Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia

by Carolyn Woods Eisenberg

Having been driven from their sanctuaries near the Cambodian border, the North Vietnamese had become more dependent on their ability to send men and material down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through the Laotian panhandle and into South Vietnam. They had also achieved a presence in northeastern Cambodia, which provided them with a brand new route for men and supplies to enter the South.

It was a problem, the president reflected, that in the White House they had let themselves become preoccupied with minor things. So they worried about the Chilean elections and whether or not there would be a vote in Guinea, “and all that bull, but the only thing that really matters” at this point, he said, was the war.12 Let the State Department handle these other matters: “I don’t give a damn what happens in those other places now. There is nothing we can do about it anyway.” Going forward, he didn’t want to see anything about Chile, or Biafra, or Guinea, or “all this other crap.”

The outrageousness of Nixon’s demands was not lost on Kissinger, who privately mocked the president to Haig: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He does not want to hear anything. It’s an order. It’s to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves. You got that?” While recognizing the childishness of this response, Kissinger quietly indulged such fits.

At year’s end, Nixon was repeatedly drawn to an apocalyptic ending to US involvement in the war: a cancellation of the Paris peace talks, mining of Haiphong harbor, and massive bombing of North Vietnam as a prelude to pulling out all US troops and allowing ARVN to finish off a decimated enemy. Kissinger knew better.

the American military left Vietnam in 1971, no matter how much damage they inflicted, the political consequences for the administration could be disastrous. In the absence of American soldiers there was good reason to fear the enemy wou...

In the end, Kissinger yielded on Laird but was insistent that Rogers and the State Department be kept in the dark for as long as possible. Their exclusion was remarkable, given the fact that Ambassador Bunker, who was technically under the authority of the Secretary of State, was fully cognizant of their plans. However, it was established procedure for Bunker to keep important information from his department superiors, while communicating more candidly with the White House.

Indeed, the early decisions to bomb Cambodia in the spring of 1969 and to invade the country in the spring of 1970 were both products of a truncated policy process in which military views prevailed. Each of these choices had engendered a cascade of unintended consequences that were propelling the massive Laotian operation.

Under the 1962 Geneva Agreement, Laos was to be officially neutral and foreign powers were required to desist from any military activities on its soil. Although these provisions had been violated for years by North Vietnam and the United States, a fig-leaf of “neutrality” was still in place. This had enabled Phouma to remain in power by imposing some restraints on his domestic and international adversaries. If thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers came pouring over the border, State Department officials feared it would be the death-knell for the regime.

Henry Kissinger had been operating at a furious pace, sticking close to Nixon while trying to keep everyone in the administration in line on the eve of another high-risk military campaign. However, for this weekend he had a long-standing commitment to go to Boston to meet with an organization called Project Runnymede.39 Conceived at MIT during a protest of the Cambodian invasion, its purpose was to bring together responsible academics, businessmen, and a sprinkling of moderate students to wrestle with the complexities of the Vietnam War. For this evening, the group was appropriately eminent, including among others Jeremy Wiesner, Provost of MIT; Cyrus Vance, former Deputy Secretary of Defense; Osborn Elliott, editor of Newsweek; and Jeremy Stone, Executive Director of the American Federation of Scientists. A less famous attendee was a man named Daniel Ellsberg—a consultant from the RAND Corporation who had known Kissinger for many years.

But Daniel Ellsberg had a more specific question: had the administration prepared any estimates of the number of Indochinese dead and wounded, including civilians, that would result from another year of war? Could Kissinger provide them with some numbers? Recognizing the speaker, Kissinger halted for a moment and then replied, “That is a very clever question . . . I answer even if I don’t answer.” Ellsberg interrupted to say that he was not intending to be clever, he was simply asking a basic question: Did Kissinger have such an estimate? Kissinger suggested that Ellsberg was accusing the White House of a racist policy. Race wasn’t the issue, Ellsberg insisted; he just wanted to know “how many human beings we will kill under your policy.” This was indeed a “clever” question because the consultant already knew that the administration had no desire to know how many Indochinese people would be killed, especially if they were civilians. However, Kissinger could not simply say to this esteemed audience that they had no interest in gathering such data. He strategically deflected the issue, pressing Ellsberg to offer an alternative policy. The latter tartly replied, “I know the language of alternatives and options very well and it has nothing to do with the question. . . . Do you have an estimate or not?”

Laotian Premier Souvanna Phouma had just granted Ambassador Godley his reluctant consent to the presence of South Vietnamese troops in his country.41 With that acquiescence, a new operation was about to unfold. It was to be called Lam Son 719, and it would be one of the largest allied offensives of the entire war.

And on Lam Son 719, “thank God we’re not going to lose it.” They could lose an election, “but we’re not going to lose this war, Henry. . . . Do you agree?”

At this juncture, Nixon was finding inspiration in Carl Sandburg’s biography of Abraham Lincoln as a wartime leader, perceiving a similarity between Abrams’ situation and that of General Grant during the Wilderness campaign. In that blood-drenched effort, Grant had lost twice as many men as Lee but still managed to win the war. And that’s what mattered for Lincoln’s subsequent reputation.

The White House demanded to know why all this negative information was getting into the media. And who was responsible for the leaks?

Back on Capitol Hill there was a growing perception that more than the usual dishonesty was emanating from the White House, as the realization dawned that Lam Son 719 was in fact a major operation.

Since the Cambodian incursion, Nixon had allowed himself to believe that the years of American training and money had finally yielded a high-functioning ARVN. These events shook him. “We’ve got to get the hell out of there. That’s for sure,” he told Kissinger and Haldeman.

March 18 was also the day Kissinger got definitive word from General Haig that the operation was a fiasco. During his visit Haig had realized “that ARVN’s enthusiasm for continuation of Lam Son 719 is completely lacking.”50 The South Vietnamese troops were in grave danger, threatened as they were by no fewer than five North Vietnamese regiments. The problem was no longer to convince them to stay but to get them to pull out “in an orderly way.” For all practical purposes, Lam Son 719 was over.

Riding the wave of protest, Nixon waited only 24 hours before announcing that Calley would be removed from the stockade and kept under house arrest while his appeal was being processed.

Over roast beef they told the secretary that the president had run out of time. “You don’t see any hawks around here,” said Minority Leader Hugh Scott.11 “The hawks are all ex-hawks.” Everyone wanted the war to stop.

This clamor by Republicans infuriated Nixon, as did the growing anxiety of the White House staff. In preparing his remarks he emphasized to Kissinger that on matters of substance he would give no quarter. Any notion of conciliating “doves” was bull.

Because “never in history have men fought for less selfish motives, the right of people to determine their own political destiny.”

In similar fashion, Time noted that Nixon “changed virtually nothing” as he delivered “a foxhole speech digging in tenaciously in defense of his previous position.”

Neither Nixon nor Kissinger had been fully cognizant of ARVN’s many weaknesses, because military officials had withheld bad news. But they both understood that the failure of Lam Son 719 had increased the likelihood of a formidable enemy offensive in 1972.

In the Senate, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, and other party colleagues who had previously supported the president made a trip to the White House to impress upon him the need to provide a specific date for ending US participation in the war.

Who should be the emissary? Fully aware that Kissinger would like to be that person, Nixon floated other options.44 What about Governor Rockefeller? he asked maliciously. “Not disciplined enough,” came the answer. George Bush? Definitely not him, “too soft and not sophisticated enough.” Maybe Haig could accompany Rockefeller and keep him in check? That was too awkward, Kissinger observed.

To their astonishment they were halted at the gates and forbidden to enter. Marcella King, one of the Gold Star mothers, was distraught: “My boy was killed in Vietnam. I didn’t speak out then. It’s my fault.” One of the veterans observed ruefully, “You’ve got to go back to Nam and die there, man,” in order to enter Arlington.

Kerry’s emotional plea stunned the room. During the days of hearings, nobody had spoken to the senators with anything like the eloquence and directness of John Kerry. Moreover, the presence of so many antiwar veterans seated in the chamber underlined his message.

From the long hair, headbands, and beads donned by some, this might have been a gathering of young people at Woodstock. But there was a grimness and sorrow that resembled no rock concert,

Among antiwar activists, the perception of people dying every day intensified the desire for an effective strategy. But what approach would work best? Was it better to stick with “tried and true” democratic practices—electoral politics, congressional pressure, and large, peaceful demonstrations? Or did the urgency of the crisis require a willingness to shatter mainstream norms and engage in disruptive, possibly violent and illegal actions?

The president had always doubted the loyalty of these highly credentialed Jewish intellectuals on Kissinger’s staff. Here was another Harvard traitor whom Kissinger had recruited. If he was not careful, Nixon would be blaming him. Kissinger vigorously denounced Ellsberg as a psycho, a drug user, a sexual pervert—somebody who had to be stopped at all costs.

The administration’s legal strategy was having a perverse effect. By obtaining injunctions against the New York Times and the Washington Post, it had inadvertently elevated the significance of the Pentagon Papers and thrust them into the headlines, adding drama to what might otherwise have seemed a too-dense and technical set of revelations.

Nixon had special anxiety about Morton Halperin and Leslie Gelb, two former White House officials who had access to top secret documents.41 By 1971 both men were senior fellows at the Brookings Institution. The president feared that they had removed classified material and stored it in the Brookings safe. It was possible that Gelb, who had directed the McNamara study later published as the Pentagon Papers, might have taken files pertinent to the 1968 bombing halt.

On June 17, 1971, Nixon ordered Haldeman to arrange a break-in. “Hell, they do that. You’re to break into the place, rifle the files, and bring them out.”42 If necessary, to divert attention, the president thought they could “firebomb” the building.

But the first important job of SIU –dubbed the “the plumbers”—was to discredit Daniel Ellsberg.

He recognized that Zhou would want to discuss the status of Taiwan. On this sensitive subject, Kissinger should not indicate “a willingness to abandon much of our support for Taiwan until it was necessary to do so.”

The moral arguments of US diplomats carried no weight, nor did the warnings from the US Embassy in India that the refugee situation was unsustainable and might lead to a full-scale war with Pakistan. For Kissinger in particular, the emotional cables from Dacca and New Delhi were further grist for his never-ending effort to discredit the State Department in Nixon’s eyes.

While there was plenty of spontaneous praise flowing into the White House, he wanted his PR team to crank it up. Lest they overlook any of his exemplary qualities, he made a list: 1. Strong convictions. 2. Came up through adversity. 3. At his best in a crisis. Cool. Unflappable. 4. A tough bold strong leader . . . 5. A man who takes the long view, never concerned about tomorrow’s headlines. 6. A man with a philosophical turn of mind. 7. A man who works without notes . . . 8. A man who knows Asia. 9. A man, who in personal style is very strong and very tough . . .

Apart from the right-wing complaints, Nixon’s China move was causing his poll numbers, which had been dropping since Laos, to bounce up.

As far as he could discern, “the Chinese don’t think of themselves as expansionist,” Kissinger replied. The Korean War was an outlier, a situation where Chinese leaders perceived a “plausible threat.”

We must control events. Even if we goofed our way into the Vietnam War . . . we must end the war in a competent way.

By the summer of 1971, America’s young were certainly aware of the suffering; perhaps as many as 40,000 of them had died in the service of this “goof.”

As conveyed by Haig, President Nixon had decided that during his Beijing sojourn he wanted to meet one-on-one with Mao and Zhou—which would leave the national security advisor out.

To Nixon, who had anticipated this outcome, the most distressing thing was the display: “The problem is not Taiwan. The problem is . . . the United States getting kicked around by a bunch of goddamn Africans and cannibals,” he lamented.

Would remaining ABM systems be limited to the defense of capital cities (what the Soviets wanted), or could they also protect missile sites (which the Americans preferred)?

By this point, delegation chief Gerard Smith had returned to Washington, where he became belatedly aware that Kissinger had been wheeling and dealing on nuclear issues without letting the US SALT team know.4 To Smith, who had spent months abroad trying to reach a deal under impossibly rigid guidelines, such duplicity was appalling. When Kissinger finally showed him portions of the negotiating record, he was also struck by the stupidity of the deal in surrendering an important national interest. And for what end?

In approaching their mission, State Department professionals were interested in reducing the danger of a nuclear conflagration. For that reason they had initially favored a ban on ABMs and MIRVs (multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles), both of which were perceived as destabilizing because of their first-strike potential.

the chief Russian negotiator Vladimir Semenov insisted on settling the ABM part of the agreement first, claiming that Gerard Smith’s call for parallel negotiations on both offensive and defensive weapons contradicted the bargain that Kissinger had recently announced. Unfortunately for Smith, the Soviet representative was on firm ground for his contention. The private exchange of letters between Nixon and Brezhnev that were part of the May 20 agreement had been handled in an irregular way. Ordinarily a State Department translator would have reviewed the Russian-language version of Brezhnev’s text to make sure that it was identical with the English version. However, Kissinger had short-circuited this procedure, so the match was undetermined.

Years later, some might wonder about Kissinger’s flawed handling of the arms control negotiations and his disregard of relevant experts. But apart from his propensity to monopolize policymaking wherever possible, he was driven by the president’s urgent need for rapid accomplishments.

Dobrynin acknowledged that such a meeting would likely help Nixon get elected, but among the potential Democratic nominees, “there are no great friends of ours among them.”

Especially worrying were the activities of George McGovern, a presidential aspirant and long-time opponent of the Vietnam War.29 In September he had gone to Paris and, after meeting with the North Vietnamese and the PRG negotiators, had come away with the mistaken belief that if all US troops were withdrawn from Vietnam by December 31, Hanoi would release the POWs. It was therefore his intention to re-introduce the amendment he had co-authored with Republican Senator Hatfield, cutting off funds for the war by a fixed date.