Grip and grin: When Nixon met Mao
This is Part III of The Great Wager. Click here for all five episodes.
Richard Nixon was alone in his hotel room in Beijing, uncertain and on edge.
He had traveled halfway around the world, and he still didn’t know if he would meet China’s leader, Mao Zedong.
The main purpose of the trip was for China and the United States to become friends, for each man to judge the other. Nixon needed Mao’s stamp of approval.
He was sitting in his room, alone and undressed, about to take a shower after the long journey.
“I had actually taken off my clothes, and was sitting in my shorts, prior to taking a shower,” Nixon would later tell his former aide Frank Gannon in an interview, “when Henry [Kissinger] came in, again rather breathless, and said, ‘Mao wants to see you right away!’ ”
President Nixon dressed and was whisked away, accompanied by only two aides, including Kissinger – and no Secret Service agents.
This dumbfounded the rest of his team. Bob Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, wrote in his diary, “You wonder what’s going on when you have the
