routine. 71 Kissinger kept the State Department out of the plans for Nixon’s trip to China as much as he could, and he was determined to keep its representatives on the sidelines during the visit itself. The one thing he had not yet worked out, he told Dwight Chapin during his October 1971 visit to Beijing, “was how he was going to be able to keep Secretary of State Rogers from attending various meetings.” 72
Now, at the Diaoyutai that February day, Rogers and his assistants were housed several hundred yards away from Nixon’s villa, in a smaller building. As Kissinger, who was in Nixon’s villa, remarked in his memoirs, “The Chinese well understood the strange checks and balances within the Executive Branch and had re-created the physical gulf between the White House and Foggy Bottom in the heart of Peking.” 73 If the Chinese had not been aware of the tension between the State Department and Kissinger, he obligingly let them know about it at every possible occasion. In his talks with Chou En-lai on his trips to China in 1971, Kissinger had sighed about the difficulties of dealing with American officials. “We have not had the benefits of the Cultural Revolution,” he complained jokingly. “So we have a large, somewhat undisciplined, and with respect to publicity, not always reliable bureaucracy.” 74 The Chinese, he advised, should discuss important issues such as Taiwan and relations with the Soviet Union with him, and not with representatives from the State Department. It was also not necessary for the State Department to be involved in the crucial meetings between Nixon and Mao. As he told Chou, “If those people who will not be meeting with Chairman Mao and the President could be separated from them in the most delicate way possible, it will help me tremendously.” 75
Members of the State Department were torn between admiration for Kissinger’s intelligence and his abilities as a negotiator and resentment over his determination to keep their department out of all important areas. As one said, “If Henry Kissinger is not the bride, there’s going to be no other wedding anywhere else.” 76 Kissinger at his best was “astute, articulate, a master of maneuver,” in the view of Marshall Green, who was the senior person responsible for East Asia and the Pacific during the Nixon presidency. “But he was also a megalomaniac, and as long as he was in the White House he lost no opportunity to build his power base at the expense of the State Department, undercutting the Secretary of State and shamelessly exploiting President Nixon’s long-standing suspicions and prejudices against careerists in the State Department (despite our loyalty to all Presidents and our high respect for Nixon’s extraordinary grasp of strategic issues).” 77
Unfortunately, the man Nixon had chosen to be his secretary of state was no match for Kissinger. William Rogers, a handsome, affable, and well-connected Republican from the East Coast, chafed at times, but he was too gentlemanly to protest openly. “A very nice man,” said a diplomat who knew him, “a lawyer whose proudest achievement was some product-liability suits that he’d engaged in to defend Bayer Aspirin and other miscreants of great renown, and who was intensely loyal to the president on a personal level.” 78 He and Nixon had worked together in politics for years; indeed, Rogers had stood by Nixon during the 1952 vice presidential campaign when Nixon was accused of using a secret slush fund for his own benefit. Yet like so many others who spent a lot of time with Nixon, Rogers always found the real man elusive. “His personality is more outgoing in his public appearances than in his private appearances,” he told one of Nixon’s biographers. 79 Nixon, for his part, seems to have regarded Rogers with mingled envy, admiration, and contempt. In his memoirs he praised Rogers’s abilities as an administrator and negotiator, but to his White House aides he
Now, at the Diaoyutai that February day, Rogers and his assistants were housed several hundred yards away from Nixon’s villa, in a smaller building. As Kissinger, who was in Nixon’s villa, remarked in his memoirs, “The Chinese well understood the strange checks and balances within the Executive Branch and had re-created the physical gulf between the White House and Foggy Bottom in the heart of Peking.” 73 If the Chinese had not been aware of the tension between the State Department and Kissinger, he obligingly let them know about it at every possible occasion. In his talks with Chou En-lai on his trips to China in 1971, Kissinger had sighed about the difficulties of dealing with American officials. “We have not had the benefits of the Cultural Revolution,” he complained jokingly. “So we have a large, somewhat undisciplined, and with respect to publicity, not always reliable bureaucracy.” 74 The Chinese, he advised, should discuss important issues such as Taiwan and relations with the Soviet Union with him, and not with representatives from the State Department. It was also not necessary for the State Department to be involved in the crucial meetings between Nixon and Mao. As he told Chou, “If those people who will not be meeting with Chairman Mao and the President could be separated from them in the most delicate way possible, it will help me tremendously.” 75
Members of the State Department were torn between admiration for Kissinger’s intelligence and his abilities as a negotiator and resentment over his determination to keep their department out of all important areas. As one said, “If Henry Kissinger is not the bride, there’s going to be no other wedding anywhere else.” 76 Kissinger at his best was “astute, articulate, a master of maneuver,” in the view of Marshall Green, who was the senior person responsible for East Asia and the Pacific during the Nixon presidency. “But he was also a megalomaniac, and as long as he was in the White House he lost no opportunity to build his power base at the expense of the State Department, undercutting the Secretary of State and shamelessly exploiting President Nixon’s long-standing suspicions and prejudices against careerists in the State Department (despite our loyalty to all Presidents and our high respect for Nixon’s extraordinary grasp of strategic issues).” 77
Unfortunately, the man Nixon had chosen to be his secretary of state was no match for Kissinger. William Rogers, a handsome, affable, and well-connected Republican from the East Coast, chafed at times, but he was too gentlemanly to protest openly. “A very nice man,” said a diplomat who knew him, “a lawyer whose proudest achievement was some product-liability suits that he’d engaged in to defend Bayer Aspirin and other miscreants of great renown, and who was intensely loyal to the president on a personal level.” 78 He and Nixon had worked together in politics for years; indeed, Rogers had stood by Nixon during the 1952 vice presidential campaign when Nixon was accused of using a secret slush fund for his own benefit. Yet like so many others who spent a lot of time with Nixon, Rogers always found the real man elusive. “His personality is more outgoing in his public appearances than in his private appearances,” he told one of Nixon’s biographers. 79 Nixon, for his part, seems to have regarded Rogers with mingled envy, admiration, and contempt. In his memoirs he praised Rogers’s abilities as an administrator and negotiator, but to his White House aides he
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