↩ the History · a speech, filed

I Am Not a Crook

Richard Nixon, questioned by the AP managing editors · Disney's Contemporary Resort, Orlando · November 17, 1973
text: The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara · a work of the United States government, in the public domain · the Smyser question and its answer, complete
colour carries the act's function; a dashed underline marks a predicted misfire; hover or focus any span for its filing

Q. Richard Smyser, from the Oak Ridger in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Senator Mark Hatfield said recently that we demand so much of a President, we ask him to play so many roles that no man can hold that kind of responsibility without having to share that responsibility with all Americans.

To what extent do you think that this explains possibly how something like Watergate can occur?

THE PRESIDENT. I could stand here before this audience and make all kinds of excuses, and most of you probably would understand because you are busy also. Nineteen hundred seventy-two was a very busy year for me. It was a year when we had the visit to China. It was a year when we had the visit to Moscow and the first limited nuclear ban on defensive weapons, you recall, as well as some other very significant events.

It was a year, too, when we had the very difficult decisions on May 8, the bombing and mining of Haiphong and then the negotiations and then in December, of course, the very, very difficult--perhaps the most difficult--decision I made of the December bombing, which did lead to the breakthrough and the uneasy peace, but it is peace with all of the Americans home, all of our POW's home, and peace at least for a while in that period.

Now, during that period of time, frankly, I didn't manage the campaign. I didn't run the campaign. People around me didn't bring things to me that they probably should have, because I was frankly just too busy trying to do the Nation's business to run the politics.

My advice to all new politicians, incidentally, is always run your own campaigns. I used to run mine, and I Was always criticized for it, because, you know, whenever you lose you are always criticized for running your own campaign. But my point is, Senator Hatfield is correct. Whether you are a Senator or a Congressman, you are sometimes very busy, you don't watch these things. When you are President, you don't watch them as closely as you might. And on that, I say if mistakes are made, however, I am not blaming the people down below. The man at the top has got to take the heat for all of them.

[To the next questioner] Let me just respond, if I could, sir, before going to your question--I will turn left and then come back to the right; I don't want to tilt either way at the moment, as you can be sure--since the question was raised a moment ago about my tax payments.

I noted in some editorials and perhaps in some commentaries on television, a very reasonable question. They said, you know, "How is it that President Nixon could have a very heavy investment in a fine piece of property in San Clemente and a big investment in a piece of property in Florida," in which I have two houses, one which I primarily use as an office and the other as a residence, and also an investment in what was my mother's home, not very much of a place but I do own it--those three pieces of property.

I want to say first, that is all I have. I am the first President since Harry Truman who hasn't owned any stock since ever I have been President. I am the first one who has not had a blind trust since Harry Truman. Now, that doesn't prove that those who owned stocks or had blind trusts did anything wrong. But I felt that in the Presidency it was important to have no question about the President's personal finances, and I thought real estate was the best place to put it.

But then, the question was raised by good editorial writers--and I want to respond to it because some of you might be too polite to ask such an embarrassing question--they said, "Now, Mr. President, you earned $800,000 when you were President. Obviously, you paid at least half that much or could have paid half that much in taxes or a great deal of it-how could you possibly have had the money? Where did you get it?"

And then, of course, overriding all of that is the story to the effect that I have a million dollars in campaign funds, which was broadly printed throughout this country with retractions not quite getting quite as much play as the printing of the first, and particularly not on television. The newspapers did much better than television in that respect, I should point out.

And second, they said, "How is it that as far as this money is concerned, how is it possible for you to have this kind of investment when all you earned was $800,000 as President?"

Well, I should point out I wasn't a pauper when I became President. I wasn't very rich as Presidents go. But you see, in the 8 years that I was out of office--first, just to put it all out and I will give you a paper on this, we will send it around to you, and these figures I would like you to have, not today, but I will have it in a few days--when I left office after 4 years as a Congressman, e years as a Senator, and 8 years at $45,000 a year as Vice President, and after stories had been written, particularly in the Washington Post to the effect that the [Vice] President had purchased a mansion in Wesley Heights and people wondered where the money came from, you know what my net worth was? Forty-seven thousand dollars total, after 14 years of Government service, and a 1958 Oldsmobile that needed an overhaul.

Now, I have no complaints. In the next 8 years, I made a lot of money. I made $250,000 from a book and the serial rights which many of you were good enough to purchase, also. In the practice of law--and I am not claiming I was worth it, but apparently former Vice Presidents or Presidents are worth a great deal to law firms--and I did work pretty hard.

But also in that period, I earned between $100,000 and $250,000 every year.

So that when I, in 1968, decided to become a candidate for President, I decided to clean the decks and to put everything in real estate. I sold all my stock for $300,000--that is all I owned. I sold my apartment in New York for $300,000--I am using rough figures here. And I had $100,000 coming to me from the law firm.

And so, that is where the money came from. Let me just say this, and I want to say this to the television audience: I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service--I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.

The divergences

"Well, I am not a crook." — the speaker files an Assertion, a statement of fact about himself offered to a named television audience; a listener files an Avowal, reflexive, constituting the self that the preceding eight hundred words of real-estate accounting were assembled to support. They part on target. The archive's resignation address performs the same move in the same voice the following August — "I have never been a quitter," spoken at the moment of quitting — and there the occasion supplies the counter-evidence. Here the room supplies none, which is why the reflexive filing had to survive on the accounting alone.

"And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice." — supporters file an Assertion; the special prosecutor's office files a Lie. They part on orientation, reality against deception, and this page cannot settle it: the catalogue's Lie needs the speaker's own knowledge, and no line here supplies it. The archive supplies a second page instead. On March 21 of the same year the same man was told that continued blackmail "will compound the obstruction of justice situation," said "Right.," and worked out with his counsel where a million dollars in cash could be got. Eight months and a lectern separate the two texts, and a reader can walk from one to the other. The Hotel Commodore page holds the same problem in a stricter room — two men under oath, a contradiction no arrangement of words dissolves, and no author for it inside the transcript.

"because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook." — one audience files a Frame-set and its answer, a fair question posed so that it can be met; another reads the pair backward, where the denial is what the question exists to license. They part on target. The noun enters the record from the man denying it: no questioner in this text says "crook," and the phrase outlived the presidency because the denial carried its own frame with it. Under that frame the standing question about the administration is the President's personal honesty, which the real-estate accounting can answer. The question Richard Smyser had asked was about Watergate.

"Forty-seven thousand dollars total, after 14 years of Government service, and a 1958 Oldsmobile that needed an overhaul." — the page files a Status bid, keyed to standing, claiming a rank among men who left public office richer; an editor in the hall files plain disclosure, a number he could check by Monday. They part on orientation. The Oldsmobile decides it: the car is inside the forty-seven thousand and adds nothing to the arithmetic, and the sentence spends its last clause reaching for it. The answer measures him against other Presidents three times before this figure arrives, twice against Truman by name.

"I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited" — one audience files an Apology and hears a President conceding fault on camera; another files an Assertion with its object removed, since no mistake is named, nobody is named as injured, and the possessive turns the mistakes into something owned. They part on function. The concession is what buys the denial: everything before the "but" is vague and everything after it is absolute. The resignation address makes the same trade in the same order — "if some of my judgments were wrong--and some were wrong--they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the Nation."

"The man at the top has got to take the heat for all of them." — the hall files a Promise, a President accepting responsibility for his campaign; the grammar files an Assertion about how offices work. They part on function. There is no first person in the sentence, no act named and no date set, and the sentence closing the paragraph before it has already located the failure with "people around me." What the answer offers where a commitment would go is a maxim that binds nobody.

"People around me didn't bring things to me that they probably should have" against "I am not blaming the people down below." — read narrow, an account of how paper moved and a courtesy extended to subordinates; read wide, an accusation and its withdrawal six sentences apart, with the accusation left standing on the page. They part on scope. The repair names the reading it wants blocked and retracts nothing, and the conditional it travels in — "if mistakes are made" — leaves unsaid what nobody is being blamed for. On the March tape filed in this archive the people around him arrive one at a time and by name — Mitchell, Magruder, Krogh, Kalmbach, LaRue — and the roll call is a list of exposures.