July 16: Nixon’s Tapes

Former White House aide Alexander Butterfield told Senate investigators about President Richard M. Nixon’s secret recordings of conversations in the Oval Office on this date in 1973. Among the President’s many racist and prejudiced comments were these: To Charles Colson: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.” To H.R. Haldeman, who loved to egg on the president with racist comments of his own: “Most Jews are disloyal . . .generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?” Again to Haldeman: “All of the Jewish families are close . . . but there’s this strange malignancy now that seems to creep among them. I don’t know, the radicalism.” To evangelist Billy Graham, who upped the ante in their conversation: “They’re going to get the darndest wave of anti-Semitism here if they don’t behave. Anti-Semitism is stronger than we think. You know, it’s unfortunate. But this has happened to the Jews. It happened in Spain, it happened in Germany, it’s happening — and now it’s going to happen in America if these people don’t start behaving. . . . It may be they have a death wish. You know that’s been the problem with our Jewish friends for centuries.” To hear more of Nixon’s opinions on a variety of ethnic groups, look below.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” -Henry Kissinger to Richard Nixon