Nixon's Secret (55 page)

In April 1970, Nixon allowed the export of goods to China that had been manufactured elsewhere with American components. This measure was followed in July by the release of Bishop Walsh, a Catholic priest they had imprisoned. Later in July, Nixon went further and permitted US oil companies to refuel cargo ships bound for China. In August Nixon went a step further, inserting a line into a speech he gave to the editors of midwestern newspapers, arguing that “the deepest rivalry which may exist in the world today . . . is that between the Soviet Union and China.”
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In spring 1971 Nixon lifted all restriction on the use of US passports for travel to China. This led to the much-publicized invitation by the Chinese of the United States ping-pong team to play in China (an invitation that was reciprocated by the US team after their arrival in Beijing). Chou En-Lai personally received the US team in the Great Hall of the People, an honor that few diplomats could claim.
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Shortly after the “ping-pong diplomacy,” during a state visit to Pakistan, then a close ally of China, Nixon indicated to Yahya Khan that he was willing to send a secret high-level envoy to China. Khan passed along the message, and then in December the Pakistani ambassador to the United States hand delivered a message from Chou en-Lai, indicating China’s willingness to accept such an envoy.
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It should be noted before advancing to the sequence surrounding Kissinger’s secret meetings in China just how much this was Nixon’s brainchild, not Kissinger. In fact, Haldeman recounts that when told early on in the presidency that “[Nixon] seriously intends to visit China before the end of his second term,” Kissinger, ever the Europeanist, responded with an amused smile and “fat chance.”
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Kissinger has received the accolades (including a Nobel Peace Prize), but in truth he was a beneficiary of Nixon’s ambitious policy—not the mastermind of it.

However, Kissinger’s initial opposition to the policy would transform into his ownership of it. After several months of back-and-forth diplomacy regarding the timing, Kissinger pulled Nixon aside during a state dinner for the president of Nicaragua; the Chinese had presented a window between June 15 and 20 for the meeting with Kissinger.
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Due to travel constraints revised dates of July 9 arrival and July 11 departure were suggested and accepted by the Chinese. Kissinger would fly from a military airport in Islamabad, Pakistan, to a private airport outside Beijing.
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The meeting between Kissinger and En-Lai on July 10 concluded with an invitation for President Nixon to visit China in 1972. It was a coup when it was announced on July 15 that Nixon would visit China in February 1972; the global balance of power had been completely overturned. Upon hearing the news, former British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan said, “[Nixon has] brought the oldest civilization in the world back into the game to redress the new Russian empire.”
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In fact, MacMillan may have been better informed than he realized. One of the primary motivating factors for Nixon in reaching out to China was in pursuit of a rebalancing of US-Soviet relations. Nixon also fundamentally rethought the basis of US-Soviet relations; during previous administrations relations had been “compartmentalized” with the specific issues being addressed individually and not on the whole.
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However, Nixon saw this as a failing in US diplomacy. Nixon demanded “linkage,” whereby US-Soviet relations would be viewed through the paradigm of the totality of variables, from Vietnam to Egypt to trade.

Before Nixon could achieve détente with the Soviet, however, he had one more goal to strengthen his hand beyond China—an anti-ballistic missile system. The debate in Congress and US foreign policy circles was impassioned. In both circles the thought of an ABM system, which could neuter or significantly weaken the Soviet nuclear deterrent, was seen as an inherently destabilizing act. Nixon would only win approval of the measure in the Senate by a single vote, but the Soviets got the message—Nixon meant business, and it was better to work with him than work against him.
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In 1972, Nixon’s efforts in China and at home with the ABM Treaty bore fruit. Nixon and Secretary Brezhnev signed an anti-ballistic missile treaty (a concession to the Soviets), a preliminary agreement to limit Soviet arms (a measure that would evolve into SALT 1), and a basic outline for US-Soviet relations.
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* * *

At 6 a.m. on Saturday October 6, 1973, White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig woke up President Nixon at his home in California with news that Egypt and Syria had attacked Israel.
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The news of the war shocked the American foreign policy and intelligence communities to such an extent that a study prepared by the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence in conjunction with the Nixon Presidential Library concludes, “To intelligence historians, the October 1973 war is almost synonymous with ‘intelligence failure.’”
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It became clear in the hours after the attack that the Arab forces had surprised Israeli forces and the Israeli state faced the greatest threat to its survival since the original war of independence. Along the border with Syria, along the so-called Golan Heights 180 Israeli tanks faced 1,400 Syrian tanks supplied by the Soviet Union; likewise Egypt crossed the Suez with 80,000 soldiers facing little Israeli opposition.
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In the days following the Yom Kippur attacks Israel suffered a number of setbacks, and Washington became increasingly concerned. Nixon alone concluded that the United States must step in to back Israel against Arab forces whose primary military supplier was the Soviet Union—the 1963 war became more than just necessary to save the Jewish state, it became a struggle between the world’s pre-eminent superpowers.
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Kissinger opposed the US action.

It is one of history’s great ironies that it was Nixon whose airlift would play an integral role in the salvation of the Jewish state, as in the years since the release of the Watergate tapes it has become one of the established facts of the Nixon mythos that the president was a raving anti-Semite. The tapes that have been released since Watergate continue to damn the president, who seemingly maintained a sort of cognitive dissonance when it came to several prominent Jewish members of his senior staff, Kissinger, White House counsel Leonard Garment, and speechwriter William Safire, as well as economist Herb Stein. In one rant from 1971, Nixon rails against the Jews, who, in his estimation, were both “all over the government” and disloyal; he told Haldeman that the Jews needed to be controlled by emplacing someone at the top “who is not Jewish.”
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Incredible, given the position in which he would find himself in two short years, Nixon would argue to Haldeman that, “most Jews are disloyal,” and “generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you.”
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In another exchange, just months before the 1973 war, Nixon rants to Kissinger about American Jews and what he saw as their selfish view of foreign policy. On a call on April 19, 1973, Nixon reveals a concern that American Jews would “torpedo” a US-Soviet summit, vowing that, “If they torpedo this summit . . . I’m gonna put the blame on them, and I’m going to do it publicly at nine o’clock at night before eighty million people.”
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Then, most damning, Nixon would go on to argue, “I won’t mind one goddamn bit to have a little anti-Semitism if it’s on that issue . . . they put the Jewish interest above America’s interest and it’s about goddamn time that the Jew in America realizes he’s an American first and a Jew second.”
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Yet, despite all of this, Nixon would play a pivotal role in protecting the Jewish state, as Nixon recognized that the defeat of Israel was unthinkable for US interests. Nixon went to Congress to request authorization for emergency aide for Israel despite the Gulf States announcing a price increase of 70 percent in the wake of the Arab assault. After Nixon went to Congress for authorization, the Gulf States responded vigorously, announcing a total boycott of the United States, causing the oil shock of 1973.
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The Gulf States’ retaliation simply served to further entrench the opposition of many who had fought to slow or halt the shipment of weapons to the Israelis (the former being represented by Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Kissinger, the latter being represented by Secretary of Defense Schlesinger).
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Nixon hit the roof when he leaned that Kissinger was delaying the airlift because of his concern that it would offend the Russians. Despite the opposition of his national security and foreign policy brain trust, Nixon ordered the airlift, saying, “We are going to get blamed just as much for three planes as for three hundred,” and later in exasperation at the slow start of US support, said, “Use every [plane] we have—everything that will fly.”
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Finally, after several days of internal politicking amongst the upper echelons of the administration, Nixon got his airlift Operation Nickel Grass. Over the course of the airlift 567 missions were flown, delivering over 22,000 tons of supplies, and an additional 90,000 tons were delivered to Israel by sea.
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Later in her life, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir would admit that upon hearing of the airlift, she began crying during a cabinet meeting.
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Nixon’s loyalty drove him to save a US ally from the threat of utter destruction despite the real risk of economic crisis and political cost to himself. To borrow the phrase from the Kennedy clan, in Nixon’s decision to aide Israel we see a true “profile in courage.”

In a January 1973,
U.S. News & World Report
article titled, “Behind Nixon’s Reorganization,” the country and the political-industrial complex were made aware of an administration plan that would shake DC to its core. If Nixon had thought that the fight to win confirmation for his early judicial nominees was difficult, his fight to reorganize the government would help contribute to his downfall.

On September 15, 1972, Nixon met with John Dean and Haldeman to discuss Nixon’s frustration with the working of the federal bureaucracy. During this meeting, Nixon decided that after the election, “we’re going to have a house cleaning.”
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This desire was brought about by a frustration with his ability to run the extensive federal bureaucracy; in particular, Nixon had grown frustrated with the senior administrative bureaucracy across the government. Many members of the senior administrative bureaucracy had been appointed under Democratic administrations, and Nixon viewed it as impeding his ability to get government to respond to him. Haldeman has recounted one particular aspect of the conversation regarding the Defense Department bureaucracy: “Mel Laird, he didn’t change anybody . . . the people who ran the Pentagon before [the 1968 election] are still running the goddamn Pentagon.”
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Nixon and his men vowed to change the power balance in government or fail in the attempt. In the days following the election, a group of five individuals headed to Camp David by helicopter to set about Nixon’s reorganization: President Nixon, John Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Todd Hullen, and Larry Higby. To quote Haldeman, “for the next two months we would reside at Camp David, trying to take the Executive Branch of the government apart and put it back together in a model that would work.”
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The eventual model would radically redesign the government and effectively replace the cabinet. In its place there would be four “super-cabinet” officers, whose offices would be in the White House and would report directly to the president. These offices would be divided up to govern the following areas of responsibility: Economic Affairs (overseeing, for example, Commerce), Human Resources (e.g., the Office of Personnel Management), Natural Resources (e.g., Interior), and Community Development (e.g., Transportation).
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In addition to these “super-cabinet” officials, four of the traditional cabinet posts would retain their position within the diminished cabinet: State, Defense, Justice, and Treasury.
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In practice, no one would argue, there is an effective hierarchy in the federal government; for instance, the primacy of the secretary of education is over the secretary of defense. However, in the Byzantine world of the federal bureaucracy there were, in Nixon’s estimation, too many cooks in the kitchen—far too many for him, or any president for that matter, to effectively oversee.

At the time that the proposed reorganization became public knowledge, Nixon’s popularity had soared to its highest ever level—a fact that would soon change. Nixon had made enemies of every major power group in government, from the media to the intelligence community. However, that is for a later chapter. What is important for now is that Nixon had engineered an alliance of all the major power centers, and the target of that alliance was Nixon. The institutions of government unanimously opposed Nixon’s plans to reorganize the government as a “power grab.” Coupled with his threats to the CIA and his continued discussion of eliminating the Oil Depletion Allowance, the proposed reorganization would threaten the political establishment and be a major factor in Nixon’s downfall.

It is one of history’s great ironies that Richard Nixon, the student of humanity, deftly navigated negotiations with Chairman Mao and Leonid Brezhnev, but would ultimately fail to accurately predict the response of his opponents at home.

During his first term Nixon also maneuvered to dump Vice President Agnew in 1972. The man Nixon wanted to succeed him was none other than the man who had orchestrated the Texas voter theft that cost Nixon the White House in 1960—John Bowden Connally, LBJ’s right-hand man and governor of Texas. Connally’s connection to the public was that he was in the car when JFK got shot. This gave him a key Camelot connection and great value to Nixon. The 1960 race was so close that Nixon had benefited just from being in the race with Kennedy, a factor that would improve when JFK was martyred. Nixon succeeded in getting Connally to join his cabinet in 1971. Nixon was enamored with the handsome, silver-haired Connally, who moved with a swagger and Texas-sized confidence. Connally stepped down as treasury secretary in 1972 to head “Democrats for Nixon.” Nixon planned to dump Agnew for the self-assured Connally. However, Vice President Spiro Agnew, a favorite of the right for his bellicosity and militarist tendencies, gathered an unprecedented 45,000 write-in votes for vice president in the New Hampshire primary, while Nixon was drubbling anti-war Congressman Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey and conservative challenger John Ashbrook. So Nixon abandoned his goal of making Connally vice president.