Arthur Bremer and Richard Nixon

[Guest John Gillespie]

In 2000, WGBH Channel 2 (PBS) here in Boston produced, as part of The American Experience, a film on George Wallace. Here is the site. There are many links.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/filmm...view/index.html

This is an excerpt from the text (the Carter quoted here is not Jimmy). There are a couple of very interesting comments by Ehrlichman, below, among others:

NARR: Wallace had come close to costing Richard Nixon the election in 1968 -- and the president was not going to let it happen again. Red Blount, a Nixon cabinet member from Alabama, thought Brewer could beat Wallace and drive him out of presidential politics. All Brewer needed, Blount said, was a little help from his friends.

EHRLICHMAN: There came a time when the president received Red Blount and me to discuss the Wallace situation. Red carried a message from Governor Brewer, uh, the effect of which was that he’d be willing to run, given the proper inducements. Well, that was an easy call for the president. He said, "By all means, give him whatever inducements he needs."

NARR: Nixon ultimately provided some $400,000, in secret cash payments, nearly a third of Brewer’s campaign budget.

INGRAM: Criticized beyond belief after the fact, but to this day and to my death, I will defend it as one of the cleanest contributions you could get. They didn't want a job. They didn't want a contract. They didn't want, uh, uh, want anything. All they wanted was to beat Wallace. What can you do? What's wrong with that?

NARR: The Nixon’s plan seemed to be working. The incumbent Brewer, a moderate, was gaining momentum and had the support of Alabama’s black electorate. It seemed George Wallace’s time had passed.

PAUL HARVEY: Alright. Wallace, pointing to national politicians in publications out to get me, protesting that George Wallace has nobody for him but the people. is right now outgunned -- but he’s not yet out maneuvered.

TURNIPSEED: I never will forget, we had a meeting of all the faithful, all the staff and so forth, and the governor addresses everybody, and says, "Look, we got to do what we’ve got to do." We’ve got to play, he didn’t say the race card, but it was obvious what, what he wanted. And, and he says, we gotta just go all out on this issue.

INGRAM: We didn't think they could, I-- we were in the-- living in the dream world of thinking maybe this issue had kind of-- it's 1970. They've seen the diffic-- the troubles, the tragedies for both in large degree by Wallace's, uh, stand. Uh, maybe times have changed. But the campaign began and it was absolutely like nothing this state had ever seen.

Reporter: What about what you say about your opponent?

GEORGE WALLACE: I say nothing about my opponent.

Reporter: How about your supporters?

GEORGE WALLACE: I don’t know what my supporters say.

INGRAM: They had smear sheets saying that Brewer was a homosexual. His wife was a drunk. One daughter was pregnant by a black. It was just, uh, terrifying --

Reporter: Governor, uh, what do you know about these obviously doctored photographs showing Governor Brewer with Elijah Mohammed and, uh, Cassius Clay or Mohammed Ali?

CARTER: George Wallace announces that he’s going to run as a Democrat, not as a third party candidate. And it’s the third party candidacy that’s the threat to Nixon. So, in a sense Nixon gets what he wants. Is it a coincidence that a couple of days after this happens, the Justice Department announces that it’s not going to continue it’s investigation against Governor Wallace or against his brother? Well, we still don’t know the answer to that question. But it certainly raised, for a number of people at the time, disturbing questions about whether a deal had been made.

NARR: Only one person went to jail as a result of the I.R.S. investigation. By cooperating, Seymore Trammell had implicated himself. He was convicted of income tax evasion and sentenced to four years in federal prison.

NARR: In March of 1972, a young man living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, took the first step of a fateful journey. "Now I start my diary," Arthur Bremer wrote, "of my personal plot to kill by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace."

CARTER: From uh, his earliest, pretty sad childhood, Arthur Bremer was this pathetic loner, isolated uh, he had no friends. He grew up, went to Milwaukee primary, secondary school. Uh, was always considered to be -- as people said -- weird, a weird individual who clearly was probably mentally ill.

NARR: "No one ever noticed me nor took interest in me as an individual with the need to receive or give love. In junior high school, I was an object of pure ridicule for my dress, withdrawal, and asocial manner." Dozens of times, I saw individuals laugh and smile more in ten to fifteen minutes than I did in all my life up to then."

CARTER: In his life, I think a turning point was when he had his first crush on a girlfriend. And, uh, at first she was interested, and then, when she turned him aside, then he became obsessed with this, with somehow getting her to notice him. And he did all kinds of strange things.

Arthur Bremer’s neighbor: In January, he was, when he had long hair, and then he went to extremes and he shaved it off, and he was, he shaved it completely bald.

Reporter: You mean he shaved his hair which was long at one time, until he was completely bald?

CARTER: He wanted her to notice him, and to a, he became obsessed with making a name for himself.

NARR: "Life has only been an enemy to me. I will destroy my enemy when I destroy myself. But I want to take part of this country that made me with me."

CARTER: Well, how are you going to make a name for yourself? I mean, this is part-time busboy, a janitor. Uh, he decided to kill somebody.

NARR: "What’s a good title for this manuscript? ‘A month in the life of nobody in particular.’" began with the Democratic primary in Florida. He quickly locked onto an issue that was dividing the nation -- the recent Supreme Court decisions affirming the use of busing to desegregate schools.

GEORGE WALLACE: This matter that they’ve come up with of busing little children to achieve racial balance is the most asinine, atrocious, callous thing I’ve ever heard of in the United States.

GEORGE WALLACE: I believe that if I win the Florida primary, that Mr. Nixon himself will step in and stop the busing of school children throughout the United States.

And I’ll bet you that when he was in Red China, he and Mao Tse Tung talked more about busing than anything else. If you want to know--

NARR: George Wallace carried every county in the state of Florida.

GEORGE WALLACE: The average citizen has spoken in the state of Florida. They are going to speak throughout the United States. I’m a serious candidate for the presidency on the Democratic ticket in the primaries. And it looks like we’re going to Miami with the greatest number of delegates. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. [cheers]

CORNELIA WALLACE: The Florida primary sent him out of there with a, just like on a rocket for the 1972 presidential elections.

NARR: Less than forty-eight hours after Wallace’s victory, President Nixon addressed the nation.

Nixon: I am sending a special message to the Congress tomorrow. I shall propose special legislation that will cause an immediate halt to all new busing orders by a federal court. A moratorium on new busing.

NARR: On March 23rd, George Wallace held a rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Arthur Bremer was there. "I figured Wallace would be dead or dying now if I wanted it so. After he gave the liberals hell, he stood in the open and waved and smiled."

"The audience stood, some turned to leave, some to move in for a closer view. I moved in and for the first time, saw his face. He looked heavily wrinkled and ugly.

That would have been it."

JENKINS: I had sort of expected this sort of thing to happen sooner or later. Because when you heat up the, the political, uh, environment to the extent that Wallace does, you’re going to, uh, bring a lot of kooks out of the woodwork.

WALLACE, JR: He always had told me that he realized he might be shot running for president. That was very real to him. And he said, "I, I realized that might happen." But he always believed it would be a head injury and that he would die.

NARR: "May 13, 1972. Arrived at Dearborn Youth Center at 15 after six. The hall was packed."

CHESTNUT: You just can’t go around s-- preaching hatred, however you cloak it, however you dress it up, and somehow or another, it will not come back to bite you.

NARR: "Two 15-year old girls had gotten in front of me. Their faces were one inch from the glass that would shatter with a blunt nosed bullet. They were sure to be blinded and disfigured. I let Wallace go only to spare those two stupid, innocent delighted kids. We pounded on the window together at the governor. There’d be other times."

GEORGE WALLACE: Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

NARR: The momentum from Wallace’s Florida win had continued to grow. He took a strong second in Wisconsin after only eight days of campaigning.

GEORGE WALLACE: We’ve come a long way from 8 years ago when, uh, the Democratic candidate called me something evil because I advocated that which he advocates now. And I think by the time we get to November, some of the leadership is going to be saying, you know, I just didn’t understand Wallace. He’s really a better fellow than I thought. I really didn’t know him so well.

NARR: Next was another strong second in Pennsylvania. Higher poll numbers. And overflowing crowds. Soon, the press predicted Wallace victories in some of the upcoming elections. On the morning of May 15th, Wallace departed for his last day of campaigning -- in the Maryland primary.

CORNELIA WALLACE: When we left the governor’s mansion that day, my husband had already started talking about-- he was nervous, he was just extremely nervous. He just kept saying, "I don’t think I’m going to go. "I just don’t think I’m going to make this trip." He said, "One more day of campaigning is not going to make any difference. If I haven’t won it now, I’ll, I can’t win it with one day of campaigning."

NARR: Wallace set aside his concerns and headed north for two final rallies. At the first rally, a news cameraman focused on a familiar figure -- dressed in red-white-and-blue. Arthur Bremer, standing close to the stage, asked one of the men guarding Wallace -- "Could you get George to come down and shake hands with me?’ But Wallace never mixed with the mostly hostile crowd. Instead, he and his entourage pushed on to Laurel, Maryland.

CORNELIA WALLACE: I came into the rally late at Laurel, Maryland. George was already speaking and it was a very calm crowd, very nice, congenial crowd. Everything just seemed really nice. So, he came down and he started shaking hands.

NARR: The Secret Service agent in charge asked Wallace not to go into the crowd. "That’s all right," Wallace said. "I’ll take the responsibility."

CORNELIA WALLACE: And then all of a sudden, I heard, da, da, da-da-da. And then time just stood still.

I thought they’d shoot him again. And so I jumped on top of him, trying to cover up his head and his heart and his vital organs, his lungs. And, uh, there just wasn’t anybody around him. Well, the Alabama bodyguard had been shot and blown out and knocked down. The Secret Service agent that was -- these two were supposed to protect his body -- got shot in the jaw and was vomiting and vomiting blood. So I just kept saying, uh, he, he was dazed and he didn’t speak, and I kept saying, "George, I’m going to take you home. I’m going to take you home. And we’re going home now." And, uh, finally, all of a sudden somebody was pulling me away from him. I kept begging him, I said, "Let-- don’t take me away from my husband now. Please don’t take me away from my husband now."

I was able to get in the ambulance and they put George in, and the Alabama state trooper Dothard in on another stretcher.

Emcee: Please move back, ladies and gentlemen! Let the ambulance get out of here!

Please move back! Get out of the way!!! Get out of the way!!! GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!

CHESTNUT: I think I was in a courtroom and somebody came in and said that Wallace had been shot. They were all around Selma that day, folk, who disliked George Wallace intensely, were praying that he’d recover. They didn’t want him dead, uh, and that they-- there was no rejoicing among black Alabamians that George Wallace had been shot. But there was a lot of, "The chickens have come home to roost." You heard that everywhere.

CARTER: Wallace, by the mid-1960s was certainly aware that he was a figure in danger. That is we’d had the assassination of Kenn-, the two Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, and he often talked about the danger that he had. But I think he always anticipated the kind of uh, political ideologue, somebody who opposed him, uh, uh, finding him at some moment and shooting him. George Wallace, the most intensely, ideological, political candidate of the 1960s, uh, ends up being shot by somebody who just wants to get his picture on the front page of "The New York Times."

KENNEDY: When my friend told me that he had been shot, and I don't know how to put this without it sounding, uh, really cruel, I was relieved in a way because it was over, and I didn't have to wake up another morning and think about, if this was going to be the day. And of course, you know, the fact that he lived was just, uh, wonderful. I mean, I would have given my life. I mean, I was just, it was wonderful that he lived. But the relief that, that it was over. That what you had feared was going to happen had happened, uh, just sort of rushed through me, and, uh, then I moved on and dealt with something else, see?

CORNELIA WALLACE: George was taken into the emergency room, the doctors

took a big safety pin and started pricking his leg and his skin didn’t flinch. They said, "Governor, move your legs." And, uh, they said it three or four times, and he didn’t. I said, "He’s hard of hearing, I said, he doesn’t hear well." I said, "George, move your legs." And he didn’t and then I looked up and they looked at me. And I knew he was paralyzed, they didn’t say anything.

KENNEDY: The doctor sat me down, as he did the other children, one on one, and told us that he was paralyzed. Well, um, that was like losing the '58 campaign, you-- he, he's not supposed to lose and he's not supposed to be this way. And how iron-- how ironic for as, as quick a man, uh, in step and in gesture and in everything else to be paralyzed for the rest of his natural life.

CORNELIA WALLACE: From that moment, I made another decision, that he would never see me cry. That I’d have to keep him cheered up and cheerful, that I couldn’t afford the luxury of, of mourning and weeping and letting my hurt and pain come out. And I think it was twenty years later, before I could ever really feel the pain and hurt of what had happened to my husband. Whenever I just talked about this with people. I just uh, I couldn’t talk about it anymore. And it’s still hard. It’s really hard.

NIXON: I know that all of us, uh, certainly wish that Governor Wallace in this very difficult time, uh, will have not only the very best medical care, uh, but that, uh, he can recover from the wounds that he has received.

CARTER: Within minutes after, uh, George Wallace was shot in Laurel, Maryland, the Secret Service had informed the White House.

CARTER: And, uh, Richard Nixon with several of his aides immediately begins running through, well, what are the political implications of this? How they can turn it to their advantage? And they come up with this, uh, extraordinary scheme. George McGovern is likely to be Nixon’s opponent in the upcoming presidential race. They’re going to plant McGovern material in Arthur Bremer’s apartment so that when the investigation goes forward, it will look somehow as though Arthur Bremer is a tool of George McGovern. The plan backfires, it fails because the, the F.B.I. gets there and they close off, uh, the apartment. The very idea that the President and his advisors are planning to do this, I think, in part, reflects not only the political machinations of the White House, but it also reflects the fear that Wallace instilled in the Nixon White House.

NARR: On July 7th, just seven weeks after the attempt on his life, George Wallace left Maryland’s Holy Cross Hospital.

Reporter off camera: How do you feel governor?

GEORGE WALLACE: I feel good, feel great.

NARR: With his campaign all but over he was headed to Miami, Florida, to address the delegates at the Democratic National Convention. Party officials had extended the invitation hoping to woo Wallace supporters. Wallace, in turn, hoped to find a place on the Democratic ticket.

GREENHAW: George went down and he looked pitiful. He looked like warmed over death. I mean, he looked horrible up there, suspended above this convention. I thought, my God, hey, if something slips and falls, he, he’ll be dead, you know. And what the hell is going on here? And he makes this kind of, uh, very awkward speech. I felt like, you know, he’s trying to explain himself to the Democratic party.

GEORGE WALLACE: I wanted it again to become the party of the average citizen in this country as it used to be.

GREENHAW: And it didn’t work.

EHRLICHMAN: Well, I think with most of us, he disappears. He ceases to have significance in the political race. He was not a factor in the election, and, um, we didn’t respond to him. He, he was just a non-entity.

CORNELIA WALLACE: He was very depressed at times I expended a lot of energy and effort in pumping him back up. And I said, look, you-- your life. Trying to help him to understand, to be grateful that he was alive. And it’s very easy for me to say, very hard for someone who’s going to be paralyzed. One time he just absolutely quit on us, wouldn’t get up, wouldn’t get out of bed. So I called my cousin who was an administrator of a V.A. hospital. And he said, "I’ll send you two nurses down there." And the first day they came in their uniforms and their caps and they were big women. And they, uh, came in the room, and said, "Good morning, Governor." He put, put the sheet up over his head, he just wasn’t going with them. [laughs] And uh, they said, "Well, it’s time to get up, Governor. Now what are you-- what are we going to do today, you’re going to get up or just stay in bed?" He said, "I’m going to stay in bed." And he pulled -- the sheet down and peeped out and he said, "I want to tell you two sergeants something." He said, "I’m the commander of the Alabama National Guard, the chief in commander," and said, "ain’t no two sergeants going to tell me what to do." With that, they jerked the sheet back, they grabbed him up, they put him in the wheelchair and for two weeks, they pushed him through life.

KENNEDY: My father had hoped for recovery. Uh, I think he had hopes that he would walk again, as we all did. But as the months and the years went by, uh, you know that, uh, I don't know if you call it a dream, I don't know what he called it, but it diminished. And, uh, you know, his injuries were such that it just was not going to be.

GEORGE WALLACE: I’ve had some mental stress and some anguish. And sometimes wonder, why did it happen to you? But I accepted the fact that I was not going to walk, save a miracle. And I’ve adjusted my life, I’ve accepted it. And, uh, so, I really don’t worry about it.

CORNELIA WALLACE: The thing I never told him or said publicly was that what I really loved about him was that strutty, feisty walk he had. I really loved that and it hurt me that I wouldn’t be able to see him like that again.

NARR: Wallace would remain governor of Alabama, winning re-election in 1974. But his national ambitions had not disappeared. With the fall of the Nixon presidency in scandal and the public’s disenchantment with Washington insiders, the stage seemed set for the governor to take another run.

JENKINS: You have to keep in mind that, uh, by that time, he had-- was in a wheelchair and had been paralyzed for four years, and, and the very fact that he was running from a wheelchair, uh, shows the tenacity and determination of the man.

NARR: As the first presidential candidate openly running from a wheelchair, Wallace was making history. Even as president, Franklin Roosevelt had disguised his own paralysis with carefully choreographed entrances. Thanks to a cooperative press and a vigilant secret service, there are images of FDR in a wheelchair. But times had changed. The press had a relentless fascination with images of Wallace seemingly helpless and dogged his candidacy with questions about his health.

Interviewer [off camera]: Is George Wallace well enough to run for the presidency?

CORNELIA WALLACE: He’s well, perfectly healthy and well.

GEORGE WALLACE: I can understand that people can question about my health. But Franklin Roosevelt was elected four times in a wheelchair and as Al Smith said one time, "You’re not electing an acrobat." If you needed an acrobat to be president, I would not be qualified but you don’t need an acrobat to be president.

Interviewer: He has been quoted as saying that he is in constant pain. Is he under medication anymore?

CORNELIA WALLACE: He takes, uh, Tegritol. It works on the central nervous system. But if it were any kind of, uh,thing I thought interfered with his line of work, uh—

Interviewer [off camera]: You wouldn’t let him take it.

CORNELIA WALLACE: I wouldn’t let him take it. He’d just have to suffer. [laughs]

GREENHAW: It was Cornelia’s efforts and thinking about, uh, FDR and pushing the FDR model on Wallace and his rehabilitation in 1976. Tried to get him up and ready to go and to get ready to campaign hard and strong and have him physically able where he could lift himself up.

BUCHANAN: But for someone like Wallace whose, whose appeal really is, he’s got a tremendous amount of animal energy and dynamism. If you can’t stand up there on that podium, uh, it is a tremendous disadvantage.

JENKINS: The Florida primary was the acid test for Wallace. It was early, I think it was a spring primary. Most of the national Democrats had decided to forego Florida because, uh, they knew that Wallace was very likely to take the state.

NARR: Aside from Wallace, only two Democrats entered the Florida race. One was also a governor, from a Southern state — Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter: The major person being tested in Florida is not myself, it’s Governor Wallace. He’s got to do at least as well or better in ‘76 in Florida, his best state, than he did in ‘72.

NARR: Even as Wallace sought to bring the issues that had driven his career to the fore...

GEORGE WALLACE: We haven’t been against people. We’ve been against big government trying to take over and write a guideline for you and tell you how to cross the street, what to do with your union and your business when you know how to do it yourself.

NARR: His campaign soon faltered over an aide’s stumble.

GEORGE WALLACE: Getting on the airplane, while they’re getting the airplane, uh, the people lifting me into the airplane dropped me. [laughs] And I thought that, uh, I might have a problem here because that knee bent too much. So I wanted to tell the news media about it , because they make a big thing, to-do about it.

Reporter [off camera]: Do you personally consider this to be a setback at all?

GEORGE WALLACE: Well, it’s, uh, it’s a disappointment, uh, you know. I think it would be a disappointment to anyone that sprained a ligament in their knee. And, uh, but we’re going to keep going, of course. Folks, thank you.

NARR: Unable to escape concerns about his health, Wallace lost to Carter in Florida and then again in North Carolina.

JENKINS: And this had the, the double effect of first eliminating Wallace from the, uh, 1976 race, and, second, uh, giving, uh, Jimmy Carter a tremendous surge as the person who stopped George Wallace.

BUCHANAN: But the reason Wallace, uh, could not do as well and did not beat Carter, quite frankly, was simply because he was handicapped. If he had not been handicapped, uh, Jimmy Carter would not have been president.

JENKINS: And in the end, uh, George Wallace endorsed Jimmy Carter. He did it to some extent out of spite. He, uh, he thought that this would be a way of getting back at the quote "Northern liberal Democratic establishment," by, uh, supporting a Southern governor. In effect, if I can’t have it, then we’re going to have another Southern governor do it.

NARR: Carter became the first Southern governor to win the presidency since before the Civil War. He had taken the Wallace mantle as an outsider, but not the message. The Wallace themes would find a powerful voice and his supporters a new hero in Ronald Reagan. He shared Wallace’s ability to connect with everyday Americans and he attacked many of the same targets. But Reagan projected a more positive view of the country’s future and that led to a movement that would come to dominate the nation’s politics for the last decades of the 20th century. George Wallace returned to Montgomery, as he always had after a failed presidential bid. But this time, he had only two more years of the governorship. And a marriage that had lifted him up after the shooting, now crashed around him.

GREENHAW: He began to accuse her of having affairs with state troopers. She accused him of talking to his old girlfriends on the phone all the time, uh, and trying to lure them over to the mansion. They, uh, tapped each other’s phones. And then sooner or later, you know, it just turned so nasty that, uh, that they filed divorce papers, and it was a, a nasty couple of weeks in the courtrooms, uh, and, and in the newspapers.

Reporter: A truck pulled up to the governor’s mansion in Montgomery, Alabama today and loaded aboard Mrs. Cornelia Wallace’s personal items. She was moving out. Couldn’t take it anymore, she said. The vulgarity, threats and abuse, as she put it. She and Governor Wallace have had marital troubles for some time. He has a lawyer working on a divorce. She said today that she has struggled to save her marriage but without success.

NARR: 1976 seemed to be the end of a long journey for George Wallace. But there was one transformation left, one built from the suffering of a broken body, from a rediscovered religious faith, from reflection upon a life.

CARTER: George Wallace’s life uh, had its ups and downs, but it was uh, it was pretty down after, after ‘76. Uh, he’s essentially finished as a national candidate, he leaves the governorship in 1978, and he’s a fundraiser for a medical school in Birmingham, but he spends much of his time, uh, alone. Um, he’s never been very close to his family, and he broods a lot. And he begins to think about, uh, his life. I think the way all good uh, Southern evangelicals or evangelicals do, "I’m at the end of my life, now what have I accomplished, what have I done, what have I done right, what have I done wrong."

GEORGE WALLACE: If I didn’t have what it took to treat a man fair regardless of his color, then I don’t have what it takes to be the governor of your great state.

TRAMMELL: I was outniggered and I will never be outniggered again.

GEORGE WALLACE: And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.

CARTER: And although Wallace would never admit that he was a hater -- he always says he wasn’t -- he realizes the consequences of his actions, in terms of those around him.

GEORGE WALLACE: And now they’ve created themselves a Frankenstein monster and the chickens are coming home to roost all over this country.

WALLACE, JR: His own suffering and purification that brings and the enlightenment that brings, and his realization that some things he had done and said could have caused others to suffer, bothered him, concerned him as a Christian.

CARTER: And so, one by one, he picks up the telephone and he begins calling his old enemies, the people who he had, uh, used as kind of punching bags in the 1960s. And asked for their forgiveness.

NARR: One of those Wallace called was a civil rights leader who’d been beaten bloody by Wallace’s state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

LEWIS: Uh, he was very candid, very frank, I thought. He literally poured out his soul and heart to me. Uh, it was almost like a confession, like I was his priest. He was telling me everything. That he did some things that was wrong, and that he was not proud of. He, he kept saying to me, "John, I don’t hate anybody. I, I don’t hate anybody."

NARR: In 1982, Wallace returned to politics, running once again for the governor’s office.

NARR: Somehow Wallace’s pleas for forgiveness had struck a chord.

GEORGE WALLACE: And whether or not you’ve agreed with me at everything that I used to do, and agreed to, I know that you do not. I, too, see the mistakes that all of us made in years past.

Black woman: You know, God said you must repent. And he’s repented. Uh, Governor Wallace is a child of God now. You can believe that. He helped everybody, especially the black and the poor.

GREENHAW: Here’s George Wallace from a wheelchair running in ‘82. The guy wins with the black vote. He could not have won without it.

LEWIS: He wanted the black vote and he went out and campaigned for those votes. He made promises and a lot of black folks went out and voted for him and they supported him.

Black man: He said that, uh, he was wrong on segregation-- "I mistreated folk and I want a chance to repent." But the burden of proof now is on him, and, of course, only time will tell.

NARR: For the next four years, Wallace kept that promise. Appointing record numbers of blacks. And depending on a coalition of blacks and whites for legislative support.

WALLACE, JR: He had meetings, uh, in this very building in the governor’s office, among, uh, black leaders and sought to build bridges. And if he was the epitome of resistance, he became the epitome of change in the New South.

LEWIS: In a, in a very strange sense, he was somewhat reverting back to the old Wallace, maybe, just maybe to his true self.

Tammy Wynette: Governor George Wallace, we love him.

FLOWERS: I don’t think George changed later on in his life. I think he went back to the George Wallace that I used to know. He really was for the downtrodden. He really wanted to help the people that needed help. And he more or less dropped back into the old pattern of the real George Wallace.

WALLACE, JR: His health had deteriorated some during that term. And, uh, I don’t believe he believed he could give a full measure of himself, uh, had he run again. Uh, he actually had two speeches with him as he went to the capitol, and no one knew which one he planned to give. One was that he would seek the office again. One was that he would retire.

GEORGE WALLACE: I would like to be part of the future myself. And during the past few days I have done much evaluation and much soul searching. And some of you younger may not realize that I paid a pretty high price in 1972. Those five bullets gave me a thorn in the flesh, as it did for Apostle Paul. And I prayed that they should be removed but they were not. I realized in my own mind that all I’m doing is very good at the present time. As I grow older the effects of my problem may become more noticeable. I feel that I must say that I’ve climbed my last political mountain. But there’s still some personal hills that I must climb. But for now, I must pass the rope and the pick to another climber and say, "Climb on. Climb on to higher heights. Climb on ‘til you reach the very peak. Then look back and wave at me, for I, too, will still be climbing." My fellow Alabamians, I bid you a fond and affectionate farewell. You are very kind. Good-bye. Good-bye.

JENKINS: Well, [chuckles] uh, anything good out of the Wallace years? It-- I’m afraid I can’t think of a single thing. [chuckles]

INGRAM: Much that has transpired in, in government in, on the federal level in recent years was what Wallace had espoused. Not on, on, so much on race. That's, that's the same people focus on that. But he was against big government. He was for strong military. He was concerned about, uh, welfare abuse. And that's what we talk about now.

BUCHANAN: He has never gotten credit for being the, the figure he was and having the influence he did upon subsequent politics, uh, Nixon and Agnew, the Reagan movement, uh, frankly the Buchanan movement, the Perot movement, and the others.

CARTER: He’s the man who’s not visible. He’s the invisible founding father in this whole process. The very people who profited from Wallace’s ideas are the people who don’t want to recognize him. He’s simply not respectable.

CHESTNUT: I have no problem forgiving George Wallace. I will not forget George Wallace because we must deal with the reality of Wallace. How is it that a demagogue, insulting twenty million black people daily on the television, can rise to the heights that Wallace did? Forgive, yes. Forget, never.

WALLACE, JR: The man I see is not the man that many people see when they think of George Wallace. I see a man who’s walked with his Lord and his, his faith and his forgiveness of the man who shot him five times and his expression of love for that man. And I truly believe the greatest story of him has to do with that personal side, rather than anything political.

INGRAM: I think, uh, uh, [sighs] I think in this conversion of Wallace, uh, he's cramming for final exams. He knows death is not too far away, and he wants to be on the right side, and, uh, I wish him the best. I, I feel sorry for him. To see this dynamic, energetic man just be a pathetic, deaf, almost blind, paralyzed, uh, and in constant pain. Its-- I, I don't want that-- I don't wish that on anyone.

WILLIAMS: The things that he have gone through, it was enough to change him. And I do believe he has changed.

Regards, JG

Edited August 10, 2005 by John Gillespie

[Pat Speer]

When Colson asked E. Howard Hunt to go to Bremer’s apartment he understandably argued that it would be too late as by this time the police would have arrived. It was obviously important that someone got to Bremer’s apartment before the FBI did. They did. How did they manage that? Was that “Secret Service” agent involved in Operation Sandwedge?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

John, while I suspect Sprague's mention of Tim was just sloppy journalism, which my reading of conspiracy literature confirms is widespread, I do have something to add in regards to possible Secret Service involvement. I came across this just the other day.

Nixon: an Oral History of his Presidency by Gerald and Deborah Strober. Page 263 (paperback Edition)

"Alexander Butterfield I was privy to something that has never come out: that there was a guy on the White House staff--a sort of catch-all guy; a former Secret Service agent who had been on Nixon's detail when Nixon was vice-president. They used him when Teddy Kennedy started getting some popularity, and Nixon was worried. They put him back on duty, on Teddy's detail. Of course, they thought Teddy was fooling around; they were going to get some information on him; he must have had a lady someplace. So he made weekly reports to Haldeman. I was aware of that. It's abuse of power, technically, and I imagine LBJ did worse things."

I think you'll agree this raises all sorts of questions. Who was this man? Could it be Bob King, Maheu's former partner, who'd been with Nixon during his vice-presidency? Watergate records indicate Nixon talked to King the day Hoover died. Just a coincidence? While King was never with the Secret Service as far as I know, he had been former FBI. If not King, then who? Could this man have been someone who'd been on JFK's detail as well? I think we need to figure out who this man was. Does anyone have a list of Nixon's detail? Teddy's brief detail in 72? I believe this could be important.

I think it's also important to determine what Butterfield meant by "catch-all" guy. What does a former Secret Serviceman, now "catch-all" guy, do? Could this man have been working in co-ordination with Ulasewicz and Caulfield?

Butterfield's statements, as with his statements regarding the White House tapes, could lead to the discovery of much mischief.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just came across something very interesting in The Haldeman Diaries. It turns out that on the day Wallace was shot--May 15, 1972-- Nixon started on an even sleazier project than planting McGovern literature in Bremer's apartment. He also called Connally (Sec. of Treasury and therefore head of the SS) into his office and told him to give SS protection to Shirley Chisholm and... Ted Kennedy. Based upon Butterfield's statements, this means that Nixon used the Wallace shooting in order to plant a spy in the Kennedy camp. Even worse, he used John Connally, who was shot along with Kennedy's brother and would presumably have Kennedy's trust, as cover for this sleazy move. This is a new defintion in low, as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps someone with a book on Wallace can confirm whether or not the SS detail assigned to him stayed with him after the shooting. If not, it makes perfect sense that this same detail was assigned to Kennedy. If so, although Butterfield believed this agent was put back on duty especially for Kennedy, the possibility exists that the spy in Kennedy's camp mentioned by Butterfield had previously been with Wallace... hmmm...

[Pat Speer]

While digging through some old editions of the Maryland State Medical Journal, I came across an interview with Dr. Jonas Rappeport, the psychiatrist who testified about Bremer's sanity. When asked if Bremer was part of a conspiracy, he gives a surprising reply (at least for me). He says "Nope, even with all the material Dan Rather collected for the CBS-TV News series on assassination in America, I still don't."

Does anyone know what material Rather collected and exposed on this program? Or where we can find transcripts of this program?

Another interesting tidbit is that, when discussing Bremer's childhood, he mentions that Bremer had an IQ of 92, but that later, when discussing tests that he personally ran on Bremer, he says he had an IQ of 114, well above average (and roughly the same as Oswald's). This is a tremendous leap! It kinda made me wonder if there wasn't something to this MKULTRA/Manchurian Candidate stuff after all.

[John Simkin]

Gore Vidal called Hunt’s prose “overheated, slightly dizzy.” In a comprehensive analysis of Hunt’s work published in The New York Review of Books in 1973, Vidal introduced the eccentric theory that Hunt might have written the diary that was found in the car of Arthur H. Bremer, the unemployed busboy who in 1972 attempted to assassinate Gov. George Wallace of Alabama. “I was fairly convinced after reading the diaries very carefully when they finally came out that he must have had a hand in them,” Vidal said recently. “I’m still convinced of it. There are similarities in the style.”

It should also be remembered that in May, 1974, Martha Mitchell visited Wallace in Montgomery. She told him that her husband, John N. Mitchell, had confessed that Charles Colson had a meeting with Arthur Bremer four days before the assassination attempt.

[John Simkin]

Maybe Arthur Bremer will join the Forum. After all, if he types his name in at Google he will soon arrive on the Forum:

David Dishneau, Associated Press (9th November, 2007)

After 35 years in prison, the man who shot and paralyzed Alabama Gov. George Wallace during his racially charged 1972 presidential campaign is scheduled to be released Friday into a society more diverse and more restrictive on guns.

The state's automated victim-notification system sent e-mails announcing the impending release of Arthur H. Bremer, 57.

Wallace, a fiery segregationist during the 1960s, was wounded on May 15, 1972, during a campaign stop in Laurel, Md. He abandoned his bid for the Democratic nomination, spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair and died in 1998.

Bremer, a former Milwaukee busboy and janitor, was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 53 years. He has been held at the medium-security Maryland Correctional Institution near Hagerstown, about 70 miles from Baltimore, since 1979, earning his mandatory release through good behavior and by working in prison.

Bremer's diary, found in a landfill in 1980, made it clear he was motivated by a desire for attention, not a political agenda. He had also stalked President Nixon.

A prison system spokesman declined to say where Bremer would go once he got out. The head of the state's parole commission has said there will be restrictions on Bremer's activities, including a requirement to avoid political candidates and events.

"My father forgave him and my family has forgiven him. That's consistent with God's law," George Wallace Jr. said in Montgomery, Ala. But he added: "Then there is man's law. I doubt the punishment has fit the crime."

Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the governor's daughter, said of Bremer: "I think he's getting out 17 1/2 years too early."

The Alabama governor made his famous "stand in the schoolhouse door" in 1963, decrying the enrollment of two black students at the all-white University of Alabama in a standoff against the Justice Department and the National Guard.

By 1972, he had tempered his racist rhetoric and adopted a more subtle approach, denouncing federal courts over the forced busing of children to integrate schools orders and pledging to restore "law and order," a phase sometimes regarded as a coded appeal to white racists.

But Wallace recanted his segregationist stand later in his career and won his final term with the help of black votes. The kind of fiery racial rhetoric he employed is history. And a black man is one of the leading candidates for the presidential nomination in 2008.

In another measure of how things have changed, the 1993 Brady Bill, named for the White House press secretary wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan, requires background checks to prevent felons and mentally ill people from buying guns.

Four months before the attempt on Wallace's life, Bremer was arrested and underwent a psychiatric evaluation after firing bullets into a ceiling at a shooting range, and was fined for disorderly conduct.

Had the Brady Bill been in place, "it might have been something to stop him from buying a gun," said Paul Helmke, president of the Washington-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Helmke said that the law has stopped 1.4 million people from buying guns, but that the national database is missing 90 percent of the mental health records and 20 percent of the felony records because states are not required to supply them.

Bremer was partly the inspiration for the deranged Travis Bickle character in the 1976 film "Taxi Driver." The movie, in turn, fascinated John Hinckley, who tried to kill Reagan in a twisted attempt to impress the film's co-star, Jodie Foster.

[John Simkin]

Second, while admitting that I was pulling for McGovern at the time (I was 15), I thought that he never had a prayer during the course of the campaign. Which begs the question of why would CREEP worry about Wallace's presence in the general election? The Watergate break-in, however, answers that question, because CREEP did something that risky, immoral and petty, even though Nixon seemed invulnerable to any challenge by McGovern.

The Nixon camp was very worried about the Wallace campaign. Polls at the time showed that if Wallace stood as a third party candidate it would have split the conservative vote and McGovern would win. Most of the dirty tricks campaign was to get McGovern the nomination. When that had been achieved, the only thing that stood between Nixon and victory was Wallace. That is why Tony Ulasewicz was brought in by Nixon. That is why it is so significant that Ulasewicz met Tim Gratz and why his name was then linked with Arthur Bremer.

[John Simkin]

Is it possible that Arthur Bremer was a victim of MK/ULTRA?

[John Simkin]

My own view is that like Operation 40, wealthy individuals were allowed to buy into the MK/Ultra program. I suspect that this explains the assassination attempts on JFK, RFK, MLK and George Wallace. As Nixon had discovered how JFK was assassinated, it made sense to him to use the same method to get rid of Wallace.

[Greg Parker]

Maybe Arthur Bremer will join the Forum. After all, if he types his name in at Google he will soon arrive on the Forum:

John, according to prison officials interviewed in 1998, he spent his time in conversation with coke machines and other inanimate objects.

He'd surely fit right in....

I suspect he had been interrogating the coke machine over what it knows about Oswald's alibi.

You wrote in Post #1

It later emerged that Federal Bureau of Investigation officers found both left-wing and right-wing propaganda in Bremer's apartment. They also found a diary where Bremer wrote about his plans to kill George Wallace or Richard Nixon. The opening sentence was: "Now I start my diary of my personal plot to kill by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace."

This let Nixon off the hook as it suggested that Bremer was after killing him as well. However, was this diary planted in Bremer’s apartment? Local reporters later claimed that the FBI left Bremer’s home for around 90 minutes before coming back and sealing it. During this time reporters and other unidentified figures took away papers from Bremer’s apartment.

All sources I've read say the diary was found in his car - not his apartment (for whatever difference that makes!)

Was it planted?

I'm pretty sure it was either planted, or altered. As late as July 24 (and perhaps beyond), all relevant officials and investigators were telling the press that they had no evidence that Bremer had ever stalked Nixon. If his diary was already in hand, and it stated flatly that Nixon was the main target, this denial rings hollow.

As for those who gained access to the apartment in between FBI visits... I've come across one claim it was members of the "dirty tricks" arm of Scientology posing as reporters for a bogus wire service. It sounds like something Hubbard's circus might orchestrate, but it would necessarily also put Scientology at the head of the conspirator's list, and I can't give it a lot of credence sans any evidence to back it up.