"Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I'm wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected," Clifford said. "It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country's interests."
Johnson concurred with the judgment, and an administration spokesman told Davis, "Obviously I'm not going to get into this kind of thing in any way, shape or form," according to another "eyes only" cable that Rostow sent Johnson. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Almost Scoop on Nixon's "Treason.'"]
The Consequences
The next day, Nixon narrowly prevailed over Humphrey by about 500,000 votes or less than one percent of the ballots cast.
On the day after the election, Rostow relayed to Johnson another FBI intercept which had recorded South Vietnamese Ambassador Bui Diem saying, prior to the American balloting, that he was "keeping his fingers crossed" in hopes of a Nixon victory.
On Nov. 7, Rostow passed along another report to Johnson about the thinking of South Vietnam's leaders. The report quoted Major Bui Cong Minh, assistant armed forces attach???? at the South Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, saying about the peace talks: "Major Minh expressed the opinion that the move by Saigon was to help presidential candidate Nixon, and that had Saigon gone to the conference table, presidential candidate Humphrey would probably have won."
Johnson continued to hope that Nixon, having won the election, would join in pressing for Saigon's participation in the peace talks and a breakthrough before Johnson left office on Jan. 20, 1969. But the breakthrough was not to be.
When Nixon met Thieu on Midway Island on June 8, 1969, in their first face-to-face sit-down since the election, Nixon unveiled his plan for a gradual "Vietnamization" of the war, while Thieu sought more U.S. guarantees, according to The Palace File.
Hung/Schecter recounted Thieu explaining Nixon's assurances in a later meeting with Taiwan's leader Chiang Kai-shek.
"He promised me eight years of strong support," Thieu told Chiang...
"Four years of military support during his first term in office and four years of economic support during his second term. ... By the time most of the Americans have withdrawn, so will the North Vietnamese; by then Saigon should be strong enough to carry on its own defense with only material support from the United States."
Nixon's plan proved unsuccessful. Yet, having allegedly made his secret commitment to the South Vietnamese regime, Nixon kept searching for violent new ways to get Thieu a better deal than Johnson would have offered. Seeking what he called "peace with honor," Nixon invaded Cambodia and stepped up the bombing of North Vietnam.
Before U.S. participation in the war was finally brought to a close in 1973 -- on terms similar to what had been available to President Johnson in 1968 -- a million more Vietnamese were estimated to have died. Those four years also cost the lives of an additional 20,763 U.S. soldiers, with 111,230 wounded.
The failure of Johnson and the Democrats to call Nixon out on his possible "treason" also left Nixon with a sense of invulnerability, a gambler's confidence after succeeding at a high-stakes bluff.
When it came to his reelection campaign, Nixon pushed more chips onto the table. Feeling that he had snookered the savvy Johnson, why not hoodwink the entire democratic process by rigging the selection of his Democratic opponent?
Nixon's worries about Johnson's file on the peace-talk gambit led him into a frantic search for its location. He didn't realize that Johnson had ordered Rostow to take the file out of the White House when Johnson departed on Jan. 20, 1969.
On June 17, 1971, upon hearing that the file might be in a safe at the Brookings Institution, Nixon ordered a break-in by operatives under former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt. The order apparently marked the start of Nixon's "plumbers' operation" that led to the failed Watergate break-in at the Democratic National Committee one year later. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Dark Continuum of Watergate."]
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