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1971, James Reston (CFR) wrote in an article that appeared in the New York Times: “Mr. Nixon
would obviously like to preside over the creation of a new world order, and believes he sees an
opportunity to do so in the last twenty months of his first term.” It is likely that the plan to get rid
of Nixon was beginning to take shape at that time.
In the summer of 1973, Republicans partial to Nixon had announced to the Washington
media that they wanted Nixon to be elected to a third term and had organized a group known as
‘The Committee to Repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment.’ The movement sort of died within
a couple of weeks. Then in October, came the rumor that Nixon may be considering a military
coup to stay in office. Gen. Alexander Haig told the Congress during his confirmation hearings
for the position of Secretary of State on January, 1981, that some people in Washington were
“flirting with solutions which would have been extra-Constitutional.” Watergate Special
Prosecutor Leon Jaworski warned the grand jury, that if they decided to indict Nixon, he may use
force to remain in office. In June, 1982, Harold Evans, Watergate grand juror, appearing on a
segment of the ABC-TV news show “20/20.” said that Jaworski told them, that if they indicted
Nixon, he might “surround the White House with armed forces.”
On October 26, 1973, in a Washington Star article called “Has President Nixon Gone
Crazy?” syndicated columnist Carl Rowan wrote: “…in the face of a vote to impeach he might
try, as ‘commander-in-chief’ to use military forces to keep himself in power.” In another article
called “The Pardon,” in the August, 1983 edition of the Atlantic Monthly, Seymour Hersh, one of
Nixon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote that in a December 22, 1973 meeting:
“He kept on referring to the fact that he may be the last hope, (that) the eastern elite was
out to get him. He kept saying, ‘This is our last and best hope. The last chance to resist
the fascists’ (of the left). His words brought me straight up out of my chair. I felt the
President, without the words having been said, was trying to sound us out to see if we
would support him in some extra-constitutional action ... (Secretary of Defense James)
Schlesinger began to investigate what forces could be assembled at his order as a
counterweight to the Marines, if Nixon– in a crisis– chose to subvert the Constitution.
The notion that Nixon could at any time resort to extraordinary steps to preserve his
presidency was far more widespread in the government than the public perceived...”
He felt it would be led by General Robert Cushman, the Marine Representative on the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, who had been loyal to Nixon ever since he had been his military aide while he
was the Vice President under Eisenhower. Schlesinger, in July, 1974, believing the Washington
contingent of Marines to be the probable force used in a coup attempt, began developing a
strategy to bring in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
On August 2, 1974, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger admitted that General Haig had
informed him that Nixon was considering the idea of surrounding the White House with troops.
In an August 27, 1974. article in the Washington Post, called “Military Coup Fears Denied,” the
fact was revealed that: “Defense Secretary James Schlesinger requested a tight watch in the
military chain of command to ensure that no extraordinary orders went out from the White
House during the period of uncertainty (and) that no commanders of any forces should carry out
orders which came from the White House, or elsewhere, outside the normal military channels.”
Tantamount to a military coup, and contrary to the Constitution, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent
a secret communiqué to all Commanders of the U.S. military forces around the world: “Upon
receipt of this message you will no longer carry out any orders from the White House.