October surprise of 1968

[G_j]

(no, not the hippies in Chicago, research helps dispel RW spins on American history)

October surprise of 1968

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/111300a.html

November 13, 2000

Who Should Concede?
The Secret History of Modern U.S. Politics
By Robert Parry

<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.

At the time, 500,000 American soldiers were in the war zone, and civil strife was tearing the United States apart. Nixon feared that a pre-election peace agreement could catapult Humphrey to victory.

According to now overwhelming evidence, the Nixon campaign dispatched Anna Chenault, an anti-communist Chinese leader, to carry messages to the South Vietnamese government of Nguyen van Thieu. The messages advised Thieu that a Nixon presidency would give him a more favorable result.

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.”

In her own autobiography, The Education of Anna, Chennault acknowledged that she was the courier. She quoted Nixon aide John Mitchell as calling her a few days before the 1968 election and telling her: “I’m speaking on behalf of Mr. Nixon. It’s very important that our Vietnamese friends understand our Republican position and I hope you made that clear to them.”

Reporter Daniel Schorr added fresh details in The Washington Post’s Outlook section . Schorr cited decoded cables that U.S. intelligence had intercepted from the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington.

<snip

[Hydra]

1. Man, what a mess of dirty laundry

Treason and war crimes seem to have run rampant since we nuked Hiroshima.

[dhill926]

2. set the stage for 1980 very nicely....

fucking traitors. How many more Americans died?

[Bob Dobbs]

3. Same treasonous shizzle raygun pulled on Jimmy.

poppy bush made sure the Iranians knew there would be goodies available if they didn't release the hostages until after the criminal raygun misadministration was in power.

The fact that the American people let these thugs pull this crap uncontested allowed the wheels to inexorably turn to bring us to the catastrophic point we are today. It started with the coup d'etat of 11/22/63 and ran unchecked until now, where the power elite enemies of The People are cynically out in the open with their treason.

It will be shameful if the world has to take action in The Hague because We The People are so cowardly and lazy that we can't be bothered to prosecute this (latest) criminal administration.

[G_j]

4. and of course, Watergate,

"The plumbers were searching for intelligence about the Democrats when they were caught bugging the phones of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington in June 1972."

[hootinholler]

10. Hey Bob, I disagree...

It started with the coup d'etat of 11/22/63 and ran unchecked until now

It goes back to Smedly Butler, and Prescott Bush. See Prescott begat Nixon, who begat poppy B, Rummy, and Cheney.

-Hoot

[Bob Dobbs]

13. You are right.

It probably started with the Crusaders invention of fractional banking in the Dark Ages. But you are correct, the fascist undercurrent in America runs deep and far back into history. At least Butler had the courage to stop the attempt to assassinate FDR.

Unfortunately, in 63 there was no Smedley Butler to stop GHW Bush and his co conspirators in their coup d'etat. And there has been no Smedley Butler since then to stop the never ending fascist criminality.

[G_j]

5. --

[seemslikeadream]

6. hey there

http://www.youtube.com/user/davidaron

[G_j]

7. ___

how sweet
:hi::loveya:

[Gabi Hayes]

8. Nixon and Kissinger

http://www3.sympatico.ca/ian.g.mason/Robert_Dallek.htm

Nixon and Kissinger came together, appropriately enough, over a subterfuge. As the 1968 presidential election approached, Nixon desperately wanted inside information on the progress of the Paris peace talks with North Vietnam, fearing a peace agreement that would hand the election to Lyndon Johnson’s vice-president Hubert Humphrey. Kissinger had a contact on the negotiating team in Paris, and secretly passed updates to the Republican candidate’s campaign. In an act of stunning cynicism, Nixon then put pressure on the government of South Vietnam to avoid the peace talks. There would be no October surprise for Richard Nixon.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. more

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:3asKXYmXu1cJ:www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/dont_quote_me/documents/00671039.htm+1968+kissinger+humphrey&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us

During the 1968 presidential campaign, Kissinger, a Democrat, was working as a low-level functionary for the Johnson White House, assisting with peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris. Kissinger leaked word to the Nixon campaign that Lyndon Johnson was considering a last-minute bombing halt to help the presidential campaign of Hubert Humphrey. Nixon’s minions, in turn, made use of that intelligence to pass messages to the South Vietnamese to hang tough, telling them they would get a better deal from Nixon than they would from Humphrey. Sadly, it worked — and, as Hitchens writes, “four years later the Nixon Administration tried to conclude the war on the same terms that had been offered in Paris. . . . n those intervening years some 20,000 Americans and an uncalculated number of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians lost their lives. Lost them, that is to say, even more pointlessly than had those slain up to that point.”

...................

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/CaseAgainst1_Hitchens.html

[book_worm]

11. It is outrageous and knowledge of this has been around for years

It was even mentioned by Theodore H. White in his book "The Making of the President, 1968" which came out in 1969. The reason LBJ didn't go public with the collapse of the talks and blame Nixon is because then LBJ would have had to acknowledge that he had bugged Nixon's campaign plane.

[Time for change]

12. If there was no Watergate, this alone should have been enough to remove Nixon from office

And then Reagan and Bush play a similar trick in the 1980 election and are never held accountable for it.