The Canuck letter was a letter to the editor of the Manchester Union Leader, published February 24, 1972, two weeks before the New Hampshire primary of the 1972 United States presidential election. It implied that Senator Edmund Muskie, a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, held prejudice against "Canucks", Americans of French-Canadian descent.
The letter's immediate effect was to compel the candidate to give a speech in front of the newspaper's offices, subsequently known as "the crying speech".[a] The letter's indirect effect was to contribute to the demise of Muskie's candidacy.
In October 1972, FBI investigators asserted that the Canuck letter was part of the dirty tricks campaign against Democrats orchestrated by the Committee for the Re-Election of the President.[2] The letter was a successful attempt at sabotage, reportedly masterminded by Donald Segretti and written by Ken W. Clawson.[3][4] Authorship of the letter is covered at length in the 1974 book All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and its 1976 film adaptation.
- ^ Bernstein, Carl; Woodward, Bob (October 10, 1972). "FBI files tie bugging to Nixon re-election effort". Battle Creek Enquirer. Battle Creek, Michigan. Gannett News Service. p. 1. Retrieved December 25, 2024 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ Woodward, Bob; Bernstein, Carl (October 10, 1972). "FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats". Washington Post. Retrieved September 27, 2009.
- ^ Bernstein, Carl; Woodward, Bob (2005). All the President's Men. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-89441-2.
- ^ Bernstein, Carl; Woodward, Bob (October 10, 1972). "FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 14, 2014.
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