Professor Richard Smyser

SUSSER: Professor Smyser, you were also on that plane. I won't ask if you were second into China, but if you can give us your thoughts.

PROFESSOR RICHARD SMYSER: No, I was not even anxious to be the first or the second. I was quite comfortable sitting in the plane. And when Win moved up to the front of the plane, I said to Henry, "Is he trying to cozy up to Mao's niece," who was sitting at the front. And Henry said, "You never know what Win is up to." (Laughter.)

As it turned out of course, his purpose was even more sinister and so we always have congratulated him on that. But I don't even know whether I was the second or third or fourth, but I did know, and I remarked on this to Kissinger, that the fact that Mao had sent his niece to meet us in Pakistan and to accompany us on the plane, even though I should tell you she said very little and did very little on the plane, I thought was of great significance and Henry obviously also took that on.

For your amusement, I did have a chat with her, sort of as casual as one could be, and I said to her, "I hope that all this means that someday you will visit the United States." And, "Do you have any particular places you would like to go?" I was kind of intrigued to see what she would say. And she replied, "I am sure a program will be made for me." (Laughter.) Which is a very interesting kind of comment of the kind of tension that still existed in the relationship. She had to be very, very careful what she said.

Now, I had a special role for Henry in this particular thing and that was that he wanted me along in case Vietnam came up. He was going to talk about Vietnam and about the war in Vietnam, and he wanted me to be there to help, of course, with any comments and also to answer any questions that Zhou Enlai might have. The latter purpose really turned out to be not so necessary because all the questions could be answered by Dr. Kissinger himself, but still it was a kind of reassurance.

And I think if you don't mind, I'm going to talk mainly about the Vietnam aspect of this trip, which was I thought an important aspect. At the time that we took this trip, the U.S. had been involved heavily in a war in Vietnam for a number of years. To you this is ancient history. To those of us who were involved in it at the time, it was a pressing issue that occupied all television stations every night and all our concerns every day. And we had been trying to find a negotiated settlement. In Paris there were some talks, negotiations which were mostly fruitless because there was a delegation led by a man called Xuan Thuy who was kind of a Vietnamese version of Andrei Gromyko, if this gives you some idea of how useful it was to talk to him.

But from time to time, somebody else would appear. His name was Le Duc Tho. Le Duc Tho, whom we called "Ducky," was a member of the North Vietnamese Politburo. He was one of its principal ideologues and he would appear in Paris from time to time. and we decided -- Henry and Nixon decided that they would want to meet with him. And so beginning in 1970, we began meeting with Le Duc Tho, and those meetings had two marks to them. First of all, of course, the discussion was much more open, much more frank; and secondly, you had the feeling that you were talking to somebody who was serious and who was in a position to take on what you said and to do something about it.

One of the interesting things about this negotiation is that after we had been doing it for about, oh, six to nine months or a year, all of a sudden, instead of sitting in easy chairs like these opposite each other in the living room of the Vietnamese residence in the suburbs of Paris, we found ourselves sitting around a green table, which was a sign that the Vietnamese were beginning to realize that the negotiations were serious.

Now, the problem for us was the relationship to all this of the Soviets and of the Chinese, or at least this was one of the problems. And the Soviets were playing a double game. They would come to us and say, oh yes, we want to help you negotiate, we're trying to do everything we can, we're using our influence. They said this consistently to Ambassador Averell Harriman, who, for a long time, tried to lead the negotiations and who thought there might be an opening there.

But at the same time that they were doing that and making nice noises, they were also providing the Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese, with the weapons that destroyed our aircraft and with the weapons which enabled them to conduct massive warfare in South Vietnam. They had anti-aircraft missiles, the SAMs and other weaponry which enabled the Vietnamese to continue the war and also, of course, enabled them to inflict heavy casualties upon us.

This was a double game. The Chinese were not playing a double game. The Chinese message was very simply. This is "people's war." Lin Biao even wrote a booklet about it which everybody read for a long time in the State Department. People's war meant a war that would end when the people won because the enemies got too exhausted they could no longer fight. And Mao and everybody in China said consistently -- publicly, privately, in every way -- this war cannot be ended by negotiations; anybody who negotiates is a traitor to people's war; the only way to end this war is to win it and to fight. That was the Chinese line.

We had the impression as we were flying across to Peking, as we then called it, and as we discussed the meeting in advance that the Chinese were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with this position, because the longer the war went on, the more Soviet weapons poured into Vietnam, and the more the Soviets relied -- the Vietnamese relied upon the Soviets for weaponry.

So we felt that there was perhaps an opening here to ease the Chinese resistance to negotiations. And so Kissinger in the meeting with Zhou Enlai -- and I frankly don't know whether this is going to be in the FRUS documents that you're releasing or not -- said the war can end in two ways. One is by continuing the fight, and that will last a long, long time. The other way is through negotiations, and that will be shorter.

It is clear that Zhou Enlai, whose eyes were always interesting to watch, took this on and understood exactly what it meant. Now, what he said, of course, was what we knew he would say, which was the Vietnamese make their own decisions, we support them, they are fighting in a just cause, you are not fighting in a just cause, you should leave. But nonetheless, we had the distinct impression that Zhou Enlai knew exactly what we were talking about and knew exactly what the implications would be for the Chinese position in Indo-China, for the Chinese position in North Vietnam and for the Chinese position in the world.

Now, obviously nothing changed overtly. But interestingly enough, when the negotiations, the serious negotiations actually did begin later, the Chinese eased their opposition. Now, this may have been because they said, well, the Vietnamese want negotiations, we will support them. But we also felt that it was because they understood that a shorter war, a war which the Soviets would not be able to dominate by the weaponry that they could supply and that the Chinese could not, would be in their interest.

Curiously enough, there's a couple things that might be amusing in this which I want to mention. I'm not sure that they're amusing in a funny way, but interesting. One thing that Zhou Enlai said to Kissinger was that he did not know of the negotiations that we were conducting through Le Duc Tho. I have never known whether he was conducting what some people called the classic diplomatic obfuscation campaign or whether it was true, but I suspect it may well have been true because the Vietnamese, knowing of the great Chinese opposition to the negotiations, any negotiations, might well have felt that the best thing to do was not to tell them about it. The other question that it raises, of course, was whether, in fact, Chinese intelligence was not terribly good, because these talks were going on in Paris, they had a mission in Paris, and while, of course, we were able to keep them from the press and from associated other people, nonetheless I should have thought that the Chinese, if they had a really good intelligence service, would have known about them. But they didn't.

We did meet with Le Duc Tho in Paris after coming out of Beijing. It was arranged by Dick Walters, General Walters, known to most of you and will be in the FRUS, I am quite sure, who used a very simple ploy. We all went to the ambassador's residence for lunch and then the word was that Dr. Kissinger was going to rest and the press were told, "Or you can leave." And they said ha, ha, ha, ha, we're not that stupid, we're going to watch him when he leaves. And so a team of press stayed at the front door of the residence. But the residence had a back entrance which was a garage, so Dick Walters arranged for a car to come into the garage. Henry slumped down on the floor between you and me -- you may remember that -- because they figured you and I were not recognizable to anybody but Henry certainly was.

LORD: Speak for yourself. (Laughter.)

SMYSER: I'm merely saying what they thought, not necessarily what you thought. (Laughter.) But nonetheless, we were able to get out, have a meeting with Le Duc Tho and then afterwards return to the residence. And that evening, Henry had dinner with a young lady, an NBC correspondent, as I recall, in a Paris restaurant and was accused by some woman who shook her hand at him of not doing enough for peace. So this shows about how things are.

I don't want to cover any more because I don't have much time, but I just want to mention that one of the most interesting things to all this was the Japanese reaction. And it was a reaction which I can best describe as real genuine concern as to what this meant for the stability of Asia and also really genuine concern that their principal ally, the United States, had done this and not told them about it earlier. I remember in the ensuing weeks I had several conversations with Japanese diplomats who came to my office who wanted very, very much to talk about this subject. I'm sure you had the same. And this was a genuine concern of our allies about things that we had done which they thought we should have told them about. Obviously we couldn't tell them for all the reasons that you know, but there we are.

Now, I wanted to mention one other thing. I have to leave early because I now teach at Georgetown University and I have a class, a seminar, this afternoon. So if I disappear, it is not in protest at what anybody is saying, especially Winston Lord who of course is obstreperous as always -- (laughter) -- but simply because I do have to leave. But I did want to cover this subject because it was an interesting and important aspect of what we were trying to do. Thank you very much. (Applause.)