would have failed anyway and breakthrough that johnson thought he had was not really there. timothy you say that nixon s interference in the peace talks set the tone for his administration. have donald trump s set tone for his? we ll see about donald trump. but i m convinced that only way to understand watergate is understand that richard nixon took the kind of tools that the cia would do and use oversea in doing covert action and applied them at home. and the chenault matter, the 1968 case that jack ferrell gave us the key missing piece too, that was covert action done at home and nixon would continue to do that in his presidency. and he also knows that our intelligence community knew he had done it. so he was very wary of getting caught. think increased the secretiveness of his administration. here s what john dee in the nixon white house said. tweeted about the new discovery. he said, this new info shows nixon was more than a serially
liar. he was evil. his actions may have cost some 30,000 lives. is that fair to say? we can t make that claim. don t know how important it is. but there is an argument to be made. jack s book, i ve read it and wrote a blurb for it. it s incredible. the amazing life of nixon. but don t know if could have been a peace there. william bundy working for the johnson administration for negotiations said we re not sure whether that matters that much. but there is an argument to be made it s criminal activity what nixon did. really is. add something to that. i believe that the south vietnamese government blackmailed richard nixon in 1972, and the reason why we did not have the peace that would have happened in october of 72, was that richard nixon knew the south vietnamese would blow the secret of what he d done in 68. so the peace that could have happened in october of 72 doesn t happen until after he s re-elected in january of 73.
how much did this influence the south vietnamese government which was having its own internal political battles and so how great a chance was lost? the saddest thing that i found was a note in the lyndon johnson library from his national security adviser which said almost mournfully to lyndon johnson, this is the best chance we ve had since 1961 to get out of this mess. this has been very painful. i m here with your generals. we think we should go ahead, we think with determination we can make this work. so we can look back now and say, boy, those north vietnamese were incredibly stubborn, this was never going to happen, but at the time, johnson and his advisers believed this was this was more than viable. they thought this was a potential breakthrough. and jack, a final point here. why didn t lyndon johnson reveal publicly what he knew about this before the election? they had a long discussion about that. some of his aides urged him to.
advisers believed this was this was more than viable. they thought this was a potential breakthrough. and jack, a final point here. why didn t lyndon johnson reveal publicly what he knew about this before the election? they had a long discussion about that. some of his aides urged him to. but there were two reasons. the more nefarious reasons was that nixon had been not nixon, but his envoys had been wiretapped and eavesdropped and followed around and would look bad for the american president to use the fbi in the late stages of a campaign. but the practical reason was as clark clifford told him in this 11th-hour meeting about this when they made the decision not to, was that we really don t know whether nixon was personally directing this. and that s what the haldeman notes show is nixon was personally giving these orders. and jack, i imagine you ve been having some sensations of parallels to what we ve been seeing this year. some democrats complaining that president obama s
thought. he said, i know. richard nixon did not just help prolong the war through the election season of 1968. he kept it going for five years as president costing the united states another 28,000 lives. joining us now, john farrell, the author of the upcoming book, richard nixon the life. jack, thank you very much for joining us tonight. your first interview about this discoverry which you just published. first of all, when s the book coming out? we can t wait. march 28th. march 28th. okay. i m going to be at the bookstore. so this you have many discoveries in the haldeman notes. i d like to get to some more of them. i d like to concentrate on this for the moment and that feeling in washington by the president, leverett dirksen, by the people who discovered the evidence about this at the time, of feeling that this was treason. they had never witnessed anything like this.