Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  Nixon was too experienced not to recognize the peril to our foreign policy. He did his best to shield me from the consequences of his travails. By tacit agreement, I was excluded from the inner circle of White House deliberations on Watergate. Nixon and Haig insulated foreign policy to the greatest extent possible from the scandal. Haig would give me brief advance warnings of such explosions as might affect the conduct of our diplomacy, but as a general rule I was not involved in the discussions of either strategy or tactics. Whenever there was a plan to refer to foreign policy in a Presidential statement on Watergate, I was given a chance to comment.

  As I have already said, my general view was that Nixon’s only hope was to disclose everything all at once. I made this point consistently to Len Garment and, whenever the occasion arose, to Al Haig. Nothing short of it would stop the tidal wave of successive shocks. Only in this manner would the Administration be able to return to the task of government. Garment and Haig agreed in principle, but they were in no position to put it into practice. Neither of them had any personal knowledge of the events that gave rise to the disaster. With the departure of all key White House assistants except Ron Ziegler, there was no institutional memory left in the White House. By now Nixon himself had no longer — if he ever had — a clear view of the activities lumped under the rubric of Watergate. Given his style of conversation, he genuinely had trouble distinguishing his own serious orders from his familiar rhetorical outbursts not intended to be acted upon. His Walter Mitty tendencies allowed him to perceive evasions as reality and endowed wishful thinking with the attributes of truth.

  So the summer of 1973 passed with periodic White House statements on Watergate, which almost invariably lagged behind events and only served to stimulate the national hunger for further disclosure. Nixon had promised a comprehensive statement for the middle of August. He toyed with the idea of coupling it with a plea to bring the various inquiries to an end so as not to increase our foreign policy perils. The argument was valid in the abstract; in the climate then, it would only have drawn foreign policy into the maelstrom without easing the pressures on Nixon. There was no way to stop the inquiries at this stage; the Congress, the media, and the public would not have permitted it. I appealed to Haig, Garment, and Nixon’s special Watergate counsel Charles Alan Wright not to link foreign policy and Watergate. They agreed. In the end Nixon accepted our unanimous advice without demur. In Nixon’s hierarchy of values, even at the height of his private suffering, the international position of the United States took precedence over his personal fortunes.

  The statement finally issued on August 15, 1973, suffered the same fate as all the Presidential “explanations” that had preceded it. It was too little too late. It repeated the version already advanced in the Presidential speech of April 30: that Nixon had become aware of interlocking malfeasances only late in the day as a result of investigations ordered after March 21. As earlier, Nixon was torn between shifting the blame to his subordinates and avoiding so antagonizing them that they would turn on him. The statement added little of either fact or explanation to what investigations had already brought to light. It sidestepped the issue of whether the tapes should be made available to the Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Predictably, media and Congressional reaction ran the gamut from hostility through exasperation to indifference. Failing in its prime objective, the August 15 statement generated neither sympathy nor understanding.

  By August, in short, Nixon’s style of government by means of Presidential assistants had become unworkable. The power of a Presidential Assistant derives from a strong — if necessary, a ruthless — President. If the President wishes to rely on his assistants he must be able to give them unambiguous and decisive indications of support. As President Eisenhower wrote to his Budget Director Joseph Dodge in 1953:

  [Y]ou must act as my authoritative agent in working on these problems. While, of course, each Department head always has direct access to me, I think it vastly important that if any appeal from your decisions is made, that you must be present at the time — and even more important, that you and I approach these problems so definitely from the same viewpoint that the occasion for such appeals will be minimized.3

  Ultimately, this means that the Assistant is no longer challenged; it is taken for granted that he speaks for the President. (At that point the real danger of arbitrary action by the Assistant arises; from then on it will rarely be tested whether he in fact reflects the President’s wishes or is implementing his own preferences in the President’s name.)

  That was essentially the state of affairs by the end of 1971. I had unique access to the President; my office cleared the key policy cables instructing our diplomats abroad. All this placed Secretary Rogers in an impossible position. If he approved a telegram or option before it was passed to the White House, he might see his judgment overruled in full view of his own subordinates. If he waited until I had stated my view, he was in the position of either rubber-stamping or challenging what for all he knew had already been approved by the President. (And if a Presidential Assistant is wise, or simply bureaucratically adept, he will have discussed any controversial item with the President.)

  Theoretically, this problem could have been avoided if the Assistant for National Security Affairs and the Secretary of State had been so close that they exchanged ideas constantly and thus avoided a confrontation — much as Brent Scowcroft and I did at a later time. But for Rogers and me, conflict between the Secretary of State and security adviser seemed almost to have been built into the design of our offices.

  Nixon had always distrusted the State Department, which he considered both fuzzy-minded and a nest of holdover liberal Democrats. In addition, I remain convinced that he wished to establish, for once, a relationship of primacy over his old friend and mentor Bill Rogers, to whom he had so often turned during the periods of his own weakness (such as in the crisis that led to the “Checkers” speech and during Eisenhower’s first heart attack). Nixon seemed eager to prove that there were some areas in which he was the more masterful; he had studied foreign policy all his life while Rogers came to it as a novice from a distinguished career in the law. For all these purposes I was a useful, often indispensable, instrument. But this did not mean that I was spared all exposure to Nixon’s complicated, at times convoluted, maneuvers. Nixon was not the first President deliberately to encourage rivalry between subordinates, while claiming to disdain it, so long as he did not himself have to adjudicate the resulting disputes. And Haldeman, Mitchell, occasionally Ehrlichman, stood ready to contain the fires without extinguishing them.

  Whether Nixon planned it that way or simply permitted it to happen — probably a combination of both — the relationship between Rogers and me soured beyond recovery. We had begun with the customary protestations that we would not repeat the frictions of the previous administrations. We soon found ourselves at loggerheads. I was too arrogantly convinced of my superior knowledge, Rogers was too insistent on his bureaucratic prerogative, for the acts of grace that would have permitted both of us to escape the treadmill on which we found ourselves, and, more important, to serve the nation better.

  By the beginning of Nixon’s second term, the pattern was frozen. Rogers and I had no social contact. Officially, we dealt with each other correctly without being forthcoming. I was the preeminent Presidential adviser; Rogers controlled the machinery by which much of our foreign policy had to be carried out. The stalemate deepened; I considered the situation unworkable. Rogers had been told in November 1972 that he would be replaced in the summer of 1973, but either he thought that his chief would recoil at the last moment as he had so often before, or else his imminent departure freed him of previous restraints.

  In any event, Rogers launched an attack on the system of clearances by which White House control had previously been exercised. For example, early in December 1972 the State Department decided to open discussions with Cuba on the hijacking of airplanes. Obviously, any negotiation with Cuba, whate
ver the issue, had profound foreign policy implications — especially with a President so neuralgically sensitive on the subject. Nevertheless, the White House was informed on a Saturday afternoon that the Secretary had authorized the discussions to begin on the following Monday morning — giving the NSC staff thirty-six hours to consider a major policy move and daring it to veto a negotiation that had already been scheduled. There was a fifty-fifty chance that the instructions requiring White House clearance might need another thirty-six hours over the weekend to work their way through the bureaucracy— so that even the formalities of clearance might be short-circuited. Similarly, at a time when the White House had ordered a cool attitude toward India, the State Department published without any White House clearance whatsoever an enthusiastic public response to an Indian feeler for improved relations. And I have already recounted State’s initiative toward Egypt at the end of January 1973, of which the White House was unaware.

  All this occurred even before Watergate stripped me of the backing of a strong President. Watergate left no doubt that the existing system could no longer be sustained. Sometime in the spring of 1973, Melvin Laird, then serving his brief turn as Presidential Counsellor, told me that my position as Assistant would soon become untenable. I would be ground down between the Congress and the increasingly assertive bureaucracy. I would have to become Secretary of State or resign. (I do not know whether Laird spoke to Nixon in the same vein; if so, neither of them informed me.) A little later Al Haig told me that he had come to the same conclusion: If I wanted to remain effective I would have to leave the White House and take over the State Department. He would raise the subject with Nixon, he said, but he knew it would not be easy to sell; it would lead to painful and possibly prolonged exchanges.

  I had not sought Cabinet office. Bob Haldeman has correctly described my attitude at the end of 1972 in a book containing many unflattering comments about me: In an undamaged Nixon Presidency, the national security adviser’s post was decisive; Nixon had no intention of moving me into the State Department.4 Nor do I believe that Nixon would have made John Connally Secretary of State but for the fear of losing me, as has been claimed. He knew I intended to leave by the end of 1973 anyway, no matter who was Secretary. And in a normal Presidency so politically powerful a personality as John Connally would run counter to all Nixon’s ideas of how to conduct foreign policy.5 Without Watergate, Kenneth Rush, then Deputy Secretary of State, who had played a decisive role in achieving the 1971 Berlin Agreement, would have been made Secretary in the summer of 1973 and I would have left the White House a few months later.

  But by the summer of 1973 all these plans had become irrelevant. Once Watergate descended, I could not operate effectively as a Presidential staffer; Nixon was fed up with the Rogers-Kissinger rivalry and had already decided in principle that Rogers had to go; Rush was too little known to be promoted. I would have been prepared to continue as national security adviser had Nixon insisted on going through with his original plan of appointing Kenneth Rush. I never changed the position I had announced when Watergate broke upon the nation: I would serve so long as the crisis continued, without conditions.

  The process of arriving at the decision caused all the anguish Haig had foreseen. It must have been torture for Nixon to consider assigning the principal Cabinet post to someone who was being lionized by his opponents precisely in order to make the President seem dispensable. All the arguments in favor of appointing me also underlined the mortal peril to his Presidency. So Nixon reacted to Haig’s recommendation by enveloping himself in silence. He did not accept Haig’s recommendation and he did not reject it. According to Haig, he simply noted it without comment; he never mentioned it to me even elliptically. It was an enormous strain for everybody: for the President fighting against the acceptance of his vulnerability; for Haig, who had run the risk of Presidential disfavor by raising the matter; and for me now in an almost untenable position should Nixon simply maintain his silence.

  Washington abhors a vacuum. In the middle of July, my opponents accelerated a decision that my friends so far had been unable to advance. While Rogers was on a trip to the Far East, on July 13 Dan Rather broadcast on The CBS Evening News that consideration was being given to having me replace Rogers. Other commentators soon took up the theme. The White House reaction would now give a crucial clue.

  Washington is like a Roman arena. Gladiators do battle, and the spectators determine who survives by giving the appropriate signal, just as in the Coliseum. Barely noted by the rest of the country, leaks to media serve Washington as clues to power and influence. Once a controversy begins, the outcome importantly depends on what influential person will back which version. This is not necessarily a function of truth; it more often reflects ulterior motives. Reputations can be damaged, or made, by leaks that find no rebuttal from the powerful, even if untrue. A particularly subtle version is the untrue leak that is permitted to run its course uncontested by those in a position to rebut it, and is denied only when the news cycle has passed it by. This has the advantage of damaging the victim almost as much, while preserving the reputation of the source.

  The journalists act simultaneously as neutral conduit and tribunal, shielding their witnesses by the principle of “protection of sources” and often determining the outcome by the emphasis they choose to give competing versions. The press is thus both spectator and participant. The people may have “a right to know” — but only what the press chooses to tell it. In bureaucratic infighting, masking the identity of the leakers is frequently a suppression of the most significant part of the story. The journalist may strive for objectivity, his competitors may have an incentive to knock down his story, but leakers can always initiate a drama that creates its own momentum through the reactions of the victim and the power brokers. Rarely, it seems, does anyone worry about the motives of the source, though there are serious ethical problems when the journalist’s interest in a scoop and the source’s self-interest coincide, as in some “investigative” journalism. It becomes difficult to determine who is using whom.

  In this case the story died quickly, but not before it made its mark. Nixon, though no doubt nonplussed, continued to keep his thoughts to himself, torn between his emotions, which rebelled against my promotion, and his judgment, which underlined its inevitability. Haig kept White House comments noncommittal. I denied to the press ever having discussed the subject with the President, which was true but only part of the story. The Secretary’s party in Tokyo naturally blamed the leak on me. Dan Rather — with whom I was later to have my disagreements — would not tell me his source but generously confirmed to me that he had received the story from opponents eager to thwart the prospect. They in turn had apparently exhausted their store of knowledge. The Secretary of State’s entourage in Tokyo soon realized that impugning motives would do no good; further pursuit of the story could only dramatize the weakness of Rogers’s position. No supporters for him had come forth; no Senators had rallied; the White House had not denied the story. The leak had backfired.

  In early August, Haig told me that Nixon, who still had not said a word to me, had agreed to appoint me in Rogers’s place, provided he did not have to dismiss Rogers personally. Accordingly, Haig called on the Secretary of State on August 8 to suggest his resignation. Rogers, who throughout behaved with extraordinary strength, honor, and aplomb, in effect threw Haig out of his office. If Nixon wanted his resignation, he said, he would have to ask for it himself. He would not give up the senior Cabinet post to an intermediary. To anyone familiar with Nixon’s dread of personal confrontations, it was clear that this requirement would bring about another, probably prolonged, delay.

  By now the uncertainty was growing hard to bear; perhaps it was a deliberate price exacted by Nixon for taking a step essentially so repugnant to him. Haig was told nothing; Nixon hid behind the need to prepare his statement on Watergate and withdrew to Camp David. As usual when drafting speeches, he refused to answer the telephone for days on end,
even for routine foreign policy business. Finally on August 16, with only a few hours’ warning to Haig and no notice to me at all, Nixon called in Rogers, intending to ask for his resignation. To everyone’s surprise and Nixon’s immediate intense relief, Rogers made it easy for his old friend. Without letting Nixon speak he submitted a letter of resignation free of recrimination or argument. It was a classy performance.

  And still Nixon had said nothing to me. Even after he had Rogers’s resignation in his hand, he did not speak to me for several days. Although I knew about Rogers’s visit and Haig had told me that Nixon would announce my appointment at his next news conference, Nixon continued in silence. I heard from him only on the late afternoon of August 21, in San Clemente, about eighteen hours before my appointment was to be announced. Nixon took me to a corner of the swimming pool with the pretext of wanting to go over some questions and answers for his news conference the next day. Then he told me matter-of-factly, while floating on his back, without warmth or an expression of anticipation of close cooperation, that he would open the news conference by announcing my appointment as Secretary of State. I made a reply that would have been sarcastic had I been less moved; it was in fact simply: “I hope to be worthy of your trust.” We both realized that for Nixon my appointment was less an act of choice than a step taken against his will in the hope it would mitigate catastrophe.

  On August 22, at 11:30 in the morning Pacific Daylight Time, Nixon announced my appointment in a televised outdoor news conference with the sparse comment that “Dr. Kissinger’s qualifications for this post, I think, are well known.” He did not elaborate.