In Tapes, (Lyndon B.) Johnson Accused Nixon’s Associates of Treason

[sabra]

Source: NYTimes/AP

AUSTIN, Tex. (AP) — In the last months of his administration, President Lyndon B. Johnson suggested that associates of Richard M. Nixon were trying to persuade the South Vietnamese government not to join the peace talks until after the 1968 election, recordings of telephone conversations released Thursday show.

Progress on peace in Vietnam before the election might have given Hubert H. Humphrey, the Democratic presidential nominee and Johnson’s vice president, support among voters.

Accusations of Nixon’s influence in the peace conference have been reported before, but the tapes provide a look at how Johnson handled the issue, said Bruce Buchanan, a government professor and an expert on the presidency at the University of Texas, Austin.

During a conversation with Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, Johnson, referring to people close to Nixon, and said, “This is treason.” Dirksen was the Republican leader in the Senate.

In a conversation in November 1968, Nixon assured Johnson that he supported the president’s efforts to arrange a peace conference in Paris. Johnson had cited news articles and private information he had been given that he said made him think Nixon’s associates were working against his efforts. ”I think what’s new here is the way Johnson characterizes it as ‘treason’ in his private conversations,” Professor Buchanan said. The 42 hours of telephone recordings released Thursday cover the period from May 1968 through January 1969, when Johnson left office.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/us/05tapes.html?ref=us

[blueclown]

1. Reminscent of how Reagan aides went behind Carter's back during and after the 1980 election.

LBJ's fears were well-founded. I wouldn't trust the Rethugs as far as I could throw them.

[JDPriestly]

9. I also thought of Reagan's deal with the Iranians. Dastardly.

And the further we get from that deal with the Iranians, the clearer it becomes to me that, yes, Reagan did betray the country for political gain. Unbelievable but I believe more and more that it is true. It is the Republican way of politics.

[unblock]

20. it was obvious, especially after the iran-contra scandal.

first iran breaks off all communication with carter after negotiations had been improving.

then they release the hostages, supposedly in exchange for nothing of great consequence (e.g., a u.s. promise not to intervene in iranian domestic politics), less than 2 hours into reagan's presidency (supposedly they held the hostages on the runway until they got confirmation that reagan had become president).

yeah. no deal. riiiiiiight.

[starroute]

21. There's a common element in both - Richard V. Allen

Allen is not somebody whose name gets mentioned much, but he's been at the center of all kinds of weird crap over the years -- from promoting fascist coups in the 70's to being a PNAC-er and a member of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya in the 90's. He was tied in with the China Lobby early in his career, was the first permanent staff member of CSIS in the early 60's, and founded the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center in 1983 with donations from the Korean CIA.

And along the way, he played a role in both October Surprises.


http://www.williambowles.info/ini/oct-surprise.html

August 1980 - Reagan Campaign appoints Richard Beal, assistant to campaign pollster Richard Wirthlin, to work on counter strategies to a Carter "October Surprise," and Richard V. Allen, the campaign's chief foreign policy adviser, is appointed to head one of two "October Surprise" groups.


http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/02/10/silberman/index.html

Silberman's sojourn in the world of political scandal began during the run-up to the 1980 presidential election when, as a member of Ronald Reagan's campaign staff, he, along with Robert C. McFarlane, a former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Richard V. Allen, Reagan's chief foreign policy representative, met with a man claiming to be an Iranian government emissary. The Iranian offered to delay the release of the 52 American hostages being held in Tehran until after the election -- thus contributing to Carter's defeat -- in exchange for arms.


http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/ReaganContraCommit_TICC.html

Adler did not refer specifically to the very efficient sabotaging of the Nixon White House by Howard Hunt, nor to the fact that Hunt's White House services went into their disastrous high gear after the June 1971 departure of Kissinger for Peking. But she specifically named Anna Chan Chennault, perhaps Taiwan's top lobbyist in Washington, as someone who had raised campaign funds for Nixon from the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. Citing evidence too complex to review here, she concluded that "the South Vietnamese administration, not wanting peace to be at hand just yet, used some of the enormous amounts of money we were pouring in there to bribe our Administration to stay in."

The bribes were in the form of illicit foreign campaign contributions - possibly in 1968, and more clearly in 1972. Though she refers to him only as a Nixon "White House official," Adler refers to two distinct sub-plots where in each case a principal suspect was Richard Allen, the man who in 1980 became Reagan's principal foreign policy adviser. In the 1968 case, Mrs. Chennault's activities had aroused the suspicions of the Washington intelligence community, and a plethora of agencies seemed to be watching her closely. According to published reports, the FBI tapped her telephone and put her under physical surveillance; the CIA tapped the phones at the South Vietnamese embassy and conducted a covert investigation of Richard Allen. Then, a few days before the election, the National Security Agency...intercepted a cable from the Vietnamese embassy to Saigon urging delay in South Vietnam's participation in the Paris peace talks until after the elections. Indeed, on November I, her efforts seemed to have paid off when President Nguyen Van Thieu reneged on his promise to Lyndon Johnson... and announced he would not take part in the exploratory Paris talks.

There are enough similarities between Allen's career and Deaver's (both men having gone on from the post of White House official to become the registered foreign lobbyist of Asian countries) to suggest that Adler's hypothesis for the origins of Watergate (bribery by illicit foreign campaign contributions, and the potential for blackmail thus created) might help explain the workings of the Contragate mystery as well. In 1980 as in 1968 the WACL coalition apparently decided to conspire against an American Democratic incumbent, the main difference being that in 1980 the role both of illicit foreign funds and of American intelligence veterans appears to have been more overt.

[Gman]

25. Pappy Bush flew to London and cut the deal with the Iranians

not to release the hostages before the election. They're all treasonous bastards.

[groovedaddy]

2. It was treason. Just like the "October surprise" of 1980. n.t

[indepat]

4. When will Americans come to grips with the fact that 'pukes will do absolutely anything necessary

to achieve power and control, that in their eyes, committing treason is but a mere piffle? :P

[blm]

3. It was treason...GHWBush was running these ops for Nixon back then.

Treason has never been a concern for Poppy and his thugs - it was considered just another step necessary to fulfill the global fascist agenda.

[acmavm]

5. It was also treason for bush** to steal two elections. And he had

help from the highest court in the land.

America is pretty much dead. The America that the Founding Fathers established that is.

[groovedaddy]

8. Technically speaking, stealing elections isn't treason. Felonious, absolutely.

Treason is when you sell out your country to another country.

[acmavm]

10. Treason is where you commit criminal or unethical acts that do

harm to your country. Here is the definition.

<snip>

trea⋅son   /ˈtrizən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation Show IPA Pronunciation

–noun 1. the offense of acting to overthrow one's government or to harm or kill its sovereign.
2. a violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or to one's state.
3. the betrayal of a trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.

<snip>

The theft of the 2000 election was the overthrowing (with help from the SCOTUS) of the man who won the popular election and by rights should have had Florida's electoral votes. Al Gore was president. He never took office. Why? Republican treason. They knew they did not win legally, so they stole it illegally. They usurped the White House.

The theft of 2004 is the same thing. But there were criminal acts of deceit and fraud involved. And the election results were phonied up and ended up on RNC servers being manned by KKKarl Rove. That's not treason????

The result of these two crimes? The destruction of our armed forces, the raiding of the Treasury, the spying of this government on the citizens of this country, torture, murder of over 4,000 American military personnel, the murder of maybe over a million people of a sovereign nation that did nothing to harm us, the manufacturing of 'intelligence' to justify those acts. The latest is that the bush** admin hid the economic disaster that killed the world's economies for month so that they could saddle the next administration with the disaster.

[groovedaddy]

12. I stand corrected - you're right. They are a bunch of treasonous bastards! n.t

[struggle4progress]

13. In the US, "treason" is explicitly defined by the Constitution Art III Sec 3:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort"

[acmavm]

15. Well, they ain't ahering to us or our interests. There are other forms of

terrorism (which considering the Patriot Act and all the signing statements) other than taking a gun and trying to use the bush** administration for target practice.

These 'people' have completedly, and successfully I may add, have subverted every writing, be it Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Convention, the Int'l Criminal Court, and even just the plain damn every day rules of civilized behavior. And people, millions of people, have paid the ultimate price. They paid with their lives. And these 'people' who did this lied to us about it. NOW some people were too smart to fall for that. They took to the streets and they testified as to the truth. They plainly told every fucking one that this was all bullshit. And the liars lied again. And they punished the very people who were right, who were trying to warn the rest of us. Now you tell me if that isn't treason? Because 7+ years here we are, still killing people. For what? WMDs? Saddam had a wish-list? What, you tell me. Because I really fucking want to know.

And they hid the Wall Street debacle for months from us. They sat on it hoping to blame someone else. Hoping to fuck up the next administration. And as they sat on this, the problem grew and grew and grew and grew until it became the trillions of dollars fiasco know as the 'bailout'. You tell me this isn't treason? Fuck, the took down more then OUR economy. You betcha. They took down the world. Shit sakes, what does it take??????????????

[struggle4progress]

22. I agree their intentions are completely clear. They've been riding with Grover Norquist and his gang

for decades now, deliberately trying to destroy the US through bankruptcy, and they've done a lot of damage. For further evidence, one notes they just tried to place a secessionist in the queue for the White House. The only conclusion is: they don't love the country and have set out to destroy it. Naturally, I am tempted simply to say, Them what ride with outlaws, hangs with outlaws. But the Constitution is the Constitution, and it does define treason, so perhaps we could look for an approach with a more legal flavor -- (say) declaring them all enemy combatants and shipping them off to one of the secret prisons -- or asking John Yoo to write a nice opinion explaining the President can order anybody run thru a woodchipper, so we can process him and the rest of the whole sorry gang in a nice legal way

[Thothmes]

23. By that definition, I would offer up that LBJ was

guilty of Treason for launching the war in Vietnam. Maybe the 36,000 Americans killed there would agree.

[acmavm]

26. You know what, I bet most of their families would. Especially since we know

so much more about the lies and the secrets they kept from the house and senate and the people about that war and the truth about conditions in that country back then.

We lost Viet Nam. But hell, years before we got out we knew we lost, that it couldn't be won. And they kept pumping our troops warm bodies into the fray, and they kept dying. Which was all that could happen because we couldn't win, couldn't stop the attacks, couldn't stop the killing. So our government lied. And men and women died.

[gratuitous]

6. Everything old is new again

Isn't Jeb! Bush asking his fellow Republicans to set up a "shadow government"? Treason is an old family tradition for the Bushes.

[ramapo]

7. I thought this was common knowledge

It was just the start of Nixon's manipulation of the war for political purposes. Remember his plan to end the war and peace with honor? Of course, he wouldn't divulge his plan and used it as part of his reelection campaign.

He has the blood of tens of thousands of Americans on his hands.

[surrealAmerican]

11. Johnson was right. It was treason.

Too bad they couldn't prove it at the time.
With Nixon, political gain always was the most important goal. The republican party has followed his lead ever since.

[Thothmes]

24. Of course, if Johnson had not launched that war

it would not have happened.

[Ichingcarpenter]

14. I bet Pat Buchanan was involved with this

if not, I'm sure he was taking drugs with Rush Limberg back then.

Of course it was treason

[pitohui]

16. imho it WAS treason

i don't think this was any secret at the time that LBJ and others thought so either -- seems to me i heard some discussion of this even as a kid -- in fact didn't nixon all but say he had a secret plan and some secret deals going? (a secret peace plan that did not in fact materialize once he was elected!)

[Alexander]

17. Just look up "Anna Chenault" and you'll know everything about Nixon's treason.

LBJ was 100% right about this.

Then again, he had his own brush with treason regarding the Kennedys, so he's no saint either.

[tom_paine]

18. The Bushies have ben committing High Treason against the USA for MUCH longer than that.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

[TheWraith]

19. What do you know? Maybe Johnson was smarter than he seemed.

Not saying he was an idiot, but his foresight tended to be lacking.

[yurbud]

27. kick