CNN Sends Apology to Nixon’s Family

The family of Richard Nixon said it received an apology from CNN for linking the late president to a now-retracted report that the U.S. military killed American defectors during the Vietnam War by using sarin nerve gas. In the letter, CNN Chairman and Chief Executive Tom Johnson noted that CNN broadcast a “NewsStand” segment “which said that the use of sarin gas on an ‘Operation Tailwind’ mission in Laos in 1970 ‘would have to come from the Nixon White House.’ ” CNN and Time retracted the report after an internal investigation concluded the June 7 broadcast could not be supported. “President Nixon was directly implicated in it, and that was a concern,” a spokeswoman for the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation said.