See link:
Nixon gives up secret Service protection
The approximate chronology is:
8/9/74 Nixon resigns
3/85 Nixon gives up SS protection
4/22/94 Nixon dies
So Nixon did not give up SS protection "when he resigned", but kept it (@ ~$3.0 million per year)
for over 10 years after leaving office.
No he did not make his bucks early in his career.
He was making so little money in private practice pre-war that he applied for a government job
and moved all the way across the country when he was hired. He went into politics in 1946,
not enough time to make any money in private practice before becoming a professional politician.
Well off enough to finance round-the clock protection 30 years later? Don't be ridiculous.
Copyright royalties might have provided enough by 1985, provided the cost was a lot less than the
$3million the SS was costing.
The private, personal Nixon was by all accounts a very nice man.
However, Nixon did not leave himself out of the generosity sweepstakes, see link:
President Nixon's Troublesome Tax Returns
INCOME TAX PAID
1969 $328,161 $72,682
1970 $262,942 $792
1971 $262,384 $878
1972 $268,777 $4,298
That's a tax rate of 6.82% on $1,152,234. I wonder if any Marines were getting away with a rate that low.
I know that for most of my working life I didn't, and I never made anywhere near $200k in a year.
And leaving aside the questionable propriety of several of Nixon's deductions, that rate of income
generation could not have been a significant factor in privately financing security at any time later in Nixon's life.
