Richard Nixon-- Another Conservative As Queer As David Dreier, Lindsay Graham And Aaron Schock

Young conservative love

I shudder when history's villains are labeled "gay." Like Hitler. And some of them, J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn, for example, were. But Nixon? Richard Milhous Nixon? I grew up hating him. I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't. And until yesterday, his 99th birthday, I had never heard any of the rumors that he was gay. And, as you probably know, I get those rumors fast. Patrick McHenry (R-NC)... he's gay. So are Aaron Schock (R-IL), Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Miss McConnell (R-KY), David Dreier (R-CA). (Yes, DiFi looks like she'll have a gay challenger for re-election-- either that or multimillionaire and career criminal Darrell Issa.)

Anyway, back to Nixon, the subject of a new book by veteran White House reporter Don Fulsom, Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President. There's a long list of eye-popping charges, three of the most startling being that he used to beat Pat, that he had mob ties for more than 20 years before he was elected and that he "lusted after his best pal, dashing Cuban-American playboy Charles (Bebe) Rebozo."

Nixon, like most conservative closet queens, made a point of being aggressively anti-gay in public. But Fulsom charges that he and Rebozo were longtime lovers.

Nixon and Rebozo, who the feds believe laundered money for mob kingpins in Florida and Cuba, swam, sunbathed and dined together during guys-only vacations in exclusive Key Biscayne, Fla., and were once spotted holding hands under the table during a dinner with K Street power brokers, according to a report on the book in the Daily Mail.

Another Washington reporter told Fulsom that he once spotted a boozy Nixon nuzzling Rebozo "the way you'd cuddle your senior prom date."

The pair's friendship was no secret to Washington insiders, and the book claims that there were whispers that the two were more than just pals up until Nixon's death in 1994. (Rebozo was by his side. He died four years later.)

White House aides at the time said Rebozo was nothing more than "the guy who mixed the martinis" and showed the notoriously stuffy Nixon how to hobnob, the Mail said.

The new book also charges that Nixon guzzled bathtubs of booze-- earning the name "Our Drunk" from his own staff-- and abused First Lady Pat Nixon.

Fulsom writes that an aide had to coach Nixon on how to kiss Mrs. Nixon so that they'd come across as a loving couple, the Mail said.

But behind closed doors, Nixon called his wife a “fucking bitch” and often beat her before, during and after his presidency, the book claims.

The American media has largely left this story alone, but U.K. newspapers are having a field day. The Express went into great detail about the affair between Nixon and Rebozo, who died in 1998.

[Nixon and Pat] had separate bedrooms at the white House and at the exclusive Florida resort of Key Biscayne where Nixon often holidayed, Pat stayed in a separate house while Bebe Rebozo stayed in the room next to Nixon.

As president Nixon maintained close ties with criminal figures including New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, considered America’s “most powerful Mafioso,” Fulsom claims. Nixon bought a home in Key Biscayne at a bargain price from Mafia-linked businessman Donald Berg. The lender for one of Nixon’s homes in the Key was Arthur Dresser, who consorted with mobster Meyer Lansky.

Yet it is Nixon’s alleged decades-long affair with Rebozo that seems most extraordinary for the president who was notoriously homophobic. “They were inseparable,” Republican campaigner Louis Fineman said when Nixon died in 1994. “You can’t imagine how close two men could be. It was as if Bebe had the key to unlock Nixon’s soul.”

Insiders wagged tongues at the intimacy the two men shared. One recalls seeing a drunken Nixon drape his arm around Rebozo “the way you’d cuddle your senior prom date” and they were spotted holding hands on at least three occasions, Fulsom alleges.

The duo played boisterous physical games together in the pool and spent many hours secluded together on guys-only holidays on private boats. Rebozo chose Nixon’s suits and even picked the movies to screen in the white House. But Rebozo also played a more sinister and lucrative role.

“Rebozo was Nixon’s No 1 bagman for payoffs from not only the Mafia but from mobbed-up loopy billionaire Howard Hughes,” claims Fulsom. Rebozo owned the Key Biscayne Bank, suspected as a pipeline for laundering Mafia money from a mob-linked casino in the Bahamas and was linked to notorious mob bosses Santo Trafficante and Alfred “Big Al” Polizzi. FBI agents in the Sixties branded Rebozo a “non-member associate of organised crime figures.”

He was indicted for money laundering a $100,000 donation to the Nixon campaign made by Howard Hughes after the money was found in Rebozo’s safe deposit box. Yet Rebozo escaped trial, reaching a deal probably brokered by Nixon.

Astonishingly the dubious businessman was given his own office and bedroom at Nixon’s White House, frequently hanging out in the Oval Office, claims the book. In Key Biscayne they bought neighboring houses.

Nixon was a California senator when he first met Rebozo in 1950 and they quickly became best buddies. Rebozo became “Uncle Bebe” to Nixon’s daughters Tricia and Julie. The son of a Cuban cigar-maker, Rebozo worked himself up from poverty to become an entrepreneur and banker just as Nixon, the son of a struggling grocer, endured an impoverished childhood in Whittier, Los Angeles, to become a lawyer and politician. The good-looking Cuban surrounded himself with beautiful women and hosted debauched orgies in Miami but Fulsom suggests that was a front to hide his affair with Nixon.

Rebozo’s four-year first marriage-- to Claire Gunn, the sister of his alleged former male lover-- was never consummated, Fulsom claims, and a second marriage to his lawyer’s secretary, Jane Lucke, was so sexless that she said: “Bebe’s favourites are Richard Nixon, his cat-- and then me.”

General Alexander Haig allegedly mocked Rebozo’s “limp wrist” manner and secretary of state Henry Kissinger bristled when Rebozo flew on Air Force One sporting a US Navy flight jacket emblazoned with the presidential seal. Yet Rebozo was loyal to the end, one of the president’s few friends to stand by him after he resigned in shame in 1974 and was at Nixon’s bedside before his death in 1994. When Rebozo died four years later he left more than £12million to the Nixon Memorial Library.

...The new biography reveals the rare bond that existed between the president and his loyal if crooked companion. But in the light of the cruel ways in which Nixon assuaged his inner demons even his most ardent apologists will struggle to muster any pity for a lying, abusive venal crook forced to conceal a forbidden love.

You can buy this book at the DownWithTyranny bookstore, of course. Don't forget to read the Huffington Post's open letter to gay Republicans. And if you want to help rid Congress of it's worst homophobic members-- from both parties-- well... here's the place to do that.