An Inoperative Recollection

One of the more moving moments in the David Frost interview with Richard Nixon came when the ex-President revealed how, while serving as Dwight Eisenhower's Vice President in 1958, he had been required to tell the embattled Sherman Adams, Ike's closest aide, that Ike wanted Adams out. As Nixon poignantly recalled it, after long deliberation Eisenhower agreed that Adams must leave but could not bring himself personally to tell him. Said Nixon to Frost, with great pain showing in his face: "You know who did it? I did it."

No, he didn't. When it was disclosed during a 1958 congressional hearing that New England Textile Manufacturer Bernard Goldfine had given Adams a number of gifts, including hotel accommodations in Boston and a vicuna coat, calls began to rise, even in the Republican Party's own ranks, for Adams' resignation. At first Eisenhower stoutly defended his aide. But it was a congressional election year, and party pros were convinced that the Adams affair was damaging their chances. Vice President Nixon, assigned to weigh party sentiment, found that virtually all Republican candidates wanted Adams out. That jibed with Nixon's own view then, though in the Frost interview he never suggested that he privately sought Adams' resignation. Republican National Committee Chairman Meade Alcorn also told Ike, "Sherm must go."

TIME Senior Correspondent John Steele, then the TIME-LIFE Washington bureau chief, remembers how Adams got the word. After hearing from Alcorn, Ike agreed to dump Adams. But he himself would not wield the ax against his close friend. Ike apparently reasoned that the task of cashiering Adams properly belonged to the political chief of the party, since it was essentially a political affair. Eisenhower asked Alcorn and Nixon to talk to Adams. He told Alcorn: "You've got to handle it. It's your job." Alcorn summoned Adams from a vacation in Canada to give him the bad news.

As it happened, about an hour before this troublesome session, Nixon begged off, telling Alcorn on the phone that there were too many newspapermen around. Said one participant in the final episode: "Nixon was never more than a back-seat passenger in the whole thing."

Could it be that Nixon's memory lapsed? That is unlikely. Just a couple of months before the Frost taping, he was explicitly reminded of the firing details by someone who was in the White House at the time.

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