Secret Senate Sessions on Laos; Retreat at Snuol; Pinning Laos on Kennedy; the Pentagon Papers—“This Is Treason,” Kissinger’s Distancing (“I Didn’t Know the Thing Existed”), and Appealing to Lyndon Johnson; Kissinger’s Secret Trip to China; Announcing Nixon’s Visit to China and the New Public Mood; More Secret Vietnam Talks and the Impasse over Thieu; the Upcoming Rigged South Vietnamese Election; and Bypassing State on Berlin

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter discusses closed Senate sessions on the secret U.S. war in Laos, the leak of the Top Secret Pentagon Papers study on Vietnam, and the Nixon administration’s responses to it. To distance himself from the leak and the leaker, Daniel Ellsberg, Kissinger claimed he never knew the study was completed and never had a copy of it. The administration tried to get Lyndon Johnson to denounce publication of the Papers but he refused to do so or to persuade others. Kissinger advised “hollering treason” at their critics. The chapter also discusses Kissinger’s secret trip to China to prepare for the China summit and Nixon’s announcement of the trip and his acceptance of China’s invitation for him to visit. Plus it discusses a meeting between Kissinger and the North Vietnamese in Paris and Hanoi’s continuing demand that the administration remove South Vietnamese President Thieu. And it takes up Berlin negotiations and a South Vietnamese election.</jats:p>