The Remarkable Tornado

In Washington last week the curtain rang down on a Sunday Meet the Press television show featuring the Republican vice presidential nominee, California's Senator Richard Nixon. After the show, Columnist Peter Edson, an old Washington hand who writes a column for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, approached Nixon. There had been a story "kicking around" ever since the Chicago convention, said Edson, to the effect that Nixon was getting financial assistance from a special fund set up by a group of wealthy Californians. Well, Nixon replied, the truth wasn't quite that way, but Edson could get all the facts if he cared to call up a lawyer named Dana Smith in Pasadena.

Next day Edson telephoned Lawyer Smith. He got his facts, wrote his story, and N.E.A. airmailed it to 800 clients for release on the following Thursday. Wrote Edson: "Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Richard M. Nixon has been receiving an extra expense allowance from between 50 and 100 well-to-do Southern California political angels ever since he entered the Senate in 1951. Over the past two years these contributions have amounted to approximately $17,000."

"Millionaires' Club." Nobody got very excited about Edson's low-key account. Columnist Drew Pearson had been tipped on the same story and passed it up. But in Manhattan, on the same Thursday, the New Dealing New York Post, having come by the same story, broke out with high-key headlines: SECRET RICH MEN'S TRUST FUND KEEPS NIXON IN STYLE FAR BEYOND HIS SALARY. Tied to the headline was a Post "special" from Los Angeles, written by the Post's West Coast Correspondent Leo Katcher. For more than a month Katcher had been getting together a political series on Nixon for the Fair Dealing Post. Katcher, too, had interviewed Lawyer Smith about the trust fund, and Smith had talked to him freely. Katcher's "special" to the Post began: "The existence of a 'millionaires' club' devoted exclusively to the financial comfort of Senator Nixon, G.O.P. vice presidential candidate, was revealed today."

The Post's story began developing into a most remarkable political tornado. Press services picked it up and spread it across the U.S., where at first it got a treatment indicating editors were only mildly interested. In northern California, reporters interrupted Nixon's first big whistle-stop tour to ask if the fund existed. He said it did. In Washington, Chairman Stephen Mitchell of the Democratic National Committee promptly cried for Nixon's withdrawal as a candidate.

Sleepless on a Train. The story hit the Eisenhower campaign train as it made its way across the Midwest on Thursday evening. Correspondents got the first news of the Nixon fund when they picked up local newspapers in Nebraska. Almost instantly the words "Nixon" and "millionaires' club" zipped through the train. That night, Ike himself went to bed soon after his Omaha speech. But his advisers huddled anxiously through the night while correspondents listened to their discussions and badgered them for statements. With few facts at hand, many on the Eisenhower staff and most of the reporters adopted the framework set up by the Post and Democrat Mitchell; the discussion got down to an argument on the pros & cons of kicking Nixon off the ticket. Train correspondents reported the news that the Post story had thrown the Eisenhower train into a panic; by next morning the correspondents were typing out the sensational word that the matter of dropping Nixon was under consideration by Eisenhower's staff. With this, the story really began to pick up speed.

Just after 10 a.m. Ike issued a formal statement. He believed "Dick Nixon to be an honest man," and intended "to talk with him at the earliest time we can reach each other by telephone." But some of Ike's strategists, still in high panic, insisted that Nixon should be brought into Ike's presence for a personal accounting. Nebraska's Senator Fred Seaton, a close friend of both Eisenhower and Nixon, dropped off the Ike train at Auburn, Neb. to put through a telephone call to Nixon to ask what Nixon proposed to do. Should he break his campaign tour in the West and come to Ike with an explanation ?

Nixon, talking from his train at Chico, Calif., objected strongly to any such pilgrimage of humiliation. He had a counterproposal: he would dictate a statement and Ike could issue it for him. Seaton flew back to join the Eisenhower staff in Kansas City's Muehlebach Hotel. After an hour's conference, Ike's advisers decided that Ike should preface his forthcoming evening speech--on corruption in government--with Dick Nixon's formal statement.

Single Standard. It was a unique moment in U.S. political history when the G.O.P. presidential candidate came to the microphones in Kansas City's Municipal Auditorium and, in a clear, calm voice, read off the vice presidential candidate's explanation of his conduct. Said Nixon, through Ike: "Because of continued misrepresentation concerning disbursement of a fund which was collected and expended for legitimate political purposes. I have asked the trustee of this fund, Dana Smith of Pasadena, to make a full report to the public of this matter ..." When Ike finished reading, he added: "Knowing Dick Nixon as I do, I believe that when the facts are known to all of us, they will show that Dick Nixon would not compromise with what is right. Both he and I believe in a single standard of morality in public life."

Facts were duly produced next day in Lawyer Smith's crowded Pasadena office. The fund was established, Smith explained, after Nixon was elected to the Senate in 1950. It was closed up when Nixon was nominated for the vice presidency (a point which neither the New York Post nor Columnist Edson had noted). Smith himself was the trustee who wrote the checks. "Some of the disbursements," he said, "came to me as direct bills for payment. And some came to me as statements of expense from Senator Nixon's office. The Senator never handled any of the money himself." But sometimes Nixon was personally reimbursed by check for expenses he had incurred--and accounted for.

In its two years of operation, said Smith, the fund took in $18,235, Paid out all of this, except $66.13, on Nixon's political expenses. The major item: $6,166.60 for stationery, printing and mimeographing, mostly for Nixon's newsletter to his constituents. Mailing lists and postage ("above the senatorial allowances") cost another $2,390. For political travel Nixon drew $3,430.78, mostly for trips between Washington and California for public appearances. For radio and TV time: $2,017.79. All of the remaining $4,163.70 was scrupulously accounted for, except for one item of $294 for "miscellaneous"--and a $2.25 error in bookkeeping. This was considerably at variance with the Post's implication that Nixon had used the money to buy a house and hire a housemaid.

Who's Who. Smith named 76 contributors to the fund and the amounts they had paid. The average contribution was around $250. The biggest was $1,000 by a retired Pasadena businessman. The names resembled a Who's Who of Southern California business, included Oilman Earl Gilmore, President P. G. Winnett of Bullock's department store, President Joe Crail of the Coast Federal Savings & Loan Association, Manufacturer K. T. Norris, Charles S. Howard, wealthy heir to an automobile fortune and socialite turfman, three members of the wealthy Los Angeles Rowan real estate family, and Civil Engineer Herbert Hoover Jr.

The group had banded together before Nixon's senatorial campaign. They were all ardent admirers of Nixon, the young Quaker Congressman, and wanted him to run for the Senate. They raised some $25,000 for his campaign against Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas. "After he was elected," explained a fund member, "we wanted him to continue what we all looked on as a kind of California crusade for good government. Dick didn't have a dime of his own. So this fund was set up to cover his extraordinary expenses outside his office. Dick never got a nickel of it for personal use. And we were most careful to screen the contributors. We didn't want anybody contributing who might use the fact as a lever on Dick's voting."

Hound's Tooth. Meanwhile, Eisenhower's campaign train was still in turmoil. Later on the day that Smith produced his details, Eisenhower himself talked with reporters on his campaign train about the Nixon case. Ike posed for pictures driving an angry fist into his palm. His conversation was not for quotation, but the papers soon blossomed out with stories that Ike would not run on the same ticket with Nixon unless Nixon came out of his trouble "clean as a hound's tooth."* The tabloid New York Mirror reflected the indirect statements in a more direct headline: EXPLAIN OR QUIT, IKE TO NIXON.

In California, Dick Nixon caught the first heckling about the fund just as his train was about to leave Marysville. "Tell us about the $16,000!" yelled a man on the fringe of the crowd. "Hold the train! Hold the train!" shouted Nixon. Then he launched into a reckless, belligerent counteroffensive, blaming the "smear" on the "Communists and the crooks in the Government," and declaring that Democratic Candidate John Sparkman has his wife on the Government payroll.

The counterattack left a bad taste, and Nixon soon toned it down to a rational explanation of what the fund was all about. Reporters circulating through his audiences the rest of the trip found that even visiting Democrats seemed sympathetic to Nixon, and were not especially outraged by the fund story. But by the time his train pulled into Portland, Ore. late Saturday, Nixon was tight-lipped and grey-faced. He was well able to handle his audiences, but he was hardly prepared for what was going on behind him.

His first bitter blow was the news that the Saturday morning papers across the nation--some of them pro-Eisenhower--were crying for his scalp before they had heard his case. (The editorials were running 2 to 1 against him.) Notable among the prematurely disillusioned was the dean of pro-Eisenhower dailies, the Republican New York Herald Tribune. Then, when Nixon walked into the lobby of Portland's Benson Hotel, reporters confronted him with the stories that Ike might dump him. He snapped a "no comment" and disappeared into his room.

Sunday night a call came through from Ike Eisenhower, in St. Louis. He and Nixon talked for 20 minutes. At 1:15 a.m. Nixon announced to reporters that he would interrupt his swing through the Northwest, fly back to Los Angeles Monday, and make a nationwide radio & TV address.

"That means you are remaining on the ticket?" asked a reporter.

"Give me a little time on this," Nixon replied, and he retired to confer with his press aide. In a moment Nixon was back. "My answer to that question is that I have no further comment," said he. Obviously, the decision was up to Ike Eisenhower, and Ike had not yet made it.

Double Trouble. By this time some of those who had called for Nixon's resignation were beginning to cool. This week the New York Herald Tribune acknowledged that Nixon could be charged with no dishonesty, and left it up to Ike to decide about Nixon's future.

There was no doubt, as Nixon prepared to address the nation, that his political effectiveness, particularly as a candidate in a crusade against corruption in government, had been impaired by the furor over the fund. There was no doubt that he was in trouble because of two serious mistakes. The first was in allowing the fund to operate when there were other ways to cover his legitimate political expenses* (e.g., through publicly reported political funds, by lecture fees, or by continuing his law practice). The second mistake was in keeping the fund secret. Few professional California GOPoliticos knew of the fund. Nixon erred grievously in not telling Ike--and the public--the whole story before the campaign began.

But Nixon would have been in far less trouble had he been allowed to make his own answers in his own way. Instead, Ike's jittery campaign staff compounded and magnified the problem out of all proportion.

* Nobody has the power to fire a candidate once he is nominated by the national convention. If a candidate should resign during the campaign, he may be replaced either by a new convention, or (most likely at this stage) by nomination of his party's national committee.

* Nixon's official Senate salary is $12,500 a year, his tax-free expense allowance is $2,500; his allowance for running his capital office, approximately $60,000.

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