Richard Nixon's Last Comeback
SCHORR, DAMEL
Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Richard Nixon's Last Comeback I FIRST MET RICHARD M. NIXON in 1947, when he came to the Netherlands as a member of a House committee looking into European...
...The Ford Pardon Speaking of pardons, ex-President Gerald Ford told the Vail Daily in Colorado that he is more convinced than ever that he made the right decision for the country when he forgave Nixon his transgressions in September 1974...
...In September, on learning that Nixon, after his resignation, faced possible indictment, President Ford, already fully aware of his broad powers, issued his pardon to Nixon...
...It was one of his 45 -minute virtuoso extemporaneous performances, and when I rose to ask him a question I complimented him on his excellent report...
...Glad to see you...
...He wanted to know everything going on in the enemy camp...
...So he opted to be mourned, safely, in Yorba Linda, where he received his final pardon...
...Trading the promise of a pardon for the Presidency would have been an almost inconceivable offense...
...That is how Watergate was born...
...That was why his Presidency—and Watergate—were so richly documented...
...Haig produced two handwritten documents—a legal statement explaining that a pardon could be issued at any stage, even before any charge had been preferred, and a draft of the proper form for a pardon requiring only the beneficiary's name, a date and signature...
...He seemed driven by a need to control everything around him from public opinion to dinner menus...
...I am thinking of his idiotic "enemies list" plus, in my case, the FBI investigation that ended up as an item in the Bill of Impeachment...
...The alternative to these horrendous options, Haig suggested, was that Nixon would resign and be pardoned by his successor...
...Abrilliant, restless, broodingman, Nixon was a presence in this country for half a century...
...I am not only thinking of the Watergate cover-up and the missteps that led Nixon to strangle himself politically with his own Oval Office tapes...
...Period...
...His death on April 22 left me wondering how a man so creative could be so self-destructive...
...But now he took to mingling, starting in small towns where he would rub shoulders with citizens...
...He does not talk, however, about how close he came to promising Nixon a pardon if he would resign...
...Both warned the Vice President that he had done something quite improper, that Haig had jeopardized him the moment he spoke the word "pardon" in his presence...
...From Moscow, during his final trip in March when he was snubbed by President Yeltsin, he sent me a fax message saying he had heard that my National Public Radio commentary on his trip was the best anyone had done...
...Seeking out occasions where he could appear with other ex-Presidents, he solicited an invitation to the funeral of former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, whom he had beaten in 1968...
...Nixon did seem, in some curious way, to thrive on adversity and to be uncomfortable with success...
...That cloudy chapter of history is illuminated in a recent biography of our 38th President by James M. Cannon, Time and Chance, based on interviews with almost everybody concerned and unrestricted access to Ford's papers...
...Nixon, the control freak, kept himself under tight control most of the time...
...He invited me to participate in the Richard Nixon Foreign Policy Institute he was planning to establish in Washington as the culmination of his comeback...
...Nixon even forced himself to treat journalists in a friendly manner—to the extent of contriving a reconciliation with me...
...And Nixon loved public pomp, as is well remembered from his having White House guards dressed in ornate Graustarkian uniforms...
...Soon he plunged again into foreign affairs, visiting Moscow and Beijing, where he had always been treated as a hero...
...Thus the second of three articles of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, on "Abuse of Power,'' included the White House-ordered investigation of me...
...What we had not known until now was that when Nixon Chief of Staff Alexander M. Haig Jr...
...are they making money...
...Finally, Haig said directly that Nixon would agree to leave in return for the advance promise of a pardon...
...He wanted to form a supercabinet to bring government more effectively under his control, with White House commissars watching over the bureaucracy he had found difficult to manipulate...
...The next day Ford phoned Haig and, with his aides as witnesses, said: "Nothing we talked about yesterday afternoon should be given any consideration in whatever decision the President may wish to make...
...Haig told the Vice President there were five options open to the beleaguered Chief Executive...
...That led him to divide his world into supporters and "enemies," a word I had never before heard an American politician apply to those more commonly called opponents, rivals or adversaries...
...In one place or another, in one position or another, he hovered over almost a half-century of my career...
...Had he been able to foresee the wave of respect—from some even affection—that his death elicited, he would surely have wanted a state funeral like that of ex-President Eisenhower and others back to Lincoln...
...More ominously, he had FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover launch an investigation into my background in 1971...
...Ford responded that he needed time to think about the matter, and wanted to discuss it with his wife...
...When that leaked out, the White House devised a preposterous explanation...
...Testifying before a House Judiciary subcommittee in October, Ford said, "There was no deal...
...Press Secretary Ron Ziegler was instructed to say I was under consideration for a Presidential appointment, but someone had neglected to tell me about it...
...The 50-minute meeting ended with each putting an arm around the other and Haig saying, "We've got to keep in contact...
...If opponents were enemies, then knowing their plans became, logically, a legitimate intelligence endeavor...
...This was necessary because he was nervous about having to make small talk...
...The Democratic headquarters break-in stemmed from a need to find out what surprises might lurk in the desk and files of Democratic Party Chairman Lawrence O'Brien, who had been a consultant to the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes, a donor of illegal campaign funds to Nixon...
...Damn near hired you once...
...I remember covering his campaign headquarters on election night in 1972, when, despite Watergate, he was returned to office in a gigantic landslide...
...He was willing to reach out for reconciliation with former "enemies"—if only he could be assured that he would not be rejected...
...So he tried to position himself as an elder statesman...
...He followed up with a letter saying my compliment on his performance was "most gracious...
...The next day, as we subsequently learned, he called together his Cabinet and, without any time out for self-congratulation, requested everyone's resignation...
...While in the Oval Office he had put me on his "enemies list" because of critical commentaries I had done, as a CBS correspondent, on some of his programs...
...At Haig's insistence, the two men had met alone...
...When she saidno, she had come on El Al, Israel's airline, all he could think to say was, "I see...
...They included toughing it out through impeachment to conviction...
...or pardoning himself—and possibly all the Watergate defendants—and then resigning...
...went to see Ford on August 1,1974 to discuss a pardon, he wasn't acting as a disinterested intermediary but as Nixon's emissary...
...Ford seemed to believe that the pardon was in the national interest...
...Not sure he remembered who I was, I went up to him after dinner...
...Imagine my then being invited in 1992, 20 years after I had last seen him in person, to a Carnegie Endowment dinner at which Nixon gave an off-the-record briefing on a recent trip to the former Soviet Union...
...Over the preceding 10 years there had been five Presidential funerals—John F. Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson...
...In time the lie was exposed, and Nixon aides had to admit to Congressional committees the attempt to use the FBI for purposes of political reprisal...
...In his twilight years, Nixon disciplined himself to mix with ordinary people...
...He told off-color stories to seem like a regular guy, or spoke inappropriately about money to seem like just folks...
...I was a fledgling correspondent at the time...
...Betty Ford told her husband he simply could not assume the Presidency as part of a deal...
...Later he permitted me to quote from a more-or-less private memo charging President Bush with missing the boat on aid to Russia...
...It was carefully orchestrated from his first public appearance in 1975?3 months after his resignation—on a California golf course...
...In 1971, while gearing up for the re-election campaign, Nixon told his aides he would tolerate no "surprises...
...Plans are proceeding to establish that institute...
...When Ford informed his advisers—John Marsh and Robert Hartman—of the exchange, they exploded...
...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Richard Nixon's Last Comeback I FIRST MET RICHARD M. NIXON in 1947, when he came to the Netherlands as a member of a House committee looking into European economic conditions in connection with the proposed Marshall Plan...
...You can't do that, Gerry," she said...
...As I began to reintroduce myself, he interrupted, "Dan Schorr, sure...
...But control freak Nixon, who left no ceremonial details to chance, had no way of knowing how a request for a state funeral would be received by President Clinton, nor what new hostile demonstrations might be occasioned by his lying in state in the Capitol rotunda...
...Along with the tendency to rue victory and savor setback, the key to understanding Nixon was that he was a "control freak...
...Ford asked about a President's powers, particularly whether a pardon was possible prior to an indictment...
...This was not easy...
...Because of his discomfort with individuals, as President he had preferred memos to briefings...
...But what we do not know—and now can never know—is whether Nixon would have resigned if he did not feel confident, based on his reading of that fateful Haig mission, that a pardon would come...
...Maybe not, as he saw it...
...invoking the provisions of the Constitution's 25th Amendment permitting temporary retirement...
...Haig, who by that time had presumably told Nixon that Ford seemed quite comfortable with the idea of a pardon, replied, "You're absolutely right...
...It was as though the architect of stunning victories also had to be the author of his own defeats...
...He had generally displayed a greater interest in America's global condition than its human condition...
...Sometimes his words were out of sync with his intentions...
...Greeted in the ballroom of the Shoreham Hotel with a chorus of "Four more years...
...Of that, more later...
...his victory remarks were strained, unjubilant...
...Nixon's specialty was the comeback, and his most amazing one was his 20-year campaign for ex-President...
...He was, after all, the first ex-President to be buried in more than 20 years...
...and wild cheers, he looked strangely morose...
...During a photo opportunity chat with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, he asked whether she had flown to Washington on an Israeli Air Force plane...
...I recount all this to illustrate how bent Nixon was on redemption...
Vol. 77 • May 1994 • No. 5
