This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

Continuing conversation with Jeff Warro, the book is The Vietnam War, a military history.

March 31st, 1968. Leonard Johnson, surprising even his closest counselors, taking to the television

to announce that he's stopping the bombing of Vietnam, seeking a peace table in Paris

or wherever, and that he will not be a candidate for the presidency in 1968.

He is a casualty of the tat and of poor choices these last years with Westmoreland.

Richard Nixon wins the election.

However, there's a detail here that's important. Jeff, a very good evening

again to you, and the detail was not revealed until the 21st century. I believe it was found

by an author doing a biography of Richard Nixon, that prior to the success of the Nixon campaign over Hubert Humphrey,

the vice president who ran on the Democratic ticket,

Mr. Nixon had been in conversation with Anna Chanel,

using her as a conduit to President 2 of Vietnam, South Vietnam.

And what was the purpose of those conversations, Jeff?

Yeah, well, Nixon was deeply concerned that, you know,

he'd been ahead of the polls against Hubert Humphrey for all of the 1968 campaign.

But then once Johnson announces the bombing halt in October of 1968 on the eve of the

elections in November, suddenly Humphrey starts climbing in the polls.

And Nixon had been exploring this ways to derail these peace talks, which might result in

what he called a November surprise with, I'm forgetting this big bounce from a Johnson peace deal,

and then, and then surpassing Nixon in the polls at the last minute. So he'd been, he'd been

looking for ways to do this, and he was lucky because there was a Republican that

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