WASHINGTON, Dec. 2, 2008
Window Into Nixon White House Opens Wider
Newly Released White House Tapes, Documents Give Insight To Vietnam Struggle
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Play CBS Video Video Skeletons In Nixon's Closet The release of more tapes of former President Richard Nixon's phone calls sheds light on a different era in politics. Bill Plante reports.
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Richard M. Nixon waves from helicopter steps as he resigns from the U.S. presidency, Aug. 9, 1974. (AP (file))
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Interactive The Nixon Presidency Explore the era of triumphant diplomatic breakthroughs and the drama of Watergate.
The National Archives opened nearly 200 hours of White House tape recordings and 90,000 pages of documents.
A newly declassified memo to Nixon from his secretary of defense at the time reflects just how much the administration felt and discussed public pressure - even as it weighed U.S. geopolitical strategy - in anguished internal debate over war policy.
The seven-page document cautions the president against a proposal from military brass to conduct a high-intensity air and naval campaign against North Vietnam.
Then-Defense Secretary Melvin Laird said such a plan would involve the United States in "expanded costs and risks with no clear resultant military or political benefits."
With peace talks "seemingly stalled in Paris, with combat activity levels reduced in South Vietnam, but with seemingly rising levels of discontent in the United States, we should review the overall situation and determine the best course of action," the defense secretary writes the president on Oct. 8, 1969.
"The sum total of the considerations ... casts grave doubt on the validity and efficacy" of the proposal from the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, the memo concludes.
At the time, the Nixon administration was secretly conducting a massive bombing of Cambodia to destroy sanctuaries for enemy troops.
In regard to the war generally, "we must ... act in a fashion which will maintain the support of the American people," Laird wrote. The proposed bombing campaign of the Joint Chiefs sought to drive the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table. The Nixon administration didn't go forward with the Joint Chiefs' plan. But in December 1972, it launched what became known as the "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi when peace talks hit a dead end. The effort stirred even more anger with the American public. North Vietnam called it a terrorist act.
Laird became the biggest proponent of the concept called Vietnamization, urging Nixon to follow through on a policy of troop withdrawals, putting the burden of fighting the conflict on South Vietnamese troops.
The massive B-52 strikes over Hanoi and Haiphong in the last two weeks of December 1972 were a gambit to shock North Vietnam into a serious posture in peace negotiations. The newly released tapes cover the period leading up to the bombing as well as the execution and are expected to include Oval Office discussions about the assault.
The recordings are of Nixon's White House conversations from November 1972 to January 1973 and cover his re-election that fall, steps to bomb North Vietnam and also to make peace with it.
The new tapes also show that President Nixon, though famously reserved, did try on occasion to offer sympathy, as in a condolence call to Joe Biden, who had just lost his wife and daughter in a traffic accident.
Biden: Hello, Mr. President. How are you?
Nixon: Senator I know this is a very tragic day for you, but I wanted you to know that all of us here at the White House were thinking about you and praying for you and also for your two children…. I'm sure that she'll be watching you from now on. Good luck to you.
Biden: Thank you very much, Mr. President. Thank you for your call.
The sympathy call came as U.S. B-52's were conducting the so-called "Christmas bombing" over Hanoi, reports CBS News White House correspondent Bill Plante.
National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger had announced that "Peace is at hand," but the Paris talks had stalled - and Nixon wanted a treaty before congress returned in January as he and Kissinger talked:
Kissinger: I would then recommend that we start bombing the Bejesus out of them within 48 hours.
Nixon: We're gonna continue the bombing. We're gonna continue mining until they get our prisoners back.
This unvarnished history exists only because, for a couple of decades, presidents recorded their meetings and phone calls, Plante reports. As far as we know, they don't anymore; and in many countries, those records would have remained state secrets.
Historians hoped for insights into the 1972 "Christmas bombing," one of the most controversial acts in a divisive war and the most concentrated air attack of the conflict.
The documents take historians closer than the latest tapes do to the Watergate scandal that gathered force in 1973 and peaked with Nixon's resignation in disgrace in August 1974.
The records include 65,000 pages from the files of J. Fred Buzhardt, Nixon's attorney in the titanic struggle over White House tapes that ultimately betrayed Nixon's complicity in the scandal.
Other Watergate figures are represented in the collection, too. Thousands of pages are being released from the files of Nixon aides Charles W. Colson, H.R. Haldeman, Patrick J. Buchanan and John W. Dean.
As well, there are more than 8,000 pages of correspondence from and to Nixon's political lieutenants at the Committee to Re-Elect the President, John Mitchell and committee deputy Jeb Magruder.
Burglars working for the committee broke into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex in June 1972, setting off a chain of events that tied Nixon's top men and the president himself to a cover-up of illegal political machinations.
Over the years, a mountain of paper and tape has emerged shedding light on the inner workings of a president who operated in great secrecy but, ironically, seemed to chronicle every step for history.
This is the 12th release of Nixon White House tapes since 1980. More than 2,200 hours of tape recordings from the Nixon White House now are available, according to the
All the recordings in the latest release are being put online while the papers can be seen at the two institutions.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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- The AP pieces that have come out in the past 24 hours are based on an essay and tape excerpts which can be found here: http://www.nixontapes.org/chron5.htm
nixontapes.org is the only website dedicated solely to disseminating the Nixon tapes, and has the most complete digital collection anywhere (including the Nixon Library and the National Archives). - Reply to this comment
- Eisenhower sent in about 800 advisors, Kennedy followed that up with 25,000 COMBAT TROOPS. Kennedy expanded Eisenhowers peacekeeper 30 TIMES over!
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- No, its people like John, Bobby and Teddy Kennedy. They''re the ones who get 55,000 American kids killed.
Bush hasn''t even gotten 1/10 as many killed. as I said I''m not a fan of Bush, but Harry "the Nuke" Truman and the Kennedys have cost far more young Americans their lives.
But you DO get an "A" for effort, mtracy, for trying to claim that Kennedy wanted out of Vietnam so badly that he TRIPLED the US troops there.
On this note I''ll rest. It''ll be interesting to see what you say when Obama is still fighting wars a year from now. - Reply to this comment
- You admitted that Kennedy put 25,000 soldiers into Vietnam. Thus, he started it. Although it really doesn''t matter, Johnson was a democrat too.
Come to think of it, Lester Maddox, George Wallace and Huey Long were ALL democrats. Great tradition, there!
As an aside, I''ll bet you''ll try to disavow those characters as democrats, perhaps because they were Southern. It''s always funny wen you folks try to renounce that racist aspect of democrat politics. LMAO - Reply to this comment
- I''m sorry mtracy, I have to laugh at your believing that the 25,000 soldiers Kennedy sent to Vietnam were unarmed advisors. They were combat troops out in the field.
Yes, I know people like McCone have tried to cover for Kennedy from time to time. But the timing seems odd. "Just a few weeks before his brains were splattered he changed his mind...." , that''s priceless.
I''ll bet you believe Teddy took the Chappy Bridge by mistake too! - Reply to this comment
- Sry mtracy,
Kennedy started with 800 or so passive advisors and had built to around 20,000 COMBAT TROOPS by the time his head popped open in Dallas. Hardly sounds like he was looking to pull out. In any event, Vietnam was justa another democrat war with no purpose. - Reply to this comment
- I was 9 when JFK was shot. To this day I still believe it was an inside job meaning some body in the govt killed him. I was a kid then. I was 13, when RFK was gunned down on national TV live. Bush is by far the worse of the bunch. No bush will be pardoned of any wrong doing. Nixon was an angel when we talk about bush.
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- It''s funny how dem forget that when Kennedy/Johnson administration grabbed power, the US had 800 or so ADVISORS in Vietnam. By, the time they were done in January of 1969 here were nearly 600 THOUSAND combat troops in Vietnam. Nixon would never have faced the situation he did, had not bloodthirsty democrats lied about the notion of "communists" overrunning the world. (Sounds alot like "terrorists" today!).
Every year after the democrats were thrown out, troop levels and casualties decreased.
The Kennedy Brothers (John, Bobby and TEDDY) along with Johnson caused the deaths of 58,000 Americans and the wounding of about 350,000 more. All to because they lied about "communist agression".
I have to laugh when Teddy the Butcher decries a war that has produced less than 5000 American casualties.
Don''t forget it that the only man to use nuclear weapons, Harry Truman was a democrats as well. Next to the democrat body count Bush''s pales.
I am not a Bush fan, nor a proponent of the Iraq War, but lets be honest about the past atrocities and lies committed by democrats.
I predict the current one, for all his anti-war rhetoric will have us in an Asian war for te duration of his presidency. - Reply to this comment
Please do not say anything bad about the politicians.
They are there to protect and guide us.
These articles are unnecessary.
Let''s all follow them blindly.
"Don''t worry, be happy"- Reply to this comment
- Since we''re opening up windows of way-past presidency''s I''d love to see more of bubba''s. Just what went on in that Lincoln bedroom they rented out?? Just where in the attic were those old files?? Just what did happen to foster? Oh the questions I would love to have answered. Say, just how many files did they have on every day Americans. AND, just what was project echelon all about. Wow, it would be great.
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Author Thomas Friedman on Obama's Afghanistan plan and the war on terror.
