Congratulations to Beverly Deepe Keever, a retired University of Hawaii journalism professor who played a key role in uncovering the Vietnam Era scandal featured in Rachel Maddow’s latest made-for-television documentary, “Betrayal: The Plot That Won the White House.”
A bitter race for the White House. A secret campaign meeting in New York. And a presidential contender willing to conspire with a foreign government to clinch the win.
The program describes then-candidate Richard Nixon’s secret backchannel approach to the government of South Vietnam. Nixon offered that his administration would give the South Vietnamese a better deal if they would avoid agreeing to a peace deal until voting was over in the 1968 presidential election. Nixon felt his chances of victory would be boosted if the peace process stalled during the campaign.
Keever, who had been reporting the war for six years, caught wind of the rumors flying in Vietnam and brought them to the attention of her editors at the Christian Science Monitor, aiming for a scoop just days before the election.
An interview with Keever, now UH Professor Emeritus of Journalism, appears at 34 minutes and 47 seconds into the program.
President Lyndon Johnson, who had also become aware of Nixon’s actions, privately called Nixon’s ploy an act of treason.
In any case, you can watch it here.
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Many of us have known about this for some time. I can’t say I disagree with President Johnson’s description of Nixon’s duplicity as treasonous, to say nothing of the deaths of tens of thousands of American and Vietnamese that was the price paid.
And now we have Trump who imprisons children and excuses the murder of an American journalist for both personal ( we have Ivanka’s husband in our pocket) and political gain. For shame!
Very cool. I have vast regard for Bev Keever.