Kissinger Papers: U.S. OK With Takeover

Dr. Henry Kissinger, left, U.S. Presidential National Security Adviser, shakes hands with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai of the People's Republic of China at their meeting at Government Guest House in Peking, China, July 9, 1971. As the Vietnam War dragged on Kissinger told Zhou in 1972 that "if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina." (AP Photo/File)

WASHINGTON -- Henry Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops _ even as the war to drive back the communists dragged on with mounting deaths.

President Nixon's envoy told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, "If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."

Kissinger's blunt remarks surfaced in a collection of papers from his years of diplomacy released Friday by George Washington University's National Security Archive. The collection was gathered from documents available at the government's National Archives and obtained through the research group's declassification requests.

Kissinger's comments appear to lend credence to the "decent interval" theory posed by some historians who say the United States was prepared to see communists take over Saigon as long as that happened long enough after a U.S. troop departure to save face.

But Kissinger cautioned in an interview Friday against reaching easy conclusions from his words of more than three decades ago. "One of my objectives had to be to get Chinese acquiescence in our policy," he told The Associated Press.

"We succeeded in it, and then when we had achieved our goal, our domestic situation made it impossible to sustain it," he said, explaining that he meant Watergate and its consequences.

The papers consist of some 2,100 memoranda of Kissinger's secret conversations with senior officials abroad and at home from 1969 to 1977 while he served under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as national security adviser, secretary or state and both. The collection contains more than 28,000 pages.

The meeting with Zhou took place in Beijing on June 22, 1972, during stepped-up U.S. bombing and the mining of harbors meant to stall a North Vietnam offensive that began in the spring. China, Vietnam's ally, objected to the U.S. course but was engaged in a historic thaw of relations with Washington.

Kissinger told Zhou the United States respected its Hanoi enemy as a "permanent factor" and probably the "strongest entity" in the region. "And we have had no interest in destroying it or even defeating it," he insisted.

He complained that Hanoi had made one demand in negotiations that he could never accept _ that the U.S. force out the Saigon government.

"This isn't because of any particular personal liking for any of the individuals concerned," he said. "It is because a country cannot be asked to engage in major acts of betrayal as a basis of its foreign policy."

However, Kissinger sketched out scenarios under which communists might come to power.