American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [“What do the Chinese Communists want?”]: quoted in Kalb and Kalb, p. 218. 468-9 [Nixon’s changing line on China]: Nixon, “Asia After Viet Nam,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 46, no. 1 (October 1967), pp. 111-23, quoted at pp. 121,123, 121, respectively.

  469 [Nixon’s attempt to visit mainland China]: William Safire, Before the Fall: An Inside View of the Pre-Watergate White House (Doubleday, 1975), p. 366.

  [Start of rapprochement between the U.S. and China]: Warren I. Cohen, America’s Response to China: An Interpretative History of Sino-American Relations (Wiley, 1971), pp. 239-42; John King Fairbank, The United States and China, 4th ed. (Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 457-58; Hersh, ch. 26, pp. 363-71; Kissinger, White House Years, chs. 6, 18; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 545-52; Seymour Topping, Journey Between Two Chinas (Harper, 1972), ch. 27; Kwan Ha Yim, ed., China and the U.S.: 1964-72 (Facts on File, 1975), pp. 215-23; John W. Carver, China’s Decision for Rapprochement with the United States, 1968-1971 (Westview Press, 1982); Michael Schaller, The United States and China in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 163-71; Frank van der Linden, Nixon’s Quest for Peace (Robert B. Luce, 1972), pp. 139-43; Michael I. Handel, The Diplomacy of Surprise: Hitler, Nixon, Sadat (Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1981), ch. 4.

  [“Curious ambivalence”]: Fairbank, United States and China, p. 314.

  469-70 [U.S.-China historical background]: ibid., chs. 12-13 and passim; Fairbank, China: The People’s Middle Kingdom and the U.S.A. (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), esp. chs. 8, 10; Akira Iriye, “The United States in Chinese Foreign Policy,” in William J. Barnds, ed., China and America: The Search for a New Relationship (New York University Press, 1977), pp. 13-37; Michael H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (Columbia University Press, 1983); Michael Oksenberg and Robert B. Oxnam, eds., Dragon and Eagle: United States-Chinese Relations (Basic Books, 1973); A.T. Steele, The American People and China (McGraw-Hill, 1966).

  470 [“When we step in here”]: quoted in Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 (Macmillan, 1971), p. 39.

  [“The American memory”]: Bloodworth, The Messiah and the Mandarins: Mao Tsetung and the Ironies of Power (Atheneum, 1982), p. 266; see also Oksenberg and Oxnam, part 2.

  471 [“When the moment comes”]: quoted in Handel, p. 176.

  471 [Washington’s ignorance mapproaching China]: see Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 164, 167, 685-88.

  [“Take the glow off”]: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 711.

  [“An intricate minuet”]: ibid., p. 187; see also Hersh, p. 351.

  [Plans for Kissinger’s trip]: Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 718-40; Hersh, pp. 372-73.

  [Kissinger’s trip to Peking]: Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 738-55; Schaller, pp. 170-72; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 553-54; Hersh, ch.27.

  [“Toward the heavens”]: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 742.

  472 [Chou]: Dick Wilson, Zhou Enlai (Viking, 1984).

  [Chou’s trip to Hanoi]: Hersh, p. 375.

  [Nixon’s announcement]: July 15, 1971, in Nixon Public Papers, vol. 3, pp. 819-20, quoted at p. 820.

  [Preparations for Nixon trip]: Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 774-84, 1049-53; Schaller, pp. 173-74; Hersh, pp. 489-93; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 554-59.

  473 [“Great opportunity”]: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1050.

  [Nixon’s arrival]: Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 559-60; Schaller, p. 174; Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1053-56; see also Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (Atlantic Monthly/ Little, Brown, 1973), p. 222.

  [Nixon in China]: Kissinger, White House Years, ch. 24; Hersh, ch. 35; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 560-80; Newsweek, vol. 79, no. 10 (March 6, 1972), pp. 14-29.

  [“A great wall”]: exchange with reporters at the Great Wall of China, February 24, 1972, in Nixon Public Papers, vol. 4, pp. 370-72, quoted at p. 370.

  [Nixon-Mao exchange]: quoted in Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 561-62.

  474 [Shanghai Communiqué]: reprinted in Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1490-92, n. 3, quoted at pp. 1491, 1492; see also ibid., pp. 1085-86; Gene T. Hsiao, “The Legal Status of Taiwan in the Normalization of Sino-American Relations,” in Hsiao and Michael Witunski, eds., Sino-American Normalization and Its Policy Implications (Praeger, 1983), ch. 2, esp. pp. 41-57.

  [Reactions to China initiative]: Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1091-94, Reagan quoted at p. 1093.

  474-5 [Kissinger’s request to the press]: Hersh, pp. 499-500, quoted at p. 500.

  475 [“Week that changed the world”]: quoted in Nixon, Memoirs, p. 580. [“Transformed the structure”]: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 163.

  [Chinese internal conflict]: Garver, ch. 4; Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Brookings Institution, 1985), pp. 235-36.

  475-6 [North Vietnamese offensive and preparations for Moscow summit]: Kissinger, White House Years, chs. 25-27; George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (Wiley, 1979), pp. 239-42; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 586-608; Stanley Karnow, Vietnam (Viking, 1983), pp. 639-47; Hersh, ch. 36; Georgi A. Arbatov and Willem Oltmans, eds., The Soviet Viewpoint (Dodd, Mead, 1981), pp. 61-64.

  476 [Kissinger-Dobrymn exchange]: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1117,

  [Moscow summit]: ibid., ch. 28; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 609-21; Safire, pp. 440-59; Garthoff, ch. 9; Hersh, ch. 37.

  476-7 [Kissinger on mood aboard Air Force One]: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1202.

  [“One of the great diplomatic coups”]: quoted in Nixon, Memoirs, p. 609.

  [“If we leave all the decisions”]: quoted in ibid., p. 610.

  [“Hid the appalling realities”]: Weisberger, Cold War, Cold Peace: The United States and Russia Since 1941 (American Heritage Publishing, 1984), p. 268.

  [“Reciprocity, mutual accommodations”]: quoted in Garthoff, p. 290.

  478-9 [“A First Step”]: quoted in Hersh, p. 530.

  479 [SALT ratification vote]: New York Tunes, August 4, 1972, pp. 1-2.

  Peace Without Peace

  [“Peace is at hand”]: quoted in Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1399; see also Nikolai V. Sivachev and Nikolai N. Yakovlev, Russia and the United States, Olga Adler Titelbaum, trans. (University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 252-55.

  479 [Nixon’s post-election melancholy]: Nixon, Memoirs, p. 717.

  [Demand for staff resignations]: Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1406-7. [“Eastertide’’ offensive and U.S. retaliation]: Hersh, pp. 503-8, Nixon quoted on the weather and the Air Force at p. 506; Karnow, pp. 639-43; Herring, pp. 240-43.

  480 [Giap’s strategy]: see William J. Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Westview Press, 1981), pp. 227, 292.

  [Haig’s trip to Saigon]: Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1338-39; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 689-91; Arnold R. Isaacs, Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), p. 35.

  481 [“I sympathized”]: Nixon, Memoirs, p. 690.

  [“Personally with you”]: quoted in ibid., p. 690.

  [Kissinger’s negotiations in Paris]: Allan E. Goodman, The Lost Peace: America’s Search for a Negotiated Settlement of the Vietnam War (Hoover Institution Press, 1978), pp. 125-52; Kissinger, White House Years, chs. 31-33; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 687-701; Hersh, ch. 38: Herring, pp. 244-46.

  482 [“Finest compromise”]: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1358.

  [Kissinger’s report to Nixon]: ibid., pp. 1360-62; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 691-93. [Kissinger’s trip to Saigon]: Herring, p. 245; Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1367-91; Hersh, pp. 593-603.

  [Nixon’s misgivings about agreement]: see Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 701-7; Hersh, ch. 39 passim.

  482-3 [Post-election negotiations]: Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1410-46; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 717-33; Goodman, pp. 152-60; Hersh, pp. 610-23.

  483 [“Up and down”]: quoted in Nixon, Memoirs, p. 7
35.

  [“Bunch of shits”]: ibid., p. 733.

  [Renewed bombing]: Goodman, pp. 160-61; Hersh, pp. 616-28; Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1444-57; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 733-41.

  [“This is your chance”]: quoted in Nixon, Memoirs, p. 734.

  484 [“War by tantrum”]: James Reston, quoted in ibid., p. 738.

  [“Sorry Christmas present”]: quoted in Herring, p. 249.

  [Newspaper headlines]: quoted in Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1453.

  [Pope on “blessed” Vietnam]: quoted in Karnow, p. 653.

  [Resumption of negotiations]: Herring, pp. 249-50; Goodman, pp. 162-64; Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1457-70; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 741-51 passim: Hersh, pp. 631-35; see also Gareth Porter, A Peace Denied: The United States, Vietnam, and the Paris Agreement (Indiana University Press, 1975), ch. 5; Maynard Parker, “Vietnam: The War That Won’t End,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 53, no. 2 (January 1975), pp. 352-74.

  [“Respond with full force”]: letter of Nixon to Thieu, January 5, 1973, in Nguyen Tien Hung and Jerrold L. Schechter, The. Palace File (Harper, 1986), pp. 143-44, quoted at p. 144.

  [“All that I can”]: quoted in Herring, p. 250.

  [“The chance today”]: in Nixon Public Papers, vol. 5, pp. 12-15, quoted at pp. 13-14.

  [“Just to show”]: quoted in Nixon, Memoirs, p. 752.

  485 [“On the other hand”]: ibid., p. 753.

  [Preliminaries to Summit II]: Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Little, Brown, 1982), pp. 228-86; Garthoff, pp. 319-30.

  [Summit II]: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, pp. 286-301; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 876-87; Garthoff, pp. 330-44.

  [“Act in such a manner”]: quoted in Garthoff, p. 334; see also ibid., pp. 334-44; Kissinger, Year of Upheaval, pp. 274-86.

  486 [Nixon’s suspicions of Brezhnev’s motives]: Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 880-81. [“Landmark” step]: quoted in Gartoff, p. 335.

  [“Bland set of principles”]: Kissinger, While House Years, p. 1152.

  [Summit conflict over Middle East]: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, pp. 297-99; Nixon, Memoirs, pp. 884-86; Garthoff, pp. 364-65.

  487 [Middle East crisis]: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, chs. 11-12; Garthoff, ch. 12; Alan Dowty, Middle East Crisis: U.S. Decision-Making in 1958, 1970, and 1973 (University of California Press, 1984), part 3; John G. Stoessinger, Henry Kissinger: The Anguish of Power (Norton, 1976), pp. 175-95.

  [“Appropriate steps unilaterally”]: quoted in Garthoff, p. 377.

  487 [“Strangelove Day”]: ibid., p. 378. [“In no event”]: ibid., p. 380.

  [Garthoff on Kissinger’s motives]: ibid., p. 384.

  [“Soviets subsided”]: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 980.

  488 [NATO and détente]: see ibid., chs. 5, 16 passim; Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1273-75.

  [Doubts concerning detente]: Garthoff, ch. 12 passim; Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, ch. 22 passim.

  [Vladivostok summit]: Gerald R. Ford, A Time To Heal (Harper, 1979), pp. 213-19; Garthoff, pp. 443-50; Thomas W. Wolfe, The SALT Experience (Ballinger, 1979), ch. 9. 488-9 [Helsinki agreements]: Garthoff, pp. 473-79; Ford, pp. 298-306 passim.

  489 [Schlesinger firing]: Ford, pp. 320-24; Reichley, pp. 348-51; Garthoff, pp. 441-42.

  [Fall of South Vietnam]: Isaacs, ch. 13; Karnow, pp. 659-70; Herring, pp. 252-63; Alan Dawson, 55 Days: The Fall of South Vietnam (Prentice-Hall, 1977); see also Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Atlantic Monthly/Little, Brown, 1972), esp. ch. 17.

  [Farmer and bullock]: story related to author.

  Foreign Policy: The Faltering Experiments

  491 [“A new leadership”]: press conference of A. A. Gromyko, Pravda, April 1, 1977, as quoted in Garthoff, p. 809.

  [“Ruling circles”]: “On the Present Policy of the U.S. Government,” Pravda, June 17, 1978, as quoted in ibid., p. 604.

  [“Explicit value, and means calculations”]: Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (Harcourt, 1950), pp. 66-85, quoted at p. 69; see also Frank L. Klingberg, “The Historical Alternation of Moods in American Foreign Policy,” World Politics, vol. 4, no. 4 (January 1952), pp. 239-73.

  492 [“Fortress America”]: Henry A. Kissinger, The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy (Harper, 1961), p. 1.

  [“In a revolutionary period”]: ibid., pp. 355-56.

  493 [Kissinger on “middle way”]: ibid., ch. 8.

  493-4 [Alternative strategies]: James MacGregor Burns, “A Way Out in Vietnam,” Harper’s, vol. 233, no. 1394 (August 1966), pp. 34-35; see also Anthony Eden, “Toward Peace in Indochina, Twelve Steps to a Long-range Settlement,” ibid., pp. 36-43; see, generally, Joseph W. and Stewart Alsop Papers, General Correspondence, esp. containers 69-77, Library of Congress.

  494 [“No true Nixon”]: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, pp. 73-74.

  [Stevenson on Adlai]: John Bartlow Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World (Doubleday, 1977), p. 547.

  495 [“Early presidents deliberately selected”]: Schlesinger, The Cycles of American History (Houghton Mifflin, 1986), pp. 296-97; see also Abraham D. Sofaer, War, Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Power: The Origins (Ballinger, 1976).

  [Media and foreign policy]: see Montague Kern, Patricia W. Levering, and Ralph B. Levering, The Kennedy Crises: The Press, the Presidency, and Foreign Policy (University of North Carolina Press, 1983); David L. Paletz and Robert M. Entman, Media Power Politics (Free Press, 1981), ch. 13.

  [“Caused severe damage”]: in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D Roosevelt, Samuel I. Rosenman, comp. (Random House, 1938-50), vol. 10, pp. 514-16, quoted at p. 514.

  [“Hell of a beating”]: quoted in Tuchman, p. 300.

  496 [“Appearances contributed to reality”]: John Kennedy, quoted in Robert Dallek, The American Style of Foreign Policy (Knopf, 1983), p. 230.

  [Johnson’s fear of appearing “soft”]: see Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (Harper, 1976), pp. 258-59, 269.

  [“Pitiful, helpless giant”]: Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia, April 30, 1970, in Nixon Public Papers, vol. 2, pp. 405-10, quoted at p. 409. [Caddis on the perception of power]: John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 277; see also James Chace and Caleb Carr, America Invulnerable: The Quest for Absolute Security from 1812 to Star Wars (Summit, 1988).

  12. Vice and Virtue

  497 [“Guerrilla war to end”]: Max Frankei, “A Divided Nation Lost Its Way,” New York Times, January 28, 1973, sect. 4, p. 2.

  [“Full, free, and absolute”]: Proclamation 4311, Granting Pardon to Richard Nixon, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975-79), vol. 1, pp. 103-4, quoted at p. 104; see also Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal (Harper, 1979), pp. 157-71, 196-99; Robert Sam Anson, Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard M. Nixon (Simon and Schuster, 1984), chs. 3-4.

  [“Our people would again”]: in Ford Public Papers, vol. 1, pp. 101-3, quoted at p. 102.

  [Suspicions of Ford-Nixon deal]: Hersh, “The Pardon,” Atlantic, vol. 252, no. 2 (August 1983), pp. 55-78; J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years (Viking, 1976), p. 545.

  [Nixon’s alleged call to Ford]: Hersh, p. 76.

  [“No deal, period”]: October 17, 1974, in Ford Public Papers, vol. 1, pp. 338-71, quoted at p. 363; see also Ford, Time to Heal, pp. 196-99.

  [“The greatest good”]: in Ford Public Papers, vol. 1, p. 102.

  499 [Enemies list]: Lukas, pp. 12-13.

  [Huston Plan]: memoranda reprinted in Steve Weissman, ed., Big Brother and the Holding Company (Ramparts Press, 1974), pp. 321-32; Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance (Knopf, 1980), pp. 261-68; Lukas, pp. 32-37; Steve Weissman, “Tom Huston’s Plan,” in Weissman, pp. 45-60; Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (Free Press, 1987), pp. 448-58.

  [“Flag-waving”]: quoted in Lukas, p. 11.
r />   500 [“Going to change now”]: Gerald Gold, ed., The White House Transcripts (Bantam, 1974), p. 63.

  Watergate: A Morality Tale

  [At the Beverly Hills Hotel]: Jeb Stuart Magruder, An American Life: One Man’s Road to Watergate (Atheneum, 1974), pp. 211-15; see also Lukas, ch. 7.

  [Magruder-Liddy exchange]: quoted in Magruder, p. 211.

  [“We were the government”]: ibid., p. 214.

  [Magruder]: ibid., chs. 1-8; Lukas, pp. 7-8.

  501 [“State of permanent crisis”]: Magruder, p. 72.

  [Cover-up]: Lukas, chs. 8-9; Magruder, chs. 11-12; John W. Dean III, Blind Ambition (Simon and Schuster, 1976), chs. 4-6; Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms & the CIA (Knopf, 1979), pp. 258-67.

  [“This dirty work”]: Dean, p. 123.

  [Kalmbach’s fund-raising]: ibid., pp. 123-24, 139-40; Lukas, pp. 250-55.

  [Post investigations]: Bernstein and Woodward, All the President’s Men (Simon and Schuster, 1974), quoted at p. 142; see also Barry Sussman, The Great Cover-Up: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate (Crowell, 1974), part 4.

  [McCord’s admission]: Lukas, pp. 302-6; John J. Sirica, To Set the Record Straight (Norton, 1979) ch5.

  502 [“Come a long road”]: White House Transcripts, p. 91.

  [“Certain domino situation”]: ibid., p. 119.

  [“Get a million dollars”]: ibid., pp. 146-47.

  [“No doubt about the seriousness”]: ibid., p. 134.

  [“Fall on his sword”]: Dean, pp. 194, 195.

  503 [Ervin committee]: Sam J. Ervin, Jr., The Whole Truth: The Watergate Conspiracy (Random House, 1980); Sam Dash, Chief Counsel (Random House, 1976); Dean, ch. 10; Magruder, pp. 304-7; Gerald Gold, ed., The Watergate Hearings: Break-in and Cover-Up (Viking, 1973); Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, The Battle for Public Opinion: The President, the Press, and the Polls During Watergate (Columbia University Press, 1983), ch. 5; Mary McCarthy, The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits (Harcourt, 1974).

  503 [“Public posture”]: quoted in Lukas, p. 278.

  [Dean’s testimony]: Watergate Hearings, pp. 266-363, quoted at pp. 266, 302, 307-8, 353-54.

  504 [“Make it fourteen”]: quoted in McCarthy, p. 37.