[5] The main negotiators of the agreement were US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese Politburo member Lê Đức Thọ.

The agreement's provisions were immediately and frequently broken by both North and South Vietnamese forces with no official response from the United States.

The street of the house was named after Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, who had commanded French forces in Vietnam after the Second World War.

[6] The agreement called for: Following the strong showing of anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, in March 1968 US President Lyndon B. Johnson halted bombing operations over the northern portion of North Vietnam (Operation Rolling Thunder), in order to encourage Hanoi (the perceived locus of the insurgency) to begin negotiations.

[7] Shortly thereafter, Hanoi agreed to discuss a complete halt of the bombing, and a date was set for representatives of both parties to meet in Paris.

Harlow and Henry Kissinger (who was friendly with both campaigns and guaranteed a job in either a Humphrey or Nixon administration in the upcoming election) separately predicted Johnson's "bombing halt."

Democratic senator George Smathers informed President Johnson that "the word is out that we are making an effort to throw the election to Humphrey.

"[9] According to presidential historian Robert Dallek, Kissinger's advice "rested not on special knowledge of decision making at the White House but on an astute analyst's insight into what was happening."

CIA intelligence analyst William Bundy stated that Kissinger obtained "no useful inside information" from his trip to Paris, and "almost any experienced Hanoi watcher might have come to the same conclusion."

While Kissinger may have "hinted that his advice was based on contacts with the Paris delegation," this sort of "self-promotion...is at worst a minor and not uncommon practice, quite different from getting and reporting real secrets.

North Vietnam insisted for three years that the agreement could not be concluded unless the United States agreed to remove South Vietnamese President Thiệu from power and replace him with someone more acceptable to Hanoi.

Young, contends that the contents of Hanoi's proposal were systematically distorted from their original plea to permit Thiệu's replacement, to what Kissinger propagated as a demand for his overthrow.

[18] On May 8, 1972, Nixon made a major concession to North Vietnam by announcing that the US would accept a cease-fire in place as a precondition for its military withdrawal.

In a meeting with Kissinger, Thọ significantly modified his bargaining line, allowing that the Saigon government could remain in power and that negotiations between the two South Vietnamese parties could develop a final settlement.

Consequently, the US brought great diplomatic pressure upon their South Vietnamese ally to sign the agreement even if the concessions Thiệu wanted could not be achieved.

To demonstrate his seriousness to Thiệu, Nixon ordered the heavy Operation Linebacker II bombings of North Vietnam in December 1972.

Fighting began almost immediately after the agreement was signed, due to a series of mutual retaliations, and by March 1973, full-fledged war had resumed.

Thiệu subsequently resigned, accusing the US of betrayal in a TV and radio address: At the time of the peace agreement the United States agreed to only replace equipment on a one-by-one basis.

According to Finnish historian Jussi Hanhimäki, due to triangular diplomacy which isolated it, South Vietnam was "pressurized into accepting an agreement that virtually ensured its collapse.