Describing his investigation, Huston said he eventually "got so frustrated ... because I knew I wasn't getting all of the information that would allow me to really understand what had happened in Paris. And so I decided to go out and start bird-dogging on my own," reaching out to other federal agencies.
Huston said "there is no question" that the Nixon campaign approached senior South Vietnamese officials with promises of a better deal if they stayed away from the Paris peace talks.
"Clearly, [campaign manager John] Mitchell was directly involved. Mitchell was meeting with her [Chennault], and, you know, the question, was the candidate himself directly involved, and, you know, my conclusion is that there is no evidence that I found, nor that anyone else has found that I can determine, that I regard as credible, that would confirm the fact that Nixon was directly involved.
"I think my understanding of the way in which -- having been in the '68 campaign, and my understanding of the way that campaign was run, it's inconceivable to me that John Mitchell would be running around, you know, passing messages to the South Vietnamese government, et cetera, on his own initiative."
Though Huston reported to Nixon that the Johnson people apparently lacked a "smoking gun" that personally implicated him in the scheme, the whereabouts of the missing evidence and exactly what it showed remained a pressing concern to Nixon and his inner circle, especially in June 1971 when major American newspapers began publishing the leaked Pentagon Papers. That report revealed the deceptions that had pervaded the Vietnam conflict from its post-World War II origins through 1967, covering mostly Democratic lies.
A Dangerous Sequel
But Nixon knew what few others did, that there was the potential for a devastating sequel, the story of how the Nixon campaign had torpedoed peace talks that could have ended the war. Given the intensity of anti-war sentiment in 1971, such a revelation could have had explosive and unforeseeable consequences, conceivably even impeachment and certainly threatening Nixon's reelection in 1972.
Huston had come to believe that a detailed report on the failed Paris peace talks, possibly containing the evidence of the Republican sabotage, had ended up at the Brookings Institution, then regarded as a liberal think tank housing many of Nixon's top critics.
"I send [White House chief of staff H.R. 'Bob'] Haldeman a memo and I said, basically, 'You're not going to believe this.' Here I've spent all these months, I've been chasing all over the God-dang'd government try to get everybody to give me bits and pieces and trying to do this job that you told me to do, and the God-dang'd Brookings Institution is sitting over here with a God-dang'd multi-volume report that I don't have. And if Brookings can get the damn thing, I don't see any reason why I can't get it."
According to Brookings officials and U.S. government archivists, Huston appears to have been wrong in his conclusions about the existence of such a "multi-volume report" hidden at Brookings, but his memo would have historical repercussions because it became the focus of a frantic Oval Office meeting on June 17, 1971, as Nixon and his top aides were assessing their own exposure as the Pentagon Papers filled the front pages of the New York Times.
Blow the Safe
Nixon summoned Haldeman and national security advisor Henry Kissinger into the Oval Office and -- as Nixon's own recording devices whirred softly -- pleaded with them again to locate the missing file. "Do we have it?" Nixon asked Haldeman. "I've asked for it. You said you didn't have it."
Haldeman: "We can't find it."
Kissinger: "We have nothing here, Mr. President."
Nixon: "Well, damnit, I asked for that because I need it."
Kissinger: "But Bob and I have been trying to put the damn thing together."
Haldeman: "We have a basic history in constructing our own, but there is a file on it."
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