210. Conversation Between President Nixon and his Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)1
Nixon: I notice the infiltration, for example, and—
Kissinger: Yeah, they’re pushing—
Nixon: —I wonder: is he [Laird] cutting down on the bombing?
Kissinger: Uh, no—
Nixon: He knows.
Kissinger: —I told—
Nixon: Put somebody on it. Put it on Moorer, then—
[Page 672]Kissinger: I told—I talked to Moorer yesterday along the lines—2
Nixon: —[unclear] infiltration is up, and we’ve just got to put it on him, lay it into him.
Kissinger: I talked to Moorer yesterday along the lines of what you said. Uh—
Nixon: What the hell is he bombing? How does—?
Kissinger: Of course, bombing doesn’t get the personnel.
Nixon: I know. It gets something; it gets the artillery. For Christ’s sakes, they’re bringing artillery down there.
Kissinger: Yeah. Well it’s—that’s one of the results of Laos, that they—this is the stuff that they couldn’t send down during Lam Son 719.
Nixon: Now they’re sending, sending it down in the rainy season.
Kissinger: Sending it down in the rainy season.
Nixon: It’s pretty tough.
Kissinger: [unclear] session, they repeated their demand to have political and military issues settled together, which is what we’re trying to separate in my talks. But, that couldn’t be an answer, yet. They’re just going through their book there. I mean, we go through our formal public position, and they go through theirs.
Nixon: On that Cambodian action there, what’s your final assessment there?
Kissinger: In—the Snuol one? Well, that—there’s several. One is that division in Snuol, the one that withdrew, is no good.
Nixon: Yeah, we understand what was happening, but was it as bad as—it’s not as bad as the press made it out?3
Kissinger: Oh, no, no. The immediate action—the division is no good, but the immediate action, by every account that I’ve been able [Page 673] to get, in any normal press reporting, would be a—would be considered a success. They inflicted very heavy casualties on the North Vietnamese. They were withdrawing anyway. They weren’t pushed out of Snuol. They were going to their positions in South Vietnam for the rainy season. The South Vietnamese are under orders until October to avoid casualties. Thieu has already told Bunker. That is, right after the election, he’s planning measures to anticipate North Vietnamese offensives. But, I think, on the whole, it was a very successful operation. And, in—in that part of the country, the North Vietnamese have been taking exorbitant casualties. Now, unfortunately, without—if Tri hadn’t been killed, those units wouldn’t have been there anymore. He was in the process of defeating them. Incidentally, I talked last night—I think that’s an interesting change. First of all, I don’t know whether you’ve seen today’s news summary—about three pages on SALT. I mean, that story is just going on and on. But that was a group of East Asian scholars, to whom I agreed to talk three months ago—
Nixon: Um-hmm?
Kissinger: —really just to show the administration flag.
Nixon: Hmm?
Kissinger: About 100 of them, from all over the country. There’s an East Asian society or something like that—
Nixon: Um-hmm.
Kissinger: —[John] Fairbanks, and [Edwin] Reischauer—all, all the big names.
Nixon: Um-hmm.
Kissinger: [Frank] Tillman Durdin was there. And, the mood is really amazing, how it has changed towards the administration. Only one question on Vietnam, and a very mild one, and it was the last one. All the questions had to do with China policy. And a bearded, beatnik-type got up and said, “We just want you to know how great it is. What can we do to help the President? What can we do?” [laughs] And for a group of—I’m not saying they’re going to vote for you—
Nixon: If they saw this, they’d have been standing on the chairs.
Kissinger: Well, for the—when, when this comes out—I mean, it doesn’t have to—when the results of this come out, the fact of it doesn’t have to come out.
Nixon: Oh [unclear] I know. In fact, there’s [two?] but, I mean, the results—
Kissinger: When the results come out, they’re going to be climbing walls. But, the whole mood has changed. I don’t know whether [Page 674] you saw the Oberdorfer article in The Washington Post today, that you’re going to be the peace candidate of ’72?4
Nixon: Hmm.
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Tapes, Oval Office, Conversation 512–4. No classification marking. The editors transcribed the portions of the tape recording printed here specifically for this volume. The transcript is part of a larger conversation, 9:42–10:22 a.m.↩
- According to Kissinger’s Record of Schedule, he spoke with Moorer from 4:10 to 4:13 p.m. on June 3 but no further record of their conversation has been found. (Library of Congress, Kissinger Papers, Box 438, Miscellany, 1968–76) Following up on this conversation with Nixon, Kissinger called Moorer on June 5 at 9:37 a.m. and, according to a transcript of the conversation, said, “I would like to sit down with you next week sometime to let our hair down on what is going on out there. Secondly, before that happens, I have the impression that the enemy is really building up in I Corps. We cannot afford another shellacking. I don’t give a damn about the autonomy of the field commander. We have to avoid another set of debacles here. Maybe we need another field commander. We cannot have these reports that are, in fact, misleading.” Moorer agreed, to which Kissinger replied, “Something isn’t right out there. We may have withdrawn a little too fast.” (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Box 10, Chronological File)↩
- “Snuol Battle Said To Have Reduced Viet Force by Half,” The Washington Post, June 4, 1971, p. A16.↩
- Don Oberdorfer, “Nixon in ’72: Peace Candidate,” The Washington Post, June 4, 1971, p. A21.↩