Two items I would like to share. I heard on Thom Hartmann.

[Stuart G]

1. Hartmann played a recently released tape from the Johnson Library. Hartmann said that Johnson wanted to end the war by the middle 1968, (he was getting sick over it) and had discovered that Nixon's people had contacted South Viet Nam to "make a better deal" and keep the peace talks from starting.
(Johnson wanted to start talks before election )..Evidently (according to the tape) Johnson had discovered that Nixon had interfered and kept the talks from starting...Nixon interfered with Johnson's personal diplomacy..
Johnson is heard saying to Dirkson (republican seantor) that the CIA had discoverd this..and it was "treason". It is believed if talks had started in October 1968, Humphrey would have easily won, ended the war much ealier and saved thousands of lives on both sides.

2. Ronald Reagan Hartman said, a couple of weeks ago, intervened in the Hostage Crisis. Regan sent his people to talk with the hostage takers of our people in Iran..Same sort of thing. Reagan's people talked hostage takers into waiting till Regan was elected
to release the hostages. If the hostages had been released 3 months earlier, Carter may have won. If I recall, the hostages were indeed released when Regan was sworn in as President.

I believe Hartman is reliable..Do you?
.. That these events happened.. The story about President Johnson story was released relatively recently, and Hartmann claimed that the Johnson Library didn't know it was there..

If so, what kind of scum are we really dealing with? Keep the deaths in a war going for political gain, or keep our people in hostage for political gain...Who are they?
Surely they would tank the economy, for political gain, if they are capable of the above.

[rfranklin]

1. The question is why the Dems keep letting them get away with it...

Clinton letting Bush Sr. skate on the IranContra crimes was what gave us Junior and the mess we are in right now.

[cleanhippie]

13. And you win the million dollar prize!

[Syrinx]

2. Reagan/Bush famous October Surprise

[Mimosa]

3. Iffy.

I have read a whole lot about the period and events. I do not believe it happened. If anybody was hostage to the CIA tricks dept. it was Nixon. LBJ was a collaborator. he was committed to the war. However he did recognize it was a swamp, a quagmire.

[checks-n-balances]

15. Just wondering what was your source of info - where did you read that?

Sounds more like Repub Rewrite of history...

[Mimosa]

16. Definitely NOT.

There are dozens of books, including mainstream histories,which detail Nixon's fear of CIA and the exposure of 'the whole Bay of Pigs thing'. If you recall, in the Nixon Watergate tapes, several times Nixon talked about E, Howard Hunt and the bay of Pigs thing being 'opened up.' Nixon probably had nothing to do with the mechanics of JFK's assassination. But no president has wanted the truth about the right wing coup which enabled the Vietnam war to be revealed to the American public. In Nixon's day it was too close, so close that the revelation of a beloved President having been murdered by government insiders would have overturned the country.

Try reading the article and some of the books mentioned:

http://mtracy9.tripod.com/kennedy.html


Also, http://www.amazon.com/JFK-Unspeakable-Why-Died-Matters/dp/1439193886/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312443362&sr=8-1>JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W Douglass is a must read which benefits from RECENT FOI releases.. It is anything but right wing.

[BeHereNow]

4. Is this a trick question Stuart?

Of course it happened, and Hartmann is reliable, and
yes they would tank the economy and eat their children, and yours, if
they stood to gain politically.
BHN

[Stuart G]

17. No,this is not a trick question..

These people, I realized would do/ have done anything for power.
I guess when I heard the Johnson story on Hartmann, it became clearer than ever who we are dealing with, although, I knew on one level.
Does Obama know?
So they tank the economy, which everyone knows is fragile.
Tens of thousands of jobs are lost because they purposely do this or that.
..It is about an election 14 and a half months away, not helping this nation and its people..(except for the very rich)
They don't give a damn.
.Their hate for us, is only exceeded by their greed for power

[BeHereNow]

20. agree 100% n/t

bhn

[elleng]

Can't say 'incredible' scum, because it is credible;

They were then and are now capable of ANYTHING, to achieve and retain POWER.

Thanks for this (I guess.)

[The Traveler]

5. Reagan's people

DEFINITELY interfered with official diplomacy with Iran, for political motives. This eventually evolved into the whole Iran/Contra mess. It was never established that Reagan knew these things were being done in his name, as I recall.

I can well believe this, and while I would want confirmation of this tale ... it fits the pattern. Republicans above the law, acting with impunity to gather power regardless of the costs to the nation, or innocent American citizens.


Like the dude, I abide. Ya'll just let me know when we're (as a people) ready to do something about this mess. I think that time is rushing towards us ...

Trav

[Bonobo]

7. +1

[notadmblnd]

6. I recommed you read the "Know Your BFEE" series posted here by DU-er Octafish

You will learn soooo much!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/searchresults.html?q=know+your+bfee&sitesearch=democraticunderground.com&sa=Search&domains=democraticunderground.com&client=pub-7805397860504090&forid=1&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&cof=GALT%3A%23008000%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3BVLC%3A663399%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3A336699%3BALC%3A0000FF%3BLC%3A0000FF%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A0000FF%3BGIMP%3A0000FF%3BFORID%3A11&hl=en

[Maccagirl]

8. I also read a book that Pam Am 103 (exploded over Lockerbie

Scotland ) had 5 CIA agents on board with maps of where American hostages were being held in Beirut. Evidence suggests that they were killed by Syrian, rather than Libyan terrorists but the CIA at Langley didn't know that there was a deal with Syria regarding drug-smuggling via Germany that was ran by then VP Bush from the WH.

[RainDog]

9. Robert Parry covered Reagan's October Surprise for Frontline on PBS

Yes, it happened. Reagan was a scum-sucking pig who did enormous harm to this nation in all areas - his presidency was the worst thing that happened to this nation until we invaded Iraq.

The claims about Nixon were also made by conservatives.

I would find it less credible to think that he didn't do this since he had Kissinger meeting with the Vietnamese before he was ever elected.

[H2O Man]

10. Both are well-known.

[Ruby the Liberal]

11. Can't speak to the first

But he is right about the second. Hostages were released upon Reagan's inauguration.

It was the genesis of the October Surprise.

[southernyankeebelle]

12. I dunno about Nixon. I wouldn't be surprised. How do you think he got the

Name Tricky Dick? Now it is funny I always thought Reagan had something to do with the release when in was sworn into office. It didn't make sense. It is sad that President Carter was a good man and a honorable man. I don't think if he knew what was going on he would have put up with it. Reagan wasn't a good president. He was a nice man but a losey president.

[indurancevile]

18. he wasn't even a nice man. he was an informer, stool pigeon, slimebag.

[a la izquierda]

14. The October Surprise is pretty common knowledge...

or at least accepted knowledge, among Latin American historians. We're all familiar with what Reagan ended up doing in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and the October Surprise comes up in analyses from time to time.

Considering what Reagan did in Central America, I'm not surprised that slimy fucker gained by going around Carter.

[Waiting For Everyman]

19. Both of those things were reported at the time.

Of course the "Silent Majority" types denied it, as they do now (the Repubs then too). Everybody with a lick of sense knew better (just as a sizable percentage of people also knew the Gulf of Tonkin was phoney before being told so years later).

BTW, my FIL was a high-level Army officer with military intelligence based in Paris (after the coup) following a career in Viet Nam as a close diplomatic aide to Diem. He was part of Nixon's "back channel" in Paris, supposedly negotiating the end of the war, only it was just a stall.

He privately affirmed both stories you cited (among other things) in a casual but lengthy late-night conversation in the late 1980s.

He was also a close aide to Churchill in his underground command center during WW2. He was an interesting man. The classic Cold War "spook".