Word: saigon
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...called war almost anywhere else. Last week in the old "iron triangle," South Vietnamese units finally, after an agonizing battle, chased North Vietnamese and Viet Cong regulars from one of three outposts they had recently captured near Ben Cat, a strategically important district town 25 miles north of Saigon. The next day the Communists launched a strong counterattack, which ended in failure. In spite of repeated air strikes by South Vietnamese Skyraiders, however, the two neighboring posts remained in the hands of the Communists. From advance positions the North Vietnamese fired more than 40 122-mm. rockets at Bien...
...much bigger role in salvaging the stalled Viet Nam negotiations than they have been credited with. The essential breakthrough came in the Soviet Union after the North Vietnamese launched their Easter offensive in 1972. The Communist onslaught created "a sense of panic in the White House" that the Saigon regime might collapse. Kissinger, who went to Moscow in April to set up Richard Nixon's May summit with Soviet Party Leader Leonid Brezhnev, tried to enlist Russian aid in containing the North Vietnamese drive. During his visit, Kissinger told the Russians that the U.S. would no longer insist...
USING (AND MISUSING) SECRECY. Szulc says that Kissinger made an obsession of secrecy as he shuttled between Washington, Paris, Moscow, Peking and Saigon largely because he wanted to "keep everybody off balance," the better to increase his own room for maneuvering. Says Szulc: "It is possible that even Nixon did not fully understand at all times" what Kissinger was doing...
Kissinger's close-to-the-vest style proved nearly disastrous when it came to dealing with South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu, who had been kept in the dark about the negotiations. In a hand-holding visit to Saigon in July 1972, Kissinger made no mention of his concessions to the Communists on troop withdrawals and the tripartite commission. He said merely that with an election coming, the Administration would have to put on a show of serious negotiating for a while, but that it would be "a different story" after a Nixon win. Implying that...
Thieu to prevent final agreement. As Szulc tells it, Kissinger's celebrated statement that "peace is at hand" was not only aimed at Hanoi and Saigon, but made partly with an eye to the election only twelve days away. Some of Kissinger's aides have told Szulc that they doubted that Kissinger really believed an agreement was at hand, but that he wanted "to commit Nixon to a quick peace. He seemed worried that after the elections Nixon might reopen the whole diplomatic situation; he feared that given Nixon's natural inclinations, the President might revert...