How Henry Did It in Viet Nam

Henry Kissinger's success in the Middle East inevitably recalls his negotiations in another battleground: Viet Nam. By coincidence, the first "inside" account of those 3 1/2 years of talks and tribulations appears this week in the summer issue of the quarterly Foreign Policy. Written by former New York Timesman Tad Szulc, it offers an insight into the Secretary's "brilliance, stamina and tactics." Szulc pieced together his 47-page narrative from conversations with several officials involved in the peace effort--although not with Kissinger himself. Among the article's principal points:

RUSSIANS TO THE RESCUE. As Szulc tells it, the Soviets played a much bigger role in salvaging the stalled Viet Nam negotiations than they have been credited with. The essential breakthrough came in the Soviet Union after the North Vietnamese launched their Easter offensive in 1972. The Communist onslaught created "a sense of panic in the White House" that the Saigon regime might collapse. Kissinger, who went to Moscow in April to set up Richard Nixon's May summit with Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev, tried to enlist Russian aid in containing the North Vietnamese drive. During his visit, Kissinger told the Russians that the U.S. would no longer insist on withdrawal of all North Vietnamese troops from the South after a cease-fire--a stunning reversal of the previous U.S. position.

In May, Kissinger returned to Moscow with Nixon for the summit. Viet Nam dominated one long, frosty session. At one point, Premier Aleksei Kosygin turned to Nixon and said: "You have Henry Kissinger. He's a smart man. Why don't you get him to find the right solution for the war?" As the meeting dragged on, Nixon turned to Kissinger and whispered: "God, this cannot go on like this."

Next day Kissinger made another major concession: Viet Cong participation in a mixed tripartite commission to oversee new elections after a ceasefire. The Soviets were suddenly impressed with the U.S. determination to make peace. Brezhnev agreed to send Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny to Hanoi to urge resumption of the secret Paris talks. An elated Kissinger told his aides that "the Russians are going to help us."

MAN IN A HURRY. When the North Vietnamese finally responded to the U.S. concessions and produced a draft agreement in Paris on Oct. 8, Szulc claims, Kissinger fairly grabbed at it. He instructed three staffers to write a counterproposal, then went out to a dinner date. The aides finished at 3 a.m. and went off to sleep, leaving the document for Kissinger. He awakened them at 8 a.m., raging that the draft was much too tough. "You don't understand," he said. "I want to meet their position." All through that critical week Kissinger kept up a furious pace. Said one American official: "Henry was rushing things too much; it was getting too sloppy."

USING (AND MISUSING) SECRECY. Szulc says that Kissinger made an obsession of secrecy as he shuttled between Washington, Paris, Moscow, Peking and Saigon largely because he wanted to "keep everybody off balance," the better to increase his own room for maneuvering. Says Szulc: "It is possible that even Nixon did not fully understand at all times" what Kissinger was doing.

Kissinger's close-to-the-vest style proved nearly disastrous when it came to dealing with South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu, who had been kept in the dark about the negotiations. In a hand-holding visit to Saigon in July 1972, Kissinger made no mention of his concessions to the Communists on troop withdrawals and the tripartite commission. He said merely that with an election coming, the Administration would have to put on a show of serious negotiating for a while, but that it would be "a different story" after a Nixon win. Implying that the U.S. position would harden again, he suggested that Thieu plan on an invasion of North Viet Nam.

Szulc stops short of concluding that Kissinger deliberately misled Thieu, but does insist that he "grossly overestimated his ability to bring Thieu around." When Kissinger showed him the draft of the peace agreement for the first time in October, Thieu "reacted with undisguised fury." It was the outraged opposition of Thieu (for whom Kissinger developed an active hatred, says Szulc) that led to delays in the signing of the agreement, to Hanoi's second thoughts about U.S. intentions, and to the "Christmas bombings" that finally ended the agony of Viet Nam.

WATCHING THE POLITICAL CLOCK.

Though Kissinger has publicly denied it, Szulc finds that "the critical factor" in the timing of the negotiations was the approach of the 1972 presidential election, just as Lyndon Johnson's overtures to Hanoi on ending the bombing of the North were prompted by the 1968 election. Szulc says that Kissinger traveled to Moscow and Peking in May and June 1972 with hopes of "resuming secret meetings with the North Vietnamese before the Democratic National Convention--'for the theater,' as the White House saying went." As early as July, Kissinger told his staff that Viet Nam had to be sewed up between the November election and Nixon's second inauguration the following January. "We cannot stand another four years of this," he said. "So let's finish it brutally, once and for all."

READING THE BOSS'S MIND. At times during his long, twisting pursuit of peace, Kissinger had to deal as carefully with Nixon as with the other personalities involved in the complex Viet Nam equation. So it was in the dramatic Kissinger press conference of Oct. 26, 1972, which followed an extraordinary broadcast by Hanoi recounting the history of the secret negotiations and accusing the U.S. of cynically allowing

Thieu to prevent final agreement. As Szulc tells it, Kissinger's celebrated statement that "peace is at hand" was not only aimed at Hanoi and Saigon, but made partly with an eye to the election only twelve days away. Some of Kissinger's aides have told Szulc that they doubted that Kissinger really believed an agreement was at hand, but that he wanted "to commit Nixon to a quick peace. He seemed worried that after the elections Nixon might reopen the whole diplomatic situation; he feared that given Nixon's natural inclinations, the President might revert to toughness after being re-elected."

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