Nixon tapes released for 40th anniversary of resignation

A decade after his resignation, Richard Nixon sat down with a former staffer for a series of candid interviews about his final days in office. The Nixon library is resurrecting a series of clips from those interviews for the 40th anniversary of his historic resignation. 

|
Raiford Communications/AP
Former President Richard Nixon talks about his 1974 resignation in an interview conducted by former White House aide Frank Gannon in New York City in 1983.

Forty years ago this Friday, Richard Nixon became the first and only president of the United States to resign from office. He signed his resignation agreement, boarded a helicopter for San Clemente, Calif., and largely retreated into the shadows of history.

A decade later, he sat down with former White House aide Frank Gannon to share his own account of his final days in the Oval Office. Segments culled from those 30 hours of interviews were aired publicly just once, on CBS News. This week, The Richard Nixon Foundation and the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum are releasing a series of clips of those interviews in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the resignation.

In the first installments of the video series entitled “A President Resigns,” the disgraced president recalls learning that the infamous tape that became known as “the smoking gun” had been released. The tape revealed that Nixon had been aware of the break-in at the Watergate, despite his repeated denials.

“This was the final blow, the final nail in the coffin. Although you don’t need another nail if you’re already in the coffin – which we were,” Nixon said in the interview a decade later.

The smoking gun tape was released on August 5, 1974, the day Nixon took one final evening cruise on the presidential yacht, the USS Sequoia.

“It turned out to be a rather eerie ride, I might say. We talked about everything but what Tricia [Nixon’s eldest daughter] has called ‘the subject,’ ” Nixon recounted.

When the call came saying that the tape had been released and that it was in fact as incriminating has had been anticipated, the first lady began to pack, Nixon said in a segment released Tuesday.

Nixon publicly announced his resignation on August 8, 1974, and Vice President Gerald Ford was inaugurated as the 38th president of the United States the following day. Mr. Ford granted Nixon a full presidential pardon one month later.

The library will release additional installments of the series each day this week, leading up to August 9, the day Nixon resigned. On August 10, the interviews will return to the archive once again.

“This is as close to what anybody is going to experience sitting down and and having a beer with Nixon, sitting down with him in his living room,” said Mr. Gannon, now a writer and historian in Washington, according to the Associated Press.

“Like him or not, whether you think that his resignation was a tragedy for the nation or that he got out of town one step ahead of the sheriff, he was a human being,” Gannon said.

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Nixon tapes released for 40th anniversary of resignation
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0805/Nixon-tapes-released-for-40th-anniversary-of-resignation
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe