RICHARD NIXON 1972 The Foundation of Peace (Part 24) End Game (part 3) Operation Linebacker Two

The Richard Nixon Experience

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President Theiu of South Vietnam kept stalling and not agreeing with one proposal after another. After the election, it became clear to North Vietnam that the leverage may be about to turn in their favor as it became clear that even though President Richard Nixon had been overwhelmingly re-elected an antiwar congress had also been elected in the United States. Now all they needed to do was stall until January 1973 and they could force a better deal or even just continue their efforts with no deal at all. We had yet another stalemate in the Vietnam War.
Richard Nixon decided it was time to take as drastic an action as he had taken in his time in office to force the war to an end. What became more interesting was that the Chinese, once an enormous worry for both the Johnson and Nixon administrations, were putting pressure on the North Vietnamese to end the war. All the intelligence pointed to that and it freed Richard Nixon to make a major offensive in an effort to break the stalemate.
In this episode we listen as Nixon discusses his next moves with General Alexander Haig and then has a long wide ranging discussions of the situation with Dr. Henry Kissinger before the decision to pull the trigger on a massive bombing of the North Vietnam, including encroaching on Hanoi is decided. It would be known as the Christmas Bombing, or Operation Linebacker 2.
You will get to hear a series of calls from Kissinger telling the President that the raids have begun and what damage has been done and what damage we have sustained. To keep the mission simple we use B-52's for three days to bombard the North Vietnamese and then keep the mission going for 10 days. It will change the direction of the war. Here it will all go down in real time as we listen in.