“So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, … but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love – a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. …
“The vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”
Despite Kennedy’s elegant appeal, race riots broke out in cities across America. Divisions, distrust and hatreds deepened.
RFK Killed
Then, on June 5, 1968, as Kennedy appeared to be headed for the Democratic nomination having just won the California primary, he, too, was killed by an assassin’s bullet.
The political vacuum that followed Kennedy’s death turned the Democratic convention in Chicago in late August into a violent free-for-all, with hard-line Mayor Richard Daley unleashing his security and police forces inside and outside the convention hall, beating up young demonstrators outside and roughing up delegates and journalists inside.
Behind Daley’s iron fist, the Democratic establishment controlled the convention, which handed the presidential nomination to Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
Suddenly, the anti-war youth were looking at a November match-up between two representatives of the old guard, Humphrey and Republican Richard Nixon, with the likelihood that the Vietnam War would continue no matter who won.
However, 1968 had one more cynical episode to add to its dark history, albeit one that would be accomplished out of sight and not pierce the public’s consciousness for decades to come.
As the days to the November election counted down, President Johnson mounted a last-ditch effort to achieve a Vietnam peace deal with North Vietnam and the Vietcong through negotiations in Paris. Besides starting to bring U.S. troops home, the deal also might have given Humphrey the boost he needed to edge out Nixon.
According to what is now an extensive body of evidence, the Nixon campaign countered by dispatching Anna Chennault, an anti-communist Chinese leader, to carry messages to the South Vietnamese government of Nguyen van Thieu.
Chennault’s messages advised Thieu that a Nixon presidency would give him a more favorable result than he would get from Johnson.
Journalist Seymour Hersh described the initiative sketchily in his biography of Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power. Hersh reported that U.S. intelligence “agencies had caught on that Chennault was the go-between between Nixon and his people and President Thieu in Saigon. … The idea was to bring things to a stop in Paris and prevent any show of progress.”
In her own autobiography, The Education of Anna, Chennault acknowledged that she was the courier. She quoted Nixon aide John Mitchell as calling her a few days before the 1968 election and telling 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.”
Reporter Daniel Schorr added fresh details in The Washington Post’s Outlook section on May 28, 1995. Schorr cited decoded cables that U.S. intelligence had intercepted from the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington.
On Oct. 23, 1968, Ambassador Bui Dhien cabled Saigon with the message that “many Republican friends have contacted me and encouraged me to stand firm.” On Oct. 27, he wrote, “The longer the present situation continues, the more favorable for us. … I am regularly in touch with the Nixon entourage.”
On Nov. 2, Thieu withdrew from his tentative agreement to sit down with the Vietcong at the Paris peace talks, destroying Johnson’s last hope for a settlement. Though Johnson and his top advisers knew of Nixon’s gambit, they kept it secret.
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