Billy Graham's anti-Semitism leaves Jewish leaders aghast.
Call it Jewish paranoia — about Jews, not by Jews.
That's the mentality revealed by the Rev. Billy Graham in tapes recorded in 1972 and recently released by the National Archives, in which the evangelist urged President Nixon to fight the Jews´ alleged domination of America's media.
"This stranglehold has got to be broken or this country's going down the drain," Graham says on the tapes.
Graham, now 83, apologized for the remarks last Friday — though he qualified it by saying he didn't recall saying such things.
Not all American Jewish leaders were satisfied with the mea culpa.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, described it as "mealy-mouthed."
"The Graham name is the most respected clergy name in America, and has been for decades," Foxman said. "What this requires is for him to own up to what he said, to own up to the ugliness of the bigotry and issue not only a clear, stated apology," but also to express " how terrible these thoughts are" and that "he has learned better."
In his apology, Graham said, "Although I have no memory of the occasion, I deeply regret comments I apparently made in an Oval Office conversation with President Nixon."
He added: "They do not reflect my views and I sincerely apologize for any offense caused by the remarks."
That's enough for Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, director of inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee.
"I don't think we should judge people based on comments made 30 years ago," Resnicoff said. "I think his words and his actions since have shown him to be a friend and someone who is working for good across religious lines."
Even so, "it's pretty devastating, and it's pretty depressing," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an institution dedicated to the study of the Holocaust.
"Billy Graham has been the symbol of morality in America, and among not only millions of everyday Americans, but among America's elite," Cooper said. It's "very sobering indeed that a spiritual leader of his stature should have harbored those views."
Cooper added, "This is, if you will, a slap across every Jew's face."
However, Cooper said, in the Jewish tradition, "if someone apologizes, you have a responsibility to forgive them."
Another troublesome element on the tapes is when Nixon apparently coaxes Graham to say things the president can´t.
"You believe that?" Nixon asks Graham of his allegations of Jewish media domination.
"Yes, sir," Graham says.
"Oh boy, so do I," Nixon says. "I can't ever say that, but I believe it."
"No," Graham replies, "but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something."
Later in the conversation, Nixon brings up the subject of Jewish influence in Hollywood.
"A lot of Jews are great friends of mine," Graham says. "They swarm around me and are friendly to me. Because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth. But they don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them."
Nixon responds, "You must not let them know."
The way Nixon eggs Graham on is shocking, Foxman said.
Still, "we knew that Nixon was an anti-Semite," Foxman said, whereas Graham is "a guy we all felt comfortable with" as a spiritual guide to many presidents. "And he was so infected with this virulent anti-Semitism."
The idea of Jewish control of the media is a "classic, anti-Semitic canard," Foxman said, the same one that led to the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
The murdered reporter's last words — a forced admission of his Jewishness — were intertwined with this notion, Foxman said.
It's a belief espoused frequently by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, who believe their poor image in America is due to manipulation and distortions by Jewish journalists, Foxman said.
Graham's remarks are especially chilling because of the current climate of growing anti-Semitism in the world, according to Martin Raffel, associate director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
It's "bad enough that it was said and who said it, but it has hit even harder because of the growing concern we have in the community about anti- Semitism and anti-Zionism today," Raffel said.
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What exactly was Nixon smoking?
On tape, late president rants on about Jews, gays, marijuana.

Now that the latest tapes from the Nixon White House have been released, the press is all over them with characteristic glee, eager as always to remind us that not long ago the leader of the free world was buggier than a flophouse blanket. Don’t you get tired of this?
ME NEITHER. So when researcher Doug McVay from Common Sense for Drug Policy sent me tapes he culled from Nixon’s Oval Office rants about drugs, I pounced on them. I figured it would be a welcome respite from Nixon’s recent rants about Jews.
From the Weed Screed, May 26, 1971:
“You know, it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists.”
In my professional capacity, I diagnose a delusional state of mind. It’s simple logic: In a previously released rant, Nixon and Billy Graham gnash and froth over how Jews control the media. How can most Jews be psychiatrists and still control the media? Nixon does not explain.
But he does explain many other things in these drug tapes, including the insidious nexus between drugs, homosexuality, communism and, of course, Jews.
The excerpts begin with the Nixon doctrine on why marijuana is much worse than alcohol: It is because people drink “to have fun” but they smoke marijuana “to get high.” This distinction was evidently enormously significant to Nixon, because he repeats it twice.
A PAINFUL EXCHANGE
In an excruciating sequence from Sept. 9, 1971, Nixon is meeting with former Pennsylvania governor Raymond P. Shafer. Shafer heads a presidential commission on drug policy that Nixon has heard might be flirting with the notion of recommending the decriminalization of marijuana.
“You’re enough of a pro,” Nixon tells Shafer, “to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we’re planning to do, would make your commission just look bad as hell.”
Shafer begins to stammer. Nixon appears to be telling his commission, in advance, what to conclude.
If there is any doubt about this, Nixon erases it instantly. He instructs Shafer not to seek input from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which he seems to think is soft on drugs, apparently because it is filled with, you know, psychiatrists:
“As an old prosecutor, I don’t mind somebody putting it in J. Edgar Hoover’s hands, but I come down very hard on the side of putting it in, uh, hardheaded doctors, rather than a bunch of muddle-headed psychiatrists.”
Shafer can barely get a word in edgewise.
“They’re all muddle-headed,” Nixon says. “You know what I mean?”
The governor’s discomfort is palpable. You can almost hear him hooking a finger in his collar.
Nixon continues, making things perfectly clear: “But anyway, the thing to do now is to alert the country to the problem and say now, this far, no farther, and I think that’s what you want to do, take a strong line.”
Suddenly, people start getting up. The meeting is over. Before Shafer knows what hits him, the president is pushing him out the door, with a gift of golf balls and cuff links.
THREATS TO THE REPUBLIC
Eventually, Shafer’s commission would recommend decriminalization. The Nixon White House was appalled, understandably: Nixon saw drugs as a threat to the vitals of the republic — right up there, hand in hand, with the scourge of homosexuality.
Nixon expounds on this in a lengthy monologue on May 13, 1971. On this day, he makes it clear that he does not like gay people. Northern California, he says, has gotten so “faggy” that “I won’t shake hands with anybody from San Francisco.”
Nixon loves this subject. He is nearly unstoppable on it. His top aides H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are in the room, but they barely speak beyond monosyllabic sycophancies. It takes the president a while to get to the point, which begins with his review of a popular TV sitcom he has just watched, apparently for the first time:
“Archie is sitting here with his hippie son-in-law, married to the screwball daughter. . . . The son-in-law apparently goes both ways.”
Nixon seems to have concluded, against all evidence, that Meathead is bisexual. Possibly it is the length of his hair. Another character in the show, Nixon reports, is “obviously queer. He wears an ascot, and so forth.”
The president is outraged that this filth should appear on TV:
“The point that I make is that, goddamn it, I do not think that you glorify on public television homosexuality. You don’t glorify it, John, anymore than you glorify, uh, whores.”
‘ARISTOTLE WAS A HOMO’
The president asserts that America is in jeopardy from this Archie Bunker gay thing:
“I don’t want to see this country to go that way. You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates.”
Ehrlichman interrupts to reassure his boss. Socrates, he says, “never had the influence that television had.”
Precisely, precisely. Nixon is on a roll, lecturing like a history professor:
“Do you know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. . . . You know what happened to the popes? It’s all right that popes were laying the nuns.”
Someone laughs nervously. Nixon bulls on, not a hint of humor in his voice.
“That’s been going on for years, centuries, but when the popes, when the Catholic Church went to hell in, I don’t know, three or four centuries ago, it was homosexual. . . . Now, that’s what happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France. And let’s look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn it, they root them out, they don’t let ‘em hang around at all. You know what I mean? I don’t know what they do with them.”
“Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. Not if they can catch it, they send them up. You see, homosexuality, dope, uh, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing it. They’re trying to destroy us.”
Well, that was 31 years ago, and I am happy to report that the Jew-homo-doper-Commie-shrink-lefty-pope cabal has not, to date, destroyed us. Nixon seems to have been wrong on this one.
Of course, it’s not the first time he was wrong. Yes, he was a crook. No, it wasn’t a third-rate burglary. And yes — we do still have Dick Nixon to kick around. Apparently, thanks to his tapes, forever and ever and ever.