Is this not an accepted part of the history? Is there not enough evidence? I don’t understand why this part of the historical record isn’t talked about, or how Henry Kissinger is so highly revered to this day. Please help me understand.
I assume you are talking of the Paris Peace Conference which the LBJ administration was engaged in prior to the election of Nixon? In episode 7 'The Veneer of Civilisation', Burns does acknowledge the alleged interference of the Nixon campaign in the talks,
“But then on November 2nd, with just three days to go until Americans went to the polls, President Thieu suddenly announced that the South Vietnamese government would not attend the proposed talks after all.”
“A representative of the Nixon campaign, at the candidate’s personal direction, had secretly contacted the Saigon government, urging Thieu to stay away from the talks.”
“The representative promised that once Nixon was elected, he would drive a harder bargain with Hanoi than Humphrey would.”
“Due to a CIA bug planted in Thieu’s Saigon office and a FBI wiretap on the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington, Johnson learned what had happened, and called Everett Dirksen, the Republican Senate Minority Leader, to warn him that the Nixon people were committing treason.”
“Nixon was lying and Johnson knew it. But to go public with the information, the President would have to reveal the methods by which he had learned of the Republican candidate’s duplicity. He was unwilling to do so.”
“Nixon’s secret was safe. The American public was never told that the regime, for which 35,000 Americans had died, had been willing to boycott peace talks to help elect Richard Nixon. Or that he had been willing to delay an end to the bloodshed in order to get elected.”