Conversation 111-002

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

Yeah.

I'm very grateful for

I don't know if this is a great idea, but it does much about us.

We do this because we grow in this country, so we must be doing something right.

But it's been my conviction, one that's shared, I know, by the men in this room, and certainly shared by all the people, to talk about productivity.

You can't talk about it simply in terms of management.

You certainly can't talk about it in terms of stockholders.

You can't talk about it in terms of decisions that are made by government.

But it has to be always cast in terms of cooperation between management

We've got to all work together.

We have some times when there will be a necessary difference of opinion, actually, between labor and management on one side, management and government, labor and government, and so on and so on.

We all know, too, and I've heard many in the room, and in the Trump State, whenever productivity goes up, everybody gets a little bit of it.

And it's good for all of us.

What particularly pleases me is that the real power of American labor is in this room.

I also want you to know that we're not having you here for the purposes of being here.

The cosmetics that are involved and like that, we want your views, we want your advice.

just as we want the views of management people.

And out of that, we look to make decisions that will, in the long run, be best for the whole country, but particularly for all the people who work for us in this country, as well as those who invest in the rest.

There will be a few more and a lot of other changes to be done.

I'm glad to welcome Pete Brannan, who is one of your colleagues as our Secretary of Labor.

I want all of you to know that his door to the case

George Shultz was Secretary of Labor, and going back to the Eisenhower administration when Jim Hitchell was there, and Jim Hodgson as well, for those matters that had to do with the Labor Department.

But I also want to emphasize to me, when we had our talk with Ian David, that when matters involve this country, the national policy and so forth, that I think that there has to be also a very direct relationship between the President of the United States and the door of his White House is open, too.

And it doesn't mean we go around our cabinet officers.

We understand that.

You'll know everything goes on.

But it does mean that at times you have things you want to discuss, why you come and discuss it with us or with other cabinet officers and the rest.

Of course, George Jones, who is especially responsible for his job in the directorial re-organization of The Anonymous Man.

You know, it's rather, at least, I say, easy to work with.

Don't let that strong voice fool you.

I hope it is.

We particularly...

Let me get the inclusion poll.

And Pete, I've talked to you about this.

We want recommendations.

All of you who are personnel in the government.

We've been going over foreign services and finances the rest of the time.

We're interested in recommendations.

and not just in the labor department, but in other departments of government.

We'd like to see, and I think this is something that maybe we've missed, and this is true of all administrations, not just the folks down here, but this administration, we want to try to be representatives of labor, or labor in other places, so that's a labor spot or something.

It's like, say, taking a cab to a position.

When we came in four years ago, everybody, housing and urban development, blah, blah, blah.

That's a black spot.

Well, that's the housing department, the Department of Urban Development, the EPD.

It's not a black spot or a white spot or a desolate or conscious spot.

It's one that solves the problems of housing and urban development.

They will represent all the statements in society.

And so it is as far as what is in here.

We feel that the voice of labor, organized labor, and you are organized labor, should be heard and ought to be heard, not simply in the very special matters that involve or involve labor, but in the broader context.

I'll just conclude by saying that we particularly appreciate in this office, I know, the fact that the voice of organized labor

where national events, national security, and public policies are concerned.

But we've had to make tough decisions.

You've been there.

I'm very grateful for that.

I hope we don't give you too many more tough ones.

I hope we can look to a period to keep the press warm and go on to other things.

But back to organized labor, time and time again,

has, with very few exceptions, stood up and spoken up without even being asked or before any other interest.

That's been a very, very good thing to me.

In fact, without your help, we couldn't have made some of the tough decisions.

They wouldn't have stuck.

Congress wouldn't have stuck with us.

We were able to make them.

And we're just trying to do the best we can.

Now, as a matter of fact, I was reminded you were already receiving $1,000 in that right, sir.

Yes, sir.

And that's true, it is true, destiny.

I didn't see that, but I've had a reception person in the White House today.

How do you pay that?

Well, most of them get paid adequately.

Well, I tried it, you know, to get each of you to come in very soon.

At least one of you is already going to know all this stuff.

But I don't know if we have this or not.

This is old.

It's a rather nice little memento.

So we'll get those out and you can take them home and give them to your wives.

You know, I've often found that it's much better to be good with a person's wife when you're in the United States, you understand, instead of your wife.

So you can say, Mrs. Nixon, I want you to have a little meadow.

Oh, it looks very expensive.

You don't have to report it for that much.

For those who serve without a pay, you'll at least get an entry.

Thanks very much.

If you have something to talk to me about, just let us know.

We'll enjoy seeing you.

Thank you.

Before you, uh...

I was gonna sum up a little bit, and then I was gonna... That's some good, great comments, too, gentlemen.

I would ask that you take a good look at it.

The person who I support is in some part responsible.

I bring the facts about your gun to the very program.

That's the first problem.

I'm not saying that's the only thing.

That's America.

But to get around to that part of it, look at it good.

And that's what the economy is.

It's what the economics is.

They didn't know what's up and coming over.

I want to see it a little bit, just a little bit.

I'm afraid it will always take some work to see it a little bit.

The art work is stressful.

An example now, for example, we have a few more American cities.

and move on to the rust and grain situation.

But in the rust and grain situation, the tanker market is going to be flooded.

Supply and demand is the bottom.

We could do a hell of a lot better as to the earning capacity and build up a little plus balance payments.

So when you get around to that, Mr. Secretary, just live hard on it and remember that we now have a program, thanks to this administration, that made that very clear.

Every place I've been, the public and private, they know about this.

Whereas it requires some assistance for the incentives to develop, it does allow us to track the considerable interest in the financial world outside of America.

It's the first time I've been interested in talking about it moving in to Mexico.

Now, any fresh, direct or indirect position from the system in keeping with what the Mexican-American program is called for will to some degree affect that confidence.

So I would just make that one big point.

It's not only Tim O'Rourke.

I might just say on that call, there are quite a few people taking a hard look, and I thought, oh, I'll get you.

I ran out of time.

I know for a very specific point, and it is very tough.

budget year to try to keep things under control, but at the same time, the maritime effort has on people's minds, and I'm sure there won't be any basic things taken about it, but there may be some things that we'll have to do, but a lot of them, I don't trust.

But as an individual who was probably representing people less affected by all these situations, we're just pretty, pretty friendly around the world.

We don't have the same kind of situation.

But the tough thing for me,

Now it's cool down to a degree, and I think that the position enjoys many candidates.

But my point of view indicates where it has been from the later moments of my career.

It also sets forth where, from the point of later, it had to be.

But there are other areas that I think should be given immediate attention.

Here in Pat Gray House, for example, excuse me, but some of the people said, Gary, that it's just personnel alone who has to die.

The clearing, the switchback, it puts a great fix on the global civilization.

It hacked the situation up.

And in many cases, I don't know, there was no real issue.

And of course, I think that's the point that wrapped the local unions probably more than anything else.

But one of the great factors.

And the other one is that the one that's been talked about here, and we've talked about it publicly and everything, that's the question we've put in there.

And that is, is it right or is it wrong?

Why don't we look here for a formal picture.

John, turn that way and you might go get a formal picture.

I know.

I'll put another one tomorrow.

I'll put another one tomorrow, too.

This will be a very...

for a very brief meeting and purpose.

I'm sure, again, it's a vision of the new eyes of the world, the eyes of the nation.

Let me tell you why I didn't announce it.

It must have been very brief in my earlier discussion.

It must be very brief.

and by the, for example, the reading of the legislature, which is right afterwards, by, will only be pro forma like this, and then we're going to have a legislative reading against it.

Tomorrow, it looks like this is anxious.

I was starting to say that I will announce at 10 o'clock during the reading of the talk on television, including today.

I will read to you here now.

This agreement will be formally signed by the parties participating in the Paris conference.

on Vietnam on January 27, 1973.

And second, at the International Congress Center in Paris, the ceasefire would take effect 2400 grand each meeting time on January 27, 1973.

And the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam expressed the hope of this agreement to ensure stable peace in Vietnam and contribute to the preservation of lasting peace in the China and Southeast Asia.

That is the announcement.

We made it head on.

Washington.

Now, what?

This agreement does, and what the protocols, which are virtuous and fairly important, is to accomplish all the goals that I have announced in January.

You remember the report.

At first, that there had to be a return of all of our prisoners to war.

I said that there had to be an international supervised ceasefire.

I said there should be a withdrawal of all American forces and there should be a right on the people of South Vietnam to determine their own future without outside interference.

All of those things have to be met.

As far as the

Implementation is concerned.

The flight is in effect in terms of prisoners who distance 60 days from statics.

All prisoners who have been interned in almost the United States Council.

If it is 60 days from statics, all American forces will be in conflict and enthroned.

And in terms of the international supervising fire, we will cease fire at 7 o'clock Washington time.

In terms of what it means for Cambodia and Laos and so forth,

I think it's a, let me, let me say this, at this point, since this is a subject that will come up within a leaders' meeting, that we're going to probably have to answer it.

I think it would be well for any to take just a moment on Cambodia and Laos, because the Vietnam thing is all I'm really going to talk about tonight.

There's, there's very scintillating discurs.

that Vietnam has some understanding regarding Cambodia.

Now, you've got to understand that Cambodia allows for a lot of interest, and they're quite important.

Go ahead if you're taking that on.

The major thing is that it's essential not to talk about that trip.

not so that it has to get us to always when the market agreement comes out.

But that won't be the agreement either.

But we have strong reason to believe that there will be a ceasefire in Laos within 15 days of the agreement in Vietnam, so by around February 10th.

The two parties there are already negotiating, and we have, as I said, a strong reason to believe which can be jeopardized only by an excess of talk here.

Secondly, with respect to Cambodia, the situation is more complex because there are factions there that are not always in control of the parties involved.

But we believe that if de facto ceasefire will occur in Spain, which will be a little bit messier than the one in Laos, over an incomparable period of time after the agreement is signed by the Secretary of State on Saturday,

but the degree of formality of respect that allows ceasefire is greater than the degree of formality that the Cambodians ceasefire, but we have

on the status of their state of the vote.

These are un-Chinese.

I use the term China.

That's what we're fixing.

And, of course, there are other forces.

It's been very, very important.

Oh, a couple of other points should be made.

After a great deal of political argument, the government of South Vietnam, the general and the president of the U.S. in particular, are totally for it, and will make those statements.

I presume they will have a practical reason already to say that.

The U.S. is going on television to have another appeal, Mr. President.

I have made a statement here that he goes, of course, and that is what has been told us that he does.

That is what I can do to express that .

Now as far as the problems are concerned, we have to be aware of it.

between now and the ceasefire, there will be an environment that both sides will be trying to grab as much as they can.

When I say there will be, I assume that because that happens in all ceasefires, after the ceasefire, that there will be inevitably, in this kind of guerrilla warfare, where you don't have a line, there will be violations.

And that's why the supervisory body is so important, which was, how many, 11?

760, Mr. President.

I would want to be one of them.

Well, actually, it's 1160 in the international valley, and in addition to that, there is a sort of island commission from which we serve, which has 3,300 members, of which we supply a board, and after we drop out of it, there'll be

The supervisory force composed of the two being the lead parties, which has about 1,600.

So the total supervisory mechanism will range from 3,300 to 4,600.

And it's really distributed over the country in a very effective way.

Now, whatever limitations the supervisory bodies have had in the past, the international force is four times larger than any that has operated there before.

The two-party commission never existed at all.

And the machinery by which they operate, including provisions for minority reform, gives us a better chance to get something done that the treaties extend.

One little note of interest is that...

I'm sure you can share it with the other side.

Probably get out.

The question is always, when do you believe that it was going to break?

And, well, it's just fantastic that as I formed the leaders in January and January of the first meeting,

After, of course, 10 days of negotiations in December, the negotiations agreed to code that money, not simply on details, but code.

In our case, the meetings were in Stonewall.

It was obvious that they were going to do that.

It was then that we resolved the main policy, and then on the 30th of December, they had our conditions to return to Congress.

The technical talks began on the 2nd.

Henry arrived on the 8th of January and began his thoughts.

He was there for more than he said.

He was there for four or five days.

The, uh, my talks, the, uh, talks that he'd given itself resumed at the 8th.

Let's see, on Monday.

That was Monday.

His birthday was brutal.

As Bill knows, Henry's message on the first day made us all think, here we go again.

First day ain't no good.

It was a total absolute deadlock.

So, at the President's instructions I told them, I sent them a message that night that I would have to leave on Wednesday night.

So then, on the next day, which happened to be the President's birthday, he made a very major advance on the two outstanding issues in his agreement, and they began to

to work with great energy on the technical agreement.

And up to then, they had had an unbeceivable head in charge of the technical agreement, and they put their vice minister in charge, and I asked Bill Sullivan to discuss the technical thing.

So that started moving on the line.

And then it happened to be the president's birthday, and I sent him a cable saying,

It's broken her heart before, but it's maintained another day or two.

She's going to have a break, so he said, well, let's not get too optimistic.

But if it is, I just will take it with another hand.

Thank you.

And by the end of that we had settled almost the entire agreement.

And all the principles with respect to the protocol.

But then having a set of principles and details and then we worked out the location of the heat, logistics and directions for the heat and most of that was done last week.

So when I arrived last night, there were, with respect to the agreement itself, only three things to be done, which we settled very quickly this morning.

I mean, with respect to the protocol, there were three things to be done.

And then a great deal of the surroundings, Frankfurt, the international conference, and so forth, was one of the most favorably determined and settled things.

Well, for example, they had another big issue in St. Louis is that today, I thought, because of President Johnson's death, at that point, it would be a modest opportunity to take a little more time.

And so I sent a message over to Henry, and I just pointed out that the Muppets were there.

And also, I thought it might help a little with the therapy with the South.

He said that they're so determined to settle, he better go.

And they didn't shake him a bit.

When they were ready, they were ready.

They just wanted to leave.

They couldn't have kept him from settling today, right?

Yeah.

I must say their confidence that we had with that, they said the buoy is a negotiation show, but in fact, last night,

that we finished the English and Vietnamese texts.

They took the English texts home with them and locked them in the safe, lest we take out a page and slip in another one.

Let me just summarize and sign off.

It's quite interesting to note that without the success of the Vietnamization program, there would have been no settlement.

Because the South Vietnamese would not have settled unless they were confident they could defend themselves, and the North Vietnamese wouldn't have had the incentive to settle if they thought they could.

We're all at easy to knock over.

Our own military actions, of course, played a very decisive part, because without our doing something that they didn't want us to do, we would have very little incentive.

I would say also that I would have to say that the settlement was not made easier by the totally irresponsible actions of the Congress.

I do not refer to the whole country over and over again.

Over the past four years, the Congress, particularly the Senate, and even in this session, I think that we were going back to the Congress table to pass resolutions.

which called basically for a settlement, which was far less than they were willing to settle for, and far less than he got.

And just to sum it up in a word, I say it in one sentence when I speak sometimes, is perhaps both reasons.

You see, to many people, the so-called Grimesfield Resolution prisoners are withdrawn.

Is that right?

Isn't that a great deal?

We get our POWs and we withdraw them.

Isn't that a good deal?

Well, I'll tell you the people that understand that probably better than anybody else and a lot better people than senators and congressmen.

are the wives of the prisoners of war who said, our people, our men, did not become prisoners.

They did not suffer.

They really did not wait.

And we did not fight this war just to get them back.

And their colleagues did not die just for the purpose of getting our prisoners of war back.

The difficulty with the POW withdrawal proposal, which is the proposal, the most responsible proposal of all the irresponsible ones, this is police irresponsible, I would say, the difficulty is that it would have ended the war for us.

but the war for 50 million people in the end of Chinese Revolution.

The agreement we have is a ceasefire for Vietnam and with the possibility of a ceasefire in Laos and Cambodia.

And so what we have done, by insisting on peace without it, we not only have our prisoners back, or our withdrawal, but in turn we're supposed to provide a ceasefire stopping the war for the end of Chinese.

And also, we have the right to sell the enemies to determine their own future under a proper, supervised budget.

Something which was awesome, but not as good as it should have been thrown.

What I'm really trying to say is that it's been rather long, it's been rather painful, it's been very difficult, as many of you might know.

I wonder why don't we get out of Johnson's War anyway?

Why don't we blame on the Democrats and get out and so forth and so on?

The reason is, this is not Johnson's War.

or Kennedy's war.

I mean, I have never engaged with that kind of, what I think, irresponsible rhetoric.

It's happened that it started in Kennedy's administration and continued in Johnson's administration, and in my opinion, it was very badly handled.

Maybe, perhaps, he made a mistake.

But the point is, whatever happened, the United States was involved.

We have now withdrawn our forces down to the minimal route to there.

We have now achieved freedom, which achieves our goals of peace for Vietnam that has had war for the past 25 years, and the right of the people of South Vietnam to determine their future without having communists running a compulsion bomb against their will.

And my view is the fact that we as a country, it will mean a lot, certainly, to the 17th century in South Vietnam.

But the fact that the United States was responsible for it,

will have, in my opinion, a decisive event on what is going to be in the world.

We here at SET and the United States, by its engagement with Vietnam, are in the world.

I can assure you that if the United States did not prove to be responsible in Vietnam, if we had ended this war, could it be with surrender, prisoner to withdrawal?

The Chinese wouldn't consider us worth talking to.

The Russians wouldn't consider us worth talking to.

The Europeans, with all of their bitching, would not consider us to be reliable allies.

And so what's involved here, which most of the members of the Senate in the House eventually will understand, and which all of us around this table must understand, is that the United States can play a role

to keep the peace.

And as the only one who can stay free from the world, we have to be responsible.

That's what this piece is all about.

Let me say this.

I have as much contempt for the Republicans who would come and run as I do for the Democrats who would come and run.

We couldn't have done it without Democrats in the House and Senate who stood with us when some of our Republicans were deserted.

And we couldn't have done it with a lot of Democrats without a lot of Democrats in this country, including a lot of me friends, friends around who stood with us.

when a lot of the sort of elitists were running away from us thank god for this good

you

All of us are going to the...

Today we will focus on .

Both of them

The reason he could not have you for the day is to design my job.

I thought I was going to design a big bag and a big last night.

the other side that the agreement would not be related to today's discussion until today.

That's why we call these meetings today.

Otherwise, matter of fact, until I move the steps away from this meeting, I have to agree with the schedule.

We were going to have this last month, but then they insisted that they want the agreement a day later, but we can't.

Everybody agreed that the agreement should be put out a day later.

And so, because they wanted to, we thought it would be well to have this first announcement and the agreement.

to fit with their time frame in terms of reading and so forth.

Now today, I have some help from you.

I don't have as many to do as I said last time.

And I will not take your time by going further on that.

I will only say that the agreement meets the conditions we laid out in our annual proposal in January with the different proposals.

The international supervisors filed a return on POWs for the next 68 years in the Senate.

The withdrawal of all Americans within the next 68 years, that of course will be a parallel operation.

and a process by which the South Vietnamese will retain, will, as the chairman said, without outside interference, and which we continue to recognize and will continue to support the darkness of the Republic of Vietnam.

Now, the details are, and they will be used, I'm sure, in some of the terribly boring and importantly important

because they're an important cause

As you all know, all pieces are hard to reach a great institution.

All of us, you will.

Our part is to take Korea.

Many of you have been out there in that Korean line.

Many of you know.

We'll talk to you soon.

Here, 20 years after Korea, we still have interest.

Not so many as we used to.

Here the Americans are on one side, and the others on the other side, and there they are.

And Korea, however, is really a big one compared to the guerrilla war situation, where it's a small country.

There you have a line.

Here you've got units of the North Vietnamese and the V.C.

drop countries.

And so enforcing the ceasefire and supervising the ceasefire, having it work, has been more difficult.

And that is one of the reasons why the Commissions, both the Commissions within the country during the shift, have really strived in which both their parties are concerned, and the International Commissions, and how they operate.

Now, the details are, and they will be used, I'm sure, by some of you.

They're terribly boring, but they're important.

because there isn't any importance because, as you all know, all pieces are hard to disagree and to choose from.

All of us, you can imagine, all of us, you will, are hard to choose from.

You take Korea.

Many of you have been out there in that Korean line.

Many of you know, if you talk to the students, that a year, 20 years after Korea, we still had incidents.

Not so many as we used to.

Here the Americans are on one side and the others on the other side, and there they are, and there's still incidents.

And Korea, however, is really a big one.

compared to the guerrilla war situation where it involved countries.

There you have a line.

Here you've got units of the North Vietnamese and the V.C.

throughout the country.

And so enforcing this thing by unsupervised policies, having it work, it doesn't seem more difficult.

And that is one of the reasons why the Commissions

both the commissions within the country in which everyone described, in which both the parties were concerned, and the international commissions, and how they operate are enormously important.

I would say also that

There was one line in my talk last night, there were a couple lines that I will not go into any further detail.

I know that you've picked up one.

Perhaps the

We do not specifically mention, for example, the Soviet Union.

We do not mention the PRC and the Supreme Court.

And we're not going to talk about either.

To talk about either would completely or probably inevitably lead to forcing them into a position where restraint would not be possible.

On the other hand, let me say, we are totally aware of the fact that restraint by all the major powers, including the United States and the Soviet Union and the PRC, is incredibly important.

in order to make this work.

And to the extent restraint is shown on their side, restraint will be shown on ours.

Let's go beyond that and accept that that base is being covered.

It hasn't been covered in the past.

It will be covered in the future.

Is that the fair statement?

That is the exact statement.

But to examine us too closely on that and to say, what are we doing?

Why don't we make a public statement?

Why don't we do this and that?

Let me say, the moment...

If you put the competition between those collars, either of them on a public spot, you are going to force them to step.

They are not going to do anything, or they're not going to compete with each other in support of the revolution.

So that's the situation there.

Now, the only point that I will cover, because I know that all of you are interested, both from a personal and emotional standpoint, as I am, and you're all going to have letters in place from constituents of the POW issue.

Henry will elaborate on the details, but I want to cover briefly what Mike and Jerry, which I covered last night with you, as to how that is going to work.

Within 60 days, on Saturday, all will be released.

And at the same time, all of our own troops will be withdrawn.

Now, the first will be released within 15 days.

And about a fourth will be released at that time.

People say, why do we wait 60 days?

The point is that you have to make arrangements to do it.

And also, we have to get our courses done at the same time.

You see, it's a parallel deal.

That's a straight tree.

But it's arranged 60 days.

The arrangements for their reading, and this is one of the intricate things that we did work on very early on, are now just what we asked for.

In October, they were not.

They were conditions.

The ratings are, they will be released.

For example, those of the North have to be anonymous at all.

American planes.

We'll be allowed, of course, to go in and medical, what they call medical, medevac, medical medevac players will go in and pick them up.

They will be flown from Hanoi to Vienna, and that will be allowed at that.

Now, for those held in South Vietnam, there are some in South Vietnam.

Arranges will be made within the next week to ten days as to the points at which they will be released.

They will be released in South Vietnam.

They will be released to the government of the United States and not to peace groups.

And it will be flown, of course, just as maliciously as possible.

Back here, probably, in terms of places, I haven't thought all this through totally, but I would imagine Guam, Hawaii, and then to the air base up in Northern California.

Those are details that we will work on as time goes on.

here there will be an actual group which will supervise and get as active a report as we possibly can on that part.

The last year certainly, I think,

It's as clear as it can possibly be.

The protocol is very good on this.

Because we know that the DOW is nasty and wise and so forth and so forth.

And the message felt very strongly that this should be nailed down.

It is nailed down as well as it possibly can be.

That's the field of consideration at this point.

Now what I would suggest would be a good procedure this morning would be for Henry to run over the highlights of the agreement.

The agreement itself

will be made public and be available to those involved.

And, of course, to the leaders.

He got all of the details of the agreement.

And if you would like to give a little background on how he got there.

And where we are, it might be a summit with the leaders, but I think they're also there primarily because they may not have already been out.

And that, as we go along, if questions arise, of course, you're welcome to ask them.

We'll try to respond.

I'm going to ask Henry to respond to most of the details.

I have been pleased to actually touch with all of this.

And, of course, we say within the same dissonance, true of Bill Rogers' statement,

But these details, I think it's best for him to cover it, because he was in the meetings, he knows exactly what the nuances of every word he brings.

Now, before we go into that, may I say, why don't we just, are there any questions on the POWs you'd like to ask?

And let's get that out of the way.

So, Mr. President, maybe it's been covered, I shouldn't ask.

The first thing we'll all begin with, when will the list come out?

and other details regarding the supervision and the investigation of all prisoners and their names.

We're just going to be jealous on that one point, I would think.

The provisions for supervision are being published today.

Do we have any other supervisory details?

The list of prisoners will be handed over on the day of signing, which is the same Saturday.

And they should be made public Saturday or Sunday.

The investigation of the missing in action and the visit to Greg's, a procedure has been established for exchanging information and for investigating teams to look into disputed cases.

So all of this information should be available within a week.

The supervisory information is available today.

The names, according to the terms of the agreement, will be made available on Saturday.

They have made a full statement to us that there are no prisoners held in Cancun.

Uh, it involves laws.

We did make the leaders last night and only perhaps three of them.

There are three over the Chinese.

We can only say that when I was there talking to Joe and Lyle, when Mike and Hugh were there, and when Jerry and Hale were there, assurances, well, to the extent that assurances can't be given because at that point, who could know what was going to happen, that they would...

consider releasing those as soon as the war or the ceasefire, whatever we have, was achieved.

We have no information on that, and that, of course, is not covered in this agreement.

But we have every reason to believe

The downing case is a different one.

The downing case involved a CIA agent.

We have discussed this case with the joint line.

I have did personally.

The others did as well.

We're still hoping for the best there, but even at this point, it's having to serve a pretty long time to get action on it.

These all, these are just, we're talking about one person for thousands, but I know there's lots of things we've received from each other over the months.

All right, let's go again.

At the end of the meeting, we're going to give you a poll that's going to say, and the summary of the main provisions.

of the agreements and of the protocols as well as the math, which gives you the location of the various teams.

Would you agree, Mr. President, if I could take perhaps five minutes just on the evolution of how we got to where we are today?

itself, the 4th of December, for reasons which we can discuss right now, the negotiations have reached an essential step.

There was a great deal of speculation at the press that this enemy had been produced by this or that American demand, which could not be met, or which they had used to meet, but this was actually not the case, because if it had been produced by anybody, we couldn't yield it.

was produced to stay alive if we had wanted to, was produced to stay alive in the middle of December as of this moment, as of that moment was the fact.

that they, for whatever reason, had decided to stall for time.

And we could know sooner than ever one issue than they made another.

And these issues became more and more frivolous.

For example, there's one provision in this agreement that says that parties shall respect the neutrality of Laos and Campo, shall respect the 1954 agreement, and so on, and so forth.

On the last day of the meeting, they took out the word shell.

So I said, why do you take out the word shell?

They said, well, shell is in the future.

We don't know when it starts.

So I said, well, let's put it in the early media.

They said, well, we're respecting it.

We respect it in the past.

We're respecting it in the present.

We respect it in the future.

I said, can you explain to me why you should make an agreement that applies to you to do what you're already doing?

And when you have troops in Laos and Cambodia, you say you're already inspecting it.

That's highly un-reassuring to us.

Well, this, I don't want to bore you with all the details.

This was a two-hour discussion, and never was resolved on that day.

And there were 15 issues like this, which actually, which actually, from which the only conclusion to be drawn was not that we were in a substantive deadline, because these were not serious issues.

And they disappeared in January.

Nothing has ever been heard from them again.

Well, they raised them and they were settled in a house.

They raised them because they were on the table, but once they started moving, they were settled in a house.

I think it would be very exciting when you went back in the shepherds.

you expected, in fact we talked about it, that there were two outstanding agents that you could settle into two days at the most.

After the second day, you cabled.

After the third day, after the fourth, after the fifth, after the sixth, after the seventh, after the eighth, after the tenth day, after the tenth day, there was an absolute hopeless deadlock, a filibuster, and that is why

There was, in terms of your being able to make, or our being able to make concessions on their demands, that weren't ours, we couldn't make them fast enough.

Was that what it was?

There were two categories of problems.

There were some substantive ones, on which they wanted major concessions.

For example, they were beginning to work themselves into a position where they were sending out prisoners to the release of civilians.

prisoners in South Vietnam.

And since even the classification of prisoners in South Vietnam is among the focus undertaking as to see who is in prison for criminal activities, who is in prison for political activities,

Uh, and since they have been pleading provisions in the agreement separating these categories, this would have been a major change.

Well, if we had laid, if we had, for example, and that was, that was laid down as a national condition, uh, in so far as, I mean, as far as we could do, but if we had laid, uh, the release of our prisoners, the release of civilian prisoners held by the government,

South Vietnam, or the Republic of Vietnam.

we should, under no circumstances, have been able to deliver the South Vietnam police on that part of the market.

Because they're not going to turn loose all our civilian prisoners in return for that.

So that meant that our POWs, whatever deal we made for ceasefire or anything else, would have been stuck there for months on end.

That's why I said at the leaders' meeting the other day that they put, they rejected, that when they attacked the conditions in the POW issue, we could not accept it.

And now there are no detentions, whatever the deal is.

It's a plow deal.

So there were major issues, and then all these privilege issues that they kept raising, which, as I said, they kept raising fast so that we could settle them.

And so there was a substantial deadline.

The major issues were how would we sign the agreement, which I claim is a matter of great importance to the South Indian people.

what is the status of the people that derive themselves and how do we handle the existence of two political entities in a country that's recognized basically as one.

That was the situation in the middle of this chapter.

And finally, there was a total, absolute deadlock of the international machinery.

On the last day of our meetings in December, they gave us their version of the protocols.

The protocols are the implementing instruments of the basic agreement that spell out in detail the technical provisions of the Supervisory Machinery and Central Prisoner System of the United States of America.

What they proposed for the international machinery was a force of 250, of which half had to be located in Saigon, which had no organic communications, to ask for the ability to conduct an investigation without the concurrence of the effective party.

and which was designed even for its necessity, even for its use case, on the valley in whose area it was functioning, and which did not have a budget of its own.

We could not have asked, it was not respected.

country to serve on that.

Moreover, they wanted to place them in the headquarters of their military legions, as they defined it, as they defined the military legions.

And I could go into more detail, it wasn't totally

objectionable, indeed, insulting protocol that we could never have had an international machinery on that basis.

Secondly, they proposed, and we had agreed to, a two-party commission that we created, two South Vietnamese parties to take care of the day-to-day contact.

But the way they defined it, a communist team would have been put into every district town of South Vietnam with complete freedom of movement

and with a completed ability to interfere in every aspect of life, and would have been a way of spreading the communist presence throughout South Vietnam, that again could not be accepted.

So we were in a total disaster with respect to the protocol.

But before we resumed talks with them, we told them, one, that all political elements had to be removed from protocol, that the protocol could only be technical instruments.

Secondly, that nothing should be in the protocols that was in the system for the basic agreement.

Thirdly, that we wanted serious talks and not these frivolous exemptions.

That's the sentiment.

And we have to say that very soon, very soon, the technical talks in January,

And those went very slowly at first, but it didn't come to nothing.

And we resumed the main course on January 8th.

And I had more enjoyable days in my life than that first day.

It was a no-sweet-to-meat after the first two.

After the first two.

Oh, there was one day we didn't complete it.

It was, it was a total fail.

That was January 8th.

That evening, the police told them that this was not our mechanism to see if we were going to be able to.

And I will have to say this about the Newark Street committees.

In fact, they were as fast as I've ever dealt with it, but they don't want to settle.

And they are the most efficient, but they do want to settle.

But they want to move.

They can't just really move.

So on January 9th in the morning they proposed a procedure which was very efficient.

They proposed that Li Dazhou and I concentrate on the agreements and on the major principles of the protocol.

That we create a working group to work out the technical details of the protocol.

For example, Li Dazhou and I will decide there will be 46 posts throughout the country.

Then, these posts will be covered by the power of the princess.

Then, from the States, the working group on our side and the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs had a working group on their side to place these posts around the country.

They had a disagreement.

They brought it back to us.

So we had two groups working.

In fact, January 9th, which happened to be the president's birthday, I sent a table to the president in which I said the following.

We celebrated your birthday today by making a major breakthrough in the negotiation.

In sum, we settled all the outstanding questions that were in the text of the agreement, made major progress on the method of signing the agreement, and made a constructive beginning to the protocol.

then I gave the President the details of what was done in General McVoy's head.

And because then I would add, then at the end I said, these are me that wrote in our hearts several times before, and we cannot assume success until everything is done.

But the mood and the businesslike approach was as close to Oktober as anything we had seen since Oktober.

Oktober was the first big statement on the way.

And President Envoy assigned that evening.

He greatly appreciated you for sticking with the curriculum and gave detailed instructions.

And while I might take it the other side, take on this track, it doesn't go down till tomorrow.

What was done today is the best birthday dress I've had in 60 years.

Well that, that January 9th was really the breakthrough in the association.

That was the point.

which we knew if they kept going like this, we were going to have to settle.

The next two days we settled the issue of the demilitarized zone, the issue of signing, the issue of how you take account of the fact that there are these two political entities, two countries within Vietnam,

and who made spectacular progress on the protocol.

If we can't just talk about these protocols, that's really... Could I ask a question at that point?

When you talk about these two political entities, are you talking about North and South?

No, Vietnam.

We're talking about the revolutionary liberation.

No, we're talking about North and South Vietnam.

Oh.

And I will explain.

The problem is that the 1954 Accords say that Vietnam is one country, temporarily divided into two zones.

Now, there was a great deal of speculation in the press here that we were insisting on sovereignty and the love of other things, and indirectly their sanctitude, but the basic problem was that the North Vietnamese wanted to abolish the demilitarized zone, in effect.

This would have meant that we made an agreement about South Vietnam which did not define where South Vietnam began and where the provisions with respect to South Vietnam apply.

For example, there is a provision in the agreement that prohibits the infiltration of men into South Vietnam unconditionally.

Now, if you don't say, where does our Vietnam begin, this is a meaningless phrase.

And if you don't establish a demarcation line where the international community can operate, you are killing with one hand and taking away with the other.

So we wanted to establish a demilitarized zone.

not so much as a political frontier, but as a dividing line, which separated the entity South Vietnam from the entity North Vietnam, for as long as these two countries were not unified by the processes which we... Well, and the dividing line, if I may add, is an issue already.

Why?

The dividing line was...

the important, not from the standpoint of sovereignty, of having the infiltration, which, of course, would lead to a resumption of the war, bleeds in some way.

You don't have any dividing line.

You've got nothing to cross.

And that was the key point.

Our concern was not the sovereignty.

Our concern, basically, was to have some way to

whereby they're providing commissions and so forth.

They just say, now, you don't go across this line into here, or otherwise the war just erupts again.

Yeah, if the demilitarized zone has been abolished, which is more than I was supposed to know that we would need to propose,

then the provisions of the agreement would have required only two items and they would have been unilateral restrictions on the south, on the Saigon government and on us but they could not have been applied in practice to the communists in South Vietnam nor to the North Vietnamese so this was a matter of great practical importance not a matter of theoretical importance and

That is an issue that has now been settled, that has now been settled satisfactorily.

Now, perhaps, Mr. President, I should go briefly to the agreement and explain what it contains.

If you could go through those basic things that we did, and then I'll go through this, and perhaps I could explain what we said is true, what we were trying to get.

And then I'll explain very briefly the protocols and ask any questions which you might have.

And I'll make examples of the agreements.

The first one is to see an assertion that the 1954 agreement with respect to the territory detected in sovereignty and unity of free attack are reaffirmed by the United States and all other countries.

Oh, before I get into this, I have to explain one procedure which has to do with science.

As you know, the Saigon people do not recognize the Communists as a government in South Vietnam.

Therefore, we have the problem of not getting this document signed by all four parties without implying recognition.

by Saigon of the NLM as a government led.

And we finally get on a solution of great decisions which may produce confusion.

We produce two documents.

One document doesn't refer to anybody.

It simply says the parties of the conference in Paris, the parties of the Paris conference

It doesn't mention the U.S., North Vietnam, PRC and Saigon.

It just says the parties of the conference.

And that will be signed on Saturday morning by the four foreign ministers.

We at Saigon are going to sign on one page.

The two Communist parties are going to sign on another page which preserves the character of the parish conference as a two-sided conference.

So they don't have to sign on the same page and nobody mentions anybody else.

This sounds simple as it was once, three days ago.

In the afternoon, Bill Rogers and the Foreign Minister of North Carolina are going to sign another document

in which Saigon, neither Saigon nor the Cambodian citizens, in which it says the United States will be concurrent of Saigon government, the DRB will be concurrent of the DRG, makes it bothering indeed.

And that's only signed by the Secretary of State and the Foreign Minister of the DRC.

That document doesn't bind the South Vietnamese policy.

It's word for word the same thing.

It's exactly the same thing, word for word, except that the preamble is different.

The DRC are legally obligated to carry out the document that doesn't mention anybody.

The Communists, on the other hand, got the signature on a document which lists the title, although Bradley had some ridiculous ego for it, because we can sign a document saying, we can write a document saying the United States is a concurrence of out of Mongolia, and they doesn't mind out of Mongolia.

So if you read about the fact, or if you've noticed that two documents are going to be signed, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, there is a compromise between the position of the two Saudis in the Middle East that didn't want to recognize each other and the insistence of the DRV that some reference be made.

And the only difference between the two documents is the three acts.

And the signal application in here is in the truth document.

I mention those things because you will see that there are two documents.

There are words for words in there, operative paragraphs, and names.

And in the operative paragraphs, none of the parties are mentioned.

It just says the parties are obligated to do the following.

Now, as to the substance of the case, there are nine best charges.

The first charge, uh, uh, the, uh,

They have observed the territorial unity of Vietnam as recognized by the 1954 Agreements.

The 1954 Agreements, however, divided the country into two zones, and therefore it is simply a way of saying that the basic structure which was established in 1954 is maintained.

The second chapter is a detailed chapter of the ceasefire, which was recorded to be at midnight British Mean Time, January 27th, which is turned PM Washington, January 27th.

And it defines what the parties may or may not do during the ceasefire, provisions which are spelled out in even greater detail in a protocol.

It also provides that with the 60 days of disease fires coming into effect, the United States forces will be withdrawn.

The crime provides for the fact that both sides in South Vietnam, communists as well as we, can receive replacement military aid.

They cannot augment their military resources, but they can replace the existing forces on a one-to-one basis with weapons of similar characteristics and quality under international supervision.

And since the South Vietnamese have a very high level of arms, this provides an opportunity to maintain a level

And of course, how these provisions will be carried out depends on China with respect to the general influence of military intervention.

The third chapter is that, as I indicated, you just must trust in the fact that you're totally aware of the problem and also have very good communication with both governments.

But then it starts being on the relation of provisionists.

It's the same as that, because the metal abominations of the communist side is much more than they're out of.

to introduce new equipment when asked to show the equipment that is being replaced.

Can I ask a question at that point?

What about the withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces?

I'll get into that.

I'll come to that later.

There's no specific provisions.

For the replacement of North Vietnamese forces, there is a provision requiring the demobilization and reduction of forces.

Secondly, there is a provision that prohibits the introduction of blue personnel, of blue military personnel.

There is a prohibition against the use of Cambodian and Laotian military.

There is a prohibition against the use of infiltration rules through Cambodia and Laos.

And there is a prohibition

and there is a prohibition against the movement of military units across the three militaries.

So, if all of these provisions are carried out, then it is everybody's judgement.

But, first of all, no North Vietnamese forces can then be introduced insofar as an agreement cannot be legally introduced.

And they come around, you say, across the DMZ, but can they introduce forces to their planes?

They cannot.

It is a total prohibition.

against Buddhists going into Cambodian clouds.

They have to be withdrawn from Cambodian clouds.

They cannot come across the DMZ.

And in addition, there is a prohibition against the introduction of personnel by any other means that we may not have covered.

Is it agreed?

It's a breach of the existing North Vietnamese code.

Secondly, there is a prohibition that they are requiring the demobilization of existing forces without certifying them as North Vietnamese as soon as possible, which is linked to other political provisions.

And I ask you, and therefore there is no possibility, if they cannot augment their forces, if everybody says that they will have to be, at the minimum, be a substantial official in those weaknesses, unless they manage to revive that division.

Well, how many forces are in?

What's your estimate now?

Because this will become a central question.

How many North Vietnamese within the borders of South Vietnam now?

What's our estimate?

Our estimate has been about 140,000 of 45,000 which the vast majority, not the vast majority, which about 40%, 35% are in Northern Military Region 1.

within about 30 miles of the north-east frontiers.

About what?

Zone 3 adjacent to Saigon.

Our estimate is that they have about 15 to 20,000.

and it's the idea that they will not be augmented or supplied and therefore it's a kind of a face saving thing that they will they cannot be augmented, they cannot send replacements down there they cannot replace men that are sick, wounded and just can they supply them they can supply them only if they if they replace equipment

No, but I'm talking about food, basic logistics.

Well, it's the idea that, uh, the idea is that this is... ...if it's subdued, subdued the nutrition of the forces in the South.

Well, if they're cut off, they'd have to withdraw.

If, uh, this is a face-saving device for them, is it, which they quietly...

They have not, their government has been sent to... Well, in other words, they're there.

They have never admitted that they were there.

So for them to admit that they had forces there, I don't think the troops would withdraw anything.

Let us understand on this point that this question has been raised, but I am quite confident that the government of the South is not.

would not have come along unless they had, having asked the same question, had concluded that if the agreement were to observe, the Christian and so forth would say that he, in other words,

All of these things are going to be in demand.

Whether you can send new men in, people can send.

The whole business is supplied.

All of this is so intricately tied in there to get it, that it at least gives reassurance that South Vietnam bought what's necessary.

had really broken down into very small units as a result of the trip.

Therefore, if they cannot be resupplied in Cambodia's place, and if they cannot get resupplied in Cambodia's place, and if they cannot insuffer additional personnel, and if the Cambodian and Laotian bay areas are closed,

then it is possible to conceive that the present strength

can be maintained, in addition to the morality of it, of how you can maintain such a substantial force, such a force now and then, when peace has been created, so that this has been, if you go on to and through this, I think it will become

It's apparent that, assuming that the various provisions of this agreement are carried out, that in the non-military areas, some incentives may develop for the North to have some of these people back.

That country is denuded at the present time.

In fact, it's been one word of cash.

Ours this week were two.

Last week were two.

And so we say the war must be over.

The North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese are losing 1,000 every week right now.

And we'll, in a practical, over 1,000 in the next couple of days, over at the rate of 1,000 a week because these are going to step up and they're trying to grab terror.

So the war goes on.

Now, when you look at what the North Vietnamese have lost, they need these people.

And the question is whether or not they're intent, and that's the key point here, whether they're intent

is to build up for another pocket, or whether their intent now, for a period of time, is to regroup in the north to establish a sofa.

And I think that will come to a later point, I think.

You are considering for a while, and we might even have a tangent, getting into this commitment with the withdrawal of Suncoast.

But when you do that, then you're implying that the remaining forces have the right to aid it.

And as it is now, there is nothing in the agreement that gives the North Vietnamese a right to be in South Vietnam.

And we thought it is for our legal position better not to have any provision in there that implies that there are any North Vietnamese forces in the South, that you get a sort of a half-baked solution.

The basic issue is precisely the one that the President mentioned.

Even if they had a key to withdraw, if they want to re-infiltrate and break the agreement, think into it.

It would only have about three months to say a readiness time.

Everything therefore depends on whether we can induce them, through the pressure of the Allies, through positive programs that we are developing, and through other means, that we can induce them to observe deeply.

If they observe deeply, the provisions upon the DNC, by laws in Cambodia, and against infiltration, make it incontrovertible for them to maintain a substantial force therein.

That is why I use the term that we will make major efforts.

for reconciliation with the North.

That term was quite deliberately worked out, and we're not going to fill out specifically at this point what it means, but basically it's studied in one direction, and then of course there's studied in another direction.

When you look at all the curious and all the various observations we have to bear in mind, I'd like to get down to the key point as to whether the NARD and Frankenstein just stopped.

I'd like the district agency to know whether the NARD wants at this point to, uh, to, uh,

return to a meantime activity after 25 years in our institution.

If I can ask you in any detail, as school principals, if you could give a feel for what that attention may be, I suppose,

These are the best possible path of fantasy that I can see.

So, we are not talking here about wild hoes.

It's about these.

I think for their own reasons, suffering is a very disarming part of the story.

Being a boy is the one being exhausted, not the other.

Ladies and gentlemen, believe that they may want to observe this agreement for a while.

For example, if we extend this, there are three legal crossing points.

This would be the police side, that is three points that the military equipment can be introduced.

Now everybody in this room knows that if they want to,

At the long frontier, they can see equipment is there and it's going to be very tough to find it.

They have put two seaports and one crumbling point at the demilitarized zone, which indicates that they really do not want to come through Daos and Cambodia.

And secondly, they asked whether for a 60-day hill, they could use one crossing point from Laos and Cambodia, because they have fixed stockpiles of equipment in Laos and Cambodia, all the way up into North Vietnam.

which they want to use up in that 60-day period.

And that has the effect of getting their bases out of Laos and Cambodia, and it is an extreme way of dying a good base, because if they had wanted to sneak into South East London, it would have been all that hard to do, particularly in the confusion of the immediate post-war period before the machinery of supervision.

What is the word?

Replace equipment?

What the provision says, they can replace equipment that is damaged, destroyed, used up or worn out.

They're talking about forces.

There is a plan to prohibit military forces from being replaced.

There's no new military forces to be introduced.

It is oddly enough, from the outside, that it's an unconditional plan, and we have no exceptions whatsoever.

That's all infiltration.

That is totally unequivocal.

There's no exception to that.

I don't know if they can go through there, but... Let me say, you understand, right?

The misrestraint is on the side.

Yes.

But as far as their military equipment is concerned, no new equipment.

They cannot augment their equipment.

But in terms of personnel, the South can increase its army as long as it recruits people from South Vietnam.

But no forces from the outside can be introduced.

We don't expect it to happen.

We expect the South to increase itself.

But the restrictions on infiltration apply only to forces coming in from the outside of South Vietnam.

Now Chapter 3 dealing with the decree of Capture of Military Personnel and Foreign Civilians

That has three sources.

The President has covered two of them.

One is that all U.S. military personnel and civilians will be returned within 60 days.

It will be in run the evil trawlers every 15 days.

There will be a journey in Hanoi for those prisoners that are in the southernmost part and being fully accounted for their actions.

And there will be teams established in Amsterdam to investigate grave sites and so forth.

There is a third part of this that separates the issue of civilians.

I'll meet with the civilians that are held in prison by both sides.

and which provides that the two South Vietnamese parties will negotiate a very hopeful one in an atmosphere of reconciliation and concord.

The disease of these other significant prisoners, I wouldn't want to be a second prisoner, and that they go to their utmost to accomplish this with agreement.

The practical consequence of this is that

Madame Ben was not one of the winners of this negotiation, because it means that the matters of the backlash against Saudis is driven to remain there, and that they have to have a subsequent negotiation with the Saudis to be governed.

about their release and that you must agree and that this is another important letter that the South Vietnamese have with respect to the North Vietnamese troops because they will undoubtedly take the position that they cannot release me at consular prison and augment hostile forces unless there is some practice towards the demobilization of the troops.

Well, I can only say that it's much better if they have those 240,000 or whatever there are

That's exactly right.

Our concern was not to treat those prisoners unnecessarily.

Our concern was not to get involved in the negotiation about the disease of the South Vietnamese prisoners as one of the things that the prisoners have done.

was that we should all separate those two issues.

If we had not, we would have been involved in an endless discussion.

We separated the military from the civilian prisoners.

That's basically it.

That's the critical point that we had to insist on.

Exactly.

What is and how you plan to fight these prisoners.

And so that was something that had been agreed upon in October.

And we agreed on that.

And we gave you a job.

That's the point.

Now then there is a, the next chapter deals with the exercise of the South Vietnamese people's right of self-determination.

And it states so incredibly which the United States and the North Vietnam jointly maintain.

Which is of great significance because they speak of the South of South Vietnam as an etiquette.

It states that the South Vietnamese people's right of self-determination is sacred in any middle and shall be respected by all countries.

And the DRV subscribes to that.

It speaks of this South Vietnamese rising self-determination and it says foreign countries shall not impose any political tendency.

But I don't want to go through every provision.

The biggest provision is that there should be three elections at a time to be mutually agreed upon between the two South Vietnamese parties for offices to be mutually agreed upon by the two South Vietnamese parties.

and that these elections, once they have agreed upon, by the 2005, will be in the national supervision.

It will be set out, and that must be a, that's the rule.

But this means in effect that these parties have to agree to it.

It means that's agreed.

They have to agree.

There is another, there is an institution set up called the National Council of Reconciliation and Conflict.

Let me just say, I was not trying to just have a play on words.

The important thing to remember there is, and this is true throughout the political section, is Henry is a great human being.

That the decisions that are made in regards to the future of the South and the South Vietnam Republic are decisions that are not opposed.

They are decisions that the government, the Republic of Vietnam must make.

That has been its fundamental function as government, the Republic of Vietnam.

None of these things go hand in hand with each other.

There can be no election.

Oh, that is a very important point, of course, with the South Vietnamese.

I'm talking about Vietnam.

Let me say one other thing.

The part in this agreement that it worked out, the reason the North could sign was to convert to the South Vietnamese.

And the reason we could sign was to ban the South Vietnamese.

children.

And to us, we only recognize, and I think that was a deliberate phrase last time, are we only recognized in South Vietnam as a legitimate government in the Republic of Vietnam?

You see, the South Vietnamese, Greece, and many, the skilled way of getting that phrase used, it's now got it used in South Vietnam.

To us, it means the Republic of Vietnam, but in our case, it means nothing else, correct?

Yes, but they are recognizing the government as such.

They're recognizing the area as such.

No, they're recognizing the government as such.

We recognize only one government.

They recognize two governments.

That's what I mean.

They recognize two.

That's what I mean.

But do you mention the NLS specifically in this particular project?

In our draft?

No, no, no.

It's never mentioned in the whole document.

But you said either document, as I said, the 2000s, it never mentions the NLA.

We threw out the document.

Threw out either document in the operative clauses.

The preamble.

In the 2000s, it was the document in the NLA that mentioned the preamble.

But that's not something that the self-indemnities have to do.

And even when it's mentioned in the preamble, it is not mentioned as a party, just as it is with the superior law.

And so that's around the intricate formula.

The three A's.

Correct.

Now, in addition, there is an institution called the Knight of Reconciliation.

See?

Mr. National Council, it's important that you understand this one in terms of a lot of misunderstanding that Ms. Pollard makes some deliberately distant creed, but as an accredited minority of the needs of the National Council in October, there was a thought that the National Council of Reconciliation was actually a coalition government.

It is not.

It isn't even a government at all.

It's a non-governmental organization.

This is another thing that took us some time to negotiate.

In the original October draft, we had put in the phrase, it is an administrative structure because we thought it made it clear that it was a non-governmental thing.

The North Vietnamese and the Vietnamese text of this pulled one of their nice little ploys because there are three words that Vietnamese were administrative, one of which is the same as governmental.

So, in Vietnamese, it read like a governmental structure of power.

We had meant to imply that it was something less than a government.

Well, once we realized that they had pulled this maneuver on us in the Vietnamese text,

We insisted that this be deleted or conformed to our notion of administrative.

And that took us a few days.

So we're on another word that didn't have screening.

Well, actually, we've not dropped the old phrase.

We just said that we created a National Council of Reconciliation.

And we won't use the word administrative structure.

It's not dropped.

But it is important, Governor, that the military structure doesn't see it anymore.

Who's on it?

Well, the administration.

First of all, that has to be negotiated in an atmosphere of reconciliation and concordance between the 2,000 of these parties.

who will do their utmost to bring it into being in a three-month period.

They're not obligated to bring it into being at all.

They're just obligated to do their utmost.

Who is on it is appointed equally by both sides.

From each side nominates

four people which they call their own.

The 12th man on the east side nominates four people which they call their own.

And then they each nominate two people they call neutralists.

But at any rate, the east side nominates six people.

The council operates on the principle of unanimity.

And the only thing it has to do is

is to supervise elections that really have to be agreed upon between the two parties.

So, my prediction as a political scientist is that it is not going to come into being in the first week of this agreement.

And that it will not exhaust itself in activity much enough to be never in all history have so many fictions been put together in one document.

Frankly, I mean, one area, but frankly, gentlemen,

is to enable them to get off their demands for a coalition government.

And this is why Mr. Vince Tapper has been so extremely fouled in recent weeks, and why he refused to come to the airport when he got no return to Paris.

Because, in effect, this means that the demands for a coalition government have been dropped, that he essentially insists

about the political future of South Vietnam will be made by the existing South Vietnamese authorities, which means that we have to see what the President has always said, that we will not impose a political solution on South Vietnam.

There is another allow, you see, it does provide for a device where all people, himself, you know, we have always said, to participate in the political process, including the, you know, on the other hand, if the two South Vietnamese parties do want to get together, and if they do want to have connections, this provides a mechanism for them to have it.

It doesn't block it, it just doesn't impose it.

Finally, there is a provision in this chapter about the political future of South Korea, and I'm calling for the reduction and demobilization of existing military, of the reduction of existing military forces and then demobilization, which is, and this is not done in terms of UNHCRs, this is done in terms of

These are the major provisions of the political chapter.

Then the next chapter five deals with the relation of North and South Vietnam to each other.

It states that the unification of Vietnam shall be carried out by peaceful means on the basis of discussions and agreements between North and South Vietnam without coercion and annexation, without military pressure.

And the time for reunification will be agreed upon between North and South Vietnam.

Second, can they reunification?

It reaffirms the military demarcation line as long as there is a deep cut.

It says this is provisional, but it exists until reunification.

Second, it says North and South Vietnam shall respect the demilitarized zone on either side of the provisional military demarcation line.

There is, in other words, an unprovisional resignation of the demilitarized zone.

And then, for those in South Vietnam, it's roughly something over the age.

So the youth was reestablishing normal relations in various fields.

And it has another cause in the United States.

They may discuss the business movement across the demilitarized zone.

I agree upon every one question.

By the way, please, the military movement

It's strictly prohibited in Ku Klux Klan.

Well, that would make a very lack of religion situation to see the President.

The one thing I would like to say to Mr. President, when you use the term South Vietnam there, this is why the government of North Vietnam, the DRV, is talking to some of the government of South Vietnam, or just the two governments.

Because we have two separate governments.

One is with, two governments in South Vietnam.

The second is...

Now, South Vietnam, we cannot make any attempt to get the DRV to get into the deep, into the question of which is the legitimate government of South Vietnam because that they could not do.

But you are the agent, and I will numerate that when we are through.

We have an explicit recognition by North Vietnam that South Vietnam exists.

And as soon acts by those we come against are forbidden.

That's for the purposes of the international situation.

That is to say, for the purposes of the interest of aggression.

And of course, the mere fact that there is a legal recognition of an entity called South Vietnam whose right of self-determination has to be respected against which it is impermissible to use force to sovereignty.

There are three different references to the sovereignty of South Vietnam with respect to the International Control Commission, with respect to the contract of foreign policy.

And with respect to the relationship between Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam, in each case, which is that these provisions have to be held out with regard to the sovereignty of South Vietnam.

The question of the existence of South Vietnam for the purposes of disagreement has been fully covered.

And that was even more important at that stage than to settle the question of which is the legitimate government.

Because whichever is the legitimate government, if there is a South Vietnam, and if it has attributes of sovereignty, then the North Vietnamese have no business being there.

Whoever the legitimate

Governor, this is really established by the establishment of the demarcation.

Exactly.

These issues are only about to remain.

But on top of this, we have these explicit references in the agreement.

Could I ask, as I understand it, the DMC is now occupied fully by North Vietnam.

Are there any provisions for them to withdraw from there so that the DMC needs anything more than this statement?

Well, there's an international control team.

And as we put, as we give the responsibility of implementing these improvements, we will make the team in the terrace zone.

And it will be located right at the team in the terrace zone.

But while we're on that, I think this will be

Big question.

Where will the rest of the line be?

It's a standstill in place since March.

Yes, sir.

The rest of the line will not be in place.

It will be determined by the military commanders in the field.

It will be determined, in other words, by the existing military situation in South Vietnam.

On January 27th.

On January 27th, which in fact will mean

But right now, from the standpoint of the current military situation, how much of South Vietnam, land-wise,

and the Northfield.

Assuming that it remains reasonably stable between now and Saturday, if it remains reasonably stable between now and Saturday, at least 90% of the succulent gas will line up in the GDS.

What will happen is that there will be three areas of the land in which my other side has forces.

In the Central Islands, for example, it's going to be very difficult to establish a clean alliance in my case.

But even there, our judgment is that, almost by definition, since the South and the East have an army of over a million, and since they are spreading it out, and since the communists have an army of less than 200,000 or 200-plus thousand, they cannot undertake to cover as much territory as, so we would say, 70% of the territory.

70%?

Yeah, do you have control of how much the old man's land, so to speak?

Well, there will be areas such as the Central Island in which it is going to be extremely difficult to establish a clear land, but there's no population there.

There's nobody there.

What about in Zone 3?

In Zone 3, in the military region, we would expect

that about 90 plus percent of military resources will be in the hands of the government.

Geographically and geographically.

There will be enclaves near the Cambodian border, and there will be that Saigon River corridor where there are some base areas.

And let's be frank about this, especially about Zone 3 in this group.

To you, we sent General Hayden to Saigon and said, we want you to know that if a ceasefire is offered, we'll accept it, so we'll clear out as much of the territory as we possibly can.

On August 15th, the President sent me to Saigon to present the state of the negotiations, and he said, if there's a ceasefire offered, we will accept it, therefore clear out as much of the territory as we possibly can.

We have four South Vietnamese divisions,

in military region three of which only one has been consistently used, two have never been used.

So if it is impossible for us in a negotiation, to achieve in a negotiation what he has not been able to do, in combat there are only about 18,000 North Vietnamese forces against those who are 100,000 South Vietnamese forces in military region three.

Like all ceasefires, you cannot achieve in a negotiation what isn't achieved on the battlefield.

Basically, the vast majority of military territory will be under our control, or will be under the control of the Saigon Guards.

There is the difficulty that the Saigon Army refuses to go into communist-made areas so that there are few endpoints there.

which they have refused to enter for six months.

And there's absolutely nothing we can do about those, except to seal them off.

But it's not allowed in territory.

People prefer to have them cleared out.

But that is not a question of those who don't know.

That is, just on military mission three, we have gone to enormous lengths.

They have the generals in charge.

We can be honest here, it is true.

That's right, that's right.

The military, one of the troubles is that the Saigon government has always been going to Military Region 3, which means having units there that can clear out Military Region 3, and having units there that are not capable of marching into Saigon.

Now any unit that's good enough to clear out Military Region 3 may also be good enough

to make a coup.

And ever since General Tree was killed, General Tree was a good combat commander, but he was so corrupt that there was no chance of his ever taking over the government.

He's put in charge of military history.

Let's face it, it's most un-underprising

Commander, it's been our biggest heartache here that the conduct of operations in Military Region 3 within 20 miles of the capital simply hasn't had the energy that they have shown in Military Region 1.

And if they had used the forces, there wouldn't be, you wouldn't have to ask this question.

And it isn't the balance of forces.

It isn't the conflict of strength.

It is simply the unwillingness to use the forces there in such a way that their islands suffer so many losses that they'll become a morass problem or that they'll get so proficient that they may get it into their head and march into Saigon.

That's the problem in militaries 3 as well.

Militaries 4 is an excellent say.

The military is also in good shape.

Or do I ask a question?

Because then it's a matter of real concern.

You anticipate there'll be a lot of fighting between now and Saturday?

Every week on Saturday, the Communists have been given instructions to seize as much territory as they can.

But our judgment is that they don't.

They can't seize a lot of territory.

They're more apt to lose territory than to seize it.

So then there's a bottom section, chapter six, that deals with international controls, which I will deal with in discussing the protocols, which is repeated in the protocols and which I won't cover.

Then there's a next chapter.

deals with laws in Cambodia.

And we consider that extremely important.

It says, the parties participating in the Paris Conference stress strictly to respect the 1954 agreements in Cambodia and the 1962 agreement on love.

In other words, those two agreements are reimbursed

and again, and they shall strictly respect the neutrality of Cambodia and Laos.

Then it says, the parties participating in the Paris Conference undertake to refrain from using the territory of Cambodia and the territory of Laos to a growth of the sovereignty and security of one another and of other countries.

So you have in that sentence a recognition of sovereignty.

And B, a planned prohibition against the use of, unconditional prohibition against the use of base air.

The next prohibition is for the withdrawal of all foreign forces.

from Laos and Cambodia and for the reaffirmation of their neutrality.

So you have in there a reaffirmation of the 54 and 62 Accords, a policy of base areas and a flat agreement to the withdrawal of foreign forces.

Let me say one other thing.

In the agreement, we could only put those provisions which the parties to the agreement are in a position

Let's start, please.

As all of you gentlemen know, there's a civil war on power that's going on in both Laos and Cambodia.

Now, for obvious reasons, we cannot go into the detail of what we believe will happen.

But we have every reason to believe that within a matter of a few weeks, there will be a formal ceasefire in Laos.

And we have every reason to believe that in a somewhat messier way, there will be a de facto ceasefire over a slightly longer period of time in Cap Odeon.

Now this could not be a reference to the agreement because the Laotian and Cap Odeon parties are not subject to this agreement, and because in the Cap Odeon case, one of the parties is headquartered in Egypt.

As you all know, Prince Theodore can display the extraordinary phenomenon of a royal prince conducting a civil war from a communist capital.

And this, and Theodore is being used by the Chinese against Hanoi.

And I have these friends from my talks with the North Vietnamese, and they just like him more than we do.

So here we have to set up a three-quarter negotiation to get that situation formally quieted down, but the parties to this agreement have undertaken an application to quiet it down.

On our side, you will see

some definite physical actions to stop the war in Cambodia, and we have reason to believe that a de facto ceasefire would occur in Cambodia.

We have every reason to believe that a formal ceasefire would emerge in Laos, so that when the President's request for inter-China ceasefires, he was reflecting the reality of the situation.

We can speak more categorically about it because

It does involve a third party.

It does involve third parties.

I would say, Henry, would you not, that at the time that our first POWs go out to Vietnam,

If it's possible, it might be very close to that tree.

We probably can't be sure.

It's just about as close as it is.

I want to just follow up, not to interrupt the briefing, but we showed the leaders last night a historical document of some interest.

People wondered what does that mean, and of course it means that at that point, after consultation and so forth and so on, and there was a time yesterday when I sent a message to Henry and I said, go ahead, and they told him to do so.

And that was the deal.

The deal was made.

The formal documents had to be signed.

I'll tell you, by all means.

And the initial document is here, so if you'd like to see it, I will pass it around.

But each of you look at the initial page, what it says.

It's going to end here.

Now I can immediately show you where this is going to be.

And that's a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long.

The United States and North Vietnam will begin a new era of reconciliation.

And without going into detail, what we have in mind here is, through a combination of the provisions of this agreement, we have gone from the border, and over a period of time, of moving our relations with the North African East Coast, North East Asian, and some degree of economic reconstruction.

we can give them a sufficient incentive not to resume the move in South Vietnam and Indochina.

However, it's clearly understood that that aspect of the agreement depends on their performance in Indochina.

Of course, it depends on congressional approval and that it will be implemented over a time span so that action does not have to be taken while American prisoners are still being held in North Vietnam.

The details of this

where they emerged, those are seen to be .

Let me just say something there.

This is a very good day for you.

It's been a very long, difficult war, and there's going to be much public sentiment for what we call participating in a regional reconstruction thing, and frankly, some reconstructions in the north as well as in the south.

The point that I make is we have nothing to present to you today that is tangible to say because we don't like that that will come out over a period of time by negotiations and so on.

But in my view, one of the best investments we have made

in terms of keeping the peace there, and having the dark Vietnamese turn to their own problems, rather than to go ravenous and so forth, is to the fact that there's something they want from us.

Now, on this point, let me say I know that you've wondered about all those things, but let us remember that it has been a tradition of the United States when we have these, not Korea, you'll have to see there, you all know, not yet, but whether it was Germany or Japan or the rest, we helped in a rehabilitation program after a war, and it's evident in both of those countries history paid off.

Because they have become the two of our best and most reliable allies and strong free-world people.

I have suggested in this instance that if you're about to find North Vietnam become a strong free-world nation, I have suggested that it is strange that the Soviet and the Chinese may or may not be able to do it.

But another very positive incentive for North Vietnam could be, in the event we are able to work on an ongoing program of reconciliation, et cetera, could be that they desire good relations with the United States because of what we've been doing.

That's what, and I didn't want to read my law.

I don't want, in other words, I wouldn't, it would be very, it would not be useful if the leaders were to indicate, no, this thing is over.

We will not even listen to the idea of, when I spoke of efforts toward reconciliation for the idea, but instead of any economic program, cooperation, or assistance from our people.

Let me say it.

When I recommended a Congress subject, we're not prepared yet to do so.

It will not be simply for the purpose of helping them.

I mean, that will be a fine one.

But it will be, if I invest, they last in peace, which we need, because it will be a restraint on them, and it's necessary for them to keep the peace.

Is that a fair statement?

Absolutely.

And as you know, this is no news to any of you, and it was no news to them.

I added in my speech in 1969, and I put in the January 22nd speech, that we would help with the reconstruction and so forth and so on.

Mr. President, will the Russians and the Chinese also be willing to help?

And will there be incentives to keep the peace?

We have reason to think so.

Up to this point, the Russians and the Chinese are each watching each other, and he wanted to get caught not supporting a great revolutionary.

Now at this point, with this thing ended, we don't know what they're thinking right now, and the Kremlin are indeed king.

But obviously, our diplomatic efforts will be directed toward getting them to assist in this kind of a program as well, whether or not you're expecting your name to be seen.

Is that very clear?

I think that the President, when he was in China and in Moscow, had a vision that would make us believe that the borders of the

that they would be receptive to proposals of this kind.

Let me say, before you go on, on this point, you have to remember that the Russians don't want the Chinese to dominate in China.

The Chinese don't want the Russians to dominate in China.

And, of course, we don't want us to

And we don't want it.

So the question there is, what was the best thing for everybody concerned?

The best thing for everybody concerned is to have neutral restraint and

so that the NARC will look into its own thing and not extend its domination over the balance of the enemy.

But the other thing the Chinese have to be concerned about, knowing the NARC Vietnamese, how strong, tough, vigorous they are, they have not only dominated 80,000 educated people in China, but 30 or 40 of them are in Thailand as well.

could be something in their southern mind that they wouldn't want to call.

These are factors that I think that are entering into their minds.

I'm not indicating, you know, I'm not going to give any impression to Jeremiah or the mountain, et cetera, et cetera.

But I think we could read between lines a bit about that.

There's two facts that are interesting and suggestive.

One is, there doesn't have continued to be recognition of those that have been taken to maintain the government in Haiti, that is.

And the fact that there was charge in those tents

throughout this whole day.

Second thing, when Madame Lin was received by Mao a few weeks ago, she received an honor that has never been shown to regard so or to any other member of the North Korean public bureau, as in through Peking, which suggests that whatever the Chinese might want, they should further pour into Chinese countries through one monolith.

uh, and, uh, Southern, uh, Frontier has said, or has, he's just restored the positivity for two bonuses, uh, required out of the situation, but because of, uh, uh, this, this question hadn't been raised, so let me be, uh, as I grab people's ears, it's very handy, just to be, uh, if they see the, the,

And we talk about, I think, perhaps an argument on the most difficult to negotiate with, but that's medication and care, because there's three sides, on both sides.

And it's also a question of time.

So what I'd like to say is that I think we're more reasonable than they are.

The point I'm going to say is that we're not going to indicate that it's all going to be just Ukraine.

There aren't going to be any violations against these fires.

The Russians are going to need to go along.

The actual main statement today is that we're very conciliatory and so forth and so on.

After what you said last night, you've got to go out and say something.

You've got to talk about victory.

You're going to talk about victory.

And I just want to reference the fact that at least their public statements may say one thing and they may do something else.

What I'm saying is that the United States, your government,

to cooperate with us and see that this

part of the world, which for 25 years has been crossed by war, Japanese civil war and so forth, finally has a period of peace.

And that's what we're going about.

I just raised a very pertinent question.

We're not going in there and saying, well, the big U.S. is going to do the whole job.

Is that responsible?

Well, Mr. President, I just think we've already faced up to the hard facts of life.

The American people are hoping that this mess in South Vietnam is over and that the cost of the war will be over.

And that the bench budget can't be drastically cut.

And the bitter medicine is this holy saying, and I think it's inevitable, I'm not saying that.

The bitter medicine is that we've got to come out with billions of dollars to support them.

Billions of dollars to support you all.

of the people of L.C.J.

earlier, and I think he, on a previous occasion, had said, we've got this, and I'm more relieved of the fact that this is going to present all the manner of trouble in view of the fiscal situation of the country, and the American people are going to be upset at the end of the war to have people keeping

millions of dollars over a long period in South Vietnam and in the 80s in North Vietnam.

And that's a bitter situation.

And when we put that in the case book, it's going to be bad.

I think we'll put it in the foreign aid bill.

The foreign aid bill is supposed to be the pocket bill we have.

But the case is in such trouble.

that I don't think we'd better put it in defense, and the uprising among the rank and file men on Main Street against rebuilding North Vietnam and Illinois is going to be bad.

It's going to be a hell of a situation.

Now, they're happy today, but they'll make me get a car in hell, and please, will they find out the facts or what?

Well, I remember, George, when you were in Iowa, I'll tell you about it.

We knew there was going to be things unpopular after that war to bore those billions of dollars into Europe, but we had to come back and sell it because it was an investment piece.

Let me also say, out of our biggest question of dollars,

The question is here in Paris.

Yes, there will be some expenditures for economic and other purposes in this part of the world, but it's going to be one hell of a lot less than the expenditures of continuing this war.

That's the point.

So you're going to have something out of your budget.

I understand.

But it's a credit.

It's a credit.

I am a player.

If we give this aid so long as there are annoying Vietnam troops in South Vietnam, if we begin giving this aid before they withdraw,

The situation, this is a matter, of course, that there is, this is a matter that has to be resolved.

But the point, the point that should be made is this, that it's a anti-ethnical, evil, and dark, obviously, is to keep the peace.

That's to keep on going.

Sometimes the conditions are broken.

But they're broken.

The A.A. is gone.

Of course.

Yeah, but of course, the evidence at this stage is to give it true justice.

And the point is to say, I think the very fact that, which is premature, and we're not talking about it yet, but when that time comes, I will present the facts as it is.

I think that you will see, in my view, that as far as what groups remain there, that will be a major factor in having us removed.

We have made some commitments of any kind to the...

There is no commitment to this one.

All we have agreed to do up to now is to discuss it.

We've got to agree on something.

I've just agreed to cut it out of the contract so that there's no bigger deal.

I'm just telling you that I'm just urging that you...

I can put it this way, George.

In terms of just having another lead program, close your minds off on it and say no.

But in terms of whether, when we examine the situation, it is something that we could constantly recommend as a way in the cruelest part of the world to avoid another outbreak of war and so forth and so on, which could be dangerous in all respects, in part because there could be things wrong.

Let's look at it from the other side.

Yes, at the same time, we're considering economic aid to the north.

Russia and China are providing further military aid to the north and replacing and building up sophisticated weapons and so forth in the north.

I understand they're not coming under the one-for-one replacement.

place us in an absolutely untamable position.

Yeah, the fact that we're fighting militaries in the South, in the event they do end up, you say they don't have one.

That's why I use the term ,, because it's very, very powerful.

It's very persistent with the East side.

And another very important thing is that you can't even fight the East side.

We're dependent upon both the Russians and Chinese people in order to leave the South.

and we can get all sides to be restrained to see what could happen.

That was very much in line.

Mr. President, what George said about making realistic the problems of the Congress, so we have to face the fact that some of these people have been so critical of what the President has been doing in Vietnam.

We have to go that way out.

We'll try to understand.

Mr. President, I think

We can all think of ways that the agreement could satisfy us better.

Given the rigidity of the situation and the length of the exacerbation between the parties, I think that what's been achieved is just a monumental accomplishment.

I think that another amount of credit goes to you for...

Well, the war had to be brought to an end, you know.

There was no way America would

I want to say something at the end before we have to take off.

What is your situation?

It's not the one I'm talking about.

We could be in trial for eulogy.

Oh, we've got a little more time.

Well, then we'll move along for ten more minutes.

I can cover that in five minutes.

I've told you what the North Vietnamese proposed about international machines.

Let me tell you what we have agreed about.

There are, there are two types of supervisory parties.

There is a convention for the two parties to be agreed on.

There is the United States, North Vietnam, and the Saudi-Indian parties.

which create teams of four each for a period of two months, and after a withdrawal, it will occur into two party teams of the North and South Vietnamese, which investigate certain types of activities.

Secondly, they're an international profession.

you

Lord, I want to now commend you for a great thank you to the Lord for the way you've cut this thing out.

It's none of our people's good, but you've done it by far the most.

I know little about the church more than any of the men who have had it tonight.

I used to sit in the Oval Office and discuss it.

Well, you had money, too.

Money, man.

I want to say one thing about this.

I believe in one of the most troublesome things now, money.

In connection with this, it's money we're spending in Laos and Cambodia, especially in the military.

We owe it to them.

shut that thing up some way, take it out, and it needs to be moved away from all this matter.

One thing, John, one of the things about the ocean, the ocean thing, well, as you know, it's a very mighty ground.

But if we could get that thing moving along, we could have a better look at that one, right, Henry?

Senator, I could be honest with you.

You could be honest with me.

Some months without bringing pressure on that addictive toy, and we won't need it, I don't think.

The provisions of the agreement and the associated discussions will take care of it completely.

That's correct.

And that's our goal.

Let me tell you, if we want to be bogged down in Laos, Cambodia, anywhere we want to be bogged down, we announce.

If we announce another disease by a go-tend of infection in Laos, as we have very recently faced within a matter of weeks, if then the foreign troops are withdrawn from all sides, if you know what I'm talking about, then the expenses which concern you will...

In effect, as it is, almost both.

A lot of clear atmosphere.

But these things we have just always brought us.

we have fell on the road to a formal solution.

And the Cambodian one is messier because of the Chinese factor and we have to do it more subtly.

But that's not where we have our biggest messages anyway.

All that, I think, we can solve.

And to this force level, I mean, of course, it's offshore.

There's nothing that affects those.

But I... That's our decision.

That is our decision.

It's our decision.

In the immediate future, until the thing settles down, we will substantially maintain our position.

Uh, I would expect that our carrier force is off.

We did not, there couldn't be a carrier force.

We have had about six carriers there.

Uh, so we would, there could be a rate of success.

Totally outside of the agreement.

This is not required.

I think what we're doing, the carriers are going to have to, the carriers are going to have to put them off on the station.

On the station to get back to a more normal rotation.

As you know, some of the troubles we've had on the carriers

have to do with the fact that they've had to be on station for so long that all the tensions have been exacerbated, so we will expect to go back to a more normal rotation, which means that... Harry asks, do we have any research at all that North Vietnamese will diminish their strength in Laos and Cambodia?

They will totally withdraw from the house and come.

That's agreed, isn't it?

Agreed.

The agreement says they will withdraw their horses from the house.

Agreed, Mr. President.

The difference between Laos and Cambodia, the withdrawal thing means something to their foreign forces because North Vietnam does not claim and does not deny that they have forces from Laos and Cambodia.

It's only South Vietnam that you have this to the effect that they have no forces.

This is actually not against our interest.

It is not in our interest to nail down this proposition.

that they have forces in South Vietnam.

My point is that they maintain much strength there.

This war may start all over again.

According to the agreement, now they're all...

But according to the agreement, they are obliged to withdraw all their forces from Laos.

For example, to accommodate in Laos

I don't want to say I'm very much on the move with it.

I congratulate you.

It's been a little long, and I hope that I'm very happy.

Thank you very much.

Mr. President, we gotta help you handle this deal as smoothly as possible.

There is a flying one.

We have to have a foreign aid continuing resolution, or a foreign aid organization and corporation bill.

And this would be the vehicle for taking up a lot of trouble.

I see McClellan, and I see Walker, and I see Young, and I see Polk right over there.

Now, if you can pull us together, or somebody will pull us together, and we can get that thing behind us without a lot of...

Let me just close the meeting.

We are planning to set up a procedure whereby other members of the House and Senate will be free.

That cannot be done today because we're pretty full today.

I think that's a brilliant job.

About three hours.

You should know that this is simply his, you're sort of a taxi fly every day or whatever you do.

Now he's got to go out and face the press and take their questions.

But I can assure you, Henry, the press won't be here to listen to all of you.

They won't be stopped.

That's a tough pronouncement.

The point is that...

The point I wanted to make in conclusion is this, that he...

that I have, of course, appreciated the support of those who are here, and there are many of you who have given us very strong support in this fight against the Russians.

I respected the fact that there are others here, some who have taken a different view.

I want to be very candid about it.

the Korean ceasefire, and I was in this room.

We talked about it.

President Eisenhower had the order.

He ordered a devastating bombing of the Liberty in the case of civilian areas in North Korea, and that hurt the boy almost none of us.

As far as this is concerned, we would have to agree there are problems.

You have raised some of the problems.

But I would say that it would be extremely helpful if the members of the Congress, Democrat and Republican, to the extent of the leaders that you can, that instead of consulting our leaders on this, don't be, of course, going out and saying, well, everything's done, this, that, and all that.

Be quite honest, and you've got to be honest.

But also, don't, I think it's very important for us not to, after getting this agreement,

to send messages to Hanoi and messages to Saigon, and, well, we don't think it's going to last and all that sort of thing.

You can talk that way, the way you thought it was a thought.

It's going to happen.

Now, we've got to talk it weird.

I would like to, if you can, if you could simply say what I said last time.

This is a good agreement.

It is peace with honor.

It not only ends the war, but us, which of course, the prisoners for withdrawal, which many members of the House and Senate just a week after we announced that we were going to be voted for.

So what we have here is we've got our prisoners.

We have more than that.

We've got peace, not only for America, but peace, at least, as fragile as it may be, for all of the people of Indochina, and certainly for Vietnam for a while.

Oh, there will be episodes, and you will read them, and see on the TV every week that something's going to happen here and there.

And we also have, and this is very important, at least a chance

a chance for the South Vietnamese to determine their own future, and thanks to the atomization program, their ability to defend that chance by themselves, without our help.

Now, that, to me, is much better than to have taken another world.

It would have been much easier, believe me.

And I was not tempted, but many of my advisors were tempted to say, throw up our hands, particularly after the election, and say, take anything, get out, the American people be relieved, get our prisoners, and let the whole thing down the drain.

We could have.

But whatever I might have intended for that, I, the opposite of my mind, saw a picture of the POW wife.

I met her first in 1969, and I've seen her at every one of these gatherings since.

She's a Tyson.

I think she's from Colorado.

She had four children, and one was born after her husband was taken to the POW.

Been at the POW for five years.

She kept saying, you know, there were hundreds of thousands marching around this camp.

There were resolutions being passed and so forth saying, get out.

She said, we didn't fight this war for our prisoners.

Don't let our people die.

And we're willing to wait until we get the right kind of a peace.

I'm not suggesting this peace is perfect.

No peace that is negotiated is perfect.

The only one that is perhaps perfect in many things is unconditional surrender.

And I may say that has serious, certain kinds of .

But I do say this is a peace that can work and give the people of Southeast Asia a chance to determine their own future.

And I can only say thank God for those who stood by me.

Great respect, as I say, for those who had their opinions.

Thank God for also a lot of brave men who went out there

We didn't want to go to war anymore.

They gave their lives, so we became prisoners.

We ought to be damned, probably.

there.

You didn't want to go to war anymore.

They gave their lives.

Solomon became prisoners.

We ought to be damned, probably.

We appreciate it.

You're a strong back.

You're still a living baby, son.

I'm not going to have anything to do with that.

Well, Henry, you've got a brief for us now.

I'm going to show a wife that I didn't get to have.

That's true.

It's time to get to the President.

We have some kind of a resolution or a prayer.

Somebody thanking the people of the United States and grateful for the war.

Oh, something like that.

Let me say, I think it would be very good, but I am the last one that can suggest it.

going to look like it's just all serving that's right but if that comes from your boss you know on a bipartisan basis and sort of pull everybody together i mean there are people that disagree on this struggle as a matter of fact as we looked around the day after manson everyone around here has supported what we've been doing you know virtually all the time

Jack suggested it.

We don't want part of us, Congress, to do it and the other part not to do it.

So, you and Bob, you and Webster can do it.

It would be a great thing.

And the appreciation of our people and, I mean, our men for our service and appreciation for the American people.

whatever you whatever it comes to your stuff all right

Well, if you could put the best one on to do that, it's Ray Price.

Ray Price is the man who's been working with me on both the inaugural and this series.

It ought to be that we asked for it, not that we promoted it.

Why don't you do another?

You've got other writers with you.

Are there people outside?

right to do it right now there's an idea price

Don't plan until the summer.

Is everybody?

I've already checked that out, sir.

Everyone looks pretty good now.

You can see me.

A good tiny channel, a deep and lean color, one inch.

That's it, brother.

That's Marcus.

Now, I'm about to end the three shots.

I'm going to make one right now.

Look at me.

Now, what are you trying to do?

The gentleman below me is doing black and white, and I'm doing color.

So pay attention to me now.

And there it is again.

And this will be the final shot, sir.

Stand by.

All right.

Stand by that, Atkins.

Fine.

Now do you want me to hold the rest of you?

Yes sir.

Alright, let's try one more gentleman.

And number three will be the last one, gentlemen.

We stand under the central cabinet.

Each member of the cabinet will receive one at the end of the bill.

Because we have the budget on.

We are starting late, and because of our unfortunate appointment, we're going to have to leave this 3-6.

So, I've never heard of budget freezing that didn't take more than three hours.

So, would you do this right now?

That's why you have to take more time.

But before we do so, I would like to say a word with regard to what you have in front of you here.

This is looking a little good.

It's not very nice of you to have a line.

It gets stronger, I do, which is what I've been attending to over the last four years.

It's a four-year challenge.

And I also learned that campaigns are campaign people here.

Well, it's good to know that.

We used to have a calendar on the wall which simply indicated how many days of elections.

So it comes down to 60 days, 50 days, and so on.

So the whole purpose of that, of course, is to indicate that every day counts and you only have this many days left.

Now it happens that on the 20th of January, we have 4,361 days, not one day more, not one day less, to get in office and do everything we have to do, and that isn't very much time.

We've already wasted three, four days.

I don't think yesterday was a waste of time.

But anyway, today that we've got 14 in on 57 days, you don't have to use this counter-incursion system, no matter what you want.

But I am going to use it this way.

We'll limit that day, and I'll say, now, what did I do today?

I guess, now it's not like, it's not today.

I don't want the Vice President to get any ideas about what I'm about now to say.

I guess...

I found that this is the first time since January of 1973, 20 years ago, that we have not had a former president living.

That was the day that I'm also checking.

former presidents of the United States, I find that the days of greatest mortality happen to be in the 60s.

And having just passed that threshold, the bill just approaching, and I should tell you, some of you may not remember this, but it, uh, but, uh, P. Barr died in 1990 when he was only 61.

He left the presidency.

Coolidge was 61.

Wilson was 68 in 1924.

And Wilson was F.D.

on his fourth term president.

Of course, he actually did quite a bit in 1924.

Whenever you're 60, it means your day, your number.

So that's what I'm thinking of.

Here we are looking forward.

So I think that every day, maybe, I think we should think that this cabinet room and everything we do is not alone.

That every day could be the last.

I don't say this in any sense of, well, it's going to be terrible, but it's great.

If you think that every day is going to be the last, you won't wait.

So that's why you get these calendars and also do those ones too.

We're not over the hill.

But with regard to the budget,

Fortunately, about half of the campus here has sat through this.

Bill and I have sat through the darn things.

It's the most boring.

It's an interesting exercise in the world to hear about the budget.

You never have enough, no matter whether the budget is an expansion or a budget order, as we call it in the state.

Now, I'm concerned about their budget.

And I can point out that the budget for 73, although it's a cutback, is $18 million more than the budget for 72, and the budget for 74 is $96 billion more than the budget for 73.

And yet, because the way everything grows and grows and grows, particularly in the parts where Elliott is now left, which is under control,

we have a terrible problem, and also the way things are added to in the country.

In order to get this thing presented properly, I'll subscribe and read again.

Let me tell you what I, from a political standpoint, we all have to remember.

government spending is a lousy issue.

People are bored with spending.

They really are.

They're boring because they like this program or that, and anybody who's a smart politician will figure

What is going to be spending?

It was spending as well as my program.

I put in all those things to take care of.

I put in water for those personalities and all the rest of it.

So forth and so on.

Now, the fee for a balanced budget is an impossible issue.

to have got no choice .

So the balanced budget we do, whether it's a balanced full employment budget, which is our, shall we say, justifying having a balanced budget.

or whether it is a balanced budget in the traditional sense, in the conventional sense that we used to talk about when we were out of power, they had to never test the oil, and they did.

Whatever the case might be, what we have to remember is that the balanced budget, the reason we are for it, is that it is the only way we can avoid, particularly as the economy is expanding,

the inflationary pressures of the rate that will raise prices.

And, at the present time, that means it's the only way we can avoid higher taxes.

However, as all of you present this thing publicly, within your own shop, it's going to be hard, because there are going to be cuts made, perverts are being cut, there's going to be hard-heartedness.

But in terms of pretending that probably whenever the issue comes up, you can never win fighting on the issue of whether or not you ought to have schools and health care or families that earn $30,000 a year or more, which we now provide.

You'll never win on that issue.

Because people will say, well, gee, you know, they earn $30,000.

The kids ought to have dollars.

Probably isn't.

So, I think in all my life, I have more dentistry than anybody in the school.

The other guy says, but we ought to have a program for school milk for kids, regardless of whether or not they get it.

But you add all that up together, and the question is, do you want all those programs and higher taxes?

Or do you want us to make some cuts and avoid higher taxes?

On that issue, you can win.

If you ever get caught debating the programs, you will lose.

Unless it is a particularly lousy program.

And most of them are lousy, but it's hard to convince people of it.

I'm just trying to put it in the political context as best I can.

Now, Cap, of course, will now go over this budget and tell us what some of those cuts are.

But I should be saying that all of us must constantly pay attention to one thing, that the purpose of our budget is to avoid an tax increase.

By cutting our budget back, we are avoiding putting more taxes on the backs of the American people for 1973, for 1974, and even for 1975.

And that is worth building.

The people don't want to pay more taxes.

They do like more government programs if they are for them.

And that's about the way it sets it down.

Having said that, can't you tell us why you think we should debate it on the other ground?

I'm trying to balance it out a little.

Oh, absolutely.

I'm not sure that you are, sir, if you agree.

It's the fact that you understand that you can't go on and crack the program again.

I think that pretty well completes the budget briefing.

I didn't mean to say anything else on this terrible subject, but I agree it is pretty difficult.

I told the President I thought three federal budgets were enough, and he agreed with me, and I thought I was going home, but here we are.

And Groin is right in front of me.

get some of the labor, I'm afraid, of the problems involved.

This is the standard.

We can't open a budget briefing without this, Director.

And this is the one that shows the rate of injury issue we're speaking of.

Outlays are still seen.

I'll bet it had a receipt.

And we are still, we are running at about a $24 billion deficit, actual, just about $3 billion in full-appointment deficit for the current fiscal year.

That $24, $22 billion deficit may be cut to $12 billion by the end of 1974.

and we have uh prepared the figures for 1975 and it will show that we are just about exactly even in 1975 and we'll come to that uh in a moment it will be balanced in full employment in 1974.

Your directions to me in July in this room were to hold this to 250 and to hold the 1974 budget to full fund balance and those were to the economic advisor.

I'm only doing this so that people will have the answer.

The economic advisor is telling us that 1974 will not be a year until we will have full fund.

Yes, sir, they are.

What's the matter with that?

That's what I was wondering.

I think they're doing very well.

We will be where the estimates range from five to four, six.

through the fiscal year.

And we will be at full employment balance as directed.

We will be at the actual deficit of just about $12 billion compared to $24 billion in the previous year.

Let the record show, incidentally, that Secretary Flader and Shapiro later in the fiscal year, which is now under his, I trust, watchful eye.

had to revise their loss plan and figure it down to the amount in the last month, 5.2 to 5.1.

There was kind of a loss in the last, what was that, a seasonal adjustment?

But I haven't published it.

It'll only come out with our economic reports.

Oh, that'll be an economic report for the last month's figure.

It makes her, it makes her science team a little less of a liar.

And as I said, we have said that we would give the neighborhood a 5%.

5.2, the neighborhood's got to be a real big.

5.1, it really is the neighborhood, right?

That's the only difference between being there and not being there.

We are not spending more of the gross national product.

In fact, a little bit less than we have over the period over the last decade.

So that we went up the Vietnam War escalated.

We had peaked about a little bit, but a jump there for fiscal stipulation.

Now we're down right about, just about at that 20% of the GNP is the federal budget.

The state and local government takes us to about 34%.

So 34% of the GNP is government.

The results of the President's directions, could I just say they're trying to make a full stop at the point.

They do a lot of good.

They're doing a lot of good.

They're doing a good job.

And of course, it's very detrimental to our economy.

But when you get to the point that government, federal, state, local, who takes over the creditors and everything, you've got to start watching out because that's going to creep up to 40% to 45%.

You're still going to reach the point where people are going to be working more for themselves.

That's another reason to keep this down.

I think it's a good point.

34% of everything we produce goes for government.

That's high enough.

That's another reason for holding a lot of taxes.

Mr. President, they'd also like to work at Patriot.

That's right.

We've got a job.

That's right.

That's what's fine, sir.

This shows the results of the President's direction to pull the offlays to 250 million in 1973.

What would have happened if those directions hadn't been followed, and the fact that we have.

A year ago today, when the budget went up to the hill, it went up to 246.

It had climbed to 250.

We knew from the bills pending and from the attitudes of the Congress that it would probably go to 260.

If we spent everything that had been appropriated when the Congress adjourned October 27, it would have been 260, which instead of a $24 billion deficit would have been a $35 billion deficit.

And we moved back down to 250 as a result of the actions taken in this budget.

And that's what we're now looking at for the balance of this year.

This shows again what would have happened if we left the 73 alone and if 73 had gone to 261 billion instead of 250 we're now recording.

Then just on a straight continuation basis with no new programs, we would have gone to 288.

But because we made that $11 billion saving this year, that has the effect of a $19 billion saving on fiscal 74 of the budget that's going on Monday.

And if that in turn had been allowed to go unconstrained, it would have gone to 312 with a deficit again of about 30 billion, a little over 30 billion in actual deficit this year.

So that's saving, that shows how it functions from 11 to 19, 24 billion, just because we didn't make this very difficult.

reduction exercise here in 1973 and as a result of that we were looking at a full one balance instead of 288 269 for 1974 268 actually uh and again because we did something this year we have not done before and which incidentally is the idp

The principal item of the budget that hasn't yet leaked, Mr. President, and we hope it will not between now and Monday, and that is we did a very complete estimate of 1975, much more so than normal.

And that shows that we will and can hold the 288, which again will be in full employment balance, actually a small full employment surplus.

And as far as I can see, we have the normal growth of revenue taxable dollars during that year.

If we hadn't done it, we would have had a $312 billion outlays with no new programs just because of the growth of what would have happened if you left this figure alone.

And that's why I say this is related to what Peter and I's point is.

Our goal, of course, is to talk about that second slide.

That means the actual balance is what we really want.

Actually, we want a quote-unquote balance, and that means an unemployment balance.

But we should be very close to a quote-unquote balance.

And these are enough expenditures to do that.

But these are enough expenditures to start inflation going because of taxes.

Okay, now let's go to the tax reduction.

Can I interject?

That is a...

tremendous innovation in the budget process.

And it was very tempting, as we argue about this, you remember, to try to protect the economy and say, well, we'll be in coal prices then, and therefore we can project a balanced rate, and maybe even a surplus or something of that kind.

But the fact is, everybody who's observed economists knows we have enough trouble trying to predict what the economy's gonna do a year from now, not about two, three years from now.

And so it was very deliberately used, not to try to put a forecast in place, but to leave ourselves the flexibility to try to manage the budget in accordance with whatever the economic problems turn out to be as we approach the end of something.

and we're not smart enough to predict if this figure is going to be in the budget.

A 75 figure for full employment out of these will be, but we will not predict a prediction for what the receipts will be, because that would be as though we were saying we are forecasting what the economy is going to be like, and we want to work to have it be.

The normal growth of the actual revenues from this year to this year would just about do that.

So within this room, we can say we would be just about, as far as we can tell now, at actual balance.

This shows the other form of stimulation that we used.

We stimulated the economy by expanding expenditures.

We also stimulated it by reducing taxes.

And again, though it's not all that easy to figure, it's exactly what the total tax rate would have been in 74 if we'd left the tax rates alone.

We have made this deep a reduction, and given certain assumptions, which I think are fair enough, we can say that we have had a reduction in the individual income taxes.

of $25 billion a year.

We would actually, as far as we can tell, GMT and other things that run just about the same, we would have taken in $25 billion more in taxes this year than we are now, which, oddly enough, is just about exactly the size of the actual tax.

Have we not had our tax bill from 1969?

Yes, sir.

Right.

And then other reductions that were made since the result of 1971.

Now, this shows that this is all quite that good, because there has been an increase in payroll taxes, Social Security taxes.

It had gone up just about, in 1974, it had gone up just about $20 billion.

So at the very least it's been a reduction of $5 billion in total taxes.

Individual income taxes down about $25 billion.

Social security taxes at the end of fiscal 74 will be up just about $20 billion.

benefits have gone up just about the same, about 21 billion.

And Social Security benefits have actually increased something like 87% since 1970.

And if I go back for a moment to that 25 billion figure you said, I think that

had taxes remained at the earlier higher level, there would have been enough to eliminate the deficit.

But isn't it also conjecturally true that had taxes remained at the lower level, you wouldn't have had as high a rate of economic growth.

Therefore, the yield would not have been enough to...

I'm still projecting myself back to October.

It's still fair enough to say that we did cut individual income cuts.

President, we were asking the question, you turned off the theory behind the desirability in the standpoint of economic growth, on all items and so on, and having reduced the taxes.

It is, and many people, myself, think it's a better way of stipulating because it leaves the dollars in the people's pockets to spend as they wish.

This shows that we have to get out of stipulation.

What is the, what is your issue of stipulation?

I don't know, of course.

I'm picking up a little phone call from Social Security.

Are they aware of that?

Is that after they care?

Of course, it is a take-home pay, but I'm just wondering.

Remember, when we put this in, we said to you, this is a tax increase.

I'm just wondering, what's your reaction?

Did they, were they aware?

Did they mind it?

Most of them didn't like it when it happened this year.

Uh-huh.

But they were aware.

They saw that chunk come out of their face.

They're more sophisticated in these areas now than they have been 10 years ago.

But they didn't like it because they saw the money come out.

And they knew it was going to come for something as far down the road when they might have gotten it around.

About 8 million beneficiaries of Social Security and about 60 million and 70 million contributing to it.

And it's now a little over half of the income tax.

So, in total pay, in some brackets, it's almost as much as or more than the income tax.

You see the great...

It was a great attempt to take something out of the comments and of course we signed this with a very great idea and sort of reluctance.

But we want to take a hard look at the future.

Congress always jacks up, jacks up that.

But let's remember that every time we jack up those things, that social security, and the rest, and social, and that, it just takes it right out of those people who are, and they're earning here, around 25, 40, 50, we're going to get some hard.

Listen, I don't think it's to their nation.

especially with some employees that paid all the money off.

So you're talking, President, that this county did, as you are, written a recommendation

including cost of living escalated into law now, so that there is no longer real gentrification for benefits.

It really ought to stabilize at this point, as far as benefits are concerned.

Well, it's a very good example, Mr. President, of the problem that we've been talking about with congressional procedures, that they never take an overall look at the whole thing.

We talked about the $20 million increase in outlays.

12 billion of that 20 billion dollars increase in social security benefits so that you have if anybody looked at overall and said should we put that much of the available new money uh that we can spend without having a tax increase in the social security benefits on top of all that they've done before probably the answer would be no but nobody nobody in the congress looks at the overall

This one shows the changing priorities in terms of dollars.

Defenses remain just about level since 1960-69, almost exactly level with dollar amounts, and will again this time, although it can go up about $3.5 to $4 billion from 73 to 74, entirely because of pay and price increases, mostly associated with the oil law and fair arms force.

Human resources has gone from about 60 to

to about 112 in that kind of range.

And for cities, it's again exactly the reverse.

So that you have from about 45% events now down to under 30.

Human resources programs from about 32 now up to about 46.

The technology should have

Because people don't know it, the cabinet can tell it to them.

So they're playing on it.

They don't believe me.

And to be perfectly frank with you, I don't think you like it.

Go to hell.

Now here is the best, you know, all the new members of the cabinet know that I sometimes say they kind of want to go down by this rule.

Because they write this into my school.

Yeah, every time I say it.

Great.

It will go to 79 in 1974, no new activity, fewer men.

But that is entirely the result of pay and price increases within the department.

So we are staying level on actually a little lower, actually.

And that's where the so-called piece of it is, right in that little blue line.

Now, here we have the problem explained a little bit more.

In 1968, the average pay in allowances on active duty was $5,500.

It is now $10,000.

We have 3.5 million men in the Army, in the events in 1968.

We only have 2.2 million, and yet they will cost us more.

And another way to look at this is the chart that we had last year.

How many men in the armed forces will a billion dollars pay for?

In 1964, it would pay for 219,000 men.

In 1974, it would pay for 100,000.

So that's the effect of pay raises and inflation within the Department of Defense.

Here is, back on the human resources side, this is the increase in benefits to the elderly, benefit tables.

A little under 40 million, 37.1 in 1970, and 1974 goes to 63.5.

A very tight budget, does not need to send it up from 57 to 63, between 73 and 74, but these are the different.

Yes, I don't have the number of participants here, but we can do that.

It has been increased.

It's about 17 million now, and it was somewhere in there, but it was out.

I forgot the name.

We can get it.

food assistance has had an enormous increase starting in 69 food stamps jumped way up and other school lunch and other programs special health program is leveling out just a little bit but still going up food stamps leveling out between 73 and 74. we're now up to over four billion uh 200 percent increase in the number of children receiving free and reduced school lunches uh 65 percent rise in the

areas participating in the food stamp program.

All of these are things that you never can gather when you read about criticisms of the budget, but there is no disputing the figures, and you can see the size and rapidity of those increases.

But at least we do care about the hungry.

I bet you, Tommy, aren't you surprised to see these figures from those people?

These figures in the food center, for example, the food is that this is a really a low in there.

That's 40% of my budget.

One thing, Mr. President, is that it's considerably complicated for our welfare reform, because it means that all, remember when you originally proposed it, to include the good and poor as part of the wage incentive.

Working around and going on welfare, the food stamp program was quite small.

so that the extension of benefits to the working poor had a significant potential impact.

But the growth of the food stamp program is now such that these families are growing benefits, in effect, at least as much as they would have received as the program originally conceived.

From 200 million to 2.5 million in three years.

Mr. President, this is an area that will potentially increase all of them.

Take the school lunch, for example.

Last year, the Congress added two steps to the Constitution, and they took every school lunch, whether the Constitution or not.

They're going to send them out there for free school lunches for everybody to have school breakfast.

It's perfectly uncertain.

We could cut it loose from the cover line standard, but it took a little more.

You have to bear in mind, too, that this is not a focus program.

This is for everybody.

This does not go to these schools.

This goes to all the schools, no matter how wealthy the school district or how poor the school district is.

Just to cite this as a case in point, we have 20 million youngsters now in schools.

Every one of them gets an 8 cent contribution toward this fund.

We have between 6 and 7 million who get free or partially subsidized lunches, depending on their parents' economic status.

The pressure is to give the free lunch to everybody.

We're putting apparently capital up to $2 billion, and that this is potentially a $10 or $12 billion that will accomplish his brother's goal.

And little by little, it sheds a little light here, so you're going to see the profit.

The pressure is going to move in on this.

I think so, yes.

It's a capital.

The government program, of course, was a free lunch and a free breakfast for every child in the school system, and that may well be introduced again.

This shows the additional amounts that we are now putting into both minority assistance and enforcement of civil rights activities, and this has had a very steady growth during the entire administration, and we look to see that growth in 1974.

enforcement up a little more than the previous years, John.

Minority assistance, small business, a minority business enterprise, all of those activities.

Yes, sir?

What's in the yellow?

The Department of Commerce and the 43 Medicaid.

43 Medicaid.

Yes, the minority business enterprise.

That's a lot of education.

Oh yes, very much so.

The other thing about it, we said that Kleindies wasn't having $3 million for these purposes.

The direct federal outlays are almost matched now by to LEAA and other grants to state and local governments.

And it's a smaller jump for next year, but that was planned in the previous year.

uh okay now brought up the uh state of the state of local government on that point mr president i would say within three or four years you will not have an necessity for increases there's another point where you'll never solve the problem always

Another of the areas of the budget is environmental control, environmental quality.

This takes us up very sharply in pollution control in the basement as a result of the Clean Water Act.

This is at the level at which we plan to spend.

If Congress had its way, we wouldn't have enough room on the paper for this one,

made very substantial increases, right straight through.

Smaller increases, but steady increases in recreational and sanitary pollution control, and they've had a very marked increase from well under a billion.

Actually, this was approximately 200 million, a little less than that when the first term started.

And as you can see now, it's way up over 2.8 billion for the pollution control, and will continue to increase as the Clean Water Act spins out.

Here is the chart that shows what food prices are selling.

Farmer's cash has gone unsettling, and they're now close to 60 billion.

That's farm income.

Price support programs are going down, and the inventory owned by the CCC is way down as we sell off in the various grain sale programs and the others.

But this is a very significant drop, and Earl cooperated magnificently in helping us

I can interrupt for one moment.

Maybe this figure also .

But I was interested in the CPI figure, which is two-tenths.

And also the food, the food thing, which is not, I don't know how to speak to it, at what point, what happened, the decision on just, it was nothing, it was level, but yeah, of course they don't expect any more of those, it's got to be done.

What is the question?

The question I raised there is that I remember when everybody came in and said, well, when Bryce went up one-on-one, he had a lot of grass to plant.

The next one that took off, I assumed that we were projecting on, but that showed that you can't.

Let's go to all these things.

We didn't, let's not jump on that zero.

That zero was the problem before us.

This one has significance because of course it's a lot lower storage costs.

It means we're doing a lot less farming.

Farmers are selling more private sales and open markets.

Here, what we're doing, this is, I think, one second, I don't want to delay the meeting, but Earl and the new members of the cabinet should also hear the point that you have made and that John Connors offered me, too, that there's presently, in the rising standards in the world, this is a good sign, there's a world of security.

of meat.

And that's a real problem.

It's just going to continue to go on.

May I say, as we sit here, a meat purveyor in Britain is importing prime beef from the United States because the market is better than the American market on prime beef.

But all over the world, people eat more and so forth.

So it's going up.

So the other side of that coin is...

or go someplace and raise a cow.

I run a very real risk of surplus, which would jack up CCC costs in existing homes.

It will also have the effect of

11, that's correct.

That is correct.

I've got 11 now to track up the other costs.

I think it's also interesting that we do that with 5% of our people.

Isn't that right?

About 5% of our people?

Yes, on farms.

Yes.

In China it's 80%, in Russia it's over 50%.

Very good.

Yeah.

But if I had to say, we do it now in the world too.

We contributed $3 billion net surplus to our amounts of trade rights to humanity.

That's the Soviet and all the rest.

Japan, Soviet Union, and so forth.

Urban transportation, again, we've still been showing increases, not having rapid increases in previous years, but considerable growth.

Rapid transit will stay just about the same.

Highways will increase a bit as we pay off from previous years.

programs and airport stays about level with the airport construction funds as a special fund now.

So that is up over $2 billion in outlays in that year.

We do not yet have a highway bill, but that's an estimated outlay that will be made when that bill is passed.

It shows the improvement in housing conditions and some of the reasons why it seems feasible to

temporarily some of those programs.

In 1950, the federally subsidized housing has grown from about less than $200 million up to, as you had said, $200 million up to $1.2 million in standard housing.

Occupied standard housing is now at that kind of level, and substandard housing has gone very steadily and rapidly down.

on the chart here, the basic economic forces that provided major stimulus for dramatic improvement, and they have, as the economy has improved, we've had a very substantial improvement in housing all over, and with the problems involved in those programs, and with this kind of record, this number of reductions from substandard housing, and this kind of increase in people in standard housing, and this sort of increase in federally subsidized housing, and with all the problems involved in those programs, it seemed that this was a piece of a year to do that.

There is no problem about our assistance to state and local governments.

That is still growing up very rapidly with the extra.

six billion this year of general revenue sharing.

That levels off a bit because of the factors that pushed it up this year, retroactive payment that came into this this year.

The grants, however, are all still up.

So the argument that we use revenue sharing to reduce grants is not correct.

And we can see that while there is a leveling, it is still very high, $45 million to all of these state and local governments.

There is one other point that isn't charted, and that's on federal civilian employment, which is another subject of very specific directions from the President.

We have moved down in federal civilian full-time employment from 2 million 6 in 1969

$2.5 million in 1972, $2.4 million at the end of 1974, based on the ceilings that will come out with the allowance letters that will be mailed Monday at the same time the budget is sent.

There will be most interest, I suspect, in the

various program reductions and terminations.

And we have a rather complete section that will be in the budget that will list on five pages in great detail the individual savings that have been made.

We'll have briefing material as to the reasons for those, the selection of those programs for the savings.

And most importantly, as I mentioned at the beginning,

The out-year effect of those savings, the $6 billion savings in reduction and termination of programs this year, the balance of this year, produces about $17 billion in 1974 and up again about $22 billion in 1975.

These are the amounts we would be spending if we continued the programs we're recommending for reductions and terminations.

Not too many of these require substantive legislation.

We've broken the tables down between those that do require legislation and those we can do administratively.

And this is really the reason why there have been and will be some difficulties, some problems in individual programs because we frankly are reducing programs.

There's no way of doing this kind of reduction and maintaining it through the next three to five years without some sharp reductions and terminations.

We do have supporting now and through for each one.

As the President says, the point of this exercise is not just to end up with a surplus or to end up with a good-looking last line.

It is literally the only kind of drastic action that can prevent a tax increase.

If you have a $35 billion actual deficit this year and roughly a $10 or $12 billion gold-in-flux deficit this year, that climbs, as we saw in the other chart.

you have to have more taxes.

You'll get inflation, too.

And then it gets worse as it multiplies out and you're in the remaining fiscal year.

It has a very sharp geometric rate of progression as it gets up.

So the time to make savings is three years ago.

We have to start now if we're going to do it at all.

And that's why there haven't been such drastic reductions this year in compliance with the President's instructions.

And it was only because of that.

that we were able to get a full employment balance in 74, and then we could get very close to actual balance, again, with a at this reduced rate of taxation that we've been able to produce since 1969.

We'll have the presentation to the press on Saturday, and to the Congress on, I think, Friday.

And then the members of the cabinet will get their budgets, I hope, on Friday.

And it's all in the parking lot, of course, until Monday morning.

Yeah, I see her.

She followed you.

She's become a very honest singer today.

I guess that's why you really liked her and her singing, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah, did you hear what I said?

You said that wasn't as good as talking about dying in your 60s.

I had to write my way to a pretty good foundation, yeah.

That was easier after all.

Before I, I do want to, let me ask a question here to the charge.

We all know that the first was necessary, and the second didn't include it.

Now, why?

With this rather sharp contraction, leaving out the equation and all this, to what extent would you believe that there is going to be damage?

Now, I know the argument is, well, if you don't do it, then people on Wall Street are going to worry, and the bankers are going to worry, and all we do worry, and the Europeans are going to worry, because they're letting their houses get out of order, and so forth and so on.

And so, I guess, being a devil's advocate for a moment, I suppose you might say, well, now, you've got this too sharp a turnaround, and by that sharp a turnaround, you...

well it's not that sharp turn around the the sharp cut is from the campus made it from things that were prospective not that we ever had it shows an increase

The increase in spending this year is $18 billion, next year is $19 billion, the year after is $20 billion, so it's a fairly steady rate of growth of spending.

And the decline of the full budget, which in my dictionary is just not, it's not just an excuse for debt, but the decline of the full budget is very small.

And we think, as you see this,

economy is made by the TMP and then rising at a rate like 10% per annum.

Well, we can't go on rising at that rate for very long without giving us another big explosion.

So we've got to slow that down.

And it's appropriate for the purpose of slowing that down to have the

But in turn, in the sum of restrictive directions, just as it was appropriate in the beginning of 1972, that it should turn in an expansive direction.

So we think that Cap's instincts turned out to be right at this moment.

You expect the economy to be expanding very strongly in 1973.

Do you really think so?

That's everybody's projection.

We subscribe to that, and this budget is consistent with an expanding economy.

We, how does this differ, may I ask, George, from the year 1960?

I recall that these magazines, I can't really hear very well, early in the year, these magazines came out with full-time, as you called them, soaring sixties, and announcing all the rest of the sixties going to be a great year.

And since it turns out to be a lousy year, how many of us, but Mark and Matt deserve to be announced, but what I've got to ask is, do you see, do you see looking forward, shall we say, this year 1974, which a number of our callers are interested in, as well as George Bush, are we doing things here now that are, you know, have us pay a 1974 with a

Well, we think that if we don't have a slowing down of the expansionary force of the federal budget, what will happen is that the economy will just soar up beyond bullet points, so to speak, and we'll have a tremendous inflationary outburst

And we will have to somehow deal with that.

The only way to deal with it at that time is the way it was dealt with in 68, 69, namely to have a tremendous budget turnaround, extremely precise monetary situation, and put the economy through a crunch, which would be coming along in about 1974.

So what we're trying to do is to

have a policy that allows the economy in a sense to go into a sustainable orbit where it doesn't get so expensive so fast that it goes right up through a possible horrible horrible path and kind of comes on to the full appointment screen a little bit more gradually so that it can be sustained

President, it seems there's a difference to me between now and 50 in that we have the wage and price controls, which when removed will give a psychological forward thrust to the economy.

So that if the vanity does occur more than is projected, it may be a little shot forward from that.

On that contrast, do you remember those budget charts we used to use on the full fund of budgets to show the whole decade?

And in the 1960s there was a fairly substantial full fund surplus.

And spending had been held way down below what the revenues would be at full fund.

And an effort was made in those days to balance the budgets no matter what.

And a darn good job was done in inflation, in fact spending was too good in the sense that it was way below full fund revenues and was a drag on the energy.

And what, in effect, the

the Eisenhower administration wound up doing was to, in fact, hand the Kennedy administration an opportunity to cut taxes, stimulate the economy, and be authoritarians on the basis of the restraint that they had exercised.

We also had, in those days, extraordinarily tight money policies.

which combined with budget business to give us that downturn.

We have had a monetary policy that has been throughout 1972, and I think most people would say right now it's too expensive.

It's going to have to be tightened up, tightened up somewhat.

That is getting a lot of attention.

Mr. President, I think one thing, as far as the political aspects of whether you're concerned, I believe there are enough people that came in to become concerned about energy.

In the presentation that we are making with the emphasis on very versus, given your source of concern, at some point, because I think we've got a good record, we ought to display

The efforts that are being made in the R&D areas, particularly the reactor and all the other things that we're doing in terms of cranking up our domestic energy base.

I would hope that that aspect, if the record is...

one that is comparable.

We ought to display that along with what we're doing in agriculture, what we're doing in the federal and local government systems because people are really concerned and they are concerned that we are not moving far enough or fast enough.

And I think in the study of the record,

would show that this is not true.

This is one of the big problems that I think we have in our congressional relationships because people are just saying, you're not doing anything about it.

The facts are we're doing a lot about it.

And those things will begin to actually show up on the ground.

And I think that's something we can't ignore and read the press and all the rest of it.

We will.

We haven't completed any of the charts quite yet, but there is a chart on energy R&D that will be ready by Saturday and will be in the chart book that will be distributed to everybody.

That's a very good point.

we've got about 100 charts and i didn't want to display them all because they aren't all made up yet but that is a very good one to have in this it would be enough i think we all know that this is a good solid budget well some of the congressmen they may include something like this

you

Thank you.