Precedents and Back-Channel Games, 1968–1970

This chapter traces the development of the Nixon administration’s foreign policy structure, early back-channel overtures to the Soviets, the evolution of bureaucratic rivalries within the administration, and the early development of the Channel between Kissinger and Dobrynin. In a vicious and destructive cycle, leaks by officials of highly classified documents deepened Nixon’s longtime hatred of the press, exacerbated his fears, and reaffirmed the use of back channels to shelter sensitive negotiations. Before his narrow victory in the November 1968 election, Nixon used two back channels to message the Soviets. The first overture and the closest precedent to the Kissinger-Dobrynin channel developed during the presidential campaign and went active immediately after the election, when Nixon dispatched his longtime aide and personal friend Robert Ellsworth to make contact with Ambassador Dobrynin and Soviet chargé d’affaires Yuri Tcherniakov. The second channel, between Kissinger and a KGB intelligence officer, Boris Sedov, functioned informally during the presidential campaign and petered out shortly after Nixon’s inauguration.