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Safe Keeing

By Brent Scowcroft
January/February 2000
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Essay
The (Ab)normalization of U.S.-Chinese Relations
Patrick Tyler

Only Nixon could go to China, but even the architect of America's opening to the world's most populous communist power had to leave full normalization of U.S.-Chinese ties to his heirs. Jimmy Carter knew when he took office that he would take the final difficult step. But no one imagined that the China breakthrough would come as a result of all-out civil war between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose competition reached startling depths. At every turn down a very long road, momentous decisions on Taiwan and Cold War strategy jostled with bitter personal rivalries.

To the Editor:

In his fascinating account of U.S.-China normalization, Patrick Tyler makes a series of statements relating to the documentary record of the Ford administration that requires correction ("The (Ab)normalization of U.S.-Chinese Relations," September/October 1999).

First, I was not Henry Kissinger's deputy at that time. Kissinger was secretary of state and I was national security adviser, so he had no authority whatsoever over the disposition of presidential records in the White House.

Second, I did not "order" empty safes as I left office. There was -- and is -- a standard, nondiscretionary procedure in the White House for document disposition. In the National Security Council (NSC), presidential documents (which were in the NSC files because I, as national security adviser, was a presidential staff member) were sent to the presidential library, and NSC documents were sent to the Federal Repository in Warrenton, Virginia. My only role was to ensure compliance with that compulsory procedure, which was the same process that governed the end of the Carter, Reagan, and Bush administrations. To the best of my knowledge, there was no shredding of documents destined for the presidential library or the Federal Repository.

BRENT SCOWCROFT

National Security Adviser to Presidents Ford and Bush

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