April 30 - May 1, 1973: Nixon’s Millionaire Friend Worried about Potential Illegal Use of Campaign Donations

Charles ‘Bebe’ Rebozo. [Source: Bettmann / Corbis]Herbert Kalmbach, President Nixon’s personal lawyer, has a confidential discussion with Nixon’s close friend, Florida millionaire Charles “Bebe” Rebozo. Rebozo tells Kalmbach that Nixon is uneasy about $100,000 in large campaign donations Rebozo made to the Nixon re-election campaign—two $50,000 donations, one given in 1969 and one in 1970. Rebozo was actually a middleman in the contributions, which originally came from Richard Danner, an executive with the Howard Hughes financial empire. While the contributions themselves are neither illegal nor controversial, Nixon is worried about the disposition of the money. Some of the money went to Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods; some went to Nixon’s two brothers, Donald Nixon and Edward Nixon; and some went to, in Rebozo’s words, “unnamed others.” Campaign donations can only be used for campaign expenses, not personal disbursements, and therefore, Rebozo’s money was likely used illegally. Rebozo has a meeting scheduled with the Internal Revenue Service to discuss the contributions. He wants advice on what to tell them. Kalmbach advises Rebozo to come clean with the IRS, but Rebozo balks. “This touches the president and the president’s family,” he says, “and I just can’t do anything to add to his problems at this time.” Kalmbach checks with a friend, Stanley Ebner, the general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, speaking strictly hypothetically; Ebner gives the same advice as Kalmbach had. But, when Kalmbach meets a second time with Rebozo, the millionaire no longer seems concerned. Kalmbach will later testify, “I had the feeling that he had made up his mind on what to do before that meeting, and cut me short when he found that I had not come up with a more acceptable alternative” (see Early May, 1974). In January, Rebozo will tell Kalmbach an entirely different story. He had never given any of the money to the Nixon campaign after all, he will claim; instead, he had found all the money in a safe-deposit box, still in its original wrappers. Senate investigators will find that the money in Rebozo’s safe-deposit box was actually supplied as a cover by another Nixon millionaire friend, Robert Abplanalp. [Time, 5/6/1974]