deal with Hanoi. “There is nothing more important to me than to end this war on a fair basis,” he said. “It could make possible U.S.-Chinese relations, and would help relations with the Soviet Union. All this is possible.”
Nixon strongly suggested he would escalate the war if North Vietnam did not agree to a peace deal soon. The enemy’s leaders “continue to fight in Vietnam, thinking that public opinion will force us to capitulate,” he told Ceau ş escu, speaking more frankly than he did with the American people. By November, Nixon warned, there would be hell to pay if North Vietnam did not make peace: “I never make idle threats; I do say that we can’t indefinitely continue to have 200 deaths per week with no progress in Paris.”
Kissinger split off from the president’s traveling party and went to Paris the next day, delivering through diplomatic channels a letter from Nixon addressed to Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam since World War II. The message proposed a new set of negotiations in Paris, to be conducted in a completely clandestine manner by Kissinger himself.
The Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA were to know nothing about this; Nixon and Kissinger alone would negotiate an end to the war with Ho’s personal emissary from North Vietnam.
* * *
After Nixon’s world tour ended, he retreated to spend a month at the Western White House, La Casa Pacifica in San Clemente. The president tried to relax, but war and crisis kept him anxious and ever restless; twice during August, he awoke in the middle of the night fearing he was having a heart attack.
On August 14, 1969, Nixon convened the National Security Council in San Clemente. Those gathered at the Western White House included Nixon, Kissinger, Rogers, Laird, Helms, and Mitchell.
The main subjects were China and the Soviet Union, whose armies were clashing in a border battle and whose leaders had nuclear weapons at hand. Nixon startled his national security team by taking China’s side. Moscow “may have a ‘knock them off now’ policy,” the president said. “We must think through whether it is a safer world with China down.” Nixon believed it was best to see that the largest Communist nation in the world survived.
Nixon’s fear of a cataclysmic clash between China and Russia was a remarkable foresight. Four days later, William L. Stearman, the State Department’s ranking intelligence expert on Hanoi, who was about to join Kissinger’s staff, sat down to lunch at a Washington hotel with Boris N. Davydov—officially a diplomat, in reality a spy stationed at the Soviet embassy. Such conversations, often stranger than fiction, were part of the unwritten code of conduct between the Cold War combatants.
“Davydov asked point blank what the US would do if the Soviet Union attacked and destroyed China’s nuclear installations,” Stearman wrote in a top-secret memo that went straight to Kissinger. “What would the US do if Peking called for US assistance in the event Chinese nuclear installations were attacked by us?”
Kissinger called a crash meeting in San Clemente with Attorney General Mitchell, CIA covert operations chief Thomas Karamessines, and the handful of senior State and NSC experts he trusted.
If the border battle went nuclear, “the consequences for the US would be incalculable,” Kissinger said. “We must make this very plain to the Soviets despite the US nuclear policy in Europe,” which included an all-out attack with thousands of nuclear weapons if Soviet troops crossed into West Germany. “It would be helpful to know something about what DEFCON should be entered into,” he added, if “the Soviets were to knock out the Chinese nuclear capacity.” * Three weeks later, both the Soviet Union and China conducted nuclear weapons tests. The cataclysm never came, but it was now clear to all that Moscow and Beijing were implacable enemies.
On August 30, Nixon passed an almost completely
Nixon strongly suggested he would escalate the war if North Vietnam did not agree to a peace deal soon. The enemy’s leaders “continue to fight in Vietnam, thinking that public opinion will force us to capitulate,” he told Ceau ş escu, speaking more frankly than he did with the American people. By November, Nixon warned, there would be hell to pay if North Vietnam did not make peace: “I never make idle threats; I do say that we can’t indefinitely continue to have 200 deaths per week with no progress in Paris.”
Kissinger split off from the president’s traveling party and went to Paris the next day, delivering through diplomatic channels a letter from Nixon addressed to Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam since World War II. The message proposed a new set of negotiations in Paris, to be conducted in a completely clandestine manner by Kissinger himself.
The Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA were to know nothing about this; Nixon and Kissinger alone would negotiate an end to the war with Ho’s personal emissary from North Vietnam.
* * *
After Nixon’s world tour ended, he retreated to spend a month at the Western White House, La Casa Pacifica in San Clemente. The president tried to relax, but war and crisis kept him anxious and ever restless; twice during August, he awoke in the middle of the night fearing he was having a heart attack.
On August 14, 1969, Nixon convened the National Security Council in San Clemente. Those gathered at the Western White House included Nixon, Kissinger, Rogers, Laird, Helms, and Mitchell.
The main subjects were China and the Soviet Union, whose armies were clashing in a border battle and whose leaders had nuclear weapons at hand. Nixon startled his national security team by taking China’s side. Moscow “may have a ‘knock them off now’ policy,” the president said. “We must think through whether it is a safer world with China down.” Nixon believed it was best to see that the largest Communist nation in the world survived.
Nixon’s fear of a cataclysmic clash between China and Russia was a remarkable foresight. Four days later, William L. Stearman, the State Department’s ranking intelligence expert on Hanoi, who was about to join Kissinger’s staff, sat down to lunch at a Washington hotel with Boris N. Davydov—officially a diplomat, in reality a spy stationed at the Soviet embassy. Such conversations, often stranger than fiction, were part of the unwritten code of conduct between the Cold War combatants.
“Davydov asked point blank what the US would do if the Soviet Union attacked and destroyed China’s nuclear installations,” Stearman wrote in a top-secret memo that went straight to Kissinger. “What would the US do if Peking called for US assistance in the event Chinese nuclear installations were attacked by us?”
Kissinger called a crash meeting in San Clemente with Attorney General Mitchell, CIA covert operations chief Thomas Karamessines, and the handful of senior State and NSC experts he trusted.
If the border battle went nuclear, “the consequences for the US would be incalculable,” Kissinger said. “We must make this very plain to the Soviets despite the US nuclear policy in Europe,” which included an all-out attack with thousands of nuclear weapons if Soviet troops crossed into West Germany. “It would be helpful to know something about what DEFCON should be entered into,” he added, if “the Soviets were to knock out the Chinese nuclear capacity.” * Three weeks later, both the Soviet Union and China conducted nuclear weapons tests. The cataclysm never came, but it was now clear to all that Moscow and Beijing were implacable enemies.
On August 30, Nixon passed an almost completely
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