Terror Watch: Nixon and Dixon

As Naftali writes in his book, Nixon at first took the idea of the government terrorism committee seriously--and pushed Kissinger on the issue in the days ahead. He wanted both Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray and CIA Director Richard Helms on the panel so intelligence would be coordinated at the highest level. "I don't want a bunch of ... jerks from State," Nixon told Kissinger in a meeting on Sept. 25, 1972. "No, no," Kissinger replied. "This is a cabinet-level committee ... lots of prestige."

But the issue soon faded and, according to Naftali, the terrorism committee spurred in part by Dixon's prophecies was all but forgotten. It met only once, in October 1972--and then was replaced by another executive-branch terrorism committee in 1977 under President Gerald Ford. Interviewed by Naftali, Haig called the Nixon terrorism committee "a charade."

But Nixon's relationship with Dixon clearly wasn't--even if nothing was publicly known about it at the time. Five years ago, the Chicago Tribune became the first and only news outlet to report Dixon's Oval Office connection, though the newspaper did not explore the post-Munich terror warnings that were uncovered by Naftali. A further passing reference to Dixon was made in a Los Angeles Times story about the Nixon tapes in 2003.

If Nixon's dealings with Dixon had become public during the time of his presidency, it unquestionably would have been major news. Dixon, who died in 1997 at the age of 79, catapulted to international fame after Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Her devotees pointed back to an interview she had given to Parade magazine in 1956 in which she predicted that a Democratic president would be elected in 1960--a tall young man with blue eyes and brown hair who would die in office. Dixon later claimed that she had specifically predicted this tall young man would be assassinated, but that Parade editors deleted this part from the story.

But Dixon also made many other predictions that were wildly off the mark. She predicted, for example, that World War III would erupt in 1958 over the offshore Chinese islands of Quemoy and Matsu. She predicted that the Soviets would beat the United States to the moon. She predicted that cancer would be cured by 1967. In perhaps her strangest prophecy, she predicted that a baby descended from the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti would be born in the Middle East in 1962 and grow up to usher in an era of world peace--until he turned out to be the Anti-Christ.

Her forecasts grew so unreliable that one of her most prominent clients, astrology buff Nancy Reagan, concluded that Dixon had lost her powers and shifted to a rival astrologer, Joan Quigley, who provided advice while she and her husband were in the White House.