(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
BY STEVEN SPARKMAN
ANCHOR ANA COMPAIN-ROMERO
He famously said -- I am not a crook.
Now, the public gets a look at what impeached former President Richard Nixon told a grand jury about the scandal that brought his presidency down. The National Archive and the Nixon Library have released the transcripts of the testimony Nixon gave under oath -- way back in 1975.
“Nixon's testimony has remained locked out of sight ever since by grand jury confidentiality rules, a last, tantalizing secret from one of America's greatest political scandals. The transcript became public Thursday, providing a detailed view of Nixon -- combative, condescending, funny, outrageous, defensive and mindful of his place in history.”
The documents were released after a lawsuit by Nixon historian Stanley Kutler. Kutler didn’t predict any bombshells, but historians were still eager to pore over the pages. One interesting find was Nixon’s opinion on ambassador positions.
A writer for Tickle The Wire summarizes:
“...the president admitted to giving precedence to wealthy campaign contributors when assigning foreign ambassador posts. The president maintained that such assignations were not ‘commitments’ made for contributions. Rather, the president reasoned that big contributors, who are generally wealthy, have justified their qualifications by the mere fact of their wealth.”
But historians hoped the big get from the testimony would be comments on the infamous 18½-minute gap. The gap is a blank recording during the Watergate tapes. It coincided with a conversation between Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, just three days after the Watergate break-in.
But CNN correspondent Athena Jones says the testimony doesn’t give any answers.
Athena Jones: “Of course, the big thing that everyone wants to hear about is the 18 ½-minute gap in that tape, that famous gap. And you know, we don’t really have our questions answered there. He kind of dodges the question. He’s a few times. At one point he says, ‘I don’t now how that gap occurred. I guess it was an accident.’ At another point he says, ‘I’ve never heard this conversation you allude to, this 18 ½ minute gap.’ So not a lot of light shed on that.”
Analysts say Nixon chose his words carefully because, while he had been pardoned for anything he did during his presidency, he could still have been charged with perjury. Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate scandal, said this isn’t an authentic view of the former president.
Carl Bernstein: “The real Nixon is the Nixon of the Watergate tapes -- unfettered, in his office, ordering break-ins, firebombings, covering up -- that’s the real Nixon. This is a witness who wants to make sure that he is not caught in a legal trap. … It’s the same Nixon as we see on the Frost interviews, which is rehearsed.”
Along with the documents, archivists released 45 minutes of recordings Nixon made on his Dictaphone. In it, he details a surreal morning, long before Watergate, when he woke up around 4 a.m. and went to the Lincoln Memorial. Once there he started chatting with anti-war protesters, and the President get philosophical.
The Globe and Mail has the recording, where he repeatedly talked about the value of understanding people.
Richard Nixon: “For the next 25 years the world is going to get much smaller. You’re going to be living in all parts of the world. And it is vitally important that you know and appreciate and understand people, every place, wherever they are.”
He also weighed in on the burgeoning environmental movement, calling it important, but saying it didn’t solve a “spiritual hunger.”
“Ending the war and cleaning up the streets and the air and the water was not going to solve the spiritual hunger which all of us have and which of course has been the great mystery of life from the beginning of time.”
In his testimony, Nixon referred to the Watergate scandal as “this silly, incredible Watergate break-in.”
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