Conversation 501-014

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expect, he was very disturbed and he wanted to say something.

And his point was, his basic point of contention was, why wasn't I informed in January?

Well, we didn't get into months because I didn't know the specifics of all what happened.

So why wasn't I informed that the president was

dealing with Doreen and working something out.

He said it's perfectly clearly understood that it's his privilege to tell me he's going to handle it, doesn't want me involved, but I should be informed so that I know what's happening, so that I know to judge my own acts on the basis of that.

For instance, the President made the point to me that the real problem with the dividend remark in London was related to this.

If I had known that, I would have approached that.

more carefully, maybe, and that kind of thing.

He said he was hurt.

I know he was.

He thought that this was an indication that he wasn't trusted.

He said it wasn't that at all.

What is he?

Did you raise the point?

That's the subject of the former player, too.

Yeah.

That he couldn't be done.

Yeah.

And he just, you know, watched over that and made the point that this wasn't simply a state matter.

It was involved.

But...

Well, he just ignored that completely.

He went into kind of going back over and over and made the point that Henry had assured him and that you had assured him that we would never do this, that he would be informed.

And Henry had told him that even if the president says it's got to be very close to hell, that will always keep you informed of it.

of any activity that we have going on with ambassadors and so on, so you won't get caught short on anything.

You'll always know.

And I got into the, he said, this is,

I said, obviously there have got to be situations where the President also has got to make a decision.

He's got to have the timeframe.

He was gone when all this stuff took place.

We were in very big shape on that.

This was in San Clemente.

And I did tell Bill that I was going to send some sort of a message.

Well, I mentioned that, that you said that you had told him you were sending a letter or something.

didn't play back to that he just called me on the phone just now again and he said then he kind of admitted that yeah you probably did mention something about the other i mentioned and uh a letter that i was sent i'd send some sort of a letter in my locker to know on my own he said i'll bet you any amount of money that all the magazines and

the background columns and everything, we'll have a full report on the number of meetings, gifts that you're ready to bring.

Now, you see, this will make me the laughing stock again of this whole thing.

It destroys my effectiveness and credibility.

For instance, how can I go to NATO now?

They'll all know that I don't know what's going on.

So there's no reason for anybody to know that you don't know what's going on.

First place you did know, as I understand it, the thing was being opened.

At one point, kind of whizzed by the person sending a signal, why, you know, that's fine.

He wants me to take more time, said, I just don't know what to do, and I do want the person to know my feeling.

He, way down the line, dropped in, I think it's a great development, and I'm all for it, you know, this stuff.

About this, I hope you, I know you did reassure, there isn't going to be, now Henry has got to hold his ego to check now, and he's not going to say about any, he's not going to say anything about developments.

One of the things that Henry's got to, Henry just can't, he just, he must do it for another reason, it'll hurt the Soviets.

that Henry puts up and he did this and that.

I made that point today.

The Soviets came back on it unexpectedly.

I didn't expect him to do it, frankly.

I didn't really think his whole business was going to succeed.

I never thought anything would happen, but I know you didn't.

I know you didn't.

Well, I told you.

It was my understanding that you didn't think there was much hope on this.

There was one glimmer you had taken the flyer to see it out.

He was disturbed because you told him you were going to be telling Smith this afternoon, and he said that as soon as I got back here, Smith came in and Henry had told him before I didn't leave him.

And, uh...

I told him Henry was leaving.

I told him Henry was leaving, but then I went to see him and said, okay.

And he said, Smith came in to me and said, I'm very sorry, and I just want you to know that I didn't have anything to do with this, that I didn't know about it either.

So he said, there is one more person who knows I didn't know anything about it.

So he said, obviously Henry couldn't do anything to tell him that I did.

That gets to what is kind of a key point now, which is what he called me back on, which is that we should develop a party line on how this transpired and what he should say.

For instance, he said, what do I say up on the Hill?

I've got to explain this.

Now what do I say?

And the fact of the matter is that I don't know why.

I think we...

I think you've got to say this was a presidential initiative.

He sent the message.

There's been an exchange of correspondence.

Oh, we've all been working on it.

And were you aware of this?

Yes.

And he got through it.

We said, if you didn't tell him, which he now admits you did about the letter.

Yeah.

And also, the other thing that's occurred in the last two weeks, and it's something that I've made the intention to.

You know, if he isn't trusted, he can't.

We could find out it wasn't a question of, did you tell him about the Middle East, for example, or did you get that point?

I think the Middle East, I never asked him a goddamn thing about it.

I mean, we just leave it totally in his ballpark, you know, and we don't let him know.

He made the point that he kept us completely filled in, and kept you in every sense.

And Henry, completely filled in on everything in the White House.

Oh, he said, and Henry, over here, filled in on the Middle East, everything he was doing.

He keeps me posted.

I agree with that.

I think Bill tells me as much as I need to know, but I don't want to know everything about it, frankly.

Well, beyond that, beyond that, we must, he's absolutely right, there must be a party line.

And the party line has got to be that everybody knows about it.

I think he's got to say, but how do you handle the trust?

I said it wasn't a question of trust at all, Bill.

It was a question of operating procedures that went along.

I said the President's concern all the way through here is it is on any of these things to make it work.

It's not the story or who gets credit, but it's to make the thing work.

I said, sure.

He's very much concerned about how it's properly presented after he gets the thing solved.

But I said, you know him a lot better than I do.

You've been around a lot longer than I have.

You know perfectly well when he gets into something like this, he works on it on the basis of how best to make it work out.

He doesn't get into, am I going to get credit or is Sam going to get credit?

And I was trying to shimmy Bill because Bill was playing good.

It wasn't, he wasn't playing credit, but he was playing who knew the, yeah, was I involved, you know.

And so, when he said, I don't want to, you told him, I said, I hope, of course you did talk, that nobody around here knew anything about it.

I didn't.

I told him I didn't know.

You didn't know a damn thing.

And he said, well, how many times did Harry meet with Doreen?

And I said, I haven't any idea.

I don't know that he did.

Yeah, sure.

I don't know how the, I don't know how the thing was handled.

He said, well, does Henry have a conversation memorandum of his meetings with DuBain?

I said, I don't know that.

I've never seen any.

And as I said, I don't know if he's met with him or how.

I don't know how this was handled.

And I don't.

Actually, it was handled.

Henry did meet with him.

Not as often as Henry indicates, but he did meet with him.

Well, I know he did.

But we've got a specific number here.

Should we get Henry in and work this line out now?

No.

I wouldn't, don't give Henry any chance to, I'd put it to him in terms that you just said that Bill, frankly, has the problem.

Well, how did this happen?

I wasn't informed.

And I've got to say to my people, I was, he must be, the Secretary of State cannot do this.

This, of course, breaks up and involved the other things in Henry's, you know, working on, which I, I mean, his, what I was thinking about, his Paris thing, and I just wondered, it's a Chinese thing, what do you guys decide?

Do you want to try and

Farm Bill.

Bush Bill.

Well, he has to move them out if he wants to.

Actually, at the present time, so deeply involved in the Mideast that he may be able to pull it off.

I don't agree with him or your hate on that.

Or I don't want to hate it next, but it's beginning to come around.

It is possible for the reason that we're not going to live the damn future.

I think we've got to get Bill...

He's got to be informed of something and something breaks.

That's the whole point.

His point is that if you follow what he thinks now, you should tell him now that we are involved in a negotiation with the Chinese that you just want him to know that there's no further to be said about it because it obviously has to be

Very tight.

You're getting through channels that nobody here knows about.

Okay.

That would be the thing.

And then on the other, that also there is, there has been a feeler.

We are in a perfect position to disclose that stuff.

And that you are going to move Henry into that.

You're in a perfect position to disclose that now.

Because we can see this is coming up.

If you wanted to do that, you've got to decide which tactic you want.

If you want to get Bill simmered down and keep the thing on the track for a while, then the best way to do it would be to do that.

And just to say, Bill, there have been...

He kept saying, well, why wouldn't he tell me?

And I said, Bill, to be perfectly frank, I would guess that it never occurred to him that he wasn't telling you.

I think he was dealing with a matter that was of, and I said, and he said, well, doesn't he have any real answers about it?

I said, yes, he did.

When the thing finally looked like it was going to work out, the first thing he thought of was, you know, he told me.

And that's the first time he looked at it, was when he told me to call you, saying that he was going to do it.

Did I not report to you?

Yes, I did, please.

Yeah, that's right.

You told him.

I'm sorry.

I got distracted.

Well, it's hard with Henry.

But on this case, it's really true.

I tried to separate.

I said, oh, you've got two different things.

And one is your relationship with the president.

Don't get into a questionnaire of trust or any prospects.

It doesn't arise.

The other is your relationship with Henry.

And there, there's a problem you know damn well there is.

And it works both ways.

And the State Department is not fair in the way they deal with it, and Henry isn't fair in the way he deals with it.

And we both know that.

And he started defending the state, and I said, Bill, you know there's two sides to it.

And he said, well, maybe there is.

But there really is.

Sure there is.

Very clearly there is.

Uh, you know, just a point, Secretary of State.

So, uh, yeah, the crux of this problem is clearly this.

And I think that, uh, to be summarized, to be summarized, you said, rather than have Rogers come and tell him that stuff.

Yeah, I just wouldn't have understood.

Yeah.

Well, in any event, my point is that he, see, Rogers has this problem in his own bureaucracy.

Smith might have told him, Smith might have been silent.

One of my biggest problems was when I came, he said, the president told me he was going to be telling Smith this afternoon.

And I didn't say that, I said, and I'm meeting, so that's what he said.

They said, and yet as soon as I got back here, Smith came in, and he had been told before I was, Henry had been in for breakfast before I even got to the White House.

And Smith came in to me and said, I just want you to know, Bill, I'm sorry I am about this and that I had nothing to do with it.

He said, I didn't know about it either.

And so Bill said, well, that's good.

Yeah, it's good in that sense.

But Bill's point is, in other words, Smith knows that I didn't know.

See, Bill, the thing that you've got to recognize is all of what Bill says all the way through is, why didn't you tell me?

I didn't have to be involved.

I don't have to be concerned in any sense of why wasn't I told.

He just doesn't know what's going on.

If I'm not trusted, then I shouldn't be here.

I've proven time and again I can't be trusted.

If I'm told something and don't do anything about it, I will not do it.

He won't leave.

He won't let others do it, but he won't leave.

He'll find it other ways, but he will not leave.

There's no question about that.

That's really the yes part, but is that being the essence of the problem?

The question is how do we position this in terms of what the administration lines as to how this was worked out.

That is where the background is therefore becoming extremely critical.

I think the backgrounders have got to be, I mean, they must protect all incentives.

Not Smith.

Well, even Smith.

We've got to protect Smith.

We've got to protect Rodgers.

He said to Rodgers, all of a sudden, what the hell?

How can I go to see him?

I didn't know what was going on.

Well, I think that's far.

He says, I'm back to being a laughingstock again.

Because Bill Henry, the president, promised me they'd never do this.

And I would always know what was going on.

Yeah, he said that you had promised him, Jed, that you'd help us.

I'm a laughingstock.

that business.

Rogers couldn't be in a better public position in the present time.

But God, he's getting great notices on his mid-Eastern trip.

And gee, nobody, no Secretary of State ever got it better besides just looking him over in Jesus Christ.

And nobody around here is trying to take any credit on that.

And that's what he was saying.

I'm getting none.

He was saying everything for the last couple months has been going beautiful.

We've had good communication.

Everybody's been working well.

He's getting all the credit.

That's what he likes to talk about.

I mean, we talk about whatever we want to say.

The point is, at this time, at this time, it's extremely important that he, his position, be maintained in special positions and layers.

And I think that the, therefore, when you talk about background, Henry, it may be that we've got to, we've got to change our tactics in terms of not telling the hell off.

Well, you see, I think in other words, we got to the name and we got to the sentence to point out that this whole, the result of this, the result of the presidential initiative, now, is that Bill, fortunately, I did tell him, he forgets it now.

Oh, but does he finally admit that he did it?

Because I said to him, I said, Bill, I want you to know, I told you, here's the way the job is handled.

I had, I talked to him, this was in January, or right after.

I said, Bill, I don't trust Jerry Smith.

This is what I said.

Those were the words.

You'll remember the conversation.

I said, I do not trust Jerry Smith.

And I said, I don't want to talk in front of him, and I don't, and some of your people, and I'm assaulting, because I figured this might come up, and I covered the tracks with assaulting.

I may want to make a, may send a message, write a letter on this thing to see if we can get it going.

So in other words, he was informed of that.

And that is the point Bob, you've got to emphasize, and I'm telling him that he'll check his notes of conversations.

He must make notes of conversations with me.

Everybody else does.

He'll remember specifically, I said, I do not trust Jerry Smith.

That's what I started the conversation with.

And I said, Bill, I don't.

And I am going to do it on my own.

He said, I want you to know that I may.

I didn't say I would.

I said I may.

And I told him that before I went to San Clemente in January.

That was it.

It may have been a tactical mistake to tell Smith before the only trouble was... We don't care about that, whether it was tactical or not.

The second point is that Bill must be protected here.

Blair must be protected.

Smith must be protected.

All of them.

It's got to appear that all of them knew about the thing from the beginning.

Well, Mr. President, I went over about 50 questions, dirty questions that Scali prepared this morning, and we worked out an answer with exactly this in mind.

There was not going to be, when they say what channels were used, we'll say this was confidential.

And many terms were Secretary Rogers involved, of course.

Was Ambassador Smith involved?

And then we'll just cut it off and say there's no sense going into it.

We're not going to discuss that.

It was at the highest levels of the government.

He argues that you've got to be careful with that on who was involved.

I made that same point.

He said, well...

And if you say we're involved, it's known we aren't.

He said the active people know we weren't involved.

They know Smith wasn't involved.

Now, there's a way around that.

You can protect them all by saying, all right, maybe it's just to protect Robert.

Or just say, I'm not going to get into who was involved.

There were appropriate people who were involved.

This was the presidential initiative.

And the main thing is the Secretary of State wasn't involved.

He knows.

He doesn't know the details.

Mr. President, it depends in part how he plays it.

As a matter of fact, Henry, you know, I didn't pay too much attention to details myself.

Well, the point is, he called, after I got back here, Henry, he called me on the phone and he said he was out of his, you know, expressing his complaints and into what do we do now.

And he said the important thing here is we've got to establish

what the President wants all of us to say so that we all have a standard line, particularly as to who was involved and all that.

I don't think we told anybody who was involved.

There must be no indication of who was involved at all.

I put out an iron curtain on that.

Well, there shouldn't be any implication that the Secretary of State was not involved.

If his crybabies don't put it out that he wasn't involved,

All of us look at the officials that he was intimately involved with.

He used to say in a statement, this was an idea.

Does he mind giving me credit?

You see, all he's concerned about is... Now wait, now my turn.

All right.

All he can say about this is that this was a presidential initiative.

That we have got.

We've got to do something.

If we don't say that, for Christ's sakes, then the Russians do.

Right?

This was a presidential initiative, and I think we go into the details of how it was accomplished, because it wouldn't serve our interests, it wouldn't, because the Soviet would not like it.

These were complementary communications.

I'd simply say it was a presidential initiative, and that's what I plan to say.

And that we're not going to let anybody say anything about who did it, said what, and who.

And who negotiated, or any of that sort, or any negotiations.

We're not going to talk about how many people took benefit anyway, how many people took away the history of that sort, not a man or a woman.

The history books, we will go and get that out at the proper time.

We don't need to.

So right now, especially being in the final instance, the main thing now is to tell them what it means.

We don't want to tell them.

We do not want to have any public approving, well, look what a great job we did.

The Soviet came back and we stood firm.

None of this will be put out.

Huh?

None of this will be put out.

I told Bill this morning, I said, this is one.

where we want this, and we want, and we don't need to mention, where both can get the credit.

Did he tell you that?

The major thing, Mr. President, is to establish that you took the initiative in breaking the deadlock.

How we got that to the final conclusion is irrelevant.

After all, who has today, when everyone says Kennedy broke the deadlock on the test stand, how the hell he did it, whether Rusk or Balls or Balls or Ruffalo?

The line?

basically the president took an initiative, he initiated himself to break the debt.

And that initiative was implemented at the appropriate levels in government.

At the appropriate levels and that we're not going to indicate, not be in the interest to indicate what the negotiations were.

Acta has no interest in putting out that it was all about it.

Not as far as Bill Rogers is concerned.

I think the important thing you've got to get across, Bill, is that as a matter of fact, he was the only one to do it, except Andrew.

Do you realize that?

Hey, Mr. President, the Nelson Amendment was defeated 63 to 23.

Wow.

And with that, that was the one we were worried about.

That means man still will be worse.

Well, what about that?

But once they busted, Nelson was the First Amendment, but once they busted that, there's a whole series of amendments now that go downhill.

That establishes both...

But I just thought that Nelson was the one...

I've got to come back to the important thing here.

The important thing is to say, I think you ought to be very strong, Mr. Bill, if you can keep the overly sensitive on this.

He was informed that the President, maybe on the infinite, as far as the farming was concerned,

He's reasoned, I'm sorry, because he, once you just say the president happened to have him around with a conversation, I'm going to put it that way.

He went back and looked at the conversation.

He'd start, the man would tell him, there's a conversation, if you'll check your box, where the president said, I don't trust Jerry Smith.

And I don't trust the people down the lines.

I want you to know how I figured that on this speech of D.G.

Garnett with the way ABN, this is the doctor of the country, the way ABN was going and so forth.

But I felt that we had to be one step ahead of the sheriff, frankly.

And that I was going to, that I might undertake, I wanted to know, I might undertake a private letter or a private communication.

You did say that.

You told me immediately after.

That's what Roger said.

That you had told her after?

I don't know when I did it.

I think it was February.

Well, just say that it was January.

Oh, in January?

Yeah, in January.

Now, that was done.

And now, and actually, nothing gelled.

Nothing came of this.

Nothing came of this except for, you know, garbage.

until the Monday, I mean, until after he elected for Europe.

And that is why, without, and even then, when De Bruyne came, De Bruyne came back.

Is that right, buddy?

But yes, when he came back and said that he would, De Bruyne came back and said, the life will build us.

When De Bruyne came back and says, our government now wants

to establish a different relationship and proceeded to take me in a bad substance, in principle, the very thing that I had offered in January and that they had previously rejected.

And from then on, it moved fast, all while he was gone.

Then, on Friday, when we called it before, I mean, it had not yet

about that, what you called him on Monday, I still didn't know anything was going to come up because we hadn't got the final thing.

We called him on Monday and we didn't get the word.

As a matter of fact, you can say, Bill, the president was in his office at 5 o'clock on yesterday before we got the word.

I told him that.

And it's true, we didn't have a seal.

And then as soon as it was, he was informed.

Now, as far as the papers are concerned, I didn't get involved in those papers.

Well, yes, I really did.

I can't keep at it.

And he doesn't complain about that.

His only complaint is a pure, why didn't you tell me you were doing it?

Well, then if you told me you were doing it, you'd try to dot the I's and cross the T's.

I must say, he did, after he would have got through all that, he did pull out the announcement.

And I'm starting on the agreement sentence, because he doesn't like the three agrees in one sentence.

Of course not.

I tried to get it edited with the preamble.

It's really, it's not a good sentence, but it's a clear statement that there'll be an agreement on offensive weapons, which is better than...

Didn't Bill finally, though, at one point in the conversation, did he think it was a good move or not?

Oh, yeah.

Yes, but it was a lot of interest.

He said, somewhere in the middle of all this, he said, I don't want to make it clear.

I think it's a great development, and I'm all for it.

But how can I explain it to Congress?

If you explain it to Congress, he's got no problem.

Right?

Just say it's great.

What do you mean?

How does he explain it to Congress?

He knows that it's right.

I'm sure Fulbright's first thing will be, Mr. Secretary, were you involved in this negotiation?

Yes.

I don't even see why that issue... Yeah.

Because it's one of the issues they try to make.

And he knows it.

But supposing... No, but he can't...

Wait a minute.

Now, here's the thing.

On that question, he could say, where the negotiations of this type are concerned, we cannot discuss them with the Senate.

You see, we cannot discuss them with the Senate.

See what I mean?

I don't know if Bill's calling to speak to you.

Why don't you call me back and get this part all over, and I'll try to take this call in half hours.

to finish the Red Cross.

But the point is that there is no problem.

I'll say I talked to you and now you're in another meeting.

Yeah, but I'm in the cabin room.

It's a little hard for him to get out.

He knows I know him because I was on the phone with him.

I know him.

Well, the point that I make is that I know you're going to call and you'll be out of the cabin room in about 20 minutes.

I guess he's in there.

You go ahead.

My point is that there's absolutely no question on his being formed.

There's absolutely no question on that.

And there is not going to be, as far as the White House is concerned, or anybody else, there's going to be no disclosure of whatever negotiations were.

As far as if Fulbright ever raises that question, you say, well, I can't.

We cannot discuss the...

We cannot discuss publicly the negotiations.

He can also have private negotiations, right?

He can say that it's perfectly good that he was involved.

It isn't a question of if the state was involved.

The question is, you see, Fulbright will say, why didn't you, Mr. Secretary, tell the Foreign Relations Committee that you were involved in such negotiations?

Because that would have been a disaster.

Because that would have destroyed it.

the possibility of getting an agreement.

Say he was aware of this.

Yeah, he was aware, and the position, oh, he can also say the position was developed.

The position, and I stated the position in the press conference.

I stated the position in the press conference of the offensive and defensive lineage.

The position was worked out.

We would do that, but the negotiations as far as the statement, okay, you do that, and then come back at him.

As soon as you finish your conversation, I'll make the call.

You think that I put out 1015, but I wasn't really...