Richard M. Nixon: Smoking Gun Tape

Context

When Nixon was elected president in 1968, the nation was sharply divided by the Vietnam War and by a counterculture rebellion. The Vietnam War was by far the most polarizing issue. When the United States first became militarily involved in Southeast Asia in the early 1950s, it was widely seen as part of the ongoing U.S. effort to contain Communism and thus as essential to national security. But by 1968, with the United States seemingly no closer to victory and with U.S. casualties exceeding sixteen thousand, many Americans had lost faith in the war and the leaders responsible for it. Antiwar protests swept across the nation, culminating with a massive and violent demonstration at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

By 1968 a counterculture rebellion was also dividing the nation. Although Americans were initially united in their celebration of the prosperous society that emerged after World War II, by 1968 that consensus had broken apart. Counterculture rebels protested against the materialistic values of the post–World War II consumer culture and what they regarded as the bland, conformist lifestyle of middle-class suburban Americans. Through alternative lifestyles, psychedelic drugs, free love, and rock music, the rebels sought to recapture the American individualistic tradition.

Americans were deeply troubled by these divisions, and Nixon used them effectively to win the 1968 election. By promising that he would achieve an honorable peace and that he would bring the nation together, Nixon portrayed himself as a political moderate who would repair the national consensus. However, Nixon also campaigned in 1968 on darker themes meant to exploit the divisions in society for his political advantage. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in August, he promised that he would restore “law and order,” thereby implicitly criticizing both the antiwar protestors and the counterculture rebels. Once in the White House, however, Nixon became the symbol of the establishment protestors held responsible for the Vietnam War and the affluent society. Thus, when ending the Vietnam War proved to be an intractable problem for him, and as protests mounted, Nixon increasingly turned to these darker campaign tactics to silence his critics.

Protests and civil unrest are difficult problems for any president, but for a man with Nixon's temperament the national divisions of the late 1960s were particularly troublesome. An insecure person by nature, Nixon compensated for his worries through almost obsessive overachievement. His defeat by John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election by one of the narrowest margins in history and his razor-thin victory in the 1968 presidential election heightened his insecurities. Thus, when confronted with nationwide protests during his presidency, Nixon saw them not as legitimate forms of political expression but as threats to the viability of his leadership. In June 1970 Nixon approved a secret plan developed by his aide Tom Charles Huston that proposed using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to spy on antiwar protestors.

When, in 1971, the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret history of America's war in Vietnam leaked by the security analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Nixon approved the creation of the White House Special Investigations Unit, known popularly as the “plumbers,” to stop the leaks of classified information. Later that year, in an effort to help Nixon's reelection, the chief White House plumber, former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy, developed Operation Gemstone, which proposed a series of covert operations including the installation of listening devices on the Democratic National Committee's telephones, the incapacitation of the air-conditioning system at the Democratic Party's 1972 convention, and the kidnapping of radical Americans to prevent demonstrations at the Republican Party's 1972 convention. A scaled-down version of Gemstone was approved later that year by Attorney General John N. Mitchell. The Watergate scandal that led to Nixon's resignation originated ironically, then, in a covert plan intended to secure his reelection.

Throughout his presidency Nixon met frequently in the Oval Office with his chief of staff, Haldeman. Among other duties, the White House chief of staff supervises the president's daily schedule and controls access to the chief executive. However, because Haldeman had worked for Nixon in a variety of political capacities stretching back to 1956, the president also relied heavily on his aide for advice. Their Oval Office meeting on June 23, 1972, was thus part of their normal daily routine. One item on the agenda, however, the break-in at the Watergate Hotel six days earlier, was of particular concern to them.

When five men were arrested in the early morning hours of June 17, 1972, at the Democratic Party's national headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., they carried with them a variety of items suggesting that they were not ordinary burglars. One of them carried $2,400 in cash, including thirteen new, sequentially numbered $100 bills. Another had an address book containing the cryptic entry “Howard E. Hunt—W. House” with an attached phone number that proved to be for the White House switchboard. The burglars also carried expensive cameras and sophisticated electronic eavesdropping equipment. Because the eavesdropping equipment raised the possibility of a violation of federal wiretapping laws, the arresting Washington, D.C., policemen called in the FBI. The preliminary FBI investigation and the arraignment of the burglars later on June 17 turned up additional evidence that suggested a possible connection between the Watergate break-in and Nixon's reelection campaign. Four of the burglars were Cuban nationals who had been employed previously by the CIA in a variety of covert activities, including the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, in which the CIA attempted to have the Cuban leader Fidel Castro overthrown. In the hotel room of the Cuban nationals the FBI found a check signed by E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent who had helped organize the Bay of Pigs invasion. The fifth man proved to be James W. McCord, Jr., also a former CIA operative who at the time of his arrest was the chief of security for CREEP, Nixon's main campaign organization.

Although Nixon publicly dismissed the Watergate break-in as a minor burglary with no connection whatsoever to his reelection campaign, privately he understood almost immediately the potential damage it could do. His campaign's chief of security had been arrested, and, as Nixon and Haldeman both knew, Hunt was part of a secret White House unit created in 1971 to engage in “dirty tricks” against the president's political opponents. Moreover, by the time of his meeting with Haldeman on the morning of June 23, 1972, the FBI investigation also had discovered that a $25,000 campaign contribution solicited by Kenneth H. Dahlberg, a fund-raiser for Nixon's reelection campaign, had been deposited in the bank account of Bernard Barker, one of the Cubans arrested in the Watergate burglary. Moreover, the FBI had traced the $25,000 through a Mexican bank back to CREEP and its finance chairman, Maurice Stans, who had earlier served as Nixon's secretary of commerce. In their meeting on the morning of June 23, 1972, Nixon and Haldeman contemplated how to keep the FBI from discovering evidence that would undermine the president's reelection.