It’s Over Mr. President. It’s Over.

One can see CIA Director Bill Colby (left) arguing in favor of continuing the war in Vietnam at the crucial meeting on 28 April 1975. On President Gerald Ford’s left-hand side is Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and on his right-hand side is State Secretary Henry Kissinger (photo: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library).

Yesterday, a president was publicly disgraced and thrown out of the White House, because he didn’t understand that “No security guarantees” means “No security guarantees” and he didn’t understand that he is losing on the battlefield. This reminds me of a similar event during the Vietnam War. The CIA was unable to understand that the U.S. was losing on the battlefield. In April 1975, at a White House meeting, President Gerald Ford, State Secretary Henry Kissinger, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and Director of Central Intelligence Bill Colby discussed the fact that the Vietnamese troops were taking more and more territory. CIA Director Bill Colby was arguing for regrouping the forces, so that the U.S., or the South Vietnamese, would then be able to force the North Vietnamese (as they called them) to retreat. However, Colby was confronted at the meeting by Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, who said: “It’s over Mr. President. It’s over.”

Bill Colby was unhappy with Jim Schlesinger’s conclusion, and wrote a book, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America's Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam, which was finalized in autumn 1989. He argued that victory had been possible. I visited Bill Colby at his home in Georgetown in early November 1989 to discuss Swedish-CIA relations. I showed my new book on US Maritime Strategy, while Bill Colby pushed for his new book: Lost Victory. He left me alone in his living room library and went out to the pharmacy. When he got back, we discussed primarily the current situation in Europe, not Vietnam.

Almost four years later, the Peace Research Institute in Oslo had invited relevant people, including Jim Schlesinger, to a nuclear-weapons conference. In the bar the first night, Jim Schlesinger explained what had happened at that crucial meeting in the White House. Colby had argued in favor of regrouping the forces, but there were actually no high-quality forces left to regroup, Jim Schlesinger said. “We had lost on the battlefield”, and at this April meeting, he confronted Bill Colby and made the important statement: “It’s over Mr. President. It’s over.” Henry Kissinger did not say anything, but after the meeting he went up to Jim Schlesinger, put his arm over his shoulders, and told him about his view. In the bar in Rjukan outside Oslo, Schlesinger continued, while acting as Henry Kissinger, he put his arm over my shoulders, and said: “I totally agree with you, but I don’t think you should have told the President”.

According to Henry Kissinger, to tell the President at this stage would make it too difficult for him to digest the defeat. You had to be more cautious, and this custom of protecting a president or a prime minister from the truth, will easily make him or her live in “bubble”. The president will not be able to understand when the war is over, because you cannot tell him the bad news. He will live in his own “bubble”, as the Europeans and the Ukrainian President do today. They try to get the U.S. onboard to offer “security guarantees” with some U.S. forces in Ukraine, but this will almost by necessity lead to a US-Russian “shooting war”. It will be a “gambling with World War III”, as the U.S. President said yesterday, and that is why the Ukrainian President was thrown out of the White House. He and the Europeans are living in a “bubble”. It is tragic to see what now happens. It will end very badly. “It’s over Mr. President. It’s over”.