Vietnam (28 page)

'We're still looking for the guy in the COSVN T-shirt,' said one US intelligence operative.

For Nixon, it was like Christmas. The incursion was an overwhelming success. In just two weeks, the operation had culled 4,793 small arms, 730 mortars, over three million rounds of rifle ammunition, 7,285 rockets, 124 trucks, and two million pounds of rice. Nixon ordered another 31,000 US troops into Cambodia to take out the rest of the sanctuaries along the border. However he had misjudged the reaction. The Soviet Union and France condemned the extension of the war into Cambodia, and it also led to new demonstrations in the US. Even so, Nixon ordered the renewed bombing of North Vietnam, provoking more protests, which resulted in the killings at Kent State University, Ohio. Nixon was unrepentant. 'When dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy,' he blithely said.

But Congress was not so blasé. It forced Nixon to promise that US troops would penetrate into Cambodia no deeper than 21 miles from the border and withdraw completely within a matter of weeks. Congress also repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that had given the President the power to go to war in Southeast Asia. Nixon was unconcerned, maintaining that his power to conduct the war rested in his authority as commander-in-chief, not the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

As he promised, Nixon withdrew US troops from Cambodia after seven weeks, but continued the illegal bombing of Cambodia. The ARVN continued fighting in Cambodia, with American air support, but made little headway. The NVA now were deployed in Cambodia and in South Vietnam in overwhelming strength. Nixon proposed a 'standstill' ceasefire, leaving troops where they stood on the battlefield. This played well at home, but was rejected by the Communists who were, by then, confident of victory.

On 21 November, the Green Berets staged a daring raid on the prisoner-of-war camp at Son Tay, just twenty-three miles from Hanoi. Militarily, this attack deep behind enemy lines was a brilliant success. The 60 guards were overwhelmed and the camp taken in a matter of minutes. But the operation was fruitless. Intelligence had been poor and the 70 American pilots held there had been moved shortly before. None were rescued.

That same day, an unarmed US reconnaissance aircraft was shot down. In response, the US unleashed a huge bombing raid against the North. Although Nixon later warned Hanoi that more raids would follow if their aggression continued, Congress was slowly tying his hands. It prohibited the further use of US forces in Cambodia, though Nixon determinedly continued his secret bombing, reasoning that by disrupting the NVA build-up in the border regions, he was buying time for Vietnamisation and the completion of US troop withdrawals.

Congress also banned the use of US ground troops in Laos. Nixon had indeed been planning a new incursion into Laos, where the Laotian Communist guerrillas, the Pathet Lao, and the NVA had been making advances. Nixon responded with massive illegal B-52 raids, which made refugees out of 700,000 of the population of two million. On 8 February 1971 12,000 ARVN troops invaded Laos, supported by American aircraft. Nixon denied that US troops were operating in Laos and refused to curtail the use of US air power. Congress was outraged and Nixon's opponents tried to further limit his power to wage war. It was later admitted that US troops were being sent into Laos on the pretext that they were rescuing downed airmen, prompting a North Vietnamese protest at the Paris Peace Talks. By then, Nixon's popularity had plummeted to the lowest point since he took office and the Weathermen were setting off a bomb in Washington, DC, damaging the Capitol building. The Laos incursion turned into a fiasco. The ARVN were no match for the Communists; they suffered huge losses and were soon forced into a humiliating withdrawal.

On 31 March 1971, Lieutenant Calley received his life sentence for his part in the My Lai Massacre. The sentence provoked storms of protest from those who still supported the war. Nixon went on television to defend his record in Vietnam, restating his hope for an 'honourable' end to the war. But as US losses topped 45,000, he found a powerful new opponent on the streets of Washington: returned Vietnam veterans demonstrating against the war. Nixon found himself in deeper trouble domestically when
The New York Times
began publishing extracts from the 'Pentagon Papers'. His attempts to silence the papers made him even more unpopular.

In Paris the peace talks remained deadlocked. However, on 21 February 1970, Kissinger had entered into new secret talks with North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho in a small house in a Paris suburb. Le Duc Tho, a former commissar for the South, had taken over a head of the Vietnamese delegation when Ho Chi Minh died in September 1969. Born in northern Vietnam in 1912, Le Duc Tho was the son of a civil servant in the old French administration. He was a founder member of the Indochinese Communist Party and played an important part in building up the organisation. He was also a founder of the Vietminh and had spent years fleeing arrest or in jail. During the war against the French, he had been commissar in the South. He was still active after the US intervention, hiding in the remote villages or the jungle, supervising the guerrilla war. During the war and after it, he refused to be interviewed and remained unknown in the West. Even to Kissinger, he was a mystery. Dour and austere, he gave nothing away.

'I don't look back on our meetings with any great joy,' Kissinger said later, 'yet he was a person of substance and discipline who defended the position he represented with determination.'

These backstairs negotiations lasted three years with every detail being communicated back to the new collective leadership in Hanoi. This caused constant delays that left Kissinger exasperated. Nixon's expansion of the war in Southeast Asia had borne no fruit and Kissinger could not understand why a 'fourth-rate power like North Vietnam' did not have a breaking point. What he did not know was that, at the same time as negotiating the peace in Paris, Le Duc Tho was also directing the insurgency in the South. But then Kissinger too was playing a double game: in Paris, he was a dove; at home, he was engineering the clandestine bombing of Cambodia. In 1973, Le Duc Tho and Kissinger were offered a joint Nobel Prize for ostensibly bringing peace to Vietnam. Le Duc Tho had the good grace to decline it; Kissinger, on the other hand, accepted, an act that led satirist Tom Lehrer to comment that political satire was now dead.

As these clandestine talks dragged on, year after year, US troops became so disillusioned with the war that they began to disobey orders. Some refused to go out on patrol, but they were not court-martialled. Politically things were becoming unravelled in South Vietnam too. President Thieu was re-elected, but all the other candidates had boycotted the election, claiming it was rigged. Vice-President Ky had tried to stand against Thieu, but had been persuaded to return to the air force. Congress further hobbled the ARVN's ability to prosecute the war by freezing military funds. Nixon responded with renewed air strikes on North Vietnam, the heaviest since 1968.

As US casualties mounted and the war became increasingly unpopular at home, Kissinger found his position being undermined. He abandoned Nixon's hope that a sustainable coalition might be established in Saigon and took the position that the best that the US could hope for was a 'decent interval' between US withdrawal and a Communist victory in the South.

Despite the hope that Nixon might still bring peace, the administration was further tarnished by more revelations about the conduct of the war. The government admitted that the CIA was running a 300,000-man army of irregulars in Laos. Reports that the ARVN had committed a number of atrocities against Cambodian civilians provoked the pro-American Cambodian government into demanding their withdrawal. Instead of pulling out, the ARVN went on the offensive as the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communist guerrillas, encircled the capital Phnom Penh.

Throughout 1972, US troop withdrawals continued, but Nixon announced that 35,000 would stay until all US POWs held by the Communists were returned. By this time, even the South Vietnamese had turned against the Americans, who were accused of running out on them. Gangs of youths made life unpleasant for Vietnamese girls seen with GIs. It was estimated that there were up to a thousand confrontations a month between Vietnamese civilians and US troops, and there were reports of young Vietnamese trying to beat up and even castrate Americans found on their own.

On 25 January, Nixon revealed that Kissinger had been negotiating secretly with the North Vietnamese and unveiled a new eight-point peace plan, which Hanoi promptly rejected. Even so, Thieu regarded it as an American attempt to abandon the South. Pressure grew as the 1972 presidential election loomed and the NVA made continued gains in the South. But Nixon had an ace up his sleeve: he suddenly revealed that he was planning to visit China, after a 21-year estrangement. In February 1972, he visited Beijing, the first American president to do so. In May of the same year he also became the first US president to visit Moscow. The architect of both these rapprochements was Henry Kissinger. This diplomatic offensive did little to help the situation in South Vietnam though. Neither Peking nor Moscow had much influence with Hanoi. In March the NVA began a massive offensive, streaming across the DMZ and taking the ARVN by surprise. A second thrust out of Cambodia attempted to cut the South in two; a third cut Saigon off from the rest of the country. The NVA were now equipped with the latest Soviet tanks, artillery, and anti-aircraft missiles. The US blunted the attack by giving the ARVN heavy air support and sending B-52s against the North. This began a new wave of protests across the US. International protests followed and movie actress Jane Fonda went to Hanoi where she broadcast an anti-war message on Hanoi Radio.

In protest at the NVA offensive, the US withdrew from the Paris Peace Talks on 8 May 1972 and resumed the full-scale bombing of the North. To halt the supply of new Soviet weapons, bombers mined Haiphong harbour. That and the intense bombing began to cause Hanoi severe economic problems, and gradually the ARVN clawed back the territory seized by the NVA. On 26 September Kissinger and Le Duc Tho began their nineteenth session of talks with the North Vietnamese continuing to insist on a complete military and political solution, while the US sought an end to the fighting first, the search for a political solution later. By the time the peace talks resumed in Paris the US had closed down its military headquarters and the last US combat battalion left Vietnam. The only leverage the US had left at the talks was the bombing, which continued until 8 October when Le Duc Tho, North Vietnam's chief negotiator in Paris, offered a new peace plan. This broadly accepted the US position decoupling the military and political solutions: a military ceasefire would be put in place first, followed by new talks to establish a political settlement. President Thieu rejected the compromise, but Nixon stopped the bombing and Kissinger announced 'peace is at hand' just in time for the presidential elections. And on 7 November President Nixon was re-elected by a landslide. However, on 30 December, the peace talks broke down again. Nixon resumed the bombing, which wrecked a large part of North Vietnam's infrastructure and devastated its cities. Despite international condemnation, this Christmas bombing brought the North Vietnamese delegation back to the negotiating table. On the battlefield though, the fighting continued. The NVA attacked Route 1, north of Saigon.

Secretary Laird declared that the 'Vietnamisation' programme was complete, despite the fact that the ARVN was still receiving tactical air support from US bombers. Fearing that the US was abandoning South Vietnam to the Communists, on 13 January 1973 Thieu demanded that the US back an invasion of the North if peace talks broke down again. On 23 January, the Paris Peace Accords were announced, ending American involvement in the war. Nixon declared it 'peace with honour'. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on 27 January 1973, and a ceasefire began the next day. On 27 January, Lieutenant-Colonel William B. Nolde became the last US serviceman to die on active service in Vietnam.