Henry A Kissinger - Jan 23 1970 - Off Record dinner with Vashington Nieman Fellows Partial Notes Bureaucratic pressures to concentrate on current crises- My greatest nightmare is that someone will call me with a crisis in the middle of the night on a subject I have not f ocused on Found that bureaucratic prerogatives often more important than the elements of a subject-- the interplay of personalities and the interplay of bureaucracies Everyone who sees the President wants something ooo everyone has saved up for this opportunity and has a long list and thinks this is his opportunity to get a decision ooo this goes on l hours a day Q A Why didn't Pres mention Mideast in state Union A- briefly discussed how Pres writes speeches He writes most of the speech himself I know that is the traditional ' fiction but in this case tis true He writes much of his speeches hims elf and he wrote the greatest part o f that s p eech He didn ' t list p roblems but rather achievements We don ' t cORsider that we have achieved a great deal on Mideast From some points of view p eople might argue that peace in the Middle Eas is f urther away than a year ago From many points of view M E is more dangerous than any other area It is difficult to conceive of anything we could do in Vietnam that could bring a general war then he qualified that somewhat ooo But Mideast is like the Balkans in 1914 ooo small countries with no overall concern about the balance of peace in the world Conflict could start and spread unrelated to big power intere s ts We have tried to se p arate U S -Sov interests from individual countries ' interests We are just at th e beginning o f this p rocess Q- Viextnami tion p rognosis Negotiations A- Now having studies made By mid- Feb hope have conclusions Our studies confirm systematically a considerable chang e in the countryside Guerrillas have suff ered considerable losses and govt rule has expanded But question is How fragile is this gain Can it erode under Arvin I have no conclusive evidence yet on Arvin capability There has not yet been significant NorViet offensive directed against Arvin to judge this Maybe we are now being oversuspicious But negotiations will succeed to the ex tent that we can pose to Hanoi an alternative that is worse than negotiations We have a very severe and top opponent that has shown ability to assess the situation quite candidly better than we Kis singer Page 2 - Jan 23 1970 What is the worse alternative The question fo r Hanoi is if Vietnamization works that it will have t o deal with Saigon whi c h can be worse than to deal with us Q- To what extent is U S p oli c y contmn gent on Hanoi A- ooo The demagogi c answe r is that it is not But of course our p oli c y is dependent t o s ome extent on what Saigon and Hanoi d o Totally wrong to say not Of cour if Hanoi poured everything in this is a different situation oooo But if Hanoi loses the ' multiplier ' effect of guerilla forces on the scene and - is fo rc ed to operate only with its own g XMM troap sJ then we be c ome independent of Saigon ' s actions This was a telescope version of the contention that if Hanoi has only ZMNX conventional f orc es they cannot stant against U S forces with superior firepower mobility etc With Saigon we done a great deal nothing we haven ' t Saigon ' s veto I negotiations that but the real test have a deli c ate pro blem Saigon has at U S suggestion I can think of done that we c ould have done without can think of nothing in the peace we wanted to do that Saigon vetoed ooo of this will come in negotiations Q- A question about domestic impact on f oreign problems A- I have next to nothing to d o with domesti c problems My impression is that the P res is giving increased attention to xxsz domesti c pro blems ooo The Pres operate by getting a conce pt ual grasp on problems first On foreign policy now the main outlines are pretty well set --although we still have a lot to do ooo I have the idea that on domestic affairs he is dOing the same thihg conceptualizing first Q Is' gap between rich poor north south black white your rME1Rm2 area A- An thing MRXX out'side the three - mile l imit is my area and I fight jealously to p rotect it Chucklin I am against the 12- mile limit I don ' t think north sout h is right way to deal with the problem The Mxr Marshall Pl an was carried out with industrialized nations ooo Nigeria has the problem of how to build a nation ooo On foreign aidE I agree that if it ' s not dead its on a downhill slope Q- Assess press coverage of f ormign policy A- Says reads selectively When I read pap ers I c an usually tell who leaked what and for what purpose ooo Some of the particip ants in the Nix on admin process have no idea what hap ened to their prop sals and ofte misconstrue and pass an to the press what actually RaE happened ooo Only five or six people really know what goes on ooo There is news distortion p roduced b the bureaucracY ooo Journalism ' s values were f ormed in an era when getting the news first was the most important thing In my fi eld there are very few news breaks Kissinger - Page 3- Jan 23 1970 newsbreaks of that sort There are few super- secret things that are worth knowing ooo On Vietnam for exampl e if you study the situation sometimes you can uncover things that are not generally known- -sometimes that t govt has not seen ooo I ' m more interested in someone ' s analysis of the underlying arguments than the events Q- Is present transition in U S foreign poli c y v A- Whoever might be President would have b een obliged adjust to x events in which our influence declined ooo Q -Why Nix on so remote from us A- I never think of him as a remote president The very factors that make xx him remote from you make him close to his staff The people who claim they re al ly know the p resident are usually at the fringes No president I kxMW have known fully revealed himself t o his advisers I never thought that the Pres Kennedy that Arthur Schlesinger knew was the same president that McGeorge Bundy knew ooo kE This president operates alone He withdraws in p reparation when he has to go public The speeches he considers very important he wi do with a very constri cte d group ooo He will sit fo r hour in an NSC meeting taking copious notes and not giving clue to his decision ooo He likes to go over choices and consequences over and over again He doesn ' t feel the need for a lot of people to talk to oo o I Gould not get away with presenting to him only one course of action It isn't true that he is insulated or remote - -he is insulated from verbal contact yes but not cross -views ooo Q- Change in flow of information fr om Saigon to Wash A- We have on NSC a group of people RzzxgRN assigned to play devilR's advocate role oo o I think it is my job in large part to be a devil ' s advocate ooo We k now have 3 NSC staff people in S Vietnam checki g ooo I ' m told that my p redecessor whom I very much liked used to rely MH very much on raw intelligence I don ' t ooo Lawrence Lynn now in Vietnam ooo Chairman of Vietnam special studies group he has 8 people working with then we have a working group whi ch I zakir chair Q- U S foreign trade policy set A- We have not set the compass course on this issue as much as others ooo but we are basically committed to a liberal trade poli cy Q- What did Secy Rogers mean that Vietnamization is jt i' rRrR irreversible lf A- Vice President Agnew and Rogers you note both used term irreversible--but in 0 osite x if I understo them e ce res en en s office so I would think he had reason to think he was re f lecting the views of the President Rogers said the p resent policy is ilrreversible What the Vi ce President was saying was that the rate and form of the withdrawal depended on the 3 criteria ooo I think the policies are b a sically consistent as expresse by Rogers and Agnew but Kissinger evidently regards the ualifications as more re re s entative of Nixon ' s positi -I Kissinger - Page 4 - Jan 23 1970 Q- Why is admin so imprecise on timetable A- ooo We need a measure of ambiguity Q- Would reduction of U S forces in Europe harm atte to relax tensions A- At some point over the next decade some reassessment of the U S forces in Europe would be inescapable I am not saying they reassessments are imminent they are nmt ooo But the p roblem is that some changes are bound to occur and the question is how it will be carried out Q- Chinese exp ansionism A- China is a fact of life I think our attempt to establish contact will be one of the advanc es this admin has made It is not our intenti on to XX give Cst China carte blanche to exp and But it is also not our intenti to assume res p onsi mlity for all of the areas around her periphery Q- SALT assessment A- The group in the Soviet Union which seeks a down payment of go d faith at the outset of negots seems less influential than in the U S Soviet intentions They cannot build SS- 9s until all eternity ooo They makR may seek to put us in position where in_ c risis we have t face the choice of attac king population centers oo o lf SS9 not accurate they are less useful than single missiles they don ' t need 3 warheads to attack a city So deducti reasoning is that somewhere down the line the SS mis s ile are going to be accurate enough to attack Minuteman Q- By accurate enohgh you mean a i mile A- Yes on the order of t of a mile If they continue build SS g s and SSlls at current rate something has XM got to give If the y went ahead 5 years at the present x rate then we would have a problem ooo We don ' t have to make a deplo decision until we see how the SALT talks are going We ' ll get a clue during the SALT talks and we may get unilateral action unexplained xxx Q on Harvard student ferment A- ooo When a student says he wants to study ' what is relevant ' if he knew is relevant he wouldn ' t be a student Q- See danger of Sino- Sov war Preemptive attack A- A year ago I would have thought it inconceivable Seven months ago if you asked me if there was a war who would it be started by I would have thought XXR ei ixiNRSE Now I can say ooo If it h it will almos certainl 0 I think I c Marder                     National Security Archive    Suite 701  Gelman Library  The George Washington University    2130 H Street  NW  Washington  D C  20037    Phone  202 994‐7000  Fax  202 994‐7005  nsarchiv@gwu edu