248. Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between President Nixon and his Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)1
K: Sorry to disturb you.
P: It’s all right, fine, no problem.
K: I wanted you to be aware of something. We’ve just had a Reuters dispatch that Minh has withdrawn from the race in Vietnam and that will mean that some of our people are going to be anguishing all over the place.2 Now, I feel that part of this . . . maybe Thieu was unwise in some of the things he did, but I think partly it’s also rigged by the Buddhists and the Communists and this would explain why they didn’t settle at the last meeting, that they knew this was coming. And what we would like to do is to put a lid on comments on our side for a while . . .
P: Total, total.
K: . . . and see perhaps whether we could get Thieu to get a new election law and, above all, I don’t think we should turn on Thieu at this late moment.
P: Turn on him? Never, never . . . I hope never.
K: Well, that’s the trend in the State Department.
P: Well, the hell with them.
K: They see in this a God-sent opportunity to get rid of him.
P: No, we must never do that. It’s like what they did killing Diem.
K: Exactly.
P: Never. Never, never, never. They’re to shut up. They’re to say nothing without my approval.
K: Exactly. Well, if I may do that, Mr. President . . .
P: Fine. You tell him that’s the order and . . . it isn’t too bad you know. The Communists let Thieu win, so he wins.
K: It’s no crime to have an anti-Communist win an election . . . to run . . . But we may be able to get another . . . you know get the election deferred, get a new electoral law or whatever. At any rate I [Page 882] don’t think we should now give the impression that we are turning on Thieu.
P: I’m not sure we ought to defer the election. I mean, you know, let’s get it over with, don’t you think.
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Box 11, Chronological File. No classification marking. The conversation took place at an unknown time in the evening.↩
- Minh announced his decision on the morning of August 20. (The New York Times, August 20, 1971, pp. 1–2)↩