True Compass (37 page)

Richardson approached several possible candidates, but in late May settled on what I thought was a masterful choice: Archibald Cox, the legal scholar who had served my brother Jack as adviser, speechwriter, and, later, solicitor general. I admired Cox's ability, intelligence, and integrity, and I was determined that he function without the slightest hint of pressure. So I spoke again with Richardson, insisting--against his own wishes at first--that he agree to one condition, and one condition only, under which he would fire Cox or carry out a presidential order to fire him: "extraordinary impropriety."

It did not take Richardson long to understand the importance of this condition, and he agreed to it. Better still, he stood behind it when the inevitable phone call from Nixon reached him.

That call came on October 20. Since July, Cox (backed up by a district court order) had been demanding that Nixon release his newly revealed tape collection to Ervin's committee. Nixon resisted, growing more and more defiant as the weeks passed. On October 19 the desperate president concocted a scheme: he would offer a compromise. He prevailed on Senator John Stennis, the Mississippi Democrat, to listen to the tapes and send Cox a summary of them. The ridiculousness of this plan was obvious. Stennis and Nixon enjoyed a warm friendship. And Stennis was nearly deaf.

Archibald Cox unconditionally refused this transparent ploy. Nixon exploded; he picked up the telephone on October 20, called Richardson, and demanded that the new attorney general fire Cox. An historic crossroads was at hand. Would Elliot Richardson cave in? Had he done so, oversight of the tapes would almost certainly have defaulted to Stennis, Nixon would then have escaped the threat of impeachment, and his illegitimate power would have continued to stain American governance.

Richardson held strong. Nixon responded by firing Cox through the offices of Solicitor General Robert Bork, and abolishing the office of special prosecutor. Before the night was finished, Richardson had resigned, and so had his deputy, William Ruckleshaus. The president had won the night. But he had only succeeded in raising the level of suspicion against him--and of calls for his impeachment.

A final footnote to Watergate: virtually since the moment the existence of the Oval Office tapes became public knowledge, Americans have wondered where Richard Nixon came up with the idea of recording the conversations that ultimately brought him down.

I believe I know the answer: he got it from my brother Jack.

President Kennedy had a taping system in his office. He was not the first president to do so, nor the last until Nixon. Franklin Roosevelt recorded a few hours of press conference conversation with a large, unwieldy prototype. Both Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower experimented with the idea. But it was Jack's system that seems to have caught Nixon's imagination. My brother in fact recorded the fewest number of hours of any president, and nothing was confidential. But they included the intense and historically invaluable deliberations over the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the early debates over going into Vietnam.

Perhaps Richard Nixon envisioned compiling a comparable record of his own presidential triumphs. His fatal modification was to install a voice-activated mechanism, which removes the user's volition. Jack and other presidents, by contrast, relied on the conscious procedure of flipping a switch.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Backlash in Boston

1974-1976

In handing over to Sam Ervin's committee documents that Ad-Prac had accumulated, I'd largely fulfilled my role in the Watergate matter. And so in the spring and summer of 1974, I turned my energies to other matters, ranging from nuclear arms testing to the Boston school busing crisis.

I had been invited by the Soviet Union for a six-day round of talks in Moscow related to arms control. I had some topics of my own that I intended to raise. I decided to take members of the family with me.

Along with Joan, Kara, and Teddy Jr., I arrived in the Russian capital on the evening of April 18. (Patrick was still too young for this kind of trip.) Waiting to greet us were several deputies of the Supreme Soviet and the chief editor of the government newspaper,
Izvestia
. I made a brief statement at the airport, noting that I wished to discuss the issues of free emigration and civil liberties in the scheduled meeting with the premier. Given that the Russian leadership and the Russian people in general were well aware of Watergate and the impending collapse of the Nixon presidency, I felt it appropriate to assure them that the Democrats were at least as committed to detente as the Republicans.

My host, the general secretary of the Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev, welcomed me. I understood (as I subtly tried to keep my grip as firm as his) that I was in the presence of a classic Russian strongman and shaper of history. Brezhnev's broad face beneath those famous eyebrows conveyed the toughness of his working-class roots and his rank as brigade commissar in World War II, where he served alongside Nikita Khrushchev.

Brezhnev honored me with what the press back in America described as a "four-hour luncheon," although I will admit now that two of those hours consisted of making polite conversation, through interpreters, with the other guests in the Kremlin's formal dining room as we waited for Brezhnev to appear.

Arms control, the main agenda item for my visit, was politely sidestepped in this early, ceremonial phase of my visit. No one, however, could ignore its urgency. The secretary, while professing his wish to end the arms race, for years had been investing Russia's wealth in an ongoing buildup of its armies and their weapons, to an extent that modernization of industry was neglected, the vast agricultural system had failed to keep pace with population increases, and the economy as a whole was stagnating. The USSR and the United States had signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) when Nixon had visited Moscow two years earlier, but Russia's continued testing of nuclear weapons was a matter of great concern to the U.S. government.

I opened up the subject the next day, when I gave a talk that stressed the dangers to peace inherent in weapons testing, and directly questioned why the Soviet Union continued to build and test missiles. The day after that, April 21, I spoke to an audience of some eight hundred people at Moscow State University. About half of this audience suggested to me either a dense infusion of party apparatchiks, or that students in Russia were considerably older than in the United States. I began by attempting to poll the audience on the issue of Soviet defense spending, but it went nowhere. An awkward silence dropped over my listeners, and a professor in the audience barked out a sharp rebuke.

I raised the issue of Jewish emigration, which resulted in more furrowed brows. I finally coaxed some smiles when, asked about whether I would run for president in 1976, I cupped a hand to my ear and pretended that I hadn't heard the question. When the two or three laughs had died down, I assured everyone that my only intention was to run again for my Senate seat. I responded to a question about the Warren Commission report on my brother's assassination by stating my belief that its conclusions were correct.

Though I'd been forthright in disavowing any intention to seek the highest office, I well understood why Brezhnev had been so receptive to my visit. He and other Soviet officials believed that I would be America's next elected president, and that I was an honest advocate for control of the arms race. This was confirmed when the two of us finally sat down for serious discussion on the topic. I had brought with me a draft treaty built around a call for a total ban on nuclear testing. The secretary nodded in silence from time to time as the document was translated for him.

"If you were president of the United States now," he told me when it was finished, "I would ask you to sit over here in front of this fireplace. We would light a fire, and we would have some vodka, and both of us would sign it and celebrate a great step toward halting nuclear expansion."

During my visit, Brezhnev averred expansively that our countries should not be threatening each other. I told him that I agreed. He grew emphatic: his country was
not
threatening the United States. One unfortunate tradition that fed false suspicions was that of restricted access: the Soviet Union restricted where American visitors could travel, and Americans restricted Russians' freedom of movement as well. Brezhnev believed that between the two countries, the Soviet Union was far more liberal.

"Let me show you," he said. We both arose, and I followed Brezhnev to a map of his country. "Americans cannot go here or here," he conceded, as his thick finger stabbed at various locations. "Or here, or here. Or here. But outside of that, Americans are able to go anyplace they want."

I tried to memorize the places where Brezhnev's finger had fallen. When I returned home, just for the fun of it, I showed the locales to a military expert, who told me that each was a top-secret site where the Soviets stored their missiles.

It was doubtless the prospect of my possible presidency, coupled with the innate hospitality that Brezhnev shared with his fellow Russians, that prompted the secretary to offer his private jet to my entourage for a side trip before we returned to the United States. Before we departed, I had one further item to take up with Secretary Brezhnev. Leonard Bernstein, the esteemed conductor and composer who had been a great friend of President Kennedy's, had called me before I left the States and said he knew I was interested in the release of Soviet Jews. He had a request: see what Brezhnev will do, he urged me, about the release of Mstislav Rostropovich, the sublime cellist and conductor who was effectively imprisoned within Soviet borders.

Rostropovich was perhaps the greatest cellist of the twentieth century. Both Prokofiev and Shostakovich had composed pieces for him, and in 1950, at the age of twenty-three, he was awarded the highly prestigious Stalin Prize. Rostropovich's social ideals were as bold and enlightened as his art was exquisite. An outspoken believer in free speech and democratic values, he earned the enmity and scrutiny of the Soviet leaders. In the early 1970s, official Russia held him in disgrace, canceled his concerts, and, in 1972, prohibited his travels outside Russia.

Joan's training as a classical musician made her a strong advocate of the artist's release as well. During a photo opportunity in front of the Kremlin on our arrival, she had relayed to Russian officials the petitions of Bernstein and others in the worldwide artistic community that Rostropovich be granted an exit visa. Now, toward the end of our meeting on Monday, I repeated the request to the premier. I could see that he'd picked up on the importance that we, and by extension the influential American arts community, had accorded this matter.

Brezhnev said to me, you will hear back from us very soon.

We flew from Moscow for Tbilisi, the historic capital of Georgia, and then Leningrad (since restored to its original name, St. Petersburg), where we visited the massive Piskarevskoye Cemetery with its roughly half million dead and buried in mass graves from the infamous nine-hundred-day World War II siege. Accompanying my entourage was an aide to Brezhnev, A. M. Alexandrov-Agentov, clearly present to keep an eye on my contacts and behavior.

On the return flight to Moscow, I frankly told Alexandrov about a plan I intended to carry out, a plan that involved some risk to me as well as potential outrage from my hosts. I wanted to speak personally to some of the dissident Jews being held without exit visas in Moscow. Alexandrov was predictably shocked, and we argued about it, but he shrugged helplessly when he saw that my mind was made up--though I knew he would report my intention.

I'd arranged a dead-of-night meeting with a group of the dissidents at the small apartment of one of them, a distinguished scientist and a pioneer in cybernetics named Alexander Lerner. He had applied to leave for Israel in 1971 and was refused. I was accompanied by the courageous Grace Kennan Warnecke, the daughter of the former ambassador George Kennan, who challenged our driver to take us there despite orders to the contrary from the KGB.

Like Rostropovich, these Jews were hostages within the Soviet Union, and hungered for the right to immigrate to Israel. I promised them that once back home, I would do all in my power to see that their dreams came true. In the end, the Soviets, though furious about my visit, did indeed grant exit visas to some of these people.

Nor was that all the good news. When the flight back home made its first landing outside the Soviet Union, I received a call from the Soviet ambassador saying that Rostropovich and his wife would be released.

After we returned to the United States, Joan and I had a welcoming party for Rostropovich and his wife, Galina, at our home in McLean, Virginia. They were exceedingly gracious. When the maestro met Teddy later in the evening, I could see that he was moved by my son's positive spirit in the face of his ongoing battle with cancer. In a spontaneous act of generosity, Rostropovich said that the only way he could ever thank me for helping to secure his freedom was to teach my son the cello. As it turned out, Teddy did not take advantage of this formidable opportunity; but neither my son nor I ever forgot the offer.

Rostropovich became musical director and conductor of the National Symphony in Washington, was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan, and sat on a metal chair at the Berlin Wall as it crumbled in November 1989 and played a Bach suite with tears streaming down his face. He reconciled with his homeland in the 1990s. When he died in Moscow in 2007, Soviet president Vladimir Putin called his death a terrible loss for Russian culture and praised the musician as a firm defender of human rights.

Back home and at work, I started to address the other urgencies that had crowded my calendar during the Watergate ordeal. Health care and national health insurance, for example. Ending the oil depletion allowance. Reforming campaign finance laws. Easing restrictions built into the 1966 Freedom of Information Act. Addressing tensions in Boston ignited by the issue of busing. And, in the early months of 1974 at least, considering my prospects for a presidential run in 1976. I could not help but notice that in May, a poll for
Time
reported that 55 percent of Americans called me an "acceptable candidate" as opposed to 43 percent for Vice President Ford.

I'd begun to move ahead on some of these well before the House Judiciary Committee passed its three articles of impeachment in late July 1974 and Nixon announced his resignation on August 8.

I harbored no doubts that Nixon had to go, yet I could not shake a sense of sadness that the country had been put through this ordeal. The saving truth was that our system had worked. The right outcome had occurred.

As the news was announced, the Senate cloakroom was nearly empty, but not completely. One other senator remained there, sitting in silence beside me as we watched Nixon's small, hunched figure trudge down the walkway to the waiting craft, mount those steps, then suddenly spin about and thrust both arms over his head, giving the double "V for victory" salute with his fingers as he prepared to leave the White House for the last time. The two of us watched without speaking as Nixon disappeared inside.

The senator sitting next to me was Gene McCarthy. McCarthy and I, alone together in the cramped, L-shaped cloakroom, frowning in concentration at the TV set as Nixon vanished into the sky.

We didn't have a conversation. I don't recall that we spoke, although courtesy probably prompted us to acknowledge each other. We just sat there and watched, each of us consumed with his own thoughts about what might have been.

After Eugene McCarthy died at age eighty-nine in December 2005, of complications from Parkinson's disease, in a retirement home in Georgetown, I attended his funeral. He'd been a difficult fellow in many ways, but I wanted to pay my respects.

In mid-1974, the next presidential election primaries lay only a year and a half in the future. Some candidates in both parties had in effect launched their campaigns already. I knew that I would very soon have to make my own decision. Feelers were coming in from thoughtful and substantial Democrats, urging me once again to make the run. Although I had insisted both in public and in private that I would not be a candidate, I admitted to myself that I had some serious thinking to do.

Many of the friends, aides, and followers who envisioned an Edward Kennedy presidency were basing their hopes on a romantic and ultimately irrelevant model. Whether consciously or not, they seemed enthralled by the dream that the dash and vaulting aspirations of the early 1960s would return again.

My actual vision of the presidency, to the extent that I turned it over in my mind, was a good deal more complex and less romantic.

It was and remains a given that my brothers established a soaring standard for public service, and that their standard to a great extent has defined my life and my aims. I have always measured myself against that standard. Jack and Bobby were my heroes.

But my concept of myself as president had little or nothing to do with Camelot. It had nothing to do with that old preoccupation with "catching up" that I've mentioned earlier. It wasn't about Jack, or Bobby, or my father. The eras that shaped them had passed. The present era was quite different in mood, in collective experience, and in the challenges the nation faced. Jack's and Bobby's great legacies inspired me, but cold reason told me that I could not run as their surrogate, nor could I govern according to their templates. My goals, my style would derive from my own judgments as to what I wanted to accomplish.