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Nixon Tells Editors, 'I'm Not a Crook'
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Mr. Nixon said the government could give him back the papers any time and he could make more than $500,00 by publishing them.
"I am the first President since Harry Truman who hasn't owned any stock" since taking office, Mr. Nixon said.
When he left office as Vice President in 1961 his net worth was $47,000, he said. "In the next eight years, I made a lot of money," he said.
Mr. Nixon said he made $250,000 from his book, "Six Crises," and earned between $100,000 and $250,000 a year practicing law.
In 1968, he said, he sold all his stock for about $300,000, his new New York condominium apartment for $300,000, and received $100,000 due him from his law firm.
"I made my mistakes," he said, "but in all of my years of public life I have never profited from public service."
When asked whether Donald Nixon's telephone was tapped by the Secret Service, the President said the Secret Service "did maintain a surveillance. They did so for security reasons, and I will not go beyond that. They were very good reasons, and my brother was aware of it."
The President did not use the phrase "national security," but only "security." When questioned further he said the surveillance "involved not what he was doing (but) others who were trying to get him, perhaps to use improper influence and support might be doing, and particularly anybody who might be in a foreign country."
[In September, the Washington Post quoted reliable sources as saying Mr. Nixon ordered his brother's phone tapped because he feared that his brother's various financial activities might embarrass the administration.]
Asked if his brother was aware of the surveillance, he said. "He was aware during the fact, because he asked about it, and he was told about it. And he approved of it. He knew why it was done."
The questioning continued to focus on Watergate almost for the entire hour even though the President seemed pleased when he got a few questions on other subjects.
When asked whether he still thought former aides John D. Ehrlichman and H.R. (Bob) Haldeman were fine public servants, as he once characterized them, Mr. Nixon called them "dedicated, fine public servants, and it is my belief, based on what I know now, that when these proceedings are completed that they will come out all right."
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