Nixon's Secret (36 page)

Oklahoma Governor Harry Bellmon replaced Parkinson. A story that may not be apocryphal claimed Bellmon was so dumb that once, traversing a hotel lobby in Oklahoma City, the desk clerk yelled “Bell man!” and the governor asked him what he wanted. The point remains moot: Parkinson, and later Bellmon, were front men, while Ellsworth and Sears served as Nixon’s chief political operatives in the early days. Mitchell rose to take the helm from Bellmon, who went on the win Oklahoma’s US Senate seat in 1968, serving as the head of Nixon’s campaign.

The old Nixon warhorses came to the fore with 1960 supporters like New Hampshire Governor Lane Dwinell, former Connecticut Governor and Congressman John Davis Lodge, former Eisenhower Commerce Secretary Fred Seaton, ambassador Robert C. Hill of New Hampshire, and Walter W. Williams of Seattle, Washington, Chairman of Citizens for Eisenhower/Nixon in 1952 and later Under-Secretary of Commerce would comprise the “Nixon for President Committee.”
28
Money was supplied by Nixon’s friends. Aerosol valve king Robert Alplanalp, Dewitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, owners of
Reader’s Digest
, Delaware trucking executive John Rollins, Southern California car dealer, Robert Nesen, who later served as US Assistant Secretary of the Navy, eccentric Chicago insurance magnate W. Clement Stone, and coal heiress Helen Clay Frick, put up the early money for Nixon’s carefully timed White House bid. Former Eisenhower OMB Director Maurice Stans collected the money with an assist from Walter Williams. Stans had played this role in 1960 and 1962. A measure of Nixon’s political rehabilitation is the fact that money was plentiful for his ‘68 comeback bid, while he had struggled to raise money for his 1962 governors’ race only a year after losing the presidency to JFK by a whisker.

Until 1968,
every
presidential campaign was headquartered in Washington, DC. While Nixon’s campaign had a storefront there for appearances, his operation worked out of his law firm in the beginning and expanded to discreet rental space in New York City, only blocks from Nixon’s post Fifth Avenue apartment that he rented from Nelson Rockefeller, who was his neighbor in the building and landlord. Ellsworth commented on the “kabuki theater” of the Washington headquarters; nothing happened there, the action was in New York.

Of the bright young men who surrounded Nixon early in his comeback bid, the men recruited by Garment most definitely leaned to the right. More importantly, Nixon made much of his commitment to “new ideas.” Although, most new ideas were jettisoned in the fall campaign as Nixon hedged his bets on the Vietnam War. Instead he stuck to relatively broad platitudes, including law and order, black capitalism, and the rebuilding of American prestige abroad.

Indeed, these men of ideas who inspired Nixon to climb out of his image as a two-time loser were pushed aside later by marketing and public relations men who favored style and appearance over substance.

NOTES

1
.     Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, p. 52.

2
.     Conversation with author.

3
.     Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober, The Nixon Presidency: An Oral History of the Era, p. 55.

4
.     Robert D. Novak, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Kindle Locations 3907-3908).

5
.     Ibid

6
.     Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, p. 23.

7
.     Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, p. 59.

8
.     Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, p. 22.

9
.     Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm, p. 85.

10
.   Ibid.

11
.   Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power, p. 264.

12
.   Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power, p. 316.

13
.   Leonard Garment, In Search of Deep Throat, pp. 34–35.

14
.   Jules Witcover, Very Strange Bedfellows, p. 45.

15.   Craig Shirley, Rendevous with Destiny, p. XXX.

16
.   Jules Witcover, Marathon, p. 73.

17
.   Letter to author, June 8, 1987.

18
.   Lou Cannon, Reagan, p. 192.

19
.   Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, p. 13.

20
.   Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, p. 24.

21
.   Douglas Robinson, “Du Bois Duplicity Decried by Nixon,
New York Times,
March 9, 1966.

22
.   Robert D. Novak, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Kindle Locations 3918-3921).

23
.   Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, p. 24.

24
.   Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm, p. 37–38.

25
.   Allen, Robert S. Scott, Paul. “Leaks Plague Nixon Backers,”
Rome News-Tribune
, Sept. 1, 1967.

26
.   Richard Whalen, Catch the Falling Flag, p. 19.

27
.   Ibid. p. 24.

28
.   Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page, An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968, p. 255.

CHAPTER TEN

THE BIG ENCHILADA AND THE RISE OF THE MERCHANDISERS

“
We joined up with the Old Man to do something for the future, something that would continue. This won’t.
”

—John Sears
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N
ixon had made the tragic mistake of managing his own campaign for president in 1960. Party leaders like his “campaign manager” Len Hall and vice presidential aide Robert Finch were powerless; Nixon made all crucial decisions, from the campaign schedule right down to the color of the bumper stickers. At the same time he worked himself into an exhausted frenzy. Nixon understood he needed a campaign manager this time around, someone to whom he could delegate real responsibility. He was under pressure to find a world-class manager in whom he could invest all his confidence. Many old-line Nixonites who had not yet rejoined the entourage were concerned about Nixon’s track record of grabbing the wheel at crucial times. The man who emerged was Nixon’s law partner: John Newton Mitchell.

Because Nixon had an inferiority complex and a chip on his shoulder, he tended to gravitate to self-made men who exuded a sense of confidence and even bravado. This explains Nixon’s camaraderie with Philadelphia Mayor Frank L. Rizzo and big John Connally. This explains Nixon’s attraction to Mitchell. Mitchell had a serene confident manner and unpreturbable nature that Nixon admired. “I’ve found the heavyweight!” Nixon exclaimed to William Safire in early 1967.
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John Mitchell had merged his firm with Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, and Alexander shortly before Nixon joined the firm. As a bond lawyer and expert on the bond market, Mitchell had designed complex bond issues for states and municipalities including putting together complex and enormous state borrowings by Nelson Rockefeller’s New York State. As a result of this specialty, Mitchell knew a vast amount of detail concerning state and local politics and had a good network of financial and legal movers and shakers in the various states.

John Mitchell also had “fuck you” money and lived in an opulent home on a golf course in Westchester. Mitchell was a calm and judicious man, slow to anger and serenely confident in his judgment and demeanor. Len Garment, who also recruited Mitchell in his talent search, saw the lawyer as confident, but limited in his political ability:

Mitchell was certainly not a bad man, as the cliché machine painted him during and after Watergate. But Mitchell, in contrast to Sears, knew less about politics than he was thought to know and, more important, considerably less than he should have known. Mitchell was the master of a narrow piece of the political world, municipal financing. From this fact he made the faulty generalization that he was similarly the master of all politics.

Intimations of Mitchell’s future troubles appeared in the 1968 campaign, where the most pervasive internal battle was between those who believed in political technique above all and those who insisted on the value, intrinsic and instrumental, of ideas in politics. Mitchell’s laconic tough-guy stance put him habitually in the camp of the former. More, underneath Mitchell’s confident exterior lay a deep unsureness about himself. Therefore he would not brook disagreement. If I had not enjoyed such senior status in the campaign, he would have treated me as a major antagonist. As it was, Mitchell’s insecurity led to flare-ups between him and what must have seemed to the older man like an impossibly self-assured Sears.
3

Mitchell’s outward serenity was deceptive. In fact, he was deeply unsure of himself given his lack of political experience. The stocky man had put himself through school playing professional hockey until sidelined from hip injuries. He could be jaunty, upbeat, and jocular. Although he and his second wife Martha were known in New York society, he only rarely socialized with New York’s financial elite. Like Nixon, he came up the hard way and wasn’t impressed with the Ivy League degrees and social airs of the New York establishment.

I first met Mitchell in 1968 when I hitched a ride to the Republican National Convention in Miami, booking a room at the shabby Wofford Beach Hotel. I was sharing my hotel with an overflow of Reagan delegates from California who couldn’t get into the Deauville Hotel, the official residence of the California Delegation. I came equipped with a letter of introduction from Governor Lodge and was assigned to be a gofer for John Mitchell. In all my years in politics I have never met a more decent or kinder man than John Mitchell; far different than the gruff caricature of him created by the national press. I later learned what a calming and moderating influence Mitchell could be on Nixon.

Mitchell gave me an envelope that carried a letter, or in some cases I suspected cash, and pulled a $10 bill from his own money clip to give me give me cab fare to whichever hotel and politician expecting an envelope. One night around dinner time, Mr. Mitchell came by the messenger pool, handed me a $10 bill and told me to go across the street to LUMS, a popular beer joint, and buy two hotdogs steamed in beer and covered with sauerkraut. He told me to slather both with mustard and “eat them both,” he said with a wink.

On another occasion Mr. Mitchell instructed me to deliver a heavy envelope to Congressman Bradford Morse of Massachusetts, a Brahmin and very liberal Republican. My instructions were to call the congressman’s hotel room from the lobby and he would tell me what room to bring the package to.

I called his room but there was no answer. I called again and this time someone knocked the phone onto the floor, finally, a woman gave me the room number and quickly hung up. I jumped the elevator only to find the hotel room door ajar. I could hear heavy breathing. I slowly pushed the door open only to see two enormous white buttocks splayed with pimples pounding away on top of a prostitute. The congressman, covered in sweat, reached out for the envelope and grunted, “Get the fuck out.” I ran like hell.

Mitchell initially agreed only to organize Wisconsin for that state’s pivotal primary. Using a network of bond lawyers in the state and their own rolodexes of high-profile contacts, Mitchell organized Wisconsin down to the precinct level, tying down the most influential movers and shakers in the state.

Mitchell’s future problems were intimated in the 1968 effort, where the campaign had a deep divide and internal fight between those who believed in political technique above all (Haldeman, Ehrlichman et al.) and those who believed in the value and power of ideas in politics. Mitchell’s stoic tough-guy stance put him habitually in the camp of the former. More importantly, underneath Mitchell’s confident demeanor lay a deep sureness about himself. Therefore, once he took power in the campaign, he brooked no disagreement.

Mitchell, in turn, recruited Mississippi Goldwater backer and oilman Fred Larue, Arizona attorney Robert Mardian, Kentucky Governor Louie Nunn, and former Arizona Republican Chairman and Goldwater confidant Richard Kleindienst as his political deputies. By the time the Southern State Republican chairmen met in Atlanta in May 1968, Mitchell had emerged as “El Supremo,” later referred to in the Watergate tapes as “The Big Enchilada.” Mitchell was known to his deputies for his imperturbable manner as “Old Stone Face.”

As accomplished and tough as he was, Mitchell had a growing “Martha problem.” The gruff New York attorney’s Southern belle wife, Martha, resented the time “her John” spent “electing Mr. Nixon.” Desperate for attention and increasingly given to rages and indiscrete late-night phone calls, the “Martha problem” festered. On one occasion, in Mitchell’s absence, bodyguard Steve King held Mrs. Mitchell down—in her words, “against my will”
4
—while a doctor injected sedatives to calm her uncontrollable anger.

In fact, Martha raged often. She threw things, including lamps, ashtrays, and just about anything she could get her hands on. Incredibly, she blurted out claims about Nixon’s Mob ties and financial dealings. Martha also wanted to “travel with the president” on Air Force One, but Nixon gave Haldeman explicit instructions to “keep that woman away from me.”

“He [Mitchell] was proud of her; she had that manic zest,” said Len Garment, his former law partner and longtime friend, who recommended Mitchell to Nixon. “He didn’t know what she would do next—go over the edge, or the parapet. At the end, he was very much distracted and not thinking clearly—which is an explanation, not an excuse.”
5

Ironically, Los Angeles advertising executive H. R. “Bob” Haldeman and Seattle zoning lawyer John Ehrlichman were the two most non-ideological members of the 1968 Nixon entourage and controlled access to Nixon after the Miami convention until the time Nixon fired both men from his White House.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman joined the Nixon entourage only after Sears, Ellsworth, and John Mitchell wrapped up the nomination. Ehrlichman even declined a request from deputy campaign director Richard Kleindienst to help recruit a Nixon chairman for Washington State. “I’m not getting involved in politics,” Ehrlichman told a stunned Kleindienst. Although the two Christian Scientists had been advance men in Nixon’s 1960 effort and were heavily involved in the disastrous 1962 gubernatorial bid, Haldeman and Ehrlichman held back, skeptical that the scarred and damaged Nixon was still politically viable.