Aitken Jonathan - Nixon : a life

NIXON

Copyright 1993 by Jonathan Aitken

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First e-book edition 2015: 978-1-62157-442-2

First published in Great Britain in 1993 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

First U.S. hardcover edition published 1994; ISBN 978-0-89526-489-3

First U.S. paperback published 1996; ISBN 978-0-89526-720-7

This paperback edition published 2015; ISBN 978-1-62157-405-7

The Library of Congress has cataloged the U.S. hardcover edition as follows

Aitken, Jonathan, 1942

Nixona life / Jonathan Aitken.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 19132. PresidentsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

E856.A68 1993

973.924092dc20

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CONTENTS

S o many friends, helpers, and sources have made this book possible that it is somewhat invidious to single out only a few names for special acknowledgement. Nevertheless, a selection must be made so I begin by expressing my gratitude to the staffs of the principal public libraries and archives on which I relied heavily, notably the Nixon Presidential Materials Project at Alexandria, Virginia; the Nixon Pre-presidential Materials Project at Laguna Niguel, California; and the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Archives at Yorba Linda, California. I particularly thank Fred Klose and Diane S. Nixon, Federal Archivists at Laguna Niguel and John H. Taylor, Director of the Nixon Library, whose wise counsel and support at all stages of my researches was invaluable.

In tracing Nixons footsteps during his childhood and youth I received exceptional help from his brother Edward C. Nixon; his Whittier College contemporary Hubert C. Perry; and his fiance Ola Florence Welch Jobe. Their recollections, introductions, letters and papers proved to be hitherto unmined seams of biographers gold. The same may be said of the generous assistance I received from several members of Nixons long sisterhood of secretaries and personal assistants. They include Evlyn Dorn, his secretary at Wingert and Bewley 193740; Dorothy Cox Donnelly, his first secretary as a Congressman who worked for him 194760; Betty Lewis Walton, who worked with him on the Hiss case 19489; Loie Gaunt, who joined his Senate staff in 1951, remaining his personal archivist and book-keeper; Rose Mary Woods, his private secretary and confidante for nearly forty years; and Kathy OConnor, his executive assistant today.

From 1947 onwards Nixon lived his life as a public figure and the source notes on each chapter tell their own story of my indebtedness to various interviewees, documents and records. Yet at every stage of Nixons career I was helped by some outstanding mentors and interlocutors, among them: Patrick J. Hillings and Robert Finch on the congressional years 194752; Herbert Brownell, Vernon Walters and James D. Hughes on the Vice Presidency 195260; Len Garment, Tom Evans and Ray Price on the wilderness period 19618; H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles E. Colson, Alexander M. Haig and Ron Ziegler on the Presidency 196974; Howard Baker,

Sam Dash, Elliot Richardson, G. Gordon Liddy, Len Colodny, Benjamin C. Bradlee and Richard Helms on Watergate; Jack Brennan, Frank Gannon, Diane Sawyer, Bob Abplanalp, Bebe Rebozo, John Taylor and Julie Nixon Eisenhower on Nixons years of exile and renewal 197492. The greatest boon of all to this biography was to be allowed access to so many of Nixons private papers, letters and diaries, as well as to be granted some sixty hours of interviews with the former President, whose good-natured patience I must at times have sorely tested.

On my own staff, a warm tribute is due to my two principal research assistants Alison Maitland and Sam Whipple, two US citizens resident in London, who lasted the course of my Nixon Marathon with professional dedication and tenacious enthusiasm. I am also grateful for individual items of research work to David Barbour, Helen Haislmaier, Ted Morgan, Jacqueline Williams and Lauri Halderman.

Writing such a magnum opus on top of an already heavy workload of parliamentary and business correspondence put severe pressure on the staff of my private office. My personal assistant Lynn Fox carried the brunt of these extra burdens with unfailing cheerfulness and exemplary efficiency. She was helped by Karen Seymour, Jill Denning and Alan Woods, Sarah Chalkley, whose typing of the final manuscript was a paragon of speed and accuracy, deserves a special word of thanks for her contribution.

At my publishers Weidenfeld and Nicolson I am grateful to Christopher Falkus, who commissioned this biography in 1988; to my ever-encouraging editor Ion Trewin; to his editorial assistant Catherine Lightfoot; and to my indefatigable copy-editor Lesley Baxter.

Completing a presidential biography of this magnitude is not unlike docking a liner. There are many hands on deck, but only the Captain-Author is responsible. I alone have steered the course and every judgement, opinion and decision in this book is my own.

Jonathan Aitken

How does a British Member of Parliament come to be writing a biography of Richard Nixon?

I first met Richard Nixon in 1966 when I opened the door of a London flat and showed him into a meeting of exhausted volcanoes. Disraelis phrase was appropriate to describe the three participants: Sir Alec Douglas-Home, a defeated ex-Prime Minister; Selwyn Lloyd, an ex-Foreign Secretary; and Richard Nixon, an ex-Vice President. None of them had a political future, at least in the judgement of contemporary journalism. So far as Nixon was concerned that judgement was resoundingly confirmed by a trawl through the press cuttings on his defeat in the 1962 election for the governorship of California. The logical conclusion from this research was that not only was Nixon finished, it was a thoroughly good thing that he was finished. He was a second-rate hack politician; a vindictive loser; in John F. Kennedys phrase, he had no class.

I reflected these views in a background paper prepared for the meeting. To my surprise, Alec Douglas-Home and Selwyn Lloyd were crushingly dismissive of my briefing note, which one of them described as complete tosh. Patiently they explained to their embarrassed young researcher that the man who was coming to tea had a first-class brain, a profound understanding of international affairs, and a superb speaking ability. They added that General de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer greatly admired him and that he would have made a far better President than Kennedy or Johnson. This encomium of Nixon was such heresy in 1966, particularly to a twenty-three-year-old Kennedy admirer, that I began to wonder if my employers had taken leave of their senses.