Disinformation in Stone’s ‘Nixon’

In his vicious attack on Henry Kissinger (letter, Feb. 4), Oliver Stone has graphically proved the central assertion made by many critics of his film “Nixon”--namely, that Stone’s purpose was not to enlighten people about the 37th president but instead to spread disinformation about the central events of his public life, especially the war in Vietnam.

The goal of Richard Nixon and Kissinger was to withdraw American forces from Vietnam in a manner that would permit the non-Communist government in Saigon to defend itself and to deter Hanoi’s persistent aggression. Winning the war by defeating North Vietnam militarily was never the issue. The issue was preserving the freedom of a population in South Vietnam on behalf of which 3 million young Americans, including Stone, ultimately fought and 58,000 died.

In January 1973, when the Paris Peace Accords were signed, a framework had been created within which these goals could have been achieved. When Saigon fell a little over two years later, it was not because of any deficiencies in the agreement or in the army of South Vietnam. By the spring of 1973 the Watergate crisis had deprived President Nixon of the political authority he would have needed to use air strikes to block Hanoi’s violations of the accords. Meanwhile Congress slashed aid to Saigon so brutally that by 1975 it was pathetically outgunned by Soviet-supplied forces in the north. Stone’s feverish “beast” metaphors, his unintentionally comic depiction of Nixon and indeed all the frantic revisionism of surviving elements of the ‘60s left cannot mask the fact that Saigon fell because the United States, weary after a decade of war, lost interest in keeping its promises.

DIMITRI K. SIMES, President

Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom

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JOHN H. TAYLOR, Exec. Dir.

Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation

Yorba Linda

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* I was glad to see Stone’s reply to Kissinger. I think Kissinger will be remembered as the diplomat who left his mark on Southeast Asia and Chile and bestowed on the American public nearly two decades of reactionary foreign policy.

I just returned from Cambodia and I saw one of those Kissinger marks on humanity. Between 1969 and 1973 the Nixon administration secretly dumped bombs on Cambodia the equivalent of five Hiroshimas. I saw the consequences when I went to view disabilities among the people.

What a price to pay for an honorable peace in Asia for America! Kissinger has absolutely no justification for having done this to a people, nor does he have the credibility he once had as a statesman, regardless of his Nobel Prize, which may have been prematurely bestowed. No, the truth is not on the cutting-room floor.

ANATOLI ILYASHOV

Los Angeles