Stress Points

Between Oliver Stone’s and the Library & Birthplace’s versions of the Richard Nixon story, clashes in matters of emphasis and interpretation abound. Here are some examples:

* The rise: At the library, Nixon’s first political race, his winning bid for a congressional seat, is the tale of an unknown war veteran with little in the way of resources--not even a civilian suit of clothes--winning against the odds over popular incumbent Jerry Voorhis. The library’s Nixon, who later moved to the U.S. Senate, is tenacious and scrappy.

The movie emphasizes his red-baiting tactics against Voorhis and later against Helen Gahagan Douglas in the 1950 Senate race (“a vicious campaign,” intones a reporter in a voice-over. “For Nixon, politics was war”).

* Alger Hiss: The library’s elaborate display lays out Nixon’s arrival in the national spotlight for his work on the House Un-American Activities Committee and his questioning of the State Department’s Hiss, who was accused of being a spy (never proven) but was eventually convicted of perjury. Both sides of the still-contentious debate are given space, but wall text brings the library firmly down in Nixon’s camp.

Nixon “was condemned by those in the media who had thought and written that Hiss was telling the truth and resented Nixon for proving them wrong,” the text reads.

In the movie, the Hiss case is a decisive element in Nixon’s climb: “To the right wing, Nixon was a hero and a patriot,” another voice-over reports. “To the liberals, he was a shameless self-promoter who had vengefully destroyed a fine man. It was to become a pattern: You either loved Richard Nixon or you hated him.”

* The “Checkers” speech: In a 27-minute film screened for library visitors, this address (called the “fund crisis speech” in displays there) is depicted as a courageous act by a man who had been falsely accused of maintaining a slush fund. The ubiquitous “Nixon” voice-over: “It was shameless. It was manipulative. It was a huge success!”

* The Kennedys: At the library, visitors can watch portions of the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates in a vintage living room (complete during the holidays with an aluminum Christmas tree). There’s also a reference to the first public debate between the two men, over a congressional bill early in their political careers.

In the movie, Kennedy is a constant touchstone for Nixon. The man from Brookline, Mass., is a symbol of the clubby Eastern establishment that the man from Whittier simultaneously loathed and envied--and the smooth, aristocratic antipode to Nixon’s own awkwardness and humble roots. Nixon even addresses Kennedy’s portrait as he prepares to leave the White House: “When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.”

Nixon’s obsession with the Kennedys is well-documented--but then, so is Stone’s.

* Castro: The Cuban president figures little into the library’s presentation, but he provides the darkest--and most contentious--undertow to Stone’s “Nixon.”

First, the movie states clearly that Nixon (as vice president under Eisenhower) knew of and perhaps approved assassination attempts on Castro, a point with which a number of commentators have quarreled (and to which the library has taken particular exception).

Second, Nixon’s reference to “the whole Bay of Pigs thing” in the famed “smoking gun” tape of June 23, 1972, is interpreted by the filmmakers as a code for the Kennedy assassination. It is a theory pulled out of H. R. Haldeman’s book “The Ends of Power,” although Haldeman reportedly attributed it later to his ghostwriter. (Eric Hamburg, in his introduction to the annotated “Nixon” script, dismisses reports of Haldeman’s disavowal of the theory, pointing out that it remained in paperback editions).

Haldeman to John Erlichman, in the movie: “They went after Castro. In some crazy way it got turned on Kennedy. I don’t think [Nixon] knows what happened, but he’s afraid to find out.”

The film speculates further that Nixon personally was behind the famed 18 1/2-minute gap on the Watergate tapes and that the erased section referred to that “Bay of Pigs thing.” Hamburg: “What we are trying to do is raise some questions about the Watergate tapes that have not yet been answered.”

* Vietnam: The secret bombing of Cambodia is Stone’s leitmotif for the war Nixon inherited; it rates scarcely a mention at the library.

* Watergate: In a film at the library, the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s subsequent resignation are depicted as a test of the man’s ability to rise from adversity. “He was in his deepest valley,” the narrator says, echoing Nixon’s own words, “but he wasn’t there for long.” The short film goes on to chronicle Nixon’s rebirth as a respected elder statesman.

The library’s museum corridors end in a darkened chamber devoted to Watergate. Visitors can listen to an edited version of the “smoking gun” tape, on which Nixon approved a plan to ask the CIA to interfere with the FBI’s investigation of the break-in at Democratic National Headquarters.

Wall texts offer a chronology of events leading to the resignation, but the undertone throughout is sympathetic to the former president. An attempt is made to explain away the content of the “smoking gun” tape and the Watergate cover-up is laid to aides. According to this version, the 18 1/2-minute gap was probably the result of mechanical error, and the entire scandal was an attempt by enemies to reverse “the mandate of the 1972 election.”

Stone, as one might guess, sees things a little differently.