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Richard Nixon was so threatened by Ted Kennedy ahead of the 1972 presidential election, he tried to catch the senator cheating on his wife. White House tape recordings reveal a stark series of conversations in which the former U.S. president instructed aides to recruit secret service agents to spill dirt on the behaviour of Senator Kennedy, who died on Tuesday aged 77.
'Do you have anybody in the Secret Service that you can get to?' Mr Nixon can be heard asking aide John Ehrlichman. 'Yeah, yeah,' replied Ehrlichman. 'Plant one,' Nixon said. 'Plant two guys on him. This could be very useful.' Mr Nixon had been eager to track the senator's movements after the Chappaquiddick scandal in 1969, when Kennedy swam to safety after driving his car off a bridge leaving passenger Mary Jo Copechne to drown.
In his efforts to expose the senator with a woman other than his wife, Joan, Nixon had investigators follow Mr Kennedy on holidays in Hawaii and Martha's Vineyard. Secret Service agents were only able to tell the president that Joan Kennedy had wanted to wear 'hot pants' to a White House function until her husband talked her out of it. 'Does he do anything?' Mr Nixon asks in a September 1971 meeting. 'No, no, he's very clean,' Mr Ehrlichman replied. 'He was in Hawaii on his own. He was staying in some guy's villa. He was just as nice as could be the whole time.' 'The thing to do is watch him,' said Mr Nixon.
The president also made clear that the Secret Service protection afforded Mr Kennedy in the wake of his brothers' assassinations would be rescinded. 'After the election, he doesn't get a ... thing. If he gets shot, it's too damn bad. Do it under the basis, though, that we pick the Secret Service men.' Mr Nixon is heard saying. 'Understand what I'm talking about?'
History professor and Nixon expert Luke A. Nichter said: 'President Nixon never forgot his humiliating defeat in the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy. 'Nixon did not intend to simply win in 1972; he wanted to destroy his opponent.
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