On January 20, 1961, Richard Nixon retired from public life. After losing a painfully close race for the White House, the former vice president relocated his family to California—his home state and scene of so many early political triumphs, where he and his wife, Pat, now planned to build a handsome, four-bedroom ranch house in an exclusive subdivision in Bel Air. For the first time in his life, Nixon was earning real money—roughly $3 million annually in today’s dollars—as a lawyer, syndicated columnist and book author. So it gnawed at his ego when the Los Angeles Times ran a sensational...