Six Crises

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  Contents

  Introduction

  Introduction to the First Edition

  The Hiss Case

  The Fund

  The Heart Attack

  Caracas

  Khrushchev

  The Campaign of 1960

  Appendix

  Endnotes

  Index

  To Pat

  she also ran

  NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  Among the many who so generously gave me the benefit of their advice and assistance in preparing this book, I would particularly like to thank Bill Henry, Earl Mazo, Charles McWhorter, Raymond Moley and Kyle Palmer.

  And to Alvin Moscow, for his skilled professional services in directing research and organizing material, my special appreciation.

  —R.N.

  Introduction

  If I had known the effort that writing my first book would require in the very hectic year of 1961, I would not have undertaken the project and might never have written a book at all. As luck would have it, I did write it, and it became the first of eight.

  The theme of each of the six crises appears in a sentence or two at the beginning of each chapter. The lessons of what I always called my seventh crisis—actually writing the book—can be summed up just as simply. Busy people should never let their hectic schedules prevent them from applying time to far more important creative pursuits that will broaden their outlook and conceivably produce something of lasting value. But by the same token, they should not put their names on the product unless they are willing to put real effort into what goes inside.

  After leaving the Vice Presidency, I had moved our family to California and joined a law firm in Los Angeles. I was writing a monthly newspaper column. I had scores of speaking engagements, not only in California but in other parts of the country as well—the inevitable fallout from my campaign for President the year before. It was also in this period that I made the decision to run for governor in 1962, a decision that entailed countless meetings with figures ranging from President Eisenhower to General MacArthur, and hours of study and thought.

  In the midst of these distractions, Ken McCormick of Doubleday came to California to propose that I write my memoirs. After I described the demands on my time, he assured me that writing a book would not add to them substantially. He said that the custom for major public figures was to hire a good writer to do the job. I would meet with him on occasion and answer questions, and he would do the rest.

  I decided to write the book, but I found the usual practice would not work for me. After fourteen years on the national scene, I had made thousands of speeches, and my style was highly recognizable. Al Moscow and Chuck Lichenstein, who provided invaluable editorial and research assistance, were better writers than I was, but neither could make their writing sound quite like mine.

  In this era when the ghostwriter often haunts the cover in type as large as that used for the author’s name, if not larger, public figures who want to write books worth reading should recognize that there is no substitute for hard work by the author himself. Others can do research and make suggestions. The author alone must supply the theme, the structure, the tone—and, perhaps most important, the title.

  I developed the organizational approach for this book late one night in the study of the house we had rented in Brentwood. I listed the major events of my career and finally boiled them down to the six that are covered here. At the top of the page, I wrote “Six crises.” A few days later, when the journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns came to visit me, I showed her the outline. She pointed to the heading and said excitedly, “That’s the title.”

  I still marvel at how we were able to get the manuscript finished in ten months. This was long before word processors, which permit the author to indulge his desire to see a fresh page, even if he has made only minor corrections in a draft. In 1961, changing a comma required a whole page to be typed over.

  I have also found that I produce best under intense pressure and in an environment that poses a minimum of distractions. When it was time to write the chapter on my confrontations with Khrushchev in Moscow in 1959, I rented a room in a Los Angeles hotel and spent six days working fourteen hours a day, reading, outlining, writing, and dictating, until the first draft was finished. I ate all my meals in the room. For the chapter on the 1960 campaign, I went up to the Apple Valley Inn, where Don Hughes got me a room in a quiet villa. For seven straight days I went through exactly the same grueling procedure. I could not do the same thing today. It was a close call then.

  Reviewers, probably justifiably, criticized the book for being uneven. Nonetheless it was a national best-seller. Even now, four best-sellers and nearly three decades later, I still consider it to be the best book I have published, because of the simplicity of its organization and the clarity of its writing. But it contains one glaring falsehood. In the introduction of the original edition, after discussing the ordeal of writing books I promised, “I might start another one, but I am sure I will never finish it.” I am pleased that this special Nixon Library and Birthplace Edition gives me the opportunity to set the record straight!

  —RN

  February 14, 1990

  Saddle River, New Jersey

  Introduction to the

  First Edition

  THE last thing I ever intended or expected to do after the 1960 election was to write a book. I had received the usual offers for publication of my memoirs which are tendered to political leaders who have retired—voluntarily or involuntarily. But although anyone who goes through a presidential campaign feels immediately afterward that he has lived enough for a lifetime, I still did not believe I had reached the point in life for memoir-writing. Since I had never kept a diary, I was not in a position even to write a detailed account of my eight years as Vice President. Three people exerted particular influence in changing my mind.

  Shortly after the election, I had the honor of sitting by Mrs. Eisenhower at a White House dinner. I told her that one of the reasons I had decided against writing a book was my belief that only the President could write the story of his Administration and that, by comparison, any other account would be incomplete and uninteresting. She answered, “But there are exciting events like your trips to South America and to Russia which only you can tell, and I think people would be interested in reading your account of what really happened.”

  In April, I visited President Kennedy for the first time since he had taken office. When I told him I was considering the possibility of joining the “literary” ranks, of which he himself is so distinguished a member, he expressed the thought that every public man should write a book at some time in his life, both for the mental discipline and because it tends to elevate him in popular esteem to the respected status of an “intellectual.”

  The one who had the greatest influence on my decision was Adela Rogers St. Johns. From the time I entered public life, as a Congressman in 1947, she has been a close friend and adviser. Through the years she has insisted that I should take time off to write a book. Until January 20, 1961, I could always plead that I was too busy. When I left Washington and returned to California, she took matters into her own hands. I received a phone call from her in April informing me that Ken McCormick of Doubleday and Company was flying to California to see me the next day. I protested, as I had many times before, that I did not have a subject which seemed to me worth writing about. “You let Ken decide that,” was he
r reply.

  The night before McCormick arrived, I tried to jot down some ideas which might form a basis for discussion. I decided that what particularly distinguished my career from that of other public figures was that I had had the good (or bad) fortune to be the central figure in several crisis situations with dimensions far beyond personal consideration. I made notes covering a dozen such situations and then selected six of them—the chapter headings of this book—for presentation to McCormick. He approved the concept, told me how easy and enjoyable I would find writing a book to be, and finally convinced me that I should undertake the venture.

  It turned out to be the seventh major crisis of my life, and by far the most difficult from the standpoint of the mental discipline involved. My respect for those who write books, already high, has gone up a hundredfold. But my personal attitude toward undertaking any more such assignments in the future can probably best be described by one of my favorite Eisenhower anecdotes.

  President Eisenhower gave up smoking in 1945. I asked him once whether he was ever tempted to resume the habit. “No,” he said, and then added: “I can’t say that I might not start again. But I can tell you one thing for sure: I’ll never quit again!” My attitude toward writing a book runs along somewhat similar lines: I might start another one, but I am sure I will never finish it!

  • • •

  I would like to add a word as to what this book is—or tries to be—and what it is not.

  I have not attempted to set forth a complete and detailed account of all the events surrounding each crisis situation. What I have tried to do is describe my personal reactions to each one and then to distill out of my experience a few general principles on the “crisis syndrome.”

  On the other hand, I do not presume to suggest that this is a scholarly treatise on conduct in crisis. The experts will have to judge what contribution my observations may make to a better understanding of that intriguing and vitally important subject.

  My own limitations in this respect were brought home to me in a letter I received from James A. Robinson and Thomas W. Milburn of Northwestern University, two political scientists now engaged in a study of crisis behavior. Among the questions they suggested I try to answer were these:

  Is it possible to be rational at all in crisis situations? Can you separate what were really factual and empirical matters as opposed to emotional reactions?

  Do crises seem to have many elements in common?

  Does the participant seem to learn from one crisis to another?

  Did you feel a sense of exhilaration or enjoyment of any, or all, of the six crises about which you are writing?

  Do you feel you have learned anything new about basic strengths in your personality, or did you discover any personal weaknesses about which you were previously unaware?

  Have you found that you had extra strength which you had not anticipated when you were confronted by a crisis?

  Could you recall your feelings after the crisis had passed? Was there any sense of relief from tension or anxiety?

  As a result of these several crises have you formulated any “rules of thumb” to guide your behavior in subsequent crisis situations?

  Several of these questions I will try to answer—but, let me emphasize, from a personal rather than a general viewpoint. Because there is one lesson, from my own experience, that seems especially clear: reaction and response to crisis is uniquely personal in the sense that it depends on what the individual brings to bear on the situation—his own traits of personality and character, his training, his moral and religious background, his strengths and weaknesses.

  • • •

  Among my personal conclusions, which will be spelled out in greater detail in the following pages, are these:

  One factor common to all six of these crises is that while each was an acute personal problem, each also involved far broader consequences which completely overshadowed my personal fortunes. In one way, the fact that so much more rides on a crisis than personal considerations makes it more difficult to bear. But in another, this very factor may prove to be an asset. We often hear it said that truly “big” men are at their best in handling big affairs, and that they falter and fail when confronted with petty irritations—with crises which are, in other words, essentially personal.

  From my own experience, the bigger the problem, the broader its consequences, the less does an individual think of himself. He has to devote his entire concentration to the much larger problem which confronts him. “Selflessness” is the greatest asset an individual can have in a time of crisis. “Selfishness” (in its literal rather than its lay sense) is the greatest liability. The very fact that the crisis is bigger than the man himself takes his mind off his own problems. The natural symptoms of stress in a period of crisis do not become self-destructive as a result of his worrying about himself but, on the other hand, become positive forces for creative action.

  A second general point can best be illustrated by an anecdote. Shortly after I returned from South America in 1958, I attended a Washington reception for Congressional Medal of Honor winners. One of the guests of honor came up to me and, pointing to his ribbon, said, “You should be wearing this, not I. I could never have done what you did in Caracas.” I answered: “And I could never have done what you did during the Battle of the Bulge.” Perhaps we were both wrong. No one really knows what he is capable of until he is tested to the full by events over which he may have no control. That is why this book is an account not of great men but rather of great events—and how one man responded to them.

  I do not believe, for example, that some men are just “naturally” cool, courageous, and decisive in handling crisis situations, while others are not. “He doesn’t have a nerve in his body” is a popular cliché. Of course some men may be stronger, less emotional, quicker, smarter, bolder than others. But I think these attributes are for the most part acquired and not inherited, and many times acquired suddenly under stress. The public likes to glamorize its leaders, and most leaders like to glamorize themselves. We tend to think of some men as “born leaders.” But I have found that leaders are subject to all the human frailties: they lose their tempers, become depressed, experience the other symptoms of tension. Sometimes even strong men will cry.

  • • •

  I should like finally to list some of the lessons I have learned from the six crises described in this book. I offer them not as inflexible rules, but only as tentative guides.

  Confidence in crisis depends in great part on adequacy of preparation—where preparation is possible.

  Coolness—or perhaps the better word is “serenity”—in battle is a product of faith. And faith, apart from that which stems from religious heritage and moral training, comes to an individual after he has gone through a necessary period of indecision, of doubt and soul-searching, and resolves that his cause is right and determines that he must fight the battle to the finish.

  Courage—or, putting it more accurately, lack of fear—is a result of discipline. Any man who claims never to have known fear is either lying or else he is stupid. But by an act of will, he refuses to think of the reasons for fear and so concentrates entirely on winning the battle.

  Experience is a vitally important factor. When a man has been through even a minor crisis, he learns not to worry when his muscles tense up, his breathing comes faster, his nerves tingle, his stomach churns, his temper becomes short, his nights are sleepless. He recognizes such symptoms as the natural and healthy signs that his system is keyed up for battle. Far from worrying when this happens, he should worry when it does not. Because he knows from experience that once the battle is joined, all these symptoms will disappear—unless he insists on thinking primarily of himself rather than the problem he must confront.

  A man will look forward to the end of the battle. He thinks, “Just as soon as this is over I’ll feel great.” But except for a brief period of exhilaration if the fight ended in victory, he will then begin to feel the full eff
ects of what he has been through. He may even be physically sore and mentally depressed. What has happened, of course, is that he is just too spent emotionally, physically, and mentally to enjoy the fruits of victory he so eagerly anticipated.

  The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision—whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.

  I find it especially difficult to answer the question, does a man “enjoy” crises? I certainly did not enjoy the ones described in this book in the sense that they were “fun.” And yet, life is surely more than simply the search for enjoyment in the popular sense. We are all tempted to stay on the sidelines, to live like vegetables, to concentrate all our efforts on living at greater leisure, living longer, and leaving behind a bigger estate. But meeting crises involves creativity. It engages all a man’s talents. When he looks back on life, he has to answer the question: did he live up to his capabilities as fully as he could? Or were only part of his abilities ever called into action?

  One man may have opportunities that others do not. But what counts is whether the individual used what chances he had. Did he risk all when the stakes were such that he might win or lose all? Did he affirmatively seek the opportunities to use his talents to the utmost in causes that went beyond personal and family considerations?

  A man who has never lost himself in a cause bigger than himself has missed one of life’s mountaintop experiences. Only in losing himself does he find himself. Only then does he discover all the latent strengths he never knew he had and which otherwise would have remained dormant.

  Crisis can indeed be agony. But it is the exquisite agony which a man might not want to experience again—yet would not for the world have missed.