18 & 1/2 Minutes: Nixon's Darkest Secrets Revealed

Prologue

Washington, D.C.

September 1973 …

Just a moment, sir.

The guard was broad shouldered, an ex-NFL type. He spoke with a hint of a southern accent. His plastic nameplate blended almost perfectly into the dark blue serge suit.

You’re new here, Jeff White said, not recognizing him.

Yes, sir. Dark eyes studied the driver’s license and then glanced at the ID tag clipped to Jeff’s sports coat. He flipped a page on the clipboard, compared names, then handed back the license.

Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. White. You’re cleared to go through.

Thank you, he answered, smiling wearily. If you don’t mind, I’ll stay here. I’m waiting for someone.

He’s on the list, sir?

Ed Geiss.

The guard checked his clipboard again. Very well, sir.

He leaned against the gate, admiring the night. Washington, D.C. was eerily quiet. Traffic lights reflected in the glistening pavement of the empty streets. Earlier that evening rain came down in torrents, washing away the tourists. Even the politicos fled, and now the air carried an unfamiliar clean smell. Once more Washington looked like a city of hallowed marble monuments, not the place of political uncertainty it had become. Woodward and Bernstein were bringing a president down, and there was much that needed to be cleaned up before Richard Nixon left office. Let’s face it, that’s why the President sent for me, Jeff thought sardonically.

He was only thirty, but today he felt much older. A frantic call from Nixon, begging for his help left him with a new sense of purpose. He recalled the first time he met the great man in of all places Appleton, Wisconsin, a small town known for its red-baiting, anti-communist Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, who left the city a dreadful reputation. But it was in Appleton ten years earlier where Richard Nixon’s comeback started, and Jeff had been one of the architects of that resurrection.

After his defeat in the California governor’s race in 1962, Nixon, the once presidential standard bearer of the Republican Party, sank so low in the esteem of party elders, he was relegated to the boondocks of small college forums. In 1964 he came to Appleton’s Lawrence College to debate one time Socialist Sydney Hook on public policy matters in the college’s hundred year-old chapel. After the debate ended, the university’s elderly regent politely thanked Nixon, saying he would find somebody to drive him to his next destination. That person turned out to be Jeff White. That’s how it all started. By pure luck he ended up driving Richard Nixon along with his two best friends at Lawrence from Appleton to Ripon, Wisconsin, an hour’s drive away. Ironically, Ripon was the birthplace of the Republican Party more than a hundred years earlier. And in 1963, it would once more become a birthplace of a new kind of conservative politics—the silent majority of Richard Milhouse Nixon.

Jeff at the time was a townie, living at home a few blocks from the school. He thought himself immune to politics having zero interest in chasing power. His love was computers and the next wave of technology. After telling Nixon about his view of the new technological world, Nixon said as they left the Lawrence Campus, You know, Jeff, I made a famous declaration to the media, last year: ‘You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore.’ The Vice President laughed and swore like a dockworker. I’ll be damned if that’s going to happen. I’m going to rise like a fucking Phoenix from the ashes. He could feel the man peering intently at him. I’m going to need a bright young man like you, Jeff.

Jeff had never met, a man like Richard Nixon before. The former VP deep-set, dark eyes captured everything going on around him. He possessed an uncanny ability to make Jeff feel as if he was the most important person in the world.

Did you hear what I’m asking of you, Jeff?

He looked at his two friends in the back seat not sure what to say.

Your country needs you, Nixon repeated. I need you to make it great again. The conversation moved on with no answer from Jeff. However, The hour-long drive changed his life forever. Afterwards, he switched majors from philosophy to political science and journalism.

Two years later following his graduation, he was working for Nixon. Not directly but from a seedy real estate development company in Los Angeles, California. It was a front for Nixon’s comeback bid.

It’s necessary to keep a low profile for now, Jeff, Nixon explained, squeezing his shoulder like a father would. When the time’s right, this will all go away and we’ll have a proper campaign headquarters.

He agreed and did his job. He took wealthy private clients out to lunch, flattered them and reassured them that their political contributions were well spent. All of these clients seemed to dress the same—conservative business suits, narrow ties and sunglasses. They traveled with bodyguards who never smiled and smoked unfiltered Camels nonstop. The clients had mob ties written all over them but Jeff never asked. He was in the thick of Nixon’s bid for the Presidency, and the paycheck was ten times bigger than anything he could have gotten in computer programing. He was so successful at the odd jobs he did for Nixon and his crony, BB Rebozo, he earned the nickname, ‘The Adjuster.’

Tonight he would earn that and more.

He stood straight and cracked the vertebrae in his back. The gate guard looked up from a copy of Sports Illustrated. Do you need anything, sir?

Just stretching.

The guard smiled and went back to reading.

His eyes swept Lafayette Square. He checked his watch and swore silently. Ed Geiss was late. A few cars went past, drivers in a hurry, none of them even glancing in the direction of the home of the President. Somewhere close a walkie-talkie crackled and Jeff knew that Secret Service was nearby. Most times you only saw the suit-clad men surrounding the President. You never saw the guys in the bushes that could shoot the beak off a hummingbird at a hundred yards.

Jeff saw a man sauntering past the statue of Lafayette. He was small, balding and hopelessly out of fashion for Washington power politics—floppy bell-bottom jeans, a floral vest over a tie-dyed T-shirt, and granny glasses. The satchel strap over his left shoulder looked like it would support a portable tape recorder. Relief spread across Jeff’s face as he recognized his old buddy.

Ed Geiss was a sound engineer he’d met while working for Nixon in Los Angeles. At the time Ed worked for Paramount. He smoked and drank heavily, giving him a reputation of being unreliable. But he was a genius when it came to audio.

Reaching the gate Ed asked, They going to let me in?

Won’t be a problem.

The guard waved them on. Jeff never tired of the feeling of power his unique position to the President gave him.

They headed up the walkway to the West Wing’s pressroom. The pressroom had once been a swimming pool for the polio-ridden Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Nixon converted it into a pressroom. Nixon, obsessed with the press ever since his disastrous TV debate with Kennedy in 1960, created the room especially for reporters to remind them that he was their friend. Watergate tarnished that camaraderie, and the President almost never came down to visit with any of the reporters anymore.

A Secret Service man opened the door for Jeff and Ed and closed it discreetly behind them. They stood in the quiet amphitheater. Jeff never could get over how small it seemed whenever it was empty. Fill it with reporters, though, and it was like a large zoo. Lately feeding time was anything about Watergate.

Ron Ziegler, Nixon’s press secretary, stood off to one side of the podium and its Presidential seal, defined by Nixon’s former boss, Dwight Eisenhower in Executive Order 10860: An American eagle holding in his dexter talon an olive branch and in his sinister talon thirteen arrows, and in his beak a white scroll inscribed E Pluribus Unum. The normally affable Press Secretary was tense. His lips stretched in a thin moue and his blue eyes darted around the room as if he expected reporters to come hurtling out of the woodwork.

Did anyone see you come in? Ziegler asked testily.

Rain couldn’t have come at a better time, Jeff said. The city’s deserted.

If only it would stay that way. The Press Secretary laughed overly loud at his own joke. Grimacing at the two men, he pointed needlessly at Ed and added, He’s the guy who’s going to make everything alright?

He’s the best in the business.

Good night then. Ziegler left without shaking hands.

Jeff frowned at Ziegler’s abrasive behavior but Ed shrugged. I get that a lot.

Bad manners?

People afraid they’re going to get their hands dirty.

Jeff understood that all too well. That’s when they call me in to adjust things. Putting aside his irritation, he ushered Ed into the now vacant press secretary’s office. Three television sets along one wall showed the news from the major networks. They were all muted. Jeff recognized Walter Cronkite. An image of the White House flickered onto the screen behind the newsman. He could only imagine what the latest charges were against the president. He tore his gaze away. The rest of the well-used office was file cabinets and bookshelves. A single window showed the well-lit lawn of the White House. A ghost couldn’t slip through undetected. But Jeff didn’t need a ghost; he needed an engineer no one would notice.

Ed Geiss cleared his throat. Jeff pulled a white cardboard case out of his pocket and emptied the contents into his palm. It was a single five-inch reel of pale brown audiotape. Here’s where you earn your paycheck, Ed.

The audio engineer pushed aside a pile of papers and set down his satchel. He removed a reel-to-reel tape deck twice the size of the Oxford Dictionary. The Swiss-made Nagra IV-S tape recorder was a prototype. The most durable and reliable audio machine ever made, it was the standard sound recording machine for movie and television production. It was invented by the Polish engineer Stefan Kudeleski. He named it after the Polish word nagrac, which literally meant, ‘it will record.’ From his vest Ed pulled out a small oblong black box. Attached was an XLR audio cable, which he plugged into the back of the deck. A headset followed. He inserted it into the deck but left it on the desk so that both men could hear what was on the tape. He snapped his fingers and motioned for the tape, which he laced to the deck’s take-up reel.

Now what? Ed asked.

Jeff could hear the tension in the engineer’s voice. Ed didn’t get a lot of calls for this kind of cloak and dagger work. He just hoped that the tension didn’t mean there was a problem in Ed keeping this visit quiet. Go a quarter in.

Ed pushed the fast-forward button. The reels spun with a high-pitched hum. Ed hit stop.

Play.

Even with the headset a couple of feet away, the two men could clearly hear the voices of Chief of staff HR Haldeman and Richard Nixon in a heated argument. Jeff winced. The President’s profanity was legendary. Stop. Back up a little and start there.

Ed pulled out a grease pencil and made a yellow mark on the pale brown acetate tape, then pushed play again.

For the next eighteen minutes the two men stood like statues. Then Jeff heard the fateful words, ‘It’ll have to goddamn get done.’ Stop! he said louder than he meant to. This was the third time hearing tape and still he couldn’t believe what was on it. Jesus Christ!

He looked at Ed. The engineer stood frozen.

Christ! Stop the tape, Ed!

Ed shed his paralysis. Hands fumbled for the stop button, pressing it ineffectively several times before the machine finally came to a halt. The shorter man peered up at Jeff, the color drained out of his face. Jesus, he mumbled, his voice echoing Jeff’s fear.

Jeff gripped his arm. This can never be heard. Never! You understand?

Ed nodded his head. He made a second yellow mark and then rewound to the first grease mark. He flipped the switch on his black box and pushed record.

This will take care of it, right?

Not only will it record over the conversation but it’ll make it seem like the tape came too close to an everyday AC current. All you’ll ever hear is a sixty cycle hum.

Good.. He watched the tape wind through the machine. When it was done, he made Ed do it six more times.

Ed put away the Nagra. The black box went back into his vest. He licked his lips but he kept quiet. His eyes said it all. There’s one more thing.

Jeff nodded and pulled out an envelope. Ten grand. The price for security. He walked Ed out of the building and past the gate. Pools of rainwater reflected the bright lights around the White House’s West Wing entrance. He made a show of shaking the audio engineer’s hand. Take some time off, Ed. Get lost for a while.

Ed managed a weak grin and patted his vest pocket. I can get lost real good with this, Jeff.

A grim smile came to Jeff’s face as he watched Ed disappear into the darkness on the other side of Lafayette Square. No one every really gets lost, Ed. By morning Ed Geiss would be dead, and the ten grand would be back in Jeff’s pocket.

Chapter One

Present day …

The camera was a Sony z-7. Gideon James checked the focus one last time and pressed the record button. He waited for the green ‘Stand by’ message in the camera’s flip out screen to change to the red ‘Record.’ Rolling, he said loudly, eyes on the tiny three-inch frame.

His world was reduced to the image of a middleaged chubby man in oversized sheepskin chaps, a blue cowboy shirt with a brightly polished sheriff’s star and a white Stetson hat. The faux cowboy stepped out of a bright red Mustang convertible. Gideon slowly zoomed back as the man, fingers twirling an obviously fake black handlebar mustache, walked with an exaggerated John Wayne swagger to the front of the car. The spurs on his cowhide boots jingled. At the same time two women wrapped their arms in his and stood with backs arched to show off their ample breasts barely held in by scanty red and black dance hall outfits.

Looking into the camera, the urban cowboy urged viewers, Come on down to Merlin’s Auto Mall, where you… Shit! The man grabbed at his hat as a gust of wind threatened to send it sailing across the car-filled lot.

Cut! The director’s voice sliced through the breeze. It was the thirteenth take in what should have been an easy commercial shoot. But the weather wasn’t cooperating. Take fifteen, everyone.

Gideon flipped the camera off and walked over to the shade of the portable awning set up to protect the actors from the sun in between set ups. Automatically he checked his Droid phone and saw a text message from Jimmy Tull. Call me.

Tull answered immediately and launched right into his spiel without even saying hello. Hey old buddy. I’m producing a series for HD Net on America’s greatest unsolved mysteries—true-life conspiracies, missing persons, lost treasures, cold crimes and the like. I’m interviewing a guy in Iowa who’s written over twenty-five books on everything from Bigfoot to Jimmy Hoffa. I need a cameraman. Two Thousand dollars plus I'll feed you and put you up in Sioux Falls. It'll be like old times.

What do I need to bring?

Your HD camera, couple of mic's and that beat up Ari light kit of yours.

I don't know ...

The director yelled, Everybody back to your places. We’re going to try this again.

Tull snickered. Another cowboy car commercial?

Text me the flight information, Gideon said and hung up.

Chapter Two

Spirit Lake, Iowa

Gideon leaned lazily against the door of the mid-sized SUV, and stared at the wind-flecked water of Upper Spirit Lake, one of Northwest Iowa’s ‘Great Lakes’ as the locals called them. The breeze carried a hint of moisture and freshness that was a welcome relief to the hot, late May weather.

Tull clambered out of the driver’s seat. He was already sweating profusely.

The two men had known each other for almost two decades, but they couldn’t have been more different in looks or temperament. Gideon was lean and rangy, with thick dark hair and the chiseled features of an athlete. He always seemed a little unpredictable. Tull was a big man who dressed for comfort. He wore Crocs, green rayon jogging pants and a loose fitting T-shirt. He was an easy-going documentary film producer who didn’t give a damn about pleasantries. His work was everything.

So this is Spirit lake, Iowa, Tull said.

Gideon nodded and opened the rear hatch of the rental SUV to get his camera and lighting gear.

Given our subject matter, it’s apropos. The producer laughed. Get it?

Gideon shrugged. He didn’t care if was apropos or not. It was better than shooting commercials. Instead he pointed to the name on the mailbox—Breyers, like the ice cream. So he’s the expert on everything mysterious?

Yep.

Does he know where the WMDs are buried?

What?

Gideon didn’t bother to answer. There’s a mystery I’d like to solve, he thought. How Bush pulled that bullshit over the American people and Congress. Carrying his 30,000 dollars worth of gear, he followed Tull through the gate, down the Vermont blue stone walkway edged by the neatly trimmed lawn and up brick steps to the door of an old Victorian home. White flowering dogwood fronted a teakwood veranda that swept around three sides.

Writing about America’s mysteries obviously paid well. People were always getting worked up about such obvious fakes as Bigfoot and what really happened to Hoffa.

A short grandmotherly woman met them at the door. Randall’s expecting you, she said, ushering them inside.

She pointed to a doorway in the hall exiting the other side of the living area. His study. Gideon followed Tull through the living room, heavy with curios and artifacts from a lifetime of collecting the mysterious and arcane. On massive shelves lining the walls were shrunken heads, a pennant from the 7th Cavalry, arrowheads, and a coonskin cap that looked scruffy enough to be the Crockett original. One entire wall was devoted to weapons; from Native American war clubs and lances to modern day sniper rifles. Strange place, he muttered.

Tull nodded, acting as if he expected all of this, and he might have. He did his homework and his documentary series always made money.

Quickly they found themselves at the threshold of the study, which was bigger than the living room, but with even less free space. Stacks of books and newspapers formed little canyons converging on a desk sitting in front of a massive plate glass window that made up the outside wall. The home’s backyard extended 200 feet to the shore of Spirit Lake where a light breeze nudged a twenty-four foot powerboat against a pipe dock’s white fenders. To one side of the desk towered a nine-foot tall carving of Sasquatch. The artist had a touch of genius, capturing the long shaggy hair of the ape-like creature, the beetling brows, dark piercing eyes and tufted ears that made the statue look like it was waiting for a magic wand to give it life. Someone else had placed a hand rolled cigarillo between its thick, ink-colored lips and New York Yankees sports cap cocked at a rakish angle on it head.

Gideon focused on the man standing behind the desk. Randall Breyers was balding, with a shaggy beard and tufted eyebrows. He wore black jeans and a T-shirt that read, NOT ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE FROM EARTH. He was dictating into a microphone connected to a laptop computer on the desk.

Stopping in mid-word, he glared at the two men, genuinely surprised to see them in the doorway. Who’re you?

We’re the film crew. We talked on the phone. I’m Jimmy Tull. This is my cameraman, Gideon James.

Randall glanced at the clock on the wall, grunted with a tone of amazement and admiration. You’re here on time, he growled.

I like to have my experts in a good mood, and you’re the best, Tull said. He sized up the room. If you’re comfortable I’d like to shoot in here. It’s a little tight, but I like the atmosphere. Turning to Gideon he said, Let’s play the Sasquatch in the frame.

Gideon let Tull do all the talking. He went about setting up the lighting and the camera. He drew the curtain across the window, since he didn’t have enough lighting power to match the outdoor brilliance. He ignored the conversation flowing around him, except for Breyers’ comment on Watergate.

I really wanted to do that book on Nixon, but it’s not going to happen now, the mystery expert said.

In your email you skipped over the Nixon tapes completely. Are you sure you don’t want to comment? It’s on our list of sixty greatest mysteries, Tull said.

You trying to get me killed? and immediately the man laughed a little too hard at his own joke.

Tull laughed too, but Gideon didn’t think Breyers was kidding. He’d seen that look in the eyes of men before when he was in Fallujah during Operation Phantom Fury.

Ready, Tull, Gideon said. You want to see the set up?

The filmmaker came over and checked the scene in the camera’s viewfinder. The Sony High Definition digital HVR-z7u recorded everything to a standard HDV sixty-three minute tape. But Gideon had an added precaution. The camera also recorded everything onto a compact memory card, which he transferred onto hard drives for his clients if needed.

Tull made a slight adjustment. He took a sheaf of papers with hand written notes out of his back pocket—the questions. He said to Breyers, I’ll sit here beside the camera. You’ll look at me when you give your answers, and since my questions won’t be part of the final product, if you could reframe them in your answer that would be great.

Breyers looked bored, like he’d done this interview a thousand times before. But once the camera started rolling, he was the epitome of professionalism. He was a natural and even Gideon was impressed by his articulate responses.

Gideon checked his watch. Two hours passed, everything was going smoothly, just like usual. Tull was a pro who could entice the most interesting answers out of his interviewees. Then the filmmaker asked Breyers about the missing eighteen and a half minutes on the Nixon tapes.

I told you I wouldn’t talk about that, the man said, his voice suddenly hard.

Tull shrugged off the man’s irked expression. It’s the mystery of the century, he countered. Everybody has an opinion.

The mystery of the century is who killed Kennedy, Breyers grated. And opinions on this subject are like navels, everyone has one. They all think theirs is the truth.

Is that what was on the tape?

Once again, Gideon saw the scared look in the man’s eye. Breyers clammed up for a moment and then unexpectedly added, Turn the camera off.

Gideon looked at Tull who nodded.

Breyers squinted at the camera to see if the red light was on. I have a friend, a fellow conspiracy theorist, the unsolved mystery writer began slowly, satisfied he wasn’t being recorded, "who called me to say he had a way of removing the 60 cycle hum on the tape, or knew somebody that knew what Nixon and Haldeman were talking about that was so damaging. That was six months ago. Funny coincidence, two months later