Terror Watch: Nixon and Dixon

Assigned to research the history of U.S. counterterrorism policy, a September 11 Commission researcher last year stumbled upon a bizarre discovery: in the aftermath of the Munich Olympic massacre in 1972, President Richard M. Nixon was briefed on terror plots that had been divined by professional psychic Jeane Dixon.

The relationship between Nixon and Dixon, whose followers believed had prophesied the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, has been almost entirely overlooked by historians. But Dixon's supply of psychic "intelligence" to Nixon is fully documented on little-noticed White House tapes. They show that the president's loyal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, gave the president detailed briefings on offbeat national-security forecasts from a woman that Nixon called "the soothsayer."

In what University of Virginia historian and 9/11 Commission researcher Timothy Naftali calls "one of the oddest moments in the history of U.S. counterterrorism," Woods alerted Nixon to some of Dixon's most alarming warnings during an Oval Office meeting that took place on Sept. 19, 1972, between 3:27 p.m. and 3:42 p.m. This meeting (which has never previously been detailed) took place just two weeks after nine Israeli Olympic athletes kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists were killed during a botched rescue attempt by West German authorities.

"There are going to be killings here in America, bombing of Jews," Woods told the president, explaining she had just been told this in a recent session she had with Dixon. The psychic (who at the time wrote a newspaper astrology column) warned that Jewish leaders were going "to commence attacks on you [Nixon] for not protecting them," according to Woods's briefing. But she said Dixon was concerned for the president--and advised him not to "say something."

Dixon's reasoning: there were so many prominent Jewish Americans ("all the big radio stations and TV stations and the newspaper people are Jewish people") that "there was no way to protect them."

One possible terror target was Washington PostPublisher Katharine Graham, whose father was born Jewish. "Harm could come to Kate Graham if she opens some package in her office--not her house," Woods reported to the president. "But [Dixon] is not going to pass that on, she's not going to call Graham and tell her this." [NEWSWEEK is owned by The Washington Post Co.]