Former president Richard Nixon frequently expressed strong anti-Jewish feelings, according to a new batch of tapes of his Oval Office conversations which has just been released.
The tapes covering the period from February to July 1971 also show the president preoccupied by the winding down of the Vietnam War and rising unemployment.
Mr Nixon tells his chief-of-staff, Mr Bob Haldeman: "I want to look at any sensitive areas where Jews are involved. There are exceptions," he says, "but generally you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?"
Mr Haldeman agrees, saying: "Their whole orientation is against you. In this administration anyway. And they are smart. They have the ability to do what they want to do, which is to hurt us."
Mr Nixon asserts that "most Jews are disloyal" but he exempts three senior aides working for him, Dr Henry Kissinger, Mr William Safire and Mr Leonard Garment.
When the Bureau of Labour Statistics shows unemployment figures rising in July 1971 the president orders the dismissal of the director, Mr Julius Shiskin, and he asks his aide, Mr Charles Colson, to investigate the ethnic background of the bureau staff.
"They are all Jews," Mr Nixon comments when shown the list. "Every one of them," Mr Colson replies. "Well, with a couple of exceptions . . . You just have to go down the goddamn list and you know they are out to kill us."
Mr Nixon later that day discusses Jewish penetration of the National Security Council headed by Dr Kissinger. He asks: "Is Tony Lake Jewish?" referring to a young aide who later became President Clinton's national security adviser.
"I've always wondered about that," replies Mr Haldeman. "He looked it," says Mr Nixon.
Mr Lake, who is now teaching in Georgetown University, is not Jewish.
When the Washington Post published a survey showing 60 per cent support for anti-Vietnam War protests among the better-off areas of Washington, Mr Nixon complains to Mr Haldeman that the results are skewed. "There's a hell of a lot of Jews in the District [of Columbia], see . . . The gentiles have moved out."
Mr Nixon also rails at the Supreme Court when its decisions go against him and sneers at individual judges. "You've got a senile old [expletive] in [Justice Hugo] Black. You've got an old fool and a black fool in that [Justice] Thurgood Marshall. Then you've got [Justice William] Brennan, I mean, a jackass Catholic."
Mr Nixon later tells aides that Dr Kissinger was trying to get total control of "everything that comes to me" on foreign policy.
"What he does not realise is, I don't read his goddamn papers . . . I just skim it."
The former president praises Dr Kissinger as "the man that has the greatest influence on me". But "sometimes he is as wrong as hell".