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Nixon dropped the subject after ten minutes and never returned to it. In retrospect I believe that we should have taken it more seriously. The bane of our military actions in Viet Nam throughout was their hesitancy and inconclusiveness.
In all events, after the poolside strategy session at Camp David we flew back to the capital, and in the late afternoon Nixon invited John Mitchell to join Bebe Rebozo and me for a cruise down the Potomac on the presidential yacht Sequoia. The tensions of the grim military planning were transformed into exaltation by the liquid refreshments, to the point of some patriotic awkwardness when it was decided that everyone should stand at attention while the Sequoia passed Mount Vernon—a feat not managed by everybody with equal success. On the return to the White House, Nixon invited his convivial colleagues to see the movie Patton. It was the second time he had so honored me. Inspiring as the film no doubt was, I managed to escape for an hour in the middle of it to prepare for the next day's NSC meeting.
On Sunday evening, April 26, the President met with his principal NSC advisers—Rogers, Laird, Wheeler, CIA Director Richard Helms and me—in his working office in the Executive Office Building. Nixon tried to avoid a confrontation with his Secretaries of State and Defense by pretending that we were merely listening to a briefing. To my astonishment, both Rogers and Laird fell in with the charade that it was all a planning exercise, and did not take a position. They avoided the question of why Nixon would call his senior advisers together on a Sunday night to hear a contingency briefing.
As soon as the meeting was over, the President called me over to the family quarters and instructed me to issue a directive authorizing an attack by American forces into the Fishhook area. I had it drafted, and he signed it. Just to be sure, the President first initialed the directive and then, beneath his initials, also signed his full name.
Not even this "double-barreled presidential imprimatur," as Kissinger calls it, settled things. Both Rogers and Laird were having second thoughts. Nixon agreed to think it over for 24 hours.
On Tuesday, April 28, in a 20-minute meeting with Rogers, Laird and Mitchell, the President reaffirmed his decision to proceed with a combined U.S.-South Vietnamese operation against the Fishhook. He noted that the Secretaries of State and Defense had opposed the use of American forces and that Dr. Kissinger was "leaning against" it. (This was no longer true; I had changed my view at least a week earlier. In my opinion Nixon lumped me with his two Cabinet members because he genuinely and generously wanted to shield me against departmental retaliation.) Nixon assured them he would assume full responsibility for the decision.
The final decision to proceed wai thus not a maniacal eruption of irrationality as the uproar afterward sought to imply. It was taken carefully, with much hesitation, by a man who had to discipline his nerves almost