Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Mayhem: The 1970s You Never Knew, Episode 3

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

“The week that changed the world.” Was it a chance encounter at the World Tennis Championship in 1971, “Panda diplomacy” between the U.S. and Communist China, or a break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters by a team of 5 burglars, that drastically altered the trajectory of world history? It was around this time that the Women’s Equity Action League also filed one of the farthest reaching Class Action lawsuits, leading to President Nixon signing the Education Act into law. Join us as we talk about the origins of the Watergate scandal, the landslide victory that kept Nixon in office, and the establishment of Title IX.  Writer, Host, and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Writers and Researchers: Amy Watkin, Mandy Reid, and Kari Anton Production Coordinator: Andrea Champoux Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Dyson OnTrack. Dyson OnTrack headphones offer best-in-class noise cancellation and an enhanced sound range, making them perfect for enjoying music and podcasts. Get up to 55 hours of listening with active noise cancelling enabled, soft microfibre cushions engineered for comfort, and a range of colours and finishes. Dyson OnTrack. Headphones remastered.

Buy from dysoncanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply.

Details at Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Hello, friends, and welcome back to our docuseries about the 1970s. If you've been listening to our previous episodes, you know we've already been on a wild ride through government deceit, an unbelievable party in Iran, student protests, and travels through space. Well, buckle up because there is so much more to come. Today, we're going to talk about 1972, when President Nixon visited Communist China, Title IX was established, Nixon was re-elected, and an eagle-eyed security guard spotted a little piece of masking tape in a building you may have heard of called Watergate. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.

And here's where it gets interesting. According to Eugenio Martinez, one of the Watergate burglars, the mission felt doomed from the beginning. Martinez had signed divorce paperwork that same day, going directly from the courthouse to the airport to get to Washington, D.C. Not only that, but the car that picked up the five-man team heading to the Watergate office building reminded him of a hearse. Martinez felt a deep sense of foreboding, but continued with the mission. Inside the DNC offices, they turned off their walkie-talkies, cutting off communication with anyone outside the building. They rifled through files and documents, photographing as many as possible, but soon heard the sounds of people moving up and down hallways and stairs. They told themselves it was just guards and employees doing regular nightly checks, but in fact, it was the police that security guard Frank Wills had called in on their suspects because of the missing ceiling tiles and the paperwork and files strewn everywhere.

John Barrett, one of the police officers on eye, only about two inches from his face. Barrett said in a 2022 interview, I screamed something to the effect of, get out of there, get your hands up. Sergeant Paul Leeper jumped on top of the desk and found more men there. Sergeant Paul Leeper jumped on top of the desk and found more men there. The five burglars were hiding behind cubicles and file cabinets, but now they were trapped. Martinez said in a 1974 interview, Then there was running and men shouting, Come out with your hands up or we'll shoot.

All five men were arrested. Some of them were carrying equipment like bugs for phones and other listening devices for rooms. They were also wearing surgical gloves and carrying long range walkie talkies, a shortwave radio capable of listening to police calls, 40 rolls of unexposed film, two 35 millimeter cameras with multiple lenses, three pen-sized tear gas guns, and $2,300 in uncirculated and sequential $100 bills. Just a teeny bit suspicious. The five men sat in jail after giving fake names and refusing to talk to anyone or call lawyers. No one had posted bail. The first newspaper article about the break-in, written by longtime reporter Alfred E. Lewis, appeared pretty unobtrusively at the bottom of page one in the Washington Post on June 18, 1972. But it would soon become the biggest news in presidential history as the five men headed to trial. until his editor told him where the break-in happened, as well as details about the five men arrested, the cash, and the fake names. The judge presiding over the case asked the five men about

their occupations. One finally spoke up and claimed that they were employed as anti-communists, and all the others nodded. But that wasn't good enough. The judge called one of them, who we now know was James McCord, to step forward and asked if he was employed. McCord replied that he was a security consultant, recently retired from a government department. The reporter, Bob Woodward, moved to the front row of the courtroom so he could hear every word. Where in the government? The judge asked, clearly losing patience with the men's vague answers. CIA, McCord whispered, causing the judge to recoil back into his chair. causing the judge to recoil back into his chair.

Woodward's story ran on the front page of the Washington Post the next day and began with this paragraph. Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2.30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities describe as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here. The Watergate scandal began. President Richard Nixon's July 15, 1971 announcement that he'd accepted an invitation to go to China and meet with the leader of the People's Republic of China shocked most Americans. Nixon had, after all, been very publicly anti-communist for years.

As a member of Congress in the 1940s and 50s, he had served on the House Un-American Activities Committee and been part of investigations and eventual prosecutions of suspected communist spies like Alger Hiss. During Nixon's time in Congress, communist leader Mao Zedong announced the creation of the People's Republic of China after the Chinese Revolution of 1949. after the Chinese Revolution of 1949. This ended the Chinese Civil War that had been fought on and off since the 1920s, but it also led to the United States breaking diplomatic ties after declaring that China had fallen to communism. In other words, by 1972, there'd been no diplomatic relationship between the United States and China in about 23 years.

And Nixon seemed like a very unlikely person to build that bridge. Nevertheless, Nixon would become the first U.S. president to visit China, the world's largest communist country, while in office. communist country while in office. Now, you might be wondering what led President Nixon to suddenly announce a trip to China. It turns out that the straw that broke the camel's back was not a strong-arming politician or new economic sanctions. It was table tennis. In January 1971, Nixon received a message from Mao Zedong. Because the countries did not have diplomatic relations, Chairman Mao sent the message via Romania, saying that Nixon was welcome to visit Peking, the capital of China, which is now known as Beijing. Apparently wanting to come off as super casual, Nixon put a note on Mao's message saying, we should not appear too eager to respond. All of this is the governmental equivalent of passing notes in high school,

or snapping each other, or whatever it is the teenagers are doing today. You have a friend ask for you so that you save face if the other person isn't interested. Then the person being asked has to wait a while to respond so that they can seem all nonchalant about it, basically leaving them unread, even if they're really excited. But look, it worked, right? Nixon's closest national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, began speaking to Peking in January 1971, but they weren't yet discussing a presidential visit. In April 1971, the World Table Tennis Championships took place in Japan. And you might know table tennis as ping pong. At one point, American player Glenn Cowan boarded

the Chinese team's bus. Whether by accident or not was never clear, and one of the Chinese players took the opportunity to talk to him, and they were photographed shaking hands. Chairman Mao was delighted and called the player a good diplomat, but wasn't quite ready to invite the American team to China. Mao regularly took sleeping pills before dinner and had a standing order with his staff that they should disregard anything he said after taking his sleeping pills. That night, as his staff was helping him to bed, Mao cracked his eyes open and insistently mumbled instructions to invite the American team to China. team to China. At first, his staff didn't do anything because of his standing order, but after Mao's insistence that they make the invitation quickly, they complied. The table tennis visits really broke the ice and made it easier for Kissinger to plan a presidential visit. Nixon and Kissinger decided that it would be better for the balance of power against the Soviet Union if the United States could somehow re-establish diplomatic relations with China.

Nixon also clearly understood how positive and monumental a presidential trip to China would be preceding the 1972 election. preceding the 1972 election. Nixon's official announcement of the trip aired on television in both countries in July 1971. The meeting between the leaders of China and the United States is to seek the normalization of relations between the two countries and also to exchange views on questions of concern to the two sides. And so, after months and months of mostly secret negotiations between the two countries, President Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon finally visited China in February 1972 to experience what would soon be called the week that changed the world. The official meeting between Nixon and Chairman Mao lasted a little over an hour and has been described by historians as lively, focusing mainly on what they called philosophical questions with the men

exchanging a famous handshake afterwards. It was Chinese Premier Xu Enlai who spent most of the trip with Nixon and worked with him on details of an agreement called the Shanghai Communique, in which they formally agreed to, quote, normalize relations between their two countries, develop trade, lessen the chances of what they called international military conflict, and avoid seeking hegemony or power and dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. Another result of this trip was that the People's Republic of China, the PRC, gained a place in the United Nations General Assembly and is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

The rest of the visit was well documented, with the President and First Lady traveling to the Great Wall, the tombs of the Ming Dynasty, the formerly forbidden city, and Tiananmen Square. It was this very visit to China that started something now known as panda diplomacy between the U.S. and China. Premier Xu heard First Lady Pat Nixon express her fascination with China's national symbol, the giant panda. She was taken with how playful they were and how gentle they seemed to be for their size. And Premier Xusu was not going to miss this opportunity for continued diplomacy, so he offered to send the United States a pair of pandas. And that is how the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. received its first pair of giant

pandas named Ling Ling and Sing Sing. First Lady Pat Nixon was there to welcome the pandas. On behalf of the people of the United States, I am pleased to be here and accept the precious gift of the panda, pandas, and also these other mementos from the government of the People's Republic of China. I'm so glad that this delegation could come here to the United States and enjoy some of our hospitality just as we enjoyed that in their country. And I do appreciate them taking such good care of the pandas on the long trip and after they arrived here at their new home. Panda diplomacy essentially means that the National Zoo pays a fee somewhere around $500,000 to a million dollars a year per panda to China, and American zookeepers and scientists get to learn about the raising and keeping of giant pandas. And in exchange, China uses the giant pandas to soften its authoritarian

reputation and draw attention away from its human rights abuses. Since Lingling and Sing Sing died without any surviving offspring, China gave the National Zoo a second pair of pandas in 2000, this time on something like a lease. The second pair of giant pandas, Meishang and Tiantian, have been at the National Zoo for 23 years. And now they, along with their three-year-old Xiaochiji, are scheduled to go back to China in December of 2023.

In 1972, Mariah Burton Nelson was unconcerned with politically motivated break-ins in Washington, D.C. She was a 16-year-old high school student asked to try out for her Phoenix High School boys basketball team because there was no girls basketball team. The 6'2 Mariah soon started at Stanford University and joined the women's basketball team, though calling it an official team is a stretch when you consider that they were coached by an unpaid graduate student, had to purchase their own t-shirts and high tops that passed for uniforms, and did all of their own physical training and therapy, like taping ankles. Yet there was Mariah breaking the rebound record and going on to play professionally in what was then called the Women's Basketball League, quickly learning, as she says in this quote, that the reality was quite a contrast to the dream. Many of us were not ultimately paid to play.

As the league developed financial troubles, many of us, myself included, received checks that bounced. Many of the coaches were sexist, insisting that we wear makeup or attend John Robert Powers' charm school. One coach insisted on calling us girls when we asked to be called women. Most had never coached women before and compared us unfavorably to the men and boys that they coached. There was a lack of respect for us as athletes that we found demeaning. Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith. The first women's intercollegiate basketball team, in fact, the first intercollegiate women's game in any sport, was played in 1896 between Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. And at that time, Stanford didn't even have a men's team. But roles quickly reversed and men's sports began to dominate.

In 1906, the National College Athletics Association, or the NCAA, was founded in order to regulate the rules in men's college football. Before long, they became the regulatory body over all college athletics. NCAA regulations did not require institutions to offer women's athletics, meaning that there were no funds set aside for women's sports scholarships or facilities or supplies, etc. Before, someone says that this happened because men's sports garner more attention and thus more money for the colleges, or because men are naturally more athletic, consider the history. People at the turn of the 20th century still believed that humans had a

limited amount of energy. And historians note that women were not encouraged to exert themselves, probably because they needed their energy to clean their houses and cook meals and run after children. Some experts preach that sports would make women unattractive to men and make their children weaker and harm their reproductive ability. weaker and harm their reproductive ability. Nevertheless, female PE teachers, coaches, and hopeful athletes pushed forward. In 1970, there were approximately 30,000 women competing in NCAA sports compared to about 170,000 men. And the vast majority of those women had to pay their own way, just like Mariah's 1972 Stanford team. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson had signed Executive Order 11375, which said that any educational institution that received federal funding or participated in federal contracts

could not discriminate on the basis of sex. Around this same time, Brooklyn native Bernice Resnick-Sandler had a PhD in psychology and was working as a lecturer at the University of Maryland. As full-time teaching positions became available, she was given a myriad of excuses for why she was not promoted, including, women always stay home when their children are sick, or you're just a housewife who went back to school. And the time-worn chestnut of, you come on too strong for a woman. Bernice and her husband realized that she was being discriminated against. So she joined the Women's Equity Action League. And in 1970, they filed one of the farthest reaching class action lawsuits in U.S. history at that point against all colleges and universities in the country. The gender discrimination was

rampant. Cornell School of Veterinary Medicine only admitted two women per year, no matter how many applied. Most faculty departments and universities across the country had no female staff at all and enforced policies against giving scholarships to married women. The 1971 House Report on Higher Education revealed that 21,000 women students were turned down for college entrance in the state of Virginia, while not one male student was rejected. Dr. Sandler's lawsuit led to compliance investigations of several colleges and universities, starting with Harvard in 1970. several colleges and universities, starting with Harvard in 1970. Federal government offices began issuing guidelines against sex discrimination. While all of that was going on, Dr. Sandler met Representative Patsy Mink from Hawaii, the first woman of color and the first Asian American woman to serve in Congress, and together they began working on what would become Title IX.

Title IX was part of the larger 1972 Education Act, an omnibus bill containing 10 subsets or titles. The 1972 Education Act did many things, like giving $2 billion to desegregate school districts and $19 billion to colleges and universities. For the first time, offering programs so that students who couldn't afford college could receive federal aid to help pay for it, and taking federal funding away from colleges and universities that discriminated against women in their admissions policies. President Nixon signed the final version of the Education Act, and thus Title IX, into law on June 23, 1972. Title IX covers gender discrimination in a number of areas, as we can see from its wording.

It says, no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. But it's best known for its effect on college athletics. When asked if she considered herself a pioneer in women's sports, Mariah Burton Nelson said, Yes, we all are. Pioneers are people who go where others have not gone before. They don't usually get rich or famous,

and they often suffer numerous hardships and indignities, but they open doors for future generations. After Representative Patsy Mink died in 2002, Title IX was officially renamed the Patsy Takamoto Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act. And it's time we return to Richard Nixon and Watergate. At the end of 1972, the president was running for re-election against a candidate there's a good chance you don't remember. George McGovern. Clinching the Democratic nomination was hardly a foregone conclusion for McGovern.

People felt sure it would go to someone like Ted Kennedy or Hubert Humphrey. McGovern's platform included ending the war in Vietnam and implementing a basic minimum income to help the nation's poor. Almost everyone who met McGovern declared him to be one of the most decent men they'd ever known. Even the Pope was so impressed with the work that McGovern was doing with the Kennedy administration that he told him, when you meet your maker and he asks you, did you feed the poor? You can say, I did. McGovern's initial choice of running mate was Ted Kennedy. After much back and forth over the phones during the convention, Kennedy told his friend he was sorry, but no thank you, noting personal responsibilities to his own family and those of his assassinated brothers, John and Bobby. Kennedy suggested Tom Eagleton, a senator from Missouri who gladly joined McGovern's ticket. But Eagleton had secrets of his own.

The McGovern campaign learned that Eagleton had received inpatient care for depression several times, and his treatment had included electroshock therapy and antipsychotic medications. Everyone was telling McGovern to change his mind. Instead, McGovern released a statement saying that he was, quote, 1,000% for Tom Eagleton, and he had no intention of dropping him from the ticket. On the campaign trail, McGovern was battling an incumbent president, enjoying a booming economy, and the predicted positive attention from the visit to China. Nixon's campaign rested confidently on the fact that he was already president, taking the attitude that the current president was far too busy and important to be bothered

with partisan bickering between candidates. And it worked. By 1972, only seven incumbent presidents in history had lost re-election. And so with those odds, plus a campaign budget of $45 million, which was like $330 million today, the Nixon Agnew ticket looked unstoppable. The Republican campaign slogan, President Nixon, now more than ever, was plastered on buttons and bumper stickers everywhere and seemed to be what people wanted, despite the news trick to have about the recent break-in at the Watergate building. Years later, one of McGovern's campaign managers said McGovern was holding up the Washington Post at rallies and saying, here is the newest story. The country just didn't want to believe it. A poll just before the 1972 election showed that only 3% of likely voters thought that Watergate was important. Another poll showed that 48% of Americans had never even heard of Watergate. Then, fewer than 14 days before the general election, Henry Kissinger announced that, through ongoing negotiations, peace was at hand in Vietnam. This was not strictly true. Six weeks after the 1972 election, Nixon ordered the beginning of the Christmas bombing raids on Hanoi.

But about 80% of the public believed Dr. Kissinger. It turned out that announcements like these, designed to let voters believe that Nixon was close to brokering peace in Vietnam, were aimed at young voters in particular. One of the reasons McGovern may have still believed that he could win was the 26th Amendment passed in 1971 that lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. McGovern's campaign hoped that the more than 11 million new voters now eligible to cast a ballot in 1972 would vote overwhelmingly for him, the Democrat. But Nixon was paying more attention to the environment and pledging to end the draft, all with an eye on those young voters. Nixon's campaign hired a PR consultant to develop and direct a brand new Young Voters for the President organization.

And a September 1972 poll showed that 57% of young voters found Nixon more sincere than McGovern. Around November 1st, McGovern's staff became concerned. Their fear was that McGovern might believe he could actually win when it was clearly going to be a landslide victory for Nixon. The Sunday night before the election, one staffer drew the short straw and had to tell McGovern that according to all the polls, there was no way they were going to win. McGovern looked at him and said, Bob, I know this, but for the next 48 hours, I just have to pretend. On election day, it was all over by seven o'clock Eastern. 49 states had voted for

Nixon and only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. for McGovern. It was the largest margin for presidential victory in U.S. history to date. Nixon won 60.7% of the popular vote and 97% of the electoral votes. On election night in Washington, D.C., President Nixon publicly thanked his staff and his wife and children. He cracked some jokes for insiders about those guys at the papers missing a good party. But what else could possibly have been happening in 1972, you ask? Let's see. In October 1972, the International Computer Communication Conference saw the first public demonstration of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, one of the precursors of the Internet.

agency network, one of the precursors of the internet. Also in 1972, a new form of communication called electronic mail was first introduced. Imagine how fast the news about Watergate would have traveled if email had been available then. Also in March 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment, which was first proposed in 1923 and would provide a constitutional guarantee of equal rights under the law for all people regardless of sex, passed in Congress and was immediately ratified by 35 of the 38 states required to make it part of the Constitution. The 38th state finally ratified the amendment just a couple years later in 2020. Many scholars say that this means the ERA is now part of the Constitution, but the amendment has not been officially archived that way. Maybe if Nixon had had email, he would have known that an accident would soon change someone's loyalty and that his campaign manager had the home phone numbers of two of the Washington Post's news reporters. And we'll cover all of that and more in our next episode. I'll see you soon. The show is written and researched by Sharon McMahon, Amy Watkin, Mandy Reed, and Kari Anton.

Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder, and it is executive produced and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. If you enjoyed today's episode, we would love for you to hit the subscribe button, leave us a review, or share this episode on your favorite social media platform. All of those things help podcasters out so much. We'll see you again soon.