Richard Reeves, Journalist Patrick Buchanan, Journalist Subject: "NIXON REVISITED"

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II FIRinG Line

Guests: Richard Reeves, journalist Patrick Buchanan, journalist Subject: "NIXON REVISITED"

SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION SECA PRESENTS @ FIRinG Line

HOST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. Guests: Richard Reeves, journalist Patrick Buchanan, journalist Subject: "NIXON REVISITED" Panelists: Jonathan Kaufman, Yale University The FIR ING LIN E television series is a production of the Southern Educational Nicholas Ulanov, Princeton University Communications Association, 928 Woodrow St., p.O. Box 5966, Columbia, S.C.• Donald Ciaramella, Pace University 29250 and is transmitted through the facilities of the Public Broadcasting Service. Production of these programs is made possible through a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. FIRING LINE can be seen and heard each FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL week through public television and radio stations throughout the country. Check your local newspapers for channel and time in your area. This is a transcript of the FIRING LINE program taped in New York City on May 18, 1977, and originally tele cast on PBS on May 27, 1977.

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© Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University. MR. BUCKLEY: Richard Nixon appears to fill a deep need in America, a need variously expressed--someone to hate, surely; someone not so much to love as to defend against the excesses of his critics. It is written that history is the polemic of the victor, in which case Nixon is likely to be deep-sixed by the historians, to use a word from the rich vocabulary of Watergate. Still, there are reservations. Certainly there is indignation, as ex pressed, for instance, by Patrick Buchanan. Mr. Buchanan is, of course, the syndicated columnist. His previous job was as aide, speechwriter, and advisor to Richard Nixon, who once said about him that he had the smartest political mind Nixon had ever run across. His association with Mr. Nixon dates back to the pre-presidential days after a tour of duty in the St. Louis Globe Democrat, following a graduate degree in journalism at Columbia. His summation of the Frost-Nixon broadcasts is, "No saint himself, Mr. Nixon was not hounded from office by a communion of saints. Despite his failings, his flaws, he remains as decent, compassionate, patriotic, and courageous a man as any among those who dragged him down." Richard Reeves, I never tire of recalling, was trained as a mechanical engineer. It has always overwhelmed me that anyone could know how to build a tunne1'and also know other things, unless he is Benjamin Franklin. There are, indeed, similarities. Mr. Reeves is by conviction some sort of a liberal, certainly a dues-paying member of the anti-Nixon Black Septemberists. But Mr. Reeves, who was formerly political editor for New York magazine, and be fore that with the New York Times, cherishes the making of distinctions. He is the author of A Ford, Not a Lincoln, an unfriendly book about President Ford, and now his new book is called Convention, and gives the inside view of what happened, and most important what went on at the Carter convention in Madison Square Garden a year ago. © 1977 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL I should like to begin by asking Mr. Buchanan whether he defends Mr. COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION Nixon's position that he committed no crime. MR. BUCHANAN: In response to that I would think that Mr. Nixon in his own mind believes he committed no crime. My own view is that had Mr. Nixon been brought back from San Clemente to Washington, D.C., in that environment, had he been indicted and prosecuted for participation in the Watergate cover-up, my guess is that the jury would probably have returned a verdict of guilty, quite frankly. But I do believe that Mr. Nixon in his own mind does not be lieve he is guilty of any criminal offense. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, if I may say so, I think your answer is a little bit eva sive, because you have written that a jury in Washington, D.C., would have convicted anybody associated with Nixon of anything. So therefore, you're saying that they would have convicted Nixon in that context. It doesn't really commit you to the proposition that he was guilty. MR. BUCHANAN: Well, I think the proposition is arguable that Richard Nixon was not integrally involved in the cover-up. Peripherally, yes. He did give orders, for example, for the CIA to contain the FBI, but that can be argued on political grounds, to keep them out of the fundraising activities. I think if you look at the tape of March 13th, to get into particulars, it's quite clear that Nixon, when Dean is speaking to him, really does not have any idea of the details of the cover-up. Nixon himself admits that as of March 21 he gave consideration to acts which would have been participation in the cover up. He claims that no act followed. I do not know, quite frankly, if you had an Edward Bennett Williams and the trial had been moved to Richmond, Virginia, whether or not Mr. Nixon could have been exonerated of participation. But I do think it's an open question. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Jaworski, of course, says that the March 21st tape closes the question. MR. BUCHANAN: Well, I think the ten members of House Judiciary who studied that matter as closely as Jaworski contended that it did not c10se·the ques tion, that Mr. Nixon was not guilty of an impeachable offense. What finished

© Board of Trustees of the Le and Stanford Jr, University, Nixon off, quite frankly, was the revelation of the tape o~ June 23rd, ~nd ~uch that for months Mr. Nixon had deceived his staff, had ~ece1ved.the Amer1can . time is spent on it, inasmuch as it would appear to me, since the whole people as to whether or not he had given them all t~e .lnformat1on. Now,.tell1ng 1mpeachment process is in part ambiguous, it really doesn't matter so much that one can answer that question with total certitude. Or do you think it a public untruth to the American people is not a cr1m1na~ offense: I~ d1d does? break Mr. Nixon's ties to the people who had supported h1m .. I th1nk.1~ de stroyed his capacity really to lead his own side of.t~e nat1?nal pol1t;cal . MR. REEVES: Well, I certainly don't think it does. I think that Marshall community. But that in and of itself was not a pol1t1cal cr1me~ I do~ t th:nk. McLuhan would probably be the person at our point in time best qualified to MR BUCKLEY' Let me ask you Mr. Reeves, why is so much attent10n be1ng pa1d, talk abo~t this. I mean I think something happened on television, something in'your ana;ysis, to the que~tion of why he committed.a "crime"? Is it b~cause extraordlnary, that a good part of the country saw it, and it reaches the rest people who are anxious to bury him are very much afra:d ~hat.someday ~e w1ll of the country by word of mouth. And I think that in general that conclusion rise again on a refreshed interpretation of the data 1nd1cat1ng that 1n fact w~s? that is the conclusion for our time, that the man was lying on tele v1slon, or appeared to be lying, which on television is the same thing, and he committed no crime? Is that why? . gUil~ MR. REEVES: I think that that in fact exists, that some people do:-or I ~h1nk that he appe?red to admit on television even if he did not say the magic did before the Frost interviews--worry that Richard Nixon would r1se aga1n words. I thlnk that for our tlme, for Richard Nixon's lifetime, that that's ~ th~m what happened? and that "he kind of linear analyses of tapes, of dates, of as political power, and I think that motivated ..That.hardly seems actual admisslons-- likely to me that that would happen. I think that ln llstenlng to Pat talk, MR. BUCKLEY: Lose their importance. the emphasis on what a tape said really is ~n som~ ~ays related t? the fact MR. REEVES: --no longer have the importance in an electronic age that they that so many people, both in the press and ln POllt1CS, but more ln the press, once did. have such an investment in their own knowledge of those ~apes and of the dates, and of who said what to whom at what time, that they domlnate the process.of MR. BUCHANAN: I've got to disagree. I don't think that what did the comment on the Nixon interviews, and in a way they ~ominated.the.preparatlon president know and when did he know it was really the motivation of why the for the Nixon interviews. And they are interested ln explor1ng.lt along.those left sort of yelled, "Tally ho!" and went after Richard Nixon. But I think lines. when my own feeling as to whether o~ not ~here wa~ a.cr1me--a c~lme that it is necessary for justification of what was done to Nixon that it be being whatever a jury and the courts at a glven t1me ~ay 1~ ls--~eallY.1s demonstrated that he was guilty of a crime, and that it be demonstrated that secondary to the perception that in fact vict?riou~ h1storlans.wlll wrlt~. he was guilty of an impeachable offense for historical purposes. Right now And I think that perception is that Richard N1xon ln fact commltted a cr1me, they can say, "Well, Nixon obvi ous ly was a thoroughly bad man, and we know and that's more important than who did what on what date. what he did in Cambodia; we know what he did here and there." But when his MR. BUCKLEY: But this doesn't have a sacramental sign~ficance for you. You torians look back, and if they find no hard, verifiable evidence that Nixon care less whether he committed a "crime," strictly def1~ed, than ~hether there was guilty of a crime, then I think they begin to suspect, or challenge, or was enough evidence there to force his impeachment, WhlCh you thlnk:- question, or look into the motives of those who brought him down. So I think MR. REEVES: Yes. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am an e~glneer,. it is of central importance to a number of people that Nixon-- It would have been most desirable if Nixon had admitted he was guilty of a crime, and this even if I probably build a lousy tunnel, and I am not a lawyer. R:chard N1xon. Nixon refused to do. in my mind, failed politically. And Pat is qUit~ right when he sald h~ lost the capacity to govern the country, even at a p01nt to rally some of hlS ?wn MR. BUCKLEY: Or at the time he was pardoned. staff, that that in fact is what happened. He was brought d?wn.by a co~bln~ MR. BUCHANAN: Exactly. If they could have gotten that admission that he was tion of political enemies, and the law itself was--I guess.I m ln the mlnorlty i nvo 1ved in the cover-up they coul d say, "Look, we were ri ght. He was gui lty of a crime, and even in the narrow sense of an impeachment process he should on this with a lot of analysis of Watergate--that the law ltself was the tool have gone out." for an essentially political process. .. . MR. BUCHANAN: But the point you make 1S very lmp?rtant, I thln~, a~ m~c~ for MR. BUCKLEY: Of couse, I suppose people of the future could have said that those who defend Nixon as for those who brought hlm down. I thlnk :f lt s he had been coerced into admitting a crime because he couldn't afford in this climate to count on a fair jury trial, so even that might have clouded the demonstrated historically that it could not be demonstrated con~luslvely that ultimate question. he committed a crime, which by narrow definition is the only th:ng t~at's an impeachable offense. as we argue, then his~oricall~ th~ o~her slde wlll have MR. REEVES: Is this the way it's going to go, though? I find myself more in a terribly difficult time, I think, defendlng and Justlfylng what was done: terested in the political reality. If I may take a very, very brief diversion, MR. BUCKLEY: They'll be on the wrong end of Profiles in Courage a generatlon I heard a debate here in New York the other day among some people in politics from now, right? about Bella Abzug, who wants to be mayor, or anything else that's available. MR. BUCKLEY: Chief of protocol is my suggestion. MR. BUCHANAN: Exactly. Right. . (1 aughter) MR. BUCKLEY: Well, this interests me very much, becaus~ curl?usly ~ l?t of the people who want to hear from the very lips of Mr. Nlxon hlS .admlsslon of MR. REEVES: And they were talking about--I mean the great debates of the formal guilt are the same people who continue to insist ?n t~e :n~ocence of . left that began--and they were talking about, well, do you know what Bella Alger Hiss. And there, once again, there is an emblematlc slgnlflcance to th1S said in 1936. She really was a Stalinist. 1936 happened to be the year I was insistence. They believe that the whole of history may turn on these formal born, and I listened to that argument with great intensity, as if it were of itites. It was so with Dreyfus. People ·woul d not talk to peo~1e abou~ D~eyfus great importance to New York City and Bella's political future. And I did unless they knew that that person would concede that he was g~llty or :ns1st for my own amusement check, and found out that in that year Bella was 14 years that he was innocent. I know somebody, a professor, who got lnt? terrlble old. And yet serious political people were debating that sort of angels on trouble; he finally was chased out of Yale in part because he sald t~at the head of the pin. And I think historically it may be important, but I Socrates was really guilty. (laughter) Now, of course, Socrates.admltted he wonder why so many people, including people who were associated with Nixon, feel driven. Or are they going to spend so much of their time talking about was, didn't he? But on the matter of the Nixon business it faSC1nates me how that? 2 3 © Board of Trustees of the L and Stanford Jr. University. M~. ~ell, I thought the visual impact--Nixon said, "I'm not groveling," but he was BUCKLEY: let me read youa sentence from Pat Buchanan, published in groveling on television. h1S col~mn, Wh1C~ sugg~sts ~he reason for this continuing indignation. He MR. BUCHANAN: You're talking about the show now. wrote, If the f1rst f1ve k1ds caught smoking pot in the dorm were given a MR. REEVES: Yes, but I think the show becomes the trial, that that is what stern lectu~e, you do not expel, prosecute, mark for life the sixth. It is t~e suggest10n of ~nequal treatment that causes most indignation." But I would television has done to us. 11 ke to sugges t th1 s, that what I ca 11 the "Profumo factor" was at work here MR. BUCHANAN: Well, let me ask you this. In the absence of a smoking pistol John Profumo was kicked out not because he whored around, but because he said tape, when there's a measure of anbiguity there as to whether Nixon really is ha~n't ~hored culpable of an impeachable offense, how would you have felt that Congress he around to his peers. And this, I think, is the reason that should have moved? It should have moved to impeach him anyhow? the sltuat~on turned against Nixon, or was ready to turn, when the June 23rd MR. REEVES: I think it would have moved to impeach im, and would have impeached tape was d1scovered. Would you agree? him, and would have found something, barring one fact. And that was some kind M~. BUCHANAN: I agree. I think the same forces that I believe were after N1xon on Watergate were after him in the entire Vietnam era when David Broder of event that changed the country's perception of Nixon as president. I think ~e that impeachment at the time was inevitable, that it was in the air, that the wrote his "Breaking of the President" column. And I think succeeded then dogs had scented blood and were going to follow through, unless some extraor because basically-- dinary event, perhaps an international event, had changed the president's MR. BUCKLEY: Well, ADA wanted to impeach him before Watergate. popularity profile in the country at that time. I agree with you totally that MR. BUCHANAN: Exactly. There were buttons around for impeachment before it was a better result for our time that that tape did come out, that it just ~atergate. But I think that the thing was that we won on that issue, we won 1n Novem~er of 1969 because the country believed that Nixon was acting in what simply made it cleaner-- ~e conce1ved to be the best public interest. We lost on Watergate a) because MR. BUCKLEY: Made it unanimous, in effect. 1t was not the national interest involved, but because it was Richard Nixon's MR. REEVES: --and more acceptable politically, even to people who in fact sup hide that was involved, and secondarily, and more important is what I men ported Nixon and felt he was being treated unfairly. tioned, and what you called the "Profumo factor," which is that to his own MR. BUCHANAN: Well this is why, quite frankly, in the process, when we went people Mr. Ni~on has conced~d now, and the smoking pistol tape was proof then, to Camp David and talked about it, we argued about the-- MR. BUCKLEY: After the release of June 23? that.he had m1sled and dece1ved those who had backed him up and stood with him MR. BUCHANAN: No, before it. We argued for a two-step thing. Nixon was pre on V1etnam ..50 we sort of cut our links to our own people. We could always pared to step up and resign at the same time it was released, which would have stan~ up aga1nst the left as long as we had our backing, our solid Republican back1~g, in effect covered up--not covered up, but it would have blotted out the tape, our middle-America backing. But we cut the tie to that, I think, and it was our argument that the tape should be released first, so that Nixon's when 1t b~cam~ known th~t we had misled these people, or that the president through h1S a1des had m1sled these people. So I think that was--I think you're own people would realize the reason why he was doing what he was doing. right--that is what finished Richard Nixon. It was not a crime but it de MR. BUCKLEY: So they wouldn't think he just quit. stroyed his capacity to lead the country, and it made certain the outcome of MR. BUCHANAN: They would come to the conclusion, right, that he had to go. the situation both in the House and the Senate. They wouldn't say that they broke, you know, Nixon's people all broke and they MR. BUCKLEY: Okay. But do you approve? If you say it made certain the out caved in under pressure of the House Judiciary Committee. And so we argued come of his situation in the House and in the Senate would you then go so far that the tape should hit first so that then our people, or at least a great as to say that his having been rendered impotent, the House and the Senate number of them, would be brought around to the conclusion that it was neces would have been justified in impeaching him, even if there had not been a sary that Nixon go, and there would be a much greater degree of unanimity about smoking pistol? his decision, which was taken on Friday when the tape was released on Monday. MR. BUCHANAN: If there had not been a smoking pistol? MR. REEVES: How much of that is post facto, though? How much of that dis MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. cussion revolved around the fact of, "Let's drop this and see what the impact MR. BUCHANAN: Oh, I think the House would have impeached him. I think the is. Can we survive this?" S~nate.could ~ave MR. BUCHANAN: No, that was very much in the-- We discussed it on the heli gone either way without the smoking pistol. But I think copter to Camp David; we discussed it at Camp David. Views shifted. Some h1stor1cally 1f there had been no smoking pistol it would have been seen as a argued that Nixon should step up on Monday and say, "I knew this information--" political atr?ci~y against Nixo~ in ~ixon being singled out. I think quite frankly the f1nd1ng qf the smok1ng p1stol was beneficial for the country in MR. BUCKLEY: This was Monday the what? Monday of resignation week? terms that it convinced-- MR. BUCHANAN: Monday of resignation week, which was the Monday we dropped MR. BUCKLEY: It cut the ambiguity. the tape. --and that Nixon should get up and say, "I'm going to step down." MR. BUCHANAN: Right. It convinced Nixon's own people, his own closest aides, And we argued against that. We argued we should drop the tape first and let t~at he had to go for t~e good of the country, that he no longer had the capa that hit. And one of the reasons, quite frankly, was there were some in the C1ty to lead the country, not because he had committed a crime--because even White House and the president's immediate family who felt it was not fatal. the June 23rd tape is ambiguous-~but that he had misled the country, which is So we said, "Let's drop the tape first. This will demonstrate--and we believe not a crime, but which disqualifies him, I think, from further leadership. it is fatal, and the country--" And there's no justification for going through those six more months we knew MR. REEVES: But you didn't say at that time, "We believe it is fatal." we'd go through when the outcome was certain. MR. BUCHANAN: Oh, yes we did. We told the president that we thought it was MR. BUCKLEY: Does that appeal to you, that analysis? fatal. MR. REEVES: Yes. That's a political analysis. I mean I think it was a poli MR. REEVES: Oh, I'm sorry. But what the president told the public in re tical process. And we're probably in agreement in that basic set of facts. leasing that statement was that this can be misinterpreted and "I hope people But it brings me back to the point, I didn't care. I personally didn't care~ wi 11 take a couple of days to understand." and I wonder how many people did--whether Nixon in fact made that admission. MR. BUCHANAN: Well, he also indicated he had misled his staff in releasing

4 5 © Board of Trustees of the Lei nd Stanford Jr. University. around Nixon instead of on Nixon. And many other journals did the same kind of it, that he had known what it contained for three months, and that his staff thing. They thought, well, everybody knows about what happened in California, did not know, which had been saying, "We've released everything." And so the whether it happened in 1946 or '48, or in 1962. And his past was not explored tape was a real bombshell, and we knew it would be. Some felt it wouldn't be. in the same way that other presidential candidates have been, at least since And so then the firestorm that followed that on Wednesday and Thursday made about 1964. And I think that worked to his advantage. I suspect that heavy mandatory his resignation, and it also made it much easier for Nixon's par concentration on the California years and on names that even to people of my tisans to accept what was inevitable. Some of them did not accept it, but it age are dim memories--Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas, to say nothing broke Nixon's lines, as it were, I think. of Alger Hiss-- And at the same time I always thought one of the most brilliant MR. BUCKLEY: There's been a lot of discussion of the pathology of Nixon, as individual efforts I have ever seen in American politics was you in those days we all know, but very little discussion of the pathology of his critics. And dealing with a press which was essentially hostile to Nixon--and is essentially beginning with somebody who isn't all that famous for being obsessed with the hostile to Republicans, in fact--and saying--and you're an easy guy to get subject, Professor Barber, quoted by Anthony Lewis a couple of days ago, I'd along with, and people liked you even if they weren't particUlarly fond of your like to have your reaction to the following statement of James David Barber: candidate--and you would frame everything in, "Look, I know you're not going "Despite the most abundant evidence ever available regarding any potential to give us a fair break, but this is what we're saying." (laughter) And I'm president, we, the American people, failed to see through the machinations of telling you I don't know how well you thought it was working, but guys were an expert fl imflam man." Now, Barber, I take it from the context, is going coming back and saying,. "You know that Pat Buchanan, he thinks I'm not going on to say that ours is a very fragile democracy in virtue of its lacking so to be fair, that son of a--" And I think you got about 25 percent better basic a power of penetration. Now, this of course barges into your statement press than you should have gotten when he was campaigning. about Mr. Nixon that I quoted in the introduction. But how do you analyze MR. BUCKLEY: So he's responsible for the deception of which Professor Barber Barber saying that at this point? . complains. MR. BUCHANAN: Well, I don't know who Barber is, quite frankly. But I think (1 aughter) history would demonstrate that that's a simplistic and gross underestimation MR. REEVES: I think he's a little quicker than Professor Barber. That's my of the capabilities of t1r. Nixon. What you've got to remember is that even reading of it. in the television age Richard Nixon has been a central figure in most of the MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Barber is, of course, a pretty heavy historian, but the conflicts of the postwar era, from the Hiss case to the anti-communist move fact that he's quoted by Anthony Lewis gives it national circulation and a cer ment of the early Fifties, to the battles against Stevenson, to the battle tain benediction. But let's just progress a little bit. You've got Pete against Kennedy, to the assault on the press in 1962, to the '68 campaign, Hamill: "Nixon is the Bela Lugosi of American pol itics, lying out there in the and then the Vietnam war, and then he was the candidate who in effect humili crypt of San Clemente and rising into the darkness of night. We think we have ated the candidate of the counterculture. It seems to me preposterous to say finally put him behind us, hoping that he is gone and he wil~ never again ~e that a man without any substance could have taken so many defeats as he did admitted into our consciousness, and then there he was, walklng among us wlth and to have come back from them. I think he is an individual of extraordinary that eerie smile, those glittery vengeful eyes, that odd hunched body that he courage, of a sense of self-confidence, of drive, and of ability as a poli almost seems to have rented somewhere but never possessed." Now, what pos tician. He's not gifted as a great orator, quite obviously. He's an excel sesses Hamill? lent political analyst and tactician. But there's only one other figure in MR. REEVES: A desire to write gothic novels? (laughter) It is a bit over American history, and that's FOR, who's been on five national tickets. And written. so I just think to make a statement like that is just simplistic, and it's MR. BUCHANAN: It's almost a parody of The Nixon Reader, that piece, yes. an underestimation of Nixon's genuine capacities and abiliti~s. Obviously he MR. BUCKLEY: It's almost a parody, isn't it? Sort of NationaZ Lampoon stuff. is an individual who has character flaws, but I mean I couldn't endorse or But people say, "Well, only Pete Hamill would do that." But-- subscribe to that statement at all. MR. BUCHANAN: Breslin, same thing. MR. BUCKLEY: What about you? MR. BUCKLEY: Sure. "He's the Boris Karl off. The monster, lurching, walks. MR. REEVES: I do think it's a bit simplistic, too. And I think something He is our living death, all our yesterdays returning, the past that waits just very interesting happened on two levels--one on a very basic level that Richard around the corner to our future. No wonder that so many people for a while Nixon, representing a minority party--not necessarily in view of its ideology, did not want to get out of bed and face the mob." but certainly in view of its political potential in any given election--was MR. BUCHANAN: You know, we used to gather those things lovingly in the White basically elected because of mistakes of the majority party. But going to House and you'd pick them up and read them and say, "Is this fair?" And then the specifics of that thing, I always felt that Pat played a very key role in you'd roll those right out. Those people played right into Mr. Nixon's hand, something that I remember happening. And it was that-- quite frankly, with statements like that, I think. Just the overdone chara~te~ MR. BUCHANAN: You mean the cover-up, eh? of them. I think they did the same thing after your brother was elected, dldn t (laughter) they? They set out and-- MR. REEVES: No, no. No, in fact it was an opening up. Well, let me tell MR. BUCKLEY: A couple did, yes. . you where both our lives were in 1968. Nixon in a strange way covered two MR. BUCHANAN: We all had a "C" branded on our forehead when we woke up thlS generations, and when you were traveling with him then I was writing a series morning after Jim Buckley was elected. But I think that rea~ly refl~cts o~ of profiles on candidates--I was then 31 years old--for the New York Times the individuals themselves who have written it, because I thlnk any lntel~lgent magazine. And whatever my skills were, and some other people around the person, as I say, who looks back on Nixon's record, they might sa{ that Nlxon country who did that kind of thing, those profiles in general tended to be was a bad man or Nixon was a man of no convictions, but to say he s a man of negative. You were essentially looking for things that these people weren't no substance or ability or something like this is preposterous, because how telling the country. When it came time to do one on Nixon, we sat down--we could he have survived for 30 years during periods of great controversy and being the editors of the New York Times magazine and myself--and decided, well, crisis in American politics? everybody knew everything about Richard Nixon. And we did a piece on the men 7 6 © Board of Trustees of the Lei nd Stanford Jr. University. MR. REEVES: Well, I don't like Richard Nixon, and I never really have. On their noses in it. And after the December bombing Nixon came out and it looked the other hand, so much, as the parade goes by, depends on how it's looked at like that which they had called murder bombing, et cetera--it looked like that at a moment. Jimmy Carter is suddenly viewed as having found the American had worked. And Nixon had won the war in Vietnam on which they had broken and pulse with a kind of cool, laid back--whatever word you want to use on the run. And Nixon was saying these things, and so he did stick the sword in, or style. Richard Nixon says, "Lower our voices." Right? Was that the phrase the needle in, constantly. So when they saw this opportunity that was pre that you people used? And the same people who are saying "Isn't this mar sented to them by Watergate I think they seized upon it, and I think it's for velous?" with Carter didn't see any feel between Richard Nixon and the American their own reaS0ns that they're portraying Nixon as sort of a unique monster people. In fact, whether or not one admires him, he did have a pretty good in American history, which simply is not validated by the facts we've dis feel for the American people. covered since then. But I do think there's something to do with Nixon's per MR. BUCKLEY: Sure he did. sonality. For example, now that Goldwater is no threat to the left, Goldwater MR. REEVES: Certainly in the late 1960s. is the very popular figure on the left. But it has to do with personality. MR. BUCKLEY: He never lost a primary. Am I correct? I think Joe McCarthy's personality probably had something to do with his prob MR. BUCHANAN: ~xac~ly right. 19~8, and that 1972 was the greatest victory lems, as well as his point of view. But I think basically it is that Nixon was ever won by a m1nor1ty party cand1date. Forty-nine states. Of course, we on the other side. And Nixon is not a conservative, but Nixon was the supreme had the benefit of Senator McGovern on the other side, but-- anti-liberal of the postwar era, I think. And I think that had a lot to do MR. BUCKLEY: Carter lost the last six primaries he ran in, by contrast. with it. MR. BUCHANAN: Exactly. Right. MR. REEVES: Oh, I think that is it. I would only add to that that much of the M~ .. BUCKLEY: So I think you have this interesting point. There was an af difference between Nixon and Goldwater is that Nixon was formidable and f1n1ty there between the American people and Nixon. Goldwater was not. He did make a mockery of what a generation of Americans- ~R: ~EEVES: Well, I don't know how history is going to record him as a pol and I'm not talking about the people who were kids then; I'm talking about the 1t1c1an, because of course he had one spectacular political failure, as we've people who were a generation ahead of the kids in the Sixties--thought was the now seen. future of the country. We're talking about the New Yorker publishing The MR. BUCKLEY: The big one. Greening of America, and hundreds of thousands of people going out to buy that. MR. BUCHANAN: The World Series. And people of good will and good intellect genuinely thought that was the fu (laughter) ture of the country. And in a way McGovern was a symptom of that, rather than M~. REEVES: In fact, there's nothing in Pat Caddell memos that are now being central to it. And this one little guy who had been doing it for 20 years c~rculated or Hamilton Jordan memos being circulated as being brilliant that kept deflecting all of that. And even now, I think part of the hatred is the R1chard Nixon was not hitting on in the late 1960s and in 1972. So that it's realization that the current administration in the United States, the Carter foolish to pretend that he was not a very, very capable man. There is a lack Administration, is in fact in many ways out of the Nixon stream, certainly, m~ybe ?f--and it's what Breslin, Hamill, other people are driving at--there rather than the McGovern Sixties stream of thought. ~s someth1ng.peculiarly American about Richard Nixon. We haven't quite figured MR. BUCHANAN: Well, McGovern himself said during the primaries, this fellow 1t out. He 1S not our Boris Karloff at all. We're fascinated with him. He Carter is "our Nixon," you know, and I think in a sense that Carter looked at will come back in a media sense again and again. He will write a book and what Nixon did and how he won that mandate and Carter picked up a lot from it will start an enormous wave-- ' that. He didn't emphasize issues so much as the left constantly does. He MR. BUC~LEY: Yes, we'll go through it all again, probably in this room, the emphasized his own personality, and I think there are similarities and similar same th1ng. (1 aughter) Anybody who I s a cause of a nati ona1 neuros is is i nter traits between the two men, quite frankly. They're very much pragmatists, esting~ for that reason alone. Now mind you, these people are not saying that you know. Carter drops the $50 rebate; Nixon goes for wage and price controls. he's w1thout substance or without competence. Jimmy Breslin says that the p~ople w~o robbed the great train in England in 1963 are still in jail, whereas MR. REEVES: The anti-Nixon literati, I think-- N1xon tr1ed to rob our whole country. Now, these are people who make a living, MR. BUCKLEY: That's just about everybody. w~o are.very talented professionals. Why are they doing this? What is it that (laughter) ~lxon d1~ that caused them to react in such a way? It's a question that is MR. REEVES: That's right. --genuinely feels- 1nstruct1ve not only for people who are interested in the morphology of Nixon's MR. BUCHANAN: And the "i 11 iterati" too. (laughter) ~ersonality, but for people who are interested in the way people react. For MR. REEVES: --that he succeeded over this 20 year period, 25 year period, 1nstance, I've always thought the most interesting thing about Joe McCarthy 30 year period, by appealing to what was worst in the American people, while w~s hi~ en~mies ..And increasingly I think the most interesting thing about N1xon 1S h1S enem1es. Are they sore at the American people, for whom I think they were appealing, in fact, to what was best in the American people. In these people have a considerable contempt, for electing him? Is this really fact, it seems to me a more sensible analysis is that we, after all-- why they go after him and after him, for the reason you said, that he defeated MR. BUCKLEY: If that's true then the American people are no good, because they responded to the worst. and humiliated the candidate of the counterculture? MR. REEVES: That's right. And of course much of the lashing of Nixon, par MR: ~UCHANAN: Right, he did. 8u~ ~e was more than that. On ~very great cr1S1S on Wh1Ch the country was d1v1ded between left and right .in the postwar ticularly in the 1971-73 period, was a lashing of the American people for era, from the Hiss case, as I mentioned, to the anti-Communist era, to Stevenson being too stupid to see through all of this. But I think that the people who versus Eisenhower, to Kennedy versus Nixon, to the war in Vietnam, and then to wrote that acted out of sincerity, but also out of a misunderstanding of the 1972, Nixo~ was on the other side. You mentioned the personality conflict, country that Richard Nixon never had. We have built a society that is based too, and N1xon was on the other side of all of these questions. And then in essentially on self-interest, and constructed it. Nixon understood that. I 1~72 he did humiliate their candidate. He read the country better than they don't think that the liberals of the 1960s understood that at all. d1d. And our victory was not really q gracious victory;, we in effect rubbed MR. BUCKLEY: Well how do you account for-- Here's an episode that's only a day old. Gerald Ford goes to Yale University, gets a standing ovation, honor- 8 9 © Board of Trustees of the Lei nd Stanford Jr. University. ary degree~ the whole works: And yet, he's a man appointed by Nixon, who MR. REEVES: Or to bring it closer to the election. pardoned Nlxon, who ran agalnst Carter, who ran in 1976 on a campaign to the MR. BUCKLEY: Well, of course the irony is that Watergate caused the loss of right of Nixon's. Is it because he was beaten? Vietnam. MR. REEVES: Because he lost. MR. BUCHANAN: Oh, yes. I believe that. I think that they broke Nixon when MR. BUCKLEY: He redeemed himself by losing. they denied him the right to bomb in August of '73 and then they began sub MR. REEVES: That's right. sequently cutting off assistance, and even the North Vietnamese generals said MR. BUCKLEY: He would never have gotten that degree if he had won, would he? that Thieu was forced to fight a poor man's war. But I think, and this is a MR. KAUFMAN: He was also a nicer man. hard indictment of the left, but I honestly believe there are some members of MR. BUCKLEY: Okay. Well, that's a-- the left who were delighted that that war was lost. MR. REEVES: He was nice enough to lose. I would argue- MR. BUCKLEY: Well, they felt it was the only form of expiation. MR. BUCKLEY: Like Goldwater. MR. BUCHANAN: Because they felt, right, it was immoral. MR. REEVES: --that Gerald Ford, nothing becomes him like defeat. MR. BUCKLEY: Because they felt we shouldn't have been there in the first MR. BUCHANAN: He represents no threat now to the left. Therefore he can be place, so therefore we deserved to lose it. credited with what he did for the country. MR. BUCHANAN: And it was immoral, also. MR. BUCKLEY: Ooes Nixon represent a threat? MR. REEVES: The reverse is probably also true, though, that Vietnam caused MR. BUCHANAN: Historically, the way we talked before, I think he does. But Nixon to lose Watergate. My own feeling is he would not have been as vu1ner if Gerald Ford had won that election and he were up against the Democratic able-- Congress, I think after four or five years when he left he would be lower in MR. BUCHANAN: It was a contributing factor. the polls than Harry Truman was in 1952 when he departed. MR. REEVES: --in the country to the kind of unprecedented unique movement in MR. REEVES: We haven't mentioned the war at all, and I would certainly argue American history, the destruction of a sitting president, if it were not for- that people who oppose Nixon on the grounds of the war certainly acted out of MR. BUCKLEY: If he had not been associated with the war. motives that they themselves thought were of the highest. And I think even MR. BUCHANAN: He was on the other side of that argument as well, right. And their critics would say that many of them, that their motives were decent. that was the most divisive of them all, I think. But Nixon did take away the best years of our lives, the time when we were in MR. BUCKLEY: Which? the flower of late and achieving youth, having gone through weaving daisy MR. BUCHANAN: Vietnam, I think, and the humiliation of McGovern and the chains, that kind of thing, and now were ready to take on-- Suddenly Richard counterculture, so to speak, I think were the final contributory factors. Nixon comes from out of the past. Probably those analogies of him constantly think, you know you mentioned we did get good press-- coming out of the mist are in fact that he came out of the mist and snatched MR. REEVES: By the way, I don't agree with the humiliation of McGovern. away the best years of Jimmy Breslin's and Pete Hamill's lives. think humiliation of-- MR. BUCKLEY: By absorbing them, and by being sort of aesthetically ubiquitous. MR. BUCHANAN: Well, it's the humiliation of the left, of the left, right. MR. REEVES: And also by preventing them from imposing their own ideas on the MR. REEVES: --the counterculture, but they abandoned McGovern very quickly and majority, at least, of the country. suddenly dech:led, "My God, we've picked this ineffective-- MR. BUCHANAN: The Vietnam thing is important, because I think we argued, and MR. BUCHANAN: I think they did because they said, "Obviously our ideas are correctly, that we were led into Vietnam basically by the men John F. Kennedy not wrong. The conveyance of our ideas in the form of Mr. McGovern--he is re brought to Washington, who was really the hero and the champion, and really the sponsible for the loss. It's not that our ideas have been defeated." And of shining knight of the left. And then Nixon from 1969 up until 1973 appeared course, we would turn around and say the reverse. a) to be withdrawing American troops, sort of bombing his way out, at the same MR. BUCKLEY: Like the people who backed Henry Wallace in '48. They did the time winning a conflict which they had come to believe was immoral and all the same thing. rest, and by 1973 it looked like Nixon had succeeded. And I think that they MR. BUCHANAN: Right. had broken and run, quite frankly, and Vietnam was really the most divisive MR. BUCKLEY: Jonathan Kaufman is from Yale University. Mr. Kaufman. issue of my lifetime, and Nixon had appeared not only to have come out on the MR. KAUFMAN: An editor of Time magazine has said that during the Watergate right side of it, but he was going to write the history books. period Nixon covers sold like cholera, and that when the Frost interviews were MR. BUCKLEY: He brought it off. first announced the networks just wouldn't touch them. Why are we now back MR. BUCHANAN: Right. He was going to write the history books; and how were again, obsessed? I mean why is everyone writing about it? Why is everyone they going to come off in the history books, the ones who had championed the talking about it? And why are so many millions of people watching them? people who led us into Vietnam when Nixon had led us out? What's the compulsion now? MR. REEVES: I suppose I would argue that both sides exploited the war, but MR. REEVES: Our experience at New York magazine when I was there was the that up to that point in time your side had exploited the war more effectively. opposite of that. We were very, very conscious of cover sales, because it's MR. BUCHANAN: We were in favor of the war basically when it was prosecuted the only real indication you have of your editorial content from week to week. by Johnson, but we argued that the prosecution of the war was inadequate, that And Nixon covers--our covers were in general much more hostile and much more Johnson was making too many concessions to his critics in the way he was fight pointed than what the newsmagazines were writing--but it may in fact be that ing the war. Now, my own view is even with Nixon, what he did in May of 1972 maybe--I hadn't realized it until I spun it out--the fact that they were and December of 1972 he should have done in May of 1969 and December of 1969, pointed and anti-Nixon rather than simply being Nixon covers was what made them quite frankly. I think we dillydallied too long in terms of negotiation. sell, while Time's and Newsweek's did not. MR. BUCKLEY: Incremental escalation. MR. BUCHANAN: My own feeling is that I think Nixon, whatever is said for and MR. BUCHANAN: Right. And we should have moved very rapidly, I think, because against him, is one of the most fascinating and interesting figures of the we realized that the country would stand for only so much, and I think that entire postwar era. And I think for reasons that we've talked about here, was why Nixon was sort of forced to move out the way he did. for everybody as we were growing up--I think Meg Greenfield coined the term 10 11 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. presented a detailed version of the moment of letting go, the version that ends "the Nixon generation"--that there's been no election in her lifetime, she with, "Just explain to my children what happened," and that Nixon, for reasons said, in which half of us were afraid Nixon was going to succeed and the that are certainly not clear to me, chose to pick that precise moment to make other half was hoping he would, et cetera. So I think that's very true, and Ehrlichman look anything but noble, with Ehrlichman saying, "Look, keep me and for the points made here, that he was involved in every single one of the sellout Haldeman." And I think that must have struck very, very hard at collisions of the postwar era, and he was on the wrong side, and the literati Ehrlichman, because I've heard him since talk about that moment on the porch. was on the other side. We certainly have a rich amount about what happened on the porch that morning- MR. KAUFMAN: Do you think the interviews were seen as a surrogate trial? morning or afternoon. I've forgotten which it was. MR. REEVES: Absolutely. I do. MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Ulanov. MR. BUCHANAN: Well, Frost made the point that they were. I suppose many MR. ULANOV: I'm somewhat surprised to hear that basically the reason Richard people saw them that way. I think that you've got in Mr. Nixon'~ admissions Nixon had to resign was that he happened to be president during the Vietnam that he misled the American people, that he had not told the ent1re truth, war, which was very divisive in the country, and he lied to his political and that he in effect on March 21 gave consideration to certain acts which friends, didn't tell them the extent of his feelings or involvement, and so would have involved him in the cover-up, and that he could understand how he lost his base of support and had to go. Is there nothing more in Richard people would see how he was involved in the cover-up, is as much as you are Nixon's personality or in the way he wielded his office that resulted in his ever going to get in terms of a concession on the Watergate matter. being the first president to resign? MR. REEVES: I think not only they're a surrogate trial, but I think quite by MR. BUCHANAN: Well, clearly a number of abuses took place. One of them you accident they fit into a surrogate trial that the American people had al~e~dy could mention was the wiretaps on certain key NSC staffers. I think, which had seen. The structure and content of the first Nixon interview was very S1m11ar original justification, but they were continued long afterwards when some of to the Caine Mutiny court-martial. I thought Frost made a big mistake ~y not them went to work for Mr. Muskie and others on political staffs, and things giving Nixon two steel balls. (laughter) But it was, I mean the dramat1c- like that. But all of the so-called abuses of agencies and the rest that MR. BUCKLEY: You have a good point, yes. He sort of broke down at the end, occurred under Nixon, there were clear precedents that had been discovered yes. since, and some of them were known then,within the Johnson and Kennedy admin MR. REEVES: --theme was very familiar to the American people. It stunned me istrations. SO.if House Judiciary had moved in these areas I think we would that more was not written about the analogy and about Frost's questioning have had a justifiable defense. As Lasky said, you know, two wrongs don't style. And I don't think any American interviewer would have done that.inter make a right, but the do make a precedent. But I think that as I've always view the way that he did. The suppression of ego involved in Frost ask1ng argued, I think we could have survived the entire process and effort to get Nixon to do certain things, I thought, was extraordinarily effective. Nixon had Mr. Nixon simply come forward and said that "You're not going to MR. BUCKLEY: Like what? believe how stupid--" and what has happened. Had he come forward post MR. REEVES: That "Please, you've got to. Don't you want to get this off election, and "It was our boys who were involved and there has been in the your chest? Don't you want to--" process a cover-up"--now this would have involved, in effect, throwing certain MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, I see, yes. All that. people to the wolves, and Nixon simply would never do that. But I'm convinced MR. REEVES: I mean can you imagine Mike Wallace or Dick Reeves or anybody- that what broke the presidency was the breaking of the linkage to his own peo we would have in fact either tried to trick him or bludgeon him, where Frost, ple. As long as he had that to his people on the Hill, to his middle-America maybe because Frost is an entertainer--he understood instinctively, I think, in the country-- that this would be the way to get the most. And I certainly agree with Pat MR. BUCKLEY: In fact he said that. He said, "I have found I have no political that this is the most you can get. And I, for one, thought it was a hell of backing. My backing has eroded." a lot. MR. BUCHANAN: The political base is gone. And it went on the grounds that MR. BUCKLEY: By the way, before we go on to Mr. Ulanov, how do you ac~ount he had not been truthful in what he said with regard-- for Ehrlichman's reaction? He said, "What I heard was a smarmy, maudlln ULANOV: Not been a good butcher? rationalization that will be tested and found false." MR. BUCHANAN: No, not that. MR. BUCHANAN: Well, there's a real breach between Ehrlichman and Nixon, and MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that was the reason why he got into that mess, he said. I think it's caused-- There are a number of tapes there, of course, where ~1R. BUCHANAN: It's what he said when he said, "We have given House Judiciary Nixon has told Haldeman, "Don't even tell Ehrlichman about the tapes." And I all the information that is relevant." Now, you can argue whether the June think there's a real feeling on John Ehrlichman's part that he was deceived, 23rd tape implicates Nixon or not. You cannot argue that it is not relevant. and that he was not really involved in the cover-up at al~, quite frankl~. I And so therefore, through his aides and through his own attorney and through think he has a firm belief in his own innocence, and I th1nk that he bel1eves others, Nixon had made statements which turned out to be contradicted by the that quite frankly Nixon and Haldeman are responsible for his present condi facts and which meant that quite frankly your lines to your base were cut. tion. He's very bitter, I understand. MR. REEVES: I would hope no one gets the impression that what has been talked MR. BUCKLEY: I see. He says that something was tested which will be found about is any kind of definitive list of why the Ni~on presidency was termina~ed. false. Do you know what he's referring to? I don't think we know yet. I certainly know I don t know, and maybe no one 1n MR. BUCHANAN: No, I don't. The only--and it was not a contradiction--the only this country yet knows exactly what happened. It may well be that.a lot of new information--and it's not altogether new--is that he was offered.some money historical analysis is going to be based on institutions after a t1me of tur at Camp David. But no, I don't think--the only t~ing that you're g01ng to moil testing, in fact, what their real and relative strengths were--Congre~s, find to contradict that is some new tapes and hav1ng seen a number of these which was in the decline, the press clearly in the ascendancy, the courts 1n already leaked, which did not in effect contradict Nixon,.I don't know wh~t's the ascendancy, the presidency also appearing to be in the ascendanc~--t~at in the remaining balance of tapes, but I don't know anyth1ng that contrad1cted maybe that is what happened. And the fact as we talked about, and.Nlxon s . what he said. own personal unpopularity among much of the country that opposed hlm made thlS MR. REEVES: It also must have hit Ehrlichman very hard that Ehrlichman had 13 12 © Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. the time most fertile for that kind of testing. I don't think anybody knows what happened. MR. BUCHANAN: I've used an analogy--I think it's valid--that when the Congress, the Senate, went after Andrew Johnson on the technical grounds of the violation of the tenure of office act when he fired Secretary of War Stanton, that's really not what the impeachment was about. It was to remove Johnson and im pose a Cartheginian peace on the South, and this was sort of the cause or the Transcripts are available from the Southern Educational Communica reason that was used to attempt to get rid of President Andrew Johnson. I think tions Association for the 250 Firing Line programs produced during the same thing is true of Watergate. You know the whole argument of what did the last five years. If you would like to order back issues of the president know and when did he know it, and I think Nixon's contribution the Firing Line transcripts, please fill out the attached order to all this was the fact that I think he detested his adversaries so much that form and mail it with your check or money order (please, no cash) he was unwilling to come out and concede the truth that it was his own people to: who had been involved. And I think the press, just as they forgave Kennedy Firing Line after the Bay of Pigs and the deceptions following that, and forgave Eisenhower P.O. Box 5966 the U-2, I think they would have forgiven Nixon and they would have understood. Columbia, South Carolina 29250 What they could not understand, as I say, is the 18 months or however long it and indicate the transcript number(s) from the list on the fol tOOk place that he was not forthcoming and truthful in all his statements. lowing pages. Each transcript is $1.25. Special discount for an MR. BUCKLEY: Mr. Donald Ciaramella is from Pace University. Mr. Ciaramella. order of 10 or more transcripts: $1.00 each. MR. CIARAMELLA: Hypothetically, if another president was involved in the Watergate scandal, would he have been given more leniency by the press? MR. BUCHANAN: Oh, clearly. I think Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy, both. Kennedy especially because he was a favorite of the press, he had a sympa thetic Congress, he had no hostile special prosecution force. And Lyndon Johnson, of course, the Bobby Baker scandal--the Democrats voted in unanimity, I believe, not to lift the lid on that particular garbage can during the Name, _ elections of 1964. But this again is something Nixon should have realized, that he did have a hostile Congress which was lying in wait, and once he ap Address, _ pointed Archie Cox it was a partisan special prosecution force, and he did have a press that was totally hostile to him. I think--well, we now know that City ---'State Zi p, _ there were a number of things done in the Johnson and Kennedy years, which, if they were revealed, could quite conceivably have constituted impeachable of fenses. Transcript number(s): MR. REEVES: They were not revealed of course. And to say nothing of the Roosevelt period--some of the things that have come out in the British archives about Roosevelt's role in the political demise of Burton K. Wheeler are so #_--- #_--- #_--- #_--- much more extraordinary than anything that happened in Watergate. But I think the uniqueness of Richard Nixon is in fact that other presidents would not have lost the presidency over the same circumstances; both because of the pol #_--- #,---- #_--- #_--- itical passions he had generated and the circumstance that he found himself in and because of his own character failings the process never aborted as it rolled on. #_--- #_--- #,---- #_--- MR. BUCHANAN: One example, though, of that double standard--there was excessive wiretapping, I think. There were two members of the White House staff who were political who were wiretapped. It looked to me for political reasons. check enclosed MAIL TO: Firing Line But the press knew that Martin Luther King had been wiretapped, because they P.O. Box 5966 were peddling all this information about his personal life allover town. And ___money order enclosed Columbia, S.C. 29250 where were they getting it? There was simply no follow-up on the part of the press in those days, quite frankly, because I think there was no inclination to follow up and to damage the Kennedy Department of Justice or the Kennedy Please allow three weeks delivery time. presidency or the Johnson presidency, who was then, quite frankly, putting through the Great Society programs with which the press by and large agreed. MR. REEVES: I remember those days, and I remember those tapes going around. I never remember' hearing any great debate about the legality or morality of wiretapping in that. MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you very much, Mr. Reeves. Thank you, Mr. Buchanan. Thank you, gentlemen of the panel. Thank you all.