TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061791/0617102.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8KB | 160 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 27

WATERGATE REVISITED

Notes from Underground


A fresh batch of White House tapes reminds a forgiving and
forgetful America why Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace

By MARGARET CARLSON/WASHINGTON


    Only in America, the land of fresh starts and clean
slates, could someone who fell from power in such complete
disgrace return to tell heads of state how the world should be
run and not be laughed off the editorial page.

    Richard Nixon has managed that feat by following a kind of
self-imposed work-release program ever since he resigned and
left for San Clemente, Calif., in 1974, churning out dozens of
articles and seven books on subjects ranging from Vietnam to
geopolitics. Former aide-turned-bete-noire John Dean summed it
up neatly: "He's running for the office of ex-President, and
he's won."

    Quick to forget, anxious to forgive, many Americans began
to wonder whether Nixon had ever really been as bad as all
that. Just how thoroughly he has been resurrected was underlined
earlier this month when the Washington Post, a primary agent of
his destruction, gave front-page play in its opinion section to
his plan for granting economic aid to the Soviet Union.

    So last week's release of 60 more hours of White House
tapes came as a timely reminder that Nixon is not simply an
author and global analyst but an unindicted co-conspirator who
is lucky to have escaped prison. Listen to any random
conversation, on any day, and the mask of respectable elder
statesman melts away to reveal a deceitful, lowbrow, vindictive
character, dangerously armed with the full power of the IRS, FBI
and CIA, and all too willing to use it. Audit his enemies, he
orders. "We have to do it artfully so that we don't create an
issue by abusing the IRS politically," says Nixon, warming to
the subject. "And there are ways to do it. Goddam it, sneak in
in the middle of the night."

    The so-called smoking-gun tapes that prompted Nixon's
resignation were released in August 1974. They are the ones that
contain the incriminating conversations on stonewalling Congress
and paying hush money to the hired hands who executed the
ill-fated Watergate break-in. They also detail many of the
charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, tax evasion,
wiretapping and destruction of evidence that landed some of
Nixon's closest aides -- including Attorney General John
Mitchell, chief of staff Bob Haldeman, White House adviser John
Ehrlichman and counsel John Dean -- in jail.

    The latest batch of tapes, which languished for nearly two
decades in the National Archives while Nixon lawyers and the
government argued over how to release them, show just how coarse
and ruthless a man he was. At one point he enthuses over a
suggestion to recruit "eight thugs" from the Teamsters Union --
"murderers" -- to gang up on peace protesters. "They've got guys
who will go in and knock their heads off," says Nixon. "Sure,"
adds Haldeman, "Beat the s--- out of some of these people."

    These recordings are the latest in a series of tapes that
are made public every so often, like time-release capsules, to
administer a healthy dose of reality whenever Nixon seems to
have rehabilitated himself. Full of sentence fragments and
garbled syntax, a cross between Valley Girl-speak and
locker-room profanity, the tapes reveal Nixon in the raw,
unimproved by speechwriters, aides or editors. Contrast his
statesmanlike published prose on the Soviet Union's "strategic
challenge of global proportion, which requires a renewed
strategic consciousness" with this typical passage from the
tapes about sacking IRS Commissioner Johnnie Walters for
refusing to harass Nixon's enemies: "Kick Walters' ass out
first, and get a man in there." So damaging are the tapes to the
Nixon rehabilitation that Republican Party leaders, who had been
considering a Nixon appearance at the 1992 convention, are now
rethinking the invitation.

    The tapes show that long before he was under siege by the
Watergate investigators, he was under siege by his own demons.
His re-election campaign belied its official slogan -- "Bring
Us Together" -- by beginning with a pogrom. "I want there to be
no holdovers left. The whole goddam bunch go out . . . and if
((George Shultz)) doesn't do it, he's out as ((Treasury))
Secretary." Nixon returns to his purge later: "You're out,
you're out, you're finished, you're done, done, finished.
Knocked the hell out of there." And these are his own people.

    When Nixon's attention turns to his real enemies -- Jews,
Democrats, liberals, intellectuals, anyone who came from a
loftier social background than he did -- the President erupts
in spurts of venom about clowns in government, conspiratorial
leakers, preacher types, gum-chewing reporters, Kennedys. "A lot
of our own people come in here, and they start sucking around
the Georgetown set. All of a sudden, they're just as bad as the
others . . . They're disgusting." He speculates that the antiwar
protests are part of a Jewish plot. "Aren't the Chicago Seven
all Jews? ((Rennie)) Davis is a Jew, you know." Told that he
wasn't, Nixon guesses again. "Hoffman, Hoffman's a Jew?" he asks
Haldeman, who confirms that, yes, Abbie Hoffman is Jewish.
"About half of these are Jews," Nixon concludes.

    The one person for whom Nixon showed a grudging respect
was J. Edgar Hoover -- the only man in Washington with an
enemies list longer than his own. Nixon wanted to get rid of
Hoover but feared that the FBI director might "bring down the
temple" by releasing compromising information from his thick
files. Fate settled the matter on May 2, 1972, when Hoover died
of a heart attack. Months later, Nixon delivered his own kind
of eulogy, musing, "There was senility and everything . . . He
wasn't perfect, but he ran a tight ship. Goddam it, that's the
way."

    But for all his paranoia, Nixon's own ship was anything
but tight. For that, he had no one to blame but himself. He was
the one who ordered the installation of concealed recording
devices in the Oval Office, the Executive Office Building and
Camp David, yet he continued to carry on crude, incoherent and
ultimately incriminating conversations. As late as April 25,
1973, well after the smoking-gun conversations about
stonewalling and hush money, Nixon was still congratulating
himself on the secret system. "I'm damn glad we have it, aren't
you?" he crowed.

    Nixon seems to destroy himself every so often in order to
keep fighting. Able to live without friends, but not without
enemies, he needed Helen Gahagan Douglas, the cloth coat, the
Checkers speech, the 1960 defeat -- and maybe even Watergate.
It is not the desire to scale great heights that gets Nixon up
in the morning and sends him to his New Jersey office, where he
waits for the phone to ring and tries to peddle op-ed pieces on
geopolitics; it is the need to claw his way out of a dark hole
of his own digging.

    While other former Presidents are content to do good
works, serve on boards and play golf, Nixon, like the Energizer
bunny, just goes on and on and on. At the Nixon library in Yorba
Linda, Calif., beside the small, white frame farmhouse where
Nixon was born, a movie called Never Give Up: Richard Nixon in
the Arena runs continuously in the 293-seat theater. It's a
reel he plays over and over in his own mind.