The President's Men; 16; William P. Rogers: Secretary of State

Behind every president is a group of men who advise the chief executive and carry out his policies, handpicked, they serve at his pleasure, and in turn they help run the national government. Cabinet members, special assistants, agency heads, collectively they are known as the President's Men. This is a series of programs dealing with some of those President Nixon has selected as his men. They discuss with reporter Paul Niven, their functions, their thoughts, and their aims. Tonight, the Secretary of State, William P. Rogers. The National Security Council waxes and wanes and importance White House advisers come

and go, but the Department of State remains the central instrument of American foreign policy. Under Secretary William Rogers, it maintains relations with representatives of 117 other countries, and on a given day represents the U.S. at 15 or 20 international conferences. The Department has 25,000 employees. Rogers became an adviser to Congressman Richard Nixon more than 20 years ago. The two men have remained close ever since that time. In choosing William Pierce Rogers as the next Secretary of State, I did not do so simply because he had served with the distinction as Attorney General of this country, that he had been three years on the National Security Council where he had an opportunity to see our foreign policy in action under General Eisenhower, that he had a great record as a lawyer, both a trial lawyer and having one of the great law firms. I said that after a period of confrontation, we now entered a period of negotiation. And consequently, I wanted a secretary

of state in these next four years, who would be the best negotiator in the world if that was possible. I would put him up against any man in the world today that I have met around the world in my many travels. I think America will be represented well by him in the years ahead as he negotiates for peace. In ten months in office, Rogers has traveled 110,000 miles, visited the Vietnam battlefield, and discussed the war and other problems with most of the world's foreign ministers. But he wears his metal easily. Mr. Secretary, some of your predecessors have been moral crusaders and one cause or another. Some have had previous experience in the department and regarded the Secretary's ship as the culmination of a career and enjoyed being part of the foreign ministers' club. I gather that coming in from another field, you have a somewhat different attitude towards your

job. Could you describe your approach? Yes, I think my approach could be described by saying that I try to carry out this assignment in accordance with the President's wishes, which is to enter an area of negotiations rather than confrontation. Secondly, to sort of lure our voice. Because as a nation, we have times appear to be loud and strident and too dominant in our attitudes. So I would hope that as we go along in this administration that we can have somewhat a new approach of lowering our voices and projecting the American personality and policies as they really are. This may be why Senator Fulbright looks upon you so approvingly. This has been his theme for some years, a part of it. Yes, I think that our policy is so sound that we don't have to be too strident, too loud and projecting it.

And you said our power is so great that only the weak need make noise. Yes, we don't have to speak with a loud voice. We are the strongest nation in the world by far, both militarily and economically. And so when we say something, it carries a great weight in and out of itself. So it doesn't have to be shouted. It doesn't have to be said in an arrogant or egotistical manner. It just carries weight because of the prominence and the prestige and the importance of the United States. I know that you and Mr. Kissinger are sick of being asked about each other, and I won't labor the point, but let me ask it institutionally. Mr. Atchison was asked in a recent interview how he would have coped with an office of international security affairs in the White House, and he replied quite simply, I would have ceased to be Secretary of State. Now, you and Mr. Russ seem to have taken a different view. How do you divide up the load? Is it generically other some problems that go to the President directly from the State Department and others that go through the Kissinger office? Is it long-term planning or long-term policy from

here and immediate reaction through that office or what? Well, it would require a sort of a long answer, but let me say this. Mr. Atchison, of course, was talking about his experience. If he were here today, he'd have to create something like the National Security Council. He could not, but he would not. Right, what happened? Well, because the volume of business is so much greater, what happens now is that we have a great many problems that cut across many departments and agencies of government. We had one this morning, for example, involving bacteriological and chemical warfare. Now, that involves the defense department, the state department, the science advisor, other departments of government. We couldn't decide that just in the state department, it's a very important matter for defense department. So, that is done through the National Security Council. They collect the opinions of the different departments. We present them to the President and the President makes his decision. Furthermore, there is so much paperwork these days, so many recommendations that we send to the President that someone has to collect those

papers, present them to them when he has an opportunity to look at them and so forth. So that you couldn't get along without the National Security Council and you couldn't get along without some staff assistance in the White House. And I think that the relationships that exist now are excellent, or there is no problem. Even Kennedy used to cast aspersions on the Department of State in private. Our President's perhaps unduly critical of the state department. Do they feel to appreciate the vast volume of work that the Department like this has to do quite apart from policy and immediate reaction to crises? Yes, and I think there's another reason. That is because so many of the problems are insoluble. In a President feels that he wants to solve problems and he expects the people in his administration to solve them. Now, in a lot of departments, for example, the Department of Justice that I had it for a while, we could solve problems. We had them under our control. In the foreign affairs field, quite often, they're well beyond your control. And I think the President has a feeling, not knowing about all of the ramifications that maybe something could

have been done to prevent difficult situation from arising. But the fact that the matter is, and quite often, it's not possible to anticipate trouble, it's not possible to prevent it. During the campaign, I think many people were disposed to believe that a new administration, whatever problems it ran into with the war in Vietnam, would at least have the great advantage that it would not be settled with pride of authorship, that it might make its own mistakes, but it would not be concerned with defending the policies of the media past. After 10 months, do you still feel that you have an independence in Vietnam that a previous administration did not? Or do you find yourself increasingly the same circumstances, the same facts, the same attitudes on the other side that the other administration? Not at all. I think we have independence and we're going to assert it. I mean, we have changed the war from a necessary situation to a de-escalation and we're going to continue. And when I hear people talk about the fact that our policy is not changed, I don't understand

what they mean. We reverse the policy. We're withdrawing troops. We're going to victimize the war. We're going to get American soldiers out of combat. And that's irreversible. Progress in Vietnam in the 10 months that you've been in office about what you expected or less or more. Well I think progress in the negotiations have been disappointing. We hope that there would be greater progress in Paris. Insofar as the war itself and the passification programs concerned, I think it's gone somewhat better possibly than I'd expected. Because the war has been considerably de-escalated, as you know, casually said down well over 50%, the combat activity is down. And so I think on the whole, the war has gone better than I would have anticipated. You interpret Mr. Chew's New York Times interview as a reaction to the resignation of Mr. Lodge and an effort on the coming as part to keep the talks going for whatever purpose and whatever substance.

Are you speaking about Mr. Chew? No. Oh, one tweet. In Paris, yes, his interview with Harrison Salisbury, but she... Well, I don't know how to interpret it. He wasn't telling the truth. Yeah. Mr. Lodge has been willing for some time and clearly indicated to the North Vietnamese that we were willing to talk to them about military and political matters at the same time. We always did say, though, that in the final analysis, a political solution had to be decided upon and determined by the people in South Vietnam. But we were perfectly willing to talk about it. In fact, we did have private talks about both military and political matters in private sessions. I was wondering if Mr. Tui's initiative in granting this interview was an effort to keep the talks going at a time when he felt the American administration was more or less giving him up on them. It's possible. Why? We don't exactly know. Does that mean they want to talk substantively or they just want to keep them gluing for some other purpose? Well, I think that they are getting some benefits from the talks. For example, they have already access to the American press, for example, that they wouldn't have if they were

in Henni. So from that standpoint, they are able to get across the point of view on a daily basis, which they couldn't otherwise do. Mr. Tui stressed that if we, if a settlement were reached and we pulled out, there would be no blood bath, no mass slaughter of South Vietnamese, friendly to us and he invoked Vietnamese tradition in this connection. Did you regard this as an effort to answer one of our principal fears about precipitate withdrawal? I don't regard those public statements as anything except propaganda. If they are serious about talking to us about negotiating peaceful settlement, why don't they discuss it in private session? Why is it necessary to go out and talk to the press about it? We're perfectly willing to meet them at any time and talk about all phases of this world. What about that famous controversial last letter of the Ho Chi Minh letter to the President, which Mr. Nixon and his broadcast interpreted as a rejection? Some students of Soviet or correspondents have said, well, it was more or less open and it didn't close the door.

Have you and the President take them these? Yes, we've talked about these things. Of course, it's pretty clear from the letter that's a rejection, but on the other hand, if it's not a rejection, all they have to do is pick up the phone and tell us. I have a trouble understanding all the esoteric interpretations that are put upon these little signs by the media. It's a perfectly simple thing to do, we're in contact every day almost. If they have any thoughts, why don't they express them to us? If there's anything in the Ho Chi Minh letter that we have overlooked, all they have to do is suggest it to us. The President said that the rate of our withdrawal will be determined by progress in the talks, the lowering level of the battle and the progress of yetimization. It doesn't do some political opponents have suggested, doesn't this put the initiative in all three cases upon the other side? Doesn't this give away the power to decide our rate of withdrawal? No, I don't think so because we are pretty confident about the rate of the ability of

the South to take over the combat responsibilities. President Nixon has a plan which he's thought through very carefully and he is going to put that plan into effect. He hasn't announced the timetable, but he has it clearly in mind. Now, the timetable may be affected slightly from months to months. Only slightly? Only slightly. Because we're quite convinced that the South Vietnamese are going to be able to take over the combat responsibilities so far, it's worked quite well. If the level of battle suddenly increased significantly, if there were another 10 offensive, would not that affect the speed of the atomization and of America would grow more than slightly? Well, slightly in terms of a month or two possibly, but I don't think that the enemy can, I hope I'm not wrong. I don't think the enemy can launch a major offensive. They can launch offensive, so I don't have any doubt about that, but I think their ability to launch that kind of offensive is somewhat limited.

Senator Scott made a striking statement a month or two ago that the enemy might have one more offensive than anybody if he did. That would be his last and he would be a defeated enemy. On other soldiers and certain columnists who have been telling us that for four years, what reason is there to believe it now when it's been wrong so many times? Well, I wouldn't want to make that prediction that they couldn't launch several offensive, but I mean at the present time, I don't believe that they're in a position to launch a very large major offensive that would last a long time. Now, they might be able to, if they sent more men into the South, but at the present time, as you know, they've not been replacing their troops with infiltration so that there has been a net reduction of their forces in the South. I think enough has been said in the press in the last two or three days about the alleged massacre of Vietnamese civilians that it's probably enough has been done to prejudice the court martial proceedings when they should be, but in general, these things have come and gone before. The Green Marrake case, which was dropped in others, isn't one of the

worst things about this kind of a dirty jungle war that it brutalizes large numbers of young Americans. Yes, I don't think there's any way to deny that. I think if the allegations are true, it's a shocking incident, and all we can do is to court martial any responsible persons and to show to the world that we don't condone this. Obviously, if anything of this kind happened, it's a direct contradiction to the orders. As you know, it's been big news in Europe almost bigger than here. Are you getting much heat diplomatically about it? Well, we haven't gotten much heat diplomatically. We don't need much heat. It's a tragic event if it's true, and certainly there's indication of some truth at least, so we are highly concerned. It's a shocking thing. In your own conversations with more than 24 ministers, you've stressed that we will uphold

our present commitments, but we're going to take a long careful look at new commitments. Do you think we're over-committed now? No, I don't think we're over-committed. We have to live up to our commitments. I think our commitments are sound commitments. I think they should be lived up to. I don't think we should make further commitments. I think we have enough. I think the commitments we've made have contributed greatly to the stability of the world. After all, we've avoided a world war now for 25 years. Our NATO commitments certainly are sound and should be continued. I think our commitments in Southeast Asia and the whole contribute to the stability of the area. Well, it's been alleged during the past administration by some people on the hill that we sometimes slide into commitments, sort of willy-nilly and imperceptibly, without a conscious decision by the President's consultation with the Congress and the National Society and the public. Is there any validity to this charge, do you think? Well, I think we have to be careful

to avoid that. And I think Congress is performing its constitutional function when it takes its position. We are going to do what we can to work with Congress to see that that doesn't happen. We have no interest to desire to have anything of that kind happen. So I think Congress is doing its job. Well, some people are seizing, for instance, on the President's statement that we're furnishing some aid and training to Laos. His name is that, oh, here we go again. This may end up another Vietnam. Now, why won't that happen? Well, the President won't let it happen. That's why, I mean, we have learned one lesson and that is that we're not going to fight any major wars in the mainland of Asia again, and we're not going to send American troops there. And we certainly aren't going to do it unless we have the American public and the Congress behind us. But in any event, we have no such plan. We don't intend to. Is it conceivable as Professor Reichauer has suggested that our experience in Vietnam is so embedded in the Congress and the public that there might be some time in the future

when the Communist challenged us somewhere in the world, very suddenly, he is in career in a way that demanded a response. And the administration would want to go in, thought we should, and for the more the time was on the efforts, was on the essence, but couldn't because Vietnam has so dissipated public and congressional support for overseas adventures. Is this a problem about the legacy? I don't think so. I don't believe that Congress would ever be reluctant to meet our commitments, our treaty obligations if we had to. And I think Congress would react very favorably if the President ever got to that point, God, for a bit. We certainly, I think, would have difficulty if we, as you suggested earlier, try to use troops in Laos, for example. I mean, I think that Congress will be very careful about proving anything of that kind. And so will we. I mean, the President and I and the rest of us are not going to get involved in anything of that kind.

Well, treaty obligations don't cover every part of the world on our way. If the Chinese invaded Thailand, both members of CTO and we would go to Thailand's aid, it's in the treaty, and say very hypothetically, that the Chinese army and force crossed the border of the Union of Burma. Burma is a neutral country. Burma called on us for aid. Wouldn't our response be affected by the knowledge that public support and congressional support would be affected by the experience of Vietnam? Yeah, so I don't undoubtedly, and I think it should. I think under those circumstances, it should be very much affected by congressional attitudes and public attitudes if we're talking about an invasion of Burma. As a lawyer and civil libertarian, you have often upheld the right of people to demonstrate against our foreign policy. Yet, as Secretary of State, you've been compelled to say from time to time that some of this must encourage Hanoi. Do you find yourself constantly in dilemma every time one of these demonstrations occurs? Well, yes, to some extent. There's nothing more sacred to our system of government than the right of free speech and the right

of assembly. And for that reason, I am very sympathetic to young people who use those means to voice their dissent. On the other hand, it reaches a point sometimes where it's more than just voicing dissent. It gets to the point where it's so insistent that almost sounds as if they're saying, if you don't do what we tell you, we're going to cause more severe trouble for you. I think at that point, you, it becomes a problem. On the whole, I think that the dissent that's been manifested in this country is very sincere on. I think those of us in the government have an obligation to take it seriously, listen to it, which we've done. And I, of course, criticized the violence that's been used on some occasions. But by and large, this last moratorium, so I have 250,000 people, consisted of a lot of people that are very seriously concerned about the war. And they want their government to know how deeply they feel about it. And I think we have an obligation to

listen to them and respect their views. Without naming names, it sounds as if you were more tolerant of them than some of your colleagues in the administration. Well, I don't want to get involved in that. I certainly am not tolerant of the radical element, those who use violence and obscenities and all these other things. But I think that we certainly have an obligation in the government to respect the views of people who disagree with it. On October 12th, I meet the press. You were asked about progress in the Paris, or when they might reach them. And you said there might be some, if Hanoi became convinced that we were meant business, but that didn't tell the diminution in this protest day at home. Three days later, there was the moratorium, how we've had a mobilization of a quarter of a million. We're not making any progress in curbing dissent or persuading the dissenters to stop dissenting publicly, Hanoi. Well, I don't know about that. You see, they haven't announced another march. And it may well be that they will decide that they've made their point. And certainly there's some

attitude. There's an attitude in the part of some members of the Congress that that's the case. And if their dissent is unsuccessful in causing the public, the changes attitude toward the president, then it could well be that it'll be kind of productive. In other words, as you notice, the president's popularity has gone up since the moratorium. And I think Hanoi is going to be quite conscious of that. They watch these things. And they know that the president's, November 3rd speech was very effective. And then they'll see that the public is supporting the president. So it may well be that they'll have some effect on their attitudes and peers. When before the moratorium, the president said that he would not be influenced in any way, whatever, in any way, whatever. And when during the mobilization, he said it was a good day to watch a ballgame. Some of the kids took this as gratuitously insulting to them. My own feeling was that he wasn't speaking to them at all, but he was trying

to speak above them to Hanoi and make it clear that he and not they were running the foreign policy of this country. Do you have a fair assessment? I think that is a fair assessment. I think what he was saying is that you can't really make decisions based on who's complaining the most. As president, you have to make a decision based on what you think is in the national interest. And what he was saying was he was going to do that. He was not saying that he wasn't going to listen or pay attention to the views. Mr. Secretary, the salt talks in Helsinki are still in the early stages of the preliminary phase, but do you have any impressions out of them yet? Yes, we do. The impression we have is that the Soviet Union is quite serious about these talks. And I've talked to some of those who are in Helsinki, and they tell me that the nature of the talks, the manner of dialogue is the best of any discussions they've had with the Soviet Union. They're serious, they're not polemical. And we were very encouraged by the general atmosphere. Is this a surprise? No, but we're pleased.

Why did they put them off so long if they were ready to be forthcoming? You know, I suppose they asked that question about us because we delayed from the beginning of our administration to June. I think probably that the reason was that they were having problems with the Chinese. I think they wanted to get those talks started before the talks started with the Chinese, red Chinese, before they went to Helsinki. Is it true that the Department of State wanted to go into these preliminary talks with some substantive proposals, but that other agencies of the VAR government did not and prevailed? No, I don't think that's true. We thought all along that these preliminary talks would be useful. They were trying to really probe to see what we could do in the final talks. And I think the Soviet Union took the same attitude. What does the Soviet Union want? Well, I think it's a little early to tell. I think what they want is the same thing that we want. At least that's what we hope. And that is that we can curb the arms race, maintain the same relative position so that each of us does not have to spend so much money on

arms. Do they admit this by the way that they would like to divert some of their resources to domestic affairs? Well, I don't know as I've ever had that exact discussion with them, but that clearly is the impression. Well, we're going to, by Pentagon testimony, we're going to conclude our move of testing and more or less perfected by Mayor June. Isn't this going to make any agreement much more difficult to enforce? Yes, I think there's a lot to that, but it's just one of those facts of life we left to face up to. Do you see any possibility of getting an agreement before Mayor June? I doubt it very much, because it's very difficult to imagine that could happen. We're not sure what stage they're in and they're not sure what stage we're in. And if we proposed it too aggressively, they would think that we had completed our test to the point where we didn't need any additional tests, and they'd be naturally suspicious and vice versa. But if it goes to Mayor June and our mayor of his operational, doesn't any agreement

entail a vast, detailed inspection? Isn't this a stumbling block that some of the American arms actually run up against for 20 years? Sure, your question suggests the incorrect premise, and that is there's something magic about Mayor June. Well, once we've finished the mayor's test and it's operating... What I'm saying is that it isn't necessarily the finish of the test that counts. Why is that, sir? Because you don't necessarily have to finish the test to know that you can deploy them. Oh, we could deploy before? Well, as I say, the tests that run for long period of time are designed to give you the maximum amount of testing. Now neither side quite knows whether the other side is to test it enough so that they would be able to deploy them now. Mr. Secretary, finally, your predecessor served for eight years, one of the longest ten years as Secretary of State and American history. You made it clear the other day that this was one example of his. You were not going to follow that four years would be enough. Why do you feel that way?

Well, I think it's a very difficult job, and I think that you can do a good deal in four years, and I think maybe after that it's better to have a new man in the job. I think he may have some other ideas. Furthermore, in view of Dean Atchison's success as an author, I notice he's charging $15 for his book. I might think about selling books. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Next week, the Attorney General, John and Mitchell, will appear on the President's mint.

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