162. Message From the President’s Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs (Haig) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) in Paris1
Tohak 166/WHP 251. I just returned from meeting with the President which lasted about 45 minutes.2 I brought him abreast of the Thieu speech situation and your latest reports from Paris. He is in full agreement with your proposed scenario for handling the talks there. He also agrees with you that despite Thieu’s speech we must move ahead and consummate an agreement if one can be realistically achieved. He also agrees for the very reasons that you cite that Agnew should go to Saigon but that we will need to very carefully game plan the steps that will be necessary to carry through with this course of action under the assumption that agreement with Hanoi is still achievable.
I believe the President recognizes fully the implications of this course of action. I pointed out to him that if Thieu remains intransigent and we are forced to split with him publicly after achieving settlement, this process could well result in Thieu’s overthrow, resignation or neutralization. This could have the effect of jeopardizing all that we have sought to achieve. Nonetheless, I believe the President holds the view that Thieu cannot remain intransigent despite his National Assembly speech if we play a hard game and offer him no alternative or show no possibility of reneging.
I informed the President that the other side told us this morning they were still without instructions and that if this persists at this afternoon’s meeting you will stay tomorrow until it is evident that they are speaking from updated guidance. If the guidance is reasonable, you would then hopefully arrive at a settlement. If not, you would then quietly recess for consultation, with both the view toward attempting to prevent Hanoi from going public first and so that we will preserve our options to retain the initiative upon your return.
The President now clearly understands that some kind of explanation will have to be made to the American people, both because we will have to safeside ourselves against a pronouncement from Hanoi and because a resumption of heavy bombing of the North cannot be just sneaked into.
[Page 591]Following the meeting, I received a call from Dobrynin.3 He stated that they had received a communication from Hanoi indicating that there were still many difficult issues to resolve and that you have been the intransigent one. They listed the following specifics:
- —A sharp disagreement between you and Le Duc Tho on the composition of the International Commission.
- —A demand from you that the North withdraw 100,000 troops under a de facto formula.
- —An explicit unwillingness on your part to deliver on an earlier commitment for a unilateral understanding to exercise our good offices on the political prisoner issue.
- —A disagreement, with Hanoi highly suspicious of our motives, on the issue of the signature of the agreement, i.e., the letters versus signatures on the documents.
- —In addition, and this is perhaps the most interesting, Dobrynin mumbled something about your conveying to Le Duc Tho that it is now obvious that so many details remain that the negotiations will have to continue to the end of December. It is apparent that this statement is a source of considerable concern to Hanoi.
I told Dobrynin that my own personal observation of the conduct of the negotiations belied the report from Hanoi. I noted that on Saturday we had been on the verge of a settlement and that Le Duc Tho had agreed that all major issues of principle had been agreed upon with the exception of the DMZ problem but that on Monday4 they not only remained intransigent on that issue, under the guise of having no instructions, but again as they had done repeatedly throughout the negotiations, they reopened other issues on which we had achieved earlier agreement. From my personal observation, their tactic had been to repeatedly raise such issues as U.S. civilian presence and paragraph 8c to extract concessions from our side. When this had been accomplished and an agreement on specific issues arrived at, they merely pocketed the U.S. concession and they reopened the issue subsequently to achieve yet another U.S. concession.
I told Dobrynin that quite frankly while we had no objective time pressure to settle that patience was wearing thin. He urged me to provide him with a prompt readout of the results of this afternoon’s meeting, stating that Moscow was using its good offices to bring Hanoi in line. Unfortunately, however, the reports from Hanoi seldom were in “G” with those from Washington. I believe it would pay some dividends to give Dobrynin this afternoon or tonight a fairly specific [Page 592] description of the remaining issues as we see them. Please advise as to how I should respond to Dobrynin.
In a separate matter, Governor Rockefeller called this morning recommending that Bill Keating be designated as the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations or in any event be given a new Ambassadorial post. He had talked to Ehrlichman earlier and Ehrlichman had told him the UN post was not locked. Our PR friend apparently believes it is, however, because he mentioned this to me yesterday afternoon.
I advised the Governor not to go out on a limb just yet on his POW project. He has a number of high business officials and legislators coming to New York on Monday on this subject. He has not told them what the subject is and I urged him to keep his powder dry until we see what comes out of this Paris round. He will do so and, if necessary, cancel the meeting scheduled for early next week.
Warm regards.
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Kissinger Office Files, Box 27, HAK Trip Files, HAK Paris Trip Tohak 100–192, December 3–13, 1972. Top Secret; Flash; Sensitive; Exclusively Eyes Only. Sent via Guay.↩
- See Document 161.↩
- See footnote 2, Document 161.↩
- December 11. See Document 156.↩