The Last of the President's Men

by Bob Woodward

“K [Kissinger] called from New York all disturbed because he felt someone had been getting to the P [President] on Vietnam. . . . Henry’s concerned that the P’s looking for a way to bug out and he thinks that would be a disaster now.”

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  Nixon did not ease his way into more bombing after the “Zilch” memo. The next month, February 1972, according to a TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE/EXCLUSIVELY EYES ONLY memo from Kissinger to the secretary of defense, Melvin Laird, Nixon ordered a dramatic bombing escalation. It was in anticipation of a large North Vietnam offensive.I

  Kissinger wrote Laird that as a result of a National Security Council meeting on February 2, a month after the “Zilch” memo, Nixon had made the following decisions.

  According to Kissinger’s memo, “the President has directed that the Secretary of Defense undertake the following actions. . . . Add, as soon as possible, one additional [aircraft] carrier to the three currently available for operation in Southeast Asia. . . . Deploy additional B-52s to permit a sustained sortie rate of about 1500 per month. . . . Deploy additional fighter bomber squadrons to Southeast Asian bases. . . . Remove all existing sortie restrictions for both B-52 and tactical air missions during the current dry season in South Vietnam. . . . You should authorize air strikes into the northern portion of the DMZ whenever the field commander determines that the enemy is using the area in preparation for attack in the south.”

  This memo is not referred to in either Nixon’s or Kissinger’s memoirs.

  • • •

  Nixon was very worried about what Kissinger might have in his files, according to a taped November 20, 1972, conversation with Haldeman.

  “Now another thing that I desperately need something on is this: I’ve got to get from Henry’s office, get to my library file, all of my memoranda and his memorandums. Now, he doesn’t know, as you know, that we’ve got the recorder in there.” Kissinger was not aware of the secret taping system. Nixon also reminded Haldeman that “None of those should be transcribed; don’t want them transcribed.

  “Mine. Mine,” he declared. “I have got to get Henry’s stuff . . . and I want the original. I don’t want copies. You understand?

  “I’ve got to get his memoranda to me. Every memorandum he’s written to me, and everything I’ve written to him, has got to be put in that file now. . . . How are you going to get it?”

  “Easily,” Haldeman assured him. “Because he’s assured me all along that’s exactly the case. I now say we’re at the end of the first term, and we’ve told the whole staff, so it’s not singling him out, all the first-term papers have got to be moved over now. And physically, and I’ll take possession of them. And put them in your box.”

  • • •

  On May 9, 1972, Nixon dictated a TOP SECRET—EYES ONLY memo to Kissinger that Butterfield has in his files. It was declassified in 2010, years after most major Vietnam War histories were published.

  Nixon quotes seven paragraphs from the 20-paragraph memo in his 1978 memoir. The selection illustrates the point Nixon frequently made—it depends who writes the history. It also depends on who selects the documents and what portions to make public.

  In total, it is a revealing stream-of-consciousness document. The day before, May 8, Nixon had ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor and the bombing of key military targets in North Vietnam. It was again a significant escalation, in part, the kind of bombing that five months earlier he claimed had achieved “zilch.” He also seemed to realize fully that he was playing a mind game with the North Vietnamese.

  The seven paragraphs that Nixon uses in his memoir include the following strong assertions of his determination: (All the emphasis is Nixon’s.) “I cannot emphasize too strongly that I have determined that we should go for broke. . . . We must punish the enemy in ways that he will really hurt at this time. . . . I intend to stop at nothing to bring the enemy to his knees. . . .

  “We have the power to destroy his war making capacity. The only question is whether we have the will to use that power. What distinguishes me from Johnson is that I have the will in spades.”

  What he left out of his memoir was a description of the means.

  The full memo in Butterfield’s files adds this dimension:

  “. . . over the next few days I also want some targets hit which will have maximum psychological effect on morale in North Vietnam. That is why it is so important to take out the power plants. If your operational group thinks of any other targets of this type hit them and hit them hard.”

  Nixon also says that he will circumvent the chain of command, which by law runs from the president to the secretary of defense and to the military commanders. Because Laird opposed the mining and bombing, Nixon said he would deal with General Creighton Abrams, the commander in Vietnam. “I intend to give the directive directly to Abrams in the field and I will inform Laird and bring him into line. . . .

  “Over a longer period of time we can be more methodical in directing our air strikes to two specific targets—the rail lines, highways and POL [petroleum] supply areas. . . .

  “Needless to say, indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas is not what I have in mind. On the other hand, if the target is important enough, I will approve a plan that goes after it even if there is a risk of some civilian casualties.”

  He also left out the following: “I want as part of the plan this week, on an urgent basis, making strikes on all air fields in North Vietnam, particularly in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. I realize that they can be put back into operation a few days after a strike, but the psychological effect could be considerable. On this score, I particularly want to hit the international airfield where civilian planes land.”

  He had one more thought to offer in this long monologue.

  “Also, this week I want one major strike. Get Abrams to collect his assets and have one 500 plane strike by Thursday or Friday of this week so the enemy will know that we mean business all the way.”

  At the top Nixon appended a handwritten note to Rose Woods that she should file in “RN personal,” and issued this order: “K reread and Haig also before filing.”

  When the State Department declassified its version of the memo in 2010, it said in a footnote that nearly a month later Haig forwarded the memo to Kissinger with the notation, “Henry—the president sent this via Alex Butterfield this morning and asked that we both reread it. I am afraid that Rebozo will rekindle the fire over the weekend and we must all be ready for the ritual.”

  Butterfield said he does not know what this meant.

  • • •

  Though not aware of Nixon’s “Zilch” memo, Ken Hughes, a researcher at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, and an expert on Nixon’s tapes, has found significant new evidence about Nixon’s actions in the Vietnam War. In his 2015 book, Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War, and the Casualties of Reelection, Hughes shows that Nixon was aware that the massive bombing did not do the job militarily but it was politically popular. Hughes argues with a great deal of evidence that the bombing was chiefly designed so Nixon would win reelection.

  On the day after Nixon resigned, papers were removed from the desk in his hideaway office. Included was a 79-page “Confidential Survey” done for the Republican National Committee three years earlier at the end of July 1969. The survey is in the Nixon Presidential Library now. It stated that 66 percent of those polled would favor bombing and blockading North Vietnam for six months. On May 8, 1972—six months before the election—that was precisely what Nixon did when he ordered the new bombing of the North and the mining of Haiphong.

  Nixon would later claim in his 1985 book, No More Vietnams, that the bombing and mining “succeeded in crippling North Vietnam’s military effort.” Hughes cites CIA, DIA and Pentagon memos showing that bombing was not that effective because the North was getting more supplies than it needed to fight the ground war in the South and could last for two more years even if the bombing and mining continued. The Official History
of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975, first published in Vietnam in 1988 and translated into English in 2002, states: “The volume of supplies shipped from the North to South Vietnam in 1972 was almost double that shipped in 1971.” This claim and others in the Official History could not be verified.

  According to a September 8, 1972, tape recording, Nixon reported to Kissinger that the poll numbers favored bombing. “Just got Harris’s data,” the president said. “It’s two-to-one for bombing. Two-and-a-half-to-one for bombing. They want us to be very, very tough.” Nixon wrote that his popularity in 1972 was often attributed to his China opening, but “what really sent it up was the bombing and mining of Haiphong.”

  According to the tape of an October 6, 1972, meeting, Nixon disparaged the bombing, telling Kissinger, “We’ve never done anything militarily that’s worth a shit in North Vietnam except the mining.”

  Nixon did voice concern at one point about the human impact of the bombing. “I see those poor North Vietnamese kids burning with napalm, and it burns my heart,” he said, according to an October 12 tape. Three days later, Nixon was basking in the prospect of election victory in three weeks. “We’re not going to lose. Haha. Okay,” he said according to an October 15 tape.

  The next day, October 16, according to the tape of the discussion, Nixon harked back to the day he ordered new bombing and the Haiphong mining, telling Kissinger:

  “May 8 was the acid test. And how it’s prepared us for all these things. The election, for example.”

  “I think you won the election on May 8th,” Kissinger said.

  * * *

  I. I did not find a copy of this two-page memo in Butterfield’s files, but it was declassified in 2007.

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  It is, of course, impossible to review all of the Nixon-Kissinger actions and memos on Vietnam here. But some of the Butterfield documents raise questions about the public record, particularly the selection of information on Vietnam in both Nixon’s and Kissinger’s memoirs. Crucial parts of memos have been omitted from their memoirs, altering the historical record in significant ways.

  For example, Kissinger, who was in South Vietnam for meetings with South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu, sent a Top Secret Flash, Sensitive, Exclusive Eyes Only two-page memo dated October 22, 1972, to the White House. This was just two weeks before the U.S. presidential election.

  It also contains Nixon’s handwritten note at the top to “File RN personal,” meaning it should go only to Nixon’s personal file. The same dark ink appears to be Nixon’s underlines on key passages.

  In Kissinger’s memo he proposes that Nixon send a letter to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who was acting as an intermediary with the North Vietnamese on peace negotiations. The national security adviser recommends saying that Nixon “would be prepared to work out a bilateral arrangement” with the North. This would exclude South Vietnam, the U.S. ally in the war.

  “We have always said that we would not impose a solution on our allies,” Kissinger said. But that was what he was proposing and he added, “obviously I favor” this option.

  In his memoir, Nixon does not even acknowledge that Kissinger made a proposal for such a “bilateral arrangement,” and writes that he categorically rejected such a concept and would not even entertain the thought.

  “I did not feel that I could let this happen. . . . If we abandoned him [Thieu] South Vietnam would fall to the Communists within a matter of months and our entire effort there would have been for naught.”

  On the very next page Nixon quotes the first line of Kissinger’s cable of October 22, 1972: “It is hard to exaggerate the toughness of Thieu’s position. His demands verge on insanity.” But Nixon leaves out the rest including Kissinger’s favored course of a “bilateral arrangement” with the North.

  In his memoir, Nixon writes, “I immediately sent a message to [Premier] Pham Van Dong through the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris, reminding Hanoi that we had always taken the position that we could not proceed unilaterally” without the participation of South Vietnam.

  Of course this was contrary to Kissinger’s favored course—“a bilateral arrangement”—as outlined in the portion of the cable that Nixon did not acknowledge.

  In his memoir, Kissinger also does not mention or acknowledge his favored course. He mentions the cable and says, “We wanted Soviet assistance to keep Hanoi on a restrained course.” But he makes no mention of his willingness to make “a bilateral arrangement” with the North—something both Nixon and he assured the South Vietnamese president would never happen.

  Neither Nixon nor Kissinger uses the line from the cable in which Kissinger recommends that more should be done than just a letter to Brezhnev. “Here you would add orally that, of course, the November 7 considerations must weigh very heavily,” Kissinger said. November 7 was the date of the upcoming presidential election.

  A full copy of this Top Secret memo was released publicly in 2010 when it was declassified and published by the State Department Office of the Historian. It was among more than 4,000 pages of documents released in four volumes from the Vietnam era. This was more than three decades after the Nixon and Kissinger memoirs were published. The failure to tell the whole story suggests it may be time for a fresh examination of the entire Vietnam record in light of Nixon and Kissinger’s substantial efforts to distort the record and not explain what they were really doing.

  The next day, Monday, October 23, Kissinger met with Thieu for two and one quarter hours and in his memoir he calls the session “a melancholy encounter” and quotes some benign exchanges with the South Vietnam president.

  But a five-page TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE EXCLUSIVELY EYES ONLY cable back to Nixon and Haig that is in the Butterfield files shows the extent to which Kissinger did not tell Thieu much of the truth, insisting he would not do precisely what he had proposed to Nixon a day earlier.

  “First,” Kissinger reports on what he told Thieu, “I want to make it clear there never have been talks or communications with the other side which have not been communicated to you. You have been apprised fully of every development as it has occurred and have been consulted on every move we have made with the single exception of the meeting on September 15 when we believed it was necessary to move before we had heard from you.

  “The U.S. will never sacrifice a trusted friend. We will not deal with anyone but the President of Vietnam and will have no communication with anyone but the president of Vietnam.”

  Kissinger added, “We do not consider President Thieu’s demands unreasonable.”

  In the notetaker’s summary, the cable continued, “Dr. Kissinger said that he would probably have a press conference when he returned to the U.S. He will give the impression that progress is being made. . . .

  “When he returned to the U.S., he will consider himself President Thieu’s comrade in arms,” adding ambiguously but more truthfully, “warning, however, that we may not face the ideal way in which we can continue together.

  “Dr. Kissinger . . . assured Thieu that nothing would be done behind his back and that consultation would continue.”

  In his memoir Kissinger goes further. “Outrageous as Thieu’s conduct had been, our struggle had been over a principle: that America did not betray its friends. I agreed with Nixon that turning on Thieu would be incompatible with our sacrifice.”

  It would be naive in the extreme not to realize that this is the way diplomacy is often conducted, but in his memoir published five years after Nixon’s resignation, Kissinger masks the truth by selective use of his cables. Both he and Nixon leave out any reference to a separate “bilateral” arrangement with the North that would be a sellout of their longtime ally.

  By December the Peace Talks had broken down and on December 18 Nixon began the so-called Christmas bombing of the North, unleashing massive B-52 Stratofortress raids on Hanoi and Haiphong. Code-named Operation Linebacker II it was the largest heavy bomber strike launched by the Unite
d Sates since the end of World War II.

  The North called this “extermination bombing,” but as Nixon said in RN, “they did not require that the bombing be stopped as a precondition to their agreeing to another meeting” for peace talks.

  If the bombing was effective and having such an impact, why did the North not require or even request that it be halted? Part of the answer may be provided by the official North Vietnamese history, which says that they were able to use the massive American bombing raids for propaganda purposes and to boost morale.

  This history also suggests that contrary to U.S. claims much of the bombing was not effective and did minimal damage—in other words “zilch” as Nixon had written earlier in the year.

  It portrays the Christmas bombing as brutal but claimed the bombing served to rally the people and military. The first night of bombing, December 18, 1972, the history says the North shot down three B-52s. This is confirmed by U.S. records.

  “This glorious victory in our initial battle strongly encouraged the fighting resolve and will to win of the soldiers and civilians of the entire nation,” the Vietnamese history says.

  After 12 days the Christmas bombing was halted. “The enemy’s massive strategic offensive using B-52s against Hanoi and Haiphong had been crushed,” the Vietnamese book says. “Nixon’s dream of negotiating from a position of strength had ended in total failure.” The history claimed the North had shot down 34 B-52s. The U.S. said it was only 15, though another nine suffered medium to heavy damage.

  In the midst of the new bombing and with the reelection behind him, Nixon wrote in his memoir that he sent “the strongest letter I had yet written to Thieu.” Nixon then bluntly surfaced the idea that he would make a bilateral agreement with the North if necessary. It was, he told Thieu, “my irrevocable intention to proceed, preferably with your cooperation but, if necessary, alone.”