"The President spent much of today convincing himself and trying to convince others that his Vietnam policy speech is an overwhelming success.

At mid-morning and then again in the afternoon the President called reporters into his office to show them a desk stacked high with telegrams.

The President indicated that most of the telegrams favored his Vietnam speech, although he acknowledged that some -- he didn't know exactly how many -- advocated immediate US withdrawal from the war.

What pleased Mr. Nixon most was that so many of the telegrams were signed, 'members of the silent majority.' A phrase he had used in his address last night." 1/

Frank Reynolds on the ABC Evening News, November 4,

summed up much of the news media at President Nixon's speech:

"In the final few days before the President's speech, the Administration made a serious attempt to discourage speculation about major changes in policy, or any dramatic breakthroughs toward peace.

Still, despite these forthright warnings against unduly high expectations, a good many people, and I am one of them, expected the President to at least try to diffuse or disarm the anti-war movement in this country.

Instead, by the standfast tone of his speech, Mr. Nixon may have added fuel to the fire of his opposition." 2/

1/ Radio-TV Defense Dialog, November 5, 1969.

2/ IBID

David Brinkley offered a subtle rebuttal to
President's speech on the NBC Evening News, November

5:

"Needless to say, the organizers
of the last moratorium and the planners
of the next one - those who see the war
as a calamitous blunder that ought to
be ended found the President's speech
bitterly disappointing and out of touch
with the realities of American opinion.

The President addressed some of
his remarks to them, referring to them
as a the minority - a label they probably
do not accept." 1/

Brinkley then switched to Sam Brown, chief organizer of
the October Moratorium, who offered his rebuttal:

"It seems clear from our polling
around the country last night that people
who were only marginally involved are not
deeply committed to the cause of peace =
the people who were previously deeply in-
volved, are not ready to take even more
of their time to spend on working for
peace.

It seems clear to me that he has
reinforced the sentiment in the peace move-
ments, made it much stronger and made it
much more possible for us really, to work
in communities.

We anticipate that the President's
speech will be tragically of help to us." 2/

1/ Radio-TV Defense Dialog, Department of the Air Force,
November 6, 1969.

2/ IBID

A *Times* editorial on November 7 depicted the President's policy as an "open-ended commitment" to Saigon, inconsistent with the Asian Doctrine enunciated at Guam in August. It took issue with Nixon's contention that the only alternative to his policy was precipitate withdrawal:

"Most critics of Vietnam policies, old and new, believe what is required is steady, orderly withdrawal of American forces from South Vietnam under conditions that offer maximum safeguards against the massacres... Mr. Nixon predicts."

Washington looked ahead with some trepidation to the three days of anti-war demonstrations planned in the capital for November 13-15.

On November 6 Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst refused a request for a march permit for the November 15 march on Pennsylvania Avenue. Law enforcement officials were clearly edgy about the prospects of violence in the upcoming demonstrations. In/November 7 issue of The Washington Post a story reported that 400 District of Columbia police-men were being trained for riot duty or, as the term was used, "a civil disturbance unit".

A Washington Post editorial on November 8 criticized the Kleindienst decision, noting that there were indeed chances of violence on November 15. Unfortunately, law enforcement officials had to reconcile the need to protect public safety with the need

111

to guarantee citizens the right to protest:

"Undoubtedly, there is going to be some trouble during the weekend of the 15th. There ought to be plenty of force on hand to control it. The trouble will not come from the great army of protesters eager to tell the President how they feel about Vietnam. It will come from little roving groups of firebrands and anarchists who want to bait the authorities into excesses... But it is vital to bear in mind that the great majority of Americans who will be here do not intend to break the law at all and the measures taken to control the situation must recognize their rights as well as the concerns of public order ... Our guess is that the majority will be able to go a long way towards controlling and even policing the performance of even the most violence-prone among the minority. It will, that is unless the Justice Department, by needless provocation and denial, undermines and alienates the majority and thus plays squarely into the hands of the minority."

On November 9, Joseph Kraft focused his attention on what he perceived to be the central issue of the Vietnam debate, rather than the upcoming Moratorium demonstrations. Kraft asserted the familiar theme that the United States had not done everything possible to achieve a negotiated settlement: "It is passing strange, that so many people have made up their minds so quickly about the President's speech on Vietnam. For at the core of Mr. Nixon's argument, there is a mystery -- the mystery of why negotiations have gone sour.

"The President's claim, of course, is that the intransigents of the other side are to blame. But the evidence he offered argues the opposite...

"Ho Chi Minh's letter dated three days before his death on September 2, does nothing to justify the President's staggering denunciation... In any case the price being paid for Mr. Nixon's policy should be clear. The other side has now been confirmed in its worst suspicions of the United States. Negotiations are much more difficult than ever before -- if possible at all. A long and bitter struggle at most, certain to intensify at some point, looms ahead. The struggle is, by no mere rhetorical touch, Nixon's war."

In contrast to the period preceding the October
Moratorium, when the voices of the doves grew louder, the
mood on Capitol Hill before the November marches was one
of caution, with relatively muted criticism from even the
doves. This was due to expectations and fears that the
40-hour "March Against Death" would turn violent, and few
members of Congress wanted to risk association with such
an event.

Senator McGovern had reportedly asked protest leaders
on October 22, "Can I really be seen on the same platform
with David Dellinger (leading radical activist)?" 39/
Senator Hatfield at first expressed support for the up-
coming protests, yet said shortly before the march that
peace efforts should be "concentrated at grass roots level,
not in massive marches and vigils." 40/
And according to

39/ Washington Post 10/23/69

40/ Congressional Quarterly 11/14/69

*Congressional Quarterly* (November 14 issue) "division began to appear between Congressional doves and organizers of the November 13-15 antiwar protests."

In the end, a very small number of Senators participated in the march: McGovern, Hughes, McCarthy and Young. McCarthy made a brief speech at the Capitol before joining the main demonstration up at the Washington monument.

Twenty-three senators, - 21 Democrats and 2 Republicans - did sign a statement calling on residents of Washington to offer their assistance to demonstrators.

An extraneous issue had been injected into the general context of the Vietnam debate by Vice President Agnew on November 13. In a speech at a Republican Party function in Des Moines, he charged that the television networks presented their viewers with a biased view of Vietnam-related news. Agnew took issue particularly with what he called the "instant analysis and querulous criticism" which he claimed followed the President's November 3 speech. Needless to say, the issue of the media's objectivity/ selectivity had been raised before. But Agnew unquestionably heightened public awareness of it, and left a legacy of mistrust between the media, the White House and the American people, which was to manifest itself again during the Watergate years.

Another relatively extraneous issue, which nevertheless affected public and Congressional opinion on Vietnam,

was raised on November 13, when (then) freelance writer Seymour
Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre. On November 24
the Army announced the court-martial of Lieutenant William L.
Calley on charges of murdering at least 109 Vietnamese
civilians.

On November 13 "The Mobe" as the November Moratorium was
called, began in Washington. The dispute with the Justice
Department had been resolved amicably and Deputy Attorney
General Kleindienst had issued a permit for a slightly different
route than the demonstrators had wished. A Washington Post
editorial on November 13 took satisfaction that "the vibrations
are better today than they were last week and now there is every
expectation that the weekend demonstrations will be largely
peaceful." The Post apparently placed most of the blame on the
predemonstration jitters with the Justice Department. "It
doesn't much matter how the final accommodation was reached,
but surely the largest bouquet should go to the Mobe leaders...
but no matter, Deputy Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst's
words yesterday were generous and struck the right note."

117

The antiwar demonstrations in Washington of November 13-15 did turn out to be, for the most part, peaceful. One notable exception to that was on November 14 when approximately one thousand hard-core mititants clashed with police outside of the South Vietnamese Embassy in what The Washington Post termed "a mini-riot". A number of radicals also assaulted the Justice Department on Pennsylvania Avenue on November 14 and were subsequently gassed by police. During that incident a Vietcong flag had been run up outside the office of Attorney General John N. Mitchell. Many of the demonstrators appeared equipped for street fighting, and threw a smoke bomb against the Justice Department before the police retaliated with tear gas.

But by far the most impressive feature of the November Moratorium was a mass rally on the grounds of the Washington Monument on Sunday, November 15 in what was the largest antiwar crowd ever assembled in the United States, and a demonstration larger than the 1963 civil rights march on Washington. At least 250,000 demonstrated, two blocks away from a barricaded White House. In contrast to some of the nasty scenes of the preceding two days, the atmosphere at the monument was quite mellow.

Many of the persons attending the demonstration where young, white and apparently quite middle class compared / the dominant appearance / persons involved in Woodstock-type / of the/altercations with police.

Network television coverage of the November Moratorium
was more extensive than that of the October 15 demonstra-
tions; this was a natural consequence of the length of
the November protest. Much of the coverage subtly empha-
sized the overhanging prospect of violence by noting the
presence of large numbers of troops on the streets of
Washington.

climactic

Following the/November 15 march, Chet Huntley
noted the peaceful nature of the march, and predominance of
white, middle class youths:

"More than a quarter of a million people, most of them young, most of them white, demonstrated against the Vietnam war today in Washington. Theirs was the largest anti-war demonstrations in the history of the United States, and it was entirely peaceful...

There were more than 40,000 police and
regular Army troops, National Guardsmen, and
other security forces in Washington to prevent
violence. But there was no violence to prevent
(not an entirely true statement)." 1/

1/ Radio-TV Defense Dialog, Department of the Air Force,  
November 17, 1969.

Time and Newsweek once again gave more than adequate coverage to Moratorium events. And again Time was much more forthright in drawing conclusions. In its November 21 issue, it said:

"Once again, on main streets and Broadway, in village halls, statehouses and the national capital, at coliseums, campuses and churches, Americans turned out to march, argue and de-claim over Vietnam. The spectacle in many ways resembled the October Moratorium, but with a major difference. This time, answering Richare Nixon's call, thd opponents of dissent also demonstrated ... No less patriotic by their own lights, the antiwar forces also blossomed with American flags in three days of nationwide activities that were anchored by mass marches in Washington and San Francis-co...

During much of the time that tens of thousands of young marchers against the war filed past the White House, the President remained aloof inside, showing no sign that he was moved to consider any policy change. He seems under no compulsion to do so. The massive demonstration in Washington showed the continuing momentum of dissent. Nonetheless, the week's activity nationwide served to emphasize that those who want an immediate end to the war, regardless of its consequences, still represent a minority ..."

In contrast to *Time's* analysis, *The New Republic* viewed the November Moratorium as another success for antiwar forces, to be followed most effectively by involvement in the 1970 Congresses I elections:

"There need not be another massive march on Washington, not soon. The one of November 15 will stand a while as incontrovertible testimony to the strength of the antiwar sentiment. It was unlike anything seen heretofore, unlike the smaller demonstration of October 15, when Moratorium marchers one by one passed the White House and the Treasury Building and stuck their candles on the iron fence railings, so that by night there were banks of them in all colors and shapes ... This time there was simply the immensity of the crowd, some 250,000 people around the Washington Monument on a cold November afternoon ... The best of the orators sensed that the speeches were incidental,...

But beyond raising a cheer for resistance within the armed forces, what can those who came to Washington do in the months ahead ?...

We look once more to the Moratorium Committee to lead.... Their network of dedicated, disciplined young people reaches into every state, every congressional district. The marches are behind them; ahead is a harder task. The Moratorium ought now to mount a national political assault, its objective being nothing less than the election of a Congress in 1970 that reflects the new mood of the country, one pledged to ending the war and to a thoroughgoing renewal of American society..."

On the page opposite the above editorial, however,
Joseph Kraft did try to assess the political implications.
In "Living with the Mobe," Kraft asserted that although dem-
onstrations like the New Mobe and the Moratorium were apt to
become a standard feature of the political landscape, pol-
itics "can probably keep on even keel only when the govern-
ment learns to live more easily with plebiscitary democracry."

The feeling that the massive antiwar demonstrations of
the November Moratorium had made an undeniable -- if still
undefined -- impact, was bolstered when on November 16 the
Administration moved to discredit the antiwar protesters.

Two of the President's closest advisors, Attorney
General Mitchell, and Communications Director Herbert G.
Klein, claimed

that although the demonstrations were considered generally
peaceful, they had, in fact, actually moved the city to
the brink of violence. Klein said, "There is no question
but that the American people do support the President."

41/ Washington Post, Nov. 17, 1969.

123

On November 17 Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post noted the uncertain future of the antiwar movement: "After the emotion of Saturday's massive march, the peace movement stands where it was before ... loosely structured, divided ideologically into a number of factions, and lacking any central direction." (The Mobe actually disbanded five months later, shortly before the furor over the Cambodia invasion and Kent State)

Joseph Kraft seemed to synthesize many of the doubts and uncertainties, in his column November 18. Noting the caustic comments of Vice President Agnew, Kraft asserted:

"There is no reliable way to measure the support of public opinion on complicated issues. The record numbers who turned out for the Moratorium and mobilization remained a minority -- and pretty small minority, given the whole country...

"Prudence tells the Administration to tone down some of the wild talk ... Prudence now tells the demonstrators that they are not the only ones who can play the game with new rules of plebiscitary democracy ... Their best tactic is to revert to the old rules -- of the system ...

"The god of public opinion, though unknown and unknowable, does exist. However, difficult to measure, there is such a thing as a national mood, a climate of ideas that makes certain things acceptable -- and others not. And one thing that is not permissible is long involvement in the Vietnam war."

The fusion of the "Agnew issue" the administration's
reactions prior to and following the November Moratorium, the
growing polarization of the American people, and the entire
polymorphous war issue, provoked The Washington *Post* to
editorialize on November 20 in much sharper language and with
much more bitterness apparent toward the administration than
had been previously evident:

"It is tempting to account for the
words and the handiwork of the Justice
Department and the Vice President and
other administration luminaries over the
last week in terms of individual style,
to put it all down to vindictiveness or
prejudice or mean-mindedness or simple
isolation from reality.

What else is needed to explain the
lurid scare talk before last weekend's
march?; the first instinct to slam
the door on Pennsylvania Avenue; the
crude efforts to scale down crowd esti-
mates, to hound the organizers of the
Mobe, to see only the hustlers as Mr.
Agnew calls them and not the innate
decency and doubt that moved perhaps as
many as half a million people to come to
Washington...

'We would like unity' says the
administration's Director of Communica-
tions, Herbert Klein, which is fair
enough, except that what the administra-
tion is getting is something else --
polarization of public opinion into
sharp extremes. He is provoking and
repelling those honest doubters who
want only what Mr. Nixon wants, only they want
it faster... He is doing, in short,
precisely what Lyndon Johnson, what-
ever else he may have done, was careful
most of the time not to do; he is playing
for cheap games, a temporal upsurge in
the pols, a pile of wires on his
White House desk...

instead of backing down under the pressure of the President's
November 3 was stepping up its military activity. The erosion
of the Saigon regime had "not made dent on the President and
his immediate entourage." Kraft's only hope for a saner policy
in the fact that
was /"American officials with Vietnamese experience" were
"working to get the President off the escalation hook."

With public and Congressional opinion to some extent
diverted by the Agnew-press and My Lai issues, and with
the holidays approaching, public dissent on Vietnam fizzled
as 1969 drew to a close. The generally queiscent atmosphere
was reinforced by President Nixon's announcement at his
December 8 news conference that another troop withdrawal
would be announced within the month. The withdrawal of
50,000 more troops was, in fact, announced only a week
later on December 15. This brought the total number of
soldiers either withdrawn or planned to be withdrawn to
110,000 - a 20% reduction since the President had taken office.

On the following day *The Washington Post* noted in an
editorial that "it is impossible to ignore the contradiction
between the bright promise of Vietnamization and what the
President has to say about the outlook for a negotiated settle-
ment."

The *Times* commented negatively on the President's news
conference on December 10:

"The perennial Pentagon faith in a fav-
orable military solution ... was clearly
reflected in President Nixon's remarks ...

Despite the President's promise to announced further ... troop cuts later this month, there is little apparent foundation for his belief that "Vietnamization" of the war can successfully continue regardless of enemy action ...

The time to negotiate is now ... The troop withdrawals Mr. Nixon has promised might come about more quickly if the President recognized that the problem in Paris stems not only from the intransi-gence of Hanoi but also ... Saigon."

Congressional reactions were fairly predictable. The doves approved the withdrawal with reserve. Senator Fulbright, who on December 10 had attacked the Administration's Vietnamization policy as "continuing terror and death for the indefinite future" for the Vietnamese people, said now, "I only wish it were 100,000." 43/ Senator Goodell said that while he welcomed the return of 50,000 more troops, "they are at the mercy of both the Hanoi and Saigon governments." 44/

Public reaction was favorable. A Gallup Poll taken January 2 to 5 showed that 61% of those questioned approved of the President's Vietnam policy, a 2% increase from the previous poll. 22% disapproved, and 17% had no opinion. 42/

42/ Gallup Poll Index to 1969.

43/ N. Y. Daily News 12/15/69

44/ IBID

MEMORANDUM

TO: HAK

FROM: Peter PML

RE: Moynihan's Memo

Pat Moynihan has written you (Tab C) asking if you recall
anything about a memo that Roger Morris says Moynihan wrote to
the President in the fall of 1969 on the subject of the student
anti-war demonstrators.

Moynihan's memo is in your files and I have made a copy (Tab A).
At Tab B is your cover memo to the President with your
comments, which is also discussed by Morris.

If you want to do Moynihan a favor, you could pass on to
him the copy of his memo at Tab A (without your cover memo). While
there is no rule prohibiting removing a xerox copy of an unclassified
memo from the Library of Congress, you may want to caution Moynihan
that this is a bootleg copy and he shouldn't advertise where he got
it.

While you could send it to him by mail, it would be better if you
gave it to him privately at your next get-together.

Recommendation:

That you give Moynihan the copy of his memo at Tab A.

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

November 13, 1969

MEMORANDUM FOR

THE PRESIDENT

Last night Teddy White related to me your hopes for reviving the Eisenhower-Nixon majority. This seems to me altogether a worthy goal, and a perfectly feasible one. But I fear we may be jeopardizing that outcome by certain present postures which are now in no way central to any of your other goals or policies.

The Eisenhower-Nixon majority was broadbased. (Ike got 20% of the black vote in 1952 and twice that in 1956.) But its bedrock consisted of the business and professional class of the nation. These provided the brains, the money, the elan.

Clearly your overall policies are ideal for mobilizing that group once again. Your fixed intention to get us out of that war in Asia; to put the economy back in balance; to restore the authority of public institutions; to achieve social progress with social stability -- all these are precisely the goals of that group.

I think, however, you could lose much of it -- needlessly -- if their children begin to take personally your necessary, proper and

2

essentially impersonal opposition to their own effort to make foreign
policy in the streets.

It must be remembered that to an extraordinary degree the
demonstrators are an elite group.

* I would hazard that half their parents are Republicans.

* I would not be surprised if those parents contributed half the funds spent by either major party in the 1968 election. Note, for example, that much of the money behind this weekend's demonstration comes from General Motors and Singer Sewing Machine fortunes. (The Ole Mole, the radical journal in Cambridge, is financed by the granddaughter of Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. There is no end to such examples.)

As with most such groups, they really are kind of arrogant. Teddy White told a (private) story. His son will be down from Harvard this weekend, demonstrating with his girl friend. She is an Auchincloss.

3

As she put it "Uncle Mac /Bundy/ and Uncle Bill /Bundy/ made a terrible mistake about Vietnam, and I feel I must help rectify it."

They can also be wonderful. Maureen Finch who took part in the Moratorium worked for me this summer, and was superb. I gather that Mel Laird's son who also took part is equally an attractive young man.

And in the mass they are powerful. One of the least understood phenomenon of the time is the way in which the radical children of the upper middle classes have influenced their parents. That is why Time Magazine, Life, Newsweek, NBC, CBS, the New York Times and the media in general will take their side against anybody whatsoever: the Democratic Party, the Pentagon, Mayor Daley. Or, if it should ever come to it....you. (on the left only!)

In the course of the rioting at the Chicago convention Tom Wicker of the New York Times uttered the famous remark "But those are our children down there on the street." It remained for Pete Hamill to comment that "You'd think no cop ever had a mother." No matter. The kids finished Humphrey.

Their parents are in a curious way proud of them. Last Saturday at half time at the Harvard-Princeton game the Harvard Band lined up

4

and began its march with the announcement "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Effete Harvard Corps of Intellectual Snobs." There cannot have been less than $10 billion bucks of Republican money in the Stadium at the time, and as one man it roared approval, i.e., unity with the undergraduates in the face of an outsider who dared affront them. After all, they are Harvard men, etc. (Try to remember that I went to the City College of New York on the subway. So I am not writing about anybody I know!)

I sometimes like these kids. More often I detest their ignorant, chiliastic, almost insolent self confidence. But I think it extremely important for the administration not to allow itself to become an object of their incredible powers of derision, destruction, and disdain.

Daniel P. Moynihan

MEMORANDUM

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON

EYES ONLY - SENSITIVE

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT

FROM: Henry Kissinger

SUBJECT: Pat Moynihan's Memo on the Young Demonstrators

I have several specific comments on Pat Moynihan's memo on
the problem of the young demonstrators.

Who Are They?

They are a very mixed group -- in social origin, in political
outlook, in potential for help or harm. Of the young Moratorium
marchers, some were certainly the offspring of the affluent, and
therefore their politics are a sharp departure from their parents.
Yet many have fathers who attended college under the GI Bill in the
late '40s and who went on to vote for Stevenson. A lot of the marchers
were undoubtedly the first generation to reach college from predom-
inantly Democratic urban strata. And if Tom Wicker is speaking for
himself and his colleagues in claiming that "those are our children"
down there in the streets, these are also the offspring of some trad-
itionally Democratic professional elements.

The geographic spread of politically active young people is much
broader than the East Coast. A Harvard-Princeton game might find
a majority of Bostonians and New Yorkers among the alumni in the
stands. But the percentage of mid-Westerners and Westerners among
the students would be far, far higher than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
To use Pat's comparison, the distinction between the subway to City
College (or the freeway to Berkeley) as against walking across ZI arvard
Yard has largely broken down in this age of mass higher education.

Why Do They March?

Their motives are also quite varied. In the broader sense, most
are casualties of our affluence. They have had the leisure for self-
pity, and the education enabling them to focus it in a fashionable critique

EYES ONLY - SENSITIVE

-2-

of the "system". But the psychological origins are probably irrelevant. Confusion, outrage, or evangelism have absorbed youthful energies in every generation. The group Pat talks about is special in the sheer breadth of its political consciousness and activism. It is drawn, after all, from the largest number of educated young people in history.

And to the degree that they are politically conscious, many are substantially anti-establishment simply because that is not only the natural bent of youthful alienation, but also because it is a major thrust of contemporary academic literature. Modern American sociology, psychology, political science, etc., have turned a glaring light (as they should have) on the faults in our society. So too is some of our best modern literature powerful social criticism. All this is bound to fall on fertile ground -- and cover more of it than ever before -- in a country that sends 8 million kids to college.

The practical result is very mixed.

A small minority takes refuge (as it always has) in mindless radicalism.

But I believe that the overwhelming majority of these young people across the country remain remarkably open in terms of their future political affiliation. Many are bright and thoughtful. They are committed to right wrongs and find themselves. They are eager to participate, impatient for tangible results. They are wary of every answer -- ready to suspect that arguments for gradual (realistic) progress (from peace in Vietnam to desegregation) mask some sinister conspiracy against the goal.

## Their Political Impact

This frame of reference will probably stay with most of these young people through their first decade as voters. Taken alone as a segment of the voting public, however, they are not significant, and you could build a broad majority however you deal with them.

They become formidable by adding to their own votes an enormous outburst of political activism, bound to have an influence on others as well as on their parents. We have ample proof of this in the McCarthy phenomenon.

EYES ONLY - SENSITIVE

-3-

Vietnam is only symptomatic. When that issue is gone, another
will take its place. For they are fighting the establishment position
as much as a given problem.

## What Can You Do?

I agree with Moynihan that attacking this group head-on is counter-productive. This is not to say that you should be soft on the militants. There is a strong need here for firm leadership, both in psychological and political terms. But when talking about the great majority of these young activists, I think you should calculate carefully the benefits and costs of taking them on.

Blanket condemnation of the demonstrators gains favor with es-
sentially two groups in the voting public.

On one hand, there are labor and lower middle class elements, readily critical of the demonstrators. Yet I doubt that criticism of the young people, in itself, will gain you more with these groups than transient advantage in the polls -- as distinct from the polling booth, where, other factors being equal, they will vote their traditional Democratic patterns. You may break into these groups on other issues -- such as law and order, welfare reform, etc. -- but criticism of the demonstrators will not be the decisive factor.

On the other hand, there is undoubtedly an appeal to rural groups.
But these are already strongly in your column.

My concern, then, is that condemnation, while giving no lasting
benefit, will drive the young activists to focus their energies against
you personally -- with the fallout Pat describes in the sympathy of
their elders and the influence they have in the broader arena.

There are strong arguments for simply neutralizing this potential
force by avoiding a collision. This by no means requires appeasement.
It does mean that the Administration be seen to take seriously the
responsible majority of these young people. The posture would be that
they may be wrong on the merits of the argument, but you do not doubt
the authenticity and sincerity of their concerns.

EYES ONLY - SENSITIVE

-4-

Can You Gain Anything?

Beyond this neutralization, there just might be a chance, over
time, to win some of these young people to your side. The old
Democratic-Republican quarrels of the '40s and '50s do not encumber
this generation of young Americans.

You have something basic in common with many of them -- a con-
viction that the machinery of New Deal liberalism has to be fundamentally
overhauled. You also share a concern that America play a more bal-
anced and restrained role in the world. You are, in fact, turning over
most of the rocks at home and abroad that these kids want to see turned
over.

With a concerted and sensitive effort to get across the fresh ap-
proach of your Administration, you may well gain some converts among
those who now seem irretrievable.

168]

UNCERTAIN GREATNESS

Laos and on the DMZ had not taken place, there was no carpet bombing of Hanoi, and the numbers of American dead had not so hideously doubled. There was still time for a negotiated peace.

But apart from diplomatic or military realities, proposals like the Lake-Morris memorandum rested on a false assumption—and the point was critical in what followed. Arguments against the attrition policy of Vietnamization or against any savage new escalation were based on the premise that American domestic opposition to the war would inevitably grow. The October memo confidently warned, “We believe that the dangers of our course to domestic cohesion will begin to outweigh any foreign policy interest in Southeast Asia.” In the event, however, domestic dissent briefly reached a high point in the autumn of 1969, only to fade steadily with the American troop withdrawals. This development confirmed and hardened Nixon and Kissinger in their fundamentally contemptuous attitudes toward the anti-war opposition, attitudes which, thereby vindicated, were to be a major influence on their Indochina policy.

The evidence and impact of this animus toward domestic dissenters was no less revealing that same fall than the existence of the September Group or the rejection of any new peace initiatives. It surfaced, for example, when White House adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan returned from an Ivy League football game to write Nixon a characteristically effervescent “eyes only” memo on the new régime’s opportunity to capture the “young demonstrators” and (by some osmosis) their elders, most of whom Moynihan felt might otherwise go Democratic. Moynihan’s argument was an intelligent but essentially nebulous statement, which recommended that Nixon avoid any open confrontation with the younger generation. The memo was no doubt one more example of Moynihan’s spontaneous enthusiasm for molding his employer into a Disraeli of American politics, a progressive conservative benignly ruling with Moynihan’s ideas as a guide. But this particular effort provoked from both Nixon and Kissinger a harsh response derived from their already decided views on the question. In the margin at the point where Moynihan observed that there was potential Nixon support among the Vietnam marchers, the President scribbled an angry: “No, RN $ and votes came from West and South.” It was an indication of his analysis of electoral sociology, which allowed him to dismiss and defy what he saw as the limited regional and political nature of the anti-war dis-

"And You and I Will End the War"

[ 169 ]

sent. Interestingly, Nixon then sent the Moynihan memo to Kissinger for comment. That drew for a time a collection of acid Kissinger observations to his staff on the neurotic character of the demonstrators: "They don't know who they are," "They need fathers, not brothers." A formal West Basement response to Moynihan's memo went through several careful drafts before it was finally sent to the Oval Office. It emphasized Kissinger's personally dictated points that the "bright" and anti-establishment demonstrators were not politically significant ("you could build a broad majority however you deal with them..."). Kissinger argued that Vietnam was not a special cause but only the current symptom of youthful revolt. It would be wise to avoid "a collision," he advised, although "this by no means requires appeasement."

The effect of such arguments, laced with biting Kissinger comments on the subject to a sympathetic Nixon at White House staff meetings, reinforced the caricature of the anti-war opposition which both men possessed. As seen by Nixon and Kissinger, the youthful protesters were little more than a confused, unsustained, capricious, and insubstantial force. Seldom spoken but deeply settled in both was the conviction that the Vietnam dissent was very largely a protest against the draft system by the newly expanded and educated middle class, a movement that could be weakened and ultimately stilled by means of a reduction of the draft, and by the withdrawal of troops. Perhaps most tellingly, the two men believed the protest would lose its force if their policy simply reduced the number of flag-draped coffins coming home from Vietnam to an American heartland that would otherwise abide or support Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger however they ended the war.

As these views became plainer to those around them, there emerged other equally profound feelings about an opposite dimension of the war. Both were haunted by starkly imagined fears of the domestic consequences if they did *not* defy and defeat the demonstrators. In a sense, the specter of a politics of retribution bedeviled the very politician who had once led such forces in America, as well as the intellectual who recalled a tragic precedent in his native Germany. For Nixon, the "loss" of South Vietnam clearly evoked the "loss" of China a generation before. During his formative years as a politician, he had witnessed bitter national division, the naming of scapegoats, the McCarthy excesses which took place in the wake of