FrostNixon: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews by David Frost

Author:David Frost [Frost, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mom 04/05/2014
ISBN: 9780061445866
Goodreads: 1906822
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2007-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

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PRIME TIME

Bob Zelnick was relaxing in his room at the Beverly Hilton hotel less than a week before our first broadcast when the telephone rang. The caller identified herself as Nancy Collins, the author of The Washington Post’s gossip column. Ms. Collins quickly got to the point: Was David Frost going to confront Nixon with new tapes unearthed by his investigators? Zelnick stalled with an ambiguous reply, wondering how Ms. Collins knew about the tapes. Her next question, pertaining to the content of our planned questions, was a dead giveaway that she had somehow acquired copies of all our documents dealing with research and interview strategy completed before we left Washington for California. Zelnick’s mind raced. The only possible culprit, he thought, was a secretary hired for the project who had quit when we failed to invite her to accompany us to the West Coast. He was dead-on. The woman had dumped every scrap of paper she had on The Washington Post. Thank God she doesn’t have the transcripts of our interviews conducted at San Clemente, thought Zelnick. Regardless, there was no reason to stonewall.

The Post’s great national correspondent Haynes Johnson soon joined the conversation, and Zelnick tried to acquaint them with the theory of our exercise. “We looked upon the Watergate taping as the trial Nixon never had,” said Zelnick. “We tried to look at ourselves as senior litigation partners in a law firm. But we knew we could ask questions and draw legal conclusions at times that a prosecutor can’t draw in court. We knew we could use certain internal legal analyses and blast him with it. We were in close touch, you know, with many of the people who had prosecuted the Watergate trial.” In fact, Zelnick himself had discussed certain legal theories with the prosecutors Richard Ben-Veniste and James Neal.

The Post played the story straight and, while we were disappointed that our control over the editorial flow had been interrupted, we could see certain public relations advantages to the piece. Other media, suspecting that the entire affair had been the product of David Frost hype, suggested that the leak had been intentional. Zelnick accepted interview requests from NBC News and National Public Radio, both of which aired stories reflecting deep skepticism about his assurance that we had not been involved. “Don’t take it too hard,” John Birt advised Zelnick. “Any reporter covered by the press quickly revises his opinion regarding their competence and objectivity.”

In fact, the project had been buffeted by criticism since the moment it had first been conceived. There was nothing about the venture that didn’t seem to rankle one columnist or another: that Nixon was being paid, that he was being given a platform, that a pushover Brit would be his only interrogator. Writing for The Washington Post, Charles B. Seib spoke for many of his colleagues at the time the contract was first signed: “Richard Nixon has had the last laugh in his long and bitter feud with the press.

“By selling his

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