TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040290/0402510.000

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                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 46

Paying The Price


RICHARD NIXON believes he will always be known as the "Watergate
man," the President who resigned the office, and expects
little charity from history

By JOHN STACKS and STROBE TALBOTT and Richard Nixon


    Q. How do you expect the Watergate affair to be judged in
the future?

    A. Clare Boothe Luce once said that each person in history
can be summed up in one sentence. This was after I had gone to
China. She said, "You will be summed up, `He went to China.'"
Historians are more likely to lead with "He resigned the
office."

    The jury has already come in, and there's nothing that's
going to change it. There's no appeal. Historians will judge
it harshly. That's what I would say on that.


    Q. Why did you write this book?

    A. I really wrote this book for those who have suffered
losses or defeats and so forth, and who think that life is
over. I felt that if I could share with them my own
experiences, it might help.

    The problem with that, of course, is that resigning the
presidency is something that is beyond their imagination. And
so, consequently, that's why throughout the book I tried to put
it in a context that they could understand. But I felt that if
I could let them see what I went through, and how I at least
recovered in part, that that might tell them that life wasn't
over.


    Q. You say in your new book that you recovered in part. You
also say that you have paid, and in fact are still paying, the
price for it.

    A. By paying the price, I mean in terms of being able to
influence the course of events. I mean, every time I make a
speech, or every time I write a book, inevitably the reviewers
refer to the "disgraced former President."

    And I consider, for whatever time I have left, that what is
most important is to be able to affect the course of events.
My experience has been somewhat unique. I am probably wrong on
a number of things, but at least it's a point of view.

    The difficulty is that getting that point of view across is
compromised by the fact that they say, Oh, this is the
Watergate man, so we're not going to pay any attention to what
he does. Now that attitude has receded substantially, and over
a period of time it may recede more, but that's what I meant
by that.


    Q. Do you think the price you paid was fair, or do you think
it was disproportionate to what happened?

    A. I don't think I'm the best judge of that. It was a price
that was inevitable, and I accepted the fact that it had to be
paid. I must say that many of my friends and my family think
it was very unfair and disproportionate, but I'm not going to
even comment about if it was fair or disproportionate.


    Q. I want to ask you a Watergate trivia question or two.

    A. There's nothing trivial about Watergate.


    Q. Do you have any reflections on the somewhat ambiguous
role that was played by your White House chief of staff Al
Haig?

    A. I have never shared the mistrust that many have about
Haig.

    Al Haig was a consummate bureaucrat, and that's said with
admiration rather than condemnation. You can't get up that high
in the Army without being a consummate bureaucrat. Eisenhower
was a consummate bureaucrat too.

    I think in Al's case, he would engage in activities that
might have a double meaning. But I think as far as his goal was
concerned, it was always one of loyalty to the office, loyalty
to me, and I think it was almost as hard on him as on me when
he came to the conclusion that I should resign. That's my view
about Al.


    Q. Some say he is probably the best candidate for Deep
Throat. Do you believe that?

    A. I can't believe that's the case. It is possible. I mean,
anything is possible.


    Q. Had you planned, if the Supreme Court was less than
unanimous, at 6-2 or 5-3, on the tapes question to contest or
to resist?

    A. No. I had that as a possible option, but I hadn't planned
it in advance, saying if we get one or two votes, that then we
will resist it. No.


    Q. One of the things Watergate derailed was your planned New
American Revolution. Instead we got the Reagan revolution. How
would you draw the contrast between the two?

    A. I won't say anything in this interview that is critical
of him and the Reagan revolution, but basically we had
different approaches.

    I think in his case, he had very little confidence in what
Government could do in some of these areas because he thought
Government could screw it up. He looked at the Great Society
programs, and because they failed, he thought all Government
action failed.

    In my case, I just looked at the Great Society programs, and
I said, Well, they failed, but they were aimed at real
problems. And now I want to find some answers.


    Q. How do you measure George Bush?

    A. I consider him to be a progressive Republican. He is
highly intelligent. He is hands-on. He's not a bomb thrower,
but because he isn't a bomb thrower he doesn't have any
interceptions. That's one of the reasons he's doing as well as
he has. Bush -- I ought to leave it in football terms -- he's
the Joe Montana. The short, sure pass. He has a very high
percentage.


    Q. You wrote that Gorbachev may turn out to be not only the
man of the decade --

    A. But man of the century.


    Q. In the short time since you finished your book a great
deal has happened in the Soviet Union. What do you make of
events there in the past few weeks?

    A. I look at Gorbachev somewhat this way: I see him as a
troika. I seem him first as a communist. Second, he's a Russian
nationalist. Maybe we should say he's proud of his country;
he's a patriot. His purpose is not to abandon communism but to
save it. But he also has another facet, which at times
overrides the other two, that he is a great, pragmatic
politician. And as a pragmatic politician, he sometimes will
overrule even his basic communist instincts, or even his
national instincts, in the event that his political survival
requires it.

    But also he's a great gambler. He's a great actor. He has
decided that he would risk his power in order to save his
reforms, rather than risk his reforms in order to save his
power.

    Now that was a mountaintop decision. And that's what
Gorbachev has done. It was a gutsy decision. And he also
believes, because he's so self-confident, that he'll win. Five
years from now, he believes that reforms will work, and that
if he goes before the people, he will not have lost his power.

    One more point about Gorbachev. I compare him to Khrushchev.
Khrushchev was not well educated, but he was smarter than
Gorbachev and quicker than Gorbachev. But Khrushchev had a
fatal weakness. He was rash. Gorbachev is not rash, but he does
have a temper.

    We have some who say that the changes in the Soviet Union
happened because the U.S. under Reagan had a booming economy
and a stronger military; it had SDI [the Strategic Defense
Initiative], which the Soviet Union would have to spend
billions of dollars to compete with, and had a firm foreign
policy.

    On the other side, some argue -- and I agree -- that the
primary factor was internal. Communism didn't work: it didn't
work there, it didn't work in Eastern Europe, it didn't work
in the Third World. What we did may have accelerated the
process.

    But even had the U.S. not taken the line it did, this would
have happened.


    Q. If your policy of detente had continued, might it too
have created the circumstances that we now see?

    A. In my view, yes. Of course, I'm a prejudiced witness on
that. Now, detente practiced with linkage would have worked.
What has happened now might have happened sooner.


    Q. Is the cold war really over?

    A. The Soviets have lost the cold war, but the West has not
won it. It is not enough to say now that people have rejected
communism, that we're home free. Waging a revolution is
difficult, but not nearly as difficult as governing. That is
the problem in all the countries of Eastern Europe. I'm not
enthused about this idea of sending our political experts over
and telling these poor people how to win an election. I think
it's a little silly and even insulting. What they need is
economic experts from the private sector, and maybe some from
the Government.


    Q. Looking back on the Vietnam War, what second thoughts do
you have?

    A. I was asked that about [the invasion of] Cambodia once
after a speech at Oxford. I said, "Yes, I wish I'd done it
sooner." That was a shocker. And going further, Why didn't you
do the May 8 bombing and mining sooner? Why didn't you do the
December bombing sooner? And the point was, it should have been
done sooner, but for one thing, I didn't feel first that the
traffic would bear it within the Administration.

    We might have lost half the Cabinet, certainly. Neither
[Secretary  of State William] Rogers nor [Secretary of Defense
Melvin] Laird -- not because they were doves, but because they
just thought it was the wrong decision -- would have supported
an all-out attack in order to bring the war to a conclusion.

    Eisenhower and I were once talking in 1967; Eisenhower felt
we should declare war. He said, "You can declare war, then you
can handle all these debaters and the bomb throwers." But the
problem with declaring war was that the Russians and the
Chinese both had treaties with North Vietnam.

    So the declaration of war didn't appeal. But I was also
thinking of what we could do after Vietnam. It was essential
to have a new relationship with the Russians, have a new
relationship with the Chinese, and I felt that at that time,
early on, it would have made it difficult, almost impossible,
to develop that new relationship had we declared war. It would
have broken it off. In retrospect, I don't think so. In
retrospect, I think we could have done it. And it may have been
a mistake of judgment, but at the time, that's the reason I
didn't do it.


    Q. Some people say that when all was finally said and done
you --

    A. Didn't get any more than we would have gotten earlier?


    Q. That in 1969 you could have gotten just about what you
got in the end -- a kind of a decent interval, the North
Vietnam army's forces in place in the South, POWs -- and that
therefore the price in American lives was way too high.

    A. I know that argument, and I don't agree with it.
Kissinger and I have often talked about that. And there, we
have to look at the intricacies of the peace agreement of '73.
Had that agreement been implemented as it was, it would be a
very different situation than it is at the present time.

    But as you know, there were two aspects of the agreement.
One has been totally forgotten. The two aspects were: one, that
the U.S. would continue to support South Vietnam, just as the
Soviets would be expected to be supporting North Vietnam. The
other was that the U.S., in the event that the North Vietnamese
complied with the terms, would also support them economically.
In other words, there was the economic package.

    Naturally, this is self-serving, but everything I say is
self-serving. But had I survived, I think that it would have
been possible to have implemented the agreement. South Vietnam
would still be a viable non-Communist enclave or whatever you
want to call it. But because I think that I had enormous
credibility with the North -- because of what I'd done on May
8 [ordering the mining of North Vietnamese ports], because of
what I'd done in December [ordering the bombing of Hanoi and
Haiphong] -- they thought, Well, this unpredictable so-and-so,
we can't be sure if we attack. You've got to remember, too,
that the peace agreement worked for two years.


    Q. If you'll pardon me, this is the theory according to
which you were a madman acting, or gambling, or whatever you
want to call it.

    A. You know, they all talk about the difference between
Eisenhower and Dulles and Nixon and Kissinger. Eisenhower was
the very reasonable fellow, he loved peace and all the rest,
and Dulles was a hawk who was talking about the peaceful
liberation of Eastern Europe.

    And then the point is that they say that in Nixon's case and
Kissinger's case, it is just the other way around. Kissinger
is the reasonable fellow, he's from Harvard and all the rest,
he'll be reasonable working these things out. But he's got this
guy back there in Washington whom he just has to control. And
if his warlike instincts prevail here, you'd better watch out.
You see?

    Now as a matter of fact, let me tell you, Dulles didn't do
anything without Eisenhower's support. Eisenhower was really
a hands-on President, particularly in foreign policy. And
Eisenhower, he could be very curt at times. He'd just cut them
short, his Cabinet members. He said, "Listen, I'll make the
decisions regarding what the defense budget is going to be."
He could be so genial, yet so cold.

    And I would say the same was true with me and Kissinger. We
would disagree politically at times. For example, a major
disagreement we had was with regard to the war, but it was
before the elections, you remember, in 1972. And Kissinger
politically felt very strongly that it was important to get an
agreement before the elections.

    I knew that politically it was not a liability, particularly
in view of the irresponsibility of the antiwar crowd. So we had
a difference politically, and that's when Henry made his famous
"Peace is at hand" statement, and I had to back off of it.
Henry had greater confidence in the efficacy of negotiations
than I had. I think that is the difference. He thought that
even fanatics would be reasonable insofar as negotiating is
concerned. He could not accept the fact of all of the forces
going against him. I used to say, "Henry, I'll take care of the
politics."

    Henry is a world-class strategist. He has incredible
stamina, which makes him a great negotiator. He'll wear you
out. How he does it, I don't know. He has an insatiable
appetite for all the treats they put on the table. Henry would
sit there in negotiations, he'd have the peanuts out and the
rest, and he'd be talking between mouthfuls. But on the other
hand, that gave him the energy to keep going. But Henry needed
it.


    Q. I wanted to ask you again about '72, the fall period when
Kissinger declares, "Peace is at hand." And you at that point
are unsure. He feels it's necessary for the election, and you
feel it's not a liability. Did you feel it was actually
detrimental politically to arrive at a settlement?

    A. Oh, no. I felt it would have been very helpful
politically if we could have a settlement before the election.
But I felt that until it was nailed, we should not even breathe
a word about it, because I thought that then it put the
responsibility on us to make the concessions.

    The second point was, I felt we would be in a much stronger
position after the election, after a tremendous mandate, after
the antiwar crowd had been totally defeated. I thought that
then we could really get these people to, shall we say, cry
uncle.


    Q. One could argue that during the last two years of your
presidency, Kissinger was somewhat out of your control.

    A. No, Kissinger never took a step without informing me. He
was always very circumspect. Kissinger is a great bureaucrat.



    Q. He makes quite a point in his memoirs of where he went
off the reservation and did what he thought was right, making
his own political judgment or his own strategic judgment or his
own moral judgment.

    A. That he does. I have heard that. I haven't read it. I
don't read books about myself. I have read reviews of the
books. I'm saying that as far as I'm concerned, I have never
felt that he was out of control, that he was doing something
he thought I would disapprove. And for example, I've noticed
some columns indicating that he was really opposed to the
so-called Christmas bombing . . . That's nonsense. He was for
it, all the way. And so was I.


    Q. But you were never crazy about the idea of making him
Secretary of State, were you?

    A. It was a difficult time, because Bill Rogers was my
friend. And Rogers I think had done, really, under the
circumstances, a very credible job as Secretary of State. But
Kissinger at that point I considered indispensable. With the
Watergate problem, we didn't have any choices.


    Q. There are no regrets on that score.

    A. If I had them, I wouldn't tell you. Put it that way.


    Q. You have conjured up the danger that Japan and China will
get together in the next century.

    A. It would be a very natural thing to happen. You look at
what China has and what Japan has. China has resources; it has
a potentially highly qualified, intelligent people. And here's
Japan, with less arable land than the state of California and
no oil reserve. So it's a natural. It's a marriage made in
heaven, economically. And that could happen.

    Let's look at it from China's standpoint. Let's assume the
U.S. isolates them because of our concern about human rights.
Where do the Chinese look?

    They're not going to look to the Soviet Union because it's
a failure, and even these latest announcements all indicate
that the Chinese are all for economic reforms. And they're
going to try to goose them up. Even [Premier] Li Peng [favors
that], because I've talked to him. All the Chinese leaders,
from the extreme reactionaries to the more progressive ones,
are for economic reforms. Japan is an economic miracle, an
economic success story. So they turn to Japan.

    The U.S. needs to be in north Asia as a major player along
with the Chinese, the Japanese and the Soviet Union.


    Q. And one should not expect a flowering of democracy
anytime soon?

    A. Not soon, no. I don't mean the Chinese people do not have
a potential interest in and, frankly, respect for and probably
desire to have so-called democracy. But if you look at the
country today and how far it is in its educational standards,
it's a long way off before that seeps down. I think, without
question, our strategic interests require that we re-establish
a constructive relationship with China. Human rights requires
it too, because Li Peng is not totally in control. There are
others who will be contesting with him for power. The U.S. will
always come down on the side of the progressives and the
reformers, rather than the reactionaries.


    Q. Have you set any specific goals for yourself?

    A. No, not at this point. I see some of my contemporaries
on television these days. I don't intend to reach that point.
I haven't quite reached it yet. It's very important for
somebody not to try to stay too long in the public life,
particularly in the television age. Some people are surprised
at me that I'm ambulatory.


    Q. You've made so much of the importance to you of the
struggle itself. Not just victory but, more important, the
struggle. Do you feel that now the struggle's over for you?

    A. No. I must find new challenges. Because the moment that
you think the struggle is over, when you have nothing to live
for other than yourself, you're finished.