before we checked into the motel some place in virginia. now out of respect for his being 91, i don't call him every night but regularly to update him. he wants to hear what the activities are. >> congressman don meyer, thanks for your time. the legacy of the nixon presidency. next, members of the nixon national security team on his foreign policy. then a look at his supreme court appointments. and later the career of nixon administration defense secretary, melvin laird and his impact on the post vietnam war military. you're watching american history tv on c-span 3. >> recently taking part in a discussion about president nixon's foreign policy. topics included the vietnam war,

paris peace accords and the president's historic visit to china. this is just under two hours. >> good morning. i'm here to welcome you on behalf of the richard nixon foundation which co-sponsors these legacy forums with the national archives. it's a wonderful partnership. david is responsible for 12 billion documents, some of which is placed at the library, which is his facility. and we, in turn, have the people who created those documents. if you're old enough to remember warren beaty and the movie "shampoo," we've got the heads and he has the shampoo. since my experience on nixon's staff was on the domestic side we tend to favor topics that i

knew. that didn't include foreign affairs but we've stumbled on to a brilliant and helpful counterpart of me that is my pleasure to introduce. that's kt mcfarland. you know kt as fox news analyst. everybody has to start somewhere and kathy troyas started as a clerk typist on the graveyard shift of national security council when she was a sophomore at the george washington university. >> actually, i was a freshman. >> see, my facts are wrong already. then she grew in stature and importance under nixon and president ford and president reagan, where she was a contributing substantive member of the national security council. she has very kindly con sented to moderate a series of these nixon forums on foreign affairs. in that particular series, this is our third one. at this point i'm very happy to

introduce kt and our topic today, vietnam and the paris peace accord. thank you. >> thank you very much, jeff i want to add the thanks from all of us from the nixon kissinger staff of the importance of doing this. the documents are one theng. but to actually hear from the people who made history, i think, is a great addition, not only to the nation's knowledge to the history but to the next generation of americans who are going to have to grapple sometimes with the very same issues. as jeff pointed out, this is the third in a series devoted to the nixon foreign administration policy. we covered -- be the ones we covered so far have been the nixon kissinger reorganization of the national security decision making structure, middle east shuttle diplomacy and opening to china. the five years of the nixon administration were a particularly fruitful time in american foreign policy and many called this the golden age of american diplomacy. this one is going to focus on

the vietnam war, negotiations and the paris peace accords. it was one of the biggest and most intractable problems nixon faced when he walked in the door, when he took office. it's difficult today in 2014, to comprehend how divisive it had become. the country was already on the edge because of the two kennedy and martin luther assassinations and the draft meant that every family was affected. we had over half a million american troops halfway around the world in a war we couldn't seem to win, but we didn't know how to end. there were demonstrations on college campuses across the nation, young men burnt their draft cards, risking person and some fled to canada to avoid going to war. as the war dragged on with no victory in sight, anti-war sentiment swept across the country, dividing family and friends.

lyndon johnson, the president, had no choice but to withdraw from re-election and his vice president, herbert humphrey ran in his stead. richard nix nixon became president. ultimately 50,000 americans lost their lives, it shaped a generation of military leaders and politicians. joining us today are the men who made history. this were the key assistants to henry kissinger, helped to end the vietnam war and hammer out the paris peace accords. first, richard smeiser, who served extensively in germany with u.s. armed forces in the foreign service, a witness of the berlin crisis in 1961, beginning of the cold war. he was an adviser to the paris peace talks in 1969 and became a senior member of kissinger's

national senior security staff. he was responsible for vietnam affairs and involved in the historic opening to china. after leaving the staff in 1971, professor smeiser served as a professor at university and deputy high commissioner for refugees at the united nations. he is now a professor at georgetown university. next is winston lord. he joined kissinger's staff at the very beginning of the nixon presidency and was one of kissinger's closest advisers throughout the administration. he worked on every aspect of the foreign american policy, including china, paris peace talks, vietnam war. winston went on to become president of the very prestigious council on foreign relations, assistant secretary of state and united states ambassador to china, the country with which he helped to establish diplomatic relations and finally john negroponte, provincial officer in the late

1960s in saigon before joining the first delegation at the first paris peace talks in 1968. he went on to work on the nsc, nixon and kissinger in june of 1972 and later served as ambassador to hon duras, mexico, and iraq. that's a lot. deputy national security adviser, deputy secretary of state and, as he is most famously known recently the first director of national intelligence, an office created after the september 11th attacks. i want to turn now to the effectiveness of the national security council staff. kissinger did assemble one of the most effective staffs in history. the staff was very small by today's standards in the kissinger era, i think there were less than 50, probably 35 professional staff members, equal number of support staff,

of which i was one. compare that today to probably 1700 staff members of all types. the kissinger staff had a lasting effect. generation of diplomacy. these men and others went on to very senior positions. i want to get back to the beginning and get the personal story from each of you how did henry kissing her, looking for the most important people, come to find you? professor smyser, how did he come to notice the brilliant service officer? >> i'm not sure i was brilliant but i got to know him when i was doing some graduate studies at harvard because i took his seminar. later when he came to washington to work on the national security staff. he knew that i was there and so he asked me to join him. >> all right. had you been in vietnam before? had you met kissinger in vietnam? >> i met kissinger in vietnam when vietnam -- when kissinger

went to vietnam at the request of lbj to see what the situation was. i was his control officer, which is rather a loose term. controlling henry kissinger is not an easy thing to do. >> it's an oxymoron. >> it's an oxymoron. nonetheless, i did it and tried to give him the best possible introduction to vietnam, including some meetings with john negroponte and others. and, of course, a briefing by myself, which may or may not have contributed to my knowledge. the point was that that was where i first met him on vietnam. before then, i had talked to him about numerous things. >> the two of you were in vietnam before kissinger became national adviser, before nixon became president. that's when you met? >> that's correct. dick and i were in the embassy in sigh govenlt i was a provincial reporting officer and cover aid particular area of south vietnam. when henry came out i was

assigned the task of taking him to the northern part of north vietnam, the first corps area. that's how i got to know henry. then i went to the paris peace talks as you mentioned and then i was recruited in 1970 to join the staff. >> i don't know if it's true or not but there's a story that henry kissinger, when he was in saigon with you, had a few incidents. >> yes, indeed. >> what were they? >> in 1975, he was there as an adviser to lodge. on one of his last days there was november 1st. it was the anniversary of the overthrow. there was a big parade in saigon and my apartment overlooked the parade. i gave sort of a champagne breakfast for a lot of people. when henry came, i think dick brought him through the crowd to my apartment. when he got there, he realized he lost his wallet.

and he said what really bothered him was that he lost his white house pass. i'll always remember that. >> can i tell one little story about that? >> sure. please, go ahead. >> because we wanted to introduce him to the full life of saigon, we took him to a cabaret, which was -- >> is this a story we can actually say? >> is this pg? >> is this a pg story? >> of course, it is. >> okay. >> heavens. who would think that i would tell anything that wouldn't be proper? the idea was we wanted to have him meet some vietnam characters who were not necessarily political officers and so we took him there. and he got up to the bar and a young lady of uncertain background came up to meet him and rather clutched him tightly and he turned to me and said i think i've been discovered.

so that was a pretty thorough briefing on how that worked. >> i don't know how you're going to top that one. >> i can't top that. i was working in the pentagon in 1968 in the policy planning staff and my boss was a man named halperson. and the first person kissinger asked to join him on his staff was halperson, to rearrange the system. he asked me to go with him i was interviewed by henry for about half an hour. i guess it went pretty well. although i think he hired me mostly on the recommendation of mort. i started out with mort doing two things in the executive office building across from the white house, helping to run the nsc system, putting together the books and implementation of systems after the meetings. the other was where we sent himq

memos, playing devil's advocate. during that year that i was doing that, first year on the nsc staff in '69, i sent henry several memos, some of which were critical. henry does not like yes men or yes women as long as your arguments are well put forward he respects them. i think i caught his attention through these memos as well as what we did on the system. in february 1970, he made me his special assistant and i was very fortunate because i didn't have expertise like these guys did on vietnam, others on china, others on russia, others on the middle east. he wanted one person with him at all times in all these developments so we could have a global perspective, impacts on china and russia with hanoi. i got to work on all these

shalls. >> win wrote a lot of the speeches and henry said win has the fastest pen in the west. >> he didn't say best. just fastest. >> let's set the stage for history. when nixon took office, we were in the middle of war. it wasn't a war he started. it was a war he inherited. what was the historical context? what happened in the '60s? why were we in vietnam in the first place? >> because the french wanted us to be in there and we didn't want to be involved quite as much as they wanted us to be involved. they asked us to drop an atomic bomb on them. eisenhower refused to do that. he said we're not going to get involved in that war. we were very, very cautious, particularly under eisenhower, about anything that had to do with endochiena. then kennedy wabecame president.

he was more ready to practice what they call warfare. counter insurgency, that's right. one of his ideas was that vietnam was the perfect place to practice counter insurgency, to practice what he thought would be the new american doctrine, which would win these wars and counterinsurgency was the thing. >> where were we then when president johnson was in office? what happened by the late 1960s? >> it became office that counterinsurgency could not win the war because the vietnamese, north vietnamese kept sending troops in and counterinsurgency couldn't defeat them because that counted on the south vietnamese to do that. we had to begin sending in american troops. >> you were in saigon at the time? >> i was there from '64 to '68

and i watch this had process that dick is talking about. what you really had was -- i think hanoi decided in '64, maybe late '63, that they couldn't win the war just by political means alone and they had to ratchet up the level of violence because that's what -- no doubt about it, their purpose in the end was to reunify the country. they introduced north vietnamese troops. by the time we left or that the administration transitioned from johnson to nixon, we had 510,000 troops. it was a progressive escalation. >> more than that, actually. >> okay. there were something like ten regular north vietnamese divisions in south vietnam. this incipient insurgency

involves into this large-scale escalated war. >> that's mission creep, right? it started as a small scale counterinsurgency? >> it's escalation. >> it's more than just mission creep. i would call it mission escalation. >> it's also a demonstration that the north vietnamese, poor as they were, were prepared to go to just about any length to achieve their objectives. >> 1968, nixon wins. 1969, he comes into office. what was nixon's thinking when he took the oath of office in january 1969 about vietnam? >> there was some foreshadowing. he wrote for foreign affairs magazine in '67, counted as suggested opening of china, asia generally and particularly asia after vietnam, no matter how it came out, what would it look like, if we had lost or won or

it was in between. and during the campaign he gave suggestions that he had a strategy in mind. no actual secret plan, which people seem to think happened. he didn't say that. so when he got into office, it was clearly the most urgent issue he had to face. it was clear that he was stuck between this tremendous domestic turmoil and this escalating threat, american involvement in southeast asia. he was caught in between the desire of many in the u.s. to get out and the military power in north vietnam. he and kissing her had, obviously, a real dilemma. and future historians, young people have got to remember the context he inherited in judging how well he and kissinger did in the subsequent years. it was a very tough challenge. first thing they did, we issued what they called a memorandum to

all the agencies, gathering every conceivable type of information that we could from the state department, political talks, cia and what was going on, from the pentagon on the military developments. every conceivable aspect that we could collect information on. i was in charge of helping to collect this. everyone else did most of the work. i was orchestrating it. one of the people i was working with, ironic, dan ellsburg went on. he went on to be -- a year or two later and was responsible for leaking the pentagon papers. we assembled that in order to have nixon and kissinger make up their minds on what kind of strategy they wanted to pursue. they probably had some ideas but all this information helped them shape it. if you want i can quickly tell you -- >> yeah, what were the options? >> the democrats did this, kennedy and johnson. it's a not our fault. we're just going to get our

prisoners back and get the hell out of there. and nixon rejected that because of our position on the world, sacrifice that had been made, credibility of the united states as an ally, what it would do to our world position. the other extreme was incredible escalation, forcing north vietnam to be more reasonable. i think they felt it would not be maintained under those circumstances. so a middle path, an honorable ending to this war which consisted of two main elements and two supporting elements. one was vietnamization, successfully turn over to the south vietnamese the burden of fighting the war. it would take several years but through training and the u.s. would be able to withdraw in successive segments.

this would mean the south vietnamese would realize they would have to take the burden. but, above all, you would maintain support in the united states for continuing involvement. people could see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. we reducing our casualties, our presence and, therefore, they would support ongoing efforts. second main element was negotiations. and we'll get into that. but which they decided had to be done secretly in order to be possible success. there's no other way for these public exchanges. propaganda exercises so they would have to be done secretly. dealing with china and russia, hanoi's two major patrons and dramatic opening to china which, in turn, to deal with this more pragmatically. maybe to cut off aid. but to urge hanoi to be somewhat

reasonable to get on with their relationships and to use military pressure when and if it was required particularly in response to north vietnamese provocations. the last point i'll make is the one flaw in this -- they understood that, nixon and kissinger at the time. there was a certain tension between vietnamization, gradual u.s. withdrawal but nonetheless total withdrawal, turning it over to the south vietnamese and negotiations. you could argue that the north vut naumese knew we were getting out unilaterally anyway. so they would sit back and wait and not negotiate seriously. >> the leverage you might have had was not there? >> the judgment on that -- and we thought all this through. in the first place there were no better alternatives for an honorable end to the war but without an endless involvement.

and secondly, we planned and hoped to do the vietnam iowaation in a responsible way to give the south vietnamese the time and equipment and training to actually take on the north vietnamese and vietcong and hanoi would be forced to negotiate more reasonably. because they could see that over time they couldn't prevail. >> talking about vietnam iowaation, you were there. >> yeah, can i? i was going to mention two points. one, with regard to vietnamization. and i noticed dr. kissinger's book on vietnam iowaation is dedicated, among others, to general. in 1964 when lbj had to choose who the next commander in vietnam would be of macv. he chose westmoreland,

regrettably, who put tremendous emphasis on the americans doing the main fighting themselves. he stuck to that principle right to the end of his command and be a rams came in, and his view how to fight this war dovetailed very nicely with the nixon/kissinger approach of training the south vietnamese troops and giving them the capacity to fight the war. the reason vietnam iowaation was so important, it's a principle that carries forward into other conflicts in the future. what we did in afghanistan, what we've done in iraq and so forth. and it's the same motion that comes up there. the second point i wanted to make is that although the -- winston wasn't there and dick, there were secret negotiations during the lbj time. and they never got very far. but they did get so far as to achieve a bombing halt at the end of 1968, in october of '68,

right prior to our president ia elections and they ended up getting a seat at the table for the vietcong and south vietnamese. prior to that we had been conducting these talks bilaterally with north vietnam. >> professor smyser, maybe you can talk about it. who were all these different groups? >> they were all controlled -- excuse me. north vietnamese and the vi techlt cong were all control bid the same group, the endochinese communist party developed before world war ii and had, at one point, wanted close ties with the united states, but it never worked out. and they were groups that wanted to fight against the west in order to make vietnam independent. truly independent. and so they were people who normally would have been our

friends. but because the french were also our allies, we couldn't very work for them to be independent because that would be a loss for the french. we were stuck working behind or with allies in europe than working with those who wanted to be our friends in asia. we finally decided the best thing to do was just to work with our friends in europe and to try to help our friends in europe achieve some kind of pea peaceful settlement for their war with the independent people or with the people seeking independence. it never was quite right. it never worked quite the way we wanted it to work. and that was one of the problems. and i think john negroponte puts it very well. it was one of the real problems that we faced because we were

stuck between people who wanted to be our friends and whom we wanted as friends but who were fighting each other. one of the most difficult situations in international politics. and this group has a bunch of people and students who study international politics it's worthwhile to look at this as a situation of incredible difficulty for the management of foreign affairs. >> i might add to underline his point, the north vietnamese always acted out the charade, no troops in south vietnam. this is all vietcong. their rationale, of course, is that we had undermined prospect of elections which had been agreed upon in geneva a few years earlier. they had a right to challenge us on that front. the fact is that this was not a civil war primarily. it was north vietnamese invasion and vietcong were an arm of the

north vietnamese. >> you were already negotiating publicly in geneva, but -- >> in pair zblris. >> in paris. that was going no place? >> we were negotiating publicly and privately. we had some talks. and we reached an agreement just on the eve of the presidential elections in 1968. the greatest pressure to reach some kind of agreement was one month before our elections on a bombing halt and exchange. we would stop bombing north vietnam in exchange for them lowering their attacks on south vietnamese cities and we also agreed that the south vietnamese party represented at the peace talks, which is what led to what, for many people, was this rather absurd discussion for about a month at the end of 1968

on the shape of the table. how do you shape the negotiating table in order to reflect the two opposite views of the situation? we felt vietcong -- and they wanted to be viewed separately from us. how did you achieve that in the shape of a -- we had sort of an oval table with two small tables on each side. they didn't quite touch the oval table. it was unbelievable. >> it's a wonderful art. >> yeah. and you can't imagine. it was like a contest. we got so much mail from people all around the world suggesting different shapes of tables to help us solve our problem. >> interesting thing about this also -- and john was more involved in it than i was -- was that harriman -- this was ambassador harriman, our negotiator.

>> in the johnson administration? >> yes, in the johnson administration. and he knew very well that nothing could ever be done in public. so he tried very hard to get the north vietnamese to join us for secret talks. and the idea was that we would have breaks in the talks and, during those breaks, he would hook his arm to the arm of whoever the vietnamese guy was, take him aside and say don't you want to have a little coffee break? don't you want to have a little tea, so on and so forth? at first the north vietnamese resisted. they wouldn't play that game. because they didn't want to do something that the russians or chinese might wonder what's going on. then finally, they did. >> so harriman pulls me in his office one day. i had been responsible for finding the safehouse we were going to meet at.

he gave me a few hundred francs out of his pocket. go get caviar. i said they don't like sweet things. they like cakes. i watched them long enough. we got to the tea break, there was all this caviar out there, no one in the north vietnamese delegation ate the caviar. they went for the streets. >> how did the nixon administration then deal with -- >> nixon and kissinger knew this history, above all the frustrations dealing with north vietnam. whether we could start secret talks with the vietnamese, recognizing only secret talks and make success. in may, the president made his first announcement in a speech, which basically reviewed the bidding. to try to make the progress

setting the stage for what was going to be a difficult process, that the north vietnamese were tough to deal with. the next significant event was in june 1969. nixon was in guam as part of an asian trip. it wasn't a prepared statement he thought about it in advance. he laid out what later became known as the guam and nixon doctrine, back to the point that was made earlier about how this applies to other issues, the principles of this besides vietnam. namely he said we're going to be world leaders. he was talking primarily about asia. increasingly, we looked to our friends and all is to take more of the burdens of the front lines, providing a nuclear umbrella. we'll train and support and provide aid to other countries but they increasingly had to take on these responsibilities. this clearly was the theory of

vietnamizati vietnamization. world policy in general. so that was the next step. then in august -- let's see. i want to check my -- yeah. in august was the first secret meeting with the north vietnamese. none of us were involved in that, i don't believe. it was before we took over. and that was rather fruitless. that leads to the next major item, a speech in 1969, the famous silent majority speech. the purpose of this speech was to rally domestic and foreign support. the vietnamization process had ák2qet he was beginning to announce incremental withdrawals, to show american people it wasn't open-ended. later on he turned the draft into a lottery as opposed to the other aspects of it, which were more unfair.

and that helped to ease the situation as well. the main thrust of that was red meat, very tough on north vietnamese and designed to show how intransigent they were. >> how was it that you had secret negotiations and nobody noticed you left white house? >> my colleagues might want to chime in. this was very interesting, the logistics. when they picked up -- february, march and april were the next ones. here is how it would go for all of us. we're working all week. i would say our workweek was roughly between 80 to 100 hours a week, literally. we have a secret meeting coming up. nixon, kissinger, harriman and

three or four of us. that's it. we start secretly to prepare the briefing books for that secret negotiation. this included a memo to the president laying out our strategy and goals for that meeting, including an exhausting briefing book for kissinger of his opening statement, fallback statements, probable north vietnamese positions, transcript of previous meetings, profiles of their leaders. we go home from the nsc on friday night. this was always done on weekends or holidays because kissinger's absence was not so glaring if it was over a weekend and you could sort of cover for him. if he did it during the workweek, you couldn't get away with this. we're already exhausted at this point. saturday morning a white house car picks us up at our home. i don't remember how we got our classified materials on the plane but somehow they got on the airplane. we go to andrews air force base and join henry on air force two

or one of the presidential planes. we fly over the atlantic and to the center of france, a military airport in the center of france. we had the cooperation of the french to do this secretly. >> it was orlean. >> nobody was noticing that air force one was landing -- >> no. that's why we had to go to the center of france. the cover was it was a training mission. >> which it actually was. >> well, in some ways. >> henry is never satisfied with any briefing on the plane. all the way over for eight hours, we're redoing the briefing book. right? >> right. >> we get in the center of france. special assistant to the president, who finally became the foreign minister, he led us

to a small french plane in the middle of paris -- in france. we take that plane to an obscure part on the outside of paris where we meet our military attache. he was fluent in french, among other things, and loved the james bond aspects of this. he rented a car. couldn't use his own car. we each had code names. i'll let negroponte tell us what the code names were. we had to encounter at this safehouse apartment we twoent. we didn't want the cleaning lady to know who we were. we go to the apartment. at this time it's about midnight paris time. but it's about late afternoon in washington. so we have trouble getting to sleep because it's late afternoon our time. at least in my case, i would finally get to sleep. about an hour or two before we had to get up, which was, say,

6:00 or 7:00 am paris time, which is about midnight washington time. we then go into a meeting for six to eight hours, verbatim notes. >> and we're at our best, of course. >> yes. we finish the meeting, go back to the airport. we take the plane back to the center of france. we get on that plane and fly back. all the way over we're writing a memo to the president of what happened at the meeting, beginning to type up the transcripts of the meeting. we get back to washington, at which point it was about 6:00 am paris time but midnight washington time. we go to sleep. come to the office monday morning, pretend we had the whole weekend off. so that's really what happened. >> and so henry was general kirchbaum and winston was colonel landry and i being the junior person of the group was lieutenant newman. >> no.

we used my initials. >> each of us had initials. you must have been s. >> i just remember being lieutenant newman. >> i asked henry if he would give proper credit if there was a peace agreement and he regarded that as a nonessential question. >> how did you, when you were preparing the briefing materials -- two problems. one, we didn't have direct ability to pick up the phone to the north vietnamese. so how do we communicate with them? secondly you're a staff of young guys, assembling mountains of briefing papers and how did you do that without letting the state department, defense department, anybody else know that you were doing this? >> like so many other things, like the china opening and dealing with the russians, the state department was not involved. we had plenty of papers. first the original mission that i mentioned, but also

continuing. it was public aspects through the war and so on, paris peace talks were going on publicly. we had lots of background material. we had experts. not me but these two guys knew a lot about vietnam. so there was enough fire power to prepare these memos. it does underline the relationship between nixon and kissinger, fantastic complement. nixon would have to decide on keet decisions and overall strategy of each meeting but henry would give him ways of how to accomplish that and go actually negotiate it. >> how did you contact the north vietnamese? >> in paris. >> you weren't going through the state department. >> no, nor the embassy. it was a formal diplomatic channel. instead we used general walters, who was an army attache. so it's not formal state department channel.

>> so 1969, you have really nothing -- there was a silent majority speech, the talks really were going nowhere. the fighting was escalating. 1970, what happened in 1970? there was more escalation? >> we had three meetings in the spring of 1970 that didn't really get anywhere. this led us to that spring -- first let me say that we had ongoing secretly -- starting in '69, a bombing in cambodia along the borrower with vietnam. >> part of the initial decision that this was going to be the policy? >> the problem with vietnam they had these sanctuaries in cambodia and laos that were essentially untouchable. they would come across the border and go back over in the case of cambodia or come down the ho chi min trail in the case of laos. to have these sanctuaries made the fight even tougher. we bomb cambodia secretly, only

close to the border. but it was secret. and when it does leak out, there was outrage particularly by the congress and the media. the rationale for doing it and doing it secretly was, number one we want to hit the bases along the border because they were coming across, slaughtering americans and going back over to cambodia. secondly, it had to be secret because the head of cambodia didn't like the north vietnamese in his country. couldn't do anything about it. he tolerated these raids. he fully approved of it. it was done along the border with minimum civilian casualties. nevertheless became very controversial. that then leads us to -- since we're getting nowhere in the secret talks to what we call the cam bodian incursion. >> that was in the spring? >> i can take this on or can you -- >> i'm at stanford university at

that time. in a way it's an interesting perspective for having seen that. >> sure. >> i was on a sabbatical and the incursions, i believe, took april or so. >> april 30th. >> 1970. and i was at the hoover institution. they have a big tower but next door they have this big glass building. there wasn't much left of the glass in that building after the cam bodian incursion. campuses erupted. >> let me explain the rationale here. the nsc and the cabinet had to debate whether to go into cambodia and go after these. first, do you do it at all or just with south vietnamese troops or have american troops with them? how do you do it? how long do you go in there? how deep do you go in? >> how do you know you've succeeded?

>> americans were getting slaughtered. we were not extending the war into cambodia. the north vietnamese were disregarding the cambodia neutrality and had these sanctuaries. the feeling was that americans had to be with them. thirdly, to show that it wasn't an invasion or open ended it was decided to limit the duration, mainly about two months, and only a few miles going in. that was the basic decision. now the problem was that since it was limited because of domestic reaction and world reaction to the incursion, in duration and scope, it was less effective militarily. the other mistake we made, we pronounced it as going after their headquarters and there was no such thing exists. as if some building.

it was their leadership moving around and theyt8gy moved deepe into cambodia to escape. we never got their headquarters and so it was sort of considered less than successful. the fact is that it did lower american casualties, helped to speed up. but counter balanced toward that was tremendous domestic reaction which we just mentioned. this is a famous kissinger meeting with his dove members of his staff just before the noticement of the decision to go in. he didn't like yes people. he wanted to hear all points of view. called into his office five staff members who he knew would oppose this incursion. won't go over all the names but i was one of them. i was in support of the positions we were taking on vietnam. but i was somewhat dovish in terms of -- >> expanding? >> as a result of this meeting,

two hours, we had a very stormy meeting why we didn't think it was a good idea. after that meeting three of those in the meeting and a couple of others outside the meeting resigned from the staff over cambodia. two who resigned frankly were going to resign anyway in the summer. they were staying on but they moved it up in order to make a statement oncambodia. they were about to leave anyway out of exhaustion. i did not resign. another person, systems analyst didn't resign and wasn't caught up in the emotional debates. my reasoning wasn't that i was against it for moral and ethical reasons. i felt it was entirely moral and ethical. these people were killing american troops and south vietnamese. we had a right to go after them and a legal right to do so. i didn't argue emotionally like some of the others who felt we were extend iing the war.

the north vietnam ooesz extended the war. the tradeoff between the military impact, particularly with the duration and scope limited, versus the uproar domestically and loss of support for the war wasn't worth it. and so i argued on those ground bus i didn't resign because of a moral or ethical problem. i thought it was -- and 30,000, i handed kissinger the draft. we had 48 hours to go. my colleagues will understand this. we literally have 48 hours before it's published, takes the draft, almost literally throws it on the floor and says this is absolutely useless, which didn't help my morale a great deal. i had one night to redo the whole damn thing, which i did. i went to bed. he woke me up and said this is terrific. it couldn't have gotten that much better that soon but

anyway. >> so one up shot of this, and it's the direct segue, there are five resignations and so henry starts casting about, looking for replacements for those people and that's how i got recruited initially to be on sort of a planning staff through the nsc in september 1970. and then later on took over from dick, who was running the endo-china operation at the nsc the following summer. >> can i say something in general here? >> please. >> it's very difficult. as i look around the faces of this room, i see many faces that were not in washington alive and kicking in the 1970s. the mood in this country is so difficult to describe to anybody in that group, because it was a poisonous mood. we were not fighting only the

vietnamese. we were fighting the americans. "the new york times" would incredibly lengthy editorials, criticizing whatever negotiating position we took. other newspapers would do the same. not all. some were quite positive. but nonetheless, the campuses were literally hot beds of resistance. i went to harvard after having been on the kissinger staff for a while. that i had been on the nsc because i would be kicked off the campus. so it was that kind of mood that was absolutely priceless. that made it very, very difficult. no matter what we did, there was always somebody who would

criticize. and what do you do when you're fighting a war sbfr move you make is the people whom you regard as your friends? this is a very difficult decision. >> i think it's so important to make this point. i was a student at george washington university. and in 1971, the whole semester of classes were canceled so my university could house the students coming all over the country to participate in the demonstrations. we all got pass/fail in our course, but we never went to class. >> first, nixon and kissinger were particularly bitter because some of the most vociferous critics were people of the johnson and kennedy administrations who got us into this war in the first place and then they turned. he felt the establishment in general, not just the heart of the faculty, turned on people, at least in kissinger and

nixon's view were trying to end this honorably. >> and who, by the way, in the johnson administration had not withdrawn one single troop from vietnam despite the fact that the talks had started in may. >> that's right. >> they never had -- never were prepared to step up to some of the difficult issues. >> so this really made frankly all of us rather bitter. these people who got us in there and up to 550,000 troops were turning on their successors, particularly because nixon could have said, as i said earlier, we've had it with this mess, we're getting out. it's their fault. then the secret talks, nobody knew we were negotiating seriously. we would make -- nobody knew that. all my friends, liberal and moderate and everyone else, said why the hell aren't you negotiating seriously? all they could see were the public propaganda exchanges. i knew secretly we were making

every effort and the north vietnamese were being unreasonable. they were working on this war without trying to negotiate an end. i had come back from paris, we were trying to do the exact thing. >> but you couldn't mention it. >> couldn't mention it. >> whose decision was it to make these talks secret? so was it so you could advance more -- who had the courage to do it. >> we felt you cannot make progress, propaganda, with the whole world watching. you've got to do it secretly. i think the north vietnamese weren't that interested in negotiations, except as a tactic to wear us out or to see whether we could make the kind of deal they could live with. they didn't want to accuse the vietcong and others of being overly soft. what do you think, joe? >> i think here winston and i may differ slightly. i think it's porn to have secret

negotiations, they accompany almost any negotiation about a serious issue. i think henry wanted to keep it secret. >> that's a different issue. i meant the public. >> i understand. my point is for him secret negotiations also meant not telling the state department or pentagon or keeping them somewhat in the dark for a while. >> on one hand you were negotiating, and you were exhausted, negotiating in good faith. everything you seemed to try wasn't working. you were getting beaten up in the press, called you baby killers. it was a terrible time. yet at the same time you were keeping i guess president nixon had the courage to take that because he thought it was the most effective way to negotiate an end to the war. but talk to me about why was it kept secret from the rest of the government? was that essential do you think? >> because everything leaks in washington. >> and that's the quick answer.

nixon and kissinger particularly. >> and henry, for both good and ill, was very possessive of our national security and diplomatic -- >> he only could be because nixon was possess sive. >> there's not been anybody since kenry kissinger who has had as much authority or power over our national security, no one individual. >> eegter in the state department -- >> anywhere. >> it was incredibly difficult. again, you have to see the mood of the country at the time. it was simply incredibly difficult to keep a secret. >> because of the passions of the issue. >> yes. >> the word passions is a very modest word. >> i might add one other thing. we'll get to this a little later, but when the secret talks became known, then we had sort of semi secret talks, namely in 1972 which we'll get to, we

would not announce in advance we were having talks. we would secretly go over and have the talks, but afterwards we and the north vietnamese would brief the press on what was happening. they were secret in the sense that nobody would know what was going on other than the sanitized briefings. >> 69, 70, 71, escalated negotiatio negotiations. nothing seems to happen. we're now at the middle 1971, kissinger made a secret trip to china. did that change everything? >> i think we have to back up for a second. i'm checking the chronology. we had the laos incursion, but it was china. again, the basic point they had these sanctuaries. the quick answer is it was the south vietnamese expedition essentially with our support because of the constrictions of congress, and it wasn't very

effective. so then, what happened, very significant. that's why we have to stop for a minute. may 1971. you had a secret meeting in which we set forth obviously with nixon's full approval what essentially became the agreement a year and a half later. it essentially was the following. it was a military-only agreement. the north vietnamese positions from the very beginning until the breakthrough that we'll g to was not only are we supposed to withdraw unilaterally, but as we leave vietnam, we're supposed to over throw the government and install a coalition government. >> and not force them to -- >> as i said, unilaterally. that was their position. nixon was prepared to have a military only solution, but he was not prepared to over throw an ally for all the reasons of world credibility, morality and sacrifice. the may proposal, and this is

very important for history. a lot of revisionists saying we could have had the final agreement earlier. we couldn't have had it because until the break through in october of '72, north vietnamese insisted on replacing the tu government. in may '71 we put a seven-point plan forward consisting of the following, unilateral withdraw but no further infiltration across the dmz of any more north vietnamese troops, a cease-fire, get our prisoners back, independence and cease-fire in laos and cambodia and international supervision. that is essentially what the final paris accords look like. we put that forward, and for the first time, the north vietnamese began to take us -- they see there was something to

negotiate, but they continue to hang on to the political settlement dimension. so we couldn't strike a deal because that to us was dishonorable and so on. they wouldn't budge on that. so these promising negotiations, of the seven points we sort of agreed on five or five and a half with a lot of details to come on. we couldn't get to the seventh which was the political future of south vietnam determined by the vietnamese themselves. it does mean overthrowing the government. and so we then ran into an impasse even though we had some hopes. it included the opening of china. henry's secret trip was in july '71. coming back, dick smyser was on that trip with me. it was a public trip generally including a stop in paris. i'll let dick give some of the

color of how we managed to pull that secret negotiation off in paris on our way back. this is before the president announced. >> secret trip to china. >> we stopped off in paris publicly. dick, you might explain how we managed to have a.zñu secret negotiation in paris. >> well, we had henry having dinner with an attractive young lady who was a correspondent in paris, and that provided a cover for our business because since he was having this dinner with this woman, nobody suspected that he might also be having a negotiation with the vietnamese. >> he was wildly criticized. everybody knew that leonard toe was in town. >> and why is henry seeing this woman who was a reporter for "the new york times" or one of these papers, why is henry having dinner with this woman

instead of meeting with leonard toe. this is the kind of mood that existed at the time it was crazy. there was one very important point which i think i focused on more than anybody else, though it later became moot, and that was that when henry said we would do a unilateral withdrawal, that was the first time that we went into the negotiating session with the north vietnamese at their private villa, that they had tables for us to negotiate. up until that time we had sat in chairs like this, and the north vietnamese did not think that was a real negotiation. but once henry said we are prepared to withdraw unilaterally they said, a-ha, they have come to one of our most basic points and, therefore, we will now have a table. it's these little things, again -- diplomacy is a funny game. you look for little things that

tell you a great deal about what is behind the thinking of people who are not ready to articulate it. it's kind of tricky. but on the other hand it's absolutely essential. >> i'll quickly mention that when the pentagon papers were released, leaked out, and they were just a review of vietnam situation, military and diplomatic during the johnson and kennedy years. it had nothing to do with nixon. it wasn't any embarrassment to nixon. he got hammered for opposing the leak of these papers as if he was trying to cover things up. it was just making his predecessors look bad. he felt it was an important principle, one to only classify documents. him and kissinger were particularly upset. june 71 was precisely a month before we were going to china secretly and we're in the middle of these promising negotiations with the vietnamese. so they were doing this on

behalf of their successors where you try to keep some relevant secrets but also the timing was atrocio atrocious. >> are you going to talk about china? >> in fall of 1971 you think things are going well, but the north vietnamese you detect are gearing up for another offensive. >> right. >> then in 1972, that was the momentous year for a lot of reason as professor smyser pointed out, nixon went in february, moscow in june. >> he went to moscow the end of april. >> the water gait break-in occurred at roughly the same time. >> i know we have to get through this, but we've got to circle back to the spring of '71 when the north vietnamese unleashed a major offensive -- spring of '72. >> but they were gearing up to it by the end of 1971. let's go through 1972. that was the big year.

>> january '72 nixon goes public with the secret talks. >> he gave a speech january 25th because in the preceding month, despite this promise over the summer with the seven-point plan, the north vietnamese began to back away, delayed any further talks, started gearing up for a military offensive and we would continue to get hammered by our domestic audiences about not negotiating seriously. he decided we had to finally go public with the fact that we had been negotiating for two or three years and it was north vietnam, and he laid out a seven-point plans to make clear how reasonable we were and put pressure on hanoi. it did rally american public opinion a great deal. >> for a while. >> for a while. >> so that's january. >> that's january. the north vietnamese did not respond. they launched this offensive.

we had one last chance and a secret trip to moscow. >> let me pick up before that, because that is critical. it's i believe march 30th of 1972 that they lawn tch offensive. it was easter, and there are a lot of catholics in vietnam. it was called the easter offensive. and it was major, frontally, it was right across the dmz. they actually came up against a pretty good ar vent division, and we knew everything we had at this offensive, and actually over a period of time succeeded in turning it around. it was not a bad test of vietnamization. it required a lot of our air suppo support. but it was a major, major effort and a precursor of what ultimately happened in vietnam.

the north vietnamese were willing to send conventional forces across the border. >> let's go back one month. it was the 1972 february trip where nixon went to china. you went with him. what impact did that have on vietnam if any? >> we do know the chinese weighed in with the vietnamese, but not in a way that would be overly pressuring. this was to have our relationship with china not complicated by the vietnam war with american troops on the border. they wanted to balance the soviet union and we knew we wouldn't be an effective global balance. the chinese had an interest in having us end this war. we tried to make clear to them, henry did i think with success, that we're willing to get out and get our prisoners back and cease-fire, not willing to over throw the toou government. it's not in our interest to make the u.s. look like an unreliable

ally because you want us to help balance the soviets. we know the chinese took some trips to hanoi and did weigh in. they probably said wait the americans out, get them out of vietnam, don't insist on mun into lags in the political settlement. in a few years saigon will fall in your lapse anyway. we also also with the russians the secret trip in april to set up the may summit with the russians, another isolation of hanoi. we try to get them to get the vietnamese to meet with us. already the offensive was taking place. we had one may 2nd meeting with north vietnam: we got nowhere. as a result of this we decided to bomb hanoi and mine high fong. >> the chronology is nixon goes in february. the north vietnamese invade south vietnam in a spring

offensive a month later. you're already negotiating with a planned trip to moscow to have nixon go visit moscow for the moscow summit. the north vietnamese look like they're winning, as you said. so what went around the thinking of nixon's decision to then escalate? >> you want to take that one? >> well, it was a very important weekend. he did it on the 8th of may. in the preceding days we had some meetings. i remember general hague calling me in on a friday afternoon. i was about to go to new york. he said you better stick around. the president's decided, it's a certain certainty, that he's going to mine high fong and bomb hanoi. we're going to spend the weekend here doing some staff work and we'll have an nsc meeting on monday. and he asked me to write kind of a justification for doing this. >> what was the background in mining high fong harbor? it was the largest harbor in

north vietnam. >> it was the kind of escalation we had avoided previously. i think mr. nixon felt that he couldn't go to moscow on his summit with mr. brez nef while mr. perez nef's client was invading a friend of ours. >> we had an nsc meeting monday morning and then the action was undertaken. it continued. >> tell me about those five or six stays. >> president nixon decided we were going to bomb hanoi, mine high fong harbor knowing that maybe the moscow summit hung in the balance. so what -- did kissinger talk to you? >> i'll pass this back to winston except to say that, yes, that saturday we had a meeting in the situation room with all of henry's closest staff. >> we may have different

memories of people's positions. i think most people were in favor of doing this both for military reasons to blunt the north vietnamese offensive and they understand nixon's view that you don't go to russia looking weak while your american soldiers are getting killed by russian weapons. as i recall it, you correct me with your memory, almost everyone thought this would be the end of the moscow summit, that the russians wouldn't greet moscow -- >> especially the ships. >> one of the ships got hit by accident which didn't help. people thought the summit would either be canceled or said it's a good chance it's going to be canceled. i distinctry remember nixon saying no, the russians have too much at stake with us bilaterally. i'll look how much better being strong as i go there. where others felt, we'll do this, lose the arms control agreement, berlin agreement, all the other things we worked out

particularly with the russians. i remember going in a helicopter with henry up to camp david to help write the speech an announcing hanoi and high fong. >> this was a couple days in early may. >> henry and i were depressed on the aircraft, not that we were against what was going to happen, but all the work on the russian front was going to go down the tube. nixon was right. we were wrong. we went ahead with the summit. we ought to let john -- >> we have slightly different recollections of the saturday meeting. i felt there were more opinions expressed to the effect that the summit is not likely to be canceled including from helmet seinfeld who was the european director and john hole drij who was the asia man. be that as it may, i also attended the nsc meeting on monday and i recall henry saying that he thought there was a

50/50 chance. >> so kissinger -- the small inner circle took you into the white house situation room and said this is what the president's decided, what do you think? >> yeah, basically. >> what do you think is going to happen? >> he also said that before the opt -- >> nixon never wavered. this is an interesting point. >> this is a very courageous decision. he was willing to risk the moscow summit. in his mind he wasn't risking it much. >> people go back and say was it kissinger, was it nixon? >> this was nixon supported by kissinger. >> it's very hard sometimes to distinguish the two. i want to add one thing on china. when kissinger went to china on the secret trip, he took me with him which rather surprised me because i wasn't working on

china, wynn was. the interesting thing about it to me was at a certain point we began talking about vietnam, and he mentioned a number of key points. afterwards kissinger asked me, is there anything in his key points which deviates in a substantial way from [ inaudible ]. i said no, he is taking exactly the same line. to me that meant that we could not count on the chinese to pull our irons out of the fire on vietnam. i think that was a key point. >> well, they wouldn't pull irons out of the fire. a little more nuance. first of all, joe and i have to send his transcript to annoy.

>> dhaert. >> secondly, i do think and it was shown that they weren't going to pull our irons out of the fire. to the extent, as i said earlier, they could get us out of vietnam and away from their borders in a way that wouldn't undercut our world credibility and balancing of the soviet union, it was worth it for the -- i think they did argue to hanoi, don't make them over throw, settle for a military settlement. you'll get your prize in the long run. >> that was an important modification. >> so let's flash forward. that was talking about vietnam with the chinese a year before. but then when you went to moscow, did you also talk -- >> moscow was a very different kettle of fish. >> nixon called the bluff. the trip was on. the russians, the soviet union did not object. now you're in moscow. >> we had one seminal meeting on vietnam with brezhnev, co-seeing

gan, alex an drof, their national security adviser and their interpreter. it was the president, it was henry and it was winston and myself. we had a nice long four-hour thing where they basically vented about vietnam. i think the longer they spoke, the clearer it was -- it's again this question of sending the transcript to hanoi. they were doing this for the record in hanoi. and bob winston may want to talk about the one detail. >> one of the worst moments of my life up till then was the fact that meg upon they and lloyd missed the presidential mode tore cade. this meeting was clearly going to be on vietnam. it was a big signing ceremony i think for a space agreement, i don't know what it was. we were with the briefing books for the meeting for mix on and

kissinger in the office. the motorcade was supposed to go a half hour later. brezhnev says to henry -- to both of them, let's go out early. so the motorcade takes off and we're left behind with the briefing books. henry is a great guy but he can get a little upset when things don't go well. not having the briefing books and missing the motorcade, even though that was totally not our fault, but that's totally irreleva irrelevant. we were agonizing, we went to the kgb and said please let us go out. they said no, you can't go out. we were an hour and a half behind brezhnev and nixon. and as be went out, we were contemplating suicide. i don't know about you. luckily brezhnev took nixon out on a boechlt then we had a meeting and it was a vicious

meeting. nixon stood there, didn't try to debate. by the way, this is important, the fact the russians had nixon when we were bombing hanoi and mining high fong, it was quite useful. after this meeting, very vicious atmosphere, we go upstairs, the entire mood changes. they break out the vodka and sit around and get semi drunk and have a great time. at the end of that, nixon leaves. kissinger negotiates the salt agreement later that night. i don't think he was drunk. >> henry used to say the trouble with my staff is that they're all incompetent. >> that was example number one. >> let history note that in the audience are several key members of henry kissinger's staff. they were chuckling when they

talked about contemplating suicide because henry kissinger would have been disappointed at their foolish actions. >> they didn't need broefing books because it was a total four-hour lecture by the other side. >> we've gotten through the salt negotiations, arms control agreements, opening to china. the vietnam is still raging. college campuses are on fire. smyser is at harvard incognito and not letting anyone who who you worked for. then october 1972, breakthrough. >> well, we got the north vietnamese's attention with high fong and hanoi, blunting their offensive. as you'll see in a later opinion associated when you talk with hanoi, you get their attention. when you're nice to them, you don't get their attention, unfortunately. so september we resumed late september talks. we began with to get a few

inning links that they might be more flexible. nothing definitive but the tone was totally different because you just bombed the hell out of them. plus we have this very forthcoming proposal still on the table. to make a long story short, the breakthrough came on october 8, 19726789 why did it come? the breakthrough being the following, we go to another secret talk and they present a proposal, elaborating on the points with their own proposal. for the first time in the history of the negotiations they have to drop their political conditions. people have to remember up until then, even in 1969 if we said give us our prisoners back and we'll get out, it wouldn't work. they would insist on over throwing toou. madam bin had eight points which said unilateral u.s. withdrawal,

and then over throw toou -- not those words oochs, and once you've done those two things we'll begin to discuss prisoners. that was their position. so anyway in october what happened? u.s. presidential election happen. george mcgovern was the opponent to mix on. he basically was willing to give to the vietnamese everything they wanted. as long as they thought mcgovern might win, they were going to wait. that's why they petered out the negotiations. they were going to wait to see if he could give them what they wanted without this mad man. when they saw by october that nixon was going to win and probably in a landslide, oh, my god, we're going to have this mad man in office four more years. he doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected. he just bombed the hell out of us. we better make a deal now. that's what turned the tide. secondly, wrongly, they thought nixon would be eager even though

he's going to winnie way, eager to have a peace agreement before the election if he possibly could, therefore, he might be more flexible. nixon was just the opposite. he was damned if he would have any agreement that looked like a sellout. he was a man of principle and he wasn't going to do it and he didn't need it for the election. >> although the october date is kind of an interesting coincidence compared to the experience four years before. one of the things i've learned from the vietnam negotiations is, if you can at all avoid it, don't negotiate something critical to united states national security one month before a presidential election. >> that's right. so critics can say we rushed it, and john may want to comment on that as we get further on. in any event, we spent three days, exhausting days fleshing out our counterproposal. i remember one night, john, we were staying i guess at the embassy. i don't know where we were at

that point because this was public now. henry said take their proposal and redo it. john and i stayed up until 3:00 a.m., did the proposal. henry woke us up -- he was generous that night, didn't wake us until about 7:00. he said it was too tough. i think that's probably negroponte's fault. anyway, we redid it, had three or four more exhausting days. we finally settled on the basics of the agreement, some details and henry was asked to go to hanoi to complete it. he was contemplating that. meanwhile we were keeping nixon and president toou informed but rounding off some of the edges not to scare anybody and lock us in. so which went back with the agreement. i stayed behind for a day with our translator and negotiated with the vietnamese on a lot of details. we made about 65, 70 technical changes. i'm not pretending i was a major

negotiator. but it was harrowing. i went to bed, was woken up by the hague saying you have to go back and get more point. you have to remember the emotions of this time. i went into the restroom on the plane and sat down and cried, both out of exhaustion and out of joy that we were going to end this damn thing. then we got back to washington and we decided we better go tell mr. toou what this agreement is all about. i'll let john pick it up from there. >> we went to saigon, i think it was about the 17th of october, and the scenario henry had in mind was we'd go to saigon for a couple of days and then we would go to hanoi, initial the agreement and the seize fire would go into effect i think on the 2nd of november, something like that, so just several days before the elections. but when we got to saigon -- unfortunately we didn't even

have yet a fully completed vietnamese text. but toou reacted -- i was not at the meeting, maybe you were. >> i'll interrupt you for your sake. on the way out there we had discussions about how toou was going to react. henry and i, partly analysis, partly wishful thinking thought he would not like the agreement but he would accept it because we got rid of the political conditioning. he'd still be in office. in fact, the year before, we had to elaborate one of the proposals by saying we'd be willing to have negotiations six months after the agreement and that toou would resign a month before the elections, leave the implication he would still run in the election. he was willing then, a year earlier, to say no, i won't even run in the election. we said no, that's going too far. for that reason we thought he might buy this agreement.

plus, as i say, there were many other reassurances of continuing aid and everything else. john was much more prescient. he predicted a real blowup in saigon. >> you think you got a deal after a decade of the vietnam war, and then you go to south vietnam. >> there's not much more to the story. what happens is toou says he won't do it. then the north vietnamese reveal the fact -- and henry then cancels his trip to hanoi to carry out this scenario. arnaud debore grof writes a story head lined in "newsweek" magazine, a deal with annoy, a duel with toou. president nixon faced with this situation decides, and i think very correctly, that he couldn't go ahead and forge ahead and sign this agreement in october of '72. it would look like we were really in a very ungracious way just dumping an ann ally that we

fought side by side with for all these years. we decided to go back to washington. and henry had a press conference on the 26th of october -- >> first press conference he ever gave. >> if memory serves, and said peace is at hand which was misinterpreted by many of the critics as henry trying to convince the american people, to try to deceive them somehow whereas what he was really trying to do was send a message reassuring annoy particularly in my view and a message to saigon, also, to say okay, we've had this hiccup, but we'll be back to sort this out after the election. >> then you have nixon re-elected. you don't have a deal. then what does nixon do? >> we go back with more talks in november in paris which got nowhere, not only did north vietnamese not make the changes.

when it blew up with hanoi, we said we can't do the deal unless south vietnam is on board. we're telling toou we'll try to get some of your changes but don't expect too much. we go back, nothing happens in novemb november. >> although all along, just to interrupt, all along we've now decided to really ramp up the supply of the south vietnamese army to bolster their sense of security for any future agreement. >> that's right. we were telling toou we would back him up. anyway, we'll get into that. nixon decides once gn, the only way to get their attention is militarily. the bombing took place around christmas time since the november talks got nowhere. the fact is, you could argue it's not a nice thing to do. the fact is within two days the

north vietnamese sent a conciliatory note saying they wanted to talk again, so we got their attention. furthermore, we did limit civilian casualties. there's horror stories about these civilian casualties. i'm sure there's, quote, collateral damage, but we did our best to minimize it. when we went to hanoi a couple days later, we could see in the populated areas there's no damage. the craters that were out in areas not near the population. so in any event, that got their attention. we went back to negotiations. they did make some changes, not enough for toou's sake, but we got the deal. >> two days after the christmas bombing you got the deal. >> we have a picture of the initialing ceremony that took place at that point, january 23rd, 1972. you want to add something? >> well -- >> this is the initialing ceremony. where is this taking place?

>> this is in paris. >> do you want to talk us through. >> and there's the international conference center where there's a picture later on of them coming out onto the streets. it's on avenue clay bare of paris, france. >> can you go back to the previous picture, i'll explain who is there. on the left-hand side ambassador sullivan negotiating with the legal adviser of the state department, kissinger is left. >> george aldridge. >> they were negotiating protocols in indochina generally, prisoners and supervision. you have sullivan, kissinger, aldridge, then myself and then a dalla looking john negroponte who was less happy with the agreement than i was. our translator. opposite from henry is lake october, the right hair, to his right is juan twee.

if it was just juan twee, he was a functionary and vice minister of foreign after first, we knew it wouldn't be. >> in that conversation i recall one thing that he asked lay da toe which i thought was quite revealing, he said do you decide these issues in the politburo by consensus or by vote? i was sure he was going to say by consensus, because that's sort of the way the communists work, at least that's my perception. he said no, by vote which i thought was pretty interesting. i think they had actually genuinely been divided in the weeks preceding about whether or not to go forward with the agreement because they felt they had been double crossed by us bailing out on the original scenario and then resupplying saigon with all this equipment. there might have been some dissension in the politburo

about whether to go forward or not which is why he then just before christmas said he had to go back. i think the reason he introduced so many -- he introduced a whole bunch of changes, nine or ten changes in the agreement just before we finished the november/december talks. i think it was to buy himself time to go back for consultations. i don't think he realized he was going to also buy the christmas bombing. >> the deal is signed january 1973. what happens next? >> next is kissinger goes to hanoi and we went with him. >> i was not. i declined to go. >> well, i was with him for several purposes, one to try to urge implementation by hanoi of the agreement and to both threaten and reassure them about implementation. secondly, very importantly, to get as much information on prisoners of war as we could. very important.

this is crucial nixon and kissinger for the prisoner situation. we insisted they had to all come back while we were still in the country. the agreement phased over two month, incremental u.s. withdrawals and return of prisoners. we got them all back on schedule. they did live up to that. the problem is the list they gave us of prisoners they were returning was shorter than we thought it should have been and very weak on laos and cambodia prisoners. we even brought photos of those we thought should have been in the prison camps but hadn't returned. it was a very unproductive trip, unfortunately foreshadowing what was coming. the question remain for many years did they hold prisoners back? my view is they were certainly brutal enough to do that but they didn't do it. if you hold them back and you don't tell anybody you've got them, there's no leverage. if they tell the world they reneged and held the people

back, then, of course, world outrage. my guess is that those who we thought should have been on the list probably died in captivity under torture or starvation or whatever it was and they didn't want to reveal that fact. i think we got everyone back who they actually had at that point. >> the prisoners are back, the deal is signed. you're all relieved we'll actually ended the vietnam war and done it with honor and integ see and decency, and then it all falls apart. >> to be honest, i think john was less relieved than i was. >> when the deal was done -- >> i did not like the deal, and i foresaw in that agreement the seeds of what happened next. i think in honesty, it was a withdrawal agreement. diplomacy sometimes you use euphemistic terms for what it is you've done. if you look at the agreement,

it's called the agreement to restore peace, to end the war and respees in vietnam. it turned out essentially to be with -- not quite adds decent adds we would have liked it to be. then, of course, there's all kind of discussion afterwards, did it unravel because of the agreement, or did it unravel because the presidency was so weakened in those subsequent years that it deprived president nixon of his ability to react and respond in a forceful way. we can debate the what-ifs forever. >> let me explain what nixon and kissinger's view were which i shar shared. first we felt we had for ten years sacrificed blood and money on behalf of south vietnam.

we tried to prepare them with vietnamization. we paid our price. secondly, we thought it was the best deal we would get, better than what most people were saying coalition government, get rid of toou and so on. we avoided that saying we'd give at least a chance for him to survive. there were four reasons we thought the agreement would hold up beyond thinking we were out of time. it had gone on long enough. number one, if there were -- we're not naive. we didn't trust hanoi. if they nibbled at the agreement and had cease-fire violations, we felt that the south vietnamese with our supplies would be able to handle that, that they had gotten to the point they can handled low level violations. number two, if there was massive infiltration and invasion which did happen, we thought the american people certainly -- we didn't want and they didn't want us to go back in on the ground,

but to uphold an agreement after all these sacrifices and credibilities of world power, at least resume our bombing to stop them from invading. we thought the military situation could be manageable. thirdly, there was an aid program. they wanted to call it reparations, we called it reconstruction. we had aid programs for laos, cambodia and south vietnam as well as hanoi. that was the incentive, the carrot to hanoi, $2.5 billion. if they implement the agreement, they get all this aid for reconstruction. fourthly, we thought the chinese and the russians would weigh in on implementation, not wanting to humiliate us and having their own stakes in the bilateral relationship. each of those assumptions didn't really pan out. the south vietnamese were not as capable as we hoped. in all fairness, the congress to its eternal shame cut off economic and military aid, or at least military aid to the south vietnamese. the practical and the psychological impact on our allies of trying to fight off a

north vietnamese invasion when we wouldn't give them military aid. we're not talking boots on the ground or air power. of course we couldn't do air power. >> when did congress cut off aid? >> more and more incremental about cutting off bombing and aid. >> this was 1973. >> started in '73 and '4, it kept on going. the archives would have the details. i must say kissinger's book, this is the most comprehensive account obviously from his perspective and a lot more. those interested -- this came out in 2003 called ending the vietnam war. >> that, too, is a euphemism if you pardon the interruption. it ended our involvement. >> that's why we think it could have worked but it didn't work because some of these

assumptions proved to be wrong the way we got chu to go along was the kind of rationale i just told you. we couldn't back up, as well as threats. we were out of patients. it's time to come to an agreement. he objected not only to the fact that there were north vietnamese in his country, but he felt misled. that's why he reacted the way he did. we thought we wouldn't get a better deal and it didn't work out obviously the way we hoped. the fact is, we did buy some time, southeast asia had time to assemble itself and not fall as dominos. but it was purchased at a very tough price. >> so by april 1975, north vietnam moved into saigon and

we're evacuated the american embassy in saigon. >> right. >> are there any final thoughts about all this? >> final thoughts. >> what did we learn from vietnam? what were the successes, the failur failures? what do you take away as the lessons you learned? >> i think the main lesson is don't get involved in things where you cannot count on your public being fully committed. i want to vets this again. our problems were not only in vietnam, our problems were in the united states. for some odd reason and maybe not-so-odd reason, we were unable to convince the american people that we -- how we could

have done it is one of the great questions of the century, and i suspect that your book does not fully answer it. and i'm not sure that anybody can fully answer it. but i teach a course in diplomacy at georgetown university. one of the things i go into, not in the painstaking detail that we do here, one of the things i go into is the question of how does one handle the problem of public opinion in a democracy when you're dealing with a diplomatic situation. when you're dealing with people as smart and as dedicated as the north vietnamese turned out to be, you have a genuine problem. you can't solve it by glib memos and sending papers around and taking a lot of trips.

you have to solve it by convincing people that what is at stake is generally in the national interest. i think that's the real question that americans face in the coming years and in the coming century. we have a very, very difficult situation in terms of projecting power across the world, and that is what we have to learn to do. i think if there's anything that comes to me out of this discussion, and i think john and wynn happened ld it brilliantly. the real issue is how does one manage public opinion in a democracy in such a way that it doesn't cheat people. don't ever think for a moment that you would cheat them because you can't. you have to do it honestly, you have to do it honorably, but you

also have to do it right. it is one of the questions which i address with my stew. how in god's green earth can you sometimes do this? i hate to say that, but even though it's an excellent and brilliant course managed by a wonderful professor, we don't have the answer in this course. >> do students know anything about vietnam? i would think it's ancient history to them. >> it's ancient history but they can be introduced to the elements. it is a difficult thing to do, particularly when you're dealing with somebody who is as clever and as motivated as the vietnamese were and perhaps are. now they have a different problem with the chinese. it is, however, something and i think needs total commitment of american thought and conscience,

how to continue this. >> well said. >> the world is not going to get simple her and there we are. >> well said. john, what are your final thoughts? >> well, several things. i guess, first of all, my -- that was more or less the beginning of my career, not the end of it. i went on and ended up dealing with situations like iraq and afghanistan. i was ambassador to iraq and central america. i was in a lot of different conflictive situations. so i carried my recollections of vietnam with me wherever i went, and i suppose one of the most important things was vietnamization, and the fact of building local. the guam doctrine, building local capacity. the whole issue of, can we do it all ourselves? can we be the policemen of the world or do we have to have friends in this endeavor. i always have ever since vietnam

emphasized this aspect. i remember sitting in my office as ambassador of the unit nations with george tenet when he was het of cia and we had just gone into afghanistan, and i told him, we've got to build up the afghan army. he sort of shrugged it off. we didn't try to do that for another six or seven years which i think is really unfor fatunat. i hope we don't have to keep relearning this lesson when we want to help other countries in difficult situations. the second thing i'd say is that obviously what ensued from this, and i think we need to be fair to mr. nixon and mr. kissinger, even though they're the ones who ended it, they don't really get responsibility -- you can't tag them with responsibility for everything that went before, because i think, in fact, their strategy was quite brilliant, and it would have been better if we applied it even sooner.

for example, i think the entire lbj administration, they never really thought through implications of the soviet split which i think henry and president nixon did very thoroughly, obviously. lastly, sort of on a happy note, despite the loss of vietnam to the north, despite all the human tragedy that ensued for boat people, vietnamese who my greated here and so forth, i found it very interesting when i went back as deputy sake tear of state, first time i had been back to vietnam in 35 years, since the signing of the agreement and just saw the incredible enthusiasm that existed in the democratic republic of vietnam for good relations for the united states, and i think it's mutual. i remember leaving hanoi and i gave a press conference as i would always do whenever i made an official stop somewhere.

and a vietnamese journalist asked me, mr. ambassador, if an american oil rig was attacked by the chinese in vietnamese-controlled waters, would the united states come to our assistance? when you think of that, that such a question was even conceivable back 40 years ago, we've come a long way and i find it heartening that we've actually come back to having a healthy relationship with the democratic republic of vietnam. >> i think what we've just said is what i think it was tyler ran doll said, but someone can correct me, you don't have permanent friends or permanent enemies. you have permanent interests. we've come full sierkal with vietnam and we might come full circle again. the fact is just a few years after the paris peace accord, the chinese invaded vietnam, and

they had real conflicts over kanl cambodia and all kinds of things. for me personally, it was beginning of my career, all of us were pretty young. when i was assistant secretary under clinton in the early 1990s, we were very concerned with the m.i.a. question, who was missing, getting remains back. the president appointed me and the deputy head of the veterans administration, herschel goldberg. we took several trips to hanoi. you can imagine the memories i had, to try to find out more the missing and get the remains. we made a lot of progress, and one of the most emotional and moving moments of moye life would be to stand in the hanoi airport, and it was all of our efforts to see a conference going back to the united states with remains of people who didn't know where their loved ones were for 15 or 20 years. we decided that we would move ahead to try to normalize

relations with vietnam. for me it was holding my nose. these guys had broken the agreement and all the sacrifices we made. but i felt, but more importantly the administration felt, that was the best way to get information on the m.i.a.s. secondly, it would help to balance china which was growing as a geopolitical competitor because vietnam, we were clear were not a friend of china. eventually vietnam is an important country with a lot of people. economically it might be useful down the road. with help of senator cain and senator kerry and the head of the foreign relations committee, they protected clinton's flank to go ahead with normalization. clinton was vulnerable having evaded the draft. these war heroes stood up for norm maalization

normalization. >> they led the way. >> absolutely. we normalized and had what john says, the now situation in the south china sea where vietnam is not going to become our ally but they see the need for reassuring american presence in that region as do all the other countries in the region. >> if i could add my final thoughts, i have two, one, the debate that we've had, you could have today about the foreign policy of the united states today and the place of america in the world. we're still talking about a lot of the same issues, public support for an increasingly unpopular war. do you go back in and bomb if someone doesn't abide by the agreement? what happens to safe havens across borders? these are all the same issues we're facing today. the other thing i must conclude with, as i listen to the three of you talking about with enormous depth and feeling and concern and