Being Nixon: A Man Divided

by Evan Thomas

On the same day that Israel asked to be saved by the United States, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled 5 to 2 that President Nixon had to turn over the tapes of nine White House conversations subpoenaed by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force. Nixon had been dreading the court’s decision, in part because of the prospect that the judges would shred his constitutional defense of executive privilege and in part because he feared the unleashed zeal of Archibald Cox. “Firing him,” Nixon wrote in his memoirs, “seemed the only way to rid the administration of the partisan viper we had planted in our bosom.”15 For months, the special prosecutor, with his graying crew cut and jaunty bow ties, had been engaged in what Nixon regarded as a witch-hunt.