A Lion...A Fox

Chapter 3 - Dec. '59 Chap. 4 Winds of Change

Chapter 3        December ‘59

At his home in Biscayne Bay Bebe Rebozo thought back to when he was first introduced to Dick Nixon by U.S. Senator George Smathers. Smathers was the newly elected Senator from Florida, in 1950 a democrat and aquaintence of Rebozo’s. It was a quiet evening in Key Biscayne Florida and a time for Charles Bebe Rebozo to put on his finishing touches. Tomorrow his guests would arrive and his work with the caterers and staff was finished for the day and as evening comes earlier this time of year he prepared to enjoy a quiet evening cocktail in hand out by the pool. He was called Bebe as a nickname for baby being the youngest if twelve children born to a Cuban American family in Tampa, Florida. A man who prided himself on always being fashionably dressed and appropriately appointed for whatever the occasion might be. Bebe was a man of style and prided himself so. 

In the dark quiet on a December evening with a temperature almost room so at 68 degrees Bebe began to get lost in his thoughts of years gone by. Rebozo was remembering that Nixon supported the Taft-Hartley Act and served on the Education and Labor Committees. He was part of the Herter Committee, which went to Europe to prepare a preliminary report on the newly enacted Marshall Plan. Rebozo noted that Nixon first gained national attention in 1948 when his investigation on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) broke the impasse of the Alger Hiss spy case. Nixon was making bold steps in the game of politics Rebozo thought and that was part of his attraction to Nixon.

Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950 for statements he made to the HUAC. The discovery that Hiss committed perjury and thus may well have been a Soviet spy thrust Nixon into the spotlight for the first time. This case turned Nixon into a controversial figure. Rebozo recalled how The HUAC became a standing committee. Richard Nixon was the newest member of the committee. Under its mandate, the committee focused its investigations on suspected communists in positions of actual influence in the United States society.

Nixon had a big set of balls he thought as Rebozo revisited the past few years. When things looked bad for the committee Nixon worked 24/7 in an almost desperate urgency to win against Hiss and prove what he knew that Hiss was indeed a communist. Nixon had worked well with committee investigators and their work together would pay off for HUAC and particularly for Nixon. Under pressure from Hiss’s lawyers, Chambers finally retrieved his envelope of evidence and presented it to the HUAC after they subpoenaed them.  It contained four notes in Alger Hiss’s handwriting, sixty-five typewritten copies of State Department documents and five strips of microfilm, some of which contained photographs of State Department documents. The press came to call these the “Pumpkin Papers” referring to the fact that Chambers had briefly hidden the microfilm in a hollowed-out pumpkin. These documents indicated that Hiss knew Chambers long after mid-1936 and also that Hiss had engaged in espionage with Chambers.

Rebozo recalled meeting Dick Nixon at that time and helping him purchase his winter Florida home in 1950.

Rebozo recalled that in the 1950 mid-term elections, Nixon ran against Democratic Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Nixon felt the former actress was a left-wing sympathizer, labeling her “pink right down to her underwear.” Conversely, Douglas referred to Nixon as “Tricky Dick”. Chotiner was a master at dirty trick style of campaigns and getting down right in the mud. While Douglas was touted as a liberal, wealthy privileged upper-class New Dealer, Nixon was the average man, the guy next door who was helping you fight the communists.

The red scare was in full bloom and the favorable publicity Nixon had received as a result of the Hiss case, Taft Hartley and the Marshall plan. It was something other congressmen could only dream of and there was only one place for a “comer” like Nixon to go—the United States Senate.