Richard Nixon’s thoughts on John Kerry, otherwise referred to as “that SOB.”
Monica Crowley was a foreign policy assistant to Richard Nixon from June 1990 until his death in April 1994. Nixon often confided his thoughts to her and he was very candid in his comments about current events. Ms. Crowley took notes. Lots of notes. After Nixon’s death, she wrote two books, Nixon off the Record and Nixon in Winter, that accumulated his comments. These books are must reads for anyone interested in what Nixon was thinking about after he left office.
During the summer of 1992, Kerry headed up a Senate committee that wanted to explore whether or not the Nixon administration had willfully left POWs in Vietnam in order to secure the peace agreement. Nixon was outraged and suggested that the committee was “on an ideological fishing expedition. And what they’re really trying to do is justify Clinton’s activities during Vietnam. Let him off the hook – that’s all they want to do, and I don’t want any part of that.
The committee eventually vindicated Nixon but the process left him bitter. As for Kerry, Nixon thought that he was pond scum.
“Look at the ringleader! Kerry, my God. Here’s a guy who was carrying placards in front of the White House, protesting because it was his right! And there I was, trying to fight the war and end it so that all of these people who died didn’t die in vain, and I had to deal with people like Kerry – and Clinton, for that matter.”
Kerry’s committee presented Nixon with a set of written questions. “I took them on, especially Kerry – that SOB threw his medal over the fence at the White House. Here I was trying to end the goddamned war so that his service wouldn’t be in vain, and he’s throwing his medal back at me. So my replies to the questions are tough, so what?”
Ms. Crowley concludes her section on the Kerry committee with: “The Kerry Committee report was released on January 13, 1993, to little media attention. If offered no new evidence, no hard conclusions, no smoking gun. Nixon and Kissinger were vindicated in what had essentially been an investigation in search of a nonexistent bombshell.” |
