Political chicanery certainly isn’t a new phenomenon.
Now, though, the world is learning that when it comes to matters of war and peace, not even the prospect of peace that could end years of bloodshed and the loss of thousands of American lives is above the hideous intervention of one prominent politician.
It appears to be confirmed now that President-elect Richard Nixon sought to derail a last-minute peace deal that President Lyndon Johnson sought to broker with North Vietnam near the end of his presidency.
Notes acquired by journalist John Farrell suggest that Nixon’s intervention in those peace talks are far worse than anything the future president would do during the Watergate scandal that forced him to quit his office in August 1974.
According to the New York Times: “In a telephone conversation with H. R. Haldeman, who would go on to become White House chief of staff, Nixon gave instructions that a friendly intermediary should keep ‘working on’ South Vietnamese leaders to persuade them not to agree to a deal before the election, according to the notes, taken by Mr. Haldeman.”
LBJ was seeking to start peace talks that could have brought the fighting to a much earlier end. Nixon, according to Farrell’s upcoming book, didn’t want the Democratic president to succeed and give a boost to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was Nixon’s primary opponent in the 1968 presidential race. To block any possible boost to Humphrey’s campaign, Nixon finagled a way to keep the South Vietnamese away from the peace table until after the election.
Can you say “treason”?
This is so profoundly offensive to learn of this so many years later, I almost don’t know where to begin.
So, I won’t go into too much detail here. I do, though, want to suggest that the moniker “Tricky Dick” now seems more appropriate than ever.
The idea that a president-elect would interfere directly with a sitting president’s initiative to seek an end to warfare that was killing Americans crosses the line with both feet that defines treason.
Nixon campaigned in 1968 on the promise to deliver a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War. Of course, he wouldn’t tell us that the plan involved derailing his predecessor’s effort and then drag the war effort on for another five years.
The link I attached to this blog post goes into amazing detail about what Farrell discovered at the Nixon presidential library. Take a look at it.
Warning: It might turn your stomach as much as it did mine.
This reminds me of a chapter in the The President’s Club – wherein various efforts are recounted – LBJ and RMN each trying to manipulate the other in person, in the press, and “behind the scenes”
It was somewhat convoluted, so much of it has slipped my grasp however, part of it was to try to “influence” the Paris peace talks.
Treason, indeed!
I encourage you to comment at length on this – if only to vent your spleen.
Much of the book is not “slimy”- but details how former and sitting presidents corresponded and cooperated.
Looking forward, one hopes that Obama will help Trump so far as he can stomach it.
It occurred to me that if Nixon truly derailed the peace talks, then he was responsible for my going to ‘Nam in the first place. Now my question: Would I be the person I am today had I not had the experience of getting a ringside seat on the Vietnam War?