front-runner was muskie. george mcgovern was the weakest of the candidates. one of the dirty tricks that the nixon team used was the canuck letter. nixon s re-election committee sent a fake letter. the white house wanted to undermine muskie s appeal in new hampshire by associating muskie with some language about people of french canadian heritage. the issue was the word canuck. the muskie campaign did not write that letter. but at the time, muskie felt that being associated with a letter that described a very important bloc of voters in new hampshire as canucks was a disaster for his campaign. and he went public to deny any responsibility for the letter. it was snowing that day. and the snow fell on his eyebrows and then melted, and it
to win. nixon and musky were neck and neck. nixon feared he was going to lose, and he did not want to be a loser. the democratic nomination was a horse race, and in the beginning the front-runner was musky. george mcgovern was the weakest of the candidates and one of the dirty tricks that the nixon team used was the canuck letter. nixon s re-election committee sent a fake letter. the white house wanted to undermine musky s appeal in new hampshire by associated muskie with some language about people of french canadian heritage. the sword canuck. the muskie campaign did not write that letter. at the time muskie felt being associated with a letter that
campaign espionage team. his feeling that even though he was president of the united states that it could be taken all away from him drove him to find people who would do dirty work. keep in mind that the white house was a nasty place, that they were hurting people for political reasons, so it was natural that the committee would share these values. the committee for re-election of the president tried to engineer through a vast campaign of political espionage and sabotage who the candidate of the opposition would be. to those of you who are older as i am, the first thing we must do is to end our involvement in the war in southeast asia. at the time it was by no means clear that nixon was going to win. nixon and muskie were neck and neck. nixon feared he was going to
lose, and he did not want to be a loser. the democratic nomination was a horse race, and in the beginning the front-runner was muskie. george mcgovern was the weakest of the candidates. one of the dirty tricks that the nixon team used was the canuck letter. nixon s re-election committee sent a fake letter. the white house wanted to undermine muskie s appeal in new hampshire by associating muskie with some language about people of french-canadian heritage. the issue was the word canuck. the muskie campaign did not write that letter. but at the time muskie felt that being associated with a letter that described a very important bloc of voters in new hampshire as canucks was a disaster for his campaign. and he went public to deny any
segretti hired and paid 22 dirty people to play dirty tricks on senator muskie. if you look at the history, it s stunning, for $250,000, nixon and his team got the person, nixon in 72, wanted to run against. not muskie, because he was strong, but george mcgovern. the idea that the leader of one party, let alone the president, would undertake a criminal covered program to say, let s find something i can beat, and nixon found him and did it. it s an appalling history of somehow we let this man we let this man take over.