The Almost Scoop on Nixon’s ‘Treason’ [View all]

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from Consortium News:



The Almost Scoop on Nixon’s ‘Treason’
June 7, 2012

Special Report: At the end of Campaign 1968, as Richard Nixon feared his narrow lead could disappear if progress were made on Vietnam peace, a U.S. correspondent in Saigon got wind of a cabal between Nixon and South Vietnamese leaders to block peace talks and secure his victory. History was at a crossroads, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry


In late October 1968, Beverly Deepe, a 33-year-old Saigon correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, came upon a story that could have changed history. A six-year veteran covering the Vietnam War, she learned from South Vietnamese sources that Richard Nixon’s campaign was collaborating behind the scenes with the Saigon government to derail President Lyndon Johnson’s peace talks.

On Oct. 28, Deepe sent her startling information to her Monitor editors in the United States, asking them to have the Washington bureau “check out a report that [South Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States] Bui Diem had sent a cable to the Foreign Ministry about contact with the Nixon camp,” she told me in a recent e-mail exchange.

At that moment in 1968, the stakes surrounding Nixon’s secret contacts could hardly be higher. With half a million U.S. soldiers serving in the war zone – and with more than 30,000 already dead – a peace deal could have saved countless lives, both American and Vietnamese. Progress toward a settlement also could have meant defeat for Nixon on Election Day, Nov. 5.

History was at one of those forks in the road. A peace agreement could have brought the divisive war to an end before the social fabric of the United States was thoroughly torn apart. Besides the lives and treasure that could have been saved, decades of political recriminations could have been averted. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/06/07/the-almost-scoop-on-nixons-treason/