Nixonland. Part 27

Mr. Schultz: "You also practice karate, don't you?"

The Witness: "Yes, I do."

Mr. Schultz: "That is for the revolution, isn't it?"

The Witness: "After Chicago I changed from being a pacifist to the realization that we had to defend ourselves. A nonviolent revolution was impossible. I desperately wish it was possible."

Rennie Davis thought this was the defense's most effective witness with the jury. He asked a reporter what he he had thought of Morse's testimony. The reporter's answer spoke to the polarization: "It certainly was a disaster for you. Now you've really had it." had thought of Morse's testimony. The reporter's answer spoke to the polarization: "It certainly was a disaster for you. Now you've really had it."

Could your daughter kill?

The defendants had intended to win the sympathy of the big jury out there, the general public. Their message was seen through a gla.s.s darkly. "What did did go on in Judge Julius Hoffman's courtroom?" asked the back cover of one of the many paperback books that appeared later reproducing court transcripts. With no cameras to record it, it was hard to know. Afterward a friend asked Tony Lukas of the go on in Judge Julius Hoffman's courtroom?" asked the back cover of one of the many paperback books that appeared later reproducing court transcripts. With no cameras to record it, it was hard to know. Afterward a friend asked Tony Lukas of the Times Times which of the defendants had defecated in the aisle of the courtroom. which of the defendants had defecated in the aisle of the courtroom.

Most newspaper coverage came from secondhand wire reports, built from a written record that the judge made sure reflected every defense outrage and whitewashed every prosecution one. The Times Times's Lukas paid careful attention to such unfairness, but his editors pruned him ruthlessly: Abbie Hoffman always "shouted"; Judge Hoffman always "said" (even if it was really the other way around). To much of the public, the presumption was that the defecation was nonstop.

William Kunstler offered his summation to the jury on February 13, 1970: "I think if this case does nothing else, perhaps it will bring into focus that again we are in a moment of history when a courtroom becomes the proving ground of whether we do live free or whether we do die free.... Perhaps if you do what is right, perhaps Allen Ginsberg will never have to write again as he did in 'Howl,' 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,' perhaps Judy Collins will never have to stand in any courtroom again and say, as she did, 'When will they ever learn?'"

Thomas Foran offered his summation: "At the beginning of this case they were calling them all by diminutive names, Rennie and Abbie and Jerry, trying to pretend they were young kids. They are not kids.... They are highly sophisticated, educated men, and they are evil men."

The jury returned their verdict after five days. All seven were acquitted on the conspiracy count. Froines and Weiner were acquitted of the charge they'd constructed an incendiary device. But Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Hoffman, and Rubin were found guilty on the indictment's counts two through six, which cited t.i.tle 18, United States Code, Section 201-the provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, pa.s.sed to honor the martyr Martin Luther King, outlawing the "travel in interstate commerce...with intent to incite, organize, promote, and encourage a riot" and to "speak to a.s.semblages of persons for the purposes of inciting, organizing, promoting, and encouraging a riot."

The liberal editorialists praised the jury's ruling as judicious and well considered, a complex split decision: the system worked. Spiro Agnew called it an "American verdict." It was indeed an American verdict: almost as soon as the trial began, the jury had split into polarized camps. One believed the defendants were not guilty on all accounts. The other believed they were guilty on all counts. Only three jurors actually agreed with the decision as rendered.

They had socialized apart, eaten apart-and, when together, spent most of their time in the jury room debating child-rearing philosophy. One of the convict-on-all-accounts jurors talked about the time she took her willful daughter to see a shrink who said she just needed "love and patience"-and how she stalked out saying of her daughter that she needed to have something "shoved down her throat." They voiced their fears that their children would end up hippies, said things like "They are evil" and "This is like n.a.z.i Germany-hippies want to take over the country" and "They had no right to come into your living room." The liberal jurors argued that slovenliness wasn't a crime, the prosecution was corrupt, and that for the first time they were afraid the government might be spying on them. them. They wondered whether the antiriot statute was const.i.tutional. At that, the conservative side wondered, if the law didn't protect decent people from They wondered whether the antiriot statute was const.i.tutional. At that, the conservative side wondered, if the law didn't protect decent people from this, this, then what did it protect them from? then what did it protect them from?

A journalist later observed the sociology that divided the two groups. "The convict-on-all-counts jurors tended to be people who had moved recently from the city of Chicago itself to the suburbs. They were the hard-line we-worked-hard-and-won-our-way-according-to-the-standard-rules-of-social-mobility-people.... The acquittal jurors tended to be those who had been longer situated in the suburbs or outlying parts of the city, and were easier in their att.i.tudes about raising children."

Franklins and Orthogonians: they hated each other too much to agree on anything. They sent out notes to the judge that they were a hung jury. The judge refused to accept them: "Keep deliberating!" A juror finally brokered the split-verdict compromise. Judge Hoffman still was not satisfied. So he exercised his discretionary power. Over two long days, he called each defendant and each defense lawyer before the bench and delivered contempt specifications for each act of schoolboy naughtiness, sometimes reading out long stretches from the record: "Specification 1: "Specification 1: On September 26, during the opening statement by the Government, defendant Hoffman rose and blew a kiss to the jurors. Official Transcript, Chapter One." On September 26, during the opening statement by the Government, defendant Hoffman rose and blew a kiss to the jurors. Official Transcript, Chapter One."

Abbie Hoffman got a day in jail for that. He got six days for calling the judge, in Yiddish, shanda fur di goyim. shanda fur di goyim. (The judge read the phrase, which meant "a Jew who shames Jews in front of the gentiles," from the transcript haltingly and p.r.o.nounced, "I can't understand the following words.") David Dellinger had insisted, on Moratorium Day, on reading a list of the war dead. For that, he got six months. (The judge read the phrase, which meant "a Jew who shames Jews in front of the gentiles," from the transcript haltingly and p.r.o.nounced, "I can't understand the following words.") David Dellinger had insisted, on Moratorium Day, on reading a list of the war dead. For that, he got six months.

The law had spoken. John Lindsay responded, "The blunt, hard fact is that we in this nation appear headed for a new period of repression-more dangerous than at any time in years." Foran, at a booster club rally at a parochial high school, said, "We've lost our kids to the freaking f.a.g revolution." Rennie Davis said that when he got out of jail, "I intend to move next door to Tom Foran and bring his sons and daughters into the revolution" and "turn the sons and daughters of the ruling cla.s.s into Vietcong." Jerry Rubin signed his new book-Do It!-to "Judge Hoffman, top Yippie, who radicalized more young Americans than we ever could." And Tom Hayden said, "Our jury now is being heard from." jury now is being heard from."

In Ann Arbor, five thousand students and hangers-on marched to city hall busting windows and wrecking cars. The FBI put a "White Panther" on the ten most wanted list, who wrote from exile in the Michigan woods, "I don't want to make it sound like all you got to do is kill people, kill pigs, to bring about revolution," but "it is up to us to educate the people to the fact that it is war, and a righteous revolutionary war." In Madison a student stole an Air Force ROTC training plane and tried to bomb an army ammunition plant (just as a student radical stole a plane in the newly released Zabriskie Point Zabriskie Point).

The preliminaries in the trial of the "Manson Family" were all over the news: Manson had hoped, it turned out, to foment a race war. Weatherman Bernardine Dohrn said of the murders, "Dig it, first they killed the pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!" On February 17, what appeared to be a copycat crime emerged, a hideous attack on a military family: a Green Beret captain, Jeffrey MacDonald, reported regaining consciousness from a knife attack to find his wife and two children, Kristen and Kimberly, dead. He remembered what one of the intruders, a woman wearing a "floppy hat" and carrying a burning taper, chanted: "Acid is groovy, kill the pigs."

In St. Louis, at 2 a.m. on February 23, the Quonset hut housing Was.h.i.+ngton University's Army ROTC program was burned to the ground. In frigid Buffalo, on February 24, the president of the State University of New York campus summoned cops to control the threatened disruption of a basketball game. The next night, forty students stormed his office. A police squad chased them into the student union. Eight hundred students attacked the police. At the precinct house, amid the Jewish-looking haul, one arrestee heard a cop say that America "should have let Hitler win, he'd have known how to take care of these f.u.c.kers."

That same day, William Kunstler, facing two years in jail for contempt of Judge Hoffman's court, gave a speech at the UCSanta Barbara stadium. Ten years earlier he had dropped out of the executive-training program at R. H. Macy's; how things had changed. "I have never thought that [the] breaking of windows and sporadic, picayune violence is a good tactic," he now said. "But on the other hand, I cannot bring myself to become bitter and condemn young people who engage in it." Students whistled and cheered. Hundreds strolled to a rally in the adjacent town of Isla Vista. One of them idly swung around a bottle of wine. The cops, thinking it a Molotov c.o.c.ktail, arrested him. Violence broke out. Kids burned down a Bank of America branch. Ronald Reagan ordered his attorney general to look into charging Kunstler with crossing state lines to incite a riot.

On March 6 a mysterious explosion collapsed an entire town house in Greenwich Village. Cops searching through the rubble pulled out three dead bodies and enough live-wired dynamite bombs to blow up the entire block if detonated at once. The house had been a bomb factory, and one of the bombs was intended to slaughter attendees at an upcoming dance at Fort Dix. One decapitated body was identified by a print taken from the severed little finger of the right hand: Diana Oughton, a Weatherman. Another was a leader of the 1968 Columbia University strike. The third was a Weatherman based at Kent State University, in Ohio.

On March 11 a bomb gashed a chunk out of the corner of the Dorchester County Courthouse in Maryland, site of pretrial hearings for H. Rap Brown for inciting the burning of the schoolhouse in Cambridge in 1967.

The next night, in Buffalo, hundreds of students fought a running battle with police, throwing Molotov c.o.c.ktails at the faculty peace monitors trying to keep the two sides apart.

Three days later Judge Hoffman received an enthusiastic clap on the shoulder from Richard Nixon. He was a special guest at the president's weekly Christian service in the East Room, where the Reverend Billy Graham preached that America's "differences could melt in the heat of a religious revival."

In New York City one day in March, fifteen thousand people were evacuated from office buildings from three hundred separate bomb threats. On April 4, Governor Reagan, in a reelection campaign speech to the Council of California Growers, said of government's dilemma of beating back the mounting violence, "If there is to be a bloodbath, let it be now." That America was in the middle of a civil war had once been but a metaphor. How soon before it became real?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

Tourniquet IN THE N NIXON ADMINISTRATION, A BUREAUCRATIC MUTINY TOOK SHAPE.

On January 19, 1970, President Nixon announced his next Supreme Court nominee, G. Harrold Carswell, a good ol' boy from South Georgia. An ad that Carswell had taken out advertising his run for state legislature in 1948 was discovered: "I Am A Southerner By Ancestry, Birth, Training, Inclination, Belief, And Practices. I Believe That Segregation Of The Races Is The Proper And The ONLY Practical And Correct Way Of Life In Our States." Staffers in the civil rights division of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare took in the situation with disgust and watched their boss for a response.

Nixon made it at a press conference on January 30 when asked if he would still have nominated Carswell if he'd known. "Yes, I would," the president responded. "I am not concerned about what Judge Carswell said twenty-two years ago when he was a candidate for state legislature. I am very much concerned about his record...as a federal district judge."

The Post Post reported on that record the next day: an embarra.s.sing two-thirds of his decisions had been overturned by higher courts. Then it came out that in 1956 Carswell had schemed to make a public golf course private to keep blacks out. Two weeks later Leon Panetta picked up the reported on that record the next day: an embarra.s.sing two-thirds of his decisions had been overturned by higher courts. Then it came out that in 1956 Carswell had schemed to make a public golf course private to keep blacks out. Two weeks later Leon Panetta picked up the Was.h.i.+ngton Daily News Was.h.i.+ngton Daily News and read an article about himself: "Nixon Seeks to Fire HEW's Rights Chief for Liberal Views." He dutifully submitted his resignation that Tuesday. Then he delivered a speech to the National Education a.s.sociation: "The cause of justice is being destroyed not by direct challenge but by indirection, by confusion, by disunity, and by a lack of leaders.h.i.+p and commitment to a truly equal society." Six of Panetta's subordinates resigned in solidarity. and read an article about himself: "Nixon Seeks to Fire HEW's Rights Chief for Liberal Views." He dutifully submitted his resignation that Tuesday. Then he delivered a speech to the National Education a.s.sociation: "The cause of justice is being destroyed not by direct challenge but by indirection, by confusion, by disunity, and by a lack of leaders.h.i.+p and commitment to a truly equal society." Six of Panetta's subordinates resigned in solidarity.

On March 1, the New York Times New York Times published a leaked memo from Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The White House was putting "as much or more time and effort from this administration than any in history" on civil rights, he rea.s.sured the boss. But the administration wasn't getting the credit because the discourse was controlled by "hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides.... The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect. The subject has been too much talked about." published a leaked memo from Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The White House was putting "as much or more time and effort from this administration than any in history" on civil rights, he rea.s.sured the boss. But the administration wasn't getting the credit because the discourse was controlled by "hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides.... The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect. The subject has been too much talked about."

Over two hundred civil servants at Health, Education, and Welfare pet.i.tioned Secretary Finch: "We are gravely concerned about the future leaders.h.i.+p role of HEW in civil rights." The day of the town-house bombing Nixon grumbled that what they "can't understand is that the confusion is deliberate."

Then he turned to a more important subject. Larry O'Brien had just taken over again as Democratic National Committee chairman, to Nixon a clear signal that Ted Kennedy was rea.s.serting control of the party. (Coincident with O'Brien's reascendency, the Democrats played neatly into the emerging right-wing charge that they were no longer the party of the people but instead the party of chic elites. The DNC moved to the sw.a.n.kiest address in Was.h.i.+ngton, two floors below the Federal Reserve Board: "Watergate, Where Republicans Gather," the Post Post headlined a February 25, 1969, spread on the $70 million complex where it cost an unheard of $3,500 a year for a s.p.a.ce in the underground garage, and where Rose Mary Woods, the White House protocol chief, and four Nixon cabinet secretaries now lived. "Why, we could have a cabinet meeting here" was the favorite line of exuberant real estate agents showing off the $250,000 penthouses.) The president told Haldeman to have Murray Chotiner, Nixon's old dirty trickster from the forties he had brought in to help with the 1970 campaign, investigate O'Brien. And if for some reason Chotiner wouldn't play ball, Nixon had already had J. Edgar Hoover get the goods on his old friend. headlined a February 25, 1969, spread on the $70 million complex where it cost an unheard of $3,500 a year for a s.p.a.ce in the underground garage, and where Rose Mary Woods, the White House protocol chief, and four Nixon cabinet secretaries now lived. "Why, we could have a cabinet meeting here" was the favorite line of exuberant real estate agents showing off the $250,000 penthouses.) The president told Haldeman to have Murray Chotiner, Nixon's old dirty trickster from the forties he had brought in to help with the 1970 campaign, investigate O'Brien. And if for some reason Chotiner wouldn't play ball, Nixon had already had J. Edgar Hoover get the goods on his old friend.

This was the Nixon who once shared in a moment of introspection to an aide, "It's a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can't stop playing the game the way you've always played it because it is part of you and you need it as much as an arm or leg.... You continue to walk on the edge of the precipice because over the years you have become fascinated by how close to the edge you can walk without losing your balance."

Nixon had rung in the year with flights of Kennedyesque rhetoric. His New Year's message to the nation marked the signing of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969: "The 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debts to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its water, and our living environment. It is literally now or never." He didn't care much about this stuff one way or another-"I think interest in this will recede," he wrote on a memo three months later-but it presented a political opportunity. According to polls, environmental concern had tripled since 1965. Since the publication of the perennial bestseller Silent Spring Silent Spring in 1962 (its t.i.tle referred to the imminent day when birds stopped singing: "Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?"), environmentalism had sometimes seemed a sort of transideological apocalypticism. Ehrlichman considered himself an environmentalist. So did General Curtis LeMay, an overpopulation obsessive. Edmund Muskie and Scoop Jackson, both likely 1972 presidential contenders, were strong for the issue. Wisconsin's Democratic senator g.a.y.l.o.r.d Nelson was planning something called Earth Day, for April. Best of all, the radicals were obsessed with it. Linda Morse, she of the M1 rifle, spoke in her testimony at the Chicago 7 trial of "companies just pouring waste into lakes and into rivers and just destroying them." Allen Ginsberg said "overpopulation, pollution, ecological destruction brought about by our own greed" was "a planetary crisis not recognized by any government of the world." in 1962 (its t.i.tle referred to the imminent day when birds stopped singing: "Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life?"), environmentalism had sometimes seemed a sort of transideological apocalypticism. Ehrlichman considered himself an environmentalist. So did General Curtis LeMay, an overpopulation obsessive. Edmund Muskie and Scoop Jackson, both likely 1972 presidential contenders, were strong for the issue. Wisconsin's Democratic senator g.a.y.l.o.r.d Nelson was planning something called Earth Day, for April. Best of all, the radicals were obsessed with it. Linda Morse, she of the M1 rifle, spoke in her testimony at the Chicago 7 trial of "companies just pouring waste into lakes and into rivers and just destroying them." Allen Ginsberg said "overpopulation, pollution, ecological destruction brought about by our own greed" was "a planetary crisis not recognized by any government of the world."

Well, now Richard Nixon recognized it. The latest edition of Silent Spring Silent Spring put Nixon's "literally now or never" quote on the back cover. put Nixon's "literally now or never" quote on the back cover.

He cleared his schedule for thirteen days to write his January 22 State of the Union address. (Though he took time out to write a memo to Haldeman: "Will you give me a recent report sometime this week on what we are doing to sanitize the White House staff. You will recall my concern with regard to one of the offices where big pictures of Kennedy were in the office in a rather sensitive area where some form letters are prepared to send out.") The address began, "The seventies will be a time of new beginnings, a time of exploring both on earth and in the heavens, a time of discovery. But the time has also come for emphasis on developing better ways of managing what we have and of completing what man's genius has begun but left unfinished.... Ours is, and should be, a society of large expectations."

He wound up with this soaring peroration: "I see an America in which we have abolished hunger, provided the means for every family in the nation to obtain a minimum income, made enormous progress in providing better housing, faster transportation, improved health, and superior education. I see an America in which we have checked inflation and waged a winning war on crime."

He had sounded all the Kennedyesque notes. The New York Times New York Times's headline was a four-column haiku: "Nixon, Stressing Quality of Life / Asks in State of the Union Message / For Battle to Save Environment." Pundits spoke hopefully of the end of the "positive polarization" strategy.

Nixon delivered his most precious baby on February 18, his 160-page "First Annual Report to the Congress on Foreign Policy for 1970," what he called a "State of the World" message. "The postwar period in international relations has ended," it began, then gave full expression to what a new "Framework for a Durable Peace" would look like. In-depth discussion of Vietnam only began around Chapter 4. He concluded by printing the toast he'd given to the president of India, a paean to Mahatma Gandhi: "A peace responsive to the human spirit, respectful of the divinely inspired dignity of man, one that lifts the eyes of all to what man in brotherhood can accomplish and that now, as man crosses the threshold of the heavens, is more necessary than ever."

The New York Times New York Times printed all 37,425 words in a stand-alone supplement. printed all 37,425 words in a stand-alone supplement.

Thus, the Nixon public transcript, circa early 1970.

As the danker corners of his mind got busy with things the public needn't know.

Nixon had a favorite young dirty trickster, former Young Americans for Freedom president Tom Charles Huston. In his 1965 YAF inaugural address Huston had excoriated conservatives "who abuse the truth, who resort to violence and engage in slander," and "who seek victory at any price without regard for the broken lives...incurred by those who stand in the way." In the White House he sometimes signed his memos "Cato the Younger," after the statesman of the late Roman Republic famous for his stubborn incorruptibility.

He embodied a certain paradox of the right: to those who believed civilization unraveling at the hands of barbarians, it was principled to be unprincipled. Mark Felt of the FBI described Huston as the White House "gauletier"-a French word for the chief official of a district under n.a.z.i control. By the sixth month of the new administration, Nixon was a.s.signing the twenty-eight-year-old former army intelligence officer delicate security requests like setting up the IRS antiradical unit, or developing evidence of Red China ties to antiwar activists ("...or if not Huston, someone with his toughness and brains"). He put Huston to work in February putting together an internal-security apparatus to run out of the White House; Nixon though John Mitch.e.l.l and the Justice Department too soft for the job. On February 9, the president's aggressive new special counsel, Charles W. Colson, recommended another healthy right-wing exuberant to help: E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent who'd helped run the Guatemala coup in 1954 and the Bay of Pigs in 1961. He had just quit the company because he thought it "infested with Democrats."

The Justice Department stumbled along in the internal-security business as best it could. Its latest tack was subpoenaing unedited footage from network doc.u.mentaries on the Black Panthers and notes and unused magazine photographs of the Weathermen. As more and more embarra.s.sing evidence of G. Harrold Carswell's persistent segregationist loyalties emerged, unflattering information somehow came forth about the leaders of the fight against him: George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey owned real estate with racially restrictive covenants; Senator Birch Bayh had failed the bar exam.

Another secret bombing campaign began on February 16, over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. But bombs were loud, and it was reported in the newspapers. Antiwar senators asked why they shouldn't suspect there were also American ground troops in Laos. The Pentagon promised there were none. That proved too easy to check. The Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times discovered the death of a Captain Joseph Bush in a firefight on February 10, 1969; NBC interviewed an American CIA pilot who reported fifty or sixty U.S. military installations in Laos; discovered the death of a Captain Joseph Bush in a firefight on February 10, 1969; NBC interviewed an American CIA pilot who reported fifty or sixty U.S. military installations in Laos; Newsweek Newsweek reported the existence of a 150-plane secret CIA air force, Air America, whose pilots flew wearing thick gold bracelets to barter for supplies when they landed in the bush. "To say that a credibility gap is developing with regard to Administration statements on U.S. involvement in Laos," the reported the existence of a 150-plane secret CIA air force, Air America, whose pilots flew wearing thick gold bracelets to barter for supplies when they landed in the bush. "To say that a credibility gap is developing with regard to Administration statements on U.S. involvement in Laos," the Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia Inquirer editorialized, "is to understate the case." editorialized, "is to understate the case."

The White House then admitted at least twenty-seven Americans had died fighting in Laos. The president's approval rating was back down to 53 percent. Again, Nixon felt his loss of popularity as a loss of control. He thrashed about in rage to free himself and made the situation worse.

March 2 and 3 were busy days; Nixon received his plaque from the NFL in New York, held a state dinner with the French president, worked on his next televised Vietnam speech (and conferred with the vice president over another matter of state: the piano duet they were to perform at the Gridiron Dinner). He also dispatched a blizzard of memos. To Haldeman, he said a cabinet post for the former Democratic governor of Texas should be looked into; John Connally "has the subtlety and the toughness and the intelligence to do a good job." He told Haldeman to "get the names of 20 men in the country who can give $100,000 or more. We should concentrate on them. Have them in for a small dinner, let them know that they are RN's personal backers." Nixon also noted with pleasure something he had heard from Billy Graham: that a right-wing consortium from Texas and Arizona was considering a bid to buy a controlling interest in CBS.

A memo to Pat Buchanan directed him to game-plan a fight against "the inst.i.tutionalized power of the left concentrated in the foundations that succor the Democratic Party." Buchanan took to the charge with relish, suggesting not only defense but offense: a new right-wing "talent bank" working at the secret bidding of the White House, with a figurehead board of directors. "Some of the essential objectives of the Inst.i.tute would have to be blurred, even buried, in all sorts of other activity that would be the bulk of its work, that would employ many people, and that would provide the cover for the more important efforts." The plan would require "a strong fellow running the Internal Revenue Division.... We would be striking at the heart of the Establishment."

The president also commanded Ehrlichman to cut the share of the federal budget sent to Missouri, New York, Indiana, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Minnesota-the homes of Republican congressional enemies, especially senators balking at the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell.

This last was an abiding obsession. He needed the South to achieve a Republican majority. But for over a century Southern patriots had grown up learning to spit when they heard the name of the party of the Yankee interlopers. That started breaking down in the 1950s, when Eisenhower campaigned in the South's urban areas, and in the early 1960s, when the RNC launched Operation Dixie, sending fresh-faced young organizers door-to-door to show Southerners Republicans didn't have horns-and, especially, in 1964, when 87 percent of Mississippi voted for the presidential candidate who had voted against the Civil Rights Act. Every year, a few more state legislators joined Strom Thurmond in switching parties. But that lingering distrust remained.

The coming congressional elections were a stand-or-fall moment. The GOP had a chance to take a majority of the five Southern Senate seats up in 1970. Harry Byrd of Virginia was considering switching parties. Statehouses looked to be in play in Tennessee, Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia.

The Southern Strategy was the media's label for the White House's project. The White House denied any such thing existed. But it had been chartered during the first hundred days, as Southern Republican chairmen demanded their price for having backed Nixon for the nomination and presidency: the heads of four liberal bureaucrats at the HEW regional office in Atlanta. Slowly, sedulously, maneuvering around civil service protections, the Nixon administration got to work.

In June, John Mitch.e.l.l had gone up to Capitol Hill to testify to a House judiciary subcommittee on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, set to expire in August of 1970. The legislation was so important it should apply uniformly nationwide, he said. Civil rights activists saw through that straightaway. It was an old segregationist debating trick, like Strom Thurmond going to New York in 1948 and declaring, "If you people in New York want no segregation, then abolish it and do away with your Harlem." The subcommittee's ranking Republican, liberal Bill McCulloch of Ohio, accused Mitch.e.l.l of doing the bidding of unreconstructed Mississippi racists. A week later the Justice Department officially affirmed that the administration was "unequivocally committed to the goal of finally ending racial discrimination in schools, steadily and speedily, in accordance with the law"-but that "a policy requiring all school districts, regardless of the difficulties they face, to complete desegregation by the same terminal date is too rigid to be either workable or equitable." The next day was the NAACP's July 4 national convention. There, HUD secretary George Romney said every American was "ent.i.tled to full and equal citizens.h.i.+p." Roy Wilkins responded that the administration's double-dealing was "almost enough to make you vomit."

It was hard to play both sides sedulously, the higher the stakes got.

"Complete desegregation by the same terminal date"-the start of the 196970 school year-was exactly what the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had demanded of Mississippi on August 11, 1969. Two weeks later, HEW gave them an extra sixty days. The NAACP, correctly suspecting White House interference, appealed to the Supreme Court. The president was asked about press reports that John Stennis of Mississippi, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was threatening to block the administration's defense authorization bill if more desegregation went through. Nixon replied, "Anybody who knows Senator Stennis and anybody who knows me would know that he would be the last person to say, 'Look, if you don't do what I want in Mississippi, I am not going to do what is best for this country.' He did not say that, and under no circ.u.mstances, of course, would I have acceded to it."

Nixon lied. Stennis had sent him a four-page, single-s.p.a.ced letter on August 11: "As chairman of the Armed Services Committee I have major responsibilities here in connection with legislation dealing with our national security, but I will not hesitate to leave my duties here at any time to go to Mississippi to do whatever else must be done to protect the people of Mississippi and to preserve our public school system. While I have not yet spoken to Senator Symington, I am sure that as the ranking member...he will be glad to a.s.sume those committee responsibilities if I am called away."

Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri was against Nixon's pet proposal in his defense authorization bill: the antiballistic missile system. The threat was rather transparent.

In September, the Atlanta HEW regional director was kicked upstairs to Was.h.i.+ngton. The man who replaced him, a friend of Harry Dent's, gave an interview in which he claimed, "There is no more segregation."

The Fifth Circuit's stay for Mississippi went to the Supreme Court. For the first time since Brown v. Board of Education, Brown v. Board of Education, the federal government argued on the side the federal government argued on the side against against school desegregation. It lost. On October 30, 1969, in the middle of Nixon's preparations for the Silent Majority speech, the Supreme Court handed down school desegregation. It lost. On October 30, 1969, in the middle of Nixon's preparations for the Silent Majority speech, the Supreme Court handed down Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, ruling Southern "dual" school districts and "freedom of choice" plans illegal. Of course, it had ruled similarly in 1968 in ruling Southern "dual" school districts and "freedom of choice" plans illegal. Of course, it had ruled similarly in 1968 in New Kent County. New Kent County. Only this time, the South was aided in its intransigence by the president of the United States. Only this time, the South was aided in its intransigence by the president of the United States.

The Supreme Court nomination of Haynsworth of South Carolina was killed on November 21, 1969. "Find a good federal judge further South and further to the right!" Nixon told Dent. The president's otherwise n.o.ble State of the Union soliloquy included not a word on civil rights. Carswell was announced; his Judiciary Committee hearings began early February. One former NAACP lawyer explained what kind of racist Carswell was by sharing how the lawyer used to prepare his black subordinates for what they could expect before Carswell's bench by screaming at them as they delivered their arguments. Another lawyer told of a time Carswell released illegally arrested voter-registration volunteers from jail so they could be rearrested "properly" the moment they left the courthouse. The dean of the Yale Law School said Carswell had "more slender credentials than any nominee for the Supreme Court put forth in this century." Deans of several other schools, and two hundred former Supreme Court clerks, signed an open letter charging Nixon with degrading the court.

The administration responded with a full-court press. Bill Rehnquist of the Justice Department wrote speeches for Judiciary Committee conservatives such as Nebraska senator Roman Hruska, who said, "There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are ent.i.tled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance?" Perhaps that line had not been scripted by Rehnquist, as well as the anti-Semitic fillip that followed: "We can't have all Brandeises and Cardozos and Frankfurters and all stuff like that there."

Rehnquist promised that there was "nothing else in Carswell's record to worry about." But more revelations of racism as late as 1966 kept coming. Carswell managed to pa.s.s the Judiciary Committee on February 17; then the American Bar a.s.sociation withdrew its approval after an affidavit he swore out to help an all-white booster club at the University of Florida stay segregated was produced. Senators started peeling off. Southern folk started feeling put-upon. No Southern leaders, of a certain age, were free of such blemishes in their past. Did that mean Southerners were banned from the nation's highest councils?

Nixon knew just how to placate them. He pointed out that in 1940 a hero among Southern liberals, Ralph McGill, the editor of the Atlanta Const.i.tution, Atlanta Const.i.tution, "wrote a column in which he came out unalterably against integration of education of Southern schools. He changed his mind later." Wasn't Judge Carswell "wrote a column in which he came out unalterably against integration of education of Southern schools. He changed his mind later." Wasn't Judge Carswell also also allowed to change his mind? allowed to change his mind?

The precincts of the West Wing devoted to Southern Strategizing grew frenetic. Georgia governors weren't allowed to succeed themselves, and Lester Maddox was considering a 1970 run for lieutenant governor. A rich Georgia Republican offered him $500,000 for the right to use his name on a chain of fried-chicken outlets. Not long after, Maddox traveled to Was.h.i.+ngton for meetings. (He took with him his usual travel companion: a crate of autographed pick handles to distribute to fans.) Whatever transpired in those particular nut-cutting sessions went unrecorded. Apparently, it wasn't enough. "The Democratic Party brought a little better way of life to our people," he announced upon his return. "I shall remain in the Democratic Party and carry it to victory in the election of 1970." He was disappointed, he said, that Republicans "came to my office and to the mansion to talk about switching, then afterward, trying to deny it. But I've grown accustomed to expecting this kind of thing from politicians."

Moynihan's "benign neglect" quote that came out March 6 was benign compared to the next memos to leak. On March 15 the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post reported that a few days after Harry Dent became the top White House political liaison, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party told him he had "been given a.s.surance by some very wealthy individuals" that "there will be little financial worry for the Republican Party in Georgia if the school situation in Was.h.i.+ngton can be worked out." Another memo, from Dent to Finch on White House stationery marked reported that a few days after Harry Dent became the top White House political liaison, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party told him he had "been given a.s.surance by some very wealthy individuals" that "there will be little financial worry for the Republican Party in Georgia if the school situation in Was.h.i.+ngton can be worked out." Another memo, from Dent to Finch on White House stationery marked CONFIDENTIAL, CONFIDENTIAL, asked Finch to drop a desegregation case in Strom Thurmond's Columbia, South Carolina. A third indicated that Dent had intervened with a judge. asked Finch to drop a desegregation case in Strom Thurmond's Columbia, South Carolina. A third indicated that Dent had intervened with a judge.

Winning the South for the Republicans was starting to resemble a criminal enterprise. On the first day of April at 11:45 a.m. a tall, dour man with an expensive briefcase sat in the tiny lobby of the Sherry Netherlands Hotel in a New York City made nervous by New Left bomb scares.

A man with a Southern drawl approached him. "Are you Mr. Jensen of Baltimore?"

The first man responded, "No, I'm Mr. Jensen of Detroit."

That was the signal to exchange briefcases.

"Where's your briefcase?" Mr. Jensen of Detroit asked.

"I didn't bring one," the other man said, suddenly panicking. "I figured that you would give me that one."

Mr. Jensen was actually Mr. Herb Kalmbach, the president of the United States's personal attorney. He glared and said, "I'm not about to give you my briefcase." Instead he started stuffing a manila envelope with one thousand $100 bills. They came from a safe-deposit box at Chase Manhattan Bank, accessible only by Kalmbach, a brother-in-law of Bob Haldeman, and one of the partners at Nixon's old law firm. It was one of the slush funds left over from the 1968 campaign, the one that also paid the salary of their private investigator Tony Ulasewicz. The recipient-so nervous he was almost run down by a taxi while holding $100,000 of the president of the United States's illicit cash-worked for Alabama's governor, Albert Brewer. George Wallace was running against Brewer to regain the governor's chair. Richard Nixon was working to make sure Wallace lost, to end his political career before the 1972 presidential election season. For the runoff election on June 1, Kalmbach pa.s.sed to Brewer another $300,000.

There was no longer any doubt about Wallace's continued presidential aspirations. "The so-called Southern Strategy has been all talk," he had said at the beginning of the year. "The administration has done more to destroy the public school system in one year than the last administration did in four." Then he hustled to the Fort Benning stockade for an audience with Lieutenant Calley. He said he didn't think there'd been any My Lai ma.s.sacre. But if there was, it was the Communists' fault-"a direct result of the North invading South Vietnam." Wallace met with Calley for an hour, then said, "I'm sorry to see the man tried. They ought to spend the time trying folks who are trying to destroy this country instead of trying those who are serving their country."

"Blount-$100 G for Brewer. Move on this," Nixon had scrawled to Haldeman soon after. Winton "Red" Blount was a wealthy contractor from Alabama and Nixon's postmaster general-the cabinet officer traditionally responsible for distributing administration patronage. Blount got to work arranging the drop. Nixon also had another White House staffer dig up dirt on Gerald Wallace, his brother George's purported bagman. Murray Chotiner pa.s.sed what he found to muckraker Jack Anderson, whose column ran in over three hundred papers.

During the New York City bomb scare, the mail stopped circulating. On March 17, 1970, letter carriers voted 1,555 to 1,055 to go on strike, against the wishes of their leaders.h.i.+p. The walkout spread to sorters, clerks, and drivers throughout the region-then across the country. Without warning, by March 21, the first national strike by federal employees in U.S. history was in full effect.

All of it was illegal. The government issued an injunction. Strikers ignored it. The government issued a second injunction. They ignored that, too. Labor Secretary George Shultz personally negotiated with the leader of the National a.s.sociation of Letter Carriers, which, since the carriers thought their leaders.h.i.+p quislings, only spread the walkout further.

Nixon went on TV on March 23 to announce he was sending in 2,500 army and air force National Guardsmen, and 15,500 navy and marine reservists, into the nation's largest city to deliver the mail. "If the postmaster general deems it necessary to act in other affected major cities, I will not hesitate to act," Nixon said. "What is at issue...is the survival of a government based on the rule of law."

Mailmen started returning to work, though in New York, some still stayed out. It was "well worth going to jail for," one told Newsweek. Newsweek. You didn't have to be a Yippie, it turned out, to judge law and order a tool of the oppressor. You didn't have to be a Yippie, it turned out, to judge law and order a tool of the oppressor.

One reason was economic. In 1969, the average factory worker earned 82 cents less a week in real terms than he did in 1965. Nixon was right in 1966: stagnation in the standard of living was was imminent. Only now it was his problem. In New York, some letter carriers were eligible for welfare. Across the economy, long-term labor contracts that had failed to keep pace with prices were expiring. Workers started demanding and getting generous pay increases. Where union leaders weren't able to settle to their restive members.h.i.+ps' satisfaction, a price was being exacted: the "wildcat" strike-the working cla.s.s's way of giving the middle finger to its own Establishment. In New York alone, longsh.o.r.emen, taxi drivers, building-service workers, even employees of the Metropolitan Opera, struck. Tugboat deckhands shut down harbors for two months and won a 50 percent raise over three years. Some 450,000 Teamsters struck and increased their pay by 27.5 percent just as the letter carriers were returning to work-under a settlement that gave them amnesty for breaking the law. Postal workers, for their part, got a 14 percent increase, the first 6 percent retroactive to the end of 1969, which would also be applied to every one of 5.6 million federal employees. imminent. Only now it was his problem. In New York, some letter carriers were eligible for welfare. Across the economy, long-term labor contracts that had failed to keep pace with prices were expiring. Workers started demanding and getting generous pay increases. Where union leaders weren't able to settle to their restive members.h.i.+ps' satisfaction, a price was being exacted: the "wildcat" strike-the working cla.s.s's way of giving the middle finger to its own Establishment. In New York alone, longsh.o.r.emen, taxi drivers, building-service workers, even employees of the Metropolitan Opera, struck. Tugboat deckhands shut down harbors for two months and won a 50 percent raise over three years. Some 450,000 Teamsters struck and increased their pay by 27.5 percent just as the letter carriers were returning to work-under a settlement that gave them amnesty for breaking the law. Postal workers, for their part, got a 14 percent increase, the first 6 percent retroactive to the end of 1969, which would also be applied to every one of 5.6 million federal employees.

Richard Nixon judged the inflation risk acceptable. Economics was one more aspect of domestic policy that he tended to ignore. But he did harbor one core economic conviction. In the traditional trade-off between recession and inflation, he would always choose inflation. As Haldeman wrote in his diary, "P made point that he never heard of losing an election because of inflation." But a recession, he was sure, had lost him his first try at the presidency: Eisenhower had taken his dour former treasury secretary George Humphrey's fiscally conservative advice instead of his labor secretary Jim Mitch.e.l.l's fiscally liberal advice, allowing a slowdown in 1960. Nixon's was the first Republican presidency in eight years, he pointed out to his economic policy committee in April of 1969-and those eight years had seen no further such slowdowns. "We can't allow-wham!-a recession. We will never get in again."

At first Nixon left the details up to his economic team, a humble and pragmatic bunch who proposed a policy of cooling the economy gradually. No one saw any reason why the old ways of doing things should no longer hold.

But creeping price hikes were shaking that confidence. Dour old financiers were once more warning a president to cool the economy-the same ones who, worried about the value of their bond portfolios, had lost him the 1960 election when General Eisenhower took their advice. The Federal Reserve chairman Nixon inherited, William McChesney Martin-he had three names; how much could you trust a guy like that that?-waxed gloomily in a June 1969 speech to an audience of bankers: with federal expenditures growing 60 percent in three years and revenues and productivity not keeping pace, the U.S. economy was a "house of cards." The time had come to cool it down: "We're going to have a good deal of pain and suffering before we can solve these things."

This economic counsel the president was not ready to accept. "I remember 1958," he grumbled to his economic advisers. "We cooled off the economy and cooled off fifteen senators and sixty congressmen at the same time." Conservative talk about silent majorities was one thing. He wasn't about to become a fiscal fiscal conservative-not in an election year. conservative-not in an election year.

In September of 1969, he called on Congress to fatten Social Security checks by 10 percent and index them to inflation. n.o.body shoots Santa Claus, as liberal Democrats liked to say. If that didn't help keep the economy humming, Nixon told his economic team ten days after the Silent Majority speech, "let's build some dams."

But Fed chair Martin, statutorily independent of White House pressure and counsel, would not cooperate. Martin said prices would rise beyond reason unless the people felt some economic pain-pain the Federal Reserve had the power to bring about by raising interest rates.

Bill Martin's term expired in January. In October, the president announced he would not reappoint him. He offered instead for Senate confirmation Republican economist Arthur Burns. Burns had worked with him for twenty years. This man would, he hoped, be tractable. "You see to it," Nixon told Burns in a private meeting on October 23. "No recession."

Burns was appointed as signs of an economic slowdown took hold. But the one thing that was supposed to accompany every economic slowdown was not occurring: decreased inflation. By the January 22, 1970, State of the Union address it was 6.1 percent, the highest in ten years. The system was short-circuiting. Inflated labor settlements were partly to blame. So was the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon had ruthlessly exploited the intertwined conundrums of the economy and the war to tighten the psychic tourniquet against Lyndon Johnson. Now, in 1970, he was the one being squeezed.

At the presidential press conference on January 30, the AP correspondent read out the latest economic headlines-"Balance of Trade Makes Slight Progress in 1969"; "Big Firms' 1969 Profits Down"; "Dow Average Hits New Low for 3 Years"; "GNP Rise Halted"; "U.S. Steel Will Raise Sheet Prices February 1"-and asked if America "may be in for perhaps the worst sort of economic conditions-inflation and and recession." The next afternoon a.s.sociate Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan swore in Arthur F. Burns as the tenth chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in the White House East Room. The president said, "I have never heard so much applause in this room for some time. This is an historic occasion." (The president loved to call events in his White House historic occasions.) He said the applause was "a standing vote of appreciation in advance for lower interest rates and more money." recession." The next afternoon a.s.sociate Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan swore in Arthur F. Burns as the tenth chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in the White House East Room. The president said, "I have never heard so much applause in this room for some time. This is an historic occasion." (The president loved to call events in his White House historic occasions.) He said the applause was "a standing vote of appreciation in advance for lower interest rates and more money."

This was the setup to a joke; everyone knew the Fed chair was supposed to be independent. This was the punch line: "I hope that independently independently he will conclude that my views are the ones that should be followed." he will conclude that my views are the ones that should be followed."

To the president's considerable chagrin, Burns did not. Burns had already effected an act of fiscal blackmail. In the State of the Union address the president said his first economic priority was "controlling inflation." He lied. If that was his first priority, he wouldn't be preparing a liberal $212 billion budget to send to Congress in February for FY 1971. Burns said it wouldn't be a credible act to try to cool the economy through monetary policy if the president wasn't showing a commitment to cooling it through fiscal policy-and that unless Nixon cut that down to under $200 billion, Burns wouldn't be able to lower interest rates. Nixon's budget director, Robert Mayo, got it down to $203.7 billion. Burns said that still wasn't enough. Mayo didn't see anywhere else he could squeeze and proposed tax increases instead. Burns said no dice. The Fed chair finally acceded to increasing the money supply when Nixon lowered his budget request to $200.3 billion-by postponing a scheduled pay raise for federal employees by six months. That was what had led to the postal strike in March.

Nixon had blamed Burns, and regressed in his rage to childhood: the sensitive son absorbing the anger of a hard-pressed, helpless, small-town independent grocer of particularly bitter disposition. It was meat prices driving inflation, Nixon decided, big supermarkets who refused to pa.s.s lower cattle prices on to consumers. "Kick the chain stores," he said in early February ("kicking" was always the favorite Nixon metaphor when expressing violent moods; a psychobiographer once wondered whether Frank Nixon had kicked Richard as a child). "I think you will find that chain stores who generally control these prices nationwide are primarily dominated by Jewish interests. These boys, of course, have every right to make all the money they want, but they have a notorious reputation in the trade for conspiracy."

Nixon said that on March 16, the day after the Harry Dent segregation memos leaked, the day before the postal strike vote, as Manhattan banks and corporate headquarters were being evacuated under bomb threats. A new issue of U.S. News, U.S. News, the most Nixon-friendly magazine, came out March 17. Its the most Nixon-friendly magazine, came out March 17. Its Was.h.i.+ngton Whispers Was.h.i.+ngton Whispers gossip column reported he had lost thirty-five senators' votes and counting on the Carswell nomination. When was the last time a president had gossip column reported he had lost thirty-five senators' votes and counting on the Carswell nomination. When was the last time a president had two two Supreme Court nominees rejected in a row? That was the kind of historic first Nixon preferred not to remark upon. Supreme Court nominees rejected in a row? That was the kind of historic first Nixon preferred not to remark upon.

He was choking with a sense of impotence. He petulantly banned Kissinger from the Oval Office after the NSC m.u.f.fed the Laos public relations (the NSC told the press, "No American stationed in Laos has ever been killed in ground combat operations," two days before the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times reported the death of an American stationed in Laos). Kissinger was, meanwhile, flying back and forth to Paris for a secret back-channel set of negotiations with Le Duc Tho of the North Vietnamese politburo (unbeknownst to Secretary of State Rogers or Secretary of Defense Laird). Amid it all, the leader of Cambodia traveled to France for cancer treatment. Prince Norodom Sihanouk tilted toward China and the Soviet Union and tolerated North Vietnamese military sanctuaries in his kingdom. His prime minister, Lon Nol, in the prince's absence, staged a coup. That was March 18. Lon Nol was a CIA a.s.set. But here he was freelancing. Le Duc Tho pitched fits with Henry Kissinger in Paris over what looked like a breach of faith. This sudden, surprising geostrategic opportunity-a newly friendly Cambodian government eager to kick out Communists-became yet one more headache for the president. The fog of war was not salubrious to delicate negotiations. reported the death of an American stationed in Laos). Kissinger was, meanwhile, flying back and forth to Paris for a secret back-channel set of negotiations with Le Duc Tho of the North Vietnamese politburo (unbeknownst to Secretary of State Rogers or Secretary of Defense Laird). Amid it all, the leader of Cambodia traveled to France for cancer treatment. Prince Norodom Sihanouk tilted toward China and the Soviet Union and tolerated North Vietnamese military sanctuaries in his kingdom. His prime minister, Lon Nol, in the prince's absence, staged a coup. That was March 18. Lon Nol was a CIA a.s.set. But here he was freelancing. Le Duc Tho pitched fits with Henry Kissinger in Paris over what looked like a breach of faith. This sudden, surprising geostrategic opportunity-a newly friendly Cambodian government eager to kick out Communists-became yet one more headache for the president. The fog of war was not salubrious to delicate negotiations.

Now Nixon was raging at the drop of a hat. He said John Mitch.e.l.l was "not a nut-cutter." Republican senators refusing to back Harrold Carswell were to be banned from the White House. Nixon penned a letter to William Saxbe of Ohio, who was on the fence: "What is centrally at issue in this nomination is the Const.i.tutional responsibility of the President to appoint members of the Court-and whether this responsibility can be frustrated by those who wish to subst.i.tute their own philosophy or their own subjective judgment for that of the one person entrusted by the Const.i.tution with the power of appointment.... The question arises whether I, as President of the United States, shall be accorded the same right of choice in naming Supreme Court justices which has been freely accorded my predecessors of both parties."