LBJ’s ‘X’ File on Nixon’s ‘Treason’

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



LBJ’s ‘X’ File on Nixon’s ‘Treason’
March 3, 2012

Special Report: In the dusty files of Lyndon Johnson’s presidential library in Austin, Texas, once secret documents and audiotapes tell a dark and tragic story of how Richard Nixon’s team secured the White House in 1968 by sabotaging peace talks that might have ended the Vietnam War four years earlier, Robert Parry reports.

By Robert Parry


On May 14, 1973, Walt W. Rostow, who had been National Security Adviser during some of the darkest days of the Vietnam War, typed a three-page “memorandum for the record” summarizing a secret file that his former boss, President Lyndon Johnson, had amassed on what may have been Richard Nixon’s dirtiest trick, the sabotaging of Vietnam peace talks to win the 1968 election.

Rostow reflected, too, on what effect LBJ’s public silence may have had on the then-unfolding Watergate scandal. As Rostow composed his memo in spring 1973, President Nixon’s Watergate cover-up was unraveling. Just two weeks earlier, Nixon had fired White House counsel John Dean and accepted the resignations of two top aides, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman.

Three days after Rostow wrote the memo, the Senate Watergate hearings opened as the U.S. government lurched toward a constitutional crisis. Yet, as he typed, Rostow had a unique perspective on the worsening scandal. He understood the subterranean background to Nixon’s political espionage operations.

Those secret activities surfaced with the arrest of the Watergate burglars in June 1972, but they had begun much earlier. In his memo for the record, Rostow expressed regret that he and other top Johnson aides had chosen – for what they had deemed “the good of the country” – to keep quiet about Nixon’s Vietnam peace-talk sabotage, which Johnson had privately labeled “treason.” ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/03/03/lbjs-x-file-on-nixons-treason/

[leveymg]

1. Every year, we learn more how fundamentally corrupt the US political system really is

and how national policy and foreign affairs is really just rival gang warfare. Rival gangs wrapped in state secrecy and the flag, of course. Parry is one of the few independent reporters brave and ethical enough to write what it really is.

File this along with Reagan and GHW Bush's treason in the October Surprise and his secret Safari Club deal to allow the Saudis to fund the Pakistani nuclear program in exchange for petrodollars to finance CIA covert operations banned after the Church-Pike Committee hearings.

Call it treason, but it's just another day at the mattresses.

[starroute]

7. 1968 was the original October Surprise of which 1980 was a second-hand copy

One thing about the GOP is that they don't alter their playbook much. If something works the first time, they keep repeating it over and over -- and more and more stupidly.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. "Wall Street bankers – at a working lunch to assess likely market trends

and to decide where to invest – had been given inside information about the prospects for Vietnam peace."

Figures.

[Fearless]

2. This sort of thing is like an iceberg...

What you know is only 10%...

[xchrom]

3. du rec. nt

[Scuba]

4. K&R

[arendt]

5. Anthony Summers covered this in 2001 in

The Arrogance of Power. [link:http://www.amazon.com/Arrogance-Power-Anthony-Summers/dp/1842124315|

Of course, it sank like a stone. And this will too.

History continues to be rewritten. And Nixon is ancient history to most people today. Besides, he looks like a saint compared to today's GOP.

But thanks for the article.

[leveymg]

8. The irony is that to some on the Joint Chiefs, Nixon & Kissinger were also suspected traitors

after the US started to pursue the Paris Peace Talks in actually earnest. ONI was actively spying on Kissinger through Yeoman Radford, and it seems that the Post's Woodward and Bradley (both retired ONI) were also part of the Pentagon's mechanizations against Nixon. Of course, figures at CIA and FBI were also deeply in the loop.

As complex as anything at the Byzantine Court.

[arendt]

9. I had no idea ONI was an independent player...

could you explain how that came to be and if its still true today.

I always new Woodward was an insider-spook; but glossed over the ONI connection.

As always your comments are most informative.

[leveymg]

12. If you Google Yeoman Radford, "Radford-Moorer Affair", there's a lot of material on JCS/ONI spying

against the Nixon White House that was overseen by Admirals Robinson/Wehlander/Moorer. One of the best researched articles is here: http://www.watergate.com/stories/obit.asp

[dhill926]

6. K & R.........

[SDjack]

11. Take a look who else is in the game

Alexander Sachs (on the board of Lehman Brothers) and all his buddies, get insider briefing on where to put their money to take advantage of the failure of LBJ's peace initiative.

[n2doc]

13. I guess GHW Bush learned from the master before the 'October Surprise" with Iran in 1980

Pretty much the same tactic. Got away with it also.

[patrice]

14. Thom Hartmann has played phone tape of LBJ & Evertt Dirksen talking about Nixon's

October surprise during his campaign against Hubert Humphrey.

[secondvariety]

15. I'm tired of secrets being kept "for the good of the country".

I'm still waiting for an answer to what really happened in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Maybe next year.

[Doctor_J]

16. Republican treason has been epidemic for at least 50 years

it just gets worse, and no one ever does anything about it.

Here's hoping the 99% have it out with them before I shuffle off.