On August 9 1974 Richard Milhous Nixon became the first American president to resign from office. Nixon by Nixon: In His Own Words, caption, Sky Atlantic 2018
Never forget: the establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The press is the enemy. ibid. Nixon tapes
South Vietnam probably can never survive anyway. ibid.
I want to look at any sensitive areas around where Jews are involved, Bob. See, the Jews are all through the government. ibid.
I don’t give a shit about the law. ibid.
We’re gonna put more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at twenty four hundred dollars a family. ibid.
Homosexuality, dope, immorality in general. These are the enemies of strong societies. ibid.
There is a snobbish elite. You know, you know why they hate my guts? Mainly it is this: I’m not one of them. And they know it. ibid.
He was one of America’s most successful presidents on the international stage. Lorded as a world statesman who thawed the Cold War. He was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in American history, capturing 49 out of 50 states. Yet Richard Nixon was also the only president to resign from office, forced out of the White House in abject disgrace. David Reynolds, Nixon in the Den, BBC 2015
His father Frank, a small town grocer in California, was a violent bully. His mother Hannah was a devoted Quaker and home-maker. Yet the young Richard drew no real warmth from her; there were few hugs or kisses. Much of Hannah’s energy was expended on his sickly brothers, Arthur and Harold, who died of Tuberculosis. Richard grew up insecure, withdrawn and emotionally bottled up. ibid.
This was a president who wanted to rule the world on paper. But a detached, loner president who secluded himself so much from bureaucrats and politicians, press and public, was particularly reliant on a few key intermediaries to do his will. His right-hand men were domestic adviser John Ehrlichman and Chief of Staff Bob Halderman, known unaffectionate as the Prussians. ibid.
He relentlessly depicted his opponents as crypto-communists. Running for the Senate in 1950 he smeared his rival Helen Gahagan Douglas as ‘pink right down to her underwear’ ... She coined the nickname ‘Tricky Dicky’. ibid.
Nixon’s loathing was reserved particularly for the East Coast establishment. ibid.
He deliberately portrayed himself as the champion of middle America. And his mix of Commie-bashing and populist politics catapulted him into the vice-presidency where he made a name for himself in foreign policy. ibid.
His opponent was a Daddy’s boy from Harvard John F Kennedy whose rich womanising father was determined to install his son in the White House. Nixon’s relentless hard work on the campaign trail counted for little in the beauty contest of the first real television election. ibid.
The President’s double act with Kissinger became one of the most extraordinary political relationships of the twentieth century. It would fuel Nixon’s rise but also his fall ... He and Nixon were in fact essentially similar. Ambitious loners obsessed about image and their place in history. And each was by nature deeply suspicious. ibid.
The appeasement was costly. Kissinger had set up a summit in Moscow essentially on his terms. The messenger was becoming the master ... Clearly his National Security Adviser saw their roles as being reversed. ibid.
Nixon saw enemies on every side encircling him. But I think he almost needed to be hated. That way he knew he was right. There was a kind of self-righteous masochism here as well as paranoia. ibid.
Madman tactics failed to end the war as Nixon hoped. In fact his saturation bombing provoked a backlash at home fuelling mounting public protest and criticism. ibid.
The President was exhausted and drinking heavily. In May 1970 four students were shot dead on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio protesting for peace. The following weekend thousands of anti-war demonstrators converged on Washington. Nixon felt besieged. ibid.
Nixon suddenly flipped. Desperate to break out of the Den he summoned his driver. He drove down to the Lincoln Memorial. There in the early light he confronted some of the protesters. They were utterly astonished to encounter the President. And to hear rambling recollections of his own idealism at their age. ibid.
The global chess game paid off. In 1972 Nixon won a landslide victory being re-elected with 60% of the vote. ibid.
Nixon had extricated America from the mess, and got the boys home. ibid.
In due course the tapes would prove Nixon’s fatal mistake. ibid.
There was just one minor difficulty for Nixon. The trial in a Washington court of some rather unusual burglars. The Washington Post didn’t usually put local burglaries on its front page. But this one, at the Watergate apartment complex on the Ptomac River in June 1972, was not run of the mill. ibid.
Watergate wasn’t a marginal event on the fringe of the Nixon presidency. It was a product of the hardball paranoid politics that had got Tricky Dicky to the top and would now bring him down. Nixon probably didn’t know about Watergate in advance. But he had sanctioned break-ins and wire-taps of opponents through his notorious Plumbers. He had fostered the climate of illegality that had led to Watergate. ibid.
The burglars and their immediate bosses were prosecuted. The press followed up every lead. ibid.
Following the Watergate arrests, Nixon was right at the centre of a cover-up which he delegated to the White House law officer John Dean. ibid.
The Pressure was really getting to Nixon. His hands were shaking. His breath smelt of liquor. The Den was becoming a bunker. It was like May 1970 all over again. But this time there was no way back. His presidency and his personality began to fall apart. ibid.
Watergate wasn’t a strange aberration. It was symptomatic of the back-channel back-stabbing methods by which Nixon’s whole presidency operated. ibid.
President Nixon was formally pardoned for all Watergate crimes today by the People’s Republic of China. Saturday Night Live, Chevy Chase, Weekend Update 28th February 1976
Tell ’em national security. Fuck ’em. Playhouse Presents: Nixon’s the One, Nixon to Bob Haldeman, Sky Arts 2012
No actor could’ve done that. Not even Reagan. ibid. Nixon to Kissinger
Screw the Cabinet and the rest of them. ibid.
The medical profession don’t know much about cholesterol. ibid. Nixon
Can we please get the names of the Jews, big Jewish contributors to the Democrats? All right, can we please investigate some of the cocksuckers? ibid. Nixon to Bob
I have the greatest affection for blacks but I know they’re not going to make it for five hundred years ... They steal, dishonest, but they do have a concept of family life. ibid.
Last six Roman emperors were fags. ibid.
You think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. They sent them up. Homosexuality. Dope. Immorality generally. These are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the communists and the left-wingers are pushing this stuff. They’re trying to destroy us. ibid. Nixon to John
At the Bohemian Grove that I attend from time to time. Easterners and others come out there. But it is just the most goddamn faggy thing you can ever imagine. ibid.
President Nixon severely restricted his press photographer, Olly Atkins. On the night of his resignation speech to the nation, before the television broadcast began, the President had this ultimate and most revealing exchange with Atkins: ‘Have you got an extra camera in case the lights go out? Olly? No. Only the CBS crew now is to be in this room during this – only the crew. No. No. There will be no pictures.’ Obama’s White House, BBC 2016
At the moment Nixon was enjoying his greatest political achievement, the seeds of his eventual downfall were being sown. Reports were coming in of a seemingly insignificant break-in at the Watergate building in Washington. On June 17th 1972 five men were caught installing bugging devises in the offices of the Democratic Party in the Watergate Complex. Two of the men had CIA connections. Another was James McCord – Nixon’s Public Security Chief. Days that Shook the World s1e10: Assassination of JFK & President Nixon, BBC 2003
Last October Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned over charges of tax evasion. His wasn’t the only resignation of 1973. Domestic Affairs Assistant John Ehrlichman resigned pending trial for Obstruction of Justice. And most damaging of all, the Attorney General John Mitchell, apparently the ring-leader of the Watergate bugging team, was forced to quit. ibid.
22 years ago he fought a charge of embezzlement while standing for election. ibid.
Outside the crowd chants ‘Jail to the Chief’. ibid.
In total almost thirty people were imprisoned in connection with Watergate. Richard Nixon remained in California with his family ... In September 1974 President Ford used his position to publicly pardon the former president for all offences against the United States. ibid.
The names still trip off the tongue: Alderman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean. The White House crimes known as Watergate. Crimes against democracy. To harass opponents the Nixon White House had set up a secret team called the Plumbers. They bugged phones, opened mail and burglarised the President’s critics. Bill Moyers, The Secret Government: Constitution in Crisis, 1987