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Dick Tuck Biography Dick Tuck is an American political consultant, writer, campaign strategist, advance man, political candidate and the nemesis of Richard Nixon. Tuck worked on many political campaigns for national and California Democrats, including Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Richard Hatcher, Pat Brown and Jerry Brown. He was editor of the Reliable Source, an informal newspaper published for many years during Democratic Party conventions and Political Editor for the National Lampoon. Tuck resides in Tucson, Arizona. Early Life Tuck is known for his well-rounded secondary education, having completed a "tour" of four of the finest Jesuit schools in the West, including • St. John's Military Academy, Los Angeles, CA WWII Pearl Harbor was attacked just a few weeks before Tuck's 18th birthday, and he enlisted in the Marines. Having spent many of his boyhood summers in Southern California, Tuck has a great love for aquatic activities like surfing and skin diving. Tuck's basic training aptitude tests returned very high scores in the mental and physical skills required for disarming unexploded bombs and other explosives, so after receiving advanced training from the British, Tuck joined the Navy's 1st Mobile Explosive Investigation Unit (MEIU). In Britain, Tuck was taught how to combine CO2 fire extinguisher snow with pure distilled alcohol to freeze a bomb's electric fuse, thus rendering it inoperable. For this use the unit carried with it a 40 gallon tank of alcohol. Coincidentally, the alcohol was safe for human consumption in small quantities with orange juice. Thus, Tuck spent the war touring the South Pacific dealing with the messy explosive offal of war. Tuck meets Nixon During the 1956 presidential election, Tuck traveled with Adlai Stevenson acting as a press liaison. After Stevenson's defeat in November, Tuck was one of the first to begin preparation work on Edmund G. (Pat) Brown's campaign for governor of California prior to the 1958 election. With Brown's victory in 1958, Tuck became the governor's travel scheduler, legislative aide and unofficial aide de camp. At one point, Tuck served as Deputy Commissioner of Motor Vehicles. JFK Nixon vs. Brown 1962
Goldwater Train 1964 Dick Tuck: Candidate
Gary, Indiana 1967 Bobby Kennedy Presidential Campaign Tuck was with Bobby Kennedy the night he was assassinated after claiming victory in the California primary. Tuck was just behind Kennedy when Sirhan Sirhan shot him and he personally tended to the fallen candidate. Tuck rode to the hospital with Los Angeles police in the lead squad car. Later the next day, Rafer Johnson gave Tuck Sirhan Sirhan's pistol, which the Olympic decathlon Gold medallist had torn from the assassin's grip just after the shooting. In the early 1970s Tuck worked briefly for the McGovern campaign, but found little appreciation for his brand of humorous politics. Occasionally, McGovern could be funny: Tuck: "I have the sad duty to inform you, sir, that FBI Director Hoover has passed away in Washington this morning." McGovern: "Do you think this means he'll finally retire?" Tuck served also as the political editor for the National Lampoon, sharing an office with future film director John Hughes and collaborating with legends of humor like P.J. O'Rourke, Christopher Cerf and Michael O'Donoghue. Watergate It was more than a year after the burglary, on July 13, 1973, that White House aide Alexander Butterfield testified about the White House taping system and the collection of recordings of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and various staff beginning in February 1971 and lasting until July 18, 1973. Senate Republican Counsel and future Actor/Senator Fred Thompson courageously exposed Nixon's secret to the American public on July 16th by asking, "Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?" Butterfield told the committee "everything was taped ... as long as the President was in attendance. There was not so much as a hint that something should not be taped." Thompson walked witness Butterfield through a complete review of the system on national/worldwide television. The Nixon administration would last 389 more days. Ten days after the revelation, the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, subpoenaed the tapes as evidence in the case against Nixon's former advisors H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Attorney General John Mitchell, but Nixon refused to turn them over. Nixon claimed executive privilege until July 24, 1974, when the Supreme Court voted unanimously to order their surrender. On August 5th, the so-called "smoking gun" tape in which Nixon authorized his lieutenants to have the CIA order the FBI to stop their investigation into the Watergate break-in on the grounds that it was a national security matter. This made Nixon part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice. On August 8, 1974, Nixon announced his resignation from office in a nationally televised speech. Over the course of the year following the revelation of the tapes, the White House released two sets of heavily edited transcripts of Nixon meetings in the Oval Office. Finally, full, unedited transcripts were released in August after the Supreme Court decision, more than a year after the news broke. But, it would take even longer for the people of the United States to actual hear the incriminating conversations. Tuck helped give the public its first listen to the Watergate tapes at a press conference he conducted on October 21, 1980 at the Aspen Hotel's Jerome Bar. Amazingly, by this time no tape excerpts had been played on the national media, only transcripts had been released because the National Archives would not allow the public any access to the tapes beyond listening to them at the Archive building. No one was allowed to record the tapes. Tuck said he had acquired copies of the tapes from a source not affiliated with the White House or the National Archives and, hence, they were legally safe to play in public. For an hour he played excerpts, which the media recorded and later re-played on their network news programs, giving the public a more reality-based and detailed feel for how their leaders behaved. It was seven years after the burglary. The tapes confirm Nixon's paranoia about Tuck. Conversations between Nixon and aides, including H.R. Haldeman, focused on the Republican's plans to create a group that would engage in Tuck-like activities. "Dick Tuck did that to me. Let's get out what Dick Tuck did!" Nixon told Haldeman according to the transcripts. Segretti's group, who called themselves "The Ratfuckers" practiced traditional Republican gutter politics. One example is a letter forged by Segretti on Democratic candidate Edmund Muskie's letterhead falsely charging that U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Democrat, had fathered an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old. Another letter, purportedly a letter to the editor of the extremely conservative Manchester Union Leader, claimed its author had heard Muskie use the derogatory term for Canadians, "Canucks" and disparage French Canadian culture and language. During the Watergate hearings in the Capitol Building, Tuck encountered H. R. Haldeman, who Nixon had cut loose the month before along with John Ehlichman. "You started all of this," said the ex-chief of staff of the White House. Replied Tuck: "Yeah, Bob, but you guys ran it into the ground." Tuck is the father of a son, Gregory, who lives in Australia where he runs a printing concern. In 1987 Tuck met and wooed Joyce Daly, professional writer and communications producer in New York City. They married in 1989 at the Woody Creek Tavern in Aspen. Colorado.
Dick and Joyce lived in Parachute, Colorado and travelled extensively until her sudden and unexpected death in 1995. Tuck retired to Tucson, Arizona, not far from where he was born in Hayden. | ||
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