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This Copy For __________

BACKGROUND BRIEFING

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

IN THE ROOSEVELT ROOM

WITH DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS

5:40 P.M. EST

FEBRUARY 9, 1971

TUESDAY

DR. KISSINGER: Why don't we conduct it in the form of letting me answer your questions or do you want me to say something?

Q Have you any new information?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes. The new information isn't much. It is that the South Vietnamese are now, we think it is about 12 miles inland. And they have cut the first of the major roads, the first of the major north-south roads -- I think it is Route 92. Check it on the map to make sure that I am right.

Incidentally, we are talking on a BACKGROUND basis, not a White House official with an accent. (Laughter.) So let's say the Administration believes, or something like that.

Q Have we been inhibited much by the weather?

DR. KISSINGER: I have checked into that in great detail. First of all, the bad flying weather is where the correspondents are. Actually, that is true. The bad flying weather is on the South Vietnamese side of the border where the rainy season is in North Vietnam. But on the Tchepone side of the border, on the Route 9 side of the border, the weather is good.

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So this morning at the Khesanh Airfield there was
a low ceiling for a couple of hours which made it hard to
take off. But there was no problem about operating the
planes coming from other parts of the country.

Therefore, this is not correct -- the operation
is essentially on schedule. Up to now the resistance has
been lighter than we had estimated. The South Vietnamese
are advancing methodically. We have no great interest in having
them chopped up and moved into a trap.

Therefore, they are not moving perhaps as recklessly
as other units would move in the same situation, but they are
moving at about the pace that we had anticipated.

Q Can you say how many miles they are in there?

DR. KISSINGER: About 12 miles. They are across
or through Route 92.

Q How wide is the panhandle, approximately at
that point, that area?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't really know. They are
about here at this road, Route 92 that comes through the
DMZ, and goes south.

It cuts across it. It is about halfway from the
border to Tchepone, about that.

Q How far do they want to go? What is the
objective beyond that?

DR. KISSINGER: Their objective is to disrupt
communications and movement of supplies. They don't have
an objective, a particular objective. They don't have a
particular town which is the ultimate objective. The
objective is to cut as many of these roads as possible and
to prevent the movement of supplies.

Let me say one thing. Did anyone describe to you
how this supply system operates so that you have some idea?

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They are operating through a series of way stations which are about 50 to 75 miles apart. They shuttle back and forth between the stations. And the big new supply push starts about January 10. They spend about four to six weeks after the end of the rainy season repairing the roads. Then they spend another four to six weeks provisioning the way stations for the movement; that is, the rice and other equipment.

Then around January 10, they start the big through push. Then they move through there just north of Route 9.

Therefore, the strategic objective of this operation is not to pick up supplies. We would be delighted to pick up supplies. I could give you the fact that they picked up some 60 tons of ammunition. But this isn't the point. We can get you those figures. We will pick up supplies, too.

But the purpose of this operation is to keep as many of the supplies north of Route 9 as we possibly can for as long a period of time as we possibly can.

Q. It seems to me this can be done without enemy contact, if the North Vietnamese choose not to contact.

DR. KISSINGER: It could end without enemy contact.

Q. Couldn't you, if you wanted to, keep it closed permanently?

DR. KISSINGER: From May 15 on, take a week on either end, the weather is going to close it. We don't have to close it. This trail system for all practical purposes becomes impassable from the middle of May to the middle of October.

This year the rainy season lasted three weeks longer than usual. So it was impassable until early November.

Q. Will the withdrawal to be announced in April depend on the success of this mission?

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DR. KISSINGER: No. We have a plan for the with-
drawals which we will follow in any event. Whether this plan
can be accelerated as a result of this mission? There is
still too much to tell.

The war in Vietnam operates in cycles of dry season and wet season. In every previous year, they have been able to start operating early in the dry season on the basis of supplies accumulated in the previous dry season or at the end of the previous dry season.

That was the importance of these sanctuaries
along the Cambodian frontier. They would sally forth out
of these sanctuaries and they would give us and the South
Vietnamese an insoluble problem. If we defended ourselves
against the main forces the guerrillas would start acting
up, and if we defended ourselves against the guerrillas,
the main forces would start acting up. And it was almost
impossible to deal with both of them simultaneously.

What the sanctuary operations did was break
that link which was already being weakened enormously,
because it made it impossible for the main forces to operate.
And the main forces had to spend most of their time inside
Cambodia re-establishing supply areas rather than operating
in South Vietnam.

This year they have already spent a good part of
the dry season just trying to get supplies down there. And
the main forces are trying to stay alive and have a potential
base for operations next year.

We believe their strategy was somewhat as follows:
They started a big infiltration push of men in October,
November, and December, about three times as large as the
same period the year before and about 25 percent larger
at the same period in 1968. A good percentage of those
troops stayed in southern Laos to protect the supply route
and to prepare for the greatly increased logistics push
that was necessary this year.

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That greatly increased logistics push in turn was made necessary by two factors: by the discovery of the huge caches which we made last year during the sanctuary operation, and by the closing of the port of Sihanoukville which was the route for 85 percent of the material which came into southern Vietnam. So they had to replace the caches plus the 85 percent of the supplies that came in through Sihanoukville.

We believe that then around January 10 they started the biggest supply push of the whole Vietnamese war. They have pushed more supplied through the Ho Chi Minh Trail or they are trying to push more supplies through the Ho Chi Minh Trail than in any period in the six years of the war, even if you include the Sihanoukville operation.

This is the biggest supply push they have ever had.

Q What was that operating date?

DR. KISSINGER: January 10, give or take five days. I have to give you the date that we became aware of it and there is some lag in-between. But it is roughly correct.

We believe that their strategy was to pre-position their supplies as far south as they could and then to move the troops that were guarding the supply lanes into I and II Corps for their offensive prior to the election in Vietnam in October, then, to pick up the supplies again in October and November, December, and start another big offensive next February and March at a period when our own withdrawals would be really reaching the most critical point.

The longer we can keep their supplies north of Route 9, and you have to remember it takes them about three months to get supplies down, the later they can start an offensive this year, if they could ever start an offensive this year.

If we can stop their supplies or keep their

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supplies north of Route 9 throughout the dry season, they have to stay up there throughout the rainy season, which means that even if they get their whole supply system fixed again without interference, which would be a rash assumption to make, it would take them until about this time next year before they could even start moving the supplies again because they would have to re-provision the whole system again before they could start operating it.

So what we are hoping is to push the possibility of an offensive as far into the next dry season as we possibly can. And if we are very successful, maybe throughout the next dry season, which would, in effect, mean through the end of 1972.

In that period, the South Vietnamese should gain so much in strength that a military victory by the North Vietnamese would be a rather formidable undertaking.

I think we vastly underestimated the North Vietnamese in '64 and '65. We compounded this underestimation by fighting a war which was not particularly attuned to the realities of the situation.

But we are so shell-shocked now that we are vastly overestimating the North Vietnamese. You hear, for example, the argument that the South Vietnamese are being spread dangerously thin by this operation. Well, the one thing that would spread the South Vietnamese dangerously thin is not to undertake these operations because then the South Vietnamese would have to defend 800 miles of frontier against sanctuary base areas from which the North Vietnamese could sally forth at moments of their own choosing after carefully preparing the battlefields they would then conduct the sort of battles with the South Vietnamese they conducted with us between '64 and '68.

We couldn't win that sort of battle because of the handicap which we imposed on ourselves was much too great.

The distance from the border to Tchepone is 25 miles. I can just give you a rough example. It is 25 miles. If we can get across there, then that is all

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that has to be defended.

If that isn't defended and the supplies get
spread all along the border, the whole border has to be
defended.

Similarly here in the South there is now an
operation to put a barrier across here, in effect to keep
them from opening up supply lines into the South and
repositioning. So, actually, the South Vietnamese forces
are being concentrated. They are not being spread then.

The second problem of reality to consider is
that once the base areas are destroyed and the North
Vietnamese have to fight like a normal army and has to
carry its supplies with it, it is at a considerable disad-
vantage, vis-a-vis, the South Vietnamese. Because when
they come all the way down here, they are at the end of
a 600-mile supply line. They have to commit themselves
three months before the South Vietnamese do.

And the South Vietnamese will be constantly
sitting on their flanks as they are moving South; especia-ly,
if the Cambodian Army gets stronger.

So that if we can gain a year of grace out of
these operations, it should not be all that brilliant for
the North Vietnamese.

I just wanted to give you the strategic concept
of what it is that we are trying to do. The South Vietnamese
with our support are not just running wild. This is not
just a desperate lashing out.

These are carefully thought-out operations that
have the objective of drying up the Communist supply
system, gaining time, and strengthening the South Vietnamese
forces. And also we intend not to be in a position where
the North Vietnamese can apply their favorite tactic of
building up at their pace, of preparing the battlefield,
pre-positioning their supplies and then making us die the
death of a thousand cuts.

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It is trying to learn the lessons of the previous five years.

Q How many of these points do you have to hold in that 25-mile area?

DR. KISSINGER: It is very dangerous to fight with the North Vietnamese from static positions. What we are trying to do is to cut the main trails and the main routes. Of course, the thing that everyone has on his mind is as one goes in there, will they move in behind us and create a Dienbienphu?

Believe me, this is a question that we have asked every day in our planning. That doesn't guarantee the answer will turn out to be correct. But we look every day at every conceivable North Vietnamese unit that could be brought into this area.

The judgment of our intelligence is that since the South Vietnamese move by helicopter and the North Vietnamese move by foot, and since the South Vietnamese have artillery, gunships, and our support and tactical air, and the North Vietnamese have only mortars as their heaviest weapon, a Dienbienphu is almost out of the question. That doesn't mean that we won't lose outposts. It is almost certain that the North Vietnamese will start pecking away at some of the firing points that are established along the route. They may even be able to knock one or two of them off. But that doesn't solve their strategic problem. We do not believe that they are capable of encircling a large South Vietnamese force, if the South Vietnamese fight well at all. So far they have fought well. These are supposed to be their best units that are being employed there.

In fact, so far the North Vietnamese have done what they did in the sanctuaries in Cambodia. They have not done much fighting at all. They have done only harassing. They have been fighting back.

Q Do you still expect them to stand in the way?

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DR. KISSINGER: I will tell you exactly what I told my colleagues before this operation started. The consensus there was that they would fight very hard and there would be a very bitter battle. My own assessment was that there was a higher probability that they wouldn't fight at all than that they would fight very fiercely. I said maybe a 30 percent possibility that they wouldn't fight at all, maybe a 25 percent possibility that they fight very fiercely and the strongest possibility is for something in between, that they will fight and harass the outposts.

If they fight fiercely, they will lose a great many men. They will keep their roads open a few days longer, maybe a week or two longer, but at the cost of directing all of the supplies into the defense of the area so that they don't have really a net gain in their supply.

Q. They would be giving up men for a temporary gain, too?

DR. KISSINGER: They would be giving up men for only a temporary gain. The reason why they may have to fight, whether they want to or not, is that these are primarily stationary supply troops. In the sanctuaries, I felt they wouldn't fight because they were mostly manned by combat units and those combat units were under fairly good discipline.

In the panhandle, most of the units are supply units. They have about 9,000 combat troops in there. But most of them are supply troops. And I don't know whether their supply troops are as disciplined as the combat troops and whether they can move them around so easily and keep them together as cohesive units.

If they can, in my judgment, they will try to get out of the way. If they can't, they will suffer very heavy casualties.

Q. Where do you think they will go if they disperse?

DR. KISSINGER: They will go north.

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Q What is the likelihood that the South Vietnamese, if they do well and have success, might like to cross into North Vietnam?

DR. KISSINGER: That thought might occur to them, but it is a war being fought under very curious conditions. There is no law of nature that says that the North Vietnamese can cross into South Vietnam but the South Vietnamese have no right to cross into North Vietnam.

But this is not part of the current scheme of things and this will not be an extension of the present operations.

Q They would have to do it without American air support, then?

DR. KISSINGER: It will not be part of this current operation, because we will be much more interested in cleaning out this whole supply system than we would be in scoring some tactical points.

One other interesting thing is that as of this evening, the North Vietnamese have not moved any additional units into or towards the Tchepone area.

Q Can you tell us where their main forces are located?

DR. KISSINGER: They have a fairly large concentration north of the DMZ to protect themselves against the fairly large concentration being put south of the DMZ.

They obviously think a move across the DMZ is not impossible for a variety of reasons which I can't explain to you. They believe that a major attack is likely to come in the plateau area, or down the Ashau Valley. In fact, if you remember the Soviet radio, and Prime Minister Kosygin last week accused the United States of already having started the operation and conducting these operations in the Bolovens Plateau. This doesn't happen to be true. At least, there is nothing going on in

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the Bolovens Plateau other than what obviously has been
going on there.

But as long as they have this belief, they are
going to keep their units protecting those ares. They have
a tough problem, because if they start pulling out of
Southern Laos towards Route 9, then they are opening up
the Southern Laos supply system to incursion.

Q Doctor, are most of the main trials between
the border and Tchepone?

DR. KISSINGER: Most of them, yes.

Q How many, roughly?

DR. KISSINGER: You would be mistaken if you
thought we were aiming for a city. We are not aiming for
any particular city. We may never go into any particular city.
We are interested in cutting the trails. And you see, any-
thing that is in the supply system now is really committed.
They can't just shift it around from road to road, because
a road for them that doesn't have, what they call, Binh
Trams or way stations along the way is really useless since
they can make only 50 to 75 miles a night. A road that
doesn't go through jungle is useless, because if we can
see the way stations in the day time, we can destroy them.

So, their requirements are that the road have
Binh Trams along it, and, secondly, that the road go through
jungle covered territory. They cannot move it through the
open country. But most of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, to answer
your question, crosses Route 9 to the east of Tchepone,
and converges on Route 9 and then spreads out from there again.

Q What does one of these way stations consist of?

DR. KISSINGER: It is often caves, places where
a truck parks, a different place in which they put the
equipment, and rice. It is not a building that you can
necessarily see. And they often put matting across the
jungle so that you can't get aerial photography.

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Q That raises a question of the enormous bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in recent months. Would you say it obviously didn't do much good? Would you say that?

DR. KISSINGER: No, you can't say it doesn't do much good. What the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail does is raise the price to them of operating the supply system. It does two things.

We try to cut the trail at choke points through massive bombardments, which cause landslides, usually with B-52's. Often they put their Binh Trams at these choke points, because they reload the supplies on trucks on the other side of the choke point.

Secondly, we now have a pretty good system by which we can line up our gunships with the electronic things. So we do get quite a few trucks a night and the impact of the bombing is that it forces them to keep a large number of men repairing the road and operating the system. It does not completely interdict the system. It may take a total of 25 percent, which is considerable, but not decisive and probably allowed for in the operation of the system.

Q Are the Chinese still helping the North Vietnamese with their repair work in the northern part of North Vietnam?

DR. KISSINGER: No, because there is no repair work needed.

Q No bombing in that area?

DR. KISSINGER: No, the Chinese helped the North Vietnamese only with the repair of bomb damage. They never helped them with the long-term reconstruction of their county. Since there is no bomb damage in the north, there are no Chinese units in the north.

Q You mentioned that the time of the withdrawal might be speeded up with respect to this.

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DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to speculate on that. I think it is much too early. If we can keep to our present timetable with an increased assurance of safety and an increased assurance of ultimate success, the operation will be well worthwhile. We are not running any races with ourselves. We are not going to get any prizes for getting out three months earlier or later.

This is political speculation, which will be forgotten a year from now. What is important is that we get out in an honorable way, in a way that does not hazard the security of our forces and does not turn over the country to the Communists.

If we can achieve those two objectives, we will consider our policy successful.

Q Can you make an estimate on the duration of this particular operation?

DR. KISSINGER: No. But I have given you some rough estimates in terms of the weather conditions. In the past, the North Vietnamese used to pull their units out of the Ho Chi Minh Trail area during the rainy season. And, of course, if their infiltration down the Ho Chi Minh Trail stops, the South Vietnamese incentive to stay there would diminish. But again, let me repeat you cannot measure the success of this operation by the length of time we stay. Every week delay in the operation of the system is worth something. And, therefore, any additional week is worth something.

We don't want to put out official time limits on ourselves at either end of the operation. Of course, it is reasonable to assume that the longer we can stay, the longer we will inhibit the operation of their supply system.

Q Do you anticipate that the South Vietnamese might turn south once they get a deeper penetration?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to speculate on the operations that might be conducted. But we do want to destroy as many of the base areas as we can find.

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There is one base area which the South Vietnamese have begun to enter which is called base area 611. It is very large and extends on both sides of the South Vietnamese-Laotian boarder. In it the South Vietnamese last year found the largest cache of the entire Vietnamese war on the South Vietnamese side of the frontier.

And it may be that the South Vietnamese will enter that base area more deeply than they have in recent days.

Q Dr. Kissinger, quite apart from this current operation, might there be a day when the South Vietnamese would go into North Vietnam? I would like to rephrase my previous question.

MR. KLEIN: Have you got a column already written that way? (Laughter).

DR. KISSINGER: Some of our critics right now are having nervous breakdowns over the possibility that the North Vietnamese will defeat the South Vietnamese while we are there or immediately afterwards. So, I don't want to speculate on what might happen. If the balance should shift so that the South Vietnamese should think they are strong enough to attack the North Vietnamese, I would say I hope to be here when this problem exists. (Laughter).

It is a much more restful one than the one that we have had.

Q As to the capabilities to take counter measures either to relieve the pressure we are putting on them or to do something to regain some kind of initiative of their own, eitehr immediate or longer term, what can they do?

DR. KISSINGER: You know, they could try to turn Tchepone into a solid ground. Just pick this Route 9 operation. They could make that into starting ground and pour units in from all over the area. First of all, this

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is practically excluded by the fact (1) that they have to
move overland, (2) that their movement would be very slow,
and (3) that it would be almost impossible to time their
arrival so that they would all get there simultaneously
and not leave large areas uncovered. This is all the more
so as we might decide not to fight.

Our interest is not to win a battle; our interest
is to stop their supplies. If they want to spend all of
their supplies supplying units along Route 9, that is almost
as good for us. All we want is that the supplies not cross
Route 9. How they get expended is a secondary consideration.

We don't really expect it, but theoretically
they could launch an attack across the DMZ. However, with
the understandin-s on the bombing halt they would be
enormously reluctant to do that.

Q Just because if they do that we could go
ahead with the bombing again?

DR. KISSINGER: That is what Secretary Laird said
at the beginning of the Cambodian operation.

Q That still stands, then?

DR. KISSINGER: It hasn't been --

Q What is this?

DR. KISSINGER: Crossing the DMZ in force.

Q The bombing halt was sort of conditioned
on no crossing by them.

DR. KISSINGER: If you write about it, just refer
to Secretary Laird's statement and don't refer to
Administration spokesmen. The most likely action on their
part is one that they plan to take anyway, which is an
attack from the Plaine Des Jarres towards Long Tieng
against the Meo tribesmen who represent the only effective
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General Vong Pao and whose headquarters is at Long Tieng. They fight, however, only to protect their families. If they can panic their families to move out of Long Tieng, there is a good chance that the tribesmen will follow them.

Q What would the effect of that be?

DR. KISSINGER: The effect of that would be to make even clearer what is already obvious, that the North Vietnamese can take Northern Laos any time that they want to pay the political price for taking it. The political price for taking Northern Laos is the risk of Thai intervention or at least of enormous Thai hostility as well as the risk of forcing the whole issue into an international forum for the violation of the '62 agreement which, for some reason, the North Vietnamese have been very reluctant to take.

But that is an option. They have attacked in this area across or southwest of the Plaine Des Jarres every year for the last four years.

When these attacks start, as we expect them to within the next week or two, it will not be in response to what we and the South Vietnamese are doing down here. They started moving the 312th Division into Northern Laos two months ago. The lead time for offensives in the South is from three to four months. The lead time for offensives into the Plaine Des Jarres area is about six weeks to two months. So whatever will happen in the next two or three weeks in the Plaine Des Jarres area or southwest of the Plaine Des Jarres has nothing to do with what we are doing or what has been done along Route 9.

Q I am trying to understand how that dissuades the South Vietnamese.

DR. KISSINGER: No, it does not, but it would give the North Vietnamese a victory.

A number of things could be done. They could try a general uprising throughout South Vietnam if they have the capability. Frankly, we don't think they have the capability to do that. We expected them to launch a general offensive

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in the South after the Cambodian incursions and it never
happened.

Q What about sabotage in Saigon?

DR. KISSINGER: They might try a step-up. But their capabilities are just not what they used to be. Part of the problem is this: They upgraded their guerrilla units. If you look at the evolution of the war since the Tet offensive in 1968, in 1968 they upgraded their guerrilla units into main forces and they suffered. They gambled a great deal on that throw of the dice. They suffered very heavily casualties in their main forces and, therefore, very heavy casualties with their guerrillas. It is true, the South Vietnamese Government denuded the countryside in order to protect themselves against the Tet onslaught in 1968, but so did the guerrillas.

Then in 1969 this Administration came in. They launched another big Tet offensive, not quite as big as the year before, but still, if you remember, when we came in our casualties were about 400 a week in that first offensive. Now, when we have casualties of more than 30 a week, we think that there was something wrong.

In the first Tet offensive, our casualties were
700 a week. In the second Tet offensive, they were about 400,
sometimes 500 a week, usually around 400. And this went
on until about September 1969.

Then starting around November 1969, we made a
deliberate effort. We adopted a deliberate strategy of
ignoring their main force units as much as we could and
going after their guerrilla units. This is when we made
these spectacular gains in the pacification program. Those
were very precarious. I had had a study made by the Vietnam
Special Studies Group that I set up in February and March
1970 which indicated that our pacification gains were very
real, but also very vulnerable to main force pressure;
that is, any area in which they could operate their main
forces might lose the gains that we had made very
quickly.

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The sanctuary operations made it next to impossible for them to operate with substantial main forces in III and IV Corps and, therefore, you find the situation that all of you who have been in Vietnam must have encountered, that most of the roads are now open and the pacification has been consolidated. So last year they lost the ability to conduct substantial main force operations. This year we have consolidated the situation in III and IV Corps.

Now the strategy of this year has two prongs: (1) of keeping their supplies north of Route 9; and, (2), of using up whatever supplies they have left through the operation that is now being conducted in what you call the Chup Plantation. The South Vietnamese force is now entering here and destroying those caches that were outside the 30 kilometer limit that we had established for ourselves last year. We will also force the North Vietnamese combat units here to expend as many supplies as we possibly can in combat and to make them fight on South Vietnamese terms. This will also push them back as far as possible in this dry season, so that in the next dry season if they want to start an offensive they have to start from as far back as possible.

If all of these operations succeed -- and we are not claiming yet that they have succeeded -- but this one (Chup) has certainly succeeded down here -- but if these operations succeed then we will have done for First and Second Corps this year what we did for Third and Fourth Corps last year. And we will have assured the Third and Fourth Corps throughout most of next year that the condition can be maintained, because they would then have to spend most of their time bringing supplies down here. And we will have created a much better base of safety for First and Second Corps. This is the situation. This is the strategic concept on which we are operating.

Q A minor point: Is that area in Laos populated?

DR. KISSINGER: No. It is not populated by friendly population. There are civilians there. All the local Laotians were moved out.

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Q You said earlier on that today the South Vietnamese had crossed Highway 92. Where does that stand in relation to the bulk of the paths that make up the Ho Chi Minh Trail?

DR. KISSINGER: I just don't want to speculate. Our information isn't that good that we can tell what percentage goes in any one group. We can tell what goes from one station to another station. But since they all converge on the Route 9 area and fan out again from the Route 9 area, our information is less good in this area of where it came from.

Q But Highway 92 is part of this Ho Chi Minh Trail network?

DR. KISSINGER: Absolutely. It goes through the DMZ, comes out here and cuts South.

Q That is where it converges on 92?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes.

Q Doctor, do you know what has actually been happening on the Trail since this operation was first threatened and then started to happen?

DR. KISSINGER: I thought at first that as soon as the operation threatened they would stop moving things down the Trail. I was wrong. You had better write that down. It may happen more frequently than you will find me admitting it. (Laughter.)

Q Kissinger wrong again. (Laughter.)

DR. KISSINGER: I was wrong for two reasons: One is that I thought it would become obvious about ten days ago that we were going to come down Route 9. The fact of the matter is it didn't become obvious to them and I am not sure it is obvious to them today, because they are remaining in position to block other operations. Therefore, they have no particular incentive to stop at any one point along the route.

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Secondly, I should have thought about the fact
that once they are on the Trail there is literally nothing
they can do with it. Because if they stop, the whole system
gets clogged up and where are they going to go? So once
the system is committed, they might as well push it through
as fast as they can. If they get caught somewhere in
the system, they are no worse off to be caught on Route 9 than
they would be being stuck north of Route 9.

Therefore, what they have done is to push like crazy
in the last ten days to get as much stuff through as they
possibly can. But there may be some indications that they
are now slowing it up. It is a little premature. But I
know if we get clear indications of that by tomorrow
night I will let Pat know and he knows how to get in touch
with you.

It isn't clear yet whether they are slowing it down.
But we are getting some indications that they may be.

Q Do you have an estimate on how many of their
troops are being pinned down on this DMZ alert?

DR. KISSINGER: Quite a few; we have a pretty
good idea.

Q You can't tell us in numbers, though?

DR. KISSINGER: No. I am not particularly eager
for you gentlemen to write a great deal about this,
pinning down and so forth, because we want them there.

Q Just leave them there and let them guess.

DR. KISSINGER: We would appreciate it, really, if
you would keep that under restraint.

Q Doctor, you said earlier and you talked about
the supply movement and so forth down the Trail which
started in January, the biggest of the war. Yesterday, the figure
of 10,000 tons of supplies was used.

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DR. KISSINGER: That is an estimate; but it is
fairly close.

Q This movement was largely supplies that you
were referring to?

DR. KISSINGER: I am talking about supplies, yes.
Before they moved a lot of stuff into position along the trails.

Q Do we have any idea how much of that has gotten
past the point to where we are now trying to break?

DR. KISSINGER: We estimate the vast bulk of it
was north of Route 9; two-thirds, three-quarters, it is hard
to say. But we think the vast bulk of it is still north
of Route 9.

Q How about the infiltration of personnel?

DR. KISSINGER: The infiltration of personnel has
slowed down. We think the reason for that is that personnel
without supplies isn't any good to them. The reason they
poured in personnel at first was two-fold: one, to replace
the losses they suffered in the sanctuary operations and
to give their people in Cambodia, where about half of them
went, a capability of clearing these new sanctuary areas;
and secondly, to put them into Southern Laos to rebuild
and protect the infiltration. And those units that were in
Southern Laos, we think, after the infiltration and supply
season was over, would have moved over into First and Second
Corps and have launched an offensive there closer to the South
Vietnamese election.

Q Is there any diminishment in the contribution
the Chinese make in supplies to North Vietnam?

DR. KISSINGER: What percent of their supplies
is Chinese?

Q I mean reduction?

DR. KISSINGER: No.

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Q What does the supplies consist of?

DR. KISSINGER: Rice, mortar arms, mortars. Most of the heavy equipment and most of the POL comes from the Soviet Union.

But, frankly, the extent of Chinese supplies is irrelevant to this operation, because we don't care what they have up here. Our concern is what they can get down through the panhandle. They cannot solve the problem of what is now being done by getting greater supplies from the Soviet Union and Communist China.

Q What kind of lead time do they have? If they make a decision to slow up the supplies or men, have they committed, say, five days work on the trail?

DR. KISSINGER: If they wanted to throw away their dry season and say the heck with this one, they could reverse the process and still get back into North Vietnam before the rainy season begins. I am not saying they are going to do that. That would really be a phenomenal decision for them to make. That would be a stupendous victory for us. No one is expecting that because it would mean that they in effect would have lost a year. But this we don't expect. So I am not trying to steer you in this direction.

Their problem is that it takes them two and a half months to get the stuff down. If they don't start moving, say, by whatever time it takes, it is going to get stuck somewhere down the road in the rainy season.

Q By saying down, two and a half months, you mean down to the Cambodian plantation?

DR. KISSINGER: From, say, Mu Gia Pass into the Chup Plantation area, it takes about three months.

Q How was this operation initiated? Who took the initiative?

DR. KISSINGER: We tried last fall to look ahead to what the prospects were over the next two years. We had no doubt that we could get through 1971 without major difficulty. And we have no doubt that even without this we had a chance to get through 1972. But we would have been able to defeat the offensive or the

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South Vietnamese would have been able to defeat the offensive only with difficulty.

But if we wanted to insure the withdrawal program and if we wanted to make it more likely for the South Vietnamese to be able to survive after our withdrawal program had reached a level where we were no longer a combat force, then we decided we had to do the sort of thing we are now doing.

We first set the objective of trying to disrupt the enemy supply system and trying to use up as much of the dry season as possible by forcing him into a supply effort during that dry season and using up as many of his supplies as we could.

Out of that then we put this problem to the South Vietnamese and jointly they and our people came up with these various ideas and they were implemented on the schedule that was established.

All of these stories that the President had cancelled the order and that there was a tremendous goofup, that there was a three-day delay, that it was off and on again are total nonsense.

If you remember, the American brigade moved down Route 9, starting last Sunday, and they built 33 bridges and two airfields. You will see that that enterprise was not unusually long. And that then two South Vietnamese divisions moved first up here and down Route 9. It so happens we are exactly on schedule.

Q Henry, was this basic background explained to Senator Fulbright, Senator Mansfield or to anybody on the Hill? Would they have been told about the basic idea?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes.

Q It sounds very persuasive. Were there questions that they asked?

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DR. KISSINGER: You have seen their public statements. There is a belief -- I have given you the argument -- that this widens the war, that it spreads the South Vietnamese thin, that it gets us involved in other countries, that we are assuming responsibilities for these other countries.

Since they don't have any responsibility for giving us an alternative, I think the overwhelming desire of many of our critics is just to get out of Vietnam regardless of the consequences. We want to get out of Vietnam, but we want to leave it in a manner that is consistent with international stability and in the long-term domestic stability in this country.

Q What is your reading on the present public opinion? Does it side with the Administration in that type of withdrawal?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes.

Q By how much?

DR. KISSINGER: The President felt last week, and he said, that there were 18 reasons for doing this and one reason for not doing it. He felt that there was a good chance that he would make some wrong decisions for the right reason. He didn't want to make a wrong decision for the wrong reason. So he did it.

Q What was the one reason for not doing it?

DR. KISSINGER: The reason for not doing it was the argument that this would again produce the same public outcry that we had faced in Cambodia. Look, if Perry will forgive me, in 1938 Chamberlain could have won an election in Britain with 90 percent. First of all, no one would have contested it. He had 90 percent of the British people with him.

Eighteen months later when the consequences of his decision became apparent, he had very few of the British people with him. The people do not forgive their leaders for the consequences of their decisions, even if the decisions were made with public approval at the time.

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We have a responsibility for what we believe is in their best interest. The President was elected because it was thought that his judgment encumbers some understanding of the national interest as he saw it. And nobody who went through the Cambodian experience would like to see the anguish repeated. On the other hand, to not go in might lead to even further division in the country and even greater international instability.

One can make a very strong case for the proposition that if we had not done what we did in Cambodia last May there would have been a war in the Middle East in September.

Q Is this because the other side would have miscalculated our resolve?

DR. KISSINGER: In September, the situation in the Middle East hung by a razor's edge. If any of the chief adversaries had acted more precipitously, there would have been an explosion.

And when one sees all the commotion last year, the greatest danger of war was not Cambodia, which produced all of this turmoil.

The greatest danger of war last year was for six days in the Middle East after the Syrians invaded Jordan.

Nobody paid any extraordinary attention to that. If you look at the sequence of events, if Syria had broken through, if Jordan had collapsed, if Israel had attacked and if the Egyptians had responded and then the Israelis, and if Nasser had had a heart attack in the middle of all of this turmoil -- and you would have to assume that his heart condition would not have improved under those conditions ---

Q You would have had the Egyptians and Israelis fighting again.

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DR. KISSINGER: There was a great risk. But at any rate, there might have been a Middle East war and we avoided a Middle East war also by being both firm and restrained.

Neither our firmness nor our restraint would have meant a thing in September if we had not established the degree of credibility by our actions earlier.

Q Does this move in Laos reflect the Administration's view or optimism in the Paris talks?

DR. KISSINGER: We are not very optimistic about the Paris talks.

Q Doctor, could I ask you before we break up what you are hearing from Souvanna Phouma other than what he is saying publicly, any indication?

DR. KISSINGER: Nothing. But I said he said all that needs to be said. He said that his territory is controlled by the North Vietnamese; that he deplores the South Vietnamese incursions into his country, but that the North Vietnamese are principally to blame and he called on all foreign troops to leave his country.

We agree with all of these statements except perhaps deploring the South Vietnamese incursions into his country.

Q Have you heard the suggestion, Dr. Kissinger, that as 1972 approaches, the elections in 1972, that Nixon changes his policies so as to get out of Vietnam regardless of the consequences?

DR. KISSINGER: Nixon went into Cambodia in May of an election year in the face of warnings by senior advisers that this would lead to a thousand casualties a week, and in the face of the near certainty that it would lead to an explosion. He did this because he believed that he couldn't face the American people a year later if he didn't do it.

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And I am sure the President doesn't tell me everything that he thinks. But having worked closely with him for over two years I would be absolutely astonished if the President in 1972 would act on the basis of electoral considerations.

But besides, our program is such that we believe that in 1972 we will be able to go before the American public and to compare what we have done with what our critics said at various stages, that I believe it will be our critics who will be on the defensive at that point and not we.

Q Do you feel these incursions should have occurred several years ago?

DR. KISSINGER: I have trouble enough thinking about the policies of this Administration.

Q It was possible for them to.

DR. KISSINGER: Let me say in defense of the previous Administration that at that time most of the men came through the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but most of the supplies came through Sihanoukville. But I think one could argue that if the war had been directed against the vitals of the enemy rather than peripherally, it might have helped. I don't really want to speculate on that.

Q Doctor, you said the President decided a year hence that he couldn't have faced the American people if he had not gone ---

DR. KISSINGER: Faced them not for electoral reasons. The issue the President faced in May or in April of 1970 was as follows: Before the overthrow of Sihanouk, we faced isolated base areas which Sihanouk was attempting to squeeze into a narrower and narrower compass. After the overthrow of Sihanouk, when the North Vietnamese in the sanctuaries began to turn westward against the Cambodians, we faced the problem that all of Cambodia would turn into a base area; that the President felt that the only real

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choices he had at that moment was to get out immediately or to go into Cambodia. The advice which most people gave him was to say, "Things are going along so well, why do you ask for more?" That is the one chance he felt we couldn't take because that would have meant being faced just about at this time of this year at the height of the dry season with a Communist offensive coming out of these sanctuaries. And he would have had to explain to himself why he had sacrificed more American lives for a year's effort when he knew very well that when this 150,000 withdrawal program continued he would confront this situation. That was the situation.

Q If this was considered as a possibility several months ago, it was presumably before the Congressional prohibitions were put on the use of American forces.

DR. KISSINGER: We never considered using American forces. Incidentally, there has been a prohibition on the use of American forces in Laos already in last year's budget. So it was never considered, nor have we used American forces in Cambodia before the prohibition.

THE PRESS: Thank you, Doctor.

END

6:42 P.M. EST

This Copy For

BACKGROUND BRIEFING

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

IN THE ROOSEVELT ROOM

AT 5:40 P.M. EST

FEBRUARY 9, 1971

TUESDAY

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DR. KISSINGER: I have checked into that in great detail. There was bad flying weather for an hour. First of all, the bad flying weather is where the correspondents are. Actually, that is true. The bad flying weather is on the South Vietnamese side of the border where the rainy season is in North Vietnam. But on the Tchepone side of the border, on the Route 9 side of the border, the weather is good.

Therefore, this is not correctly -- the operation is essentially on schedule. Up to now the resistance has been lighter than we had estimated. The South Vietnamese are advancing methodically with no great interest in having them chopped out and move into a trap.

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starts about January 10. They are spending about four to six weeks after the end of the rainy season repairing the roads. Then they are spending another four to six weeks provisioning the way stations for the movement; that is, the rice and other equipment.

Q: It seems to me this can be done without enemy contact, if the North Vietnamese choose not to contact.

Q: Couldn't you, if you wanted to, keep it closed permanently?

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DR. KISSINGER: From May 15 on, we will give a week on either end, the weather is going to have to close it. We don't have to close it. This trail system for all practical purposes becomes impassable from the middle of May to the middle of October.

Q Will the withdrawal be announced in April depend on the success of this mission?

DR. KISSINGER: No. Yes and no. Some of the success of this mission -- we have a plan for the withdrawals which we will follow in any event. Whether this plan can be accelerated as a result of this mission, there is much to tell.

But the real success of this mission, this is the first year to give you a strategic picture -- in every previous year the war in Vietnam operates in cycles of dry season and wet season.

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That was the importance of these sanctuaries along
the Cambodian frontier. Then they would sally forth out
of these sanctuaries and they would give us and the South
Vietnamese an insoluble problem. If we defended ourselves
against the main forces the guerrillas would start acting
up, and if we defended ourselves against the guerrillas,
the main forces would start acting up. And it was almost
impossible to deal with both of them simultaneously.

What the sanctuary operations did was to break
that link which was already being weakened enormously,
because it made it impossible for the main forces to operate.
And the main forces had to spend most of their time inside
Cambodia re-establishing supply areas rather than operating
in South Vietnam.

This year they have already spent a good part of
the dry season just trying to get supplies down there and
the main forces in there trying to stay alive to have a
potential base for operations next year.

We believe their strategy was somewhat as follows:
They started a big infiltration push of men in October,
November and December, about three times as large as a
comparable period the year before and about 25 percent

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