Instead, the bombing sparked new protests, with fatal results. At Kent State University, a bucolic, nonviolent Ohio campus prior to May 1970, a tragic shooting occurred when protesters had become so destructive that the National Guard was called out.168 Students first torched the ROTC building, then attacked firemen who struggled to put out the fires, slashing their hoses. During subsequent protests, the guardsmen unexpectedly fired into the crowd, killing four. In May, at the all-black campus of Jackson State, rioting unrelated to the war resulted in the police killing two students. Both events solidified in the public mind the violent nature of the antiwar/“student” movements. From January 1959 to April 1970, more than 4,300 bombings racked universities, government buildings, and other facilities, at a rate of nine a day, most by the radical Weathermen.
Protest took on a form different from demonstrating or bombing: releasing secure or classified documents that could damage America’s war efforts. In 1971, a former Defense Department official, Daniel Ellsberg, provided secret documents to the New York Times, which published the classified Pentagon study called The History of the U.S. Decision Making Process in Vietnam. These excerpts revealed that in many cases the Johnson administration had lied about U.S. involvement. Even though the documents only covered events until 1965, the nature of the analysis and the sources of some of the data would have exposed U.S. intelligence-gathering methods and threatened national security. For that reason, Nixon rightly fought their release in court, losing a Supreme Court decision that allowed their publication. The New York Times knew that all the significant information contained in the so-called Pentagon Papers had already been made public. The affair had nothing to do with informing the public and everything to do with further embarrassing the government, especially Nixon, who was tarred with Johnson’s actions. Like the protests, publication of the Pentagon Papers only added to Hanoi’s resolve, convincing the communists that America would soon crack. Nixon, on the other hand, thought that it was Hanoi that was close to surrender.
His one serious attempt at bringing the North to the bargaining table through bombing involved the April to August 1972 Linebacker offensive. Linebacker proved extremely successful: more than 70 percent of enemy tanks were destroyed or damaged by tactical aircraft and gunships, and by August, allied air power had virtually eliminated any armored capability in the North.169 Linebacker II, unleashed in December after Hanoi had grown intransigent, consisted of an eleven-day bombing. According to one analyst of air power, “the effect of the…campaign on Hanoi’s ability to resist was crushing. In what now stands as another preview of the functional effects achieved by allied air power two decades later in Desert Storm, the rail system around Hanoi was attacked with such persistence and intensity that poststrike reconnaissance showed that repair crews were making no effort to restore even token rail traffic.”170 Another source concluded that North Vietnam was “laid open for terminal destruction.”171 POWs in Hanoi confirmed that the North Vietnamese were nearly on the verge of collapse during the bombing, a view supported by the British and other foreign ambassadors there.
Even with the bombing pauses, the communist warlords in the North realized that they could not take much more punishment, and certainly they could not sustain any more “victories” like Tet. Until that time, there is considerable evidence that the North was counting on the antiwar protesters to coerce America into withdrawal, but Nixon had gone over the media’s heads in November 1969 in a speech to the “great, silent majority,” which was followed by a January 1970 Gallup Poll showing a 65 percent approval rating on his handling of the war. The protesters and their allies in the media had lost decisively and embarrassingly.
Developments in Vietnam always had to be kept in the context of the larger cold war strategy. Neither Kennedy nor Johnson had any long-term plan for dealing with the USSR or China. Nixon was convinced he could make inroads to each, possibly opening up a discussion that could ultimately reduce nuclear weapons and even, he thought, bring pressure to bear on Hanoi. In February 1969, Nixon circulated a memorandum outlining his plans for China, whose relations with the USSR had grown strained. Nixon perceived that the split was an opportunity to play one against the other, and he even cautioned Soviet leaders that the United States would not countenance an invasion of China.172 Internally, Nixon and Kissinger referred to leverage against Russia as “playing the China card,” starting matters off with “ping-pong diplomacy,” in which the Chinese entertained the American table tennis team in April 1971. Nixon then shocked the world when, in 1972, he flew to Peking (later, under the new Anglo respelling of the Chinese alphabet, “Beijing”), where foreign minister Zhou Enlai greeted him and a military band struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.”173
It was a stunning and important meeting, leading to the phrase “It takes Nixon to go to China” (meaning that only a conservative anticommunist would have the credentials to deflect attacks that he was selling out). Nixon’s visit sent a message in all directions: to America’s ally, Taiwan, it was a reality bath. Taiwan realistically had no claim to the hundreds of millions of people on the mainland, but Nixon also made clear he would not abandon the island to the communists. To the USSR, the China card meant that Soviet posturing toward Western Europe was complicated by the necessity of keeping a constant eye toward the East, where massive Chinese armies could overwhelm local defenses. But the entire diplomatic offensive was dropped by Nixon’s successors, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and by the time Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, time and the death of key players had eroded many of Nixon’s gains.
Aside from Vietnam, Nixon had to continue to fight the cold war on a strategic level. That required a commitment to keeping the Soviets’ nuclear arsenal safely locked up while offsetting their vastly superior land and tactical air power in the European/NATO theater. The problem here was that the United States had allowed much of its nuclear arsenal to grow outdated, a point Nixon hoped to correct. In 1969, the navy embarked on a study of its submarine force, leading to the funding and construction of state-of-the-art Trident ballistic missile submarines.174 Independently, the navy, air force, and army had contributed toward developing new low-flying, air-breathing cruise missiles. Independent of those efforts, the United States had researched and started to deploy an antiballistic missile (ABM) defense network around the ICBM bases and Washington, D.C. All of these weapons were hugely expensive, reflecting a half decade’s worth of neglect by McNamara and Johnson, and their funding added to the Nixon-era inflation.
When it came to matching weapons with the Soviets, the United States had a significant advantage in its capitalist agricultural system. The USSR was chronically short of food, which made it possible (when combined with the China card) for Nixon to follow up his China visit with a historic trip to the Soviet Union. Ushering in a new détente, or easing of tensions, between the two superpowers, Nixon met with Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, promising the sale of $1 billion worth of grain. In return, Brezhnev quietly scaled down Soviet support for some terrorist activities. More important, though, the two countries hammered out an arms control treaty called SALT I (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks), signed in May 1972. Lacking the sophistication of American technology, Soviet military planners counted on sheer force and overwhelming numbers. Any launch of a nuclear attack against the United States had to be massive in order to destroy all U.S. bombers on the ground and knock out as many submarines as possible. But the development of ABM technology threatened to erase the Soviets’ lead in pure numbers. Defensive weapons, which were far cheaper than the heavy nuclear missiles they would target, could offset many times their actual number because the launchers were reusable and the antimissile missiles plentiful.
Here was an area where the United States had a decisive technological and moral lead, but the SALT I treaty gave it away, getting little in return. No limits were placed on Soviet launcher numbers, or on sub-launched ballistic missiles, or bombers. The military, already seeing the USSR rapidly catching up
in quality, and having watched the president bargain away a critical technological advantage, found itself preparing to defend the country with increasingly obsolete weapons. Nevertheless, Nixon had done what Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson had not: he had negotiated deals with America’s two archenemies and managed, at some level, to control further proliferation of nuclear weapons. For that, and many other reasons, Nixon was poised to coast to a reelection against a pitifully weak opponent. And at that moment, his insecurities triumphed.
America’s Second Constitutional Crisis
Realizing they could not beat the United States as long as Nixon remained in the presidency, the North Vietnamese boldly sought to influence the November elections by convincing Americans of the hopelessness of their cause. On March 30, 1972, after Nixon had gone on television to lay out the history of months of secret—but so far, fruitless—negotiations with the communists, more than 120,000 North Vietnamese troops poured across the demilitarized zone into South Vietnam in a last-ditch desperate invasion. Supported by Soviet-made armor and artillery, the communists encountered the new ARVNs. Despite the initial surprise of the offensive, the troops from the South shocked Ho’s forces by their cohesion, courage, and tenacity. Facing heavy use of enemy armor for the first time, the ARVNs held their ground, losing control of only one provincial capital. Nixon unleashed U.S. air power to shatter shipping and to resupply, and the offensive sputtered. Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but the communists lost between one fourth and one half of their entire invading force—staggering losses, again, for such a tiny country.
But the attack failed to achieve the communists’ goals in the election. The Democratic front-runner, South Dakota senator George McGovern, promised a unilateral withdrawal if elected. As the favorite of the media and easily the most liberal candidate in history to run for president from either of the two parties, McGovern supported the legalization of marijuana and promised every American family an income floor of $10,000 from Uncle Sam. He had no plan for extracting the prisoners of war from North Vietnam, other than to just “ask” for their return. He alienated the Democratic Party’s southern base, the union hard hats, and the social conservatives, but he thrilled the eastern elites.
Nixon crushed McGovern in November, sweeping all but 17 electoral votes and winning nearly 61 percent of the popular vote (including 56 percent of the blue-collar ballots). The press was outraged. One editor said, “We’ve got to make sure nobody even thinks of doing anything like this again,” referring to Nixon’s overwhelming victory over a full-blown liberal.175 Film critic of The New Yorker magazine, Pauline Kael, reflected the elitism that pervaded much of the media when she said, “I can’t believe it! I don’t know a single person who voted for him!”176 Nixon’s affirmation by the public ended North Vietnam’s hopes of using American public opinion to force an end to the conflict on the communists’ terms.
Out of options, consequently, on January 23, 1973, Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam signed an agreement with U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers ending the war. Nixon made clear his intention of keeping U.S. warships in Southeast Asia and of using American air power stationed in Thailand or the Philippines to maintain the peace. The North promised to return all American POWs. Like any such agreement, it largely hinged on Nixon’s willingness and ability to enforce it. For all intents and purposes, America’s longest war was over, having cost 58,245 battle deaths and another 300,000 wounded, as well as consuming $165 billion.
Having won every major military encounter in the war, American armed forces withdrew and Vietnamized the war, as had been the intention since Kennedy. Vietnamization, however, worked only as long as the U.S. Congress and the American president remained committed to supporting South Vietnam with aid. In the wake of Nixon’s resignation, however, Vietnam could no longer count on the president, and shortly thereafter Congress pulled the plug on further assistance, dooming the free government in the South. In the immediate term, Nixon had fulfilled his promise of withdrawing the American forces from Vietnam, but the media (and most historians) portrayed the war—which, up to that point, was a victory—as a loss.
There was little time for Nixon to enjoy this substantial achievement. Ever since the release of the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon White House had been obsessed with leaks and internal security. “Paranoid” might even describe the state of mind at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Having special staff to dig up dirt on enemies and pester opponents was nothing new to the presidency. Franklin Roosevelt had had an “intelligence unit” supported by a State Department slush fund; Kennedy’s questionable (if not illegal) contacts with the Mafia are well documented. Phone tapping had increased under both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, as had bugging of suspects’ hotel rooms and offices. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the targets of the FBI’s extensive bugging campaigns. Lyndon Johnson bugged Goldwater’s campaign offices in 1964, and nothing was done about it. The press laughed it off.
There was a widespread (and realistic) view within the administration that the press was out to get Nixon. Nixon genuinely believed, though, that the security of the United States was at risk; thus he had approved the creation before the 1972 campaign of a “special investigations” unit (also known as the dirty tricks group or the plumbers [plumbers fix leaks]). Whatever delusions Nixon operated under, he nevertheless had convinced himself that attacks on his administration threatened the Constitution.
The plumbers broke into the Watergate building in Washington, D.C., in May 1972 and again on June 17. Even today it is unclear what their objective was. They were led by G. Gordon Liddy, a former attorney, prosecutor, and military officer, but there remains a controversy over who in fact issued the orders to the plumbers. At the time, most reporters took it on faith that the purpose of the break-in was to smear McGovern in some way. However, subsequent evidence has suggested—and a trial involving Liddy has confirmed—that the mastermind behind the break-in was Nixon’s White House counsel, John Dean.177 Authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin contend that the name of Dean’s then-girl-friend, Maureen, was connected to a call-girl ring and that Dean dispatched the plumbers with cameras to photograph the key address book that would, or would not, prove her involvement. Several subsequent trials involving Liddy have sustained these allegations.178
At any rate, a security guard suspected a problem and called the police. Several burglars were arrested, including several Cubans hired by Liddy for the operation. A grand jury later indicted Liddy, E. Howard Hunt (Liddy’s contact man in the break-in), and some other minor players, including some of the Cubans. Liddy, coming before an anti-Nixon judge, “Maximum” John Sirica, refused to talk, and was given the maximum: five years in prison and a massive fine for a first-time breaking and entering, all to intimidate the other defendants and the White House.
The Democratic congress, smelling Nixon’s blood in the water, started investigations. A special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, of Harvard Law School, was appointed with immense powers to investigate the president, acquire evidence, and subpoena witnesses. With a staff of two hundred, and the full support of the anti-Nixon media (which could plant selective stories and generate rumors), the special prosecutor became a tool of the Democrats. In fact, the Constitution intended no such role for a special prosecutor, and expected partisan give and take. Indeed, the entire process of impeachment was designed as a form of political combat.
Dean informed Nixon about the break-in after the fact, misled him about its purposes, and convinced him that the plumbers’ efforts had national security implications, thereby persuading Nixon to obstruct justice. Ordering the CIA to instruct the FBI, investigating the crime at the time, to abandon the case, Nixon broke the very laws he had sworn to uphold, and all over a break-in of which he had had no prior knowledge. He then compounded his guilt in the matter by not demanding that Dean resign immediately, by failing to open his files to the FBI, and by refusing to genuinely cooperate with the investigation. Instead, Nixon attempted a tactic
that would twenty years later serve Bill Clinton quite well, telling his aides regarding the congressional investigations: “Give ’em an hors d’oeuvre and maybe they won’t come back for the main course.”179 This worked for Clinton because he had the media on his side, but Nixon faced a bitterly hostile press. Accepting the resignations of Bob Haldeman, John Erlichman (another of those with knowledge of the dirty tricks), and Richard Kleindienst, and firing Dean in April 1973, scarcely did anything to quell the inquiries.
Congressional testimony, on July 13, 1973, revealed that all of the working conversations in the Oval Office were tape recorded. If there was a smoking gun implicating Nixon, lawmakers might be able find it. Paradoxically, Nixon had ordered the original taping system, which Johnson had installed, taken out, only to have replaced it later when he grew concerned that his Vietnam policies might be misrepresented.
A massive battle over the tapes and/or transcriptions of the tapes ensued, with Nixon claiming executive privilege and the Congress demanding access. The courts sided with Congress after a prolonged battle. On October 30, 1973, rather than surrender the tapes, Nixon fired the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. He had first ordered the attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to sack Cox, but Richardson refused and then resigned. Then the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, refused to fire Cox, and also resigned. This Saturday Night Massacre produced outrage in Congress and glee in the media, which now had Nixon on the ropes. A grand jury indicted Nixon’s close associates Chuck Colson, Haldeman, Erlichman, and the physically ailing former attorney general John Mitchell in hopes of obtaining evidence on Nixon himself, none of which was forthcoming.
Aware that he had no support in Congress or the media, Nixon tried one last appeal—to the American people. In a televised speech Nixon looked into the camera and said, “I am not a crook,” but the public abandoned him.180 An ABC poll conducted within days of the speech found that almost 60 percent of Americans did not believe “much of what the president says these days.”181
A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror Page 118