Journey into the history books

Lord, meanwhile, remained seated with everyone else on the president's plane, not to mar the visit's establishing shot. Yet his inclusion in the Nixon-Mao meeting barely three hours later secured his place in the diplomatic breakthrough, whose drama Lord would "run out of objectives in describing".

Calling Mao's style of conversing "self-deprecating", "casual and episodic" yet "purposeful", Lord said:"Rather than using elegant, long phrases like Zhou did, he would use analogies, metaphors and similes－brief-brushstroke comments that you had to sometimes interpret or decipher... We soon realized that he was outlining, with those broad and brief brushstrokes, the strategic policy guidelines which Zhou would then elaborate in great detail."

"Clearly, Nixon and Mao recognized each other's vision and courage in taking this important step," Lord said, pointing to Mao's decision to meet Nixon immediately upon the latter's arrival as a deliberate show of endorsement, not to be missed by anyone.

Pictures of the meeting hit the front pages of all the world's great newspapers, but Lord, sitting beside Kissinger on the picture's far right, was missing.

"Nixon and Kissinger told the Chinese: 'Please cut out Mr Lord from all of the photographs and keep secret that he was at this meeting'," Lord said. "The Chinese clearly must have been puzzled by this, but they readily went along with the request. I, of course, was disappointed."

But he understood the rationale, he said."They figured that it was humiliating enough that the national security adviser was with the president at this historic meeting, but the secretary of state was not. Now to have a third, younger person there was just too much."

The reason behind the exclusion, Lord said, was that "Kissinger and above all Nixon were suspicious of the State Department". "Nixon felt that they were more bureaucratic and incapable of bold moves. They were also very worried about leaks."

And out of the same concern, none of the US reporters were allowed to cover the meeting. The dissatisfaction, palpable though it was, had done little to take away from "the magic" to quote Platt－of the opening banquet that night, hosted by Zhou and held at the Great Hall of the People, whose size "made one feel like an ant in a movie set".