Books

## Henry Kissinger: The artful diplomat

The sheer size—1,521 pages—of Henry Kissinger's *White House Years* may intimidate all but the most resolute of readers. That would be a pity, because Kissinger's account of his four years as White House adviser to Richard Nixon is an extraordinary volume: part historical record, part graduate seminar on the design of global politics and the realities of power, part *apologia* for the role that Kissinger played in dramatic events and controversial decisions—from the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi to the wiretapping of his own aides. But what makes the book a rarity, among memoirs

Pope, wreathed in smoke rising from the pocket where Laird had secreted a lit cigar; Kissinger, foot-in-mouth, being coolly put down by the “colossus,” Charles de Gaulle; South Vietnamese President Thieu desperately maneuvering, throughout the long peace talks, to avoid the abandonment by the U. S. that he foresees, more clearly than the Americans, as the eventual outcome of the nightmare in Southeast Asia.

The gems in this rich lode are the capsule profiles—deft, perceptive, sharp-edged, sometimes wicked—of the statesmen and politicians, friends and foes, that Kissinger has dealt with. One whom Kissinger warily admires, Soviet Ambassador to the U. S. Anatoly Dobrynin, has “smiling, watchful eyes and the bluff confident manner of one who has taken the measure of his share of senior American officials in his day.” Kissinger could say much the same of himself, sans bluffness, as he holds his yardstick up to numerous foreigners as well as Americans.

Here, for example, is former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged this year by the military junta that deposed him: “Elegant, eloquent, subtle, Bhutto ... was not above playing a demagogic anti-American tune when it served his domestic purpose. The legacy of distrust engendered by his flamboyant demeanor and occasionally cyrical conduct haunted Bhutto within our government throughout his political life. I found him brilliant, charming, of global stature in his perceptions ... He did not suffer fools gladly.

Since he had many to contend with, this provided him with more than the ordinary share of enemies.”

And here is Aldo Moro, the former Italian Prime Minister who was assassinated last year: “Moro was clearly the most formidable [Italian leader]. He was as intelligent as he was taciturn; he had a reputation for superb intelligence. My only evidence for this was the Byzantine complexity of his sentence structure. But then I had a soporific effect on him; more often than not he fell asleep in meetings with me; I considered it a success to keep him awake.”

Kissinger's deadly irony leaves McGeorge Bundy, like T. S. Eliot's Prufrock, “formulated, and sprawling on a pin.” Of his Harvard colleague—and predecessor as White House national

security adviser under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson—Kissinger says: admired his brilliance even when he put it, too frequently, at the service of ideas that were more fashionable than substantial. ... Had he lived in a less revolutionary period ... Bundy would have moved through the high offices government until his experience matched his brilliance and his judgments equaled his self-confidence.”

Framing such observations, and providing a conceptual matrix for Kissinger's own actions in the events he describes, are his basic ideas on foreign policy. He outlines them in a chapter entitled, somewhat cloyly, “The Conclusions of an Apprentice Statesman” and in shorter essays that are scattered throughout the book.

Kissinger, of course, was no apprentice in foreign affairs when he joined the Nixon Administration. In the 1950s his writings on nuclear strategy had earned him some renown as a Dr. Strangelove. His concept of the kind of global equilibrium that is indispensable to peace traces back even further—to his Harvard doctoral dissertation on Metternichian and Castlereagh, the 19th century statesmen who restored the European balance that Napoleon had destroyed. Genuine negotiation with revolutionary

### White House Years

By Henry Kissinger

Little, Brown • 1,521 pp. • $22.50

powers such as the Soviet Union and China—as with Napoleonic France—is possible, Kissinger maintains, only when there is a willingness to accept limited gains within an equilibrium of powers, rather than an effort to subvert the world order.

Most Americans would probably now agree that Nixon and Kissinger were right in their perception in 1971 that China had reached such a point of willingness. The jury is still out on whether the kind of detente they sought with the Soviets is possible. One problem is that Kissinger's underlying message, as he concedes, is uncongenial to Americans who generally prefer to “solve” problems and forget them. What Kissinger seems to be saying is not only that the road to coexistence with the Soviets is a very long one but also that the road may never lead to a definitive settlement between the two powers.

“For as far ahead as we can see,” Kissinger argues, “America’s task will be to recreate and maintain the two pillars of our policy . . . a willingness to confront Soviet expansionism and a simultaneous readiness to mark out a cooperative future.” The current confused debate over the U. S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, and its possible scuttling because of a largely symbolic dispute over Russian troops in

Kissinger and Nixon: A strange, complex relationship.

of American statesmen, is the unexpected talent as storyteller that the many-faceted Kissinger displays. He is able to recount, at times, a gathering crisis—such as the shoot-out between Jordan's King Hussein and the Palestinian guerrillas—in the rhythm of a well-paced drama: the early signals of trouble, the moves and responses of the protagonists, the dinner-jacketed strategists, the crisis and denouement.

Of course, much of the intractable material that Kissinger deals with would defeat the narrative powers of even a Dickens or a Dostoyevsky. But Kissinger's account is enlivened by set-piece vignettes and built on recurring themes, modulating from farcical to poignant and even tragic: Defense Secretary Melvin Laird at an audience with the

14 BUSINESS WEEK: November 5, 1979

[LC]

BOOKS

Cuba, suggests that the nation still
hankers for all-or-nothing solutions and
may find it virtually impossible to walk
the dual track that Kissinger lays out.

The other difficulty, in public perceptions of Kissinger's grand design, is that his concern is mainly with great-power relationships; other values and the interests of smaller powers are subordinate. Kissinger makes a persuasive case that the U. S. "tilt" toward Pakistan, in its 1971 war with India, helped thwart the expansion of Soviet influence on the subcontinent and ultimately served the cause of peace in the region, despite the revulsion in this country against the atrocities of Pakistani troops. But what was accomplished in 1970 by U. S. bombing and ground attacks in Cambodia, even in a narrow military sense? Here, despite Kissinger's arguments, the grand design blurs. Kissinger admits that it was a sudden impulse of Nixon that sent U. S. troops against North Vietnamese sanctuaries, many of them in remote areas along the entire 600-mi. border between South Vietnam and Cambodia, instead of confining the attacks to the border salients near Saigon, where the military justification for the U. S. incursions was strongest.

The decision was an example of a
recurring problem, as Kissinger saw it:

keep [Nixon's] courage from turning
into recklessness and [his] firmness into
bravado." That, in turn, was a facet of
the strange, complex relationship be-
tween the two men that, more than
anything, serves as the book's unifying
thread. The relationship was oblique yet
intense, compounded of mutual admira-
tion and diffidence, loyalty and reserve.
Kissinger admired Nixon's "unsenti-
mental grasp of international affairs."
When the chips were down—and on the
big issues—he insists, Nixon made the
right decisions and acted boldly.

"I doubt whether the rapprochement [with China] could have occurred with the same decisiveness in any other President," Kissinger writes. But against such moments of greatness, Kissinger narrates a counterpoint of Nixonian pettiness, dithering, and insecurity. After a day of state visits in Brussels and London, Kissinger recalls, "Nixon desperately wanted to be told how well he had done. As he would do on so many other occasions, he asked me to recount his conspicuous role in the day's events over and over again."

What the two men shared, on such
occasions, was an acute sense of history
and their own self-conscious role in it.
Such an awareness pervades *White
House Years*. Kissinger pauses, regular-

ly, now himself from a spectator's
vantage point, as a player in a drama.
Occasionally he becomes the omniscient
19th century novelist—or the modern
New Journalist—who is privy to the
inner thoughts of each actor on the
scene. In a purple passage, Kissinger
recounts his meeting with Nixon after
the breakthrough in the Vietnam peace
talks: "We spoke to each other in nearly
affectionate terms, like veterans of
bitter battles at a last reunion, even
though we both sensed somehow that too
much had happened between us to make
the rest of the journey together."

Kissinger's preferred posture at such
moments is that of the world-weary
statesman: without illusion yet not with-
out hope; keenly aware of the historical
ironies, ambiguities, and potential for
tragedy in his situation; impelled to act,
yet poignantly conscious of the limits of
choice. Thus, at the end of the Vietnam
negotiations, he sees lying ahead "the
chance to shape events, to build a new
world. I was grateful for the opportunity
I had enjoyed to help prepare the
ground. And I was at peace with myself,
neither elated nor sad."

—John Pearson

John Pearson is a Senior writer on interna-
tional affairs for this magazine.

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BUSINESS WEEK: November 5, 1979 19

Verbündete Kissinger, Thieu in Saigon 1972: „Mehr als acht Jahre Seite an Seite gekämpft“

## „K.- machen Sie was daraus“

Henry Kissingers Memoiren (VI): Amerikas mühsamer Weg aus Vietnam

Sofort nach unserer Rückkehr aus Paris am 12. Oktober 1972 suchten mein Stellvertreter Alexander Haig und ich Nixon in seinem Privatbüro im Old Executive Office Building auf, um ihm über unsere erfolgreichen Gespräche mit dem nordvietnamesischen Verhandlungsführer Le Duc Tho zu berichten.

Nixon bestellte Steaks und Wein, um unseren Erfolg zu feiern. Ich erläuterte den vorläufigen „Zeitplan“, über den ich mich mit Le Duc Tho geeinigt hatte: Ich würde am 17. Oktober nach Paris zurückkehren und versuchen, bei den noch ungelösten Problemen voranzukommen. Von Paris würde ich nach Saigon fliegen und dort vom 18. bis zum 22. Oktober bleiben. Am Abend des 22. Oktober würde ich nach

Hanoi fliegen und am 24. Oktober nach Washington zurückkehren. Der Abschluß der Vereinbarungen solle am 26. Oktober bekanntgegeben werden und die Unterzeichnung der Verträge am 31. Oktober erfolgen.

Der Präsident stimmte mir zu. Sorgen machte ihm jedoch die Möglichkeit, daß es mit Saigon zum Bruch kommen könnte. Das wollte er unter allen Umständen vermeiden: Wenn Thieu Schwierigkeiten machte, sollte ich den Abschluß der Vereinbarungen auf die Zeit nach unseren Präsidentschaftswahlen verlegen.

Am 16. Oktober, 11 Uhr, begab ich mich auf die Mission, auf die sich seit vier Jahren alle unsere Hoffnungen konzentriert hatten: Es ging um die Beendigung des Krieges in Indochina.

Im Flugzeug fand ich eine handschriftebene Botschaft Nixons vor. Sie lautete:

> Lieber Henry, ich dachte, ein paar schriftliche Anhaltspunkte zu dem, was wir besprochen haben, werden Ihnen bei der

Abreise nach Paris vielleicht ganz nützlich sein. Erstens: Tun Sie, was richtig ist, ohne Rücksicht auf die Wahlen. Zweitens: Wir dürfen uns die Chance nicht entgehen lassen, den Krieg ehrenhaft zu bedenken. Was die Wahlen betrifft, so würde es uns bei den jungen Wählern helfen, wenn das Abkommen nicht scheitert; aber wir brauchen es nicht, um zu gewinnen. Sollte das Abkommen scheitern, würde uns das zwar schaden, wäre aber nicht entscheidend ... Kurz gesagt, tun Sie das Richtige, um einen ehrenhaften Frieden zu sichern, aber lassen Sie den Zeitplan nicht durch die Wahlen beeinflussen.

Meine Begegnung mit Xuan Thuy am 17. Oktober war nicht so dramatisch wie die Sitzungen mit Le Duc Tho in der vorangegangenen Woche. Xuan Thuy war nicht bevollmächtigt, auf wesentliche Änderungen im Vertragsentwurf einzugehen. Wir verbesserten den politischen Teil der Vertragsbestimmungen insofern, als wir noch deutlicher zum Ausdruck brachten, daß der Nationalrat für Nationale Versöhnung und Einheit die Wahlen zwar überwachen konnte; er hatte aber nicht die Vollmacht, sie anzuordnen.

© 1979 Henry A. Kissinger: „White House Years“ (Little, Brown; Boston). Die deutsche Buchausgabe ist unter dem Titel „Memoiren 1968—1973“ im C. Bertelsmann Verlag, München, erschienen. Übersetzung: Hans-Jürgen von Koskulli.

192

Arabien und Marokko, die Emire von Kuweit und den Golfstaaten laden ihn regelmäßig zu Privatvorstellungen in ihre Paläste. Aber auch Gastspiele in Algerien, im Irak, Syrien und dem Libanon stehen immer wieder auf seinem Programm. Wahhab ist inzwischen mehrfacher Millionär.

Wer in Arabien einen Komponisten braucht, kommt zuerst zu Abd el-Wahhab. Es gibt keinen arabischen Sänger von Rang, der nicht wenigstens fünf oder sechs Lieder seines Repertoires von Wahhab vertonen ließ. Sogar die beliebte libanesische Sängerin Feirus, die normalerweise nur Werke ihres Mannes, des libaneschen Komponisten Rahbani, vorzutragen pflegt, erlag schließlich doch dem Schmelz der Wahhab-Lieder.

Die algerische Sängerin Warda (die kürzlich im Pariser „Olympia“ gefeiert wurde) gehört ebenso zu den Kunden des Sänger-Komponisten wie die Stars in den islamischen Staaten Afrikas und Asiens.

Den größten Triumph seiner Laufbahn erlebte Wahhab 1963. Damals komponierte er zum ersten und letzten Mal eine Weise für die „Königin des arabischen Gesangs“, die berühmte Umm Kulthum. Als das, so Ägyptens Presse, „von Allah geschickte Künstler-Paar“ zusammen auftrat und Umm Kulthum nach Wahhab s Melodie das Liebeslied „Anta Omri“ (Du bist mein Leben) sang, wurde das Ereignis in Ägypten wie ein Feiertag begangen. In Kairo blieben die Autobusse stehen, die Geschäfte machten zu.

Für weiteren Glanz des Tonkünstlers sorgte Staatschef Sadat. Der ganz auf Frieden mit Israel eingestellte Rais beauftragte den schon siechen Künstler, rechtzeitig zur feierlichen Unterzeichnung des ägyptisch-israelischen Friedensvertrages eine neue Nationalhymne zu schaffen. Wahhab veredelte das alte Volkslied „Biladi diladi“ (O mein Land, o du mein Land) zur Hymne. Damit der Künstler bei der Premiere in blütenweißer Prachtuniform Ägyptens Militärkapelle dirigieren konnte, errannte Sadat den eingeschworenen Pazifisten noch rasch zum Armeegeneral.

Das hatte ein unerwartetes Nachspiel: Der Irak, der die arabische Front gegen Ägypten anführt, verbot kurzerhand das Abspielen sämtlicher Lieder und Kompositionen von Abd el-Wahhab. „Bisher dachten wir, nur Chomei ni kann Musik verbieten“, amüsierte sich Nahid el-Kudsi, die libanesische Frau des Künstlers.

Die Irakis besannen sich auch schon nach einer Woche wieder anders. Denn wäre das Verbot in Kraft geblieben, hätte Radio Bagdad einen großen Prozentsatz seines Tonarchivs wegwerfen müssen. Und eine ganze Reihe von Staatsbesuchern in Bagdad hätten auf ihre Hymne verzichten müssen.

DER SPIEGEL, Nr. 45/1979

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etb.

Neuwahlen bedurften der einstimmigen Genehmigung durch die südvietnamesischen Parteien — und das war die Formel, mit der man jedes Problem begraben konnte. Im Nationalrat — dem letzten Überbleibsel der Koalitionsregierung — hatte nicht nur Saigon das Vetorecht, er war absolut machtlos. Hanois politisches Programm war gestorben.

Die Stimmung auf der langen Reise nach Saigon war optimistisch. Außer meinem Mitarbeiter John Negroponte glaubten wir alle, Thieu würde überglücklich sein, wenn er von dem Abkommen erfuhr.

Aber Thieu wollte, wie wir erst später begriffen, den ganzen Vertrag nicht und wich jedem konkreten Gespräch aus. Er kämpfte auf vietnamesische Art: indirekt, auf Umwegen und mit Methoden, die seinen Gesprächspartner erschöpften, aber nichts klärten. Er mäkelte an allem herum, kam aber niemals auf den Kern der Sache zu sprechen.

Mit solchen Methoden haben die Vietnamesen seit Jahrhunderten versucht, ihre ausländischen Gegner müssen zu machen, bevor sie sie in einer ihrer heroischen Anstrengungen, die Freiheit wiederzugewinnen, physisch angriffen.

Bei dem Treffen am 19. Oktober bekamen auch wir diese Methode zu spüren. Nach meinem Eintreffen im Präsidentenpalast ließ man mich in Gegenwart aller Journalisten 15 Minuten warten. Dann erschien Thieus Berater Hoang Duc Nha und führte unseren Botschafter Ellsworth Bunker und mich zum Präsidenten. Thieu begrüßte uns mit keinem Wort, sondern nahm unbewegt einen Brief Nixons in Empfang.

Er las den Brief, ohne sich dazu zu äußern, und bat mich ins Nebenzimmer, wo ebenso wie bei dem Besuch von Haig vor drei Wochen sein Nationaler Sicherheitsrat versammelt war, den er diesmal durch die südvietnamesischen Botschafter in Washington und bei den Pariser Friedensgesprächen erweitert hatte.

In welcher Atmosphäre das Gespräch stattfinden würde, zeigte sich sofort, als Thieu ohne ein Wort der Einleitung die Sitzung damit eröffnete, daß er sagte, Nha werde die Aufgabe des Dolmetschers übernehmen. Wenn man bedenkt, daß jeder anwesende Vietnamese die englische Sprache wenigstens verstand, dann bedeutete dies, daß Thieu nicht die Absicht hatte, uns die Sache leichtzumachen.

Darüber hinaus machte Nha das Dolmetschen insofern zur Farce, als er alles, was ich sagte, etwa auf die Hälfte zusammenstrich. Das veranlaßte mich zu der Bemerkung, entweder sei das Vietnamesische eine viel straffere Sprache als das Englische oder Nha

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DER SPIEGEL, Nr. 45/1979

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streiche meine Äußerungen zusammen (und in diesem Fall sei es interessant zu wissen, was er fortlasse). „Ich bin ein Meister im Zusammenziehen“, sagte Nha bescheiden.

Ich erläuterte eine Stunde lang den ganzen Vertragsentwurf. Am Schluß wandte ich mich dem Kernproblem zu:

Wir haben mehr als acht Jahre Seite an Seite gekämpft. Sie haben große Opfer gebracht, und auch wir haben das getan. Wenn wir jetzt gemeinsam einen Frieden schließen, dann wird dieses Leiden einen Sinn gehabt haben, und wir können in Vietnam das aufbauen, wofür wir alle viel gelitten haben. In diesem Geist soll ich im Namen des Präsidenten mit Ihnen sprechen, und ich komme zu Ihnen als Freund, um ein gemeinsames Problem zu behandeln, damit wir unsere Freundschaft bewahren und auch weiterhin zusammenarbeiten können.

Thieu ließ sich durch die Beredsamkeit eines Ausländers ebensowenig beindrucken wie Le Duc Tho während der vergangenen drei Jahre in Paris — oder vielleicht habe ich meine eigene Überzeugungskraft überschätzt. Er stellte eine Reihe intelligenter Fragen — und erweckte damit den Eindruck, er werde sich, wenn meine Antworten ihn befriedigten, mit dem Vertragsentwurf einverstanden erklären.

Noch vor Beginn der nächsten Sitzung hörten wir etwas aus Nordviet-

nam. Hanoi, so erfuhr ich auf dem Umweg über Washington, wünsche kein weiteres Treffen mehr. Wir wurden vielmehr gebeten, an dem ursprünglichen Zeitplan festzuhalten.

Um uns das zu ermöglichen, gaben die Nordvietnamesen unseren Forderungen in den letzten beiden noch offenen Punkten nach; Hanoi akzeptierte nicht nur den Inhalt unserer Vorschläge, sondern auch den Wortlaut.

Als Haig mir das mitteilte, fügte er treffend hinzu: „Mir ist klar, daß diese Botschaft für Ihre heutige Sitzung eine erhebliche zusätzliche Belastung bedeutet.“

Es war in der Tat der Gipfel der Ironie, daß die bedingungslose Annahme unserer Forderungen durch Hanoi meine Verhandlungsposition noch mehr belasten sollte. Aber es war wirklich so.

Die verstärkten nordvietnamesischen Anstrengungen, vor dem Waffenstillstand Gelände zu gewinnen, waren nicht dazu angetan, Thieu zum Einlenken zu überreden; nach den erneuten Zugeständnissen Hanois andererseits würde es für uns nahezu unmöglich werden, unsere Position innenpolitisch zu halten, wenn Thieu nicht einlenkte. Die Entscheidung darüber, ob der

Krieg rasch beendet werden konnte, lag bei Saigon.

Und Saigon lag nicht viel daran, daß ich irgendwelche Zeitpläne einhielt. Die zunächst für den 20. Oktober um 9 Uhr angesetzte Sitzung mit Thieu und seinem Nationalen Sicherheitsrat wurde auf 14 Uhr verlegt und dauerte dreieinhalb Stunden.

Thieu eröffnete die Sitzung wieder, ohne ein freundliches Wort an die amerikanische Delegation zu richten. Er brachte seine tiefe Skepsis gegenüber den Motiven Hanois zum Ausdruck und sprach von der Gefahr, die Nordvietnamesen könnten uns in einen „Hinterhalt“ locken.

Dann trug Nha eine lange Reihe intelligenter Fragen vor, die sich mit den nordvietnamesischen Streitkräften im Süden, den Waffenlieferungen, der Zusammensetzung und den Funktionen des Nationalrats für Nationale Versöhnung und Einheit und der amerikanischen Haltung für den Fall einer Verletzung der Vereinbarungen beschäftigten.

Ich wiederholte die Zusicherung Nixons, daß die Vereinigten Staaten im Falle massiver Verletzungen der Ver-

Abtransport verwundeter US-Soldaten in Vietnam: „Wir haben große Opfer gebracht“

DER SPIEGEL, Nr. 45/1979

195

Von US-Truppen angezündetes Haus in Vietnam: „Freundschaft bewahren“

einbarungen durch die Nordvietnamesen eingreifen würden, um die Einhaltung der Vertragsbestimmungen zu erzwingen.

Immer wieder legten die Südvietnamesen neue Änderungsvorschläge auf den Tisch und erweckten damit auf der amerikanischen Seite — die sich der Komplexität der vietnamesischen Psychche nicht gewachsen zeigte — den Eindruck, Saigon taste sich an die Vereinbarungen heran.

Dieser Eindruck verstärkte sich, als Thieu am Ende der Sitzung erklärte, er werde am folgenden Vormittag mit den Führern der Nationalversammlung und anderen politischen Schlüsselförpersönlichkeiten sprechen müssen, um sie auf die bevorstehenden Entwicklungen vorzubereiten. Wir vereinbarten daher das nächste Treffen für den 21. Oktober um 14 Uhr.

Aber zur verabredeten Zeit hörten wir nichts. Etwa eine Stunde später rief Nha an und sagte, wir sollten uns bereithalten; die Sitzung sei auf 17 Uhr verschoben worden. Wir würden benachrichtigt werden, wenn Thieu verhandlungsbereit wäre.

Der Grund der Verzögerung wurde uns nicht genannt, und Nha entschuldigte sich auch nicht; er richtete uns nur seine Botschaft aus und hängte ein. Wahrscheinlich hatte er gesehen, wie Humphrey Bogart das in irgendeinem Film tat.

Um 16.30 Uhr — zweieinhalb Stunden nach der verabredeten Zeit — fuhr Thieus Wagenkolonne mit lautem Sirenengeheul an der Botschaft vorbei. Um 17.30 Uhr hatten wir noch immer nichts aus dem Palast gehört, und nun kam es zu einem fast historischen Ereignis: Bunker bekam einen Wutanfall. Er versuchte Thieu telephonisch zu erreichen, aber man sagte ihm, der Präsident nehme an einer Kabinettsitzung teil. Als er verlangte, mit Nha zu sprechen, erklärte man, der Pressesekretär habe das Gebäude verlassen und sei nicht zu erreichen.

Eine Stunde später, fast fünf Stunden nach dem verabredeten Termin, rief Thieu Bunker an und sagte ihm, er werde uns unmittelbar nach der Kabinettsitzung empfangen, die jedoch noch andauere. Nach einer weiteren dreiviertel Stunde rief Nha an und sagte, Thieu werde Bunker und mich am nächsten Morgen um 8 Uhr empfangen. Als Bunker protestierte und sagte, durch den Zeitunterschied werde sich die Entscheidung Washingtons um mindestens 24 Stunden verzögern müssen, legte Nha einfach auf. Wir empfanden eine ohnmächtige Wut.

Gegen 21 Uhr — sieben Stunden nach dem verabredeten Termin — rief Thieu Bunker an. Fast hysterisch beglagte er sich bitter, daß Haig vor zwei Wochen nach Saigon gekommen sei,

um einen Staatsstreich gegen ihn zu organisieren; Mitglieder meiner Delegation setzten diese Bemühungen jetzt fort. Er verlangte, daß wir dieses Spiel einstellten.

Bunker und ich gehörten seit Jahren zu denen, die Thieu am energischsten unterstützt hatten; wir hatten alle Forderungen Hanois und der Kriegsgegner in den USA abgelehnt, die Regierung in Saigon zu stürzen. Haig hatte in Vietnam gekämpft und bewunderte Thieu. Es war bitter, jetzt beschuldigt zu werden, wir versuchten einen politischen Führer zu stürzen, um dessen Überleben wir uns so aufrichtig bemüht hatten.

Bunker wies Thieus Vorwürfe in so empörtem Ton zurück, wie es seine sanfte Natur nur zuließ. Aber wir hatten keine Zeit für Wutausbrüche und auch keine andere Wahl, als durchzuhalten — und Thieu wußte das sehr genau. Wir waren an einen Zeitplan gebunden, der mich in 72 Stunden nach Hanoi bringen sollte, während unser vietnamesischer Verbündeter die Fassung verlor.

Wir begannen zu hoffen, die Nordvietnamesen würden das Problem dadurch gegenstandslos machen, daß sie sich weigerten, unsere neuen Vorschläge zu Laos und Kambodscha zu akzepieren. Aber noch am selben Abend ging Hanoi wieder auf alle unsere Forderungen ein und erklärte sich mit dem gesamten Wortlaut unserer Texte sowie

198

mit dem neuen „Zeitplan“ einverstanden, den ich tags zuvor übermittelt hatte. Unsere Strategie verzeichnete überall erstaunliche Erfolge — nur nicht bei unseren Verbündeten in Saigon.

Auf der Sitzung mit Thieu am Sonntag, dem 22. Oktober, um 8 Uhr kam es trotz des unheilverkündenden Vorspiels nicht zu einer Konfrontation. In würdiger Haltung erklärte der südvietnamesische Präsident, unser Problem sei es, unsere Beteiligung an diesem Krieg zu beenden; für ihn gehe es um das Überleben seines Landes.

Er müsse nicht nur die Vertragsbedingungen berücksichtigen, sondern auch daran denken, wie sie von der Bevölkerung Südvietnams aufgenommen würden. Er müsse deshalb die Führer der Nationalversammlung konsultieren. Er werde Bunker und mich um 17 Uhr noch einmal empfangen, um uns seine endgültige Antwort zu geben.

Nach dieser Sitzung schöpften wir neuen Mut. Ich telegraphierte nach Washington: „Ich glaube, uns ist endlich der Durchbruch gelungen.“

Das Gespräch am Nachmittag dauerte fast zwei Stunden. Anschließend teilte ich Haig telegraphisch die verheerende Nachricht mit: „Thieu hat soeben den ganzen Plan und auch jede

Modifizierung dieses Plans abgelehnt und sich geweigert, über weitere Verhandlungen auf dieser Basis zu sprechen.“

Es war eine bizarre Begegnung gewesen. Thieu, obwohl fließend im Englischen, hatte sich geweigert, englisch zu sprechen. Während er redete, brach er immer wieder in Tränen aus, mehr aus Wut denn aus Kummer, wie es Bunker und mir vorkam. Nha übernahm die Rolle des Dolmetschers und weinte an den entsprechenden Stellen ebenfalls.

Die Sitzung begann damit, daß ich Thieu von unseren erfolgreichen Konolutionen in Pnom Penh, Bangkok und Vientiane berichtete. Er erwiderte, das überrasche ihn nicht, denn diese Länder seien nicht „geopfert“ worden.

Die Vereinigten Staaten hätten sich offensichtlich mit den Sowjets und China zusammengetan, um Südvietnam zu verkaufen. An einem solchen Geschäft werde er sich nicht beteiligen.

Zum erstenmal stellte sich heraus, daß er sich schon seit wenigstens einem Jahr betrogen fühlte, seit wir ihn nämlich gebeten hatten, einen Monat vor den neuen Präsidentschaftswahlen zurückzutreten.

Ich erwiderte ihm: „Hätten wir Sie verkaufen wollen, dann hätten wir das

auf viel einfachere Weise bewerkstelligen können.“

Wenn der 8. Oktober, der Tag, an dem Hanoi endlich alle seine politischen Forderungen aufgegeben hatte, für mich das bewegendste Erlebnis meiner Regierungslaufbahn gewesen war, dann war dies — wenigstens bisher — das traurigste. Was jetzt auch geschehen mochte, Thieus Reaktion garantierte, daß der Krieg sich nicht so bald und auch nicht in einer Weise beenden lassen würde, die es ermöglichte, die Spaltungen in unserem Land zu heilen.

Mionei Mitarbeiter und ich mußten nun aus der Sackgasse herausfinden, in die wir durch Thieus Ablehnung des Friedensvertrages geraten waren. Nixon wollte jedoch nichts davon hören — er hatte den Ehrgeiz, die Wahlen mit der größten Mehrheit zu gewinnen, die es in der amerikanischen Geschichte gegeben hatte, und war überzeugt, daß ihm das gelingen würde, solange während der letzten beiden Monate vor den Wahlen nichts Unvorhergesehenes geschah.

Deshalb durften keine aufsehenerregenden Nachrichten aus Vietnam die innenpolitische Szene erschüttern. Das Problem sollte für mindestens zwei Wochen in der Versenkung verschwinden und erst unmittelbar nach den Wahlen wiederaufgenommen werden. Er hatte mich angewiesen, auf diesem Gebiet nach Möglichkeit für Ruhe zu sorgen. Ich war sicher, daß weder unsere Feinde noch unsere Verbündeten in Vietnam das zulassen würden.

Am 26. Oktober wurde ich um 5.30 Uhr geweckt und erfuhr, daß der Rundfunk in Hanoi seit Stunden die nordvietnamesische Version der Ereignisse verbreitete, und zwar auf vietnamesisch, auf französisch und am Schluß auf englisch.

Radio Hanoi schilderte den Verlauf der Verhandlungen während des vergangenen Monats: Am 8. Oktober habe Nordvietnam auf einer Geheimsitzung „eine neue, außerordentlich wichtige Initiative“ ergriffen und einen neuen Entwurf für einen Friedensvertrag vorgelegt. Die wichtigsten Punkte des Vertragsentwurfs wurden korrekt zusammengefaßt. Weiter hieß es, ich hätte zugegeben, der neue Vorschlag sei „in der Tat ein bedeutendes und sehr fundamentales Dokument“.

Dann erwähnte die Sendung den „Zeitplan“, dessen ständiger Veränderung Hanoi auf Verlangen der Vereinigten Staaten zugestimmt habe. Die Vereinigten Staaten hätten jedoch unter den verschiedensten „Vorwänden“ versäumt, an dem vereinbarten Zeitplan festzuhalten. Deshalb müsse Hanoi „die Nixon-Regierung streng dafür

„Das geht hier Zug um Zug“

Chicago Sun Times

200

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tadeln, daß es ihr an gutem Willen und
Ernst fehlt". Die Nordvietnamesen ver-
langten eine Unterzeichnung der Ver-
einbarungen bis zum 31. Oktober.

Nachdem Hanoi an die Öffentlich-
keit gegangen war, mußten wir dazu
Stellung nehmen.

So kam es dazu, daß ich am 26. Ok-
tober 1972, gegen Ende der ersten
Amtsperiode Nixons, zum erstenmal
eine Pressekonferenz gab, die im gan-
zen Land vom Fernsehen übertragen
wurde.

In meinen einleitenden Worten
sprach ich dann den Satz aus, der mich
von diesem Augenblick an verfolgen
sollte: „Der Frieden ist zum Greifen
nah.“

Trotz aller Vorwürfe, die man mir
später gemacht hat, war meine Aussage
im wesentlichen zutreffend — wenn ich
mich auch heute nicht ganz so dramatic-
tisch ausdrücken würde. Die Verhand-
lungen wurden am 20. November
wiederaufgenommen (Hanoi verzöger-
te sie um fast vier Wochen). Zu dem
Durchbruch, mit dem alle Hauptpro-
bleme gelöst wurden, kam es am 9. Ja-
nuar 1973; am 23. Januar wurde der
Vertrag paraphiert.

Die Experten mögen darüber strei-
ten, ob ich berechtigt gewesen sei, vor
Abschluß sechswöchiger Verhandlun-
gen zu sagen, der Frieden sei zum Grei-
fen nah. Die Tatsache ist jedoch unbe-
streitbar, daß ein mit Erbitterung ge-
führter Krieg, der zehn Jahre gedauert
und zahllose Menschenleben gekostet
hatte, wenige Wochen nach meiner
Erklärung beendet wurde.

Zunächst einmal ging es aber darum,
Hanoi wieder an den Verhandlungs-
tisch zu bekommen. Doch die Nord-
vietnamesen wollten sich, um einen Ge-
sichtsverlust zu vermeiden, offenbar
nicht auf neue Verhandlungen einlas-
sen, bevor der von ihnen festgesetzte
Termin am 31. Oktober verstrichen
war.

Erst am 4. November, drei Tage vor
den Wahlen, erreichte uns Hanois Zu-
sage, auf unser Angebot zur Wieder-
aufnahme der Verhandlungen einzuge-
hen — und zwar am 14. November
oder „zu einem anderen Zeitpunkt, den
die amerikanische Seite vorschlagen
möchte“. Hanoi erklärte sich bereit,
sich an den Text der Vereinbarungen
zu halten — mit anderen Worten, von
sich aus keine Änderungsvorschläge zu
machen.

Die eigenartigste Periode in Nixons
Amtszeit als Präsident folgte auf seinen
überwältigenden Wahlsieg am 7. No-
vember 1972. Der Wahlausgang ver-
sprach zum größten Erdrutsch in unse-
rer Geschichte zu werden. Doch als
sich die Stunde seines Triumphes nä-
herte, zog sich Nixon immer mehr zu-
rück, ja, er mied sogar einige seiner
engsten Berater.

202

Wahlsieger Nixon, Vizepräsident Agnew, Ehefrauen 1972: „Wir wurden hinausgeworfen“

Seine Ressentiments, die er gewöhnlich so gut zu beherrschen wußte, kamen immer deutlicher zum Ausdruck, als wäre der Sieg kein Anlaß zur Versöhnung, sondern eine Gelegenheit, alte Rechnungen zu begleichen, die ihn ein ganzes Leben lang bedrückt hatten.

Alle Mitarbeiter des Weißen Hauses waren für 11 Uhr am Morgen nach der Wahl ins Roosevelt-Zimmer gebeten worden. Pünktlich auf die Minute erschien Nixon. Er machte keinen frohen Eindruck, sondern wirkte eher grimmig entschlossen und distanziert, als läge der entscheidende Abschnitt seines Lebens noch vor ihm. Ohne sich zu setzen, sprach er den Versammelten steif und offiziell seinen Dank aus. Etwa fünf Minuten später übergab er Haldeman die Leitung der Versammlung und ging.

Haldeman kam sofort zur Sache. Jedem Mitarbeiter des Weißen Hauses habe sofort seinen Rücktritt einzureichen; wir wurden alle aufgefordert, ein Formblatt auszufüllen und darauf alle Dokumente einzutragen, die sich in unserem Besitz befanden. Der Präsident werde seine persönlichen Entscheidungen über die Zusammensetzung der neuen Regierung innerhalb eines Monats bekanntgeben.

Wir waren wie vor den Kopf gestoßen. Am Morgen nach einem triumphalen Sieg wurden wir praktisch hinausgeworfen. Eine Stunde später wiederholte sich das gleiche abstoßende Schauspiel im Kabinett.

Ich selbst war nicht unmittelbar betroffen, denn Haldeman hatte mir sofort nach der Zusammenkunft im Roosevelt-Zimmer gesagt, mein Rücktrittsgesuch sei eine bloße Formalität. Seit meiner Geheimreise nach China jedoch hatten sich meine persönlichen Beziehungen zu Nixon kompliziert.

Bis dahin war ich ein mehr oder weniger unbekannter Berater des Weißen Hauses gewesen. Seither aber war ich deutlicher ins Licht der Öffentlichkeit gerückt — und das traf das Weiße Haus an seiner empfindlichsten Stelle, im Bereich der Public Relations.

Nixon gefiel der Anschein, daß ich eine wichtige Rolle spielte, keineswegs. Besonders erboste ihn jedoch die Tatsache, daß ich für mich Eigenschaften in Anspruch nahm, die seinem eigenen Selbstverständnis entsprachen, die er aber aus psychischer Unsicherheit nicht selbst artikulieren konnte.

Zunächst hatte das keine sichtbaren Folgen. Doch infolge der latenten Miß

helligkeiten zwischen dem Steuermann und seinem Navigationsoffizier wurde es immer schwieriger, einen sicheren Kurs einzuhalten.

Am 20. November traf ich mich zum erstenmal seit der 16 Stunden dauernden Marathonsitzung vom 12. Oktober wieder mit Le Duc Tho.

Um die Atmosphäre etwas aufzulokkern, hatte ich Geschenke mitgebracht. Le Duc Tho bekam einige Bildbände über Harvard, um ihn für den Fall vorzubereiten, daß er jemals meine Anregung aufnahm und dort ein Seminar über Marxismus-Leninismus abhielt; dazu Federhalter und Bleistift für die Unterzeichnung des Friedensvertrages. Xuan Thuy erhielt einen Bildband über Amerika und einen gläsernen Pferdekopf, da ich wußte, daß er sich für Pferderennen interessierte. Aber die Geschenke konnten der Begegnung den Stachel nicht nehmen.

Le Duc Tho begann mit einer langen Tirade über Hanois guten Willen und die Doppelzüngigkeit der Vereinigten Staaten, die sich nicht an den „Zeitplan“ gehalten hätten, und verlas dann eine schriftliche Erklärung, die uns vor

DER SPIEGEL, Nr. 45/1979

203

jedem Versuch warnte, Nordvietnam zu erpressen; er beschwerte sich darüber, daß Nordvietnam zwar oft von den Franzosen, Japanern und Amerikanern getäuscht worden sei, aber nialls so wie jetzt (das klang fast nach bewundernder Anerkennung).

Mein Vortrag erregte die Gegenseite, da ich dabei alle uns inzwischen präsentierten 69 Änderungswünsche Saigons auf den Tisch legte. Das erwies sich als schwerer taktischer Fehler. Diese Liste war unmöglich und ging weit über die Änderungswünsche hinaus, die wir öffentlich und privat angedeutet hatten.

Le Duc Tho reagierte entsprechend. Wenn diese Änderungsvorschläge ein Ultimatum darstellten, werde der Krieg noch vier Jahre weitergehen, erklärte er. Die meisten Vorschläge lehnte er ab und akzeptierte nur ein paar Korrekturen. Schlimmer war jedoch, daß er jetzt selbst bestimmte Änderungen verlangte.

Nachdem wir dreieinhalb Sitzungen abgehalten hatten, kehrte ich am 22. November zu den wesentlichen Fragen

zurück und distanzierte mich dabei von der Haltung Saigons — wobei ich riskierte, in das gleiche Dilemma zu geraaten wie im Oktober. Während ich so tat, als ginge ich den Entwurf noch einmal Abschnitt für Abschnitt durch, verzichtete ich auf eine Reihe unwezentlicher Forderungen Saigons, die eigentlich nur Nadelstiche waren, und beschränkte unsere Forderungen auf die von Nixon in einem Brief an Thieu vom 8. November als wesentlich bezeichneten Punkte.

Jetzt ließ auch Washington wieder von sich hören. Nixon schickte mir eine hart klingende Anweisung mit dem ausdrücklichen Vermerk: „Keine Direktive — zur etwaigen Verwendung bei den Nordvietnamesen.“ Die Anweisung lautete:

Der Präsident ist über Ton und Inhalt der letzten Gespräche mit Le Duc Tho sehr enttäuscht. Unter diesen Umständenweise ich Sie an, die Gespräche abzubrechen, wenn die andere Seite nicht die gleiche Bereitwilligkeit zur Vernunft zeigt wie wir; wir werden dann wieder militärisch vorgehen müssen, bis die andere Seite verhandlungsbereit ist.

Präsident-Berater Kissinger in Paris 1972: „Der Frieden ist zum Greifen nah“

In einer zweiten Botschaft riet mir Haldeman, ein ernsteres Gesicht zu machen, wenn das Fernsehen mich mit Le Duc Tho filmte. Mit anderen Worten, in Camp David sah man es nicht gern, wenn wir in Paris lächelten.

Am Thanksgiving Day bewirteten uns die Nordvietnamesen als aufmerksame Gastgeber mit Rinderbraten und Hühnchen. Anschließend telegraphierte ich Nixon, wir seien zwar um ein kleines Stück vorangekommen, aber auch die Nordvietnamesen hätten gewisse Abstriche verlangt, deshalb sehe der Entwurf jetzt etwas weniger günstig aus als im Oktober.

Wir hätten zwei Möglichkeiten: Wir könnten die Gespräche entweder abrechen und die Bombenangriffe nördlich des 20. Breitengrades wiederaufnehmen (das war praktisch der Vorschlag, den Nixon mir 24 Stunden zuvor gemacht hatte), oder wir konnten uns mit den Verbesserungen des Entwurfs in bezug auf die entmilitarisierte Zone und die Waffenlieferungen sowie mit geringen Veränderungen auf politischem Gebiet einverstanden erklären, die es Saison ermöglichen würden, das Gesicht zu wahren; im übrigen müßte dann der im Oktober ausgehandelte Vertragstext übernommen werden.

Ich wußte allerdings nicht, ob Hanoi darauf eingehen würde — Saigon würde eine solche Lösung mit Sicherheit ablehnen. Es war symptomatisch für die wachsenden Spannungen zwischen Nixon und mir, daß ich keine Empfehlungen machte, die zwischen diesen beiden Möglichkeiten lagen. Nixon behauptet, ich hätte mich für die erste Option ausgesprochen. Die vorhandenen Unterlagen bestätigen das nicht; ich hatte vielmehr angedeutet, daß ich der zweiten Möglichkeit den Vorzug gäbe.

Aber Nixon wollte sich nicht ins Bockshorn jagen lassen. Er telegraphierte zurück, „wegen der Erwartungen, die in diesem Lande entstanden sind“ (eine Anspielung auf mein „Der Frieden ist zum Greifen nah“), sei es nicht mehr möglich, die Gespräche abzubrechen, wie er noch 24 Stunden vorher vorgeschlagen hatte. Er entschied sich für die zweite Option und forderte mich auf, so hart wie möglich zu verhandeln.

Am nächsten Morgen änderte Nixon seine Meinung noch einmal; ich weiß nicht, was ihn zu diesem Sinneswandel veranlaßt hat. Er telegraphierte mir, die Gespräche nun doch abzubrechen, und zwar unter dem Vorwand, beide Seiten müßten noch einmal über die grundsätzlichen Probleme nachdenken. Während der Verhandlungspause wollte er einen massiven Luftangriff gegen Nordvietnam befehlen.

Ich hätte es für richtiger gehalten, die Bombenangriffe nördlich des 20. Brei-

206

Nordvietnam-Unterhändler Le Duc Tho: „Hanoi war unersättlich“

tengrades erst dann wieder aufzunehmen, wenn die Verhandlungen völlig gescheitert waren, und diesen Punkt hatten wir noch nicht erreicht. Nixon war jedenfalls jetzt bereit, gegen die innenpolitische Opposition einen harten Kurs zu verfolgen:

> Unser Ziel wird es auch weiterhin sein, den Krieg unter ehrenhaften Bedingungen zu beenden ... Aber nun, da die Wahlen hinter uns liegen, schulden wir es den Opfern, die so viele bis heute gebracht haben, das Richtige zu tun, auch wenn wir dabei auf den massiven Widerstand der Öffentlichkeit stoßen.

Alle diese Anweisungen bedeuteten letzten Endes, daß mir die Entscheidung überlassen wurde.

Die Südvietnamesen verlangten noch immer die Berücksichtigung aller 69 Änderungswünsche. Am 23. November erfuhrten wir, daß Thieus Mitarbeiter Nguyen Phu Duc nach Paris kommen würde, um das südvietnamesische Beobachterteam zu verstärken. Wir mußten seine Ankunft abwarten, um zu sehen, ob Saigon sich zu etwas mehr Flexibilität bewegen ließ.

Außerdem hielt ich es für falsch, wenn die amerikanische und die nordvietnamesische Delegation sich noch weiter im bisherigen Rahmen trafen, um die Vertragsbedingungen auszuarbeiten. Solange Le Duc Tho keine neuen Anweisungen erhielt und Saigon nicht nachgab, würden wir uns nur noch mehr festfahren.

Unter diesen Umständen erschien es mir sinnlos, die Besprechungen zwischen den beiden Delegationen fortzut-

setzen, und ich schlug eine einwöchige Verhandlungspause vor.

Widerwillig erklärte sich Le Duc Tho mit der Unterbrechung einverstanden; ich hatte nicht den Eindruck, daß er zu ernsthaften Gesprächen bereit war. Wir kamen überein, die Wiederaufnahme der Gespräche für den 4. Dezember bekanntzugeben.

So endete die erste Gesprächsrunde mit zwölf zum Teil geringfügigen Verbesserungen des Vertragstextes und der Forderung Hanois, ihn in drei oder vier Punkten wesentlich zugunsten Nordvietnams zu verändern. Wir waren uns über die endgültigen Absichten Hanois nicht im klaren. Entweder wollte Le Duc Tho hart verhandeln, oder die Nordvietnamesen glaubten, daß sich die Lage psychologisch zu ihren Gunsten entwickelte.

Vielleicht rechneten sie damit, daß wir versuchen würden, Saigon zur Annahme des Textes vom Oktober zu zwingen, wenn sie lange genug auf ihrem Standpunkt beharrten, und daß das die Moral der Regierung Thieu erschüttern würde. Vielleicht glaubten sie aber auch, daß der Kongreß uns zwischen würde, den Krieg zu beenden.

Alles deutete darauf hin, daß beide vietnamesischen Parteien im Augenblick keine Zugeständnisse machen wollten. Wir brauchten deshalb die Verhandlungspause, um uns nicht restlos festzufahren und um festzustellen,

mit welchen Druckmaßnahmen wir unsere Verhandlungspartner zum Nachgeben bewegen konnten.

Am 26. November bat ich Bunker, Thieu noch einmal zu sagen, daß unsere Minimalforderungen die gleichen blieben. Um unserer Position Nachdruck zu verleihen, gingen wir auf einen früheren Vorschlag Thieus ein, einen Bevollmächtigten zu schicken, und baten, Nguyen Phu Duc möge sofort nach Washington kommen, damit Nixon ihm unsere endgültige Entscheidung erläutern könne. Damit wollten wir Thieu zugleich jede Hoffnung nehmen, aus Meinungsverschiedenheiten zwischen Nixon und Kissinger Kapital schlagen zu können.

Als Phu Duc am 29. November nach Washington kam, traf er auf einen entschlossenen Nixon. Der Präsident hielt sogar die von mir vorbereiteten Verhandlungsunterlagen für ein wenig „zu weich“; er wollte mir zeigen, wie man zu eindeutigen Ergebnissen kommt. Da er noch nie mit Vietnamesen verhandelt hatte, wußte er nicht, daß sie Kraftproben vermeiden und daß ihre Unbestimmtheit es oft unmöglich macht, zu erkennen, worum es ihnen eigentlich geht und worüber man sich geeinigt hat.

Nixon erklärte Phu Duc in barschem Ton, wir könnten nicht Friedensbedingungen ablehnen, die wir gemeinsam seit fast drei Jahren vorgeschlagen hätten. Unsere Strategie sei jedenfalls festgelegt. Er werde ihr folgen, welche Haltung Saigon auch einnehmen wend; Saigons Haltung werde nicht den Ausgang der Verhandlungen bestimmen, sondern nur darüber entscheiden, ob wir in der Lage sein würden, Südvietnam nach dem Friedensschluß zu helfen und für die Einhaltung des Vertrages zu sorgen.

Das waren harte Worte, aber nicht hart genug, um eine eindeutige Reaktion auszulösen. Phu Duc bestritt, eine Konfrontation herbeiführen zu wollen. Sein Ziel sei im Gegenteil eine enge Zusammenarbeit. Andererseits habe er keine Vollmacht, über die Positionen seines Präsidenten hinauszugehen. Nixon schlug großzügig vor, Phu Duc und ich sollten uns zusammensetzen und eine praktische Lösung ausarbeiten; seine Entscheidung sei gefallen. Mit anderen Worten: Wir waren dort, wo wir angefangen hatten. Phu Duc hatte keine Verhandlungsvollmacht, und Thieu würde meinen Forderungen niemals nachgeben.

Auch die Nordvietnamesen erwiesen sich als wenig entgegenkommend. Als wir die Verhandlungen am 4. Dezember wiederaufnahmen, beschwerte sich Le Duc Tho mit bitteren Worten über unsere Taktik. Dann widerrief er neun der zwölf Änderungen, denen er in der Verhandlungsrunde im November zugeestimmt hatte. Er blieb dabei jedoch bei seinen Forderungen nach Änderung.

208

Südvietnam-Abgesandter Nguyen Phu Duc, Nixon, Kissinger: „Harte Worte, aber nicht hart genug“

gen im Vertragsentwurf vom Oktober. Ich glaubte nicht, daß Le Duc Tho es gewagt hätte, solche Vorschläge zu machen, wenn er nicht bereit war, den Abbruch der Gespräche zu riskieren.

Am ersten Abend glaubte ich, den Abbruch der Verhandlungen nur dadurch verhindern zu können, daß wir Moskau und Peking davon unterrichteten, was den Kommunisten in Hanoi bevorstand.

Ich bat Dick Kennedy, der mein Büro in Washington besetzt hielt, Dobrynin zu sagen, wir näherten uns einer Situation wie im vergangenen Mai und bäten um irgendeine Reaktion der So wjet-Union. Um Moskau Zeit zu geben, seinen Einfluß spürbar zu machen, schlug ich Le Duc Tho am 5. Dezember eine Unterbrechung der Sitzungen für 24 Stunden vor — „wegen der ersten Lage, die nach der Sitzung vom 4. Dezember entstanden ist“.

Ich hielt ein Scheitern der Verhandlungen für wahrscheinlich und wußte sehr wohl, daß ich einen Teil der Verantwortung zu tragen hatte; schließlich hatte ich das Tempo seit Oktober forciert vorangetrieben. „Wenn das geschieht“, schrieb ich an Nixon, „werde ich nach meiner Rückkehr mit Ihnen über meine Verantwortung und meine Rolle sprechen.“

Vor meinem nächsten Zusammentreffen mit Le Duc Tho beantwortete Moskau unsere Note. Der Kreml riet zur Geduld. Die Sowjets behaupteten, an den Friedenswillen Hanois zu glauben, und versicherten uns — 48 Stun-

den nach Le Duc Tho —, daß die Nordvietnamesen immer noch bereit seien, einen Vertrag im Rahmen des im Oktober ausgehandelten Entwurfs zu unterzeichnen. Dobrynin ließ mich vertraulich wissen, Moskau stehe mit Hanoi in Verbindung, und empfahl, die Gespräche weiterzuführen, um dem Kreml mehr Zeit zu geben, seinen Einfluß spürbar zu machen.

Die Besprechung mit Le Duc Tho am 6. Dezember brachte nichts Neues. Beide Seiten stellten noch einmal ihre Standpunkte dar. Wir sprachen zwar über einzelne Vertragsklauseln, aber das Ganze war nur ein Spiel um Zeitgewinn.

Nixon wies mich an, die nächste Sitzung mit einer Reihe von Fragen im Stil eines Staatsanwalts zu eröffnen und zu versuchen, Hanois Unnachgiebigkeit in verschiedenen Punkten aktenkundig zu machen, damit wir Beweise in der Hand hatten, falls die Verhandlungen abgebrochen oder vertagt wurden. Dann sollte ich Hanoi auffordern, sein letztes Angebot auf den Tisch zu legen.

Auf der vierstündigen Sitzung am 7. Dezember zeigte sich jedoch wieder, daß Hanoi die Verhandlungen weiter hinauszögern wollte. Offenbar rechneten die Nordvietnamesen damit, daß sich ihre Lage im Laufe der Zeit nur verbessern könnte und wir hoffnungslos in die Ecke getrieben würden.

In einem Bericht an Nixon schrieb ich:

Es zeigt sich immer deutlicher, daß Hanoi ... seine Ablichten im Hinblick auf Südvietnam keineswegs aufgegeben hat ... Wir stehen wieder vor meiner ürsprünglichen Frage: Ist es besser, jetzt auf den Vertragsabschluß zu verzichten und weiterzukämpfen, oder später gezwungen zu sein, auf eine Verletzung des feierlich abgeschlossenen Vertrages zu reagieren?

Ich empfahl das Letztere, und Nixon nahm meine Empfehlung erwartungsgemäß an.

Seiner Antwort entnahm ich, daß er die Unterzeichnung eines jeden nur einigermaßen annehmbaren Vertrags einer weiteren Verzögerung vorzog. Ich sollte versuchen, gegenüber dem Entwurf vom Oktober „gewisse“ (nicht näher bezeichnete) Verbesserungen durchzusetzen.

Mein Dilemma lag darin, daß ich zwischen der widerspenstigen Regierung in Saigon, den in subtiler Weise unverschämten Nordvietnamesen und einer verwaschenen Haltung in Washington stand, wo man sich darum bemühte, die Verhandlungen um jeden Preis weiterzuführen, was es mir vollkommen unmöglich machte, eine Entscheidung zu erzwingen.

Ein Telegramm von Haig, das nach der Sitzung am 11. Dezember eintraf, zeigte mir deutlich, welche Stimmung in Washington herrschte. Der Präsident wünschte, ich sollte so lange in Paris bleiben, wie noch die geringste Hoffnung auf einen Vertragsabschluß bestand; wenn ich glaubte, die Situation hätte sich so festgefahren, daß wir zunächst nicht weiterkämen, sollte ich zu Konsultationen nach Washington zu-

210

rückkehren; ich sollte die Gespräche vertagen, aber nicht abbrechen; und wenn der Präsident beschloß, die Bombenangriffe wieder aufzunehmen, sollte ich die Presse davon unterrichten.

Um uns ein wenig zu beruhigen, legte Le Duc Tho endlich die Protokolle für das Inkrafttreten des Waffenstillstands und die Arbeit des internationalen Kontrollapparates vor. Er kam unseren Plänen insofern zuvor, als er mir sagte, er habe beschlossen, Paris am Donnerstag, dem 14. Dezember, zu verlassen, um nach Hanoi zu reisen.

Bis er dort einträfe, würden vier bis fünf Tage vergehen. Er werde nicht abschließen können, bevor er die noch zögernden Mitglieder des Politburos persönlich von der Notwendigkeit des Friedensschlusses zu diesen Bedingungen überzeugt hätte. Diese Leute machten ihm angeblich besonders in der Frage der entmilitarisierten Zone ständig Schwierigkeiten.

Er erklärte sich bereit, wenn notwendig, nach Paris zurückzukommen, glaubte aber, wir könnten die noch offenen Probleme mit einem Notenaustausch lösen, was angesichts der zahlreichen technischen Einzelheiten, die berücksichtigt werden mußten, unsinnig war.

Die Vorstellung, daß der friedliebende Le Duc Tho von seinen aggressiven

Vorgesetzten daran gehindert wurde, Zugeständnisse zu machen, ging über meinen Verstand; aber damit hatte Le Duc Tho eine Begründung gefunden, die Verhandlungen in die Länge zu ziehen, ohne uns (wie er hoffte) einen Vorwand für Gegenmaßnahmen zu geben.

Am Abend prüften wir die nordvietnamesischen Protokollentwürfe. Sie waren, wie ich Nixon berichtete, „empörend“.

In den Bestimmungen über die Größe, Zusammensetzung und die Aufgaben der Internationalen Kommission zur Kontrolle und Überwachung (ICCS) war die Überwachungsbehörde so vielen Vetos unterworfen, daß man sich nicht vorstellen konnte, wie sie überhaupt irgend etwas überwachen sollte.

Außerdem würde die ICCS keine eigenen Transportmittel haben, sondern die zu inspizierende Seite müßte ihre Zustimmung geben und Fahrzeuge, Telephone oder andere Ausrüstung zur Verfügung stellen. Le Duc Tho machte den zynischen Scherz, daß in den von den Kommunisten beherrschten Gebieten unter Umständen für den Transport nur Ochsenkarren zur Verfügung stünden.

Die Ausführungsbestimmungen für den Waffenstillstand waren ebenso absurd. Darin wurde verlangt, daß alle südvietnamesischen Flugzeuge am Boden bleiben und jedes einzelne Kriegs-

schiff, auch wenn es sich in südvietnamesischen Gewässern befand, vor Anker gehen müßte.

Unter dem Vorwand, den Waffenstillstand zu präzisieren, versuchte Hanoi, den Südvietnamesen jede Möglichkeit der Verteidigung zu nehmen.

Kein Wunder, daß mein VietnamExperte John Negroponte Hanois Verhandlungstaktik in der Dezemberrunde als „plump, frech und gegenüber den Vereinigten Staaten verächtlich“ sowie als „billig, kleinlich und manchmal geradezu kindisch“ bezeichnete.

Das alles zeigte sich auch deutlich während meines letzten Zusammentreffens mit Le Duc Tho am 13. Dezember. An diesem Tag scheiterten die Verhandlungen endgültig.

Ich war am 4. Dezember mit Nixons Anweisung nach Paris gekommen, den Vertrag abzuschließen. Le Duc Tho hatte mich zehn Tage dort festgehalten — das war unsere bisher längste Verhandlungsrunde —, und jeden Tag hatte ich den Eindruck, daß der Abschluß weiter in die Ferne rückte.

Es gab keine unlösbaren konkreten Fragen mehr, die beide Seiten voneinander trennten, vielmehr zeigte sich, daß die Nordvietnamesen entschlossen waren, den Vertragsabschluß nicht zuzulassen. Das war das unlösbare Pro-

Kissinger (2. v. I.), Stab in Paris*: „Tun Sie, was richtig ist“

212

* Peter Rodman, Winston Lord, Al Haig, William Sullivan, David Engel, John Negroponte (sitzend).

The New York Times

blem, das uns veranlaßte, fünf Tage später zu Weihnachten die Bombenangriffe wiederaufzunehmen.

Man hat die Bombenangriffe in den Weihnachtstagen als eine Orgie massiver Vernichtung bezeichnet und behauptet, diese Maßnahmen seien sinnlos und böswillig gewesen. Das ist ein Märchen. Nixon und ich entschlossen uns vielmehr nur mit größtem Widerwillen dazu, wieder an den Einsatz militärischer Mittel zu denken.

Aber Hanoi war unersättlich. Die Nordvietnamesen glaubten, jetzt alles erreichen, Saigon demoralisieren und uns zum Nachgeben zwingen zu können. Doch sie hatten einen schweren Fehler begangen, indem sie Nixon in die Enge trieben.

Nixon war niemals gefährlicher, als wenn er glaubte, in seinen Entschlüssen nicht mehr frei zu sein. Er wollte sich während seiner zweiten Amtszeit durch unser nationales Trauma nicht wieder so quälen lassen wie in der ersten — besonders jetzt, da der Vertragsabschluß so nahe gerückt zu sein schien.

Nixon, Haig und ich kamen zu der Auffassung, daß irgendeine militärische Reaktion notwendig sei.

Nixon erinnert sich, ich hätte eine Intensivierung der Bombenangriffe südlich des 20. Breitengrades und in Südlaos empfohlen, nicht aber eine Bombardierung bewohnter Gebiete. Ich kann mich daran nicht erinnern, meine vielmehr, die Wiederaufnahme der Bombenangriffe im gleichen Umfang empfohlen zu haben, wie sie vor

dem Oktober durchgeführt wurden, und zwar in ganz Vietnam. Die bewohnten Gebiete wollte ich nur mit Jagdbombern angreifen lassen.

Haig wiederum war für den Einsatz von B-52-Bombenflugzeugen, besonders nördlich des 20. Breitengrades, und zwar mit der Begründung, daß nur ein massiver Schlag Hanoi wieder an den Verhandlungstisch bringen könne. Nixon stimmte Haig zu. Ich ließ mich überzeugen, wenn zunächst auch widerwillig. Ich mußte einsehen, daß Nixon und Haig grundsätzlich recht hatten.

Nixon entschloß sich, eine Entscheidung zu erzwingen, und zwar mit der Wiederaufnahme massiver Bombenangriffe mit B-52-Maschinen, zum erstenmal in beschränktem Ausmaß auch gegen den Nordteil Nordvietnams.

Er entschied sich für die B-52 zum Teil deshalb, weil er sich davon eine stärkere Schockwirkung versprach, aber auch, weil andere Maschinen nicht bei jedem Wetter eingesetzt werden konnten. Wie sich herausstellte, hätten die Jagdbomber während der zwei Wochen, in denen die B-52 über Nordvietnam eingesetzt wurden, nur insgesamt zwölf Stunden lang operieren können.

Sosehr ich Nixons Entscheidung bewunderte, so sehr bedauerte ich seine Weigerung, sie der Öffentlichkeit zu erläutern. Für den 17. Dezember hatte er die Neu-Verminung nordvietnamesi-

scher Häfen angeordnet und für den 18. Dezember die Wiederaufnahme der Bombenangriffe befohlen. Das mußte eine gewaltige öffentliche Empörung auslösen.

Aber Nixon wollte sich aus der Schußlinie halten und forderte mich auf, in milder Form die Gründe für die Vertagung der Pariser Gespräche zu erläutern; wie ich das angesichts so dramatischer Ereignisse tun sollte, war mir in Washington ebensowenig klar wie in Paris.

Am 16. Dezember ging ich in den Presseraum des Weißen Hauses, um zu erläutern, weshalb die Verhandlungen sich festgefahren hatten. Nixon hatte mir mit zwei persönlichen Aktennotizen am 15. und 16. Dezember genaue Anweisungen gegeben.

Vor allem sollte ich darauf hinweisen, wie folgerichtig, unbeirrт, fest, geduldig und weitblickend uns der Präsident durch diese schwierige Periode geführt habe. Später wurde ausgezählt, ich hätte Nixon auf meiner Pressekonferenz im Dezember 14mal erwähnt, am 26. Oktober aber nur dreimal. Da ich wußte, daß ein Beauftragter Haldemans Statistik führte, blieb mir kaum etwas anderes übrig, als Nixonsstruktionen zu befolgen.

Der Sinn der Pressekonferenz bestand meiner Auffassung nach darin, Hanoi für alle Schwierigkeiten verantwortlich zu machen und Saigon deutlich erkennen zu lassen, daß wir entschlossen waren, den Vertrag abzuschließen. Ich erläuterte recht eingehend die Gründe für den Abbruch der

214

Verhandlungen und wies darauf hin, daß Hanoi immer wieder völlig nutzlose und herausfordernde Fragen vorgelegt hatte.

Die erste Reaktion der Medien war maßvoll und ausgewogen, wenn auch nicht besonders freundlich, wich dann aber wachsender Empörung über die am 18. Dezember wiederaufgenommenen Bombenangriffe, die zwölf Tage dauerten und als „Weihnachts-Bombardement“ in die Geschichte eingegangen sind. Die moralische Entrüstung wuchs täglich. Niemand widersprach der Behauptung, die Regierung der Vereinigten Staaten ermorde in einem sinnlosen Terrorfeldzug bewußt die Zivilbevölkerung.

„Wahllose Flächenbombardierung dichtbesiedelter Gebiete“ lautete der wesentliche Vorwurf. Nachdem die Journalisten sich erst einmal an dieser Formulierung festgebissen hatten, entwickelte sie ein Eigenleben. Die Wirklichkeit allerdings sah ganz anders aus. Der Historiker Guenter Lewy, der das Beweismaterial überprüft hat, schreibt:

> Diese Vorwürfe werden durch damals verfügbare Beweise und spätere Augenzeugenberichte widerlegt. Die Nordvietnamsen selbst haben damals behauptet, zwischen 1300 und 1600 Menschen verloren zu haben, und obwohl Hanoi und Hai-phong zum Teil evakuiert worden waren,

sind solche Verlustzahlen – so bedauerlich Verluste bei der Zivilbevölkerung immer sind – sicher kein Beweis für Ter-rorbombenangriffe.

Ich befand mich in Washington im-mitten eines Wirbelsturms, dessen elementare Gewalt nicht nur vom Haß der beiden vietnamesischen Staaten und der Hysterie der innenpolitischen Kritiker ausging, sondern auch von der schmerzlichen Klutt, die zwischen Ni-xon und mir entstanden war.

Noch vor den Bombenangriffen zu Weihnachten hatte sich das Weiße Haus darum bemüht, sich von mir zu distanzieren. Ich sage „das Weiße Haus“, weil ich daran zweifle, daß Ni-xon den ausdrücklichen Befehl dazu gegeben hat. Allerdings mußte er ange-sichts der Tatsache nervös werden, daß sein Berater mehr ins Licht der Öffentlichkeit zu rücken begann als er selbst.

Anfang Dezember hatte das Nachrichtenmagazin „Time“ in bester Absicht die Schwierigkeiten dadurch erhöht, daß es Nixon und mich gemeinsam zu „Männern des Jahres“ erkor. Ich erfuhr davon kurz vor meiner Abreise zu der Verhandlungsrunde im Dezember und wußte sofort, wie mein

Chef das aufnehmen würde, dessen begrenzte Fähigkeit zu verzeihen nicht dadurch gefördert wurde, daß man ihn in die zweite Reihe stellte (wenn man ihn als „Mann des Jahres“ auf eine Ebene mit seinem Berater stellte, dann hatte das diese Bedeutung).

Nachdem ich mich mit Nixons Pressechef Ron Ziegler beraten hatte, der über die wahrscheinliche Reaktion Nixons ebenso dachte wie ich, bestürmte ich die ganze „Time“-Hierarchie bis hinauf zum Chefredakteur Hedley Donovan mit der wahrscheinlich zum erstenmal vorgetragenen Bitte, mich vom Titelblatt zu entfernen. Donovan beendet die Diskussion mit der Antwort, wenn ich nicht aufhörte, zu quengeln, würde ich allein zum „Mann des Jahres“ gemacht werden.

Am Morgen des 18. Dezember schickten wir, gleichzeitig mit der Wiederaufnahme der Bombardierungen, über unseren Pariser Kanal eine Note nach Hanoi, in der wir Nordvietnam beschuldigten, „die Gespräche bewußt und in frivoler Weise zu verzögern“.

Wir schlugen einen Termin für die Wiederaufnahme der ins Stocken geratenen Gespräche vor und regten an, zu dem Text zurückzukehren, mit dem wir

Hanoi nach dem Flächenbombardement Weihnachten 1972: „Entscheidung erzwingen“

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die erste Verhandlungsrunde am 23. November begonnen hatten (bevor Le Duc Tho seine Zugeständnisse zurückgenommen hatte). Wir sagten, ich sei bereit, jederzeit nach dem 26. Dezember mit Le Duc Tho zusammenzutreffen.

Am 26. Dezember — an diesem Tag hatten unsere B-52 einen der schwersten Angriffe geflogen — hörten wir direkt etwas aus Hanoi. Die Nordvietnamesen lehnten die „ultimative Sprache“ unserer letzten Note ab — gingen aber auf unsere Bedingungen ein. Es wurde behauptet, Le Duc Tho könne aus Gesundheitsgründen vor dem 8. Januar nicht an einer Sitzung teilnehmen. Hanoi bestätigte „seine stets ernste Bereitschaft zu verhandeln“ und „die noch übriggebliebenen Fragen mit der amerikanischen Seite zu klären“. Seit Mitte Oktober hatten wir aus Nordvietnam einen so höflichen Ton nicht mehr gehört.

Schon am nächsten Tag zeigte sich, wieviel den Nordvietnamesen an der Einstellung der Bombenangriffe gelegen war, denn wir erhielten eine neue Note, in der sich Nordvietnam bereit erklärte, die technischen Gespräche unmittelbar nach Einstellung der Bombenangriffe wiederaufzunehmen, und bestätigte, daß Le Duc Tho sich am 8. Januar mit mir treffen könnte.

Wir antworteten am 27. Dezember: Die technischen Gespräche müßten am 2. Januar wieder aufgenommen werden; Le Duc Tho und ich würden uns am 8. Januar treffen; diese Gespräche müßten zeitlich begrenzt sein. Die Wiederaufnahme der Verhandlungen würde gleichzeitig mit der Beendigung der Bombenangriffe bekanntgegeben werden. Um Hanoi zu einer raschen Antwort zu veranlassen (und Nixons Wunsch zu entsprechen, daß die Wiederaufnahme der Verhandlungen vor Beginn der neuen Sitzungsperiode des Kongresses am 3. Januar bekanntgegeben wurde), machten wir das Angebot, die Bombenangriffe 36 Stunden nach Empfang der endgültigen Zustimmung zu diesem Verfahren einzustellen.

Hanois Antwort ließ nicht einmal 24 Stunden auf sich warten — eine erstaunliche Leistung, wenn man bedenkt, wie lange die Übermittlung von Paris nach Hanoi und umgekehrt brauchte, und dazu noch den Zeitunterschied berücksichtigt. Am 28. Dezember wurde die Annahme unserer Vorschläge bestätigt, und man versicherte uns wie üblich des guten Willsens.

Am nächsten Tag teilten wir Hanoi mit, wir würden die Bombenangriffe um 19 Uhr Washingtoner Ortszeit einstellen.

Die Bekanntgabe erfolgte am 30. Dezember. Ich war überzeugt, daß wir

218

Diplomat Kissinger*: „Das Weiße Haus ging auf Distanz“

das Spiel gewonnen hatten und die nächste Verhandlungsrunde erfolgreich zu Ende gehen würde. Jetzt begann die letzte Phase der Verhandlungen zur Beendigung des Krieges. Wir hatten es nur noch mit unserem widerspenstigen Verbündeten in Saigon zu tun.

Für eine neue Saigon-Mission meines Stellvertreters Al Haig legte ich Nixon einen in sehr scharfer Form abgefaßten Entwurf eines Briefes an Thieu vor. Gegen seine Gewohnheit unterzeichnete der Präsident meinen Entwurf nicht, sondern brachte einige zum Teil gera-dezu brutale Korrekturen an. Den letz-ten Abschnitt entwarf Nixon hand-schriftlich:

> Ich habe General Haig gebeten, mir Ihre Antwort auf dieses absolut endgültige Angebot mitzubringen, das Ihnen zeigen soll, daß wir entweder zusammenarbeiten können, um in dem von mir genehmigten Sinne gemeinsam auf einen Friedens-schluß hinzuarbeiten, oder von nun an getrennte Wege gehen. Lassen Sie mich am Schluß ausdrücklich darauf hinweisen, daß General Haig nicht nach Saigon kommt, um mit Ihnen zu verhandeln. Es ist Zeit, daß wir bei den Verhandlungen mit unseren Feinden in geschlossener Front auftreten, und Sie müssen jetzt entscheiden, ob Sie unser Bündnis fortsetzen wollen oder ob Sie wünschen, daß ich mit dem Gegner einen Frieden schließe, der allein den Interessen der Vereinigten Staaten dient.

Doch selbst dieser Entwurf war Nixon noch nicht scharf genug; er bat mich, das Schriftstück mit doppelten Zeilenabständen auf der Maschine

schreiben zu lassen, damit er noch Korrekturen vornehmen konnte.

Thieu nahm seine Vorbehalte gegenüber den politischen Bedingungen des Vertragsentwurfs zurück, konnte sich aber mit dem Verbleib der nordvietnamesischen Streitkräfte im Süden nicht einverstanden erklären. Haig und ich empfahlen dem Präsidenten, die Verhandlungen mit Hanoi ohne Rücksicht auf Thieus Stellungnahme fortzusetzen.

So traf ich am 8. Januar in Gif-sur-Yvette wieder mit Le Duc Tho zu unserer, wie wir beide versichert hatten, letzten Verhandlungsrunde zusammen.

Die viereinhalb Stunden dauernde Sitzung am ersten Tag verlief praktisch ergebnislos. Le Duc Tho verurteilte pflichtgemäß und mit den gewohnten Argumenten unsere Bombenangriffe, aber in einem viel milderen Ton als in seiner Erklärung auf dem Flughafen. Nach meiner kurzen Erwiderung begann ein Tauziehen darum, über welche Fragen wir uns noch einigen müßten.

Der Durchbruch kam auf der nächsten Sitzung am 9. Januar, als Le Duc Tho praktisch unseren Vorschlag vom 18. Dezember annahm. Es war Nixons 60. Geburtstag. Ich berichtete nach Washington:

> Wir haben heute den Geburtstag des Präsidenten damit gefeiert, daß uns bei den Verhandlungen ein wesentlicher Durchbruch gelungen ist. Wir haben

grundsätzlich alle offenen Fragen bezüglich des Vertragstextes gelöst, wesentliche Fortschritte hinsichtlich des Unterzeichnungsverfahrens erzielt und sind bei den damit im Zusammenhang stehenden Vereinbarungen am Beginn konstruktiver Gespräche...

Trotz der Spannungen, die ich in den vergangenen Wochen mit Nixon gehabt hatte, schuldete ich ihm doch herzliche Anerkennung:

> Was uns bis hierher gebracht hat, ist die Festigkeit des Präsidenten und die Überzeugung der Nordvietnamesen, daß er sich weder vom Kongreß noch von der Öffentlichkeit unter Druck setzen lassen wird. Le Duc Tho hat das mir gegenüber mehrmals zum Ausdruck gebracht. Es ist deshalb wichtig, daß wir in den nächsten Tagen eine feste Haltung bewahren. Es könnte selbstmörderisch sein, wenn wir zu großes Interesse zeigen.

Nixon telegraphierte zurück: „Ich habe mich ganz besonders über Ihren Geburtstagsgruß und Ihren Bericht gefreut... Wenn die andere Seite auf diesem Weg bleibt und nicht schon morgen zurückweicht, dann ist das, was Sie heute getan haben, das schönste Geburtstagsgeschenk, das ich seit 60 Jahren bekommen habe.“

Am Samstag, dem 13. Januar, lag der Vertragsentwurf endlich zusammen mit allen Nebenvereinbarungen und Protokollen vollständig vor. Zum erstenmal aßen wir alle zusammen. Ich ließ auftragen, und Vietnamesen und Amerikaner saßen in bunter Reihe um den Tisch. Le Duc Tho und ich brachten Trinksprüche auf einen dauerhaf-

* Auf dem Flug zur Paraphierung des Friedensvertrages am 23. Januar 1973 in Paris.

DER SPIEGEL, Nr. 45/1979

219

Vertragspartner Le Duc Tho, Kissinger in Paris 1973: „Amerikas Vietnamkrieg war beendet“

ten Frieden und die Freundschaft zwischen unseren beiden Völkern aus.

Am selben Tag kehrte ich in die Vereinigten Staaten zurück, landete in Washington, um Haig abzuholen, und flog mit ihm nach Key Biscayne. Die Public Relations-Kampagne des Weißen Hauses, mit der man beabsichtigte, mich in den Hintergrund zu drängen, war immer noch spürbar. Viele Journalisten erwarteten uns, aber mein Flugzeug wurde vom Kontrollturm an den äußersten Rand des Militärflugplatzes Homestead dirigiert, wo auch die Teileobjektive uns nicht mehr erfassen konnten.

Haig sollte am nächsten Abend (dem 14. Januar) nach Saigon fliegen und ein Ultimatum überbringen, das besagte, wir würden den Friedensvertrag unterzeichnen, notfalls auch ohne Thieu. Am 15. Januar wollte das Weiße Haus die Beendigung der Bombenangriffe bekanntgeben; am 18. Januar sollte erklärt werden, daß ich am 23. Januar nach Paris zurückkehren würde, um „den Vertrag abzuschließen“. Am selben Abend sollte Nixon vor der ganzen Nation im Fernsehen eine Rede halten.

Die offizielle Unterzeichnung des Vertrages durch die Außenminister sollte am 27. Januar in Paris stattfinden. Um Rogers eine kleine Freude zu machen, erklärte ich mich bereit, auf die Teilnahme an dem unsere Bemühungen krönenden Ereignis zu verzichten.

Jetzt war es Zeit, das zu feiern, worauf wir gerungen, wofür wir gebetet, worauf wir gehofft und weswegen wir vielleicht sogar gehaßt hatten — das Ende unserer Beteiligung an den kriegerischen Auseinandersetzungen in Indochina und den Frieden.

Aber noch immer fehlte uns die Zustimmung des hartnäckigen kleinen Mannes in Saigon, des Präsidenten Thieu.

Nixon war entschlossen, sich durchzusetzen. „Brutalität ist nichts dagegen“, sagte er mir. „Wenn dieser Hundesohn sich nicht fügt, sollen Sie mal wirkliche Brutalität erleben!“

Am 16. Januar übergab Haig dem südvietnamesischen Präsidenten einen ätzend scharfen Brief Nixons. Der entscheidende Abschnitt lautete:

> Ich habe ... unwiderruflich beschlossen, den Vertrag am 23. Januar 1973 paraphieren und ihn am 27. Januar 1973 in Paris unterzeichnen zu lassen. Ich werde das, wenn nötig, allein tun. In diesem Fall werde ich öffentlich erklären müssen, daß Ihre Regierung den Friedensschluß behindert hat. Das Ergebnis wird die unvermeidliche und sofortige Beendigung der amerikanischen Wirtschafts- und Militärhilfe sein, der Sie auch durch Personalveränderungen in Ihrer Regierung nicht zuvorkommen können. Ich hoffe jedoch, nach allem, was unsere Länder in diesem Konflikt durchgemacht haben, werden wir zusammenbleiben, um den Frieden zu bewahren und seine Früchte zu ernten.

Am 21. Januar stimmte Thieu in würdiger Haltung unseren Vorschlägen zu und bat nur um einige einseitige Erklärungen

der Vereinigten Staaten, daß sie Saigon als legale Regierung von Südvietnam anerkannten und daß Hanoi nicht das Recht habe, dort Truppen zu unterhalten.

Das entsprach unserer Interpretation des Friedensvertrages; der Vertrag ließ die Stationierung ausländischer Truppen nicht zu und erwähnte an mehreren Stellen die „Souveränität von Südvietnam“. Wir gaben Thieu die verlangten Zusicherungen.

Am 22. Januar flog ich zur letzten Sitzung mit Le Duc Tho nach Paris. Sie sollte zum erstenmal auf neutralem und repräsentativem Boden in einem kleinen Konferenzzimmer an der Avenue Kléber stattfinden, dem Schauplatz von 174 vergeblichen Plenarsitzungen seit 1968. Und auch jetzt sollte hier nur eine symbolische Handlung vorgenommen werden.

Mit einer letzten unsinnigen Geste verlangten die Nordvietnamesen, die fertigen Texte mit Bindfäden zusammenzubinden und zu versiegeln; wahrscheinlich wollten sie uns daran hindern, heimlich in der Nacht noch irgendwelche Änderungen vorzunehmen. Um 12.45 Uhr am 23. Januar paraphierten wir schließlich die Texte. Anschließend gingen Le Duc Tho und ich in den trüben, regnerischen Tag hinaus auf die Straße und schüttelten uns vor den Kameras der Photographen die Hände.

Amerikas Vietnamkrieg war beendet.

Ende

DER SPIEGEL, Nr. 45/1979

221

TIME, NOVEMBER 19, 1979

Letters

Fallaci vs. Kissinger

I have read in TIME the reference to me in Dr. Kissinger's book [Oct. 8]. I must re-establish the truth with the following observations:

1) Dr. Kissinger writes that he saw me out of vanity, in order to appear in my journalistic pantheon of world leaders, but that he had never bothered to read any of my other interviews. That is not what he said to me when he received me in his office. For one full hour he discussed my interviews with Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Ali Bhutto and Yasser Arafat, and explained that leaders don't have to be intelligent, only strong and determined.

2) Dr. Kissinger claims that I put in his mouth the "cowboy phrase." He knows very well that it was he who put the fatal words into my ears and my tape recorder. After the publication of the interview, Kissinger did not deny the cowboy reference. Nor has he ever denied it in the past seven years. What he has said is that doing the interview was the stupidest thing of his life.

3) Dr. Kissinger affirms that I have consistently refused to make the tape available to other journalists. Though I don't travel the world with his tape in my pocket as if it were my passport, someone *has* listened to it. When Mike Wallace came to interview me in Italy for 60 Minutes and asked me to hear Kissinger's voice telling his own cowboy epic, I played the tape in front of the whole CBS group. Wallace heard what he wanted and he got very excited, even amused.

4) Dr. Kissinger insinuates that I was "on to" something. True. I was "on to" hoping to find a man less arrogant and more coherent than the one portrayed in those days by the American press. I failed, and my interview with him thus remains the worst I have ever done, the most boring, in every sense.

Oriana Fallaci
Rome

Wallace doesn't remember it quite that way. He recalls hearing parts of a scratchy tape with the voice of Henry Kissinger saying something that was not as simple and dramatic as it appeared in the printed Fallaci interview.

A 6

Tuesday, November 27, 1979

THE WASHINGTON POST

R.

# Vance Briefing Aimed at Soothing Angry Kissinger

By Robert G. Kaiser

Washington Post Staff Writer

Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance sought yesterday to smooth the feathers of his predecessor, Henry A. Kissinger, after they were badly ruffled by reports of anonymous Carter administration criticisms of Kissinger's role in the Iran crisis.

Last week Vance invited Kissinger to come to the State Department for a full briefing on the situation in Iran. During that 75-minute meeting yesterday, administration sources said, Vance sought to calm Kissinger, who was described as enraged by an article in Saturday's Boston Globe.

The Globe quoted "a high State Department official" as saying that Kissinger threatened to "hold the Carter administration accountable for the death of the deposed shah if the expired Iranian ruler was not permitted to come to the United States for cancer treatment."

This account was publicly and pri-

vately denied yesterday, by Kissinger and by senior administration officials. They noted that Kissinger was traveling at the time the White House decided to allow the shah into the United States for medical treatment, and they said he had no contact with the State Department or the White House on the matter.

(Earlier, Kissinger did press the administration repeatedly to allow the deposed shah to enter the United States.)

The Globe also quoted a senior aide to President Carter as calling Kissinger "a deviant and dishonorable man" who attacks the president publicly on Iran, then calls the president's friends privately to say he supports Carter's handling of the crisis.

There were no denials of this quotation yesterday, and White House sources confirmed that this sentiment is held by senior officials there. However, other senior aides to the president sought to calm the situation, in-

sisting that the White House wants no fight with Kissinger.

The flap illustrates the sensitive political problem Kissinger poses for the Carter administration. As one administration official noted last night, some White House officials believe Kissinger's support for SALT II is crucial to its prospects for Senate approval, so there is a great eagerness not to alienate him.

At the same time, administration officials cannot disguise their resentment of Kissinger's escalating criticism of Carter's foreign and defense policies. Last week in Austin, Tex., Kissinger told a Republican Governors' Conference meeting that the fall of the shah was a disaster for America, and suggested that during the Carter administration other countries had learned that "there is no penalty for opposing the United States and no reward for friendship to the United States."

Last Friday's Wall Street Journal

carried a report that Kissinger had threatened to withhold his final support for SALT II until the White House allowed the shah into the United States. White House press secretary Jody Powell denied this report yesterday, as other senior officials did privately.

THE WASHINGTON POST

Tuesday, November 13, 1979

B15

Jack Anderson

# Nixon and Kissinger: Rewriting History

To paraphrase Gen. Douglas MacArthur, old presidents and their sidekicks never die; they just keep writing memoirs. In the process, they have a tendency to rewrite history.

Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger, for example, have come up with a fascinating, if far-fetched, explanation for their famous tilt toward Pakistan during the 1971 India-Pakistan conflict. This is a subject we know something about, having uncovered and published the secret documents on the tilt.

There wasn't space, of course, to publish the hundreds of documents we examined. We can report, however, that they told a different story than Nixon and Kissinger are now trying to peddle.

First, this background: While Pakistan and India fought over the dreary, humid, painfully impoverished piece of earth now called Bangladesh, the United States, the Soviet Union and the Peoples' Republic of China maneuvered dangerously near the edge of world war.

They had started choosing sides even before the Indian army crossed into Bangladesh. The Chinese, who secretly sent supplies over the Himalayas to aid Pakistan, had troops poised to cross into India.

In the White House, Nixon decided that the past Chinese-American hostility had been a ghastly mistake and he set out to restore relations with Pakistan. This worthy quest led him into a close relationship with Pakistan's military dictator, Agha Mohammad Yahya

Khan, who helped to open the doors to Peking.

Indian diplomats, finding the air chilly at the White House, tried to win friends on Capitol Hill. In late August 1971, Kissinger summoned Indian Ambassador L. K. Jha to the western White House at San Clemente, Calif. He delivered this secret warning, never before published:

> "They very fact that our system is different must make you realize that, no matter how much you succeed in influencing important senators, you have to deal with the administration — and this means the president — for bringing about any change in U.S. attitudes...

> "The president does not feel that apart from East Coast intellectuals among whom I used to be counted at one time there are many people in this country who are genuinely interested in or excited about the affairs of the (Indian) subcontinent.

> "The congressional leaders who support you do so because they want to use any excuse for attacking the president and not because they have any deep sympathies. Most of them have solidly opposed foreign aid and are pro-Chinese in their outlook."

When the fighting began, the Nixon administration deviously supplied the Pakistanis and dispatched a naval task force, led by the nuclear carrier Enterprise, to the Bay of Bengal. On orders from Washington, the ships operated under wartime conditions.

Top Soviet officials, meanwhile, assured Indian leaders that Chinese intervention would be offset by a Russian attack on China and that any

moves by the American task force would be opposed by the Soviet fleet. In one bitter confrontation, a Russian officer warned his Chinese counterpart of the power of Soviet missiles.

Using sophisticated electronic equipment, U.S. intelligence had gathered all these facts and had forwarded them to Washington. But Congress and the press, rather than being told of the dangers, were assured that America was following a policy of strict neutrality.

In secret, however, both Nixon and Kissinger were issuing instructions that were anything but neutral.

These were the conditions that led us to expose the lying of Nixon and Kissinger. Now the two of them are at it again in their memoirs. They portray themselves not as rattling sabers but as waving olive branches.

Kissinger in his memoirs offers the improbable, explanation that he was using quiet, backdoor diplomacy to obtain a political solution. By invoking his influence with Yahya Kahn, Kissinger suggests, he could have restored civilian rule and obtained autonomy for Bangladesh.

This initiative by the Nixon administration, Kissinger contends, was shattered by an expansionist-minded India, which saw in the crisis the opportunity to dismember Pakistan and occupy Bangladesh. It was frustration over India's aggressiveness, writes Kissinger, that led to the tilt toward Pakistan.

Thus Kissinger, with even smoother obfuscation than Nixon achieved in his memoirs, revives an eight-year-old lie.

III. 21 Nov 79

A 5

USSR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES & CANADA

IZVESTIYA COMMENTS ON HENRY KISSINGER'S MEMOIRS

LD152114 Moscow TASS in English 1953 GMT 15 Nov 79 LD

"[IZVESTIYA on Henry Kissinger's Memoirs"--TASS headline]

[Text] Moscow, November 5, TASS--To be getting attention to be in the limelight was always flattering to Henry Kissinger's boundless self-esteem and self-love to his inflated "ego". To achieve this, he was ready to any political striptease, to any politicalomersault, IZVESTIYA writes in an article about the pronouncements of the former U.S. secretary of state contained in his memoirs "The Years in the White House". It is not surprising that Kissinger is smearing detente, peaceful coexistence, disarmament to which he publicly swore allegiance quite recently.

"What has changed since then, the newspaper asks? Anti-communism, anti-Sovietism are again all the rage on the Potomac and are gaining one commercial advantage, what with the unprecedented arms race spurred on by war psychosis, by allegations about 'Soviet military menace' and the coming rivalry for the White House and the Congress, Kissinger chose his line, and he did so promptly and willingly."

Pointing out that Kissinger's sympathies and dislikes in his memoirs are quite obvious, IZVESTIYA writes that the author of the memoirs reserves the high-sounding epithets and expressions of admiration for Chinese leaders.

This servility of former Harvard intellectual to the Beijing rulers has both subjective and objective reasons, the newspaper writes. Kissinger belongs to the school of Washington geopoliticians that would like to play "the China card".

Touching upon the part of Kissinger's memoirs dealing with Soviet-American relations, particularly with the 1972 Moscow summit meeting, IZVESTIYA writes: One gets the impression that Kissinger would like to disregard this event completely, but since this is impossible, he treats it according to Washington's present "confrontational" approach. The author tries in every way to misrepresent the Soviet policy of peaceful coexistence. Concerning the reason for this "metamorphosis of Kissinger's views", the newspaper stresses that his political opportunism, his unscrupulousness play not the least role by far. Moreover, acquisitory interests combine with his political leanings. But Kissinger's memoirs reveal more than the traits of his personality. Reading the memoirs of the former U.S. secretary of state, one unwittingly ponders on the destinies of the United States, the unscrupulousness of the ruling circles of that country. It is not for nothing that the U.S. ruling circles are stigmatized by the Watergate affair, the symbol of irreversible erosion of all moral values, both human and political ones, in the home and foreign policy of the USA.

BOOKS

Modern Guicciardini

THE WHITE HOUSE YEARS

By Henry Kissinger

Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
Michael Joseph. 1,545 pages.

£14.95.

This is an extraordinary book, a continu-
ation, for better or worse, of the Kis-
singer legend. Beguilingly written, mas-
sively constructed, sensitive and brutal by
turns, funny one moment, forced the
next, it is yet, one suspects, a gigantic
publishing mistake by its American pub-
lisher, Little, Brown. Had the publisher
realised what gems of description,
analysis and blatant contention were
toming his way he would surely have
published Mr Kissinger's memoirs in four
digestible—more profitable—gobbets
rather than in this succulently indigestible
pair (of which the tome under review is
merely the first bite).

It reminds one of the massively elegant
works of Guicciardini and Machiavelli.
The scale of the literary and intellectual
enterprise is dealt with in much the same
way: "the flow of arguments and the
author's mental concentration", as Pro-
fessor Stanley Hoffmann admits in his
review in the New York Review of
Books, "are prodigious". Subjects are
defined, distinctly, chapter by chapter. A
few deft references relate the timing in
one chapter (on, say, India and Pakistan)
to the pressures at work in two others
(say the opening to China and the closing
doors to Vietnam). They are enough to
reveal the pressures, the (famous Kissin-
gerism) linkage. By this treatment each
subject is rigorously scrutinised both in
context and on its own.

The typical chapter opens with a broad
account of the issues at stake and the
story so far. In some instances the quality
of evocation is tacky and contrived, a
sentimental cover to the distinctly unsen-
timental (Kissinger's favourite word)
policy revelations to come. But in others
there is a sumptuous quality to Mr Kiss-
singer's insights, for instance in the "mys-
tical ambiguities" of the Middle East:

What the parties to the Middle East conflict
really want lies deep in an amalgam of
convictions, resentments and dreams. For-
mal positions are like the shadows in Plato's
cave—reflections of a transcendent reality
almost impossible to encompass in the dry
legalisms of a negotiating process (page
342).

There usually follows a staccato summary
of immediate events of the day: often an
amalgam of selective newspaper quota-
tions intermingled with public statements
on the record by Mr Kissinger, his presi-
dent or one of their adversaries in Russia,
Vietnam or the Washington bureaucracy.
These, at a guess, are compiled by Mr
Peter Rodman, Mr Bill Hyland or one of
the committee of ex- and present helpers
who have surrounded Mr Kissinger in
compiling this book. But the prime au-
thor's hand is never absent. There is a
tightness, a control and a self-indulgence
that, mixed, are entirely his.

Then the fun begins. Nixon and Kissinger start to discuss, in gripping exchanges of notes, marginal comments and apparently minuted conversations, how to take control of policy from the massive departments of government that surround the White House. Each trusts the other's determination to prevail in this battle. By and large each supports the other's policy, with Kissinger the tougher (but deferring to a president's political needs) on Vietnam, Nixon the harder on Cambodia, on the short-term tactical use of the China card, on Mrs Gandhi and on Russia. Each, as the book progresses, starts to distrust and allow for, usually uncharitably, the other's personal fallibil-

ities. The common enemy is as much the
state department, under the luckless
Rogers, or the defence department, un-
der the formidable Laird, as it is the
antagonist abroad. A main gainer from
this chaos was (another favourite word)
"implacable" Hanoi:

All this time Hanoi stood at the sidelines,
coldly observing how America was negotiat-
ing not with its adversary but with itself
(page 303).

Then the uplands are reached. The cut-
and-thrust policy struggle is now set in its
Kissingerian context: the strategy of
"geopolitics", the ultimate reliance on
American "credibility", no matter
where. The author's clarity is, if not
complete, devastating in its elegance and
force. Uninformed critics of the secret
Vietnam negotiation with Le Duc Tho
are, on the strength of the analysis rather
than their necessary ignorance, ruthlessly
dumped for always advocating yet an-
other concession. Those who fall for Mrs
Gandhi's attempt to dismember Pakistan
on the back of a convenient moral cause
in Bangladesh are caned.

The rhythm is measured but never
constant (the reader is quickly punished if
he tries to skip): suddenly a quarter-hour
by quarter-hour description of the Wash-
ington war over King Hussein of Jordan's
war with his Palestinians erupts (pages
620-625) into the middle of a routine
description of Middle Eastern affairs.
And there, as always, is President Para-
dox in the middle of it:

Once the point of decision was reached,
Nixon acted with a kind of joyless, desper-
ate courage—torn between his insights and
understanding of the international reality
and his fatalistic instinct that nothing he
touched would ever be crowned with ulti-
mate success (page 621).

At these moments, where hectic events
unfold into reflection and exegesis, Mr
Kissinger is at his self-justifying best. In
the midst of a stupendous portrait of Mao
Tse-tung ("I have met no one, with the
possible exception of Charles de Gaulle,
who so distilled raw, concentrated will-
power"—page 1,058 passim), Mr Kiss-
singer dares to interpolate his own essay
on revolution—and gets away with it. " 'I
have not been able to change [the
world]', replied Mao, not without pathos.
'I have only been able to change a few
places in the vicinity of Peking'."

It was a modest claim after a lifetime of
titanic struggle to uproot the very essence of
his society. In its matter-of-fact resignation
it underlined the revolutionary dilemma.
The qualities needed to destroy are usually
not those needed to sustain: the greater the
upheaval, the more it may lead to a new
apparatus even more pervasive and usually
much more efficient than the one replaced.
Revolutions conducted in the name of liber-

126

THE ECONOMIST NOVEMBER 24, 1979

BOOKS

ty more often than not refine new tools of authority (page 1,063).

In such passages, though the nostrums are Mr Kissinger's, they are embedded in the personality of those he is writing about. The book is spattered with major character portraits Jane Austen would be proud of (and with other minor ones—of old soldiers, mediocrities, defeated rivals, past and future political associates—gooxy enough to have been invented by Georgette Heyer). Chou En-lai is the hero, if there is a single one, of this book, courted and conversed with through a medium of secret signals and signs, special channels, chance remarks and the "firing of empty cannon" for months before the breakthrough was made. Chou said at the end of those оргastic days of secret meeting in Peking in autumn 1971: "Come back soon for the joy of talking". Mr Kissinger did.

Even where analysis is routine and repetitive, as it often is on, for instance, the Nato alliance, the simplicity and clarity of expression rarely falter:

> Too large to be a tripwire, too small to resist an all-out Soviet onslaught, the allied military establishment was an accidental array of forces in search of a mission (page 83).

When the pace slackens, a footnote will surprisingly pick it up (James Callaghan, Edward Heath and other narrow losers might sample the picture of Georg Kie-

singer, on page 99, crossing that "thin dividing line between being hailed as a master politician and being scorned as the failed leader"). Ignore at your peril the notes printed at the back of this volume: they resemble in helpfulness those in Louise and Aylmer Maude's translations of Tolstoy (sample Kissinger's Vietnam memorandums to the president, notes 11 and 12 to chapter VIII, and Nixon egging on the pace in Cambodia, notes 9 and 10 to chapter XII).

If it is the concentration of mind which produces the simplicity, it is the subtlety and speed of instinct, the flash of political awareness, which were to make Mr Kissinger such a master bureaucrat in the service of a president he admired but didn't like—and which make this book, from the opening pages of its seductive foreword to the unconvincing glow of the second inauguration of Richard Nixon at its end, such a compellingly readable, if wrist-breaking, chore.

So much for its texture: what does Mr Kissinger's book say about his record?

Henry Kissinger was appointed national security adviser in 1968 by a man he disliked who had a few months earlier, at the Republican party convention in Miami, trooped Mr Kissinger's patron and closest political friend, Nelson Rockefeller. He brought to the White House a theory of world events that he has barely since modified, merely refined and polished by exposure to power:

> In foreign policy there is no escaping the need for an integrating conceptual framework... The test of domestic policy is the merit of a law; that of foreign policy, nuances and interrelations... A conceptual framework—which “links” events—is an essential tool. The absence of linkage produces exactly the opposite of freedom of action; policymakers are forced to respond to parochial interests, buffeted by pressures without a fixed compass (page 130).

The United States and the free world are confronted, according to Kissinger, by an implacable adversary, the Soviet Union, plus surrogates or followers round the globe who have, if Russia is not to press forward, always to be checked. The worst way to check them is by "sentimentality": "moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have choice" (page 225). Equally "liturgical belligerence" achieves little. If freedom is to be preserved, totalitarian aggressors have constantly to be shown the real "risks" attached to aggression, and the real security to be gained by "restraint". Cultivation of those elusive "moderates" in Moscow or Hanoi is usually pointless: if Moscow moderates do exist they are better strengthened by American "firmness, which demonstrates the risks of Soviet adventures, than by creating the impres-

sion that seemingly marginal moves are free of cost" (page 122).

Immense patience is required, as these carrots and sticks are applied to Russian behaviour in every nook of world politics. Policy is not created by theory or fiat; it will only "emerge when concept encounters opportunity" (page 171): The Russians made it brutally plain to President Nixon and Mr Kissinger that they simply disregarded linkage until they were confronted with its full effects in 1972 on the eve of Nixon's re-election: no pressure would they bring, for instance, on their implacable disciples in Hanoi. Besides, the state department, to Nixon's fury, so destroyed linkage by premature response that there was little reason early on for Russiā to behave any other way than it did. But in the end, according to Kissinger, the treatment works: the time for progress in a Soviet negotiation, as the vulgar, barnyard Moscow summit in May, 1972, was at last to show, arrives only when "incentives and penalties of sufficient magnitude" have been generated "to impel decision".

By 1972 some of the incentives and penalties developed by Nixon and Kissinger were these: first, and far the most important, the meeting of geopolitical minds with Peking ("The leaders of China were beyond ideology in their dealings with us"—page 1,063); the reguard refusal in the face of domestic pressure to cop out of Vietnam, backed by a willingness to bomb and bash the enemy even as American troops were withdrawn; the prevention, preferably accompanied by massive and observable sabre-rattling, of the break-up of Jordan by guerrillas and Syria, of West Pakistan by Mrs Gandhi, of Nato by congress ("One's actions must be sustained; they must appear relentless, inexorable"—page 604. "The time for conciliation is after the crisis is surmounted and a settlement or modus vivendi has been reached"—page 629); the refusal, notably in the Middle East, to pursue fashionable attempts to make peace in conjunction with Russia, thereby, over time, discrediting the value of Russia as an ally in the eyes of redeemable Arabs like President Sadat; the effort, despite domestic pressure, "to redress the strategic balance" of nuclear weaponry; the offering of arms limitation, commerce, grain, consultation and understanding only in return for Soviet help in maintaining stability wherever conflict occurs.

This strategy of multiple Lilliputian control of the lumbering giant is a cogent one—and one that has been frighteningly absent since Mr Nixon was hustled from power, and Mr Ford and Mr Kissinger left it. But in its exorcism of the sentimental, its alleged immorality, it has not made Mr Kissinger's policies in office

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That Mr Kissinger is hurt by this, and determined to hit back, is evident in every passage of his book: "the impulse to explain merges with the impulse to defend", he concedes in a foreword that calls on his readers to "transcend our divisions by recognising that serious people manned both sides" of the Vietnam barricades (a rule he subsequently finds it hard to keep as his own story unfolds). In the welter of documentation available in modern America, any version of events can be proved. He can only present "the myriad of possible considerations [that] in fact influenced the decisions in which he was involved. . . . None of this [will prove] that his judgment was right-only what it was based upon" (pages xxii-xxiii).

But here emerges the contradiction in Mr Kissinger's book. His concern, in office and since, has been to attack the sentimental as being the worst form of defence against communist advance. But sentiment and disagreement over policy are, as Mr Kissinger sees vividly at each stage in his account, facts of politics. They, as much as Russian implacability, are part of the balance of power. Mr Kissinger's president's eventual failure was born precisely of his inability to create the unsentimental consensus he and Mr Kissinger needed in order to prove their point. Strong leadership should not, of course, follow every opinion poll (besides, Mr Nixon in fact enjoyed majority support for some even of his most unpopular decisions in Cambodia and Vietnam). But, over a two-term presidency, opinion must be with a president if his foreign policy is to prevail.

Mr Kissinger sees this, and, not altogether artfully, he clears the way in this volume for the story of the next which will doubtless show how a splendid construction was to be battered by Watergate and the breakdown of congressional leadership. Undoubtedly, the Kissinger theory would have stood a better chance under a different president—a Rockefeller, say. Mr Nixon's strengths are here much admired. He was courageous and lonely in decision. He was "overwrought" but "right" when the Cambodian sanctuaries were attacked. He suspected, as Kissinger did not, that peace was not quite at hand in autumn 1972. At several stages he overruled his security adviser—"I now believe wisely". In crises, he had an unusual sort of sanity: in mid-Jordan-blow-up he is unearthed in a bowling alley in the basement of the Executive Office Building. His judgment of politics was usually good: few remained certain, as he did, that Edward Heath would win in June, 1970. He was worth working for: when presidents "at-

tempt the tactical implementation of their own strategy they court disaster. Nixon never made that mistake" (page 142). He was a "superb expositor of carefully prepared positions", as the Peking summit was to show. So far as the conduct of relations with foreign powers was concerned, even Nixon's "personal antipathy to personal negotiation was not a weakness . . . but a strength".

But that antipathy was fatal at home:

> ... he was prepared to make decisions without illusion. Once convinced, he went ruthlessly and courageously to the heart of the matter; but each controversial decision drove him deeper into his all-enveloping solitude. He was almost physically unable to confront people who disagreed with him; and he shunned persuading or inspiring his subordinates. He would decide from inside his self-imposed cocoon, but he was unwilling to communicate with those who disagreed. It was the paradox of a president strong in his decisions but inconclusive in his leadership (page 482).

The accusation against Mr Kissinger's role in all this should not be of immorality. It should be twofold.

First, he failed to respond—and so helped blind his all-too-willingly-blinded president—to the internal weakness of some of the local regimes on which his would-be containment of Russia was based. This charge may or may not apply in the case of Vietnam (and on the fundamental decision to get out of Vietnam with honour and credibility intact rest the Cambodian decisions as well). *The Economist* believed it did not. Maybe nobody will ever know whether a credible America, unafflicted by Watergate, would in fact have been able to uphold a shaky government in South Vietnam and a distinctly shaky peace against North Vietnam's messianic mission and America's own "peace" lobby.

But the miscalculation permeates the rest of the book much less arguably. The "honest soldier" Yahya Khan, helpful as he was in opening the door to Peking, simply was not a sensible pillar on which to rest Mr Kissinger's correct subcontinental strategy. The Shah, rightly and ringingly though Mr Kissinger defends him (page 1,258 *passim*), was during these particular years grandly withdrawing from early reform into later dictatorship in ways that America could and should have discouraged. It is a revealing accident that, at the moment when Chou En-lai's invitation to Peking finally arrives, after weeks of nail-biting waiting for it, Mr Kissinger should have to fish America's president out of a dinner for a certain Anastasio Somoza. It illustrates something that, in a book devoted to the discouragement of Soviet meddling by linking every issue at stake, one of the

largest, southern Africa, is the subject of no comment at all. That Mr Kissinger vividly understood the local issues at stake, this book demonstrates without doubt. But that he subordinated them so remorselessly to geopolitics was bound, in the end, to disturb geopolitics as such.

Second, Mr Kissinger was sucked into the very Nixonian embattlements against American opinion that he so tellingly, often cattily, depicts. Indeed his own motives—love for his adopted country—somewhat oddly merge with his cold-eyed analyses to produce a furious display of that quality he most derides, sentimentality, in the fight with his critics over Vietnam, strategic arms and defence. He knew, after all, that Vietnamisation was unlikely to work. He points out to Nixon in 1969 that withdrawal of American troops

will become like salted peanuts to the American public: the more . . . come home, the more will be demanded. . . . Han-oi's adoption of a strategy designed to wait us out fits both with its doctrine of how to fight a revolutionary war and with its expectations about increasingly significant problems for the US (pages 1,481-82).

Hence, in part, his negotiating theory of "pre-emptive concession" rather than negotiating by driblets. The critics, he argues, never saw the damage they did:

> . . . as the years went by, every concession produced demands for further concessions. In the face of media and congressional opposition, there never was any firm ground on which to stand (page 293).

And, over strategic arms,

> As almost always happens, retreat by the administration spurred, rather than stilled, critics (page 539).

That such a huge proportion of this huge book is devoted to the fight for a president's policy inside the government is merely the most vivid illustration of how tough it is to conduct a democracy's struggle to contain non-democracy. In several asides, Mr Kissinger hints at remorse. The backchannels of information and diplomacy of which he was the prime architect produced something which, he adresses, must not be repeated: the "compartmentalisation of knowledge which was such a bane of the Nixon administration" (page 448). But of course it will be repeated. And so will the competition for, and manipulation of, American public opinion be repeated, whether it is by the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Irish, the Vietnamese or the Russians themselves. That, in the end, is where American foreign policy has to be made: in a million men's minds. And that is where a Kissinger again in the White House, with a new president, would have to found his policy next time round if his construction was to survive.

128

## BEHIND THE BEST SELLERS

By Edwin McDowell

# Henry A. Kissinger

Kissinger.

For one who seemed to enjoy the limelight as Secretary of State, Henry A. Kissinger has assumed an uncommonly low profile in his new role as best-selling author of "White House Years." Although he made several television appearances in connection with the book (one of which resulted in the widely publicized set-to with David Frost), Mr. Kissinger has rejected scores of invitations for personal appearances.

Well before the book's Oct. 23 publication date he told his publisher, Little, Brown, that he wasn't interested in an author's tour or any of the other usual promotions. "They've been good about it," Mr. Kissinger said in a recent conversation.

On the other hand, the need to plug a book is not so urgent for Henry Kissinger as for the typical author. His personality, his public image and the passions he evokes in others have combined to make him one of the world's best-known figures — and a publisher's dream. According to industry insiders, Mr. Kissinger is a good bet to earn as much as $6 million from his memoirs.

While Mr. Kissinger undoubtedly would have earned money from his literary efforts in any event, the enormous sum now within reach owes much to the marketing strategy devised by his agent, Marvin Josephson. That basically consists of splitting up most rights and selling them separately. But the real trick is in the execution, and that is where Mr. Josephson shines.

The former CBS lawyer is president of Marvin Josephson Associates and of its principal subsidiary, the International Creative Management talent agency. The firm's roster of 2,300 clients includes Woody Allen, Laurence Olivier, Barbra Streisand, Tennessee Williams and Isaac Stern, but Mr. Josephson personally handles only Steve McQueen and Mr. Kissinger. Mr. Kissinger chose Mr. Josephson as his representative, in late 1976, only after interviewing him four times.

Two months later Little, Brown offered an estimated $2 million for the memoirs, outbidding a dozen other publishers for the hardcover, book-club and paperback rights (which have not yet been offered for sale). Time Inc., which owns Little, Brown, bought the North American serial rights and Reader's Digest purchased the chapters on China.

Fresh from the Little, Brown triumph, Mr. Josephson landed his client another $2-million contract, this as a special consultant to NBC. From a book-merchandising standpoint, the arrangement insured Mr. Kissinger periodic access to an important national forum and it enhanced his commercial value overseas. By the time Mr. Josephson arrived in Europe with his order pad, foreign publishers were clamoring for first-class seats aboard the Kissinger-Josephson shuttle.

The Bertelsmann Group paid $530,000 for German hardcover rights, and Der Spiegel magazine paid almost as much to serialize the memoirs. Book, newspaper and magazine publishers in Japan, England and France chipped in another $1 million or more. A Chinese-language newspaper in Hong Kong signed up for the memoirs, a Kuwait publisher bought Arabic-language rights, and an Argentine publisher purchased Spanish-language rights. Two Israeli newspapers serialized the memoirs and arranged for a joint book venture. The New York Times Syndicate serialized the memoirs in much of Latin America and in parts of Europe.

Some form of the Kissinger memoirs has appeared in most of the non-Communist world, but if Mr. Josephson is impressed with that accomplishment, it is not apparent. In an understatement that would do crédit to a diplomat, he said only, "It's certainly the most wanted book I have any knowledge of." ■

Kissinger Visits Shah;
Opposes Forced Return

Henry A. Kissinger, the former Sec-
retary of State, visited Shah Mo-
hammed Riza Pahlevi yesterday at
New York Hospital-Cornell Medical
Center. He said the deposed ruler
should not be compelled to return to
Iran, as demanded by the students
holding American hostages in Teheran.

Mr. Kissinger and his wife arrived at 11:30 A.M. and spent about a half-hour with the Shah. Speaking briefly with reporters as he was leaving, Mr. Kissinger said that the Shah had lost much weight.

Stressing that the Shah had been a
friend of six United States Administra-
tions, he said the United States should
not capitulate to blackmail. Mr. Kissin-
ger added that it was time for diplo-
macy.

Asked what he would do if he were
still Secretary of State, Mr. Kissinger
refused to answer on the ground that he
lacked full information about the situa-
tion.

NYT

11/11/79

The
re-emergence
of Henry Kissinger

By HENRY L. TREWHITT

Washington.

By the time he left the State Depart-
ment in 1977, Henry A. Kissinger had
eaten his way into a new wardrobe. Never
visibly unnerved, he spent on food the ten-
sions of eight years at the pinnacle of for-
eign policy. His attack on snacks during
airborne press briefings was truly awe-
some.

He never left the limelight entirely; he
merely stepped to its edge. With him went
several of his former Secret Service
agents, a private bodyguard many regard
as more of a conceit than a necessity. But

perhaps they contributed to the mystique
that converted him into a one-man intel-
lectual industry.

As a speechmaker he is reported to
earn $1,000 a minute, perhaps an exagger-
ation, but a small one. His memoirs com-
manded $2 million in advance. For con-
sulting at a Washington think tank, he re-
ceived office space, help in composing his
writings, and a fee. NBC contributed to
the golden flood in an arrangement both
the network and Mr. Kissinger have come
to regret.

Now he is back at center stage, slim
again, carrying "White House Years," the
book that is his return ticket to the unend-
ing Washington seminar on international
affairs. It is quite simply a tour de force.
No doubt it is infuriating to many of his
enemies and critics. But it is there for de-
bate. It is brilliantly organized and it with-

holds less, and is less self-serving, than
most such undertakings.

His reentry may be tentative for a
while. Another book is in the making. But
it is hard to imagine that Mr. Kissinger
will not make his judgments felt in the
developing presidential campaign. In that
respect he may be a torment, wittingly or
not, directly or indirectly, to the Carter
administration.

For what Mr. Kissinger represents
above all is a coherent view of a chaotic
world. It is a view that commands maxi-
mum balance of contending forces. Until
after World War II those forces were ex-
ercised by a small group of powers, the
United States, Japan and a few in Europe.
Later they were primarily the superpow-
ers, the United States and the Soviet
Union. Today they include all of the above
plus a large group of disparate nations in

the so-called Third World, some of which
may soon have nuclear weapons.

Mr. Kissinger never succeeded in
creating his balance. Indeed the realiza-
tion that the mix is constantly changing is
central to his theories. He does not hesi-
tate to defend the threat or use of force
when it is essential to the larger cause.
His is a perspective dictated by history, a
perception of morality that may or may
not transcend emotional or even humani-
tarian considerations of the moment.

The degree of success or failure of his
tenure doubtless will be debated for years.
Before he left office Congress was frus-
trating him at every turn, rejecting his ap-
peal for money to sustain South Vietnam
in the hour of collapse and to challenge
Cubans in Angola. Still he insists that the
Vietnam peace accords might have en-
dured had Watergate not brought down

President Nixon, that "tortured man ...
who thrived on crisis, [but] also craved
disasters."

In any event his judgment of what is
needed is as crisp as ever, reappearing in
"White House Years" in a public climate
more favorable than in 1976. The argu-
ment for a calculated balance of power is
not new, indeed is as old as history. But it
is especially pointed at a time when the
Carter administration is criticized most of
all in foreign policy for lacking a clear
view of its goals and how it plans to reach
them.

There are enough parallels between the
foreign policy apparatus of the Nixon,
Ford and Carter administrations to be
striking. How they evolved is another mat-
ter.

Mr. Kissinger arrived as the estab-
lished academic theoretician from Har-

vard, becoming, first, national security
adviser to Mr. Nixon. William P. Rogers, a
lawyer friend of the president, took over
the State Department.

In the Carter administration, Mr. Kiss-
inger's old job is occupied by Zbigniew
Brzezinski, another established academic,
from Columbia. Mr. Carter's Secretary of
State, Cyrus R. Vance, is, like Mr. Rogers,
a prominent lawyer. Unlike Mr. Rogers,
Mr. Vance had a long history of public
service when he arrived.

With time, of course, Mr. Kissinger
came to dominate the system, eventually
humiliating Mr. Rogers and succeeding
him in the State Department. Treating
foreign policy as a series of isolated prob-
lems, Mr. Rogers never developed the

48

49

long reach that would enable him to compete with Mr. Kissinger.

Similar rivalries exist between Mr. Vance and Mr. Brzezinski. But Mr. Vance, who also tends to treat foreign policy issues in lawyerly isolation, has guarded his turf more carefully than Mr. Rogers did. And Mr. Brzezinski, a theoretician who never mustered influence comparable to Mr. Kissinger's, has not emerged in sharp focus.

One reason for the distinctions may be the differences between the two presidents. Mr. Nixon came to office with a prime interest in foreign policy and views in harmony with Mr. Kissinger's. Mr. Carter arrived with little experience and contempt for traditional policies, but with a will sufficient to control compliant subordinates.

With Mr. Kissinger's re-emergence, the stage is set for a fundamental comparison of approaches to policy. The vehicle almost certainly will be the presidential campaign, for Mr. Kissinger inevitably will appear as an adviser to one or more Republican aspirants and possibly, depending on the identity of the victor, to the party nominee.

His is a policy of antipation and of attempts to control events as they develop. The Carter administration's is a record of reaction.

That is not necessarily a criticism, though the Republicans surely will make it one. Mr. Kissinger's anticipatory powers may have been in full bloom near the end of his tenure. His ability to control events was slipping badly, mainly because of congressional world weariness.

He bequeathed Mr. Carter a foreign

policy in which the American position had eroded severely. The Soviet Union, counting on the paralysis caused by Vietnam and Watergate, was groping for advantage. In his final months in office, Mr. Kissinger had maneuvered assiduously to soften the impact.

To some of the challenges the Carter administration responded assertively and with courage. The personal political risks accepted by the president in bringing the Mideast peace accords to reality were potentially fatal,

But it is not in Mr. Carter or Mr. Vance to adopt a broader geopolitical course or rewards and penalties and constant high risk as a steady diet. They would not, for example, make the strategic arms limitation treaty hostage to Soviet restraint in a wider framework, as a Kissinger-dominated foreign policy would have required. What Mr. Brzezinski might have done, had

he the freedom to reflect in policy his worries about Soviet expansionism, is not recorded.

Which policy approach corresponds more accurately to current reality is by no means certain. What is certain is that, for whatever combination of reasons, the American position in the world is more fragile than it was three years ago. And that, inevitably, will be the stuff of a political campaign.

It comes at a time when the public and Congress teptatively are shedding some of the inhibitions that followed Vietnam and Watergate. The trend surely will inspire political adjustments on both sides, including some jingoistic appeals.

But if the nation is lucky, it also will inspire serious discussion of what the U.S. role in the world ought to be and can be. That is where Mr. Kissinger's return to the scene is important.

The Nation

November 10, 1979 $1

## EDITORIAL

# THE PAST RECAPTURED

Absent from all the current public clamor about Henry Kissinger, his best seller, his paperback and overseas rights, his television consulting, his dispute with William Shawcross, etc., is any serious discussion of how a man such as Kissinger rose to his present eminence as a scholar-policy maker. Now, however, Prof. Sigmund Diamond, in an account that begins on this page, reports on a newly discovered Federal Bureau of Investigation document that provides a disturbing behind-the-scenes glimpse at the making of a Presidential confidant. Diamond's account of Kissinger's curious relations with the Bureau is as illuminating of the values and assumptions that have guided this man as they are shocking. At the end of his article, Professor Diamond raises disturbing questions about Kissinger's activities during the cold-war period. When we put these questions to Kissinger, he declined to confirm or deny, saying, "The implication of these questions is ridiculous and contemptible."

We can think of no scholar better suited to raise the questions than Sigmund Diamond, Gidings Professor of Sociology and professor of history at Columbia University, who is not only a scholar of the cold war but one of its victims. In a review of *Education and Politics at Harvard*, a book by Seymour Martin Lipset and David Riesman, that appeared in *The New York Review of Books*, April 28, 1977, Diamond told of being offered an appointment by Harvard in 1954, and of Harvard's subsequent withdrawal of the offer for political reasons. The questions Diamond posed in his review about the relations between Harvard and the F.B.I. were discussed in an exchange of letters between him and McGeorge Bundy, former Harvard dean; Clark Kerr, chairman of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, which sponsored the Lipset-Riesman book; Lipset and others.

KENNEDY VS. CARTER ON HEALTH CARE
Toby Cohen

CENTRAL AMERICAN DOMINOES
Stephen Kinzer

MOZAMBIQUE
Stephen Talbot

NORMAN PODHORETZ
Robert Lekachman

MARY MCCARTHY
Richard Lingeman

'PEEPING TOM'
Nora Sayre

## THE INFORMANT

# KISSINGER AND THE F.B.I.

### SIGMUND DIAMOND

In chapter seven of his new book, *White House Years*, called "The Agony of Vietnam," Henry Kissinger writes of his and President Nixon's outrage over leaks to the press, from within the Government, of information about air strikes in Cambodia. "The conviction that such leaks were needlessly jeopardizing American lives, which I shared," he writes, "caused the President to consult the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI about remedial measures. J. Edgar Hoover recommended wiretaps. . . . The Attorney General affirmed their legality. Nixon ordered them carried out on the basis of explicit criteria of which access to or unauthorized use of classified information was the principal one. I went along with what I had no reason to doubt was legal and established practice in these circumstances, pursued, so we were told, with greater energy and fewer safeguards in previous Administrations."

Subsequently, Kissinger says, his views on wiretapping changed. In a recent interview in *Time*, for example, he said, "I believe now that the more stringent safeguards applied to national security wiretapping since that time reflect an even more fundamental national interest." Even the account in his memoirs suggests that Kissinger's acquiescence in wiretapping was a one-time expediency, impelled by concern for saving American lives and the arguments of J. Edgar Hoover, John Mitchell and the President that the taps were "legal and established practice."

But a document from the files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation gives reason to believe that Kissinger was not a neophyte in the secret scrutiny of his associates. Nor, on the earlier occasion, did he have the assurance of Hoover, Mitchell

*(Continued on Page 466)*

466

The Nation.

November 10, 1979

TO : DIRECTOR, FBI DATE: July 15, 1953
ATT'N: Central Research Division

FROM : SAC [Special Agent in Charge], Boston (100-0)

SUBJECT: HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, Mass.
HARVARD SUMMER SCHOOL OF
ARTS AND SCIENCES AND OF
EDUCATION
INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR

July 6 - August 26, 1953

Information Concerning

On Friday morning, July 10, 1953 the Boston Division was in receipt of a telephonic communication from HENRY ALFRED KISSINGER who identified himself as a teacher at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Mr. KISSINGER stated he had information of interest to this Bureau and requested an agent contact him that afternoon.

SA [name blacked out] of the Boston Division interviewed KISSINGER at 1:45 p.m. on July 10, 1953 and obtained the following information:

HENRY ALFRED KISSINGER is a teaching-fellow in Government at Harvard University as well as Executive Director of the Summer School, International Seminar and Editor of "Confluence", an international forum. KISSINGER, who has his office at 10 Weld Hall, Harvard University and who resides at 59 Frost Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, stated the Harvard Summer School, International Seminar, has been set up through private sources to provide an opportunity for individuals from abroad to discuss the

many-school enrollment has tripled to more than 1.4 million and literacy classes are being established in factories, communal villages and other workplaces. New schools, teacher crash-training courses, on-the-job training programs and adult literacy classes proliferate—even if the “school” may be in some cases no more than a blackboard under a tree with a teen-age teacher. In the rural areas, a million people have moved into about 1,000 communal villages, and while they vary tremendously in their levels of development, they have made social services and agricultural machinery more available to the traditionally scattered and isolated peasants who previously labored on Portuguese plantations or led a precarious existence based on subsistence-level farming.

For a one-party state, there is a remarkable degree of frank and open discussion of problems. Letters to the editor of *Tempo*, Mozambique's weekly news magazine, are lively and frequently critical. More important, worker participation in factory decision making and grass-roots democracy in villages and neighborhood committees are actively encouraged. Of course, there is always the danger of Frelimo becoming an authoritarian elite purporting to speak for “the people,” but to the traveler the overall impression is of an entire country in motion, of a people asserting themselves.

Ultimately, the fate of Mozambique's experiment in socialism is inextricably bound up with the outcome of the war in Zimbabwe and the struggle for majority rule in South Africa. In the meantime, it will strive to overcome its economic disabilities while pursuing a foreign policy of delicate ambivalence—e.g., supporting South Africa's liberation movement, the African National Congress, on the one hand, and continuing to provide South Africa with power from the huge Cabora Bassa dam and allowing Mozambican migrant workers to labor in the South African gold mines on the other.

"These are hard times to work in Mozambique," an official of the state-owned fishing company acknowledged. "We have so many problems of production, the difficulties we have inherited from colonialism, and now the war in Zimbabwe. But we know where we want to go and we are trying our best to get there." ☐

## Kissinger

*(Continued From Front Cover)*

and Nixon as to the legality of his action. The document, acquired in connection with research I am doing on the relations between the F.B.I. and universities before and during the McCarthy period, states that Kissinger volunteered information to the F.B.I. that he had obtained by opening another person's mail when he was a member of the Harvard University faculty in the 1950s.* The F.B.I. report follows, reprinted in its entirety.

*Tampering with the mails is punishable by a fine of up to $2,000, or imprisonment up to five years (18 U.S. Code, Sec. 1702); there is a five-year statute of limitations that would have run out in 1958.

November 10, 1979

The Nation.

467

nature of present-day problems with their contemporaries with [sic] other European and Asian countries and in the United States.

The Harvard International Seminar assumes all the expenses of its participants including transportation to and from their homes, room, board, tuition, and an adequate allowance for personal expenses.

The program has three parts:

A. It gives its participants an opportunity to become acquainted with various aspects of American life.

B. It has a formal academic program in which approximately ten members work on cooperative projects of contemporary interest under the general supervision of a faculty member.

C. As many participants as possible are given an opportunity to speak to an American audience on some aspect of their own country.

KISSINGER made available literature relating to the International Seminar, a copy of which is forwarded to the Bureau as an enclosure to this letter.

He stated that approximately 40 persons from various foreign countries, who, in general, are employed in positions on a policy-making level, are invited by the International Seminar. He stated these persons are highly placed economically and politically in their own nation and that through them the International Seminar hopes to place American policy in a favorable light in these foreign nations.

KISSINGER stated he has jurisdiction in the naming of these individuals to attend the Seminar.

On July 10, 1953 there arrived at his office approximately 40 letters addressed to all individuals slated to appear at the Seminar. These letters were postmarked Providence, Rhode Island and dated 6:30 p.m., July 9, 1953. According to KISSINGER, all the letters gave evidence they had been typed on the same typewriter. He opened one such letter addressed to [name blacked out] who, as of July 10, 1953 had not appeared at the Seminar session. Enclosed in an inner envelope was an eight-page flyer captioned, "A Few Grains of Truth". The flyer, in general, was highly critical of the American atom bomb project and set out what purported to represent the shame and anguish of the American population on American preparation for war.

The flyer advocated, "There is no other way but for each firmly to resolve that life must be dedicated to peaceful endeavor. ..."

KISSINGER stated he did not know how the unknown individual or individuals who had forwarded these flyers to members of the Seminar had obtained the list of its members.

He stated, however, that five general sources could have had information on the identity of the participants of the Seminar. He listed these as:

Norman Birnbaum, Blair Clark, Ramsey Clark, Fred Cook, Terrence Des Pres, E.L. Doctorow, Richard Falk, Jules Feiffer, Tom Ferguson & Joel Rogers, Frances FitzGerald, James Goodman & Dorothy Samuels, Philip Green, Christopher Hitchens, Leonard Kriegel, Penny Lernoux, Sanford Levinson, Carey McWilliams, Aryeh Neier, Marcel Ophuls, Nora Sayre, Robert Sherrill, Calvin Trillin, Kurt Vonnegut, Alan Wolfe write it.

John Alcorn, Marshall Arisman, Tony Auth, Seymour Chwast, Robert Grossman, Frances Jetter, Ed Koren, David Levine, Lou Myers, Ed Sorel illustrate it.

Victor Navasky edits it.

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1. Newspapers who were given a news release and who will receive [sic], perhaps, 40 such subsequent news releases in the weeks to come.

2. Guest speakers who are to address the participants.

3. Those people asked to extend hospitality to the participants and to provide weekend relaxation for them.

4. Former Governor ROBERT BRADFORD of Massachusetts who suggested the names of several guest speakers.

5. Members of the staff of the Harvard "Crimson", student undergraduate daily newspaper at Harvard College.

KISSINGER stated that the flyer on the surface appears to be well written and no doubt will cause some discussion in meetings of the Seminar. He stated that he intends to show no alarm, whatsoever, concerning the article and will "play it down" in his discussions.

He stated he will not refute the article inasmuch as to do so would increase its importance through giving it a second hearing. He promised to provide to the Boston Division any additional information at similar attempts to provide this type of literature to participants in the Seminar.

KISSINGER identified himself as an individual who is strongly sympathetic to the FBI and added he is now employed as a Consultant to the U.S. Army and is a former CIC [Counter-Intelligence Corps] Agent who, approximately in mid August, 1953, will engage in a two-week tour of duty for his CIC detachment.

Boston will retain two copies of the flyer, "A Few Grains of Truth" and will enclose two additional copies for perusal by the Central Research Division at the Bureau.

KISSINGER noted that four copies of the flyer had been enclosed in the letter to the Seminar participant and presumed that the person who wrote the letters meant the Seminar participant to distribute the flyer.

Boston will take no additional action in this matter unless called back by KISSINGER. Steps will be taken, however, to make KISSINGER a Confidential Source of this Division.

- RUC

Written in longhand at the end of the memorandum is the notation "Being handled separately" followed by an undecipherable initial. Appended to the memorandum is the flyer that Kissinger obtained from the envelope the F.B.I. agent reported he had opened.

Some questions remain.

Did Kissinger succeed in determining who leaked the names of the seminar participants? If so, did he inform the F.B.I.? Did Kissinger serve as a "Confidential Source" and, if so, when did this relationship terminate? Did Kissinger, as in the episode discussed in the memorandum, prefer to work voluntarily?

Efforts to answer these questions have so far failed; the F.B.I. has not provided all the documents I have requested concerning its relations with colleges and universities, including Harvard, during the McCarthy period.

Still other questions remain. Did Kissinger's students, for example, know that in speaking to him they were speaking to a "former" counterintelligence "agent" still engaged in intelligence activity? Did Kissinger's colleagues on the Harvard faculty know it? Did the authorities at Harvard University know it? If so, did they approve of his activities, or was it a matter over which they had no control?

Answers to these questions, and to others more important, might be provided by the documents in Harvard's own archives but, grudging as the F.B.I. is in disclosing what is in its files, Harvard is even more grudging—and there is no Freedom of Information Act to permit even limited access to its documents. Despite a number of requests from scholars for permission to look at the Harvard documents from the McCarthy period, Harvard has refused to make an exception to its established policy that administrative records are closed for a period of fifty years after their creation. In his letter rejecting the appeal of those who had requested permission to use the Harvard archives, President Derek Bok wrote, "There does not appear to be much which can be gained by granting an exception at this time. The records will remain intact, and future historians of Harvard and higher education will have access to them when fifty years have elapsed. Whatever can be learned from the events of the 1950's will then be available to society, with the perspective that only the passage of time can provide."

The official announcement of President Bok's decision was made in *The Harvard Gazette* of December 9, 1977, the very day on which, in an impressive public ceremony, Harvard opened the papers of A. Lawrence Lowell on the Sacco-Vanzetti case—fifty years after their execution. ☐

Children's Books Fall 1979, Pages 49 to 71

The New York Times

Book Review

NOVEMBER 11, 1979

Self-Portrait

WHITE HOUSE YEARS

By Henry Kissinger.

Illustrated, 1,521 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $22.50.

By BARBARA W. TUCHMAN

Vivienne Flester

In the last century, the historian Leopold von Ranke laid down the dictum that foreign relations were supreme among the influences that shape the history of nations. This may be arguable, but for the immediate past it is certainly maintainable. No one has been more deeply engaged at so influential a level in the conduct of foreign relations than former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, or gained so much public recognition of his role. He became a cult figure, a popular celebrity, the subject of countless full-length books, studies and analyses. Publication of his own version is thus something of a historical event.

With some relief I can report that it contains no more Metternich. Because Kissinger's doctoral dissertation and first published book, "A World Restored," dealt with Prince Metternich, the Austrian Foreign Minister, and the resettlement of Europe after the windstorm of Napoleon, everyone writing about Kissinger since then has made a comparison between them. Kissinger, writing about himself, does not mention Metternich — rightly, for the world he has had to deal with is so different in such absolute ways that a comparison is inapplicable. The differences are important: whatever their rivalries, the nations at the Congress of Vienna had a common outlook and a common goal — restoration of the status quo ante. Today, nations are split between two opposing ideologies, and the globe is dominated by two antagonistic superpowers locked in quarrel. Balance of power is inoperable; the third world has emerged to upset any balance; a new risk center exists in the Middle East; the Industrial nations are in thrall to the oil of the undeveloped; nuclear weaponry overshadows all.

In such a world, Kissinger's task as he saw it on taking office in the Administration of Richard M. Nixon in January 1969 was to end the Vietnam War, manage a "global rivalry" and nuclear-arms race with the Soviet Union, reinvigorate alliance with the European democracies and integrate the new nations into a "new world equilibrium."

How well did he succeed in his mission? He himself offers no overall assessment — perhaps because he has allowed himself no time for reflec-

*Continued on Page 34*

Barbara W. Tuchman is the author of "The Guns of August," "Stilwell and the American Experience in China" and, most recently, "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century."

Mordecai Richler on Daniel Fuchs's stories,
David Bromwich on a life of W. H. Auden

9

Section 7 Copyright © 1979 The New York Times

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Kissinger

*Continued from Page 1*

tion. To make ready for publica-
tion. A text of 1,476 pages in two
and a half years since leaving
office is an Olympic feat leaving
little room for philosophy. Kiss-
singer has been in such a hurry
to vindicate his management of
complex and turbulent events
that he seems not to have let a
day elapse between doing and
writing or removed himself in
any way to gain perspective.
The book is all record, no as-
sessment. He has written too
much too soon.

The plunge into writing seems
to carry on a habit and a condi-
tion of his office. Its pressures
did not allow time to think, to
examine a problem on all sides
and a course of action in all its
consequences. This is undoubt-
edly a fault of the system rather
than of character; public life, as
Kissinger acknowledges, "is a
continual struggle to rescue an
element of choice from the pres-
sure of circumstance." Surely
that is all the more reason, once
released from the pressure, to
have taken time for thought.

What we have is an im-
mensely long and superfluously
detailed account of virtually
every message, meeting, jour-
ney, negotiation and conversa-
tion in the 50 months from Kis-
singer's appointment in Novem-
ber 1968 to the signing of peace
with North Vietnam at the end
of President Nixon's first term
in January 1973. We do not need
all the aide-memoires and the
daily comings and goings of
Egon Bahr, Vladimir Semenov
and dozens of other secondary
intermediaries to understand
what was going on; indeed, the
picture would be clearer if Kis-
singer had taken the trouble to
strain out the insignificant and
condense his tale as a whole.
Since by training he knows bet-
ter than to confuse setting down
the total record with writing his-
tory, one must assume that the
record — in his version — was
what he wanted, and I have no
doubt that specialists in strate-
gic arms, the U.S.S.R., NATO,
China, Chile, the Middle East,
India and Pakistan, and Viet-
nam will be mining it for years.

It is enlivened (in spots) by
small revelations, vivid scenes
and portraits, and glimpses of
the often astonishing mechanics
of official life. For example, out
of the blue in August 1969 a
Soviet Embassy official asked a
State Department official at

Henry Kissinger.

lunch what would be the United
States reaction to a Soviet at-
tack on Chinese nuclear facili-
ties. Mr. Nixon's speechwriting
staff had a specialist for every
tone the President wished to
adopt. In 1969 China had only
one ambassador serving abroad
— in Cairo. Through names pre-
sented privately by Kissinger to
Ambassador Anatoly I. Dobry-
nin, the release of 550 out of 800
hardship cases of Soviet Jews
was obtained over a period of
time. On a Presidential journey,
every member of the official
party is given a little book list-
ing every event and movement
timed to the minute, together
with charts showing where
everyone is to stand. All these
are surprises, at least to this re-
viewer.

There are sparkles amid the
long stretches: the "thrill" of
the first summit visit when, as
the plane door opened on arrival
in Brussels, "we were bathed in
the arc lights of television," a
red carpet and honor guard
were on hand, and the King of
the Belgians waited at the foot
of the ramp; the papal audi-
ence, during which smoke sud-
denly poured from the garments
of Secretary of Defense Melvin
Laird (in response to Kissin-
ger's suggestion that he dispose
of his cigar, he had concealed it
alive in his suit pocket). There
are incisive small history les-
sons introducing, among others,
the problems of Pakistan and of
Poland. There are gems of
quotation, as when Dean Ache-
son, asked why a meeting of
senior advisers lasted so long,
replied, "We are all old and we
are all eloquent."

The author is less good at pro-
fundities. When he attempts
them, for example in reflections
on the space age, his language

invariably swells into the sen-
tentious, not to say banal, and
he sounds less like himself than
Gerald R. Ford. On the "agony
of Vietnam" he sees his role as
"helping my adopted country
heal its wounds, preserve its
faith and . . . rededicate itself to
the great tasks of construction
awaiting it." Or, on the end of
the war, he hopes Americans
will "close ranks" and the peo-
ples of Indochina "perhaps at-
tain at long last the future of
tranquility, security and
progress . . . worthy of their sac-
rifices." Coming from the sar-
donic gentleman who once, on
being thanked by an effusive
wellwisher for "saving the
world," is reputed to have re-
plied, "You're welcome," this is
pure hype on a level with cam-
paign rhetoric, as if he were
running for office. Perhaps he
is.

Perhaps that explains his
hurry to bring out the book, in
good time to make its impres-
sion before November 1980.
Could it be that this tremendous
tome is a campaign document
designed to exhibit the author as
the most knowledgeable, ex-
perienced and expert, the in-
tractable, the only possible Sec-
retary of State under the next
Republican President? I cannot
believe that his eye is on Capitol
Hill. The Senate has no scope for
the summiteer, for shuttle di-
plomacy, for the commuter
from Tel Aviv to Peking to Mos-
cow to Bonn, the guest at Cheq-
uers and the Elyseé. I imagine it
is to this life of the Air Force.
One jet set that he wants to re-
turn.

That would explain why — for
the sake of dignity — Kissinger
as a personality, the phenom-
on of Super-K, the swinger, the
media's delight, is missing from
this book. Beyond some rather
stilted references to "my
warped sense of humor," no
hint comes through, yet the at-
tention showered upon him
must be a factor in the record.
"Power is an aphrodisiac," Kis-
singer himself has said (though
not in this book), and although
popularity is a different thing, it
reinforces power. Kissinger's
explanation of his popularity
with the press is that because its
members disliked President
Nixon they tended to give credit
for favorable developments to
"more admired associates . . .
and I became the beneficiary of
this state of affairs." Clearly
more than that was at work; a
distinct personality made itself
felt. Kissinger was refreshing
and the press succumbed to the
wit and charm he knew how to

34

men, was incomparably more
influential among his peers, left
an indelible mark on several of
the later performers who are in-
cluded (Santana, the Allman
Brothers Band).

There are gems here, such as
Dan Morgenstern's careful ap-
praisals of various jazzmen,
John S. Wilson on figures as di-
verse as Josephine Baker and
Xavier Cugat, and Douglas
Green writing about some of the
stars of country music. But too
many of the entries read like
press handouts, and, when one
wants hard facts or concise
critical evaluations, most of the
time they just aren't there.

Sheldon Harris's "Blues Who's Who" is nothing if not encyclopedic. This "Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers," with 571 entries, bibliographies, a discography and a detailed index, fills a notable gap; until now the only blues reference works in English were discographical. In his introduction Mr. Harris promises "the bare facts, without embellishment," and this is what one gets. The author began collecting these facts more than 18 years ago, when he was working as a volunteer at the Institute for Jazz Studies, and he has wisely supplemented his basic data by drawing on the expertise of a worldwide network of blues record collectors and other specialists.

The factual approach has its
drawbacks. One wonders who
could possibly be interested in
long lists of nightclubs, colleges,
festivals and radio stations
where various artists have per-
formed, and there's almost
nothing here in the way of stylis-
tic analysis or critical commen-
tary. But there is an absolute
mountain of information, and
every major figure as well as
many minor ones are included.
Anyone seriously interested in
the blues and its many offshoots
in American popular music
should have access to "Blues
Who's Who," in a nearby library
if not on their own shelves." ■

Author's Query

For a study about the role of
interpreters/translators in
world affairs, I would appreci-
ate personal anecdotes from
anyone experienced in national
or international organizations.
Confidentiality respected.

R. A. ROLAND
201-1 Murphy Mill Road
Americus, Ga. 31709

Women

*Continued from Page 12*

morning. Then I sat on the floor,
leaned up against the wall and
gave up for about 15 minutes."
Because of their vulnerability,
employers used women when
they could, especially when new
technology made older skills ob-
solete. This not only depressed
wages but heightened the fric-
tion between male and female
workers.

While employers either
mercilessly exploited women or
refused to hire them, the unions
were almost as bad. "I believe
that woman is not qualified for
the condition of wage labor," a
veteran labor leader declared at
the turn of the century. "The
mental and physical makeup of
women is in revolt against wage
service. She is competing with
the man who is her father or
husband, or who is to become
her husband." Her place, said
another, is that of "queen of a
little house — no matter how
humble — where there are chil-
dren rolling on the floor." In-
creasingly, women learned to
rely on themselves.

"Women the world over need protection and it is only through the united efforts of women that they will get it." It is this feminist perspective, articulated by Alva Belmont — an upper-middle-class member of the Women's Trade Union League of New York City and supporter of the shirtwaist workers' strike of 1909 — that gives Professor Foner the most difficulty. His analysis is class-based; he believes that working people — male and female — should have united against the common enemy, rapacious employers. Yet his evidence reveals that middle-class "ladies" were more sympathetic to the plight of laboring women than male-dominated unions were. In

short, whatever solidarity did
appear stemmed from sex and
not class. "It was my interest in
women," Mrs. Belmont pro-
claimed . in 1909, "in women
everywhere and every class
that drew my attention and
sympathies first to the striking
shirtwaist girls." The author
rightly makes that successful
strike the watershed in his
narrative but then is con-
strained to observe that only
"the Jewish cigarmakers union
and the United Hebrew Trades"
supported the action. "Small
wonder then," he concludes,
"the shirtwaist workers were
compelled to look to upper-class
women for support."

Nor was this feminist dimen-
sion new in 1909. Throughout the
19th century, upper-class
women reached across social
lines in active sympathy. As
Barbara Berg's "Remembered
Gate" demonstrated, they de-
veloped compassionate ties with
female outcasts, including pros-
titutes, as well as engaging in
the charity work characteristic
of their class. To be sure,
women's organizations and
leaders differed on tactics:
some wanted to emphasize
equal pay; others sought to re-
dress their grievances through
suffrage. But they increasingly
came to believe that the com-
mon predicament of women in a
male-oriented society was more
fundamental than class lines.
Professor Foner's analysis has
the same problem with black
working women: not only sex
but race transcended class con-
siderations.

Fortunately, the author's his-
torical predilections do not mar
the force or extent of this narra-
tive. Based on a lifetime of re-
search, this volume brings to-
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justice. By 1914 victory was not
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exercise, although they find virtually no expression here.

How did the sudden blossoming of this pudgy professor into the rose of the Nixon Administration affect American foreign policy? I would speculate that it enhanced his belief, already embedded intellectually, in his own powers of manipulation and hence in over-reliance on personal negotiation. It may have nurtured fantasies of omnipotence. Although his text is impersonal, that is not from modesty. The illustrations tell a different story. Out of 65 photographs, Kissinger himself appears in 63, 28 of them in the company of Mr. Nixon, as if to assure posterity of his close and constant access to the President. And it seems that he even needed to reassure himself. Apropos of the low protocol rank of his office, which seated him far below the salt at official dinners, "I spent much time calculating the distance separating me from the Presidential person and the odds on my reaching my car before the Presidential limousine pulled out." Who can envy the life of officialdom weighed down by these concerns?

If there is a key to Kissinger's concept of a minister for foreign affairs, it lies in this sentence: "My approach was strategic and geopolitical; I attempted to relate events to each other, to create incentives and pressures in one part of the world to influence events in another." Here is the activist, the great manipulator, convinced that he can pull the strings that will make the nations, like puppets, play out his scenario. No matter how often they evade or refuse, he pursues his objective with unwerving persistence and intensity. Geopolitical is his favorite word, applied to every problem in every region — and it is, in this outsider's opinion, the explanation of American mistakes. Our approach is too geopolitical and not sufficiently local. If we had paid more attention to the history of Vietnamese nationalism or to the internal stresses in Iran, we could not (one hopes) have invested our policy and support in regimes lacking a valid mandate from their own people. Geopolitical, as Kissinger uses it, is just another word for cold war. It means combating the machinations of Communism wherever they are exercised on the globe. The contest with Communism is indeed serious but, as we should have learned by now, the oppo-

nent is divided and disparate, not solid, and the combat will be lost if we are not more sophisticated about conducting it in local terms.

Kissinger's activism was risky because it set in motion reactions and consequences that could not be controlled or even at times foreseen, as happened in Cambodia and Chile. He had been warned that it would be a mistake to try to solve the problem of North Vietnamese presence in Cambodia by force and that it would be wiser, as a State Department official put it, "to wait on events, saying little." Had this counsel been followed, Cambodia would have been spared untold agony and Kissinger a stain that will not wash away.

Because the North Vietnamese were unquestionably the first to violate the neutrality of Cambodia — as the Germans were of Belgium in 1914 — the current controversy about American violation is a false issue. American guilt lay in extending the war to a nonparticipating land and people and in requiring our Air Force deliberately to falsify the record. Kissinger's strained defense — on the ground that it was necessary to keep silent in order not to force the necessity of a protest on Prince Norodom Sihanouk or provoke North Vietnam to retaliation — is not impressive. Keeping silent is one thing; extreme precautions of secrecy (which Kissinger omits to mention), to the point of transgressing our own military code, are quite another.

Equally, the justification on the ground that American soldiers were being killed by North Vietnamese based in Cambodia seems inappropriately indignant. Kissinger fulminates about an "unprovoked offensive killing 400 Americans a week" and the "outrage of a dishonorable and bloody offensive." Is an offensive supposed to be bloodless? Is there something peculiarly shocking about killing enemy soldiers in war? When it comes to "dishonorable," I cannot follow Kissinger's thinking at all.

He talks a lot about honor in these pages. American honor and American innocence are terms that recur as often as "realities" and "realpolitik," with which they consort oddly. The United States is said to have entered Vietnam "in innocence, convinced, that the cruel civil war represented the cutting

> "I can't wait to reach 50 so I can plunder its pages."

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edge of some global design." One fails to comprehend why containment of Communism is described as innocence. Elsewhere he says we entered the war out of "naive idealism," which sounds strange coming from Henry Kissinger, the unsentimental dealer in hard realities. Why is he trying in this book to make himself appear something he is not, to wear a Roman toga, as it were, over a coat of mail? Perhaps, with an eye on office, it is to legitimize himself with those on the right.

The vicious tyranny that has descended upon Chile, with the assistance of the United States, belongs to the period after this book closes in January 1973 and presumably will be dealt with in Kissinger's next volume. Here he includes a chapter on the decision by the so-called 40 Committee, of which he was chairman, to authorize expenditures by the Central Intelligence Agency to influence the Chilean elections of 1970. Here we come to an outright instance of American illegality in a cold-war cause, even if in the first instance it was ineffectual.

With copper and ITT in the background, Kissinger eschews reference to American innocence and concentrates instead on making a fervent case of the danger represented by Salvador Allende, who is credited with the "patent intention" to accomplish the transition to Communism. His predicted electoral victory (by a plurality but minority vote) would establish another Castro in the Western hemisphere. He "would soon be inciting anti-American policies, attacking hemisphere solidarity, making common cause with Cuba, and sooner or later establishing close relations with the Soviet Union," with profound effect "against fundamental American national interests."

If such was the case — and Kissinger can be very persuasive — a legitimate question arises. In the national interest, was it not an American duty to do what it could to fend off a second Communist state in Latin America? The answer, in this case, must be no, for whatever the threat, Allende's approaching presidency was to be accomplished by constitutional means. For the United States to interfere in the domestic affairs of a neighboring state in an attempt to thwart their legitimate operation is intolerable. We have come a long way from the election of 1888, when the British Ambassador to the United States advised a correspondent

in a private letter to vote for Grover Cleveland, and on this being leaked to the press the Ambassador's recall was demanded for interference in American politics. I do not believe that international relations can be guided by morality, but I believe in obeying as far as possible the rules we have worked out for the social order, otherwise society slides back into anarchy — which is as dangerous for the right wing as for the left.

In Nixon circles, Kissinger was an ambivalent figure, suspect on the right for friendship with Nelson A. Rockefeller, a Harvard background, entree in Georgetown and flexibility on Russia. Yet, as agent of a President farther to the right than any since McKinley, he accomplished progress in important areas: in China, in the Middle East, even in détente with Russia and in the Stygian labyrinths of strategic-arms limitation.

One thing that the overwhelming detail of the book succeeds in demonstrating is the breadth of subject matter Kissinger dealt with, the unrelenting hard work it demanded and the fierce schedule he maintained. Japanese textiles, Common Market, Ostpolitik, ABM's and MIRV's, Palestinian hijacking, Soviet submarines in Cuba, Soviet missiles in Egypt, channels to China, Nixon to Rumania, Polish riots, crisis in Jordan, war in Pakistan, summit in Moscow, the Year of Europe, the death of Nasser, visit to the Shah, and through it all, secret and subsequently formal conferences in Paris with the North Vietnamese. It was no job for a self-doubter, which Kissinger is anything but. All this seemed to him to require his personal presence. He was continually in motion, talking, traveling, which may not have been the most creative use of his time. Once, in the years before prominence, when a colleague asked him what he thought of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, he thought for a moment and replied, "He travels too much."

Kissinger did contribute creative policy to the Middle East in his rejection of that dream of never-never land, the "comprehensive" solution. He understood that disengagement between Israel and Egypt had no chance of success if it had to be negotiated as part of an overall settlement and, as he points out with admirable common sense, "if there was no chance of success I saw no reason for us to in-

DOUBLEDAY

36

volve ourselves" in the attempt. He preferred to try for an interim agreement to break the impasse and open the way to further advances. Thus originated the step-by-step process, to be dramatized by the Kissinger shuttle in the next term, that eventually achieved progress where none had been registered for 30 years.

In the end, however, although Russia and the Middle East may be more important for the future, it is Vietnam that is the test of the man and the statesman, and of his mark on American history. The necessity of American withdrawal having already been acknowledged by both candidates in 1968, the effort to negotiate terms that would save our face occupied Kissinger from the day he took office. The difficulty was that the Administration was bent on negotiating a withdrawal that would not look like deserting Saigon, that would not destroy the confidence of other peoples in America, that would "offer a fair and equitable settlement to all," in short, that would make America look good — all of which was a contradiction in terms with the fact of withdrawal. Under domestic protest, withdrawal had already begun while negotiations were under way, which amounted to a signal to Hanoi that it did not have to meet American terms. A beligerent does not have to negotiate "fair and equitable" terms with an enemy on his way out who has given up the goal of victory.

Throughout the interminable talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris, Kissinger kept rediscovering that Hanoi did not want a compromise settlement, that Hanoi "had no intention of withdrawing its own forces" from the South, that Hanoi "would be satisfied only with

victory," that, in short, good terms from our point of view were unobtainable. The only bargaining lever left to us was to make continuation of the war a greater risk to Hanoi than a settlement would be. Hence the bombing and the offensive against North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia. Military action was not pursuit of a military solution but an argument by force that would bring Hanoi to an agreement to leave Saigon in place and allow the United States to depart looking strong.

The failure of creative policy was the failure to consider that confidence in America meanwhile was not being furthered by the spectacle of our military impotence in a guerrilla war in Asia. A great role in foreign affairs could have been played by an adviser who could have brought us to a withdrawal on the basis that we had done all we could or ought to do for Saigon and that its ultimate survival depended on itself, or otherwise would be valueless, as indeed it proved. Kissinger lacked the imagination and, doubtless, the influence for that solution. In the end, Christmas bombing and all, after four years' talk at a cost of 19,000 more American lives and untold more lives and destruction in Vietnam, the terms obtained were no better than might have been obtained at the start. The four years of additional death and devastation were a waste.

Kissinger acknowledges none of this. Even less does he understand the domestic dissent of the time, although it is a constant theme in the book and clearly the factor that most deeply disturbed him. He treats it as a perverse opposition that, by encouraging Hanoi to stall, frustrated his negotiations. He quotes The Wall Street Journal statement that "Americans

want an acceptable exit from Indochina, not a deeper entrapment" and The New York Times statement that bitter experience had "exhausted the credibility of the American people and Congress" and The Milwaukee Journal statement that "If [the South Vietnamese] can't stand on their own feet now it is too late. The U.S. can no longer stand the internal frustrations and disruptions that the bloody, tragic and immoral war is costing," but he does not absorb the message. His comment is that the national debate was "engulfed in mass passion," not that it was telling him something he should have listened to. Apropos of the Congressional vote to terminate action in Cambodia that finally blocked the Executive in 1973, he writes that Cambodia was the victim of "the breakdown of our democratic political process," when in fact what was taking place was the functioning, not the breakdown, of that process. It is unsafe to have high office filled by someone who does not know the difference.

Kissinger complains that "we faced a constant credibility gap at home" and that he could have succeeded "if the public had trusted our goals," but he never traces any connection between the public's lack of trust and the acts and policies of the Administration he represented. He has no inkling of the concomitant damage: that the cost of playing tough may come too high; that a foreign policy that alienates one's countrymen and causes dislike and distrust of government is not worth what it might gain against the adversary; that a nation's strength lies ultimately in its self-esteem and confidence in what is right; and that whatever damages these damages the nation. ■

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HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH 3

+

## Vivante

*Continued from Page 15*

the strengths and weaknesses of New Yorker stories generally. The dangers here are those of preciousness and attenuation, and a too-uniform tastefulness. In "Of Love and Friendship," a man with a passion for studying lichens communicates his enthusiasm to the narrator, who, in turn, offers an elegant de-

scription of lichens, then in-tones: "How did nature manage to be so unerringly tasteful?" Nature, as portrayed in "Run to the Waterfall," is unerringly tasteful, and this strikes me as sentimental and untrue.

But having duly noted the perils of exquisiteness, it is important to reiterate how fine a writer Mr. Vivante is, how exacting his craftsmanship, and how tender and luminous his perception of people and the world around him. The impres-

sion left by so many of these stories is best captured by the author himself when speaking of his mother's letters: "'Reading them,' one critic wrote, 'it occurred to me that many of us ought to throw away the pen, which in our hands is a hoe and in hers a little April branch.'"

Mr. Vivante speaks very softly. Where everyone else is shouting, his voice might be easily lost.

His voice ought not to be lost. ■

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Scams

*Continued from Page 14*

outline of the plot.

In telling the story of the Bid-
well gang's attempt to bilk Eng-
land's greatest bank, Mr. Shep-
pard engages in the old practice
of weaving actual historical
characters into his narrative. In
the right hands this can be an ef-
fective device. (Read George
MacDonald Fraser's "Flash for
Freedom" and meet young Abe
Lincoln just starting out in poli-
tics in an unforgettable literary
cameo.) Though Mr. Sheppard
trots out Baron Rothschild for
color and famous American de-
tective Allan Pinkerton to break
the case, they have no more sub-
stance than his fictional charac-
ters.

If the plot is mechanical and
the characters even more so,
Mr. Sheppard then raises addi-
tional difficulties in his manner
of writing. People in the 1800's,
even bank robbers, were per-
fectly capable of speaking in a
straightforward fashion, but
Mr. Sheppard tries to evoke the
spirit of the 19th century by
writing all of his sentences
d backward. In "The Four Hun-
dred," even hurricanes strike in
the passive voice.

As someone who grew up on
the excesses of Frank Yerby, I
don't find much in the way of
historical adventure novels I
can't enjoy, but this is one of
them.

"The Four Hundred" has al-
ready been sold to the movies
for one of those headline-grab-
bing prices. Despite its weak-
nesses as a novel, it might make
a good film. With decent actors
breathing humanity into the
characters, or at least making
them so that we can tell them
apart, the story might come
alive instead of lying flat on
the page. But there's no rush.

"Rainbow," by William
Harry Harding, is a much more
successful historical adventure
story and one that will have
every sportswriter who feels he
has a novel lurking in his notes
kicking himself for not having
written it sooner.

Titanic Thompson was one of
those real-life characters who
cried out to be put into a novel.
Thompson was America's
greatest golf hustler and a mas-
ter of the set-up. He liked to beat
a pigeon for a few rounds and
then offer to let him try to get
his money back double-or-noth-

ing with Thompson playing left-
handed. That's when the fish
found out that Thompson was
really a left-hander and had
been stringing him along.
Thompson's stories are well
known in sports circles, and Mr.
Harding has had the good sense
to cash in on the stories in this
tough, gritty novel of sports hus-
tlers and con men.

Rainbow Roberts, modeled
after Thompson, makes some
money playing golf and then
heads for the 1925 summer rac-
ing season at Saratoga with a
neat plan for ripping off a few
hundred thousand on a boat
race. Along the way there is the
mandatory woman; in this case,
it's Iris Winslow, who turns out
to be even a better con artist
then he is. They meet, con each
other and fall in love.

Mr. Harding has a nice eye for
the grubby details of the gaming
life, and he fills his story with
plenty of interesting back-
ground. (Though he did give me
an anxious moment when in de-
scribing a high-stakes poker
game he confused a straight
with a flush.)

The author is less successful
in setting up his love scenes,
which are gamy without being
interesting. I bow to no one in
my dedication to the First
Amendment, but if there are
any ways to prevent Mr. Hard-
ing from writing about sex with-
out doing damage to the Consti-
tution, they should not be left
unexplored.

Still, "Rainbow" is a neat ex-
ercise in fast-paced fiction. It
also is scheduled to be made
into a movie. That one I would-
n't mind seeing. ■

Film

*Continued from Page 13*

ticularly moving) that the book
can include such tidbits of
Woody Allen lore without being
overwhelmed by them. Far
from dazzling the reader with
tales of Mr. Rosenblum's fa-
mous employers, the book
works slowly and quietly to
create a heightened awareness
of editing as a craft. "We hope
that after reading it, you will no
longer think about movies in
quite the same way," the au-
thors note in their introduction.
Gradually and modestly, they
accomplish that, and more. ■

LETTERS

'Small Futures'

To the Editor:

Prof. Diane Ravitch's review
of Richard deLone's "Small Fu-
tures" (Sept. 16) does not give
an accurate picture of that
book's central argument or of
the views of the Carnegie Coun-
cil on Children.

Professor Ravitch says that
the book "harshly attacks liber-
alism, individualism, economic
growth and the private sector."
In fact, Mr. deLone's main
thesis is that 1) children born at
the bottom of American society
are seriously and unfairly dis-
advantaged compared to those
in the middle or at the top; 2)
this fact flies in the face of our
traditional belief that all men
are created equal; 3) as a re-
sult, American reform move-
ments have repeatedly and sin-
cerely tried to equalize the
chances of children; 4) these re-
form efforts have failed to
change the relative disadvan-
tage of poor and nonwhite chil-
dren. Much of the book is an ef-
fort to understand this failure
and, above all, to explain
American belief that the way to
combat social, racial and eco-
nomic inequities is to improve
the characters of the disadvan-
taged.

In skirting this argument,
Professor Ravitch makes two
contradictory claims. She first
claims that things have gotten
better ("a quiet revolution"). She cites, for example, a de-
crease in the number of people
below the official "poverty
line." But she presumably
knows that this arbitrary line
does not measure relative pov-
erty, much less the overall dis-
tribution of income, wealth and
prestige, and that these latter
are what Mr. deLone is talking
about. But second, she claims
that things have always been
good ("upward social mobility
has been constantly large
throughout our history"). But I
assume she also knows that so-
cial mobility is no greater in the
United States than in other in-
dustrialized societies, despite
150 years of intense effort to in-
crease it. That fact is one of the
ironies that Mr. deLone's book
sets out to explain.

Professor Ravitch claims that
the Council's work will "under-
mine political support for the so-
cial-welfare programs that it at-

tacks." But in fact, the Council
argued that "social-welfare"
programs like health care,
education, child-care and im-
proved court procedures are es-
sential, and spelled out guide-
lines for insuring that such serv-
ices to children and families are
accessible, fair, effective and
responsive.

Most misleading of all is Pro-
fessor Ravitch's claim that Mr.
deLone seeks "to eliminate the
line between public and pri-
vate," beneath which she
"senses" an "implicit faith in
the virtue of the omnicompetent
state." But one of Mr. deLone's
main criticisms of past reform
movements is that they placed
too much power in the hands of
public officials and profession-
als and trusted too little in the
judgment of private parents.
The main report of the Carnegie
Council, "All Our Children,"
also underlines the need to sup-
port the private judgments of
family members against the
views of public bureaucrats,
educators and professionals
about what is best for their chil-
dren. Indeed, one reason the
Council emphasized policies to
insure parents a job and an ade-
quate income is that such poli-
cies leave basic decisions about
family life in the hands of par-
ents, where we think they be-
long, and not the state.

It is a matter of definition as
to whether Mr. deLone's book
and the Carnegie Council's work
is "radical," as Professor Ra-
vitch implies, or liberal or con-
servative. It is surely liberal in
that we start from an ancient
liberal commitment to provide
equal futures to all children,
limited only by talent and ef-
fort. It is conservative in that
we place great faith in the wis-
dom of parents, and designed
our recommendations to sup-
port rather than undermine
family life. But it may indeed be
radical. As another reviewer of
Mr. deLone's book put it in The
New York Times (Aug. 24),
"Everything in 'Small Futures'
is obvious. It is also radical. The
obvious tends to sound radical
after decades of systematic self-
deception."

KENNETH KENISTON

Cambridge, Mass.

Diane Ravitch replies:

It is remarkable that Profes-
sor Keniston, who wrote the
foreword to Richard deLone's

38