Ford, the Pardon, and RN's Last Campaign

For next Tuesday, Schoen, ch. 7-8, and afterword.

Thursday class next week will be brief.

Ford coins a phrase.



Footnote #1091 of the Mueller report (p. 178):

A possible remedy through impeachment for abuses of power would not substitute for potential criminal liability after a President leaves office. Impeachment would remove a President from office, but would not address the underlying culpability of the conduct or serve the usual purposes of the criminal law. Indeed, the Impeachment Judgment Clause recognizes that criminal law plays an independent role in addressing an official's conduct, distinct from the political remedy of impeachment. See U.S. CONST. ART.l, § 3, cl. 7. Impeachment is also a drastic and rarely invoked remedy, and Congress is not restricted to relying only on impeachment, rather than making criminal law applicable to a former President, as OLC has recognized. A Sitting President's Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution, 24 Op. O.L.C. at 255 ("Recognizing an immunity from prosecution for a sitting President would not preclude such prosecution once the President 's term is over or he is otherwise removed from office by resignation or impeachment.").

Ford pardons Nixon.  The proclamation:

I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

Ford takes the extraordinary step of testifying:


The people disapprove

Fast forward to 2001:  Ford receives the JFK Profile in Courage Award for the pardon.  He says:

President Kennedy understood that courage is not something to be gauged in a poll or located in a focus group. No advisor can spin it. No historian can backdate it. For, in the age-old contest between popularity and principle, only those willing to lose for their convictions are deserving of posterity's approval.

Ted Kennedy(!!) says:

I was one of those who spoke out against his action then. But time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us. He eminently deserves this award, and we are proud of his achievement.

After the pardon,  phlebitis nearly killed RN, then it nearly bankrupted him.

 The 1974 election and the recession of 1973-1975

Watergate babies

Nixon Goes to China (again) in 1976.  (Schoen 304)

Frost/Nixon (see Schoen 305-307)






RN  -- the book -- was ... controversial (Schoen 307-308)




From Leaders (1982):

At first glance, it may seem surprising that so many of the great leader during this period were so old. And yet on reflection it is not surprising. Many had a "wilderness" period. The insights and wisdom they gained during that period, and the strength they developed in fighting back from it, were key elements in the greatness they demonstrated later.

• Nixon meets Churchill
• Nixon meets de Gaulle

Newsweek 1986 (Schoen 315)

Meet the Press in 1988



1988:  Work starts on the Nixon Library  Two years later, it opens -- amid controversy, of course.

Nixon advises Bush 41 on the Gulf War


Nixon returns (by video) to a GOP convention:



But the campaign was not entirely successful:

Downfall

 

FOR THURSDAY, SCHOEN CH. 10.

REVIEW FROM LAST TIME:

Nixon Checks Out

February 6, 1974 House of Representatives authorizes House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether grounds exist for the impeachment of President Nixon.

February 22, 1974:  The House Judiciary Committee issues a report on constitutional grounds for impeachment.  One of the writers of the report is Hillary Rodham.

March 1, 1974:  The Watergate Road Map -- “Grand Jury Report and Recommendation Concerning Transmission of Evidence to the House of Representatives” -- goes to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia under seal. Chief Judge John Sirica then provides it to the House Judiciary Committee.  It does not become public until October 11, 2018.

April 16, 1974 Special Prosecutor issues subpoena for 64 White House tapes.

April 30, 1974 President Nixon submits tape transcripts to House Judiciary Committee.

July 24, 1974 Supreme Court unanimously upholds Special Prosecutor's subpoena for tapes for Watergate trial.

July 27, 1974 House Judiciary Committee adopts article I of impeachment resolution charging President with obstruction of investigation of Watergate break‑in.

July 29, 1974 House Judiciary Committee adopts article II of impeachment resolution charging President with misuse of powers and violation of his oath of office.

July 30, 1974 House Judiciary Committee adopts article III of impeachment resolution, charging the President with failure to comply with House subpoenas.

The articles of impeachment

Garrett Graff in Politico:

Moreover, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger recalled years later that in the final days of the Nixon presidency he had issued an unprecedented set of orders: If the president gave any nuclear launch order, military commanders should check with either him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger before executing them. Schlesinger feared that the president, who seemed depressed and was drinking heavily, might order Armageddon. Nixon himself had stoked official fears during a meeting with congressmen during which he reportedly said, “I can go in my office and pick up a telephone, and in 25 minutes, millions of people will be dead.” Senator Alan Cranston had phoned Schlesinger, warning about “the need for keeping a berserk president from plunging us into a holocaust.”

August 5, 1974:  Rep. Charles Wiggins (R-CA), Nixon's ablest defender on the House Judiciary Committee, says that the smoking gun tape has convinced him to support impeachment.

August 6, 1974: At the regular Senate Republican Conference lunch, Goldwater says: "There are only so many lies you can take, and now there has been one too many. Nixon should get his ass out of the White House -- today!"

August 7, 1974, Goldwater goes to the White House with House GOP Leader John Rhodes and Senate GOP Leader Hugh Scott. (Start around 4:00)

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August 9, 1974 President Richard Nixon resigns.




The farewell:  watch from 11:00 to 9:30



September 8, 1974 President Gerald Ford pardons former President Nixon.

Watergate and the Fall, Part II

FOR NEXT TUESDAY:  

• Hoff, ch. 9-10
• Matthew N. Beckmann, "Did Nixon Quit Before He Resigned?" Research and Politics April-June 2017, 1-7, at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053168017704800 and at Sakai.

Review

Theories about the Break-in (Hoff ch. 10) -- including a lurid theory about John Dean.

Antisemitism and Mark Felt (Hoff, p. 321)

The role of the Kennedy family

• Fear of Teddy
• Archibald Cox and the special prosecutor "charter" (Matthews p. 327)

October 1973 Yom Kippur War  Airlift and Defcon 3

October 12, 1973:  Nixon announces his intention to nominate Gerald Ford as vice president.

October 19, 1973 President Nixon offers Stennis a compromise on the tapes; that is, Senator John Stennis (D‑Miss.) would review tapes and present the Special Prosecutor with summaries.

October 20, 1973 Archibald Cox refuses to accept the Stennis compromise. President Nixon orders Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox, but Richardson refuses and resigns in protest. Acting Attorney GeneralRobert Bork fires Cox. These events come to be known as the "SaturdayNight Massacre."  And once again, everything circles back to the Cold War:

Mr. Richardson recalls that the first thing Mr. Nixon said when he entered the Oval Office to resign was a reference to Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader.

 

“Brezhnev would never understand it if I let Cox defy my instructions,” the President declared.

 

“I'm sorry that you insist on putting your personal commitments ahead of the public interest,” he quoted Mr. Nixon as saying.

          

October 23, 1973 President Nixon agrees to hand over tapes to comply with subpoena

October 26, 1973 press conference

November 1, 1973 Leon Jaworski named Special Prosecutor.

November 17, 1973  Nixon speaks to AP managing editors

November 21, 1973 Senate Committee announces discovery of 18 1/2 minute gap on tape of Nixon‑Haldeman conversation of June 20,1972.

December 6, 1973 White House chief of staff Alexander M. Haig Jr. testifies that he and White House lawyers had discussed fears that "some sinister force" erased one of President Nixon's subpoenaed Watergate tapes.

December 6, 1973:  Ford takes the oath as vice president.

And RN checks out

Final Days (more on Tuesday)

• Kissinger & Schlesinger
• Smoking gun aftermath
• Resignation
• Farewell
• Coda: Ford Pardon

Watergate and the Fall, Part I

Domestic Intelligence Origins

Hoover

• J. Edgar Hoover had bugged King aide Stanley Levison.  In October 63, RFK approves wiretaps on MLK's home and SCLC office.  Couldn't say no to Hoover.    
• Hoover dies on May 5, 1972.  L. Patrick Gray succeeds him.  Mark Felt does not

Intelligence Abuses

• E. Howard Hunt spied on Goldwater's headquarters for CIA
• LBJ had FBI bug Goldwater's campaign plane.
• How did LBJ know of RN's Chennault connection?
• IRS audited Nixon in 63, FBI bugged him in 68.
• The Pentagon Papers and the Plumbers

 The 1972 campaign

• From last time:  Nixon did not have a commanding lead at first.
• Nixon holds RNC at arm's length; tries to distance himself. CREEP runs the campaign.
• Old campaign finance rules allow a lot of money to come in: slack resources lead to mischief

"Follow the Money" -- Something that Deep Throat Did Not Actually Say

Prelude 1967:  States complete ratification of the 25th Amendment

May 28, 1972 Electronic surveillance ("bugging") equipment is installed at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building.

June 17, 1972 Five men are arrested while attempting to repair the surveillance equipment at Democratic National Committee headquarters.

June 23, 1972:  Nixon and Haldeman discuss how to obstruct justice.  This conversation will end Nixon's presidency.

  

August 1, 1972;  The Post reports that a $25k check made out to CREEP Midwest Finance Chair Ken Dahlberg ended up in a bank account of Watergate burglar Bernard Barker.

August 30, 1972 President Nixon announces that John Dean has completed an investigation into the Watergate buggings and that no one from the White House is involved.

September 15, 1972 Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord, Jr., and Frank Sturgis are indicted for their roles in the June break‑in.

October 10, 1972: According to the Post, FBI agents have established that the Watergate bugging incident stemmed  from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage directed by officials of the White House and CREEP

January 8, 1973 Watergate break‑in trial opens. Hunt pleads guilty (January 11); Barker, Sturgis, Martinez, and Gonzalez plead guilty (January 15); Liddy and McCord are convicted on all counts of break‑in indictment (January 30).

February 7, 1973 U.S. Senate creates Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities.

March 17, 1973: Watergate burglar McCord writes a letter to Judge John Sirica, claiming that some of his testimony was perjured under pressure and that the burglary was not a CIA operation, but had involved other government officials, thereby leading the investigation to the White House.

April 17, 1973 President Nixon announces that members of the White House staff will appear before the Senate Committee and promises major new developments in investigation and real progress toward finding truth.

April 23, 1973 White House issues statement denying President had prior knowledge of Watergate affair.

April 30, 1973 White House staff members H. R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman, and John Dean resign.  Nixon then gets hammered, calls Haldeman.

May 17, 1973 Senate Committee begins public hearings.

May 25, 1973 Archibald Cox sworn in as Special Prosecutor. 

July 7, 1973 President Nixon informs Senate Committee that he will not appear to testify nor grant access to Presidential files.

July 16, 1973 Alexander Butterfield informs Senate Committeeof White House taping system.

July 23, 1973 Senate Committee and Special Prosecutor Cox subpoena White House tapes and documents to investigate cover‑up.

July 25, 1973 President Nixon refuses to comply with Cox subpoena.

August 9, 1973 Senate Committee files suit against Nixon for failure to comply with subpoena.

September 29, 1973:  Vice President Agnew proclaims: "I will not resign if indicted!  I will not resigned if indicted!"

October 10, 1973:  Agnew resigns.

Final Essay, Spring 2021

 Pick one:

1. Compare and contrast Watergate with either the first or second impeachment of Trump. What are the factual, legal, and political similarities and differences? 
2. Choose any substantial post-presidential speech, article, or book chapter by Nixon.  What was he trying to accomplish?  Did he accurately portray the record?  In your answer, give careful consideration to his long effort at rehabilitation.
3. Go to The American Presidency Project and search what one of Nixon's successors said about him in public.  (You may find that Democrats tended to say more.)  Explain this president's discussions of Nixon.  In your answer, consider the president's political environment.
4. Analyze a dramatic (not documentary) movie or TV show in which Nixon was a substantial character or subject.  What was the point of the characterization?  How accurate was it?  Did it offer insight into Nixon, make a misleading impression, or both?

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page. 
• Submit papers as Word documents, not pdfs.
• Cite your sources. Use Turabian/Chicago endnotes. 
• Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays to the Sakai dropbox by 11:59 PM, Friday, May 7. I reserve the right to dock papers one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.  

Nixon and Baseball

 This article talks about how Nixon used baseball as a tool to push his policy agenda. Nixon and the MLB commissioner maintained an ongoing partnership to fight drug use. The MLB produced brochures and videos denouncing drugs which aimed to “alert our young people to the drug menace.” 

Nixon also used baseball to build support for the military. He had POWs and servicemen throw out the ceremonial first pitch at numerous games to highlight the "White House’s determination to bring [soldiers] home as quickly as possible."

The article shows that sports and politics have always been linked and that Nixon knew the power that sports have.

https://www.pinstripealley.com/2021/4/19/22391030/baseball-history-richard-nixon-mlb-kuhn-yankees-patriotism-sports-politics-vietnam-war-on-drugs

Nixon and Prince Philip

 An article about a Nixon and Prince Philip connection: 

Throughout his decades in public life, Prince Philip was known for putting his royal foot in his mouth with occasional off-the-cuff remarks that could be embarrassing. But his faux pas at a White House dinner with President Richard Nixon in 1969 was enough for Philip to actually lose sleep.

In a handwritten note to the president uncovered by archivists at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, the Duke of Edinburgh wrote to “humbly apologize” for failing to toast the president’s health as dictated by protocol during a “stag” dinner in his honor.

The dinner came a day after Nixon delivered his famous “silent majority” speech in which he implored a national audience to unite behind the continuing war in Vietnam until his administration could achieve “peace with honor.” Byron said top aide H.R. Haldeman, who later went to prison for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, noted in his diary how absolutely joyful the president was that night, given that his address had been positively received.

 https://apnews.com/article/politics-prince-philip-health-richard-nixon-coronavirus-pandemic-5157a606fd9711a81ab7de77ba5577e0 

Nixon, Party Politics, and 1972

 Things to remember about 1972

• First presidential election with 18-year-old vote.
• First presidential election with national exit poll data.
• First nomination contest of the reform era.  Muskie was originally the front-runner and seemed likely to give Nixon a very competitive race.
• Wallace ran in Democratic primaries until the shooting.
• Eagleton had to withdraw from the D ticket.
• Summits in USSR and China in midyear.
• Vietnam: "peace is at hand" (10/27/72)
• And an insert in Social Security checks:

Schoen 174:

As president, Nixon did, in fact, do much for the Right—but not in the way that conservatives would have expected. Moving leftward domestically, economically, and internationally, he first frustrated, then alienated, and finally galvanized American conservatives to action. Much of the political organizing and grassroots activism that forged today's Right got started during the Nixon years and the Ford and Carter years that followed.

Tevi Troy:

Steering too far in the direction of independence risks provoking presidential disapproval. In fact, it was the displeasure of one White House aide with the think tanks of the time that led to creation of the Heritage Foundation in the first place. In 1970, a small delegation of conservatives met with the Nixon White House staffer Lyn Nofziger to discuss how to get research support for conservative ideas in Congress. When one of the participants mentioned the American Enterprise Institute, Nofziger had a visceral reaction. Paul Weyrich, who was at the meeting, recalled that Nofziger said: “‘AEI? AEI—I'll tell you about AEI.’ And he got up, walked over to a bookcase, took a study off the shelf and literally blew the dust—I mean, you saw this cloud of dust. And he said, ‘That's what they're good for. They're good for libraries.’” The beer mogul Joseph Coors, who was also at the meeting, decided as a result to back the initiative that became the Heritage Foundation. 

The origins of Heritage

Polarization: Democrats Move Left, Then Republicans Move Right

1972 Democratic Platform

.It is time now to rethink and reorder the institutions of this country so that everyone—women, blacks, Spanish-speaking, Puerto Ricans, Indians, the young and the old—can participate in the decision-making process inherent in the democratic heritage to which we aspire. We must restructure the social, political and economic relationships throughout the entire society in order to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth and power.

The Democratic Party in 1972 is committed to resuming the march toward equality; to enforcing the laws supporting court decisions and enacting new legal rights as necessary, to assuring every American true opportunity, to bringing about a more equal distribution of power, income and wealth and equal and uniform enforcement in all states and territories of civil rights statutes and acts.

Gary Hart, Right from the Start

Nixon attack ad against McGovern:

Dukakis (Schoen 202-203)



McGovern meets with the head of his campaign in Texas:





Voting Patterns in Congress

Nixon, Culture, and Party Politics

 Pat Buchanan (Schoen 92):

What the Left never understood, or would never accept, is that Nixon brought the South into the Republican column not because he shared their views on segregation or civil rights.  He did not.  What he shared was the South’s contempt for a liberal press and hypocritical Democratic Party that had coexisted happily with Dixiecrats for a century but got religion when conservative Republicans began to steal the South away from them.

The Goldwater-Nixon party in which I enlisted was not a segregationist party but a conservative party.  Virtually every segregationist in the eleven states of the old Confederacy, and every Klansman from 1865 to 1965, belonged to the party of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman.

Democratic Congressional Party Strength in the South

(House: dotted line. Senate: solid line)

Military enlistments by region

Democrats for Nixon ad in 1972

Chutzpah: Nixon campaigns against a guaranteed income!

Culture:  Richard Nixon Meets Johnny Cash.  The song that RN requested (Cash declined because he did not know it well enough to perform it on short notice.)  Welfare Cadillac

RN welcomes Merle Haggard (see the lyrics)

Hardhats

New York Steamfitters leader George Daly hands a ceremonial hard hat to President Nixon. Beside Daly is Peter Brennan, the president of the 200,000‐member New York trades union council. Nixon honored twenty-three union leaders on May 26, 1970. (Oliver Atkins/The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum)

Nixon and the conservatives (ch. 5)

Buckley and China

Reagan on foreign policy (start at one minute)

Nixon and the Equal Rights Amendment

Politics, Culture, and the 1970s

 

============== 

 Nixon turns right on welfare: hardhats approve:

  ================================================= 

You do not have to watch the whole thing, but catch "Okie from Muskogee"at 4:50. Listen to the lyrics.

   

Billy Graham, father of Franklin Graham

 

RN on the World Stage

 Revisiting Economics

The "New Economic Policy" and Bretton Woods

Wage-Price Controls (Schoen 45-47):  A Rare Admission of Error

What did America reap from its brief fling with economic controls?  The August 15, 1971 decision to impose them was politically necessary and immensely popular in the short run.  But in the long run I believe that it was wrong.  The piper must always be paid, and there was an unquestionably high price for tampering with the orthodox economic mechanisms.

It also turned one mid-level aide sharply to the right:

It's a part of my attitude towards governments involved in the economy, [one that] goes back to having been involved in wage/price controls during the Nixon years. I was the assistant director of the Cost of Living Council, supervising 3,000 agents trying to enforce wage/price controls. I always remember a debate we had. This was in 1972 during the reelection campaign, the Nixon administration, when the public was convinced that food prices were going up, so the political debate was whether or not we should re-impose a freeze on food prices. But in reality, if you looked at the consumer price index, the food component, it hadn't budged in six months. There had been absolutely no increase in food prices whatsoever. But we had a meeting in the Cabinet room where we argued about whether or not we should put controls back on food prices. And at one point President Nixon spoke up and quoted... "Sometimes in order to be a statesman you have to be a politician for a while. And when the people see an imaginary river out there, the politician doesn't say, 'There's no river there'; he builds an imaginary bridge over the imaginary river. Therefore we ought to control food prices." That struck me. It captured a lot of the dangers, even though best intentions can get you in trouble with respect to too much government involvement in the community.... But especially it's dangerous when you get to the point where you're working off misperceptions and trying to build a government policy that's not based on fact and on reality and on truth, but rather on the myth that somehow there's an imaginary river there. You don't say to the public, "There's no river there"; you say, "Okay, we'll put an imaginary bridge over your imaginary river  -- Richard B. Cheney

Third World Politics

• Biafra -- an intelligence failure (Hoff, 245-246)
• Chile:  CIA material and National Security Archive

The Shah

Why so cozy?

• Nixon was there when we helped install the Shah (Hoff 206-262)
• Iran kept on producing and exporting throughout 1973-1974 OPEC embargo. 
•  Look at a map.

The Yom Kippur War and the Embargo

DEFCON 3 (Hoff p. 268)

Nukes?

Nixon and the Vietnam War

 A MAP

VIETNAM WAR TIMELINE

• 1954 French defeated at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Agreed to an international Conference on the future of Vietnam.
• 1954 Geneva Conference ‑ Vietnam divided along the 17th Parallel:
• 1954 South‑East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) established to protect the independence of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
• 1955 Last French troops leave Vietnam.
• 1956‑60 US sends arms and millions of dollars to South Vietnam, fearing a take‑over by the Communist North.
• 1961 President Kennedy orders first US military assistance to South Vietnam.
• 1963 Kennedy assassinated. Johnson becomes President.
• 1964 North Vietnamese attack on US ships in Gulf of Tonkin.
• 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed, allowing US attacks on North Vietnam.
• 1965 US Air Force starts bombing targets in North Vietnam.
• 1965 Internal DOD memo on US war aims:
• 70% --To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).
  20%--To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
  10%--To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
• 1967 Anti‑war demonstrations begin in the USA.
• 1968 Tet offensive inflicts heavy casualties on US army. LBJ drops out of reelection race.
• 1968 Nixon elected President promising "peace with honor."  The Chennault Affair
• 1969 US fighting troops reach their maximum strength. Peace talks begin.
• 1969 - President Nixon orders a "random selection" lottery system for selecting men to serve in
• the war in Vietnam, changing the previous system of drafting according to age. 
• 1969 - Operation MENU -- covert bombings in Cambodia (Hoff 215-218)
• 1969 -- October and November Moratorium demonstrations (Hoff 227-213)
• 1970 US troops and planes attack Communist bases in Cambodia. Kent State killings.
• 1971 -- Release of Pentagon Papers
• 1972 North Vietnamese Army Eastertide Offensive. Most US troops withdrawn.
• Jane Fonda visits North Vietnam
• Christmas Bombing
• 1973 US and North Vietnam sign a peace agreement. Last US combat troops leave.
• 1974 Nixon resigns following the Watergate scandal.
• 1975 South Vietnam surrenders to North Vietnam and the country is reunited. Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, renamed Ho Chi Minh City.
• 1977 President Carter pardons Vietnam‑era draft evaders.

Casualties

Inductions by Year -- The last draftee enters the Army on June 30, 1973.

Silent Majority -- Conclusion starts at 29:00



Nixon's approval rating went from 55 to 64 percent.


Cambodia






Nixon and the "Decent Interval"

• August 3, 1972
• October 6, 1972

The decent interval ended in April 1975.

Vietnam Video

 Silent Majority - Listen starting at 29:00

Cambodia

Kissinger Brown-noses Nixon, dumps on South Vietnam

Nixon admits the limits of bombing:



Nixon and the "Decent Interval"

President Nixon and the Cold War

NIXON AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS ...  and Liddy

Kissinger redux

• 1950-54:  Harvard Ph.D. study. Kissinger's A World Restored -- a published version of his Harvard dissertation -- lays out his philosophy.  Kissinger dedicates it to Professor William Y. Elliott, father of CMC professor Ward Elliott and Pomona professor David Elliott.
• 1954-1968:  Harvard Gov Dept
• 1969 -- gains power in National Security Decision Memorandum 2 (Hoff 160)
• National Security Study Memoranda (Hoff 161) -- click here to read them.

The Nixon Doctrine

FOR MUCH OF THE COLD WAR, AMERICANS WERE NOT CONFIDENT THAT THE USSR WOULD CRUMBLE.

Whittaker Chambers on abandoning his life as a Soviet spy: "I wanted my wife to realize clearly one long-term penalty, for herself and for the children, of the step I was taking. I said: `You know, we are leaving the winning world for the losing world.' ... Almost nothing that I have observed, or that has happened to me since, has made me think that I was wrong about that forecast."

Nixon on ABM and SALT

They [the Soviets] deployed more than a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) while we deployed none; they added several nuclear missile-firing submarines to their Navy while we added none; and they deployed forty new ABMs around Moscow. We knew that even as the debate in Congress over an American ABM was raging, the Soviets had initiated work on more ICBMs and ABMs, as well as major new radar systems in conjunction with their deployment; they were also building additional submarine missiles. I felt that tactically we needed the ABM as a bargaining chip for negotiations with the Soviets: they already had an ABM system, so if we went into negotiations without one we might have to give up something else, perhaps something more vital. In that sense, we had to have it in order to be able to agree to forgo it. I tried to persuade Congress that what the ABM vote represented was really a philosophical turning point in America’s strategic credibility.

From the State Dept:

The administration ultimately won the ABM battle. Congress did not actually pass the bill authorizing spending on defense projects, including the ABM, until November 9. But the Senate effectively approved Safeguard on August 6 [1969], when, by votes of 51–49 and 50–50, it defeated amendments that, if adopted, would have prohibited all funding for the system’s deployment. Vice President Agnew cast the tie-breaking ballot in the latter vote. The next day Nixon wrote a memorandum in which he directed Kissinger, Ehrlichman, and H.R. Haldeman to get “out the true story,” which was that the ABM victory was a result and reflection of the “Nixon Style.” The President urged them to “point out that RN made the decision to tackle ABM head on against the advice of most of his major advisers, including particularly the State Department.”

... 

In his memoirs, Nixon concluded, “I am absolutely convinced that had we lost the ABM battle in the Senate, we would not have been able to negotiate the first nuclear arms control agreement in Moscow in 1972.” (Nixon, RN, page 418)

Kissinger and Brezhnev (Hoff 184)

Dictator Humor:




Soviet Jews:  take your pick on which is the real Nixon



RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, page 876:

I have never had any illusions about the brutally repressive nature of Soviet society.  But I knew that the more public pressure we placed on Soviet leaders, the more intransigent they would become…. I felt that we could accomplish a great deal more on the Jewish emigration issue when we were talking with the Soviets than when we were not.  Although we did not publicly challenge the Soviet contention that these questions involved Soviet internal affairs, both Kissinger and I raised them privately with Brezhnev, Gromyko, and Dobrynin. This approach brought results…. [T]he statistics are proof of undeniable success: from 1968 to 1971 only 15,000 Jews were allowed to emigrate.  In 1972 alone, however, the number jumped to 31,400.  In 1973, the last full year of my presidency, nearly 35,000 were permitted to leave.

One of the emigrants was a young Felix Sater

One of the many "Holy Crap!" moments of the Nixon years:

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