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That was true, but it did not resolve the question of whether Nixon and Kissinger had deceived Congress about private assurances to Thieu. Idaho Democratic Senator Frank Church backed Jackson, calling the confirmation of the Nixon letters "another cobblestone in a long road of deceit that has characterized our policy in Southeast Asia." Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield supported a full investigation by the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees. The new Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Democrat John Sparkman, asked the White House to turn over "all pertinent documents" on the subject. Indeed, there seemed little reason not to reveal any Nixon-Thieu letters now.
High Road. That controversy is minor compared to the potential divisiveness and discord latent in Ford's insistence in his speech on Congress's role in bringing about the present crisis and its responsibility to provide instant aid to Saigon. Of such stuff are "Who lost China?" poisons brewed in the body politic, even if Ford, as he vowed, would not be the Republican to cast blame.
Ford's approach was not what his closest domestic advisers, Bob Hartmann, Donald Rumsfeld and John Marsh, had argued for or anticipated. Indeed, almost up until the day of the speech, Ford's White House staff appeared confident that the President would take the high road this time, extend a conciliatory hand toward Congress, and in the process demonstrate his own command of foreign policy. They underestimated Ford's vulnerability to the last-minute persuasion of Henry Kissinger.
It was Kissinger, as it turned out, who worked over the draft of the speech with Ford until 1:30 a.m. on the day it was delivered. Until then, the President had not even decided whether he would ask for any further military aid for South Viet Nam. Ford finally produced a speech that sounded as though it had been written by Kissinger—and probably was. For it is Kissinger who has been most pessimistic about the consequences for America's position in the world if South Viet Nam fell ignominiously. And Kissinger's reputation and achievement in the Paris accords is in jeopardy in Indochina.
Kissinger's hand was even apparent in the key portions of Ford's address that dealt with places outside the crisis area of Indochina, where he talked about the need "to recover our balance." Ford showed more emotion, and drew his first spurts of Republican applause, on three issues known to be especially bothersome to the Secretary of State. In each case, Ford was protesting what he considered encroachments by the Democratic Congresses of recent years on Executive functions. They were:
AID TO TURKEY. Ford angrily deplored the congressional cutoff of aid to Turkey after that nation had invaded the Greek-held portion of Cyprus. He said that he understood how Congress had laudably hoped to pressure Turkey into helping to settle that dispute, but he called the termination of aid "an unprecedented act against a friend" and noted that it had not been helpful in getting negotiations under way. Ford ignored, however, the fact that the Turkish invasion may have violated U.S. laws requiring an end to aid for any nation, even a NATO ally like Turkey, that is adjudged a military aggressor against another country.