Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam

by Robert K. Brigham

  7. As quoted in Gareth Porter, A Peace Denied: The United States, Vietnam, and the Paris Peace Agreement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 80.

  8. Isaacson, Kissinger (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 166.

  9. Ibid., 206.

  10. Ibid., 208.

  11. H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: Putnam, 1994), March 17, 1970, 139.

  12. Kissinger, White House Years, 263–264.

  13. Memorandum, To the President from Henry A. Kissinger, March 10, 1969, box 175, National Security Council Files: Paris Talks, RNPLM.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Conversation, The President in Key Biscayne and Kissinger, March 8, 1969, 10:45 a.m., box 1, HAK Telecon, White House Tapes: Chronological File, RNPLM.

  20. Ibid.

  21. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, April 3, 1969,” document number 52.

  22. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 391.

  23. Kissinger, White House Years, 268.

  24. Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 75.

  25. Ibid., 76.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Kissinger, White House Years, 268. See also Nixon, RN, 391.

  28. Ilya V. Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1996), 207–209.

  29. NLF’s Ten Point Peace Plan as translated by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, at https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01720R000200160010-8.pdf.

  30. Ibid.

  31. New York Times, May 15, 1969.

  32. Speech of President Richard Nixon, May 14, 1969, Office of the Press Secretary, the White House, Washington, DC.

  33. Luu van Loi, Le Duc Tho–Kissinger Negotiations in Paris, 85–88.

  34. Kalb and Kalb, Kissinger, 132.

  35. Porter, A Peace Denied, 87.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Harold P. Ford, “Calling the Sino-Soviet Split,” US Central Intelligence Agency Library, at https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter98_99/art05.html#rft3; see also William Taubman, “Khrushchev vs. Mao: A Preliminary Sketch of the Role of Personality in the Sino-Soviet Split.” Woodrow Wilson Center, Cold War International History Project (Issues 8–9, Winter 1996/1997), 243.

  38. Mao Zedong, “Second Speech to Second Session, Eighth Party Congress,” May 17, 1958, as cited in Allen S. Whiting, “The Sino-Soviet Split,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 14, The People’s Republic, Part I, The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1949–1965, ed. Roderick Macfarquhar and John K. Fairbank (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 488–489.

  39. From Deng speech, November 14, 1960, at the Moscow conference of 81 Communist parties, as cited in CIA/Office of Current Intelligence Special Report, “The Men in the Sino-Soviet Confrontation,” July 5, 1963, 2, on file in CIA’s History Staff.

  40. Chen Jian, “China’s Involvement in the Vietnam War, 1964–1969,” China Quarterly 142 (June 1995): 382.

  41. Ibid., 382–383.

  42. Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 142.

  43. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Editorial Note,” document number 84. [Editorial note captures conversation with Dobrynin.]

  44. Ibid.

  45. Ibid.

  46. “Trends in Communist Propaganda,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service, October 28, 1970, 1–2.

  47. Ibid.

  48. Ibid.

  49. Luu van Loi, Le Duc Tho–Kissinger Negotiations in Paris, 94.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Memorandum, For President Nixon from Henry A. Kissinger—“Your meeting with Jean Sainteny,” July 14, 1969, box 107, National Security Council Files: Henry A. Kissinger Office Files, Country Files, Far East—Vietnam, RNPLM.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Letter, To His Excellency, Ho Chi Minh, President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam,” box 107, National Security Council Files: Henry A. Kissinger Office Files, Country Files, Far East—Vietnam, RNPLM.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Pierre Asselin, A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 20.

  56. Letter, From Sainteny, July 16, 1969, box 107, National Security Council Files: Henry A. Kissinger Office Files, Country Files, Far East—Vietnam, RNPLM.

  57. “President Nixon and President Thieu Meet at Midway Island, June 8 1969,” Nixon Foundation, at https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2014/06/president-nixon-president-thieu-meet-midway-island-june-8-1969/.

  58. Le Duan, Thu vao Nam [Letters to the South] (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan, Dan, 2005).

  59. Kissinger, White House Years, 278

  60. Luu Van Loi, Le Duc Tho–Kissinger Negotiations in Paris, 98.

  61. Ibid., 102.

  62. Ibid., 103.

  63. Kissinger, White House Years, 279.

  64. Ibid., 283.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Ibid.

  67. Memorandum of Conversation, August 4, 1969, box 107, National Security Council Files: Henry A. Kissinger Office Files, Country Files, Far East—Vietnam, RNPLM.

  68. Ibid.

  69. Ibid.

  70. Ibid.

  71. Ibid.

  72. Mai Van Bo, Tan cong ngoia giao [Diplomatic offensive and secret contacts] (Hanoi: Nhe Xuat Ban Su That, 1985), 165–168.

  73. Memorandum of Conversation, August 4, 1969, box 107, National Security Council Files: Henry A. Kissinger Office Files, Country Files, Far East—Vietnam, RNPLM.

  74. For a good summary of the intrigue between Kissinger, Laird, and Rogers, please see Notes, August 27, 1969, box 40, and Notes, January 14, 1972, both Haldeman Papers, White House Special Files, RNPLM.

  75. In a surreal meeting among Kissinger’s Senior Review Group (comprising U. Alexis Johnson, William Sullivan, David Packard, Armistead Selden, General Fred Karhos, General Richard Knowles, General William Burrows, General Robert Cushman, George Carver, Wayne Smith, John Negroponte, Admiral Robert Welander, Mark Wandler, and James Hackett), representatives from the State Department, the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council Staff that met all too infrequently to provide meaningful and useful coordination for the secret negotiations in Paris, Kissinger asked what Hanoi was going to do after a standstill cease-fire was in place. The problem: This question came six months after the proposal was formally offered to Le Duc Tho in Paris. See FRUS, 1969–1976, Volume VII, Vietnam, July 1970–January 1972, 1971, “Minutes of a Meeting of the Senior Review Group, October 1” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2010), document number 266.

  76. John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1998).

  77. For best practices in peace negotiations, please see Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, Taming Intractable Conflicts (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2004); Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, Leashing the Dogs of War (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007); Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999); Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse, Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2005); and Christine Bell, “Peace Agreements: Their Nature and Legal Status,” American Journal of International Law 100 (April 2006): 373–412.

  78. For a complete discussion o
f how Kissinger organized the NSC and the Senior Review Group, please see “National Security Council Structure and Functions,” at https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/textual/nsc/structure.php?print=yes.

  79. Ibid.

  80. Letter, From Head of the Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, August 9, 1969, box 861, National Security Council Files: Vietnam Negotiations, Camp David Memos, RNPLM.

  81. Memorandum, For the President from the National Security Adviser, September 10, 1969, at https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/salted-peanuts-memo-kissinger-nixon.

  82. Kissinger, White House Years, 284.

  83. FRUS, 1969–1976, volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Memorandum from the President’s Special Adviser for National Security Affairs to President Nixon, September 11, 1969,” document number 119.

  84. Ibid.

  85. Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969–1973, Secretary of Defense Historical Series (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2015), 120.

  86. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, September 12, 1969,” document number 120.

  87. Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History 1946–1975 (New York: Oxford, 1988), 598.

  88. Draft, Presidential Speech, 2nd Draft, September 27, 1969, box 34, National Security Council Files: Adviser’s Files, West Wing Office Series, RNPLM.

  89. Isaacson, Kissinger, 246.

  90. As quoted in Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 419.

  91. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 688.

  92. Memorandum, For the President from Henry A. Kissinger, October 2, 1969, Contingency Military Operations Against North Vietnam, box 89, National Security Council Files: Vietnam Subject Files, RNPLM.

  93. Conversation, Kissinger and the president, September 27, 1969, 4:40 p.m., box 3, HAK Telecon, White House Tapes, Chronological Files, RNPLM.

  94. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Memorandum for the Record, October 11, 1969,” document number 136.

  95. Ibid.

  96. As quoted in Jussi M. Hanhimaki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford, 2004), 62.

  97. Ibid.

  98. As quoted in New York Times, December 10 and 11, 1968.

  99. Isaacson, Kissinger, 237–239.

  100. Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 156.

  101. White House Tapes, Oval Office, number 632-2, December 8, 1971, 9:25–10:18 a.m., RNPLM; see also Haldeman Diaries, diary entry for December 9, 1971, 381.

  102. White House Tapes, Oval Office: number 632-2, December 8, 1971, 9:25–10:18 a.m.; number 631-7, December 7, 1971, 4:33–5:05 p.m.; number 631-11, December 7, 1971, 6:28–7:04 p.m.; number 631-1, December 7, 1971, 12:57–1:58 p.m.; number 631-7, December 7, 1971, 4:35–5:05 p.m., all RNPLM; see also Haldeman Diaries, entry for December 7, 1971, 380, and John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 307–308.

  103. White House Tapes, Oval Office, number 632-2, December 6, 1971, 12:02–12:06 p.m., RNPLM.

  104. Ibid.

  105. White House Tapes, Oval Office, number 309-1, December 24, 1971, 4:58–5:08 p.m., RNPLM.

  106. As quoted in Barbara Keys, “Henry Kissinger: The Emotional Statesman,” Diplomatic History 35 (September 2011): 587.

  107. Ibid., 588.

  108. Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, 297–298; see also, Isaacson, Kissinger, 209.

  109. Keys, “Henry Kissinger,” Diplomatic History, 587.

  110. Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War, 93.

  111. Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, 172.

  112. Gallup Poll, January 1970.

  113. Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 163.

  114. Isaacson, Kissinger, 248.

  115. Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 158.

  116. Public Papers of the President, Nixon, 1969 (Washington, DC: Office of the Federal Register, 1971), 901–909.

  117. Conversation, Kissinger and the President, November 3, 1969, 10:20 a.m., box 3, HAK Telecon, White House Tapes: Chronological File, RNPLM.

  118. Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 166.

  119. Conversation, Kissinger and the president, November 3, 1969, 10:20 p.m. and midnight, box 3, HAK Telecon, White House Tapes, Chronological File, RNPLM.

  120. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Memorandum from President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to the President, December 1, 1969,” document number 152.

  121. Ibid.

  122. Ibid.

  123. Isaacson, Kissinger, 248.

  124. Ibid.

  125. Memorandum, For the President from Henry A. Kissinger, December 10, 1969, box 107, National Security Council Files: Henry A. Kissinger Office Files, Country Files, Far East—Vietnam, RNPLM.

  CHAPTER THREE: BOLD MOVES

  1. Kissinger, White House Years, 436.

  2. Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969–1973, Secretary of Defense Historical Series (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2015), 125–142.

  3. See the work of Nguyen Viet Thanh, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016) and Nu-Anh Tran, “South Vietnamese Identity, American Intervention, and the Newspaper Chinh Luan [Political Discussion], 1965–1969,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1 (February/August 2006): 169–209.

  4. As quoted in Walter Isaacson, Kissinger (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 253.

  5. Memorandum, Vietnam Alternatives, Henry Kissinger to Richard Nixon, January 16, 1969, box H: 019:5, National Security Council Files: Institutional Files; and Memorandum, From Henry Kissinger to Richard Nixon, Vietnam Situation and Options, box H: 98:7n National Security Council Files: Institutional Files, RNPLM; see also Conversation, The President and Henry Kissinger, March 8, 1969, 10:45 a m., box 1, HAK Telecon: White House Tapes, Chronological File, RNPLM.

  6. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 157–158.

  7. Willard J. Webb, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969–1970 (Washington, DC: Office of Joint History, Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2002), 15–19, 259.

  8. Le Mau Han, Cac Dai Hoi Dong cong san Viet Nam [The Vietnamese Communist Party] (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Banh Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 1995), 92.

  9. As quoted in Pierre Asselin, A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 25.

  10. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 435.

  11. FRUS, 1969–1976, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Nixon, January 7, 1970,” document number 167.

  12. FRUS, 1969–1976, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs to President Nixon, January 19, 1970,” document number 170.

  13. Ibid.

  14. George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 233.

  15. Conversations, Kissinger and Rogers, March 19, 1971, 9:35 a.m., box 9, and The President and Henry Kissinger, March 19, 1971, 11:10 a.m., box 9, both HAK Telecon: White House Tapes: Chronological File, RNPLM; see also Douglas Brinkley and Luke Nichter, eds., Nixon Tapes, 1971–1972 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 2014), 77.

  16. Conversation, President Nixon and Kissinger, January 14, 1970, 5:40 p.m., box 3, HAK
Telecon: White House Tapes, Chronological File, RNPLM; see also FRUS, 1969–1976, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between President Nixon and his Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), January 14, 1970,” document number 169.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Kissinger, White House Years, 158.

  20. Public Papers of the President, Richard Nixon, 1970 (Washington: Office of Federal Register, 1971), 115.

  21. See for example, Haldeman Diaries, January 27, 1970, 123; April 7, 1970, 147; and May 9, 1970, 163. For the May 9 entry Haldeman notes: “I am concerned about his condition… he has had very little sleep for a long time and his judgment, temper, and mood suffer badly as a result… He’s still riding on the crisis wave, but the letdown is near at hand and will be huge.”

  22. Isaacson quotes Kissinger as saying that Nixon was often drunk during this period, Kissinger, 259.

  23. As quoted in Isaacson, Kissinger, 249.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 111.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Kissinger, White House Years, 440.

  28. Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War, 113.

  29. Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 48.

  30. Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 116.

  31. Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century, 14.

  32. Kissinger, White House Years and Years of Upheaval.

  33. Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War.

  34. McGeorge Bundy, “Reconsiderations: Vietnam, Watergate, and Presidential Powers,” Foreign Affairs (December 1, 1979).

  35. Nguyen Tien Hung, a Saigon official, released the Nixon-Thieu letters on April 30, 1975. He later referred to them in his book The Palace File (New York: Harper and Row, 1986).