Office of the Historian

69. Transcript of a Telephone Conversation Between the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (Sullivan)1

Washington, October 25, 1972, 5 p.m.

[Omitted here is a discussion of Canada’s participation in the International Commission of Control and Supervision.]

S: Now, another thing I wanted your judgment on—We’ve been doing a lot of leafleting and dropping of miniature radios and things of that sort …

K: I would go easy on that.

S: North of the 20th, huh. What I think I’ll tell them is they can still use the balloons to drift in, right?

K: Right.

S: And they can launch stuff that floats in from the sea but no air drops.

K: Absolutely.

S: No. Okay.

K: On our side we keep getting, you know, insistent messages that we sign on March [October] 30th.

S: I’m sure.

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K: On October 30th, and I finally asked them to explain to me how we can sign a document that begins by saying “with the concurrence of a party that hasn’t concurred.”

S: You’re getting logical again.

K: And we’ve got the Russians and Chinese in action and we hope we can get everyone quieted down now.

S: I think the general—I haven’t finished reading this long diatribe of tears but the general impact of it on the press is not all that too bad.2

K: No, but we got some intelligence that the guy is really off his rocker.

S: So Al Haig told me.

K: You know, I could live with—If all of this is posturing, it’s actually quite true but if—

S: But if he’s really thinking the same behind us.

K: But he thinks he’s got us face down and that his trick now is to come up with an alternative proposal.

S: I’m afraid that’s what his Ambassador3 is going to be carrying back on Saturday or Sunday.

K: Yeah. Well, we better start turning the screws a bit. We better have a talk before you talk to his Ambassador.

S: Okay, I don’t think he will be in until the weekend.

K: Right. Okay, Bill.

S: One final thing just in case Laird calls you, I don’t think he will but his people have been trying to get Porter to raise the POW issue.

K: No, no, no.

S: And I’ve turned it off.

K: Absolutely not.

S: They said they were going to get Laird to call you but—

K: Absolute insanity. We’ve got that solved.

S: Yeah. Good.

K: Okay.

S: Okay, Henry, bye.

  1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Box 16, Chronological File. No classification marking.↩
  2. Sullivan was referring to the address to the nation Thieu made on October 24. See footnote 4, Document 72.↩
  3. Tran Kim Phuong.↩