Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 316 › Conversation 316-012
Nixon & Sanchez on Vietnam War and Paris Peace Talks
Tuesday, January 25, 1972 · 4:36 PM–5:30 PM ET · Old Executive Office Building · 16 min
AI Summary
President Nixon utilized this session in the Old Executive Office Building to rehearse his televised 'Address to the Nation Making Public a Plan for Peace in Vietnam.' Accompanied at various points by Manolo Sanchez and an unidentified woman, Nixon refined the delivery of his speech, which sought to disclose previously secret negotiations with North Vietnam. The rehearsal focused on presenting the administration's comprehensive peace plan, including the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the release of prisoners of war, and proposals for new presidential elections in South Vietnam.
Audio
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Position in tape: 02:06:48 – 02:22:45
part A, 0:59
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316b.mp3
NARA Description
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.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 316-12
Date: January 25, 1972
Time: Unknown between 4:36 pm and 5:30 pm
Location: Executive Office Building
The President rehearsed his "Address to the Nation Making Public a Plan for Peace in Vietnam".
[A transcript of the speech in its final form appears in Public Papers of the Presidents, Richard
M. Nixon, 1972, pp. 100-105]
An unknown woman entered at an unknown time during the rehearsal.
Speech draft [?]
The unknown woman left at an unknown time.
The President resumed rehearsing his speech.
Manolo Sanchez entered at an unknown time during the rehearsal.
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[Personal Returnable]
[Duration: 4s ]
END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1
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The President resumed rehearsing his speech.
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BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2
[Personal Returnable]
[Duration: 3s ]
END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2
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Sanchez left at an unknown time.
The President resumed rehearsing his speech.Transcript (AI-generated)
This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.
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Talking points, but I've got two things that need to be done.
So this new one that's up here stayed, which probably would be good.
Talking points.
— 1 min 24 s with no transcribed speech —
After this public time tonight, we make public a plan for peace.
We can bring the war to an end.
We cannot.
We can bring to an end.
We can end the war.
We cannot.
We cannot.
The law is law.
The law presents law.
We have a government, the United States and the government itself, who now, with the full knowledge and approval of President Chu, is 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 United States...
There were 550,000 in the community now, and every killed in action was running a street of 500-300 people.
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 full-fill a pledge I had made to 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 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 and capacity to do so.
The path of Vietnamization has been successful.
Two weeks ago, I announced that by May 1st, American forces in Vietnam would 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 Vietnamization has been the long voyage home, straining the patience and testing the perseverance of the American people.
What are the shortcuts?
The path of negotiation.
Progress here has been disciplined.
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 deadline of negotiation.
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 Republican deadline.
At the consultation of Secretary Rogers, I passed an incision on my chief negotiator in Paris.
With full knowledge and approval of President Chu, I sent Dr. Kissinger to Paris as my personal representative on August 4, 1959, to begin a secretly secret mission.
At that time, Dr. Kissinger has traveled to Paris 12 times on these secret missions.
He has met seven times in lead octo, one of Hanoi's top political leaders, and Minister Nam Thuy, head of an RVLM delegation in Paris, France.
He has met with Ministers Huan Thuy along with five times.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank President Pompeo of France for his personal assistance in facilitating the arrangements for these talks.
This is why I initiated these private-company negotiations.
Privately, both sides can be more flexible in offering dual approaches.
Also, private discussions allow both sides to talk frankly and get relations free from the pressures of public debate.
In seeking peace in Vietnam, not enough.
So many lives at stake.
Thank you.
Correct.
The possession is free from the pressures of public demand.
Seeking peace in Vietnam, so many lives at stake, I felt we could not afford to let any opportunity go by, private or public, to negotiate a settlement.
As I have 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. Kim, or I were asked about such negotiations, we would only say we were pursuing every possible channel in search for peace.
It was never a leap, because we were determined not to jeopardize the secret negotiations.
Until recently, this course 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 faiths to divide America, to avoid the Constitution.
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.
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 marked North Vietnamese led them to 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 I would gladly reject them or ignore them 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 ceasefire.
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.
Disposed it about the line.
Which package it would respond to, the public plan or the secret plan?
July 12th, another private meeting in Paris.
Dr. Chisholm, you 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 U.S. Well, the Viet Cong's seven-point public proposal was limited to nine, and that's what we did.
We went even beyond that.
We left some of the points in the public plan that were not covered in the secret plan.
On August 16, at another private meeting, we went further and offered a complete withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces within nine months after an agreement on an overall settlement.
after an agreement on an overall settlement.
On September 13th, the North Vietnamese rejected this post.
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 Severn Plain Plain.
The truth is that we did respond to the other's plan in the manner we wanted 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 on a new file.
On October 11th, I sent a private communication to North Vietnamese that could name new elements that could move negotiations forward and urged a meeting on November 1st between Dr. Kissinger and Special Advisor Nhi Loc Co 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 for now.
Two months had passed since they called on that meeting.
The only reply to our plan has been an increase in coup infiltration, or if not, communist military defenses in Laos and Cambodia.
Our proposal for peace was answered by a step up in the world.
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 track down the military base.
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 Hanoi are not watching their sidearm and has made the war go on.
Now here is the essence of our peace plan.
Public disclosure may get the attention it deserves in Hanoi.
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 Indochina.
There will be a ceasefire throughout Indochina.
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 Wong will 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 program.
Any program will speed negotiations.
We're ready to negotiate the plan I've outlined tonight to include a comprehensive agreement on all military and political issues.
Or, as we proposed last May, we remain willing to settle on
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 endogenous ceasefire and the release of all prisoners.
The choice is up to the United States.
This is a settlement which is very normative now, very sovereign.
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.
It has not been rejected, but it has been ignored.
I reiterate that peace ought not, it can no longer be ignored.
The only thing this plan does not do is to join our enemy or to draw our ally.
The United States of America will never do that.
If the enemy wants peace, it will have to recognize the important difference between settlement and surrender.
This has been a long and agonizing journey, but it is difficult to see how anyone, regardless of his past position on the board, could not now say that we have gone the extra mile to offer the settlement of this fair to everybody concerned.
For the steadiness of our withdrawal of troops, America has proved its resolution to end its involvement in the war.
By our readiness to act in the spirit of reconciliation, we have proved our desire to be involved in the building of a permanent peace throughout our time.
And we're ready to negotiate peace immediately.
If the enemy rejects our offer to negotiate, we shall continue our program of ending American involvement in the war by withdrawing our remaining forces as the South Vietnamese develop the capability of defending themselves.
Also recorded on January 25, 1972
- 316-010 4:35 PM · 47 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 4:35 pm to 4:36 pm.
- 019-059 4:36 PM · 11 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 4:36 pm and 5:30 pm.
- 316-011 4:36 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 4:36 pm and 5:30 pm.
- 316-013 4:36 PM · 15 min — President Richard M. Nixon met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 4:36 pm and 5:30 pm.
- 316-014 4:36 PM · 15 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 4:36 pm and 5:30 pm.
- 019-060 5:30 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Tricia Nixon Cox talked on the telephone from 5:30 pm to 5:32 pm.
- 316-015 5:30 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Tricia Nixon Cox met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 5:30 pm to 5:32 pm.
- 316-016 5:32 PM · 16 min — President Richard M. Nixon met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 5:32 pm and 6:32 pm.
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Cite this conversation
Conversation 316-012, January 25, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/316-012 (accessed November 11, 2026).