↑ "The proof that Nixon and Kissinger timed military withdrawal to the 1972 election and negotiated a “decent interval” comes from extraordinarily rich and undeniable sources—the Nixon tapes and the near-verbatim transcripts that NSC aides made of negotiations with foreign leaders."
↑ "the normal human reluctance to produce self-incriminating evidence"
↑ "What we can then tell the South Vietnamese—they’ve got a year without war to build up."
↑ "We can’t have it knocked over—brutally—to put it brutally—before the election"
↑ "a plan in which we will withdraw all of our forces from Vietnam on a schedule in accordance with our program, as the South Vietnamese become strong enough to defend their own freedom"
↑ "If the government is as unpopular as you seem to think, then the quicker our forces are withdrawn, the quicker it will be overthrown. And if it is overthrown after we withdraw, we will not intervene."
↑ "I think we could take, in my view, almost anything, frankly, that we can force on Thieu. South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway."
↑ "We’ve got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two."
↑ "I also think that Thieu is right, that our terms will eventually destroy him."
↑ "By 1971 [Kissinger] and Nixon would accept a 'decent interval' between U.S. disengagement and a North Vietnamese takeover in the south. Secret talks with Hanoi would allow Kissinger to manage this process, preserving the image of American strength and credibility."
↑ "Nor is it correct that all we sought was a 'decent interval' before a final collapse of Saigon. All of us who negotiated the agreement of October 12 were convinced that we had vindicated the anguish of a decade not by a 'decent interval' but by a decent settlement."
↑ "at times they speak of desiring no interval at all other than the duration necessary to quickly withdraw troops and POWs"
↑ "the tenor and content of their discussions seems much closer to support for the idea of a decent interval theory"
↑ "scholars [who] argue that Nixon and Kissinger’s strategy in Vietnam was never more than securing a ‘decent interval'"
↑ "simultaneously maintained a Plan A of further supporting Saigon and a Plan B of shielding Washington should their maneuvers prove futile."
↑ Yusuke, Tega (2012). “The Sino-US-Soviet Triangular Diplomacy and the Vietnam Peace Negotiations, 1971–1973: Between “Peace with Honor” and “Decent Interval””. The Frontier of International Relations (168): 117–130. doi:10.11375/kokusaiseiji.168_117.
