightly ahead. That, incidentally, would mean Humphrey winning by a majority of five million votes. I said, " ; Well, I' ; m not going to comment on the poll." ; So I had that in the back of my mind. Well, I climb on the airplane, and it was a festive occasion. The staff had balloons around, and placards--" ; President Nixon" ; -- and I said, " ; My God, I hope they' ; re right." ; So I decided that we ought to really have a--a little family conference, and so I got Mrs. Nixon and Tricia and Julie together, and I said, " ; Look, I think we' ; re going to make it, but more important, I think we can assured it will not be a long evening like it was in 1960." ; I proved to be a very poor prophet in that respect. But I said, " ; What we have to be prepared for is the possibility of an upset, because, you know, they' ; ve been coming on hard--been outspending us in these last two weeks, the bombing halt, and all that. I still feel we' ; re going to make it." ; And, incidentally, I was confident to the last. I felt even then--thought it was going to be close, because even though the polls had narrowed, as I looked at the critical states, I didn' ; t think there was a way Humphrey could win an electoral college vote. I was particularly interested then in being very sure I didn' ; t win the electoral college vote and he got a majority, or at least, I should say, a plurality of the popular vote-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE NIXON: --which, of course, he didn' ; t. We finally won the popular vote by a half-million. GANNON: In the end, do you think Wallace helped him or you, because the argument is that the people that voted for Wallace turned out--although they were conservatives, they were Democrats, so that in the end they siphoned more people from him than they did from you? NIXON: No, that is--there' ; s no question about that, because all the pollsters--Gallup and others--who polled after the election found that the Wallace vote would have twice as much for Nixon as it would for Humphrey. In other words, the Wallace vote was an anti-administration vote--an anti-Johnson vote, an anti-Humphrey vote. And if Wallace had been out of it--I think Gallup reported that it would have been a landslide in a magnitude of about fifty-six to forty-four-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0394/bmac
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60 minutes
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, September 7, 1983, part 2.
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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oral histories
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1983-09-07
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, September 7, 1983, part 3. gannix_0395 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|14(9)|30(7)|44(2)|55(14)|70(5)|80(8)|94(13)|106(10)|122(9)|124(10)|150(10)|161(11)|179(11)|191(7)|206(14)|220(9)|231(16)|244(1)|255(9)|266(14)|278(11)|293(3)|306(7)|325(9)|339(13)|351(6)|364(15)|378(2)|392(14)|406(12)|423(4)|435(16)|447(1)|460(11)|473(7)|481(4)|494(7)|505(17)|519(6)|554(14)|568(3)|578(4)|608(13)|621(4)|634(13)|646(10)|658(3)|668(11)|677(17)|690(8)|701(13)|712(11)|722(11)|734(14)|745(10)|758(13)|770(1)|779(10)|791(13) 0 https://youtu.be/G2eGYb9dSks YouTube video English 8 Winning the Presidency --about the same as the Eisenhower landslide of '52, if Wallace had not been in. Nixon recounts the events of election night and the next day's celebrations when he won the presidential election. He also addresses a claim by Roger Ailes that Ailes was instrumental in Nixon's election. 657 Henry Kissinger's Negotiations Henry Kissinger apparently had some difficulties, to put it mildly, dealing with the North Vietnamese--with the North Vietnamese in the negotiations. Nixon recalls some of the difficulties Kissinger had while negotiating with the Vietnamese and gives his opinion on a statement by Kissinger about the release of the Pentagon Papers. 777 Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death How did you hear about Martin Luther King's death? Nixon describes hearing about the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a discussion about him that Nixon had with his driver John Wardlaw. 915 Attack in Caracas When you were in that car in Caracas and the f--windows finally started breaking in and the rocks coming through, did--did it occur to you--or a--a--at what point did it occur to you that you might not actually get out of that alive? Nixon relates the attack on his motorcade while visiting Caracas, Venezuela. 1538 Julie Eisenhower Many people f--felt, and, I'm sure, still feel that one of the worst crimes of Watergate was a crime of the heart, in that you let your daughter Julie go out and defend you for weeks--months--after it had to be clear to you that your case was indefensible. Nixon describes his daughter Julie Eisenhower and her decision to defend him after the Watergate scandal. 1636 Japan's Future Moving on briefly to Japan, what's your opinion, your assessment, of Prime Minister Nakasone? Nixon discusses the importance of Japan to the United States, Japan's relations with the Soviet Union, and its future. 2121 Meeting General Charles de Gaulle The first time you met General de Gaulle was when he paid a visit to the United States in 1960. Nixon recounts meeting Charles de Gaulle for the first time at a luncheon after hearing about him from others. He also recounts a toast in which de Gaulle predicted that Nixon would become president. 2671 Visiting General de Gaulle as President What are your main recollections of your trip to Paris and your visit to--with de Gaulle in 1969, when you were now president, when his prophecy had been fulfilled? Nixon talks about spending time with General de Gaulle during his visit to Paris while president and discusses de Gaulle's personality. 3211 General Charles de Gaulle's Legacy How--how did you learn about his death? Nixon recalls learning about Charles de Gaulle's death and attending his funeral. He also discusses de Gaulle's legacy and the important things that he accomplished for France. Interview NIXON: --about the same as the Eisenhower landslide of ' ; 52, if Wallace had not been in. And he got 12 percent of the national vote, as we know. GANNON: At what point on election night, or election morning, did you finally feel confident that you were the thirty-seventh president of the United States? NIXON: I felt confident about three o' ; clock in the morning, and that was before some others did, because, again, I looked at the state-by-state analysis. And at three o' ; clock in the morning, when I' ; d heard that we' ; d won Missouri, I thought we were going to win. Kevin Phillips was one of the few people who predicted we were going to win Missouri, and that was somewhat of an upset, but we did win it, because I knew that we felt--or felt that we had California for sure, and we did with that by a quarter of a million votes, which was pretty good under the circumstances, with all the tough campaigning that had taken place in California in those last few days. But I had it figured out that with Missouri and New Jersey, these are the second states, that, in addition to that, we would win California, we would win Ohio, win Illinois. We had to win three of the " ; big seven," ; as they were called then. That would mean we could lose Texas, lose New York, lose Pennsylvania, and still win the election. That was my strategy. And as I looked at the results at three in the morning--I went over them with Murray Chotiner, as a matter of fact, the shrewdest observer we had. I said, " ; Well, we' ; ve got it made." ; I told my staff, " ; I think it' ; s made." ; None of them disagreed, although I think some of them were really worried. GANNON: Did you tell Mrs. Nixon? NIXON: Not then. No. No. I didn' ; t want to tell her and then have her be disappointed at a later time. GANNON: When did you tell her? NIXON: Not till the next morning. The next morning--it was about six in the morning, or seven in the morning. I was still-we' ; d stayed up all night. I was hoping to be able to go down and tell her much earlier, but I knew the traumatic effect that 1960 had had on her, and 1962, and I thought, " ; My God, I don' ; t want to get her hopes up and then have them dashed." ; That' ; s the worst thing you can do. So she was down in another suite with Helene Drown and Tricia and Julie, and I was in this suite with all the political people, and I kept waiting. " ; When can I go tell them?" ; And so, until I felt we' ; ve got it a little bit more nailed down, I shouldn' ; t do it. The real question at that point--we knew we had California by seven in the morning. That was clear. We knew we had Ohio by a hundred thousand votes. That was clear. We needed only one more state, and it turned out to be Illinois, of all states. And we were ahead in Illinois by a hundred thousand votes, but Cook County wasn' ; t all in. And so, under the circumstances, I couldn' ; t be sure. But Dwight Chapin, I remember, burst in with the news. " ; ABC has just conceded." ; And I said, " ; What about CBS and NBC?" ; " ; Not yet." ; " ; Well, maybe that' ; s it." ; But I still waited, and finally NBC conceded. And then, finally, CBS. It was the last. I' ; ll never forget Walter Cronkite. You know, I felt a little sorry for him. I don' ; t have any hard-on against him, because we' ; ve had some pleasant times together, particularly at the space splashdowns and so forth. But he was obviously, of course, pro-Humphrey, which I understood. And I' ; ve never seen a man look so sick. I thought he was going to cry. He did wait an hour after NBC and ABC to make his announcement. But I didn' ; t care. It was done. So I went down, and I saw Mrs. Nixon. And I said, " ; Well, we' ; ve got it." ; She said, " ; Are you sure?" ; I understood that that night she had been sick to her stomach because she' ; d heard that Illinois was still in the balance, and the commentators were pointing out that it had been lost in 1960 because of hanky-panky in Cook County. And I said, " ; Yeah." ; She said, " ; What about Illinois?" ; I said, " ; Look, we' ; re ahead by a hundred thousand votes. There' ; s no way they can steal a hundred thousand votes in Cook County." ; " ; Are you sure?" ; I said, " ; Yes," ; and she started to cry again, and so that was--and threw her arms around me and said, " ; Oh, thank God. I hope you' ; re right." ; Well, we were right. GANNON: How did it feel, after all that time and all those years, to be the president of the United States? NIXON: Well, you didn' ; t get the lift out of it as if we had won it in ' ; 60, I think. But having gone through the trauma of coming so close and losing and then becoming prepared and feeling quite sure that I was going to win--I wasn' ; t overconfident. We campaigned hard throughout that period. I mean, the mythology to the effect that we just sort of dogged it and didn' ; t campaign hard in ' ; 68--that' ; s just nonsense. We went on two three-hour telethons from California the day before the election, just to be sure that we didn' ; t have the thing taken away from us in the last few minutes. But, under the circumstances, it was not, therefore, that big a surprise to me. In other words, I think when you say how does it feel--if something comes almost unexpectedly, then it has a great--a greater lift--gives you a much greater lift than if it comes when you do expect it. I don' ; t mean I was overconfident, but I was inwardly pretty confident and pretty, frankly, fatalistic about it. If we had not won, I would have taken it reasonably well. So, under the circumstances, I would say that I was prepared for it, because I thought we were going to win. And so we got underway. GANNON: What did you do? What was your first morning as president-elect like? NIXON: Well, it' ; s--it should be, I suppose, some mountaintop experience, but it never is that way. It turns out to be something very--something that everybody can relate to. We went back to our apartment on Fifth Avenue, and I said to Pat and the girls--I said, " ; Look, you know, I think we really ought to go out" ; --this is the day after the election day--" ; I think we ought to go out to lunch." ; And they said no, we really couldn' ; t go out to lunch. I mean, after all, by that time hordes of reporters were around, and the Secret Service was there, and all the rest. We just couldn' ; t do it. Well, unfortunately, in the apartment, we didn’t have any help. I didn' ; t find out later as to why--what became of all the help--were they dogging it or something--because this was the day after the election. And what had happened was that Manolo and Fina Sanchez were of Spanish background. That was the day they went down to be sworn in as citizens of the United States, and they were down getting sworn in. Later, they came back and very proudly, they said, " ; Next time we can vote for you for re-election as president." ; They were proud. But, in any event, we didn' ; t know that at the time that we were trying to find out what to have for dinner. And so Pat and the girls got some eggs, and they scrambled some eggs, and they made some bacon, and so we had bacon and eggs as our victory feast there in our apartment on Fifth Avenue. And so, after that, I was pretty tired, because I' ; d been up all night before that. Everybody else--everybody went to bed. So I went into my library and built a fire and got out one of my favorite records, Victory at Sea. I don' ; t know why I picked it, but I' ; ve always liked the record. And so I put it on the machine. I turned it up and opened the window so that everybody on Fifth Avenue, five blocks below, could hear it. And it blasted out Victory at Sea. That' ; s the way I celebrated. GANNON: Roger Ailes, always a legend in his times, and our times, always tells everyone--as a matter of fact, as early as this morning he was telling me that without him you couldn' ; t be president. Do you want to comment on that? NIXON: Well, if I had to pay everybody that says that, I would be broke at the present time, and I' ; m not that wealthy, in any event. But, in any event, I suppose what he' ; s talking about are the campaign techniques of the man in the arena and that sort of thing. We developed a lot of very effective campaign techniques in that campaign. And that was one of the best--where people get a chance to participate in it. GANNON: At that point, we' ; ll break for lunch. OFF SCREEN VOICE: unauthorized question, Gannon. [Laugh] Okay, that' ; s all. NIXON: Yeah, but you' ; ve got plenty of time. GANNON: Yes. NIXON: So we can do it. We' ; ll make it. [Clears throat] It' ; ll move fairly fast. GANNON: We' ; ll get fairly fast through this--Japan and de Gaulle. That' ; s not-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stand by. GANNON: On a ten-point scale, that' ; s of a lesser-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Frank. GANNON: Yes. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [Unintelligible] GANNON: Sorry? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Three-thirty? GANNO: Three-thirty. OFF SCREEN VOICE: You got it. Okay, here we go. GANNON: Henry Kissinger apparently had some difficulties, to put it mildly, dealing with the North Vietnamese--with the North Vietnamese in the negotiations. NIXON: Oh, did he! I recall when he came back toward the end, just before we finally made the agreement, he said, " ; You know, the Vietnamese are just" ; --let' ; s start again. I remember when he--I remember one occasion particularly, when he came back after a very tough negotiation in 1972, and he said, " ; You know, the North Vietnamese are just shits. They' ; re just filthy, tawdry shits." ; He said, " ; They make the Russians look good, just as the Russians make the Chinese look good when it comes to negotiating." ; That' ; s the other way around. GANNON: What did you think of the recent Kissinger interview where he sort of backtracked on his opinion about the Pentagon Papers, where he said at the time he felt it was wrong to publish them but now he feels, although it' ; s wrong to take papers, that the media should not censor itself in terms of the publication of documents like that? NIXON: I don' ; t agree. I agree with Chief Justice Burger' ; s dissent in that case, when he says that it is the responsibility of cab drivers, or the responsibility of elevator operators, of secretaries, and editors of The New York Times not to engage in such activities of this sort. GANNON: How did you hear about Martin Luther King' ; s death? NIXON: I don' ; t recall exactly how I heard about it. I think it was actually on a television. Let' ; s start again on that. Let me see--I don' ; t think I remember that. GANNON: How did you hear about Martin Luther King' ; s death? NIXON: Well, I was in New York at the time. I heard about it on one of the newscasts. I think it was on radio, when I was in the car. And when I heard about it, I just couldn' ; t believe that it had happened, because, well, Martin Luther King has become, and was even earlier, controversial. I knew him quite well. I had met him in Ghana in 1957. I had seen him also in my office. I' ; d had long talks with him. I knew, of course, that he was a violent opponent of the war in Vietnam, as were many others. But I also respected him for the fact that there was no question of his not being Communist. He was pro-American. And also I considered him in terms of the black movement as being what I would call a moderate. At least he wasn' ; t advocating burning down the buildings and raising all the kind of hell the Black Panthers and others were. So, therefore, I thought he was a very important voice in that black community. GANNON: Did you go to his funeral? NIXON: Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, one of the things I particularly remember about Martin Luther King and the enormous hold he had over the black community was a rather interesting incident I had with our driver, Geor--John Wardlaw, during the vice presidential days. This was right after the election. We' ; d returned to Washington from California, and John was driving me down to the Capitol, and he was very emotional because he was a strong supporter. He said, " ; You know, I listened to the TV and heard about all of my people voting for Kennedy." ; He said, " ; I want you to know I just can' ; t understand it" ; --said, " ; because all that I knew were going to vote for you," ; because I had had a very strong civil rights record, better than Kennedy' ; s. Jackie Robinson and others in the black community had supported me. But he said, " ; You know what did it? They were all for you until Bobby Kennedy called the judge in that Martin Luther King thing, and then they turned to Kennedy." ; So I realized that Martin Luther King had an almost religious effect on millions of black Americans. GANNON: When you were in that car in Caracas and the windows started breaking in and the rocks coming through, did it occur--or at what point did it occur to you that you might not actually get out of that alive? NIXON: Well, we have to understand the background of how we got there in the first place. Revolution was sweeping over Latin America at that time, and we were on a trip that took us to most of the Latin American countries. There were demonstrations in Uruguay. There were demonstrations in Argentina. There were demonstrations also in Peru--a violent one there at the University of San Marcos. There were demonstrators out also in Bogota, Colombia. What had happened, though, is that the demonstrations up to that point had been ones that I had been able to handle, according to reports at the time, quite effectively. We routed the demonstrators usually by just handling them firmly but yet in a very effective way, and consequently they began to get rougher and rougher. And we got reports as we were flying from Colombia on to Venezuela, through the CIA, that plans were underway to murder the vice-president of the United States when he visits Caracas, Venezuela. They came to me. My staff said, " ; What should we do about this? Should we change the plans?" ; And I said, " ; Well, let' ; s check." ; So we checked with the State Department. The ambassador said no, he didn' ; t see any significant problem. There were a few demonstrators and so forth, but he urged that we come forward because if we didn' ; t keep coming it would be a very great blow to the prestige of the United States. So I said, " ; Okay. The CIA' ; s been wrong before. Maybe they' ; re wrong this time." ; So we flew on in. We knew almost from the time we landed that we were in trouble. I recall the airport was totally cleared. They were afraid of the demonstrators. I remember that after we finished the welcoming speeches, I walked with the foreign minister, with Pat at my side. We walked into the airport terminal. There was a balcony immediately over it, and we were showered with spit. Frankly, it was tobacco juice spit, too, tobacco juice spit that just covered our clothes. She had on a very bright red dress that I always liked, and it just splotched it beyond repair. My suit was done in pretty good. We got into the cars. The foreign minister was very apologetic. He says, " ; You know, they' ; re just children--just kids." ; I said, " ; Well, they' ; re pretty tough." ; He handed me his handkerchief--" ; here" ; --so that I could wipe the spit off. I said, " ; No way." ; I said, " ; I' ; ve got to burn these clothes when I get into the residence." ; So we began to drive into the city of Caracas. It was ominously quiet. The streets were all cleared again and so forth. And then we seemed to be hitting some--what I thought were potholes--thud, thud, thud--and what it was were boulders, rocks landing on top of the limousine. Now, of course, the limousine was very heavily armored--weighs about four-and-a-half tons, and it had glass, which, of course, was supposed to be nonshatterable. But as we drove on in, the rocks continued to fall. Several of the windows were broken, and at two points we had roadblocks, which we were able to evade. But finally the whole motorcade came to a screeching stop because they had stopped a truck and put it right across the two lanes of traffic that we were going down. So we were stopped there. And once we were stopped, it was right in an intersection. My Secret Service man Jack Sherwood said, " ; Here they come," ; and just coming out on either side, down the alleys, down streets and so forth, were hundreds of people throwing rocks and stones and carrying clubs and rushing at our car--a pretty ominous sight. They came in, and they started to pound on the car, and a great big guy--several of them were young, student types, but several of them had been out of college or university for a great many years. They were the leaders. And this one fellow had a great big steel pipe, and he began to bash in the window on my side, trying to get at me. Incidentally, he knocked the window in so strong it shattered. Some of it got into the mouth of my interpreter, Leonard--I mean, General Walters. And I said, " ; There goes my interpreter." ; But, be that as it may, as he was pounding on this window, Jack Sherwood, my Secret Service man, was sitting right in front of me in the jump seat, and he started to grab his gun from the holster, and he said, " ; Let' ; s get some of these sons-of-bitches!" ; I said--I grabbed his arm quickly. I said, " ; Don' ; t do it." ; I said, " ; If you do, they' ; ll tear us to pieces." ; And then, as we sat there, all of a sudden the car began to rock--back and forth, back and forth--and then I knew what was happening, because I had seen enough movies and read enough about it to know that that' ; s the tactic of a mob--to turn a car over and burn it. And just when we were tilting almost to the point that we were going to turn over, a miracle occurred. Right in front of us on the motorcade was a flatbed truck with a cameraman on it. The driver of the truck, very intelligently, finally was able to maneuver his truck, turning it to the left out of the two lanes of traffic into the oncoming--oncoming traffic, into the other lane. And we followed him. He was the blocking back. We were the running back, and Mrs. Nixon' ; s car right back of us, as well. We followed him around and came roaring on down the street on the wrong side of the street. Fortunately, nobody was coming up the other side. What should we do then? I ordered the driver, " ; Go directly to the embassy." ; The foreign minister objected and said, " ; Oh, you can' ; t do that. We' ; ll get off our schedule. We' ; ve got to go lay a wreath." ; I said, " ; We' ; re not going to lay a wreath right now." ; It turned out later that that' ; s where we really dodged the danger, the major danger, because there, where we were supposed to lay the wreath, a number of bombs--homemade ones, as a matter of fact, but effective nonetheless, were found. They would have exploded had we gone. So we went on up to the embassy. But that was as close as anybody wants to get. I must say, incidentally, as far as that particular incident is concerned, I was hoping that one of the results would be to get a more consistent US policy toward Latin America. I came back, and I said, " ; The trouble in the United States press, the only Latin America makes the front pages in the United States is when there' ; s a revolution or a riot at a soccer game." ; I said, " ; We' ; ve got to have a consistent policy that they understand, or otherwise the Communists" ; --and this, of course, was a Communist-inspired mob. Radio Moscow was inciting it all the way along the line. " ; Otherwise they' ; re going to take it by default." ; Well, of course, there was some interest immediately after the Caracas incident, and then it went down. But politically it helped, I must say. For that time--from that time forward, whenever I' ; d meet people who are from Latin America or who had connections with it, they would say, rather admiringly--they would say, " ; Well, whether we agree with you or not, we like you, because you have cojones." ; I said, " ; What' ; s cojones?" ; They said, " ; Balls." ; GANNON: Did you think--were you scared? NIXON: Oh, I was certainly concerned, but what happens in cases like that is you don' ; t get scared. You tend to get cool. I became--in fact, I was pretty cool. I was able to restrain Sherwood. I was able to give the order to move on, and so forth. I think it' ; s just something you almost inherit, or you learn into it. What happens is if you go through enough crises, you' ; re prepared when you face a big one. And I had been through quite a lot before I ever got stoned in Caracas. GANNON: Did it occur to you that you might not survive--that you might die in that car? NIXON: Oh, yes. Oh, certainly, particularly when the car was rocking. Then I knew that if something didn' ; t happen, that we may have had it. Oh, yes, that was the danger point. But before I had a chance to think about it, then we were gone. GANNON: What--was Mrs. Nixon in danger? NIXON: She was. She was right behind us. I remember Alice Longworth had a marvelous comment about her afterwards. She said, " ; I saw that picture of Pat" ; -- " ; Dear Pat," ; as she called her--" ; and there she sat, talking to the wife of the foreign minister" ; --she guessed that' ; s who it was--" ; and she just was--seemed to be talking about what they were going to do at the afternoon tea, absolutely cool." ; And, of course, that was the way she was. And she was naturally more concerned that I am, sure, because she was behind us, and while they hit her car a couple of times, too, she could see all of these goons around us, smashing the car with their clubs and everything. And naturally she got a little concerned. GANNON: What did she say to you, or you to her, when you finally met-- NIXON: Well, the way it worked is that we roared out of there on our way to the embassy and finally stopped so that she could catch up. She didn' ; t--she didn' ; t go into any great, you know, flights of hysteria or something like that. She said, " ; Thank God that fellow had the good sense to move out." ; She saw it better than we did, because she saw it in perspective from the car right behind. And afterwards, I must say, I was never more happy to be inside an American embassy than on that occasion. And, incidentally, I finally did burn that damned suit. And I don' ; t--I think she never was able to wear the red suit again, one of my favorites, because it was so messed up. You know, spit is bad enough, but tobacco spit--that' ; s the worst. That' ; s the lowest. GANNON: I' ; ll accept that and hope I have no experience to confirm it. Many people felt, and, I' ; m sure, still fell that one of the worst crimes of Watergate was a crime of the heart, in that you let your daughter Julie go out and defend you for weeks--months, after it had to be clear to you that your case was indefensible. Why did you do that? NIXON: Well, I actually didn' ; t have much choice. I didn' ; t want her to do that. I didn' ; t want the family at all to do it. But Julie is a very--a very persistent person. Of all the--of all the people that I have known, I would say that she has perhaps the greatest aptitude for political leadership. I' ; m not surprised when people, after they' ; ve seen her on television, say, " ; There' ; s the first woman president." ; I don' ; t know that she' ; ll ever go into politics, but she has the capabilities. She' ; s effervescent. She' ; s bubbly. She' ; s intelligent. She has a big heart, a--and yet she has an inner strength which is very, very formidable. And she never gives up. She used to say over and over again after 1960, " ; When are we going to ask for a recount in Cook County?" ; She never gave up. And in this instance, I said to her, " ; You know, I do not think that we' ; re going to survive." ; I said, " ; This is just too tough. I don' ; t think you should go out there," ; because I didn’t want her to go through what she had to. I said, " ; Those press people are vicious, and since they can' ; t get at me--I' ; m not meeting with them at the present time--they' ; re going to take it out on you." ; I' ; ll never forget the way she answered. She said, " ; But, Daddy, we have to fight." ; So she insisted on going out. GANNON: Moving on briefly to Japan, what' ; s your opinion, your assessment, of Prime Minister Nakasone? NIXON: He is potentially one of the truly great Japanese leaders. Now, incidentally, Japan has been very, very fortunate to have excellent leadership, better than average leadership, since World War II, beginning with Prime Minister Yoshida, Kishi, Sato, et al. But Nakasone is from a newer generation somewhat. He is a man who takes a higher profile than the others could take at that particular time in Japan' ; s history. I think he' ; s going to take the Japan today, which is an economic giant, a--and make it not a military giant, but at least see that it is no longer a military pygmy, not even able to defend itself. And also, I think very properly, he' ; s going to have Japan play a higher " ; posture," ; as the Japanese would put it--role--on the world stage. And I think they should. GANNON: Do you--do you think Japan should rearm? NIXON: No question about it. I said that back in 1953. By rearming--let me be very precise--Japan should not acquire nuclear weapons. They shouldn' ; t, for reasons that everybody can understand, having to undergo as they did the first, and, I hope, the last use of nuclear bombs in warfare. But, on the other hand, Japan should acquire the ability to defend itself. It has armed forces about one-third the size of those in North Korea today. That doesn' ; t make any sense. The Japanese should be able to protect its sea lanes. They' ; ve got to have land forces to protect themselves on land, rather than having the US not only hold the rein against the nuclear threat from the Soviet Union but otherwise. GANNON: How strong is the Soviet threat to Japan? NIXON: Oh, it’s very significant. There are far more SS-20s, for example, aimed at Japan and China than there are at some of the countries of Western Europe. And that SS-20--just a few of them could take out the whole island. Also, the Soviet threat is internal. Fortunately, the Japanese have a very strong political system. At the present time, the ruling party is in very successfully, and the socialist opposition party is also anti-Communist. But the Communists are always there. It is relatively small. They are suffering from a number of problems of their own doing--poor policies in the past. But Japan at the present time, for that reason, has to have a good, strong economy, because if its economy becomes weak, you open the door for more Soviet influence. GANNON: Do you think the Soviets are behind the Japanese peace movement? NIXON: No question about it. No question about it. The Japanese peace movement--let me put it this way. There would be some Japanese peace movement even if there were no Soviets, but, on the other hand, I think the Soviets play a greater role in the Japanese peace movement than they do, for example, in the American peace movement, because it' ; s much closer. And in that particular area, the Soviets have enormous influence. GANNON: What do you see happening in Japan in, say, the next ten years? NIXON: Well, I think in order to understand what happens in the next ten years, you' ; ve got to understand why Japan has recovered as it has from World War II. Look at this country. It' ; s a country with no oil, no significant natural resources--the coal is virtually gone. It has less arable land than the state of California. And yet today it is the second economic power in the free world. By the end of the century, it may have a per capita income larger than that of the United States. How does it happen? It' ; s happened for several reasons--because of who the Japanese people are, highly intelligent, a passion for education, great abilities not only to copy but to innovate, as they are in technology and many other fields. A second point is the remarkable political leadership that they' ; ve had. Here, you took Japan--you talk about the miracle economically. That couldn' ; t have happened without the miracle politically. You took Japan after World War II. They had to change from the government which was a military dictatorship, in effect, a government in which you had the emperor as a religious figure. He had to get down off the throne and become a man rather than a god. And the Japanese, as a result of an odd couple in political leadership such as the world has never seen before--General MacArthur on the one side and Yoshida, who was about half his height, on the other side--they created the constitution and the system which modern Japan enjoys today. And so, as a result, it' ; s a miracle to see what it' ; s done economically. It' ; s a miracle to see its political stability, and, looking to the future, it' ; s only going to go up. Japan has to be concerned about being too good. That' ; s their problem, because Americans are jealous of the way they' ; ve moved ahead. Europeans are jealous of the way they’ve moved ahead. But I would say that it is in our interest to have Japan be strong, because when you look at the Soviet Union and Asia, and China, with all of its people and all of its resources, is still weak economically and relatively weak militarily. Japan is indispensable to peace in the Pacific, just as China in the future will always be indispensable, too. Therefore, a strong Japan must be maintained if the Soviet attempts to move into China, for example, or other parts of Asia are to be thwarted. And in that connection, therefore, the Japanese-American alliance is absolutely essential. GANNON: How do you see the development of Sino-Japanese relations in this ten-year period, say? NIXON: Sino-Japanese relations are just as important as the American-Japanese relations. For example, at the present time the major thrust of American policy toward China should be to help it develop its economy, because without a stronger economy it cannot afford a stronger military. And until it has a stronger military it will not be able to have the strength to deter a possible Soviet attack. Now, we can help, but the Japanese can help more. One, because they' ; re closer. Two, because they' ; re Asian. For example, our trade last year with Japan, or, I should say, our trade with China last year was five-and-a-half billion dollars. Japan' ; s trade with China last year was over ten billion dollars. That gives you the magnitude of the problem and the way that it can be solved. So we' ; ve got to encourage more and more Sino-Japanese cooperation. GANNON: What--if you had to choose one thing, what' ; s the greatest danger facing Japan today? NIXON: The greatest danger is the danger of the threat from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is still there, and if the United States is not there to hold the rein against the Soviet Union, Japan is kaput. Another danger, and that' ; s why Japan has as great an interest as we do in China, is if China, some way or other--because they give up on the West, because the United States fouls up some way its relationship with China, if China felt that it should move back into the Soviet orbit, then the Japanese would be running for the hills. GANNON: The first time you met General de Gaulle was when he paid a visit to the United States in 1960. We have a film of the departure ceremonies from National Airport in Washington. WILDTRACK. De Gaulle film. GANNON: What were your first impressions of Charles de Gaulle? NIXON: Well, I had my first impressions of de Gaulle before I ever met him. I was in France in 1947, and all the Foreign Service people that I met spoke of him with absolute dislike and certainly thought that he was finished. I had the impression from reading the press, the media, at the time, that he was virtually a dictatorial type, almost a fascist--rigid, difficult. Also, I had been reading a little of Churchill, and Churchill was really devastating in his commentary on de Gaulle. He said, " ; Of all the crosses I have to bear, the heaviest is the Cross of Lorraine." ; The Cross of Lorraine, of course, was de Gaulle' ; s standard. And he said, " ; You know, de Gaulle thinks he is Joan of Arc." ; He said, " ; The trouble is my bloody bishops won' ; t let me burn him!" ; So, under the circumstances, when I first met de Gaulle when he came on this trip, I expected to be--see a rather austere, dictatorial, difficult kind of a person. I saw someone quite different. One--dignified, yes--one with enormous self-confidence, one who was very impressive, who gave off an aura of charisma, of command. Some men have it--very, very few. He was one who has it in spades, and, after I got to know him, one who became more and more impressive as you knew him. GANNON: In 1963, when you were in Paris, he gave you a luncheon at the Élysée Palace. Why did he received at what had to be the lowest ebb of your political career, do you think? NIXON: Well, frankly, I don' ; t know. I wondered that at the time. After all, at that time I had been defeated for president of the United States. I had been defeated for governor of California. I had burned my bridges in spades as far as the press were concerned. And here I was in France on a trip with my family. I didn' ; t ask to see him, and we received this invitation to the Élysée. He may have had several motivations. One, the obvious one, is that, well, he thought just possibly I might come back again. I, of course, didn’t feel that, and I don' ; t think he would have felt that either. The other point, however, that should be made in that connection is he didn' ; t--he was one who--sorry. He thought I might come back again. Another point that may have--a fact that may have affected him was that he had a very low opinion of some other American political figures. He was quoted as saying that-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] to do a pickup on that. That fly [unintelligible]. GANNON: Yeah. OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] do a pickup on the second part of that question. NIXON: You ready? GANNON: Yes. NIXON: Oh, I thought--the fly--you get it? Oh. GANNON: No. [Laughs] NIXON: That' ; s what he' ; s saying? All right. GANNON: That he had a low opinion-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: After he thought you might come back again. GANNON: The second reason was he had a low-- NIXON: Yeah. GANNON: --opinion of the other-- NIXON: The second--the second reason was that he had apparently a very low opinion of some American political leaders. He was supposed to have said at one time that President Kennedy reminded him of an assistant hairdresser trying to comb through problems. Well, whatever the case might be, he did receive me. I think there was a deeper reason--a deeper reasons as to why he received me on this occasion. There was a certain empathy there. He never mentioned it, as far as I was concerned, but he made a very revealing comment to General Vernon Walters, Dick Walters, when Walters took him a letter that I had written him--a handwritten letter--when he announced that he was resigning from the office of president of France. He said, like myself, he has been an exile in his own country. He had been in the wilderness. He had gone through adversity. I had been in the wilderness and gone through adversity. He appreciated that, and I think he respected it and admired it, and therefore saw things and possibilities in my career due to the fact that such things had happened to him. GANNON: What was the luncheon--what is luncheon at the Élysée Palace with General de Gaulle like? NIXON: Well, first of all, coming to the Élysée was a great thrill for me. I am somewhat of a Francophile. I had four years of French in college and read Rousseau and the other French classics, in French, and, also, I had read a lot of French history. You came to this great building--the only thing, really, that surpasses it in the places I' ; ve visited is the Vatican, because on this same trip, incidentally, I was received by--and the family as well--by Pope Paul before--the day before the coronation took place. But, in any event, we drove through the gates and went in to lunch. The lunch was set up outdoors. It was in the summertime--beautifully done, as, of course, any French chef would do it, and of course de Gaulle had the best, but very friendly. The only--only six people present--President and Mrs. de Gaulle--she' ; s a very remarkable person, incidentally--and the Bolins, Mr. and Mrs. Bolin--he was the ambassador--and Mrs. Nixon and myself. GANNON: In your memoirs, you wrote about a toast that General de Gaulle made at that luncheon which turned out to be very prophetic. NIXON: Yes. After the toast-- GANNON: [Begins to speak.] NIXON: Uh-- GANNON: Can you begin with just " ; after" ; ? NIXON: What? GANNON: With just " ; after the toast" ; ? NIXON: You want so s-- GANNON: Without saying " ; yes." ; NIXON: Oh, yes, yes, fine. Don' ; t say " ; yes," ; fine. No--" ; in his toast" ; --is that--you want me to say-- GANNON: " ; After the luncheon." ; NIXON: After the luncheon, de Gaulle proposed the toast. It was a surprise to me, and, I think, even a greater surprise to Bolin, because he said, in effect--he said, " ; I realize that you have been checked in the pursuit of your goals. But I have sensed that there is no doubt but that at some time in the future you will serve your country again in an even higher capacity." ; Well, that' ; s the first time I' ; d ever heard anybody, even among my closest friends and supporters in the United States, let alone abroad, indicate that I might have a political future. And it really shocked Bolin. He didn' ; t--wasn' ; t bitter about it or anything like that, but he says, " ; That was really a remarkable statement." ; Now, again, you could just say, " ; Well, de Gaulle' ; s just smart enough to say that to anybody, because, you know, we always say nice things to our visitors, particularly if we' ; re fellow politicians. It doesn' ; t cost anything. It makes them feel good. And someday it may be useful to you." ; But the interesting thing here was that I have talked to several French leaders, cabinet officers and others, through the years, and over and over they tell me that de Gaulle at various times has told them that same thing, prior to the time I was elected in 1968. In fact, there was a very amusing incident. It occurred at a time that they were having de Gaulle inspect the new quarters, guest quarters, at the Trianon Palace at Versailles for distinguished guests. And as they were going through it, they went through the area that was for the president, or whoever it might be--the head of state who was coming there. And the bathtub was apparently quite a small one, and the guide said, " ; You know, this bathtub looks a little small for Johnson." ; De Gaulle smiled and said, " ; Yes, but it looks about right for Nixon." ; GANNON: What are your main recollections of your trip to Paris and your visit to--with de Gaulle in 1969, when you were now president, when his prophecy had been fulfilled? NIXON: I would say that, first, just arriving there, which was the first state visit to Paris as president--I had been there, of course, as vice president--and no one does protocol better than de Gaulle. He believed that that was a very small price to pay. And he did the--he put on the same show, I learned later from General Walters, who was then our aide in the embassy--military aide--whether it was the leader of a small African or Asian country, he did the same for them as he did for the president of the United States. But it was magnificent. But it was a bitter cold day, and the aides had told me that I' ; d have to wear my overcoat and gloves and all that business and so forth, and so I had had it on, and as the plane pulled up to the apron I saw de Gaulle standing there. Here' ; s this seventy-eight-year-old man, standing erect, no hat, no coat. So I took off my overcoat and walked down to meet him. Symbolism--he dealt in symbolism. He thought that was very important. Just to show respect, he was not going to wear an overcoat. He knew what the pictures would look like, as well. And then, too, I have memories of many things that happened. We had hours and hours of talk. I was just impressed by the way he was able to--he reminded me of MacArthur. He talked with precision. You could take de Gaulle' ; s conversation, transcribe it, and never have to change a comma or anything, or a word, for that matter. He didn' ; t talk in commas too much. The precision of it--he spoke, for example, then, as he had clear back in 1963, about the importance of the United States talking with China and negotiating with China now, when they needed us, rather than waiting until later when they would be so strong we would have to talk to them because we needed them. He talked about the need to bring the war in Vietnam to a close. He talked, for example, very effectively about what he called--what has been called " ; détente." ; He said, " ; Well, what are you going to do? Are you going to break down the Berlin Wall? If you' ; re not ready to make war, make peace, but make it on a very strong basis, from strength rather than from weakness." ; All these conversations impressed me, but I think even more those times when he' ; d speak philosophically, because he was a philosopher. He was a philosopher-statesman, without question, and without a peer, in my view. He--we were sitting--we were sitting in a beautiful room in Versailles, where the conversation was taking place, and in a break in the conversation he walked over to a window and, speaking to no one in particular, but to everyone, he looked out the window, and he said, " ; Louis XIV ruled all of Europe from this room." ; And the other case--he was talking about World War II and the hopelessness of all war, especially modern war. And he said, " ; In World War II all the nations of Europe lost. Two were defeated." ; He had the ability to put everything so precisely, so well. And then a final memory, the great dinners, the toasts that he prepared, a conversation with Mrs. de Gaulle where she, speaking of the closeness of the family, made the point that " ; the presidency is temporary, the family is permanent." ; And then, finally, going to the airport, getting ready to leave, making the departure statements, de Gaulle escorting us out of the apron to the ramp--foot of the plane, shaking hands, getting into the plane. Then the custom is for the head of state to go back into the reception room and wait for the plane to take off. And I assumed that' ; s what he would do. I got onto the plane, and then, as the plane was taxiing down the runway to take off, I looked out. De Gaulle was still standing there, standing on the ramp in a salute. Symbolism again. I think he would--did that because he felt that after very difficult years with both Kennedy and Johnson, that finally there was in the White House a president who understood France, who would restore the French-American relationship, and who understood and respected de Gaulle. GANNON: De Gaulle' ; s image is formidable, to say the least, and he spent a lot of time and effort creating it and maintaining it. Did you get a chance to--to see the man behind the myth, so to speak? NIXON: To an extent, yes. I saw certainly--well, let me put it this way. Mrs. Nixon saw it. He was a very thoughtful man. You know--head of state comes to a dinner. The poor wife--in this case it' ; s Mrs. Nixon--does all the work preparing the flowers and the name cards and the menus and all that sort of thing. And she had a beautiful centerpiece with a fountain in it and flowers all around. It was held in the Carlton Hotel. There was no residence for the vice president then, and we had to rent out a hotel. And de Gaulle spent quite a bit of time talking to Mrs. Nixon about how beautiful the centerpiece was, complimenting her on the dinner generally. He was a very--he was a very fine gentleman. He wasn' ; t that austere type. Also, de Gaulle was a deeply religious man, and many people are not aware--you think of him only as a great soldier, and even potentially a great statesman. Some do. But he was also a very devoted family man. I think one of the most moving stories I' ; ve ever heard of a public figure involved de Gaulle--something you would not expect from him. They had children, other children. One is an admirable--one is an admiral in the French navy today. I met him--his name is Phillip de Gaulle--when I was in Paris. Looks just like his father--younger, of course. And then their last child, Anne, unfortunately was born retarded, because Yvonne de Gaulle, de Gaulle' ; s wife, was in a terrible automobile accident just before she was born, and--brain damage to the child. And that retarded child was one that they insisted on keeping. The doctor said, " ; Look, there' ; s nothing you can do for her. Let us take her to a home." ; And de Gaulle answered, " ; She did not ask to be brought into this world. We will keep her here." ; There was never a day when he didn' ; t go home and try to entertain her. He was the only one that could make the child laugh. He would play little games with her. She loved to take his military hat, the decorations on it, and play with them. He would always walk her around, whenever he could, in the garden and so forth. During the war, the press always wanted to take pictures of his family. He would never allow it, except with him and Mrs. de Gaulle, because he didn' ; t want them to have a picture of just the older children without Anne de Gaulle. The thing which really caused him very great pain was the fact that other children sometimes could be so cruel to Anne. Because she was different, they taunted her--because she was different. And then, finally, in--she was eighteen years of age. She caught pneumonia, and she died. There was a very simple ceremony in the little graveyard at Colombey, where they lived--a few prayers, some tears, de Gaulle, Mrs. de Gaulle standing together silently at the grave. And, finally, he took her by the hand and said, " ; Come, Yvonne. Now she' ; s like the others." ; And from that time on, there was never a day till the end of his life that on a Sunday he did not go to the grave to lay fresh flowers. That was de Gaulle. GANNON: How--how did you learn about his death? NIXON: I learned about it in Washington. It was from Henry Kissinger. He brought--he usually brought the news of anything--development of that sort. And just as soon as I learned it, I said I was going to go to the funeral. I was--and as a result of my going, everybody else came. It was an enormous, moving event. It was in Notre Dame. It was not actually a funeral, I should say. This was simply a memorial service, because de Gaulle, typically, had put in his will " ; no funeral." ; All he allowed was to have a little private service out into his home village. And a butcher and a tradesman were among those who acted as the pallbearers, just very, very simple people. But, of course, the nation insisted upon having a funeral. President Pompidou said it very eloquently. When he heard about the death, he said, " ; General de Gaulle is dead. France is a widow." ; And so all the people were gathered there in Notre Dame, and I remember the moving eulogy that was given by President Pomch--Pompidou, who was to succeed de Gaulle, and--or had succeeded de Gaulle when de Gaulle retired. And I was leaving the cathedral when it was completed. And then the great organ in Notre Dame--it' ; s a huge organ--began to strike up the Marseillaise, that great, moving song. And I started to turn toward the organ and toward the flag to salute, and unfortunately another one of the guests happened to grab my arm at the time just to pay his respects. The moment was lost, but it occurred to me that there' ; s no more moving tribute that could be paid to de Gaulle than for that whole mass of people from all over the world to turn toward the altar as the Marseillaise was being played and salute. GANNON: What--how do you think history will assess de Gaulle? What will his legacy turn out to be? How will he have made a difference for France, for Europe, for the world? NIXON: Well, de Gaulle made a difference in several ways substantively. First, without de Gaulle, France would never have recovered its spirit after the terrible defeat of World War II. Without de Gaulle, France would not have become a respected, powerful nation in the world today, as it is. And without de Gaulle, and also Adenauer, and the fact that the two came to power at the same time together--without de Gaulle and Adenauer, you would not have had, at the time we' ; ve had it, the French-German rapprochement which ended centuries of bloody wars between two very great peoples. So, all of these are tremendous achievements that will go down in history for de Gaulle. I am inclined to think, however, that he will be remembered more for what he was than for what he did. He was a man bigger than life. He once described himself--and this is not an arrogant statement, even though some would think it that. They asked what he was politically. He said, " ; De Gaulle is not on the right. He is not on the left. He is above." ; What he meant there--he was above politics. And, under the circumstances, I think--you look at de Gaulle generally. He was a massive personality on the post-war scene, an intellect of unquestioned superiority, a man of supreme eloquence, a man who understood symbolism and modern communication, a man that was bigger than France, bigger than his own country, one that everybody could recognize as a giant, even though they might have disagreed with him bitterly. His greatest contribution, other than what he was, was what he did, not in terms of any particular thing for France in terms of its foreign policy, but the French constitution. I remember, for example, that when I was vice president, I had the opportunity, or the responsibility, of going to the airport to visit--to meet visiting prime ministers. And it seemed about one month I' ; d be going to meet a new Italian prime minister, and the next month it' ; d be a new French prime minister. And that' ; s still the case with Italy. They changed prime ministers about two or three times a year. But in France, de Gaulle stopped that. He created a strong presidency, and yet democracy underneath. And it' ; s that stability that has made France what it is today. I had a talk with the Socialist president of France, Mitterrand, just recently in Paris. And I told him of my evaluation of de Gaulle and the Constitution, and in a rather sardonic way he answered--he said, " ; Yes." ; He said, " ; When we were out of power, we didn' ; t like that provision of the Constitution. But now that we' ; re in power we like it so much better." ; Stability is so essential. If the de Gaulle Constitution could be adopted in all the Latin countries of Latin America, it might be the answer to many of their problems--stability, strong presidency at the top, and yet democracy underneath, affected by elections as they go on from time to time. But don' ; t have a change of government any time any particular head of government happens to have a policy that falls out of favor. THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE GANNON: Do you think that President Kennedy got away with things that you didn' ; t get away with because the media liked him and didn' ; t like you? NIXON: Well, I don' ; t want to say that I did the same things he did, or that he did the same things I did. But there was a little bit of a double standard. He, incidentally, was--could be very honest. I am sure he would agree there was a double standard--privately, at least. But I do know that I was rather amused when I read recently--when some of the disclosures come out of what happened during the Kennedy administration--that with all of this talk about racism-- Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0395/bmac
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, September 7, 1983, part 3.
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Frank Gannon
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1983-09-07
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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United States
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moving image
OHMS
-
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The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection
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Politics and Public Policy
United States--Officials and employees
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
Date
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1983
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gannix
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The Richard Nixon/Frank Gannon interviews consist of more than 30 hours of videotapes interviews with former President Richard Nixon. The interviews took place nearly a decade after Nixon's resignation, and were conducted with the benefit of some historical perspective and without media hype. They were made in four groups and two- and three-day sessions spread over seven months in 1983. Each interview was organized around a specific topic or topics. Issues discussed include Nixon's early political career, Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation as president, U.S. domestic policies, U.S. presidents, and foreign leaders. These interviews, conducted by Frank Gannon, former employee and trusted friend of Richard Nixon, represent Nixon's most substantial and lengthy post-presidency interview.<br /><br />All interviews in this collection have been indexed in OHMS.
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Oral histories
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United States
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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5.4 Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, September 7, 1983, part 4. gannix_0396 gannix The Nixon-Gannon Interviews Collection Item record on BMA website Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection Richard Nixon Frank Gannon 1:|9(11)|24(2)|42(11)|51(12)|65(10)|78(7)|89(3)|102(3)|112(6)|122(8)|130(15)|142(14)|155(14)|169(10)|180(12)|193(7)|209(4)|220(13)|231(14)|244(14)|256(13)|268(4)|279(12)|295(6)|307(9)|320(7)|332(13)|344(14)|356(5)|366(13)|376(13)|390(16)|401(4)|414(7)|426(5)|438(8)|449(7)|463(14)|473(14)|485(8)|498(10)|518(4)|534(12)|546(7)|558(2)|567(16)|577(17)|588(3)|601(15)|610(15)|626(6)|640(8)|658(12)|671(8)|680(12)|712(2)|756(2)|770(3) 0 https://youtu.be/TRFw8gXTnyY YouTube video English 7 Media Double Standard / Death of Robert Kennedy --and all that sort of thing, and prejudice--that a little bit of that went on in their period, too. Nixon recounts instances of a double standard in the media when reporting about the Kennedys and liberal politicians as opposed to conservative politicians. He also speaks about the assassination of Robert Kennedy. 235 End of President Johnson's Time in Office From most accounts, Lyndon Johnson was a very bitter and embittered man by the time he left the White House, almost paranoid about the--the suppor--the--the--the opponents who he felt had sabotaged him, the supporters who he felt had screwed him. Nixon discusses the personality of Lyndon B. Johnson while he was in office, including his desire for loyalty and loss of popularity during his last year as president. Barry Goldwater ; Bill Moyers ; Bobby Kennedy ; Bryce Harlow ; bug ; Dean Acheson ; Eugene McCarthy ; FBI ; Great Society programs ; homosexuality ; information leak ; J. Edgar Hoover ; John F. Kennedy ; Lord Randolph Churchill ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Martin Luther King, Jr. ; Pentagon Papers ; Walter Jenkins ; Winston Churchill ; wiretapping Acheson, Dean, 1893-1971 ; Churchill, Randolph Henry Spencer, Lord, 1849-1895 ; Harlow, Bryce Nathaniel, 1916- ; Hoover, J. Edgar (John Edgar), 1895-1972 ; Jenkins, Walter (Walter Wilson), 1918-1985 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Kennedy, Robert F., 1925-1968 ; King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 ; McCarthy, Eugene J., 1916-2005 ; Moyers, Bill D. 864 Presidential Scandals / Profanity in the Oval Office At--at the risk of being criticized for--for asking the fox to--to assess the interior decoration of the henhouse, how would you compare the--say, the Truman scandals--the [Five Percenters], the mink coats--the Johnson scandals--the--Bobby Baker--to--or, say, the Carter scandals, in a way, or the Abscam scandals which took place in the Carter administration--to the Watergate scandals? Nixon compares the response to and the nature of the Watergate scandal to other presidential scandals. He talks about the use profanity by presidents and why presidential tapes should be expurgated of such language. 1166 Relationship with President Johnson / Johnson's Death A couple of months ago, you told me a story about--we were talking about Johnson. You told me about Johnson and a rattlesnake on his farm. Nixon recounts a story about President Johnson and describes his larger than life personality. He also discusses learning about Johnson's death. 1619 Historical Assessment of Presidents Looking back from the--say, the perspective of the turn of the century, how will the man in the street in the year two thousand assess John Kennedy's contribution to America and to world history? Nixon considers how historians will rate the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, and himself in the future. assassination ; cancer ; China ; Civil Rights Act of 1964 ; Cuba ; Egypt ; Fidel Castro ; Henry Kissinger ; history ; Hubert Humphrey ; Israel ; Jimmy Carter ; John F. Kennedy ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Ngo Dihn Diem ; Paul Johnson ; resignation ; Soviet Union ; Vietnam ; Watergate ; Winston Churchill Carter, Jimmy 1924- ; Castro, Fidel, 1926- ; Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Johnson, Paul, 1928- ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 ; Kissinger, Henry, 1923- ; Ngô, Đình Diệm, 1901-1963 2219 Spiro Agnew In 1968 in Miami, when you announced your--that your choice for vice president was Spiro Agnew, there was a resounding chorus--" ; Spiro who?" ; Nixon discusses his choice of Spiro Agnew as his vice president and the problems that led to Agnew's resignation. Aldai Stevenson ; campaign ; fund ; John Bartlow Martin ; media ; New York Times ; Spiro Agnew Agnew, Spiro T., 1918-1996 ; Martin, John Bartlow, 1915-1987 ; Stevenson, Adlai E. (Adlai Ewing), 1900-1965 2551 Mrs. Pat Nixon How do you think history will look back and assess Mrs. Nixon? Nixon describes Pat Nixon, including his respect for her accomplishments, how the public and media perceived and represented her, and her support of his political career. campaign ; Caracas ; China ; first lady ; Fund Crisis ; Great Contemporaries ; H. H. Asquith ; Harry Darby ; Jeane Kirkpatrick ; Julie Eisenhower ; Lou Henry Hoover ; media ; Pat Nixon ; Peking ; Plastic Pat ; Tricia Cox ; University of Southern California ; Venezuela ; Winston Churchill ; women ; World War I Asquith, H. H. (Herbert Henry), 1852-1928 ; Churchill, Winston, 1874-1965 ; Cox, Patricia Nixon, 1946- ; Darby, Harry, 1895-1987 ; Eisenhower, Julie Nixon ; Hoover, Lou Henry, 1874-1944 ; Kirkpatrick, Jeane J. ; Nixon, Pat, 1912-1993 3003 Charles de Gaulle's Insights / Future Plans You had mentioned a couple of days ago an interesting insight that de Gaulle had into the difference between Kennedy and Johnson. Nixon relates Charles de Gaulle's opinion on differences between Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and shares a story about Johnson. He considers growing older and remaining politically active. campaign ; Charles de Gaulle ; funeral ; future ; John F. Kennedy ; Look Magazine ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; old age ; Protocol Office ; Sam Houston Johnson ; Tricia Cox ; Walter Annenberg Annenberg, Walter H., 1908-2002 ; Cox, Patricia Nixon, 1946- ; Gaulle, Charles de, 1890-1970 ; Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973 ; Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 3386 President Johnson's Memoirs / 1968 Presidential Nomination It seems that the kind of vibrant Johnson you've described hasn't come across, and the--the record is that he spent a lot of time while he was still alive expurgating his own memoirs. Nixon discusses the censorship of President Johnson's memoirs and tapes and how that may affect how he is perceived. He also recounts the difficulties of going against Nelson Rockefeller for the 1968 presidential nomination. Interview NIXON: --and all that sort of thing, and prejudice--that a little bit of that went on in their period, too. Bobby Kennedy, for example, when there was--a reporter for CBS was overly critical, he thought--overcritically of President Kennedy, he called him a " ; Stevenson Jew." ; Well, that just raised hell, and President Kennedy made him apologize, but not a word was written about it. And then President Kennedy on one occasion, on a day in Boston--he was referring to that particular day, and he says, " ; It was so hot that even the niggers went to the beach." ; Not a word was written, although it was said to a Time Magazine reporter. Compare that to what happened to poor Earl Butz. He was driven from public life. Now let me say I' ; m not complaining that they didn' ; t say that--they didn' ; t report it. I think when a president or his attorney general and so forth happens to say something that may reveal something when he says it off the top of his head--that the press shouldn' ; t rush it into print. But let me say that in the case of the liberals, they will cover up--the press will--virtually anything they can. Now maybe today it' ; s changed, it' ; s changed a bit, when everybody is panting after each other to try to get the news, to get their stories and go out. But in that case, I must say there was a double standard. GANNON: Do you remember how you heard about the death of Robert Kennedy? NIXON: Oh, very vividly. I was listening to the returns from California in New York, because I had campaigned in California--campaigned only because I wanted to get a big vote in the primary, which we of course got, because we didn' ; t have any opposition to speak of. But, be that as it may--no, let' ; s stop that, on the California thing. Question again. GANNON: Do you remember how you heard about-- NIXON: Yes. GANNON: --the death of Robert Kennedy? NIXON: Yes. I was--I remember it particularly because I was interested in the California campaign. He had campaigned out there, after losing in Oregon, where I had seen him briefly. Because I had campaigned in Oregon and won heavily there, he had to win in California. And he had won. And I listened to it, and then I heard a report toward the--late in the evening--it was after midnight because of the time difference--and I heard that he had been shot. But the first reports weren' ; t all that discouraging. It indicated that he was under observation, as I recall, at the hospital. So I went to bed. The next morning, very early, Mrs. Nixon came in, and it' ; s one of the few times I' ; ve seen her cry. And she said, " ; That poor boy died." ; Bobby Kennedy had died. And I thought, " ; My God, not again!" ; And here this nut had finished him off, in each case an aberration--an aberration in the case of Oswald and an aberration in the case of the one that shot Bobby Kennedy. I particularly remember, too, going to the memorial service. And that' ; s when I told my friends, " ; Don' ; t underestimate Ted Kennedy." ; I think that' ; s the day he grew up. Before that, he' ; d been kind of a playboy, and he still played around a bit thereafter, as most people are quite aware. But, on the other hand, he was not considered to be a very serious person. But his eulogy was eloquent. He was a man by that time. I knew from then on he would be a formidable figure on the American political scene. GANNON: From most accounts, Lyndon Johnson was a very bitter and embittered man by the time he left the White House, almost paranoid about the--the suppor--the opponents who he felt had sabotaged him, the supporters who he felt had screwed him. Did you--did you see any of that in your dealings with him? NIXON: Well, yes. He let his hair down with me on occasion. That was one of the reasons, for example, that he told me that he couldn' ; t have been president unless he had J. Edgar Hoover head of the FBI, because Hoover was very important to him in terms of avoiding leaks, leaks coming from people that were supposed to have been loyal to him. Johnson had a very high standard of loyalty, incidentally. The story that illustrates that--a true story, I understand--appeared in a recent book. One of his aides came up to him and submitted a name for appointment to some position, and Johnson said, " ; Is he loyal?" ; And the aide responded, " ; Well, he appears to be loyal." ; And Johnson said, " ; Goddamn it, when I say loyal, I mean loyal. I want someone who' ; s so loyal that he' ; ll kiss my ass in Macy' ; s window and tell me it smells sweet. I want someone" ; --no. Let me start again. " ; When I say loyal, I mean loyal. I want someone who will kiss my ass in Macy' ; s window and tell me it sells--smells sweet." ; I' ; ve got to repeat it, because I missed something. Yeah. " ; When I say loyal, I mean loyal. I want someone that' ; ll kiss my ass in Macy' ; s window and tell me it smells sweet. I want his pecker in my pocket." ; GANNON: That' ; s loyal. NIXON: That' ; s loyal. But Johnson perhaps had reason to feel that way. After all, he not only had the problem of the Bobby Kennedy people, who deserted him after he had kept so many of them on after President Kennedy' ; s death and deserted him when Bobby Kennedy didn' ; t get the nod for vice president. But even when some of his own protégés left him, that must have hurt him very deeply, because he was a very proud man. Bill Moyers, for example--Moyers was practically his alter ego. Moyers, who, ironically, today is TV' ; s priest of higher morality as to--with regard to political activities and so forth--he was Johnson' ; s hit man. He was the one that supervised, on Johnson' ; s orders, an investigation of Goldwater' ; s staff to see if, as Johnson put it, there were any fags on the staff. The reason was that they had discovered that Walter Jenkins, Johnson' ; s top man, had a homosexual background. And he was the one--this is Moyers again--who supervised the taps on Martin Luther King, which were initiated by John Kennedy, and then also proceeded to help Johnson in the cover-up of that because it might be politically embarrassing for it to get out. Then when Moyers deserted him in 1967, ostensibly because of his disenchantment about the war, it must have had a terrible impact on Johnson. So I can imag--I can see why he would have been almost paranoiac about insisting on loyalty, even to the extreme that he described it. GANNON: One gets the impression that for the last months or year he was in the White House--that he was almost like a zombie. Was he effective, or was he vitiated by this kind of paranoia? NIXON: What happened to Johnson after he had reached the peak of 1964, the great [unintelligible]--the victories of the Great Society programs--1965, 1966--he started to go down after the midterm elections of 1966. What had happened there, briefly, is this. Johnson was unbeatable in ' ; 64 because up to the time Johnson became president in his own right, he was there always praising President Kennedy. As long as he was doing that, he got a magnificent press. He went to the grave. He did all the proper things. He had a very low profile. He was speaking always of President Kennedy and carrying out his mandate. After he was elected in his own right, he began to be Johnson, and the press began to be turned off. And then, after he dropped Bobby Kennedy, even more of them turned off. And then, when the war began to escalate and Johnson didn' ; t know what to do about it, it became even worse. And those three events combined to reduce Johnson' ; s popularity. And then he just started to flail around, and everything that he tried seemed to crumble in his hands. It wasn' ; t before the end of 1967 that he really, I think, gave up. What caused him to give up finally was when McCarthy didn' ; t win in New Hampshire. Many people think that Johnson was forced to resign because McCarthy beat him in New Hampshire. McCarthy didn' ; t beat him in New Hampshire. Johnson beat McCarthy, but Johnson--the fact that McCarthy even got that many votes, because he had contempt for McCarthy and his dovish views, discouraged him, and he just decided to bug out--drop out, I should say. From that time on, I think Johnson was sort of a pathetic figure. He wasn' ; t the Johnson I used to know. Oh, at times he' ; d have a burst and then he' ; d back down and so forth, but it was always deterioration from there on. And after the election it was downhill all the way. Lord Rosebery, in the nineteenth century, describing Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill' ; s father, who had terminal syphilis, once said that he died by inches in public. And so it was with Johnson. He began virtually to shrivel in public. Johnson himself described it in a rather poignant way. He said, " ; You know, President Kennedy was lucky. He was assassinated and it was over in a day. With me, it goes on day after day and it' ; s much more torturous." ; And I recall one thing that brought this home to me was when we had the situation with regard to the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Now, these Pentagon Papers that were going to come out--we tried to stop them from being published in the Times because we thought it would not serve the national interest. In fact, it was very harmful, because it disclosed a lot of things that, in my view, were very detrimental to our bringing the war to a successful conclusion as soon as possible. But they weren' ; t about our administration. The Pentagon Papers recounted what happened in the Johnson administration. And so we thought Johnson would join us in the lawsuit to keep The New York Times from publishing it. But Johnson said, " ; No." ; Talking to Bryce Harlow, he said, " ; I--there' ; s nothing we can do." ; He says, " ; All they' ; re trying to do in the media is to re-execute me." ; That' ; s the way Johnson felt, and I think perhaps the best indication of how disillusioned he was and how much he' ; d given up on his ability to control events, and particularly to do any good with the media, was when the advice he gave to me toward the last about what I could do about the media attacks that were getting rougher and rougher on the way. He says, " ; Oh, there' ; s nothing you can do about it. All you can do is to really hunker down like a jackass in a hailstorm." ; Now, that' ; s not Lyndon Johnson-- not the Lyndon Johnson I know. The Lyndon Johnson that I know would be a jackass that would kick his opponents right in the balls. GANNON: It' ; s--it' ; s been written that it was his desire--his need to be liked or to be loved that drove him to the excesses and in turn drove people away from him, and/or created impossible demands for them that they couldn' ; t possibly fulfill. NIXON: Johnson--Johnson was a very proud man. One of the reasons, for example, that I think he failed in his term at presidency was his refusal to get rid of many of the people he inherited from Kennedy. They weren' ; t his people. They didn' ; t agree with him. They didn' ; t want him to succeed. If he succeeded, it would make Kennedy look bad in comparison. But he didn' ; t do it for two reasons. One, because in the beginning he needed them. He needed the mantle of Kennedy in order to build himself up. But, two, he was just confident enough to think he could win them. He thought he could win the press. He knew that Kennedy had a good press, and he felt, quite correctly, that certainly in domestic issues he--Johnson--was keeping Kennedy' ; s promises. Kennedy was unable to do anything on civil rights. Johnson did it. And so it was in all the other great domestic programs that he carried forward. And so he thought, " ; Well, by God, I can win the press." ; And he kept fighting and fighting. He felt he could get people to love him, to like him, like they apparently had loved and liked Jack Kennedy, because he thought he was quite a fellow. And he just couldn' ; t do it. And one time, rather--he was talking to Dean Acheson, who was never anything but blunt, and he said to him, " ; Why is it--why is it that I can' ; t get people to like me?" ; And Acheson said, " ; Because you' ; re not a very likable man, Mr. President." ; GANNON: At--at the risk of being criticized for asking the fox to assess the interior decoration of the henhouse, how would you compare, say, the Truman scandals--the Five Percenters, the mink coats--the Johnson scandals--the--Bobby Baker, too--or, say, the Carter scandals, in a way, or the Abscam scandals which took place in the Carter administration, to the Watergate scandals? NIXON: Well, I think there' ; s a fundamental difference. The Watergate scandals alleged abuses of power to serve political purposes. The Truman scandals--the Five Percenter scandals, the Johnson scandals--the Bobby Baker case--and the money that was made by Johnson and some of his colleagues, and the Carter ones, to a certain extent-- Bert Lance, et cetera, et cetera--that involved the use of political power for financial gain. Now, that' ; s a very substantial difference. Neither can be justified, but, on the other hand, when you compare the two, you would have to say that, as far as Watergate was concerned, bad as it was, nobody gained anything financially except those that wrote books about it. It was for political purposes. GANNON: Largely because of your tapes, you have become known as the man who sort of brought the four-letter word to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Given some of Johnson' ; s tremendously colorful and vital but undeniably crude language and the language of the presidents you have known, does it gall you that you have been lumbered with this dubious distinction? NIXON: No. Nothing galls me. I mean, obviously, the Johnson tapes will be expurgated. The Kennedy tapes will be expurgated, and they should be. Let me tell you why. GANNON: Should yours be? NIXON: Of course. Of course. Let me tell you why. We have to realize that, first--let me begin by saying every president I have known swore privately. Eisenhower did--all the rest. None of them that I have known swore publicly. Now people say, " ; But that' ; s hypocritical." ; And the point is--not at all. If I may be very direct, you don’t go to the bathroom in the living room. Presidents, like anyone else, are human, and profanity comes forth when you' ; re frustrated, and, believe me, in that job sometimes you do get frustrated. I remember--already we' ; ve talked about how President Kennedy was blowing his stack about what happened at the Bay of Pigs, and, boy, he used words that I' ; ve never heard in that place before or since. But I understood it. I would have been frustrated, too, and I would have sworn [unintelligible]. Eisenhower--I remember the time that he was so angry as we got the election returns in 1956 and found that, although we had won in a landslide, we had failed to win the House and the Senate. And he says, " ; Those goddamn mossback Republicans! That' ; s the problem--we' ; ve got to have a modern Republican Party!" ; That' ; s the way he would talk. Now, look, why can' ; t we have all of that out so that everybody can see? And the answer is that, while presidents are human, people expect them to be more than human. People have images of their presidents, of their leaders. They want them--they want to keep those images. I want to keep them. I want a president to be able to have a private life, even to be able to swear now and then, to let his hair down. But from the standpoint of people, it' ; s very important that they see the best side of the man. President de Gaulle understood this as well as anybody. He recounted how, shortly after the fall of France--and he was that symbolic man who was going to bring France back, and he went to one of the French African colonies, and he remembered how moved he was. There was a huge, huge crowd-- surrounded his motorcade, and they shouted, " ; De Gaulle! De Gaulle! De Gaulle!" ; And he said, " ; At that moment I understood I was two people. I was this General de Gaulle, and I was Charles de Gaulle. And from that time on, I realized I must do nothing that would not be worthy in public of this General de Gaulle. So every time I did anything, I said, ' ; Would General de Gaulle approve of this, or that, or the other thing?' ; " ; And so it is with the president. And so I say, as far as I' ; m concerned, what a president' ; s private life is--it should be kept private. People don' ; t like profanity. They don' ; t like it in their families. They certainly don' ; t want to see it in their presidents. GANNON: A couple of months ago, you told me a story about--we were talking about Johnson. You told me about Johnson and a rattlesnake on his farm. NIXON: Oh, yeah. Well, Johnson had a--Johnson was a legendary figure. I mean, he was bigger than life. He had enormous appetites in every way--physical, et cetera. And in this particular instance, I remember that there was a story that appeared in the papers. We all remembered it. In fact, some of us used it, I think probably unfairly, in the 1966 campaign. Some woman reporter was bitchy enough to write it. She' ; d given him a ride--he' ; d given her a ride, I should say, in his car around the ranch. He used to like to get in that car and drive around his ranch--a huge ranch, you know. And he drove very fast. He did everything--he walked fast, he talked fast, drove fast. And he was driving this car and drinking beer at the same time, and she wrote that he was driving eighty miles an hour and drinking beer out of a can in a car. Well, it raised hell, of course, and Johnson raised hell with her, I' ; m sure. But, be that as it may, he, in driving around the ranch, he sometimes had the bad fortune to have the reporters go with him. Maybe it wasn' ; t bad fortune. Maybe he didn' ; t really care. At that point, he was pretty confident he was going to survive, and he had had two or three, apparently, out on the ranch. It was a hot day, and he stopped at the side of the road in order to relieve himself. And he went into some bushes there, and one of the reporters called out and says, " ; Mr. President, aren' ; t you afraid a rattlesnake might bite it?" ; He turned to him and said, " ; Hell, man, it is part rattlesnake." ; He also, of course, was big in every other way. I' ; ll never forget my surprise, actually, when I went into the Oval Office--I was never in the Oval Office while Johnson was president. I saw him in his bedroom for coffee one morning after a Gridiron d--Gridiron dinner in 1966. Never in the Oval Office--I was in the Oval Office only once after leaving as vice president and coming back as president. That was with President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. And I remembered so vividly President Kennedy there in a rocking chair, which, of course, I' ; d seen pictures of. So I go into the Oval Office after the election in 1968. Here' ; s President Johnson. He' ; s still got the rocking chair, and it' ; s twice as big as Kennedy' ; s! Of course, he was a bigger man. I remember, too, the first time I was on Air Force One. I walked in there, and I looked at the compartment where the president' ; s supposed to sit with his guests, and here was this huge elevated chair. It looked like a throne. And all the other chairs were sort of around it. So I had it taken out, and I was able to put in two extra chairs as a result of removing the huge Johnson throne chair. Now, understand, I do not say this critically of him, but that' ; s the way he was. He was a big man. He wanted bigger things. And another instance I remember so well--when I went to Europe the first time, when we were in London. We were to stay at Claridge' ; s Hotel. I' ; d stayed at Claridge' ; s many times. It' ; s one of the really great hotels of the world. And I' ; d had this same--what they called " ; presidential suite," ; or " ; king suite," ; or whatever, each time. And as I go in there, here I see the Filipino stewards around taking the bed out. I says, " ; What the hell are you doing?" ; " ; Oh, we' ; re removing the bed. We brought your bed from the White House to put in here." ; I said, " ; I don' ; t need that! Why don' ; t I use this bed?" ; " ; Oh, we always did that for President Johnson." ; Of course, Johnson wanted a big bed. He wasn' ; t going to be satisfied with the big beds at the Claridge' ; s. Well, I stopped that practice, at least. But that was Lyndon Johnson. GANNON: What were your personal relations with him like? NIXON: Personal relations were very good. I' ; m referring now to the period after I was president and after he had left. I kind of knew how to use a former president, having been a former vice president. He was very helpful to me, and I was, I think, very considerate of him. I went out to dedicate his library. I dedicated a grove to Mrs. Johnson in California. I had him and Mrs. Johnson to the White House on several occasions for lunch, for breakfast, et cetera--a church service. I had him briefed regularly, and it was worth doing. As a matter of fact, he became very supportive, particularly on the war issues. I remember so well during the 1972 campaign, he was appalled about McGovern, just absolutely appalled that he was the Democratic candidate, and he thought Shriver was a silly ass. And so, under the circumstances, you' ; d think he would endorse me, but he made a very interesting comment to Bryce Harlow. He says, " ; Well," ; he says, " ; I' ; m for him, but I' ; m not going to say anything public." ; He says, " ; After all, I' ; ve been sucking at the tit of the Democratic Party so long that I' ; m not going to let go now simply because the milk' ; s turned sour because of what the poor cow is eating." ; That' ; s the way Lyndon Johnson would put it, of course. GANNON: How did you hear about his death? NIXON: It was a very dramatic moment. It was--we were just holding and waiting to see whether or not the Vietnamese would sign the peace agreement which we had negotiated. And we learned it on the night of the 22nd, that the agreement signing would take place on the 23rd, and then the formal signing on the 27th when Secretary Rogers was to go over to Paris. And Henry Kissinger brought me the news that President Johnson had just died. And what concerned me about that was that I knew that above everything else in his final days he wanted to be sure that the war had been brought to an honorable conclusion, because he knew his place in history would be determined by that. And I wondered if he really knew, because we hadn' ; t announced anything yet. And I asked Kissinger later--I said, " ; Did he know?" ; And Kissinger said, " ; I think he did." ; He said, " ; He" ; --Kissinger says, " ; I went down to see him on the fifteenth to brief him, and I told him on the fifteenth that the Vietname--that President Nixon had ordered that the bombing be halted." ; And he said Johnson smiled. He said, " ; I know what that means. Nixon would never stop that bombing unless he had a deal." ; Now, there' ; s another reason Johnson said it. I remember a conversation I had with him back in 1969 at breakfast, and he was berating Harriman. He said, " ; That son-of-a-bitch Harriman told me twelve times when I stopped the bombing that if I' ; d only stop it he knew that the Russians would help and the Vietnamese would cooperate, and it didn' ; t do any good. Every single bombing halt was a terrible mistake." ; So, therefore, he got the message. He knew before he died that the long war that he had tried so desperately to bring to a conclusion but had only succeeded in escalating had been brought to a conclusion, and, of course, he could have felt then that maybe his place in history would be restored. GANNON: Looking back from, say, the perspective of the turn of the century, how will the man in the street in the year 2000 assess John Kennedy' ; s contribution to America and to world history? How will John Kennedy have made a difference? NIXON: Well, I think, really--that question is often put to me, which is-- rather than what the man in the street' ; s going to do, because who is the man in the street? That' ; s one of hundreds of millions and so forth. You usually hear this--what I think--rather fatuous question, " ; What is history going to say? How is he going to look in history?" ; and so forth. And here is something we have to understand about--what is history? How does history judge John Kennedy? How is history going to judge Lyndon Johnson? How is it going to judge Richard Nixon? That is beside the point. You' ; ve got to find out what history is, this impersonal history we talk about. I remember when, after I had resigned the presidency--I had made the resignation speech--Henry Kissinger walked over to the residence with me. And as we were walking along, he was rather emotional, and he said, " ; Because of your foreign policy, I am confident that you will be rated a great president in history." ; I said, " ; Henry, that depends on who writes the history." ; Winston Churchill understood that. Winston Churchill said, " ; History is going to treat me well, because I intend to write it." ; And he did. When we talk about history, what we have to recognize is that history is not a single impartial judge. The verdict of history is rendered by a jury of historians. And historians in the United States are overwhelmingly liberal and, to the extent that they have party affiliations, are overwhelmingly Democratic. And, in addition, because their bread-and-butter is style, they are suckers for style, obsessed with style. Style is more important to them than substance. Now, in answering the question with regard to what President Kennedy' ; s place in history will be, I would say it will be very good because historians have to be impressed by his style. He' ; s got to get double-A figures for style in every which way. They' ; ve got to be impressed by his charisma. Historians like charisma. As far as his record is concerned, they will gloss over that to an extent, because the record is not particularly impressive. He was not able to accomplish anything particularly domestically. Johnson was the one that carried through on the Kennedy promises. He was the performer. Kennedy was the promiser. And in foreign policy--the Kennedy foreign policy could only be described as being almost disastrous. Kennedy' ; s legacy is a Castro with a privileged sanctuary in Cuba and raising hell all over the world. As far as Vietnam was concerned, his legacy is the assassination of Diem, the musical chairs that followed, fifteen thousand combat troops assigned there, the beginning of a war that took years and years to end. But on balance, historians--not history, but historians--in that broad context will rate him very, very high. A British historian, Paul Johnson, makes the blunt statement that Kennedy was a weak president. I don' ; t agree with that. I think had he lived, that Kennedy would have become more Irish and less Harvard as he went along, and would have done a more effective job with regard to both Castro and Vietnam, and other things, than he' ; d done earlier. But not having lived, he will have to take, of course, historically speaking, some of the criticism which has been leveled at him for his failures, particularly in Cuba and in Vietnam. GANNON: From the same perspective--or the perspective of history, not from the man in the street--how will--how will Lyndon Johnson fare at the turn of the century? NIXON: Well, historians are turned off by Lyndon Johnson' ; s style, turned off partly because he' ; s got a Southern accent. Incidentally, I think Jimmy Carter has suffered from that, too. It' ; s not fair. Historians generally don' ; t--if they come from the South, they develop Harvard accents if they possibly can, the elitist--you know, that sort of approach to things in terms and it' ; s--the fashionable way to talk and to act and to write and so forth is not Southern, let' ; s face it. Not fair, but that' ; s the way it works. So they don' ; t like Johnson' ; s style. So that hurts him. They don' ; t like him in comparison to Kennedy. That hurts him. In terms of what he accomplished, they don' ; t like him because of the war--the war in Vietnam. And then, however, you' ; ve got to balance that by what he did. And what he did on the domestic scene was something that made a difference. And I refer to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Just as I could go to China, where Hubert Humphrey, the liberal, could not, so only Johnson could have gotten the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed--Johnson, a Southerner who had voted against civil rights during the 1950s, when I was presiding over the United States Senate. And that was his monumental achievement. He deserves great credit for that. And maybe by the turn of the century, honest historians--and there are some, I am sure, that will look back and say Johnson gets high marks for that, for doing what Kennedy promised but did not produce on the civil rights area. GANNON: How do you think Richard Nixon is going to fare? NIXON: Well, as far--as far as historians are concerned, again having in mind that most of them are liberal, most of them are Democrat in terms of party persuasion, and most of them are obsessed by style, I' ; m going to strike out on all three scores. I' ; m not a Democrat, I' ; m not liberal, and my style does not appeal to them. And so, under the circumstances, apart from Watergate, which of course will be a very big negative, the administration that I headed will not get the credit, perhaps, that it deserves for some great events that did make a difference. Henry Kissinger--at the time we went to China and at the time we ended the war in Vietnam, he' ; d come into the office and emote about his friends from Harvard. He said, " ; They can' ; t bear the thought that you did it. They can' ; t bear the thought that you did it." ; " ; Well," ; I said, " ; what difference does it make? It' ; ll look all right historically," ; and that, of course, is irrelevant now, but, nevertheless, when you look at the events, the actual accomplishments, they are not insignificant. The opening to China--that made a difference. It changed the world. The new relationship with the Soviet Union, the first arms control agreement--whether you like it or not, it made a difference. Ending the war in Vietnam and, during the balance of my presidency, not losing anything to the Communists--that made a difference. Reestablishing relations with Egypt, saving Israel in 1973, laying the foundation, therefore, for the Israeli-Egyptian rapprochement--that made a difference. Domestically--and many people are not aware of these domestic accomplishments because we' ; re primarily known for the foreign policy accomplishments--the most important achievement, without question, were the appointments to the Supreme Court. We left a lot of blood on the floor, but we changed history in the United States, and I think for the better, as a result of those four very, very good appointments. Next to that, and very next to it, very close to it, was the peaceful desegregation of Southern schools. That could not have been accomplished by anybody other than, I believe, a conservative who has credentials in the South and yet who also was strong for civil rights. Beyond that, I think as time goes on our cancer initiative may historically make a difference. It has made some already. What we did, for example, in environment and hunger I don' ; t think can be classified like that, because that would have happened anyway. We just happened to preside when it did happen. Revenue sharing--that principle might not have happened had we not done it, but some even question whether it should. But the overwhelming evidence would have to be that on China, on Russia, on Vietnam, on the Mideast, the Supreme Court--these things all made a difference. Now, that seems like a very formidable record. But on the negative side, as I say, we have the whole Watergate, which of course made a difference on the negative side. Now how is that all going to sort out as far as historians are concerned? Negatively. Negatively because most historians are negative toward the individual, toward me, just as they are toward Lyndon Johnson. He isn' ; t going to get a good shake historically from historians. And neither will I. GANNON: In 1968 in Miami, when you announced that your choice for vice president was Spiro Agnew, there was a resounding chorus--" ; Spiro who?" ; Looking back now, was that--was that the right choice? NIXON: Well, you know, I would be expected to say that it was, and I do say that it was. First of all, I had to have somebody who was a bridge between North and South. I did not want a Southerner because I didn' ; t have a qualified Southerner. If I' ; d have had a qualified one, I' ; d have put him on there, because it was time for the South to be on that ticket--the Republican ticket. But Agnew, coming from a border state, met that. Second, Agnew, we forget now, had very good credentials as a " ; moderate" ; Republican. He had defeated a racist Democrat. He was highly praised in The New York Times for having done so after he was elected governor in Maryland, and so--and in terms of Agnew himself, he was an able man. He was intelligent. He was a well-trained lawyer. He was a fighter for what he believed and served well as vice president. Now, let' ; s look at the negatives there, and let' ; s put it in the context, since we' ; re speaking historically here. Agnew, unfortunately, had been governor of Maryland. Maryland, realistically, for as long as anybody can remember, had been a state in which contractors doing business with the state were asked to and gladly complied with provisions to kick back part of amounts they got for their contracts into funds to be used by the governor for his political purposes and was, to an extent, since the governor wasn' ; t paid that much, even to take care of some of his personal expenses. Now, that wasn' ; t limited even to Maryland. That' ; s happened in many other states. Adlai Stevenson, according to John Barlow Martin, his biographer, had a fund of sixty thousand dollars which was taken from contractors doing business with the state of Illinois which was used to pay for some of his charitable contributions, used to pay for parties that he gave for his staff, a dance he gave for some of his children, and so forth and so on. It was considered perfectly proper in his case. Agnew did it. Now, there was nothing to indicate that Agnew ever did anything as vice president for which he took money, but because some of the money that was supposed to be contributed by the contractors was delivered to him after he became vice president--so he was forced to resign. Was it a double standard? Yes. Why was it worse in Agnew' ; s case? Because he had the temerity to take on the press. There was no one, even more than I---more than I, Agnew was a target. Agnew was a target because he' ; d been effective against the press, and, understandably, once they caught him in what they thought was a politically vulnerable activity, they hung him out to dry. But I think in terms of that very time, and up to the time that occurred, Agnew conducted himself in a dignified and effective--as vice president. GANNON: If it' ; s common knowledge that this is the way--that this is politics as usual in Maryland and other states in that region, or of that kind, couldn' ; t you have, or shouldn' ; t you have, or did you anticipate that he had this problem or might have this problem? NIXON: Well, I didn' ; t anticipate it because I did not dream that he would have continued to accept the contributions after he became vice president. See, that' ; s what made it--that' ; s what gave it the problem, receiving the contribution while he was vice president. GANNON: So to that extent you--he deserved what happened? NIXON: No. I--I--no. I still think it was a double standard. I think he deserved, certainly, some condemnation, but I do not believe that he deserved the almost hysteria that went on in the U.S. attorney' ; s office and everything else, that he had committed the crime of the century. It had happened in Illinois, and I' ; m sure it happened in a lot of other states. It doesn' ; t happen in California, I can assure us. They haven' ; t grown up to that sort of thing there yet, but I' ; ll bet you it' ; s still going on in some of these states. GANNON: It wasn' ; t--this was on a new level in that it--whatever may have been happening in state houses, this was the White House, or the Office of the Vice President. This raised it to a national level. NIXON: Oh, if the contribution ever--the contribution had been earned, shall we say--the contractor had been--hands laid on him to make the contribution before he ever got, however, to vice president. It wasn' ; t done while he was vice president. It was delivered. The money was delivered. It just wasn' ; t--but the services performed for the money, i.e. the contractor, occurred long before he became vice president of the United States. GANNON: If you felt it was a bum rap, why did you let him go, or why didn’t you stop him from going? NIXON: There was nothing that we could do to stop him. With the problems that I had at that particular time, there was nothing I could do for him. I only wish I' ; d been stronger. If I had been, I would have stopped him. GANNON: How do you think history will look back and assess Mrs. Nixon? NIXON: I think quite well. After some of my candid comments about the press, I think they are going to have a great problem in not giving her her due. I think the fact that, although she has done nothing in the public arena since we left Washington--that she' ; s still rated in most of the polls among the top--most admired women in the world, in the Good Housekeeping poll and so forth--that' ; s got to tell us something, that [unintelligible] legacy. Let me see. I don' ; t know about history, but I know how I would rate her. I' ; ve known a lot of First Ladies and, incidentally, I' ; ve admired them and respected each in his own way. Each contributed in her own way. The first one I knew was Mrs. Herbert Hoover, a very lovely lady. I knew her when we were both serving on the board of Whittier College. But looking at Mrs. Nixon, I think these are the characteristics that sort of set her apart. Once, first, she has an unusual combination--beauty and brains. Now, I have found that, generally speaking, girls that are beautiful are--don' ; t have much upstairs, and those that have brains are not very pretty. I know there' ; s a great argument in television today about whether or not the television networks are hiring people--girls, women--simply because they are good-looking. And of course they are. Take, for example, Jeane Kirkpatrick at the United Nations, probably the most intelligent women, or one of the most intelligent in the U.S., and very articulate. Do you think she' ; d ever have a chance to be on a network show? No way! She isn' ; t good-looking enough. She is, in my view, but she' ; d never make it. Of course, they' ; d pick a--but Mrs. Nixon, without question, had great beauty, but she' ; s also very smart--cum laude graduate of the University of Southern California, worked her way through on a fellowship, orphaned when she was seventeen years of age, took care of her brothers, did the cooking and so forth and so on, a hard life in those early years in order to get through school and get an education, taught school, married, continued to work, made it possible for me to enter politics, and so forth. That' ; s enough of the background. But apart from the beauty and the brains and the background, there' ; s another characteristic that' ; s a little harder to describe. I' ; ll never forget when I was in China in 1978, we were riding a train from a city in the southern part of China up to Peking, and there was a Chinese woman, a young woman, who was my guide and translator. She was the tough, partisan type, as they always are when they assign them to you--not very feminine at all. And she said to me as we were riding along in the train, in the compartment--she said, " ; How is Mrs. Nixon?" ; And I said, " ; Well, she' ; s recovering very well." ; And she said, " ; We in China have great respect for her. She is such a strong person, such a strong person." ; And what she meant by that was that here you had someone who had developed strength from the time she was in school, who had a tough life when she was growing up, who showed great strength in my political career, in the fund crisis way back in 1952, in Caracas when she sat there just as cool as if it were a Sunday afternoon tea rather than a life-threatening crisis, who went through the defeat in 1960, the defeat in 1962, the resignation, and still just glided along as the lady that she is. I think that impressed the Chinese. It certainly impressed me. And then another thing I would say about Mrs. Nixon. Now, the women' ; s libbers are not going to like what I' ; m going to say now. They’re not going to like it at all. But I remember something I read in Winston Churchill' ; s great contemporaries about Asquith, the British prime minister in the early years of World War I. He said his greatest is his children. Her greatest legacy are her children. She' ; s been a magnificent mother. It' ; s hard for children of celebrities, particularly of presidents and vice presidents, to grow up a normal life. People who are children of celebrities turn out to be groupies or drugs, alcohol, or even worse. But Tricia and Julie are remarkable young ladies, and I was away a lot, and she certainly gets the credit for that. So I would say that, all in all, because of her brains, her beauty--which of course she inherited--because of her great strength, because she was a very, very fine example as far as being a mother is concerned--on all this she deserves credit. Now let' ; s look at the downside, however. The ladies in the press--some of the men as well, who covered--criticized Mrs. Nixon very cruelly, and this hurt her, incidentally. It shouldn' ; t have, but it did. She should have considered the source, but they said, " ; It' ; s Plastic Pat," ; and why? Because she never said anything. She didn' ; t make speeches. She didn’t make an ass of herself in public. That' ; s what they want--they want a story, you know--falling down drunk or some other damned thing. But she wouldn' ; t do that. And they said, " ; Why didn' ; t she make speeches? That shows she doesn' ; t have a mind of her own." ; That’s not true at all. She' ; s just smart. She knows you can' ; t have two voices out of the White House. She had ideas, and she expressed privately. And another thing it shows, which these critics among the ladies in the press--what they wouldn' ; t understand and they won' ; t appreciate at all--she was self-assured and self-confident. She didn' ; t have such a big ego that she had to go out and prove that she had a career in her own right. To her, what was important was the career of her husband. She served as First Lady with all of these thoughts in mind, and she set an example that was splendid. Her travels abroad, all of these--her performances in the White House. And I would say, finally, as a campaigner. The one thing that brought that home to me--back in 1952 I was speaking, I remember, out in Kansas, and Harry Darby, who served for a short time in the Senate, was introducing Mrs. Nixon--Pat, as he called her--to a big, huge rally there. And he said, " ; You know, our candidate for vice president, Senator Nixon, he' ; s controversial, but everybody loves Pat." ; And I thought that was a high compliment to a great campaigner. GANNON: You had mentioned a couple of days ago an interesting insight that de Gaulle had into the difference between Kennedy and Johnson. NIXON: De Gaulle put it-- GANNON: Or--can you do it in a sentence? NIXON: De Gaulle--in referring to Kennedy and Johnson, de Gaulle made, I thought, a very profound comment. He said, " ; Kennedy was a mask on the face of America. Johnson was America." ; I must say, incidentally, on Johnson, another recollection of him that always brings a smile to my face was the time we had breakfast in 1969. He was bitching to me about an article in Look Magazine about his brother. He says, " ; You know, my brother' ; s sort of a black sheep." ; He says, " ; Every family' ; s got one." ; He said, " ; I know, for example," ; he said, " ; that I had this contractor friend down in Texas, and," ; he said, " ; he had a no-good brother," ; he says, " ; who just couldn' ; t hold a job. And his mother came to him and begged him to hire that dumb brother and give him a job." ; He said, " ; Oh, well, he finally relented, and he did. You know what he did? Well, he gave him a job driving a load of dynamite across the state. Well, the fellow stopped at a roadside bar, had six beers, propositioned the waitress to marry him, and then drove on down the road. And you know what happened? He drove smack dab into a telephone pole." ; GANNON: Do--do you think of yourself as old? NIXON: Not yet, but that' ; s--that' ; s because I' ; ve survived so long. GANNON: De Gaulle said old age is a shipwreck. Do you see yourself as, since--if you don' ; t see yourself as old, you don' ; t see yourself as shipwrecked, but do you see yourself towards shoals or sandbars? NIXON: I' ; m very fatalistic. I think when I--when I leave the scene, it will be suddenly. Let me say I don' ; t want to got and don' ; t intend to go gradually. GANNON: De Gaulle, as early as twenty or more years, as early as 1950, had laid out an elaborate--although a very simple--but an elaborate plan for his funeral--where he wanted to be buried, who he wanted to be there, what he wanted his epitaph to be. Have you done that? NIXON: No, I have--I--I' ; ve been giving the Protocol Office, I guess they call it, at the White House--I' ; ve given them fits, because they' ; ve been after me time and time and again to approve some darned plan. And I' ; m not going to do it. I just don' ; t like to look forward that far. GANNON: In 1968, as you' ; ve said, when you were considering whether or not to run for president, Tricia said that the reason you should run was that if you didn' ; t you wouldn' ; t have anything to live for. And you' ; ve said that that was true at the time. What do you have to live for now? NIXON: Well, what a former president can contribute is, I would say, marginal. I mean, we--you know, we get a lot of guff to the effect that, well, everybody' ; s hanging on every word that a former president says, and a--former presidents are great national assets. And that' ; s all a bunch of nonsense--not really true. A former president can contribute, not because he' ; s a former president, but if he knows something, a little bit more than somebody else. Having been president, it may give you temporarily a forum. But once they find out there' ; s nothing up here, or that you' ; ve got nothing to say, they quite paying attention to you. So I would say that as long as I can keep current with events and have something to say that could make a difference, I may influence the course of events. Once I decide that I no longer have the energy or maybe the understanding to comment on current events in a way that could influence the course of events, influence decisions made by the president, secretary of state, and whatever--once that occurs, then I will quietly recede from the political scene. But as far as the future is concerned, I have, again, a rather philosophical and almost fatalistic view about it. Walter Annenberg, our former ambassador to England, once told me, shortly after I resigned the presidency and I was down a bit, understandably, and he was trying to buck me up--and he said, " ; Remember, life is ninety-nine rounds, ninety-nine rounds, and whoever' ; s standing at the end is going to win." ; Well, I' ; m still standing at seventy, and I expect to stand again, I trust, for a few more years. Maybe ninety-nine rounds. GANNON: Looking back on the last seventy years, do you count the last thirty-six or -seven hours we' ; ve spend together in the studio as one of the highest of the high points? NIXON: Well, let me say, we' ; ve discussed the high points, but whether I' ; d put this at a high point I' ; m not sure. I wonder if we' ; ve missed something on Johnson here. GANNON: [Begins to speak] NIXON: Let' ; s see. Well, that' ; s enough. We' ; re through? GANNON: Do you--anything you want to-- NIXON: What was it--Johnson--let' ; s see--what other--let' ; s see. I know--you covered all the Johnson points you want? GANNON: I think we hit--yeah. NIXON: Good. That' ; s enough. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Hold position one second. NIXON: You got--our pictures. I think we trotted through that in good shape. GANNON: Yes. A lot of ground. OFF SCREEN VOICE: Stay right there for one second. I need to do a couple of [unintelligible] shots. GANNON: If-- NIXON: Oh--sanitizing the record. GANNON: You got that. You said that. You talked about expurgating all the stuff. NIXON: Maybe I did. I didn' ; t think so. GANNON: You want to do it? NIXON: [unintelligible]--his warts are bigger than-- GANNON: Roger? NIXON: If you' ; ve got-- OFF SCREEN VOICE: Yes? NIXON: If they can bring back the [unintelligible]. GANNON: Can we come back for one point? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Yes. Switch the lights, please. Keep the tapes rolling [unintelligible]. NIXON: I think it' ; s just as well. [Unintelligible.] I' ; d like to make it again. GANNON: All right. NIXON: All right, I' ; ll finish. GANNON: Be specific. NIXON: Three minutes, right? OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay, here we go. GANNON: It seems that the kind of vibrant Johnson you' ; ve described hasn' ; t come across, and the record is that he spent a lot of time while he was still alive expurgating his own memoirs. Does this bother you? NIXON: I understand that Johnson not only expurda--I understand that Johnson not only expurgated his memoirs but that since then those that are running his library and have his papers are expurgating his tapes, his memoirs, and everything else. They' ; re going to sanitize him so that he comes through like every bland, moderate, so-called " ; mushy" ; moderate politician. And I would say that they' ; re rendering him a terrible disservice. He' ; s just going to be a homogenized type like those that populate the House and Senate and many of the state houses today. Johnson was different, and they should let people see him as he was, warts and all, because I' ; ll say one thing for sure--Johnson' ; s warts were bigger than most of those in the political scene today. GANNON: We' ; ve made it sound like it was almost inevitable that you would win the 1968 nomination for president as a result of this comeback. But was that the case? Did you have a battle for the nomination? NIXON: Oh, yes. Nelson Rockefeller was in there, in and out, over and over again, and he had a huge amount of money. He spent more in that nomination period than we spent for the entire campaign in 1968. And then also Ronald Reagan was making a little run at it from the coast. He was not in it so much, but his people were pushing him hard. I' ; ll never forget what brought this home. After we won the nomination and Nelson Rockefeller called to congratulate me, and he always gets a harsh voice--he' ; s a very enthusiastic type on election night. Every time I' ; ve talked to him, his voice is hoarse. A voice that was very hoarse said, " ; Congratulations, Dick. Congratulations." ; And he said--I said, " ; Well, you ran a good race, Governor. You gave us a little bit of a scare." ; He said, " ; Yeah, well, Ronnie didn' ; t do quite as well as we hoped he would." ; GANNON: What was that? He-- THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE GANNON: --meant Reagan? NIXON: Oh, yeah. He meant, of course, that his only hope was to have Reagan pick up some Southern delegates and bring in California, and he' ; d hold New York. Between the two of them, they would deny me the majority, and then they' ; d fight it out for the nomination. GANNON: Was--was either Rockefeller or Reagan a real threat then? NIXON: Never. Never. The mistake that he made--Reagan never intended to get into the primaries. But I said right at the beginning that I was going to enter every one of the primaries. The mistake that he made was not to go into the primaries. That party wasn' ; t about to nominate somebody who wouldn' ; t test himself in the primaries. He wanted to be nominated by the bosses and to claim, on the one hand, that he had the support of the people, and yet refusing to allow the people to decide in primaries whether he had that kind of support--it totally destroyed him. I entered the primaries. I won every one of them. So it was inevitable that he would lose. [Inaudible.] GANNON: Bebe Rebozo you' ; ve described at many times as your closest friend, or one of your closest friends. At many of the most crucial events you' ; ve described, he was there. I think a lot of people have the idea of him as sort of a--almost a sinister figure, not to put it too--in too extreme a way. What is he like, and why is he your best friend? NIXON: Well, what--what Bebe Rebozo is--in terms of the media, is, as you say--he sounds like a Latin gangster, like a second-generation Al Capone--foreign bank accounts, Bahamian banks, this, that and the other thing. It' ; s all totally false, and it would not have happened unless he had been my friend. He knows that, and he' ; s a very strong man to have taken this terrible abuse. They' ; ve lied about him. They continue to misrepresent him, and they do it because he' ; s my friend, just as they go after my family and others, because they happen to be my family. That' ; s part of the--that' ; s part of the business, of course. Where any conservative is involved, they will cut at you any way they can--your friends, your associates. In Rebozo' ; s case, he' ; s impeccably honest. Let me tell you--if he had done what Bert Lance did with his bank, making--borrowing for special purposes, making special loans, and so forth--he' ; d have been in Leavenworth for life! And, of course, he' ; s never had--been--he' ; s been accused of many things, and indicted for nothing, because they' ; ve never had a case. And, thank God, now they realize they didn' ; t have a case. GANNON: You' ; ve described yourself as a loner, though, and what is it in personal terms that draws you to Bebe Rebozo as a friend, just in personal terms? NIXON: Well, he' ; s a--he' ; s gregarious. He' ; s a great storyteller. He' ; s--he and Bob Abplanalp, another one of my friends, are very much alike in that way. They love to trade stories. They kid each other a lot. But I think the reason that I like him and I like Bob--that kind of person--is that we never discuss politics. GANNON: What do you discuss? NIXON: Oh, we discuss business, business matters. We' ; ll talk about the--everything from food to beverages to business to sports--everything except the political area. Sometimes we get into politics. We have a lot of--a lot of fun talking about the media, our favorite television programs, our favorite commentators, or commentatress. GANNON: That must be a short conversation. NIXON: No. Time we get through, we have created something that is quite interesting there. No, we talk about a few things like that, but the point is-- GANNON: Do you talk about women? NIXON: --all of us--not very often. That isn' ; t the primary interest. I think all of our conversation is--most of our conversation is really more in the non-political area. It' ; s in the kind of area that a group of men, for example, at the Touchdown Club would talk about. A great deal of talk about sports and that sort of thing, but mainly--I think this is the important thing--each one of us knows when we were together, as we were in Europe recently and as we have been recently in Florida--each one of them knows that he can let his hair down without worrying about anything being said. And there are very few people in this world you can do that with, because everybody, deep, down, is a gossip--deep, deep down. Some restrain it, but most just can' ; t help, particularly when they' ; re dealing with a celebrity, to say, " ; Gee, let me tell you about this or that or the other thing." ; And both Bebe and Bob--they realize that a friendship with someone from a high office--the first requisite is let him talk, let him let his hair down. GANNON: I hope you have felt that way here, because we' ; re going to keep all this real quiet. Parties interested in production or commercial use of the interview should contact the Brown Media Archives & ; Peabody Awards Collection. This material is copyrighted by Raiford Communications, Inc. video 0 http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix/bmac-coll http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0396/bmac
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Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection
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63 minutes
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<a href="http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0396/bmac">http://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0396/bmac</a>
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https://purl.libs.uga.edu/brown/gannix_0396/ohms
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Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, September 7, 1983, part 4.
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gannix_0396
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Richard Nixon
Frank Gannon
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video
oral histories
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1983-09-07
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United States
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moving image
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Richard B. Russell, Jr. Oral History Project
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United States--Officials and employees
State governments--Officials and employees
Politics and Public Policy
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The Richard B. Russell, Jr. Oral History Project consists of 175 oral history interviews relating to the personal and political life of Richard B. Russell. Interviewees include members of the Russell family, his staff and interns, other senators and public figures, and friends. The primary interviewer was Hugh Cates, a public relations manager at Southern Bell and secretary of the Russell Foundation (1977-1981). Most of the interviews were recorded between 1971 and 1979, but the majority during 1971 after Senator Russell's death. Other interviewers include: William Stueck, Karen Kelly, Barboura Raesly, Robert G. Stephens, Jr., Dwight L. Freshley, Tom Jackson, Angus Hepburn, and Russell Library staff. Interviews provide insight into Senator Russell's political career as State Representative, Governor, and U.S. Senator, his views on various topics such as civil rights and Vietnam, and his personality and family life.<br /><br /><a href="http://georgiaoralhistory.libs.uga.edu/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=&range=&collection=23&type=&tags=OHMS&featured=&subcollections=0&subcollections=1&submit_search=Search+for+items">View all OHMS indexed interviews in this collection here.</a>
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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1971-2002
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Oral histories
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RBRL216RBROH
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Georgia
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Transcript, 53 pages
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Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies
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RBRL216RBROH-111
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Interview with Richard Nixon, April 13, 1978
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1978-04-13
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Richard Nixon
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Interview with United States President Richard Nixon. Topics include Central Intelligence Agency; Civil rights; Cloture; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Lyndon B. Johnson; Labor law and legislation; Presidential election (1952); U.S. Foreign relations; Senate Committee on Appropriations.
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Foreign relations
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United States
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oral histories
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sound