Wired magazine reveals that Richard Nixon really did have a Secret Plan to Bring Peace to Vietnam .

On the morning of October 27, 1969, a squadron of 18 B-52s — massive bombers with eight turbo engines and 185-foot wingspans — began racing from the western US toward the eastern border of the Soviet Union. The pilots flew for 18 hours without rest, hurtling toward their targets at more than 500 miles per hour. Each plane was loaded with nuclear weapons hundreds of times more powerful than the ones that had obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The secret Nixon/Kissinger plan, codenamed Giant Lance, was to convince the Soviets that Nixon was a madman who would start a nuclear war if they didn't give in to him on Vietnam. This must have been one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time.