When we landed in Bucharest, Romania, on August 2, I became the first American President to make a state visit to a Communist satellite country.
President Nicolae Ceauescu is a strong, independent leader who had cultivated good relations with the Chinese in spite of the fact that he had to walk a very fine line lest the Soviets decide to intervene in Romania as they had in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. So far he had walked that line with consummate skill.
I had been briefed to expect a courteous reception, but the size and spontaneous enthusiasm of the crowds exceeded all our expectations. At one point Ceauescu and I were literally swept up by the dancing in the streets.
Romania had good diplomatic relations with the North Vietnamese, and I knew that anything I said would be repeated to them, so I used one of my meetings with Ceauescu to reinforce my message to Hanoi. I said, “We cannot indefinitely continue to have two hundred deaths a week in Vietnam and no progress in Paris. On November 1 this year—one year after the halt of the bombing, and after the withdrawal of some of our troops and several reasonable offers for peaceful negotiations—if there is no progress, we must re-evaluate our policy.”
I told him that in order to get peace we might have to open another channel of communications between the two sides. Ceauescu said he would do everything he could to be helpful in furthering negotiations.
The story of Kissinger’s secret meetings with the North Vietnamese, which began on August 4, 1969, and extended over the next three years, is an extraordinary one, full of classic cloak-and-dagger episodes, with Kissinger riding slouched down in the back seats of speeding Citroëns, eluding inquisitive reporters, and putting curious embassy officials off the scent.
The first conversation took place in Jean Sainteny’s Paris apartment in the fashionable Rue de Rivoli, where Kissinger met with Xuan Thuy and Mai Van Bo.
Kissinger opened by saying that he wanted to convey a message from me personally. He reminded them that November 1 would be the first anniversary of the bombing halt. During this time the United States had made what we considered significant moves: we had ended troop reinforcements, we had observed a partial bombing halt and then a total bombing halt, and we had already withdrawn 25,000 combat troops and offered to accept the result of free elections. As far as we could see, there had been no significant response. Now, in order to expedite negotiations, I was ready to open another channel of contact with them. “But at the same time,” Kissinger added, “I have been asked to tell you in all solemnity, that if by November 1 no major progress has been made toward a solution, we will be compelled—with great reluctance—to take measures of the greatest consequences.” He pointed out that in their propaganda and in the Paris discussions, the North Vietnamese were attempting to make this “Mr. Nixon’s war.” “We do not believe that this is in your interest,” he said, “because if it is Mr. Nixon’s war, then he cannot afford not to win it.”
Xuan Thuy replied with a relatively restrained restatement of Hanoi’s most extreme position: he called for the complete withdrawal of all American forces and observance of the National Liberation Front’s ten points, which in effect provided for total Communist domination over South Vietnam. He insisted on maintaining the patent fiction that there were no North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam. He also continued to demand that we overthrow President Thieu before any agreement could be reached.
Finally Kissinger decided that he had said all he could to representatives who were not actually empowered to negotiate. Exercising his tremendous skill, he brought the conversation around to a mellower tone, saying, “We would prefer to have the Vietnamese as friends rather than as enemies. I believe that we must make an effort to find a solution between now and November 1.”
The three men shook hands and departed separately to avoid attracting any attention.
Having put the Nixon Doctrine on record and having begun to put pressure on Hanoi, I decided it was time to assume the offensive in the public forum of the Paris peace talks. The diplomats and reporters who had become accustomed to Cabot Lodge’s usually complacent demeanor were surprised when he rose from his chair on August 7, looked directly at the Communist delegates, and said, “We have done all that we can do by ourselves to bring a negotiated peace in Vietnam. Now it is time for you to respond.” The press called it his toughest talk since taking over in January as chief U.S. negotiator.
Ho Chi Minh’s reply to my July letter arrived dated August 25. In it, he referred to “the war of aggression of the United States against our people” and said that he was “deeply touched at the rising toll of death of young Americans who have fallen in Vietnam by reason of the policy of American governing circles.”
In response to my statement that we would be willing to discuss any proposal or program that might lead to a negotiated settlement, he said that the ten-point program of the NLF had “earned the sympathy and support of the peoples of the world.” He concluded:
In your letter you have expressed the desire to act for a just peace. For this the United States must cease the war of aggression and withdraw their troops from South Vietnam, respect the right of the population of the South and of the Vietnamese nation to dispose of themselves, without foreign influence.
Considering the tone of my letter to him, and even taking into account the stridency of communist jargon, there was no doubt that Ho’s reply was a cold rebuff.
After receiving this unpromising reply, I knew that I had to prepare myself for the tremendous criticism and pressure that would come with stepping up the war.
On September 3, Ho Chi Minh died. There were rumors of a struggle over the succession for several days before Premier Pham Van Dong emerged as the Hanoi Politburo’s leading figure. Veteran Vietnam-watchers were at a loss to predict what effect this would have on the war.
In the middle of September I announced the withdrawal of another 35,000 troops by December 15. In my statement I pointed out that the withdrawal of 60,000 troops was a significant step and that “the time for meaningful negotiations has therefore arrived.” This announcement was intended to let the new leaders of North Vietnam know that I was not assuming that they were bound by Ho’s reply to my letter.
Two days later, in a speech at the opening of the UN General Assembly, I said that “the time has come for peace. And in the name of peace, I urge all of you here—representing 126 nations—to use your best diplomatic efforts to persuade Hanoi to move seriously into the negotiations which could end this war.”
On September 20 Kissinger received a letter from Sainteny, who had been in Hanoi for Ho Chi Minh’s funeral and, while he was there, had had a long conversation with Pham Van Dong. The new Premier was notably unvituperative in his references to the United States. When Sainteny stressed that he knew how eager I was for peace from his own conversation with me, Dong said, “I see that they have convinced you. But we, we are not able to take them at their words: only acts will convince us.”
Since this conversation had taken place before my mid-September troop withdrawal, I felt that I had supplied the deed to prove our words. Once again the choice lay with Hanoi.
In the weeks remaining before November 1, I wanted to orchestrate the maximum possible pressure on Hanoi. I was confident that we could bring sufficient pressure to bear on the diplomatic front. But the only chance for my ultimatum to succeed was to convince the Communists that I could depend on solid support at home if they decided to call my bluff. However, the chances I would actually have that support were becoming increasingly slim.
There had been serious riots and disorders on more than a score of college campuses during the winter and spring of 1969, the causes of which covered a wide spectrum of frustrations of which Vietnam was by no means the predominant one. Students at Berkeley demanded an autonomous College for Ethnic Studies. Black students seized the administration building at Duke and demanded a nongraded black education program and money for a black student union. One hundred black students, armed wi
th rifles and shotguns, held the student union at Cornell University and demanded that disciplinary reprimands to three black students be revoked. The faculty first refused and then capitulated on the issue. The University of Pennsylvania administration decided to avoid a confrontation with student war protesters by taking down American flags and putting them in storage.
I was disgusted—and I said so—by the capitulation of professors and administrators to students using force. I praised those who held firm—like San Francisco State College’s Dr. S. I. Hayakawa, who ripped out the wires of a public address system set up by radicals in violation of campus regulations, and Rev. Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame, who announced he would give protesters who substituted “force for rational persuasion” fifteen minutes, and then suspend them from the university; five minutes after that, if they continued the disturbance, they would be expelled.
During the first months of my presidency Vietnam was not the primary issue in campus demonstrations largely because Johnson’s bombing halt had suspended the most actively controversial aspect of the war, and my announced plans to establish an all-volunteer Army and our reform of the draft, which made it less threateningly disruptive, also helped in this regard.
I knew that this situation was bound to change. As the fall term began on college campuses, and as Congress returned from its summer recess, newspapers and television began reflecting signs of a new level of intensity in the antiwar movement. There was talk of holding a “Moratorium,” a nationwide day of protest, on October 15, right in the period most crucial to the success of my November 1 ultimatum.
In a press conference on September 26, in answer to a question about the Moratorium and other public protests against the war, I said, “Now, I understand that there has been and continues to be opposition to the war in Vietnam on the campuses, and also in the nation. As far as this kind of activity is concerned, we expect it. However, under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it.”
I was fully aware of the furore that this statement would cause. But having initiated a policy of pressure on North Vietnam that now involved not only our government but foreign governments as well, I felt that I had no choice but to carry it through. Faced with the prospect of demonstrations at home that I could not prevent, my only alternative was to try to make it clear to the enemy that the protests would have no effect on my decisions. Otherwise my ultimatum would appear empty.
We continued to keep up the diplomatic pressure on the Soviets. On September 27, Kissinger told Dobrynin that the apparent failure of all our requests for Soviet help toward ending the war made it very difficult for us to carry on more than basic diplomatic relations between our two countries.
I telephoned Kissinger in the middle of this discussion, and we talked for a few minutes. When they resumed their conversation, Kissinger said, “The President just told me in that call that as far as Vietnam is concerned, the train has just left the station and is now headed down the track.”
Dobrynin tried to ease the atmosphere with a diplomatic turn of phrase. “I hope it’s an airplane rather than a train,” he said, “because an airplane can still change its course in flight.”
Kissinger replied, “The President chooses his words very carefully, and I am sure he meant what he said. He said, ‘train.’ ”
As another part of our efforts to apply pressure on Hanoi, I ordered a survey of non-Communist nations shipping to North Vietnam. We found that Cyprus, Malta, Singapore, and Somalia were among the countries with registered ships going to Hanoi. When the first two governments refused to cooperate with us, I ordered their foreign aid programs cut off. Singapore and Somalia agreed to cut down the shipping under their flags.
I met with the Republican congressional leadership and told them that the next sixty days would be of the utmost importance for the ending of the war. “We are going to need unity more than we have ever needed it before,” I said. “I can’t tell you everything that will be going on, because if there is to be any chance of success, it will have to be done in secret. All I can tell you is this: I am doing my damnedest to end the war. I am approaching the whole question with only two operating principles: I won’t make it hard for the North Vietnamese if they genuinely want a settlement; but I will not be the first President of the United States to lose a war.”
Later the same day I moved the pressure on Hanoi up a notch when I met with nine Republican senators and planted a story that I knew would leak. I did not have to wait long. In eight days Rowland Evans and Robert Novak ran a column saying that I was considering blockading Haiphong and invading North Vietnam. I wanted this rumor to attract some attention in Hanoi. Although I never knew for sure that it did, I do know that it attracted the attention of Mel Laird. He and Bill Rogers immediately urged that before taking any drastic action I consider the very low American casualty rates over the last few months and the improved performance of the South Vietnamese as a result of our stepped-up Vietnamization program.
VIETNAM MORATORIUM
The antiwar forces on the campuses, in Congress, and in the media had coalesced around the Vietnam Moratorium scheduled for October 15 in Washington. The plan was to hold similar demonstrations in different cities on the fifteenth of each month until the war was over.
By the first week of October, the pent-up fury reached full force. There were antiwar speeches, teach-ins, and rallies. The controversy over my Supreme Court nomination of Judge Clement Haynsworth, the debate over welfare reform, the defeat of a Republican incumbent by an antiwar Democrat in a special election in Massachusetts, the vocal impatience of some civil rights leaders with the pace of our integration policy—all prominently in the news—created the impression of an administration reeling under siege. These factors were lumped together in the media and labeled a crisis of leadership. The headline in Newsweek was Mr. Nixon in Trouble, and Time devoted its National Affairs section to describing Nixon’s Worst Week: “It did not take an alarmist of Chicken Little proportions to discern that bits of sky were falling on the Nixon administration.”
Pronouncements of no-confidence and predictions of political paralysis were widespread. On October 7 David Broder wrote in the Washington Post that “it is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon Johnson’s authority in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969. The likelihood is great that they will succeed again.” A few days later Dean Acheson warned against “the attempt being made from so many sources to destroy Nixon.” In an exclusive interview in the New York Times he said, “I think we’re going to have a major constitutional crisis if we make a habit of destroying Presidents.”
My deliberate refusal to acknowledge these dire predictions itself became an element of the supposed crisis. Time reported, “Nixon seemed unconcerned and aloof from it all,” and the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, Hugh Sidey, found my attitude “perhaps as alarming as the events themselves in the most trying time Nixon has yet had in office.”
My real concern was that these highly publicized efforts aimed at forcing me to end the war were seriously undermining my behind-the-scenes attempts to do just that. Weeks later, in a meeting with Cabot Lodge, the North Vietnamese ambassador recited statements made by leading Senate doves. The New York Times reported that Le Duc Tho, “with a wide grin,” told an American visitor about Senator Fulbright’s accusation that I was trying to prolong the war with Vietnamization. Although publicly I continued to ignore the raging antiwar controversy, I had to face the fact that it had probably destroyed the credibility of my ultimatum to Hanoi.
On October 13 Ron Ziegler announced that I would make a major address to the nation concerning Vietnam on Monday, November 3.
This announcement was generally interpreted as either an attempt to undercut the October 15 Moratorium, then only two days away, or as a sign that the Moratorium had already been successful in forcing me to reconsider my Vietnam policy. In fact, I hoped that the announcement of a major speech for two day
s after the November 1 deadline would give Hanoi second thoughts about fishing in our troubled domestic waters.
On October 14, I knew for sure that my ultimatum had failed when Kissinger informed me that Radio Hanoi had just broadcast a letter from Premier Pham Van Dong to the American people. In it Dong declared:
This fall large sectors of the U.S. people, encouraged and supported by many peace- and justice-loving American personages, are launching a broad and powerful offensive throughout the United States to demand that the Nixon administration put an end to the Vietnam aggressive war and immediately bring all American troops home. . . .
We are firmly confident that with the solidarity and bravery of the peoples of our two countries and with the approval and support of peace-loving people in the world, the struggle of the Vietnamese people and U.S. progressive people against U.S. aggression will certainly be crowned with total victory.
May your fall offensive succeed splendidly.
To indicate the seriousness with which I viewed this blatant intervention in our domestic affairs, I asked Agnew to hold a press conference at the White House. He called Dong’s letter an “incredible message” and read excerpts of it for the cameras. He said, “The leaders and sponsors of tomorrow’s Moratorium, public officials, and others leading these demonstrations should openly repudiate the support of the totalitarian government which has on its hands the blood of 40,000 Americans.”
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