One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon

by Tim Weiner

“The pressure of public opinion”: Kissinger to President Nixon, Sept. 10, 1969, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Our Present Course on Vietnam,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “sharp military blows”: Kissinger to President Nixon, Oct. 2, 1969, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Contingency Military Operations Against North Vietnam,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “If USSR thinks President is a madman”: Vietnam, Contingency Planning, Sept. 12, 1969, Kissinger Papers.

  “[Nixon held] one of those mystic sessions”: Oct. 3, 1969, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “Could you exercise the DEFCON?”: Transcript of telephone conversation between Kissinger and Secretary of Defense Laird, Oct. 6, 1969 (declassified Oct. 14, 2011), Washington, DC, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test,” in FRUS XXXIV: National Security Policy.

  “an integrated plan”: Memo to General Wheeler, Oct. 9, 1969, Records of the Chairman of the JCS, Earle Wheeler Papers. The document originally was obtained by William Burr of the National Security Archive under the FOIA, and first cited by Burr and Jeffrey Kimball in “Nixon’s Secret Nuclear Alert: Vietnam War Diplomacy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Text, October 1969,” Cold War History 3, no. 2 (January 2003).

  “the ‘madman theory’”: Laird interview with William Burr, June 18 and Sept. 6, 2001, National Security Archive, George Washington University.

  “Tonight—to you, the great silent majority”: Nixon address to the nation on the war in Vietnam, Nov. 3, 1969. Public Papers of President Nixon, full text online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2303.

  “I am on the inside, the enemy”: Watts oral history, FAOH.

  7: “Don’t strike a king unless you intend to kill him”

  “a fifth-rate agricultural power”: Kissinger, memorandum of conversation, “SUBJECT: Vietnam,” Aug. 4, 1969, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris. Full text online at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB193/HAK-8-4-69.pdf

  “If we fail we have had it” and “‘Don’t strike a king’”: Adm. T. H. Moorer, memorandum for the record, Oct. 11, 1969, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: JCS Meeting with the President,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “We have the following problem” … “What if it comes out?”: Transcript of telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger, Jan. 26, 1970, 3:30 p.m., Washington, DC, Kissinger Papers.

  “rotting cadavers”: Admiral Thomas Moorer, JCS 2610 message to Admiral John McCain, Feb. 18, 1970, Abrams Papers, cited in William M. Hammond, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1968–1973, Center for Military History, Washington, DC, 1996.

  “the bombing was basically ineffectual”: Rushing oral history, FAOH.

  “We have won the war” … “You talk peace, but you make war”: Memorandum of conversation, Feb. 21, 1970, 4:10 p.m., Paris, FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “I want to run through the Laos situation” … “I don’t want any questions left”: Minutes of the National Security Council Meeting, Feb. 27, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “I’ll have to fuzz their capacity”: Transcript of telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger, Feb. 27, 1970, Washington, DC, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, cited in FRUS VI: Vietnam, document 190, editorial note.

  “There was a phrase in that paper”: Lord oral history, FAOH.

  “I knew it wasn’t true”: Transcript of telephone conversation between Kissinger and Haldeman, March 9, 1970, Washington, DC, Kissinger Telephone Conversation, cited in FRUS VI: Vietnam, document 190, editorial note.

  “a lot of very young and very able Air Force officers”: Holdridge oral history, FAOH.

  8: “A pitiful, helpless giant”

  “I don’t think he ever slept”: Haig Oral History Interview, Nov. 30, 2007, Nixon Library.

  “there wasn’t much we could do militarily,” “went through the roof,” and a “hard option”: From minutes of Washington Special Actions Group meeting, March 19, 1970, Washington, DC, footnote 12: U. Alexis Johnson Files, Telcons, March–April 1970, FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “Mr. Helms said”: Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group meeting, March 23, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “totally unprepared for combat”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969–1970, p. 149.

  “President Nixon asked me to draft” … “to lead his country out of its mess”: Marshall Green oral history, FAOH.

  “I want Helms to develop”: Kissinger to President Nixon, March 19, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “military effort against the Viet Cong in Cambodia”: Helms to Kissinger, March 23, 1970, “SUBJECT: Proposals to Sustain the Present Regime in Cambodia,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “Here was another”: Memorandum of conversation, April 18, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Dr. Kissinger’s Conversation with CIA Officer Recently in Phnom Penh.” FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “Poor K”: March 24, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “Apologizing for my vulgarity”: Helms memorandum for the record, March 25, 1970, Job 80–B01285A, Jan 1–June 30, 1970, DCI Helms Files, CIA.

  “The Thai battalion”: Telephone conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, March 26, 1970, Nixon Presidential Materials, Haig Special Files, National Archives, Washington, DC.

  “fight such a limitation to the death”: Haig to Kissinger, April 1, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Meeting with Secretary of Defense Laird and the President, 3/31/70,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “Multiple unsolvable problems bearing in”: April 15, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “Set up political attack … Have to declare war”: April 9, 1970, entry in ibid.

  “an all-out hatchet job”: March 10, 1970, entry in ibid.

  “We have no intention” … “reap the whirlwind”: Memorandum of conversation, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, Paris, April 4, 1970, FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “the need for speed”: McCain quoted in History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969–1970, pp. 247–48.

  “discussed possible cross-border attacks into Cambodia”: Ibid.

  “I think we need a bold move in Cambodia”: President Nixon to Kissinger, April 22, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS I: Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1969–1972.

  “pussyfooting”: Henry Kissinger, White House Years (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), pp. 490–92.

  “a political storm”: Memorandum from Roger Morris, Winston Lord, and Anthony Lake of the National Security Council staff to Kissinger, April 22, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Cambodia,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “P is moving too rashly”: April 24, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “There was no discussion”: Memorandum of meeting among the president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, attorney general, April 28, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Cambodia/South Vietnam,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “This is not an invasion of Cambodia”: Nixon Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia, April 30, 1970, Public Papers of Richard Nixon. The full text of the speech is online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2490.

  “As Nixon concluded his maudlin remarks”: Green oral history, FAOH.

  9: “An unmitigated disaster”

  “I made a very uncharacteristic”: Nixon, RN, p. 454.

  “P was really beat”: May 1, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “They’re the greatest”: Nixon, RN, p. 454.

  “He’s very disturbed”: May 4 and 6, 1970, entries in Haldeman Diaries.

  “We have to stand hard as a rock”: Telephone conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, May 4, 1970, Box 363, Kissinger Papers.

  “K. wants to just let the students go for a couple of weeks, then move in and clobber them”: May 6, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “The Cambodian incursion was an unmitigated disaster”: Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945–1989, Book II: Centralization Wins, 1960�
�1972, Center for Cryptological History, National Security Agency, 1995, Top Secret Umbra, excised copy declassified 2013, pp. 572ff.

  “By the time I had stopped laughing”: Stearman oral history, FAOH.

  “The press got hold” … “the advancing allies”: Johnson, Centralization Wins, pp. 572ff.

  “His instinct for the political jugular”: Nixon, RN, p. 496.

  “attack and counterattack”: Exit interview with Charles W. Colson, conducted by Jack Nesbitt and Susan Yowell, Room 182 of the Executive Office Building, Jan. 12, 1973, Nixon Library.

  “he’ll do anything”: May 16, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.

  “agitated and uneasy”: Nixon, RN, p. 459.

  “Four-thirty in the morning”: Krogh Oral History Interview, Sept. 5, 2007, Nixon Library.

  Lynn Schatzkin, Ronnie Kemper, and Joan Pelletier: Quoted in John Morthland, “Nixon in Public,” Rolling Stone, June 11, 1970, reprinted in Editors of Rolling Stone, The Age of Paranoia (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), pp. 306–9.

  “flushed, drawn, exhausted”: Krogh Oral History Interview, Sept. 5, 2007, Nixon Library.

  “The weirdest day so far” and “The unwinding process is not succeeding”: May 9 and May 15, 1970, entries in Haldeman Diaries.

  “scooping up secret data”: Sept. 30, 1969, entry in ibid.

  “the President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV”: James St. Clair, oral arguments before U.S. District Court judge John Sirica, May 1, 1974, U.S. v. Nixon.

  “Marcos and his wife”: Box 555, Symington Subcommittee, vol. 1, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, FRUS XX: Southeast Asia.

  “democracy doesn’t work”: “Memorandum from the American Embassy in Thailand to the Department of State,” Nov. 17, 1971, Bangkok, FRUS XX: Southeast Asia; see also “SUBJECT: Covert Support of the Thai Government Party in the Thai National Parliamentary Elections,” Feb. 7, 1969, FRUS VI: Vietnam. “The Thai let us”: Montgomery oral history, FAOH; Ambassador Unger’s report on the Thai coup and Kissinger’s analysis of the coup for Nixon are in FRUS XX: Southeast Asia.

  “They had been content”: James Marvin Montgomery oral history, FAOH.

  “aware of our attacks”: Nixon meeting with Souvanna Phouma, prime minister of Laos, and Kissinger, Oct. 7, 1969, “SUBJECT: The Public Position on US Activities in Laos,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “The President chewed our butts”: United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, staff summary of Bennett testimony, undated but written in 1975. See also “Meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, Lt. Gen. Bennett, and Adm. Gayler,” June 5, 1970, Haldeman White House Files, Nixon Library.

  “revolutionary terrorism” … “a plan which will enable”: Presidential talking paper: Meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, Lt. Gen. Bennett, and Adm. Gayler, June 5, 1970, Haldeman White House Files, Nixon Library.

  “I’m not going to accept”: Sullivan deposition, Nov. 1, 1975, United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.

  “in view of the crisis of terrorism”: Nixon, RN, pp. 474–75.

  “Haldeman basically gave him the portfolio”: Huston oral history, Nixon Library, online at www.nixonlibrary.gov.

  “we would continue our interdiction” … “it was worth taking risks”: Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group meeting, June 15, 1970, 3:15 p.m., Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Cambodia,” Box H–114, “WSAG Minutes, Originals, 1970–1971, Cambodia 6/15/70,” Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Institutional Files (H-Files), NSC Files, National Archives, Washington, DC.

  “I just hope they got it”: Ibid. At 7:45 p.m. on July 15, the president called Kissinger to ask if he thought that the WSAG “got the message?” Nixon continued: “They said they were trying so I just hope they got it. No doubt about what we were going to do—we were going to take some gambles and risks.”

  “There were a great number of people”: “Remarks by the President at WSAG Meeting,” minutes of Washington Special Actions Group, Washington, June 19, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS VI: Vietnam.

  “We were instructed to receive him and take him to visit Lon Nol”: Antippas oral history, FAOH.

  “Phnom Penh did not need an Ambassador”: Swank oral history, FAOH.

  “The communists have overrun half of Cambodia”: Special National Intelligence Estimate SNIE 57–70, Aug. 6, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: The Outlook for Cambodia,” CIA.

  “Listen, Henry, Cambodia won the war”: Nixon to Kissinger, Oct. 7, 1970, Box 7, Chronological File, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.

  10: “Only we have the power”

  “Plan is for P”: Oct. 14, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “seeking to trap” … “We should bear in mind”: Memorandum of conversation, Oct. 2, 1970, Madrid, FRUS XLI: Western Europe, NATO, 1969–1972.

  “The differences between the United States”: Background press briefing by President Nixon, Oct. 12, 1970, Hartford, CT, President’s Daily Diary (declassified 2011), Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Central Files, National Archives, Washington, DC. Nixon also prepared a set of handwritten notes for the briefing. According to these notes, he planned to state that, in spite of differences in the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union shared a “vital” interest in communication to “avoid war,” to “reduce armaments,” and to “have trade.” The president was neither “naive” nor “sentimental.” The United States and the Soviet Union, allies in the Second World War, had become competitors in the Cold War. This competition would continue, even if the two countries agreed to hold a summit meeting. Rather than seek “quick victories,” “sensational speeches,” and “spectacular formulas,” Nixon was determined to take the “long view” as he sought to build a “structure of peace” (notes from Oct. 12, 1970, Box 61: President’s Speech File, President’s Personal Files, Nixon Presidential Materials, National Archive, Washington, DC).

  “unless the United States was willing”: Memorandum of conversation, Oct. 22, 1970, 11:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m., Oval Office, participants included the president, Secretary of State Rogers, Kissinger, Gromyko, and Soviet ambassador Dobrynin, FRUS XIII: Soviet Union, October 1970–October 1971.

  “P. obviously enjoyed the confrontation”: Oct. 22, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “a moment of unusual uncertainty”: Memorandum from Kissinger to President Nixon, Oct. 19, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Your Meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, Oct. 22, 1970,” FRUS XIII: Soviet Union.

  “Put the past behind”: Notes prepared by President Nixon for Oct. 22, 1970, meeting with Gromyko, undated, Washington, DC, President’s Personal Files, Nixon Presidential Materials, Nixon Library.

  “The US”: Nixon to Kissinger, Oct. 12, 1970, 6:10 p.m., Washington, DC, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.

  “Anyone who had lived in Chile”: Phillips testimony, United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, vol. VII, pp. 55ff., July 13, 1975, declassified 1994.

  CONTACT THE MILITARY: The CIA’s operations are fully documented in https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21 and Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File (New York: New Press, 2003).

  A VIAUX COUP and OVERTHROWN: Ibid.

  “come up with nothing”: Sept. 15, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  “We wanted some confrontation”: Oct. 29, 1970, entry in ibid.

  “I could not resist showing them how little respect I had for their mindless ranting”: Nixon, RN, pp. 492–93.

  “a terrifying flying wedge of cops”: Oct. 29, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.

  Larger government studies estimated: Lee N. Robins, “Lessons from the Vietnam Heroin Experience,” Harvard Mental Health Letter, Dec. 1994. See also Alfred W. McCoy with Cathleen B. Read and Leonard P. Adams II, The Politics of Heroin in South
east Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 223ff.

  “a significant political failure” … “absolutely ruthless”: Nixon, RN, pp. 495–97.

  “amazing array of trivia” and “handling super fat cats and special assignments”: Nov. 10 and 19, 1970, entries in Haldeman Diaries.

  “John Dean asked me if I would set up a safe house” … He was also “quite dangerous”: Miller oral history, FAOH.

  “He started vying for favor on Nixon’s dark side”: Tim Weiner, “Charles Colson, Nixon’s Political Enforcer, Dies at 80,” New York Times, April 23, 2012.

  11: “We’re not going to lose this war”

  “break the back of the enemy”: CJCS Memo M-218-70, Dec. 23, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Conference with President Nixon,” in Moorer Diary, July 1970–July 1974, Records of the Chairman.

  “we’ve discovered that the enemy has our plan and is starting to mass their troops to counteract”: Jan. 26, 1971, entry (declassified Nov. 2014) in Haldeman Diaries.

  “we had received intercepts yesterday”: Memorandum for the president’s file by the president’s deputy assistant for national security affairs Haig, Jan. 27, 1971, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Meeting of the President, Secretary of State Rogers, Secretary of Defense Laird, Director of CIA Helms, Chairman of JCS Moorer, Henry A. Kissinger and Alexander M. Haig in the Oval Office,” FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “there could be no perception of defeat”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–1973, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, DC (declassified 2007), p. 5, Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, JCS.

  “He did not agree with the connotation that the Laos operation was merely a raid”: Memorandum for the president’s file by Haig, Jan. 27, 1971, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Meeting of the President, Secretary of State Rogers, Secretary of Defense Laird, Director of CIA Helms, Chairman of JCS Moorer, Henry A. Kissinger and Alexander M. Haig in the Oval Office,” FRUS VII: Vietnam.

  “The pressure back here”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–73, pp. 5–6.