Fatal Politics

Sargent Shriver Dies; Kennedy Brother-in-Law Saw Nixon's Vietnam Settlement as 'Surrender'

2011-01-19T01:04:00.001-05:00

Sargent Shriver's life is being celebrated for his civil rights record, his founding leadership of the Peace Corps, and even for his family's work on Alzheimer's, but I doubt that a single obituary or appreciation will mention stand he took in the final days of his fated 1972 vice presidential campaign. It was bold, lonely (not even shared by his presidential nominee) and right.
The Nixon White House caused an international sensation less than two weeks before Election Day when National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger announced before the television cameras that "peace is at hand" in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger had, in fact, reached a settlement with the Communist government of North Vietnam, but it was not peace, as they all realized. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, whose government more than 50,000 American soldiers had died defending, realized that Nixon's settlement terms would destroy the South. Privately, as Nixon's White House tapes have since revealed, the President and the national security adviser acknowledged it, too. (Listen to Nixon and Kissinger discuss the matter here.)
The first national security study Nixon ordered on taking office in 1969 was a complete review of Vietnam. The results, compiled in a classified document known as National Security Study Memorandum 1, revealed that all of the defense, diplomatic and intelligence agencies that took part in the study believed that South Vietnam would never be able to survive without major U.S. ground forces--even *after* Nixon completed his ambitious "Vietnamization" program of expanding, training and modernizing the South's military. Nixon's choice: keep U.S. soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam for the foreseeable future, or withdraw and let the Communist North take over the entire country. Neither choice was politically acceptable, so Nixon publicly pretended the dilemma didn't exist.
He told America that he would withdraw U.S. forces only when the South was capable of surviving without them, but he realized that day would never come. Periodically during his first term he would go on television and announce that Vietnamization was working well enough for him to bring some troops home, but not all, not yet. In fact, he had privately decided that he would bring the last American soldiers home around the next presidential election. By early 1971, he had decided that it could be a little bit before or after Election Day, as long as he could avoid a pre-election Communist victory.
During the first four years of Nixon's term more than 20,000 American soldiers (and countless more Vietnamese, North and South) died while the President awaited the politically correct time to pull out.
During that time, Sen. George S. McGovern, D-South Dakota, led an unsuccessful fight in Congress to force the President to withdraw faster than suited his political convenience. Nixon beat back attempts to set an "end date" in 1970 and 1971 by saying McGovern's legislation would lead to Communist victory, and denying that his own strategy would do the same, only with many more casualties.
At the same time, Nixon had Kissinger negotiate a "decent interval" exit strategy with the Communists. At his first secret meeting with Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai, Kissinger told North Vietnam's second largest supplier of aid that if the South waited a while after Nixon withdraw the last American troops before it took over the South, Nixon would not intervene. (Check out the documentation here & here.)
In other words, North Vietnam accepted Nixon's settlement before Election Day 1972 because it realized, like Nixon and Kissinger, that the settlement would lead to a Communist victory. For the same reason, South Vietnam rejected the deal.
On paper, the settlement called for a reconciliation commission with Communist and anti-Communist members to work on setting up elections in South Vietnam, but the commission was designed to deadlock. Nixon realized that the two sides would ultimately fight it out, but hoped that the South would last long enough so its final defeat was its fault, not his. In the most recent released batch of Nixon tapes, you can hear Nixon and Kissinger discuss the best time--in terms of American politics--for the South to fall (after the 1974 midterm elections in the spring of 1975--exactly when it did.)
On the Democratic ticket, only Sargent Shriver, the vice presidential candidate, criticized the deal for what it was. "If this is peace with honor," Shriver said on Oct. 31, 1972, "I'd like to know what surrender is. . . . I don't see the difference between what [Nixon and Kissinger] got and what we used to call surrender."
At the top of the ticket, however, presidential nominee McGovern claimed that Nixon had "closed the door to peace once again" by refusing to sign the deal before Election Day. The deal was nothing like peace, so refusing to sign it didn't close any door to peace. It just gave Nixon more time to find a way to force President Thieu to accept the terms that would destroy South Vietnam.
McGovern, like so many liberals, overestimated Nixon. They thought he was really determined to prevent Communist victory in Vietnam. He was only determined to prevent Democratic victory in America.

Allen J. Matusow, Historian of Insight

2011-01-10T16:04:00.000-05:00

From Allen J. Matusow, Nixon's Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars & Votes:

The zigs and zags of policy gave the appearance of ideological confusion. Politics provided the coherence, and because politics was the point, Nixon cared more about the symbolism of his program--how it played in Peoria . . .

Have truer words ever been written about Richard Nixon and his presidency? And they're just as true of Nixon's foreign policy.

Nixon on the Politically Correct Time for Communist Victory in Vietnam

2010-12-09T20:01:00.000-05:00

You can listen to President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger mull over the best time--politically--for North Vietnam to conquer the South on a March 16, 1973, tape, one of the 265 hours of White House tapes released by the Nixon Library today.

Just as Nixon timed his withdrawal of troops from Vietnam to the 1972 presidential election (because a pre-election collapse of the South would have mean the collapse of his hopes for a second term) he also hoped that his fraudulent peace accord with the North would hold together for a year or two after his final troop withdrawal. (Watch Fatal Politics to hear, in their own words, how they pulled it off.)

The last American troops and POWs were still coming home from Vietnam in March 1973, when Nixon and Kissinger had this conversation. (It's number 881-2, 16 March 1973, 10:18 to 10:33 A.M., Oval Office, and you can download the whole thing here.)

President Nixon: In the meantime, what you and I’ve got to do, Henry, is just to work on these big games, the big plays, and that’s what we’re gonna do, by golly.

Kissinger: I agree.

President Nixon: And, essential to this is not to let them, if we possibly can, do us in on Vietnam this year. We can’t let that happen.

Kissinger: Mr. President--

President Nixon: And that’s why we’re gonna bomb the bejeezus out of them.

Kissinger: --after the summer of ’74, that’s a different story.

President Nixon: No, after the elections of ’74.

Kissinger: After the election of ’74. In fact, if it’s got to happen, the spring of ’75 is better than the spring of ’76.

President Nixon: That’s right.

Kissinger: But--

President Nixon: I don’t think it’s gonna happen. [Unclear] I’m just not all that--I’m just not all that--I don’t have all that lack of confidence in the South, I don’t have all that confidence in the North, Henry.

Kissinger: I don’t think it’s gonna happen, Mr. President, if we pull them up short a few times.

(Before they made the deal with Hanoi, Nixon and Kissinger had both privately said it would lead to a Communist takeover.)

The Communist takeover of South Vietnam did ultimately take place at the time when Nixon and Kissinger deemed best politically--in the spring of 1975.

New Nixon Tapes: Nixon on the Politics of a "Decent Interval"

2010-12-09T14:03:00.000-05:00

"The country would care if South Vietnam became Communist in a matter of six months. They will not give a damn if it's two years."--President Richard M. Nixon, March 17, 1973

First interesting find in the new batch of White House tapes released by the Nixon Library today. The quote above comes from a conversation (number 416-43 for those of you who want to listen) with Alexander M. Haig, the deputy national security adviser.
The quote once again underlies the domestic political imperative that shaped Nixon's "decent interval" exit strategy from Vietnam. As a longer, even more revealing conversation from August 1972 (which I transcribed and put in this educational video) indicates, Nixon feared that if South Vietnam collapsed too quickly after he withdrew the last American troops, he would be blamed for losing the war after prolonging it for four more years at the loss of 20,000 more American casualties. At that time National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger said, "We've got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which--after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater. If we settle it, say, this October, by January '74 no one will give a damn." Nixon clearly agreed.

They were both wrong.

New Nixon Tapes Are Online Now; 265 Hours From February & March of 1973

2010-12-09T11:26:00.002-05:00

The Nixon Library has released another 265 hours of White House tapes from February and March of 1973. Finding aids and sound files for February 1973 are here; March 1973, here. The library's release notes highlight topics discussed on the tapes, including Watergate, the Vietnam settlement and the release of POWs. The helpful staff has also put together a chronology of the period.

Nixon Library to Open 265 More Hours of Nixon Tapes

2010-12-09T08:43:00.000-05:00

The National Archives will make 265 hours of Nixon tapes public today, and I will continue my new tradition (begun last year) of blogging anything interesting I find.

These tapes come from February and March of 1973, during the (shaky) cease-fire period when the last American troops and prisoners of war were coming home from Vietnam. Read the Nixon Library announcement.

Diplomatic History Article Now Online Free

2010-12-07T23:33:00.002-05:00

The full text of my article in Diplomatic History, the journal of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, is now available to non-subscribers free. "Fatal Politics: Nixon's Political Timetable for Withdrawing From Vietnam," outlines how Richard Nixon prolonged the Vietnam War and faked peace for political gain.

Nixon Library to Open 265 More Hours of Nixon Tapes

2010-12-06T14:39:00.006-05:00

From the National Archives' announcement:

"National Archives Nixon Library to Release White House Tapes, Documents and Oral Histories

"Washington, D.C. . . On Thursday December 9, 2010, the National
Archives Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California, will open 265 hours
of White House Tapes, over 140,000 pages of presidential records and 75
hours of video oral histories. The materials will be available in the
Nixon Library research room at 9 a.m. PDT. The Library is located at
18001 Yorba Linda Blvd., Yorba Linda, CA, 92886. All of the White House
tapes and selected documents will be available online at: www.nixonlibrary.gov."

When Everything Goes Wrong

2010-10-24T15:37:00.006-04:00

I needed a shot of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall) for The Stealing of the Presidency 1968 and knew exactly what I wanted: this.
I didn't realize that it must have been taken at sunset (the sun rising behind the Washington Monument turns it into a silhouette) so I set the alarm clock to wake me an hour before dawn.
I awoke before the alarm and got out early--and noticed that the sky was quite, quite bright for pre-dawn. Daylight, one might call it.
I got in the car anyway. Found out Constitution Ave. was blocked. Marine Corps Marathon.
Undeterred, I stopped and asked one of Washington, DC's police officers if this meant I couldn't walk to the wall. She replied that I could, but that if I got in the way of the marathon I would be arrested.
Arrested. Huh.
So I parked a few blocks from Constitution and started walking.
The wrong way. Got some shots of the Washington Monument. The side the sun wasn't on.
Realizing by then that it was impossible to get the shot I wanted, I went to the wall anyway.
And saw this.

Robert Byrd: Iraq War Critic Raised Question About Vietnam

2010-06-28T08:24:00.000-04:00

Robert Byrd, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, has died, and his obituary rightly focuses on his criticism of the war in Iraq, but I'm impressed by a question he raised decades earlier about a different war.
Back then the President claimed that he had to keep U.S. soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam to win the release of American prisoners of war from Hanoi. Richard Nixon's secretly recorded White House tapes confirm that he knew this was not so--the only thing that would free the POWs was withdrawal of American ground forces.
Nixon maintained public support for the war by announcing a series of partial troop withdrawals throughout his first term, but leaving enough in Vietnam to ensure that it didn't collapse before Election Day 1972. His political decision to prolong the war had the consequence of prolonging the POWs' captivity.
Which brings us to Byrd's excellent question, raised with the President shortly before he went on television to announce another (partial) troop withdrawal: If Hanoi had not released our prisoners in, say, 1969, when Nixon had more than 500,000 U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, why would they do so in 1972, when the number of U.S. soldiers fell below 50,000? It was a question Nixon couldn't really answer, for reasons you'll see when you click the link below.

Diplomatic History Publishes Fatal Politics Article

2010-05-11T17:58:00.003-04:00

The latest issue of Diplomatic History includes something I wrote about Nixon's decision to time U.S. military withdrawal from Vietnam to his 1972 reelection campaign. The great thing about writing in a scholarly journal is the opportunity to go in greater depth with the evidence (and include stuff I couldn't squeeze into the videos). The article is called "Fatal Politics: Nixon's Political Timetable for Withdrawing from Vietnam." I hope you enjoy it and that you belong to an institution that has a subscription to Diplomatic History ("the only journal devoted to

U.S.

international history and foreign relations, broadly defined, including grand strategy, diplomacy, and issues involving gender, culture, ethnicity, and ideology") because otherwise you have to pay to read.

Nixon Didn't Have to Accept Congressional Cut-Off of U.S. Combat in Indochina

2010-04-29T16:56:00.007-04:00

On June 29, 1973, Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich., rose on the floor of the House of Representatives and made an announcement that left his colleagues stunned.
President Richard M. Nixon, Ford said, would sign a bill barring U.S. combat activities in all of Indochina--North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnamese battlefields. As Republican leader during the Vietnam War, Ford had led many successful floor fights against bills to end the U.S. combat role in it.
To his colleagues, Ford's announcement made no sense. Just that week, Nixon had vetoed a much weaker bill, one that would have stopped his bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North Vietnamese supply lines through Laos and Cambodia. Only two days before Ford's surprise announcement, the House had sustained the President's veto. Nixon had denounced the "Cambodia rider,"saying it would "cripple or destroy the chances for an effective negotiated settlement in Cambodia and the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops," as required by Nixon's January 1973 settlement, commonly called the Paris Peace Accords.
Now Ford was telling the House that Nixon would sign a bill that would not only bar him from sending U.S. bombers into Cambodia and Laos, but into North Vietnam and South Vietnamese battlefields as well. Antiwar lawmakers couldn't believe it. They knew they lacked the votes to force Nixon to accept a ban on combat in even part of Indochina; how could it be that he'd accept a ban for all of Indochina? "We did not have the votes to override the veto," said Rep. Paul W. Whitten, R-Ct. "We do not have them now."
The override attempt had been a key test of Nixon's political authority. At this point all U.S. ground forces had come home from Vietnam, so Nixon could no longer say the bombing was needed to protect them. Watergate had begun to erode the President's popularity. All he needed to sustain a veto, however, was one-third of the votes in either the Senate or the House. He had them in the House, as he'd proven that week when 173 representatives voted with him. (He needed, at most 145, and that was only if every member voted.) Supporters of the Cambodia and Laos bombing ban had mustered 241 votes, a simple majority, but 35 short of what they needed that day.
They had not picked up enough votes in the two days since, according to the New York Times: "there was a majority of votes in both Houses of Congress to attach amendments cutting off bombing funds to fiscal measures that the Government needs to continue operating into the new fiscal year starting Sunday. But Congress did not have the two-thirds vote necessary to override Presidential vetoes of these measures."

Haig's Version

General Alexander M. Haig, former deputy to National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger and then the White House chief of staff, provided a charming explanation for the great reversal in his memoirs. According to him, it was all a big misunderstanding.

In June 1973, while in San Clemente, as White House Chief of Staff, I was informed that the House of Represenatives was on the verge of passing a bill to call a total halt to all bombing by U.S. aircraft throughout Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by August 15. Passage of this bill would render worthless the promises Nixon had made in person and I had so often repeated to Thieu that the U.S would punish Hanoi for breaches of the cease-fire. The level of violence had greatly intensified in South Vietnam, and this measure was tantamount to giving Hanoi a green light to conquer the country.

I phoned the Republican leader of the House, Gerald Ford, and asked him in the name of the President to stop the bill. Ford, as honest as the day is long, made no effort to hide his surprise and dismay. He said he had been led to believe by Mel Laird that this bill was acceptable to the President. I told him that Laird's support was news to the President. Ford was stunned. If he reversed himself now, he might have to resign as Republican leader.

Despite my concern, Nixon could not bring himself to ask Ford to do that: “Al, I can’t afford to lose Jerry Ford.” The bill passed on June 29 and Nixon signed it into law three days later, thereby sealing the fate of [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu and his people . . . (Haig,Inner Circles, pp. 316-317.)

There are some holes in Haig's story.

Kissinger Telcons

Melvin R. Laird was no amateur at congressional relations or military issues. He'd represented Wisconsin as a Republican congressman for eight terms before becoming Nixon's secretary of defense. After Laird resigned as SECDEF in 1973, Nixon called him back to the White House to work on legislative issues.

Thanks to Kissinger's habit of having his secretaries transcribe his phone calls, it's clear neither Laird nor Ford made the mistake Haig laid on them.
On the eve of Ford's announcement, Kissinger was worried, because Sen. Jacob K. Javits, R-N.Y., had told him the Senate was considering an all-Indochina combat ban.
"I think we can save the House vote," Laird assured him. As Laird was flying out to the "Western White House" in San Clemente, Calif., Ford had called him twice on the plane. The House Republican leader was working on a compromise bill. It would allow Nixon to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia for six more weeks, until Aug. 15.
"And that's the way it should go to the Senate," Laird said, "and the House will stand firm on that, Henry."
"OK, then," Kissinger said, "I'll tell Javits we can't make any deals."
"Yeah, I think that you should stay with the House language. Don't give up any more. I think we've gone as far as we can."
"Mel, we've gone further than we can afford." (Kissinger had wanted to be able to continue the bombing until September.)
With Laird's assurances, Kissinger personally lobbied against an all-Indochina combat ban. "I don't normally call congressmen about congressional--about votes, in fact, I've never done it," Kissinger told House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Thomas E. Morgan, D-Pa., "but I think that vote on Cambodia today is really so important that I wanted you to have our view, which is that the House version [stopping the bombing of Cambodia] is one we can live with, but the Eagleton Amendment [banning U.S. bombing in North and South Vietnam as well] would be really serious." How serious? "If the Senate version were adopted," Kissinger, referring to the all-Indochina ban, told House Government Operations Committee Chairman Chester E. Holifield, D-Calif., "it might really destroy this."

More Holes

Another hole in Haig's story: House Appropriations Committee Chairman George H. Mahon, D-Tx., had spoken with Laird himself and didn't see how Ford could be right. "I certainly have received assurances from people such as Mel Laird," Mahon said, "although I have not talked to the President, but these assurances have been unequivocal."
The biggest hole in the Haig version is what Ford did to ease his colleagues' doubts: He left the floor of the House and spoke by phone with the President himself (not, as Haig had it, Haig). "Mr. Chairman, I just finished talking with the President himself for approximately 10 minutes," Ford said, "and he assured me personally that everything I said on the floor of the House is a commitment by him."
Nixon was at the Western White House in San Clemente, away from his taping system, so we can't listen to his phone call with Ford. But it was the President--not Laird, Ford or Kissinger--who decided to accept a bill that would bar him from bombing battlegrounds in the South and anywhere in the North.
Haig's story is cute. It excuses all parties involved (well, all the Republican ones at least) as victims of one big misunderstanding. But it doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

Nixon's Version

Afterward, Nixon claimed that he had no choice but to accept the all-Indochina ban on U.S. bombing, writing that "it was becoming clear that the antiwar majority in Congress would soon be able to impose its will." But seasoned vote-counters like Ford and Laird thought that the President didn't have to give up, that he could win this battle.
"When I protested to Nixon," Kissinger wrote, "he said it was too late; he had yielded to force majeure"--a greater force. Nixon had done something stranger. He'd yielded to a lesser force.
By doing so, he solved most of the political problems created by his"decent interval" exit strategy.

Political Benefits

Although Nixon had promised Saigon that he would respond to Communist violations of the Paris Accords with massive military retaliation against North Vietnam, it was a promise he couldn't keep--not without creating an impossible military, diplomatic and political dilemma for himself.
The dilemma would arise as soon as the North captured the crew members of any downed U.S. aircraft. Hanoi had had some practice shooting down American planes. During the 1972 Christmas bombing alone, it shot down 15 B-52s and captured 24 U.S. airmen.
That was before the Paris Accords, when Nixon still had something to trade for release of the POWs--namely, total U.S. withdrawal of all ground forces. As of June 1973, however, after all the ground forces had come home, Nixon no longer could trade the withdrawal of ground forces for the release of any new POWs. If he launched air strikes on the North and it captured any crew members, he would face a terrible choice--leave the POWs in North Vietnam or surrender. Not the disguised surrender of the "decent interval" deal, but public, open, undeniable surrender. Hanoi could simply refuse to release the prisoners unless Nixon called off all air strikes and/or cut off aid to Saigon. Either of those moves would amount to surrender. (Nixon had tried a rescue mission in his first term, but intelligence couldn't locate the prisoners.)
The new prisoners dilemma was only one of the factors keeping Nixon from using American airpower against North Vietnam. Air strikes in Vietnam would also violate the secret assurances he had given North Vietnam through Beijing and Moscow that if they waited a year or two after he withdrew the troops before conquering the South, he would not intervene. That was why Hanoi had signed the Paris Accords. (Nixon realized long before the deal was done that he would not be able to "enforce" the agreement. On April 30, 1972, he'd written to Kissinger that he wanted the bombing of North Vietnam to, "if possible, tip the balance in favor of the South Vietnamese for battles to come when we no longer will be able to help them with major air strikes.")
Once the Paris Accords were signed and American POWs and troops had come home in early 1973, Nixon needed an excuse not to use US airpower to punish the North for violating the agreement. (Sending in the bombers would, of course, violate Nixon's secret assurances to the Communists that he would not intervene if they took over the South following a "decent interval.") Kissinger had told the President that his own settlement terms would destroy South Vietnam, and Nixon himself had said, "I look at the tide of history out there, South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway. I'm just being perfectly candid." Their private view was that Saigon was going down, no matter how much they claimed in public that they had achieved "peace with honor."
A congressional ban on any US combat in Indochina gave him that excuse--and a politically convenient scapegoat to blame for the Communist takeover of the South.
The thought of letting Congress stop the bombing of Cambodia and then blaming it for whatever happened afterwards certainly occurred to Kissinger and Laird on June 26, 1973.

Kissinger: We really have to think about whether we are not better off saying these sons of bitches just are responsible for the defeat.

Laird: Politically, you'd be better off. I don't think Cambodia will ever work out very well anyway and I'd like to be able to blame these guys for doing it myself. But that's--Henry, you know I'm kind of a black character and I'd like to blame these guys for the incapability of getting these things resolved, because I think it's damn touch-and-go to get it resolved as far as Cambodia is concerned anyway.

Kissinger: Yeah.

Laird: I'd like to be able to blame them.

Kissinger: No, we'd have a pretty good chance [of a Cambodia settlement] because we got the Chinese involved and the Soviets, but I get your point.

If a congressional prohibition on U.S. bombing in Cambodia could be blamed for Communist victory in that country (as Laird suggested) then a congressional prohibition on U.S. bombing in all of Indochina could be blamed for Communist victory in Vietnam.
A few days after signing the bill, Nixon attacked Congress for passing it in a public letter to Democratic leaders decrying "the dangerous potential consequences of this measure," "the hazards that lie in the path chosen by Congress," and the "abandonment of a friend."
Democrats saw this as an attempt to dump in their laps anything bad that happened thereafter in Cambodia: "In Congressional quarters," the Timesreported, "Mr. Nixon's letter . . . was widely interpreted as an attempt to shift onto Congress the blame and the responsibility if Cambodia should fall to the Communists after the halt in the bombing."
What the Democrats didn't realize was that Nixon would later use the same bill to shift blame and responsibility onto them for the fall of Saigon as well.
Edited on Dec. 9, 2011.

Read Part One and Part Two of "Legends of the Fall of Saigon."

Learn more about the Presidential Recordings Program of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

All of the transcripts of Kissinger telephone conversations (the "Kissinger Telcons") quoted in this post are available online through the good offices of the Digital National Security Archive. The quotes from the House floor are in the June 29, 1973, Congressional Record.

Nixon Threatened U.S. Aid Cut-Off to Make South Vietnam Take 'Decent Interval' Deal

2010-04-29T10:47:00.011-04:00

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger boast in their respective memoirs that North Vietnam caved in and accepted a settlement on their terms in October of 1972.
Neither memoirist mentions their critical Oct. 6 Oval Office discussion of what these terms meant for South Vietnam--its destruction. The conversation took place at a pivotal moment--right after Kissinger's deputy Alexander Haig briefed South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu on the settlement terms (Oct. 4) and right before North Vietnam accepted them (Oct. 8).
"I read Haig's transcript," the national security adviser told the President, "and these guys are scared. And they're desperate. And they know what's coming."
South Vietnam's President had said that under Nixon's peace terms "sooner or later the government will crumble and Nguyen Van Thieu will have to commit suicide somewhere along the line." Haig said the briefing "became highly charged and emotional with Thieu in tears through much of its duration." Thieu was certain the settlement--which, among other things, would leave 145,000 North Vietnamese troops (Thieu said 300,000) in the South--meant defeat. It would, he told Haig, "culminate in the ultimate collapse of the government of South Vietnam."
Kissinger gave Nixon the gist: "Thieu says that, sure, these proposals keep him going, but somewhere down the road he'll have no choice except to commit suicide. And he's probably right. I mean, we--"
"Let's talk among ourselves," Nixon said.
"We have to be honest--"
"Right."
"--among ourselves." Kissinger thought the North, unlike the South, was ready to take the deal. "And I also think that Thieu is right, that our terms will eventually destroy him."
Hanoi accepted Nixon's settlement offer in October of 1972 for the same reason that Saigon rejected it that same month. Both sides realized that it would lead to a Communist military victory.
On Oct. 26, less than two weeks before Election Day, Kissinger stood before the TV cameras and said, "We believe peace is at hand." He knew it wasn't peace. It wasn't "at hand," either, since the South Vietnamese government was dead set against signing a deal that spelled its destruction. Still, Nixon won reelection with the biggest share of the popular vote a Republican had ever received, 60.7 percent.

Cut-Off Threat

After the election, to force the deal on Saigon, Nixon made the ultimate threat--a cutoff of American aid. "I have checked today as to the attitude of the leading Democrats and Republicans who support us in the Senate on Vietnam," Nixon wrote Kissinger in a Nov. 24, 1972, letter that the adviser made a point of reading out loud to South Vietnamese officials. "The result of this check indicates that they were not only unanimous but vehement in stating their conclusions that if Saigon is the only roadblock for reaching agreement on this basis they will personally lead the fight when the new Congress reconvenes on January 3 to cut off all military and economic assistance to Saigon."
An American aid cutoff would have destroyed the South faster than Nixon's settlement. "Without U.S. aid, Saigon could not survive," Nixon told Nguyen Phu Duc, a Thieu aide, on Nov. 29. "Saigon had the option of saying it would not go along. The United States did not want that, but without U.S. funds, Saigon would be through." South Vietnam had depended on U.S. aid for all 18 years of its existence.
Kissinger went through the motions of present the South's demands to the North's negotiators. The South, of course, demanded a North Vietnamese military retreat. This was essential to Saigon's survival, but the combined might of its army and the greatest military in world history had been unable to achieve it on the battlefield, so the North, of course, refused. The Communists responded to the stepped up demands on the deal they thought was already done as any negotiators would. They ratcheted up their own demands. The "peace" Kissinger said was "at hand" right before the election receded from his fingers right after.

'Christmas Bombing'

This was the real reason for the "Christmas bombing" of December 1972, as Nixon explained to Haig on Dec. 13: "The President then went through a long exposition of the fact of how difficult this would be. The American people would not understand and the realities were that it was the U.S. and not Hanoi that was backing away from the agreement because we had, in effect, placed additional demands on them. He also added that the other culpable party was Saigon and not Hanoi . . ." But Nixon decided to send the B-52s in anyway and blamed North Vietnam's "unacceptable demands." At the same time he asked Haig to "prepare a menu of economic and military pressures which he could apply to Thieu," the real obstacle to completing the "decent interval" deal. "The President then stated that we are obviously very much in a corner," Haig cabled Kissinger. "It does not seem possible that he can break Thieu in the process of agreeing with Hanoi, for this will ultimately lose us the entire game, and if we are to do that, it would be preferable to continue our alliance with Thieu and have Congress do the evil deed."
Without the conservatives, however, the votes to do the "evil deed" of cutting off U.S. aid to Saigon just weren't there.
In their memoirs, Nixon and Kissinger make too much of a couple of January 1973 Democratic caucus votes. Nixon claims there was a real risk that "Congress would force us to accept defeat by agreeing to a withdrawal in exchange for our POWs." To force Nixon to make a withdrawal-for-POWs deal over his veto would have required a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress--67 votes in the full Senate and 290 in the full House of Representatives. The caucus votes fell far short of both marks. The House Democratic caucus mustered 154 votes to cut off military operations in Indochina "subject only to arrangements necessary to assure the safe withdrawal of American troops and to return the American prisoners of war." Two days later in the Senate Democratic Caucus, the same proposal got 36 votes. It was not even close. And the Democrats did not even discuss cutting off aid to Saigon.
Saigon understood American politics well enough to know that Nixon couldn't do the "evil deed" himself. "I don't think Saigon believes that the funds would be cut by the White House," South Vietnamese Ambassador Tran Kim Phuong told Kissinger on Jan. 3, 1973. The South continued to resist the deal, even after the North accepted Nixon's terms (again) in January 1973.

'Mr. Conservative'

Nixon searched for a way to give his threat credibility, and on January 18, 1973, he hit on it. The President would have an icon of the conservative political movement issue the threat. When Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona won the 1964 Republican presidential nomination, Nixon had introduced him to the convention with these words: "He is the man who earned and proudly carries the title of Mr. Conservative." Goldwater had been a strong supporter of Nixon on the war. If a hawk of his stature signaled that U.S. aid to Saigon was in jeopardy, Thieu would have to take the threat seriously.
"Would it be useful," Nixon asked Kissinger, "to have Goldwater take a little--say, 'Look, come along, boy?'"
"I think that might do some good," Kissinger said.
"I don't want one of the left to do it," Nixon said, "but somebody like Goldwater from the right should say it." As a backup, Nixon suggested Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John C. Stennis, a conservative Democrat from Mississippi.
The national security adviser would conceal his hand. "None of them would say they talked to me," Kissinger said.
"Yeah," Nixon said, "well, you can tell them it's very important that this not appear to come from the White House."
Goldwater agreed immediately to send Saigon the signal. "The difference is between them and us," Kissinger told Goldwater. "I mean, we shouldn't say that, but just for your information--cannot be explained to the American people."
"No," Goldwater said, "that's for sure."
Kissinger also asked Stennis to make a statement that "puts a little pressure on Thieu, so that he doesn't think that the conservative element in this country is behind him."
"Yes, sure," Stennis said. (All these Jan. 18, 1973, quotes come from the Kissinger "telcons," transcripts of the national security adviser's telephone conversations by his secretaries, and can be read in their entirety at the Digital National Security Archive, an invaluable scholarly resource.)
Goldwater and Stennis had their reputations on the line as well. When Saigon said Nixon's terms would destroy the government that over 58,000 Americans had died defending, it hurt lawmakers who had supported him on the war.
"Two of the Saigon government's strongest supporters in the United States Senate--Barry Goldwater and John C. Stennis," the New York Times reported the next day, "warned that South Vietnam would lose support in the United States for further economic and military assistance if President Nguyen Van Thieu blocked a settlement of the war."
"The South Vietnamese will need economic and military aid in the coming years," Goldwater said. "However, the South Vietnamese can jeopardize American support for such programs if they emerge now as the obstacle to peace in Southeast Asia." The Times noted that the statement made by Stennis was "markedly similar."
A letter from the White House to Saigon drove it home: "It is obvious that we face a situation of most extreme gravity when long-time friends of South Viet-Nam such as Senators Goldwater and Stennis, on whom we have relied for four years to carry our programs of assistance through Congress, make public declarations that a refusal by your Government of reasonable peace terms would make it impossible to continue aid."
Saigon was out of options. "For Nixon to use Goldwater in the letter as evidence that support against Thieu was building up in Congress had a strong influence on Thieu," wrote Nguyen Tien Hung, a special assistant to the South Vietnamese President. "He realized that even his staunchest supporters had deserted him."
Hours before Nixon was sworn in for the second term that his "decent interval" exit strategy had made possible, he told Kissinger, "I don't know whether the threat goes too far or not, but I'd do any damn thing, that is, or to cut off his head if necessary."
Thieu caved. To avoid the immediate destruction of his government, he took the deal that would destroy it in a couple of years.
Nixon structured his second inaugural address around the theme of peace. "The peace we seek in the world," he declared, "is not the flimsy peace which is merely an interlude between wars, but a peace which can endure for generations to come."

Read Part One of "Legends of the Fall of Saigon." And here's Part Three.

Learn more about the Presidential Recordings Program of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

For Journalists Covering the 35th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon

2010-04-28T16:07:00.011-04:00

Since partisans have turned the April 30, 1975, Communist takeover of South Vietnam into a political weapon, I’m going to spend the anniversary doing a little myth-busting.
Mel Laird, Richard Nixon’s defense secretary, started the modern myth that “Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975” in a 2005 article in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations.
Laird repeated it two years later in a Washington Post op-ed column in which he wrote “of 1975, when Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War three years after our combat troops had left."
It was the perfect political meme. It was simple and sound bite size. It built on a an existing template, the staple of Republican rhetoric charging that Democrats since Franklin D. Roosevelt have “snatched defeated from the jaws of victory.” And it was a seeming-fact that appeared relevant to a hot an ongoing debate—in this case, proposals to force President Bush to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq by setting a deadline in an appropriations bill.
It wasn't true, but that never stopped a meme.

$700 Million

A quick, easy check of an old newspaper database shows Laird's cutoff claim to be false. In the fiscal year running from July 1, 1974, to June 30, 1975, the congressional appropriation for military aid to South Vietnam was $700 million.
Nixon had requested $1.45 million. Congress cut his aid request, but never cut off aid.
Nixon's successor, President Gerald R. Ford, requested an additional $300 million for Saigon. Democrats saw it as an exercise in political blame-shifting. "The administration knows that the $300 million won't really do anything to prevent ultimate collapse in Vietnam," said Senator and future Vice President Walter F. Mondale, D-Mn., "and it is just trying to shift responsibility of its policy to Congress and the Democrats." Congress didn't approve the supplemental appropriation.

The Times reported that with National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry "Kissinger's personal prestige tied to peace in Vietnam, his aides have said that he will try to pin the blame for failure there on Congress." He tried to do just that at a March 26, 1975 news conference in which he framed the question facing Congress as "whether it will deliberately destroy an ally by withholding aid from it in its moment of extremity." Three years earlier, in October 1972, the month in which Kissinger publicly proclaimed that "peace is at hand," he privately told the President that their own settlement terms would destroy South Vietnam.
Congressional aid cuts didn't determine the war's final outcome. Saigon's fate was sealed long before, when Nixon forced it accept his settlement terms in January 1973.
As for Laird's "cut off" of funds for Saigon, it just never happened. Even Nixon acknowledged the 1975 military appropriation for Saigon of $700 million (on page 193 of No More Vietnams).
Neverthless, Laird wrote in Foreign Affairs of "the day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding." If only his editors had asked him what day that was exactly.
The Legend Gets Printed
The imaginary cutoff has made a real impact. In recent years, as the nation has debated withdrawing U.S. soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, the Cutoff That Never Happened was treated as fact by politician, pundit and press alike. Newt Gingrich: "In 1975, when there were no Americans left in Vietnam, the left wing of the Democratic Party killed the government of South Vietnam, cut off all of its funding, cut off all of its ammunition, and sent a signal to the world that the United States had abandoned its allies." Columnist Robert Novak: "Congress ended the Vietnam War with a Communist victory by cutting off funds to South Vietnam." U.S. News & World Report: "Historians say congressional Democrats dug themselves into a deep hole when they forced the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and cut off money to the Saigon government in its struggle against the Communists." (Which historians?)
Laird's cutoff myth just embellishes a bigger, more powerful myth begun by his old boss. Nixon claimed that as of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973, he had won the Vietnam War. But in the years to come, Nixon contended, Congress "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory."
I'm a journalist-turned-historian who has spent the past decade researching the White House tapes full-time for the Presidential Recordings Program of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. My focus has been the Nixon tapes. These tapes, along with declassified government documents, reveal how Nixon pursued a "decent interval" exit strategy designed to postpone, not prevent, Communist military victory.
Political Spin
Nixon crafted this secret strategy to foster the illusion that his public strategy of "Vietnamization and negotiation" worked. Vietnamization was supposed to train the South Vietnamese army to defend itself so the American army could come home; negotiations were supposed to produce a settlement guaranteeing the South's right to choose its own government by election. Nixon privately realized that Vietnamization and negotiation would not work as he said they would.
"South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway," he said in private, but never in public. To conceal Vietnamization's failure, Nixon timed the withdrawal of U.S. forces to the 1972 election. This way, California Governor Ronald Reagan could welcome delegates to the Republican National Convention in 1972 with the perfect words to launch the President's reelection campaign: "The last American combat team is on its way home from Vietnam."
To get the North Vietnamese to accept a settlement that, on paper, guaranteed the South's right to free elections, Nixon assured them, through the Soviet Union and China, that if they waited a "decent interval" of a year or two before taking over South Vietnam, he would not intervene. The Communists accepted Nixon's settlement terms because they knew that they didn't have to abide by them and the would get a clear shot at overthrowing the South Vietnamese government if they waited approximately 18 months after Nixon withdrew the last U.S. ground forces. Nixon wanted this "decent interval" to make it look like Saigon's fall wasn't his fault.
He started the myth that Congress lost the Vietnam War to conceal the fact that he lost it himself. (I've assembled much of the evidence of Nixon's "decent interval" exit strategy into a series of educational videos you can watch here. Links to articles I've written are here.)
Myth-Busting Time
I haven't written much about Nixon's stabbed-in-the-back myth blaming Congress for the Communist victory that was built into his own exit strategy, so I'll post more of my research over the next few days. I'm calling these posts "Legends of the Fall of Saigon." (Fans of Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt and Aiden Quinn understand.) There will be three, built around the "cutoff" theme.
1. Congress Never Cut Off Aid to South Vietnam (that's this post)
2. Nixon Threatened U.S. Aid Cut-Off to Make South Vietnam Take 'Decent Interval' Deal
3. Nixon Didn't Have to Accept Congressional Cut-Off of U.S. Combat in Indochina

Ted Kennedy Rightly Accused Nixon of Playing Fatal Politics With Vietnam War

2009-08-26T02:24:00.009-04:00

Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, was one of the few leading Democrats to call out Richard M. Nixon on the President's secret plan to time American withdrawal from Vietnam to his 1972 reelection campaign. Nixon's secret timetable and Kennedy's criticisms of it are explored in the first two episodes of my documentary miniseries:

Kennedy's criticism of Nixon's Vietnam strategy was one of the reasons he became a political bogeyman for the right, but in this case history has proved him right.

You can listen hear the entire phone call in which Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, D-Minnesota, the former Vice President of the United States, receives Nixon's thanks for attacking Kennedy and defending the President. It's part of a free, online exhibit that the Presidential Recordings Program of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia put together featuring White House tapes and transcripts about Ted Kennedy from the administrations of Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, and his older brother, John F. Kennedy.

Nixon's obsession with all things Kennedy played a role in the abuses of power that led to his downfall. Listen to him order the use of the Secret Service to spy on Kennedy and the IRS to investigate him and more.

If Only . . .

2009-07-06T23:02:00.003-04:00

If only Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser and Secretary of State, would follow Robert McNamara’s example late in life and confess that he deceived the American people about Vietnam.

Declassified Nixon tapes and documents prove that Kissinger realized that:

1. The Vietnamization training program would not make South Vietnam capable of defending itself, and

2. The “peace” terms he negotiated with North Vietnam would destroy South Vietnam following a “decent interval” of a year or two.

To conceal the failure of his strategy of “Vietnamization and negotiation, Nixon (at Kissinger’s urging) prolonged the war into the fourth year of his first term -- long enough to avoid a pre-election collapse of the South Vietnamese government that would show voters he had lost the war.

You can see and hear the evidence here:

fatalpolitics.blogspot.com/2009/06/watch-all-episodes-of-fatal-politics.html

The decision to prolong the war for political reasons cost thousands of American lives, and countless more Vietnamese lives as well. No one deserved to die for the sake of Richard Nixon’s or Henry Kissinger’s career.

There are worse things than coming clean too late, like Secretary McNamara, and one of them is to continue to profit from deception, like Secretary Kissinger.

ETA: I originally posted this in the New York Times comments section but the link no longer works, so I'm reposting it here.

ETA: New permanent link. Click "Recommend" if you do.

Christopher Hitchens on the Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and Everything

2009-06-29T13:37:00.004-04:00

In Slate today, Christopher Hitchens examines the latest Nixon tapes released by the Nixon Library on June 23:

Bad—and revealing—as all this petty filth and bigotry undoubtedly is, it has a tendency to pale when set against the sheer brutal cynicism of the conversations about Vietnam. Nixon liked to talk tough in two distinct but related ways about this subject. To Charles Colson—another pious Christian among his consiglieri—he is heard on the tapes boasting that his massive bombing of North Vietnamese civilians would be vindicated and that those who opposed it would be held "treasonable." (His famous confidential secretary, Rose Mary Woods, is on the tapes expressing the same hope for an arraignment of disloyal senators and congressmen.) But when talking to his most depraved of all associates, Henry Kissinger, he is full of cruelty and bluster when expressing his intention of applying pain to the South Vietnamese. If the South Vietnamese client president, Nguyen Van Thieu, would not agree to sign Nixon's version of what was later to be called "peace with honor," Nixon yelled on tape in 1973 that he would "cut off his head if necessary." Thus, a huge number of American lives and an incalculable number of Vietnamese ones were thrown away to end the war on more shameful terms than had been on offer in the fall of 1968 (when Nixon had been in league with Kissinger and Nguyen to sabotage and oppose those very terms; for more on this, see my book The Trial of Henry Kissinger).

New York Times Quote

2009-06-29T09:12:00.002-04:00

Francis X. Clines of the New York Times writes:

. . . the [Nixon] tapes serve up stark life-and-death history when the president is heard scheming to make his hollow Vietnam peace agreement dovetail with his “peace with honor” campaign promises. There’s the president obsessively focused on triumph over his critics while 20,000 more American troops die in Vietnam. “Put it to ’em,” orders the commander in chief, referring to his political opponents.

Perfect End to a Superfine Week

2009-06-26T19:58:00.005-04:00

Not talking about my Thai iced coffee-induced euphoria, my merry introduction to the wonders of Mandopop, or the opening of The Hurt Locker.

Talking about Fredrik Logevall. Specifically, the paper he gave (or delivered -- I've not quite figured out the right verb for talking about a paper) at the the roundtable discussion of The Politics of Troop Withdrawal this afternoon at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

I've been a Logevall fan since his first book, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam, which came out in 1999, the same year I wrote a Boston Globe Magazine cover story on the Diem coup, one of the many topics the book covers. What surprised me about Logevall's take on Kennedy and Vietnam was that it was (1) quite different from previous scholars' and (2) right. I had dived deep into then-recently declassified Kennedy White House tapes and documents and had found much to criticize in many accounts of the period, but then I found much to admire in Logevall's.

His topic today was the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The Nixon that Logevall described this afternoon -- considering his Vietnam options with the 1972 election in mind, resigned to a face-saving defeat -- is the Nixon I hear on the tapes and the Nixon America needs to know more about.

And now I see that he's preparing another Vietnam book. Good heavens, I'd better get to work on mine.

Radio New Zealand!

2009-06-25T21:14:00.002-04:00

Wow, I hate my voice. One of the reasons that the next episode of Fatal Politics is not a talky. At least not a me-talky. Nixon and Kissinger, you get to hear them.

Radio New Zealand interview!

Los Angeles Times on Nixon's Tapes and "Decent Interval" Exit From Vietnam

2009-06-24T07:40:00.004-04:00

Christopher Goffard r eports in the Los Angeles Times on Nixon's tapes and domestic political reasons for forcing South Vietnam to accept settlement terms that doomed it to a Communist takeover.

AFP Reports on Nixon Tapes, Vietnam, and "Decent Interval" Exit Strategy

2009-06-24T07:26:00.003-04:00

Shaun Tandon reports on the Nixon Tapes release and quotes some bald guy.

New York Times Quote, Wherefore Art Thou?

2009-06-24T00:33:00.010-04:00

Tuesday afternoon I was quoted on the New York Times web site regarding the "I'd . . . cut off his head if necessary" statement I transcribed from the Nixon tapes that were released yesterday.

“What this quote shows is that Nixon was willing to go to any length to force the president of South Vietnam to accept a so-called peace settlement that Nguyen Van Thieu, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Nixon all realized would lead to a Communist military victory,” Mr. Hughes said.

But now my beautiful, beautiful quote is gone -- gone -- vanished!

Here, I have a picture of it, before it was torn from its natural habitat.

It's there! I know it's small, but look closer. Look! Gaze upon its quotatiousness.

This week the S ociety for Historians of American Foreign Relations convenes and, gentle reader, I was so gonna rock my New York Times quote at SHAFR.

At last, I can hear myself saying, at last, some mainstream media recognition of Nixon's "decent interval" exit strategy.

It would've been swell.

Now I'm afraid I'm gonna get paraphrase-probed. It's gonna hurt.

Mr. Hughes said the conversation bolstered his view that Nixon, Thieu and Mr. Kissinger knew at the time that the cease-fire could not endure, and that it was not “peace with honor,” as Nixon described it, so much as a face-saving way for the United States to get out of the war. In 1975, North Vietnam would violate the cease-fire and conquer South Vietnam.

So, Ken, I can hear them all snidely sneering, wasn't it basically everyone's view that the ceasefire would not hold? And to say that Nixon did not achieve "peace with honor," well, isn't that a little vague? Like "a face-saving way for the United States to get out of the war"? I don't know, we were expecting something a little . . . more.

Come back, li'l quote! I love you!

The Night Lyndon Johnson Died

2009-06-23T18:43:00.002-04:00

The night before President Richard M. Nixon went on television to announce his settlement of the Vietnam War, he learned that his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, had died. He informed General Alexander M. Haig by phone. Transcript by the Presidential Recordings Program, thanks to Ben Breit.

The Politico on the Nixon Tapes

2009-06-23T17:54:00.002-04:00

Andy Glass reports on the Nixon Tapes release in The Politico.

“. . . A War . . . Which We Can No Longer Win . . .”

2009-06-23T15:53:00.002-04:00

“I knew domestically we’d wind up in something like this position sooner or later. Sooner or later the doves were going to come after us. And we would have to pay ransom to the Soviet Union and to Communist China just to keep a war going in Southeast Asia which we can no longer win because of the errors of your predecessor.” National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger, January 3, 1973.

I was asked today, did President Nixon know that the Communists were going to win in Vietnam?

Nixon realized that the Communists were going to win in Vietnam. “I look at the tide of history out there,” he said in the Oval Office, “South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway.”

Nixon publicly promised to end the war through Vietnamization or negotiation. Vietnamization was supposed to train and arm the South Vietnamese to defend themselves. Negotiation was supposed to produce a settlement with the North guaranteeing the South’s right to choose its government by election. Nixon pledged to withdraw American troops from Vietnam only when Vietnamization or negotiation succeeded -- when the South could defend and govern itself. This was his definition of “peace with honor” -- in public, that is.

Privately, however, Nixon realized that the South would not be able to defend and govern itself. His military and diplomatic decisions about the war were based on his recognition (1) that he would not be able to make the South capable of self-defense and self-government and (2) that if voters recognized what he recognized, they would reject him in the 1972 election as a President who lost a war.

Viewers of Fatal Politics have seen how this recognition shaped Nixon’s military and diplomatic decisions:

Military: More than a year in advance, Nixon decided to bring the troops home shortly before or after Election Day 1972. Stretching out troop withdrawals through his first term would keep enough American troops in Vietnam to enable Nixon to avoid a pre-election collapse of the South Vietnamese government, while also enabling him to announce a series of partial troop withdrawals throughout his first term, withdrawals he presented to the American people as “proof” that Vietnamization was working. But we heard Nixon on tape privately express his determination to bring the troops home whether South Vietnam can survive without them or not. His timetable for withdrawing American troops was based on politics.

Armed with the results of a secret opinion poll on Vietnam exit strategies, Nixon implemented the most popular one when it would do him the most good. The poll showed a large majority in favor of bombing and blockading the North for six months to get a compromise settlement, and Nixon announced the bombing and mining of the North six months, minus one day, before the 1972 election. The bombing and mining were as popular as the polling suggested, but did not bring us any closer to a South Vietnam that could defend and govern itself.

Diplomatic: Through triangular diplomacy with the Chinese and the Soviet Union, Nixon let the Communists know that if they overthrew the South Vietnamese government after he withdrew American troops, he would not intervene--provided they gave him a “decent interval” of about 18 months.

In other words, the Communists agreed, one month before the 1972 election, to a settlement that called for elections in the South, because Nixon had let them know through diplomatic channels that they didn’t have to abide by the settlement’s terms -- that they could overthrow the South Vietnamese government after a “decent interval,” or, in Kissinger’s words, “a year or two.”

I don’t say Nixon knew what was going to happen in Vietnam, because it’s impossible to know the future. But Nixon thought the Communists would win. He expected the Communists to win. He realized the Communists would win.

Nixon and Kissinger didn’t like talking about this, but sometimes they had to -- especially when it was time to make a decision. In August 1973, when the North made the crucial concession of allowing Thieu to stay in office at the time the settlement was signed. In October 1972, when the North was ready to settle on Nixon’s terms. And in January 1973, when Thieu’s continuing refusal to accept Nixon’s settlement terms gave the President a choice: get Thieu to agree to the settlement (Nixon called this Option One) or settle without him (Option Two).

I transcribed these January 3, 1973, passages from the latest Nixon tapes release this afternoon:

President Nixon: Let me put it this way, putting it quite candidly: Where frankly taking an Option One, which we know has many potential risks -- although not certainty -- risks of a collapse in South Vietnam, I think it’s better than going with Option Two, with all of the pressure [unclear] that we’ve had to go through. In other words, there comes a point in war when--not defeat, because that isn’t really what we’re talking about, fortunately, in a sense--but where an end that is not too satisfactory--in fact, that’s very unsatisfactory--is a hell of a lot better than the alternative. That’s really what we get down to.

Later in the conversation, Nixon continues:

President Nixon: The reason I paint that picture as dark as it is, is that I want us to see whatever the other picture is. Dark as it is, it may not be as dark as this one. You see? I know the darkness in the other picture. I know what Thieu [unclear] I know that we ought to improve on the agreement, because otherwise he can’t take it, it’ll make him collapse and so forth. In my view . . .

Kissinger: Well, you know, I was always

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Kissinger: I was always [unclear] Mr. President, for all the reasons you gave, for the reason that I knew domestically we’d wind up in something like this position sooner or later. Sooner or later the doves were going to come after us. And we would have to pay ransom to the Soviet Union and to Communist China just to keep a war going in Southeast Asia which we can no longer win because of the errors of your predecessor. And thirdly because Option One fulfills your May 8th [1972] objectives, it exceeds them, and if the guy collapses it’s his fault. So for all these reasons, I always thought--and the criminal thing he has done to us is--your authority. I mean, supposing we had brought this thing off at the end of October [1972] or, let’s say, the middle of November in order to separate it from the election.

President Nixon: Any time.

Kissinger: Your authority of having foreseen it--for anything, even in Southeast Asia, would be unchallenged today. That was my major--

President Nixon: In America or the world?

Kissinger: In America and the world. You would have shoved it down their throats and you would have made it.

President Nixon: That’s right.

Kissinger: And this son of a bitch has involved us in a totally [unclear], totally needless domestic brawl in a war which was well-designed. We achieved our objective, and suddenly he raised objections which he had never raised before.

Both these passages came from a tape released today, conversation 832-10, 3 January 1973, recorded at an unknown time between 4:19 and 5:05 PM in the Oval Office. The first one starts 17.5 minutes into 832-010b.flac. The second passage begins 20 minutes into the same tape. You can download a broadcast-quality sound file of this conversation by clicking on the link or by going here and, in the FLAC column, opening the chron5 folder, then the 197301 (January 1973) folder, and the tape 832 folder and right-clicking on 832-010b.flac.

New York Times on Tapes Release

2009-06-23T14:46:00.003-04:00

Charlie Savage reports on the Nixon tapes release in the New York Times.

"I'd . . . Cut Off His Head if Necessary"

2009-06-23T10:23:00.007-04:00

Here's an advantage White House tapes have over White House documents -- even documents as illuminating as the Kissinger Telcons: The tapes capture statements the documents don't.

On January 20, 1973, when Nixon and Kissinger were discussing the threat of a cutoff of U.S. aid to South Vietnam spearheaded by congressional conservatives -- a threat designed to force South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to accept Nixon and Kissinger's settlement terms, which all three realized would lead to a Communist military victory following a face-saving (for Nixon) "decent interval" -- Nixon said, "I don't know whether the threat goes too far or not, but I'd do any damn thing, that is, or to cut off his head if necessary."

Pretty important sentence, no? But whoever transcribed the conversation for Kissinger didn't include it. If you subscribe to the Digital National Security Archive, you can read the Telcon here. It's #KA09342.

From the tape that was released today, I added missing words and sentences to the transcript in the Telcon. (You can listen to the tape as you read the transcript, thanks to Presidential Recordings Program Chairman David Coleman. You can also download a broadcast-quality digital sound file of this conversation from the PRP by right-clicking on this link, 036-021.flac, and selecting "Download Linked File As" to save the file to your hard drive.)

I put the parts that the Telcon left out in italics. This passage starts about 3 minutes and 50 seconds into the tape:

Kissinger: But what we should put in the letter from you is that you must have an answer from him by noon tomorrow whether, even though you have instructed me to seek that change, he will concur in letting us initial it.

President Nixon: Letting us, or--

Kissinger: I mean--

President Nixon: Ha ha.

Kissinger: --he will concur in our initialing it.

President Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: Because if not, you will have to initial it unilaterally.

President Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: And you would then have to call the congressional leaders in Sunday night prior to my departure and inform them of that fact. I mean, you don’t have to do it, I just want to give him an explanation why he has to answer tomorrow.

President Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: That once the congressional leaders are informed, aid will become difficult even if he then still finally comes along.

President Nixon: Yeah, that the congressional leaders will, in my opinion, be adamant in saying that we should go unilaterally and not seek further cooperation.

Kissinger: My worry is that if we don’t give him an absolutely unshakable deadline, he will yield, I will now bet -- I would say the chances are 99 out of 100.

President Nixon: Which you--that, of course--it’s a question of which day. I guess we all thought he’d yield Tuesday, and now we thought he’d yield Saturday and now--

Kissinger: No, I never thought he’d yield Tuesday. I thought--

President Nixon: No, no, I mean some did. I mean--

Kissinger: I thought he’d yield either today or next Tuesday. And what we have to bring home to him is that Tuesday is too late.

President Nixon: That’s right. Yes.

Kissinger: But [General Alexander M.] Haig and [Ambassador Ellsworth F.] Bunker and our intelligence chief there, we have--all their units have already been informed that the ceasefire will go in--

President Nixon: Why don’t you say this, that before--and he doesn’t need to know that [unclear]--I said that before you leave for Paris on Sunday evening, I have to meet with congressional leaders, that at that time they are going to ask whether--that I will have to tell them, yes or no, whether or not he will concur in the initialing.

Kissinger: Right.

President Nixon: That we will do our best in that, but I cannot guarantee--but in any event, we will try. But if I tell the congressional leaders he will not concur, then--that it is my judgment without--that I am convinced from having talked to Senator [Barry M.] Goldwater [R-Arizona] and Senator [John C.] Stennis, [D-Mississippi] who are his major supporters in the Senate, that they will throw up their hands--that they will in effect direct--they will in effect inform me that the Congress will not go along on further aid unless he goes along on Tuesday.

Kissinger: Right.

President Nixon: How about putting it that way?

Kissinger: Exactly.

President Nixon: Tell him I’m going to have a meeting with congressional leaders.

Kissinger: Well, uh--

President Nixon: You see, he doesn’t need to know whether we have it or not. Or you don’t want to say that?

Kissinger: I think--

President Nixon: You see, I--

Kissinger: We’ll say you’ll have a meeting and at that time you’ll have to tell them on what basis we’re proceeding.

President Nixon: Yes, that as I--tell him I’m going to have a meeting on Sunday with congressional leaders before you leave. We should say with selected congressional leaders before you leave. At that time, the question will be--I have been informed that the question will be raised as to whether or not he will concur in our initialing of the agreement. If his answer is that he will not concur in the initialing of the agreement, that the congressional leaders in my view without question then will move to cut off assistance. Is that going too far? In other words, I don’t know whether the threat goes too far or not, but I’d--

Kissinger: No.

President Nixon:--do any damn thing, that is, or to cut off his head if necessary, but, uh--

Kissinger: The way to put it, I think, Mr. President, is to say that even if he should then later come along--

President Nixon: Yes, that is--

Kissinger: --that [unclear--“our assurances,” according to Kissinger Telcon, but Nixon’s talking over Kissinger] will do him no good because they will look as if they’d been extorted. [The Telcon says “exploited” rather than “extorted.”]

Nixon Tapes Online Now

2009-06-23T08:31:00.005-04:00

The Nixon Library has 154 hours of Nixon White House tapes from January and February 1973 Nixon online. Nixon documents, too!

Your humble tapeservant listens to Free Lossless Audio Codec files that the Presidential Recordings Program puts online at:

http://tapes.millercenter.virginia.edu/

These are archival-quality digital sound files for those who don't want to miss a syllable (and have high-speed internet connections, since these files are big).

Less Than an Hour To Go . . .

2009-06-23T08:05:00.003-04:00

. . . before the Nixon Library posts previously unreleased Nixon White House tapes and documents online.

Then I slap on the big headphones and dive into the past -- specifically, January and February of 1973.

While you wait with infinite patience for my transcripts, the Libe will have never-before-seen-by-us documents for your perusal.

The January 1973 Threat of a Cutoff of U.S. Aid to South Vietnam

2009-06-22T19:25:00.031-04:00

After I asked how Richard Nixon got two bastions of political conservatism, Barry Goldwater and John Stennis, to make his threat of a congressional cutoff of aid to South Vietnam credible, I discovered I didn’t have to wait until Tuesday's release of Nixon tapes from January and February 1973 to learn (most of) the answer.

Thanks to the bounties of the National Security Archive. Without its diligent, industrious, ultra-skilled researchers, the government would still be keeping a lot more unnecessary secrets (the kind that protect politicians’ images rather than the nation’s security) than it currently does. Among the documents the National Security Archive has helped pry loose are the Kissinger Telcons. As national security adviser and later as Secretary of State, Kissinger had secretaries transcribe his telephone calls. You can read them online at the Digital National Security Archive.

The Kissinger Telcons from mid-January 1973 provide the edifying spectacle of a President crafting a veiled threat.

Quick recap: In the October 8, 1972, round of negotiations, North Vietnam agreed to settle on Nixon’s terms: A ceasefire-in-place leaving North Vietnamese troops militarily occupying and governing parts of South Vietnam, total withdrawal of American troops, release of American POWs, and a designed-to-deadlock commission for South Vietnamese elections. The North had also agreed that South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu could remain in office at the time the settlement was to be signed. The North accepted these terms for the same reason that the South rejected them: both sides realized such a settlement would lead to Communist military victory. Nixon acknowledged this privately, despite his public promises to withdraw American troops only when South Vietnam could defend and govern itself.

On January 17, 1973, over three months after the North had agreed to Nixon’s “decent interval” terms, the South still had not. Nixon thought it time to send South Vietnam’s President a particularly threatening letter:

President Nixon: . . . I would make the letter this time very tough in substance and I would smooth off the edges in its content -- you know what I mean.

Kissinger: Exactly. Absolutely.

President Nixon: So that it is one that -- so that he doesn’t look as if we are -- it must have the veiled threat -- one that can be clearly seen. We know what is beneath the veil -- there is no other choice but that the Congress and I will not be able to resist it under these circumstances -- that the aid will be cut off. This is what is at stake. . . . Your going along with the settlement and going along enthusiastically, as I will, would have an enormous effect on American public opinion and provide the continued support which we so desperately need in our Congress for a military and economic aid to South Vietnam.

Kissinger: Absolutely. Exactly.
(17 January 1973, 9:44 AM, KA09292, subscription.)

The next day, the President had an idea: A public statement by "Mr. Conservative," Senator Barry M. Goldwater, R-Arizona:

President Nixon: . . . the only thing I wonder, would it be useful to have Goldwater take a little -- say, "Look, come along boy?"
Kissinger: I think that might do some good.
. . .
President Nixon: I think if Goldwater could just come out and say it’s time to quit this nonsense, stop all this jabbering . . .
. . .
President Nixon: I don’t want one of the left to do it, but somebody like Goldwater from the right should say it.
Kissinger: Exactly.
President Nixon: And maybe [Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John C.] Stennis will say it if he won’t. Stennis should be another good one.
Kissinger: Right.
(18 January 1973, 9:40 AM, KA09303, subscription)

To further veil the threat, Nixon and Kissinger would hide their own hands in it:

Kissinger: None of them would say they talked to me, they keep their--
President Nixon: Yeah, well, you can tell them that it’s very important that this not appear to come from the White House.
(18 January 1973, 9:40 AM, KA09303, subscription)

Goldwater didn't hesitate:

Kissinger: Barry, what I called you about is this: I was wondering whether you would consider making a statement today in effect saying to Thieu, what’s important now isn’t this or that comma or word or clause; what’s important now is to maintain unity between us.

Goldwater: This is directed to President Thieu.

Kissinger: That’s right. Because we are at a point now where if they keep nitpicking around in Saigon on these abstruse theological points, they are going to get so much opposition to themselves triggered here.

Goldwater: Yes.

Kissinger: The difference is between them and us. I mean, we shouldn’t say that, but just for your information -- cannot be explained to the American people.

Goldwater: No, that’s for sure.
(18 January 1973, 11:13 AM, KA09307, subscription)

Thieu wanted any settlement to include the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from the South -- hardly an "abstruse theological" point.

Stennis was even more amenable to Kissinger:

Kissinger: I was wondering whether I could make a suggestion to you.

Stennis: Yes, sir, always.

Kissinger: We think given your long-term commitment to defense and so forth, that if you

made a statement saying that you thought that this would be -- that this was now the time for Thieu and us to close ranks and that there shouldn’t be legal quibbles, that to restore the unity between our two governments, or something like that that puts a little pressure on Thieu, so that he doesn’t think that the conservative element in this country is behind him. (Emphasis added.)

Stennis: Yes, sure.

Kissinger: Today would be a good day to do it.

Stennis: I heartily agree . . .
(18 January 1973, 11:30 AM, KA09310, subscription)

The public statements by Goldwater and Stennis managed to sound like they were predicting, rather than promising, an aid cutoff. But South Vietnam's President got the message: "He realized that even his staunchest supporters had deserted him." (Nguyen Tien Hung and Jerrold L. Schecter, The Palace File, p. 155.)

Time Set for Nixon Tapes Release

2009-06-22T14:14:00.004-04:00

The Nixon Library's latest release of Nixon White House tapes, 154 hours from January and February 1973, will go online tomorrow at 9:00 AM Eastern, 6:00 AM Pacific.

So that's when I'll start pouring through the tapes for illuminating passages to transcribe and post here.

The Library is also releasing many previously classified documents and putting some of them online.

USA Today's The Oval Blog Links to Fatal Politics . . .

2009-06-22T09:31:00.005-04:00

. . . which means a lot of people are arriving at this site asking, "What is Fatal Politics?"

Fatal Politics is a video series that shows how President Richard M. Nixon prolonged the Vietnam War and negotiated a fraudulent peace settlement for political gain.

The Best Book on the Subject of Nixon's Vietnam Exit Strategy

2009-06-20T11:47:00.014-04:00

It's this puppy:

The Vietnam War Files: Uncovering the Secret History of Nixon-Era Strategy by Jeffrey Kimball.

Among those of us who study Richard Nixon's "decent interval" exit strategy for Vietnam, Jeffrey Kimball is The Guy.

Let me guess: You've never heard of him.

In a just world, you would have read a review of this book in the The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek and every other publication that prides itself on informing its readers about books that shatters historical myths, books that not only address questions that come up repeatedly in discussions of current of events, but actually answer them. Books that expose the fraud perpetrated on the American people by ruthless politicians who put their ambitions over the lives of American soldiers.

The reviews would have praised Kimball for his careful examination of the Nixon White House tapes and foreign policy documents that had been released in the years prior to its publication. They would have noted that the evidence showed that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger did indeed adopt a "decent interval" exit strategy, one that allowed them to falsely claim in public that they had succeeded in rendering South Vietnam capable of defending and governing itself even as they privately acknowledged that their policies would just delay Communist military victory for a year or two after Nixon withdrew the last American troops.

It's not like the book got bad reviews in the newspapers. It got no reviews in the newspapers.

Kimball's previous book on the subject, Nixon's Vietnam War, did get a favorable review in the Washington Post.

Kimball's invaluable diplomatic history . . . details Nixon's failure to get the results he wanted from the North Vietnamese -- people with a few myths of their own -- at the negotiating table, in spite of his adherence to the "madman" theory, a poker player's view of international relations in which one allows opponents to believe one is erratic, crazy and ideologically driven enough to actually use maximum, even nuclear, force, even at the risk of self-destruction, in order to scare them into line. But Nixon's solipsism was so great that he was willing to bomb Vietnam to fit his own vision. And he was willing to drop bombs in order to distract from his failures, a trait apparently shared by more than one president. . . . what makes this study particularly credible is the thoughtful and comprehensive use of wide-ranging sources: academic, military, historical, political, journalistic and personal, and particularly the inclusion of many Vietnamese sources, so that the reader gets a global picture of the subject.

All the good things Wayne Karlin wrote in this January 10, 1999, review are even more true of The Vietnam War Files, which benefits from the avalanche of Nixon White House tapes and foreign policy documents that were released after Nixon's Vietnam War.

The ultra-sharp reporter will try to have a copy of this next to her computer for ease of reference as she writes up the release of the January and February 1973 Nixon tapes on June 23, 2009.

Nixon Threatened South Vietnam With a Cutoff of American Aid by Congressional Conservatives

2009-06-17T20:15:00.018-04:00

Just as one might assume that Richard Nixon would not force South Vietnamese leaders to accept a settlement that he and they realized would destroy the government that 58,000 Americans had died defending, one might also assume that congressional conservatives would not threaten a cut off of U.S. military and economic aid to the Saigon government if it didn't give in to Nixon's demands. But one would be sadly mistaken.

Three weeks after President Richard M. Nixon won reelection with the largest percentage of the popular vote of any Republican in history, National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger read an ultimatum to Nguyen Phu Duc, special assistant to the President of South Vietnam. The ultimatum came in the form of a cable from Nixon himself :

November 24, 1972

I have checked today [the President's cable said] as to the attitude of the leading Democrats and Republicans who support us in the Senate on Vietnam. In preparing them for the consultation which must take place once agreement is reached we have informed them of the key elements of the October 8 agreement: the return of our POWs, a ceasefire, and a formula under which [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu remains in power and all South Vietnamese have an opportunity to participate in a free election to determine what government they want for the future.

The result of this check indicates that they were not only unanimous but vehement in stating their conclusions that if Saigon is the only roadblock for reaching agreement on this basis they will personally lead the fight when the new Congress reconvenes on January 3 to cut off all military and economic assistance to Saigon. My evaluation is that the cut-off would be February 1. They further believe that under such circumstances we have no choice but to go it alone and to make a separate deal with North Vietnam for the return of our POWs and for our withdrawal.

(Emphasis added.)

This was an astonishing threat, one Nixon didn't dare make in public. Cutting off American aid would mean destroying the South Vietnamese government. The Saigon government simply could not continue to exist without U.S. military and economic assistance. (A point Nixon himself made directly to Special Assistant Duc five days later: "Without U.S. aid, Saigon could not survive . . . without U.S. funds Saigon would be through." See page 6 of this memcon.) In its 18-year existence up to that point, the South Vietnamese government simply had never survived without American aid.

And, according to the President, this threat to destroy an ally was being made by his congressional allies, the conservative Republican and Democratic senators who had backed his war policies.

These [Nixon continued] are men who who have loyally supported us on November 3, Cambodia and Laos, and May 8.

Those dates and places refer respectively to (1) Nixon's November 3, 1969 "Silent Majority" television address rallying American public support for continuing the war until the South was capable of its own self-defense and self-government, (2) the offensive Nixon ordered in 1970 to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a military action known alternatively as the invasion of Cambodia or as the Cambodian incursion (3) a 1971 offensive by the South Vietnamese, backed with American air support, to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos, and (4) Nixon's May 8, 1972, announcement of his decision to bomb and mine North Vietnam.

Tell [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu that I cannot keep the lid on his strong supporters in the House and Senate much longer.

(Emphasis added.)

These were lawmakers who had supported Nixon even as he had added (up to that point) 46 months to the war, and 20,031 to the total American dead. Yet the President was telling Thieu that his supporters would not allow the war to go on if the South refused to settle on Nixon's terms.

The third option of our trying to continue to go forward together on the basis of continuing the war is simply not open. The door has been slammed shut hard and fast by the longtime supporters of the hard line in Vietnam in the House and Senate who control the purse strings. (Emphasis added. You can read the entire cable from Nixon here, starting on page 2.)

The threat didn't work at first. Saigon held out for nearly two more months, until January of 1973, when two of these "longtime supporters of the hard line" publicly declared that South Vietnam had to settle or else lose American aid.

Goldwater and Stennis Tell Saigon Not to Balk

By David E. Rosenbaum

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18[, 1973]. Two of the Saigon government’s strongest supporters in the United States Senate--Barry Goldwater and John C. Stennis . . . warned that South Vietnam would lose support in the United States for further economic and military assistance if President Nguyen Van Thieu blocked a settlement of the war.

. . .

The warnings addressed to the Saigon government by Senator Stennis, who spoke in the Senate, and by Senator Goldwater, who issued a statement, were markedly similar. . . .

Stennis, conservative Mississippi Democrat, chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee, was a longtime and influential advocate of escalating the Vietnam War. Historian Joseph Fry wrote: "The Mississippi Senator hounded [Lyndon B. Johnson's secretary of defense, Robert S.] MacNamara and the DOD and lobbied relentlessly for unrestrained bombing of North Vietnam." (Debating Vietnam: Fulbright, Stennis, and Their Senate Hearings, p. 96.) This was a very popular move when Nixon finally implemented it (see "Poll-Tested Bombing," parts one and two). While it succeeded for Nixon politically, it did not persuade the North to give up on military victory, just delay it for a year or two under Nixon's "decent interval" terms.

Stennis told the Senate:

“I do not think this is the time for the Government of South Vietnam to be an obstacle to peace. The South Vietnamese Government must realize that there are limits to what the American people are willing to do.

“The South Vietnamese will need economic and military aid in the coming years. However, the South Vietnamese can jeopardize American support for such programs if they emerge now as the obstacle to peace in Southeast Asia.”

Senator Barry M. Goldwater, R-Ariz., was, of course, "Mr. Conservative." His successful bid for the Republican nomination in 1964 signaled the dawn of an era of conservative dominance in the party (though he was crushed in the general election by Lyndon Johnson in the only popular landslide bigger than Nixon's).

Senator Goldwater said that his statement was “directed to President Thieu,” whom he cautioned not to object to minor points in any peace agreement.

“I am sure that support for President Thieu and his Government will diminish rapidly in this country if this happens,” Senator Goldwater declared. “It would imperil any future help which South Vietnam might obtain from this country.”

(Subscribers can read the full article on the New York Times web site.)

Nixon cited the Stennis and Goldwater statements in the final letter he sent Thieu demanding acquiescence to his settlement terms.

It is obvious that we face a situation of most extreme gravity when long-time friends of South Viet-Nam such as Senators Goldwater and Stennis, on whom we have relied for four years to carry our programs of assistance through the Congress, make public declarations that a refusal by your Government of reasonable peace terms would make it impossible to continue aid. ("Nixon to Thieu," 19 January 1973, quoted by Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, pp. 234-235. Or you can read the letter itself here.)

The threat worked.

"For Nixon to use Goldwater in the letter as evidence that support against Thieu was building up in Congress had a strong influence on Thieu," wrote Nguyen Tien Hung, another special assistant to the South Vietnamese President, after the war. "He realized that even his staunchest supporters had deserted him." (Hung and Jerrold L. Schecter, The Palace File, p. 155.)

A deal that would keep the South Vietnamese government around for a "decent interval" of a year or two was more attractive than an American aid cutoff that would destroy it even more quickly.

The June 23, 2009, release of Nixon White House tapes from January and February of 1973 could shed light on this sordid chapter in political history. (I know, "could" is not saying much, but we never know what's on the tapes until we get to hear them.) The first key words I'll be searching for in the finding aids will be "Goldwater" and "Stennis." How did Nixon get these two pillars of the right to put teeth in his ultimatum to South Vietnam? What did he tell them?

ETA: June 22, 2009, 11:43 AM: I found (most of the) answer in the Kissinger Telcons (transcripts of the national security adviser's phone calls made by his NSC secretaries) and will post . . . as soon as I can!

All three -- Nixon, Goldwater and Stennis -- had a compelling political interest in convincing a majority that continuing the war for four years had paid off -- had achieved the "peace with honor" that Nixon spoke of. If all Nixon's continuation of the war had achieved was a deal that would lead to a Communist military victory in a year or two, then the 20,200 American casualties that occurred during those four years had been in vain. And the Americans who tried to force Nixon to withdraw sooner had been right -- prolonging the war had merely postponed defeat until after Nixon was safely reelected.

Coming soon: more than one post needed to puncture some of the aid cutoff myths that have sprung like weeds around this subject.

Mistakes in News Reports on the Latest Nixon Tapes Release

2009-06-16T09:16:00.003-04:00

Journalists must learn this lesson early in their careers: What you don't know can hurt you, but what what you assume will kill.

In the hopes of avoiding the kind of false assumptions that marred news media coverage of the last opening of Nixon tapes to the public by the National Archives, I'm going to try to nail them (most of them (some of them (the ones that make my howls of pain particularly piteous))) before the next release on Tuesday, June 23, 2009.

(No, I'm not going to name names or link links, deriving little pleasure from nipping careers in the bud and recognizing the impossibility of writing a story on "What's New and Important in This 154-Hour Nixon Tapes Release?" within the confines of a single 24-hour day.)

In the period covered by this release -- January and February 1973 -- the most significant event in both foreign policy and domestic politics went by the name of the "Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam."

One might assume that the parties to an "Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" believed that it would end the war and restore peace in Vietnam. One might further assume that such a belief would be the parties' motive for entering the agreement. But one would be sadly mistaken.

South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu believed that the agreement would lead to destruction of his government through a final Communist military victory. As he told General Alexander M. Haig through a translator during an October 4, 1972, classified briefing in Saigon: "In the proposal you have suggested, our Government will continue to exist. But it is only an agonizing solution, and sooner or later the Government will crumble and Nguyen Van Thieu will have to commit suicide somewhere along the line." (Quote comes from page 17 of this memo.)

At 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 6, 1972, National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger walked into the Oval Office and began to discuss the memo with the President.

Kissinger: I read Haig’s transcript and these guys are scared. And they’re desperate. And they know what’s coming. And [South Vietnamese President] Thieu says that, sure, these proposals keep him going, but somewhere down the road he’ll have no choice except to commit suicide. And he’s probably right. I mean, we have to be honest—

President Nixon: Right.

Kissinger: —among ourselves.

Richard Nixon had not informed Kissinger when he had a voice-activated recording system wired to seven hidden microphones in the Oval Office 21 months earlier. Neither man had reason, at that point, to think that the conversation would not stay "among ourselves" forever.

Kissinger noted that triangular diplomacy -- detente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with China -- was producing results. Hanoi was under pressure from its Communist allies and aid suppliers to make a deal with Nixon.

Kissinger: Hell, the thing that worries me is that—before we get to the specifics—is that we’ve now got all the steam into the boiler. Everything—

President Nixon: I know.

Kissinger: —that we have a plan for is happening. The Russians are pressing them. The Chinese are pressing them.

President Nixon: The French?

Kissinger: VIP planes going back and forth between Peking, Moscow and Hanoi. [Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy F.] Dobrynin was in again yesterday. I got another message from [North Vietnamese negotiator] Le Duc Tho yesterday. I’ve had five since the last meeting. And I actually think we can settle it. On terms, however.

President Nixon: On our terms [unclear] but not [South Vietnamese President] Thieu’s.

Kissinger: On close to our terms. But—and I also think that Thieu is right, that our terms will eventually destroy him.

Needless to say, Nixon and Kissinger left this conversation out of their respective memoirs. While both boasted that the Communists accepted their settlement terms at the October 8, 1972, round of negotiations outside Paris, neither mentioned that these terms doomed the South Vietnamese government. Their political ambitions -- indeed, their political survival in office -- depended on fostering the illusion that they had saved South Vietnam. A settlement was essential to that illusion.

The North Vietnamese accepted Nixon and Kissinger's terms for the same reason that the South Vietnamese rejected them. North and South both realized that these terms would lead to Communist military victory. As did Nixon and Kissinger.

Which leads us to the trouble with press reports on the previous opening of Nixon tapes. Last year, when the Nixon Library opened the White House tapes from November and December 1972 to the public, reporters went searching for new insight about that year's "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi.

One might assume that a President bombed North Vietnam to defeat its government or to persuade it to settle on his terms. But one would be sadly mistaken.

Once the North accepted Nixon's terms in October 1972, his chief political problem was getting the South to accept them, too. He wanted to claim that he'd achieved the "peace with honor" that he'd promised in two winning presidential campaigns. The South's refusal to take the deal made him look bad. If the settlement was as good for Saigon as he said, why was Saigon refusing it?

In the hopes of gaining South Vietnamese acquiescence, Nixon privately assured President Thieu that America would enforce it. Nixon promised to use his authority as commander in chief to respond to Communist violations of the settlement with American military power.

After Nixon won reelection by the largest percentage of the popular vote of any Republican presidential nominee in history, the negotiations between Kissinger and the North resumed. In another attempt to mollify the South, Kissinger presented the North with additional settlement demands desired by Saigon. The North, having been assured by Nixon and Kissinger before the election that it had a deal, got testy and started making additional demands of its own.

This was the context of the "Christmas bombing." It was aimed less at persuading our enemy than at persuading our ally. All Nixon needed from the Communists was the willingness to settle on basically the terms they had already agreed to two months earlier. It wasn't Hanoi, after all, that had backed off from the deal.

What Nixon needed from South Vietnamese President Thieu would be much harder to get: Saigon's agreement to terms that, as Thieu and Nixon both realized, would lead ultimately to the South Vietnamese government's demise. Nixon wanted Thieu to believe that he would retaliate militarily if the North violated the settlement after the deal was made. The "Christmas bombing" was another chance to show resolve.

This December 13, 1972, cable that Haig sent to Kissinger after meeting with the President puts the decision to bomb Hanoi in perspective:

The President asked me if I favored doing so and I answered affirmatively. The President then went through a long exposition of the fact of how difficult this would be. The American people would not understand and the realities were that that it was the U.S. and not Hanoi that was backing away from the agreement because we had, in effect, placed additional demands on them. He also added that the other culpable party was Saigon and not Hanoi and that we can expect a massive push from the [political] left charging us with being tools of Thieu. (Emphasis added.)

Bizarre as it sounds, Nixon's decision to bomb the enemy capital of Hanoi was part of his attempt to win concessions from the allied capital of Saigon.

The attempt failed. Even after the "Christmas bombing," South Vietnam refused to settle on Nixon's terms. Why would Saigon make a deal that would lead to its destruction following a "decent interval" of a year or two?

Because Nixon threatened the South Vietnamese with the prospect of something worse: Loss of the U.S. military and economic aid that Saigon depended on for its survival.

That threat lacked teeth until the middle of January 1973, when Nixon enlisted the aid of two conservative political legends to back him up: Armed Services Committee Chairman John C. Stennis, D-Mississippi, and "Mr. Conservative" himself, Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, R-Arizona. How Nixon got Goldwater and Stennis, staunch supporters of the Vietnam War, to help him force President Thieu to accept a settlement that would doom his government to destruction -- a government that nearly 60,000 Americans died defending -- is a question that the June 23, 2009, release of tapes from January and February of 1973 will help answer. (I hope. We won't know what's on the tapes until we hear them.)

In my next post, I'll provide some background on what we currently know about this strange chapter in the history of the Vietnam War.

* * *

The Nixon tape quoted above is: Conversation 793-6, 6 October 1972, 9:30 am - 10:03 am, Oval Office. As the government continues to declassify the Nixon's tapes, the Presidential Recordings Program makes them available for download. Free!

For Journalists Covering the June 23, 2009, Nixon Tapes Release

2009-06-15T22:46:00.033-04:00

The purpose of this post is two-fold:

1. To help reporters avoid making big mistakes in their reports on the next Nixon tapes release.

2. To help me avoid reading big mistakes in their reports on the next Nixon tapes release.

Yes, I'm a big old Nixon tapes/Nixon docs/Vietnam/Decent Interval nerd. Let's be honest. That's what brought you here into my virtual lair. I hope you enjoy your stay. Come freely, go safely, and leave a little of the happiness you bring, bwahahaha*cough*.

Just imagine that you need to catch up on a decade or so's worth of archival revelations, but all you have is seven units of time, each totaling one-sixth of an hour or less. Say! Look over here! Someone has converted archival revelations into pleasing and convenient video form.

While providing you with such tremendous viewing pleasure must seem unfathomably generous on my part, and truly is, I just know that some of you -- conscientious, self-respectful reporters whose relentless pursuit of the truth will become the stuff of legend one day if it hasn't already -- will want to know how the lesser lights of an entry-barrier-free profession mishandled (that was not the first verb that came to mind) the last tape opening.

ETA: A post on Nixon's threats of a cutoff of U.S. aid to South Vietnam led by congressional conservatives. ***This threat finally worked in January of 1973, so the tapes being released on June 23, 2009, may shed some light on it.***

ETA: A post on how Nixon and Kissinger got congressional conservatives to make public statements warning South Vietnam to accept Nixon's settlement terms or risk loss of the American military and economic aid the South depended on for its survival.

The Best Book on the Subject of Nixon's Vietnam Exit Strategy.

ETA: June 23, 10:51 AM: First New Nixon Tapes Quote: "I'd . . . Cut Off His Head if Necessary."

ETA: June 23, 4:31 PM: "A War . . . Which We Can No Longer Win."

ETA: Transcript: The Night Lyndon Johnson Died.

The hour when 154 hours of Nixon White House tapes from January and February of 1973 will go on line: 9:00 AM Eastern, 6:00 AM Pacific Tuesday, June 23, 2009.

I'll add links to this page as I post more useful background information for the upcoming Nixon tapes release so please come visit again or subscribe to this blog!

On the day of the release, I'll be searching for noteworthy and newsworthy tapes and posting here. If you have questions or want some fact-checking help, email me: kh7h (at) virginia.edu.

About Fatal Politics

2009-06-13T21:50:00.009-04:00

I decided to make the Fatal Politics web documentary videos because, at some point in my study of the Nixon White House tapes with the Presidential Recordings Program of the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia, it occurred to me that every voting age citizen of the United States needs to know how a President could prolong a war and fake peace for political gain. The videos incorporate the research I've presented at academic conferences, but they're made for everyone 18 and older.

This blog builds on the Fatal Politics web documentary miniseries. It's an attempt to correct/dispel/shatter myths that Nixon created about his exit from Vietnam, myths that persist in news media reports and political debate today.

I've written about the Nixon and Kennedy White House tapes in the pages of the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, the Boston Globe Magazine, The American Journalism Review and The Hill and online for the History News Service, the History News Network, and Salon. Diplomatic History published "Fatal Politics: Nixon's Political Timetable for Withdrawing from Vietnam."

What makes me happy is when teachers have students watch Fatal Politics, as these distinguished scholars have or told me that they plan to:

Prof. James G. Blight, Brown University

Brig. Gen. Charles F. Brower IV (USA, Retired), Virginia Military Institute

Richard M. Filipink, Western Illinois University

Prof. Mark Kramer, Harvard University

Prof. janet M. Lang, Brown University

Prof. Ralph B. Levering, Davidson

Prof. Robert J. McMahon, Ohio State University

Prof. Chester Pach, Ohio University

Prof. Robert D. Schulzinger, University of Colorado at Boulder

If you teach with Fatal Politics, send me an email at kenhughes@fatalpolitics.com.

How To Footnote/Endnote Fatal Politics Web Documentary Video Episodes, Chicago Style

2009-06-11T16:31:00.002-04:00

What is the prize for Dullest Post of the Day? Most Egocentric? Well, people ask me how they can cite the videos, and it's taken this long for me to come up with an answer, since there's nothing in the Chicago Manual of Style under "Web-Based Documentary Video Miniseries."

Chicago Style Footnotes and Endnotes:

1. Ken Hughes, "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode One: Secret Timetable," YouTube, 9 September 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT9WZqnz6Bk&feature=channel_page.

2. Ken Hughes, "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Two: End Date," YouTube, 18 September 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cer6RqjVmVk&feature=channel.

3. Ken Hughes, "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Three: Decent Interval I, Part One," YouTube, 1 October 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tosr8XAJ4UQ&feature=channel_page.

4. Ken Hughes, "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Three: Decent Interval I, Part Two," YouTube, 1 October 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmXi2KN5vFQ&feature=channel_page.

5. Ken Hughes, "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Four, Poll-Tested Bombing, Part One," YouTube, 23 October 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnPI3_lhjjg&feature=channel_page.

6. Ken Hughes, "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Four, Poll-Tested Bombing, Part Two," YouTube, 23 October 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_T9ZU9f-nY.

7. Ken Hughes, "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Five: Decent Interval II," YouTube, 13 November 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3LIqzR6-Q.

Chicago Style for Bibliography Entries:

[If there's a way to format these with a hanging indent on this page, it is beyond your Ken. Do hanging indents cost extra?]

Hughes, Ken. "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode One: Secret Timetable." YouTube. 9 September 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT9WZqnz6Bk&feature=channel_page.

Hughes, Ken. "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Two: End Date." YouTube. 18 September 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cer6RqjVmVk&feature=channel.

Hughes, Ken. "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Three: Decent Interval I, Part One." YouTube. 1 October 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tosr8XAJ4UQ&feature=channel_page.

Hughes, Ken. "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Three: Decent Interval I, Part Two." YouTube. 1 October 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmXi2KN5vFQ&feature=channel_page.

Hughes, Ken. "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Four: Poll-Tested Bombing, Part One." YouTube, 23 October 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnPI3_lhjjg&feature=channel_page.

Hughes, Ken. "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Four. Poll-Tested Bombing, Part Two." YouTube, 23 October 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_T9ZU9f-nY.

Hughes, Ken. "Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, Vietnam and the Biggest Republican Presidential Landslide, Episode Five: Decent Interval II." YouTube. 13 November 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ3LIqzR6-Q.

Nixon Tapes and Documents Opening June 23

2009-06-11T12:06:00.000-04:00

The Nixon Library and Museum homepage announces:

Nixon Library to release 154 hours of White House tapes from January and February 1973 and thousands of pages of documents on June 23.

This fills me with anticipation and dread.

Anticipation, because I'm a guy who thought listening to Nixon tapes and reading Nixon documents was a great way to spend my free time when I was working as a reporter in the 1990s. Then starting in 2000 I got to do it full time as a Research Fellow with the Presidential Recordings Program of the Miller Center of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia (yes, 4 of the last 12 words were "of," but everyone needs a namecheck). Tapes and docs, they make me merry. This merry:

Dread, because the last time the Nixon Library released tapes and documents, major news media organizations screwed up the most important part: Nixon's exit strategy from Vietnam. Apparently, reporters still don't know that Nixon pursued a "decent interval" strategy -- one designed to postpone, not prevent, Communist military victory.

Getting Nixon's Vietnam exit right is crucial, since prominent politicians and policy makers cite it as a model for Iraq. If we leave Iraq the way we left Vietnam, a lot of Americans will die needlessly and we still won't have an Iraqi government that can defend and govern itself.

Fortunately, there's a relatively painless way for reporters to get the essential background information.

Watch All Episodes of Fatal Politics Web Documentary Miniseries

2009-06-10T16:48:00.010-04:00

Read how President Richard M. Nixon prolonged a war and faked peace for political gain in Diplomatic History, "Fatal Politics: Nixon's Political Timetable for Withdrawing from Vietnam," and watch the educational videos.

Episode One: Secret Timetable
Fearing that the South Vietnamese government would collapse after he completed the withdrawal of American troops, and that he wouldn't win a second term if the collapse occurred before Election Day, President Nixon secretly decided almost two years in advance to delay the final troop withdrawal until shortly before or after November 1972.

Episode Two: End Date
Nixon blocked legislation that would have forced him to bring the troops home from Vietnam too soon for his political purposes. He did this by claiming that an earlier pullout would lead to Communist victory, while not admitting that a later pullout would do the same.

Episode Three: Decent Interval I
Historian Jeffrey Kimball uncovered documents revealing how Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger used the opening to China to secretly sell the Communists a "decent interval" deal -- a "peace" agreement that would merely postpone, not prevent, North Vietnam's final military victory. This episode has two parts:

Episode Four: Poll-Tested Bombing
In 1969, Richard Nixon's first year in the White House, the Republican National Committee had a secret poll conducted on Vietnam exit strategies. The most popular strategy was a six-month plan to bomb the North and blockade Haiphong Harbor until Hanoi agreed to a favorable compromise. Nixon announced the bombing and mining of the North on May 8, 1972--exactly six months, minus one day, before the election. This episode has two parts.

Episode Five: Decent Interval II
President Richard Nixon used the diplomatic opening to China to negotiate a face-saving "decent interval" deal on Vietnam, one that would postpone, not prevent, Communist military victory. His own secretly recorded White House tapes captured him saying, "South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway." He had told the American people the opposite, prolonging the war for four years and adding 20,000 American casualties saying the sacrifice was necessary so that one day the South could defend and govern itself. As his tapes reveal, he did not believe that day would come. He prolonged the war to conceal his inability to win it, and he negotiated a settlement that would put a "decent interval" between his final troop withdrawal and the Communists' final military victory--one long enough to make Saigon's fall look like Saigon's fault. "We've got to find some formula," National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger said, "that holds the thing together a year or two."

If you have questions about Fatal Politics email info@fatalpolitics.com.