One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon

by Tim Weiner

“prodded remorselessly by Nixon and Kissinger”: Alexander M. Haig, Inner Circles (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 273.

  “The best legacy”: Nixon to Kissinger, Jan. 24, 1971, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.

  “our army’s greatest concentration of combined-arms forces”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–73, p. 9.

  “Tchepone, a tiny town”: Maj. Gen. Nguyen Duy Hinh, Lam Son 719 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1979), p. 90.

  “We’re not going to lose it”: Feb. 18, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “We can win in ’72”: Ibid.

  “This is the moment of truth”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–73, pp. 10–13.

  THE PRESIDENT’S DECISION TO SUPPORT LAM SON 719: Kissinger to Bunker, March 1, 1971, Washington, DC, FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “the surface of the moon”: Howland oral history, FAOH.

  “Why is it that Hanoi”: Minutes of a meeting of the 40 Committee, March 31, 1971, San Clemente, CA, FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “They’ve now fought for ten years against us”: March 18, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “It would be hard to exaggerate”: Back-channel message from Kissinger to Ambassador Bunker, March 18, 1971, Washington, DC, FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “lost their stomach for Laos”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–73, pp. 10–13.

  “What has dramatically demoralized”: New York Times, March 28, 1971.

  “a bloody field exercise”: Hinh, Lam Son 719, p. 163.

  “a concrete demonstration”: Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975, trans. Merle L. Pribbenow (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), p. 278.

  “Tonight I can report”: President Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” April 7, 1971, Public Papers of Richard Nixon, full text online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2972.

  “The war has eroded America’s confidence”: April 21, 1971, NWHT, telephone tape.

  “want to destroy you and they want us to lose in Vietnam”: April 23, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “All of this is a bunch of shit”: Ibid.

  “All that matters”: May 10, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “We’ll bomb the goddamn North like it’s never been bombed”: April 6, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.

  “They relived”: Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, April 22, 1971, Cong. Rec. (92nd Cong., 1st Sess.), pp. 179–210.

  “You’ll find Kerry running for political office”: April 23, 1971, NWHT, White House.

  “Any military commander who is honest with himself”: McNamara interview in The Fog of War, directed by Errol Morris (2003).

  12: It’s a conspiracy”

  “This goddamn New York Times exposé”: June 13, 1971, NWHT, telephone tape.

  “It just shows massive mismanagement”: June 13, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “Goddamn it”: June 15, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “You can blackmail Johnson on this stuff”: June 17, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “Do you remember Huston’s plan? Implement it”: Ibid.

  “You need a commander … It could be Colson”: July 1, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “We’re up against an enemy” … “Is that clear?”: Ibid.

  “I just want to make that big play”: June 29, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “fears of what the President might do”: Memorandum for the president’s file, July 1, 1971, “China Trips, July 1971,” Briefing Notebook, Kissinger Papers.

  “We’re not going to turn the country over”: July 1, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “You can say ‘I cannot control him’”: April 23, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “I understand you are going to Beijing”: Memorandum of conversation, Oct. 25, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Meeting Between the President and Pakistan President Yahya” (notes taken by Kissinger), FRUS E-7: Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972.

  “The Chinese Government reaffirms its willingness”: Memorandum of conversation, May 7, 1971, Palm Springs, CA, Participants: Joseph S. Farland, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Henry A. Kissinger, assistant to the president for national security affairs, FRUS E-13: Documents on China, 1969–1972.

  “President Nixon was ambivalent”: Lord oral history, FAOH.

  “this was about as mysterious as you can get”: Farland oral history, FAOH.

  “‘Do you know what I’m going to talk about’”: Ibid.

  “We were stepping into the infinite”: Holdridge oral history, FAOH.

  “As the sun came up”: Lord oral history, FAOH.

  “Kissinger and I and the others walked around”: Ibid.

  “as forthcoming as we could have hoped”: Kissinger to President Nixon, July 14, 1971, San Clemente, CA., “SUBJECT: My Talks with Chou En-lai,” FRUS XVII: China.

  “repeatedly stressed—in an almost plaintive tone”: Ibid.

  “Krogh and his guys”: July 20, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “I listened intently”: Egil Krogh, “The Break-in That History Forgot,” New York Times, June 30, 2007.

  “Where does Krogh stand now?”: Sept. 8, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “permanent tails”: Ibid.

  “On the IRS”: Sept. 8, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.

  “We had one little operation” … “It may pay off”: Sept. 8, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  13: “I can see the whole thing unravel”

  “Our goal is clear”: Conversation among President Nixon, Ambassador Bunker, and Kissinger, June 16, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “There are no fair elections”: Ibid.

  “re-elect Nguyen Van Thieu”: CIA memorandum for the 40 Committee, Feb. 3, 1971, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Covert Actions in Support of U.S. Objective in South Vietnam’s 1971 Elections,” FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “Turn on him? Never, never”: Aug. 19, 1971, Washington, DC, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.

  “Unless there is a real contest”: Back-channel message from Ambassador Bunker in Saigon to Kissinger, Aug. 20, 1971, FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “For the hundredth [sic] and twentieth time”: Kissinger, memorandum of conversation, Sept. 13, 1971, Paris, FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “The heart of the problem”: Kissinger to Nixon, Sept. 18, 1971, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Vietnam,” FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “A swift collapse”: Ibid.

  “I think we have to consider withdrawing the son-of-a-bitch”: Sept. 14, 1971, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.

  “Having been in the military” … “It was a grim picture”: Lange oral history, FAOH.

  “We have to keep in mind” … “not to overthrow Thieu”: President Nixon’s news conference, Sept. 16, 1971, online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3146.

  “He started the damn thing!”: April 7, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “everything that flies” … “And with a victory”: Sept. 17, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “The behavior of the U.S.”: NSC meeting on Vietnam, Sept. 20, 1971, Kissinger Papers.

  WE ARE LAUNCHED ON A COURSE: Memorandum of conference with the president, Aug. 29, 1963, National Security file, JFKL. Richard Helms was at a White House meeting at noon on August 29, 1963, with the president, McNamara, and Rusk, among a dozen other top officials. The note taker recorded that Ambassador Lodge had already sent the message to the Vietnamese generals plotting to overthrow Diem that the United States would support them. “The President asked whether anyone had any reservations about the course of action we were following,” and Rusk and McNamara did. The president decided that “Ambassador Lodge is to have authority over all overt and covert operations” in Vietnam.

  “We must bear a good
deal of responsibility for it”: Nov. 4, 1963, JFK Tapes, JFKL.

  “the Kennedy Administration was deeply implicated”: Neil Sheehan, “‘Vietnam Hindsight’ on the Kennedy Years,” New York Times, Dec. 22, 1971.

  “We have those tapes”: Oct. 8, 1971, NWHT, White House.

  “We’ve got to avoid the situation”: Oct. 25, 1971, NWHT, White House.

  “We will bomb the bejeezus” … “‘Oh, horrible, horrible, horrible’”: Nov. 20, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  14: “It is illegal, but…”

  “These people are savages”: Dec. 15, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “a special feeling”: Kissinger note attached to memorandum of conversation with ambassador to India Kenneth Keating and NSC aide Harold Saunders, June 21, 1971, National Security Council Files, Nixon Library.

  “The Pakistani army was just murdering people”: Veliotes oral history, FAOH.

  “Don’t squeeze Yahya”: Nixon’s handwritten note on Kissinger’s memo, April 28, 1971, “SUBJECT: Policy Options Toward Pakistan,” FRUS XI: South Asia Crisis, 1971.

  “If they’re going to choose to go with the Russians”: Aug. 9, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “She is a bitch”: Nov. 5, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “We will do everything we can”: Nov. 15, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “Yahya is beginning to feel cornered”: Back-channel message from Ambassador Farland to Kissinger, Nov. 19, 1971, Islamabad, FRUS XI: South Asia Crisis.

  “Is Yahya saying it’s war?”: Nov. 22, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “didn’t have any confirmation”: Nov. 22, 1971, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  STRICTEST PRESIDENTIAL INSTRUCTIONS TO TILT TOWARD PAKISTAN: Back-channel message from Kissinger to Ambassador Farland, Nov. 24, 1971, Washington, DC, FRUS XI: South Asia Crisis.

  “To the extent that we can tilt it toward Pakistan”: Nov. 24, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “Pakistan thing makes your heart sick”: The president was in Key Biscayne, Florida; Kissinger in Washington, DC. Dec. 3, 1971, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.

  “We have had an urgent appeal”: Dec. 4, 1971, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.

  Nixon authorized the arms transfers: Dec. 6, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “The way we would do that is to tell the King”: Dec. 9, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “I was too easy on the goddamn woman”: Dec. 6, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “cold-bloodedly make the decision”: Dec. 8, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.

  “I tell you, a movement of even some Chinese”: Telephone conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, Dec. 8, 1971, NWHT, White House.

  “What do we do if the Soviets move”: Dec. 12, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “Savages”: Dec. 15, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “only one place in the whole federal government” … “a federal offense of the highest order”: Dec. 21, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “the house detective”: Memorandum for the record by David R. Young, “SUBJECT: Transcription of Tape Recorded Interview” of Admiral Welander by Ehrlichman and Young, Dec. 22, 1971, Nixon Library. This document, with handwritten annotations by Young on a hastily prepared typed transcript from the tape-recorded interview, was apparently purloined from Nixon’s presidential records, then returned to the Nixon Presidential Library. Young’s files remain almost entirely sealed. A copy of the document can be accessed at http://nixontapes.org/welander.html.

  “Your alter ego” … “Almost anything you name”: Young, “SUBJECT: Transcription of Tape Recorded Interview,” ibid.

  “What we’re doing here is, in effect, excusing a crime.… They had to”: Dec. 22, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “That’s the question” … “Everyone else should go to jail!”: Dec. 23, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “Got any ideas?” … “That would do it”: Dec. 24, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.

  “The main thing is to keep it under as close control as we can”: Telephone conversation between Nixon and Mitchell, Dec. 24, 1971, NWHT.

  warrantless wiretap on Radford: Memorandum for the president from David R. Young, undated, “SUBJECT: Record of Investigation into Disclosure of Classified Information in Jack Anderson Articles,” Nixon Library.

  “I don’t care if Moorer is guilty”: Dec. 24, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.

  “They can spy on him and spy on me and betray us!”: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, p. 307.

  “The worst thing about it” … “But it’s essential”: Dec. 23, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “it might partially explain their origin”: Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), p. 808.

  15: “Night and Fog”

  “immense opportunities and, of course, equally great dangers”: Nixon, RN, p. 541.

  “It isn’t about China”: Feb. 2, 1972, NWHT, Cabinet Room.

  “Crack ’em, crack ’em, crack ’em”: Ibid.

  “Let’s not have any illusions” … “they’re suckers”: May 4, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “My order is to drop the Goddamned thing, you son of a bitch!”: April 19, 1971, NWHT, telephone tape.

  “Operation Sandwedge”: The Operation Sandwedge plan is reproduced in the Final Report of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Senate Watergate Committee or SSC, SSC Vol. 2, pp. 240–52. Caulfield’s testimony on Sandwedge, its “covert intelligence-gathering capability,” and his assignment to keep Don Nixon under surveillance is in SSC Vol. 21, pp. 9687–937. McCord’s testimony on his role at CREEP and in the Watergate burglary is in SSC Vol. 1, pp. 125–248.

  “From the campaign funds I need $800,000”: Strachan talking memo for Haldeman, Oct. 28, 1971, House Judiciary Committee, better known as the Impeachment hearings, HJC Appendix IV, p. 45, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1975.

  “wheeler-dealers”: Caulfield to Dean, Feb. 1, 1971, “SUBJECT: Hughes Retainer to Larry O’Brien,” Senate Watergate Committee, SSC Vol. 21, p. 9755.

  “Donald Nixon’s son” … “a huge flap in Washington”: Oakley oral history, FAOH.

  “to move hard on Larry O’Brien”: March 4, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “making sensitive political inquiries at the IRS”: To: H. R. Haldeman, From: Tom Charles Huston, July 16, 1970, Haldeman Papers, Nixon Library.

  “As you probably remember there was a Hughes/Don Nixon loan controversy years ago”: EYES ONLY: Higby to Dean, Aug. 10, 1970 (Higby was a White House aide known as Haldeman’s Haldeman), Richard M. Nixon and Bruce Oudes, eds., From: The President: Richard Nixon’s Secret Files (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 151.

  “Concerning Howard Hughes”: Chapin to Colson, Dec. 12, 1970, in ibid., p. 186.

  “The Secretary of Commerce came down”: White oral history, FAOH.

  “This Watergate thing kept coming back”: Magruder oral history, Strober and Strober, Nixon, pp. 329–31.

  “If this obsession … seems irrational”: John W. Dean, The Nixon Defense (New York: Viking, 2014), p. 651.

  “1972, as you know, was a very big year”: Nixon interview on Meet the Press, broadcast April 10, 1988, NBC.

  16: “From one extreme to another”

  “It had a tremendous impact”: Lord oral history, FAOH.

  “the intangibles of your China visit”: Kissinger to Nixon, Feb. 19, 1972, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Mao, Chou and the Chinese Litmus Test,” FRUS XVII: China.

  “We had no idea when they’d be back”: Feb. 21, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “I have read the Chairman’s poems”: Memorandum of conversation, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Prime Minister Zhou En-lai, President Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, Winston Lord, National Security Council staff, Feb. 21, 1972, Beijing, FRUS XVII: China.

  “a different kind of communiqué”: Lord oral history, FAOH.

  “The conventional way”: Memorandum of conversation, Nixon to Zhou, Feb. 2
1, 1972, Beijing, FRUS XVII: China.

  “Why not give this up?”: Memorandum of conversation, President Nixon and Prime Minister Zhou, Feb. 22, 1972, Beijing, FRUS XVII: China.

  “the Taiwan question is the crucial question”: Memorandum of conversation, President Nixon and Prime Minister Zhou, Feb. 24, 1972, Beijing, FRUS XVII: China.

  “This would almost certainly be seized upon”: Ambassador Marshall Green, FAOH oral history, privately published as Evolution of US-China Policy 1956–1973: Memoirs of an Insider (Arlington, VA: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1998).

  “all hell had broken loose”: Ibid.

  “this communiqué was a disaster”: Lord oral history, FAOH.

  “Rogers arrived at the suite”: Feb. 27, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “The symbolism escaped no one”: Green oral history, FAOH.

  “Zhou En-lai handled the matter very skillfully”: Lord oral history, FAOH.

  “had very little to do with substance”: March 21, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “The network coverage” … “Shanghai at night”: Feb. 22 and 27, 1972, entries in Haldeman Diaries.

  “If the war in Vietnam”: Memorandum of conversation, President Nixon and Prime Minister Zhou, Feb. 28, 1972, Shanghai, FRUS XVII: China.

  “to negotiate an end to the war”: Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam, p. 289.

  “We’ll bomb the hell out of the bastards”: March 14, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.

  17: “This is the supreme test”

  “It looks as if they are attacking in Vietnam”: March 30, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “I don’t know any more if I’m in northern South Vietnam or southern North Vietnam”: Quoted in Sydney H. Schanberg, “‘It’s Everyone for Himself’ as Troops Rampage in Hue,” New York Times, May 4, 1972.

  “We lose if the ARVN collapses”: April 3, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “For the President, battlefield success became paramount”: Brown oral history, FAOH.

  “There will be no consideration of restraints”: April 4, 1972, entry in Moorer Diary.

  “The P’s massing a huge attack force”: April 4, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “God Almighty, there must be something”: April 4, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “An enormously potent ordeal”: April 20, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.