New files were made publicly available yesterday from the Nixon Presidential Materials by the Nixon Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California. If there aren’t any smoking guns, or crass examples of Nixon behaving badly, there are documents that can help fill in some gaps, and connect some dots.
For one, there are several memos between Nixon aides H.R. (Bob) Haldeman (Chief of Staff), Charles Colson, Gordon Strachan, and Dwight Chapin about Frank Sinatra. Could Sinatra, who by this time is releasing Greatest Hits collections, be seduced to endorse Nixon in time for the 1972 election? The Sinatra-related materials released yesterday begin with September, 1971, and go through February, 1972.
Vice President Spiro Agnew enjoyed spending time with Sinatra at his Palm Springs house, as well as with Bob Hope, with whom Agnew was especially close. Hope let him into the circle of friends he’d call early in the morning with new jokes.
So the administration knew they had an entry. But the first new document is a memo from Haldeman to Strachan checking on a rumor that Ed Muskie, Democrat Presidential candidate, used Sinatra’s plane recently. This was laid to rest two days later, when Strachan, quoting an Agnew aide, assured Haldeman that “Sinatra is still one of us,” and that the plan was owned by Sinatra and a friend, and it was the friend who ok’d Muskie’s use.
But then, Colson writes a long, confidential, memo that October outlining steps to lure Sinatra closer to the Nixon camp. (PDF) The administration should set up a meeting with the singer and the President, because
“We understand Sinatra to be a very deep thinking and
well informed person, who will want to discuss
important substantive subjects with the President
rather than engage in light conversation.”
This meeting of the minds, with Sinatra and Nixon discussing Vietnam, Communism, and school busing, would be a success due to the President’s undeniable “ability to charm people on a personal basis.” You can read the rest of the memo, but the upshot was to be that if the steps were followed, “we are relatively certain to have completed our seduction of Frank Sinatra.” The memos that follow are inconclusive on whether this meeting was set up, but, it would seem, something did happen.
Maurice Stans
By next February, an accountant named Maurice Stans left his position as commerce secretary to become the finance chairman for the Finance Committee to Re-Elect the President, which was part of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Stans was in charge of a slush fund, according to J. Anthony Lukas’s Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years, which maintained no public records. Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods did keep a list, however, and while she claimed it was to keep track of invitations to social functions, Lukas added, “there is some evidence that it was used to dispense more tangible favors.” Donations to this fund were usually in cash, and Stans and his assistants worked madly to build the account before April 7, when a new campaign finance law would go into effect.
What does this have to do with Frank Sinatra? He allegedly contributed $100,000 in cash ($509,000 adjusted for inflation) to the fund in April, 1972, according to Gus Russo’s floridly written 2006 history of the Chicago Outfit, Supermob. One of Sinatra’s friends was Angelo DeCarlo, whom the FBI claimed to be a hit man (or as they put it, a “methodical gangland executioner.”) DeCarlo was serving a 12-year prison sentence for extortion. An Agnew aide then, allegedly, contacted John Dean, who then forwarded a request for a pardon to the Justice Department. Sinatra also allegedly made an additional $50,000 gift to Nixon’s campaign fund. Nixon was re-elected in November. DeCarlo was released in December, having served 1 1/2 years.
It would seem that Colson, who described himself as a “flag-waving, kick-’em-in-the-nuts, anti-press, anti-liberal Nixon fanatic,” devised a plan that managed to benefit both men’s interests.