246. Memorandum From President Nixon to his Assistant for National Security Affairs
(Kissinger)1
Washington, April 22, 1970.
It is quite clear from reading Sihanouk’s letter to Mansfield2 that Sihanouk has become a captive, perhaps a willing one, of the
Communists, lock, stock and barrel. Be sure that a copy of this letter is,
in confidence, given to Rogers and to
Helms, but if you will re-read
the letter carefully you will find that it parrots the Communist line in
virtually every respect. My guess is that the Chinese would never let him
get it out unless it had been a letter along these lines, but it is also
very possible that this reflects his own personal views. Perhaps you can
think of a way, or Helms can, that
the substance of his communication, without revealing the Mansfield source, gets around in places
where it would hurt him.
Attachment
Letter From Norodom
Sihanouk to Senator Mike
Mansfield
In this so dark and so painful period in the life of the Cambodian people
and of mine, your voice, Senator, was raised again in defense of truth
and justice. If your government and so many others had listened to the
voice of wisdom and human liberalism which was always yours, the peoples
of Indochina and Indochina herself would have recovered peace in
independence a long time ago. Unfortunately, wisdom and good sense have
never prevailed since the end of the Indochinese war and the Vietnamese
people first, then the Laotian people, finally the Cambodian people,
have in spite of themselves soon fallen into a second war of Indochina,
longer and more murderous yet than the preceding one.
[Page 848]
As far as my people and myself are concerned—and taking into account the
egoism of certain great powers—an egoism that has allowed the
installation in Phnom-Penh of an illegal, dictatorial, bellicist and
racist government, practising genocide without precedent in modern
history, with the exception of the monstrous crimes of the Hitlerian
regime, we have no other recourse than an armed fight for national
liberation and the triumph of justice, even if we have to obtain them at
the price of an ideological change in Cambodia.
The most severe ideology—as long as it is based on social justice— is
infinitely preferable to a regime composed of greatly corrupted people
and anti-popular reactionaries who impose themselves upon the nation
with guns and bayonets; through bluff and demagogy, through the odious
and anachronistic awakening of a racism which had been asleep for many
centuries, through the mass assassination of a national opposition, a
mass genocide of a foreign and unarmed population and by lighting up of
the fires of a war that the “vis-à-vis” (opposite number) has neither
wanted nor provoked against our nation.
I do not know what our future will be but what I want to tell you here is
that the Khmer people and myself will never forget what Senator
Mansfield has done for us and
for peace and justice in the world.
Pray, Senator, accept the assurance of my eternal gratefulness, of my
very high consideration and of my everlasting friendship.
