[News] We can bomb the bejesus out of them all over North Vietnam

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/index.htm

"We can bomb the bejesus out of them all over North Vietnam."

Archive Publishes Treasure Trove of Kissinger Telephone Conversations

Comprehensive Collection of Kissinger "Telcons" 
Provides Inside View of Government Decision-Making;
Reveals Candid talks with Presidents, Foreign 
Leaders, Journalists, and Power-brokers during Nixon-Ford Years

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 263

Edited by William Burr

Posted - December 23, 2008


<http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/KA/intro.jsp>Kissinger 
Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977

<http://www.proquest.com/products_pq/descriptions/dnsa.shtml>Digital 
National Security Archive (ProQuest)

Related postings

<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB135/index.htm>The 
Kissinger State Department Telcons
Telcons Show Kissinger Opposed Human Rights Diplomacy;
Secretary of State Tapped Own Phone Calls

<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/index.htm>The 
Kissinger Telcons
Archive Celebrates Release of Previously Sequestered Telephone Records

Washington, D.C., December 23, 2008 - Amidst a 
massive bombing campaign over North Vietnam, 
Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon candidly shared 
their evident satisfaction at the “shock 
treatment” of American B 52s, according to a 
declassified transcript of their telephone 
conversation published for the first time today 
by the National Security Archive. “They dropped a 
million pounds of bombs,” Kissinger briefed 
Nixon. “A million pounds of bombs,” Nixon 
exclaimed. “Goddamn, that must have been a good 
strike.” The conversation, secretly recorded by 
both Kissinger and Nixon without the other’s 
knowledge, reveals that the President and his 
national security advisor shared a belief in 1972 
that the war could still be won.  “That shock 
treatment [is] cracking them,” Nixon declared. “I 
tell you the thing to do is pour it in there 
every place we can
just bomb the hell out of 
them.” Kissinger optimistically predicted that, 
if the South Vietnamese government didn’t 
collapse, the U.S. would eventually prevail: “I 
mean if as a country we keep our nerves, we are going to make it.”

<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19720415-1130-Nixon.pdf>The 
transcript of the April 15, 1972, phone 
conversation is one of over 15,500 documents in a 
unique, comprehensively-indexed set of the 
telephone conversations (telcons) of Henry A. 
Kissinger­perhaps the most famous and 
controversial U.S. official of the second half of 
the 20th century. Unbeknownst to the rest of the 
U.S. government, Kissinger secretly taped his 
incoming and outgoing phone conversations and had 
his secretary transcribe them. After destroying 
the tapes, Kissinger took the transcripts with 
him when he left office in January 1977, claiming 
they were “private papers.” In 2001, the National 
Security Archive initiated legal proceedings to 
force the government to recover the telcons, and 
used the freedom of information act to obtain the 
declassification of most of them.  After a three 
year project to catalogue and index the 
transcripts, which total over 30,000 pages, this 
on-line collection was published by the 
<http://www.proquest.com/products_pq/descriptions/dnsa.shtml>Digital 
National Security Archive (ProQuest) this week.

Kissinger never intended these papers to be made 
public, according to William Burr, senior analyst 
at the National Security Archive, who edited the 
collection, 
<http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/KA/intro.jsp>Kissinger 
Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of 
U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977. “Kissinger’s 
conversations with the most influential 
personalities of the world rank right up there 
with the Nixon tapes as the most candid, 
revealing and valuable trove of records on the 
exercise of executive power in Washington,” Burr 
stated. For reporters, scholars, and students, 
Burr noted, “Kissinger created a gift to history 
that will be a tremendous primary source for 
generations to come.” He called on the State 
Department to declassify over 800 additional 
telcons that it continues to withhold on the grounds of executive privilege.

The documents shed light on every aspect of 
Nixon-Ford diplomacy, including U.S.-Soviet 
détente, the wars in Southeast Asia, the 1969 
Biafra crisis, the 1971 South Asian crisis, the 
October 1973 Middle East War, and the 1974 Cyprus 
Crisis, among many other developments. 
Kissinger’s dozens of interlocutors include 
political and policy figures, such as Presidents 
Nixon and Ford, Secretary of State William 
Rogers, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Robert S. 
McNamara, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin; 
journalists and publishers, such as Ted Koppel, 
James Reston, and Katherine Graham; and such show 
business friends as Frank Sinatra. Besides the 
telcons, the 
<http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/KA/intro.jsp>Kissinger 
Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of 
U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977 includes audio tape of 
Kissinger’s telephone conversations with Richard 
Nixon that were recorded automatically by the 
secret White House taping system, some of which 
Kissinger’s aides were unable to transcribe.

A series of unforgettable moments are captured in 
the transcripts, not least involving Kissinger’s 
complex and difficult relationship with Richard 
Nixon. Repeatedly, the national security adviser 
used his skills in flattery and connivance to 
help build up the president’s image and stay in 
his good graces. During the Jordan crisis in 
September 1970, Kissinger told the media that he 
had awakened the President to brief him on King 
Hussein’s military actions against Palestinian 
guerillas.  But a 
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19700917-0900-Nixon.pdf>transcript 
of his call to the President the next day 
recorded him as informing Nixon: “in light of the 
fact that there was nothing you could do, we 
thought it best not to waken you.”

The telcons also illustrate other Kissinger’s 
efforts to spin the media, monitor and control 
the process of decision-making, disparage rivals, 
keep important associates, such as his patron 
Nelson Rockefeller, in the loop, and win over critics:
After Gerald Ford shuffled his cabinet in 
November 1975, removing Kissinger as national 
security adviser and shifting Donald Rumsfeld 
from his chief-of-staff position to be Secretary 
of Defense, 
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19751103-simon.pdf>Kissinger 
spoke to Secretary of the Treasury William 
Simon.  “The guy who cut me up inside this 
building isn’t going to cut me up any less in Defense,” he noted.
In an 
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19740813-richardson.pdf>August 
13, 1974, conversation with Elliott Richardson 
after Nixon resigned, Kissinger disparaged George 
H.W. Bush as a candidate to replace Gerald Ford 
as Vice President. “I am not as high on George 
Bush, as some others are, partly because of his lack of experience.”
In a 
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19730601-nixon.pdf>conversation 
with President Nixon on the illegal wiretap 
scandal in June 1973, Nixon threatened to go to 
political war with Democrats if they pressed the 
issue. “Lets get away from the bullshit,” Nixon 
stated angrily. “Bobby Kennedy was the greatest 
tapper.” The President even suspected his own 
phone had been wiretapped in the early 1960s. 
“[J.Edgar Hoover] said Bobby Kennedy had [the 
FBI] tapping everybody. I think that even I’m on 
that list,” President Nixon told Kissinger. When 
Nixon noted that the wiretap scandal would “catch 
some of your friends,” Kissinger responded: 
“Well, I wouldn’t be a bit unhappy.”
In a 
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19710423-1950-Ginsberg-FIX.pdf>bizarre 
conversation with anti-war activist/poet Alan 
Ginsburg on April 23, 1971, Kissinger discussed 
meeting with ardent opponents of the Nixon 
administration. Ginsburg suggested the meeting, 
joking that “It would be even more useful if we 
could do it naked on television. “I gather you 
don’t know how to get out of the war,” Ginsburg 
is recorded as stating. “I thought we did,” 
Kissinger responded, “but we are always interested in hearing other views.”
In the 
<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19720415-1130-Nixon.pdf>April 
15, 1972, conversation about bombing North 
Vietnam, Nixon recalled that bombing had failed 
to defeat Ho Chi Mhin’s forces in the past.

Nixon: “Of course, you want to remember that 
Johnson bombed them for years and it didn’t do any good.”

Kissinger: But Mr. President, Johnson never had a 
strategy; he was sort of picking away at them. He 
would go in with 50 planes; 20 planes; I bet you 
we will have had more planes over there in one day than Johnson had in a month.

Nixon: Really?

Kissinger: Yeah.





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