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A more precise definition of U.S. intentions in Indochina, however, has been sought by the President's critics on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Their frustration at not being able to get it erupted in a new argument over the Administration's claim to an executive privilege against some kinds of congressional inquiry. Missouri Democrat Stuart Symington raised the issue in a personal way by complaining in a Senate speech that National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger has emerged "as clearly the most powerful man in the Nixon Administration next to the President" but "will not appear before the duly constituted committees of the Congress." He also stated something that nearly all of Washington believes: "Dr. Kissinger, not Secretary of State William Rogers or the State Department, is the primary spokesman on foreign policy."
Candid Advice. At his press conference, Nixon distorted Symington's speech as an "attack upon the Secretary and a cheap shot." He praised Rogers as his "oldest and closest friend in the Cabinet," said that he "participates in every foreign policy decision that is made by the President," and ticked off all the times that Rogers had talked to Senators and Congressmen.
Nixon's defense of Rogers missed the point. It was Kissinger, not Rogers, whom the Senators wished to quiz—and not because they denigrate either man. The issue, Democrat William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, explained in another Senate speech, was that "the people's representatives in Congress are denied direct access not only to the President himself but to the individual who is the principal architect of our war policy in Indochina." The clash over executive privilege is a recurring and complex one. The Senate has a right to review U.S. foreign policy: yet a President needs candid advice from his aides, which he is unlikely to get if each aide knows that he may be publicly grilled on what he tells the President.
The ruckus tended to obscure the real issue. What is actually under attack —and at stake in Laos—is Nixon's whole Indochina policy. The thrust into Laos represents a huge gamble. Yet there has been a growing sense in the White House in recent weeks that perhaps, just perhaps, the U.S. may be able to pull off not only a successful withdrawal from Indochina but some form of victory as well. That victory would be based on the ability of a South Vietnamese government to survive without large-scale U.S. help and like South Korea after 1954, to hold its own against Communist attempts to overthrow or subvert it. That may be only wishful thinking, but success in Laos is essential if such a victory is even to have a chance of becoming reality. The President had a valid point when he warned against too quick judgments on Laos. "The jury," he said, "is still out."