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So, this is the first timeline I've written in almost three years. It's mostly about LBJ and Humphrey deciding to make Nixon's sabotage of the Paris peace talks public.

1.​

“Do you solemnly swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?”
“I do.”
Nixon associate Anna Chennault being sworn before a Senate investigative committee, April of 1969


HUMPHREY: What will happen to them, Lyndon? If I do this?
JOHNSON: Forget them. Forget them. We have bigger things coming.
HUMPHREY: I still can’t believe…
[Johnson shifts and sighs on his end of the line]
JOHNSON: Dick was always a sneaky little son of a bitch, this isn’t out of his wheelhouse. You have to be ready for what’s coming, Hubert. Lots of people are gonna be asking how anyone knew Nixon was talking with the South Vietnamese.
HUMPHREY: I didn’t want it to come to this.
JOHNSON: It’ll have foreign repercussions. You’ll have to lean on Thieu. Force the bastard to respect you.
[Silence for a period of six seconds]
HUMPHREY: I understand.​
Transcript of a phone call between President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey sometime in late October of 1968


Though often overshadowed by later events, the scandal that dominated the last week of the 1968 presidential contest cannot be understated in terms of political and social impact. From the moment that then Vice President Hubert Humphrey sounded the alarm on the Nixon campaign’s meddling in foreign affairs, the world became a very different place.
Excerpted from ‘Blood on His Hands: Richard Nixon and the Chennault Affair’ by Ron Chernow


RFK: Nixon ‘Responsible’ for Breakdown of Peace Talks
Senator becomes first elected official to echo Vice President’s accusations
The Washington Post, November 1, 1968


“The balls on Kennedy to say something like that. Like he himself hadn’t cheated Nixon out of Illinois back in 1960…”
Nixon associate Fred LaRue, quoted in ‘The Rise and Fall of Tricky Dick’ by Roger Stone


“What I remember most clearly from the days around when the…the allegations came out was a sense of profound disquiet from my father. We didn't spend much time on the campaign trail, my sister and I, but a day or two before the news broke he called us both out. I think he knew what was about to happen and wanted everyone close.”
Tricia Nixon, quoted in a CBS News interview, 1995


Nixon Denies Vietnam Meddling Allegations
Embattled Nominee Blames Democrats for ‘Smear Campaign’
The Wall Street Journal, November 1, 1968

“Speaking of ‘68…that election was the second biggest political clusterfuck I’ve ever seen in my life.” Hunter said. He bowed down to light a cigarette, face framed with bluish curls of smoke for a moment.

“What was the first?” I asked, all of my more pertinent questions fizzling as my brain slowly swam atop a lake of mescal.

“That thing with Evans and the Maniac. Y’know…”

“Right. Right…” I tried to shepherd the conversation in another direction. No fun to reminisce about that particular slice of the past.

“Gotta say, this was the funny kind of clusterfuck, like you could at least laugh at the absurdity. I was howling each time Nixon lost a close state and the cameras would show some Republican campaign headquarters full of people just looking shellshocked. The noise was endless.”

“Yeah.” I said.

“Yeah.” Hunter answered.

Then we were both silent.
An exchange with Hunter S. Thompson as described by an unnamed gonzo journalist, 1977


“What a great relief it was for everything to be over. All of this chaos boiled down and finally we got a very simple outcome. It was like the entire country before the election was a particle frantically flipping across every possible position it could take…then, on the morning of November 6th, we knew. We’d picked something at long last.”
Former NASA Deputy Director Carl Sagan recalling the 1968 elections


CHANCELLOR: It’s been a long night here, folks, the sun is nearly up, but after all this time we feel confident enough to call the election in favor of the Vice President. His performance in the South has been just strong enough to deliver him the crucial state of Texas. This, in concert with a surprisingly weak Nixon performance all across the Midwest appears to have ensured a narrow Democratic victory. Two hundred seventy electoral votes exactly for Vice President Humphrey, at least sixty four for Governor George Wallace, with North Carolina wavering on the edge…​
NBC Nightly News election coverage of the 1968 elections, presented by John Chancellor


“I recall encountered the President on the night of the election, just after everything had been settled. Everyone was cheering or screaming, absolutely crazy with relief, but he seemed perfectly collected. Humphrey had been President-elect for maybe fifteen seconds before Johnson took me aside and began laying out plans for investigations and just…just anything possible to sink Nixon and his entire campaign apparatus. He wanted to punish them for what they’d done. He wanted to hurt them all very, very badly.”
Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, quoted in an interview to Vanity Fair, 1994
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