Nixon's Secret

Copyright © 2014 by Roger Stone with Mike Colapietro

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-603-4
eISBN: 978-1-63330-060-0

Printed in the United States of America

To my beloved wife, Nydia, who supports me when I am right and when I am wrong, and my beloved dogs, Milhous, Taft, Dewey, Pee Wee, Buster, and Oscar. All noble dogs.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Anyone writing a book about Richard Nixon is blessed with an abundance of sources. The most durable figure in American politics in the twentieth century, Nixon has been the subject of fascination and public debate for six and a half decades. The literature runs the gamut from devastating psychological profiles such as Fawn M. Brodie’s
Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character
and Arthur Woodstone’s
Nixon’s Head
, which can find no redeemable qualities in Nixon, and Lord Conrad Black’s
Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full
, which can find no fault in the man.

In order to grasp the full scope of Nixon and to carefully balance both his attributes and his faults, one must delve deeply into the literature on our thirty-seventh president. William Safire’s
Before the Fall
is required reading for anyone who wants to understand Nixon, as is Raymond K. Price’s
With Nixon
. The three-volume biography of Nixon by historian Stephen Ambrose presents a fine and balanced portrait of Nixon and his times. The fact that Ambrose wrote an excellent multivolume biography of Dwight Eisenhower gave Ambrose additional insight into the complicated relationship between Ike and Dick.
The New York Times
reporter Tom Wicker’s
One of Us
has the same balance and perspective.

I am particularly indebted to Nixon law partner Leonard Garment for his iconoclastic view of Nixon as reflected in
Crazy Rhythm
and
In Search of Deep Throat: The Greatest Political Mystery of Our Time
.

Jules Witcover is perhaps the best reporter on the 1968 campaign with his much overlooked
The Year the Dream Died
, his
The Resurrection of Richard Nixon,
and his more recent
Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew
. Witcover’s shrewd insights and eye for color make him one of the best political reporters of our time.

Generally speaking, the books by Theodore White on US presidential elections are close to worthless. White, an affable man, was mesmerized by the stylish and dashing John Kennedy. White in his seminal
The Making of the President, 1960
would weave a narrative in which Kennedy is a star and Nixon is a black-hatted villain. White bought into JFK’s expensively promoted image of style, grace, and intellectualism. Kennedy’s young and carefully dressed wife and his beautiful young children were part of the mystique. White wondered why the Nixon entourage would treat him coolly when he joined the Nixon campaign tour wearing a Kennedy button. Fortunately three authors have written retrospectives on the 1960 campaign, which put the photo-finish election in better perspective. First among these is David Pietrusza’s
1960—LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies
. Also invaluable for a more balanced assessment of that race is Professor Edmund F. Kallina Jr.’s
Kennedy v. Nixon: The Presidential Election of 1960,
although the good professor underestimates the important role of organized crime in stealing votes for Kennedy.
The Kennedy Brothers
by former Arizona Secretary of State Richard D. Mahoney is the definitive account of the efforts of the Chicago mob to intimidate voters in that city as well as the mob’s earlier role in the West Virginia primary. Also required reading for a better understanding of the 1960 election is W. J. Rorabaugh’s
The Real Making of the President.

Because of the circumstances of his death and the effects on him by his brother’s assassination, public awareness of Robert F. Kennedy is more vague today. Because of Robert Kennedy’s tactics in the 1960 election, he is an extraordinary factor in the Nixon narrative. I relied upon the aforementioned
The Kennedy Brothers
by Richard D. Mahoney as well as Jeffrey K. Smith’s
Bad Blood: Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, and the Tumultuous 1960s
and Jeff Shesol’s
Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy and the Feud that Defined a Decade
. Robert Kennedy was among the most ruthless political operators of the 1960s, a fact you won’t find in Arthur Schlesinger’s
Robert Kennedy and His Times
.

Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter J. Anthony Lukas, in his stunning book
Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years,
bores in on several areas of Watergate and the Nixon administration where knowledge is scant, including the role of Robert Bennett and his CIA front the Mullen Company in the break-in, the 1969–71 wire tapping on Nixon’s aides, the Howard Hughes–Nixon relationship, the Saturday night massacre, and the connection between the Watergate break-in and a high-end house of prostitution operating out of the Columbia Plaza Apartments only blocks from the Watergate.

Although most Nixon loyalists heap abuse on investigative journalist Anthony Summers book
The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon
, I found it both fascinating and readable. Don Fulsom’s
Nixon’s Dark Secrets
has an agenda but is also valuable. The reporting of Dan E. Moldea is invaluable, particularly regarding Nixon’s long and complicated relationship with Teamster leader James “Jimmy” Hoffa.

I am, however, particularly indebted to four ground-breaking journalists who have had the courage and tenacity to examine the accepted Watergate narrative and poke substantial holes in it.
Secret Agenda
by Jim Hougan is the important first cut at permeating the many falsehoods the public accepts about Watergate.

In their book
Silent Coup
, Leonard Colodny and Robert Gettlin advanced the narrative first uncovered by Hougan. Working with Tom Shachtman, Colodny’s
Forty Years War
outlined in graphic detail the foreign policy hard-liners attempts to undo Nixon’s policy of détente. Fox News White House Correspondent James Rosen’s biography of Nixon Attorney General John N. Mitchell,
The Strong Man
, fifteen years in the writing, is a vital corrective for many of the myths of Watergate. A must-read is also veteran journalist Phil Stanford’s
White House Call Girl,
which breaks important new ground in the Watergate narrative.

The public can more accurately understand what really transpired in Watergate through the writing and scholarship of former White House lawyer Geoff Shepard, who has exhaustively examined the words and actions of former White House Counsel John Dean and has written a devastating critique of Dean’s most recent book,
The Nixon Defense
. This analysis is included in this volume as Appendix 5.

Beyond these authors as well as many others, I am indebted to Craig Shirley, Michael Caputo, former
Reader’s Digest
Washington Editor Bill Schulz, Jeffrey S. Bell, Douglas Caddy, Ed Cox, Scott and Sonia Kaiser, John Taylor, Andrew Cettina, Travis Irvine, Sharon Kaplan, Dianne Thorne, Robert Morrow, William Maloney, and Roger Ailes. I am indebted to our publisher Tony Lyons of Skyhorse Publishing, a man of uncommon courage, my editors Steve Price and Krishan Trotman, and of course, my coauthor Mike Colapietro, who labored without complaint to make our deadlines.

Roger Stone

Miami Beach, Florida

INTRODUCTION

NIXON’S THE ONE!

“A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.”

—Richard Nixon
1

I stood in the rain at Nixon’s funeral. I was given a color-coded badge that assigned me to sit with the immediate family and friends. Forty-two thousand people filed past his casket.
2
The line had at one point been as long as three miles.
3
As the shiny black hearse sped away, preceded by California Highway Patrol motorcycles, thousands more people thronged the streets in the rain to catch a glimpse of the casket containing one of the most powerful politicians of the twentieth century. I reflected on the Nixon I knew—or rather, the Nixon he wanted me to know, the Nixon he chose to show me: “The Man in the Arena,” as he would call it.