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The Toronto Star Mar. 17, 02:47 EDT Nixon tapes reveal loathing for Trudeau Former PM was a 'son of a bitch,' Canadian trip 'a pain in the ass' By Robert Russo Canadian Press WASHINGTON � The 30-year-old tapes are scratchy and the words often indiscernible, but the scorn for Pierre Trudeau drips from recently released recordings of Richard Nixon like toxin from a time capsule. Five hundred hours of audio tapes secretly recorded by the disgraced former president made public by the U.S. National Archives make it clear that Nixon's sulphureous loathing for Trudeau extended to the former prime minister's staff and even to Canada. Trudeau was that "clever son of a bitch" playing both sides of the street. The former prime minister's executive assistant was "that ugly bastard � a real left-winger" who became the subject of a petty Nixon vendetta. Spending three days in Canada was "a pain in the ass." Nixon found Trudeau's intellectual acrobatics tiresome and baffling. After the Canadian left an Oval Office meeting, Nixon wondered aloud to then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger: "What in the Christ is he talking about?" Nixon fought the release of his taped conversations right up to the day he died in 1994. His daughters continue the struggle to this very day. About half of the 3,700 hours recorded have been made available so far. The most recent block of tapes made public by the U.S. National Archives cover six months near the end of Nixon's first term, which ran from 1969 to 1973. They include the former president's unfavourable impressions of a trip to Ottawa in 1972, his assessment of Trudeau and an Oval Office conversation between the two men. A voice-activated 1960s-vintage microphone under his desk in the Oval Office barely captures Nixon's baritone at times. Cross-talk and a constant hiss obscures much of the dialogue. The tapes reveal a man with a brilliant command of an incredibly complex world stage at a time of a hot war in Vietnam, a Cold War with the Soviet Union and growing demonstrations at home as he headed into an election year. But they also allow for new glimpses of the already documented dark side of a paranoid former president. He can barely mention Trudeau without referring to him a "son of a bitch." On April 18, 1972, Nixon complains to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, about his dealings with Trudeau during an April 13-15 trip to Ottawa a few days earlier. For months, Trudeau complained to Nixon that the war in Vietnam and American economic policy had given succour to the Canadian left. The tapes reveal that Nixon was suspicious of his Canadian counterpart. "That Trudeau, he's a clever son of a bitch. You see, he's on that side of that Canada liberation movement," he tells Haldeman. "He's trying to play both sides so he has them out there and he sort of tries to give us a little colour guard. But after the way we treated the son of a bitch. . .." Cross-talk blurs the rest of Nixon's thought. So do two sections of the conversation totalling more than three minutes that were beeped out for national security reasons. But Nixon won't let it go. He fumes about a Trudeau aide who refused to allow Haldeman to open an elaborate set of sculptured doors at the National Arts Centre so Nixon could make a quick getaway from a dinner he and his wife were attending with Trudeau. "Was the prime minister's executive assistant, that bushy-haired fellow?" Nixon asks. "Ugly bastard. Probably very left-wing. Why didn't we do something about it." Nixon, practically sputtering with rage, orders Haldeman to plant a negative story with columnist Jack Anderson about the Trudeau aide. "Play it hard, find a way goddammit. Give it to somebody around here." "You've got to put it to these people for kicking the U.S. around after what we did for that lousy son of bitch (Trudeau), wasting three days up there." The subject of Nixon's rage turns out to be Timothy Porteous. Before he headed the Canada Council for the Arts, Porteous worked as Trudeau's executive assistant and remembered the incident clearly. "The veins were popping through Haldeman's forehead," Porteous, now retired, said from Vancouver. He chuckled when Nixon's description of him was read over the telephone." "I'm actually proud to have been the subject of a Nixon smear campaign," Porteous said. Tapes released several years ago made Nixon's scorn for Trudeau clear. The conservative president came from a hardscrabble background. He looked at Trudeau's wealth, his privileged education and long hair and was appalled even before the two men had a chance to discuss policy. Henry Kissinger said Trudeau's brilliance, elegance and liberalism inevitably stirred the beast in Nixon. "Trudeau was bound to evoke all of Nixon's resentments against 'swells' who in his view had always looked down on him," Kissinger wrote in his memoirs. "He disdained Trudeau's clear enjoyment of social life; he tended to consider him soft on defence and in his general attitude toward the East." Marc Lalonde, who was Trudeau's senior adviser during Nixon's first-term, said his boss was well aware of Nixon's antipathy. "It certainly didn't prevent him from sleeping at night," Lalonde said in a telephone interview from Montreal. When the first batch of tapes made public years ago recorded Nixon referring to Trudeau as an "asshole," the former prime minister reacted with Gallic indifference and a characteristic shrug of the shoulders. "I've been called worse things by better people." The recently released Nixon tapes include conversations recorded on the day Nixon returned from a three-day trip to Ottawa. He could barely stomach his time there, judging by his unfiltered impressions shared with aides. "That trip we needed like a hole in the head," he told Kissinger on April 15, 1972. Three days later, he has some kind words for the House of Commons and then-Conservative leader Robert Stanfield. "They were magnificent," said Nixon, indicating they had taken the bother out of "that Canadian trip (which was) a whole pain in the ass." __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Sports - live college hoops coverage http://sports.yahoo.com/ --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
