On January 25, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, unknown person(s), and Manolo Sanchez met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 4:36 pm and 5:30 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 316-012 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
After this election time tonight, we make public a plan for peace.
We can bring the war to an end in Vietnam.
We can bring to an end, we can end the war in Vietnam.
Vietnam, we love you.
Vietnam, present.
We have the government of the United States and the government itself in Vietnam.
The full amount of in-approval from President Pugh was both generous and far-reaching.
It is a plan to end the war now.
It includes an offer to withdraw all American forces within six months of the agreement.
Its acceptance would mean the speedy return of all the prisoners of war to their homes.
Three years ago, the rank would compensate.
There were 550,000 men fighting in the community now.
The number killed in action was running as high as 300 a week.
There were no plans to bring any Americans home.
The only thing that had been settled in Paris was the shape of the conference room.
I immediately moved to fulfill a pledge I had made in the campaign.
Made to the American people.
To bring about a peace that could last, not only for the United States, but for the long-suffering people of all of Southeast Asia.
There were two honorable paths holding to us.
The path of negotiation was and is the path we prefer, but it takes two to negotiate.
There had to be another way in case the other side refused to negotiate.
That plan was called Vietnamization.
This meant training and equipping the South Vietnamese to defend themselves and steadily withdrawing America as a developed country in the matter to do so.
The path of Vietnamization has been successful.
Two weeks ago, I announced that by May 1st, American forces in Vietnam will be down to 69,000.
That means almost one-half million Americans will have been withdrawn from Vietnam over the past three years.
In terms of American lives, the losses of 300 a week have been reduced by over 95% to less than 10%.
The path of vehicleization has been the long voyage home, straining of patience and testing the perseverance of the American people.
What are the shortcuts?
The path of negotiation.
Progress here has been disciplined.
The American people deserve an accounting as to why it has been disciplined.
Tonight I intend to give you that accounting and in so doing to try to break the deadlock of negotiations.
We've made a series of public proposals designed to bring an end to the conflict.
After 10 months of no progress in the talks in Paris, I became convinced that it was necessary to explore the possibility of negotiating in private channels to see whether it would be possible to have a public deadline.
At the consultation with Secretary Rogers, Ambassador Sison, and Chief Negotiator in Paris, with full knowledge and approval of President Pugh, I sent Dr. Kissinger to Paris as my personal representative on August 4, 1959, to begin a secret peace and peace mission.
At that time, Dr. Kissinger has traveled to Paris 12 times on these secret missions.
He has met seven times in Ligue Octo, one of Hanoi's top political leaders, and Minister Nam Thuy, head of an R.V.L.M.I.F.
delegation in Paris, France.
He has met with Minister Zwan Thuy along with five times.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank President Pompidou of France for his personal assistance in facilitating the arrangement for these talks.
This is why I initiated these private negotiations.
Privately, both sides can be more flexible in offering new approaches.
Also, private discussions allow both sides to talk frankly and take decisions free from the pressures of public debate.
In seeking peace in Vietnam, not enough.
So many lives have stayed.
Thank you.
His personal assistance is still available.
The position is free from the pressures of public debate.
Seeking peace in Vietnam, so many lives have been saved.
I felt we could not afford to let any opportunity go by, private or public, to negotiate a settlement.
As I stated on a number of occasions, I was prepared and remain prepared to explore any evidence, public or private, to speed negotiations to end the war and bring peace.
For 30 months, whenever Secretary Rogers, Dr. Kirchner, or I were asked about secret negotiations, we would only say we were pursuing every possible channel in our search for peace.
It was never a leap, because we were determined not to jeopardize the secret negotiations.
Until recently, discourse showed signs of yield in some projects.
Now, however, it is my judgment that the purposes of peace will best be served by bringing out publicly the proposals we have been making in these projects.
Nothing is served by silence.
when the other side exploits other faith to divide America, to avoid the consciousness.
And nothing is served by silence which misleads some Americans who are accusing their government of failing to do what it has already done.
Nothing is served by silence when it enables the other side to apply possible solutions publicly that it has already rejected privately.
The time has come to lay the record of our secret negotiations on the table.
Just as secret negotiations can sometimes break a public deadline, public disclosure may help to break a secret deadline.
Some Americans believe that the market is what the market ought to be able to be, so let them believe.
The charge of the United States is not to pursue negotiations intensively.
As the record will show, just the opposite is true.
Questions have been raised as to why we have not proposed a deadline for the withdrawal of all American forces in exchange for a ceasefire and the return of our prisoners of war, why we have not discussed the seven-point proposal made by the Viet Cong last July in Paris, why we have not submitted a new plan of our own to move negotiations off dead center.
And as the private record will show, we have taken all these steps and more and have been flatly rejected or ignored on the other side.
On May 31, 1971, eight months ago, at one of the secret meetings in Paris, we offered specifically to agree to a deadline to withdraw all American forces in exchange for the release of all prisoners of war and cease-fire.
On June 26, the North Vietnamese rejected our offer.
They privately proposed instead their own nine-point plan which insisted that we overthrow the government of South Vietnam.
Five days later, July 1st, the enemy publicly presented a different package.
The seventh might be a conflict.
This told them about the line.
Which package should we respond to, the public plan or the secret plan?
July 12th, another private meeting in Paris.
Dr. Kissinger put that question to the law to be able to meet the record.
They said we should deal with their nine-point secret plan because it covered all of Indochina, including Laos and the Middle East.
Well, the Viet Cong's seven-point public proposal was limited to eight-nine, and that's what we did.
We went even one beyond that, dealing with some of the points in the public plan that were not covered in the secret plan.
On August 16, on another Friday, we went further and offered a complete withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces within nine months after an agreement on an overall settlement.
agreement, after an agreement on an overall settlement.
On September 13th, North Vietnamese rejected this post, and they continued to insist that we overthrow the South Vietnamese government.
Now, what has been the result of these private efforts?
For months, the North Vietnamese have been berating us in the public sessions for not responding to their side's public treatment of the seven-point plan.
The truth is that we did respond to the other's plan, and the man who wanted us to respond secretly.
In full possession of our complete response, the North Vietnamese publicly denounced us for not having responded at all.
They induced many Americans in the press and the Congress into accepting their propaganda.
Americans who could not know they were being falsely used by the enemy to stir up the busyness in this country.
I decided in October that we should make another attempt to break the deadline.
I consulted with President Chu and heard polling renewed by him.
On October 11th, I sent a private communication to North Vietnamese that contained new elements that could move negotiations forward and urged the meeting on November 1st between Dr. Kissinger and Special Advisor Neelat Koh or some other appropriate official.
On October 25th, North Vietnamese agreed to meet and suggested November 20th.
On November 17, just three days before the scheduled meeting, they said the doctor was ill. We offered to meet as soon as the doctor recovered, with him or immediately with any other authorized leader who had come from Africa.
Two months had passed since they called on that meeting.
The only reply to our plan has been an increase in Cuban infiltration from North Vietnam, and communist military defenses in Laos and Cambodia.
Our proposal for peace was answered by a step up in the world, and that's where matters stand today.
We are being asked publicly to respond to proposals that we answered, and in some respects accepted months ago, prior.
We are being asked publicly to set a terminal date for our withdrawal, but we've already offered one in practice.
And the most comprehensive peace plan of this country lies ignored in the secret channel while they only trace again the military data.
That is why I have instructed Ambassador Porter to present our plan publicly at this Thursday's session of the Paris Peace Talks, along with alternatives to make it even more flexible.
We are publishing the full details of our plan tonight.
It will prove beyond doubt which side has made every effort to make these negotiations succeed.
It will show unmistakably that Hanover and not Washington's sidearm has made the war go on.
Now here is the essence of our peace plan.
Public disclosure may get the attention it deserves in Hanover.
Within six months of an agreement, we shall withdraw all U.S. and allied forces from South Vietnam.
We shall exchange all prisoners of war.
All prisoners of war were ever held in China.
There will be a ceasefire throughout India-China.
There shall be a new presidential election in South Vietnam.
President Chu will announce the elements of this election.
These include international supervision and an independent body to organize and run the election, representing all political forces in South Vietnam, including the Communist National Liberation Front.
Furthermore, President Chu has informed me that in the framework of the agreement outlined above, he makes the following offer.
He and Vice President Huang would be ready to resign one month before the new election.
The chairman of the Senate as caretaker head of the government would assume administrative responsibility, but the election would be the sole responsibility of the independent election body.
Thank you.
For example, as we offered privately in July 26 of last year, we remain prepared to undertake a major reconstruction program throughout Indochina, including North Vietnam, to help all those peoples recover from the ravages of the generation of war.
We will pursue any approach that will speed negotiations.
We're ready to negotiate the plan I've outlined tonight and conclude a comprehensive agreement on all military and political issues.
Or, as we proposed last May, we remain willing to settle on
our issues and leave the political issues to the Vietnamese alone.
Under this approach, we withdraw all U.S. and allied forces within six months in exchange for an end of China's ceasefire and the release of all prisoners.
The choice is up to the United States.
This is a settlement which is fair to North Vietnam and fair to South Vietnam.
It deserves the light of public scrutiny by these nations and by other nations as well.
It deserves a united support of the United States.
privately over three months ago.