Word: bit
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Edward Redd, executive secretary of the Boston office of the NAACP, said yesterday. "The Harvard students have been helpful and have put in quite a bit of effort...
...into the living room specially as backdrops for the show. (The books are mostly historical reference works, selected to establish an atmosphere in which Nixon would be comfortable.) Frost is seated to favor his best profile. Heavy curtains obscure the rugged coast and the sunny Pacific. Nixon looks a bit older than in his White House days but surprisingly strong and tanned?a daily round of golf has become part of his routine. He brims over with confidence. He appears far more presidential than in those final weary days in the White House...
Adopting a patronizing tone, Nixon turns lawyer. He says his absence of motive precludes any criminal intent, but then Frost probably has not read the law on obstruction of justice. It is an unfortunate bit of condescension. Just minutes before, on the way to the taping, Frost, at the request of his advisers, had read the law. He surprises Nixon by attacking Nixon's knowledge of the law. Nixon fumbles, explains first that he has not really read the statute since his law-school days, then pulls back further when he has to acknowledge that the law was not written...
Throughout Frost's Watergate assault, the old Nixon mannerisms inject an uneasy déja vu. The most discomforting is his reflexive, contrived smile, flashed?when he is under harsh attack. Sometimes his face freezes impassively, his eyelids fluttering. He stutters a bit under stress, and his syntax breaks down. At certain moments his lips shut tight, his mouth seems to shrink...
Frost's citing of this tape stuns Nixon, who seems hardly to believe he said such things. Frost then starts to unreel a bit of the Feb. 13 tape. Nixon interrupts, asking apprehensively: "It hasn't been published yet, you say?" Replies Frost: "No, I think it's available to anybody who consults the records." A smile breaks onto Nixon's face, but vanishes suddenly. "Oh, I just wondered if we'd seen it," he says...