Newport Pastor Was a Nixon Confidante in the Watergate Era

The Rev. John Huffman reached for a worn Bible in his book-lined study. It was a gift, he said, a gesture of graciousness, from a man in the midst of a glorious but doomed career. The inscription says that Huffman, as a messenger of God’s word, “strengthened each of us in the work of peace and human justice.”

It was signed Richard Nixon .

Now pastor of the 4,000-member St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, Huffman wrestles with the day’s political issues, like abortion and homosexuality. But he’s no stranger to the moral hot seat. From 1968-73, the years dominated by the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, he was the confidante of a besieged President.

Though Huffman, 50, has been pastor of St. Andrew’s for 11 years, he said few members of his congregation are aware of his past. He has rarely been asked about Nixon since the turmoil of the final days, he said.

In an unusual interview he granted recently, he stressed he could not, as a pastor, reveal any confidences made by Nixon at that time. But he did talk about his feelings toward Nixon and some of the drama surrounding that turbulent era.

He recalled that Nixon, reared an evangelical Quaker, rarely attended church services in Washington.

“He lived with the fear that the same thing would happen to him that happened to Lyndon Johnson--that he would go to church and be attacked from the pulpit.”

But when Nixon vacationed in Florida, he and his family attended services at Huffman’s Presbyterian church in Key Biscayne, Fla., which was recommended to Nixon by his friend Bebe Rebozo, a regular churchgoer.

Nixon came to church on Easters, after his inauguration and following his trips to China and the Soviet Union. When he came, the services drew about 80 reporters and were usually picketed by war protesters. One called Huffman a “pig” and threatened him with an ice pick, he said.

At the time, news analysts called Huffman, who had his own radio and television shows, “flamboyant” and “handsome and not particularly modest.” They noted that Huffman’s rise in prominence paralleled his association with the President. Photographs of the two show dark, wavy-haired men who could be brothers.

After Nixon came to his church, he was indeed offered his own television ministry but turned it down, he said. “I predicted then the TV ministries would get tripped up by finances.”

Huffman, who once aspired to politics “as a Christian witness,” said Nixon appreciated his worldly views as well as his sin-and-repentance style of preaching. At Nixon’s request, Huffman preached at the White House and held a special televised service at Key Biscayne to mark the cease fire in the Vietnam War, he said.

The day before the United States invaded Cambodia, Nixon shared intelligence information with Huffman over breakfast.

“I talked with him behind the scenes about his (political) problems,” Huffman said.

After the Easter Sunday service in 1973--amid increasing revelations about the Watergate scandal--Huffman said he walked Nixon to his car and asked him directly whether he knew anything about the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices. “Nixon assured me, ‘I knew nothing about it.’ I can picture his eyes. They were . . . intent.”

While Huffman believed him, that day heralded the beginning of a long estrangement of the two. Huffman’s sermon that day used a Biblical allusion--”The King knoweth of these things . . . this thing was not done in a corner.” It was widely interpreted by the media as criticism of Nixon’s involvement in the cover-up and a call for him to repent.

Huffman said the sermon was written before he knew Nixon would attend and was not directed at him. But he learned through the “White House people” that eventually Nixon suspected the worst--that he had been attacked from the pulpit.

Later, the publication of secretly taped conversations between Nixon and his aides revealed him to be active in the Watergate cover-up. A Key Biscayne news account that included Huffman’s reaction carried the headline, “Nixon Lied to Me, Former Minister Says.” That day, he said, the husband of a church member spat in his face and called him “traitor.” Although he had moved by that time to be pastor of a church in Pittsburgh, Huffman said, “I received hundreds of letters across the country, castigating me for attacking the greatest President this country ever had.”

“It would break my heart if I would ever say anything unkind to him. At the same time, the record has to stand as it is. He was one of the most complex, in my view brilliant, presidents. And he has a sinister side to him. . . .

“He certainly dealt with fear, or whatever, in terms of the Kennedys, but he would say to this day that he was loyal to John Mitchell and loyalty was one of his highest priorities. Others would say, ‘How come (White House aides H.R.) Haldeman and (John D.) Ehrlichman are in jail?”

As for himself, Huffman said, “I love Richard Nixon.” He used the word gracious repeatedly to characterize Nixon then and now.

Huffman said he and Nixon have become friends again. He said he wrote the pardoned president several years ago praising his speeches on international relations and saying he regretted the parting of their paths in 1973. “I said I was honestly trying to express my viewpoints on things and I loved him like my own father. He wrote back very graciously, saying let’s let bygones by bygones. Life is too short to carry feelings too long.

“And he sent me his book on leaders, which is very graciously inscribed.”

This one reads, “To John Huffman, with best wishes.”

NIXON IN CHINA

The former president is visiting at a time when Sino-U.S. relations are strained. A4