Breach of Faith: Fall of Richard Nixon

by Theodore H. White

The Nixon crisis of 1973-74 threatened the state in ways not immediately understood. Stripped of drama & confusion, however, the problem was that the President had placed himself above the law. The nation had to decide whether that could be allowed. Theodore H. White starts this story with the last days of Richard Nixon in the White House--as those closest recognized he'd deceived them & that they must force him out. He follows the thread of manipulation back to its origin 20 years earlier & shows how the Nixon team came to see politics as war without quarter, in which the White House was a command post where ordinary rules didn't apply, where power could be used without restraint.
Let justice be done
The politics of manipulation
Poor Richard: how things work
The team: from politics to power
The White House of Richard Nixon: from style to heresy
The underground: from crime to conspiracy
Victory 1972: design for control
The tapes: a tour inside the mind of Richard Nixon
The systems respond: Spring 1973
Firestorm: Fall 1973
The question period: Winter-Spring 1974
Judgment: Summer 1974
Breach of faith
Appendix A: The articles of impeachment
Appendix B: Richard Nixon's farewell statement, 8/8/74

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Presidents, American History, Biography

383 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Theodore Harold White was an American political journalist, historian, and novelist, best known for his accounts of the 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 presidential elections.
White became one of Time magazine's first foreign correspondents, serving in East Asia and later as a European correspondent. He is best known for his accounts of two presidential elections, The Making of the President, 1960 (1961, Pulitzer Prize) and The Making of the President, 1964 (1965), and for associating the short-lived presidency of John F. Kennedy with the legend of Camelot. His intimate style of journalism, centring on the personalities of his subjects, strongly influenced the course of political journalism and campaign coverage.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

My lover in ‘73 was All-Access, alas. It always bounced back on us both with a Thud.

She was no better, of course, than the widest perimeter of probity permitted. A hot dog on a long leash, if you will - but I was her myopic fallen keeper.

So I was blinded by the halogen hi-beam of her artful inner Void!

And long before the Watergate Enquiry members folded up their tents and rent their tunics in anguish, Richard Milhaus Nixon’s alibis and antics were becoming pretty boring. Like her.

Childish, too. What went around came around, again that year.

In 1973 my naïveté was both a bane and a promise, of eventually emerging from out of the darkness of my early years with uncompromised wholeness.

I had again token a stand against moral turpitude as I had in my uni sophomore year, and, though defiant, was now once again in return inimically sequestered and doped beyond the limits of caring, through the unerring judgement of a morally freewheeling Canada.

Free love, after all, is Cheap. Or was to dumb me, considering its satyriacal value to me back then. Nowadays, of course, I prefer a good nap.

An old man now, I know peace.

Richard Nixon, of course, was the reverse: though objectively guilty of murkier felonies, he shilly-shallied and finagled his muddy way out of judgement.

Until now, thank the Lord...

Now the most powerful guy in the free world was under a similar cloud to my own - but HE was guilty of a felony that mushroomed into a colossal breach of trust. You don’t keep on telling a bare-faced lie in answer to a direct question about your complicity.

Boy, did it feel good to be innocent, then, and with free daytime access to every blow by blow hit of John Dean and not a few of his Plumber confederates. I felt strangely redeemed.

So titans fall.

But would other fast-talking moral flyweights take the hint? Probably not.

And I turned up the volume every chance I got that stifling hot summer. I had a brazen dislike of overbearing mendacity, and thrived on Chairman Erwin’s dialectics. Like a tomcat cornering a presumptuous mouse.

Someone saved my life that day - back in those days when my dark distrust of Tricky Dicky proved well founded!

John Dean VINDICATED my “poor judgement” of Nixon by turning the tables and proving all my arguments and judgements reliable.

Maybe not to my erstwhile interlocutors, though I was then not yet inured to their fast doubletalk.

But to me...

It showed the conflated and skewed logic my friends, the Trolls, had used in my own case - banished for no just cause to a gaping chemical pit.

And the logic All the President’s Men employed in their pitiful prevarications to Americans after the historical Watergate burglary - that, alas, was a Hopeless Pack of Lies.

You know, though, my early manner of assimilating these insights wasn’t any more objectively valid than my dejection at the hands of Trolls was.

But when you factor in the bad guys’ nefarious behaviour - later exposed (the ones who daily passed judgement on me) - and have to defend yourself daily amidst the thick miasma of strong neuroleptic meds, your case is lost to all but yourself.

I had to learn to gain a new insight into evil folks from my own reactions - which I now ethically questioned and found sound in principle - and from comparing the moral harvests in the actual worldly experiences of good and bad folks, separately considered.

It was a sobering experience. And it grounded me.

And it started with the careful, serious, heuristic science of Discernment.

The great American Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa can teach us much about this process of seeing what is REALLY going on, by discerning God’s will in the everyday.

Good behaviour IS rewarded.

Evildoers ARE punished.

And oh, yes: thanks to what Samuel Beckett calls our Calmatives - for us fallen-between-the-cracks guys - I saw I was now ONLY a danger to others’ funny bones and reflexive prudence and probity, nothing else!

There could be no deflated egos as a result of my antics.

But if we insist on playing from our own sheet of music, like I did, sooner or later we have to play in tune.

Happened to me, and it will happen to everyone else.

THAT’s the Will of God.

Until, of course, one grasps the pure logic of it.

That’s where a flaw in our own reactions to modern string theory in physics appears.

Morally there’s no such thing as random chance.

If we’re attracted to the freedom of abstraction, we need the parallel reality of sound moral truth to offset it.

There is only one moral law - science can have no say there - and we can’t play the eternal improviser (like tweets when a Sylvester Virus sneaks up on you)!

If we’re honest with ourselves we’re honest with the world. Otherwise - “O sur châtiment!”

And law is law. Nixon played around his own way for just a little too long.

Likewise, there’s just no such thing as the King’s law for the king and the baron’s law for barons.

We all have to face the music -

And truthful music is the best for ALL of us!

And so - mark this well - Nixon fell to his disgrace.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theodore White's Breach of Faith has the wounded tone of someone atoning for a mistake. In Making of the President '68 and '72, White shed his Kennedy worship and embraced Tricky Dick as the great statesman of the age, a calming panacea in a chaotic age (he was far from alone in that). Here, White treats Nixon's disgrace as both a national and personal betrayal, with the latter often outweighing the former: sometimes White, in his anguished self-justification, seems less contrite than angry that Nixon made him look bad. Still, White's an engaging writer on his worst day, and the book flows well-enough: he recounts the inner workings of Nixon's White House, the single-mindedness, arrogance and isolation that enabled Watergate with skill and verve. He's less interested in recounting the minutia of the break-ins, the Senate hearings and public reaction than probing how a great man destroyed himself, and as such it's a worthy addition to the voluminous Watergate literature.

[Bob Koelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really nice view from the inside of the Nixon White House, by someone who had the cooperation of many who worked there. It's like the mirror image of All The President's Men. White wants to tie the paranoid White House to both Nixon's past political struggles as well as the ideological turmoil of the day, and he's much more successful at the former, which makes up most of the book. Much of the final chapter can be disregarded as pointless analysis by someone who was not removed far enough in time from the events.

On a side note, White is way too generous in praising Nixon's foreign policy successes, because the backlash was still yet to be recognized in 1975. And there's a quite tragically humorous statement made about the 1968 election: "Nixon was scrupulous in the support he gave Lyndon Johnson's efforts at peacemaking [in Vietnam]." Now we know that Nixon's greatest crime was treason in 1968, encouraging the Hanoi delegation to break off talks with Johnson, promising them better terms. Even George Will conceded this recently. His instincts were correct; Johnson's announcement of a hiatus in bombing the week before the election almost derailed Nixon's campaign, and certainly a peace deal would have iced it. So Nixon gave us 5 more years of war, tens of thousands more dead American soldiers and untold dead Vietnamese, expansion into Cambodia and transformation of the Khmer Rouge from hill bandits into a homicidal regime killing 2 million there. Presidents have since carefully read about his political crimes and avoid them, but apparently nobody bothered to learn from his bigger more lethal crimes, because they don't even recognize the criminality.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually went out to see Richard M. Nixon once during the 1972 campaign, visiting a tepid rally the Republicans were holding with him outside Maine West High School in Illinois. He was about two inches tall from where Arthur Kazar and I were standing with a bunch of protesting farmworkers (UFW).

The Watergate scandal began to hit the news during that campaign, mostly in terms of the break-in at Ellworth's psychiatrist's office by the Plumbers, but not soon enough and with not enough coverage to much help George McGovern. Nixon was re-elected and the war in Southeast Asia and against progressive domestic organizations continued. When the investigations stemming from the break-in proliferated during the Watergate hearings, however, the daily news actually became cheering and my friend Martin and I would, probably for the only time in our lives, purchase both Time and Newsweek magazines to follow it. As we were living in the woods in rural Michigan at the time, the press and the radio were our only sources of information. We followed both eagerly.

White's critique of the Nixon administration is that of an old-school liberal. White himself lacked the ability to appreciate the New Left. Indeed, his attitudes in this regard are not much different than Nixon's, just a bit more liberal. Other than that, this is a decent representation of what may be understood to be "the Establishment's" take on some of the crimes of Richard Nixon's administration.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This turned out to be a very good refresher course for recalling the Watergate fiasco and the downfall of an American president. Over forty years after the events and this book's publication, White's erudite rhetoric has proven somewhat overblown. The consequences of Nixon's failure have cycled so far away from the expected path that now the actual crimes and "breach of faith" of Watergate seem almost quaint when compared to the 2017 election and the days through which America is now floundering. Does America have faith in any president anymore? Or even in America? I think I'm sorry I read this book right now; it's depressing.

[Aaron Million · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book seemed to break Theodore White out of his string of The Making of the President series of books, as he did not write any others after he finished chronicling Richard Nixon's downfall. The title seems to reflect White's own disappointment, although he does not come directly out and say that. Instead, he frames it as much more of the breach of the faith that Americans previously had in their presidents, and the office of the presidency, in general.

While there is no question that Nixon's unethical behavior and constant lying seriously damaged the presidency in the minds of Americans and others throughout the world, White fails to connect this theme with the previous erosion of trust that really began under Lyndon Johnson. Actually, one can trace it back further, to when Dwight Eisenhower got caught in a lie in 1960 concerning a U-2 spy plane that got shot down over the Soviet Union. Eisenhower's reputation was so high with the American people, that this one incident did not do significant damage to him, and coming as it did at the end of his tenure in office, it was mainly a blip on the radar.

While John F. Kennedy had the implosion of the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, and paved the way for disaster in Vietnam by sending in American "advisers" who really were combat soldiers, Johnson ruined himself, divided the country, and almost destroyed his Great Society programs by the lies and deception that he practiced while he was in office. This is to take NOTHING away from the out of control, above-the-law mentality that permeated Nixon's Administration, which is a direct result of what Nixon himself wanted, but the point is that when White writes in generalities about Americans losing trust in the presidency, he needs to step back a bit to include the actions of Nixon's predecessors that helped contribute to the climate that Nixon came to office in.

White begins the book by writing of the final days of the Nixon Administration, when the damaging June 23, 1972 tape surfaced showing Nixon and Haldeman scheming to cover-up Watergate by having the CIA lie to the FBI and tell them to back off their investigation as it was supposedly getting close to a covert CIA operation. This chapter is excellent as White really gets the mood of the embattled White House, the determined Congress, and the confused American people correct. It is disappointing that this also happens to be the most interesting chapter of the book. White quickly goes back into various facets and personalities in the Nixon White House and in Congress. Nothing riveting is uncovered here, and reading it now, over forty years later, it is quite dated.

However, White is still a superb writer, and frequently is able to add perspective to the men involved because he knew many of them and had access to them. This is something that would be almost impossible to do today as most of the major participants are dead. And even for the ones still alive, memory was no fresher than it could have been back when White wrote this book. Therefore he is able to provide something that we cannot get now: the raw feeling of what people felt at the time, without the benefit of what time did to the country as it tried to move forward and put this scandal behind it. And for that alone, plus some good writing by White, this book is still worth a look to anyone interested in reading about Watergate.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Nixon's secrets were brought to light by Watergate, author White saw Nixon as a split personality. He explains that in foreign affairs Nixon used his objective, analytical brain and innate sense of what was possible, to bestride a world of lesser leaders. At home he had a political sense of what the majority of Americans wanted, which eventually lead him to the presidency; but then he mistook his victory as license to do whatever he wanted. When he came under serious fire, Nixon's long-term experience as a despised loser took over and he went to war against his own country.

White concludes with his main question: Would Nixon's breach of faith with the American nation lead to a major housekeeping and renewal in government, or would it lead to mistrust of all our leaders and a feeling in the climate-making press that all presidents are the enemy?

In the 45 years since the book was released, we have seen the latter. Since it is harder to keep secrets now, we can see things that support that mistrust; but it has also led to situations in which presidents have not been able to fulfill their good intentions solely because of factionalism.

Read 3 times

[P.S. Winn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy reading the history of Nixon, especially in this day and age of a man in the White House who will also change history in ways we can't possible expect. Taking a look at Nixon through the eyes of those who saw the steady decline is interesting.

[Chris Schaffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s one of the better Nixon/Watergate books. White goes into detail on the people who would play key roles in the saga as well as analyzes Nixon thoroughly throughout. Sometimes a bit highbrow and off on tangents - White has that tendency.

[Aspar · Rating 3 out of 5]

An independent and relatively objective account of Nixon's fall and the circumstances and peoples that led up to it. Theodore White sufficiently discloses his biases and his own background to put the reader on guard. However, much of the story is told with insider knowledge provided from key players involved, which inevitably is tinged with a desire to preserve one's legacy. This is especially applicable here, the biggest political scandal in American history. Everyone tries to protect their own legacy and distance themselves from the corruption. While White does a fantastic job of calibrating for this, inevitably it still seeps through. One can detect this especially in the descriptions of the actions of Haig, the senior Republican Congressmen, and other Cabinet members.

Because this is a novel geared to a more general audience, the language is often dramatic. While this is indeed a dramatic moment in American history, sometimes the dramatization is cringe worthy.

White does an excellent job of balancing Nixon's achievements, notably his foreign policy achievements with the Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam, with the irredeemable actions he took to preserve his power domestically. White also does the story justice by going into depth on the various key characters throughout Nixon's career and how they impacted Nixon's mind, leading to the impeachment.

Highlights: Some of the more interesting things I learned that stuck out to me.
- Nixon created the EPA and aggressively fought to prevent environmental destruction that he, and much of the Republican party, acknowledged was occurring because of unregulated big business.
- Bob Haldeman was Nixon's advance man. His loyal dog who did whatever necessary to preserve Nixon's power. An absolute political brawler, whose loyalty was firstly to Nixon, not the country or the office.
- Nixon had a deep insecurity and love/hate relationship with "East Coast Elitism". He envied the wealthy, Harvard educated, elite, but also hated them.
- Nixon's career started with fear mongering using populist fears on immigration and crime.
- The actual Watergate break-in was a minor incompetent burglary that Nixon legitimately did not know of or order. His crime was in the subsequent cover-up.
- The more offensive breach of faith, to me, is his authorization of sweeping breaches of citizens' constitutional rights to privacy and Due Process when Nixon ordered the creation of the "super police" with power to intercept private mail, burgle citizen's homes without warrants, and spy on American citizens. The casual step towards an Orwellian government mimics the authoritarian actions of the Russians and Chinese.
- Additionally, Nixon's casual talk of using the government institutions and abusing them to keep his own power is repulsive. Democrats use of similar dirty tactics before is equally repulsive.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful and fair examination of Richard Nixon’s downfall due to Watergate. Since he is neither Woodward nor Bernstein, White brings the detachment necessary for objectivity. He is at times sympathetic towards Nixon, but unsparing in his assessment of the causes and damage Nixon inflicted on our nation and the presidency.

This book was written in 1975 when the wounds of Watergate were still open and raw. White is prescient in his views of how the scandal would affect future presidencies. It is easy to draw parallels between Nixon and Trump: faith in undeserving subordinates, hatred of the media, distrust of civil servants. Nixon would have loved the phrase “deep state” — because he was a true believer.

I highly recommend this book because, decades after its release, it remains vital and relevant.

[Mike Medeiros · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read a Nixon/Watergate book written so close to the events of 1973-74 (not counting All the President's Men and The Final Days) basically because this subject has the distance of time as a definite advantage due to access to documents and recordings not available to earlier historians.
But this being by famed chronicler of presidential campaigns Theodore White I decided to finally read it and I was glad I did. White has some wise perspective on events of very recent history as of the writing.

[Pat McDermott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written just a year after Nixon’s resignation, this book examines the moral flaws of Richard Nixon, and details the House Judiciary Committee’s efforts to hold Nixon accountable through the impeachment process. As someone who lived though this, this book sets up a powerful contrast between the president and Congressman Peter Rodino, who chaired the Judiciary Committee. This is the one Watergate book that I reread from time to time.

[BJ Cefola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth reading the last chapter for a discussion of American mythology, how people including Nixon were influenced by it, and how Nixon ultimately violated it.
Great context for understanding the chasm opened by the election of Trump.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Badly written but good information. I recommend a more recent account, as more information has become available since this was written.

[Marsha Valance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nixon acted in violation of his constitutional responsibility when he tried to cover up his administration's involvement in the Watergate break-in, leading to his resignation from the presidency.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the best book I've read about Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. Theodore H. White wrote some compelling books about the presidential elections of 1960, 1964, 1968 and 1972. His account of the fall of Richard Nixon, in a Shakespearean-like tragedy, was no less compelling. His chapter about the tapes that led to Nixon's demise is one of the finest I've ever read on the subject. To understand Nixon and Watergae, it is essential to read this book.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading Theodore H. White's "Making of the President" books and I found this to be even better. His insight into the psyche of Nixon and adumbration of the hubris of a very intelligent man impressed me. With his account of the decline and fall of Richard Nixon, Theodore White not only succeeded once more in transforming presidential politics into best-selling nonfiction, but also demonstrated that the loss of power can be made as fascinating and satisfying a story as its acquisition.

[Monte Lamb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the story of the fall of Richard Nixon. It is very well written and does a good job of telling the steps of his fall. Reading this book in 2015, it was very interesting to read the final chapter which asks many questions as to what the future will be and how Nixon's acts might affect them. It asked the right questions and knowing how many of them have been answered, the author understood what might happen in many areas.

[Stuart Townsend · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply my favorite book - a delight to read, to think about, to cherish. It is writing at its finest. He tells the story of the fall of Richard Nixon with such eloquence. If I had just one book I was allowed - this would be it. It is a book which leaves me in awe. I have read it perhaps 6 times. I still find more in it each time.

[Drnick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've only managed to read part of this book, but it is a fascinating look inside Nixon's white house. It gave me a deeper understanding of the personal traits which lead to Nixon's mistakes. It may also provide some insight into G.H.W. Bush's failed presidency as well.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

White brings the historian's rigour as well as his ability to write with passion. One of many judgements on Richard Nixon. Since this was written immediately after the fall, it is more reliable than some of the rehabilitation texts that cropped up 20 or so years later.

[Jake Voss · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very critical look at the Nixon administration. Much more pointed than Woodward/Bernstein's criticisms. Slows down for the last third, but the details and anecdotes alone make the book worthwhile. Not sure why it took me 3 years to finally finish it.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good account not only of Watergate and its aftermath, but of Richard Nixon's career and the political apparatus he built.

[Cws]

JRef4

[GRANT · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that got me started reading Presidential Biography and Watergate books. White was a master of political history.

[Glenn Rodekohr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot recommend this book enough. Essential reading.

[Seng Soumpolpakdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably one of the most nerdiest books I've ever read but it was cool because theodore gave a visual tour of the events very well. Not bad at all. Great story.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The eloquence of Theodore H. White is at its best in this account of the Watergate story. If you have not read it, you have not examined the tragedy of Watergate.

[MisterFweem · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://misterfweem.blogspot.com/2016/...

There's the review. Briefly: An excellent book for any Nixon junkie or fan of Ted White.