“The Nixon enemies list?” she said, eyes wide. “We’ve been married all these years and you’re only now telling me you were on the Nixon enemies list?”
By TONY CASTRO
MY WIFE ISN’T A JOURNALIST. Which is wonderful — except when she starts thinking like one. She has this habit of sometimes catching me mid-story and accusing me of burying the lead.
The other night I was reading her an email from someone promoting one of my books: “…you’ve survived the Nixon enemies list, conquered…”
She stopped me cold.
“The Nixon enemies list?” she said, eyes wide. “We’ve been married all these years and you’re only now telling me you were on the Nixon enemies list?”
Well… yes.
It was a long time ago, a dozen years before I ever met her — 1972, to be exact. I first heard about it from an aide to California Congressman Chet Edwards, who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate. That committee subpoenaed millions of documents detailing the Nixon administration’s crimes, improprieties, and little “projects.” Among them: the now infamous list of journalists deemed enemies of the President.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were there, naturally. But so were countless others — including me.
At the time, I was reporting for The Dallas Morning News and also under contract as a national correspondent for The Washington Post. My contributions to Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate coverage were minor, but my own reporting broke bigger ground elsewhere: how Nixon’s team had hastily appointed record numbers of Latinos to federal positions and judgeships, while simultaneously misusing government funds to court Mexican-American votes in Texas and the Southwest.
It was called Nixon’s Chicano Strategy.
That exposé was a career-defining coup for a young reporter. It won a shelf of awards, landed me a book contract for Chicano Power, and secured me a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. Not bad for a kid still in his twenties.
But being on Nixon’s enemies list had its darker side. The lists — part of the so-called “Political Enemies Project” — weren’t symbolic. They were marching orders: people like me were to be harassed through tax audits, career derailments, and whispered campaigns. One Judiciary Committee document later revealed that Latino officials inside the White House press office had intervened to block my permanent hiring at The Washington Post. One of them had once been a friend back in Texas.
Forgiven, yes. Forgotten, never.
In the end, Nixon’s Chicano Strategy was buried under the avalanche of Watergate, impeachment, and resignation. I moved on, becoming a columnist at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. My place on the enemies list became a historical footnote — one that surfaced only once in a truly unforgettable way.
It was 1981 at Lucy’s El Adobe Café, that fabled Los Angeles political watering hole. I was dining with friends when Frank Casado, Lucy’s husband, led over a familiar face — a former Nixon operative, a Latino political hack who’d played his role in trying to tank my career prospects. Casado, not knowing our history, thought he was doing me a favor.
The hack spotted me, spat out a profanity, and turned to the Englishwoman at my side with a sneer: “British hussy.”
My manners ended there. I grabbed my plate — still heaped with a vegetarian tostada — and let it fly.
It hit him square in the face. Guacamole, beans, and salsa dripping down his suit.
Stunned, he staggered back and called the police, demanding I be arrested for assault.
“Assault? With what, a deadly tostada?” cracked attorney Alex Jacinto, who was at our table, when the officers arrived. “That’s an insult to my client’s restaurant.”
Casado, with his wicked sense of humor, smoothed things over. He treated the officers to dinner, then turned to the Nixon hack and asked him politely to leave.
As the man slunk away, Casado quipped:
“That Castro kid just ordered another margarita. Who knows what he’ll throw next?”
Looking back, the Nixon enemies list now feels almost quaint. But it was real enough to derail careers and ruin reputations. Yet life has a way of serving up its own justice: sometimes in courtrooms, sometimes in Congress. Enemies lists fade. Presidents resign. But never underestimate the power of one well-aimed tostada.
And that, I think, is the real lead — not that I was on the list, but that I’m still here to laugh about it.
TONY CASTRO, the former award-winning Los Angeles columnist and author, is a writer-at-large and the national political writer for LAMonthly.org. His forthcoming dual biography, MICKEY & BILLY: The Glory & Tragedy of a Yankee Friendship (Diversion Books, 2026). He can be reached at tony@tonycastro.com.
