Then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson (L) w. Sen. Everett Dirksen listening
intently during Johnson's Senate hearings, November 27, 1957
More proof that Thom Hartmann is running the most valuable show in talk radio. Today he played portions of White House tapes in which then-president Lyndon Johnson accused Richard Nixon, who would become the next president of the United States, of treason regarding the Vietnam war, and an incident eerily similar to an operation George W. Bush's father pulled off on behalf of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan 32 years later...
Just days before the pivotal 1968 presidential election featuring Vice President Hubert Humphrey's bid to succeed him, President Lyndon Baines Johnson suspected Humphrey's Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, of political sabotage that he called treason, according to the final recordings of Johnson's presidency to be publicly released.
As Johnson tried to arrange peace talks between North and South Vietnam on the eve of the election, he and his closest advisers received information indicating that Nixon allies had asked that South Vietnam avoid peace talks until after the election, the tapes show.
Johnson and his advisers, Humphrey included, kept their concerns secret at the time. But given that Nixon defeated Humphrey by just 500,000 votes out of 73 million cast and that Nixon's suspected perfidy involved the unpopular war in Vietnam, there is ample cause to wonder how history might have been changed had the concerns Johnson voiced 40 years ago been made public.
The LBJ Library made those conversations public Thursday with the release of 42 hours of recordings made from May 1968 until the Johnson family left the White House in January 1969. ...
Some context:
With an election hanging in the balance, however, there is added drama in the flurry of calls in late October and early November concerning Johnson's attempt to bring the North and South Vietnamese governments together for the first time to discuss peace.
On March 31, under heavy pressure from the anti-war wing of his Democratic Party, Johnson shocked the American people by saying he would not run for re-election or accept his party's nomination. Instead, Johnson endorsed Humphrey, who inherited the warmonger label critics had hung on Johnson.
And the crescendo:
To test the good faith of the North Vietnamese, Johnson ordered that all bombing in the north cease on Oct. 31 , six days before voters were to go the polls. The cease-fire gave the Humphrey campaign an immediate jolt — polls showed Nixon's 8-percentage-point lead had shrunk to 2 points.
The precise nature of any communication between Nixon's allies and the South Vietnamese government isn't revealed in the tapes — nor is the way Johnson and his advisers learned of them.
In the tapes, Johnson tells Secretary of State Dean Rusk: "It's pretty obvious to me it's had its effect."
In a segment aired at the news conference, Johnson tells Sen. Everett Dirksen , the Republican minority leader, that it will be Nixon's responsibility if the South Vietnamese don't participate in the peace talks.
"This is treason," LBJ says to Dirksen.
"I know," Dirksen replies, very softly.
Confronting Nixon by telephone on Nov. 3, Johnson outlines what had been alleged and how important it was to the conduct of the war for Nixon's people not to meddle.
"My God," Nixon says to Johnson, "I would never do anything to encourage the South Vietnamese not to come to that conference table." Instead, Nixon pledged to help in any way Johnson or Rusk suggested, "To hell with the political credit, believe me."
For Johnson and his top advisers, it wasn't a matter of whether Nixon was telling the truth but whether accusing Nixon of meddling would give the appearance that Johnson — rather than Nixon — was using the war to influence the election.
In the end, the South Vietnamese stayed away from the proposed peace talks. And Johnson listened to his advisers and suggested to Humphrey that he not use what he had learned.
"For God's sake, you want everybody to know you don't play politics with human lives, that we did what's right," Johnson tells Rusk on one of the recordings.
In several of the recordings, Johnson wonders what will become of a Democratic Party so riven by the war that it would not unite behind Humphrey.
"I'm sorry I let you down a little," Humphrey tells Johnson.
"No, you didn't; no you didn't," Johnson replies. "A lot of other folks (did), not you. You fought well and hard."
The original audio can be found in several parts, dating from October 31, 1968 through the election, here (10/31/68), here (11/2), here, here (11/3)and here. The full lot of LBJ tapes is here. The conversations are mainly with Everett Dirksen, interestingly enough a Republican Senator from Illinois, for whom the Senate's main office building is named (and the man likely responsible for getting John McCain's father his possibly undeserved fourth star...) But there are also conversations with Nixon himself (in which he denies meddling in the peace talks) and one conference call with a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor, who got wind of the story and wondered why LBJ and Humphrey weren't going public with their suspicions.
Fast forward to the 1980 election, and guess what strategy the Republicans are reviving? U.S. hostage were released on the day Reagan took the oath of office, and his CIA director, Mr. Casey, wound up with a piece of his brain missing 48 hours before he was to testify about Iran Contra.
A more concise version of the LBJ Nixon "treason" audio:
Courtesy of this TPM diarist, a fellow Vietnam POW says he's not voting for McCain, and why McCain's POW experience is not in and of itself, a qualification to be president:
John McCain served his time as a POW with great courage, loyalty and tenacity. More that 600 of us did the same. After our repatriation a census showed that 95% of us had been tortured at least once. The Vietnamese were quite democratic about it. There were many heroes in North Vietnam. I saw heroism every day there. And we motivated each other to endure and succeed far beyond what any of us thought we had in ourselves. Succeeding as a POW is a group sport, not an individual one. We all supported and encouraged each other to survive and succeed. John knows that. He was not an individual POW hero. He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did.
I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate.
Most of us who survived that experience are now in our late 60's and 70's. Sadly, we have died and are dying off at a greater rate than our non-POW contemporaries. We experienced injuries and malnutrition that are coming home to roost. So I believe John's age (73) and survival expectation are not good for being elected to serve as our President for 4 or more years.
I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I want next to that red button
The fake 'cone of silence' ... plus: is John McCain embellishing his Vietnam stories for political gain?
Apparently, Pastor Rick Warren was surprised to learn that his pretend maverick guest, John McCain, wasn't in a "cone of silence" after all while Barack Obama was taking questions at the Saddleback Church's civil forum:
The McCain campaign, which flew here Sunday from California, said Mr. McCain was in his motorcade on the way to the church as Mr. Obama was being interviewed by the Rev. Rick Warren.
The matter is of interest because Mr. McCain, who followed Mr. Obama’s hourlong appearance in the forum, was asked virtually the same questions as Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain’s performance was well received, raising speculation among some viewers, especially supporters of Mr. Obama, that he was not as isolated during the Obama interview as Mr. Warren implied.
Mr. Warren, pastor of Saddleback, had assured the audience while he was interviewing Mr. Obama that “we have safely placed Senator McCain in a cone of silence” and that he could not hear the questions.
After Mr. Obama’s interview, he was joined briefly by Mr. McCain and the candidates shook hands and embraced.
Mr. Warren started by asking him, “Now, my first question: Was the cone of silence comfortable that you were in just now?”
Mr. McCain deadpanned, “I was trying to hear through the wall.”
Yeah, the wall of his car, in which he was riding to the church while most likely being briefed on the questions by an aide who was following the forum for him on his or her iPhone (sure, McCain doesn't know how to use one, but that's what young aides are for...)
Which leads to the question: did Mac lie to the pastor about the 'cone of silence', or did the pastor lie to us?
The McCain camp trotted out this not-unexpected defense:
Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions. “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.
Sure, sure, when in doubt, draw for the "war hero" card. We all know that former POWs never lie... Well if the McCain campaign wants to talk incessantly (as the candidate did himself at Saddleback,) about the greatness of John McCain's Vietnam service, is it fair to ask whether he is embellishing the stories of that service for political gain? I say it is. So let's...
Last week, a speech by Sen. John McCain had phrases that were likely lifted directly from Wikipedia.
Now it seems McCain may have lifted another story last night at megachurch pastor Rick Warren's Faith Forum. According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity -- or as he said, "just two Christians worshiping together" -- is very similar to a story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn and his times in the Soviet Gulags.
CQP has the Solzhenitsyn passage, along with links to other doubters about McCain's version of events when in 'Nam:
Steven Waldman [on Beliefnet] notes that McCain's recounting of this story has changed over the years and "has gradually morphed from being about the humanity of the guard to being about the Christian faith of the guard and John McCain."
That last piece is important, because if McCain only recently began telling that story, or worse, if he did so in conjunction with his candidacy for office, that seems to me to be a serious thing, especially given what was done to John Kerry in 2004. And just to make things interesting, guess who McCain's witness is for the cross story? Why, one Bud Day, the Florida crank and member of the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth. Day figures in many of McCain's Vietnam-faith stories, but curiously, the cross story often does not, as in this glowing profile of McCain in the Chicago Tribune, where a Christmas riot makes the grade, but the cross in the sand does not...
Shortly after John McCain came back from Vietname in 1973, he wrote a detailed 12,000 word report of his experiences that was published in US News and World Report.
Even though McCain goes into a lot of detail in that story and mentions religion a few times, there is no mention of the cross in the sand story, even though it would have fitted in well with the whole narrative. There are numerous mentions of Vietnamese guards in the reports, mostly bad ones but also good ones, but there is no indication at all that any of them would have been Christian, although "[a] lot of them were homosexual".
So even though McCain yesterday said:
It was Christmas day, we were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes, and those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other although we certainly did. And I was stadning outside for my few minutes, outside my cell. He came walking up. He stood there for a minute and with his handle [sandal?] on the dirt in the courtyard he drew a cross and he stood there and a minute later, he rubbed it out and walked away. For a minute there, there as just two Christians worshiping together. I'll never forget that moment so every day -
That moment he will never forget wasn't worth spending a few of those 12,000 words on.
Recall that McCain has already been caught massaging his "NFL team as my squadron" story to pander to Pennsylvania voters. He is becoming notorious for failing to remember details about his own voting record, including last night, when he served up four "liberal" Supreme Court justices he wouldn't nominate, despite the fact that he voted to confirm two of them when Bill Clinton was president (something he bragged about to Hillary Clinton dead-enders as recently as June...) And also at the Rick Warren forum, he cited a story about "evil" Iraqis strapping suicide belts on two retarded women -- a story that has long since been debunked. On the "cross in the sand story," there's also this problematic fact:
There is a real question here about whether McCain embellishing the story of his captivity in 'Nam, in order to make it more compelling to certain voters -- in this case, members of the religious right, who the inimitable Frank Rich points out McCain hasn't exactly been friendly with in the recent past. And if he is, does anyone in the media, or the Obama campaign, have the stones to call him on it?
UPDATE: The McCain campaign has adopted nearly the entire Hillary Clinton/Mark Penn primary playbook, complete with attempts to bully the press into getting back to the traditional, suck-up coverage of John McCain. This time, the campaign has demanded a meeting with NBC News president Steve Capus to protest, of all people, Andrea Mitchell, probably the one consistently objective reporter left in Washington. The reason? That darned "cone of silence..." Part of the letter from Rick Davis to Capus reads:
We are extremely disappointed to see that the level of objectivity at NBC News has fallen so low that reporters are now giving voice to unsubstantiated, partisan claims in order to undercut John McCain.
Nowhere was this more evident than with NBC chief correspondent Andrea Mitchell's comments on "Meet the Press" this morning. In analyzing last night's presidential forum at Saddleback Church, Mitchell expressed the Obama campaign spin that John McCain could only have done so well last night because he "may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama." Here are Andrea Mitchell's comments in full:
Mitchell: "The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because what they are putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well-prepared." (NBC's "Meet The Press," 8/17/08)
Make no mistake: This is a serious charge. Andrea Mitchell is repeating, uncritically, a completely unsubstantiated Obama campaign claim that John McCain somehow cheated in last night's forum at Saddleback Church. Instead of trying to substantiate this blatant falsehood in any way, Andrea Mitchell felt that she needed to repeat it on air to millions of "Meet the Press" viewers with no indication that 1.) There's not one shred of evidence that it's true; 2.) In his official correspondence to both campaigns, Pastor Rick Warren provided both candidates with information regarding the topic areas to be covered, which Barack Obama acknowledged during the forum when asked about Pastor Warren's idea of an emergency plan for orphans and Obama said, "I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea ahead of time, and I think it is a great idea;" 3.) John McCain actually requested that he and Barack Obama do the forum together on stage at the same time, making these kinds of after-the-fact complaints moot.
Indeed, instead of taking a critical journalistic approach to this spin, Andrea Mitchell did what has become a pattern for her of simply repeating Obama campaign talking points.
Are you kidding me? Andrea Mitchell? Talking points? You must have her confused with David Gregory and YOUR talking points...
Above: a picture you won't find of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney or any of the chicken hawks attacking Jeremiah Wright and questioning his patriotism.
I'm privileged to know Lawrence Korb, who served as undersecretary of defense for manpower during the Reagan administration and who now is a senior fellow at the Democrat-leaning Center for American Progress. Dr. Korb remains a Republican, if an iconoclastic one on the subject of Iraq, and he is, in my experience, the smartest analyst on the subject of the war. I met him in December 2003 during a brief journalism fellowship in Maryland, and he was my number one "go to guy" on Iraq when I was with Radio One. I say that to say that Korb's opinion is one I deeply respect. So when I noticed that it is he who co-authored (with fellow military veteran and CAP staffer Ian Moss -- Korb is a Navy man, Moss a former Marine,) this editorial, I took particular notice. So should you:
In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.
In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)
The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.
What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated.
While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.
Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?
After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities.
This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades.
The two men go on to disagree with some of Wright's statements, but they add a very important caveat:
... Some of the Wright's comments are inexcusable and inappropriate and should be condemned, but in calling him "unpatriotic," let us not forget that this is a man who gave up six of the most productive years of his life to serve his country.
How many of Wright's detractors, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly to name but a few, volunteered for service, and did so under the often tumultuous circumstances of a newly integrated armed forces and a society in the midst of a civil rights struggle? Not many.
While words do count, so do actions.
Let us not forget that, for whatever Rev. Wright may have said over the last 30 years, he has demonstrated his patriotism.
When you're a chickenhawk... never bring up Vietnam
... ever.
George W. Bush, America's second most powerful chickenhawk (Dick Cheney being the first,) made a serious mistake this week, during a speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In pleading for more time and more support for his Mesopotamian disaster, he stumbled upon an unfortunate analogy. Said the Texas, Alabama and Massachusetts Air National Guard no-show:
"One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like boat people, re-education camps and killing fields..."
Interesting choice, Dubya. And recall that this is a guy who generally pooh-poohs the Iraq-Vietnam comparison ... all that nasty talk of quagmires and such... Here's Condi Rice back in 2006:
"Historical parallels of that kind are not very helpful, and I don't think they happen to be right," she said. "This is a different set of circumstances, with different stakes for the United States."
Yeah, a set of circumstances a lot like Vietnam...
Meanwhile, in his speech, Bush also walked back from any criticism of the administration of Iraqi P.M. Nouri al-Maliki. Said Bushie about his equally incompetent, Shiite militia-coddling pal:
"Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, good man with a difficult job and I support him," Mr Bush told military veterans in Kansas city.
The president also vowed to stay the course in Iraq and for the first time compared the situation to the Vietnam War, arguing that America's withdrawal had been catastrophic for millions of people.
"As long as I am commander in chief we will fight to win," Mr Bush said to resounding applause from a conference of US military veterans in Kansas City, "I'm confident that we will prevail."
And why so nicie?
The Iraqi prime minister had earlier reacted angrily to what he called the "discourteous" remarks from his US allies.
AdvertisementHe suggested that if the was not treated well by the Americans, he would find another patron much less to their liking, such as Iran or Syria.
"Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria," said Mr Al-Maliki.
"We will pay no attention. We care for our people and our Constitution and can find friends elsewhere.
"No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected by its people."
The message was driven home to president Bush overnight.
So Iraq is, or isn't, Vietnam, we're never leaving, and Maliki's doing a heckuva job. Well alrighty then.
Back to Bush's Vietnamization strategy, David Gergen weighs in:
"He may well have stirred up a hornet's nest among historians," Gergen stated. "By invoking Vietnam, he raised the automatic question, 'Well, if you've learned so much from history, Mr. President, how did you ever get us involved in another quagmire?' ... It's surprising to me that he would go back to that, and I think he's going to get a lot of criticism."
"This is not a man who's talking about compromise," Gergen emphasized "This is not a man who's talking about a Plan B. ... This a man saying, 'I'm hanging tough.'"
And furthermore:
"The reason we lost Vietnam, in part, was because we had no strategy," said Gergen. "And the problem we've got now in Iraq, what is the strategy for victory? ... It's not clear we have a winning strategy in Iraq. That's what cost us Vietnam. That's why we eventually withdrew under humiliating circumstances."
"[Bush] talks black and white," Gergen concluded. "Victory or withdrawal, those are the two options. And Democrats and Republicans are saying, 'Mr. President, there is a third option here, and that is a partial pullback. Stay there, try to prevent a civil war.' ... Today, there was no indication he was willing to do that."
Natch.
Update: Watch Dubya for yourself:
Update: Veterans react to Bush's chicken hawkery...
