Nixon defended his legacy in grand jury tape

CALVIN WOODWARD, NANCY BENAC

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Feisty and cagey, ex-President Richard Nixon defended his shred­ded legacy and shady Watergate-era actions in grand jury tes­ti­mony that he thought would never come out. On Thurs­day, it did.

Offer­ing a rare look into con­fi­den­tial grand jury pro­ceed­ings, and the first ever to have a for­mer pres­i­dent tes­ti­fy­ing, the National Archives and its Nixon Pres­i­den­tial Library released a tran­script of the tes­ti­mony after a judge ordered the gov­ern­ment to do so.

In it, Nixon, 10 months after he resigned under threat of impeach­ment, describes the bur­glary by polit­i­cal oper­a­tives at Demo­c­ra­tic head­quar­ters as “this silly, incred­i­ble Water­gate break-in” and claims “I prac­ti­cally blew my stack” when he learned that 18 1/2 min­utes of a post-Watergate White House meet­ing were erased from a tape.

The gap was con­sid­ered key in deter­min­ing what Nixon knew about the bur­glary and what he did to cover up the explod­ing scandal.

Nixon’s main legal risk dur­ing 11 hours of ques­tion­ing near his Cal­i­for­nia home in June 1975 was being caught in a lie. Short of com­mit­ting per­jury, or impli­cat­ing any­one in his much-diminished cadre of loy­al­ists, he could tes­tify with impunity because a par­don by his suc­ces­sor, Ger­ald Ford, pro­tected him from pros­e­cu­tion for any past Water­gate crimes.

At one con­fronta­tional moment, he bris­tled when pressed for details of a con­ver­sa­tion that he said he could not remem­ber. “I don’t recall that those spe­cific names were in the dis­cus­sion,” he snapped. “I mean, if you want me to lie about it, I will be glad to.”

He added: “Bet­ter strike that last.”

Nixon indig­nantly defended his record.

His admis­sion of wrong­do­ing came with a hefty dose of sar­casm, as when he men­tioned the bur­glars tied to his re-election com­mit­tee — known as plumbers — and other heavy-handed oper­a­tions to get dirt on polit­i­cal foes and claw for cam­paign advantage.

“I want the jury and the spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors to kick the hell out of us for wire­tap­ping and for the plumbers and the rest,” he said, “because obvi­ously you may have con­cluded it is wrong.”

His­to­ri­ans suc­cess­fully sued for access to the records. They expected few rev­e­la­tions but were deter­mined to bring to light all facets of that extra­or­di­nary episode of pres­i­den­tial disgrace.

The fact the tes­ti­mony was released counted for more than its con­tents, they said, because it helps estab­lish a prece­dent for lift­ing the veil of secrecy over grand jury pro­ceed­ings when mat­ters of great his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance are involved.

“It’s Nixon being Nixon,” his­to­rian Stan­ley Kut­ler said after his ini­tial review found no bomb­shells. “It’s a vir­tu­oso per­for­mance. How about $10 for every time he says, I don’t recall?”

A lead­ing fig­ure in the law­suit that opened the records, Kut­ler said Nixon is by turns petu­lant, self-pitying and bit­ing. “There’s a lot of that in there. And a lot of snide remarks.

Nixon’s mem­ory lapses were fre­quent when he was grilled about whether he used the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice to pur­sue his polit­i­cal oppo­nents, which would be ille­gal. Yet he gave cre­dence to a the­ory that he had done just that with Demo­c­ra­tic donors.

Pros­e­cu­tors pointed to a list of Demo­c­ra­tic con­trib­u­tors that was com­piled by Nixon’s peo­ple, evi­dence that Nixon con­tacted his trea­sury sec­re­tary about at least one top Demo­c­ra­tic offi­cial who was inter­viewed by the IRS, and a White House memo with the note: “Check McGov­ern IRS files.”

George McGov­ern was Nixon’s Demo­c­ra­tic oppo­nent in the 1972 election.

“I should point out that I can never recall sug­gest­ing Mr. McGov­ern, Sen. McGovern’s files be checked,” he tes­ti­fied. “What I do recall is only a sug­ges­tion that the McGov­ern con­trib­u­tors might be checked.”

His­to­ri­ans cer­tainly did not expect the tran­script to solve the mys­tery of the 18 1/2 minute gap. Inves­ti­ga­tors sus­pected the por­tion of the June 20, 1972, sub­poe­naed tape was erased to hide incrim­i­nat­ing talk between Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Halde­man, three days after the break-in at the Water­gate complex.

Nixon stuck to sec­re­tary Rose Mary Woods’ story that she erased it by mis­take, and pro­fessed anger when learn­ing how much was miss­ing. Although he said he could not remem­ber what was said dur­ing the gap, he had a clear rec­ol­lec­tion of his aide Alexan­der Haig telling him that much more was erased than orig­i­nally thought.

“Rose had thought it was four min­utes, or some­thing like that,” he tes­ti­fied. “Now the coun­sel have found that it is 18 1/2 min­utes, and I prac­ti­cally blew my stack.”

He said: “If you are inter­ested in my view as to what hap­pened, it is very sim­ple. It is that it was an accident.”

Even with­out the tape, inves­ti­ga­tors learned enough of Nixon’s machi­na­tions in the cover-up to bring him to the brink of impeach­ment. Fel­low Repub­li­can law­mak­ers finally aban­doned him, leav­ing him lit­tle choice but to resign.

Dur­ing the tes­ti­mony, spread over June 23–24, 1975, Nixon slipped in lit­tle digs at the pros­e­cu­tors. He simul­ta­ne­ously applauded them for their hard work and crit­i­cized them as being part of an effort to take him down. He accused them of hav­ing a dou­ble stan­dard with their treat­ment of him ver­sus his adversaries.

“If I could give one last bit of advice,” he tells the pros­e­cu­tors at one point, “tak­ing the dou­ble stan­dard is going to make you much more pop­u­lar with the Wash­ing­ton press corps, with the George­town social set, if you ever go to George­town, with the power elite in this coun­try. But on the other hand, think of your chil­dren — they are going to judge you in the pages of history.”

He goes on to say, “I mean, I am not unaware of the fact that the great major­ity of the peo­ple work­ing in the Spe­cial Prosecutor’s Office did not sup­port me for president.”

Nixon also was quizzed about his appoint­ments of five non­ca­r­eer ambas­sadors who had been donors to his cam­paign. He defended his choices while deny­ing he had promised diplo­matic posts to big cam­paign donors.

“Some of the very best ambas­sadors we have have been non­ca­r­eer ambas­sadors who have made sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions,” he tes­ti­fied, cit­ing Perle Mesta, an appointee of Pres­i­dent Harry Tru­man, as an exam­ple. “Perle Mesta wasn’t sent to Lux­em­bourg because she had big bosoms. Perle Mesta went to Lux­em­bourg because she made a good contribution.”

Nixon described a White House sys­tem in which polit­i­cal fundrais­ers might dis­cuss ambas­sador­ships with donors, but denied promis­ing them jobs. “I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of ever autho­riz­ing the sell­ing of ambas­sador­ships, the mak­ing of an absolute com­mit­ment for ambas­sador­ships,” he said.

The grand jury mate­ri­als reside for pub­lic inspec­tion at the National Archives in Col­lege Park, Md., and were put online along with thou­sands of other Watergate-era doc­u­ments and some sound recordings.

One record­ing shows a dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent side to Nixon. It is of his dic­tated mus­ings about an odd episode from 1970, when he paid a late-night visit to the Lin­coln Memo­r­ial to meet anti-war pro­test­ers. He told the young peo­ple they were hun­ger­ing for the same things he searched for 40 years earlier.

End­ing the Viet­nam War and stop­ping pol­lu­tion won’t end “the spir­i­tual hunger which all of us have,” he dic­tated. That, he said, is the “great mys­tery of life from the begin­ning of time.”

Posted by AP News on Nov 10 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.