| Nixon calls military greedy bastards { October 8 1999 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/nixontapes991008.htmlhttp://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/nixontapes991008.html
Portrait of a President Nixon Tapes Reveal His Cynical, Opportunistic Side
President Nixon gestures toward transcripts of White House tapes after announcing he would turn them over to House impeachment investigators and make them public in April of 1974. (AP Photo)
By Jon Ebinger
W A S H I N G T O N, October 8, 1999 — President Richard Milhous Nixon speaks. Loudly, clearly, and on occasion, profanely. On the military fighting in Vietnam: “The military. They’re a bunch of greedy bastards who want more officer’s clubs and more men to shine their shoes. The sons of bitches are not interested in this country.” On business leaders who support him: “The hell with the other businessmen. They won’t do a thing with their lives or their fortunes except screw someone else.” On his Cabinet, which he knows is deserting him over his Vietnam policy of staying the course: “They’re all running away. I know that. But that’s OK.” And on members of his own faith, who have taken an opposing view on Vietnam: “I don’t want any of those damn Quakers over here to see me.” This week, after some legal wrangling, the National Archives released 443 hours of tapes recorded during the first half of 1971. The recordings fulfill Nixon’s original intentions of making monuments to history. They also reveal the first bloom of his by now well-documented paranoia, with his obsessions and knee-jerk reactions laid bare for posterity. Tapes Make History in Themselves One of the first conversations on file is from Feb. 16, 1971, the day the taping system was first used by Nixon. Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield tells the president there are only eight people who know of the taping system’s existence, including the two of them, Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, and the Secret Service. Nixon spoke with then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger on the night of April 7, 1971, after delivering an address to the nation in which he said he would be withdrawing 100,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam and suggesting that the speech laid out his policy on Vietnam for the remainder of his first term. Nixon told Kissinger, “Right now, if it doesn’t work, then, let me say, I’m gonna find out soon. I’ll turn so right so goddamn hard, it will make your head spin. We’ll bomb those bastards right off the earth.” During the evening, Nixon conducted two dozen conversations, principally with Haldeman and Kissinger, but also with his secretary Rose Mary Woods, several members of his staff, the Rev. Billy Graham, and two Republican governors Nixon was wary of, Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan. With each conversation, the window on Nixon opens slightly wider. After Billy Graham tells him, “You’ve given me something to hold on to ... I’m putting the blame for [Vietnam] on Kennedy,” Nixon replies, “That’s right. We’re gonna win.”
The Beginning of the End Two months later, the day after The New York Times ran the Pentagon Papers, which documented the policy of the United States toward Vietnam over several administrations, Nixon spoke with Haldeman about his suspicion that the leak came from within Kissinger’s staff. Though his instincts were right in this instance (former aide Daniel Ellsberg was responsible for the Papers making their way to the Times), Nixon said Kissinger’s staff would “lie, cheat ... I warned him, I said don’t go over there, it’s the Democratic National Committee.” And in what could be called a prelude to Watergate, Haldeman tells Nixon about a mysterious “he” with whom he has discussed breaking into the Brookings Institution at some point in 1970. “Said they got [the Pentagon Papers] over at Brookings. They’ve moved it out of the Defense Department ... took the whole file over there. He argued ... what we should do is send some people over there on a routine ... security check, find the stuff in, confiscate it, and walk out.” Though the Brookings break-in was never conducted, the final days of the Nixon presidency were about to begin.
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