National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger wrote in his memoirs that "historians rarely do justice to the psychological stress on a policy-maker", noting that by early 1970 President Nixon was feeling very much besieged and inclined to lash out against a world he was believed was plotting his downfall. Nixon had vowed to end the Vietnam War by 1 November 1969 and failed to do so while in the fall of 1969 he had seen two of his nominations to the Supreme Court rejected by the Senate. Nixon had taken the rejection of his nominations to the Supreme Court as personal humiliations, which he was constantly brooding over. In February 1970, the "secret war" in Laos was revealed, much to his displeasure.