Portions of the tapes of these June 23 conversations are at variance with certain of my previous statements.
—Richard M. Nixon, August 5, 1974
What he sought in his oblique manner was a vote of confidence from his Cabinet, some expression of sympathy for his plight. . . . But all he encountered was an embarrassed silence.
—Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 1982
Despite his plea that we put Watergate behind us, it has been his own delaying tactics that have made it impossible for the nation to end this ordeal.
—Houston News editorial, August 7, 1974
By early May the president faced a united, broad-based opposition that included the courts, the House of Representatives, the special prosecutor, and the press. All demanded that he release the tapes. These forces inexorably pushed Nixon toward impeachment or resignation. Opinion polls a year earlier indicated he already had lost public support; that loss increased steadily month by month throughout the ensuing year. During Nixon’s final three months in office fewer and fewer Republicans remained who believed his explanations. On August 9, 1974, as Nixon left the presidency, Americans demonstrated a consensus of opinion regarding a vital public issue that was unprecedented in the nation’s peacetime history. They understood the issue, knew its complexities and its importance; they had discussed, read, and heard about Watergate for the past two years.
The transcripts constituted only one part of the president’s strategy to resolve his crisis without releasing the tapes. On May 1, 1974, Nixon introduced his other strategy when, through his attorney James St. Clair, he announced he would reject any House Judiciary Committee request for additional tapes and documents. The same day, St. Clair petitioned Judge Sirica to quash Jaworski’s subpoena for tapes on the grounds of executive privilege. Nixon’s chief of staff Alexander Haig also announced the president would release no more tapes.
On May 5 Jaworski met with Haig and St. Clair and attempted to reach an accord whereby Nixon would give the special prosecutor tapes of eighteen of the sixty-four conversations he had subpoenaed, in return for which Jaworski would withdraw the subpoena. Jaworski advised Haig and St. Clair that the grand jury had authorized him to name the president as an unindicted coconspirator and to date he had not made that information public because of the pending House impeachment proceedings. After Haig and St. Clair relayed Jaworski’s compromise offer, Nixon listened to the eighteen tapes and concluded that rather than reveal the information on them he preferred to have the nation learn of his status as an unindicted coconspirator.
Nixon instructed St. Clair to tell Sirica that a member of the executive branch could not sue another member of the same branch. This move incensed Jaworski, who maintained that it violated the specific agreement Haig had arranged with him on Nixon’s behalf. Jaworski also sent Nixon’s legal adviser Fred Buzhardt a copy of Acting Attorney General Robert Bork’s announcement when he named Jaworski special prosecutor. At the time, Bork stated that Jaworski had the right to take the president to court to obtain tapes and papers, if necessary. Jaworski also informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that Nixon was attempting to circumvent and restrict the powers of the special prosecutor. Although having no authority in the matter, the committee by a fourteen to one vote adopted a resolution that Jaworski had acted within the scope of his authority. Senator Kennedy cast the only dissenting vote on the grounds the resolution did not go far enough. On this issue Nixon won the support of virtually no one.
On May 9, while Sirica considered St. Clair’s motion, Congressman Peter Rodino banged the gavel in Room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building to open the Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings. After the opening statement, the committee members voted thirty-one to six to conduct their inquiry behind closed doors. Of the committee’s thirty-eight members, two were women and three were black; half were under the age of fifty and eleven were serving their first terms. For months the majority and minority counsels, John Doar and Albert Jenner, and their staffs had been compiling data from the Senate Watergate Committee, the Watergate grand jury, the Internal Revenue Service, and congressional fact-finding committees. Among these materials were nineteen White House tapes. Doar’s staff had divided the materials into thirty-six topics, each with its own loose-leaf notebook. Topic by topic Doar led the members through the material. After negotiation, the committee permitted St. Clair to attend the sessions but not to participate in discussions.
To facilitate its work, the Judiciary Committee sought eleven tapes and specific diaries of Nixon’s White House meetings. On May 15 the committee approved two subpoenas. A week later Nixon wrote to Rodino declining to comply, arguing that “the Committee has the full story of Watergate, in so far as it relates to Presidential knowledge and Presidential actions.” Nixon also informed Rodino that he would reject any future subpoenas.1
In the interim Judge Sirica rejected St. Clair’s argument that one member of the executive branch could not sue another and ordered Nixon to give Jaworski the sixty-four tapes he had subpoenaed on April 18. The president petitioned the court of appeals to overrule Sirica. Jaworski countered by petitioning the Supreme Court to bypass the court of appeals and to consider the case immediately because of “imperative public importance.” Twice since World War II the Court had taken such action. To help St. Clair argue against Jaworski, Nixon hired Charles Alan Wright, a professor at the University of Texas Law School. On May 31 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Jaworski and set a calendar: June 21 for filing of briefs and July 8 for beginning of oral arguments.
Nixon’s potential confrontations with the Supreme Court and with the House Judiciary Committee occurred in a news media atmosphere that gave him scant comfort. Within the past two months judges had sentenced Liddy, Chapin, Kleindienst, Magruder, Colson, Kalmbach, and Ehrlichman for various crimes. The Watergate grand jury, by unanimous vote, had named Nixon an unindicted coconspirator. Judge Gerhard A. Gesell, the U.S. District Court judge presiding at the Plumbers trial, ruled that President Nixon had no constitutional authority to order a break-in on grounds of national security. The Internal Revenue Service reported that the president and his wife had not yet paid the $148,080 they owed on their 1969 taxes. The Senate Watergate Committee officially ended its existence and released its final 2,217-page report. Lowell Weicker, a Republican member of the committee, publicly charged that the Nixon administration had undermined, abused, and violated every major part of the Constitution. He also charged that the cover-up continued. The vice chairman of the Senate committee, the Republican Howard H. Baker, reported that the CIA had withheld information regarding the Watergate break-in. As in their responses to the publication of the transcripts, the Chicago Tribune and a host of other newspapers again withdrew their support of Nixon and called for either his resignation or impeachment. Watergate dominated the news, and almost all the stories reflected negatively on the president.
With so many persons involved and with so much at stake, opportunity abounded for spreading rumor, innuendo, and false information. Members of the press and government officials have long exchanged information in private. Presidents and their staffs have secretly passed information to favorite reporters to enhance their own image or to damage the image of their opponents. During the primary campaigns of 1972, for example, a CREEP official passed to the columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak copies of internal memos that the dirty tricks operaters had stolen from Senator Muskie’s office. Bill Gulley, director of the White House military office, later identified Melvin R. Laird, secretary of defense during Nixon’s first term, as “one of the biggest leakers in the Administration”; Laird’s aide, according to Gulley, made a “daily run” to Evans and Novak. Haldeman also considered Evans and Novak to be journalists who would release information to promote specific White House projects.2 To discredit John Dean, someone in the White House had leaked information that he had borrowed $4,000 from campaign funds to finance his honeymoon. Pat Buchanan once instructed Press Secretary Ron Ziegler to “feed not only the Star, but other pro or neutral papers.”3 And although Deep Throat leaked no specific information, he leaked the knowledge that a big story lay behind the break-in. Reporters consistently coaxed information from secretaries, Senate and House staffers, and anyone else who might prove useful.
The relationship between a president and the press depends a great deal on the personality of the president. Since World War II presidents have viewed the press with varying degrees of hostility, at least at certain times. For example, President John F. Kennedy, whose good rapport with the press no successor has equaled, asked the New York Times to remove its journalist, David Halberstam, from his Vietnam assignment and canceled the White House subscription to the New York Herald Tribune. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s false statements and distortions of fact led reporters to refer to his credibility gap. The mutual distrust between Johnson and reporters underlay the media’s suspicions of his successor. Throughout the Watergate crisis, moreover, Nixon and his supporters purposefully attempted to discredit the press in order to undermine the credibility of its disclosures and then to reinforce the opposition of conservative independents and Republicans to the idea of impeachment. The magnitude of the Watergate affair, and Woodward and Bernstein’s roles, merely intensified Nixon’s relationship with the press, a relationship that all presidents had often found troubling. But hostility between Nixon and the press had its origins in the 1948 election campaign.
Nixon tried hard to keep the press, and therefore public opinion, with him, but the actions early in 1973 of Judge Sirica and of the acting director of the FBI Patrick Gray had led to the president’s loss of control over the Watergate story. From summer 1973, Nixon’s refusal to release the tapes, his firing of Cox, his income tax problems, and his edited tape transcripts had turned almost the entire newspaper world against him. By the end of May 1974 President Nixon also had turned the House Judiciary Committee against him.
On May 30 the committee voted thirty-seven to one to issue a third subpoena for tapes of Watergate-related conversations and voted twenty-eight to ten to inform the president by letter that the committee would view his defiance of its May 15 subpoena as possible grounds for impeachment. On June 9 Nixon replied to the committee by reiterating his previous positions. He cited his desire to preserve the principle of separation of powers and maintained that the materials he already had given told “the full story of Watergate, in so far as it relates to Presidential knowledge and Presidential actions.” Nixon ended his letter insisting that “the Executive must remain the final arbiter of demands on its confidentiality.”4 Thus the deadlock between the committee and the president continued.
The morning after Nixon sent the Judiciary Committee his letter, he left on a trip to the Middle East, with a two-night stopover in Salzburg, Austria. Then from June 12 to June 18 the president visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, and Jordan. Before returning to the United States he stopped in the Azores Islands. The themes of the discussions he held with the heads of state were peace in the Middle East and cooperation with the United States.
Six days after his return, Nixon left on another overseas trip, this time to the Soviet Union, with a two-night stop en route in Brussels. He spent seven days in the Soviet Union and spoke to the Soviet people on radio and television. In Moscow the president attracted larger crowds than he did in New York City. At the end of his visit, he and the Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev issued a joint communique expressing their two countries’ mutual desire to strengthen cooperation and understanding and to promote world peace. Arriving home, Nixon told the nation that during his two trips he had traveled more than 25,000 miles, visited nine countries, and advanced the cause of peace.
The trips did take Nixon’s mind away from Watergate, allowing him to exercise some of the power he had at his command and to enjoy the pomp and respect other nations accord the president of the United States. But with no specific crisis in U.S. relations with any of the countries the president visited and with the majority of Americans believing the House of Representatives should impeach him, Nixon’s trips seemed hollow attempts to appear in the news as a world leader and thereby divert attention from Watergate. This brief respite was interrupted by the onset of House impeachment hearings.
On July 2, the day before the president left the Soviet Union, the House Judiciary Committee questioned the first of ten witnesses. The committee conducted this stage of its proceedings in closed sessions, the same policy it had pursued when spending six weeks examining more than 7,000 pages of documents and more than 600 statements. The political atmosphere was intense, fueled by the president’s staunch defenders. His press secretary, Ron Ziegler, called the committee a kangaroo court. The committee, meanwhile, had worked to minimize partisanship and, to varying degrees, Republican members extended a measure of respect for Chairman Rodino’s efforts. Rodino knew that the impeachment resolution needed support from Republicans on the committee if it were to command public credibility.
Typical of its willingness to compromise, the committee permitted St. Clair to suggest witnesses and to participate in their questioning. In one case, after resolving a dispute, the committee added all of St. Clair’s suggestions to its own list. None of St. Clair’s witnesses offered new evidence, and none helped Nixon’s position. Alexander Butterfield stressed that Nixon “was highly interested in detail.” Among Butterfield’s many illustrations was his description of the president’s directive “to log the comments made about each painting to see how popular it might be to guests who were awaiting appointments in the west lobby.” Butterfield portrayed Haldeman as “entirely . . . an implementer. . . . The President was the decision maker. The President was 100 percent in charge.”5 John Mitchell’s lawyer informed the committee that the former attorney general could not answer every question because of his own pending trial. Charles Colson suggested again that the CIA had undermined the president.
St. Clair summarized the president’s defense on July 18. To justify impeachment, St. Clair argued, the evidence must document criminal action; investigators must produce a smoking gun. He pointed out that Nixon had dismissed his aides when he realized they might have committed crimes. Judge the president, St. Clair continued, on his conduct, not on his comments uttered in anger or frustration. St. Clair insisted that Dean, not Nixon, had orchestrated the cover-up. To support his contention that Nixon had not obstructed justice, St. Clair introduced an excerpt from a Nixon statement on the March 22, 1973, tape. Republicans and Democrats alike cried foul; Nixon had refused to release that tape to the committee. He and St. Clair, therefore, appeared to be withholding a tape that might embarrass the president yet using the same tape when it might help him. Doar’s summary followed St. Clair’s. The evidence, Doar concluded, justified impeachment. Doar proposed five impeachment charges: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, contempt of Congress and the courts, failure to enforce the laws, and denigration of the presidency.
The assessments and actions of the minority chief counsel, Albert Jenner, undermined Nixon’s chances to block impeachment. From the time of his appointment the previous January, Jenner had avoided partisan concerns and cooperated closely with the majority’s chief counsel, Doar. By July Jenner privately concluded that Nixon had lied and continued to lie. On July 19 Jenner joined Doar to urge the Judiciary Committee to recommend impeachment. For Republicans, even those who leaned toward impeachment, this was the last straw. Two days later they terminated Jenner’s employment and selected Sam Garrison, Jenner’s deputy, as their new minority chief counsel. The Republicans recommended that Rodino appoint Jenner as his associate counsel, which he did.
On July 22 the Judiciary Committee completed its information gathering and prepared for the final phase of its work, the discussion and vote on impeachment charges. By a 31 to 7 vote the committee concurred with the House of Representatives, which had voted 346 to 40 to permit live radio and television coverage of the forthcoming impeachment sessions. Only once before in the nation’s history had the House held similar hearings.
While the Judiciary Committee progressed to its final phrase, the Supreme Court moved inexorably toward deciding whether the president could retain absolute control of the tapes. On July 8, eight justices on the Court heard contrasting arguments from St. Clair and Jaworski.6 Since the previous July, when Butterfield disclosed the existence of Nixon’s taping system, the question whether the president had absolute control over the tapes had been simple. The president claimed an absolute right to withhold information and defended his position. For a year, demands that he release the tapes had generated ever increasing public support. By July 1974 most Americans agreed with this position. While the Court weighed the constitutional issues, St. Clair intensified the suspense when he announced that the president might defy the Court’s ruling, should it order him to release the tapes.
Nixon still nursed hopes of avoiding impeachment. In June, he recalled later, “it looked as if things were actually beginning to brighten.” On June 7 the journalist Theodore White passed word to the president that he believed the House would not vote impeachment nor would the Senate convict. John Connally, the former Democratic governor of Texas and Nixon’s secretary of the treasury from 1971 to 1972, agreed with this assessment, as did William E. Timmons, Nixon’s director of congressional relations. Two weeks later Nixon telephoned Joe Waggoner, a Louisiana Democrat then in his seventh term in the House. Nixon considered Waggoner “totally realistic” and “a great source of strength to me throughout the whole Watergate period.” The head of an informal group of congressmen, Waggoner told Nixon the House would not impeach unless, for some reason, the Supreme Court held him in contempt. On July 12, Vice President Ford conveyed his encouragement: “Don’t worry, Mr. President, you’ve got this beat. We have a solid fifty-vote margin in the House.” That afternoon the president and his family flew to San Clemente for a two-week vacation. In his memoirs, Nixon reflected on the weekend of July 20 and 21 as “the last time there was any real hope.”7
On July 23 the Judiciary Committee member Lawrence Hogan (R-Md.) obliterated Nixon’s cautious, thoroughly unrealistic optimism. At a press conference that morning, Hogan announced his belief, “beyond a reasonable doubt,” that the president had committed impeachable offenses. He charged that Nixon had “lied repeatedly,” had paid blackmail, had tried to misuse the CIA, and had praised those who he knew had committed perjury. As a conservative, a former FBI agent, and a candidate for his party’s gubernatorial nomination, Hogan held a zero rating from the liberal pressure group, Americans for Democratic Action. His announcement stunned the political world.8 Until then Republican members of the Judiciary Committee and the three conservative southern Democrats had kept their opinions to themselves regarding how they would vote on impeachment charges. Rodino, mindful of the need for Republican votes, expected William S. Cohen of Maine to favor impeachment and judged as likely the votes of Hamilton Fish Jr. of New York and Tom Railsback of Illinois. With luck, Rodino hoped to gain another two Republican votes from among New York’s Henry P. Smith, Virginia’s M. Caldwell Butler, and Illinois’s Robert McClory. Hogan caught everyone off guard, and his announcement greatly increased the possibility of impeachment. Timmons soon telephoned San Clemente and told the president the three southern Democrats would vote impeachment. Nixon tried to enlist the support of Alabama’s governor George Wallace to reverse the expected votes of the southern Democrats. Wallace politely refused. After Nixon hung up the telephone, he turned to Haig and declared, “Well, Al, there goes the presidency.”9
The next day, July 24, the Supreme Court announced its decision, with an eight to zero vote, that President Nixon must turn over the sixty-four tapes the special prosecutor had subpoenaed. Three of the eight votes came from Nixon’s appointees. Nixon had hoped for some “air,” perhaps a six to three vote, in the ruling and thus hinted through his aides that he might defy the Court. With no air, Nixon accepted the inevitable and indicated he would comply. Only then did Nixon ask his chief legal adviser, Fred Buzhardt, to listen to the June 23, 1972, tape. Buzhardt did, telephoned St. Clair and Haig, and told them the tape was the smoking gun. Haig asked Buzhardt to listen a second time. He listened again and repeated his assessment.
The Court’s ruling remained above criticism, owing to its unanimity and because five of the eight participating justices had been Republican appointees. Nixon himself had appointed three, including Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, who wrote the thirty-one-page opinion. Eisenhower had appointed the other two. In straightforward language, the opinion referred to the well-known 1803 case Marbury vs. Madison, and the justices reaffirmed the principle that the Court, and not the president, is the final arbiter of the Constitution. Coming the day after Hogan announced his support for impeachment, the Court’s decision neutralized much of the remaining contention that partisanship motivated the impeachment procedure.
The yearlong struggle for the tapes ended, bringing to an abrupt end Nixon’s holding action against subpoenas, first from the Senate Watergate Committee, then from the first special prosecutor, then from the second special prosecutor, and, finally, from the House Judiciary Committee. In his attempt to keep the tapes, the president had offered to permit Senator John Stennis to listen to the subpoenaed tapes and to verify a transcript of their content. When Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox rejected this proposal and insisted on the tapes, Nixon fired him. The strong negative reaction to Cox’s firing forced Nixon to yield some tapes, including one with the unexplained eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap, but then he drew a line and declared he would release no more tapes. When the subpoenas kept coming, Nixon released transcripts and falsely maintained that he had released everything relevant. Throughout the struggle, Nixon employed every possible delaying tactic. His position, combined with his delaying tactics, cost him the support of the majority of Americans. From the beginning in July 1973, when Butterfield disclosed the existence of the Oval Office tapes, Nixon’s claim of executive privilege seemed weak compared to Barry Goldwater’s commonsense approach that Nixon should release the tapes to exonerate himself and bring the controversy to an end. The Supreme Court ruling, moreover, introduced a further issue when it affirmed that no president could place himself above the law and withhold materials that might prove his guilt in a crime.
The same day that the Supreme Court handed down its decision, the House Judiciary Committee started formal debate on articles of impeachment. At 7:45 p.m., July 24, 1974, with approximately 40 million Americans watching on television, Rodino solemnly opened the proceedings. That evening and the next day, every member of the committee, each of whom was a lawyer, had fifteen minutes to state a position. By the time each member had spoken, the outcome of the forthcoming impeachment vote appeared evident. Southern Democrats favored impeachment, as did Republicans Lawrence Hogan, M. Caldwell Butler, and William Cohen, and Republicans Hamilton Fish and Thomas Railsback hinted that they also might.
On Saturday evening, July 27, after three days of debate, the Judiciary Committee approved article 1 of its impeachment proposals; the vote was twenty-seven to eleven. Six Republicans voted for impeachment, along with the twenty-one Democrats. Article 1 detailed the specific steps the president had taken to obstruct justice. It listed such unlawful activities as making false statements to investigative officers, making false public statements, condoning perjury, attempting to misuse the CIA, paying money to influence witnesses, and interfering with investigations by the Congress, the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Watergate special prosecutor. “Such conduct,” the article concluded, “warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.” Immediately after the vote, Rodino adjourned the committee until the following Monday. On Sunday, with the committee in recess, Nixon returned to Washington from his California vacation.
When the committee reconvened, it approved impeachment article 2 by a twenty-eight to ten vote. Robert McClory of Illinois became the seventh Republican to vote for impeachment. Article 2 listed specific abuses of power, including unlawful use of the IRS, the CIA, and the FBI, and concluded that Nixon had “acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government.” Such conduct, the article stated, “warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office.” The next day, by a twenty-one to seventeen vote, the Judiciary Committee passed article 3 of impeachment. It reported that Nixon had failed to produce documents “as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee” on April 11, May 15, May 30, and June 24, all in 1974. Like the first two articles, this one called for impeachment, trial, and removal from office. Later that day the committee rejected, by a twenty-six to twelve vote, article 4, which charged the president with concealing information and providing false information regarding the U.S. bombing of Cambodia; by an identical vote it rejected article 5, which charged the president with income tax evasion.10
While the Judiciary Committee was considering articles 3, 4, and 5, St. Clair returned to work following a long weekend on Cape Cod. Then for the first time, he listened to the June 23, 1972, tape. Shaken, he told the president the tape contradicted what he, on behalf of the president, had argued before the Judiciary Committee. St. Clair reasoned, therefore, that he would be party to an obstruction of justice charge unless Nixon made the tape public.
The next day, Wednesday, July 31, Nixon asked Haig to read the transcript of the June 23, 1972, tape. Haig did and informed the president that he agreed with St. Clair and Buzhardt; the tape was the smoking gun. That afternoon Nixon asked Ron Ziegler to listen to the tape. Two days later, Nixon had Haig arrange for Charles E. Wiggins of California, a staunch defender of the president on the Judiciary Committee, to read the transcript. After reading it, Wiggins concluded that House impeachment and Senate conviction were inevitable. Nixon must report the information on the transcript, Wiggins added, or those persons who had read the transcript or had listened to the tape would become accomplices in the obstruction of justice. Other than from his immediate family, his close friend Bebe Rebozo, and his longtime personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, Nixon found almost no support to continue the fight against impeachment. Still, he opted for one last chance. On Monday he intended to release to the public the June 23, 1972, tape and hoped, “by some miracle,” the reaction would be less damning than he and his advisers expected.11
That Friday, August 2, while Wiggins recommended disclosure and Nixon agonized over his situation, the Louis Harris Associates conducted one of its public opinion polls, revealing that by 66 to 27 percent Americans favored impeachment. Typifying that sentiment and the reasoning behind it, an editorial that day from the News and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, declared: “One after another, new developments have unfolded to shake our confidence and cause us to reconsider a long-standing position as a Nixon admirer and advocate.” The movement to force the president from office, the editorial continued, “no longer can be identified as the sole possession of those who might be cataloged as Mr. Nixon’s enemies, anxious to do him harm.” Enlistments in the movement “of such respected people as our Sunday columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick and U.S. Rep. James D. Mann of South Carolina . . . have added depth and respectability.” The paper concluded by calling for Nixon to resign, and should he refuse, for the Congress “to press ahead as quickly and decisively as possible with impeachment.” Also on August 2, Judge Sirica sentenced John Dean to one to four years in prison for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in. Two days earlier, Judge Gesell had sentenced John Ehrlichman to a prison term of twenty months to five years for perjury and conspiracy in the Fielding break-in case.
The Supreme Court ruling and the House Judiciary Committee votes finally brought Watergate to a climax. Nixon faced the choice of resignation or an impeachment trial and removal from office. If he planned to resign, the decision he favored, he had only a few days left as president. The weekend of August 3 and 4 he spent at Camp David with his family. On Sunday, Pat Buchanan, St. Clair, Haig, Ziegler, and Raymond Price journeyed north to meet with Nixon and help prepare a statement to accompany the release of the smoking gun tape. Rumors of plans to fight impeachment coexisted with equally strong rumors of impending resignation. At 4:00 p.m. on Monday, August 5, after several postponements that heightened the rampant public speculation, aides distributed to reporters transcripts of the tape and Nixon’s two-page commentary. The irrefutable evidence of guilt was this exchange only a week after the break-in:
Haldeman: That the way to handle this now is for us to have Walters [CIA deputy director] call Pat Gray [acting director of the FBI] and just say, “Stay the hell out of this . . . we don’t want you to go any further on it.”
President: How do you call him in, I mean you just, well, we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things.12
In his statement Nixon confessed he had never told his staff and counsel about the June 23, 1972, tape. He acknowledged his defenders had argued his case “with information that was incomplete and in some respects erroneous.” The tape revealed that at least as early as June 23, 1972, Nixon knew who was responsible for the break-in. The taped conversations confirmed his participation in obstruction of justice, misuse of federal power, and systematic public deception. In a remarkable understatement, Nixon admitted that “portions of the tapes of these June 23 conversations are at variance with certain of my previous statements.” Yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he continued to claim that “when all the facts were brought to my attention, I insisted on a full investigation and prosecution of those guilty.” He ended his statement asserting that “the record, in its entirety, does not justify the extreme step of impeachment and removal of a President.”13 Nixon had admitted obstruction of justice, an impeachable and criminal offense by his own definition, yet declared that his record did not justify impeachment.
Reaction to Nixon’s statement and to the content of the tape exploded in newspaper editorials across the country with an intensity and a unanimity rarely equaled in the nation’s history. The Albuquerque Journal concluded correctly that it was “one of the few American dailies which has not, thus far, called for the impeachment, resignation or removal of the President.” The Milwaukee Journal observed, “If there is a consensus about anything in America today it is that Richard Nixon must go—one way or another.” The Arkansas Democrat agreed: “From all sides have come cries for him to resign.” The editorial added, “We are disposed to judge the President most harshly for his arrogant contempt toward the great masses of the American people.” The Washington Star–News concluded, “It is now virtually inconceivable that Nixon can last out his term. He has betrayed and affronted those loyalists who have bet their political lives on his veracity.” It reminded its readers, “This newspaper has supported Richard Nixon in all his national campaigns.” Newspapers in all regions of the country that once supported Nixon published similar laments. Because it had endorsed his presidential campaigns in 1960, 1968, and 1972, the State, in Columbia, South Carolina, took “no pleasure in reaching the conclusion that Mr. Nixon’s resignation is in order.” The Orlando Sentinel Star called for Nixon’s prompt resignation: “He had lied to the country and even to his own lawyer, and he betrayed the faith of millions of Americans who believed him.” The Tulsa Daily World, which had “supported Mr. Nixon through many adversities,” called for his resignation because it saw no alternative. The Dallas Times–Herald reminded its readers of its endorsement of Nixon’s election and reelection and then urged the president “to remove himself from office.” The Los Angeles Times likewise favored resignation and expressed a feeling of betrayal because it had supported Nixon throughout his career, starting with his 1946 campaign for the House of Representatives.14
For all practical purposes, the nation’s newspapers were unanimous that Nixon must leave office. The only disagreement concerned the method whereby he would leave. On August 5, when the president released the transcript of the June 23, 1972, tape, he closed his accompanying statement by saying that “as the constitutional process goes forward,” it would find his record too strong for removal from office. In two editorials the Greenville (S.C.) News presented with clarity the issues involved regarding Nixon and impeachment. On Monday afternoon, August 5, the editors prepared an editorial for Tuesday’s publication “reemphasizing the point that the President had not been proved guilty.” About 6:00 p.m., however, they read Nixon’s statement accompanying his release of the smoking gun tape. Troubled by the new revelations, the editors killed the unpublished editorials, having concluded that the president’s statement and the transcript changed “the whole picture.” Nixon’s disclosures “appalled” the editors: “This situation is tragic for the nation. It is heartbreaking for those who have supported the President.” Despite the reversal of its assessment of Nixon’s culpability, the Greenville News did not join the clamor for his resignation. Instead, the next day the paper insisted that “to force President Nixon from office while he still maintains innocence . . . would be wrong constitutionally and politically.” Once started, the impeachment process should determine Nixon’s guilt or exoneration. “Any other course subverts the rule of law upon which American liberty and the American system of government rest.”15
Nixon refused to admit guilt, and due process concerned other newspapers as well as the Greenville News. The Charlotte Observer maintained, “As long as Mr. Nixon insists that he is innocent of an impeachable offense, he should be given every opportunity to answer the charges against him.” The Philadelphia Inquirer opposed resignation for the same reason. From the Midwest, the Des Moines Register observed, “Our view, like that of the Wall Street Journal printed on this page, is that the constitutional process of impeachment, trial, and removal from office if found guilty is the proper procedure.” The Wichita Eagle, once a firm Nixon supporter, explained that “should President Nixon resign at any point before the conclusion of his trial a considerable body of Americans will remain convinced of his innocence.” It also expressed concern that through resignation “a dangerous precedent will be set for the harrying out of office of future presidents guilty of nothing but personal unpopularity.” The Roanoke Times favored impeachment for a different reason, because it would stand as an “enduring warning to future Presidents not to abuse powers in the ways charged against Mr. Nixon.” A host of other newspapers voiced concern over due process or precedent, or about Nixon’s profession of innocence, and thus supported impeachment rather than resignation. These included the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, the San Diego Union, the Chicago Daily News, the Fort Worth Star–Telegram, the Detroit Free Press, the Daily Oklahoman, the Ann Arbor News, the St. Louis Post–Dispatch, the Dayton Daily News, the Milwaukee Journal, the Arkansas Democrat, and the St. Louis Globe–Democrat. The majority of newspapers, however, just wanted Nixon to resign.
The nation’s newspapers detailed the concrete reasons for their position, whether they counseled impeachment or resignation. The Washington Star–News, for example, explained that “the President has been forced to hand over the smoking pistol demanded by those of us who have insisted he be given the benefit of every doubt.” The Orlando Sentinel Star agreed: “For those of us who demanded evidence before joining the crowd determined to drive a President from office, we now have it—in spades.” Repeating the same point, The Syracuse Herald–Journal observed, “This newspaper consistently has called for any evidence to show he committed a serious offense. That evidence now is known to the American people by his own admission.” The Topeka Daily Capital stated, “The tape transcript reveals incontrovertibly that . . . he was perfectly willing to participate in the cover-up—hiding the facts from the voters.” The Dallas Times–Herald called Nixon’s statement a “stunning confession of cover-up activities,” and the Chicago Tribune wrote about “Nixon’s own confessions.” The Salt Lake Tribune concluded, “Mr. Nixon has, for all practical purposes, confessed his guilt to the Judiciary committee’s first impeachment article.” The Biloxi Daily Herald believed the tapes proved that Nixon “did indeed obstruct justice.” The fact that all of these papers had supported the election and reelection of Nixon illustrates the widespread belief in the impeachable guilt of the president.
Several newspapers, which had earlier supported Nixon, observed that the impetus to drive the president from office transcended partisan politics. The day after Nixon released the tape and statement, for example, the Birmingham News wrote, “There is no longer any question of his being forced to resign for strictly political reasons.” The Kansas City Star pointed out that “nobody is ‘driving’ him from office. He has done that himself.” The Pittsburgh Post–Gazette graphically stated that with his release of the tape, “the President fit the noose more securely around his own neck.” Until Nixon did that fitting, the Post Gazette had opposed resignation. The Roanoke Times believed the tape’s release made it impossible for the president “to continue and nurture a Nixon myth, the fable of how an able and lonely President was driven from office by evil powers. President Nixon did himself in with his own tapes.” The Indianapolis News asserted, “A President cannot be ‘brought down’ by communications media or by opposition politicians, but he can be destroyed—and was—by unprincipled advisors.”16
The newspaper that made the most dramatic reversal of position, because it originally had taken the most pugnacious stance, was William Loeb’s Manchester Union Leader. On July 30, 1974, after watching the House Judiciary Committee proceedings, Loeb concluded that “the ‘liberals,’ both Republican and Democratic . . . give the impression that they see a golden opportunity to reverse the terrible licking their hero, George McGovern, received in the Fall of 1972.” The impeachment process, Loeb continued, was simply “a partisan attempt to overturn the decision of the voters two years ago.” He called the committee members who voted against Nixon “vultures” and maintained they had received aid from “the left-dominated communications media.” A week later, after Nixon’s release of the smoking gun tape, Loeb opened his editorial: “And now President Nixon has impeached himself.” Loeb wrote that “what the President condoned was use of the CIA to head off an FBI investigation. That amounts in our view to undermining national security by suborning one of its most vital arms for purely political purposes.” After discussing impeachment and resignation, Loeb concluded that “either way, what this nation now needs is a change at the top. And soon.”17 The symbol of far-right political journalism had joined an anti-Nixon mainstream that pulled in virtually every newspaper in the country.
Just as the smoking gun tape drained the last of the president’s newspaper support, so too did it all but eliminate his political support. Within twenty-four hours after the release of the tape’s transcript, every member of the House Judiciary Committee, seventeen of them Republicans, publicly announced their intent to vote for impeachment. For ten of these Republicans this meant an about-face; ten days earlier they had voted against article 1 of impeachment, which charged the president with obstruction of justice. The Republican leader in the House, John J. Rhodes, announced that he too would vote for impeachment. Robert P. Griffin, the Senate Republican whip, concurred and called for Nixon’s resignation: “It’s not just his enemies who feel that way. Many of his friends, and I count myself one of them, believe now that this would be the most appropriate course.”18
At 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, August 6, the day when almost every daily newspaper in the country carried an editorial about the smoking gun tape that Nixon had released the day before, the president convened a cabinet meeting. He began with comments about inflation and then shifted to Watergate. He acknowledged the difficulty of the situation but announced he would not resign. In the interest of the presidency and the nation, he would instead follow the procedure outlined in the Constitution. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger believed that what Nixon “sought in his oblique manner was a vote of confidence from his Cabinet. . . . But all he encountered was an embarrassed silence.”19 Vice President Ford broke the silence with a short statement about “the difficult position I’m in.” After expressing “personal sympathy” for Nixon, Ford continued, “I wish to emphasize that had I known what has been disclosed in reference to Watergate in the last twenty-four hours, I would not have made a number of the statements I made either as Minority Leader or as Vice President.”20 George Bush, chair of the Republican National Committee, reported on the disaster that he believed the Republican Party would face in the forthcoming congressional elections. He wanted, therefore, a quick end to Watergate. Obviously, the only quick end meant a Nixon resignation. Kissinger recalled, “It was cruel. And it was necessary. For Nixon’s own appointees to turn on him was not the best way to end a Presidency. Yet he had left them no other choice.”21 Word of Nixon’s intent to face an impeachment trial rather than resign soon leaked to the media.
Less than an hour after the cabinet meeting, Kissinger went unannounced to the Oval Office. The purpose of his visit was to suggest that the president resign because a lengthy impeachment trial would be too demeaning and too damaging to the country. Nixon thanked Kissinger but remained noncommittal. The president thereupon talked with his director of congressional relations, William E. Timmons, who gave the disheartening news that eighty Senators favored impeachment.
Ford, meanwhile, had gone to Capitol Hill to brief those present at the Senate Republican Policy luncheon about the cabinet meeting. He encountered a growing anger over the content of the tape. When told that the president believed himself innocent of impeachable action, they became increasingly agitated. Barry Goldwater blurted out that Nixon should resign immediately. The essence of this meeting, including Goldwater’s recommendation, quickly reached reporters. Later that afternoon Republican leaders in the Senate decided that Goldwater should go to the White House and describe to the president the certainty of impeachment. When asked if he would meet with Goldwater, Nixon agreed but suggested that he be accompanied by House leader John Rhodes and Senate leader Hugh Scott.
Wednesday morning, August 7, Nixon returned a telephone call to H. R. Haldeman in California. Haldeman urged Nixon, if he planned to resign, to consider “a blanket pardon for all the Watergate defendants.” The pardon, Haldeman reasoned, would spare the country years of trials and lawsuits. Moreover, to deflect criticism of the pardons, he recommended that the president grant amnesty to the Vietnam draft dodgers. Nixon listened but gave no specific answer.22 At noon that day Goldwater had lunch at the home of Dean Burch, a presidential counselor to Nixon and former chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Haig had arranged the meeting in order to caution Goldwater about the state of Nixon’s mental health. Nixon’s chief of staff characterized the president as someone capable of going off in any of several directions. He needed to realize, Haig advised, that he had no options left.
At 5:00 p.m. Haig intercepted Goldwater, Scott, and Rhodes on their way to the Oval Office and warned them not to suggest resignation explicitly. Then the four Republican politicians had an awkward, painful exchange. At the climax, Nixon asked Goldwater how many votes he had. Goldwater replied, “Ten at most, maybe less. Some aren’t firm.” Nixon turned to Scott, who said he agreed with the count. “It’s my decision,” Nixon snapped as he ended the meeting. Following this, Goldwater, Scott, and Rhodes told reporters they had not discussed a resignation decision. When Goldwater returned to his Senate office, he telephoned Katharine Graham, owner of the Washington Post. He recounted the scene in the Oval Office and said, “Nixon was wobbling” and was capable of irrational action. Goldwater then asked her, the owner of a paper that he and Nixon most disliked, to refrain for a day from emphasizing that Nixon’s presidency was over. Let him resign without further pressure, Goldwater advised. In his memoirs, he recounted that the next day, “the Post was as circumspect as it could be.” He praised it for placing the country’s interest above its own: “I will never forget their recognition of responsibility as long as I live.”23 That same afternoon Rodino passed word to Timmons that if Nixon resigned, Rodino would not pursue criminal charges against him. Speaker of the House Carl Albert agreed with Rodino’s position.
Goldwater, Haig, and the others had sound reasons for their cautious dealing with Nixon. Pressures to resign had placed enormous stress on him, owing both to the historical significance and the fact that resignation ran counter to his basic instincts. For a week the president alternated between resisting and accepting resignation. Throughout this week, however, Nixon consistently emphasized that he would be the one to make the decision, and no member of the cabinet, Republican senator, or member of Congress would push him into a humiliating situation. Those who talked with the president that week worried about his stability.
In his memoirs, Nixon reported that on August 1 he told Haig he “had decided to resign.” That evening Haig told speechwriter Ray Price to draft a resignation speech. The next day Nixon had second thoughts and ordered Price to stop drafting the speech and to begin work on a statement to release with the smoking gun tape. During the August 3 and 4 weekend, at Camp David, Nixon placed the possibility of resignation in abeyance until after he had evaluated the public’s reaction to the tape. This position reflected the president’s belief that he had committed no crime serious enough to merit impeachment as well as his acceptance of Pat Buchanan’s argument that Nixon must be certain he no longer enjoyed sufficient support for staying in office. On Monday evening, a few hours following the release of the smoking gun tape and after the Senate Republican whip Robert Griffin had called for the president’s resignation, Haig told Kissinger that “Nixon was still hesitating.”24 At 11:00 a.m. the next day Nixon informed his cabinet that he would face the Senate trial. As late as the afternoon of Wednesday, August 7, Haig told Goldwater, Scott, Rhodes, and Kissinger that although Nixon leaned toward resignation he still might change his mind. About 6:00 p.m. Nixon telephoned Kissinger, asked him to come to the Oval Office, and told him he would resign.
At 9:00 p.m. Nixon again telephoned Kissinger and asked him to come to the Lincoln Sitting Room in the White House. In his memoirs Nixon described an hour’s meeting during which the two men discussed foreign policy and reminisced about their five and a half years shaping and conducting U.S. foreign relations. In his memoirs Kissinger remembered that “the meeting lasted nearly three hours.” He recalled the president as in control of his emotions but “not calm,” “shattered,” and “deeply distraught.”25 Raymond Price reported in his memoir that while Nixon and Kissinger met, he worked on the president’s resignation speech scheduled for the next evening. Price remembered Nixon telephoning him at 10:35, 10:38, and 11:07 p.m. to discuss the content of the speech. Kissinger did not mention these interruptions. At 4:15 a.m., 4:30 a.m., and 5:07 a.m. Nixon again telephoned Price about the speech.
Nixon began his last full day as president having had little sleep and with the incredible stress that because of his conduct in office he would become the first president in the nation’s history to resign. Shortly after 11:00 a.m. Nixon spent seventy minutes with Vice President Ford, beginning by announcing his decision to resign the next day. At 12:23 p.m. Ziegler told reporters, who crowded into the White House press room, that the president would address the nation at 9:00 p.m. Although Ziegler did not reveal the subject of the speech, his tearful eyes left little doubt about the accuracy of the speculation over the impending resignation, which dominated the city and the national news. After the departure of Haldeman and Ehrlichman on April 30, 1973, Ziegler had become one of Nixon’s closest intimates. At 7:30 p.m. Nixon met in the Executive Office Building with congressional leaders of both parties and officially told them of his decision. He then moved to the cabinet room and spoke almost half an hour to forty-six members of Congress. Nixon and many of those in attendance shed tears. At 9:00 p.m., however, a composed president sat before the television cameras.
In his resignation speech Nixon declared, “I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to remain in office.” He personally wanted “to continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication.” Such a fight, he reasoned, would absorb too much attention and time from Congress and himself, to the detriment of the country. Nixon never indicated he had obstructed justice and systematically lied to the country for more than two years, confessing only to faulty judgment: “I would say only that if some of my judgments were wrong—and some were wrong—they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interests of the Nation.”26 Nixon also reviewed his foreign policy achievements and praised Vice President Ford. After some time with his family, Nixon went to the Lincoln Sitting Room and until 1:30 a.m. telephoned staff, supporters, and friends, expressing his appreciation for their support. With seemingly nothing politically to gain, he continued his career-long practice of telephoning.
At 9:30 a.m., Friday, August 9, the president spoke in the East Room to the White House staff, cabinet members, and a few friends. Surrounded by his family, and televised nationally, he spoke in maudlin tones of his parents, of the White House, and of the White House staff and referred to himself with self-depreciation. He repeated the admission in his resignation speech that “we have done some things wrong in this Administration. . . . Mistakes, yes. But for personal gain, never.”27 After Nixon spoke, he and his wife flew by helicopter to Andrews Air Force Base in the suburbs of Washington and there boarded the presidential plane “The Spirit of ’76” for their trip to California. At 12:03 p.m., with Nixon airborne, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger administered to Gerald Ford the oath of office as president. One of Nixon’s legacies to the nation was a president who was the first person never to have won a vote as candidate for either vice president or president. In his first remarks as president, Gerald Ford declared, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”
Most Americans agreed. On the question whether Nixon should leave office, the country stood unusually united on an issue of such supreme importance. Democrats and their supporters and allies among voters, the media, and special interest groups had never liked or respected the president. What gave respectability and credibility to the two-year struggle to uncover the cover-up was the indispensable role of Republicans and conservatives.
The smoking gun tape removed the last remaining doubts about Nixon’s culpability. A unanimous Supreme Court ordered the president to release the tapes. After the revelation of the June 23, 1972, tape, the seventeen Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee supported impeachment. The Republican leadership in both houses of Congress and the 1964 presidential nominee Barry Goldwater urged resignation. Senate Republican leaders had concluded that ninety of the one hundred members would vote to convict the president. Even the senior cabinet member, Secretary of State Kissinger, recommended resignation. The overwhelming majority of newspaper editorials advocated resignation or impeachment, including such ardent conservative newspapers as the Chicago Tribune and the Manchester Union Leader. A public opinion poll by Louis Harris Associates found that 66 percent of Americans favored impeachment, a higher percentage than the percentage of popular vote any presidential candidate ever has received in an election. This rare national consensus had forced the president from office.