Declassified LBJ Tapes Accuse Richard Nixon of Treason

Hugh Pickens writes writes "After the Watergate scandal taught Richard Nixon the consequences of recording White House conversations, none of his successors has dared to do it. But Nixon wasn't the first. He got the idea from his predecessor Lyndon Johnson, who felt there was an obligation to allow historians to eventually eavesdrop on his presidency. Now David Taylor reports on BBC that the latest set of declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone calls show that by the time of the Presidential election in November 1968, LBJ had evidence that Nixon had sabotaged the Vietnam war peace talks — or, as he put it, that Nixon was guilty of treason and had 'blood on his hands'. It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war that he knew would derail his campaign. Nixon therefore set up a clandestine back-channel to the South Vietnamese involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser. In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris. This was exactly what Nixon feared. Chennault was dispatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal. Meanwhile the FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and transcripts of Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. Johnson was told by Defense Secretary Clark Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace. The president gave Humphrey enough information to sink his opponent but by then, a few days from the election, Humphrey had been told he had closed the gap with Nixon and would win the presidency so Humphrey decided it would be too disruptive to the country to accuse the Republicans of treason, if the Democrats were going to win anyway. In the end Nixon won by less than 1% of the popular vote, escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives, and finally settled for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968."

Very interesting article, thanks!

[Weezul]

I'm reminded that Clinton's administration created a fairly good email archiving system. Bush's people dismantled it upon taking office because they knew they were there to commit fraud even before 9/11.

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Re:The Only Surprising portion of the revelation..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not expose it after the election?

Not exactly treason

[Rambo Tribble]

While Nixon's actions certainly border on treason, he was dealing with South Vietnam, an ally. On the other hand, prior to the 1980 election Reagan bargained with Iran, an enemy, to keep Americans imprisoned and subvert the election. It's hard to see that as anything less than treason.

Re:If this is true...

[dkleinsc]

Most of those people showed up again in prominent roles during the Reagan administration.

Which would mean that Iran-Contra was the repeat of the same crime: There's evidence that Reagan's campaign undermined Jimmy Carter's efforts to negotiate a settlement in 1980, because as soon as Reagan was inaugurated the US hostages were released, and shortly afterwords the Iranians got a sweet sweet (illegal) deal for buying weapons from the US.

Re:The First October Surprise

[ebno-10db]

What's new is the LBJ tapes showing that he knew about it, and why he did (or didn't) do various things as a result. But yes, the idea that Nixon sabotaged the peace talks has been known for some time. This additional evidence is useful and informative though.

I also thinks it's good that this is in the news (well, in some places) because a lot of people aren't familiar with this. It sounds like a wild-eyed conspiracy theory but unfortunately it's not.

Re:If this is true...

[dywolf]

Yes. Lets forget all about:

-Opening relations with China ("Only a Nixon could have gone to China")...which led directly to....
-The Anit-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the ensuing state of "detente" with Russia (since it was no longer 2 against 1, with China liking us all of a sudden) that lasted until the fall of Communism
-The New Federalism that gave back much power to the states that previously had been the Feds
-The first presidential initative to fight/research cancer
-Establishing the EPA and staffing it with people with the guts to stand up to his own administration
-Enforcing/protecting desegregation before it could be killed by opposition groups and reverted
-Prominent supporter of the NEPA, OSHA, and the Clean Air Act
-Supported the Equal Rights Ammendment, even though it was killed in Congress
-Created the first affirmative action program in the federal govermnment

Even in his time he was considered a moderate, the last of the of the Rockefeller republicans. today he would be dismissed by the party as a liberal.

Key thing to remember: all we have here is an article claiming proof. That IS NOT in itself proof of anything. It's "a friend of a friend", it's hearsay. And all historical measures of the war previous to this, there is zero indication that any of this happened, no indication that they were ever close to a settlement in that time. and this is the sort of thing that would NOT stay secret, that someone would have come forward with years ago.

But no, you're right. We should forget he ever existed and curse his name for years to come, and ignore everything else he did, of which that is only a partial list.

Re:The Only Surprising portion of the revelation..

[sehryan]

How is not exposing a presidential candidate's treason putting country ahead of personal and party gain? Just because he would gain politically does not automatically mean that he shouldn't do it "for the good of the country." Those things are not exclusive.

Re:If this is true...

[ebno-10db]

It very likely lead to the fall of South Vietnam as well. At the time of those peace talks, the VC and the NVA were at a low point. The Tet Offensive earlier in 1968 was a tactical disaster. The VC were largely destroyed and the NVA wasn't in great shape either. Giap was relieved of command of the NVA because it was such a mess. A peace accord would likely have meant an end to any serious help from the USSR, just as it did after the Korean ceasefire. Without Soviet weapons and supplies the NVA would have been nothing. I assure you they couldn't manufacture their own SAM's.

Re:Not exactly treason

[rsilvergun]

There's strong evidence that Regan's October Surprise was real. There's also Strong evidence that the moon landings are real. I'm capable of believing in both. Nice try trying to paint me as a loon though through a weak association to a completely unrelated topic. Any debaters/logic guys here know which fallacy that is?

Re:The Only Surprising portion of the revelation..

[apcullen]

But if this evidence had been made public, even after the election, it might have pressured Nixon to pursue peace rather than escalation in Vietnam.

Re:The First October Surprise

[geekoid]

And it repeats. We see it again in the Carter/Reagan election regarding Iran hostages.
And Bush v Kerry debates.
And Obama / McCain.

Interestingly, Cheney was involved in all those campaigns.

Re:The Only Surprising portion of the revelation..

[1u3hr]

a.k.a. Nixon had worse stuff on the democrats

Worse than treason? If Nixon was ready to screw up a peace deal, if he'd had anything on the Democrats, he would have used it. Nixon sent the plumbers to Watergate to dig up dirt on the Democrats in 72.

Putting pure politicians in charge of military decisions (or anything in need of objective reality) is a problem.

Yeah, we should leave diplomacy to the generals.

Re:The Only Surprising portion of the revelation..

[Hatta]

No, those of you who think I'm being a partisan hack by singling out the worst war criminal of our time are being knee jerk partisan hacks. Obama has done many bad things, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, violating the war powers act, etc. But none of those come close to causing hundreds of thousands of innocent people to die so your cronies get lucrative war contracts. Obama is a common criminal, Bush is directly responsible for more American deaths than Bin Laden. Get some perspective.

Re:Very interesting article, thanks!

[cusco]

When I pointed out at the time that any Exchange admin out in the real world would have been fired, sued, and possibly jailed for the supposed gross incompetence displayed by the White House email admin I was called "conspiracy theorist" on most of the Internet forums that I was participating in (including SlashDot).

Re:The Only Surprising portion of the revelation..

[dgatwood]

Coming to think of it: the only president that doesn't need hanging was Jimmy Carter.

None of those presidents were deliberately acting against U.S. interest (except Nixon). Of course, if you allow yourself the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, Carter also did some things that were highly detrimental to the U.S.'s strategic interests—arming the mujahideen, for example:

• In 1979, he began arming and providing funds for the mujahideen in Afghanistan to help them topple their government out of fear that communism would spread to the Middle East and would dry up our oil supply.
• After the Soviet Union fell (under Bush Sr.), the U.S. stopped funding them.
• They started to hate the U.S. for supporting and prolonging the war but not helping build their country back up afterwards.
• Portions of the mujahideen became what we now know as the Taliban.
• The Taliban, in turn, trained and protected Al Qaeda, who hijacked American planes and flew them into buildings about 11.5 years ago.
• The Taliban are also killing American troops in Afghanistan now with weapons that the U.S. government gave them.

Of course, Reagan expanded the program significantly, and Bush cut off funds and failed to take any actions to stabilize Afghanistan after the Soviets left. But Bush's decision not to interfere would not have mattered as much had Carter not interfered in the first place.

Then again, I can't think of any time when the U.S. tried to topple a foreign government that didn't come back to bite it in the you-know-where. One of the primary reasons why so many extremist groups exist in the first place is because the U.S. government helped tear down Iran's democratic government and replaced it with a puppet government under the Shah, which it supported for decades.

I'm not saying that we wouldn't have terrorism if the U.S. had not provided material support to people who would probably be called terrorists today, tried to set up puppet governments in Iran and other places, or allowed Afghanistan to degrade into a horrible state of civil war after the Soviets pulled out, but we'd likely have a lot fewer terrorists, and it is quite clear that the terrorists who did exist would not have as much money and would not be as well armed. If nothing else, these are lessons that future Presidents need to learn.

Re: Fuck Republicans

[ChrisMaple]

The US entry into WWI was a disaster. It caused a war that would have probably ended in a draw to become a blowout with severe, punitive and vindictive penalties for the loser. Those penalties were a large part of the ultimate causes of WWII.