Then president Richard Nixon shakes hands with Sen. Edward Kennedy before leaving Andrews Air Force Base for Europe in this Feb. 23, 1969, file photo.
Former U.S. president Richard Nixon once had the late Ted Kennedy in his crosshairs, putting the senator under surveillance due to fears he was a serious political threat in the early 1970s.
Mr. Nixon, the man whose years in the White House ended in disgrace after the Watergate wiretapping scandal, not only wanted to dig up dirt about the Democratic senator, but resented the prospect of providing him any Secret Service security after the looming 1972 election.
"You understand what the problem is," he said in Oval Office conversation following an assassination attempt on Democrat George Wallace, the Alabama governor, as he campaigned for president in May, 1972.
"If the son of a bitch gets shot, they'll say we didn't furnish it," Mr. Nixon tells his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman. "So you just buy the insurance. After the election, he doesn't get a god damn thing. If he gets shot, it's too damned bad."
In long-obscured tapes obtained by the website nixontapes.org, Mr. Nixon also asks that Mr. Kennedy be assigned a Secret Service team that would provide the White House with information about the senator's activities.
"Plant two guys on him. This could be very useful," says Mr. Nixon, nervous that the lone surviving Kennedy brother might make a run for the presidency in 1972.
In an earlier Oval Office conversation, Mr. Nixon tells his closest advisers that he wants Mr. Kennedy put under surveillance.
"God damn it, there ought to be a way to get him covered," Mr. Nixon says as Mr. Haldeman reminds him that members of Congress cannot be bugged.
"The reason I would cover him is from a personal standpoint - you're likely to find something on that . . . you watch, I predict something more is going to happen," Mr. Nixon tells Mr. Haldeman, referring to the senator's alleged marital infidelities, during his first recorded gossip session about the Kennedy clan.
That conversation took place in April, 1971 with Mr. Haldeman and White House press secretary Ron Ziegler.
During the course of their chat, the three men dished the dirt about the Kennedy men's storied extramarital affairs - "they do it all the time" Mr. Nixon says - and even Joan Kennedy's fashion sense.
"Did you see his wife came here at the White House again (wearing a) crazy outfit ... some leather gaucho, with a bare midriff or something," Mr. Haldeman says. "She was going to wear hotpants but Teddy told her she couldn't."
Mr. Ziegler declares: "They're weird people, they really are."
Mr. Nixon also weighs in.
"It's crude," he says. "What the hell's the matter with them? What's she trying to prove?"
Ted Kennedy's own political albatross, the Chappaquiddick scandal, then comes up.
The married Mr. Kennedy drove his car off a bridge after a night of partying in Massachusetts in 1969 and left the scene of the accident. His female companion drowned, and the incident haunted the senator's career and thwarted his eventual presidential bid in 1980.
"She has to have some sort of hang-up herself, personally," Mr. Ziegler says of Joan Kennedy. "She knows what Teddy was doing out there with that girl, running her into the water, you know, and what he's been doing."
Luke Nichter, a history professor at Texas A and M University who analyzes the tapes at nixontapes.org, says the recordings reveal Mr. Nixon's desire to win the 1972 election by any means possible.
"Nixon wanted to do more than win, he wanted to humiliate his opponent," Mr. Nichter said.
"In case that opponent was to be a Kennedy, Nixon left nothing to chance. Nixon was a political survivor who had overcome long odds to reach the White House, and he acted quickly to remove any potential roadblock to victory in 1972."
In a later Oval Office conversation, Mr. Nixon gets a status report on the information gleaned from putting a tail on Mr. Kennedy and other Democratic presidential hopefuls, and says he wants to take the surveillance efforts a step further.
"I could only hope that we are frankly doing a little persecuting," he says of Mr. Kennedy, Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey
"We ought to persecute them ... let's do everything we can," he said, adding the men's IRS returns should be examined.
"Teddy? Who knows about the Kennedys? Shouldn't they be investigated?" he asks one of his closest advisers, John Ehrlichman.
Mr. Ehrlichman replies: "IRS-wise, I don't know the answer. Teddy, we are covering personally. When he goes on holidays, when he stopped in Hawaii on the way back from Pakistan."
Mr. Nixon asks: "Does he do anything?"
"No, no," Mr. Ehrlichman replies. "He's very clean. Very clean . . . he was in Hawaii on his own. He was staying in some guy's villa. And we had a guy on him. He was just as nice as could be the whole time."
Mr. Kennedy died this week at age 77 after battling brain cancer for more than a year. Dubbed the "Lion of the Senate" after almost 50 years in politics, he overcame personal tragedy and scandal to become one of the most effective senators in U.S. history.
Mr. Nixon was long fearful of the Kennedys after losing to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, Mr. Nichter said - but beneath that fear, there was a grudging respect.
"Working-class Richard Nixon publicly despised the patrician Kennedys; however, in private, he admired them," Mr. Nichter said.