Nixon's Secret (79 page)

51
.   Colodny, Len. Gettlin, Robert.
Silent Coup,
p. 419.

52
   Woodward, Bob. Bernstein, Carl. “Ford Disputed on Events Preceding Nixon Pardon,”
The Washington Post,
December 18, 1975.

53
.   Anderson, Jack. “The was no advance deal in Ford’s pardon of Nixon.”
The Prescott Courier.
July 1, 1976.

54
.   Agnew, Spiro.
Go Quietly, or Else,
p. 192.

55
.   Ibid, p. 193.

56
.   Ibid, p. 193-194.

57
.   Ibid, p. 192.

58
.   Fulsom, Don.
Nixon’s Darkest Secrets
, p. 234.

59
.   Baker, Bobby, Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator, p. 209.

60
.   Thompson, Hunter. “He was a Crook.”
Rolling Stone.
July 16, 1994.

61
.   Fulsom, Don.
Nixon’s Darkest Secrets,
p. 235.

62
.   Morris Roger, Haig: The General’s Progress, pp. 320-325.

63
.   Havill, Adrian.
Deep Truth,
p. 183.

64
.   “Alexander Haig,” TIME Magazine, April 2, 1984.

65
.   Alexander Haig interview. 60 Minutes II, April 23, 2001.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

FIGHTING FOR HIS LEGACY

“Nixon was a fighter. From the minute he resigned he fought for his legacy.”

—Carl Bernstein speaking at Florida Atlantic University, February 19, 2014

R
ichard Milhous Nixon had served a total of 2,026 days as the thirty-seventh president of the United States before he left the White House on August 9, 1974. Nixon biographer Jonathan Aitken wrote that “during the early months after his resignation Nixon was a soul in torment. He spent days shut away behind the guarded walls of his Oceanside, CA home. He made a brave show of keeping up appearances while he deteriorated both emotionally and physically to the point where he had close calls with a nervous breakdown and with death. At the same time Nixon told Sen. Barry Goldwater that rumors that he had lost the will to live were ‘bullshit.’”
1

Aitken stated that Nixon made efforts “to remain presidential without the Presidency. Each morning he arrived in his office at 7 a.m. prompt, immaculately dressed in coat and tie despite the 100-degree heat. He was guarded by a detail of eighteen Secret Service men, given medical attention by Navy corpsmen; provided with transport by the marines and supplied with secure communications by the Army. He was attended upon by a retinue of some twenty assistants, aides and secretaries who had volunteered to accompany him to California.” But there was essentially no business to be done. Rod Ziegler, his former press secretary, sat with him alone for hours each day with nothing to do but discuss pending lawsuits and plot battle over public control of the White House tapes.

Although Nixon was originally allocated $850,000 by the House of Representatives to fund his move to California and transition to post-presidential life, Congress reduced this amount to only $200,000, which was to be used to cover the costs of office rent and salaries for his team of staff for a period of six months.
2

With only $200,000 given to him by the General Services Administration, he moved his small staff to California to be near his beloved La Casa Pacifica, a property he purchased in 1969 that became his presidential retreat, christened, “the Western White House.” The property was found for the president in 1969 by a young White House aide instructed by Nixon to go to California and find a suitable presidential retreat. During better financial times, Richard and Pat Nixon purchased the private Spanish-styled estate as a sanctuary where they could entertain dignitaries and run the business of the United States in a secure and serene environment, and as a private place to conduct his presidential duties outside of Washington. It remained a hub for international negotiations both in his presidential and post-presidential years. Breshnev, the Soviet leader, would call on Nixon at his post-presidential retreat.

In 1974, Nixon became sick with phlebitis in his left leg, a blood-clotting disorder that causes veins to be inflamed. Doctors told him that he needed to be operated on or he could possibly die. He chose the operation. The illness just happened to be around the time that Haldeman, Dean, and Ehrlichman were on trial.

Nixon was subpoenaed to testify but, by chance, he was granted a dismissal by the presiding judge, who trusted the ailment was not just a ruse after three court-appointed lawyers examined him and said he was in no current condition to testify. Others were skeptical of the timing of his illness and accused the former president of faking the ailment so he didn’t have to go to court.

After the presidential pardon, Nixon released the following statement:

I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy. No words can describe the depth of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency, a nation I so deeply love, and an institution I so greatly respect.

If anyone thought Nixon was grateful for the pardon by Ford, they were mistaken. As Ford struggled to fend off a challenge from Ronald Reagan in the snows of New Hampshire, Nixon announced he would travel to China at the invitation of Chairman Mao. Nixon’s visit would only serve to remind voters of Ford’s pardon of his predecessor. It was the last thing Gerald Ford wanted in the news. John Sears, who was now working for Reagan, had urged Nixon to take the trip. “He didn’t need much convincing” he told me. The Chinese cooperated in order to signal their lack of happiness with Ford. It was a terrible blow to Ford.

A 1976 article in the
Washington Post
about that year’s presidential campaign managers stated—probably on the basis of an interview with Sears—that Nixon continued to call Sears for advice, even during his Watergate troubles. Monica Crowley, who served as Nixon’s assistant after his presidency, wrote that Nixon and Sears were still in touch, even though Sears played a key role in Nixon’s downfall by shaping the Watergate narrative through Bernstein and other major reporters.

Sears’s role in Watergate was based on loyalty to the Nixon he knew: the wise man, the teacher, the father figure. Sears’s own father had perished in a fire when Sears was young. Sears revered Nixon as the gold standard of political calculation. The Nixon with whom Sears had signed up was a man capable of understanding and championing great policies. This was not the Nixon Sears saw in the self-imposed clutches of Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Haig, and Colson. Sears’s loyalty was to Nixon’s ideas and his own sense of public service, honed in long conversations with the Nixon he remembered. The Nixon he helped take down was not the same man.

Ford’s reelection prospects also took a hit from John Dean. Dean appeared on the
Today
television show to publicize his book, aptly titled
Blind Ambition
. NBC was interested in publicizing his book too. They had just bought the television rights to it. In the course of his interview, John Dean announced a new “fact” about Watergate. House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, at President Nixon’s instigation, had successfully squelched the Patman investigation of the financing of the Watergate break-in. Dean’s charge was essentially true, and Ford’s adamant denial did little.
3

Nixon was plagued with lawsuits that dragged on almost throughout the rest of his life. These civil suits wore him down emotionally and drained his liquid assets. He seized the opportunity to make some quick cash by writing his memoirs. Legendary Agent Swifty Lazar negotiated a $2 million advance. Nixon would ultimately go on a prolific writing spree that included the writings of ten post-presidential books on domestic policy and international affairs and, of course, his memoirs.

Beyond writing books, Nixon also sought out other public-relations opportunities that he thought would earn him some money and allow him to spin his version of Watergate. One of those opportunities came in 1976: the Frost interview.

A few years after Nixon resigned, he was approached by British talk show host David Frost who proposed doing a paid interview show that would delve deep into the Watergate scandal and finally ask the questions that America, and the rest of the world, wanted answered.

Frost paid him $600,000 for a taped interview. The show received fifty million viewers when it aired in 1977. It was one of the highest-rated shows of all time. The show helped Nixon out of his desperate financial situation, but, more importantly, it helped improve his image around the world, although Frost got Nixon to go further in atoning for Watergate than others had. After the Frost interview, Nixon seemed reinvigorated and wanted to jump back into international travel and foreign affairs—the two cards he would use to reinvent himself yet again as a foreign policy expert. Isolated from his daughters and their husbands as well as their grandchildren on the East Coast, he and Pat soon began looking for properties to buy that were closer to “the fast track.” New York City would be their next move.

In 1980, Richard and Pat Nixon sold their beloved La Casa Pacifica property so they could move to New York City and be closer to the hub of politics and business on the East Coast. He sold the California estate to the founder of a pharmaceutical company, who also happened to be a big Republican donor who later developed the surrounding parcels of land into residential home sites to create a community now called Cotton Point Estates.
4

When it was reported that Nixon sold his California home, the General Services Administration of the US Government demanded that the ex-president reimburse them in the amount of $703,367 for items that were installed on the La Casa Pacifica property for post-presidential operations and security. The GSA claimed the items were abandoned by Nixon when he moved, and the costs for those upgrades now needed to be repaid. These items that Nixon had installed were a $6,600 gazebo, a $13,500 heating system, $217,006 for lighting and electronics, $137,623 for landscaping, $2,300 for a flagpole, in addition to many other upgrades to the house that were installed by the Secret Service and other government contractors for security and to facilitate the operations and duties of an ex-president.

Nixon refused the demand by the General Services Administration and countered with a public notice for the agency to remove the unwanted items and restore the home to its original condition within sixty days. He also sent a check to the GSA for $2,300 for repayment of the flagpole fee. Nixon claimed the Secret Service insisted on the upgrades to the property. His belligerence paid off, and the GSA desisted.

Finding suitable housing accommodations in New York City for the ex-president and his wife would be a tricky task. The first co-op that the presidential couple wanted to purchase on Madison Avenue didn’t want the exposure that a disgraced ex-president would bring to the building, so they were denied admittance. The couple was also denied the ability to purchase another choice New York City property after the building residents joined forces and voted to deny Richard and Pat Nixon’s application for residency. George Leisure told a reporter at the time, “Everyone signed against them. Money’s not enough here.”

On August 10, 1979, the Nixon’s found a townhouse to buy at 142 East 65th Street, on the Upper East Side, for $750,000, next door to David Rockefeller and other notable power brokers. It was a more suitable location for a man who was accustomed to socializing with world leaders.

After only eighteen months in New York City, the Nixons sold their townhouse and bought a home in Saddle River, New Jersey, where they had found a home within a peaceful community that was away from the big, loud, and crowded city and that also afforded them quick and easy access to Washington, DC and New York City. Pat and Richard Nixon entertained visiting kings, foreign ambassadors, and, most importantly, their grandchildren in their Saddle River home.
5
The GSA provided office space at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. Nixon would ultimately give up his Secret Service protection, saving taxpayers millions.

Given his well-known aversion to the press, it was surprising that Nixon asked me to arrange a series of small dinners with select reporters for background discussions on politics and foreign affairs. “I want guys who don’t remember Hiss,” Nixon said.

Nixon published his memoir,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon,
in 1978, the first of ten books he was to author after leaving the White House. This was followed by a series of foreign policy tomes that outlined Nixon’s views on the future of US relations with Russia, China, and the Middle East. Nixon visited the White House in 1979, invited by President Jimmy Carter for the state dinner honoring Chinese Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping. Carter initially refused to invite Nixon, but Deng said he would visit Nixon in California if the former president was not invited. Nixon had a private meeting with Deng and visited Beijing again in mid-1979.

When the former Shah of Iran died in Egypt in July 1980, Nixon defied the State Department, which intended to send no US representative, by attending the funeral. Though Nixon had no official credentials, as a former president he was seen as the US presence at the funeral of an ally.

Throughout the 1980s, Nixon maintained an ambitious schedule of speaking, writing, and foreign travel. He met with many third-world leaders. He joined Presidents Ford and Carter as US representatives at the funeral of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. On a trip to the Middle East, Nixon made his views known regarding Saudi Arabia and Libya, which attracted significant US media attention. Nixon journeyed to the Soviet Union in 1986 and on his return sent President Reagan a lengthy memorandum containing foreign policy recommendations and his personal impressions of Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Nixon connected with Soviet reformer Boris Yeltsin after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Yeltsin aide Michael Caputo told me, “Yeltsin was getting political advice from Nixon on what to do in the former Soviet Union and in the US.” They were on the phone constantly. Yeltsin sent messages to Clinton through Nixon.