Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Nixon was known to be a wife-abuser, a
journalist alleges
WASHINGTON - Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter who
reported the ''dark side of Camelot'' in an expose of the Kennedy
administration, says he has evidence that Richard M. Nixon was a
wife-beater.
In a recent appearance before Nieman journalism fellows at Harvard
University, Hersh said he chose not to use the story of Nixon's alleged
assaults on his wife Pat in a 1983 book because there was no evidence
the
president's private life affected his public duties.
''It wasn't a question of sources. I knew I was right,'' Hersh said in
an
interview yesterday. ''I only write about people's private life when it
impinges
on their performance as a public official.
''The bottom line is that we are not all jerks in this business. A lot
of times
there are stories you don't write willy-nilly about someone's private
life,'' said
Hersh.
But Hersh's claim about Nixon's relationship with Pat was met with
skepticism by Stephen Ambrose, the well-known historian who has written
biographies of Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower, and explorers Lewis and Clark.
''This is just outrageous. There is no evidence of any kind
whatsoever,'' said
Ambrose, whose three-volume biography of Nixon is the most
comprehensive study of the former president's life.
''All the evidence is conclusively in the opposite direction. The one
person
(Nixon) was nice to was Pat, and his daughters,'' said Ambrose. Hersh or
his sources ''must be making this up out of whole cloth,'' Ambrose said.
John H. Taylor, director of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif.,
also
viewed Hersh's allegation as preposterous.
''I have never, ever heard such an allegation before, and I am 100
percent
sure that there isn't a scintilla of truth to it,'' Taylor said.
''Anybody who
knows how profoundly the Nixons cared for one another and respected one
another would say the same thing.''
Hersh disclosed the charges about Nixon at the Nieman seminar because,
he
said, he has been ''devastated'' by the collapse of journalistic
standards he
sees in the coverage of President Clinton's sex life. He said he wanted
to
give the Nieman fellows an example of a commercially lucrative story
that he
and his editors decided not to use.
Hersh said yesterday he had also kept ''tremendous ... headline stuff''
about
John F. Kennedy out of his book, ''The Dark Side of Camelot,'' as well.
And Hersh, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his reporting on the My
Lai massacre in Vietnam, said he chose not to write about a love affair
between a gay Supreme Court clerk and a gay attorney in the US solicitor
general's office that sent tremors through the capital's legal community
in the
early 1980s.
In that case, Hersh said, clerks at the high court feared that the
affair
influenced the way a Supreme Court justice, influenced by the clerk's
legal
analysis, voted in a particular case.
One of Hersh's superiors at The New York Times tipped the Justice
Department to the conflict of interest, Hersh said, and the member of
the
solicitor general's office quietly resigned.
''It was handled with a call to the attorney general. Everything was
done
beautifully. The guy was out of there,'' said Hersh.
Toni House, the public information officer for the Supreme Court,
declined
to comment on the matter.
A transcript of Hersh's Feb. 6 remarks to the Nieman fellows is included
in
the spring issue of ''Nieman Reports'' magazine.
''There was a serious empirical basis for believing (Nixon) was a
wife-beater, and had done so - at least hospitalized her a number of
times,''
Hersh told the Nieman fellows. ''I'm talking about trauma, and three
distinct
cases. And I really brooded about what to do about this because it's a
huge
selling point for a book.
''But the point I'm making is I couldn't find any connection between
what he
did in his private life (and public policy), and so I didn't use it,''
Hersh said.
Hersh said sources told him there was evidence Nixon assaulted his wife
in
1962, the year Nixon lost the California gubernatorial election; in the
period
between 1969 and 1974 when Nixon was president; and ''within days'' of
Nixon's retreat to his home in San Clemente, Calif., after resigning as
president in 1974.
Hersh said he viewed these alleged episodes as private matters.
''As I said at Harvard, I couldn't find a time when the guy went to beat
up
Pat and couldn't find her, and decided instead to bomb Cambodia,'' he
said.
--
Two rules in life:
1. Don't tell people everything you know.
2.
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