During the years I was President I placed primary emphasis on better education in neighborhood schools. In a message to Congress on March 16, 1972, I proposed directing over $2.5 billion mainly toward improving the education of children from poor families. I hoped by doing this that we could retrieve a lost generation of children who had been doomed to inferior education in the central cities.
Controversy continued to rage over the interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decisions on busing. Some lower courts ordered or approved busing plans that went much further than the Supreme Court had intended, and in 1972 Chief Justice Burger issued a memorandum for the guidance of courts across the country, making it clear that the high Court did not require busing for the purpose of achieving racial balance.
Just before I resigned in 1974, the Supreme Court further endorsed my position by holding that unless school districts were gerrymandered for the purpose, or with the intent, of segregating blacks from whites, the law did not require busing to ensure racial balance. In his opinion, Chief Justice Burger wrote that “no single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control.”
As far as my administration’s overall record on civil rights is concerned, I believe we can point with justifiable pride to what was accomplished in the area of peacefully desegregating schools in the South. As Pat Moynihan put it in a memo shortly after the school year began in 1970, “There has been more change in the structure of American public school education in the past month than in the past 100 years.”
CAMBODIA AND KENT STATE
As 1970 began, our intelligence indicated that Communist infiltration from North into South Vietnam was increasing substantially. The North Vietnamese had also begun moving large numbers of troops and equipment into Cambodia and Laos.
In view of this enemy activity I felt that we had to think about initiatives we could undertake to show the enemy that we were still serious about our commitment in Vietnam.
On February 21 Kissinger had his second secret meeting in Paris with the North Vietnamese. The situation had changed dramatically since the first meeting in August, largely because my November 3 speech had strengthened my position at home. A Gallup poll at the end of January found that 65 percent of the nation approved of my handling of Vietnam. Even more disturbing for the North Vietnamese must have been the knowledge that we were now talking to their two major military patrons: the Soviets had recently proposed four-power discussions on the Berlin question in Bonn, and the Chinese Communists had agreed to resume the ambassadorial talks with us in Warsaw.
This time Le Duc Tho joined Xuan Thuy in participating in the talks with Kissinger. Tho was a member of the Hanoi Politburo, which meant that the talks now had at least reached the decision-making level.
Trying to capitalize on the reaction to my speech, Kissinger emphatically warned them not to underestimate the strong support I had for my Vietnam policy. “I know that here in Paris you see many Americans who are extremely sympathetic to your position. But in the last election the big bloc of votes was not on the left but on the right. President Nixon can appeal to people whom President Johnson could not reach,” he told them. Le Duc Tho countered suavely that it was his impression that since August the antiwar movement in the United States had surged higher than ever. He said that he had seen many statements by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, by the Democratic Party, and by Clark Clifford demanding the total withdrawal of American forces and the change of the Thieu government. Tho bluntly told Kissinger, “The present administration of Thieu–Ky–Khiem is opposed by the people and the press of the U.S., as by the great majority of the people of South Vietnam.”
Kissinger had felt from the start that Tho’s bombast concealed genuine North Vietnamese doubts and worries. This appraisal seemed to be borne out later in the meeting when the North Vietnamese became more conciliatory. In fact, it appeared that they were ready to begin serious negotiations in the private channel. They suggested another meeting for March 16.
When Kissinger returned to Washington he reported that “this has been an important meeting, certainly the most important since the beginning of your administration and even since the beginning of the talks in 1968.”
At the end of Kissinger’s memo proposing our strategy for the next secret meeting, I wrote a short note about the way I thought he should deal with the North Vietnamese at their next session. “Don’t haggle so much over ‘what did they mean by this or that,’ ” I wrote. “They thrive on this kind of discussion. Come directly to the hard decisions on the two major issues and say ‘we will leave details to subordinates’—otherwise you will spend two days on details and make no progress on substance. We need a breakthrough on principle—and substance. Tell them we want to go immediately to the core of the problem.”
When they met again on March 16, Kissinger told the North Vietnamese that if a settlement could be reached, we would have all our troops out of Vietnam within sixteen months. They appeared interested but remained noncommittal. Kissinger’s conclusion was that “two more meetings should tell the story.”
A few days later an unexpected event completely altered the situation. On March 18, while the Cambodian head of state Prince Sihanouk was visiting Moscow, he was overthrown by a bloodless military coup that brought to power General Lon Nol, a strong anti-Communist.
Lon Nol’s coup came as a complete surprise. The CIA had received no indication that the opposition to Sihanouk had gone so far. “What the hell do those clowns do out there in Langley?” I asked Bill Rogers impatiently.
My immediate inclination was to do everything possible to help Lon Nol, but Rogers and Laird strongly recommended that we hold back. They pointed out that Moscow, Peking, and Hanoi would be in great turmoil and suspect us of having financed and staged the coup. If we provided economic and military aid now, they argued, we would confirm such suspicions and possibly even supply the North Vietnamese with a pretext for abandoning their official facade of noninvolvement and thereby unleash a full-scale invasion of Cambodia. Helms also urged restraint. He reported that the Lon Nol government was unlikely to survive. It would put us in a very bad light, he said, to rush aid to a government that might be overthrown even before our aid arrived.
I decided to withhold any aid for at least a week, during which time Lon Nol, whose troops fought surprisingly well against the highly trained Communist Khmer Rouge and North Vietnamese, proceeded on his own to cut off a major source of Communist supplies by closing the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville.
Against this background Kissinger prepared for another meeting with the North Vietnamese in Paris. Before he left, he sent me a memo requesting approval for the strategy he wanted to follow. He felt that the time had come for our side to be very firm and find out whether the Communists really meant to negotiate. I approved this strategy and even strengthened it. “Put a time limit on it,” I wrote on his memo.
The meeting lasted almost five hours. The North Vietnamese were not forthcoming. Kissinger felt that they had been confused by the events in Cambodia, which they charged us with having engineered. Following my instructions, he proposed that a time limit be set for reaching an agreement in the secret talks. When they would not agree to this, he suggested that the channel be closed down until one side or the other had something new to discuss.
The whole situation over Cambodia and Vietnam was becoming so tense that I felt I had to make a very painful personal decision. Although I knew how much Pat and Julie were counting on it, I canceled our plans to attend David’s graduation from Amherst and Julie’s graduation from Smith later in the spring. Pat had never known the joy of having a parent attend any of her graduations, and I knew that she had been looking forward to Julie’s. Julie was also terribly disappointed. She tried to hold back her tears, and she pointed out that only a few small radical groups were involved, and that everyone she knew—including students who opposed the war and my administration—felt that I should be able to attend the ceremony.
Despite the impasse in the secret talks and the worsening military situation in Cambodia, I decided to go ahead with the troop withdrawal scheduled for April 20. I discussed the issue at length with Kissinger, and we agreed that the time had come to drop a bombshell on the gathering spring storm of antiwar protest.
Vietnamization had progressed to the point that, for the first time, we felt we could project our troop withdrawals over the next year. We decided, therefore, that instead of announcing a smaller number over a shorter period, I would announce the withdrawal of 150,000 men over the next year.
The withdrawal figure came as a dramatic surprise when I revealed it in a speech on April 20. The only Communist reaction was an escalation of the fighting.
By the end of April, the Communists had a quarter of Cambodia under control and were closing in on Phnom Penh. It was clear that Lon Nol needed help to survive. If the Communists succeeded in overthrowing him, South Vietnam would be threatened from the west as well as the north. This situation would jeopardize our troop withdrawal program and would also virtually assure a Communist invasion of South Vietnam as soon as the last American had left.
Support for Lon Nol was to be discussed at an NSC meeting on April 22. I woke up early that morning and dictated a memorandum to Kissinger:
Assuming that I feel the way today at our meeting as I feel this morning (it is 5 A.M., April 22), I think we need a bold move in Cambodia to show that we stand with Lon Nol.
I do not believe he is going to survive. There is, however, some chance that he might, and in any event we must do something symbolic to help him survive.
We have really dropped the ball on this one due to the fact that we were taken in with the line that by helping him we would destroy his “neutrality” and give the North Vietnamese an excuse to come in. Over and over again we fail to learn that the Communists never need an excuse to come in.
They didn’t need one in Hungary in 1956 when the same argument was made by the career State people and when Dulles bought it because he was tired and it was during the campaign.
They didn’t need one in Czechoslovakia when the same argument was made by the State people. And they didn’t need one in Laos where we lost a precious day by failing to make the strike that might have blunted the whole offensive before it got started, and in Cambodia, where we have taken a completely hands-off attitude by protesting to the Senate that we have only a delegation of seven State Department jerks in the embassy, and would not provide any aid of any kind because we were fearful that if we did so it would give them a “provocation” to come in.
They are romping in there, and the only government in Cambodia in the last twenty-five years that had the guts to take a pro-Western and pro-American stand is ready to fall . . .
I will talk to you about this after the NSC meeting.
The Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia were in two main areas. The Parrot’s Beak is a sliver of land that pushes into South Vietnam and reaches within thirty-three miles of Saigon. A particularly strong ARVN [South Vietnamese Army] force was stationed on the border in this area. Our intelligence reports indicated that the heaviest Communist concentration was in another border area, the Fishhook, a thin, curving piece of Cambodian territory jutting right into the heart of South Vietnam, about fifty miles northwest of Saigon. This was the primary area of operation for what intelligence referred to as COSVN—the Central Office of South Vietnam. COSVN was the Communists’ floating command post of military headquarters, supplies, food, and medical facilities. The Fishhook was thus the nerve center of the Communist forces in the sanctuaries, and it would be strongly defended. The initial intelligence estimates projected that the heavy fortifications and the concentration of Communist troops in the area might result in very high casualties in the first week of the operation.
I began to consider letting the ARVN go into the Parrot’s Beak and sending a mixed force of American and South Vietnamese troops into the Fishhook. Giving the South Vietnamese an operation of their own would be a major boost to their morale as well as provide a practical demonstration of the success of Vietnamization. It would also be a good diversionary cover for the more important and more difficult Fishhook operation.
I never had any illusions about the shattering effect a decision to go into Cambodia would have on public opinion at home. I knew that opinions among my major foreign policy advisers were deeply divided over the issue of widening the war, and I recognized that it could mean personal and political catastrophe for me and my administration.
On Sunday night, April 26, I reached my decision. We would go for broke. The ARVN would go into the Parrot’s Beak and a joint ARVN–U.S. force would go into the Fishhook.
On Monday morning I met with Rogers, Laird, and Kissinger. It was a tense meeting, because even though Rogers and Laird had by now given up hope of dissuading me from taking some action in Cambodia, they still thought they could convince me not to involve American troops. Rogers said, “It will cost us great casualties with very little gain. And I just don’t believe it will be a crippling blow to the enemy.” Laird said, “I’m not really opposed to going after the COSVN, but I’m not happy with the way this is being implemented.” He was more upset, it seemed, with an apparent snub of the Pentagon in our decision-making process. He also suggested that General Abrams might not approve of the COSVN operation, but backed away when Kissinger contradicted him. Nevertheless, immediately after our meeting I sent a back-channel cable to Abrams, ordering him to send me the “unvarnished truth” about the way he felt.
A joint response from Abrams and U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker indicated full support on their part. Speaking specifically of the attack on the Fishhook, they wrote: “We both agree that attack on this area should have maximum unsettling effect on the enemy, who has considered until now his sanctuaries immune to ground attack.” Abrams added his personal views in a separate paragraph: “It is my independent view that these attacks into the enemy’s sanctuaries in Cambodia are the military move to make at this time in support of our mission in South Vietnam both in terms of security of our own forces and for advancement of the Vietnamization program.”
That night I sat alone going over the decision one last time. It was still not too late to call the operation off: the Parrot’s Beak action would not begin until the next morning, and the Fishhook not until two days after that. I took a pad and began to make a list of the pluses and minuses of both operations. The risk and danger involved were undeniably great; there was no assurance of success on the battlefield and there was the certainty of an uproar at home. But there was also no question that the continued existence of the Cambodian sanctuaries would threaten the safety of the remaining American troops in South Vietnam and almost guarantee a Communist invasion as soon as we had pulled out.
Early the next morning I showed Kissinger my notes. He blinked his eyes as he took a piece of paper from the folder he was carrying and handed it to me. It was a list almost identical to mine. “I did the same thing, Mr. President,” he said, “and it looks like we’re both able to make a good case both ways on it.”
I said that as far as I was concerned, the simple fact of showing the Communists that we intended to protect ourselves and our allies put all the weight on one side. “Now that we have made the decision there must be no recriminations among us,” I said. “Not even if the whole thing goes wrong. In fact, especially if the whole thing goes wrong.”
South Vietnam’s announcement of the Parrot�
�s Beak operation came over the wires on Wednesday, April 29. Within minutes the leading Senate doves were in front of the TV cameras, demanding that I disavow Thieu’s offensive and not send any American troops into Cambodia. All during the day I continued to work on the speech I would deliver the next night announcing the operation. I asked Rose to call Julie for me. “I don’t want to get her upset, but it’s possible that the campuses are really going to blow up after this speech,” I said, “so could you just say I asked if she and David could come down from school to be with us.”
That night I found it difficult to get to sleep. After tossing fitfully for an hour or so, I got up and sat in the Lincoln Sitting Room until 5:30. At nine o’clock I walked over to my EOB office to go over the first pages of the typed speech. That afternoon I had Haldeman and Kissinger come over so I could read the announcement to them. I asked Kissinger to brief George Meany, because I knew that labor support would be vital. A little later he reported that Meany supported my decision wholeheartedly. Kissinger had less success with his own NSC staff. Three of his top assistants decided to resign in protest over my decision.
Shortly before delivering the speech from the Oval Office, I went to the White House Theatre to brief the bipartisan congressional leadership. I said I understood that many of them would oppose the decision I had made. I knew how they felt about it, and I respected their feelings. “I just want you to know that whether you think it’s right or wrong, the reason I have decided to do this is that I have decided it’s the best way to end the war and save the lives of our soldiers,” I told them.
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