Will Sellers: Saint Hannah and her sinner son
The summer of 1974 in Washington DC was a political bullfight; there was one bull, but a host of matadors, picadors, and spectators galore just waiting to watch President Richard Nixon in his last gasps of political power. Congressional hearings, articles of impeachment, and an administration completely insular and unstable were all coming to a simultaneous head. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger metaphorically described this as the highest pinnacles of success descending into the deepest valleys of distress. Over the course of the prior few years, President Nixon had won the largest landslide election victory to that point in history, successfully concluded American involvement in Vietnam, and achieved the monumental foreign policy objectives of detente with the USSR, stability in the Middle East, and rapprochement with China. But in August 1974, all these achievements were forgotten, and with an atmosphere of political intrigue thick with smiling hatred, the bull in the ring faced the final cut. Almost everyone had deserted him as key members of his staff faced indictment, trials, and prison. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled he had to provide tape-recorded conversations to prosecutors, the House Judiciary Committee passed the first article of impeachment for obstruction of justice, and a group of key legislators informed him that he didn’t have the votes in the Senate to avoid removal from office. Nixon even called Alabama Governor George Wallace to enlist his support, but Wallace refused to intervene on his behalf with members of the Alabama congressional delegation and other Boll Weevil Democrats. After the call with Wallace, Nixon turned to Chief of Staff Alexander Haig and said, “Well, Al, there goes the presidency.” And so the true “man in the arena” faced the final curtain all alone. The day before, on national television, Nixon announced his intention to resign, and now, on the morning of August 9, in an impromptu moment, Nixon addressed the White House staff for the last time as president. In what has been described as rambling, unprepared, and certainly unscripted remarks, Nixon, perhaps for the only time, opened his soul and summed up his life’s work. These off-the-cuff remarks were recorded, and for history’s sake, transcribed for all of see. In the midst of a rambling apology, Nixon reflected on his youth and his parents and then, out of the blue and with no context, said: “Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother. Well, I guess all of you would say this about your mother – my mother was a saint. And, I think of her, two boys dying of tuberculosis, nursing four others in order that she could take care of my older brother for three years in Arizona and seeing each of them die, and when they died, it was like one of her own. Yes, she will have no books written about her. But she was a saint.” An old saying, perhaps, said to comfort women of a different age and justify their sacrifices states: “The hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world.” So, Nixon’s mother, Hannah Milhous, at least for five-and-a-half years, ruled the world. No book has ever been written about her, but the life of Hannah Nixon and the impact she had on her son and his consequential role in American politics and international affairs is worth consideration. Hannah Milhous was born in 1885 in Butlerville, Indiana, into a devout Quaker family of farmers. She was one of nine children; seven girls and two boys. Her father, Franklin, was an orchardist, who, seeing brighter days ahead, moved his entire family to California in 1897 to establish a tree nursery and orange grove with other Quakers in Whittier, California. While a “birthright” Quaker, Hannah’s branch of the faith expressed itself in a more evangelical bent, and at the age of 18, she had a religious experience that made her very devout and committed. Hannah was intelligent, and after completing high school, she attended Whittier College, where, by all accounts, she made good grades and was on the path to becoming a teacher. No stranger to hard work, she helped her mother with various household tasks, assisted with her father’s farm, and stayed up late each night studying. Her life would be forever changed when, at a Quaker Valentine’s Day party, she met Frank Nixon. They feel in love and married four months later. Hannah’s family never really approved of Frank and thought she had married beneath her. The fact that she married before finishing college was also a sore spot with Hannah’s family, who never seemed to warm up to Frank. But Hannah truly loved her husband, and, having completed her sophomore year of college, seemed ready to start her own family. Within a year of their marriage, Harold Nixon was born, followed by Richard in 1913. She had five sons in all, named after the early English kings; Richard, for the Richard the Lion-Hearted. By all accounts, Frank was uncouth, argumentative, and a tough father. Upon his marriage to Hannah, he converted to the Quaker faith but never truly left his Methodist roots. Hannah was the complete opposite – quiet and inclined to see both sides of an issue. She was also compassionate, and one area of disagreement with Frank was Hannah’s willingness to help the destitute. Frank wanted someone to work before receiving assistance, but Hannah would never turn away a tramp from the door and ran the household like a charitable operation. Even when the family had enough money to employ a “hired girl,” Hannah insisted that the servant eat with them at the table. Hannah was religious and committed to her faith, but she was also had a deep sense of privacy and was not a show-off when it came to piety. At night, she went into her closet to say her prayers. As was true of most Quakers, neither she nor Frank smoked, drank, or cursed, and she expected that her children would accept these same restraints. Hannah’s influence was so
Will Sellers: Loyalty still matters
Always the catch-all political crime, an accusation of treason is used to punish rivals and remove them from civic engagement. Autocrats use the insinuation of treason with brutal efficiency to banish, if not execute, a political problem or inconvenient idea. While treason is bandied about to characterize someone with whose political beliefs we disagree, our founders made treason a particularly difficult crime to prove. As with so much of the Constitution, the terms were specifically written to prevent abuses witnessed by colonials. Article III, Section 3 not only provides safeguards that treason not be used to silence political opponents, but it also limits the extent of any punishment. Because of these strictures, we often forget what real treason looks like and fail to fully appreciate loyalty to country or creed. While national ties are not unlike family bonds, this intrinsic loyalty to place or relations is often weakened by opportunity or ideology. Few people today really know a traitor to their country. There may be disagreements on any number of levels, but seldom do acts fully rise to the level of treason within the Constitutional definition. Treason in the United States is more than a lazy term of derision occasioned by mere policy disagreements. Seventy years ago, when highly placed British diplomats surreptitiously defected to the Soviet Union, treason was made manifest. In May 1951, the Cold War was escalating between the capitalist West and the communist East. The United States had witnessed hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and citizens were rocked by allegations of Soviet agents operating within our nation’s government. Alger Hiss had been convicted of perjury, which fanned the flames that other government employees had divided loyalties and worked for the Russians. But many of the accused denied any involvement in espionage; for every accusation, there was denial and not always crystal-clear evidence of treason. In a sensational trial held in March 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage, but there was hardly uniform consensus that they were significantly guilty, and there was enough evidence to question the appropriateness of the death penalty. In similar cases, the accused were defiant and vociferously expressed innocence. Thus, the county was divided about whether the treason was actual and if those accused were more political dissenters than disloyal Americans. The actions of the British diplomats and the subsequent revelations after their defection left no doubt that our former allies, the Russians, had for years spied on us and penetrated both British and American governments at a very high level. At Cambridge University in the 1930s, several undergraduates, including Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, were recruited by the Soviets to provide information about Great Britain. They were from privileged families and considered among the elite attending a premier university. Nothing in their background gave the slightest hint that their loyalties had shifted from King and Country to Joseph Stalin and the Bolsheviks. MacLean joined the British foreign office in 1934 and almost immediately began supplying information to the Russians. Until his defection in 1951, he delivered more than 4,500 documents to his Soviet handlers. Burgess was initially employed by the BBC and British Secret Service and, later, with the foreign office. While working as a spy, he supplied the Soviets with more than 4.600 confidential or top-secret documents. Using information obtained from MacLean, the Russians leaked a copy of a letter from Winston Churchill to President Harry Truman, which included an embarrassing assessment of Stalin. The FBI believed the leak had come from the British Embassy and suspected MacLean, but they were unable to confirm their suspicions. Later, as Western intelligence services began decrypting old Soviet traffic between Washington and Moscow, MacLean emerged as a leading suspect, given his access to a host of sensitive documents about the US, British, and Canadian committee on the development of atomic weaponry. Recalled to London, MacLean was tipped off by fellow Cambridge spy Kim Philby (who was stationed in DC with knowledge of the investigation) that he was under suspicion. Given the stress of his dual identity, MacLean started drinking heavily and was viewed as so unstable that, once accused, he would confess and implicate others. Not wanting to risk exposure, Burgess and Philby explained to Moscow that MacLean must leave Britain, and Burgess began making plans for MacLean to defect. At this same time, Burgess was dismissed from the foreign service based on conduct unrelated to his espionage. With his career at an end, he decided to accompany MacLean. Moscow felt a dual defection with mutual support could be successful. Others disagreed and argued that 2 defections would prompt counterintelligence to begin connecting dots to uncover seemingly loyal British citizens who served Stalin’s workers’ paradise. By a series of feints and head fakes, Burgess and MacLean successfully defected and were noticeably absent, prompting the secret service and other agencies to assess the situation. They soon realized their slow response to American inquiries had given the spies time to depart without exposing their accomplices. The situation quickly began to unravel as guilt by association caused suspicion to fall on others who had served with Burgess and MacLean. Most importantly, trust between the U.S. and British intelligence agencies deteriorated, which may have been even more significant than the disclosure of state secrets. The instability caused by these defections led both the CIA and MI-6 into a frenzied self-examination, placing former colleagues under suspicion and disrupting normal operations in search of disloyalty. An inordinate amount of time was consumed by Western allies chasing spies who either did not exist or were not in positions to supply actionable intelligence. Burgess, MacLean, and their ilk committed treason by being unambiguously disloyal to their country. There remains no question that their actions lead to deaths and seriously compromised military and diplomatic secrets. They also sowed seeds of discord among Western security agencies. While many in the
