From The New York Times, 7/12/07:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/washington/12nixon.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1184243065-xgB4xr/q8dfPIC/YKP7Vig
National Archives Release 11 Hours of Nixon Tapes
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON —
The National Archives made available on Wednesday more than 11 hours
of tape recordings that show President Richard M. Nixon maneuvering in
1972 to remake the Republican Party in his image, crush South
Vietnamese opposition to his efforts to end the Vietnam War and dole
out patronage to ethnic groups based on how much they supported his
re-election.
The release of the tapes along with 78,000 pages of newly disclosed
documents should be a trove of fascinating detail and context for
historians, archives officials said.
The Nixon library in Yorba Linda, Calif., is now part of the National
Archives, as a result of an agreement forged after years of bitter
fights between the government and the Nixon family over custody of his
official papers.
The most dramatic and revelatory tape recordings involving abuses of
government power were disclosed in 1996 and included Nixon’s
conversations as recorded by a hidden taping system as the Watergate
scandal enveloped and eventually forced him from office.
The newly released recordings provide a fresh glimpse of the political
Nixon, especially in the heady moments of his 1972 landslide
re-election victory over his Democratic opponent, Senator George
McGovern, as the Watergate clouds were just beginning to form.
The documents span a wider period and include a memorandum that may
intrigue students of Nixon’s character.
In the document, written in December 1970 to H. R. Haldeman, a top
aide, Nixon expresses both anger and pain that his aides have not been
able to establish an image of him as a warm and caring person.
He makes several suggestions about how this could be accomplished,
warning frequently in the single-spaced 11-page document that it must
appear that the examples of his warmth were discovered by others and
not promoted by White House aides.
“There are innumerable examples of warm items,” he wrote, saying that
he had been “nicey-nicey to the cabinet, staff and Congress around
Christmastime” and that he had treated cabinet and subcabinet
officials “like dignified human beings and not dirt under my feet.”
With regard to the “warmth business,” the memorandum says, it is
important to emphasize to anyone who may write an article that the
president “does not brag about all the good things he does for
people.”
Shortly after trouncing Mr. McGovern in his re-election bid, Nixon is
heard on a Nov. 19, 1972, tape criticizing two men who would go on to
be president: Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush.
He tells Charles W. Colson, a senior aide, that the Republican Party
is in trouble and needs to be reinforced with a coalition of
working-class Democrats.
“Basically, your leadership in the states is so bad,” Nixon says.
“Frankly, in California, it’s Reagan. You can’t do it around him. He’s
got to do it, and he is a drag.”
Nixon talks in the same conversation about replacing Mr. Bush as
representative at the United Nations, saying:
“That whole staff up there is violently anti-Nixon, and Bush hasn’t
done one damn thing about it. He’s become part of it.”
Mr. Colson suggests replacing Mr. Bush with John Scali, a former
network television correspondent whom he describes as completely loyal
to Nixon.
The two men note that naming Mr. Scali would fulfill Nixon’s desire to
have an Italian-American in the top ranks of the administration.
A proposal to name Walter Washington, the first black mayor of the
District of Columbia, to the post is dismissed during the
conversation.
“We don’t owe the blacks a damn thing, anyway,” Nixon tells Mr.
Colson, who notes that African-Americans had contributed little to his
landslide victory.
Nixon responds:
“After all, pampering the blacks isn’t good. I think you’ve got a good
point there.”
Nixon also initially dismissed the idea of naming someone to a high
position as “the house Jew,” but then says of Leonard Garment, a White
House lawyer, “Let him be the house Jew.”
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Harry
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