Tricky Dicky and the madman theory

1969 Unbeknown at the time to USA citizens, under Richard Nixon their country embarked on a nuclear-armed military operation codenamed Operation Giant Lance. Nixon ordered a worldwide nuclear alert – one of the largest secret military operations in US history, and not discovered until 1983. Giant Lance was an airborne alert to bluff the leaders of the USSR into thinking the United States was getting ready for a nuclear attack. The operation was kept secret not only from the people's Congress, but even from some of the senior military officers charged with implementing it.

''I want the North Vietnamese to believe," Nixon said to White House Chief of Staff, HR Haldeman, in a tape released in later years, ''that I've reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry, and he has his hand on the nuclear button, and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."

"I call it the madman theory, Bob," Nixon said ...

Categories: war, military, usa, ussr, nuclear, disinfo, disinformation