Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam

by Robert K. Brigham

  I am fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful colleagues at Vassar College. I would like to thank Nancy Bisaha, Mita Choudhury, Miriam Cohen, Andy Davison, Rebecca Edwards, Maria Hoehn, Tim Koechlin, James Merrell, Quincy Mills, Lydia Murdoch, Leslie Offutt, Justin Patch, Ed Pittman, Miki Pohl, Ismail Rashid, Steve Rock, Wayne Soon, and Michelle Whalen, who have provided such a supportive intellectual environment. I owe special thanks to President Elizabeth Bradley, Jon Chenette, Cathy Baer, John Mihaly, Natasha Brown, and Catherine Conover at Vassar, and to the late Bennett Boskey for his generous support.

  I am deeply thankful to the authors whose books I have read and reread in preparation for this project. The same goes for the archivists at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, especially Meghan Lee-Parker. Christine Weideman helped me navigate Kissinger’s papers at Yale University. I owe a great debt of gratitude to John Carland and Sahr Conway-Lanz for their advice about sources.

  I have been blessed with three wonderful mentors—Steve Ireland, Frank Costigliola, and George C. Herring—who continue to offer sound advice and warm friendship.

  At PublicAffairs I thank my editor, Clive Priddle, for his steadfast support and superb editing, and Peter Osnos for his friendship and undying faith in me.

  My final and most important acknowledgment is to my family, especially Monica Church and Taylor Brigham, to whom this book is dedicated.

  Robert K. Brigham is the Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations at Vassar College. He is a specialist on the history of US foreign policy. His fellowships include the Rockefeller Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for Humanities. Brigham is author or coauthor of nine books, among them Iraq, Vietnam, and the Limits of American Power and Argument Without End.

  NOTES

  PREFACE

  1. Henry Kissinger, “The Vietnam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs (January 1969), accessed at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/1969-01-01/viet-nam-negotiations. (This online version of Foreign Affairs does not have page numbers.)

  2. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 1470.

  3. Mark Atwood Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 145.

  CHAPTER ONE: THE APPRENTICE

  1. This is the major theme of Henry Kissinger’s book Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994).

  2. As quoted in Walter Isaacson, Kissinger (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 127.

  3. As quoted in Niall Ferguson, Kissinger, 1923–1968: The Idealist [hereafter, Idealist] (New York: Penguin, 2015), 851.

  4. Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983), 13–14.

  5. As quoted in Ferguson, Idealist, 828. Kissinger was frequently in Paris to consult with the US negotiating team. He had even been used in a secret peace contact, code-named PENNSYLVANIA, which showed great promise. PENNSYLVANIA began in June 1967 when two French scientists, Herbert Marcovitch and Raymond Aubrac, approached Kissinger to offer their services as go-betweens to promote negotiations between Washington and Hanoi. Aubrac was an old friend of Ho Chi Minh and promised to deliver a message to the aging DRV leader if the Johnson administration had anything new to say. Kissinger referred the proposal to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, with a copy to Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara.

  On the day that Aubrac and Marcovitch were to leave Paris for Hanoi, United States aircraft flew more than two hundred sorties against North Vietnam, more than any previous day of the war. The official explanation for the poor timing of the bombing missions was that the attacks scheduled for earlier in the month had been delayed by bad weather. Once the weather broke on August 20, the bombing resumed according to protocol and lasted for another four days. Hanoi publicized the new attacks, claiming that Johnson had used the proposed bombing pause as a diversion while he actually escalated the war. Johnson denounced these claims, but the contact fizzled and the war dragged on.

  6. Tuyen bo, Thong cao, Thong diep cua Chanh phu VNCH ve cac bien phap ngung ban nam 1968, November 1, 1968, Ho so 861 [Statement of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam on November 1, 1968, Declarations, Announcements, and Messages of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam on Ceasefires of 1968, file number 861, Second Republic of Vietnam, Vietnamese National Archives Center, Ho Chi Minh City].

  7. The documentation is clear that Anna Chennault did deliver this message to the Thieu government. See for example, Memorandum, Dr. Kissinger from Richard L. Schneider, Appointment with Anna Chennault, April 7, 1969, box 810, National Security Council Files: NSC Name Files—Chennault, Anna; Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Yorba Linda, CA [hereafter, RNPLM]. For an interesting discussion of the Chennault affair, see John A. Farrell’s Richard Nixon (New York: Doubleday, 2017) and Farrell’s New York Times essay at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html. See also Ken Hughes, Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, The Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014).

  8. Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 234–241.

  9. Ve tinh hinh chinh tri va chinh sach ngoai gioa cua Hoa Ky, 1968–1975, Ho so 21016 [Report to the Prime Minister, June 18, 1968, On the Political Atmosphere and Foreign Policy of the United States, 1968–1975, File number 21016, Prime Minister’s Palace, Vietnamese National Archives Center II, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.] See also Tuyen bo, Thong cao, Thong diep cua Chanh phu VNCH ve cac bien phap ngung ban nam 1968, October 20, 1968, Ho so 861 [The House of Representatives of the Republic of Vietnam’s Resolution, October 20, 1968, file number 861, Declarations, Announcements, and Messages of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam on Ceasefires of 1968, Second Republic of Vietnam, Vietnamese National Archives Center, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam]. And finally, Tuyen bo, Thong cao, Thong diep cua Chanh phu VNCH ve cac bien phap ngung ban nam 1968, November 1, 1968, Ho so 861 [Statement of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam on November 1, 1968, Declarations, Announcements, and Messages of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam on Ceasefires of 1968, file number 861, Second Republic of Vietnam, Vietnamese National Archives Center, Ho Chi Minh City].

  10. Interview with Nguyen Xuan Oanh, economist and former Republic of Vietnam official, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, July 1989.

  11. Ken Hughes, Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015), 8.

  12. Memorandum, Dr. Kissinger from Richard L. Schneider, Appointment with Anna Chennault, April 7 1969, box 810, National Security Council Files: NSC Name Files—Chennault, Anna; RNPLM.

  13. Interview with Nguyen Xuan Oanh, economist and former Republic of Vietnam official, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, July 1989.

  14. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 10.

  15. Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 393.

  16. Kissinger, White House Years, 15.

  17. Ibid., 11.

  18. A reference to Johnson’s “Tuesday Lunches” where he talked about Vietnam with his foreign policy associates.

  19. As quoted in Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), 9.

  20. Kissinger, White House Years, 14.

  21. Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 81.

  22. Kissinger, White House Years, 27.

  23. As quoted in Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 84.

  24. As quoted in Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 83.

  25. Kissinger, White House Years, 26–27.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Ibid., 30.

  30. Ibid., 32.

  31. As quoted in Isaacson, Kissinger, 140.

  32. Wil
liam P. Bundy, Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 54–55.

  33. George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Policy since 1776 (New York: Oxford, 2008), 764.

  34. Ibid, 765.

  35. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations—September 24, 1965,” Henry A. Kissinger Papers, Part II, Series I: Early Career and Harvard University, box 101, folder 6, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut [hereafter, Kissinger Papers, Yale].

  36. “Roger Fisher, Letter to the Editor,” New Republic, September 5, 1967, 44.

  37. John T. McNaughton Papers, “June 1965, #59,” box 1, file IV, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas.

  38. John T. McNaughton Papers, “1964, #16 and 16a,” box 8, file III, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas.

  39. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations,” Part II, Series I: Early Career and Harvard University, box 101, folder 6, Kissinger Papers, Yale.

  40. Ferguson, Idealist, 588.

  41. As quoted in Ferguson, Idealist, 599.

  42. Ferguson, Idealist, 621.

  43. Ibid., 605.

  44. Ibid.

  45. Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 57.

  46. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations—Letter from John Dunn to Henry Kissinger, August 20, 1965,” Part II, Series I: Early Career and Harvard University, box 101, folder 6, Kissinger Papers, Yale.

  47. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations—Meeting on Vietnam, Wednesday, August 4, 1965,” Part II, Series I: Early Career and Harvard University, box 101, folder 6, Kissinger Papers, Yale.

  48. Ibid.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Ibid.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Ibid.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Ibid.

  56. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations—Letter, September 13, 1965,” Part II, Series I: Early Career and Harvard University, box 101, folder 6, Kissinger Papers, Yale.

  57. Ferguson, Idealist, 634.

  58. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations—Letter, September 13, 1965.”

  59. As quoted in Ferguson, Idealist, 636.

  60. Ibid., 635.

  61. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965 (Washington, DC: Office of the Federal Register, 1966), 394–399.

  62. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations—October 18, 1965.” Part II, Series I: Early Career and Harvard University, box 101, folder 6, Kissinger Papers, Yale.

  63. Ibid.

  64. Massachusetts Historical Society, Lodge Papers, Vietnam, reel 20, “Henry Kissinger to Lodge, September 14, 1965,” Boston, Massachusetts.

  65. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations—October 18, 1965,” Part II, Series I: Early Career and Harvard University, box 101, folder 6, Kissinger Papers, Yale.

  66. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations—October 26, 1965,” Part II, Series I: Early Career and Harvard University, box 101, folder 6, Kissinger Papers, Yale.

  67. “The Vietnam Trip, 1965—negotiations—November 2, 1965,” Part II, Series I: Early Career and Harvard University, box 101, folder 6, Kissinger Papers, Yale.

  68. Ferguson, Idealist, 838.

  69. Henry Kissinger, “The Vietnam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs.

  70. As quoted in Douglas Kinnard, The War Managers: American Generals Reflect on Vietnam (New York: Da Capo, 1977), 43.

  71. Gregory A. Daddis, Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 12.

  72. Kissinger, “The Vietnam Negotiations,” Foreign Affairs.

  73. Ibid.

  74. Ibid.

  75. Ibid.

  76. Ibid.

  77. Nhan Dan, August 31, 1972.

  78. Author interview with Luu Doan Huynh, Hanoi, Vietnam, November 1995.

  79. As quoted in Hersh, Price of Power, 49.

  80. Interview: Daniel Ellsberg Interview Transcription, May 20, 2008, with Timothy Naftali, 2008-05-20, ELLS, RNPLM.

  81. “Vietnam Options, 1969,” Morton Halperin Papers, box 10, folder “Vietnam Operations, January 8, 1969,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas.

  82. Ibid.

  83. Ibid.

  84. Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969–1973, Secretary of Defense Historical Series (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2015), 94.

  85. Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter, FRUS], 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, January 25, 1969,” document number 10 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2006).

  86. Isaacson, Kissinger, 163.

  87. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, September 12, 1969,” document number 120.

  88. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, March 28, 1969,” document number 49.

  89. Ibid.

  90. Ibid.

  91. Office of the Press Secretary for the President of the United States, “Lyndon B. Johnson Speech in Akron, Ohio, October 21, 1964,” at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26635.

  92. Hunt, Melvin Laird, 90–95.

  93. Ibid., 105.

  94. Kissinger, White House Years, 265.

  95. Memorandum for the President, Vietnam Situation and Options, undated, box 89, National Security Council Files: Vietnam Subject Files, RNPLM.

  96. Memorandum for the President, Reflections on De-escalation, March 8, 1969, box 89, National Security Council Files: Vietnam Subject Files, RNPLM.

  97. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, March 28, 1969,” document number 49.

  98. Ibid.

  99. As quoted in Mai Elliott, RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2010), 365.

  100. Hunt, Melvin Laird, 95.

  101. Ibid., 96.

  102. Memorandum, Kissinger for Laird, February 5, 1969, box 955, National Security Council Files: Haig Chronology, Feb 1–Feb 15, 1969, RNPLM.

  103. As quoted in Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 124.

  104. Ibid.

  105. Ibid.

  106. Memorandum, President Nixon from Kissinger, January 13, 1969, and Memorandum, President Nixon from Kissinger, January 8, 1969, box 1, National Security Council Files: Henry A. Kissinger Office Files—General Goodpaster, RNPLM.

  107. Ibid.

  108. Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, 127.

  109. New York Times, February 3, 1969.

  110. Conversation, Kissinger and President Nixon, March 8, 1969, 6:25–7:10 p.m., Henry A. Kissinger Telephone Conversation Transcripts [Hereafter HAK Telecon], box 1, Chronological File, RNPLM.

  111. Memorandum, President Nixon from Henry Kissinger, March 10, 1969, box 175, National Security Council Files: Paris Talks/Meetings, RNPLM.

  112. Memorandum, President Nixon from Henry Kissinger, January 13, 1969, box 1, National Security Council Files: Henry Kissinger Office Files—General Goodpaster, RNPLM.

  113. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Memorandum from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, February 19, 1969,” document number 22.

  114. Hunt, Melvin Laird, 145.

  115. U.S. Air Force Oral History Interview, Office of Air Force History, Historical Research Center, “Interview with Lt. General Ray Sitton, 7–8 February 1984,” Air War College, Montgomery, Alabama, 156.

  116. Ibid., 159.

  117. Ibid.

  118. Ibid.

  119. Conversation, Kissinger and President Nixon, March 15, 1969, 3:35 p.m., box
1, HAK Telecon: Chronological File, RNPLM.

  120. Conversation, Kissinger and President Nixon, March 15, 1969, 3:44 p.m., box 1, HAK Telecon: Chronological File, RNPLM.

  121. FRUS, 1969–1974, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, “Memorandum for the Record, March 15, 1969,” document number 39.

  122. New York Times, March 26, 1969.

  123. Hersh, Price of Power, 61.

  124. Hunt, Melvin Laird, 149.

  125. See for example, William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979).

  126. Greg Grandin, Kissinger’s Shadow (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015), 55.

  127. Henry Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 61.

  128. Hunt, Melvin Laird, 148.

  129. Conversation, Kissinger and President Nixon, March 20, 1969, box 1, HAK Telecon: Chronological File, RNPLM.

  130. As quoted in Barbara W. Tuchman, The March to Folly (New York: Random House, 1985), 382–383.

  131. Luu Van Loi, Le Duc Tho–Kissinger Negotiations in Paris (Hanoi: Gioi Publishers, 1996).

  CHAPTER TWO: THE LONE COWBOY

  1. Oriana Fallaci, “Kissinger: An Interview with Oriana Fallaci,” New Republic (December 16, 1972), 21.

  2. Ibid., 20–22.

  3. Henry Kissinger, For the Record: Selected Statements, 1977–1980 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981), 124.

  4. Henry Kissinger, “Strains on the Alliance,” Foreign Affairs (January 1963), at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/cuba/1963-01-01/strains-alliance.

  5. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), 266.

  6. Kissinger wrote this memo the first day in office for Nixon to sign and send out to top officials in his administration. Kissinger, White House Years, 130–135. See also Bernard Kalb and Marvin Kalb, Kissinger (Boston: Little and Brown, 1974), 130–135; Hersh, The Price of Power, 66; Raymond Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1994), 129.