Enemies Lists

Summary

History As It Happens: Episode Summary – "Enemies Lists"

Podcast Information

• Title: History As It Happens
• Host: Martin Di Caro
• Episode: Enemies Lists
• Release Date: March 25, 2025
• Description: Delving into historical perspectives on current events, this episode examines the notorious "Enemies List" from Richard Nixon's presidency and draws parallels to contemporary political climates.

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Introduction

In the "Enemies Lists" episode, host Martin Di Caro explores the historical significance and contemporary relevance of political "enemies lists," focusing on President Richard Nixon's infamous compilation and its echoes in modern politics, particularly during Donald Trump's administration.

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Richard Nixon's Enemies List

Origin and Purpose

• June 24, 1971: Nixon's White House assistant, George T. Bell, under the direction of Charles Colson, compiles the first enemies list comprising 20 names. The purpose, as outlined in a memo by former White House counsel John Dean, was explicitly to "use the machinery of the federal government to screw our enemies" (02:30).

• Expansion: The initial list grew to 700 names, including political figures, private sector companies, media outlets, and prominent intellectuals. Notable entries included:

  • Paul Newman: Actor and civil rights advocate.
  • Leonard Bernstein: Renowned composer.
  • Ed Guthman: Managing editor of the LA Times.
  • Allard Lowenstein: Political activist.

Implementation and Abuse of Power

• Nixon utilized the federal government’s resources, including the FBI and IRS, to investigate and undermine those he deemed political threats. For instance:

  • Morton Halperin: A Nixon administration official who faced unwarranted FBI surveillance for 22 months without evidence of wrongdoing (34:23).

• Nixon's Justifications: Nixon publicly denied the existence of the enemies list, stating, “I do not know of the IEC itself preparing political material... I might also add that... [the list] was rather extensive and continually being updated” (00:37).

Consequences and Public Reaction

• The revelation of the enemies list during the Watergate hearings in 1973 provoked bipartisan outrage. Conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. denounced it as an act of "proto-fascism," highlighting its ruthless dismissal of human rights and reliance on state power to harass political adversaries (03:48).

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Contemporary Parallels: Donald Trump's Enemies List

Trump’s Rhetoric and Actions

• Public Campaigning Against Enemies: Much like Nixon, Donald Trump has publicly declared adversaries, both real and perceived. Notable statements include:

  • “I am your warrior. I am your justice... Success will be our revenge” (01:21).
  • Categorizing threats as “the outside enemy” and “the enemy from within” (05:54).

• Weaponizing Federal Agencies: Trump has utilized federal law enforcement to target individuals and groups, including:

  • Immigrants: Subjected to detention without due process.
  • College Students: Allegedly deported for criticizing Israel during campus demonstrations.
  • Universities: Heavy-handed tactics against institutions like Columbia University, which conceded to his demands (06:24).

Comparison to Nixon

• Unlike Nixon, Trump's enemies list has not been kept secret but is articulated openly through speeches and social media. This transparency leads to:
  • Public Vilification: Figures such as Judge Boasberg facing impeachment threats for enforcing court orders.
  • Lack of Bipartisan Pushback: Unlike the strong bipartisan reaction during Nixon’s time, Trump's actions receive limited opposition, raising concerns about the erosion of checks and balances (40:19).

Legal and Constitutional Implications

• Supreme Court Rulings: A recent court decision granted Trump immunity from prosecution for official acts, effectively giving him carte blanche to act against perceived enemies (18:20).

• Potential Abuses: Ken Hughes highlights that while Nixon's abuses involved covert operations like the Plumbers and illegal wiretapping, Trump’s public declarations can lead to similar but more overt abuses of power without significant legal repercussions (27:59).

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Discussion with Historian Ken Hughes

Nixon's Paranoia

• Rational Fears: Nixon’s apprehension about leaks (e.g., Pentagon Papers) was partially justified, stemming from genuine threats to his administration’s secrecy (20:36).

• Irrational Biases: Personal animus towards Jews, intellectuals, and Ivy Leaguers fueled his paranoia and justified his political purges (26:36).

Impact of Government Surveillance and Abuse

• Hughes draws parallels between Nixon's covert operations to undermine adversaries and contemporary efforts to suppress dissent:
  • Wiretaps and Surveillance: Similar to Halperin’s unwarranted surveillance, modern administrations might leverage technology to monitor and control opposition.

Lessons from Watergate

• The Watergate scandal underscored the fragility of checks and balances. Hughes warns that current political climates, where executives can publicly label and target opponents without bipartisan accountability, pose significant threats to democratic institutions.

• Importance of Legal and Political Mechanisms: Hughes emphasizes that no single solution can address these abuses. Instead, a combination of legal action, public opinion, and political processes must work together to uphold the rule of law (47:35).

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Lessons and Conclusions

Historical Echoes in Modern Politics

• Nixon's enemies list serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of executive overreach and the weaponization of government institutions against political adversaries.

• Trump's similar tactics, albeit more public, highlight enduring vulnerabilities in the democratic system, particularly in an era of social media and hyper-polarization.

Guarding Democratic Principles

• Upholding the separation of powers, ensuring judicial independence, and fostering a vigilant public are crucial to prevent the repetition of historical abuses.

• Role of Public Opinion and Media: Just as bipartisan backlash limited Nixon’s actions, contemporary public and media scrutiny are essential in curbing potential abuses by current and future leaders.

Looking Forward

• The episode underscores the necessity of historical awareness to recognize and resist similar patterns of power abuse in the present day. Future discussions will delve deeper into related topics such as the Alien Enemies Act and historical civil rights abuses, continuing to draw lessons from the past to inform current and future governance.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Richard Nixon: “I shall resign the presidency effective” (00:37).
• Donald Trump: “Success will be our ultimate and absolute revenge” (01:21).
• Ken Hughes: “Watergate really was a scandal about a president... trying to use his powers secretly to become the people's master” (15:15).
• William F. Buckley, Jr.: “It was nothing but fascism. It's using the state against chosen political enemies” (38:49).

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Conclusion

"Enemies Lists" serves as a profound exploration of how historical patterns of political persecution manifest in modern governance. By examining Nixon's strategic undermining of adversaries and drawing parallels to Trump's openly adversarial stance, the episode emphasizes the critical importance of safeguarding democratic institutions and maintaining a vigilant public to uphold the integrity of the republic.

For more in-depth discussions and historical analyses, subscribe to Martin Di Caro’s weekly newsletter and tune in to upcoming episodes of History As It Happens every Tuesday and Friday.

Transcript

[Ken Hughes]

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[Martin DeCaro]

Vote history as it happens. March 25, 2025 Enemies Lists I welcome.

[Richard Nixon]

This kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. There was also maintained what was called an enemies list, which is rather extensive and continually being updated. What did the President know and when did he know it? Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective.

[Martin DeCaro]

At noon tomorrow as the President of the United States promises to seek revenge against his enemies, real or imagined. The story of Nixon and his enemies list, which he tried to keep secret, has something to teach us about the uses and abuses of executive power, about the resilience or fragility of the laws and institutions holding our republic together. That's next, as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[Donald Trump]

I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. Your victory will be ours, our ultimate vindication. Your liberty will be our ultimate reward. And the unprecedented success of the United States of America will be my ultimate and absolute revenge. That's what I want. Success will be our revenge.

[Ken Hughes]

Well, the enemies list is, unfortunately, all too relevant. The enemies list was one way that Richard Nixon tried to weaponize the federal government against people who got in his way politically. These were not people who had declared Richard Nixon their enemies. These were people whom Richard Nixon considered his enemies.

[Martin DeCaro]

Late June 1973, about five weeks after the start of the nationally televised Watergate hearings, former White House counsel John Dean provides one of the most startling revelations of the whole sordid drama. Nixon had an enemies list.

[Richard Nixon]

Do you consider the matters which you've spoken of, whether it be an FBI investigation of an individual or an IRS audit. Do you consider that to be legal and proper activities by those security arms? As I say, I don't know of the IEC itself preparing political material. I do, of course, know, and as I have submitted in documents, other agencies were involved in seeking politically embarrassing information on individuals who were thought to be enemies of the White House. I might also add that in my Possession is a rather very much down the lines of what you're talking about is a memorandum that was requested by me to prepare a means to attack the enemies of the White House. There was also maintained what was called an enemies list, which is rather extensive and continually being updated. I'm not going to ask who was on it, I'm afraid you might answer. I wonder, are these documents that are in the possession of the committee? No, but I'd be happy to submit them to the committee.

[Martin DeCaro]

Dean had written the June 1971 confidential memo dealing with our political enemies. He wrote, how we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies. And as historian Ken Hughes writes for the Conversation.com, the Nixon administration's enemies list inspired bipartisan revulsion. It provoked conservative columnist and Nixon supporter William F. Buckley, Jr. To use the F word in print. Yes. Buckley called the enemy's list an act of proto fascism. It is altogether ruthless in its dismissal of human rights. It is fascist in its reliance on the state as an instrument of harassment. So said William F. Buckley, as cited by Ken Hughes. Now, today, how many Republicans in, say, Congress or on talk show panels objected to President Trump's deranged speech at the Department of Justice a few days ago, promising to seek revenge against the people who, to his mind, weaponized the government against him during and after his first term?

[Donald Trump]

Unfortunately, in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations. They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people. They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and Third World country.

[Martin DeCaro]

Trump's opponents were hardly faultless, but the man did try to steal the 2020 election, and he incited a mob to attack Congress. As he made clear over and over again on the campaign trail, the January six rioters had been mistreated.

[Donald Trump]

You see the spirit from the hostages, and that's what they are, is hostages. They've been treated terribly and very unfairly, and you know that and everybody knows that. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.

[Martin DeCaro]

Unlike Richard Nixon, Trump publicly campaigned on sticking it to his enemies, sometimes by name, sometimes in more nebulous language.

[Donald Trump]

We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within.

[Martin DeCaro]

Trump would also say his revenge would be a successful presidency. Here he is with Kristen Welker on NBC's Meet the Press. Asked if he would appoint a special prosecutor to go after Joe Biden. Are you going to do that?

[Ken Hughes]

Are you going to go after Joe Biden?

[Donald Trump]

I'm really looking to make our country successful. I'm not looking to go back into the past. I'm looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success.

[Martin DeCaro]

Three months into his second term, the President has yet to attempt to prosecute any major political figures. Yes, he and Elon Musk verbally attack their foes in interviews and on social media. Democrats, federal judges, news reporters. It's bad enough to say these people should be arrested for doing nothing wrong. It's more difficult to actually prosecute them. Trump has weaponized the federal law enforcement apparatus against easier targets. Immigrants who've been denied due process and sent to a gulag in El Salvador, college students legally kidnapped by immigration agents for the crime of criticizing Israel in campus demonstrations. The stated reasons are a cover for a crackdown on free speech. And Trump has gone after the universities. See his heavy handed attack on Columbia which made concessions to his demands. I'm going to cover some of these matters in the next episode of this podcast with historian Michael Kazin. We're going to talk about the Alien Enemies act, the Palmer Raid and the deep history of civil rights abuses in America. What's happening now is not entirely unprecedented, even if different in some important respects. The crackdown on dissent during the First World War by Woodrow Wilson is a history everyone should know. Again, that's coming up in the next episode. In this episode, we're going to talk about what has changed since Nixon covered the White House in disgrace. His operatives, from John Dean to the plumbers and others, actually drew up an enemy's list on a piece of paper. The first one had 20 names on it. There was another enemy's list later that grew to 700 names. And we know from the White House tapes Nixon talked about his enemies quite a bit and how to deal with them legally or illegally. Here he is in a conversation with Henry Kissinger, December 1972, talking about the Christmas bombings, his plan to begin bombing North Vietnam again.

[Richard Nixon]

And remember, we're going to be around and outlive our enemies. And also never forget, the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The astounding is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that in the blackboard 100 times and never forget it. I'm the professor's no instruction at all. And of the press are complete agreement.

[Martin DeCaro]

And we all know how this ended.

[Richard Nixon]

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interests of America first.

[Martin DeCaro]

During Watergate, the Supreme Court ruled that Nixon had to hand over his White House tapes. Today we have a court that ruled President Trump has immunity from prosecution for official acts, essentially carte blanche. Ken Hughes spends a lot of time listening to Richard Nixon and LBJ and John F. Kennedy on the White House tapes for the Miller center at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Chasing Shadows and Fatal Politics, two excellent books about Nixon's corruption. Ken Hughes, welcome back to the show.

[Ken Hughes]

Thank you, Martin DeCaro, as always, it is a delight and a privilege to be among your very distinguished guests.

[Martin DeCaro]

The privilege is mine to have the master of the White House tapes back on on the show. Before we talk about our favorite subject, Nixon. You're still working on your book about Kennedy. You're diving into the Kennedy tapes and the documentary record about Operation Mongoose. How's that going?

[Ken Hughes]

Endlessly fascinating. It is very eye opening into the extent to which false flag operations fabricated pretexts for war were in the early 1960s, not a scandal at all, but actually a part of top level American foreign policy debate. Not only did the Kennedy administration come up with a list of possible pretexts for war with Cuba considered seriously by people at the cabinet level. President Eisenhower, before he left office, toyed with the idea of faking an attack on Guantanamo. He did not go into it very seriously, but he did mention it in January of 1961 when it was of course too late for him to actually do anything about it. And Richard Nixon, as a defeated presidential candidate in the early 60s, also publicly discussed invading Cuba on pretextual grounds. Probably have already told you more than you want to know, but no, that's fascinating. And you know, especially since our current president is making threatening noises toward a variety of countries. It's something that is is relevant.

[Martin DeCaro]

Most people know Bay of Pigs and some of this other stuff and attempts to assassinate Castro, but I did not know that they were thinking about false flag operations to justify a US Invasion or the overthrow of the Castro regime. I did not know that Operation Mongols.

[Ken Hughes]

Robert Kennedy, the President's brother and the Attorney general, more than once proposed invading countries on the basis of a pretext. He toyed with the idea in his very first foreign policy memo during the Bay of Pigs. A month later, he raised the possibility of faking an attack on a US Government building in I believe the Dominican Republic. To justify military intervention there. And on the very first day of the Cuban Missile crisis. This is on tape. Robert Kennedy verbally raised the possibility of sinking the Maine, which is, of course, a reference to the ship whose explosion played a role in America's entry into the Spanish American War or staging an attack on Guantanamo. Robert Kennedy clearly thought that false flag operations were an acceptable way to justify US Military intervention.

[Martin DeCaro]

This is timely because the Trump administration just dumped all the documents from the JFK files. And while there are no revelations or conspiracy theories about the assassination itself, apparently there is plenty in there about what the CIA was up to during those years. And I'm going to try to do an episode about that in the coming days and weeks ahead.

[Richard Nixon]

This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.

[Martin DeCaro]

Enemies lists. Nixon had two enemies lists, ultimately totaling 700 people. What does the Nixon drama, the enemies list, have to teach us today?

[Ken Hughes]

Well, the enemy's list is, unfortunately, all too relevant. The enemies list was one way that Richard Nixon tried to weaponize the federal government against people who got in his way politically. These were not people who had declared Richard Nixon their enemies. These were people whom Richard Nixon considered his enemies. And typically they were people who were some political challenge or some political threat to him. His efforts behind the scenes to mobilize the vast investigative and prosecutorial power of the federal government against people on the basis of politics was a major part of Watergate. Unfortunately, Watergate is these days mainly remembered as a thwarted break in.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, the break in story, unfortunately, has played a role in obscuring the rest of the Watergate story and the challenge to the constitutional order that it presented by Richard Nixon and his plumbers. So, as you wrote in an essay for the Conversation, and I will share a link to that essay in my weekly newsletter, this ultimately, some of the shenanigans here that we're gonna talk about. A wiretap of Morton Halperin. This became an article of impeachment against Nixon that had bipartisan support. It actually passed the House Judiciary Committee. But we kind of overlook some of this stuff because of the emphasis on the break in, which was about much more than just going into the DNC offices.

[Ken Hughes]

So Watergate really was a scandal about a president who's supposed to be a servant of the people, trying to use his powers secret to become the people's master. This is a, you know, A complete violation of the spirit and the letter of our Constitution which demands that the president execute laws passed by Congress and uphold them and obey them himself or herself one day. The Watergate scandal is not really so much about a foiled break in as about preservation of our liberty, our freedom as citizens, in particular, our freedom from overweening, imperious central government.

[Martin DeCaro]

Rogue executive. The lesson of Watergate, and this is what compelled our country to put in reforms after Watergate and after Vietnam. Because the Nixon administration had many abuses in Vietnam as well. The Vietnam War, prosecuting the war. The lesson was how to prevent a rogue executive again. And here we are. But a major difference is Ken Nixon kept his or tried to keep his enemy's list secret. It was until the Watergate testimony of John Dean in. What was that, 1973.

[Richard Nixon]

I might also add that in my possession is a rather. Very much down the lines of what you're talking about is a memorandum that was requested by me to prepare a means to attack the enemies of the White House. There was also maintained what was called an enemies list, which is rather extensive and continually being updated. I'm not going to ask who was on it.

[Martin DeCaro]

I'm afraid you might answer today. It's out in public. Didn't Kash Patel write a book? Now, Kash Patel is not the president. He has been appointed to lead the FBI, which is simply amazing. Patel, you mentioned him in your essay. He had some kind of enemies list in a book. I mean, I don't know if the Trump administration has a piece of paper with names on it like Nixon did.

[Ken Hughes]

And it doesn't matter. Trump has publicly listed his enemies crooked.

[Donald Trump]

Joe Biden became mentally impaired.

[Richard Nixon]

Sad.

[Donald Trump]

But Lyon, Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions.

[Ken Hughes]

And made such scurrilous accusations as to claim that they had committed treason when there's no evidence of that out in public.

[Martin DeCaro]

He campaigned on it.

[Ken Hughes]

It is a sign of a vulnerability in our system. Trump and his political movement are now exploiting. You've also had the packing of the Supreme Court with people who, you know are called conservative but don't currently seem to be practicing their stated philosophy of textualism and original intent in such rulings as Trump v. United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right. They gave him carte blanche with that ruling. You say here almost all of Nixon's abuses of power could be described as official acts, which you say should get everyone an idea of what the Supreme Court has unleashed on the Republic. Quote, unquote official acts could be described that way?

[Ken Hughes]

Sure. The creation of the Plumbers, the Special Investigations Unit, a secret unconstitutional institutional police investigative unit that was answerable only to Richard Nixon. So Congress could not exercise any oversight as it could over the FBI and intelligence organizations. Nixon, as an official act, gave a pardon to Jimmy Hoffa, the president of the Teamsters. And he did it for an entirely corrupt reason. He did it in return for support from the Teamsters Union and Nixon's use of, attempted use and actual use of the Internal Revenue Service against political targets. That was an official act, but he did it for political reasons. He targeted the head of the opposition party, Larry O'Brien, a particularly skilled politician who had helped elect John Kennedy in 1960 and had helped Lyndon Johnson pass his Great society agenda in 1964 and 1965. Nixon got O'Brien tied up in an audit during the presidential campaign of 1972 that was not for any gross abuse of the tax law by O'Brien. The full audit, the autopsy without benefit of death that he did for Larry.

[Richard Nixon]

O'Brien on May 22nd. I stated in very specific terms and I state again to every one of you listening tonight these facts. I had no prior knowledge of the Watergate break in. I neither took part in nor knew about any of the subsequent cover up activities. I neither authorized nor encouraged subordinates to engage in illegal or improper campaign tactics. That was, and that is the simple truth.

[Martin DeCaro]

What was or what were the roots of Nixon's paranoia?

[Ken Hughes]

Nixon had two main roots to his paranoia. One was rational, one was irrational. The rational one was the subject of my first book, Chasing Shadows, and that was Nixon's very rational fear that his interference with Vietnam peace talks prior to the 1968 election would become public and become a great scandal. During the closing days of the 1968 campaign, the North Vietnamese agreed to enter peace talks and to refrain from violating the DMZ that separated North Vietnam from South Vietnam and also to refrain from shelling civilians in South Vietnam. In other words, to refrain from engaging in terror bombing. And also they agreed to enter peace talks, which, you know, was the only way that any sort of settlement could be achieved to end American involvement in the war. And Nixon secretly, through a fundraiser named Anna Chennault, urged the South Vietnamese government to boycott those peace talks before election day. The Johnson administration had picked up some evidence of this through the National Security Agency, which intercepted communications between the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington and its home government, and through the CIA, which had a bug in office of the President of South Vietnam. And finally through the FBI, which tapped the phone of the South Vietnamese embassy and caught Anna Chenaulta on the phone telling the South Vietnamese ambassador to hold on.

[Martin DeCaro]

We're going to win the Chenalta Fair. We did an entire episode about that. I'll make sure I share a link to that one too. In my.

[Ken Hughes]

You edited together an entire great episode using available tapes of Johnson and Nixon discussing the bombing halt.

[Richard Nixon]

Dick, I told Erickson last night I thought it'd be better do it that way than to be calling on the trips. I think this. These people are proceeding on the assumption that folks close to you tell them to do nothing till January 20th. You got it? Now we think I know who they're talking about too. Is it John Tower? Well, he's one of several. Ms. Chennault is very much in there. Well, she's very close to John.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right. You show how this is all really related to, ultimately to Watergate. Because of Nixon's paranoia about trying to stop leaks.

[Ken Hughes]

That was the rational part. When the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, the top secret history of the Vietnam War that was composed by the Defense Department, Nixon got scared that this was the first step in a larger plot to leak his secrets, including those related to the 1968 bombing halt in the presidential election. That was the rational part of his fear. The irrational part was that he hated Jews, intellectuals and Ivy Leaguers.

[Martin DeCaro]

There's a personal aspect to this.

[Ken Hughes]

Yes. Nixon's initial claim to fame as a young congressman from Whittier, California was the. His case, a major communist spy case very early in the Cold War.

[Richard Nixon]

I am holding in my hand a microfilm, a very highly confidential secret State Department documents. These documents were fed out of the state department over 10 years ago by communists who were employees of that department and who were interested in seeing if these documents were sent to the Soviet Union, where the interests of the Soviet Union happened to be in conflict with those of the United States.

[Ken Hughes]

But Alger Hiss was a genuine communist spy. And Nixon's role in proving that was the reason he became a very famous figure not only among Republicans and on the political right, but throughout the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

He was a believer in conspiracy theories.

[Ken Hughes]

These were very political, his conspiracy theories. During the New Deal when Nixon was a young man, among the people who were getting jobs in the New Deal were, according to Arthur Schlesinger, who was an historian of the New Deal, a two time Pulitzer Prize winner. From the perspective of Republicans, Arthur Schlesinger said there were too many radicals, too many Ivy Leaguers, Too many intellectuals and too many Jews. Now Arthur Schlesinger was saying that to give the perspective of some Republicans. He was not giving that as his own perspective. He was obviously an Ivy Leaguer. His father taught at Harvard and so did he. He's clearly an intellectual. He wrote two Pulitzer Prize winning books and I think one of his grandparents was Jewish. So he was talking about this again from the perspective of people who didn't like the New Deal and focused their ire on various groups that were achieving power. Then there were in Alger Hisses particular spiring Ivy Leaguers, intellectuals and Jews. Nixon took his success in the his case to be confirmation of his anti Semitism and his anti intellectualism and his, his hatred of the Ivy League. He thought that Jews, intellectuals and Ivy Leaguers were arrogant and they put themselves above the law. And he was ranting about this to his aides right when he became his most arrogant and put himself above the law. Very often conspiracy theorists are basically justifying their own evil doing by imagining evildoing by the people that they're persecuting.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right. They're not going after the deep state, as you say. They create their own deep state to go after their enemies, real and imagined. He was deeply insecure about certain things and that colored his view of his enemies.

[Ken Hughes]

He was, even though he was a.

[Martin DeCaro]

Smart man, but he felt inferior though to these other intellects.

[Ken Hughes]

I don't like psychoanalyzing Richard Nixon because one, I don't have any skills and two, I think it's just too easy to say whatever one wants about him. But one thing he said about himself was that he was an introvert and an extrovert's profession. For a politician, he lacked many basic skills. He was just not a very charming person. The classic question they ask about presidential candidates is would you want to have a beer with him? He was somebody who struggled to make small talk. He didn't have the, the most common political skills, but he was also a political genius. He was a great political strategist and that was in part because he was utterly ruthless. He didn't have any moral scruples about winning. He would do whatever it took to win, including secretly mobilizing the federal government against anybody who would get in his way.

[Martin DeCaro]

You know, he had his demons. Donald Trump has his demons and he speaks about them openly.

[Donald Trump]

Unfortunately, in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations. They spied on my campaign launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another.

[Ken Hughes]

While he is very dishonest about the accusations he makes against others, it's also clear that he does somehow believe that he is persecuted rather than that he is someone who has simply failed to live up to the ethical and legal norms that have governed America since Watergate.

[Martin DeCaro]

When it comes to the 2020 election, which is the driving force in his mind behind the people who are after him, among other things. And it does seem to me that Trump really believes that he won and that he was screwed. I mean, I can't be sure of this. You know, both men had their demons, both men lied. And I guess that's part of the mystery here. Where's the line between, okay, now they know what they're saying here is baloney, and they're saying it for a reason or they've actually lost their bearings. I, I do think Nixon at one point there lost his bearings.

[Ken Hughes]

I know the, the puzzle of do they mean it or are they just lying is in some ways fascinating, but in other words, I mean, I would just go back to the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments. There's a commandment, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. The commandment is not, you shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Even if you have, like, no absolute knowledge of whether your neighbor is guilty or not. It's whether you're doing it deliberately or whether you're doing it because you have given your credence to some sort of slander. It's still a sin. It's still a basic ethical obligation for us to tell the truth and to make sure that we are telling the truth and not just to say whatever helps us at the particular moment.

[Martin DeCaro]

You're right. It doesn't matter whether they believe it or not, or think it's true or it might not be true. They have a responsibility not to create a climate where that person is now targeted by psychopaths online who agree with what Trump and Musk are saying. You know, Nixon never had that ability. There was no Twitter in those days, and Nixon kept it or tried to keep it secret for a while, whereas today we're just in a different. I was going to ask you about the milieu, the atmosphere in the country preceding the very first enemies list that came out. What was it, 1971. But today, we just have it. It's so much right. We have social media, propaganda channels, and we have a hyper polarized, distrustful, mistrustful, distrustful public.

[Ken Hughes]

I would just like to point out that we were pretty polarized back during the 1960s and the 1970s as well. But with no social media, the most you could do is like get a letter in the local newspaper and a great deal of traditional media. But there was, even when Nixon was president, about 40% of the country just didn't believe Watergate was real. You know, did they just thought, well, all politicians do this? Nixon just got caught. There was a lot of receptivity to Nixon's conspiracy theory that he was in fact the victim of liberals in Congress and in the news media and in the federal government.

[Richard Nixon]

The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The astounding is the enemy. The professors are the enemy.

[Ken Hughes]

In a way it's just more open now and that is in some ways more frustrating. But in other ways it makes it more possible to expose and combat the abuses of power. When Nixon's enemies list was first created, 1971, right after the leak of the Pentagon Papers is when the first serious one took form.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's the spur Summer of 71.

[Ken Hughes]

Summer of 71, the enemy's list was a secret. And of course it had to be because there was a universal understanding that our heritage as Americans meant that our government was our servant and that whoever is occupying the White House doesn't get to use the federal government to go after whoever they are angry at that day or whoever they think is standing in the way of their political success.

[Martin DeCaro]

So at this time, Nixon was dealing with Vietnam. He was trying to bring the Vietnam war to a close. Through Vietnamization, he wanted to re establish ties with China. He had a number of important items on his agenda. When he decided, when his people decided to come up with an opponent's list, an enemies list that I guess in Nixon's view, he believed these people were getting in the way of him accomplishing his agenda. Although as we mentioned, there was something very personal about this too. He didn't like Jews, didn't like intellectuals, didn't like the Ivy Leaguers of the so called eastern establishment. So it was a Nixon administration assistant, a White House special assistant named George T. Bell, who compiled the first list of 20 names June 24, 1971, under the direction of his boss, the infamous Charles Chuck Colson. The purpose of the list, Ken Hughes, John Dean, he spelled it out. What was the purpose? Great quote in that memo.

[Ken Hughes]

Well, he, he said the purpose was to use the machinery of the federal government to screw our enemies.

[Martin DeCaro]

And he typed those words out. Screw our political enemies.

[Ken Hughes]

Yes, which really just Laid it all out there. And it seems funny to have put that imprint, especially since Nixon wound up being able to do relatively little against his enemies. But he did some significant things against them. But what Dean's vision was was at the time was to see what these enemies had going on with the federal government. Were they receiving federal grants? Do they have federal contracts which they of course depended on for their income? Was it possible to engage in civil litigation against them or criminal prosecutions and of course IRS investigations?

[Martin DeCaro]

These were not just political figures. Right. They were private sector companies, these banks, media outlets. Give us an idea of who is on the list.

[Ken Hughes]

Ed Guthman, the managing editor of the LA Times who had incensed Nixon by investigating whether he had hired undocumented workers. I guess the one that makes people laugh the most is Paul Newman, the famous actor who was involved in the civil rights movement and other liberal causes.

[Martin DeCaro]

Leonard Bernstein, the great composer, was on the list. You know, whenever I read anything dealing with Nixon in my mind, I'm reading it in the Nixon voice. And I'm not a great Nixon impersonator. Allard Lowenstein, pushing the dump RN move with young people. That says right after his name. He's pushing the dump Richard Nixon move with young people.

[Ken Hughes]

Which is of course an absolutely legitimate, of course, political activity in America.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, you're allowed to oppose the incumbent and vote for someone else. Here's another one. Charles Dyson, Associate of Larry O'Brien, bankrolls anti RN radio programs. We got to get rid of him too. And Morten Halperin, who you mentioned, that's one of the worst abuses. Right. So Halperin, we did cover this in the earlier episode about the Chenault affair. But as you say here in your essay in the Conversation, Halperin committed no crime. However, Nixon got FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to do something for him. What did he do?

[Ken Hughes]

He got the FBI to tap Halperin's phone own for a ridiculous reason. When Nixon secretly bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail. When Nixon started secretly bombing that the New York Times found out Nixon wanted to find out who was responsible for the leak. And J. Edgar Hoover suspected Morton Halperin for really shoddy reasons, just called him a Kennedy style liberal. When Halperin was in fact a Republican before he joined the Johnson administration, there was no part of the Kennedy administration administration at all. More importantly, Halperin, who was working for Richard Nixon in National Security Council bureaucracy, didn't know enough about the secret bombing of Cambodia to leak it. He was like he only knew about it what he read in the papers and what Kissinger had passingly said about it in his presence. So he was not only not guilty of the leak. Leak, he couldn't have been guilty of the leak. Nonetheless, J. Edgar Hoover, with the blessing of the Nixon White House and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, continued tapping his phone for 22 months. During that time the FBI found no evidence that Halperin had leaked anything to anyone.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, because leaking classified documents is a serious crime. But here he hadn't done anything wrong. Wrong. I'm sure they didn't get a warrant for this, but in that 22 month period they got plenty of political intelligence, didn't they?

[Ken Hughes]

Yes, they did. Halperin, after he left the National Security Council bureaucracy because of Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, decided to try to help Democrats get elected in 1972. One of the first things he did was help help former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, a huge name in Democratic politics who was Lyndon Johnson's last Defense secretary. Halperin helped Clifford draft an article for Life magazine back when Life magazine was still a huge part of American journalism. The magazine article suggested that Congress forced Nixon to get out of Vietnam by using its power to the purge. Now again, this is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, perfectly legal. This is protected by the First Amendment's guarantees of our rights of free speech and freedom of the press and freedom of association. Nonetheless, J. Edgar Hoover used the wiretap to tell Richard Nixon's White House in advance that this article was going to come out criticizing his policy in Vietnam. And that gave the Nixon White House a chance to figure out in advance what its political response would be. This was the use of the investigative powers of the FBI and an illegal wiretap to gather political intelligence, funnel it to the White House where the White House used it to craft political strategy. This is a. A proto fascistic move.

[Martin DeCaro]

Buckley called the Enemy's List. William F. Buckley called the Enemy's List fascist.

[Ken Hughes]

You make that point when the Enemy's List eventually became public. When John Dean revealed it in sworn testimony during the Watergate hearings. William F. Buckley, the most prominent conservative columnist in America, said that it was nothing but fascism. It's using the state against chosen political enemies. Now there was nobody on that list that Buckley was a fan of and probably nobody who was a fan of Buckley at the time. Except eventually my favorite historian Gary Wills got on the list. And he was of course a Buckley protege whose writings about Nixon first appeared in, in National Review before his critical book on, On Nixon came out and won him a place of Honor on Nixon's enemies list.

[Martin DeCaro]

We look back on it now we say Gary Wills, I mean this is ridiculous. Other people who when they there on the list, maybe they laugh about it today but at the time it was scary. The most powerful office holder with the power of official acts, you have the FBI, you have the CIA, you have the Plumbers who are digging into your life could potentially ruin your life with bad publicity even if they never charge you with any crime. Right. Because you haven't done any wrong anyway. So today when some people just kind of dismiss when Trump talks about locking up Hillary Clinton or Liz Cheney or Hunter Biden or Joe Biden or whoever, I think it's wrong to just dismiss that as stupid talk.

[Ken Hughes]

It's ridiculous, yet it's serious. Is Trump saying what he wants to do? Trump has the power to do much of it in a way that Richard Nixon did not. After the leak of the Pentagon Papers, Nixon ridiculously thought that Morton Halperin and Leslie Gelb, two Defense Department officials who worked on creating the Pentagon Papers, on overseeing the drafting of that study of the Vietnam War. Nixon suspected them of taking part in the leak. While they both knew Daniel Ellsberg who did the actual leaking. And they had both given Ellsberg, who was a very well respected national security analyst with a security clearance who had not, had not leaked anything major like the Pentagon Papers at the time. When they gave him access to the Pentagon Papers, it was because he had worked on the Pentagon Papers himself and he needed access to do the jobs that he was then doing for the government. They didn't know that that Ellsberg would leak the Pentagon Papers. He did not tell them. They were both surprised when the Pentagon Papers started appearing in the New York Times.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right. Which don't mention Nixon.

[Ken Hughes]

But Nixon had no evidence against Halpern and Galb. But he tried like heck to get evidence against Halpern and Gelb. When he recreated the Plumbers, the Special investigations unit, the secret police unit, he wanted them to commit several illegal to do several illegal and legal things for him. He wanted them to gather all of the grand jury information regarding the leak of the Pentagon Papers so he could find the most politically damaging of that information and leak it. That is a crime. Leaking grand jury information is a crime, but it was a crime the President wanted to commit and he could use the Plumber as a semi official body to get that information from the Justice Department. He also wanted the Plumbers to break into the Brookings Institution where Halperin and Gallup were Both fellows and steal what he thought was there. He thought they had a file on the 1968 election and the bombing halt affair. No doubt assumed that that file would include whatever the federal government had learned about the Chenalta fire. That was information that Nixon felt he desperately needed. He was willing to commit not just a high crime and misdemeanor, but a basic felony. That felony was a break in connection.

[Martin DeCaro]

Between Watergate and Vietnam. Nixon, paranoia. His suspicions heightened because of the Pentagon Papers, which don't mention him. They were about the previous administration in Vietnam. But now, as you detail in your marvelous book Chasing Shadows and as we discussed in our episode last year, he now believes, paranoia, conspiracy theory, whatever you want to call it, believes there's some other document implicating him in the Chenault affair. How this got into the safe at the Brookings Institution, well, I guess that would have been Halpert and Gelb, who were. Who were Jewish intellectuals and Ivy Leaguers. So. And this is my favorite Nixon tape. Now, I have not listened to as many Nixon tapes as you have, but when he orders the break in, we can laugh about it. Now, you hear Kissinger in the background say, wait, well, hold on a second. If Brookings has some highly classified top secret document in their safe, why don't we just send our people over there and ask for it? And Nixon says, no, damn it. I want it done on a thievery basis. Get in there and blow the safe.

[Richard Nixon]

But couldn't we go over. Now, Brookings has no dialogue to. To have, you know, I. I mean, I want it implemented on a thievery basis.

[Ken Hughes]

God.

[Richard Nixon]

Get in and get those files, those site and get it.

[Martin DeCaro]

They may well clean it by now.

[Ken Hughes]

It is a great tape that shows Nixon at his most Nixonian. You know, he had descended into mere lawlessness at that point. Ordering a crime no one could fail to identify as a crime. Time.

[Martin DeCaro]

And they were going to burn down the place. Right.

[Ken Hughes]

When Nixon finally got the Plumbers together. E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent, and G. Gordon Liddy, a former FBI agent, came up with a plan to break into Brookings. Part of the plan was to firebomb Brookings so that they could send a fake squad of firemen who would actually be people. CIA assets that Hunt knew from his Bay of Pigs days. Days. And they would enter the burning think tank, steal the safe, obtain the documents Nixon wanted that way.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. Pretending they were there to put out.

[Ken Hughes]

The fire, planning to set off the firebomb late at night so that hopefully no one would be hurt. But I don't know. I think people sometimes work late at night at Brookings.

[Martin DeCaro]

So that's true.

[Ken Hughes]

That wasn't a great plan.

[Martin DeCaro]

At least they didn't go through with that. So, you know, though, even here, here, Nixon understands that this has to be kept secret because there would have been revulsion. Not by everybody. Nixon had his defenders, but there would have been revulsion in the public. And there was. And this is a key point we can circle back to present day now. When the Enemy's list was made public, there was bipartisan pushback. Today, we'll use an example. Donald Trump and some of his followers are vilifying this judge, Judge Boasberg, who ordered the administration to turn the planes around, who are taking the suspected gang members down to El Salvador to stick them into a gulag. And the administration ignored his order. Trump and others, Elon Musk, are calling for the judge to be impeached. It's an enemies list in public.

[Ken Hughes]

There is no legitimate ground for impeaching a judge who is doing the judge's job. We don't really know what to do about it. We can say what was done done with Nixon. The creation of the plumbers, the wiretapping against Halperin and over a dozen other people eventually became part of an article of impeachment passed by the House Judiciary Committee 28 to 10, with seven Republicans joining the committee's Democratic majority today in 2025. I don't see that happening. I can't picture that happening.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, you raised a really important question there. What are we going to do about it? Because this has been a big debate, especially online, among historians on the left, center and right, about how to handle something like this. Do we just rely on the political process? Trump's really that bad, then he could be defeated at the ballot box. Should we rely on lawsuits and the courts? You know, I don't think it's one or the other. The rule of law and the Constitution have to stand for something. As it turned out, the prosecution of Trump was not successful because Donald Trump won the election. So that's it. And he didn't face justice for his role in the insurrection on January 6, although many of the rioters were put in prison because of that. Guess what I'm getting at here is we still haven't answered this question because now lower level judges in the federal judiciary are pushing back on some of these, some of these moves by Musk and Company and Trump. But how do they enforce their rulings? And if the executive chooses to simply ignore a federal Judge what happens.

[Ken Hughes]

Those are great questions, and they weigh on my mind, too. Legal action is, of course, course, essential. The specter of lawlessness with impunity. I guess it's no longer a specter since the president pardoned the January 6 convicts. It's deeply unsettling for many Americans, and it is a moral outrage. If I can say one thing, I. I never understand why people think there's just one solution or if one solution doesn't work completely. Legal action never works completely. It never solves all of the problems. That something that doesn't solve all the problems shouldn't be tried.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right.

[Ken Hughes]

The failure to be a panacea is universal.

[Martin DeCaro]

Courts, public opinion, elections, the separation of powers, meaning Republicans in Congress would have to do something about it. All of those are pieces, all of those are essential.

[Ken Hughes]

And everything about politics that takes place outside of elections. Speaking of Gary Wells, he's often made the point that elections don't actually solve most public policy issues. Those are heavily influenced by political movements that are acting in ways other than elections, by experts, by the climate of public opinion. I had the good fortune to work on the very few presidential recordings created by Franklin Rosebud, and it gave me a chance to dip my toe into the history of the 1930s, when explicit fascist movements were part of American politics and radicalism of the left and the right were powerful and meaningful and influential. And Franklin Roosevelt, being, you know, probably the greatest political genius who has ever served as president, was able to navigate and manage the convulsions, the political convulsions of the era, and the great challenges of the domestic challenge of the Great Depression and the foreign challenge of the rise of international fascism with great skill. And he didn't do that by being politically consistent, are always doing one thing thing and not doing another thing that might not work fully effectively. He was a very nimble political actor. And we should recall, you know, that in America, we very, very often have problems from extremists. During the Nixon era, there were extremists on the left who used bombings to get their way. America did endure. There are always people challenging democracy, but there are always people defending and reinterpreting and reminding people why democracy, though flawed, is still our best approach to governing ourselves. You know, we were in the first few months of the Trump administration. There could be a recession next year. There could be a huge backlash against him in the polls. That's true for causing inflation. And inflation, as those of us who survived the 1970s recall, can be associated with high unemployment as Well, I feel bad, but there's no excuse for despair ever in America. People who had much greater challenges than us have achieved much more than we can imagine.

[Martin DeCaro]

I agree. Frederick Douglass's life, Frederick Douglass, his famous speech, July 4, 1852, about the fight to end slavery. Slavery, he said, Allow me to say in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. On the next episode of history as It Happens, the Enemy Aliens act, deportations of suspicious immigrants, crackdowns on dissent and free speech. It is not unprecedented. There is a deep history of civil rights abuses in America. That's next with Michael Kazin, as we report history as it Happens. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter every Friday. Sign up at historyasithappens. Com.