Acutely aware of his eroding public and political support after the “Saturday-night massacre” President Nixon began an effort to speak personally with every Republican in Congress and his allies on the Democratic side of the aisle. “Operation Candor” was not Nixon’s term for these meetings, but it appeared in an unfriendly Newsweek article.

By the time Herblock’s cartoon was published, a series of articles and editorials in the Washington Post had attacked the truthfulness of Nixon’s remarks in these private meetings. The Post also questioned Nixon’s comments in a speech he gave to the Associated Press managing editors on November 17, in which he claimed that Attorney General Elliott Richardson was not truthful in his description of events leading up to the firing of Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox.