The notes sourced in the article were quietly made public in 2007 by the Nixon Library but were only recently discovered by a biographer researching the former president.
Context: It's October 1968, Nixon is running against Hubert Humphrey for President, the election is a month away, and Nixon's lead over Humphrey is declining.
NYT: Nixon's Vietnam Treachery
- Henry A. Kissinger called, alerting Nixon that a peace deal was in the works.
- South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, feared that Johnson would sell him out. If Thieu would stall the talks, Nixon could portray Johnson's actions as a cheap political trick.
- Nixon had a pipeline to Sout Vietnam: Anna Chennault, a Republican doyenne and Nixon fund-raiser, and a member of the pro-nationalist China lobby, with connections across Asia.
- She ”contacted Vietnam Ambassador Bui Diem," one report from the surveillance noted, ”and advised him that she had received a message from her boss ... to give personally to the ambassador. She said the message was ... ‘Hold on. We are gonna win. ... Please tell your boss to hold on.' "
- Nixon told Haldeman to have Rose Mary Woods, the candidate's personal secretary, contact another nationalist Chinese figure — the businessman Louis Kung — and have him press Thieu as well. ”Tell him hold firm," Nixon said.
- ”My God. I would never do anything to encourage" South Vietnam ”not to come to the table," Nixon told Johnson, in a conversation captured on the White House taping system.
- Now we know Nixon lied. A newfound cache of notes left by H. R. Haldeman, his closest aide, shows that Nixon directed his campaign's efforts to scuttle the peace talks, which he feared could give his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an edge in the 1968 election. On Oct. 22, 1968, he ordered Haldeman to ”monkey wrench" the initiative.
- Throughout his life, Nixon feared disclosure of this skulduggery. ”I did nothing to undercut them," he told Frost in their 1977 interviews. Even after Watergate, he made it a point of character. ”I couldn't have done that in conscience."
- Nixon had cause to lie. His actions appear to violate federal law, which prohibits private citizens from trying to ”defeat the measures of the United States." His lawyers fought throughout Nixon's life to keep the records of the 1968 campaign private.
- When Johnson got word of Nixon's meddling, he ordered the F.B.I. to track Chennault's movements.
- In a conversation with the Republican senator Everett Dirksen, the minority leader, Johnson lashed out about Nixon. ”I'm reading their hand, Everett," Johnson told his old friend. ”This is treason." ”I know," Dirksen said mournfully.
- Johnson's closest aides urged him to unmask Nixon's actions. But on a Nov. 4 conference call, they concluded that they could not go public because, among other factors, they lacked the ”absolute proof," as Defense Secretary Clark Clifford put it, of Nixon's direct involvement. Nixon was elected president the next day.
TL;DR:
- President Lyndon Johnson arranged a cease-fire and peace talks between the USA, North & South Vietnam, and the Soviet Union. Nixon is worried this will give his opponent, Humphrey, an edge in the election so he enlisted the help of his staff, Chinese nationalists, and the South Vietnamese President to "monkey-wrench" the peace talks.
Bonus:
- The notes contain other gems, like Haldeman's notations of a promise, made by Nixon to Southern Republicans, that he would retreat on civil rights and ”lay off pro-Negro crap" if elected president. There are notes from Nixon's 1962 California gubernatorial campaign, in which he and his aides discuss the need to wiretap political foes.
I thought this was interesting story, especially with the backdrop of our current political calamity, and a good reminder to myself to never underestimate the levels people will sink to in the pursuit of power or money.
