Watergate by Lamar Waldron

Author:Lamar Waldron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036060, BIO010000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2012-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

Aside from John Mitchell and Roger Ailes, the trusted core of Richard Nixon’s campaign staff in 1968 was made up largely of veterans from past campaigns. They included John Ehrlichman, H.R. Haldeman, Maurice Stans, and Herb Kalmbach, all of whom would later be prosecuted—along with Mitchell—after Watergate. Nixon’s main speechwriters included William Safire (for more moderate speeches) and Pat Buchanan, who provided fiery conservative rhetoric.

On August 8, 1968, Richard Nixon officially accepted the Republican nomination for the Presidency, which for months had been a foregone conclusion. Ambrose reports that there were “gasps” from the packed convention when Nixon announced Agnew as his running mate. The delegates were expecting either a rising star like Texas Congressman George H.W. Bush or a seasoned veteran like Representative Gerald Ford. Still, the crowd seemed otherwise happy with Nixon and his well-written speech about “the American Dream.” In it, Nixon reiterated his promise from his standard campaign speech: “ending the war in Vietnam” would be “his first order of business” as President. 57

Following his nomination, Nixon stopped en route to California for a meeting in Texas with President Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and CIA Director Richard Helms. This marks one of the first documented meetings between Nixon and Helms, who in the coming years would prove so important to each other’s future. The discussion was primarily to bring the new nominee up to date on foreign affairs, including the situation in Vietnam.58

Now that he was the nominee, Nixon expanded his attacks on Humphrey, using some of the same “fear and smear” techniques he’d been honing for years, though leaving Agnew to make the most outrageous remarks on his behalf. Nixon also made use of a “spy in the Humphrey camp,” identified as “Hearst journalist Seymour Freidin . . . a veteran CIA informant.” Freidin received “thousands of Republican dollars to phone reports on the Democrats to a secretary in Murray Chotiner’s office. Chotiner edited the messages, then wired them to Nixon’s plane.” As the bitter memories of the Chicago convention started to fade and Humphrey was subject to fewer real demonstrations, Nixon began using techniques that dated back to his first race, in 1946. Nixon had “busloads of pro-Nixon hecklers [who] followed Humphrey from rally to rally, trying to drown out his speeches.” Joining Nixon’s team around this time was Lucianne Goldberg, later to become infamous during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in Bill Clinton’s Presidency.59

Nixon tried to ensure that he faced no hecklers by having ticket-only rallies, from which anyone who didn’t look clean-cut was “turned away” or diverted to exits. When even after these precautions Nixon was faced with hecklers, he first “ordered John Ehrlichman to have the Secret Service detail rough them up.” When the Secret Service refused, “Nixon told [Ehrlichman] to create a flying goon squad to rough up the hecklers.” Ehrlichman did so, usually paying “cash to off-duty police.” This use of goon squads would later become more organized and part of the Watergate operation.60

Through September and October Nixon

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