Watergate, page 78
It was that mixing of idealistic light: Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 3.
“His rise to the presidency”: Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 11.
“He was too suspicious”: Ibid., 13.
“He liked rolling in the dust”: Farrell, Richard Nixon, 159.
“It was a day that all of us will always remember”: Nixon, RN, 508.
“diminutive, ethereal, blond daughter”: Nan Robertson, “Tricia Nixon Takes Vows in Garden at White House,” New York Times, June 13, 1971, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1971/06/13/170503892.html?pageNumber=1.
“If it were the Kennedys”: Farrell, Richard Nixon, 417.
“I just don’t like that paper”: Katharine Graham, Personal History (New York: Knopf, 1997), 440–42.
“Let’s go face the enemy”: Farrell, Richard Nixon, 205.
He and Pat knew they lived: Ibid.
“Was Nixon paranoid?”: Ibid., 398.
“He had strong opinions”: Strober and Strober, Nixon, 46.
“It was eating at him”: Patrick J. Buchanan, Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever (New York: Crown, 2017), 19, 53.
“I just don’t understand how the hell”: Ibid.
Chapter 1 All the President’s Men
“It would be god damn easy”: H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: Putnam’s, 1994), 289.
“The confidence of the early sixties”: Richard N. Goodwin, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), 470.
“welfare mess”: Dan Rather and Gary Paul Gates, The Palace Guard (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 5.
“The enemy was liberalism”: Ibid., 224.
Despite a job larger and more powerful than ever: Rowland Evans, Jr., and Robert D. Novak, Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power (New York: Random House, 1971), 105.
“Just one dinky little phone”: Rather and Gates, The Palace Guard, 30.
“That’s a real time-saver!”: Farrell, Richard Nixon, 355.
Reporters who covered the administration: See, e.g., Lloyd Shearer, “What’s Your Origin?,” Sunday Press (Binghamton, NY), September 12, 1971, https://www.newspapers.com/image/255484710/.
“Never before had so much authority”: Rather and Gates, The Palace Guard, 21.
Haldeman had long idolized: Ibid., 121.
“What appealed to me first”: Ibid., 113.
“vot[ing] straight down the line”: Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 14.
“How he loved that case!”: Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 49.
“Pink Lady”: Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 19.
“most notorious, controversial campaign”: Ibid., 21.
one of his greatest product launches: Rather and Gates, The Palace Guard, 130–31.
Once in the White House: Thompson, The Nixon Presidency, 76–77.
The chief of staff, one of just a handful: Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 51.
“Spiky and glaring”: Ibid., 55.
“Harry Robbins Haldeman is”: Ibid., 54.
He said he doubted: Ibid., xx.
“I have been accused”: Ibid., xiii.
“Nixon was an aggressive campaigner”: Ibid., 50.
“He dealt with most people”: Jeb Stuart Magruder, An American Life: One Man’s Road to Watergate (New York: Atheneum, 1974), 58.
“There were to be results”: Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 53.
He had been elected with a campaign trail reprise: See, e.g., Rather and Gates, The Palace Guard, 67–110.
“Domestic policy under Ehrlichman’s reign”: Ibid., 231.
Some plugged-in Washingtonians: Ibid., 25.
“a figure of real distinction and glamour”: Ibid., 24.
“I have never met such a gang”: Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 81.
“I can’t explain how difficult”: Ibid., 93.
“Kissinger and Nixon both had degrees”: Ibid., 92.
“I’ve always thought that this country could run”: Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1968 (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 147.
“[Nixon and Kissinger] both had a penchant”: Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 141.
“the brutal truth”: Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 102.
“a listing of the Kissinger staff”: Evans and Novak, Nixon in the White House, 96.
New York Times reporter: William Beecher, “Raids in Cambodia by U.S. Unprotested,” New York Times, May 9, 1969, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1969/05/09/88992642.html?pageNumber=1.
while President Nixon lounged: President Richard Nixon’s Daily Diary, May 1–15, 1969, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/documents/PDD/1969/008%20May%201–15%201969.pdf.
All through that first spring: Nixon, RN, 386.
“What is this cock-sucking story?”: Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography, 217.
“Dr. Kissinger said they wondered”: David C. Humphrey, ed., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Vol. 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2006), Document 39, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76v02/d39.
One of the oddities: Ken Hughes, Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014), 93.
“Simply… no one remembered”: Felt, The FBI Pyramid, 143.
“the highest authority”: William C. Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI (New York: Norton, 1979), 219.
“The FBI would place”: Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 103.
Sullivan sent some thirty-seven: J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years (New York: Viking, 1976), 63.
Even more, fifty-two: Ibid., 65.
“A dry hole”: Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 103.
Ragan had been one of the Bureau’s: John Caulfield, Caulfield, Shield #911-NYPD (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2012), 65.
He and another man surreptitiously: Statement of Information: Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary Pursuant to H. Res. 803, 93rd Congr. 7:315 (1974), https://books.google.com/books?id=MBkQgXo1KsYC.
Finally, the frustrated order: Sullivan, The Bureau, 221.
Chapter 2 “Ellsberg? I’ve Never Heard of Him”
“You know, they could hang”: Brian VanDeMark, Road to Disaster: A New History of America’s Descent into Vietnam (New York: Custom House, 2018), 383.
“this goddamn New York Times”: Douglas Brinkley and Luke Nichter, The Nixon Tapes: 1971–1972 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), 171.
“Had some process removed”: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, 301.
Journalist Fred Emery: Fred Emery, Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Times Books, 1994), 39.
“It shows you’re a weakling”: Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 110.
“Ellsberg? I’ve never heard”: James Rosen, The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 157.
“Henry had a problem”: Emery, Watergate, 44.
“shared Nixon’s views”: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 116.
“The two of them are in a frenzy”: Reeves, President Nixon, 333.
“These leaks are slowly”: Charles W. Colson, Born Again (Old Tappan, NJ: Chosen Books, 1976), 57.
“Once this thing gets going”: Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 289.
In a conversation with Kissinger: Ken Hughes, ed., “Richard Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, and John N. Mitchell on 14 June 1971,” Conversation 005–070, Presidential Recordings Digital Edition, http://prde.upress.virginia.edu/conversations/4002139.
“Let’s go. Let’s publish”: Marilyn Berger, “Katharine Graham, Former Publisher of Washington Post, Dies at 84,” New York Times, July 17, 2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/17/obituaries/katharine-graham-former-publisher-of-washington-post-dies-at-84.html.
“The security of the Nation is not at the ramparts”: “Judge Gurfein’s First Case,” New York Times, December 18, 1979, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1979/12/18/111213202.html?pageNumber=18.
“I hope that the truth”: Daniel Ellsberg, interview by Walter Cronkite, June 23, 1971, transcript, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/ellsberg/cronkiteinterview.html.
“We’ve got a counter-government”: Seymour M. Hersh, “Colson Asserts Kissinger Wanted Ellsberg Stopped,” New York Times, April 30, 1974, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1974/04/30/99167389.html?pageNumber=33. More detailed versions of this conversation came out in the Nixon tapes.
“was one of the meanest people”: Strober and Strober, Nixon, 273.
“He always had about sixteen balls”: Jonathan Aitken, Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed (New York: WaterBrook, 2005), 132.
“Within a short time”: Ibid., 126.
“the president’s liaison with the outside world”: Ibid., 122.
He relished planting stories: Strober and Strober, Nixon, 277.
“Chuck sat and listened”: Ibid., 274.
“Who is Colson’s constituency?”: Ibid., 280.
each project he kept organized: Ibid., 276.
“We had a very good staff system”: Ibid., 277
In fact, Nixon seemed to relish: Thompson, The Nixon Presidency, 78.
“I was the man for the straight”: Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 61.
His speechwriting team existed: Thompson, The Nixon Presidency, 78.
“Most of us operated”: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, 342.
“The relation of the various Nixon aides”: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 77.
Chapter 3 The Chennault Affair
“He just could not leave”: Thompson, The Nixon Presidency, 137.
“Set up budget”: Farrell, Richard Nixon, 17.
“It was easy to get combative”: Farrell, Richard Nixon, 306.
“risk for peace”: R. W. Apple, Jr., “Humphrey Vows Halt in Bombing if Hanoi Reacts,” New York Times, October 1, 1968, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/10/01/76885700.html?pageNumber=1.
“Look, I’ve hated Nixon”: Isaacson, Kissinger, 133.
Kissinger at that point had established: Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit, 1983), 14.
“I’ve got one this morning”: Hughes, Chasing Shadows, 5.
“Anna Chennault was an ideal intermediary”: William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998), 38.
“Many Republican friends”: Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 244.
“If it became known”: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Intelligence and the Rights of Americans of the Select Committee on Intelligence, 95000 Congr. 291 (1978), https://books.google.com/books?id=Vts1AAAAIAAJ.
“Anna, I’m speaking on behalf”: Bundy, A Tangled Web, 41.
“contacted Vietnamese ambassador”: Shane O’Sullivan, Dirty Tricks: Nixon, Watergate, and the CIA (New York: Hot Books, 2018), 32–33.
“a sensational dispatch from Saigon”: Hughes, Chasing Shadows, 52.
“I do not believe that any president can make any use”: Ibid., 54.
“good for the country”: Ibid., 63.
“either one of the noblest in American political history”: Bundy, A Tangled Web, 43.
“No visiting head of state”: Hughes, Chasing Shadows, 63.
“Keep Anna Chennault working”: Farrell, Richard Nixon, 638.
“If I had only known what a beautiful woman”: Joseph Rodota, The Watergate: Inside America’s Most Infamous Address (New York: William Morrow, 2018), 86.
“They got away with it”: John A. Farrell, “When a Candidate Conspired with a Foreign Power to Win an Election,” Politico, August 6, 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461/.
“The evidence in the case”: Hughes, Chasing Shadows, 70.
“Clearly Mitchell was directly”: Tom Charles Huston, interview by Timothy Naftali, June 27, 2008, transcript, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/documents/histories/huston-2008-06-27.pdf.
“All these documents are top secret”: Hughes, Chasing Shadows, 70.
“I need it”: Ken Hughes, ed., “Richard Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, H. R. ‘Bob’ Haldeman, Henry A. Kissinger, and Ronald L. Ziegler on 17 June 1971,” Conversation 525–001 (PRDE Excerpt A), Presidential Recordings Digital Edition, https://prde.upress.virginia.edu/conversations/4006738.
Chapter 4 The Huston Plan
“a fomentation of hippies”: Melissa Graves, Nixon’s FBI: Hoover, Watergate, and a Bureau in Crisis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2020), 11.
“If you didn’t experience it”: Buchanan, Nixon’s White House Wars, 166.
“In the ’68 campaign”: Rosen, The Strong Man, 70.
“The evolutionary circle of violent dissent”: Nixon, RN, 469.
“You’re really working a crisis center”: Strober and Strober, Nixon, 72.
“The result was a highly-charged atmosphere”: Lukas, Nightmare, 12.
One Saturday staffers: Caulfield, Caulfield, 73.
“though lucrative hardly teaches”: White, The Making of the President 1972, 291.
He had a habit: Ibid.
“Pragmatism”: Rosen, The Strong Man, 28.
The two men had forged: Ibid., 31.
Mitchell sometimes referred: Ibid., 35.
“the more Negroes”: James Boyd, “Nixon’s Southern Strategy: ‘It’s All in the Charts,’ ” New York Times Magazine, May 17, 1970, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/05/17/354962432.html?pageNumber=25.
remarkably effective: Rather and Gates, The Palace Guard, 209.
“Of all the public officials”: Rosen, The Strong Man, 65.
“Oh, I’ve heard of you”: Ibid., 35.
“It was less fraternal”: Lukas, Nightmare, 5.
he turned down the job: Rosen, The Strong Man, 66.
agreeing to serve only: Richard Kleindienst, Justice: The Memoirs of Attorney General Richard Kleindienst (Ottawa, IL: Jameson, 1985), 61.
“He was, and is, an unusually”: Ibid., 41.
“He had a superior intellect”: Ibid., 46.
“to interpret in unequivocal language”: Ibid.
“the prime advocate of no-knock laws”: Lukas, Nightmare, 5.
In a surprisingly short timeframe: Rosen, The Strong Man, 72–74.
“We screamed ‘Fuck you’ ”: Ibid., 93.
“We’re going to enforce the law”: Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up?: American Protest Against the War in Vietnam 1963–1975 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984), 249.
“10 percent lawman”: Jack Anderson, Peace, War, and Politics: An Eyewitness Account (New York: Forge, 1999), 157.
Later, Hoover always brushed: Megan Gambino, “Document Deep Dive: Richard Nixon’s Application to Join the FBI,” Smithsonian, April 1, 2014, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/document-deep-dive-richard-nixons-application-join-fbi-180950329/.
“lacking in aggression”: Sullivan, The Bureau, 196.
“Dick, you will come to depend”: Thomas, Being Nixon, 286.
“In general, the FBI investigative work”: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, 158.
Whereas the CIA’s authority: Graves, Nixon’s FBI, 6–7.
Asked at one point: Ibid., 93; Felt, The FBI Pyramid, 102.
“Hoover wanted the FBI to be”: Graves, Nixon’s FBI, 4.
“History abundantly documents”: “Excerpts from Ruling on Wiretapping,” New York Times, June 20, 1972, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1972/06/20/80793239.html?pageNumber=23.
“When that support was lacking”: Ibid., 32.
Hoover that year asked: Felt, The FBI Pyramid, 105.
Even the CIA, which was supposed: Rosen, The Strong Man, 78–83.
Amid growing frustration: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, 162.
“Hoover seemed to me like an old boxer”: Ibid., 166.
“Most of what he was saying”: Reeves, President Nixon, 223.
Late that May, the Weathermen: John Kifner, “A Radical ‘Declaration’ Warns of an Attack by Weathermen,” New York Times, May 25, 1970, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/05/25/76761126.html?pageNumber=27.
“over 40,000 bombings”: Nixon, RN, 470.
“Nixon became convinced”: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 88.
he’d led the national group: Christopher Saunders, “How We Got Here: The Education of Tom Charles Huston,” Avocado, June 8, 2019, https://the-avocado.org/2019/06/08/how-we-got-here-the-education-of-tom-charles-huston/.
An early backer of Nixon: Tom Charles Huston, interview by Timothy Naftali, April 30, 2008, transcript, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/virtuallibrary/documents/histories/huston-2008-04-30.pdf
“the most logical target”: Reeves, President Nixon, 175.
“intense, cadaverous”: Raymond K. Price, With Nixon (New York: Viking, 1977), 227.
He had already shown: Lukas, Nightmare, 24–26, and Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 105.
“It was as if he had said two plus two”: Sullivan, The Bureau, 207.
“We are now confronted with a new and grave crisis”: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans: Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, 94th Congr. 936–37 (1976), https://books.google.com/books?id=gFovAAAAIAAJ.
“Present procedures should be changed”: Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States: Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, 93rd Congr. 454 (1974), https://books.google.com/books?id=sAUqAQAAMAAJ.
