Tapes have just been declassified, confirming that Nixon deliberately derailed LBJ’s plan to end the Vietnam war in 1968, in order to win the election. Nixon convinced the South Vietnamese government to pull out of the deal, because, he said, LBJ was selling them out, and they would get a better deal from him.
The war went on for five more years, with an additional 15000 Americans killed, god only knows how many Vietnamese killed, and Saigon fell anyway.
And although LBJ considered Nixon’s action treason, he couldn’t say anything, because he found out about it via illegal wiretaps.
So I guess the debate is, should we be content to let Nixon burn in hell, or should we dig up his corpse and piss on it?
As it was mentioned in the other thread, that was likely the reason why Nixon send the plumbers to the Watergate hotel.
Before there was a very interesting idea that it was caused by Nixon trying to find if an autobiography of Howard Huges (found later to be fake) was going to reveal the shady campaing loans that Huges had made to Nixon.
Plausible deniability in the sense that it wasn’t clear whether this was Nixon or Agnew. LBJ suspected it was Nixon, but from what we saw in the Pit thread, it wasn’t clear.
But, just as an aside, did they have a warrant for the bug?
As pointed out in that thread they might not, explaining why LBJ wouldn’t release the tapes, especially if it looked as if HHH was going to win the race in the last few days.
Speaking of Howard Hughes shady campaign deals, that’s where Nixon’s famous Checker’s Speech comes in. He was looking for dirt on Hughes and the dem whose strings Hughes pulled. They set Nixon up that he took illegal campaign funds. Ike almost dropped Nixon from the ticket til he gave his famous speech named after a dog his daughters found stranded on the beach. He looked into the camera and said and we’re not giving him back. The country loved it, especially animal lovers.
So Nixon wanted dirt on these guys as revenge. They actually broke into the Watergate 14 times. Hunt and the head of the plumbers didn’t want to go back in thinking it was bad luck. They were bound to get caught and were. The head of the plumbers said he was even ordered to stand down on certain security measures they took in advance which allowed the security guard to discover the basement door was unlocked. It was supposed to be locked. It was the last time the guard checked it but that time it was left un-locked and the guard knew someone was in the bldg and found them. This even leads to suspicion that the whole operation was sabotaged by the CIA. Nixon was cutting heads all over the place including the director of the CIA or he was trying to. He had to be stopped.
The only thing they found were some pics of prostitutes with a high DNC official. Gordon Liddy talked about it on his radio show and was sued but he showed the pics to the court and the case was dismissed.
Sorry, here’s a vid on the Checkers Speech. Nixon was the first politician to master TV. BTW, a Senator back then made $15,000 and had enough money for just one trip a year. My how times have changed-lol.
I read in one story that it was a bug on the phones of the South Vietnamese embassy, presumably in DC. I don’t know if that would need a warrant, it being within the purview of the CIA or maybe the NSA.
If that’s true, I’d guess they didn’t release the story because it would mean acknowedging they were tapping our allies, and that a potentially valuable intelligence source would be compromised.
Still, if a potential president committing treason isn’t enough reason to disclose and intelligence resource, then what is?
Anyway it’s no secret that Nixon was an asshole, but that should be balanced against the good things he did:
Reestablished contact with China, bringing China back into the modern world
Initiated detente with the Soviet Union
Established the EPA
On the other hand if he really did derail the Vietnam peace process it is unforgivable. It’s much worse than the Watergate cover up and may be the worst thing ever done by a US politician.