lyndon johnson found out about what chennault was up to through a variety of reasons.e national security agency was intercepting cables from the south vietnamese embassy to saigon. the cia had a bug in the president of south vietnam's office, and -- >> imagine that. >> what a surprise. >> when i said it a few years ago, there would be a few gasps. now we know. and lyndon johnson had the fbi put a wiretap on the phone in the south vietnamese embassy. november 2nd, three days before the 1968 election, and chennault calls up the ambassador of south vietnam, says i've got a message from my boss, not further identified. hold on, we're going to win. so johnson knows that the republicans are interfering with this peace talks, but he doesn't have the goods on nixon. he calls the senate minority leader everett dirksen. goes into a tirade. sort of implies he has the goods on nixon. the next day he talks to nixon and nixon kind of gives him an evasive assurances that he would never do that. and make a long story short, nixon never really knew how much the federal government had c

lyndon johnson found out about what chennault was up to for a variety of reasons.the national security agency was intercepting cables from the south vietnamese embassy to saigon. the cia had a bug in the president of south vietnam's office, and -- >> imagine that. >> what a surprise. >> when i said it a few years ago, there would be a few gasps. now we know. and lyndon johnson had the fbi put a wiretap on the phone in the south vietnamese embassy. november 2nd, three days before the 1968 election, and chennault calls up the ambassador of south vietnam and says, i have a message from my boss. hold on. we're going to win. so johnson knows that the republicans are interfering with this peace talks but he doesn't have the goods on nixon. he calls the senate minority leader everett dirksen. goes into a tirade. sort of implies he has the goods on nixon. the next day he talks to nixon and nixon kind of gives him an evasive assurances that he would never do that. and make a long story short, nixon never really knew how much the federal government had collected with regard

we know for a fact that nixon set up an ultrasecret meeting between himself, chennault because one of his speech writers kept a memo of that. nixon said he wanted to keep it a secret from the secret service agents, the guys there to protect his life. chennault said this was the meeting that nixon said you are the sole representative between my campaign and the south vietnamese government for the duration of the campaign which puts the fbi report wherein chennault saying i just heard from my boss, hold on, we're going to win, into a very damning light. >> how do you connect this to watergate and the plulers unit? >> the month nixon took office he ordered his aides to get their hands on every document related to the bombing halt. and one of the things the aide that wound up with the job was houston, later notorious for the houston plan to combat domestic terrorist using illegal break-ins. on tape, the only thing we hear nixon say he wants to use the houston plan to do is to break into the brookings institution, this washington think tank where houston had told him there was this very de

lyndon johnson found out about what chennault was up to for a variety of reasons. the national security agency was intercepting cables from the south vietnamese embassy to saigon. the cia had a bug in the president of south vietnam's office, and -- >> imagine that. >> what a surprise. >> when i said it a few years ago, there would be a few gasps. now we know. and lyndon johnson had the fbi put a wiretap on the phone in the south vietnamese embassy. november 2nd, three days before the 1968 election, and chennault calls up the ambassador of south vietnam and says, i have a message from my boss. hold on. we're going to win. so johnson knows that the republicans are interfering with this peace talks but he doesn't have the goods on nixon. he calls the senate minority leader everett dirksen. goes into a tirade. sort of implies he has the goods on nixon. the next day he talks to nixon and nixon kind of gives him an evasive assurances that he would never do that. and make a long story short, nixon never really knew how much the federal government had collected with regard

said to him, not only do we have a tap on the south vietnamese embassy phone, we have a tap on chennault's p j one. we had a bug on your campaign plane for the last two weeks. true, if that had been the interference nixon personally did with peace talks would have been in the fbi file. of cessnas office with getting his hands on the file. he has hr oldman put to work on it. houston says, we looked through it. it does not make lyndon johnson look good and it doesn't look -- make us look good, either. he comes up with a very strange story in which he says that there is a company report, all the documents for the time, at the brookings institution. it was prepared by clark clifford's defense department. this is exactly the sort of thing we need. probably going way longer than i should. >> if you want to know the rest, read his book. >> that is fair. elizabeth, one of your dispatches wrote about a time in which the unfolding story began to take on the characteristics of a russian novel, someone we had never heard of suddenly emerged as an agent in activities that were almost inconceivable. met