A Big Honking If

A British blogger has fun with the Daily Mail.

Summers' Time

For a disrespected writer, accused of slipshod use of evidence by the Washington Post, Anthony Summers is having considerable influence on how the personal lives of our Cold War leaders will be remembered.

In 2000, he accused Richard Nixon of domestic abuse against his first lady. A principal source had waited many years to get his questionable charges into print. Summers was his man. Now a new book by Donald Fulsom repeats the domestic abuse allegations. He quotes or cites Summers nearly 50 times. We'll have to wait until its publication in late January to learn if he adds anything to Summer's claims.

Anticipating Fulsom's allegations about Richard Nixon and his friend Bebe Rebozo, U.S. News recently noted that sex stories were being told about Nixon as they earlier were about the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover. Britain's Daily Mail, publicizing the Fulsom book, also notes the Nixon-Hoover coincidence, since the film "J. Edgar," in which the actor playing Hoover dons his mother's dress and jewelry, opens in London next month, when the book is published.

What neither account mentions is that the most explosive allegations about Hoover -- that he engaged in cross-dressing at gay orgies -- were also made by Summers in 1993, also based on statements by a person who'd been waiting years for someone credulous enough to roll the presses. Almost all historians now repudiate Summers' Hoover allegations, according to Jeff Stein at the Washington Post:

“Too good to check!” reporters sometimes joke when they hear a story so fantastic they fear checking it out, lest it turn out untrue.

Likewise, the public seems determined to cling to the story that J. Edgar Hoover, the piranha-jawed director of the FBI for over 40 years, liked to par-tay in a cocktail dress, fishnet stockings, full makeup and a wig.

No matter that it’s almost certainly untrue, based as it is on a single discredited source, according to almost every historian of the FBI, including the G-man’s fiercest critics.

As with Nixon's alleged battering, a source only Anthony Summers was naughty enough to use. Don't get me wrong. I have almost nothing to say in defense of Hoover -- and that's just based on what's true.

The Seeds Of Regret

Jonathan Aitken is a former member of the British Parliament and author of Nixon: A Life (sadly and I hope temporarily out of print, though you can grab a copy here). A frequent visitor to San Clemente after President Nixon's resignation, including during his honeymoon with his first wife, he had a fascinating insider's account of the Nixon-Frost interviews in Saturday's London Daily Mail.

Aitken begins with a glimpse of the honeymoon visit:

[A]n awkwardly but determinedly romantic Richard Nixon presented us with a formal corsage of flowers, made delicate inquiries on how we were sleeping, and took immense pains in putting on a festive dinner party which he called 'La Casa Pacifica's welcome to the honeymooners from three happily married couples'. They turned out to be ex-President Nixon and his wife; David and Julie Eisenhower (President Ike's grandson and Nixon's daughter); and Congressman and Mrs Jimmy Roosevelt (FDR's son and daughter-in-law).

Having recently interviewing RN's then-chief of staff (played in "Frost/Nixon" by Kevin Bacon), Aitken describes what really happened after the former President successfully filibustered David Frost in their first videotaped exchanges:

As Colonel Jack Brennan tells it: 'Frost sent his aide, John Birt [later boss of the BBC], to see me. He said: "This has been terrible. We need more time."

'My immediate reaction was "Tough. We've kept our side of the deal: the taping is over."

'But later I talked it over with my staff. We all agreed that Nixon should voluntarily go further and express some regret.

'So I went to see the boss and I said to him: "Listen, if this ends the way it has, the world is going to say, there goes the same old Nixon."'

At first, Nixon was curtly dismissive of this criticism. But Brennan and his team persisted. Their argument was that some expression of regret for Watergate needed to be put on record....

'From that moment onwards,' recalled Brennan, 'I knew that Nixon was spending all his time preparing himself for how to say something that would not be a confession or an expression of guilt, yet would say sorry for what had happened.' Throughout his life, Richard Nixon had difficulty giving apologies. This one was the hardest of all.