Nixon's Darkest Secrets: an expose rife with personal resentment

By Steve Donoghue
The National, United Arab Emirates
Feb 17, 2012

On August 22, 1973, an embattled President Richard Nixon held a rare press conference in San Clemente, California. The main subject was the exploding Watergate scandal in which burglars in the pay of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (widely known as Creep) had broken into the Democratic National Committee headquarters, but other subjects came up too, including one a reporter raised towards the end of the session: "Mr President, in your Cambodian invasion speech of April 1970, you reported to the American people that the United States had been strictly observing the neutrality of Cambodia," the reporter began. "I am wondering [in the] light of what we now know - that there were 15 months of bombing of Cambodia previous to your statement - whether you owe an apology to the American people?"

Nixon promptly shot back: "Certainly not, and not to the Cambodian people, because as far as this area is concerned, the area of approximately 10 miles which was bombed during this period, no Cambodians had been in it for years." Read the rest of the article at The National.