Nixon, Kissinger & Kraemer on Vietnam War and Cease-fire negotiations

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Thank you.

I think, too, that it's the, shall we say, when there are so very few people with intellectual capabilities who are focused on that.

Appreciate it.

asked me a personal question.

They said, are you asking me about the battle, or are you asking about Mr. Clayton?

He was true.

I said, no, about the battle.

So, I was totally aghast when Fred told me, I don't know if he told you or something, that this article was there.

But it was certainly a very well-maintained friendly.

Sure.

It was good.

No doubt.

Very positive.

I'm sure it was.

It's interesting that, you know, we forget these days how many much-sacrificed people must sometimes go through to survive, even.

And in your case, you won't survive to continue to contribute.

But I think that you're working up in Maine, cutting wood.

Mr. President, I can't believe you're at your liberation.

Yes, it was amazing, and you have shown that work is a fun work, because the real, one single factor that's strange about me is that at age 37, I gave back a few commissions in infantry, and I used to be physically, now I'm an old man, but I was physically an ox in strength, and I could go out and work as a fucking woman.

I thought that was the only thing that I was,

families behind enemy lines, of course, naturally a man who cannot get a job.

I understood that fully, and I want to say that nobody could have been more decent and objective than the FBI was with me.

It's an unbelievable story, and they were so kind that I had to tell them, if I were sitting on the other side of the desk, I would be tougher, because you can't look into my soul.

I could be a traitor.

extraordinarily nice and human.

And this was one of the deepest reasons for my total inner attachment to the United States.

You know, when you have come on to talk to the other planet, then you know what other people are.

You will never know in later when the powerful people will try to play out to you.

And when one has no power, then one can judge other people's humanity.

We are now in a position

we say, needless to put it, to use the understatement of the enormous change in the world, we're in a period, too, where, as far as I'm concerned, I have no illusions about the so-called good intentions of even the leaders of the Soviet and the PRC.

I have always been

very interesting how they withdrew from Egypt but they have to have the feeling that they're incontrollable forces and these young Egyptian officers seem incontrollable so they withdrew but they want to get

And that is why very often one has to play, I don't know, I've forgotten Henry's theatrical talents by now, I don't see them, whether he can seem at times near uncontrollable.

That's the one thing which the Russians don't want.

Now, Chinese is entirely different because those are very great men, Mao Zedong, whose ideas are analysed

Not because I wanted to show you something, eh?

This morning I had to sleep under the tables like this.

And these tables I set up more regularly anyhow.

Now, when you see these absolutely technical cables, constant instruction,

want to see fires declared, GPN forces will be restrained from firing upon unarmed civilians carrying such flags, and the marchers will be able, therefore, to show the flag deep within GPN territory.

Now, I came to the table this morning, and merely because I'm sending this over, and this goes piece after piece, policy concerning illegal functions relating to military political, military proselytizing.

Except for main course elements,

these combat functions.

The others will continue as they did before, with terrorism, assassination and so on.

Now, there are no people who have the time to read hundreds of cables every day and see them as from the single stones of the mosaics.

I can see the single stone is mosaic, and that's why I am now very fearful about to see it fire.

I don't know, you may not wish to discuss it at all, and I certainly am not a man who wants to defect you for what you want me to say.

For example, tactically, in the present moment, I have had places which unfortunately haven't.

I wouldn't...

definitely try to have the coming of the ceasefire into force in legal terms becoming effective and the announcement of it as near together as possible so that the MNE doesn't have time to use this gap between announcements and the actual effectiveness to jump forward.

Secondly, I would make every tactical effort to have these 12 hours

And then, you know, we have very clear cosmic directives that during the first two days of ceasefire, they will not observe the ceasefire.

Under the pretext that they were unable to get the word through.

Now, we all must know that for two days, the other side will not be able to observe the ceasefire, except with me.

supervision internationally, let's say 5,000, 7,000, Venezuela, Sweden, Sweden, Austria, and so on, whoever is in there.

If they come two or three weeks later, too late, in the meantime, relations can happen so that other tactical aid might be simultaneously of the ceasefire and of the supervision.

Now, this is a very little

But where is the rush?

On our side, very probably not, because I'm sure, Mr. President, you are of the conviction that whatever may decide these elections here at home, it will not be of the Vietnam regime.

Oh.

Here we go.

Why the rush?

There's no rush.

Come on.

We must.

We must have what we said.

We must do what is right.

we have used the elections not because not in order to support the president but in order to run up the other side against the deadline we could not change in the past we've always had a situation where when we gave a deadline they'd make a concession just before the deadline and then we had to change it this time

we have a deadline that they cannot change.

Probably it will not get settled before the election, so we're not talking about that.

That would be good, because we're not letting them think that it's going to happen.

We are leaving it vague, whether it will or not, in order to get the maximum of concessions out of it before the election.

Basically, from a political standpoint, this time we would prefer not to have a referendum before the election.

And you can...

You are forcing the enemy, will not understand your psychology, and therefore make a beautiful mistake.

They will say that you are a group of men, and therefore think that at the very moment you have been rejected, you will then be a terrible tiger there by the tail.

Now we know that your interests are for more human intelligence, but they won't believe it.

Well, we don't.

We're not going to let them believe it.

Yeah, that's my point.

That's my point.

We mustn't let them feel that that's one of the reasons why we think I think there's something to be said to let them guess immediately after the election with no restraints I might do some rather rash things.

Our difficulty, Grandma, has been not that we have made concessions before the election.

Our difficulty has been

think up demands which could protract it beyond the election, because every demand we make, they meet within 24 hours.

So we are literally running out of proposals we can make to them.

But we've made the proposal, for example, that day of prisoners have to say it's out, we admit jails.

40,000 political prisoners should stay in South Vietnamese jails, which we thought was unacceptable.

And they have now accepted that their families stay in South Vietnamese jails.

Now, you know that this is not an easy thing for them to sign a document in which they release our prisoners.

They have to release South Vietnamese military prisoners, but all civilian prisoners stay in jails.

I think they're terrified, but I think this is the only factor which I think they're terrified.

the bombing has hurt, the mining has hurt, the attrition that has occurred to them in South Vietnam.

You stop the thing of not just what we've done in the North, but the 52 of those six carriers you've had out there.

I think, therefore, that they just may have breached the point.

And it's only temporary, I agree.

They're out there.

They may have read them out.

was all we wanted to retreat.

And we may have been, in fact, too successful of convincing them what the President would do on November 7th, because we told them, for example, that all communication would be cut off on November 7th, because the President would have to retreat to reorganize the Cabinet.

But why do you feel that you should take push from Mr. Rasmussen

We are talking about two different periods.

Until October 8th, our strategy was just to waste as much time as possible.

Then they suddenly started making decisions with such a review that it was, I think, impossible for us almost to think up demands, to slow them down.

We, for example, we asked

for a ceasefire in Cambodia.

And they accepted that within 36 hours.

Now, just giving you... No, their power is somewhat limited in Cambodia because they're the Chinese... That's guaranteed.

But who will be physically on the ground?

Well, we have a commission.

I personally believe that for their own reasons.

We talked to the man and woman who were after all this intelligence.

Well, we saw him.

He said, ils sont écrasés.

Ils sont tout à fait battus.

That's a very strong... Now, you know that Subana is not a man who doesn't understand the situation.

And he said, ils sont tout à fait battus.

Ils sont écrasés.

They have some, for that reason, I mean, they probably are the ones who should come report to us.

Let me say that after all this long ordeal with Sanderson, and I think the first ordeal with Sanderson stood up hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, the whole establishment,

college professors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The ministries and the business managers, you will be silent.

What about all the support we really have?

It's very unfortunate that shows the country still has some guts.

Except for isolated people in all of these that I have just mentioned, because there are always some exceptions.

But the support primarily came from what

People of your intellectual background, I guess, would consider to be.

Well, there's a little bug of animals because of their education.

The workers, the ethnicists, the farmers, the southerners.

Further, you get away from Washington.

We cannot now, we will not now do something with an election coming up that would mean that 55,000 Americans die for nothing.

And beyond that, beyond that, that is one thing.

Men cannot just die for honor.

They do.

I mean, but not in these states.

But beyond that, we cannot give to America's foreign policy a blow,

dagger in the heart, and it would bleed to death around the world if we sink these people now.

So we're doing everything we can.

The reason we've been so tough within our community is that we'll continue to be, to get the right kind of people, even though it's very difficult.

It is that we want the right kind of a settlement.

Of course, we have to make a determination as to whether we think it's right.

We cannot allow him

to be the sole judge of that, because he doesn't have, he's too close to it.

We take into account what he has to say, but my own view is that we fought a pretty good fight up to this point, and we're not cheating.

Because we see that it's terribly difficult for success or failure now, not just for the moment.

I think people will go look at it for three months, but something that has a chance to survive, shall we say, for two or three years, that is very much a condition that we cannot follow.

May I?

Yeah, for me it is, once the teaching circles start really summarizing it, if it should prove within a number of

inhabitants.

Then, apart from everything moral, the question will arise among friend, foe, and nucleus, is who can the United States ever deal successfully?

Because this entity of 31 million, supported by the Soviets, by China, but not by them and our technology, is relatively so small that everybody from Rio de Janeiro

uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... uh...

I mean, how easy it would have been, politically, to have flushed the whole thing in January the 20th, 1969.

But we couldn't do that.

We couldn't do that.

But then I feel real strategic.

That's right.

That's why, as we examine the curriculum, I really feel that we're, with those conditions in mind, that we are meeting that challenge.

Of course, right now, we

We shall see what the North says, what the South says.

And we'll react with, believe me, we're going to squeeze every ounce out of this thing that we can.

Because the war in Vietnam is not Vietnam as far as we're concerned.

So in Southeast Asia, it's about

or even give an overall impression and make it psychological.

That's by the way one thing one has to fear.

That is a very synonymous perspective.

And there again, the other side is these iron-fisted cartels.

Imagine if you could make the French for an elite force.

They had no fatherland.

Their motto was, there is no party among the nations of fatherland.

They had no ideology.

They were crooks and scoundrels.

But they were iron-fisted.

offices for each, and this other side has its iron fist in the soup.

That is one thing I've seen where we have to understand that Q is in a really difficult spot.

But it is remarkable, sir.

I had meetings, one of them was here this time, with all the intelligence officers from all the regions.

And we compared the directives they've issued over the last two months with what they've been able to execute.

And there's an enormous gap now.

For example, they have given this directive for a high point about now.

And one reason, one concern I had was that if there were a ceasefire now, which isn't going to happen all that quickly now, but if there were one, it would coincide with a ceasefire with a high point, see?

But they can't do it, I suppose.

This rather meek General Meade, who has the entire area, says, I have been contained because of what they had, a sapper squad.

Squad, that's a very low unit.

They really had to be beaten hard.

And they couldn't execute this, but they did it politically.

That's why they have now made it a secret.

Let me just say finally that

I've got to give you your advice, and I want you to continue to send it in here.

You've got to send it.

And I, I must say, I'm sort of in direction.

I've got a hard line, if that's the proper word.

But also, with a certain degree of subtlety, which my hard-line friends don't understand, they don't.

But the most important thing, the other thing is this, in the personal sense of it,

You and Henry have been, as you are, with your very impressive intellectual backgrounds.

Actually, I'm sure you have always put great emphasis on what a person's IQ is.

I imagine both are very high.

But you can't run couples with dummies, but.

And that's CQ, character quotient.

And as I see, the graduates are not Harvard, Yale, and so forth.

IQs are astronomical character quotients, after they've been exposed to their faculty for terribly low.

And it's good to have two, Hugh and Henry, who have, in my view, astronomical character quotients.

He will be a replacement of the army.

The appointment of Hay has been accepted with elixir by all field grade officers.

Elixir with absolute elixir.

I think that by the 243 generals who were there, and we had one phone in the hooker,

Artists are horrible people.

This man quoted me correctly once.

He said, Dr. Kramer told me, men of medium brilliance can permit themselves to be overawed by their own or other people's brilliance.

Those who are truly brilliant will understand that brilliance is nothing.

And he quoted me correctly, and that was right.

Sir, I'm deeply grateful.

Well, I, uh, I always like to use someone to get you a soul voice, Christopher.

Uh, you've got the usual conversation.

I, uh, I think you must have a remarkable son, too, from what I heard.

Stanton, said his brother.

Well, Stanton's man said, yes, sir, you've had a lovely stay.

Nixon, Kissinger & Kraemer on Vietnam War and Cease-fire negotiations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 24, 1972

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