It was an eerie ride from the airport to the government guest house in Beijing. In my years as Vice President and President, I had made official visits to the Vatican, the Kremlin, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Versailles, and Westminster, but nothing could prepare me for this—the first visit of a President of the United States to the People’s Republic of China. President Ayub Khan of Pakistan had urged me to go to China when I saw him in Karachi in 1964. He had just returned from Beijing. I asked him what impressed him most. He replied, “People, millions of people in the street clapping, cheering, waving Pakistani and Chinese flags.” The curtains on the Chinese government limousine were drawn. But as I looked through the tiny openings, I could see that except for a lonely sentry stationed every few hundred yards, the streets were totally deserted.
The airport ceremony had met all of the requisites of protocol—very proper and very cool. Chou En-lai, wearing a top coat but no hat in the freezing cold, started to clap as Mrs. Nixon and I came down the ramp. We clapped in return, since we knew from our visit to Moscow in 1959 that it was the custom in Communist countries. I reached out to shake his hand. I did not realize until later how much that meant to him. The honor guard was spectacular. I also found out later that Chou had picked the men personally. They were all tall, ramrod straight, and immaculately groomed. The Red Army Band played “The Star Spangled Banner.” In my visits to other countries I had learned that the tune, an old English drinking song, is difficult to play, and in fact it was hardly recognizable in some places. But the Chinese performed it superbly.
I did not know what to expect from our host. Henry Kissinger, whose standards for excellence in leaders are extraordinarily high, ranked him with de Gaulle as the most impressive foreign statesman he had ever met. At the same time, he likened him to a cobra that sits quietly, ready to strike at the opportune moment. Eisenhower’s assistant secretary of state, Walter Robinson, had told me that Chou, charming as he was, had killed people with his own hands and then departed, calmly smoking a cigarette. A high-ranking foreign diplomat once said, “There was not a grain of truth in him . . . It’s all acting. He is the greatest actor I have ever seen. He’d laugh one moment and cry the next and make his audience laugh and cry with him. But it is all acting.”
Skilled diplomat that he was, he put me at ease immediately. As we left the airport, he said, “Your handshake came over the vastest ocean in the world—twenty-five years of no communication.” I was surprised when he told me that he felt he knew me through my book Six Crises, which he had had translated into Chinese. He made an observation that he was to repeat several times during the visit—that my career had been marked by great defeats as well as great victories but that I had demonstrated the ability to come back. For example, on one of our plane flights in China, he observed that adversity is a great teacher and that men who travel on a smooth road all their lives do not develop strength. From one who had endured the Long March, I considered that to be an unusually high compliment.
The visits to the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and other points of interest gave us an idea of how much there was left to see in this nation of a billion people and four thousand years of history. To paraphrase Lord Curzon, China is a university from which the scholar never gets a degree.
The state dinners in the Great Hall of the People, with the Red Army Band playing “America the Beautiful” and other favorites, left an indelible impression. Chou was the perfect host, serving us with his chopsticks and then joining me in toasting each of the over fifty people at the head tables with our one-ounce glasses of maotai, a fiery 106-proof Chinese brandy Chou assured me would “cure anything.”
Most memorable were my meetings with Chou and Mao. We learned later that Mao had already suffered a mild stroke, although the Chinese people did not know it. He was still treated with enormous respect by his aides and attendants and was sharp in his repartee. I had gotten an idea of what to expect from André Malraux when I gave a dinner for him at the White House shortly before our trip. He warned me, “You will be meeting with a colossus, but a colossus facing death. Do you know what Mao will think when he sees you for the first time? He will think, He is so much younger than I. You will meet a man who has had a fantastic destiny and who believes that he is acting out the last act of his lifetime. You may think that he is talking to you, but he will in truth be addressing Death.” He turned to me and said fervently, “Mr. President, you operate within a rational framework but Mao does not. There is something of the sorcerer in him. He is a man inhabited by a vision, possessed by it.”
Like Stalin, Mao was a voracious reader. His office was cluttered with books—not for show, but for reading. Like Chou En-lai, he said that he had read Six Crises and found that it was “not a bad book.” Also like Chou En-lai, he showed his political acumen when he said, “I voted for you during your last election.” When I responded, “When the Chairman says he voted for me, he voted for the lesser of two evils,” he came right back and said, “I like rightists . . . . I am comparatively happy when these people on the right come into power.” I responded, “I think the most important thing to note is that in America, at least at this time, those on the right can do what those on the left can only talk about.”
The only sour note during the visit was sounded by Mao’s wife, our hostess for a theatrical extravaganza called The Red Detachment of Women. I noted the perspiration on her forehead and thought at first that she might be ill. It was probably just tension. She obviously did not approve of the visit. She said to me sharply, “Why did you not come to China before now?”
The most substantive and by far the most fascinating meetings were the long negotiating sessions with Chou himself. He followed my practice of speaking without notes and without calling on his aides to provide information. His understanding of not just Chinese-American issues but international affairs generally was all-encompassing. We discussed our profound differences at great length. We supported South Vietnam; they supported North Vietnam. We supported South Korea; they supported North Korea. We had a military security alliance with Japan; they opposed it. We supported non-Communist governments in the Third World; they opposed them. They demanded that we discontinue our sales of arms to Taiwan; we refused to do so.
In view of such irreconcilable differences, what brought us together? One China expert in the United States predicted that the first question Mao would put to me would be: “What is the richest country in the world prepared to do to help the most populous country in the world?” He was wrong. Not once during many hours of discussion did economic issues come up. Our common economic interests are the primary factors that keep us together today. They played no part whatever in bringing us together in 1972.
The real reason was our common strategic interest in opposing Soviet domination in Asia. Like the Soviet Union, China was a Communist country. The United States was a capitalist nation. But we did not threaten them, while the Soviet Union did. It was a classic case of a nation’s security interest overriding ideology.
Kissinger and Chou worked out a brilliant formula for the Shanghai Communiqué, which was issued at the conclusion of the visit. Instead of trying to paper over differences with mushy, meaningless, diplomatic gobbledygook, each side expressed its position on the issues where we disagreed. On the neuralgic issue of Taiwan, we stated the obvious fact that the Chinese on the mainland and on Taiwan agreed that there was one China. We expressed our position that the differences between the two should be settled peacefully. And on the great issue which made this historic rapprochement possible, the communiqué stated that neither nation “should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region and each is opposed to efforts by any other country or group of countries to establish such hegemony.” This document has stood the test of time. The principles it set forth are still adhered to by both sides.
With the grueling work of hammering out the details of the communiqué completed, Chou spoke movingly of what we had achieved. He quoted from a poem by Mao, “The beauty lies at the top of the mountain,” and from another Chinese poem that read, “On perilous peaks dwells beauty in its infinite variety.” I remarked that we were at the top of the mountain now.
He then referred to a third poem, “Ode to a Plum Blossom.” Chou said the poem meant that “by the time the blossoms are fullblown, that is the time they are about to disappear.” He went on, “You are the one who made the initiative. You may not be there to see its success, but of course we would welcome your return.”
On February 27, in my toast at the concluding banquet, I said that our communiqué was “not nearly as important as what we will do in the years ahead to build a bridge across 16,000 miles and twenty-two years of hostility which have divided us in the past.” I raised my glass and said, “We have been here a week. This was the week that changed the world.”
Some might say this was an overstatement. But Chou En-lai and I savored the moment because we both had been in the deepest valleys. We knew that we were now on the mountaintop. What we did not know was that in just four years, when I would return to China, I would have resigned from office and he would be dying of cancer. As de Gaulle once observed, victory had “folded its wings almost as soon as they were spread for flight.”
I did not sleep well my last night in the White House. This was not unusual; after a major speech or press conference I get so keyed up I always find it difficult to get to sleep. That evening, in a nationwide address, I had announced my decision to resign the Presidency. It was 2:00 a.m. before I dozed off.
I woke up with a start. I looked at my watch; it was only 4:00 a.m. I went across the West Hall to the kitchen to get a glass of milk. I was startled to see Johnny Johnson, one of the stewards, making coffee.
I said, “Johnny, what are you doing here so early?”
He replied, “It isn’t early, Mr. President. It’s almost six o’clock.”
My watch had stopped. After three years the battery had run down.
I asked Johnny to make me some corned beef hash with a poached egg rather than my usual spartan breakfast of wheat germ, orange juice, and a glass of milk. I showered and shaved and walked down to the Lincoln Sitting Room. It is the smallest room in the White House and my favorite. It is next to the Lincoln Bedroom, which used to be Lincoln’s office. It once was shared by his two young secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay. I sat down in my favorite chair and put my feet up on the ottoman. Pat had given the chair to me as a birthday present when we were living in California in 1962. We had taken it with us first to our apartment in New York and then to the White House. It is the chair in which I am sitting as I dictate this recollection.
I tried to make some notes for what would be my last speech as President. I had spoken to tens of millions the night before on television. Now I had to think of something personal to say to a few dozen members of my White House staff—dedicated men and women who had served so loyally during the tumultuous days of the Vietnam War and the even more difficult days of Watergate.
I couldn’t concentrate. I put my head back and closed my eyes. I thought of some of the great events that had occurred in this room.
It was here on June 2, 1971, that I received what Henry Kissinger described as the most important communication to an American President since the end of World War II. I had been sitting in this same chair catching up on some of my reading material after a state dinner that evening. It was almost eleven o’clock. Henry burst into the room. He was breathless. He must have run all the way over to the residence from his West Wing office. He handed me a message. It was Chou En-lai’s invitation to visit China, which he had sent through President Yahya of Pakistan. As Chou put it later, it was a message from a head, through a head, to a head. Neither Henry nor I generally had a drink after dinner, but on this occasion we toasted this historic event with a very old brandy a friend had given Pat and me for Christmas.
As I tried again to concentrate on preparing my farewell remarks, the thought that raced through my mind over and over was—how was it possible to have been so high and now to be so low?
There was a discreet knock at the door. Al Haig came in, holding a single page in his hand. I thought I had completed all of the signing the day before, including the veto of an agricultural appropriations bill that had exceeded my budget. His face was drawn as he handed me the last document I was to sign as President. It was a one-sentence letter to Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State: “I hereby resign the Office of President of the United States.”
The first time I saw President Eisenhower in the Oval Office in 1953, he was signing some letters and other documents. He looked up at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Dammit, Dick, I wish my name weren’t so long!” Mercifully, my name is short. I signed the letter.
After Haig left, I had only an hour left to get my thoughts together for my farewell to the staff. The day before I had found it difficult to control my emotions in a meeting in the Cabinet Room with my closest friends and supporters in Congress. I concluded by blurting out what I knew was true: “I just hope that I haven’t let you down.” Today, I had to find a way to lift up the loyal members of my staff. I knew I should not talk about Pat, Tricia, Julie, Ed Cox, and David Eisenhower, who would all be standing by my side on the platform. It would be too painful for them and for me. They had been magnificent in standing up against the merciless pounding in the media, which began after the 1972 election and, except for a brief period around my inauguration and the Vietnam peace agreement in January 1973, had gone on without any letup for over twenty months. Day after day it was the lead story in the newspapers. Night after night it led every television news show. The family had unanimously opposed my decision to resign. Tricia, whose quiet strength reminded me of my mother, fiercely insisted to the very last that I not even consider resigning. Two days before, I had worked on my resignation speech until 2:00 a.m. in the Lincoln Sitting Room. When I went to my bedroom to catch a couple hours’ sleep, I found a note from Julie on my pillow:
Dear Daddy,
I love you. Whatever you do I will support. I am very proud of you.
Please wait a week or even ten days before you make this decision. Go through the fire just a little bit longer. You are so strong! I love you.
Julie
Millions support you.
If anything could have changed my mind, Julie’s note would have done it. But I was too worn out to reconsider. It was not because I had given up the fight but because I knew that the decision I had made was best for the country. Two years of Watergate was enough. The nation could not stand the trauma of a President on trial before the Senate for months. The international situation required a full-time President.
Once my family knew that the decision was final, they backed it. Pat took on the superhuman task of supervising the packing of all the belongings we had acquired during the past five and a half years in the White House. She had not slept for forty-eight hours. I don’t know how she did it. The way she stood on the platform by my side, erect and proud though her heart was breaking, demonstrated what I have always said—that she is the strongest member of my family, personal or official.
Finally, I decided to talk to the staff about my roots. I remembered that when a superb group of black musicians had performed in the White House after one of our state dinners, the leader expressed his appreciation for the invitation and concluded his remarks by saying, “You know, Mr. President, it’s a long way from Watts to the White House.” I responded by thanking him and saying, “It’s a long way from Whittier to the White House.”
I spoke of my father and my mother. I read the moving tribute Theodore Roosevelt had written when his first wife died: “She was beautiful in face and form and lovelier still in spirit. When she had just become a mother, when her life seemed to be just begun and the years seemed so bright before her, then by a strange and terrible fate death came to her. And when my heart’s dearest died, the light went from my life forever.” TR had written those words when he was in his twenties. He thought the light had gone out of his life forever. But he went on to become President of the United States.
I went on, “We think sometimes when things don’t go the right way, when we suffer a defeat, that all has ended. Not true. It is only a beginning, always. Greatness comes not when things always go good for you, but the greatness comes when you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
“Always give your best. Never get discouraged, never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you, but those that hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
The critics panned my remarks, not surprisingly, as being too emotional. They overlooked the fact that it was an emotional moment.
Finally, it was all over. We said goodbye to the Fords and were on our way back home to California, where we thought, mistakenly, we would at long last find peace and quiet.
As our plane circled the El Toro Marine Air Base on the afternoon of August 9, I could see hundreds of cars lined up trying to get into the already overflowing parking area. I had not thought I could find the energy to make another speech that day, but I managed to thank them for welcoming us home and I vowed to continue to fight at home and abroad for the great causes of peace, freedom, and opportunity that had been my motivating principles from the time I first ran for Congress in 1946.
As we walked toward the helicopter, I heard someone from the crowd shout out, “Whittier is still for you, Dick.” My thoughts went back to a day I had spent in a Portland hotel room in September 1952. It was the middle of the Fund crisis, and it had seemed that everybody in the country, including most Republicans, were demanding that I get off the ticket. Tom Bewley and Johnny Reilly, two long-time friends, flew up to Portland to try to give me a lift. As they came into the room, Johnny said, “All the folks back in Whittier are behind you 100 percent.” Just two days later, I was able to reverse public opinion in the country with one speech on television. This time, I knew it might never be possible to reverse it.
Thanks to Gavin Herbert and a group of volunteers from USC, La Casa Pacifica’s grounds were beautiful almost beyond description. I said to Gavin, “It is good to be back in a house of peace.”
But it was only a lull before a storm. The following day, the blows began to fall again. The special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, had been delighted when Al Haig informed him of my decision to resign. He thought it would be in the best interests of the country. Haig reported to me that based on his conversation, he did not believe we would continue to suffer harassment by the special prosecutor. He had not reckoned with the young activists on Jaworski’s staff. Far from being satisfied by the resignation, their appetites for finishing the injured victim were whetted. When Ed Cox urged me not to resign, he had warned me that this might happen. He had known several of Jaworski’s staff at the Harvard Law School and had served with some in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York. He said, “I know these people. They are smart and ruthless. They hate you. They will harass you and hound you in civil and criminal actions across the country for the rest of your life.” He was right. They were following the dictum of the nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary Sergey Nechayev: “It is not enough to kill an adversary. He must first be dishonored.”
One after another, the blows rained down.
I resigned from the Supreme Court, California, and New York bars. The Supreme Court and California accepted my resignation. The New York Bar Association refused to do so and instituted disbarment proceedings.
Scores of lawsuits were filed against me by individuals who were seeking damages for assorted government actions. Few involved Presidential decisions. Most were dismissed, but all had to be defended.
The cost for attorneys’ fees was staggering. In the fifteen years since I resigned the Presidency, I have spent over $1.8 million in attorneys’ fees to defend myself against such suits and to protect my rights that were threatened by government action.
The Supreme Court ruled against me on my suit to gain possession of my papers and tapes, including those that were private.
A scandal magazine printed letters that I was supposed to have written to a countess in Spain whom I had never met. They were obvious forgeries, but the story was never retracted.
The pounding in the newspapers and on television continued unrelentingly. I was the favorite butt of jokes on the talk shows. Hundreds of columns attacked me. A number of anti-Nixon books were published. Those by critics I understood. Those by friends I found a bit hard to take.
For months we were followed and harassed by the media wherever we went. Manolo Sanchez, who proudly called himself my valet, was a hot-tempered Spaniard who was outraged by their behavior. He called them “the witches and the vultures.” He thought the women were worse than the men.
One of the worst blows was the harassment of my friends. Bebe Rebozo was accused of being associated with the Mafia, gamblers, and drug barons. The special prosecutor’s staff pursued him for over a year. He testified eighty-five times before the prosecutor’s staff and the Ervin Committee. All of the charges were false. He had done nothing wrong, except to be my friend. In the end, he was cleared. His attorneys’ fees were enormous.
Maurice Stans, a scrupulously honest man, paid fines for five technical non-intentional misdemeanor violations of the campaign laws—the moral equivalent of parking tickets. Similar violations by Democratic fundraisers were ignored.
The Rose Bowl game in 1975 was interrupted on television by an announcement of the conviction of John Mitchell and my other top aides. I could no longer even take refuge in my favorite avocation, watching sports on television.
By far the hardest blow was the pardon. My primary reason for resigning was to avoid having a President of the United States in the dock for alleged illegal activities. But the assaults had not stopped. As President, even after I had been crippled by Watergate, I could still set the agenda to an extent. My visits to the Soviet Union and the Mideast that summer had resulted in some significant diplomatic achievements. But now without the powers of the office, I was utterly defenseless. My public standing had been driven so low that I do not think there was any allegation about me, no matter how horrendous or base, that would not have been believed if it was aired or published. In fact many distortions and blatant lies about me, my family, and my friends were aired and published. It was not enough for my critics to say that I had made terrible mistakes. They seemed driven to prove that I represented the epitome of evil itself.
I will never forget the moment that Jack Miller, my attorney from Washington, came into my office in San Clemente on September 4 to inform me of President Ford’s decision to stop the hemorrhaging by issuing a Presidential pardon. Now I had to decide whether or not to accept it.
We discussed it at great length. I told Miller I was worried the pardon would hurt Ford politically. He said that in the short run, it would. But he added that if the country continued to be obsessed by Watergate, President Ford and others in government would suffer even more from being unable to devote their attention to urgent problems at home and abroad.
Miller also knew my desperate financial situation. He pointed out that the attorneys’ fees and the other costs of defending actions against me would bankrupt me. In view of what happened soon thereafter, he was remarkably perceptive when he added that he thought that I had taken as much physically, mentally, and emotionally as I could and that I should accept the pardon for my own well-being and my family’s as well. His strongest argument was that because of the unprecedented publicity over the past year and a half, there was no way I could get a fair trial in Washington.
Next to the resignation, accepting the pardon was the most painful decision of my political career. The statement I issued at the time accurately describes my feelings then and now:
“I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forth-rightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy.
“No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the Presidency—a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect.”
The pardon was granted on September 8. The predictable occurred. Ford went down in the polls, and I was subjected to a whole new round of attacks in the media.
• • •
I have always believed that there is a direct relationship between mental and physical health. Events in the aftermath of the pardon proved it, as far as I am concerned. Twenty years had passed since I had last suffered from phlebitis, blood clots which usually occur in the legs. Just before my trip to the Mideast in June, my left leg began to swell. I have a rather high pain threshold and consequently did not report it to the doctor for several days. When I did, he did not advise me, as was later reported in the press, to cancel the trip to the Mideast. Hot and cold compresses reduced the swelling, but it increased alarmingly again when I had to stand too long at the various ceremonies. It became even more aggravated when I went to the Soviet Union in July and visited a war memorial in Minsk. I had to walk for almost a mile and a half over cobblestone paths, and the pain was excruciating.
When I returned to Washington, the pain subsided, and I was so busy in those final weeks before the resignation that I forgot about it completely. A few days after the pardon the swelling recurred, and I consulted my family doctor, Dr. John Lungren. He urged me to go to the hospital for treatment with heparin and coumadin, saying that if a clot should break loose and go to the lungs, it would be fatal. That got my attention. I went to the hospital.
I was there for almost two weeks, sleeping very little because the nurse had to come in every hour to refill the intravenous heparin medication. It was a miserable experience. When I returned home, I told Pat that I would never go to a hospital again. Within three weeks, I was back. Lungren had warned me that sharp pains in the abdomen would be a danger signal. After X-rays, the doctors decided that an operation should be performed immediately. I remember the pinprick of the needle administered by the anesthetist and being wheeled down to the operating room, but for six days thereafter I was in and out of consciousness.
My first recollection was of a nurse slapping my face and calling me. “Richard, wake up,” she said. “Richard, wake up.” I knew it was not Pat or Lungren. In fact, only my mother called me Richard. When I woke up again, Lungren was taking my pulse. I noticed I was hooked up to intravenous feeding and other contraptions. I told him that I was anxious to go home. He said, “Listen, Dick, we almost lost you last night. You are not going to go home for quite a while.”
He told me I had gone into shock after the operation. My blood pressure had gone down to 60 over zero before inching up to 70 over 55. Only after four transfusions over a period of three hours were the doctors able to push it back to normal. I learned later that Pat, Tricia, and Julie had been standing by me in the room for most of the night. When I woke up again, I asked Pat to come in. I now knew that I was in pretty desperate shape. Throughout the time we have known each other, Pat and I have seldom revealed our physical disabilities to each other. This time, I couldn’t help it. I said that I didn’t think I was going to make it.
She gripped my hand and said almost fiercely, “Don’t talk that way. You have got to make it. You must not give up.” As she spoke, my thoughts went back again to the Fund crisis in 1952. Just before we went on stage for the broadcast, when I was trying to get all of my thoughts together for the most important speech of my life, I told her, “I just don’t think I can go through with this one.” She grasped me firmly by the hand and said, “Of course you can.” The words were the same but now there was a difference. Then I had something larger than myself to fight for. Now it seemed that I had nothing left to fight for except my own life.
Except for my family and Bebe, and Bob Abplanalp, who flew in from their homes in Miami and New York, no visitors were allowed. The first outsider was Jerry Ford, who was in California campaigning for congressional candidates. I must have looked like hell, because he blurted out, “Oh, Mr. President!”, despite the fact that since my resignation we had been on a first-name basis. He did his best to give me a lift, but I knew that the pardon had hurt him and that the campaign was not going well.
Shortly afterwards, a nurse came in and wheeled me into another room with a window. She pointed to a small plane with a sign trailing behind that read: “God loves you and so do we.” I learned later that Ruth Graham and some of her friends had arranged it. I am convinced now that had it not been for the support of my family and the thoughts and prayers of countless numbers of people I have never met and that I would never have a chance to thank, I would not have made it.
There was still bad news to come. A few days later someone brought the results of the 1974 off-year elections to my hospital room. The Republican Party was in even worse shape than I was. Some commentators pointed out that the energy crisis and the sharp recession that followed were partly responsible. But most pundits and politicians blamed Watergate. I knew that from that time on, the Democrats who won would be called Watergate Democrats and the Republicans who lost would be called Watergate Republicans. After the millions of miles I had logged and the thousands of speeches I had made for Republican candidates over the years, I knew that this was my final legacy to the party. It would be a heavy burden for the rest of my life.
When I left the hospital and returned home to La Casa Pacifica, I thought that now, at least, I might get a little relief from the merciless attacks of the critics. It was not to be. Judge Sirica wanted me in his courtroom to testify against John Mitchell and the other defendants. He ordered three doctors to come to San Clemente to examine me to see if the reports on the seriousness of my illness were true. In retrospect, he had some cause to do so. Doctors and so-called medical experts from all over the country who had never met or examined me had deluged the press and the airwaves with opinions on my condition. Some said the operation was not necessary. Others said that the operation was conducted negligently. Most said that it was really not all that serious. Lungren was infuriated that his fellow doctors would lend themselves to such political diagnoses. To his credit, one doctor who did not join his politicized colleagues in these attacks was Dr. Lawrence Altman, the medical writer for The New York Times, whose reports on my condition were accurate and fair. And yet even now, so-called biographers and journalists blithely inform their readers that I cynically arranged my near-fatal illness in order to quell public opposition to the pardon.
So Sirica’s three doctors came to San Clemente. Each took turns poking and pinching and pulling and doing the other things that doctors do during an examination. One was obviously a little embarrassed by the whole exercise, but the other two seemed to enjoy their work. They were at least professional enough to report to Sirica that I could under no circumstances travel to Washington and testify.
I did not get the lift that I should have when I received the news that I would not have to go to Washington. For the first time in my life, I was a physical wreck; I was emotionally drained; I was mentally burned out. This time, as compared with the other crises I had endured, I could see no reason to live, no cause to fight for. Unless a person has a reason to live for other than himself, he will die—first mentally, then emotionally, then physically.
At some of the low points in the past, I have been sustained by recalling a note Clare Boothe Luce handed to me right after Watergate first broke, when she was sitting next to me at a meeting of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. It was St. Barton’s Ode: “I am hurt but I am not slain! I will lie me down and bleed awhile—then I’ll rise and fight again.” This time, it did not work. I did not have anything to fight for.