June 5, 1956. Burbank, California: Elvis, charting at number one with Heartbreak Hotel, appears live on the Milton Berle Show, for the second time.

The first time, he sang a ballad. This time, Elvis performs "Hound Dog" with an up-tempo beat. Everything is normal for the first minute and 30 seconds. Then, chaos lets loose.

You can watch here from the start.

The tempo slows down (1:40 signature on the video above). The crowd goes wild. Elvis gyrates. And the world is scandalized. Truthfully, scandalized. Elvis is condemned as immoral. As Milton Berle himself said later, Elvis received "hundreds of thousands" of pieces of hate mail.

As damage control, Elvis ended up doing much tamer followup on the Steve Allen Show on July 1 where Elvis wears a tuxedo and sings to an actual dog, to which Elvis later said

It was the most ridiculous appearance I ever did and I regret ever doing it.

Despite the family-friendly walkback, Elvis's reputation continued to have a transgressive edge with older Americans.

However, Elvis was something of a conservative with law enforcement. He made friends with officers as he toured, and started to collect police badges, which were usually given as gifts; i.e. a deputy sheriff's badge when he was performing in Jackson, Mississippi. He also got a Lieutenant Detective badge from a detective he was friends with in the LAPD (it wasn't "real", a reporter later verified that the badge number never was given to a detective), and even -- just based on word of mouth, he never performed there -- was sent a Constabulary badge from Kent in South England.

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September 28, 1974. College Park, Maryland: Elvis gives a monologue at a performance, which you can watch here:

Things that are written about me in movie magazines are trash! Rumors that you hear about me are trash!

I'm an 8th degree black belt in karate.

I'm a federal narcotics agent. I am, I swear to god ... they don't give that to you if you're strung out. On the contrary I have to be straight as an arrow ...

By this time, Elvis had been on a steady stream of pills. In 1977, the year Elvis died with 14 different drugs in his system, Elvis's doctor George Nichopoulos wrote prescriptions for ten thousand doses, as he tried to keep Elvis from getting even more pills from other doctors. From a 2002 interview:

Elvis's problem, was that he didn't see the wrong in it. He felt that by getting it from a doctor, he wasn't the common everyday junkie getting something off the street. He was a person who thought that as far as medications and drugs went, there was something for everything.

Even before meeting his doctor in 1967, he had been taking amphetamines (which weren't outlawed in the US until 1965). So, Elvis had been taking medication all his life, but didn't consider his addiction the same as illegal drugs.

I'll get to the Nixon meeting soon, but I'd like to address the "eighth degree black belt" thing, because it helps answer the overall question...

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Elvis was drafted to the Army in 1958 and his first exposure to karate was on the base he was stationed at in Germany. He earned his first black belt in 1960, and went on to train with Master Kang Rhee in Memphis.

He was genuinely passionate about martial arts, although his seventh-degree black belt (we'll get to eighth in a second) was earned under dubious circumstances. He had gotten up to sixth degree; Kang Rhee was seventh degree, so that was technically the highest Elvis could go.

Elvis very much wanted to be seventh degree (something about it being a "perfect number") so (according to Wayne Carman, who trained with Elvis) Kang Rhee called together a gathering of black belts about the problem; the end result as Kang Rhee being raised to eighth-degree so Elvis could be brought to seventh. According to Carman:

Elvis's gratitude upon his promotion is obvious. After class, Elvis gave Kang Rhee a Cadillac.

So, when Elvis wanted something, he was persuasive. And he did eventually get an 8th degree belt from Kang Rhee as well, on September 16, 1974. (If you're paying attention to dates, you'll notice this is only two weeks before he talks about it on stage.)

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Let's get to that letter. Elvis was on a flight towards Washington DC and -- by coincidence -- was next to Senator George Murphy of California. Elvis brought up a desire to be a Federal Agent, and the Senator suggested Elvis write a letter. Elvis did so, on American Airlines stationary:

First, I would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley and admire you and have great respect for your office. I talked to Vice President Agnew in Palm Springs three weeks ago and expressed my concern for our country. The drug culture, the hippie elements, the SDS, Black Panthers, etc. do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it the establishment. I call it America and I love it. Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out. I have no concern or motives other than helping the country out.

The letter was originally going to be given to Murphy to give on to the president, but Elvis ended up having his driver go to the White House when he landed. One of Elvis's bodyguards handed off a letter which made its way from the Secret Service to John Finlator (acting head of Narcotics) who had nixed the request. It also landed with Bud Krogh, Nixon's deputy assistant for domestic affairs (and an Elvis fan).

Due to Krogh, a meeting ended up happening six hours later; it was supposed to be secret, although Nixon had photographs taken. Krogh came up with talking points like an anti-drug rock musical (seriously) and making anti-drug advertisements.

What Elvis really wanted was the badge. Krogh recounts:

And then 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 ended up hugging Nixon, then asking if his bodyguards could come in. Nixon gave each bodyguards a present out of a drawer, and Elvis -- ever the persuader -- chimed in with "they have wives". Krogh said Nixon "dived back into the drawer again and out come the presents for the wives".

Unfortunately, this happened before Nixon installed his famous tape recorders, so there's no Elvis-Nixon tape; however, the meeting did leak to the press in a story by Jack Anderson not long after the meeting happened.

Krogh called Finlator and told him to make the badge; as reported by the Anderson, that upon receiving it, Elvis was "overcome by emotion".

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The meeting is now often characterized as a long con by Elvis (although Elvis was probably not "high as a kite" as has sometimes been speculated -- this was a little early in his biography for his more extreme pill-taking, and the Secret Service would likely not have allowed a drugged-out Elvis to get anywhere near the President).

But -- when Elvis said on stage he as a federal narcotics agent -- did he really think he was? I've so far left out a key detail to the story. He also liked to play at being a police officer.

He had a million badges and a blue police light on his car.

That's Priscilla Presley. Elvis would like to put his light on and pull people over, and warn them they were speeding. (This wasn't quite full officer impersonation, since Elvis was definitely recognizable.) He also would listen to the police scanner and when an accident occurred would drive to the scene to direct traffic.

According to two different sources (although admittedly this may be braggadocio from Elvis himself) he once saw two men attacking a man at a gas station, and jumped out of his limo to break up the fight. Everyone stopped fighting (it's Elvis, after all) and they ended up posing for pictures.

As far as being a drug agent goes, Elvis asked his (high-school aged) stepbrothers to report any drug activity, and also used the badge once to stop a plane on a tarmac (Elvis's valet, James Caughley, was missing).

Finlator (the one who gave Presley the badge) called every six months to check to make sure Elvis still had the badge, but nothing came about otherwise -- no anti-drug commercials or rock musical. But all indications are that Elvis thought the Federal Agent title was real, like being a seventh or eighth level black belt, even if he didn't take on any real responsibilities.

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Carman, W. (1998). Elvis's Karate Legacy. Legacy Entertainment.

Guralnick, P. & Jorgensen, E. (1999). Elvis Day by Day: The Definitive Record of His Life and Music. Ballantine Books.

Krogh, E. (1994). The Day Elvis Met Nixon. Pejam.

Presley, P. & Presley, L. (2005). Elvis by the Presleys. Crown.