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Did Richard Nixon secretly try to scuttle President Johnson’s peace talk plan days before the 1968 presidential election? New evidence supports an unpublished story that he did . By Beverly Deepe Keever The Unexploded Election-Eve Bombshell Beverly Deepe arrived in Vietnam as a 26-year-old reporter in 1962 six articles (March 20–27) from Khe Sanh on the plight of the and remained for seven years, becoming one of the longest-serving encircled Marines ther e... .Indeed, she traced the pattern of Western journalists to cover the war. As a freelancer early in the war, conflict all the way from the man in the Khe Sanh dugout to she explored the life and problems of the South Vietnamese in rural General [William] Westmoreland in Saigon and the Pentagon villages. In 1968, reporting for the Christian Science Monitor , the in Washington.” Nebraska native covered the Tet Offensive and Khe Sanh and pur - The shock and awe of the Communists’ Tet blitz was on the sued an unlikely lead she received from South Vietnamese sources U.S. “leadership segment”—the press, politicians and official a week before the U.S. presidential election: that the Richard Nixon Washington, according to a well-established polling firm. Clark camp was undermining President Lyndon Johnson’s three-point Clifford, who had replaced Robert McNamara as secretary of peace plan. In an excerpt from her memoir Death Zones and Dar - defense on March 1, 1968, explained, “Tet hurt the adminis - ling Spies , Beverly Deepe Keever explains how the politically explo - tration where it needed support most, with Congress and the sive revelations were softened when the story ran on election day, American public—not because of the reporting, but because and how information declassified in 2008 now seemingly confirms of the event itself, and what it said about the credibility of the story, 45 years after LBJ’s private allegations to the Republican American leaders.” Within Johnson’s official circles the psycho - camp that Nixon was guilty of treason and had “blood on his hands.” logical shock produced by Tet was profound. “The pressure grew so intense that at times I felt the government itself might POLITICS BY ANY MEANS In the last months of his presidency, left Khe Sanh just as U.S. bulldozers and explosives were come apart at its seams,” Clifford, the 61-year-old confidant to Lyndon Johnson suffered setbacks on the O demolishing the combat base so that it could be aban - several U.S. presidents, explained. “There was,” he said, “some - T Vietnam front from (left to right) Richard O H P Nixon, Anna Chennault and Khe Sanh. N doned. Back in Saigon I wrote and airmailed to Boston thing approaching paralysis, and a sense of events spiraling out O S I L L a three-part series [about the siege at Khe Sanh for the of control of the nation’s leaders.” E B O B : T Christian Science Monitor ] that was later submitted along Some linked the loss of credibility to Johnson’s own mis - H G I R ; S with the Monitor ’s forms and letters nominating me for managed public relations campaign months earlier. “The ad - E G A M I I the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. verse impact of Tet on the United States government and its Y T T E G Describing my June series as “unique in-depth reporting of policies would never have been as serious as it was if the John - / T S O P complex and hazardous events,” managing editor Courtney son Administration had not spent the better part of the preced - R E V N E Sheldon in his nominating letter also summed up some of my ing fall in a massive propaganda campaign to raise the level of D : R E T N work throughout the year:“During 1968, Miss Deepe produced American support by [ sic ] the war with a flood of reports and E C ; P A no fewer than 18 series of major articles on Vietnam for the : T F E Excerpted from Death Zones and Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting , L Monito r, plus her regular string of daily articles. Among the best D N by Beverly Deepe Keever, by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. © 2013 by A P O examples of her work under combat conditions was a series of the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. T 52 VIETNAM / OCTOBER 2013 public appearances by General Westmoreland, Ambassador and written translations] had gleaned from sources inside and Bui Diem and to the“purported political encouragement from other sources much of his story line about Nixon’s maneuver - [Ellsworth] Bunker and others,” a veteran Washington journal - outside the palace and the Vietnamese High Command. the Nixon camp,” which, he wrote, “seems virtual equivalent ing for my book, I had never suspected what Parry revealed ist explained. He reasoned, “To say that the press was responsi - Then, out of the blue, I learned of such outlandish rumblings of treason.” about my own unpublished scoop. ble for the impact of the Tet offensive is to overlook the role of that on October 28 I sent an advisory to the Monitor ’s overseas Hayward could not have known then, but his description of Parry had opened a manila envelope in LBJ’s presidential li - the government itself.” editor, [Henry S.]“Hank” Hayward:“There’s a report here that Nixon’s “virtual equivalent of treason” was being privately brary in Austin, Texas, labeled the “X Envelope.” In it he found On March 31, 1968, the leadership paralysis was broken when Vietnamese Ambassador to Washington Bui Diem has notified echoed at the time by Johnson when he sputtered: “It would dozens of“secret” and“top secret” memos, transcripts of audio - Johnson made twinned surprise announcements on nationwide the Foreign Ministry that Nixon aides have approached him and rock the world if it were known that Thieu was conniving with tapes, FBI wiretaps and National Security Agency intercepts. television: He was declaring a halt to the bombing in North told him the Saigon government should hold to a firm position the Republicans. Can you imagine what people would say if it Johnson had amassed the documents and, before he died on Vietnam except above the demilitarized zone so as to begin now regarding negotiations and that once Nixon is elected, he’ll peace talks, and he would not seek reelection. Perhaps prompt - back the Thieu government in their demands. If you could track ing Johnson’s decision was a draft memo from his most trusted it down with the Nixon camp, it would probably be a very good National Security Adviser Walt Rostow instructed the LBJ Library advisers dated Feb. 29, 1968. In it they argued against further story.” I was so busy I had no chance to remember my assist eight director not to open the “X Envelope” for 50 years from June 6, 1973. escalation of the war by using words Peter Arnett had gathered years earlier in the NBC studios when my boss, Sam Lubell at Ben Tre during Tet: More escalation would make it “difficult [with whom she had polled voters in key precincts about the to convince critics that we are not simply destroying South Viet - 1960 presidential election], had predicted Nixon would lose the were to be known that Hanoi has met all these conditions and Jan. 22, 1973, had given them to National Security Adviser Walter nam in order to‘save’ it and that we genuinely want peace talks.” presidency to John Kennedy. Now, Nixon was facing Democrat then Nixon’s conniving with them kept us from getting it.” Rostow. In turn Rostow labeled the manila mailer and inserted General [Vo Nguyen] Giap interpreted Johnson’s decision to de - Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was saddled with Presi - Hayward told me within a day or so:“The alleged Nixon in - his top secret letter instructing the LBJ Library director not to cline a reelection bid to be “the end of the period in which the dent Lyndon Johnson’s increasingly controversial Vietnam policy. volvement was interesting but needed confirmation from this open the X Envelope for 50 years from June 6, 1973—that is, until American imperialists considered themselves to be a super- I received no response to my cable from Boston. end—which was not forthcoming—before we could print such 2023. The librarians waited only 21 years, until July 22, 1994, power, and the collapse of their role in the world.” Three days after my advisory, on October 31, Johnson an - sweeping charges on election day. It was a good story nonethe - to open the X Envelope and begin declassifying its contents. Not so much because of Tet, the year 1968 was significant be - nounced that he had ordered a complete end to the bombing of less, and you get major credit for digging it out.” Knowing the The documents in the X Envelope reveal an even closer con - cause of the U.S. economic crisis caused by a run on the dollar North Vietnam within 12 hours and that the date for the first ne - time-honored journalistic tradition of fairness, I understood nection between Thieu and the Nixon camp than I had made in and gold resulting from Johnson’s spending on both the Viet - gotiation session with Hanoi was set for November 6, the day when Hayward told me that without such confirmation, the referring to Ambassador Bui Diem in my scoop, Parry details. nam War and his cherished Great Society programs, according after the U.S.

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