Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  But any tensions caused by these practices had largely evaporated in early 1973, once I had decided to resign. In the second half of April 1973, therefore, my feelings toward both Haldeman and Ehrlichman were tinged with sadness. Whatever the occasional frictions, we had been colleagues during turbulent years. I remembered their hopes and, yes, their dedication to service. I knew and liked their wives and their children. I had a better sense than almost anyone of the environment out of which — nearly imperceptibly — had grown the cancer of Watergate. The White House is both a goldfish bowl and an isolation ward; the fish swim in a vessel whose walls are opaque one way. They can be observed if not necessarily understood; they themselves see nothing. Cut off from the outside world, the inhabitants of the White House live by the rules of their internal coexistence or by imagining what the outside world is like. This in the Nixon White House became increasingly at variance with reality until suddenly the incommensurability between the two worlds grew intolerable; the bowl burst and its inhabitants found themselves gasping in a hostile atmosphere.

  So Haldeman and Ehrlichman thrashed around at the end of April 1973, not able to gauge the implications of what was happening or even the degree of their own responsibility. As the days went by without exoneration I became more and more convinced that they were finished in their accustomed roles even if they survived in their official positions. The authority of a Presidential Assistant is like that of a trainer in a wild-animal act. His mastery depends on never being challenged; even if he survives an initial assault, he has lost the presumption of his dominance. Every command becomes a struggle; attrition is inevitable. Once Watergate broke and they were thought to be involved, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were doomed to an endless struggle as many who considered themselves abused would now test the limits of their power. And the President would soon tire of the constant contention; he would not want continually to reaffirm his orders to fractious Cabinet secretaries. It was, after all, precisely to spare himself that necessity that he had given so much authority to Haldeman and Ehrlichman in the first place.

  As April drew to a close, I was given reason to believe Haldeman and Ehrlichman would not survive at all. In almost every conversation, Nixon asked me in his elliptical manner whether his two closest aides should resign. It was a strange query, since Nixon never told me the reasons for which he was considering separating himself from the associates of a decade. Throughout the Watergate crisis, not once did Nixon tell me his version of events. He maintained in private the same posture he had adopted in public, that every revelation was new to him and that he was forced to deal with the scandal as it unfolded since he had no personal knowledge of its constituent elements.

  On April 21, from Key Biscayne, Nixon telephoned to tell me that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were at Camp David over the weekend to reflect on their predicament. They were in great distress. Would I be willing to call them to fortify their morale? I was by now familiar enough with Nixon to suspect that in addition to offering psychological succor, I was expected to urge them into the desired course, all the more so as he told me ominously that he was planning something decisive. He simply had to wait, he said, for the right moment.

  Over the next few days, I spoke with Haldeman and Ehrlichman several times. I listened to them in their travail with a sympathy incapable of generating true helpfulness. For no more than the President would his closest aides tell me exactly what had happened. They ruminated on their chances of survival but not on the circumstances that had produced their dilemma. And I am not sure that they really fully understood. What later came to be labeled Watergate was the composite of a series of ad hoc decisions, elliptical conversations, and uncoordinated acts by different individuals, many of whom were competing with each other for Presidential favor and therefore jealously guarding the bits of intelligence they had picked up in or near the Oval Office.

  Which of these random events would emerge during the investigation — more important, which actions were legally wrongful — seemed obscure to Haldeman and Ehrlichman. They had not thought of their conduct as a “cover-up” but as a means to protect an elected Administration that still had much left to accomplish from opponents working against the national interest as they conceived it. Or else they were more skillful actors than I think possible. They had no difficulty agreeing with my by-now stereotyped recommendation, that anything bound to happen eventually should be carried out immediately. But clearly they did not believe that resigning was ultimately necessary; hence there was no reason to consider it immediately. They seemed to think that they would have to leave office only if they were criminally liable. I was convinced their survival depended on more rigorous standards. But I knew too little to argue the merits of the case. Nor was it my place to do so; that decision could only be made by the President, much as he sought to avoid it.

  The Disintegration of the White House

  DAY by day, Watergate grew into bewilderment and frustration for those seeking to keep the government operating and into panic for those directly involved. We had all become passengers in a vehicle careening out of control in a fog; but we had different perceptions. Those who might have taken control were inhibited by ignorance and by a frustrated mixture of pity, loyalty, and horror; they had but brief, blurred glimpses of the landscape. Those who knew the size of the looming precipice were incapacitated by the fear that a halt for safety would result in their being flung aside.

  It was in this atmosphere that only ten days after my high hopes at the Federal City Club — now appearing so naive — I mounted the rostrum at the Associated Press Annual Luncheon in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York to make my first major public speech after four years of office. Its purpose was to unveil the Nixon Administration’s new initiative toward the industrial democracies: the so-called Year of Europe. My theme was that, a generation after World War II, the Western Alliance had to articulate a new sense of purpose; military defense remained crucial but no longer seemed a sufficient motivating force. The nations that shared democratic values needed to join in a reaffirmation of common ideals and common goals if we were to maintain our cohesion in a new era of East-West diplomacy, economic and energy problems, and a changing military balance (see Chapter V).

  The reception to my speech was friendly, but the question period afterward indicated what we were up against. The audience was preoccupied with matters other than our new initiative: problems with the cease-fire in Vietnam, my personal plans, and Watergate.

  I will also discuss Vietnam elsewhere (see Chapter VIII). As for my personal plans, I used the occasion to hint at my preference to leave. But I stressed that I felt a duty to remain until the immediate domestic crisis was surmounted:

  I have always believed that I should leave at a moment when some major task had been accomplished and when the transfer of responsibility could occur under conditions that assured continuity, and that made it clear that the position was not held for personal motives entirely, which is always difficult to separate.

  Now, at this moment, it is not the time for senior officials of the Administration to talk about their resignations, until the framework of the future becomes clearer, and it depends, of course, also on the President’s conception of what one’s duties are.

  I was committed to stay, but for how long I could not guess; privately, I estimated it as some additional months.

  The Watergate questions were less easily disposed of. I now thought it probable that Haldeman and Ehrlichman would be forced to resign or inevitable that their roles would be much diminished. But I wanted to preserve to the greatest extent attainable the possibilities of a constructive foreign policy; for that I had to maintain that executive authority was unimpaired. Moreover, I felt pity for men who had been close associates over a long period. All these themes were in my extemporaneous reply:

  On the [Watergate] case itself, of course, I know many of the people that you all read about, and, of course, I know them in a different way than you rea
d about them, and it is difficult to avoid a sense of the awfulness of events, the tragedy that has befallen so many people who have, for whatever reason, or are alleged to have done certain things. So without prejudging anything, one should at least ask for compassion.

  With respect to foreign policy, a great deal will depend on how foreign countries will assess the degree of authority in this country, the degree of dedication of the public to the objectives of its foreign policy.

  I have no question that the President will insist, as he has said publicly, on a full disclosure of the facts. But when that is accomplished and the human tragedies are completed, the country will go on. Then we have to ask ourselves whether we can afford an orgy of recrimination, or whether we should not keep in mind that the United States will be there far longer than any particular crisis, and whether all of us do not then have an obligation to remember that the faith in the country must be maintained, and that the promise of the country should be eternal.

  The moment proved as ill chosen for a new foreign policy initiative as for an appeal for compassion. The media reported my reply on Watergate almost to the exclusion of any reference to my carefully prepared speech on the Year of Europe. Part of the fault was organizational. To reduce the bureaucratic backbiting between the White House and the State Department, Nixon had suggested that I not announce the theme of my speech ahead of time. Therefore no briefing was given in advance; as a result, only the New York Times gave it major coverage, hailing my appeal for revitalization of the Alliance. The Washington Post led its news reportage with my answer on Watergate and consigned the Year of Europe to the concluding paragraphs. Some editorial opinion indeed treated my speech as a maneuver to divert attention from Watergate.

  An editorial in the Washington Post of April 26 distinguished between compassion and an assignment of blame, which it insisted must take place. It refuted the idea that the authority and prestige of the Presidency abroad as well as at home could be salvaged only by insulating the normal functioning of government from the Watergate scandal. Everything, including the Year of Europe and all foreign policy, was secondary to Nixon’s “revealing the whole truth”:

  Richard Nixon can restore what is essential to the nation and to himself by trusting the American people with all the facts. Mr. Nixon is in a terrible predicament at the moment, and nothing that affects him fails to affect the rest of us. We believe the situation can be redeemed. But we also believe that it can be redeemed only by his bending his every effort to win that popular trust which is essential to the functioning of the presidency, and that the only way in which he can win such trust is by pursuing and revealing the whole truth. . . . It represents the only hope he has of regaining public trust and, with it, presidential authority.

  The New York Times of the same date questioned even the appropriateness of compassion:

  When Mr. Kissinger speaks of “the tragedy that has befallen so many people” involved in Watergate, can he really be insensitive to the tragedy of those who remain without hope for amnesty from this Administration for having broken the law, not in pursuit of political power but in protest against a war they regarded as immoral?

  Faith in this country, both at home and abroad, will best be preserved through an unflinching demonstration by the President that a single standard of justice prevails here, with the most powerful as subject to punishment as the weakest — and with the always desirable qualities of compassion and forbearance impartially applied.

  Watergate was thus linked with Vietnam, which had indeed spawned it.

  If the media thought I was too compassionate toward my colleagues, many in the White House thought I had gone too far in speaking of human tragedies as if they were already accomplished. George Shultz told me that Ehrlichman was of the view that he could maintain his position while Haldeman’s prospects were shaky. Len Garment reported that he had no idea what would happen next nor who was really responsible for what had already been disclosed. Also he had only a most fragmentary notion whence future revelations might descend upon us.

  On the weekend of April 28–29, I was in New York on personal matters, mostly to see my future wife, Nancy. On Sunday afternoon, April 29, I received a phone call from Nixon at Camp David. Nearly incoherent with grief, he told me that he had just asked Haldeman and Ehrlichman to resign. Richard Kleindienst, the Attorney General, had also submitted his resignation. John Dean was being fired. The President said he needed me more than ever. He hoped I was abandoning any thought of resignation. The nation must be held together through this crisis.

  My attitude toward Nixon had always been ambivalent, compounded of aloofness and respect, of distrust and admiration. I was convinced that he was at the heart of the Watergate scandal even if he did not know all its manifestations. He had set the tone and evoked the attitudes that made it inevitable. And yet there was another side to Nixon that made him a considerable figure and accounts for his surviving all his vicissitudes. I admired the self-discipline by which he wrested a sense of direction from the chaotic forces at war within him; I was touched by the vulnerability of a man who lived out a Walter Mitty dream of toughness that did not come naturally and who resisted his very real streak of gentleness. For all his ambiguities, he had by conspicuous courage seen our nation through one of its great crises. He had inspired and run the risks for a sweeping and creative revision of our foreign policy. He had effected a dramatic breakthrough to China; he had begun to construct a more positive relationship with the Soviet Union. He had attempted to free America from its historical oscillation between over-extension and isolation. His strange mixture of calculation, deviousness, idealism, tenderness, tawdriness, courage, and daring evoked a feeling of protectiveness among those closest to him — all of whom he more or less manipulated, setting one against the other.

  It seemed quite natural both that I should speak to him warmly, urging him never to lose sight of the service he had yet to render, and that, having recovered his composure, he would make another of his elliptical sallies, at once a plea and a form of blackmail: “I hope you will help me protect the national security matters now that Ehrlichman is leaving.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. I was baffled but made no response, on the assumption that like so many of his odd comments this did not necessarily have a concrete basis. Later that evening I saw my old friend and mentor Nelson Rockefeller, and mentioned it. What could Nixon have had in mind? “Nothing,” replied Rockefeller, who was willing enough to support the President of the United States but could never bring himself to shake the personal dislike of Nixon developed over a decade and a half of rivalry. “He is trying to spook you.”II

  The next morning, Monday, April 30, Haldeman called the senior White House staff to a meeting in his office. In attendance were Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Shultz, Roy Ash (head of the Office of Management and Budget), and me. With great dignity Haldeman said that he and Ehrlichman had decided to resign to enable the President to go on with the tasks that had brought all of us to the White House in the first place. (Neither made any reference to having been requested to do so by Nixon.) Those of us who stayed had to redouble our efforts, he said; we had important goals to reach; the President needed us more than ever. I replied for the others that we knew how much of their lives they had given to service; we would do our best; we wished them well.

  That evening, Nixon went on television and, in a distraught presentation, announced the wholesale purge of his Administration. It was not easy to tell from his remarks whether he was concluding an era; it was impossible to believe that this rattled man could be ushering in a new one. His words were self-exculpatory; his demeanor did not convince one of his innocence. It was not the cold recital of available facts some of us had hoped for; but it was not a staunch defense of the record either. It fell between the two stools, defining rather than mitigating disaster. No one watching Nixon’s genuine desperation and anguish could avoid the impression that he was no longer in control of events.

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p; As after every major speech, I called the Residence to offer reassurance. Rose Mary Woods, his fanatically and touchingly loyal secretary, answered. Haldeman had banished her to the periphery so as to gain control of all access to the President; now she was back as one of Nixon’s principal props. The President, she said, was too upset to come to the telephone. She would convey my good wishes to him.

  But for me the evening would not end without a last, incongruous touch. The People’s Republic of China was in the process of establishing its Liaison Office in Washington. Weeks earlier, the Chinese advance team had invited me to dinner on April 30 together with other American friends in the Yenching Palace restaurant. The Chinese would not hear of cancellation. They simply moved the starting time to ten o’clock, after the President’s television address was completed.

  We met in a festive setting, with the ubiquitous toasts to friendship and cooperation. Our Chinese Communist hosts clearly could not comprehend that a nation might destroy its central authority over the issues so far revealed — or anything comparable. Their principal concern was to get the strange period over with so that we could return to the fundamentals of the US–Chinese relationship. My host, Ambassador Han Xu, proposed an eloquent toast to the crisis that President Nixon had just so courageously transcended. Watergate, he averred, had found its proper conclusion.