Nixon played politics with the war for four years so he could get Re-elected and then settled for the same terms he could have had when he was sworn in the first time. The 22000 American deaths pale in comparison to the millions of deaths caused by Kissinger and Nixon expanding the war into Cambodia and Laos. I remember the brutal Christmas bombing and the cynical “Peace is at Hand” statement. I thought no one could be worse until seeing what the current version of Republicans are up to now.
An excellent and timely reminder of the template of venality that Republicans have sought to conceal for a generation. Their project to restore the imperial presidency is a reaction to Nixon's self-inflicted fate.
The Chennault story was in the public domain very soon after the event. It was given a wide public airing via a number of journalists like Drew Pearson and Seymour Hersch. The year following the eelction saw the publication of Theodore H White's The Making of the President 1968. Like most commentators in the know at the time, White hedged. The book revealed but didn't accuse - avoiding conclusions, White lets hang in the air the assumption that such high level tinkering to subvert the peace initiative, particularly in such an intensely centralised and control obsessed campaign like that of Nixon 68, could only have come from the top ie the candidate himself and not rogue underlings. Final proof that Nixon directed the whole stalling operation had to wait until after his death. White claims that
(a) Theiu, South Vietnamese president, was responsible - faced with a rebellion from his cabinet against joining the Johnson initiative he hijacked it by refusing to meet for negotiations, thus making the point moot that Nixon derailed a small chance of peace and risking the lives of thousands in the proces) and
(b) Johnson did not put what he knew into the public domain (remember it was literally on the eve of the vote) because of statesmanship - no matter his political hopes, LBJ would not cripple Nixon's authority as president if, as seemed likely, he was to win.
We now know for certain the following
1. Nixon was intimately involved in attempting to subvert the Johnson peace initiative. What historians had searched for for decades - conclusive proof of Nixon's direct involvement and guiding hand in the conspiracy - was finally uncovered by historian John Farrell around 2016. He uncovered the smoking gun proving Nixon's direct involvement in the successful sabotage. It was in the form of handwritten notes that Farrel found, long buried in the archives that Nixon had fought to keep private, taken by chief of staff H R Haldeman from a phone conversation with Nixon dated October 22 1968. In this, Nixon is not merely responding as a bystander to over-eager operatives (long the Republican line) but explicitly directs the conspiracy, telling Haldeman to "keep Anna Chennault working on the SVN (South VIetnam) "The notes include the question, 'Any other way to monkey wrench it? Anything RN (Nixon) can do."
2. Spiro Agnew was directly involved in the Channault initiative, tasked with threatening intelligence chief Helms that he would be out of a job unless he kept the information under wraps
3. Johnson considered dropping what he knew into the media via back channels the very day before the election. Clark Clifford said later that what was lacking was the absolute proof that the public could understand. It was secret intelligence, and using it ran the very real risk that it would blow up the Democrats.. LBJ had passed the information on to the Humphrey campaign that weekend, allowing the Vice President to make the call on what would have been the mother of all October surprises. William Bundy in an interview said that in the brief time window before the election it would have required not only revealing the secret intelligence operatives, but admitting that the Democratic administration had been spying on their allies during wartime and also on the domestic opposition during an election campaign. White, in his typically romanticized style, says in TMOTP 1968 that the reason for Humphrey's refusal to air the story on the eve of the vote was the candidate's humanity - 'He (Humphrey) was repeatedly urged by his advisors to release the information....I know of no more decent story in American politics than that of Humphrey's refusal" ie to believe that Nixon would have stooped so low as to be party to something like this. The real reasons were, as Mr Warde explains, that the campaign initiative had turned dramatically in Humphrey's favour, he was rising fast in the polls, with campaign funds and endorsements pouring in, one reputable poll even giving him a head to head lead. This suggested that HHH was days away from pulling off the greatest political upset since Truman. Therefore with victory in sight, why risk recourse to last minute revelations that could blow up the entire campaign? What White gets right in his book, in my opinion, is his assertion that Humphrey would have won the 1968 election had he revealed Nixon's conniving. "He would have been a minority president,but the president nevertheless."
4. Nixon maintained his lies about non - involvement for the rest of his life. His memoirs do not mention the Chennault affair. He lied to LBJ in the famous phone call alluded to by Mr Warde, feigning indignity that anyone could think him capable of stymying US foreign policy for his own political ends. (LBJ knew Nixon was lying and Nixon knew that LBJ knew). Nixon categorically denied any involvement to David Frost in the televised interviews, disclaiming any decision making or even knowledge of the matter.
5. Nixon was guilty of violating the Logan Act prohibiting private citizens, as he was at the time, of meddling in any way with national US diplomacy. Nixon's actions, according to Henry Kissinger, would be 'highly inappropriate, if true.' Hank would know. He was one of the Nixon moles working on behalf of the Johnson administration to get peace talks going, feeding Nixon's campaign information about the talks and specifically warning Nixon's team of a potential peace breakthrough.
6. Watergate and its connection to the Chennault affair has been a topic for years. It is known that Nixon knew that Johnson had the goods on him. The proposed firebombing of the Brookings Institute, one of Nixon's aborted earlier criminal initiatives in 1971, has widely been seen seen as an attempt to retrieve what were suspected were copies of Johnson's Chennault files that Nixon allegedly believed lay in a safe at the institute (the Keystone Cops scenario had Nixon's men buy a second hand firetruck, dress up as firemen, and after starting a fire at Brookings, go in under cover of the chaos, blow the safe and steal the incriminating papers) There has even been talk that the perennial mystery of exactly what Liddy and co were after in the Watergate break-in was actually information relating to the Nixon-Chennault affair held by Larry O'Brien, DNC chairman.
Long submission to make a bleedingly obvious conclusion - Nixon was a crook. Of course in every category the current incumbent far surpasses him as an unprincipled scoundrel.
This is the part of history patriotism keeps trying to memory-hole. Not a mistake. Not “the cost of complexity.” A conscious choice to trade bodies for ballots. When people say “both sides,” this is the receipt. Nixon didn’t inherit a war. He delayed peace for power, and thousands of names paid the interest. That’s not strategy. That’s blood accounting.
Trump’s policies or lack thereof contributed to the deaths of around 461,000 Americans in 2018. In 2019, about 22,000 deaths resulted from Trump’s dismantling of environmental protection measures alone, based on the Commission’s analyses. And of course, there was 2020, when the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic hit. Many have written about the Trump administration’s failure to mount a scientifically appropriate response to the pandemic.
Trump gave the a trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and high-income individuals followed by cuts in food subsidy and health care programs to repealing environmental regulations.
By the end of trumps second term, I would guess trump would beat nixons record, but we would have to count, not only if he starts a war which he treatens other countries with, but the cost of American lives in he first term with the Covid deaths, and now with he and his administration, whith the greenlight from the bought and paid for Supreme Court, so many more deaths will happen with the loss of the ACA and the other "cruelties that are being forced on our nation's population in the next 3 years
Yes, thank you. There's a book titled "The October Surprise" that details an elaborate scheme - committed by members of the St. Reagan campaign, including former CIA chief George Herbert Walker Bush III - to cut a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini to hold the hostages until after the election. Much evidence was collected, but there wasn't enough to indict anyone.
Sad to read, but not surprising. Having lived through this period, it was easy to see how our present administration played the same political game, lying their way into office, with no concerns for anyone but themselves. The old adage that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it is true today. The party of “law and order” “respect for the military”, “supportive of law enforcement,” hasn’t changed.
This Was TREASON, we were at war, and he called n vietnamese ambassadore to DC to warn him off of peace deal. 22,000 young men and women died for it, but he and the gop got their power, and brothers and sisters died needlessly for it.
Rachel Maddow told this story about Nixon on her podcast & how he was colluding with a Chinese woman to keep the war going while killing thousands of our soldiers daily. Nixon was a sick & cruel bastard but he looks like a saint compared to DJT!
That last sentence was a bit of a stretch. Tricky Dicky was certainly less demonic than Trumpkopf, but even by comparison by no means looks like a saint.
Having lived through this, not knowing, but I saw how he treated this country first hand. My mother couldn’t stand Nixon from the first go around in the 50’s, she didn’t trust him long before he was elected, I’ll never forget her disgust even though I was a child.
Nixon played politics with the war for four years so he could get Re-elected and then settled for the same terms he could have had when he was sworn in the first time. The 22000 American deaths pale in comparison to the millions of deaths caused by Kissinger and Nixon expanding the war into Cambodia and Laos. I remember the brutal Christmas bombing and the cynical “Peace is at Hand” statement. I thought no one could be worse until seeing what the current version of Republicans are up to now.
He was a crook and just as evil as the Trump regime.🤮🤮🤮🤮
An excellent and timely reminder of the template of venality that Republicans have sought to conceal for a generation. Their project to restore the imperial presidency is a reaction to Nixon's self-inflicted fate.
The Chennault story was in the public domain very soon after the event. It was given a wide public airing via a number of journalists like Drew Pearson and Seymour Hersch. The year following the eelction saw the publication of Theodore H White's The Making of the President 1968. Like most commentators in the know at the time, White hedged. The book revealed but didn't accuse - avoiding conclusions, White lets hang in the air the assumption that such high level tinkering to subvert the peace initiative, particularly in such an intensely centralised and control obsessed campaign like that of Nixon 68, could only have come from the top ie the candidate himself and not rogue underlings. Final proof that Nixon directed the whole stalling operation had to wait until after his death. White claims that
(a) Theiu, South Vietnamese president, was responsible - faced with a rebellion from his cabinet against joining the Johnson initiative he hijacked it by refusing to meet for negotiations, thus making the point moot that Nixon derailed a small chance of peace and risking the lives of thousands in the proces) and
(b) Johnson did not put what he knew into the public domain (remember it was literally on the eve of the vote) because of statesmanship - no matter his political hopes, LBJ would not cripple Nixon's authority as president if, as seemed likely, he was to win.
We now know for certain the following
1. Nixon was intimately involved in attempting to subvert the Johnson peace initiative. What historians had searched for for decades - conclusive proof of Nixon's direct involvement and guiding hand in the conspiracy - was finally uncovered by historian John Farrell around 2016. He uncovered the smoking gun proving Nixon's direct involvement in the successful sabotage. It was in the form of handwritten notes that Farrel found, long buried in the archives that Nixon had fought to keep private, taken by chief of staff H R Haldeman from a phone conversation with Nixon dated October 22 1968. In this, Nixon is not merely responding as a bystander to over-eager operatives (long the Republican line) but explicitly directs the conspiracy, telling Haldeman to "keep Anna Chennault working on the SVN (South VIetnam) "The notes include the question, 'Any other way to monkey wrench it? Anything RN (Nixon) can do."
2. Spiro Agnew was directly involved in the Channault initiative, tasked with threatening intelligence chief Helms that he would be out of a job unless he kept the information under wraps
3. Johnson considered dropping what he knew into the media via back channels the very day before the election. Clark Clifford said later that what was lacking was the absolute proof that the public could understand. It was secret intelligence, and using it ran the very real risk that it would blow up the Democrats.. LBJ had passed the information on to the Humphrey campaign that weekend, allowing the Vice President to make the call on what would have been the mother of all October surprises. William Bundy in an interview said that in the brief time window before the election it would have required not only revealing the secret intelligence operatives, but admitting that the Democratic administration had been spying on their allies during wartime and also on the domestic opposition during an election campaign. White, in his typically romanticized style, says in TMOTP 1968 that the reason for Humphrey's refusal to air the story on the eve of the vote was the candidate's humanity - 'He (Humphrey) was repeatedly urged by his advisors to release the information....I know of no more decent story in American politics than that of Humphrey's refusal" ie to believe that Nixon would have stooped so low as to be party to something like this. The real reasons were, as Mr Warde explains, that the campaign initiative had turned dramatically in Humphrey's favour, he was rising fast in the polls, with campaign funds and endorsements pouring in, one reputable poll even giving him a head to head lead. This suggested that HHH was days away from pulling off the greatest political upset since Truman. Therefore with victory in sight, why risk recourse to last minute revelations that could blow up the entire campaign? What White gets right in his book, in my opinion, is his assertion that Humphrey would have won the 1968 election had he revealed Nixon's conniving. "He would have been a minority president,but the president nevertheless."
4. Nixon maintained his lies about non - involvement for the rest of his life. His memoirs do not mention the Chennault affair. He lied to LBJ in the famous phone call alluded to by Mr Warde, feigning indignity that anyone could think him capable of stymying US foreign policy for his own political ends. (LBJ knew Nixon was lying and Nixon knew that LBJ knew). Nixon categorically denied any involvement to David Frost in the televised interviews, disclaiming any decision making or even knowledge of the matter.
5. Nixon was guilty of violating the Logan Act prohibiting private citizens, as he was at the time, of meddling in any way with national US diplomacy. Nixon's actions, according to Henry Kissinger, would be 'highly inappropriate, if true.' Hank would know. He was one of the Nixon moles working on behalf of the Johnson administration to get peace talks going, feeding Nixon's campaign information about the talks and specifically warning Nixon's team of a potential peace breakthrough.
6. Watergate and its connection to the Chennault affair has been a topic for years. It is known that Nixon knew that Johnson had the goods on him. The proposed firebombing of the Brookings Institute, one of Nixon's aborted earlier criminal initiatives in 1971, has widely been seen seen as an attempt to retrieve what were suspected were copies of Johnson's Chennault files that Nixon allegedly believed lay in a safe at the institute (the Keystone Cops scenario had Nixon's men buy a second hand firetruck, dress up as firemen, and after starting a fire at Brookings, go in under cover of the chaos, blow the safe and steal the incriminating papers) There has even been talk that the perennial mystery of exactly what Liddy and co were after in the Watergate break-in was actually information relating to the Nixon-Chennault affair held by Larry O'Brien, DNC chairman.
Long submission to make a bleedingly obvious conclusion - Nixon was a crook. Of course in every category the current incumbent far surpasses him as an unprincipled scoundrel.
Wow - I was in school when this was happening. My parents knew something was “up”, but I didn’t understand what they were talking about at the time.
(Please Share 🕯️ Happy Holidays Everyone!)
⭐🕊️🇺🇦🫶🏼🇺🇸 “The Promise the World Didn’t Forget”
In a land full of echoes from struggles long past,
Where the truth must stand tall
and the lies never last,
A bright little promise still shines, glowing yet—
A vow from the world
we should never forget.
It came from a time when the globe stood as one,
When fascism’s darkness
was finally undone.
Our grandparents fought with a courage so true,
So tyrants would fall
and the daylight break through.
They crossed stormy oceans with fire in their eyes,
They challenged the strongmen
and silenced their lies.
Their bravery carved out the freedoms we keep—
A legacy guarding
the wakeful and deep.
And today in Ukraine, that courage returns,
In people defending
their homes as it burns.
They stand against Russia’s illegal parade,
A tyrant whose cruelty
the whole world has weighed.
We remember the moment the globe made its stand—
The Budapest promise,
the word of each land:
Ukraine gave its weapons so peace could take root,
And trusted the world
not to follow the brute.
But here in our homeland, confusion still spreads
Through FOX-colored lenses
and right-winger threads.
They shout “all is fine!” while the families cry,
As prices climb higher
and checks barely buy
Insurance, and food, and the basics of day—
While propagandists twist
what the numbers convey.
So the grandparents rise with a bright steady beat,
With phones shining fiercely
like lamps in the street.
They comment with courage, they post without fear,
They lift Indy media
the nation must hear.
They share what is fact-based, transparent, and clear,
They push back the lies
till the truth reappears.
Each repost a lantern, each comment a flame—
A spark from the past
with a new modern name.
From Normandy’s beaches to Kyiv’s brave stand,
From WW2 sacrifice
to thumbs in our hand—
The torch passes onward from challenge to threat,
For truth is a promise
the world won’t forget. 🇺🇦🕊️🕯️
#ResharingBrigade #GrandparentsForTruth #IndyMedia #ProDemocracy #SupportUkraine #SupportPalestine #SupportAfghanVets#PeoplePoweredPolicies
This is the part of history patriotism keeps trying to memory-hole. Not a mistake. Not “the cost of complexity.” A conscious choice to trade bodies for ballots. When people say “both sides,” this is the receipt. Nixon didn’t inherit a war. He delayed peace for power, and thousands of names paid the interest. That’s not strategy. That’s blood accounting.
Nixon served almost two terms before he resigned.
Trump’s policies or lack thereof contributed to the deaths of around 461,000 Americans in 2018. In 2019, about 22,000 deaths resulted from Trump’s dismantling of environmental protection measures alone, based on the Commission’s analyses. And of course, there was 2020, when the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic hit. Many have written about the Trump administration’s failure to mount a scientifically appropriate response to the pandemic.
Trump gave the a trillion-dollar tax cut for corporations and high-income individuals followed by cuts in food subsidy and health care programs to repealing environmental regulations.
By the end of trumps second term, I would guess trump would beat nixons record, but we would have to count, not only if he starts a war which he treatens other countries with, but the cost of American lives in he first term with the Covid deaths, and now with he and his administration, whith the greenlight from the bought and paid for Supreme Court, so many more deaths will happen with the loss of the ACA and the other "cruelties that are being forced on our nation's population in the next 3 years
It's mass murder. It's what psychopaths do.
And he isn't the only one. I can only hope that they pay for their crimes.
Now do Reagan and what he did to Carter to make sure HE won which also cost US lives.
Yes, thank you. There's a book titled "The October Surprise" that details an elaborate scheme - committed by members of the St. Reagan campaign, including former CIA chief George Herbert Walker Bush III - to cut a deal with Ayatollah Khomeini to hold the hostages until after the election. Much evidence was collected, but there wasn't enough to indict anyone.
I am still proud that in my first election in 1972, I voted for George McGovern, who lost in a landslide to Nixon.
The Repuglicons play book. Treason is their middle name.
All those lives lost for the power of the White House. Nixon should have been tried for treason. Just like the current occupant in the White House.
The atrocities of the GOP go way back.
Sad to read, but not surprising. Having lived through this period, it was easy to see how our present administration played the same political game, lying their way into office, with no concerns for anyone but themselves. The old adage that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it is true today. The party of “law and order” “respect for the military”, “supportive of law enforcement,” hasn’t changed.
This Was TREASON, we were at war, and he called n vietnamese ambassadore to DC to warn him off of peace deal. 22,000 young men and women died for it, but he and the gop got their power, and brothers and sisters died needlessly for it.
Rachel Maddow told this story about Nixon on her podcast & how he was colluding with a Chinese woman to keep the war going while killing thousands of our soldiers daily. Nixon was a sick & cruel bastard but he looks like a saint compared to DJT!
That last sentence was a bit of a stretch. Tricky Dicky was certainly less demonic than Trumpkopf, but even by comparison by no means looks like a saint.
Didn’t Reagan do the same thing with the hostages?
Yes. There's a book about it "The October Surprise".
Having lived through this, not knowing, but I saw how he treated this country first hand. My mother couldn’t stand Nixon from the first go around in the 50’s, she didn’t trust him long before he was elected, I’ll never forget her disgust even though I was a child.