Curiouser and Curiouser

Of all the major nonfiction books published last year, Irish investigative journalist Anthony Summers’ expose of Richard Nixon, “The Arrogance of Power,” was so bold and shocking in its scope and breadth of new research that for various reasons, some of them petty, it was misinterpreted by much of the media. A tabloid sleaze diminished the book’s release, sensationalizing Summers’ findings that Nixon allegedly abused drugs (Dilantin) and his wife while ignoring the larger implications, such as foreign wars and a possible coup d’etat. Even the distinguished (London) Times Literary Supplement’s reviewer was keen to dismiss the book.

Given a second chance in paperback, the book discusses aspects of Nixon’s career, as detailed by Summers, that bear serious reexamination. As in the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, there is an uncanny dynamic in Nixon’s life of Bad Richard destroying almost everything Good Richard achieved. From high honors to low trafficking and theft, slush funds, break-ins, cover-ups and a consistent need throughout his lifetime to lie, Nixon, who occupied an amazing 56 Time magazine covers, should perhaps be belatedly recognized as the true “Godfather” of the second, dystopian, half of the American Century.

In unfolding his major theme of Nixon’s personal corruption culminating in the psychotic destruction of his emotions and judgment, Summers traces a path of rich entrepreneurs and corporate sponsors, especially oil interests, supporting Nixon from as early as 1946, in his first war-like run for the House against liberal Jerry Voorhis. Bagmen and cutouts, such as Murray Chotiner and best friend “Bebe” Rebozo, are far more fully explored here than I’ve seen elsewhere, as are details on a surprising number of interlocking but “plausibly deniable” relationships with figures such as Mickey Cohen of the 1940s’ L.A. mob; Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, whom Nixon pardoned in 1971 , after five years of a 13-year prison term, presumably in return for campaign favors; and, most interestingly, Meyer Lansky, the Jewish “capo of capos,” who, like Nixon, was obsessed with eliminating Fidel Castro and reinstituting his businesses in Cuba.

Summers points, most notoriously, to billionaire Howard Hughes, who wanted Nixon to continue the Vietnam War so he could make up for his financial losses on helicopter development, as making the controversial $205,000 loan to Nixon’s brother that may have been the motive behind Watergate. Summers further outlines the slush funds used to build Nixon’s fortress compounds in Key Biscayne and San Clemente, exposing Rebozo’s bank in the Bahamas as a laundry through which millions of dollars moved to and fro. Nixon apparently had a secret account in Rebozo’s bank that led to labyrinthine ties to other Bahamian banks and the 1960s’ first big gambling resort, the historic Paradise Island. Summers alleges that Nixon hid millions of dollars in Switzerland with Rebozo’s help and reveals that during his retirement, he traveled often to Zurich.

Even Nixon’s historic move to take the United States off the gold standard in 1972 is now seen by Summers in the light of the personal profits that came to Nixon’s campaign chest through proxies, first buying gold with inside information of the impending change, then selling it for profits that, according to Summers’ source, were in the vicinity of $10 million or more.

Whether it was the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1974, for which Summers accretes more evidence of Nixon’s involvement, or the bizarre affair of billionaire oil and shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, the actions of Bad Richard always manage to lure us in with a page-turning gonzo quality, as if he were an Ed Sullivan on speed.

There is plenty here of classic gangster dialogue, replete with profanity and ethnic slurs, of which the following examples are among the more moderate: Of Italians: “They’re not like us ... they smell different, they look different ... you can’t find one that’s honest ....” The IRS was “full of Jews” .... “Most Jews are disloyal” .... “You can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you.” On Robert Kennedy: “Why does Bobby get to be so mean, and I have to be so nice?” His Cabinet, Henry Kissinger and almost everyone close to him are at one point or another an “idiot,” “moron,” “jerk,” “pansy,” “fag,” “ratbastard,” “jewbastard,” “viper in my bosom,” “off the reservation.” His wife, Pat, was treated like furniture, rarely acknowledged. On one vacation, cut short by Nixon, he blamed “the shallow talk .... The lack of interest in subjects of importance grew more and more boring .... I could hardly wait to get back to work.”

The miracle of Nixon’s political comeback, after eight years in the wilderness following his defeat by JFK in 1960, reads like the resuscitation of a vampire, as he benefited from the violent deaths of JFK, RFK and some 27,000 Americans in the Vietnam of 1963 through ’68. But at a historic moment when Nixon could have been a hero, Summers argues, with interesting evidence, that Nixon betrayed the cause, undermining Lyndon Johnson’s peace talks in Paris with both South and North Vietnamese governments.

We learn here that the “great silent majority” groundswell which Nixon boasted about was based on a high proportion of supportive telegrams and letters stacked on Nixon’s desk in front of live television cameras and generated well in advance by Republican state chairmen, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Ross Perot. We also learn that the notorious May 1970 demonstration on Wall Street with construction workers brandishing American flags and hard hats, chanting, “All the way USA! Love it or leave it!” was hardly the spontaneous counter-protest described in the media. Summers describes the presence of “men in gray suits and hard hats ... directing the construction workers with hand motions.”

It appears now that Nixon never had any intention of “bringing us as a people together” as he promised in 1968. To the contrary, he deeply hated opposition in all forms, whether foreign leaders (Castro, Ho Chi Minh), politicians (all the Kennedys, George Wallace), intellectuals (Alger Hiss, Daniel Ellsberg), celebrities (Jane Fonda) or the Chicago Seven, all of whom he erroneously thought were Jews. This is no passive Nixon but a man at the head of a criminal enterprise not unlike the Mafia, dead set on getting even with those who made his life so painful.

What emerges is a tragic portrait of a man who tried his entire life--and not without honor--for the presidency. By the time he finally achieved it at age 55, he was exhausted from the fight and unable to fulfill his lifelong dreams. He frittered away his energies going after “enemies” without results. Lacking exercise, rarely seeing anyone on an intimate basis, including his family, secretly seeing a New York psychotherapist, medically drugged and drinking more regularly than many of us ever suspected, he was an insomniac keeping long hours at night on the phone with other politicos, becoming increasingly trapped by his own volatile moods. Surprisingly lazy and inefficient for a man with his reputation for hard work and intelligence, he seemed undermined by his anger and the distracting pursuit of details, such as who should sit where at what dinner, what uniforms his staff should wear, who hated him, et cetera. Nixon in these pages comes to personify the classic paradox of achieving the American dream without being able to enjoy it. And his tale reads, surprisingly, like an Elizabethan morality tale with an appropriately modern ending.

What was Nixon looking for at Watergate? With many conflicting parties still alive, probably no one will ever know, but the serious motives presented by Summers are of a pattern consistent with Nixon’s post-1940s criminality. Of new interest is information, based on his secret meetings with John Mitchell, that Nixon knew of the Watergate break-in beforehand. Mitchell of course went to jail with 10 other co-conspirators so that Nixon could dodge the bullet, but Watergate, almost anticlimactically, becomes an affair of such small machinations in Nixon’s otherwise immense life that it pales in comparison to the emotional imbalance of the president and the resulting consequences, with which Summers concludes his expose.

Summers describes Nixon, reportedly stupefied by drink and prescription drugs, as America’s conventional and nuclear forces went on DEFCON 3 alert against a possible Soviet entry into the 1973 Israeli-Palestinian War; he has Nixon ordering illegal Cambodian bombing raids (which became one of the articles of impeachment) while drunk, as if rooting for the Washington Redskins; he has Nixon ordering a tactical nuclear strike against North Korea for shooting down a U.S. spy plane in 1969. A high-ranking CIA operative is quoted, “But Kissinger got on the phone to the Joint Chiefs, and they agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up in the morning.”

Summers also has Nixon, after a terrorist hijacking, ordering the bombing of the Damascus airport. Kissinger was certain the order “would not survive the night.” When Nixon kept badgering Kissinger with hourly phone calls, he was told bad weather was hampering the aircraft carrier sailing to a potential launch site. The following morning, Kissinger recalled, “I never heard another word about the bombing of Damascus.” Summers also has Nixon, in response to aggressive remarks by Mao Tse-tung, losing his patience and issuing, without any analysis, orders to move all available naval forces into the Taiwan Strait. The orders, however, were not executed for some 24 hours, and Nixon later “thought better” of his plans.

Nixon’s “madman behavior” culminated when he explored with his Joint Chiefs a military intervention on his behalf if he defied the impeachment process. Adm. Elmo Zumwalt was particularly worried by Nixon’s veiled request, as well as his mental stability. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, whether influenced by Nixon’s behavior or not, instructed the Joint Chiefs “that every order that would come from the White House had to come to me directly.... [T]here was not to be any extraordinary measures taken.” In the last, tense week of the presidency, consideration was given to bringing in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division to calm a possible revolt. Just last year, Schlesinger commented that “[t]he end of the Nixon Presidency was an extraordinary episode in American history. I am proud of my role in protecting the integrity of the chain of command.”

By the time Vice President Gerald Ford stepped into the presidency and announced that the “long national nightmare is over,” our collective sigh of relief was as powerful in its way as JFK’s assassination. The vampire was gone. But as in any decent horror film, Nixon returned with a vengeance. After Ford pardoned him for his crimes with the same moral expediency that Nixon used to forgive Hoffa for fraud, jury tampering and conspiracy and later, to forgive Lt. William Calley for the My Lai massacre, the vampire went on to write nine books preserving his legacy. He never admitted his guilt over Watergate, only his “responsibility” and legally stonewalled the release of the secret presidential tapes until years after his death and showcased himself around the world, selling himself to the American public as the world’s “elder statesman for peace.”

It worked. At his funeral in 1994, all five living American presidents, including his political stepsons Ronald Reagan and George Bush, paid deep respect. Then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) went so far as to call his time on Earth the “Age of Nixon.” In the end, his mother and father, the “silent majority” of Nixon’s mind, would have been proud of their successful son.

It was through Richard Nixon that the modern Republican Party was reborn roughly 100 years after Lincoln--though probably not in the manner the patriarch would’ve approved. In putting himself above the party’s interests in 1968 and again so egregiously in 1972, Nixon dismembered moderate Republicanism into what it has become today--a party of negative hardball politics, pious association with a Christian God, and the contradictions of wanting less government but more control of private lives, bodies, individual rights and new definitions of criminality and cultural and drug “wars”--the chilling effects of which, in their authoritarianism, have taken the Grand Old Party more in the direction of Savanorala than Eisenhower.

“The Arrogance of Power” is an indispensable book. Some of the charges are passed on second-and third-hand but, surprisingly, many of them come from people who worked with and for Nixon. Scholars may pick over its bones for years, but Summers nonetheless has a reputation for passion and serious inquiry, and here he takes us to new levels of meaning on the strange life of Richard Nixon. The hardcover was oddly misunderstood and unappreciated, but no future historian of Nixon worth his tenure will be able to ignore the true implications of this book.