Colson: "And done through the FBI. My God, if we ever did anything like that you'd have the ..."
Nixon: "Yes. For example, why didn't we bug McGovern, because after all he's affecting the peace negotiations?"
Colson: "Sure."
A Nixon Leak
Nixon's complaint about Johnson bugging "our phones" in 1968 became a
refrain as the Watergate scandal unfolded in 1972. Nixon wanted to use
the information to pressure Johnson and Humphrey into twisting
Democratic arms so the Watergate investigations would be stopped.
On Jan. 8, 1973, Nixon urged Haldeman to plant a story about the 1968
bugging in the Washington Star.
"You don't really have to have hard
evidence, Bob," Nixon told Haldeman. "You're not trying to take this to
court. All you have to do is to have it out, just put it out as
authority, and the press will write the Goddamn story, and the Star
will run it now."
Haldeman, however, insisted on checking the facts. In The Haldeman
Diaries, published in 1994, Haldeman included an entry dated Jan.
12, 1973, which contains his book's only deletion for national
security.
"I talked to [former Attorney General John] Mitchell on the phone,"
Haldeman wrote, "and he said [FBI official Cartha] DeLoach had told him
he was up to date on the thing. ... A Star reporter was making
an inquiry in the last week or so, and LBJ got very hot and called
Deke [DeLoach's nickname], and said to him that if the Nixon people are
going to play with this, that he would release [deleted material --
national security], saying that our side was asking that certain things
be done. ...
"DeLoach took this as a direct threat from
Johnson. ... As he [DeLoach] recalls it, bugging was requested on the
planes, but was turned down, and all they did was check the phone
calls, and put a tap on the Dragon Lady [Anna Chennault]."
Ten days after Haldeman's entry in his diaries, Johnson died of a
heart attack , on Jan. 22, 1973.
That same month, the Nixon administration finally signed a Vietnam peace agreement in Paris that was much like the one Johnson had tried to negotiate four years earlier.
In the meantime, a million or more Vietnamese were estimated to have died along with an additional 20,763 U.S. dead and 111,230 U.S. wounded. The war also had spread into Cambodia with other horrendous consequences.
Watergate Showdown
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