The Arrogance of Power (98 page)

13.
In conversation with Liu's attorney, Nixon too denied any sexual involvement. He said he knew Liu “casually.” (
SF Examiner
&
SF Chronicle
, Feb. 8, 1981.)

14.
The publishing magnate Walter Annenberg, who served as U.S. ambassador to London in Nixon's presidency, was a longtime personal friend. (
Fortune
, June 1970,
MEM
p. 977.)

1.
Under questioning by the Senate Watergate Committee, however, DeBoer denied contact with Mitchell personally. (DeBoer testimony, Executive Session, Aug. 8, 1973, p. 5, Box C-28, E, NA.)

2.
Nixon had also considered Ford as running mate in 1960. (Int. Robert Finch; Miller Center, eds. op. cit., p. 259.)

3.
As early as May, on a flight to Portland, Oregon, he had fed the
Washington Post
's David Broder the notion that if he were nominated, his running mate would be Agnew. (Crouse, op. cit., p. 91.)

4.
The Selling of the President
(New York: Simon & Schuster), by Joe McGinniss, was first published in 1969. The TV producers were Frank Shakespeare and Roger Ailes; the “creative supervisor” was Harry Treleaven.

5.
Press aide Herb Klein has queried whether Smith was with Nixon on election night. In his interview with the author, however, Smith insisted that as news reports have stated, he was present. (Klein, op. cit., p. 37; int. Arnholt Smith.)

6.
Former IRS Special Agent David Stutz, later a deputy district attorney in San Diego, recalled receiving a call from John Caulfield at the White House. Saying he was phoning on behalf of Ehrlichman, Caulfield asked Stutz to fly to Washington with all the information he had on Alessio and Smith—without informing his superiors. Stutz took the call with a colleague listening in and told Caulfield to put the request in writing. The line then went dead. (Int. David Stutz,
Ramparts
, Oct. 1973.)

7.
Hughes's memorandums, later circulated and cited in scattershot fashion, are best accessible in Michael Drosnin's book
Citizen Hughes
. For this author, however, the most authoritative account is
The Hughes Papers
, by Elaine Davenport and Paul Eddy, because it relies almost entirely on sworn testimony and exhibits. (See Bibliography.)

8.
The secret cash payments aside, Hughes made one legitimate donation in 1968: Fifty thousand dollars, routed through Governor Laxalt, was distributed in seventeen checks paid to seventeen campaign committees, as a device to circumvent the limit on individual contributions to any one committee. Donald Jackson, a Nixon campaign official, had formally asked for financial assistance in March that year. The fifty-thousand-dollar donation was paid in October. (Legitimate donation: Stephen Haberfield to Hughes-Rebozo file, Aug. 20, 1974, Campaign Contributions, file 804, WSPF, NA; formally asked: Donald Jackson to Robert Maheu, March 4, 1968, file 804, Box 111, WSPF, NA.)

9.
During the Watergate investigation, Rebozo would produce a hundred thousand dollars in cash from a safe deposit box and say it was the Hughes money, and that it had been undisturbed and unused in the box since he had received it. A complex study of the banknotes involved led the Senate Watergate Committee to doubt this claim. (E, Report, p. 944–; FBI 62-112974.)

10.
The Hughes man alleged by Meier to have delivered the million dollars was Ken Wright, head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. (Meier, op. cit., p. 46.)

11.
Two men appear to have been involved in the first introduction: Getty associate John Pochna and Nixon friend John Shaheen, also in the oil business. (Int. Adnan Khashoggi, and see Paul Michel to Files, Aug. 13, 1975, re: int. Khashoggi, Box 95, WSPF.)

12.
Jonathan Aitken, favored Nixon biographer and former British Conservative MP (jailed for perjury in 1999), reported that Khashoggi was one of several entrepreneurs who explored “private business deals overseas” with Nixon after his resignation. (Aitken, it should be noted, has a connection with Khashoggi's family: He fathered a child by Soraya Khashoggi.)(One of entrepreneurs: JA, p. 540; perjury:
NYT
,
Times
[London], June 9, 1999; fathered child: London
Sunday Times
, Jan. 10, 1999.)

13.
In the United States Demetracopoulos sustained himself principally not as a journalist but as a consultant for a Wall Street stockbrokerage. He has told the author of his run-ins with both Greek and U.S. officialdom over the years, backing up his claims with copious documentation. Concern about him in the Nixon administration and attempts to silence him are covered in Chapter 30, Note 20. At least two overt smears of Demetracopoulos were demonstrated to be false, first when columnist James Kilpatrick published a humiliating retraction in 1972 and later when a 1977 story by David Binder of the
New York Times
proved baseless. Binder cited a CIA source and CIA records, but after a battle by Demetracopoulos to clear his name the agency admitted that the information was inaccurate. (Kilpatrick:
Washington Star
, July 30, Aug. 10, 1972; Binder:
NYT
, Dec. 6, 1977;
London Guardian
, Jan. 5, 1978;
WP
, Jan. 5, 1978; Sept. 3, 1979;
Newsday
, May 7, 1984, and see Hearings and Appendices, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Subcommittee on Oversight, 95th Congress, 1st and 2d Session, Dec./Jan./Apr. 1978, and see Joseph Goulden,
Fit to Print
, New Jersey: Lyle Stuart, 1988, p. 292–.)

14.
His Greek contacts aside, Pappas made no secret of the fact that he collaborated with the CIA. His Pappas Charitable Trust of Boston was identified in early 1967 as a conduit for CIA money into Latin America. “I have worked for the CIA anytime my help was requested,” he told a pro-junta Greek newspaper in the summer of 1968. (Trust:
Boston Globe
, Oct. 31, 1968; “I have worked”:
WP
, July 16, 1975, referring to a Pappas int. in
Apogevmatini
, July 18, 1968.)

15.
Tasca, whom Nixon had known for years, regularly entertained Pappas and was close to the junta. In 1975, when Nixon had fallen and Tasca was no longer ambassador, he was interviewed by an attorney for the House Select Committee on Intelligence, primarily on other matters. In the course of the interview, the attorney told the author, Tasca said that “the Colonels were nervous by 1968 that the Democrats would win and that American policy would be set against them. They wanted to contribute to the Nixon campaign. How to do it? It had to be filtered, and that's what Pappas did—and in doing so cemented his own relationship with the Nixon administration. “Nixon's people,” Tasca told the House attorney, “were happy to have the money.” Further corroboration of the allegation that junta money went to Nixon was obtained by the author Seymour Hersh in an interview with a senior State Department official. (Tasca background: Kutler,
Watergate
, op. cit., p. 206;
Boston Sunday Globe
, Nov. 14, 1971; State Dept. Source: Seymour Hersh,
The Price of Power
, New York: Summit, 1983, p. 138–; author's conv. Seymour Hersh.)

16.
The O'Brien aide most involved in the exchanges, according to Demetracopoulos, was Ira Kapenstein. He was present at the two meetings with O'Brien and, in part as a precaution against telephone taps, repeatedly visited Demetracopoulos at the Fairfax Hotel.

17.
In 1975, in the wake of renewed press allegations, Agnew denied knowing of any contributions to the 1968 campaign by the Greek junta. He offered to testify to the Senate Committee on Intelligence but, reportedly because of pressure over the entire matter by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, never did. In interviews in 1988 and 1989 Agnew claimed he did not know Demetracopoulos or anything about Greek money for the 1968 campaign. In the 1989 interview he did admit having met Demetracopoulos. (
NYT
, Aug. 1, 2, 1975;
Miami News
, Aug. 2, 1975;
NYT Magazine
, Oct. 26, 1975; Stanley Kutler notes and transcripts of ints. Spiro Agnew, Kutler Papers; int. Demetracopoulos.)

1.
Latest available figures indicate there were 47,357 U.S. battle deaths and 10,796 nonbattle fa-talities: 58,153 U.S. dead in total. The wounded in action numbered 153,303. A spokesman for Vietnam's Washington embassy cited his government's report of 1996 as giving “more than 3,000,000” as the figure for Vietnamese war dead. Reuters suggested “about 3,000,000.” (Spencer Tucker, ed.,
Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War
, vol. III, Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1998, p. 1093, and figures supplied by National Archives, Defense Dept., and Vietnamese embassy, Washington, D.C.)

2.
The Cambodia location was rendered in the autograph dealer's catalog as “Phumi Kriek.” The spelling on maps seen by the author is “Phumi Krek.”

3.
This citation is from the fullest version of the Kimmons story, compiled by autograph dealer Mark Vardakis from his conversations with Kimmons. Along with the original of the Nixon inscription, it is available at the Forbes Gallery in New York. Vardakis paid Kimmons one hundred dollars for the inscription, sold it for five hundred dollars to another dealer, Paul Richards, who sold it to the Forbes Gallery for twenty-five thousand dollars. (Ints. Mark Vardakis, Gabrielle Kimmons [second wife], and Gerard Stodolski, colleague of the late Paul Richards.)

4.
In response to a written inquiry enclosing the
New York Times
report on the matter, the Nixon Library told the author in 1998 there was “no confirmation of [the] report in files available here.” (Archivist Susan Naulty to author, Feb. 2, 1998.)

5.
Nixon visited two villages in the Mekong Delta near Saigon, Tan Anh and Phu My (Not to be confused with the Phu My many miles north of the capital). (
LAT
, Apr. 3, 1964;
Pacific Stars & Stripes
, Apr. 5, 1964.)

6.
It is not clear just what did happen when Dunn sought to board the helicopter with Nixon on April 2. Dunn, a lieutenant colonel with an otherwise unblemished career record, was later charged with telling Lodge “with intent to deceive” that Westmoreland had refused to let him join the Nixon party. The army inspector general cleared him of this and another unrelated allegation. Westmoreland's memoirs and Dunn's correspondence indicate that Lodge forbade the army command to take reporters by helicopter to cover the overt Nixon visits to villages. It is clear there were serious differences between U.S. officials and senior army officers at the time. (Dunn charges: Lodge to Dunn and Advice to Dunn on Rights under Article 31b; Lodge to General Harold Johnson, July 2, Lodge to Dunn, July 2, Dunn to Lodge, Dec. 16, 1964, Colonel Victor Baughman to Lodge, undated, General Johnson to Lodge, Feb. 26, Lodge to General Johnson, March 10, Lodge to Dunn, Nov. 30, 1965; Zalin Grant,
Facing the Phoenix
, New York: Norton, 1991, p. 213; ints. Mary Dunn [widow] and Alan Dunn [son], and Oral History int. John Michael Dunn, LBJL; row over press: Henry Cabot Lodge Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; William Westmoreland,
A Soldier Reports
, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976, p. 67; differences: ibid., p. 67–; Karnow, op. cit., p. 341.)

7.
Hughes recalled pinning on his flak jacket an old 1960 Nixon-Lodge campaign button he happened to have with him in Vietnam. He and Nixon joked about it, as pilot Paul Schreck also recalled in his notes about the episode. (Int. John Hughes; Paul Schreck's draft account, supplied by his son Terry.)

8.
Out of OPLAN-34A, issued by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in December 1963, grew the largest clandestine military unit since World War II's OSS. It operated as the Special Operations Group, or SOG, an acronym it kept for security reasons when its name was changed to the euphemistic Studies and Observations Group. (Plaster, op. cit., p. 23.)

9.
According to Defense Department records, sixty-two Americans went missing in Southeast Asia between 1961 and April 1964. While some returned alive over the years and some bodies were recovered, the published records list no prisoner handover between January and May 1964. One man who did get out alive is listed as an “escapee.” (Dept. of Defense Prisoner of War, Missing in Action Office Reference Document,
U.S. Personnel Missing, Southeast Asia
, March 1998.)

10.
While he may privately have approved Kennedy's decision to send advisers to Vietnam, Nixon did his best as president to blame Kennedy for the U.S. involvement. In September 1971 he said at a press conference that “the way we got into Vietnam was through overthrowing Diem and the complicity in the murder of Diem.” He told Billy Graham, a recently released White House tape shows, that Kennedy “started the whole damn thing. He killed Diem, and sent the first 16,000 combat people there himself. . . . You see, Billy, the key thing here was Kennedy's, and—I must say—our friend Lodge's agreement to murder Diem. That's what opened the whole damn thing.”

Nixon's comments were typical of his spleen against the Kennedys but distorted the facts. President Ngo Dinh Diem, who had been maneuvered into office by the CIA in 1954, had been supported by the Eisenhower administration, which sent in the first 700 U.S. military advisers. The Kennedy administration also backed Diem initially, but the 16,000 military advisers were not combat troops, and only 195 had died by 1963. No combat troops were deployed until 1965. The burden of the evidence, reflected in most of Kennedy's public statements on the subject, is that he wished to avoid further U.S. involvement and bring the advisers home. In the fall of 1963, with South Vietnam slipping into chaos and the autocratic Diem losing control, Kennedy aides concluded the United States could no longer work with him. President Kennedy and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge did collude with the Vietnamese generals who toppled him on November 2, 1963. In a tape intended for his memoirs, released in 1999, Kennedy admitted that “we must bear a good deal of responsibility.” He deplored the way he and his
colleagues had handled recent contacts with Saigon. There is no evidence that Kennedy approved or encouraged the
murder
of Diem and his brother, news of which left him shaken and dismayed.