Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  See also the excellent constitutional analysis and testimony submitted by Senator Barry M. Goldwater on May 10, 1973, to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. US Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. Policy and Programs in Cambodia, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, 93d Cong., 1st sess., 1973, pp. 41–52 and 82.

  22. “Mr. Nixon’s War Veto,” Washington Post, June 29, 1973. Similar comments appeared in the Baltimore Sun of June 18; the New York Post, June 26; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 7; and the Baltimore Sun, August 14, 1973.

  23. See, e.g., Michael Parks, “Soviet Trying to End Feud with Sihanouk,” Baltimore Sun, July 8, 1973.

  24. James Pringle, “Sihanouk Adapts to ‘Austere Life,’ ” Washington Post, July 18, 1973.

  25. My letter to Mrs. Aase Lionaes of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee on April 30, 1975, read as follows:

  Dear Mrs. Lionaes:

  The award to me in 1973 of the Nobel Peace Prize was one of the proudest moments of my life. Together with millions of others, I hoped that the Paris Agreements would finally bring peace in Indochina. But that was not to be; the peace we sought through negotiations has been overturned by force.

  While I am deeply conscious of the honor done me by the Nobel Foundation, I feel honor bound to return the prize. I, therefore, enclose the Nobel Gold Medal and the Nobel Diploma so graciously presented to me in 1973.

  As you know, rather than accept the financial award which accompanied the prize, I used the money to endow a fund to provide scholarship assistance to children of American servicemen killed or lost in Indochina. Others have since made additional contributions to the fund, and the first scholarship grants will be announced shortly.

  Nevertheless, I feel I must reimburse the Nobel Foundation, or, should the Foundation prefer, make a contribution of like amount to a charity acceptable to the Foundation. I ask that you let me know the wishes of the Foundation in this regard, so that I may comply with them immediately.

  I regret, more profoundly than I can ever express, the necessity for this letter. But the anguish and tragedy that have been inflicted upon millions who sought nothing more than the chance to live their own lives leave me no alternative.

  Sincerely,

  [signed] Henry A. Kissinger

  IX

  CHILE: THE FALL OF SALVADOR ALLENDE

  1. US Congress, Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973, Staff Report, 94th Cong., 1st sess., 1975, pp. 2, 28.

  2. White House Years, pp. 654–655.

  3. Régis Debray, The Chilean Revolution: Conversations with Allende (New York: Random House, Pantheon Books, 1971), pp. 119, 118, 82.

  4. See White House Years, Chapter XVI.

  5. Ibid., Chapter XVII.

  6. Nathaniel Davis in “US Covert Actions in Chile 1971–73,” in two issues of Foreign Service Journal, November and December 1978. The quotations here are from p. 11 of the December article.

  7. See Davis, “US Covert Actions in Chile,” November 1978, pp. 12–13; William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), pp. 379–382.

  8. Davis, “US Covert Actions in Chile,” December 1978, p. 11.

  9. New York Times, June 13, 1972.

  10. Paul E. Sigmund, The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964–1976 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), p. 171.

  11. Ibid., p. 186.

  12. See US Congress, Senate, Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973, p. 31.

  13. Sigmund, The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, p. 215.

  14. The following is the Chile portion of my conversation with Ambassador Nathaniel Davis on September 8, 1973:

  KISSINGER: Tell me how things are going in Chile.

  DAVIS: Well, I certainly haven’t improved the situation. The economy continues to go downhill; polarization of the political forces continues; and each of the three armed forces has at one point or another faced an internal crisis. As a result, the Anti-Allende forces are stronger in each of the three services. As you know, General Prats has resigned.

  KISSINGER: Why did he leave?

  DAVIS: Well, partly because of the wives of Prats’ officers, including the wives of many of his Generals, who demanded his resignation. Partly because Prats has fallen in with and become something of a tool of the Allende forces in the Government.

  KISSINGER: Will there be a coup?

  DAVIS: In Chile you can never count on anything, but the odds are in favor of a coup, though I can’t give you any time frame.

  KISSINGER: We are going to stay out of that, I assume.

  DAVIS: Yes. My firm instructions to everybody on the staff are that we are not to involve ourselves in any way.

  KISSINGER: Do the Chileans ever ask us for our view?

  DAVIS: Yes, on occasion they’ll sidle up and ask what we think about the situation. But as I said, my strong instructions to the staff are that they are not to get drawn into any conversations on the subject.

  KISSINGER: Can Allende last out his term?

  DAVIS: His chances of doing so are decreasing with every week.

  KISSINGER: Well, what happens in those circumstances? Has there ever been a President who resigned?

  DAVIS: Yes. In 1891 there was a case like this. In fact the situation was somewhat similar to the circumstances today.

  KISSINGER: Well, if Allende leaves, what happens? Is there a new election?

  DAVIS: If he resigns, then the President of the Senate becomes Chief of State. That’s Frei, but I don’t think you should count on that [as a] likely possibility. If the Army should take over, I doubt very much that they will be prepared to give up power in a hurry.

  KISSINGER: Then Chile would go the way of Brazil?

  DAVIS: Yes, or Peru.

  KISSINGER: What would the military government be like? Would it be like Peru or Brazil?

  DAVIS: It would be very pro-American. We have good contacts with the Chilean military. But Chile has a radical history and the military will not want to look as if it is running away from that history and returning to the old conservative status quo.

  KISSINGER: Yes, but Chile under those circumstances would not be a center for revolutionary activity in Latin America, would it?

  DAVIS: No.

  KISSINGER: What should we do there?

  DAVIS: Things are moving fast enough. Our biggest problem is to keep from getting caught in the middle. We must leave the Chileans to decide their future for themselves.

  KISSINGER: What’s your bet on an Allende overthrow?

  DAVIS: I would think that Allende has about a 25 percent chance of finishing out his term in 1976. I think there’s a 35 to 40 percent chance that there will be a golpe. I think there is perhaps a 20 to 25 percent chance that the military will enter the government but in such a role that it really runs the government. I think there is a very small percentage chance that Chile will become a Cuba-type situation.

  KISSINGER: Well, if it were to become one, from what base would it develop?

  DAVIS: It would develop from a failure of nerve on the part of the military. I have to admit that the Chilean military’s nerve has failed it before.

  KISSINGER: What about the carabineros?

  DAVIS: They are moving closer to the military point of view these days. The top leaders, however, still want to stay out of the middle.

  15. Sigmund, The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, pp. 4–5, 244–247, assesses the conflicting accounts and comes to the conclusion that “the weight of the evidence seems to point toward suicide.”

  16. Interview with Madrid newspaperese, October 10, 1973, quoted in Facts on File Yearbook 1973, vol. XXXIII, p. 872.

  X

  BECOMING SECRETARY OF STATE

  1. See White House Years, especially pp. 26–32.

  2. See, e.g., H. R. Haldeman with Joseph DiMona, The
Ends of Power (New York: New York Times Books, 1978), pp. 94–97; Bill Gulley with Mary Ellen Reese, Breaking Cover (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980), pp. 133, 251.

  3. Fred Greenstein and Robert Wright, “Reagan . . . Another Ike?” Public Opinion 3, no. 6 (December-January 1981): 52–53. See also Greenstein and Wright, “The Political Savvy of Dwight Eisenhower,” Wall Street Journal, January 28, 1981.

  4. Haldeman, The Ends of Power, pp. 176–177. Herb Klein reports overhearing me, in late 1972 after the election, asking Haldeman when I would be named as Rogers’s replacement. But Haldeman’s account, referring to the same period, makes clear that at that stage Kenneth Rush was to be Rogers’s replacement. See Herbert G. Klein, Making It Perfectly Clear (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 180), pp. 309–310.

  5. I realize that Nixon gave a different account to David Frost. See David Frost, “I Gave Them a Sword”: Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews (New York: William Morrow, 1978), pp. 166–167.

  6. See, e.g., “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, September 17, 1973; William Safire, “Advise and Condone,” New York Times, September 13, 1973.

  7. Testimony of Attorney General Elliot Richardson before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, September 10, 1973. See note 8 below. See also the comment of William Ruckelshaus, former Acting Director of the FBI, on CBS-TV’s Face the Nation, June 16, 1974: “It wasn’t his [Kissinger’s] idea to tap; he simply complained about the leaks.”

  8. US Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings on the Role of Dr. Henry A. Kissinger in the Wiretapping of Certain Government Officials and Newsmen, 93d Cong., 2d sess., published September 29, 1974, includes my testimony in both public and executive session in both 1973 and 1974.

  9. Muskie is cited in “U.S. Split on Defense Costs, Muskie told Soviet Premier,” Washington Star, January 26, 1971.

  10. See White House Years, pp. 38–48.

  XI

  THE MIDDLE EAST WAR

  1. See Abba Eban, An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1977), p. 502. Menachem Begin, then opposition leader and now Prime Minister of Israel, later charged inaccurately that I accepted Zayyat’s version of events that morning and that I automatically “assumed” that Israel had started the war with the alleged naval attack. This is simply not true. See interview with Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, by Robert Siegel, Communiqué: The Weekly Report on World Affairs from National Public Radio (NPR), June 18, 1981.

  2. Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962).

  3. Barton Whaley, Codeword BARBAROSSA (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1973).

  4. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, translated and with an introduction by Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 66.

  5. See, e.g., Commission of Inquiry — Yom Kippur War (The Agranat Commission), Partial Report, 2 April 1974 (State of Israel, Government Press Office, Press Bulletin), paras. 9–12; Lt. Gen. Haim Bar Lev, “Surprise and the Yom Kippur War,” paper delivered to the International Symposium on the Military Aspects of the Israeli-Arab Conflict, Jerusalem, October 1975, in Louis Williams, ed., Military Aspects of the Israeli-Arab Conflict (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 1975), pp. 259–265.

  6. Eban, An Autobiography, p. 496.

  7. See Ray S. Cline, “Policy Without Intelligence,” Foreign Policy, no. 17 (Winter 1974–1975), especially pp. 131–133.

  8. Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 246.

  9. Ibid., pp. 247, 249, 252–254.

  10. See New York Times, September 29, 1973, p. 1. See also Claire Sterling, The Terror Network (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981), pp. 144–145.

  11. See Golda Meir, My Life (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975), pp. 426–427; Moshe Dayan, Story of My Life (New York: William Morrow, 1976), pp. 460–461; “Israel Knew Attack Was Coming, Envoy to the U.S. Asserts,” New York Times, October 11, 1973, p. 18; Edward N. Luttwak, “Strategy for a War,” Washington Star-News, October 14, 1973.

  12. Dayan, Story of My Life, p. 460; Eban, An Autobiography, pp. 508–509.

  13. Sadat, In Search of Identity, pp. 252–254.

  14. See, e.g., Edward N. Luttwak and Walter Laqueur, “Kissinger and the Yom Kippur War,” Commentary (September 1974).

  15. See the Washington Post, October 15, 16, and 18, 1973.

  XII

  MOSCOW, THE CEASE-FIRE, AND THE ALERT

  1. UN Security Council Resolution 338 of October 22, 1973, the text of which was worked out in Moscow, read as follows:

  The Security Council

  1. Calls upon all parties to the present fighting to cease all firing and terminate all military activity immediately, no later than 12 hours after the moment of the adoption of this decision, in the positions they now occupy;

  2. Calls upon the parties concerned to start immediately after the cease-fire the implementation of Security Council resolution 242 (1967) in all of its parts;

  3. Decides that, immediately and concurrently with the cease-fire, negotiations start between the parties concerned under appropriate auspices aimed at establishing a just and durable peace in the Middle East.

  2. White House Years, p. 1155. The aircraft pilot regarded it as a computer malfunction. J. F. terHorst and Colonel Ralph Albertazzie, The Flying White House: The Story of Air Force One (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979), Chapter 9.

  3. Resolution 339, adopted October 23, read as follows:

  The Security Council

  Referring to its resolution 338 (1973) of 22 October 1973,

  1. Confirms its decision on an immediate cessation of all kinds of firing and of all military action, and urges that the forces of the two sides be returned to the positions they occupied at the moment the cease-fire became effective;

  2. Requests the Secretary-General to take measures for immediate dispatch of United Nations observers to supervise the observance of the cease-fire between the forces of Israel and the Arab Republic of Egypt, using for this purpose the personnel of the United Nations now in the Middle East and first of all the personnel now in Cairo.

  4. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), P- 938.

  5. See White House Years, pp. 614–630.

  6. See US Congress, House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Inquiring into the Military Alert Invoked on October 24, 1973, Report No. 93–970 to Accompany H. Res. 1002, 93d Cong., 2d sess., 1974, which described the briefings in general terms and agreed with the Administration that sufficient public disclosure had been made.

  7. Resolution 340, adopted on October 25, was as follows:

  The Security Council

  Recalling its resolutions 338 (1973) of 22 October and 339 (1973) of 23 October 1973,

  Noting with regret the reported repeated violations of the cease-fire in non-compliance with resolutions 338 (1973) and 339 (1973),

  Noting with concern from the Secretary-General’s report that the United Nations military observers have not yet been enabled to place themselves on both sides of the ceasefire line,

  1. Demands that immediate and complete cease-fire be observed and that the parties return to the positions occupied by them at 1650 hours GMT on 22 October 1973;

  2. Requests the Secretary-General, as an immediate step, to increase the number of United Nations military observers on both sides;

  3. Decides to set up immediately under its authority a United Nations Emergency Force to be composed of personnel drawn from States Members of the United Nations except the permanent members of the Security Council, and requests the Secretary-General to report within 24 hours on the steps taken to this effect;

  4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Council on an urgent and continuing basis on the state of implementation of the present resolution, as well as resolutions 338 (1973) and 339 (1973);

  5. Requests all Member States to extend their full co-oper
ation to the United Nations in the implementation of the present resolution, as well as resolutions 338 (1973) and 339 (1973).

  XIII

  FIRST MIDDLE EAST BREAKTHROUGH

  1. See William B. Quandt, Decade of Decisions: American Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–1976 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 251–252; Edward R. F. Sheehan, The Arabs, Israelis, and Kissinger: A Secret History of American Diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1976), passim.

  2. See White House Years, pp. 1246–1248 and Chapter XXVIII, notes 3 and 4, pp. 1493–1494.

  3. See Richard Valeriani, Travels with Henry (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1979), pp. 249–251; Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb, Kissinger (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1974), pp. 505–506; John P. Wallach, “Mr. K as tourist . . . diplomat . . . negotiator,” Boston Sunday Herald Advertiser, November 16, 1973, p. A24.

  4. Miles Copeland, The Game of Nations (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1969), p. 177.

  5. See Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 228–231; White House Years, pp. 1295–1297.