MR. KISSINGER'S BACKGROUNDERS

1971

1-A Mr. Kissinger's Press Conference - February 23, 1971

1. Backgrounder - February 9

2. 1-A. Backgrounder - February 23 (11:35 A.M.)

3. Backgrounder - Re President's Foreign Policy Report
February 24 - (2:35 P.M.)

4. Backgrounder - Re President's Foreign Policy Report
February 24 (4:25 P.M.) (Given out for distribution)

5. Backgrounder - April 7

6. Backgrounder - April 8

7. Backgrounder - May 11 (Daily News)

8. Backgrounder - May 20 10:55 A.M. SALT (with Gerard Smith)

9. Backgrounder - May 20 11:30 A.M. SALT

10. Backgrounder - May 20 12:45 P.M. SALT (with Alexis Johnson, Amb. Gerard Smith) (only Backgrounder given distribution)

11. Backgrounder - May 20 2:12 P.M. SALT

12. Backgrounder - May 20 4:02 P.M. SALT

13. Backgrounder - Re Dr. Kissinger's Visit to Peking (San Clemente)
July 16, 1971

14. Backgrounder - October 5 -10:05 - Re Upcoming Peking Visit

15. Backgrounder re Dr. K's trip to Peking - October 27, 1971 - 4:16 P.M. (2 versions - Official & Internal Use Only)

16. Backgrounder re President's Trip to Peking - November 30, 1971

17. Backgrounder re India/Pakistan - December 7, 1971 (4:40 p.m.)

MR. SHUMWAY: Gentlemen, I am Van Shumway of
Herb Klein's office; Herb is sorry that he couldn't
be here with you for this briefing.

The ground rules, in case you wonder,
are that this is a background, off-the-record briefing;
anything that the Doctor tells you you are welcome
to use for background purposes, but not to write
stories about it.

In other words, if you use an editorial
in which you refer to something that, the stand of
the Administration, the Doctor's information is
helpful to you, why, you can say the Administration
believes this or that, in a column you could use
it that way, but we would appreciate it if you
operate under the ground rules that you do not use
this briefing as the basis of a news story, or as
the basis for a column.

Q There will be no transcript?

MR. SHUMWAY: There will be a transcript made.

DR. KISSINGER: I thought perhaps it would be
most useful if, rather than for me to make an
extended statement, if I just, if I confine myself
primarily to answering questions, taking some and

2

answering them rather extensively, because that
way I know we will be covering what you are concerned
with, rather than handing you an Administration line,
so I will answer somewhat extensively on some
questions, and why don't we -- with that, I will
take some questions.

Q How serious is our situation in Cambodia,
would you say, the military situation?

DR. KISSINGER: Let me explain the situation in
Cambodia as we see it.

First, let me say that it, in Cambodia
the intelligence is not easy to come by. We don't
have advisors with the military units. We don't
have observers to the units in the field, so we
do not have as accurate information about Cambodia
as we do about Vietnam.

What goes on in Cambodia, we are largely
dependent upon the reports of the Cambodians on the
ground, plus what we can observe from the air, plus
some other methods, but it is not as up-to-date, and
as current, and as detailed as our information is,
for example, in South Vietnam.

The problems which we have quite honestly

3

have to be compounded in the case of newspapers;
most of what newspapers get, as far as I can tell,
comes from correspondents in Phnom Penh that make
occasion forays out on the roads, and who are
very much dependent on what they hear from each
other, and from their own presence.

Now, the situation in Cambodia seems to
us to be as follows:

First, there are about 50,000 North Vietnamese
troops in the country, so if anyone talks about
expanding the war, the war has been expanded into
Cambodia by the North Vietnamese, not by us.

Those 50,000 North Vietnamese are attempting
to get ready for an offensive, either into Cambodia
or into South Vietnam; we can't yet tell.

Most of them are in the northeast part of
the country, the part of the country that extends --
there is a projection southward of Laos.

The majority of them are in the relatively
unpopulated parts of the country, and the -- and
the problems, and also so far as we can tell, the
overwhelming majority of the Cambodian population is
opposed to this invasion.

4

[cc]

The North Vietnamese have not succeeded
in organizing Cambodian populations as they have
the -- as they did in South Vietnam.

In Cambodia it is, in fact, a national war
against North Vietnamese invaders.

Now, our concern in Cambodia is to prevent
the re-establishment of safe sanctuary areas in
Cambodia from which attacks can be launched into
South Vietnam to threaten our forces, and to overturn
the military situation.

As of now there are about four North
Vietnamese divisions that are being occupied by
the Cambodians, and by the military operations that
are going on in Cambodia; those four divisions would
otherwise be active in South Vietnam against South
Vietnamese and American forces.

The significance of Cambodia, there are,
secondly from the fact that until our sanctuary
operations last year, and the previous overthrow of
Sihanouk, it now turns out that almost all of the
supplies that came into Vietnam into 4th Corps,
3rd Corps and 2nd Corps into Vietnam came through
Sihanoukville and on the roads in Cambodia. While

5

[LJ]

we were interdicting the Ho Chi Minh Trail, they were
shipping in the supplies through Cambodia.

It is indeed one of the big, I have to
confess, it's one of the -- this is strictly off-
the-record -- but one of the big intelligence failures
has been the totally incorrect assessment that was
made for six years of the significance of Cambodia
to the South -- to the Vietnamese supply operations
in -- to the North Vietnamese supply operations in
South Vietnam.

When we came in we had two intelligence
estimates -- I won't give you the figures -- that
were in, at wide variance with each other.

One was four times higher than the other,
and I always said, "But Cambodia isn't Outer Mongolia.
There must be some way by which we can get the facts
in Cambodia." But we never solved that problem.

It now turns out -- this, incidentally,
I don't want to have to send out in the transcript --
it now turns out that ten times as many supplies as
the low estimate, and three times as many supplies
as the highest estimate that no one believed were
sent in through Sihanoukville.

6

[LJ]

The reason the main forces war has, to all practical purposes, stopped in the southern half of South Vietnam, which contains 75 percent of the population, is because of the destruction of the sanctuary areas, and the closing off of Sihanoukville.

And our concern is everything we are doing in Cambodia is designed to prevent the re-establishment of Sihanoukville as a supply port, and the re-establishment of sanctuaries along the South Vietnamese border, so whatever stories come out of Cambodia, this is the objective of this Administration; but we are not concerned with Cambodia as such, we are concerned with that particular objective.

Now, what is the military situation in Cambodia?

The Cambodians have built up their forces substantially. Sihanouk had left the army in a ludicrous state -- not for even wrong reasons; he thought that since the Cambodians could never fight the North Vietnamese anyway, and since he didn't want to have a force in the country that might want to topple him, he deliberately confined the Cambodian army to civic action projects, and deliberately kept

7

[cc]

them from any fighting capability at all.

When he left, the Cambodian army was
30,000 men strong. They have not expanded it to
about -- I forget what the numbers are, about 180,000 --
we can get the correct figure if you are interested --
it's something on that order.

By all accounts the Cambodians fight
extremely well, except they are untrained. They have
squad leaders who are students who are two weeks out
of school, and they need experience, and they are
up against seasoned North Vietnamese troops. Never-
theless, the North Vietnamese -- what the North Vietnamese
tactics are now is to harrass, to interdict supply
routes, and to create a general state of insecurity.

For example, on all the major routes they
will set up a roadblock. The Cambodian army isn't
very mobile, so the Cambodian army moves against that
roadblock, and ninety-nine out of a hundred times
they destroy that roadblock but then -- or they remove
it -- but then the North Vietnamese move 20 miles
further up the road or down the road, and set up
another roadblock. To keep a 300-mile road open
all the time is a very tough problem, if not an

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[u]

insoluable problem, for the -- for the Cambodians.

On the other hand, any time a road must
be opened, it can be done.

A few weeks ago, for example, Route 7 --
I don't, I just want to give you a feel for the
situation, and therefore I have to give you some
detail -- Route 7 which connects Phnom Penh with
Kompong Cham was cut, and one reads a lot of stories
in the paper about Kompong Cham being surrounded, and
falling soon, and Phnom Penh being cut off from
the northeast, and so forth; and they were right,
but as soon as some forces were put on that road
to be -- there were some South Vietnamese were put
on the road, together with some Cambodians. The
road was opened, and it has been opened since.

Now, I don't doubt that it's going to be
cut again. I am just asking you to see it in
perspective. When you read about a road cut, this
doesn't mean that the North Vietnamese are holding
everything around it; it means that they are harrassing,
they are trying to establish bases, and no doubt in
a few weeks, or in a month or so, they will try to
launch a significant offensive.

9

[L.C]

What are we trying to do?

We are trying to do, as I said before we
are trying to prevent Sihanoukville from falling
into their hands, and we are trying to prevent the
re-establishment of sanctuary -- of sanctuaries along
the border.

Now, the operation which has been in the
newspapers the last week, the operations along Route 4 --
the operation along Route 4, that is one of these
typical operations.

First of all, the number of North Vietnamese
along that route is not large. We estimate that
it is no more than 1,500 North Vietnamese along that
route, and we are trying to get, to drive them into
the mountains, away from that route so that they
cannot descend into Sihanoukville, and also they are
trying to get that route open for supplies from
Sihanoukville into Phnom Penh.

The forces that are operating there are about
four-fifths Cambodian and one-fifth South Vietnamese.

We have been giving them air support and
some supplies. We have not had any, any advisors
on the ground. I have looked into the pictures that

10

[LJ]

were published of Americans on the ground, and I was told there were three occasions on which there were Americans on the ground, in each case no more than ten minutes each.

The pictures that were shown here were of people who had been in helicopters that had touched down, either to deliver supplies, or to bring South Vietnamese air controllers on the ground, and where the pilot left his helicopter, or some other officer left the helicopter, but I am told by General Abrams, that in no case was the American personnel on the ground for more than ten minutes, and that was not an integral part of the operation.

Now, incidentally, that operation is not going to last more than two more weeks. It had the limited objective -- now, don't hold me to the exact day, it may take two and a half weeks, it may take a week and a half. The major point of, the primary objective of the operation is practically achieved, which is to drive the North Vietnamese off that road into the mountains, to inflict casualties on them in an area where they can't replenish -- where they can't restore their forces very easily in

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order to remove the constant threat to Sihanoukville,
and to open the road, and the intention is to have
the Cambodian forces hold the road after the South
Vietnamese and Cambodian forces have opened it.

Now, there may be other operations like
that in other parts of the country, but the purpose
will never be to conduct military operations deep
in Cambodia as such. The purpose will always be
related to the dual objective of preventing the
opening of the ports, and of preventing the re-
establishment of sanctuary operations, and the
strategic objective is this, if we can keep the --
if we can keep the North Vietnamese from re-establishing
the situation that they had last March -- that is
to say, access to the sea, plus sanctuary areas
this year -- in other words, if we get through the
dry season without collapse of that particular problem,
then we are confident that the strengthening of
the South Vietnamese forces, coupled with the
strengthening of other forces -- coupled with the
strengthening of Cambodian forces, is going to make
it next to impossible for them next year to launch
an overwhelming attack into South Vietnam.

12

[L.C.]

We are already in the situation today where, in 3rd and 4th Corps, it is very, very difficult -- one hates to use the word "impossible", but it is very, very difficult for the North Vietnamese now to launch a massive attack because of the sanctuary operations we conducted last year, and therefore, in order for us to be able to continue and to accelerate our withdrawal program, we are trying to make it impossible for them to re-establish launching bases for massive attacks into South Vietnam during this dry season, and then to count on the continued strengthening of the South Vietnamese during this year, to be able to restore the situation that might develop next year, and if you compare the situation this year with the situation what it would have been last year, last year no one would have thought it possible that the South Vietnamese could conduct an operation that far from their bases, that all ground combat in Cambodia could be turned over -- if 90 percent of the ground combat in South Vietnam could be turned over to the South Vietnamese, and if we make anything like the progress this year that we made last year then -- and we have every expectation

13

that we will do at least as well, and probably better, then we can really say that Vietnamization is going to have succeeded by this time next year.

Q Dr. Kissinger, you said that - -

DR. KISSINGER: I am sorry to have given such a long answer, but I wanted to give you our thinking and I will be more -- I will be briefer from now on.

Q You said that the Cambodian civil population rejects, or resists organization by the North Vietnamese; will they accept that long run from the South Vietnamese?

DR. KISSINGER: No. The Cambodians hate all Vietnamese, North and South, and they will not accept organization by the South Vietnamese, and if a situation should develop in which it should appear that the South Vietnamese are turning the Cambodians into a South Vietnamese colony, then we would have a massive problem in Cambodia.

Now, as of now they prefer the South Vietnamese to the North Vietnamese because at least the South Vietnamese leadership -- not always their troops, I have to be quite candid, have behaved with restraint, and with some respect for the national

14

[L.C.]

concerns of the Cambodians.

Q Is Vietnamization -- go ahead.

DR. KISSINGER: There have been troop incidents -- the behavior of the South Vietnamese troops has sometimes left something to be desired, and we have made strenuous efforts, and the Saigon government has supported us, to take strong measures against this.

Now, one way which we are attempting to minimize the degrading impact of any Vietnamese on Cambodians is to keep the number -- is to encourage the South Vietnamese when they go into Cambodia, only to go in for specific operations, and then to withdraw.

There aren't any -- I am familiar with only one semi-permanent base of the South Vietnamese in Cambodia, and that has been established at the urgent request of the Cambodians along the Mekong in order to keep open the waterway from Saigon up to Phnom Penh.

Otherwise all the operations of the South Vietnamese into Cambodia, to the best of my knowledge -- at any rate, that is the dominant pattern, have been

15

[cc]

launched from South Vietnam, have had a definite
time limit on them.

For example, the operation along Route 4
that is now going on has a very definite time limit
on it, and the only reason I don't give it here is
because if it slips by a day or two, I don't want
to be in trouble about a credibility gap, but I
would be amazed if it went much beyond two more
weeks, and that will be the pattern in all other
operations; we are strongly discouraging -- and I
must say that we are under no pressure from Saigon --
any permanent presence of South Vietnamese in
Cambodia.

Now, we have a -- you know when one looks
at the long-range situation, there is no reason in
the world, one of the big changes that has occurred
in South Vietnam, especially in III and IV Corps,
is that the North Vietnamese now have to fight like
a conventional army, that the guerrilla forces are
being ground down, and they can no longer hide in
the population. They also can no longer hide --
they can, have never been able to hide among the
population in Cambodia; therefore, when they fight in

16

Cambodia, they have to fight a conventional battle.
In Cambodia they are at the end of a 600 mile supply
line over very bad roads coming down through Laos.
There is no inherent reason in the world if Vietnamization
is successful, why the South Vietnamese coming in
from a supply line or 50 to 100 miles should not
be able to hold them off at the end of a 600 mile
supply line, not in the jungles of the northeast,
but in the areas that are of strategic importance to
South Vietnamese, mainly the heavily populated areas
contiguous to South Vietnam.

Q If Vietnamization is completed a year from
now, as is your prediction, what will the United
States have left in Southeast Asia?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I am not saying that our
troop withdrawal program will be completed a year
from now; I am saying that Vietnamization will have
reached a point a year from now where we will be
able, with some confidence, to point to the end of
the road.

Q But aren't they parallel?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, no. I think what is
parallel -- what is parallel, the seeing the end of

17

the road is not necessarily parallel with the end
of the road.

We have -- we have refrained from giving
precise dates until we knew that we could meet
them, and we have, because we have tried to keep
every promise we have made, and we have kept every
promise we have made, so I don't want you, I -- if
I left the impression that a year from now we would
have completed the whole process, that was a mistake.

But we will be, a year from now, in the
middle of a continuing and, I am confident, accelerating
process, and we will be able to see, to say with
confidence where it will lead, and it will not be
an infinite time period.

At the end of that process, whenever it is,
we would expect that most -- well, all American
combat forces will be removed, and indeed most
organized, most organized units will be removed, and
there will be only volunteer advisors left -- of a
number that I am not going to go into now.

Q What does this mean --

DR. KISSINGER: And they will be related, their
presence will be related to the actions of the North

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Vietnamese on prisoners and other issues; we will
not withdraw every last American until we are
satisfied on the other issue.

Q What does this mean in terms of the military
budget, defense budget for next year?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, we inherited a very tough
military budget situation.

First -- because no new strategic programs
had been started for ten years, and most -- and a
big slice of the defense budget, up to 40 percent,
went into current operations on Vietnam, so we,
there was no new strategic program, and modernization
was slowed down from 1965 onward.

We reduced, when the budget projection that
Secretary Clifford left for us was for a budget
this year, at 1968 prices, of $83 billion dollars,
I mean, that was his projection; we have cut the
defense budget substantially below that, we have
cut the defense budget substantially below the level
that had been established by the previous Administration.

But on the other hand, not all the savings
that are made from Vietnam can be simply withdrawn
from the defense budget. This is -- this is one of

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[LJ]

the problems.

We have -- for example, we have to put
a fair amount of money now into hardening our
Minutemen. This is made necessary because of the
improvements in accuracy of the Soviet strategic
forces, because of the new multiple warheads that
they have developed, and because there is a real
danger that the strategic, that our strategic forces
could become vulnerable to a surprise attack. This
is also the reason for parts of the ABM program.

But, of course, secondly, some of the
money that is saved from Vietnam will have to be
spent for military assistance and economic assistance
for the South Vietnamese forces, so there may be --
so whether there is a great decline from present,
from the budget that will be presented next week,
in the years ahead and largely, less on Vietnam
than on the progress we make with the Soviets in
the talks on strategic arms limitation.

If those talks make progress then some,
some budgetary savings are foreseeable, but without
them, I don't think that huge savings are foreseeable
in the next, in the next few years.

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On the other hand, as you will see in the budget that we will present next week, that in 1955 the percentage of our total budget that was represented by defense was over 50 percent; in the next budget it will be below 35 percent.

The percentage of the Gross National Product represented by the defense budget is constantly declining.

In other words, while the total figures may not decline, the relationship to the total expenditures of the Federal Government, as well as the relationship to the total GNP indicates the reordering of priorities that has been going on.

Q Can we be reasonably sure of a friendly and stable government in Phnom Penh, or are we likely to run into another Saigon, with governments replacing each other, in the absence of a communist military victory?

DR. KISSINGER: As I said, the political stability of South Vietnam -- of Cambodia is not an end in itself for us. The primary concern we have is to keep Cambodia from being turned into a communist military base aimed at South Vietnam in the, in the

21

[L.C.]

period in which Vietnamization is taking hold and
while American forces are being withdrawn, so even
if you got into a situation where you had a number
of governments succeeding each other in Phnom Penh,
if that did not necessarily lead to a communist
takeover, we would not consider that the ultimate
calamity.

I think it is possible that the situation,
that the political situation in Phnom Penh will have
its ups and downs. Up to now their cohesion has
been amazing, and we, we can't detect any, any cross
currents.

Now, the sort of attack that took place,
like yesterday at the airport in Phnom Penh --
which was a very serious one -- could create some
psychological tremors in the city.

Of course, this is the sort of attack, as
we proved in Son Tay that, a few weeks ago, that a
small group of men can always get into any one area
and do some, and do some damage; it is not an
indication of total, of total communist strength,
so I wouldn't exclude it.

It doesn't now look as if you had, as if

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[cc]

you would -- as if there were a probability of a
succession of coups as you have in Saigon three or
four years ago, but I don't exclude it; that would
not be the worst thing that could happen, though.

Q How much of a factor is Sihanouk himself
in all of this? He was talking about returning.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, that is right.

Now, Sihanouk is really a tragic figure,
because in many respects, I consider him a genius.

He did walk his tightrope, for ten years,
with enormous skill, and the trouble with him was
he went out on his tightrope every year, did a
somersault, and went and danced off it.

Last March he was getting really cute, got
out on his tightrope, did a double somersault, and
fell off, and now some of my academic friends say
"CIA did it."

I wish the CIA were as good as my academic
friends believe it is, but I have -- but the somber
fact of the situation is that a, the only -- there
have been two coups in Southeast Asia that produced
results generally favorable to U.S. interests. And,
as I said, the somber fact is that both coups occurred

23

[LC]

in countries in which we didn't have a single CIA
man -- so I don't know whether we shouldn't pull
them out of the countries where we do have them.

But at any rate, we had nothing to do with
it. I don't know why I should brag about that, we
had nothing to do with it; indeed, when I first
heard about it, I thought that Sihanouk had arranged
it himself, so that he could be called back in
triumph and for about four days I didn't take it
too seriously.

I have to say in my defense that I was,
at one end, at convictions with Sihanouk, and who
was more of an expert on Cambodia; Sihanouk, every
year he went -- first of all, let's remember who
overthrew him.

He wasn't overthrown by any opponents. He
was overthrown by his own government. He was over-
thrown by the government he had himself put in, and
that was running the country in his absence.

Now, every year Sihanouk went to Paris for
two months, and put his, left his government in the
hands of somebody else. Usually that was the period
he -- he did all his dirty work on the communists, so

24

[LC]

that if anything blew up, he could blame his government, and he could come back as the savior.

Now, what he had planned to do, he was in the process of trying to squeeze these communist sanctuaries along the Vietnamese borders, and he was trying to get them to reduce the size or the sanctuaries, as well as to give them a fixed date for their removal.

He had planned to go to Moscow and Pekin in order to ask their support with Hanoi in getting the North Vietnamese present in his country reduced, so he was not on a pro-communist mission.

About two days before he set out for Paris there were some -- well, about a week before there were some riots in Phnom Penh directed against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. We frankly thought -- and we still believe -- that, "A", he knew about them, and "B", that they were organized by the government in order to strenghten his negotiating position in Moscow and Pekin, so that he could claim that popular indignation was running away with him, and but then these riots, which proably were encouraged by the government, ran away with him.

25

Now, at that point he made the worst decision of his life. If he had got on a plane then and gone home to Phnom Penh, he would still be ruling Cambodia, and the whole sequence of events would have been different, and that was his intention.

But between the morning of the day when he bought Air France tickets to get him back to Phnom Penh, and the evening when he got on the plane to Moscow, something happened that we don't understand, and that no one knows. He decided to go to Moscow; he decided to go on his trip to Moscow and Pekin, and if nothing had happened, continuing to negotiate the reduction of North Vietnamese forces, perhaps in the hope that he could come back to Phnom Penh then to claim some success, and re-establish himself; but what he had in mind no one knows because no one has ever talked to him again since then.

So off he went to Moscow, and while he was in Moscow he was deposed.

Then the Russians made a terrible mistake -- which I am sure they are regretting -- and let him go on to Pekin, and that is where he has been ever since.

26

Now -- and this has created an enormous complication for everybody.

For the Russians, the complication is that if Sihanouk comes back to Cambodia, that means they are getting a Chinese stooge into Southeast Asia.

For Hanoi it creates the complication that they are not spending hundreds of thousands of lives in order to establish the Chinese as the dominant influence in Indo-China, and for Hanoi it creates the additional complication that however communist Sihanouk may now talk, they know that the mission on which he set out from Phnom Penh last year was not in their favor.

But for us it creates the complication, and for everyone else it creates the complication that whatever Sihanouk's original intentions were, his kick, the reason he stayed in power until March '60 -- March of '70 was that he convinced the communists that he was as far left as you could safely go in Cambodia.

He pushed -- he deliberately placed himself on the left wing of the center and right wing, and therefore he constantly kept building up the center

27

and right wing, and always had in his cabinet people
far to the right of him, in order to be sure that
he was the most acceptable figure to the communists.

If he comes back now, the center and right
wing will have to be destroyed. There is no way,
other way for him to come back, since he is now,
to all practical purposes, held incommunicado in
Pekin, and has become a Chinese stooge, so the
balance of forces in Cambodia would be destroyed
by his return, and he would now have to come back
as a communist, as a Chinese communist front man.

But the interesting thing is all of us,
including the Russians, expected that he would show
up in some city in Cambodia as the head of the
Cambodian National Government.

But the fact, the lack of proper support
for the communists is shown by the fact that there
isn't any city in which he can plausibly establish
himself in Cambodia, nor any part of the population
that he can reliably keep as his own, so the problem
of Sihanouk is that he is really a very tragic figure.
He is not a communist, and -- but he can succeed only
now by being a communist stooge, and by mouthing

28

[L.C.T.]

phrases which are absurd in light of what one knows
about him, and now I think it is extremely unlikely
that however Cambodia comes out, Sihanouk will be
a principal figure in it. He is not really reliable
enough for Hanoi; he is not really trusted enough by
the Russians, and for the Chinese to make a total
power play of installing him would be a tremendous,
would be a tremendous step, and you know, interestingly
enough, the Russians have not withdrawn recognition
from Phnom Penh. They still have an embassy. They
still have an embassy in Phnom Penh with the Lon
Nol government. They had an ambassador there until
he went on summer vacation, from which he hasn't
returned, but his staff is still in Phnom Penh, and
they still recognize Lon Nol, and they still have
diplomatic contact there. They have not yet recognized
Sihanouk.

Q Doctor, you indicated that there are three
divisions of South Vietnamese in Cambodia; what is --

DR. KISSINGER: Four divisions of North Vietnamese.

Q Four divisions, no divisions of South?

DR. KISSINGER: No. There are four divisions
of North Vietnamese in Cambodia. There are, at this

29

moment, there is a fairly small force of South
Vietnamese, certainly less than 5,000 -- I think
it is around 2,000, but I am not sure what the
exact figure is on that Route 4 operation. I am
sure it is less, it is much less than five.

Q I misunderstood your statement. I am sorry.

DR. KISSINGER: No, no. There are four divisions
of North Vietnamese in Cambodia who otherwise would
be fighting in South Vietnam.

Q What is the greatest difficulty our troops
are experiencing in training the South Vietnamese
to fight? Is it a language barrier?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, the South Vietnamese,
the South Vietnamese have made absolutely spectacular
progress in the last year.

General Abrams, when he came into office,
General Abrams used to speak of the best South
Vietnamese division, which usually then was the
only good South Vietnamese division. Now he is
talking of the seven or eight best South Vietnamese
divisions, and if they were -- for example, in
IV Corps the Delta, which has 40 to 50 percent of
the population, there are no American troops, and

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[cc]

there haven't been any American troops since 1969. When we started our withdrawal program, we took a deliberate big gap. The first ideas with respect to the withdrawal program had been to withdraw support troops, and everyone used to say, well, there are enough Army bands in South Vietnam to withdraw 50,000 men just from the PXs, and from the Army band, and from the tail. We made the deliberate decision to withdraw in the first incrimant only 25,000, but who have, 90 percent of them combat troops, because we felt that the only way we could ever make the South Vietnamese stand on their feet is to show them that American combat troops were coming out, and that there was a terminal point.

Then we made another deliberate decision, rather than spreading these combat troops across the whole country, we had one division in the Delta, and we just pulled that division out, and we frankly weren't sure what would happen in the Delta, but for a year the situation in the Delta slightly deteriorated, but only slightly, that was actually great progress, because if it had continually deteriorated at that rate, they would still have a fighting chance,

31

but since the Cambodian operation, the situation
in the Delta has dramatically improved, because there
are no longer main force units coming into the Delta
from Cambodia, and because the Cambodian troops --
the Vietnamese troops that have fought in Cambodia
developed tremendous confidence.

Strangely enough -- and we haven't foreseen
this, so I can't claim credit for it -- the Cambodian,
one of the best results of the Cambodian operation
last year was that it showed the South Vietnamize
army, gave them confidence that they could fight,
and that they could run their own operations.

When we were planning the Cambodian
operation, people were saying, "Good God, anything
the South Vietnamese do has to be screwed up. They
will never jump off at the same moment. It will
leak all over the place, and they will jump off
over a period of two days. It will be chaos."

But it turned out that they did everything
very well, and since then no one has any hesitation
in entrusting operations to the South Vietnamese.
In fact, when Laird came back, he said one of the
curious results is that the South Vietnamese now talk

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about the Cambodians the way we used to talk about
the South Vietnamese. You don't entrust anything to
the Cambodians; anything they touch gets screwed up,
so actually if we can continue to make the progress
this year that we made last year, we are quite confident
that we can turn over combat operations to the South
Vietnamese with the feeling that the only thing that
can defeat them is political collapse in Saigon, and
not military collapse in the field.

Q How extensive is the U. S. air support in
this present Cambodian action?

DR. KISSINGER: Again in the present Route 4
operation, I can't give you the exact numbers; I
just don't know them. But it is not -- it is not a
big operation.

The numbers of troops, the total number
of troops involved, Cambodian as well as Vietnamese,
I am sure is below 10,000, so we are talking of --
I don't know how you measure extensiveness, but it
is, it is tiny compared to the sort of thing that
used to go on in South Vietnam. There are a number
of sorties -- the priorities we have established,
that wherever possible the South Vietnamese Air Force

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should do it. Only where the South Vietnamese
Air Force isn't adequate do we permit American
planes to be used.

But the scale of this is small, and in
similar -- and we can believe that by this time
next year, or shortly thereafter, but at any rate
within a reasonable time span, this sort of operation
can be conducted entirely by South Vietnamese.

Q There are no -- do you foresee a military
situation in which we would have to use on-the-ground
advisors in Cambodia?

DR. KISSINGER: No, we are -- we will, under
no circumstances, use on-the-ground advisors in
Cambodia. We believe that -- and I am being very
candid with you, we believe that this year it is
very important to prevent the North Vietnamese from
re-establishing the secured base areas, which they
can then build up and hit us just when our withdrawal
is really in its maximum acceleration, and debauch
out of there, and this is the purpose of the present
operation, to prevent them from getting set. The
South Vietnamese have no intention of establishing
any permanent occupation in any of the territories

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that they are now operating in, and may operate in;
the kind of air support we are giving, it's limited
compared to things that have been going on before,
but at any rate, we will not put American ground
troops in, we will not put American ground advisors
in; any operations into sanctuary areas will be
conducted by South Vietnamese, but there will be
American air and logistic support, but it will be
the difference in the scale, it will not be the
principal equation.

Q I have difficulty pinning down the number
of South Vietnamese involved.

DR. KISSINGER: In the present operation?

Q Well, in Cambodia.

[L4]

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[LCJ]

DR. KISSINGER: Well, you see, there isn't
any permanent occupation.

Q Yes, I understood that, but what average
figures, since June, have they had in there?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I wish I had looked
up the figures. I can only tell you now, from
off the top of my head, my estimate, now, these
are strictly off-the-record figures, I am just
giving them to you to give you a sense of what
magnitudes we are talking about, my guess is,
my rough guess is that there are no more than
3,000 involved on that Route 4 operation, and
they will be withdrawn, as I said, within, let's
say, within three weeks.

Q But are they the only South Vietnamese
troops?

DR. KISSINGER: Then there used to be a
fire base along the Mekong River, which had one
battalion in it, which would be what, about 800
or a thousand. Outside of that, there are forays
into sanctuary areas that come and go, for example,
that was never reported because it was in a very
unpopulated area; it was reported in Saigon. It

36

wasn't picked up here, in this operation on Route 7
that I mentioned to you earlier, when Kompong Cham
was surrounded, there were, 2,000 South Vietnamese
were airlifted in -- incidentally, entirely by
the South Vietnamese. We had nothing to do with
that, with the airlift, but we gave -- there was
a little air support in that area -- 2,000 came in.
They helped open Route 7. They stayed in for two
weeks, and then they came out again. They haven't
been in since, so we are not talking, at this
moment, of huge operations, and we are not planning --
I am not familiar with the planning of huge operations.

But you will get these occasional forays,
which sometimes may be a little larger, sometimes
a little smaller, but none of them are principally --
well, none of them are designed to occupy territory.

They are trying to, you see, the great
advantage the North Vietnamese have had in the past
is they have been able to get set for their
offensives. They -- we saw them coming prior to
the Tet offensive for months, and they are
meticulous planners. They preposition everything,
and indeed, they fight a curious war. Most armies

37

[LCS]

have their supplies behind them; the North Vietnamese put their supplies ahead of them, and fight into their supplies, with the result that the more they move, the more formidable they get, because they pick up their supplies as they go along.

Now, this meticulous planning, the fact that they have to prepare it three months ahead of time, we believe we can make work against them, if we never let them get set.

See, every time we destroy one of these forward supply bases, they have to go back to the drawing board, and this is really the strategic concept behind these operations that are going, is to prevent a major offensive from developing this year, and so they will come and go, and if we then can get through this dry season, you see, after July they won't be able to launch a major offensive, and that is the purpose, not to occupy any territory. There won't be any permanent South Vietnamese garrisons in Cambodia -- at least I am not familiar with any such scheme.

Q But with that, the reason I asked the question was if that small number of South Vietnamese

38

[L.C.]

can occupy 50,000 North Vietnamese in Cambodia --

DR. KISSINGER: It's not the South Vietnamese who are occupying them; it's the south -- there are also 180,000 Cambodians.

Q I understood that in back of this was the South Vietnamese; the Cambodians are still untrained.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, yes, except, you see, one, it's a very good question for this reason; if the North Vietnamese were still as formidable as they were two years ago, they would have routed the Cambodians by now, and run them back to Sihanoukville. One proof we have -- we have a number of proofs that these sanctuary operations really hurt them last year; one is the drop in U.S. casualties.

We firmly expected last year, when we went into Cambodia, that for a period of a few months our casualties would rise because we thought that they had an interest in hitting back with a bigger offensive in order to maximize domestic dissension in this country, and we saw no strategic objective of theirs that was served by letting our casualties drop. In fact, our casualties have dropped from an average of 110 a week to a present average of about

39

35 a week.

Last year at this time when we had, we --
in which less than a hundred were killed, I would
run into the President's office and report it as a
great success. Now when we have more than 30 killed,
we have explanations to make of how that happened.
That shows -- this is still too many, but it shows
which way the situation has gone.

The other is the fact that even though
they are building up, they have not run the
Cambodians back the way one would have thought
they could do if they, if they still had their
full punch.

The third factor is that the particular
skill of the North Vietnamese has been the meshing
of guerrilla and main force operations, so that if
you fought the guerrillas, the main forces hit you;
if you fought the main forces, the guerrillas hit
you.

Well, in Cambodia they have no guerrillas,
and they have very tough supply lines, so any time
they want to attack the Cambodians, they have to
fight like a regular army. When they fight like a

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