THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1971-1979:
1971
Secret bombing of Laos
- The US begins a secret bombing campaign in Laos as part of its Vietnam intervention. In February, South Vietnamese troops later invade Laos under US direction. The "carpet-bombing" of Laotian targets, killing untold numbers of civilians, horrifies the world when details are leaked. (ZMag, Chronology of US-Vietnam Relations)
- The UN formally admits the People's Republic of China after 21 years of US resistance. China is made a permanent member of the Security Council. (CBS News, NATO and UN History)
- Furious over what he believes are "leaks" from his administration to the media about his Vietnam policies (including the secret bombings of Cambodia), Nixon orders the FBI to place illegal wiretaps on the phones of thirteen government officials and four prominent reporters. The wiretaps provide little information useful to Nixon, and do nothing to stem the tide of anti-war protests. Nixon runs into some resistance from both the FBI and the IRS when he demands all-out investigations of antiwar groups for supposed Communist ties and possible tax evasion, though the CIA conducts its own investigation of a number of antiwar leaders and finds no links to any Communist organizations. Tom Charles Huston, a former Army intelligence official, proposes that Nixon create a domestic spy organization in direct violation of the Constitution. After receiving little support for the idea from the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover and other intelligence agency officials, Nixon creates his own "in-house" intelligence gathering organization, originally headed by White House adviser John Ehrlichman and his deputies Egil "Bud" Krogh and David Young. This organization will later become the infamous "Plumbers." (David Fremon)
- George H.W. Bush is named Ambassador to the United Nations by President Nixon.(Bushwatch)
- At a dinner honoring California state senator James Mills, California governor Ronald Reagan says, "For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapons." (Rotten)
- Early 1971: The New York Times receives a huge amount of secret Defense Department documents and memos that prove the tremendous duplicity of both the Kennedy/Johnson and Nixon administrations in their prosecutions of the Vietnam war. The documents are leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department official who operated in counterintelligence and later worked for the Rand Corporation while remaining an active consultant to the government on Vietnam. Ellsberg has, over his tenure as a senior government official, become increasingly disillusioned with the actions of the US in Vietnam; he decides that leaking the documents is the best way to prove the truth to the American people. The documents show how Johnson secretly paved the way for combat troops to be sent to Vietnam, how he had refused to consult Congress before committing both ground and air forces to war, and how both Johnson and Nixon had secretly, and illegally, shifted government funds from other areas to fund the war. The documents prove that all three presidents had broken Constitutional law in bypassing Congress and sending troops to wage war in Vietnam on their own authority. These documents will come to be known as "The Pentagon Papers." (D.J. Herda)
- January: George W. Bush is assigned flying duty as part of an F-102 squadron at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston. During this time, the Houston press reports that he is considering running for state senate. (Ian Williams)
- January 4: President Nixon announces "the end is in sight." (Vietnam War Timeline)
- January 31: A three-day testimonial event, informally dubbed "Winter Soldier," begins in Detroit, for the purpose of compiling stories and evidence of American military atrocities in Vietnam. 109 veterans and 16 civilians take part in the panel discussions, which are organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the war. Honorably discharged soldiers, along with retired civilian contractors and medical personnel, give testimony about war crimes they had committed or witnessed during the years of 1963-1970. Though the media virtually ignores the event, it is well documented by journalists and filmmakers, and a transcript of the proceedings is later entered into the Congressional Record. The event and the 1972 film of the same name is presented as part of the anti-war effort throughout the country.
- Sparked by recent investigations and media revelations of, among others, the My Lai massacre and the CIA's rogue Phoenix Program, the event is designed specifically to illustrate the point of the event's organizers and participants that, first, military atrocities were far more common than is widely known, and second, the atrocities were largely caused, not by rogue soldiers going berserk, but directly because of US policies and policymakers. Says participant Donald Dzagulones, "We gathered not to sensationalize our service but to decry the travesty that was Lt. William Calley's trial for the My Lai massacre. The US had established the principle of culpability with the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis. Following those principles, we held that if Calley were responsible, so were his superiors up the chain of command -- even to the president. The causes of My Lai and the brutality of the Vietnam War were rooted in the policies of our government as executed by our military commanders."
- Credibility is a key issue. Author and conspiracy theorist Mark Lane is asked to leave the organizing committee after his own lack of reliability becomes an issue. The veterans have their records thoroughly checked by VVAW and Pentagon sources, and, whenever possible, their recollections are verified by other veterans and journalistic sources. Nixon official are also interested in trying to prove the lack of credibility of the participants, and senior White House aide Chuck Colson is assigned to the task. In a confidential "Plan to Counteract Viet Nam Veterans Against the War," Colson writes, "The men that participated in the pseudo-atrocity hearings in Detroit will be checked to ascertain if they are genuine combat veterans." At one point, the Nixon team suggests in a memo about VVAW, "several of their regional coordinators are former Kennedy supporters." VVAW was also targeted by the FBI for observation as a possible dissident organization. Although the efforts to verify the credentials and validity of the veterans are strenuous, at least one person, VVAW official and event co-organizer Al Hubbard, lied about being an officer when in reality he was an E-5 sergeant. NBC's Frank Jordan recalls, "He was convinced no one would listen to a black man who was also an enlisted man." Though Hubbard does not testify at Winter Soldier, detractors frequently raise Hubbard's falsification to generate doubt about the validity of the entire proceedings. Fritz Efaw, a chapter representative of VVAW, later says, "The claims that the WSI [Winter Soldier Investigation] hearings contained falsified testimony from men who were not veterans is an old one, and it's definitely false. The testimony was startling even at the time it took place: startling to the general public, startling to the military and the Nixon administration, and startling to those who participated because each of them knew a piece of the story, but the hearings brought a great many of them together for the first time and provided a venue in which they could be heard for the first time. It's hardly surprising that those on the other side would set out almost immediately to discredit them."
- The three-day panel discussions include the first revelations of the toxicity and health effects of Agent Orange to the public. Other incidents never before revealed to the general public include the 1969 incursion into Laos, known as "Operation Dewey Canyon" (refuting claims just days before by the Pentagon denying any such incursions).
- Though the mainstream media roundly ignores the entire event (except for a single brief story in the New York Times and a short appearance on CBS News), it has a powerful impact on antiwar demonstrators around the country, and on members of Congress. Senator Mark Hatfield, a liberal Republican who has already come out against the war, is incensed by the material covered in the proceedings, both over the list of atrocities one after another and of what Hatfield called the instiutional racism and racial hatred instilled in American soldiers for their enemy. On April 5, Hatfield says, "A recurrent theme running throughout the testimony is that of institutionalized racist attitudes of the military in their training of the men who are sent to Vietnam -- training which has indoctrinated them to think of all Vietnamese as 'gooks' and subhuman. ...Further, the thrust of the allegations made in the 3-day testimony is that such actions were the consequence of reasonable and known policy adopted by our military commanders and that the knowledge of incidents resulting from these policies was widely shared. ...Several of the allegations made in this testimony would place the United States in violation of the Geneva Convention and other international agreements relating to the conduct of war which have been ratified by our Government." Hatfield succeeds in having the entire transcript of the WSI testimony and panel proceedings placed into the Congressional Record, and asks, fruitlessly, for Congress to investigate the allegations made during the proceedings.
- Two veteran participants, Steve Pipkin and Scott Camil, will state for the first time during the 2004 presidential campaign that John Kerry, then the Democratic candidate for president, and the VVAW pressured them to testify to atrocities that they did not witness. Both Pipkin and Camil's more recent statements conflict dramatically with the testimony they made in 1971, and in Camil's case, he has claimed military rank and honors that he never earned. Ever since the proceedings, individuals and groups, most recently the anti-Kerry organization Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have worked to discredit the participants and their stories. As of yet, no allegations of fraudulent participants or fraudulent testimony have stood up to scrutiny.
- The name itself, "Winter Soldier," is derived from Thomas Paine's first Crisis paper written in December 1776, where he wrote regarding the soldiers deserting Washington's army in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, because of the bitter cold: "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." By implication, the soldiers who stayed and fought were "winter soldiers." Decorated veteran and future Democratic senator John Kerry will tell a Senate hearing, "We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out." (Wikipedia note: while this Wikipedia article is detailed and well sourced, it is the product of significant controversy among contributors, and is subject to further modification by those with political agendas on either side of the debate and those attempting to keep the article neutral)
- March 29: Lieutenant William Calley is found guilty of the murder of 22 My Lai civilians. He is sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor, however, the sentence is later reduced to 20 years, then 10 years. Out of 16 military personnel charged with offenses concerning the My Lai massacre, only five were actually court-martialed, and only Calley was ever found guilty. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- April 1: Congress passes a two-year extension of the military draft and abolishes exemptions for college freshmen. (Ian Williams)
- April 19: "Vietnam Veterans Against the War" begins a week of nationwide protests. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- April 22: John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who now represents Vietnam Veterans Against the War, testifies in front of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. He says, in part, "I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit -- the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do. They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country. We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough. [In 2004, Republicans will twist Kerry's words in this speech to allege that he, himself, levels accusations that he saw, and even participated in, war atrocities. A cursory reading of his statement shows this to be false.] We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....
- "In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart. We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from. We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.
- "We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism -- and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong. We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum. We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals. We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against 'oriental human beings.' We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others
- "Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese. Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, 'the first President to lose a war.' We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? ....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country -- the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.
- "An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, 'My God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people,' and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end. We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....
- "We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission -- to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say 'Vietnam' and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning." (History News Network, WinterSoldier/Truthout [full transcript, including question-and-answer session])
- May 3 - 5: A mass arrest of 12,000 protesters occurs in Washington. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- June: The first KH-9 spy satellite is launched into orbit. This satellite system, and its descendant, the KH-11 Crystal, provide years of explicit, highly detailed information about the Soviet Union's military status as well as information about other countries. Much of the information about the KH-11 and its own descendants is still classified. (Philip Taubman)
- June: During a college commencement speech, Democratic senator Mike Mansfield labels the Vietnam war "a tragic mistake." (Vietnam War Timeline)
"Pentagon Papers" are published
- June 13: The New York Times begins publication of the "Pentagon Papers," a secret Defense Department archive of the paperwork involved in decisions made by previous White House administrations concerning Vietnam. Publication of the classified documents infuriates President Nixon. Nixon attempts to stop further publication of the Pentagon Papers through legal action against the Times in federal court. Five days later, the Washington Post begins its publication of the Pentagon Papers. The Times and Post now become involved in legal wrangling with the Nixon administration which soon winds up before the US Supreme Court. (D.J. Herda)
- June 13: The New York Times prints the first excerpts from the Defense Department documents known as "The Pentagon Papers," an archive of the paperwork involved in decisions made by previous White House administrations concerning Vietnam. The next day, after the Times prints a second excerpt, the US Attorney General, John Mitchell, sends a telegram at the behest of Richard Nixon demanding that the paper stop further publication of the excerpts based on the argument that disclosing the information would cause "irreparable injury to the defense interests of the United States." Mitchell also claims that the publication is in violation of laws against espionage. The claim that the Times is violating espionage laws is suspect at best, partially because there is no precedent for such a case. The Times "respectfully declines" to cease publication of articles based on the documents. On June 15, the paper publishes its third installment in the series. Nixon is furious, and demands an immediate court injunction to keep the paper from printing more excerpts. He then demands, "I want to know who is behind this and I want the most complete investigation that can be conducted.... I don't want excuses. I want results. I want it done, whatever the cost. " Henry Kissinger informs Nixon that he believes Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the documents to the Times, is a "fanatic" and a "drug abuser." Mitchell says that Ellsberg must be part of a communist "conspiracy" and suggests he be tried for treason. Nixon calls together a group of loyal White House aides, led by White House assistant Egil Krogh and lawyer David Young, to investigate Ellsberg's leak of classified documents. The group will become known as the "plumbers" for their task to "plug the leaks." Other undercover operators, including E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, are recruited by White House special counsel Charles Colson. The Plumbers break into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, hoping to find information on Ellsberg that might discredit him to the public; their search comes up dry. Later, the same unit will be caught breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate building in Washington, DC. Ellsberg's leak proves to Nixon's satisfaction that everyone opposed to the Vietnam War is a dangerous, potentially treasonous anti-American who must be stopped. Krogh sums up Nixon's thinking quite eloquently: "Anyone who opposes us, we'll destroy. As a matter of fact, anyone who doesn't support us, we'll destroy." (D.J. Herda, Vietnam War Timeline)
Pentagon Papers book cover
- Mid-June: American citizens and lawmakers are outraged by the information revealed in the publication of portions of the so-called Pentagon Papers. Democratic senator George McGovern, who was pushing legislation to withdraw all US troops from Vietnam by the end of 1971, says the documents tell a story of "almost incredible deception" of Congress and the American people by the White House; he goes on to say that he can't see how any senator can ever again permit the President to make any foreign policy decisions without first going through Congress. Senate Majority Leader Hugh Scott, a Republican, expresses concern over the leaking of the documents, but calls their contents "shocking. " Democratic House member Paul McCloskey says the papers show "the issue of truthfulness in government is a problem as serious as ending the war itself. " McCloskey complains that, according to the documents, the briefings he and other Congressional members had received regarding the war had been "deceptive...misleading...[and] incomplete...," often while Army officials who knew more of the truth stood silently by his side. "This deception is not a matter of protecting secret information from the enemy, " McCloskey complains, "the intention is to conceal information from the people of the United States as if we were the enemy." (D.J. Herda)
- June 15: The Justice Department files a motion with the US District Court in New York requesting a temporary restraining order and an injunction against the New York Times to prevent further publication of articles stemming from the Pentagon Papers. The case of New York Times Company v. United States begins. The government's argument is based on the assertion that the publication of the documents jeopardizes national security, makes it more difficult to prosecute the Vietnam War, and endangers US intelligence assets. The Times will base its arguments on the principles embodied in the First Amendment, as well as the argument that just because the government claims that some materials are legitimately classified as top secret doesn't make them worthy of keeping out of the public eye; the Times will argue that the government doesn't want to keep the papers secret to protect national security, but instead to protect itself from embarrassment and possible criminal charges. The court grants the temporary restraining order request, but refuses to order the Times to turn over the documents to the government. (D.J. Herda)
- June 16: The New York Times stops printing its articles based on the Pentagon Papers, obeying the court-ordered temporary restraining order issued at the request of the US government and prepares to defend itself in court. (D.J. Herda)
- June 17: A federal court refuses to order the New York Times to turn over its copy of the Pentagon Papers for government inspection, saying that it will not authorize a government fishing expedition into the files of any newspaper. (D.J. Herda)
- June 18: Hearings over the legality of publication of the Pentagon Papers begin in federal court, along with the publication of an article derived from the Papers in another newspaper, the Washington Post. (D.J. Herda)
- June 24: After a series of rulings and appeals that fail to remove the temporary restraining order against the New York Times, the newspaper files a request to have its case against the government heard in the US Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the government has filed charges against the Washington Post similar to those against the Times asking for the prevention of further publication of articles based on the Pentagon Papers. Fearing that the articles would soon begin appearing in newspapers all over the country, the government wins a Supreme Court ruling that, until the Court can hear the case, both the Times and the Post must cease all publication of articles based on the Papers. Other newspapers hold off publication of similar articles until the Court can rule. (D.J. Herda)
- June 26: Opening arguments in the Pentagon Papers case begin in the Supreme Court. The government argues that the publication of articles based on the documents constitutes a "grave and immediate danger" to US interests, and that the "integrity of the institution of the Presidency" must be protected. For the New York Times, the arguments are that, first, since it took days for the government to respond to the publication of the first articles, the documents must not be that sensitive; lower courts could not find a single sensitive document among the documents; the government had no right imposing restraints on a newspaper's First Amendment rights to publish in this situation; and that many times in recent history the Times and other news outlets had published "leaked" information, often information that was deliberately leaked by government sources. (D.J. Herda)
- June 28: The source of the Pentagon Papers leak, Daniel Ellsberg, surrenders to police. He will be is indicted for theft, conspiracy, and espionage. (Vietnam War Timeline, Watergate Time Line, Chronology of Watergate Crisis)
- June 30: In a 6-3 decision, the US Supreme Court refuses to order a permanent injunction against the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other news outlets from publishing articles derived from the Pentagon Papers. Three justices, William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, and Thurgood Marshall, insist that the government can never suppress the publication of information no matter what the threat to national security; the other three in the majority, Potter Stewart, Byron White, and William Brennan, use a more moderate "common sense" standard that says, though the government can suppress publication of sensitive information under circumstances of war or national emergency, this case did not meet the criteria for such suppression. Chief Justice Warren Burger is joined by Harry Blackmun and John Harlan in dissenting; they believe that the president has the unrestrained authority to prevent confidential materials affecting foreign policy from being published. The Times' lawyer says that the ruling will help ensure that a federal court will not issue a restraining order against a news outlet simply because the government is unhappy with the publication of a particular article. (D.J. Herda)
- In response to the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the principles of freedom of speech and expression over the government's right to secrecy, author D.J. Herda observes that not all governments show the same concerns: "Unfortunately, freedom of the press has not been high on every leader's list of democratic freedoms. During the late 1930s and 1940s, the idea of a democratic republic, very much like the one we have here in the United States, preventing the press from freely publishing information on the workings of the government, was unheard of. Yet during those ten years in history, that is exactly what happened. Led by a man who had been defeated for the office of president before finally filling that position in 1934, the government worked long and hard to conceal information from the press that would prove embarrassing or damaging to the government. In time the leader succeeded in turning the press into just one more arm of his administration. Soon the press was printing only the information that had first been cleared with the government, giving that government a free hand to run the country as it wished without the citizens learning of the corruption, vice, and hysteria that were slowly sweeping the government. By the time this man's administration had been forced from power, millions of people had died. Hundreds of thousands more had been left homeless. And one of the bloodiest eras in world history had come to a sad and bitter end. These events occurred in Nazi Germany. The leader was Adolf Hitler. And the world, some half a century later, is still struggling to recover. Some people say that such a tragedy could never happen in America. Others believe that one of the only things preventing this tragedy from happening in America is a free press." (D.J. Herda)
- July 1: The 26th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, allowing citizens as young as 18 to vote. The amendment, one of the quickest to be ratified in national history, is sparked by outcries over the fact that, while 18, 19, and 20-year olds are allowed to be drafted for military service, they cannot vote, and the 14th Amendment only certifies the ability of 21-year olds to vote in a roundabout fashion. (US Constitution Online)
- July 1: As recorded in his office, Nixon tells his aides Haldeman, Colson, and Ehrlichman, "I don't want that fellow [Daniel] Ellsberg to be brought up until after the election. I mean, just let -- convict the son of a b*tch in the press. That's the way it's done.... Nobody ever reads any of this in my biographies. Go back and read the chapter on the Hiss case in Six Crises and you'll see how it was done. It wasn't done waiting for the godd*mn courts or the attorney general or the FBI. ...Let me show you what happened [in the Hiss case].... I played it in the press like a mask. I leaked out the papers. I leaked everything. I mean, everything I could. I leaked out the testimony. I had Hiss convicted before he ever got to the grand jury." Nixon turns his attention back to Daniel Ellsburg: "I mean, we will leak -- we're going to leak out bits and pieces.... The conspiracy. All at once we find with regard to the conspiracy that's going to be leaked to columnists and we'll kill the sons of b*tches. This [NSC official] Cooke, I want to get him killed. Let him get in the papers and deny it." (Stanley Kutler/James Carville)
Nixon establishes US relations with China
- July 15: President Nixon announces he will visit Communist China in 1972, a major diplomatic breakthrough. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- July 17: The "Plumbers" unit, headed by Nixon aides John Ehrlichman and Charles Colson, already busy investigating Daniel Ellsberg, also attempts to "plug" various news leaks. Colson compiles an "enemies list" featuring the names of 200 prominent Americans considered to be anti-Nixon. On September 3 the unit will burglarize Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in a failed attempt to find incriminating or embarrassing information on Ellsberg. The burglary team is headed by former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, who uses his ties to the Cuban exile community in South Florida to recruit fellow Bay of Pigs veteran Bernard Barker; Barker recruits fellow exiles Eugenio Martinez and Felipe de Diego. Hunt recruits flamboyant lawyer G. Gordon Liddy, and the group breaks into the psychiatrist's offices, but finds nothing. (Vietnam War Timeline, Chronology of Watergate Crisis, David Fremon)
- August 2: The US admits there are some 30,000 CIA-sponsored irregulars operating in Laos. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- August 18: Australia and New Zealand announce the pending withdrawal of their troops from Vietnam. (Vietnam War Timeline)
- September 9-13: The Attica prison uprising occurs; New York state troopers kill 39 prisoners and wound 88 others. (Amy and David Goodman)
- October 9: Members of the US 1st Air Cavalry Division refuse an assignment to go out on patrol by expressing "a desire not to go." This is one in a series of American ground troops engaging in "combat refusal." (Vietnam War Timeline)
- December 1: Power shifts in Arab world cause Iraq to align itself more closely towards the Soviet Union. (MidEast Web)
- December 13: The Supreme Court hears opening arguments in the abortion case Roe v. Wade. The arguments move swiftly, with the defense, representing the state of Texas, undermining their case by admitting that Texas often allows abortions in apparent contravention of its own statutes. The seven justices (two new justices, Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist, are in the process of joining the Court) meet in conference over the next few days to discuss the case. It doesn't take long for the battle lines to be drawn. Chief Justice Burger is unclear as to exactly why he opposes the legality of abortions, but tends to come down on the side of states' rights, though he feels that Texas's anti-abortion laws may be too vague to be constitutional; Justice Byron White is adamant in his insistence that the laws are valid as they stand. On the other hand, Justices William Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, and William Brennan stand firmly on the side of a woman's right to choose an abortion. Justices Harry Blackmun and Potter Stewart, favor overturning some but not all of the Texas anti-abortion statutes. Burger, a political creature, apparently wishes to delay the court hearings in deference to Richard Nixon, who is strongly against abortions. He delays the case until the two new Nixon appointees, Powell and Rehnquist, can join the Court. Douglas threatens to go public with Burger's political machinations, but is dissuaded. The court decides to hold the case over for reargument. (D.J. Herda)
- December 26 - 30: The US heavily bombs military installations in North Vietnam, citing violations of the agreements surrounding the 1968 bombing halt. (Vietnam War Timeline)
