In July, Nixon approved establishing a White House Special Investigations Unit. Former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy and former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt were brought in to help run things. They hung a “Plumbers” sign on their door and set out to plug the leaks. In September, they broke into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in hopes of finding something to use to silence him before he could release documents Nixon thought he had revealing Nixon’s threats to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Coming up empty with that break-in, they made further plans to silence Ellsberg, unleashing a wave of dirty tricks and criminal activities that would eventually bring multiple indictments and Nixon’s ignominious resignation.
Hanoi’s spring 1972 offensive pulverized the South Vietnamese army. Desperate to avoid defeat before the election, Nixon contemplated measures so extreme that even Kissinger objected. “…power plants… the docks… And, I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?” Nixon asked. “About two hundred thousand people,” Kissinger informed him. “No, no, no… I’d rather use the nuclear bomb,” Nixon asserted. Kissinger hesitated, “That, I think, would just be too much.” “The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?” Nixon asked, “I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.”102
Nixon bombed North Vietnamese cities for the first time since 1968 as well as sites throughout the South and mined Haiphong. He wanted Hanoi to be “bombed to smithereens,” declaring that the “bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time.”103 Civilian casualties soared. Nixon felt no remorse, telling Kissinger, “The only place where you and I disagree… is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about the civilians and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.” Kissinger assured Nixon that his restraint was based on political calculations, not humanitarian ones: “I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.”104
In October, the stalled Paris talks suddenly revived. Kissinger announced, “Peace is at hand.”105 But after winning reelection, Nixon unleashed a massive twelve-day “Christmas bombing” campaign against Hanoi and Haiphong—the heaviest bombing of the war. The international outcry was deafening. Peace talks resumed. On January 23, Nixon announced an agreement that would “end the war and bring peace with honor.”106 The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27. The United States ceased military activities, and the last U.S. troops departed on March 29, 1973. Approximately 150,000 North Vietnamese soldiers remained in the South, though they were to respect the cease-fire. Thieu would retain power pending the results of elections in which all would participate. But in fact he made no effort to hold such elections. Nixon assuaged Thieu by increasing the already massive military support and promising to restart the bombing if the Communists attempted a new offensive.
In April, within weeks of the U.S. troops’ departure, Nixon and Kissinger ordered a resumption of bombing in both the North and the South—bombing more intense than at any previous point in the war. The order was rescinded, Time magazine reported, when Nixon learned of John Dean’s damning revelations to Watergate prosecutors. Nixon decided not to inflame public opinion by bombing at the same time he was preparing to battle Congress, a determination he would make for the rest of his time in office.
The war dragged on for two more years. On April 30, 1975, the North Vietnamese seized Saigon. The war was finally over. By its end, the United States had dropped more bombs on tiny Vietnam than had been dropped by all sides in all previous wars throughout history—three times as many explosives as were dropped by all sides in World War II. Unexploded ordnance blanketed the countryside. Nineteen million gallons of herbicide poisoned the environment. In the South, the United States had destroyed 9,000 of the 15,000 hamlets. In the North, it had rained destruction on all six industrial cities, leveling 28 of 30 provincial towns and 96 of 116 district towns. Le Duan, who took over the leadership of North Vietnam when Ho died in 1969, told a visiting journalist that the United States had threatened to use nuclear weapons on thirteen different occasions. The war’s human toll was staggering. More than 58,000 Americans had died in the fighting. But that paled in comparison to the number of Vietnamese killed and wounded. Robert McNamara would later tell students at American University that 3.8 million Vietnamese had died.107
The horrors of Cambodia exceeded those of Vietnam. In December 1972, Nixon instructed Kissinger, “I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?”108
Kissinger conveyed the orders to his assistant General Alexander Haig: “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?”109
The bombing continued until August 15, 1973, when Congress cut funding for the war. More than 100,000 sites were hit with more than 3 million tons of ordnance. The attacks left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead. The Cambodian economy lay in tatters. Inflation skyrocketed, especially food prices. Production dwindled. Rice production was barely one-sixth of prewar levels. Starvation was rampant. Not everyone suffered, though; the elite frolicked in opulence and splendor. Refugees flooded into Phnom Penh, creating a humanitarian crisis. Approximately 95 percent of all income came from the United States. By early 1974, U.S. humanitarian aid totaled $2.5 million compared with $516.5 million in military aid.
The Khmer Rouge, which had been a weak force prior to the bombing, used those atrocities to recruit in the same way that others would later use U.S. atrocities to recruit in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to Khmer Rouge officer Chhit Do:
Every time after there had been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched…. The ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on cooperating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children off to go with them…. Sometimes the bombs fell and hit little children, and their fathers would be all for the Khmer Rouge.110
The Khmer Rouge grew exponentially. Terrifying reports circulated of the fanaticism of its young cadre. In 1975, it seized power. It wasted little time in unleashing new horrors against its own people, leading to a genocide in which more than 1.5 million people perished on top of the half million or so who had been killed in the U.S. phase of the war. The United States, given its new alliance with China, Cambodia’s principal ally, maintained friendly relations with the brutal Pol Pot regime. In late 1975, Kissinger told the Thai foreign minister, “You should… tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way.”111