Washington: Former US President Richard Nixon viewed the media and academics as "enemy," and conducted heated campaign to investigate, intimidate and smear political rivals and opponents of the Vietnam War.

Archival documents along with 198 hours of the 37th president's White House tapes released this week by the Nixon Presidential Library Museum, also reveal the president s contempt for colleagues and his vitriol for critics.

"Never forget, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy," he told his national security adviser Henry Kissinger in Dec 1972. "Professors are the enemy," he repeated. "Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it," he told his top aides, including deputy assistant for National Security Affairs, Alexander Haig.

It also reveals that Nixon's siege mentality was shared by his closest advisers. Together, they collected dirt on the president's critics and public figures, including their marital, mental and drink problems. From the White House, the documents show, that Nixon was directing aggressive investigations of his rivals soon after taking office in January 1969. The Republican leader was particularly furious with those conducting campaign against the Vietnam war. Nixon wanted to "decimate" North Vietnam, and called the communists "filthy bastards".

He described his own vice president, Spiro Agnew, "a god-damned fool" who "doesn't know a god-damned thing".

When told by Haig that Agnew disagreed with Kissinger on Vietnam, Nixon replied that his VP "is a god-damned fool" who "doesn't know a god-damned thing. He bores the hell out of me. Christ... I'll have to have him come in here."

Source : PTI