Word: nixons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Though Nixon makes no such dramatic admission of error as he had in his televised interviews with David Frost ("I let the American people down, and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life"), he does admit that all his public speeches about his Watergate role as he fought to stay in office "were not explanations of how a President of the United States could so incompetently allow himself to get in such a situation. That was what people really wanted to know...
What finally forced Nixon to quit was the hard evidence that only six days after the Watergate burglary, he was already deeply involved in the coverup. This became clear when he was forced to release the White House tape of a meeting that he had with Haldeman on June 23, 1972. The "smoking gun" revelation came out in the fateful summer of 1974, and Nixon writes of the events of Friday, August 2: "I decided instead of resigning on Monday night, I would release the June 23 tape and see the reaction...
...knew that he had to resign. Instead of breaking the news himself, he called in his secretary, Rose Mary Woods, and had her tell his family. When his sons-in-law, Edward Cox and David Eisenhower, argued the case for delaying his decision at least for a few days, Nixon recalls, "I said that this was just like a Greek tragedy: you could not end it in the middle of the second act or the crowd would throw chairs at the stage. In other words, the tragedy had to be seen through until the end as fate would have...
...final days, Nixon spent much time with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. On Wednesday, August 7, he said to Kissinger, "Just as there is no question but that I must go, there is no question but that you must stay." Then, Nixon adds, "At one point Kissinger blurted out, 'If they harass you after you leave office, I am going to resign as Secretary of State...
Soon after that, the much reported praying scene took place, and Nixon gives his recollection: "I told Kissinger that I realized that, like me, he was not one to wear his religion on his sleeve. On an impulse, I told him how every night, when I had finished working in the Lincoln sitting room, I would stop and kneel briefly and, following my mother's Quaker custom, pray silently for a few moments before going to bed. I asked him to pray with me now, and we knelt...