Richard Nixon
"My animus toward him had deep roots in the ‘tricky Dick’ shenanigans of his pre-presidential behavior, but more pointedly, in his continuation of and duplicity about the Vietnam War."
Photo slideshow:
I’m not the only person in America who’s obsessed with Richard Nixon. He may be the most fascinating politician of the Twentieth Century, as the library of books about him, the movies, the plays, the continuing debate about him after his death, attest. But I was lucky enough to have a very close encounter with this complicated, mysterious figure, and even luckier to have contributed something important to his prodigious biography. It was perhaps the clearest example for me, in the sense that Albert Camus expressed it, of the engagement of a writer in a profound issue of his time. For I was to become a central figure in forcing Nixon to acknowledge his Watergate crime and to apologize for them to the nation. That apology has become the stuff of legend: a seminal moment in the history of television, an iconic moment of prosecutorial journalism, an exorcism of Watergate from the public mind, and the end of Nixon on the national stage.
My animus toward him had deep roots in the ‘tricky Dick’ shenanigans of his pre-presidential behavior, but more pointedly, in his continuation of and duplicity about the Vietnam War. I reveled in his downfall as a process of historical justice. And as the details of his cover-up and abuse of power emerged in the Ervin Committee hearings in 1973, I felt I could not languish in North Carolina at a distance. I had to go to Washington to witness and wallow in what was surely going to be the greatest political drama of my life. It was.
In the academic year of 1973-74 I took a leave from UNC, set up shop in Washington, and became a regular observer of the Senate hearings. Snatches of my diary of those heady months are below. I joined up with the Democratic strategist, Frank Mankiewicz, to co-write a book, Perfectly Clear: Nixon from Whittier to Watergate. At my prodding, the book became the first to advocate the impeachment of the president.
"Reston has crafted a riveting memoir....A welcome flashback for those still infauated with one of America's darkest political hours."
-Los Angeles Times on The Conviction of Richard Nixon
Two years later, happily back on my farm outside Chapel Hill and working on another novel, I was contacted by David Frost, the British broadcaster and entertainer. Before long, I was back in Washington in the fall of 1976, tasked with doing all Frost’s research on the Watergate scandal, devising a strategy to interrogate Nixon on his crimes, and preparing Frost for his historic mission.
In the articles below, especially the Playboy article called “The Breaking of Richard Nixon,” my process and the ultimate triumph of the Nixon Interviews are well described. When it was over, I went home and taught a one-semester course entitled: “Nixon: A Tragic Figure?” You will see my answer in several other articles. And as I taught, I wrote the entire experience up, a work which 30 years later became a book called The Conviction of Richard Nixon.
Heady as it was, my encounter with Nixon and Frost receded in my memory for thirty years.....until in 2006 the stage and ultimately Hollywood came calling. Now history was moving into the realm of drama and film. Compression of the historical record into a dramatic essence was inevitable. As a participant, as a playwright myself now, and as a historian looking back, I would develop a testy relationship with the playwright/screenwriter, Peter Morgan. Those tensions are described in the Smithsonian Magazine essay below. But there is no denying that Morgan’s hit play and then Academy Award nominated film, Frost/Nixon, was a tour de force. And I could scarcely complain at being cast as the moral center of the play and movie, and portrayed by a truly wonderful actor, Sam Rockwell.
Hate mail: view hate mail sent to Reston
My animus toward him had deep roots in the ‘tricky Dick’ shenanigans of his pre-presidential behavior, but more pointedly, in his continuation of and duplicity about the Vietnam War. I reveled in his downfall as a process of historical justice. And as the details of his cover-up and abuse of power emerged in the Ervin Committee hearings in 1973, I felt I could not languish in North Carolina at a distance. I had to go to Washington to witness and wallow in what was surely going to be the greatest political drama of my life. It was.
In the academic year of 1973-74 I took a leave from UNC, set up shop in Washington, and became a regular observer of the Senate hearings. Snatches of my diary of those heady months are below. I joined up with the Democratic strategist, Frank Mankiewicz, to co-write a book, Perfectly Clear: Nixon from Whittier to Watergate. At my prodding, the book became the first to advocate the impeachment of the president.
"Reston has crafted a riveting memoir....A welcome flashback for those still infauated with one of America's darkest political hours."
-Los Angeles Times on The Conviction of Richard Nixon
Two years later, happily back on my farm outside Chapel Hill and working on another novel, I was contacted by David Frost, the British broadcaster and entertainer. Before long, I was back in Washington in the fall of 1976, tasked with doing all Frost’s research on the Watergate scandal, devising a strategy to interrogate Nixon on his crimes, and preparing Frost for his historic mission.
In the articles below, especially the Playboy article called “The Breaking of Richard Nixon,” my process and the ultimate triumph of the Nixon Interviews are well described. When it was over, I went home and taught a one-semester course entitled: “Nixon: A Tragic Figure?” You will see my answer in several other articles. And as I taught, I wrote the entire experience up, a work which 30 years later became a book called The Conviction of Richard Nixon.
Heady as it was, my encounter with Nixon and Frost receded in my memory for thirty years.....until in 2006 the stage and ultimately Hollywood came calling. Now history was moving into the realm of drama and film. Compression of the historical record into a dramatic essence was inevitable. As a participant, as a playwright myself now, and as a historian looking back, I would develop a testy relationship with the playwright/screenwriter, Peter Morgan. Those tensions are described in the Smithsonian Magazine essay below. But there is no denying that Morgan’s hit play and then Academy Award nominated film, Frost/Nixon, was a tour de force. And I could scarcely complain at being cast as the moral center of the play and movie, and portrayed by a truly wonderful actor, Sam Rockwell.
Hate mail: view hate mail sent to Reston
Articles:
"Present at the Demise"
Diary entries for the last four days of Nixon's presidency view PDF "Impeachment Standards" Appeared in The Washington Post June 30, 1974 pg. C6 (found in ProQuest Historical Newspapers)view PDF "Needed: A Grand Reconciliation" Appeared in Newsday, September 3, 1974 view PDF “Our Far Flung Correspondents” About a dedication to Nixon in Hyden, Kentucky, transcript, appeared in The New Yorker, August 21, 1978 view PDF "The Breaking of Richard Nixon" Appeared in Playboy, April 1978 view PDF "The Unmaking of a President:" Appeared in Newsday after Nixon interviews, 1978 view PDF |
“Nixon in Exile: A Tragedy”
Appeared in the Charlotte Observer May 7, 1978 (originally published in LA Times) view PDF “Nixon Drama: Pathetic Not Tragic” Appeared in Los Angeles Times and Charlotte Observer, May 28, 1978 view article PDF, view cover pic "Frost, Nixon, and Me." Appeared in Smithsonian Jan. 2009 pgs. 86-92 view PDF "That's Me on the Big Screen." Appeared Esquire Feb. 2009 view PDF “In Memoriam, Mr. President” Appeared in GQ Australia, July 2009 view PDF "David Frost, action figure: Column" Appeared in USA Today, September 2013 view PDF |