In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks
Oliver Atkins/National Archives

President Richard M. Nixon at his desk in the Oval Office, where a secret taping system had been installed.
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: December 10, 2010


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YORBA LINDA, Calif. — Richard M. Nixon made disparaging remarks about Jews, blacks, Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in a series of extended conversations with top aides and his personal secretary, recorded in the Oval Office 16 months before he resigned as president.



Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and his vice-presidential running mate, Senator Richard Nixon, in 1952.
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Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel with Nixon on Nov. 2, 1973, in Washington.
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Associated Press

Nixon conferring with Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser, on Nov. 25, 1972.
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Associated Press

Rose Mary Woods, President Richard M. Nixon’s personal secretary, at the White House in 1973.

The remarks were contained in 265 hours of recordings, captured by the secret taping system Nixon had installed in the White House and released this week by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.

While previous recordings have detailed Nixon’s animosity toward Jews, including those who served in his administration like Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser, these tapes suggest an added layer of complexity to Nixon’s feeling. He and his aides seem to make a distinction between Israeli Jews, whom Nixon admired, and American Jews.

In a conversation Feb. 13, 1973, with Charles W. Colson, a senior adviser who had just told Nixon that he had always had “a little prejudice,” Nixon said he was not prejudiced but continued: “I’ve just recognized that, you know, all people have certain traits.”

“The Jews have certain traits,” he said. “The Irish have certain — for example, the Irish can’t drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I’ve known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish.”

Nixon continued: “The Italians, of course, those people course don’t have their heads screwed on tight. They are wonderful people, but,” and his voice trailed off.

A moment later, Nixon returned to Jews: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”

At another point, in a long and wandering conversation with Rose Mary Woods, his personal secretary, that veered from whom to invite to a state dinner to whether Ms. Woods should get her hair done, Nixon offered sharp skepticism at the views of William P. Rogers, his secretary of state, about the future of black Africans.

“Bill Rogers has got — to his credit it’s a decent feeling — but somewhat sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he’s been in New York,” Nixon said. “He says well, ‘They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on.

“My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years,” he said. “I think it’s wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.”

These tapes, made in February and March 1973, reflect a critical period in Nixon’s presidency — the final months before it was “devoured by Watergate,” said Timothy Naftali, the executive director of the Nixon Library.

Mr. Naftali said that there were now only 400 hours of tapes left to released, and that those would cover the final months before the tape system was shut down in July 1973 after Alexander Butterfield, who was a deputy assistant to Nixon, confirmed its existence to the Watergate committee.

Mr. Naftali said he intended to have those tapes — actually, given changing technologies since Nixon’s time, CDs, and available for listening online at the library’s Web site — released by 2012.

An indication of Nixon’s complex relationship with Jews came the afternoon Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, came to visit on March 1, 1973. The tapes capture Meir offering warm and effusive thanks to Nixon for the way he had treated her and Israel.

But moments after she left, Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”

In his discussion with Ms. Woods, Nixon laid down clear rules about who would be permitted to attend the state dinner for Meir — he called it “the Jewish dinner” — after learning that the White House was being besieged with requests to attend.

“I don’t want any Jew at that dinner who didn’t support us in that campaign,” he said. “Is that clear? No Jew who did not support us.”

Nixon listed many of his top Jewish advisers — among them, Mr. Kissinger and William Safire, who went on to become a columnist at The New York Times — and argued that they shared a common trait, of needing to compensate for an inferiority complex.

“What it is, is it’s the insecurity,” he said. “It’s the latent insecurity. Most Jewish people are insecure. And that’s why they have to prove things.”

Nixon also strongly hinted that his reluctance to even consider amnesty for young Americans who went to Canada to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War was because, he told Mr. Colson, so many of them were Jewish.

“I didn’t notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don’t know how the hell they avoid it,” he said, adding: “If you look at the Canadian-Swedish contingent, they were very disproportionately Jewish. The deserters.”

[B]Nixon's Jewish Problem[/B]

Speaking from the grave, Richard Nixon talks trash about members of the tribe once again.
By Jack ShaferPosted Monday, Dec. 13, 2010, at 3:57 PM ET

Richard Nixon. Click image to expand.Richard NixonFrom his throne in hell, Richard Nixon commands our attention once again with newly released White House tapes from February and March 1973 that drop another tanker load of piss and bile on Jews.

"The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality," he told an aide.

"Most Jewish people are insecure. And that's why they have to prove things," he said.


"I didn't notice many Jewish names coming back from Vietnam on any of those lists; I don't know how the hell they avoid it," he remarked.

When then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said, "If [the Soviets] put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern," Nixon concurred. "I know," he responded. "We can't blow up the world because of it." (See the Dec. 11 New York Times story for more background.)

For reporters of a certain age, the recent release of 265 hours of Nixon tapes gives new life to dormant hatreds and lapsed interests. For them, it's a little like hearing "River Deep, Mountain High" on the radio for the first time in a decade. You haven't thought much about it since the last time you heard it, but the totality of the experience stuns you for a few moments. Then you return to whatever you were doing before and forget it until the next time.

Nixon's reflexive animus against Jews has been documented ever since (subscription required) the Watergate era. But I hesitate to call it anti-Semitism—not out of defense for Nixon but because I think it's something potentially worse.

Give a listen to the way Nixon talked about members of the tribe:

Going after all these Jews. Just find one that is a Jew, will you … —July 2, 1971

The Jews are born spies. You notice how many of them are? They're just in it up to their necks. … Also, an arrogance, an arrogance that says—that's what makes a spy. He puts himself above the law. —July, 5, 1971

Bob, please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats. … All right. Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers? —Sept. 13, 1971

Good. What about the rich Jews? … You see, IRS is full of Jews, Bob. … That's what I think. I think the reason they're after [the Rev. Billy] Graham is the rich Jews. —Sept. 14, 1971

This is national security, you bet we have. We've got all sorts of activities because we've been trying to run this town by avoiding the Jews in the government, because there were very serious questions. —March 29, 1973

There are some Jews, that you, that you might, as you might have guessed, doesn't mean that if there were some Gentiles it might not be this bad. There are some Jews in New York [who wanted an anti-trust suit] because [industrial and Nixon friend Robert] Abplanalp … makes the best valve at the cheapest price. —July 11, 1973

The first quotation, Stanley I. Kutler tells us in his book Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes, comes as Nixon muses about his plan to revive the House Committee on Un-American Activities to investigate the Pentagon Papers leak. Nixon not only wants to find the leakers; he wants to find Jewish leakers.

When Nixon finds out one of his daughters has been volunteering at a museum, he tells H.R. Haldeman, "The arts, you know—they're Jews, they're left wing—in other words, stay away" (July 23, 1972). When the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, White House tapes captured Nixon lashing out at Times Washington bureau chief Max Frankel and forbidding his staff from talking to the paper. ''Don't give them anything,'' Nixon said. ''And because of that damned Jew Frankel all the time—he's bad, you know. Don't give him anything.''
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When Judge Murray I. Gurfein was assigned to the Pentagon Papers case, Nixon said, "I like Gurfein fine. … He's a Jew, a liberal. But I think tough. I think tough. But he may be sucking up to the liberal left. In New York, you just can't tell what happens to those guys." From the same batch of White House tapes, Nixon broadcast his notion that Jews are born traitors. "The Jews are all over the government," Nixon said. "Most Jews are disloyal." After explaining that his Jews—Kissinger, White House counsel Leonard Garment, and speechwriter William Safire—could be trusted, he said, "But, Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?"

And this from the tapes: "The only two non-Jews in the Communist conspiracy … were [Whittaker] Chambers and [Alger] Hiss. Many felt that Hiss was. He could have been a half, but he was not by religion. The only two non-Jews. Every other one was a Jew. And it raised hell with us." And this: "There's a Jewish cabal, you know, running through this, working with people like [Federal Reserve Board Chairman Arthur] Burns and the rest. And they all only talk to Jews."
Related in Slate

This morning, Christopher Hitchens used the new tapes to whack Henry Kissinger. David Greenberg wrapped his head around Nixon and the Jews in 2002. Timothy Noah has been tracking Nixonian Jew-counting since 2001.

Even when Nixon isn't hating on Jews, he's got his Jewdar turned up high to make sure he knows when they're in his proximity. In 1972, aide H.R. Haldeman thinks out loud about a New York Times reporter, commenting that the writer has a "Jewish name," Nixon cautioned him. "You can't tell that way." (Regular readers of Slate need not be reminded of Nixon's adventures in Jew-counting, as documented since 2001 by our own Timothy Noah.)

Nixon has never lacked Jewish defenders. Just six months ago, writer Ben Stein, the son of Herbert Stein, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers under Nixon, pooh-poohed the Jew-counting story that Noah has so determinedly tracked. Wrote Stein:

Now, bear in mind, Nixon was by far the best friend the Jewish people have ever had since Abraham. He had the most Jewish appointees to high offices, the most pro-Israel foreign and defense policy in history, saved Israel in the Yom Kippur War, put Russia at bay about helping Egypt in that war—was just the best friend Jews have ever had, including Jews themselves.

Alas, being actively pro-Israel doesn't automatically exonerate Nixon from anti-Semitism. For one thing, he and Kissinger were playing a global board game with the Soviets in those years, and the Soviets were backing Egypt. An Israeli defeat would have been an American defeat, too. For another, Nixon didn't want to go down in history as the American president who "lost" Israel and put the Jewish people in peril.

To be open-minded about Nixon, let's go ahead and put his support of Israel in the asset side of his anti-Semitism account.

What then to make of his long list of Jewish appointees? In a newspaper interview last year promoting his book, Why Are Jews Liberals?, Norman Podhoretz beat Stein to the punch on Nixon's defense of Israel but added that Nixon "was the kind of anti-Semite who thought that Jews were smarter than everybody else. That's why he had Kissinger. That's why he had Arthur Burns, Herb Stein. … A lot of Nixon's anti-Semitism is talk. ... His anti-Semitism consisted of resentment of Jews for being liberals and hating him. It's not the traditional kind of anti-Semitism." [Emphasis added.]

Podhoretz is half, maybe three-quarters right. Nixon did seem to believe Jews were exceptionally smart, although these views were obviously colored by the fact that most of his encounters with Jews in his adult life were with successful Jews. Did he similarly extrapolate from his encounters with successful Catholics that they were brilliant, too? Mormons? Cubans? Armenians?

Did Nixon really need a one-syllable abbreviation for "Jewish liberal," as Podhoretz seems to imply? I think not. Whenever I read White House tapes I have the temptation to put Nixon on the couch and ask whether his vitriol for Jews came bundled with his personal insecurities. We know he grew up poor and resentful and that those resentments only grew as he found himself surrounded by swells at the Duke law school and the well-bred know-it-alls on Capitol Hill and Foggy Bottom. There was no shortage of specific and genuine Nixon White House enemies. Why blast Jews so persistently?

Plenty of American Jews understood that Nixon didn't like them. In his book Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House, speechwriter Safire notes the "indefinable suspicion" of many Jews that "Nixon just doesn't like Jews." Were they accurately gauging Nixon's prejudices or picking up on something else? Nixon White House counsel Leonard Garment sought an asterisk for his old boss and old friend's behavior because Nixon was, as Garment wrote in 1999, "an extraordinarily angry politician" who "was a champion, equal-opportunity hater." Garment continues:

Mainly, he hated liberals, reserving his most intense hatred for journalists, academics and government bureaucrats, all of whom had returned the favor over years of partisan combat. Nixon thought Jews overrepresented in all these populations. He could not resist making the fevered connection.

He could not resist making the fevered connection. Why the hell not? I can understand extending this sort of excuse to an uneducated knuckle-dragger, but the graduate of a prestigious law school who had served in the House, the Senate, and two terms as vice president? Garment forgives Nixon's private anti-Semitism because it "found virtually no correspondence in his speech or actions outside those explosions."

Nixon obviously possessed more control over his connection-making than Garment gives him credit for. Why else didn't he ever play the anti-Semite in public? Because he knew it was wrong! Nixon beat up on Jews because he knew, as an accomplished demagogue, that it would stir the animal passions of those around him. Reading the transcripts, you can see members of his inner-ring second his Jew-baiting without a whisper of dissent. As Nixon transgresses—and there can be no mistake that he knows that he's transgressing, because, as Garment points out, he never talks like this outside of the White House bunker—his underlings transgress with him.

As Satan worshippers will tell you, there's no bonding like the bonding over something indecent. Performing inside the proscenium arch of the Oval Office, Nixon draws his aides into his darkness—not that it took that much effort. Ripping on Jews is a Nixon loyalty test: Can his staff pass it? He consciously sets Jews up as objects of hatred and loathing for political ends (where have we heard that story before?), hardening his men to go wherever he wants them to go to do whatever he wants done.

Nixon's routine vilification of Jews for political gain wasn't anti-Semitism. It was something worse.

******

How can you miss Nixon? He's never gone. Send Nixon memories to slate.pressbox@gmail.com and record my Twitter feed. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

.Robert Koehler
Robert Koehler

Syndicated writer, editor at Tribune Media Services
Posted: December 23, 2010 09:22 PM

Believe in Violence and Be Saved



A dozen years ago, before 9/11, before Bush Jr. or the war on terror, Bill Clinton, then in the midst of impeachment hearings, bombed Iraq over a four-day period. Shortly before this act of national distraction, I read an article in the Chicago Tribune discussing, with the knowing, amoral inanity of the mainstream media, the international implications of the pending action.

For me, the article was immortalized by the following pull-quote from an anonymous Jordanian official, which crystallized the cynicism of geopolitics and the way nation-states function: "Look, nobody here likes Saddam, but people will not be happy when they see Iraqi babies dying on TV."

The article was in no way critical of the quote, which seemed to be delivered up merely for our sophisticated consumption. The idea, or so it struck me, was to coyly bring readers into the know so they could pretend to weigh, as important officials do, the troublesome public relations components of an act of war before committing murder in the name of national security.

If we oppose war, if we stand in horror at every nuance and detail of it that comes to our attention, if we grow less "knowing" and "sophisticated" as the days pass and the machinery of empire grinds on -- if we have experienced war first hand and felt the cruelty of industrialized murder disconnected from its justifications -- and if we are driven by this horror, let us say, to stand illegally at the White House fence in protest of it and, like Thoreau, Gandhi, King, submit to arrest for our beliefs, this cynicism is our dilemma.

The 131 people who did so a week ago -- members of Veterans for Peace and Code Pink, Daniel Ellsberg, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, journalist Chris Hedges -- barely merited news coverage in our sophisticated, dying media, which can purvey knowing cynicism far more easily than they can convey moral outcry. This slows down, coagulates, the dynamic of change.

Today's supercharged world, the one the media desperately summons for us 24/7, has no spiritual depth. Even so, some 60 percent of Americans, according to a recent ABC/Washington Post poll, are now saying the war in Afghanistan "hasn't been worth it"; that number has jumped 7 percent since July.

"I'm well aware of the popular concerns and I understand it," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in response to this ebbing of support, "but I don't think leaders, and certainly this president, will make decisions that are matters of life and death and the future security of our nation based on polling."

While her words sound so rational and sensible, this is when I thought about the "dead babies" quote and how the conceit of representative government is that it prevents the passion of the mob from ruling the day. Yet "the mob" is the reservoir of human empathy and the pulsing ocean of our evolution. When it comes to war, "the mob" may be the only voice of restraint and concern for the common good. The "leaders," isolated in their servitude to the corporate status quo, tempted by the power they command, are the ones who commit acts of inhumanity. Such acts are rational far more often than they are passionate and primal.

"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward."

So wrote Henry David Thoreau in his essay "Civil Disobedience," quoted by Ray McGovern a few days ago in an article discussing his own act of civil disobedience. Our only hope is the human conscience, individual and ungovernable, yet connected to the core of who we are while the decisions of political leaders -- who do not "make decisions... of life and death... based on polling" -- are too often connected only to the interests they represent.

Pondering all this, I also thought about theologian Walter Wink and what he calls the Myth of Redemptive Violence: the simplistic belief in incorruptible good and irredeemable evil, locked in an endless go-around of carnage and collateral damage. This myth, writes Wink, is society's dominant religion, at least as old as ancient Babylon, as current as the Saturday morning cartoons. It's the stand-in for wisdom in politics and pop culture -- and it's what the protesters at the White House on Dec. 17, and maybe even the respondents to the recent ABC/Washington Post poll, cried out against.

In the Babylonian myth, Wink explains, the universe was created in a confrontation between gods, an act of primordial violence. Thus our natural condition is war. And human beings, Wink writes, "are thus naturally incapable of peaceful coexistence. Order must continually be imposed upon us from on high: men over women, masters over slaves, priests over laity, aristocrats over peasants, rulers over people."

This myth imposes a toxic immunity on all who embrace it -- an immunity, you might say, to "dead babies" and all else that is harmed in the name of doing good. It has delivered us to our current crossroads. The time has come to transcend it, one conscience at a time.

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, contributor to One World, Many Peaces and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

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