So far, in fact, it looked as if the North Vietnamese strategy had succeeded. If the negotiating record were made public, it would show that they had virtually capitulated and agreed to everything we required. If we now decided to delay signing the agreement because of Thieu’s objections to it, or if we demanded changes in it because of him, then the North Vietnamese were likely to go public with their case and demand that we sign. Thus Thieu would be isolated as the sole obstacle to peace. American public opinion would be stirred up against him by the antiwar leaders and the media, and there would be tremendous pressure brought to bear to jettison him and sign the agreement on our own.
I did not feel that I could let this happen. Even in November, when Thieu’s conduct became infuriating, I still felt that if we abandoned him South Vietnam would fall to the Communists within a matter of months, and our entire effort there would have been for naught. I was confident that Thieu would eventually join us in signing an agreement at some point before Congress returned in January and took matters out of our hands by voting to cut off all appropriations for the war and for aid to South Vietnam. So while I hoped that Thieu would accept the agreement before the November election, I was prepared to give him until the end of December to make whatever domestic preparations he felt were necessary before agreeing to sign. In the meantime, I felt that the most important thing was to keep the negotiations going.
On Sunday, October 22, at 8 A.M. in Saigon, Kissinger was finally summoned to Thieu’s office. If Thieu had decided to go along, there would still be time for Kissinger to go to Hanoi as we had agreed and for the agreement to be signed in Paris according to the schedule on October 31. Immediately after this meeting Kissinger sent a cable that was phoned to me at Camp David as I was getting ready for bed just after midnight: “We have just finished two-hour meeting with Thieu that was tense and highly emotional. However, I think we finally made a breakthrough and can keep to the original schedule with his support.”
I felt an enormous sense of relief and satisfaction when I received this news. By the time I awoke the next morning, another cable had arrived from Kissinger:
Thieu has just rejected the entire plan or any modification of it and refuses to discuss any further negotiations on the basis of it. He insists that any settlement must contain absolute guarantees of the DMZ, total withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces, and total self-determination of South Vietnam without any reference as to how this is to be exercised.
I need not tell you the crisis with which this confronts us.
Later in the day Kissinger sent a cable explaining how Thieu had called him back in the late afternoon and completely reversed the position he had taken in the morning. “It is hard to exaggerate the toughness of Thieu’s position,” Kissinger stated. “His demands verge on insanity.”
I immediately sent a message to Pham Van Dong through the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris, reminding Hanoi that we had always taken the position that we could not proceed unilaterally: “Unfortunately the difficulties in Saigon have proved somewhat more complex than originally anticipated. Some of them concern matters which the U.S. side is honor-bound to put before the D.R.V. [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] side.” Citing the breach of confidence of the de Borchgrave interview as a major reason for the problems with Saigon, I informed them that I was calling Kissinger back to Washington for consultations, and asked that they take no public action until we could send a longer message within twenty-four hours. I reaffirmed our commitment to the substance and basic principles of the draft agreement and our commitment to achieving a negotiated settlement at the earliest opportunity.
Haig called Dobrynin in and explained that difficulties in Saigon required us to postpone the arrangements for signing a settlement. He said that it was important that the Soviets enjoin restraint on their partners, and that Hanoi not indulge in public polemics over the delay.
In the meantime we received a sternly worded reply from the North Vietnamese, stating that they could not accept the reasons I had given for requesting a delay and warning that unless we strictly carried out our commitments regarding the agreement and the schedule for signing it, we would bear the “consequences” for continuing the war.
On October 23 Kissinger and Thieu had a final meeting. Thieu repeated his three main objections to the agreement: its failure to establish the DMZ as a secure border; the potential of the National Council of Reconciliation and Concord to become a coalition government; and the continued presence of North Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam. Kissinger repeated his belief that, while Thieu’s concerns were not unjustified, the terms of the agreement were, in fact, a major victory over the Communists. He nonetheless agreed to invite the North Vietnamese to Paris and present Thieu’s demands to them there, but he stressed that it was unlikely we would be able to achieve all of them. “What is important is that all the sacrifices that have been made should not have been made in vain,” Kissinger told Thieu. “If we continue our confrontation you will win victories, but we will both lose in the end. It is a fact that in the United States all the press, the media, and intellectuals have a vested interest in our defeat. If I have seemed impatient in the last days it is because I saw opportunity slipping away. This is why I leave with such a sense of tragedy.”
The next day I sent another message to Premier Dong requesting one final meeting. I declared that the text developed at this meeting would be considered final, and as a token of good will I offered to suspend all bombing of North Vietnam north of the 20th parallel. This message crossed wires with a curt statement from the North Vietnamese insisting that the agreement was complete and no further meeting was necessary. They were ready to receive Kissinger in Hanoi as scheduled; if we delayed, the war would continue. They requested an answer by the next day.
Our answer, which we sent on October 25, was tempered but firm. We stated that we shared their regret that a brief delay in signing was necessary, but we pointed out that we could not sign a document that asserted the concurrence of one of the parties when that concurrence did not exist. We repeated our request for one more meeting between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho and repeated that the text they agreed upon would be considered final. We went even further than I had the day before and undertook that as soon as the text had been completed and while we were consulting with our allies, we would completely stop the bombing of North Vietnam. The message concluded:
It is up to the D.R.V. to decide whether to sacrifice all that has been achieved by a policy of public vilification and private intransigence. For the D.R.V. to insist on demands beyond the power of the U.S. to fulfill will permit no other conclusion than that it seeks a pretext for prolonging the conflict.
At this point Thieu made a speech to the National Assembly in Saigon. Although he railed against the major provisions of the agreement, he did so in a way that did not rule out his coming along at some later time.
Diary
Thieu’s speech was sort of a mixed bag. The most important thing that came out of it, however, was that of the two theories that Henry had laid out—either Thieu was crazy or that he was crazy like a fox—the second proved to be true.
What happens here is that really he is preparing himself for a cease-fire but also proving that he is participating in it in insisting that he is not going to have a coalition government, etc.
On the day of Thieu’s speech I signed two veterans’ benefits bills at a ceremony in the East Room.
Diary
As I spoke to the veterans I was again terribly moved when I saw the blind veterans and those in wheelchairs.
It makes me realize what a debt we owe to these people, and how important it is to have the kind of peace that will really contribute to no more wars, rather than one that is simply a hiatus between two wars.
How they can still be for us is difficult to understand, but there must be a lot of character in our people, that they will suffer so much and still stand up for what is right for the country.
On Thursday, Oc
tober 26, what we had been fearing happened: the North Vietnamese went public with the peace agreement. They broadcast the general provisions of the agreement over Radio Hanoi, including the October 31 signing timetable. They revealed two of my cables to Pham Van Dong and insisted that we were dragging out the talks in order to cover up our “scheme of maintaining the Saigon puppet regime for the purpose of continued war of aggression.”
Kissinger had already planned to hold a press conference on October 26 in order to reassure the North Vietnamese that we were serious about reaching an agreement as well as to distract attention from Thieu’s obstructionism. Now his press conference took on an additional purpose and importance: we had to use it to undercut the North Vietnamese propaganda maneuver and to make sure that our version of the agreement was the one that had greater public impact.
In his opening remarks Kissinger said, “We believe that peace is at hand. We believe that an agreement is within sight, based on the May 8 proposals of the President and some adaptations of our January 25 proposal, which is just to all parties.”
Public attention focused on this turn of phrase, “Peace is at hand.” Another statement later in the briefing would also come back to haunt us. Kissinger said, “We believe, incidentally, what remains to be done can be settled in one more negotiating session with the North Vietnamese negotiators, lasting, I would think, no more than three or four days, so we are not talking of a delay of a very long period of time.” When Ziegler told me that the news lead from Kissinger’s briefing was “Peace is at hand,” I knew immediately that our bargaining position with the North Vietnamese would be seriously eroded and our problem of bringing Thieu and the South Vietnamese along would be made even more difficult. No less disturbing was the prospect of the premature hopes for an early settlement that would be raised at home, while the McGovern supporters would naturally claim that we were trying to manipulate the election. Kissinger himself soon realized that it was a mistake to have gone so far in order to convince the North Vietnamese of our bona fides by making a public commitment to a settlement.
On the positive side, there was no doubt that Kissinger’s briefing had succeeded in completely undercutting the enemy’s ploy and superseding their false interpretation of the proposed peace agreement.
Diary
The North Vietnamese thought they were going to surprise us by going public through the NLF with a somewhat distorted and garbled version of the peace plan. Consequently, Henry went public and indicated that “peace was at hand.” This was really going considerably further than I would have gone, and I know Henry was worried about it. However, when I talked to him about what I should say when we went to [campaign in] Kentucky, he very much did not want me to back off from what he had said.
The North Vietnamese ignored Kissinger’s briefing and delivered a message that they were still expecting him in Hanoi to initial the agreement. We sent them a note repeating that we understood their disappointment at our inability to meet the October 31 signing schedule and proposing a final meeting on November 1 with November 20 as the new target date for initialing the agreement.
We agreed not to request any further changes after the agreement had been reached at this final session, and we repeated the offer to suspend all bombing of North Vietnam as soon as the agreement had been completed and while we were consulting our allies about it. We said: “The U.S. side wishes to reaffirm its belief that with a cooperative attitude and good will on both sides, all remaining obstacles can be overcome. The major problem now is to focus on the future and to end recriminations about the past.” In a reference to their having publicized the negotiations we added: “Public pressure tactics can only retard progress.”
At the same time, we sent a note to Peking saying that it would be greatly appreciated if the Chinese would use their considerable influence in Hanoi to help bring about the peace that was now so near; and I wrote to Brezhnev asking him to use his influence to urge North Vietnam to work with us to complete the agreement on a realistic schedule.
I also sent a strong message to Thieu: “If the evident drift towards disagreement between the two of us continues, however, the essential base for U.S. support for you and your government will be destroyed.”
Diary
We are now in a position where if he doesn’t come along after the election we are going to have to put him through the wringer. I think then he will come along.
What really concerns him, Henry believes, and I am inclined to think he is right, is that he is terrified of the idea of the Americans being gone from South Vietnam. Abrams, on the other hand, who is certainly no opponent of Thieu’s, feels strongly that the time has come for us to get out and that we simply have to cut the umbilical cord and have this baby walk by itself. If they can’t do it now, with all we have fed it in the way of arms and ammunition and training, etc., they will never be able to do it.
The avalanche of speculation created by Kissinger’s “peace is at hand” statement put us in a very delicate position. Although I did not want to dampen optimism needlessly, I could not allow the impression to remain that a settlement would be the guaranteed outcome of the next Paris meeting. Even if the North Vietnamese gave in to every requirement, there was no assurance that Thieu would go along. In fact, he had made a public speech condemning the proposed settlement as an “agreement to surrender.” Therefore, on November 2, in a televised campaign speech, I stated: “We are not going to allow an election deadline or any other kind of deadline to force us into an agreement which would be only a temporary truce and not a lasting peace. We are going to sign the agreement when the agreement is right, not one day before. And when the agreement is right, we are going to sign, without one day’s delay.” McGovern responded with a charge that I had purposely misled the people about the prospects of peace.
On the same day that I made this speech I authorized some relaxation of the restriction on B-52 raids over North Vietnam that had been in effect since October 13. The plan now was to exert increasing pressure on Hanoi by beginning the bombing near the DMZ and then moving it slightly farther north each day. It seemed to work almost immediately: two days after it began the North Vietnamese agreed to meet with us in Paris on November 14. The election would be over by then; the American people would have chosen their President for the next four years and their decision would have a determining impact on the outcome of the war. Although the differences between McGovern and me were fundamental in almost every area, we were most diametrically opposite in the matter of the Vietnam war. He had pledged to end the war immediately by beginning a unilateral withdrawal without insisting on any arrangements for the return of our POWs. I had pledged to continue fighting until I was convinced that we had achieved a peace that was worthy of our sacrifices, that preserved the independence of South Vietnam, that had a chance of lasting after we had withdrawn our forces, and that assured the return of our POWs and an accounting of our MIAs.
THE CORRUPTION ISSUE
Ignored or rebuked by the majority of voters on the Vietnam war and nearly every other issue, McGovern and the Democrats began to focus on “corruption in government.” It may have been completely coincidental that at the same time the Washington Post ran a series of news reports—attributed largely to anonymous “sources”—about alleged corruption in the Nixon campaign. As McGovern was quick to recognize, the Post’s articles had far more influence in Washington and on the rest of the national media than his or Shriver’s campaign rhetoric, and he began to incorporate the charges made by the Post into his speeches. These stories reached their peak two weeks before the election, on October 25, and then ended as soon as the election was over. This too may have been coincidental, but that is not the way we saw it in the White House at that time.
For example, on October 3 the Post reported an allegation by “sources” that Bill Timmons had been named as one of the people who had received reports from the Watergate wiretaps. The allegation was false, and Timmons denied it. It was still false w
hen the Post repeated it three days later, this time on the front page under a big headline.
On October 8 I commented in my diary on the effect this kind of story had.
Diary
Julie was worried about the story in the paper to the effect that Timmons, [Robert] Odle, and one other White House aide had had access to the reports on Watergate. She said that if any of them are really guilty that we really ought to get rid of them. I told her not to be concerned about it, that the reports were false. It does show how sensitive she, and probably others like her in the campaign, are about this issue.
She mentioned the fact that she had seen Sherman Adams. It is a tragedy really what happened to Adams and I must remember to have him to the White House for some occasion. After all of his service to Eisenhower, he should not have been forced to leave under a cloud for an offense that was, at best, a question of judgment and not one of illegality or morality. I tend to agree with Jerry Persons when he says that Adams is an impeccably honest man and left his job a relatively poor man.
On October 10 the Post had a new front-page allegation. Under the headline FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats, the story began: “FBI agents have established that the Watergate bugging incident stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of President Nixon’s re-election and directed by officials of the White House and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.”
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