Bruce Herschensohn’s New Book

March 31, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under International Affairs, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam | 9 Comments 

On April 19, political commentator, former assistant to President Nixon, and 1992 Republican senatorial candidate Bruce Herschensohn comes to the Nixon Library to discuss his new book American Amnesia, which presents his thesis that had Congress been prepared to support Presidents Nixon and Ford when they asked for military aid to South Vietnam after North Vietnamese violations of the 1973 peace accords, then Hanoi’s forces would not have been able to defeat that nation in 1975. The theme of his book has particular relevance as American forces prepare to depart from Iraq, a nation whose future may be determined by the whims of its eastern neighbor Iran unless the United States is ready to ensure otherwise. In today’s Victorville (California) Daily Press, Herschensohn discusses his book:

On January 27, 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed by the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the Viet Cong. North Vietnam agreed to an immediate cease fire, and South Vietnam was promised the same sort of freedoms guaranteed Americans under the First Amendment.

Officially, the war was over.

But, Herschensohn says, the U.S. wasn’t so naive as to believe there would be no more hostilities by North Vietnam after American troops went home. So, the accords promised piece-for-piece replacement of any military assets South Vietnam used to defend itself after the Americans left.

“We didn’t do it,” Herschensohn said flatly. “Congress saw a way that we could lose (the war) by not appropriating funds in the piece-for-piece provision.”

Editors note: Bruce Herschensohn will be at the Nixon Library on Monday, April 19, to discuss and sign copies of American Amnesia. For more information click here.

Managing The Nixon Oval Office

February 19, 2010 by admin | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Nixon family, Nixon in the News, Pat Nixon, Presidential libraries, Richard Nixon, Yorba Linda | 6 Comments 

On Presidents’ Day 2010, more than five thousand packed the Nixon Library and were welcomed with cherry pie and appearances by Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. Then at 1:30 pm, RN’s Oval Office Team presented the second Nixon Legacy Forum, The Effective Use Of the President’s Time, a look at RN Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, how the Office of the President operated and why it became the model for successive administrations.

Twenty-two members of the Haldeman family were in the audience including widow Jo Haldeman, their son Hank, daughters Anne and Susan, and their grandchildren. Dwight Chapin, former Deputy Assistant to President Nixon, moderated the panel of key staff including Larry Higby (Special Assistant to the President and Assistant White House Chief of Staff), Steve Bull (Special Assistant to the President) and Ron Walker (Special Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Presidential Advance). Chapin’s service to RN started as a young field man in the 1962 California gubernatorial race. After the former Vice President’s defeat, he went to work for Haldeman at the J. Walter Thompson advertising company. It was during this time that Haldeman – who served as Campaign Manager in 1962 and Director of Advance in the 1960 Presidential campaign – spearheaded the organization of RN’s comeback.

“These weren’t the wilderness years.” Chapin explained. “These were the strategic planning years.”

As an example, Chapin pointed to a memo that illustrated a new and innovative strategy for winning in 1968. Outlining the need for more effective time management, Haldeman told RN that he could reach more voters through the use of television in one or two key events with substantive messages, buying much needed time for him to rest, reflect and write.

This was a radical concept that totally changed the way campaigns went thereafter.” Larry Higby added. “It became the style for how we started to communicate as a White House.”

Higby, the youngest of the staff, also began his career working for Haldeman on the 1968 campaign while in graduate school at UCLA. At twenty-three years old, he became Assistant White House Chief of Staff.

“My first job was to find a book on how the presidency worked.” We had just ninety days to build a corporation from scratch.”

The Nixon organizational model would be groundbreaking. Previous White Houses implemented the cabinet form of government where decision-making was delegated to cabinet officials. John F. Kennedy, Higby explained, worked freestyle, forming coalitions and committees for the most important policy issues. While President Johnson managed like a legislator and focused heavily on his domestic agenda, a reflection on his over 20 years on Capitol Hill.

By contrast, RN managed like an executive.   “H.R. Haldeman was his Chief Operating Officer,” explained Steve Bull. “While Dr. Kissinger was the Vice President of International Affairs and John Erlichman was the President of Domestic Affairs.” It was the Cabinet officers’ job to ultimately execute the positions from the White House.

A retired Marine, Bull’s path to White House was trailed after returning from Vietnam in 1966. He hardly recognized his country as rising crime, social upheaval, and protests against the war were dividing the country. He saw RN as the leader who could bring the country together.

After working on the successful 1968 campaign, Bull joined the White House team as the President’s Special Assistant, managing his day-to-day schedule and moving officials in and out of meetings.

“I was not a confidant.” Bull said.  “It was a senior to subordinate position. My job was to run the Oval Office. I was kept around because I was trustworthy. Trust was important.”

Managing RN’s work environment was also important. Bull explained that RN was a private person. He didn’t like meeting with large groups or numerous advisers. He was a contemplative man whose best course was to rely on his own instincts. He needed time to shape his agenda and map out the long term.

He essentially “shaved two days into one,” Chapin said.  RN started his day early by reading the daily news summary and meeting with Kissinger, Haldeman, and other White House senior advisers and cabinet officials.  During the afternoon, RN would take a short 40 minute “power” nap, change and retreat to his private study in the Executive Office Building, where he would “write out long thoughts, shape his agenda, and constantly be looking ahead,” Higby explained.

As Director of the first Office of Presidential Advance, it was Ron Walker’s job to constantly look ahead. Now the President of the Richard Nixon Foundation, Walker prepared hundreds of foreign and domestic trips for RN including the historic trips to China and Russia in 1972.

After working as a volunteer advanceman during the 1968 Campaign, Walker worked on the transition and the first inaugural. Following inauguration, Chapin invited him to construct the first Office of Presidential Advance.

Not only did Walker create the office, but he also perfected the art first pioneered by Haldeman.

“We wanted to be the mantel of the Presidency,” Walker explained. “When I went into the White House to work for Dwight and Bob, the first thing I thought was important was that I write an advance manual.”

The manual took six months and amounted to 397 pages, constituting what Haldeman initially developed for political campaigns and refining it to advance the President of the United States.

The Nixon White House had “all of those elements necessary to move the President of the United States outside the White House,” Walker said. “We had advance men who knew how to run airport arrivals, how to put motorcades together, how to do press conferences, how to handle the press,” and who were able to effectively “work with Secret Service,” and “the White House Communications Agency.”

On the last day of the 1972 campaign, Walker advanced President Nixon to Greensboro and Spartanburg, South Carolina at midday, flew to a sunset rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico and landed in Ontario, California for a torch light parade of fifty thousand with appearances by John Wayne and the Carpenters.

The next morning at the White House, the President thanked the advance team for their hard work and told them if it not for what they had accomplished he wouldn’t have earned a second term.

To give a sense of their efficiency, RN later told Walker that his team could have took the beaches at Normandy.

Nearly forty years later at the President’s Library in Yorba Linda, the Oval Office Team also performed with masterful efficiency, finishing two minutes ahead of schedule. “The program was to run from 1:30 to 3:30, this program ended at 3:28,” Walker concluded, “that’s called a good advance.”

A President’s Time

February 13, 2010 by admin | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Library events, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | 2 Comments 

On the day he was inaugurated to his second term, President Nixon gave members of the White House staff a desk diary covering the four years of that term. Each day indicated how many days were remaining before his “Four More Years” came to a close.

On the cover page he wrote, in part:

Every moment of history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. The Presidential term which begins today consists of 1461 days – no more and no less. Each can be a day of strengthening and renewal for America; each can add depth and dimension to the American experience.

The 1461 days which lie ahead are but a short interval in the flowing stream of history. Let us live them to the hilt, working each day to achieve these goals.

This fairly modest gift richly captures the importance President Nixon placed on using his time – and the time given his administration – to achieve the great purposes to which he devoted his presidency.

There is no single, succinct definition of what constitutes the best use of a president’s time. As head of state, chief executive of the federal government, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and head of his political party, a president wears many hats – often simultaneously. Each president must find a way to juggle the demands these different roles place upon him so that he can focus on those matters that only the president can handle.

When President Nixon took office in January 1969 he established a staff structure that remains largely intact today, seven presidencies later. While each president has tinkered with it, none has entirely replaced it. And those that have strayed too far from its central tenet – that a president’s time is his most valuable resource – have seen their decision-making and their effectiveness diminished.

In the Nixon White House, large, lengthy meetings involving the president were held to a minimum. Requests to see the president were vetted through his chief of staff, who rigorously guarded the president’s time. Policy proposals needing a presidential decision were frequently presented in writing. Presidential travel was meticulously planned to make the most of every minute on the road. Most important, the president’s schedule included “open time” for him to think through issues and strategies.

President Nixon valued and guarded that open time. It gave him the opportunity to reason things through, to consider the various consequences of a decision, and to construct an effective strategy for advancing his vision. As John Mitchell told Time magazine, “[The President] is a man who does his homework, and that becomes quite time-consuming.” Of course, President Nixon only had the time to “do his homework” because his staff was so effective at managing the other demands on his schedule.

This structure, of course, had its detractors. Cabinet officers grumbled that the cabinet didn’t meet enough and complained that they lacked unfettered access to the Oval Office. Members of Congress and White House staff members would have liked more “face time” with the president to advocate for a policy or just to collect that valued Washington currency: the ability to say, “When I was meeting with the president the other day….” The media claimed that the president was being isolated behind a “Berlin Wall” constructed by Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Kissinger.

Much of the criticism centered on the canard that President Nixon didn’t much like being around people. His critics saw his preference for written memos over face-to-face meetings, for example, as proof of his supposedly misanthropic nature. A fairer reading of the practice, especially taken in the context of his respect for the limited time given any president to accomplish his great goals, leads one to a different conclusion.

If done right, a carefully thought out, well-written memo is almost always a better way to present a proposal. The author of a memo is forced to construct the most cogent, concise presentation for the president’s consideration. That, in turn, provides the president with the information he needs in an efficient format – and if it doesn’t, he will ask for more (or will find someone else who can do it right the first time).

When I was working in President Nixon’s Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey office in the spring of 1990 writing the exhibit text for the Nixon Library, we followed this procedure. As I was preparing to begin writing an exhibit, he would dictate a memo to me (of usually just a page or two) outlining his goals for the exhibit and suggesting tone, content, and direction.

I used that memo as a starting point and would write a draft for his consideration. It would come back marked up in varying degrees. I would incorporate the changes and send back a revised draft. That would continue until he was satisfied with the final product.

This process saved us an enormous amount of time and effort, which was important because we were on a tight schedule. But it also was important because it forced the President to consider what he wanted in an exhibit and because it gave me what I needed to meet his expectations. It only worked, however, because he was willing to take the time to think things through.

My experience is, of course, in no way analogous with the experiences of those who worked in the Nixon White House. On their easiest days they faced pressures, complexities, and challenges of exponentially greater magnitude than anything I tackled during my most difficult. But that’s what made the Nixon White House’s process for managing the president’s time so much more important. It allowed the President to focus on the big picture – and the big picture is ultimately what being president is all about.

For his 13th birthday, Richard Nixon’s grandmother Milhous gave him a framed picture of Lincoln, which she inscribed with a stanza from Longfellow’s Psalm of Life. The inscription read:

Lives of great men oft remind us/We can make our lives sublime,/And, departing, leave behind us/Footsteps on the sands of time.

The future president hung that picture over his bed, and years later still regarded it among his fondest possession.

Over the course of his long career, President Nixon left many footsteps on the sands of time. His ability to do so was made possible, in no small part, because he knew how to use the time given him most efficiently and effectively.

Exactly how he did so will be the topic of what promises to be a fascinating program at the Nixon Library on Monday. Ron Walker, Dwight Chapin, Larry Higby, and Steve Bull – four men uniquely qualified, both by experience and expertise to illuminate this issue – will talk about the work they did in the Nixon White House to help the President make the best use of his time. I cannot think of a better way to mark President’s Day – or to spend your time.

_______________________________________________________

Editor’s Note: On Presidents’ day, February 15, from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm, the Nixon Library will hold its second Nixon Legacy Forum, “The Effective Use of the President’s Time.” Watch on Youtube starting February 16 as the Nixon Oval Office Team discusses how President Nixon was briefed, scheduled and moved through events and around the world.

The forum will also feature a Q&A. Submit your questions online on the Foundation’s Facebook page, via Twitter @nixonfoundation, or by email at jonathan@nixonfoundation.org.

Richard Norton Smith On The Nixon Funeral

February 9, 2010 by admin | Filed Under American Politics, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Yorba Linda | 3 Comments 

This week Public Affairs Press has reissued Who’s Buried In Grant’s Tomb?, a book edited by Brian Lamb and originally published in 2000 as a companion volume to the “American Presidents” series of programs that were, at that time, being first broadcast on C-SPAN. (In the decade since they’ve frequently been rerun, most often on C-SPAN3.)

The book, as you might guess from the title, concerns Presidential gravesites. Did you know that George Washington had such an intense fear of being buried alive that his will stipulated that he not be interred until at least three days after his death? Well, I didn’t either until I read this article about the book by Paul Bedard, the “Washington Whispers” columnist of US News magazine.

Bedard includes a lengthy excerpt from the new editions introduction by that pre-eminent Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, who describes his work on the address delivered by then-Senator Bob Dole at President Nixon’s funeral at the Nixon Library in 1994:

“As one who had a hand in drafting Robert Dole’s eulogy for Nixon, delivered on April 27, 1994, I will go to my grave convinced that Richard Nixon hoped to influence the 1996 presidential race from his. In point of fact, Dole had been among the eulogists at Pat Nixon’s funeral the previous June, as was California governor Pete Wilson. Approximately 33 million Americans watched Nixon’s late afternoon burial in the lengthening shadow of his boyhood home. They saw a side of Bob Dole few would have predicted—except Nixon himself. For he knew that Dole’s feelings lay just below the surface, much closer than his hardboiled public image suggested. In designating him one of his Yorba Linda eulogists, Nixon anticipated the sob in Dole’s voice as he struggled to complete his tribute to the central figure in what the senator that day called the Age of Nixon. So authentic a display of grief was touching to all but the Nixon-haters in the vast audience. Moreover, by exhibiting his feelings so openly, Dole was, in effect, humanized in ways no other speech could have done. Which is exactly what Nixon intended, I believe, as he made his own funeral a showcase for his political heirs. Nixon was always a better campaign manager than candidate.”

Indeed, Dole’s eulogy was likely an important factor in reinforcing his status as a frontrunner in the 1996 election.

“Only Nixon” Reviewed

February 6, 2010 by admin | Filed Under Book Review, China, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The Pueblo (Colorado) Chieftain has just published this review of James C. Humes and Dr. Jarvis Ryals’s book Only Nixon, which recounts the President’s historic China trip as seen from the perspective of the Chinese who helped arrange for RN’s meetings with Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong. (TNN previously has posted a video about this book.)

John Waters And His Nixon Connection

February 5, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Energy, Entertainment, Environmental issues, Movies, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

This week the Australian newspapers the Melbourne Age features an interview with director, writer and raconteur John Waters, who will be traveling to Down Under in March to present his one-man show in several of that nation’s cities. In the article, Waters mentions that he was interested to see one of his childhood favorites, Patty McCormack of The Bad Seed fame, playing Patricia Nixon in Ron Howard’s film Frost/Nixon, which leads to the surprising fact that:

Waters has a Nixon connection himself. His uncle, John C. Whitaker, was undersecretary of the interior during the Nixon years. It got a bit awkward, Waters says, “during the ’60s when I was at riots and things outside the White House but now we get along great”. Whitaker, he adds, “was never part of anything like Watergate and his son, when he was 15, worked as a craft services kid on Hairspray and went on to become a big producer with Imagine Films, producing things like Eminem’s film 8 Mile.”

As previously mentioned at TNN, Mr. Whitaker, who appeared at the Nixon Library last month, was a major figure, during the early 1970s, in the shaping of the most far-ranging and farsighted environmental policies of any Presidency since Theodore Roosevelt’s, and in the initiatives in energy policy that have become especially relevant in recent years.

It’s also worth noting that his son Jim Whitaker, who Waters mentions, was a producer of another Ron Howard film, Cinderella Man. And it was Waters’s grandmother Stella Whitaker who gave him, for his sixteenth birthday, the camera which he used to shoot his earliest films. Over forty years later, he’s at work on his next feature, Fruitcake, although, as he points out to the Age’s reporter, it’s now rather difficult for even the creator of Hairspray to get backing for any feature with a budget above $1 million and below $100 million.

Honoring The Veterans

November 12, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library events, Podcast | Leave a Comment 

The Golf Command, 4^th Marine Color Guard conducts the Presentation of the Colors in the Nixon Library’s East Room.

More than 2,000 people came to celebrate Veteran’s Day at the Richard Nixon Library on Wednesday, where there was also a program that honored America’s Armed Forces in the library’s replica of The White House East Room.

Introduced by Foundation Vice President Sandy Quinn, the first keynote speaker was Congressional Medal of Honor recipient John Baca.

Constrained by enemy fire during a night mission in Vietnam in February 1970, Army specialist Baca covered an enemy grenade with his steel helmet and sacrificed his own body to absorb the impact after it detonated, saving the lives of eight men in his platoon.

For his heroism, Baca received the Medal of Honor from President Nixon on July 15, 1971.

Baca’s speech was followed by remarks from U.S. Marine Major General Richard Mills, Congressman Gary Miller, former Nixon military aide Colonel Jack Brennan, Clay Baxter, Commander of the Richard Nixon American Legion Post 679, and Hal Short, Commander of the Yorba Linda and Placentia Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9030.

Introduced by Colonel Brennan, the Nixon Foundation presented its first ever Orange County Veteran of the Year Award to retired Marine Corps General Bill Quinn.

General Quinn served in the Marine Corps from 1942 to 1975, commanding one-third of the Armed Forces at the El Toro Marine Corps Base during RN’s presidency.

Colonel Brennan added that General Quinn should also be honored for his loyalty and service to the Nixon Family, a relationship that extended beyond the White House years.

General Quinn was the first to introduce RN to the awaiting crowd at El Toro following his resignation in 1974, and later invited the President to play golf there when he and the First Lady made their permanent home in San Clemente.

Providing the ceremonies with sentimental patriotic tunes were Celebration USA, the Villa Park High School Symphonic Ensemble, and the Orange High School Chamber Singers and Concert Choir.

Courtesy of Foundation friend David Stokes, a radio talk show host and pastor at Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, Virginia, below is a podcast recording of Wednesday’s events in full:

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The New Nixon Podcast Is Up And Running

October 31, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Advertising, Foundation News, Interviews, Media, New Media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Center, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Podcast, Popular Culture, Richard Nixon, Social Networking, Technology, The National Interest, The New Nixon | Leave a Comment 

During a recent visit to the Nixon Library, I had a discussion with several people about the potential for a podcast, something designed to highlight the events at the library, as well as the larger work of the Nixon Foundation.

We determined to use the recent visit of Sonny West and his talk about the day Elvis came to see President Nixon in the Oval Office for the premier production of the podcast.

This podcast is being registered with I-Tunes and will be available through them by the end of today. This, of course, makes the podcast portable. It can be downloaded to I-Pods and other such devices. In the meantime, here is a link to the first episode of what we hope will be a regular feature.

A couple of provisos: First, the theme music is from “VICTORY AT SEA” at the recommendation of Sandy Quinn. He told me how much Mr. Nixon enjoyed it – so it was an obvious choice. Second, some of the audio during Sonny’s remarks is a little difficult to hear and I suspect he pulled a Fran Tarkenton and scrambled out of the pocket, straying from the microphone, at times. These technical difficulties will be addressed and corrected for future events and podcasts.

But even with a few “glitches” – this podcast will be, I think, a welcome edition to the wonderful media expressions of the Nixon Foundation.

It is my privilege to host and produce this and I look forward to working on new editions about once a month – so, stay tuned! My special thanks to Philip Bassham, on my staff in Fairfax, for his vital help with this project.

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George McGovern Speaks At The Nixon Library

August 28, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Presidential libraries, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Yorba Linda | 5 Comments 

On Wednesday night, a crowd of over 700 gathered in Yorba Linda to see former Senator George McGovern talk about his new book, a short biography of Abraham Lincoln. The event, co-sponsored by the Richard Nixon Library and Museum and the Richard Nixon Foundation (and held in the Library’s replica of the White House’s East Room) would have been remarkable enough for the appearance of President Nixon’s Democratic opponent in the 1972 election – but, in a surprise appearance, the Senator was introduced by none other than 83-year-old Gore Vidal, almost the last major American writer of the “Greatest Generation” still living, who has written about RN on many occasions (including the 1972 play An Evening With Richard Nixon). Both men received standing ovations.

Though Vidal has sometimes expressed a degree of admiration for the thirty-seventh President’s resilience and achievements in the field of foreign affairs, in recent years his remarks about Nixon have been much more negative, and he seems to blame RN for instigating the careers of former Vice President Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom worked in the Nixon Administration and have been the targets of Vidal’s angriest barbs in articles and interviews since 2000. The late Senator Edward Kennedy has also been the object of Vidal’s bile from time to time, unsurprisingly given the writer’s mercurial relationship with the Kennedy clan, and his preference for Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s brand of populist radicalism. But in his introduction in Yorba Linda, Vidal spoke instead of Lincoln, the subject of one of his best-known and most acclaimed novels.

Sen. McGovern then took the podium and discussed his biography. He stressed that Lincoln’s greatest achievement was preserving the Union, and spoke at length about the difficulties the sixteenth President had to overcome – his limited formal education, and his struggle with depression (which McGovern knows from experience, as he movingly describes in Terry, his book about his late daughter’s tragic battle with alcoholism and bipolar illness).

Though Ted Kennedy went unmentioned in the main part of McGovern’s talk, one of the questions asked after it referred to him, and the reply was:

“Ted was a great senator,” McGovern said. “He hardly missed a day [of work] . . . I admired him and, on a personal basis, if any senator suffered a loss like a child or a spouse, he was the first person who called. When our daughter Terry died, he came to see Eleanor and me. He was there at 9 a.m. the next morning with his wife. He was a person who respected tragedy because of his family. He was very thoughtful. I thought a lot of him.”

McGovern also spoke at Chapman University earlier in the day.

Dick Morris Puts RN Center Stage In Healthcare Debate

August 17, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon Library events | Leave a Comment 

Former Clinton adviser Dick Morris spoke before a crowd of hundreds in the Richard Nixon Foundation’s replica of The White House East Room Thursday night. The Fox News contributor also signed copies of his new New York Times bestseller, Catastrophe.

Morris devoted most of his speech to the contentious issue of healthcare reform reminding visitors that RN had among the most effective prescriptions for public health in the 20th Century.

Morris explained that before RN came into office “one-third of the elderly were in enormous poverty.” He solved the problem with the cost of living adjustment for social security, effectively “taking the issue away” from the Democratic Party. Morris contends that the move proved so fruitful that RN did more than Presidents “FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter combined.

Dinner of the Century Revisited

July 19, 2009 by David Emig | Filed Under Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Yorba Linda | 3 Comments 

Author’s Note:  Nineteen years ago tonight marks the anniversary of the dinner honoring the Library’s dedication.  The following article appeared in the Checkers newsletter in the August 1990 issue.

As a bit of background, Checkers was a newsletter started by Chris Crain, a prolific collector of Richard Nixon political memorabilia.  Checkers was published four times a year between 1975 to 1994.

I was Assistant Editor of the newsletter from 1986 to 1991.  In those days, we complied the newsletter should I say, manually.  There was a deadline to submit articles.  The illustrations were photocopied and placed on the page.  Chris would then type around the illustrations.  What we could have done with modern technology of desktop publishing…

I will always be grateful to Chris Crain for giving me my first opportunity to write about Richard Nixon.

So here are my thoughts after the dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel.  I would be most interested to hear from anyone else who was there that night.

There are no second tables here; only first tables   You are all our friends—RN

The evening festivities took place in Los Angeles with a ‘celebration gala’ at the Century Plaza Hotel.  The black tie dinner honoring President and Mrs. Nixon and their family followed the morning’s dedication of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda.

When our party arrived at the hotel, our cab was greeted by protesters.  We weren’t sure exactly what they were protesting, but the following day’s newspaper said it appeared to be about 30 different causes.

The formal reception began at 7:00pm in California Lounge.  Inside was a virtual treasure trove for autograph seekers.  Several former Nixon administration officials and other celebrities were making the rounds outside the banquet room.  Notables such as Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, George Romney, H.R. Haldeman, William Simon, Richard Allen, Pat Buchanan, Ken Khachigian and Herb Klein.  Celebrities included Foster Brooks, George Allen, Tom Landry and Cesar Romero.  There were some people that fit both categories, like Benjamin Stein.  Stein, a former speechwriter for the Nixon administration, presently appears on “The Wonder Years,” a top-rated television series.

About 8:00pm, people began entering the Los Angeles Ballroom for dinner.  A program greeted each place at the table.  Featured in each program was a 5” x 7” color photograph of the entire Nixon family.  The photograph had been taken on the occasion of the Nixons’ 50^th Wedding Anniversary at their home in Saddle River, New Jersey.  This photograph made the program a very special one indeed.

Seated at our table were the Crains, Eldon Almquist, Bob Fuhr, Harry Jeffery, Jim Carskadon, Jack and Darlene Cook and myself.  Seated at the other NPIC table, on the other side of the ballroom, were Les and Susan Spreen, Phil and Jean Baldwin, Lu Paletta, Lloyd and Mabel Johnson and Donna and Bill Hickman.

After a welcome by Bruce Herschenson, the Master of Ceremonies, and the invocation by Billy Graham, the appetizer, salad and entrée were served.  According to the wishes of Mrs. Nixon, the dinner featured a low sodium meal.  While dinner was being served, the All-American Boys Chorus sang to the guests.  It was at this point that the most personally event almost occurred.

The area where the Boys Chorus was singing was directly across from the head table.  Between dinner and dessert, former President Nixon appeared on the stage, briefly leading the chorus in song.  It quickly became apparent that RN might attempt to greet each table.  Maybe I would get to meet him.

Many thoughts crossed my mind.  What would I say?  Perhaps tell him what his legacy meant to younger Americans like myself.  Maybe just a “how about those Mets?”  There probably wouldn’t be enough time.  I would have a few moments at the very most.

My inner excitement grew as the former President approached.  A crowd of people, with RN in the middle, moved toward our table.  It was a different feeling seeing the former President in this setting.  Slightly larger than life, but also one of us.  A bodyguard walked ahead, clearing the way.  People were getting up and greeting RN.  This, unfortunately, made passage a little difficult.  I had no desire to push my way into the crowd.  RN looked taller than I thought he would be.  As he passed by our table he shook Chris’ hand.  He then reached over and shook Candy Crain’s hand.  By the time I extended my hand the group had moved on.  I guess that’s what one would call a near brush with history.

After dessert the program continued.  Norman Vincent Peale recounted his visit to Vietnam, as well as personal memories of the Nixon family.  Bob Hope provided some comic entertainment.  Hope quipped that the library dedication was an opportunity to see Mount Rushmore live.  He also noticed that Yorba Linda was the only place in which Nixon T-shirts were outselling the Simpsons.  Hope’s remarks were followed by two toasts to the Nixons.  Maurice Stans gave a toast to Pat Nixon and Ambassador Walter Annenberg gave a toast to President Nixon.  President Nixon was then introduced by William Simon.

At the beginning of his remarks, President Nixon recognized all of the people who had spoken on his behalf.  He remembered that he probably knew Les Brown the longest.  Brown and his band had played at Duke Law School while RN attended there in the 1930s.  RN recalled Mrs. Billy Graham’s show of support during the time of his brush with death in a Long Beach hospital in 1975.  He thanked Norman Vincent Peale for the support given his family over the years.  He recognized Bob Hope’s contribution to the USO and his frequent visits to American servicemen overseas.  In total, RN expressed his deep appreciation for friends who stuck by in the darkest of times.  While RNs evening remarks carried the theme of his dedication speech, the tone was much more personal.  In a highlight to the evening, Mrs. Nixon said a few words after the program.

Finally, it was over.  It had been a most memorable day.  All of the planning and anticipation were reality.  It truly was the event of a lifetime!

John Dean And The Tapes

July 10, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under John Dean At The Nixon Library, News media, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Nixon in the News, TV News Personalities, The New Nixon, U.S. History, Watergate, Yorba Linda | 5 Comments 

No, not those tapes.

A little over two weeks ago I posted about one of the webpages of the groundbreaking and very informative nixontapes.org site run by Luke Nichter, an assistant professor of history at Tarleton State University in Texas. This page, at the time I posted, included links to two audio files in which John W. Dean III, White House counsel during the Nixon administration, was featured.

In one file, from a recording of a telephone conversation made in 1989, Dean could be heard explaining that when writing his book about Watergate, Blind Ambition, “I never actually went back and re-read my [Senate Watergate Committee] testimony.” This was by way of explaining why some passages in the book described events in a way somewhat different from what Dean told the Committee two years earlier. A second audio file was an excerpt from a recording made of Dean’s appearance last month at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, to promote the reissue (with a lengthy new afterword) of Blind Ambition.

However, if anyone goes to that part of nixontapes.org now, he or she will find a notice from Professor Nichter stating that these sound files have been removed as a result of a notice from Dean threatening legal action if they remained on the site. (However, the 1989 conversation can still be heard at watergate.com, the site founded by Silent Coup co-author Len Colodny.)

An article at FoxNews.com by Joseph Abrams delineates the situation further. “I merely wanted to bring these contradictions to light and thought I was doing a service, but Dean was absolutely mortified when he found out that I had these materials,” Professor Nichter explains, and notes that his modestly funded site does not have the resources to contest Dean in court.

Indeed, Dean’s previous legal actions against the authors and publisher of Silent Coup and Watergate figure-turned-radio host G. Gordon Liddy have made some journalists nervous. Jim Hougan, whose 1984 book Secret Agenda was the first work to raise substantial questions about Dean’s role in Watergate, refused to comment to Abrams at all about Dean.

But Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen, author of the 2008 biography of John Mitchell The Strong Man, which contains the most meticulously documented and groundbreaking research into Dean’s role in Watergate to see print thus far, has not been cowed. He told Abrams:

“My book speaks for itself, and I think it’s noteworthy that Dean has entirely avoided engaging its substance. Dean himself is well aware that his historical reputation has suffered enormously in the last two decades, and so he resorts to frivolous litigation and bullying tactics to rehabilitate himself. Not since Albert Speer [Hitler's architectural and technological mastermind] has a historical figure so assiduously used his post-prison writings to muddy and distort the historical record of the events in which he was culpable.”

Although Dean was one of the younger figures to be involved in the Watergate scandal, he is 70 now, so one wonders for how much longer his story of what happened will continue to go unchallenged by many journalists and historians.

When Seventies Phenomena Collide

June 17, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, John Dean At The Nixon Library, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Nixon in the News, Presidential libraries, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Watergate, Yorba Linda | 1 Comment 

Tonight, former Nixon White House counsel Luke W. – I mean, John W. Dean III appeared at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda. Speaking before an audience of close to 300, according to Melody Chiu of the Orange County Register, he contended that the Richard Nixon Foundation, by criticizing his appearance, “is reviving the dark side of Richard Nixon,” and asserted that the controversy surrounding his remarks was “petty.”

Nixon Library director Timothy Naftali called the appearance “an important milestone,” adding: “All we care about is that [our speakers]are serious and that our community will learn from them. We want to create a forum for serious discussion, debate and education.”

Earlier in the day, Naftali told Rebecca Cathcart of the New York Times’s “The Caucus” blog that Dean’s appearance formed part of an “initiative” to “provide a nonpartisan presentation of the facts of Watergate,” adding that another element of this would be the renovated Watergate exhibit, to be unveiled at the museum in August.

John Dean At Yorba Linda, or Who’s Deep Throat Now?

June 16, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, John Dean At The Nixon Library, National Archives, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Nixon in the News, Orange County, Presidential libraries, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Watergate, Yorba Linda | 1 Comment 

Tomorrow, June 17, is the thirty-seventh anniversary of the Watergate break-in. At the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, it will be marked by a lecture and book-signing by John W. Dean III, counsel to the President from 1970 until 1973, convicted felon (for obstruction of justice, to which he pled guilty on November 30 of the latter year), and one of the central figures in the Watergate scandal.

Several months ago, when discussing a post Dean made on the site The Daily Beast in which he defended historian Stanley I. Kutler from criticism of the latter’s transcriptions of the Nixon tapes, I noted that in it he said he planned to reissue his first book Blind Ambition, his own account of Watergate, with new material. That book will be republished tomorrow, with a new afterword which, according to a press release promoting the reissue, “truly closes the case on Watergate.”

It would seem a sure bet that one or another of our major conglomerate publishing imprints would be keen to acquire Blind Ambition, given such a promise, but the book is not being reprinted by any of them – not even Simon & Schuster, which originally published it. Instead, the book, according to Al Kamen in the Washington Post, is being “privately published” by Polimedia, the author’s PR firm. The event at the Nixon Library is described as the reissue’s “launch” at the firm’s site.

Dean’s appearance in Yorba Linda is not being greeted with universal hosannas, as Michael Isikoff of Newsweek makes clear in this article. Robert Odle, who worked in the communications office of the Nixon White House (and was later administration director of the Committee to Re-Elect The President) says in it that inviting Dean to the Library is “like having Monica Lewinsky speak at the Clinton library on the anniversary of President Clinton’s impeachment.” (As it happens, Isikoff is the journalist who broke the Lewinsky story.)

And at the Washington Times, Susan Naulty, who was the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace’s archivist from the institution’s dedication in 1990 until 2003, explains why she believes Dean’s appearance is not appropriate. She says, in part:

[T]hanks to Mr. Nixon’s voluminous archives, scholars with a better understanding of the man and his career-long struggle to advance freedom over tyranny on the one hand, and with considerably more data regarding the congressional investigations directed against him on the other, may well begin to wonder who was the real Machiavelli in Watergate – the president or his accusers. If the latter, the lessons of that crisis have enormous relevance for us today – and for freedom-loving people everywhere and at all times.

One drawback of Ms. Naulty’s article is that it does not precisely explain how Dean will come to be in Yorba Linda tomorrow. He was invited to speak by the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, which is part of the federal National Archives and Records Administration, and which now operates the museum facility in Yorba Linda and will be transferring the Nixon presidential documents to the library facility next year from Maryland. The Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation (sponsor of TNN), which was in charge of the Library when it was a private institution, not part of the NARA presidential libraries system, from 1990 until 2007, was not consulted about Dean’s appearance and, as Isikoff points out, has expressed its disapproval of the invitation.

Ms. Naulty’s article has attracted several comments at the Times’s site. A rather interesting one, from “anonymous222,” refers to Dean’s involvement in the quest for the true identity of “Deep Throat,” the Watergate informant.

In 1975, Dean suggested DT was Earl Silbert, who was the prosecutor of the Watergate defendants in the early stages of the scandal. Then, in his 1982 book Lost Honor, Dean devoted a number of pages to arguing, rather unconvincingly, that Gen. Alexander Haig was DT.

Twenty years later, Dean wrote an e-book published by Salon.com, Unmasking Deep Throat. Several articles, before the book was published, claimed that Dean would identify Washington lawyer Jonathan Rose as DT, which reportedly prompted Rose to inform Salon that he would sue for defamation in such an event. But when the book finally came off the cyberpress (or whatever one would call it), Dean instead suggested DT was a composite of more than one of Bob Woodward’s sources. (After Mark Felt “confessed” to being DT in 2005, Dean told Keith Olbermann of MSNBC he still held to the composite theory.)

And then there are the still-murky events of 2003. In that year, a group of student journalists at the University of Illinois came to the much-publicized conclusion that Fred Fielding, White House counsel for two presidents (and Dean’s deputy in the Nixon years), was DT. At the time it was reported that Dean had gone to the trouble of personally contacting some of the students to explain to them why Fielding could not be DT.

But some questions remain. As Olbermann observed in 2005, according to All The President’s Men, DT talked to Woodward about the famous 18 1/2 minute gap in the tapes before it became public knowledge. Felt, who had left the FBI, would have been unlikely to know about the gap. Fielding, who was still White House deputy counsel at the time, would have known. (Rather intriguingly, Fielding’s Wikipedia entry incorrectly states that his work in the Nixon Administration ended in 1972.)

So, were I in Yorba Linda tomorrow, one question I’d like to pose to Dean would be: Why did you try to steer the Illini journalists-to-be from the conclusion Fielding was Deep Throat? There are some other questions that come to mind, and tomorrow I hope to discuss them here.

Michael Ramirez Talks Cartoons

June 14, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Book Review, Nixon Library events, TNN TV | 1 Comment 

Michael Ramirez, the Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist and opinion editor for Investor’s Business Daily was at the Nixon Library Wednesday where  he discussed the current political landscape and presented a slide show of some of his award winning cartoons.

Afterward, Ramirez signed copies of his new book Everyone Has The Right To My Opinion.

He also gave TNN TV some time for an interview,  discussing the impact of editorial cartooning on the political process:

Obama’s First 100 Days At The Nixon Library

May 8, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Barack Obama, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events | Leave a Comment 

From left to right: KRLA host Kevin James, pictured with talk show hosts Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, and Hugh Hewitt.

Last Monday the Nixon Library hosted KRLA 870 and Salem Communications syndicated radio talk show hosts Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, and Hugh Hewitt. The three evaluated and graded President Barack Obama’s performance during his first 100 days at the helm. MC’ing the event was local KRLA host Kevin James.

Mike Gallagher gives President Obama an “F” for his first 100 days.

“I give him a resounding F,” said Gallagher of the President. “He is a radical tax and spender.”  On foreign policy, Gallagher also pointed to Obama’s stance on interrogation as a snapshot of how Obama views the world and America’s enemies. Gallagher concluded, “he has absolutely made us less safe.”

Dennis Prager critized President Obama for his cordiality with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Dennis Prager was a bit more generous giving the President a “C.” But Prager’s most staunch criticism was in foreign affairs and his embrace of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at last month’s Latin American conference. “When the President grabs Hugo Chavez like a long lost buddy, it hurts me because of the people of Venezuela,” “Obama doesn’t owe an apology to the American people, but the Venezuelan people.”

Prager also believes Obama has made us less safe through his and the left’s willingness to cede American superiority to the United Nations.  “The U.N. is a moral cess pool.” Prager said.  “The world is a safer place solely because of the United States.” “I don’t care if the world like us,” “it is better to be feared than loved.”

Prager also believed that the White House is promoting fear and is pessimistic about what he thinks will be permanent change to the character of the American economy. “We didn’t undo anything of FDR’s,” Prager said.

Hugh Hewitt gave the President a “C”, with A’s for Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, National Security adviser Jim Jones, and for having a wonderful family. But an “F” for everything else.

Hewitt gave President Obama an “A” for Afghanistan, an “A” for keeping General David Petraeus, an “A” for making General James Jones National Security Adviser, an “A” for having a wonderful family, and an “F” for everything else. Hewitt’s final grade: a C. The former Nixon Library director was also concerned about the direction of foreign policy, “Nixon would say foreign policy matters most,” stressing the safety of Israel and stability of Pakistan. But Hewitt also acknowledged that Obama “isn’t fully formed” arguing that  he will inevitably mature into his role as Commander-in-Chief by spending a lot more time with the “self-sacrificing” troops of the U.S. military.

Hewitt was more optimistic about the resilience of the American economy contradicting Prager’s claims by listing off many of the now defunked alphabet soup programs of the New Deal era. He also contended that time and again the American economy has “stepped up” to overshadow the existence of big government.

RN’s grandson, Christopher Nixon Cox, also discussed Obama’s first 100 days and what his grandfather would do differently in terms of foreign policy.

In the audience was the President’s brother, Ed Nixon, and the President’s grandson Christopher Nixon Cox. Cox also spoke about Obama’s first 100 days in a speech on Tuesday, but not before speaking to TNN about how his grandfather would help diffuse tension in this multi-polar, multi-nuclear and very dangerous world:

Obama’s Enemies Guest List

December 8, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Nixon Library events, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

Elaborating on points he made last Monday at the Nixon Library, Dick Morris, writing with Eileen McGann, outlines the risks the PE runs by giving top jobs to past and perhaps future opponents.

The Corps, And The Corps, And The Corps

October 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Book Review, Military, Nixon Library events | 5 Comments 

Vietnam War scholar Bob Sorley, third-generation West Point graduate, brought his copy of the 1952-53 Bugle Notes (indispensable handbook for each class of plebes, or freshmen, at the U.S. Military Academy) to the Nixon Library last week. He was in Yorba Linda to talk about his new book, Honor Bright: History And Origins Of the West Point Honor Code And System. Copies of Honor Bright were on sale. The Bugle Notes were not. Sorley would just as soon give you his right arm. The well-worn volume contains this answer to the question of what advantages an Army career has to offer, which he read out to his audience:

The answer is, paradoxically, practically none; [but,] in another sense, everything that is worthwhile in life. It depends entirely on your viewpoint….If you measure success by things accomplished, by a niche well filled, by the gratification of duty well and faithfully done, if your joy in life finds fulfillment in playing the game for the game’s own sake, of winning the love and respect of the men serving under you…, if you do not count the work, the trouble, the cost to yourself and do not stop to think of where the credit will go, but only of the success of the team, then in the Army you will find contentment.

Bolstering this countercultural vision of community and mission-critical interdependence is West Point’s honor code: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” Cadets violated the code most famously in 1951, when 90 were dismissed (with the personal acquiescence of President Truman) after one revealed the existence of an academic cheating ring designed to help members of the football team, and in 1976, when an instructor read this on a cadet’s computer science paper: “This is not entirely my own work.” Over 150 cadets were involved that time, though many were permitted to return after a redemptive year off. Sorley says the returning cohort did just as well making colonel (an important benchmark in an Army career) as those who weren’t involved in the scandal.

The friendly and phlegmatic scholar choked up just once, and just a little, as he talked about his and Virginia Sorley’s (his wife and a former CIA librarian) friendship with West Point graduate Dawn Halfaker, severely injured while leading troops at Baquba, Iraq in June 2004. Among many other activities, Halfaker is now vice president of the Wounded Warrior Project. Recruited to play basketball at West Point, she had no special calling to military service until she arrived at the academy and got to know her instructors and coaches and her brother and sister cadets. Sorley said she told him later, “I’d found my tribe. These were the people I wanted to be with.”

After Sorley’s talk, the last question was posed by Orange Countian Lee Hobbs, who’d brought his son, Tobin, West Point ‘96, a veteran of service in Bosnia and now a Chapman University law student as well as a major in the Army reserves. Such is the bond in the long grey line that, before the applause had died, Bob Sorley was making his way up the aisle to shake the hands of a fellow cadet and his proud father.

 

McCain, McCain, And Vietnam

October 22, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Iraq War, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Richard Nixon, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

Boston Globe:

Admiral McCain [Sen. McCain's father] was the subject of Nixon’s ire because he had complained to the White House that Nixon was imposing too many restrictions on his ability to bomb North Vietnam. The admiral soon went into retirement, keeping private his disagreements with Nixon and publicly praising the president’s “Vietnamization” strategy, in which the United States cut back its involvement as control of the war was gradually turned over to the South Vietnamese.

Now, as Senator John McCain seeks the presidency, he often says that the lessons from the Vietnam War helped shape his views on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But what is little-noted is that one of his key lessons came from what he perceived as a failure by his father. Senator McCain has excoriated the way his father failed to make public his misgivings about Nixon’s Vietnamization strategy. If the older McCain and other commanders had spoken up, his son believes, it might have changed the course of the war.

Assuming reporter Michael Kranish is being attentive to the nuances of the latter years of the Vietnam War, it’s hard to believe that Admiral McCain really thought that more bombing during 1969-73 would’ve been politically sustainable. The campaigns President Nixon did order in May and December 1972 prompted massive criticism while nonetheless blunting the North Vietnamese invasion that spring and, late in the year, setting in motion the events that led to the Paris Peace Accords and the return of John the younger and his fellow POWs.

As for Vietnamization, whether or not Admiral McCain thought it was a failure, historian Bob Sorley (coming to the Nixon Library on Oct. 24) has argued in A Better War that the policy succeeded, only to be sold out by a Democratic Watergate Congress in 1973-75 which let our allies in South Vietnam run out of bullets. RN would’ve been the first to say that he shared in that debacle by letting Watergate get out of control and losing his leverage over Congress. As a result, Vietnamization wasn’t given a chance to work. The next President’s challenge: An Iraqification that is given a chance.

Library Diplomacy

September 17, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under China, Economic issues, International Affairs, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events | Leave a Comment 

At the Nixon Library on Tuesday, the United States and China arrived at major commercial agreements at the 19th annual JCCT (US-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade) after extensive talks led by Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez along with Trade Representative Susan Schwab and Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer representing the United States, and Vice Premier Wang Qishan representing China.

Among other items, of particular note was Vice Premier Wang Qishan’s (pictured above) speech during the afternoon press briefing. Qishan announced that China would lift its ban on U.S. beef imports, albeit by compelling the U.S. to consider more stringent regulatory health guidelines. Qishan also announced that China would also be lifting the ban on Avian flu related poultry in six U.S. states, and that it will lower the capital requirement for U.S. businesses by 50 percent. In sum, he re-affirmed China’s central commercial principle of its 30 year open-door economic policy:

We will follow the model of socialism with Chinese features.

Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez (above) also honored the 37th President’s diplomatic legacy in his remarks this afternoon:

Nixon and Mao started the fastest growing and largest economic relationship we have ever seen.

Today, two-way trade can be estimated at over $380 billion up from the $4 billion when China inaugurated its open economy 30 years ago.

Secretary Gutierrez also announced other “robust outcomes” from the conference including bilateral cooperation in solving statistical discrepancies in trade data and the establishment of 12 working groups to address – in part – issues involving intellectual property rights.

Secretary Gutierrez embraces Vice Premier Qishan during a light hearted exchange.

In light of more turbulent times on Wall Street, Secretary Gutierrez also addressed the impact of U.S. trade policy with China, emphasizing the importance of China’s $65 billion export market, and vital investment flow.

U.S. Trade Ambassador Susan Schwab also gave a short press briefing.

Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer (pictured signing one of many agreements with a Chinese trade official), concluded the closing ceremony on a hopeful note:

Bring people together by trade is the most beautiful thing we can do.

For more information, check out the Department of Commerce’s outcome fact sheet from yesterday’s conference.

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