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Vietnam War – Nixon & Kissinger – Carolyn Woods Eisenberg
134 Plays2 years ago
Ep 008 - Nonfiction. My fascinating conversation about the Vietnam War with Prof. Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, author of the new book "Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia."
Prof. Eisenberg’s book is a re-examination of Nixon and Kissinger during the Vietnam War. Our conversation touched on the origins of the war, Nixon’s shrew political maneuvering, and how the U.S. made major concession to both the Soviet Union and China.
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Transcript
Introduction to War Books Podcast and Guest
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello everyone, this is AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books Podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics. Today I am so excited to talk to Carolyn Wood's Eisenberg about her new book, Fire and Rain, Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia.
00:00:24
Speaker
Professor Eisenberg is a professor of U.S. History and American Foreign Relations at Hofstra University. She has won numerous awards for her work, like the Stuart Burneth Book Prize for the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Herbert Hoover Book Prize, and she was a finalist for the Lionel Herbert Book Prize. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and on NPR.
Writing Process and Challenges of 'Fire and Rain'
00:00:49
Speaker
Carolyn, how are you today? I'm just fine.
00:00:52
Speaker
Wonderful. Starting the morning with war. Okay. Well, I'm really excited to talk to you about your book. First of all, I love books that take many years to write. There's something about them that just feels very special. The first episode I had for this podcast, I had a historian, his name's Professor Philip Blood, and he's been
00:01:21
Speaker
He's been in the field for a long time now. And I was like, so when did you first get interested in this book? And he's like, well, this goes all the way back to my PhD dissertation. So I definitely enjoy those projects that are multi-year. You write at the beginning of this book that you thought this was just going to be like a brief overview of, or not overview, but a brief work on Vietnam during the Nixon years.
00:01:49
Speaker
That obviously wasn't the case. How long did it take for you to write this book and why did it take longer than you anticipated? Well, a couple of things. First of all, I think it's more accurate to say that I've been writing this book for a slightly more than 20 years, so there is that. But actually, I think two different things are pertinent. One is that writing this book was not the only thing I was doing in all these
00:02:17
Speaker
in all of this time. I still think my primary responsibility is to my classroom, to my students, to my job. And actually, I think one of the things that's happening now, which is very unfortunate in academia, is that for younger people, the pressure to write something that could be peer reviewed is so intense and so crazy.
00:02:44
Speaker
that it actually makes it very difficult for a new young professor to really focus on teaching. So I had the particular advantage that I think I was already tenured and a full professor when I got interested. So I mean, in terms of why I took a long time, I think
00:03:00
Speaker
all of these things of my children and my grandchildren, my classroom, my peace group, and this. You're right about how this spans to your grandchildren. Yeah, I know, I know it does. Before some of them were even born. So that's one factor.
Insights from Declassified Documents
00:03:19
Speaker
Then there actually is a second thing that's pretty pertinent, which is that it's a level of declassification of documents from the Nixon administration.
00:03:28
Speaker
When I started out, there were declassified documents, but I hadn't really even imagined the extent of what this would become over the next 20 years. And I don't think we're ever going to have actually anything like the documentation that we have for Nixon. So just as one illustration, the tapes,
00:03:53
Speaker
For example, most Americans think, well, the tapes, it wasn't that old, but actually not. What people are remembering are the tapes that had to do with Watergate, which the court insisted be open. But the tapes about everything else remain classified. So those started opening up while I was already in my project and initially I had to go to the archives and put headphones on and listen. So I mean, that's one example or a second example
00:04:23
Speaker
What's unusual is that Henry Kissinger had all of his phone calls monitored. He had what's called telcons, which are thousands of them. The guy was always on the phone. It's unbelievable. There's lots of that. He tried to claim that it's his personal property, which he would control.
00:04:46
Speaker
But again, I think legal action was started, and in the end, he was probably advised that that claim wouldn't stand up. So just those two sources alone are amazing sources, but lots of other things that were not known really opened up. So I would say that's really the second thing. And actually, just real quick to add to that,
00:05:08
Speaker
One of the things that also really opened up was the transcripts of Kissinger's negotiations with the Russians and the Chinese. Not only were there transcripts from the US side, but unexpectedly, the Russian documents became available after the Cold War ended. You could actually compare what Ambassador de Brinin was saying to his folks back in Moscow,
00:05:34
Speaker
about a meeting and what Kissinger said about a meeting. That's just an example of the incredible material. That is really the other explanation. Why did these materials become declassified only recently?
00:05:52
Speaker
Again, remembering how slow I am and writing this book. Some of this book came available 10 or 15 years ago. Is that just a standard process to wait? Well, it is. You also had people, including myself, submitting FOIA.
00:06:12
Speaker
applications to make certain things available that might not have been. So it's really been a landslide. I mean, who in the world would have expected, for example, that the Russian documents would come out? And actually the State Department, in one of their volumes, did something very unusual because they had the Russian documents, is that they did an entire volume on US
00:06:38
Speaker
of Soviet negotiations, a huge volume. And in that volume, they had Kissinger's conversations with the Russians, but also they included, they translated the Russian documents as well. So at some point I asked the State Department historian, well, because they're different, you know, with the breathing says they talked about what Kissinger says does not always square. And I remember asking the
00:07:07
Speaker
State Department person who worked on this, well, who do you trust? Which document? I think his feeling was like mine, which is that on the whole, that Debreenan's account was actually more believable than Kissinger's. But that's an example of the kind of thing. And it took forever to read these things. So, you know, some ways you could think of it as I only took a short amount of time to write this book.
00:07:32
Speaker
We'll take that interpretation. Well, you talk about how, so you hope that this project is helpful for a new generation of readers.
Vietnam War Memory and Impact
00:07:44
Speaker
And I really love that. So I'm 30. I'm 30 years old. Well, you know, honestly, I didn't know much about the Vietnam War. I knew the basic things. I knew the rough time frame. I knew there was a draft.
00:08:00
Speaker
I knew there was a peace movement and that the war was unpopular. And I knew, of course, it took place in Vietnam, but that's not even really the full story because you write a lot about Laos and Cambodia as well. Why do you think that Vietnam either has started to fade or is fading from the American memory? Well, I mean, there's not a single answer to that question.
00:08:28
Speaker
You know, when I first started teaching about the war, well actually, scratch what I was about to say, when I first started teaching about the war, the war was still going on. So that wasn't a problem. I was teaching at Dartmouth College, and that kind of coincided with, so we're talking now 1972, when Nixon,
00:08:57
Speaker
responded to a North Vietnamese offensive by bombing North Vietnamese cities. And so that was happening while I taught my class. And actually, you know, in the middle of that, I mean, remember when the kids were all interested? I mean, there was no question about that. And we had at Dartmouth, we had like a demonstration outside where the draft bus was in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
00:09:26
Speaker
And then several faculty members, actually, and staff did a sit-in. We tried to block this bus. And the bus, by the way, was not really a bus, because this is New Hampshire. So it was actually Omar's taxi. I thought it really was. But in any event, we did this action. And we had like, I feel like there were like 1,000 students that were, we didn't want students to get arrested. So it was all people who were,
00:09:56
Speaker
were adult at that point. Students were adult, but different level. So that happened. That was needless to say, caught the eye of students if they're having professors actually get arrested. So that was a very different situation. And the war, there were conservative students as well as liberal students
00:10:19
Speaker
Conservative students were mad that the professors had done this, point being that nobody thought this was uninteresting or unimportant. And one of the things that I would really emphasize about this, which is on my mind, because we just did a book launch for the gathering people together. And one of the things about the book launch was that for the guests at the launch who were mostly my age,
00:10:48
Speaker
For us, Vietnam was an intensely personal situation, you know, phenomenon. It wasn't just like some current event that
00:10:57
Speaker
nobody's paying attention to. My students aren't following Ukraine, for example. But for people my age, and certainly if you were in college, this was really a riveting situation. And the draft was part of that. Young men had student deferments if they were full time in college.
00:11:19
Speaker
Um, they knew they were going to lose those deferments. So, so, I mean, that's one piece that, you know, you just couldn't ignore this going on. It also, you know, as more and more became known about the war, it raised a lot of serious moral questions, right? For all of us, like, what is your responsibility as a person living in a country?
00:11:42
Speaker
that has essentially invaded another three countries. We talk about Putin as if nobody ever invaded anything before. It's like, you know, I'm forced amnesia. So what I'm saying is, you know, our feeling was the US had sent troops to somebody else's country. They're killing people, ruining the land.
00:12:02
Speaker
and we're sitting back, and what are we supposed to do about it? So that was very immediate. And I won't go through all this sort of iterations after that, except to say that, for example, when I was teaching in Hofstra, several decades ago, and I would ask my students, like, why are you in this class? A common answer was, because my father was there, and he would talk to me about it. And I'm thinking, if I take this class, maybe I couldn't open up communication.
00:12:32
Speaker
You know, not an unusual response. In one case, we actually had some vets come in, I remember. So every generation, it's been different. No, that's, I mean, but that is really, that is interesting, how different generations view Vietnam. So you mentioned the draft, for example. And you write about this actually at a point. So I grew up in a small rural town in northern Indiana.
00:13:01
Speaker
And the draft loomed so large in our town. There are memorials everywhere. Well, not everywhere, but there are some memorials. Such and such died at Quezon. Never forget that type of thing. A lot of my grandpa's friends died in Vietnam. My dad's neighbor died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam.
00:13:25
Speaker
My wrestling coach, he was drafted and went to Vietnam. And the draft was such a frightening thing for me growing up because in our community, it was a scary thing. And you write a little bit about in small towns, working class towns. Ohio. Yeah. We'll talk a little bit about that. Why did this affect, why did the draft affect small towns, rural working class towns more than other areas?
00:13:55
Speaker
Because I think the short answer to this, which might not be complete, is that for working class towns, there were a large number of young people that were not in college. And so they didn't have a deferment. And maybe at the beginning, some of those young men felt the war was important.
00:14:23
Speaker
something you should do, people have been in World War II, people have been in Korea, this is your responsibility. So some of that, but I think probably the major thing is really the proportion of young people that were not in college and they were not shielded. And I have a section of my book, I'm not looking at it right now, but it was a section in, I think, Bealesville, Ohio, where the mayor wrote to the Defense Department saying, could you please,
00:14:51
Speaker
You know, we already have, you know, X amount of deaths. We still have three more kids over there. Could you spare our town? And the answer to that was no, except, I mean, what's also relevant is that in the Nixon years, certainly the first term, the war is continuing, but with a gigantic but, which is unlike Johnson, who was basically adding troops from
00:15:23
Speaker
1963, maybe there were like maybe 16,000 US troops and by the end of Johnson's term, there were 550,000. Nixon was doing the opposite, which is that he was taking troops out from the very beginning, 30,000, a couple months go by, another 40,000, another 60,000.
00:15:46
Speaker
That reality also begins to really dawn on people at a certain point. I actually think the people that it dawned on the least, I have to say with people in the anti-war movement,
00:15:58
Speaker
I mean, you know, one of the revelations when I was doing my research, it was kind of interesting to do research on something that you lived through and you saw things a certain way and then you look back and it's a little different. And so one of the things that I hadn't really appreciated or at the time, nor did anyone else, is that by the time that Nixon is actually up for reelection in 72, all the combat troops had been removed from Vietnam.
00:16:27
Speaker
You know, maybe there were 20,000 left. They were mostly in support training. Maybe there were a small number of combat troops. But basically, all the combat troops had really been removed. And to a large extent, I mean, this is a
Vietnam War Beginnings and Escalation
00:16:45
Speaker
different discussion. I actually think part of why that happened was because the anti-war movement was an effort to really
00:16:51
Speaker
shut that down. But weirdly, people in the anti-war movement didn't really get the fact that all these troops had come home. But one other interesting thing to look back at is that around the time that Nixon got reelected, there were various polls that were taken before asking people, did they trust George McGovern or Nixon to get us out of the war? And overwhelmingly, people said Nixon.
00:17:20
Speaker
And I remember thinking at the time, you know, people are really stupid. How could they think that? But actually, that wasn't true. People were smart because they could see in their towns, kids are coming home on a vast scale, 550,000 to say you're down to 20,000. So that's actually a huge thing.
00:17:42
Speaker
But it's something that, depending on where you lived, in Indiana, your town, which suffered casualties and so forth, when troops came home, it was going to weigh very differently than, let's say, for students. I mean, that's a whole topic in itself.
00:18:02
Speaker
Well, let's get into some of the history for the war then. So your book is obviously about the war during the Nixon years. But I was surprised to learn that actually the Vietnam War really started during the Truman administration, or at least the buildup then started during the Truman administration. Walk us through the buildup from Truman going up to Nixon.
00:18:31
Speaker
Well, at the end, I'm trying to think, where could you start this story? Going into the 20th century, France, you know, had control of Vietnam as all of Indochina, not just Vietnam, but what would become Laos and Cambodia was a colony of France.
00:18:54
Speaker
And there was an independence movement that was growing inside Vietnam, which is known as the Viet Minh. And that movement was led by Ho Chi Minh, a more familiar name. And the
00:19:12
Speaker
Distinctive thing about Ho Chi Minh was that, I mean, actually, there's three things. One is that he was very smart. The other is that he was an intense nationalist, that the belief in Vietnam's autonomy should be in sovereignty. Very important to him. But he also was a communist as well. Now, that wasn't always true.
00:19:37
Speaker
And, you know, one of the other things, if you want to go back to Woodrow Wilson, is that it's peace talks in 1919, where they had been so much talked by Wilson of we want to make the world safe for democracy. And that should be the outgrowth of the war. So Ho Chi Minh actually goes to Paris, thinking that the Americans will be really excited to meet him. And of course, that doesn't really happen. So that's a very,
00:20:05
Speaker
significant side to him. And then you have the other side of it, which is that after 1919 Lenin is very, and the Russians are very interested in decolonization and I believe that, you know, that that's an important area of struggle. So I read the Ho Chi Minh actually, he asked the, I don't know if asked for help, but
00:20:26
Speaker
He was more inclined first to seek help from the Americans before the Soviet Union. I forget where I read that, but I read that a long time ago. Well, it's true, but you have to then pass through very quickly, several decades. So France is in control of Vietnam throughout the first part of the 20th century.
00:20:46
Speaker
So there's this struggle going on, but it's just not really decisive. And then when Second World War breaks out, there's the point at which Japan drives the French out of Indochina.
00:21:00
Speaker
And oddly, that's what you're remembering, which is that at least for a year, what happens is that with France in control, so the Viet Minh is not going to turn its attention to Japanese occupation. And for that reason, there's a connection that's made between members of the Viet Minh and Americans.
00:21:22
Speaker
who are parachuted into the area, who are also fighting Japan. So that's where the connection is. And there are personal relationships that get established right back then that will put you in 1944. And so partly because of those relationships, Ho Chi Minh is optimistic that the Americans are going to be his friends.
00:21:46
Speaker
after the war, which turns out not to be true. But ironically, he proclaims independence at the end of the war and uses the Declaration of Independence as his inspiration and so forth. But unfortunately, Truman and the Truman administration decide to support France rather than the Viet Minh. By the time you're into maybe 1953, the United States is paying for about 80% of the war effort.
00:22:16
Speaker
giving advisors, et cetera. So then what happens is you have the Battle of Bien Bien Phu. French army is surrounded by Vietnam. They're defeated. You get a conference then in Geneva to how is this all going to be settled now that the French have taken this, you know, this defeat. Ho Chi Minh goes to that conference pretty sure that this is going to be it. They're going to get independence and be a United country.
00:22:45
Speaker
The United States government, now we're talking about the Eisenhower administration, we're talking about John Foster Dulles, do not wanna see that happen. So in the end, what occurs is that there's a decision made to temporarily partition Vietnam, North and South. The Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh are essentially given control of the Northern part. Technically, the French are gonna still have control in the South,
00:23:15
Speaker
And the idea is that after two years, there's going to be an election and the country would be unified. So that was the deal. A lot of the people from the Vietnamese felt really betrayed by that. And all the while too, the fear of communism is really growing. This is the 1950s. So the fear of communism is becoming front and center domestically.
00:23:40
Speaker
Well, that's true. And also, very little interest by people in power about what's really happening in Vietnam or what people who live in Vietnam or what do they care about, what are their commitments. This is sort of irrelevant to everybody. So of course, LBJ chose not to run again for another term in office.
Political Consequences of Vietnam War Policies
00:24:05
Speaker
And you write that that was actually,
00:24:19
Speaker
for this period of four years from, you know, well, it's even more from the time Kennedy is assassinated in November of 63, going right up to the early months of 68. You know, what you've got is this escalation is happening. There's more and more violence in Vietnam. More Americans are being killed. This is major fact, right? Thousands of Americans are dying over there.
00:24:30
Speaker
was partially influenced by what was going on
00:24:49
Speaker
More and more money is being spent on the war diverted from domestic purposes. All these things are happening, but they're all happening in a context where the president and various spokespeople are continuing to tell everybody that, yes, but we're turning the corner, there's light at the end of the tunnel, we're really winning, and so forth.
00:25:08
Speaker
But then what happens is that early in 1968, you get this head offensive. And the head offensive is that all of a sudden, during the holiday of Ted, there are uprisings by the, it's now really the National Liberation Front, which is the descendant of the Viet Minh, there are uprisings all across South Vietnam, every single major city, every provincial capital is hit.
00:25:36
Speaker
by NLF insurgents. And even though, in fact, in the end, all of those uprisings are ultimately put down by Americans, South Vietnamese as well, the fact that the enemy was so strong that they could actually have these uprisings all across the South really belied the fact
00:26:04
Speaker
or belied the claim of, oh, everything's ending, and we're at the light of the end of the tunnel and so forth. And some of these uprisings were very dramatic. For example, Viet Cong, in surgeon, this is an American term, but most of your listeners will recognize it. Viet Cong are able to get into the US embassy inside that, that that's possible, even though there's maximum security around the embassy.
00:26:34
Speaker
Again, ultimately, they're killed, so the occupation of the embassy ends, but it's pretty dramatic that after all these years, and by this point, you've got maybe 35,000 Americans who've died already, and they're getting into the embassy, and they're having these uprisings. In Hue, for example, this uprising hangs on for another three months
00:26:59
Speaker
So all of this makes the Johnson people, but especially Johnson himself, look like complete incompetent and liars. And so that opens up the real possibility that he's gonna lose the election. I mean, that's what's happening.
00:27:17
Speaker
Well, so then now we've arrived at Nixon. So talk then about Nixon. How did he feel about Vietnam initially? Because he was known as being kind of a hardliner against communism before 1968. How did he feel about Vietnam initially? And then how did that change once he got into office? Well, I think, I mean, right.
00:27:46
Speaker
look at the period where he was in Congress and the period where he's vice president of the United States, he's a super hawk. And of course, he's famous for that because of his role in investigating Alger Hiss and discrediting Alger Hiss. So this is his reputation. And for most of his
00:28:15
Speaker
time politics that he states kind of the Cold War orthodoxy that you're supposed to say about him. However, by the time that he's running in 1968, and remembering that Ted has happened, you had the candidacies of Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, that's his own story. He knows that the Vietnam War is very unpopular.
00:28:45
Speaker
So for example, there's not going to be any support for expanding the US military involvement, even though you've just now seen how strong the enemy is. So he's not going to talk that language. His way of positioning himself is to say that he has a secret plan for peace.
00:29:04
Speaker
in Vietnam, and he's not going to disclose it for various patriotic reasons. He's not going to disclose it. I mean, I think when you look at the record, he didn't disclose it because he didn't actually have a plan. But another point is he's not going to... I think you say in the election, when he was asked, he would go, well, you know, there's a peace process going on right now, so I don't want to say what that plan is. I thought that was really interesting.
00:29:32
Speaker
Right. I mean, so he's managed to be evasive, you know, the whole time. And then there's this sort of scandal that comes, you know, has been opened up more recently, not then, about the fact that when you're nearing Election Day in 64, the Johnson administration has been trying to get negotiations going with
00:30:01
Speaker
North Vietnam, with South Vietnam, with all the principles, they want to get that launched. And they seem, but there's certain impediments to getting it launched. But, you know, a brand about October, it does look like there's enough procedural stuff that's been cleared up that the negotiations could start. And what we now know from the record is that the Nixon people spoke to
00:30:30
Speaker
people associated with the South Vietnamese government and encourage them to sabotage this effort until past election day by assuring them that they're going to get a better deal from Nixon than they're going to get from Lyndon Johnson. So let's turn over the apple cart there.
00:30:51
Speaker
And that was certainly not known at the time by people. Apparently, Lyndon Johnson knew that's what was happening. But it shows really the cynicism and opportunism of Nixon that you would actually undermine peace talks. Now, sometimes that's been exaggerated by scholars, recent scholars, because it makes it seem like our best chance to save American lives
00:31:20
Speaker
got upturned. That's not really true. They were very far away from, I mean, even if you got the deal about who's going to sit where at the table and what the terms of discussion would be, that didn't mean that you were going to have peace right away. I mean, it was going to be a very big problem, but it definitely is revealing of the Nixon approach that he would engage in that kind of sabotage as people would do it.
00:31:47
Speaker
Well, let's talk also a little bit about Kissinger then, another big figure in the book. What about him? How did he feel? You know, I get the sense Nixon was a little bit more practical in his approach to Vietnam for how it could benefit him.
00:32:04
Speaker
in his political career. Talk about
Nixon and Kissinger's Vietnam Strategies
00:32:07
Speaker
Kissinger. Was he maybe more ideological? How did his feelings perform after change? I would say the most relevant fact about Kissinger is that his priority was Kissinger. He wants to be influential. He, like Nixon, had been a Cold War hawk, really, and somebody who, for example, thought that people ought to focus on the possible uses of nuclear weapons.
00:32:34
Speaker
that we could fight a nuclear war with certain nuclear weapons. And that's something that policymakers could be thinking about, of uses of nuclear.
00:32:45
Speaker
of a nuclear threat. So he's coming into this position with good credentials as a hawk and even somebody who is especially hawkish, given his ideas and focus on nuclear stuff. So that's kind of who he is and he's obviously picked for that. I mean, one of the sort of side stories about Kissinger is that he had been a consultant to the Johnson administration.
00:33:11
Speaker
And I haven't found this to my own research, but other historians have pointed out that because he's in touch with the Johnson people about the talks in Paris, he then tips off the Nixon campaign.
00:33:27
Speaker
and tells them when they get to the point of just about to have an agreement about moving forward, he lets the Nixon people know that so that they have the heads up and proceed to sabotage things. So he's establishing a connection to them in that
00:33:46
Speaker
difficult part. I think in recruiting Dr. Kissinger, I think that Nixon wanted somebody who would be very smart. He also wanted somebody that would be very tough. It surprised a lot of people because in general, Nixon was not known to love intellectuals of any sort. So he's going to bring in this guy from Harvard. But it's assumed that he would be hawkish.
00:34:14
Speaker
And I think it's very hard to fully characterize Kissinger's approach because it really evolves over time. Both he and him somehow think that once they're in charge that they're going to be able to wrap this thing up. Now, why they exactly thought that is a question.
00:34:36
Speaker
they did have that expectation. It would be some amount of negotiating and some amount of escalating and all these pieces, and then they would be very smart, and they would be able to get a deal. I would say that once sort of in place, Kissinger wants to get a deal for the Vietnam problem. He definitely wants to, and he wants to be the person that makes it.
00:35:00
Speaker
The wrinkle in that is that the kind of deal they wanted at the beginning was a deal in which there would be mutual withdrawal. So the US would take its troops out, but so would North Vietnam, they take their troops out. And also another piece in the American position was that when we left that the South Vietnamese government under two would be in place.
00:35:29
Speaker
Okay, so that's what they think they're going to get Hanoi to agree to, a peace agreement, a ceasefire, and so forth, but a peace agreement with mutual withdrawal and the government of South Vietnam stays in place. Now, how are they going to get that? I mean, to some extent, you'd say, well, Johnson couldn't get it, but I think
00:35:51
Speaker
that in their minds, they see themselves as such geniuses that they're gonna be able to do what Linda Johnson couldn't do, which is again, to keep the focus on getting a positive settlement associated with that with some willingness to escalate the war in certain respects that hadn't been done before. So the earliest example of decision
00:36:16
Speaker
to bomb Cambodia, right, secretly. I mean, Americans didn't know they were doing it, but that was a significant escalation on the US part. And they're like thinking not only that it will be good because you'll kill a lot of North Vietnamese who are over the border, so that's good. But also it has the additional good, which is that you actually will, you know, show the, show Hanoi
00:36:45
Speaker
that you're really tough, that you're serious, you're determined, and therefore that no one's gonna realize, oh, now we're really dealing with tough guys, we're gonna make a deal. So that's what they expect. They want, right? What were some of the more interesting things in your research for this book? What were some of the more interesting things that you found and that you learned and that you thought were really fascinating? Well, I would say there are...
00:37:09
Speaker
I would say three things, actually, maybe if you have another two hours, I'll say four. But first of all, I mean, one thing that just surprised me, it's like, I was not a person that admired and loved Richard Nixon before I was writing his book, so, you know, and, or Kissinger. But I actually, at times, was absolutely shocked by how indifferent they were to even our own people dying. Like they just,
00:37:37
Speaker
where the deaths of civilians periodically come up in some discussion of, oh yeah, but if we do that, a lot of American pilots will be shot down or a lot of civilians will be killed. And this is like a matter of complete indifference to them. I mean, they'll say some obligatory things, oh, let's not kill civilians, but then they won't give orders which are going to kill civilians. So honestly, even though I didn't think my attitude could get worse, it really was like, oh my God, they don't care about anything.
00:38:08
Speaker
So that's one piece of it was really surprise. Second surprise was about the very important role of Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense. Now, at that time, again, I was part of the college graduate school professor, this is all anti-war land. Melvin Laird was of little interest and didn't seem as any different from anybody else.
00:38:37
Speaker
But he was very, very important and significant because Melvin Laird is coming to his job as a politician. He's not from these national security bureaucracies. He's a congressman from Wisconsin, a pretty conservative Republican, and is extremely skillful in maneuvering on the congressional side, which is why
00:39:00
Speaker
Nixon takes him because Nixon knows he's going to have to deal with Congress and he thinks Mel Laird is going to be really effective in that way. Surprise is as far as I could tell from reading the record and I also interviewed Laird into two phone calls. The surprise was that Melvin Laird actually was his main concern was just to get the troops out. That's what he cared about, getting the troops home as fast as possible.
00:39:27
Speaker
And I always sort of think of him as Schindler, if you're familiar with Schindler's list, a guy who engaged in a lot of negative things in order to save the lives of lots of other people. I feel like Laird is like that, that he basically, he will do what Richard Nixon wants him to do in Congress, whatever he personally thinks. He didn't think bombing Cambodia was wise.
00:39:55
Speaker
He didn't think invading Cambodia was, I mean, the list of things he didn't think was wise goes on and on. But publicly, he always defended the administration. But every time he defended it, he would remind Nixon, remember, remember, remember, we were going to take 30,000 troops out of November. So let's keep that in mind. And then in February, we were going to take out this many people.
00:40:17
Speaker
And so he's constantly trading his providing Nixon with cover for troop removals. Kissinger is absolutely opposed to troop removals. To him, that's stupid. If you want to get a deal with North Vietnam, aren't they going to be able to see that the US is taking its troops out? So what's the incentive? And he says that right from the very beginning of, say, by September of 69, he feels it the whole time.
00:40:47
Speaker
But that's one area where Kissinger loses out. And the reason he loses on this issue is that Richard Nixon is a politician. And Richard Nixon knows that he has to maintain his identity or reputation as a man of peace if he wants to have a second term in office. So in some ways, what I actually think is that
00:41:15
Speaker
is that Melvin layer its pressure and Nixon's listening to that about troops is really because of the peace movement, anti-war movement, is that that's the pressure that's existing inside the country. If you get more and more young Americans home, Americans are gonna tolerate a lot of other things like maybe they don't care about Cambodia, maybe they don't care about Laos, you know, so forth.
00:41:43
Speaker
But this is a political move. So that's for Kissinger is an ongoing frustration. But for him, the most important things are, first of all, he wants to be more important than Secretary of State Rogers. That's a constant obsession of his. Who is Nixon really listening to?
00:42:04
Speaker
of great concern. He wants to have influence. His reputation, of course, soars with the opening to China and then his diplomacy with Russia and so forth. But I would say in general, if you're thinking about the whole period, that Kissinger really was an advocate down the line for more militaristic policies, even then Richard Nixon. He
00:42:33
Speaker
He hides that, because he's also by 1971, 72, he's become a celebrity, he's hanging out with movie stars, he's important intellectuals, and it always conveys to these people that he's like this great humanitarian dove, secretly, and it's just Nixon. That's just fake. If there's any consistency, it's to do something that would cause more death and destruction.
00:43:03
Speaker
I couldn't find almost any place where he'd say, well, oh, let's not do that because some people would be dying. It's like not in his land. So anyway, that was two. The third surprise really was reading these transcripts of, again, mostly Kissinger, but also Nixon's negotiations with the Russians and the Chinese. I mean, that was really stunning to read.
00:43:24
Speaker
And why is it? Because they're still maintaining this fiction about why we're in Vietnam so that China and Russia won't take over the world. People in Indiana think that's what this is about. That's why their sons are sacrificing over there. It's because of that.
00:43:39
Speaker
Meanwhile, when you actually read their conversations with the Russians and the Chinese, the butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. They are not only rhetorically nice, they are offering various concessions because they're not tough at all in those negotiations. If anything different, they're making concessions. Why?
00:44:01
Speaker
These visits by Nixon in 1972 is politically great for him. Again, he's a peacemaker, not a warmonger. Also, because they think that the Russians and the Chinese, as they improve relations,
00:44:16
Speaker
are really going to lean on the North Vietnamese to accept the deal that the U.S. wants. So, you know, it's that that's happening. But I just have to say the tenor of those discussions were so surprising to me and also infuriating, right? Again, you've got this whole country that's sacrificing. And, you know, meanwhile, you know, you're having toast in Moscow and you're, you know, going to Leningrad memorials and so forth. So that's it. I got it through.
00:44:45
Speaker
And you're, well, I'm very impressed. And that's really your, one of your main arguments of your book is that in order to overshadow the failures of their policies, Nixon, the Nixon administration was willing to make all sorts of concessions to the Soviet Union and into the Chinese, which struck me because going, if you go back to Nixon, the Nixon of the 1950s,
00:45:10
Speaker
It's like a sworn enemy, the Soviet Union, and I thought that was so surprising and fascinating, and I was so glad that you wrote about that. I mean, there's actually this one episode, and you'll be amazed to learn that I haven't reread my book recently, so I no longer remember it exactly, but there's like one moment
00:45:33
Speaker
where, I feel like it might have been, it was maybe the summer of, probably summer of 71, right? So here, you know, the war is still going on. The US is bombing like crazy. Cambodia is coming apart, et cetera. So, the Breenan has to be on the west coast of Florida to, I'm sorry, the west coast of California to confer with people at the consulate. She's gonna go to California.
00:46:00
Speaker
And Nixon, Nixon is in San Clemente at this particular time, and Kissinger tells him that Dabreenin is going to California. And so Nixon says, the Russians are really people. We always have to remember that. Why don't we invite Dabreenin and his wife to come stay at San Clemente? And Pat really likes Mrs. Dabreenin. So that would be really nice, and so we'll invite him.
00:46:29
Speaker
Dabreenin comes and visits with the Nixons. And then Kissinger plans this exciting thing where he's going to take Dabreenin to Disneyland for the day and also to one of the major studios. And he's going to arrange for Dabreenin to meet Alfred Hitchcock and maybe Frank Sinatra. He's going to create a whole thing for Dabreenin. And also in that trip,
00:46:55
Speaker
I think Dabreenin writes about this actually in his memoir, you know, on that same, you know, little visit to Los Angeles and all the celebrities. He and Dabreenin go to a beach, they go swimming. I think it's Dabreenin who comments that there's only like one
00:47:10
Speaker
a guard that's anywhere near them while they're off swimming in the Pacific. So on the one hand, I'm not opposed to the idea that there'd be good relationships. It's just like when you wrap your brain around the fact that there are American kids out there who are dying.
00:47:29
Speaker
that day while, you know, Kissinger and Dabrennan are, you know, going to meet Frank Sinatra and Alfred Hitchcock. I mean, it's just like, morally, it's just absolutely horrifying. Really incredible. Well, Carolyn, I know that you've got to get going, but I just want to say thanks again for our conversation.
Involvement in Peace Movement Documentary
00:47:51
Speaker
I really, your story, the story you tell in your book, I think, is one that I hope that
00:47:56
Speaker
the next generation does pick up and read and learn a little bit about because I learned so much and I was so grateful to be able to read your book. Carolyn, what projects are you working on right now? Well, a project that I'm just a little helper on, but that I think is very exciting is that there is going to be on PBS in the American Experience series, a documentary it's called
00:48:24
Speaker
The Movement and the Mad Men. And that's going to be aired on PBS on Tuesday night, March 28th at nine o'clock. And then it'll be streaming for really at least another month free for people. So this is a documentary that's been worked on for years. It's about 90 minutes long.
00:48:49
Speaker
And a lot of the documentary focuses on the peace movement, especially in 1969 and the moratorium demonstrations, which a lot of younger people have never heard of at all. But they have amazing footage, have done amazing interviews. And so it's probably about the peace movement. It's also focused on how the peace movement, especially the moratorium campaign, actually
00:49:18
Speaker
directly affected Richard Nixon's strategy right there because he had planned to escalate on November 1st in some dramatic way. And this is one case where the protest had a really direct impact, which he had to cancel his plan to escalate.
00:49:35
Speaker
So the filmmakers have done an amazing job just in terms of like all the people they've consulted. I think they did, you know, maybe close to 20 interviews for the documentary, many of them people who worked on Kissinger staff and Dan Ellsberg and a whole bunch of people.
00:49:52
Speaker
but it's a great documentary and people, and it has a lot of educational use and people should see it. So again, that's the movement in the Mad Men and PBS on March 28th at 9 p.m. And one of the interviews will be you, correct, on that document? Correct, I have no idea. I mean, everybody that they interview, they talk to forever. And then they, you know, then they clip people. So they might have interviewed you for an hour and taken one minute. So I don't know who,
00:50:21
Speaker
It's highlighted. I actually think the most interesting people they interviewed really were the people that worked on Kissinger's NSC staff at the time, who have Morton Halpern stands out in my mind. These folks have a story to tell. It's pretty interesting. Wonderful.
00:50:41
Speaker
So Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Fire and Rain. Nixon Kissinger and the Wars in Southeast Asia. Go buy it, go check it out from the library. A lot of really interesting things to be learned from it. And Carolyn, again, thank you so much. Well, thank you for having me. You can see I still like talking about this. Amazing. Well, I appreciate it. So thank you.