AUG. 07 '85 12:30 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

WGBH

WGBH Educational
Foundation

125 Western Avenue
Boston
Massachusetts 02134
617 492 2777
Telex 710.330 6887

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Suite 1021
1800 K Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20006

April 8, 1985

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

I am writing in response to your letter of March 22, 1985 to Mr. Charles Otto, in which you deny permission for WGBH to include your interview in the transfer of WGBH's archive holdings of materials developed for, VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY.

Since your interview is not only an integral part of the
collection of materials WGBH is conveying to the University
of Massachusetts, but also is important in its historical
context as a statement of the Vietnam War "Era," I have
taken the liberty of enclosing a transcript of your
interview for your review. After reviewing the transcript,
WGBH would again request your assent to the release of your
interview materials along with the remainder of the
collection.

WGBH trusts that reviewing the enclosed transcript of your interview will enable you to make a favorable decision upon reconsideration; and thus, allow your interview to be included in what we consider to be one of the most comprehensive collections of archive materials pertaining to the Vietnam War to be housed at the University of Massachusetts archive.

Again, thank you.

cc: Sue Kantrowitz, Esq.

Public Broadcasting

Boston:

Channel 2
Channel 44
WGBH Radio

Springfield:

Channel 57

Lowell Institute
Cooperative
Broadcasting
Council

Boston College
Boston Symphony
Orchestra

Boston University
Brandeis University

Harvard University
Lowell Institute

Massachusetts Institute
of Technology

Museum of Fine Arts

Museum of Science
New England

Conservatory of Music
Northeastern University

Immons College

Uffolk University

Uitsu University

University of
Massachusetts

Vellesley College

APR 11 1985

AUG. 07 '85 12:31 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

WGBH Educational
Foundation
125 Westem Avenue
Boston
Massachusetts 02134
617 492 2777
Telex 710 330 6887

May 13, 1985

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

Pursuant to your request, enclosed please find
an additional copy of the interview which you
provided WGBH during production of its series,
VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY.

My apologies for the delay in getting this to you,
however, the cataloging process had made your
interview temporarily unavailable.

If I may be of any further assistance, please do
not hesitate to contact me at the above address, or
at extension 4233.

MAY 15 1985

Public Broadcasting

Springfield:
Channel 57

Lowell Institute
Cooperative
Broadcasting
Council
Boston College
Boston Symphony
Orchestra
Boston University
Brandeis University
Harvard University
Lowell Institute
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology
Museum of Fine Arts
Museum of Science
New England
Conservatory of Music
Northeastern University
Simmons College
Suffolk University
Tufts University
University of
Massachusetts
Wellesley College

AUG. 07 '85 12:40 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.03

WGBH

[L]

WGBH Educational
Foundation

125 Western Avenue
Boston
Massachusetts 02134
617 492 2777
Telex 710 330 6887

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

Attn: Ms. Chris Vick

July 16, 1985

JUL 18 1985

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

I am writing in regard to WGBH's request to include the interview you provided WGBH during production of its television series VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY, in the transfer of the WGBH Vietnam archive to the University of Massachusetts in Boston.

Public Broadcasting

Boston
Channel 2
Channel 44
WGBH Radio

Springfield
Channel 57

In speaking with Rosemary Nias of your Washington office this morning, it was suggested that you be informed of the current status of negotiations between WGBH and the University. It was also suggested that the time table for closing and transfer of the archive would be of assistance to you.

Lowell Institute

Northeastern University

Simmons College

Suffolk University

Tufts University

University of
Massachusetts

Wellesley College

Currently, WGBH and the University have finalized negotiations and have signed an agreement concerning the terms and conditions of the sale of the WGBH archive. Closing is scheduled for this Thursday the 18th of July, and it is expected that physical transfer of the archive will occur on or before August 15, 1985. Since you have not yet consented to this transfer of your interview, it has been segregated from the materials which have been approved for transfer.

If you have any further questions concerning the proposed transfer of your interview, please do not hesitate to contact me. We here at WGBH hope that you will reconsider your initial denial of assent, and that you will allow your interview to be included in the transfer of this important and valuable archive.

cc: Sue Kantrowitz, Esq.

AUG. 07 '85 12:32

P.12

June 19, 1985

MEMO FOR HAK

FROM: Rosemary

SUBJECT: WGBH Request re Your Vietnam Interviews

This is to deal with the WGBH request that you agree to the transfer of the entire unedited texts of your Vietnam interviews, as part of the whole program collection which the station wants to give to the University of Massachusetts at Boston. I understand that negotiations for that arrangement are still underway but an agreement is expected early next month and WGBH hopes your texts can be included.

The original proposal from WGBH is at Tab A. In response you wrote a letter of objection, because of the wide-ranging powers that would be granted to U/Mass with respect to future use (publication, including of derivative works, display, etc) of the materials.

WGBH (via its legal department) appealed your decision by sending you a copy of your entire unedited transcripts - per their letter at Tab B. You had begun to look at the texts but they were ultimately misplaced.

At Tab C is another copy which WGBH provided and it is the one that requires your review.

I assume from the fact that you had begun to read the transcripts that you are now inclined to assent. If this is not the case, do you want another letter turning down the request?

yes

Assuming you plan to go ahead, the following pertains to Tab C:

--The unedited transcripts will go along with sound tracks and film footage related to your interviews.

** In short, WGBH does not really want your transcripts edited since they should match the sound tracks.

--There are a few edits marked in red which must be made nonetheless and a few yellow flags to point up some problems.

--Elsewhere I have marked in pencil edits I think you might insist on for readability - such as the "ahs" and needless repetition of words. I think this is legitimate clean-up since no real substance is being changed.

Your guidance and review and/or edits would be appreciated.

Do you?

___ want to let it go with no changes?

___ ask for only minor changes (in red)?

✓ ask for all changes noted?

cont'd

AUG. 07 '85 12:34

PAGE 2

There is another thing you might do to ensure your total perspective is included in the U/Mass collection. On the first page of your interviews you mention your memoirs. We could ask that a footnote be inserted citing both memoirs and giving the chapter numbers and pages etc. of everything dealing with Vietnam.

No ____ Yes, write up footnote as above and insert.

When you have reviewed the package, I will prepare an appropriate letter from you to WGBH reflecting whatever approach you want to take.

April 8, 1985

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

Again, thank you.

cc: Sue Kantrowitz, Esq.

**Public Broadcasting**
Boston:
Channel 2
Channel 44
WGBH Radio
Springfield:
Channel 57

**Lowell Institute**
**Cooperative**
**Broadcasting**
**Council**
Boston College
Boston Symphony
Orchestra
Boston University
Brandeis University
Harvard University
Lowell Institute
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology
Museum of Fine Arts
Museum of Science
New England
Conservatory of Music
Northeastern University
Simmons College
Suffolk University
Tufts University
University of
Massachusetts
Wellesley College

APR 1-1 1985

VIET NAM
HENRY KISSINGER
SOUND ROLL 467, TAPE 1, SIDE 1

ch

Viet Nam Project for WGBH. This is
April 17, 1982. This is an interview with
Kissinger. Production number TVP 013.
Has a reference minus eight db zero.
And there's a hiss for azimuth alignment.

Sound roll 467. This will be
picture roll 2462.

KISSINGER

Your questions are clear enough. I have
not had a chance. I wanted to yesterday read
my Viet Nam chapters in the first book of ...

Q: Here's a thought Mr. ... when Stanley asks the question and asks to stop, we've all been through it and we've got this, you know we've got it all ...

We got it all ...

Ya ...

We'll talk back to you ...

Q: Just before we start I want to show you

KISSINGER
SR 467

-2-

(chuckle)

On one.

The Viet Nam book.

A: Oh, so you're going to be the one that kills me, not the broker.

Q: This is one story, you've seen all the questions, if you could describe your feelings with this involvement in Viet Nam as you went through, before you went to the Nixon administration, foreign affairs . . . and, you know, where did you think . . . did you think of attrition

the strategy was working, Could you envisage negotiation U.S. credibility?

without undermining The things that you wrote about . . . one thing, shall I repeat the question, Peter.

Sure. Beep.

Q: Could you describe your feelings and attitudes towards the U.S. involvement

KISSINGER
SR 467

in Viet Nam before you went to the Nixon administration.

A: Well, ah, in 1962 to '65 when the involvement developed I really my attitude was that this was an area about which I knew very little. Ah. I once asked, I believe it was Walt Rostow how when they were sending twenty-thousand troops how they thought they could win with 20,000 what the French couldn't win with 150,000 and he sort of dismissed it, but I didn't feel strongly about it one way or another. Probably I, like most others, was leaning towards supporting the involvement, but I didn't examine it.

In 1965 I went to Viet Nam as a consultant to Ambassador Lodge and had an opportunity to travel around the country and I concluded then that there was no way of winning the war in the manner in which it was being conducted and I said so to McNamara, Bundy and others.

Ah. M cNamara pretty well had come to the same conclusion. Bundy was ah less

KISSINGER
SR 467

-4-

committal about his own views ah and
he strongly supported the administration
ah policy. So, I felt from that moment on
that we had to find a negotiated way out.
But, I also felt that having committed
that many forces, we couldn't simply
walk away, and these thoughts over a
period of time crystalized into an
article that I put before, that I
published in *Foreign Affairs*. More or
less simultaneously with my
appointment as security adviser to Nixon.
When I wrote it I had no idea that I'd
become security adviser to Nixon
simply the lead time of the magazine
in which I more or less outlined the
policy that I then pursued when I got
into office tending to separate the
military from the political outcome and
ah and and indicating the directions in
which our negotiations should go.

Q:

How did Viet Nam fit into the Nixon
administration's foreign policy priorities?
What was the Nixon doctrine? How did it

KISSINGER
SR 467

-5-

apply to you?

A:

Well, you have to remember, we inherited a nightmare. Ah. And, much of the public discussion today, the impression is created as if the Viet Nam War was were Nixon's war. We found five hundred and twenty-five thousand troops in Viet Nam and the numbers were still increasing on the basis of schedules established before we got into office. So, we inherited it as a priority. We had no choice about it.

KI

Ah. And, we made up our minds from the beginning that we were going to try to disengage from Viet Nam. And, all of the debates afterwards were really about, with the moderate critics, were about rates of disengagement not about the fact of disengagement. So, it had to be a high priority. It was affecting our domestic stability. It was the consuming concern of the intellectual community. It obtruded itself as a high priority. We would have preferred to do something else.

Q: Could you mention the Nixon doctrine as it

KISSINGER
SR 467

-6-

applied to Viet Nam? Did it, did
it mean that we would withdraw the troops
but retain aid and air power?

A: Ah. The Nixon doctrine ah evolved out of the need of responding to the general debate that the Viet Nam War had generated about the role of America in the world and the intention of the Nixon doctrine was to ah ~~was~~ to explain how America could reduce it s direct involvement in various local conflicts without abdicating its responsibilities as the ultimate guarantor of the global balance of power and therefore it applied to Viet Nam . . . it attempted to apply the lessons of Viet Nam in a more general sense. Ah. I don't think at the time that it was developed a clear-cut decision had been made, or theory had developed on what precise continuing role the United States would play in Viet Nam after withdrawal, but I think in the back of our mind we always expected that a settlement that was negotiated would have

KISSINGER
SR 467

-7-

to be backed in some way by ah by the
United States. I know no settlement
in history that's been self-enforcing.

Q: What were your doubts about Vietnamization?

A: Well, my concern about Vietnamization was,
and I wrote several memoranda to that
effect, my concern about Vietnamization
was that the rate of obje<sup>tions</sup> to the
Viet Nam War, and especially in the
intellectual community, was there would
be increasing faster than we could
possibly meet by troop withdrawal. And, I
wrote in one memorandum to Nixon that we
would become like salted peanuts, the
more you offered, the more ah would you
would want to eat, and so the concern
was that our bargaining position would
decline while the public pressures on us
would not be eased and that, therefore,
the negotiated out come was sss... was
dubious,
and at various times I I explored means
of bringing matters to a head earlier by
attempting a blockade or something of that

KISSINGER
SR 467

-8-

kind and getting a... to seeing whether we could get a negotiation triggered by a process other than ah than ah than this, than Vietnamization. I never could develop in my own mind any huge conviction about it, and while I did some planning, I never pursued it with the intensity I pursued other preferred solutions, and ah so I had my doubts but at the end I went along with it because the other alternative of unconditional withdrawal which is what most of the criticism finally, what most of our critics at the end of the day finally recommended, I thought would have catastrophic consequences for the United States.

Q: But, Vietnamization implied that the South Vietnamese could stand on their own. Did you believe that they could?

A: I, I thought it would be a close race.

Q: Could you repeat the sentence?

A: I thought it would be a close race whether

KISSINGER
SR 467

-9-

the Vietname . . . whether the South
Vietnamese could stand on their own, but
ah, I thought, what I thought was that
they would, there was a chance of their
standing on their own against minor
violations and against even pretty lar ge-
scale violations. But, if there were
another all-out Vietnamese assault,
probably some outside forces would be needed.

Q: Ah. Let's get into Le Duc Tho. . . Could you give me, give us your impressions of him as a person and as a negotiator. I mean how would he compare to other people you negotiated with?

Well, ah, it was our misfortune that Le
Duc Tho's assignment was to break the
spirit of the American people for the war,
and that he was engaged in a campaign of
psychological warfare so what he attempted
to do to us was extremely painful. On
the other hand, I had very high regard
for him. He was a man of enormous

KISSINGER
SR 467

-10-

discipline. Ah. He ah never made any
mistakes that I was aware of. Ah. He
stonewalled when he was trying to generate
our position within the United States and
when he decided settle when the Polit-
bureau and Hanoi decided to settle, he
did it with astonishing rapidity and
extraordinary patience and then at the
end he was flexible for a while as he
had been brutal and intransigent before.

So, I don't look back to my meetings with
him with any great joy, but I have to
say he was a man of substance and discipline
who defended the interests of the of of
the philosophy which he represented, which I
violently object with with great dedication.

Q: Did you notice ...

A: Which is more, which is kinder than he
speaks of me.

Q: You, you recall any anecdote about him
that sort of sums up his style, his
personality?

KISSINGER
SR 467

-11-

A' Oh, it's, I can't recall any any ah any
particular. Well, maybe one anecdote.
He had a tendency . . .

Q: Could you repeat . . .

A: Well, Le Duc Tho had a tendency to ah
make the same speech every day, months
on end, and ah it was sort of like a prayer
session at the beginning of a meeting,
and ah, it meant, what it symbolized was
that they had all kinds of time, that we
were going to have to collapse long before
ah before they would even think of
yielding. Ah. One of the lines in that
speech was ah you make a big effort, we'll
make a big effort. One day I heard him say
you make a big effort, we'll make an effort.
I said Mr. Special Adviser, which was his
title, have I noticed you dropped an
adjective here. He said, you're absolutely
right. Ah. Because yesterday we made a big
effort and you only made an effort. So,
today we reverse roles. Well, this you know,
this time you can relate it to joking but
ah we had to keep our composure. But, I

KISSINGER
SR 467

-13-

Tri
had taken Quang A we had a meeting in
May, 1972, which we had negotiated to
arrange for months. When I arrived there
all he did was read newspaper accounts
to me. When I said I didn't have to come
thousands of miles and negotiate for
five months for a meeting to hear newspaper
accounts. He said, if they're true what
difference does it make? Then we, Nixon
ordered the bombing of North Viet Nam and
the mining of the harbors. We resumed
negotiations. Le Duc Tho was much easier
to deal with and made many more concessions
after that then he had made in the years
before that. Similarly with Christmas
bomb . . . with the Christmas bombing,
in the session before we broke up the
talks ah he was impossible. Ah. At his
absolute obn Oxious worse. Ah. Then there
was the Christmas bombing. Ah. When we met
again ah it was, they were the easiest
negotiations since the one after, around
October 8 when when the first breakthrough
came. That happens to be a fact. He was

KISSINGER
SR 467

-14-

publicly he refused to shake hands with me and in all the pictures that were taken he never appeared with me, but inside the negotiating room he moved at tremendous speed and with as much human warmth as he was capable of generating towards a representative of the capitalist system. There certainly was more human warmth than at any *other* previous period.

Q: Could you reach a conclusion about this?
What does it tell you?

A: What it tells me is that he considered us fundamentally enemies to whom . . .

Q: Can you just say . . .

A: Ah. Le Duc Tho considered us fundamentally enemies to whom the relationship would have to be determined by the balance of forces, and if the balance of forces was unfavorable to Viet Nam, he was willing to draw the necessary conclusion. If the balance of forces was favorable to Viet Nam,

KISSINGER
SR 467

-15-

to the North Viet Nam, the fact that he ah ah that he might respect me or that I might be conciliatory, that didn't play any any role in it.

Q: Let's get into the breakthrough when you reached the agreement. When did they, when did the North Vietnamese drop their demand that Thieu be removed or leave office and, I just want to get on to when did we make the concession about allowing them to keep the North Vietnamese troops in the south.

A: Those are two separate problems.

Q: Well, let's take the first one.
Two separate problems.

A: When did the North Vietnamese agree that Thieu could stay in office? Well, after the mining and the bombing ah all summer long, they were trying out various possible concessions on us. I formed the opinion, inconclusively, I formed the opinion that they were very much afraid of Nixon's

KISSINGER
SR 467

-16-

election and that if by the middle
of September the polls showed Nixon
decisively ahead that they would probably
make a major effort to settle. I thought
it was one of the few miscalculations I
saw them make, that they felt Nixon's task
would be easier after the election with
respect to the Viet Nam War than before.
I didn't think so. I thought it would be
just as hard, if not harder, after the
election. Be that as it may. They dropped
the demand that Thieu had to resign on
October 8 I believe it was. At any rate,
whenever they put forward their comprehensive
proposal. And, that, as far as we were
concerned, was the breakthrough. With
respect to leaving North Vietnamese troops
in South Viet Nam, that proposal was already
implicit in October, 1970, when we offered a
cease fire in place. That was not coupled with
any proposal for the withdrawal of North
Vietnamese troops. It was made explicit in
our secret proposal of May, 1971. It
was publicly repeated in ah ah January, I
believe, 1972 in the sense that our Peace

KISSINGER
SR 467

-17-

Program did not call for the withdrawal
of the troops, and only called for a cease
fire so that we did not make an additional
concession on the presence of the North
Vietname . . . North Vietnamese troops in
October, 1972. We thought that issue had
been settled and we concentrated on
resupply and no re . . . no resupply and no
reinforcement which was the first time
accepted by the North Vietnamese in these
sessions.

Q: When did you first sense that the North Vietnamese recognized this concession that they keep their troops in the south?

A: Oh, I think they ah . . . Certainly I recognized that the . . . I think the North Vietnamese recognized that they could keep their troops in the south at the latest in May, 1971, and all of the proposals that we made to the North Vietnamese were seen and approved by Thieu. So, that was not a new proposal by us in October of '72.

Q: How did you, did your meeting with Breghnev

KISSINGER
SR 467

-18-

in ah May '72 at the Summit in Moscow,
did that contribute in any way to the
cease fire in Viet Nam?

A: Not in any significant way. We always ah ...

Q: You have to repeat the subject.

A: I don't think that the summit meeting and my previous visit to Moscow contributed in any significant way on the substance of the solution. We always made sure that what we told the Russians was one round behind where we were in the negotiations with the North Vietnamese. Ah. The one thing we were sure we was that Hanoi would not respond favorably to a proposal that they saw the first time coming through Moscow. So, whatever we told the Soviets, we had already told the North Vietnamese at least one or two rounds before then. Ah. It contributed to a solution, not in the sense that the Soviets brought a new proposal to Hanoi, but in the sense that the Soviets ... the fact that the Soviets received us after

KISSINGER
SR 467

-19-

the ah intensification of the war on
North Viet Nam must have contributed
to the sense of isolation and beleaguerment
of Hanoi. In that sense it helped, but not
in terms of specifics that were negotiated.

Q: What about, what was Brezhnev's reaction to the bombing of Hanoi and the mining of Haiphong?

A: Brezhnev's reaction to the bombing of Hanoi and mining of Haiphong was very tough in rhetoric and really inconsequential in action. He, he made many tough statements, but he never did anything.

Q: Did the Chinese play any role in the cease fire agreement as, including partly as you said in the case of the Russians for giving more of a sense of isolation particularly after the trip to Mos . . .

A: I think the Chinese role towards the settlement was again to contribute to the sense of isolation of Hanoi, the fact that Nixon was received in

KISSINGER
SR 467

-20-

Peking, that, obviously, ah the admi . . .
the Chinese were ah paying great attention
to improving their relationship with the
United States [?] and that they would set a
limit to the risks that they were going
to run. Again, we kept the Chinese generally
informed of our negotiations with the North
Vietnamese, but we ah because we saw them
less frequently in that period, we gave them
somewhat fewer details and they never told
us what they did in Hanoi. The Soviets
once sent a representative to Hanoi ah to
dis . . . but they didn't tell us exactly
what what he did there. I think Podgorny
went to Hanoi ah . . . the Chinese never
told us.

Q: What, what was the reason, what was your purpose in saying peace is at hand in your October, 1972 news conference?

A: Well, first of all, with respect to the
peace is at hand statement, what most
outsiders in, say, don't understand about

AUG. 07 '85 12:21 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES

WASH. DC

P.02

August 6, 1985

MEMO FOR HAK

FROM: Rosemary

SUBJECT: WGBH - Transmittal Letter

Back from vacation, I note you have approved your WGBH transcript with the edits I suggested and I need to send the package back up to Boston. (They said any time in August).

The back-up correspondence with WGBH's original request is at Tab B.

I was a bit reluctant to send this off myself because in the first letter (February 25) WGBH asked you to sign an assent form linked to the terms and conditions under which the transfer of the entire collection (including your interview) would be made.

Since you are making edits, perhaps a short cover letter of assent by you would suffice. Such a letter is attached at Tab A assuming you agree to all the conditions outlined.

Sign Tab A

As edited

Rosemary can sign transmittal letter ("Dr. Kissinger assents" - and same substance)

AUG. 07 '85 12:26 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

P.06

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
350 Park Avenue 26th Floor
New York, New York 10022

FEB 25 1985

Re: Educational use of
interview materials

February 20, 1985

Public Broadcasting

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

Since our last contact with you regarding our public television series, VIETNAM: A TELEVISION HISTORY, we have held discussions with universities in the Boston area regarding their possible acquisition of WGBH's archive holdings, prepared during the production of the series, as a resource tool. We are now in final negotiations with the University of Massachusetts at Boston and are writing to you in that regard.

Our archival materials are of special interest to the University's William Joiner Center. That Center's activities involve the organization of course offerings in the University which relate to issues of war and the effect of war on society and individuals. The Center's particular focus is on the war in Vietnam. The establishment of new courses relating to these subjects will be supported by the Center within existing patterns of developing academic programs in the College of Arts and Sciences. Also, the Center will support research concentrating on the academic subjects relevant to its mission. The service functions of the Center will include outreach, counseling, tutorial and other services particularly addressed to veterans. The Center anticipates the holding of conferences and workshops devoted to subjects relevant to veterans' concerns and to the study of war and its consequences.

All those who worked on the Series are most anxious to keep the entire archive together and accessible to interested teachers and researchers. In view of this objective on the part of WGBH, and the express purposes of the William Joiner Center, the University of Massachusetts is now building a new state archive facility, adjacent to the University's campus in Boston, in which the Vietnam

AUG. 07 '85 12:27 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASHINGTON, DC

Page 2

materials would be housed. This facility will be able to
provide sufficient climate-controlled storage space for
proper retention and preservation of the materials.

Our intention is to sell certain materials, principally those generated by us, to the University and to donate certain other materials, principally stock footage and still photographs, held by us under restricted license from third parties. As you will recall, we already hold a quite broad appearance release relating to our interview of you for our Vietnam Series. However, we wanted to advise you of our plans and obtain your specific assent. Our intent is to transfer all materials generated by us relating to our interview of you (including, to the extent applicable, interviewer's notes, audio-visual tapes, audio tapes, written transcripts of interviews and video tapes of still photographs or other materials you may have made available to us) and to transfer as well our copyright interests in those materials. The University would then be entitled to make all decisions as to such materials relating to duplication, publication, performance, display or preparation of derivative works. All materials transferred to the University, including those relating to our interview of you, would have to be maintained by the University as an integrated archive.

We believe that the materials we assembled for our
Vietnam series constitute one of the most extensive
collections of information about Vietnam in existence and
we are quite excited that a major University is willing to
maintain these materials and make them available according
to the University's educational purposes. So that we may
keep the collection together, we request your assent to our
transfer to the University of materials related to our
interview of you, with the right, as indicated above, in
the University to make all decisions as to the duplication,
publication, display or performance of, or preparation of
derivative works relating to, those materials.

We very much hope you will respond favorably. To
indicate your consent, will you please sign where indicated
below and return to us the enclosed copy of this letter.

KISSINGER
SR 467

-21-

policymaking is that you can reach a point
of total exhaustion where you have, ah,
where you can't weigh every word of what
you're saying. I, I awoke on the
morning of I guess it was October 30th to
the fact that the North Vietnamese had
published ...

Q: You have to do it against the 26th ...

A: I awoke on the morning of October 26 to
the fact that the North Vietnamese had
published ah the text of the preliminary
agreement that we had reached. At that
point I had been ah negotiating and traveling almost interruptedly since
October 8. I had had many eighteen-hour
negotiating sessions with Le Duc Tho
and equally wearing negotiating sessions with
Thieu. I had just come back from ah
Viet Nam to the Uni ... from Saigon to the
United States

Beep, Beep, Beep. End of SR 467. Tape 1,
Side 1.

CJD

VIET NAM
HENRY KISSINGER
SOUND ROLL 468, TAPE 1, SIDE 2
ch

This is April 17, 1982. Continuing interview with Dr. Kissinger for Viet Nam Project. Production TVP 013. This is Sound Roll 468. Camera Roll 2464. Here's a reference. Scene three coming up. Scene three.

If you can just pick that up. The peace is at hand.

Well...

Go ahead, sir.

A: Well, the peace is at hand press conference was not something that we had planned to do. It was something that was imposed on us by the North Vietnamese. We woke up on the morning of October 26 with the news that the North Vietnamese had published the preliminary understandings we had ah negotiated with them two weeks earlier in ah Paris and in this period between October 8

KISSINGER
SR 468

and October 26 there had been exhausting
and long negotiations with the Vietnamese
followed by equally exhausting and
long and frustrating negotiations with
the South Vietnamese so when we woke up
in ah to that news our basic concern was
two-fold. One, not to let the North
Vietnamese stampede us into something that
ah Saigon was not yet ready to do but on
the other hand, not to give Hanoi the
impression that we were overthrowing the
agreement and [the phrase "peace at hand"
was chosen to indicate that we were sticking
to the fundamentals of the agreement, ah,
but at the same time that something still
remained to be done was a warning to
Saigon that we were not going to be driven
off our course, a signal to Hanoi that we
were sticking to the main lines of the
agreement and the fact that still some
things remained to be done.] Had we had
three days to prepare for it we might have
chosen a happier phrase and one that would
lend itself less to ah later second guessing,
but we only had an hour or two to prepare for it.

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-3-

Q: Could you describe the problem of persuading Thieu to accept the cease fire agreement? And, your own difficulties with him?

A: Ah. Well, Thieu, ah who, I think whose hatred of me is poisonous, is a man I, nevertheless, respected greatly. He had to fight a civil war ah on long, nearly indefensible frontiers. Ahh. And, of an invasion simultaneously, and deal with the pressures of a distant country that really didn't know much about South Vietnamese culture and was trying to in . . . ah to institute reforms of a kind for which there were few precedents in Vietnamese history, and he did all of this with great dignity and strength. On the other hand, I don't, like all Vietnamese North or South he found the notion of compromise to ahh accept. And, for him it was a war to the finish, and, of course, he was going to be there after we left, so it was a different problem for him. So, he had accepted a number of proposals as long as he thought they weren't going to be accepted and the shock

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-4-

to him was not the specific proposals we
had accepted, because the proposals we had
accepted were so far better than anything
that we had previously put forward that we
thought, foolishly, that we'd be greeted in
Saigon with expressions of gratitude and relief. We had achieved North
Vietnamese acceptance of the continuation of
the Thieu regime in its present borders. Ah.
Or, in the territory that it controlled
which is more than he had been able to
achieve. So, he, once he was faced with a
decision to end the war, he started nitpicking
specific provisions about which he had never
raised objections when they were first
put forward plus provisions that we
thought were really had gone very far ah much
further towards his objectives than any
of our critics thought were possible. On the
other hand, I, I can understand his dilemmas.

Q: When you went back to present his demands, his 69 demands to the North Vietnamese, there were some demands that he made that were unraveling the agreement you had already

KISSINGER
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-5-

concluded. I mean, why did you do that?

A: Well, I did it because I felt . . .

Q: Say . . .

A: Well, I, I, I pro . . . I made his proposal . . .
The proposals we made when negotiations . . .

Q: Start with Thieu's . . .

A: I made Thieu's, I presented Thieu's list of changes which we had whittled down already in Saigon because I felt I owed it to him to go through them, and frankly, to demonstrate that most of them were unattainable. Ah. It is not, I do not believe that that unraveled the agreement because when Le Duc rejected them we . . . immediately we didn't persist in it . . . we immediately fell back to, I forget, six or eight essential conditions which, with which we agreed and we had reached that point already when the first round of negotiation, renegotiations ended.

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-6-

Q: What, what would you have done if Thieu had dug his heels and refused to go along with you? What option would we have had in that case? That stage?

A: Well, it was our judgement even before we made the first agreement with Hanoi that the 1973 congress would refuse to appropriate the supplementary budget which was necessary to maintain the blockade and the additional air forces and that it would probably set a fixed deadline for taking us out of the war unconditionally. Ah. So, we thought, our perception was that we were working against a very tight deadline. I suppose ... I don't know what we would have done because we were never faced with it. Nixon was threatening him with the cut-off of American aid.

Q: Do you think you could mention his name.

A: What we would have done if Thieu had refused the demand, the final agreement, I don't know. Nixon had threatened that in those

KISSINGER
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-7-

conditions he would not be able to
continue American aid. I don't believe
we would ever, ever have done that, and
probably what would have happened is that the
congress would have ah would have legislated
an end to the war. Unconditional ahh
withdrawal for no terms in return for
the prisoners.

Q: What was the aim of the Christmas bombing of '72? What was your feeling about it?

A: I was in favor of the Christmas bombing.
It had not occurred to me when I proposed ...
I did propose ... I had pointed out all
through the negotiations that if they failed,
we would have to do something military. I
thought it would be a resumption of the bombing
of the previous type which was mostly with
Phantoms. Nixon was of the view that
something shocking had to be done. That was
not my view at the time but I didn't disagree
with it, and I went along with it, and I think
Nixon turned out to be right, and ah so it
was a period of great ambivalence for me. I
was enormously unhappy. To me ending the

KISSINGER
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-8-

Viet Nam War had been the principal goal of Nixon's first term, not only in order to bring peace, but in order to end our domestic divisions. For me, almost all of my friends, of my educational period and of my professional life, were on the other side of that debate and I wanted to create conditions which would unify the country again by having an honorable end to the war in Viet Nam. So, [I was extremely depressed, not because I was opposed to the bombing, but because I was unhappy that things had reached the point where we were so close to a settlement and the thing blew up again. So, that was perhaps the most unhappy period of my government service.]

Q: Did you warn Hanoi that the bombing would take place if they did not, if they didn't sign the amended agreement?

A: I warned Hanoi that we would do something. I didn't tell them what because I didn't know what we were going to do, but that they could not assume that we would do nothing.

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-9-

Q: Just to conclude this particular period, what were your feelings about when the cease fire agreement was finally concluded? Was it a sense of relief or accomplishment and if you could throw into this your own sort of response to the suggestion that the agreement could have been reached earlier.

A: Well, with respect to the argument that the agreement could have been reached earlier that is simply revisionist nonsense. Ah. The agreement could have been reached earlier if the North Vietnamese had been prepared to accept the continued existence of a noncommunist government in South Viet Nam. All during the negotiations that had preceded the settlement the condition of the North Vietnamese was unconditional withdrawal of the United States, coupled with the overthrow of the existing structure and the formation of a coalition government in which they would retain the veto over the participants, that we could not accept. If not the North Vietnamese had accepted anything like that in 1971 or 1970 we would have settled for

KISSINGER
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-10-

it then. So, this is a myth. There
was no solution possible before October 8
when they
and when they settled, gave us the
essential condition that we had told them
for four years we needed on October 8,
I settled within seven hours without
even going back to Washington and checking
on it. On what was my, as with respect
to my feeling when the war ended, ah, in
foreign policy I have found that a great
achievement leaves you with what I've been
told women feel after a baby is born. Ah.

That again. Marvelous.

Camera roll 2465. Scene four.

I should just say I felt ...

Well, you could if you, it doesn't make ...

But you don't want me to say that.

No. It's a little smoother from ... I
can just actually ...

KISSINGER
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-11-

A: No, no, no. I thought you needed it
so the audience knew what I was say . . .

Q: When the cease fire agreement was signed
I felt . . .

I see.

Go ahead Dr. Kissinger.

A: All right. When the cease fire agreement
was signed as in many other great experiences
in foreign policy I felt somewhat as a . . .
like . . . as I'm told women feel after
they've given birth to a baby, a combination
of relief, letdown, some depression ah
because it was what we had aimed for four
years and suffered for four years. Ah. On
the other hand, one knows that any solution
in foreign policy is the admission's price
there are no final answers
to a new set of problems, and especially not
there. So, there was a sense of elation
mixed with foreboding and ah relief mixed
with wondering when the next crisis would
come and how, how we would handle it. So,

KISSINGER
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-12-

it was not the unrelieved joy that one
might have expected.

Q: But, to be more precise, when the cease
fire agreement was concluded, did you kind
of feel that Viet Nam was behind us at
that stage?

I believed that with skill, and discipline
and luck through a combination of
incentives to the North Vietnamese and
resolution and reform in the south, we
might bring about a situation in which it
could last for a fairly indefinite period
and ten years is a long time in foreign
policy, but I thought we could ah ...

Q Start again because you're not mentioning
specific. You're using it . . . it was
very good except you're . . .

A: Right.

Q: In other words did you feel that Viet Nam
was behind us after the cease fire?

KISSINGER

SR 468

-13-

A: When the agreement was signed I didn't think Viet Nam was behind us but I thought that the Viet Nam War as a divisive element in America might well be behind us. I thought that those who had opposed the war might join with us on the ground that it had after all been ended, and those who wanted an honor . . . honorable settlement would rejoice in the achievement of their, their goal. In Viet Nam itself I believed that on the basis of a new relationship with Hanoi, they might devote a considerable period to the reconstruction of the north if we created the correct incentives and we had to hold in reserve the dangers that they would run if they started another offensive by maintaining some air power and sea power in ah in the area. I thought that if properly balanced, we might have brought a prolonged period of peace which then would create its own imperatives.

Q: Why didn't the cease fire work and and did you, particularly did you think that it would hold

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-14-

after you saw Le Duc Tho again in
in June of 1973?

No, after June, 1973, I did not believe
that the cease fire would hold. Ah.
Certainly not after July, 1973. When I
saw Le Duc Tho again in June 1973 Watergate
was in full strength. We had ah already
ahm acquired intelligence documents in
which the North Vietnamese had made the
very correct analysis that Nixon would not
be in the position to repeat what he had
done in 1972 because of his ah domestic
difficulties. The congressional agitation to
end all military activities in Southeast
Asia was already in full force and everyday
a new amendment was being proposed so it
was just a question of time until it, one
of them would pass. And, Le Duc Tho, would
read them to me every day that we met so at ah
that point I pretty well, I felt that it ah,
the situation was most precarious.

Q: Would you say, I mean if you believe at
that I think that you did say that you lost

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-15-

CYJ

hope after the banning bomb . . . ?

A: Well, after the, after the bombing cut-off I lost, I lost most of my hope. I thought it would, maybe a miracle could occur. Maybe the South Vietnamese would get stronger faster. Maybe the North Vietnamese had been weakened more than we had assumed. Maybe they wouldn't believe that Nixon wouldn't find some way of retaliating anyway, ah, but those were all maybe's. At that time, we had lost control of events.

Q: Was, take the period now from the middle of '73 through 1974 was . . . could you describe to the extent to which Viet Nam was then getting overshadowed by other issues. The Middle East, Russia and the Soviet Union and so forth, and so that it became a back burner issue?

A: Viet Nam, ah, after the middle of 1973, through a whole combination of factors, Viet Nam slipped out of our, out of the control of

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-16-

a decisive American policy.
There was the Middle East oil which took
most of our energy. There were east-west
relations. That was not such a decisive
factor because they had gone on even during
ah even during the Viet Nam War and above
all there was very little we could do.
Then, with the decline of Nixon's authority
and with the election of a ah a new congress
dominated by many of the opponents of ah
of the war, the problem of getting even
material aid for South Viet Nam became
more and more difficult. The aid to South
Viet Nam had run at about two billion a
year, I believe, in 1973. It was cut to
one billion in '74 to seven hundred million
for '75. At the same time that the energy
crisis quadrupled the oil prices so that
much of the aid went to purchase of ah
of energy and ah it was at that point we
were hoping that ah the South Vietnamese
were stronger than they were, but that's
about all we could do.

Q: Though congress had stopped the bombing

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-17-

in the middle of '73 and was curbing the
aid you described, President Ford was
pledging to help the South Vietnamese.
Ambassador Martin was _impleading_ those
(?) How credible was . . . ?

A: No, no, no. Again, I haven't had a chance to review these documents ~~with~~ *what* to exactly President Ford said in 1975. Ah. What President's said is he would give what material assistance he could and he advocated an additional aid program. Ah. At that time, especially 1975, we ah we were convinced on the basis of General Weyand's mission that South Viet Nam would almost certainly be defeated, but we thought it was important for the honor and decency of America that we not be perceived as the country that stabbed its ally in the back in the last moment and, therefore, I went before congressional committees day after day asking for aid appropriations to make clear that it was not we who were pulling out but that circumstances had grown beyond our capacity to ah to manage, and

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-18-

this is what President Ford had in
his mind.

Q: And, what about the charge that Graham Martin, Ambassador Martin, didn't act fast enough to evacuate Americans and there were Vietnamese associates who were getting in the spring of '75 . . . ?

A: The evacuation of Americans from South Viet Nam was a very complicated problem because we had to fear that if we evacuated too rapidly, the South Vietnamese government in its frustration might turn on us and there might be a massacre of Americans. Ah. Secondly, we wanted to withdraw at a measured pace so that the North Vietnamese would be concerned that if they moved too fast, we might intervene in order to save the remaining Americans. At, about the rate of withdrawal of American civilians there were many disputes. Ah. Some advocated a much more rapid evacuation. Some a slower one. Martin was generally on the favor, on the side of those who were in favor of the

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-19-

slower evacuation. I was generally in
the middle between the fastest and the
slowest withdrawal. But, I don't find it
in my heart to criticize Martin who lost a
son in Viet Nam wi ... with respect to
his judgements about what was the best way
of winding up that war.

Q: So, you wouldn't, you don't have any evaluation or assessment of his performance?

A: Well, after all, we did evacuate all
Americans at the end, and ah, so it worked
out for the best.

Q: Do you, do you recall your ... I
just want to get into the ...

End of SR 468. Tape 1, Side 2.

Interview
Henry Kissinger
SR 469
Pic roll 2466

Q. Why didn't cease-fire....

A. The cease-fire collapsed because from the beginning the North Vietnamese did what they had done after every other cease-fire in Indochina, they began to test their limits of the agreement; infiltration began almost immediately, again despite the fact that to us one of the most significant provisions of the agreement was that there would be no infiltration except through designated check-points. The North Vietnamese interpreted this to mean that whatever didn't come through designated check-points was legal. So nothing came though designated check-points, and everything came through all sorts of trails, hundreds of tanks, much equipment and personnel all of which was prohibited. Then the South Vietnamese were also pushing against the edges of the agreement and the North Vietnamese simply had never given up their determination to conquer all of South Vietnam, and one thing led to another. We gradually lost the capacity to retaliate the North Vietnamese began to have less and less fear for us, it became...and the economic agreements between us and the North Vietnamese could not

C.Y.J.

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

2.

ah...
be, understandings could not be carried
out because in the climate of constant
North Vietnamese violations there was no
congressional support for them. So both
the carrots and the sticks were simultaneously
lost but the major factor was the implacable
determination of the North Vietnamese. They
used the cease-fire simply as an interlude.

Q: Let's go back now to the spring of the last act there in the spring of '75. Could you talk about this attempt to negotiate with Dobrynin. Could you recall that?

A: At the end of the war, at the end of the
collapse when of the Saigon we
assembled a large fleet of South Vietnam
for evacuation purposes. And I attempted
a rather forlorn attempt, a rather forlorn
negotiation, to ease the transition
government
by creating a coalition in Saigon and
implying that that fleet might be there
for purposes other than simply evacuation.
And proposed some sort of coalition effort
which was not refused initially. But then
after about a week of this, the North Viet-
namese started their final offensive and
it collapsed.

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

3.

Q. Could you pinpoint the Dobrynin talk... was that part of this?

A. I don't understand the question.

Q. Did you see Dobrynin to try to...

A. Yes, I saw Dobrynin and I made a specific proposal to him. But I had no illusions. I knew the coalition government would only be a way station to a complete communist take-over at that point with the South Vietnamese army destroyed. But I thought it might ease the transition and save lives and enable us to get more people out. At that point my overwhelming concern at that point after the Weyand mission, we're talking about April 1975. My overwhelming concern was to evacuate the largest number of Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, to whom we owed that minimum of protection, and therefore I engaged in any kind of time saving maneuver that occured to me, I did not believe that it was possible to arrest the ultimate takeover by more than a month or so but I thought even a month would enable us to get more people out.

CJA

4.

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

Q. To be a little bit more specific, you remember you met with President Ford and General Weyand in Palm Springs. On April 5....could you recall what happened?

A. My meeting with Weyand and President Ford... I don't remember the details, except that it was General Weyand's judgement that it was very unlikely that the South Vietnamese could maintain their position for any length of time. And therefore our problem was how to wind up the war in a manner that was most protective of the millions who had after all relied on American promises over three American administrations and painful as that may have been especially on the first administration that got us involved which there and in was our predecessor.

Q. But then President Ford went on to give a speech at Tulane in which he said it is a war that "Vietnam is finished"...did that come out of this meeting that you had?

A. The Tulane speech did not come out of it. And that meeting. I uh I was not aware he was going to use that exact phraseology, and I, it reflected our views but I did not think that it would be announced in

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

5.

quite this manner, although it reflected
our views.

Q. How did you feel when it was all over?
when Saigon had fell to the Communists?.
Did you feel that we could have done it
differently? First start with the first
one, if you could recall your own emotions.

A. When Saigon fell, I was uh I was extremely depressed. It was the end of an effort that America had started in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations with idealism and with good purposes. It had staked, we had staked more than we could achieve and uh I had given many years of my life to try to achieve an honorable outcome but above all I felt for the people in Indochina who in relying on distant friends had pursued a certain course of action who and would now be left to the mercies of a victor who had never shown enormous compassion in the past. But of course on that last day my job was to manage the evacuation so I was uh I was extremely busy.

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

6.

Q. Just another, if I can ask you to recall another sentiment, did you feel at that point that a different American approach might have achieved a different end?

A. I, whether a different American approach could have achieved a different end, the only American approach that could have achieved a different end would be to go, would have been really. to go for all out victory. Once we were engaged in a protracted war, uh, it was we were playing their ball game, uh, maybe if we could have kept our domestic structure intact, it might have been a different end. But it would still have been very painful... if it hadn't been for Watergate. I didn't think then, and I regret to say I don't think today that the situation that the Nixon administration inherited permitted many different policies.

Q. Do you think that Vietnam was a victim?

A. Vietnam... It's a close call. Whether Vietnam was a victim of Watergate or not depends on my...oh judgement whether the American people would have supported the limited military efforts that would have been needed to shock the North Vietnamese into understanding that

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

7.

we would not accept a total violation of
the agreement. At any rate Watergate
accelerated the demise of Vietnam. I don't
believe that the collapse would have
occurred this rapidly, whether it would
have occurred ultimately or not, historians
will debate forever.

Q. I'm skipping the evacuation questions....

TONE

Synch² coming up, synch 6

TONE

OK?

Q: How did you feel about the anti-war movement especially in the beginning of the Nixon....

A: Well, the anti-war movement at least the
moderate side of the anti-war movement
which was the one I knew best, was led
by friends of mine, and it contained

all of the people with whom I
who had been

colleagues of mine at the

whose opinion I valued. And so

Washington convinced that a

SR 469.

Henry Kissinger

8.

in winning them to a policy of negotiation and of uh conciliation. And within the first year of my period in Washington we in fact proposed formally what was the minority plank of the Democratic party that had caused all the uproar at the Democratic convention in 1969. To my sorrow and dismay I noticed that for every move we made towards this group, they moved a step further, so that we were we never got any firm ground under our feet, and we never obtained the support of the people whose opinion I had always treasured... and many of whom are still people I respect enormously. So gradually we drifted apart and from my point of view, the anti-war movement became more and more dominated by its radical elements and became an objective obstacle to the objectives which I believed I shared with them. We wanted to end the war.

TONE

Soundroll 4. Camera roll 2467, Synch 7

Q. you just said that you became dominated by the radical element.. and : an obstacle were also to what you trying to...

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

9.

Q: Did you feel that they had some effect on your actual negotiating effort? Impact on?

A. From where I sat, the radicalization of the anti-war movement made it more and more an obstacle to negotiation, rather than a help to negotiations. I entered government with a conviction that one could create a large consensus behind a reasonable program which would then impress Hanoi with our determination to be both conciliatory but also to indicate the limits of our conciliatoriness. That objective we never achieved because the moderate groups always felt they had to be a step ahead of the administration. That in turn produced in a situation where every negotiation with Le Duc Tho, I had to spend hours listening to his recitals of what various leaders of the anti-war movement had said, what various congressional resolutions were trying to push, and why we would be forced by our own domestic opinion sooner or later to accept his demands.

Q: How do you think Nixon handled the anti-war movement? Did you have differences within one, the way to handle it?

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

10.

A: Yes. I, Nixon's handling of the anti-war movement was not generous and contributed to the polarization of our society. Nixon when challenged politically, tended to react with certain gut feelings and he never found the language of respect and compassion which might have created a bridge at least to the more reasonable elements of the anti-war movement. So that civil war conditions developed. The anti-war movement also behaved in a ruthless and brutal fashion. But I believe higher standards are required of a president than of the opposition.

Q: As you were in the White House, during that period when you were in the White House, what kind of impact did Vietnam seem to be making on a social fabric of the country as you observed it?

A: The impact of Vietnam on the social fabric of the country was that the thoughtful people those who usually provide continuity and stability to the concepts by which this society runs, moved into opposition. The majority of the population on the whole supported the administration, so there was a conflict, strangely enough between what

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

11.

the elite was thinking and what the
general public was thinking. It was not
that the anti-war movement ever achieved
a majority, but when 30% of the population
and many of those who write for the media
and speak publicly, oppose a given cause,
confusion is inevitable. And I think we
lost in this period, the consensus behind
our foreign policy, in all fields. And we
have never been able to recreate it since
then, and this may well be the heaviest
price we have paid for the Vietnam War.

Q: Do you single out the media in particular?

A: I don't single out the media, I mean, the media, the intellectual community, were preponderantly moving into opposition. This is now independent of whether were right or wrong. I'm describing government condition under which had conducted.

Q: But the fact that you had the majority as far as of public opinion behind you, it "the silent majority," did you a sense of confidence?

A: Yes, but the fact that
of the population !

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

12.

we
a sense of confidence. But also, the
fundamental problem was a different one,
and it has to do with one's conception
of the role of leadership in a democracy.
If a national leader is convinced that a
certain course will produce a catastrophe,
what is his obligation to the public?
Especially when the majority of the public
supports him? Uh, should he yield to those
who tend to dominate the discussion, knowing
that he will be blamed for the catastrophe
and he will be responsible for the catas-
trophe, even if it reflected the dominant
editorial and congressional opinion of the
moment. It's a very difficult problem. Nixon
and I were convinced that an unconditional
withdrawal from Vietnam would be a catastrophe.
The dispute between us and the moderates
was over that issue. Or about the rate of
withdrawal, and we withdrew within months
of the various deadlines that were being
set. I think the damage to the country that
was caused over the intensity of the conflict
over that narrow issue was too great.

Q: How did...you talked about the impact of
Vietnam, Watergate on Vietnam. In a sense
how did Vietnam contribute to the unraveling

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

13.

of the Nixon administration? Touching on
things like the Pentagon Papers.....

Q: Well, uhm the uh, impact of Vietnam on the atmosphere that finally led to Watergate was to create a sense of be-leaguerment in which the methods on both sides reached the edges of legality 'cause a president does not have the same right has and additional duties uh and responsibilities to the moral tone of the country so I would not equate the actions of the two sides.
Uh, which of the various things that now increasingly lumped under Watergate were peculiar to Nixon, and which of them were really relics of previous administration that is something ought to be examined in a study on Watergate sometime.

Q: Are you stopping.... let's go now over into Cambodia...
What were the reasons for the bombing...
the secret bombing that begins in early '69,
and why was it kept secret?

A: The so called secret bombing of Cambodia started in March 1969 following a North Vietnamese offensive, that began in the middle of February 1969, three weeks after

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

14.

Nixon came into office, and before he had had any opportunity to formulate a policy and after he had sent messages to the North Vietnamese that he was looking for an honorable, negotiated solution. This offensive caused 500 American dead a week, uh in some weeks, anyway between 3 and 500 a week. Nixon issued several warnings, and then finally in the middle of March, around the middle of March, 1969, he ordered an attack on the sanctuaries, on one sanctuary along the Cambodian-Vietnamese frontier. These sanctuaries, in our perception, were occupied entirely by North Vietnamese troops, they extended for a distance of two or three miles beyond the Vietnamese border. The Vietnamese troops, would come, the North Vietnamese troops would enter South Vietnam, kill Americans and South Vietnamese and then withdraw into these sanctuaries. And they also used them as supply depots. He ordered one attack, the instructions were that if the Cambodians protested, or if the North Vietnamese asserted it, we would admit the attack and we would then ask for a UN investigation of the area in which the attack took place

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

15.

in order to determine whether it was
the
occupied by North Vietnamese. To our amaze-
ment Cambodia didn't protest, the North
Vietnamese didn't say anything and there-
fore we believed that for us to take the
initiative would force a protest by Prince
Sihanouk, the ruler of Cambodia, and
force us to stop doing something that we
believed was important to put an end to
the offensive that was taking place in
Espec...
South Vietnam. And it seemed to us espe-
cially important since we were planning
to withdraw American troops at the same
time.

Q: Did you have any evidence? Did you have
any evidence of Sihanouk's acquiescence
to this, besides the fact that they didn't
protest..did you have any..

A: We had many indirect evidences of Sihanouk's acquiescence in the bombing. Repeatedly when he was asked at press conferences he would say that of course he did not approve attack on Cambodian territory, but he did not know what was going on in territory occupied by what he called the Vietminh, which was the earlier name for the North Vietnamese

SR 469

Henry Kissinger

16.

sponsored guerilla activity. Uh he invite
Nixon to visit Cambodia while the bombin
was going on, he reestablished diplomati
relations with us, while the bombing was
going on,] and we have to remember, we ar
talking about bombing of small areas--three
to five kilometers in depth, substantial
unpopulated, along the border, and we ,
never complained that any Cambodians wer
injured or killed.

RAN OUT

TONE

TONE

Henry Kissinger
SR470
 (pic 2468)

Kissinger
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2.

Q: Did the United States play any role in Sihanouk's overthrow?

A: Sihanouk's overthrow took us completely by surprise. In fact, for the first two days, I thought that Sihanouk had engineered the overthrow so that he could come back under better conditions than some of the ha-harrassments to which he had been exposed prior to his taking his vacation in France. So we...ah... were not aware of his being overthrown ahead of time and I have never seen any evidence, and certainly we were not conscious in Washington of any American complicity in his overthrow, nor was it in our interest.

Q: Do you think he could have been restored to power at that point?

A: If he had not gone from Moscow to Peking..

Q: Sihanouk...I'm sorry...

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3.

A: Sihanouk could have been restored to power if he had followed his initial itinerary. Initially, Sihanouk wanted to go from Paris to Cambodia. If he had stayed in Paris, if he had not gone to Peking, there was a chance of restoring him to power. But by going to Peking, putting himself at the head of the Khmer Rouge, focusing his attacks on the United States, he gave up the role that everybody had lived with before as a balancer between contending factions and as what we tried to restore him as later on, as negotiations developed. I think his passions ran away with him, uh, we would have liked to see him back, but there was no--we couldn't even communicate with him in Peking.

Q: What were the reasons for the U.S. and South Vietnamese incursions into Cambodia in 1970? What did it accomplish?

A: The incursions followed five weeks of constantly expanding North Vietnamese attacks in eastern Cambodia. It was our

Kissinger

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4.

perception that as the North Vietnamese
left their base areas and started cutting
communications all over eastern Cambodia and
gradually began encircling Phnom Penh that
our nightmare, that had caused us to try to
interrupt the supply through Cambodia, was
becoming even worse. That the whole eastern
part of Cambodia would then become one large
North Vietnamese supply base at a moment when
we had already announced the withdrawal of
close to 200,000 American troops so that a
new front would open as we, as we were with-
drawing. Then the North Vietnamese encircled
Phnom Penh and it began to look to us as if
the overthrow of the Phnom Penh government was
only a question--of the--Phnom Penh government
that was recognized, one has to remember, by
the U.N. and even by the Soviet Union--was
only a question of weeks. This followed the
fact that on October 4th, I believe it was,
I--in the secret talks with Le Duc Tho--had
offered the complete neutralization of
Cambodia, which would have opened also the
possibility of reintroducing Sihanouk, had
I think
been rejected by Le Duc Tho. He said, "this is

[Y]

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5.

almost a verbatim quote, "The border in
Cambodia and Indochina have now become one
This is, it was this sequence of events
that made us decide to go in and clean out
the sanctuaries once and for all and at
a minimum it gained us the years needed for
the withdrawal of American forces.

Q: Was the resistance to this policy by people like Laird a serious obstacle?

A: Ah, Laird opposed this policy largely for
domestic reasons. He thought it would
create a serious...would create a serious
problem domestically, as indeed it did.
No, it was not--it was a difficult problem
while the decision was being made. It
was the essence of Laird's conduct of his
office that he might ob--that however hard
he objected to a particular policy, once
the President had conclusively decided it,
he'd carry it out with energy and conviction
and Laird, ah, had every right to state
his point of view which he did ably and
afterwards he carried it out.

Kissinger

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6.

Q: In the second volume of your memoirs, you described this race towards negotiation against the Congressional bombing cutoff in 1973. I wonder if you could go through that story briefly and then I just want to ask you one question. Why wasn't the negotiating effort started earlier? Just first describe that race if you could.

A: Well, the race toward the n-negotiations, the Cambodia negotiations, were e-conducted side by side with the Vietnamese negotiating all the way through. And we thought during the negotiations that--with Le Duc Tho-- that the end of the war in Vietnam would also bring an end of the war in Cambodia as it was supposed to in Laos. As the negotiations developed it became apparent that this was not necessarily the case though Le Duc Tho constantly promised us the North Vietname--North Vietnam would make a major effort to bring peace in Cambodia. We convinced the Cambodian government to declare a unilateral cease-fire that was rejected by the Khmer Rouge

Kissinger

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7.

who continued military operations. So
this threw the negotiations on Cambodia
and on Vietnam somewhat out of phase.
As soon as it became clear that Cambodia
was not going to fall under the general
umbrella of the ceasefire in Viet--in
South Vietnam and Laos, we initiated
negotiations both in Hanoi and in Peking
to see which would be more productive.
It turned out that Peking was the more
productive channel. But nego--communicati
were slow. Sihanouk was traveling a great
deal. The Chinese did not feel they
could communicate efficiently with
Sihanouk while he was traveling so there
were always long interruptions. One of
our offers, the key offer, was that we
would stop bombing in Cambodia in return
for the re--for Sihanouk's ah, return
and a ceasefire. That bombing was being
constantly, was being ended by Congression
action, so as this negotiation developed
our chief card was being taken out of
our hands and shortly after the Congressi

[Y]

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8.

mandated end of the bombing, the Chinese withdrew from the negotiation and Sihanouk ended it as well.

Q: How would you characterize Nixon Administrati
policy towards Cambodia, ______________
but charges have been made that he contribute
to the devastation of Cambodia and so forth.
Can you speak to this?

A: Well, I think with respect to the charges
that have been made that the administration's
policy contributed to the devastation of
Cambodia, I think this is a--I think this is
...act of considerable hypocrisy. The--many
of the critics of the war face the dilemma
that after all, the war in Vietnam and Laos
was inherited by the Nixon administration.
And that many of the people that finally
joined their ca--their cause had indeed been
the originators of that war. Cambodia they
can present as a Vie--as a Nixon effort, and
so all of the criticism has focused on
Cambodia. I'm not saying that every decision

[Y]

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9.

was correct. That, I'm a party to them,
and that will have to be sorted out by
others. But I am saying that serious
people faced with the withdrawal of
550,000 American troops seeing a base area
being developed on the flank of these
troops could come to the conclusions that
the Nixon Administration in fact did,
and the murders in Vietnam, the devastatig
of Vietnam, was largely caused by their
own rulers who were brought into--ah--
the devastation of Cambodia was largely
caused by their own rulers after the
collapse of the resistance.

Q: Let me just, if you could make this personal in a way. How do you feel (garble).

Starting Camera Roll 2469

Sync 9.

Q: Just address, could you give us a personal word on it. Do you feel, how do you feel when you look back on Cambodia, as you say, this is...

Kissinger

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10.

A: I think Cambodia is a great tragedy, and the tragedy is in part that our domestic divisions were fought out over an essentially peaceful people. Whether Nixon and his associates like myself were right in ordering the incursions into Cambodia can be discussed forever, but once they had taken place the only way out was to prevent the Khmer Rouge from taking over the country. But the bitter in this country was so great that many people seemed to want to refight the ant-war protest of May 1970 over and over again putting on restriction at restriction which made it impossible to be effective, so that we were involved enough for the war to continue but not involved enough to bring it to any negotiated conclusion. And I think both sides of this debate ought to search their souls and stop this, these bitter, vicious, personal attacks on something in which--on which reasonable people could differ but in which finally millions of people were killed because a murderous

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11.

gang was permitted to take over, largely
as a result of our own divisions.

Q: But weren't, let's consider for example
that we were leaning on a regime there,
the Lon Nol regime, what did you think of
that regime?

A: I didn't think much of this reg--the
Lon Nol regime had many weaknesses. And
as many regimes in under-developed country
in the middle of a guerilla war where
the best officials get assassinated, it
had its elements of corruption, but the
Lon Nol regime was after all the Sihanouk
government without Sihanouk. This is
what was there to begin with. It was not
the government that I would have created
if I wanted to make Cambodia over in the
American image. But no regime and no
people deserve the murdering that took
place when the Khmer Rouge took over.
This is unprecedented in modern history,
that a government takes over that then
begins to exterminate its own people. And

(siren)

[Y]

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13.

about American credibility, and American power. Not only in our country but in many, ah, in many parts of the world. It has poisoned our domestic debate in which almost every issue now turns more on motives than on substance. And so we paid an exorbitant price for the decisions that were made in the middle 1960's in good faith and for good purposes. And the lesson we should learn is that we need some view both as to our ultimate purposes in the world about the objectives that are within our power to reach, and about the means that are appropriate to these objectives. And the second lesson we have to learn is that you cannot run a society by civil-war kind of debates. That there has to be something that a residue of what unites people must be preserved and that, that political opponents should strive not only for victories over each other, but that they'll ultimately be judged by their reconciliations.

Q: Good, OK, thanks a lot.

Wild track room tone.