1968-“the Chennault Affair.” LBJ Presidential library
“Now, I’m reading their hand Everett. I don’t want this to get in the campaign. And they oughtn’t to be doing this. This is treason.”
– President Lyndon B. Johnson
On a telephone call with Sen. Everett Dirksen, Nov. 2, 1968 [Listen]
The Chennault Affair
Nixon gave Haldeman his orders: Find ways to sabotage Johnson’s plans to stage productive peace talks, so that a frustrated American electorate would turn to the Republicans as their only hope to end the war.
Fifty years ago this year, on Oct. 31, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam in hopes of encouraging peace talks to end the Vietnam War. At the time, Johnson knew a secret. Some in the Nixon campaign were secretly communicating with the South Vietnamese Government in an effort to delay the opening of the peace talks. They offered the prospect of a better deal for South Vietnam if Nixon became president.
The gambit worked, and the Chennault Affair, named for Anna Chennault, the Republican doyenne and fundraiser who became Nixon’s back channel to the South Vietnamese government, lingered as a diplomatic and political whodunit for decades afterward.
1972 – Watergate- Congressional Record/Court cases
By early 1972, the Plumbers, at this stage assigned to the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP), had become frustrated at the lack of additional assignments they were being asked to perform, and that any plans and proposals they suggested were being rejected by CRP. Liddy and Hunt took their complaints to the White House – most likely to Charles Colson – and requested that the White House start putting pressure on CRP to assign them new operations. It is likely that both Colson and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman did so, starting the train of events that led to the Watergate break-ins a few months later.
1981- Consent decree (2010 DNC RNC Consent decree)
- 1981 Lawsuit and Consent Decree
During the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial election,
the DNC, the New Jersey Democratic State Committee
(“DSC”), Virginia L. Peggins, and Lynette Monroe brought
an action against the RNC, the New Jersey Republican State
Committee (“RSC”), John A. Kelly, Ronald Kaufman, and
Alex Hurtado, alleging that the RNC and RSC targeted
minority voters in an effort to intimidate them in violation of
the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (“VRA”), 42 U.S.C. §§ 1971,
1973, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the
Constitution of the United States. The RNC allegedly created
a voter challenge list by mailing sample ballots to individuals
in precincts with a high percentage of racial or ethnic
minority registered voters and, then, including individuals
whose postcards were returned as undeliverable on a list of
voters to challenge at the polls. The RNC also allegedly
enlisted the help of off—duty sheriffs and police officers to
intimidate voters by standing at polling places in minority
precincts during voting with “National Ballot Security Task
Force” armbands. Some of the officers allegedly wore
firearms in a visible manner.
cont @
powerfulconstitutionalrights.org/...