Nixon Wanted To 'Ruin' Foreign Service

Embittered by career diplomats during his first term, President Nixon said he wanted to "ruin the Foreign Service" before leaving office, according to newly released State Department documents.

Days after his re-election on Nov. 7, 1972, Nixon vented his frustrations about the diplomatic corps during a meeting with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.

Just before saying he was going "to take the responsibility for cleaning up" the department, the president told Kissinger on Nov. 13 he was determined that "his one legacy is to ruin the Foreign Service. I mean ruin it — the old Foreign Service — and to build a new one. I'm going to do it."

Earlier, Nixon had questioned career diplomats' loyalty to his policies and was particularly outraged by the State Department's performance on international economic policy.

"I don't know of one man, a soul, that's worth a goddamn as an economic adviser. Not one. Not one at all," Nixon said at a White House meeting on Jan. 18, 1972, the documents said.

The documents shed new light on the tensions between Nixon and the State Department's permanent foreign policy establishment. It was a period dominated by dramatic developments overseas: the winding down of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the beginnings of a relationship with China and the continuing Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union.

Winston Lord, a top aide to Kissinger during the 1970s, said Nixon looked on the Foreign Service as dominated by liberals and as generally "cautious, unimaginative, slow-moving and risk-averse."

But, he said, Nixon was given to hyperbole and his "extreme" comments about dismantling the Foreign Service should be seen in that light. At times, he said Kissinger simply ignored instructions from Nixon that the diplomat felt were given out of pique instead of careful consideration.

During the early years of Nixon's presidency, Kissinger dominated foreign policy, which caused friction with the marginalized secretary of state, William P. Rogers.

Rogers had served as attorney general for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican like Nixon, and was a longtime friend of Nixon's. According to the documents, Nixon disagreed with Kissinger on both Rogers' intelligence and the worthiness of the career diplomatic corps.

"Henry says Bill is dumb — not smart. He is wrong. Bill is smart as hell. Bill is not a clown," Nixon said at the January 1972 meeting.

As for State Department officials, Nixon said he has "much more suspicion of them and much more contempt for them than he (Kissinger) has."

Rogers was "shocked" when, shortly after the 1972 election, he was informed that he was being relieved of his duties. Rogers protested to Nixon that his departure at the time would look like he was being forced out by Kissinger. Nixon relented and permitted Rogers an elegant exit after Kissinger's appointment to replace him nine months later.

Kissinger, notified that Rogers was being allowed a grace period, responded that it was "a disaster for the P (president) and the country and unworkable for the administration and our foreign policy.

"Our problem is not the Foreign Service, it's the secretary, and he operates independently of the White House, won't carry out orders and won't do the work, the preparation of his own materials," Kissinger is quoted as saying.

"The Department is torn between their loyalty to the secretary versus the White House. ... If we had a secretary we could work with, we could tell him what we want, and it would get done."

Lord noted that after Kissinger took control at State, he drew heavily on the Foreign Service for key appointments during his three-year tenure.

As for Nixon, he was forced from office by the Watergate scandal less than two years after his re-election, his stated goal of dismantling the Foreign Service unfulfilled.