When One Stood Alone

by J.D. Farinacci, Donald J. Farinacci

Richard M. Nixon rode into the presidency in 1968 on a promise to end the Vietnam War. He soon learned that he would be no more successful in extracting America from the mire of Vietnam than was his discredited predecessor, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Nixon became obsessed with the notion that biased reporting on Vietnam combined with the favorable publicity garnered by the anti-war movement's massive protest demonstrations and resistance to the military draft, was eclipsing and even obscuring his more positive accomplishments. It was a bitter irony to Nixon that he wasn't receiving the acclaim that a Democratic president would have received for similarly impressive accomplishments in thawing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and achieving a measure of rapprochement with Communist China. Nixon had surrounded himself in the White House with a loyal ban of sycophants who keenly understood the intricacies of Nixon's thought process. They believed that one of their functions was to insulate him from the more sober and balanced voices of his Administration, who were more likely to counsel moderation than to act on Nixon's more bizarre impulses. Nixon's chief lieutenants were his Chief of Staff, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, his Chief Domestic Policy Advisor, John Ehrlichman, and his Attorney General, John N. Mitchell. They were later joined in the effort by special counsel, Charles Colson, and White House Counsel, John Dean. Beginning in 1969, Nixon and his White House aides devised their own secret internal intelligence operation and implemented a massive program of spying and political sabotage against their opponents. Top Democrats were the main, though not exclusive, target. Many of theactivities engaged in by the White House intelligence arm were highly illegal, such as burglary, unauthorized wiretaps and surreptitious mail openings. The author devotes two full chapters to the key events from 1969 when the espionage and sabotage plan was first hatched until the June 1972 Watergate arrests, in order to set the stage for the emergence of John J. Sirica onto the Watergate scene, a most unfortunate event for the co-conspirators. President Nixon had, in effect, abdicated his responsibilities as moral leader of America. Judge Sirica, on the other hand, filled the void of leadership, and during the period of November 1972 through the end of 1977 became the true moral leader of America.

112 pages, Hardcover

First published March 28, 2005