Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 1.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: All right, Frank.

GANNON: 'Kay.

NIXON: [Clears throat.]

NIXON: Tell you when you want to [unintelligible].

GANNON: Do you remember the first time you met Harry Truman?

NIXON: Well, I'll never forget it, because it was the first time I was ever in the White House. Having been just elected to Congress in 1946, we were invited to the reception that the president traditionally gave then, and even now, for the new members of Congress, and, for that matter, all members of Congress. I remember we had a little bit of a family problem then, because we were pretty strapped financially after the campaign, but the s--this event was black tie for the men and long dresses for the ladies. And Mrs. Nixon felt she had to have a 00:01:00new dress, and she certainly did have to have one, and I said, "Well, go ahead." And she said, "Well, I'm going to get it because it's probably the only time we'll ever be in the White House." So she got the new dress. We went. It was a mob scene, of course, with so many there, but we will always remember it. I remember when we met President Truman that he and Mrs. Truman were standing together, in the Blue Room, as I recall. And he shook hands in the way that people often shake hands in receiving lines when they wanted to get you through. He'd take your hand and just push you on to the next one, and push you on to the next one. And it went pretty fast.

GANNON: Whats your hand-shaking technique?

NIXON: I always believe it's very important for even one--ten seconds, for that matter--look them straight in the eye, and then on, and very strong. The fish handshake, I think, is something that I--just turns me off. Now, some people have it. Our British friends usually use it, but I think that an American should 00:02:00shake hands strongly and firmly and look people in the eye.

GANNON: What--what were your impressions of him as a--as a man, or as a president, as a leader?

NIXON: Well, my impressions, I think, were colored a great deal by my first meeting with him. On this occasion, of course--was not a meeting. It was a handshake. But in July of that year, that first year of 1947, a group of four freshman Republican congressmen met with Truman in the Oval Office. The way it came about is that Charlie Kersten from Wisconsin requested an appointment, and it was given. Incidentally, at the time, since we were members of Congress, we all thought we were important enough to deserve to be invited down to see the president. But as I look back at it in retrospect, I really marvel that Truman ever did it. But then I think that tells us something about him. He was a very 00:03:00good politician. He knew that the Republicans had an overwhelming majority in the House and in the Senate. He needed Republican votes. He also knew something else, that the four of us--and I'm sure that our records were checked before we ever got into the Oval Office--had supported the Greek-Turkish aid program, whereas many liberal Democrats had opposed it. He needed us as friends. And then I think he might have been impressed by the fact--he just liked the fact that we had the temerity to ask. And so he sort of appreciated that, because that's the kind of thing he might have done.

GANNON: What were your feelings as you stepped over the threshold of the Oval Office for the first time?

NIXON: Well, my feelings were, of course, one of profound respect for that place. It's a hallowed place. I'd read about it and seen pictures of it. But I think my recollection of the meeting is more of the man than of the office. President Truman, before we went there, was one who had not received a 00:04:00particularly good press. When he succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, there were many in the media, and many in the country, for that matter, who said, "Can this little pipsqueak from Missouri, poorly educated and so forth, step into the shoes of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was a great heroic figure for so many years?" And many wondered whether he could. I would say that nobody could have filled the shoes of Franklin Roosevelt, but Harry Truman made his own footprints in the sands of history. At this particular point, however, having read about him as being somewhat uneducated, rather crude, and--and rather limited, I was impressed by the fact that he had a sense of history. He demonstrated that by taking us over to the globe which was there in the office and turning it to Manchuria and pointing out, which was quite prophetic at that time, how 00:05:00important Manchuria, in terms of its natural resources, could be in the future, and how important that whole area of China could be in the future for this country, and for the world, for that matter. And then he turned the globe a little further to the Soviet Union, and he said, "You know, I--I like the Russian people. They got along very well--the Russians soldiers did--with our soldiers at the Elbe." He said, "As far as I am concerned, they can have any kind of a system they want, provided they don't try to impose it on us." He spoke not in a dramatic way, but almost in a matter-of-fact way--that the most difficult decision he'd ever made was to drop the atomic bomb--a decision which I think, incidentally, was his greatest decision, the most courageous one, and was totally right. I would say, too, that in terms of his manner, at that point, before he was elected in his own right in 1948, he was somewhat humble, very direct, but not at all overbearing, not at all cocky, as he sometimes later came 00:06:00to be. So, all in all, I would say that he made a good personal impression on all of us. I thought right then that those that criticized him because of his lack of education failed to recognize a truth which I have always felt was the case where many leaders are concerned. Education sometimes can strengthen the brain and weaken the backbone. Harry Truman had a pretty good brain, but I can say that his backbone was strong, and that's what sustained him through those years.

GANNON: He was a--a terrifically crusty figure, and I know there was a lot of shock at the time that the--that your White House tapes were revealed about the language that went--that--that was spoken in the Oval Office, and yet the records indicate that Truman, possibly next to Johnson, had the most salty language, and he was also, by the time he left office, a very unpopular figure. And yet for the last ten years or so, there seems to have been a tremendous 00:07:00revision of opinion about him. Do you--do you have any insights into that?

NIXON: Well, I would say that, as far as President Truman is concerned, that the revision is taking place for several reasons. One, because as far as those who write that kind of article, who write instant history--most of them are liberal. Most, also, when they do have partisan affiliations, are Democrats. He, in terms of his domestic policy, was very liberal. His Fair Deal was more liberal than the New Deal, and in terms of his partisanship, of course, he was a very partisan Democrat. I think that helped in terms of the revision--the fact that those that are writing it approved of what he was trying to do in those particular areas. In addition to that, I think the fact that Truman was so 00:08:00refreshingly candid--he was an interesting personality. The things that made him unpopular at the last of his service--unpopular because it was combined with the Truman scandals, the war in Korea, which was not being waged effectively, many people thought--those things that made him unpopular then, that crusty, arrogant--what th--many thinks--thought arrogant and too cocky attitude made him far more interesting to instant historians today. So, under the circumstances, I would say that the revision is--that that is part of the reason for the revision. Another part of the reason for the revision is that, whatever you want to say about President Truman, whatever about--we want to say about his manners, about the Truman scandals--"the mess in Washington," as Adlai Stevenson called it--and so forth, he was a strong president. He made three great decisions, and that's what the man's hired for--to make the great decisions.

GANNON: What were the three?

NIXON: The three--first, of course, was dropping the bomb, which saved at least a million lives, according to experts--if we had gone to take over Japan through conventional arms rather than the nuclear weapont--weapon that was available. The second one was the Greek-Turkish aid program, the so-called Truman Doctrine, which later developed into the Marshall Plan. It was unpopular, and therefore a difficult decision for him politically because it was unpopular with his liberal wing of his party. But he stood up to them, and with the help of some of us who were Republicans, we got the bipartisan support that was needed. And his third, curiously enough, was going into Korea. Now I was critical of him, as were many Republicans, and I think properly so--of the way the war was waged at times. But the decision to go in was right. It was necessary because, had the Communists been allowed to overrun Korea, Japan would at that early point be a sitting duck for Communist takeover. So I would say these three great decisions are ones that 00:10:00make the revisionism with regard to Harry Truman and his place in history most justifiable.

GANNON: Do you think that there is some kind of inexorable law of--of presidential revisionism that if--that if you can wait long enough or live long enough the distance lends enchantment and reputations are revived? It seems to have happened with Hoover by the time Truman came into office. It happened to Truman by the time you were in office. Do you think it'll happen to Johnson?

NIXON: Yes, perhaps to a less extent and much further on down the road. I--I should point out th--however, in terms of the revisionism by the historians, that it is more likely to happen to one who is a liberal and one who is a Democrat, due to the fact that most historians are liberals, and, where they do have party affiliation, are Democrats, than it will, for example, to Herbert Hoover. There's been some revision on Herbert Hoover, but not among the elitists. There's been some on Eisenhower, justifiably so, and there should have 00:11:00been long before. But insofar as--as a place in history for a president is concerned, he has twice as good an opportunity or chance to have a higher place as time goes on if he's a--a liberal rather than a Democrat.

GANNON: Rather than a Republican.

NIXON: Yeah, rather than a Republican.

GANNON: How long's it going to take for Nixon?

NIXON: Oh, I have no idea about that. I won't speculate.

GANNON: Harry Truman once said that "there are only two men in the whole history of the country that I can't stand." One was a governor of Missouri that he had helped get elected and then screwed him politically, and the other was guess who. Why do you think he disliked you so much?

NIXON: Well, the major reason for his dislike goes back to the Hiss case. Certainly when we were there in July of 1947--the four congressmen--he liked us 00:12:00politically because we had given him support on the Republican side that he couldn't get from his liberal Democrats. He liked that. But later on it was my responsibility to conduct the investigation of the Hiss case. That embarrassed Truman. I want to s--make it clear that, as far as Truman is concerned, there was no question that he was an anti-Communist. But where the Hiss case was concerned, he had condemned the Committee on Un-American Activities as trying to bring a red herring into the campaign of 1948. He felt that the--that the investigation was politically motivated, and even though un--evidence was brought to his attention that clearly indicated that Hiss had turned over top-secret documents to Soviet agents, he still persisted in condemning the committee, and therefore condemning me. I remember s--so well being told by Bert Andrews of the New York Herald Tribune that when the so-called Pumpkin Papers 00:13:00were brought to Truman's attention by an Assistant Attorney General of the United States, he looked them over, and he said, "The son-of-a-bitch. He re--pr--betrayed his country. The son-of-a-bitch. He betrayed his country." And then he went right out that same day in a press conference, and somebody asked him, "Do you think--still think the investigation's a red herring?" He said, "Yeah. It's a red herring." That's Harry Truman, vintage Harry Truman--politics in terms of trying to evaluate an investigation of that sort.

GANNON: Didn't he think, though, that you'd added insult to injury by impugning his patriotism by accusing him of being a traitor?

NIXON: Yes.

GANNON: Didn't he carry that on through--

NIXON: Yes, he--he

GANNON: [unintelligible] something he held against you?

NIXON: --felt that was true. It--it wasn't true, of course. As far as the Hiss case is concerned, I earned what he gave to me. Earned it be--it happened that I was right, and of course there was nothing more difficult for a politician than to have somebody else prove him wrong. But beyond that, in this case it happened 00:14:00that his dislike for me was motivated by a wrong impression of what the facts were. The facts were very clear. In a speech in the 1952 campaign at Texarkana, Texas, I made the point that Truman, Acheson, and others in the current leadership of the Democratic Party were traitors to the high principles in which many of the nation's Democrats believed. I didn't say he was a traitor to the country. And so, under the circumstances, it came to his attention. He short-handed it to "traitors to the country" and said Nixon called him a traitor, even though several of my friends who were his friends tried to set him right.

GANNON: Why do you think an otherwise intelligent, tough-minded man remained impervious to this kind of proof that what you had said was not what he had thought you'd said, because to the end he carried this idea that you had accused him of being a traitor.

NIXON: Well, it wasn't just me that he was that way with. He--he was very personal. He just wasn't a Democrat, and a partisan Democrat, he was a personal partisan Democrat. For example, he never forgave Eisenhower for the fact that Eisenhower, after Truman urged him to run as a Democrat, proceeded to become a Republican a--and then to become a Republican president. And that's why he said that--very disparaging things about Eisenhower. After praising him earlier, he said, "He doesn't know as much about politics as a pig does about Sunday." And so, under the circumstances, therefore, he--he--he--he had a tendency to do--to--I would say that that's an indication--in talking about Eisenhower, you could say, "Well, Eisenhower was a Republican, and he was a Democrat." But he had some of the same kind of pithy comments with regard to Adlai Stevenson. He said, "He's an indecisive fellow. He doesn't know whether to go to the bathroom, or when. He can't decide." So I'd say that--that Harry Truman had his likes and 00:16:00dislikes, and they became imbedded in him. He was one who did not forgive, usually.

GANNON: How did Eisenhower feel about him? Was that feeling reciprocated?

NIXON: Oh, it was reciprocated in spades. That's why Eisenhower never had him to the White House in those eight years. I think it was a mistake not to have had him. For example, I had Johnson and the Kennedy clan and all the rest to the White House when I became president, but, on the other hand, Eisenhower also had very strong feelings. When somebody impugned what he thought, his intelligence, or his integrity, or so forth, he didn't forgive them.

GANNON: Do you think Truman disliked you personally?

NIXON: No, I don't think so. I don't think it was a question of personal dislike. I didn't know him that well to dislike me personally.

GANNON: He didn't know you well enough to dislike you, as--as the saying goes.

NIXON: And the point was that he--his--his dislike was basically partisan and political, the Hiss case in the first instance, and the view, too--I--I think 00:17:00you have to have in mind that he was--he was a good Democrat fighting for his candidates. Eisenhower was not a target that would be a very attractive one, because Eisenhower was too popular. I was carrying the load politically for the Republicans, and so, consequently, he zeroed on me--in on me, and I zeroed in on him. But I did not become personal with him. I didn't take him on, for example, for some of the things that he did.

GANNON: [Starts to speak.]

NIXON: I attacked "the mess in Washington," of course, and so forth.

GANNON: Was Eisenhower a--a long, hard grudge-holder? Was he a good hater?

NIXON: Not a hater, no, that--Eisenhower is not--I wouldn't classify him that way, the same way you would classify a--a usual partisan. But, on the other hand, he had a long, long memory, and sometimes, because he was not a 00:18:00politician, or--he would take things personally that a politician would let roll off the back. That was why, also, he didn't want to have Stevenson come to the White House, because he thought Stevenson had said some things that were beyond the pale in the campaign of '52, and he wouldn't let his staff bring Stevenson in to see him, even when he felt--they felt that Stevenson coming to the White House might help Eisenhower get through a program for foreign aid. That was the way Eisenhower was.

GANNON: Your relationship with Harry Truman wasn't entirely grim. I think there were a couple of lighter moments to it.

NIXON: Yes, we--we had some lighter moments. One I particularly remember was when I was the Republican speaker at a Gridiron dinner--this is after Truman had left the presidency--and before the dinner, they have a custom of having the head table all get together in a small room just before you go into the main 00:19:00dining room, at the Statler Hilton Hotel, where those dinners were held at that time. I was at that reception, and I saw Harry Truman sort of standing over by himself, alone. Sometimes a former president can become very lonely. And as I saw him standing there, I went over to the bar--I knew the bartender well--and I said, "Make Mr. Truman his drink." And he says, "Oh, it's bourbon." So he poured bourbon on the rocks. I took it--it was Jack Daniel's, incidentally, a very good bourbon. I took the drink and took it over to Harry Truman. I said, "Mr. President, here's a bourbon for you." And he said, "Thank you, sir. You're a real gentleman." Then we went in to make the speeches, and I made the Republican speech, the usual ten-minute speech, part of it serious, a--and ending usually on what is supposed to be a half-serious, or humorous, note. And so I related that incident to the press people and the other bigwigs that were there for the 00:20:00dinner. The theme of the dinner that night was that "Everything Is Made for Love." All the songs were "Everything is Made for Love." And so I said, "I know the theme of this particular dinner. I want to tell you an incident that proves that that theme is correct." I said, " I went in and I saw Harry Truman tonight. I brought him a bourbon, and you know what happened? He took it and thanked me for it. And I can assure you that when Harry Truman will take a glass of bourbon from Dick Nixon and drink it without asking somebody else to taste it first--that's love."

GANNON: D--do you think the theme was right? Is everything made for love?

NIXON: It has--you have to say that now and then. But as far as war and politics are concerned, love plays very, very little part.

GANNON: We have some film of an event in your presidency, when you went out to 00:21:00Independence, Missouri, and took with you, to present to President Truman for the Truman Library, the piano that he had played in the White House. Do you have any recollections as you see this film?

NIXON: Well, the piano was on the second floor of the White House.

NIXON: It was sort of a beaten-up thing in any event, but that wasn't the reason we took it. As a matter of fact, Harry Truman wanted that piano--I am sure he wanted it not because he had played it, which he had, but because his Ma--daughter Margaret had also used it. Of course she had become quite an accomplished singer. And so, under the circumstances, I just loaded the piano onto Air Force One. We flew it out to Independence and presented it to him. And then I see a picture there of me playing the piano, and there's Harry Truman standing behind me clapping. But let me tell you, he--he was not one to go overboard. After all, I had a f--I play by ear now, and I had a few blue notes. I was playing "The Missouri Waltz," and he didn't say, "That's excellent." He 00:22:00says, "That's pretty good."

GANNON: What was--did you have any dealings at all with Mrs. Truman, any impressions of her?

NIXON: Only at a distance, of course, and meeting her at--at the White House reception, and meeting her, of course, then, and when I went out to President Truman's funeral. I liked her. She was down-to-earth, Midwestern, no airs, very strong. I think she was a very good influence on him. Incidentally, in that connection--this may be an apocryphal story, but it's, to me, one of the most amusing ones. Truman could get very rough in campaigns. They think I'm rough, but I campaigned on issues. I would be rough on people on the issues, but as far as Truman is concerned, he could get very, very personal. And at one point, he--out on the stump, he said, "The Republican platform ought to be a manure spreader." And one of his aides talked to Mrs. Truman, according to this story, 00:23:00and said, "Mrs. Truman, you know, it--it would be better i--i--if you could have him say, 'fertilizer spreader.' 'Manure''s a little crude." She said, 'Look, you don't know how many years it took before I could get him to say 'manure'!"

GANNON: Looking back at that '52 campaign, do you see the--any of the language you use and--used, and particularly the--the line about "traitors to the high principles of the Democratic Party," as being inflammatory or excessive, because, after all, at that time the whole issue of loyalty and of Communist infiltration was a--was a tough issue being used against the Democrats. Even to use the word "traitors to the high principles"--was that a--was that a buzzword that--

NIXON: It wasn't intended to be, under any circumstances. As a matter of fact, in that same campaign, an issue that developed was that Bill Jenner, the senator from Indiana, had a--had coined the phrase of "twenty years of treason." And I 00:24:00made the point that there was only one party of treason in the United States--the Communist Party. So I constantly tried to reassure audiences that the problem was not a party--one party being the party of treason and the other party being the party of loyalty. And I--I must say that in all campaigns the rhetoric gets excessive. I think, for example, a--in retrospect, that I was too rough on Acheson. Acheson was wrong on the issue. He never understood it. He didn't go there enough, if at all, when he was secretary of State. But he was right on Europe, and deserves high mark for the leadership he provided on the Marshall Plan and in other areas. And I was overly rough on him, just as Harry Truman might have been a little overly rough on me.

GANNON: There's a book that's recently been published about the Rosenberg case, which, if it's true, upsets the liberal pantheon in that, based on government and other documents, it indicates that the Rosenbergs were, in fact, guilty, al--at least Julius Rosenberg was specifically guilty and Ethel to a--perhaps to a lesser extent. But it also indicates that the government went overboard in framing a case against them. Does that--did that shock you as you read about that, or surprise you, or f--make you feel vindicated?

NIXON: No, as far as the Rosenberg case was concerned, of course, that final decision, the decision not to delay the sentence, was President Eisenhower's. I was in the room when it happened. It was in the Cabinet Room, and I recall very well the Attorney General, Herbert Brownell, and Bill Rogers, the Deputy Attorney General, bringing the facts to the president, to his attention, and the decision was made. Not in that room--he made it later--

GANNON: (unintelligible)

NIXON: --as he always did.

GANNON: Did anybody argue for--

NIXON: No.

GANNON: --clemency?

NIXON: No. The evidence was clear. There was no question about their guilt, as even this book--in which the authors started out convinced they were innocent and then came around to c--becoming convinced they were guilty.

GANNON: Does it bother you, though, that some of the evidence--although they were apparently guilty--that some of the evidence was--was cooked by the FBI to make them appear even more guilty--

NIXON: If we had--

GANNON: --which might have affected the judgment on clemency, at least for Ethel Rosenberg?

NIXON: Oh, certainly. If I had known--if we had known that at the time--if President Eisenhower had known it, he might have taken a different view with regard to her. In other words, tainted evidence, even though a person is totally guilty, is a reason to get him off. Take Daniel Ellsberg. Daniel Ellsberg was guilty of t--of illegally taking top-secret papers from the Pentagon and turning them over to be published in a newspaper. And yet, because the evidence was tainted, he's scot-free, making a lot of monies on the lecture circuit, particularly at the elite Ivy League colleges. So, as far as Mrs. Rosenberg was 00:27:00concerned, she was entitled to get off on that basis, too.

GANNON: Does it disillusion you about J. Edgar Hoover that presumably he--it wouldn't have been done without his knowledge, if, indeed, without his direction--that the FBI was cooking evidence in such a way?

NIXON: Well, I wouldn't--I f--I followed that book that you refer to. And the case they made for cooking the evidence is--is pretty weak. It's--it's a question of, really, a--a matter of judgment, and there isn't any c--if--if you look at the times then, at you took--if you look at the fact that the Soviet Union acquired the atomic bomb two to three years before we thought they could, all the evidence points to the fact they wouldn't have gotten it if it hadn't been for not only our atomic spies, but the British atomic spies. You can see why overzealous prosecutors, and those that are assisting prosecutors, like J. Edgar Hoover, would certainly tilt their prosecution and their investigation in 00:28:00a way toward guilt, rather than toward innocence. Now if you look at it coolly, in retrospect, at this point, certainly we would have preferred that it not be done. But at the time I understand why it was done. And let us understand--Mrs. Rosenberg was guilty. This wasn't a case of somebody not guilty going to the chair.

GANNON: Do you remember your first meeting and your first impressions of John Kennedy?

NIXON: Well, our first meeting, actually, was in the committee. He was a member of the Education and Labor Committee. He was from a liberal district in Massachusetts, and I was a member of that same committee, and I was a conservative Republican from California. In the new Congress, the way you determine seniority for a committee is to draw straws. He drew straws on the Democratic side. He drew the last straw. In other words, he became the l--became the low man on the totem pole. I drew straws on the Republican side. There were 00:29:00seven new members on the Republican side. I got the last straw, number seven. So I was the low member on the Republican side, and, as somebody might have put it, we were bookends on that committee--political booklends--ends--and literal bookends. On the committee I learned to respect him, and I think he learned to respect me, because by the time the questioning got around to those of us at the end, all the good questions had been asked, so we really had to do a great deal of work in order to have good, precise questions to ask. We worked together, not conspiratorially, but independently, particularly in questioning labor leaders who had infiltrated--labor leaders that--or C--or Communist-leaning labor leader--leaders that infiltrated the labor unions. His questioning was extremely good, and independently I had come to similar conclusions, and so we played each other very well at that point.

GANNON: He was a strong anti-Communist then?

NIXON: Oh, yes, very strong, very strong. Well, later on, because we were members of that committee, we both received an invitation, with no honorariums, incidentally. This was before the days of honorariums of any significance. Frank Buchanan--I remember him so well--the silver-haired liberal Democratic congressman from McKeesport, Pennsylvania, right outside of Pittsburgh, said y--there's a big civic dinner up there, that they wanted to have the Taft-Hartley bill, which I had supported and Kennedy had opposed--they wanted to have it debated and wondered if we would go up and debate it. Well, independently, he agreed to do so, and I agreed to de--do so. And so we went up to McKeesport, Pennsylvania. I don't recall the debate. I don't think anybody that was there would particularly recall it, because we were nothing then. We were just a couple of junior senators. I think most of those who were there, because the audience was primarily business-oriented, although some labor leaders were there as well--most of them agreed that I had, perhaps, had a bit 00:31:00better of the argument, I think--had the better of it, because, I think, had the better case. And, incidentally, I don't think he had his heart in that case, either. While he came from a liberal Democratic district, he was concerned about the excesses that some labor unions had been guilty of, and he wanted some restraints on them. Well, the debate was over, and it was late at night, and that's before w--there were good airplane flights from Pittsburgh to Washington. And so we took the night sleeper train. I can remember very well that particular occasion, and again we had to do some drawing of straws because the only two bunks left were in the same compartment, an upper and a lower. And I drew, and he drew, and this time I won. I got the lower berth, he got the l--upper berth. Didn't make a lot of difference because we didn't sleep all the way back. We talked, and mainly about what we agreed on. You always do that when you're in Congress, and with people that are personal friends though political opponents. 00:32:00And so we talked about foreign policy, about the problems in Europe, and the problems that might come up in Asia and the rest. I don't remember anything--any discussion whatever of domestic policy.

GANNON: Didn't he become a--an unlikely contributor to your Senate campaign?

NIXON: Yes. In fact, I should point out that, while our relations were not buddy-buddy--in fact, except for a very few, he didn't have buddy-buddy relations with anybody. He was not that--he was not the gregarious type that Teddy Kennedy is, for example. But they were--they were friendly and personal.

GANNON: Who was he buddy-buddy with?

NIXON: George Smathers was a very good friend of his, for example. I would say, however, that in terms of--of his--our personal relationship, I could summarize it this way. He invited me, or, I should say, Eunice Kennedy, his sister who was his official hostess before he got married--to his--to his home, his Georgetown 00:33:00home, for a stag dinner, or I think there may have been another one as well. And they were very gracious, and the conversation was very spirited. I recall, too, being invited to his wedding--this was later on--and there were occasions when we had the opportunity of meeting on a--on a--on a very impersonal, social basis. But--but John Kennedy was not one of the group that played handball down in the gym. I did that. He was not one that--

GANNON: Were you any good?

NIXON: I was fair, but--not as good as some, but I couldn't play enough. So, in any event, we had a good personal relationship in that respect. I remember, incidentally, to show you how things can change in terms of political affiliations and the rest, the first time that I met his father, Joe Kennedy, 00:34:00the legendary Joe Kennedy, it was in 1960. This was before the nomination, and Joe Kennedy and Teddy Kennedy were standing outside the Colony Restaurant in New York City, and I shook hands with them. And this is the first time I'd met Joe Kennedy, and he said, "I just want you to know how much I admire you for what you've done in the Hiss case and in these--this Communist activity of yours." He says, "If Jack doesn't get it, I'll be for you." Teddy didn't say anything, but I hoped that he felt the same way. I saw Joe Kennedy later, incidentally, that same year. I was on my way to California by plane, and he was on the same plane with a beautiful girl. Oh, she was a raving beauty. And so I saw him, and I shook hands, and he introduced her to me as his niece. I don't know whether he 00:35:00had a niece out there or not, but she was a beauty. But as far as--as Kennedy himself was concerned, for example, he used to bring me--he'd bring me a book on occasion. I remember particularly, and I still have it in my library--he brought me the book To Light a Candle by Father [James] Keller, about the Christophers. It was inscribed by Father Keller. This is an indication of the kind of relationship it was.

GANNON: Did you consider that you were friends?

NIXON: Oh, yes, we were friends--not close friends, but we were not enemies by any ch--by any stretch of the imagination. We never had a hard word between ourselves, never.

GANNON: You'd started to tell about the--the 1950 campaign.

NIXON: Well, this--in 1950, he came into the outer office. My secretary buzzed and said, "Congressman Kennedy is here." And so, of course, he came right in, and he handed me an envelope. He said, "You know, I know you've got a tough 00:36:00campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas, and the family'd like to contribute." So he handed it to me, and it was a thousand dollars in cash. Later on, I think it was quite embarrassing to him, and he wanted it made very clear that the contribution was from his father and not for him personally. But he was delivering it. There was no question that--whose side he was on, and later on, after the election, when he was speaking at Harvard, he said that he was not unhappy about my defeating Helen Gahagan Douglas, because he had not found her one that he'd like to work with in the Congress of the United States.

GANNON: Do you think the money was, in fact, from him, or was it from his father?

NIXON: Doesn't make any difference. The Kennedy money is all in one pot, and he got--he had a chance to get it. I think--let me put it this way. Unless he had wanted me to beat Helen Gahagan Douglas, that money would never have come, because I didn't know his father at that time. I'm sure what happened is that he s--told his father that--"Well, this is one of the coming lights here," and his 00:37:00father was anti-Communist and felt, because of what I'd done in the Hiss case, which was already under the belt at that point, that he'd like to be on that side. No, I don't think he was an errand boy for his father. The money may have come from this father, but he wanted it done, too. There was no question about that. He was on my side in that campaign.

GANNON: It's been written that--or a lot has been written about the patriarch's tremendous influence on the Kennedy family--that Joe set the--the tone and the pace for the entire family, and indeed it was his thwarted presidential ambitions that led him to expect his son Joe, Jr., and then when he died, John, and then when he died, Robert, and now Edward--that the--the mantle sort of fell to them. It's also been argued, or written, that the fact that he was very open in his--you mentioned his--his niece, but there are stories that, when Gloria Swanson was his mistress, he actually had her on a boat to England with Rose 00:38:00Kennedy, and she simply had to accommodate herself to the--to the women that he brought around. And it's been argued that that influenced the Kennedy family's attitude towards women generally. Do you see anything to that in your observation of him or them?

NIXON: No. As far as he was concerned, I, frankly, wasn't particularly interested in what his extracurricular life was. And I must say this. Insofar as the time before he went to the White House, and I can't speak for what happened then--he was quite circumspect about it. I mean, he didn't flaunt it around and run around with the--the babes, particularly after--after he was married.

GANNON: Do y--m--my guess is--I don't want to--

NIXON: Yeah.

GANNON: --wrong anybody, but that there's not much action on the streets of McKeesport after dark--but after that debate, or in your experiences with him at that time, did you see--with John Kennedy--did you see any of the ladies' man 00:39:00that the reports subsequently indicated were there?

NIXON: No, I really didn't. As I said, it isn't something that I discussed with him. Maybe we were--we weren't that close. Maybe that's something that a very close friend, like maybe a George Smathers, might have talked with him about, but I--I can never dis--I can never remember a discussion with him about girls. I don't recall his being known having a reputation around the House--the House of Rep--Representatives--that is, around the office building--as being one who's chasing the girls. I am sure, based on what we have read since, that he was rather active, and, he of course apparently came by it through inheritance, through his father, who was quite a swordsman.

GANNON: In 1952, when you were nominated at the Chicago convention, John Kennedy wrote you a letter, which you reprint in your memoirs, and I wonder if you'd read it for us.

NIXON: This is a handwritten letter, incidentally. "Dear Dick, I was tremendously pleased that the convention selected you for vice president. I was always convinced that you would move ahead to the top, but I never thought it would come this quickly. You are an ideal selection and will bring a great deal of strength to the ticket. Please give my best wishes to your wife." I must say, incidentally, that our communication in that respect was not just one-sided. I--I wrote to him in 1956, after he had tried to gain the nomination on the 00:41:00Democratic ticket, and he made a very good run for it--almost got the nomination but was turned down, probably because he was a Catholic, at that point. But, in any event, I wrote to him afterwards and congratulated him on a very good race, and I think he appreciated that fact.

GANNON: Could--

NIXON: That's something that you do in politics. I--I wrote to Hubert Humphrey after he lost the nomination back in 1972. I write, as I've often said, to losers as well as winners, because I had been both.

GANNON: Could you read again just the last? You left out one--

NIXON: Let's see--

GANNON: --section of the very last paragraph there.

NIXON: Oh, yes. Want me to read the whole thing again? I--see, I didn't bring my glasses. I forgot about them.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: Let's read the whole thing again.

NIXON: All right.

GANNON: Okay.

NIXON: This was a letter that was, incidentally, written by hand, and it said, "Dear Dick, I was tremendously pleased that the convention selected you for vice president. I was always convinced you would move ahead to the top, but I never thought you could come this quickly." No, th--sorry. "Dear Dick, I was tremendously pleased that the convention selected you for vice president. I was always convinced that you would move ahead to the top, but I never thought it would come this quickly. You were an ideal selection and will bring great strength to the ticket. Please give my best to your wife, and all kinds of good luck to you."

GANNON: You've described your first meetings--meeting with and impressions of John Kennedy--Congressman John Kennedy. Do you remember your last meeting with President John Kennedy?

NIXON: Well, the last meeting was not a meeting. It was a telephone call. We were in Rome at the time on a family vacation in 1963, and he was in Rome on a state visit. And it happened that we were in the same hotel, and he was there for a meeting, and I was, of course, staying there. And he called on the phone. It was a very--just a--a friendly call. He said he hoped we had a good vacation, and I wished him good luck. And six weeks later, of course, he was dead.

GANNON: Do you remember how you heard about his death? For--for one generation of Americans, just like for an--for an earlier one--everybody remembers where they were when FDR died and--in your generation. In my generation, I think, everybody remembers where they were when they heard about President Kennedy's death. Do you remember?

NIXON: Oh, yes. I was in a taxicab. I had been in Dallas that very morning, as a matter of fact. I'd been out there for a board meeting of the Pepsi-Cola 00:44:00Company, of which I--our firm was general counsel. And I remember driving through the streets of Dallas. They were deserted, and the barricades were up for the parade that was to go through the city. I got a cab from the airport--was driving in and--at the--I think it was right at the 59th Street Bridge, where y--from Queens on fifty-nine--strike that. I remember that our cab was stopped at--in Queens just as you come into 59th Street, and--at a stoplight, and a man ran over from the curb and said to the cab driver, "Do you have a radio in your car?" He said, "No." He said, "President Kennedy's just been shot!" Well, we didn't have a radio, and the cab went on, and I--all the way back in--took an--tw--another twenty, twenty-five minutes before we got to the apartment, I wonder what in the world has happened. So we got into the 00:45:00apartment, and I immediately got on the phone. I got J. Edgar Hoover on the line, and I said, "What happened? Who was it? One of the right-wing nuts?" And Hoover responded, "No, it was a Commonest." He never said "Communist." He always said "Commonest." And that's how I learned it.

GANNON: Didn't--you've written that he later told you that you might have been the target.

NIXON: Yes. Hoover told me later that Mrs. Oswald said that she locked her husband the day before into the bathroom because he had a gun and said he was going to get me, because, of course, I was--happened to be in Dallas the day before at this board meeting. Apparently, if this story is true, and I have no reason to believe that Edgar Hoover made it up, it means that this man was a little bit off his rocker and was out to get anybody that he thought was possibly against what he stood for.

GANNON: What--what was your personal reaction when you found that President Kennedy was, in fact, dead?

NIXON: Well, it was the reaction of, I think, most everybody, that--first, one of sadness, profound sadness, the tragedy of it all, a man so young with so much life ahead, the tragedy for him, for hims--his family, for his supporters and friends, for the free world generally, the tragedy for the country--that a--an assassination could take place and be allowed to take place. That certainly was something that ran through my mind. I didn't have any feeling that there but for the grace of God go I. I had--I had--after all, I'm very fatalistic about life in general. And as far as I'm concerned, I always feel that what you have to do 00:47:00is to live life to the hilt. You have to--I always start out each day figuring this day may be the last, and live it right to the hilt. If you shortchange life, you shortchange yourself. You never look back, but always go forward. I think President Kennedy, John Kennedy, felt the same way, and the tragedy that he had to have his life snuffed short, to an extent, I think, is balanced by the fact that he lived it to the hilt.

GANNON: How do you feel about the use of the insanity plea in assassination attempt cases? For example, John Hinckley has recently and successfully used it in his attack on President Reagan.

NIXON: Well, I suppose the--what I consider the responsible su--proposals to modify the plea, so that it just isn't used--made up--"temporary s--insanity." If you have temporary insanity, you can say that everybody, any cold-blooded murderer, is temporarily insane. At the present time, the plea covers far too 00:48:00many people who, frankly, should pay for their crimes.

GANNON: We--we--I think we've anticipated the answer to this question, but I'll--I'll ask it anyway. We have a ph--a photograph of you and Mrs. Nixon standing next to the catafalque at the Kennedy lying in state in the Rotunda of the Capitol. Do you remember what you were thinking or what was going through your mind as you stood there looking at his coffin?

NIXON: Well, I'm not one that is going to say that I had profound feelings at such a time and so forth. That isn't the way it was. I--I think my feelings were the same--any person who was, as I had been, a personal friend, one who 00:49:00respected him, although he had been my political opponent--respected him as a man and particularly as president of the United States. I think the primary feeling was one of the tragedy of it all, of a life being snuffed out. Even though he was against me, even though he was an opponent, in our system the better the competition, the better the eventual leader's going to be. And he was a great competitor, and in that sense the loss to the country was irreparable. Then, of course, just the human tragedy of it all.

GANNON: A lot has been written and spoken, and--and even sung, about the--the Kennedy style, that sort of collection of events and attitudes and conduct which for one brief shining moment created Camelot on the--on the Potomac. One might 00:50:00expect that you have a--a slightly different approach to the Kennedy style. How would you describe the Kennedy style?

NIXON: Well, I would describe it first as being suave, smooth, debonair, and that appealed, of course, to many in the media, who--who are more, frankly, suckers for style than average people, for that matter.

GANNON: Are they suave, smooth, and debonair themselves?

NIXON: No, but they want to be. They always admire it, but i--in Kennedy they saw somebody that they would like to be and so consequently it--it appealed to them. Also that th--I guess, the Kennedy style had to do with the fact that he was considered to be an intellectual.

GANNON: Was he?

NIXON: He--I would rate him more so than most in that office. He was a good phrase-maker. He read books. Many don't. And--and whether he was or not is not so important as that he enjoyed the company of--of intelligent people, of intellectuals. He made them feel important, and that was the case. But th--I think another thing that appealed to the media was that he was more than simply a suave, smooth intellectual, or l--Ivy League l--intellectual. He was Ivy League, but he was also Boston Irish, and that was a big difference. I think the fact that--that John Kennedy very much approved of the designation that was given to him by Joe Alsop tells us about--tells us one of the reasons why he had this charisma. He was a "Stevenson with balls," and therefore he was one that attracted the--the people who wanted a young, courageous man in the presidency 00:52:00and yet one who was smooth and graceful. Basically that's the mark of royalty.

GANNON: Do you think that the Kennedys are American royalty?

NIXON: Oh, in their minds, certainly. And I think that tells part of the story. And in the minds of many of the media, yes. Nothing else can explain the way that Teddy Kennedy, despite the defeats he has suffered and despite his background, is still a very formidable potential candidate for president of the United States. It's the Kennedy mystique. It's still there. It's going to last as long as one of them's living.

GANNON: Do you think that Americans long for the grandeur and the pageantry and the s--and the security of a royal family? Do they look for that in leaders?

NIXON: Some do, yes.

GANNON: Is that healthy?

NIXON: Whether the majority do or not--I don't think it's particularly unhealthy. I--it depends on--on how you--how it's really defined. I would say that, generally speaking, you find that many Americans--that they want their leaders to be somebody different from themselves. The--the present-day politician thinks that the way to lead is to be like the other people, just to be like the man next door. Well, people aren't going to vote for the man next door. They want their leader to be somebody who is different, bigger than life, different from themselves. Not one that is like them.

GANNON: Some of the Kennedy people--in fact, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., is the man who gave it the phrase--have said that the Nixon presidency was an imperial presidency. Was that your attempt to give the American people that aspect of a--of a royal family in your kind of leadership?

NIXON: No. I would say that--I would say the Kennedy presidency is the one that qualifies as the imperial presidency more than any other. It had the glamour. It had the trappings. It had the--the--the--the phrases and so forth of the imperial presidency. I think in our case we tried to--to be--to run the office in a way that was dignified, but not in a way that made us--made it necessary for people to bow down and--and in effect treat us as the royalty. I never thought of it that way.

GANNON: I think the real point of the Schlesinger book was that--that your administration's use of power, your approach to the power of the office, was an imperial one. How would you compare your approach to power and your administration's approach to power to the Kennedy administration's approach to power?

NIXON: Ineffective.

GANNON: Who--what--which was ineffective?

NIXON: Oh, ours.

GANNON: Compared to theirs?

NIXON: Oh, yes, yes, yes. They--they really know how to use power, and they used it ruthlessly. Well, let's--let's use a couple of examples. You heard about wiretapping, and people would think that the first time anybody was ever wiretapped was in our administration. Now, this is going to surprise a lot of people, but the highest number of wiretaps, even higher than those that were necessarily applied for national security purposes in the Korean War and those that were applied for national security fur--purposes in the Vietnam War--the highest number of "national security"--so-called--wiretaps was in 1963 by Bobby Kennedy when he was attorney general for John F. Kennedy. And they used the wiretaps were for what I would say were questionable national security purposes. For example, they wiretapped one reporter that they found was writing a book on Marilyn Monroe that might have some derogatory comments about Kennedys in them. I don't think you can find any of that in our case. Some of ours may not have 00:56:00b--should not have been applied, but we tried to have a national security justification for them. Leaks, for example, of classified material was the primary reason we had for wiretapping. The--the handling of the press, for example--there is a great deal of discussion about the fact that we were s--trying to use the power of the presidency to silence the press, and so forth. But let's look at how they used it so effectively. Their--a story appeared, apparently--carried on se--on CBS after the 1960 elections, indicating that the Catholic vote had been stirred up by the Kennedys during the election so that there was a pro-Catholic backlash among Protestants and the rest. And Kennedy was furious, and he called in Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, and took him to t--on the carpet about it. And Stanton said, "Well," he said, "look. We 00:57:00weren't using this for the first time. The print media's used this story before." And then Kennedy looked him in the eye and said, "Yes, but they aren't lion--licensed by the federal government." And inc--of course, predictably, CBS soft-pedaled the story thereafter. Now that's the use of power, and using it effectively. And in campaigning we have some pretty good examples. I think of Dick Tuck and others like him--th--the c--what they did, the way they would foul up schedules, the way they'd have demonstrators and hecklers and so forth, to follow us around on the campaign trail. And they made poor Donald Segretti and his little group of collegiate people look like a--like the amateur hour. What I am suggesting is that, while the Kennedy campaign did not develop--did not initiate or invent dirty tricks, they were the most professional in using them 00:58:00of any campaign that I know of.

GANNON: You--you tell these stories with such seeming relish. Do you envy this toughness, and almost ruthlessness in--

NIXON: No, I--

GANNON: --campaigning?

NIXON: No, the only thing I envy is the effectiveness. I think things sh--I think--I think if you're going to engage in activities for which you are going to be held account, as you should, that they should be effective. That's why, for example, in the field of foreign policy, it turns me off to have congressmen and senators, or other leaders, huff and puff about the Communists and so forth, and then when it comes to doing something effective, they back away. I'm interested in a policy being effective above everything else. And let me say, the Kennedys got it done. They got the job done. They were very effective.

GANNON: There are those who argue that President Reagan is not u--

THE FOLLOWING IS IN THE ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT BUT NOT ON A TAPE

GANNON: --nlike these congress in light of the recent shooting down of the Korean Airlines jet--is not unlike these congressmen you mentioned--that he's talked about the "evil empire" in the past, that he's huffed and puffed about the Soviets, but that when it came to actually going on television and doing something about it, he talks about suspending landing rights for a certain amount of time. Has his reaction been properly tough in these terms, do you think, in terms of being effective?

NIXON: Well, any criticism I would have, I, of course, would make to him personally, because I follow the ground rule of not criticizing the president in the foreign policy area.

GANNON: Have you done so?

NIXON: No. I'm not--I haven't criticized him. My view is that, once it's done, then you look to the future. I think in this case he's between a rock and a hard place. He had to be tough with regard to what