Nixon Defended Envoy's Groping; 1972 Tapes Also Reveal Talk of a Justice Dept. 'Full of Jews'
When President Richard M. Nixon's ambassador to France got roaring drunk and began groping the flight attendants on a trip home from Paris, Nixon didn't see that much to get excited about.</br></br>"Look, people get drunk," the president said after a Jack Anderson column regaled readers with a graphic account of Ambassador Arthur K. Watson's behavior on a March 1972 flight to Washington. "People chase girls. And the point is, it's a hell of a lot better for them to get drunk than to take drugs. It's better to chase girls than boys." "Now that's my position and let's stop this crap," Nixon declared at a March 14, 1972, Oval Office meeting with his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. "Understand?"</br></br>The episode, which prompted Democratic congressional demands for an investigation and Watson's resignation, is one of thousands chronicled on 426 hours of White House tapes released yesterday, the biggest release to date.</br></br>The new batch deals with the tumultuous first half of 1972, which included Nixon's historic trip to China, a fierce battle for the Democratic presidential nomination and an assassination attempt that crippled Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace at the height of his popularity. It also included what the White House sought to dismiss as a "third-rate burglary" at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex.</br></br>At one point, in a discussion with national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger about intensified bombing of North Vietnam, Nixon abruptly suggested a nuclear strike. But he may have just been trying to get a rise out of Kissinger, who quickly played down the idea.