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- Richard Nixon was labeled a "psycho"
and called "nuts" during a no-holds-barred telephone chat between
President John F. Kennedy and the governor of California in 1962, newly
released JFK tapes reveal.
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- The stunning slaps at Nixon came as JFK
and Gov. Edmund "Pat" Brown chatted after Brown's gubernatorial
victory over Nixon in 1962.
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- "You reduced him to the nut house,"
said Kennedy, after Nixon's infamous "last press conference"
after his 300,000-vote loss to Brown.
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- "That last farewell speech of his
... it shows that he belongs on the couch," Kennedy said.
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- Brown agreed, then said humiliating Nixon
was what Kennedy - who defeated Nixon for the presidency in 1960 - had
hoped for.
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- "This is a very peculiar fellow.
This is a very peculiar man," the governor said.
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- "I really think that he is psycho.
He's an able man, but he's nuts!"
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- When Kennedy asked Brown what he thought
about Nixon's political future in California, the governor said that morning's
famed speech may have doomed him in the Golden State.
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- The Kennedy-Brown conversation was among
the tapes released late last month by the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston.
The taped chat was discovered and reported by the San Francisco Examiner
on Sunday.
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- Six years later, Nixon carried California,
his native state, in his presidential bid against Democratic candidate
Hubert Humphrey.
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- Still, until he died, he harbored a belief
that Kennedy had stolen the 1960 election, according to Gen. Alexander
Haig, Nixon's chief of staff.
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- Tapes made by Nixon during his presidency,
now stored at the National Archives, reveal he also blamed Kennedy for
the 1962 defeat.
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- It is not known whether Nixon was ever
informed about the JFK-Brown conversations.
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- Pat Brown was the father of another former
California governor, Jerry Brown, who went on to make an unsuccessful run
for the presidency.
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- The Kennedy Library still has many tapes
and personal documents that have never been publicly released.
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- Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets
as he and his wife, Jackie, rode through downtown Dallas, Texas, on Nov.
22, 1963.
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