nixon and mr. kissingereven 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

it was nixon's idea. kissinger's response of going to china in 1969 was fat chance. now the tapes are terrible. a lot of you have heard parts of them. they don't lie. nixon said terrible things. racist things, anti-seymmetanti-symmetic and it is not unusual for that period or type of male who has to show what a man he is by swearing a lot. the swearing was no more swearing than happens at the "washington post" company where i worked. but there was an arrogance there. when he is talking to word leaders nixon could be very cool. he was good with world leaders. terrible at small talk so didn't try. he talked about interest and not ideas and got down to business and they liked that about him. he was a cool ham in those circumstances. in his office he could get wound up and say a lot of very bad stuff but there was an inequality to swearing. lbj knew how to swear. there was another side. late at night nixon would take his yellow pad and make notes to himself. and those notes he would describe the man he wanted to be. and we would use words like joyful and serene and inspir

in fact, when alderman told kissinger and nixon won to go to china, kissinger's response in 1969 was quote fat chance. now, the tapes are terrible. a lot of you have heard excerpts of them. they don't live. nixon said terrible, vile things. racist things. but i've listened a lot of the states, hundreds of hours of these tapes. my strong impression is a lot of this was posturing on nixon's part. this kind of awful big macho men think there is that kind of unusual for the. and that type of certain mail mastership what a man he is by swearing a lot. the swearing was no more swearing that happens today at the "washington post" why work. but there was an arrogance there. and yet it contrasts with his coolness at other times. when he's talking to world leaders, talking to brezhnev or mao zedong, nixon could be very cool and he was good with world leaders because he didn't preach at them. he was terrible and smallpox we didn't even try. he talked with interest and ideology. and get right down to business and they like that about him. and he was a fairly cool hand in those circumstances. in h

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 possessive. >> there's not been anybody since henry kissinger who has had as much authority or power over our national security, no one individual. >> either 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. it would have leaked immediately. >> 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 then 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 san

for nixon and kissingers, laird was a secondary policymaker at best. it's not that he wasn't accessible to the present, but that he often made policy as the book shows. and louse would be another example of that. where should the secretary of defense fit into the policy process. the volume shows that laird found a way to get his policy positions into the policy process, but he often had to do it despite the white house. despite the white house. second point, vietnam, gornl, i'm sure we'll talk a lot more about this. i think the book makes a very strong case that laird was not only the author of the vietnamzation strategy. that we knew, i think, but that he made an important effort time and again to pressure and in many cases to force other members of the administration to follow through on this process. and that he played a key role in trying to build up the south vietnamese military. the book is very strong showing laird's budgetary efforts to get allocations of resources from a congress that did not want to allocation resources to these purposes. it

she is presently completing a book entitled, never lose, nixon, kissinger and the illusion of national security. stephen f.knott is a professor of national security affairs at the united states naval war college. he served as co-chair of the university of virginia's presidential oral history program and directed the ronald reagan oral history project. professor knott received his ph.d. in political science from boston college and taught at the united states air force academy and the university of virginia. he is the author of alexander hamilton and the persistence of myth, and secret and sanction covert operations in the american presidency. the latter in examination of the use of covert operations by early american presidents. he is a co-author of the reagan years, and at reagan's side insider recollections from sacramento to the white house. dr. knott's most recent book, rush to judgment, george w. bush and the war on terror and his critics, was published in march 2012. amy goodman is the host and executive producer of democracy now, a national daily independent award winning news pr

saigon fell in 1935, kissinger gave a famous piece of advice before that the united states is going to have to take some action somewhere in the world. and that is what he and nixon did in southeast asia. kissinger told clinton, whether we got it right or not is really seconding that. and so it's not really that remarkable of a statement. not when one considers his insistence that the demonstrative effects are like this. it's to prove and convince ourselves that we are willing to be something and do something. that it's produced by one's active well and it's more important than the consequences of that act. and we can go through with his played out. so all of this could sound familiar and it should, basically it is the same. kissinger's philosophy of history is basically the physical dance card of those that believe that america creates its own reality. william kristol constantly complains that america has grown too soft. paul wolfowitz complained complained that there was not enough help and too many casualties. dick cheney's doctrine that held that there's even the slightest chance that a threat will be realized that the u.s. would act as though the threat was

if he hadn't recognized the people's republic of china, carter did that, not nixon and kissinger, and create a relationship with the president, he wouldn't be able to go now and election monitor this china like he's done in recent years. he was the first president, sitting president, to go to africa while president when he went to nigeria. he had denounced apartheid when he was president. so it's all part and parcel, the presidency and the post-presidency of an extraordinary american life dedicated to honesty, decency, and democracy everywhere on the planet. >> very notable at this time and we have to be careful not to eulogize him because he made clear he's not done yet. he has much more work he wants to do. doctor, let me go finally to you. i asked about the prognosis and you said it's strong, it's bright potentially but again he is 90. he's talking about radiation on the brain and he's talking about cancer. they don't believe it spread anywhere else but there might very well be more cancer cells in the body. >> ultimately it's hard when you're talking about an advanced cancer. does

i have nothing to do with watergate or nixon, kissinger, lbj.r campaign and win. he said the democratic party is around my neck. he acts like it is around his neck. >> i remember hearing that at home growing up. jimmy carter was governor of georgia, obviously. that makes you a qualified outsider. you are a politician. these guys are a very different cut. ben carson is a brain surgeon and never had a political inclination and you have trump and we know what he is and is not. this is a more dramatic version. >> absolutely. it's very hard. i have been saying we are in unchartered territory now. you can't compare what trump is doing to anybody. one analogy people make, which is useful is rethinking ross perot winning 19% of the vote in 1992. he had no political experience. he was a billionaire running, but in a third party context. now you have trump hijacking the republican party and establishment doesn't know what to do. just like obama back in '08 was the blackberry guy, that was the new technology of the moment. donald trump is the twitter maest

. >> president nixon will dispatch his adviser on foreign affairs, henry kissinger, to paris on peace talks. >> the president is working on a new proposal to offer to the viet kong and north vietnam. >> nixon's strategy on vietnam was to negotiate a peace agreement, but at the same time to vietnamize the conflict. >> we had to turn the war over to south vietnam, or it was going to be helpless. we couldn't fight their war forever. >> the south vietnamese were taught to think like americans, act like americans, fight like americans. >> south vietnam's president has said that he wanted nothing more than gradually to take over full responsibility for the war. >> president nixon started withdrawing troops almost right away. he had a lot to withdraw. there were over 500,000 men there. >> but he did this very slowly, as they supposedly shifted the burden of the fighting to the south vietnamese army. it was going so slowly, a lot of people were getting killed in the process, and there was no end to it. >> october 15th, 1969. vietnam moratorium day. >> surely this is a day unique in our histor

seen a lot in this country they have in the book here that mao meeting with president nixon and there's henry kissinger of are there. what kind kind of shape is the end of this mating? >> guest: he had an affect a stroke, something similar to a stroke. he was a more coptic condition than that but at this mating he had just purged his defense minister. the next picture next to him is even later when he's very weak in 1975. that was his last mistress, mr.'s companion who was the companion of his last years. c-span: the nixon visit was of what value to mao tse-tung? >> guest: it lined up the united states as an ally of china against the soviet union. here we tend to look at it the other way round. it normalize relations with china for a strategic alliance. the alliance is too strong a word that a strategic accommodation with china against the russians which was nixon's logic. c-span: in this book your biggest personal surprise? >> guest: gosh. that's something i really haven't thought of. c-span: either about him or that you were studying. >> guest: i think one of the things that has struck me most forcib

nixon loved this pitting one side against the other, and he played that actually -- and kissinger deserves crept, he was -- credit, he was good at this kind of thing. they did play them against each other. ultimately, he wanted the chinese and the russians to tell the north vietnamese to take a deal. that didn't work out. they had this word linkage, that they were going to link all these things together ultimately to lean on the north vietnamese government to take a deal, and the north vietnamese were pretty stubborn. the chinese and the russians didn't really play ball, so that piece didn't work out that well. but the fact is nixon went to china, nobody else had done it. it took a republican to do that. it was the right thing to do, and it took some guts and some vision to do it. >> as an afterthought, the number of things that you've outlined here that nixon actually accomplished i constantly, despite all of his facts -- all of his faults, wonder why he isn't given more credit than some of his colleagues who have accomplished -- >> because he disgraced his office. he disgraced his office

she helped in the nixon, ford, reagan administration, aide to henry kissinger, secretary of defense casper wine berger and later as principal, deputy assistant secretary of defense and pentagon spokesperson. in 1985, she received the defense department's highest award given to a civilian for her work in the reagan administration. she's a much sought after speaker and writer for her commentary on international affairs. ladies and gentlemen, coming to speak now is the honorable arum basham. [ applause ]. >>> good morning. i am very happy to be here in virginia for this occasion because i have a particular personal reason for remembering the westminster address that president reagan gave. i was director of speech writing at the time. and of course i was there. but something happened shortly after the speech where i was walking -- i had been to london before. i was showing a few people around. pastor shop that had all of these model soldiers. there were hundreds of them. one caught my eye. it's strange. but it caught my eye. a single figure. and i bought it. and i still have it. in fact, i hav

she helped in the nixon, ford, reagan administration, aide to henry kissinger, secretary of defense casper wine berger and later as principal, deputy assistant secretary of defense and pentagon spokesperson. in 1985, she received the defense department's highest award given to a civilian for her work in the reagan administration. she's a much sought after speaker and writer for her commentary on international affairs. ladies and gentlemen, coming to speak now is the honorable arum basham. [ applause ]. >>> good morning. i am very happy to be here in virginia for this occasion because i have a particular personal reason for remembering the westminster address that president reagan gave. i was director of speech writing at the time. and of course i was there. but something happened shortly after the speech where i was walking -- i had been to london before. i was showing a few people around. pastor shop that had all of these model soldiers. there were hundreds of them. one caught my eye. it's strange. but it caught my eye. a single figure. and i bought it. and i still have it. in fact, i hav

in other words, nixon's great foreign policy legacy was bringing the chinese in from the cold and kissingeranged it. david: right. so they want to do with iran what nixon did with china. i have to ask a final question, duane, how does the next president deal with all of this? quickly. >> i don't know where he begins. frankly don't know. because i don't think we've seen the end of what's going on on now. david: yeah, we do have another year and a half of the current president. duane clarridge who knows where he speaks of, former cia senior operations officer. appreciate it. >>> talking about china. take a look at alibaba hitting another low, down 2.5% today, down 32% just so far this year. about 71 bucks a share. but was at $119 a share at its height, that was back in february, in fact. . >>> trump telling maria bartiromo he would build the great wall of trump as he calls it to keep out illegal immigrants. why our next guest says giant steps like this are needed? at ally bank no branches equals great rates. it's a fact. kind of like shopping hungry equals overshopping. . david: we've got bre

she helped in the nixon, ford, reagan administration, aide to henry kissinger, secretary of defense casper wine berger and later as principal, deputy assistant secretary of defense and pentagon spokesperson. in 1985, she received the defense department's highest award given to a civilian for her work in the reagan administration. she's a much sought after speaker and writer for her commentary on international affairs. ladies and gentlemen, comingo speak now is the honorable arum basham. [ applause ]. >>> good morning. i am very happy to be here in virginia for this occasion because i have a particular personal reason for remembering the westminster address that president reagan gave. i was director of speech writing at the time. and of course i was there. but something happened shortly after the speech where i was walking -- i had been to london before. i was showing a few people around. pastor shop that had all of these model soldiers. there were hundreds of them. one caught my eye. it's strange. but it caught my eye. a single figure. and i bought it. and i still have it. in fact, i have

it does underline the relationship between nixon and kissinger again, which was a fantastic complement. nixon would have to decide on key 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. and we weren't going through 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. and then 1970, what happened in 1970? there was more escalation? >> we had three meetings in the spring of 1970 that didn't really get anywhere. so 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 nixon decision that this was going to be the policy? >> the problem with