Little Man in a Big Hurry

The Nixon story begins almost as if it had been written by Horatio Alger. Reared in a hard-working Quaker family, Richard Milhous Nixon was early inspired by his father's commitment to overcoming economic hardship through diligent effort. As the former Vice President has said, "My dad was an individual—he'd go to his grave before he took government help. This attitude of his gave us pride." And no doubt it did. The schoolboy Nixon worked in the family's small grocery store in Whittier until nine or ten o'clock at night, and after it closed for the night would study until two or three in the morning.

In Nixon's junior year at Whittier High School, in keeping with his Quaker philosophy of individual responsibility and personal dignity, young Nixon's father gave him complete charge of the vegetable counter in the family grocery store. Dick did the buying, driving to the Los Angeles public market before sunrise to haggle with the local produce growers and hurrying back to arrange his displays before he left for school. All the profit he could make was his, and all that he could save went into a college bank account. It was superb training for a boy.

In describing Richard Nixon as boy and young man, his schoolmates employ two adjectives repeatedly: "determined" and "persistent." After that come "brilliant," "serious," "clever," "calculating," "reserved," "cold," "industrious," and "game."

An excellent student who was willing to pay the price of long hours of study to achieve academic excellence, young Nixon also became entranced with debating. His high school debating coach, Mrs. Clifford Vincent, remembers that she used to feel "disturbed" at his superiority over his teammates. "He had this ability," she recalls, "to kind of slide round an argument instead of meeting it head on, and he could take any side of a debate."

Nixon has always prided himself on his skill with an audience and on the practiced urbanity and self-control that he patiently developed in those early years. His teenage skill at debating may have been honed by six weeks as a barker for a wheel of chance at the Slipper Gulch Rodeo in Prescott, Arizona. There "he learned the knack of drumming up customers and then letting them have it," Phillip Andrews wrote in This Man Nixon. "His booth, it is said, became the most popular one in the show."

While working his way through Whittier College, Richard Nixon majored in history and again covered himself with distinction as a debater; he also distinguished himself as an actor in school dramas.

Dr. Albert Upton, who directed Nixon in one of the Whittier College plays, is still awed when he recalls how adept the young collegian was at producing tears. "It was beautifully done, those tears," he remembers, confessing to having "twinged" when he saw photos of Nixon weeping on Senator William Knowland's shoulder after the famous "Checkers" speech. Dr. Upton says he never dreamed that his former student would go into politics, but adds: "I wouldn't have been surprised if, after college, he had gone on to New York or Hollywood looking for a job as an actor." Some cynics believe he did!

According to Earl Mazo, his most friendly biographer, "Nixon classified himself a 'Liberal' in college, 'but not a flaming liberal.' Like many law students of that period, his public heroes were Justices Brandeis, Cardozo and Hughes, then the Supreme Court's progressive minority." At Duke Law School on a scholarship, he graduated third in his class. Stewart Alsop quotes a former classmate:

"My impression was that Richard Nikon was not an exceptionally brilliant student. However, he was outstanding because of his ability and willingness to do prodigious amounts of work. He pursued his ambition to stand at the head of his class with an intensity that few people are capable of."

The biggest excitement of his law school days came when he and two classmates became overeager to learn of their class standing at the end of the second year and, in the words of one of them. Bill Perdue, "broke into the dean's office during the summer to find out where they stood."

Upon graduation, Nixon had his heart set on the "big apple"—New York. Although he graduated third in a class of twenty-six, none of the New York firms to which he applied showed any interest. Then he made application to the FBI, and accounts vary as to whether there was any response from that agency. In any case, Nixon returned to Whittier and entered law practice in his home town. After Pearl Harbor, Nixon hied himself to Washington looking for a job. According to Harvard's John Kenneth Galbraith (CFR):

". . . the Office of Price Administration, where I was in charge of price control, rescued him—and hired Mrs. Nixon too. The primary credit goes, I believe, to Thomas I. Emerson, later Professor of Law at Yale, a valiant supporter of Henry A. Wallace and by all odds the most radical member of this very liberal agency. But Leon Henderson, who was in general command, gets bureaucratic credit and so do I. It hurts me that I never met Mr. Nixon in those days. I'm glad he's still under my influences."

Nixon found life as an OPA bureaucrat suffocating, and in the spring of 1942 he applied for a Navy commission, disregarding the fact that as a Quaker he could easily have claimed exemption from active service. In the famous "Checkers" speech of 1952, Mr. Nixon described his war record in these words:

"My service record was not a particularly unusual one. I went to the South Pacific. I guess I'm entitled to a couple of battle stars. I got a couple of letters of commendation, but I was just there when the bombs were falling, and then I returned."

That isn't just how it was. In fact, Stewart Alsop noted in Nixon and Rockefeller that ". . . Nixon had a non-combat job far from the battle lines . . ." For a few weeks, though, his naval unit was on the fringe of a combat area. But though he received a citation for efficiency in providing supplies something he had been doing effectively with cabbages and parsley since the age of seventeen—he was certainly entitled to no battle stars.

During the long lonely nights in the backwaters of the Pacific war, Nixon did develop a talent that has doubtless stood him in good stead ever since. The young lieutenant became an expert—and very cagey—poker player. "He was the finest poker player I ever played against," fellow officer James Udall said. "I once saw him bluff a lieutenant commander out of $1,500 with a pair of deuces."

Another officer, Lester Wroble, said he never saw Nixon lose at the game—five-card stud or draw, nothing wild. "He was consistent. He might win $40 or $50 a night," Wroble said. When Nixon entered politics by running for Congress from Whittier, his few thousand dollars of savings included money won at the poker table.

Richard Nixon's entrance into politics was one of those quirks of fate. In a feature story the Los Angeles Mirror once observed: "It's still a matter of some amusement to Dick Nixon how he was transported from a small-town lawyer into a legislator. He answered a newspaper ad." In reality it wasn't, quite that simple. Republicans in Nixon's home district had for ten years been endeavoring unsuccessfully to unseat Democratic Congressman Jerry Voorhis. A candidate-finding "Committee of One Hundred" was formed to select an opponent to Vorrhis who had enough pizazz to defeat the veteran Congressman. The committee took its first step by sending to twenty-six newspapers in the district a publicity announcement describing its aims. What they wanted, it said, was a newcomer in politics with qualifications that might make him a match for the incumbent. The committee promised that its endorsement and financial support would not obligate the candidate in any way.

An old friend of the Nixon family, Herman Perry, head of the Bank of America's Whittier Branch, fired a telegram to Nixon, who was awaiting his discharge from the Navy in Washington. Nixon telephoned Perry and told the banker he was definitely interested. Nixon was flown home for a November 1, 1945 appearance before a screening committee at the William Penn Hotel in Whittier. He told the assembled men that there were two schools of thought about the nature of the American system:

One advocated by the New Deal is government control in regulating our lives. The other calls for individual freedoms and all that initiative can produce. I hold with the latter viewpoint. I believe the returning veterans—and I have talked to many of them in the foxholes—will not be satisfied with a dole or a government handout. They want a respectable job in private industry where they will be recognized for what they produce, or they want an opportunity to start their own business. If the choice of this committee comes to me, I will be prepared to put on an aggressive and vigorous campaign on a platform of progressive liberalism designed to return our district to the Republican Party.

Despite the fact that his closing sentence seemed to contradict what he had said before, Richard Nixon was tapped by the committee to carry the Republican banner into political battle against the seemingly unbeatable Mr. Voorhis. The "Committee of One Hundred" had hired an appealing symbol—one that could be well merchandised. He was young, industrious, well-educated, and very ambitious. His background exemplified the wholesome Protestant ethic of hard work and diligent self-improvement. Here was a young man who was going places.

Up to then, Richard Nixon says, he had had little interest in politics, but he accepted the offer with alacrity: "Why did I take it? I'm a pessimist, but if I figure I've got a chance. I'll fight for it." As the friendly Stewart Alsop observes:

"Nixon became a politician, in short, more because it seemed a good idea at the time than because of any profound political convictions. Having thus entered politics more or less by accident, one suspects that he thought of a political career much as another young veteran back from the wars might think of as a way to make a advertising, or meat packing, or bond-selling living and get ahead."

Nixon's opponent, Jerry Voorhis, was a true maverick. Voorhis at one time had been a registered Socialist and was a staunch supporter of the New Deal's welfare and business control measures. But Voorhis broke with FDR on the question of the Federal Reserve System and deficit spending. Most Leftist politicians would rather slide down a bannister that turns into a razor blade than criticize the international banking fraternity, which probably contributes more money to the Democratic Party than do the labor unions. But Voorhis committed the unpardonable sin of introducing a bill into Congress calling for the end of the international banker-controlled Federal Reserve System. Voorhis then compounded the crime by writing a book called Out of Debt, Out of Danger for a conservative publisher, Henry Regnery and Company. Out of Debt, Out of Danger was a slashing attack on the international banking Insiders, who profit extensively from Keynesian deficit spending. FDR and his cronies had convinced most Americans that they need not worry about the mounting national debt because "we owe it to ourselves."

Voorhis showed that we didn't owe it to ourselves, we owed it to the international bankers. Clearly, Voorhis had to go. He was a Liberal, but he was an anti-international banker Liberal—a variety scarcer than a woman of virtue in a house of ill-fame. Just what role, if any, the international banking clique played in Nixon's race against Voorhis is difficult to prove. It is reported, reliably we believe, that New York banking elements poured funds into the Nixon campaign and provided behind-the-scenes know-how from the Madison Avenue advertising firm of Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn, which also operates out of Los Angeles. Voorhis has hinted at this in print and been much more blunt about it in private conversations. William Costello, in his "unauthorized" biography of Nixon, wrote:

"Voorhis intimated later in his book that the Nixon campaign . headquarters may not have been quite so impoverished as this story [a magazine story by Mrs. Nixon, which portrayed a shoestring operation] would suggest. The congressman said the representative of a large New York financial house made a trip to California in October 1945, about the time the Committee of One Hundred was picking Nixon, and called on a number of influential people in Southern California. The emissary "bawled them out" for permitting Voorhis, whom he described as "one of the most dangerous men in Washington," to continue to represent a part of California in the House. As a consequence, Voorhis said, "many of the advertisements which ran in the district newspapers advocating my defeat came to the papers from a large advertising agency in Los Angeles [at a time when this now common practice was unheard of], rather than from any source within the Twelfth District. And payment was made by check from that same agency."

Just how much or whether outside interests actually contributed to Nixon's campaign has never been made clear.

It should be noted here that William Costello, a Liberal, portrays Voorhis as simply a champion of the "little man," and says nothing of his Out of Debt, Out of Danger, his advocacy of the dismantling of the Federal Reserve, or his opposition to the international banking establishment. Voorhis was much more than just a foe of "big business." He was a foe of "big banking," and there is a difference—a difference that was much larger then than now.

Nixon waged an energetic and aggressive campaign against Voorhis. At first he wore his old Navy uniform while delivering speeches, until it was learned that rank-conscious ex-G.I.'s reacted to this practice with hostility. Nixon's campaign leaflets billed him as the "clean, forthright young American who fought in defense of his country in the stinking mud and jungles of the Solomons" while Voorhis "stayed safely behind the front in Washington." According to biographer Costello:

". . . Nixon, canvassing the 200,000 voters of the district, introduced himself as a 'liberal Republican.' He refrained from attacking the New Deal in all its aspects, but he pulled no punches in attacking Voorhis."

As he was to do so successfully in future campaigns, Nixon made a major issue of Communism. He told the Republican kickoff rally in Whittier on August 29, 1946:

"I want you to know that I am your candidate primarily because there are no special strings attached to me. I have no support from any special interest or pressure group. I welcome the opposition of the PAC [the CIO's Political Action Committee], with its Communist principles and huge slush fund.

Later Nixon referred to Voorhis as "the PAC candidate and his Communist friends." The charge was damning, but not true. The PAC was indeed controlled by Communists, but Voorhis had been refused PAC support. Nixon's allegation was based on the fact that a local CIO unit had requested national approval of Voorhis, but it was rejected. The maverick Voorhis was not only anti-international banker, he was also strongly anti-Communist, and while he was a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities had fought Communist penetration of PAC. The West Coast Communist paper, People's World, complained bitterly that "Voorhis is against unity with Communists on any issue under any circumstances."

But Voorhis was extremely vulnerable on the issue of socialism. Over and over candidate Nixon told audiences: "A vote for Nixon is a vote against . . . socialization of free American institutions."

Liberals resented, and resent to this day, Nixon's linking of socialism with Communism. In doing so they ignore the fact that Marx made no distinction between the two and that it is a basic tenet of Communist philosophy that a nation must adopt socialism before Communism is possible. It is ironic that as President, Nixon has supported and expanded the very legislation and concepts he used to lash his first political opponent with. In the end, Nixon's aggressive tactics worked, and he was able to pull off one of the major upsets of the year by trouncing Voorhis 64,784 to 49,431.

As a Congressman Nixon carved out a moderately Conservative voting record on domestic issues and a Liberal one on foreign policy. From the beginning Nixon was a supporter of foreign giveaway programs, which have long been demanded by the international socialists and the CFR. Joseph Stalin had stated earlier, concerning the importance of foreign aid to the triumph of socialism:

". . . It is essential that the proletariat of the advanced countries should render real and prolonged aid to the backward nationalities in their cultural and economic development. Unless such aid is forthcoming, it will be impossible to bring the various nations and peoples within a single world economic system that is so essential to the final triumph of socialism."

Of course, such aid was indeed forthcoming. In Nixon and Rockefeller Stewart Alsop tells us:

"Nixon has also loudly and consistently advocated an adequate foreign-aid program. Indeed, in Nelson Rockefeller's struggle . . . on this issue he was Rockefeller's strongest . . . ally.

"Ever since the Herter committee days . . . he has been a strong advocate of foreign aid, with no visible political profit to himself. He is an internationalist, an activist, an interventionist . . . in foreign policy."

Nixon defended his foreign aid stands on the basis that it was in America's interest to build up the free world so that it could resist Communism. Unfortunately, while examples can be cited in which foreign aid has done just that, in many more instances foreign aid money has been used to socialize countries and to oust anti-Communist leaders and replace them with "neutralists," who usually side with the Iron Curtain countries. Nixon's "internationalist" policies are simply those of the Council on Foreign Relations in its efforts to bring about a world superstate. Nixon's admitted mentor in this area, Christian Herter (CFR), a top Insider who later became Secretary of State after Dulles' death, had married into the Standard Oil fortune and served its internationalist interests well.

Nixon accompanied Herter to Europe to compile the reports that became the basis of the $17 billion Marshall Plan. Large amounts of the money were used to rebuild West Germany, where much of the industry had been bombed out during World War II, but even more had been given to the Russians. In the aftermath of Yalta, the Bolsheviks had been allowed to cart off to Russia from West Germany entire factories, down to the last drill press, nut, and bolt. Nixon never mentioned this as one of the real reasons for the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan is usually pointed to as an example of the "success" of the foreign aid program, but it actually was used to promote socialism in Western European countries.

Although the program was justified to Americans in the name of "anti-communism," the Plan had been designed in part by a Russian-born Communist immigrant named Lewis Lorwin, who, according to Congressman Edward Cox, had been an associate of Leon Trotsky in the abortive Communist revolution of 1905. On March 29, 1948, after listing numerous persons in positions making policy for the Marshall Plan whose Far Left and Communist front backgrounds indicated what was happening, Cox told his fellow Congressmen: "To permit pro-Communists, Socialists, or collectivists of any hue to administer this American program, at any level, would be a grave mistake."

Even the name of the program was phony. The Marshall Plan was put together by Herter and his associates, including Communist Lewis Lorwin. Secretary of State George C. Marshall's name was tacked on to the Plan as a signal to Leftist forces around the world that the Plan was controlled by the Left. Marshall (CFR), a man who had been mysteriously promoted over the heads of thirty-four superiors to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff just as he was about to be retired after an unspectacular career, was well known in sophisticated revolutionary circles as one of their own.

Early in his Congressional career Nixon began to develop his reputation among both Liberals and Conservatives as a cynical opportunist. "Almost from the start," writes Costello, "Nixon showed a grasp of the opportunistic art of working one side of the fence while a bill was being amended and perfected, and then switching to the other side or being conveniently absent when the measure came to a final vote." He was also careful to build contacts into both Conservative and Liberal wings of the Republican Party. In those days Nixon was a true pragmatist, interested not in ideology but in building his chosen career. One political observer noted that Nixon could spend one evening with the "Modern Republicans," convincing them he was their best ball carrier, and the next evening could convince the backers of General MacArthur that he was their man.

As Nixon learned the Washington ropes, he became aware, possibly due to his close association with Herter, that the behind-the-scenes power in the Republican Party lay with Tom Dewey (CFR), two-time unsuccessful Republican candidate for the Presidency. Dewey ran the Eastern Liberal Establishment wing of the Party for the Rockefeller and related New York international banking interests. Probably through his connections with Dewey, Nixon became a founder of Republican Advance, the Republican offshoot of the ADA that was discussed in the previous chapter. Republican Advance was established to mitigate the influence of the Taft wing of the Republican Party and water down its anti-socialist policies. It was financed by Insiders Nelson Rockefeller and Sidney Weinberg, who wished to make the policies of the Republican Party a carbon copy of Democrat Party policies. Later, Republican Advance was to become "Citizens for Eisenhower," and to steamroller the outmaneuvered Taft people.

One of the key decisions of Nixon's Congressional career was to accept a proffered assignment on the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Weighed in the balance was the fact that the Committee offered an unparalleled opportunity to become widely known in a hurry and to take advantage of the growing concern of the country over the advances of Communism. Against this was the fact that the Committee had been the recipient of a colossal smear job from Communists, pro-Communists, and woolly-minded Liberals, many of whom had been sucked into Communist fronts and were not happy about the exposure of their indiscretions. After due consideration Nixon decided to accept the Committee assignment—a decision which started a chain of events that would eventually put the young lawyer from Whittier into the White House.

The political climax of Nixon's Congressional career was the Alger Hiss affair. In the short space of 134 days, between August 3 and December 15, 1948, Nixon's name became a household word, and as the two Hiss perjury trials dragged through the courts in 1949, with sensational revelation following sensational revelation, the "fighting Quaker," as Nixon loved to categorize himself, became a national celebrity.

During the summer of 1948, the House Committee called upon Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor at Time Magazine, to testify. Nixon recalled later that the witness "made charges which at the time seemed fantastic—that he'd been a Communist, that he had worked with Hiss, [Harry Dexter] White, [John] Abt, [Lee] Pressman, [Nathan] Witt, and a number of other people who were also connected with the government." Hiss had been a very important man in the New Deal, although he was not well known to the man in the street. According to Nixon biographers Mazo and Hess:

". . . [Hiss] was highly respected in the government, and also in legal and diplomatic circles. Only the year before he had been appointed president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at a salary of $20,000, which was $5,000 more than what was then paid Cabinet members and congressmen. The Carnegie board which hired him was composed of eminent men. Its chairman was John Foster Dulles, the Republican party's foremost expert on foreign affairs . . ."

Hiss seemed beyond reproach. He had been at FDR's side while the ailing and failing President was dealing with the Russians, and he also had been the principal architect of the United Nations Charter. Mazo and Hess continued:

". . . Hiss had been principal adviser to the American delegation at the first United Nations General Assembly Session. Before that he had distinguished himself as secretary-general of the conference in San Francisco which created the United Nations. Furthermore, he had accompanied the Roosevelt party to Yalta and had been executive secretary of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944 . . ."

Hiss's was by far the most important name dragged out of the reluctant Chambers, and Hiss demanded an immediate hearing to answer Chambers' charges.

On the witness stand Hiss was smooth as glass. Not only did his confident testimony contrast with the halting and tortured words of Chambers, but the appearance of the tall, slim, impeccably dressed Harvard graduate also contrasted favorably with that of the dumpy and rumpled Chambers. When Hiss concluded his testimony, the general feeling in Washington was that the long-controversial House Committee had just slit its own throat. Almost everyone was convinced that Chambers had duped the Committee into using it as a forum from which he could slander people. Congressman John Rankin, an outspoken segregationist from Mississippi who was hated by the Liberals with an absolute passion, was so moved by Hiss's testimony that he left his seat to shake Hiss's hand. That morning President Truman told a press conference that Republicans had cooked up spy hearings "as a red herring."

Legend has it that Nixon, due to his courtroom experience, detected that Hiss's testimony was just a little too smooth. Later, to explain his "hunch," the California Congressman called attention to a few lines of testimony that had seemed to strike a phony note from the first.

Q. You say you have never seen Mr. Chambers?

A. The name means absolutely nothing to me.

Nixon, it seemed, perceived that Hiss was not answering the question. Nixon later explained:

"As I read the testimony later I became convinced that if Hiss was lying he was lying in such a way as to avoid perjury, with a very careful use of phrasing. He never made a categorical statement. He would say, "To the best of my recollection" over and over again. He never said, "I have never known Whittaker Chambers." He constantly reiterated when the question was put to him, "I have never known a man by the name of Whittaker Chambers." In other words, he was too careful in his testimony, too smooth. It was very possibly an act, it seemed to me."

Again, legend has it that, on the basis of these suspicions, Nixon followed up on the case and personally re-interviewed both Chambers and Hiss. This he did do, but not on his own initiative. The material on Hiss was not new in government security circles. Not only had Chambers told other investigators privately about Hiss on previous occasions, but the FBI had also been hot on Hiss's trail. In 1964, Nelson Rockefeller admitted that when he was attending the San Francisco conference as Assistant Secretary of State, he had met with FBI men in his hotel room every morning at 7:30. According to Rocky, "They came in one morning and said, 'We've got the goods on Alger Hiss.'"

[Note: Why did Rockefeller wait nearly twenty years before revealing this information about fellow CFR member Alger Hiss? Why did Rockefeller not relay this information to his superiors in the State Department? His excuse was that he had the feeling that "maybe this [the FBI] was a fascist organization in our midst." This provides us with a valuable clue as to the esteem in which Rockefeller holds J. Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I. His esteem for the United Nations, on the other hand, is indicated by the fact that, even though the UN Charter had been largely written by Soviet spy Alger Hiss, who was serving as Administrative Secretary General, the Rockefeller family had donated the land upon which the UN building stands.]

In a TV interview on CBS in 1962, Senator Karl Mundt, who at the time of the Hiss case was chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, revealed that an Assistant Secretary of State named Jack Peurifoy had shown him the State Department's dossier on Hiss, which "Truman would not let House investigators see." According to the Associated Press, "Mundt said his look at the security file on Hiss came before Richard Nixon, then a congressman, had made up his mind that Hiss was guilty." Mundt was told by Peurifoy, "I know that what you're saying about Alger Hiss is true as I have access to the files of the State Department, which Truman will not let you have."

There were at this time a group of ex-Communists and former FBI agents in Washington who were working diligently to try to get the facts about Communist subversion and infiltration of government made public. This group worked on Nixon for months to try to impress upon him the importance of going after Hiss. One of these men, whose name still cannot be revealed, told the author:

"We had an awful time with Nixon. Nixon was very timid about it [pursuing Hiss] . He didn't want to do it. Some other members of Congress were recruited to apply additional pressure on him. He was anything but a tiger and some of us who helped create the Nixon image have lived to regret it. We didn't realize the extent to which he was chicken. He has been consistent in this particular weakness ever since."

Nixon had reason to fear taking on Hiss, despite the fact that he knew Chambers was telling the truth. Hiss was not only the fair-haired boy of the New Dealers, he was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and John Foster Dulles (CFR), a top Insider and Rockefeller relative who had served as an attorney for numerous international banking firms and who was later to be Ike's Secretary of State, had appointed him as president of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. In taking on Alger Hiss, Nixon was taking on not only the street-bunder-level Communists and their allies and sympathizers, but also his own future partners in the Eastern Liberal Establishment. On the other side of the scales was the opportunity to achieve fame and political advancement on the tide of revulsion against Communism that was rising across the land. Nixon decided to take the chance and the Nixon legend was born.

Commenting on this legend, Martin Dies, for many years chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, wrote:

". . . in the case of Alger Hiss, there are many facts which have never been known by the public. Our people believe, for instance, that the discovery of Hiss was largely the work of Richard Nixon. The truth is that he had very little to do with it . . . "

Dies continued, providing background to the Hiss case:

". . . We had known about Hiss for some time. As a matter of fact, Whittaker Chambers had come to my office several times and had told me about Hiss in very general and vague language. I knew what he was talking about because I had the information supplied by the Prime Minister of Canada; but Chambers was not ready to break openly with the Communists and testify. I knew that without his testimony we could not make out a case. I did what I could to persuade Chambers to testify as an act of atonement for his complicity in the theft of our secrets . . ."

Dies went on to explain:

". . .I quit Congress [for reasons of health and election opposition from his own party leader, FDR] and Chambers began to contact my very able Chief Investigator and Secretary, Robert Stripling. When Whittaker Chambers finally decided to talk, it was to Stripling. Stripling could have given those facts to any member of the Committee and it would have made him famous and guaranteed his promotion to the Senate. He chose to select Richard Nixon, an obscure Congressman from California. The rest is history. It was the 'breaking' of this story which put Nixon in the Senate and Vice Presidency. Richard Nixon should have been eternally grateful to Stripling and it was publicized that Stripling would be offered an important post in the Eisenhower Administration. He deserved it and had the ability to fill any post in the government with credit to the Administration.

". . . I always had a feeling that Stripling wanted the recognition he deserved. So far as anyone else knows, he was never offered the opportunity to accept or reject. Nixon was placating the "liberals" and the last thing the "liberals" would have tolerated was Robert Stripling in an important position. Furthermore, Eisenhower was a protege of Roosevelt. He was implicated with Roosevelt in the stupid blunders which made it possible for Communism to become the greatest menace of all times. Eisenhower shared the views of Roosevelt about the Communists as disclosed by his various public statements which I quoted at length in my book, Martin Dies' Story. Nixon dared not displease Ike, and the recommendation of Stripling to an important post would have been very unacceptable to Eisenhower."

Nixon used Robert Stripling, and then ditched him as he has so many others who befriended him during his climb to the political peaks. Once Nixon made the decision that there was more to be gained than lost by going after Hiss, he was persistent. Hiss helped to seal his own doom by suing Chambers for calling him a Communist. Under that pressure, Whittaker Chambers produced a thick envelope containing four pages in Hiss' handwriting and a number of typewritten documents which he said had been copied on Alger Hiss' typewriter. He charged the envelope contained confidential State Department Documents which Hiss had pilfered and passed on to him in the service of the International Communist Conspiracy. Examination showed the papers were in fact copies of authentic top-secret documents; and other testimony established that the transmission to the Russians of verbatim texts of these papers would have enabled the Soviet government to break the State Department's secret code.

So powerful were the Communists in government that even in the face of all of this there was an intimation from the Justice Department that the Hiss-Chambers case would be dropped unless additional evidence could be found. At that point Mr. Nixon performed his penultimate service in the Hiss case. At a private interview with Chambers on the latter's farm in Maryland, Congressman Nixon learned that Chambers had in his possession additional documentary evidence. The next evening, in a cloak-and-dagger scene that fired the national imagination, an agent of the Committee served a subpoena on the ex-Communist; Chambers led him in darkness to a pumpkin in his garden, and from the pumpkin he drew five rolls of microfilm containing photostatic copies of confidential and secret documents stolen from the State Department.

A New York Grand Jury, on the verge of indicting Whittaker Chambers for perjury, reversed itself when Nixon rushed to New York and testified that it must have been Hiss who lied in saying he had not turned official documents over to Chambers. Simultaneously, the FBI was able to establish that the pumpkin papers had been typed on the same Woodstock typewriter as letters from Mrs. Priscilla Hiss. On December fifteenth, the Grand Jury climaxed its investigation by bringing in an indictment for perjury against Alger Hiss, who was later found guilty and jailed.

[Note: While on trial. Hiss stayed at the home of Helen Lehman Buttenwieser, whose husband, Benjamin J. Buttenwieser (CFR) is a partner in Kuhn, Loeb and Company, the international banking firm that was the major bankroller of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and has had close ties with Russia ever since.]

For his role in exposing Hiss, Richard Nixon earned the undying hatred of a vast segment of the American Left. Hiss had been a fair-haired boy among the Liberals. Adlai Stevenson (CFR), Felix Frankfurter (CFR), and Dean Acheson (CFR) had served as character witnesses at his trial, and many another super-Liberal had gone out on a limb to defend him. Until Nixon's persistent investigation (actually Stripling's, but Nixon received credit for it) produced the evidence, the dapper and urbane Hiss was on the way to being cleared. Nixon left a lot of Liberal Democrats with egg on their faces as he concluded the experience, a national hero.

To this day many knee-jerk Liberals have never forgiven Nixon for his overrated role in pursuing Hiss, even though it was virtually his last anti-Communist act. Ever since the Hiss case Nixon has worked hard to ingratiate himself with the Establishment Left, and though he continued to flay Communism verbally until 1968, there has been no action since the Hiss case to back up the laudable talk. Nixon, as Dies stated in his book, Martin Dies' Story, "was the only Congressman ever to profit by anti-Communist activity, and he profited only because he backed away from it." He parlayed the Hiss case into a Senate seat, the Vice Presidency, and eventually the Presidency. Seldom if ever in American political history has a man wrung so much mileage over so many years from a single act.

Even today, the Nixon-Hiss legend lives on. The ADA type of fuzzy-minded Liberal still goes into contortions when Nixon's name is mentioned. And although it is obvious that Nixon is now in league with the Eastern Liberal Establishment Insiders and has accepted their policy of working towards convergence with Communism in a world superstate, among well-meaning Republicans Nixon still benefits from the Hiss case. When it is pointed out that he is following the same CFR policies of appeasing the Communists as did Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, the inevitable retort is: "Yes, but how about the Hiss case?"

The next step on Nixon's ladder to the Presidency was the capture of one of California's Senate seats. The incumbent, Conservative Democrat Sheridan Downey, was challenged in the Democratic primary by ultra-Leftwing Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. Mrs. Douglas, a former actress and wife of film star Melvyn Douglas, had been a member of two organizations cited by government investigating bodies as Communist fronts, while her husband, in addition to being a member of the ACLU, had joined six cited organizations. Nixon seemed like a long shot until Downey dropped out of the Democratic primary, naming reasons of health. Instead of facing a Conservative, incumbent, Nixon now faced the vulnerable Helen Gahagan Douglas.

Those were lean days for many Leftist politicians. The Truman Administration had been rocked by corruption and spy scandals. To top it off, in June of 1950 the Korean "police action" broke out, and those whose voting records indicated they were "soft on Communism" were in trouble.

When Nixon announced his candidacy for Senator he declared that the main issue was "simply the choice between freedom and state socialism." Although Nixon never, but never, uses the word "socialism" any more, when he announced for the Senate he proclaimed: "Call it planned economy, the Fair Deal or social welfare—but it is still the same old Socialist baloney, any way you slice it."

The Nixon-Douglas campaign was one of the bitterest on record. Taking a cue from his friend, Florida Congressman George Smathers, who had knocked off rival Claude Pepper with the well-deserved appellation, "Red Pepper," Nixon dubbed Mrs. Douglas "the Pink Lady." Nixon Red-baited the Pink Lady unmercifully. The Republican candidate told audiences:

". . . if she had had her way, the Communist conspiracy in the United States would never have been exposed . . . it just so happens that my opponent is a member of a small clique which joins the notorious Communist party-liner, Vito Marcantonio of New York, in voting time after time against measures that are for the security of this country. "

Marcantonio was a Congressman from New York City, where he represented the rather openly Communist-controlled American Labor Party. Mrs. Douglas retorted by trying to hang the Marcantonio albatross back around Nixon's neck, citing a couple of bills on which they had voted together. But it did not work against Nixon, who was basing much of his campaign on his exaggerated role in the Hiss case.

Mazo and Hess, among Nixon's most favorable biographers, comment on the reciprocal mud slinging:

"An analysis of the Nixon and Douglas campaigns shows that the most notable difference was in the adroitness and calmness with which Nixon and his people executed their hyperbole and innuendo. When the Nixon camp questioned her fitness to be even a Democrat, for instance, or bemoaned her inability to judge between what was good for America and what was good for Russia, it was like a team of experienced surgeons performing masterful operations for the benefit of humanity . . . when compared with the surgeons of the Nixon camp, Mrs. Douglas' operators performed like apprentice butchers . . . "

Nixon's piece de resistance in the campaign was the famous "Pink Sheet," a leaflet printed on pink paper (for obvious reasons), which the candidate's workers distributed by the basketful. Headlined "Douglas-Marcantonio Voting record," it began:

"Many persons have requested a comparison of the voting records of Congresswoman Helen Douglas and the notorious Communist party-liner. Congressman Vito Marcantonio of New York.

"Mrs. Douglas and Marcantonio have been members of Congress together since January 1, 1945. During that period, Mrs. Douglas voted the same as Marcantonio 354 times. While it should not be expected that a member of the House of Representatives should always vote in opposition to Marcantonio, it is significant to note, not only the great number of times which Mrs. Douglas voted in agreement with him, but also the issues on which almost without exception they always saw eye to eye, to-wit: Un-American Activities and Internal Security."

The sheet ended by asserting there was a "Douglas-Marcantonio Axis."

Naturally Liberals went into convulsions over the "Pink Sheet," and the less sophisticated ones still do. Defenders of Mrs. Douglas pointed out that Nixon himself had voted with Marcantonio 112 times during his four years in Congress (vs. Mrs. Douglas's 354 times in six years). The Pink Lady's apologists also pointed out that many Liberals had voted with Marcantonio on domestic issues, but this came off as rather a castigation of Liberals as socialists than a legitimate defense of Mrs. Douglas.

But in his ruthlessness, Nixon had passed over some important differences between Mrs. Douglas and Marcantonio. For one thing, there was no "Douglas-Marcantonio Axis," despite the similarity of their voting records. According to Mazo and Hess:

"In the California election, when Mrs. Douglas was first tied to Marcantonio by her Democratic primary opponent, Marcantonio went to a friend of Nixon's and said, chuckling, 'Tell Nicky to get on this thing because it is a good idea.' Marcantonio disliked Mrs. Douglas intensely and normally used an obscene five-letter word when referring to her in private conversations."

There were also several key votes concerning Communism where Mrs. Douglas and Marcantonio voted against each other. Although Mrs. Douglas was blind in many ways about Communism (as she remains today) and was used by the Communists, she was not consciously pro-Communist. Mazo and Hess admitted:

". . . she was actually a vigorous foe of the Communist party and had fought Henry Wallace's Progressive party in a congressional district [Beverly Hills] where that took considerable courage."

It was the "Pink Sheet" that led Nixon's opponents in the Democratic Party to label him "Tricky Dick." Later, Republicans who worked closely with him were to learn that the Democrats had assessed Mr. Nixon's character, if not his politics, correctly.

Another Nixon stunt that raised a furor during the Senatorial campaign was literature, mailed to thousands of registered Democrats, that pictured a smiling Nixon and family and greeted readers: "Fellow Democrats!" The excuse was that in those days in California politicians could cross-file and run on both the Republican and Democratic tickets simultaneously in primaries. Nixon had cross-filed in the Senate primary, but to address voters in the general election as "Fellow Democrats" was very tricky business.

As a climax to one of the twentieth century's most undignified campaigns, in the final hours the Nixon forces launched a telephone drive, promising that for anyone who answered the telephone with "Vote for Nixon," there would be:

"PRIZES GALORE!!! Electric Clocks, Silex coffee-makers with heating units—General Electric automatic toasters—silver salt and pepper shakers, sugar and creamer sets, candy and butter dishes, etc., etc. WIN WITH NIXON!"

And win Nixon did—by 680,000 votes. At thirty-seven, Richard M. Nixon was a United States Senator from California.

As an epilogue to this contest, in 1957 Nixon was questioned by a British reporter about the campaign against Douglas. With dignified sadness he replied, "I'm sorry about that episode. I was a very young man."

Nixon's Senate career was short, lasting only nineteen months before his Vice Presidential campaign began, and was undistinguished, as one would expect from a freshman Senator. Nixon's voting record was very similar to the one he had achieved in the House, voting Conservative on most domestic issues and Liberal-internationalist on foreign policy. Nixon did, however, take a strong stand against the pulled-punches war in Korea. "Certainly we cannot ask our men to give their lives unless we back them to the hilt . . ." he told the Women's National Republican Club in New York.

Nixon was very much a hawk on the Korean conflict, and was a strong supporter of General Douglas MacArthur after the General was fired by Truman for having the temerity to try to win the war. "MacArthur," he said, "was fired simply because he had the good sense and patriotism to ask that the hands of our fighting men in Korea be untied." Nixon pleaded for the avoidance of "tragic appeasement" and promised that the "policies of MacArthur will bring victory and peace in the Pacific . . . "

On April 11, 1951, Nixon took the floor of the Senate to proclaim: "I believe that rather than follow the advice of those who would appease the Communists . . . we should do what we intended to do when we went into Korea, bring the war to a successful military conclusion . . ." In order to accomplish this, the junior Senator from California recommended that the United States adopt MacArthur's program of stopping all free-world trade with Red China, bombing enemy bases on Chinese soil, imposing a naval blockade, and using Chiang Kai-shek's troops.

On April 27, Nixon made another speech before the Senate ridiculing the Administration's policy of fighting a land war "instead of using to the fullest extent our naval power and our air power."

"We are using our airplanes only for the purpose of tactical bombing," he said. "We are not using our navy for the purpose of a blockade . . . We are unable to win a military victory in Korea. We are unable to do so because we are restricted in the use of both strategic bombing and naval power."

On May 1, Nixon expressed his thoughts about the then current peace talks:

"I believe the only way we can end this war is not by a ninety-day-long 'peace talk' but by military victories and economic blockades to shut out all foreign trade and smuggling such as now continues to aid Red China. There can be no 'political' settlement."

All of this advice was militarily and politically sound; if it had been followed we would not be wallowing in the current mess in Asia. Moreover, by substituting the word "Vietnam" for the word "Korea," you have a perfect argument against the current policies of the Nixon Administration.

By this time Nixon was an acknowledged "comer" in the Republican Party. He had proved that an orthodox Republican could defeat a Liberal Democrat in an industrial state where one million more Democrats than Republicans were duly registered. Nixon now became the most sought-after Republican, and regularly broke away from his Senatorial duties to preach the gospel of national salvation through Republicanism. Always, the young Senator made a major issue of Communism, as in this statement:

". . . one thing can be said to our credit which cannot be said for the party in power, that is, that we have never had the support of the Communists in the past. We have never asked for that support. We do not have it now, and we shall never ask for it or accept it in the future: And for that reason a Republican administration, we can be sure, will conduct a thorough-going house-cleaning of Communists and fellow travelers in the administrative branch of the government because we have no fear of finding any Communist skeletons in our political closets."

There is much mystery surrounding the events that led to Richard Nixon's selection to run on the Eisenhower ticket. We shall never know the whole truth, as we can never find out for sure what goes on in the back room among the boys with the cigars. Any story that is released to reporters is bound to be a heavily censored and edited version. In most cases the decisions which shape history are not put into the history books. As Harold Lavine remarks in his Smoke Filled Rooms—The Confidential Papers of Robert Humphreys (Humphreys was a professional staff member of the Republican National Committee):

"Nothing in politics just happens. There is always someone who sets the stage for it, writes the dialog, rehearses the actors, prompts them from the wings. True, sometimes the play takes on a life of its own; the actors begin to ad-lib, the scenery collapses, the audience joins in the action."

Some surface facts concerning Nixon's rise to the Vice Presidency are known, however. In May 1951, Nixon went to Europe as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the UN's World Health Organization. On June 5, while debating a bill on the floor of the Senate, Nixon mentioned that he had dropped in on Eisenhower at NATO headquarters in Paris. A week before leaving for Europe, Nixon had met in New York with the Eastern Liberal Establishment's powerful kingmaker, Thomas E. Dewey.

[Note: One of Dewey's sons, Thomas E. Dewey Jr., is now a partner in the international banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, the organization that financed Leon Trotsky and the Russian Revolution]

According to Mazo and Hess:

"His [Nixon's] New York appearance stood out because of what happened rather than what he said in his speech [at a fund-raising dinner], for Governor Dewey informed Nixon after the dinner that he should be the candidate for Vice President on the Eisenhower ticket.

"'The two of us sat around for about an hour or an hour and a half before he took his train,' Dewey said. 'That was the occasion on which I discussed with him briefly the possibility of him becoming the Vice-President.' It was no doubt Dewey who arranged for Nixon to see Eisenhower while he was in Paris. Dewey wasn't pulling an unknown rabbit out of a hat. Although Dewey had never been in the House or the Senate, he nonetheless controlled many Liberal Republicans and, as a political controller for the Insider Establishment, was a behind-the- scenes mover and shaker. According to those who know Nixon well, Nixon had become aware of the power and money wielded by Dewey and his New York colleagues, and as a highly ambitious man he had gravitated in their direction. This gravitation was tangibly expressed when Nixon became a founding member of the leftist Republican Advance.

"Nixon, however, found himself in a sticky position as the nominating convention approached. He could not publicly endorse Eisenhower, because as a member of the California delegation he was pledged by law to support Governor Earl Warren as a favorite-son candidate until Warren released the seventy delegates; and Warren was not about to release any delegates, because he was hoping for an Eisenhower-Taft deadlock in which the convention would turn to him. Also, there was already no love lost between Warren and Nixon. Warren, who ran for governor on both Republican and Democratic tickets (thus taking advantage of California's then-existing cross-filing system, as had Nixon in running for the Senate), had never endorsed Nixon for either Congressman or Senator.

"Paul Hoffman, as one of Eisenhower's chief lieutenants, had met twice with Nixon before the convention, to try to line up the California delegation for Eisenhower on the second ballot if the General needed only a few more votes to win and Warren's candidacy seemed hopeless. Since California came early in the roll call, a switch of its delegation's votes to Eisenhower could be psychologically crucial. The Eisenhower forces knew that if Warren released the delegation, Eisenhower would receive fifty-two of the votes to eighteen for Taft.

"Meanwhile, in early June, Nixon conducted a private poll by mailing 23,000 letters to his 1950 precinct workers, asking them to name not their second choice, but 'the strongest candidate the Republicans could nominate for president.' It was charged, but never proved, that the Citizens for Eisenhower Committee paid for printing and addressing the survey. When Warren learned of Nixon's straw poll, the feathers hit the fan. Warren's people regarded the canvass as a stab in the back and a deliberate attempt to undermine the governor's position as a favorite-son candidate. If Warren won, it could do nothing to enhance his position; if he lost it would be a crushing psychological blow. Warren's fears were soon confirmed, as news began to 'leak' from Nixon's office that Eisenhower was running far in front. Of course, Nixon's people were doing the counting.

"Nixon went to Chicago on July 1, several days in advance of the rest of the delegation, as a member of the platform committee. Three days later he flew from Chicago to Denver and boarded the California delegation's convention train there, whereupon chaos ensued. There are numerous versions of what happened, but what had been a gay party disintegrated, and more intrigue took place on that train than on the Orient Express. Nixon began meeting with delegates in the lounge car, claiming that Eisenhower was a cinch on the first ballot (which Nixon could not have thought unless he already knew that many delegates were going to be stolen from Taft), and suggesting that the California delegation jump on the bandwagon so as not to waste its votes. If it did so, argued the Senator, it would be in a position to suggest as a quid pro quo the choice of Nixon as veep. Bitterness ran high among the Warren loyalists, who considered Nixon's actions as self-serving and a double-cross of the man he was legally committed to. The Warren people even talked of denying the Senator a berth on the train. By the time the train arrived in Chicago the split in the delegation was wider than the Grand Canyon, and Nixon detrained at a suburban station in order to avoid reporters' questions.

"Having nudged the knife into Warren, Nixon now slipped the stiletto into Taft. He joined the move to outflank the Taft supporters by denying credentials to sixty-eight Southern delegates committed to Taft who were being challenged by Eisenhower delegations. It was at this crucial juncture that Nixon showed his hand publicly for the first time. Dashing to the microphone, Nixon addressed the California delegation and accused those who were the victims of theft of being thieves. The non-Machiavellian Taft people were dumbfounded and outflanked. In reply to pleas that the convention should accept the majority opinion of the credentials committee, Nixon proclaimed:

"'If we were to feel that we were bound automatically to accept the decisions of our committees here, there would be no reason for us to come to the convention at all. We could leave the nomination entirely up to committees.'"

"Of course, this was a complete non sequitur, but in the emotion of the moment it swayed many. The California delegation voted fifty-seven to eight to cast the state's vote for the misnamed 'fair play'' resolution. As Costello observed: 'From that moment the drift toward Eisenhower became a stampede, and Nixon's future was assured.'"

On July 11, Eisenhower was nominated on the first ballot, and the course of American history was dramatically changed. Future history may show that on that day America lost one of its best opportunities to save the Republic from the International Conspiracy of which Communism is an integral part—but only a part. From that day to this it has been all down hill for America. The Republic still can be saved, but at a much greater price than would have been required had Robert Taft been elected President of the United States.

That same day the first of two caucuses to select the General's running mate took place in Eisenhower's suite at the Blackstone Hotel. At the meetings, those involved went through the motions of considering numerous possibilities before settling on the man who had been preselected months in advance by the Dewey clique. Nixon's name was introduced by Dewey, who later recollected:

"There were a lot of people with a lot of views. I waited until they had gotten down through the list. I didn't say much about it, until finally they had gotten from the East all the way across to the West. Then I named Nixon as the logical nominee."

No one offered any objections, and Paul Hoffman, as chief spokesman for Citizens for Eisenhower, was invited to put his group on record.

"I told them that everything I had heard about Senator Nixon was good," the Establishment stooge later wrote in Colliers magazine. "I looked on him as one of the Republicans who had an enlightened view [i.e., Liberalinternationalist-one world] on foreign affairs, and I thought that a man of his views should run with General Eisenhower."

Hoffman intimated that the Dewey forces were prepared to make a fight for Nixon if necessary, but as it turned out there was no need to do that. Nixon had much to recommend him as the candidate. He was geographically right, had a reputation as a fighter against corruption, subversion, and Communism, and was a vigorous campaigner. He was also regarded as a "bridge" to the alienated Taft people, to keep them from bolting the party in disgust after seeing the nomination stolen from their candidate. This role Nixon filled admirably, even though Stewart Alsop was later to write:

"The admiration for Nixon among the Taft-worshippers is essentially irrational, since Nixon contributed to Taft's last defeat in 1952 and since he has none of Taft's hankering for a simpler past.

At this time in his career, Nixon was by no means a member of the Establishment, although he had doubtless realized that that was where the power lay within the Republican Party and beyond. The Insiders needed Nixon to pacify the Taft people and had good reason to believe that a man as inordinately ambitious for power and wealth as was Nixon could be controlled easily enough.

The Taft people should have realized that any man who was the protege of the likes of Hoffman and Dewey was not a man they could trust.

Taft himself had seen enough of Richard Nixon working behind the scenes to realize that it was not for nothing that he was nicknamed "Tricky Dick." Following the '52 convention he told friend and supporter Joseph Polowasky that Nixon was "a little man in a big hurry." He also noted that the ambitious Californian had a "mean and vindictive streak," a fact that many others in and out of the Republican Party were to discover from firsthand experience. Taft expressed the fervent hope that circumstances would never propel Nixon into the Presidency.

After the cigar smoke lifted from the back rooms at the 1952 convention, this question wafted out onto the breeze: How did Earl Warren, a man totally lacking in judicial experience, become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? The events leading to his appointment were described by Frank Hanighen in Human Events in January 1958:

"By 1952, Warren considered himself the boy most likely to succeed to the top nomination—but, Warren-like, took out insurance to cover his candidacy. The policy was proffered, at the outset of the National Convention in Chicago, by representatives of candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower; they feared the General could not win the nomination unless the convention accepted Ike delegations sent by five Southern states in opposition to Taft delegations chosen by regular party process.

"Their proposition to Warren was simple; he could have his choice of Secretary of Labor or Interior when Ike became President, if he only cast California's . . . convention votes for himself on the actual balloting for the nomination, but he was just to vote to seat the Southern Eisenhower men. Warren demurred; the quid pro quo was raised to the first Supreme Court vacancy, a lifetime job. He took it. California voted for the Ike delegations, and Taft's hopes went glimmering.

"The payoff came in September 1953, with the untimely death of Chief Justice Fred Vinson. In a few days. Attorney General Herbert Brownell flew to Sacramento to tell Warren that, in compliance with the promise, President Eisenhower would nominate him to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, naming one of the sitting Associates to the presiding chair. No, said Warren firmly; the promise to him was for the first vacancy, and since the first vacancy was the Chief Justiceship, he intended to have it."

Needless to relate, Ike caved in and Warren became Chief Justice. The rest is tragedy.

Nixon's campaign for the Vice Presidency had just begun when one of his six (or more) crises popped up. The New York Post hit the streets on September 18 with a front-page story headlined: "Secret Rich Men's Trust Fund Keeps Nixon In Style Beyond His Salary." The story was picked up and blown out of all proportion by pro-Adlai Stevenson newspapers. There was indeed such a fund. It had been put together by Pasadena lawyer Dana Smith, according to Smith, so that Nixon could continue campaigning and selling concepts of free enterprise between formal elections. Nixon could not possibly have done this on his salary of $12,000 per year plus $2,500 for expenses.

It would have been difficult to find an elected official in Washington who did not have some such fund; Adlai Stevenson himself had two. Smith had been careful to limit individual contributions to the fund to $500, so as to avoid any inference that "wealthy industrialists" were buying themselves a Senator. However, the Washington Star later revealed that Nixon's office had interceded on behalf of Smith himself in a Justice Department case in which a company owned by Smith's family was seeking a tax rebate of more than half a million dollars. Moreover, the legal opinion from the firm hired by the Republican National Committee to research the propriety of the fund acknowledged that, after interviewing "a number of contributors," the researchers had learned that "in two instances the contributor had contacted Nixon to request his assistance in connection with matter pending before a department or agency of the government."

In total, the fund had, in a little less than two years, raised $18,000, which was used to finance speaking trips, send Christmas cards to Nixon's 25,000 campaign workers, defray expenses on mail that could not be franked, and pay for long-distance telephone calls. Nixon claimed that "not one cent . . . went to me for my personal use." But he had earlier admitted to columnist Peter Edson that had it not been for the fund, he could not have made the down payment on his house in Washington.

The revelation of the fund was a powerful weapon against the Republicans, who were making a big issue of dishonesty and corruption in the Truman Administration. The Democratic politicians grabbed at it in desperate self-defense, ignoring the fact that most politicians had funds of the same sort. The public, which in general did not know that the economic facts of life in Washington necessitated outside support, was, by and large, extremely upset. Nixon tried to counter by blaming the charges on the Communists. From the observation platform of his campaign train he told audiences:

"You folks know the work that I did investigating Communists in the United States. Ever since I have done that work, the Communists, the left-wingers, have been fighting me with every smear that they have been able to. Even when I received the nomination for the vice-presidency, I want you folks to know and I'm going to reveal it today for the first time—I was warned that if I continued to attack the Communists and crooks in this government they would continue to smear me, and, believe me, you can expect that they will continue to do so. They started it yesterday—you saw it in the morning papers. They tried to say that I had taken the money, $16,000.

"What they didn't point out is this: that what I was doing was saving you money, rather than charging the expenses of my office, which were in excess of the amounts which were allowed by the taxpayers and allowed under the law, rather than taking that money.

"Rather than using the money, the taxpayers' monies for those purposes, what did I do? What I did was to have those expenses paid by the people back home who were interested in seeing that the information concerning what was going on in Washington was spread among the people of their state.

"I'll tell you what some of them do. They put their wives on the payroll, taking your money and using it for that purpose. And Pat Nixon has worked in my office night after night after night, and I can say this, and I say it proudly, she has never been on the government payroll since I have been in Washington, D.C.

"Point two: What else would you do? Do you want me to go on and do what some of these people are doing? Take fat legal fees on the side? During the time I've been in Washington—and I'm proud of this—I've never taken a legal fee, although as a lawyer I could legally but not ethically have done so, and I'm never going to in the future, because I think that's a violation of a trust which my office has . . . "

Still there was no word from Eisenhower. Agonizing day followed agonizing day for Nixon as he waited for reassurance. Many key Republicans were calling for him to be dropped from the ticket. Dewey contacted Nixon and suggested that he bare his soul on national television. Out of this came the famous "Checkers Speech."

Shortly before going on the air for the "Checkers Speech," Nixon received a call from Dewey, bearing the bad news that most of Ike's advisers favored dumping Nixon. It seemed a hint for the candidate to resign on the air. The emotional strain was immense as Nixon went before the cameras with a hastily written speech scrawled on a note pad. The Senator delivered an emotion-laden speech that detailed the history of the fund, leaving out a point here and there, and adding that someone had also given his family a cocker spaniel, "Checkers," which his children loved, and they weren't going to give it back. Nixon closed his talk, not by resigning, but by putting the decision up to the Republican National Committee and asking the public to voice their sentiments to that body via telegrams.

The speech was described by Stevenson supporters as "soap opera schmaltz and mawkish ooze," but it was one of the most effective political speeches ever delivered. The Republicans received telegrams signed by more than one million citizens, overwhelmingly supporting Nixon. Nixon's political skin had been saved. That weekend he flew to Wheeling, West Virginia, where Eisenhower was on hand to greet him as "my boy."

Throughout the rest of the campaign Nixon worked tirelessly for the ticket, making as many as a dozen speeches a day. His formula was "K-l, C-3"—so-called for Korea, Communism, corruption, and costs. The Democrats were vulnerable on all items, and Nixon did not spare the rhetoric. He began on September 2, 1952, in a speech at Bangor, Maine, with the statement:

"We can anticipate charges of smear . . . if the record itself smears, let it smear. If the dry rot of corruption and Communism which has eaten deep into our body politic during the past seven years can only be chopped out with a hatchet—then let's call for a hatchet."

Some of his speeches showed the flair for alliteration that would help to make Spiro Agnew a household word nearly two decades later. On October 1, 1951, the candidate told assembled loyalists in Alexandria, Virginia:

"The Truman-Stevenson duet is simply designed to bamboozle the American people into continuing in power an Administration steeped in corruption, confusion, compromise and Communist-coddling."

Nixon reminded the public of the vast millions of people who had disappeared behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains during the reign of the irascible man from Missouri. For this he justifiably blamed the Administration. The folks in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, heard this from the candidate on October 9:

"Because of recent attempts of Messrs. Truman, Acheson and Stevenson to falsify the record to cover up their failure to deal with the Communist conspiracy or to develop any program for meeting it in the future, I am going to take the case before the American people."

In the same vein, Nixon reiterated the truth to an audience in Utica, New York, on October 18:

"I charge that the buried record will show that Mr. Truman and his associates, either through stupidity or political expedience, were primarily responsible for the unimpeded growth of the Communist conspiracy within the United States. I further charge that Mr. Truman, Dean Acheson and other Administration officials for political reasons covered up this Communist conspiracy and attempted to halt its exposure."

Two of Nixon's favorite targets in these days were Truman's Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, and his policy of "containing" Communism. On October 16, Hoosiers in Evansville heard the candidate proclaim:

"I say, make 'containment' read 'appeasement.' Yet Adlai Stevenson, who carries a Ph.D. from Dean Acheson's cowardly college of Communist containment—approves this disastrous policy."

In those days the Republicans were calling for victory over Communism, not proposing an "era of negotiation." Acheson (CFR) was a particularly juicy target, since he had surrounded himself with Alger Hiss, Owen Lattimore, John Stewart Service, Oliver Clubb, John Carter Vincent, Lauchlin Currie, and their like—all of them either Soviet spies or security risks. Undoubtedly it was just a coincidence, but Joseph Stalin had hired Acheson to be the Soviet Union's personal attorney in the United States prior to the official recognition of the Soviets by FDR. Just how Stalin happened to pick Acheson to serve as the Bolsheviks' barrister has not, to our knowledge, ever been explained. There is of course the possibility that he happened to be browsing through the Yellow Pages and found Acheson's name at the top of the page.

During Acheson's tenure as their legal representative, the Communists made tremendous advances throughout the world. Acheson had also been responsible for elevating Hiss to a high position in the State Department, and even after Hiss had been convicted of perjury for lying about his spying for the Soviets, Acheson announced: "I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss." Since Nixon was deeply involved in the Hiss case, and since he and Acheson were such violent enemies, it is truly one of the great ironies of the Nixon Administration that Dean Acheson should be able to announce, as he did on his CBS Special with Walter Cronkite, that he is now a behind-the-scenes advisor to President Nixon. CFR politics makes strange bedfellows. Maybe Nixon too was browsing through the Yellow Pages.

Journalist Clark Mollenhoff, until recently a member of Nixon's staff, disclosed:

"He [Kissinger] has his admirers and detractors. Among the former are former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who believes that our foreign policy is a mess, but that Henry Kissinger's handling of things in the White House is the only reason that the United States is not in more difficulties in the world. "

The anti-Communist rhetoric of Nixon in 1952 contributed to Eisenhower's landslide victory, as the victory-starved Elephant Team swept thirty-nine states and corralled 442 electoral votes.