Bugging and Bookkeeping
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Washington-USA BUGGING AND BOOKKEEPING BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington Of the many woes Watergate has caused Richard Nixon, probably none galls him more than his belief that his accusers are...
...One family member who has participated actively in these undertakings is the President's youngest brother...
...The foundation has hired several other consultants to help in the realization of its main goal, a Nixon Presidential library similar to those that have been built by private subscription to house the records of every President since Herbert Hoover...
...He is hampered by a narrowness of vision that, coupled with a certain moral obtuseness, helped land him in the Watergate cauldron...
...For Watergate has served to confirm Nixon's belief that the elite get their kicks by throwing dirt his way while continuing to take in each other's washing...
...The other side of the coin is evident in Nixon's decision to name Henry Kissinger Secretary of State...
...since then, four of its seven members have been implicated in Watergate...
...De Marco, who is secretary of the foundation (a separate post from the executive board secretary), also prepares the President's income-tax returns...
...The extent to which his anguish feeds on self-delusion is not at issue...
...Even as President, especially as President, he feels excluded from the charmed circle?that loose network of the well-born, well-bred, well-educated, well-married, well-connected, and well-fixed...
...In March 1972, the foundation made its first and, to date, only contribution: a $7,500 grant to the Smithsonian Institution...
...And the California law firm of Kalmbach, De Marco, Knapp & Chillingworth is still on the job as legal counsel to the Nixon Foundation...
...Some six months before the first taping session, Edward C. Nixon was hired by the Richard M. Nixon Foundation as a consultant, with special responsibilities for the oral project...
...But he remains loyal, and the President remains grateful...
...John D. Ehrlichman and John N. Mitchell...
...A site for the library has yet to be chosen...
...Some of these discussions occurred at the South Vietnamese Embassy in Washington-a place that President Johnson, in the words of a former aide, "had wired every which way, top to bottom...
...Others point out that Nixon is convinced the Presidency would have been rightfully his in 1961 had it not been stolen from him by Democratic vote frauds in Texas and Illinois...
...If left unchecked, this could land him in fresh trouble in the future...
...Nixon, however, could never tell the story of his 1968 encounter with LBJ as a means of rallying his defenders...
...Johnson brought him into the Cabinet Room, played portions of the incriminating tape and administered a scathing lecture...
...All he saw was the young whiz-kid's progress through Harvard, the Marine officer corps, the top ranks of the bureaucracy, the elite Rand Corporation-and the final betrayal of U.S...
...In 1972 Edward joined the staff of the Committee for the Reelection of the President, where he was paid $1,755 a month...
...what counts is that he has always seen himself as an outsider looking in, a man yoked by the double standards of others...
...W. Roy Newson, vice president for administration at Whittier, Edward Nixon visited the campus "about once a month" while the recordings were being made...
...Yet in filing with the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt institution, the Nixon Foundation has not identified these consultants and their fees have not been itemized...
...Each person interviewed for the oral history project was enjoined by foundation rules against discussing anything "political"-Such as perhaps their recollections of the young lieutenant commander's early plans to run for Congress in Southern California...
...C. Richard Arena, an associate professor of history who has taken a two-year leave from Whittier College, where Nixon received his bachelor's degree 39 years ago, says that whenever fellow historians have asked to use the tapes for their research, the foundation's answer invariably has been "no...
...It was the same state of mind that led him to react so emotionally when Daniel Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to the establishment New York Times...
...They are H. R. (Bob) Haldeman, chairman...
...But, as of this writing, none has resigned as a foundation trustee...
...The money was used to pay Norman Rockwell for a painting of Nixon that first appeared on the cover of Look and now hangs at the National Portrait Gallery...
...Except for some $5,200 in office equipment, the rest of the "assets" consist of "construction in process...
...The significant point, however, is that by virtue of Kissinger's training, temperament and associations Nixon has every reason to see him as being in the same class as, say, the feared and distrusted Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox...
...One wonders, though, whether it bothers Nixon that Ellsberg once worked for Kissinger...
...True, the departure of the President's chief foreign policy adviser in the midst of the Watergate investigations could have been a ruinous blow, and the former Harvard professor might well have left if he had not been given charge of the State Department...
...government secrets...
...In a 1969 letter to the IRS seeking the customary tax exemption, De Marco declared that the Nixon Foundation would "give special encouragement to young people to take pride in their American heritage...
...Washington-USA BUGGING AND BOOKKEEPING BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington Of the many woes Watergate has caused Richard Nixon, probably none galls him more than his belief that his accusers are hypocrites...
...Nowhere is his constricted outlook more clearly reflected than in the affairs of the Richard M. Nixon Foundation, a private offshoot of the White House over which the President and his advisers exercise full control...
...No matter that publication of the documents neatly served Nixon's political interests...
...The Nixon Foundation's articles of incorporation state that its business affairs shall be managed not by its president, California industrialist Leonard K. Firestone, but by a seven-member board of executive trustees who "shall serve for their respective lifetimes unless they should voluntarily resign...
...For example, the Nixon Foundation has commissioned yet another set of tapes, covering the President's life from his birth in 1913 until 1945, when he was about to be mustered out as a young Navy officer...
...At the start of this year, the foundation said it had $36,592 in cash, no investments, and other assets of $77,484...
...This proved to be Nixon's first, but not last, traumatic encounter with White House tapes...
...In return, Nixon promised Saigon a better deal than it could expect to receive from his newly dovish Democratic opponent, Hubert Humphrey...
...Haldeman is no longer White House chief of staff, Ehrlichman is no longer the President's top domestic adviser, Mitchell is no longer Attorney General, and Kalmbach is no longer the President's personal attorney...
...The $19,500 payment to Edward Nixon, for instance, is subsumed under this heading...
...In due course, the aide recalls, LBJ summoned Nixon to the White House...
...He was reelected to the office of President by a huge majority, but that has not changed him...
...Through 1972, the Nixon Foundation raised $151,174, but the donors, each of whom deducted their contributions, have not been made public...
...secretary...
...He advised Nixon on the tax consequences of a $500,000 deductible contribution of Vice-Presidential papers to the National Archives...
...The board last met in January...
...Is it any wonder, then, that by 1968 Nixon felt the time had come to arrange a few things himself...
...Instead, the foundation's activities have been lumped together under the general heading of "construction in process...
...Acting through intermediaries, he suggested to the South Vietnamese that they sabotage the Paris peace negotiations-which was their natural inclination anyway-and thus insure a breakdown in the talks...
...Herbert W. Kalmbach...
...Those who want Nixon to begin anew by disowning the wicked former counselors, embracing the press and lending a helping hand to the Ervin committee and Cox, simply fail to comprehend how much political and emotional baggage Nixon has hauled to Watergate...
...Given the materials at hand, that may not be an easy thing to do...
...if there was any way that Ellsberg failed to fit the mold of an enemy, it escaped the President's notice...
...According to Dr...
...The planned library, he added, "should be designed to heighten aspirations for achievement in public service or other similar careers...
...He received consultant fees of $1,500 in late 1970 and $18,000 in 1971...
...The head of the project, Dr...
...Some observers who know the President well say that he still has not forgotten the eight years he served as Vice President-years in which Dwight Eisenhower, a military aristocrat, did not once invite the Richard Nixons to the White House family quarters...
...For all of Johnson's failings, no one ever accused him of thinking small...
...And he is reported to believe that two years later, when he ran for the governorship of California in an attempted political resurrection, he could have beaten Edmund G. (Pat) Brown if President Kennedy had not conveniently settled the Cuban missile crisis just before the election...
...All "construction in process" is then listed as a continuing asset of the foundation and not as an expenditure...
...As a case study, it is worth examining in some detail...
...if anything, his longstanding psychological stresses have recently deepened...
...ostensibly for a national security briefing...
Vol. 56 • September 1973 • No. 18
