# The Calm

Once upon a time, a President was
the former Secretary of State offers

By HENRY KISSINGER

IT IS DIFFICULT TO WRITE ABOUT RICHARD NIXON, WHO COMBINED BRILLIANCE, patriotism and courage with self-destructive flaws as in a Greek tragedy. The hatred he evoked in his political opponents was extraordinary even by the turbulent standards of American democracy. I served as his principal adviser on foreign policy for 5½ years and often saw him several times a day. Yet to some extent I still remain mystified by the personality of the perhaps most complex President of the 20th century.

One of the questions posterity will surely ask is what it was about Nixon that caused passions to run quite so deep. Was it because almost everything one could say about Richard Nixon was both true and yet somehow wrong? He was politically

astute and highly intelligent yet prone to self-destructive acts; exceptionally analytical yet done in by yielding to ill-considered impulse; deeply patriotic yet wont to hazard his achievements on tawdry practices; possessed of a considerable capacity to feel guilt coupled with an instinct to gravitate toward actions guaranteed to evoke feelings of guilt; an outstanding judge of people except of those whose actions could affect his own interests; successful in the gregarious profession of politics although introverted, almost reclusive.

Nobody who dealt with Nixon regularly ever doubted that here was a man capable of imposing his will on circumstances. But he could not handle face-to-face disagreements and would go to extraordinary lengths to achieve his aims by indirection. Nixon aspired to greatness and came close to it, at least in the conduct of foreign policy. Yet he ruined his presidency by acts as unnecessary as they were unworthy.

It would take a poet of Shakespearean dimension to do justice to the extraordinary, maddening, visionary and debilitating personality of Richard Nixon—at once thoughtful and quirky, compassionate and insensitive; sometimes fiercely loyal, at other times leaving old associates in his wake as casualties. Yet ultimately Nixon’s obvious and unending struggle with himself proved so unsettling, even threatening, because deep down one could never be certain that what one found so disturbing in Nixon might not also be a reflection of some suppressed flaw within oneself.

Inevitably our personal relationship exhibited the ambivalences Nixon inspired in his entire entourage. Nixon, who treated acquaintances with a wary aloofness and even close associ-

ates as foils, provided few emotional footholds. His oblique, indirect method of government and his tendency to foment conflicts among his subordinates could be nerve-racking. Occasionally I would relieve the tension with exasperated comments. For his part, Nixon resented the publicity I attracted, starting with the secret trip to China on which he sent me in 1971. Presidents do not take kindly to assistants who compete with them for public attention—especially when some of Nixon’s closest advisers were arguing that I was upstaging him deliberately. While the word deliberately was inaccurate, it is certainly true that I did not exactly resist the media’s favors.

Nevertheless, and despite some mutual misgivings, Nixon and I worked extremely well together. Face-to-face, he always treated me with conspicuous courtesy. Though we were not emotionally close, I was touched by his vulnerability and often moved by his inner torments, as in the period just prior to his resignation (when I might well have been as close to Nixon as anyone, except his immediate family, ever got).

Nixon’s single most important quality was the ability to make bold decisions. That attribute was all the more remarkable because he was not by nature daring and by no means a happy warrior. On the contrary, he made his major decisions with a joylessness verging on despair, as if he was doomed by some malignant destiny to have so much anguish brought to naught despite meticulous reflection and notepads crammed with options.

One of the paradoxes of the Nixon presidency is that the evidence on the tapes pictures him as impulsive, even reckless. But the Nixon with whom I worked on foreign policy reached his major decisions only after almost maddening deliberation. He

PATRICK DURAND—SYGMA

From Years of Renewal by Henry Kissinger; ©Henry Kissinger. To be published by Simon and Schuster, Inc.

After the Storm

us forced from office. In an excerpt from *Years of Renewal*,
r s a front-row seat to one of America's greatest crises

CORBIS BETTMANN

DIRCK HALSTEAD FOR TIME

A TRAGIC ENDING AND A BRIGHT NEW BEGINNING

Richard Nixon flashes his trademark "victory" sign after his resignation. Within hours Gerald R. Ford took the oath of office

might act intuitively, but he did not do so impulsively. Every sig-
nificant foreign policy decision was preceded by weeks of soli-
tary reflection and apparent indecision. Sequestered in his hide-
away in the Old Executive Office Building with the curtains
drawn, Nixon would work out on a pad of yellow sheets permu-
tations of the options I generally had submitted to him. And
since, in any major decision, the pros and cons are closely bal-
anced and unanimity among advisers is rare, he would muse
endlessly about how to overrule fractious subordinates. But
once he had overcome his premonitions of catastrophe and
found someone (usually Bob Haldeman or John Mitchell) to
bring the bad news to the overruled associates, Nixon would al-
most invariably take a big leap.

Afterward Nixon would retire to Camp David for a few days,
to recover from the ordeal but also to make it that much more
difficult for opponents of the decision to reach him. It was hard-
ly the decision-making process recommended in public-admin-
istration textbooks, and it was emotionally exhausting for all the
participants—including, especially, Nixon. But Presidents could

do worse than to place on their desks the dictum Nixon would
invoke on such occasions: "You pay the same price for doing
something halfway as for doing it completely. So you might as
well do it completely."

THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ADVISER

THE BREAKTHROUGHS OF THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION WERE due to the fact that both Nixon and I subordinated our reservations about each other to a close collaboration based on mutual respect. The Quaker's son from Yorba Linda and the son of a secondary school teacher in Bavaria complemented each other's qualities in a special way. Nixon had the best personal knowledge of leaders around the world of any American political figure I have met. Foreign policy was his hobby, and he deepened his understanding of it by frequent travel. I had a better knowledge of history and of the conceptual side of geopolitics. Nixon operated by flashes of insight, to which he clung with remarkable persistence. My forte was translating general goals into long-range strategies—a task for which Nixon lacked the requisite patience.

Nixon's ability to make bold decisions was all the more remar

ka

Nixon had an instinct for the jugular. With respect to several key decisions, even when I came to view their necessity somewhat before he did, once Nixon decided to act, he

went frequently beyond my recommendations. In 1970, after the North Vietnamese forces stationed in Cambodia broke out of their base areas and threatened to take over the entire country, Nixon and I were studying ways to neutralize the North Vietnamese offensive in Cambodia and prevent the whole country from being turned into a vast base area aimed at South Vietnam. I recommended an assault on Parrot's Beak, the communist base area closest to Saigon; after hesitating for nearly a month, Nixon opted for attacking every base area along the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. In 1973, when I tried to orga-

nize the Pentagon's civilian reserve air fleet for an airlift to Israel, Nixon overcame Pentagon foot dragging by ordering a military airlift and using the giant C-5 planes. In each case, Nixon's decision was vindicated by events.

The cooperation between the President and the National Security Adviser worked not just because we complemented each other's strengths (and perhaps reinforced each other's weaknesses with respect to our sensitivity to criticism and proclivity for sudden diplomatic coups), but above all because Nixon and I viewed international relations from a nearly identical perspective. Both of us believed that we were in trouble in Vietnam because our predecessors had launched the U.S. into an enterprise in a distant region for worthy causes but without adequately assessing the national interest and the likely cost. America's historic idealism had to be leavened with an assessment of national interest, and our approach to international relations had to move from episod-

ic interventions to a strategic design that took account of the requirement of equilibrium. This was then—and probably still is at this writing—a minority view in a society which, never having experienced national tragedy, identifies the quest for peace with the missionary vocation of spreading its own domestic values around the world.

In the end, this vision led both the President and me to be harassed by what had been our normal constituencies. Liberals accused me of abandoning them in quest of power; conservatives thought Nixon had been seduced by the Establishment.

Nixon could have greatly eased his presidency by simply abandoning our allies in Indochina and placing the onus on his predecessors. He was surely given every incentive to do so when the architects of the debacle, in a collective fit of amnesia, constantly pressured him to go down the road of unconditional abandonment. Believing such a course to be dishonorable and against the national interest, Nixon played the hand he had been dealt and achieved a settlement his critics had declared unattainable—though it later unraveled, in large part because Congress cut off economic and military aid. Even while engaged in this searing process, Nixon managed to forge new policies toward China, strategic arms limitations, the Middle East peace process and access to beleaguered Berlin. In their essence, these policies set the course for the remainder of the cold war.

## NIXON THE PERSON

IN THE MYTHOLOGY OF HIS TRADUCERS—AND OF SOME FILM PORTRAITS—Richard Nixon was a man given to histrionics, to shouting his prejudices at cowed subordinates and to dominating his environment by conveying his views with great, even overpowering insistence—frequently under the influence of alcohol. Nothing could be further from the real Richard Nixon—at least the Richard Nixon with whom I dealt.

For example, the portrayals of Nixon drinking himself into incoherence with a bottle ever at his side are simply absurd. In my experience, Nixon never took any liquor during working hours or in the Oval Office. Only his closest associates ever saw him drink in any context. The trouble was that Nixon could not hold even a small quantity of alcohol. Two glasses of wine were quite enough

to make him boisterous, just one more to grow bellicose or sentimental, occasionally with slurred speech. Alcohol had a way of destroying the defenses he had so carefully constructed to enable him to succeed in a profession based on a conviviality unnatural to him. These episodes occurred extremely rarely, always at night and never in the context of major decisions. The few of us who actually witnessed such conduct never acted on what he might have said; we felt we owed the President another chance to consider whatever the issue was.

The Richard Nixon with whom I worked on a daily basis for 5½ years was generally soft-spoken, withdrawn and quite shy. When talking to me or to George Shultz, he rarely, if ever, used the graphic language that proved so startling in the transcripts of his conversations with the political side of the White House. Nixon was capable of dominating a conversation only by conducting a monologue, never in a genuine dialogue. To passive admirers or people who sought

his views, Nixon could appear overpowering and confident. But Nixon abhorred face-to-face disagreements of any kind. In his many conversations with me, he would ask many perceptive questions and frequently make very astute observations. He was quite capable of changing his mind upon reflecting on a counterargument. But these were separate events. I cannot remember any real dialogue in which we argued clashing points of view.

The way differences between us were handled was that I would register more or less passively some comment of Nixon's. Some time later, I would revert to the same point without ascribing it to him and state my contrary view. After yet another interval, Nixon would either reaffirm his original position or change it without acknowledging the disagreement between us.

Since this was a method involving a considerable risk of misunderstanding, I conducted most of the major policy discussions with Nixon and almost every presentation of options by memorandum. Nixon felt no inhibitions about reading contrary views, and he felt free to state his response crisply and to issue unambiguous orders. Future historians removed from the passions of the moment will find a study of the voluminous memoranda he produced far more rewarding than the dialogues on the tapes.

The reason for Nixon's diffidence in face-to-face encounters was the opposite of arrogance: it was a reflection of his abiding fear of being rejected. Others more knowledgeable about Nixon's

BOLD STROKES
Inside the Kremlin in 1972

TIME, MARCH 15, 1999

prospects of some unwanted direct confrontation.

My staff would prepare a detailed memorandum explaining the purpose of the visit, the physical arrangements, what the foreign interlocutor was likely to say, our recommendations for the best response, the optimum outcome and the dangers to avoid. Nixon would commit to memory either the entire memorandum or the part he thought useful. Since Nixon did not like to admit that he needed any staff assistance in foreign policy, he never brought the staff memorandum to the meeting. Instead, he would hold forth as if extemporaneously, not without sometimes skating closer than I considered wise to the very subjects our memorandum had warned represented the areas of thinnest ice. Nixon liked to live dangerously and to show off his skill at doing so.

On one occasion, the arrangement went awry, and it was the vaunted NSC staff system, not Nixon, that misfired. As part of some U.N. celebration, the Prime Minister of Mauritius had been invited to Washington. Mauritius is a subtropical island located in the Indian Ocean. It enjoys plenty of rainfall and a verdant agriculture; its relations with the U.S. were excellent. Somehow my staff gained the impression that the visitor was from Mauritania, an arid desert state in West Africa which had broken diplomatic relations with us in 1967 as an act of solidarity with its Muslim brethren in the aftermath of the Middle East war.

This misconception produced an extraordinary dialogue. Coming straight to the point, Nixon suggested that the time had come to restore diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Mauritius. This, he noted, would

permit resumption of American aid, and one of its benefits might be assistance in dry farming, in which Nixon maintained the U.S. had special capabilities. The stunned visitor, who had come on a goodwill mission from a country with, if anything, excessive rainfall, tried to shift to a more promising subject. He inquired whether Nixon was satisfied with the operation of the space tracking station the U.S. maintained on his island. Now it was Nixon's turn to be discomfited as he set about frantically writing on his yellow pad. Tearing off a page, he handed me a note that read: "Why the hell do we have a space-tracking station in a country with which we do not have diplomatic relations?"

## THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

AFTER THE SO-CALLED SMOKING-GUN TAPE WAS RELEASED ON Aug. 5, Vice President Gerald Rudolph Ford, at a Cabinet meeting the next day, took the unprecedented step of dissociating from the President. He would no longer defend the President's position on Watergate, he said, and, indeed, he would not have done so in the past had he known what was on the tape. Publicly he would maintain silence on the matter on the ground that he was a "party in interest"—pointedly reminding everyone that he was next in line for Nixon's office. But Ford stressed that even though he was dissociating from the President, he would continue to support Nixon's policies.

I did not speak with Ford at that meeting or, indeed, until Nixon had decided to resign. It was now certain that Ford

would become President. In that turbulent week of Nixon's resignation, I had no time to speculate on how it would affect my own position. Before I could address the subject, Ford took the decision out of my hands by telephoning me on the morning of Aug. 8, after Nixon had informed him of his decision to resign. Ford asked me to come to see him and, in his unassuming way, left the time up to me. In the course of the same conversation, he asked me to stay on and in a way that made it sound as if I would be doing him a favor by agreeing.

Dramatic events are not always ushered in by dramatic dialogue. As I recall this conversation from the perspective of two decades, I am struck by its matter-of-fact tone and concerns. At the time, I was affected by the understated way in which Ford conveyed Nixon's decision, which would make him President, without rhetorical flourishes and without mentioning the emotional impact on himself. And I was moved by his tact in so swiftly putting an end to any personal uncertainty I might be experiencing.

The atmosphere of the conversation carried over into our meeting that afternoon. I sat on a sofa near the balcony

overlooking the White House Lawn, Ford in an easy chair with his back to the window. He seemed casual and calm, neither grandiloquent nor pretentiously humble. He opened the conversation by saying he intended to announce even before he had taken the oath of office—in fact, that very evening—that I would be staying. Ford added that he had felt comfortable with me ever since our first meeting at Harvard some years before. Artlessly, he added that he felt confident we would “get along.” I replied that it was my job to get along with him, not the other way around.

Perhaps the most lasting impression of that first conversation was its aftermath. For the first time since I came to the White House, I left the presidential presence without afterthoughts, confident that there was no more to the conversation than what I had heard. Starting with that first meeting, I never encountered a hidden agenda. He was sufficiently self-assured to disagree openly, and he did not engage in elaborate maneuvers about who should receive credit. Having been propelled so unexpectedly into an office he revered but never thought he would hold, he felt no need to manipulate his environment. Ford's inner peace was precisely what the nation needed for healing its divisions.

Gerald Ford was an uncomplicated man tapped by destiny for some of the most complicated tasks in the nation's history. The first nonelected President, he was called to heal the nation's wounds after a decade in which the Vietnam War and Watergate had produced the most severe divisions since the Civil War. As different as possible from the driven personalities who typically propel themselves into the highest office, Gerald Ford restored calm and confidence to a nation surfeited with upheavals, overcame a series of international crises and ushered in a period of renewal for American society.

## THE NEW PRESIDENT

THE MORNING OF AUG. 9, 1974, WITNESSED ONE OF THE MOST dramatic moments in American history. At 9:30 in the East Room of the White House, President Nixon bade farewell to his

AN UNUSUAL COLLABORATION

Kissinger and Nixon shared a view of the world

THE WHITE HOUSE

TIME, MARCH 15, 1999

THE PHENOMENON

MANCHETE

in a game six times, four goals 30 times and three goals 90 times. And he did so not aloofly or disdainfully—as do many modern stars—but with an infectious joy that caused even the teams over which he triumphed to share in his pleasure, for it is no disgrace to be defeated by a phenomenon defying emulation.

He was born across the mountains from the great coastal cities of Brazil, in the impoverished town of Tres Corações. Nicknamed

Dico by his family, he was called Pelé by soccer friends, a word whose origins escape him. Dico shined shoes until he was discovered at the age of 11 by one of the country's premier players, Waldemar de Brito. Four years later, De Brito brought Pelé to São Paulo and declared to the disbelieving directors of the professional team in Santos, "This boy will be the greatest soccer player in the world." He was quickly leg-

end. By the next season, he was the top scorer in his league. As the *Times* of London would later say, "How do you spell Pelé? G-O-D." He has been known to stop war: both sides in Nigeria's civil war called a 48-hour cease-fire in 1967 so Pelé could play an exhibition match in the capital of Lagos.

To understand Pelé's role in soccer, some discussion of the nature of the game is necessary. No team sport evokes the same sort of primal, universal passion as soccer. During the World Cup, the matches of the national football teams

impose television schedules on the rhythm of life. Last year I attended a dinner for leading members of the British establishment and distinguished guests from all over the world

at the staid Spencer House in London. The hosts had the bad luck to have chosen the night of the match between England and Argentina—always a blood feud, compounded on this occasion by the memory of the Falklands crisis. The impeccable audience (or at least enough of it to influence the hosts) insisted that television sets be set up at strategic locations, during both the reception and the dinner. The match went into overtime and required a penalty shoot-out afterward, so the main speaker did not get to deliver his message until 11 p.m. And since England lost, the audience was not precisely in a mood for anything but mourning.

When France finally won the World Cup, Paris was paralyzed with joy for nearly 48 hours, Brazil by dejection for a similar period of time. I was in Brazil in 1962 when the national team won the World Cup in Chile. Everything stopped for two days while Rio celebrated a premature carnival.

There is no comparable phenomenon in the U.S. Our fans do not identify with their teams in such a way partly because American team sports are more cerebral and require a degree of skill that is beyond the reach of the layman. Base-

ball, for instance, requires a bundle of disparate skills: hitting a ball thrown at 90 m.p.h., catching a ball flying at the speed of a bullet, and throwing long distances with great accuracy. Football requires a different set of skills for each of its 11 positions. The U.S. spectator thus finds himself viewing two discrete events: what is actually taking place on the playing field and the translation of it

**BORN** Oct. 23, 1940, in Tres Corações, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais

**1956** Begins pro career with Santos Football Club, which wins nine

championships between 1958 and 1969

**1958** In his first World Cup appearance, leads Brazil to victory

**1970** Plays his final World Cup, a victory for Brazil

**1974** Signals retirement by picking up the ball 20 minutes into final game and kneeling in midfield

**1975** In financial trouble, comes out of retirement to play for New York Cosmos

**1977** Retires from Cosmos

**1994** Long at odds with the world soccer authority, he is named Brazil's Minister of Sports

THE CONQUISITION

PELE AND HIS CHILDREN KELLY CHRISTINA AND EDINHO IN 1975

115

# The Calm

By HENRY KISSINGER

It would take a poet of Shakespearean dimension to do justice to the extraordinary, maddening, visionary and debilitating personality of Richard Nixon—at once thoughtful and quirky, compassionate and insensitive; sometimes fiercely loyal, at other times leaving old associates in his wake as casualties. Yet ultimately Nixon's obvious and unending struggle with himself proved so unsettling, even threatening, because deep down one could never be certain that what one found so disturbing in Nixon might not also be a reflection of some suppressed flaw within oneself.

ates as foils, provided few emotional footholds. His oblique, indirect method of government and his tendency to foment conflicts among his subordinates could be nerve-racking. Occasionally I would relieve the tension with exasperated comments. For his part, Nixon resented the publicity I attracted, starting with the secret trip to China on which he sent me in 1971. Presidents do not take kindly to assistants who compete with them for public attention—especially when some of Nixon's closest advisers were arguing that I was upstaging him deliberately. While the word deliberately was inaccurate, it is certainly true that I did not exactly resist the media's favors.

Nixon's single most important quality was the ability to make bold decisions. That attribute was all the more remarkable because he was not by nature daring and by no means a happy warrior. On the contrary, he made his major decisions with a joylessness verging on despair, as if he was doomed by some malign destiny to have so much anguish brought to naught despite meticulous reflection and notepads crammed with options.

PATRICK DURAND—SYGMA

NATION

# A Burning in Alabama

The savage murder of a gay man stuns a state where hate-crime laws do not protect homosexuals

THIS IS NOT THE TYPE OF PLACE WHERE this happens,” city council president George Carlton told a reporter, after the horror became public in his hometown, Sylacauga, Ala. He echoed what was said in Jasper, Texas, a year ago. Few people then had ever heard of Jasper. A week ago, even fewer could have pointed out Sylacauga on a map. A tiny city of 13,000, halfway between Birmingham and Montgomery, Sylacauga was known for its white marble quarries, textile mills and ice-cream factory. But last week Sylacauga, like Jasper, became a chapter in the recent history of hatred.

According to police, Steven Eric Mullins, 25, and Charles Monroe Butler Jr., 21, plotted for two weeks to murder Billy Jack Gaither, 39. On Feb. 19, they

aflame, says Bradley, “then they put the body on the fire.” They did it all, the deputy says, because Gaither was gay.

Gaither's death has become a rallying point for gay-rights organizations' and state legislators' pushing a bill that would extend Alabama's three-year-old hate-crimes law beyond race, color, religion and national origin to cover crimes related to sexual orientation as well. “It's unfortunate that somebody had to lose his life in order for this legislation to pick up momentum here in the state of Alabama,” says state Representative Alvin Holmes, who failed to get the original law amended when it was passed in 1996. Holmes filed for extending the law after Matthew Shepard, a gay student, was beaten and left to die on a fence in Wyoming last

October, an incident that sparked national outrage. Even Wyoming failed to pass hate-crime legislation in the wake of the Shepard lynching. Like Shepard, Gaither did not hesitate to admit being gay, though he adhered quietly to Sylacauga's Southern dispositions. And friends dispute Mullins' and Butler's allegations that a sexual proposition incited the murder. Gaither's brother Randy told CNN: “Regardless of his personal life or anything, he doesn't deserve to be killed for this.”

THE DAILY HOME (4)

HATE CRIME: Mullins, left, and Butler, center, confessed to killing Gaither, who was seen with Mullins at The Tavern

arranged to meet him at a Sylacauga bar and lured him to a secluded area. There they beat him and dumped him into the trunk of his car. They then drove about 15 miles to Peckerwood Creek in Coosa County. There, says Coosa County Sheriff's Deputy Al Bradley, “they took him out of the trunk, took an ax handle and beat him to death.” They set two old tires

“The message people are getting is that gay people are second-class citizens,” says Tracey Conaty, spokesperson for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Before Gaither's murder, activists were planning a major national pro-gay offensive. From March 21 to March 27, the task force will launch its “Equality Begins at Home” campaign, with 250 grassroots events in all 50 states

aimed at passing anti-gay-bashing legislation. Says Conaty: “These laws reflect the conscience of a community and send an important message.” The March events, says Urvashi Vaid, director of the task force's policy institute, will involve straight people concerned about neighbors denied basic human rights. Adds Vaid: “It's more than just a gay thing.”
—By Sylvester Monroe

AP/2

ITALIAN TRAGEDY: The site of the carnage

# Without Guilt?

Italians are shocked by the acquittal of a Marine pilot

ALL BILL CLINTON COULD DO WAS APOLOGIZE, “The U.S.,” he declared, “is responsible for this terrible tragedy.” But his guest was implacable. “We shall say we are satisfied when whoever is responsible for what happened is found guilty and punished,” said Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema. The day before, a military jury in Camp Lejeune, N.C., had acquitted Captain Richard Ashby, a U.S. Marine pilot

whose EA-6B warplane severed a ski gondola in the Italian Alps on Feb. 3, 1998, sending 20 Europeans to their death.

While military prosecutors alleged that Ashby had been “flat-hatting”—flying recklessly—his lawyers revealed widespread training deficiencies. Prosecutors couldn't prove Ashby had been

told of speed and altitude restrictions for the flight. There was also a sense among some leathernecks that Ashby was targeted for punishment that should have been more evenly shared. All that was apparently sufficient for at least three of the eight Marine jurors to vote not guilty (military juries require only two-thirds to convict) after seven hours of deliberation. Ashby still faces charges of destroying a videotape of the flight, and his navigator, Captain Joseph Schweitzer, faces a charge of involuntary manslaughter and obstruction of justice.

After the verdict was announced, a prosecutor turned to the relatives of those killed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I buried my husband a year ago,” Rita Wunderlich replied. “Today it was his second funeral.”
■

ASHBY: Was sloppy training to blame?

TIME, MARCH 15, 1999

# After the Storm

forced from office. In an excerpt from *Years of Renewal*, a front-row seat to one of America's greatest crises

COBBS BETTMANN

DIRCK HALSTEAD FOR TIME

## A TRAGIC ENDING AND A BRIGHT NEW BEGINNING

might act intuitively, but he did not do so impulsively. Every significant foreign policy decision was preceded by weeks of solitary reflection and apparent indecision. Sequestered in his hideaway in the Old Executive Office Building with the curtains drawn, Nixon would work out on a pad of yellow sheets permutations of the options I generally had submitted to him. And since, in any major decision, the pros and cons are closely balanced and unanimity among advisers is rare, he would muse endlessly about how to overrule fractious subordinates. But once he had overcome his premonitions of catastrophe and found someone (usually Bob Haldeman or John Mitchell) to bring the bad news to the overruled associates, Nixon would almost invariably take a big leap.

Afterward Nixon would retire to Camp David for a few days, to recover from the ordeal but also to make it that much more difficult for opponents of the decision to reach him. It was hardly the decision-making process recommended in public-administration textbooks, and it was emotionally exhausting for all the participants—including, especially, Nixon. But Presidents could

## THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ADVISER

49

Nixon had an instinct for the jugular. With respect to several key decisions, even when I came to view their necessity somewhat before he did, once Nixon decided to act, he went frequently beyond my recommendations. In 1970, after the North Vietnamese forces stationed in Cambodia broke out of their base areas and threatened to take over the entire country, Nixon and I were studying ways to neutralize the North Vietnamese offensive in Cambodia and prevent the whole country from being turned into a vast base area aimed at South Vietnam. I recommended an assault on Parrot's Beak, the communist base area closest to Saigon; after hesitating for nearly a month, Nixon opted for attacking every base area along the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. In 1973, when I tried to organize the Pentagon's civilian reserve air

The cooperation between the President and the National Security Adviser worked not just because we complemented each other's strengths (and perhaps reinforced each other's weaknesses with respect to our sensitivity to criticism and proclivity for sudden diplomatic coups), but above all because Nixon and I viewed international relations from a nearly identical perspective. Both of us believed that we were in trouble in Vietnam because our predecessors had launched the U.S. into an enterprise in a distant region for worthy causes but without adequately assessing the national interest and the likely cost. America's historic idealism had to be leavened with an assessment of national interest, and our approach to international relations had to move from episodic

## NIXON THE PERSON

THE WHITE HOUSE

## BOLD STROKES
Inside the Kremlin in 1972

TIME, MARCH 15, 1999

early years may be better able to explain this handicap—for such
it was—in a man of such intelligence and possessed of extraordi-
inary powers of persuasion. Or the even greater anomaly that
Nixon seemed more paralyzed by the prospect of rejection than
by its actuality. Once the worst had, in fact, occurred and the
dreaded (and half-anticipated) rejection had finally taken place,
Nixon displayed extraordinary fortitude, willpower and resilience.

To spare himself face-to-face controversies as much as possible, Nixon avoided office appointments wherever possible unless they were carefully orchestrated set-piece encounters. Those of us in the inner circle faced no more daunting task than to persuade Nixon to meet some individual he did not already know or to see someone who might produce an unpleasant situation—that is, anyone whose opinion Nixon did not know in detail beforehand.

The reverse side of this fear of being re-
jected—its ballast, so to speak—was Nixon’s
romantic image of himself as a fearless
manipulator, marching to his own drum-
mer, unaffected either by turmoil around
him or contrary advice on the part of his
Cabinet and staff. Sometimes this was in-
deed the case, but most often Nixon was not
as alone as he was wont to imply. His quest
to receive sole credit for every achievement
of his Administration and to have it per-
ceived as having been carried out as an en-
tirely solitary act explains why Nixon rarely,
if ever, had an approving word to say about
any of his associates. Subconsciously at
least, Nixon sought to enhance his emi-
nence by denigrating his associates, thereby
magnifying his own solitude.

Another aspect of this cult of the “tough
guy” was that in conversations with his en-
tourage, Nixon might generate a series of
extravagant propositions which, in his
heart, he never expected to be implement-
ed. Some of the more bloodcurdling orders
on the tapes released thus far have their ori-

gin in this proclivity—as I believe to have been the origin of Wa-
tergate itself. Nixon was convinced, and repeated on many occa-
sions, that during the 1960 presidential campaign, his office and
airplane had been bugged by the Kennedy camp. And I suspect
he felt that his victory in 1972 would not be complete until he had
demonstrated his own ability to play by the same rules as he
imagined the admired and feared Kennedy clan to have done.

In foreign policy, these tough-guy orders were much less
frequent; though, when they occurred, they could be unsettling
(after a few months with Nixon, I was able to distinguish between
what he intended to be carried out immediately and what he de-
served to be given an opportunity to reconsider). For example,
in August 1969, a TWA plane with Americans aboard was hi-
jacked and flown to Damascus airport. I reported this fact to
Nixon, who was in San Clemente with his two friends, Charles
("Bebe") Rebozo and Robert Abplanalp. Obviously trying to im-
press his pals, Nixon issued a curt-sounding order: "Bomb the
airport of Damascus." I was certain the order would never sur-
vive the night and called Secretary of Defense Mel Laird to tell
him what had happened. The two aircraft carriers in the
Mediterranean were out of range, and bombing a country is not
a simple matter of giving an order: targets have to be selected, a
diplomatic scenario prepared and press guidance developed. So
Laird and I decided to carry out the letter of the order by im-
plementing the first steps and leaving the other measures for the

next day. In the morning, at my regular briefing, I brought
Nixon up to date, including the fact that the Sixth Fleet carriers
were now near Cyprus. "Did anything else happen?" Nixon in-
nocently asked. When I replied in the negative, the President—
without moving a facial muscle—said, "Good."

The trouble arose with members of the Nixon entourage
who had less access and less experience with exuberant presi-
dential statements. When the full extent of Watergate became
apparent in April 1973, I asked permanent elder statesman
Bryce Harlow how it could have happened: "Some damn fool got
into the Oval Office and did as he was told," Harlow remarked.

INSIDE THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE

NIXON SET IN MOTION A FIERCE COMPETITION AMONG HIS ADVIS-
ers while guarding the mystery of his own ultimate destinations.

He was determined that foreign policy be
conducted from the Oval Office, but he
never said as much to his Secretary of
State. He would send me off on secret
back-channel negotiations without in-
forming Bill Rogers—and while complain-
ing to Haldeman about the Kissinger-
Rogers feud that he himself never ceased
stoking. The result was that the State De-
partment would often pursue a course of
action that was in direct conflict with what
I was doing on behalf of the President and
of which the department was unaware.
The practical consequence was that the
party being overruled blamed the outcome
on some malign influence—as time went
on, most often on me.

Nixon's reputation for "trickiness" re-
sulted from his need to balance his abor-
rence for direct confrontation against his
even stronger inward drive to live up to his
foreign policy convictions. Preposterous as
this may sound, what passed for trickiness
was Nixon's way of being principled.

Spending much of what would nor-
mally be considered personal time in his hideaway in the Old Ex-
ecutive Office Building or at Camp David, Nixon would sit in an
easy chair, his feet on a hassock, the shades drawn, commenting
on conceptual rather than action memoranda and making notes
on his yellow pads. To relieve the inner tension, he would call in
one of his advisers to go over his notes and/or to recount again
and again the battles of his earlier years, from the Alger Hiss case
through the California election of 1962. These grinding conver-
sations could go on for hours while the designated listener, fran-
tic over the work and telephone calls piling up back in the office,
yearned even for some catastrophe to divert the President and
permit one to get back to one's regular chores.

The incentives for Nixon's adviser soon became exactly the op-
posite of the normal assistant's ambition, which is to log the maxi-
mum amount of time with the President. Nixon's aides by contrast
tried to cut down their time with the President. In the process, they
revealed something less creditable about themselves: the degree
to which the emotionally exhausting White House atmosphere
had robbed them of sensitivity for the obvious and all-encompass-
ing loneliness of their President, who needed them as much to fill
the emptiness of his life as for practical advice.

Though Nixon did not particularly enjoy the mechanics of
governing and was generally leery of visitors, he did enjoy for-
eign guests. But even in his area of expertise, he would not meet
a visitor without meticulous preparation to minimize the

THE WHITE HOUSE

NO HIDDEN AGENDAS
In Vladivostok in 1974

TIME, MARCH 15, 1999

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Apollo 11 lands on the moon in 1969.

Nixon stood on pinnacles that dissolved into precipices

a pardon posed for Ford, it was a tricky subject to initiate with the new President, particularly for me as one of Nixon's close associates. I finally overcame my hesitations when, in the second week of Ford's presidency, Bryce Harlow called on me to express his own deep concern.

Harlow argued that putting Nixon on trial would further divide our country and probably compound the emotional disintegration of a President who, with all his faults, had rendered distinguished service to the country. The conversation with Harlow gave me the pretext to raise the subject with Ford. I passed on Harlow's views and endorsed them. When Ford asked a few questions about the psychological impact of a trial on Nixon, I argued that equally important was the impact on the world, where the former President was highly respected. Ford mentioned that some of his advisers thought he should wait until an indictment was actually handed down. I replied that I could not judge the domestic situation, but delay would surely complicate both the international impact and Nixon's personal despair.

Ford made no further comment. On the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 7, 1974, he telephoned to inform me of his decision to pardon Nixon the following morning. The time had come, Ford said, to lay the past to rest and, in a spirit of Christian forgiveness, to permit Nixon to live out the remainder of his days in dignity. Ford did not invite my comments. Though the decision probably cost him his own election to the presidency, I am convinced that it was a courageous and humane act that was

necessary if the nation was ever to be liberated from the traumas of the previous decade.

NIXON IN EXILE

AFTER RESIGNING FROM THE PRESIDENCY, NIXON LIVED FOR another two decades. The first few years in exile were excruciatingly difficult for him. Only his closest friends telephoned him, and he disappeared from the public debate except in the sensational stories regarding his alleged abuses of power. During this period, he and I often spoke on the telephone, and I visited him once in San Clemente. While I was still in office, when major events occurred, I would brief him; when I was under attack—which happened more and more frequently—he would call with supporting and insightful comments.

In February 1980, Nixon moved to New York and launched a spectacular career of reinventing himself as elder statesman. I hosted a small dinner to welcome him. For the first time, he sought to engage the Establishment. He would invite key representatives of the media and industry for an evening of discussion that usually turned into a briefing; he would send thoughtful little notes to authors of articles or books that caught his attention. Patiently and tenaciously, Nixon earned himself a position as a senior commentator whom, in the end, the incumbent Presidents found it to their benefit to consult.

Nixon began to deliver public speeches. I attended a few of them and marveled at how he used the occasion to overwhelm his audience. Pushing the lectern ostentatiously out of the way, he would deliver an hour-long speech forcefully and extemporaneously. Only the few Nixon cognoscenti understood just how much the sheer effort of it had cost him. They knew that if it was an important group, he would have written out the speech beforehand or at least made a full outline and probably rehearsed parts of it before a mirror. They were participating in an extraordinary feat of memory and self-discipline, not a spontaneous effusion.

I saw Nixon for the last time in January 1994 when I was one of the speakers in Yorba Linda at the launching of the Nixon Center, a new foreign policy think tank now located in Washington. Former key Cabinet members spoke briefly. Nixon concluded the event with a graceful speech to a large and friendly audience. At the lunch following, I toasted Nixon on behalf of his former Cabinet.

A few months later, in April 1994, Richard Nixon died.

We had lived together through periods of hope and of de-

spair, through fleeting moments of triumph and long domestic travails. Nixon could be exasperating, maddening, even treacherous. But the overriding feeling evoked by his death was one of sorrow. Paradoxical as it sounds, Nixon's endless machinations were apt to be forgiven especially by those closest to him and therefore most likely to be damaged by his wiles because we were also familiar with the sweep of his aspiration and aware that his most tormenting battles were ultimately with himself.

Assaulted on all sides and torn within himself, Nixon had held to a concept of national honor, determined to prove that the greatest free nation had no right to abdicate. With a romantic and, even lofty notion of the hero-statesman, he sought to point a way to overcome his nation's oscillation between overcommitment and withdrawal. Though in the end he fell short of fulfilling his highest aspirations, Nixon's goals were worthy even when the execution was occasionally flawed.

This is why his funeral on April 27, 1994, became a national occasion of mourning attended by all surviving Presidents, including Bill Clinton. And my eulogy came from the heart:

> "When I learned the final news, by then so expected yet so hard to accept, I felt a deep loss and a profound void. In the words of Shakespeare: 'He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again' ...

> "... So let us now say goodbye to our gallant friend. He stood on pinnacles that dissolved into precipices. He achieved greatly and suffered deeply. But he never gave up. In his solitude, he envisaged a new international order that would reduce lingering enmities, strengthen historic friendships and give new hope to mankind—a vision where dreams and possibilities conjoined.

> "Richard Nixon ended a war, and he advanced the vision of peace of his Quaker youth. He was devoted to his family, he loved his country, and he considered service his honor. It was a privilege to have been allowed to help him."

AN OCCASION OF NATIONAL MOURNING
Presidential farewell to Nixon

DIANA WALKER FOR TIME

TIME, MARCH 15, 1999

# A Realist Faces Reality

## The Ford years don't make a rollicking read, but Kissinger's memoirs draw some smart lessons

By WALTER ISAACSON

IT'S BEEN 17 YEARS SINCE HENRY KISSINGER published the second of his three volumes of memoirs, which took him through Richard Nixon's resignation, and some wondered whether he would ever really write this final volume. The Gerald Ford years, after all, were filled with events (communist victories in Vietnam and Cambodia, the end of détente with Russia, arms-control stalemates) that weren't exactly ripe for recounting with relish.

But here it is, yet another 1,000-plus pages, and in the end it was worth the wait. Kissinger again displays an intellectual ambition, provocative-ness and mix of sweep and detail that make other memoirs seem pale. Of course that doesn't mean *Years of Renewal* (Simon & Schuster; $35) is a relaxing beach read. The narratives and character sketches (including those of Nixon and Ford, excerpted in this issue) are often vivid delights, but they are leavened by meticulous trudges through old battlegrounds (some repetitive of previous volumes) that make up in defensiveness what they lack in concision. To paraphrase a reviewer of one of his first books, 40 years ago: Kissinger may be a great writer, but anyone who finishes his book is definitely a great reader.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me note that I once wrote a biography of Kissinger that, while attempting to convey his brilliance, criticized him for failing to fully appreciate the messy openness of America's democracy and the strength it derives from basing its foreign policy on moral ideals. He was not thrilled. In this volume he rather effectively debunks the notion, put forward by myself and others, that growing up as a Jew in Nazi Germany bred in him a reverence for order over ideology, and he ends with an eye-moistening 1946 letter his father wrote him about idealism. But his primary theme, now as in the past, is that in seeking a balance between realistic appraisals of our nation-

al interests and Wilsonian idealism, America tips too much toward the latter.

Kissinger's pragmatic, realpolitik approach may have made intellectual sense, but his lack of feel for America's idealistic impulses ultimately contributed to a string of failures: Congress's unwillingness to support South Vietnam after America's withdrawal; the controversy over "secret" assurances of support that Kissinger had given Saigon; the assault on détente with Russia

by both liberals and conservatives; and the crazed congressional probes of the CIA oddly abetted by its director, William Colby. Kissinger doesn't go so far as to admit he was wrong, but he does concede that "I underestimated the impact on the public psyche of the sharp difference between our approach to foreign policy and the Wilsonianism which had become dominant in the 20th century."

Kissinger is particularly baffled by neoconservatives such as James Schlesinger and Henry ("Scoop") Jackson. He thought they should have been his natural allies in pursuing anticommunist strategies, but he now realizes how deep the differences were between their uncompromising (and rather ambition-laden) moralism and his realism. Among Kissinger's great mistakes, for example, was thinking he could negotiate with Jackson a compromise level of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union that would convince the Senator to support détente,

or that he could convince Schlesinger to support an arms-limitation scheme based on realistic numbers. Kissinger also tacitly concedes that the secretive methods he used in negotiating with Russia, China and Vietnam made it harder for him to win sustained support from the bureaucracy and Congress.

The most painful failure was the collapse of the Vietnam peace accord. Kissinger's outrage that Congress would not go to the aid of South Vietnam in 1975 when the North launched its final offensive is sincere and understandable. But he glosses over any differences he may have had with Ford, who

displayed a more sensitive feel for the wariness of Congress and the weariness of the public. And he never confronts the basic reality that his 1973 peace accord fudged rather than resolved the issue of whether the communists accepted South Vietnam as an independent country. He is right to be dismayed, but has little justification for being shocked, that neither the North nor the South ever worked hard at reaching a political rather than a military resolution—or that there was little appetite in the U.S. to reengage in the struggle.

From his earliest writings on Bismarck and Metternich to the final chapter of this final volume of his 3,769-page trilogy of memoirs, Kissinger has remained true to his realist tilt. "The United States," he concludes, "must temper its missionary spirit with a concept of the national interest and rely on its head as well as its heart in defining its duty to the world."

Yet the enduring successes of the Ford years came not from merely pursuing the pragmatic calculations of the Nixon years. The 1975 Helsinki accord, for example, including its *über*-idealistic declaration on human rights, will be "considered by posterity as a landmark in the West's victory over communism," as Kissinger points out. More broadly, the Ford years restored a sense of honesty, openness and morality to the conduct of foreign affairs. In portraying them as years of renewal, Kissinger conveys his appreciation of these values, perhaps even more fully than he did at the time. ■

APRIL 1975: AS VIETNAM WAS FALLING
He understood global balances better than American politics

DAVID HUME KENNERLY—THE WHITE MOUSE

TIME, MARCH 15, 1999

MAR-04-99 THU 18:17

P. U. C.

It is difficult to write about Richard Nixon, who combine/ brilliance, 1
patriotism and courage with self-destructive flaws as in a Greek tragedy. The 2
hatred he evoked in his political opponents was extraordinary even by the tur- 3
bulent standards of American democracy. I served as his principal adviser on 4
foreign policy for 51/2 years and often saw him several times a day. Yet to some 5
extent I still remain mystified by the personality of the perhaps most complex 6
President of the 20th century. 7
One of the questions posterity will surely ask is what it was about Nixon that 8
caused 9
passions to run quite so deep. Was it because almost everything one could say about 9
Richard Nixon was both true and yet somehow wrong? He was politically astute and 10

highly intelligent yet prone to self-destructive acts; exception- 11
ally analytical yet done in by yielding to ill-considered impulse; 12
deeply patriotic yet wont to hazard his achievements on tawdry 13
practices; possessed of a considerable capacity to feel guilt cou- 14
pled with an instinct to gravitate toward actions guaranteed to 15
evoke feelings of guilt; an outstanding judge of people except of 16
those whose actions could affect his own interests; successful in 17
the gregarious profession of politics although introverted, al- 18
most reclusive. 19

Nobody who dealt with Nixon regularly ever doubted that 20
here was a man capable of imposing his will on circumstances. 21
But he could not handle face-to-face disagreements and would 22
go to extraordinary lengths to achieve his aims by indirection. 23
Nixon aspired to greatness and came close to it, at least in the 24
conduct of foreign policy. Yet he ruined his presidency by acts 25
as unnecessary as they were unworthy. 26

It would take a poet of Shakespearean dimension to do jus- 27
tice to the extraordinary, maddening, visionary and debilitating 28
personality of Richard Nixon—at once thoughtful and quirky, 29
compassionate and insensitive; sometimes fiercely loyal, at oth- 30
er times leaving old associates in his wake as casualties. Yet 31
mately Nixon's obvious and unending struggle with himself 32
proved so unsettling, even threatening, because deep down one 33

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L 34 could never be certain that what one found so disturbing in Nixon might not also be a reflection of some suppressed flaw within oneself.

37 Inevitably our personal relationship exhibited the ambivalences Nixon inspired in his entire entourage. Nixon, who treated acquaintances with a wary aloofness and even close associates as foils, provided few emotional footholds. His oblique, indirect method of government and his tendency to foment conflicts among his subordinates could be nerve-racking. Occasionally I would relieve the tension with exasperated comments. For his part, Nixon resented the publicity I attracted, starting with the secret trip to China on which he sent me in 1971. Presidents do not take kindly to assistants who compete with them for public attention—especially when some of Nixon's closest advisers were arguing that I was upstaging him deliberately. While the word "deliberately" was inaccurate, it is certainly true that I did not exactly resist the media's favors.

51 Nevertheless, and despite some mutual misgivings, Nixon and I worked extremely well together. Face-to-face, he always treated me with conspicuous courtesy. Though we were not emotionally close, I was touched by his vulnerability and often moved by his inner torments, as in the period just prior to his resignation (when I might well have been as close to Nixon as anyone, except his immediate family, ever got).

L 58 Nixon's single most important quality was the ability to make bold decisions. That attribute was all the more remarkable because he was not by nature daring and by no means a happy warrior. On the contrary, he made his major decisions with a joylessness verging on despair, as if he was doomed by some malign destiny to have so much anguish brought to naught despite meticulous reflection and notepads crammed with options.

65 One of the paradoxes of the Nixon presidency is that the evidence on the tapes pictures him as impulsive, even reckless. But the Nixon with whom I worked on foreign policy reached his ma-

MAR-04-99 THU 18:18

P. 04

L '68 jor decisions only after almost maddening deliberation. He

69 might act intuitively, but he did not do so impulsively. Every sig-

70 nificant foreign policy decision was preceded by weeks of soli-

71 tary reflection and apparent indecision. Sequestered in his hide-

L 72 away in the Old Executive Office Building with the curtains
73 drawn, Nixon would work out on a pad of yellow sheets permu-

L 74 tations of the options I generally had submitted to him. And
75 since, in any major decision, the pros and cons are closely bal-

L 76 anced and unanimity among advisers is rare, he would muse

L 77 endlessly about how to overrule fractious subordinates. But

L 78 once he had overcome his premonitions of catastrophe and

L 79 found someone (usually Bob Haldeman or John Mitchell) to
80 bring the bad news to the overruled associates, Nixon would al-
81 most invariably take a big leap.

82 Afterward Nixon would retire to Camp David for a few days,
83 to recover from the ordeal but also to make it that much more
84 difficult for opponents of the decision to reach him. It was hard-
85 ly the decision-making process recommended in public admin-
86 istration textbooks, and it was emotionally exhausting for all the
87 participants—including, especially, Nixon. But Presidents could

88 do worse than to place on their desks the dictum Nixon would

L 89 invoke on such occasions: "You pay the same price for doing
90 something halfway as for doing it completely. So you might as
91 well do it completely."

92 THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ADVISER

93 The breakthroughs of the Nixon Administration were
94 due to the fact that both Nixon and I subordinated our reserva-
95 tions about each other to a close collaboration based on mutual
96 respect. The Quaker's son from Yorba Linda and the son of a sec-

L 97 ondary-school teacher in Bavaria complemented each other's
98 qualities in a special way. Nixon had the best personal knowledge
99 of leaders around the world of any American political figure I
100 have met. Foreign policy was his hobby, and he deepened his un-
101 derstanding of it by frequent travel. I had a better knowledge of

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102 history and of the conceptual side of geopolitics. Nixon operated by flashes of insight, to which he clung with remarkable persistence. My forte was translating general goals into long-range strategies—a task for which Nixon lacked the requisite patience.

106 Nixon had an instinct for the jugular.

107 With respect to several key decisions, even when I came to view their

109 necessity somewhat before he did,

110 once Nixon decided to act, he went

111 frequently beyond my recommendations. In 1970, after the

112 North Vietnamese forces stationed in Cambodia broke out of their base areas and threatened to take over the entire country, Nixon and I were studying ways to neutralize the North Vietnamese offensive in Cambodia and prevent the whole country from being turned into a vast base area aimed at South Vietnam.

117 I recommended an assault on Parrot's Beak, the communist base area closest to Saigon; after hesitating for nearly a month, Nixon opted for attacking every base area along the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. In 1973, when I tried to organize the Pentagon's civilian reserve air fleet for an airlift

122 to Israel, Nixon overcame Pentagon foot dragging by ordering a military airlift and using the giant C-5 planes. In each case, Nixon's decision was vindicated by events.

126 In the end, the cooperation between the President and the National Security Adviser worked not just because we complemented each other's strengths (and perhaps reinforced each other's weaknesses with respect to our sensitivity to criticism) and proclivity for sudden diplomatic coups), but above all because Nixon and I viewed international relations from a near-identical perspective. Both of us be-

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136 Iieved that we were in trouble in Vietnam
L 137 because our predecessors had launched
L 138 the United States into an enterprise in a
139 distant region for worthy causes but with-
L 140 out adequately assessing the national in-
L 141 terest and the likely cost. America's his-
142 toric idealism had to be leavened with an
L 143 assessment of national interest, and our
144 approach to international relations had to
L 145 move from episodic interventions to a
146 strategic design which took account of the requirement of equi-
147 librium. This was then—and probably still is at this writing—a mi-
L 148 nority view in a society which, never having experienced na-
149 tional tragedy, identifies the quest for peace with the missionary
150 vocation of spreading its own domestic values around the world.

151 In the end, this vision led both the President and me to be
152 harassed by what had been our normal constituencies. Liberals
153 accused me of abandoning them in quest of power; conservatives
154 thought Nixon had been seduced by the Establishment.

L 155 Nixon could have greatly eased his presidency by simply
156 abandoning our allies in Indochina and placing the onus on his
157 predecessors. He was surely given every incentive to do so when
158 the architects of the debacle, in a collective fit of amnesia, con-
159 stantly *harassed* him to go down the road of unconditional aban-

appraised

L 160 Believing such a course to be dishonorable and
161 against the national interest, Nixon played the hand he had been
162 dealt and achieved a settlement his critics had declared unat-
163 tainable—though it later unraveled, in large part because Con-
164 gress cut off economic and military aid. Even while engaged in
165 this searing process, Nixon managed to forge new policies to-
166 ward China, strategic arms limitations, the Middle East peace
167 process and access to beleaguered Berlin. In their essence, these
168 policies set the course for the remainder of the cold war.

169 NIXON THE PERSON

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170 In the mythology of his traducers—and of some film por-
171 traits—Richard Nixon was a man given to histrionics, to shout-
172 ing his prejudices at cowed subordinates, and to dominating his
173 environment by conveying his views with great, even overpow-
174 ering insistence—frequently under the influence of alcohol.
175 Nothing could be further from the real Richard Nixon—at least
176 the Richard Nixon with whom I dealt.

177 For example, the portrayals of Nixon drinking himself into
178 incoherence with a bottle ever at his side are simply absurd. In
179 my experience, Nixon never took any liquor during working
180 hours or in the Oval Office. Only his closest associates ever saw
181 him drink in any context. The trouble was that Nixon could not
182 hold even a small quantity of alcohol. Two glasses of wine were
183 quite enough to make him boisterous, just one more to grow bel-
184 licose or sentimental, occasionally with slurred speech. Alcohol
185 had a way of destroying the defenses he
186 had so carefully constructed to enable him
187 to succeed in a profession based on a con-
188 viviality unnatural to him. These episodes
189 occurred extremely rarely, always at night
190 and never in the context of major deci-
191 sions. The few of us who actually witnessed
192 such conduct never acted on what he
193 might have said; we felt we owed the Pres-
194 ident another chance to consider whatever
195 the issue was.

196 The Richard Nixon with whom I
197 worked on a daily basis for 5 1/2 years was
198 generally soft-spoken, withdrawn and
199 quite shy. When talking to me or to George
200 Shultz, he rarely, if ever, used the graphic
201 language that proved so startling in the
202 transcripts of his conversations with the
203 political side of the White House. Nixon

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P. U8

204 was capable of dominating a conversation
205 only by conducting a monologue, never in
206 a genuine dialogue. To passive admirers or
207 people who sought his views, Nixon could
L 208 appear overpowering and confident. But
L 209 Nixon abhorred face-to-face disagree-
210 ments of any kind. In his many conversations with me, he would
211 ask many perceptive questions and frequently make very astute
212 observations. He was quite capable of changing his mind upon
L 213 reflecting on a counterargument. But these were separate
214 events. I cannot remember any real dialogue in which we argued
215 clashing points of view.

216 The way differences between us were handled was that I
217 would register more or less passively some comment of Nixon's.
218 Some time later, I would revert to the same point without as-
219 cribing it to him and state my contrary view. After yet another
L 220 interval, Nixon would either reaffirm his original position or
221 change it without acknowledging the disagreement between us.

222 Since this was a method involving a considerable risk of mis-
223 understanding, I conducted most of the major policy discussions
224 with Nixon and almost every presentation of options by memo-
225 randum. Nixon felt no inhibitions about reading contrary views
226 and he felt free to state his response crisply and to issue unam-
227 biguous orders. Future historians removed from the passions of
228 the moment will find a study of the voluminous memoranda he
229 produced far more rewarding than the dialogues on the tapes.

230 The reason for Nixon's diffidence in face-to-face encounters
231 was the opposite of arrogance: it was a reflection of his abiding
L 232 fear of being rejected. Others more knowledgeable about
233 Nixon's early years may be better able to explain this handicap—
234 for such it was—in a man of such intelligence and possessed of

235 extraordinary powers of persuasion. Or the even greater anom-
236 aly that Nixon seemed more paralyzed by the prospect of rejec-
237 tion than by its actuality. Once the worst had, in fact, occurred

MAR-04-99 THU 18:20

R. UY

238 and the dreaded (and half-anticipated) rejection had finally taken place, Nixon displayed extraordinary fortitude, willpower and resilience.

241 To spare himself face-to-face controversies as much as possible, Nixon avoided office appointments wherever possible unless they were carefully orchestrated set-piece encounters.
243 Those of us in the inner circle faced no more daunting task than to persuade Nixon to meet some individual he did not already know or to see someone who might produce an unpleasant situation—that is, anyone whose opinion Nixon did not know in detail beforehand.

249 The reverse side of this fear of being rejected—its ballast, so to speak—was Nixon's romantic image of himself as a fearless manipulator, marching to his own drummer, unaffected either by turmoil around him or contrary advice on the part of his Cabinet and staff. Sometimes this was indeed the case, but most often Nixon was not as alone as he was wont to imply. His quest to receive sole credit for every achievement of his Administration and to have it perceived as having been carried out as an entirely solitary act explains why Nixon rarely, if ever, had an approving word to say about any of his associates. Subconsciously at least, Nixon sought to enhance his eminence by denigrating his associates, thereby magnifying his own solitude.

266 Another aspect of this cult of the "tough guy" was that, in conversations with his entourage, Nixon might generate a series of extravagant propositions which, in his heart, he never expected to be implemented. Some of the more bloodcur-

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P. 10

272 dling orders on the tapes released thus far
273 have their origin in this proclivity—as I be-
274 lieve to have been the origin of Watergate
275 itself. Nixon was convinced, and repeated on many occasions,
276 that during the 1960 presidential campaign, his office and air-
277 plane had been bugged by the Kennedy camp. And I suspect he
278 felt that his victory in 1972 would not be complete until he had
279 demonstrated his own ability to play by the same rules as he
280 imagined the admired and feared Kennedy clan to have done.

L 281 In foreign policy, these tough-guy orders were much less frequent; though, when they occurred, they could be unsettling (after a few months with Nixon, I was able to distinguish between what he intended to be carried out immediately and what he des- served to be given an opportunity to reconsider). For example, in August, 1969, a TWA plane with Americans aboard was hi- jacked and flown to Damascus airport. I reported this fact to Nixon, who was in San Clemente with his two friends, Charles ("Bebe") Rebozo and Robert Abplanalp. Obviously trying to im- press his pals, Nixon issued a curt-sounding order: "Bomb the airport of Damascus." I was certain the order would never sur- vive the night and called Secretary of Defense Mel Laird to tell him what had happened. The two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean were out of range, and bombing a country is not a simple matter of giving an order: targets have to be selected, a diplomatic scenario prepared and press guidance developed. So Laird and I decided to carry out the letter of the order by im- plementing the first steps and leaving the other measures for the next day. In the morning, at my regular briefing, I brought

L 304 The trouble arose with members of the Nixon entourage
305 who had less access and less experience with exuberant presi-

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306 dential statements. When the full extent of Watergate became
L 307 apparent in April 1973, I asked permanent elder statesman
308 Bryce Harlow how it could have happened: "Some damn fool got
309 into the Oval Office and did as he was told," Harlow remarked.
310 INSIDE THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE
311 Nixon set in motion a fierce competition among his advisers
312 while guarding the mystery of his own ultimate destinations.
313 He was determined that foreign policy be conducted from the
314 Oval Office, but he never said as much to
315 his Secretary of State. He would send me
L 316 off on secret back-channel negotiations
317 without informing Bill Rogers—and while
L 318 complaining to Haldeman about the
L 319 Kissinger-Rogers feud which he himself
320 never ceased stoking. The result was that
321 the State Department would often pursue
322 a course of action that was in direct conflict
323 with what I was doing on behalf of the
L 324 President and of which the department
L 325 was unaware. The practical consequence
326 was that the party being overruled blamed
327 the outcome on some malign influence—as
328 time went on, most often on me.
329 Nixon's reputation for "trickiness" resulted
330 from his need to balance his abhor-
L 331 rence for direct confrontation against his
332 even stronger inward drive to live up to his
333 foreign policy convictions. Preposterous as
334 this may sound, what passed for trickiness
335 was Nixon's way of being principled.
L 336 Spending much of what would normally
L 337 be considered personal time in his
L 338 hideaway in the Old Executive Office
339 Building or at Camp David, Nixon would sit in an easy chair, his

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340 feet on a hassock, the shades drawn, commenting on conceptu-
341 al rather than action memoranda and making notes on his yel-
342 low pads. To relieve the inner tension, he would call in one of his
343 advisers to go over his notes and/or to recount again and again
344 the battles of his earlier years, from the Alger Hiss case through
L 345 the California election of 1962. These grinding conversations
346 could go on for hours while the designated listener, frantic over
L 347 the work and telephone calls piling up back in the office,
348 yearned even for some catastrophe to divert the President and
349 permit one to get back to one's regular chores.

350 The incentives for Nixon's adviser soon became exactly the
351 opposite of the normal assistant's ambition, which is to log the
352 maximum amount of time with the President. Nixon's aides by
353 contrast tried to cut down their time with the President. In the
L 354 process, they revealed something less creditable about them-
355 selves: the degree to which the emotionally exhausting White
356 House atmosphere had robbed them of sensitivity for the obvi-
L 357 ous and all-encompassing loneliness of their President, who
358 needed them as much to fill the emptiness of his life as for prac-
359 tical advice.

360 Though Nixon did not particularly enjoy the mechanics of
361 governing and was generally leery of visitors, he did enjoy foreign
362 guests. But even in his area of expertise, he would not meet a vis-
363 itor without meticulous preparation to minimize the prospects of
L 364 some unwanted direct con-
365 frontation.
366 My staff would prepare a
L 367 detailed memorandum ex-
L 368 plaining the purpose of the
369 visit, the physical arrangements, what the foreign interlocutor
370 was likely to say, our recommendations for the best response,
371 the optimum outcome and the dangers to avoid. Nixon would
372 commit to memory either the entire memorandum or the part
373 he thought useful. Since Nixon did not like to admit that he

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374 needed any staff assistance in foreign policy, he never brought
375 the staff memorandum to the meeting. Instead, he would hold
376 forth as if extemporaneously, not without sometimes skating
closer than I sometimes considered wise to the very subjects
377
378 our memorandum had warned represented the areas of
379 thinnest ice. Nixon liked to live dangerously and to show off
380 his skill at doing so.

381 On one occasion, the arrangement went awry, and it was
382 the vaunted nsc staff system, not Nixon, that misfired. As part
383 of some U.N. celebration, the Prime Minister of Mauritius had
384 been invited to Washington.

385 Mauritius is a subtropical island

386 located in the Indian Ocean. It

L 387 enjoys plenty of rainfall and a
388 verdant agriculture; its relations

L 389 with the U.S. were excellent.

L 390 Somehow my staff gained the
391 impression that the visitor was

392 from Mauritania, an arid desert

393 state in West Africa which had

L 394 broken diplomatic relations
395 with us in 1967 as an act of soli-
396 darity with its Muslim brethren
397 in the aftermath of the Middle
398 East war.

L 399 This misconception pro-

L 400 duced an extraordinary dia-

L 401 logue. Coming straight to the
402 point, Nixon suggested that the

L 403 time had come to restore diplomatic relations between the
404 U.S. and Mauritius. This, he noted, would permit resumption
405 of American aid, and one of its benefits might be assistance in
406 dry farming, in which Nixon maintained the U. S. had special
407 capabilities. The stunned visitor, who had come on a goodwill

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L 408 mission from a country with, if anything, excessive rainfall,
L 409 tried to shift to a more promising subject. He inquired
410 whether Nixon was satisfied with the operation of the space
411 tracking station the U.S. maintained on his island. Now it was
412 Nixon's turn to be discomfited as he set about frantically writ-
413 ing on his yellow pad. Tearing off a page, he handed me a note
414 which read: "Why the hell do we have a space-tracking station
415 in a country with which we do not have diplomatic relations?"

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

416 After the so-called "smoking gun" tape was released on Aug.
417 5, Vice President Gerald Rudolph Ford, at a Cabinet meeting
418 the next day, took the unprecedented step of dissociating from
419 the President. He would no longer defend the President's po-
420 sition on Watergate, he said, and, indeed, he would not have
421 done so in the past had he known what was on the tape. Pub-
422 licly he would maintain silence on the matter on the ground
423 that he was a "party in interest"—pointedly reminding every-
424 one that he was next in line for Nixon's office. But Ford
425 stressed that even though he was dissociating from the Presi-
426 dent, he would continue to support Nixon's policies.
427

428 I did not speak with Ford at that meeting or, indeed, until
L 429 Nixon had decided to resign. It was now certain that Ford
430 would become President. In that turbulent week of Nixon's
431 resignation, I had no time to speculate on how it would affect
432 my own position. Before I could address the subject, Ford took
433 the decision out of my hands by telephoning me on the morn-
434 ing of Aug. 8, after Nixon had informed him of his decision to
435 resign. Ford asked me to come to see him and, in his unas-
436 suming way, left the time up to me. In the course of the same
437 conversation, he asked me to stay on and in a way that made
438 it sound as if I would be doing him a favor by agreeing.

439 Dramatic events are not always ushered in by dramatic di-
440 analogue. As I recall this conversation from the perspective of two
441 decades, I am struck by its matter-of-fact tone and concerns.

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[YD]

442 At the time, I was affected by the understated way in which
443 Ford conveyed Nixon's decision which would make him Presi-
dent, without rhetorical flourishes and without mentioning
L 444 the emotional impact on himself. And I was moved by his tact
445 in so swiftly putting an end to any personal uncertainty I might
446 be experiencing.
447

448 The atmosphere of the con-
L 449 conversation carried over into our
450 meeting that afternoon. I sat on
L 451 a sofa near the balcony over-
452 looking the White House Lawn,
453 Ford on an easy chair with his
454 back to the window. He seemed
455 casual and calm, neither grand-
L 456 iloquent nor pretentiously
457 humble. He opened the conver-
458 sation by saying he intended to
L 459 announce even before he had
taken the Oath of Office—in
L 460 fact, that very evening—that I
L 461 would be staying. Ford added
L 462 that he had felt comfortable
L 463 with me ever since our first
464 meeting at Harvard some years
465 before. Artlessly, he added that
466 he felt confident we would "get along." I replied that it was my
467 job to get along with him, not the other way around.
468

469 Perhaps the most lasting impression of that first conversa-
470 tion was its aftermath. For the first time since I came to the
471 White House, I left the presidential presence without after-
472 thoughts, confident that there was no more to the conversation
473 than what I had heard. Starting with that first meeting, I nev-
474 er encountered a hidden agenda. He was sufficiently self-as-
475 sured to disagree openly, and he did not engage in elaborate

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476 | maneuvers about who should receive credit. Having been pro-
477 | pelled so unexpectedly into an office he revered but never
478 | thought he would hold, he felt no need to manipulate his en-
479 | vironment. Ford's inner peace was precisely what the nation
480 | needed for healing its divisions.

481 | Gerald Ford was an uncomplicated man tapped by destiny
482 | for some of the most complicated tasks in the nation's history.
483 | The first nonelected President, he was called to heal the na-
484 | tion's wounds after a decade in which the Vietnam War and
485 | Watergate had produced the most severe divisions since the
486 | Civil War. As different as possible from the driven personali-
487 | ties who typically propel themselves into the highest office,
488 | Gerald Ford restored calm and confidence to a nation surfeit-
489 | ed with upheavals, overcame a series of international crises
490 | and ushered in a period of renewal for American society.

491 | THE NEW PRESIDENT

L 492 | The morning of Aug. 9, 1974,

493 | witnessed one of the most

494 | dramatic moments in American his-

495 | tory. At 9:30 in the East Room of the

496 | White House, President Nixon bade

497 | farewell to his staff. At 12:03 that same day, in the same room,

498 | Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the 38th President of the Unit-

499 | ed States. The seats had been rearranged so that when Ford

500 | spoke, he was facing in a different direction than Nixon had,

501 | symbolizing a new beginning.

502 | Gerald Ford performed his task of overcoming America's

503 | divisions and redeeming its faith so undramatically and with

504 | such absence of histrionics that his achievements have so far

505 | been taken too much for granted. To a great extent, this ne-

506 | glect was because Ford bore so little resemblance to the pro-

507 | tototype of the political leader of the Television Age. The media

508 | and many of his colleagues were at a loss when it came to fit-

509 | ting him into the familiar stereotypes. The modern presiden-

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544 the political class has never been lower.
545 Gerald Ford was about as different as possible from what
L 546 has become the familiar political persona. Having risen
L 547 through the ranks of his party in the House of Representa-
L 548 tives—a career dependent on day-to-day practical relations
549 with his peers—Ford was immune to the modern politician's
550 chameleon-like search for ever-new identities and to the emo-
551 tional roller coaster this search exacts. Far too unassuming to
552 think of himself as heroic, Ford would have been embarrassed
553 had anyone suggested that Providence had imposed on him
554 just such a role.
L 555 Cartoonists had great fun with Ford's occasionally frac-
556 tured syntax. They forgot—if they were ever aware—that being
557 articulate is not the same as having analytical skill, which Ford
558 had in abundance. For a national leader, courage and devotion
559 to principle are, in any case, the more important qualities.
560 Ford was well aware of his relative lack of suavity and, un-
561 like the modern political leader, was not embarrassed to admit
562 it. "I am not one of those oratorical geniuses," he said to me on
563 the telephone on Jan. 15, 1975. "There is no point in my trying
564 to be one. I just have to be myself." A week later, he returned
565 to the subject after a press conference in which he thought he
566 could have done better (a view I did not share). Unlike most
567 political leaders of the Television Age, Ford blamed himself,
568 not the media:
569 "I came away feeling myself it could have been a lot bet-
570 ter ... I get mad as hell, but I don't show it, when I don't do as
571 well as I think I should ... If you don't strive for the best, you
572 never make it."
573 Ford was always himself, and he always did his best; in the
574 process, he saved the cohesion and dignity of his country.
575 FORD AND THE NATIONAL
576 INTEREST
L 577 Ford reacted to the seem-

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L 578 ingly inexhaustible volume
L 579 of challenges without either
L 580 self-pity or doubt about the
581 good faith of his political adver-
582 saries. Ford viewed his role not
583 unlike that of a doctor minister-
584 ing to a patient just recovering
L 585 from a debilitating illness. He
L 586 therefore resisted demands for
587 heroic posturing and prescribed
588 a regimen of building and con-
L 589 serving strength. Ford thought
590 it essential to prove to the Amer-
591 ican people that crisis and con-
592 frontation were a last resort, not
593 an everyday means of conduct-
594 ing foreign policy.

595 Dedicated to the proposition that his presidency should be
596 a time of healing (as he would entitle his memoirs), Ford dis-
597 played personal goodwill to friend and foe alike. At times, I
598 thought his apparent equanimity excessive, especially when
599 his reluctance to impose penalties made resistance to presi-
L 600 dential authority appear free of risk. In retrospect, I have
L 601 come to appreciate Ford's self-restraint, for it gradually
602 drained the American political system of its accumulated poi-
603 son and created the conditions for the restoration of faith in
604 American institutions. In the end, societies thrive not on the
605 victories of factions but on their reconciliations.

L 606 This unflinching sense of the national interest enabled
607 Ford in his 29 months in office to navigate his country through
608 a series of crises which could have filled a two-term presiden-
609 cy. Other Presidents were to receive the credit for winning the
610 cold war. But I am certain the time will come when it is rec-
611 ognized that the cold war could not have been won had not

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612 Gerald Ford, at a tragic point of America's history, been there
613 to keep us from losing it.

614 THE PARDON

615 No decision President Ford made was more important

616 than Nixon's pardon. Nixon seemed nearly certain to be in-

L 617 dicted by the special prosecutor—a painful prospect for the

618 U.S. and for the fallen President. Such a spectacle would have

L 619 been gravely damaging to America's standing in the world.

L 620 And those of us who knew

L 621 Nixon felt certain that he

L 622 would never get through a

L 623 trial or even an indictment

L 624 without grave physical and

L 625 psychological repercussions. Yet given the risks a pardon

626 posed for Ford, it was a tricky subject to initiate with the new

627 President, particularly for me as one of Nixon's close associ-

628 ates. I finally overcame my hesitations when, in the second

629 week of Ford's presidency, Bryce Harlow called on me to ex-

630 press his own deep concern.

631 Harlow argued that putting Nixon on trial would further

632 divide our country and probably compound the emotional dis-

L 633 integration of a President who, with all his faults, had ren-

634 dered distinguished service for the country. The conversation

L 635 with Harlow gave me the pretext to raise the subject with

636 Ford. I passed on Harlow's views and endorsed them. When

637 Ford asked a few questions about the psychological impact of

638 a trial on Nixon, I argued that equally important was the im-

639 pact on the world, where the former President was highly re-

L 640 spected. Ford mentioned that

641 some of his advisers thought he

642 should wait until an indictment

L 643 was actually handed down. I

L 644 replied that I could not judge

645 the domestic situation, but delay

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L 646 would surely complicate both

L 647 the international impact and

648 Nixon's personal despair.

649 Ford made no further comment.

650 On the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 7, 1974, when he

L 651 telephoned to inform me of his

652 decision to pardon Nixon the

L 654 following morning. The time

655 had come, Ford said, to lay the

L 656 past to rest and, in a spirit of

657 Christian forgiveness, to permit

658 Nixon to live out the remainder

L 659 of his days in dignity. Ford did not invite my comments.

660 Though the decision probably cost him his own election to the

661 presidency, I am convinced that it was a courageous and human

662 act which was necessary if the nation was ever to be

663 erated from the traumas of the previous decade.

664 NIXON IN EXILE

665 After resigning from the presidency, Nixon lived for

666 another two decades. The first few years in exile were excrucia

667 ciatingly difficult for him. Only his closest friends telephoned

668 him, and he disappeared from the public debate except in the

669 sensational stories regarding his alleged abuses of power. Dur

670 ing this period, he and I often spoke on the telephone, and I

671 visited him once in San Clemente. While I was still in office,

672 when major events occurred, I would brief him; when I was

673 under attack—which happened more and more frequently—he

674 would call with supporting and insightful comments.

L 675 In February 1980, Nixon moved to New York and
676 launched a spectacular career of reinventing himself as elder

677 statesman. I hosted a small dinner to welcome him. For the

678 first time, he sought to engage the Establishment. He would

L 679 invite key representatives of the media and industry for an

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EV

680 evening of discussion that usually turned into a briefing; he
L 681 would send thoughtful little notes to authors of articles or
L 682 books that caught his attention. Patiently and tenaciously,
L 683 Nixon earned himself a position as a senior commentator

684 whom, in the end, the incumbent Presidents found it to their
685 benefit to consult.

686 Nixon began to deliver public speeches. I attended a few
687 of them and marveled at how he used the occasion to over-
688 overwhelm his audience. Pushing the lectern ostentatiously out of
689 the way, he would deliver an hour-long speech forcefully and
690 extemporaneously. Only the few Nixon cognoscenti under-
691 stood just how much the sheer effort of it had cost him. They
692 knew that, if it was an important group, he would have writ-
693 ten out the speech beforehand or at least made a full outline
694 and probably rehearsed parts of it before a mirror. They were
695 participating in an extraordinary feat of memory and self-dis-
696 discipline, not a spontaneous effusion.

697 I saw Nixon for the last time in January 1994 when I was
L 698 one of the speakers in Yorba Linda at the launching of the
699 Nixon Center, a new foreign policy think tank now located in
L 700 Washington. Former key Cabinet members spoke briefly.
701 Nixon concluded the event with a graceful speech to a large
702 and friendly audience. At the lunch following, I toasted Nixon
703 on behalf of his former Cabinet.

704 A few months later, in April
705 1994, Richard Nixon died.

L 706 We had lived together
707 through periods of hope and of

L 708 despair, through fleeting mo-
709 ments of triumph and long do-
710 mestic travails. Nixon could be
711 exasperating, maddening, even
712 treacherous. But the overriding
713 feeling evoked by his death was

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L 714 one of grief. Paradoxical as it sounds, Nixon's endless machinations were apt to be forgiven
715
716
L 717 especially by those closest to him and therefore most likely to
718
L 719 be damaged by his wiles because we were also familiar with the sweep of his aspiration and aware that his most tormenting battles were ultimately with himself.
720
721
722
723

724 Assaulted on all sides and torn within himself, Nixon had
725 held to a concept of national honor, determined to prove that
726 the greatest free nation had no right to abdicate. With a ro-
727 mantic and even lofty notion of the hero-statesman, he sought
728 to point a way to overcome his nation's oscillation between
729 overcommitment and withdrawal. Though in the end he fell
730 short of fulfilling his highest aspirations, Nixon's goals were
731 worthy even when the execution was occasionally flawed.

732 This is why his funeral on April 27, 1994, became a national
733 occasion of mourning attended by all surviving Presidents, in-
734 including Bill Clinton. And my eulogy came from the heart:

735 "When I learned the final news, by then so expected yet so
736 hard to accept, I felt a deep loss and a profound void. In the
737 words of Shakespeare: 'He was a man, take him for all in all, I
738 shall not look upon his like again.' ...

739 "... So let us now say goodbye to our gallant friend. He
740 stood on pinnacles that dissolved into precipices. He achieved
741 greatly and suffered deeply. But he never gave up. In his soli-
742 tude, he envisaged a new international order that would re-
743 duce lingering enmities, strengthen historic friendships and
744 give new hope to mankind—a vision where dreams and possi-
745 bilities conjoined.

746 "Richard Nixon ended a war, and he advanced the vision
747 of peace of his Quaker youth. He was devoted to his family, he

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It is difficult to write about Richard Nixon, who combine brilliance, patriotism and courage with self-destructive flaws as in a Greek tragedy. The hatred he evoked in his political opponents was extraordinary even by the turbulent standards of American democracy. I served as his principal adviser on foreign policy for 51/2 years and often saw him several times a day. Yet to some extent I still remain mystified by the personality of the perhaps most complex President of the 20th century.

It would take a poet of Shakespearean dimension to do justice to the extraordinary, maddening, visionary and debilitating personality of Richard Nixon—at once thoughtful and quirky, compassionate and insensitive; sometimes fiercely loyal, at other times leaving old associates in his wake as casualties. Yet ultimately Nixon's obvious and unending struggle with himself proved so unsettling, even threatening, because deep down one

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L 34 could never be certain that what one found so disturbing in 35 Nixon might not also be a reflection of some suppressed flaw 36 within oneself.

37 Inevitably our personal relationship exhibited the ambiva- 38 lences Nixon inspired in his entire entourage. Nixon, who treat- 39 ed acquaintances with a wary aloofness and even close associ- 40 ates as foils, provided few emotional footholds. His oblique, in- 41 direct method of government and his tendency to foment con- 42 flicts among his subordinates could be nerve-racking. Occasion- 43 ally I would relieve the tension with exasperated comments. For 44 his part, Nixon resented the publicity I attracted, starting with 45 the secret trip to China on which he sent me in 1971. Presidents 46 do not take kindly to assistants who compete with them for pub- 47 lic attention—especially when some of Nixon's closest advisers 48 were arguing that I was upstaging him deliberately. While the 49 word "deliberately" was inaccurate, it is certainly true that I did 50 not exactly resist the media's favors.

51 Nevertheless, and despite some mutual misgivings, Nixon 52 and I worked extremely well together. Face-to-face, he always 53 treated me with conspicuous courtesy. Though we were not 54 emotionally close, I was touched by his vulnerability and often 55 moved by his inner torments, as in the period just prior to his 56 resignation (when I might well have been as close to Nixon as 57 anyone, except his immediate family, ever got).

L 58 Nixon's single most important quality was the ability to 59 make bold decisions. That attribute was all the more remarkable 60 because he was not by nature daring and by no means a happy 61 warrior. On the contrary, he made his major decisions with a joy- 62 lessness verging on despair, as if he was doomed by some ma- 63 lign destiny to have so much anguish brought to naught despite 64 meticulous reflection and notepads crammed with options.

65 One of the paradoxes of the Nixon presidency is that the ev- 66 idence on the tapes pictures him as impulsive, even reckless. But 67 the Nixon with whom I worked on foreign policy reached his ma-

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L 68. for decisions only after almost maddening deliberation. He 69 might act intuitively, but he did not do so impulsively. Every significant foreign policy decision was preceded by weeks of solitary reflection and apparent indecision. Sequestered in his hideaway in the Old Executive Office Building with the curtains drawn, Nixon would work out on a pad of yellow sheets permutations of the options I generally had submitted to him. And since, in any major decision, the pros and cons are closely balanced and unanimity among advisers is rare, he would muse endlessly about how to overrule fractious subordinates. But once he had overcome his premonitions of catastrophe and found someone (usually Bob Haldeman or John Mitchell) to bring the bad news to the overruled associates, Nixon would almost invariably take a big leap.

L 76
L 77
L 78
L 79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
Afterward Nixon would retire to Camp David for a few days, to recover from the ordeal but also to make it that much more difficult for opponents of the decision to reach him. It was hardly the decision-making process recommended in public administration textbooks, and it was emotionally exhausting for all the participants—including, especially, Nixon. But Presidents could

do worse than to place on their desks the dictum Nixon would invoke on such occasions: “You pay the same price for doing something halfway as for doing it completely. So you might as well do it completely.”

THE PRESIDENT AND HIS ADVISER

92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
The breakthroughs of the Nixon Administration were due to the fact that both Nixon and I subordinated our reservations about each other to a close collaboration based on mutual respect. The Quaker's son from Yorba Linda and the son of a secondary-school teacher in Bavaria complemented each other's qualities in a special way. Nixon had the best personal knowledge of leaders around the world of any American political figure I have met. Foreign policy was his hobby, and he deepened his understanding of it by frequent travel. I had a better knowledge of

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102. history and of the conceptual side of geopolitics. Nixon operated by flashes of insight, to which he clung with remarkable persistence. My forte was translating general goals into long-range strategies—a task for which Nixon lacked the requisite patience.

106. Nixon had an instinct for the jugular. With respect to several key decisions, even when I came to view their

109. necessity somewhat before he did, 110. once Nixon decided to act, he went

111. frequently beyond my recommendations. In 1970, after the 112. North Vietnamese forces stationed in Cambodia broke out of their base areas and threatened to take over the entire country, 113. Nixon and I were studying ways to neutralize the North Vietnamese offensive in Cambodia and prevent the whole country 114. from being turned into a vast base area aimed at South Vietnam.

117. I recommended an assault on Parrot's Beak, the communist 118. base area closest to Saigon; after hesitating for nearly a month, 119. Nixon opted for attacking every base area along the Vietnamese-120. Cambodian border. In 1973, when I tried to organize the Pentagon's civilian reserve air fleet for an airlift

122. to Israel, Nixon overcame Pentagon foot 123. dragging by ordering a military airlift and 124. using the giant C-5 planes. In each case, 125. Nixon's decision was vindicated by events.

126. In the end, the cooperation between

127. the President and the National Security 128. Adviser worked not just because we complemented each other's strengths (and per-

130.haps reinforced each other's weaknesses 131. with respect to our sensitivity to criticism 132. and proclivity for sudden diplomatic 133. coups), but above all because Nixon and I 134. viewed international relations from a near- 135. ly identical perspective. Both of us be-

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L 155 Nixon could have greatly eased his presidency by simply
156 abandoning our allies in Indochina and placing the onus on his
157 predecessors. He was surely given every incentive to do so when
158 the architects of the debacle, in a collective fit of amnesia, con-
159 stantly harassed him to go down the road of unconditional aban-
L 160 donment. Believing such a course to be dishonorable and
161 against the national interest, Nixon played the hand he had been
162 dealt and achieved a settlement his critics had declared unat-
163 tainable—though it later unraveled, in large part because Con-
164 gress cut off economic and military aid. Even while engaged in
165 this searing process, Nixon managed to forge new policies to-
166 ward China, strategic arms limitations, the Middle East peace
167 process and access to beleaguered Berlin. In their essence, these
168 policies set the course for the remainder of the cold war.

169 NIXON THE PERSON

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170. In the mythology of his traducers—and of some film por-
171. traits—Richard Nixon was a man given to histrionics, to shout-
172. ing his prejudices at cowed subordinates, and to dominating his
173. environment by conveying his views with great, even overpow-
L 174. ering insistence—frequently under the influence of alcohol.
175. Nothing could be further from the real Richard Nixon—at least
176. the Richard Nixon with whom I dealt.

177. For example, the portrayals of Nixon drinking himself into
178. incoherence with a bottle ever at his side are simply absurd. In
L 179. my experience, Nixon never took any liquor during working
180. hours or in the Oval Office. Only his closest associates ever saw
181. him drink in any context. The trouble was that Nixon could not
182. hold even a small quantity of alcohol. Two glasses of wine were
183. quite enough to make him boisterous, just one more to grow bel-
184. licose or sentimental, occasionally with slurred speech. Alcohol
L 185. had a way of destroying the defenses he
186. had so carefully constructed to enable him
187. to succeed in a profession based on a con-
188. viviality unnatural to him. These episodes
189. occurred extremely rarely, always at night
L 190. and never in the context of major deci-
191. sions. The few of us who actually witnessed
L 192. such conduct never acted on what he
193. might have said; we felt we owed the Pres-
194. ident another chance to consider whatever
195. the issue was.

L 196. The Richard Nixon with whom I
L 197. worked on a daily basis for 5 1/2 years was
L 198. generally soft-spoken, withdrawn and
199. quite shy. When talking to me or to George
200. Shultz, he rarely, if ever, used the graphic
L 201. language that proved so startling in the
L 202. transcripts of his conversations with the
L 203. political side of the White House. Nixon

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204 was capable of dominating a conversation
205 only by conducting a monologue, never in
206 a genuine dialogue. To passive admirers or
207 people who sought his views, Nixon could
L 208 appear overpowering and confident. But
L 209 Nixon abhorred face-to-face disagree-
210 ments of any kind. In his many conversations with me, he would
211 ask many perceptive questions and frequently make very astute
212 observations. He was quite capable of changing his mind upon
L 213 reflecting on a counterargument. But these were separate
214 events. I cannot remember any real dialogue in which we argued
215 clashing points of view.
216 The way differences between us were handled was that I
217 would register more or less passively some comment of Nixon's.
218 Some time later, I would revert to the same point without as-
219 cribbing it to him and state my contrary view. After yet another
L 220 interval, Nixon would either reaffirm his original position or
221 change it without acknowledging the disagreement between us.
222 Since this was a method involving a considerable risk of mis-
223 understanding, I conducted most of the major policy discussions
224 with Nixon and almost every presentation of options by memo-
225 randum. Nixon felt no inhibitions about reading contrary views
226 and he felt free to state his response crisply and to issue unam-
227 biguous orders. Future historians removed from the passions of
228 the moment will find a study of the voluminous memoranda he
229 produced far more rewarding than the dialogues on the tapes.
230 The reason for Nixon's diffidence in face-to-face encounters
231 was the opposite of arrogance: it was a reflection of his abiding
L 232 fear of being rejected. Others more knowledgeable about
233 Nixon's early years may be better able to explain this handicap—
234 for such it was—in a man of such intelligence and possessed of
235 extraordinary powers of persuasion. Or the even greater anom-
236 ally that Nixon seemed more paralyzed by the prospect of rejec-
237 tion than by its actuality. Once the worst had, in fact, occurred

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238. and the dreaded (and half-anticipated) rejection had finally taken place, Nixon displayed extraordinary fortitude, willpower and resilience.

241. To spare himself face-to-face controversies as much as possible, Nixon avoided office appointments wherever possible unless they were carefully orchestrated set-piece encounters.
243. Those of us in the inner circle faced no more daunting task than to persuade Nixon to meet some individual he did not already know or to see someone who might produce an unpleasant situation—that is, anyone whose opinion Nixon did not know in detail beforehand.

249. The reverse side of this fear of being rejected—its ballast, so to speak—was Nixon's romantic image of himself as a fearless manipulator, marching to his own drummer, unaffected either by turmoil around him or contrary advice on the part of his Cabinet and staff. Sometimes this was indeed the case, but most often Nixon was not as alone as he was wont to imply. His quest to receive sole credit for every achievement of his Administration and to have it perceived as having been carried out as an entirely solitary act explains why Nixon rarely, if ever, had an approving word to say about any of his associates. Subconsciously at least, Nixon sought to enhance his eminence by denigrating his associates, thereby magnifying his own solitude.

266. Another aspect of this cult of the "tough guy" was that, in conversations with his entourage, Nixon might generate a series of extravagant propositions which, in his heart, he never expected to be implemented. Some of the more bloodcurled

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272. dling orders on the tapes released thus far
273. have their origin in this proclivity—as I be-
274. lieve to have been the origin of Watergate
275. itself. Nixon was convinced, and repeated on many occasions,
276. that during the 1960 presidential campaign, his office and air-
277. plane had been bugged by the Kennedy camp. And I suspect he
278. felt that his victory in 1972 would not be complete until he had
demonstrated his own ability to play by the same rules as he
imagined the admired and feared Kennedy clan to have done.

281. In foreign policy, these tough-guy orders were much less
frequent; though, when they occurred, they could be unsettling
282. (after a few months with Nixon, I was able to distinguish between
283. what he intended to be carried out immediately and what he de-
284. served to be given an opportunity to reconsider). For example,
285. in August, 1969, a TWA plane with Americans aboard was hi-
jacked and flown to Damascus airport. I reported this fact to
287. Nixon, who was in San Clemente with his two friends, Charles
288. (“Bebe”) Rebozo and Robert Abplanalp. Obviously trying to im-
289. press his pals, Nixon issued a curt-sounding order: “Bomb the
290. airport of Damascus.” I was certain the order would never sur-
vive the night and called Secretary of Defense Mel Laird to tell
291.
292. him what had happened. The two aircraft carriers in the
293. Mediterranean were out of range, and bombing a country is not
294. a simple matter of giving an order: targets have to be selected, a
295. diplomatic scenario prepared and press guidance developed. So
296. Laird and I decided to carry out the letter of the order by im-
297. plementing the first steps and leaving the other measures for the
298. next day. In the morning, at my regular briefing, I brought

300. Nixon up to date, including the fact that the Sixth Fleet carriers
301. were now near Cyprus. “Did anything else happen?” Nixon in-
nocently asked. When I replied in the negative, the President—
302. without moving a facial muscle—said, “Good.”

304. The trouble arose with members of the Nixon entourage
305. who had less access and less experience with exuberant presi-

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306 dential statements. When the full extent of Watergate became
L 307 apparent in April 1973, I asked permanent elder statesman
308 Bryce Harlow how it could have happened: "Some damn fool got
309 into the Oval Office and did as he was told," Harlow remarked.
310 INSIDE THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE
311 Nixon set in motion a fierce competition among his advis-
312 ers while guarding the mystery of his own ultimate destinations.
313 He was determined that foreign policy be conducted from the
314 Oval Office, but he never said as much to
315 his Secretary of State. He would send me
L 316 off on secret back-channel negotiations
317 without informing Bill Rogers—and while
L 318 complaining to Haldeman about the
L 319 Kissinger-Rogers feud which he himself
320 never ceased stoking. The result was that
321 the State Department would often pursue
322 a course of action that was in direct conflict
323 with what I was doing on behalf of the
L 324 President and of which the department
L 325 was unaware. The practical consequence
326 was that the party being overruled blamed
327 the outcome on some malign influence—as
328 time went on, most often on me.
329 Nixon's reputation for "trickiness" re-
330 sulted from his need to balance his abhor-
L 331 rence for direct confrontation against his
332 even stronger inward drive to live up to his
333 foreign policy convictions. Preposterous as
334 this may sound, what passed for trickiness
335 was Nixon's way of being principled.
L 336 Spending much of what would nor-
L 337 mally be considered personal time in his
L 338 hideaway in the Old Executive Office
339 Building or at Camp David, Nixon would sit in an easy chair, his

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[L]

374. needed any staff assistance in foreign policy, he never brought
375. the staff memorandum to the meeting. Instead, he would hold
376. forth as if extemporaneously, not without sometimes skating
377. closer than I sometimes considered wise to the very subjects
L 378. our memorandum had warned represented the areas of
379. thinnest ice. Nixon liked to live dangerously and to show off
380. his skill at doing so.
381. On one occasion, the arrangement went awry, and it was
382. the vaunted nsc staff system, not Nixon, that misfired. As part
383. of some U.N. celebration, the Prime Minister of Mauritius had
L 384. been invited to Washington.
385. Mauritius is a subtropical island
386. located in the Indian Ocean. It
L 387. enjoys plenty of rainfall and a
388. verdant agriculture; its relations
L 389. with the U.S. were excellent.
L 390. Somehow my staff gained the
391. impression that the visitor was
392. from Mauritania, an arid desert
393. state in West Africa which had
L 394. broken diplomatic relations
395. with us in 1967 as an act of soli-
396. darity with its Muslim brethren
397. in the aftermath of the Middle
398. East war.
L 399. This misconception pro-
L 400. duced an extraordinary dia-
L 401. logue. Coming straight to the
402. point, Nixon suggested that the
L 403. time had come to restore diplomatic relations between the
404. U.S. and Mauritius. This, he noted, would permit resumption
405. of American aid, and one of its benefits might be assistance in
406. dry farming, in which Nixon maintained the U. S. had special
407. capabilities. The stunned visitor, who had come on a goodwill

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THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

416 After the so-called "smoking gun" tape was released on Aug.
417 5, Vice President Gerald Rudolph Ford, at a Cabinet meeting
418 the next day, took the unprecedented step of dissociating from
419 the President. He would no longer defend the President's po-
420 sition on Watergate, he said, and, indeed, he would not have
421 done so in the past had he known what was on the tape. Pub-
422 licly he would maintain silence on the matter on the ground
423 that he was a "party in interest"—pointedly reminding every-
424 one that he was next in line for Nixon's office. But Ford
L 425 stressed that even though he was dissociating from the Presi-
426 dent, he would continue to support Nixon's policies.
427

439 Dramatic events are not always ushered in by dramatic di-
440 alogue. As I recall this conversation from the perspective of two
441 decades, I am struck by its matter-of-fact tone and concerns.

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[lc]

442 At the time, I was affected by the understated way in which
443 Ford conveyed Nixon's decision which would make him Presi-
dent, without rhetorical flourishes and without mentioning
444
445 the emotional impact on himself. And I was moved by his tact
446 in so swiftly putting an end to any personal uncertainty I might
447 be experiencing.

L 459 announce even before he had
L 460 taken the Oath of Office—in

L 461 fact, that very evening—that I
L 462 would be staying. Ford added
L 463 that he had felt comfortable

L 464 with me ever since our first
465 meeting at Harvard some years
466 before. Artlessly, he added that

467 he felt confident we would "get along." I replied that it was my
468 job to get along with him, not the other way around.

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[LC]

491 | THE NEW PRESIDENT

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[cc]

510 tial candidate ends up making a kind of Faustian bargain: a
511 full-scale national primary cam-
L 512 campaign costs a minimum of $15
513 million for television and print
L 514 media advertising. But the
L 515 money must be raised within
516 strict limits defined by law. To
L 517 remain credible, a candidate
518 feels obliged to devote most of
519 his energies for the better part of
L 520 three years to accumulating a
521 war chest from fragmented and
522 disparate constituencies. In that
L 523 process, his principal incen-
L 524 tive—approaching an impera-
525 tive—is to try to be all things to
526 all people. What starts as a tac-
527 tic, easily turns over the course
528 of the campaign into a defining
L 529 characteristic. National recog-
530 nition is achieved at the price of
531 nearly compulsive personal insecurity.
532 A curious blend of brittleness and flamboyance thus de-
533 fines the modern political persona: brittleness verging on ob-
L 534 sequiousness in the quest for mass approval, flamboyance
535 turning into panic when the public's mood shifts. Far more
536 concerned with what to say than with what to think, the mod-
L 537 ern political leader too frequently fails to fulfill the role for
L 538 which he is needed most: to provide the emotional ballast
L 539 when experience is being challenged by ever-accelerating
540 change. The inability to fulfill these emotional needs lies be-
541 hind the curious paradox of contemporary democracy: never
542 have political leaders been more abject in trying to determine
543 the public's preferences, yet, in most democracies, respect for

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544. the political class has never been lower.

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[cc]

MAR-04-99 THU 18:25

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614 THE PARDON

639 impact on the world, where the former President was highly re-

L 640 respected. Ford mentioned that

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L 646. would surely complicate both

649 Ford made no further com-

650 ment. On the afternoon of Sat-

L 651 urday, Sept. 7, 1974, when he
652 telephoned to inform me of his

L 653 decision to pardon Nixon the

661 presidency, I am convinced that it was a courageous and hu-

662 mane act which was necessary if the nation was ever to be lib-

664 NIXON IN EXILE

666 another two decades. The first few years in exile were excru-

669 sensational stories regarding his alleged abuses of power. Dur-

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L 714 one of grief. Paradoxical as it
715 sounds, Nixon's endless machi-
716 nations were apt to be forgiven
L 717 especially by those closest to
718 him and therefore most likely to
L 719 be damaged by his wiles be-
720 cause we were also familiar with
721 the sweep of his aspiration and
722 aware that his most tormenting
723 battles were ultimately with himself.

732 This is why his funeral on April 27, 1994, became a national
733 occasion of mourning attended by all surviving Presidents, in-
734 cluding Bill Clinton. And my eulogy came from the heart:

John: Please disregard the insert that is to substitute for lines 226-234 on page 7 that I faxed you earlier today and use this one instead.

This one is better because it actually is taken from the book -- and Dr. Kissinger feels strongly about using this one.

Nixon could have greatly eased his presidency by simply abandoning our allies in Indochina and placing the onus on his predecessors. He was surely given every incentive to do so when the architects of the debacle, in a collective fit of amnesia, constantly harassed him to go down the road of unconditional abandonment. Believing such a course to be dishonorable and against the national interest, Nixon played the hand he had been dealt and achieved a settlement his critics had declared as unattainable -- though it later unraveled in large part because Congress cut off economic and military aid. Even while engaged in this searing process, Nixon managed to forge new policies toward China, strategic arms limitations, the Middle East peace process and access to beleaguered Berlin. In their essence, these policies set the course for the remainder of the Cold War.

KISSINGER ASSOCIATES

350 PARK AVENUE
NEW YORK, NY 10022
(212) 759-7919

FACSIMILE: (212) 759-0042

NO. OF PAGES: 7 (including cover) DATE: February 27

RECIPIENT NAME: John Stacks
FAX NO: 522-0262

SENDER NAME: Suzanne S. McFarlane
Executive Assistant

HAK has made a few minor changes to the last draft. I think it
will all be clear but do call if you have any question. The
substitution from the earlier draft does not seem to be from
the one I have, but no matter -- it is clear enough.

Dr. Kissinger wanted me to send this to you with the following
note from him:

"Dear Mr. Stacks:

You have done a great job. I have made only a few
changes:

- page 5 is self-explanatory

- on page 6 I suggest using the airlift example replacing one of the Vietnam examples. Otherwise it looks as if all courageous decisions were about Vietnam.

- on page 7 I have dropped one paragraph and replaced it with a brief summary of Nixon's accomplishments to give some substantive content to the personal descriptions.

- on page 8 I have slightly softened the language. It is too stark in a short piece.

Thank you for including this material.

HK"

I don't know if you are in the office on Saturday, but I will
be here through the afternoon should you need anything.

FEB-26-99 FRI 19:25

R. 00

137 sions: ``You pay the same price for doing something halfway as for doing it completely. So you might as well do it completely.'' 141 The President and His Adviser L 138 L 139 L 140 141 ▲ The breakthroughs of the Nixon Administration were due to the fact that both Nixon and I subordinated our reservations L 145 about each other to a close collaboration 146 based on mutual respect. The Quaker's son L 147 from Yorba Linda and the son of a secondary school teacher in Bavaria complemented each other's qualities in a special L 150 way. Nixon had the best personal knowledge of contemporary leaders around the world of any American political figure I L 152 have met. Foreign policy was his hobby, 153 and he deepened his understanding of it by frequent travel. I had a better knowledge of L 156 history and of the conceptual side of L 157 geopolitics. Nixon operated by flashes of insight to which he clung with remarkable 158 persistence. My forte was to translate general goals into long-range strategies--a task L 160 for which Nixon lacked the requisite patience. 161 162 163 Nixon had an instinct for the jugular. L 164 With respect to several key decisions, L 165 ~~though~~ I came to view their necessity 166 somewhat before he did, once Nixon decided to act, he went frequently beyond my 167 recommendations. In 1970, after the North 168 Vietnamese forces stationed in Cambodia 169 broke out of their base areas and threat-

even when

page 5

FEB-26-99 FRI 19:26

R.01

171 ened to take over the entire country, Nixon
172 and I were studying ways to neutralize the
L 173 North Vietnamese offensive in Cambodia
174 and prevent the whole country from being
distant
175 turned into a vast base area aimed at South
L 176 Vietnam. I recommended an assault on
L 177 Parrot's Beak, the Communist base area
178 closest to Saigon; after hesitating for near-
179 ly a month, Nixon opted for attacking every
180 base area along the Vietnamese-Cambodi-
L 181 an border. In 1972, when we were dis-
L 182 cussing resuming the bombing of the
L 183 Hanoi-Haiphong area to break the dead-
184 lock in the Vietnam peace talks, I recom-
185 mended the established method by fighter
186 planes; Nixon ordered the use of B-52s (I
L 187 was not opposed to B-52s in principle;
188 their use simply had not occurred to me). ▲
L 189 In each case, Nixon's decision was vindi-
190 cated by events.

L 191 ▲In the end, the cooperation between
L 192 the President and the National Security
193 Adviser worked not just because we com-
194 plemented each other's strengths (and per-
L 195 haps reinforced each other's weaknesses
196 with respect to our sensitivity to criticism
L 197 and proclivity for sudden diplomatic
198 coups) but above all because Nixon and I
199 viewed international relations from a near-
L 200 ly identical perspective. Both of us be-
201 lieved that we were in trouble in Vietnam
L 202 because our predecessors had launched
L 203 the United States into an enterprise in a
204 distant region for worthy causes but with-

John:

HAK would prefer dropping
either the B-52 or the
Cambodia examples and
substituting the airlift
example attached from the
previous draft (lines 217-
222) to avoid all examples
being from the Vietnam
experience.

[Actually, it must be
from a previous draft that
I don't have a copy of --
it doesn't match up with
the "previous draft" that
Helga faxed me Friday
night. But it should be
clear enough. It follows.]

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L 205 articles in the Communist base area

206 closest to Saigon; after hesitating for near-

207 ly a month, Nixon opted for attacking every

208 base area along the Vietnamese-Cambodi-

L 209 an border. In 1972, when we were dis-

L 210 cussing resuming the bombing of the

L 211 Hanoi-Haiphong area to break the dead-

212 lock in the Vietnam peace talks, I recom-

213 mended the established method by fighter

214 planes; Nixon ordered the use of B-52s (I

L 215 was not opposed to B-52s in principle;

216 their use simply had not occurred to me).

217 In 1973, when I tried to organize the Pen-

218 tagon's civilian reserve air fleet for an airlift

L 219 to Israel, Nixon overcame Pentagon foot-

220 dragging by ordering a military airlift and

L 221 using the giant C-5 planes. In each case,

222 Nixon's decision was vindicated by events.

L 223 ▲In the end, the cooperation between

L 224 the President and the National Security

225 Adviser worked not just because we com-

226 plemented each other's strengths (and per-

L 227 haps reinforced each other's weaknesses

228 with respect to our sensitivity to criticism

L 229 and proclivity for sudden diplomatic

230 coups) but above all because Nixon and I

231 viewed international relations from a near-

L 232 ly identical perspective. Both of us be-

233 lieved that we were in trouble in Vietnam

L 234 because our predecessors had launched

L 235 the United States into an enterprise in a

236 distant region for worthy causes but with-

237 out adequately assessing the national inter-

L 238 est and the likely cost. ▲ America's historic

NO. 168

P. 6

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205 out adequately assessing the national interest and the likely cost. ▲ America's historic idealism had to be leavened with an assessment of national interest, and our approach to international relations had to move from episodic interventions to a strategic design which took account of the requirement of equilibrium. This was then--and probably still is at this writing--a minority view in a society which, never having experienced national tragedy, identifies the quest for peace with the missionary vocation of the spreading of its own domestic values around the world.

219 In the end, this vision led both the President and me to be harrassed by what had originally been our normal constitutions. Liberals accused me of abandoning them in quest of power; conservatives thought that Nixon had been seduced by visions of Establishment legitimacy.

226 Nevertheless, we were prepared to assume the responsibility for extracting the United States from the debacle of Vietnam. We never blamed our predecessors for the mess. We would not, however, leave the country for which nearly forty thousand Americans had already died by turning over the Communist rule tens of millions who had staked their lives on our word.

235

236 ▲▲▲▲▲▲▲

237 ▲Nixon the Person

238 In the mythology of his traducers--and

Delete & substitute paragraph on following page.

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Insert as substitute for lines 226-235 on previous page 7:

In the face of massive domestic unrest, Nixon achieved an extraordinary foreign policy record. He extracted America from Vietnam without ever blaming his predecessors for the mess they left him and without abandoning the tens of millions in Indochina who had staked their lives on America's word. And he initiated policies which have been the basis of American foreign policy to this writing: the opening to China; the beginning of talks to limit strategic arms; the Middle East peace process; the ending of the threat to the Berlin access routes.

FEB-26-99 FRI 19:26

P. 09

[M]

239 of some film portraits--Richard Nixon was
240 a man given to histrionics, to shouting his
L 241 prejudices at cowed subordinates, and to
242 dominating his environment by conveying
L 243 his views with great, even overpowering
244 insistence--frequently under the influence
245 of alcohol. Nothing could be further from
L 246 the real Richard Nixon--at least the
247 Richard Nixon with whom I dealt.

L 248 For example, the portrayals of Nixon
L 249 drinking himself into incoherence with a
250 bottle ever at his side are simply absurd. In
L 251 my experience, Nixon never took any
252 liquor during working hours or in the Oval
253 Office. Only his closest associates ever saw
254 him drink in any context. The trouble was
L 255 that Nixon could not hold even a small
L 256 quantity of alcohol. Two glasses of wine
257 were quite enough to make him boisterous,
L 258 just one more to grow bellicose or senti-
259 mental with slurred speech. Alcohol had a
260 way of destroying the defenses he had so
261 carefully constructed to enable him to suc-
262 ceed in a profession based on a conviviali-
L 263 ty unnatural to him. These episodes oc-
264 curred rarely, always at night and never in
265 the context of major decisions. The few of
L 266 us who actually witnessed such conduct
L 267 never acted on what he might have said;
L 268 we felt we owed the President another
269 chance to consider whatever the issue was.

L 270 The Richard Nixon with whom I
271 worked on a daily basis for five and a half
L 272 years was generally soft-spoken, with-

A, occasionally

A extremely

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AMANPURI

NO. 168 P.5 P.05

137 sions: "You pay the same price for doing something halfway as for doing it completely. So you might as well do it completely,"

L 142 ▲ The breakthroughs of the Nixon Administration were due to the fact that both
143
144 Nixon and I subordinated our reservations

146 based on mutual respect. The Quaker's son
L 147 from Yorba Linda and the son of a secondary school teacher in Bavaria complemented each other's qualities in a special
148
149 way. Nixon had the best personal knowledge of contemporary leaders around the
L 150
151 world of any American political figure I
L 152 have met. Foreign policy was his hobby,
153
154 and he deepened his understanding of it by
155 frequent travel. I had a better knowledge of
L 156 history and of the conceptual side of
L 157 geopolitics. Nixon operated by flashes of
158
159 insight to which he clung with remarkable
160 persistence. My forte was to translate general goals into long-range strategies--a task
L 161 for which Nixon lacked the requisite patience.
162

163 Nixon had an instinct for the jugular.
L 164 With respect to several key decisions, I even when
L 165 ~~though~~ I came to view their necessity
L 166 somewhat before he did, once Nixon decided to act, he went frequently beyond my
167
168 recommendations. In 1970, after the North
169 Vietnamese forces stationed in Cambodia
- 170 broke out of their base areas and threat-

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FEB 27 FEB. 1999 19:50
FEB 20 FRI 11:42

AMANPURI

NO. 168

P. 7p. 06

171 ened to take over the entire country, Nixon
172 and I were studying ways to neutralize the
L 173 North Vietnamese offensive in Cambodia
174 and prevent the whole country from being
175 turned into a vast base area aimed at South
L 176 Vietnam. I recommended an assault on
L 177 Parrot's Beach, the Communist base area
178 closest to Saigon; after hesitating for near-
179 by a month, Nixon opted for attacking every
180 base area along the Vietnamese-Cambodian
L 181 border. In 1972, when we were dis-
L 182 discussing resuming the bombing of the
L 183 Hanoi-Haiphong area to break the dead-
184 lock in the Vietnam peace talks, I recom-
185 mended the established method by fighter
186 planes; Nixon ordered the use of B-52s (I
L 187 was not opposed to B-52s in principle;
188 their use simply had not occurred to me). ▲
L 189 In each case, Nixon's decision was vindi-
190 cated by events.
L 191 ▲In the end, the cooperation between
L 192 the President and the National Security
193 Adviser worked not just because we com-
194 mplemented each other's strengths (and per-
L 195 haps reinforced each other's weaknesses
196 with respect to our sensitivity to criticism
L 197 and proclivity for sudden diplomatic
198 coups) but above all because Nixon and I
199 viewed international relations from a near-
L 200 ly identical perspective. Both of us be-
201 lieved that we were in trouble in Vietnam
L 202 because our predecessors had launched
L 203 the United States into an enterprise in a
204 distant region for worthy causes but with-

I prefer dropping B-52s or landfills, especially if we could avoid all examples of being near Vietnam's competence.

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L 205 Paris's Bear, the Communist base area
206 closest to Saigon; after hesitating for nearly a month, Nixon opted for attacking every base area along the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. In 1972, when we were discussing resuming the bombing of the Hanoi-Haiphong area to break the dead-lock in the Vietnam peace talks, I recommended the established method by fighter planes; Nixon ordered the use of B-52s (I was not opposed to B-52s in principle; their use simply had not occurred to me).
217 In 1973, when I tried to organize the Pentagon's civilian reserve air fleet for an airlift to Israel, Nixon overcame Pentagon foot-dragging by ordering a military airlift and using the giant C-5 planes. In each case, Nixon's decision was vindicated by events.
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223 ▲In the end, the cooperation between the President and the National Security Adviser worked not just because we complemented each other's strengths (and perhaps reinforced each other's weaknesses with respect to our sensitivity to criticism and proclivity for sudden diplomatic coups) but above all because Nixon and I viewed international relations from a nearly identical perspective. Both of us believed that we were in trouble in Vietnam because our predecessors had launched the United States into an enterprise in a distant region for worthy causes but without adequately assessing the national interest and the likely cost. ▲ America's historic

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