Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate

On the 40th anniversary of the infamous Watergate break-in, questions remain over former President Nixon’s motives in recent American political history, but Hughes, a researcher at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center Presidential Recordings Program, provides essential answers with key hours of declassified White House tapes in this book of startling revelations. Hughes goes back to the Johnson and Nixon presidencies, to the Chennault Affair, a now-obscure Oval Office crisis that nevertheless had great political consequences. While the 1968 contentious presidential campaign between Nixon and Vice President Hubert Humphrey was in full swing, Johnson tried to fashion a bombing halt with Hanoi as a lure to the Paris peace talks, but Nixon conspired to sabotage the push to end the Vietnam conflict through a series of back-channel ruses and schemes. Hughes shows how Anna Chennault, Nixon’s leading female fundraiser, acted as a conduit between Nixon and Saigon to derail the talks, setting up her boss to win the election, settle scores on the Pentagon Papers fiasco, and launch sinister counter-measures against the Democrats like the Watergate burglary. Through its foremost practitioners in Johnson and Nixon, Hughes reveals the realities of American politics as blood sport. (July 29)