As it turned out, Nixon's burglars were nabbed inside the Watergate complex during their second break-in at the Democratic National Committee on June 17, 1972, exactly one year after Nixon's tirade to Haldeman and Kissinger about the need to blow the safe at the Brookings Institution in pursuit of the missing Vietnam peace-talk file.
Ironically, too, Johnson and Rostow had no intention of exposing Nixon's dirty secret regarding LBJ's Vietnam peace talks, presumably for the same reasons that they kept their mouths shut back in 1968, out of a benighted belief that revealing Nixon's actions might somehow not be "good for the country." [For details, see Robert Parry's America's Stolen Narrative.]
The Scandal Grows
In November 1972, despite the growing scandal over the Watergate break-in, Nixon handily won reelection, crushing Sen. George McGovern, Nixon's preferred opponent. Nixon then reached out to Johnson seeking his help in squelching Democratic-led investigations of the Watergate affair and slyly noting that Johnson had ordered wiretaps of Nixon's campaign in 1968.
Johnson reacted angrily to the overture, refusing to cooperate. On Jan. 20, 1973, Nixon was sworn in for his second term. On Jan. 22, 1973, Johnson died of a heart attack.
In the weeks that followed Nixon's Inauguration and Johnson's death, the scandal over the Watergate cover-up grew more serious, creeping ever closer to the Oval Office. Meanwhile, Rostow struggled to decide what he should do with "The 'X' Envelope."
On May 14, 1973, in a three-page "memorandum for the record," Rostow summarized what was in "The 'X' Envelope" and provided a chronology for the events in fall 1968. Rostow reflected, too, on what effect LBJ's public silence then may have had on the unfolding Watergate scandal.
"I am inclined to believe the Republican operation in 1968 relates in two ways to the Watergate affair of 1972," Rostow wrote. He noted, first, that Nixon's operatives may have judged that their "enterprise with the South Vietnamese" -- in frustrating Johnson's last-ditch peace initiative -- had secured Nixon his narrow margin of victory over Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
"Second, they got away with it," Rostow wrote. "Despite considerable press commentary after the election, the matter was never investigated fully. Thus, as the same men faced the election in 1972, there was nothing in their previous experience with an operation of doubtful propriety (or, even, legality) to warn them off, and there were memories of how close an election could get and the possible utility of pressing to the limit -- and beyond." [To read Rostow's memo, click here, here and here.]
Tie to Watergate
What Rostow didn't know was that there was a third -- and more direct -- connection between the missing file and Watergate. Nixon's fear about the evidence in the file surfacing as a follow-up to the Pentagon Papers was Nixon's motive for creating Hunt's burglary team in the first place.
Rostow apparently struggled with what to do with the file for the next month as the Watergate scandal expanded. On June 25, 1973, fired White House counsel John Dean delivered his blockbuster Senate testimony, claiming that Nixon got involved in the cover-up within days of the June 1972 burglary at the Democratic National Committee. Dean also asserted that Watergate was just part of a years-long program of political espionage directed by Nixon's White House.
The very next day, as headlines of Dean's testimony filled the nation's newspapers, Rostow reached his conclusion about what to do with "The 'X' Envelope." In longhand, he wrote a "Top Secret" note which read, "To be opened by the Director, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, not earlier than fifty (50) years from this date June 26, 1973."
In other words, Rostow intended this missing link of American history to stay missing for another half century. In a typed cover letter to LBJ Library director Harry Middleton, Rostow wrote:
"Sealed in the attached envelope is a file President Johnson asked me to hold personally because of its sensitive nature. In case of his death, the material was to be consigned to the LBJ Library under conditions I judged to be appropriate. ..."After fifty years the Director of the LBJ Library (or whomever may inherit his responsibilities, should the administrative structure of the National Archives change) may, alone, open this file. ... If he believes the material it contains should not be opened for research [at that time], I would wish him empowered to re-close the file for another fifty years when the procedure outlined above should be repeated."
Ultimately, however, the LBJ Library didn't wait that long. After a little more than two decades, on July 22, 1994, the envelope was opened and the archivists began the long process of declassifying the contents.
Yet, by withholding the file on Nixon's "treason," Johnson and Rostow allowed for incomplete and distorted histories of the Vietnam War and Watergate to take shape -- and for Nixon and his Republican cohorts to escape the full opprobrium that they deserved.
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