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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLBJ and Senator Dirksen: Nixon's unpunished treason...
Nixon's campaign committed treason before his initial presidential campaign when LBJ was revealed a tape that showed Nixon's people working with the Viet Cong to keep the Vietnamese war going instead of going to a treaty that LBJ was negotiating. Dirksen agreed here on a video that what Nixon was doing was treason.
LBJ had his National Security Advisor take the evidence of this event, even though it was kept quiet with him when LBJ left the White House. It is said that Nixon, knowing about this evidence of his treason engineered the Watergate break ins to try and find this evidence, which gave us the whole Watergate mess too...
http://consortiumnews.com/2012/03/03/lbjs-x-file-on-nixons-treason/
Just think of how many of our fathers, grandfathers, etc. would still be alive today if LBJ had been able to negotiate that treaty instead of the war being prolonged then unnecessarily. We wouldn't have even gone in to Cambodia.
My thoughts for all of those vets who gave their lives then. They have honor, but those that kept this war going don't.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)Thanks for Posting. Yes, you just wonder how things could have been different if this was revealed at the time.
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)Kissinger -- whom the current president consults from time to time. Kissinger -- still alive and still on top of the heap for Most Evil, Vile Man in America. Watch the Trial of Henry Kissinger here (if you have the stomach):
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-trials-of-henry-kissinger/
byeya
(2,842 posts)upi402
(16,854 posts)instead of asking a few damn questions
lpbk2713
(42,857 posts)SSDD
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Poppy was involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco which was organized by Nixon. I'm sure they had conversations on many subjects over the years.
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... that has Lyndon Johnson saying Nixon committed treason that was missing from the earlier story.
democrat2thecore
(3,572 posts)Somebody a couple of weeks ago was talking about President Obama's aversion to picking up the phone and talking with members of even our own party, much less Republicans. Listening to that call to Sen. Dirksen made me think of the contrast. LBJ was a son of a bitch, but he got things done. He was a strong president who picked up the phone all the time to try to talk sense into people on both sides of the aisle. His tapes are fascinating as you see he knew exactly how to use the "bully pulpit."
roamer65
(36,753 posts)Last edited Mon May 27, 2013, 08:12 PM - Edit history (1)
I have always believed it was about something more than McGovern's election plans. Looks like Christopher Hitchens had it right in his book on Kissenger and Nixon.
Why didn't LBJ go public with this information in 1968??? I think that is a good question to ask as well.
For Nixon to be so sure this kind of evil gamble would work, he must have had something on LBJ.
Makes me really wonder now what was on that 18.5 minute gap.
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... and Eisenhower limited U.S. presence to "advisors" to take over the vacuum left by the French...
And it had been revealed later too that Nixon as president had considered using nukes in Vietnam, and it was our war protests and activism in the streets that kept him from doing that.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB195/
Daniel Ellsberg has spoken a number of times about Nixon's plans to use nukes as well (I attended one of his talks a few years ago)...
Part 1:
Part 2:
byeya
(2,842 posts)with Eisenhower. Ike was shite.
YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)ashling
(25,771 posts)This was campaign #2.
However, I don't have any trouble believing that some of Nixon's deceptions and other duplicity prior to 1960 might have been treasonous.
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)presidential term... He did get reelected in his second term while Watergate was happening.
G_j
(40,373 posts)Who Should Concede?
The Secret History of Modern U.S. Politics
By Robert Parry
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/111300a.html
<snip>
For the past four decades, the Republicans have built a record of dirty tricks and October Surprises in presidential contests. And typically, it is the Democrats who stay silent after learning of the schemes to avert constitutional crises and avoid public disillusionment with the political process.
<snip>
The Vietnam War was raging and was creating deep divisions within the Democratic Party. In October 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was maneuvering to achieve the framework for a peace settlement with North Vietnam and the Viet Cong through negotiations in Paris.
<snip>
Journalist Seymour Hersh described the initiative sketchily in his biography of Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power. Hersh reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had caught on that Chennault was the go-between between Nixon and his people and President Thieu in Saigon.
The idea was to bring things to a stop in Paris and prevent any show of progress.
<snip>
In the end, though, Johnsons advisers decided it was too late and too potentially damaging to U.S. interests to uncover what had been going on, Summers wrote. If Nixon should emerge as the victor, what would the Chennault outrage do to his viability as an incoming president? And what effect would it have on American opinion about the war?
<snip>
A late Humphrey surge fell short. Nixon won the election.
<snip>
WheelWalker
(8,983 posts)Skidmore
(37,364 posts)reaping the destruction he sowed. So many of these nasty R power brokers were birthed in the viper's pit of the Nixon administration.
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)When he put in place things like the EPA, etc. that would make many feel that he wasn't so evil, when at his core, people like him and Kissinger were all about having power and wielding it sometimes very cruelly.
I think that's why it's so important today even to look at our own party's pols sometimes to look below the window dressing to see where their heart is, and what they are really doing to "fight city hall", when today "city hall" is so much more powerful and working against all of us. And "City Hall" probably doesn't let us hear about the evils of many of today's pols like we had a chance to hear about them in the past with those like Deep Throat and Daniel Ellsberg feeling empowered to tell us the truth, instead of slapped down so heavily like Bradly Manning has been.
roamer65
(36,753 posts)zbdent
(35,392 posts)(if true)
Something like that would have not only destroyed the GOP, but plunged this nation into darkness that would make 9/11/2001 look like a cherry bomb in a toilet ...
roamer65
(36,753 posts)Certainly in the realm of possibilities.
mercymechap
(579 posts)Nixon was a crook!
indepat
(20,899 posts)the rising political aspirations of Republican operatives.
ramapo
(4,603 posts)Not only did Nixon tamper with the treaty negotiations in 1968, but he then prolonged the war four more years so he could use it in his reelection campaign. His "Peace with Honor" motto was a centerpiece of his 1972 capaign against McGovern.
In many ways, Nixon is far preferable to the current batch of Republicans but the fact that he is a treasonous war criminal cannot be overlooked.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)people but they are immune to any prosecution because they all belong to the same club. Pres Obama belongs to that club also.
It wouldnt surprise me in the least if Pres Obama pardons the Cheney-Iraq cabal.
Canuckistanian
(42,290 posts)Why in the world did LBJ and those who knew about this say nothing?
MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)It's all about preserving the office. They all protect one another's back. One of the things the plumbers wanted most was the evidence and transcripts of the airplane bugs.
LBJ also hated Humphrey, he wasn't going to help him.
Canuckistanian
(42,290 posts)Never heard that before.
MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)I highly recommend the book "The Presidents Club". It is chock full of great stories and facts I never knew before. It covers Hoover to Obama and how they interact(ed) with each other.
My two favorites are Nixon and Carter.
Nixon, of course, did some fucked up things but may have been the smartest President of modern times, he's incredibly fascinating. And Carter just doesn't give a fuck about anything but doing the right thing. Politics and respect be damned.
Buy it, borrow it, steal it. Whatever you have to do. Just read it.
Canuckistanian
(42,290 posts)I'll look it up.
Raine
(30,565 posts)to see if I can get a hold of it. Love him or hate him Nixon is fascinating IMO. And Carter, a really good guy whose underated.
dflprincess
(28,141 posts)villager
(26,001 posts)...for their ongoing, treasonous misdeeds has led the nation to its present ruinous precipice...
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)As far as I can remember, anyway.
Maybe the very last weekend before election day: one poll, I think it was Harris, had him up nationally by about 1%. But the other polls including Gallup had Nixon winning by 2% or more.
My guess is HHH didn't release the evidence because he didn't HAVE the evidence. Johnson HAD it... or his people did... and a late charge of this kind by HHH w/o incontrovertible evidence in his possession would have smelled like desperation.