“Henry Kissinger – Dec. 19, 1972, phone call with Marder”

Source: “Henry Kissinger – Dec. 19, 1972, phone call with Marder” Date: Dec 19, 1972 Collection: The Murrey Marder Papers at the National Security Archive Jul 20, 2017

Editorial Analysis

Original analysis by the DriftSeas editorial desk. The complete primary-source document, transcribed from the National Security Archive scan, appears in full below.

A furious diplomat in the waning days of Vietnam

The transcript records a December 19, 1972, phone call between National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and Murrey Marder, a journalist who was covering the administration’s Vietnam policy. The call was prompted by a Washington Post editorial titled “The Great Charade,” which accused Kissinger of engineering 126 draft‑board changes to benefit the South‑Vietnamese government. In the conversation Kissinger erupts, branding the story a “blatant, bald‑faced lie” and insisting that only a handful of issues were ever raised. He also acknowledges, with a mix of sarcasm and bitterness, that the editorial made his earlier meetings with the paper’s columnist Phil Geylin worthwhile.

The immediate context was the intense domestic backlash against the Nixon administration’s handling of the war. By late 1972 the Pentagon’s “Vietnamization” program had stalled, the Easter Offensive in the north had just been repelled, and the United States was negotiating a cease‑fire in Paris. The Washington Post, under Ben Bradlee, was publishing a series of exposés that alleged secret diplomatic maneuvers and manipulation of the draft to shield South‑Vietnamese officials from prosecution. The “126 changes” claim was a shorthand for a broader accusation that Kissinger was using his diplomatic leverage to rewrite the terms of the war in favor of the Saigon regime, even as the American public grew weary of the conflict.

Kissinger’s outburst reveals several layers of his personality and political calculus. First, his language—uncharacteristically profane and combative—signals that he felt personally attacked, not merely politically embarrassed. The phrase “sons of bitches” underscores how the adviser perceived the journalists as conspiratorial adversaries, a view that aligns with his later reputation for treating the press as an adversary rather than a partner. Second, his insistence on the impossibility of “126 issues” being raised in a single day betrays a strategic need to control the narrative: by minimizing the scope of any alleged negotiations, he aimed to undercut the credibility of the Post’s story and protect the fragile diplomatic tracks he was juggling in Berlin, Shanghai, and Moscow.

The call also illuminates the internal tension between the administration’s public messaging and its secret diplomacy. Kissinger’s remark that he was “not supposed to talk” to Marder hints at the unofficial, off‑the‑record channels through which the National Security Adviser often communicated. Yet his willingness to continue the conversation suggests a calculated risk: by feeding a trusted journalist a glimpse of his irritation, he might shape future coverage while still maintaining plausible deniability.

In the broader sweep of the Vietnam peace process, this episode is a micro‑cosm of the Nixon‑Kissinger effort to manage both a war that was increasingly unwinnable and a home front that was demanding accountability. The Washington Post’s investigative push contributed to the erosion of public trust that eventually led Congress to curtail executive war powers in the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Kissinger’s defensive posture here foreshadows his later attempts to rewrite history through memoirs and selective releases of documents.

The legacy of this phone call lies in its illustration of how high‑level policymakers reacted when investigative journalism pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the war. It shows that even the most seasoned diplomat could be rattled when an editorial threatened to cast his diplomatic achievements as a “charade.” The episode also serves as a reminder that the battle over Vietnam was fought not only on battlefields in Southeast Asia but also in the newsroom, where the press could force the administration to confront uncomfortable truths.

For scholars, the transcript offers a rare, unfiltered glimpse of Kissinger’s tone and rhetoric at a critical juncture. It underscores the importance of oral histories and contemporaneous recordings in reconstructing the emotional tenor behind official decisions. The call’s raw anger and sarcasm add depth to the more measured diplomatic dispatches that dominate the archival record, reminding us that policy is made by humans who, in moments of pressure, can be as volatile as the events they seek to control.