HENRY A. KISSINGER

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

December 20, 1995

Dear Bob:

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I read the review of "Kissinger and Nixon" in the *Wall Street Journal*. What is the point of being the premier spinmaster if one is found out so easily? Here the old spinmaster has been busily confusing the issue on Vietnam for twenty years. Nixon and I nearly got away with creating the impression that we were standing up for the honor and credibility of the United States in refusing to turn over to the Communists millions who, in reliance on America's promises, had cast their lot with us. We had conducted policies from a besieged White House, gone through the anguish of Cambodia and the risks of mining North Vietnam, faced down scores of Congressional resolutions demanding withdrawal, to obscure the real purpose of the spinmastership - now, alas, unveiled in a TV film endorsed by the *Wall Street Journal* - that all this was "not to score, but to win over the fans in the bleachers". Incompetent as Nixon and I proved to be, we were not aware that there were fans in the bleachers (they surely were not in Congress or the media) and the conservatives were uncharacteristically silent.

Of course, there are a few glitches: for example, how the spinmaster, whose office was down the hall from the President, managed to escape for his nefarious secret negotiations without Nixon knowing it or how he organized the airplane to get to Paris. In fact, the spinmaster was even cleverer than that. He left memos in the files, approved by a Nixon presumably too boozed up to know what he was signing, approving every trip and its talking points in advance and every trip report later.

Poor old doltish Nixon. He left a trail of handwritten notes urging the spinmaster to proceed and not *one* document or tape that supports what the filmmaker and your

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reviewer discovered - that he wanted to delay the negotiations until after the election. But the old spinmaster who tried to trick Ford into resisting the Cuban troops in Angola, from which he was restrained by vigilant neo-conservatives, overcame all these obstacles. He even fooled Nixon into believing that there had been no real disagreement between them, as is shown in the extract from a letter to me from Nixon dated April 9, 1990 when a national magazine tentatively tried out the thesis so triumphantly vindicated in the film endorsed by the Wall Street Journal review, namely that Nixon and I were adversaries rather than partners.

"As you will of course recall, you often told me, as I have noted in my diaries, that Nancy believed that in view of McGovern's way-out position, our continuing to take a hardline on negotiations was politically helpful rather than harmful. While I shared that view, I often told you that if we could get the right deal before the election, we should do so regardless of what we thought the political circumstances might be. If we couldn't get the right deal, we should refuse to make an agreement even though we thought that the political effect would be negative. I believed that you shared that view then and still do.

There was only one area where we had a significant difference of opinion. I felt that you had more confidence in the negotiating process than I had. On the other hand, as I noted in my *Memoirs*, I had to admit, once you negotiated the Paris Peace Agreement, that you were right and I was wrong on this score."

Nixon and yours truly, the old spinmaster, were clearly trying to put one over when we presented our Vietnam policy as an effort to extricate our country honorably from a liberal debacle. It was two liberal administrations that transformed the containment approach of Eisenhower into a social reform policy that blew up in our face, as it was later to do in Somalia. It was these administrations which opened the supply routes through Laos (which Eisenhower

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wanted to defend) into Vietnam, overthrew Diem, then sent
500,000 troops with a strategy of attrition, thus leaving
the initiative to our enemy. And having negotiated a
bombing halt just before leaving office, the perpetrators of
that policy then joined the peace movement and made life
hell for those who wanted to extricate America with honor
from that war.

But the film and your reviewer were not so easily fooled.
They got to the heart of the truth - which apparently was
that the Nixon administration's heavy thinking was sham, and
the real failures were in the conservative camp because the
"two performers were eagerly awaiting the next morning's
reviews". And it was a measure of the clumsiness that the
performers' reviews turned out to be uniformly hostile
despite their most heroic efforts. No matter. Anyone
duplicitous enough to doubt that the Backfire was a
strategic bomber is also quite capable of spinning a yarn
for a TV film twenty years later to the effect that he
single-handedly achieved peace by double-crossing his
President and betraying America's allies. Such characters
must be exposed, even if it means that the _Wall Street_
_Journal_ ignores demonstrated factual misrepresentations and,
in effect, endorses the Jane Fonda version of history.

Mr. Robert Bartley
Editor
The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

## Significant Errors of Fact in TNT Docudrama

References are made to a draft script entitled "Kissinger: An American Chapter," by Lionel Chetwynd, dated November 1, 1993 (hereinafter referred to as "the Script").

There is extensive literature on Vietnam, and the controversies are many. This is to be expected, given the passions that the war aroused. However, there is also a documentary record of the negotiations and of the diplomatic and other communications surrounding the negotiations. This record constitutes a body of *fact* which contradicts many of the main themes of the Script.

This memorandum discusses in detail in the order they appear some of the more important errors of fact in the Script, with reference to authoritative documentary sources. Many of these documentary sources are in the public domain, and we have attempted to include as many as possible in the attached appendix. Other documentary sources referred to are official records of the United States Government, though relevant materials were cleared by the White House in connection with publication of Dr. Kissinger's two volumes of memoirs, *White House Years* and *Years of Upheaval*.

1. The episode in the Script suggesting *that the resumption of Kissinger-Le Duc Tho talks in the summer of 1972 was engineered by Dr. Kissinger behind President*

2

Nixon's back and only discovered by the President through
the State Department's interception of one of
Dr. Kissinger's communications with Hanoi (Script, pp. 5-10)
is a fabrication unsupported by any authentic source. The
resumption of negotiations in July 1972 (which seems to be
the time period of the episode in the Script) was developed
through a series of diplomatic exchanges in May-June 1972,
of which President Nixon was continually and fully informed
and in which he participated. The Presidential channel to
the Kremlin indeed played a major role. The sequence of
events--most of which is in the public domain--demonstrates
this:

-- On May 8, 1972, President Nixon announced that
he had ordered the mining of North Vietnamese harbors and
the resumption of bombing of North Vietnam. At the same
time, he publicly indicated his willingness to resume the
negotiations which had broken off earlier in the year.
(Nixon Address to the Nation, Appendix, Tab 1).

-- On May 9, in a news conference, Dr. Kissinger
reiterated this offer and reviewed the status of the
negotiations (Tab 2).

-- On May 24, in a meeting at Brezhnev's dacha
during the Moscow Summit, Nixon asked the Soviet leaders to

3

help arrange a resumption of negotiations. (This is discussed in many public sources.)

-- On May 29, also during the Summit, Brezhnev informed Nixon that Nikolai Podgorny, titular President of the Soviet Union, would soon visit Hanoi to promote negotiations to end the war.

-- On June 11, Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin informed Gen. Haig (Dr. Kissinger being on a visit to Japan) that Podgorny would be leaving for Hanoi on June 13 and requested a suspension of the bombing in the Hanoi area during that visit. Nixon agreed.

-- On June 12, in order to support Podgorny's initiative, Nixon authorized a formal offer to Hanoi to resume both plenary and secret negotiations.

-- On June 20, Hanoi replied, accepting the U.S. proposal and suggesting the resumption of negotiations any time after July 13.

-- On June 22 (while Dr. Kissinger was in China), Brezhnev wrote to Nixon informing him of Hanoi's willingness to resume negotiations.

-- On June 23, Dr. Kissinger informed Hanoi of the U.S. willingness to resume confidential talks on July 19. The date was chosen by Nixon.

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In short, nothing remotely resembling the Script ever occurred. Not on this occasion, indeed, not ever was there a case in which President Nixon learned of the diplomatic activities of his national security adviser by accident or through intercepted communications. The Haldeman diaries published entries, which refer frequently to Nixon-Kissinger, Kissinger-Haldeman and Nixon-Kissinger-Haldeman meetings and discussions about Vietnam, contain no references to any such episode. To suggest otherwise is false and defamatory.

Nor was there only one climactic negotiating meeting as the Script suggests. In fact, there were six rounds of meetings with the North Vietnamese once the talks resumed: on July 19, August 1, August 14, September 15, September 26-27, and culminating in the breakthrough of October 8-12. Before each meeting, Dr. Kissinger submitted a detailed memorandum to President Nixon including his recommendations, and these were discussed with the President. After each meeting, a summary was sent to the President along with analysis and further recommendations.

2. The purported snippet of a North Vietnamese Politburo meeting of May 1972 (Script, pp. 3-5) contains a series of statements falsely implying that the North Vietnamese initiatives for a political solution in 1972 were