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Le Duc Tho argued that Hanoi's offensive was not in fact an offensive, since it had been provoked by the U.S., which was the real aggressor. He proceeded to quote statements from our American critics to support his position, which led to a testy exchange:
Kissinger: Our domestic discussions are no concern of yours.
Le Duc Tho: I would like to give you the evidence. It is an American source, not our source. [Senator J. William] Fulbright said that the acts of the liberation forces in South Viet Nam are in direct response to your sabotage of the Paris conference—
Kissinger: I have heard it before. There is no need to translate. Let's go on to the discussion.
Le Duc Tho: I would like to quote—
Kissinger: I have heard it before. Please go ahead.
Le Duc Tho refused to go ahead. He did not negotiate; he simply read me the formal North Vietnamese position, publicly available for months. There was no point in continuing the meeting. Le Duc Tho was not even stalling; he was laying down terms. As I got up to leave, Le Duc Tho took me aside and said in the tone of a fellow conspirator that his side's prospects were "good."
The die was cast. The May 2 meeting revealed Hanoi's conviction that it was so close to victory that it no longer needed even the pretense of a negotiation. Our action had to provide a shock that would give the North pause and rally the South.
What concerned Nixon most was the imminent Moscow summit. Haunted by the memory of Eisenhower's experience in 1960 [when Nikita Khrushchev abruptly canceled a summit because of U-2 "spy flights" by the U.S.], he was determined that any cancellation or postponement should come at his initiative. He was adamant that a cancellation by Moscow would be humiliating for him and politically disastrous.
Nixon Adviser H.R. Haldeman strongly opposed our cancellation of the summit. It would damage the President by making him appear impulsive. Nixon suggested that Haldeman and I solicit Treasury Secretary John Connally's views.
We called on Connally at the Treasury Department around noon on Thursday, May 4. Connally's eyes were narrowed, squinting, as was his habit when he was gauging his challenge. We explained that the President was determined to resume bombing in the Hanoi-Haiphong area and had decided to preempt Moscow's probable reaction by canceling the summit. Haldeman said that he disagreed with the latter. Connally resoundingly seconded Haldeman. Cancellation would gain us nothing domestically; the accusation of rashness would be added to the usual barrage of criticisms. We should leave the dilemma to the Soviets, whose arms had made it all possible. Anyway, Connally did not think it a foregone conclusion that the Soviets would cancel. As soon as Connally had spoken, I knew he was right.
Connally stressed that while we should not cancel the summit, we also should not refrain from doing what we thought necessary out of fear of the Soviets' doing so. Whatever measures we took had to be