Roger Stone, The New York Times bestselling author of The Man Who Killed Kennedy: the Case Against LBJ, gives the inside scoop on Nixon’s rise and fall in Watergate in his new book Nixon’s Secrets. Stone charts Nixon’s rise from election to Congress in 1946 to the White House in 1968 after his razor-thin loss to John Kennedy in 1960, his disastrous campaign for Governor of California in 1962 and the greatest comeback in American Presidential history.

“Just as the assassination of JFK prevents a balanced analysis of Kennedy and his times, the myth of Watergate prevents a reappraisal of our 37th President,” said Stone whose book on LBJ was the second biggest selling book during the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s murder.

Stone reveals how the Kennedys wiretapped Nixon’s hotel room the night before the Nixon-Kennedy debate, and stole Nixon’s medical records from his psychiatrist’s office. Stone lays out how Kennedy running mate Lyndon Johnson stole Texas from JFK through vote fraud while Mayor Richard Daley stole Illinois, and how JFK actually lost the popular vote.

Stone looks at the Nixon Presidency: the desegregation of the public schools, the progressive social programs, Nixon’s struggle to end the war in Vietnam, the historic SALT arms reduction agreement with Russia, the saving of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, the opening to China, and the disastrous decision to take America off the Gold standard.

“The mainstream media’s interpretation of the facts surrounding the Watergate episode are a fantastic and grotesque distortion of historical truth,” said Stone. “Cursory examination of the facts in Watergate will reveal that the actions which caused the fall of Nixon cannot be reduced to the simplistic account summarized by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post.”

The author outlines how White House Counsel John Dean, planned, pushed and covered-up the Watergate break-in , then sought to avoid responsibility for it. Stone examines the bungled Watergate break-in to determine what exactly Nixon’s agents were looking for and how the CIA infiltrated the burglar team and sabotaged the break-in to gain leverage over Nixon. Find out why Nixon demanded the CIA turn over the records of the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy Assassination.

Learn how a cabal of military and intelligence hard-liners spied on and undermined Nixon to stop his pro-peace détente foreign policy, his withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, his arms limitation agreement with the Soviets, and his opening to Red China. Discover how Vice President Spiro Agnew was setup to move him out of the line of presidential succession.

Stone makes the compelling case that General Alexander Haig orchestrated Nixon’s removal from office in a coup d’état and brokered the deal for his pardon. Finally the public will learn what is on the 18 ½ minute gap in the White House Tapes.

Stone, a Washington insider for 40 years, outlines why FBI agent Mark Felt is not “Deep Throat,” why there is no Deep Throat, and why Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein lie about it even today.

Stone reveals how Nixon used the dark secrets he knew to avoid prosecution by blackmailing Gerald Ford for a full, free and unconditional pardon. Nixon’s secret would not only destroy his presidency—it would save him from prison and allow him to launch his final comeback—advising President Bill Clinton on foreign affairs despite Hillary’s attempts to block him and her being fired from the 1974 House Impeachment Committee for lying and violating Nixon’s rights.

Softcover, 669 pages

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments - 1

Introduction Nixon's the One! - 5

Chapter One - The Man - 15

Chapter Two - "Your Good Dog" - 33

Chapter Three - Murray and the Mob - 51

Chapter Four - The Great Train Robbery - 77

Chapter Five - Ike and Dick - 101

Chapter Six - Stolen - 115

Chapter Seven - "California Needs a Decisive Leader" - 175

Chapter Eight - The Wilderness Years - 201

Chapter Nine - The Bright Young Men - 233

Chapter Ten - The Big Enchilada and Rise of the Merchandisers - 259

Chapter Eleven - The Comeback - 291

Chapter Twelve - Plastic and Steel - 349

Chapter Thirteen - A New Beginning - 375

Chapter Fourteen - The Break-ins - 407

Chapter Fifteen - Gemstone - 455

Chapter Sixteen - Nixon and the Bushes - 493

Chapter Seventeen - Woodstein - 515

Chapter Eighteen - "Pardon Me" - 529

Chapter Nineteen - Fighting for His Legacy - 567

Appendices - 595

Bibliography - 663

Index - 669

Excerpt

Chapter 11 - Wilt “The Stilt” and Nixon

On a typically warm spring morning in Atlanta, Richard Nixon would be sweating through his suit. April 9, 1968 would be no exception. The world was watching Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral and the former vice president was in town with dozens of others of dignitaries to pay his respects.

The King funeral caused great debate within Nixon’s campaign. Nixon’s Campaign Manager John Mitchell opposed his attendance. Law partner Len Garment insisted Nixon attend. Nixon, who had enjoyed a good relationship with King, decided to split the difference-he would go to the service but not join the King Family on their three-and-a-half mile march from Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the reverend had preached, to Morehouse College, where King had received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology.

The conservative South was key to his presidential campaign yet Nixon knew he must attend. Still, he had to keep a low profile to appease his white southern supporters. His advisors feared some far right southerners might bolt to George Wallace, who was running on an Independent line.

To cover his bases Nixon flew in early to pay his respect to the newly widowed Coretta Scott King in the privacy of the family home in Atlanta, far from the lenses of news photographers.

In his new book The Greatest Comeback, former Nixon aide Pat Buchanan says Nixon and Senator Eugene McCarthy agreed in advance to march to the cemetery. Nixon, travel aide Nick Ruwe told me, was adamant about not marching.

Ruwe had accompanied Nixon to King’s funeral. Ruwe told me the former vice president decided he would arrive late and take a back row seat in the church’s VIP section. To keep it short and sweet, Nixon would avoid the march with Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senator Eugene McCarthy, Bobby, Ethel and Jackie Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Hosea Williams, Dr. Ralph Abernathy, Daddy King, and the others. Instead, Nixon told Ruwe to pick him up at a side door of the church as the dignitaries queued up to march.

As Rev. Abernathy finished his sermon, calling King’s assassination “one of the darkest hours of mankind,” Nixon turned to slip out. He was stopped short with a huge black hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Nixon, you ready to march?” It was Los Angeles Laker Wilt Chamberlain, whom Nixon had met at a previous event.

All eyes were surely on the 7′ 1″ Los Angeles Lakers center as he towered over the 5’11″ Republican candidate for president. Nixon wisely obliged.

“Why, yes of course” said Nixon. Ruwe was confused when he saw his boss lining up behind the funeral procession, led by two local mules pulling a simple wooden wagon bearing the murdered Martin Luther King Jr.’s coffin.

Ruwe waved frantically to Nixon as he maneuvered the car down an adjacent street at the same slow speed of the procession. “Nixon seemed to look right through me,” he later told me. “He was continually looking at his watch.”

Three blocks into the march, Nixon told Chamberlain he had to get to the airport. The NBA star, who had impeded Nixon’s exit earlier, stepped out of the procession and paused for a moment, staring down upon the presidential hopeful. “Can I get a lift?” asked Chamberlain.

The former Vice President and the LA Laker both bolted the funeral march for Nixon’s waiting car. Wilt “The Stilt” would soon thereafter go to work as a paid Nixon surrogate, and the 1968 presidential campaign unfolded.

When he was out of public office and lived in New York, Nixon belonged to the prestigious Baltustrol Golf Club in New Jersey. When Nixon first began his comeback campaign he came under fire because the club had no black or Jewish members. Some demanded that Nixon resign. Instead, Nixon wrote the board of directors that membership should be open to all and punctuated his letter by playing the golf course with “The Stilt” the next day.

A memo sent to Chamberlain from sports editor Brad Pye in August 1968 offered the basketball star advice on how he might help Nixon win the black vote. In addition to “planting” stories in popular black publications such as Sepia or Ebony, Pye was sure that Nixon Press Secretary Herb Klein could “sell some white publications on the angle of his [Nixon's] black supporters.”

“As I have indicated before, I think we should saturate the black press with pictures of you and RMN,” Pye wrote.[1]

Chamberlain’s sexual appetites were legendary. The NBA star boasted of bedding over 20,000 women. The Nixon campaign was no exception. “Wilt made his way through girls the campaign staff and volunteers,” said Ruwe. “At the end the advance men were hiring call girls just to keep Wilt happy and on the road for RN.”

[1] Letter from Brad Pye to Wilt Chamberlain. August 19, 1968. http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/releases/jul07/081968_pye_b.pdf

Excerpted from NIXON’S SECRETS by Roger Stone. Copyright © 2014 by Roger Stone with Mike Colapietro.

Roger Stone is an alternative historian who was one the legendary American Republican political consultant who has played a key role in the election of Republican presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Stone also served as an assistant to Senator Bob Dole. Stone is the author of "The Man Who Killed Kennedy - the Case Against LBJ" (Skyhorse). Stone is also the author of Nixon's Secrets, a broader look at the rise and fall and rise and fall and final comeback of Richard Milhouse Nixon.

Stone has also chronicled men's fashion for the New York Times and the Daily Caller. His annual "Ten Best and Worst Dressed" list has been featured on the Huffington Post and the New York Post since 2009. Stone serves as Men's Style Correspondent for the Daily Caller.

A Goldwater zealot in grade-school after a neighbor gave him Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative, Stone was elected Young Republican National Chairman in 1977. Stone was appointed Chairman of Youth for Nixon for Connecticut by Gov. John Davis Lodge who would become Stone's mentor. Stone was the youngest member of the staff in President Richard Nixon's re-election camping in 1972, the notorious CREEP - Committee for the Re-Election of the President. At CREEP Stone would fall under the tutelage of the legendary Murray Chotiner, Nixon's early campaign manager and the inventor of negative campaign advertising and tactics. In 1973 Stone went to work for Senator Bob Dole as a staff assistant and travel aide.

In 1976 Stone was named by Senator Paul Laxalt as National Director of Youth for Reagan, a division of Governor Ronald Reagan's 1976 Presidential campaign. In 1978, Stone co-founded the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) where he is credited with developing the negative campaign into an art form and pioneering the modern use of negative campaign advertising which Mr. Stone calls "comparative, educational, not negative."

Starting in 1979, Stone served as Regional Political Director for Governor Reagan's 1980 campaign for President handling New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, his native State. Stone became known for his expertise and strategies for motivating and winning ethnic and Catholic voters. Stone went on to serve in the same capacity in Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign adding responsibility for Pennsylvania and Ohio to the states Stone managed in 1980. He went on to serve as a Senior Consultant for California for President George H. W. Bush's campaign. Bush beat Dukakis by 1% in the Golden State.

In 2000 Stone is credited with the hard-ball tactics which resulted in closing down the Miami-Dade Presidential recount. Stone is credited in HBO's recent movie, "Recount 2000" with fomenting the so-called "Brooks Brothers Riot" in which a Republican mob swarmed the recount demanding a shutdown while thousands of Cuban-Americans marched outside the Courthouse demanding the same thing.

The New York Times and Miami Herald reported it was Mr. Stone who first tipped of the FBI to Governor Eliot Spitzer's use of prostitutes.

Stone has worked for pro-American political parties in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean. He is consulted regularly on communications and corporate and public relations strategy by fortune 500 ECO's and pro-democracy foreign leaders.

Stone endorsed former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson for President before switching his registration from Republican to the Libertarian Party. Stone says his plans for 2016 are uncertain.

Stone has been profiled in the Weekly Standard, The New Yorker, and the Miami Herald. Mr. Stone has written for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, The New York TimesOp Ed page and for Newsmax.com, Breitbart, the Huffington Post and the FOX Opinion page. He has appeared frequently on FOX News.

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