Nixon's Secret (16 page)

The crux of the Kitchen Debate came when Khrushchev surprised Dick by going into a rather fiery protest over a recent resolution that Congress passed condemning the Soviet Union for its control over Eastern Europe. The resolution called for Americans to pray for the “captive” peoples of Eastern Europe, and the Soviet premier seemed to take this to heart. After this tirade, Khrushchev then dismissed all the American technologies he had seen in the exhibit so far and declared that the peoples of the Soviet Union would have all the same things in a few years’ time, and then his people would say to the United States “bye-bye” as they passed by.
18
Khrushchev had a few other good zingers during the debate, mocking the luxury of some of the appliances in the model kitchen by asking if there was an American machine that “put food in the mouth and pushed it down.” Nixon kept his composure and admired that the competition between the countries through the exhibit was technological instead of military, and ultimately both of the leaders agreed that their two countries should find areas in which they could work together. The exchange, though, was heated. At one point the cameras caught Nixon jabbing Khrushchev with his finger. Fortunately for Nixon, this was the Associated Press photo that was distributed in newspapers across the United States. The debate famously concluded with Khrushchev asking for everything he said in the debate to be translated into English and broadcast in the United States Nixon calmly responded, “Certainly it will, and everything I say is to be translated into Russian and broadcast across the Soviet Union. That’s a fair bargain.” Upon hearing this proposal, Khrushchev extended his hand, and the men vigorously shook. Of course, the Russians would famously only partly translate Nixon’s comments and aired the debate on television at a late hour, when most of the country was sleeping.
19

Time
magazine praised Nixon for his performance, saying he “managed in a unique way to personify a national character proud of peaceful accomplishment, sure of its way of life, confident of its power under threat.”
20
Nixon gained even more popularity with Americans who were devoutly anti-Communist, and he impressed his competitor in the debate, Premier Khrushchev. According to then-PR man William Safire, who was present at the exchange, “The shrewd Khrushchev came away persuaded that the advocate of capitalism was not just tough-minded but strong-willed.”
21
Khrushchev later said he did all he could to cause Nixon’s loss to Kennedy.

* * *

Nixon had a pivotal meeting in April 1959 with the highly romanticized, cigar-smoking, fatigue-wearing Cuban liberator, Fidel Castro. Castro had been sworn in as prime minister of Cuba in February after years of guerrilla warfare drove Fulgencio Batista from his ruthless dictatorship of the small island. Castro was in the United States for a fourteen-day stay at the invitation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Little was known about Castro’s intentions for Cuba at the time, and the meeting gave Nixon a chance to evaluate the mysterious revolutionary.

Though Castro steadfastly denied he had a history of communist involvement, as an undergraduate at the University of Havana, he had been a member of a student organization with communist members.
22
Nixon had his suspicions prior to the encounter. The two-and-a-half-hour meeting in Nixon’s Washington office was private, but it is known that Nixon clearly took the time to learn about Castro, while at the same time lecturing the young rebel about the growing Communist influence in Cuba. “This man has spent the whole time scolding me,” Castro later told an aide.
23

Nixon got a firm impression of Castro, which he conveyed in a memo to President Eisenhower. Castro was “either incredibly naïve about Communism or under Communist discipline,” Nixon wrote.
24
The vice president also noted that Castro’s antagonistic feeling toward the United States was “virtually incurable.” In Nixon’s opinion, Castro was dangerous and if left in power would become a large problem only a short distance (ninety miles) off the coast of Florida. Many on the left later criticized Nixon and claimed that if we had embraced Castro after the 1959 meeting and plied him with cash, we could have pulled Fidel from the Soviet orbit. This is false.

In the late eighties, Nixon’s son-in-law, New York lawyer and a longtime friend of mine Edward F. Cox, would be granted a rare interview with the aging dictator at the Palace of Justice in Havana. Castro would ramble in a two-hour tirade against the United States, but was otherwise cordial and somewhat friendly. When their time was up, the aged dictator would ask Cox, “So, how did your father-in-law know I was a Communist?”

Nixon’s advice to Eisenhower that Castro had to go would sow the seeds of the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy assassination, and Nixon’s ultimate downfall. In late 1959, then director of the CIA Allen Dulles put forth a proposal that stated that “thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro . . . Many informed people believe that the disappearance of Fidel would greatly accelerate the fall of the present government.”
25
The proposal led to the Dulles-formed Operation 40, a team of CIA assassins that, along with members of the Mafia, would attempt to assassinate Castro.

Because Castro had expelled all known CIA assets from Cuba, the agency needed the Mafia’s contacts in the various hotel casinos in Havana to collect intelligence about Castro’s movements. The CIA may also have thought that the Mob could get an assassin close to El Commandante. The Mob believed this marriage would be helpful in reclaiming their Havana gambling establishments and garner leverage with the US government.

Nixon, who had been assigned as the “desk officer” of Cuban affairs by Eisenhower, pushed the plan to have the CIA recruit the active help of the Mafia in eliminating Castro. Former FBI man and longtime Howard Hughes retainer Robert Maheu would be authorized to reach out to Mob fixer Johnny Rosselli to weld the agency and La Cosa Nostra together in an effort to kill the Cuban leader.

Nixon was clearly hoping that the hit on Castro would take place in the fall before the 1960 election, providing a major foreign policy victory for the Eisenhower-Nixon administration and a boost in Nixon’s prospects to prevail in the 1960 election, where it was crucial to Nixon to win the votes of Democrats and independents. The removal of Castro would be “a real trump card,” Nixon told his press secretary Herb Klein. “He wanted it to occur in October, before the election,” Klein added.
26
Nixon’s deep involvement in Operation 40 made him fully aware of the CIA assassination team that included CIA agents E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and Bernard “Macho” Barker. Operation 40, with the assistance of Mafia agents failed to eliminate Castro in 1960. These men would reappear at the failed Bay of Pigs operation, an offshoot of Operation 40 that anticipated a full-fledged invasion of Cuba concurrent with another attempt on Castro’s life.

Hunt, Sturgis, and Barker were on the ground in Dallas the day of the Kennedy assassination and were subsequently arrested at the Watergate Hotel in 1972. Nixon clearly understood the thread that ran from Operation 40 to the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy assassination, and the CIA role in Watergate, the caper that would ultimately bring Nixon down.

NOTES

1
.     Conrad Black,
A Life in Full
, p. 210.

2
.     
Crossfire
, November, 1982.

3
.     Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 161.

4
.     Jonathan Aitken,
Nixon: A Life
, pp. 225–227.

5
.     Jeffrey Frank,
Ike and Dick
, p. 76.

6
.     Melvin Small,
A Companion to Richard M. Nixon
, pp. 102–120.

7
.     Richard Nixon,
The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
, p. 163.

8
.     Stephen Ambrose,
Nixon: The Education of a Politician
, pp. 375–376.

9
.     Herbert S. Parmet,
Richard Nixon and his America
, p. 259.

10
.   Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 209.

11
.   Ibid.

12
.   Conrad Black,
A Life in Full
, pp. 349–352.

13
.   Leonard Lurie,
The Running of Richard Nixon
, p. 232.

14
.   “President suffers ‘mild stroke,’ will need several weeks’ rest; Nixon denies he’ll take charge,” Associated Press, November 27, 1957.

15
.   
Spokane Daily Chronicle
, May 9, 1958.

16
.   Stephen Ambrose,
Nixon: The Education of a Politician
, p. 254.

17
.   “The Russian People Can Take a Peek at U.S. Civilization,”
Saturday Evening Post
, August 1, 1959.

18
.   “Nixon in USSR Opening US Fair, Clashes with Mr. K,”
Universal International News
, July 1959.

19
.   Associated Press, “Soviet TV Shows Tape of Debate,”
The New York Times
, July 28, 1959.

20
.   “Better to See Once,”
Time
, August 3, 1959.

21
.   William Safire, “
The Cold War’s Hot Kitchen
,”
New York Times
, July 24, 2009.

22
.   Herbert Matthews, “From the Sierra Maestra to Havana, the Ideals Never Changed,”
New York Times
, April 5, 1959.

23
.   Jim Rasenberger,
The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America’s Doomed Invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs
, p. 21.

24
.   Ibid.

25
.   Anthony Summers,
The Arrogance of Power
, p. 184.

26
.   Anthony Summers,
The Arrogance of Power
, p. 185.

CHAPTER SIX

STOLEN

“Will God forgive me for stealing Illinois from Nixon?”
1

—Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, on his deathbed

“Of course they stole the election.”
2

—Richard Nixon

T
he 1960 election was viewed as a “generational change” election. America would choose between two young veterans of World War II, one who offered the staid continuation of the Eisenhower policies of peace and prosperity, and the other who urged a more activist vision for the future.

Incredibly, three of the four candidates on the two national tickets would eventually become president (John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon would all win the White House.). The election took place during one of the most turbulent times in American history. With the nation confronting communist aggression in Cuba and Indochina as well as a standoff with the Russian in East Berlin, the Cold War was near its peak. Voters believed that the election would determine the fate of free world. Both Nixon and Kennedy would run as Cold Warriors.

In spite of their disparate origins, the early careers of Nixon and Kennedy were curiously parallel. Both had been naval officers during World War II. Both began their political careers in the House in 1947 and had served together as junior members of the House Labor Committee. Both foreign policy hard-liners, they enjoyed a friendly relationship traveling to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, to debate the fine points of the Taft–Hartley labor law. Nixon was the hardscrabble upstart from California and Kennedy the politically connected rich kid from Boston, but both found common ground sharing the Pullman compartment on the Capitol Limited. “We went back by train to Washington from McKeesport,” Nixon recalled. “It was a night train because we had to get back for a vote the next day. And so we drew as to who got the upper berth and who got the lower berth, and I won, one of the few times I did against him. I got the lower berth, but it didn’t make a lot of difference, because all night long, going back on the train, we talked about our experiences in the past, but particularly about the world and where we were going and that sort of thing. I recall that was the occasion too, as we were going back on that train, we—I told him about me being stationed at Vella LaVella, and found that his PT boat had put in there, and we reminisced about whether we might have possibly met on that occasion. So we each assumed we did.”
3

Nixon was deeply affected by Kennedy’s serious illness and hospitalization in 1947 when it appeared that young Kennedy would not survive. The married Kennedy, a notorious ladies man, upon hearing that Nixon would travel to Paris dropped by the ungainly Congressman’s office with names and phone numbers Nixon could call for a steamy romp in the City of Lights. Nixon didn’t follow up.

Although Nixon had a high regard for Kennedy it appears that JFK did not have the same high regard for his Republican competitor. Nixon smarted from the rejection of his House colleague, and his sense of resentment to the Eastern elite would only grow. Not only did they dislike him, he believed they stole the White House from him. Senator George Smathers, the handsome friend of both Nixon and Kennedy said, “Nixon had a greater admiration for Kennedy than Kennedy had for Nixon . . . Nixon told me several times he admired Jack, and I happen to know the feeling was not particularly mutual. I don’t think Jack ever thought too highly of Nixon, either of his ability or of him as a man of great strength of character . . . He felt that Nixon was a total opportunist.”
4

Sometimes JFK could reciprocate Nixon’s goodwill. “Nixon is a nice fellow in private, and a very able man,” Kennedy said. “I worked with him on the Hill for a long time, but it seems he has a split personality, and he is very bad in public, and nobody likes him.”
5
Kennedy’s opinion of Nixon would only deteriorate during the hard-fought campaign. JFK speechwriter Richard Goodwin would hear Kennedy say of Nixon, “He’s a filthy, lying son of a bitch, and a very dangerous man.”
6