SECTION 2

Page 13 [LC]

FROST: As you know, General Abrams sworn testimony to the Senate in '73, he confirmed that the bombing "made it almost inevitable they would have to expand their area of control or operation, thus bringing them into increasing conflict with the Cambodian authorities... Now again, Abrams is one voice, but he's a fairly authoritative

KISS: Well, I would take Abrams as authoritative....I would consider him an authoritative voice.

FROST: So then we move on to the next stage in the unfolding tragedy of Cambodia...

KISS: (over) I would only say he didn't say that in 1969 and 1970, when he was recommending it.

FROST: He did not say it then and er, that...fair point but it.. he said it when he reconsidered. I guess he had second thoughts.
The, the er...

KISS: (over) Yes but we, but we had to act on the basis of his recommendation in '69. (Frost under)... and not on the basis of his second thoughts in '73.

FROST: No, second thoughts are the luxury of people who judge events but on the other hand, they will be the judgement of history...will be whether people were right or wrong at the time, admitting that it's not easy to be right or easy to be wrong. But the, the er, coming on to the step.

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Page 14

**FROST:** The next step you say in your book, er, there have been all sorts of allegations about the Lon Nol coup but you say that it took us, both in the book and in the Economist you say, it took us completely by surprise... the Lon Nol (under: that is correct) the Lon Nol coup... that And/the CIA report that had been circulating had not reached your desk at that time.

**KISS:** (over) Well, what CIA report that had been circulating?

**FR:** Well, there was a report that that generally became available on the day of the coup...I mean, there's no evidence to suggest that er, that it was seen earlier. I mean I accept...

(Kiss under...?) that..

**KISS:** There was a report that became available on March 18th, or thereabouts which was describing a general situation that had already started on March 11th with er, with the riots in Phnom Penh. Er, the sequence of events that led to the overthrow of Siahnouk was not what happened on March 18th but what happened on March 11th.

**FR:** But when Lon Nol came to power and then it just lead a few weeks later, the next step was the invasion. Now in your book.

**KISS:** Now just a minute uh, I think with all due respect your whole line of questioning is making a mockery of what was going in in Indo-China.

[L]

Page 15

KISS: The sequence of events was not as you described it. The sequence of events was that the North Vietnamese broke out of their sanctuaries after Lon Nol had overthrown Sihanouk without our help, without our help, without our knowledge, and without our encouragement that for five weeks we did nothing.

FR: When you say in the book, you refer to the book, that "Nixon in his April the 30th invasion speech added a sentence that was irrelevant to the central thesis as it was untrue. That would we had not moved therefore against the sanctuaries, overlooking the secret bombing.

KISS: That statement should not have been made.

FR: Why did he make it?

KISS: Because he was given to hyperbole.

FR: Why did you make the same statement in your background briefing to the press on the same day.

KISS: Because I suppose we did not have, to us this bombing of the sanctuaries had become so much part of the landscape that we did not really focus on that. But that was not a correct statement.

FR: The last question on Cambodia is this one. Which is that what I am saying, let me underline again, I am not suggesting that you were not inhumanly busy, I'm not suggesting that your main concentration -- indeed, I think it was one of reasons--was on South Vietnam.

KISS: Mr. Frost...

FR: But I'm merely saying...

KISS: Mr. Frost...

FR: Now, now, now, please let me finish. The thing is that

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[c]

FR: when the Cambodian sections of your book are examined, people will say this is the reverse of the Forsythe Saga, it's the hindsight saga, that the Americans, not through villainy but through negligence were responsible for what happened--not solely responsible--for what happened in Cambodia, and this is why we're discussing it, America was not in Cambodia until your administration. Well, Nixon's administration.

KISS: Well, I think that is totally incorrect. I think we inherited a tragedy. We attempted to, and succeeded in, extricating America with honor from this tragedy, that we faced a domestic situation in which those who wanted to end the war honorably and those who identified honor with the most rapid termination of the war on almost any terms, managed to paralyze each other; as a result nothing could be carried to its conclusion.

FR: What about Cambodia?

KISS: I'm talking about Cambodia.

FROST: You didn't inherit a tragedy. You inherited an unwelcome situation in Cambodia. Not a tragedy.

KISS: You are assuming that the situation in Cambodia could be totally isolated from the situation in Vietnam. We could not both withdraw, withstand North Vietnamese offensives, and permit the communists to act in Cambodia with total impunity...which they had occupied before we did anything.

FR: But the previous regime had managed, from our point of view, to isolate Cambodia...

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KISS: The previous regime...

FR: We embroiled Cambodia...

KISS: The previous...

FR: We engulfed Cambodia.

KISS: The previous regime...no, the North Vietnamese
engulfed Cambodia.

FR: Four years earlier.

KISS: The North Vietnamese engulfed Cambodia...

FR: They didn't engulf it. The didn't bomb the hell
out of it.

KISS: They engulfed it in 1965 and six with large numbers
of troops. They engulfed it in 1970 by breaking out
of the sanctuaries and cutting communications all
over the country. And they engulfed it after
American withdrawal because a communist...to be
true...to be sure a genocidal government, had they
had to be independent of them. Those were the facts.

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SECTION III

FROST VO
PEACE TALKS
FILM

The term, shuttle diplomacy hadn't even been coined then.
But Henry Kissinger, during the negotiations to try and
end the Vietnam war was engaged in that kind of
diplomacy--
shuttling between Washington and Paris and, eventually
Indochina.

The talks were over military issues--troop pullouts,
a ceasefire.

Linked with political issues--whether to have a
coalition government or an advisory body in Saigon...
...and what to do about South Vietnam's President
Thieu. Keep him in power or agree to remove him
from office?

The air and ground war...and the peace talks...knit
together in a complex pattern, all the way to the
culmination--during that fateful period between
October 1972 and January 1973.

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SECTION III

No Vietnamese can believe that there is an outcome
to a war other than total victory a and that
therefore all our efforts to achieve a compromise
met with incomprehension in both Hanoi and I dare
say Saigon. In however I would say that until
very late in 1972 the South Vietnamese went along
with every proposal we made because they were
reasonably confident in their mind that the
North Vietnamese would reject it and they agreed
with our proposals as an admission's price to
American support because they thought that this
would enable us to rally public opinion in our
country behind a reasonable program. When the
North Vietnamese suddenly accepted these
proposals, then the South Vietnamese had to come
to grips with the implications of what they had
been dealing with.

FROST:

President Thieu and the gentlemen referred to in
the book as "the obnoxious Mr. Nha both maintained
that when you arrived in Saigon that that was in
October 1972 that that was the first time they
knew the Americans were agreeing to North Vietnamese
troops staying in their country a and that was the

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Page 20

FROST: first time...

KISSINGER: Well a..

FROST: Did did they just are they ignoring the written record
in saying that?

KISSINGER: I believe they're ignoring the written record because
after all we had proposed a ceasefire in place in
October 1970. The clear implication of a ceasefire
in place was that the forces that were wherever they
were would stay.

One of the reasons for the misunderstanding between
us and the South Viet South Vietnamese was that the
end of our negotiation in Paris in October 1972 I
naively believed that we would receive a hero's
welcome in Saigon because we had saved them from
a coalition government and had preserved the existing
allied government.

FROST:

Well because obviously there was an explosion and it
was an explosion that led to a delay and an and then
led eventually to a sequence of events that included
the Christmas bombing and so on and and in fact what
they say is indeed I think a ceasefire in place does
carry an implication but that that they were reassured
by the ambassador and so on that what it meant was
that it would take longer to get the North Vietnamese
troops out but we were still committed to getting them
out which would explain the explosion and make...

KISSINGER:

Well...
President Thieu slightly less irrational than he appears.

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Page 21

KISSINGER: I'm not saying he was irrational I I think that President Thieu was a man of great courage and of enormous dignity a whose problems inevitably were different from ours.

FROST: Do you regret that the sort of ultimatum that President Nixon gave South Vietnam in January, the take it or leave it, was not given, if not before the election, because of the sensitivity after the election and before the talks resumed do you wish you in that period when President Nixon was closeted at Camp David a lot that you could have got to him, and if he had sent the same ultimatum then that the Christmas bombing need never have happened?

KISSINGER: A no because once the South Vietnamese had raised a number of issues even if some of them seem minor to us a it was important that this war be ended in a manner in which the South Vietnamese could feel that they participated in the negotiations.

KISSINGER: There's no question in my mind that if the North Vietnamese had wanted to, they could have settled in November very easily the issues that were before us, and that somewhere in November they decided that they were going to go for broke and see whether they could string it out long enough and salvage a total victory. After all that was what led to the breakdown of the negotiations. Yes I was very unhappy at that time, because the thing I had most wanted to do was to bring an end to that war and it seemed so close at the end of October.

[L]

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**FROST:** Let's turn domestically to the er, siege mentality er, of the, of the Nixon White House. Er, and to the subject which is always mentioned er, namely the wiretapping. To the extent to which you went along with it, your friends say that you went along with it in order to prove your loyalty to a Nixon White House, that did not yet trust you.

**KISSINGER:** The wiretaps of which I am aware were all related to the protection of classified er, information and the reports that was sent to the White House represented the FBI's judgement of a..they did not send every conversation, they only sent those conversations which they thought bore on national security. Now, it's fair to say, that their judgement of what affected national security was somewhat more strict than ours and that I did not consider all of these reports of, er, of equal significance and after one year, er, I was taken by President Nixon out of this whole system, because it really was not in my area of jurisdiction and there was nothing I could do about it or nothing I ever did about it. So I don't think it was simply the siege mentality, it was er, that in er, in hindsight I believe that governments in power are always more bothered by leaks than and are often more bothered by leaks than is justified, but it was ov..it was also a very complicated situation in the middle of the war er, in which er, we faced very complex decisions. Why did I p..participate in it? After ten years it's very