On January 25, 1972, 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. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 316-013 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
It has not been rejected, but it has been ignored.
I reiterate that peace offer is not, it can no longer be ignored.
The only thing this plan does not do is to join our enemy, to overthrow 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 struggle, 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 in offering a settlement to this failure to make 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 its 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 to solve the Vietnamese development capability of the Pentagon itself.
If the enemy's answer to our peace offer is to step up their attacks, I shall fully meet my responsibility as commander-in-chief of our forces to protect the remaining troops.
In this course of action, we want to end the war not only for America, but for all the people in the region.
The plan I have proposed tonight can accomplish that goal.
Some of our citizens have become accustomed to thinking that whatever our government says must be false, and whatever our enemies say must be true.
The record I reveal tonight proves the contrary.
We can now demonstrate publicly, but we have long been demonstrating privately, that America has taken the initiative not only to end our participation in this war, but to end the war itself for all the people of China.
This has been the longest and most difficult war in our history.
Honest and patriotic Americans disagreed for whether we should have been involved at all nine years ago, and there had been disagreement on the comment we made.
Although I have made the nine as one on which we can all agree, let us unite now in our search for peace, a peace that is fair to both sides, a peace that can last.
I have asked for this tolerated time tonight to make public a plan for peace which can end the war in Vietnam.
The offer that I shall now present on behalf of the government of the United States and the government of South Vietnam, with the full knowledge and approval of President Pugh, is both generous and far-reaching.
It is a plan to end the war now.
It includes an offer to draw up American forces within six months of an agreement.
Its acceptance would mean the speedy return of all prisoners of war to their homes.
Three years ago, I took office, and there were 550,000 American fighting men in Vietnam.
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 settled in Paris was the shape of the bargaining table.
I immediately moved to go for a pledge I had made to the American people, to bring about a peace that could last, not only for the United States, but for all of the long-suffering people in the China.
There were two honorable paths open 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 path we called Vietnamization.
This meant training and equipping South Vietnamese to defend themselves, and steadily withdrawing America as they developed a pass to Jerusalem.
The path to Vietnamization has been successful.
A few 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 to Vietnam over the past three years.
And in terms of American lives, the losses of 300 a week have been reduced by 95%, to less than 10%.
But the path to Vietnamization has been a long voyage home, strains of patience, and testing perseverance of the American people.
What are the shortcuts on the path of negotiation?
Progress here has been disappointing.
The American people deserve an accounting of why it has been disappointing.
Tonight, I plan to give you that accounting, and in so doing, to try to break the deadlock in the negotiations.
We have made a series of public polls designed to reconnect with the conflict.
But early in this administration, after ten months of no progress from the public talks in Paris,
I became convinced that it was necessary to explore the possibility of negotiating on private channels to see whether it would be possible to end the public deadlock.
Under consultation of Secretary Rogers, our ambassador to Saigon, our chief negotiator in Paris, and with the full knowledge and approval of President Pugh, I sent Dr. Kissinger to Paris as my personal representative on August 4, 1869, to begin these secret peace negotiations.
Since that time, Dr. Kissinger has traveled to Paris several times on these secret missions.
He has met seven times with Lee Doctole, one of Hanoi's top political leaders, and Ministers Wang Hui, head of the North Vietnamese delegation to the Paris office.
He has met with Ministers Wang Hui alone five times.
I would like to take this opportunity this evening to thank President Pompidou of France for his personal assistance in facilitating the arrangements for these talks.
This is why I am interested in these private negotiations.
Privately, both sides can be more flexible in offering .
Also, private discussions allow both sides to talk frankly to take positions free from the pressures of public debate.
In seeking peace in Vietnam, with so many lives at stake, I felt we could not afford to let any opportunity go by, private or public, to negotiate .
So I have stated a number of .
As I was prepared, and I remain prepared, to explore the aisle, public or private, to speed negotiations in the world.
For 30 months, whenever Secretary Rogers, my petitioner, or I were asked about secret negotiations, we would only say we were pursuing every possible channel in our search for peace.
There was never a leak, but we were determined not to jeopardize the secret negotiations.
Until recently, this course showed some signs of yielding progress.
Now, however, it is my judgment that the purposes of peace will best be served by breaking out publicly the proposal of the United Nations.
Nothing is served by silence.
On the other side, it exploits our good faith to divide America and to avoid the conflict.
Nothing is served by silence, but it misleads some Americans into accusing their government of failing to do what it has already done.
And nothing to serve by silence but enables the other side to imply possible solutions publicly that it already has 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 who believe in North Vietnamese medicine believe and charge that the United States has not pursued negotiations intensively.
And the record will show just the opposite is true.
Questions have been raised as to why we have not proposed a deadline to withdraw all American ports in exchange for a ceasefire and return of 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 off-submitted a new plan of our own to move the negotiations off dead center.
As the private record will show, we have taken all these steps and more, and we have had them flatly rejected or ignored the other side.
May 31, 1971, eight months ago, at one of the secret meetings in Paris, we offered specifically to agree to a headline for the withdrawal of all American forces in exchange for the release of all prisoners of war and ceasefire.
At the next private meeting in June 26, the North Indian community 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 of proposals.
The seventh one would be a common plan.
That was to go out which package would respond to the public plan or the private plan.
July 12th, another private meeting in Paris, Mr. Kissinger put that question to the North Vietnamese directly.
They said we should deal with their nine-point secret plan, because they covered all of Indochina, including Laos and Cambodia, while the Viet Cong's seven-point public proposal was limited to Vietnam.
And so that's what we did.
We went beyond that.
Dealing with some of the White's public plan were not covered in the secret plan.
On August 16, in another private meeting, we went further and offered a complete withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces within nine months after agreeing on an overall settlement.
On September 13, North Vietnamese rejected this proposal.
They continued to insist that we overthrow this opposition government.
What has been the result of these five attacks?
For months, North Vietnamese have been deregulating us from public sessions for not responding to their side's public presented seven-point plan.
The truth is, we did respond to the enemy's plan, and the man that they asked us to respond, secretly.
Full possession of our complete response, the North Vietnamese publicly denounced us for not having responded at all.
They disinduced many Americans from the press and the Congress, and defected their propaganda.
Americans who could not have known they were being falsely used by the enemy to stir up the business in this country.
I decided in October that we should make another attempt to break the deadline.
I consulted with President Q, who concurred fully in a new plan.
On October 11, I sent a private communication to the North Vietnamese that contained new elements that could move negotiations forward, and urged a meeting on November 1 between Dr. Kissinger and Special Advisory Dr. To, or some other appropriate official, now.
On October 25, North Vietnamese agreed to meet, suggested November 20.
About November 17, just three days before the scheduled meeting, they said that Dr. Ho was ill. We offered to meet as soon as he recovered, either with him or immediately with any other authorized leader who could come from Anaheim.
Two months had passed since they called off that meeting.
The only reply to our plan has been an increase in troop infiltration from North Vietnam and communist military offensive from Laos and Cambodia.
Our proposal for peace was answered by a step-up in the war.
And that's where matters stand today.
We are being asked publicly to respond to proposals that we answered in some respects, except some months ago in private.
We are being asked publicly to set a terminal date for our withdrawal, but we've already offered one in private.
And the most comprehensive peace plan of this conflict lies ignoring the secret channel while the enemy tries again for military victory.
That is why I have instructed Ambassador Porter to present our plan publicly at this Thursday's session of the Paris Peace Conference along with alternatives to make it even more classical.
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, not Washington or Saigon, has made the work go on.
Now here is the essence of our peace plan, public disclosure.
may be given the attention they deserve to have.
Within six months of an agreement, we will withdraw all U.S. and L.A. forces from South Vietnam.
We shall exchange all prisoners of war, wherever they are held in the battalion.
There shall be a ceasefire through out of the battalion.
There shall be a new presidential election in South Vietnam.
President Chu will announce the office of this election.
These include international supervision and independent bodies that organize and run the elections, representing all political forces in South Vietnam, including the Communist National Liberation Front.
Pergamon President Chu has informed me that within the framework of the agreement outlined above, he is preparing, he makes the follow-up offer.
He and Vice President Hong, Vice President Huang, would be ready to resign one month before the election.
The chairman of the Senate is a caretaker head of the government, would assume administrative responsibility in South Vietnam, but the election would be the sole responsibility of the independent election body.
There are several other proposals for our new peace plan.
For example, as we offered privately on July 26 of last year, we remain prepared to undertake a major reconstruction program throughout China, including North Vietnam, to help all those people recover from the ravages of a generation of war.
We will pursue any approach that will speed negotiations.
We are ready to negotiate the plan I have outlined tonight through the Comprehensive Agreement on All Military and Political Issues.
Or, as we proposed last May, we remain willing to set alone the military issues and leave the political issues to the Vietnamese along the way.
Under this approach, we will withdraw all U.S. and allied forces in six months in exchange for an end-of-science cease-fire and release of all troops.
The choice is up to you.
This is a settlement which is fair to North Vietnam and fair to South Vietnam.
The Republic's truth, by these nations and by the other nations as well, deserves the advice and support of the American people.
We made the substance of this generous offer privately over three months ago.
It has not been rejected, but it has been done.
I reiterated that peace offer in the night.
It can no longer be ignored.
The only thing this plan does not do is to join our enemy to overthrow our ally, which the United States of America will never do.
If the enemy wants peace, they will have to recognize the important difference between settlement and surrender.
This has been a long and agonizing struggle for America.
It is difficult to see how anyone, regardless of his past position in the war, can now say, we have not gone the extra mile.
And all of a sudden, it is out of the fair to everyone concerned.
It is for our withdrawal of troops.
America has proved its resolution and its involvement in the war.
By our readiness to act in the spirit of conciliation, America has proved its desire to be involved in the building of a permanent peace throughout a good time.
We are ready to negotiate the peace immediately.
If the enemy rejects our effort to negotiate, we will continue our program of ending American involvement in the war by withdrawing our remaining forces and solving the enemy's development capability of defending themselves.