Our virtues are our vices. I firmly believe that. The same qualities that elevate us often also pull us down. No clearer illustration of this is at hand than the life of the Rev. Billy Graham, pastor to the presidents, who recently found himself, at age 83 and in ill health, repeatedly apologizing for anti-Semitic slurs he made with Richard Nixon in 1972. It's a sad capstone to a career notably free of scandal, particularly when compared to the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart and all the others who at one time or another aspired to a spot in the nation's pulpit.
 
    The focus has been on the anti-Semitic aspect of the remarks, about Jews having a "stranglehold'' on the media and such. But that isn't really what fascinates me. Lots of people will say all sorts of negative things they only half mean, and who would want their casual comments recorded on secret taping systems and handed down to history?
 
    No, what interests me is that Graham, in his second apology, said he is mystified at why he said what he did.
 
    "I cannot imagine what caused me to make those comments,'' he said.
 
    I sure can. Anyone even passingly familiar with Graham's career should know exactly why Graham said what he did. The reason is apparent, and it has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Billy Graham became the unofficial pastor to the president over the past half century by ducking the great ethical crises of his day, and his echoing Nixon's anti-Semitic rantings is only a minor example.
 
    But first, for those just joining us, a quick history. Graham first tasted fame right here in Chicago, speaking to a youth rally at the Auditorium Theatre. Soon, he was captivating hundreds of thousands at tent crusades that lasted for weeks. It was only a matter of time before he found himself in Washington, praying with Harry Truman in the White House in 1950.
 
    The minister had discovered his flock: presidents. No national figure--no politician, no journalist, nobody--has had the continual access to the White House that Billy Graham enjoyed. He baptized Dwight D. Eisenhower. John F. Kennedy's Catholicism was no bar to Graham (who, though few know it, was a registered Democrat). Graham spoke at Lyndon Johnson's inauguration in 1965.
 
    He was especially close to Nixon. Each had been converted by the same Chicago evangelist, Dr. Paul Rader, and perhaps that created a special bond. Nixon and Graham prayed together, they golfed together, Graham spoke at Nixon's mother's funeral and was part of the all-night session that picked Spiro T. Agnew as a running mate. When Nixon needed a sympathetic audience, he turned to Graham--after sending troops into Cambodia, he tested the waters by speaking to a Graham crusade.

    Nixon went down in disgrace, but Graham endured. He was a frequent guest at the Reagan White House, but Bill Clinton was also under the Graham influence--Clinton, who met Graham while still a teen, used to tithe part of his salary to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
 
    How does a minister keep on such good terms with such a divergent cast of powerful presidents? I'll give you a hint. It isn't by challenging their biases. It isn't by getting in their face. Graham would no sooner have called Nixon on his anti-Semitic spoutings than he would have called Johnson on the Vietnam War. In fact, he did the opposite.
 
    "It seems the only way to gain attention today is to organize a march and protest something,'' he said, shrugging off the Peace March on Washington at a 1965 rally, his friend LBJ nodding in the audience.
 
    Ten years earlier, it was civil rights being given the backhand by Graham--who, to his credit, wouldn't speak to segregated audiences, but who wasn't exactly pushing Ike into uncomfortable positions either, dismissing lunch-counter sitters and freedom marchers as those who "become addicted to sitting, squatting, demonstrating and striking for what they want.''
 
    This is Graham's tragedy, and it gave him a superficiality that was even noted at the time. In 1965, theologian Martin Marty wrote of Graham in the Sun-Times: "A man in transit between epochs and value systems, he has chosen to disengage himself and distract us by shouting about the end of history.''
 
    Time on this earth is running out for Graham, and I feel sincerely sorry that his twilight is marred by this ugly incident. I truly believe he is a good man who tries his best. He didn't see the attention of the president as a lure, perhaps even the devil's trap.
 
    Maybe that was his role, his destiny. There were other ministers, remember, who walked with King at Selma, who joined the protesters forming a ring around the Pentagon. Somebody had to pray with Nixon.
 
    Still, I don't want to let Graham off too easily. You have to wonder: What was the point of gaining the trust of those in power, if your every comment was designed to flatter? If you never challenge them on their assumptions, no matter how mistaken? Think how comforting it would have been to hear Graham on those old tapes: "Now, wait a second, Mr. President, that's one of the stupidest things anyone's . . .''
 
    But man is a flawed vessel, and perhaps that is asking too much.

    Rev. Billy Graham openly voiced a belief that Jews control the American media, calling it a "stranglehold" during a 1972 conversation with President Richard Nixon, according to a tape of the Oval Office meeting released Thursday by the National Archives.
 
    "This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain," the nation's best-known preacher declared as he agreed with a stream of bigoted Nixon comments about Jews and their perceived influence in American life.
 
    "You believe that?" Nixon says after the "stranglehold" comment.
 
    "Yes, sir," Graham says.
 
    "Oh, boy," replies Nixon. "So do I. I can't ever say that, but I believe it."
 
    "No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something," Graham replies.
 
    Later, Graham mentions that he has friends in the media who are Jewish, saying they "swarm around me and are friendly to me." But, he confides to Nixon, "They don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country."
 
    The newly released tapes cover the first six months of 1972, with the Vietnam War and the upcoming presidential campaign the backdrops for many conversations. The tapes touch subjects as varied as using a nuclear bomb on North Vietnam--a notion quickly derided by adviser Henry Kissinger--and settling a West Coast dock strike.
 
    They also include all of the famous "smoking gun" conversations about the Watergate break-in, known for its damaging disclosures about a cover-up and its 18 1/2 minute gap.
 
    The Nixon-Graham remarks came during a 90-minute session after a prayer breakfast the men attended on Feb 1, 1972.
 
Scholars surprised
 
    "I find this rather stunning," said William Martin, a professor of religion and sociology at Rice University in Houston and author of "A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story." "This is out of character with anything else I have heard Billy Graham say or be quoted as saying. It is disappointing," Martin said.

    "What Graham said that day is inexcusable. Did it ever occur to him that he should have countered the president?" said Martin Marty, a religious historian at the University of Chicago who noted the distinction some conservative evangelicals and Pentecostals have made between supporting Israel but not American Jews.
 
    "One really did not associate him with this," said Michael Kotzin, a vice president at the Jewish United Fund in Chicago. "Rather than try to direct Nixon in a different direction, he reinforces him and eggs him on when it came to these stereotypes, and that's troubling."
 
    "What Graham said that day is inexcusable. Did it ever occur to him that he should have countered the president?" said Martin Marty, a religious historian at the University of Chicago who noted the distinction some conservative evangelicals and Pentecostals have made between supporting Israel but not American Jews.
 
    "One really did not associate him with this," said Michael Kotzin, a vice president at the Jewish United Fund in Chicago. "Rather than try to direct Nixon in a different direction, he reinforces him and eggs him on when it came to these stereotypes, and that's troubling."
 
    Graham, 83, is not in good health and indicated, through spokesman Larry Ross, that he could not respond because he did not recall the conversation.
 
    Thursday's release of 426 hours brings to about 2,600, out of a total of 3,700, the hours of recordings either publicly disclosed or returned to the Nixon family because they were deemed strictly personal. Many recordings, including the Graham tape, are edited to exclude content believed to disclose national security information, constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy or reveal trade secrets, among other matters.
 
    Previous tapes have underscored the complexity of Nixon, including his insecurity and occasional nastiness. Apologists tend to cite his fits of bigotry as ancillary to his policy achievements, with the Nixon estate claiming that his harshness was often a display of faux machismo in the presence of H.R. Haldeman or his other top aide, John Erlichman.
 
    While other prominent figures, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then a Nixon aide, can also be heard on tapes during mean-spirited discourses by Nixon, many assumed a more passive role. Graham is unusual for being a distinguished outsider actively taking part.
 
Longtime friendship
 
    Graham and Nixon had become close friends during the Eisenhower administration, when Nixon was vice president. The friendship remained strong until Nixon was brought down by the Watergate scandal and resigned the presidency in August 1974.
 
    Haldeman's diaries noted the conversation. He wrote that there was discussion "of the terrible problem arising from the total Jewish domination of the media, and agreement that this was something that would have to be dealt with."
 
    He continues, "Graham has the strong feeling that the Bible says there are satanic Jews and there's where our problem arises." No such comments about the Bible are found on the tape released Thursday but, because it contains several long deletions, it's believed such remarks were excised.

    The lengthy chat opens with Graham praising Nixon's prayer breakfast remarks. "There were a lot of people in tears when you finished this morning and it's very moving. That's the best I've heard you at one of those prayer breakfast things."
 
    After offering Nixon tips on preparing himself for big speeches, as well as strategy for his re-election campaign, Graham notes that he has been invited to lunch with editors of Time magazine. "I was quite amazed since this is the first time I've heard from Time since [Time founder] Henry Luce died."
 
    "You meet with all their editors, you better take your Jewish beanie," Haldeman says.
 
    Graham laughs. "Is that right?" I don't know any of them now."
 
Hollywood and the media
 
    Nixon then broaches a subject about which "we can't talk about it publicly," namely Jewish influence in Hollywood and the media. He cites Paul Keyes, a political conservative who is executive producer of the NBC hit, "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," as telling him that "11 of the 12 writers are Jewish."
 
    "That right? says Graham, prompting Nixon to claim that Life magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and others, are "totally dominated by the Jews." He calls network TV anchors Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite "front men who may not be of that persuasion," but that their writers are 95 percent Jewish."
 
    Nixon demurs that this does not mean "that all the Jews are bad" but that most are left-wing radicals who want "peace at any price except where support for Israel is concerned. The best Jews are actually the Israeli Jews."
 
    "That's right," agrees Graham, who later concurs with a Nixon assertion that a "powerful bloc" of Jews confronts Nixon in the media. "And they're the ones putting out the pornographic stuff," Graham adds.
 
    Nixon contends that "every Democratic candidate will owe his election to Jewish people," but he won't. Haldeman turns the subject to the White House press corps and the Gridiron Club, a bastion of the media establishment, both of which they say were mostly WASP once, but no more.
 
    "It was the Merriman Smiths, the Dick Wilsons, the [James] Kilpatricks, all that kind of people. But you look at what covers the president today and it's really kind of scary," Haldeman says. Haldeman and Nixon cite by name reporters from the Los Angeles Times (David Kraslow), New York Times (Max Frankel), Washington Post (Stanley Karnow) and NBC (Herb Kaplow) but stumble on CBS.
 
    "From CBS, Rather, Dan Rather, is Rather?" says Haldeman. A deletion then follows with the next voice heard being that of Graham, who alludes to A.M. Rosenthal, managing editor of the New York Times.

    "But I have to lean a little bit, you know. I go and see friend of Mr. Rosenthal at The New York Times, and people of that sort. And all, I don't mean all the Jews, but a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me. Because they know I am friendly to Israel and so forth. They don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country."
 
    Nixon says, "You must not let them know." The conversation turns to religious magazines, postal rates and Nixon's uncharitable thoughts on certain Cabinet members. Graham then leaves and, a few minutes later, Nixon tells Haldeman, "You know it was good we got this point about the Jews across."
 
    "It's a shocking point," says Haldeman, a frequent cheerleader during Nixon's diatribes.
 
    "Well," says Nixon, "it's also, the Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards."