Apparently Richard Nixon was a self-serving schemer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668)
QuoteDeclassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone calls provide a fresh insight into his world. Among the revelations - he planned a dramatic entry into the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. And he caught Richard Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks... but said nothing.
After the Watergate scandal taught Richard Nixon the consequences of recording White House conversations none of his successors have dared to do it. But Nixon wasn't the first.
He got the idea from his predecessor Lyndon Johnson, who felt there was an obligation to allow historians to eventually eavesdrop on his presidency.
"They will provide history with the bark off," Johnson told his wife, Lady Bird.
The final batch of tapes released by the LBJ library covers 1968, and allows us to hear Johnson's private conversations as his Democratic Party tore itself apart over the question of Vietnam.
The 1968 convention, held in Chicago, was a complete shambles.
Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters clashed with Mayor Richard Daley's police, determined to force the party to reject Johnson's Vietnam war strategy.
As they taunted the police with cries of "The whole world is watching!" one man in particular was watching very closely.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was at his ranch in Texas, having announced five months earlier that he wouldn't seek a second term.
The president was appalled at the violence and although many of his staff sided with the students, and told the president the police were responsible for "disgusting abuse of police power," Johnson picked up the phone, ordered the dictabelt machine to start recording and congratulated Mayor Daley for his handling of the protest.
The president feared the convention delegates were about to reject his war policy and his chosen successor, Hubert Humphrey.
So he placed a series of calls to his staff at the convention to outline an astonishing plan. He planned to leave Texas and fly into Chicago.
He would then enter the convention and announce he was putting his name forward as a candidate for a second term.
It would have transformed the 1968 election. His advisers were sworn to secrecy and even Lady Bird did not know what her husband was considering.
On the White House tapes we learn that Johnson wanted to know from Daley how many delegates would support his candidacy. LBJ only wanted to get back into the race if Daley could guarantee the party would fall in line behind him.
They also discussed whether the president's helicopter, Marine One, could land on top of the Hilton Hotel to avoid the anti-war protesters.
Daley assured him enough delegates would support his nomination but the plan was shelved after the Secret Service warned the president they could not guarantee his safety.
The idea that Johnson might have been the candidate, and not Hubert Humphrey, is just one of the many secrets contained on the White House tapes.
They also shed light on a scandal that, if it had been known at the time, would have sunk the candidacy of Republican presidential nominee, Richard Nixon.
By the time of the election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks - or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had "blood on his hands".
The BBC's former Washington correspondent Charles Wheeler learned of this in 1994 and conducted a series of interviews with key Johnson staff, such as defence secretary Clark Clifford, and national security adviser Walt Rostow.
But by the time the tapes were declassified in 2008 all the main protagonists had died, including Wheeler.
Now, for the first time, the whole story can be told.
It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.
He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.
At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.
In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.
Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.
So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out.
He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to "just hang on through election".
Johnson was told by Defence Secretary Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace.
In a series of remarkable White House recordings we can hear Johnson's reaction to the news.
In one call to Senator Richard Russell he says: "We have found that our friend, the Republican nominee, our California friend, has been playing on the outskirts with our enemies and our friends both, he has been doing it through rather subterranean sources. Mrs Chennault is warning the South Vietnamese not to get pulled into this Johnson move."
He orders the Nixon campaign to be placed under FBI surveillance and demands to know if Nixon is personally involved.
When he became convinced it was being orchestrated by the Republican candidate, the president called Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader in the Senate to get a message to Nixon.
The president knew what was going on, Nixon should back off and the subterfuge amounted to treason.
Publicly Nixon was suggesting he had no idea why the South Vietnamese withdrew from the talks. He even offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.
Johnson felt it was the ultimate expression of political hypocrisy but in calls recorded with Clifford they express the fear that going public would require revealing the FBI were bugging the ambassador's phone and the National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting his communications with Saigon.
So they decided to say nothing.
The president did let Humphrey know and gave him enough information to sink his opponent. But by then, a few days from the election, Humphrey had been told he had closed the gap with Nixon and would win the presidency. So Humphrey decided it would be too disruptive to the country to accuse the Republicans of treason, if the Democrats were going to win anyway.
Nixon ended his campaign by suggesting the administration war policy was in shambles. They couldn't even get the South Vietnamese to the negotiating table.
He won by less than 1% of the popular vote.
Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives, before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968.
The White House tapes, combined with Wheeler's interviews with key White House personnel, provide an unprecedented insight into how Johnson handled a series of crises that rocked his presidency. Sadly, we will never have that sort of insight again.
That's not exactly new, is it?
Lies and calumnies.
Not really sure I get the treason charge.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2013, 04:08:27 PM
Not really sure I get the treason charge.
If Nixon hadn't interviened, indecisive campaigning would had prevailed longer and US embarrasment would had come sooner.
Quote from: Neil on March 16, 2013, 04:01:39 PM
Lies and calumnies.
You should only suffer to read not respond. Conflict of interest... fanboi. :P
Kill the hippies.
That's only like 25,000 more dead American soldiers.
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on March 16, 2013, 02:44:52 PM
Apparently Richard Nixon was a self-serving schemer.
You don't say.
Plus he started a war against that ball people.
Quote from: Ed Anger on March 16, 2013, 08:50:54 PM
Plus he started a war against that ball people.
:lol:
Anyways, I thought it was well known he sabotaged those talks?
Also, how much did sabotaging the talks matter, anyways? IIRC the North wasn't really negotiating in good faith.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 17, 2013, 12:06:47 AM
Quote from: Ed Anger on March 16, 2013, 08:50:54 PM
Plus he started a war against that ball people.
:lol:
Anyways, I thought it was well known he sabotaged those talks?
There were always rumors, but I don't think there was much in the way of evidence. Just heresay.
Quote from: Syt on March 17, 2013, 12:12:57 AM
Also, how much did sabotaging the talks matter, anyways? IIRC the North wasn't really negotiating in good faith.
Probably a lot. Besides possibly getting Nixon elected, the American public wasn't so disgusted with South Vietnam and possibility of the US retaining some support after a treaty would be high.
You might very well think so. I couldn't possibly comment.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 16, 2013, 08:17:08 PM
That's only like 25,000 more dead American soldiers.
You seriously think that, if the "make peace treaty -> wait for the US to leave -> lol was just kidding, here is zergrush" happened in '68 instead of 73 or whenever the hell it happened, the US would had still said "oh, I'll be damned, who would have thought?! good luck South Vietnam! kthxbye!"?
Dude, I can't speak Hungarian, so try to write that post again in English.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 18, 2013, 10:29:33 AM
Dude, I can't speak Hungarian, so try to write that post again in English.
I'll help.
Quotebeet beet beet! JEWS! Beet beet beet steal those hubcaps! JEWS! Beet beet beet beet.
FU :P
so, to have a run at it again, what I wanted to say was: you implied that there would had not been a reaction from the US to a broken peace of '68 if there had been one, just like there was no reaction to the broken peace in the 70s.
And I think you are wrong, because the nose of the USA was probably not sufficiently bloodied to be taken for a fool by half of a former french colony.
Quote from: Tamas on March 18, 2013, 10:45:23 AM
FU :P
so, to have a run at it again, what I wanted to say was: you implied that there would had not been a reaction from the US to a broken peace of '68 if there had been one, just like there was no reaction to the broken peace in the 70s.
And I think you are wrong, because the nose of the USA was probably not sufficiently bloodied to be taken for a fool by half of a former french colony.
I implied this? I thought I said the opposite.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 18, 2013, 10:53:14 AM
Quote from: Tamas on March 18, 2013, 10:45:23 AM
FU :P
so, to have a run at it again, what I wanted to say was: you implied that there would had not been a reaction from the US to a broken peace of '68 if there had been one, just like there was no reaction to the broken peace in the 70s.
And I think you are wrong, because the nose of the USA was probably not sufficiently bloodied to be taken for a fool by half of a former french colony.
I implied this? I thought I said the opposite.
I think you need to expand what you meant by "That's only like 25,000 more dead American soldiers" then since I understood it to imply the same thing that Tamas did - that you believed that the USA would not have reacted to North Vietnam's (hypothetical) abrogation of the (hypothetical) peace treaty in the period 1968-70 to a greater extent than the more war weary America of 1973-5 actually did once the inevitable North Vietnamese offensive began - and that thus 25000 Americans who died in the period after Nixon's intervention would not have died had he not intervened.
Or, more simply, that for some reason you believe that North Vietnam would have held to a Peace Treaty signed in 1968 when they demonstrably did not abide by the treaty of 1973, a position for which I would be interested to hear your argument for.
The US could have responded to violations of a peace treaty in a way that did not require mass deployment of the army. Continued support through air power and sale and aid of military hardware would have been greater support then was given post 1973 treaty and is unlikely to have resulted in so many American deaths.
The North breaking whatever agreement might have been reached and invading the South outright (the kekekeke scenario) could, as a blatant act of international aggression, have given the U.S. the diplomatic cover to overthrow the Hanoi government. So they probably wouldn't have done that--although they certainly would have continued supporting the insurgency indefinitely, which would have been messy.
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on March 18, 2013, 01:45:51 PM
The North breaking whatever agreement might have been reached and invading the South outright (the kekekeke scenario) could, as a blatant act of international aggression, have given the U.S. the diplomatic cover to overthrow the Hanoi government. They probably wouldn't do that--although they certainly would have continued supporting the insurgency indefinitely, which would have been messy.
:huh: That's the scenario that did happen.
:lol:
By 1975 the American public was so exhausted by the war that they would never have consented to going back in. The political will to punish North Vietnam and defend the South might have existed if they'd pulled out earlier.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2013, 04:08:27 PM
Not really sure I get the treason charge.
He was interfering in government-to-government talks, and intentionally sabotaging the negotiations of his own government.
Is that a high crime or misdemeanor? YMMV.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 18, 2013, 05:30:36 PM
He was interfering in government-to-government talks, and intentionally sabotaging the negotiations of his own government.
Is that a high crime or misdemeanor? YMMV.
If the head of some US aid organization told the head of a developing country that voting for a US GATT proposal was not in their interest, would that be treason too?
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 18, 2013, 05:30:36 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2013, 04:08:27 PM
Not really sure I get the treason charge.
He was interfering in government-to-government talks, and intentionally sabotaging the negotiations of his own government.
Is that a high crime or misdemeanor? YMMV.
Hans told us it was treason back in 2004.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 18, 2013, 05:35:40 PM
If the head of some US aid organization told the head of a developing country that voting for a US GATT proposal was not in their interest, would that be treason too?
Nope. But I'm sure you can see the differences.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 19, 2013, 10:15:34 PM
Nope. But I'm sure you can see the differences.
I can see a plethora of differences, none having to do with the essence of the charge as described by Joan.
Opposition parties that aspire to government shouldn't undermine foreign policy of the country for political game. The way they make changes is by winning elections, not playing footsie with foreign leaders.
It may not be treason, but it makes Nixon a consequential George Galloway.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 20, 2013, 06:52:48 AM
It may not be treason
Don't really see the "may."
Quoteit makes Nixon a consequential George Galloway.
I'm sure you see the differences.
It's obviously not treason. Treason is a specific and difficult to prove charge. It may violate some other law. Many Republicans were saying that John Kerry had violated the law when he went to the Paris Peace accord thingy back in the 1970's.