The Trial

In the three-room suite on the fifth floor of Los Angeles' Ambassador hotel, the tension grew with each turn of the second hand. At 6:30 that Tuesday night, Dick Nixon was to face the television cameras to explain to the nation why he had drawn on an $18,000 private fund to pay some of his political expenses as a U.S. Senator (TIME, Sept. 29). Telephone calls poured into the hotel from G.O.P. bigwigs across the nation: some told him to fight, others told him that for the good of the party he must resign. Three hours before his broadcast Nixon sent his advisers away and ordered his telephone cut off. "I dont want to talk to anybody," he snapped as he closed his door.

The fact that weighed most heavily on Dick Nixon was that he was a man on trial, and strictly on his own. At stake were the campaign chances of the Republican Party, and his own political future. He had expected that Ike Eisenhower would make it clear to the nation that he was 100% behind Nixon. Ike had not done so. It was up to Nixon to clear himself with the people by presenting facts & figures. Until he did, Ike would not give him complete vindication.

Just before 6:30 Nixon sat down behind a desk in an NBC television studio in Hollywood, a sheaf of papers at his elbow. He had no written script, and the television crews were so uncertain of his plans that they warmed up two extra cameras in case he should walk out of range of the primary camera. Nixon's wife Pat sat in an armchair a few feet from the desk. When the announcer cued Nixon to start talking, not even Pat knew precisely what Nixon was going to say.

The Accounting. "My fellow Americans," said Nixon, as his earnest face loomed up on the nation's TV screens, "I come before you tonight as a candidate for the vice presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity has been questioned." His voice was level and he showed no sign of the strain.

Was it "morally wrong" for him to have drawn on the $18,000 fund for political expenses? No, said Nixon, since the 76 contributors asked no special favors, expected none and got none. The fund was not really secret at all. And "not one cent of the $18,000, or any other money of that type, ever went to me for my personal use. Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the U.S."

Nixon's voice took on a compelling note of seriousness as he launched his bold counterstroke: "And so now, what I am going to do--incidentally, this is unprecedented in the history of American politics --I am going at this time to give to this television and radio audience a complete financial history, everything I've earned, everything I've spent, everything I owe, and I want you to know the facts."

Most of his early life was spent in his family's grocery store in East Whittier, he said. "The only reason we were able to make it go was because my mother and dad had five boys and we all worked in the store.

"I worked my way through college and to a great extent through law school. And then, in 1940, probably the best thing that ever happened to me happened. I married Pat, who is sitting over here." The TV camera followed Nixon's cue, turned for the first time to Pat, sitting in profile with her eyes on her husband. "I practiced law," said Nixon as the camera picked him up again, "and she continued to teach school."

Package from Texas. Then, while he served with the Navy in the South Pacific, his wife worked as a stenographer, he said. Their joint savings at the end of the war were "just a little less than $10,000." Since then, he and Pat have inherited about $4,500; he has drawn $1,600 from cases which were in his law firm before he went into politics (but not a cent from subsequent legal business). He has made an average of $1,500 a year "from non-political speaking engagements and lectures." And he has had his salary as a Representative and Senator ($12,500).

"What do we have today to show for it? This will surprise you because it is so little . . . We've got a house in Washington which cost $41,000 and on which we owe $20,000. We have a house in Whittier, Calif, which cost $13,000, and on which we owe $10,000. My folks are living there at the present time. I have just $4,000 in life insurance, plus my G.I. policy, which I've never been able to convert and which will run out in two years ... I own a 1950 Oldsmobile car. We have our furniture. We have no stocks and bonds of any type. We have no interest of any kind, direct or indirect in any business. I owe $4,500 to the Riggs Bank in Washington ... I owe $3,500 to my parents . . . and then I have a $500 loan ... on my life insurance."

Nixon had one postscript to his accounting. "One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't they'll probably be saying this about me too--we did get something, a gift, after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog, and believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip, we got a message from the Union Station, in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us ... It was a little cocker spaniel dog . . . and our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it Checkers. And you know the kids . . . love the dog, and . . . regardless of what they say about it, we're going to keep it."

Let Them Decide. When Nixon had finished with his accounting he noted, by a swift glance at the clock, that he had used only a scant half of his allotted half-hour. So smoothly that his audience could detect no change of pace, he went into one of his back-platform attacks on the Administration. He got up from his chair and walked out in front of the desk. Then he gave the whole speech a heightened meaning when he announced that he was submitting his case to the Republican National Committee. "Let them decide whether my position on the ticket will help or hurt . . . whatever their decision is I will abide by it ... But . . . regardless of what happens, I'm going to continue this fight. I'm going to campaign up & down America until we drive the crooks and the Communists . . . out of Washington. And remember, folks, Eisenhower is a great man, believe me. He's a great man ..." There in mid-sentence Nixon's time expired and the technicians cut him short. It was one more unintentional point of high drama in a dramatic half-hour, for the rest of Nixon's sentence was not half so important as the effect of his dissolving from the nation's TV screens in the midst of an appeal for Ike Eisenhower.

"I Couldn't Do It." When the red camera light blinked off, Nixon mumbled an apology for going over his time. Then he turned his face away and broke into sobs. "I couldn't do it," he said. "It wasn't any good." Studio technicians bore down on him to assure him that he was wrong; some of the TV camera crew were weeping too. Mumbled Nixon, who rarely drinks: "Let's get out of here and get a fast one. I need it."

Next morning, dog-tired, he knew he had made one of the most dramatically successful speeches in the history of U.S. politics. Toward the end of his speech he had asked his listeners to send their opinions on his case to the Republican National Committee, and people were responding as they had never responded before to a political speech. By week's end the national committee estimated that it had heard from some 2,000,000 people by telegram, letter or telephone. Some editorialists and a handful of columnists (including Walter Lippmann, Max Lerner and Westbrook Pegler) scoffed at Nixon's performance. And some professional television critics tried unconvincingly to measure him off in all the cliches of the cliche-ridden Manhattan television and advertising world. (Wrote the New York World-Telegram and Sun's Harriet Van Home: "Senator Nixon was using what admen call the 'sincere' approach.") But most newspaper editorial opinion flip-flopped thunderously to Nixon's defense.

Actually, the speech was cut to fit the charge it answered. The attack on Nixon's fund as picked up by the New York Post (see PRESS) derived most of its power from the assumption that some of the mud would stick and thus disqualify Nixon (and, through the doctrine of guilt by association, Eisenhower) from continuing a moral crusade against corruption & Communism. The specific legal and moral case against Nixon was so foggy and so vague that Nixon would have made the mistake of his life if he had tried to answer with specific legal or ethical arguments. What he had to dispose of was not a charge that he had violated a specific ethical principle; he had to deal with the "Caesar's wife" argument, the vague but very widespread suspicion that he was somehow not an honest man. When he finished dealing with the attack, he had established himself as a man of integrity and courage. In 30 minutes, by the exposure of his personality, he had changed from a liability to his party to a shining asset.

"We've Only Begun." One man who felt the courage in the speech was Ike Eisenhower--perhaps the one man whom Nixon had uppermost in his mind during the broadcast. Soon after he was off the air Nixon got Ike's telegram of congratulation (see below). There was still no blanket vindication, but Ike suggested a meeting with Nixon in Wheeling, W. Va. Said Nixon happily, as he hopped off for Wheeling from Stapleton airport in Denver: "I'm going to Wheeling to meet the man there who will be the next President of the United States ... I can tell you we've just begun to fight."

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