Foreign Relations of the United States 1969-1976, vol. 6, Vietnam, January 1969-July 1970 (review)

This volume represents the long-awaited entry of the official document series Foreign Relations of the United States into Nixon-era substantive material (a first Nixon-era volume consisted primarily of data related to public reports and pronouncements). Perhaps fittingly this first tranche concerns Vietnam. It covers the period from the beginning of the administration through the summer of 1970. In keeping with the evolution of the Foreign Relations (FRUS) series, scope has expanded to take in, to a degree, military affairs and intelligence appreciations in addition to standard foreign policy matters. The material in this volume includes documents relating to the early phase of the Vietnamization program, the secret bombing of Cambodia, development of a U.S. policy for negotiations with North Vietnam, the beginning of Henry Kissinger's secret talks with the North Vietnamese, Nixon's meetings with South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Van Thieu at Midway and in Saigon during 1969, the U.S. invasion of Cambodia in the spring of 1970, and American moves on Laos.

As is increasingly the case with this official documentary series, the volume is both rewarding and frustrating. The expanding scope of coverage is very valuable and affords readers access to primary source materials on a variety of issues. But, as former officials will attest, U.S. government consumption of paper exploded during these decades, especially at the classified level, and given its wider scope the FRUS has become progressively thinner in its coverage. For some of the volumes in the last decade or so the State Department compensated with a microfiche supplement but that has been discontinued.

Even at a thousand pages this FRUS volume has important gaps and other places where the documents offered barely scratch the surface. For example, the pacification program had become the centerpiece of U.S. strategy in Vietnam by the time of the Nixon administration but here features as the focus of just four of 350 documentary offerings. The Phoenix program only features in one. Fears of a follow-on Tet offensive in 1969, the "Duck Hook" scheme to coerce Hanoi, the Cambodia operation and subsequent military aid, a number of actions in the fighting, and even the diplomatic dance to start secret talks with North Vietnam are underrepresented. Having been through the records of the Paris negotiations and secret talks in some detail, I can say that what is presented here covers mostly records of conversations while leaving out most of the policy planning material. These are only some examples, there are other lacunae as well.

On the other hand, this volume benefits from some key declassifications. There is a complete set of Defense Secretary Melvin Laird's trip reports from the period. Most important, documents emanating from meetings of national security adviser Henry Kissinger's Washington Special Action Group (WSAG), which managed most of the key events, are collected and reprinted here. As a result there are some surprising inclusions as well, in particular good coverage of U.S. policy with respect to Laos, including initial consideration of the use of B-52 bombers in northern Laos. It was probably inevitable that due to its controversial nature, Nixon administration actions on Cambodia are covered in some detail (though not sufficient, at least on the planning of the "incursion"), and here the WSAG minutes reveal the extent to which policymakers were simultaneously preoccupied not only with Cambodia but with Laos.

Whatever the weaknesses of the FRUS it will be a vital source for researchers, who have been hampered by the slow release of Nixon-era materials and the fact that further delays will be incurred as the entire collection moves from the National Archives (NARA) in Washington to the Nixon Library in California. (Parenthetically, it should be noted that the Nixon White House files at NARA...