| ONE THOUSAND AND three times during the years 1969-t973 1 took notes as I talked with Richard Nixon. Some of those notes are a single page, but most of them ran two to ten pages. Spasmodically I made memoranda of remarkable events, too. For seven years all of this material was held by the Govern- ment and 1 was not permitted access to most of it. Finally, in 1980, I was admitted to the Archives and was permitted to copy some of those records which had been seized in my White Hou~ office the day alter I was fired. This is not a history book. It recounts what 1 knew in those early 1970s, occasionally elaborated with later developments if they help to round out the narrative. The Nixon dialogues come from my notes. If the Nixon tapes are ever released, I ll be seen to be less than a verbatim reporter, but I have the substance correct, I know. This is primarily an account of people and events as I per- esived them eight to ten years ago. 1 haven t followed every account with the parenthetical phrase "(or so I thought then), " but I trust the reader will supply it when required. It is obvious that many things I believed were untrue. Richard Nixon was a Presidential candidate when I first met him in 1959 and for the next ten years that I knew him. Such a person is not like ordinary Americans. The aspiration de- mands enormous sacrifice. A candidate is rarely at home; he seldom sees his family, rarely has time to enjoy a concert, a novel or his garden. Presidential candidates are hybrid humans, from whom are plucked the normal joys, emotions and experiences of life, |
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