Nixon Viewed Media, Academics As 'Enemy', Led Smear Campaign

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Washington: Former US President Richard Nixon viewed the media and academics as "enemy," and conducted heated campaign to investigate, intimidate and smear political rivals and opponents of the Vietnam War.

Archival documents along with 198 hours of the 37th president's White House tapes released this week by the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum, also reveal the president's contempt for colleagues and his vitriol for critics.

"Never forget, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy," he told his national security adviser Henry Kissinger in Dec 1972.

"Professors are the enemy," he repeated. "Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it," he told his top aides, including deputy assistant for National Security Affairs, Alexander Haig.

It also reveals that Nixon's siege mentality was shared by his closest advisers. Together, they collected dirt on the president's critics and public figures, including their marital, mental and drink problems.

From the White House, the documents show, that Nixon was directing aggressive investigations of his rivals soon after taking office in January 1969.

The Republican leader was particularly furious with those conducting campaign against the Vietnam war. Nixon wanted to "decimate" North Vietnam, and called the communists "filthy bastards". He described his own vice president, Spiro Agnew, "a goddamned fool" who "doesn't know a goddamned thing".

When told by Haig that Agnew disagreed with Kissinger on Vietnam, Nixon replied that his VP "is a goddamned fool" who "doesn't know a goddamned thing. He bores the hell out of me. Christ... I'll have to have him come in here."

The documents may also shed light on the origins of Nixon's infamous "enemies list." In the documents, Nixon's top aide, H.R. Haldeman, records the Presidents order to bring the weight of the IRS down on attorney and former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, who had been critical of Nixon's Vietnam policy, and on the anti-war movement.

In a handwritten note on June 23, 1971, Haldeman reminds himself to take action against "TK," believed to be Senator Ted Kennedy. Haldeman writes: "Get him -- compromising situation . . . Get evidence -- use another Dem as front."

The newly released documents also illustrate Nixon's interest in the "across-the-board loyalty" of White House staff.

In a memo to Nixon on January 16, 1970, presidential staffer Alexander Butterfield reported on the progress of Nixon's order to remove all pictures of past presidents from White House walls. Butterfield noted that of 35 offices occupied by White House support staff, six had displayed one or more former presidents. Nixon, the memo reveals, had expressed special concern about an office in which he saw two pictures of John F. Kennedy.

The tapes reflect Nixon conversations between November and December 1972 and include discussions of the 1972 elections and the bombing of North Vietnam.

Nixon is credited with creating the modern day Imperial Presidency, in which the presidency retains a high level of control over government policy and decisions.

The Nixon administration backed Pakistani President Yahya Khan during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War despite widespread human rights violations against the Bengalis by the Pakistan Army.

During the crisis Nixon was vocal in abusing Indian Prime Minister India Gandhi as an "old witch" in private conversations with Kissinger, who is also recorded as making derogatory comments against Indians. Nixon suffered a stroke on April 18, 1994 and died 4 days later, at the age of 81.






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