ABSTRACT
Richard Nixon always dreamed of going to China. A Californian, he fronted on the Pacific, and looked to Asia, rather than the Atlantic and Europe. He served in the Pacific during World War II. Korea and Vietnam focused his attention on the East in the Fifties and Sixties. And in 1965 he almost made it. His law client, John Shaheen, who was building an oil refinery in Newfoundland, had an idea to get the Premier of that province sent to China by the Prime Minister of Canada. As Shaheen put it to Nixon: “Let’s see if Joey Smallwood can get assigned a mission to China by Mike Pearson and you go along as his lawyer.” The trip was quickly arranged with the Canadians, and would have projected the long-forgotten Nixon back into the headlines, but President Johnson’s State Department would not grant Nixon permission to go.
