Newly Released Secret Tapes Reveal LBJ Knew, but Never Spoke Out About Nixon's 'Treason'
Rumors and whispers of Richard Nixon's 'treason' -- sabotaging Vietnam peace talks to help his Presidential campaign -- have floated around for years, but newly released tapes from Lyndon Johnson's Presidency confirm that LBJ knew about Nixon's behaviour and didn't bother to report it.
RELATED: Presidents in Short Shorts: There's No Right Way for Candidates to Vacation
In previously released tapes from Johnson's Presidency, we had heard about Johnson having substantial body of evidence showing Nixon had schemed to keep the South Vietnamese away from the negotiating table at the 1968 Paris peace talks. Like Nixon, Johnson had recored all of his conversations held inside the White House. Nixon was accused or dispatching Anna Chennault, a senior advisor, to convince the South Vietnamese they would get a better deal if they didn't agree to a peace deal until after the U.S. Presidential election. Chennault confirmed she spoke with the Vietnamese in her autobiography, The Education of Anna, but nothing more than that. If true, the charge would likely amount to treason.
RELATED: A Visual History of Presidents Petting Turkeys
And Johnson knew about it all. In the recently released tapes, we can hear Johnson being told about Nixon's interference by Defence Secretary Clark Clifford. The FBI had bugged the South Vietnamese ambassadors phone. They had Chennault lobbying the ambassador on tape. Johnson was justifiably furious -- he ordered Nixon's campaign be placed under FBI surveillance. Johnson passed along a note to Nixon that he knew about the move. Nixon played like he had no idea why the South backed out, and offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.
RELATED: How Michelle Obama's Dress Measures Up to All the First Ladies' Gowns
Johnson also passed along a note to Nixon's opponent, Democrat Hubert Humphrey. The Democratic campaign found out just days before the election, though, and decided they were close enough in the polls to not release the information. A treason accusation could potentially damage the country's security, they thought, before Humphrey lost a narrow election. Hindsight is 20/20, others say.
RELATED: Comment of the Day: That Circus of a Resignation Press Conference
But even before Nixon won, Johnson had his own issues to deal with. The South pulling out of the Paris talks meant the war would continue. Johnson could independently release the information if he wanted, destroy Nixon, and ensure a win for his Democratic ally Humphrey. But he opted not to for the country's greater security concerns:
Johnson felt it was the ultimate expression of political hypocrisy but in calls recorded with Clifford they express the fear that going public would require revealing the FBI were bugging the ambassador's phone and the National Security Agency (NSA) was intercepting his communications with Saigon.
So they decided to say nothing.
Definitive Johnson historian Robert Caro, the author of four of a planned five books chronicling Lyndon Johnson's time in American politics, declined to talk about the confusion surrounding Vietnam in this May 2012 interview with NPR's Leonard Lopate. "That's coming in the next book," Caro said.
Nixon went on to win the Presidency in 1968. In 1973, after escalating the Vietnam War in his first term, a peace deal was finally agreed upon. The rest, as they say, is history.
