Nixon's Vietnam Treason (George Will Confirms)

[Octafish]

2. Richard Nixon’s long shadow

Richard Nixon’s long shadow

By George F. Will
Washington Post, Opinion writer August 6 

At about 5:15 p.m. on June 17, 1971, in the Oval Office, the president ordered a crime: “I want it implemented on a thievery basis G------ it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.”

The burglary he demanded was not the one that would occur exactly one year later at the Democratic National Committee’s office in the Watergate complex. Richard Nixon was ordering a break-in at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, to seize material concerning U.S. diplomacy regarding North Vietnam during the closing weeks of the 1968 presidential campaign.

As they sometimes did regarding his intemperate commands, Nixon’s aides disregarded the one concerning Brookings. But from a White House atmosphere that licensed illegality came enough of it to destroy him.

SNIP...

In October 1968, Nixon’s lead over his Democratic opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was dwindling, partly because Humphrey had proposed a halt to U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. Five days before the election, President Lyndon Johnson announced the halt, hoping to convene peace talks. One impediment, however, was South Vietnam’s reluctance to participate. Its recalcitrance reflected its hope that it would be better supported by a Nixon administration.

On July 3, 1968, a Nixon campaign aide, Dick Allen, sent a memo proposing a meeting with Nixon and Anna Chennault, a Chinese American active in Republican politics. She would bring to the meeting South Vietnam’s ambassador to Washington. The memo said the meeting must be “top secret.” Nixon wrote on the memo: “Should be but I don’t see how — with the S.S. [Secret Service].” On July 12, however, she and the ambassador did meet secretly in New York with Nixon who, she later said, designated her his “sole representative” to the Saigon government.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/13/nixons-vietnam-treason/

Nixon's Shadow covers America to the present day.