Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, June 13, 1983, part 3.

GANNON: --allegation?

NIXON: I don't respond to it. The record has been made, and as far as these people are concerned, they're speaking generally from a different vantage point. And I just let the record speak for itself.

GANNON: Can you--can't you at least deny it?

NIXON: No, I'm not going to deny it. I cer--I've made it clear--I have had drinks on occasion, but I was never in a position--and Henry Kissinger bears this out, incidentally--there was never an occasion when I was not able to exert the leadership functions that I was supposed to exert. That's one of the reasons I was that restrained.

GANNON: You're not concerned that a failure to deny might be seen as a tacit admission that you can't deny it?

NIXON: No. No. I'm not--no. When I say I won't deny it--I'm not going to deny that I have not had drinks, because I have. I do deny that I have ever had 00:01:00drinks to the point that I was unable to handle the office in a responsible way, of course. Let's get on with the stuff here. You're taking too long.

GANNON: What was your--what was your meeting with President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs like?

NIXON: Well, the way it happened was that he called me on the phone, and I was in Washington briefly to get a CIA briefing prior to some travel. And he asked me if I could come down to see him. And I said of course I would come, and we set the appointment for the next day. I should set the background for that, however. When I arrived in Washington, I arrived the day that the Bay of Pigs story began to break in the papers. I had an appointment that evening with Allen 00:02:00Dulles, the head of the CIA. He was going to brief me on foreign policy generally. The Washington Star reported that the landing had taken place. I assumed it had gone all right because I knew that it had been planned in the Eisenhower administration, and I just assumed this was the one that was being carried forward by Kennedy.

GANNON: After you left office, you had no knowledge of its being carried forward, though?

NIXON: No, but I assumed it would be, because it was well on its way by the time Kennedy became president. Then, when--and when Kennedy reappointed Allen Dulles as head of the CIA, I assumed that Dulles would continue to push for carrying out the particular plan. I'll never forget when Dulles came to the door. I opened the door, and I shook hands, and I said, "Come on in, Allen." I said, "Would you like a drink?" He says, "I would." He says, "I really need 00:03:00one." I said, "Well, what's happened?" He said, "The whole Cuban venture is a failure. Everything is lost. This is the worst day of my life." And then he gave me chapter and verse as to what had happened. He said, "The greatest mistake I ever made in my life was not to tell the president that if he went in--that there was a chance it might fail and that he must not lose," because what had happened is, as Allen Dulles explained, is that Kennedy had cancelled two air strikes which were essential if it were going to have any chance to succeed--cancelled the strikes because he was concerned about the reaction he was getting from within his own administration, particularly people like Adlai Stevenson, in opposition to what was being done. So I had that background before going in. So I went to the White House, and Lyndon Johnson was in the office at the time, and we shook hands, had a little idle chatter, and we sat down, 00:04:00Kennedy in his rocking chair, I sitting over on a couch, and he proceeded to fill me in.

GANNON: How did he look?

NIXON: Beaten, very wan, very tired, harassed. I had never seen him look down before--never. But in this case there was no--it was surprising that he would look that way. And I felt, incidentally, complimented a bit that he felt that he could let his hair down. And he really did. He was--he was, I may say, quite outspoken in condemning all the people that advised him--the CIA, the military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of those that advised him. He says, "I asked every one of the sons-of-bitches about this. They all assured me it would succeed." And then he got up and started to pace the floor, and he used a string 00:05:00of four-letter words that he didn't learn at Harvard, unless he went there in the sixties--he might have learned it then. But, in any event, I felt that it--I felt it was good that he had a chance to vent his frustration and his anger on this occasion. And he said to me--and, incidentally, this tells us something about his past as well. He said that it had been the worst experience in his life to have to talk to some of those men that had been part of the invasion force--their families and so forth. He said it was the worst day of his life--his feeling that he had let them down. And as he told me that, I realize that this is the first time he had ever failed. He had never been through the fire of failure before, and that's why it had such an enormous impact on him.

GANNON: What did--why did he want to meet with you? Did he ask for your support?

NIXON: Oh, of course. That was the purpose of it. Yes. He hadn't had me down before. No reason to, particularly, but in this instance he wanted the support of the Republicans for what he was not going to do, which was nothing at that particular point.

GANNON: Did you--did he ask for your advice, or did you offer advice on what you thought he should do?

NIXON: Yes. I said that--he suggested he would be interested in advice. And I said, "There's no question about what ought to be done." I said, "You've got to get Castro out of there." I said, "I would find a legal excuse, maybe defending our base at Guantanamo, or saving the lives of American citizens who happened to be residing in or living in Cuba, to go in and take him out." And his answer was, well, he couldn't risk that, because he had heard from Chip Bohlen and other experts that Khrushchev was in a very cocky mood, and that if he moved in on Cuba, that Khrushchev might move on Berlin. So we kind of left that there. I 00:07:00then pledged my support, in addition, if he decided to do something in Laos, because his first speech after he became president had been with regard to the Communist attempts to take over Laos. And, you remember, he had said in his inaugural, "We will fight any time, any place, in defense of freedom." And Laos had been used as an example of where the United States might fight. And then I was really shocked to hear him say, "No, we can't do anything in Laos if we can't do something about Cuba ninety miles away. I don't think the American people will support doing something in Laos where we might be confronted with a million Chinese." Of course, later on it was he who made the decision to send the first fifteen thousand Americans in to Vietnam. But that, of course, is another part of the story. So, under the circumstances, the conversation went on.

GANNON: Did you try to talk him around to your point of view?

NIXON: As well as I could. I felt that I had to put it into the hopper. He has a very quick mind. You don't need to try to arm-twist him or that sort of thing. And, anyway, it would have been improper for me to do so. So, as we were leaving, he escorted me out to the car. He was very gracious about it--asked me about the possibility of running for governor--said I didn't plan to--urged that I write a book, which I did do--Six Crises. Then he made a very interesting comment at the end that showed how his vision of the presidency had changed to an extent. In the campaign, he talked quite a bit about domestic issues, of course, because as a Democrat running against a conservative Republican he had to appeal to the liberals. And so he went through the usual liberal clichés about more of this and more for that and the other thing. But then he said, "You know, really, who gives a shit whether the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25 when 00:09:00you think of this problem like this? Really, that's all that matters, isn't it?" You see, it meant, in other words, that now the he was in the office he realized that overriding these admittedly important domestic issues was the responsibility that a president has, and only the president can fulfill, of projecting the United States as a responsible foreign policy power and to defend the freedom of ourselves as well as others throughout the world.

GANNON: Do you think that going through what you call the fire of failure in the case of the Bay of Pigs changed President Kennedy's conduct or his outlook?

NIXON: Well, it changed him in one respect. He felt that he had to do something about it later, and after losing in the Bay of Pigs, I think he felt that he had to prove himself in some other area. As a matter of fact, this had to be 00:10:00terribly disillusioning to his own people. I--I've read since then that one of those who helped train the Cuban--the dissident Cubans who were in the landing force and so forth was saying how terribly disillusioned they were, because they had this image of Kennedy, which was built up in the campaign and which came from his inaugural, that he was a macho fellow, that he would fight any time, any place, and take any risk for freedom around the world. And then they were let down so, and this man described it. He said, "It was like their finding that Superman was a fairy." And so Kennedy had to change that image, and I think that's one of the reasons, among others, that he decided that the United States 00:11:00should play a strong, positive role in Vietnam. He didn't want to have Vietnam, for example, fall to the Communists, because having failed in Cuba--and, incidentally, that failure was compounded by the fact that after the Cuban missile crisis, he gave Castro a privileged sanctuary in Cuba and said that we would restrain any further attacks by dissident forces based in the United States. This meant that he had to do something in other places in the world. So Vietnam turned out to be the place.

GANNON: Do you see the Cuban missile crisis--that outcome of the Cuban missile crisis is usually seen as a Kennedy success, indeed the fruit of the lesson that he learned in the Bay of Pigs failure. Do you see the Cuban missile crisis as a failure, as another failure, or as not a success?

NIXON: No. I think I would say--I myself have said that the Cuban missile crisis was one where he, very properly, stood up to the Soviets, where he called their hand, where he instituted the blockade, and where they backed down and 00:12:00took out the missiles. On the other hand, the price that was paid, which many didn't realize at the time, where we took missiles out--claims that they weren't useful any more--we took intermediate missiles out of Greece and Turkey--and also an agreement to the effect that the United States would not support or--any actions from the American shores against Cuba. This gave Castro the privileged sanctuary that he has today, and allows him--presently Cuba is the most awesome military power in the Western Hemisphere except for the United States and possibly Canada--and also allows him to be the most effective Soviet proxy in the world, running around Africa and other places when they should be concentrating on Cuba.

GANNON: Did you talk to President Eisenhower about his opinion of the--Kennedy's actions in the Bay of Pigs?

NIXON: Oh, yes, and he was as astounded as I was. I think what irritated him was the reflection on his leadership, the idea that all Kennedy was doing was carrying out the Eisenhower plan. And I remember he gritted his teeth, and he said, "Can you imagine they suggest that this was my plan? It wasn't my plan." He said, "I wouldn't have approved a plan for an amphibious action of that sort without adequate air cover." And he says, "The plan did provide it for, and the reason it didn't work is that he withdrew the air cover." No. Eisenhower felt very, very strong about that, and very critical of Kennedy. MacArthur, too--MacArthur's point was he felt that Kennedy did not recognize the prime rule that a great power must follow. You don't start something unless you're prepared to finish it. And he should have thought of that before he went in. But having 00:14:00said all these things, Kennedy having failed in Cuba, I think, led to a certain extent to his doing what he did in Vietnam. And then the Vietnam thing was compounded by the fact that when Diem was murdered, assassinated, during a coup which he--Kennedy--had supported, that led to the musical chairs which exacerbated the Vietnamese problems and the first fifteen thousand combat troops committed by Kennedy, and then escalating from there on. So you can really trace in a way--you can trace, in a way, if you want to follow it historically--the involvement in Vietnam back to Cuba. One failure leads to another. In order to correct one failure, you want to prove yourself strong in another, and you're strong in a place where it's difficult to be strong. Vietnam was one of those.

GANNON: To reduce it to an absurdly simple level, could you say that the reason--one of the reasons we went in to Vietnam was to prove that Superman 00:15:00wasn't a fairy?

NIXON: Well, there was a macho feeling about it, as I understand it, and as I reflect on it since then. The Green Beret concept--the feeling, too, as I say, that was expressed in the inaugural--"we're going to fight any time, any place." Well, we didn't do it in Cuba, so we have to do it somewhere else. And I think it could have led to that. Now, understand, I do not criticize Kennedy for going into Vietnam. I think going in was necessary. I think it was proper. I have always supported that. I have never gone along with many in our own administration who have indicated, "Well, it was a bad--and all we're trying to do is to be sure that we end it in the right way." If it was a bad war, it should have been ended immediately. The point of the matter is it wasn't 00:16:00conducted properly, and that was the great mistake.

GANNON: Do you remember the first time you met Bobby Kennedy? What was he like?

NIXON: Well, Bobby Kennedy I met when he was working for Joe McCarthy. See, I was an investigator, and so was he. He was very intense, very different from Jack. In fact, Alice Longworth had a priceless comment about the three. I think she said Jack Kennedy was like a debonair--I remember Alice Longworth used to describe the three Kennedy brothers, and she used to revel in how different they were. She said Jack Kennedy was a debonair man of the world, a movie star. And Bobby Kennedy was an eighteenth-century Jesuit priest. And Teddy Kennedy was a gregarious Irish politician. And I think that says it well. Bobby Kennedy was humorless. I've often heard Jack Kennedy laugh and tell funny things. I didn't 00:17:00know Bobby that well, but from what I've been reading about him, he was very intense, very hard-working, very dedicated. But he could be dedicated to anything he was in at the particular time. He was totally dedicated to McCarthy and what he was doing, and John McClellan, who was the overall chairman of that committee, said that he had never seen a more dedicated, hard-working man than Bobby Kennedy when he was working for McCarthy and then for McClellan. Another time that I saw him, apart from casual meetings and other occasions, was at a football game. The year was 1960, or, I should say, 1959, and it was the playoff game for the National Football League championship. That was before the leagues--the new league came into being. It was a game in Baltimore between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants. The Colts, incidentally, won, and it 00:18:00was a pretty good game. But I remember I was sitting by Bobby in the owner's box, and I was interested in the game. Bobby wasn't interested in the game. He never talked about the game. He wanted to ask me how would--how would Jack do if he entered the California primary. It was a long way off. I said I thought he would do well, which I believed at that particular point. But I could see then that this was a totally political animal.

GANNON: We have to break.

NIXON: Okay.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible]

NIXON: Well, you know the reason Helms was so concerned about that June twenty-third tape and so forth was--

OFFSCREEN VOICE: How's that now?

NIXON: --remember this [unintelligible]--

GANNON: It's the Mafia.

NIXON: It had to be that that was all in there.

GANNON: Yeah.

NIXON: And he didn't want to turn it over--

GANNON: Surely it was.

NIOXON: --and never did.

GANNON: Well it was all over the place.

NIXON: And it came later, see, and he just never did give it to us. I didn't know.

GANNON: Mm-hmm.

NIXON: You don't think that's it?

GANNON: Yeah, that's--

NIXON: And Helms is basically a Democrat.

GANNON: That's what they're scared of.

NIXON: Don't you think so?

GANNON: Yeah. The--the Kennedys were scared because it would have tied Kennedy to--

NIXON: Gian--

GANNON: Giancana.

NIXON: --cana.

GANNON: To Exner--through--through Exner.

NIXON: Yeah.

GANNON: And--

GANNON: --the CIA would have been up to their keisters in Mafia.

NIXON: Mm-hmm.

OFFSCREEN VOICE: Hi-ho.

NIXON: [Clears throat] Hm. Well also the--you know, I sort of put aside these assassination plots, but obviously there was one. Operation Mongoose.

GANNON: Oh, there's no question that there was--

NIXON: See, we didn't know about that.

GANNON: And it got to a very far point.

NIXON: I didn't know about it as vice president, see. I didn't know about it then. H--Helms never told me about that, see.

GANNON: Well, that only came out in the '75--

NIXON: That's right.

GANNON: --with the Rockefeller stuff.

NIXON: That's right. Hm.

GANNON: This damn fly.

OFFSCREEN VOICE: Ten seconds.

GANNON: Does it bother you?

NIXON: No, I haven't seen it yet. I saw it earlier.

OFFSCREEN VOICE: Five seconds.

GANNON: After President Kennedy's assassination, you wrote a letter to Mrs. Kennedy offering your services if she needed them in any way and your support. Several weeks later, she wrote you a handwritten reply, which you reprint in your memoirs. I wonder if you would read that letter.

NIXON: "Dear Mr. Vice President, I do thank you for your most thoughtful letter. You two young men, colleagues in Congress, adversaries in 1960, and now look what has happened. Whoever thought such a hideous thing could happen in this country? I know how you must feel--so long on the path, so closely missing 00:21:00the greatest prize, and now, for you, all the questions come up again, and you must commit all you and your family's hopes and efforts again. Just one thing I would say to you: If it does not work out as you had hoed for so long, please be consoled by what you already have--your life and your family. We never value life enough when we have it, and I would not have had Jack live his life any other way, though I know his death could have been prevented, and I will never cease to torture myself with that. But if you do not win, please think of all that you have. With my appreciation and my regards to your family. Sincerely."

GANNON: Do you--do you remember your first meeting with Ted Kennedy?

NIXON: It was a rather curious meeting, as a matter of fact. It was while I was vice president. I had just become vice president in about 1953 or '54. And my office, the vice-presidential office, was right across the hall from Jack Kennedy's senatorial office, and I used to get to the office quite early in the morning. One day I arrived at my usual early time, and here was a young fellow sitting on a suitcase outside of the Kennedy office door, which was not yet open. It was Ted Kennedy. So I invited him in and had a cup of coffee with him, and we talked a little about wherever he was going to school, and that's how we got acquainted for the first time.

GANNON: Did you see a future senator in him then? Could you see the family resemblance?

NIXON: Oh, the resemblance, yes. I would say, incidentally, in terms of appearance, that he was the best looking of the Kennedy group. I don't mean that they all weren't good-looking men, but Teddy, I think, in terms of appeal to 00:23:00women, probably was the most glamorous.

GANNON: Do you think that he has a--in 1984, or--he's still a young man--in 1988--that he still has a viable presidential future in American politics?

NIXON: Oh, without a doubt. He has much of what it takes to go all the way. First, he has money. Second, he has the best brains that money can buy. And third, he also has the Kennedy mystique, which is still around. He is the one that carries the torch for both of his brothers, both of whom were assassinated. I would say, too, that he's a very good campaigner. As I look at the three of them, curiously enough--this will surprise some people--the one who was the most effective senator was not Jack or Bobby, but Teddy. Bobby wasn’t there long enough. Jack was not too well during his Senate years and was campaigning for president a great deal of the time. But Teddy is a very natural politician. He 00:24:00likes the Senate. He likes being on a committee, he has a very good staff, he works hard, and so forth. I would say that his problems are--he has one other asset going for him. Who's going to beat him? Well, maybe one of the Democratic candidates currently on the scene will rise to the top. But at the present time, as somebody has recently said, you've got about six candidates for vice president running for president on the Democratic ticket. I would say, too, that he's got to pray in 1984, assuming that lightning doesn't strike him through some sort of a draft, that Ronald Reagan wins, because if Ronald Reagan wins in 1984, I think that in 1988 it will be very, very difficult for him to take on an incumbent Democratic president. In other words, he can run in '88, but I think by that time he's going to be over the hill in age, which brings me, of course, 00:25:00to the last point. His problem is that at the present time one of his major appeals--one of the major appeals of the Kennedys generally has been that they appeal to youth. And there's nothing more pathetic that a middle-aged man trying to act like a teenager. He's got to grow old gracefully and still be young enough in heart and actions and so forth to appeal to youth. But adding it all up, I would say that of all the people on the scene today, he has as good a chance as any to go clear to the top.

GANNON: The--the conventional wisdom is that although he's got two other--or two major problems--one is that although he has the looks and the money and the staff that he doesn't have the ambition, the fire in the belly, that the others did. And then, of course, the other is Chappaquiddick.

NIXON: Well, I would say there's no question but that Bobby had more fire in his belly than either of the other two. But Jack had enough. Teddy doesn't seem 00:26:00to have it at the present time. And believe me, you've got to have fire in your belly. You've got to pay the price.

GANNON: Can you fake it?

NIXON: Oh, yes. I think so. And I think that that is what his admirers, the rest of sort of the Kennedy entourage that realize they want--or want another one in there--that they'll attempt to have it put on. Anything can be faked, particularly in this age of television.

GANNON: Isn't the camera supposed to never lie, though? Wouldn't the camera reveal that?

NIXON: I--I don't give that much credence to what the camera can do. It can see through a lot, but I would say that if it comes up to the point where he thinks he has a real chance, he'll get up for it. He's not a weak man. Now, as far as the Chappaquiddick thing is concerned--that's hurt him up to this point. It--certainly the Roger Mudd interview, the famous Roger Mudd interview on 00:27:00Chappaquiddick, hurt him the last time around. But as time goes on, that's going to recede into the background, and people are going to look at the Teddy Kennedy of today, rather than the Teddy Kennedy in his misspent youth. You know, it's an interesting thing. That used to drive Lyndon Johnson right up the wall--the fact that Teddy Kennedy, after the death of this girl at Chappaquiddick--that he seemed to get off so lightly. And he once remarked to a friend--he said, "Well, gee, I've been out with a girl, and she'd been stung in the ass by a"--strike that. He said that "If I'd been out with a girl, and she'd been stung in the ass by a bumblebee, they would have put me in Sing Sing for life." And there is somewhat of a double standard there. I think Johnson had a good beef.

GANNON: Do you think he got off lightly--Teddy Kennedy on Chappaquiddick?

NIXON: I would say that it seems to be a very light--well, let me put it this way. From a legal standpoint, it would seem so, where death was involved, and the rest. From the standpoint, however, of the political price he paid--who knows? The personal price he paid--who knows? I mean, only he can tell us about that. But he's paid a price.

GANNON: Does it say something about the American political process, or the American people, that someone who did something like that, or to whom something like that happened, x-number of years later can be back as a very viable political presidential possibility?

NIXON: Well, it says something about the political process generally, not just in the United States. People generally are not going to hold an action against an individual forever. An individual has a chance to come back from adversity. 00:29:00And he has that chance if he's able to wheel it. I do not think, as a matter of fact, that Teddy Kennedy failed in his 1980 bid, or in the earlier bid, solely because or even primarily because of Chappaquiddick. Perhaps without Chappaquiddick he would have been more sure to win, but I think it was the fact that he just didn't seem to be presidential. He didn't answer the other questions as well as the ones about Chappaquiddick. He didn't seem to be decisive enough and strong enough. Now he may be able to overcome that, and if he can overcome that image in--in decisiveness, of knowledge about the issues, the Chappaquiddick thing will get behind him. I think it's possible, particularly in view of the fact that there doesn't seem to be much competition coming up on the Democratic side.

GANNON: What do you think, or do you have any opinions about the subsequently 00:30:00alleged Castro connection behind President Kennedy's assassination?

NIXON: I know there's been a great deal of speculation as to whether or not Oswald was acting alone or whether he was part of a conspiracy and that Castro was behind that conspiracy due to the fact that Oswald had spent some time in Cuba. I would state, first, that there is a strong hypothetical case for that conspiracy theory. First, Castro had a motive. The motive was that there was a plot to assassinate Castro--no question about that--called the Mongoose Plot. The CIA had drawn up the plans to carry it out. Second, there was no question about Kennedy being aware of it, because he discussed it with other people--aware of the plot. And also there doesn't seem to be much question that 00:31:00Castro was aware of the fact that there was a plot, because two months before the assassination he made a comment to the effect that if the Americans were trying to engage in activities against him--that they should fear for their own lives. I would say, too, that Castro looking at Kennedy might have reached the conclusion--"Well, after all, he's capable of having a plot of this sort," and, of course, here's the conspiratorial Communist mind working. After all, if Kennedy, a man who had no qualms about supporting a coup which resulted in the assassination of a friend, Diem, in South Vietnam, would therefore have even less qualms about engaging in activities that result in the assassination of an enemy, Fidel Castro. Now, that is, of course, the hypothetical case. Lyndon 00:32:00Johnson put it very graphically to Howard K. Smith when he said Kennedy was out to get Castro and Castro got him first.

GANNON: Do you think Johnson believed that back then?

NIXON: Possibly he did believe it, because Johnson tended to think sometimes in conspiratorial terms, too. I would say that as far as the hypothetical case is concerned, and I outline this because this has widely been published in this country, and abroad as well, that it is there. However, the factual evidence, and this has been investigated over and over again, is that he was acting alone. So I have to assume that that is the case, and I will say that is the case. I think all of us should say that is the case unless we have facts to disprove that and prove the hypothetical case.

GANNON: Didn't Johnson, at another point, referring to the Mafia connection, make some remark about--

NIXON: Well, Johnson said--as a matter of fact, when he became president, he 00:33:00says, "I inherited a damned Murder, Incorporated, in the Caribbean," because apparently there was a plan to assassinate a few other people as well.

GANNON: How--how do you react to the knowledge that the CIA used the Mafia to set an assassination of Fidel Castro?

NIXON: Well, the whole assassination game is kind of beyond me, in any event. When I spoke of what we would do about Castro when I spoke to President Kennedy, I was not speaking in terms of assassination. I was speaking in terms--in recommendation action in which the United States would move in and overthrow Castro. Just assassinating Castro I don't think would have done the job, because there are Castroites, more now even than there were then. I think what was necessary would be to support a counterrevolutionary activity that would--overthrown the Castro regime. So, consequently, I must say that I never 00:34:00knew of any CIA assassination schemes while I was president, and, frankly, I would never have approved one.

GANNON: Do you think that the--that the knowledge of this tangled web of the CIA's involvement with the Mafia, President Kennedy's involvement with one of his mistresses, Judith Exner, and her also at the same time being the mistress of one of the Mafia leaders--do you think that accounts for the CIA's tenderness about the Bay of Pigs?

NIXON: Well, I've always wondered about why they were so tender. It is well-known that I requested the full file on the Bay of Pigs--what came that brought it on, how it was handled, the preparations for it, how it was handled, and the aftermath. But I was never able to get it from the CIA. And it took till 00:35:00after I left office in 1975 and the Rockefeller Commission investigation that some of this information began to come forth. I didn't know there was an operation for assassination. I didn't--and as a matter of fact, when you speak about Johnson saying he inherited Murder, Incorporated--that really hadn't worked its way into my consciousness either.

GANNON: You are nothing if not a tough guy, a tough leader. Why did you take no for an answer from the CIA when you asked for this stuff and they first didn't send it and then sent the wrong stuff? Why didn't you shake them up and get what you wanted?

NIXON: Well, it was a little difficult because, after all, I had--I had named Helms as the head of the CIA, and I'd either--all I could--about all I could hope to do then was to change him, which, incidentally, I did after the election in 1972, and get a new man in who would do what I felt was proper. As a matter 00:36:00of fact, I do not think that a CIA head should hold himself above the presidency, just as I don't think the State Department Foreign Service should hold itself above the presidency. Anything the president wants is something in terms of information that the CIA should provide for him. As a matter of fact, I was never able to get from the State Department the full disclosure of what commitments were made at the time of the bombing halt that Johnson ordered, that led to the Paris peace talks, which aborted and, of course, delayed the ending of the war rather than brought it closer to an end.

GANNON: Does it say something, or anything, about the CIA that having devoted its attention, its purpose, and its considerable resources--I think at one point something--several hundred people were working on Operation Mongoose--that they 00:37:00weren't able to assassinate Fidel Castro successfully?

NIXON: The CIA, as has, of course--just as every organization has, some very good people. But in terms of its operational capabilities, I've never been very high on them, not in my time. I think in the earlier period under Allen Dulles there were some operations that were extremely effective, but later on it became too cluttered up with bureaucracy and so forth--that I never had much confidence in what they could do. But that--incidentally, I don't want to knock them alone. I didn't have much confidence in what some of our military were doing either. They were just muscle-bound by too much money and too much bureaucracy. And the same is true of the State Department. Basically what we're talking about here is the curse of a huge overblown bureaucracy, everybody writing memos to everybody else, and a lot of people with great educations trying to do things rather than 00:38:00getting the people that could do things to take charge. That's the curse of government, and that's what the president is for. He's got to shake these people up and make them--make them brace up. But the CIA--the CIA's capabilities in that area it didn't seem to me were too good.

GANNON: You make it sound--

NIXON: In fact, that shouldn't have been too difficult a job, if they were going to assassinate--incidentally, I question the wisdom of assassination, however. I never approved it. I would not approve it now, because I don't think it's effective.

GANNON: Do you question its morality? Would you stop it because it's not wise or effective, or because it's immoral?

NIXON: Because it's not wise and effective. Let me say that in terms of immoral and therefore becomes ineffective, that's something else again. No, I wouldn't like the morality of it. War is immoral, but sometimes you have to wage war, a defensive war, and maybe that doesn't make it moral, but it certainly isn't immoral to--to resist, for example, a Communist takeover of South Vietnam. It's 00:39:00more immoral to allow the Communists to take it over and hundreds of thousands of boat people drown in the China Sea and millions of Cambodians killed and starved to death. But in terms of the moral problem as far as assassination is concerned, certainly I don't like the idea at all, but what you have to look at here--and I'm putting it on the broad context--you have to look at it in terms of what is effective to serve the interests, the broader interests of American foreign policy resisting Communist aggression. And the broader interests, I think, are not served by trying to assassinate a political leader.

GANNON: If that had succeeded, though, would you have approved of it and supported it?

NIXON: That's a hypothetical question I don't think I'd go into.

GANNON: You almost--it sounds like the CIA at times has been a loose cannon, almost, and there are people--conspiratorialist, I guess they could be called--who believe that there's almost a parallel government operating out in 00:40:00Langley on its own. Do you worry about the independent sort of super-power in the CIA in terms of reporting to presidents and doing things?

NIXON: Yes, I worry about that, and I worry about the independence of the State Department Foreign Service. I worry about the independence of the Pentagon--the professionals over there. There's a tendency of all these huge bureaucracies in the national security field to think that they have a franchise and that they can be bigger than the president and so forth and so on. Now, the military shapes up the best because they realize there's a direct chain of command between the president as commander-in-chief and the military. But, boy, it's hard to shape up the State Department at times, particularly with their propensity for leaking and all that sort of thing. And the CIA does tend at times, in my view, or did--whether the situation is true now under Casey I don't know--but they did tend at times to feel that they were an institution that went 00:41:00on and on and on--that presidents just come and go.

GANNON: In February 1971, you invited Mrs. John Kennedy and her children to come to the White House for a private dinner to see the portraits--the official portraits of President and Mrs. Kennedy that were going to be unveiled. Do you remember that visit--that private visit?

NIXON: Yes. We arranged it because we knew that she would like to see the portraits. We knew also, and we understood this, that her feeling about privacy was such that she didn't want to come with her children to see it with a huge crowd of tourists and others around. So we arranged it very privately--arranged the visit privately. There was no press present. No pictures were taken. It was just unfortunate. It would have been nice to have had a picture. We didn't have the White House photographer there. And it was a very pleasant evening. The children were just growing up then. They were very young, and they had the problems that young people have. For example, I remember that one of them--I 00:42:00think it was the boy--when Mrs. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, ordered milk for him, said, "Well, I'll take some milk." He said, "I don't like milk in foreign countries. It's so icky." But he drank the milk here, and she was a little concerned because he spilled some of it. But what I, incidentally, am particularly delighted at is that both the boy and the girl seem to have grown up very, very well, because it's terribly difficult for children of celebrities, and particularly one in the spotlight such as the children of John Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, to grow up and just be normal, or even, shall we say, subnormal. And they are far more than that I am sure. I remember, too, that when she came in, we were sitting around the little reception area before going in to dinner, and the White House butler who waited on us had been there in the Kennedy White 00:43:00House--Alan. And he asked everybody what they wanted to have for drinks. He came to Mrs. Kennedy, and he said, "What would you like, Mrs. Kennedy?" And she said, "Ginger ale." He looked startled and said, "Ginger ale?" She said, "Well, maybe a little vodka." And so we had our drinks, and then we went in to dinner, and she talked about campaigning, and she had the same problem that we had. She said she remembered going into hotel rooms all over the country and getting sick, because every time you went into the hotel room they would have painted it the day before to be sure it was nice and fresh. And then on one occasion when the conversation seemed to drift away, she said something rather interesting. She said, "You know, I always lived in a dream world."

GANNON: What--what are your impressions of Jacqueline Kennedy?

NIXON: Well, she's--I do not know her well, first. I was--we were invited to the wedding. We were unable to go to the wedding. And I've only seen her 00:44:00socially on--at least--maybe two occasions. From what I read about her, I would say that she has star quality. She handled herself, of course, in a very effective way at the time of President Kennedy's assassination. and that has made her place in history. And whatever she did before and whatever she did after, it's not going to affect that. That's the way it is sometimes. One big event overwhelms all the negatives, if there are negatives, on either side of that event.

GANNON: Do you remember your first meeting with Lyndon Johnson?

NIXON: Well, I was flat on my back at the time. I was in the Congress. I'd just come to Congress, and I had--was carrying Tricia, our older girl, and slipped on the ice at the little apartment house where we lived out in Alexandria, and broke both elbows. So I had to go to--not to Walter Reed--I went to the Naval 00:45:00Hospital, as a matter of fact--Bethesda. And right across the hall from me was a Texas congressman who was a member of the Ways and Means Committee who had fallen on the ice in Washington crossing one of the icy streets. You don't have ice in Washington that much, and so--and I, from the West, wasn't used to it at all, and neither was he. So we were sharing these opposite suites. And in came this very handsome, vigorous young man bringing a big bowl of chili. It was Lyndon Johnson. This Texas congressman loved a little restaurant out on--near Rockville. He said made the best chili, even better than they made in Texas. And so Johnson had gone out there and got the chili and brought it in to us. So I shared the chili with the congressman and Lyndon Johnson. But I remember he was tall, of course. He was a big man, he was handsome--thinner then than he is now, or was later on. But he cut a striking figure. Also I saw from that time, and it 00:46:00was always true thereafter--he was a fashion plate. And he had cufflinks--most of the rest of us wore just sort of store clothes--well-tailored suits. A very impressive-looking fellow.

GANNON: Wasn't--or maybe that was part of the fact that he was considered to be sort of a ladies' man?

NIXON: Well, I--you know, all this talk about Johnson and Kennedy being ladies' men, again, it's something I never discussed with either. I never participated in any of their activities as far as I know, and, frankly, I think it's pretty much irrelevant in terms of their performance in office. My point is this--whether it's being a ladies' man, whether it's the health problem, whether it's any other activity of that sort, what is important is what did the man do. He's got to have a personal life. He's got to have a private life. Now, it's 00:47:00only when his private life impinges upon his public life that it becomes a public issue. And if someone who is a ladies' man does it so blatantly that it sets a bad public example, that's something else again. And the same is true of whatever it is--philandering, drinking, or if his health is so bad that it impinges on his public performance, as it did with Woodrow Wilson when he'd had a stroke and for seventeen months didn't even act as president, or Franklin D. Roosevelt when he was no longer able to act effectively when he went to Yalta. That's when health then becomes the issue. But otherwise, it's not a legitimate issue, and it's one I don't like to discuss.

GANNON: One gathers that Lyndon Johnson really had to be experienced to be understood or appreciated. What--what was he like to know?

NIXON: Big. Everything about Johnson was big. He was a tall man, a big man. He 00:48:00gestured expansively. He ate enormously, much too much. He had to constantly diet. He could drink like nobody else. I have never seen anybody who could drink so much and not be affected by it. I never saw him drunk. Oh, he'd maybe slur a word now and then, but Lyndon was always in total control. He was the man in motion, perpetually in motion. Without question, when you judge Lyndon Johnson, he was the most effective legislative leader of the period that I was around, thirty-seven years or so-- the most effective legislative lea--probably the most effective legislative leader of the century. He had all the moves. He knew how to use power. He was ruthless. He was persuasive mentally, physically, emotionally, and every other way. Overwhelming was the way I'd describe him. When I describe him as a man in motion, I have a vivid recollection of Lyndon 00:49:00Johnson. On those occasions when I'd be presiding in the Senate and we'd have a visitor, as we often would, from a foreign country come to address the Senate--not a joint session but just a session of the Senate, Johnson would escort them in. Now the senators would sit back there. When the visitor was introduced, most of them would clap in that vapid way, you know, sort of like that, like--many times particularly you find this in the East. The British do it the same way, that sort of polite hand-clapping. But Johnson was a cheerleader. He would always go [imitates sound of Johnson clapping] like a machine gun and made everybody else do it. He'd look around like that. That was Lyndon Johnson. He was a leader. He was strong. He was quite a man.

GANNON: Was he a nice man?

NIXON: Yes. Anyone who knew him personally, yes. He could be brutal, I understand. He--I've talked to some of the girls who were in our White House who were in his, and said that he'd send them out with tears because they made a 00:50:00mistake in doing a letter, or didn't carry out an order as he thought it should be. But the next day he'd give them a huge gift. He was volatile, et cetera. He was ruthless, he was tough, but he also had a very, very big heart, in my opinion. But, you see, I'm seeing him from my vantage point. Whether others who knew him in a different way felt that way, I don't know.

GANNON: What--what happened to him, then, because one tends to think, I guess, of his latter days as president, and the last words that come to mind would be handsome, vigorous, decisive, even ruthless. One thinks of him as being sort of sad and an almost melancholy figure.

NIXON: Well, he did become sad and melancholy. He was broken. I think you go through several phases here. First, you had the Johnson of the Senate days, and then there was no one that was his equal, and I don’t think there'll be anyone who will be his equal. Let me say that one who has the makings of being as 00:51:00effective is Howard Baker, who, unfortunately, is not going to be leader in the Senate now since he's not running again. But Baker didn't have the ruthless quality that Johnson had. Johnson was not only persuasive, but he liked power, and he used it. When he became president, for example, he would get all of the FBI reports that he possibly could on the various senators, and he'd look right in the eye and let them know in no uncertain terms that he knew what they were up to--I mean, in their extracurricular activities. And so he--he used power effectively, and if he couldn't win them by persuasion, he scared them to death, or he rewarded them. He rewarded, he punished, he cajoled. He did it all. That was the Senate days. Then he became vice president. Those were very unhappy days for him--unhappy because he felt from the beginning that he was superior to 00:52:00Kennedy, that he should have been in the office himself. He was a loyal vice president, however. He never cut Kennedy up while he was vice president. But it wasn't reciprocated. Kennedy, the president, did not cut him up, but Bobby really did him in, always putting out little stories about things--gaffes that he presumably had made. And Edgar Hoover, who of course was very close to Johnson, said that--told me on one occasion that in that period--that Johnson was about ready to resign as vice president because Kennedy, in a National Security Council meeting, had berated him, humiliated him right in front of the president. And I would say that in that particular respect that Johnson, I think, liked Jack Kennedy up to a point. He did not respect him as a leader, because he thought he--Johnson--was a more effective leader. He hated Bobby 00:53:00Kennedy. And so it was an unhappy time. But, you know, Johnson gave him a little ammunition. He was fine in the domestic field, where he was so effective--the Johnson Library has example after example where Jackie Kennedy writes memoranda to Lyndon Johnson, the vice president, to ask him to get things done that she thinks need to be done, rather than the president. And that shows you that she knew the man that could get things done. But in the foreign field he was inept then, and later he improved some. But, for example, I think one of his major gaffes--it didn't get a lot of play at the time, but it must have had quite an effect in a certain quarter--a distinguished diplomat from India came in, and Johnson was talking to him. He said, "You know, hell, we don't worship cows here in this country. We eat 'em!" Well, you can imagine the effect he had on some 00:54:00Indian vegetarian who worships cows. But, nevertheless, that was Johnson. Then came the period when he became president, and there for a time he put on an act you wouldn't believe. He went to that grave about once a week. He'd find a reason to lay some flowers. He was contrite. He was humble. He was the man, the soft-spoken, very kind man who had taken the mantle of leadership from the martyred president. He always spoke of what he was doing in terms of carrying out President Kennedy's policies rather than in terms of being president himself. And that was a period when he got a very, very good press, because the press basically was pro-Kennedy. One, because they considered him to be one of their own, sort of an intellectual. Two, they considered to be basically, as he was, of course, a domestic liberal. And three, because he was a Democrat, of 00:55:00course. So, anyway, here came Johnson in this period after Kennedy's assassination. And then a change had to come over him. He had won in his own right. He had won the biggest landslide in history. The only one that even approached it was the one that we won--by one-tenth of a percent less than that we won in 1972 over McGovern.

GANNON: This was the Goldwater race in '64.

NIXON: Goldwater race in '64. And so after massacring Goldwater, he proceeded, without realizing it, to massacre himself. Not at first--Johnson's first year after he was elected, year 1965, was a year of achievement even exceeding Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous Hundred Days. The way he rolled that legislation through--the Great Society legislation. A lot of it was bad, in my opinion, but he got it through, and he's got to get a lot of credit for that. What he did then--he's got to get a lot of credit for having the ability to do it. Now it's 00:56:00true that he had enormous majorities in both the House and the Senate, something Eisenhower didn't have when he had both houses, something Reagan does not have, something I never had. But you've got to give him credit. He did it. And in that period, his approval rating went up, but then Johnson began to be Johnson, and then people began to realize, "Oh-oh, now we've got this Johnson sitting in Kennedy's chair. And who is this meathead, this cornpone, sitting in Kennedy's chair?" You know, I speak of bigness. I'll never forget the first time I was in the Oval Office with Johnson--this was after I was elected president in 1968. I had been in the Oval Office with Kennedy--that was the only other time--eight years before, and Kennedy sat in his rocking chair. Believe it or not--I was so surprised--I go into the Oval Office. Here Johnson's sitting in a rocking chair. The difference was it was twice as big as Kennedy's. That's Lyndon Johnson. So, 00:57:00anyway, here was Johnson, and he was a very effective president, but then he began to turn off the pro-Kennedy people. And as a result, the situation began to change. It changed for several reasons. One, he broke it off in Bobby Kennedy by not taking him for vice president, and, in effect, humiliating him, accord--Bobby felt he had, at least.

GANNON: Would Bobby Kennedy have wanted to be vice president?

NIXON: Oh, no question about it.

GANNON: Wouldn't that have put him in a weak position vis-à-vis Johnson like Johnson was in vis-à-vis John Kennedy?

NIXON: John--Johnson, whatever people may say about his weaknesses, was a party man. For example, I remember Bobby Baker, who was his top assistant, telling me in 1960--this was when Johnson was running against Kennedy for the nomination--"Johnson will never go on that ticket, never go on that ticket. He despises this whippersnapper," et cetera. I wasn't a bit surprised when Johnson went on the ticket. He's a party man. And Johnson was a good vice president 00:58:00because he was a party man. He felt that was his job. On the other hand, Bobby Kennedy is a Bobby Kennedy man first--or a Kennedy first and a partisan--

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

NIXON: Democrat second. And he would have done what was necessary. And the way he would do it would be very cleverly. He'd just have Johnson cut up through the media, through his leaks, and his controls also, and all of his contacts out in the bureaucracy. And it would have been very effect--oh, it would have been terrible for Johnson. It would have been a terrible mistake for him to let Bobby Kennedy be vice president.

GANNON: Don't you--there's a story that you've told about the meeting in which Johnson broke the news to Bobby Kennedy that he wasn't going to be taken on the ticket.

NIXON: Well, it's too bad that we don't have a record of that, but it's no fault of Lyndon Johnson's if we don't. What happened was that Johnson wanted to