You are not only the National Security adviser to and secretary of state to president nixon and secretary of state to president ford but a parttime consultant to president kennedy. I want to congratulate the library for organizing this and providing the opportunity. I would like to say also it is symbolic that secretary kerry is coming here tomorrow night. He was Walking Around outside the white house when i served there. [laughter] he pointed out what his absence had been there and that it was a pity that we didnt have an rather than o talk confront each other in that period. In that spirit, he and i worked together when he was chairman of the Foreign Relations committee and i greatly respect his efforts now and its very meaningful that this conference would end with his speech by this distinguished leader of america now. Now to answer your question. The dominant concern about indoechina and the Kennedy Administration was the future of laos because they in return received the advice from president eisenhower in the transition that the future of laos might determine the future of vietnam. Then as the administration went n, there was a document that he chinese produced by the successor to mao saying the whole world was going to be characterized by the destruction of the cities and the kebbedr Kennedy Administration tended to interpret what was going on in indoechina as part of that process. But in those days we only had a few thousand advisers but that umber was increased by about 50,000 in the Kennedy Administration. Of it was not yet a Central American policy. Inherited a ohnson situation in which the government of vietnam had been overthrown. The north vietnamese had infiltrated regular divisions and not just Guerilla Forces and Lyndon Johnson saw he was carrying out the spirit of the olicy that had been started by president kennedy when he ordered the increase of our i must say he was an anguished person because he notions of but his peace were that you made a compromise. I attended a scientific conference in europe and at that conference there were two individuals who talked to me because they knew i had been in weeks earlier ew that year at the invitation of the ambassador. Well, one of these two people chi minhthe host of ho when he was in paris to negotiate peace and he offered to go to vietnam and call on his acquaintance on behalf of peace for the United States. I called up secretary macnamara to tell him about this. The secretary discussed the matter with president johnson. And amazingly president johnson entrusted a professor at harvard, which was not the favored ncy which most him. [laughter] being an intermediary to two frenchmen that no one ever heard of before. D there was a message from minh dent johnson to ho chi under the circumstances to which he wanted to make peace. Nd they came back with reply which after six years of negotiations and various administrations we learned was a typical north vietnamese reply that basically, you take the proposal but made it sound as if maybe there was something. So they brought back the reply and i wont go through all the details. But i was sent back with another essage and none of this effort did i ever see a vietnamese negotiator. There were two frenchmen. It has been known for about a ee months and then after while we realized that they were stalling. But i mention this only to show the dedication of president johnson who achieved an admirable negotiated peace from the very beginning. President nixon had the problem of how he inherited the war. Already 500plus thousand troops in vietnam and he had the same issue as president johnson, how do you end this war. And how do you withdraw these troops without leaving it to a collapse of the whole structure and our aleyes telling us the collapse. You can ask me questions about individual decisions. And president ford was president in the very last days of the war. But at the very end when the war when it was obvious and we were talking only about the vacuation of the last batch of civilians that were stuck at the airport in sigeon and i called and i calledaigon, them and said we have to permit he evacuation of saigon and if you read that phone conversation between him and me, he realized hat we have to leave, but he wanted to squeeze out another 12 hours to see whether we could rescue a few more people. So all the president s were haunted in their way. Each of them were dedicated to finding a peaceful solution. Each of them had the dilemma of how you relate american honor to the ending of the war and that was the dilemma. There was nobody who wanted war. There was nobody who wanted to escalate the war. They all wanted peace. But the question was under what conditions can you do that thout turning over the millions who in reliance on the word of previous president s had committed themselves. Doctor, let me go back to john f. Kennedy. There is widespread speculation had he not been assassinated, he would have reverse course and withdrawn troops from vietnam. Anything you saw from president kennedy that over time he would have withdrawn our support for he war in vietnam . I never seen the slightest evidence of this. It is possible to say that he would have done this, but all the moves of the Kennedy Administration while kennedy was alive were in the direction of increasing our commitment and not diminishing it. All based on the belief that if than as a simpler problem it turned out to be. I have never seen a piece of paper and that would indicate this and all of the chief advisers of president kennedy, who were taken over by president johnson when he became president were unanimous in both presidencies in supporting the cause that was adopted until things got very difficult and then, of course, divisions appeared. Ut i have never seen them i know of no evidence that president kennedy would have done this. Lyndon johnson was a domestic policy sage. He knew how to get deals done and knew instincttively what to do. Many who think he was out of depth in terms of Foreign Policy. Hat is your view of johnson in terms of a Foreign Policy president . President johnson was saddled with the war from the first day in office. What cant really judge tendencies oflicy the president who was swallowed up in a way by the war in vietnam. Without any question, johnson as a master in knowing the nuances of domestic policy and he did not know the foreign leaders as well as he did the con ing againsties. So it didnt come as naturally to him as domestic policy. On the Foreign Policy issues , er than the war in vietnam he had a Good Relationship with our allies and our enemies, he was very eager to come to some agreement with the soviet union. But everything was so overlaid by the war in vietnam, i thought president johnson was a formidable individual of in some ways, it was a personal tragedy that he spent so much of his life to achieve that office in order to be excelled to do things that had been his major focus. But i thought he was a strong Great Respect lt and affection. Has long been alleged that Richard Nixons campaign in 1968 tampered with the Peace Process emissary to withhold negotiations because they felt they might get a better deal from a future president nixon. I have no personal knowledge whether that contact actually took place in the way it has been alleged, but assuming that the story is essentially correct , i do not believe that it had been that whatever nixon did had any of the consequences that have been alleged. You have to remember this aspect of our relationship with the et in a most, the vietnamese and vietnamese allies will were in desperate situations. Ey needed our help as an essential component. So when a Peace Process was going on, they had a tendency to agree to put forward on the theory that the north vietnamese would reject it. We experienced what nixon then experienced four years later, that when the point came actually to undertake the negotiations that day would have to assume responsibility for the outcome. Then the South Vietnamese leaders felt it necessary to demonstrate to their own people that they had been forced by the United States to do this. Debate aboutrted a omething that im sure president johnson and i know president nixon in our period thought it had already been settled. One of the key issues was actually to sit down at the table and then, of course produce the necessity for the South Vietnamese to sit down at the same table with the people who had been fighting to verthrow from the south of vietnamese communist side and so when that issue arose as a consequence of the negotiation, e president started a debate about the way the negotiation could even start. We faced exactly the same thing in for years later. With the north vietnamese, without the South Vietnamese had agreed to each of the terms when we had discussed them. But then when they were actually put forward, we went through six weeks of controversy about nuances. That would have happened whether nixon wrote his note or not. Secondly, some delay between the announcement in the sitting down was, in my opinion, inevitable. But theres one other thing to remember. Its often alleged that peace could have been made if somehow they had all sat at the same table. It was absolutely no chance of this whatsoever. Because on november 3, two days after these announcements were made, the vietnamese made changes that they never changed for the rest of the Johnson Administration and the rest of the next administration, which were United States had to withdraw totally, and former Coalition Government noted by communists before any negotiation could take place, about anything else. So the Johnson Administration officials, at that time was of the position of the north vietnamese had to withdraw before any withdrawal of american troops could even take place. Those conditions were maintained for the rest of the Johnson Administration. And they were the principal obstacle to the failure of the negotiations in the next administration, until the vietnamese were defeated in the sequel to the tet offensive, where johnson mentioned, because the one thing that the next administration would not concede, it said that we would overthrow and allied governments that had supported the United States in reliance on promises made by a other president s. And as soon as the north vietnamese agreed that the existing government could stay, which was at the very end of the Nixon Administration, a settlement was achieved. I mention it only because america should not torture itself on the view that it could have had a settlement earlier, if their president had been more willing. They could not have had settlements except for just selling out, which no one would have supported. Mark bob halderman, president nixons chief of staff, said in a 1978 Television Interview that nixon had no intention of quickly pulling out of vietnam. He aimed to explore the rivalry between china and the soviet union to improve relations. Vietnam was an expedient where americas bona fide intentions and motives were being acted out. Nixon believed that america had to negotiate from strength to prove its willingness to fight, vietnam became that place. How do you respond to that . Is that characterize, and view, nixons position on the war . Dr. Kissinger it characterizes part of nixon position on the war. This can be interpreted by professional critics of nixon to mean that he fought so that he could do some other things. That was not what he thought. He thought that if america is credited by abandoning its commitments in vietnam, he could not do the bigger things that were needed in order to make the war in vietnam fit into a global perspective. And so in the sense that he said this is not only about vietnam, its about trying to create a world order in which the amounts can no longer occur, in that sense, it is correct. Mark you say in your book, ending the vietnam war, that the dominoes theory was real. The domino effect would have played out. What would have been the consequences of not waging a fight in vietnam . Dr. Kissinger look, the problem of any Foreign Policy is that you have to make a commitment on the basis of assessment. You cannot prove true when you make them. They depend on a judgment, and you can always come up with a counterfactual argument. A person who has a great influence on our thinking, and i believe also some extent, on president johnsons thinking was the Prime Minister from singapore. One of the great men i have met. He inherited a sand bar with a per capita income of 60. And turned it in 20 years to a significant country with a per capita income of 55,000 without any natural resources, based on the dedication and quality of its population. He was convinced, and so were many others, that if the amount collapsed, at the time that president kennedy and johnson made vacancies, that the whole south asia would be engulfed, and that the same thing within half an in indonesia, malaysia, and he maintained that opinion until his death. And he was not a cold war in the abstract, he was a judge of what it took to keep his Little Country security. Secure. Mark do you agree . Dr. Kissinger i agree with that. I think that the president s who made the major decisions had a reason for making them. Mark in his 2015 book, the last of the president s men, bob woodward writes of january 1972 memo that you wrote to nixon updating him on the military situation in laos. President nixon wrote a handwritten note on that same memo, which read k, meaning kissinger, we have had 10 years of total control in the air in laos and vietnam. The result equals village. Zilch. There is something wrong with the strategy or the air force. And yet, that before, that before coming in a cbs interview with dan rather, residence and set up the bombing, the results of been very, very effective. I think their effectiveness will be demonstrated. Publicly, president nixon as saying the bombing is effective, privately to you he is saying that they have done zilch. Dr. Kissinger he wasnt saying one of the curses of modern is collected and treated as if it were a legal document. Here are these president s, on 18 hours a day. They are under constant pressure. They write a note to their advisors and frustration that its still going on. And next and had a way of exaggerating his comments. I can tell you here that woodward called me up with this. He said what to do do when he received it . I said i did nothing. He couldnt believe it. Why would i do nothing . Because i have worked with president nixon for 10 years. Or eight years. And when you got a message like this, i have a tendency after a while to wait to see whether they would be a followup. And if you think about it, this would be the normal way on the worst assessment of the air campaign, you cannot possibly say that it achieves nothing. You can say it may not have achieved everything that he wanted, and that you have to break it down into the biggest components were. I think probably nixon might have slightly exaggerated what he said publicly. And he surely exaggerated his frustration in a handwritten notes, probably late at night. I think one ought to analyze these documents that are floating around from that point of view. I mean, what was the context in which the comment was made . Mark nixon is a very enigmatic person. You write often that he would say one thing and mean another. You had to judge when he was saying dr. Kissinger he didnt mean another. I had a very clear idea of what he wanted. You have to understand it, you cannot survive security advisor, you have only one constituent, and that the president of the United States. And you must be absolutely straight with him. And the most important thing is security advisor can do, and must do, is to tell the president the options he has. Sometimes he has to save the president from ill considered first moves. And if you abuse that, utility, [indiscernible] and nixon, its now generally known, hated personal confrontations. And so, therefore, in facetoface confrontations, it was like it was possible that he expressed himself ambiguously. But, if you in any written excerpts, you can absolutely rely on what he was saying. If you look at his record, he knew he was a very strong president. Sticking to his basic convictions. And he took in or mostly difficult decisions, and there was no ambiguity about them. But it was better to discuss them with him in writing, then as a facetoface conversation. And one will find in going through the archives, which are now available, that most of the key decisions when i was security advisor were based on memoranda, and not on conversations. The conversations played a very Important Role in creating the mood, and establishing the general context. But when a precise decision was needed, it was best to do it in writing. Which i think is a good way anyway, in relations with these president s. Mr. Mark tom johnson mentioned your commitment to the Peace Process, and the fact that you, in 1973, along with your north vietnamese counterpart, won the nobel peace prize. There are many who alleged you are a war criminal due to the systematic carpet bombing of laos and cambodia. Why was that bombing necessary to our strategy in winning the war . Dr. Kissinger well, my now, and in my 90s. Ive heard this. I think the word war criminal should be thrown around in domestic debates. Its a shameful reflection on the people who use it. Let us look what was the situation . First, there was no carpet bombing. That is absolute nonsense. The situation was as follows. In the Johnson Administration, the north vietnamese moved four divisions into the