Dec 1971 - On a precarious precipice
An American typist who had spent some years in India, a muckraking high-flying reporter, a president who hated him to the core, a wily bureaucrat, a game of war being fought on two fronts, the baying press, an alarming prospect of WW III, and potential for a nuclear confrontation. These scenes are not a work of fiction or part of a well-structured novel, but real images from the last days of 1971. Would you like to know what this was all about? Read on…
Impeachment is a word on every lip these days after the
chaotic scenes at the US Capitol two weeks ago and we will probably see the
twice impeached Trump on trial soon. But this one goes back to the Nixon years.
Most people would quickly connect the title to the infamous relationship
between Nixon and Indira Gandhi during the 1971 Pakistan conflict and the the liberation of Bangladesh. Yes, in a way it is indeed correct since Nixon and
Kissinger, two individuals who misread so much and supported the wrong side, who
said all the wrong things and earned the displeasure of a multitude of the
world’s population did have a huge tiff going with India’s Indira Gandhi. The
battle of nerves between the nervy POTUS and the firm Indian PM almost resulted
in WWIII, ending with Indira emerging triumphant, and pushing Nixon down the
slippery slope, towards impeachment.
Some years ago, I wrote about the key role played by Dr
Crane in helping India along with her freedom movement with a fortuitous leak
about Churchill’s duplicity, to the newspapers. This one dates to the 70’s and only
some parts are well known in India. What led to the press disclosures on the
inner workings behind the whole sordid affair and how it all snowballed to almost
starting a nuclear conflict, is not well understood.
I first read about the Watergate scandal detailing the Nixon
misadventures through the reporting of the brilliant journalists Woodward and
Bernstein, many years ago. Like all others, I read about the Presidents fall
from grace, but until recently I did not really know about the connections
between India, the journalist Jack Anderson and Nixon, how it resulted in
Anderson going after Nixon, how the White House even decided to do away with
the pesky reporter and how the whole sordid mess escalated to Watergate, in
Nixon getting the senate boot and getting eventually impeached. What did India
have to do with it? It is truly fascinating a story, something which happened
in my school days.
It tail-ends my previous story, where I introduced Dr Crane,
India’s friend. In that I also told you about the larger-than-life journalist
Drew Pearson, who used journalism as a weapon and wrote all kinds of inside
stories connected to the swamp – a.k.a. Washington DC. Well by 1971, Drew had passed
on and the hard-nosed journalist and one-time Mormon missionary Jack Anderson,
the muckraker had taken over the column from his onetime protégé. Writing for the Merry-go-Round column, the
hardnosed reporter whose glacial relationship with Nixon dated back many years,
decided to release a series of exposés. The subject of the exposé not only ridiculed
the presidential handling of a critical issue in the world stage but potentially
threatened the chances of Nixon’s reelection in 1972. It also impacted the
competence, position, and standing which the popular and powerful Henry Kissinger,
then Nixon’s National security advisor, had on the world stage.
A little background will explain the reasons for the stormy
relationship between Anderson and Nixon. Anderson, of Mormon background, started
out as a journalist and after serving in various capacities in WW II, joining
Drew Pearson’s Merry-Go-Round and a radio show (which had an astounding 40
million combined readerships) team in 1947. A keen investigative reporter,
Anderson provided many exposés working for and with Drew Pearson, exposés
concerning the Mafia, McCarthy, the ITT scandal concerning Nixon, the Hiss spy
case, the Parnell Thomas scandal to name a few. Anderson’s reporting of a
corruption case involving Nixon almost derailed his election chances in 1952.
The ‘Dump Nixon’ move was next, in 1956, but Nixon outwitted him by getting the
journalist implicated in a bugging case.
Drew Pearson passed away, in 1969 and Anderson took over the
Merry-go-round, renaming it Washington-merry-go-round. Not only did he go after
Republicans, but also democrats and for a while even Martin Luther King. He was
the ultimate Washington snoop and he had this habit of reporting first and if
it was wrong, he would apologize. He was the biggest weapon for any politician and
also, their worst fear. Now, if you wanted a pen picture of the man, read on - Hair
combed downwards to cover a receding hairline, baggy trousers, an ample
waistline, terrible ties, colorful socks, a toothpick in his mouth, sometimes
holding a hairclip to pick his ears, mostly socks off at the office and picking his
toes. If you thought this boastful specimen of a human was a pushover, you’d be
mistaken for there was nobody more tenacious and nosier.
He did well with his acquisition and over 300 newspapers
were his clients. Exposés and scoops continued, as corruption turned waters
murky in Washington. It was, as Trump termed it recently, becoming a putrid
swamp. As the Vietnam war under Nixon’s tenure dragged on, Anderson continued
his revelations, the excesses and the administration’s duplicity in it. The
white house was alarmed that Anderson had access to so much confidential
information. Nixon decided to start surveillance on Anderson and started
investigating leaks because by then, Anderson’s column appeared in about 1,000
newspapers with 45 million daily readers, at a time when few other reporters
actively sought to uncover government wrongdoing.
A little introduction to Henry Kissinger is needed to
complete the background. A naturalized American citizen, the German origin
Kissinger was the National security advisor in the Nixon administration. While
many books have been written about the man and his accomplishments, what we will
observe now is a brief period where we see him at his worst, especially his
role concerning India, in 1971.
I know you are impatient, and I am still meandering through
the protagonist Anderson and the adversary Nixon. What on earth had India to do
with either of them?
The connections start with a Yeoman (clerical staff) in the
US Navy named Charles E. Radford. The 27-year-old Chuck Radford before his
arrival in Washington had been stationed in New Delhi since 1967 and was then
handpicked by Admiral Robinson as his Private Secretary. Radford, a lanky,
mustachioed, devout Mormon half American Indian, married Toni, the daughter of
a US navy officer in New Delhi, and had already fathered two children while in India.
Soon he was Washington bound, with his young family, to become an associate of
Robinson. Interestingly, the Radford’s had come across Jack Anderson’s parents
in Delhi and had hit it off as they were also fellow Mormons, in fact, Radford
helped them get visas to travel from Delhi to Ethiopia. Little did Radford know
that this chance meeting in Delhi would turn his whole world topsy turvy, some
years later. In the spring of 1971, Admiral Welander replaced Robinson who was
killed in a helicopter crash, as Radford’s boss.
While Nixon was getting the brickbats for prolonging the
Vietnam war, his involvement with the Pakistani carnage in East Pakistan –
Bangladesh today, was not known until Anderson got wind of it. Anderson’s role
was instrumental in exposing the involvement of Nixon and Kissinger in the war
politics played by Yahya Khan, the further involvement on India in support of
the West Bengali’s, the support for India from Russia, and the sly game which
China wanted to play or almost got involved with. This unnecessary involvement,
due to prodding from Kissinger and Nixon almost brought the world to the brink
of a nuclear war.
The Awami league headed by Mujibur Rahman won 1970
elections and was in control of East Pakistan, much to the disgust of the West
Pakistani’s. Yahya launched Operation searchlight with his ruthless dictum –
kill 3 ½ million of ‘em Bengalis and the rest will eat out of our hands’. In
the resulting genocide, millions perished and others (close to 10 million) took
to flight, towards the Indian border. India supported the resistance movement
and the Mukti Bahni, a story which I will get so soon while talking about the RAW
agent who spearheaded it. Martial law, systemic rapes were part of the genocide
unleashed by the Pakistani army on hapless Bangla civilians.
Nixon and Kissinger threw their lot with the dictator while
badmouthing Indira Gandhi in the vilest terms. While the personal equations
were key to a lot of friction, the geopolitical set up being planned and
nurtured by Nixon and Kissinger was the primary reason. Nixon planned to
restart friendly relations with China using Pakistan’s help in order to form a
counter to Russia. That said, Nixon supported Pakistan and their dastardly
actions in the public sphere, and simply refused to condemn the atrocities being
wrought in East Bengal. Yahya then ramped up the rhetoric accusing India of
direct support and launched a propaganda campaign ‘crush India’. Indira Gandhi
who wanted to stop the genocide quickly was informed by Gen Manekshaw that it
was not yet opportune due to various tactical and other reasons. As the water
was getting to a boil, Russia warned Yahya not to go to war. China was expected
to support Pakistan and one reason why Manekshaw delayed his counter was to
stop the Chinese with the snow and ice-clad Himalayas in December. War was
inevitable. Armies were amassed at borders; the Taj Mahal was camouflaged.
In Dec 1971, Pakistan preemptively attacked Indian airbases,
the world quickly condemning the attack, while Nixon demurred stating staunch
neutrality and non-involvement. However, that was only in public, for in secret
he decided to help Yahya, in spite of a congressional ban on any form of aid to
these warring countries. Iran, Jordan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia were contacted
and asked to stealthily assist Pakistan by transferring fighter planes and
armaments. Indian forces countered the
attack with massive well-coordinated air, sea, and land assaults on Pakistan
from all fronts. The Pak navy was decimated and soon enough the submarine Ghazi
was sunk, a story I had written about some years ago.
After the initial attack, the Pak air force went into a defensive mode. Despite state department warnings and objections, Nixon issued more directives to support Pakistan. In fact, following up the indirect actions, Nixon ordered the seventh fleet of 8 warships, a hundred bombers, many thousand marines, and nuclear weapons, into the Bay of Bengal, ostensibly to rescue a handful of Americans in East Bengal (actually they had been evacuated by Dec 12th). He wanted to throw a royal scare onto Indira Gandhi, to needle the Soviets who were planning to support India, and to show them all that he was the tough guy.
But well, not everybody would take it lying and there was one
brave bureaucrat who decided to do something about it, just like Dr Crane did
some decades ago. He decided to contact the one person who could blow the lid
off the cauldron, and well, that person would be Jack Anderson. Meeting him surreptitiously
at a drugstore, he outlined the situation and Nixon’s deceit, and Kissinger’s
support for it. But Anderson was wary, he had no intention in jumping into the fire
without good reason and insisted on proof which he could stand by, if
questioned.
Reluctantly, the source, in a second clandestine meeting
handed over many envelopes filled with incriminating material of the actions by
Nixon and his cohorts and Andersson started publishing details of the
machinations. The rest of the press and the public were not too interested, but
the White House was and they decided to deny it all. That was when Anderson
decided to make the next article sensational, using quotes from official
records and informing about the illicit movement of planes and arms to
Pakistan, just when Nixon launched the ‘Tilt to Pakistan’ posture. He then
informed the world about the tilt and the movements of the task force 74 – the seventh
fleet and the dangerous turn such a move could take, of WW III. White House
tapes later revealed the conversations – 12 Jordanian planes have moved to
Pakistan; the Saudis and Turks were willing to pitch in. Nixon asking if the
Chinese could move some forces or threaten to move some forces and later on
asking if the French could sell some planes to the Paks? As China continued
their military preparations (53rd and 157th infantry) at
the Himalayas to carry out ‘urgent missions’, Russia contemplated a preemptive
strike at Sinkiang to wipe out some of Chinas missile launchers
The Soviets who had signed a treaty with India, sent out
convoys and a submarine armed with cruise missiles, sailing towards the Bay of
Bengal while Kissinger was worried that Russia might move against China.
Andersson upped the ante and laid the blame directly on the administration and
finally, the rest of the press took notice, seeing the wealth of sources and
papers Anderson was starting to flaunt. He even gave retyped copies of some of
his source material to the NY times which started to excerpt these.
The only way now for the administration was to attack the
messenger and so a hunt was launched to find out the leaker was, in the name of
national security. As that was going on, the national press joined in and soon
they were up in arms against Nixon, even in late-night comedy shows. Kissinger
and Nixon could no longer hide and the 1972 presidential campaign was in a quandary.
George Bush senior, then the UN ambassador naively called on Andersson to name
his source while national security advisor Kissinger’s stock and standing
nosedived as his rants and moods swung back and forth, reaching breaking
points.
The war was going on between Pakistan and India and it was
then that Nixon, in order to support the flagging Kissinger, agreed to the planting
of a story in journalist Alsop’s column stating that India was out to crush and
dismember Pakistan, the information apparently supplied by a leading Indian politician and a bitter enemy of Indira Gandhi (S Hersh) or a source close to the PMO (Anderson). Years later, it became clear that the
information supplied was completely wrong. But at that time, it was fortunately disregarded
and nobody really took notice.
Anderson’s fearless exposure of the scandalous manipulations by Nixon and Kissinger and his reporting of American policy decision-making during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 resulted in his receiving the Pulitzer Prize in 1972. Does the story end there? Of course not. In fact, the whole story can be read in much greater detail in many of the referenced books, and the twists and turns it took, the threats, counter threats, intrigues and the missives launched at and by Nixon, the machinations of Kissinger can all be fodder for many months of concentrated reading.
But how did Anderson get the material? Who leaked it? Well, the
White House plumbers were tasked to get to the bottom of it. Very soon they
found that one of the memos was made only in 5 copies and with that, they zeroed
in on the suspect, the very person we had read about a few paragraphs back –
Navy Yeoman typist stenographer Charles Radford. Investigators turned over
diplomatic files and human resource material to discover that Radford had
served in India, and was friendly with Anderson’s parents. In fact, he even had
dinner with the Anderson’s at a Chinese restaurant, the day prior to the first exposé!
Radford was according to them, preferential to India and was aghast when the
seventh fleet was rushed to its waters! He had to act… or so they thought. His then
superior Admiral Welander decided to question him and Radford replied to him with
a straight face that he had NOT passed on any papers to Anderson. But Nixon
hearing about Radford’s involvement, judged – Oh, he is pro-Indian? Well then,
he did it!!
Welander reported to his superiors and Radford was picked up
and interrogated, subjected to many polygraph tests, cajoled, abused, threatened
and cross-examined by experts. Radford though distraught and nervous to the
extreme, simply maintained his story, not wilting. After the initial
interrogation, Radford contacted Anderson, for support and Anderson coached him
on not confessing and getting into further problems. The investigators
continued to work on Radford, trying to get him to confess that he had passed
on the papers to Anderson, while Nixon tried to cast Anderson and Radford as
deviate gay lovers, a ridiculous attempt considering that between them the
Anderson and Radford had fathered 17 children! Extensive investigations led
nowhere, but naturally!
And finally, the dam collapsed, when Radford revealed that
he had been making copies of the papers for the Pentagon Joint Chief of staff,
who distrusted Nixon and Kissinger. In fact, for the ‘backchannel’, he had
copied well over 5,000 classified documents, once even on Airforce One,
directly swiping papers from Kissinger’s briefcase. It came to light that he was working for Admiral Thomas Moorer, with Admiral Welander’s help! Now
Nixon was in a right royal mess, what could he do? There was no way this could
be made public! If they went after Radford, Anderson would tell the public that
the copying was done at the behest of the Pentagon - A catch 22 situation. All
Nixon and Kissinger could do was fret and fume admitting to themselves that all
this was a result of their own stupid actions.
Admiral Welander, Radford’s boss, stated then that Radford
should be put in jail for his actions, Admiral Moorer, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, said that Admiral Welander should be put in jail. Kissinger
wanted Moorer in jail, but well, nobody went to jail. “Our best interests are
served by not, you know, raising holy hell,” concluded President Nixon. And so,
Nixon dropped the whole affair and had Radford transferred far away to the west
coast, in Oregon with a huge threat of criminal charges hovering over him. The
Moorer Radford affair was successfully covered up. But then again, our question
still remains unanswered, how did the papers get to Anderson? Did Radford do it?
Anderson continued to taunt and expose Nixon and his team at
every given moment. Nixon countered by sending the CIA to spy on him, again
flaunting rules which prohibited them from domestic spying. Anderson’s phones
were tapped, but pretty soon Anderson caught up to the game and together with
his children decided to make a mockery of the CIA snoops. He and his girls
caught them in the act and wrote about their antics. Months later, a plan was discussed
- to assassinate Anderson, the pesky journalist, with a massive drug dose. WH
plumbers Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy discussed it at length, but it did not
get off the ground, and the two agents were eventually diverted to do something
else, bug and burglarize the Democratic headquarters at Watergate. And well,
you know the rest of the story of the Watergate scandal, how it all came to
light and how Nixon was impeached.
But again, who gave the papers to Anderson? When Radford was
being implicated, Anderson mentioned that he always got his inputs from well-placed individuals like Admirals and Generals, not lowly stenographers. Was he
trying to protect his friend? It could be so, for as soon as Radford reached
Oregon, he called Andersons’s parents and himself, talking in basic code and
requested some monetary support, which Anderson worked out in a very roundabout
way, by buying some land owned by the Radford’s in a remote California location,
through a friend, for $9,000. Anderson had the last laugh, for neither did
Nixon, nor all his men, find out about this. It also appears that Radford was
in touch with the Andersons and he had called Anderson to congratulate the
latter for the Pulitzer Prize.
But did Radford give Anderson the papers? Or was their
relationship nothing more than a friendly family relationship? Anderson did
admit feeling guilty about Radford getting caught due to his publishing those
papers, but he never admitted that he got them from the Yeoman. Though many
still feel Radford was the man who gave the envelopes to Anderson, nothing has ever
been proven and Anderson rightly protected his source, to the very end. The
Senate hearings absolved the Pentagon, concluding that Radford might have
perjured and agreed that Anderson did wrong in publishing over 70 classified
documents.
Nixon got impeached for Watergate and resigned in 1974,
Kissinger’s reputation got soiled, maintaining that Anderson had no idea about
the significance behind the WH actions, Moorer continued in his post till he
retired in 1974, Welander retired in 1975, Hunt and Liddy the plumbers became
famous with their memoirs, and as for Radford, he continued to work for the
Navy.
George Bush, UN ambassador, who became the president later made
an interesting aside to Kissinger – He said, ‘I want a transfer when this (Indo
Pak War 1971) is over, I want a nice quiet place like Rwanda’!
Anderson, ah! That fearless newshound continued to do what
he always did, taking on the high and mighty, and passed away in 2005. All
through his career, he angered many a powerful man, and in most cases, came out
the winner. His strategy was simple, as the NY Times stated in its 1972
headline - The Anderson strategy: We hit you‐pow! Then you issue a denial, and‐bam!
‐we really let you have it…
References
The Anderson Papers – Vinod Gupta
Nixon, Indira and India – Kalyani Shankar
Poisoning the Press – Mark Feldstein
The Blood Telegram - Gary J Bass
The Silent Coup – Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin
White House Years – Henry Kissinger
The Price of Power - Kissinger in the Nixon White House - Seymour M. Hersh
Research papers by Christopher Van Hollen, Geoffrey Warner, Ankit Agarwal, Shankar Jha
Crane, The Phillips affair and India
Pics – Wikimedia, Jack holding the Indo-Pak papers (AP
Photo/HWG, Thanks to Megan Day). Nixon with Indira – Nixonfoundation.org..
