The Invisible Bridge

Stans tried again, offering that it was so every candidate and charity in town wouldn’t be harassing the contributors for donations—which didn’t make sense. The question wasn’t why the campaign had kepr contributions from the public; it was why it hadn’t even kept a record for itself. Stans replied that there was nothing illegal in doing so. At that, Sam Ervin stuck in the shiv: “Mr. Stans, do you not think that men who have been honored by the American people as you have ought to have their course of action guided by ethical principles which are superior to the minimum requirements of criminal law?” That was Sam Ervin all over. 

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 Once upon a time “the occult” had been the redoubt of rubes. Now, in a world where the usual sources of authority no longer had answers for anything, the weird stuff was getting more serious consideration. 

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 Grantland Rice’s “it’s how you play the game” had transmogrified into Vince Lombardi’s ~ Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Watergate, then, was no  less about Richard Nixon than it was about us, an emanation of our national soul: a nation that now believed “it’s us against them, and the only goal is to win, with no quarter asked or given.” 

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The defense case grew increasingly surreal and sordid. Judiciary members’ switchboards were swamped by identically phrased phone calls concerning “the lynch-mob atmosphere created in this city by the Washington Post and other parts of the Nixon-hating media”; these were scripted by a George Mason University student named Karl Rove and his faux-grassroots group “Americans for the Presidency.” In Richmond Hills, New York, the superannuated president of the Republican Club, which sported a gargantuan SUPPORT YOUR PRESIDENT across the entire face of the building, told Newsweek “they” —the presidents’ persecutors—“were encouraging poor Negroes to come up here and endorsing fornication and supporting illegitimate children. And Patty Hearst! She’s a product of a liberal environment.” The Georgia state Republican chairman, for his part, maintained, “If the news media is attacking the President, he must be doing something right.” 

Then there were the glassy-eyed young people crowding the U.S. Capitol steps every morning bearing signs reading FORGIVE, LOVE, UNITE and chanting “God needs Nixon” in front of the Rayburn Office Building wearing sandwich-board images of Judiciary Committee members treading, “I am praying for ___.” “This nation is God’s nation,” their leader explained. “The office of the President of the United States is, therefore, sacred.” This leader was the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Thousands of brainwashed “Moonies,” it turned out, had been placed front and center at the White House Christmas tree lighting ceremony back in December in “Project Unity” armbands. They were the ones waving banners reading “God Loves the President” and “God Loves America” in time to “Deck the Halls.” The president had come out to pay his respects; the Moonies literally knelt down to worship him. 

Moon didn’t actually believe God loved America—or at least its form of government, democracy, which he considered the work of Satan nor did he much love the deity whose birth Christmas celebrated, whom he considered decidedly inferior to himself, In face his plan was to take over the country by 1977, lest Armageddon come, That was why the Moonies had been loaded into vans across the country, allowed five or four hours or even just three hours of sleep a night while chanting “Our Satan” incessantly to stay awake, all under the discipline of handlers who watched Hitler Youth films for their training in disciplinary techniques. Here they were: the president’s people. And the president welcomed their devotion. In February, Moon had visited the Oval Office. Together, they bowed their heads for a prayer in which Moon proposed a national fast to preserve his presidency. The fast took place that July, kicked off in a ceremony attended by Bruce “Dr. Happiness” Herschensohn and Rabbi Baruch Korff. 

This banquet was the president’s chance to thank them. “Rabbi Korff’s eloquence, his intelligence, his dedication,” Nixon’s disembodied voice boomed across the huge Shoreham banquet hall, “have been a great source of strength to me and all of us in these difficult times.” The rabbi hung up the phone receiver, intoned, “We love you dearly,” and brushed away a stubborn tear.