Nixon, Kissinger & Bull on Vietnam War and Lam Son 719

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Well, that was a man with wings.

I'll check that they're sanitized for you.

I just want to tell you...

Ah...

I'm going to tell you that I was very fluttered up this morning to pick up the line and post, see an article by Peter Post, quoting an American major to be affected.

Did you see that article?

No, no.

American major...

I understand the sergeants, I understand the war officers, I understand the lieutenants, I understand the young guys.

This is typical of this kind of thing.

Quote by Peter Rasmus, you know.

There is no getting around it, said an American major involved in the Laotian invasion from the start.

Quote, it ended badly, and that may turn out to be what matters most.

I don't know before the abrupt, costly, and the American-backed South Vietnamese drive across the Schmidt Trail startled even those military men who planned it going well.

More importantly, it has raised serious questions in many minds about whether the operation ultimately damaged the effectiveness and spirit of the enemy's troops more than it disrupted them.

Now, not that I don't know what the case was.

You agree or not?

Absolutely.

I understand, I don't want, I mean, Adrian still is the truth, but goddammit, maybe you're not supposed to talk about that.

Mr. President, I think Adrian is the truth, and you're going to be asked to make him chief of staff next year.

I think what the army needs is a young driving guy.

If Haig were older, Haig is one turn away from it, but somebody like Stilwell, maybe.

There's no doubt that the way it ended,

was screwed up.

If they had told us two weeks before, if you could have said on your press conference, March 4th, they're going to be out by the end of March, we could have lost six Italians on the way out, and it wouldn't look good.

But that was as much the fault of our command as it was of the South Vietnamese.

I think Q made a cold decision.

He had seen too many rainy days.

He was afraid in April there would be even more, and he was going to lose his major units there.

How does it look at the present time?

Is this very indicative, not four, but maybe even six battalions were destroyed by the assault?

I had an estimate yesterday from Abrams.

He says four.

These four are destroyed.

They were badly damaged.

They're still fighting units, okay?

They're still fighting units.

But what is the general situation with regard to morale in South Vietnam?

I've asked that every day.

Well, I've got a memo coming in to you.

Sanker says the operation was a net plus, a great net plus.

Can you put that out?

Sure.

Get out that memorandum to the press.

Right.

Get it out.

I don't know.

I don't want anything to break the credibility problems.

Well...

Danke for å sette det långt til, in which she pointed these facts out.

With regard to this whole situation, of course, we know that it should be understood better.

How in the world would an American nation, I told that to our friend Haig, and said, now Haig, find out who that nation is.

And that's the problem with our army right now.

The only service that has real morale, and the Air Force is so awful that we can't even talk about it, but the army has lost a lot of its morale.

And one can understand why they've been taking a terrific beating.

The press is tearing them to pieces, and they haven't been...

The whole country is being torn to pieces every now and then.

Well, I think no, I think it's right.

I think it's important.

But I was really interested by this conversation with the president yesterday, because he was really pushing for some opening to the North Vietnamese.

Right.

I think it's a little premature.

I think you should make your next announcement.

Make the next announcement.

Cancel the next speech.

I need a cancel.

God damn it.

Don't let anybody rock you.

No, it's done.

It's done.

All right.

And the way he does it is coldly and abruptly.

We were going to contact them today.

They had proposed to us that the next meeting be April 1st.

We told them we'd let them know today.

We'll just tell them coldly that we're not ready on April 1st.

We delay it to April 8th.

We could go through a little of this analysis and say therefore we can now...

Safely destroyed 100,000 men.

It was not too much.

I think I would go there.

I just summarized it in a sentence.

As a result of this operation, you said there was a good, and we are now able to withdraw this, and so forth and so on.

And you walked about 15 minutes at most.

Yes.

I wonder who was the best one to work with, Price or Sapphire.

Sapphire.

Because I had Vincent Lord on my staff.

They did the October 7th speech, which was so successful.

I'll get Lord to do a draft, a substance.

And Lord is a good race maker, too.

Right, right.

He's fine.

You see, I may not use the text at all.

I may decide to throw it away and just do it like it is.

I'll have something for you, say, if I went, say, just for substance.

Yeah.

And, because you'll be, until Tuesday, I understand, you'll be there.

But let me try to keep all your, all your press friends and the rest gassed up.

I tell them I've got this stand.

I mean, like, I don't want this, our friends like Stuart Elsoff and the rest to start trolling.

No, no, Stuart will do it a little more than Joe.

Yeah, why?

What's the matter with Stuart?

He's afraid of you.

Well, Stuart is torn between his disdain for the establishment.

Yeah.

and his feeling that maybe you should pull out as fast as possible.

Is he really feeling it?

Well, no, but only because he thinks the public may not support you.

He agrees that you are right.

Pull out as fast as possible, lose it all, what the hell do you think would happen to this country?

He won't say that.

God, we're not going to be serious.

Why don't we make that decision right now?

We're going to pull out through with it, too.

What do you think is going to happen?

How the heck are you going to support us in that?

That we wouldn't be down the tube.

If you step up the withdrawal rate, if you do it, it will be with you.

Well, you know, stepping up the withdrawal rate...

It's a symbolic thing.

You don't know who it is.

It won't help much, but it will, uh...

I do listen.

All the best, sir.

Now, we have to defuse this thing.

Ford's saying that it's defused without the leverage.

But I agree, trying to get the Democrats not to screw us on the 31st Democratic Congress.

I think those two fellows... Well, what I said to him at the last time we were meeting and anything else, I'm not going to quote politics.

I say, look here, I'll take the responsibility for this.

But if you tell the state the responsibility, I'm going to blame you for losing it.

I'm going to blame you.

I've got to know him.

And with a boxing up there, tell him that.

Oh yeah, Boggs on the one hand is partisan as hell.

I know, that's what he says.

Exactly.

But on the other he's a good man, but these southerners are more patriotic.

I was at a dinner with Boggs a few weeks ago, and he was absolutely maudlin about you.

He said you're the greatest man in foreign policy that he remembers, and your old party would only support you.

Well, sir, don't worry about our own party or anything like that.

It's the present time.

It's full of weak men.

The leaders, the national leaders are disasters.

And we know that these are hard times.

I get back to the old analogy.

This is very different.

Jesus Christ.

But in a way, this is worse.

No, my God, they had...

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ...

We've got to really, we're going to put it right to them.

Politics that we have to.

Now, on the other hand, when everybody goes down, we must not lose it now.

That's really what Laos is all about.

It's really about winning.

We could have done a little better.

We may have been better than we think.

I have a hunch that we've done better than we think.

I know we did better than we think.

We didn't do visibly as well as we might have.

Visibly it looked like worse than it was.

Although, I don't know, I think some of us on the subventions for us are beginning and not beginning.

They're wondering whether they may be out of the way.

What do you think?

That's right.

If you read these articles carefully, of course most people don't do that, but the beginning is usually a slap at us.

But if you read them through our FNU York Times accounts yesterday or the same,

There are really a lot of pluses in there, and they always cover it by saying, well, the pluses might not be...

So this is the thing gradually getting off the television?

I am...

It must.

There isn't anything left to report.

Oh, well, actually, we're using the film they had three days ago.

That'd be awesome.

It's a little hard.

That's true.

That'd be awesome.

The difficulty is, people think in terms of whether Victor has been arrested for a while, that'll hurt us.

But our casualties are bound to go down again, even below 54, and we can then compare that.

And if there are no major actions this year, then I really don't see how they can be after the next month.

And I doubt that there will be any next month, but I just... Well, there will be next February and March.

There could be something in first core.

I think we've got to pop them once or twice more just to show them.

You mean with air?

Yeah.

We got away pretty easily with that last part, I think.

Nothing in third and fourth core.

There could be something in first core next year.

Well, if there is, what the hell will we care?

We'll be out of there.

Let's get the hell out of there.

But at any rate, I think the South Vietnamese will be able... We've got to keep a large air force.

There's a thing...

I'm setting up that meeting, as you requested, Mr. President, with Lear.

What is essential is, no matter what double talk he gives you, is to press him to leave a maximum amount of equipment behind, and to keep our air authority rate at a high level next year.

After 72 we can pull it down, but if we keep it up at 10,000, that's the one big punch we've got against them.

Don't get discouraged.

I don't know, I hope you don't forget it, but I know they beat you over the head.

Oh, but I know we've done it, I've said it all, but I'll be sorry.

You've got to keep plugging, because that's what it means when they attack you.

Nixon, Kissinger & Bull on Vietnam War and Lam Son 719

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 26, 1971

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