Vietnam and "The Chennault Affair"
Recorded in
Nixon, A Life, by
Jonathan Aitken, notes of
Patrick Hillings, the former congressman accompanying the candidate's 1967 trip to
Taipei, Nixon interjected just after an unexpected encounter with Mrs. Chennault, "Get her away from me, Hillings; she's a chatterbox."
On 31 March 1968, President
Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he was withdrawing from the 1968 presidential election, announced a partial halt to the bombing of North Vietnam and stated his willingness to open peace talks with North Vietnam on ending the war.
[35] After much haggling about where to hold the peace talks, talks finally began in Paris in May 1968 with
W. Averell Harriman heading the American delegation and
Xuân Thủy the North Vietnamese delegation.
[36]
In the 1968 election, Chennault served as the chairwoman of the Republican Women for Nixon Committee.
[37] According to records of President
Lyndon B. Johnson's secret monitoring of
South Vietnamese officials and his political foes, Anna Chennault played a crucial role on behalf of the
Nixon campaign
[38][39] which sought to block a peace treaty in what one long-term Washington insider called "activities ... beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat."
[40] She arranged the contact with South Vietnamese Ambassador
Bùi Diễm whom
Richard Nixon met in secret in July 1968 in New York.
[41]
On 12 July 1968, at the Hotel Pierre in New York, Chennault introduced Bùi Diễm, the South Vietnamese ambassador to the United States, to Nixon.
[42] Unknown to Diễm, he was followed secretly by the CIA who kept him under surveillance while the
National Security Agency (NSA), which had broken the South Vietnamese diplomatic codes, read all of the messages going back and forth from the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington.
[43]
Henry Kissinger, the Harvard professor of political science had started his career as an unofficial diplomat involved in the peace efforts to end the Vietnam war in June 1967 when he met in Paris Herbert Marcovich, a French biologist who told him that a friend of his,
Raymond Aubrac, was a friend of
Ho Chi Minh.
[44] Kissinger contacted Harriman, the Ambassador-at-Large with a mandate to end the Vietnam war.
[45] Marcovich and Aubrac agreed to fly to Hanoi to meet Ho, and to convey his messages to Kissinger who was to pass them on to Harriman.
[46] Through nothing came of Operation Pennsylvania as Ho stated the United States had to "unconditionally" stop bombing North Vietnam as the precondition for peace talks, a demand that Johnson rejected, it established Kissinger as someone who was interested in making peace in Vietnam.
[47] Kissinger had served as the principal foreign policy adviser for the Republican Governor of New York,
Nelson Rockefeller, during his three failed bids to win the Republican nomination in the elections of 1960, 1964 and 1968.
In the 1968 Republican primaries, Kissinger had expressed considerable contempt for Nixon, whom he wrote in July 1968 was "the most dangerous, of all the men running, to have as president".[48] After Rockefeller lost to Nixon, Kissinger switched camps, telling Nixon's campaign manager, John N. Mitchell that he had changed his mind about Nixon.[49] As Kissinger was a close associate of Rockefeller with a history of denigrating Nixon, Mitchell was very cool to Kissinger. In an attempt to ingratiate himself with Nixon, Kissinger offered to serve as a spy, saying that Harriman trusted him and he could keep Nixon informed about the state of the Paris peace talks.
[50]
On 17 September 1968, Kissinger contacted Harriman.
[51] Kissinger falsely portrayed himself to Harriman as having broken with the Republicans, writing a letter that began with: "My dear Averell, I am through with Republican politics. The party is hopeless and unfit to govern".
[52] Kissinger visited Harriman in Paris to offer his expertise and advice, and through talking with his staff learned that the peace talks were going well.
[53] Upon returning to the United States from France, Kissinger contacted
Richard V. Allen, another Nixon adviser, to tell him that Harriman was making progress in Paris.
[54] Kissinger contacted Allen via a pay phone in an attempt to avoid FBI wiretapping.
[55]
The Democratic candidate for president in 1968, Vice President
Hubert Humphrey, was behind in the polls because of the
riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in August, but on 30 September 1968, he broke with Johnson by stating his willingness if elected president to stop all bombing of North Vietnam as the price of peace.
[56] Afterwards, Humphrey started to rise in the polls, and by late October 1968, the election was close.
[57] In October 1968, Humphrey was leading 44% to Nixon's 43% of the vote, a very narrow lead, but a lead nonetheless.
[58] In October 1968, the American delegation in Paris led by
W. Averell Harriman reported to Washington that the peace talks with Thủy were going well and he believed a peace agreement was possible before the election.
[59] On 12 October 1968 Kissinger reported to Allen that Harriman had "broken open the champagne" because he believed that he was very close to a peace deal.
[60] In a conversation that was secretly recorded by the FBI, Allen and Mitchell both agreed that Kissinger would have to be rewarded with a senior post if Nixon won the election as a reward.
[61] Allen suggested that national security adviser might be suitable for Kissinger.
[62] A peace deal might have turned the election in favor of Humphrey. The South Vietnamese President
Nguyễn Văn Thiệu did not want the Paris peace talks to be successful as he feared an American withdrawal would be the end of his regime. Throughout October, Thiệu kept demanding conditions that he knew the North Vietnamese would reject in attempts to sabotage the peace talks, leading to intense pressure from the Johnson administration on him to cease his intransigence.
[63]
On 23 October 1968, Diễm cabled President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu saying he was in close contact with Chennault and that: "Many Republican friends have contacted me and encouraged us to stand firm. They were alarmed by press reports to the effect that you have already softened your position".
[64] In another message from Chennault, Diễm reported to Thiệu that she wanted him to object to the American offer to cease bombing North Vietnam altogether, saying this would be deal-breaker at the Paris peace talks.
[65] The messages that Thiệu received from Chennault to the effect that Nixon, if elected, would bargain for a better peace deal than Humphrey, encouraged him in his intransigence.[66] According to notes of Nixon's aide, Robert Haldeman, his orders were: "Keep Anna Chennault working on SVN [South Vietnam]"..
[67] Both the CIA and the FBI had tapped Chennault's phone and were recording her conversations with Diễm.
[68] Besides for the NSA intercepting the South Vietnamese diplomatic cables, the CIA had also bugged Thiệu's office, and as a result knew that Cheannult's messages were indeed encouraging Thiệu to make unreasonable demands at the Paris peace talks.
[69] Johnson phoned Nixon to tell him that he knew very well what he was doing and to stay away from Chennault.
[70] Johnson's call convinced Nixon that the FBI had bugged his phone as Johnson seemed very well informed about all of the details of the "Chennault affair".
[71] In fact, Chennault was under FBI surveillance.
[72] One FBI report stated: "Anna Chenault contacted Vietnam Ambassador Bùi Diễm and advised him that she received a message from her boss...which her boss wanted her to give personally to the ambassador. She said the message was that, 'Hold on. We are gonna win...Please tell your boss to hold on".[73]
It was through Chennault's intercession
[74][75] that Republicans advised Saigon to refuse participation in the talks, promising a better deal once elected.
[76][77][78] Records of
FBI wiretaps show that Chennault phoned Bùi Diễm on November 2 with the message "hold on, we are gonna win."
[79][80] Before the elections
President Johnson "suspected (…) Richard Nixon, of political sabotage
[81] that he called
treason".
[82]
On January 2, 2017,
The New York Times reported that historian
John A. Farrell, a biographer of Nixon, had
found a memo written by H.R. Bob Haldeman that confirmed that Nixon himself had authorized "throwing a monkey wrench" into Johnson's peace negotiations.[2] Objections from President Thiệu sabotaged the peace talks in Paris.[83] On 30 October 1968, Thiệu announced flatly that South Vietnam was withdrawing from the peace talks in Paris.[84] Thiệu's reasons for withdrawing from the talks were supposedly due to the seating arrangements, claiming that it was unacceptable to him that the Viet Cong delegation should be seated apart from the North Vietnamese delegation, stating the entire Communist delegations should be seated together.[85] The South Vietnamese peace delegation did not return to Paris until 24 January 1969.
[86] William Bundy, the Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs, summoned Diễm to a meeting where he accused him to his face of "improper" and "unethical" contacts with Chennault.
[87] Johnson knew from information provided to him from the FBI, CIA, and the NSA of Chennault's efforts to sabotage the Paris peace talks, saying that the "*****" as he called her was guilty of treason.
[88] John told his friend, the Republican Minority Leader in the Senate, Everett Dirksen, that: "We could stop the killing out there. But they've got this...new formula put in there-namely wait on Nixon. And they're killing four or five hundred a day waiting on Nixon".[89] On 2 November 1968, Johnson called Dirksen to say "I'm reading their hand. This is treason" with Dirksen saying in response "I know".[90] As much of this information was gathered illegally such as the FBI wiretapping phones without a warrant or was embarrassing to admit to such as that the NSA was reading South Vietnamese diplomatic cables,
Johnson felt he could not have the Justice Department charge Chennault as much as he wanted to.[91] To charge Chennault would mean having to admit in court that NSA had broken and was reading South Vietnam's diplomatic codes, which in turn might trouble relations with other American allies who might might wonder if the NSA was reading their diplomatic cables as well.
Johnson's National Security Adviser, Walt Whitman Rostow, urged him to "blow the whistle" and "destroy" Nixon, but the president demurred, saying it would be much too of a scandal if it emerged that the United States spied on South Vietnam, supposedly one of its leading allies.[92] The election was extremely close with Nixon winning 43.4% of the popular vote while Humphrey won 42.7% of the popular vote.[93] Given the extremely tight election, it was widely believed that Chennault's intervention may have been decisive as a peace agreement might have tipped the election in favor of Humphrey.
[94]
In part because Nixon won the presidency, no one was prosecuted for this violation of the Logan Act.[95][96][97] Cartha "Deke" DeLoach, then FBI Deputy Director, mentioned in his book
Hoover's FBI that his agency was only able to connect a single
November 2, 1968 phone call from the then Vice President candidate
Spiro Agnew to Anna Chennault, unrecorded details of which Johnson believed were subsequently transmitted to Nixon. Later liaisons with Nixon staff were by telephone to then aide
John N. Mitchell via direct personal numbers that changed every several days, as was his custom.
[98]
A week after the election and Nixon's fence-mending with Johnson in a joint statement announcing Vietnam policy, Mitchell asked Chennault to intercede again, this time to get Saigon to join the talks. She refused. According to her account, Nixon personally thanked her in 1969, she complained she "had suffered dearly" for her efforts on his behalf, and he replied, "Yes, I appreciate that. I know you are a good soldier."
[99] The American historian Catherine Forslund argued that Chennault would have been in a good position to demand that Nixon appoint her ambassador to an important American ally or that she be given some other prestigious job as a reward, but Chennault declined, fearing that she might have to answer difficult questions during the Senate confirmation hearings.
[99]
Chennault's interaction with the Paris Peace Accords on behalf of Nixon is sometimes called the "Chennault Affair."
[100][101] Bundy in a later book stated about the "Chennault affair" that "probably no great chance was lost" for peace.
[102] Farrell argued that given the incompatible agendas of Hanoi and Saigon with one wanting one Communist Vietnam and the other equally opposed that the chances for peace in the fall of 1968 were overrated.
[103] He also argued that there was at least a moment of hope that there would be peace in Vietnam in 1968, and Nixon by encouraging Thiệu to be obscurantist via Chennault had ended that hope for purely partisan reasons, making it the "most reprehensible" of all Nixon's actions.
[104] Assessments vary about the importance of Chennault's intervention in the 1968 election. The American historian Jules Witcover wrote that because Nixon won the election by 0.07% points that a peace agreement just before the election in October 1968 could have been decisive as even a small boost in the polls for Humphrey might have made the difference.
[105] By contrast, Chennault's biographer, Catherine Forslund, told
The Wall Street Journal that Thiệu would have acted to sabotage the peace talks in October 1968 without any prompting from Chennault, and at most the effects of her intervention was to encourage him to take a course of action that he would have taken anyhow.
[106]
