Nixon Revisited A New Portrait Offers a Startling Account of Richard Nixon's Political Career
By John W. Dean. John Dean, who was counsel to President Richard Nixon, wrote two books about his role in Watergate.
The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon By Anthony Summers, with Robbyn Swan Viking, 640 pages, $29.95
Is it possible Richard Nixon was far worse than we ever imagined? If the information in "The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon," written by Anthony Summers with his wife, Robbyn Swan, is true, no American journalist, historian, biographer or prosecutor truly fathomed the depth of depravity, venality and corruption that pervaded the life of our 37th president. As some news stories suggest, this book presents a devastating portrait of Nixon's political career, including new charges of years of non-prescription psychotropic drug use and wife beating.
"The Arrogance of Power" is an unabashed examination of (seemingly) every sordid and appalling story ever written, investigated, gossiped or imagined about Nixon. It is a catalog of Tricky Dick's private scams and shady chums, his Faustian political bargains, his distressed marriage and his endless lies, deceits and deceptions that define his character, his career and his presidency. This book was prompted because the authors found "most public commentary seemed excessively deferential to the memory of the first American president to have resigned in disgrace." They offer no deference whatsoever.
I thought I knew a fair amount about Nixon. Yet I found myself reading page after page of jaw-dropping revelations and bizarre stories I had never heard, nor could have imagined. For example, I had no idea that Nixon had ties to the mob, dating back to his early political career. While Bebe Rebozo, Nixon's best friend and most frequent companion, always struck me as creepy, I'd never conceived that he had relationships so close with mobsters that the FBI had pegged him an "associate" of organized crime. Nor was I aware that Uncle Bebe ran a secret trust fund for Nixon's family, apparently using it as a clandestine device to pass along the president' s share of ill-gotten gains.
I didn' t know that Nixon stalked Alger Hiss based on information secretly given him by the CIA and FBI, making his pursuit of Hiss anything but bold and daring. And this is the first book to investigate (and confirm the possible truth of) the remark that White House aide Chuck Colson made to me one time after talking with the president, about someone's building a typewriter (which would have been fabricating evidence) in the Hiss case. The authors have reopened the debate on whether Hiss was framed.
The book provides details of the slush-fund episode that almost ended Nixon's career as Eisenhower's vice president, and it spells out the lies in his famous career-saving Checkers speech. The book assembles the facts, and the latest information, about Nixon's manipulation of South Vietnamese officials on the eve of the 1968 presidential election, moves that may have prolonged a grim war but assured Nixon' s election. Throughout the narrative we find Nixon crumbling under stress, frequented by personal demons and using alcohol. By the time he resigns his office, we find him cracking mentally and disintegrating physically, incapable of being president.
Of the book's 33 chapters, eight deal with matters of which I have varying degrees of personal knowledge. These chapters address Nixon's presidency and Watergate. Yet this is not a book that breaks new ground about Watergate. Rather it focuses on Nixon' s role in the scandal by summarizing, updating, filling in and confirming information covered more fully by Stanley Kutler's "Wars of Watergate" (1990) and "Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes" (1997), as well as Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's "The Final Days" (1976).
Although Summers and Swan had some information generated by my eight-year lawsuit dealing with bogus Watergate revisionism (but not provided by me), they are simply not privy to new facts and information that I have uncovered. Thus, it would be unfair to criticize their analysis of the reasons for the Watergate break-in, which they discuss in terms of several speculative alternatives. Nonetheless, they do provide an insightful synopsis of available information showing (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the Nixon apologists who make light of his involvement in Watergate are only kidding themselves. The authors must be praised for ferreting out many telling and unpublished statements by Nixon on his White House tapes as part of their critique.
As for the chapters about which I don't have first-hand information, I, like most readers, must decide whether to trust the authors based on what I know of their work, since I have not seen their evidence. When Summers first called me in 1997 for an interview, I was leery. I knew he had written a string of highly controversial, history-revising booksalways about dead people (who aren't very good at rebutting false allegations).
In "The File of the Tsar" (1976), Summers claims that the wife and daughters of Russia' s Czar Nicholas escaped their alleged assassination by the Bolsheviks; in "Conspiracy" (1980), he wrote that the CIA was involved in JFK's assassination; in "Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe" (1985), he has JFK and RFK in bed (at different times) with Monroe, whose death he attributes to homicide, not suicide; and finally, in "Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover" (1993), he writes that Hoover was a cross-dressing homosexual, noting on one occasion: "He was wearing a fluffy black dress, very fluffy, with flounces, and lace stockings and high heels, and a black curly wig. He had makeup on, and false eyelashes. It was a very short skirt. . . ." No way. I can' t begin to conjure that ugly little man in a miniskirt. A long black dress, maybe. Curiosity led me to an off-the-record meeting with Summers, where I found a well-educated, savvy journalist who is witty and indefatigable--and certainly not a conspiracy nut. I explained my low tolerance for bogus history, and the lawsuit my wife and I had filed against a wacko version of Watergate concocted by a conspiracy buff from Tampa working with Watergate's most-decorated felon, Gordon Liddy (they were absurdly claiming my wife was the key player in Watergate). Summers was familiar with the charges and appreciated why we had sued.
When Summers told me of the extensive cooperation he was receiving (the book reports 1,000 interviews), I agreed to assist. Over the next three years we talked or corresponded periodically (for he had many questions), giving me an opportunity to judge his professionalism, which I cannot fault. Summers and his wife are careful, non-stop and exceedingly competent researchers. Observing them I detected no bias, agenda or preconceived notions, other than their interest in peeling Nixon like an onion.
By digging, and then digging further, the authors gathered a dumpsterful of information about Nixon from journalists, historians, biographers, government investigators, government archives, Nixon' s associates and former White House aides, and private libraries and collections--all of which they carried home to Ireland, accumulating what is probably the largest off-shore Nixon archive in existence. The comprehensiveness of their research can be measured by the 50 pages of authors' notes and 66 pages of source notes (all in tiny print) in "The Arrogance of Power." A doctoral dissertation could not be better documented. My only problem with the source notes was their density, and they are sometimes only loosely tagged to the relevant text, making them difficult to use. But most readers probably won' t be as interested in the sources.
"The Arrogance of Power" contains so much contentious information it would require another book to assess it. My strongest criticism of the book is that the authors (who appear to relish scandal-mongering) have laced their narrative with occasional gratuitous sensationalism (and these cursory comments are misleading unless the reader digs into the authors' notes or sources); more importantly, these sensational asides usually have nothing to do with Nixon or his presidency. Suffice it to say, however, I found none of the authors' more breathtaking charges relating to Nixon to be baseless, or totally unbelievable. There are no equivalents to Hoover's dress. This is not to say, however, that I agree with all their conclusions. In fact, in most cases I don't have access to the evidence they state they are relying upon.
Being trained as a lawyer who believes that the rules of evidence are the best way to separate fact from fiction when you don't have firsthand knowledge, I employ a standard different than most authors (and journalists). Little of the evidence supporting "The Arrogance of Power" would be admissible in court. Still, the book presents prima facie findings about Richard Nixon that demand further examination. None of the book's startling characterizations, like Nixon's ties to organized crime, can be simply disregarded.
"The Arrogance of Power" is an extraordinary--almost frightening--story of Nixon' s rise and fall, an account that challenges all the existing biographies (and autobiography) of this American icon. While this book will never be found on a shelf of the Nixon Presidential Library, no one interested in history, politics, government or the American presidency should ignore it.
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Carl
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