ese. The emerging problem in Saigon was
to prepare Thieu for a settlement.

The Kissinger line was thus to remind Thieu that a Presidential election was approaching in the United States, that the Administration must be forthcoming in its peace diplomacy, and that it must prevent Senator McGovern from making it appear that Saigon was blocking the peace. Consequently, he said, the Administration must, as a matter of political realities, come forth with seemingly attractive proposals knowing full well that Hanoi would reject them. Political risks had to be reduced before the elections. But, the notion of the tripartite electoral commission, offered to the Russians, was not broached to Thieu at this time.

Then, it appears, Kissinger proceeded to make extravagant promises to Thieu. After the elections, he allegedly told him, it would be a "different story." The United States would not hesitate to apply all its power to bring North Vietnam down to its knees. Kissinger recommended that Thieu start planning an invasion of North Vietnam after the elections. Specifically, he suggested ARVN landings in Vinh or Donghoi. Thieu, who appeared nonplused by this idea, finally replied that if an invasion were mounted, Thanhhoa should be the prime objective. Actually, Thieu had been urging an invasion of North Vietnam as early as March 1971 (during the Laos incursion), but could enlist no American encouragement and eventually dropped the idea. It was first revived by General Haig in June 1972, when he inquired of the commander of the ARVN First Corps whether an invasion of the North was feasible. When Kissinger reached San Clemente late in July, he told Sir Robert Thompson, the British counterinsurgency expert who was reporting to Nixon on his latest survey in South Vietnam, that we would not be "bashful" after the elections.

It is, of course, hard to judge whether Kissinger was playing a complicated double game with the two Vietnamese factions, or whether he really believed that a final blow

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at Hanoi late in the year would leave the South Vietnamese in a strong enough military position to go along with the peace proposals he had in the works. He could have been deceiving Thieu, but, on the other hand, Kissinger always believed in giving Saigon a "decent interval" after a cease-fire— and this could only be achieved by crippling the North.

There was, to be sure, a certain logic in Kissinger's own evolving approach to the situation. The 1972 Communist spring offensive, if nothing else, had convinced him that the Vietnam war must be ended as soon as possible and the United States finally extricated from it. During the flight from Saigon to California, following his talks with Thieu, Kissinger mused in front of his staff that "we just can't let the Vietnam issue plague us for four more years." The problem, he said, had to be resolved between the November election and the President's anticipated second inaugural the next January. It thus appeared that as early as July, Kissinger had the time sequence for an agreement firmly set in his own mind. He was optimistic that with quiet Soviet and Chinese support, and the stalling of the North Vietnamese offensive, Hanoi would meet him halfway before long—meaning a decision to wind up the conflict on the basis of the secret concessions Kissinger had just spelled out in Moscow and Peking, and without further North Vietnamese insistence on Thieu's elimination. As he flew to San Clemente, Kissinger's problem was clearly to convince the President to accept this course of action and, simultaneously, to force Thieu to face reality and endorse the new American diplomatic stance. As for Nixon, Kissinger, as he put it, wanted to "lock him irrevocably into a decision" before the elections. Thieu was to be given maximum military advantage before the cease-fire. Kissinger told his aides in the plane over the Pacific, "One thing is for sure: we cannot stand another four years of this... So let's finish it brutally once and for all."

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Pushing his scenario with Hanoi, Kissinger held private talks with Tho in Paris on August 1 and again on August 15. Now that peace diplomacy was in high gear, the Kissinger-Tho meetings were being officially announced, but, by common agreement, none of the substance of their talks was revealed.

### General Haig, Meet President Thieu

But Kissinger could go only so far without some form of concurrence from Thieu. After the August 15 session in Paris, the point was reached where South Vietnamese acceptance of the tripartite commission and a quickened American withdrawal were required. Haig was now dispatched to Saigon to try to sell the new American package to Thieu.

Thieu was adamant. He told Haig that inasmuch as he controlled 90 percent of South Vietnam (a claim the Americans tended to dispute in private), and the Vietcong could not expect to garner more than 10 or 20 percent of the vote, he could not see why a tripartite commission was needed at all. Thieu, of course, was worried that such a commission would transform itself into a coalition government. Instead, he proposed a referendum in South Vietnam, to determine its political future. Haig reported to Washington that he could not break the deadlock with Thieu. But Kissinger wanted to maintain the momentum of negotiations and he arranged to meet secretly with Tho in Paris on September 15.

First, however, Kissinger made another visit to Moscow. This visit was part of the new consultative process set up at the May summit. The three-day stay in the Soviet capital—September 10 to 13—was devoted to a wide range of matters. Vietnam came up only on the last day, September 13, at a session between Kissinger and his advisers and Brezhnev, Gromyko, Dobrynin, and Alexandrov. Two days earlier, the Vietcong delinquation in Paris had issued a fairly ambiguous new proposal that could have been read as meaning that, for the first time, a cease-

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fire would be acceptable without prior removal of Thieu. Kissinger was not certain that this was the breakthrough for which he had been waiting for three years; the Russians told him they thought it was.

### Kissinger Proceeds Without Thieu

Meanwhile, a stark and intense drama was developing behind the scenes. The plan was for Ambassador Bunker, in Saigon, to obtain Thieu's agreement to the tripartite commission, while Kissinger carried out his Moscow talks and prepared to meet Tho in Paris on September 15. Kissinger was determined to present the North Vietnamese with a proposal on the tripartite body—agreed to by both Washington and Saigon—at their forthcoming session. But late at night on September 13, after the talks with the Russians were finished, Kissinger, who was at the Dom Pryoma estate guest house, received a cable from Bunker advising that despite all the efforts in recent days, Thieu had rejected the tripartite commission proposal. An associate recounted later, "Henry blew a gasket." He said that he was perfectly capable of making it clear to Hanoi that there was a difference between a tripartite commission and a coalition government. Walking around the *dacha* at midnight, Kissinger briefly toyed with the idea of rushing to Saigon to try to change Thieu's mind, but concluded that the time had come for the United States to act unilaterally. It was too late in the negotiations to go back to Thieu, Kissinger told his associates. Shortly after midnight, he sent a telegram to Nixon, requesting permission to meet with Tho as planned and inform him that Washington would stand firm on the question of the electoral commission regardless of Thieu's views. Kissinger's argument was, among other things, that with the elections at home only seven weeks away, the President could not risk a collapse in the peace negotiations.

Nixon's reply reached the American party the next morning, September 14, as they prepared to leave for London. It said, in

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effect, that Kissinger could go ahead and tell Tho the next day that the United States accepted the tripartite commission. But this decision was not wholly popular in the White House: Haig, for example, complained privately to friends that Kissinger was giving away too much.

The Nixon-Kissinger decision was another major turning point in the tortured history of Vietnam negotiations. For the first time, Nixon was ready to make a major offer to Hanoi without Thieu's concurrence —in the face of his outright opposition.

Kissinger flew to Paris from London on September 15, reverting to complex secrecy procedures. Kissinger had spent the previous night at Claridge's and a State Department Vietnamese-language interpreter, urgently summoned from Washington, was put up at another hotel to maintain the cover. The interpreter met Kissinger at 6:30 AM in Claridge's lobby, and then the whole group was driven in a British military vehicle to the Royal Air Force's Bryce-Norton Base near London. There, they boarded a U.S. Air Force prop-driven twin-engined Convair plane for a choppy flight to the Villa Coubley field outside Paris. Kissinger's meeting with Tho and Thuy was relatively brief: he orally communicated the new American position and asked questions about the Vietcong document of September 11. Tho, in turn, questioned Kissinger about modalities of presidential elections in South Vietnam after a cease-fire. This was, in a way, a preliminary step before the negotiations were to enter their final stage.

At a White House news conference on September 16, the day after his return from Paris, Kissinger sounded a carefully optimistic note, though his audience, unaware of the substance of secret talks, was at an obvious disadvantage in trying to make sense of his remarks. He said, without elaboration, that the September 11 Vietcong proposals left "something to be desired" in terms of his hopes for "bringing about a rapid conclusion of the war." Kissinger told newsmen

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that the "fact that these talks are going on would indicate a certain seriousness."

Kissinger returned to Paris for three meetings with Tho and, on September 26, formally presented the American proposal for a tripartite electoral commission. Haig was simultaneously sent to Saigon to work on Thieu. Tho, who had received new instructions following his talks with Kissinger on September 15, gave the impression of receptivity. Kissinger flew back to Washington, highly encouraged. He now felt, he told his associates, that there was a good chance that the "Vietnam cancer" could be removed before the November elections. His heart was not in the war; it endangered détente.

## Breakthrough In Paris

The long-elusive breakthrough in the Vietnam peace talks finally came on October 8. Kissinger, Haig, and a large staff of advisers had arrived in Paris the previous day for the scheduled secret meeting. Late that afternoon, the Americans arrived at a villa owned by the French Communist Party in a Paris suburb, to be effusively greeted by Tho and Thuy. Then Tho presented Hanoi's coup de théâtre.

Tho opened the conversation by saying that inasmuch as Kissinger was anxious to settle the war before the American elections, the North Vietnamese had brought a document to serve as the draft peace agreement. It was the first time Hanoi had presented a genuine negotiating document rather than just a series of demands.

The highlights of the Hanoi plan were an immediate cease-fire in place in Vietnam, a total U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and the return of all the American POW's within 60 days. Politically, it proclaimed Vietnam —North and South—to be one country, temporarily divided. To bring about eventual unity, the North Vietnamese blueprint offered a vague political process in the South where an "administrative structure" would be in some way established prior to the elections. The document appeared to separate

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military from political issues—certainly not
making a cease-fire contingent any more
upon a political solution—and in this sense it
met Kissinger's conceptual approach. Above
all, Hanoi was no longer demanding Thieu's
ouster as an a priori condition. Kissinger
remarked that this was a "very interesting
document inasmuch as they are separating
the military from the political."

Before the meeting adjourned, Kissinger
indicated to Tho that he was willing to ac-
cept his document as the basis for subsequent
negotiations. Accordingly, a new meeting
was scheduled for the next day, October 9.
Returning to the American Embassy res-
idence, Kissinger instructed Winston Lord,
John Negroponte, and David Engel, his staff
aides, to draft a counterproposal overnight.
As it stood, he said, the Hanoi draft placed
almost all the operational obligations on the
United States and South Vietnam, and vir-
tually none on North Vietnam, except to
cease firing and return the POW's. Hanoi's
troops were not expected to go home. One
of Kissinger's ideas was that there should be
a National Council of Reconciliation and
Concord in Saigon in lieu of the vague "ad-
ministrative structure." The Council, not a
coalition government, would operate along-
side the Thieu regime and the electoral com-
mission during the pre-election period.

Having instructed his staff to write the
counterproposal, Kissinger went out to a res-
taurant with a date. The three men finished
their work at 3:00 AM and went to sleep,
leaving the document for Kissinger. But
they were awakened by him at 8:00 AM. He
was furious; the draft was too hard-nosed.
"You don't understand," he said, "I want
to meet their position." He also wished to
keep a number of issues open for further dis-
cussion. He gave his staff until 1:00 PM to
revise the counterproposal along the lines he
had indicated. An American official, familiar
with the events of that week, said later that
"Henry was rushing things too much; it
was getting too sloppy." Before going into
the second meeting with Tho, at 3:00 PM

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on October 9, Kissinger sent a two-para-
graph telegram to Ambassador Bunker in-
forming him very briefly of the situation
and instructing him to tell Thieu. Trying
to maximize his negotiating freedom on all
fronts, Kissinger sent only scant reports on
the situation to Saigon and even to Nixon.

Kissinger and Tho met daily on October
9, 10, and 11, hammering out the language
of the agreement. On October 11, they
reached an agreement in principle although
two issues were left unresolved: the question
of releasing civilian prisoners in South Viet-
nam (Kissinger did not want to press Thieu
on this point), and the cessation of all mili-
tary aid by the United States to South Viet-
nam and by North Vietnam to the Vietcong
(and to the North Vietnamese regulars in
the South) except on a one-to-one replace-
ment basis. These two points were to prove
to be among the most troublesome in sub-
sequent talks. Kissinger told Tho that he
now had to return to Washington to seek
Nixon's approval before there could be an-
other meeting on October 17 to finalize the
agreement. But Tho insisted on an under-
standing that the peace accord would be
signed on October 31.

The North Vietnamese, whose military
fortunes in the South were declining after
their spring-summer successes, evidently
wanted the signing before the election in the
United States. They conveyed to the Amer-
icans their concern that after the election the
President's position might harden and the
agreement, evidently favorable to them,
might become unhinged. They obviously
had premonitions about the future. Kissin-
ger, who told Tho on six different occasions
that Saigon's concurrence had to be obtained
for the signing, related later that the North
Vietnamese fought for the October 31 date
"almost as maniacally as they fought the
war." Anxious for a quick signing, Kissin-
ger promised Tho to make a "major effort"
to meet the deadline. Then he flew home,
leaving Lord and Engel behind to keep liai-
son with the North Vietnamese.

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On October 12, Kissinger presented the 58-page draft agreement to Nixon, Rogers, and several State Department experts, including William H. Sullivan, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State specializing in In-dochina, and Deputy Legal Adviser George H. Aldrich. The CIA's George Carver was also brought in. The consensus was that the draft was basically acceptable, although a number of provisions had to be tightened.

The American public was unaware of how advanced the negotiations were. But Mau-rice Schumann, the French Foreign Minister, came to Washington around October 15 to see Nixon and Kissinger. He had seen Tho in Paris a few days earlier and now he told four journalists, two American and two French, during an off-the-record round of drinks at the French Embassy residence, that he had reason to believe that a peace agree-ment was "within reach" if both parties wished to reach for it. Schumann, who com-plained that the Americans had been keep-ing him uninformed, had received a full brief-ing from the North Vietnamese and he spoke with more authority than the four journal-ists were prepared to accept. The Schumann story, which could not be attributed to him, was never written.

## Kissinger Plans A Hanoi Trip

Kissinger was now bubbling with opti-mism. He planned to return to Paris on Oc-tober 17 for a final meeting with Thuy (Tho had flown back home for last-minute consultations), and then go on to Saigon for wrap-up conferences with Thieu, between October 19 and 23. Then he would fly se-cretly to Hanoi to initial the agreement on October 24—his presence in the North Viet-namese capital would be revealed publicly only after the initialing ceremony—and the peace accord would be signed by the four foreign ministers in Paris on October 31. The Hanoi trip would be Kissinger's great-est coup, and he was visibly excited about it. It was a beautiful scenario—except that Kissinger (despite warnings from the CIA's

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George Carver) had grossly overestimated his ability to bring Thieu around. This error was to plague him for months.

Kissinger arrived in Paris on the morning of October 17 with Sullivan and Aldrich. They went immediately into session with Thuy, but it quickly developed that impor-tant textual differences remained between the two sides. The afternoon turned into evening. Kissinger, growing increasingly nervous and impatient, announced that he simply had to leave for Saigon that same evening before Orly Airport closed at 11:00 PM. He was anxious to stay on schedule. Thuy told him that the final details presumably could be worked out in Hanoi after Kissinger arrived there from Saigon on October 24. The North Vietnamese liked the idea of having Kissin-ger in Hanoi to wind up the talks and ini-tial the accord in their capital.

## Disaster In Saigon

Kissinger and Sullivan arrived in Saigon on the morning of October 19. Nobody there had a clear idea of what was happen-ing; Kissinger had made a point of keeping everyone in the dark. Bunker had not seen the text of the agreement, and was only vaguely aware of some of its provisions. Thieu knew next to nothing. But Kissinger was confident he could get his agreement in three days of talks and then go on to Hanoi,

On October 19, Kissinger and Bunker met for three-and-a-half hours with Thieu at the Presidential Palace. For the first time, Thieu saw the draft peace agreement—and only in the English version, which was all Kissinger had with him. He reacted with un-disguised fury. His first objection was that he had not been consulted about the doc-ument that Kissinger proposed to initial in Hanoi three days hence. The text he was shown was still incomplete—the provisions for the release of civilian prisoners in the South and the question of military equip-ment replacements remained subject to fur-ther negotiations—but Thieu opposed most of the clauses that were written into it. His

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attitude was later described by a participant in the meeting as that of a "trapped tiger." He said he was not ready for a cease-fire and that he could not understand why the Americans had given up their demands for an Inchina-wide cease-fire in favor of a truce confined to Vietnam alone. At the October 19 meeting with Kissinger, and during sessions in the three ensuing days, Thieu claimed that the most important flaw in the proposed agreement was that the North Vietnamese were not required to leave the South. He protested that the document recognized post-truce areas of control in the South for both his forces and the Communists. This, he said bitterly, had the effect of granting the Communists sovereignty over some areas.

As the sessions at the Palace grew increasingly tense—a participant said Thieu was acting almost paranoid—the Saigon leader accused Kissinger of negotiating an agreement behind his back and then demanding his endorsement of it in three days. He took exception to the concept of the tripartite commission and to the expression "administrative structure" which was still in the text despite Kissinger's preference for the Reconciliation and Concord Council. Either way, he said, this presaged a coalition government. Thieu saw his survival as South Vietnam's leader gravely threatened by the agreement Kissinger was trying to ram down his throat.

Kissinger (who by now had developed a hatred for Thieu) argued that the proposed agreement, combined with American guarantees, gave the Thieu regime a "fighting chance" and a "decent interval" after the cease-fire and the now inevitable U.S. withdrawal. He told Thieu: "We were successful in Peking, we were successful in Moscow, we were even successful in Paris. There is no reason why we cannot be successful here." Thieu's young foreign policy adviser Hoang Duc Nha replied: "So far history has shown that the United States has been successful in many fields. But history does not predict that in the future the United States will be successful here."

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Still, Kissinger thought that Thieu would in the end be persuaded, and so advised Nixon from Saigon. Late on October 21, Nixon, on Kissinger's recommendation, dispatched an extraordinary message to Hanoi, saying that despite a few remaining problems "the text of the agreement could be considered complete" and that peace could be signed on October 31. The plan still was for Kissinger to go to Hanoi on the 24th.

While Kissinger kept negotiating with Thieu, he sent Sullivan to brief Laotian Premier Souvanna Phouma in Vientiane and the Thai leaders in Bangkok. Sullivan told the Thais that as part of the peace agreement the North Vietnamese would withdraw from Laos and Cambodia. If Hanoi violated this commitment, he said, the United States would "obliterate" North Vietnam. This, however, was not entirely accurate. The United States never had a firm commitment from Hanoi on quitting Cambodia, although it had secret assurances that a Laos truce could be arranged as, indeed, it was, a month after the Vietnam accord. Kissinger made a quick trip to Phnom Penh to confer with President Lon Nol, but he did not show him the peace plan nor tell him that Hanoi resisted a commitment on ending the Cambodian fighting. Instead, he pressed Lon Nol to seek a unilateral cease-fire. Lon Nol thanked him and asked when the North Vietnamese were leaving.

Kissinger and Bunker held their last meeting with Thieu on October 23. Despite Kissinger's entreaties, Thieu remained totally opposed to the peace plan. Kissinger reported this to Nixon who, in turn, informed Hanoi that the Saigon talks had hit a snag and that, after all, the signing of the peace agreement could no longer be done on October 31. Heavy-hearted, Kissinger cancelled his Hanoi trip and, dejected and exhausted, flew back to Washington.

*"Peace Is At Hand"*

Now a new crisis had developed. The North Vietnamese concluded that the Amer-

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icans had used them for domestic political purposes and that they were reneging on the agreement reached in Paris earlier in the month. Their response was to "go public" with a broadcast on October 25, disclosing the highlights of the agreement. The broadcast was monitored during the night by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (a CIA operation) and Kissinger was awakened at 2:00 AM October 26 to be told about it. He instantly telephoned the President at the White House. The two men met in the morning and a decision was made that Kissinger would hold a news conference at noon to explain the situation. Kissinger's overwhelming concern was that Hanoi not think that it was being deceived by the United States. With Nixon's specific approval, he thus used the now-famous expression that "peace is at hand" and that only a few more meetings with the North Vietnamese were required to iron out final details. The point was to reassure Hanoi, on one hand, and to warn Saigon, on the other, that the United States was determined to conclude a Vietnam peace agreement. Just as importantly, the statement served to undercut McGovern two weeks before the election. ♃

Kissinger, in fact, was deeply concerned that his negotiations with the North Vietnamese would collapse because of Saigon's opposition. While still in Saigon, he had urged Nixon by cable on October 23 to suspend American bombings north of the 20th parallel as a gesture of goodwill. He even suggested the end of U.S. tactical air support to the ARVN to show his annoyance with Thieu. Nixon agreed to halt the bombings in the North, but refused to cancel battlefield air support. The pressure on everyone involved was intense: before his return from Saigon to Washington Kissinger had a series of bitter cable exchanges with Haig, who thought that the American negotiating position was eroding.

At his televised performance in Washington on October 26, Kissinger was, in effect, telling Hanoi to cool it, that the United

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States would deliver despite the unexpected delay. Some of Kissinger's colleagues say that he did not believe at that point that peace was really "at hand," but that he was both anxious to commit Nixon to a quick peace and to keep McGovern on the defensive. He seemed worried that after the elections Nixon might reopen the whole diplomatic situation; he feared that given Nixon's natural inclinations, the President might revert to toughness after being re-elected.

*Haig Tries Thieu Again...*

Thus, as soon as the returns were in, Haig was dispatched to Saigon to discuss the "minimum changes" to be negotiated with Hanoi. Haig, who unlike Kissinger was still on speaking terms with Thieu, told Thieu on November 9 that he should not take too much comfort from the American elections. He warned him that although Washington would do its best to improve the terms, it would not give up its commitment for the tripartite electoral commission. Thieu reopened his objections to the draft language defining the areas of military control by the two sides in South Vietnam and resisted anything that would bind him militarily. The North Vietnamese were overextended in the South at that stage—many of their units had not been advised to prepare for a ceasefire—and now Thieu was stalling while the ARVN tried to improve its position.

*... And Disaster In Paris*

Kissinger returned to Paris on November 20 for a new round of talks with Tho—to settle what he had said the previous month would be the final details. But, again, he miscalculated the situation. On Nixon's instructions, he convinced the North Vietnamese to include in the text a definition of the demilitarized zone as a provisional political division line. This was designed to pacify Thieu. Kissinger also read "for the record" a South Vietnamese document demanding 69 changes in the text. But the next day, November 21, Kissinger retracted about one-

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half of these proposed changes. Kissinger said later that it was not conceivable that the North Vietnamese would have taken the South Vietnamese demands seriously. However, it was probably a mistake for him to have ever raised them so late in the game.

The talks dragged on for four more days and the Americans began detecting hesitations on Tho's part. Old questions were being asked again. Then, on November 25, the North Vietnamese asked for an eight-day recess. Tho raced back to Hanoi.

On December 4, Kissinger and Haig flew back to Paris. They found a new attitude on Tho's part. Kissinger's impression was that Hanoi had suddenly developed "cold feet" about the whole situation. Battlefield conditions were turning against the Communists while, at the same time, the United States was rushing some $1 billion worth of new military equipment to South Vietnam under the name of Operation Enhance to beat the cease-fire deadline. F-5A jet fighter-bombers were being borrowed from South Korea, Nationalist China, and Iran to beef up the South Vietnamese Air Force because it would take too long to get them from the United States. Hanoi's strategic doctrine called for a cease-fire only under optimal conditions; the North Vietnamese might be rethinking the entire agreement. Still, Kissinger kept negotiating with Tho despite the North Vietnamese on-and-off attitude toward parts of the agreement.

On December 14, Tho told Kissinger that he had to go home for a few weeks to study the situation. Before leaving, he handed Kissinger the text of the protocol for implementing the cease-fire, including international supervision, which the Americans found totally unsatisfactory. The same evening, Kissinger flew back to Washington, still hopeful that an agreement was within reach.

Sullivan and William Porter, the chief American delegate to the semipublic negotiations, were left behind in Paris to continue technical talks with the North Vietnamese. On December 15, when the two del-

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egations met at the Neuilly-sur-Seine home of an American jeweler, the North Vietnamese proposed 16 changes in the text, reopening a part of the negotiations. Among other things, they now demanded that the release of the American POW's be conditional on the freeing of thousands of civilian prisoners held by Saigon. Until then, the matter of the Saigon prisoners had been left for negotiations to come after the truce between the two Vietnamese factions. Sullivan and Porter passed this on to Kissinger, who immediately ordered his staff to prepare a paper on Hanoi's "perfidy," to form the basis of his Washington press conference the next day.

A close study of the documents suggests, however, that the "perfidy" was somewhat exaggerated. Aside from the reopened question of the POW's, the differences between Hanoi and Washington were not all that great at that point. There was no agreement on the DMZ clause (it was academic anyway because the Communists controlled the whole area). Hanoi had not yet agreed to replace the term "administrative structure" with "National Council for Concord and Reconciliation"—though this alone hardly seemed to justify new bombings.

## The Christmas Bombing

The question, therefore, arises: why did the President feel impelled on December 18 to order "Operation Linebacker II"—the bombing of Hanoi and the rest of North Vietnam? A theory held privately among many key officials is that he and Kissinger had decided, given the battlefield situation, that drastic action was necessary to discourage the pro-war faction in the North Vietnamese Politburo from forcing a reconsideration of the peace agreement. The Americans knew from intelligence sources that the October decision to go for a settlement carried by a small margin in the Hanoi Politburo. The White House feared that in a changed military context, the balance might shift in Hanoi in favor of the faction advocating more protracted warfare. As Kissinger put it,

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the United States was applying leverage against Hanoi to assist it in its decision-making process.

These officials believe that, in effect, the United States launched the Christmas bombings to force Hanoi to make "marginal decisions" about changes in the text of the agreement. One participant remarked at the time that "we are bombing them to force them to accept our concessions." The view of many officials, as this latest bit of brinkmanship developed, was that the POW question, and the disputes over the truce supervision mechanism and the National Council, could have been resolved without the bombings.

The Administration realized that the bombings were not sustainable over an indefinite period, for international as well as domestic reasons. They were, therefore, a short-term proposition. This theory is borne out by the fact that on the day the bombings were resumed, Haig flew to Saigon with a secret letter from Nixon urging Thieu to accept the settlement. Haig also told Thieu that, while the United States was "brutalizing" North Vietnam, it would sign a peace agreement if Hanoi would make a few changes in the text. He informed Thieu that if he remained adamant, he could no longer count on American assistance. On December 21, Thieu handed Haig a letter for Nixon saying that he felt that he had been given an ultimatum and that he could not believe the President of the United States would deal in such a manner with an ally. When Kissinger read the letter, he commented bitterly: "All the Vietnamese parties are against us."

Evidently, Hanoi felt, early in January, that it had taken all the punishment it could take and proposed the resumption of the negotiations. Ironically, as the United States discovered from intercepted North Vietnamese tactical communications, Hanoi had only a two-day supply of SAM antiaircraft missiles on hand when the bombings stopped.

The meetings in Paris resumed on January 7, 1973. The United States, in Kissin-

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ger's view, was now in an excellent position to obtain an agreement. Thieu was much more amenable to accepting the basic text in view of the Christmas bombings; his relative military position had improved. There is no known evidence that Kissinger had opposed the Christmas bombings (as he hinted to several liberal Washington columnists).

## Agreement

The negotiations were concluded on January 13, largely on American terms as conceived in a narrow mechanical sense. Kissinger seemed more interested in the technical modalities of the cease-fire provisions—once Hanoi reverted to its original position on the POW's—and gave the impression that he had lost interest in the political fate of the rest of Indochina. Kissinger also won his points on the Reconciliation Council.

He received a secret commitment that a Laos truce would follow a Vietnam agreement by 20 days—it was cut down from 30 days—but he pushed little for a pledge over Cambodia, although he was to insist publicly that he had received one. Hanoi also agreed to the DMZ clause and to a 2,500-man international supervisory force.

What American negotiators wanted most was a text with the maximum ambiguity of language so as to give the United States all the flexibility possible in supporting South Vietnam militarily after the truce. But they also entered into a series of secret and hereunto unpublicized agreements with Hanoi, most of them unfulfilled, presumably as a quid pro quo for ambiguities elsewhere.

## What Did The Agreement Mean?

The frame of mind of the Kissinger team, the secret commitments, and the deliberate ambiguities are well reflected in a secret State Department document entitled "Interpretations of the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam," prepared early in 1973 by George Aldrich, the Deputy Legal Adviser.

The most important commitment con-

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cerns American civilian personnel working with the ARVN. In Aldrich's words:

The United States has assured the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] that we shall withdraw from South Vietnam within twelve months from the signature of the Agreement all our civilian personnel "working in the armed forces of the Republic of Viet-Nam." We have also assured the DRV that the majority of them will be withdrawn within ten months. These assurances clearly cover all U.S. Government employees whose principal duties are with GVN armed forces. It is unclear whether it applies to U.S. nationals employed by contractors of either the United States or the GVN.

This commitment remains unfulfilled as of May 1974—15 months after the signing of the Agreement. There are an estimated 9,000 American civilians in South Vietnam, most engaged directly or indirectly in supporting the ARVN, especially in aviation.

Another secret commitment given Hanoi was that American air reconnaissance over North Vietnam "will cease completely and definitely." In the light of the 1974 North Vietnamese build-up, it is unclear whether this commitment has been observed. The United States also informed Hanoi that it would consider it "a violation of the cease-fire" if Communist forces fired on South Vietnamese planes flying reconnaissance over areas in the South held by the Communists. Hanoi said South Vietnamese planes over-flying such areas would be fired upon.

In March 1974, the United States began delivering to South Vietnam the first of 150 F-5E jet aircraft, a more sophisticated version of the F-5A planes borrowed during the war from Korea, Taiwan, and Iran. The State Department paper expresses doubts as to whether such deliveries are not in violation of Article 7 of the Agreement providing for a one-for-one replacement of used-up equipment. Under the Agreement, replacements must be identical. The document argues that the return of the borrowed F-5A's is the equivalent of being "used up,"

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in terms of its availability to Saigon. But, it says, a "more difficult question is whether an F-5E can be a legitimate replacement for an F-5A." The paper concludes that "it seems obvious . . . that the GVN will have to be prepared to justify this replacement on the grounds of substantial similarity between the aircraft; if a decent argument cannot be made, the replacement cannot be justified."

Although the Agreement prohibits the movement of South Vietnamese warships in Communist-controlled areas, the State Department has provided an interpretation making it possible for Saigon's ships to escort convoys sailing up the Mekong River to Phnom Penh. This, the paper states, is "permissible if the GVN [Government of South Vietnam] agrees that the ship channel remains an area under government control . . . this would be true even if areas of shore are clearly under PRG [Vietcong] control, but it is far from clear that the PRG would accept that interpretation. . . ."

A major weakness in the Agreement—the definition of the areas of control by the opposing parties in South Vietnam—is also spelled out in the State Department paper. It says that "we tried unsuccessfully to include in the Ceasefire Protocol an article making it clear that the Two-Party Joint Military Commission [South and North Vietnam] should base its determination on a census of military forces, including their location, strength, and deployment. The DRV refused to accept this concept and clearly preferred a political exercise of drawing lines on a map. . . . The Commission is left with no guidance on how to determine the areas of control in South Vietnam."

Inasmuch as Article 5 of the Agreement provides that American forces had to remove American military equipment from South Vietnam as part of the withdrawal, the United States hastily transferred title to much of it to the Saigon regime before the cease-fire became effective. But no determination was possible as to whether "transfer of title or transfer of possession is the critical

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act." Aldrich's analysis states that "we tried during the negotiations to lay a foundation for our theory that transfer of title was adequate... but we decided that we could not make this explicit without running an unacceptable risk that the North Vietnamese would object and make the issue a major one in the negotiations.... On the basis of the language and the absence of any relevant negotiating history, we can make a reasonable case, but we must recognize that it is far from compelling...."

## Aid To Hanoi?

Among American commitments made public during the peace negotiations was the promise of economic aid for the reconstruction of North Vietnam. A joint American-North Vietnamese economic committee began meeting in Paris shortly after the signing of the cease-fire agreement. In the light of congressional criticism, however, the Administration made it known that it was impossible to reach an accord with Hanoi.

It is a fitting footnote to this whole extraordinary history that the Administration chose to misrepresent the state of affairs concerning the economic talks.

Thus a top-secret telegram was sent to Washington on March 27, 1973 by Maurice J. Williams, the principal American negotiator, reporting that a virtually complete agreement had been reached on operating procedures to govern the provision of U.S. aid to North Vietnam. The single unresolved point, Williams stated, involved how the North Vietnamese were to report on how the aid would be used. The Administration, deciding to drop the whole project for political reasons, never made public the fact that the United States had been one step away from a bilateral accord with Hanoi.

## What Does It Mean?

Looking back at the saga of Kissinger's Vietnam peace diplomacy, one must ask whether he could have negotiated a settlement better and sooner than he did. The

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related question is whether Nixon would have allowed him to do so. Granting the dangers of second-guessing recent history, the following points can be made on the basis of what is now known of the Vietnam negotiations:

1. Agreement with Hanoi was probably possible in December 1972 without the final paroxysms of the Christmas bombings. The differences between the October 1972 and January 1973 texts do not appear to be sufficiently substantive to justify the death and destruction wrought by American planes—not to mention American losses. One is left with the impression that Nixon and Kissinger took advantage of Hanoi's political hesitations in December 1972 to inflict the greatest possible damage on North Vietnam so that Thieu would be able to accept the Agreement.

2. The Christmas bombings, therefore, were designed to induce Thieu to sign the Paris Agreement, the price being the "brutalizing" of the North. But, at the same time, this was the price that had to be paid for Kissinger's miscalculation of Thieu's responses to the September and October 1972 proposals on which he was never adequately, if at all, consulted. Failure to consult allies seems to be a Kissinger hallmark. Had Kissinger been more open and forceful with Thieu in August 1972, much grief and tragedy might have been avoided.

3. In all fairness to Kissinger, it must be recognized that a settlement, as distinct from an American cave-in which Nixon would not have tolerated, became possible only in October, when Hanoi and the Vietcong dropped their demand that Thieu be ousted as a sine qua non of peace. It may also be posited that they would not have done so at all if their spring offensive had been more successful and if Moscow and Peking had not brought pressure, subtle or otherwise, to bear on the North Vietnamese to accept a compromise.

4. But the obverse of this argument is that Hanoi might have been ready earlier

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for such a compromise if Kissinger had not waited until the spring of 1972 to tell the Russians that the United States no longer, in effect, insisted on the evacuation of North Vietnamese troops from the South and that it would go for a political deal on the basis of the tripartite commission. The logjam was broken diplomatically by Kissinger's two Moscow performances in 1972, emphasizing, among other things, that the Soviets and then the Chinese were able to play a greater role in the achievement of the peace than Washington had given them credit for. The unanswered question is whether Hanoi would have launched the March 1972 offensive if it had known that Kissinger would, within less than two months, dramatically alter his secret diplomacy.

5. It must have been predictable from the very outset—from the time the first bombing halt was negotiated in 1968—that the North Vietnamese would never leave the South. Other than the effort at Vietnamization, therefore, there is no satisfactory reason for Kissinger to have refused to recognize reality for three years. The massive American intervention in 1972 and the continuing military support for Saigon suggest that Vietnamization had fallen short of expectations.

6. It is remarkable—and instructive—to note the extremely close parallels between the negotiations of 1972 and the U.S.-North Vietnamese negotiations of 1968 concerning the cessation of the bombing of North Vietnam. While the story is too lengthy to describe here, the structure of the two negotiations was virtually identical, right down to the exact date on which the North Vietnamese demanded the agreement; each time, it was October 31. The breakdown in communications with Thieu was also a replay of what had happened in 1968. In both cases, it would appear that the critical factor as far as timing was concerned was the impending Presidential election.

7. This negotiation story offers a unique insight into the brilliance, stamina, and tac

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tics of Henry Kissinger. This does not necessarily mean that no one else could have done it, but it is instructive to follow his steps—including his mistakes and deceptions—through the minefields of Paris and Hanoi, Saigon and Washington. Concealment—partial or complete—was an essential part of his policy. Others will find in this story many additional insights into the way Kissinger operated.

8. A year-and-a-half after the Paris sign-ings, Thieu remains in power, which on the surface bolsters Nixon's assertion that we have “peace with honor” in Vietnam. But the other side of the coin is that Thieu can-not survive without continuing American support. The steady Communist pressure on the ARVN and the likelihood of a new offen-sive this year, already led the Administra-tion, late in March, to ask Congress for $500 million to $525 million in additional military and economic aid to Saigon during this year. In fact, the Pentagon has warned that unless $474 million in new aid comes rapidly, the ARVN might have to curtail operations.

9. The fact is that as long as the United States supports the Thieu government in any major way, and as long as the pressure to remove that government continues from Hanoi, there will be a continuing conflict with the potential to escalate again into an international issue. Thus, Vietnam remains a threat to détente, even if it is a diminished one. This was evident when the Soviet Union, for the first time in over a year, issued statements in mid-April sharply crit-icizing the United States for its Vietnam policies. It was a familiar warning shot across the bow. An ominous echo, raising the mem-ories of earlier letters from earlier eras, was Kissinger's letter to Senator Edward M. Kennedy explaining the nature of the continuing American obligation to Nguyen van Thieu. Some problems, it seems, just won't go away.

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The World Looks at . . . Henry Kissinger

MEPHISTOPHELES?
SUPERSTAR WITH
SUPERPOWER?

France

ONE MUST SALUTE Henry Kissinger. As much Mephistopheles as [Moliere's cunning character] Scapin or flying physician, this devil of a fellow has in two years accomplished the most astonishing feats of sleight of hand, straightening out the international situation from a country overwhelmed by all manner of crises and providing his sad President with his only trump cards in the eyes of American and world opinion. . . .

—Claude Bourdet, in *Le Monde*, Paris (liberal).

MERCHANT OF PEACE. . . . I believe Mr. Kissinger deserves to be honored and that his adversaries or his detractors are more swayed by jealousy than logic. Certainly, in times past no one reproached Gen. de Gaulle for his politics of grandeur. We would not be proud today if France from this time forward rallied around a cult of smallness . . .

—Jean Fayard, in *Le Figaro*, Paris (conservative).

England

HIS DIPLOMATIC SKILLS and vigor are of course impressive. His sense of history is comforting for lesser men. He always seems to have known where he was going. . . . he sees himself as a loner who performs best when free of the complexities of Washington and the impor-
tunities of lesser nations.

—Louis Heren, in *The Times*, London (independent).

DR. KISSINGER will not be heartbroken if European interests get trampled on in the rush. . . . The French may be peppery and vindic-
tive. But there is truth in their complaints that the Americans still think of Europe as a handy place for parking their front-line troops and dumping their surplus inflation.

—*Daily Mail*, London (conservative).

DR. KISSINGER is a statesman with a firm grasp of the realities of world power. But he is no archangel. When he loses patience he sometimes uses his verbal gifts to make unwise remarks.

—*The Guardian*, Manchester (liberal).

THE DISADVANTAGE of a "structure" such as Dr. Kissinger has put together is that it lacks flexibility. It can stand wind and weight, but it remains to be seen whether it will withstand an earthquake.

—*Financial Times*, London (independent).

Germany

HIS PREMISES may be a little shaky in parts but they remain sound enough for Washington to derive more benefit than Moscow.

—*Deutsche Zeitung*, Stuttgart (independent).

KISSINGER HAS LONG since forgotten his inaugural undertaking to institutionalize foreign policy within the [State] Department. Dr. Kissinger is even more liable than John Foster Dulles. . . . to accusations of carrying the State Department around in his hat. . . .

—*Süddeutsche Zeitung*, Munich (independent).

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