Nearly 30 years after the United States and North Vietnam negotiated an end to the war in Southeast Asia, a UC Davis political scientist has documented that the peace process was a sham contrived by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to continue the conflict.

In "No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam," Larry Berman, political science professor and director of the University of California's Washington Center, details the negotiations to end the war and the motivations behind them.

"There was a concerted effort by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon to keep entire records of Paris Peace Accords from the American public," Berman says. "Scholars like myself have been working for years to understand the political and historical record and its ramifications."

Berman has found that the American president and his assistant for national security affairs had no intention of disengaging from the war. Because Nixon wanted to continue bombing without Congress cutting off the funding, he had Kissinger negotiate a deal he expected the North Vietnamese would violate.

Although Kissinger has shielded his personal records of the negotiations that led to the 1973 peace agreement, Berman unearthed other sources that tell the story. These include a complete North Vietnamese account of the secret talks and a cache of recently declassified documents.

A presidential scholar and author of two other books on Vietnam, "Planning a Tragedy" and "Lyndon Johnson's War," Berman will be featured in an October "Sworn To Secrecy" series on the History Channel.

Editor's note: A review copy of Berman's book may be obtained by calling Jenny S. Dworkin of Simon & Schuster at (212) 632-4994.