I keep reading that Kissinger is an admirer of Napoleon’s enemies, Castlereagh and Metternich. Sabotaging peace was something they did a lot too. They were both utterly ruthless. Castlereagh - after Napoleon’s death - was so tormented that he killed himself.
Castlereagh
The harassment against my project escalated when I increased my focus on teaching history about Napoleon. Coincidence? What I’m trying to show you is about much more than warmongering, genocide and rampant criminality. You are witnessing and are a participant in spiritual warfare that’s been going on for many centuries. What you do and the role you play is who you are.
Metternich
So the likelihood of a bombing halt, wrote Nixon, "came as no real surprise to me." He added: "I told Haldeman that Mitchell should continue as liaison with Kissinger and that we should honor his desire to keep his role completely confidential."
Haldeman
It is impossible that Nixon was unaware of his campaign manager's parallel role in colluding with a foreign power.
Thus began what was effectively a domestic covert operation, directed simultaneously at the thwarting of the talks and the embarrassment of the Hubert Humphrey campaign.
Hubert Humphrey
Later in the month, on 26 September to be precise, and as recorded by Nixon in his memoirs, “Kissinger called again. He said that he had just returned from Paris, where he had picked up word that something big was afoot regarding Vietnam. He advised that if I had anything to say about Vietnam during the following week, I should avoid any new ideas or proposals."
On the same day, Nixon declined a challenge from Humphrey for a direct debate. On 12 October, Kissinger once again made contact, suggesting that a bombing halt might be announced as soon as 23 October. And so it might have been.
Except that for some reason, every time the North Vietnamese side came closer to agreement, the South Vietnamese increased their own demands.
We now know why and how that was, and how the two halves of the strategy were knit together. As far back as July, Nixon had met quietly in New York with the South Vietnamese ambassador, Bui Diem.
President Diem
The contact had been arranged by Anna Chennault. Bugging of the South Vietnamese offices in Washington, and surveillance of the Dragon Lady, showed how the ratchet operated.
An intercepted cable from Diem to President Thieu on the fateful day of 23 October had him saying: “Many Republican friends have contacted me and encouraged us to stand firm. They were alarmed by press reports to the effect that you had already softened your position."
The wire-tapping instructions went to one Cartha De Loach, known as Deke to his associates, who was J. Edgar Hoover's FBI liaison officer to the White House. We met him, you may recall, in H.R. Haldeman's Diaries.
In 1999 the author Anthony Summers was finally able to gain access to the closed FBI file of intercepts of the Nixon campaign, which he published in his 2000 book The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.
He was also able to interview Anna Chennault. These two breakthroughs furnished him with what is vulgarly termed a "smoking gun" on the 1968 conspiracy.
By the end of October 1968, John Mitchell had become so nervous about official surveillance that he ceased taking calls from Chennault. And President Johnson, in a conference call to the three candidates, Nixon, Humphrey and Wallace (allegedly to brief them on the bombing halt), had strongly implied that he knew about the covert efforts to stymie his Vietnam diplomacy.
This call created near-panic in Nixon's inner circle and caused Mitchell to telephone Chennault at the Sheraton Park Hotel. He then asked her to call him back on a more secure line.
Since I got a second lawsuit from someone clearly lacking funds, I’ve been searching for patterns which match those of my covert harassers so I can hopefully identify who’s paying for that 2nd lawsuit.
Who has tons of money and wants to harass me into silence? Who has the power to compel “the establishment” to pretend to ignore my existence and what I’m saying?
“The media” has been pretending to ignore so much news that they have no credibility anymore.
"Anna," he told her, “I'm speaking on behalf of Mr. Nixon. It's very important that our Vietnamese friends understand our Republican position, and I hope you made that clear to them.... Do you think they really have decided not to go to Paris?"
The reproduced FBI original document shows what happened next. On 2 November 1968, the agent reported as follows:
Equal opportunity is good, but special privilege is better.
MRS ANNA CHENNAULT CONTACTED VIETNAMESE AMBASSADOR BUI DIEM, AND ADVISED HIM THAT SHE HAD RECEIVED A MESSAGE PROM HER BOSS (NOT FURTHER IDENTIFIED), WHICH HER BOSS WANTED HER TO GIVE PERSONALLY TO THE AMBASSADOR. SHE SAID THAT THE MESSAGE WAS THAT THE AMBASSADOR IS TO “HOLD ON, WE ARE GONNA WIN" AND THAT HER BOSS ALSO SAID "HOLD ON, HE UNDERSTANDS ALL OF IT." SHE REPEATED THAT THIS IS THE ONLY MESSAGE. “HE SAID PLEASE TELL YOUR BOSS TO HOLD ON." SHE ADVISED THAT HER BOSS HAD JUST CALLED FROM NEW MEXICO.
-SECRET- NO FOREIGN DISSEMINATION EMBASSY OF VIETNAM ON NOVEMBER SEVEN, LAST, A CONFIDENTIAL SOURCE, WHO HAS FURNISHED RELIABLE INFORMATION IN THE PAST, FURNISHED THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION: IN LATE EVENING ON NOVEMBER SEVEN, LAST, MRS. ANNA CHENNAULT CONTACTED VIETNAMESE AMBASSADOR BUI DIEM AND ADVISED THAT THE MESSAGE ON THAT DATE FROM SOUTH VIETNAMESE PRESIDENT THIEU "WHICH OUR BOSS" WAS ALRIGHT. WHEN SHE FINALLY GOT BACK TO HER OFFICE TO CALL, THAT "THEY" GOT THE WHOLE MESSAGE. SHE ADVISED SHE HAD GIVEN "THEM" EVERYTHING CHENNAULT STATED THE PERSON SHE HAD MENTIONED TO DIEM WHO MIGHT BE THINKING ABOUT "THE TRIP" WENT ON VACATION THIS AFTERNOON AND WILL BE RETURNING MONDAY MORNING AT WHICH TIME SHE WILL BE IN TOUCH AGAIN AND WILL HAVE MORE NEWS FOR DIEM. CHENNAULT CONTINUED THAT "THEY" ARE STILL PLANNING THINGS BUT ARE NOT LETTING PEOPLE KNOW TOO MUCH BECAUSE THEY WANT TO BE CAREFUL TO AVOID EMBARRASSING "YOU"
Nixon's running mate, Spiro Agnew, had been campaigning in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that day, and subsequent intelligence analysis revealed that he, and another member of his staff (the one principally concerned with Vietnam), had indeed been in touch with the Chennault camp.
The beauty of having Kissinger leaking from one side, and Anna Chennault and John Mitchell conducting a private foreign policy for Nixon on the other, was this. It enabled him to avoid being drawn into the argument over a bombing halt.
And it further enabled him to suggest that it was the Democrats who were playing politics with the issue. On 25 October in New York, Nixon used his tried-and-tested tactic of circulating an innuendo while purporting to disown it.
In Haig's presence, Kissinger referred pointedly to military men as "dumb, stupid animals to be used" as pawns for foreign policy. - Bob Woodward
Of LBJ's Paris diplomacy he said, “I am told that this spurt of activity is a cynical, last-minute attempt by President Johnson to salvage the candidacy of Mr. Humphrey. This I do not believe."
Kissinger himself showed a similar ability to play both ends against the middle. In the late summer of 1968, on Martha's Vineyard, he had offered Nelson Rockefeller's files on Nixon to Professor Samuel Huntington, a close adviser to Hubert Humphrey. But when Huntington's colleague and friend Zbigniew Brzezinski tried to get him to make good on the offer, Kissinger became shy. "I've hated Nixon for years," he told Brzezinski.
But the time wasn't quite ripe for the handover. Indeed, it was a very close-run election, turning in the end on a difference of a few hundred thousand votes, and many hardened observers believe that the final difference was made when Johnson ordered a bombing halt on 31 October and the South Vietnamese made him look a fool by boycotting the peace talks the very next day. But had things gone the other way, Kissinger was a near-certainty for a senior job in a Humphrey administration.