Nixon's Secret (18 page)

Los Angeles accountant Phillip Reiner, who had served as one of the middlemen in the Hughes transaction, tipped off the Kennedys. Reiner, who had been terminated by the accounting firm that handled the Hughes business, saw an opportunity to make money. After the accountant met with Robert Kennedy and received a $100,000 payment, his former office was robbed. The accounting firm filed a burglary report with the Los Angeles Police Department, but the perpetrator was never apprehended.

Supposedly, in return for the Hughes funds Nixon had arranged the approval of giant defense contracts and interceded with Eisenhower’s Justice Department on Hughes’ behalf regarding antitrust issues. There was no evidence of this then, and none has ever surfaced since, but the revelation of the unusual loan undermined Nixon’s campaign just as he was gaining ground.
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The Kennedy men sought to plant the loan story in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
and
Time
magazine in the final days of the campaign, but neither news outlet would publish the story without documented corroboration. With time running out, the Kennedys turned to sworn Nixon enemies Drew Pearson and his associate Jack Anderson, whose
Washington Post
syndicated column had been fiercely critical of Nixon during his vice presidential years.

Kennedy lawyer James McInerney contacted Anderson and handed him documents revealing that Hughes had sent $205,000 through intermediaries to the Nixon family. Armed with the purloined documents documenting the loan, Pearson and Anderson broke the controversial story in their syndicated column on October 26, just one week before Election Day. Although their column was generally carried by seven hundred newspapers, it is notable that the majority of them declined to run the last-minute attack. A number of newspapers did carry the story, however, and Nixon believed the revelation of the Hughes loan was a major factor in his narrow loss.

Indeed, the Hughes matter vexed Nixon and hardened his hatred of reporters who raised it. When AP later reported that a reporter had tipped JFK that the Hughes loan story was coming, he would write me:

Incidentally, the January 14, 1971 memo to Haldeman which was the lead of the AP story was in fact not news. Both Haldeman and Dean had the memo in their books!

If anyone had any doubt that the media was trying to help Kennedy, his note with regard to the Hughes loan story should disabuse them. In all of my campaigns, I can never think of a case where a member of the press—even one friendly to us—leaked a story in advance to us so that we could exploit it.

While I know that you have to disagree, I still believe that the best way for a conservative to handle the media is to treat them with “courteous contempt.” As you may recall, I made this point in one of my press conferences. One of the reporters asked if I hated the press. I answered, “No.” “Love and hate have one thing in common. You must respect the individual involved.” I regret that there are very few members of the fourth estate who deserve respect as objective, fair reporters.
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After being blitzed by the Kennedy machine Nixon wrote:

We were faced in 1960 by an organization that had equal dedication to ours and unlimited money, that was led by the most ruthless group of political operatives ever mobilized for a presidential campaign. Kennedy’s organization approached campaign dirty tricks with a roguish relish and carried them off with an insouciance that captivated many politicians overcame the critical faculties of many reporters . . . From this point on I had the wisdom and wariness of someone who had been burned by the power of the Kennedys and their money and by the license they were given by the media. I vowed that I would never again enter an election at a disadvantage by being vulnerable to them—or anyone—on the level of political tactics.
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The burglary to acquire loan documents that fueled an attack on Nixon was among many surreptitious and illegal break-ins during the 1960 campaign. A private detective named John Leon claimed McInerney retained him to steal the Hughes-Nixon loan documents. Leon also concluded from a conversation with colleagues the day after the first Nixon-Kennedy debate that Kennedy’s men “successfully bugged the Nixon space or tapped his phones prior to the television debate.”
20

In 1973, Leon produced five sworn affidavits from former FBI agents and DC police officers who said they had bugged Nixon’s suite at the Ward Park Sheraton where he prepared for his second debate. Several of them also admitted to using electronic eavesdropping devices.

Leon was among the country’s earliest experts in the use and development of the lie detector. Leon would identify former CIA officer John Frank, congressional investigator Edward M. Jones, and Joseph Shimon, a former inspector for the Washington Police Department, who all came forward with sworn affidavits claiming that RFK had ordered the bugging of Nixon’s room. They all worked for Carmine Bellino, one of Robert Kennedy’s retinue of operatives.

Investigator Joseph Shimon told of how he had been approached by Kennedy operative Oliver W. Angelone, a former FBI agent. Angelone said that he was working for Carmine Bellino and needed his help to gain access to the two top floors of the Wardman Park Hotel just before they were occupied by Nixon on the eve of the Nixon-Kennedy television debate.

Edward Murray Jones, then living in the Philippines, said in his affidavit that he had been assigned by Bellino to tail individuals at Washington National Airport and in downtown Washington to the hotel.
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Leon said he was retained by Washington attorney James M. McInerney, the same man who brokered the deal for information leading to the break-in at Howard Hughes’ accountant’s office to steal the Hughes Nixon loan documents.

When JFK seemed to anticipate Nixon’s thrusts in the debate, Angeleone told Leon “Jonesy [the team’s wire man] had done his job.”
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They also admitted to electronic eavesdropping at the Republican National Committee. Bellino was fired as an investigator for the Senate Watergate Committee when his involvement in the 1960 allegations became public. Bellino denied having any role at all.

Strangely, Leon died only hours before a scheduled press conference to charge that the Democrats had wiretapped Nixon’s campaign suite in 1960 and had used electronic surveillance devices on officials at the Republican National Committee. The weight of the evidence indicated that Robert Kennedy wiretapped the Nixon campaign in 1960 and, as we shall see, would do so again in 1962.

It is understandable, therefore, why Nixon would believe that buggings and black bag break-ins were standard operating procedure in the political realm. He had been wiretapped and had information stolen from this camp. His doctor’s office was infiltrated as well as damaged by the break-in at the Hughes accountant’s office. Nixon vowed never to be caught unprepared again.

I would later become friendly with Bobby’s chief “dirty trickster” Paul Corbin. Corbin was a hard-bitten former Communist and ex–union organizer. Although personally dedicated to Bob Kennedy, Corbin was a man without scruples while at the same time enormously resourceful. “We managed to get a million pieces of anti-literature mailed to Catholic homes in Wisconsin,” Corbin would tell me when I joined him for a friendly game of poker at the home of a mutual friend. “We made it look like it came from Humphrey,” he said, alluding to Kennedy’s opponent in the crucial Wisconsin primary. Corbin also reminisced about a charge that the Kennedys had trumped up against Humphrey in West Virginia. Robert Kennedy convinced Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., son of the New Dealer, to attack Humphrey as a draft dodger who had fraudulently used an issue to avoid military service. FDR initially resisted the order but due to his difficult financial circumstances would ultimately agree to make the accusation.
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There was only one problem. It was a lie. Humphrey was furious, and it would ruin Roosevelt’s political career. “We got a flyer to every VFW and American Legion Post in the state,” chortled Corbin. “Hubert never knew what hit him.”

Unlike the Kennedys, who had a fierce battle to win the Democratic nomination, Nixon was never in true danger of being challenged for the 1960 Republican presidential nomination. Nixon would, however, fly unannounced to New York to meet with his rival Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who demanded concessions in the 1960s platform pertaining to both civil rights and defense spending.

In an effort to paper over his rift with Rockefeller, Nixon would agree to some fairly innocuous language changes, which he then imposed on the platform committee chaired by Bell and Howell exec Charles “Chuck” Percy, who would run a losing race for governor of Illinois before being elected to the US Senate. The outcry from the party’s conservative wing was immediate. “It’s the Munich of the Republic Party,” said Senator Barry Goldwater.
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The maneuver did not endear Nixon to grassroots party conservatives to whom Rockefeller seemed a big-state, big-spending liberal. Ironically, Rockefeller was pushing a platform plank that called for sharp increases in defense spending, which Nixon privately supported, but which was anathema to the budget-conscious Eisenhower.

Nixon’s eight-year service to Eisenhower and the need for Eisenhower’s help and support were severely limiting. This situation was exacerbated by a highly developed Democratic campaign theme first espoused by Senator Stuart Symington and then adopted by both Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy that a “missile gap” existed between the United States and the Soviet Union and that the Soviets were pulling ahead in nuclear armament superiority. Eisenhower, with access to real intelligence information, knew the charge was bogus but never effectively refuted it. Nixon was reduced to standing by while Kennedy effectively utilized the fear of a nation to call for a steep increase in America’s offensive nuclear capability. “Those who oppose these expenditures are taking a chance on our very survival as a nation,” declared Kennedy.
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Americans would learn after the election that there was no missile gap and that reports of Soviet advances were wildly exaggerated.

From the beginning Nixon faced a more difficult path to the White House in collecting the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Nixon needed to win at least four of the nine states with the largest numbers of electoral votes. Texas was problematic for Nixon because of Lyndon Johnson and his well-oiled Democrat-dominated political machine, which was adept at vote stealing and election fraud. The Texas GOP, still in its infancy, was nonexistent outside of a few suburban areas like Ft. Worth, Dallas, and Houston.

New York looked tough for Nixon because of its heavily Roman Catholic vote, and Nixon knew he could not count on the Rockefeller machine. Nixon also faced uphill climbs in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, where Republican state organizations were weak and Democratic governors held sway. In Illinois, the Republicans were strong, but there was an unpopular Republican governor running for a controversial third term and a weak US Senate candidate. New Jersey was in play. Ohio and California were winnable, but they were not guaranteed. Nixon never solved this Electoral College dilemma and had difficulty in deciding where his resources should be concentrated,
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on the big Northern industrial states or . . . should he make a play for the Deep South?

Nixon faced a geographic dilemma that did not confront the Democrats. Would he contest the large Northern industrial states where there were existing Republican organizations or would he roll the dice on making inroads into Dixie where there were plenty of conservative voters but party organization was virtually non-existent? Out of this dilemma was born Nixon’s foolhardy pledge to visit all fifty states, theoretically devoting time to every region in the country.

Nixon made this stunning pledge at the Chicago convention. When sidelined with a knee injury that required hospitalization after September 1, 1960, Nixon had a perfect excuse to abandon his fifty-state campaign pledge. While campaigning in Tennessee, Nixon had been surged by an enthusiastic crowd of voters and bumped his knee getting into his limousine. The leg swelled, and Nixon applied ice. In a television interview with Jack Paar, Nixon could be seen flinching when the host put his hand on the vice president’s knee. Doctors at Walter Reed hospital diagnosed a virulent infection that required intensive medication and weeks in bed.

To be out of the game for two weeks was Nixon’s worst nightmare. Now, his fifty-state campaign pledge was more problematic, as he had too few days to travel to all of the places he would be required to visit. Indeed, the final days would have him leave the lower fifty to visit Alaska, a state in which he held a seventeen point lead. Nixon’s advisors begged him to scrap his fifty-state campaign pledge, but with the support of wife Pat, Nixon kept his word. It was a costly mistake. Nixon was forced to visit small states that he had securely locked up prior to his unfortunate debilitation, at the same time trying to concentrate on big states. By contrast, Kennedy campaigned relentlessly in ten target states and rarely touched down in smaller states where the Democratic ticket was out in front.

Nixon’s fifty-state pledge locked the exhausted candidate into a grueling physical schedule set further back by his knee injury. JFK also second-guessed his scheduling when his final week’s drive took him to New York, where he enjoyed a comfortable lead, instead of California, which was close. JFK’s first instinct was correct: Nixon carried California only when the Republican-leaning absentee ballots were counted.
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The other strategic dilemma facing Nixon was the question of whether to concentrate on the black vote or the white southern vote. Nixon’s civil rights record was impeccable. Dr. Martin Luther King had personally thanked Nixon for rounding up the Republican votes in the Senate for the 1957 Civil Rights Bill. Eisenhower had run well with black voters. Nixon had opposed and worked against the jury trial amendment LBJ had dropped in the 1957 Civil Rights Act as a “poison pill.” Kennedy had voted for Johnson’s amendment. Nixon was keenly aware that the New Deal Coalition that included segregationists in the South, African Americans in the North, and big city Catholic machines, was beginning to fray. Nixon had to decide between making a play for blacks in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois or white Democrats in the needed border states of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Carolinas as well as a foray into the Deep South. JFK, whose civil rights record was weak and who had little following among civil rights leaders, moved to make the decision moot. The big-city machines had long mined the “Negro vote” and were adept at getting Kennedy’s message out to these voters.