An intellectual freedom blog with an emphasis on libraries and technology

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Nixon Hagiography Must End!

I have always felt sick to death or right-wing apologists for Richard Nixon. Every now and then in popular culture you encounter some pundit or political operative singing Nixon's praises, ignoring or rationalizing his crimes. Well, recently uncovered primary sources - incontrovertible ones - reveal that Nixon broke federal law and prolonged the Vietnam War for political gain in 1968.

Here is The Rachel Maddow Show segment in which she explains all the evidence as clearly as anyone can:


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Short summary: J. Edgar Hoover illegally wire-tapped the South Vietnamese ambassador's phone. When President Johnson arranged a peace agreement a week before the 1968 election Nixon's people contacted the South Vietnamese leaders to convince them to back out of the negotiations, that Nixon could make them a better deal. The federal law Nixon and his cohorts violated is called "The Logan Act." Enacted in 1799 the act makes it a felony for a private citizen to "carr[y] on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government .. with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States." I think this qualifies. After Hoover gave Johnson tapes of secret conversations with the South Vietnamese ambassador, Johnson could not make Nixon's treachery public due to the illegal wire-tap. No one wanted to cross Hoover.

Maddow has the count on how many more people died in a war the U.S. had to abandon years later anyway. Still think Nixon was not a such bad guy?

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