<html>
<body>
<font size=3>
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/index.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/index.htm<br><br>
</a></font><font size=4><b>"We can bomb the bejesus out of them all
over North Vietnam."<br><br>
</font><font size=3>Archive Publishes Treasure Trove of Kissinger
Telephone Conversations<br><br>
Comprehensive Collection of Kissinger "Telcons" Provides</b>
<b>Inside View of Government Decision-Making;<br>
Reveals Candid talks with Presidents, Foreign Leaders, Journalists, and
Power-brokers during Nixon-Ford Years<br><br>
</b>National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 263<br><br>
Edited by William Burr<br><br>
Posted - December 23, 2008<br><br>
<br>
<b><i>
<a href="http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/KA/intro.jsp">
Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy,
1969-1977</a><br><br>
</i><a href="http://www.proquest.com/products_pq/descriptions/dnsa.shtml">
Digital National Security Archive (ProQuest)</a><br><br>
Related postings<br><br>
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB135/index.htm">The
Kissinger State Department Telcons<br>
</a></b>Telcons Show Kissinger Opposed Human Rights Diplomacy;<br>
Secretary of State Tapped Own Phone Calls <br><br>
<b><a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB123/index.htm">
The Kissinger Telcons<br>
</a></b>Archive Celebrates Release of Previously Sequestered Telephone
Records <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>Washington, D.C., December 23, 2008</b><font face="Verdana" size=3> -
</font>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.”<br><br>
<dd>
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19720415-1130-Nixon.pdf">
The transcript of the April 15, 1972, phone conversation</a></b> 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
<a href="http://www.proquest.com/products_pq/descriptions/dnsa.shtml">
Digital National Security Archive (ProQuest)</a> </b>this week.<br><br>
<dd>Kissinger never intended these papers to be made public, according to
William Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, who edited
the collection,
<a href="http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/KA/intro.jsp">
Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy,
1969-1977</a></b>.</i> “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.
<br><br>
<dd>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
<a href="http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/collections/content/KA/intro.jsp">
Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy,
1969-1977</a> </i></b>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. <br><br>
<dd>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
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19700917-0900-Nixon.pdf">
transcript of his call to the President</a></b> 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.” <br><br>
<dd>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:
<dd>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,
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19751103-simon.pdf">
Kissinger spoke to Secretary of the Treasury William Simon</a></b>.
“The guy who cut me up inside this building isn’t going to cut me up any
less in Defense,” he noted.
<dd>In an
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19740813-richardson.pdf">
August 13, 1974, conversation with Elliott Richardson</a></b> 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.”
<dd>In a
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19730601-nixon.pdf">
conversation with President Nixon</a></b> 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.”
<dd>In a
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19710423-1950-Ginsberg-FIX.pdf">
bizarre conversation with anti-war activist/poet Alan Ginsburg</a></b> 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.” <br>
<dd>In the
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19720415-1130-Nixon.pdf">
April 15, 1972, conversation</a></b> about bombing North Vietnam, Nixon
recalled that bombing had failed to defeat Ho Chi Mhin’s forces in the
past. <br><br>
<dl>
<dd>Nixon</b>: “Of course, you want to remember that Johnson bombed them
for years and it didn’t do any good.”<br><br>
<dd>Kissinger</b>: 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.<br><br>
<dd>Nixon</b>: Really?<br><br>
<dd>Kissinger</b>: Yeah.<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
</dl>
</dl><font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>