Nixon Shifting Field

...A few weeks of concentrated public relations will, they hope, put Humpty Dumpty back together again...

...He will not act unless he believes fundamental mistakes were made...

...White House aides closest to Nixon, including Kissinger, John Ehrlichman and Bryce Harlow, insist the Cambodia decision was proper, that it was arrived at in a careful and correct manner, and would have encountered only brief and scattered opposition had it not been for the coincidence of the Kent killings, for which the President cannot fairly be blamed...

...This reportedly warned the North Vietnamese against moving out of their sanctuaries and seizing large additional portions of Cambodia, as they obviously were bent on doing...

...He even had three cordial meetings with students, and appeared on television (accompanied by his wife and an occasional dour smile) for a relaxed half-hour interview...

...The observation was made by someone who has known Richard Nixon for 22 years, but the President's baffling, contradictory behavior these past two months is giving rise to similar comments around the capital...

...His remarks earned him a few more enemies...

...It left him the choice of freezing present troop levels, undertaking some kind of major action to prove his will and resoluteness to Hanoi, and then bunching all the withdrawals toward the end of the 12-month period...

...In Washington on Monday, April 27, he is said to have retired to his small private office in the Executive Office Building, where sometime after 9 p.m...

...Almost simultaneously, Washington is said to have sent a secret message to Hanoi through intermediaries...

...Some sources say that it was while he was in Hawaii that the President received a version of the Abrams plan, which had been routed through the local headquarters of the Pacific Command...

...More important, it has spotlighted the fact that five Cabinet members—Secretaries Walter Hickel, John Volpe, William Rogers, Robert Finch, and George Romney—are believed to be in sweeping disagreement with his recent domestic and foreign policy decisions...

...Pressure was mounting for the President to act on both fronts...

...Among other things, there was some expectation of a May-June Vietcong offensive...

...The country was in an uproar by the night of May 4, and all Nixon could find to say of the death of the four students in Ohio was: "When dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy...

...But in fact outside of the White House staff, only two people...

...General William C. Westmoreland, the Army Chief of Staff, conducted a one-man lobbying effort in a series of background sessions all over Washington...

...command and the South Vietnamese...

...But more important is a fear that Vietnamization is a policy grounded on quicksand, that the enemy is merely awaiting more U.S...

...At least as far back as 1966, he had advocated that the United States invade Cambodia to destroy Vietcong and North Vietnamese sanctuaries...

...A step-by-step retracing of events reveals that the shift started April 1, when Nixon sent a message to the Senate warning that if it rejected the Supreme Court nomination of G. Harrold Carswell, it would be trespassing on his mandated powers of "appointment...

...The next week brought a spate of gloomy economic news at home: Inflation was continuing only slightly abated, and a possible recession loomed on the horizon...

...Nixon took his option book and his yellow, lined legal pad and went to Camp David for a solitary weekend of contemplation...

...The Cambodian regime rejected the proposal and appealed to Washington for help...

...Then, to pick up one of those sports terms Nixon is fond of, he suddenly shifted field, apparently hoping to convince opponents of his underlying strength...

...There is no way as yet of proving them incorrect, but the instinct of Washington's most experienced and informed observers is that they are tragically wrong...

...The Pentagon, however, had already drawn up a proposal for withdrawing 40-50,000 men over four months, and for a second withdrawal of 100,000 over eight months to be announced at the end of the summer...

...But there was no ready remedy for the domestic financial situation, and besides, most of the pressure on this issue was being generated outside the Administration...

...A number of military officers, including Abrams and Westmoreland, were known to have objected strenuously to the original withdrawal timetable...

...The President had simply combined the two moves...

...And when it was reached, Rogers was opposed, while Laird and Henry A. Kissinger, the President's adviser on foreign affairs, had reservations...

...Everything depends, of course, on Nixon's evaluation of the situation...

...Later, the White House legal aide who wrote the original brief said he had carefully used the word "nominate" throughout, but the White House speechwriter who polished the final draft substituted "appoint...

...Returning to the Oval Office on April 21, Nixon found on his desk a formal request from Lon Nol's government for enough arms to equip an army of 400,000 men (about 10 times the size of its army at that time...

...Three days later, the nation was informed that U.S...

...Moreover, Congress recently gave Nixon the green light to make the most fundamental reorganization of White House operations in two decades...

...Instead, he not only destroyed his carefully crafted consensus but set off a new wave of dissension in the country...

...But by midweek, Nixon appeared determined to turn his Administration around...

...That same day, the South Vietnamese made another massive plunge into Cambodia...

...The communications were ignored...

...The Chinese Communists, who still maintain relations with Cambodia, seem to have offered to strike a bargain with Lon Nol: If he agreed to perpetuate the Sihanouk policy of allowing the North Vietnamese sanctuaries and a secure but limited supply chain, the Chinese could in turn guarantee that Hanoi would not pose any threat to the government...

...Initially, he seems to have been more concerned about the American economy than Cambodia...

...troops, eventually about 20,000, were to be sent into Cambodia...

...The decision startled the most high-ranking military and diplomatic officials, and even Secretary of Defense Mel-vin R. Laird is said to have received it on extremely short notice...

...But there is little evidence that the policy goes beyond appearances...

...Nixon at present has a unique opportunity to rearrange the priorities of his Administration and seek an opening to the Left...

...By Monday, however, the opposition to the war's expansion was beginning to mobilize...

...Mitchell, whose public image is probably the toughest of any Cabinet member, spoke approvingly within several days of the Supreme Court, the Bill of Rights, youth, and dissent...

...A special Executive action committee was formed to draw up a list of options for his consideration...

...The soft words of his May 8 press conference and the gentleness of his attitude toward the next day's antiwar demonstration in front of the White House underlined this point...

...Following the resounding Cars-well defeat on April 8, Nixon made a second miscalculation by reacting in a manner that was, if not irrational, at least unpredictable...

...Attorney General John Mitchell warned of the probable domestic uproar in strong terms, although he is thought to have assured the President it could be ridden out...

...What is known is that at least two complex diplomatic maneuvers were launched, one from Peking and the other from Washington...

...There was also pause for reflection...

...Whatever the case, it is highly likely that Nixon knew of Abrams' Cambodian strategy when he appeared before the television cameras in San Clemente on April 20 to announce that he was withdrawing 150,000 troops from Vietnam over the next 12 months...

...Upon closer examination, though, it took on a different cast...

...To focus on one manifestation of the effort...

...And his White House aides are all saying, admittedly in self-defense, that there were none—just a little bad luck, and perhaps some poor timing...

...The strongest demands for new initiatives in Southeast Asia, on the other hand, were coming from Nixon's own military advisers—although the Cambodian regime dropped a series of increasingly pointed hints, culminating eventually in a formal request that the United States provide massive military aid...

...In a highly unusual move...

...On april 13 the Saigon government, deciding it could wait no longer, conducted a large-scale raid into Cambodia without American authorization, though there may have been consultations between the U.S...

...Congressional reaction was instantaneous and angry, while outside Constitutional experts decried the statement as exceedingly bad law...

...His explanation came too late to repair the damage...

...Vice President Ag-new, himself the cause of almost as much anger as either Kent or Cambodia, flew to Los Angeles to tape an exceedingly relaxed hour and a half tv show filled with good will for all...

...Throughout his first 14 months in the White House, the President cultivated the image of a careful, efficient, unemotional, predictable, politically sage decision-maker?and with remarkable success...

...For the remainder of that week the pressure on the President must indeed have become almost overwhelming...

...forces in Vietnam, worked up a plan for annihilation of the sanctuaries...

...Finally, a number of Cabinet members have spoken out with rare honesty, and the President's response will go far toward determining which of them will feel encouraged to speak further, and which will decide to take cover...

...Back in Washington, in an uncharacteristically abrupt move, Nixon decided on one day's notice to make a hectic weekend journey?first to Houston to pick up the wives of the returning Apollo 13 astronauts, then to Hawaii to welcome the astronauts on their safe landing, and finally to his retreat in San Clemente, California...

...Then came the Kent State tragedy—and it will forever be a moot question whether or not the Cambodian decision alone would have been enough to provoke the nationwide dissension...

...Relations with Congress have been equally disrupted, so that the President can no longer count on the support of even those who have been his staunchest backers...

...Laird and Secretary of State Rogers, had full knowledge of the options available and the elements of the final decision...

...departures, whereupon it will descend in force on the remaining Americans and wipe them out...

...Subsequently, General Creighton W. Abrams, commander of U.S...

...Virtually the entire hierarchies of two government departments—State and Health, Education and Welfare—are also disaffected...

...Now he was urging assistance to Lon Nol...

...Both personnel and policies can now be juggled with comparative ease, and next month the Pentagon is due for major changes at the top of the military hierarchy...

...The President is thought to share this concern, and it now seems apparent that his April 20 announcement was actually the preparation for a decisive move...

...But they also cut five of the seven roads connecting the Cambodian capital of Pnompenh with the outside world...

...There is absolutely no doubt that a total attempt has been made to appear conciliatory to students, senators, intellectuals, and all the other dissenters, both within and without the Administration...

...Meanwhile in Indochina, the March 18 ouster Walter R. Gordon manages the Baltimore Sun's Washington Bureau...

...Initially, the gesture looked like a long stride toward the completion of "Vietnamization...

...The North Vietnamese began moving out of their positions, apparently to secure access to one of the small ports on the southern coast...

...There was stunned reaction during the first weekend in May to the President's Cambodia intervention...

...Reports vary, but it appears that one contingency operation included a landing on the southern coast of Cambodia by a force of two divisions, as well as the destruction of enemy base areas in Laos...

...About the same time, in mid-April, the Cambodian regime's efforts to cut off land and sea supply routes to the Communist sanctuaries was starting to have an effect...

...he made the most fateful decision thus far in his Administration...

...of Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk had led to spreading chaos and a developing Communist offensive that threatened to submerge the regime of Premier Lon Nol...

...In an angry, vengeful statement, he declared that "this" Senate would not approve any "strict constructionist" who was a Southerner...

...It is not clear whether this was done to relieve pressure on the sanctuaries, to secure new base areas to the west in anticipation of a U.S.-Saigon offensive, or to destroy the new Cambodian government...

...And youth has formed such a solid phalanx against the Administration that some gop leaders in the field have given up hope for the previously vibrant Young Republican clubs...