Nixon: "That's right"
Colson: "And done through the FBI. My God, if we ever did anything like that you'd have the ..."
Nixon: "Yes. For example, why didn't we bug [the Democrats' 1972 presidential nominee George] McGovern, because after all he's affecting the peace negotiations?"
Colson: "Sure."
Nixon: "That would be exactly the same thing."
A Nixon Leak
Nixon's complaint about Johnson bugging "our phones" in 1968 became a refrain as the Watergate scandal unfolded. Nixon wanted to use that information to pressure Johnson and Humphrey into twisting Democratic arms so the Watergate investigations would be stopped.
On Jan. 8, 1973, Nixon urged Haldeman to plant a story about the 1968 bugging in the Washington Star. "You don't really have to have hard evidence, Bob," Nixon told Haldeman. "You're not trying to take this to court. All you have to do is to have it out, just put it out as authority, and the press will write the Goddamn story, and the Star will run it now."
Haldeman, however, insisted on checking the facts. In The Haldeman Diaries, published in 1994, Haldeman included an entry dated Jan. 12, 1973, which contains his book's only deletion for national security reasons.
"I talked to [former Attorney General John] Mitchell on the phone,"
Haldeman wrote, "and he said [FBI official Cartha] DeLoach had told him
he was up to date on the thing. ... A Star reporter was making an
inquiry in the last week or so, and LBJ got very hot and called Deke
[DeLoach's nickname], and said to him that if the Nixon people are going
to play with this, that he would release [deleted material -- national
security], saying that our side was asking that certain things be done. ...
"DeLoach took this as a direct threat from Johnson. ... As he [DeLoach] recalls it, bugging was requested on the [Nixon campaign] planes, but was turned down, and all they did was check the phone calls, and put a tap on the Dragon Lady [Anna Chennault]."
In other words, a furious Johnson appeared finally prepared to disclose Nixon's "treason." However, 10 days later, on Jan. 22, 1973, Johnson died of a heart attack. Haldeman apparently shelved Nixon's 1968 bugging complaint as a non-starter.
On Jan. 27, 1973, Nixon agreed to Vietnam peace terms in Paris. The agreement was along the lines of what President Johnson had negotiated more than four years earlier. The U.S. military withdrew from South Vietnam but continued supplying Theiu's forces, which proved incapable of standing on their own, finally collapsing in 1975.
The Watergate scandal of 1972-74 was the one time when the Democrats truly stood up to Republican bullying.
Although some leading Democrats, such as Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss, opposed pursuing the scandal, enough courageous Democrats and responsible Republicans were shocked enough by Nixon's abuses to keep the investigation pressing forward.
Finally, after the Washington Post exposed Nixon's financial ties to the cover-up and after Democratic members of Congress elicited devastating testimony from White House insiders, the U.S. Supreme Court forced Nixon to relinquish some of his White House tapes containing more damning evidence. Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974.
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