our building rivals anything you can build in new york or philadelphia. that was nice for the people of the state to say we have a marvelous building that will stand the test of time. >> find out where our vehicles are going next. you're watching american history tv, all weekend on c-span 3 next come the former net -- former members of president nixon's security council talk about -- they discussed the president's policies during policies torael -- egypt and israel during the war. this event, cohosted by the national archives, and the richard nixon foundation, is about 90 minutes.

>> this is probably going to be the first in a several part on how it the nixon administration change the world. particularly, henry kissinger's national security council. it led to the first middle east peace agreement in probably 2000 years. what gets lost in this amazing series of successes is how president nixon and his very able foreign-policy adviser henry kissinger transformed the national security decision-making structure. on the very first day of the administration, these innovations created the groundwork for all of the successes they were able to achieve in the next and poshard presidency -- nixon presidency. and you might say, that is more about good housekeeping is that a brilliant policymaking.

but they realized that the key to a successful foreign-policy was dedication. they discussed how they wanted to structure the national security council staff. nixon learned firsthand about a good counsel when he was eisenhower poshard vice president. eisenhower's security council was more like a military-based one. this allowed eisenhower to deal with the day-to-day crisis, as well as to devote to more strategic planning. more so, in his memoirs, richard nixon complained that a lot of eisenhower's time was wasted. nixon's personal preference was to do things on paper, he said he to get briefings through

memoranda rather than on -- them through meetings. the other shortcomings of the eisenhower system was because it was the military. so when decisions were made on the lower level, and the boss got these decisions, it was a yes or no, or choosing from a, b, or c. nixon saw first hand of the weakness of their foreign policy decision-making processes. he thought that kennedy and johnson were also more of an ad hoc crisis decision-making process. at the end of the johnson administration, decisions were made by a few people on a regular tuesday luncheon, because johnson it that point, was afraid of leaks.

together, kissinger and nixon were formed the national security structure. now, people talk about the national security council, and it is important to make it a station, that the national security council is something that is mandated by law by the national security act of 1947. there are three members, the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state. the national security council staff, which is what more people refer to, is in fact the staffers who prepare the documents for that top level group. in nixon's book, he said that eisenhower made the selection because he wanted dulles to be the chief foreign-policy administrator. but nixon wanted firm policy directive from the white house. kissinger described the johnson administration process that i talked about as lacking focus.

there was not a lot of preparation in the staff were, and decisions were made, more or less, on-the-fly. the administration became hostage and prisoners to the events of the day, and were not able to formulate how they were strategically able to deal with things. nixon and kissinger did not do it alone, despite what their memoirs might have said. he is a national recognized scholar at stanford university when nixon tapped him. once nixon became president, richard allen came the deputy director of the national security council.

john lehman, sitting next to him, joined the campaign staff in 1968. laymen became the national security council staff head of affairs, and often had a very testy relationship between the white house and congress, particularly during the vietnam war. john lehman personally gave henry kissinger headaches for his gossip column whispers about kissinger being the most eligible bachelor. now this gentleman was in the demonstration and joined the staff at the very beginning. he probably became henry kissinger's closest associate

throughout the ministration. they worked throughout the vietnam peace negotiations through other foreign-policy issues, and particularly, opening to china, particularly, it was created in that office. they were talking about the opening to china. winston helped to plan and was part of kissinger's secret trip. winston accompanied him on every one of his secret trips, he was later made the ambassador to china, i was also kissinger's right-hand man. he was also a close personal confidant. and bud was a vietnam veteran in the marine corps. he joined the kissinger staff in 1971. but like winston, but mcfarlane soon expanded his roles. him soon expanded his roles. he was able to do many things. with that, i would like to talk to these gentlemen about their recollections and remembrances, and a good point in the bad

points, about how to change the world. i would like to start with you, a dick. nixon had given a lot of thought to these issues. the prompted him to want to change the nsc system? >> he was informed as to how he was structure things as president.

his personality was such that he insisted on planning. he spent hours and hours and hours reading, mostly reading, some writing, and lots of travel, before he became president. he had the opportunity to see american foreign-policy in disarray. he thought that all of the elements of national power should be brought together under the rubric of national security. it was not a particular policy toward a conglomerate of states. it was military power, it was economic power, it is our position in the world, it is

even down to, and including, information and how we presented ourselves. we did a fairly efficient job, although we were highly criticized. nixon was highly critical of and wanted to inform it. his idea was the comprehensive national security strategy, harnessing all of the components. in order to do that, he spent hours and hours and hours of the time that i knew him, and that was a long time, and that as president, and in the transition. , charged kissinger and us with doing just what he wanted to do. organizing and bringing decision-making back into the white house where properly belong. >> nixon got elected in november of 1968, and took office in january of 1969. in that. of time, that is when you crafted this whole new system.

-- in that period of time, that is when you crafted this whole new system. >> yes. >> how is a codified? were there pieces of paper? it included the state department, the have -- the and i cash the cia, what it other departments think about this? >> i don't think people were particularly fond of this at the beginning. one of president nixon's biographies was so battered by the washington establishment during his years in the congress and as senator because he was really viewed as an outsider, and particularly going after alger hiss was thought to be an unforgivable sin.

so, he was not completely trusting of the bureaucracy. so he had a very small group, and winston was one of the leaders, along with dick, with the lead up to it. they put together the framework. and then, having a more experienced counsel to provide the actual framework, the agency was completely "baked." >> now we have a distinction vetween nssm's and nsc's, what was the difference? and all of you can chime in by the way. the national security decision memoranda, number two, was the one that created a different structure that would change the way people were in charge.

>> yes, that was the complication of everything he wanted. as a result of the discussion of the transition at his own thinking, that is exactly what he had written down and what he had approved. in the memorandum, it was approved, you can see it on the memorandum, it was approved without any other commentary on the side. no penciled notes on the outside, and no modifications. it was because he had earlier drafts presented to him before he got the final draft. >> a clean copy and a final analysis. how is this a much different than they had been before? >> we went to a hotel in 1958, and we met and nixon had wanted to get his views on how to get

the system together. dick and others also contributed. the key thing about this new system was that who chairs the committee. the person who chairs the committee sets the agenda and runs the show, and actually make sure what is put into effect. there was six basic committees. one for general foreign-policy problems, one for crises that would arise, one that talked about foreign-policy issues, a verification panel that looked arms control, and two intelligence committees. all of these were chaired by henry kissinger. him all of these agencies had a

chance to get their views on these, and he wanted another option. nixon genuinely wanted different policy recommendations of which agency supported it, and the pros and the cons, the expenses, and the risks. he used to joke that we would get three options, and the first would be unconditional surrender, the second would be nuclear war, and the third would be continued present policy. these were serious options. the other thing that you wanted to make sure was it was a strategy and that you are not just reacting to crisis. this was just the system the dominated foreign-policy in terms of the white house. we had several factors.

secondly, it was a distrust of others. it was about bringing a deleted trust to were also imaginative and innovative. thirdly, he had the guts to appoint henry kissinger and not nelson rockefeller. he was a jewish immigrant from harvard. and then you had a terrific staff, present company excluded of course, and they all work harder than the state department. then you had issues that we will get into, that let themselves to a close-knit operation and the secretive operation. the three key issues were in vietnam, china, and russia. these are some of the factors that led to the domination by

the white house. >> i wanted to focus on us. because it was different than before. who chaired this? there was always the inter-agency discussions in the eisenhower and kennedy and the johnson administration. but who was the chair? >> i don't want to but in here, but even under the nixon era, you had the under secretary, who was essentially a person who would look at issues sometimes before they got to the nsc. but in previous administrations, the key committees were generally chaired by the secretary of state or his deputy, as opposed to the nsc. >> bud, you are a military guy. talk to us about your perspective from the military. >> this was very welcome to the military, these plans were

always looking over the horizon and look at what could go wrong, what might happen in the middle east, soviet union, or russia now. so the system the resident nixon put in place would put a premium on planning. how should we approach east-west, or soviet relations? what are the economic military relations and how we can bring a together all of the u.s. resources to focus on their vulnerabilities, and by the way, what is the cost of doing option one, option two, and option three? because financially, there are risk, and politically there are allies, and so forth. so the military welcome to the system. it is fair to state, however, that the cabinet officers are strong-willed people normally, and you would really have to

have a talented staff. when you brought together the experts from the cia and so forth around the table, they had credentials also. it was only by death of the excellence of people like bill sonnenfeld, bill simon, and other practicing diplomats of scholars, who for decades already were trusted, when they went to these interdepartmental meetings, they brought information and they spoke with authority. yes they were backed by the white house am a but they were intellectually up to the job. a they were not there as patsies listening to ideas that might have been a little bit fringe,

or whatnot. so it was not the president who was just as keenly well-informed, he was a scholar himself, and it was not just dr. kissinger, but it was also subordinates who were really up to the task of the great grit work. they brought to the president options that made a lot of sense. he would pick one, and they were the people who cracked the whip after he made a decision about our policy towards the soviet union. if any cabinet agency began to go off the reservation and very a little bit, they would get a call from sonnenfeld or someone

else. in short, it was a disciplined system. it was a system that studied matters exhaustively and came to decisions, and publish them. it is almost unique in american history's that it -- history that in those years, every american could go to a bookstore and get a copy of the national security policy of the united states. every year. it covered every region. and arms control, and trade, and so forth. it was not a furtive, close-hold, secret operation, except when needed. it was open. and its successes bear that out. >> no system is perfect. bad systems can do foreign-policy. but get systems can succeed.

in contrast, nothing is perfect, especially if that is what the president wants, above all. but nixon and kissinger wanted something that was formal and that everyone was involved, and usually there was only one recommendation to the president. the compromises were hashed out before they even got to the president's desk. also, it the difference leaned heavily on dulles, where is nixon leaned heavily on his national security advisor. they would get together every tuesday for lunch because they were worried about leaks and they wanted to look at fast-moving decisions.

that had that advantage of all speed, but you did not always have carefully prepared agendas for the lunch. it had different interpretations of decisions that were made during lunch, and even different implementation. >> i would add one postscript here. and a second later i will come back to bud. president nixon had the good sense to pick and recognize the legislative arm in all of this, and to pick the premier fellow in all of washington and that was bryce harlow. he had originally written, among other things, that part of eisenhower's farewell speech, where he warned of the military-industrial complex. bryce was a lobbyist, heaven for fend, and that was when mackleroy had been the secretary

of defense. beginning in 19 tuesday 9 -- beginning in 1969, 1968 actually, there was congressional understanding and congressional funding and of course, congressional approval of policies. i think the nixon system engendered respect on the part of the legislature. i saw that he had a plan, a program, he had things in hand, and he did not waste any time implementing those.

that kind of perspective build support, and the legislative support, for the funding of programs that is necessary. >> i want to go back and say the point that winston made, where it was the best. they might not have made national figures, but they were the best in their fields. john, jump in to comment. >> it is important to understand where the national security council came from. it did not happen and come into

full bloom in 1947, but it was one of the most bitter and contentious periods that makes today's partisanship look like kindergarten. in the years of 1946, 1947, 1948, there was better policy. you have to remember that when franklin roosevelt took office for the first year, and his first term, his white house staff was five people. his was true cabinet government. he wanted to hear directly from each of the service chiefs, from the secretary of the military department, and so forth. there was no such thing as a national security staff. gradually, as the war went on and the chiefs became more -- running back and forth every day during the war -- that increased somewhat, but there never really was a national security council. >> they were not running back to the pentagon, the pentagon did not exist at that point. >> there was the war department,

and by the end of the war, it was in that five sided building, and there was the navy department down by the mall, and that is another story about how they got kicked out of their. the fact is, the cabinet were the officers and the president's advisors. they met daily during the war. then truman came in. truman really kind of burned about the way that roosevelt had such a powerful persona and had the tenure of four terms, and was running policy completely. >> he wasn't included a burned him that way.

>> no, he was not included. in his memoirs and gray by re-freeze, he really, really disliked the navy and the navy department. roosevelt always referred -- when he was talking about this navy -- he always said "we" and "us," and when he talked about the army, he always said, "them," and "those guys." he thought that they had much more power than they should. >> you have to be very careful. >> roosevelt was an assistant secretary of the navy. >> yes, under josephus daniels. the fact that there was an attempt in the truman white house to seize back control from both the state department and especially the two military department, there was a huge battle over the consolidation and the creation of the department of defense.

the secretary of the navy, really wrote a lot of the 1947 act. part of creating a national security council was, indeed, his -- he wrote it with his friends on the hill. it was to get control of the way that truman was running policy, trying to consolidate things, particularly clark clifford and a few others, and the cabinet, particularly the new defense department, and the state department, were frozen out of the policy. the nsc was thought up by forrestal, who was the first secretary of defense, and dean

atchinson, and they were trying to get back in control. the way it was originally organized, it was staffed by serving military officers and foreign service officers. there was no budget for a national security council staff. truman never used it. he resented it. he just was furious about the whole establishment of it. so he never used it. eisenhower turned it into a military staff. and then after that, it reflected how interested a president was in foreign-policy and national security. lbj was much more interested in

civil rights and domestic affairs, so vietnam became the total, but having a concept and a vision as to how the rest of the world should be, he just was not interested. the nsc reverted to a very ad hoc tuesday lunch kind of ad hoc meeting, so sometimes the cabinet officers had to weigh on things that he was not interested in, and they never knew what was going on. it was a major change, and then when president nixon came in, here was this guy who, critics of watergate say, was not interested in domestic and social policy, he was really interested in national security policy, and kissinger he found

his alter ego. their structure, whatever process that was used to build it and put in place, was designed to bring all of that back in and an orderly and structured fashion. >> none of us want to denigrate the other agencies. in fact, very many abled people took care of a lot of issues. also, they had to implement what was decided by the nsc. all of us would not deny that the white house dominated a lot of secrecy, as we will get into later, but they still provided a lot of information that was needed by the president. >> there is just one little component, the other point that i would like to make, is that

all that we find in the memorandum that was submitted by the president, including what was the united states information agency in the process. to my utter surprise, i was walking to my first national security council meeting, probably in early january or later january, across the street from the eob. ipass frank shakespeare, i said frank i will see you at the nsc meeting. he said, what nsc meeting? that's when i realize that his agency was not in the meeting. they had simply been dismissed. nixon himself did not mind that the exclusion had occurred. henry did not trust them. >> you guys talk about, and certainly others have written about, the national security

staff, and yet as somebody has pointed out, you guys were really young. you were very young. why do you just talk through how you found your way. let's start with bud. >> i was a beret officer at the will time. my office was next door to henry kissinger. i saw the opportunity to be interviewed for his military adviser position. then over time, i began to focus on working on handling intelligence dimensions of the relationship with china. also the sharing of sensitive intelligence information that the chinese would tell you was

not in the american cards that were being played against the soviet union. >> it was trying to gain the chinese confidence. >> it was immensely valuable to both countries. they got periodic briefings on soviet military deployment, what was their strength, their readiness, what about able deployments, what about soviet aid programs to india, but in short, providing chinese intelligence that they could

count on that was immensely valuable. if you were in moscow the time, and suddenly this was going on, it not only enabled you to keep 45 divisions on the chinese border, now that the americans were allied in supportive, but of those 45 divisions, we do not have to worry about them in europe. or at least not as much. nixon's policy was adopted part and parcel by the reagan administration in 1982. we are talking about the nixon administration, there were very,

very strong-willed cabinet officers that disagreed with these policies in the reagan administration. but nixon wanted these disagreements to be aired in the meetings, and decisions made in neck they are so, but, in order to do that, you had to have a strong white house staff they could bring an honest disagreements, analyze the merits of each, and the nixon model with dr. kissinger really established a process. it would get the best from the bureaucracy, including the disagreements, options, make

decisions, and then oversee the implementation of policy that brought such excess in the china opening and the middle east diplomacy, and the arms control agreement, and so forth. and similarly, later in the reagan years, successful policies that accelerated the collapse of marxism in the world, and ended the cold war, the reduction of nuclear weapons for the first time in history, and all it involve enough a model that was very similar to the nixon years. >> go ahead. by the way, everybody feel that you can -- >> we don't comment on these everyday. the basic patterns of what the president wants to delegate, all presidents have to make the most difficult decisions. it really does not matter whether we are focusing on domestic or international policy.

you had four delegating the information to kissinger, and he had nixon. none of these systems are perfect. they all had their advantages and disadvantages. >> i think there is one dimension where, had we all been able to go back to the creation, we might have asked for more help in the drafting. congress is hardly mentioned in any of these documents. while the nsc meetings and the agendas and the options were really the finest put together, ever up to that point, it was a 500 pound gorilla in the room that was never considered. >> that was your job, right?

>> yes, and at one point there was a meeting, and the congressional leader said, "god dammit, nixon, you got a get congressional input." >> i think somebody pointed this out, but the economic to mentions of foreign policy requires attention. in all fairness, economic power is absolutely crucial. in those days, it was less important. what is more important than being in the system. >> in respect to that, the

shortcoming became so apparent by 1971, that nixon created the council on national economic policy, i know because i was shanghaied to come back to help peter peterson. i was to build a council on economic policy, for the secretaries on commerce, labor, and agriculture, and all of those were international issues that begin to burn my 1971. dumping japanese television sets, expropriation of various american properties abroad such as in chile, and worries there, so that dimension really took off because of nixon.

when we speak of president nixon as an architectural president, which is the overarching theme of our discussion today, that discussion was stimulated by pressure from congress and pressure from the secretary of the treasury and who was a very strong voice and who is often thought to be nixon's successor. >> the person that everybody seems to who is not on the stage is the assistant to the president. he was part of the inner circle. wave your hand, tom. [laughter] >> crisis.

we have not dealt with crisis. >> nixon and kissinger set up a system where every agency would have a role that would contribute to the nssm. these were given to next and by -- these were given to nixon by kissinger and it would reflect -- >> always an audit number. >> always an odd number. kissinger would also recommend the pros and cons and say however, i recommend option b. it was suddenly getting a vote that was superior in some ways to the agency.

winston, you made a point in your writing that the system was not only unique to nixon and to kissinger, what it was needed at the time. it centralized the need of issues and is suited itself to the power in the white house because of the country and the issues we were dealing with. >> we were dealing with is intellectually stimulating system. i was putting together these briefing books. there was a strategy before you got the specific choices, and that was true of almost every issue. what you are referring to is the three most important issues when nixon face when he came into the office. trying to open china, that the top of the soviet union, and the ending of the vietnam war -- the

detente with the soviet union, and the ending of the vietnam war. there was an economic component, i might add. it was urgent. you did not have to worry about public policies, so all three of and these issues lend themselves to delicate negotiations out of the public spotlight, so there is a lot of sensitivities with these three issues. therefore, it lent itself to the nixon-kissinger approach. him we want to get into the secrecy issue at one point. from the outset of the ministration, it lent itself to white house control and secrecy. that had pluses and minuses. it was part of the reason that they went about diplomacy in

this way. >> with respect to the opening of china, it is also important to recognize that nixon wrote an article in october for the october 1967 issue of foreign affairs. he wrote it almost entirely by himself, along with ray price, pat buchanan, and richard whelan, and i participated in this as well, but this article really telegraphed the opening to china. nobody paid attention to it. it is quite cryptic. it is called "asia after vietnam," and nixon calls for a series of summit meetings and the opening of asia. but nobody picked it up and nobody -- and he did not elaborate on it. people thought that it was nixon referring to his secret plan for

vietnam. but he never had a secret plan for vietnam. that initiative was in place during -- place. now, i participated and was walking out with henry, and it don't know -- and i don't know if you are walking out of this meeting as well, and he said find a way to get in touch with china. that was the last remark out of the door from the oval office walking down the hall. and henry muttered, "is he crazy?" well, he himself became the vehicle to get in touch with china. >> it was beyond that. i fit for your first, 1969, 1

week -- on february 1, 1969, one week after the inauguration, henry agreed with the concept as well, by the way, but he certainly agree that the opening to china with helpless with the russians and do a lot of other things, that there is no question that this was one of nixon's basic impulses from the beginning within one week of his inauguration. by the way, he did not have a secret plan for vietnam. but he wanted to use the russians to squeeze hanoi. he wanted to construct the best possible version of events. >> you both talk about how kissinger got control of the bureaucracy. tell us how to nixon and kissinger would let the world

know that the action was in the west wing of the white house and not in any other agency. >> in one of the referendums, there was a reference to an annual statement. those annual statements became very important. you could go to the government printing office and get a copy of the american principles and policy, and it was bound for the year and beyond. it stated the country's goals for the next year. >> we would beat out these issues in san clemente every year. the president was only interested in vietnam. for example, in china, those reports gave a lot of indication of what direction we were going to take with china.

people sort of overlooked it. >> yeah, i think it -- i think it is worth talking about for a little bit longer. this is the first time the administration had said publicly, and not in a boilerplate bureaucratized language, this is where we want to go. and kissinger and nixon and i know you are part of it winston, you would take for guys -- four guys and go to san clemente and create white papers for the ministration. >> one last introduction to this, although it did not get attention from the press and from the domestic audience that

it should have, the foreign will it should have, the foreign audience understood. if you try to draft a document for kissinger, he always rejected the first draft. it was made inherently worthless. i was doing a section on indochina, and it was about 30 pages, this first draft. i did not even read it because i knew he would reject it. on page 15 i put in a sentence that was grammatically correct, but consisted of titles of all of kissinger's books. he caught it. i wanted to chime in there. >> thus far, we have talked about the planning and the thoroughness of american policy

for every part of the world. that planning was really part of an important part of the nixon administration. there are things that happened it don't anticipate. wars, crises overseas that involve american interest, so what you do when you have a crisis? that was equally as impressive as the long-term planning, and the way the president nixon organize his team. probably the most salient example was during the presidency, and the yom kippur war of october of 1973. kissinger for distance -- had been confirmed as secretary of state. i mention this primarily, however, because it didn't end well.

you can read about that. you can see a forum like this one the focuses entirely on the middle east war. i mention of foreign entirely different reason. it was because of the resume -- the resilience and the strength of president nixon who remembered the circumstances. here was an american ally, israel, attacked from two sides, syria and egypt, and losing. and it looked like for about a week's time, israel was going to suffer a pretty serious defeat. president nixon, however, here, seeing the importance of avoiding that catastrophe, was himself besieged by the watergate problem.

a challenge that have lasted over a year now. he was being attacked by members of congress and others and the press. and an ally was about to go under. it required personal composure and vision of where he wanted this to end, and he got the aid of dr. kissinger and some subordinates and the department of defense. bear in mind, the pressures of watergate, and his vice president was about to resign. and the survey union had its own interest to get back into the middle east, and it was looking for ways to undermine american policy, to the point of it even alerting seven airborne divisions to go back to egypt will and to tip the balance in

favor of egypt. you had threats by the arab countries to impose an oil embargo which could have brought down not only our economy but the global economy, so this is not your average afternoon walk in the park if you are the president facing these kinds of stresses. but throughout, and indeed the vice president did resign in that first two-week. in october, the president was there to make the decision. when things came off the american defense production line, the battlefield was turned around so that israel could avoid being defeated. but then, the evolution of any crisis, in this case the tipping of the balance in favor of

israel, which almost brought in the soviet union's airborne division, and it caused an alert on the american side, a la 1962, or almost, but he stood there like a rock. making decisions and ensuring that the aftermath not only was the security of egypt and the arab states restore to a measure of stability, but, an opening was created for the first time since israel became a state, for a dialogue with an arab leader who had the statesmanship and the character to be willing to engage against the counsel of

every arab country and engage with israel and lay the foundation for the first peace treaty between israel and an arab state. the president was able to do that, notwithstanding all of the pressures he was under, through the system that he ran and managed, regardless of his own personal circumstance, through the excellence of dr. kissinger, now his secretary of state -- >> he could write a memo to himself because he was also the defense secretary at the same time. >> that's right. >> i want to get back to the president. he did have the guts and the intelligence. they did not let israel wipe out the egyptian army, because that would have made it psychologically difficult for the arab negotiations.

so they have a cease-fire. i was involved in that. we went to moscow. they had some dignity and self-respect to negotiate, and israel was losing its hubris, so both sides were ready to negotiate. you not only have to manage the crisis, but you had a specific committee called the westsag, and that would only work if you had a couple of things intellectually in place. one, a strategy for the region. it is not like a recipe that you're going to pull off, but if you do some contingency planning, and you think about a region strategically early on, so when a crisis breaks out, you at least have some background with which to maneuver and to tailor your tactics.

so you needed this committee, which you also need a more formal system of advancement. >> what you talk about that for a moment. who was on it, and john, if you could weigh-in, what did congress think of this? congress was crucial, if they did not have the budget, some of these things would not happen. >> it was chaired, like everything else, in a committee. and you would have state defense, cia, joint chiefs present. meet in thewould white house situation room? >> just like any other committee meetings. this was specified for crises. the way this would work and the most of these meetings would work, they would start out with a briefing by the cia to get intelligence background and then henry would give an overview, including the options involved did each of the agencies would

resent their views and why they nixon, like most presidents, would listen and go off and think about it and make his decision later. >> was congress brought in? >> let me talk about congress a -- congress. first, the effectiveness of this five years, which i don't think have ever been matched, was due in no small measure to the concept of the president and henry as to how it should run. that resulted in the recruiting of some truly first-class, unusual people. it was kept small. if my memory serves me, there were only about 30 professionals on kissinger's staff. there were a total of only about 120.

that was why it was so effective, because it was very agile. it could move quickly. all the professional staff members' calls were answered by whomever was being called. whether the cabinet secretary or a senate foreign relations chairman. particularly in crisis, things moved very quickly and credibly. you contrast that with -- i really believe that there are strong things to say on the reagan system, which was really a version of the nixon system. that was clearly the apogee of the national security council as a structure that functioned. it had very high quality, very small, and very agile.

if you look at the 120 of how the system should work and compare it to today with 1700. >> is it really? i want to repeat that. 1700 members. 1700? >> when we were on the national security defense commission two years ago, that is what it was. >> quadrennial defense review, excuse me. >> i think this is a significant point. the national security staff in 1969 was probably 10 people. it may have gotten up to 30 professionals by the time the nixon administration was finished. maybe as many as 80 or 100 people.

that counts everybody from me typing the president's daily brief to henry kissinger. you're now saying it is 1700? i am blown away. where are they? >> i will tell you where they are. first, when we were there, we had some people in the basement of the west wing. a few people on the first floor. then we had about 3/4 of one floor in the executive office building. today, they have taken over what used to be called the new eob. that is filled with nsc staff. >> it has become another institution of government. it is very bureaucratic. they still have plenty of good people, but they are embedded in a huge bureaucratic system so it does not function today the way it did in either the reagan or carter years.

the height of its effectiveness was the nixon administration. it was because it lean and -- it was le+an and agile. >> to respond to crisis. >> one of the things that drove president nixon crazy was leaks. the case could be made, as i am making the case, john will remember from 1969 particularly that ultimately it was this concern and passion about stopping leaks that led to watergate. it was a direct connection. in early 1969, it was mentioned , and odd little item there is , going to be a subcommittee on

american commitments abroad. i happened to read it. john and i discussed it. thereupon began a long effort that culminated in the fall of 1969 with a 70-page memorandum, the same topic you turned into a doctoral dissertation at cambridge if i'm not mistaken. we presented this memorandum. oddly enough, the memorandum was not acted upon. it went into limbo. in 1971 when i was preparing to come back to the white house, bob haldeman, president nixon's chief of staff, called me and said the president remembers your memorandum from 1969 and would like to implement it. he wants you to implement it.

i said, no way am i going to do that because among the recommendations were reviewing everyone's security clearances. i personally wanted no part of reviewing anybody's security clearances. i did not want to see raw data. the leakage came just as much from inside the white house as it did from the bureaucracy. it was bureaucracy that nixon distrusted and henry also distrusted. but in reality, there was just as much leakage coming right out of the nsc. >> back channels and all the rest. >> a major feature of this system was secrecy. there were pluses and minuses. i have already suggested the most urgent issues lent themselves to tightly held negotiations. if you cut other people out, leave aside the morale and humiliation, you may not get the

full expertise of other agencies to get you ready for what you are secretly negotiating. we used to hope to get briefings on china generally, even though we were secretly going to china in a few weeks. we would still have the general request that the president would like to know more about taiwan and so on. that is one disadvantage. the other disadvantage is if you carry out something secretly and then announce an agreement, the agencies cut out in the first place will be tempted to say we could have done a better job if you had left this out or we had known about this. so that is the risk you run. the system was awkward, humiliating. but it produced terrific results. one of the problems was where it led. i will give you one example. on the secret trip to china, we had a public trip to india and pakistan on a small plane.

there were three types of people on the plane. four of us knew we were going secretly to china. the trip was public for other reasons. there were two or three that knew we were going but did not go with us. they had to stay behind and pakistan to cover the secret journey. there were others that did not know anything about china. i was in charge of briefing folks. i had to keep three different sets of briefing books. one for the four of us. one for a slightly larger group. henry has been napping. he would wake up and want all three changed all over again. this was absurd. the advantage on china was if you had a lot of publicity about the opening of china, although

we did send public signals we discussed. the taiwan lobby, the anti-communist extremists, all other allies would be weighing in and you would be restricted. your agenda would shrink. it was a dramatic opening. the disadvantage was the state department criticized the shanghai communiqué because they were not involved. in the case of vietnam, you needed secrecy if you wanted real negotiations. if you have a public meeting, it was just for p.r. we were making offers to in the -- offers to end that war from the beginning beyond what the editorials were calling for. we were being moderate. hanoi was intransigent. we paid a public price because no one knew we were negotiating.

let alone what kind of proposals we were making. the soviet union is the other one kissinger did secretly. nixon negotiated, with some help from the arms community, salt 1, the first big treaty. he got criticized later that if you involve the bureaucracies, you would not have made some mistakes. i would say the positives outweigh the minuses because look at the results. you did pay the price in human terms and in terms of bureaucratic strife. >> in the case of the arms control negotiations with the russians, the soviet union, and the vietnam peace agreement, there were public, formal negotiations run by the state department. yet, you guys were doing this secret back channel trip where you were doing the heart of the negotiation here, but the media and congress could focus there. >> you paid a price. the public ones looked

meaningless and no one realized we were making a real effort to in the war. you can comment on the arms control part. >> i was going to add to your point about the china negotiations. people to this day apply the -- applaud the policy. they said, did it have to be secret? well, consider this. at the time, china was killing in the cultural revolution that literally tens of millions of its own people. consider the left-wing in our country, every american really would have been revolted by the idea we are going to be engaging in trying to foster relations here with a country doing that. the right wing could have said this is a country that is providing the ak-47's to vietnam killing americans right now. , this is a country in chaos literally internally. if you had said let's float that

idea in public and see what people think about it, it would have been strangled in the crib, for sure. if you are going to take the country in a profoundly new direction on any piece of public policy that is vulnerable to being heavily criticized, as these particular ones were, later it came to a similar thing but i won't digress on the reagan years, but it had to be in secret or it never would have developed as the success it was. the gains we made today are self-evident. of course, that was a good idea. it would have never happened. >> we did pay a price with japan and nato allies. that was temporary. there could have been leaks. that reinforces your point. >> kissinger became secretary of state.

the other major accomplishment was the middle east diplomacy. everyone knew kissinger was shuttling back and forth. if the secrecy part of it, the nsc, was the fact he did not go on television to talk about it, once he became secretary of state he had other responsibilities to be done in the public eye? >> let's come back to that because i never answered your question about congress which bears directly on secrecy. i think henry's attitude to congress when he first came in was the same as admiral ernie king, that roosevelt put in at the beginning of world war ii. he was known to be a brusque character. there is a whole bureaucracy in the navy. office of legislative affairs. admiral said, here's what we

have planned for you to brief the committee. he said i am not breaking any , -- briefing any committees. what should we tell them? tell them nothing. when the war is over, tell them who won. [laughter] i think that was henry's attitude towards congress. that is why you don't see it in any of the preparatory doctrine, but he is a fast learner. pretty soon he was finding congress intruding and attacking on every level. luckily he had three of the finest tutors ever in the job, tom, bill, and bryce. he soon realized he had to start dealing with these people. >> not to mention congress approved the nsc budget. >> right. it was an unending crisis and battle from the first day until

henry went to state. then it took on another level. he turned out to be a natural because he learned so quickly that first you cannot tell them nothing, but you have to be careful who you tell what to. to summarize a lot of different crises, he was able to manage. people think congress is polarized today? it is nothing compared to those days. the bitterness between the democrats and republicans, particularly on the vietnam war, you could cut it with a knife. people were not talking to each other. >> don't forget on whose watch the vietnam war started.

>> half a million people across the street on the mall demonstrating. there was civil unrest. >> remember, we had to come into work and crawl under the buses that surrounded the old white house. remember that? >> part of the price we paid for secret negotiations which we had to do. i am not saying the demonstrations would have gone away if they had known, but it would have helped. i remember my libra all friends -- my liberal friends were beating up on us saying aren't you even negotiating and we would have just come back from a secret trip. >> the foreign relations committee was a sieve. they felt early on they were not getting what was happening. a bill was introduced to subpoena henry to testify and

make him subject to senate confirmation. basically, we came up with a strategy to give them inside skinny briefings with no staff present and the foreign relations committee. nothing in writing, but to stroke them so they were getting the truth of what was going on, to a point. that enabled them to take care of not looking totally out of the picture. then he would quickly -- tom would take us over to the minority caucus. henry was brilliant in being able to talk about the half-empty part of the glass to those constituents.

he realized soon he had to make deals with congress and deal with crises just as important as dealing with the chinese or soviets. he almost single-handedly had to block legislation constantly being proposed and easily getting a majority of signatures. that could be a book in itself. the secrecy, as he became more known particularly after the china announcement, we have to watch this guy, it was harder for him to do secret things. he was in the middle east.

the shuttle diplomacy was more public than he would have preferred. even there, winston would know more in detail. there were several layers of what was going on in addition to the public. >> it was essentially a state department operation. he was secretary of state on most of the shuttles. that was under ford as well as nixon. >> let us also not neglect that dimension of washington that is so terribly important, the style section of the "washington post." henry quickly discovered he could be socially active, shall we say. it may have been the interview with the italian newswoman. >> very beautiful. >> charming. in that interview, i recall he

spoke about riding into town as john wayne or a cowboy would. >> once we were in paris for secret negotiations with the vietnamese. we snuck away from the embassy. henry had to camouflage when we were there. he left me and john negroponte to draft the peace agreement while he went out to dinner with a beautiful blonde so everyone paid attention to that and not why we were in town. he was sacrificing himself. [laughter] >> i did not say it was not useful. it could also be enjoyable. [laughter] >> one of the reasons he kept such an effective staff was the people he wanted and did not see

as a threat he was totally loyal to. he sent me off once to a dinner off the record, how naïve i was in those days, dinner with a foreign service officer to talk about how we could improve security because leaks were everyday. above the fold, "washington post" front page. i dutifully did that and said we have the same problem with senator fulbright in the foreign relations committee. next day is an above the fold headline, "kissinger aide attacks fulbright for leaking." >> which he was doing.

>> which he was doing. i get a call from al haig, henry wants to see you. i figured cap, -- i figured, well, what am i going to do? >> this is not going to be a good meeting, you can tell. >> where am i going to work after this? i come in and he says, go on in. henry is sitting at his desk. "lehman, the secretary of state has said you must be fired, that you are poisoning relations which he has been working on for years to improve relations with senator fulbright, so i was called into the president's office and president nixon said , i know bill called you, he

called me and said you should fire this fellow lehman." nixon said, what do you think, henry? henry said, i was thinking of promoting him. [laughter] >> one point gets back to the system. you made an important point. neither nixon nor kissinger wanted yes-men or yes-women. they wanted honest points of view and debate before a decision was made. they asked that once the decision was made if you were on the losing side, you carry it out loyally. if not, you resigned. i was interviewed by kissinger to join the staff. that is how i got to be a special assistant.

the first year i was in the executive office building. one of the things we did was send memos on contingencies and devil's advocacy. i sent a couple. my boss let me send them on my own, criticizing. that is why henry was impressed with the argument even though he disagreed with it, he made me special assistant. that underlines the fact that nixon and kissinger both wanted fierce debate and options, but they wanted loyalty once you made the decision. >> i would love to get everybody's final thoughts on the nsc, the structure, how it worked and why it succeeded, wo, wholarly to ask you t later became national security advisers to president reagan. did the system work only for nixon and kissinger?

did it work effectively going forward from that? i will let you think about it. john, do you want to wrap up your final thoughts? >> i believe the national security system has never worked as well before or since, even in the reagan years for different reasons. i think perhaps a combination of the way it operated after kissinger became secretary of state would be a way to improve on it in the present day because the cabinet officers need to be included in the real decision-making. if you keep them totally excluded the way they were, they go off and do independent scheming. mel laird was cutting his own deals with congress and not telling henry or anybody else about them because he was cut

out of the inside game. there would be ways to improve on it. -- wynn putan talk it perfectly. really good people can make any system work although it can be much more cumbersome and less efficient. mediocre people, timeservers, can't make the best system produce good policy. that is what we have to keep in mind as we see every part of the government bloated to the point they do not function. >> my view is it was humiliating for secretary rogers and others. it did have an impact on morale. it was awkward for us to have to keep two or three different sets of memos, secret trips and back channels. we have not talked about telegrams done for the cia in

secret meetings and trips. having said that, you have to look at the results, which is ultimately what you're looking for. i think several factors made it work. we already touched on them. you had a president with a tremendous interest and background in foreign policy, a strong national security advisor, the kind of issues that length -- lent themselves to this kind of system. dealing with parliament and public opinion, it is difficult to deal with the issues. the final thing we have not touched on is the relationship between nixon and kissinger. it was unique. it was filled with tension and ambivalence, but it was tremendously successful. nixon struck a perfect balance between someone who was mired in details who had good foreign policy successes and the other extreme of delegating all foreign policy.

i am simplifying now. he set the strategy. but he knew in kissinger, he had the guts to appoint him and he was working for his opponent before the election, he had sufficient trust in him as a negotiator in the tactics to carry out the strategy. they would agree on the strategy and henry would carry it out. henry had a view of the world that was strongly parallel on all the major issues. nixon was willing to be involved in making sure we did what we wanted strategically but letting henry carry it out. i think that balance was a crucial factor in the success of the administration. >> there being nothing inherently wrong with the structure created at the outset of the nixon administration, i saw no reason to change it by 1980 and 1981.

it was a comprehensive system that integrated all the elements of national power and national security in the broadest possible implications. i continued it and unashamedly so. one of the problems that arose was at the very outset al haig being appointed secretary of state, reagan did not know al well. hardly at all. but i did. there are all sorts of back stories i will not bother to get into, interim meetings arranged for haig and reagan. but al wanted to run everything outside the three-mile limit. on the first day of the administration, the very first day after the inauguration, that

afternoon presented a , memorandum. i had seen earlier drafts and said to al it will not fly with this president whom al did not know, either. basically what happened was we had no crisis management until march 23. that is two-and-a-half months, a long time into the first part of the reagan administration. finally, i broke the logjam. >> what happened in march? >> sorry, president reagan was shot at the hilton hotel. i raced back to the white house to implement that which had been just approved on the 23rd of march, seven days before the president was shot. it was crisis management.

i had proposed to break the logjam. al wanted to do it and it belongs in the white house to coordinate all the elements. that led to some misunderstandings about who succeeded whom that day. the famous day. the point was the system worked very well. it worked well when you had an organization of the type nixon set up with kissinger and all of us in 1969. that system functioned with huge elements of tension as pointed out by my colleagues, but the system worked. you could drive decisions home. you cannot do that if all the decision-making elements are dispatched to the bureaucracy.

>> when you became national security adviser, you were one of the architects of winning the cold war. >> you are being very generous. but i think, to your question, it depends entirely on the president and the degree to which he or she has the vision and depth of what american interests are and how they can be advanced in their term of office. in addition to having some knowledge of what you want to do, you have got to have a sense of order, discipline. looking back over the past several generations, president nixon's model has stood the test of time of having good people

with knowledge and understanding of foreign cultures, the middle east, the far east, to russia, latin america. and able to manage a system for planning, decision-making, and for overseeing what you decide as the president gets done. you need a highly talented group of people. but the president sets the tone and cracks the whip, hires and fires, and moves us in a constructive direction. president nixon's legacy speaks for itself in all these areas we discussed and overview to hear, -- and overview here, from the

china opening to ending the vietnam war to engaging the soviet union in reducing nuclear weapons over time later on and -- in the middle east. stability in those relationships without question were better at the end of the nixon presidency than when he arrived clearly. that model stood the test of time through the reagan years. >> everybody talks about the great successes of the golden era of american foreign-policy, the nixon-kissinger period. what, often people forget to , talk about is the enduring legacy. we know there was the legacy of the policy itself, the opening of china. arms reductions agreements never would have happened if they had not happened. we have seen the problem of getting into and out of wars, the vietnam legacy, certainly in the middle east we are still reaping the peace of the middle

east from the 1970's. what often gets overlooked is the enduring legacy of the people on the national security council staff. everyone has referred to the high quality of it. but when henry kissinger has his reunions every several years and people come back, everyone looks around and is stunned to see how many people went on from junior staffers under nixon and kissinger who went on to be cabinet officers, national security advisors, more than you can count. it was not just what the policies were, but the people who were trained under that system who went on. the way i think of it is we walked with giants. you walked with giants when you were junior members on kissinger's national security council staff.

but then you became giants of your own. dick allen, who was nixon's first security advisor, went on to work for ronald reagan and was the tutor to his strategy in his campaign and went on to be reagan's first national security advisor. john lehman, the junior guy working for kissinger who almost got fired that day, went on to be the secretary of the navy in the reagan administration. built the 600-ship navy and theone of the architects -- naval presence that helped convince the soviet union had no choice. really the cold war was over by , the time we got our 600 ships. it took time to play out. john went on to do that. winston lord became the main point guard for american chinese relations for 30 years. you were ambassador to china, assistant secretary for asian affairs, president of the

council on foreign relations. the job you may have started out with not knowing a lot about , china. when i go to china and mention the name of winston lord, you're up there with the great superheroes. finally, bud mcfarlane, started out as major mcfarlane when i first knew you, went on to become reagan's national security adviser. the reagan star wars speech talks about how the united states developing the missile shield. those are for a different forum. but bud mcfarlane was an architect of the ultimate takedown of the soviet union. he was using all the elements of american power. the people in their 20's and 30's in the nixon administration, in their 40's and 50's became the men who won the cold war. i think maybe somebody is going to be on your speed dial wanting to know how we win the next one. thank you for joining us.

i hope this has given you a taste and you come back for the subsequent forums where we will drill down deeper into china, vietnam, the soviet union, and strategic planning. thanks so much for joining us. that is it. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] this weekend on the c-span networks, tonight at 8 p.m. eastern, a townhall on the critical land historic impact of voting. sunday evening at 8:00. sally quinn. on the, matt richtel distractions of technology and its impact on society. a sunday at 1 p.m., the brooklyn book festival. tonight at 10:00 on american white. tv, jonathan sunday afternoon at 8 p.m. exploresannette dunlap

first ladies fashion. c-span.org. let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us at -- e-mail us at -- send us a tweet at -- conversation.n like us on facebook. follow us on twitter. our campaign 2014 debate coverage continues tuesday night at 9:00 eastern for the final texas governor's debate between the mccracken 20 davis and republican greg abbott. live thursday night at 8:00 eastern, the oklahoma governor's debate between democrat joe dorman and republican mary fallin. watch the nebraska governor's debate between chuck hasso brooke and pete ricketts. c-span 2014.

more than 100 debates for the control of congress. >> 50 years ago in september of 1964, the warren commission released its report on the assassination of president john f. kennedy. next, the former u.s. senator arlen set -- arlen specter, who served as a lawyer for the commission, -- warren commission, describes the evolution of the single bullet theory. this is a 20 minute portion of an oral history interview he recorded with the pennsylvania cable network. he died in 2012 at the age of 82. >> how was the fbi and cia to work with? >> very cooperative. there was a question as to whether they had a conflict of interest. ruby had been interviewed by an fbi agent. there was a question as to whether they could do an independent job. but we had no investigators of our own.