The last diary in this series, Patriotism Smackdown: Barack Obama Vs. Jane Fonda?, looked at how a mythology was created after the fact to use Jane Fonda ("Hanoi Jane") as a symbol for blaming the loss of the Vietnam War on the anti-war movement. In particular, Fonda was presented as a betrayer of the troops. But, as is almost always the case with rightwing narratives, whatever accusations they may make about others are almost invariably true about themselves. "Projection" is the name of the game, and this episode is no exception. Indeed, there is now compelling evidence that Richard Nixon himself is fully deserving of all the calumny that has been heaped on Jane Fonda, and much, much more besides.
You see, in 1968, records now show, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger interfered with the Paris Peace Talks, to prevent the war from being ended before the 1968 elections. As a private citizen at the time, Nixon had no right whatever to be doing such a thing. In fact, what he did could arguably be construed as treason. Whatever the legal situation, however, one thing is clear: 20,763 American troops died on Nixon's watch, while another 111,230 were wounded. That's over 130,000 American troops who would have lived, or not been wounded had Nixon not interfered, and Johnson secured the peace treaty he so desperately sought to rescue his reputation as best he could. Over 130,000 American casualties that Richard Nixon is directly responsible for, simply in order for him to become President.
And the right wants to paint Jane Fonda as a betrayer of American troops?
Author and journalist Robert Parry, who broke the Iran/Contra scandal for the Associated Press months before the rest of the media finally picked it up, wrote about Nixon's treachery in a November 13, 2000 column where he synthesized the results of research from a number of different sources. The column itself lead off by talking about calls for Gore to conceded "for the good of the country," supported by claims that Ford in 1976 and Nixon in 1960 had both considered-and rejected-contesting close elections. The Nixon claim was particularly common at the time (I wrote a piece refuting it for Alternet), and Parry discusses it briefly before shifting focus to something even more sinister-the record of Republican dirty tricks before election day, and the Democrats habit of staying mum "for the good of the country."
This is the context in which Parry discusses Nixon's 1968 shenanigans. However, he first touches on "Operation Pluto," a secret plan to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro prior to the elections. This did not succeed, of course, but it was part of the more wide-ranging planning that also included the Bay of Pigs invasion-a plan that Kennedy felt some unease about, but failed to call off, to his subsequent shame and humiliation.
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 [1983]. 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 [1980], 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 [May 28, 1995]. Schorr cited decoded cables that U.S. intelligence had intercepted from the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington.
On Oct. 23, 1968, Ambassador Bui Dhien cabled Saigon with the message that "many Republican friends have contacted me and encouraged me to stand firm." On Oct. 27, he wrote, "The longer the present situation continues, the more favorable for us. ... I am regularly in touch with the Nixon entourage."
On Nov. 2, Thieu withdrew from his tentative agreement to sit down with the Viet Cong at the Paris peace talks, destroying Johnson's last hope for a settlement. Though Johnson and his top advisers knew of Nixon's gambit, they kept Nixon's secret.
That's it in a nutshell, the story of a private citizen derailing the signing of a peace treaty that would lead to the deaths of over 20,000 American troops, and wounding of over 111,000 others.
Talk about disrespect!
And the Democrats knew about it at the time, as Parry goes on to note, citing evidence from The Arrogance of Power, a then newly-released (Spetember 2000) biography of Nixon by Anthony Summers:
Summers's new book provides the fullest examination of the Nixon-Thieu gambit, including the debate within Democratic circles about what to do with the evidence.
Both Johnson and Humphrey believed the information - if released to the public - could assure Nixon's defeat.
"In the end, though, Johnson's advisers decided it was too late and too potentially damaging to U.S. interests to uncover what had been going on," Summers wrote. "If Nixon should emerge as the victor, what would the Chennault outrage do to his viability as an incoming president? And what effect would it have on American opinion about the war?"
Summers quotes Johnson's assistant Harry McPherson, who said, "You couldn't surface it. The country would be in terrible trouble."
A late Humphrey surge fell short. Nixon won the election.
This is a double pattern that repeats itself over and over again: conservatives commit grave outrages, which liberals find out about, but downplay or ignore entirely. Conservatives then go on to very publicly project some variation of what they themselves have done onto other-frequently less powerful liberal figures. To this day, very few people remain aware of how Richard Nixon prolonged the Vietnam War, causing the deaths of over 20,000 Americans and the wounding of over another 111,000. But virtually everyone-even the Democratic Presidential nominee-"knows" that anti-war protesters brought everlasting shame on our nation by failing to honor the victims of Richard Nixon's perfidy.
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