For various reasons, I am plowing through all kinds of Nixon related stuff at the moment, and found the full so-called “Kitchen Debate” in full color. I’ve only ever heard audio of it. Great stuff. It’s an impromptu debate between Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon, during a visit of Vice President Nixon , at the American National Exhibition in Moscow on July 24, 1959. It’s in two parts, I’m pasting both below. Part 1 contains a speech of sorts by Khrushchev and part 2 Nixon’s answer to that speech and an ensuing debate.
phillip k. dick:
“Just about the time that Supreme Court was ruling that the Nixon tapes had to be turned over to the special prosecutor, I was eating at a Chinese restaurant in Yorba Linda, the town in California where Nixon went to school—where he grew up, worked at a grocery store, where there is a park named after him, and of course the Nixon house, simple clapboard and all that. In my fortune cookie, I got the following fortune:
DEEDS DONE IN SECRET HAVE A
WAY OF BECOMING FOUND OUT.
I mailed the slip of paper to the White House, mentioning that the Chinese restaurant was located within a mile of Nixon’s original house, and I said, “I think a mistake has been made; by accident I got Mr. Nixon’s fortune. Does he have mine?” The White House did not answer.”