Nixon's Gamble: How a President's Own Secret Government Destroyed His Administration

by Ray Locker

Overview

After being sworn in as president, Richard Nixon told the assembled crowd that “government will listen. ... Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in.” But that same day, he obliterated those pledges of greater citizen control of government by signing National Security Decision Memorandum 2, a document that made sweeping changes to the national security power structure. Nixon’s signature erased the influence that the departments of State and Defense, as well as the CIA, had over Vietnam and the course of the Cold War. The new structure put Nixon at the center, surrounded by loyal aides and a new national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who coordinated policy through the National Security Council under Nixon’s command. Using years of research and revelations from newly released documents, USA Today reporter Ray Locker upends much of the conventional wisdom about the Nixon administration and its impact and shows how the creation of this secret, unprecedented, extra-constitutional government undermined U.S. policy and values. In doing so, Nixon sowed the seeds of his own destruction by creating a climate of secrecy, paranoia, and reprisal that still affects Washington today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493019458
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	847,995
File size:	539 KB

About the Author

Ray Locker is the Washington enterprise editor for USA Today, where he supervises investigative reporting in the Washington bureau, as well as the White House, military and money in politics reporters. His work as a reporter and editor has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. He covered the final years of George Wallace’s political career at the Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama; spent 13 years as a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Tampa Tribune; worked for the Los Angeles Times; and ran the Associated Press bureau in Sacramento, where he coordinated coverage of California government and politics. Locker is married to Margaret Talev, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News. They have two daughters and live in Rockville, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Table of contents Part I Prologue Origins Nixon takes charge (1969) First moves (1969) The secret wiretaps (1969) The military’s harsh awakening (1969) Cooking intelligence with SALT (1969) The Cambodia sideshow (1970) Nixon’s war with the FBI (1970) Chile (1970) Laos and other crises (1971) China (1971) Pentagon Papers and FBI (1971) India-Pakistan (1971) Triumphs (1972) Watergate and early cover-up (1972) Part II, The Unraveling Early 1973 May 1973 The White House tapes Spy ring cover-up (1973-1974) Impeachment (1974) Part III, Ramifications Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

08/31/2015
Locker, a USA Today investigative reporter focusing on politics and Congress, reconstructs the rise and fall of Richard Nixon. His well-conceived thesis is that Nixon believed the entrenched, self-interested forces of Washington—the national press corps, Congress, and the CIA, FBI, and Pentagon—were making it impossible for him to achieve his goals: reaching an arms agreement with the Soviets, establishing a détente with China, and ending the Vietnam War. Determined to succeed at any cost, Nixon stealthily created a shadow government adept at secret foreign policy initiatives. According to Locker, Nixon’s commitment to secrecy generated a culture of domestic spying, fostering the infamous break-ins, until “cover-up begat cover-up” and led to Nixon’s demise. Locker describes Nixon’s machinations in minute detail, and readers may be overwhelmed by the narrative’s parade of large and small players, but they will marvel at Nixon’s drive, paranoia, duplicity, and accomplishments. Surprisingly, while the unfolding of the world events makes for captivating reading, the debacles of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate seem like an old story. In Locker’s view, Nixon’s successes place him high in the pantheon of effective presidents, but his perfidy makes an equally compelling narrative of failure. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Locker’s book is more than just gripping political narrative: it is a critical examination of one of the most pivotal and flawed leaders in modern American history, one whose story still reverberates today almost a half-century later.

The Post and Courier

"The story we only thought we knew. Ray Locker gives us back our lost perspective on Richard Nixon and the governance we inherited from his tragedy. This courageous, graceful book is a major achievement and lasting public service.”—Roger Morris, author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician


“Richard Nixon accomplished a great deal—opening up China, arms control with Russia, ending the Vietnam War—but he did this, in no small measure, by deceit. In a tour de force of historical research, Ray Locker reveals a mind-boggling web of lies and half-truths. A gripping read and an important book.”—Evan Thomas,New York Times bestselling author of Being Nixon: A Man Divided and Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Battle to Save the World

“Ray Locker has assembled a masterful study that asks a question no one else has – was the Nixon White House flawed by design? A deep dive of government documents and primary sources, Locker examines the very foundations of the Nixon administration and finds something very troubling. A must read for anyone wanting a better understanding of the time period.”—Luke A. Nichter, co-author of New York Times bestselling series The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972 and The Nixon Tapes: 1973

Even more impressive, that’s not the most important part of this richly illuminating history of Richard Nixon’s many layered attempt to govern by secret. In uncovering the huge hidden wager that Nixon took, playing for his place in world history and going all in with nothing less than the presidency itself, Ray Locker shows us Nixon’s hole cards and how badly he misplayed them. We’re all still trying to recoup the loss.”—Ed Gray, co-author with his father L. Patrick Gray III of In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate

"’Why did he do it?’ has long been one of the great questions of the Nixon presidency. Ray Locker provides a set of fascinating new answers, based on dogged investigative research and a keen instinct for making sense of Richard Nixon's strange secret world.”—Beverly Gage, professor of American history at Yale University

“Ray Locker establishes Nixon gambled to achieve foreign policy achievements and lasting structural government changes only ultimately to be brought down by his secret modus operandi. He also convincingly documents that John Dean, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and the FBI’s top intelligence officer William C. Sullivan aided in Nixon’s demise with the duplicitous roles they played by giving misleading information to the press and Congress.”—Joan Hoff, author of Nixon Reconsidered

From the Publisher

Reads like a taught Washington thriller…thoroughly researched…dramatically engaging

Tampa Bay Times

09/01/2015
Richard Nixon (1913–94) remains a fascinating subject for historians of all stripes. Locker, an investigative reporter for USA Today, applies his ample research skills to exploring Nixon's penchant for secrecy and deception during his six years as president. The focus centers on Nixon's three primary foreign policy goals: ending the Vietnam War, restoring diplomatic relations with China, and reducing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union. In order to accomplish these disparate objectives, Locker maintains, Nixon created a complex secretive network so extensive that even his closest advisors, such as Henry Kissinger, didn't know the whole truth behind his actions. The author utilizes a wide range of primary and secondary resources to spin his tale, and at times the facts are indeed stranger than fiction as he lists the consequences of the National Security Decision Memoranda and concludes that Nixon's "climate of secrecy" continues to impact politics today. VERDICT A well-told, detailed account that will satisfy even the most dedicated Nixon scholar. Recommended for most collections.—Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames

Library Journal