Conversation 642-015

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Yeah, I think they're going to kill him.

They're going to kill him.

If you don't mind, in the background, do that.

Yeah.

Well, did you prepare?

But, I'm telling you, you prepared.

Because I know, I know, since I was in England years ago, that there might be a different option.

But...

Yeah, yeah.

I thought the way the news played your interview yesterday made it even stronger.

I mean, they picked out all the strong parts.

I don't know whether you saw it this morning.

They mentioned both withdrawal and residual force.

Very respectful.

The CalPRA was very respectful this morning.

We've got a little problem on the bill, because I have one over here, and one over here, that has to do with the .

What I'd like to do is .

I told Bill about to come .

He comes in.

He wants your final position on ABM.

I've never been there to him.

Besides, I don't think you should get much found on APN, because we've already gone a long way towards that.

It makes no difference at all.

I'd like to get some thought for it.

I wouldn't even say there won't be any final position, Mr. President, because you've just leaked it.

I would say you're selling the president very carefully.

I'll say that I have a problem with the defense.

Well, no, he's already dealing with them because they've got their own fish to fry.

I've got to get more up with them.

I would just say you're studying it.

It's a tough problem.

And you let him know.

What?

Why don't you say what you can't do?

Well, I think you can tell him that he can tell them that it should be a treaty.

for ABM and an executive agreement for a venture, that the SLBM should be in terms of two rather than in terms of both.

These are two major things.

Are the other things you want them to go on the present line for a while longer?

until we let him out.

That is the best thing to do.

Under those circumstances, you've got to get a win-win bill here.

So that he knows that we're treating him differently.

Because he's got an idea of his position.

And if he doesn't, he's right in the hand.

He's right out there.

This falls to him.

Well, he's going to be annoyed later.

Now, uh...

Well, you know, you're told this bill is launching and I'm, this happens to be one that's so complex that he doesn't understand it, so I'm not that eager to get him into too much of the line of command on it, but whether he'll be in on one meeting or not doesn't make any difference.

It's not a message.

Well, Laird is playing such a crooked game.

As always, he has a bewildering series of memoranda here.

One of them is that he wants three ABM sides.

Another is that he wants to go for an NCA defense now, defense of Washington.

Uh, another is .

. .

And I think I can, the Soviets have already asked for a recess on the 20th.

Now Smith thinks he can talk them out of it.

And I don't think you should show any eagerness for a recess, because I think I can position Antonio to ask for it, so you are not the villain.

Smith's line is, every verification panel meeting, Smith says, I just want to make sure now that the president is installing this for the summit.

Because if Kennedy were the president, he should be installing it.

I always say, no, your instructions are to get it as fast as possible.

But of course, if Kennedy were the president, the whole content bureaucracy would be stalling it for the summit.

That's just so.

For example, why didn't we stall for the summit?

So that he can get the credit.

He is running for re-election this year, Mr. President.

I was so excited that we were going to go on these two things.

That's all you have to do now.

I think you are going to have a major problem.

Certainly, I've got a cable from Sunca.

I think we can go almost any time we want to.

He'd prefer it after the 15th, but that's our plan anyway.

I don't mean on true control of the peace plan.

And he'll let, and he thinks that you will let us do the whole plan.

The what?

He'll let you do the whole plan?

That you will let us put out the whole plan.

What is your voice for these people when you speak?

Yeah.

I think, well, you know, I could give an hour's back on the record for all we care.

Which, for the sophisticates, is going to be devastating, and I think I ought to do it probably anyway.

But I think you ought to do it to tell it in a speech which could really be about death.

This is what we've done.

This is what we've offered.

This is our answer.

19th.

19th is good.

Well... Yeah, I know.

If you do it Tuesday night, one would have to do it at night.

That would be more than in Paris.

Doesn't get them.

But you know you have trained SEALs in the...

There are two trained SEALs who will reply.

On the other hand, if we deal with the press intelligently on this, and this is one that we can really make a massive effort on, you ought to be able to get some favorable press also.

What I thought, Mr. President, but I don't know whether that's possible, is whether the State of the Union could be put off until either Friday or the following Monday.

The advantage, I see the advantage of having two days in between.

The advantage of the evening of the 19th is that they cannot possibly have anything ready for the session on the 20th.

But on the other hand,

Oh, it will, it will knock their eyes out.

But I wouldn't touch through the peace plan, I would go through some of the history of it.

Because that's what will give the peace plan some meaning, then it isn't that you've just dreamt up a peace plan.

But you've had a consistent policy for a whole year.

Why don't you get all back in there, too?

Oh, please.

The idea is to be, you know, right at the point that I don't want to do it on my own.

And I don't want to do it on my own.

No, the point would be this.

I believe myself, Mr. President, that if we keep this secret as we can, that the impact will be so shocking that it isn't going to be very easy to piss on it, because here were the people who were saying you didn't respond to the second point, and it will prove we anticipated the second point.

Here are the people who said you didn't set a deadline.

You've been setting a deadline.

I mean, it will take them more than a day to recoup from this state.

You know, the people who say that we are fighting for you and you have over the design.

That's awful.

I think it would be very well if the parents would be able to make a new shot, John.

I think, however, I would rather not have.

Well, a little hope comes out of this one.

Your mom.

I think there are a lot of tension in the first place.

I think it's amazing.

It's amazing.

I think you and I are going to be able to do it.

We're going to do it.

That's the other thing.

If you make your sense of the Union in the evening or at noon, then I think maybe the 20th.

I mean, then maybe the 19th and 20th.

Because even if they piss on it by the time the particular report gets here, even if they come right back,

They just can't get organized that fast.

But I'm not so sure they're going to fix on it.

They have.

I think the Soviet strategy is to demonstrate that the Chinese aren't capable of doing anything.

No, no, but you do it for yourself.

You don't do it with your left back.

It's a monster.

The advantage of the picture is that it gives you another peace story.

The disadvantage of the picture is that it may make you regret and think we're getting to the crisis again.

But we've done through that before.

On the whole, I'd be in favor of the pictures.

You see, they're really, really long.

Tremendous, and it's covered beautifully in the dress.

And each little fluff that she just raised her glass and her toes, it's written in a very fluffing way.

I mean, it makes her more human.

I mean, it made a good story.

I mean, normally they wouldn't cover a ghost at all.

Everyone says with what poise and elegance he handled it.

I think it's a terrific thing.

Put it back to this thing on salt.

I wouldn't give you more than half an hour, Mr. President.

Hello, 15 minutes.

Good.

I told him that before.

Well, you've never spoken about it.

I've definitely decided that you should have a treaty on the ADM and the executive agreement on the ADM. Second, with regard to SLBMs, I think your idea, shall I put it this way, that your idea is different, that the number of weapons, the number of weapons, the number of tubes,

now the third

On the end of the day, I'm in the process of setting it up.

Well, we're finding that I want to be quite candid with you.

There is a very great political problem.

But this country is going to change.

There's great doubts about this thing.

I'm going to tell you.

Right.

But now it's always the case you can't fire anybody.

All right, all right.

And, uh... Oh, uh...

Uh, come around the top a little bit.

Do you have to run?

No, no, I don't know.

I don't remember.

Fine, fine.

Uh... You'll be going to the plane, won't you?

Yes.

Oh, I wish I could talk to you.

Uh...

I tried to think about this.

This double whammy.

We will still go work with the tribunals on the 35th.

Okay.

Mind you, that is either put out, but you take part of the message to go out and do the press conference.

Yeah.

Or do it in an office press conference here.

Well, the press group is the same kind of thing.

Yeah.

Makes no difference.

Yeah, the group is the same kind of thing.

Oh, in the press room you can get TV coverage.

It's more useful.

You can't get it in here.

Yes, but you prefer that rather than just having to put it on.

Yes, it looks too defensive.

Ah, nothing, nothing.

That's all.

All right, then, with regard to the piece.

Here's another overture from Mrs. Candy, but she's willing to normalize the version to the left.

He noticed that he didn't ask God to thank him.

He in fact said, listen, by next July, Mr. President, we'll look down to him and screw him.

And but I thought it was a masterful performance.

He, uh, if we could have picked the interviewer, we wouldn't have picked him, but we would have made a mistake because, uh, he came across as such a lightweight and so petty that, uh,

No.

I must say, the only time I was tempted and I thought he really deserved it was when he asked for it.

When he asked for it, I thought it was that insulting question.

Well now look, what about the charge that you're putting off the end of the war, you're putting off the summit of China and the summit of Russia, that you're going to have a policy until the election year?

But you put it down today, but I think you usually put down a team shot on it by showing class more effectively than by shooting back.

I remember that Johnson was on television once, and they were harassing him, and he said, well, what would you do?

What would you do?

And it came across so petulant.

I mean, you would never do that.

You prefer putting him down this way.

Oh, yeah.

I think you did it in a classy way, and that people watching it had to see who here was a concerned president trying to do his best for his country.

with a big sweep and knew exactly what he was doing, and this little bastard is sort of snapping at his heels.

Speaking of silly questions, Archie, what do you think of anybody out there in Chicago, you know, in Williamsburg, to ask a silly, goddamn question about his

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

First, yeah.

Second, how many people really have read Gloria Steinem?

What came out of that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the other one.

That was the other one.

Also, this charisma question, that's the one that next time it comes up.

Although you asked it very rarely, you said you do it by performance.

And you cooled the country.

But I think... Charisma.

This is something that is crazy.

You know that.

But I think...

On that one, you could afford to be a little more objective instead of saying, you say you match your performance against what somebody else of these people mean by charisma, pretending without doing anything that you don't do.

You're not a movie star.

The other one was like, oh, he's so into it.

black people are different from white people.

And you have a beautiful name.

Aren't they?

Sure.

As a matter of fact, wait, yours are different.

That is true, aren't it?

No, but that, I thought, incidentally, Mr. President, I listened to about 15 minutes of it on radio, and I sometimes regret that this isn't the radio age, because on radio, I mean, you were effective on television.

But on radio, you really sounded overwhelming.

Radio is a good medium for you.

Unfortunately, not many people listen to it now.

But your voice is very effective on radio.

That was an effective format, also some of the shots through the window.

They took some shots.

They didn't just hit you one-on-one.

They sometimes took a shot through the window of the whole room with you sitting there.

You must have had a camera.

They had a lot of shots directly get on.

Yeah, it was good.

It was, I think, technically very well done, this time.

Let's check that out.

Coming back to this, maybe I'll think about it and talk about it at some point.

Great question.

Nineteenth.

I wouldn't fall on the sword for the eighteenth, but I think there's a lot to be said if you're determined on the, so that they cannot have the

At the, uh... Next session.

Next session.

But they'll be careful about turning it down anyway.

Well, you understand, it is just the next session before the next session.

There's no session between that and the time I speak.

I speak at noon.

And they will metaparse, but nobody's going to go, God damn, they claim what they've done.

Well, that's a good point.

So I think it makes no great difference.

You can do it either way.

Well, if I did it to be easy, do you think they might make a public statement before it's said?

That's what I think.

Well, they will scream that you're revealing secrets.

But I... Maybe that builds ground.

I wouldn't...

I wonder if it isn't better to have a day between the two.

Let's think about it.

There's a lot to be said.

Otherwise, it looks a little rough.

Why not do it, I think, the 18th?

The 18th is a little bit more major, not quite as dramatic and so forth.

There's a lot to be said for it.

It's the day the Congress comes back.

There's a lot to be said for it.

Why don't we do the 17th?

No, that's a little early.

The 18th is Tuesday, the day the Congress gets back.

And then all these banshees will be out, sticking their necks out with their peace plans, and the rest will not come on tonight.

But we will announce this in advance.

But I wouldn't say what you're going to say.

No, I'm going to make another, I'm going to make a statement on Vietnam.

You're going to make a report to the nation about Vietnam.

Report to the nation on Vietnam.

And we see now that we see...

But why do you have to do it?

Announce it.

I mean, when you made your China announcement, you said... No, no, no, no, no.

The only thing is, I want them to know when they get back, that's hanging over them.

But what difference does it make?

They are so far out in that field, Mr. President.

Believe me, I've studied everything anyone has ever said on Vietnam.

It would be absolutely to your advantage if they put in proposals, because you're going so far beyond them.

We have to let that version go that far, so we can say it announced in North Vietnam.

Now, the only problem is, you can take it under certain circumstances.

We ought to go back and put the truth and everything together a little bit more.

That is something to consider.

I almost mind their names.

If you put the truth with it, then they're going to have two leads.

Well, that's the point.

You see, if you do a low-key troop thing on the 13th, Mr. President, you've already foreshadowed it.

It's a world-shaking story, and people will say, well, let's trust that they get ready to mumble around about that.

Although, what you said yesterday got a very good press today, a very good television.

Right.

So I think you can...

I think it's a double whammy shot.

I agree.

Because that peace plan, if we present what we did last year... Well now, are we building people up after having made this agreement?

Are they going to expect that they will fight the crisis and change the war?

What I'm getting at is, are we building people up?

No, I'd say I don't expect anything dramatic, the President.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't knock it down either, but I'm yet to keep it.

If your thoughts would be to simply say, I want to report on Vietnam, I just want to speak of Vietnam and, uh, I just want to say a foreign policy announcement.

Yeah.

Why say Vietnam?

I don't see why.

Just say a foreign policy announcement.

You remember the... Yeah, I made the foreign policy statement when I was 18.

That's a, that's, that would be my recommendation.

And I think, and I think we can give a very punty, I think we should give an account of what was done last year, Mr. President, because otherwise it looks improvised and also we can devastate our opponents who've been nagging at you all the time last year.

Yes.

And this is what I'm trying to do.

And secondly,

I think we ought to do some fairly extensive backgrounding out of here to the thoughts of people, giving them some motion.

Let me just tell you one thing.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, I was ignoring that for a moment.

I forgot I got to see Rose in person, and I thought I'd have to spend 10.15 on it.

And you can call Rogers.

He can come at 10.15.

Rogers?

We'll see if we can get her to get it done.

Rose, then I...

The only thing I want is to be visited.

Yes, sir.

And then I want to cut it through 10.30 that way, and I'll just tell Sven I'm visiting.

I don't want to get in trouble.

That's possible.

You just deserve it.

You talk to her.

She's always been around the track.

Oh, yes.

I just want to make sure that I don't end up with rashes on my back as I have been on everything else since then.

Well, let me have this.

It's all mine.

I've got Laird, too.

There's Laird, and then Rogers.

But more than that, I've got to carry the public relations.

We can't make a goddamn deal on salt here.

We can have an election here with all the right-wing race in hell.

It doesn't sell.

And I'm going to have to carry that.

I'm going to be cold turkey with these bastards.

They're all for the peace, but I know what's going to happen.

See what I mean?

You're right.

in his name, God Almighty.

We did everything that we could possibly do.

We did everything.

First, when the call started in March, we cut off the military pipeline, the military pipeline to Afghanistan.

Second, when the call started in March, we committed, in March, $500 billion to report on all the residents.

And we didn't do enough of the wreckage.

didn't do it earlier we got there we used our headphones with the audio identity to change the clinical civilian authority there we used our headphones with him also a mutual pullback

We passed on to her, and then, yet, she still resorted to military.

Once she was ordered to military, went to the United Nations.

And the way it was done was to get to the United Nations Cross, where, with the ceasefire resolution, it was vetoed at Security Council, and then passed by a 10 to 1 march on the General Assembly.

We had 104 boats with her.

And I said, so 10 to 1 margin, that's better, 10 to 1 margin.

And then, gee, and under the circumstances, they voted, and they rejected that.

We then used our air force with the Soviet Union and with India, because India had swallowed up Pakistan.

the effect around the world of one name, whatever provocation, using the internal problems in another nation as a justification for the war, could only have the effect of, and particularly where that was supported by a major superpower, could only have the effect of encouraging that sort of action around the world.

But I think it's a hell of a record.

And if you compare it to the alternative, Mr. President, there was nothing we could do to change the Indian pro-Soviet orientation, which was based on $800 million worth

of military equipment at a time when they cut 1.7 billion of American aid, one can in fact make the argument that we financed the Indian purchases of Soviet arms.

That was the cold reality of the situation.

We would have lost the Chinese option

we would not have gained anything in India.

We will be at least as well off in India for having taken the position we are infinitely better off in China than we are somewhat better off in Pakistan.

So on balance it was a cold-blooded calculation.

It was not peace.

Now we are having a problem, Mr. President, with our Council in Dhaka.

The Chinese went along with us on the

The UN ploy and our relations with the Chinese have never been better on the condition that we don't recognize Bangladesh.

Now that son of a bitch called on the Bangladesh foreign minister yesterday and extended New Year's greetings to him.

And state has to be prohibited from any such contacts.

No one else is doing it right now.

At least until you've seen it.

No, but until you've seen it peeking, we are just loading another 10-pound weight on ourselves.

Right.

Let me do it all over.

God damn it.

I don't care if they leak it.

I mean, I don't know.

Well, let's say that ends now.

I will put out a memorandum.

Why don't I get a memorandum saying,

The President has said that any contact with the Franklin Tech authorities must be cleared at the White House prior to its session.

The President was surprised and concerned when he saw that.

and concerned, so that our council general, without worry, had, you know, had called on him, saying that he agreed to let Ashby go.

This is being quietly interpreted in international circles as being an amount to a step toward recognition in the American press.

You and the fact that recognition has not even been extended by Soviet Union, this weakly believes is a mistake, and you don't think I should just save my soul for once?

Okay, I'll draft it for you, sir.

I confirm on the list, thus put it out, that I could describe some distractions and so forth, and other deserve chances that I said that.

I want no further contact with the men with that.

You'll hear no contact on the media with the guy in here.

On any pretext.

Any contact, whatever.

And I'll add it, Counsel General.

Yes.

He feels that he's been conscious to not follow those directives.

God damn it.

I think he's got to be taught.

He's not been loyal.

No, he's been taxed.

All right, let me put him in.

He's been in my way a couple of times now.

We'll take these people out.

I don't like them all out there.

I think Justice Trey's directives will do it.

From me?

From you.

Yes, sir.

That's not our argument, and under no circumstances in any further context, the Bangladesh must be cleared.

And I want them to say, to me, for clearance.

Just say, to me, for clearance.

Because of the very specific nature of the problem.