Vietnam: A Television History; End of the Tunnel, The (1973 - 1975); 112; Kissinger in Palm Springs

You're never going to back up what I did look right at that minute. If it's not that the question of 300 million to think that since 1973 the combination of declining aid levels inflation and driving people have fled to account and attrition up without the economy it is not the decision of Congress to deflate the hundred million dollars it if they thought that that had been going on for a period of two years and. That statement I made the feds. Want to not have. I believe personally it's not just the 300 million it's the 300 million from NG on top of a lot of other things. I believe that if it had not been for the

paralysis of executive authority resulting from Watergate for the if the aide leveled at the appropriate over the years and if we had been a different doc foreign policy then what possible under the circumstances. Partly for reasons in which the executive shares responsibility. I believe that certainly the difficulties we face this year could have been avoided for a number of years. For how long. It is hard to say but very often if we look over the post-war period a period of time gain gets a possibility. Thanks developing but I would add that most of human made by the legislators. I think the major requirement for the United States recognizing that we will now have a

difficult set of presenting an atypical set of debates is to come out of the race taking a day and without adding to the bitterness and viciousness which has so drained over the years and it will be able to try to do our best to contribute to that a bit of it succeed I don't know. That. Level would be declining he made a strategic decision. Perhaps consolidating his forces this year depriving the North Vietnamese just a momentum of its campaigning season you would say supplied. And in the battle next year and hope for a new appropriations. In 1977 this was a strategic asset in terms of a strategic assessment. It made a lot of sense. The trouble was

that in executing it he said it was not planned with sufficient care with sufficient understanding of the logistics system worked out and it was compounded by the fact that to start with a nice division half their dependents living with them so that when a South Vietnamese division moves all up they are defending move with them which in turn triggered a mass exodus of refugees and mobilizing these armies and at some point along the retreat that turned into a panic where the individual soldiers were trying to take care of their families. It the decision was triggered by a correct evaluation of its prospects. The prat being that if he kept his unit drowned out they would probably be defeated by

the mad did know of the admin the invasion and to try to get to a consolidated line executed in what was probably a good activity to its heels. What brought about consequences but that we have committed to that. But the tragic and I'm just trying to explain that.