Dwight Chapin - The Presidents Man: The Memoirs of Nixons Trusted Aide

Courtesy of the author

We were visiting my daughter Tracy. Early one evening I heard several soft, hesitant knocks on the guest room door. When I opened the door, my grandson Matthew, already in his pajamas, was looking up at me. With the innocence of a seven-year-old he asked, Pippsthats what my grandchildren call medid you work for a president?

I nodded. I did.

Did you have to go to prison? Yes, Matthew, I did.

He considered that, giving it the mighty weight prison conveys to a child. He tilted his head and pursed his lips. Did the president go to prison too?

No, Matthew. No, he didnt. I took a step back. Come on in. We sat side by side on the bed. Its very complicated, I said. When you get a little older, I promise, Ill explain the whole story to you.

The whole story? Explain what happened to me? What happened in America? That would require explaining, understanding Richard Nixon, the thirty-seventh President of the United States. Richard Nixon was the most complex man Ive ever known. He was an enigma wrapped in a cocoon of contradictions. He was a man of extraordinary intelligence and vision. He could take you around the entire world with his words, country by country, detailing the political dynamics, the shifting winds and the power players in each place, while at the same time concerning himself with petty slights. He could be warm and gracious, cold and off-putting. He was a political genius but he missed completely the dangers of Watergate. He was a man of great emotions, but he took pride in containing them. He was a public man, who drew sustenance from the crowds, yet he was happiest in a room by himself, a briefcase on his lap, recording his thoughts and ideas by hand on yellow legal pads.

I met him when I was so young, and still today, many years later, my life reverberates from our relationship.

I knew Richard Nixon well. I started working for him as an organizational field man during his 1962 California gubernatorial campaign. I served him as an aide as he wandered in the political wilderness, planting a forest of favors in anticipation of another run for the presidency. I became an advance man at the beginning of the 1966 off-year election cycle and then his personal aide in 1967. In the White House, as his appointments secretary, I had the office next to his. My door opened into the Oval Office. Then I was given responsibility for the logistics and arrangements for the presidents historic 1972 trips to China and the Soviet Union. And I was the first of the Nixon men to go to trial because of Watergate, although I had no involvement in it.

We spent thousands of hours together, from small hotels in New Hampshire to the Forbidden City in Beijing. I knew him so well; but as I have continued to discover through the decades, in many ways I barely knew him at all.

Still, today, right now, I can close my eyes and visualize him standing a few feet away from me, acknowledging defeat in that 1962 California gubernatorial election, beads of sweat on his forehead as he bitterly tells reporters they dont have Nixon to kick around anymore. I can see him alone in his New York apartment, making endless notes as he plans his political future. I can see him in the backseat of a car in the early-morning sunrise, lost on a one-lane road searching for a small radio station to do a campaign interview. I can see him, arms outstretched, reaching to the heavens, luxuriating in the roar of a packed Republican convention hall in Miami Beach. I see him tapping the schedule Ive prepared for him with his forefinger, pointing out to me, Dwight, it says here that when Im finished speaking, I will dance with this lady. People running for sheriff dance. I dont dance. (Or, as I was later reminded, wear a silly hat.) And there he is in his bathrobe, a satisfied, vindicated smile on his face, as I tell him he had been elected President of the United States.

I also can visualize myself sitting across from the president in a helicopter, circling Washington, D.C., on a glorious early June night in 1972. Below us the city was twinkling into the night. The First Lady, Pat Nixon; the Chief of Staff and my best friend, Bob Haldeman; and Press Secretary Ron Ziegler were with us, as was the presidents physician, Major General Walter Tkach. We had just returned to America from a triumphant trip to the Soviet Union, where Nixon and Russian leaders had signed the historic Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), among the first significant efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. We were flying from Andrews Air Force Base to the Capitol, where the president was to address a joint session of Congress. During that short flight I briefed him on the preparations that had been made for his arrival there, his escort into the building, and the extent of the media coverage. We circled once over the White House, then passed the Washington Monument, as Lincoln watched stoically from a distance. The city had never looked more beautiful to me. The symbolism of that flight aboard