CREATING `OCTOBER SURPRISE' NOT A NEW VENTURE IN POLITICS

The "October Surprise" is the agonizing nightmare that sometimes haunts a presidential campaign. The party out of power fears that the incumbent will use the levers of government to pull off a stunning last-minute political coup.

Professor Gary Sick of Columbia University, a former Ford and Carter Administration national security staffer, alleges that the 1980 Reagan campaign thwarted an "October Surprise" of an election-eve release of the 52 hostages held in Iran which might have catapulted Jimmy Carter to a re-election victory.

The Sick charges are distinctly in the unproven category and were weakened by the inclusion of a patently false allegation that George Bush, then the vice presidential nominee, went to Paris to discuss the deal.

But there was another presidential campaign the 1968 Nixon-Humphrey race where outside intervention did work to forestall an "October Surprise." On this one, the facts are not in doubt.

The United States and the North Vietnamese commenced public peace talks in Paris in May 1968. The negotiations were getting nowhere. The North Vietnamese were successfully infiltrating their men and material into South Vietnam despite heavy U.S. bombing. Nonetheless, candidate Richard Nixon and his advisers were extremely nervous that President Lyndon Johnson would make a breakthrough of some sort in Paris sufficient to shift the campaign momentum to Hubert Humphrey. Indeed, just such a breakthrough was in the making in October. In return for a bombing halt of the North, Hanoi would change its policy and sit at the conference table with the "puppet" South Vietnamese government of Nguyen Van Thieu. In the context of 1968, this would indeed be an "October Surprise."

Nixon states in his memoirs, "RN," that, "This came as no real surprise to me. I had known that plans were being made for such an action ... I had learned of the plan through a highly unusual channel ... Henry Kissinger." Kissinger was a Nelson Rockefeller protege determined to be National Security Advisor in the next administration regardless of who won. He was serving as a consultant to the Johnson administration at the Paris talks and leaking all he knew to the Nixon team. Richard Allen, whose name also pops up prominently in the Gary Sick allegations, was Kissinger's contact person within the Nixon camp. Allen says, "Kissinger had proven his mettle by tipping us. It took some balls to give us those tips. ... It was a pretty dangerous thing for him to be screwing around with the national security."

Enter Anna Chennault, Chinese-born widow of World War II hero General Claire Chennault. She was a close friend of President Thieu and regular messenger between Thieu and John Mitchell, Nixon's campaign manager. Based on the Kissinger leaks, Mrs. Chennault advised Thieu of what was about to occur in the Paris talks. She implored Thieu not to sign on to the deal, but rather to await the arrival of a more cordial Nixon presidency.

On November 2, two days after the deal was completed in Paris, and just three days before the election, President Thieu balked. He concurred with Mrs. Chennault and let the clock run out on the Johnson administration. The "October Surprise" was aborted.