Only in America, the land of fresh starts and clean slates, could someone who fell from power in such complete disgrace return to tell heads of state how the world should be run and not be laughed off the editorial page.
Richard Nixon has managed that feat by following a kind of self-imposed work-release program ever since he resigned and left for San Clemente, Calif., in 1974, churning out dozens of articles and seven books on subjects ranging from Vietnam to geopolitics. Former aide-turned-bete-noire John Dean summed it up neatly: "He's running for the office of ex-President, and he's won."
Quick to forget, anxious to forgive, many Americans began to wonder whether Nixon had ever really been as bad as all that. Just how thoroughly he has been resurrected was underlined earlier this month when the Washington Post, a primary agent of his destruction, gave front-page play in its opinion section to his plan for granting economic aid to the Soviet Union.
So last week's release of 60 more hours of White House tapes came as a timely reminder that Nixon is not simply an author and global analyst but an unindicted co-conspirator who is lucky to have escaped prison. Listen to any random conversation, on any day, and the mask of respectable elder statesman melts away to reveal a deceitful, lowbrow, vindictive character, dangerously armed with the full power of the IRS, FBI and CIA, and all too willing to use it. Audit his enemies, he orders. "We have to do it artfully so that we don't create an issue by abusing the IRS politically," says Nixon, warming to the subject. "And there are ways to do it. Goddam it, sneak in in the middle of the night."
The so-called smoking-gun tapes that prompted Nixon's resignation were released in August 1974. They are the ones that contain the incriminating conversations on stonewalling Congress and paying hush money to the hired hands who executed the ill-fated Watergate break-in. They also detail many of the charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, tax evasion, wiretapping and destruction of evidence that landed some of Nixon's closest aides -- including Attorney General John Mitchell, chief of staff Bob Haldeman, White House adviser John Ehrlichman and counsel John Dean -- in jail.
The latest batch of tapes, which languished for nearly two decades in the National Archives while Nixon lawyers and the government argued over how to release them, show just how coarse and ruthless a man he was. At one point he enthuses over a suggestion to recruit "eight thugs" from the Teamsters Union -- "murderers" -- to gang up on peace protesters. "They've got guys who will go in and knock their heads off," says Nixon. "Sure," adds Haldeman, "Beat the s--- out of some of these people."