Word: haldemans
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...Haldeman reports that "there were several overtures by the Soviets to the U.S. for a joint venture in the surgical strike. Nixon turned the Soviets down, but was then informed, to his horror, that the Soviets intended to go ahead on their own." Haldeman says U.S. diplomacy cleverly defused the danger. Kissinger first sought to signal the Russians that the U.S. might actually come to China's aid. He did so, says Haldeman, through Walter J. Stoessel Jr., U.S. Ambassador to Poland, who astonished Chinese diplomats at a party in Warsaw by suggesting that the U.S. wanted to resume...
...Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Using the same ploy, he sent out a deliberately uncoded message, as though by accident, estimating the number of Russian civilians who would die as the result of any Soviet attack on China. The various U.S. tactics had their effect, Haldeman says. U.S. photos soon showed the Soviet nuclear divisions withdrawing from the border...
...Haldeman's other previously unreported story tells of a new Soviet threat in Cuba. He reports that Kissinger rushed into his office in September 1970 with pictures of soccer fields being built at Cienfuegos. "Those soccer fields could mean war, Bob," an excited Kissinger is supposed to have said. Understandably, Haldeman asked, "Why?" The reply: "Cubans play baseball. Russians play soccer." The meaning, according to Haldeman, was that eight years after the dangerous Kennedy-Khrushchev showdown over Soviet missiles in Cuba, the Russians were doing it again...
...Soviet aim, according to Haldeman, was to position "mediumrange missiles" within range of U.S. nuclear command bases. DEW-line defenses that guard against Russian attack from the north would be unable to warn of a Soviet strike from the south. It was Kissinger who blocked this threat, contends Haldeman, by calling in Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin and telling him the U.S. knew about the missiles but did not want another missile crisis. If the Russians desisted, nothing would be said publicly and detente could continue. Construction of the base was abandoned by the Russians...
Kissinger agreed last week that the Soviets had considered a nuclear strike at the Chinese but denied that the Russians had asked the U.S. to join in. "Nothing like that happened," he said. As for Haldeman, "What does he know about it? I have just finished the chapter in my own book on China and have gone over the papers, and that never took place." Kissinger said that there was some tension over a Russian base in Cuba but it was far less dramatic or ominous than Haldeman's account portrays-and was nothing like another missile crisis. Haldeman...