Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume VII, Vietnam, July 1970–January 1972

218. Conversation Between President Nixon and his Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)¹

Washington, June 12, 1971.

Kissinger: Mr. President, Le Duc Tho is on the way west, stopping in Peking and Moscow.

Nixon: Um-hmm.

Kissinger: He’s allegedly going to the East German Party Congress. You can bet your bottom dollar he’ll be in . . .

Nixon: [unclear]

Kissinger: He’s not at the meetings. He’s stopping in Peking and Paris—and Moscow.

[9 seconds not declassified]

Nixon: Hmm?

Kissinger: This is as close as—Le Duc Tho never shows up. They may say no, Mr. President.

Nixon: You think he’ll show up at your conference?

Kissinger: Certainly. Almost certainly. Eighty percent. If not, he’ll show up there to give them instructions.

Nixon: Well, it’s very good that he’s going to Peking.

Kissinger: But he is going through Peking and Moscow. [unclear] Le Duc Tho is the third man in the hierarchy there, the only man who can take independent decisions on negotiations. He travels only when there are crucial matters. He was there for the bombing halt, and he was there for the—

Nixon: Was he there for the bombing halt?

Kissinger: Yeah. He was there for the early discussions with—until the fall of Sihanouk, and then he left. You remember those meetings we had in the spring of—

Nixon: Oh, yeah.

Kissinger: —of 6—of ‘70.²

Nixon: Oh, yeah. He was there, yeah.

Kissinger: And he is formidable.

Nixon: Yeah. I was reading a news summary, and just thinking of the public that we have. As you say, Johnson’s was nothing compared to this. ’Cause Christ Almighty, at least he didn’t have it from within his administration.

Kissinger: Yeah.

Nixon: You know what I mean? While Gardner left, he never said anything. He was nobody. He was the Secretary of HEW.³ My God, we’ve got, as you know—But, the way these people are rushing around with this Clifford thing is unbelievable.

Kissinger: Yeah. But, I actually think that Clifford—⁴

Nixon: You don’t think he’s getting through?

Kissinger: No, Mr. President. I really believe that—

Nixon: What’s he up to? Is he trying to fork—trying to re-circuit the wires? Is that it?

Kissinger: Yeah, but Mr. President, the North Vietnamese, with Le Duc Tho on the move, sure, they’re trying to—

Nixon: Um-hmm?

Kissinger: —to draw blood, and they’re trying to see whether they can trigger us into—

Nixon: Yeah?

Kissinger: —into making concessions before he gets there.

Nixon: There ain’t going to be any.

Kissinger: He does not have anything. I will bet my bottom dollar on it that he has nothing of any significance. He may have some Delphic hints by some low-level guy.

Nixon: Um-hmm.

Kissinger: It doesn’t—they don’t do business that way.

Nixon: The probability that they’re trying to do—if they are going to do something, that they don’t—they wanted to do it through somebody else. In other words, not let us do it. And there’s always that possibility, Henry.

Kissinger: There’s always that slight possibility, Mr. President. But, even then, we’re not in a bad position, because we can say on May 31st we made this proposal.⁵ And, I mean, we’ve got him outflanked. That if they’re screwing us—

Nixon: Um-hmm?

Kissinger: —you can say that. Whenever you decide you can—whenever you decide that this thing isn’t getting anywhere—

Nixon: Yeah?

Kissinger: —you can decide on May 31st, on the highest level, we made this proposal. While it was under consideration in Hanoi, we were forced into—Clifford came in with his variation of it. And, you can use it either as—in—as an example of independent negotiation by Clifford, or as an example of, of Hanoi’s treachery.

Nixon: Um-hmm.

Kissinger: I—I think we’ve got them outmaneuvered, but my impression is that the press—I saw Henry Hubbard and [Jerrold] Schecter⁶ yesterday, and I took a very tough line. I said—I reminded them that on March 25th, after Laos, when they were all sneering at us, on the patio of my office in San Clemente, I expressed your conviction and my conviction that this—there might be negotiations this year. And that, at that time, everyone was saying negotiations were senseless; all that’s left to do is to get out. I said to them, “Do you people really believe that we’re missing a bet? Do you really believe we don’t look into all these things? If you do—” I said, “I admit it. We won’t give you any facts. We won’t confirm or deny anything. And if you write that we’re missing them, it even helps what we are trying to do. So, you just go ahead and write it. I am not going to negotiate publicly with, with them—with them.” They were really shaken. They didn’t know what to do. Because, on the one hand, they had this—I mean, after all, it isn’t plausible, that we, who—no one has talked more about negotiations than you, or I in my backgrounders, here. This is not a Johnson phenomenon.

Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: And I don’t think they’re going to—they haven’t hit us in the press very hard. In fact, they haven’t hit us at all. Even The Washington Post had a very ambiguous editorial, yesterday, which for [them] it was really quite moderate.⁷ They said both are wrong; both Clifford and we. Well, that’s pretty good for them.

Nixon: Why’d they say Clifford was wrong?

Kissinger: Well, because he was implying that there was a solution without giving it, and we were wrong by refusing to recognize that there may be movement. Hell, if there’s movement, we produced it. We will be able to show that this break of Xuan Thuy about Thieu was a direct outgrowth—you remember, I spotted it before they even saw it, and told you that this is an answer to what we said to them on May 31st. I really think we have, we have a fighting chance, now, for a serious negotiation this summer. Le Duc Tho wouldn’t be there unless they really wanted to look it over. He may say, “No,” as he did in March—

Nixon: Suppose it does start to open up: what do you do? Then you put it in the Bruce channel?

Kissinger: Well, then, we have to decide how to do it, Mr. President. Whether—I really believe—

Nixon: You just can’t keep running over there.

Kissinger: No, no. I can’t do it. That’s—

Nixon: Why? We can’t do it without a—who could do it if we, if we—

Kissinger: Well, I’ve worked out—

Nixon: —dispose of it? But, we’ve got to have something. You—we, we can’t just continue to do this, you know?

Kissinger: No, no. No, the choice we have to make is—Incidentally, I’ve worked out a way, now, by which I can get over there with great safety. The British have a courier plane that lands at an RAF base, and they will take me anytime I want to go, so we don’t have to use American planes.

Nixon: Um-hmm.

Kissinger: And they are absolutely secure. [unclear] I might have to go once more—or at most, twice more—to do it, to get it done. The question we have to decide is whether we should let Bruce surface it, or whether we should get you to write a letter? My strong instinct is, Mr. President, that if they—

Nixon: I’d better do it.

Kissinger: That you do it. This is what I meant. That’s the decision we have to make—

Nixon: [unclear] Hell, we could let Bruce do it. [unclear] both Laird and Rogers would be in saying, “Hey, great.”

Kissinger: Well, that’s why I think, Mr. President, that, as soon as we know a serious negotiation is starting, you have to get out in front and break the deadlock. Or—or make something that breaks—do something that breaks the deadlock. And that can be easily arranged.

Nixon: We can arrange that.

Kissinger: I think that’s better than just letting it trickle out in Paris.

Nixon: Work on it a bit, how long these general principles [unclear]—

Kissinger: I think, Mr. President, that if there is going to be an agreement, and there—

Nixon: It’ll come quickly.

Kissinger: It will come this summer. That’s the funny thing.

Nixon: That’s always the theory you’ve had. Is it—?

Kissinger: Well, I’ve always had the theory, but I think the Vietnamese elections are helping us that way.

Nixon: What’s your view of the Big Minh–Ky deal I noticed in the paper this morning?⁸

Kissinger: They actually made it?

Nixon: Well, it said that they had made a deal. I don’t know, maybe see if it’s true.

Kissinger: Well, my view of the—

Nixon: It’s just as well; put ‘em over there. But I want them to really ride hard on those bastards and let them know they aren’t going to get anything.

Kissinger: Well, my view of the Big Minh–Ky deal is that it gives the opposition to Thieu a viable combination—

Nixon: Hmm.

Kissinger: —but that Thieu will, almost certainly, will win.

Nixon: Well, suppose they won? There’s not much difference, would it?

Kissinger: Mr. President—

Nixon: They, they live at our sufferance, anyway. They’d have to come along. They’d have to.

Kissinger: If—Ky is actually a friend of ours. Ky behaved with great dignity—

Nixon: That’s right.

Kissinger: —on the occasion that I saw him to turn off his trip, yeah—

Nixon: Right.

Kissinger: Uh—

Nixon: Big Minh is just dumb.

Kissinger: Big Minh is just a front man.

Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: And—so, I—I would think that if we get our deal, and if then Thieu is defeated in the election, so be it. It’s the major thing. But, I don’t think that will happen. If it does happen—

Nixon: Um-hmm? What is your [unclear]. What’s your—any judgment on the, the Cambodian action? I noticed they were trying to build that up now, at least at the present time.

Kissinger: Well, uh—

Nixon: How significant is it?

Kissinger: Well, it’s significant in the sense—

Nixon: Not as significant as the press obviously feels about it?

Kissinger: No, but it’s significant in the sense that this damned—that the death of Tri obviously kept us from knocking them out in that area. And that may have been the worst loss, because we did gain in Lam Son 719—

Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: —60 to 80 percent of what we wanted, but after Tri’s death—as I told you then—that Cambodian operation just petered out. I don’t think they’re going to topple the situation there. What they’re trying to do is to create—reconstitute the sanctuaries based on a northern supply route this time.

Nixon: Um-hmm. Well, that’s enough.

Kissinger: And that’s—that, I think, they’re in the process of. But, another problem, of course, is—another—one reason for it is that Thieu is economizing his forces now, because of the election.

Nixon: Not trying to have too many casualties?

Kissinger: No.

[Omitted here is discussion of the Middle East and the PRC, portions of which are printed in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, volume XIII, Soviet Union, October 1970–October 1971, Document 256.]

Nixon: Getting back to this Clifford/Gardner, et cetera. I noticed Gardner was on—

Kissinger: Yeah, I saw that.

Nixon: —against our fellow [unclear]. But anyway, [unclear] miserable prick, isn’t he?

Kissinger: Gardner—

Nixon: Right?

Kissinger: —he is as petty—

Nixon: [unclear] He’s not an admirable person.

Kissinger: He’s an effeminate—I mean, after all, he does not know a goddamn thing about Vietnam.

Nixon: Or about anything else.

Kissinger: Uh—

Nixon: I mean, about anything else in foreign policy.

Kissinger: At least education he’s given some thought to, but—

Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: —for him to say he—that you might still be there ten years from now, that is so—I told these guys yesterday from the press—

Nixon: Jesus Christ.

Kissinger: I said, “We’ve withdrawn steadily for two years. We’ve never lowered the withdrawal rate. We’ve never stopped withdrawing. What do you really think?”

Nixon: Well, that’s what I told [Senator John Sherman] Cooper. I said, “Now, John, you know damn well what the situation’s going to be next year, don’t you?” And I says, “You’re—you goddamn—you’re our opponents, now. Maybe you’d want to get on board? And you—” That’s it, Henry. They know damn well where we are.

Kissinger: But I see now, Mr. President, why—

Nixon: Hmm?

Kissinger: —Le Duc—why they couldn’t come to the meeting: because there’s the East—on the 20, or the 13th, or the 20th—because there’s the East German Party Congress from the 14th to the 21st. Xuan Thuy undoubtedly will be there to talk to Le Duc Tho. And—

Nixon: Yeah?

Kissinger: —so, the 26th is the earliest they could possibly be there.

Nixon: In terms of reaction to this Cambodian thing, is there—are we doing adequately there? Part of the problem with Laird is holding back on the—

Kissinger: Well—

Nixon: —airstrikes?

Kissinger: —not—no, the real problem is that MACV is just not on top of its job. That, either because Laird has a private deal with Abrams, or because Abrams has just quit, they’re not making their extra special effort, Mr. President, that makes the difference between success and failure. I think that, that is the—that is one of the major problems.

Nixon: Just sitting out there like the French used to sit.

Kissinger: And—

Nixon: [unclear] Goddammit, we just need a general. I agree with you: we’ll take that little DePuy.⁹ He’s a cocky little bastard and let him go out there and to shape them up.

Kissinger: I think that is one of the big problems: that we’re just not—

Nixon: We’ll be—it’ll be easy after the next announcement to bring Abrams home.

Kissinger: Yeah.

Nixon: I mean, just say, “We’re finished there.” Hand DePuy with what we have left. That there’s been no deal, and tell him don’t worry, he’ll—he’ll be looking for our opportunities to smack ‘em.

Kissinger: I just have an instinct that we—I don’t know whether they’ll make it, but this is as close as we’ve ever been. It’s less—it’s still far. It’s at best one in three, Mr. President. I don’t want to—

Nixon: I know. I know.

Kissinger: —to mislead you, but—

Nixon: Don’t worry, I’m not. I’m not being hopeful, but, nevertheless, there’s a chance.

Kissinger: There is a chance.

Nixon: And there has never been before. So, we’ll see. Hell, these, these people will—you can be sure, too, that every stinking political fellow like Clifford will try to get in on that chance. You realize what this would do to them politically?

Kissinger: They’d be dead.

Nixon: If we pull off the negotiations, they’d be absolutely dead.

Kissinger: If we are ruthless enough.

Nixon: [unclear]

Kissinger: If we don’t let them get off the hook, again.

Nixon: [unclear] off the hook—I’d never. On this one, we’re not going to bring them in on it, we’re not going to [unclear].

Kissinger: Because that’s the mistake we made after October 7th.¹⁰

Nixon: That’s right.

Kissinger: Now that I look back, I was part of the mistake—

Nixon: I think we shouldn’t have even made the speech.

Kissinger: We shouldn’t have made the speech, but instead then of wallowing in their approbation—

Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: —we should have reminded the country that these were the guys who were rioting against us.

Nixon: That’s right.

Kissinger: Who were encouraging them and against whose opposition we got to that, that point.

1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Tapes, Oval Office, Conversation 518–3. No classification marking. The editors transcribed the portions of the tape recording printed here specifically for this volume. The exchange is part of a larger conversation, 10:32–11:11 a.m.
2. Kissinger met with Le Duc Tho in Paris on February 21, March 16, and April 4, 1970. (See Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970, Documents 185, 189, 190, 191, 201, 218, 222, and 223)
3. John Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, August 1965 to January 1968 resigned because of his opposition to the war.
4. See footnote 2, Document 217.
5. See Document 207.
6. Hubbard was White House correspondent for Newsweek and Schecter White House correspondent for Time magazine.
7. The editorial was entitled “Promise on Vietnam?” (June 11, 1971, p. A24)
8. “Ky, Minh Ally for Viet Vote,” The Washington Post, June 12, 1971, p. A1.
9. Lieutenant General William E. DePuy, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Army.
10. Reference is to the speech Nixon made on October 7, 1970. See Document 46.