http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/us/politics/24nixon.html?bl&ex=1245988800&en=948520d3f4de6dd5&ei=5087

WASHINGTON — On Jan. 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade, President Richard M. Nixon made no public statement. But the next day, newly released tapes reveal, he privately expressed ambivalence.

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.”

Nine months later, Nixon forced the firing of the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate affair, Archibald Cox, and prompted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus. The next day, Ronald Reagan, who was then governor of California and would later be president, told the White House that he approved.

Reagan said the action, which would become known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” was “probably the best thing that ever happened — none of them belong where they were,” according to a Nixon aide’s notes of the private conversation.

Those disclosures were among the revelations in more than 150 hours of tape and 30,000 pages of documents made public on Tuesday by the Nixon Presidential Library, a part of the National Archives. The audio files were posted online, as were a sampling of the documents.

The tapes were recorded by the secret microphones in the Oval Office from January and February 1973. They shed new light on an intense moment in American history, including Nixon’s second inauguration, the Vietnam War cease-fire, and the trial of seven men over the break-in at the Democrats’ headquarters at the Watergate complex amid mounting revelations about their ties to the White House.

The tapes also capture more mundane details of life in the White House — conversations about what to pack for a trip, when to schedule a trip to the barber, whether the president’s wife would enjoy going to Trader Vic’s for dinner.

Most segments of the tapes relating to the Watergate scandal, which would lead to Nixon’s resignation 20 months later, have already been released. But there are some new materials that were previously held back because the audio quality was so poor that archives officials could not be certain whether they contained discussion of any classified topics. Improvements in audio technology have allowed archives staff to clear additional ones.

They include a Jan. 5, 1973, conversation between Nixon and his aide Charles W. Colson in which they discussed the possibility of granting clemency to E. Howard Hunt Jr., one of the Watergate conspirators, according to a log compiled by archives staff. Scholars say the same topic was addressed in several other tapes that were previously made public.

The documents also include nine pages of handwritten notes by a domestic policy aide about plans for what the White House would say about the dismissal of the Watergate special prosecutor, Mr. Cox.

The tapes also provide new material about the circumstances surrounding the Paris treaty to end the United States’ military involvement in Vietnam.

A call between Nixon and Mr. Colson just after midnight on Jan. 20 showed that Nixon anticipated, when the treaty was announced, that he would be vindicated for continuing to bomb North Vietnam. He especially relished the hit that he believed members of Congress who opposed the war — whose public statements he pronounced “treasonable” — would suffer.

Several conversations center on the pressure Nixon placed on South Vietnam’s president, Nguyen Van Thieu, to accept the cease-fire agreement. Ken Hughes, a Nixon scholar and research fellow at the Presidential Recordings Project at the University of Virginia, said he was struck by listening on one of the new tapes to Nixon’s telling his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, that to get Thieu to sign the treaty, he would “cut off his head if necessary.”

Mr. Hughes said the conversation bolstered his view that Nixon, Thieu and Mr. Kissinger knew at the time that the cease-fire could not endure, and that it was not “peace with honor,” as Nixon described it, so much as a face-saving way for the United States to get out of the war. In 1975, North Vietnam would violate the cease-fire and conquer South Vietnam.

The tapes also include a phone call from February 1973 between Nixon and the evangelist Billy Graham, during which Mr. Graham complained that Jewish-American leaders were opposing efforts to promote evangelical Christianity, like Campus Crusade. The two men agreed that the Jewish leaders risked setting off anti-Semitic sentiment.

“What I really think is deep down in this country, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, and all this is going to do is stir it up,” Nixon said.

At another point he said: “It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.”

The documents also include three newly declassified pages from a National Security Council brief discussing secret Israeli efforts to build a nuclear weapon

eh...  Nixon...  Hunter S. Thompson had some good things to say about him...  lol

Definitely a disturbing revelation.

But it COULD have been worse.  He could have been caught on tape supporting indiscriminate abortion of all races...

eh...  Nixon...  Hunter S. Thompson had some good things to say about him...  lol


Hunter....I loved Hunter.....and he is really the only one who could pull of being named Hunter.

Hunter....I loved Hunter.....and he is really the only one who could pull of being named Hunter.


Indeed...  he was crazy but cool.  Not many people can pull that off either.

http://irom.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/hunter-thompson.jpg

I read that entire article...now I feel the need to stand in a hot shower for about two days!

8-P

So Nixon was a jerk. Big deal. We all knew that already.

I know a lot of people who are critical of mixed-race relationships, actually, and most of them aren't white.

On a sidenote, I personally think that one should be with whomever they want, and if they have racial preferences when selecting their partners, that's their business. It doesn't necessarily mean they are racist, any more than preferring men or women means you're a sexist.  ;)

I hope that Richard Nixon,is currently roasting...... in Hell!

>:(

So Nixon was a jerk. Big deal. We all knew that already.


We did, and yet, it's still a big gross-out when I'm reminded just how big of a jerk he was!
8-P

I read that entire article...now I feel the need to stand in a hot shower for about two days!

8-P


Don't do it Max.  You'll prune up something fierce...

;D

Nixon was about as arrogant and bigoted as they come.  I don't think he could handle things today.

On a sidenote, I personally think that one should be with whomever they want, and if they have racial preferences when selecting their partners, that's their business. It doesn't necessarily mean they are racist, any more than preferring men or women means you're a sexist.  ;)


Aww but babies of mixed couples are just the prettiest. So let's just be shallow and do it for the beauty :D

It's scary someone that crass and bigoted was ever in the white house. in a weird way im sorry he didn't live to see a black man get elected president... cuz it would have made him CRAZY...

Aww but babies of mixed couples are just the prettiest. So let's just be shallow and do it for the beauty :D


I was watching Judge Joe Brown on TV last week and there weas this one obviously black plaintiff in the case.

She kept insisting to Judge Joe that "I am not BLACK!  I am MIXED!".  She then went on to explain that she does not associate with black women because "90% of them are no good".  ::)

Judge Joe then made her look like a fool on that point, whch was pretty easily done.

She sued some black guy and won.  Then Judge Joe asked her... "You really want to take money from a black man?  Isn't that beneath you?"  ;D

I was watching Judge Joe Brown on TV last week and there weas this one obviously black plaintiff in the case.

She kept insisting to Judge Joe that "I am not BLACK!  I am MIXED!".  She then went on to explain that she does not associate with black women because "90% of them are no good".   ::)

Judge Joe then made her look like a fool on that point, whch was pretty easily done.

She sued some black guy and won.  Then Judge Joe asked her... "You really want to take money from a black man?  Isn't that beneath you?"   ;D


Insert Lisa Lamponelli joke here.
:P

So Nixon was a jerk. Big deal. We all knew that already.

I know a lot of people who are critical of mixed-race relationships, actually, and most of them aren't white.

On a sidenote, I personally think that one should be with whomever they want, and if they have racial preferences when selecting their partners, that's their business. It doesn't necessarily mean they are racist, any more than preferring men or women means you're a sexist.  ;)


Yeah, but there is a huge difference between "mixed-race" relationships or preferences, and and saying that "mixed" children are a special category for which abortion should be made available.

Yeah, but there is a huge difference between "mixed-race" relationships or preferences, and and saying that "mixed" children are a special category for which abortion should be made available.


I am still trying to figure out which is worse...  Saying that abortion is OK for people of all races, or for just a few. ???

I am still trying to figure out which is worse...  Saying that abortion is OK for people of all races, or for just a few. ???


I would say "just a few".  It puts a layer of social division, demonization, as it were.  I respect the position of people who are against abortion.  It puts a different spin if they say "well, it is all right if they are mixed, or black, or Presbyterian, or left handed...."

I am still trying to figure out which is worse...  Saying that abortion is OK for people of all races, or for just a few. ???


Tricky Dick was revealing an essential white supremacist position:  A child with one black parent is inherently less of a human being than a child with two white parents because blacks are genetically inferior to whites. 

Never mind that the whole concept of "race" is genetically bogus.
::)

Tricky Dick was revealing an essential white supremacist position:  A child with one black parent is inherently less of a human being than a child with two white parents because blacks are genetically inferior to whites. 

Never mind that the whole concept of "race" is genetically bogus.
::)


I'm not sure that this was a "supremacist" position, however wrong he was in it.

Back then (and I know it was not all that long ago), a mixed-race child was seen as having an insurmountable handicap (social in nature) to overcome.  Mixed-race children at that point in time were seen as somebody to pity, "it wasn't their fault" and so on.

Back then, my Mum, who is the fartherst thing from racist and is very well known and loved in the local black community, would refer to a mixed-race child as a "mullato" in a muted tone.

So some people may well have seen this as a way to avoid hardship and not simply an issue of arrogant bigotry etc.  Mind you I would never support this sort of position (especially since a black woman helped to raise me, a white kid) but LOTS of people were less enlightened than we would expect here in the 2000's.

I'm not sure that this was a "supremacist" position, however wrong he was in it.

Back then (and I know it was not all that long ago), a mixed-race child was seen as having an insurmountable handicap (social in nature) to overcome.  Mixed-race children at that point in time were seen as somebody to pity, "it wasn't their fault" and so on.

Back then, my Mum, who is the fartherst thing from racist and is very well known and loved in the local black community, would refer to a mixed-race child as a "mullato" in a muted tone.

So some people may well have seen this as a way to avoid hardship and not simply an issue of arrogant bigotry etc.  Mind you I would never support this sort of position (especially since a black woman helped to raise me, a white kid) but LOTS of people were less enlightened than we would expect here in the 2000's.


You can certainly say it is not wholly white supremacist since black chauvinists, such as Malcolm X, didn't approve of race-mixing either as they considered whites to be devils.  

However, the phenomenon you are describing is the long-inculcated belief that blacks are inferior to whites.  "Mulatto" shares the same Latin root as "mule" (mulus).  There were further gradations, such as "quadroon" (1/4 black), "octoroon," (1/8 black), and "griff," (1/32 black).  In the time of slavery, if you were one-fourth black, you were born a slave.  In the time of Jim Crow, you were "colored" and treated as such.  Remember, Homer Plessy was one-eighth black, an "octoroon."  Plessy v. Ferguson was considered good law until Brown v. Board in 1954, and that was less than a generation before Nixon got into the White House.  

There is a rich history of great familial love of black servants by the white families who employed them -- but surely one would never have one's daughter marry a "negro."  

The rage of Malcolm X against the "white devils" was a reaction to hundreds of years of abuse at the hands of whites and cannot legitimately be compared to the systemic and systematic discrimination against blacks by whites.  Thus, I call Nixon's attitude "white supremacist" in an assumed cultural form rather than a reactionary and deliberate form, as seen with the KKK or the neo-Nazis.