To dismiss charges of foreign interference in our elections as “ridiculous” is itself ridiculous, no matter who proclaims that. That includes a president–elect. The intent of foreign intrusion is not benign or casual, but is intended to affect our election process and influence its outcome.
The Russians, this year, were not playing a technological game of tic-tac-toe. They obviously spent a lot of time and money with a purpose in mind. I have seen this happen before in 1968, and the consequences were deadly. Thirty-five thousand American service members died and several million Vietnamese and Cambodians did as well. None of them would have if Richard Nixon had not been elected.
The election of Donald Trump cannot be solely attributed to Russian hacking, but Vietnamese interference in 1968 was beyond question. The consequences this year may be less clear, although time will tell. Lives may not be lost, but the social fabric of our great country may be irreparably torn.
In 1968, as we approached Election Day, Vietnam peace talks were going on in Paris. President Lyndon Johnson had softened his hard-line attitude, and there seemed hope for a change in policy leading to peace. But Anna Chennault, a Chinese charmer who had married an American World War II hero, was a major fundraiser for Nixon and assumed, or more likely was assigned, the task of preventing any peace agreement before the election.
Theodore White, the preeminent writer-chronicler of presidential elections at that time, later wrote that Chennault “had undertaken most energetically to sabotage (the peace talks). In contact with the Formosan, the South Korean and the South Vietnamese governments, she had begun early, by cable and telephone, to mobilize their resistance to the Paris agreement — apparently implying that she spoke for the Nixon campaign.” She succeeded. The South Vietnamese president repudiated any peace agreements.
Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic presidential candidate for whom I worked, knew what was happening, but would not say anything about Chennault’s activities because the information was based on intelligence sources. Had Johnson informed him, given Humphrey a heads-up, we might have been able to speak out just enough to make a difference. But we heard nothing. I begged Humphrey to let me tell all of this to the press.
I was certain that Americans of both parties would be outraged at what was a treasonous act by Nixon and that we would get the final boost we needed. I told him that if it rebounded against us, he could fire me as the unauthorized leaker. I was not persuasive.
White concluded: “Fully informed of the sabotage of the negotiations by our negotiators (secretly and without White House knowledge) and the recalcitrance of the Saigon government, Humphrey might have won the presidency of the United States by making it the prime story of the last four days of the campaign. He was urged by several members of his staff to do so. And I know of no more essentially decent story in American politics than Humphrey’s reluctance to do so.”
Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election with 301 electoral votes. Hubert Humphrey received 191 electoral votes and George Wallace 46. The popular vote: Nixon 31,783,783; Humphrey 31,271,839; Wallace 9,901,118.
We are not at war today, but we are not quite at peace either. Russia can speak nice, but it continues to act in inhumane ways and in deadly opposition to reasonable policies we and our allies in the free world pursue and hold dear.
It is not ridiculous to seek and tell the truth.
