60 Years of Investigative Satire: The Best of Paul Krassner Introduction by Andy Borowitz Blurb by Art Spiegelman Click on this for a High Res Photo. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015032

What They Say About the Author “Paul’s own writing, in particular, seemed daring and adventurous to me; it took big chances and made important arguments in relentlessly funny ways. I| felt, down deep, that maybe I had some of that in me, too; that maybe I could be using my skills to better express my beliefs. Zhe Realist was the inspiration that kept pushing me to the next level; there was no way I could continue reading it and remain the same.” --George Carlin “Paul Krassner--confidant of Lenny Bruce, co-founder of the Yippies, defiler of Disney characters, publisher of The Realist, and investigative satirist extraordinaire. As soon as we decided to create the Huffington Post, | knew I wanted him involved. His irreverence was just what the blog doctor ordered.” --Arianna Huffington “Thanks to Paul Krassner for continuing to be the lobster claw in the tuna casserole of modern America.” --Tom Robbins “Krassner loves ironies, especially stinging ironies that nettle public figures. He would rather savor a piquant irony about a public figure than eat a bowl of fresh strawberries and ice cream.” --Ken Kesey “T told Krassner one time that his writings made me hopeful. He found this an odd compliment to offer a satirist. I explained that he made supposedly serious matters seem ridiculous, and that this inspired many of his readers to decide for themselves what was ridiculous and what was not. Knowing that there were people doing that, better late than never, made me optimistic.” --Kurt Vonnegut “Mr. Krassner is an expert at ferreting out hypocrisy and absurdism from the more solemn crannies of American culture.” --The New York Times “Krassner has the uncanny ability to alter your perceptions permanently.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015033

--The Los Angeles Times “He has lived on the edge so long, he gets his mailed delivered there.” --San Francisco Chronicle “Krassner lives in a world where Truth and Satire are swingers, changing partners so often you never know who belongs with whom.” --Playboy “Perhaps the satire magazine that most closely resembles Charlie Hebdo in terms of inflammatory imagery was The Realist, created by Paul Krassner...” --Time “Paul taught me that extreme stylistic accuracy could make even the most bizarre comedic concept credible. He is a unique character on the American landscape. A self-described “investigative satirist,’ he straddles the lines between politics, culture, pornography and drugs -- in other words, the land where all of us, were we really honest with ourselves, would choose to dwell.” --Harry Shearer “T have been a fan of his since I was a snot-nosed kid, and his words have been a driving force and influence on my life. If you have read his work before, you know the joys that you are in for. If you haven’t, start reading, and consider this your lucky day. For Paul Krassner is an activist, a philosopher, a lunatic and a saint, but most of all he is funny.” --Lewis Black Many of the pieces in this collection originally appeared in The Realist, High Times, AVN, N.Y. Press, National Lampoon, The Nation, L.A. Times, Whole Earth Review, Huffington Post, Alternet, CounterPunch, and Truthdig. Several pieces have not been published before, but only for this collection. For George Carlin, who continues to serve as a satirical touchstone HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015034

“Hypocrisy is better than having no values at all.” --William Bennett, former education czar, drug czar, morality czar and gambling czar “MTV actually told us, “You can make fun of God because he doesn’t exist, but you can’t make fun of Jesus because he’s God’s son.’” --Vernon Chatman & John Lee, quoted in Satiristas! Other Books by Paul Krassner How a Satirical Editor Became a Yippie Conspirator in Ten Easy Years Best of The Realist [Editor] The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race Impolite Interviews Psychedelic Trips For the Mind [Editor] Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs: From Toad Slime to Ecstasy [Editor] Murder At the Conspiracy Convention and Other American Absurdities One Hand Jerking Tales of Tongue Fu In Praise of Indecency: Dispatches From the Valley of Porn Who’s to Say What’s Obscene: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today Pot Stories for the Soul: An Updated Edition for a Stoned America [Editor] Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture Patty Hearst and the Twinkie Murders: A Tale of Two Trials The Realist Cartoons [Editor] About the Author HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015035

Paul Krassner published 7he Realist (1958-2001), but when People magazine labeled him “father of the underground press," he immediately demanded a paternity test. And when L/fe magazine published a favorable article about him, the FBI sent a poison-pen letter to the editor calling Krassner “a raving, unconfined nut.” George Carlin responded, “The FBI was right. This man is dangerous—and funny; and necessary.” While abortion was illegal, Krassner ran an underground referral service, and as an antiwar activist, he became a co-founder of the Yippies (Youth International Party). Krassner's one-person show won an award from the L.A. Weekly. He received an ACLU (Upton Sinclair) Award for dedication to freedom of expression. At the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, he was inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame — “my ambition,” he claims, “since | was three years old.” He’ s won awards from Playboy, the Feminist Party Media Workshop, and in 2010 the Oakland branch of the writers organization PEN honored him with their Lifetime Achievement Award. “I'’ m very happy to receive this award,” he concluded in his acceptance speech, “and even happier that it wasn’ t posthumous."-- paulkrassner.com HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015036

Introduction by Andy Borowitz Tocome... HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015037

Table of Contents THE EARLY YEARS-- From Carnegie Hall to MAD Magazine A Child’ s Primer on Telethons— Sex Education For the Modern Catholic Child— A Children’ s Primer on Fighting Communism-- A Child’ s Primer on Divorce— RELIGION FOR DUMMIEs-- Pope Endorses Condoms— | Ran an Underground Abortion Referral Service— There Are No Atheists in the White House— THE SEX LIFE OF PRESIDENTS & OTHERS-- The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book— A Sneak Preview of Richard Nixon’ s Memoir— Why I Leaked the Anita Hill Affidavit— President Clinton’ s Private Confession— The Autobiography of Monica Lewinsky— Sarah Palin’ s Reality Sitcom— SUBCULTURES -- And Whose Little Monkey Are You?— The Mime and the Pacer— Johnnie Cochran Meets Dr. Hip— Jealousy At the Swingers Convention— Life Among the Neo-Pagans— Murder At the Conspiracy Convention— Swimming in the Dead Pool-- Trashing the Right to Read-- Welcome to Camp Mogul— HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015038

HIGHER THAN THOU— Checkmating With Pawns— Tim Leary, Ram Dass, and Me— Remembering Scott Kelman— The 20" Anniversary of the Summer of Love— POLITICS— The Last Election— A Letter to Barack Obama— Unsafe at Safeway— The Yippies and the Occupiers— PORN AGAIN— Remembering Pubic Hair-- The Taste of Sperm— Eating Shit For Fun and Profit— “| Fuck Dead People” — COMEDIANS Remembering Lenny Bruce-- My Acid Trip With Groucho Marx-- Remembering George Carlin-- Roasting With Robin-- Remembering Dick Gregory-- The Missing Episode of Seinfeld-- THE LATER YEARS— Are Rape Jokes Funny? Words and Phrases That I’ ve Coined— My Brother’ s Secret Space Communication Projects— The Six Dumbest Decisions of My Life— Alternative Facts— | Played Thomas Jefferson’ s Violin— HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015039

THE EARLY YEARS From Carnegie Hall to MAD Magazine HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015040

| first woke up at the age of six. It began with an itch in my leg. My left leg. But somehow | knew | wasn't supposed to scratch it. Although my eyes were closed, | was standing up. In fact, | was standing on a huge stage. And | was playing the violin. | was in the middle of playing the “Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor.” | was wearing a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit-ruffled white silk shirt with puffy sleeves, black velvet short pants with ivory buttons and matching vest-white socks and black patent-leather shoes. My hair was platinum blond and wavy. On this particular Saturday evening—January 14, 1939-I was in the process of becoming the youngest concert artist in any field ever to perform at Carnegie Hall. But all | knew was that | was being taunted by an itch. An itch that had become my adversary. | was tempted to stop playing the violin, just for a second, and scratch my leg with the bow, yet | was vaguely aware that this would not be appropriate. | had been well trained. | was a true professional. But that itch kept getting fiercer and fiercer. Then, suddenly, an impulse surfaced from my hidden laboratory of alternative possibilities, and | surrendered to it. Balancing on my left foot, | scratched my left leg with my right foot, without missing a note of the “Vivaldi Concerto.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015041

Between the impulse and the surrender, there was a choice—-| had decided to balance on one foot-—and it was that simple act of choosing which triggered the precise moment of my awakening to the mystery of consciousness. 7his is me/ The relief of scratching my leg was overshadowed by a surge of energy throughout my body. | was being engulfed by some kind of spiritual orgasm. By a wave of born-again ecstasy with no ideological context. No doctrine to explain the shock of my own existence. No dogma to function as a metaphor for the mystery. Instead, | woke up to the sound of laughter. | had heard that sound before, sweet and comforting, but never like this. Now | could hear a whole symphony of delight and reassurance, like clarinets and guitars harmonizing with saxophones and drums. It was the audience laughing. | opened my eyes. There were rows upon rows of people sitting out there in the dark, and they were all laughing together. They had understood my plight. It was easier for them to identify with the urge to scratch than with a little freak playing the violin. And | could identify with them identifying with me. | knew that laughter felt good, and | was pleased that it made the audience feel good—but | hadn't intended to make them laugh. | was merely trying to solve a personal dilemma. So the lesson | woke up to-this totally nonverbal, internal HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015042

buzz-would serve as my lifetime filter for perceiving reality and its rules. If you could somehow translate that buzz into words, it would spell out: One person's logic is another person's humor. | finished playing “Vivaldi” by rote. Then | bowed to the audience and walked off stage. The applause continued, and | was pushed back on stage by my violin teacher, to play an encore, “Orientale.” | had previously asked him-while rehearsing the encore—why it wasn't listed on the program since we already knew that | would play it at the concert. But instead of answering my question, he poked me in the chest, verbalizing each poke: “Violin up/ Violin up’ Now, while playing “Orientale,” | heard the echo of his voice, and | automatically raised my violin higher. Then | popped my ears and the music sounded clearer. | wondered if it sounded clearer to the audience too. They had no idea that their laughter had woken me up. | was overwhelmed by the notion that everybody in the audience had their own individual 7his-/s-me, but maybe some of them were still asleep and didn't know it. How could you tell who was awake and who was asleep? After all, | hadn't known that /was asleep, and look what | accomplished before | woke up. If it hadn't been for that itch, | might st///be asleep. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015043

There was, of course, an objective, scientific explanation for what happened on the stage of Carnegie Hall. According to a textbook, Physiological Psychology, “It is now rather well accepted that ‘itch’ is a variant of the pain experience and employs the same_ sensory mechanisms.” But for me, something beyond an ordinary itch had occurred that night. It was as though | had been zapped by the god of Absurdity. | didn't even know there was such a concept as absurdity. | simply experienced an overpowering awareness of something when the audience applauded me for doing what | had learned while | was asleep. But it was only when they laughed that we had really connected, and | imprinted on that sound. | wanted to hear it again. | was hooked. And the first laugh was free. A couple of decades later, as if it was inevitable, | sold a few freelance pieces to Mad magazine. But when | suggested a satire on the pros and cons of unions, the editor wasn't interested in even seeing it because the subject was “too adult.” Since Maad's circulation had already gone over the million mark, publisher Bill Gaines intended to keep aiming the magazine at teenagers. “| guess you don't wanna change horses in midstream,” | said. “Not when the horse has a rocket up its ass,” Gaines replied. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015044

And that moment served as the conception of an irreverent magazine for grown-ups, 7he Realist... HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015045

A Child’ s Primer on Telethons See the tired man. He has been up all night. He is running a telethon. He wants the people to send money. It is for leukemia. That is a disease. Little children like you can catch it. Evil. See the sexy girl. She is a singer. She doesn't know whether the telethon is for leukemia or dystrophy or gonorrhea. Her agent got her the booking. She needs the exposure. Notice her cleavage. See the handsome man. He does know that it's for leukemia. You can tell. He is singing a calypso melody. Listen to the lyrics. “Give-your-money,” he sings, “to-leukemia. Give-your-money, to- leukemia.” Listen to the audience applaud. He is very talented. See the sincere politician. He is running for reelection in November. He is against leukemia. He is willing to take an oath against it. That proves he is against it. See the wealthy businessman. He is making a donation. He wants his company's name mentioned. Then we can buy his product. Then he will make profits. Then he can make another donation next year. Splendid. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015046

See the little boy. He has leukemia. Too bad for him. The nice lady is holding him up to the TV camera. Aren't you glad it's not you? But wouldn't you like to be on television? Maybe you can fall down a well. See the pretty scoreboard. It tells how much money they get. They want a million dollars. Uncle Sam has many millions of dollars. He cuts medical research funds by more than seven million dollars. Why? He needs the money for more important things. See the mushroom cloud. That costs lots of money. It has loads of particles. They cause leukemia. Money might help to find a cure. That is why we have telethons. See the tired man... HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015047

Sex Education For the Modern Catholic Child This is a diaphragm. Women use it when they don’ t want to have a baby. That is very immoral. Why, you ask? Because it is artificial, that’ s why. But never fear. There are other methods to prevent conception. They are very moral. Why, you ask? Because they are natural, that’ s why. This is big brother’ s pajama bottoms. He had a nocturnal emission last night. What a shame. It woke him up. But see the semen stain. It has millions of dead sperms. They were killed the natural way. This is his sister’ s sanitary napkin. It doesn’ t look very sanitary any more, does it? There is an ovum somewhere in that bloody mess. But it will never be fertilized. It will be flushed down the toilet bowl. That’ s the natural way, too. This is a baby. It was born dead. Every day in the U.S.A., 136,000 infants are stillborn or die within a month. Now suppose their Mommies and Daddies had interfered artificially with the process of procreation. God’ s purpose would never have been achieved. Just think what a tragedy that would’ ve been. But at least some of the dead babies were baptized. That’ s the natural way. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015048

This is a special calendar. It marks off menstrual periods. That’ s for the rhythm system of not having babies. A husband and his wife are in bed. They start to make love. Then they get out of bed. Because they have to look at the calendar. That’ s the natural way. This is a husband and wife who don’ t want to have a baby yet. But the calendar says that the time is fertile. So they stop making love. Because one thing would lead to another. Ask [advice columnist] Dorothy Dix. She should know. She tried it once with [advice columnist] Dr. Crane. Just to prove her theory. Later she had to write to his Worry Clinic. She was worried because she missed her period. She missed it very much. This is a husband and wife who do want to have a baby. But the calendar says that the time is sterile. Lucky for them they have a calendar. It saves them from having unnecessary intercourse. Unless they like to gamble on having unwanted babies. That’ s the natural way. This is a confessional booth. There is a screen in the middle. The person on one side is a priest. The person on the other side is a confessor. He is confessing that he has had evil thoughts. The priest tells him that to have an evil thought is evil. It is just as evil as committing the evil act that the evil thought is about. Priests never have evil thoughts themselves. They HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015049

don’ t have to. They have an ample supply of other people’ s evil thoughts to draw upon. This is the husband and his wife again. The ones who don’ t want to have a baby yet. Now the calendar says that the time is sterile. How convenient. Now they can make love without stopping. And without worrying. But they’ re good, consistent Catholics. And so they are worrying. Because they know that evil thoughts are evil. Their evil thought is to have intercourse but to avoid having a baby. They can’ t be sure they won’ t have a baby--that’ s why the rhythm system is moral--but the intention is there. Tomorrow they will go to confession. Postscript: | wrote the above piece in 1958 (before the Pill), and it turned out to be theologically correct in 1984, when Pope John Paul II warned that the rhythm method of birth control can be “an abuse if the couple is seeking in this way to avoid children for unworthy reasons.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015050

A Child’ s Primer on Fighting Communism Now we are going to have some fun fighting Communism. Let us play a game of Make Believe. Close your eyes and concentrate. We are going to pretend that Red China doesn’ t exist. They are the Bad Guys. Because they make people slaves. Nationalist China is different. They are the Good Guys. There, hundreds of thousands of little unwanted children are sold. They work in coal mines. Then they are wanted. The older girls work in brothels. How nice to be so wanted. Open your eyes now. Anyone around our base is /¢. Fidel Castro says Cuba is a socialist state. That proves they are Communists. But we knew it before. You could tell by the way Castro and Khrushchev hugged each other. So we stopped buying sugar from Cuba. Now other countries buy sugar from Cuba. Iran has bought 10,000 tons of sugar from Cuba. Iran gets a lot of economic and military aid from us. So we are helping Cuba anyway. Maybe we should trade tractors for prisoners then. But we will fool them. We will put treads on all the old Edsels that didn’ t sell. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015051

There are Communists in the United States too. They are dangerous. So the Supreme Court says they have to register as foreign agents. Otherwise they have to go to jail. So they register as foreign agents. Then they have to go to jail under the Smith Act. So the Communist Party isn’ t very much fun to belong to any more. But there’ s a way to belong without going to jail. You have to join the FBI first. Most of the members do it that way. J. Edgar Hoover is the head of the Communist Party. Why are Communists such a threat to us? Because they advocate the violent overthrow of the government. That is why Governor Rockefeller wrote his name on the bottom of a new law. Now anyone who gets convicted in Federal Court for advocating the violent overthrow of the government will lose his driver’ s license. That law was passed in April 1961. But on the 4" of July holiday the United States broke all previous traffic accident records. More people got killed in cars than ever before. The roads are still full of dangerous Communist spies. How can we defeat Communism all over the world? By foreign aid. That turns Neutral Guys into Good Guys. Meanwhile there is a great big famine in Red China. So Canada will ship wheat to them. But special HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015052

machinery is needed for this. It is made in America. And the U.S. Justice Department doesn’ t allow such sales. Because Bad Guys deserve to starve. Everybody knows that. Especially the Neutral Guys. So Canada shouldn’ t be mad at us. Didn’ t President Kennedy plant a tree there? That’ s personal diplomacy. It has nothing to do with hungry human beings in Red China. The way to avoid feeling guilty about suffering people is just don’ t recognize them. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015053

A Child’ s Primer on Divorce Oh, look. Mommy and Daddy are having another fight. Is it just an attention-getting device this time? Listen. They are having an adult discussion. They are agreeing on a separation. That means you will come from a broken home. What a shame. Even if they fight all the time they should stay together for your sake. Now you will be insecure. Mommy and Daddy are modern people. They drink Pepsi-Cola. They also have a modern marriage. They left the word “obey” out of their wedding ceremony. Wasn’ t that modern? But they didn’ t leave out the words “love” and “honor.” Mommy and Daddy are only modern, not avant-garde. They left “till death do us part” in the ceremony, too. But they are going to get a divorce anyway. They don’ t have to obey their marriage vows. Lucky thing they left out that word. What is to be done to keep Mommy and Daddy together? The Ladies’ Home Journal will help. They have a regular feature in their magazine. It is called “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Readers send in Betty Crocker boxtops and try to guess the correct answer. Maybe Mommy and Daddy will go on television. There is a program all about Divorce Court. Dr. Paul Popenoe is the master of ceremonies. He HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015054

wears glasses. Sometimes while the commercial is on, the actors have reconciliation. It is a real fun show. Mommy and Daddy live in New York State. To get a divorce there, one of them has to commit adultery. Daddy has a tryst with a girl. Mommy raids the joint. She brings along a photographer. Mommy has secretly been having an affair with the photographer. What Daddy doesn’ t know won’ t hurt him. He always wanted to be on Page 3 of the Daily News anyhow. Mommy made sure that his undershorts were ironed. Benjamin Brenner lives in Brooklyn. He is a Supreme Court Justice there. He makes decisions. He decided that raiding the joint is illegal from now on. Unless you have a search warrant. Then it’ s legal, but you have to knock first and say, “Benny sent me.” This new rule doesn’ t count for hotel rooms. Then it’ s okay to raid the joint. So Daddy better get his own apartment. Judge Brenner is really under the thumb of real-estate agents. There is another way. Mommy can go to Reno. She lives there for six weeks. That is called “establishing residence.” Reno is Keno but Alabama is Clamor. Same-day service. The Chamber of Commerce invites lawyers to practice there. They are promised the run of the divorce mill. More people are traveling to Alabama than ever before. They are called Freedom Riders. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015055

Here comes the governor of New York. See him eat the potato knish. He wants to get a divorce. He will establish residence in another state. But then he can’ t be governor. Instead he will get a divorce in New York. But you know what that means. Dirty, dirty. Some deserving Young Republican girl will get the assignment. This is known as _ political patronage. The governor has a horny dilemma, though. Either he commits scandal or he commits perjury. Maybe he will propose a new law. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015056

RELIGION FOR DUMMIES HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015057

Pope Endorses Condoms When | was a kid, condoms were called prophylactics, prophylactics were called rubbers, and rubbers were called scumbags. My friends and | would find used scumbags in a vacant lot or in the alley between buildings. Once, while snooping, | found a large package of unused prophylactics in my father’ s sock drawer. It must have held a dozen. Now there were nine left. Each was tightly rolled, bound by a miniature cigar- like band. | selected one, took the band off, and carefully unrolled it. There was a legend imprinted on the prophylactic: “Sold in Drug Stores Only For the Prevention of Disease.” What hypocrisy! They were sold for the prevention of pregnancy, which is a condition, not a disease. The irony is that now condoms don’ ft carry that message but they are used for the prevention of disease. Anyway, | tried to re-roll my father’ s prophylactic and stuff it back into the band, but it was a losing battle, so | decided not to put it back in the package, figuring that my dad wasn’ t counting his condoms and would never know. As an adolescent, | found that purchasing condoms was a traumatic experience. | would buy other stuff to avoid being embarrassed. “I’ d like a Batman comic book, and this Snickers candy bar, and [whispering] a HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015058

pack of Trojans, and a tube of Crest toothpaste, please.” But four decades later there were huge billboards, warning: “If you can’ t say no, use condoms.” However, an executive of the Gannett Outdoor Advertising Company confirmed that they held off putting up those signs until after a visit by the Pope. Members of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy have been faced with an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, they are opposed to condoms as an artificial method of birth control. On the other hand, they are aware that condoms can serve as a protection against AIDS. But a group of bishops issued a statement that educational programs which include information about condoms should also stress that they are morally incorrect. That’ s sort of like in the Watergate scandal when Richard Nixon said, “We could get the million dollars—but that would be wrong." Coincidentally, in November 2010, while the porn industry in California was being pressured to require all male actors to wear condoms to prevent AIDS, in the Vatican it was revealed that, for the exact same reason, Pope Benedict--in his official capacity as the Church’ s chief spin doctor--went on record proclaiming that under some circumstances it might be acceptable for a (male) prostitute to use a condom. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015059

“There can be single justified cases,” he rationalized, “for example, when a prostitute uses a condom, and this can be a first step toward a moralization, a first act of responsibility in developing anew an awareness of the fact that not everything is permissible and that we cannot do everything we want. However, this is not the best way to overcome the infection of HIV. It is really necessary to humanize sexuality.” Daniel Maguire, author of Sacred Rights: The Case for Contraception and Abortion in World Religions, observed that the pope’ s change in policy represents a significant “crack in the dike” of Catholic opposition to condom use. The opposition stems from Catholic dogma that sex is for reproduction, and nothing should interfere with that. An issue of 7he Realist reprinted an article from the London Observer, which began: “Three Roman Catholic theologians have expressed the opinion that, in times of revolution and violence, it is lawful for women, particularly for nuns, to take contraceptive pills and precautions against the danger of becoming pregnant through rape.” On that same page was our Rumor of the Month. "So-called ‘flying saucers’ are actually diaphragms being dropped by nuns on their way to Heaven.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015060

| Ran an Underground Abortion Referral Service When abortion was illegal, women had no choice but to seek out back-alley butchers for what should have been a medical procedure in a sterile environment. If there was a botched surgery and the victim went to a hospital, the police were called and they wouldn’ t allow the doctor to provide a painkiller until the patient gave them the information they sought. In 1962, there was an article in Look magazine that stated, “There is no such thing as a ‘good’ abortionist. All of them are in business strictly for money.” But in an issue of 7he Realist | published an anonymous interview with Dr. Robert Spencer, a truly humane abortionist, promising that | would go to prison sooner than reveal his identity. He had served as an Army doctor in World War I, then became a pathologist at a hospital in Ashland, Pennsylvania. He went down into the shafts after a mine accident, and aided miners to obtain Workmen’ s Compensation for lung disease. At a time when 5,000 women were killed each year by criminal abortionists who charged as much as $1500, his HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015061

reputation had spread by word-of-mouth, and he was known as “The Saint.” Patients came to his clinic in Ashland from around the country. | took the five-hour bus trip from New York to Ashland with my gigantic Webcor tape recorder. Dr. Spencer was the cheerful personification of an old-fashioned physician. He wore a red beret and used folksy expressions like “by golly.”. He had been performing abortions for 40 years. He started out charging $5, and never more than $100. He rarely used the word pregnant. Rather, he would say, “She was that way, and she came to me for help.” Ashland was a small town, and Dr. Spencer's work was not merely tolerated; the community depended on it--the hotel, the restaurant, the dress shop—-all thrived on the extra business that came from his out-of- town patients. However, he built facilities at his clinic for African-American patients who weren't allowed to obtain overnight lodgings elsewhere. The walls of his office were decorated with those little wooden signs that tourists like to buy. A sign on the ceiling over his operating table said Keep Calm. Here’ san excerpt from our dialogue: Q. Do you have any idea about how many actual abortions you’ re performed during all these years? HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015062

A. To be accurate, it’ s 27,006 Q. Have medical people come to you, who would otherwise shun you? A. Oh, yes, I' ve had medical people who bring me their wives, and I' ve had quite a few medical people send me patients. Q. But they wouldn’ t perform the operation themselves? A. No, they’ d never perform it, and just exactly what their attitude would be, | don’ t really know. Some of them, | presume, were absolutely against it, because lI’ ve had ministers, and they’ d bring me their daughters or their nieces. Q. Have police come to you for professional services? A. Oh, yes, I’ ve had police in here, too. |’ ve helped them out. |’ ve helped a hell of a lot police out. I’ ve helped a lot of FBI men out. They would be here, and they had me a little bit scared--| didn’ t know whether they were just in to get me or not. Q. What would you say Is the most significant lesson you’ ve learned in all your years as a practicing abortionist? A. You’ ve got to be careful. That’ s the most important thing. And you’ ve got to be cocksure that everything’ s removed. And even the uterus speaks to you and tells you. | could be blind. You see, this is an HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015063

operation no eye sees. You go by the sense of feel and touch. The voice of the uterus. But the only thing | can see is hypocrisy, hypocrisy. Everywhere | look is hypocrisy, Because the politicians--and I’ ve had politicians in here--they still keep those laws in existence, but yet, if some friend of theirs is in trouble... Even priests came to his clinic with the housekeepers they had impregnated. As if to retroactively approve of such hypocrisy, the Co/orado Independent reported in 2013 that “A chain of Catholic hospitals has beaten a malpractice lawsuit by saying that fetuses are not equivalent to human lives.” Their attorneys argued that in cases of wrongful death, the term “person” only applies to individuals born alive, and not those who die in utero. After the issue of 7he Realist featuring that interview with Dr. Spencer was published, | began to get phone calls from scared female voices. They were all in desperate search of a safe abortionist. It was preposterous that they should have to seek out the editor of a satirical magazine, but their quest so far had been futile, and they simply didn't know where else to turn. With Dr. Spencer's permission, | referred them to him. At first there were only a few calls each week, then several every day. | had never HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015064

intended to become an underground abortion referral service, but it wasn't going to stop just because in the next issue of 7he Realist | would publish an interview with somebody else. A few years later, state police raided Dr. Spencer's clinic and arrested him. He remained out of jail only by the grace of political pressure from those he'd helped. He was finally forced to retire from his practice, but | continued mine, referring callers to other physicians that he had recommended. Occasionally | would be offered money by a patient, but | never accepted it. And whenever a doctor offered me a kickback, | refused, but | also insisted that he give a discount for the same amount to those patients referred by me. Eventually, | was subpoenaed by district attorneys in two cities to appear before grand juries investigating criminal charges against abortionists. On both occasions | refused to testify, and each time the D.A. tried to frighten me into cooperating with the threat of arrest. In Liberty, New York, my name had been extorted from a patient by threatening Aer with arrest. The D.A. told me that the doctor had confessed everything and they got it all on tape. He gave me until two o'clock that afternoon to change my mind about testifying, or else the police would come to take me away. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015065

“I'd better call my lawyer,” | told him. | went outside to a public phone booth and called, not a lawyer, but the doctor. “That never happened,” he said. | returned to the D.A.'s office and told him that my lawyer said to continue being uncooperative. Then | just sat there waiting for the cops. “They're on their way,” the D.A. kept warning me. But at two o'clock, he simply said, “Okay, you can go home now.” Bronx District Attorney (later Judge) Burton Roberts took a different approach. In September 1969, he told me that his staff had found an abortionist's financial records, which showed all the money that | had received, but he would grant me immunity from prosecution if | cooperated with the grand jury. He extended his hand as a gesture of trust. “That's not true,” | said, refusing to shake hands with him. If | had ever accepted any money, I'd have no way of knowing that he was bluffing. The D.A. was angry, but he finally had to let me go. Attorney Gerald Lefcourt (later president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers) filed a suit on my behalf, challenging the constitutionality of the abortion law. He pointed out that the district HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015066

attorney had no power to investigate the violation of an unconstitutional law, and therefore he could not force me to testify. In 1970, | became the only plaintiff in the first lawsuit to declare the abortion laws unconstitutional in New York State. “Later, various women’ s groups joined the suit,” Lefcourt recalls, “and ultimately the New York legislature repealed the criminal sanctions against abortion, prior to the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade." Dr. Spencer never knew about that. He had died in 1969. The obituary in the New York Times acknowledged the existence of his abortion clinic. The obituary in the local paper in Ashland did not. | continued to carry on my underground abortion referral service. Each time, though, | would flash on the notion that this was my own mother asking for help, and that she was pregnant with me. | would try to identify with the fetus that was going to be aborted even while | was serving as a conduit to the performance of that very abortion. Every day | would think about the possibility of never having existed, and | would only appreciate being alive all the more. Of course, | couldn’ t possibly have known the difference if my fetus had been aborted. Pretending to be the fetus was just a way of focusing on my role as a referral service. | didn't want it to become so casual that | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015067

would grow unaware of the implications. By personalizing it, | had to accept my own responsibility for each fetus whose potential | was helping to disappear. That was about as mystical as | got. Maybe | was simply projecting my own ego. In any case, by the time these women came to me for help, they had already searched their souls and made up their minds. This was not some abstract cause far away—-these were real people in real distress--and | just couldn't say no. For nearly a decade, that became my fetal yoga. And, in the process, | had evolved from a satirist into an activist. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015068

There Are No Atheists in the White House It was God who instructed Bill O’ Reilly to consider every utterance of “Happy Holidays” to be a verbalization of “the war on Christmas.” Whenever anybody claims that God talks directly to them, | think they’ re totally delusional. George W. Bush is no exception. Not only was he told by his senior adviser, Karen Hughes, not to refer to terrorists as “folks,” but Bush was also being prompted by God Him-Her-or-lItself: “God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.’ And | did.” As if he were merely following divine orders. In July 2003, during a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, Bush told the newly elected leader, “God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda and | struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which | did. And now | am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, | will act, and if not, the elections will come and | will have to focus on them.” Abu Bakar Bashir, an Islamic cleric and accused terrorist leader, has said that “America’ s aim in attacking Iraq is to attack Islam, so it is justified for Muslims to target America to defend themselves.” That’ s exactly interchangeable with this description of Bush by an unidentified HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015069

family member, quoted in the Los Angeles Times. “George sees [the war on terror] as a religious war. His view is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know.” Indeed, General William Boykin, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, said that “George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States, he was appointed by God.” Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin explained, “I knew my God was bigger than his. | knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” Apparently, religious bigotry runs in the family. Bush’ s father, the former president: “I don’ t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” And before him, there was Ronald Reagan: “For the first time ever, everything is in place for the Battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.” Not to mention Reagan’ s Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, responsible for national policy on the environment: “We don't have to protect the environment--the Second Coming is at hand.” In 1966, Lyndon Johnson told the Austrian ambassador that the diety “comes and speaks to me about two o’ clock in the morning when HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015070

| have to give the word to the boys, and | get the word from God whether to bomb or not.” So maybe there’ s some kind of bipartisan theological tradition going on in the White House. But if these leaders are not delusional, then they’ re deceptive. And in order to deceive others, one must first deceive oneself until self- deception morphs into virtual reality. In any case, we have our religious fanatics, and they have theirs. In September 2007, on the eve of the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Osama bin Laden warned the American people that they should reject their capitalist way of life and embrace Islam to end the lraq war, or else his followers would “escalate the killing and fighting against you.” George Bush once proclaimed, “God is not neutral,” which is the antithesis of my own spiritual path, my own peculiar relationship with the universe--based on the notion that God is tota//y neutral--though |’ ve learned that whatever people believe in, works for them. My own belief in a deity disappeared when | was thirteen. | was working early mornings in a candy store across the street from our apartment building. My job was to insert different sections of the newspaper into the main section. On the day after the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, | would read that headline HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015071

over and over and over again while | was working. That afternoon, | told God | couldn’ t believe in him any more because--even though he was supposed to be a loving and all-powerful being--he had allowed such devastation to happen. And then | heard the voice of God: “ALLOWED? WHY DO YOU THINK | GAVE HUMANS FREE WILL?” “Okay, well, I' m exercising my free will to believe that you don’ t exist.” “ALL RIGHT, PAL, IT’ S YOUR LOSS!” At least we would remain on speaking terms. But | knew it was a game. | enjoyed the paradox of developing a dialogue with a being whose reality now ranked with that of Santa Claus. Our previous relationship had instilled in me a touchstone of objectivity that could still serve to help keep me honest. | realized, though, that whenever | prayed, | was only talking to myself. The only thing | can remember from my entire college education is a definition of philosophy as “the rationalization of life.” For my term paper, | decided to write a dialogue between Plato and an atheist. On a whim, | looked up Atheism in the Manhattan phone book, and there it was: “Atheism, American Association for the Advancement of.” | went to their office for background material. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015072

The AAAA sponsored the Ism Forum, where anybody could speak about any “ism” of their choice. | invited a few friends to meet me there. The event was held in a dingy hotel ballroom. There was a small platform with a podium at one end of the room and heavy wooden folding chairs lined around the perimeter. My favorite speaker declared the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not take thyself too goddamned seriously.” Taking that as my unspoken theme, | got up and parodied the previous speakers. The folks there were mostly middle-aged and elderly. They seemed to relish the notion of fresh young blood in their movement. However, my companions weren’ t interested in staying. If | had left with them that evening in 1953, the rest of my life could have taken a totally different path. Instead, | went along with a group to a nearby cafeteria, where | learned about the New York Rationalist Society. A whole new world of disbelief was opening up to me. That Saturday night | went to their meeting. The emcee was a former circus performer who entertained his fellow rationalists by putting four golf balls into his mouth. He also recommended an anti-censorship paper, 7he /ndependent. The next week, | went to their office to subscribe and get back issues. | ended up with a part-time job, stuffing envelopes for a dollar an hour. My apprenticeship had begun. The editor, Lyle Stuart, was the most HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015073

dynamic individual I’ d ever met. His integrity was such that if he possessed information that he had a vested interest in keeping quiet--say, corruption involving a corporation in which he owned stock--it would become top priority for him to publish. Lyle became my media mentor, my unrelenting guru, and my closest friend. He was responsible for launching The Realist. The masthead announced, “Freethought Criticism and Satire.” In the words of the late Jerry Falwell--who once said that God is pro- war-- “If you’ re not a born-again Christian, you’ re a failure as a human being.” We salute, then, a few successfu/human beings: *The individual who placed the winning bid of $1800 on eBay for a slab of concrete with a smudge of driveway sealant resembling the face of Jesus. *The man who tried to crucify himself after seeing “pictures of God on the computer.” He took two pieces of wood, nailed them together in the form of a cross and placed it on his living-room floor. He proceeded to hammer one of his hands to the crucifix, using a 14-penny nail. According to a county sheriff spokesperson, “When he realized that he was unable HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015074

to nail his other hand to the board, he called 911.” It was unclear whether he was seeking assistance for his injury or help in nailing his other hand. *The Sunday School teacher who advised one of his students to write on his penis, “What would Jesus do?” Presumably, “Masturbate” was not considered to be the correct answer. *And, of course, the anonymous authors of the following quotes from various state constitutions. Arkansas: “No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office.” Mississippi: “No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.” North Carolina: “The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.” South Carolina: “No person shall be eligible to the office of Governor who denies the existence of the Supreme Being.” Tennessee: “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, Shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.” Texas: “Nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.” Rick Warren, pastor of America’ s fourth-largest church, told his congregation, “I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, ‘I don’ tneed God.’ ” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015075

In 2006, the Secular Coalition of America offered a $1,000 prize to anyone who identified the highest-ranking non-theist public official in the country. Almost 60 members of Congress were nominated, out of which 22 confided that they didn’ t believe in a Supreme Being, but they wanted their disbelief kept secret. Only Pete Stark admitted that he was a nonbeliever, and in 2007, he became the first member of Congress ever to identify himself publicly as a nonbeliever. In the week following that announcement, he received over 5,000 emails from around the globe, almost all congratulating him for his courage. “Like our nation’ s founders,” he stated, “I strongly support the separation of church and state. | look forward to working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social services.” In 2008, he was elected to his 19th term with 76.5% of the votes. In the 2008 primaries, three presidential wannabes raised their hands during a Republican “debate” to signify that they didn’ t believe in evolution, although one of them, Mike Huckabee, admitted, “I don’ t know if the world was created in six days. | wasn’ t there.” He has also said that, “If there was ever an occasion for someone to have argued HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015076

against the death penalty, | think Jesus could have done so on the cross and said, ‘This is an unjust punishment, and | deserve clemency.’ ” Such western fundamentalists have been waging a battle against the teaching of meditation in publicly funded schools, as though slow, deep breathing is inextricably connected with the practice of eastern religious disciplines. What’ s next, forbidding the teaching of empathy because that’ s what Christians and Jews are supposed to practice? It was a pleasant surprise when Barack Obama acknowledged “unbelievers” among others in his inauguration speech. However, | don’ t exempt unbelievers from criticism. | ridicule officially atheist China’ s leaders for banning Tibet’ s living Buddhas from reincarnation without permission. According to the order, issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, “The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid.” That regulation is aimed at limiting the influence of the Dalai Lama, even though China officially denies the possibility of reincarnation. (| used to believe in reincarnation, but that was in a previous lifetime.) China is a Big-Brother, slave-labor-driven, human-rights-violator, Maoist dictatorship, from which the United States borrows trillions, then HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015077

proceeds to purchase their poisoned food, leaded Christmas toys, and “Made in China” American flags. America remains a living paradox, where our citizens are force-fed misinformation and disinformation, so that we can continue to fund incompetent and illegal activities in the U.S.--even though our revolution was fought because of taxation without representation. And yet | live in this country where at least | still have complete freedom to openly condemn the government, the corporations and organized religions that continue enabling each other to reek with greed, corruption, and inhumanity. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015078

THE SEX LIFE OF PRESIDENTS & OTHERS HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015079

The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book An executive in the publishing industry, who obviously must remain anonymous, has made available to The Realist a photostat copy of the original manuscript of William Manchester's book, The Death of a President. Those passages which are printed here were marked for deletion months before Harper & Row sold the serialization rights to Look magazine; hence they do not appear even in the so-called “complete” version published by the German magazine Stern. # At the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1960, Los Angeles was the scene of a political visitation of the alleged sins of the father upon the son. Lyndon Johnson found himself battling for the presidential nomination with a young, handsome, charming and witty adversary, John F. Kennedy. The Texan in his understandable anxiety degenerated to a strange campaign tactic. He attacked his opponent on the grounds that his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a Nazi sympathizer during the time he was United States Ambassador to Great Britain, from 1938 to 1940. The senior Kennedy had predicted that Germany would defeat England and he HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015080

therefore urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to withhold aid. Now Johnson found himself fighting pragmatism with pragmatism. It did not work; he lost the nomination. Ironically, the vicissitudes of regional bloc voting forced Kennedy into selecting Johnson as his running mate. Jack rationalized the practicality of the situation, but Jackie was constitutionally unable to forgive Johnson. Her attitude toward him always remained one of controlled paroxysm. It was common knowledge in Washington social circles that the Chief Executive was something of a ladies’ man. His staff included a Secret Service agent, referred to by the code name Dentist, whose duties virtually centered around escorting him to and from a rendezvous site--either in the District of Columbia or while traveling--the models, actresses and other strikingly attractive females chosen by the president for his not-at-all infrequent trysts. “Get me that,” he had said of a certain former Dallas beauty contest winner when plans for the tour were first being discussed. That particular aspect of the itinerary was changed, of course, when Mrs. Kennedy decided to accompany her husband. She was aware of his philandering, but would cover up her dismay by joking, “It runs in the family.” The story had gotten back to her about HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015081

the late Marilyn Monroe using the telephone in her Hollywood bathroom to make a long distance call to New York Post film-gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky. “Sid, you won't believe this,“ she had whispered, “but the Attorney General of our country is waiting for me in my bed this very minute--I just had to tell you.” It is difficult to ascertain where on the continuum of Lyndon Johnson's personality innocent boorishness ends and deliberate sadism begins. To have summoned then-Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon for a conference wherein he, the new president, sat defecating as he spoke, might charitably be an example of the former; but to challenge under the same circumstances Senator J. William Fulbright for his opposition to Administration policy in Vietnam is considered by insiders to be a frightening instance of the latter. The more Jacqueline Kennedy has tried to erase the crudeness of her husband's successor from consciousness, the more it has impinged upon her memories and reinforced her resentment. “It's beyond style,” she would confide to friends. “Jack had style, but this is beyond style.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015082

When Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. related to her an incident that he had witnessed firsthand--Mr. Johnson had actually placed his penis over the railing of the yacht, bragging to onlookers, “Watch it touch bottom!” —- Mrs. Kennedy could not help but shiver with disgust. Capitol Hill reporters have observed the logical extension of Mr. Johnson boasting about his six- o'clock-in-the-morning forays with Lady Bird, to his bursts of phallic exhibitionism, whether it be on a boat or at the swimming pool or in the lavatory. Apropos of this tendency, Drew Pearson's assistant, Jack Anderson, has remarked: “When Lyndon announces there's going to be a joint session of Congress, everybody cringes.” It is true that Mrs. Kennedy withstood the pressures of publicized scandal, ranging from the woman who picketed the White House carrying a blown-up photograph supposedly of Jack Kennedy sneaking away from the home of Jackie's press secretary, Pamela Turnure, to the B/auvelt Family Genealogy which claimed on page 884, under Eleventh Generation, that one Durie Malcolm had “married, third, John F. Kennedy, son of Joseph P. Kennedy, one time Ambassador to England.” But it was the personal infidelities that gnawed away at her—-as indeed they would gnaw away at any wife who has been shaped by this culture--until finally Jackie left in exasperation. Her father-in-law offered her one million dollars to HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015083

reconcile. She came back, not for the money, but because she sincerely believed that the nation needed Jack Kennedy, and she didn't want to bear the burden of losing enough public favor to forestall his winning the presidency. Consequently she was destined to bear a quite different burden-- with great ambivalence--the paradox of fame. She enjoyed playing her role to the hilt, but complained, “Can't they get it into their heads that there's a difference between being the First Lady and being Elizabeth Taylor?” Even after she became First Widow, the movie magazines would not--or could not--leave her alone. Probably the most bizarre invasion of her privacy occurred in Photoplay, which asked the question, “Too Soon for Love?” --then proceeded to print a coupon that readers were requested to answer and send in. They had a multiple choice: “Should Jackie (1) Devote her life exclusively to her children and the memory of her husband? (2) Begin to date--privately or publicly--and eventually remarry? (3) “Marry right away?” Mrs. Kennedy fumed. “Why don't they give them some more decisions to make for me? Some rea/ ones. Should | live in occasional sin? Should | use a diaphragm or the pill? Should | keep it in the medicine cabinet or the bureau drawer?” But she would never lose her dignity in public; she had too deep a faith in her own image. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015084

American leaders seem to have a schizophrenic approach toward each other. They want to expose their human frailties at the same time that they do not want to remove them from their pedestals. Bobby Kennedy privately abhors Lyndon Johnson, but publicly calls him “great, and | mean that in every sense of the word.” Johnson has referred to Bobby as “that little shit” in private, but continues to laud him for the media. Gore Vidal has no such restraint. On a television program in London, he explained why Jacqueline Kennedy would never relate to Lyndon Johnson. During that tense flight from Dallas to Washington after the assassination, she inadvertently walked in on him as he was standing over the casket of his predecessor and chuckling. This disclosure was the talk of London, but did not reach these shores. Of course, President Johnson is often given to inappropriate response--witness the puzzled timing of his smiles when he speaks of grave matters--but we must also assume that Mrs. Kennedy had been traumatized that day and her perception was likely to have been tainted by the tragedy. This state of shock must have underlain an incident on Air Force One which this writer conceives to be delirium, but which Mrs. Kennedy insists she actually saw. “I'm telling you this for the historical HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015085

record,” she said, “so that people a hundred years from now will know what | had to go through.” She corroborated Gore Vidal's story, continuing: “That man [Johnson] was crouching over the corpse, no longer chuckling but breathing hard and moving his body rhythmically. At first | thought he must be performing some mysterious symbolic rite he'd learned from Mexicans or Indians as a boy. And then | realized--there is only one way to say this--he was literally fucking my husband in the throat. In the bullet wound in the front of his throat. He reached a climax and dismounted. | froze. The next thing | remember, he was being sworn in as the new president.” [Handwritten marginal notes: 7. Check with Rankin--did secret autopsy show semen in throat wound? 2. Is this simply necrophilia, or was LB/ trying to change entry wound from grassy knoll into exit wound trom Book Depository by enlarging it? The glaze lifted from Jacqueline Kennedy's eyes. “| don't believe that Lyndon Johnson had anything to do with a conspiracy, but | do know this--Jack taught me about the nuances of power--if he were miraculously to come back to life and suddenly appear HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015086

in front of him, the first thing Johnson would do now is kill him.” She smiled sardonically, adding, “Unless Bobby beat him to it.” Postscript: The most significant thing about “The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book” was its widespread acceptance--if only for a moment--by intelligent, literate people, from an ACLU official to a Peabody Award- winning journalist to members of the intelligence community who knew that sort of thing actually does go on. Daniel Ellsberg said, “Maybe it was just because | wanted to believe it so badly.” One caller claimed that he could determine, by feeding the article into a computer, whether Manchester had written the portions | published. Several individuals queried that final arbiter of truth, the Playboy Adviser. One reader “went out and bought the original Death of a President just to see if your parts would fit into the book--they did. Amazing!” | also received a call from Ray Marcus, a critic of the Warren Commission Report, who had discovered a chronological flaw in my article. How could William Manchester leave something out of his book that was itself a report of something that he’ d left out of his book? Marcus deduced that 7he Realist must have been given the excerpts by a CIA operative in order to discredit va/id dissent on the assassination. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015087

My favorite response came from Merriman Smith, the syndicated UPI correspondent who always ended White House press conferences with the traditional “Thank you, Mr. President.” He wrote: “One of the filthiest printed attacks ever made on a President of the United States is now for sale on Washington newsstands. The target: President Johnson. This is the May edition of a so-called magazine which says it is entered as second class mail. One newsstand owner says sales of this particular issue have been = ‘quite active.’ This reporter is not embarked here on any defense of Johnson politically or personally, nor, for that matter, is this to suggest the need for greater respect for the presidency. “These are matters that have been dealt with extensively in other forums. Certain unadorned facts, however, do stand out in the open circulation, mailing and other forms of distribution of this sort of slime: Ifa magazine of major national standing tries to use the same sort of language, federal action to stop it would be almost certain. The language referred to is not conventional hell or damn profanity—-it is filth attributed to someone of national stature supposedly describing something Johnson allegedly did. The incident, of course, never took place. . .” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015088

A Sneak Preview of Richard Nixon’ s Memoir An old friend approached us with a thick sheaf of what was purported to be a photocopy of the autobiographical manuscript on which former President Richard M. Nixon was still at work. Our first reaction was skepticism. While most of the contents dealt predictably with contemporary history as it has already been recorded, there were enough surprises to shock even our own jaded psyche. Just to be sure, we employed the services of a reputable private investigative firm. Their report veritied that our source did indeed know an individual inside the San Clemente hideaway. The next step was to hire a professional graphologist. who determined the authenticity of Mr. Nixon’ s handwritten notes on the typed transcript. Finally, our attorneys assured us that there was no violation of copyright laws involved, because it was unlikely that Nixon had submitted such unfinished material for copyright protection. The book, as yet untitled, is dedicated “To Patricia Ryan Nixon, who has been named the most admired women in the country, and deservedly so, for your loyalty has been a continuing inspiration, not only to your HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015089

husband and family, but to Americans everywhere.” Here, then, are several excerpts from this preliminary draft of the memoirs of the only United States president ever to resign trom office. # Although President Dwight David Eisenhower encouraged me to call him Ike during the years | served as Vice President, it was a superficial form of intimacy. | regretted his failure to share decision-making responsibility with me at the White House. That privilege he reserved for his special assistant, Sherman Adams. When media coverage of a minor scandal in 1958 involving a rug and a vicuna coat pressured him into letting Adams go, Ike at last revealed a facet of his humanity to me. “By sheer force of habit,” he remarked, “I was ready to seek out Sherman’ s advice on whether or not | should fire him.” It was not until 1961, after Ike’ s farewell address, that he confided in me again, this time about a more momentous occasion. “I suppose,” he began, “my reference to the dangers of the military-industrial complex in my speech came as something of a surprise to you, eh?” “Well, sir, it did strike me as a rather incongruous position for a renowned Army general to take--” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015090

“| had a visitation,” he interrupted, “while | was in the process of composing my farewell address—now this is utterly impossible to describe—but | do believe it was some kind of extraterrestrial communication.” “In English or what?” | was dumbfounded. “It was in English but also beyond all language. They told me that their associates had been to see Harry Truman when /e was president. Now remember Dick, he’ s the one who ordered the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And yet these creatures convinced him not to turn Korea into another nuclear holocaust. That’ s really why he brought back General Douglas MacArthur.” Ike stared ahead with a blank expression in his eyes. “Sir, are you all right?” “Yes. Yes. | just don’ t know if | can articulate this extraterrestrial experience. It was as though my body remained in the chair and my spirit was taken on a journey. All | know is that when | returned, | just had to tell the truth. There was no other choice--" Ike stopped in mid-sentence. He never mentioned that incident again. Nor did | feel it would be proper for me to broach the subject. | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015091

dismissed it from my mind. It would not be until nearly fourteen years later that my viscera/understanding of his experience would occur. The year 1974 was so rough on me that for a while | thought | could actually be going insane. | wondered if | was being drugged without my knowledge. | found myself wallowing in paranoid fantasies, and | gave voice to these at press conferences. | expressed the fear that my plane might crash. | resorted to using expressions like “They can point a gun at your head.” | was practically begging for mercy. When | entered Memorial Hospital Medical Center in Long Beach on October 23 for my phlebitis condition, | brought my own jar of wheat germ, because | was afraid that poison would be put in my food. On October 29, the doctors placed a clamp on a vein in my pelvis in order to prevent the blood clot from moving to my lungs where it could have killed me. It was then that | went into cardiovascular failure. On October 30, Ron Ziegler announced, “We almost lost President Nixon yesterday afternoon.” This was almost three months after my resignation, and he was still referring to me as President. “Poor Ron,” | thought to myself. “He thinks he’ s still in Disneyland.” For a few hours | was considered to be clinically dead. It was an incredibly ecstatic feeling. | was conscious, but on some other plane of HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015092

existence, and there was an overwhelming temptation to remain in that blissful limbo. Yet there was also something in me that kept saying “Don’ t give up!" It was my survival instinct speaking. But why not give up? What was there left for me? The answer came to me by the same extraterrestrial path it had come to Ike: 7e// the truth! That was the turning point of my life. And these memoirs are the tangible result of my transformation. No one shall be spared, least of all myself. Those hairless creatures told me that President John F. Kennedy had also been visited by their kind. His father, old Joe Kennedy, had gotten rich off illegal booze during Prohibition, and you can be certain that the underworld bootleggers he was tied up with were not about to dissolve their silent partnership in this huge liquor industry they had built up, simply because Prohibition had been repealed. Yet there was Joe Kennedy’ s own son, Jack—not to mention his brother Bobby—refusing to cooperate any longer in allowing organized crime to have a comeback in Cuba, and furthermore, going after organized crime in th/s country. At best this was ingratitude; at worst it was treason. But | finally understood the extraterrestrial force that had motivated young Kennedy. And so now | am ready to peel away the final layers of my poker-face mask. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015093

For example, | occasionally went too far while wearing my anti- Communist mask. When former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach exposed the DuBois Clubs as a Communist front organization, poison-pen letters and threatening telephone calls were received by many of the Boys Clubs from patriotic Americans who were understandably confused by the ostensibly coincidental pronunciations. But in my function as National Board Chairman of the Boys Clubs of America, | charged that the name choice was “an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity” and that the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs “are not unaware of the confusion they are causing among our supporters and among many other good citizens.” In retrospect, however, | admit that this was a slightly foolish position to espouse. In August of 1945, while | was still serving in the Navy, stationed in Maryland, there was a Committee of 100 seeking—according to an advertisement they placed in several California newspapers—a candidate for Congress “with no previous political experience, to defeat a man who has represented the district in the House for ten years.” This was a reference to Jerry Voorhis. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015094

| did not see the ad, but destiny acted as though | had answered it, when | was contacted by Murray Chotiner for Herman Perry, vice president of the Bank of America. Perry later became vice president of the Western Tube Corporation, a CIA front located in the Whittier Bank of America building. But now he wanted to know only if | was a Republican and if | was available. My responses were both affirmative. It was Perry who brought me out for an extremely brief meeting with Howard Hughes. Hughes was handsome, dynamic, self-assured. Somehow he had seen the FBI dossier on me, which had apparently been compiled when | applied for a position with the Bureau after graduating law school. Oddly enough, | had never heard back from the FBI directly. “Nixon,” he addressed me, “you have a magnificent political future ahead. You will be able to steer your ship independently. But always keep it in a tiny compartment of your mind that you do not own the ocean. | do.” | never saw Howard Hughes face to face again. kok # The seeds of my distrust of the Justice Department were sown in 1948 during the Alger Hiss case. Those people just sat on each other’ s HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015095

hands. If not for the work of our House UnAmerican Activities Committee, the prosecution would never have been so successful. | refused to turn over to those bunglers the microfilms we had in evidence. When there was a possibility | might be cited for contempt, | raised the point of what a dangerous precedent could be set, since here | was, a U.S. Congressman, appearing voluntarily before a grand jury. But the truth of the matter was that those microfilms were copies of documents forged on an old Woodstock typewriter that had been specially constructed to resemble—to have the same_ peculiarities as—the typewriter that had actually belonged to Alger Hiss’ s wife, Priscilla. Then Whittaker Chambers hid these “old” 1938 microfilms inside a pumpkin on his pumpkin farm. The trouble was, the Eastman Kodak people stated that the type of film we used was not manufactured by their company until 1945. To this day, whenever the comic strip Peanuts mentions that bird named Woodstock or the mysterious “pumpkin papers,” | suspect Charles Schulz is trying to remind me of something. kok # There seems to be a tradition of accusing those who fight Communism of being homosexual. This smear tactic was used against HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015096

Whittaker Chambers, against Senator Joseph McCarthy and against J. Edgar Hoover. In that vein, gossips used to rant about Hoover and Clyde Tolson double-dating with Charles “Bebe” Rebozo and myself. Neither Rebozo nor! are “gay.” We have been very close friends since 1950. What we enjoy most about each other’ s company is the fact that small talk becomes unnecessary. We are not afraid of silence. But we have never had any kind of sexual relationship. We were introduced by Senator George Smathers, who was infamous for supplying female companions to his fellow legislators. It was Smathers who eventually sent Mary Jo Kopechne to be with Senator Edward Kennedy. Whenever | was in Florida, | would stay with Bebe, and he would occasionally get a couple of beautiful $200-a-night girls. Or as they would be called nowadays, $200-a-night women. But when | bought my own home in Key Biscayne, then his yacht became our rendezvous site. | was certainly not promiscuous, but | had been a virgin until marriage. | proposed to Pat Ryan the very same night | met her. She refused, but | was a determined son-of-a-gun. | even drove her to Los Angeles when she dated other men while | waited in the wings. | finally charmed her with my perseverance and self-effacement. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015097

Once | express concern to Bebe that word might get out about my “affairs” in Key Biscayne. “These girls,” | pointed out, “are likely to brag about going to bed with a United States senator.” “They’ re professionals,” Bebe reassured me. “It’s just like your lawyer-client privilege. Stop worrying.” kok & One evening in 1949, while | was still serving in Congress, | received an anonymous call at my home. A male voice said three words, “Watch Jeane Dixon,” and hung up the telephone. A week later, the psychic Jeane Dixon held a press conference. One of the reporters asked her to predict my future. She drew a blank, however, explaining that she needed time to meditate. | believe that in show business parlance this is known as “milking the audience.” Finally she said it: “| predict that one day Richard Nixon will become president of the United States.” | could only conclude that the higher source from which she had received her intelligence was not necessarily supernatural. When | lost the presidential election to John F. Kennedy in 1960, Jeane Dixon continued to predict that | would be president. “Destiny,” she said, “cannot be denied.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015098

Even after | was defeated in the 1962 California gubernatorial election and announced that | was through with politics, she said, “Richard Nixon has not even begun his rise in politics." And then she predicted the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. After the Watergate affair, she stated: “God gave us Richard Nixon to divide us, to test us where our faith is concerned, to see if we could come together.” A local paper published her statement ( “God gave us Nixon to divide us.—Jeane Dixon” ) as the caption for a cartoon showing a cloud with the voice of God saying, “Don’ t blame me—! voted for McGovern.” | had to admit it was funny, even though she had been quoted out of context. Harry Robbins “Bob” Haldeman came into my life when | was a senator in 1951. He volunteered to work on my vice presidential campaign the next year, but that campaign was not to be for him, so he tried again in 1956, and this time we took him on. He rose to be my chief advance man for the presidential race in 1960. After my defeat, Haldeman remained loyal. He volunteered to help me with my book, Six Crises. | wrote the chapter on the 1960 campaign myself because it was so fresh in my mind. Al Moscow drafted four other HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015099

chapters with Haldeman—this was not ghostwritten material because | rewrote what they presented—and Haldeman worked mostly on the Alger Hiss chapter. He was apparently so eager to please, though, that he screwed up on his research. He had it that the FBI found the old Woodstock typewriter. And the book was published that way. Then the facts came out, the trial records and all, and we had to change it for the paperback edition. So now it reads that the FBI was unab/e to find the typewriter. The truth is, Alger Hiss found it himself. But the FBI had p/anted this fake Woodstock typewriter. And then the defense presented it in the trial as what they assumed was evidence in their favor. So a least Hiss was found guilty of perjury. That verdict added immeasurably to my political strength. | had the courage of Alger Hiss’ s conviction and it served as the magic carpet that transported me from the Congress to the Senate to the vice presidency. | would have had the presidency in my pocket if not for Kennedy’ s performance in the Great Debates—but only on television; | fared better on radio. Kennedy’ s charisma was the variable that none of us had counted on. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015100

How strange that the incident from the entire eight years | spent as Vice President that stands out most prominently in my memory occurred not in the White House but in Peru. There was a rioter who spat on me, and it was with great pleasure that | kicked him in the shins. Back in the safety of our hotel that night, | recalled an early formal debate at Whittier College— “Resolved: that insects are more beneficial than harmful” —because | had been so intrigued as to how insects did not think, they just acted. Now, having myself acted totally without hesitation, | was able to identify with those insects. As Vice President, | labored diligently behind the scenes to establish Operation 40, by which our CIA covertly trained Cuban intelligence officers in exile. Operation 40 was to serve as our link between the White House and the CIA in April of 1961. My plan was to invade Cuba. Ironically, during the 1960 presidential campaign, Kennedy began advocating my plan. | could not reveal that it was a/ready in effect because Operation 40 was a secret project. Further, | found myself in the schizophrenic position of attacking my own idea whenever Kennedy articulated it, because it violated our treaty commitments. zk k * HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015101

Of all the professional newscasters | have met, Walter Cronkite of CBS was the most charming. He treated me with respect and dignity. After the broadcast interview, we sat in his anteroom and talked informally. “I’ ve always wanted to thank you,” he said, “for inadvertently bringing me back to sanity that horrible weekend John Kennedy was killed.” “Oh, really—how so?” “This followed on the heels of the televised shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. A journalist asked for your reaction, and you replied with a slip of the tongue, ‘Two rights don’ t make a wrong.’ Before you could correct yourself, | was finally able to break through my depression with a bit of laughter.” “Yes, those were muddled times. Do you know | forgot where | was the day the assassination took place? | had to tell the FBI | couldn’ t remember, and it was not until later that | remembered | had been in Dallas, of all places. There was a convention of the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages, and | was there representing Pepsi-Cola. But | flew out of there at eleven o’ clock that morning. Kennedy was shot around one o’ clock, as | recall. Where were you that day?” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015102

“In my office,” Cronkite said. “When we got the word from Bethesda that he had passed, | cried openly.” “And you’ re supposed to be objective,” | teased him. “I didn’ t realize you were that much of a Kennedy supporter.” “Well, by that time | was crying because it had also come over the wires that Lyndon Johnson was already preparing to be sworn in as the new president.” It was encouraging to find that in person this superstar really was just like your favorite uncle. When Robert Kennedy was attorney general in 1962, he was busy checking out the Hiss case for some reason. Of course, he discovered that the FBI never had the Woodstock typewriter. Then, in 1968, when he was running for president, he approached New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to be //s attorney general. Garrison had gotten a lot of publicity due to his investigation of the assassination of Bobby’ s brother. During that campaign, Howard Hughes dispatched Robert Maheu to visit me. Hughes felt strongly that the Vietnam War should continue—he had a huge defense contract for helicopters—yet at the same time he HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015103

wanted a halt to underground nuclear testing, presumably because it upset the roulette wheels in his Las Vegas casinos. | mentioned the Bobby Kennedy information to Maheu, and he said, “Uh-oh, the boss will have to keep a sharper eye on Aim." It was poetic irony that while Bobby Kennedy was giving official permission to J. Edgar Hoover to spy on Martin Luther King, | was giving unofficial permission to Hoover to spy on Kennedy. That is to say, Robert Maheu may have been working for Howard Hughes, but he had also continued working for the FBI. So when he referred to “the boss,” | asked, “Which one?" Maheu smiled and held up his arms, two fingers from each hand extending up into the air. “Both,” he said. This was the exact moment | decided to use that gesture for the crowds. Winston Churchill had used the V-sign to signify Victory. Then the antiwar protesters perverted its meaning to signify Defeat. Now | was restoring its original victorious symbolism by co-opting the co-opters. Or so | believed. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015104

The problem was that Lyndon Johnson desperately wanted to have the Vietnam War settled before he left office. Whereas, | am ashamed to admit, we were trying to prolong it. Anna Chennault—the Dragon Lady, as we called her—was our liaison to South Vietnamese government officials. Her task was to dissuade their ambassador to the U.S, Bui Diem, from attending the Paris peace talks. But LBJ got wise to this. | had to call and cajole him personally. He was absolutely furious. He complained bitterly at how “shit-kickin’ pissed off” he was. “Thieu is our boy,” he shouted, “and don’ t you fuckin’ forget that!” On November 1, 1968, only four days before the American election, President Nguyen Van Thieu announced that Saigon was pulling out of the peace talks. The Dragon Lady had obviously convinced his associates that they would obtain a juicier deal under our new administration than under Johnson or his chosen successor, Hubert Humphrey, who would surely have won if the Democrats had ended the war. And so, because it was in the mutual interest of the South Vietnamese and the Republicans to extend the war for several more years, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015105

we became the recipients of kickbacks from our own government’ s aid to the Saigon government. | do not ask for forgiveness. No, rather | must live with the memory of myself as an idealistic adolescent first reading about the Teapot Dome scandal and saying to my mother, while helping her to mash the potatoes, “| would like to become an honest lawyer who can’ t be brought by crooks.” But my character had already been set. When | was only five years old, my mother intended to buy me a copy of 7he Prince and the Pauper, but she asked a bookstore clerk for 7he Prince, and so of course he gave her Machiavelli’ s book. Mo mother was a saint. Her little mistake changed my life, and | will always be grateful for what | feel must have been a touch of divine intervention. We created a couple of Frankenstein monsters, and when | say we, | mean the administration and the media in an unintentional collaboration. One such monster was Martha Mitchell. The first time she made one of her famous telephone calls and we saw how the press ate it up, we realized we had a political gold mine. The wife of the attorney general could serve as our mouthpiece for floating various trial balloons. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015106

John Mitchell would get thoroughly briefed on whatever the issue was—Haiphong Harbor or Senator Fulbright or the need for increased spending—and then, without ever letting Martha know that he expected her to give a scoop to some lucky reporter that evening, John would simply smoke his pipe and just happen to engage her in casual conversation about the matter. Martha was much too strong-willed to be /nstructed to make a call, but she could be counted on to make the call, even if it was three 0’ clock in the morning when the urge hit her. This was a great joke among the reporters. One little news item quoted her latest pronouncement, and after the quote that sentence was completed with, “Martha Mitchell confided to the Washington Star yesterday...” Confided, indeed—to a newspaper. But in the process of becoming a public character, she developed many contacts in the media. By the time her husband became my campaign manager, Martha Mitchell was already a household word. We thought she would prove to be a wonderful asset until she started blabbing about Watergate. Another Frankenstein monster we created was Henry Kissinger. | never really wanted him in the first place. He had insulted me publicly when | received the nomination in ' 68. But | made an agreement with HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015107

Nelson Rockefeller that if he would actively support me, | would take Kissinger onto the team, and of course | had to keep my word. We all felt somewhat uncomfortable about his German accent. H.R. Haldeman decided that whenever Kissinger made any statement, his picture could be shown on TV but there would be no audio. And the electronic media cooperated. Meanwhile, we built up his image, got him dates with glamorous movie stars—Jill St. John, Marlo Thomas, Liv Ullmann—until he became known as a harmless, pudgy playboy. Then it was acceptable for his voice to be heard. “Henry,” | once remarked to him, “there’ s a rumor going around Washington that you’ re lousy in bed.” “Mr. President” —speaking very slowly and distinctly— “I can only say that... power... is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” And he just kept glaring at me with those worried-looking eyebrows frowning over his spectacles. This was just three days after our destabilization of the Chilean government. Kissinger wanted all the credit, but it was really a team effort. We could not have succeeded, for example, without the invaluable aid of Teamsters Union President Frank Fitzsimmons and his Bob Hope- HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015108

like timing in manipulating the truckers’ strike in Chile. It is possible to bring about the collapse of an entire economy by shutting down one integral aspect, especially communications or transportation. Moreover, the Soviet Union was trying to cut off the United States’ supply of a metal vital to jet engine production, by their support of the Allende government in Chile and also by backing guerrilla actions in Angola. In order to maintain the war in Vietnam, we needed Chilean copper as well as the trace metal. At any rate, we were a smooth, well-oiled team, on the way to winning the whole, beautiful, global game. kok # In 1968, George Wallace ran for president as the candidate of the American Independent Party. This almost lost me the election to Hubert Humphrey. In 1972, Wallace ran for president again. This almost cost him his life. | honestly have no knowledge as to how long Arthur Bremer was in our employ, but | do know that the cover story of his having stalked me before he went after Wallace was fabricated simply to defuse any suspicion that might have pointed to our role in the tragic event. After all, my supposed public mandate that November came from a majority that included twenty million votes that would otherwise have gone to George Wallace. We had not expected him to pose so much of a HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015109

threat. In fact, we had already taken certain steps to preclude any such possibility. In 1970, immediately after he became governor of Alabama again, the iRS and the Justice Department launched an investigation of Wallace and his brother Gerald for tax evasion and other forms of financial corruption. | don’ t fault Wallace for family loyalty, by the way. | have carried out similar filial responsibility to my own brother, Donald. This is only natural. In any event, John Mitchell, still attorney general at the time, came to me early in 1971 and said, “We’ ve got to stop George Wallace. He could force the election into the House of Representatives if he runs on a third party ticket again.” In May of that year, | was in Mobile and invited Wallace to fly with me on the presidential plane to Birmingham. En route, we shook hands on an agreement. | promised that Mitchell would call off the investigation of Wallace and his brother—although their underlings would still be subject to prosecution—and the governor in turn promised me that if he ran in ‘ 72 it would only be as a Democrat. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015110

In August 1971, we discovered that CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr had been asking around about the possibility of such a deal. Haldeman commented, “We’ d better get on /A/s ass—fast.” Two years later, when Schorr reported that John Dean was afraid of going to prison because he might get raped there, we were able to find out immediately from the FBI that his source was Dean’ s own attorney, but there was nothing constructive we could do with that information. However, it must be noted for posterity that John Dean was a closet queen supreme. His lovely wife, Maureen, is merely window dressing. Oh, how neatly she rolled up her blond tresses into a perfect bun and sat behind him at the Watergate hearings every day, blatantly projecting a modern-day American Gothic image. | recall how it came out that Dean had taken almost $5,000 from a White House safe for a hurried honeymoon right smack in the middle of the cover-up, He was already disguising his tracks. Their marriage was purely protective coloration. The case of John Dean does raise the question, when is a so-called leak actually convenient propaganda? Maureen Dean was an on airplane flight when she “accidentally” dropped her purse and spilled a vial of amyl nitrate capsules on the floor. She explained to the man sitting net to her how wonderful these were for HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015111

enhancing her sex life with John. Is it not possible that this lady was protesting just a mite too much, particularly to someone who would just happen to let the media in on her secret? No wonder G. Gordon Liddy said that John Dean was qualified to sing the title role in Der Rosenkavalier—because it is sung by a woman. Liddy once made a remark in German that | asked him to translate for me. He said, “John Dean’ s priorities are all screwed up. He doesn’ t know whether he wants to go down in history or down on a historian.” koe OF Young people might use the expression “karma returning” to describe a deal we made with Jack Anderson, who had himself exposed the corruption of so many others in his syndicated column for the Washington Post. We were tipped off that Anderson was researching the Dragon Lady connection. He had learned that her late husband, General Claire Chennault, who had commended the Flying Tigers in World War Il, had in 1946 formed a private commercial airline that later merged with the CIA’ s Air America. He also learned that our Dragon Lady was currently profiting from a Pepsi-Cola factory | had established in Laos, but which had never spewed HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015112

forth a single drop of Pepsi. Air America had been shuttling out its actua/ product: heroin. However, Anderson agreed not to publish this material. In return, we agreed not to publicize the fact that he knew about the Watergate break- in weeks before it occurred. He had warned Lawrence O’ Brien at Democratic National Committee headquarters, but O' Brien remained silent because he assumed that such a scandal would provide ammunition for a Democrat coup in the ' 72 election. He overestimated public outrage. Anderson held back because he did not wish to endanger his source, one of the “burglars,” Frank Sturgis, whom he had known for some twenty years. Shortly after my resignation in 1974, | received a long letter from Sturgis. | shall quote here a portion of that correspondence: Now, I’ m telling you this because | still consider you my Commander in Chief. | realize that the same faction of the CIA that masterminded the assassination of Kennedy was also behind your downfall. They thought JFK was soft on Communism in Cuba, and that you were soft on Communism in China, but that they didn’ t necessarily have to kill you to get rid of you. While | participated in Operation 40, our job was primarily to infiltrate foreign countries. | was a member of the Assassination Section. Orders would filter down, and our job would be to kill, say, a military official or a politician. Even in those days, unstated policy included domestic as well as foreign enemies. But | had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination myself. The FBI came to interview me the day after it happened, and | didn’ t have a thing HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015113

to tell them, except that | could agree with their speculation that the motive was revenge for the Bay of Pigs failure. There’ s no doubt in my mind that if you had been elected in 1960, the invasion would have been completely successful. For a while | believed that Bernard Barker was the double agent in Watergate, but | have since come to the conclusion that our leader, James McCord, was guided to do the things he did by certain officials in the CIA. We were definitely set up. They used us to eventually destroy the office of the presidency. You were just as expendable as Kennedy. | shouldn’ t have been surprised Mr. McCord was our Security Chief. | myself, as an infiltrator of Castro’ s inner circle, rose to Director of Security for the Cuban Air Force and Director of Intelligence. Who can you trust? Whereas | agree with Frank Sturgis that the Watergate burglars were “set up,” | question the reason he gives. The CIA was fully aware that relations with the People’ s Republic of China were bound to open up sooner or later. And of course | wanted to earn credit for that in history. Rather, | am convinced that there was a power struggle within the Agency. The “faction” to which Sturgis alludes—most likely led by CIA’ s Richard Helms—was jealous of the Special Intelligence Unit we had developed inside the White House. k kK *k Not only was the Watergate break-in deliberately bungled in order to discredit me, but the White House taping system was never part of my domain. | knew it had been installed by the Secret Service, but | lacked HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015114

access to the tapes and, more important, to any switch that would shut off a recording device. | was a prisoner in the Oval Office. A mobile prisoner, to be sure—I could go to the Cabinet Room or the Lincoln Room—but it didn’ t make any difference; there were bugs everywhere. They even bugged my cabin at Camp David. | was under more surveillance than Larry O' Brien could ever imagine. If | had the tapes in my possession, don’ t you think | would have gotten rid of them? Just the way | did with those microfilms in the Hiss case. Everybody was recommending this—from John Connally to Chuck Colson—but | simply did not have access to the system. | should explain that “Bay of Pigs” was our code word for the assassination of President Kennedy. When we were attempting to put the brakes on the FBI investigation of Watergate, | told Haldeman to get word to Helms that otherwise, because of E. Howard Hunt’ s involvement, the whole Bay of Pigs thing would open up. Hunt was the CIA station chief in Mexico when agent Lee Harvey Oswald made contact there in 1963. The whole world already knows what a fiasco the Bay of Pigs operation turned out to be—that is, the invasion of HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015115

Cuba—but because Kennedy didn’ t keep his campaign promise to support the exiles, he then became the prime “Bay of Pigs” target. Had the Watergate mission not been aborted, Hunt would have continued to simulate documents blaming Kennedy and Ted Sorensen for the murder of Che Guevara, just as he forged those cables blaming Kennedy for the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem. | hasten to add that Hunt was merely clarifying the issues. The Kennedy Administration was responsible. But what we were trying to do was hurt 7ed Kennedy’ s chances if he decided to run. However, that is guilt by relationship, which is wrong and irrelevant. kok # | was convinced that Nelson Rockefeller was behind it all. He had never forgiven me for defeating him for the Republican nomination in 1968. What with that whole 25" Amendment arrangement, | figured their chronological plan was to: 1. Get Spiro Agnew out of office. 2. Replace him with Gerald Ford. 3. Get me out of office. 4. Replace me with Ford. 5. Replace Ford (as vice president) with Rockefeller. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015116

6. Knock off Ford before the election by Squeaky Fromme, Sara Jane Moore, whoever. 7. Replace Ford again with Rockefeller, declare martial law and cancel the election. Alternatively, this could be done by killing Jimmy Carter before the inauguration. Now | realize how naive | was. Granted, Carter is more progressive than | am—after all, politics is the art of finding a balance between the status quo and the force of evolution—but it became crystal clear to me that he had made some kind of deal. The intelligence-gathering system knew about G. Harrold Carswell’ s tragic gay problem. Now, /e would have been a fine prospect for blackmail: “We have this photo of you and a friend in the men’ s room, Justice Carswell, but don’ t worry, we won’ t leak it.” | wonder, if | had been successful in appointing him to the Supreme Court, how would he have voted on the constitutionality of entrapping homosexuals? Anyway, my suspicions were aroused when it did not come out in the media until after the election—immediately before Carter’ s inauguration when it was too late to do us any good—that his son Jack had been discharged from the Navy because of marijuana. Our hammer over George McGovern’ s head in 1972 was that his daughter had been hospitalized for an LSD freakout. We never had to resort to using that particular bit of intelligence, however, despite the fact that it was wewho had arranged for her to be “dosed” in the first place. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015117

Woodward and Bernstein were not the only ones with reliable sources. According to one of my contacts in the intelligence community, the Democrats’ first choice for a presidential candidate in the 1976 elections was a southern governor—Askew of Florida—but their analysts calculated that Jimmy Carter’ s resemblance to Howdy Doody would provide a subconscious association in the minds of voters who were weaned on that folksy puppet. What the American public does not realize is the impact of the long- range planning that goes on in think tanks such as Stanford Research, the Rand Corporation and the Hudson Institute. They are already beginning to orchestrate the Bimillennium, the 2000" birthday of Christ. The function of Jimmy Carter—with all his religiosity and his talk about not living in sin—is to provide an opening wedge for the Christianization of the United States. The arms manufacturers would be well pleased by a repeat performance of the Crusades. After those Korean bribes via Reverend Moon’ s Unification Church and the brainwashing of the Moonies, they’ Il finally figure it’ s time to make Christ an American again. Incidentally, Billy Graham recently tried to convert me, the same way he did with that professional gangster, Mickey Cohen. “Think what it HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015118

would be like,” he sad, “if you were to go on an evangelistic tour with Eldridge Cleaver and Colonel Sanders.” “You mean the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy?” “Yes, he has been born again too.” “No, thank you, Billy, | seem to have found serenity in my own way.” | truly have been able to gain real humility now that Chuck Colson and Susan Atkins are saying the same things about Jesus Christ that they were once saying about myself and Charles Manson, respectively. kok # History is an unending conveyor belt that either perpetuates or corrects the inaccuracies of the past. Therefore, the first thing | wish to point out, concerning that infamous eighteen-and-a-half-minutes gap in the White House tape of June 20, 1972, is that it actually lasted only eighteen-and-a-quarter- minutes. At 10:30 that morning, John Ehrlichman was in my office. We did not discuss Watergate. Before leaving, however, he handed me two sealed envelopes. One contained a gram of cocaine; the other contained a preliminary report on the surveillance of Woodward and Bernstein. This HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015119

task had been assigned to Tony Ulasewicz immediately after their first story on the break-in was published in the Washington Post. It was strange. Ehrlichman’ s own first assignment had been to spy on the Nelson Rockefeller people for us during the 1960 campaign, and now he had his own chain of command. | have noticed that Ehrlichman’ s brow has become more knitted as he has advanced in his career. When he left, | opened the sealed envelope and read the report. It was brief: Bernstein, Carl: Heavy pot smoker. Living apart trom his wife. Began affair with Nora Ephron, Esquire columnist, in New York while her husband, Dan Greenburg, book author, was at EST, Erhard Seminar Training. Woodward, Bob: A loner. Clean as a hound’ s tooth. So far. Then | began to “chop the coke,” as they say, with a razor blade. When Bob Haldeman entered, we each took a couple of snorts. Haldeman was my Sherman Adams. | had always felt | could depend on him. We were discussing whether my itinerary for an upcoming trip to the West Coast might include Ely, Nevada, which was the birthplace of Mrs. Nixon, “That’ s perfect,” Haldeman said. “We need anything we can get, PR-wise.” “But you know something, Bob? It’ s all image.” “Well, that is precisely the purpose of public relations.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015120

“No, | mean my so-called marriage is all image. Pat and | have not, you know, slept together for many years. My God, | was the President of the Unites States, and | couldn’ t even get laid by my own wife.” “Sir, you don’ t really want to talk about this--" “And I’ Il tell you where it started. During the Cuban Crisis in October ' 62. Boy, Kennedy sure won a helluva lot of points on that one. And it could’ ve been me confronting Khrushchev. | mean a real international shootdown, not just waving my finger at him in Safire’ s goddamn makeshift kitchen.” “That would have been the logical extension of your Russian trip.” “| tell you, the unspeakable frustration of not being in a position to negotiate that missile thing. | just couldn’ t get it up for Pat, plus the pressure of the California campaign was going on then too. And after we lost that election, she started talking about a divorce. We compromised with separate bedrooms.” Suddenly | stood up, walked around my desk to where Haldeman was sitting, and | ran my hand back and forth across the top of his crewcut. | am not very physically demonstrative, but | had always wanted to do that. Still, this was almost a spontaneous gesture. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015121

“You stuck by me, Bob,” | said while | rubbing his hair. “Finch dropped out, but you... “And I began weeping uncontrollably. “Sir, is there anything | can do?” Between sobs | blurted out, “Oh, sure” —I certainly did not intend for this to be taken literally— “Why don’ t you try sucking my cock, maybe that’ //help.” To my utter astonishment, Haldeman unzipped my fly and proceeded with what can only be described as extreme efficiency. The whole thing could not have taken more than five minutes from beginning to end. He must have had some practice during his old prep-school days. Neither of us said a word—before, during or after. This misunderstanding was comparable to the time that Jeb Magruder remarked how convenient it would be if we could get rid of Jack Anderson, and G. Gordon Liddy assumed that was a direct order and rushed out to accomplish the act. If Liddy had not blabbed his “assignment” to an aide in the corridor, Anderson might not be alive today. As for my own motivation, here was an experience not of homosexuality but of power. | realized that if | could order the Pentagon to bomb Cambodia, it was of no great consequence that | was now merely HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015122

permitting my chief of staff to perform fellatio on me. In fact, | was fully cognizant of what an honor it must have been for him. When the incident was over, | simply returned to my desk, and although the tension of vulnerability was still in the air, we resumed our discussion as if nothing had occurred. “Now,” | said in a normal tone of voice, “what' s on the agenda?” “Sir,” Haldeman began, “on this Watergate problem, it would be advantageous to us if any similar activity on the part of the Democrats could be leaked to the media.” “Well, Hoover once told me—this was right after we won in ‘ 68—he said that within the previous month, LBJ had the FBI put the bug on Agnew and me. Ramsey Clark was attorney general then, but he never authorized it, so that was an ///ega/ wiretap.” “Perfect. We start with Lyndon Johnson and work our way back.” “But no, on second thought, the LBJ tap would open up the whole Dragon Lady can of beans. | mean that was the goddamn excuse they had for spying on us.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015123

Then Haldeman delivered a resounding pep talk—when he lets loose he can be an emotional marvel—about the importance of launching a counterattack against our enemies. | must say at this point that Rose Mary Woods deserves a Medal of Honor for the way she was willing to humiliate herself by taking full blame for accidentally erasing those first five minutes rather than stand by while my public image was being destroyed. Moreover, when General Alexander Haig learned from Haldeman’ s notes that during those additional thirteen-and-a-quarter-minutes there was a discussion of how to deal with Watergate, thereby proving that | was involved in the cover-up only three days after the break-in, Haig attributed the erasure to “sinister forces.” He said this under oath in Judge John Sirica’ s courtroom. Now that is loyalty above and beyond the call of duty. kok # In retrospect, | realize that H.R. Haldeman was part of the plot against me all along, always trying to ingratiate himself—anything to impress me, when actually he w as trying to hurt my political career. Not that he was against me personally; | was just his particular assignment as HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015124

part of an overall plan “to destroy,” in the words of Frank Sturgis, “the office of the presidency.” Haldeman was a saboteur in the guise of a sycophant. In 1967, when he was a vice president at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, he sent me a long memo on how | could use the media in my‘ 68 campaign. | have since learned that during World War (Il, various corporations—Standard Oil, Wrigley Chewing Gum, Paramount Pictures—lent their services to the Office of Strategic Services, which later became the CIA. The Thompson Agency supplied Kenneth Hinks to be chief of the OSS planning staff. One of Haldeman’ s predecessors, Richard de Rochemont, a vice president of J. Walter Thompson, was offered a position with the Secret Intelligence Branch of the OSS. Another Thompson official, Donald Coster, stayed on with the CIA in South Vietnam from 1959 to 1962. That’ s when Haldeman really latched on to me, in the ' 62 campaign. And when we lost, it was Haldeman who persuaded me to make a public fool of myself with that godawful “You won’ t have Nixon to kick around any more” press conference. It was Haldeman in 1972 who acted as a double agent and conspired with Dick Tuck to have all those Chinese fortune cookies contain the same message: “What about the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015125

Howard Hughes loan?” And it was Haldeman who consciously sabotaged the research on the Hiss chapter in Six Crises. On one occasion | was meeting with a group of blind veterans in the Oval Office. | wanted to display my empathy with them, so | began describing the Presidential Seal, which was woven into the carpet we happened to be standing on. A blind veteran got down on his knees and started feeling that design with his hands. | closed my eyes and proceeded to do the same. It was perhaps the most spontaneous gesture of my life, although | must admit | was grateful to hear the sound of cameras whirring. | was pleased that this scene of my true humanity was being recorded for posterity. But Haldeman ordered an embargo on that photograph, ostensibly to protect the dignity of my image, because the president should never be seen in a kneeling position. Even a year after he resigned, there he was, old faithful Bob Haldeman, backstage with me at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. He chided Johnny Cash for that time he refused to sing “Welfare Cadillac” at the White House, and Cash now replied, “Should | do it tonight and dedicate the song to you now that you’ reon welfare?” Haldeman did not appreciate the humor in that. He was too preoccupied with the betrayal of me that he had in mind. He handed me a HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015126

yellow yo-yo and said, “This will really please the crowd. It’ s an official Roy Acuff model.” | put the yo-yo in my pocket. Haldeman did not mention that the string had been loosened at the bottom, so when | was onstage and | flung that yo-yo down, it just stayed there. Once again, Haldeman had transformed the president into an asshole. It was Haldeman who had urged me to Install the White House taping system. It was Haldeman who hired Alexander Butterfield, who testified to the whole world about the tapes, and told the FBI about E. Howard Hunt. Butterfield brought in Al Wong to set up the system and check it every day. And it was Wong who brought James McCord onto the team. It all seems so obvious now. One thing about Gerald Ford, though: He keeps his promises—not only to pardon me, but also his promise to fire Alexander Butterfield, even though Ford was actually grateful to him. As for me, | should have listened to L. Patrick Gray when he warned me, “People on your staff are trying to mortally wound you.” My wife, Pat, has sworn to me that she never told anyone about our marital difficulties, and of course | believe her, so the leak to Woodward and Bernstein could on/y have come from Haldeman. On top of all his other betrayals, he must have been Deep Throat too. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015127

There was one plan of the White House Plumbers that never came to fruition. It involved the theft of Patricia Ellsberg’ s dental records. This was my own idea—not Haldeman’ s, not Hunt’ s, not Liddy’ s—they were satisfied with obtaining the records of Daniel Ellsberg’ s psychiatrist. But | remembered that the first time Alger Hiss confronted Whittaker Chambers, he requested to see his teeth. Hiss explained to me that he suspected Chambers might be someone he had known years before, and he wanted to see his teeth to make sure. Well, that recollection inspired me. We were able to obtain the dental records of Ellsberg’ s wife, all right, but did not have the Opportunity to use them in helping to prove that she was guilty of espionage. | could not imagine exactly how we were going to achieve this but | did know that, whatever, it would be accepted by the public simply because the charge itself was so “off the wall.” How odd that Whittaker Chambers, the dignified translator of Bambi, had been asked to publicly show his teeth as if he were some kind of stud at a horse show. | have never been able to forget that moment. zk k * HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015128

The paradox of our nation is that we turn our vices into virtues. As the truth about political assassinations—from Malcolm X to Mrs. Dorothy Hunt—finally begins to emerge, we may truthfully say, “Only in America does there exist the freedom to reveal how insidious we have been, and then to continue in our insidious way with an even more determined spirit.” | still believe that the United States is the greatest country in the world. It is also the greatest show on earth. | once had a vision of myself leaving Washington the way Jimmy Durante used to end his TV program, standing in a spotlight and bowing gracefully to the audience, then walking back a few steps into another spotlight, bowing again, and so on. Instead, | ended up sounding as helpless as Hal the Computer in the movie 2007, unable to control my own memory banks. My consolation for this personal tragedy is summed up in Jeane Dixon’ s prediction: “Historians yet unborn are going to take the facts, and Richard Nixon will go down as a great President. They’ re going to find that the price the world is paying for trying to discredit Nixon is going to be that we’ Il practically lose our freedom.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015129

In the meantime, | am, at long last, completely at peace with myself. It has been worth all the struggle. Postscript: After “A Sneak Preview of Richard Nixon’ s Memoirs” was published, syndicated columnist Liz Smith—who hadn’ t seen that piece—wrote that H.R. Haldeman had been in the Oval Office with Nixon, and that his trousers were down to his ankles. Hoping to smoke out the truth, | retyped one page of the manuscript, inserting a phrase (shown in italics) in this sentence: “When the incident was over, | simply returned to my desk, and although the tension of vulnerability was still in the air and my trousers were still around my ankles, we resumed our discussion as if nothing had occurred.” | then photocopied the manuscript and sent it to Liz Smith. | had assumed she would check with her source. Instead, she wrote in her column that she had been fooled by me, implying that her source had based that revelation on my article. Somehow my hoax on Liz Smith backfired. | had become a victim of my own satirical prophecy. In his memoirs, | had Nixon insisting that Watergate was a setup to get rid of him as president. A decade later, Nixon himself made that claim in a network television interview. Furthermore, Haldeman in his book, 7he Ends of Power, would reveal that Nixon used code words when talking HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015130

about the murder of President Kennedy. Haldeman said that Nixon always referred to the assassination as “the Bay of Pigs.” And, on May 5, 1977, the Houston Post published a UPI dispatch that stated: “Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis said Wednesday that the CIA planned the break-in because high officials felt Richard Nixon was becoming too powerful and was overly interested in the assassination of John Kennedy... ‘Several times the President asked CIA director Richard Helms for the files on the Kennedy assassination, but Helms refused to give them to him, refused a direct order from the President,’ Sturgis said. ‘| believe Nixon would have uncovered the true facts in the assassination of President Kennedy and that would have taken off the heat in Watergate. Because Nixon wanted files, the CIA felt they had to get rid of him.’ Asked if Nixon ever was in danger, Sturgis replied, ‘Yes, absolutely. Nixon was lucky he wasn’ t killed—assassinated like President Kennedy.’ ” One other thing. “A Sneak Preview of Richard Nixon’ s Memoir" was originally published in 1976, in which Nixon insisted that Watergate was a set-up to get rid of him as president. About a decade later, Tricky Dick made that exact same claim on a network television interview. Satirical prophecy in action. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015131