Raymond Price Remembers

he found the gap in the June 20, 1972 tape "devastating" to the President's defense, "stretching coincidence to its furthest limits." He says, however, that he always made a point of not asking Woods about the gap while federal prosecutors were investigating the erasure. "I assumed she quite possibly had [erased the tape]. Rose and I are close friends, and if she had, I didn't want her to tell me about it, in case I was ever called on to testify." (Price adds that since the federal investigators dropped the tape gap probe, Woods has on several occasions denied that she was responsible "of her own initiative." Price says he believes it is possible Nixon erased the passage, although Nixon "insists he didn't." "I've never asked him about it point blank, but he has said he didn't without my asking him," Price says.)

Price was drawn into the White House Watergate efforts back in April, 1973 when Nixon called upon him to draft the speech announcing the resignations of his two chief White House aides, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. But in the last week of July, 1974, Ray Price unobtrusively entered into the inner circle of actors involved in the Watergate drama. As Nixon's collaborator on the resignation speech and one of the aides who advised the president during the ultimate unravelling of Watergate, Price received a close-up look at the final days of President Nixon.

Many White House observers, such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, portray Nixon in this final period as a man verging on suicide or nervous breakdown, at times incapable of dealing with potential threats to national security. Episodes of Richard Nixon, jabbering incoherently, or talking to paintings of past presidents at night in the White House have been widely reported. On the basis of his own first-hand observations, Price says he rejects these reports of Nixon as "being bonkers" during the final weeks of his presidency. Because of Nixon's unique ability to "departmentalize and compartmentalize" issues and ideas, Price mxintains that Nixon proved able to completely shut out his Watergate woes when considering affairs of state, right up to his resignation.

If Ray Price is spirited in his defense of Richard Nixon's presidency and his attack upon the forces that brought Nixon down, he is much more reticent about the Richard Nixon he knows today. The signs of Price's continuing ties to the disgraced former president are evident even here at Harvard. During a recent interview, Price pointed to a pile of papers of his desk at the Institute of Politics--a draft of a section from the memoirs he is reading for Nixon. It is apparently a routine occurrence for Julie Nixon Eisenhower or Rose Mary Woods to telephone for Price at the institute. Occasionally, even Nixon himself reportedly calls the institute looking for Price, much to the surprise of students answering phones there.

From the completion of his own book last March until the beginning of his stint as an institute fellow in September, Price worked closely with Nixon out at San Clemente on his own memoirs. Price says Nixon's memoirs, which will reportedly net the ex-president nearly $2 million, will be "revelatory." A "substantial portion of the book" will be devoted to Watergate, Price says. "He's not running away from it."

Ray Price last saw Richard Nixon at the beginning of November, when the former speechwriter took a two-week-long furlough from the institute to work with the former president on the memoirs once again at La Casa Pacifica, the Nixons' San Clemente estate. In contrasting the Nixon of three weeks ago with the Nixon of the White House years, Price says Nixon's outlook is more mellowed, more reflective.

From Price's reports, Nixon appears given to pondering many of the questions and issues that may have contributed to the premature demise of his presidency. Price says he and Nixon have had numerous "confidential conversations" covering subjects such as media treatment of President Carter and whether or not the tapes should have been destroyed when the recording system became known.

Nevertheless, Price says Nixon has once again displayed "his phenomenal bounceback capacity. Comeback has been a recurring theme of his career, it has happened again," Price says. "It took a lot of guts, a lot of determination to come back from the low point of August 9th. I've developed a lot of admiration for the sheer guts of the guy, at the way he's bounced back and taken all that's been dumped on him these last few years."

Nixon is usually up early and in his office working on the memoirs by 7:30 in the morning, Price reports. Often, the former president will work on the memoirs--which are now in their final stage of editing--until after midnight. Three or four days a week, Nixon breaks away from his literary efforts for a couple of hours to play a quick nine holes of golf with his government-paid chief of staff, Lt. Col. Jack Brennan.

The lines between the San Clemente compound and the outside world apparently have not been severed completely. Nixon still reads a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, and follows national and international affairs "with avid interest though not with the same resources he once had," Price says.

Price says Nixon tries especially hard to stay on top of developments in superpower and Mideast relations, as well as domestic economic and energy issues. Nixon still occasionally speaks with unnamed national and international statesmen, the confidante reports, though "they're not coming to him for advise and counsel and that sort of thing. A lot of them are friends of his. They're just trying to maintain some personal contact," Price adds.

The former president receives thousands of letters each month from people throughout the country. A crew of volunteer San Clemente women come to the Nixon compound to keep track of all the correspondence, and occasionally, Nixon will answer a letter personally, Price reports. "Most of the letters Nixon receives are supportive, which may seem surprising," Price says. "There are still a lot of people around the country that like him," he explains.

Even with all these signs of renewed contacts, however, Nixon still appears to lead the life of a voluntary exile. The former president continues to refuse all requests for interviews by the press, even from old media friends, Price says. Nixon also remains aloof from the San Clemente community that surrounds La Casa Pacifica. "He just doesn't go down to the corner drug store," Price adds.

Meanwhile, as Nixon finished his multi-million dollar memoirs and pursues his psychological "comeback," Raymond Price takes on his new role: critic of the American press. At the Institute of Politics, Price is conducting a well-received study group on the American media and its relations with government. Even as Price's account of the Nixon White House hits the bookstores, the former speechwriter will begin working in earnest on a book on the American media after he finishes with his promotional activities for the Nixon book. Price, who maintains that he often had doubts about the professional standards followed by fellow members of the fourth estate during his 15 years as a journalist, offers a variety of proposals to bring institutional change to American media. Reporters should strive for more honesty in stating their degrees of certainty about the "facts" they report in stories; the seven major national media organizations--The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek and the three major television networks--should consciously seek an internal balance of viewpoint among themselves. Most important, Price says, we must search for "some way to break the vicious circle of distrust between government officials and the media."

Repeatedly, Price returns to the treatment of Richard Nixon to reinforce his criticisms. In the climate of hysteria created during Watergate, "every charge was assumed to be true, whether hacked up or not. It created a sense of massive malevolence," Price explains. "At least 80 per cent of what people imagined to be the facts of Watergate simply never happened," Price maintains. "And yet, because of the way it was reported, these myths were pounded into the public consciousness. One of the continuing myths ever since has been that the press was just getting out the facts. Well, they were getting out the facts, but they were also getting out a hell of a lot of non-facts."

According to Price's analysis, the media attack on Nixon actually peaked in the period after resignation, when suddenly, "the press simply had no one to call into account any more, so the sky was the limit as far as letting their imaginations run wild. The real spasm of hate that erupted at the time of the Nixon pardon told a lot about the media," Price says.

Price appears to view the post-resignation reportorial efforts of Woodward and Bernstein as especially worthy of condemnation. Price describes their second Watergate book, The Final Days, as an example of "hateploitation." At several points in his own book, Price directly challenges the Woodstein reconstruction of specific events and of various individuals' thoughts during the Watergate denouement. "My feelings about that book are pretty much unprintable," Price says.

The former president's confidante appears particularly circumspect in speculating on what elder statesman role Nixon may be able to play in the future, and it is clear that Price believes media rehabilitation of Nixon must precede a public role for the 37th president. "Obviously, I think Nixon's a tremendous national resource and it's a shame he can't be used. I don't think it's realistic to expect him to be used at this point," Price says. Price seems uncomfortable when conjecturing about what type of elder statesman role might suit Nixon, if any. "He ain't running for president again," Price says, nervously stating the obvious. Price does say Nixon hopes to do more writing after his memoirs are published, and that the former president would like to lecture at college campuses before he grows too old. Eventually, Price says he foresees a Richard Nixon who will once again speak out on national issues on a regular basis.

Clearly, Raymond Price has carved out a role for himself in the campaign to rehabilitate Richard Nixon in the eyes of history. Try to view Richard Nixon through non-Watergate colored glasses, Price recommends, and Nixon will be remembered as one of the great American statesmen of this century. In With Nixon, Price writes, "In the immediate aftermath of Richard Nixon's fall from grace and power, his administration was remembered chiefly for its end. But to see it only in these terms is to miss the central significance of one of the most momentous six-year periods in the nation's history. To view it merely in terms of crime and punishment is not only to distort history, but to deny history."

Only in the last several months has Price witnessed the start of this reconsideration of Richard M. Nixon. Press treatment of Nixon has only recently grown more balanced, Price says. "Things are gradually changing," Price maintains. "History and the public are going to look on the Nixon administration substantially differently ten years from now.

"As the hysteria subsides--and it is beginning to subside--people will begin to look for perspective, for the relative importance of things. Not that they'll ever say that Watergate was a good thing. It just won't loom quite as large."