Vietnam And Yom Kippur Wars Were Closely Connected, Newly Released U.S. Documents Reveal

Henry Kissinger, at 50, was at the height of his powers: secretary of state and national security advisor, hero of the negotiations that led to America's withdrawal from Vietnam, master of the mediation between Israel and Egypt and Syria. Golda Meir, a woman of 75, was Israel's prime minister. When the two met, they were usually accompanied by colleagues, aides and transcribers.

Nguyen Van Thieu was a military man and a politician, the president of South Vietnam and Kissinger's contemporary. Like the prime minister of Israel, he was a cranky and ungrateful client of the United States government. On November 29, 1973, about a month after the end of the Yom Kippur War, in a meeting of the crisis management team he headed in Washington, Kissinger confessed: "I've always had this secret desire to get Golda [Meir] into negotiations with [President] Thieu. What a scene that would be! They both deserve each other."

A week later, Kissinger met with South Vietnamese foreign minister Vuong Van Bac, who asked for fighter planes and antitank weaponry.

"If you promise not to record this," Kissinger said, "I'll tell you one of my secret wishes - that is to get President Thieu into negotiations with the Israeli prime minister. That would be a match. Your president is a real pro. The Israelis also want anti-tank weapons. So let the Israeli prime minister and President Thieu negotiate to see who would get our antitank weapons. No, seriously, I appreciate your need for antitank weapons."

Kissinger hastened to reassure Bac: "[Let] me say again we will do the maximum possible to preserve your independence and integrity."

In other words, the United States would act only within the bounds of what was actually possible; the administration would do only what Congress approved.

Or as Bac heard a year later from a new president, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon's successor, "I want to reassure you we will support President Thieu in every way - economically, politically, diplomatically. Our problem is not us, but on the Hill." These are quotes from secret U.S. documents released last week, just as transcripts of Golda Meir's war cabinet from the terrible days of October 1973 were revealed. The American papers are included in the last volume of Vietnam War documents published by the U.S. State Department - extending until the fall of the regime in South Vietnam and the occupation of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City ) in April of 1975.

Last week Kissinger was the main speaker at a conference convened at the State Department, his old stomping grounds, to mark this last volume's publication.

He spoke about the polar differences between the two sides at the end of the 1960s and the start of the '70s. The Americans sought a compromise; the North Vietnamese a victory, to replace the regime in the south and to unite the two halves of Vietnam under their rule. When they became stronger militarily, they attacked; when they were blocked, they agreed to bargain; when they signed an agreement, they waited for an opportunity to break it and win.
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