USA TODAY International Edition
Remembering David Frost
How the British talk show host, who died Saturday, broke down Richard Nixon. Opinion,
In the end, I concluded that David Frost was the best man in the world to confront Richard Nixon on his Watergate crimes. But the opinion was a long time in coming.
When the British talk show host — who died Saturday night at the age of 74 — hired me as his Watergate adviser for his historic Nixon interviews in 1977, I was deeply skeptical. His reputation was built on comedy and soft soap interviews of political and entertainment celebrities. Among my colleagues, we whispered that Nixon had probably chosen Frost for the exclusive interview three years after the president’s disgrace precisely because he expected to walk all over Frost, make a million dollars and rehabilitate his reputation in the bargain. Nixon, no doubt, had visions of a pleasant afterlife as a distinguished elder statesman.
From the beginning, I tried to impress on Frost the huge historical stakes. If Nixon won their confrontation, disaster loomed, because the American people would have second thoughts about driving Nixon from office. Frost had to win. Nixon’s criminality had to be dramatically and convincingly demonstrated. That was the first and utterly necessary imperative. With that, as the lowest star, the nation could be content with Nixon’s demise. To watch Nixon squirm and then confess could become a national catharsis, allow the country finally to move on.
At first, Frost seemed oblivious to my breathless urgings. As I struggled to master the mountainous canon of Watergate materials and discovered new and devastating tapes to surprise Nixon, Frost would breeze into Washington from London on the Concorde, entertain us wonderfully at a boozy lunch, and then fly off to New York to cavort with his starlet and celebrity friends.
My despair deepened in California as the tapings began and Nixon rolled all over Frost on foreign affairs and domestic policy. We watched in horror as Clay Felker, the editor of New York magazine, fell asleep as he viewed the outtakes.
How the talk show host showed the ex- president he was no walkover
But Watergate was everything. The week before the Watergate interrogation was to begin, Frost finally woke up and buckled down. The heavyweight fight imagery of the play Frost/ Nixon is apt. Perhaps, we thought, this was the champ peaking at just the right moment.
At his best, the resources Frost brought to the challenge were extraordinary. Once he mastered the details of the scandal, he knew how to conduct an extended inquisition in which each question and each statement carried the inference of guilt. It was classic prosecutorial technique.
This was no soft soap. Beyond the facts and the obvious questions, Frost knew how to use wit and humor and intellectual power to disarm the awkward, humorless villain. Sarcasm had to be employed gently and subtly. He had to be careful not to browbeat the former president, for that would only impart sympathy.
Because of his instinct for the dramatic, Frost knew how to spring my research surprises deftly with consummate skill, so that he could take firm control of the interview.
Once his withering interrogation gave the 57 million Americans watching what they needed, he knew instinctively how to shift gears and become the father confessor. The result was the most astonishing apology in modern U. S. political history.
On the day the Watergate program aired, I revealed that Nixon had been given a 10- minute break to collect himself between the prosecution and the apology. Frost was furious and never forgave me for that. But never mind. The important thing was what the polls said afterward: More than 70% concluded that Nixon was guilty of his crimes and had no place in future American politics.
David Frost deserves all the kudos he received with the Frost/ Nixon play and movie. He had, at last, become the action figure he always longed to be.