Introduction
While Nixon may not represent or symbolize the height of the Cold War, he does represent an era in American history plagued by government corruption and large-scale public dissatisfaction with the government in general. Nixon came to power on the heels of four politically motivated assassinations: JFK in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and MLK, Jr., and RFK in 1968. Robert Kennedy had been running against Nixon in the 1968 election, and his brother had beaten Nixon in the 1960 election. The deaths of both Kennedys were a reminder that something was not right in the state of Washington, D.C.—and Nixon seemed to be right in the thick of it. His famous words, “I am not a crook,” became lampooned in pop culture, and his presidency came to an early end with his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Nixon has been the subject of several films, both directly and indirectly: he was the focal point in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, a political follow-up to the director’s previous hit JFK. Nixon was lampooned in the film Dick, a comedy which focused on the Watergate scandal. His relationship with Elvis Presley was described in the film Elvis & Nixon. The 1976 film (based on a book by the same name) All the President’s Men focused on the Watergate reporters trying to break the story on Nixon’s cover-up. It portrayed the reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in a heroic light (and why should it not?—they wrote the book on themselves). Another film, The Post, directed by Spielberg, adopted a similar approach in its characterization of Katherine Graham as a female crusader for the truth. Robert Altman’s Secret Honor in 1984 put Nixon front and center in a stream-of-consciousness yet ultimately unapologetic portrayal of the president coming to terms with his failed presidency. These films vary in their approach to Nixon and the 1970s—and some, like Stone’s and Altman’s, are more sympathetic than others. They are, however, but one approach to the man and the decade. Numerous books and articles have been written on Nixon, all of which tell their own stories. This paper will explore a variety of these works to show how the history of Nixon and the 1970s has been shaped in diverse ways. It will look at Stone and Kuznick’s, Untold History of the United States, John Dean’s The Nixon Defense, Jim Hougan’s Secret Agenda, Elliot and Schenck-Hamlin’s “Film, Politics and the Press: The Influence of ‘All the President’s Men’,” Tyler’s A World of Trouble, and several others to show how historians and other writers have depicted Nixon and his time to tell their take on the man.

The Nixon Shock

There are many different places one could start when analyzing the various works that people have produced when covering Nixon. To understand how historians and writers have covered him, however, one has to start somewhere—and the Nixon Shock is as good a place as any. When Nixon shut the window on the gold standard in 1971, it “shocked” the world. Prior to that, foreign nations holding USD could still convert them into gold (though the average American could not—that window had been closed decades earlier). The Nixon Shock as it came to be known has been one of particular interest to writers more focused on the economic effect of Nixon’s presidency in the early 1970s than on the scandals. One writer who has taken a unique perspective on the Nixon Shock is G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature from Jekyll Island, a book that is highly critical of the Federal Reserve, which was essentially born on Jekyll Island shortly before Nixon himself was born in California in 1913. Griffin viewed Nixon’s move as part of a power play by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to control the global money supply. A dollar that was tied to gold could only be supplied in a limited or finite amount. A dollar that was backed by nothing but full faith and credit could be supplied in seemingly unlimited amounts. As the world’s reserve currency, the USD had to be infinite for the IMF to achieve its aim.[footnoteRef:2] [2: G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island (Westlake Village, CA: American Media, 1995), 91.]

The idea that Nixon was just a pawn in a much bigger game was one that other writers, such as Patrick Tyler, or filmmakers like Oliver Stone, have suggested as well. Tyler in his book A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East from the Cold War to the War on Terror, highlights the issues that Nixon faced in attempting to deal with the problematic issues emanating from the Middle East during his presidency. Tyler puts much of the blame squarely on the shoulders of Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Decolonization in Africa had led to an era of neo-colonization, and alliances were very unsettled and unstable as Egypt sought support from both East and West against Israel, and vice versa. Who was playing whom was a big question, and one that Nixon might have more readily asked. Kissinger, essentially acting like a double agent for Israel, quite often proved that it was Nixon, in the end, who was being played, as Tyler shows in his research.[footnoteRef:3] Tyler’s focus, along with that of Stone and Kuznick in their Untold History is on the meaning of events that typically do not get told in the popular representation of Nixon on the decade. The complex interrelationship of events linking the Shock with Middle East activities and the rise of the petrodollar along with the appeasement of Israel all are explored by Tyler and Griffin as they construct a complex narrative that shines a light on the various aspects of the times. [3: Patrick Tyler, A World of Trouble (NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2010), 24.]

Stone and Kuznick pay particular attention to the effect that Nixon’s legacy had on the latter half of the 1970s. After Nixon’s resignation and the cold water effect…Introduction

While Nixon may not represent or symbolize the height of the Cold War, he does represent an era in American history plagued by government corruption and large-scale public dissatisfaction with the government in general. Nixon came to power on the heels of four politically motivated assassinations: JFK in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and MLK, Jr., and RFK in 1968. Robert Kennedy had been running against Nixon in the 1968 election, and his brother had beaten Nixon in the 1960 election. The deaths of both Kennedys were a reminder that something was not right in the state of Washington, D.C.—and Nixon seemed to be right in the thick of it. His famous words, “I am not a crook,” became lampooned in pop culture, and his presidency came to an early end with his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Nixon has been the subject of several films, both directly and indirectly: he was the focal point in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, a political follow-up to the director’s previous hit JFK. Nixon was lampooned in the film Dick, a comedy which focused on the Watergate scandal. His relationship with Elvis Presley was described in the film Elvis & Nixon. The 1976 film (based on a book by the same name) All the President’s Men focused on the Watergate reporters trying to break the story on Nixon’s cover-up. It portrayed the reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in a heroic light (and why should it not?—they wrote the book on themselves). Another film, The Post, directed by Spielberg, adopted a similar approach in its characterization of Katherine Graham as a female crusader for the truth. Robert Altman’s Secret Honor in 1984 put Nixon front and center in a stream-of-consciousness yet ultimately unapologetic portrayal of the president coming to terms with his failed presidency. These films vary in their approach to Nixon and the 1970s—and some, like Stone’s and Altman’s, are more sympathetic than others. They are, however, but one approach to the man and the decade. Numerous books and articles have been written on Nixon, all of which tell their own stories. This paper will explore a variety of these works to show how the history of Nixon and the 1970s has been shaped in diverse ways. It will look at Stone and Kuznick’s, Untold History of the United States, John Dean’s The Nixon Defense, Jim Hougan’s Secret Agenda, Elliot and Schenck-Hamlin’s “Film, Politics and the Press: The Influence of ‘All the President’s Men’,” Tyler’s A World of Trouble, and several others to show how historians and other writers have depicted Nixon and his time to tell their take on the man.

The Nixon Shock

There are many different places one could start when analyzing the various works that people have produced when covering Nixon. To understand how historians and writers have covered him, however, one has to start somewhere—and the Nixon Shock is as good a place as any. When Nixon shut the window on the gold standard in 1971,…Introduction

While Nixon may not represent or symbolize the height of the Cold War, he does represent an era in American history plagued by government corruption and large-scale public dissatisfaction with the government in general. Nixon came to power on the heels of four politically motivated assassinations: JFK in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and MLK, Jr., and RFK in 1968. Robert Kennedy had been running against Nixon in the 1968 election, and his brother had beaten Nixon in the 1960 election. The deaths of both Kennedys were a reminder that something was not right in the state of Washington, D.C.—and Nixon seemed to be right in the thick of it. His famous words, “I am not a crook,” became lampooned in pop culture, and his presidency came to an early end with his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Nixon has been the subject of several films, both directly and indirectly: he was the focal point in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, a political follow-up to the director’s previous hit JFK. Nixon was lampooned in the film Dick, a comedy which focused on the Watergate scandal. His relationship with Elvis Presley was described in the film Elvis & Nixon. The 1976 film (based on a book by the same name) All the President’s Men focused on the Watergate reporters trying to break the story on Nixon’s cover-up. It portrayed the reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in a heroic light (and why should it not?—they wrote the book on themselves). Another film, The Post, directed by Spielberg, adopted a similar approach in its characterization of Katherine Graham as a female crusader for the truth. Robert Altman’s Secret Honor in 1984 put Nixon front and center in a stream-of-consciousness yet ultimately unapologetic portrayal of the president coming to terms with his failed presidency. These films vary in their approach to Nixon and the 1970s—and some, like Stone’s and Altman’s, are more sympathetic than others. They are, however, but one approach to the man and the decade. Numerous books and articles have been written on Nixon, all of which tell their own stories. This paper will explore a variety of these works to show how the history of Nixon and the 1970s has been shaped in diverse ways. It will look at Stone and Kuznick’s, Untold History of the United States, John Dean’s The Nixon Defense, Jim Hougan’s Secret Agenda, Elliot and Schenck-Hamlin’s “Film, Politics and the Press: The Influence of ‘All the President’s Men’,” Tyler’s A World of Trouble, and several others to show how historians and other writers have depicted Nixon and his time to tell their take on the man.

The Nixon Shock

There are many different places one could start when analyzing the various wo.......ered him, however, one has to start somewhere—and the Nixon Shock is as good a place as any. When Nixon shut the window on the gold standard in 1971, it “shocked” the world. Prior to that, foreign nations holding USD could still convert them into gold (though the average American could not—that window had been closed decades earlier). The Nixon Shock as it came to be known has been one of particular interest to writers more focused on the economic effect of Nixon’s presidency in the early 1970s than on the scandals. One writer who has taken a unique perspective on the Nixon Shock is G. Edward Griffin, author of The Creature from Jekyll Island, a book that is highly critical of the Federal Reserve, which was essentially born on Jekyll Island shortly before Nixon himself was born in California in 1913. Griffin viewed Nixon’s move as part of a power play by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to control the global money supply. A dollar that was tied to gold could only be supplied in a limited or finite amount. A dollar that was backed by nothing but full faith and credit could be supplied in seemingly unlimited amounts. As the world’s reserve currency, the USD had to be infinite for the IMF to achieve its aim.[footnoteRef:2] [2: G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island (Westlake Village, CA: American Media, 1995), 91.]

The idea that Nixon was just a pawn in a much bigger game was one that other writers, such as Patrick Tyler, or filmmakers like Oliver Stone, have suggested as well. Tyler in his book A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East from the Cold War to the War on Terror, highlights the issues that Nixon faced in attempting to deal with the problematic issues emanating from the Middle East during his presidency. Tyler puts much of the blame squarely on the shoulders of Nixon’s Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Decolonization in Africa had led to an era of neo-colonization, and alliances were very unsettled and unstable as Egypt sought support from both East and West against Israel, and vice versa. Who was playing whom was a big question, and one that Nixon might have more readily asked. Kissinger, essentially acting like a double agent for Israel, quite often proved that it was Nixon, in the end, who was being played, as Tyler shows in his research.[footnoteRef:3] Tyler’s focus, along with that of Stone and Kuznick in their Untold History is on the meaning of events that typically do not get told in the popular representation of Nixon on the decade. The complex interrelationship of events linking the Shock with Middle East activities and the rise of the petrodollar along with the appeasement of Israel all are explored by Tyler and Griffin as they construct a complex narrative that shines a light on the various aspects of the times. [3: Patrick Tyler, A World of Trouble (NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2010), 24.]

Stone and Kuznick pay particular attention to the effect that Nixon’s legacy had on the latter half of the 1970s. After Nixon’s resignation and the cold water effect of Watergate, the Cold War protestors tried to put a brighter face on things in the person of Jimmy Carter—but Carter’s way of dealing with foreign policy was essentially no different from his Cold War forerunners, and the sobering effect of Watergate was quickly lost, as the deep state got back to business as usual.[footnoteRef:4] Tyler describes a Nixon who was out-maneuvered by Kissinger at every step of the way and who was, ultimately, betrayed by his own Secretary of State: Nixon would give Kissinger one set of instructions for dealing with issues in the Middle East, particularly between Israel, Palestine, Egypt and other countries—and Kissinger would fly off and do exactly what he wanted, oftentimes the exact opposite of what Nixon instructed. Tyler’s take on Nixon and the 1970s is one in which Israel plays a powerful influence and a powerful hand—and Kissinger being Jewish and a Zionist, Tyler’s points appear valid: it was a situation in which the president of the United States thinks he has more power than he actually does and, in reality, is actually being maneuvered by a well-oiled political machine consisting of various players in various departments and agencies, many of which link back to Israel, as Jefferson Morley shows in his biography of head of CIA counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton.[footnoteRef:5] [4: Stone, Olver and Peter Kuznick, Untold History of United States (NY: Gallery, 2012), 393.] [5: Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton (St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 112.]

Such was also Stone and Kuznick’s take on events in the 1970s in their dual-effort work The Untold History of the United States, which Stone also turned into a ten-part mini docu-series for Showtime. Stone had already portrayed Nixon in a sympathetic light in his film on the president: he showed a man who was haunted by his own backroom dealings and paranoia about what Peter Dale Scott would eventually call the inner workings of the “deep state”[footnoteRef:6]—the unelected officials and appointees and agents who worked behind the scenes of the public façade to enact policies on both foreign and domestic matters—policies that benefitted certain groups other than the masses who made up the American public—the masses who would protest the Vietnam War. Stone and Kuznick, Tyler and Scott have all placed emphasis on the inner-workings of the “deep state” and have highlighted the struggles that Nixon faced