Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974 and the only president to resign from the position. He had previously served as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961, and prior to that as both a U.S. Representative and Senator from California.
Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. After completing his undergraduate studies at Whittier College, he graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937 and returned to California to practice law. He and his wife Pat moved to Washington in 1942 to work for the federal government. He subsequently served on active duty in the U.S. Navy Reserve during World War II. Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950. His pursuit of the Hiss Case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist and elevated him to national prominence. He was the running mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1952 election. Nixon served for eight years as Vice President, becoming the second-youngest vice president in history at age 40. He waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and lost a race for Governor of California to Pat Brown in 1962. In 1968, he ran for the presidency again and was elected, defeating incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Nixon ended American involvement in the war in Vietnam in 1973 and brought the American POWs home, and ended the military draft. Nixon's visit to China in 1972 eventually led to diplomatic relations between the two nations and he initiated détente and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union the same year. His administration generally transferred power from Washington D.C. to the states. He imposed wage and price controls for ninety days, enforced desegregation of Southern schools, established the Environmental Protection Agency and began the War on Cancer. Nixon also presided over the Apollo 11 moon landing, which signaled the end of the moon race. He was reelected in one of the largest electoral landslides in U.S. history in 1972 when he defeated George McGovern.
In his second term, Nixon ordered an airlift to resupply Israeli losses in the Yom Kippur War, resulting in the restart of the Middle East peace process and an oil crisis at home. The Nixon administration supported a coup in Chile that ousted the government of Salvador Allende and propelled Augusto Pinochet to power. By late 1973, the Watergate scandal escalated, costing Nixon much of his political support. On August 9, 1974, he resigned in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office. After his resignation, he was issued a controversial pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford. In 20 years of retirement, Nixon wrote nine books and undertook many foreign trips, helping to rehabilitate his image into that of elder statesman. He suffered a debilitating stroke on April 18, 1994 and died four days later at the age of 81.
“I can't ever say that, but I believe it.”
Responding to Rev. Billy Graham's assertion that the Jews have a "stranglehold" on the media that "has to be broken or the country's going down the drain." Quoted in The New Yorker (15 April 2002) https://archive.is/20130630000743/www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/articles/020415sh_shouts1
2000s
1970s, They're Born That Way (1971)
1970s, Remarks on Being Reelected (1972)
“The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards.”
Nixon to Bob Haldeman (1 February 1972) as quoted in Counterpunch (12 March 2002) http://www.counterpunch.org/alexgraham.html
1970s
National Review (19 November 2001) http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_22_53/ai_79665375/pg_2
2000s
I've earned everything I've got.
Televised press conference with 400 Associated Press Managing Editors at Walt Disney World, Florida. (17 November 1973)
Often transcribed as "I am not a crook."
'I Am Not A Crook': How A Phrase Got A Life Of Its Own http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=245830047, on National Public Radio
1970s
Notes taken down by CIA director Richard Helms on Nixon's orders for a plan against Salvador Allende of Chile. (15 September 1970); Document reproduced as part of George Washington University's National Security Archive. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch26-01.htm
1970s
Conversation with Mr. Colson, on tapes recorded February-March 1973 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/3_VIETNAM.mp3; as quoted in "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html, by Adam Nagourney,New York Times (10 December 2010)
1970s
As quoted in The Rehnquist Choice (2001) by John Dean; also in "Double Dipping at the Waffle House" by Dahlia Lithwick http://slate.msn.com/id/117140/ in Slate (11 October 2001)
2000s
Resignation Speech (8 August 1974)
1970s
1970s, They're Born That Way (1971)
1970s, First Watergate Speech (1973)
Responding to Senator Howard Baker who asked him the question: "What do you know about the Kennedy assassination?" Quoted in Oral History Interview with Don Hewitt (8 October 2002)
2000s
Fall of 1971, conversation with Harvard professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan http://nixontapeaudio.org/chron2/rmn_e010b.mp3; as qtd. in Tim Naftali, “Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-reagans-racist-conversation-richard-nixon/595102/, The Atlantic, (Jul 30, 2019)
1970s, Tape transcripts (1971)
Source: FRUS, Nixon-Haig telcon, 29 April 1971, p. 99. quoted in Bass, G. J. (2014). The Blood telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a forgotten genocide.
“I don't know how they reproduce!.. They are a scavenging people.”
1970s, Tape transcripts (1971)
Source: On Nov. 12, 1971, in the middle of a discussion about India-Pakistan tensions with Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State William P. Rogers, after Rogers mentioned reprimanding Indira Gandhi. Conversation 617-009 https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/white-house-tapes/617/conversation-617-009 of the White House Tapes. Quoted https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/opinion/nixon-racism-india.html The Terrible Cost of Presidential Racism The Terrible Cost of Presidential Racism] (September, 3, 2020) by Gary J. Bass, [[The New York Times
