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Vietnam 1965: Morley Safer (CBS News) and Cam Ne

7/24/2018

Source: David Halberstam. The Powers That Be (2012)

The power balance in the US had changed by the 1960s, in that the President dominated, and Congress was at best a secondary sideline player by comparison, and one of the main reasons was television. TV had become a weapon of the President, helping him define events on his own terms, especially if an issue/event was still ongoing . . . but that worked against President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War and President Richard Nixon during the Watergate Scandal. The President could set things in motion, but as both LBJ and Nixon discovered, they couldn’t control subsequent events.
During the 1960s, events could sweep past politicians since television reached everyone, not just the Elites, and sometimes events overwhelmed both the government and protesters. LBJ set things in motion with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, but he couldn’t control what occurred afterwards in 1965; and LBJ couldn’t control Morley Safer of CBS News in South Vietnam. Safer (35 years old) was an experienced foreign correspondent that was familiar with global military and political conflicts.

Safer was new at CBS and single, therefore relatively expendable in the eyes of the executives at CBS News, and he was sent to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City today) for a six month assignment. Safer believed he was sent to Vietnam because his bosses didn’t believe that the war would last very long. What struck Safer the most when he arrived in Saigon was the innocence and naivete of the US military officials in terms of the reality of what was happening around them. A transition was occurring when Safer arrived in that the US attitude towards the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam) had changed. In the eyes of the US military, by 1965 the ARVN was no longer the “little tiger” that could, in that many South Vietnamese soldiers cut and ran at the first opportunity during combat. As a result, General William Westmoreland wanted more US troops in Vietnam; the only real candor coming from the US military concerning Vietnam centered around how poorly the ARVN acquitted itself in combat. In July 1965, LBJ announced that he would send 125,000 troops to South Vietnam.
In August 1965, Safer went to Da Nang, which was the staging area for the US Marines in South Vietnam, for the main reason that he hadn’t recently covered the Marines. Safer was known to have “combat luck” by his fellow reporters, which meant that Safer often witnessed and reported on combat; he also had the luck to survive to narrate what he had witnessed. Safer was asked by the Marines if he wanted to accompany them to Cam Ne, which was in actuality a complex of villages. On the way there, Safer was told that the village would be leveled since they had taken fire from the Viet Cong at that location.

The real reason for the march on Cam Ne was that the province chief wanted Cam Ne punished for not paying taxes, and the Marines were the punishers . . . such was the Vietnam War. Three Marines were wounded on the way to Cam Ne. Safer noted that it was due to friendly fire; the Marines were enraged, and they took the village without any resistance.
Safer was worried that he hadn’t portrayed the reality of Cam Ne is it really was; Cam Ne was far uglier than Safer reported. Marines used hand grenades and flamethrowers where villagers were cowering in fear. The only real hero on the US side was Ha Thuc Can, a South Vietnamese cameraman that worked for CBS. Can was fluent in Vietnamese, French, and English, and he stopped further carnage by arguing with the Marines about what they were doing, which saved the lives of at least some of the villagers.
Safer asked the Marine commander why he didn’t bring along an interpreter, and the lieutenant stated that he didn’t need one. Can saved at least a dozen people, and as a reward, the man in charge of public relations for the Defense Department tried to make CBS fire him, saying that using a South Vietnamese cameraman was a sure sign of “alien influence”.
(Below: part of a Vietnam documentary focusing on Safer and Cam Ne)

Safer, a seasoned veteran foreign correspondent was shocked at what he had witnessed at Cam Ne. Safer was used to seeing French cruelty in Algeria, but here he was seeing American soldiers commit the same kind of atrocities, and Americans didn’t do those things . . . but Safer saw that American soldiers could commit atrocities. Safer filed his story on the spot, and his only regret was that he didn’t take more time to be more accurate and specific in terms of the cruelty involved.
When Safer’s report come to CBS, there was an immediate understanding of the power and danger as far as broadcasting the story. CBS News executives watched the film of the Marines burning village huts (but they didn’t see the footage of the worst of the atrocities), and after checking with Safer to make sure the facts were correct, the decision was made to broadcast the story CBS fielded many phone calls from angry citizens that cried foul, since it was obvious that US soldiers never have, and never did, anything like that . . . ever.
The next day, LBJ called one of his closest allies that was an upper-level executive at CBS and read him the riot act over the phone (among the phrases was, “you just s&%# on the American Flag”). LBJ was certain that Safer was a Communist, and how could CBS put someone like that in the field. LBJ ordered a thorough background check on Safer. Safer was originally from Canada, so that meant LBJ needed the cooperation of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police); it was discovered that Safer was beyond above-board in terms of any loyalty or security risks. LBJ was sure nonetheless that Safer had somehow convinced the Marines to do what they did at Cam Ne, which was just a hint of LBJ’s excessive paranoia to come in the succeeding years. Despite intense pressure from President Johnson, CBS stood by Safer, and broadcast his story.

Safer’s report marked the end of an era, and end to an innocence that cut into the inner soul of the US. Cam Ne was like a live grenade detonated in the living rooms of American citizens. Watching US soldiers (“Our Boys”) conduct themselves like the enemy had done in previous wars shattered the myth that had been crafted by countless Westerns, as well as both world wars . . . the myth that the US acted and behaved better than everyone else in terms of waging war.
Safer helped legitimize accurate reporting in Vietnam by other TV correspondents, with all resolving to capture what they witnessed on film. From that moment on in 1965, there was a greater receptiveness to the darker news coming out of Vietnam. For an increasing number of Americans, there was this sense that the War in Vietnam wasn’t going right, despite what the government and military stated.

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The Campaign of 1968 & Nixon’s “Perfect Crime”, Part Two

7/19/2018

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Source: Lawrence O'Donnell. Playing With Fire - The 1968 Election
and the Transformation of American Politics (2017)

On 25 October 1968, eleven days before the election, Nixon accused LBJ of playing Election Year politics with the peace talks in Paris. Nixon knew he was risking his secret telephone conversations with LBJ, and sure enough, two days later, LBJ publicly attacked Nixon, and their phone calls came to and end. On 28 October 1968, LBJ finally agreed that the bombing halt was his best move, and the next day the USSR redoubled their efforts to get North Vietnam to the negotiating table. LBJ was told that South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu could get his diplomats to Paris in twenty-four hours, and the President planned a television announcement for three days later to officially announce the negotiations.
Just a few hours later, LBJ received reports that the Nixon campaign, specifically the campaign manager, John Mitchell, was trying to scuttle the peace talks. Then Secretary of State Dean Rusk told LBJ that Thieu had balked, saying there wasn’t enough time for him to get his diplomats to Paris. LBJ was in a frenzied hurry trying to figure out what Nixon was up to. LBJ called the FBI, and soon agents were surveilling Anna Chennault and the South Vietnamese Embassy in DC. The FBI reported that Chennault had spent thirty minutes with Ambassador Diem at the South Vietnamese Embassy. LBJ called Senator Everett Dirksen (R; Illinois) to give him fragments of what he knew, hoping that Dirksen would scare Nixon into backing off; LBJ didn’t mention any criminal aspects to Dirksen, just the political risks of what Nixon was doing.

LBJ decided to use his upcoming scheduled phone call (outgoing President to Presidential candidate) to scare Nixon more directly. After that phone call, LBJ reached Humphrey and told him about what was really going on in Paris, and what Nixon was up to (and also that he didn’t have any proof). LBJ assumed that he had done enough to scare Nixon, and that Thieu’s delegation would soon arrive in Paris. As Humphrey gained on Nixon, the pressure on former Democratic candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy (MN) to endorse Humphrey rose in intensity. McCarthy was vacationing in France in order to sit out the campaign, but if McCarthy endorsed Humphrey, he would have broken the promise he made at Grant Park at the end of the Democratic National Convention (in essence he promised to not endorse Humphrey). Prominent McCarthy supporters had already gone public with their endorsements for Humphrey; McCarthy stood alone . . . no one, it seemed, was able to get McCarthy on board.
It took an open letter from prominent Civil Rights leaders, which in essence “triple-dog-dared” McCarthy to do the right thing and support Humphrey for Civil Rights reasons. To McCarthy, he now had a way out, in that in his mind, Civil Rights trumped his Grant Park pledge, so one week before the election, McCarthy officially endorsed Humphrey. McCarthy stated that Humphrey had a better understanding of the domestic needs of the nation, and that he would reduce military tensions. Then in the same breath, McCarthy stated that he would not run for re-election in the Senate in 1970, and that he would not be a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1972; eleven months after he announced his candidacy, McCarthy announced the end of his political career.

On 31 October, LBJ interrupted network programming to announce that he had halted the bombing of North Vietnam, and he outlined his hopes and expectations of the peace talks in Paris. The next day, after talking to Mitchell, Thieu betrayed LBJ. Thieu turned on the President that had propped him up in power for so long by refusing to participate in the peace talks. Thieu defended his decision by saying that there was no way he would be in the same room with the Viet Cong, and that he would only talk to North Vietnam. The news so shocked the White House that their only immediate response was “no comment”.
On that same day, Anna Chennault called Ambassador Diem at the South Vietnamese Embassy; LBJ knew she had done so since the FBI had wiretapped the Embassy’s phones. LBJ was informed that Chennault told Diem to “please tell your boss to hold on”. LBJ had unwittingly empowered Thieu to have more power in determining the outcome of the Election of 1968 than the President; LBJ’s announcement of a bombing halt now appeared to be a lame and desperate Democratic campaign tactic. With the election just three days away, LBJ had been humiliated and he simply didn’t know what to do, especially in terms of acknowledging how he knew what Nixon had done, since that meant admitting that the FBI used illegal wiretaps on foreign embassies.
LBJ told Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen as much as he felt he could, and then asked Dirksen to let Nixon know that the President knew about the sabotage of the peace talks. Nixon appeared on Meet the Press and covered himself by supporting LBJ’s efforts at peace. After that appearance, Nixon called LBJ, and the call went so well as far as Nixon was concerned that when he hung up, he and his staffers burst into laughter.

National Security Advisor Walt Rostow wanted LBJ to blow Nixon out of the water. After that meeting, LBJ met with Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford and SecState Rusk, and they pointed out that if LBJ exposed Nixon, then some not-so-legal wiretaps and intelligence-gathering would be exposed. Clifford and Rusk also pointed out that Chennault never used Nixon’s name, so there was plausible deniability on Nixon’s end if push came to shove. Nixon knew the advice that LBJ would receive from Clifford and Rusk, and that he was in the process of committing a crime (Nixon violated the Logan Act of 1799) that would lead to thousands more US soldiers getting killed and wounded in Vietnam.
But Nixon also knew that he was committing the “Perfect Crime”, in that he would not face any exposure or penalty since LBJ would not expose Nixon for the good of the nation; if Nixon was exposed and he won the election, then the impeachment and removal of a new President was a real possibility. It wouldn’t be until 2017 when some of H.R. Haldeman’s (he was Nixon’s Chief of Staff from 1969 - 1973) notes from the 1968 campaign were discovered that proved Nixon’s role in the crime (in 1977, Nixon flatly denied having any connection with the South Vietnamese government). The final Gallup poll before the election had Nixon at 43%, Humphrey at 42%, and Wallace at 15%. The Humphrey campaign knew they had momentum, but they also knew they would most likely be short a few, or even one, campaign days (that was the price the Democratic Party faced in scheduling the Democratic National Convention so late in the Summer of 1968; one wonders if Humphrey understood that he had waited far too long to distance himself from LBJ on Vietnam).

The election was too close to call by the time most Americans went to bed that night. And again, like in 1960, the election centered around the results in Illinois. The vote in Chicago hadn’t yet been finalized, but this time the Republicans had a plan for the shenanigans of Mayor Richard Daley. Daley’s strategy was to release Chicago’s vote totals after the rest of the state had done so (which meant in 1960 that Daley could “manufacture” enough votes to give the state’s Electoral tally to JFK). This time, Republican precincts outside of Chicago refused to release their vote totals until Chicago released theirs. By Wednesday morning, Daley had run out of excuses for delay, and he released the vote totals without knowing how much Humphrey needed to win Illinois. Nixon carried the 26 Electoral Votes of Illinois, which put Nixon over 270 Electoral Votes.
Again, a Presidential Election that involved Nixon was decided by less than 1% of the popular vote, with Nixon at .434, Humphrey at .427, and Wallace at .135 (Electoral College: Nixon 301, Humphrey 191, Wallace 46; States Carried: Nixon 32, Humphrey 13 + DC, Wallace 5). Humphrey became the second sitting Vice-President to lose a Presidential Election (Nixon was the first in 1960). Nixon’s Inauguration on 20 January 1969 was the first to attract protesters (8000 or so; over 100,000 protesters showed up for Nixon’s 2nd Inauguration). Although Nixon’s fall from grace was due to the Watergate Scandal, he was never held to account for his crime that really mattered during the Campaign of 1968.

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The Campaign of 1968 & Nixon’s “Perfect Crime”, Part One

7/19/2018

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Source: Lawrence O'Donnell. Playing With Fire - The 1968 Election
and the Transformation of American Politics (2017)

Republican Party Presidential candidate Richard Nixon had a 15 point leat in September 1968; if it wasn’t for his concerns about George Wallace (the Governor of Alabama was an Independent candidate), Nixon would have conducted a front-runner’s campaign. Wallace soon reached 20% in the polls while the Democratic nominee, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, was centered at 28%. Nixon believed it was possible that Wallace could keep him below the magic number of 270 Electoral Votes to become President. Wallace was far more Nixon’s problem than Humphrey’s, and Nixon had to find a way to compete with Wallace without alienating the Southern Conservative Republican bloc led by Strom Thurmond. Nixon knew that he couldn’t “out-Wallace Wallace”, so he avoided campaigning in states that were certain to go to Wallace, and instead Nixon focused on southern states such as Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Nixon’s mantra in those states was simple: a vote for Wallace was a wasted vote.
Nixon wasn’t worried about Wallace in northeastern states, since not only could Wallace not win those states, but Nixon probably wouldn’t either. To Nixon, the key battleground states included Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Texas, and California . . . the West looked very strong for Nixon. Nixon was told by his advisors that it was possible that he could win 40 states (Nixon carried 32 states in 1968, and 49 in 1972). The voting bloc of Republican conservatives was growing, and had started to take form in 1968, but it wouldn’t be until 1980 that voting bloc became a political force when they lined up in support of Ronald Reagan.

The Nixon campaign was run with corporate sophistication, with John Mitchell as the campaign manager (Chief Executive Officer) and Maurice Stans as the “money man” (Chief Financial Officer); the 1968 campaign was 180 degrees different from Nixon’s campaign in 1960, where he served as his own campaign manager. Where Wallace drew battle lines, Nixon preached unity, except for those that resorted to violence. Nixon focused on the “forgotten Americans” that worked and minded their own business, and didn’t have time to take to the streets; Nixon called them the “Silent Majority”.
A rumored quote that had been spread by the media that had Nixon stating that he had a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War was not refuted or challenged by Nixon, and that false quote became the signature slogan of his campaign. Nixon basically criticized LBJ and Humphrey and kept his alternative policies vague, which was enough for millions of Americans to believe that he did indeed have a “secret plan”. Through the end of September 1968, Nixon experienced smooth-sailing in his campaign with the exception of worrying about Wallace.
Humphrey had selected Senator Edmund Muskie (ME) as his running mate, which was a common sense and safe choice. Nixon went with the nationally unknown governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew, not wanting to make a choice that would cost him votes in what he assumed would be a very close election. Wallace wanted to run alone, but many states required a VP candidate, so on 3 October 1968, Wallace announced that his running mate would be former Air Force Major General Curtis LeMay. Under President Eisenhower, LeMay was the commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). LeMay was a “Hawk”, and his most famous quote before he was tabbed as Wallace’s running mate was that the best thing to do with North Vietnam was to “bomb them back into the Stone Age”, LeMay totally ignored Wallace and his advisors in terms of how to respond to questions regarding the Vietnam War and nuclear missiles, and was told to stay on message. But LeMay kept going on-and-on about how about how nuclear missiles weren’t really that bad and that they really should be used. LeMay wound up bombing Wallace’s campaign back to the Stone Age and the momentum of the campaign vaporized. LeMay had become a national laughingstock, and Wallace paid the political price.

The only good thing about the Humphrey campaign was Lawrence O’Brien, the former JFK campaign guru and advisor. Humphrey was all over the place in terms of his stance on anti-war protesters and the Vietnam War, and everywhere Humphrey went, the anti-war protesters waited. Humphrey looked very weak, and seemed unable to put the debacle that was the Democratic National Convention in Chicago behind him. O’Brien told Humphrey that the campaign was broke, and that confidence in Humphrey was very low. What was needed, O’Brien argued, was that Humphrey needed to break away from LBJ on Vietnam and call for a bombing halt. Humphrey agreed, and he called LBJ in order to give the President a heads-up on his upcoming campaign speech on Vietnam.
However, 45 minutes before Humphrey made that phone call, Nixon had called LBJ, informing him of much of Humphrey’s upcoming speech on Vietnam (significant portions of the speech had been leaked). LBJ not only told Nixon that Humphrey was on his own, but he also gave Nixon advice on how to attack Humphrey: the bombing halt would cost American lives.
In his speech, Humphrey stated that if he was elected, he would stop the bombing in order to pursue negotiations, but if North Vietnam balked, he would resume bombing. By 10 October 1968, the Humphrey campaign had $1 million, which paled in comparison to Nixon, but it showed that Humphrey had struck a chord. Not only did the anti-war protesters become less bothersome to Humphrey, he rose in the polls. Muskie’s job was to focus on the past shenanigans of “Tricky Dick” Nixon, and soon Agnew became the focus of Democratic attacks. Momentum for Humphrey also increased when Frank Sinatra started to campaign for the Vice-President, and when the campaign worked hard to get the labor vote, since many had defected to Wallace, but were now unsure about voting for him.

As Wallace plummeted in the polls, Humphrey rose, and by mid-October 1968, Humphrey was within five points of Nixon. Nixon had banked that being vague was the best campaign strategy, but Humphrey had closed the gap in large part because he was the candidate with specific stands on the issues. For example, Humphrey had a far clearer position on Vietnam than did Nixon and his “secret plan”, so now it was Nixon’s turn to regroup and re-strategize.
Humphrey gained enough leverage to challenge Nixon to a debate. Nixon, of course, wanted to keep Wallace away from any debate so he wouldn’t regain momentum and cost Nixon votes. So the simplest solution was to avoid the situation: the Campaign of 1968 did not feature a debate between the candidates. But it soon became apparent to Nixon that his most immediate problem was his Vice-Presidential running mate, Spiro Agnew. Pat Buchanan (who would become one of Nixon’s speechwriters) was traveling with Agnew, and he didn’t have many positives to report. Buchanan’s observations to Nixon basically stated that Agnew was living up to the Humphrey/Muskie attack ads, saying such nonsensical things as “if you’ve seen one slum, you’ve seen them all”. The Nixon campaign decided to keep Agnew on a very short leash and to minimize his appearances. Now Nixon focused on his biggest problem, which was that any positive developments in the negotiations in Paris would kill his chances of being elected President. A typical candidate would have viewed the situation as beyond his control . . . but Nixon did not see the situation in that way at all.

The Soviet Union told LBJ that if the halted the bombing, North Vietnam would agree to have South Vietnam participate in the negotiations. The USSR also told LBJ that North Vietnam was open to his three conditions as well, but it would have to appear that the US stopped the bombing before the North Vietnamese government would follow through. And, if the US stopped bombing, it would look like LBJ was following Humphrey’s stance on Vietnam, which could only help the Vice-President gain votes. To LBJ the end of the nightmare was in sight: he believed that he was truly on the brink of “Peace With Honor”, which would cement his historical legacy.
LBJ proceeded slowly, in that he wanted to find out if South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu was amenable to participating in the peace talks. Thieu readily agreed to take part, and then LBJ told North Vietnam that he would resume bombing if they reneged on South Vietnamese participation . . . LBJ was told that his message had been received. LBJ, in his customary phone calls to Presidential candidates as the outgoing President, mentioned none of these things to Humphrey, Nixon, or Wallace. It never crossed LBJ’s mind that the South Vietnamese government would betray his trust. LBJ’s advisors told him there was in essence no downside to proceeding with the negotiations, but LBJ remained slow-moving and cautious, which was consistent with his two greatest fears: failure and humiliation.

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The Democratic Nat'l Convention in Chicago (1968), Part Two

7/17/2018

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Source: Lawrence O'Donnell. Playing With Fire - The 1968 Election
and the Transformation of American Politics (2017)

Tuesday night’s convention session on 27 August 1968 again provided unprecedented confrontation on the floor. It took seven more hours to end the conflict over credentials; Connally’s Texas delegation survived the challenge from the McCarthy camp, and the Georgia delegation (half Humphrey, half McCarthy) was seated. CBS television reporter Dan Rather was shoved to the floor while trying to interview an unruly Georgia delegate that was being removed by security. Everyone in the know, including Walter Cronkite, the anchor for the CBS convention coverage, knew that Mayor Richard Daley was in charge of floor security.
The fight over credentials took so long that it wasn’t until 12:35 am that the report from the Platform Committee was given, starting with the majority (LBJ’s) Peace Plank. The chairman of the Platform Committee was forced to stop reading due to the uproar among anti-war delegates. The leader of the Wisconsin delegation moved to adjourn until the next afternoon (it was Wisconsin that started the uproar); the anti-war delegates knew that the party bosses wanted the platform debate to occur in the wee-hours of the morning in order to keep a high number of viewers from seeing the extreme rancor. Following Daley’s orders, the convention chair refused to close the session. John Bailey, the Democratic Party Chairman, realized that he had to get the convention off of television at that point, and he signaled to Daley, who signaled to the convention chair, and the session was gaveled to a close at 1:15 am.

While Lincoln Park had become a nightly war zone, four miles away in Grant Park, it was calm in that the protesters that gathered there didn’t want any trouble, and the police didn’t enforce the curfew. It was at Grant Park the next day in which the city (reluctantly) granted a permit for a demonstration. Hayden announced that protesters would march from Grant Park to the Amphitheater by any means necessary. As LBJ watched the convention unfold, he finally realized that he couldn’t save his party or his Presidency, and that his 38 years as a politician were over. All that was left as far as LBJ was concerned was his historical legacy, which meant he had to get control over the convention (and at least get peace talks started in Paris before the end of his term).
Americans that watched the Democratic National Convention in Chicago only remembered the third night, Wednesday, 28 August 1968. Mayor Richard Daley and conservative commentator William F. Buckley each had the most hateful public moments of their lives. Daley’s savage verbal attack on Senator Abraham Ribicoff (CT) and Buckley’s infamous attack on liberal commentator Gore Vidal provided fireworks inside the convention for viewers. And, on Michigan Avenue, as Hayden had predicted, “The Whole World” watched on TV (tape-delayed) as Chicago police went after the anti-war protesters. Too much had to still get done in terms of the convention itself on that Wednesday, which was to end with the nominations of President and Vice-President . . . but Tuesday’s business concerning the platform was still unfinished.

Debate on the platform concerning the Vietnam plank started at 1 pm, and at 4:30 pm votes on both LBJ’s majority plank and the Peace Plank occurred, with 1567 for LBJ’s plank, and 1041 for the minority Peace Plank. LBJ had won, or so he believed. To the anti-war delegates, their dream of ending the Vietnam War had crash-landed on the convention floor, and those delegates drowned out the convention with singing and chanting, which forced a temporary recess.
While that was occurring on the convention floor, the city-permitted demonstration at Grant Park had started with 15,000 protesters present, and the police were ready to stop the march to the Amphitheater. A teenage boy tried to take down the US Flag, and he was arrested by police. Rock-throwing by the protesters intensified, and a phalanx of police careened into the MOBE marshals, focusing on Rennie Davis; five Chicago police officers beat Davis to unconsciousness.
Daley’s response to accusations of excessive force was to increase excessive force, with many Americans seeing doing so as a mirror image of LBJ’s Vietnam policy, which was exactly what Hayden and Davis had wanted to occur. The Illinois National Guard launched tear gas in order to try and keep the protesters from leaving Grant Park. Despite every tactic used by law enforcement, many protesters broke out of the northern part of Grant Park on to Michigan Avenue, and the media followed.

At 6:30 pm, three mule-drawn wagons were heading down Michigan Avenue led by Reverend Ralph Abernathy, who had received permission from the city for the march in the name of the Poor People’s Campaign . . . and the protesters moved in behind the wagons. Just before the Hilton Hotel police had the street blocked, and for about thirty minutes, the protesters were stymied. Police then made an opening for Abernathy’s three wagons, and then closed the barricades to keep the protesters at bay. McCarthy, looking out his 23rd story window in the Hilton Hotel, saw that the protesters were surrounded on three sides, and the National Guard was in the process of closing off the fourth side. It was at that point that the Chicago police started to go after the protesters, and the most famous scenes from the Democratic National Convention in 1968 started to play out.
The nominating process had started at the convention at 6 pm, and both McCarthy and Humphrey were placed in nomination early. The plan of the party bosses was to have glowing speeches before and after the nominations to shore up unity and to have a nominee (Humphrey) selected on the first ballot. But the rioting in front of the Hilton Hotel ended that vision and television captured the tensions/divisions on the convention floor. The most famous instance was Senator Ribicoff’s “Gestapo tactics” charge from the podium against Daley, and everyone watching that could read lips saw Daley’s response, which Ribicoff heard. Later, Buckley called Vidal a queer on live television (Vidal was gay) and threatened to punch Vidal. Buckley’s slur offended everybody, and as the Gay Rights Movement gained momentum over the following years, Buckley’s offense became all the more heinous. Buckley never stopped regretting what he said that night, and also never stopped hating Vidal (the feeling was mutual).

Humphrey could not believe that the television networks showed the rioting in front of the Hilton instead of the convention; the biggest moment in Humphrey’s political life was shattered. Meanwhile, McCarthy’s hotel room (and surrounding area) was used for triage for injured protesters, and McCarthy made the rounds just like an officer in a military hospital after a battle. McCarthy made a phone call to have his name removed from nomination, but he had been so focused on the rioting that he missed his nomination being made official on television.
At 11:47 pm, Humphrey garnered the nomination on the first ballot: Humphrey 1760.25, McCarthy 601, McGovern 146.5, Channing Phillips (the 1st African-American nominated by either party) 67.5, and Ted Kennedy 12.75. McCarthy soon called Humphrey to congratulate him on the nomination. Then, contrary to all advice, McCarthy went to Grant Park to address the protesters; McCarthy referred to the protesters as “the government of the people in exile”.
The last night of the convention (Thursday, 29 August) was like an extra innings baseball game whose outcome was already decided; Wednesday night was what Americans remembered and cared about. Humphrey’s nomination speech was boring but it was not interrupted; Humphrey made sure to avoid offending LBJ and Daley. The Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, had a huge lead in the polls after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and both parties figured that the Republicans would win big on Election Day.

Addendum: The Poor People's Campaign in early-1968 . . .

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The Democratic Nat'l Convention in Chicago (1968), Part One

7/12/2018

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Source: Lawrence O'Donnell. Playing With Fire - The 1968 Election
and the Transformation of American Politics (2017)

As the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was about to open, LBJ wasn’t just controlling the Platform Committee, bullying Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and making secret phone calls to Richard Nixon . . . LBJ was reconsidering his decision not to run. Humphrey was behind both McCarthy and Nixon in the latest polls. Mayor Daley (and among other notable Democrats, Texas Governor John Connally) was all for drafting LBJ at the convention since he viewed Humphrey as too weak a candidate, and he was ready to make the necessary preparations. LBJ reached the point where he told Daley that he had made tentative plans to head to Chicago so he could be handy if the “Draft LBJ” movement became a reality.
Meanwhile, the anti-war protest groups made it clear that they would proceed with their marches/protests in public parks without city permits. The Chicago Police Department prepared for 12 hour shifts and 7000 troops at Fort Hood were being trained for riot control. Daley, the Governor of Illinois, and the Pentagon all agreed that the Illinois National Guard should be called up, which would bring the overall total to deal with the protesters (on paper) to 40,000.
The various protest groups taunted Chicago’s municipal government (e.g. threatening to dump LSD in the city’s water system), and a few days ahead of the convention, the Yippies were already in Lincoln Park, as was the Student Democratic Society (SDS). Officials from the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE) came to the park to train protesters in self-defense and confrontational non-violent tactics. It wasn’t long before Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and Dave Dellinger (all would be named as part of the “Chicago 8”) figured out that they wouldn’t come close to their goal of 300k - 500k protesters in Chicago. Lincoln Park was under 24 hour surveillance by the authorities, and soon there were more police than protesters in the park; the question on everyone’s mind was what would occur at 11 pm when the park closed.

The Yippies, MOBE, and the SDS all stated that if ordered to leave by the police that the park should be vacated. By 9 pm there were fewer than 1000 protesters in Lincoln Park, and Allen Ginsberg was among them, changing “Om” while police moved into position to enforce the 11 pm closing. When some bonfires were started, police moved fast to put them out. When the police announced that the park was closed at 11 pm, Ginsburg led the protesters out of the park, and only a few straggling protesters were shooed out of the park by police.
The next day, Tom Hayden and MOBE led a large march of protesters to Grant Park, and the were left alone by the authorities; the result was a false sense of security/accomplishment on the part of Davis and Hayden. But later in the day in Lincoln Park, Davis and Hayden became frustrated that only 5000 showed up for a Yippie Music Festival, and that the police refused to allow flatbed trucks the deliver the concert sound system. So, Hayden and Davis thought it would be a good idea to remain in Lincoln Park after 11 pm to see what the police would do, and then quickly leave the park.
Soon after 9 pm in the dark, some protesters started throwing rocks at police, and when the rocks became an avalanche, the police (fully equipped in riot gear), moved in. For the next few hours, anyone in the way of the police was dealt with harshly, and tear gas was used when the protesters left the park and entered the streets. So, of course, in response the protesters clogged up traffic, and order wasn’t restored until 2 am.

The convention opened Monday night (26 August) at the Amphitheater and police, Illinois National Guard, and some US troops had already take up their positions. Daley made sure that the anti-war delegations were seated far from the podium, and that he was seated just three rows back from the podium so he could maintain eye contact and control the goings-on up front. The microphones of the anti-war delegations were muted or turned-down, while the other microphones worked just fine for the other delegations.
Daley then explored the possibility of a “Draft Ted Kennedy” movement, of which Senator Edward Kennedy (MA) wanted no part, and when LBJ got wind of it, he put a stop to the idea. Conventional wisdom had it if Kennedy was running, Humphrey would not have enough delegates to win on the first ballot, and so, to the anti-war faction, Kennedy seemed to be the best strategy to eventually nominate McCarthy. Soon after the opening gavel a bitter floor fight ensued over the “Unit Rule”. When placed in front of the whole floor, the Unit Rule was abolished, which meant that there would be no winner-take-all vote totals from the individual state delegations.
Then it was the turn of the Credentials Committee, and a floor fight occurred over the seating of the Georgia delegation (Joseph Rauh had challenged the delegations of three Southern states, including Governor Connally’s Texas delegation). Some McCarthy delegates wanted the Credentials Committee to deny seating all of Humphrey’s delegates, which infuriated the party’s power brokers regardless of region. Never before, in the brief history of televised political conventions, had viewers seen this level of conflict and antagonism on the floor amongst the delegates and the party leaders. At 11 pm in Lincoln Park, the scene was worse than the previous night, and this time TV cameras were positioned to capture the mayhem; to viewers, it seemed that there was no such thing to Chicago police as an innocent bystander.

At 3 am, with no end in sight to the debate in terms of delegate credentials, the convention was gaveled to a close for the day, and soon the delegates came to realize that Chicago had become a war zone. Tuesday morning a closed session took place among those that wanted to “Draft Teddy”, and at the same time McCarthy in essence gave up, saying there was no way he could gain enough delegates to win the nomination. As a result, McCarthy offered to step aside in order to support Kennedy, and while many McCarthy delegates would refuse, he calculated that enough of his pledged delegates would go to Kennedy which would then deny Humphrey a victory on the first ballot.
McCarthy admitted to some that he would never have stepped aside for RFK, and nobody in the Ted Kennedy camp really trusted McCarthy. But the larger problem for those that wanted to draft Kennedy was Teddy himself, in that they needed to find a way to launch the Draft Kennedy movement without Kennedy stopping it. In other words, they needed to find a way to get it started, and then after it became public, be sure that Teddy said nothing afterwards to quash it . . . it needed to be a fait accompli. Anticipation among the delegates would quickly grow if Kennedy didn’t stop the draft, and when McCarthy took the state to endorse Teddy, the lid would pop off the floor. At that point, the Draft Kennedy supporters believed, Teddy would fly to Chicago to accept the nomination, and Humphrey (and the party bosses) would be denied.

The only problem left for the Draft Kennedy people was McCarthy, who had proven to be very erratic and moody during previous dealings with RFK; if McCarthy didn’t handle his end perfectly, the resulting humiliation for Teddy would be tremendous. The worst fear of the Draft Kennedy crowd was that once McCarthy’s name was placed in nomination, the ensuing cheering and adulation would encourage McCarthy to deviate from the plan, and he would refuse to release his delegates to Kennedy.
To Senator Edward Kennedy, the Draft Kennedy movement that was gaining steam on television looked like it was orchestrated by McCarthy; Teddy was afraid that it would appear that he was trying to push aside McCarthy, and that perception would damage his political standing then and for the future. So, Teddy believed that he had to immediately end the Draft Kennedy movement before any lasting damage could be done to his political career. Tuesday morning, Teddy called Humphrey and assured the Vice-President that he would not run; it would be another twelve years before Senator Edward Kennedy tried to pursue the nomination of the Democratic Party for President.

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Prelude to the Democratic Nat'l Convention (1968), Part Two

7/4/2018

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Source: Lawrence O'Donnell. Playing With Fire - The 1968 Election
and the Transformation of American Politics (2017)

Ohio Congressman John Gilligan, who was running for the Senate, believed that a “Peace Plank” would help Humphrey in that at least some of the delegates that supported McCarthy might switch, which would be the best chance for party unity. Gilligan and other anti-war Democrats lined up a high-profile coalition in support of the Peace Plank. To become part of the platform, the Peace Plank would have to look-and-sound more Establishment than Insurgent (e.g. avoid criticizing LBJ), which was a lot to ask of McCarthy and his supporters.
Despite mutual suspicion, unity on the Peace Plank held up generally, and there was hope that the anti-war Democrats could force it on Humphrey. Humphrey knew that he needed to move away from LBJ on Vietnam in order to distance himself to show that he was his “own man”. Humphrey showed LBJ the most recent draft of his position on Vietnam, and LBJ really let Humphrey have it, and the Vice-President left the White House humiliated. Humphrey gave the paper to David Ginsburg to “fix” while telling no one about his conversation with LBJ. The next day LBJ met with Nixon. LBJ believed that Nixon, far more than Humphrey, would continue his policies in Vietnam. LBJ needed to keep Nixon from promising a permanent halt to the bombing; after all, why would North Vietnam negotiate if they could just wait for the next President.

LBJ and Nixon met on 26 July 1968 in the Cabinet Room. Secretary of State Dean Rusk was also in attendance, as was National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, in large part to convince Nixon that it was a “real” meeting, not just a courtesy. LBJ told Nixon of his secret conditions for negotiations (of which LBJ didn’t tell Humphrey), hoping to win Nixon’s confidence. LBJ had no idea that Nixon in no way wanted to call a halt to the bombing, in that Nixon simply thought that he would do a much better job prosecuting the war than LBJ. To increase the odds of a Nixon victory in 1968, Nixon needed the quagmire to continue in Vietnam.
LBJ told Nixon that Humphrey was “under control”, and that information alone made Nixon’s visit to the White House more than worthwhile. The deal LBJ floated was that Nixon wouldn’t push for a bombing halt and would keep from directly criticizing LBJ as long as LBJ didn’t make any moves towards arriving at a resolution in terms of negotiations without informing Nixon. But LBJ kept the deepest secret of all from both Nixon and Humphrey: the President believed that he was on the verge of a breakthrough in negotiations after receiving a secret message from the Soviet Premier, Alexei Kosygin (who in effect shared power with Leonid Brezhnev). Kosygin informed LBJ that if the US stopped the bombing, the USSR would convince North Vietnam to agree to all three of LBJ’s conditions. LBJ believed that the USSR had the necessary leverage to convince North Vietnam to do so in that 80% of its war supplies came from the Soviet Union . . . LBJ dared to think about “Peace With Honor”. But Nixon was keeping a secret of his own about Vietnam, which wouldn’t be fully revealed until long after his death.

Two weeks before Nixon met with LBJ, Nixon met with the South Vietnamese Ambassador to the US, Bui Diem. Diem had flown from Washington, D.C. to New York City with Anna Chennault, a very wealthy widow of General Claire Chennault, who was also the daughter of a Chinese ambassador. Nixon asked Chennault, whose contacts in Asia were very numerous and significant, for help in developing a secret communications network with the government of South Vietnam and Chennault introduced Nixon to Bui Diem. Nixon and Diem agreed that Chennault would be the sole contact between the government of South Vietnam, and that John Mitchell, who was in charge of Nixon’s campaign, would be Chennault’s contact.
In 1968, no other government on the planet had a greater interest in the US Presidential Election than South Vietnam. Nixon wanted South Vietnam to keep him up to to date about any developments concerning the talks in Paris; both Nixon and South Vietnam feared the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam. Nixon didn’t want any progress towards ending the war before the election, since that development would only be to his disadvantage. As far as the government of South Vietnam was concerned, their whole existence depended on US troops remaining in their nation.
While the Democrats debated on the Peace Plank and the platform, Nixon told South Vietnam to hold out on the talks since they would get a better deal with him as President. Nixon had to keep his plan secret since he was breaking a law. Since 1799, the Logan Act prohibited private US citizens from negotiating with a foreign nation on behalf of the US. Nixon was more-than-comfortable committing the “Perfect Crime” to win the Presidency; not only did he know more US soldiers would be killed/wounded by his delaying tactics, but he also knew that LBJ would not blow the whistle on his shenanigans. If LBJ accused Nixon of violating the Logan Act, then LBJ would have to admit how he came about that knowledge, which would lead to admitting that the US had wiretapped embassies.

On 10 August 1968, Senator George McGovern (SD) announced his candidacy right before the convention, having lost confidence in McCarthy. In essence, McGovern tried to fill the void of RFK by using the Inside Game, and again McCarthy felt betrayed by the entry of another peace candidate into the fray. McCarthy viewed McGovern as nothing more than a shill for Humphrey, since he could split the anti-war delegates. However, if McCarthy had simply returned McGovern’s phone call in which he offered to endorse McCarthy, McGovern wouldn’t have announced. McGovern’s strategy appeared to be that by announcing his candidacy, he believed the odds of adding the Peace Plank were improved.
The Chairman of the Platform Committee was Congressman Hale Boggs (LA), the House Majority Whip and an LBJ man, and Boggs wanted to bury the Peace Plank. On 19 August 1968, the hearings in front of the Platform Committee started, and Boggs told Ginsburg that he wanted the Peace Plank to be what Humphrey wanted. Humphrey asked Senator Edmund Muskie (ME) to represent him at the Platform Committee, and also there were Senators McGovern and Fulbright in order to show a strong presence of the party’s Establishment. About 40 of the 100 members of the Platform Committee were ready to support a Peace Plank, which meant that the least that should happen was that a minority report for the Peace Plank would be presented to the delegates on the floor and a vote would be taken. If the 40 or so on the Platform Committee could get Humphrey to join them, then the Peace Plank would be part of the majority position on the Democratic Party Platform. The next day LBJ called Nixon and coached him on what to say about criticizing the Peace Plank, hoping it would weaken the position of those in support.

On 20 August 1968, Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia, stunning LBJ, but not Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford. As far as Clifford was concerned, LBJ had blown it by being far too slow to accept the USSR offer to help pressure North Vietnam into negotiations (but of course Clifford couldn’t tell LBJ what he thought). After calling Nixon to reaffirm their previous discussion, LBJ called Humphrey and read him the riot act about standing firm on Vietnam.
The naked aggression of the USSR in Czechoslovakia hit the Peace Plank supporters hard in that most voters now saw them as out of tune idealists at best, or at worst, appeasers. McCarthy’s reaction to the USSR aggression was soft and didn’t help the Peace Plank coalition at all. On 22 August 1968, four days before the convention started, the Platform Committee moved to Chicago. Chairman Boggs continued to throw up roadblocks and the level of confidence eroded among the members of the Peace Plank coalition. The coalition started to fall apart and the hearing in front of the Platform Committee became a fractured free-for-all.
The outcome was a mix of compromises that called for a halt to the unconditional bombing, and a government in South Vietnam that would recognize (and even include) the Viet Cong. Now it came down to whether or not Humphrey would be in support of the patchwork of compromises. After meeting with LBJ, Boggs became convinced that a Peace Plank would cost more US soldiers’ lives, and finally Humphrey realized that LBJ was still in complete control of not only the convention, but also the Democratic Party. The Platform Committee had 65 votes for LBJ’s Vietnam plank at 35 votes for the Peace Plank, which meant both would be brought to the convention floor for a vote by the assembled delegates.

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Prelude to the Democratic Nat'l Convention (1968), Part One

7/4/2018

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Source: Lawrence O'Donnell. Playing With Fire - The 1968 Election
and the Transformation of American Politics (2017)

Vice-President Hubert Humphrey’s staff had a much superior “Inside Game” compared to McCarthy’s in that Humphrey and his entourage had a lot of experience and they loved the inside game; Humphrey’s public awkwardness disappeared when he was in private. When it came to the Inside Game, the weakest part of the McCarthy campaign was actually the candidate. For example, McCarthy never called back Senator George McGovern (SD) who had phoned to offer McCarthy his endorsement, and McCarthy canceled three scheduled meetings with Mayor Richard J. Daley. McCarthy, simply put, was a terrible player when it came to the Inside Game, and he and his advisors weren’t nearly as connected as Humphrey and his staff.
However, on the hustings (the campaign trail), Humphrey’s popularity lagged behind McCarthy’s, and the Vice-President constantly heard “We Want Gene” and “Dump the Hump”. Humphrey’s crowds were often sparse, and on college campuses / inner cities, the crowds were even abusive. Humphrey was very nervous about keeping his pledged delegates from defecting to McCarthy, or even the independent candidate for President, Alabama’s Democratic Governor, George Wallace. Humphrey believed that he could not win the nomination without LBJ’s support, and the President wasn’t reassuring; LBJ preferred to keep Humphrey in suspense, which was his normal approach. After RFK’s assassination, LBJ felt no need to soften his stance on Vietnam to help Humphrey with the anti-war crowd.

LBJ micromanaged the preparation of the Democratic convention along with Mayor Daley. LBJ controlled the day-to-day program of the convention and refused to allow Humphrey to share in the power of the decision-making. One result was that Humphrey never knew what LBJ thought of him from one day to the next. Humphrey campaigned that summer as if he was a suspect in a crime and everything he said could be used against him; by the time Humphrey arrived in Chicago, LBJ still hadn’t endorsed his Vice-President.
Normally the committee meetings before the convention are pro forma (non-events), but not in 1968, where each committee found itself battling for what they considered to be the soul of the Democratic Party; the future of political conventions were changed forever that summer. The Rules Committee chickened out and allowed the delegates decide on the “Unit Rule”, which allowed state delegations to go winner-take-all for the state delegation’s preference for a candidate. McCarthy wanted the Unit Rule abolished since it was an obvious advantage for Humphrey. And, much to the astonishment of Democratic power brokers, Humphrey wanted the Unit Rule abolished as well. What hurt Humphrey was that it was mostly likely organizational ineptitude that led to his campaign’s opposition to the Unit Rule, and to the Democratic bosses, it looked like Humphrey didn’t have much of a clue as to what was occurring.

The mission of the Credentials Committee was to decide who was officially recognized as a delegate from each state, and the Democratic bosses were prepared to fight McCarthy in terms of any challenges. McCarthy was so new to campaigning that he and his staff were shocked to find out how states really selected their delegates; McCarthy was on the outside-looking-in. McCarthy wanted to challenge the legitimacy of as many delegates as possible in order to try and force the Credentials Committee to replace them with delegates pledged to him. McCarthy’s mantra was “achieve panic, then win”; so the question for McCarthy, then, was whether to work inside or outside the convention system. Joseph Rauh was the McCarthy point man during the Credentials Committee hearings, and Rauh’s goal was to bring the entire credentials system crashing down by using an attack so narrow in scope that nobody in a position to stop him would realize what was occurring until it was too late.
In 1964, Rauh challenged the credentials of the Mississippi delegation in that he wanted the delegates of the Mississippi Freedom Party recognized. Rauh remembered Humphrey’s promise that segregated delegations would not be seated in 1968. Rauh wanted to challenge the Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama delegations along those lines, and he hoped to replace them w/ delegates loyal to McCarthy. And, if the Southern delegations were no longer in a unified bloc, then the result could be a brokered convention. If Humphrey allowed the MS, GA, and AL delegations to be seated, then he would be allowing the ultra-conservative wing of the Democratic Party to flex their political muscles.

There were 212 African-American delegates heading to Chicago, and there was a strong possibility that Southern delegations could bolt to Wallace. Rauh’s strategy had the potential to put Humphrey in an impossible bind, but the younger staff members in the McCarthy campaign didn’t have the experience or imagination of Rauh. What the younger staffers wanted was a credentials challenge that was far more broad in focus, a challenge that encompassed the primaries as well as the convention.
19 August 1968 was the first meeting of the Credentials Committee, and they faced an unprecedented and unheard of number of challenges. McCarthy’s campaign challenged 15 state delegations, including northern states such as Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota. Humphrey joined McCarthy in challenging the Mississippi delegation in that this time he knew the challenge would be successful, and Humphrey didn’t want to expend any energy in fighting what was going to be inevitable. The Credentials Committee decided to split Georgia’s segregated delegation 50/50 between white delegates and the challenge delegates put forth by Georgia state representative Julian Bond. Humphrey had nothing to lose in supporting the challenge against Georgia in that the state was going to vote for Wallace.
On 24 August 1968, the Credentials Committee voted 84-10 to deny the segregated Mississippi delegation and to replace them with delegates evenly split among McCarthy and Humphrey. With Georgia and Mississippi taken care of, the Credentials Committee was able to stop any challenges to the northern delegations, just as Rauh had predicted.

The Credentials Committee also recommended changes in how delegates were selected at the state level so a candidate (such as Humphrey) that didn’t run in a primary couldn’t lock up delegates before the convention; 1968 was the last time primaries were less important than the Inside Game. Thwarted by the young McCarthy staffers that didn’t have his experience/vision, Rauh’s only play was to wait until the convention to try and challenge the seating of targeted Southern delegations in order to gain McCarthy delegates.
The battle in the Platform Committee far exceeded what occurred in the Credentials Committee. The platform is the written outline of the party’s position on the issues and the promises of what the party’s candidate hopes to achieve once in office. Platforms are usually bland and vague in order to avoid contradictions/violations once the candidate has been elected, but after the New Hampshire primary, it was certain that there would be a huge showdown on the Platform Committee concerning the Vietnam War.
McCarthy wanted a “Peace Plank” in the Democratic Party Platform for 1968, and Humphrey wanted whatever LBJ would allow. Preliminary talks between the US and North Vietnam began on 10 May 1968 in Paris, and while LBJ had ordered a temporary bombing halt, North Vietnam refused to negotiate until LBJ made a promise to stop bombing altogether.

LBJ had three conditions to which he wanted North Vietnam to accept before he agreed to stop bombing. First was a reduction in North Vietnamese attacks in South Vietnam, the second was a demilitarized zone between the two nations, and the third was acceptance of South Vietnam as a participant in the negotiations. But accepting South Vietnam was an impossibility for not only the North Vietnamese, but also the Viet Cong, and South Vietnam refused to participate if the Viet Cong was a participant.
So, on 10 May 1968, the US and North Vietnam were the only ones at the negotiating table in Paris . . . and the delegations of the two nations literally argued about the shape/size of the table that would be used. North Vietnam wanted a large circular table so everyone was equal (there would be no “Head of the Table”). South Vietnam, using the US delegation as its proxy, wanted a rectangular table so they and North Vietnam would be across from each other, and so that there would be no room for the Viet Cong. At that pace, there would be no progress before the Election of 1968, so no progress in Paris meant all the more pressure on the Democratic Party as it prepared for its national convention in Chicago . . .

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Vietnam 1965: Morley Safer (CBS News) and Cam Ne

The Campaign of 1968 & Nixon’s “Perfect Crime”, Part Two

The Campaign of 1968 & Nixon’s “Perfect Crime”, Part One

The Democratic Nat'l Convention in Chicago (1968), Part Two

The Democratic Nat'l Convention in Chicago (1968), Part One

Prelude to the Democratic Nat'l Convention (1968), Part Two

Prelude to the Democratic Nat'l Convention (1968), Part One

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