WASHINGTON -- President Richard Nixon had a 'mad man' strategy for dealing with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and placed the American military on a full nuclear alert for 29 days in 1969, author Seymour Hersh said Thursday.
Hersh, a former reporter for The New York Times, made the comment during a lengthy interview on the NBC 'Today' program while discussing his new book, 'The Price of Power,' in which he describes Henry Kissinger's career in the Nixon White House from 1969 to 1973.
Hersh also described Nixon's strategies and options during the height of the Vietnam War and the anti-war demonstrations at home.
'I should say that among the things it included was another message, which is they went to a full nuclear alert for 29 days in secrecy,' Hersh said. 'Def Con 1 they called it. They ordered everybody ready to go, nuclear weapons armed on the end of the runway, for 29 days and held them there.'
In the book, Hersh said Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman referred to Nixon's strategy of dealing with the North Vietnamese as 'the madman theory.'
'What I'm saying is it was a very serious bargaining strategy,' Hersh said. 'It has to be taken very seriously and that was Nixon saw that (President Lyndon) Johnson had not been steady and systematic in his approach to the pressure on North Vietnam.'
Hersh said that when Nixon became president 'he wanted to show the North that he was going to be a tough character. He was going to do all sorts of things. He was going to bomb secretly Cambodia without telling the American people or Congress.'
Hersh said Nixon was telling North Vietnam, ''Hey I am not a coolcustomer. I get mad and I may do things and I may go all the way.' And, in fact, in the summer of '69 he explicitly warned them three or four times through different intermediaries, he told the North Vietnamese that, 'If you don't come through by Nov. 1, give up in the South in 1969, I'm going to hit you with everything I have.''
