Based on newly released American and North Vietnamese documents and interviews, a premier historian of the Vietnam War tells the shocking hidden story of the peace process.
On April 30, 1975, when military helicopters pulled out the last US soldiers off the roof of Saigon's American embassy, the question lingered: had American and Vietnamese lives been lost in vain during the prolonged conflict? When the city fell shortly thereafter, the answer was clearly yes.
The Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, signed in 1973 and hailed as "peace with honor", by President Nixon, had not brought peace. Now, in a shocking expose of Henry Kissinger's back-channel negotiations, Larry Berman reveals that it also did not bring honor.
Kissinger had sealed many of the crucial documents concerning US negotiations in the final years of the war, negotiations that led to his sharing the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, based on newly declassified American documents and a complete North Vietnamese transcription of Kissinger's talks, Larry Berman offers the real story of the pace negotiation for the first time.
While Nixon said one thing in public and something very different in the private talks, Kissinger kept his own beliefs almost - but not quite - secret. There is only one word for America's actions toward its former ally, and toward its tens of thousands of soldiers who died in the final years of the war: betrayal.
