Amazing moment Elvis asked President Nixon for FBI badge to let him carry drugs & guns

THE first White House staff knew of his visit was a call from security announcing The King had arrived with a crumpled note.

“King who?”, answered senior aide Bud Krogh, frantically flicking through President Nixon’s diary.

“There aren’t any kings on today’s schedule.”

“Not just any two-bit king,” came the breathless reply. “The real king. The King of Rock.”

And so the stage was set for one of the most bizarre Oval Office encounters in history.

On the one hand, a shambolic Elvis Presley with a steadily declining career.

He was incoherent, had barely slept and wore an outfit more suited to the Vegas stage than Capitol Hill.

On the other, a sharp-suited Richard Nixon riding the crest of a popular wave 11 months into his tenure.

The story of this extraordinary meeting has now been turned into the movie Elvis & Nixon, starring

Michael Shannon as Presley and Kevin Spacey as the President, which hits cinemas here on June 24.

The events unfolded in December 1970 and Nixon was already acting on his promise to end the hated Vietnam War.

In July 1969 he had put the first men on the moon and was now winning plaudits for his revolutionary ideas on tackling pollution and saving the planet.

But these were not policies that bothered the 35-year-old visitor in the purple velvet suit.

Just two months previously, the Nixon administration had passed the Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, cracking down powerfully on the misuse of prescription drugs.

It was a subject Elvis had taken a personal interest in over the past three years and hoped very much to explore further.

As the singer’s wife Priscilla Presley later explained in a 1985 autobiography, Elvis sincerely believed that if he could convince the President to make him an honorary federal agent, it would give him a free pass to travel around with as many drugs and guns as he wanted.

Although it was only a replica badge, Elvis came away that day believing he had got exactly what he wanted.

The image of their meeting has since become one of the most famous White House photographs of all time.

It is requested from the National Archives more frequently than pictures from the D-Day landings or Neil Armstrong’s first lunar steps.

Elvis mentioned that he was just a poor boy from Tennessee who had gotten a lot from his country and in some way he wanted to repay that

Senior aide Bud Krogh

The story began in Memphis a few days earlier, when Elvis’s father Vernon and wife Priscilla complained that the singer had spent too much on Christmas presents — 32 handguns and ten Mercedes-Benz cars worth close to £500,000 today.

Peeved, Elvis drove to the airport and caught the next available flight, which happened to be bound for Washington.

He checked into a hotel, got bored and decided to fly to Los Angeles.

After a few hours he got bored again and instructed his entourage to return to the capital.

As usual, he was travelling with some guns and his collection of police badges.

He had got into the habit of asking local law enforcement officers at his concerts to give him an honorary badge, and such was his popularity that most of them agreed.

In the car to the airport Elvis decided that what he really wanted was a badge from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Priscilla wrote: “The narc badge represented some kind of ultimate power to him. With the federal narcotics badge, he believed he could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished.”

During the trip to Washington, Elvis scribbled a five-page letter to the President. It said: “Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out. I would love to meet you.”

The singer added that he would be staying at the Washington Hotel under the alias Jon Burrows and explained: “I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and Communist brainwashing techniques and I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can and will do the most good.

“I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a federal agent.”

Elvis dropped off his bizarre letter at the White House entrance gate at 6.30am before heading straight to the offices of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

He managed to arrange a meeting with a deputy director, but his request for a badge was politely declined.

By that time Elvis’s pre-dawn letter had reached the attention of Bud Krogh, who just happened to be a massive fan.

He thought the popular President could only benefit from extra stardust and contacted the Washington Hotel to set up a noon meeting.

Official records show Krogh recalled: “When Elvis first walked into the Oval Office he seemed a little awe-struck.

“He was dressed in a purple jumpsuit and a white shirt open to the navel with a big gold chain and thick-rimmed, amber sunglasses. I must say, I was very impressed.”

He also brought a gift — a Colt .45 pistol mounted in a display case that Elvis had plucked off the wall of his Los Angeles mansion.

It was immediately seized by Secret Service agents.

Krogh, who took notes which are now stored in the National Archives, revealed that  the encounter began awkwardly.

He wrote: “They had a really weird discussion about a lot of things that had nothing to do with the talking points I had written.

“Elvis was telling the President how difficult it was to play in Las Vegas. The President said, ‘I understand it is a tough town’.

“Presley indicated that he thought The Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit.

“The President then indicated that those who use drugs are also those in the vanguard of anti-American protest.”

The star suddenly became emotional and said he had been studying drug culture and communist brainwashing.

Krogh added: “Presley kept repeating that he wanted to be helpful, that he wanted to restore some respect for the flag which was being lost.

“He mentioned that he was just a poor boy from Tennessee who had gotten a lot from his country and in some way he wanted to repay that.”

Looking at Nixon directly, Elvis reportedly said gravely: “I’m on your side.”

Then he asked for the federal badge.

Krogh wrote: “The real reason for the trip finally came out as Elvis said, ‘Mr President, can you get me a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs?’. And the President looked and he said, ‘Bud, can we get him a badge?’.

“And I said, ‘Well, Mr President, if you want to get him a badge, we can do that’. He said, ‘Well, get him a badge’.”

Elvis was overcome. Krogh’s memo from the meeting shows how “in a surprising, spontaneous gesture the star put his left arm around the President and hugged him”.

Krogh said: “This was just an honorary badge. But he took it like he’d been given a real agent’s badge.

“We had to tell him that there were no federal agents-at-large.”

The White House archives also hold a copy of the thank you letter President Nixon later sent to Elvis.

It read: “I want you to know how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness in giving me the commemorative World War II Colt .45 pistol encased in the handsome wooden chest.”

At the time, Elvis was adamant that the meeting should be kept a secret, apparently believing it could affect his latest comeback.

It was only in 1988, long after Nixon had resigned over the Watergate scandal — in which he was found to have colluded in the bugging and sabotage of political opponents — that the National Archives began selling the photograph of their meeting.

Within a week, around 8,000 people had asked for copies, making it the archives’ most requested photograph.

Nowadays, its gift shops sell T-shirts, coffee mugs and fridge magnets bearing the unlikely image and its popularity is expected to soar again following the release of the movie.

As for Elvis, six and a half years after the encounter he was found dead, aged 42, on his bathroom floor with 14 different drugs in his blood.

It emerged that in the eight months before, The King had been prescribed more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and other narcotics.