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Abbreviations
Abrams Papers |
Abrams Papers, U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC |
CIA |
Central Intelligence Agency, declassified documents |
Cong. Rec. |
Congressional Record |
FAOH |
Foreign Affairs Oral History Collections, online at http://adst.org.oral-history/. |
FBI |
Federal Bureau of Investigation, declassified documents |
FRUS |
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976 |
JFKL |
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, MA |
Kissinger Papers |
Kissinger Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC |
Kissinger Telephone |
Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Nixon |
Conversations |
Presidential Materials, National Archives Washington, DC. Many key Kissinger conversations quoted in this book are available online at the Nixon Presidential Library, http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/textual/telcons.php. The National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group, also holds a substantial collection, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ |
LBJ Library |
LBJ Presidential Library, Austin, TX |
Moorer Diary |
Admiral Thomas H. Moorer diary, declassified sections in FRUS and in “The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam,” online at www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jcs-vietnam.htm |
Nixon Library |
Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum |
NWHT |
Nixon White House Tapes. A selection of the tapes is online at the Nixon Library’s website at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/tapeexcerpts/index.php |
President’s Daily Diary |
Nixon Library online, http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/dailydiary.php |
Public Papers of Richard Nixon |
Available online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/richard_nixon.php |
Author’s Note
“I gave them a sword”: Nixon interview with David Frost, broadcast May 19, 1977, broadcast on American public television stations, online at http://www.wgbh.org/programs/FrostNixon-The-Original-Watergate-Interviews-489/episodes/FrostNixon-The-Original-Watergate-Interviews-7381.
“a cancer within”: John W. Dean to Nixon, March 21, 1973, NWHT, White House.
1: “A great, bad man”
“the world leader”: Jan. 2, 1971, entry in H. R. Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, online at http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/haldeman-diaries/haldeman-diaries.php.
“an indefinable spirit”: Richard M. Nixon, State of the Union address, Jan. 22, 1970, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“Nixon has a genius”: Martin Luther King Jr. letter to Earl Mazo, cited in Clayburn Carson et al., eds., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr: Symbol of the Movement, January 1957–December 1958 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 481.
“We are still dealing with governments” and “Those Chinese are out to whip me”: May 27, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“They particularly won’t believe me”: April 17, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“the environment is not an issue that’s worth a damn to us”: Feb. 9, 1971, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“in the long run … a catastrophe”: Shultz interview in Gerald S. Strober and Deborah Hart Strober, Nixon: An Oral History of His Presidency (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 51.
“Nixon never trusted anybody”: Helms interview with Stanley I. Kutler, July 14, 1988, Box 15, Folder 16, Wisconsin Historical Archives, Madison, WI, cited by permission of Professor Kutler.
“When the president does it”: Nixon interview with Frost.
“it was ‘me against the world’”: Robert Finch interview, in Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 49.
“He hears the train go by at night”: Nixon address accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, Aug. 8, 1968, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“He had a lemon ranch”: Richard Nixon, farewell address, White House, Aug. 9, 1974, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“The last thing my mother, a devout Quaker”: Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), p. 295.
“the zeal”: Hoover testimony, March 26, 1947, House Un-American Activities Committee, online at http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/.
“my closest friend”: May 3, 1972, NWHT, White House.
“the security of the whole nation and the cause of free men”: Nixon, Six Crises, p. 37.
“The Hiss case brought me national fame”: Ibid., p. 69.
“even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen”: Ibid., p. 416.
“For sixteen years, ever since the Hiss case”: Live footage of Nixon’s “last press conference” is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMSb-tS_OM.
2: “This is treason”
“In those years in limbo”: Watts oral history, FAOH.
“When Mr. Nixon and I called on President Suharto”: Green oral history, FAOH.
“was bound to be crucified”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: New American Library, 1977), p. 263.
“increasingly attracted”: Bui Diem with David Chanoff, In the Jaws of History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 237–44.
“He was in Washington when Castro took over”: Woods to Haldeman, Oct. 13, 1968, Nixon Library, Nixon Presidential Returned Materials Collection: White House Special Files.
“between three and five million dollars”: Woods to Nixon, “RE: Telephone call from Bob Hill—re Mexico,” Sept. 29, 1968, Nixon Library, Nixon Presidential Returned Materials Collection: White House Special Files.
“someone in Johnson’s innermost circle”: Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 326.
“I immediately decided” … “a cynical last-minute”: Ibid., p. 327.
“It appears Mr. Nixon will be elected”: Director, NSA, to [classified], “Thieu’s Views on Peace Talks and Bombing Halt,” partially declassified Dec. 17, 2010, LBJ Library.
“Nixon was playing the problem”: Rostow to Johnson, 6:00 a.m., Oct. 29, 1968, LBJ Library.
“He better keep Mrs. Chennault”: Oct. 31, 1968, LBJ Tapes, LBJ Library.
“South Vietnam is not a truck”: Thieu quoted in conversation between President Johnson and Robert McNamara, Nov. 1, 1968, Washington, DC, FRUS VII: Vietnam, July 1970–January 1972.
“The Republican nominee”: Oct. 31, 1968, LBJ Tapes, LBJ Library.
“It’s clear as day!”: Notes of meeting, Nov. 2, 1968, Washington, DC, FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“a message from her boss”: Rostow teletype to President Johnson, Nov. 2, 1968, LBJ Library.
“This is treason”: Nov. 2, 1968, LBJ Tapes, LBJ Library.
“The deal was cooked”: Habib oral history, FAOH.
“I do not believe”: Telephone conversation among President Johnson, Secretary of Defense Clifford, Secretary of State Rusk, and the president’s special assistant (Rostow), Nov. 4, 1968, 12:27 p.m., FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“These messages started” … “And it is a sordid story”: Nov. 8, 1969, LBJ Tapes, LBJ Library. The bitterness lingered through Inauguration Day, January 20, 1969. LBJ’s administrative aide James R. Jones, later the American ambassador to Mexico, watched it firsthand. LBJ said that Nixon was “a son of a bitch, but he’s the only son of a bitch we have as President, so we have to support him. He never trusted Nixon but he wanted him to succeed. Johnson had an enormous sense of the history of the presidency and the night before the inauguration I remember he admonished all of us… He said: ‘This plane, the United States, has only one pilot. When we go through rough weather, if everybody on the plane starts trying to take the controls and beating the pilot over the head, that plane is going to crash.’” On inauguration morning, the presidential limousine waited at the White House for the drive to the swearing-in at the Capitol Building. “Johnson and Nixon in the back seat,” Jones remembers. “All the way up there, Nixon, all he wanted to talk about was losing Texas and how he didn’t intend to lose Texas in ’72.”
“We were tapped”: Nixon to Haldeman, June 28, 1972, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“he had sent two secret emissaries”: CIA Saigon station, “President Thieu’s Comments on Peace Talks,” Nov. 18, 1968, LBJ Library.
“The ‘X’ Files”: Memorandum for the record, W. W. Rostow, May 14, 1973, LBJ Library.
3: “He was surrounded by enemies”
Inauguration Day: Huston oral history, Nixon Library.
“I really need”: July 1, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“This country is going so far right you won’t even recognize it”: This remarkable statement by Attorney General Mitchell was reported by Kandy Stroud of Women’s Wear Daily as “overheard” during a 1970 cocktail party at the Women’s National Press Club. It was part of a long and evidently tape-recorded rant against students, professors, and the New Left shortly after the May 1970 killings of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State University.
“Attorneys General seldom directed Mr. Hoover”: Nixon testimony, U.S. v. Felt, Oct. 29, 1980, United States District Court for the Southern District, New York.
“I had a strong intuition about Henry Kissinger”: Nixon, RN, p. 341.
“It was a bizarre way”: Rodman oral history, FAOH.
“There was an absolute conviction”: Haldeman oral history, Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 183.
“the greatest military man I had ever met”: Alexander M. Haig Jr. Oral History Interview, Nov. 30, 2007, Nixon Library.
“I had clearly crossed the line for the first time”: John W. Dean, keynote address, “Presidential Powers: An American Debate,” April 25, 2006, Center on Law and Security, New York University School of Law.
“convinced that Nixon’s drinking could cost him any chance of a return to public life”: John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 37–38.
“house detective”: Ehrlichman, “Transcription of Tape-Recorded Interview,” White House, Dec. 17, 1971, Nixon Library.
“From the first time he ran for office”: Ehrlichman interview recorded by CNN in 1988, transcript at www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-16/ehrlichman4.html.
4: “He will let them know who is boss around here”
“to understand … these were horrible decisions”: Haldeman oral history; Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 181.
“Sedov said”: Kissinger, memorandum of conversation, Washington, Jan. 2, 1969, FRUS XII: Soviet Union, January 1969–October 1970. NSC Files: Contacts with the Soviets Prior to Jan. 20, 1969. Kissinger and Sedov met at the Pierre Hotel, headquarters for the Nixon transition team.
“Our lines of communication”: Nixon inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1969, Public Papers of President Richard M. Nixon. Nixon’s handwritten notes from meetings held January 20 and 21 include the following. Of domestic and international issues, including China, he wrote in part, “Chinese Communists: Short range—no change. Long range—we do not want 800,000,000 living in angry isolation. We want contact” (Box 1, President’s Handwriting File, January 1969, Administrative Files, White House Special Files, President’s Office Files, Nixon Presidential Library and Museum).
“In the second week of the administration”: Haig oral history, Nixon Library, Nov. 30, 2007.
“This will be a great symbol”: Vietnam, Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, Jan. 25, 1969, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
“To preclude … military actions”: Haig to Kissinger, Washington, March 2, 1969, “Memorandum from Secretary Laird Enclosing Preliminary Draft of Potential Military Actions re Vietnam,” FRUS XXXIV: National Security Policy, 1969–1972. The memo describes the war plans developed by the Joint Chiefs in response to Kissinger’s request on January 27, including the nuclear option.
“What is the most effective way to bring the war to a conclusion?”: Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, Jan. 25, 1969, Washington, FRUS VI: Vietnam, January 1969–July 1970.
“Mr. Kissinger questioned”: Minutes of the 303/40 Committee Meeting, Feb. 12, 1969, FRUS VI: Vietnam. The 303 meetings, later known as the 40 meetings, were where Kissinger and high-ranking intelligence, military, diplomatic, and national security officials made decision on CIA covert operations.
“I believe it is absolutely urgent”: Memorandum from President Nixon to Kissinger, Washington, Feb. 1, 1969, Washington, DC, in Box 64, Vietnam Subject Files, Reappraisal of Vietnam Commitment, vol. 1, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, National Archives, Washington, DC.
“The question that arises”: Laird to Nixon, March 13, 1969, “SUBJECT: Trip to Vietnam and CINCPAC,” March 5–12, 1969, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“lobbing a few shells into Saigon”: Kissinger to Nixon, March 10, 1969, “SUBJECT: Dobrynin–Rogers Conversation on the Paris Negotiations,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“so secret … entire new world”: Feb. 24, 1969 (Brussels), entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“In order to set the stage”: Kissinger to Nixon, “Consideration of B-52 Options Against COSVN Headquarters,” Feb. 19, 1969, Top Secret, declassified 2006, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“an extraordinary amount of detailed planning”: Oakley oral history, FAOH. Nixon’s obsession with detail was everyday life at the White House. The scripting of the presidency was a daily burden, part of the immense pressure Nixon imposed on himself and his inner circle. He would stop in the midst of deliberations over the war to demand that soup and salads be banned from White House dinners. His highest-ranking staffers took orders in the Oval Office about “whether or not the curtains were closed or open, the arrangement of state gifts, whether they should be on that side of the room or this side of the room,” his aide Alexander Butterfield said; before every ceremonial occasion at the White House, the president needed to know “whether the military would be to the right or the left, which uniforms would be worn by the White House police, whether the Secret Service would salute during ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and sing”—and this level of preoccupation applied to “all Presidential activities.”
“Must convince them”: Notes by President Nixon of a meeting, Paris, March 2, 1969, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“We are not going to double-cross you”: Telegram from the embassy in France to the Department of State, Paris, March 2, 1969, memorandum of conversation among the president, Vice President Ky, Ambassador Lam, the secretary of state, Ambassador Lodge, Ambassador Walsh, and Dr. Kissinger, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“Hit them”: March 8, 1969, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“Our military effort”: Kissinger to Nixon, March 8, 1969, “SUBJECT: Reflections on De-escalation,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“The President ordered”: Memorandum for the record, March 15, 1969, “SUBJECT: March 16 Rocket Attack on Saigon,” Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, National Archives, Washington, DC.
5: “The center cannot hold”
Abrams was “seeking permission”: Surprisingly, this important story languished for six weeks until the New York Times followed up on it. “Although President Nixon became concerned over these two stories and the threat they posed to secrecy … Nixon need not have worried,” a declassified U.S. Air Force history of the Vietnam War reflected. “Possibly put off the track by the lack of reaction from military leaders and civilian authorities, the press failed to pursue the matter. As it turned out, more than four years elapsed from the first Menu bombing in 1969 until Maj. Hal Knight, a former Air Force officer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1973 that, while serving at a Combat Skyspot radar site, he had destroyed records of strikes in Cambodia and substituted reports of attacks on cover targets in South Vietnam.” Bernard C. Nalty, Air War over South Vietnam 1968–1975, Air Force History and Museums Program (Washington, DC: U.S. Air Force, 2000), pp. 127–32.
“the ultimate weapon”: Nixon deposition, recorded in San Clemente, CA, Jan. 15, 1976, Halperin v. Kissinger, U.S. District Court, Washington, DC. Nixon gave this deposition in connection with the White House wiretaps. Kissinger finally settled the case in 1991, when he wrote an apology to his former aide Halperin, whom he had selected as a wiretap target in 1969.
“Here he was in this room with J. Edgar Hoover”: Rodman oral history, FAOH.
“destroy whoever did this”: Hoover memorandum of conversation with Kissinger, May 9, 1969, FBI.
“gossip and bullshitting”: Feb. 28, 1973, NWHT.
tapping was within the realm: The taps were clearly illegal. The prevailing law, the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, dealt specifically with the issue. While prohibiting all wiretapping and electronic surveillance by persons other than law enforcement authorities (and even then, under strict rules), it stated that “nothing … shall limit the constitutional power of the President … to protect the nation against actual or potential attack or other hostile acts of a foreign power, to obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States or to protect national security information against foreign intelligence activities.” I have emphasized the passages with the word foreign. Nothing in that law allowed the wiretapping of Americans who were not foreign spies.
“But I didn’t think it was being done by the White House”: Sullivan oral history, Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 99.
“an almost paranoid fear”: Kennedy oral history, FAOH.
“You cannot square a personal friendship”: Lord oral history, FAOH.
“disreputable if not outright illegal”: Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945–1989: Book III: Retrenchment and Reform, 1972–1980, Center for Cryptological History, National Security Agency, p. 85. This unique National Security Agency history was written in 1998 and declassified, with significant deletions, in 2013, available online at https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_histories/cold_war_iii.pdf.
“Without the Vietnam War”: H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (New York: Times Books, 1978), p. 117.
“This is the way civilizations begin to die”: Nixon statement on campus disorders, March 22, 1969, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“The subject of U.S. casualties”: Wheeler cable to Abrams, April 3, 1969, Abrams Papers, U.S. Army Center of Military History. Cited in History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969–70, Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, JCS, p. 51, available online at http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/doctrine/history/jcsvietnam_69_70.pdf.
“We need a plan”: National Security Council meeting, March 28, 1969, Box TS 82, NSC Meetings, Jan.–March 1969, Top Secret; Sensitive, in Kissinger Papers. These minutes were based on notes taken by Haig that were typed by a White House secretary; Haig made corrections by hand to the typed transcript. CIA director Richard Helms gave Nixon the Agency’s collective opinion that the United States had no strategic concept or coherent policy in Vietnam, the outlook there was for five or six more years of continuing war, it would be pointless for Washington to send more U.S. troops to Vietnam, and if South Vietnam’s leaders could not make it on their own the United States “ought to get out.” Helms notes, Job No. 80B01285A, DCI, Box 11, Folder 5, CIA.
“We must convince the American public”: Kissinger to President Nixon, April 3, 1969, “SUBJECT: Vietnam Problem.” This document contains the message delivered to the Soviet ambassador, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“the only way to end the war quickly and the best way to conclude it honorably”: Ibid.
“Even without a reason”: Telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger, April 5, 1969, 9:45 a.m., Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Another newly declassified NSA history: United States Cryptologic History, Crisis Collection, Vol. 3: The National Security Agency and the EC-121 Shootdown, NSA, 1989, declassified May 13, 2013. Online at https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_histories/EC-121.pdf.
“The President said to find a way”: Telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger (notes by Haig), April 15, 1969, FRUS XIX: Korea, 1969–1972.
“Honest John”: Minutes of NSC meeting, April 16, 1969, ibid.
“That is a very tough one”: Telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger, April 17, 1969, ibid.
“immediate military action against the North”: Haig Oral History Interview, Nov. 30, 2007, Nixon Library.
“We do not do a thing”: Telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger, April 17, 1969, FRUS XIX: Korea.
“Nixon told me”: Haig Oral History Interview, Nov. 30, 2007, Nixon Library.
“Nixon did not trust”: Rodman oral history, FAOH.
“ambassadorships were being sold to the highest bidders”: Hart oral history, FAOH.
“Vincent De Roulet was no longer ‘persona grata’”: Rogers oral history, FAOH.
“I think he had something”: Cheek oral history, FAOH.
“contributed chunks of this money”: Gillespie oral history, FAOH.
“We had a career Foreign Service officer”: Hart oral history, FAOH.
“Anybody who wants to be an ambassador must at least give $250,000”: June 23, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“He had no hobbies”: Butterfield testimony, House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings, July 2, 1974. Transcript on line at http://watergate.info/judiciary/BKITOW.PDF.
“This country could run itself domestically”: Nixon interview cited in Margaret MacMillan, Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2008), p. 8.
“He believed in nothing”: Farmer oral history, Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 110.
he “can’t have a Domestic Program”: Moynihan quoted in March 11, 1969, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“Regarding domestic policy, which Nixon dismissed as ‘building outhouses in Peoria’”: Will quoted in “Up Front,” New York Times Book Review, May 11, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/review/Upfront-t.html.
“If it’s called racism, so be it” and “Uncle Toms”: Feb. 27 and April 2, 1970, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“that we’re catering to the left”: Feb. 9, 1971, entry in ibid.
“He didn’t know anything about the war on poverty”: Cheney oral history, Miller Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, recorded March 16–17, 2000.
“The Nixon administration came in”: Carlucci oral history, FAOH.
“to provide upward mobility” … “OEO was the enemy”: Ibid.
“I want to end this war”: Nixon address on Vietnam, May 14, 1969, Public Papers of Richard Nixon, full text online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2047.
“totally unintelligible to the ordinary guy”: May 14, 1969, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“Our fighting men”: Nixon address on Vietnam, May 14, 1969.
“senseless and irresponsible”: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Cong. Rec., May 20, 1969.
“We are talking to an enemy”: Nixon meeting with Cabinet and NSC, May 15, 1969, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Special Files, National Archives, Washington, DC.
6: “Madman”
Hoover himself began to draw up a blueprint: Hoover’s plans are detailed in an FBI document, “CIA Requests for Information Concerning Aliens,” dated November 19, 1948, and declassified under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) nearly sixty years later. Despite the document’s title, 97 percent of the people listed as potential candidates for preventive detention by the FBI were Americans.
Congress … had passed: The long-forgotten Emergency Detention Act of 1950 became the subject of congressional hearings in 1971 after the mass arrest of six thousand protesters in Washington. While six detention camps were established and funded by the Congress, none of them was ever used.
“I think there is a much deeper conspiracy”: Nov. 14, 1969, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“everything depended on the war in Vietnam”: Memorandum from Kissinger to President Nixon, June 13, 1969, Washington, DC, FRUS XII: Soviet Union.
“We have a difficult political problem”: Memorandum of conversation, June 8, 1969, Midway Island, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“a sagging of spirit”: Ibid.
“if not handled carefully”: Ibid.
“He feels it will probably mean collapse of South Vietnam”: June 19, 1969, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“discouraged because his plans” and “He wants to push for some escalation”: July 7, 1969, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“until about October”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969–70, Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, JCS, pp. 56–57: “On the evening of 7 July the President met with his key advisers to review Vietnam policy.… Political climate was considered at some length, and General Wheeler later told CINCPAC [Adm. John S. McCain] and COMUSMACV [Gen. Creighton Abrams] that ‘the political situation here is not good.’ The President considered that public opinion would hold ‘until about October,’ when some further action on his part would be required.” The complete text of this history is online at http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/doctrine/history/jcsvietnam_69_70.pdf.
“Convey the impression that Nixon is somewhat ‘crazy’”: Leonard Garment, Crazy Rhythm (Boston: Perseus Books, 1999), pp. 174–77.
“We are going through a critical phase”: Nixon remarks, July 29, 1969, U.S. embassy, Bangkok, FRUS XX: Southeast Asia, 1969–1972.
“We have been using every diplomatic and other device”: Memorandum of conversation, Nixon and Thieu, July 30, 1969, Saigon, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“a complete and utter surprise”: Holdridge oral history, FAOH.
“Between Jakarta and Bangkok”: Ibid.
Yahya said he would convey the message: Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Agha Hilaly, met with Kissinger’s NSC aide Harold H. Saunders after Nixon returned to Washington in August 1969. Ambassador Hilaly had a ten-page memo from his president on the meeting with Nixon in Pakistan—a unique record. It said that “President Nixon stated it as his personal view—not completely shared by the rest of his government or by many Americans—that Asia can not move forward if a nation as large as China remains isolated. He further said that the US should not be party to any arrangements designed to isolate China.” He asked President Yahya to convey his feeling to the Chinese at the highest level: “When President Yahya said it might take a little time to pass this message, President Nixon replied that President Yahya should take his own time and decide for himself the manner in which he would communicate with the Chinese.
”Hilaly said that Zhou En-lai had been invited to Pakistan and had accepted, but that it was not clear when he would come. He said President Yahya might, in a conversation with the Chinese Ambassador, simply say that the United States had no hostile intent toward Communist China but he would wait until he saw Chou En-lai to convey President Nixon’s specific views.”
Saunders told the ambassador: “We would like to establish a single channel for any further discussion of this subject should President Yahya have any questions about what President Nixon intended or any impressions of Chinese views which he might wish to relay to President Nixon. We would like to see Ambassador Hilaly and Dr. Kissinger as the two points of contact.” Memorandum of conversation, Aug. 28, 1969, Washington, DC, FRUS XVII: China, 1969–1972.
“the card of the United States”: Xiong Xianghui published the first documented records of Mao’s task force. Xiong Xianghui, “The Prelude to the Opening of Sino-American Relations,” Chinese Communist Party History Materials, no. 42 (June 1992), excerpts online at http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB145/.
“In 25 years”: Private meeting between President Nixon and Ceauşescu, Aug. 2, 1969, Bucharest, FRUS XXIX: Eastern Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, 1969–1972.
“All this is possible”: Memorandum of conversation between the president and President Ceauşescu, Aug. 2–3, 1969, Bucharest, FRUS XXIX: Eastern Europe.
“continue to fight in Vietnam”: Ibid.
Nixon convened the National Security Council: President Nixon’s notes on a National Security Council meeting, Aug. 14, 1969, San Clemente, CA, FRUS XVII: China.
“may have a ‘knock them off now’ policy”: Minutes of meeting of the National Security Council, Aug. 14, 1969, San Clemente, CA, FRUS XII: Soviet Union. Kissinger, in his memoirs, called Nixon’s tilt toward China in its clash with the Soviets a “revolutionary thesis”: the president had declared that “we had a strategic interest in the survival of a major Communist country, long an enemy, and with which we had no contact.”
“Davydov asked point blank”: William L. Stearman, memorandum of conversation, Aug. 18, 1969, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: China: US Reaction to Soviet Destruction of CPR Nuclear Capability,” FRUS XII: Soviet Union.
“the consequences for the US would be incalculable”: Memorandum for the record of the Washington Special Actions Group meeting, Sept. 4, 1969, San Clemente, CA, FRUS XII: Soviet Union.
“The longer the war goes on”: Kissinger to President Nixon, Aug. 30, 1969, “SUBJECT: Response from Ho Chi Minh,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“We tried every operational approach in the book”: Richard Helms, A Look over My Shoulder (New York: Random House, 2003), pp. 310–11.
“I was ready to use whatever military pressure was necessary … to bear on Hanoi”: Nixon, RN, pp. 393, 398.
“The pressure of public opinion”: Kissinger to President Nixon, Sept. 10, 1969, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Our Present Course on Vietnam,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“sharp military blows”: Kissinger to President Nixon, Oct. 2, 1969, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Contingency Military Operations Against North Vietnam,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“If USSR thinks President is a madman”: Vietnam, Contingency Planning, Sept. 12, 1969, Kissinger Papers.
“[Nixon held] one of those mystic sessions”: Oct. 3, 1969, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“Could you exercise the DEFCON?”: Transcript of telephone conversation between Kissinger and Secretary of Defense Laird, Oct. 6, 1969 (declassified Oct. 14, 2011), Washington, DC, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test,” in FRUS XXXIV: National Security Policy.
“an integrated plan”: Memo to General Wheeler, Oct. 9, 1969, Records of the Chairman of the JCS, Earle Wheeler Papers. The document originally was obtained by William Burr of the National Security Archive under the FOIA, and first cited by Burr and Jeffrey Kimball in “Nixon’s Secret Nuclear Alert: Vietnam War Diplomacy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Text, October 1969,” Cold War History 3, no. 2 (January 2003).
“the ‘madman theory’”: Laird interview with William Burr, June 18 and Sept. 6, 2001, National Security Archive, George Washington University.
“Tonight—to you, the great silent majority”: Nixon address to the nation on the war in Vietnam, Nov. 3, 1969. Public Papers of President Nixon, full text online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2303.
“I am on the inside, the enemy”: Watts oral history, FAOH.
7: “Don’t strike a king unless you intend to kill him”
“a fifth-rate agricultural power”: Kissinger, memorandum of conversation, “SUBJECT: Vietnam,” Aug. 4, 1969, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris. Full text online at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB193/HAK-8-4-69.pdf
“If we fail we have had it” and “‘Don’t strike a king’”: Adm. T. H. Moorer, memorandum for the record, Oct. 11, 1969, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: JCS Meeting with the President,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“We have the following problem” … “What if it comes out?”: Transcript of telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger, Jan. 26, 1970, 3:30 p.m., Washington, DC, Kissinger Papers.
“rotting cadavers”: Admiral Thomas Moorer, JCS 2610 message to Admiral John McCain, Feb. 18, 1970, Abrams Papers, cited in William M. Hammond, Public Affairs: The Military and the Media, 1968–1973, Center for Military History, Washington, DC, 1996.
“the bombing was basically ineffectual”: Rushing oral history, FAOH.
“We have won the war” … “You talk peace, but you make war”: Memorandum of conversation, Feb. 21, 1970, 4:10 p.m., Paris, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“I want to run through the Laos situation” … “I don’t want any questions left”: Minutes of the National Security Council Meeting, Feb. 27, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“I’ll have to fuzz their capacity”: Transcript of telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger, Feb. 27, 1970, Washington, DC, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, cited in FRUS VI: Vietnam, document 190, editorial note.
“There was a phrase in that paper”: Lord oral history, FAOH.
“I knew it wasn’t true”: Transcript of telephone conversation between Kissinger and Haldeman, March 9, 1970, Washington, DC, Kissinger Telephone Conversation, cited in FRUS VI: Vietnam, document 190, editorial note.
“a lot of very young and very able Air Force officers”: Holdridge oral history, FAOH.
8: “A pitiful, helpless giant”
“I don’t think he ever slept”: Haig Oral History Interview, Nov. 30, 2007, Nixon Library.
“there wasn’t much we could do militarily,” “went through the roof,” and a “hard option”: From minutes of Washington Special Actions Group meeting, March 19, 1970, Washington, DC, footnote 12: U. Alexis Johnson Files, Telcons, March–April 1970, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“Mr. Helms said”: Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group meeting, March 23, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“totally unprepared for combat”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969–1970, p. 149.
“President Nixon asked me to draft” … “to lead his country out of its mess”: Marshall Green oral history, FAOH.
“I want Helms to develop”: Kissinger to President Nixon, March 19, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“military effort against the Viet Cong in Cambodia”: Helms to Kissinger, March 23, 1970, “SUBJECT: Proposals to Sustain the Present Regime in Cambodia,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“Here was another”: Memorandum of conversation, April 18, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Dr. Kissinger’s Conversation with CIA Officer Recently in Phnom Penh.” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“Poor K”: March 24, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“Apologizing for my vulgarity”: Helms memorandum for the record, March 25, 1970, Job 80–B01285A, Jan 1–June 30, 1970, DCI Helms Files, CIA.
“The Thai battalion”: Telephone conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, March 26, 1970, Nixon Presidential Materials, Haig Special Files, National Archives, Washington, DC.
“fight such a limitation to the death”: Haig to Kissinger, April 1, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Meeting with Secretary of Defense Laird and the President, 3/31/70,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“Multiple unsolvable problems bearing in”: April 15, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“Set up political attack … Have to declare war”: April 9, 1970, entry in ibid.
“an all-out hatchet job”: March 10, 1970, entry in ibid.
“We have no intention” … “reap the whirlwind”: Memorandum of conversation, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, Paris, April 4, 1970, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“the need for speed”: McCain quoted in History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1969–1970, pp. 247–48.
“discussed possible cross-border attacks into Cambodia”: Ibid.
“I think we need a bold move in Cambodia”: President Nixon to Kissinger, April 22, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS I: Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1969–1972.
“pussyfooting”: Henry Kissinger, White House Years (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), pp. 490–92.
“a political storm”: Memorandum from Roger Morris, Winston Lord, and Anthony Lake of the National Security Council staff to Kissinger, April 22, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Cambodia,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“P is moving too rashly”: April 24, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“There was no discussion”: Memorandum of meeting among the president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, attorney general, April 28, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Cambodia/South Vietnam,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“This is not an invasion of Cambodia”: Nixon Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia, April 30, 1970, Public Papers of Richard Nixon. The full text of the speech is online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2490.
“As Nixon concluded his maudlin remarks”: Green oral history, FAOH.
9: “An unmitigated disaster”
“I made a very uncharacteristic”: Nixon, RN, p. 454.
“P was really beat”: May 1, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“They’re the greatest”: Nixon, RN, p. 454.
“He’s very disturbed”: May 4 and 6, 1970, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“We have to stand hard as a rock”: Telephone conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, May 4, 1970, Box 363, Kissinger Papers.
“K. wants to just let the students go for a couple of weeks, then move in and clobber them”: May 6, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“The Cambodian incursion was an unmitigated disaster”: Thomas R. Johnson, American Cryptology During the Cold War, 1945–1989, Book II: Centralization Wins, 1960–1972, Center for Cryptological History, National Security Agency, 1995, Top Secret Umbra, excised copy declassified 2013, pp. 572ff.
“By the time I had stopped laughing”: Stearman oral history, FAOH.
“The press got hold” … “the advancing allies”: Johnson, Centralization Wins, pp. 572ff.
“His instinct for the political jugular”: Nixon, RN, p. 496.
“attack and counterattack”: Exit interview with Charles W. Colson, conducted by Jack Nesbitt and Susan Yowell, Room 182 of the Executive Office Building, Jan. 12, 1973, Nixon Library.
“he’ll do anything”: May 16, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“agitated and uneasy”: Nixon, RN, p. 459.
“Four-thirty in the morning”: Krogh Oral History Interview, Sept. 5, 2007, Nixon Library.
Lynn Schatzkin, Ronnie Kemper, and Joan Pelletier: Quoted in John Morthland, “Nixon in Public,” Rolling Stone, June 11, 1970, reprinted in Editors of Rolling Stone, The Age of Paranoia (New York: Pocket Books, 1972), pp. 306–9.
“flushed, drawn, exhausted”: Krogh Oral History Interview, Sept. 5, 2007, Nixon Library.
“The weirdest day so far” and “The unwinding process is not succeeding”: May 9 and May 15, 1970, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“scooping up secret data”: Sept. 30, 1969, entry in ibid.
“the President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV”: James St. Clair, oral arguments before U.S. District Court judge John Sirica, May 1, 1974, U.S. v. Nixon.
“Marcos and his wife”: Box 555, Symington Subcommittee, vol. 1, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, FRUS XX: Southeast Asia.
“democracy doesn’t work”: “Memorandum from the American Embassy in Thailand to the Department of State,” Nov. 17, 1971, Bangkok, FRUS XX: Southeast Asia; see also “SUBJECT: Covert Support of the Thai Government Party in the Thai National Parliamentary Elections,” Feb. 7, 1969, FRUS VI: Vietnam. “The Thai let us”: Montgomery oral history, FAOH; Ambassador Unger’s report on the Thai coup and Kissinger’s analysis of the coup for Nixon are in FRUS XX: Southeast Asia.
“They had been content”: James Marvin Montgomery oral history, FAOH.
“aware of our attacks”: Nixon meeting with Souvanna Phouma, prime minister of Laos, and Kissinger, Oct. 7, 1969, “SUBJECT: The Public Position on US Activities in Laos,” FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“The President chewed our butts”: United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, staff summary of Bennett testimony, undated but written in 1975. See also “Meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, Lt. Gen. Bennett, and Adm. Gayler,” June 5, 1970, Haldeman White House Files, Nixon Library.
“revolutionary terrorism” … “a plan which will enable”: Presidential talking paper: Meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, Lt. Gen. Bennett, and Adm. Gayler, June 5, 1970, Haldeman White House Files, Nixon Library.
“I’m not going to accept”: Sullivan deposition, Nov. 1, 1975, United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.
“in view of the crisis of terrorism”: Nixon, RN, pp. 474–75.
“Haldeman basically gave him the portfolio”: Huston oral history, Nixon Library, online at www.nixonlibrary.gov.
“we would continue our interdiction” … “it was worth taking risks”: Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group meeting, June 15, 1970, 3:15 p.m., Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Cambodia,” Box H–114, “WSAG Minutes, Originals, 1970–1971, Cambodia 6/15/70,” Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Institutional Files (H-Files), NSC Files, National Archives, Washington, DC.
“I just hope they got it”: Ibid. At 7:45 p.m. on July 15, the president called Kissinger to ask if he thought that the WSAG “got the message?” Nixon continued: “They said they were trying so I just hope they got it. No doubt about what we were going to do—we were going to take some gambles and risks.”
“There were a great number of people”: “Remarks by the President at WSAG Meeting,” minutes of Washington Special Actions Group, Washington, June 19, 1970, Washington, DC, FRUS VI: Vietnam.
“We were instructed to receive him and take him to visit Lon Nol”: Antippas oral history, FAOH.
“Phnom Penh did not need an Ambassador”: Swank oral history, FAOH.
“The communists have overrun half of Cambodia”: Special National Intelligence Estimate SNIE 57–70, Aug. 6, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: The Outlook for Cambodia,” CIA.
“Listen, Henry, Cambodia won the war”: Nixon to Kissinger, Oct. 7, 1970, Box 7, Chronological File, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
10: “Only we have the power”
“Plan is for P”: Oct. 14, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“seeking to trap” … “We should bear in mind”: Memorandum of conversation, Oct. 2, 1970, Madrid, FRUS XLI: Western Europe, NATO, 1969–1972.
“The differences between the United States”: Background press briefing by President Nixon, Oct. 12, 1970, Hartford, CT, President’s Daily Diary (declassified 2011), Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Central Files, National Archives, Washington, DC. Nixon also prepared a set of handwritten notes for the briefing. According to these notes, he planned to state that, in spite of differences in the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union shared a “vital” interest in communication to “avoid war,” to “reduce armaments,” and to “have trade.” The president was neither “naive” nor “sentimental.” The United States and the Soviet Union, allies in the Second World War, had become competitors in the Cold War. This competition would continue, even if the two countries agreed to hold a summit meeting. Rather than seek “quick victories,” “sensational speeches,” and “spectacular formulas,” Nixon was determined to take the “long view” as he sought to build a “structure of peace” (notes from Oct. 12, 1970, Box 61: President’s Speech File, President’s Personal Files, Nixon Presidential Materials, National Archive, Washington, DC).
“unless the United States was willing”: Memorandum of conversation, Oct. 22, 1970, 11:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m., Oval Office, participants included the president, Secretary of State Rogers, Kissinger, Gromyko, and Soviet ambassador Dobrynin, FRUS XIII: Soviet Union, October 1970–October 1971.
“P. obviously enjoyed the confrontation”: Oct. 22, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“a moment of unusual uncertainty”: Memorandum from Kissinger to President Nixon, Oct. 19, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Your Meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, Oct. 22, 1970,” FRUS XIII: Soviet Union.
“Put the past behind”: Notes prepared by President Nixon for Oct. 22, 1970, meeting with Gromyko, undated, Washington, DC, President’s Personal Files, Nixon Presidential Materials, Nixon Library.
“The US”: Nixon to Kissinger, Oct. 12, 1970, 6:10 p.m., Washington, DC, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“Anyone who had lived in Chile”: Phillips testimony, United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, vol. VII, pp. 55ff., July 13, 1975, declassified 1994.
CONTACT THE MILITARY: The CIA’s operations are fully documented in https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v21 and Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File (New York: New Press, 2003).
A VIAUX COUP and OVERTHROWN: Ibid.
“come up with nothing”: Sept. 15, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“We wanted some confrontation”: Oct. 29, 1970, entry in ibid.
“I could not resist showing them how little respect I had for their mindless ranting”: Nixon, RN, pp. 492–93.
“a terrifying flying wedge of cops”: Oct. 29, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
Larger government studies estimated: Lee N. Robins, “Lessons from the Vietnam Heroin Experience,” Harvard Mental Health Letter, Dec. 1994. See also Alfred W. McCoy with Cathleen B. Read and Leonard P. Adams II, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 223ff.
“a significant political failure” … “absolutely ruthless”: Nixon, RN, pp. 495–97.
“amazing array of trivia” and “handling super fat cats and special assignments”: Nov. 10 and 19, 1970, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“John Dean asked me if I would set up a safe house” … He was also “quite dangerous”: Miller oral history, FAOH.
“He started vying for favor on Nixon’s dark side”: Tim Weiner, “Charles Colson, Nixon’s Political Enforcer, Dies at 80,” New York Times, April 23, 2012.
11: “We’re not going to lose this war”
“break the back of the enemy”: CJCS Memo M-218-70, Dec. 23, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Conference with President Nixon,” in Moorer Diary, July 1970–July 1974, Records of the Chairman.
“we’ve discovered that the enemy has our plan and is starting to mass their troops to counteract”: Jan. 26, 1971, entry (declassified Nov. 2014) in Haldeman Diaries.
“we had received intercepts yesterday”: Memorandum for the president’s file by the president’s deputy assistant for national security affairs Haig, Jan. 27, 1971, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Meeting of the President, Secretary of State Rogers, Secretary of Defense Laird, Director of CIA Helms, Chairman of JCS Moorer, Henry A. Kissinger and Alexander M. Haig in the Oval Office,” FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“there could be no perception of defeat”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–1973, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, DC (declassified 2007), p. 5, Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, JCS.
“He did not agree with the connotation that the Laos operation was merely a raid”: Memorandum for the president’s file by Haig, Jan. 27, 1971, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Meeting of the President, Secretary of State Rogers, Secretary of Defense Laird, Director of CIA Helms, Chairman of JCS Moorer, Henry A. Kissinger and Alexander M. Haig in the Oval Office,” FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“The pressure back here”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–73, pp. 5–6.
“prodded remorselessly by Nixon and Kissinger”: Alexander M. Haig, Inner Circles (New York: Warner Books, 1992), p. 273.
“The best legacy”: Nixon to Kissinger, Jan. 24, 1971, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“our army’s greatest concentration of combined-arms forces”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–73, p. 9.
“Tchepone, a tiny town”: Maj. Gen. Nguyen Duy Hinh, Lam Son 719 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1979), p. 90.
“We’re not going to lose it”: Feb. 18, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“We can win in ’72”: Ibid.
“This is the moment of truth”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–73, pp. 10–13.
THE PRESIDENT’S DECISION TO SUPPORT LAM SON 719: Kissinger to Bunker, March 1, 1971, Washington, DC, FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“the surface of the moon”: Howland oral history, FAOH.
“Why is it that Hanoi”: Minutes of a meeting of the 40 Committee, March 31, 1971, San Clemente, CA, FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“They’ve now fought for ten years against us”: March 18, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“It would be hard to exaggerate”: Back-channel message from Kissinger to Ambassador Bunker, March 18, 1971, Washington, DC, FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“lost their stomach for Laos”: History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the War in Vietnam, 1971–73, pp. 10–13.
“What has dramatically demoralized”: New York Times, March 28, 1971.
“a bloody field exercise”: Hinh, Lam Son 719, p. 163.
“a concrete demonstration”: Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975, trans. Merle L. Pribbenow (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), p. 278.
“Tonight I can report”: President Nixon, “Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia,” April 7, 1971, Public Papers of Richard Nixon, full text online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=2972.
“The war has eroded America’s confidence”: April 21, 1971, NWHT, telephone tape.
“want to destroy you and they want us to lose in Vietnam”: April 23, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“All of this is a bunch of shit”: Ibid.
“All that matters”: May 10, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“We’ll bomb the goddamn North like it’s never been bombed”: April 6, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“They relived”: Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, April 22, 1971, Cong. Rec. (92nd Cong., 1st Sess.), pp. 179–210.
“You’ll find Kerry running for political office”: April 23, 1971, NWHT, White House.
“Any military commander who is honest with himself”: McNamara interview in The Fog of War, directed by Errol Morris (2003).
12: It’s a conspiracy”
“This goddamn New York Times exposé”: June 13, 1971, NWHT, telephone tape.
“It just shows massive mismanagement”: June 13, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Goddamn it”: June 15, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“You can blackmail Johnson on this stuff”: June 17, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Do you remember Huston’s plan? Implement it”: Ibid.
“You need a commander … It could be Colson”: July 1, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“We’re up against an enemy” … “Is that clear?”: Ibid.
“I just want to make that big play”: June 29, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“fears of what the President might do”: Memorandum for the president’s file, July 1, 1971, “China Trips, July 1971,” Briefing Notebook, Kissinger Papers.
“We’re not going to turn the country over”: July 1, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“You can say ‘I cannot control him’”: April 23, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I understand you are going to Beijing”: Memorandum of conversation, Oct. 25, 1970, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Meeting Between the President and Pakistan President Yahya” (notes taken by Kissinger), FRUS E-7: Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972.
“The Chinese Government reaffirms its willingness”: Memorandum of conversation, May 7, 1971, Palm Springs, CA, Participants: Joseph S. Farland, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Henry A. Kissinger, assistant to the president for national security affairs, FRUS E-13: Documents on China, 1969–1972.
“President Nixon was ambivalent”: Lord oral history, FAOH.
“this was about as mysterious as you can get”: Farland oral history, FAOH.
“‘Do you know what I’m going to talk about’”: Ibid.
“We were stepping into the infinite”: Holdridge oral history, FAOH.
“As the sun came up”: Lord oral history, FAOH.
“Kissinger and I and the others walked around”: Ibid.
“as forthcoming as we could have hoped”: Kissinger to President Nixon, July 14, 1971, San Clemente, CA., “SUBJECT: My Talks with Chou En-lai,” FRUS XVII: China.
“repeatedly stressed—in an almost plaintive tone”: Ibid.
“Krogh and his guys”: July 20, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I listened intently”: Egil Krogh, “The Break-in That History Forgot,” New York Times, June 30, 2007.
“Where does Krogh stand now?”: Sept. 8, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“permanent tails”: Ibid.
“On the IRS”: Sept. 8, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“We had one little operation” … “It may pay off”: Sept. 8, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
13: “I can see the whole thing unravel”
“Our goal is clear”: Conversation among President Nixon, Ambassador Bunker, and Kissinger, June 16, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“There are no fair elections”: Ibid.
“re-elect Nguyen Van Thieu”: CIA memorandum for the 40 Committee, Feb. 3, 1971, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Covert Actions in Support of U.S. Objective in South Vietnam’s 1971 Elections,” FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“Turn on him? Never, never”: Aug. 19, 1971, Washington, DC, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“Unless there is a real contest”: Back-channel message from Ambassador Bunker in Saigon to Kissinger, Aug. 20, 1971, FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“For the hundredth [sic] and twentieth time”: Kissinger, memorandum of conversation, Sept. 13, 1971, Paris, FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“The heart of the problem”: Kissinger to Nixon, Sept. 18, 1971, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Vietnam,” FRUS VII: Vietnam.
“A swift collapse”: Ibid.
“I think we have to consider withdrawing the son-of-a-bitch”: Sept. 14, 1971, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“Having been in the military” … “It was a grim picture”: Lange oral history, FAOH.
“We have to keep in mind” … “not to overthrow Thieu”: President Nixon’s news conference, Sept. 16, 1971, online at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3146.
“He started the damn thing!”: April 7, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“everything that flies” … “And with a victory”: Sept. 17, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“The behavior of the U.S.”: NSC meeting on Vietnam, Sept. 20, 1971, Kissinger Papers.
WE ARE LAUNCHED ON A COURSE: Memorandum of conference with the president, Aug. 29, 1963, National Security file, JFKL. Richard Helms was at a White House meeting at noon on August 29, 1963, with the president, McNamara, and Rusk, among a dozen other top officials. The note taker recorded that Ambassador Lodge had already sent the message to the Vietnamese generals plotting to overthrow Diem that the United States would support them. “The President asked whether anyone had any reservations about the course of action we were following,” and Rusk and McNamara did. The president decided that “Ambassador Lodge is to have authority over all overt and covert operations” in Vietnam.
“We must bear a good deal of responsibility for it”: Nov. 4, 1963, JFK Tapes, JFKL.
“the Kennedy Administration was deeply implicated”: Neil Sheehan, “‘Vietnam Hindsight’ on the Kennedy Years,” New York Times, Dec. 22, 1971.
“We have those tapes”: Oct. 8, 1971, NWHT, White House.
“We’ve got to avoid the situation”: Oct. 25, 1971, NWHT, White House.
“We will bomb the bejeezus” … “‘Oh, horrible, horrible, horrible’”: Nov. 20, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
14: “It is illegal, but…”
“These people are savages”: Dec. 15, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“a special feeling”: Kissinger note attached to memorandum of conversation with ambassador to India Kenneth Keating and NSC aide Harold Saunders, June 21, 1971, National Security Council Files, Nixon Library.
“The Pakistani army was just murdering people”: Veliotes oral history, FAOH.
“Don’t squeeze Yahya”: Nixon’s handwritten note on Kissinger’s memo, April 28, 1971, “SUBJECT: Policy Options Toward Pakistan,” FRUS XI: South Asia Crisis, 1971.
“If they’re going to choose to go with the Russians”: Aug. 9, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“She is a bitch”: Nov. 5, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“We will do everything we can”: Nov. 15, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Yahya is beginning to feel cornered”: Back-channel message from Ambassador Farland to Kissinger, Nov. 19, 1971, Islamabad, FRUS XI: South Asia Crisis.
“Is Yahya saying it’s war?”: Nov. 22, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“didn’t have any confirmation”: Nov. 22, 1971, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
STRICTEST PRESIDENTIAL INSTRUCTIONS TO TILT TOWARD PAKISTAN: Back-channel message from Kissinger to Ambassador Farland, Nov. 24, 1971, Washington, DC, FRUS XI: South Asia Crisis.
“To the extent that we can tilt it toward Pakistan”: Nov. 24, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Pakistan thing makes your heart sick”: The president was in Key Biscayne, Florida; Kissinger in Washington, DC. Dec. 3, 1971, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“We have had an urgent appeal”: Dec. 4, 1971, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
Nixon authorized the arms transfers: Dec. 6, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“The way we would do that is to tell the King”: Dec. 9, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I was too easy on the goddamn woman”: Dec. 6, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“cold-bloodedly make the decision”: Dec. 8, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“I tell you, a movement of even some Chinese”: Telephone conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, Dec. 8, 1971, NWHT, White House.
“What do we do if the Soviets move”: Dec. 12, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Savages”: Dec. 15, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“only one place in the whole federal government” … “a federal offense of the highest order”: Dec. 21, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“the house detective”: Memorandum for the record by David R. Young, “SUBJECT: Transcription of Tape Recorded Interview” of Admiral Welander by Ehrlichman and Young, Dec. 22, 1971, Nixon Library. This document, with handwritten annotations by Young on a hastily prepared typed transcript from the tape-recorded interview, was apparently purloined from Nixon’s presidential records, then returned to the Nixon Presidential Library. Young’s files remain almost entirely sealed. A copy of the document can be accessed at http://nixontapes.org/welander.html.
“Your alter ego” … “Almost anything you name”: Young, “SUBJECT: Transcription of Tape Recorded Interview,” ibid.
“What we’re doing here is, in effect, excusing a crime.… They had to”: Dec. 22, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“That’s the question” … “Everyone else should go to jail!”: Dec. 23, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Got any ideas?” … “That would do it”: Dec. 24, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“The main thing is to keep it under as close control as we can”: Telephone conversation between Nixon and Mitchell, Dec. 24, 1971, NWHT.
warrantless wiretap on Radford: Memorandum for the president from David R. Young, undated, “SUBJECT: Record of Investigation into Disclosure of Classified Information in Jack Anderson Articles,” Nixon Library.
“I don’t care if Moorer is guilty”: Dec. 24, 1971, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“They can spy on him and spy on me and betray us!”: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, p. 307.
“The worst thing about it” … “But it’s essential”: Dec. 23, 1971, NWHT, Oval Office.
“it might partially explain their origin”: Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), p. 808.
15: “Night and Fog”
“immense opportunities and, of course, equally great dangers”: Nixon, RN, p. 541.
“It isn’t about China”: Feb. 2, 1972, NWHT, Cabinet Room.
“Crack ’em, crack ’em, crack ’em”: Ibid.
“Let’s not have any illusions” … “they’re suckers”: May 4, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“My order is to drop the Goddamned thing, you son of a bitch!”: April 19, 1971, NWHT, telephone tape.
“Operation Sandwedge”: The Operation Sandwedge plan is reproduced in the Final Report of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, better known as the Senate Watergate Committee or SSC, SSC Vol. 2, pp. 240–52. Caulfield’s testimony on Sandwedge, its “covert intelligence-gathering capability,” and his assignment to keep Don Nixon under surveillance is in SSC Vol. 21, pp. 9687–937. McCord’s testimony on his role at CREEP and in the Watergate burglary is in SSC Vol. 1, pp. 125–248.
“From the campaign funds I need $800,000”: Strachan talking memo for Haldeman, Oct. 28, 1971, House Judiciary Committee, better known as the Impeachment hearings, HJC Appendix IV, p. 45, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1975.
“wheeler-dealers”: Caulfield to Dean, Feb. 1, 1971, “SUBJECT: Hughes Retainer to Larry O’Brien,” Senate Watergate Committee, SSC Vol. 21, p. 9755.
“Donald Nixon’s son” … “a huge flap in Washington”: Oakley oral history, FAOH.
“to move hard on Larry O’Brien”: March 4, 1970, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“making sensitive political inquiries at the IRS”: To: H. R. Haldeman, From: Tom Charles Huston, July 16, 1970, Haldeman Papers, Nixon Library.
“As you probably remember there was a Hughes/Don Nixon loan controversy years ago”: EYES ONLY: Higby to Dean, Aug. 10, 1970 (Higby was a White House aide known as Haldeman’s Haldeman), Richard M. Nixon and Bruce Oudes, eds., From: The President: Richard Nixon’s Secret Files (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), p. 151.
“Concerning Howard Hughes”: Chapin to Colson, Dec. 12, 1970, in ibid., p. 186.
“The Secretary of Commerce came down”: White oral history, FAOH.
“This Watergate thing kept coming back”: Magruder oral history, Strober and Strober, Nixon, pp. 329–31.
“If this obsession … seems irrational”: John W. Dean, The Nixon Defense (New York: Viking, 2014), p. 651.
“1972, as you know, was a very big year”: Nixon interview on Meet the Press, broadcast April 10, 1988, NBC.
16: “From one extreme to another”
“It had a tremendous impact”: Lord oral history, FAOH.
“the intangibles of your China visit”: Kissinger to Nixon, Feb. 19, 1972, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Mao, Chou and the Chinese Litmus Test,” FRUS XVII: China.
“We had no idea when they’d be back”: Feb. 21, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“I have read the Chairman’s poems”: Memorandum of conversation, Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Prime Minister Zhou En-lai, President Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, Winston Lord, National Security Council staff, Feb. 21, 1972, Beijing, FRUS XVII: China.
“a different kind of communiqué”: Lord oral history, FAOH.
“The conventional way”: Memorandum of conversation, Nixon to Zhou, Feb. 21, 1972, Beijing, FRUS XVII: China.
“Why not give this up?”: Memorandum of conversation, President Nixon and Prime Minister Zhou, Feb. 22, 1972, Beijing, FRUS XVII: China.
“the Taiwan question is the crucial question”: Memorandum of conversation, President Nixon and Prime Minister Zhou, Feb. 24, 1972, Beijing, FRUS XVII: China.
“This would almost certainly be seized upon”: Ambassador Marshall Green, FAOH oral history, privately published as Evolution of US-China Policy 1956–1973: Memoirs of an Insider (Arlington, VA: Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1998).
“all hell had broken loose”: Ibid.
“this communiqué was a disaster”: Lord oral history, FAOH.
“Rogers arrived at the suite”: Feb. 27, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“The symbolism escaped no one”: Green oral history, FAOH.
“Zhou En-lai handled the matter very skillfully”: Lord oral history, FAOH.
“had very little to do with substance”: March 21, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“The network coverage” … “Shanghai at night”: Feb. 22 and 27, 1972, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“If the war in Vietnam”: Memorandum of conversation, President Nixon and Prime Minister Zhou, Feb. 28, 1972, Shanghai, FRUS XVII: China.
“to negotiate an end to the war”: Military History Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam, p. 289.
“We’ll bomb the hell out of the bastards”: March 14, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
17: “This is the supreme test”
“It looks as if they are attacking in Vietnam”: March 30, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I don’t know any more if I’m in northern South Vietnam or southern North Vietnam”: Quoted in Sydney H. Schanberg, “‘It’s Everyone for Himself’ as Troops Rampage in Hue,” New York Times, May 4, 1972.
“We lose if the ARVN collapses”: April 3, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“For the President, battlefield success became paramount”: Brown oral history, FAOH.
“There will be no consideration of restraints”: April 4, 1972, entry in Moorer Diary.
“The P’s massing a huge attack force”: April 4, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“God Almighty, there must be something”: April 4, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“An enormously potent ordeal”: April 20, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I cannot impress upon you”: Moorer to Admiral McCain and General Abrams, April 8, 1972. Nixon called Admiral Moorer into the White House the following week and told him, “American foreign policy is on the line, as I’m sure you know … and putting it in melodramatic terms, the honor of the armed services of this country. The United States with all of its power has had 50,000 dead. If we get run out of this place now, confidence in the armed services will be like a snake’s belly. So we can’t let it happen.… Don’t lose. That’s all. It’s the only order you’ve got” (April 17, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office).
“The P called him and really laid it to him”: April 6, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“break the North Vietnamese”: April 10, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“When I showed the President Abrams’ message”: April 15, 1972, entry in Moorer Diary, FRUS VIII: Vietnam, January–October 1972.
“Any sign of weakness on our part”: Nixon, RN, pp. 588–91 and 601.
“I have to leave this office”: April 17, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I’ll destroy the goddamn country”: April 19, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Brezhnev is simple, direct, blunt and brutal”: FRUS XIV: Soviet Union, October 1971–May 1972. Rose Mary Woods transcribed the memorandum from Nixon’s taped dictation. Copies of the final version are on file in the Nixon Library. A stamped notation indicates that the White House Situation Room sent the message at 12:03 p.m. on April 20, 1972. Kissinger was on the plane heading for Moscow when the president’s memorandum arrived.
“I put this brutally”: April 20, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“If they don’t give anything”: Ibid.
“All that is bullshit”: Transcript of telephone conversation between President Nixon and Haig, April 21, 1972, FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“It was a tough speech”: Nixon, RN, p. 593.
“There are to be no excuses and there is no appeal”: Kissinger to Laird, April 28, 1972, FRUS VIII: Vietnam. The president had spent the day in the Bahamas and Key Biscayne. The full text of the message from Kissinger to Laird reads:
We have just received the following flash message from the President:
Immediate
From: The President
To: Henry Kissinger
1. The absolute maximum number of sorties must be flown from now thru Tuesday.
2. Abrams to determine targets.
3. If at all possible 1,000 sorties per day.
4. This will have maximum psychological effect.
5. Give me report soonest by message as to how this order is being specifically executed.
6. There are to be no excuses and there is no appeal.
“People didn’t want to hear about it”: Brown oral history, FAOH.
“I intend to cancel the Summit”: Nixon to Kissinger, April 30, 1972, from Connally ranch in Texas, FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“As the pressure has mounted”: Kissinger to Nixon, “SUBJECT: General Abrams’ Assessment of the Situation in Vietnam,” May 1, 1972, Washington, DC, FRUS VIII: Vietnam.
“The P kept telling him”: May 1, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“We will lose the country if we lose the war”: May 4, 1972, entry in ibid.
“Hoover experienced loneliness”: Mark Felt and John O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), p. 160.
“He died at the right time”: June 2, 1972, NWHT, White House.
“Pat, I am going to appoint you”: L. Patrick Gray III with Ed Gray, In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate (New York: Times Books, 2008), pp. 17–18.
“Never, never figure that anyone’s your friend”: May 4, 1972, NWHT, White House.
“We were now faced with three alternatives” … “The more the P thought about it”: May 4, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“Admiral, what I am going to say to you now is in total confidence”: May 4, 1972, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“The P very strongly put the thing”: May 4, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“We’ve had a damned good foreign policy”: May 5, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I still think we ought to take the dikes out now”: April 25, 1972, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“The best way to assure that we could win was to pick our opponent”: April 29, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“The real question is whether the Americans give a damn anymore”: Memorandum for the president’s files, May 8, 1972, “SUBJECT: National Security Council Meeting,” FRUS VIII: Vietnam.
“We now have a clear, hard choice”: President’s Address to the Nation on the Situation in Southeast Asia, May 8, 1972, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“I have determined that we should go for broke”: Memorandum from Nixon to Kissinger, May 9, 1972, Washington, DC, FRUS VIII: Vietnam.
“the biggest dogfight since World War Two”: Washington Special Actions Group meeting, May 10, 1972, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Vietnam,” FRUS VIII: Vietnam.
“The record of World War II”: Helms to Kissinger, Aug. 22, 1972, “An Assessment of the US Bombing and Mining Campaign in North Vietnam,” FRUS VIII: Vietnam. The full text of the cover note Helm wrote on this assessment reads: “The record of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam since 1965 strongly suggests that bombing alone is unlikely to transcend the realm of severe harassment and achieve true interdiction in the sense of stopping the movement of supplies a determined, resourceful enemy deems essential and is willing to pay almost any price to move.”
“I want you to convey directly”: Nixon to Kissinger and Haig, May 19, 1972, Washington, DC, HAK/President Memos, Top Secret/Eyes Only, NSC Files, Nixon Library.
18: “Palace intrigue”
“guide the course of history”: Churchill quoted in Raymond A. Callahan, Churchill: Retreat from Empire (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1984), p. 185.
“The problem with the relationship”: Toon oral history, FAOH.
“Pretty scary”: May 11, 1969, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“I read last night the whole SALT thing.… There’s an awful lot still left to be worked out”: May 19, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“We have a few snags”: May 19, 1972, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“indispensable”: Conversation among President Nixon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of Defense Laird, and others, Aug. 10, 1971, Washington, DC, FRUS XXXII: SALT I, 1969–1972.
“there would be no limitations on MIRVs”: Memorandum, July 31, 1970, Washington, DC, “Detailed Statement of the Provisions of U.S. SALT Position,” FRUS XXXII: SALT I.
“Never before have nations limited the weapons on which their survival depends”: Kissinger to Nixon, Tuesday, May 23, 1972, “SUBJECT: Your Moscow Discussions,” FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“The fact that the two great adversaries could sit down”: Garthoff oral history, FAOH.
“P was whisked off”: May 22, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“The war which the United States” … “a confidential talk”: Memorandum of conversation, Brezhnev and Nixon, May 22, 1972, Moscow, FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“We are great powers”: Box 75, President’s Speech File, “May 22–29, 1972, Russia,” President’s Personal Files, White House Special Files, Nixon Library.
“We are both civilized men”: Memorandum of conversation, Brezhnev and Nixon, transcribed from Kissinger’s notes, FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“That the President of the United States”: Gerald C. Smith, Doubletalk: The Story of the First Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (New York: Doubleday, 1980), p. 414.
“the single most emotional meeting”: June 2, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Why don’t we go see it right now?”: Nixon, RN, p. 612.
“all of a sudden the P and Brezhnev”: May 24, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“Followed by Nixon’s own car”: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1223.
“We certainly did not choose,” “We want to sign important documents,” and “Our people want peace”: Memorandum of conversation, May 24, 1972, “SUBJECT: Vietnam,” Moscow, FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“after the motorcade”: Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 1228–29.
“The real problem”: Back-channel message from Haig to Kissinger in Moscow, May 25, 1972, Washington, DC, FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“There is no room for additional compromise”: Memorandum of conversations, May 25, 1972, 5:20–6:35 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.–12:32 a.m., Moscow, “SUBJECT: SALT,” FRUS XXXII: SALT I.
Kissinger wrote in his memoirs that before the SALT discussions resumed at 5:20 p.m. (with, as usual, only a half hour’s warning), he and his staff were “frantically analyzing various combinations of figures; the permutations seemed endless, but [they] had to ensure that the Soviets dismantled the maximum number of missiles. The numbers game of submarine baselines—how many could be traded in, and when they would reach different levels by various combinations of twelve-tube and sixteen-tube boats—forced us into numerous computations on long yellow pads, drawn up between sessions and then quickly scratched up and consumed during meetings.” After the midnight meeting, Kissinger went to Nixon’s Kremlin residence and reported that the talks had reached an impasse that only the Soviets could break. But he was “fairly confident” that the Soviets would accept the final U.S. proposal: “They could not permit a negotiation that lasted nearly three years to go down the drain” over the issues of silo dimensions and submarine missiles (White House Years, pp. 1236–40).
“There are two questions left open from yesterday”: Memorandum of conversation, May 26, 1972, Moscow, “SUBJECTS: SALT; Communiqué,” FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“In his compulsive need to control events, Kissinger had deceived everybody”: Jaeger oral history, FAOH.
“Not one U.S. program was stopped by SALT”: Minutes of a meeting of the Verification Panel, April 23, 1974, Washington, DC, FRUS XXXIII: SALT II, 1972–1980.
“The MIRV explosion”: William G. Hyland, Mortal Rivals: Superpower Relations from Nixon to Reagan (New York: Random House, 1987), p. 54.
“I wish I had thought through the implications of a MIRVed world”: Kissinger background briefing, Dec. 3, 1971, cited in Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), p. 322.
“an explosive one”: Memorandum of conversation, May 22, 1972, Moscow, FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“There are in the world today” … “whose are being cut”: Memorandum of conversation, May 26, 1972, Moscow, FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“The Americans really are miracle workers!”: Nixon, RN, p. 616.
“not for a summit of one summer”: President Nixon’s notes for an address to a Joint Session of the Congress on June 1, White House Special Files, Nixon Library, and President’s address to a joint session of the Congress on return from Austria, the Soviet Union, Iran, and Poland, June 1, 1972, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“How would you see it” and “It would be very constructive”: Memorandum of conversation among Brezhnev, Nixon, and Kissinger, May 29, 1972, Moscow, FRUS XIV: Soviet Union.
“the President agreed to furnish Iran with laser bombs and F-14s and F-15s”: Memorandum of conversation, May 31, 1972, 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., Saadabad Palace, Tehran, Iran, Participants: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, shah of Iran; the president; Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, FRUS E-4: Documents on Iran and Iraq, 1969–1972.
“all available sophisticated weapons short of the atomic bomb”: Harold Saunders of the National Security Council staff to Kissinger, June 12, 1972, Washington, DC, FRUS E-4: Documents on Iran and Iraq.
“That was a fateful, disastrous step”: Killgore oral history, FAOH.
“He wanted a conversation with His Imperial Majesty”: Farland oral history, FAOH.
19: “We have produced a horrible tragedy”
“We got back into the Democratic break-in again”: June 20, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“What’s the dope on the Watergate incident?”: June 21, 1972, Nixon White House Tapes, Oval Office.
“Good deal!”: June 23, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“These should never see the light of day”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 81–82. Dean corroborated Gray’s account in his Watergate testimony.
“President Johnson told me”: Haig to Kissinger, June 18, 1972, FRUS VIII: Vietnam.
“This arrogant son of a bitch is a traitor”: Colson personal letter to Jay Lovestone, April 29, 1972. Lovestone, once a leader in the Communist Party of the United States, had become the fervently anticommunist director of the international division of the AFL/CIO; his office was jokingly called the AFL/CIA because Lovestone had worked closely with the Agency in the 1950s.
“Assault Book”: Memorandum from Patrick Buchanan (with Ken Khachigian) for Nixon and Haldeman, June 8, 1972, Subject: “Assault Strategy,” reprinted in From: The President: Richard Nixon’s Secret Files, edited by Bruce Oudes (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), pp. 463–74.
“It was a nightmare for me”: McGovern oral history, Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 264.
“We’re sitting on a powder keg”: Aug. 1, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“if you stay ten points ahead” … “a settlement by Election Day”: Aug. 2, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“What in the name of God are we doing on this score?” … “We have all this power”: Aug. 3, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“All of our people are gun-shy”: Aug. 3, 1972, entry in President’s Daily Diary.
“My eyes burned from the lingering sting of tear gas”: Nixon, RN, p. 678.
“Bad news”: Ibid., pp. 679–80.
“Well, you had quite a day today, didn’t you?”: Sept. 15, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“hurt all of us deeply”: Bolz oral history, FBI.
“I knew somebody would break”: Oct. 19, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“He said: ‘You have to tell us’”: Ibid.
“We set up dinner on the Sequoia”: Sept. 28, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“I know we have to end the war” … “He’s made these tough decisions”: Sept. 29, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“We have a major crisis with Thieu” … “And cram it down his throat”: Transcript of a telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger, Oct. 4, 1972, Library of Congress, Kissinger Papers. The President’s Daily Diary says Nixon was at Camp David when he placed the call, and Kissinger was in Washington.
“We must concentrate our efforts on doing whatever it takes to resolve our first objective”: Doan Huyen, “Defeating the Americans: Fighting and Talking,” in The Diplomatic Front During the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam, edited by Vu Son Thuy, translated by Merle Pribbenow (Hanoi: National Political Publishing House, 2004), pp. 138–40.
“Well, you got three out of three, Mr. President”: Oct. 12, 1972, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“The P kept interrupting Henry”: Oct. 12, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“The Vietnam deal”: Oct. 22, 1972, entry in ibid.
“Thieu has just rejected the entire plan”: Back-channel message from Kissinger to Haig (Hakto 37/215), Oct. 22, 1972, Saigon.
“It is hard to exaggerate”: Back-channel message from Kissinger to Haig (Hakto 41/219), Oct. 22, 1972, Saigon.
“The South Vietnamese people will assume that we have been sold out”: Bunker to Haig, Oct. 22, 1972, Saigon.
“I knew immediately”: Nixon, RN, p. 705.
“Peace is at hand”: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1400.
“The President regarded Kissinger’s gaffe as a disaster”: Haig, Inner Circles, p. 302.
“Your Government has managed to enrage the President”: Memorandum of conversation: Henry A. Kissinger; Winston Lord; Tran Kim Phuong, ambassador of the Republic of Vietnam to the United States, Jan. 3, 1973, Washington, DC.
20: “A hell of a way to end the goddamn war”
“I am at a loss to explain”: Nixon, RN, p. 717.
“We’ve got to really do something regarding a new government”: Sept. 20, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“It was done in an appallingly brutal way”: Schultz oral history, Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 272.
“it was a mistake”: Nixon, RN, p. 769.
“ruin the Foreign Service”: Nov. 13, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“That goddamn Thieu”: Nov. 15, 1972, Kissinger telephone conversations, Nixon Library.
“The list was so preposterous”: Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1417.
I WOULD BE PREPARED TO AUTHORIZE A MASSIVE STRIKE: Back-channel message from Nixon to Kissinger in Paris (Tohak 78), Nov. 24, 1972.
“It’s just a hell of a way to end the goddamn war”: Nov. 30, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Above all” … “Start bombing the bejeezus”: Haig memorandum, Nov. 30, 1972, “SUBJECT: The President’s Meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” FRUS IX: Vietnam, October 1972–January 1973.
“really agony” … “keep the hopes alive”: Dec. 5–8, 1972, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“only one viable realistic choice”: Memo from Secretary of Defense Laird to President Nixon, Dec. 12, 1972, Washington, DC, “SUBJECT: Ceasefire Agreement.”
“definitely on the front burner”: Dec. 13 and 14, 1972, entries in Moorer Diary.
“They’re shits” … “and never forget it”: Dec. 14, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“the P”: Dec. 16, 1972, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“The whole thing that counts”: Dec. 17, 1972, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“He emphasized that ‘the strikes must come off’” … “‘damn certain everybody understood’”: Dec. 17 and 18, 1972, entries in Moorer Diary.
“to stiffen his back” … “any more of this crap”: Nixon, RN, pp. 734–35.
“You will be watched on a real-time basis”: Dec. 18, 1972, entry in Moorer Diary.
“Now that we have crossed the bridge let’s brutalize them”: Telephone conversation between Moorer and Kissinger, Dec. 19, 1972, entry in Moorer Diary.
“The P kept coming back to the B-52 loss problem”: Dec. 20, 1973, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“He got kicked in the teeth”: Dec. 20, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I just came from the President” … “This is a helluva way to run a war”: Dec. 22–25, 1972, entries in Moorer Diary.
“Moorer is preparing a big strike”: Dec. 23, 1972, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“This is December 24, 1972”: Dec. 24, 1972, entry in President’s Daily Diary.
“I’ve just lived through the most terrifying hour of my life”: Dec. 27, 1972, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Never!” … “At great cost”: Ibid.
“We gave them a hell of a good bang”: Ibid.
“swallowed the hook”: Dec. 28, 1972, entry in Moorer Diary.
“Colson could be in some real soup” … “undeniable specifics”: Jan. 3, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Gordon Strachan”: Smith oral history, FAOH.
“Colson told me”: Nixon, RN, p. 745.
“I know it’s tough for all of you”: Jan. 8, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“at an end” … “the way in which we use these years”: Nixon, RN, pp. 746–51.
21: “You could get a million dollars”
“After the cease-fire”: Jan. 23, 1973, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“Whack the hell out of them”: March 7, 1973, Kissinger Telephone Conversations.
“We have a stick and a carrot”: Jan. 30, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Here’s the judge saying I did this”: Feb. 3, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“all other illegal, improper, or unethical conduct”: Senate Resolution 60, 93rd Cong. (1973–74), adopted unanimously, Feb. 7, 1973.
“We should play a hard game” … “not to let this thing run away with us”: Feb. 9–11, 1973, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“one that really had R.N. tattooed on him”: Helms interview with Stanley I. Kutler, July 14, 1988, Box 15, Folder 16, Wisconsin Historical Archives, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI; cited with the kind permission of Professor Kutler.
“We would like to be able to put the DOD”: Memorandum of conversation: President Nixon, Secretary of Defense Elliot Richardson, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Feb. 15, 1973, FRUS XXXV: National Security Policy, 1973–1976.
“the most serious blunder”: OPE Analysis, July 5, 1974, FBI Watergate Investigation.
“Would it hurt or help” … “We have got to get them”: Feb. 16, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I must have scared him to death”: Feb. 23, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“This judge may go off the deep end”: Feb. 28, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“For Christ’s sake”: March 1, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Of course” said the president: Nixon press conference, March 2, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“morphed into a mini-Watergate” … “totally disenchanted”: Dean, The Nixon Defense, p. 263.
“the continuing financial activity” … “No problem”: March 2, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I am aware of what you’re doing”: March 7, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office. The presence of Pappas in the Oval Office is noted in the White House logs. But Nixon told his secretary, Rose Mary Woods, “I don’t want to have anything indicating that I was thanking him for raising money for the Watergate defendants.”
“I’ll fire the whole goddamn Bureau”: March 14, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“Give them a lot of gobble-de-gook”: March 14, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“only if it’s against the government”: March 14, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“Mr. Dean is Counsel to the White House” … “Members of the White House staff will not appear”: The President’s News Conference, March 15, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“There are some questions you can’t answer”: March 16, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Then you get into a real mess” … “We can’t do it”: Ibid.
“I realize the problems of being too specific”: March 16, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“I think what you’ve got to do, John”: March 17, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Is the Greek bearing gifts?”: Dean repeated this conversational gem to Nixon during his “cancer on the presidency” soliloquy on March 21 and included it in his post-Watergate memoir Blind Ambition: The White House Years (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), p. 198.
“This is going to break this case”: John J. Sirica, To Set the Record Straight: The Break-in, the Tapes, the Conspirators, the Pardon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), pp. 91–115.
“Future historians”: Richard Kleindienst, Justice: The Memoirs of an Attorney General (Ottawa, IL: Jameson Books, 1985), p. 155.
“The only threat to the world’s freedom” … “We are the force for peace”: March 20, 1973, NWHT, Cabinet Room.
“I have the impression that you don’t know everything” … “It’s better to fight it out”: March 21, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I would have to conclude that that probably is correct, yes, sir”: Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary on the Nomination of Louis Patrick Gray III, 93rd Cong. (March 22, 1973).
“Gray is dead”: March 22, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I don’t give a shit what happens”: March 22, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“The courtroom exploded”: Samuel Dash, Chief Counsel (New York: Random House, 1976), p. 30.
“The problem is” … “back to Washington”: March 24–26, 1973, entries in Haldeman Diaries.
“A committee of Congress”: March 27, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“it isn’t going to get any better”: March 30, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Just remember” … “one foot outside it”: Dean, The Nixon Defense, p. 363.
22: “Vietnam had found its successor”
“Vietnam had found its successor”: Nixon, RN, p. 783.
“that’s the ball game”: April 13, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“Question: Is Hunt prepared to talk?”: April 14, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I’m going to plead guilty”: Magruder transcript, April 14, 1973, Book 4, Statement of Information, House Judiciary Committee, p. 709.
“The first one I talked to was your predecessor”: Kleindienst, Justice, pp. 159–60.This is a verbatim transcript of a conversation tape-recorded by John Ehrlichman on April 14, 1973, and seized by the FBI and Watergate prosecutors roughly three weeks thereafter.
“It is a privilege to be here”: Nixon remarks at the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association, April 14, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“I didn’t sleep but I did weep”: Kleindienst, Justice, p. 161.
“What you have said, Mr. President”: Nixon, RN, p. 827.
“Clearly he had been drinking”: Dean, The Nixon Defense, pp. 415–16.
“What the hell am I going to do?”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, p. 238.
“Everyone’s in the middle of this, John”: April 16, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“The FBI has just served a subpoena”: April 17, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“intensive new inquiries”: Nixon remarks announcing procedures and developments in connection with the Watergate investigations, April 17, 1973. Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“throwing myself on the sword”: Ibid.
“If matters are not handled adroitly”: April 25, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“I had never seen the President so agitated.… He was extremely bitter”: William D. Ruckelshaus, “Remembering Watergate,” speech before the National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys, Seattle, WA, Oct. 3, 2009.
“I don’t think it should ever get out”: April 26, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“What the hell” … “get it done, done”: April 28, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“respectable Republican cloth coat”: The “Checkers Speech” transcript is among the Public Papers of Richard Nixon at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=24485.
“He looked small and drawn”: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, p. 390.
“The P was in terrible shape”: April 29, 1973, entry in Haldeman Diaries.
“I followed my mother’s custom”: Nixon, RN, p. 847.
“an increasingly desperate search”: Ibid., p. 850.
“Goddamn it”: April 30, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“You’re the Cabinet now, boy”: Ibid.
“Still no cease-fire”: NSC memorandum to Kissinger, May 9, 1973, “SUBJECT: Bunker Assessment of Vietnam Cease-Fire at X plus 90.”
“Listen,” she said: Lowenstein oral history, FAOH.
“Presidency had been so weakened”: Stearman oral history, FAOH.
“It was the President’s wish”: Memorandum for the record, Vernon Walters, CIA, June 28, 1972.
“It will be very embarrassing”: May 11, 1973, NWHT, Camp David.
“If you read the cold print”: May 12, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“One of the things”: Nixon, RN, p. 870.
“Henry ordered the whole goddamn thing”: May 14, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“Doesn’t the President of the United States”: May 11, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“Bullshit”: May 11, 1973, NWHT, Camp David.
“a dangerous game we were playing”: FBI special agent Nick Stames’s interview with John N. Mitchell, May 11, 1973, FBI/FOIA.
“An FBI agent”: Ruckelshaus speech to National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys, Oct. 3, 2009.
“Good god”: May 12, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“the national security thing” … “son of a bitch”: May 20, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“The bad thing is that the president approved burglaries”: May 17, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“If we allow ourselves”: May 14, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“He’s thinking of you”: Ibid.
23: “The President of the United States can never admit that”
“the grave, difficult and delicate issues”: Nomination of Archibald Cox, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 93rd Cong., 1st Sess. (May 21, 1973), p. 143.
“the partisan viper”: Nixon, RN, p. 929.
“The balance between the three branches”: William Green Miller oral history, FAOH. Miller continued: “The balance in foreign affairs, defense and secret activities had tilted way over to a predominance by the Executive. This is the reason for war powers debate, and the War Powers Act, the struggle about treaty making, about who makes war, the efforts to limit the scope of executive orders, and deep inquiries into what actions require Senate ratification, the extent to which the legislature, the courts and the public should have access to information, including every aspect of intelligence. All of this ferment is from the same tapestry, the Gulf of Tonkin being the beginning, the first big lie that really bothered and shook the foundations of acceptable consensus between the White House and the legislature.”
“Watergate is the bursting of the boil”: Fulbright quoted in John W. Finney, “Cambodia: The House Gets Tough,” New York Times, May 13, 1973. The financial trickery the Pentagon used to evade congressional restrictions on financing the war in Vietnam was extraordinary. “The Nixon Administration had utilized every possible way to keep things going,” remembered Sen. Charles Mathias, a Maryland Republican. In 1972, “Mel Laird, who was then Secretary of Defense, exhumed a Food and Forage Act, which was a relic from the 19th century, which provided that when a cavalry commander got out beyond his normal source of supply, he could go to farmers and make a commitment that they would be paid for the hay that he would impound for his horses. Mel used the authority of the Food and Forage Act to get credit to keep going in Vietnam.… I think the mood developed in Congress that you just had to cut everything off because there were no halfway measures that would be effective” (Mathias oral history, FAOH).
“The Founding Fathers”: Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (hereinafter Senate Watergate Committee), May 17, 1973.
“That could never happen here”: Odle testimony, Senate Watergate Committee, May 17, 1973.
“The problem in Southeast Asia”: Memorandum of conversation [notes by Maj. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs], May 18, 1973, Washington, DC, FRUS XXXVIII: Part 1, Foundations of Foreign Policy, 1973–1976.
“he had a very important message”: Caulfield testimony, Senate Watergate Committee, May 22, 1973.
“‘I ordered that they use any means necessary’”: May 23, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“There’s going to be a full-blown war”: Joseph B. Treaster, “U.S. Forces Out of Vietnam; Hanoi Frees the Last P.O.W.,” New York Times, March 29, 1973.
“There was no plan to end the war”: May 24, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“Wouldn’t it be better for the country”: May 25, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“so that we can strategize”: June 4, 1973, NWHT, Old Executive Office Building.
“a tape of a conversation”: June 6, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I have no tapes”: June 13, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“It’s almost a miracle”: June 12, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“We must recognize”: June 18, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I think that I still have the record”: Schlesinger Oral History Interview, Dec. 10, 2007, Nixon Presidential Library.
“we would never recover”: Nixon, RN, p. 893.
“I thought to myself” … “‘Nixon taped all of his conversations’”: 2012 Chapman Law Review Symposium, 2012, “The 40th Anniversary of Watergate: A Commemoration of the Rule of Law,” Chapman Law Review 16 (Spring 2012).
“Should have destroyed the tapes”: Nixon, RN, pp. 901–4.
“The time has come to turn Watergate over to the courts” … “the conduct of this great office”: Nixon address to the nation about the Watergate investigations, Aug. 15, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
24: “The same enemies”
“Let others wallow in Watergate”: Nixon remarks to members of the White House staff on returning from Bethesda Naval Hospital, White House Press Office, July 20, 1973, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
“I’m going to hit them”: June 13, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“We’ve been at this for four years”: June 2, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
“As you are well aware”: June 3, 1973, NWHT, Camp David Study Table.
All testimony from Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell quoted in this chapter is taken from the printed records of the Senate Watergate Committee.
“Now that we have disposed”: Richardson affidavit, June 17, 1974, statement of information to House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry, Book XI.
“We’ve got an even worse problem than Agnew”: Ruckelshaus, “Remembering Watergate.”
“The President all along intended” … “the order discharging Cox”: Ibid.
“I’m going to go home to read”: These words were reported in newspapers around the world. “Whether we shall continue” and Doyle’s remark are in James Doyle, Not Above the Law (New York: William Morrow, 1977), pp. 197–200.
“All our intelligence said”: Minutes of a Cabinet meeting, Oct. 18, 1973, Washington, DC, in FRUS XXXVIII: Part 1, Foundations of Foreign Policy.
“The switchboard just got a call from 10 Downing Street”: Transcript of telephone conversation between Kissinger and Scowcroft, 7:55 p.m., Oct. 11, 1973, Washington, DC, in FRUS XXV: Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973.
“If you don’t do something”: Armstrong oral history, FAOH.
“The Soviets were shipping warheads”: Ransom oral history, FAOH.
“Nixon was in his family quarters”: Sonnenfeldt oral history, FAOH.
“The Brezhnev letter” … “what do we do?”: Moorer Diaries; CJCS Memo M-88-73, “SUBJ: NSC/JCS Meeting, Wednesday/Thursday, 24/25 October 1973,” FRUS XXV: Arab-Israeli Crisis and War.
“One of the things that I recall”: Eagleburger oral history, FAOH.
“A government of laws”: Elliot Richardson, The Creative Balance (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976), pp. 46–47.
“to kill the President”: Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 581.
“You are absolutely free…?”: Hearings, Special Prosecutor, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 93rd Cong. 1st Sess., p. 570.
“a wild hare” and “Nixon lied to me”: Saxbe oral history, Nixon Library.
“I for the first time realized”: Jaworski oral history, Baylor University, Waco, TX. Online at http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/ref/collection/buioh/id/1591.
“The answer—fight”: Nixon, RN, p. 970.
25: United States v. Richard Milhous Nixon
“Above all else”: Nixon, RN, p. 971.
“the so-called Watergate affair”: State of the Union Address, Jan. 30, 1974.
“The biggest danger” … “the way he really feels”: Nixon, RN, pp. 975–76.
“I meant that the whole transaction was wrong”: The president’s news conference, March 6, 1974.
“It is almost like we have a death wish”: March 13, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“all the additional evidence”: The President’s Address to the Nation, April 29, 1974.
“Deplorable, disgusting, shabby, immoral”: Scott quoted in Christopher Lydon, “Senator Brands Conduct as ‘Immoral,’” New York Times, May 8, 1974.
“The great tragedy”: Nixon, RN, p. 1007.
“He came out to greet Chancellor Kreisky”: White oral history, FAOH.
“The Egyptians, as I saw”: Houghton oral history, FAOH.
“Wasn’t that Nixon…?”: Nixon, RN, p. 1013.
“He stopped being the Secretary of State”: Saunders oral history, FAOH.
“Who was going to be”: Suddarth oral history, FAOH.
“a face carved out of wood”: Goodby oral history, FAOH.
“My god, he really thinks”: June 19, 1973, NWHT, telephone tapes.
“SALT—this is the most difficult”: Memorandum of conversation, June 28, 1974, Moscow, FRUS XV: Soviet Union, June 1972–August 1974.
“We suggest that the U.S.”: Memorandum of conversation, June 30, 1974, Oreanda, FRUS XV: Soviet Union.
“Sophisticates in the press”: Memorandum of conversation, July 2, 1974, Moscow, FRUS XV: Soviet Union.
“For example, I am indicted”: April 17, 1973, NWHT, Oval Office.
“I suppose it could be said”: Nixon, RN, pp. 1050–51.
“End career as a fighter”: Ibid., pp. 1056–57.
“Mr. President,” Saxbe said: Saxbe interview with Stanley B. Kutler, May 15, 1987, cited in Kutler, The Wars of Watergate (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), p. 542.
“There was a hush as he went up to the podium”: Ransom oral history, FAOH.
“I remember my old man”: Nixon remarks on departure from the White House, Aug. 9, 1974, Public Papers of Richard Nixon.
Epilogue
“He just flat-lined”: Steve Bull interview by Timothy Naftali for the Richard Nixon Presidential Oral History Project, June 25, 2007.
“Richard! Wake up, Richard!”: This account of Nixon’s brush with death is taken from the memoir of the physician who treated him, John C. Lungren, MD, Healing Richard Nixon (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2003), pp. 83–89.
“What history says”: Nixon/Frost interview, recorded May 4, 1977.
“As people look back on the Nixon administration”: Nixon interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, April 10, 1988.
“You have to, in some cases, sacrifice a lot of virtue”: Ray Price interview by Timothy Naftali for the Richard Nixon Presidential Oral History Project, April 4, 2007.