Many thanks to Steve (Again) for sending me a email with part of the interview in which HST says he was there when Nixon left the White House.
“MH: What were you doing that day? Do you remember?
HST: Absolutely, man. I was in the White House Rose Garden. I was at the end of a red carpet that stretched from the stairs to the helicopter which landed on the lawn. There were some Marines to my left, but I was the last human being in the line. Annie Liebowitz was right beside me. And yeah, just being there and watching him get on, it was — not total victory, but it gave me a sense of being very much a part of not just my reality but everybody else’s. There’s a big difference between railing against some oppressor for twenty years and then ending up in the Bastille, or fighting a twenty-year war and watching the enemy vanquished.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/graffiti/hunter.htm
