cover image One of the Presidents' Men: Twenty Years with Eisenhower and Nixon

One of the Presidents' Men: Twenty Years with Eisenhower and Nixon

Maurice Stans. Potomac Books, $25.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-1-57488-032-8

Stans, who served as Eisenhower's director of the Bureau of the Budget and as Nixon's secretary of commerce, has the distinction of being the last author of a balanced federal budget. Chairman of the Finance Committee for the Reelection of the President at the outbreak of the Watergate affair, he was accused of more than 100 campaign-finance violations. In this engrossing memoir, he describes a three-year ordeal of investigations, threatened indictments and a trial for breaches of the law. Cleared of all charges (after spending a million dollars in legal expenses), Stans is still regarded, unfairly he believes, as a major Watergate figure because of his longtime friendship with and support of the late Richard Nixon. In this lively memoir, he convincingly establishes that he had no knowledge of the break-in or cover-up, and he describes how he has struggled to restore his good name. Stans incidentally reveals for the first time an earlier personal crisis in which he was forced to resign as president of Western Bancorporation by the combined pressure of the Kennedy White House, the Justice Department and the CIA, as punishment for political activities in support of President Eisenhower. (Oct.)