DANIEL DAVIDSON, PEACE TALKS DELEGATE, 1968: We'd been in Paris since May of '68 and we got nowhere because in retrospect there was only one issue, was the United States going to get out and be defeated? And nobody was prepared to say "Yes, we've lost the war. It's over."

NARRATOR: Kissinger was an advisor to the negotiators who were authorized to provide him with privileged information.

DAVIDSON: Kissinger was in Paris in September of 1968. I thought he was intelligent, charming and just a good companion.

NARRATOR: But what Davidson and other members of the Johnson team did not know was that, on September 10, Kissinger had contacted the Nixon campaign by telephone.

DAVIDSON:We certainly did not know it. Kissinger shared his analysis of what was happening with them and he was probably by far the most brilliant mind available to them and the most sophisticated analyst.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, AUTHOR, THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER: Nixon recognizes talent when he sees it. He doesn't like Jews. He doesn't like intellectuals. But he loves Henry Kissinger because he knows what to do without being told. Richard Nixon himself said that he admired Henry Kissinger for his ability to supply secret information.

NARRATOR: Nixon was afraid that a peace accord in Paris might cost him the election.

HITCHENS: Kissinger notices something. Richard Nixon is prepared to undercut Mr. Johnson and Mr. Humphrey, the President and the Vice President and their negotiations in Paris.

WALTER ISAACSON, KISSINGER BIOGRAPHER: Kissinger had a very conspiratorial and sometimes manipulative character. He really liked to please various sides, he liked to ingratiate himself and in the Paris peace talks, he was willing to talk to both the Johnson/ Humphrey camp as well as the Nixon camp. Kissinger told the Nixon campaign that the Johnson team was close to an agreement with North Vietnam. Until the deal was final, the Johnson team wanted to keep the negotiations secret from South Vietnam.

NARRATOR: But Nixon had opened a secret channel of communication with South Vietnamese President Thieu. The go-between was Anna Chennault.

ANNA CHENNAULT: Information, information, information. And knowing that I travelled to Asia quite frequently and so messages from South Vietnam always come through me.

NARRATOR: In late September, Kissinger returned to Harvard. As the election approached, he kept in contact with both the negotiators in Paris and with members of the Nixon campaign.

CHENNAULT: He was getting information from both sides, he was probably giving information to both sides too. And I don't blame him. After all, he wasn't sure which side was going to win. Whoever wins, he's going to go to their side.

DAVIDSON: By the way, Kissinger expected to work for whoever the next President was. He offered me a job in the next administration in September of 1968.

INTERVIEWER: Really?

DAVIDSON: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: Independent of the President's name?

DAVIDSON: Right.

NARRATOR: On October 31, Henry Kissinger called the Nixon campaign to say that there had been a breakthrough in the talks. "I've got some important information," said Kissinger. "They're breaking out the champagne in Paris."

Twelve hours later, the announcement was made. The bombing of North Vietnam would cease and final negotiations would begin. The prospect of peace gave Humphrey a last-minute surge in the polls.

DAVIDSON: And then finally, just a few days before the election, we were moving to substantive negotiations for the first time and there were great hopes at that time.

NARRATOR: But just three days before the election, President Thieu defied Johnson and refused to join the peace negotiations.

DAVIDSON: Certainly one reason is the advice they got from Nixon's people. It's clear that they were being told to hold out and not go to Paris.

NARRATOR: FBI surveillance of the Nixon Camp's contacts with the South Vietnamese President confirm this. "Hold on," he was told. "We're gonna win."

Without the participation of South Vietnam, the peace talks collapsed. Richard Nixon won the popular vote by a margin of less than 1%.

HITCHENS: We know further Mr. Kissinger's opinion of Mr. Nixon was very low. Why is he suddenly doing this tremendous favor during an election campaign for someone for whom he has nothing but contempt?

INTERVIEWER: Why?

HITCHENS: It's in the hope of a political reward.

NIXON (INTRODUCING KISSINGER IN 1968): Dr Henry Kissinger has agreed to come with the White House staff as the assistant to the president elect for national security affairs.

END OF EXCERPT #1

NARRATOR: Less than a month into Nixon's Presidency, he and Kissinger began planning an attack against North Vietnamese "sanctuaries" in neighboring Cambodia.

WILLIAM SHAWCROSS, AUTHOR, SIDESHOW: The Americans starting bombing Cambodia in 1969, soon after Nixon came into office, because they had a problem. The problem was that whole areas of eastern Cambodia - which was in theory a neutral country, not on the side of the North Vietnamese or the South Vietnamese - whole areas of the country had been taken over by the North Vietnamese communists...and they were using them as staging areas and bases for their attacks on the South Vietnamese armies in South Vietnam and upon the American army in South Vietnam.

GENERAL ALEXANDER HAIG, JR., FORMER KISSINGER AIDE: Cambodia, Thailand, they were gonna overrun the whole peninsula...

ELIZABETH BECKER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: This became one of those the great myths of the Vietnam war was that the key to success was getting rid of the Vietnamese communist bases on the Cambodian side of the border.

NARRATOR: Cambodia's enigmatic Prince Sihanouk had managed to keep his country out of the Vietnam War. By turning a blind eye to the sanctuaries he hoped to avoid taking sides and so prevent an open violation of Cambodia's neutrality.

SHAWCROSS: And this led to all sorts of problems, because taking the war secretly into a neutral country meant you had to destroy the actual records, or to conceal them very effectively, to lie in fact.

BECKER: Well one motivation was for the secrecy was because it was illegal, I mean that's simple.

NARRATOR: Under the U.S. Constitution, bombing Cambodia was an act of war that would require the approval of the U.S. Congress.

BECKER: I don't know that Congress would have allowed it. The last thing that Congress wanted was an expansion of the war.

NARRATOR: In February, 1969, in a secret meeting on Airforce One, Kissinger and his Aide Alexander Haig met with Air Force Colonel Ray Sitton to plan for the secret bombing of Cambodia.

SEYMOUR HERSH, AUTHOR, THE PRICE OF POWER: What Kissinger wanted done was they ask Sitton to find a way to mask the bombing so nobody would know what was going on and Sitton did. He found a way.

SHAWCROSS: The initial secret bombing of Cambodia in 1969 was called Operation Menu. And each of the targets were different or supposed to be different North Vietnamese bases in Cambodia. And they were called after names of meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack.

NARRATOR: Starting with "Breakfast," Kissinger approved a plan to conceal the Cambodian bombing missions from military records.

Under this "duel reporting system," B52 pilots would be pre assigned targets in South Vietnam.

In mid-flight, their planes were re-routed by ground radar stations and guided to secret targets in Cambodia.

The returning pilots would report that their bombs had been dropped on South Vietnam.

Cambodia would never appear in the record.