Nixon betrayed Kissinger: book

Press, 3 June 1983, Page 6

Nixon betrayed Kissinger: book

NZPA-Reuter New York President Richard Nixon, bypassing his Cabinet, had secret contingency plans drawn up in 1969 for an invasion of North Vietnam and the use of nuclear weapons against it to try to end the war, a new book says. The book, “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House” by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Seymour Hersh, also alleges that three years later, Mr Nixon reneged on a peace agreement reached with Hanoi. Hersh* said that Mr Nixon scuttled the agreement negotiated by his National Security Adviser, Dr Henry Kissinger, in October, 1972, because his opinion poll specialist had told him that it could cost him the Presidential election the next month. Neither Mr Nixon nor Dr Kissinger would comment on the book. A Kissinger aide said that the former Secretary of State could not comment because he had not read it. The book — based on four years of research, 1000. inand documents provide® by Hanoi- and a < Vietnamese

President, Nguyen Van Thieu — said that Mr Nixon and Dr Kissinger had agreed on a “madman strategy” in 1969 to force the North Vietnamese to the • negotiating table. Hersh said that Mr Nixon and Dr Kissinger had had the office of the Chief of Naval Operations devise an extensive contingency plan, code-named “Duck Hook,” that called, for a ground invasion of the North and the severe bombing of Hanoi, Haiphong, and North Vietnam’s elaborate ©network of dikes- The plaolso

bad envisaged using nuclear devices to destroy the main north-south routes of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Hersh said that there had been a second, “even more secret study dealing with the implications of using tactical nuclear weapons” to destroy the main rail supply lines linking North Vietnam to China. Nixon had set a deadline of November 1, 1969, for the North Vietnamese to accede to a negotiated settlement or face “a savage, decisive blow.” Hersh said that the warning had been transmitted to the North by a series of intermediaries, including Rumania and Pakistan, and Mr Nixon had put the Strategic Air Command on a secret 29-day-long nuclear alert, its highest state of readiness. But within two weeks of the deadline Mr Nixon had backed down because of rising American anti-war sentiment. Hersh, citing what he said was previously unavailable North Vietnamese documents, said that in October, 1972, Mr Nixon had informed Hanoi that he considered Dr Kissinger’s negotiations for peace complete. ,

But Mr Nixon, faced with objections from the South Vietnamese and told by his pollsters that a pre-election peace could cost him the November election by losing him millions of workingclass votes, changed his mind. That move, said Hersh, had betrayed Dr Kissinger and the North Vietnamese at the very moment when peace was attainable. It was followed by Dr Kissinger’s news conference on October 26, 1972, in which he said that “peace is at hand.” Hersh said that Dr Kissinger was explaining the breakdown of peace talks with the North, not a looming breakthrough, and added that Mr Nixon had been furious about his use of that phrase. Hersh also alleges that the former Indian Prime Minister, Morarji Desai, was a paid informant for the United States Central Intelligence Agency while serving in the Indian Cabinet. Mr Desai was the source of information on which the Nixon Administration relied in justifying its hard line toward India. The Nixon Administration was anrased of tilting in favouprof Pakistan in 1971,

when millions of refugees, mostly Hindus, sought sanctury in India during the West Pakistani war against secessionist forces in East Pakistan. Hersh says that Mr Nixon and Dr Kissinger constantly evoked their “reliable sources” to justify the White House’s hard line towards India. “The source was never named for an obvious reason: the informant was reporting from India through the Central Intelligence Agency.” Hersh’Oys. “The few in the American

Government who knew his identity must also have known that his information was highly biased.” He says that Mr Desai “was a paid informer for the C.IA. and was considered one of the agency’s most important ‘assets’.” Hersh quotes former American Intelligence officials as saying that Mr Desai had been paid $20,000 a year by the C.IA. during the Administration of Lyndon Johnson, Mr Nixon’s predecessor in office. He says that he was “able to establish firmly” that Mr Desai was reporting until 1970. “After that year, the officials who wete willing to discuss Desai’s information with me were no longer in a position to see his reports, which presumably continued to flow to Washington,” Hersh says. Late last evening (NZ time) Mr Desai denied that he had worked as a paid informant for the C.LA. Contacted at his Bombay residence, he said that any accusation that he had been a CJ.A. informant was a lie. “Anybody Who said this must be. mad,” he said.