Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72

by Rick Perlstein

The multinational conglomerate International Telephone & Telegraph had acquired three companies in 1969 in a deal bureaucrats in the Justice Department worried fell afoul of antitrust laws. Thus it was that in the middle of 1971 an ITT lobbyist named Dita Beard convened a lollapalooza negotiating session whose principals included John Mitchell, Maurice Stans, John Ehrlichman, Chuck Colson, Bud Krogh, and Vice President Agnew. The upshot: ITT promised $400,000 in donations to help stage the San Diego convention. Mitchell would protect the merger. The deal created more problems than it solved. As the Florida campaigning entered the home stretch, columnist Jack Anderson published a 1971 memo in which Dita Beard exclaimed to her boss that their “noble commitment has gone a long way.” The memo also included the observation, “Certainly the President has told Mitchell to see that things are worked out fairly.” Its famous last words: “Please destroy this, huh?” Beard’s boss didn’t. The reference to the president and attorney general of the United States—now Richard Nixon’s campaign manager—as direct parties to a bribe was more than a little embarrassing. So Howard Hunt was sent to cajole Beard into claiming she’d never written such a memo. “Who exactly do you represent?” Dita Beard’s daughter asked of the redheaded stranger who appeared on her doorstep. “High Washington levels who are interested in your mother’s welfare,” he replied. Beard’s public recantation clamped the lid on w...