A president at war
Sir: I am the author of the American Spec- tator article mentioned by Professor Brogan in his review (Books, 20 June), which argued that the new book of Watergate tapes amounted to a 'brief for [Nixon's] defence'.
Even as selectively edited and mislead- ingly interpreted by Stanley Kutler, the transcripts show that prior to March 1973, the President had no knowledge of the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, the Watergate break-in, or the Watergate cover-up. This matches all his own state- ments at the time and afterwards. The new tapes also show that he observed a moral distinction between the Watergate break- in, which he considered criminal and stupid, and efforts to stop national security leaks, which he considered a vital responsi- bility of a wartime commander-in-chief. I argued that few historians observe the same distinction because most believe that, since the Vietnam war was unjust or unwise, Mr Nixon was not entitled to the extra latitude normally taken by war presidents.
Professor Brogan himself did not so much as mention there was a war on, even though it was the source of much of the President's ire and his critics'. The week he implored his aides to break in at Brookings to see if they were linked with Ellsberg, for instance, 29 young Americans died in Viet- nam, and he pinned the Medal of Honor on 15 more. He believed that Mr Ellsberg had betrayed these heroes. Mr Ellsberg's apolo- gists consider him the hero. That is a big divide. It persists, and so most arguments about Richard Nixon are still really about Vietnam. Historians cannot be fair to him or truly illuminate his era unless they understand the viciousness of the United States's culture wars in the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as the horrors wrought by our unnecessary abandonment of a defensible ally in Saigon beginning in 1973 (during Watergate).
John H. Taylor
The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, 18001 Yorba Linda Boulevard, Yorba Linda, California, USA
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