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1046 WORDS

In "Kissinger and Nixon," a reptilian Kissinger cons a boozing, anti-Semitic Nixon into peace talks with Hanoi. Nixon surreptitiously undercuts his adviser but joins him in double-crossing South Vietnamese President Thieu into a flawed agreement. The viewer is spared any ambiguity: every single American policymaker is depicted in various shades of sleaze. The few heroes are Vietnamese leaders, North and South.

This fantasy raises serious questions about so-called docudramas - fiction presented as fact. Thus in the movie "JFK," President Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were accused in docudrama style of colluding in the assassination of Kennedy. Similarly, in "Kissinger and Nixon" a skillful blend of innuendo, distortion, and misrepresentation is served up to a new generation

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unaware that Vietnam era passions are masquerading as
history.

Having been offered the script by Ron Silver (who
plays Kissinger), I submitted dozens of primary sources
documenting factual errors. I volunteered to join the
producers in a Freedom of Information suit to settle
factual disputes.

The producers, unwilling to let evidence interfere
with their quest for ratings, proceeded with essentially
the original script. As a result, the movie is filled
with inaccuracies that even a minimum regard for
available documentary material could have avoided.

In an early scene, Nixon calls for me (asking for
something am absolutely unfavourable to the tapes will
his Jewboy) because he has just learned from a State
Department intercept that I have started negotiations
with Hanoi behind his back. Nothing like this ever
happened or could have happened. Every negotiation,
including the last one, was approved by Nixon in advance.

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On the negotiation to which the movie refers, Nixon actually personally interceded with Brezhnev to help get it started. A summary of all these communications was available to the producer and ignored by him. The meticulous diaries of H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's Chief of Staff, make no reference to any of this.

In another scene I am depicted as raging because the fact of the negotiations with Hanoi is revealed on television. A cut shows Nixon gloating because now I will get blamed for the expected failure of the negotiations. Nothing like this happened or could have happened. A minimum of research would have shown the producer that every single negotiating session in the summer of 1972 was disclosed to the press within 24 hours.

Another scene shows Nixon giving Haig a fourth star, in effect for spying on me for him, and simultaneously keeping him on as my deputy, to my intense

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discomfiture. Nothing like this happened. Haig was
given his fourth star after being promoted to Army Vice
Chief of Staff at a ceremony at the Pentagon. I was
present; Nixon was not.

These factual misinterpretations pale before the
distortions of history. "Kissinger and Nixon" simply
stands history on its head. In the real world, Nixon had
put forward three irreducible conditions: continuation of
the Saigon government, return of prisoners, and end to
Communist infiltration into South Vietnam. No doubt a
Hollywood scriptwriter can, 20 years after the event,
invent tougher terms; at the time, these terms were
assailed as far too stringent in scores of congressional
resolutions, editorials, and by a candidate for
President.

The film brazenly reverses history. Those who for
four years braved often violent protests because they
refused to abandon Thieu are portrayed as betraying him.

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President Thieu, as Nixon announced on January 25 without
contradiction from Saigon.

The breakthrough of October 8 was the exact
opposite of the film's depiction of us softening our
position. Instead, it was Hanoi's negotiator, Le Duc Tho,
who accepted *our* terms of 15 months before. The producers
ignored the statement available to them with which Le Duc
Tho introduced his proposal, saying: "...It is the same
proposal made by President Nixon himself."

The alleged backbiting between Nixon and me raises
the question of how we ever had time to manage the
opening to China, the agreements with the Soviet Union
and the Mideast peace process. While ending the Vietnam
war, Nixon and I were collaborators whose occasional
tactical disagreements were invariably resolved in our
daily meetings. In addition, Nixon received detailed
memoranda before and after each negotiating session.
Nixon himself answered the innuendo that he was a

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reluctant participant. On January 9, 1990 he wrote me,
reaffirming a letter of October 1972 available to the
producers: "I often told you that if we could get the
right deal we should do so regardless of what we thought
the political consequences might be..."

Limitations of space prevent documenting a
multitude of ~~similar misrepresentations~~ including: the
preposterous dialogue with Thieu of August 17, 1972, the
malicious innuendo that Haig was promoted to four-star
rank for spying on me, the purported conversations with
Le Duc Tho, the absurd deliberations preceding the so-
called Christmas bombing, and the misrepresentation of
almost every detail of the negotiating process.

~~Prelaps 4th~~

~~Le most égypions after pactuairly~~

~~manuel p7~~

No doubt the producers will point to a disclaimer
stating that their film is based on an Isaacson book and
that some scenes are fictionalized. But the viewer is not
told what is meant by "based on" or what events are
fictional, not to speak of historically untrue.

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Ending an inherited war which had torn America
apart was bound to be anguishing. Serious people were
divided on whether America's honor required a conditional
or unconditional withdrawal. The agony of that decision
deserved an accurate and truthful docudrama. "Kissinger
and Nixon" does not meet that test.

1046 WORDS

This fantasy raises serious questions about so-
called docudramas - fiction presented as fact. Thus in
the movie "JFK," President Johnson and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff were accused in docudrama style of colluding in
the assassination of Kennedy. Similarly, in "Kissinger
and Nixon" a skillful blend of innuendo, distortion, and
misrepresentation is served up to a new generation

2

In an early scene, Nixon calls for me (asking for
his Jewboy) because he has just learned from a State
Department intercept that I have started negotiations
with Hanoi behind his back. Nothing like this ever
happened or could have happened. Every negotiation,
including the last one, was approved by Nixon in advance.

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No mention is made of a central element in the collapse
of Vietnam: Congress' progressive reduction and eventual
cut-off of aid to South Vietnam after the agreement, and
its refusal to authorize either the stick of enforcement
or the carrot of economic aid towards Hanoi. One would
have thought that at a moment when the President is
sending 20,000 troops [to Bosnia] to enforce a much more
fragile agreement, for which no Americans have as yet
died, the question of how one preserves a peace for which
tens of thousands had died, would not be presented as a
plot.

The public record belies the film's central
thesis - that the Nixon Administration fell in with a
Hanoi trick proposal as elections approached in 1972. In
fact, the United States never deviated from the position
Nixon put forward in May 1971 and made public on January
25, 1972. Despite the film's many innuendos to the
contrary, these proposals had been approved in advance by

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Limitations of space prevent documenting a
multitude of similar misrepresentations, including: the
preposterous dialogue with Thieu of August 17, 1972, the
malicious innuendo that Haig was promoted to four-star
rank for spying on me, the purported conversations with
Le Duc Tho, the absurd deliberations preceding the so-
called Christmas bombing, and the misrepresentation of
almost every detail of the negotiating process.

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