Tag: LBJ
Evidence Reveals That Nixon Deliberately Derailed Vietnam Peace Talks During the 1968 Campaign – LBJ Called It ‘Treason,’ Predicted Nixon Would Have ‘Blood on His Hands’
The BBC reports that in the final weeks of the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon, the Republican challenger, deployed Anna Chennault, a journalist, anti-communist activist and Republican operative, to disrupt peace talks among the United States, Saigon and Hanoi at the very moment that a deal had been reached to end the war.
Chennault was successful in convincing the South Vietnamese that they would get a better deal from Nixon, were he to be elected. Within days after Pres. Johnson had announced that “peace was at hand,” the South Vietnamese abruptly rejected the terms that had been negotiated by the U.S. government.
Nixon was elected a few weeks later with just 0.7 percent of the vote — 43.4 percent for Nixon and 42.7 percent for Vice Pres. Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee. (Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, the Southern racist independent candidate, received 13.5 percent of the vote.)
But after Nixon took office in January, it became clear that the promises relayed to the South Vietnamese by Chennault on his behalf were lies. There was no better offer for them. He had no plan for ending the war. As a result, it would drag on for five more years, until the United States and South Vietnam were defeated by the communist North.
