I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice Presidency and as a man whose honesty and integrity have been questioned. Now, the usual political thing to do
when charges are made against you is to either ignore them or to deny them without giving details. I believe we have had enough of that in the United States,
particularly with the present administration in Washington, D.C. To me, the office of the Vice-Presidency of the United States is a great office, and I feel that the
people ave got to have confidence in the integrity of the men who run for that office and who might obtain it. I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a
smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth, and that is why I am here tonight. I want to tell you my side of the case. I am sure that you have
read the charge and you have heard it, that I, Senator Nixon, took $18,000 from a group of my supporters. Now, was that wrong? And, let me say that it was wrong -- I
am saying, incidentally, that it was wrong, not just illegal (because it isn't a question of whether it was legal or illegal; that isn’t enough; the question is, was it morally
wrong?) -- I say that it was morally wrong if any of that $18,000 went to Senator Nixon for my personal use; I say that it was morally wrong if it was secretly given and
secretly handled; and I say that it was morally wrong if any of the contributors got special favors for the contribution that they made. And now to answer those
questions let me say this: Not one cent of the $18,000, or any other money of that type, ever went to me for my personal use. Every penny of it was used to pay for
political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States. It was not a secret fund; as a matter of fact, when I was on Meet the
Press – some of you may have seen it last Sunday -- Peter Edson came up to me after the program and he said, "Dick, what about this fund we hear about?" And I
said, "Well, there is no secret about it. Go out and see Dana Smith," who was the administrator of the fund, and I gave him his address, and I said, "You will find that
the purpose of the fund simply was to defray political expenses that I did not feel should be charged to the Government. And, third, let me point out -- and I want to
make this particularly clear -- that no contributor to this fund, no contributor to any of my campaigns, has ever received any consideration that he would not have
received as an ordinary constituent. I just don’t believe in that and I can say that never while I have been in the Senate of the United States, as far as the people that
contributed to this fund are concerned, have I made a telephone call for them to any agency or have I gone down to an agency in their behalf; and the records will show
that, the records which are in the hands of the Administration. Well, then, some of you will say -- and rightly -- "Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator? Why did
you have to have it?"