Whittier College, Home of Dirty Tricks, and Richard M. Nixon Reconsidered


When it came to making a decision about where to go to college, Dick Nixon, an innocent Whittier Quaker boy, had to settle for local Whittier College - because he couldn’t afford to accept a Harvard scholarship that didn’t include travel and living expenses. The sense of disappointment the young Nixon carried with him onto the Whittier College campus was just the beginning…

At Whittier College, the young Quaker naturally sought acceptance in the Societies, which dominated social life on campus. When an upper class Society rejected Nixon, he channeled his deepening disappointment into the founding of a new Society, the Orthogonians. As the City of Whittier has become a Hispanic-majority city and Whittier College has transformed itself into a Hispanic-Serving Institution, the Orthogonian Society founded by a poor underdog among upper class youth has become a diversity student-dominated one.

Nixon’s insecurities and disappointments drove him to solutions that exhaled resentment even as they embraced known wrongs. When voters rejected Nixon’s 1962 California gubernatorial bid, after he had lost to JFK in the 1960 presidential contest, the loser’s “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” reaction brought to mind nothing so much as caricatures of the beatings Nixon took on the Whittier College football field to prove himself to those who would never accept him. And, of course, America certainly would have Nixon to kick around, again.

Reminiscent of the scene in 'Frost/Nixon' in which Dick Nixon is portrayed as making a drunken late night telephone call to David Frost, Nixon was inebriated when he made the call in which he made that famous "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" statement, according to David Pietrusza, author of 1960, LBJ v JFK v Nixon: The Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies. .

Nixon returned to Whittier after graduating 3rd in his class at Duke and still not finding an opening in New York to practice law. During this period Nixon became deeply involved in Whittier College operations and perfected his modus operandi, Dirty Tricks, as he won election as a U. S. representative and then senator by unfairly smearing his opponents. “Of course I knew Jerry Voorhis wasn’t a Communist,” Nixon admitted. “But…I had to win… The important thing is to win.” This self-destructive drive to throw away one’s chance for glory by cheating seems to have seeped into as it now oozes out of Whittier’s pores.

Nixon's disgraceful campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U. S. Senate, a woman Whittier College should today hold up as a role model for young women, again centered on completely dishonestly casting his opponent as a Communist. In reality, the House voting records of Nixon and Douglas were more similar than different. Nevertheless, Nixon called Douglas the Pink Lady, and tastelessly said she was "pink right down to her underwear". It was Helen Gahagan Douglas who tagged Nixon with Tricky Dick, which he deservedly carried to his grave.

Dwight D. Eisenhower remains one of America's most popular presidents (the campaign buttons read 'I Like Ike'), and he never favored Dick Nixon. When asked by a reporter what Nixon had contributed to the Eisenhower administration, Ike said he couldn't think of anything! When Eisenhower was asked who he voted for in the 1960 presidential election, the outgoing President held up the face of his watch, showing miniature portraits of his grandchildren on its face, and said that he had voted for them. Ike just would not endorse Dick Nixon.

Nixon would go on to embarrass IKE (Nixon evaded personal consequences for illegal campaign contributions with the now infamous 'Checkers Speech' and blaming who else but Communists, when in fact a California Republican had gone to the press) and lose to Kennedy and then Pat Brown, only to scramble over the bodies to the very top, winning the presidency, a second time with a plan so secret even Nixon didn’t know it, and then all those Dirty Tricks caught up with the prototypical post-Quaker-affiliation Whittier College graduate. Nixon’s fear of the wages of sin was the consequence of his many sins. For Nixon, to win was to be accepted, to be right, and he never learned better.

Whittier College, a macrocosm of Nixon’s flaws, has never known quite what to do with its most infamous graduate, one year refusing to house Nixon archives, another wildly imagining that Henry Kissinger might provide some legitimacy to the unshakable Nixon albatross of a legacy. Evidently, Whittier College diversity doesn’t extend to Chile, but any Chilean student’s open letter to the campus paper would doubtlessly mysteriously be lost on the way to publication even if such a letter was sent.

Whittier College shaped and was shaped by Richard Milhous Nixon, who came to campus an innocent Quaker boy and left as the ultimately Not So Slick Dick. Whittier College’s chance for glory is to reconsider Whittier College, home of Dirty Tricks, and Richard M. Nixon, to by inspirational self-analysis and self-improvement help a nation recover from the shame its Dirty Tricks brought to us all, and instead of taking that high road, Whittier College has, so much like Nixon himself, instead lunged self-destructively onward by Dirty Tricks as usual.

Nixon talked about his formative experiences. “What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid.” Continuing, “ If you are reasonably intelligent and if your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance while those who have everything are sitting on their fat butts.”

Of course, Nixon never changed that upper class view of him. It’s unfortunate that he would do anything to try to do so, and that Whittier College still can’t face itself. Until Whittier College does take an honest look at, change and heal itself, it will continue to be at bottom more an inglorious institution of lower learning than the fine liberal arts college it wishes us to believe it is despite history.

See Chuck Fager's expansive review of Jonathon Aitken's ' Nixon: A Life ' and telling insights into what went wrong at Whittier College and for the young Dick Nixon: http://www.kimopress.com/nixon.html (and learn about the Quaker Factor, why Azusa Pacific is a University and Whittier isn't)

NIXON QUIZ

1) Did Richard Nixon fail to include being caught breaking & entering a Duke Law School professor's office, and an arrest while an undergraduate at Whittier College, in a FBI employment application?

2) If you answered Yes to Question 1): Why was Nixon arrested while a Whittier College student?

NIXON QUIZ Results: Partial Credit

John F. Kennedy waited hours for Richard M. Nixon to concede defeat in the 1960 presidential election. At length, Nixon had his press secretary Robert Finch concede. JFK said then that Nixon was going out the same way he came in, with no class, much like his alma mater Whittier College.

As for Watergate, it appears the break-in that brought down a president was only to see what might be in Larry O'Brien's files related to Howard Hughes' 'contributions' to Nixon and 'loans' to his family members. It seems Hughes not only gave money to Dick Nixon but also to Donald Nixon, a 'loan' to underwrite Nixon's Burgers. The criminal cover up of the criminal break-in made some crooked sense, but the Watergate break-in itself made no sense. Seeking to deal with an imaginary October Surprise during his last campaign, the pathologically insecure Dick Nixon provided the rope that would be used to hang his political career, and, more, show him for who and what he really was after all, a crook.

Meghan Lee, a National Archives and Records Administration Archivist at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum, informs us that, "In 1959, Richard Nixon told biographer Bela Kornitzer of the break-in. It had not been reported to that time." If that was indeed the first admission by Nixon of his breaking & entering a Duke Law School office, then he couldn't have included the incident in his FBI employment application. Nixon's FBI application itself would provide the definitive clarification. As it is, we have Richard Nixon's word, but also the low probability that soon to be dubbed 'Tricky Dick' would volunteer the act when it was believed no disciplinary or criminal record of the break-in existed.

Nixon biographer Roger Morris has Dick Nixon and two accomplices breaking and entering a Duke Law School Dean's office to check grades before their public posting. The facts and purpose of the break-in would seem least unreliably arrived at through interviewing the accomplices with Nixon no longer in a position to influence them.

Meghan Lee also reports that, "There is no mention of Richard Nixon being arrested while attending Whittier College in either processed archive collections or in secondary sources such as Stephen Ambrose's Nixon", and suggests searches of local historical society and police archives. More compelling than records, or the lazy ('serial plagiarist') Ambrose, in denial of such an arrest, though, are the observations of Nixon's Whittier contemporary Allie Darling Lowe, whose father helped Nixon establish himself in Whittier, and whose brother Nixon had to apologize for being intimidated during Nixon's dirty tricks campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U. S. Senate.

According to the 92 year old Whittier native Darling Lowe, in a 2007 Ken Braiterman interview, Dick Nixon dated the Whittier P. D. Chief's daughter from high school on through Nixon's Whittier undergraduate years (she reportedly broke up with Nixon, when he was going off to Duke Law School and suggested his steady girlfriend for years buy herself an engagement ring). An arrest or surviving record of an arrest of Dick Nixon while he was an undergrad at Whittier College, therefore, is extremely unlikely, nor apparently would Nixon's relationship with the Chief's daughter have been likely to survive an arrest record.

NARA's Archivist Lee also relates that, "According to Ambrose, Jonathon Aitken, and Nixon's own memoirs, J. Edgar Hoover later disclosed to Vice-President Nixon that the appropriation had been cut off for the position he had applied for." Hoover's statement will remain the official explanation, unless it's shown that the FBI troubled to learn about the Duke incident, and/or any Nixon arrest. The problem, of course, is sources.

Academician Stephen Ambrose has been proven a serial plagiarist. Jonathon Aitken was a Tory MP and Minister in the U. K., until he was sentenced to prison for perjury and perversion of justice, and branded a "serial liar". Nixon, not surprisingly, seems to have liked Aitken, granting him rare interviews as well as answering his submitted questions. J. Edgar Hoover was an old queen whose entire life was a lie, who as the Director of the FBI declared there was no organized crime in America, among other howlers. And Tricky Dick isn't the kind of nickname one picks up for being honest. Strange bedfellows is one thing, but dishonest bedfellows is just too much.

So far, it's confessed and accepted that Nixon was guilty of breaking & entering at Duke, and circumstantial evidence supports Nixon having omitted any mention of that incident in his FBI application, and it's obvious enough that the FBI didn't want Nixon or didn't want Nixon enough to find him a position or another position in the Bureau. There is also good cause to suggest any local arrest of Nixon while he was an undergraduate at Whittier College is as unlikely as it is likely any such arrest record would have been expunged if it had been made.

Nixon, later conducting City of Whittier Attorney's business, would have ample opportunity to disappear any such arrest record. The infamous erasure of 18 minutes of a subpoenaed White House tape recording shows Richard Nixon was far from above destroying or having evidence destroyed, just as he was far from above fabricating or having documents fabricated.

Jerry Brown, while California Secretary of State in the early 1970s, before Watergate revelations compelled Nixon to become our first President to have to resign, "exposed President Nixon's use of falsely notarized documents to improperly earn a large tax deduction."

What's clear is that the young Dick Nixon was indeed the prototypical post-Quaker Whittier College Dirty Tricks graduate, and matured into a prototypical embarrassment and disgrace, a criminal, an albatross. And what has changed at Whittier College?


Thankfully, things have finally changed at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, now under the direction of NARA's Timothy Naftali and staffed by diligent archivists like Meghan Lee. We look forward to a steady flow of Richard Nixon revelations, some of which will reveal as well still more about rogue private liberal arts Whittier College, which, like its infamous graduate Richard M. Nixon, will, finally, have to face the consequences of its wrongs.

Nixon Fountain Damaged: Vandalism or Symbolic Action?

The Richard M. Nixon fountain, on the Whittier College campus so-called North Lawn, was vandalized recently. The answer to whether this act of vandalism was a random expression of disenchantment with the Whittier College experience or a politically-motivated action, or both, may be seen in how the Nixon memorial was vandalized...

According to Dean of Students Jeanne Ortiz, the Nixon fountain was purposefully clogged and then detergent was poured in, which resulted in the fountain pump producing soap suds instead of circulating water - until the pump burned out. The pump cost $400 to replace. It only took College maintenance workers a week to effect the repair, which could be a Whittier College repair record, excepting the covering over of anti-administration graffiti sprayed on campus walls last year.

This may have been an act of vandalism, but most evidently saw the act as politically and morally symbolic, as the equivalent of washing out Tricky Dick's mouth with soap, or cleansing the disgraced Whittier College alumnus infamous for Dirty Tricks and being the only President in U. S. history to have to resign. Despite the fact that the Nixon fountain is passed day and night by Whittier College students, administrators, faculty, staff, and visitors, it wasn't until a freshman sent an email to Dean Ortiz wondering what was up with the fountain that anything was done.

Dean Ortiz asks, "What can we do to create pride in our campus"? and points out that "...it's up to...students to show pride in the campus." While no one to whittiergate's knowledge has been apprehended for this act of vandalism or making this political statement, the use of soap suds suggests trying to clean up something in which pride cannot be taken, a stain, the glorification of Richard M. Nixon. How can anyone be proud of Richard M. Nixon? Why would anyone put a memorial fountain to Dick Nixon on a college campus? How could anyone expect a memorial to Dick Nixon on a college campus to not be repeatedly vandalized?

"Get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts
Don't steal, don't lift
20 years of schoolin'
and they put you on the day shift
Look out, kid,
they keep it all hid
Better jump down a manhole
Light yourself a candle
Don't wear sandals
and try to avoid the scandals
Don't wanna be a bum
you better chew gum
The pump don't work
'cause the Vandals took the handle"

- Bob Dylan

http://www.lyricstime.com/bob-dylan-subterranean-homesick-blues-lyrics.html

Whittier College, replace the Richard M. Nixon fountain and Fellowship with a Michael Heck fountain and Fellowship. President Richard M. Nixon ordered the Christmas Bombing of northern Vietnam that continued until there was no target of value left to bomb. Much decorated USAF pilot Michael Heck decided on that Christmas Eve that he could no longer participate in his President's, Command-in-Chief's, and fellow Whittier College alumnus Richard Nixon's horrifying disregard for innocent human life. And Whittier College builds and maintains against inevitable vandalism a memorial to Tricky Dick Nixon, rather than erect a memorial to a good man who served his nation and People, and all humanity, with more courage and honor than Dick Nixon could imagine. Welcome, to Whittier College, home of Dirty Tricks, where the Trustees and administrators never seem to learn better.

http://kenbraiterman.com/just-when-i-thought-i-knew-pat-and-richard-nixon/

http://kenbraiterman.com/just-when-i-thought-i-knew-pat-and-richard-nixon2/

http://kenbraiterman.com/republican-vp-spiro-agnew-was-richard-nixons-sarah-palin/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gahagan

What Happened to History? http://hnn.us/articles/969.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Aitken

Nixon tax fraud exposed: http://ag.ca.gov/ag/brown.php

Yet Another Nixon Lie and Its Human Cost...

' Vietnam Era General Cleared After 38 Years ' by Sharon Weinberger

USAF Gen. John Lavelle was (wrongly, as then-President Richard M. Nixon knew) removed from command and demoted in 1972. Lavelle died, still in disgrace, in 1979.

"The primary evidence clearing Lavelle came from tapes of Nixon that were released (by the National Archives) in 2007."

On the tapes "Nixon...makes repeated references to Lavelle, expressing remorse that he was punished for doing something that was authorized. In public, however, Nixon condemned Lavelle's actions."

http://www.aol.news.com/2010/08/04/vietnam-era-general-cleared-after-nearly-40-years/

Blind Nixon loyalists like Whittier College Trustee Geoffrey Shepard would do themselves and others a favor by looking at the lives of those who let Dick Nixon determine their fates. Geoff, time's running out for you to live your own life, don't go out a fool for a man who disgraced himself and his country, do something positive with what's left of your own life.


New Book Links Nixon to Rise of 'Scandal Culture'

A new book by University of Maryland Journalism Professor Mark Feldstein, ' Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture ' makes public some very interesting information...

Among Prof. Feldstein's findings, it seems there was a plot originating with Dick Nixon going through White House aide Chuck Colson (who has gained some notoriety for, like infamous former Whittier College student Nicola Jagessar's father Patrick, who went from youngest senior magistrate in the British Commonwealth to prison for perversion of justice and corruption convictions, claiming to have been Born Again while incarcerated) to Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt to murder columnist Jack Anderson, after spreading false rumors disparaging Anderson's character and threats failed to persuade Anderson to stop doing his job or newspapers from syndicating his column. This plot, like numerous other schemes hatched in the Nixon White House, fortunately, for the would-be perpetrators as well as intended victims, never came off.

One such scheme not investigated by Feldstein involved trying to put a dose of LSD in the soup of Pentagon Papers co-collector-releaser Daniel Ellsberg at a hotel just before he delivered a speech, in the hope that he'd appear incoherent and lose credibility, after a break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office failed to accomplish that objective. In the end, all that came of this was Nixon conspirators doing prison time for the psychiatrist's office break-in. (This ridiculous plan may have been hatched by G. Gordon Liddy, who came to Nixon's attention trying to make a name for himself trying to bust Timothy Leary, whom Nixon said was the most dangerous man in America, at the Hitchcock family's Millbrook estate while Liddy was the Dutchess County, N. Y., District Attorney.)

Feldstein does shed new light on a wide range of Nixon maneuvers, though. For example, Nixon arranged for a corruption investigation of George Wallace and his wife Lurleen to be discontinued so that Wallace could run for the presidency as a third party (American Independent Party) candidate, denying Nixon's principal opponent, Democrat Hubert Humphrey, so-called Solid South votes. (The South, since the end of our Civil War, had consistently voted for Democratic candidates, against the GOP, the party of Lincoln -except for rare third party candidates, like Strom Thurmond (running as the States' Rights Democrat, or Dixiecrat, candidate in 1948) - the racist senator who it turned out had fathered a child by the Thurmond family maid when he was 22 and the Black maid was just 16 - with which history Nixon was of course very familiar. Ronald Reagan later benefited by this rupture between the Democratic Party and Southern voters engineered by Nixon.)

Nixon's interaction with Wallace was quite a contrast with John F. Kennedy's: JFK ordered Wallace physically removed if necessary from the doorway of the University of Alabama so that African-Americans Vivian Malone and James Hood could become UA's first Black students (both earned PHDs from UA, and Malone was later honored by the University she helped integrate). Wallace later apologized for obstructing integration. Dick Nixon didn't apologize for any of his wrongdoing, apart from a singular general apologia gotten out of him by interviewer David Frost (dramatically portrayed in the film ' Nixon / Frost '.

Feldstein reminds us that it was White House aide Paul Butterfield's testimony that there was a voice-activated tape recording system operating in Nixon's office that caused the Supreme Court to shortly thereafter order what have become known as the Nixon Tapes to be produced as evidence. This led to the infamous 18 minute gap in a key tape, and then President Nixon's resignation, still the only presidential resignation in American history.

Prof. Feldstein says of the Nixon Tapes that they're "The gift that keeps on giving...". You can search for Feldstein and ' Poisoning the Press' at booktv.org for a talk by and interview with this author. ' Quaker Campus ' editors and writers should do so and see what journalism is about. Jack Anderson showed no fear of power, even when so darkly exercised by Dick Nixon, got the story and published it.

Nixon was infamous for his actions against the Press; for example, prompting the IRS to investigate the owners of the ' Los Angeles Times ' when he didn't like stories that paper printed. But Feldstein's account of a conspiracy to murder Jack Anderson, one of the most widely syndicated columnists of his day, is still shocking. Of perhaps greater impact, however, was Nixon trying to discredit those who disagreed with him. Nixon would've been pleased no doubt by Fox News, the eventual manifestation of a media development he said was needed and with which we are now afflicted.

Nixon never figured out that it was his own misdeeds, not any liberal or any other bias, that led to his downfall, nor could he appreciate the humor of his advisor Henry Kissinger's comment that "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

It's interesting that John F. Kennedy experimented with drugs (in addition to the prescribed chemical cocktails he had to take to combat pain from combat injuries), which he intended to place responsibility for with the HEW (the Department of Health, Education and Welfare), not with any law enforcement agency, and partied til the cows came home, and that the Press never embarrassed him on those accounts, while Nixon drank, sometimes at the worst times, but didn't really party, and started the dread DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), and yet was a favorite Press target. But then JFK respected and charmed the Press, neither of which Dick Nixon was ever accused.


To whittiergate: "The difference between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon was across the board, not just Kennedy's dry and Nixon's wet upper lips.

"Roman Catholic Kennedy was a hit at Congregationalist-founded Harvard, which Nixon couldn't afford and instead lost his moral compass at Whittier College.

"Both men served in the U. S. Navy during WWII, but while Nixon was taking money from fellow sailors well behind the lines, Kennedy was being recognized for saving fellow sailors' lives in action with a Purple Heart.

"Nixon's entrance into national politics was all about Dirty Tricks, about darkness and fear, while Kennedy's was inspirational, about courage, style, and wit.

"The difference between these two men is perhaps best illustrated by their respective reworkings of a sentiment expressed first it seems by Cicero:

"Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" continues to inspire sincere Americans decades after Kennedy spoke these words at his inauguration. Nixon's "...ask not what the government can do for me, but what can I do for myself" still inspires only derisive laughter, despite his arguably being closer to the typical American's pulse. But the role of presidents is not to give voice to a silent majority, but to inspire us to be and do more, to find our own voice and step into the light. Kennedy had charisma, Nixon didn't. But then charisma comes from leading."

Dick and Bebe Reconsidered ?

'Richard Nixon Had Gay Affair, 'Nixon's Dark Secrets' Claims':

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/27/richard-nixon-had-gay-affair_n_1171557.html

Review of long-time presidential journalist Don Fulsom's 'Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President'

Fulsom reports that Dick Nixon was a drunk and beat his wife, Pat. More, Fulsom writes that Nixon had an affair with Key Biscayne, Florida banker Charles 'Bebe' Rebozo, alleged to have been involved with the mafia and in money laundering. (Dick and Bebe? Edgar and Clyde? Gays coming out could well result in a net loss of gay power and influence.) Nixon shunned gays, whom he said were "ill", while Jack Kennedy smiled easily for the camera with Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams, and Kennedy turns out to be the straight man and Nixon the...?

See http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/02/14/gay-literary-greats-who-rewrote-america/ for Vidal, Williams, and Kennedy photo

Ironically enough, the gay-oriented Queerty web site quotes Dick Nixon as saying gays shouldn't be "in places of high trust."

To whittiergate: "I've heard older people say Nixon was a queer duck, but their emphasis was on duck. Maybe it should've been on queer?"

To whittiergate: "Seems like a cheap shot after a guy's dead to come out and say he was a drunken wife beater and had a gay affair. Anyway, those things would be pretty far down on Nixon's list of sins."


Nixon Narrative Filmography

'Nixon' (1995) Starring Anthony Hopkins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_film

'The Assassination of Richard Nixon' (2004) Starring Sean Penn

http://www.slate.com/id/2111464 'Tricky Dick Flicks: The trouble with Nixon movies (including Sean Penn's new one)' by David Greenberg, Dec. 28, 04

'Frost/Nixon ' (2008) Starring Frank Langella

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost/Nixon_(film)

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