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New Releases Show How Vietnam Weighed on Nixon
Defense secretary urges against plan that would become 'Christmas bombing'
By Nick McMaster
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Posted Dec 2, 08 4:25 PM CST
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(Newser)
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Newly declassified documents and tapes from the Nixon era show how conflicted the administration was over public dissatisfaction with the war in Vietnam, the AP reports. One October 1969 memo from Defense Secretary Melvin Laird advises the president against adopting a proposal for a massive assault on North Vietnam, noting “seemingly rising levels of discontent in the United States.”
"We must,” Laird writes, “act in a fashion which will maintain the support of the American people." Though Nixon turned down the Joint Chiefs’ proposal, he would later undertake similar action in the 1972 “Christmas Bombing” of Hanoi.