In the three-room suite on the fifth floor of Los Angeles' Ambassador hotel, the tension grew with each turn of the second hand. At 6:30 that Tuesday night, Dick Nixon was to face the television cameras to explain to the nation why he had drawn on an $18,000 private fund to pay some of his political expenses as a U.S. Senator (TIME, Sept. 29). Telephone calls poured into the hotel from G.O.P. bigwigs across the nation: some told him to fight, others told him that for the good of the party he must resign. Three hours before his broadcast Nixon sent his advisers away and ordered his telephone cut off. "I dont want to talk to anybody," he snapped as he closed his door.
The fact that weighed most heavily on Dick Nixon was that he was a man on trial, and strictly on his own. At stake were the campaign chances of the Republican Party, and his own political future. He had expected that Ike Eisenhower would make it clear to the nation that he was 100% behind Nixon. Ike had not done so. It was up to Nixon to clear himself with the people by presenting facts & figures. Until he did, Ike would not give him complete vindication.
Just before 6:30 Nixon sat down behind a desk in an NBC television studio in Hollywood, a sheaf of papers at his elbow. He had no written script, and the television crews were so uncertain of his plans that they warmed up two extra cameras in case he should walk out of range of the primary camera. Nixon's wife Pat sat in an armchair a few feet from the desk. When the announcer cued Nixon to start talking, not even Pat knew precisely what Nixon was going to say.
The Accounting. "My fellow Americans," said Nixon, as his earnest face loomed up on the nation's TV screens, "I come before you tonight as a candidate for the vice presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity has been questioned." His voice was level and he showed no sign of the strain.
Was it "morally wrong" for him to have drawn on the $18,000 fund for political expenses? No, said Nixon, since the 76 contributors asked no special favors, expected none and got none. The fund was not really secret at all. And "not one cent of the $18,000, or any other money of that type, ever went to me for my personal use. Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the U.S."
Nixon's voice took on a compelling note of seriousness as he launched his bold counterstroke: "And so now, what I am going to do—incidentally, this is unprecedented in the history of American politics —I am going at this time to give to this television and radio audience a complete financial history, everything I've earned, everything I've spent, everything I owe, and I want you to know the facts."
Most of his early life was spent in his family's grocery store in East Whittier, he said. "The only reason we were able to make it go was because my mother and dad had five boys and we all worked in the store.