Nixon Horrified Jew Could Head FBI

Two months after the Watergate break-in, President Nixon already knew that FBI official W. Mark Felt was leaking information to reporters – because Nixon had his own spy at the FBI, an Oval Office tape reveals.

The tape also discloses that Nixon was shocked to learn Felt was Jewish and became horrified that a Jew could become head of the FBI.(Vanity Fair described Felt, whose ancestors were Irish, as claiming "no religious affiliation.")

In the conversation between Nixon and Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, taped on Oct. 19, 1972, Haldeman mentions Felt by name and refers to Nixon’s spy as "our source.”

And when Haldeman discusses Felt’s ambition to head the FBI, Nixon says: "Christ, put a Jew in there?”

On the tape of a February 1972 conversation with evangelist Billy Graham – made public in February 2002 – Nixon complained that a number of major news publications were "dominated” by Jews, and Graham responded: "The stranglehold has got to be broken, or the country’s going to go down the drain.”

Graham: "No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something.”

Later on the tape, after Graham left, Nixon told Haldeman: "The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards.”

The tape citing Felt as a leak mentions FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, whom Nixon had appointed after J. Edgar Hoover died – passing over Felt, who was expected to get the top job.

Nixon: "Well, if they’ve got a leak down at the FBI, why the hell can’t Gray tell us what the hell is left . . . ?”

Haldeman: "Yes, sir. Mark Felt. You can’t say anything about this because it will screw up our source and there’s a real concern. [Attorney General John] Mitchell is the only one who knows about this and he feels strongly that we better not do anything because . . .”

Haldeman: "If we move on him, he’ll go out and unload everything. He knows everything that’s to be known in the FBI. He has access to absolutely everything . . .”

Nixon: "You know what I’d do with him, the bastard? Well that’s all I want to hear about it.”

Nixon: "That’s a hell of a way for him to get to the top ... Is he Catholic?”

True, as the melting pot did its work, the old stereotypes applied less and less to reality. I was thinking more of people about Nixon's age who grew up in a more prejudiced America in which differences between, say Irish, Italians, and Jews, were greater than they are today. People in that generation came back from the war and tried to live alongside people from groups that their relatives didn't get along with at all in the old neighborhood or in the old country.

Certainly they did have a common language and common cultural references which their parents and grandparents didn't have, but it could be difficult even so. For many people in those days it was very much a matter of not saying things that came readily to mind, and that's something Nixon had trouble with.

Nixon wanted to be a regular guy. And he most definitely wasn't one. He had real intellectual gifts and was a very studious, hardworking fellow who had no small talk and was ill at ease with other people. Maybe he first really "belonged" when he was in the Navy, a regular guy among others. And in politics it didn't pay to be an aloof egghead, like Adlai Stevenson, so Nixon cultivated the common touch and tried to be an ordinary Joe, even a tough guy.

Of course it didn't work. It's better for a politician to have the people skills mastered first and procede from there. If you don't, you're probably moving in the wrong direction, following where you think the people are rather than leading them, trying to build a personality when that ought to be something you start out with. And if you really have to work hard to establish a rapport with people, chances are you get things wrong, as Nixon so often did.

I tried to read Lance Morrow's book, "The Best Year of Their Lives: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in 1948: Learning the Secrets of Power." It was awful! Rather than simply stick to what happened, Morrow embellishes his story with Freudian insights and pop culture analogies. The comparisons of Nixon to Lana Turner and the Hiss case to "Streetcar Named Desire" were bizarre and laughable. I did get the impression, though, that Nixon's was the most compelling of the three lives, and Kennedy's the least.

I don't dispute, for a second, that you are correct in your surmise. I just wonder if, in principle, it is a good idea for the Admninistration to allow this blatant crime by a 2IC at the FBI to stand unprosecuted. Valerie Plame was not, after all, physically harmed by the leaks to the reporters who are now on the griddle in her case, but Felt, probably unwittingly (as Peggy Noonan pointed out in her most recent column in support of Ben Stein's comments about the Cambodian genocide), greased the slide into the Cambodian Communist massacre, something that would not have happened in the absence of Watergate. Former CIA Director Tenet (and others who received their Presidential Medals of Freedom) are safely secured in a 'lock box', but there must be many 2IC's and 3IC's etc. in the CIA who, like Felt, are roiled and could be tempted to cop-a-plea as Kerry scouts his impeachment proceedings against 'W', looking for a whistleblower who is ready to provide the Democrats with the meat that is currently missing in the Blair Cabinet Report sandwich.

but there must be many 2IC's and 3IC's etc. in the CIA who, like Felt, are roiled and could be tempted to cop-a-plea as Kerry scouts his impeachment proceedings against 'W', looking for a whistleblower who is ready to provide the Democrats with the meat that is currently missing in the Blair Cabinet Report sandwich.

I couldn't agree more.

We seem to think along the same lines, and almost at the same time.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1415874/posts?page=11#11

Thanks for the URL. I hadn't seen your post, or indeed the thread in which it is found. I enjoyed both. No doubt about it, we're on the same wavelength w.r.t. the potential for mischief in the Deep Throat revelations. I was just looking at the posts that interceded between our exchanges in this thread. I marvel at some of the comments, which seem oblivious of the plight of Jews in Ireland who, when they were not victims of De Valera's zeal to rid Catholic Ireland of Jews, were saddled with old chestnuts such "A Jew never earned a living in Portadown", a bastion of the Protestant Orange Order in Norhern Ireland. If he is of Jewish ancestry, Felt, or his family before him, possibly even in Ireland, may well have had any number of reasons for not 'identifying', for adopting a non-denominational posture (as Woodward claims is the case), or simply deciding on a secular life, which, often as not, reflects a personal view that religious faith is a private matter. Much too much is being made of the exchange between Haldeman and Nixon on this matter. Most of the stuff on the tapes is like flotsam-and-jetsam on the cerebral beaches of the participants and of no importance in relation to the main point under discussion: a 2IC at the FBI is leaking, dammit !!!

It was Nixon,in defiance of the Constitution who created the Environmental Protection Agency. He signed the law creating the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; enacted wage and price controls; expanded the size and reach of the "civil rights" enforcement bureaucracy; and in manifold other ways abetted the growth of the regulatory leviathan. Compared to the routine crimes against the Constitution committed by Nixon by way of official policy, Watergate was little more than a series of silly pranks.

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