The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  18 Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 196.

  19 Hersh, The Price of Power, 111.

  20 Isaacson, Kissinger, 160.

  21 Haldeman with DiMona, The Ends of Power, 122.

  22 Fawn M. Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 322.

  23 William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 30–32.

  24 Isaacson, Kissinger, 213.

  25 Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 159.

  26 Ibid., 163; Young, Vietnam Wars, 239.

  27 Hersh, The Price of Power, 127.

  28 Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, 163; Hersh, The Price of Power, 126, 129.

  29 Hersh, The Price of Power, 124.

  30 Henry A. Kissinger, Memorandum for the President, “Contingency Military Operations Against North Vietnam,” October 2, 1969, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB195/VN-2.pdf.

  31 “Editorial Note,” Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. 7, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, Document 125, http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v06/d125.

  32 Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 398.

  33 Hersh, The Price of Power, 124–125.

  34 Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 358.

  35 Gregg Herken, Counsels of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 217.

  36 Nixon, RN, 401.

  37 AAAS, Minutes of the Meeting of the AAAS Council, December 30, 1965, AAAS Archives, Washington, D.C.

  38 “Scientists Protest Viet Crop Destruction,” Science, January 21, 1966, 309.

  39 Bryce Nelson, “Military Research: A Decline in the Interest of Scientists?” Science, April 21, 1967, 365.

  40 Bryce Nelson, “Scientists Plan Research Strike at M.I.T. on 4 March,” Science, January 25, 1969, 373.

  41 Max Tishler, “The Siege of the House of Reason,” Science, October 3, 1969, 193; Bryce Nelson, “M.I.T’s March 4: Scientists Discuss Renouncing Military Research,” Science, March 14, 1969, 1175–1178.

  42 Hersh, The Price of Power, 134.

  43 Christian G. Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (New York: Viking, 2003), 122–123.

  44 Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Vintage, 1996), 32–33.

  45 Appy, Patriots, 243–244.

  46 Ibid., 348–349.

  47 Hersh, The Price of Power, 135.

  48 Ibid.

  49 Robert Parry and Norman Solomon, “Colin Powell’s My Lai Connection,” 1996, www.consortiumnews.com/2009/120209b.html.

  50 Thomas S. Langston, ed. The Cold War Presidency: A Documentary History (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2007), 297.

  51 Perlstein, Nixonland, 482.

  52 Isaacson, Kissinger, 269.

  53 Bernard D. Nossiter, “Thousands of Students Protest War,” Washington Post, May 6, 1970.

  54 Kissinger, White House Years, 511, 513.

  55 We are grateful to Daniel Ellsberg for this information.

  56 Isaacson, Kissinger, 280.

  57 Wells, The War Within, 579.

  58 Testimony of Tom Charles Huston, Hearings before the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., “Huston Plan,” September 23, 1975, 20.

  59 Ambrose, Nixon, 508.

  60 Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2006), 175–176.

  61 Ibid., 176.

  62 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 307–308.

  63 “New Kissinger ‘Telecons’ Reveal Chile Plotting at Highest Levels of U.S. Government,” National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB255/index.htm.

  64 Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: New Press, 2003), 1–2, 18, 36; Westad, The Global Cold War, 201; Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 309.

  65 Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 11.

  66 Ibid., 8.

  67 Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 355.

  68 Westad, The Global Cold War, 201.

  69 Seymour M. Hersh, “Censored Matter in Book About C.I.A. Said to Have Related Chile Activities,” New York Times, September 11, 1974.

  70 “World: Chile: The Expanding Left,” Time, October 19, 1970, 23.

  71 Michael Dodge, Letter to the Editor, Time, November 16, 1970, 13.

  72 Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 17, 20–21, 58–59.

  73 Ibid., 25, 26, 28–29, 64, 72.

  74 Ibid., 79, 119.

  75 Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 364.

  76 Kinzer, Overthrow, 187.

  77 Ibid., 189.

  78 James D. Cockcroft and Jane Carolina Canning, ed. Salvador Allende Reader: Chile’s Voice of Democracy (Melbourne, Australia: Ocean Press, 2000), 201–220.

  79 Robert Alden, “Allende, at U.N., Charges Assault by U.S. Interests,” New York Times, December 5, 1972; Kinzer, Overthrow, 189; Joseph Zullo, “Allende Hits U.S., I.T.T.,” Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1972; Don Shannon, “Chile President Accuses U.S. Firms of ‘Indirect Aggression,’ ” Los Angeles Times, December 5, 1972.

  80 Kinzer, Overthrow, 190.

  81 Ibid., 194.

  82 Tim Weiner, “Word for Word/Covert Action,” New York Times, September 13, 1998.

  83 “TelCon: 9/16/73 (Home) 11:50, Mr. Kissinger/The President,” National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/Box%2022,%20File%203,%20Telcon,%209-16-73%2011,50%20Mr.%20Kissinger-The%20Pres%202.pdf.

  84 Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 265.

  85 ARA Monthly Report (July), “The ‘Third World War’ and South America,” August 3, 1976, National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB125/condor05.pdf.

  86 Ambassador Harry W. Shlaudeman to Secretary Kissinger, action memorandum, “Operation Condor,” August 30, 1976, Department of State, National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB312/1_19760830_Operation_Condor.PDF.

  87 FM USDEL Secretary in Lusaka to Henry Kissinger, cable, “Actions Taken,” September 16, 1976, Department of State, National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB312/2_19760916_Actions_Taken.pdf.

  88 John Dinges, “Pulling Back the Veil on Condor,” Nation, July 24, 2000, www.thenation.com/article/pulling-back-veil-condor.

  89 Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1985), 290.

  90 Richard Nixon, “Address to a Joint Session of the Congress on Return From Austria, the Soviet Union, Iran, and Poland,” June 1, 1972, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3450#axzz1aJSeeAQ2.

  91 For a discussion of Okinawa, see Gavan McCormack, “Ampo’s Troubled 50th: Hatoyama’s Abortive Rebellion, Okinawa’s Mounting Resistance and the U.S.-Japan Relationship (Part 1),” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 22-3-10, May 31, 2010, www.japanfocus.org/-Gavan-McCormack/3365/; Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 55–57.

  92 Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 783–784.

  93 Kurt M. Campbell and Tsuyoshi Sunohara, “Japan: Thinking the Unthinkable,” in The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices, ed. Kurt M. Campbell, Robert J. Einhorn, and Mitchell B. Reiss (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2004), 221–222.

  94 Ibid., 225.

  95 “The New Equilibrium,” New York Times, June 3, 1972.

  96 Jacob Heilbrunn, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (New York: Anchor Books, 200
9), 122.

  97 Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), 249.

  98 Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking, 2002), 255–256, 258–260.

  99 Ibid., 398.

  100 Ibid., 408.

  101 Ibid., 434, 440.

  102 Ibid., 418.

  103 Herring, From Colony to Superpower, 793.

  104 Ellsberg, Secrets, 419.

  105 Isaacson, Kissinger, 459.

  106 “Transcript of the Speech by President on Vietnam,” New York Times, January 24, 1973.

  107 Robert McNamara lecture to Peter Kuznick’s class at American University, October 21, 1999.

  108 Mr. Kissinger/The President (tape) [telephone conversation], December 9, 1970, 8:45 p.m., National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/Box%2029,%20File%202,%20Kissinger%20%96%20President%20Dec%209,%201970%208,45%20pm%20%200.pdf.

  109 Mr. Kissinger/General Haig (tape) [telephone conversation], December 9, 1970, 8:50 p.m., National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/Box%2029,%20File%202,%20Kissinger%20%96%20Haig,%20Dec%209,%201970%208,50%20pm%20106-10.pdf.

  110 Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide Under the Khmer Rouge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 23.

  111 Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, xi, note 3.

  112 Shawcross, Sideshow, 389.

  113 Georges Chapelier and Joysane Van Malderghem, “Plain of Jars: Social Changes Under Five Years of Pathet Lao Administration,” Asia Quarterly 1 (1971), 75.

  114 Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 234–236; Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life Under an Air War (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 3, 18–20.

  115 Daniel Ellsberg, personal communication with Peter Kuznick.

  116 “Excerpts from Mitchell’s Testimony,” Los Angeles Times, July 11, 1973.

  117 New Yorker, vol. 49, 1973, 173.

  118 Mark H. Lytle, America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1.

  119 Eisenberg, “Remembering Nixon’s War,” 263.

  CHAPTER 10: COLLAPSE OF DETENTE: DARKNESS AT NOON

  1 “Carter Criticizes Bush and Blair on War in Iraq,” New York Times, May 20, 2007.

  2 Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–2006 (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008), 293.

  3 Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 239.

  4 Gregory D. Cleva, Henry Kissinger and the American Approach to Foreign Policy (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1989), 40.

  5 Jonathan Schell, The Real War: The Classic Reporting on the Vietnam War (New York: Da Capo Press, 2000), 53.

  6 Ibid., 55.

  7 Graham Hovey, “He Calls ’73 Pledge of Aid to Hanoi Invalid,” New York Times, May 20, 1977.

  8 “Vietnam Report Details Unexploded Ordnance,” New York Times, August 1, 2009.

  9 Douglas Brinkley, Gerald R. Ford (New York: Macmillan, 2007), 91.

  10 Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 247; Clair Apodaca, Understanding U.S. Human Rights Policy: A Paradoxical Legacy (New York: Routledge, 2006), 60.

  11 Robert Hotz, “Beam Weapon Threat,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 2, 1977, 11.

  12 Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Détente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 138.

  13 Ibid., 152.

  14 Richard Pipes, “Team B: The Reality Behind the Myth,” Commentary, October 1986, 29, 33.

  15 Thom Hartmann, “Hyping Terror for Fun, Profit—and Power,” www.commondreams.org/views04/1207-26.htm.

  16 Cahn, Killing Détente, 158.

  17 Nicholas Thompson, The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War (New York: Henry Holt, 2009), 260.

  18 Ibid., 260–261.

  19 Tom Nugent and Steve Parks, “New Evidence Clouds Paisley ‘Suicide’ Verdict,” Baltimore Sun, April 2, 1979; “Paisley’s Death Believed Linked to CIA, Majority Security Breach,” Baltimore Sun, January 26, 1979; James Coates, “CIA Spy Mystery: How Did He Die and Why?,” Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1978.

  20 Coates, “CIA Spy Mystery.”

  21 Nugent and Parks, “New Evidence Clouds Paisley ‘Suicide’ Verdict”; “Wife Probing Death of Ex-CIA Official,” Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1978; “The Paisley Mystery,” Baltimore Sun, May 22, 1979; Timothy S. Robinson, “Full Report on Paisley to Be Secret,” Washington Post, April 24, 1980.

  22 Cahn, Killing Détente, 188.

  23 Alexander Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 20, note 18.

  24 Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 357.

  25 Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008 (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 64.

  26 Westad, The Global Cold War, 247–248.

  27 Ibid., 443, note 102.

  28 Leo P. Ribuffo, “Writing About Jimmy Carter as if He Was Andrew Jackson: The Carter Presidency in (Deep) Historical Perspective,” delivered January 2007 at the University of Georgia, http://gwu.academia.edu/leoribuffo/Papers/168463/.

  29 John B. Judis, “Twilight of the Gods,” Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 1991, 46–47.

  30 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), 297.

  31 Judis, “Twilight of the Gods,” 47–50.

  32 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), 5.

  33 Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper Colophon, 1980), 551.

  34 Jimmy Carter, A Government as Good as Its People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1977), 99–100.

  35 Walter L. Hixson, The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 258, n. 23.

  36 Lawrence S. Wittner, Towards Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1971–Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 41.

  37 Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Jimmy Carter: No Apology on Vietnam,” Washington Post, July 7, 1976.

  38 Alan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008), 334.

  39 Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 64.

  40 Ibid., 65–66.

  41 LaFeber, America, Russia, 300.

  42 Melvyn P. Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 268–269.

  43 Ibid., 284.

  44 “Speech of the President on Soviet-American Relations at the U.S. Naval Academy,” New York Times, June 8, 1978.

  45 Brzezinski, Power and Principle, 189.

  46 Westad, The Global Cold War, 283.

  47 John Drumbell, The Carter Presidency: A Re-evaluation (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1995), 102.

  48 David Vine, Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

  49 Westad, The Global Cold War, 292.

  50 “Tears and Sympathy for the Shah,” New York Times, November 17, 1977; see also Ronald Lee Ridenhour, “America Since My Lai: 10 Years on a Tightrope,” Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1978.

  51 Lloyd C. Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy from the 1970s to the Present (New York: New Press, 2008), 51.

  52 Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind, 301.

  53 Gardner, The Long Road to Baghdad, 54–55.

  54 Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helpe
d Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Henry Holt, 2005), 221.

  55 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 371.

  56 Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind, 308.

  57 “Nuclear Know-how: A Close Call,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1979.

  58 Robert A. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 148.

  59 Steve Galster, “Afghanistan: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1973–1990,” National Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB57/essay.html.

  60 William Borders, “Afghanistan Vows ‘Active Neutrality,’ ” New York Times, May 5, 1978.

  61 Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), xiii.

  62 Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind, 310–311.

  63 Ibid., 332.

  64 Russell Baker, “A Bone in the Throat,” New York Times, May 3, 1980.

  65 Jimmy Carter, State of the Union Address 1980, January 23, 1980, www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/speeches/su80jec.phtml.

  66 Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 113.

  67 Robert J. Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial (New York: Avon Books, 1995), 220, 402.

  68 Geoffrey Wawro, Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East (New York: Penguin, 2010), 382.

  69 “Transcript of President’s News Conference on Foreign and Domestic Affairs,” New York Times, March 25, 1977.

  70 Cahn, Killing Détente, 49.

  71 David Walsh, The Military Balance in the Cold War: US Perception and Policy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 183.

  72 Melvin R. Laird, “Defense Secretaries Shouldn’t Play Politics,” Washington Post, August 17, 1980.

  73 Gates, From the Shadows, 113.

  74 Ibid., 114–115.

  75 State Department cable 295771 to U.S. Embassy Moscow, “Brezhnev Message to President on Nuclear False Alarm,” 14 November 1979; Marshal Shulman memo to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, 16 November 1979; Marshal Shulman memo to Cyrus Vance, 21 November 1979, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 371, March 1, 2012, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb371/index.htm.