WEDNESDAY

it

in seeking to dis-
nation about Dr. Ellsberg and
Dr. Ellsberg as an anti-war
ther the President's aims for

us here is that the concept
s protection which animated
n of a piece with that famous
rned the enemies list next to
ritic and former Nixon aide,
odal would be most helpful
has further discredited the
urity rationale and given us
f the smears that were com-
st as they were understood by
estion that arises is whether
loyer, the President of the
of this particular activity.

ial question. Mr. Colson has
committed in the White House
ident's authority and in some
this is a felony quite distinct
ments of Mr. Nixon's former
been handed down. The Pres-
mself from any knowledge of
son. But the crime to which
does not involve participation
of the resort to a break-in to
Dr. Ellsberg. It merely in-
use governmental powers to
derogatory information about
case being tried by the same
rking the dark alleys on the
nnocent of any knowledge of
the endeavor as he says he was
is question should become an
ouse Judiciary Committee.

tinians

e difficult to achieve. Yasser
line Liberation Organization,
s sensible if painful counsel,

THE WASHINGTON POST

PEOPLE

B2

Wednesday, June 5, 1974

...R

# A Matter of Diplomatic Priority

By Ronald Koven

Henry may be able to get anything he wants from Golda and Anwar and Hafez, but when it comes to keeping the President from swiping his luncheon guests, he's nowhere.

A few of the senators on Capitol Hill found that out yesterday.

The Secretary of State's Protocol Office called them Monday to invite them to a lunch Thursday for the second most important man in Saudi Arabia, Prince Fahd Ibn Abd al Aziz al Saud. He is due here this week to put the seal on the establishment of a Saudi-American political, military and economic "special relationship."

The luncheon was all arranged for 1 p.m. Thursday, with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as the host, in the State Department's ceremonial John Quincy Adams Room.

So the senators thought.

Then, yesterday the White House called several of the same senators to request the pleasure of their company at a luncheon President Nixon would be giving for Prince Fahd at 1 p.m. Thursday.

One of the senators' secretaries allowed to the White House social secretary that she didn't see how her man could make it, since he was already booked for the State Department lunch at the same hour for the prince.

A stunned "whaaat" from the White House end of the phone line was quickly covered by a self-assured, "Well, we'll have to give them some static. We have priority."

It was not very long before the State Department Protocol Office was on the line saying that the Kissinger-hosted lunch was off. Later, a second call to the State Department from the surprised senator's office got the more studied response that the luncheon had been "transferred" to the White House.

Kissinger can hardly fault his own Protocol Office for any oversight. President Nixon has sent Chief of Protocol Henry Catto and William Codus, Catto's assistant for visits, off to the Middle East to pave the way for next week's presidential tour of the region.

One of the more junior members of Protocol Office who is home minding the store said he thought that Kissinger would get to give a dinner for Prince Fahd instead.

Putting together this visit has been "pretty hectic," he observed. The prince, who originally was supposed to come to this country more than two weeks ago, had to postpone his visit because Kissinger was still shuttling between Syria and Israel trying to get an agreement.

Fahd is bringing along three other Cabinet ministers to share Blair House, the presidential guest house, and a retinue said to total 40.

Although this visit is special because it is the culmination of years of Saudi efforts to be recognized as special friends of the United States, Prince Fahd is no stranger to Washington. He has stopped at Blair House once a year for the last three years at least.

Nor is he a stranger to President Nixon and his family. In 1969, the prince gave the President a recently much-publicized package—a matched diamond and emerald necklace, bracelet, earrings, dinner ring and brooch appraised at the time for more than $50,000.

This time, for starters, Prince Fahd will perhaps unwittingly be giving President Nixon the gift of clear priority over his own Secretary of State.

People / The Arts / Comics

JUNE 5, 1974

B1

greatest impression on me and one
lead to my own children was "The
y Men." It's not as twee as it
is a combination nature study and
story about the last three gnomes
th. I gather the author, who signs
nply 'B.B.' is a writer of mystery
father gave it to me when I was
can't be sure whether I loved it
was a gift from my father—I al-
a great crush on him—or because
that good, but either way it'
me."

It was the first story she remem
ber been read to her? "Oh my. Goin
there was a marvelous story b
s Grimm about a girl who had
horse that died or was killed. An
eept the head nailed to a wall an
talk to her and . . . I forget. But
esomely beautiful."

ticular Grimm tale, "The Goos
really rough one about a vicious
who forces a timorous prince
tplaces with her. The maidservant
omeuppance in the end: She
ked, stuffed into a barrel studd
epointed nails and dragged through
by two snow white horses un
dead.

crews said some children prob

SPECTRUM
Varying shades of personal opinion on current issues

MURRAY KEMPTON
CBS RADIO NETWORK

JUNE 4, 1974

I'm Murray Kempton.

The sense is inescapable that, if Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda should surprise us all by being anointed our King and Queen, Henry Kissinger would still be our Secretary of State.

He is no longer just a man but, all by himself, a Foreign Office very like those that served the transient governments of the 19th Century in Europe, being permanent where kings are temporary. There is something childish in the greatest of peoples, and that something remains fascinated by magicians.

I myself confess finding Secretary Kissinger at once a dazzling and a delightful presence. Still it is hard not to wonder whether his achievements are quite so permanent as his person obviously is; the art of the magician is, after all, to make us believe that he has suspended the moral laws of the universe, and those laws do have a way of asserting themselves in the long run.

There seems, for example, to remain on Secretary Kissinger a considerable quantity of the grease from the pole he climbed. Jeb Magruder remembers a conference when Mr. Nixon complained about the hostility of a Washington reporter. Kissinger intervened, "Mr. President, that man is an agent of the Romanian government."

"That's right," Mr. Nixon answered, "that guy is a Communist." The evidence was at best gossip; and there is something quite unsettling in the recollection of so much alacrity in a servant's feeding the fantasies of his king. But then Kissinger has been most unpersuasive in rebutting the charge that he ordered the wiretapping of his assistants to assure their fidelity to the Administration; still personal loyalty is a quality of persons and not institutions. Kissinger would have done as much, we have to assume, for any President.

This month's *Foreign Affairs* offers an extraordinary description by Tad Szulc of Kissinger's sinuous travels towards what got itself called the peace in Vietnam. In their course, he blithely lied to the Presidents of South Vietnam and Cambodia, bemused the President of the United States and since he was offering Hanoi terms in private that the Administration was adamantly resisting in public, he was all else but candid with our own citizens. In fairness, it must be conceded on his behalf that he also lied to Hanoi by promising to withdraw the American advisers who remain, like the war, in battle array.

This absence of moral scruple is certainly charming and indubitably brilliant. You wish however, that here as with all magicians there weren't this nagging doubt that all these tricks might not be passing illusions.

I'm Murray Kempton with Spectrum.

The diverse opinions expressed on SPECTRUM are those of the commentators themselves and should not be attributed to CBS or any of its affiliates
Produced under the supervision of CBS News 594 West 57 Street, New York, New York 10019 (212) 765-1301

HEMMED IN: Visitors to the seventh annual Carillon Art Walk at Brentwood and Forsyth boulevards, Clayton, yesterday were shoulder to shoulder as they

attempted to view the works of more than 200 artists and craftsmen. Prizes totaling $600 were awarded.

# Reports Peking Pushes For U.S. Trade

By WILLIAM VOGLER
Of the Post-Dispatch Staff

The People's Republic of China, anxious to develop its industry, is pushing for more trade with the United States, says a Monsanto Co. executive.

Edmund Greene, commercial director of the firm's international division, said the appraisal was based on obsevation by Monsanto representatives of international trade fairs held in 1973 and 1974 at Canton.

Greene, who was part of a Montano team that negotiated with representatives of the Chinese Technical Import-Export Corp. in May 1973, said the emphasis on two-way trade was obvious at the Canton Trade Fair then in progress. Similar observations were reported by other Monsanto representatives at this year's Canton fair, Greene said.

"They were pushing very hard for two-way trade at the Canton Fair," Greene said. "They gave preference to buyers (of Chinese propects) rather than to sellers in extending invitations."

The Chinese were particularly interested in the petrochemical industry, the development of synthetic fabrics and other products from petroleum, but no agreement emerged from the two-week talks, Greene said, though there may still be a chance for one.

"They made no bones about the fact that they were comparing processes from all over the world," Greene said.

Monsanto wanted to sell the Chinese technology for a petrochemical plant. The Chinese wanted to buy a plant.

After if the Chinese were uneasy about it, a tacit admission that they had not progressed far enough to develop their own petrochemical industry, Greene observed that the Chinese place great stress on self-reliance.

"I guess the only answer is the overriding pragmatism of the Chinese," he said. "They have a lot of catching up to do and this is the only way they are going to do it."

Bits of information from oil companies and other sources indicate the Chinese have extensive oil resources, but hard figures are not available, Greene said.

"They were very guarded in the talks," Greene continued. "We raised the question (about oil resources) and they nodded their heads, but they did not raise the issue with us."

Varying in age from young to middle aged, the Chinese impressed Greene as "very bright." They had done their homework, he said by studying "whatever had been published about these (petrochemical) processes."

But the knowledge appeared to be theoretical. None seemed to have the know-how to operate a petrochemical plant, he added.

The schedule for the talks was rather

rigorous: 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., but the Chinese were gracious hosts, Greene related. They took time out to show the Monsanto team a commune and the 'Forbidden City' section of Peking, the city where the talks were held.

The language barrier and the limited time available afforded little opportunity for extensive observation of the Chinese; but Greene came away with some clear impressions.

The common outside Peking, possibly a showcase operation for foreign visitors, a "very tidy and well-kept" operation. Particularly impressing to Greene were the "barefoot doctors," the Chinese version of paramedics.

"In terms of first aid and minor illnesses, we got the impression that the Chinese peasant perhaps got better attention than the farmer in the United States would get.

"It (the barefoot doctor's facility) was right there in the middle of the com-

mure and everyone had access to it. For more sophisticated medicine, they said they brought patients right into Peking."

Passports were left with the authorities when they reached Peking, but travel within the city was not restricted.

The city was very clean and there were no traffic problems (the bicycle is the chief mode of transportation), Greene said.

"The people were well fed and adequately housed and when you see the slum areas of some other Asian cities, you have to be impressed," he asserted. "We did not see a ny beggars, again in contrast to other Asian cities."

The negotiators, products of the New China who had prospered under the system, were particularly proud of the They emphasized that everyone had a chance to go to the equivalent of high school.

Criterion for entering a university, in addition to health and academic standing, called for the proper "spirit and attitude."

## Alger Reference

## Work Is A Hoax

NEW YORK, June 3 (UPI)—In its current issue Time magazine reveals the author of the standard reference work since 1928 on Horatio Alger Jr., the 19th-century author of 109 novels about poor but honest boys who rise from rags to riches, has quietly confessed the book is a hoax.

The book, "Alger: A Biography Without a Hero," was written by Herbert R. Mayes, a former editor of Good Housekeeping and McCall's. He is now 73 and living in London.

Mayes, who kept his deception secret all these years, said he wrote the book as a satire and was shocked when reviewers took it seriously, Time says. The biographer confesses the work literally swarms with contradictions and absurd fabrications. For instance, when he had Alger frolicking with a prostitute in Paris, Alger actually was attending divinity school in Massachusetts.

But, Time reports, despite his confession, the Lansing, Mich., based Horatio Alger society, made up of 250 book buffers, has offered Mayes a membership

Chinese education system, Greene said.

"A man or woman will work on a farm or in a factory after high school and their colleagues there sort of evaluate them," Greene said he was told. "Then if their peers felt that they had the right attitude they would go on tot the university."

Greene said his visit coincided with a period of relative calm in Chinese politics. Did this suggest the regime was striving for internal stability?

"That's what we would like to think and we saw nothing to the contrary," Greene replied.

Would he like to return?

Yes. I enjoyed it.

# Arab Turn to the West

NEW YORK TIMES 6/1

## Policy Shifts in Damascus and Egypt
Increase U.S. Role at Soviet Expense

By BERNARD GWERTZMAN

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 31—American officials have refrained from talking about it publicly, but many of them say privately that Secretary of State Kissinger's persistence in bringing about the Syrian-Israeli disengagement agreement will open the way for the United States to displace the Soviet Union as the major foreign influence in the Arab world.

The officials do not contemplate an American hegemony in the area, nor do they believe the Russians will no longer be a factor in the Middle East.

But they envisage, barring major unforeseen disruptions in the area, an increasing American presence, and a corresponding

decline in Soviet influence.

As part of this optimistic reasoning, improved Arab-American relations would inevitably be translated into increased prestige for the moderate leaders in the Arab world and a drop in the power of the radicals who for so many years have dominated the Arab political scene. Hopefully, the Americans believe that this would increase the chances for a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The prospects of this development, which would end America's near isolation for two decades in the Arab world, have fascinated Mr. Kissinger and his top aides, though they have been hesitant to draw attention to them for fear of causing

Continued on Page 8, Column 6

Bangkok and in the south.

"We won't get a majority," conceded Mr. Seni, who said he expected to find the Democrats in a coalition with one or more parties. He noted that his party was moving to the left to grapple with "the gap between the rich and the poor."

A well-connected and well-
heeled group of politicians

## Soviet Assertion of a Border Dispute

New York Times

without Soviet approval.

The issue crops up season-
ally because there is an alter-
nate channel between the two
rivers that the Chinese can use
in the spring and autumn but
not in the summer, when it
becomes too shallow. The So-
viet statement, couched in con-
ciliatory language that the
Chinese described as "hypo-
critical," offered to help deep-
en that channel.

It is Moscow's view that the
channel is the border. Peking's
statement described it as "Chi-
na's inland watercourse."

The Chinese position is based
on the wroding of the 1860
treaty. The Soviet statement
is based on a map that was
attached to it but has never
been published. Five years ago
there were serious armed

May 21.

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Arab Turn to West Widens U.S. Role

Continued From Page 1, Col. 4

increased and unwanted friction with the Soviet Union.

But it has been impossible to travel with Mr. Kissinger through his five Middle East trips since November—including the 33-day journey which ended early this morning—without noting the increased warmth for the United States, expressed not only by such moderates as President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt but also by so-called “radicals” such as President Hafez al-Assad of Syria.

Mr. Assad's decision, after much soul-searching, to strike a troop separation deal with Israel, was seen by many as not so much a change in Syria's attitude toward Israel—which remains hostile—but more as a policy shift by Damascus toward a new relationship with the United States.

"Let's not kid ourselves," one senior American official said last night, "if the secretary was a United Nations mediator he probably could not have gotten Syria and Israel to agree to anything.

"Both of them decided to accept his compromise plans because they both wanted to improve their relations with the United States," he said.

One of the things that intrigued Mr. Kissinger and his aides through the long days and nights of negotiating with the Syrians was the strong sign received that Damascus, unhappy being known as Moscow's main client in the area, strongly desired to follow Mr. Sadat's example and move toward a more balanced policy between East and West.

Washington officials believe that if the Arab countries follow this moderate trend the

United States will became the prime foreign influence in the area because only America has the vast markets, capital and technology sought by virtually every Arab nation.

Until recently, Americans have been so linked with Israel in the eyes of the Arab world that any initiatives by Washington were suspect. But the dramatic shifts in attitude, precipitated by Mr. Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy, have won for the United States such a reputation for fairness, goodwill and—in Mr. Kissinger's case—success that Mr. Nixon will be traveling to the Middle East at a time of unparalleled opportunity.

## Soviet Prestige Drops

At the same time, Soviet prestige has perceptively dropped. The attempts of the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei A. Gromyko, to follow on Mr. Kissinger's footsteps in the Middle East have produced derisive comments in Cairo, Damascus and other Arab capitals.

Last Tuesday, for instance, Mr. Gromyko was in Damascus to confer with Mr. Assad when Mr. Kissinger decided to return unexpectedly to the Syrian capital in an effort to conclude the disengagement talks.

Mr. Assad, apparently making clear where his priorities lay, canceled a scheduled dinner for Mr. Gromyko and spent the entire evening with Mr. Kissinger.

Now that he has concluded two disengagement agreements—with Egypt and Syria—Mr. Kissinger may begin to discuss more openly the possibilities for an expanding American role in the area.

Up to now, he has moved very carefully. The proposed

$250-million in aid for Egypt, the help in opening the Suez Canal, and the possible $100-million in contingency aid for Syria have all been handled in a low-keyed way in Washington.

But today Washington and Cairo announced the formation of joint cooperation committee to improve economic, scientific and cultural relations—a sign that both countries want to focus more public attention on the new trend.

## No Alarm in Israel

American fascination with the Arab world has not yet appeared to alarm the Israeli leaders, who have traditionally been sensitive to any sign of slackening of American support.

Mr. Kissinger has made the point in his discussions with Israeli officials that Isreal's security has to rest not only on American military aid, which will continue, but also on a peaceful resolution of the 26-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict.

The improvement in Washington's ties with the Arab countries inevitably has raised problems in Soviet-American relations.

Until the recent developments, Moscow accepted a rough balance of power in the area—the Americans predominant in Israel and some conservative states such as Saudi Arabia, the Russians influential virtually everywhere else.

The Soviet Union agreed to the Geneva Middle East peace conference on the assumption that Washington would act for the Israelis and Moscow for the Egyptians and Syrians. But the shift, toward Washington, first in Cairo, and now, apparently in Damascus, has alarmed the Kremlin.

SYRIA SAID TO BAN
GUERRILLA RAIDS

Continued From Page 1, Col. 5

given some assurances to Syria
in Mr. Kissinger's letter of un-
derstanding.

These were said to include a
pledge that the United States
would not recognize the dis-
engagement lines as legal front-
tiers, and a promise to help
negotiate with the Palestinians
so that arrangements could be
made for them to join the
peace conference here.

This is expected to be as
delicate a phase of negotiations
as were the initial Israeli-Egyp-
tian talks that led to the dis-
engagement agreement of Jan-
uary and Wednesday's Israeli-
Syrian accord.

One authoritative diplomat
said that Joseph J. Sisco, the
American Under Secretary of
State for Political Affairs, had
already met secretly with Yasir
Arafat, the leader of the Pale-
tinian Liberation Organization.
The effort to get Palestinian
representation involves some
basic political issues.

among themselves, it was noted,
and it will be necessary to des-
ignate someone to speak for
Palestinians both in exile and
under Israeli occupation. There
is still the question of whether
the Palestinians are willing to
negotiate with Israel at all;
also what their relations are to
be with Jordan, which claims
the Israeli-occupied territory.

According to the informants,
Mr. Kissinger's letter of under-
standing to Israel promised, in
addition to the clause on the
guerrillas, further economic and
military support for Israel and
aerial surveillance of the dis-
engagement.

The United States is believed
to have promised some eco-
nomic aid to Syria as well, al-
though the amount and condi-
tions were not known.

The understandings were also
said to spell out just how
much equipment may be sta-
tioned in the limited-arms
zones on either side of the
United Nations buffer zone.

The protocol on the United
Nations force was also a diffi-
cult compromise. Conference
sources said that the Israelis
wanted the same kind of emer-
gency force as on their Egyp-
tian front, composed of 3,000
men. Byt the Syrians insisted
that the force have only ob-
server status and not be al-
lowed to defend the territory
assigned to it.

In the end, the informants
said, agreement was reached
on 1,250 men, and on the name
"observers' but not on the func-
tion of guarding the buffer zone
against incursion from either
side, as in the Sinai.

Air Control Is Studied

STANFORD, Calif. (UPI)—
The possibility of controlling
the ionization of the earth's
atmosphere has been suggested
by scientists at Stanford Uni-
versity who have had some
success with a low-frequency
transmitter set up on the Ant-
arctic continent.

NEW YORK TIMES 6/1/74

# Henry Hercules and Hats

By C. L. Sulzberger

PARIS—If Henry Kissinger hadn't already received the Nobel Peace Prize (or its better half) he would merit it this year as a result of his remarkable Middle East negotiations. In fact, there isn't any regulation governing that award which should prevent it going twice to the same man if he twice makes peace.

Of course, those who have an automatic tic against anything Mr. Kissinger does are probably going to say snide things about him the moment shooting pops off again in the general region of Israel. After all, despite what he did to extricate us from Vietnam, he is still sniped at whenever fresh blood splatters that brutal land.

The fact is that perfect peace is almost a forgotten concept nowadays except among friendly nations. Those who detest each other show it by violence, even without formal war. And only disengagement—not peace—has been achieved between Israel and Syria. All one has to do is recall the endless roster of other tense frontiers.

What Mr. Kissinger has done, however, is to reduce the level of fighting in Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia to such a degree that neither area now presents the threat of major world war. He has arranged truce agreements that set in operation actual or potential peacekeeping machinery. The result is that, in two explosive global areas, a discernible if slow move toward settlement instead of holocaust is now occurring.

The Middle East is infinitely more important that Indochina. Trouble is not confinable to a peninsula and it involves tremendous ideological and religious emotions; it is strategically significant to the two superpowers; and it contains a vast proportion of the energy by which contemporary industrial progress is fueled.

## FOREIGN AFFAIRS

> Mr. Kissinger lopped off every new fire-spitting head of trouble as it grew on the Mideast war serpent.

Since Israel's creation in 1948 there have been four formal wars in the general area of Palestine from which the Jewish state was carved. Moreover, in between these formal wars, there has been sporadic violence that often threatened to touch off open conflict.

For a long time Mr. Kissinger refrained from active participation in United States efforts to tranquilize the situation, preferring (as a White House adviser) to leave the job to Secretary of State Rogers because he felt his own Jewish origin might be considered prejudicial by certain Arab leaders.

However, Mr. Rogers never made headway in the search for compromise. Mr. Kissinger therefore moved actively into behind-the-scene peace-making even before he succeeded Mr. Rogers as Secretary. Right afterwards came the Yom Kippur war of last October with its curious result: reassurance to Arab confidence and, at the same time, the verge of an Israeli strategic victory.

The first significant Kissinger success was arrangement of a disengage-

ment formula between Egypt and Israel. This achievement facilitated development of a new friendship between Cairo and Washington, prizing Egypt loose from its previous dependence on Moscow. Thus, as a spin-off from an initial Palestine truce came a weakening of Russia's strategic position in the Mediterranean.

But, while Egyptian President Sadat had always been instinctively pro-American and suspicious of Communism, no such a priori sentiment existed in the Syrian Government, which relies unabashedly on Russia for military and diplomatic aid and is traditionally considered a "radical" Arab land. It had signed no compact with the Israelis since 1949 when armistice ended the first Palestine war.

I wrote on May 2, after a long conversation in Damascus with President Assad: "Many miracles have been reported in this part of the world but I somehow doubt if Henry Kissinger, described as a miracle-maker by his new friend Anwar el-Sadat, President of Egypt, is going to pull one out of his hat when he comes here on his new tour of the Bible lands. To begin with, he doesn't wear a hat."

Well, I am glad to say I was wrong. By brilliance, stubbornness and sheer hard work; by assembling every pressure available through the U.S.A. and, it would seem, the U.S.S.R., Mr. Kissinger achieved the unachievable. A dramatic first step toward possible permanent solution was signed Friday in Geneva.

Like Hercules with the many-headed Hydra, Mr. Kissinger lopped off every new fire-spitting head of trouble as it grew on the Middle Eastern war serpent. Thus Henry Hercules astonishingly managed to achieve the unexpected miracle, and I for one am ready not only to buy him the hat he doesn't seem to possess but also to eat my own.

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Now For A Little Rest,
Then Back To State

ARIZ.
5MAR
6-1-74 N

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is home again, after 33 days of hard bargaining for cease-fire in what probably was the sternest test of his diplomatic skills save his task of extricating the U.S. from hostilities in South Vietnam. Henry Kissinger, more than any other individual, has earned credit for the first formal peace agreement between Israel and Syria since the end of Israel's war of independence in 1948. This cease-fire ends the last of the declared hostilities in the Mideast.

The success of the diplomatic mission brought more than the expected expressions of relief, worldwide, since the mission had so often appeared at the brink of collapse, since the consequences of failure were widely thought to have been new, all-out war in the Mideast, and since pressure was rapidly building in the U.S. to bring Kissinger home from this long and costly mission.

Three times, reportedly, Kissinger was at the point of giving up. Syria and Israel have been the bitterest of all Mideast enemies, with mutually unbending attitudes, and a unique geographic situation in the Golan Heights which further complicated any proposed military withdrawals.

The daily shelling along the disputed line, coupled with the pattern of atrocity and reprisal involving Arab terrorists and the Israeli army came perilously close to causing another full-scale war.

And here at home unfamiliar rumblings about the jet-set secretary of State were heard. Some were predicting Henry's first failure. Others were complaining about the dollar cost for jet travel and hotel rooms, as well as salaries and other expenses.

But the most serious criticism, and the one which probably bothered Kissinger most — hitting closest to home — was the charge that the secretary was ignoring other vital U.S. commitments in international affairs.

As James Reston pointed out when Kissinger's task was still a week from completion, during the first 21 days of his mission, India had become a nuclear power, West Germany had a new chancellor, France elected a new president, and unknown upheaval was taking place in China — all without the attention of the U.S. chief foreign officer.

Pretty clearly the workload in the State Department must be piling up. President Nixon, who has in the past liked to advertise his personal authorship of major foreign policy, cannot convince anyone that his time is occupied by anything but saving his own hide. So important international obligations are being handled by second or third-echelon civil servants in Dr. Kissinger's absence and the nations thus treated must be somewhat slighted.

Nevertheless, with the particular benefit of hindsight, few will — or at any rate, should — complain of the time spent by Kissinger in Damascus. This task deserved the highest priority.

But with Kissinger home again, the homely advice to get a little rest and catch up on the paper work is more than small talk. The pace at which the man has been working and traveling will otherwise have damaging effects on his health and effectiveness as a peacemaker. This effectiveness, the recent past has shown, we cannot afford to lose.

UPI 05-01 12:30 PED

(KISSINGER)

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- HENRY KISSINGER IS A LONG DISTANCE RUNNER. HIS 33-DAY, 24,232-MILE MISSION TO THE MIDDLE EAST ENDED DURING THE PAST WEEK WITH AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN ISRAEL AND SYRIA FOR TROOP DISENGAGEMENT IN THE GOLAN HEIGHTS--AN AGREEMENT THAT MAY, AS HE SAID, MARK A TURNING POINT IN THE HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST.

FOR THE AMERICAN SECRETARY OF STATE, IT WAS ANOTHER DIPLOMATIC VICTORY ON A PAGE ALREADY RICH WITH ACCOMPLISHMENT--THE VIETNAM TRIUNE, THE OPENING TOWARD CHINA, THE DETENTE WITH RUSSIA AND THE EARLIER MILITARY DISENGAGEMENT BETWEEN ISRAEL AND EGYPT.

FOR THE MIDDLE EAST, IT MARKED THE FIRST MAJOR AGREEMENT SINCE 1943 BETWEEN ISRAEL AND SYRIA AND REINFORCED THE MODERATE EVOLUTION OF ARAB POLICY IN AN AREA PLAGUED WITH WAR SINCE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE JEWISH STATE 26 YEARS AGO.

FOR THE UNITED STATES, IT AFFIRMED THE NEW AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC LEADERSHIP IN A PART OF THE ARAB WORLD UNTIL RECENTLY IMPERMEATED WITH SOVIET INFLUENCE. STRATEGICALLY, IT WAS A GAIN AND VIRTUALLY A GUARANTEE THAT THE OIL WILL NOT BE TURNED OFF IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE AGAIN.

FOR PRESIDENT NIXON, IT OPENED THE WAY FOR A TRIUMPHANT VISIT TO THE MIDDLE EAST.

THREE TIMES ALL THIS ALMOST FAILED. THAT IT DID NOT CAN BE CREDITED TO THE PATIENCE AND TENACITY OF KISSINGER AND TO THE TWO LEADERS WHO WORKED WITH HIM TO BRING IT ABOUT AGAINST AN ALMOST INSURMOUNTABLE BARRIER OF SUSPICION AND MISTRUST.

IT WAS THE LAST GREAT ACT OF A WOMAN OF 76, PRIME MINISTER GOLDA MEIR OF ISRAEL, BEFORE SHE ABANDONED THE LEADERSHIP OF HER COUNTRY THIS WEEKEND. HERS WAS THE MAJOR DECISION FOR ISRAEL. WHEN IT WAS OVER, KISSINGER KISSED HER.

IT WAS ALSO A MAJOR ACT OF STATESMANSHIP FOR HAFEZ ASSAD, THE 43-YEAR-OLD AIR FORCE GENERAL WHO AS PRESIDENT OF SYRIA BROKE ALL PRECEDENT TO TURN HIS RADICAL ARAB COUNTRY SYMBOLICALLY TOWARDS PEACE WITH ISRAEL.

IN DEALING WITH EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT ANWAR SADAT TO NEGOTIATE THE EARLIER EGYPTIAN-ISRAELI MILITARY DISENGAGEMENT WHICH OPENED THE WAY, KISSINGER WAS DEALING WITH A LEADER WHO ALREADY HAD MADE UP HIS MIND TO TAKE THE NEW DIRECTION IN POLICY.

IN DEALING WITH ASSAD, KISSINGER WAS DEALING WITH A LEADER WHO WAS MAKING UP HIS MIND ONLY AS EVENTS WERE HAPPENING. AT EACH CRITICAL JUNCTURE, LESSER SYRIAN OFFICIALS REPEATED THE FAMILIAR RHETORIC OF HOSTILITY AND PAST INJUSTICE. ASSAD RESITATED AND THEN TOOK THE DIFFICULT AND COURAGEOUS DECISION FOR AGREEMENT. HIS WAS THE FINAL WORD.

THE AGREEMENT INEVITABLY RAISES THE QUESTION OF HOW KISSINGER DID WHAT SO MANY MEN HAVE TRIED AND FAILED TO DO BEFORE.

HOW DOES KISSINGER DO IT?

"HE'S FANTASTIC, FANTASTIC," MRS. MEIR SAID WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN JERUSALEM AS SHE WAITED TO WELCOME HIM TO A CELEBRATION PARTY. "MORE THAN ANY OF US, ANY OF MY MINISTERS, HE KNOWS EVERY ROAD, EVERY HILL, EVERY STREET OF QUNEITRA."

KISSINGER HAS THAT TREMENDOUS GRASP OF DETAIL THAT AMAZES. HE HAS, IN ADDITION, A TIRELESS PATIENCE TO LISTEN AND EXPLAIN THAT OUTLASTS OPPOSITION AND FINALLY INSPIRES TRUST.

MORE THAN THAT, THE TIME WAS RIPE, AND KISSINGER, THE HISTORIAN, KNEW IT.

UPI 05-01 12:30 PED

## How Kissinger Did It

# BEHIND THE VIETNAM CEASE-FIRE AGREEMENT

by Tad Szulc

For Americans, the long war is over. For many, it is something to be forgotten, buried, pushed aside. But for others, it is not. A number of recent books, as well as the Pentagon Papers, have shed light on how we got into the war and how we conducted it.

Much less is known, however, about how we got out. A cloak of secrecy mixed with ambiguity has covered much of Henry Kissinger's remarkable negotiations. Even the most careful observers, even people who participated in portions of the multifaceted negotiations themselves, had trouble following them over their long and tortuous course, which involved not only the North Vietnamese, but also the Russians, the Chinese, the South Vietnamese, and the U.S. government.

Tad Szulc presents here the most complete account yet assembled of the complicated events that culminated in the signing of the Paris cease-fire agreements in January of last year. He also goes further, concluding his article with an insight into the possibilities and pitfalls left by the agreements themselves, a subject made all the more relevant by the continuing debate over American assistance to the Indochinese states.

Some of the material that follows has been public for some time. The rest of it is based on new information pieced together by Szulc from a wide variety of sources in Washington, Paris, and elsewhere, in the course of research he is conducting for a major new book on the foreign policy of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger (to be published by The Viking Press late this year). His article—the longest we have ever published—provides an unprecedented insight into how American military disengagement

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from our longest and ugliest war was ac-
complished. —The Editors.

The extraordinary diplomatic story behind the secret 1972 and 1973 negotiations leading to the Vietnam cease-fire agreement and subsequent events may never be told publicly in its complex entirety—it certainly would not serve the Nixon Administration to do so—but sufficient new material is now available to permit at least a partial reconstruction of what happened, and how, during these hectic years and months.

This reconstruction, based on heretofore
unpublished accounts of the negotiations, a
lengthy secret State Department document
providing the internal interpretation of the
Agreement by the U.S. government and
fresh insights into our negotiating position,
includes these highlights:

> The United States has made a series of secret commitments to North Vietnam, most of which have remained unfulfilled, to implement the cease-fire agreement. The most important commitment covered the removal, within a year, of all American civilians in South Vietnam engaged in supporting South Vietnamese armed forces. Simultaneously, the United States has secretly counseled Saigon on how to bend certain military provisions of the cease-fire, the ban on procuring more sophisticated planes and shipping arms to Cambodia up the Mekong River.

> The United States and North Vietnam successfully negotiated, except for one unresolved point, an agreement on American aid to Hanoi for economic reconstruction. The accord was reached in principle late in March 1973, but the Administration shelved it because of its displeasure over Communist truce violations. Both the agreement and the shelving have been kept secret.

> American military aid to South Viet-
nam is currently coordinated through a spe-
cial "covert" section in the office of the De-
fense Attaché in the American Embassy in
Saigon. The section is a "minicommand"

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with over 100 personnel. It reports to a U.S.
military headquarters in Thailand.

> The real turning point in the negotiations came not in Paris, but Moscow, when Henry Kissinger indicated to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, during a secret visit late in April 1972, that the United States, in effect, no longer demanded the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam as a prior condition. The following month, at the Moscow summit, Kissinger stunned the Russians with a proposal for a tripartite electoral commission in South Vietnam. Apparently with Soviet and Chinese diplomatic help, the United States then won, as a quid pro quo, Hanoi's willingness to drop its insistence on President Thieu's removal prior to a cease-fire. These events led to the North Vietnamese secret peace proposal in October 1972, and ultimately to the settlement.

> Throughout most of the negotiating
process in 1972, Kissinger kept Saigon in
the dark about his diplomacy. As late as
August, he encouraged Thieu to prepare for
an invasion of North Vietnam after the U.S.
Presidential elections. Only in October, how-
ever, did he acknowledge to Thieu that the
United States was no longer demanding the
departure of Hanoi's forces from the South.

> Kissinger also misled President Lon Nol in October 1972, when he claimed that he had Hanoi's assurances for a simultaneous cease-fire in Cambodia and Vietnam. In this connection, the secret State Department interpretation document discloses that Article 20 of the Paris Agreement was deliberately drafted in such a way as to permit the United States to conduct air operations over Cambodia and Laos until a cease-fire there and the withdrawal of all foreign troops. The Administration had not counted on the subsequent congressional action banning air operations in Cambodia.

> The truly fascinating aspect of the se-
cret diplomatic history of the peace talks was
Kissinger's (and, presumably, President
Nixon's) ability to develop completely dis-

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tinct public and private negotiating positions
—particularly during 1972—and the ma-
nipulation of foe and friend alike. This was
done against the background of increasingly
hostile public opinion at home—the antiwar
movement was at its apex by 1971—and in
the context of Kissinger's conviction that
the key to a Vietnam settlement was a dé-
tente with both the Soviet Union and China.
Conversely, Kissinger believed that détente
could flourish in the long run only with the
liquidation of the Vietnam war. Thus, in
1971, the strands of U.S. policies toward
Moscow, Peking, and Hanoi began coming
together as Kissinger wove an intricate diplo-
matic fabric in the Communist world. There
were also two other cardinal concepts gov-
erning the Kissinger policy: one was that
the United States had to extricate itself from
Vietnam sooner or later—even if it meant a
potential break with Saigon, as Thieu was
to discover in good time—and the other was
his unshakable belief, expressed privately in
1969, after his first secret meetings with the
North Vietnamese, that the breakthrough
in negotiations could come only after a final
paroxysm of battle. He was, of course, proved
right in 1972. Meanwhile, his diplomacy
was designed to keep everybody off balance
—Thieu and Lon Nol on one side and the
North Vietnamese, the Russians, and the
Chinese on the other. It is even possible that
Nixon did not fully understand at all times
what his Special Assistant for National Se-
curity Affairs was doing.

First Contacts

All along it was an exercise in diplomatic brinkmanship on many fronts. One false step could bring the collapse of the whole Kissinger diplomatic edifice—and he came rather close to it on more than one occasion. In any event, Kissinger could perforce operate only in total secrecy, not only from the public but often from many of the other principal actors in the Vietnam drama.

As Nixon disclosed in his speech on Jan-
uary 25, 1972, Kissinger had been negotiat-

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ing secretly with the North Vietnamese since
August 1969. The initial contact was ar-
ranged by Jean Sainteny, a retired French
diplomat with good North Vietnamese con-
tacts. Sainteny had also known both Nixon
and Kissinger "for a long time." He met se-
cretly with Nixon and Kissinger as early as
February 1969 to set in motion the con-
tacts with the North Vietnamese. Kissinger's
first session with Xuan Thuy, the chief
North Vietnamese delegate to the peace talks,
was held on August 4, 1969, at Sainteny's
Paris apartment at 204, Rue de Rivoli.

The secret Paris meetings paralleled the
weekly semipublic sessions at the Majestic
Hotel, involving the Americans, the North
Vietnamese, and the two South Vietnamese
factions. Both the secret and the public
records agree on the point that no visible
progress was achieved in either forum for
nearly two years. Though Le Duc Tho, a
member of the Hanoi Politburo, became Kis-
singer's principal interlocutor after a series
of desultory meetings with Thuy, the two
sides remained totally deadlocked, each re-
fusing to budge from its position. The Amer-
ican position, set forth by Nixon in his
speech on October 7, 1970, was that peace
could be achieved through a cease-fire "in
place" throughout Indochina linked with an
"agreed timetable for complete withdrawals
as part of an overall settlement," the release
of American prisoners of war, and an Indo-
china peace conference. "Complete with-
drawals" meant, at that time, North Viet-
namese departure from the South—a totally
intractable point in negotiations, inasmuch
as Hanoi never acknowledged that it had
troops in South Vietnam. Hanoi's demand
was, in essence, for an unconditional Amer-
ican withdrawal and Thieu's removal.

The Logistics Of Secrecy

But some promising movement in the
negotiations seemed to develop during 1971.
On May 31, Kissinger again flew to Paris
to meet with Tho and present a new secret
peace plan. At this stage, the United States

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no longer dealt through Sainteny (Kissinger basically distrusted the French although he accepted French assistance in arranging his secret travels), but through its own intermediary, Lt. General Vernon A. Walters, then Defense Attaché in Paris, who maintained contact with Vo Van Sung, the North Vietnamese Delegate General in France, for the purpose of arranging secret meetings for Kissinger and passing secret communications. Walters, now the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, also served as interpreter between Kissinger and Tho, translating Kissinger's English into French and Tho's French into English. The usual pattern: Kissinger and his staff would leave Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland in the morning aboard an Air Force VIP Boeing 707 jet and land in the evening at Avord, the French air base near Orléans. There, the Kissinger party would transfer to a French executive jet, flown by two French Air Force pilots, for the short hop to Villa Coubley, a military field outside Paris. American Embassy cars then would take Kissinger and his assistants to one of the secret apartments in Paris where they would stay during these visits. After Nixon made his 1972 announcement of the secret meetings, Kissinger openly landed at Orly Airport and made his headquarters at the American Embassy residence.

May 31, 1971

The peace plan unveiled privately by Kissinger on May 31, 1971, but kept secret by the United States for almost eight months (and even then incompletely reported by Nixon), was a risky move, almost verging on brinkmanship. Its essential new element was that Washington offered specifically to agree to a deadline for the withdrawal of all American forces in exchange for a cease-fire and the release of all our POW's. This offer was made even though Nixon had insisted, as recently as his news conference of April 29, that he would not agree to a withdrawal until Hanoi committed itself on the prisoners. Although all of Nixon's public pro-

26.

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nouncements during April went on emphasizing "mutual withdrawals" as a peace pre- condition, the secret record shows that Kissinger did not make it a major issue on May 31. This may have been his first trial balloon—a hint of a fundamental American concession if Hanoi were responsive in other ways—notably in dropping its insistence on the removal of the Thieu regime.

Kissinger himself acknowledged much later, in private conversations in Washington, that the May 31 proposal could have turned out to be a "trap" for the Nixon Administration if the North Vietnamese had accepted it in its original form, creating a situation in which the United States would have found it difficult to keep arguing for the inviolability of the Thieu government and continued military aid to it. Kissinger claimed later that he was "amazed" Tho did not try to sandbag him with the May 31 proposal. Looking back, it appears that Hanoi made a faulty judgment at that time; Kissinger thinks that the North Vietnamese believed they could extract more from the United States in exchange for releasing the POW's, such as a formal commitment to drop our support for Thieu. Kissinger had sought to establish an area of flexibility in the negotiations—with all the risks this implied—but Hanoi preferred to keep them rigid.

According to Kissinger's private recollections. Tho reacted "seriously" to the May 31 proposal. He went along with the cease-fire proposal although he remained silent on a POW commitment. He asked whether the United States was prepared to include "political issues" in the negotiations, apparently without clearly defining what he had in mind. Their next meeting was held on June 26, after Hanoi had studied the proposals, and Kissinger again twice assured Tho that the United States was not closing the doors to discussions of political issues. Tho then countered with a secret nine-point plan of his own—covering all of Indochina and including the removal of Thieu—but, according to Kissinger's recollection, the North

27.

Vietnamese negotiator remarked that "today we have really made progress."

However, Nixon interpreted Hanoi's presentation of the secret nine-point plan on June 26 and the public offer of a Vietcong seven-point plan on July 1 (confined to Vietnam alone) as a rejection of the American proposals. It remains an unresolved question as to whether there was enough meat in the Hanoi proposal—and enough serious intent to negotiate systematically— to warrant an accelerated approach to the secret talks. Kissinger thought, at the time, that the Hanoi Politburo was somewhat uncertain about its own negotiating position.

There is no question that in presenting the May 31 proposal the Nixon Administration was keen on a prompt settlement. It was giving away points, though Hanoi may not have perceived this fully. Kissinger was operating within a broad diplomatic framework. The number of American troops in South Vietnam had already been cut down from 540,000 to 270,000 by the time Kissinger went to Paris on May 31. Nixon, evidently preparing the diplomatic ground, had announced on April 7 that another 100,000 men would be withdrawn by December 1, 1971.

In the second place, the Administration was making significant progress toward détente with both Moscow and Peking. Nixon had disclosed on May 20 that a "breakthrough" had been achieved with the Soviets on an agreement on SALT. By May 31, Kissinger's secret trip to Peking had been virtually arranged. Logic, then, seemed to indicate that a major move in the stalled Vietnam peace talks was now in order.

The Peking visit may have further encouraged Kissinger to pursue the Vietnam talks because he was back in Paris on July 12, immediately after his conversations with Premier Chou En-lai. His China trip had not yet been announced. But according to Nixon's subsequent public account, all Kissinger learned from Tho was that Hanoi wished the United States to consider its

Szule

nine-point plan rather than the Vietcong's seven-point plan. This suggested to the White House that Hanoi wanted to hang loose, as it was becoming increasingly clear that a crisis was developing in Saigon over Thieu's plans to be re-elected in October. Consequently, Kissinger returned to Paris on August 16 with still another secret plan: the United States would fully withdraw its forces and allied troops within nine months after an agreement on an overall settlement. This, of course, would include a cease-fire, the POW's release, and an undefined political settlement. Likewise, the United States offered for the first time to help rebuild Indonesia, including North Vietnam, from the ravages of war. Subtly, Kissinger seemed to be telling Tho that the United States would not press for North Vietnamese withdrawal if Hanoi gave up the notion of ousting Thieu as a peace condition.

## The May 31 Phase Ends

But, as one reconstructs this period, Hanoi chose to play the Thieu card, hoping that the political turmoil in Saigon might play into its hands. The latest American proposal was thus rejected when Kissinger and Tho met secretly on September 13 at the North Vietnamese "safe house" at 11, Rue Darthe in the Paris suburb of Choisy-le-Roi. A participant recalls that the meeting was correct, "never hostile," and that Tho simply told Kissinger that the August to proposal was unacceptable. This particular meeting marked the end of the series of secret talks that had started with the American proposal in May.

For the next four-and-a-half months the United States concentrated on the twin objectives of shoring up Thieu at all costs while trying to persuade Hanoi to resume negotiations. Whether or not the White House fully understood it, this policy was a contradiction in terms. While the negotiating records indicate that Tho never said in so many words, he made it amply clear to Kissinger at the September meeting

28.

29.

that the North Vietnamese strategy called for the unseating of Thieu before all else. Tho even suggested that Vice President Ky would be acceptable in Thieu's place if the United States forced the issue and coupled it with a total withdrawal of American forces. Thuy said later that he had told Kissinger during the August 16 secret meeting that if the United States discouraged Thieu from seeking re-election, this would be a "favorable opportunity" for a settlement. Curiously, however, Kissinger kept Thieu almost entirely in the dark about his exchanges with the North Vietnamese.

The Nixon-Kissinger decision that Thieu must be shielded from attacks from the U.S. Congress and public opinion—quite aside from being shielded from the Communists—had led earlier to a major and heretofore unrevealed policy disagreement between the White House and Ellsworth Bunker, the Ambassador in Saigon. Bunker, according to his associates, was bitterly disappointed by the Thieu maneuvers that, in effect, made his re-election a one-man race after both Ky and General "Big" Minh withdrew from the contest. Bunker took the view that the Thieu re-election plans were embarrassing to the United States and damaging to South Vietnam's political future. Consequently, early in September, Bunker dispatched a top-secret cable to Washington, requesting new press guidelines on the approaching elections.

Bunker proposed that Embassy spokesmen be permitted to tell newsmen that the United States regretted the political course of events in South Vietnam and to suggest that, for example, new elections could be called by Ky if Thieu resigned from office. Bunker emphasized that Article 56 of the South Vietnamese constitution provided for such an eventuality. The Ambassador wished to obtain Thieu's forced resignation and, therefore, the scotching of his re-election plan.

Nixon and Kissinger were in San Clemente when the Bunker cable reached the White House. National Security Council staffers working on the Vietnam problem

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drafted a reply to Bunker turning down his request on the grounds that Thieu must not be undermined, particularly in view of the approaching September 13 session between Kissinger and Tho. The NSC staff sensed that Kissinger would consider any anti-Thieu pronouncement by the Saigon Embassy as sabotage of his negotiating stance in Paris. Besides, the White House always felt that policy should be expressed in Washington and not Saigon. Kissinger, located somewhere in the San Clemente area at midnight, cleared the reply to Bunker by telephone. From then on, U.S. policy was monolithically in support of Thieu.

There were now growing intelligence indications that the Hanoi Politburo had decided that a major offensive in the spring of 1972 would break the diplomatic deadlock in their favor, presumably because under Nixon's withdrawal timetable American forces in the South would be below 100,000 men. Still another secret peace plan was drafted by Kissinger, again lowering the ante, and was delivered to the North Vietnamese in Paris by Walters on October 11.

Under this latest plan, within six months of an agreement, all U.S. and allied troops would leave Vietnam (the deadline was being reduced by three months from the August 12 proposal), all war prisoners would be exchanged, there would be an Inchina-wide cease-fire, and new elections would be held in the South. Thieu and Vice President Huong (who replaced Marshal Ky following his resignation) would resign one month before the elections and the president would then be chosen by the Senate to become the caretaker-administrator. The new elections would be supervised by an "independent body" representing all political forces in the South, including the National Liberation Front.

Again, nothing was said specifically about a North Vietnamese withdrawal. The Communists were allowed to assume that the United States had given up on this point—Kissinger was still dangling the bait he first produced on May 31—but Thieu was being

31.

told in Saigon that Washington was leaving this matter for the overall settlement. This of course, was untrue, but Kissinger was anxious to keep Thieu in line after exacting from him the commitment to resign to permit new elections. Apparently, it was not explained to him that Washington did not plan to make an issue of mutual withdrawals. There was, in the secret text, the ambiguous statement that "among the problems that will be settled is the implementation of the principle that all armed forces of the countries of Indochina must remain within their national frontiers." What was the word "remain," rather than "withdraw" supposed to mean? Another new element was the proposal for the "independent body" to organize the elections, but Kissinger was careful to avoid the impression in Saigon that he was tacitly accepting Communist ideas for a coalition government—anathema to Thieu.

At first blush, the October 1971 proposal was the best deal Hanoi had ever been offered. What was totally unclear, however, was what kind of agreement Washington had in mind before it would set into motion the six-month withdrawal and election scenario. There are reasons to believe that both the North and South Vietnamese parties were confused by the new plan. We still do not know, of course, what was in the minds of the Politburo when they read the October plan. But there is evidence that Hanoi was in an increasingly bellicose mood.

## 1971 Ends In Silence

For one thing, the North Vietnamese were reluctant to meet again with Kissinger—the last meeting was held on September 13—to discuss the new proposal. In his communication to Hanoi, President Nixon proposed a secret session to be held on November 1. On October 25, the North Vietnamese in Paris informed General Walters that a meeting could be held on November 20. But on November 17, General Walters received word that the session could not be

32.

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held because Tho was ill. This apparently was true, but Hanoi offered no alternative date nor suggested another negotiator. It seems, in retrospect, that Hanoi now wished to switch entirely to the military track and remain free of the negotiating process. There were no more messages from Hanoi in 1971.

By mid-December, Ambassador Bunker began sending urgent telegrams from Saigon that the Communist military build-up was considerably bigger than realized in Washington. Bunker and the intelligence services were reporting vast movements of North Vietnamese vehicles into truck parks along South Vietnamese borders in the demilitarized zone and in Laos and Cambodia. Predictions were made for a major Communist offensive in February 1972. NSC staffers in Washington urged pre-emptive air strikes against the truck concentrations, but both the White House—including Kissinger—and the Defense Department soft-pedaled the situation because of their belief that Vietnamization had been so successful that the ARVN could handle the situation alone.

## Nixon Goes Public

Around January 20, 1972, however, the White House became so alarmed both by the North Vietnamese build-up and Hanoi's continued silence concerning the resumption of the secret sessions, that the decision was made to "go public" with the October peace proposal and the disclosure that Kissinger had been intermittently holding private sessions with the Communists since August 1969. The idea of "going public" had been considered for a number of months—Kissinger discussed it often with his staff—because of growing frustration with Hanoi and, just as importantly, because of domestic public opinion. In White House parlance, the disclosure was made for the "theater"—to confound criticism that the Administration was not actively pursuing peace in Vietnam.

President Nixon went public in a dramatic speech to the nation on January 25, 1972, telling the story of Kissinger's secret

33.

trips and revealing the October peace pro-
posal. Nixon said that "until recently" the
system of secret negotiations "showed signs
of yielding some progress." But as he spoke
to the nation, prospects for successful diplo-
macy had hit their lowest point in years.

Still, both sides spent two more months
in diplomatic charades before the explosion
that ultimately led to the Peace Agreement a
year later. The day after the Nixon speech,
the White House sent a private message to
Hanoi indicating readiness to resume secret
talks. But this suggestion was dispatched in
the midst of extraordinary expressions of
public hostility. On February 5, in Paris,
Thuy suddenly denied that Kissinger had of-
fered to set a deadline for U.S. troop with-
drawal as part of the May 31 peace plan in
exchange for a cease-fire and the release of
the POW's. For its part, the White House de-
nied Thuy's claim that North Vietnam had
agreed the previous summer to separate polit-
ical from military problems—an issue that
all along had been at the center of the whole
stalemate. On February 6, Thuy further
escalated the dispute with the announcement
that the POW's would be released only *after*
Washington abandoned Thieu and brought
the war to an end.

Despite this increasingly bitter polemic,
Hanoi advised Washington on February 14
that it would be agreeable to the resump-
tion of secret talks after March 15. On Feb-
ruary 17, the day Nixon and Kissinger left
for Peking, they informed Hanoi that March
20 would be a suitable date. This was ac-
cepted by the North Vietnamese 12 days
later, when the Presidential party was al-
ready home from China. But on March 6,
the North Vietnamese asked for a postpone-
ment until April 15. Kissinger, who was
planning a Tokyo trip on that date, pro-
posed April 24. Hanoi agreed on March 31,
only after the United States angrily inter-
rupted semipublic sessions in Paris.

The launching of the North Vietnamese
offensive on March 30 explains why Hanoi
combined its new public hostility toward

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the United States with foot-dragging on
the resuming of secret negotiations in pre-
ceeding weeks. What is unexplained is why
the Nixon Administration failed to perceive
in time what was happening. Kissinger him-
self admitted later that only on Easter Sun-
day did he realize that Saigon was facing a
full-fledged offensive and that the North
Vietnamese were "going for broke" in a last
desperate attempt to smash the South Viet-
namese army before a peace settlement. This
is particularly perplexing when one con-
siders that Kissinger had always believed
that peace would ultimately come only after
a final outbreak of heavy fighting. Still, the
overwhelming concern in the White House
was the just-concluded trip to China and the
approaching Moscow summit. As a senior
White House official remarked at the time,
Vietnam was a "cruel side show" in the Ad-
ministration's new worldwide policies.

When the scope of the Communist offen-
sive was finally realized, a touch of panic
developed in the White House. The fall of
Quangtri during April deepened the concern,
as well as the growing belief that the United
States must intervene massively to save Sai-
gon from collapse. Kissinger was portrayed
by his associates as fearing that the ARVN
could not hold its own. By mid-April, the
overhanging question was how to move de-
cisively in Vietnam without, at the same
time, destroying the chances for the Moscow
summit scheduled for May. Nixon dispatched
Kissinger to the Soviet capital to explore
the situation with Brezhnev, and to enlist his
support for convincing Hanoi to cease the
offensive.

The Kissinger mission to Moscow on April
20 was shrouded in total secrecy. The Air
Force jet that brought him from Andrews
Air Force Base landed at a Soviet domestic
airfield near Moscow rather than at Vnukovo
international airport where the white-and-
blue plane might have been spotted. Soviet
government limousines took Kissinger's par-
ty to an estate known as Dom Pryoma in
the Lenin Hills about 45 minutes away from

35.

Moscow. So great was the secrecy that except for a surreptitious visit to the Kremlin on their last evening in the Soviet Union, Kissinger and his staff never left the estate. An advance White House team headed by Brigadier General Brent Scowcroft, also in Moscow to prepare the Nixon visit, was never told of Kissinger's presence, and apparently neither was the American Ambassador Jacob D. Beam. For four days, Kissinger and his staff, including Helmut Sonnenfeldt (now Counselor of the State Department), met with Brezhnev and his advisers at the Chairman's private dacha across the road from the guest house. With Brezhnev were Foreign Minister Gromyko, Ambassador Dobrynin, Alexandrov (Brezhnev's personal foreign policy adviser), and an interpreter.

## Bombshells In Moscow

Subsequently, Kissinger publicly disclosed his secret meetings with Brezhnev. He said that the Vietnam situation was discussed "at considerable length," but he gave no details.

What Kissinger has not made public to this day is that his sessions with Brezhnev produced what probably was the first major turning point in the history of the Vietnam negotiations. He told an astonished Brezhnev that the United States would be willing to accept a cease-fire in place in exchange for the departure of the North Vietnamese forces which had entered South Vietnam since the start of the offensive on March 30. This was a veritable diplomatic bomb; Washington had never before explicitly agreed to let any North Vietnamese forces stay in the South. An offhand calculation at that point was that between 30,000 and 40,000 fresh North Vietnamese troops had entered South Vietnam since the offensive. Kissinger was telling Brezhnev that Washington would not demand the evacuation of the estimated 100,000 North Vietnamese who had been in the South prior to the offensive.

This offer has to be carefully analyzed to understand Kissinger's secret diplomacy. A concession of enormous magnitude was

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being made to Hanoi via the Russians. As noted earlier, secret American peace proposals since the May 31 document had *hinted* that the United States was not inflexible on the question of North Vietnamese forces, central as this was to the long-range survival of the Saigon regime. The October 1971 proposal left the matter deliberately ambiguous with the use of the phrase that all armed forces of "the countries of Indochina must remain within their national frontiers." Since Hanoi always took the view that Vietnam was "one country" with "two armies," the North Vietnamese were given the latitude to interpret this phrase as they wished. But they had never been told clearly that their forces could remain in the South.

In the past, Nixon had used the expression "cease-fire in place," but it was always taken to mean that a settlement including "mutual withdrawals" would then be negotiated. This concept was repeatedly rejected by Hanoi. Speaking with Brezhnev, however, Kissinger was linking his secret offer with the insistence that Hanoi stop demanding Thieu's removal *before* any agreement. Thus he later indicated to Brezhnev that the United States would not impose a Communist government on Saigon and wanted, instead, a "genuine political solution." Kissinger also reminded Brezhnev that the American proposal of May 1971 implicitly carried the same notion. Now the idea was for Brezhnev to transmit the new feature of the American position to Hanoi, so that a basis could be established for resuming secret negotiations leading to the cessation of fighting and a final settlement. Brezhnev agreed to do so, and Kissinger thus could report publicly, two weeks later, that the Russians "felt that every effort should be made to resume negotiations."

Shortly after Kissinger returned to Washington, word was received that Hanoi was ready for a secret meeting in Paris on May 2. But, meanwhile, the military situation in South Vietnam had deteriorated to such a point that Nixon and Kissinger began to plan retaliatory action against North Viet-

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nam: massive bombings of the Hanoi-Haiphong area and of all North Vietnamese communications lines, and the mining of the port of Haiphong. Kissinger felt, however, that it was essential to hold the meeting with Tho before a final decision was taken to strike at the North.

Kissinger and a small staff left Andrews on the evening of May 1, reaching Paris the following morning under the cover of secrecy. He met with Tho for nearly four hours. The meeting produced no results.

North Vietnam, apparently flushed with its military successes, was in no mood to negotiate and the American party flew home the same evening. The May 2 meeting was the first one between Kissinger and Tho since September 13, 1971. Kissinger, who had been frequently telling his staff in the crisis period that since the United States could not weaken North Vietnam through diplomacy it had to do so through force, now concluded that the time for action had come.

## The Nixon Counteroffensive

At 6:00 PM on Friday, May 5, General Alexander M. Haig, then Kissinger's Deputy, summoned a meeting of NSC staffers in the White House Situation Room to inform them that it was "98 percent certain" that the President would order bombings of North Vietnam and the mining of Haiphong. He said that a full meeting of the NSC was scheduled for 9:00 AM on Monday, May 8, and that the staff had the weekend to "game out" the plans.

At noon on Saturday, Kissinger conducted a preparatory meeting attended by Haig, George Carver of the CIA, Sonnenfeldt as the Soviet expert, John Holdridge as the China expert, and several NSC staffers. He went around the table asking for opinions. Carver said the CIA supported the bombing and mining plan because it could result in great pressures on the Hanoi leadership. This was a departure from the standing CIA position against violent retaliatory acts. Sonnenfeldt said Moscow would not increase its involve-

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ment in the Vietnam conflict unless a Soviet ship in Haiphong were hit by American bombs, but he gave even odds that the forthcoming summit might be cancelled by the Russians. Holdridge said he doubted China would respond violently. Haig supported the plan so long as it called for a sustained effort over an adequate time period.

Kissinger was described as agonizing over the decision. He paced back and forth, wondering aloud whether, after all, it would be wise policy. He knew instinctively that Nixon favored action, but he expressed doubts as to whether it was worth the risk because the ARVN might collapse anyway and the United States had already done enough for Saigon. In the end, according to associates, he was able to rationalize the need for the bombing and the mining. The NSC staff spent all Sunday coordinating operations with the Pentagon, preparing to notify the Soviets, Chinese, and others of the U.S. actions, and drafting the Nixon speech. The first draft was written by Winston Lord, an assistant to Kissinger.

On Monday, May 8, the full NSC met with the President. Nixon invited all the members to give their opinions. CIA Director Helms, the first to speak, appeared to have little enthusiasm for the bombing and mining on the theory that materiel could be easily moved to North Vietnam overland by railway from China. Secretary of State William P. Rogers then spoke out strongly against both measures. He told the President that we had already done enough for South Vietnam. In his opening remarks, Nixon told the group that they faced a tough situation, in view of the approaching Moscow summit, but that in reality a Soviet ally had invaded an ally of the United States. He said that he did not wish to hear the argument that retaliation against North Vietnam would kill the Moscow summit, because the President of the United States was not prepared to go to the Soviet Union if it did nothing to discourage an attack on America's ally.

Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird was

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outspoken against both actions. He argued that Vietnamization was working well, that Hué had not yet been taken by the Communists, and that the ARVN was proving itself. Besides, Laird said, the Pentagon already had a $4 billion deficit in 1972 and the Navy had expended all the ammunition allocated for the current fiscal year. Treasury Secretary John Connally was the strongest advocate of retaliation. As one of the participants described it, Connally practically jumped out of his chair, pointing his finger at Nixon and saying that, in effect, he would not be a real President if he failed to act. He made disparaging comments about Laird's reservations. Vice President Agnew strongly favored the decision "to go." The only comment Kissinger made during the whole meeting was that there was a 50-50 chance that the Soviets would cancel the summit if the United States engaged in the bombing and mining. A participant said later that if a secret ballot had been taken at the meeting, the decision might have gone against the bombing of the North. But few of the NSC members seemed disturbed about the mining of Haiphong. The President ended the meeting at noon, saying that he would make his decision soon. He did so a few minutes before 2:00 PM. Word went out immediately to the military to launch the operations.

President Nixon spoke to the nation at 9:00 PM to announce his decision. The most notable feature of this speech was the omission of any suggestion that a North Vietnamese withdrawal from the South was required as a condition to cease the bombing and the mining. Unlike his January 25 speech, the President did not mention the need for the armed forces of Indochinese countries to "remain within their national frontiers." This was consistent with the offer Kissinger made to Brezhnev two weeks earlier.

The omission of any reference to North Vietnamese withdrawals was deliberate. It was part of the Nixon-Kissinger "stick-and-carrot" policy designed to achieve an acceptable settlement of the Vietnam war during

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the election year of 1972. It is known that as early as 1970, an NSC staff review of Indonesia cease-fire consequences had convinced Kissinger that there was no way to win the removal of the North Vietnamese from the South. Until the May 8 speech, therefore, the United States had been simply paying lip service to this notion. In other words, the official U.S. position had now become that a *permanent* cease-fire in place was to follow the end of the fighting. Inevitably the conclusion was reached that in the end Saigon would have to cope with a military "leopard spots" situation in the South.

The White House won the gamble—the Russians did not cancel the summit. Nixon flew to Moscow assured now that Brezhnev wished to be helpful in settling the war.

## The President In Moscow

The Americans and the Russians held four discussions about Vietnam. The first one was on May 24 at the Dom Pryoma estate where Brezhnev entertained Nixon for dinner. Nixon was accompanied by Kissinger and two NSC staffers. Brezhnev, however, brought along President Nikolai Podgorny, Premier Aleksei Kosygin, and Alexandrov, his foreign policy expert. The session began shortly before 8:00 PM and lasted until 11:30 PM when Brezhnev finally called a recess for dinner. Nixon took the floor first and spoke for about 20 minutes, making the point that if the Soviet Union's allies attack America's allies with Soviet equipment, the United States has no choice but to react. Speaking quietly, without notes, Nixon went on to say that the United States had laid out its negotiating terms and that if Hanoi did not find them acceptable, we would pursue the bombing and the mining.

Kosygin, Podgorny, and Brezhnev each spoke for about one hour, in that order. They were critical of the American policies in Vietnam, but said, in effect, that there was nothing the Soviet Union could do about it. The most bitter speech was delivered by Kosygin, who recalled: "I was in

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Hanoi when the Americans started bombing Hanoi and I shall never forget it." This was a reference to the 1965 bombings. But, as Sonnenfeldt had predicted, even Kosygin confined his protest to the danger of a Soviet ship being hit by American bombs. The thrust of Brezhnev's remarks was that détente was moving ahead, so why should the United States spoil it all by destroying North Vietnam and being condemned for it by the rest of the world? None of the three Russians suggested that the continuing war in Vietnam was an obstacle to détente. At one point, Kosygin turned to Nixon and said: "You have Henry Kissinger, he's a smart man, why don't you get him to find the right solution for the war?" The meeting went on for so long that Nixon turned to Kissinger to whisper: "God, this cannot go on like this." Then, in a rather unusual gesture, Nixon lit a small cigar. The sumptuous dinner was all cordiality, Kosygin leading the toasts with Georgian brandy. Nixon had two or three brandies, bottoms-up.

The second meeting on Vietnam was held between Kissinger and Foreign Minister Gromyko at the Kremlin in the afternoon of May 25. There Kissinger dropped two more diplomatic bombs. After Gromyko made it clear that the Soviet Union could live with the existing situation in Vietnam, Kissinger told the Minister that the American air action over North Vietnam did not necessarily have to continue until all the POW's were returned. This was an abrupt departure from the position stated by Nixon in his speech only two weeks earlier that the return of the prisoners was the first condition for the end of the bombing of the North. Thus, again, Kissinger was producing a secret diplomatic track at variance with the public U.S. position. Clearly, he was using the bombing as a bargaining chip.

Kissinger's second bomb that afternoon was his sudden introduction of the theme of the political situation in Vietnam. This had not been discussed the previous evening by the principals and was also a departure from

the Nixon speech of May 8, in which no mention at all was made of Vietnamese politics. Kissinger announced that the United States was prepared to back a tripartite electoral commission in South Vietnam, including elements from the Saigon regime, the Vietcong, and the neutralists. This was a real shift in the American stance: the United States had opposed such a tripartite commission all along out of fear that it could evolve into a coalition government, something Saigon and Washington had always rejected. The secret American proposal of October 1971 had spoken only of an "independent body," representing all political forces in South Vietnam, to organize and run the elections. It had been a far cry from a tripartite commission. Gromyko was so taken aback that he said to Kissinger, "let me make quite sure I got right what you said." Kissinger replied: "Yes, I'm talking about a tripartite commission."

Kissinger and Gromyko discussed Vietnam again on May 26, covering roughly the same ground. The net effect of these discussions was that the United States made it clear to the Russians that its private negotiating position was infinitely more flexible than the public posture. This covered the North Vietnamese presence in the South, the willingness to suspend bombing even before the release of the POW's, and the support for a tripartite electoral commission. Kissinger was edging closer and closer to the Hanoi views—except for the immediate removal of Thieu—and was laying the foundations for what would become the ultimate settlement.

## Podgorny To Hanoi

The last discussion on Vietnam was conducted by Nixon and Brezhnev on May 30, the last day of the visit. They agreed that Podgorny would go to Hanoi as soon as possible to convey to the North Vietnamese the views Kissinger had expressed in Moscow. The precise nature of Podgorny's mission has thus far been kept secret, although his presence in Hanoi between June 15 and

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June 18 was publicly announced at the time. Kissinger was delighted that Podgorny would serve as an intermediary and he expressed pride to his associates that the Russians "are going to help us."

## Kissinger To Peking

On June 16, while Podgorny was in Hanoi, Kissinger flew to Peking to brief the Chinese about the Moscow summit, as part of the American triangular policy. Vietnam was discussed for four hours in a meeting with Chou En-lai, and it was clear that Kissinger was keen on enlisting Chinese support for a negotiated settlement. For one thing, he was anxious to resume secret meetings with the North Vietnamese before the Democratic National Convention—"for the theater," as the White House saying went. Whereas in Moscow Kissinger was acting as a negotiator, in Peking he was playing the philosopher with candor. He told Chou that if the Americans could be friends with China, they must also be friends with Hanoi.

The secret record shows that Kissinger told the Chinese Premier that the trouble with the North Vietnamese was that they were too greedy, that they wanted everything at once, and that they were afraid of the process of history. He asked Chou En-lai why Hanoi was so afraid of history, and why it couldn't see the whole process as two separate stages? The first step, he said, would be the American disengagement. History would then run its own course in Vietnam. Kissinger went on to complain that Hanoi kept asking the United States to do that which it was not prepared to do: namely, to overthrow a friend, the South Vietnamese, with whom Washington had already been fighting diplomatically so that the war could be ended. Kissinger, having propelled the Russians into a form of mediation, was now trying to obtain the same from the Chinese.

Chou En-lai, however, was less responsive. He told Kissinger that China would not press Hanoi one way or another, even though it did not necessarily approve of the North

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Vietnamese strategy of invading the South with conventional forces. He also volunteered the opinion that history was against the United States, that Communism would prevail in Vietnam and Cambodia, but that Laos would continue to be ruled by its king.

Despite Chou's reticence about playing a diplomatic role in Vietnam, there are strong indications that China made a major contribution. Chairman Mao told France's Foreign Minister Maurice Schumann, during July, that he advised Madame Binh, the Vietcong Foreign Minister, to desist from making demands for Thieu's resignation as a precondition. Mao informed Schumann that he had explained to Binh that in certain tactical situations a compromise is advisable. He gave her the example of his own negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek in the 1940's.

Schumann immediately informed the United States of his conversation with Mao, adding his own comment that a breakthrough might finally be in the offing. The White House took the view that Podgorny's and Mao's combined efforts, subtle as they were, held the promise of a settlement. By mid-July, there was a new sense of quiet optimism over the Vietnam negotiations. Hanoi had agreed to a secret meeting between Kissinger and Tho scheduled for July 19, and Kissinger felt that the negotiations might be getting back on the track.

The July 19 session produced no real results, as both sides basically rehashed their positions. Kissinger restated the October 1971 proposal with the added incentive that the United States might shorten the deadline for the total withdrawal of its troops from Vietnam. But, importantly, the two sides agreed to keep in touch.

## Dr. Kissinger, Meet President Thieu

After his session with Tho, Kissinger flew directly to Saigon to practice a totally different brand of diplomacy with even greater problems. In talks with Thieu, he took a distinct tack from his approach to the Russians, the Chinese, and the North Vietnam-

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