Some elements of the story are so shocking ...
”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 in a Nov. 4, 1968, conference call. “It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”
....A Dramatic Tale
The newly released audiotapes offer a dramatic story of an embattled President angered over intelligence intercepts revealing that emissaries from Nixon’s campaign, including right-wing China Lobby figure Anna Chennault, were carrying messages to the South Vietnamese government urging them to boycott planned peace talks in Paris.
The Republican message was that South Vietnamese leaders could expect a better deal from Nixon than from the Democrats. According to the evidence, President Nguyen van Thieu accepted these private assurances and backed away from a commitment to attend the peace talks.
Beginning in late October 1968, Johnson can be heard on the tapes complaining about this Republican political maneuver. However, his frustration builds as he learns more from intercepts about the back-channel contacts between Nixon operatives and South Vietnamese officials.
On Nov. 2 – just three days before the election – Johnson telephones Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen, lays out some of the evidence, and asks Dirksen to intervene with the Nixon campaign.
“The agent [Chennault] says she’s just talked to the boss in New Mexico and that he said that you must hold out, just hold on until after the election,” Johnson said in an apparent reference to a Nixon campaign plane that carried some of his top aides to New Mexico. “We know what Thieu is saying to them out there. We’re pretty well informed at both ends.”
Johnson then made a thinly veiled threat about going public with the information.
“I don’t want to get this in the campaign,” Johnson said, adding: “They oughtn’t be doing this. This is treason.”
Dirksen responded, “I know.”
