President Richard Nixon warns South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu in a private letter that his refusal to sign any negotiated peace agreement would render it impossible for the United States to continue assistance to South Vietnam. Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had been working behind the scenes in secret negotiations with North Vietnamese […]

President Nixon announces that 70,000 U.S. troops will leave South Vietnam over the next three months, reducing U.S. troop strength there by May 1 to 69,000 troops.

Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey criticizes President Richard Nixon, saying that it was taking longer for President Nixon to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam than it did to defeat Hitler.

In a surprise announcement, President Richard Nixon says that he will visit Beijing, China, before May 1972. The news, issued simultaneously in Beijing and the United States, stunned the world. Nixon reported that he was visiting in order “to seek normalization of relations between the two countries and to exchange views on questions of concern […]

Four miles south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), about 500 U.S. troops of the 1st Brigade, 5th Mechanized Division turn over Fire Base Charlie 2 to Saigon troops, completing the transfer of defense responsibilities for the border area. On the previous day, nearby Fire Base Alpha 4 had been turned over to the South Vietnamese. […]

In a major engagement near the Demilitarized Zone, some 1,500 North Vietnamese attack the 500-man South Vietnamese garrison at Fire Base Fuller. Despite U.S. B-52 raids dropping 60 tons of bombs on June 21 and a 1,000-man reinforcement on June 24, the South Vietnamese had to abandon the base since a North Vietnamese bombardment had […]

The New York Times begins publishing portions of the 47-volume Pentagon analysis of how the U.S. commitment in Southeast Asia grew over a period of three decades. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst who had become an antiwar activist, had stolen the documents. After unsuccessfully offering the documents to prominent opponents of the war […]

In support of the Nixon Administration’s conduct of the war, a group named the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace declares that it represents the majority of the U.S. veterans that had served in Southeast Asia, and calls the protests and congressional testimony of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War “irresponsible.”