The Kissinger Tapes - Nixon, Chile, Cambodia and more ...

After a long legal battle, the National Security
Archive has succeeded in winning the release of a large
volume of telephone conversations taped by Henry
Kissinger during the Nixon Presidency. The NSA web page
with the transcripts of the conversations, streaming
recordings of selected conversations and much supporting
material can be found at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

Haig Said Nixon Joked of Nuking Hill
Transcripts of Phone Talks Are Released by Archives

By Michael Dobbs

Washington Post Staff Writer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58802-2004May26.html

President Richard M. Nixon jokingly threatened to drop a
nuclear bomb on Capitol Hill in March 1974 as Congress
was moving to impeach him over the Watergate scandal,
according to transcripts of telephone conversations
among his closest aides that were released yesterday.

"I was told to get the football," White House Chief of
Staff Alexander M. Haig Jr. told Secretary of State
Henry A. Kissinger less than five months before the
president’s forced resignation, during a conversation in
which the two men exchanged stories about Nixon’s
increasingly erratic behavior.

"What do you mean?" asked Kissinger, who had called Haig
to express concern that the president might unwittingly
unleash a Middle East war with his new, get-tough policy
against Israel.

"His black nuclear bag," replied Haig. "He is going to
drop it on the Hill."

The March 20, 1974, exchange is among 20,000 pages of
transcripts of telephone conversations that Kissinger
deposited in the Library of Congress in 1976 with the
stipulation that they remain secret until at least five
years after his death. Kissinger turned the transcripts
over to the National Archives in February 2002 after
being threatened with legal action by the National
Security Archive, a nonprofit group that campaigns
against government secrecy. The National Archives
reviewed the transcripts for national security and
privacy purposes and released almost all of them
yesterday.

The transcripts shed light on the extraordinarily
complex relationship between Nixon and Kissinger during
a turbulent period in American foreign policy, from the
bombing of Cambodia in 1970 to the Yom Kippur war of
1973 and diplomatic breakthroughs with China and the
Soviet Union. Even as Kissinger attempted to convince
Nixon of his loyalty, he adopted a sardonic tone in
conversations with Haig and other aides.

In the March 20 transcript, neither Kissinger nor Haig
seems alarmed by threats to bomb Congress or "to go
after the Israelis" after "he is through with the
Europeans."

"He is just unwinding," Haig told Kissinger. "Don’t take
him too seriously."

On other occasions, as in December 1970, when Nixon
proposed an escalation in the bombing of Cambodia,
Kissinger and Haig felt obliged to humor the president
while laughing at him behind his back. During that
episode, Kissinger was still serving as national
security adviser, and Haig was one of his deputies.

The Air Force is "not designed for any war we are likely
to have to fight," Kissinger told Nixon after the
president railed against U.S. pilots for "farting around
doing nothing" over Cambodia and "running goddamn milk
runs in order to get the air medal." Both men suspected
North Vietnamese guerrillas of using Cambodia as a
sanctuary and supply line to South Vietnam.

"It’s a disgraceful performance," Nixon went on. "I want
gunships in there. That means armed helicopters, DC-3s,
anything else that will destroy personnel that can fly.
I want it done!! Get them off their ass."

"We will get it done immediately, Mr. President,"
Kissinger replied.

After talking to Nixon, Kissinger got on the phone with
Haig to pass on the president’s orders for "a massive
bombing campaign in Cambodia," using "anything that
flies on anything that moves." The transcript then
records an unintelligible comment that "sounded like
Haig laughing."

The transcripts include several episodes that appear at
odds with Kissinger’s version of events, such as his
claim that Washington had nothing to do with the
September 1973 military coup in Chile that toppled the
democratically elected, leftist government of Salvador
Allende. "We didn’t do it," Kissinger told Nixon, "I
mean we helped them. [unintelligible] created the
conditions as great as possible."

Peter Kornbluh, a Latin America specialist at the
National Security Archive, said the passage appeared to
mark an acknowledgment by Kissinger that U.S. policy
paved the way for the coup that brought Augusto Pinochet
to power. "It’s diametrically opposed to the account he
provides in his memoirs," Kornbluh said.

The transcripts show Nixon and Kissinger congratulating
each other on the overthrow of "a pro-Communist . . .
anti-American" government in Chile. The president agreed
with Kissinger’s assessment that the American press was
guilty of "unbelievable, filthy hypocrisy" in expressing
concern over Allende’s overthrow while calling for the
outlawing of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In return for Kissinger’s flattery, Nixon expressed
concern for his aide’s state of health and his frenetic
lifestyle. In February 1974, he told Kissinger he was
sending one of his doctors "over tonight to rub you
down. Use him every night you need him. A couple or
three times a week."

As the Watergate crisis deepened, Kissinger began to
worry about Nixon’s mental state. On October 11, 1973,
according to the transcripts, he rejected a British
request for a telephone conversation between the
president and Prime Minister Edward Heath on the grounds
that Nixon was in no condition to take the call.

"Can we tell them no?" Kissinger said to his deputy,
Brent Scowcroft. "When I talked to the president, he was
loaded."

While Kissinger continued to express support for the
president in their private conversations, he criticized
him behind his back. Speaking of what became known as
the Saturday Night Massacre of top Justice Department
officials in October 1973, Kissinger told former defense
secretary Melvin Laird, "it’s a goddamn disaster." The
following day, he told Nixon that Attorney General
Elliott Richardson "stabbed you in the back."

The transcripts show that Kissinger cultivated close
contacts with leading journalists and publishers,
including several who were being frozen out by the White
House because of their newspapers’ aggressive pursuit of
Watergate. In November 1973, for example, he telephoned
Katharine Graham of The Washington Post to invite her to
lunch, while insisting that she keep the meeting secret
from her own reporters. "I will be looking for a job if
my leader finds out," Kissinger said, in an apparent
reference to Nixon.