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August 27 - September 6, 2025
On this occasion, he met with Admiral John McCain, the commander-in-chief of US forces in the Pacific (CINCPAC), who warned him that the North Vietnamese were trying to take over the entire country of Cambodia. If successful, this would send the entire program of Vietnamization down the drain. On the positive side, McCain seemed confident that a cross-border operation by the army of South Vietnam could be effective even if no US troops were used.
Several of the expert, highly credentialed young men Kissinger had brought to Washington were rapidly losing faith in the administration they served. Disappointed in its failure to end the war expeditiously, they viewed the growing US involvement in Cambodia with great trepidation. In written memoranda, Roger Morris, Anthony Lake, and Winston Lord emphasized that the Cambodian military was too weak and incompetent to succeed on its own.
In fact, when Marshall Green asked whether there would be any US involvement in the plans for COSVN, Kissinger assured him: “No Americans go into Cambodia.” With that lie, an operation involving thousands of men, planes, and equipment was propelled forward, with minimal scrutiny outside the professional military.
In this encounter, as others, there was for the staff members—certainly for me—the pernicious problem of discussing outrageous, irrational official actions in the cool, bloodless language of cost effectiveness and manliness the culture of government seemed to demand. Not for the first or last time, a policy in Indochina that warranted screaming was too gently opposed.
When Kissinger handed William Watts the task of coordinating the White House effort, he refused. “When I came to work for you, my sense of loyalty was first to the American people, secondly to you and finally to Richard Nixon. I’m against this action on every count and I’m resigning.”46 Six months earlier, Watts discovered his wife and daughter on a picket line protesting the war; now he was free to join them. Kissinger was disgusted. “Your views represent the cowardice of the Eastern establishment,” he observed. To Alexander Haig this was insubordination. “You’ve just had an order from your
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The report contained one other prediction with which Madame Binh would also probably have concurred, but that was in direct opposition to Nixon’s and Kissinger’s expectations about the results of the invasion: “It is unlikely that Hanoi will move toward early negotiations.”
The ranks of the Senate “doves” suddenly swelled. One convert was Majority Leader Mike Mansfield from Montana, who argued that “the U.S.–South Vietnamese thrust into Cambodia . . . can be regarded in no other light than as a widening of the war and an escalation of the conflict.”
American soldiers were openly looting the shops that were still standing. While they did so, their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Grail Brookshire, who would later laughingly refer to himself as “the butcher of Snoul,” stood by watching. When asked how the townspeople might be affected by the destruction, Brookshire dismissed the question, explaining that, “We can’t get involved in administering civil government.”
Indeed, the sense of embattlement deepened when, on May 15 at the historically black Jackson State College in Mississippi, police opened fire on a women’s dorm killing two students and wounding another
By 4:30 am he was still awake. Summoning his valet, Manolo Sanchez, and a Secret Service man, he instructed the driver of his limousine to head over to the Lincoln Memorial where hundreds of protesters were already gathering.
On the steps, he approached a group of students: “I know that most of you probably think I’m an SOB but I want you to know I understand just how you feel.”
there he was chatting about the value of foreign travel, reflecting on the plight of the American Indian (“What we have done with the American Indian is in its way just as bad as what we imposed on the Negroes”), pointing out his administration’s work on the environment, speaking to a group of coeds from Syracuse about their university football team.
Finally, one young man brought up the reason they had come to Washington: “I hope you realize that we are willing to die for what we believe in.” The same was true of his own generation, Nixon countered. His goal, he assured the students, was “to build a world in which you will not have to die for what you believe
People thought too much about material things, he suggested. “What we must all think about is why we are here, what are those elements of the spirit that really matter?”
He wanted them to realize “that ending the war and cleaning up the streets and air and water is not going to solve the spiritual hunger that all of us have—which has been the great mystery of life from the beginning of time.”
One unlikely dissenter was Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel, who in a public letter chastised the president:
Nixon intended to fire him when the controversy died down, but to the amazement of Haldeman he instead ordered the closing of the White House tennis court as punishment for fickle cabinet members.
One week after the events at Kent State, a Newsweek poll revealed that 58% of Americans blamed the students for the deaths, while only 11% blamed the Guard.
he and Kissinger continued to resent what they perceived as the betrayal by the elite, with a special animus reserved for the architects of the Vietnam War—McGeorge Bundy, Averell Harriman, Cyrus Vance, Clark Clifford—who had suddenly been reincarnated as “doves” clamoring for a too-rapid exit from Indochina.
In Kissinger’s opinion the real culprits were not the students but their directionless parents, professors, and school administrators, who lacked proper values.
Kissinger felt increasingly estranged from his former colleagues at Harvard. While distaste for Richard Nixon was endemic at the university, the national security advisor had managed to remain on positive terms with its leading lights, meeting informally with a small group—Thomas Schelling, George Kistiakowsky, Richard Neustadt, Adam Yarmolinsky, and others.11 But during the week following the Kent State deaths, this contingent arrived in Washington declaring they had lost all confidence in the ability of the White House to conduct foreign policy wisely. Therefore, “we are no longer at your
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Ironically, the South Vietnamese army was demonstrating a zeal for fighting in Cambodia that was not previously evident on its own side of the border.21 But as they chased the enemy deeper into the countryside, the traditional animosity between the Khmers and the South Vietnamese flared. In some locations the ARVN was a greater menace to the local population than the communists.
From Nixon’s words, there was no way his audience could discern that his original goal had shifted from cleaning out the sanctuaries to keeping the Cambodian government in power.
The North Vietnamese had never embraced the Khmer Rouge, which until the coup and the American bombing had been a small left-wing movement of approximately 4,000 people that was carrying out isolated acts of antigovernment terrorism. But to defeat the Americans and South Vietnamese soldiers who had invaded the country, Hanoi quickly recalibrated.
On the morning of June 16, Nixon woke up to the news that enemy soldiers had just taken over the town of Kompong Speu, 30 miles southwest of Phnom Penh. By seizing the town these soldiers were effectively cutting off the one road that connected the Cambodian capital to Sihanoukville, the only deepwater port in the country and the source of all the oil needed in Phnom Penh.
This was good news for the White House but less so for the people who lived there. According to the Associated Press, when the South Vietnamese troops reached the central market they broke into stores by shooting off the locks: “Everything of value was taken . . . from flashlight batteries to sewing machines and motorcycles.” Many of the townspeople had fled the area when the fighting began.
A Cambodian commander lamented that the “population now has more to fear from the South Vietnamese than the Viet Cong.”
They were hearing not just from dissident students but some of the new organizations created by establishment-minded adults: Corporate Executives for Peace, the Pillsbury Committee to End the War (formed by 26 food company executives in Minneapolis), Concerned Military Academy Graduates, Academic and Professional Alliance for a Responsible Congress, Publishers for Peace, and others.
by undertaking this mission, Nixon and Kissinger entertained the hope that their boldness would intimidate North Vietnam and make their representatives more tractable in negotiations. Unfortunately, the opposite had occurred. Concluding there was nothing to discuss, Xuan Thuy left Paris for Hanoi along with Madame Binh, the spokesperson for the Provisional Revolutionary Government.
while US troops were operating there, Dobrynin did not foresee any progress at the negotiating table. Moreover, according to the North Vietnamese, the Americans at the peace talks showed no willingness to alter the political arrangements in the South, and thus precluded any chance for an early agreement.
The US delegation chief Gerard Smith, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) and State Department representative Raymond Garthoff were most concerned about stabilizing the nuclear arms race and reducing the prospects of a nuclear war. By contrast Paul Nitze, representing the Secretary of Defense, and General Royall Allison, representing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were mainly interested in slowing down the Soviet deployment of long-range missiles so as to preserve the American advantage.
On the Middle East, Nixon had deliberately bypassed Kissinger, believing that an American Jew should not be handling issues related to Israel. Responsibility for this area went to Rogers,
By late summer Nixon was beginning to wonder if Kissinger had outlived his usefulness.
However, by fall 1970 there had been a significant alteration in the disposition of North Vietnamese troops, with the majority outside South Vietnam in Cambodia, Laos, and across the DMZ on their side of the demarcation line. While this change had vast implications, it had crept in quietly. If those troops remained in place, the United States might safely withdraw a significant number of soldiers.
“Listen Henry, Cambodia won the war,” Nixon said, but what did he think about that “generation of peace” line? Kissinger thought it was terrible, an opinion he had shared with Safire.33 He would have preferred a more “manly” closing. You cannot have the president of the United States “being a pacifist,” he had grumbled. But in speaking with Nixon, he assured him it was a fine phrase—another “major step forward again.”
In Laos alone there were 300,000 refugees, most of them people who had been forced to flee during the past eight months. In Cambodia at least one million Khmers had been displaced, and the population of Phnom Penh had grown from 700,000 to well over a million in recent months.
As for Madame Binh’s “Eight Points,” the North Vietnamese leader readily admitted they were not so new but explained that the goal was “to corner Nixon.” There was not “any illusion that they will bring about any results.”
Dobrynin had become familiar with these curious power grabs by Kissinger, but was truly surprised that something as simple as prospects for a summit would be concealed from the State Department.
If anything, the message signaled weakness by asking the Soviet Union to tolerate a bloody US war for the lame reason that so many US soldiers were already dead. This might sound absurd, yet perhaps in the rush of conversation the president had spoken more truthfully to Gromyko, his authoritarian adversary, than to the American people. We are continuing in Vietnam “for the simple reason that so many U.S. soldiers [have] been killed there.”
One of the major themes of the VVAW’s protest movement was that abuse and atrocities against the Vietnamese people were commonplace and being carried out by young Americans who in ordinary circumstances were upstanding, ethical people. They wanted the public to understand that US soldiers had done terrible things to their victims but were suffering the psychological harm which resulted from being in situations where immoral behavior was almost a requirement.
Despite the torrents of material pouring out of the media and the many orations on the floor of Congress, almost no one until Kerry had managed to so eloquently focus on the cynicism of leaders who were willing to forfeit young lives to preserve their reputations.
heighten the drama, the president unexpectedly climbed on top of his limousine, giving the V-sign to his adversaries. A few responded by hurling eggs, rocks, and candles in his direction, providing footage for the national media.
Despite Nixon’s efforts—20 states in seven days--the election results were dismal. Most of the candidates he campaigned for were defeated. The Republicans lost nine seats in the House and gained only two seats in the Senate.
Ironically one critical factor undermining morale was the administration’s policy of troop withdrawals.33 From a public relations standpoint, each new increment of returned soldiers was craftily orchestrated so as to reduce domestic dissent. What no one anticipated was how this would impact the soldiers who remained in Vietnam. For those in the field, who typically regarded the army of South Vietnam as cowardly and incompetent, the obvious conclusion was that if American withdrawals continued, then sooner or later the enemy would win.34 Given that likelihood, why should they continue to fight?
The Newsweek story included Pentagon estimates that 50%–60% of soldiers were using drugs. Both marijuana and heroin were easily available in Vietnam at bargain-basement prices and with a degree of purity—and deadliness—not found in the United States. During the summer and fall of 1970, at least 75 soldiers had died of an overdose over a two-month period, according to government figures.
The sergeant provided gruesome descriptions of the mistreatment of women, including rapes described as “searches” and a sadistic dismemberment and murder.
The soldiers decided to have some fun: . . . they let her run about fifty yards and they’d fire in front of her so she’d have to turn around, and then they’d let her run another direction and then they’d cut her off. This went on about a half hour until the time the sun started to come up. So then they decided it best to eliminate her as soon as possible, so they just ripped her off.
As described in the policy papers, the military objectives were antiseptic: to create “free-fire zones,” to “neutralize” enemy cadres, to “defoliate” forests, to “relocate populations,” or to conduct “saturation” bombing.
By summer’s end, some 30% to 50% of the country’s territory had come under the control of Lon Nol’s enemies. In varying combinations these included North Vietnamese soldiers, main-force NLF units, members of the indigenous Khmer Rouge, and local groups still loyal to Prince Sihanouk.
Unlike the “spinners” in the Nixon White House, whose message was that the Cambodian operation had devastated the enemy, Abrams had come to appreciate the resilience of the North Vietnamese and feared that cultural prejudice was leading Washington officials to underestimate these troops.
