RN

by Richard Nixon

  Looking back that ten years I certainly made it hard for the family with my own reactions and I shall never forget how when I told them we were going to New York, Tricia went in and tore up all her notebooks. They had really hated the school in California because of the number of Birchers that were always giving them hell.

  I knew that the road had been hardest of all for Pat. For almost twenty years of public life she had been wife, mother, and full-time campaigner. She had done it all not because she loved the attention or reveled in the publicity—she didn’t. She had done it because she believed in me. And she had done it magnificently. Now she was loved by millions, and no woman ever deserved it more. My deepest hope was that she felt that it had all been worth it.

  VIETNAM BREAKTHROUGH

  As we anticipated, the summer of 1972 produced another series of propaganda maneuvers by Hanoi in an attempt to exploit American domestic opinion. This time they used the ploy of claiming—falsely—that American bombers were deliberately hitting the crucial system of dikes and dams in North Vietnam in order to kill large civilian populations in the resulting floods. Antiwar leaders accepted these claims uncritically. Teddy Kennedy charged that we had a “policy of deliberately bombing dikes.” In one of my press conferences I tried to introduce at least an element of logic regarding this charge: if in fact we had decided on a policy of deliberately bombing the dikes and dams, we could have destroyed the entire system in a week. But despite all the propaganda claims, no major junctures were hit and there were no massive floods.

  On July 27 former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the man described by George McGovern as “perfect for head of the FBI if you could get him,” left for Hanoi under the auspices of a Swedish group inquiring into “U.S. crimes in Indochina.” He made a broadcast over Radio Hanoi stating that our bombing should be stopped immediately. On August 12 he told reporters that he had visited a POW camp and found the health of the American POWs “better than mine, and I am a healthy man.” On Clark’s return, Teddy Kennedy had him come to Capitol Hill to testify on the good treatment the POWs were receiving.

  While Clark was in Hanoi, Shriver waded in, “revealing” that the Nixon administration, as he put it, “blew” a historic opportunity for peace in 1969 when I failed to follow up on progress that had been made in the Paris peace talks during the last months of the Johnson administration. Shriver also claimed that he had resigned as ambassador to France in protest of my war policy. Bill Rogers was furious when he heard about this. He publicly denounced Shriver’s claims as “bunk” and political fantasy. Rogers’s statement was particularly effective; it was characteristic of the forceful and articulate way he defended my foreign policy in public forums during the campaign. The next day the State Department released Shriver’s letter of resignation as ambassador. It was hardly a protest. On the contrary, he wrote that he had “accomplished the objectives I went to Paris to achieve—the beginnings at least of peace in Vietnam and the reawakening of friendship between the U.S.A. and France.”

  Connally called me to say that President Johnson was “mad as hell” about Shriver’s charge. Johnson had indicated that his already minimal support for McGovern would be even less because of this incident. Johnson called Haldeman to tell him that he had never informed Shriver of what was going on in the Paris negotiations. “I never trusted him, the SOB, not even then,” Johnson said.

  A few days after Ramsey Clark returned from Hanoi, a UPI report revealed that Pierre Salinger, on George McGovern’s instructions, had directly approached the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris. His purpose was to see if the Communists would release some American POWs. The goal was laudable, but the contact had all the earmarks of a political ploy. Moreover, the Logan Act prohibits a private citizen from unauthorized contacts with foreign governments with the intent to influence disputes between our government and theirs. McGovern, therefore, had some serious questions to answer about the Salinger mission.

  When confronted with this story, McGovern told reporters, “Pierre Salinger had no instructions whatsoever from me.” Salinger evidently was stupefied by this statement, because McGovern had not only sent him on the mission but had made the arrangements through a prominent antiwar leader. McGovern had been caught in a serious and discreditable falsehood.

  All McGovern’s efforts to attack me on the war were to no avail. At the end of August we received word that public support of my conduct of the war had actually risen. A Harris poll found in early September that 55 percent supported continued heavy bombing of North Vietnam, 64 percent supported the mining of Haiphong Harbor, and 74 percent thought it was important that South Vietnam not fall into the hands of the Communists. McGovern and his followers were out of touch with the majority of the American people. But the North Vietnamese, who were avid observers of American public opinion, apparently got the message.

  After three years of disappointing and unproductive stalemate the U.S.-North Vietnamese private channel suddenly became active in August 1972. For the first time the Communists actually seemed to be interested in reaching a settlement. Kissinger and I assumed that they had come to the conclusion that McGovern did not stand a chance of becoming President and had therefore decided to explore the possibility that they could get better terms from me before the election than after it. In addition they were undoubtedly concerned by our contacts with Moscow and Peking and with the success of Vietnamization; we knew also that the May 8 mining and bombing had taken a heavy military toll.

  At a two-day session on September 26 and 27 the North Vietnamese presented a new ten-point program. Although it was more forthcoming than anything in the past, on the key political and military issues it was still unacceptable. The next meeting, scheduled for October 8, would clearly be the decisive one for determining whether the new momentum could carry through to a settlement before the November 7 election. I was not optimistic in this regard, but I decided to orchestrate as much pressure on the meeting as possible.

  When Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko arrived in Washington for the signing of the SALT agreement on October 3, I invited him to come to Camp David. When he repeated the familiar refrain that U.S.-Soviet relations could improve if the problem of Vietnam were removed, I told him that when Kissinger returned to Paris the next week, he would lay on the table the last offer we were going to make. If the North Vietnamese said no, then the negotiating track would be closed and we would have to turn to some other methods after the elections.

  It seemed unlikely that, even if the North Vietnamese wanted to, we would be able to negotiate an acceptable agreement in just five weeks. Nonetheless I felt that we should prepare Thieu for the outside possibility that the Communists really were determined to conclude a settlement before our election. Haig flew to Saigon and assured Thieu that we would not rush headlong into an agreement. But he also described the difficult domestic situation we would face if the Communists made a reasonable offer and we refused to act upon it. Then they would be able to put the blame on Thieu for blocking peace.

  Thieu was visibly shaken. He was suspicious of the motives behind the North Vietnamese proposals and unsettled by our willingness to accept them as even a basis for negotiations. He railed against Kissinger, who, he said, did not “deign” to consider Saigon’s views in his negotiations. Haig tried to reassure him. Finally Thieu broke into tears.

  I sympathized with Thieu’s position. Almost the entire North Vietnamese Army—an estimated 120,000 troops that had poured across the DMZ during the spring invasion—were still in South Vietnam, and he was naturally skeptical of any plan that would lead to an American withdrawal without requiring a corresponding North Vietnamese withdrawal. I shared his view that the Communists’ motives were entirely cynical. I knew, as he did, that they would observe the agreement only so long and so far as South Vietnam’s strength and America’s readiness to retaliate forced them to do so. But I felt that if we could negotiate an agreement on our terms, those conditions could be met. I sent Thieu a persona
l message: “I give you my firm assurance that there will be no settlement arrived at, the provisions of which have not been discussed personally with you well beforehand.” Knowing his penchant for headstrong action, however, I reminded him of the dangers inherent in stirring up his domestic situation as well as our own.

  On October 5 we received word of a recent conversation between Premier Pham Van Dong of North Vietnam and the French Delegate General in Hanoi. For the first time Dong had sounded optimistic regarding the likelihood of peace. He had admitted that his experts had paid too much attention to American antiwar leaders and added that I would probably have a freer hand after the election.

  In my press conference that same day the questions focused on the prospects for a peace settlement before the election. I replied that in no circumstances would the election determine the character of our negotiations: “If we can make the right kind of a settlement before the election, we will make it. If we cannot, we are not going to make the wrong kind of a settlement before the election.”

  As the October 8 meeting approached, I felt that we had done everything possible to encourage Hanoi toward a settlement: their troops were being pounded by our renewed bombing, and now presumably the Soviet leaders would be urging the North Vietnamese to take the best terms they could get and end the war before the election. In the meantime, the prospects of my re-election by a landslide were increasing every day.

  Kissinger and Haig arrived in Paris on Sunday, October 8, for the crucial meeting with the North Vietnamese. That evening they sent a brief reporting cable: “Tell the President that there has been some definite progress at today’s first session and that he can harbor some confidence the outcome will be positive.”

  On Monday Kissinger reported that the meetings were tense and volatile but that “we are at a crucial point.” On Tuesday we received only a one-paragraph message that was more tantalizing than enlightening: “The negotiations during this round have been so complex and sensitive that we have been unable to report their content in detail due to the danger of compromise. We know exactly what we are doing, and just as we have not let you down in the past, we will not do so now.”

  That night George McGovern made a much-heralded nationally televised campaign speech on Vietnam. He said that on the day he was inaugurated President, he would stop all bombing and begin the immediate withdrawal of all American troops and military equipment from South Vietnam. He also committed himself to stop all military and economic aid to Saigon. He had no plan for ensuring the return of the POWs but said that he expected Hanoi to respond favorably to his policies. James Reston wrote that McGovern “went so far in meeting Hanoi’s war aims that he may actually have lost more support by his TV speech than he gained.” Joseph Kraft said of McGovern’s speech that “apparently without knowing it, he is prepared to accept worse terms than the other side is offering.”

  On October 11 Kissinger reported only that both sides had decided to stay another day in the anticipation that they were sufficiently close to a major breakthrough. On that day we established a ten-mile bombing-free circle around Hanoi.

  Kissinger and Haig arrived back at the White House on the evening of October 12 and came immediately to the EOB office to report to me.

  Since the first days of the administration Kissinger and I had talked about the “Big Three” in foreign policy—China, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam—and our goals involving each of them. So far we had succeeded with two of them: we had achieved an opening to China and we had embarked upon a new relationship with the U.S.S.R. Only the third goal—a settlement of the war in Vietnam—had continued to elude us. As Kissinger began His report of the Paris negotiations, he was smiling the broadest smile I had ever seen. “Well, Mr. President,” he said, “it looks like we’ve got three out of three!”

  He described the negotiating sessions in great detail. After some rhetoric and bluster, Le Duc Tho had presented a new proposal that met almost all our major requirements: there would be a cease-fire, followed in sixty days by the withdrawal of American forces and the return of POWs on both sides. The North Vietnamese would not specifically agree to withdraw their troops from the South because they maintained the fiction that they had no troops in South Vietnam at all. This charade was particularly galling to Thieu. Now Kissinger had brought back terms that would achieve our and Thieu’s objective while allowing the North Vietnamese to save face: no troop withdrawals would be required of them, but the provisions of the agreement regulating the replacement of forces and closing the border sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia would effectively cut them off from their source of supplies and force them either to return to the North or gradually to wither away in the South. The Communists had finally dropped their demands for a coalition government and had agreed to the face-saving substitute of a National Council of Reconciliation and Concord to be composed of representatives of the government, the Vietcong, and neutral members. Unanimity would be required in its votes; thus Thieu would be protected from being outvoted by the Communists and their supporters. Equally significant, they dropped their demand that Thieu resign. These provisions alone amounted to a complete capitulation by the enemy: they were accepting a settlement on our terms.

  There was also a provision embodying the principle of American economic aid to North Vietnam, which I considered to be potentially the most significant part of the entire agreement. The Communists tried to claim that this money would be reparations for the war they charged we had unleashed upon them; but however they tried to justify it, taking money from the United States represented a collapse of communist principle. More important, our aid would inevitably give us increasing leverage with Hanoi as the North Vietnamese people began to taste the fruits of peace for the first time in twenty-five years.

  Several unresolved issues remained to be negotiated at a final session in Paris on October 17. Only two of them were major. The first involved the release of Vietnamese civilian prisoners. The North Vietnamese would be accused of betraying their Vietcong allies unless they tried to secure their release as part of the agreement. The second involved the provision for replacement of war matériel by both sides. The Communists wanted it done on the “principle of equality.” Neither we nor the South Vietnamese could ever accept this, however, because it would immediately reduce the arms advantage that South Vietnam held over the Vietcong, which we saw as essential for maintaining the peace. Our position was that worn-out existing armaments should be replaced on a one-to-one basis.

  Cautioning Le Duc Tho that I would have to review the agreement and approve it, Kissinger had agreed that after the final session in Paris on October 17, he would go to Saigon for three days in order to present the agreement to Thieu and to obtain his approval of it. Kissinger would then go to Hanoi on October 22, where he would initial the agreement with the North Vietnamese leaders. He would return to Washington, and a joint announcement would be made on October 26. The cease-fire would begin on October 30, when the agreement would be signed in Paris by the Foreign Minister of each party.

  I asked that some steaks be brought over on trays from the White House mess, and I asked Manolo to bring a bottle of Château Lafite-Rothschild so that we could toast Kissinger’s success. I noticed that Haig seemed rather subdued, but I assumed that he was just tired after the exertions of the last few days. Finally I asked him directly how he felt about these terms from Thieu’s point of view. He replied that he honestly felt this was a good deal for Thieu. He was worried, however, about how Thieu himself would react to it.

  Kissinger had promised to let the North Vietnamese know my reaction within forty-eight hours after his return to Washington. The next day, I instructed the Pentagon to reduce our bombing of North Vietnam to 200 sorties and ordered restrictions on B-52 raids. That night we sent a message to Paris: “The President accepts the basic draft for an ‘agreement on ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam’ except for some technical issues to be discussed between Minister Xuan Thuy and Dr. Kissinger on Octobe
r 17, and subject to the following substantive changes without which the U.S. side cannot accept the document.” One of the changes I asked for was the deletion of a paragraph that tied various military obligations of the two South Vietnamese parties—the Saigon government and the Vietcong—to political sections of the agreement. We wanted political matters to be covered solely in the political chapter. Two other changes clarified ambiguities in the text.

  The North Vietnamese replied with an official note saying that they felt we were demanding changes in points that had already been agreed upon. They said that only minor technical changes could now be considered and demanded that we not make changes like the ones I had listed. The election deadline was clearly a two-way street: just as we would use it to pressure them to accept our terms, they would try to use it to stampede us into a hasty and ill-considered settlement.

  Therefore when I read this message I told Kissinger that in no circumstances should we consider any terms that we felt were less than acceptable.

  Diary

  I said that as far as the election was concerned, a settlement would not particularly help us, that there were risks insofar if Thieu blew it or the North Vietnamese blew it which could hurt us. But nothing that happened could be fatal—it could probably just narrow the gap. Under the circumstances, we had to do what was right. As I pointed out to him, if it was the right time to settle the war and if this was the right plan we should not delay it until after the election, when the pressures upon the enemy might be less than now.

  My study of previous settlements indicates that there come pressure points when a settlement can be made, and if the opportunity is missed then the war will drag on for months, and even years, before it comes again. This probably is one of those pressure points. It is an opportunity we must play out to the hilt, because we would never forgive ourselves if we miss this opportunity and then had the election go by and found that the thing would drag on and on. In any event, we have it in the right posture now. We will do what is right without any regard for what effect it will have on the election, and that will probably turn out best for the election as well.