RAY LOCKER author of Nixon’s Gamble, joins S.T. Patrick to discuss the risk President Richard Nixon took in sacrificing transparency and unity for secrecy and potential success. The gamble, Locker writes, was “to do it all in secret before the weight of the secrets crushed him.” Locker addresses the reason for secrecy, changes in the national security apparatus, Nixon’s trusted team, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Dean, Alexander Haig, the Pentagon Papers, his thoughts on the Heidi Rikan call girl ring, and so much more.
Ray Locker is the Washington enterprise editor of USA TODAY. He works with reporters covering the Pentagon, health care, money in politics, veterans, and the Supreme Court. He is the author of Nixon’s Gamble, which was published in 2015, and the upcoming Haig’s Coup, which is due in fall 2018. He and his family live in Washington D.C.
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Ray Locker’s statement to the effect that the South Vietnamese army could not stand up to the NVA is provably false.
In the 1972 Easter Offensive, the South’s army defeated a numerically superior NVA force in the drawn-out battle at An Loc. Yes, U.S. planes aided the South. But by then, the NVA were using handheld, heat-seeking. ground-to-air missiles effectively against U.S. aircraft. The South’s stout army won the victory at An Loc, despite the facts that the South’s army was surrounded and was having to deal with fearsome NVA tanks.
The main reason the South fell in 1975, is that the U.S. congress, in the wake of Watergate, cut off all aid to the South, including spare parts for military aircraft.
Ray Locker does a great job on Watergate. He adheres to a conventional narrative on Viet Nam, however.