Nixon tactics anything but ‘nicey-nice’

DISGRACED former US president Richard Nixon and his 1972 re-election campaign tried to tie Democrats to the mob, gay liberation and even slavery, according to newly released papers and tapes.

In one tactic, detailed in an August 1972 memo, an aide reports to chief of staff HR Haldeman on setting up an “apparatus” to comb through lists of McGovern’s staff and contributors for “left- wing mob connections”.

This was two months after the break-in at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex.

Another memo recommended looking for TV footage of an apparent Democratic debate over a “Gay Lib” plank in that party’s platform. “It would make excellent footage in a union hall during the campaign,” wrote political aide Gordon Strachan.

Concerned with the “the whole warmth business” and being “nicey-nice”, Nixon wrote in 1970, he wrote an 11-page, single-spaced memo detailing his acts of kindness to staff and strangers.

Officials released 78,000 documents and 11-and-a-half hours of taped conversations from Nixon’s presidency as part of a transfer of control of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace institution from private interests to the government yesterday.

The new material shows a drive to taint the Democratic ticket of George McGovern and running mate Sargent Shriver by any means in 1974.

McGovern, who will be 85 this month, said yesterday the tactics were “another example of how the Nixon administration drifted away from both common sense and decency”.