Nixon, Haldeman & Ziegler on People's Republic of China and Media relations

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Well, if you like, sir.

Thank you, sir.

No, not at all.

I thought this would be a good one.

I had been waiting a long time.

Oh, sir, well, we've got to be honest with you.

Just as a matter of guidance, ABC News is pushing Scali very hard on an hour-long crime-time documentary on Mrs. Nixon's visit to China.

And they're asking for, they do it about a month after the trip, and it'd be a wrap-up of her travels, plus any comments and reactions she wanted to make, because she wanted to be titled Mrs. Nixon's China.

The question is, they would like to know beforehand if they'd set the crew up on the basis of doing it, if we agreed that they could do it.

The question is, in our minds, do we want to give ABC News or anybody any segments of exclusivity at this point that we'll maybe regret later?

My view is that we don't, that we say we'll look favorably on all of these things, but that we simply cannot commit to any of it, that they should make sure to choose.

The difficulty of giving NEC or anybody else an exclusive is that you run into a situation where first,

we may decide that, you know, they never know what's going to happen.

Maybe a complete bust.

You know, that they can screw her up to the point where we just don't want them.

That's right.

It won't.

The second point is, I don't think that's what, the second point is, it may be, it may be so good that we may want to get her to have a way to get, I don't know how she can do three networks, but I... She might.

If we run tight, they might want it so badly that they might do it.

But I don't know, I don't think they can do it that way because they...

I think the best way for a senator actually is through...

through documentaries.

I mean, if I present pictures and so forth, we all will know how... Maybe she would agree to narrate a documentary, which she could do from a script, you see, rather than... Yeah, all that work she was doing.

Maybe so.

Well...

My view is that we shouldn't give anybody anything, and just like we won't commit to CPS for Henry, we say, hey, sir, this sounds like a disadvantage committing to ADC for a documentary.

Then they're going to want to get in special positions and everything like that all the time she's there.

It's like committing to doing a picture cover story for life, and they drive you nuts, and then you go out with the other people that are along, and they give you a cover story to see.

But we have our own film unit there.

Those are the ones we should give the preferred position to.

Then we can give that film to anybody we want to afterwards.

How good is our film?

Very good.

We're not using the Navy unit.

We're hiring a student.

You can't use the Navy unit?

This is the best Navy unit in the world.

This is not the Navy unit.

We've gone through a whole thing of...

getting the very best cameraman, the best sound man, the best lighting man out of the whole documentary business, the commercial people.

But we're hiring them.

We're contracting them through the Navy because they have the protocol.

Then what we're going to do is the film that they shoot, we'll make it available at cost to anybody who wants to use it, including the Nixon re-election committee or the Democratic National Committee if they want it or anything else.

And that film will be, and to the networks.

So I think they would, because it'll be behind the scenes stuff.

Some of them.

Sure, it's like all these pictures.

That's exactly it.

It'll be like all these pictures.

For instance, on one leg of the flight from Guam to Hawaii to Guam, we're going to let them fly on Air Force One.

They'll get pictures of Bill Rogers and people working around on the airplanes and that kind of stuff that nobody else will have.

It'll be part of the...

Totally controlled.

It's our film.

Whatever we want to make available, we can.

Whatever we don't, we throw away.

And it'll also be, you'll have the full thing for your archives.

Well, this is all a scandal.

Those of you who have not heard this, we look very favorably on the idea, but we've had, we look very proud of each other.

We've already turned on other people, others, you know, as a matter of policy for everyone.

I'm not concerned, and so forth, but we're very favorably on it.

and you can carry the things and see what the times are.

So, what will we participate in?

Well, we look very good with one, but we can't have an absolute commitment.

Right.

I don't think they're going to be able to send any more.

They take more film?

No.

All he's saying is that we give a go-ahead so that their crews can have the project in mind while we're there, and so that our own documentary will have this as one of its goals.

Well, our documentary will have this as a major goal, so we'll bring it home.

And their crews could look at another sort of make-up.

Oh, you're absolutely right.

I've always found when we make these commitments, we have some regrets.

Yep.

And we don't have to do it.

I know what I mean.

We don't have to take away.

We were absolutely right.

I'm hard on you.

As it may, as it might have turned out, they all gave a shot for that thing.

You know what I mean?

Yep.

You could have brought it back.

And they all used to be, he used to do it in his own way.

And that's what they're gonna have to do on China.

And you know, they'll argue, well, gee, if you don't tell us ahead, we just can't commit to doing it.

Well, if it's any good, they'll do it.

If it's not good, we don't want them to do it anyway.

You're absolutely right.

I mean, you're absolutely right.

They said that.

We just hard-line them and said, well, we understand perfectly.

Tell Kelly that.

Tell Kelly, too, that we are showing them, and frankly, it's just as much in their interest as ours to do this.

If it isn't in their interest as well as ours, they're going to be working.

They won't do it to me.

But I've been very angry about it because we think it's like their idea and so forth, but we cannot correct it.

And I actually have a policy on not letting anybody correct it.

And that's it.

I think that's the way we've got to go.

And if we commit on the thing, if you commit on the thing, say that if we commit on the thing, and I'll be allowed to testify too, which is true.

Let's see if you do it now, then they're going to say, well, gee, we're doing this special on Mrs. Nixon.

The president's got to give us 15 minutes.

trying to standing on the wall going back and forth.

Mrs. Nixon's got to give us a little exclusive here in the nursery as you're coming in.

There can be no exclusives off the wall or in the commune.

That's what they're going to want to ask all the way along.

Right.

Yeah.

And now we've just got to hang tight.

Everybody gets it or nobody gets it.

Yeah.

Except for our documentary crew.

We'll work them in like we do all the other work.

I need you to do something.

Yeah.

That's good.

On the post-trip plan,

The way we kind of left it the other day was tentatively figuring out a leadership meeting Monday afternoon after we get back, and then keeping Tuesday and Wednesday clear for Camp David and Thursday for a report of some time in the country.

Friday a cabin meeting in the morning and then leaving for Key Biscayne for the weekend.

and then getting out into the country the following week.

Is that as a rough pattern?

All right, because we ought to start figuring out how to get out into the country.

We don't have to lock anything, but we've got to start figuring what we want to do, if that's the pattern we want to follow.

Now, at one point, you had talked about wanting to get moving instantly when you get back.

And Henry just said, again, not in this context, but he said, you've just got to, having done it twice, and Dwight says the same thing, having done it twice, that you come back, it really is hard on you.

You know, it takes three or four days.

You're not missing a cold.

Well, but I mean, before you really feel like you can do anything.

Maybe we don't want to do the press conference then.

I'm not sure you do, but I think we ought to... My view is that we ought to leave the rest of that week clear, but with this tentative plan in mind.

In other words, we ought not to plan anything that you have to do until the following week.

But keep in mind that if you want to, you'd want to report to the nation that first week of the press conference or something.

And you might want to do the bipartisan leaders.

And you'll hear it was a total no problem.

Oh, I'm not sure we want to meet the leaders Thursday morning.

But I'm having a hell of a rhythm.

Yes, well, I don't know what the hell we can tell them.

We're so damn restricted at the moment.

We're not telling the press anything.

They're going to ask the usual stupid questions that we don't want to answer.

Are we going to do this and that to Taiwan and so forth and so on and so forth?

I just don't want that to be the way it can start.

I'll set the context with them that just, there aren't any commitments.

Right.

Well, I know.

I mean, we tried.

All I want to be sure is that you don't want us to crank up some stuff that first week.

If we're going to do that, we ought to get started on it.

And I would urge that we not do it.

Pat's got to go out west that weekend after we get back to Florida.

Yeah.

Oh, that's when I'll be in Florida then.

But I don't think you want to go west.

Oh!

My other son thought of a way you wanted to go with it, but that's a problem.

I don't think you want to get into it anymore.

No, I think for me to get on an airplane and take five, five and a half hours to California is about what I need, like a whole night.

You should go to Key Biscayne that weekend.

I should.

And I want that cleared out at least three full days.

Yeah.

Everybody's pretty well geared to that and that's where we're scheduling on that basis.

They understand the point.

sure i'm trying to i want to get them here because i don't want them to be sitting out here on the lawn when you get back with 30 different meetings that they think you have to have because they think the other way there'll be no problem if they think that way then they can get into the problem well i'm just trying to think that i know this

It's like you're talking to her and everything else.

I have mixed feelings about it.

I do know that we have, particularly after our strong world transition, not been really moved by coming back and not being in a high peak.

Well, we disappeared for two weeks then.

Well, we didn't know how to handle something like that.

That's right.

We didn't know.

I did tell a lot of things, but we didn't get the money.

We didn't know how to get money.

They went in there signing things, crapping around.

We can cover that.

Huh?

We can cover that.

So...

Well, and if you get back and you feel like you want to do something, we can move into doing things as fast as you want to anyway.

Without having to be locked in that head of time.

I don't know that I'm important for the nation.

That's the other thing I think we've got to look at.

And I don't know how the coverage goes.

It may be that you don't want to do a report to the nation.

Maybe the rabble and the way they handle the communique and all that in Peking, maybe that's the way to leave it.

And we want to remember, too, that... Or some remarks you make when you get off the airplane.

Oh, I have to ask.

I think you probably, if you haven't arranged it, that arrival time has got to be changed so that you can be on line all the way across the country.

I don't want to come in in the middle of the day.

I don't care to share about me on the news.

We want to be online.

We can come back to that arrival.

Well, you can be online.

The middle of the day is irrelevant.

That's my point.

We found that the light is always in the middle of the day, Bob, forget it.

So maybe we have to change the day someplace.

Maybe, I don't know about California, someplace else, but you see what I mean?

I think we should be dead because the arrival statement didn't mean something.

For me to waste my time with an arrival statement that shouldn't have come back in the middle of the day is no good.

Um, they're gonna cover it live, I'm sure, I'm sure.

Do you know that?

We don't care then about, I mean, we must not go in the middle of the day.

If we're gonna get live coverage, you see, we couldn't assume that would pack you back from Africa.

Of course, you didn't get live coverage.

But we don't have, well, we're gonna get live coverage if we come back.

If we can figure that out, then we can move it back to 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock at night.

Noon is wrong.

Noon is worse than 10 hours.

We could either be making a senior plan in there.

I don't know why you did that.

Well, we could actually get a crowd out of the airport.

No, we did it because of the time you leave Shanghai.

Oh, I see.

Stay a little while, Shanghai.

I'm back to where we wanted to go.

So you leave Shanghai at 9 o'clock at night.

Now if that's the point, then that's USA County.

You can leave actually to be in Shanghai at 10 o'clock in the morning on Monday.

Now what you do is spend the rest of that day in Shanghai.

If that's not a good idea, you can then.

How about going the night before?

Well, they have a dinner and a cultural show that night.

You can leave after that.

If you look at Shanghai at Mobile Island, now you can't see the parks there.

The difference is you get here two hours after you leave Shanghai.

The time difference and everything.

on the same day.

Well, how about staying, spending the night on the basin?

That would be the easiest thing.

And maybe it's not a bad idea anyway.

You get to Anchorage.

Well, you're going to have a hell of a hell of a lot of land without any money.

It's just awful.

What is it like?

It must be, what is it, 18 hours?

Something like that, yeah.

Shanghai.

Oh, you leave at 9.

Right.

Well, 9 p.m. Washington.

Your departure from Shanghai is at 9 o'clock Eastern Time.

See, that's a good ceremony, too, on television.

It may happen.

That would be Sunday night.

Then you...

It's eight hours to... Anchorage.

Eight and a half hours to Anchorage.

And another seven hours here.

Fifty-fifteen hours.

Fifteen hours on a goddamn plane is not a good idea.

Well, why not?

You know that you can stay around at the base.

You've got comfortable quarters there.

It's only a couple of nights away there once before.

Yeah.

When you did Erolita.

It'd be that house where you met with Erolita.

Which is a good setup.

And it's right on the base.

You'd arrive in Anchorage at midnight.

And, uh, you could not then cut out the whole group of the other people on either of the parks or something.

That is not a very interesting and important mistake.

Well, then let us come out for the departure.

Not the arrival at midnight, but for the evening.

Anchorage then at about 9 or 10 in the morning.

Anchorage time.

Thank you.

In here, I have, uh,

How much is the arrival here?

It's the report information.

That's what I think.

Do you feel like doing that much of a report to them?

You'd never think about it.

That's my whole nation wants to hear you.

The nation doesn't want to hear me get on it.

Oh, you're right.

Five to ten minutes.

Well, we had a wonderful time.

We met a lot of interesting people.

I hope it's a step toward peace and God bless you all for your prayers.

Thank you very much.

That's a hell of a lot better than having to see my face dropping around about this thing.

Well, you might be a hell of a lot better off to have gotten off the airplane for eight hours.

Got into a bed, had a shower, and a good meal, and all that stuff, and got away from those engines.

And then get back on the plane and have a still seven-hour flight, which is a long damn flight, but...

Come and tell me a little bit more, too, about whether we are missing something.

We're not trying to find vision.

We're just thinking about it.

We're in control of it.

All right.

Keep going.

Good.

I'm just looking at our business.

I'm looking at our business.

If you might tell me exactly what you're dropping in California.

You, again, put your right on the start line.

There's something that means the whole block.

You're dropping in California at 7 o'clock.

It's 10 o'clock Eastern time.

And then Frank was saying, no, no, I've got to get back to work.

I think they got to the feeling, they got to have the feeling that I'm back in charge in Washington.

I agree with that, except that I'm not so sure.

You're not gone that long.

See, that's the thing we keep.

You're right.

You realize we'll be back two weeks from today.

This is 15.

We're back before that.

We're back in 28.

We're back two weeks from yesterday.

That's right.

It isn't that long.

And the hell with them.

Goddamn conference model.

They're going to be patented and gone, and now they'll be going to the Jefferson Bay speeches.

I don't know.

That's if you're adult, and plus if I could do the 7 cent from the east and not break through the city like that.

Well, I would want to go, I know that my system will need, I think it will need, 3 or 4 days in Florida at that point.

On a completely relaxed basis, I think we'll need that.

And I suppose in California you go there, but then you rest in California, and now you rest in Florida again.

That, I think, is a problem.

I think if you want to get to Florida, it's better to come here and go to Florida than it is to go to California.

February was a very, very healthy home, sir.

It's not good.

Also, I don't know, I just think for national television, the arrival with the diplomatic corps in the Congress is a hell of a lot more impressive than with a bunch of people in sports shirts that nailed it all over time.

We can crank up a band and all that there, but it still isn't .

I'm just taking that .

I thought about this for the last time, and I was thinking, I know on the right of all, we don't want to go to 12 noon, unless you have a strong feeling, but that's, I suppose you were thinking in terms of getting to some unneeded news, but I was thinking in terms of just that the arrival wouldn't,

that you'd have a different report to the nation.

I can't go over to your point.

You may very well want to consider not doing any report to the nation except the arrival until maybe a week or ten days later when you have a press conference or something like that.

Yes.

But see, if the report to the nation is going to be made, I don't want it to happen.

I want to look good to another thing.

I don't think, what I mean, it's as good as I can.

I imagine if I tried to do it two days later or three days after I go back to bed, I think I'll like it.

There's makeup and everything.

Chances are you're going to look more tired then than you do when you get off the airplane.

And when you get off the airplane, look, you tear out the bed.

That's right.

They always expect you to look tired in three days later.

That's what the whole thing is.

He's an old man.

No, sir.

Well, the inspectors will look tired when you get off the plane.

They kind of like it.

It looks like you've been laboring hard for weeks and all that.

But that's right.

If you wait a couple of days, you're going to say, geez, it doesn't look so good.

Also, if you do it out at the airport, the setting and all that, it's a new setting rather than a stage setting in the office.

Yeah.

He's joking.

And the other thing you should think of is to, I mean, to stretch the story out a little that way, and maybe a couple of weeks later, right?

But I know they'll be stronger around other issues.

Another thing, and then you can be out again, and that's what you do.

Let me say, I'm afraid to be honest here, if you're building in any way, instead of going and spending the night after, you'd spend it in Los Angeles on the way back.

How far was that flight?

Will you see what time Julie gets in, please?

We can't make it all the way.

We could stop in Hawaii and review and go on into Los Angeles.

It would be no problem to help you fly.

I don't know, but can I just sleep in Los Angeles?

Maybe makes a difference, doesn't it?

Although it would be if you could make the difference that if you were to stop in Hawaii and refuel and then go into L.A., you could spend the night at your home.

Well, that means you're welcome in Los Angeles, so it doesn't matter if you're welcome here.

Yeah.

All right.

The problem is, an arrival in Los Angeles is a rally.

An arrival here is an official ceremony.

Yeah.

And the level of this whole thing is such that I ought to come back to Washington, I think.

Which secretary did we take?

This one is, I find, about the best next to Rose.

She's a fantastic wife.

She is a super machine.

She really is.

We did a few meetings around her.

It's Rose and Nell.

Those two will ask her because they're pros.

And Nell, there's no... Nell's value is that she can work across the board.

She knows everything.

She knows how to handle any of them.

She can't back up yourself.

But she's very good for the rest of the staff.

Rose isn't much good for the rest of the staff.

Discount.

Is there anybody to do any of these?

Password?

She doesn't have a password.

Sure.

All roads now.

What roads?

Road shift.

I don't know if that'll work.

Well, we've got a couple of history secretaries.

And it's ridiculous.

Roger's just got Maggie on, so he won't have a damn thing for her to do.

William.

Got it there.

Sure.

We're making the point to everybody that they all, you know, this is, nobody has any private property on this trip, that whoever is there is there to help out with whatever needs to be done.

Not, not to have her down.

Sure.

When there's,

But you read, it's like trying to do your own typing, or your own filing, or your own answering the letters.

Anything that anybody else can do, even though they can't do it as well, let them do it.

Especially that, there's just a hell of a good reason for a person who's on display.

I don't know about it, but it's just ridiculous.

— 1 min 12 s with no transcribed speech —

I'm awfully glad I got to have the garden last night.

It was nice and green.

Come here.

You know, they all just sit in a small room.

Well, Lennon particularly loves that, and then he used to sit with Amber and I'll remember that would be very meaningful to him.

Well, I mean, I think he did all of them, you know.

One of the great literary geniuses of all time.

And, you know, he's, in hearing the truth,

And for you to know another thing, I changed the CD a little.

I didn't know yet at the time to put it in, but I had somebody else buy him.

Michael Smith bought him, Mark Smith.

Of course, Smith managed the Buckland, first of French, because Smith was in, Trank was in Europe, and Smith had heard of Mackey, so, which of course was the, as he was in office in the war, had no other things.

So it gave me a lot of relief because I had somebody on my right who could talk to him in French.

Just a great, great idea.

Well, it was great to have him sent there, too.

The guy, he was worth a lot to us.

Well, the only thing, the way he did go to China wasn't based on what he knows.

They grew up.

Oh, is that it?

I need to rush it.

She doesn't want to go through.

I don't want to get past you.

I need to get past you.

Do you see what I'm looking for?

First of all, being on the wall.

The mystery is that we have to cut her.

That is the norm.

That's it.

Nobody's been there for so long that no president's ever been there.

No president's ever been to Moscow either.

But people out of Kiev, they know what's happening in Moscow.

They don't think they know what's happening in Kiev.

You can still change that pattern, can't you?

Sure.

So, I think we'll have trouble probably changing anything out of China, but we can... Oh, don't try that.

I don't think you want to spend any more time there anyway.

If you have a whole day, you might get out the night before, but I think that would be a little bit... Yeah, it would be...

I mean, we talked about that.

As a matter of fact, we wanted to do that.

I think you can insult the Chinese if you have a real problem doing that.

Because we tried to skip the dinner and leave before dinner, and that all shook.

And then the cultural show, they're very proud of us, most of them.

It's going to be a good thing for the Chinese.

But we can certainly change anything.

Once we're out of Shanghai, we can do anything we want.

Let me ask, if you had to stop at Anchorage and stayed overnight, you would agree that you'd have to let a crowd come in the airport and see us off the next morning, would you?

Yep.

I don't think you could cut that off.

They would feel apparently inclined.

So that's all right.

But you could do that very easily.

Which is exactly what happened immediately.

I said, first of all, we'll get a lot of courage.

You leave there.

I'm sorry.

You leave there around, let me see, what time?

No, what time?

You leave there around 7 Eastern time.

Oh, I don't have a certain time.

So other than that, you've got a hell of a time frame.

It's 5 and a hell of a few.

You've got a 5 hour time frame.

Yeah, but I'm talking about Eastern Time.

If you want to go around here at 9 o'clock, you have to leave there.

I know in Eastern Time it would be 7 o'clock bedtime.

2 o'clock.

Yeah, that's actually good work in the morning there.

So I told you guys, I won't get a lot of coverage, but it would get a nice radio story all the way.

Well, it doesn't get on the TV, does it?

But I would have to be very careful not to say the name there.

I wouldn't say.

And on a departure, it's easier to get away with the departure thing than it is with an arrival plane.

You can get off the plane, you've got a problem.

But when your car comes up to get on the plane, we just have a... You don't have honors and bands trooping the line and all that stuff.

You just let the folks come out, wave and cheer.

I didn't mean to get away with that.

I have to say a word, though, to the microphone.

I have to say thank you very much for coming out to see us off at this early hour.

It was good of you.

See, that's how you kill it.

You're back in the United States right now.

That is why we were going all the way here.

It was just going to happen.

A closed deal at Anchorage at midnight.

Still closed?

Yeah.

We can't.

We can keep it closed.

You know, there could be some people out there in mechanics and stuff like that, you know.

What I meant is, though, you could do it from a wave.

It would only be a wave kind of deal.

No microphones.

Maybe that's the deal.

What harm is there in that, stopping an anchorage that most people don't think is in the United States anyway?

You know, they don't think of that as a thing.

And you just hear, here we are, and he's on his way, and that's the shot.

Not say a word.

I think he'll think if you say a word.

Shake a few hands, I think you have to do that.

But you're finding me to arrive here at 9 o'clock Eastern time.

Well, if you're going to go for television, you might as well.

Am I wrong?

Do you believe that it's a good live show in return?

If you're going to say something, yeah.

to say something.

I will say something in any event.

They walk out there and somebody gives you a welcome home thing and you get up and say something.

You always do the problem.

We thought you'd be tired from the flight.

You wouldn't want to get the maximum TV.

You'll get a good spectacle.

Shot on the news, of course.

It's not the same thing as coming online.

No, that's right.

It isn't.

A lot of people would tune in to the live to get the limit.

Because people would be in the pattern of watching you at odd times anyway.

At odd times.

But you won't.

There's no way you'd get anything like the audience you'd get at night.

Well, let's think about it.

Maybe we're camping on something that we can't, so maybe they wouldn't cover the line.

It's not a possibility.

They've had so damn much and so forth.

Just arriving home.

Now, if I could do this, well, I wouldn't be able to check and see, but I just can't conceive that they wouldn't cover the line.

You think they would?

I think so.

I sure do.

And there's no question they would cover a lot of the name.

That's, listen, does that turn me on?

I mean, it's like the state of the union.

30, 40 letters.

You can get a big reference if you got it from the state of the union, you know, but it's not a function model.

Now this is maximum 10 to 12 million.

This is against 60 to 70 million.

Well, it's kind of tall, plus the middle three ground, plus the middle three ground, so it's just another 20 million.

At the maximum outside, you can get less than half the people.

That's half the number.

I'm sorry, buddy, but they did a whole lot.

He went in a small type of the heart.

I don't know.

Well, let me get to one thing.

I think that just from a physical standpoint, we should not fly all the way from Shanghai to Washington.

I just have a feeling that that is too goddamn hard.

I mean, we'd live in on that airplane for 15, 16 hours.

I don't think, the more I think about it, the stoppage in Anchorage is really a...

I just have a feeling it's going to kill the water.

I may be wrong, but I just don't think it is.

And the one thing we could outsmart ourselves, if they didn't carry the arrival lot, we'd really screw ourselves.

Because you'd miss the news.

The noon thing, you know they carry a lot, and you know they have a big chunk of it on the news.

In fact, they'd probably carry the whole thing if you spoke less than 10 minutes.

That's what I would do.

I would plan that.

Then I'll have it.

Yeah, we started thinking about it.

I'm awfully glad it was up.

It was very good to lead him on and make any difference at all.

He's with us now.

He's not ABC.

They don't care.

They don't know us anyway.

You know, that is one way to reward our friendship.

We all like Smith, but they don't care.

Right?

Well, that's kind of the dinner that Howard Smith will never forget the rest of his life.

And that's where he seems to get away with it.

A White House dinner is just another White House bomb.

They were very effective, but this is bigger.

This is bigger.

Said to a guy like Sned, this would be much bigger.

I would thank him.

I'm sure it would be.

And to a guy like Sned.

It's those things.

Scally, we've done some damn good stuff for her.

You know, that, being in Perino's that night after the China announcement, and all that kind of stuff.

Did you notice that the LA put a hell of a play in the news speakers about the China restrictions, Scott?

Yeah, oh yes, there was a hell of a play in the news.

I don't have to tell you, didn't they get any notice?

Yes, they did.

And the Monroe thing was a nice little sprinkler.

I was just saying to Bob, that was about the nicest thing we could have done for Len Donovan.

He never gets to anything.

Oh, he was really delighted.

And also for Howard Smith, who also spoke French.

That's why I put him by my role, and also because I put him there and learned he spoke French the moment I arrived.

And Andrew Scali, you know, those are guys that don't get to events very often.

Scali's been there a few times.

It's kind of like getting plenty of circles.

Don't you think they've got to get kind of this?

You know, there is, because Mauro wanted to feel authentic angels as far as time.

And actually get used to the cake that he had.

It was just fascinating.

Didn't they have it?

Didn't they?

Everyone, everyone enjoyed it.

It was fascinating.

It was really wonderful.

You never change.

It was very good.

Somebody ought to make their notes of it.

Instead of putting it in the file, I didn't make it.

I won't.

It's time to make any notes, except stuff that easily changes people.

But we had a very easy analysis.

against Kennedy.

He's having a press conference today, and I bet he'll react that same way Martin gets to the question.

Kenner told me this morning.

Deranged?

I thought it was deranged.

I thought it was Steve Carlin.

No, it's something like that.

Demented.

Even worse than deranged.

She said, only if the men in mind.

I said, only if the men in mind.

It's quite irritating.

Or he said a bunch of women.

He said it was women.

You see, he has been quite a can-be-eye.

Oh, sure.

John Kenner wrote his book, too.

John Kennedy, I don't think it was John as much as Bobby, you know, the woman.

He dedicated his book to her.

You know, Jacqueline Jackie.

He's a romantic, despite his duller exterior.

He's kind of a brush talker, isn't he?

He's going after the Kennedy grade this morning.

Nothing wrong with that.

Might as well identify a little with the candy grape.

Damn right.

That's good.

Doesn't hurt us a bit.

But he was really, he was angry.

He said he was embarrassed because it was such a stupid remark.

He said, well, he said, he might have doubted.

He was just deducing that because one was the most populous and the other was the most prosperous, that the two inevitably sometime in the future would, they had to get it.

It's like that.

He said even though the question does not, will not come up.

He said the question was never raised with you, but it might be raised in the third, fourth area.

Yet even if not raised, it will still be a question that exists.

Will the British section of the world assist the, you know, East Coast?

They may push it today on Bangladesh, which we, of course, stay away from.

That's all I'm going to say.

Thank you.

We were discussing the arrival and return.

I'm telling Bob that coming back at 12, in my view, is a big loser.

So first, forget the lodge, and then it's nothing.

I'm going to, you know, from the stadium, you know, I mean, you're just playing for a written story on the radio, five or six million people, maybe eight or nine.

But the question is whether or not if we come back at night,

The point being that the more I think of it going on, probably three or four days later, the more it's more likely to get weak-weighted.

The report on China is going to be terribly diplomatic.

There's a goddamn thing I can say about China.

I'm trying to see the communities and say it all.

I don't need to be hedged, re-hedged, and so forth.

And we will want to move.

I just don't want to make all networks.

Everybody's sitting there to a chair.

report on that basic kind of trip that people are not interested in.

I mean, except for the news and disease.

In other words, what do you do about Taiwan, and what about Japan, and what about trade, and what about culture exchange?

The average person wouldn't give one tick or ten about that kind of thing.

And if we come then in terms of making bad news, we can do that with the leadership.

We can do that in a whole variety of ways.

If we want to do something, that's where we return.

Now, therefore, I was thinking that inevitably when you return, there's always a statement made.

What we really want is to have that statement heard by a hell of a lot of people while they're still caring.

And I was thinking of coming off the plane, and it was 9 o'clock at night, and get to welcome the diplomatic corps and the rah-rah-rah on the bank, setting them up there, and then just speaking.

directly to the people playing in the background.

We had returned for 10 minutes.

And so what we have basically is a total time of 30 minutes, and I have to take from 9 to 10.

and 9 to 9.30.

We might finish by 9.20, but my point is that they would have to take turns of their hands to lose a half hour time, but 9.30.

Now, the question is, and this is a critical question, is whether they would turn that lock off.

Well, now we can run into this before we're to heaven.

I came back from one of the other trips, and we all expected live coverage of that damn thing, the wasteland.

I don't know which it was, but it made quite an impression.

I thought it was live.

I wasn't here.

No?

The first European trip they covered.

The round-the-world trip when the Vice President fell, remember?

That was the first European trip when he fell.

That was the round-the-world trip he came down with.

I know there was one where we came back at night and they did not cover the law.

I don't know which it was, but the question is, will they cover this arrival law?

The question is if he comes back at night.

I don't care about that.

I know, but that's the thing answering Ron's point.

10 o'clock in the morning, sure they cover him up.

The question is if he comes back at night.

I know, but that's the thing answering Ron's point.

You can find out, but I'd give you the answer now.

We're gonna cover it live.

The President of the United States flying out of China, direct through Anchorage, Alaska.

But I think it might is.

That's the other side.

In order to get there, it wouldn't be direct through Anchorage.

They'd have to stop at 12.

Only, but on the other hand, remember, we would stop there and go to bed.

Stop there, go to bed, and leave at 7 in the morning.

In other words, the whole purpose in Anchorage would be no saving.

I'll tell you another thing you could do if you wanted to.

If you wanted to.

What was the time of the ride on 12th and 9th?

You should just spend nine hours more in Shanghai if you don't want to.

If you do, you can.

You take a little of the speed of it.

Back in the United States, he's home safe, even though Anchorage isn't considered American.

Because they're allowed to just go into the anchorage and cover your life.

Why?

Now, who would give anything?

Why, I know, but they could lie to you.

They could lie to you.

Okay, let's do it.

Here's what happens.

Let's think that through for a minute.

What would happen is you arrive in Anchorage at midnight Anchorage time.

That's right.

And it's a closed arrival.

We'll close the base.

There's nobody there.

Nobody.

It's 20 bullets in early.

Everybody's in bed.

We get off the airplane, get in the cars and drive to those places where we stayed before and go to bed at midnight.

Stay there until 9 o'clock in the morning.

And get up and go out to the airport.

At that time, there would be some people around.

But you know official type of thing.

You say, I'll sell the base clothes, and the president just waved goodbye to those folks, and he got some camera, and he waved goodbye.

But he doesn't say anything.

So they've buried it live.

So what the hell?

You've got a picture of the person getting on the airplane.

I still think you do.

And that's 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

There's no audience.

that you lose because you have the president leaving him and flying across the story.

It's all like the president is waning as well, you know, and then if you stop and anchor, you can sleep.

I mean, you lose that.

Let me ask you this one.

Really, isn't it easy to resolve this thing?

If I simply stayed the next morning in Shanghai, I'd have to go to the commune or some kind of thing.

Just leave a little later.

You'd have to leave nine hours later, though.

You'd have to leave, you're not scheduled to leave Shanghai at ten o'clock in the morning, third time.

You would have to stay until seven o'clock in the evening.

Now, another way you could do it is to shift the thing.

and go away, why?

Now is that, now that's four hours of your time.

Is that bad?

It just puts you on a goddamn airplane for 20 hours.

I didn't get to sound any bad, it's disastrous.

That's wrong too.

I can't sleep there.

The other factor is, if you're gonna go on

TV.

You want to be as good as you can be.

You're going to be better on TV if you slept on the ground, had a shower and breakfast.

True.

And then come out with only 7 hours on the airplane instead of 15 hours on the airplane.

The hell of a difference.

My word, you can't argue with the fact that she wouldn't be more rested and feel better.

And look better.

That is a long... You don't look good sitting on an airplane for 15 hours.

It's a long ride across there, I'll tell you.

You have a bed on the plane and all that, and you...

Take it pretty easy, but it ain't like sleeping in the house.

Well, I don't know.

I'm sure of that.

I told you I'd go to the coaching room.

I got a damn ticker.

They think I'm all screwed up.

Well, they're playing better than I am.

I was coaching.

I told you.

It was nothing.

We circled for six hours.

We circled the yard, and circled Boston, and circled Washington.

Went back and landed on the 24th.

This was in 1967.

Landed 23 hours on the continent in a coach.

Unbelievable.

But it was a wretched experience.

Wow.

I can see your point, Ron.

It would take some of it off, but it'll take it more off to the press corps, maybe, in a way, than it will to the people.

People don't know what he's doing, because they're not in touch with him.

He's on his way back from China.

Going over, we stop for two days to spend the night.

Coming back, we stop for one.

I don't know.

we call it a feeling stop that's yeah but see the other thing you can get in there talk about all aspects of it well you know you get this you've got the thing of the presence holding over in alaska in order to make prime time television right now that's going to be said and i don't think we should have this we've already announced my return no sir we haven't we've left the whole thing totally loose not holding over in alaska to get on prime time it's

I mean, luckily, you come out luckily on times of the day.

You arrive in Alaska at midnight.

What do most sane people do when they get someplace at midnight?

They go to bed.

When you stop, you just get a night's sleep.

If we were arriving in Alaska at 10 o'clock, I don't believe it.

I just can't believe they're going to make that.

I guess because of the fact that they expect you to get some sleep before you go.

Sleep in Alaska, Anchorage, spend the night there.

And so they say, he's going to give...

Would you be willing to build up your remarks a little bit?

I intend to.

I mean, to make the blood and the veins build up, because that's the other point of it, is that the President, that's the way to assure that you'll be on line for one minute, is to say the President plans to do his remarks.

I'll make his remarks.

There's no question about the fact that they will cover the arrival line, no matter how we do it.

No question about the fact.

So, you know, the decision about staying overnight in Anchorage and so forth,

It does not relate to the life of the people.

Let's come again on the thought of leaving anchorage out of the coasts for us.

Amen.

Do you ever go into town?

I don't.

We have five months on our hands.

It isn't a hell of a lot of advantage.

What I meant is that the plane and the tire and so forth shows 15 hours.

But we are in a little different situation.

I mean, unfortunately, other people are not in it.

But I will be in it.

I will have a bed.

And I'll sleep in the bottom-down bed.

I can stretch out.

Well, you have privacy.

You can be left on your own.

Most people don't have a right to survive.

Now, the point is, it's too much to see if we can get the Chinese.

I think it's worth, let me say, I think we can think of the difference between being online with 10 million and a little bit of news.

And by being alive, it's a real arrival of 90 with 60 of them.

It's worth it.

So now the question is, can we stay in Hong Kong?

I don't know what are the .

They got some other things they'd like for us to see.

Now, quite incidentally, one thing you could do, certainly, is to make your refueling stop, so that you didn't leave at 7 o'clock at night, which would look like trying to get here at 9 o'clock at night.

I'd just like to send it off a little bit earlier than that, and let the refueling stop be two hours.

Yeah, the problem then is that two hours is at 9 o'clock in the morning in Alaska instead of at midnight.

Oh, I'd still be asleep.

Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't, but... Maybe he's paying us to get off the bike.

How do you keep the governor and the folks over?

Now, you're still at 9 o'clock there anyway, because your departure there is at 9 o'clock in the morning, but suddenly you get away with a wave of the hand on a departure that you can't run.

It's pretty hard just to get off.

Or let's say you don't get off.

How come you can't sit on the airplane for two hours?

You can't resolve it.

You've got to add nine hours to the thing somewhere.

And the way to add it is to spend nine hours longer on the ground in Anchorage.

Which is, it turns out, it's the best possible timing you could have for doing it.

Arriving at midnight, going to bed, and leaving at night in the morning.

If you're going to do it at all, I agree with you that it does take some of the edge off, but really, I'm wondering how much.

Nine hours is long enough that everybody, the press and everybody else, gets a chance to get into a hotel room and take another press because they won't miss me coming in at all.

You're, you're probably right.

Midnight makes sense.

Midnight denial makes sense.

Yeah.

You really shouldn't.

I just think, too, that the idea that you shouldn't, that we ought to stop stealing.

You really ought to.

rest for a little on the way back, right?

What we can do, if we decide on this, we can, because the only thing we've said up to this point, no departure time, no arrival time, nothing, but it's generally included that you would return directly from, you know, it doesn't say anything about, through Anchorage.

Yeah.

No one's even thought about, well, will he sleep there or won't he sleep there?

If we decide to do this, the way to cut away that other problem we've talked about, we can just begin to say, well, it's very likely the president will come back to the average, stop their arrest, or, you know, overnight stop.

So it catches back up.

It's an overnight refueling job.

They're going to refuel there.

Well, you're making a point about the clock, too, because we're making a point about the clock going the other way.

You're making a point about the clock going the other way.

So he gets in here early evening, and let's not settle this now.

Let me talk to Dwight, because there may be some more that we don't know about Shanghai and Anchorage and all that that may... What do you mean?

Well, there may be some reason that we could make a very good case for staying in Shanghai.

I don't know.

I think those would take some of the edge off of flying directly back.

I think it would be the rest.

I really do.

I think we need to break that syndrome right there.

Rather than taking that emergency flight, I've gotten too old to know.

It's just a terrible, terrible dream.

Well, I agree.

You get a nice sleep, then you get on the plane, you've got seven hours.

Of course, right when you're on that airplane coming back after 15 hours, you know, all of us slept.

And you still feel long.

You know, it's the kind of sleep you get on an airplane with that engine going on.

It's not like the sleep you get on the ground.

See, one thing I was talking about, the drama and so forth, and the TV, I wasn't factoring in the midnight 9 o'clock.

It is a natural thing to do.

Yes.

It's a natural thing to do.

So we just get off on the plane, breathe the wind, and go to bed at 9 o'clock in the morning.

The problem there, of course, is that midnight in Alaska is only 5 in the afternoon or something in Shanghai.

So on your body clock, you're not reading well.

None of that works.

But what you say, you're unwind.

You're just bugging along.

It's very cold out there like that.

You didn't, as a matter of fact, say that the nice cover she bought with the person who's made this flight many times from Asia to Washington.

And he's an officer from Duke, Tokyo, New York.

And on that, he has known, and he's advised on anything.

all will break with at least one night of sleep on the way, and going across the international dateline.

He feels that he can do it, but that after an exhausting, very tiring trip, that it just adds an extra

good attention, you know, and so forth.

And I feel, and that's true of my children, also, because they are fools.

I recommend that they shop in California and Hawaii, if they can afford the time, but always to make one stop, always to make one stop, usually Hawaii and Maryland.

Going backwards, which most of them prefer, because it's always far and longer.

I'll tell you the difficult and the reason that Bob was standing up.

But I spent time, I stopped at Anchorage before, and spent the night.

Just stopped, spent the night.

Stretch away.

Come on away.

It just happens, it comes to you.

She has the soil conservation values today.

One of the great pictures of the Confederation of Miami, her and her children.

She's really got the people.

Trish has got the majesty and Julie has got the common touch.

As I said, I think that after the drama of seeing China for days and days and days and days, the history of the course of the nation is not going to be something I'll want to do.

And of course, the other objections that I had not intended to say.

See, everything is going to be said in that meeting.

Everything.

And then to give a kind of personal wrap-up on your arrival, that's the reason why I think

without saying anything, is to come back and do it again.

Do it when they're interested in it and they've seen it.

And then they want to turn it out of their minds for a little while, you know.

And then let the commentators or whatever roll around about the trend as they will.

That's why I don't want to bring any specials at this point.

Later on, two weeks after we return, maybe we can hold them up again.

Maybe we want to specialize them.

Maybe we won't.

We'll see.

They're bound to run.

They're bound to run, essentially, aren't they?

That's why I told them it was essential to just stay in Alaska because you can prepare, you know.

Well, you can prepare anyway.

You can stay in Shanghai and you've still got 15 hours on the airplane.

You can sleep a while with that.

You can work there longer than that.

All right.

Preparation is no problem.

So you got it?

No problem.

You don't have it that way.

The two problems of that are, boy, this is just to find a way to get in and drive to the right kind of thing.

We're just raising the question right when we return.

The President makes the point that we're wasting one of the best shots we got on the arrival by coming in at noon at Andrews, so we should come in at 9 o'clock Monday night in prime time.

If it would be live, Ron says that there's no question it would be very live if we did.

That gives him the chance to make his report to the people on his arrival when they're interested, rather than waiting two or three days or a week and trying to go up with a report that he doesn't have any report to make.

So, to get to the logistic question, assuming that Cesar will arrive here at 9 o'clock Washington time, and to do a statement then, how do we arrange it so we do it?

Two ways.

I think you see another one.

One is to stay in Shanghai on the last day.

Instead of leaving at 10 o'clock in the morning, wait and leave at 7 o'clock at night.

You have to come in nine hours later.

If you leave Shanghai nine hours later, what would be one way to do it?

If you do that, you'd be refilling an anchorage at 9 o'clock in the morning, and instead of the bench, I'm causing a problem.

Which is a problem because your arrival in anchorage becomes a daytime alarm.

Right.

Now, the other alternative is to leave 10 o'clock on schedule, arrive at anchorage on schedule, go to the...

quarters at Elmendorf, 10 to 9.

You arrive at midnight, which is a logical time to go get off the plane and go to bed.

And then at 9 o'clock in the morning, you get up and leave Anchorage at 9 and arrive here at 9 o'clock.

I'd be impressed by that because everybody's going to be so tired anyway.

Let's look at the logistics.

Is there anything that we don't know that makes a difference?

Like, is there a reason to stay in Shanghai for that day?

Well, it depends on where they're going to communicate.

You could conceivably hinge in on that instead.

But there's no way we can control that, is there?

We don't even discuss it with them.

We wrote it right at this point.

We don't know.

That's true of anyone.

Communicate as it is now.

If you do the communicate out of Shanghai, you do it at 9 o'clock Eastern time.

That's right.

Perfect.

If you stayed over 9 hours, you'd be doing it at 2 in the morning here in the building, which would be ridiculous.

So that doesn't help us either.

So we're really better to force them to let us out of Shanghai.

at the scheduled time, because 10 in the morning Shanghai is 9 in the evening our time.

And that's our final departure from China, and that's a damn good live television show, too.

But is it more important to have the ceremony here or the communique?

Which is most important to you, here in the cave or the arrival here?

The arrival here.

Because the communique you can't avoid anyway.

It doesn't have to be negative things.

Do it when it's early in the morning here.

And then play on to the arrival here, then... Oh, you're saying Monday night?

See, we can't control them.

Well, they're going to try to get earlier, right?

Well, that's what Henry wants to do.

And there's a lot of argument in favor of doing it, communicating Thursday and Peking.

Yeah, Friday and Peking.

Before you leave for Hangzhou and Shanghai, then you're sort of finished with your business.

It adds a little to Steve not putting it out and then holding until that last meeting in Chet and I.

Because the last meeting was just a few minutes on the afternoon, Sunday afternoon.

I don't think Sunday afternoon.

But if there is a negative thing at all in the communique, or negative connotations that you would want to avoid, then by putting it out at 2 in the afternoon, which would be 3 in the morning here,

and then departing a little later on, you would avoid that strong compression, which would be made by the communique here.

I think you're right in most cases.

The communique out of China, no matter what time you release it, it's all a matter of, you know.

It's going to play very, very heavily.

He meant to go there for something that was negative in terms of the...

Controversy.

Taiwan, for example, which is a problem.

On the other hand, I think the positive features of it, like I said, Taiwan didn't be watched by many China watchers, but the positive features might be quite overriding.

You're not going to want to get off the plane in Elmendorf.

You're going to go to bed, I don't think.

I think that's going to, when that point in time comes, you're going to be going at such a speed that it's going to be very hard for you to sleep when you do get in there and try to go to bed.

And then delaying your getting there, you're going to be even tireder once you arrive at Andrews.

Am I reading that right?

Well, that's all true, but the worst time to arrive here is in the middle of the day.

Well, the other point, if you happen to just kill yourself on Halloween, because it's like doing the State of the Union in the middle of the day, which we do deliberately.

We don't want to be on the night of Halloween.

So you come here and you have fireworks, and it's kind of live, and you get plenty of the news, and that sort of thing.

That's not going to do it.

None of this, I agree.

I should have thought this earlier, because I had a note to go through mentioning a month or three weeks ago, but the whole plan should have been arrived here at night.

Well, it wasn't.

It was all purposely moved back on the basis of not having gotten off of 15 hours of airplane flying that you didn't want to go on as your flight.

But the arrival, even if I didn't do anything, should be at night, I think.

What, do you mind flying longer?

Would you rather fly longer than to get off the plane and try Hawaii?

Well, just loop past the islands.

I have an island out back.

I'd go to Wake or something and refuel there.

That would probably help some just by the way you came in.

It's not the best view.

Everybody can see why the crash is going around that way.

It seems like all the other flights have come back to Anchorage.

There are really only two choices to meet the deadline of 9 o'clock.

Stay in Shanghai and fly direct or leave on schedule and overnight in Anchorage.

You can have the best of both worlds on this.

Do the communique in the morning in Shanghai at 10 o'clock, which is 9 o'clock Eastern Time.

Then you go back to your guest house.

You delay until in the afternoon.

We just tell them that we would like to stay on.

In fact, we may even be able to come up with some little event or something that you could go see.

There's a bird's eye view of Shanghai that's fantastic, I think.

It's a...

Which is not a spectacular thing.

Which is not on our schedule.

Which is not on your schedule.

The only thing you do publicly in Shanghai is you visit an industrial exhibition that they have there.

Mrs. Dixon, while you're meeting with Cho in the afternoon, visits the children's house.

But we could do it at the cultural camps tonight.

I think they would understand perfectly.

They would immediately read what you were trying to do.

They would know that you wanted to get in here at prime time.

No, that's bad.

Well, but no, I think they understand that kind of stuff.

No, it's bad for our press.

That's going to be as obvious to them.

But our press says not only are we going to leave any time.

No, they've got a delay.

They were going to delay anyway to final communicate and so forth.

So what we are doing is actually helping our press corps by giving them a chance to write their final stories and get everything in order there before we depart.

Yeah, that's true.

So we could substantiate that.

Maybe you can have the community and get that all done.

Then you have a final session with Joe to just kind of talk it all through before you go.

this is going to be this is on the option of flying directly back that would like you then you have to go into anchorage at nine o'clock well we still need to see remember we're not working against anything here because even the no one knows

What time the children's live meeting is in Chicago, including us.

So that's what I mean.

Well, around 3.

So in fact, could we delay it or anything like that?

Actually, you could say that we could work it so that in the afternoon, you could go to the children's ballast and this is next to it.

He would show the next county, would show the next morning, and then do the communique a little bit later, like at 11, which would be 10 o'clock at night here, which would even be better here after television across the country.

Then let them press file, and then leave in the afternoon.

It's very late.

You've got to leave at 7 o'clock at night.

Or you could take a little longer off the ground.

You could have.

How long do you plan to be on the ground now?

Forty-five minutes.

We did it very, very easy to make it two hours.

You make that two hours.

We get to pick up a slack there, yes.

Well, on the basis of leaving at 5 o'clock, which is, leaving at 7 looks kind of odd.

Why don't you stay?

You could leave at 5, and then make the village stop for two hours.

I'd leave ahead of dinner, because if you caught me, I'd be in a little mood.

You do that, leave it closed and out and go, but that will give you the chance, the present chance to get off and close the house, get a shower, you know, get fresh stuff.

I mean, I still think that that's...

That you can gain nothing by having a big event.

And if there's a little stir about why don't we get to see him, I don't think there's going to be that much.

The public, they had their chance when we were there with the Japanese attraction.

Oh, I could explode the goddamn thing.

That's what we have right now.

Oh, yeah, but all the rest of them are there.

Oh, my shit.

Well, the sleeping thing is a good deal in Alaska, anyway, because whatever time of the day it is, we just went to bed.

I should have spent time someplace.

Well, then you don't get off and plan to go shower, obviously, on that one, but... Yeah, we did.

Okay, yeah, we did.

Well, I think if you get off, you're in real trouble.

Now, this is closed.

Once he's on the plane, we say it's not getting off, but the base is closed.

Once you get there, if you're awake and you feel like it and want to jump in the car and run over to the general's house to get a shower or something to eat, come back on board, you can do it.

Well, if you close the base, it makes no whole lot of sense.

By the base, though, you're sure going to have a lot of service in there, aren't you?

No, sir.

We can tell them not to come out.

You will at the end of the road.

You cannot be that.

Thank you, sir.

You could do it.

There's no question about it.

Close the base.

But you're going to upset people.

You're going to have the wires down there just to cover the fact that this plane landed and it's going to take off and that the president didn't get off and he was asleep.

That's what you say.

That's the public mind.

Maybe Secretary Henry or somebody can go wave out the door so they got something.

That's something that don't increase the presence.

But I would much prefer seeing us do that than to have you leave at the time we're scheduled to leave Shanghai presently and then try to get off the plane and sleep or go into some general's house and try to sleep and then go back out and try to get on the plane.

Once you take off, we ought to just try as much as possible to keep going and walk.

Well, because it's a long span anyway.

But more time in there is going to be, in my mind, he would not be as good on the television in terms of, as he should be.

You just increase that whole transition.

You're the opposite of that.

Well, I find you really don't sleep well for a day or two.

Ron...

or something like that.

But I know that General Hagan and Henry would agree on the car accident.

If you're gonna stop, stop for a day or a day and a half or something, which I know is out of the question, but.

Question.

In another country, it's a shock.

Question.

It's in Japan, of course.

We have a lot of drama going for you too if we make this change.

From the time that people get up in the morning here, you'll be just about ready to land in Alaska.

And then all day long, they're going to be hearing on the radio, you know, the president's flying across, you know, he's on his way back to Washington and so forth.

And then by the time they all get home for dinner and into their evening television, here you are.

I mean, it's been kind of a buildup that whole day.

As far as the movie, you're going to have that regardless of what process you follow getting back.

Well, the other way that most of the delivery would have been during the time that they were all asleep, they would not have heard.

So the way this has to work out, basically, is to, if we want to get prime time, we should find a way to get in.

At 5 o'clock in the afternoon, well, there's something to be said for that.

Maybe I should...

see a little more of that town.

It's the greatest city in the world, the biggest city in the world.

And there are a very neat number of things that I'm sure that they've done.

It's really fantastic.

It's just all the changes.

I mean, they talk about Peking.

All Chinese, the great cities, China.

I mean, Chinese in Singapore, the gardens over in Shanghai, the one thing, oh, pine flooring, it's a great, great, great accomplishment.

Do we have any, I don't know where they're parking around, but a lot of sightseeing is a good thing on the last day, I think.

Well, do the sightseeing on Sunday, and meet with Joe on Monday if we can do it.

That would be

It would be better to meet with Joe at the end than to be sexing at the end.

Do you think there's something to know?

I'll have a formal meeting on Sunday.

Well, not really.

Is there a problem with the Chinese in staying in Shanghai through that day?

I don't know what Henry would say.

I would say no.

I would say it's not something that cannot be worked out.

Would it be a problem in asking and seeking a meeting with Joe on Monday instead of Sunday?

or in addition to some of what his plans are.

I think you got a good point that we ought to do the, when we go to Shanghai, we ought to really take Sunday and look around and, you know, and then on Monday, we'll hit the, uh, the, uh,

Communicate.

Get out.

Communicate.

No.

Communicate.

You're saying the only people you're screwing with this are the news magazines and they don't matter.

See what I mean?

You're not really screwing that.

It doesn't make any difference.

They're past that line anyway.

What, with the Communicate?

Yeah.

You're not even sure now?

No, we do it Monday as well.

Sunday.

And they make their death in there.

Don't look for it.

Well, I mean, that's not an answer.

That's not an answer.

I don't never do anything like that.

The very technical point would be that the Sunday afternoon meeting is preferable to Joe from the standpoint that, as you've probably heard, he works mainly in the afternoon, so what we're asking him to do is reverse how he would normally work, but yet he'd have to go to the airport for the communique.

It wasn't Monday afternoon.

Meet Monday afternoon.

After the communique?

No.

Do the communique.

No.

Okay.

If you do that, then you're out of sync with the time that's primetime back here.

But that's so we don't care.

Well, that doesn't matter.

Okay.

I don't think the communique is not something that I particularly care about as a primetime view.

It's a news story, right?

That's right.

I mean, it's very, very complicated in these guys' hands.

So just let it be a news story with the commentators going on.

Or, as a matter of fact, they'll probably do it on prime time.

Cronkite will go on, on a special, on the communique.

That's probably what the 9 o'clock would say.

I'm going to now discuss this historic communique.

That's the way they'll do it.

They won't do it in the news.

In relation to communicating, the time factor, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because if you release it at 2 a.m. in the morning, it's going to give as much play throughout that day and that night as it would if you didn't release it.

If you and Joe go out and jointly announce a communicator or something, they'll probably put it on live television.

at 2 a.m. in the morning.

I'd let people here get up at 2 a.m. like they did in the morning.

And they're just going to run and run?

Yes.

As you say, they'll have a special offer.

Using anything that would help.

When you meet with Mal, which will probably be in the afternoon, they'll shoot that back here live, so in the middle of tape and work on it over here, but they'll just feed it back directly.

What's the status of the

ground station in Shanghai.

According to a few minutes ago, they said that there'll be no television, live television, out of Shanghai.

Well, I'll take care of that anyway.

If it'll be live television, they'll communicate with another one.

Right, they'll take the videotape.

To begin.

But now we can, that could be argued, but that's where it stands as of right now.

They have the capability to do it live, but the networks don't want it to be live.

That doesn't work out of Shanghai.

Technically, it's capable to do it without the ground station.

They were supposed to have capability on the 25th of doing it live.

But the ground station capability is there, but the other capability is not readily put in place there.

The telecine machines, the other things.

So that's where they feel that apparently, based upon what you say from the conversation, it'd be better to fly it an hour up to Peking and do it all out of there.

You just call me.

Well, one thing, before they announce it, Attorney General, I thought you might want to meet with the client leads.

We've talked about, see if they're going to announce that at the same time.

If you want to get into some of those things first, and then some of those things right after.

Don't raise a problem.

I think that the coming back all the way makes sense.

I'll reverse that.

Second, I think we ought to try to make it in prime time.

Don't you agree with me about that?

Absolutely.

I mean, it's just a waste to come in 12 minutes later.

Can't we just look?

You wasted 400 people, that's all.

Okay, we work back from a 9 o'clock arrival at Andrews to a departure that said

something like a 5 o'clock departure out of Shanghai and figure out what to do on Monday in Shanghai.

Try and make the fuel stop.

But later, if you conveniently leave Shanghai, the better.

Because those who want to contrive something about 9 o'clock would contrive off of the fuel stop.

Yeah.

If only we could just leave later.

I don't think there would be any problem staying in Shanghai.

It's 6 o'clock in the hill.

If we get out at 6, it would be pretty good, Sheriff, to stay down there.

If you haven't announced that we're going to be there.

Well, we have two hunters, and I guess that's all.

We have two hunters.

If you see something, you'll find something for each of you.

OK.

They don't know when we're leaving anyway, so we haven't done it.

We're still at ground zero.

OK.

Yes, sir.

Or what, just one thing?

No, it doesn't work.

But I don't think it's off.

If it doesn't work, isn't the next, if you can't work that, isn't the next best thing Tuesday over at 3-D?

Yeah.

I think so.

And that's, we know we can do that.

So there's no problem.

That doesn't work.

I think we just, we're just trying to take a little edge off and sleep at night.

So it's better to take that edge off and get here at nine than it is to come running to and arrive at nine.

That's right.

Just one quick thing over on this subject.

You're meeting at 9 o'clock on Thursday with the leaders.

No, I haven't announced it.

I'm just thinking about the technical side.

Because the networks will either go on at 9, 30, or 10.

They'll go on at any time.

Well, but I don't want to miss the walking out of the cabinet room and so forth and out to the chopper.

What time is it?

10 for the mangroves or 10 for the south ground?

10 for the south ground.

So ideally we just delay that.

We'll make it about 10, 10 or 10, 15 for the south ground.

See, we don't have any problem when it's 10.

Any problem when we get in there.

So I just open up at 10 o'clock.

Start covering the vent.

Well, it doesn't matter what time.

If they went on for about 10 minutes ahead of time, they should have the crowd and the gathering and so forth.

Well, the president won't come out there until 10 after 10.

It's 7 o'clock.

That's fine.

It's good.

Yeah, 10 after 10.

You'll come out.

The president won't have to go.

We'll go on at 10 o'clock.

Good.

That's all I need.

Mr. President, you have the attorney, all right?

Yes, sir.

I signed him, yeah.

And the one we sent to you, you know, at Rose's, you know, he was there to hand her.

And he said, you know, I want to just look at it and see if it's very good or something.

He said, very good.

Now, my letter, again, is not to be released, however.

It is not to be released.

The typewriter letter.

We haven't released it.

You have the one that's to be released.

The typewriter letter is not to be released.

The typewriter letter is personal.

It is personal.

But his letter, if he wants, there's nothing in it.

It's dirty.

We'll just release the pilot.

That's what I got around that.

Can you do that 11?

We're going to do that 11.

It's a question of whether you want to catch one of these before.

Just to be sure you're on it.

I mean, are you announcing?

He's not going to go out and say anything.

On these, not certain.

Well, he can come over afterwards.

I mean, he could have said he'd come at 4 o'clock before it's announced.

I mean...

you know, download them to the job.

That's right.

You don't need to, from a public viewpoint, the only point would be if you wanted to before you sent it down to the Hill.

Okay, fine.

Publicly, we don't want you to, we're not doing anything about you seeing them.

Mitchell wants you to be as low key as he can.

Well, this is a lot of time, I guess, on what seems to be rather unimportant.

It's like overriding what I thought earlier, because I knew that a riot was happening.

I said, I remember that one of ours was, first I know that a riot is going to do me no good.

Second.

Not if you want to cover it.

It's the whole story.

If you get locked, if you get on the line, it's a little more of a question of life.

Especially if we say you're going to make a mistake.

They have to do it live.

They've carried all the rest of it live.

They can't end the story on a covered basis.

The Democratic and the Republican Senators, we have the best resistance in this country.

Because?

We'll have some problems with the communicators when we get closer.

Because the armistice will waive in this country.

We'll have to give it a wash out there.

We'll have an argument with the base.

We'll have to talk about what happened in Japan.

Right.

Bob, there's just...

I took it back to your report with Gallup, but that's rather interesting.

I can't believe that Gallup would tell, that's the point, Rumsfeld, that he would hold a poll.

I never, because Gallup has always been, you know, said, well, he used to try to call them, but I said, no.

Well, he wouldn't just start a poll, but he would just not release it on the eve of your departure, is the point.

He would wait and release it next month after you got back.

I suppose.

Well, he's done that before.

which indicates something about his idea of the event.

It's a feeling you've got all across the board, and I think very strongly so.

Well, we got the message from the North Vietnamese, and it's the mildest one we've ever had.

I had sent them a message on the 26th to keep them from publishing their record, in which we just said,

We've published the record that the United States side has said in its message of November 19th.

Go ahead.

before we have a final arrival.

So we can talk about that briefly if you want to turn it off.

Okay.

I'll start as a case in point with the return here, John.

This is not when we should arrive because he's now thinking that his arrival statement at the airport may be his report to the country.

He may not want to say any more than that.

That means he may not want two or three days later to declare with some names.

and therefore he wants to arrive here when he's covered on television, which would be at 9 o'clock tonight instead of 11.

Which means we'd have to leave 10 in the evening.

Which means you'd have to leave late afternoon.

You'd have to leave 10 o'clock about 5 or 6 instead of 10 in the morning.

And so what you do is just put over some other additional activity on Monday and check that, which is what they wanted us to do to begin with.

You know, 5 or 6 in the evening here,

I mean, nine in the evening here, it's 11 in the morning.

Dead.

Dead, I mean, dead what?

Well, that means, uh, we'll have all of us a night's sleep.

It doesn't change that, you see.

Well, the only difference it makes is because of the fact that the flight is scheduled at 17 hours, you're going to lose an eye to sleep either way.

Well, unless it's out in the morning, in which case, yes.

But that isn't my main point.

My main worry is to give the Chinese the sense that we're using them to stage a television thing here.

Absolutely, we would.

After they, the schedule has all been set now.

I mean, they will have, you can't just schedule another activity there.

I think, I mean, you...

The point is we can do anything there if we ask and they'll do it.

But it will cause us, not fundamentally.

You can't tell which.

Well, this is a point that I didn't realize.

You may have the Chinese.

Have they been told to leave at 7 or 10 o'clock?

Oh, sure.

No, 10 o'clock.

10 o'clock.

They've been told that?

Sure.

The schedule...

Well, it's not that they've been told that.

That's the schedule that's been worked out between us and the Chinese.

It's for a 10 a.m. departure.

I think it's wrong to change that.

I don't have any damn reason to change it.

Except $1 was one of the things they reserved.

There's a reason for saying that we haven't though.

We can't at this late a date.

If we'd have had it on the advance party before a month ago, that's why.

Then would it be $0.02?

Well, are you sure it's a problem now?

That would be the only other question.

Because they, the original thing, when you came back, they wanted them to save to do the two days in Shanghai.

Well, but you see we said no and every time they change something they let us know you're changing the agreed procedure.

I'm sure if we had said from the beginning we want to leave at six in the evening or nine in the evening or whatever,

that would have presented no problem.

Bob, that's a really good question.

I still think, is that also sleeping in Anchorage?

That's right.

I think that's the right way to do it.

I think that everybody, I don't care whether it's Romney or maybe that would be interpreted by the American public as meaning to return to America.

Everybody knows that this is a vigilant trip and they're going to sleep on it.

I don't think you've got any problem with stopping in Anchorage and spending the night.

I think...

You'll be sort of screwed up in terms of schedule.

I don't know how the time works out as yet.

Fine.

Perfect.

Anchorage time.

It must be hard to go to sleep at midnight Anchorage time, because that's only five in the afternoon Shanghai time.

Oh, we'll all be exhausted.

But you're going to be tired.

You'll have had eight hours in an airplane, and I would think you'd be able to go to bed.

I think this is far better.

I think the nine o'clock arrival time here is bad.

But I'm very reluctant, because for that reason, we need it at nine o'clock here, because it comes in parity for another reason.

Otherwise, Frank will call me.

Oh, I think I like the night arrival.

I have no problem.

We, uh, I've been thinking about, you know, this idea of making a report when I return on consideration of that.

And this is that I'll get the most of the way, whether I do have the leaders down here.

I guess I'm going to have to leave for half an hour if we have consideration of that.

It's my belief that after a massive television coverage for a week over there, and communication,

But then, when we return, then three days later we'll go on national primetime television to report on something and cover it.

It's going to be a goddamn hard thing first, physically to get ready, and mentally to understand when the content is saying anything.

Is it going to be all that?

No.

Well, from the audience viewpoint, is there anything out there?

Is there anything more to say?

I have no surprises.

I have no news.

That's it.

Good.

Well, good.

What the hell am I going to find news to say at that point?

I won't say anything kind of untrue.

So what I thought was to take the cream off, skim it off right at that point at 9 o'clock in the morning.

I think that I come off and I can speak ten minutes.

And, you know, as I ride, I'll figure it out all well in advance.

I think it's beautiful.

I like it.

I think, Mr. President,

that's going to be interpreted all over the place and knock them, and they'll say, well, it was kind of an anti-climax, you know, they're going to be full of China in a while.

Then let others start to click into China's stuff.

I think that's absolutely right.

I like it very much.

I think the 9 o'clock arrival here, I like very much.

Adding on activities in Shanghai, when they have drilled everything, I think they're all...

So I think what we do, despite Jacob's concern, is to say it isn't going to take that much blue longer to stay and spend the night there.

Incidentally, I think we ought to...

The night there, anyway, is 6 o'clock in the morning here.

Let me ask, though, how much can we harness the clothes?

I don't think you can really harness them.

Well, you can harness the arrival very easily, because it's at midnight, no one's going to want to come anyway.

The next day, a lot of people will be out and not going away for your departure.

The people are out with you.

On departure, you can get away without saying anything.

On arrival, you almost have to say something.

The departure is only two o'clock in the afternoon here.

That's right.

And we carry it.

It'll be a skim of the news.

And they said, I will be in Washington.

And I'll maybe stay there.

I go to that with them.

When I return, when I arrive in Washington, if you are, it's an honor.

I just want to thank you, my good friends in Anchorage, for coming on the call.

I think it builds up the arrival.

That builds it up.

And I'll be in Washington tonight.

David, I've seen you so much, everyone will know you've had a good period.

I could not miss this opportunity.

This was unplanned.

This was only a refueling stop.

But I appreciate the fact that so many thousands of our good friends from Alaska came out to say goodbye and say hello.

We thank you very, very much.

We've come here, and my first stop after being chunked was in Anchorage, and a little of that crap.

And off we go.

You could talk about this at start and base, where this is the one... Why can't we make history?

We make history.

You can't do that stuff.

The first stop was in Anchorage, the first meeting between...

And then whack, whack, on the plane.

We build it.

That's only evening news.

Make out about a minute and a half.

That takes the evening news.

You get back in the airplane.

It fills up your life in seven hours.

And I make a six to seven to ten minutes.

Probably six to seven.

And we have to make a class of generalities, which will

I think that's absolutely right.

I like it very much.

I think the nine o'clock arrival here, I like very much.

Adding on activities in Shanghai when they have drilled everybody.

I think you're wrong.

No doubt.

So I think what we do, despite Zeta's concerns, is to stay.

It isn't going to take that much blue off of them to stay and spend the night there.

Incidentally, I think we ought to...

Tonight there, anyway, at 6 o'clock in the morning here.

Let me ask, though, how much can we harvest the clothes?

I don't think you can really harvest them.

Well, if you can harvest them, you probably will very easily, because it's at midnight, no one's going to want to come anyway.

The next day, a lot of people will be out and out of the way for your departure.

The people are out that you... On departure, you can get away without saying anything.

On arrival, you almost have to say something.

And the departure is only two o'clock in the afternoon here.

That's right.

And we carry it.

It'll be a swim in the news.

And they said, I will be in Washington.

And I'll maybe stay there.

And I go to that with them.

And I return.

And I arrive in Washington.

And you are as a nomad.

I just want to thank you, my good friends in Anchorage, for coming.

I think it builds up the arrival.

That builds it up.

And I'll be in Washington tonight.

And David, I've seen you so much, everyone will know you said it.

I could not miss this opportunity.

This was unplanned.

This was only a refueling stop.

But I appreciate the fact that so many thousands of our good friends from Alaska came out to say goodbye, to say hello.

We thank you very, very much.

We'd come here, and my first stop after being chunked was in Anchorage, and a little of that crap.

And off we go.

You could talk about this at start and base, where this is no wonder we make history, we make history.

Again, the last time we were first with the plan, the first stop was in Anchorage, the first meeting we were doing.

And then whack, whack, on the plane.

We build it, but that's only evening news.

Make out about a minute and a half.

That takes the agent to get back in the airplane and fills up your lights in seven hours.

And I make a six to seven to ten minutes, probably six to seven minutes.

And we'll try to make a class of generalities which will finish the trip as far as I know.

And then I will do the impression on it.

10 days later, perhaps, after I'd had a chance to go to Florida, get totally arrested and turned around and so forth, and get acquainted with the domestic issues again.

Now, the problem we have there is going to the country.

I think rather than press for you, you might go to the country the following week and do some gag-ass things.

And I said, I remember one thing I told you was common.

He said, that wasn't the thing.

That would be a nice way to approach this.

Rather than use it, since I want to come and use it, because Melanie makes you up on that, which is why we would have such a terrible time dragging it down.

It turns out it's not Abilene, it's San Angelo College, not Abilene Christian.

No, does it mean San Angelo or Abilene?

San Angelo.

Well, is he still an interested idea?

Huh?

Yeah.

Good.

Well, I like the 9 o'clock arrival, Mr. President.

My only hesitation was... And you'd also like the idea of not coming back and having to prepare a report to the Navy.

I'd like that, too, because I... Nobody's going to be ready to do that.

I don't know what you would say to the... What we can do then is meet with the leaders.

That'll be our report to the nation.

We'll meet with the leaders.

We have to.

Absolutely.

And Jack, I surround a little with that.

but that's it you can do that that's up to you either that night or tuesday morning very busy tuesday get that done and maybe get that i might go back drive go wednesday before and then say that i maybe got a crack down here tuesday and wednesday

Yeah, I would say spend two days here.

Yeah.

Tuesday and Wednesday should be scheduled here for the jackass things we have to do.

I frankly meet with the bipartisan thing, and I think that gets away from meeting with our own leaders.

There isn't a doubt that things are not any better, but we ought to have a cap team just because get a captain meeting.

Right, that's good.

Get that done and put them on different days this time.

Leaders on Tuesday and captain on Wednesday, and we won't be ready for an NFC meeting that morning last time.

Good morning, do you want anything from South Asia?

I wouldn't have to rush myself, Mr. President.

South Asia is gonna be a bitch.

How about for a leaner meat and breakfast?

Do you want to wait till tomorrow morning?

I don't think so.

I don't want to go back and talk to them later.

They're all over.

You've got to say one of the things you need me to say.

I haven't read a new song.

Colson last night told me.

Have you heard?

Yeah, I've seen him.

I'm just a blast on the Democrats.

George, you know, when he talked to me, he said, give me the casualty figures and some other stuff because I can make some use out of it.

And he got down there and he said the president's doing a lot of that.

And he said, I will not vote for him.

He said, that's unlikely that I'll vote for Richard Nixon, but I will never vote for a man who calls for surrender in Vietnam.

And he said, they're not consciously aiding the enemy, but they're aiding him.

He said, they're not consciously aiding the enemy, but they are aiding the enemy.

But you know, if somebody had said, if they're unconsciously engaging in that, it makes it worse.

It may appear to be dumb.

And so what you're saying about, you know, the people that are nitpicking, Mike, what they say, the Vice President said the same thing.

He said, well, I wouldn't say consciously.

I wouldn't go that far.

Vice President, if you're going to back up, you should back off of aiding and abetting, not off of consciously.

Let them debate whether or not they're going to come up with a debate about how they're engaging the enemy.

That's a nice debate about.

Incidentally, Mr. President, I spoke about it this morning.

If this schedule holds, LIDOC is only going to come back to Paris about 10 days after you've been in Beijing.

Everybody will figure you're interested in Beijing.

Doesn't make any difference.

It's going to look like a direct result of the Beijing trip.

Is that LIDOC coming back or will be public knowledge?

Oh yeah, that's going to be public knowledge.

We don't know why.

But, uh...

So they'll clearly think I'm getting a lot of press queries already.

And now I can see that Kraslow called this model out.

But Kraslow called because they put out a story that they did it all with China.

And it was on me.

And we proposed a secret emissary.

And he called about it, and I said it.

Well, that's ridiculous.

I mean, you really didn't say you put it up?

Well, I put it up when they got it.

There was some great talk of Pat Jones put it up when he got it.

Oh, of course.

But isn't that the silliest guy that they are?

No, that's not true.

They're putting up, like, I just read somewhere that...

The President's going to be accompanied by certain people, plus the two men who put the intellectual pattern together, Mr. Marshall Green and Alfred E.S.

Jenkins.

Oh, shit.

May I say anything about your...

I don't have to.

I just wanted to...

Why not just not say anything?

I think not.

And if I were to go, you would just say, well, he just decided he was going to make his friends, so I wouldn't let him know.

Well, they...

So I first knocked down that story.

They said, you have... What these bastards don't know is you set up the Warsaw meeting through a secret channel, through Yaya.

That's the first thing.

Secondly, they said, we told them it was our...

It's a really vicious little story.

We proposed sending a senior emissary and before they could return it fly, we went into Cambodia and they knocked it off.

Well, anyway, I'll give that away to Tim.

But I mean, it's fabulous that it's Lee Dr. Cohen speaking when you are there.

I said, frankly, we have no information about what Lee Dr. Cohen said, but let me just give you my own personal opinion.

Those Vietnamese will not settle this in Peking.

The place to watch is where the Lee Dr. Cohen shows up some of the places.

I do not, even if he should turn out to be a teacher, he will be there for Chinese business, not for American business, because that's not, I mean, I'm on safe ground, I know.

Well, the story tells us that he's there now, or on the way there today.

Well, we don't know.

But if he goes to Peking, I mean, they'll all put it together in their mind.

He goes to Peking before we go.

We go to Peking, and you'll get credited as one of the results of the trip, just when the experts start nitpicking away at the communique and say, well, there isn't all that much in there.

And

And that should happen around the 12th to the 15th.

And then they'll go crazy.

I'll see you when they find it out.

Well, you'll have to eat.

Well, I need to help you out even though they don't find it out yet.

They don't have to find out that I'm going.

They will assume now whether they can find me or not.

I think we should take the position that we do not comment on private talks.

Oh, if we announce it, they'll start escalating it.

and keep making new and new proposals.

Oh, we're just going to stay there because I have nothing to report on.

I think it's better than comment on private talks.

I just think Zegers should do the thing.

I mean, I know that everybody is afraid to say it, and Rogers will never say no comment.

I have no comment on that.

It's fine.

Just say no.

The president's for years who said it.

What the hell is the reason why you can't say it?

So with no comment, I have no comment on that.

I have nothing to report on that.

There is a White House press secretary who refuses to comment on the report.

I just have no comment on that.

The point is, it'll be a bad next day, but he has no evidence.

When he even goes beyond that and says, well, I wouldn't speculate or I don't want to speculate, it immediately makes the story one way that just that I have no comment.

Now, it's still the best thing to say to a guy like him about getting more people to say, I have no comment.

They've got to say, what do you think about the vice president?

I have no comment.

What do you think about what Holmes said?

I have no comment.

No comment.

I think it's better to be a little bit more.

Let's watch this arrival ceremony for a minute.

When you come back, you're doing this for now prime time.

The normal pattern is the Vice President welcomes you home.

He pretty much has to do that.

I think somebody, we ought to set up some way of telling the Vice President, this time let's not take any chances.

He always does a superb job.

That's right.

But let's not take any chances on what he says.

We ought to get it in his text.

Absolutely.

So that he doesn't, you know, start summarizing what you accomplished or something.

Yes, yes.

So he doesn't start getting into tight lines.

But somebody ought to get a line down as to what we want the people to say.

Well, I think you should just speak for one minute.

He doesn't have...

Even on a personal basis, Mr. President, this is, you know, one of the great moments in the history of this nation that you returned from your historic journey for peace.

We Americans are... That's why I'm proudly prepared to be prepared, may I suggest, by a speechwriter, a defiant, a technical man.

I agree.

You shouldn't have no substance at all.

No substance, right.

I mean, people don't want to see him one minute or, you know, just very little for him.

And it should only be the Vice President who welcomes you for very less than a minute and then you step up and give your remarks and that's it.

If this is the best thing.

Oh, no question.

I think it's the best thing.

If you wait until Wednesday or Thursday, you'll only be repeating the communique.

They'll have anything other than the communique they'll have seen on television.

You'll be more physically active when you're going on TV when you arrive than you will be today.

Another thing, too, is that Ziegler used to make a report to the nation and so forth.

Now, we've covered it.

In a case, he's for it.

He makes little remarks when he returns, and he's talking to the leaders.

That's a report to the nation.

See, all this, they give you a lot of pressure to report to the nation because it's been conventional.

There isn't going to be a report to the nation.

You report it to the nation, see?

That's the best way to handle this.

Go ahead with your, uh, let me just read you, uh, to what I accepted in, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh, in, uh,

You know, he's an electric guy who lives, you know, he's never gotten that retail sale figure.

I didn't like your hair, et cetera, et cetera.

And I think, you know, as I always said, I said, God damn it, don't you worry about these days.

I don't know if he does, but I can hear him.

I said, you've got to figure this out.

He's a little brave, you know.

But I think we're fortunate to have a good number come out this close to the end of January.

That's Thursday morning, I'm telling you.

Well, if they don't mail it today, papers will have it this morning.

Or at least Thursday morning.

These Thursday morning papers.

Fine.

Okay.

Let me, uh...

Okay.

I'm not going to read you what we sent to them, so that you're going to thank me for how soft they replied.

I guess before you get into that, Bob was telling me that Mallory was going to see the press at 3.30 today.

How did he behave?

Oh, yeah.

He's smart enough to know.

Well, of course, he was the director of information for that.

He did not hurt the trip.

Oh, he did behave.

Yeah.

Oh, he'll be no problem.

As a matter of fact, I think the autograph was a very nice...

I thought it was a nice touch for us to invite this man over.

This guy who knew Mao when he was 23 years old.

He, Mao, was trying to get Mao when he was 33.

You know, of course, Mao wrote the book.

That is kind of DC press.

I thought it was a really good station at the time, which I like.

You know what?

Blue State told me.

He said that it was Frank Page when I mentioned Malraux in this office press conference.

Frank Page and the Ferris wheelers love Malraux.

Always have.

And Luce said that he was so, I realize, he said he is such a towering figure that even, particularly among young people, he is still quite a following.

I see that that's because of his montage.

And that he, Lou Steele, has written two or three monographs on his works.

Art and everything.

Apparently, that guy has a reputation far beyond what most Americans would realize.

Oh, he is the leading trans-literary figure and a hero.

Yes, sir.

He fought in the Civil War, the Maquis, et cetera.

No question.

But I think it was a good thing to do.

had the purpose of preventing it from publishing directly.

So I have said it is with no reason or alternative that the United States is revealing publicly the secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese.

This was on January 26th.

And then we summed up all the proposals we had made.

And then at the end of it we said the United States side continues to seek to bring a rapid end to the war on the basis just for all parties.

It repeats its willingness to consider alternative ideas.

It stands behind everything that it has said in

private discussions.

The United States is ready to negotiate on the basis of the proposal outlined by the President in his speech and is prepared to send Dr. Kishin to the Paris whenever Special Advisor Lee Duk-to can visit.

To this, they replied, Father, the North Vietnamese side has always thought that the keeping secret of the substance of the negotiations or the publishing of the report made no difference and had no importance.

The American side has often proposed that these private meetings be kept confidential.

Replying to this request, the North Vietnamese side agreed that both sides would not publish the substance of the private meeting.

Nevertheless, the American side did not hold to its commitment.

On the 26th of January 1972, the American side again proposed a private meeting between Dr. Kismetra, Special Advisor Lee Dat Gook, and Minister Kwan Kwee in order to demonstrate

Its serious attitude is to search for a peaceful solution for the Vietnamese problem.

The DRV side informs the American side that Special Advisor V. Dr. O. and Minister X. Wang Kui are disposed to meet Dr. Kisselshaw on March 15, 1972.

If this date is not convenient, they are prepared to meet on any date that the American side will decide, giving us the exact time and date of their convenience.

I mean, this, uh, I mean, it's like, hey, that makes no difference if you publish this.

Well, then they said orderly to, uh, to, uh, to, uh, uh, to Walters that if, if we schedule it at a time, they will have it, well, at the usual time, they're assuming it will stay for that.

I mean, this is a fact.

You'd have to know all the previous ones.

They never told us we could give them a date at our convenience or a time at our convenience.

They always made us submit a date, then they'd check it, take a week or two before they'd come back.

And this is three weeks after we kicked them in the teeth.

And we didn't propose a meeting.

We just said we are ready to meet whenever they want to.

No, your answer is correct.

But it doesn't matter even if they call me a... Supposing they call us in to say you're a bunch of blood-sucking sons of bitches.

To what?

Muscular.

Muskie won't know what they're doing.

No, no, no.

We'll blame it on Archie.

We'll blame it on Muskie.

These negotiations are not right now.

I mean, they tried again, and they...

They'll say something to indicate...

The thing that I want you to particularly watch for in these next talks is any swift where they indicate that there is opposition to the war in the United States.

They always put something in there.

Oh, yeah.

You understand how important that is to us?

Well, I've got a lot of stuff in the notes already.

Good.

But if we could have some now, at this point, after our January 25th initiatives, indicating that the American people do not support the President in this, by God, we've got one hell of a thing to hang on to.

Mr. President, I think if we get only one meeting out of it, and that's inconceivable.

You get more than that.

There'll be three meetings at least.

And as long as Li Dachau is in Paris, the Democrats cannot do a goddamn thing.

Because if they attack us, we blame them for wrecking the talks.

If they keep quiet, well, then we have peace at home.

Either way, it hurts the North Vietnamese.

Because if we get till the end of April, then we have until the middle of June

because that Moscow summit, Mr. President, it won't have the same drama as China.

It is less of a historical but more of a political event.

So... That's what I mean.

I mean, you talk about the Cotswain and the Alderman, all the rectures, and the end of the war.

This is something that, if that was inevitable, if it was inevitable that, you know, the Cotswain and the end of the war should happen, the Alderman boy should sit down and yank her arm about a few times.

This means a whole new direction in U.S.-Soviet relations.

And the China meeting means a whole new direction in U.S.-China-China relations.

Well, this is, that's what's important about this.

I mean that, you know what Malcolm said last night, it's worth dating the truth.

You know, and he's right.

It's worth dating the truth.

Mr. President, nothing, and you see it now on television.

Barbara Walters was saying goodbye this morning.

I mean, this is... Teddy White called me last night in tears.

He said, I want you to...

I know, I told him that.

He was literally in tears.

He said, let the president know this is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

And therefore, that China trip, Mr. President, it's just... And it's going to build more and more and more

Now, there's one thing I wanted to say in connection with the conversations last night.

It's hard to understand these Chinese leaders because they are different from the others.

They are more comparable, in my judgment, to early Calvinists, 16th century religious fanatics.

They are not like the communists in Moscow.

They are capable of great brutality.

But what other country would call a revolution, in which millions get killed, a cultural revolution?

Their brutality is Chinese, not communist.

It is Chinese, and their whole structure.

And in dealing with them, they lay enormous threats.

You'd have to read the verbatim record on principle.

Now, it's important to be tough with them.

That is, when Zhou attacks, one has to hold firm, because otherwise he'll follow.

But when Brezhnev attacks, one has to slap him brutally.

When Zhou attacks, one has to be firm in substance but conciliatory in form because they will always have superb manners.

I mean, your behavior, your normal behavior is ideal for this, as I told you right after I came back.

But it's important for them.

They don't expect us to agree with them.

It's important, however, that we show we understand their point of view, not that we share it.

And that we have our point of view.

Now, they do not like one thing that was said yesterday.

They do not like to be told that peace is desirable.

To them, peace is not an objective.

Justice is an objective.

And therefore, the general words like cooperation, compromise is a bad word for them.

The way they can handle it is to say we are going towards our goal, you go towards yours.

We are walking side by side for this stretch of the road that they can handle easily.

But cooperation in the abstract is of no interest to them.

Peace in the abstract is of no interest to them.

Totally wrong.

These are people who think in conflict situations.

On the other hand, what we can make and say to them

is we've got two years while the Soviets are developing and we shouldn't waste them in sterile recrimination.

That they'll understand.

That's a realistic assessment.

We shouldn't spend these next two years.

We have the problem that the Soviets are building up their strategic forces.

You have the problem that the Soviets are surrounding you.

We want you to survive not because we like you,

but because we believe it is essential in our interest.

That sort of language shall understand very well.

But it must, there must be the slightest hint of what they will construe as condescension.

The way you talk to Korchescu, for example, I mean, you handle the communists better, but they are different phenomena from the Russians.

The Russians are brutal bureaucrats.

These are fanatical monks.

In 25 years, as a historian, I'd have to say we'll probably be on the side of the Russians against that.

And the game we have to play now is like the British in the 19th century.

To shift our way to one side or the other, whoever is weaker, we always have to be on the weaker side.

Not on the stronger side, because once the stronger dominate, it may become too strong for us.

And the British did it quite unemotionally, and we have to do it unemotionally.

And now tomorrow we're going to announce some Russian easing of export licenses.

We are going to announce $400 million worth of export licenses to Russia, which we've been holding.

And now I'm going to try to work out... That will be announced tomorrow.

I beg your pardon?

Sorry, in fact, do you have yet your, what you have for the opening statements and so forth?

I've just gone over them again.

I can have them to you this afternoon, late this afternoon.

No, I've got them.

I've practically got them.

I just wanted to do them one more time.

You were probably a lot of...

Now, I have worked with my staff on an analysis of Mao's stuff, which I've put in your book on Mao, which you might take a look at.

Book on Mao?

I've got a book on Mao in show and live for you.

Oh, is that a big case?

It's fancy what this is.

That's business communication.

Business communication.

All right, I go.

Well, yes, it is in the case.

But it will be offensive.

There were a couple of things that probably Butterfield or somebody said.

But on some of your memorandums of conversations, my originals, which I have marked, I don't have.

I would like to see them because it will refresh my mind.

Yeah, I have the book of the positions.

I'll give that back to you.

You've underlined things.

Yeah, the book of the positions, or, uh...

I mean, if you're...

But I mean, no, I, when you, you know...

If, if, uh, that doesn't bother you so much, that, that, you know, the positions before you left, that, that one I don't want to see.

No, but, you know, I had a memorandum of your conversations after you returned both times.

Isn't that in this book?

It is, but it doesn't have my original since I want to see my original.

We should ask him if you marked them.

Well, anything that I have marked I want to see because the markings have some special significance to my memory.

So anything that I have marked on the China papers, except not the original papers,

I know, I didn't have the position papers, that's all, that's just the memorandums, but there may be some things there that I could want to take a look at.

Now you, why don't you stay then, just because I need to go to Camp David's afternoon.

I can have it by 3.30, 4 o'clock.

Well, if you can't have it then, there's no reason to have it then.

No use to rush it that much.

Then get it to me by, say, 7 o'clock tonight.

I'll work on other things today.

Or 8 o'clock tonight, have it set up on the helicopter.

Okay.

So we say that.

That's what I'll do.

Then I'll take a look at it and be ready to talk about it on the plane.

Good.

I think if you've read this, then you might...

I have another separate book on the communique, but that's a little technical and you may not want to bother with it.

And then you might read Maximo Cho.

Yes.

The lesson she's setting up for me.

You know the lesson?

What have I had?

The lesson I already had.

Good, I'll read that.

You know, I'm quite aware of the, I think I'm aware of the great difference between the Chinese and the Russians.

I mean, they are very principled people.

Or maybe you've talked to me so much about your mother.

I mean, they're in a completely different framework, but they are people of strong convictions who do have a great sense of honor in their framework, which is totally different from ours.

So I have a... We are also...

Absolutely.

And they'll respect that.

We don't have to accept that.

But we must...

The thing we have to avoid is to...

is to start giving them the impression that we want shoddy little deals with them.

If you say, here are my principles, they're different from yours, but we can work out something practical because we have some parallel interests, they'll give you no trouble.

And there'll be no recrimination.

It would be a mistake to pretend that you agree with them.

Don't suck it around.

And also, you don't come around and say, well, look, we're not very far apart and all that.

That's another thing which we need to do around, you know, and others are always trying to reassure our people that they're having no differences.

You cannot do that.

That's a lawyer's trick.

And I think the Chinese, I can say, see that that won't work.

That doesn't mean you're belittling them about the differences which you've got.

You can afford to be non-deleterate about the differences.

Now, you will have to expect, Mr. President, that very early, somebody is going to make a tough speech at their position.

And I would make a very polite and tough reply.

At any rate, I wouldn't yield.

That is going to happen.

It may happen at the first plenary session.

They have to get their position on their record.

My experience has been that after they've made that speech, after one replies, then they go back to treatment.

What about the plenary session?

I hope that Joe is aware of the fact that we prefer to have no business done there except to be divided with the work.

That's exactly right.

Well, he will make a statement, isn't it?

No way of avoiding that.

And you can make a statement.

And then he'll propose how to divide up the work, isn't it?

Mr. President, I have no question that that's enough.

be recorded as one of your tremendous achievements, and that we can all be happy.

We've almost made it.

Because I don't see, as a practical matter now, how the Congress, how they can synchronize the congressional and public demonstration aspect.

They can't do it while you're in China.

They've got to give you about 10 days after you get back from China before they attack you.

Then, March 25th, but lead October will be here, we'll be in Paris, and while he's in Paris, I cannot imagine that a congressional, that a presidential candidate, that they'll be passing resolutions through the Congress.

Then, starting early May, we'll be in a run-up period to Moscow.

Early May will become apparent if we have the Soviet Union.

But April, what I would propose to do, as you said yesterday, is to set the meeting for the 20th.

Then the next meeting, say, about April 10th.

They won't.

We can probably complete it.

But the demonstrators by themselves don't know if the Congress doesn't.

The demonstrators actually held.

I think we're in rather good shape.

I think until the middle of June, I do not see how the opposition can mount a Vietnam attack.

Middle of June, what the hell are they going to mount?

They're going to mount about two.

People are thinking it's worse, so we've got a little residual force there.

But they're still bombing, right?

Right.

But I think you have made progress towards the settlement.

I'm sorry, Senator.

All right.

This is just... You're going to look too good.

That 53%, Mr. President.

I don't give a damn what it does to you.

It's much better when you compare it to your super-presidency.

But the point is, it's a hell of a lot different from Johnson.

Exactly.

And that's what the Vietnamese are going to watch.

Also, the fact that...

And I don't know anything about public opinion, but it should do a little more in March.

Well, we don't know.

It could.

It went up even to 55, 56 in March.

Yeah.

We don't have, of course, to depend on other views, but the China thing is handled well.

The one quencher, of course, the potential quencher we have is to have the well-intentioned guys that are like the others to go roaring off on, well, we traded Taiwan.

But I don't, I can't believe that that communicating can be so intrusive.

No.

What do you think on that?

I don't think so.

They're going to say, it depends.

You know, I was wondering if we couldn't do something with the Taiwanese and tell them there to say that.

I just, we got everybody on board and communicating.

But when Marshall Berger goes down there, somebody, the Taiwan has no option.

if they i mean if they say well we betrayed them and the hell with the americans whatever exactly but let's let's think of the pr on that how we handle the problem but otherwise

But otherwise, the communiqué, I think, is extraordinarily good.

And when I read it, I think it's more than any of them thought it would be.

You know, particularly if you could, and I'm sure you can already be sure that the press

This is not what will come out of this meeting.

I keep putting that out.

I keep putting that out all the time.

I'm putting it out.

But the whole tone of the communique is very positive.

And we have solved the problem.

We'll have a strongly friendly segment about Japan and Korea in there.

on our part, which will help us greatly in those two countries.

And I don't think the one paragraph that gives us a little confidence is it's Taiwan that you may have to take it up with Mao.

But he has an opportunity to start with you.

So maybe I have to take over with Joe.

I have a question.

I know you shouldn't do it.

I personally feel that I should stay out of the community, right?

You should stay out of it.

Unless it just becomes a matter of normalcy.

I have requested a meeting with Joe before the first plenary session.

A secret meeting.

They can handle that.

No one will know this is taking place.

Just so that he knows what he's supposed to do at the plenary session.

I know the reason for it, incidentally, that they cannot send an emissary here because they're not wanting to have anybody here while we used to recognize Highland.

That's right.

On the other hand, the appearance of the United States sending emissaries to P.K.

It is not a very little.

Let me put it this way.

The point is, the point being is that when you read Chinese history, of course, that is always in their head that they come to us.

Yeah, that's what the goddamn press is saying.

What, that we're going there?

No, no, but I mean, that's, I've read this in some accounts.

I didn't know that.

No, I was thinking of myself.

I didn't see the press on.

Are they already reading it?

Well, I've seen it in some accounts, but...

Well, your point is that you've got to do what's necessary.

Well, I think we need the semblance of active contact with them for the Russians.

That's the answer to all.

And for the Indians.

I mean, as we imagine where we would be without this Chinese option, the Russians would really be putting it to us.

I'm having lunch with Sabrina today.

I'm just going to run over.

I've thought about it.

Maybe we, if he can possibly swing it, we ought to send Butts over there rather than Peterson.

Tell Peterson, or tell them to let the man, Peterson, after the summit.

Well, because as I look over the things to be negotiated, we can't make any progress without most favored nations.

We shouldn't give the most favored nations until after the summit.

And this would be something we have dangling in front of them.

And since they have all gone to visit, we've had Peter in there.

I mean, we've had Stans there.

You might say Stans.

Also, I still don't kind of want to, I still don't want to abuse my Bruce over there somewhere.

And I know he's in control, but I'm not sure that, I know what's his, what's he doing or he's talking to him.

He made a speech which they considered threatening in 1959 and they cut him off at the age of nine.

In 1959 he came there and made a speech which they considered a threat.

or which they considered condescending.

They have said this to me.

Do you realize, in person, why we do not talk about, we don't put the emphasis on peace in talking with them as an anti-war decision?

We have to put the emphasis on peace as an anti-war decision.

I wouldn't hesitate saying it in a toast, which comes back to me.

But that makes no, that is fine, coming back here.

Also, I will see whether we can get Joe to agree to put out the communique in D.K.

Because then they'd have every excuse to take their wraps off and act trial in Shanghai.

Let's take that just a little while.

I know that has been suggested.

I'm not sure of taking the wraps off.

I think we could agree on the communique.

But what I'm concerned about is that... For two days, people can nitpick without being able to talk back.

For us, you see, when we get back and you're here, you'll be able to, they'll say, what about this or that or the other thing, and you'll be able to set them right and get them to have to do it.

So, I mean, not with the...

I mean, just the senior type of people that you normally talk to.

But we're over there for two days.

The people that didn't go, particularly, and us, made us start out a hell of a haul of them.

I think there's something to be said there that's communicating with us.

But then we should do it the morning we leave out of Shanghai.

The morning, right.

Because that's the Sunday evening in America.

Yeah.

Because otherwise we'd be issuing it Sunday night which is there, which is Sunday morning here, which doesn't do us any good.

Well, it'll be on every position.

It's more of a newspaper story with television.

It's a news hour kind of thing rather than primetime.

Well, if you think we should do it Sunday night, we can do it then.

No, just do it when it's convenient for them.

On this one, I don't think it is, but you can see what I mean about getting it out too early in there.

I'm worried about that because if we get it flat, I'll...

Maybe we shouldn't even suggest doing it.

Also, the other problem is, if we make it a policy, it will be read back there, and we'll have to answer to them and so forth.

I'm inclined to think that also, you let us suppose that you did have an extremely negative reaction on Taiwan for a couple of days, or some other damn country happened.

And we've come back to this sort of a little thing.

I'd rather have this little time, I'd rather have something, I'd rather really give it to them than we can the morning we leave.

Well, then we should do it Monday morning.

Monday morning.

Because then there can't be any reaction, probably, before you get back.

Well, there's 15 hours of time to do it, and that's a hell of a short time.

I suppose that one thing I know that you could do,

Well, if they accept the draft, which I sent in the day, then we are in good shape.

I mean, then we can crow.

That's what you said.

I don't think they'll accept it.

On the other hand, they may come down from where they are.

They will certainly come down from where they are.

And if everything goes well, Mr. President, I will be true as the authority.

But if you do well with Mao, as I know you will, I mean, you've never met a great man whom you haven't impressed.

And that was before you had power.

De Gaulle had no reason to flatter you in 1963.

There was no prospect of you getting into office that anyone could discover.

Art now had no reason to be impressed by you other than what you are.

So I, I mean, Joe did say to me that the President and Mao can do many things that you, that he and I couldn't do.

Yes, he did.

Mao was fine.

You can be sure that, he said earlier, he said he will not say anything.

He will talk to you.

But then he went on to say that now it's sort of the same thing.

Now it's good.

He has a tendency to express very serious views in a semi-humorous way.

I don't know whether you've read his conversation with Haile Selassie.

He said, a lot of my advisors tell me that President Nixon is a devil.

Why am I seeing this devil?

But it made it quick.

I can't quite put it.

He did it in a way that he gave me.

You have the copies of Memories of Times, Memorandums on China, and I have Mark.

I want those, rather than copies of anything.

Okay.

What I'm suggesting is that you've got to look through the file and see any memorandum that he has sent me on China, other than me.

Before he went, I don't want to see any book.

But like he said, I may have marked some.

I didn't mark others.

But I want to see the markings in mine.

There's a background book from the state which you might want to look at.

Depositions are useless.

Dispositions are trivial, but there's a background book.

I'll send it up with you if you want to do something extra.

It's worth reading.

Gives you a lot of legal, if you have an hour, just to read through it.

I wouldn't put a lot of my intellectual capital on it.

What do you mean, a legal body?

Well, it gives you the legal background of the Korean situation and that sort of stuff.

But you don't have to get into it.

It gives you a lot of detail about exchanges, but I don't think you have to know that.

Well, I'll send it to you so that if you ask...

Henry, my recollection is that when Eisenhower took his trip, he didn't take Dulles.

He didn't.

He didn't always take Dulles.

No, sir.

Dulles was, you know, too busy.

But my point is that I don't believe we should have a situation where the Secretary of State travels every time we go.

It's just a total... You can't have two behind me on any trip.

It's a rule we always have in politics, you know.

You never have two people now.

I just don't know how we got trapped into this.

But, you know, we really shouldn't have Bill going on this.

He should go separately on his own church.

What do you think?

What do you think, Mr. President?

Well, it's going to be a pain in the neck.

But I mean, not just this, but all.

I don't think the Secretary of State needs to go alone in the goddamn church.

I'm trying to remember.

Particularly having in mind that we're in a very different position from a British prime minister.

I mean, the president makes Florida policy.

The British prime minister has a foreign minister in the cabinet system.

We've got them in the cabinet system.

Here's a joke.

Does that mean anything?

Well, it isn't a cabinet system.

They're heads of administrative departments.

The cabinet doesn't decide anything.

Right.

Well, I think... Oh, we've got a problem.

Well, I think it's good.

It's very good.

In the second term, you...

all these relationships.

There are not going to be any trips taken with, with captain officers at all.

Any captain officers.

I think you've gotten through this first term by putting an unbelievable strain on yourself.

It's been too much.

And there's a lot of people who are working out for themselves and trying to keep everybody, tearing each other apart.

We know

It's like we survived an incident in Western Africa.

There are always enormous problems with the candidates and any administration.

There are more of us.

I don't think Roosevelt had power long at Yalta or Cairo.

I don't know.

But I didn't know Eisenhower didn't take notes.

And that says that he didn't share both of the time.

Like Kennedy didn't always take notes.

Why don't you do it?

Sometimes he did, and sometimes he didn't.

Well, that wouldn't mean I had something to say.

Let our translator go for a moment.

Sorry, the highlight was just an honorable conversation.

I thought you were superb in that conversation.

I thought you were patient.

You asked the important questions.

But I was hoping that I could get just the highlights of what he said, and get ahead of the way we have.

The father was just repeating what he said in the books.

Yeah.

He was better with you alone than he was at the dinner.

He was all right at the dinner.

Yeah.

I think it's fine.

But we didn't get the best of that.

I don't think I would like to see it there.

The evening transfer, if you remember what he said as he was getting into the car.

I'd like to see if you could get that for me.

We got it.

By General Galls?

Yes.

I'm with General Galls.

Yes.

I think Galls would say something here.

I'm going to try to hear it.

Okay.

I'll get that.

Did he cancel his ?

Well, when you get back, I'm certainly pleased with our decision, but I will not come back and make a report to the nation.

I'm told.

And what has been the mistake?

Mistake?

I shouldn't have told them, actually.

I've got to... We've done our job.

I need to go into the country.

I'm just saying the...

the usual pleasantries the following week, they're your problem, and then the pleasantries, but it's, but I think... Oh, you mean just traveling in the country?

In the United States.

I think that'd be...

I think that'd be very important, but we don't play it too much.

No decision about that, whether we get closer to it, because...

We'll see how things react and how people feel.

We want to be sure that we can have as much of an out-of-beat feeling about this as we can.

I think it will be out-of-beat.

If I don't see how I can help you, Henry, despite the call, and besides that, there'll be nitpicking in the community.

It's unstable.

There'll be their hardship and pain.

There isn't any question.

There's jealousy and everything.

You've now established your dominance of foreign policy so much that it doesn't make any difference what the state says.

I don't think it does.

No one believes this crap they're putting out.

You don't think they do?

No.

Lots of potentials.

He doesn't believe it, but he's trying to needle us.

He's trying to needle us.

He always does.

You know, it's disgraceful that anybody over there would talk to that son of a bitch, right?

Whoever takes over state next time, they have to be told that their only honor is obedience, as they all used to say.

Loyalty to the president.

Let there be a good foreign policy.

They ought to give you credit rather than take it for themselves.

They ought to give you credit for things they did rather than try to steal it away.

Connolly does that.

You have to say that for Connolly.

He talks about the Nixon policy.

That's right.

Yes, it is reassuring.

You say that Marshal Green is pretty thrilled about going.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

He knows.

I mean, after all, he's an honest man.

I know that it's the biggest experience he's ever had.

President, what other president has had a four-year record like you under any conditions?

And considering the obstacles you've had,

a lousy cabinet, a divided country, a recalcitrant Congress, a hostile press, a vicious press.

It is miraculous, the opening to China.

You've made more progress with the Soviet Union than any other president.

The Western alliance is in better shape.

It's not in good shape.

It's certainly in better shape.

It will be seen that you put relations with Japan on a new basis.

Sure, there's been a difficult transition...

Speaking of the Western Alliance, may I ask you, what the hell did we do about flying over to Brussels on the way back?

I would consider going to Iran.

I'd consider going to Iran.

You get a tremendous reception in Iran, Mr. President.

Well, I think maybe we could consider going to Iran.

And if you picked a city to visit in the Soviet Union, a southern city, say Kiev.

Sure.

I've never been to Kiev.

You could pick Kiev.

From there, it's an easy hop to take Iran.

And you could spend a day in the Narek.

Well, the point is, as you know, that a little bit apparently comes in that same time frame.

But we could duck it by saying, I think for you to go...

To give a report?

Well, first of all, I think it's unusual.

But I just don't think you're going to come in and just talk to the alliance.

But if you go there, you'll be giving them a report.

Yes.

Rather, rather, before I report to the American people.

That's right, and why so?

On the Russian trip, you really had to probably report to the people.

Yeah, because it's a lot of technical agreements.

You can explain those.

That I won't explain.

I wouldn't.

I don't know if I'd take prime time.

I might do it another time.

But I would consider seriously saying you promised a trip to Iran.

If you go from Kiev or Tbilisi.

That's right.

What, Tbilisi?

I don't know where they want to go to, George.

Well, I can't go there alone, can I?

Sure.

I'm sure.

As I told you the same last time, of course I'll see you before you go.

You'll always see a senior ambassador when he leaves, but only, like we did with the Spanish island.

It's all he wants.

He wants a picture.

I think you'll have...

I consider Kiev, Ukraine, you'll get a great reception.

Samarkand is a...

I've been to Samarkand.

I'd like to go to Kiev because I've never been there.

No, they're not good.

It's a big city.

And they'll have every interest to turn them out and then I'd leave from Kiev for a day around.

And if you arrive a day around, say, one afternoon, have dinner and spend... Well, it's really flying.

No problem.

Whether you want to spend two nights or one night, I mean, it's a...

Is there any country in Europe that we want them to stop?

Just Tehran, I think.

Well, if you stop in Europe, you'll get into the trouble of why not?

No, no, no.

I was thinking of trying to understand the, you know, I think Tehran, I think just one little tail and it's all right.

Yeah, Tehran, nothing, no one expects anything to come out of Tehran.

The Shah, there'll be no one in the police, he'll turn out a damned reception.

Right.

And...

and it gets you out of the main room.

I decided that you really have to fight with that bullet.

And in order to avoid that, you're going to have to stay on .

And we ought to lay on carry-on.

It poses a great problem.

We'll plan a rush trip so that Henry can work around the grain so that the third city might be Seattle, D.C. And the third part of Russia, and then go over to Tehran.

When is that?

Well, it's about that period, about the 29th.

If we go to Tehran, and then...

We still have the problem of being in the NATO area, and everybody would say, why don't we stop and report it to NATO?

I'd send Rogers to NATO.

Which he's expecting anyway.

I mean, I'd deal with Rogers off.

Yeah, just like we're peeling green on this trip.

Roger, you go to NATO.

Because they're all might have met with the NATO heads of government, God damn it, and that they would have seen that next time.

See, there's no way you can...

The symbolism looks bad, and if you report it, there's no way you can duck a report, and you'll be shooting whatever you want at the American people in Brussels.

And if you see them without giving them a full accounting, they'll feel you're letting them down.

But we may have the timing problem.

That's the thing we ought to determine first.

If there's enough of a gap, maybe you can just come back from Russia without bothering with either one.

If there is, don't you think I'm lying to you, Ron?

That's a big problem.

We ought to tell Rogers the date.

We know the date.

I thought we had told him, but it was obvious we hadn't, so I can't know what it is.

Shall we agree to that?

There's been a whole week there.

Yes, sir.

It'd be worth it.

We arrived in Moscow on the 22nd, yeah.

But why don't we get it?

Isn't it?

Well, .

Why don't you do that, Bob?

And, uh, how did you, why, let me, let me, whenever there's something to do, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, let me,

what is the situation

I'm afraid you're going to be right in it.

I think NATO starts on the 28th, isn't it?

Yeah.

All that.

And then on that... Well, we have really sort of promised it, and I just saw a cable that he wants an obit of his palace, if you want to say, and the one in town or the one at the outskirts of town.

I think this, that I think you ought to... That he's going to turn out an exception for you or something?

That I feel, I just thought about this thing.

I just feel it better put the chair around him.

I don't know if it's him, should him be telling this to the chair around him?

No, but to tear it off, I think nobody has to tell him because it's sad.

No, because he raised it, whether we could, he raised it, and raised the question then, I said, don't tear it off after the election.

My concern about you going to NATO is A, the symbolism of going to a military alliance straight out of Moscow.

But secondly, there's no way you can go there without giving them a full briefing.

And why would you give them a briefing before you talk to the Congress?

But the Shah, no one thinks the Shah you do it because you're a personal friend.

But no one publicly thinks you're reporting to the Shah.

I mean, those two are not... And the Shah isn't going to tell anybody what you're telling them.

If you don't report to them, it would be public.

Oh.

And Grasso, it's just a lousy...

place to visit after much.

Having said that, though, I don't want you to argue about it.

It's not debatable.

Well, Bob can tell him I wasn't in on the conversation.

Yeah, maybe Bob then, all right.

Maybe Bob, why don't you just handle the whole thing, all right?

That's fine with me.

Just say that the agreement called in here, shall we say, called in.

and set the 22nd to 29th for planning purposes, and that we approve that tentatively here.

That you, you, you talk to me and approve.

If DeBreena calls you, I call you and set the 22nd to the 29th.

Just one more problem that DeBreena does call you on such matters.

What the hell?

Why should you call Bill on it?

Bill's good.

Bill's going to fund this trip.

It's for me and my good.

And if he raises that, let's do it.

Because with all trips, we're going to fund them here.

The President's schedule is my responsibility.

The White House does not.

And then the other thing is that I feel active in saying, shall I raise a judgment in policy?

I just really can't.

I just don't want anything to get me out of the election.

I'm not going to lie to you.

Well, you wouldn't want to go as a lame duck if you could get defeated.

But if you could get re-elected, I think you'll want... You haven't won that time.

You're running around the world.

That was the time.

If you were elected, if you were re-elected, we probably won that time for the strength to reorganize.

That's the time to do the sailing.

I think by June 73, the state shouldn't be recognizable anymore at its top echelon.

I'll just try that.

You can't wait for the inauguration.

It's got to be January.

I intend to make the change right immediately.

Oh, no, no.

The top man should be changed immediately.

But then all the others...

I think when you get back in, the heads are going to roll.

All the assistants are going to roll.

Oh, yeah.

That's the best.

The most strength to do that is every day after the election.

Your strength goes down every day.

Every day after the election, your strength goes down.

Inevitably.

And you're willing to swing anything with the country.

At that point, you can do anything.

The longer you wait, the less you can do.

Well, tell Bill that's it.

And I think that under the name that we ought to just get this Nagel thing informed, that he should go to Nagel.

Yeah, that's good.

Now if Bill says, well, you can go there and then go on to NATO, he says, no, I just want to go there.

You don't give him any reason.

I'm not going to say, I'm going to be useful again to Sean.

It's a reason not to go to NATO.

I'm going to tell him the reason.

No, don't go to NATO is a decision not to go to NATO.

That's right.

But I just don't feel that it's better.

It's a good idea to go to NATO.

I feel that he should go to NATO, and I'm going to go to see Sean, period.

With or without the Sean, it would be a mistake to go to NATO.

I think we should do the shot anyway.

I think it's a nice flip on the Russian trip.

It gives you a great crowd, an easy day.

He's a pleasant man.

And recognizes that part of the world.

And it doesn't take much of when you come back.

You can still make your...

It's just that the professor said, why in the world is he going to Iran?

Because he has a long-standing commitment.

This is the opportunity to do it.

I'd recommend it to come in 1972 and this was the only chance that I'll have to do it.

It makes it a very tiring return flight for who the hell cares.

I find it makes no difference.

The return flight is so screwed up anyway.

You still want to think about going to Ireland on the way over?

I would strongly recommend that.

I recommend getting a night's sleep somewhere, Mr. President, because it's...

Well, we've got to look a lot way down the road, because this whole boxy race, he gets more tall when he calls, and they're wild and vicious in the snack.

And it's a wiring problem.

It's a big problem in the Irish.

But that's a sort of a sign of moral support for them, if anything.

You could go in and see it even.

Well, maybe we couldn't.

There's one country you can go into without getting into the country.

It's an eight hour time difference between Moscow and here.

So to arrive in a civilized town... Where would you stop on the way back?

On the way back you just don't worry about it.

Let's figure that out depending on the care.

Well, it was an interesting evening last night, wasn't it?

I thought it was extreme, just to be certain.

Very, uh, very bright guy.

Yeah.

I don't know, way back.

Let's look.

The way back, you may not have to.

Maybe better this way.

That's a hell of a long fight on the way back.

I don't know.

I see you don't need it.

I'll read it to you.

Do you want to stop or something?

Thank you.

This is this home porting issue with Greece.

We agreed on the concept.

The next thing we know, Defense is making a big announcement and it sounds as if we are establishing a naval base in Greece.

And this is just some press guidance to say this is an administrative thing.

It's not a new naval base.

It's just a way for us to get personnel over.

What do you do when they arrive?

Well, we have to look at the schedule.

They arrive late afternoon or something?

Yeah, I think at least the second morning.

Yeah, and that gets us into Washington at night.

Because you gained about eight hours.

You'd have to leave the afternoon to get in at night.

Well, I think coming back from there, well, you should come back around kind of there.

Yeah, so be it.

First president to visit Moscow.

So you'd come back.

Well, you have to, I think it's about a 16 to 18 hour flight out of there, too.

Who is it then, Ron?

Out of Tehran, I guess it would be 16 hours.

So you've got, what the hell?

No, it's probably no more than 13 hours.

13, 14 hours.

Minus 8.

It's 3 o'clock.

6 o'clock, so you want to leave at 3 in the afternoon.

Yeah.

That's about right.

But going over, if you don't stop in Europe, you're going to have a tough time traveling.

I agree.

Because if you leave, I mean, you'd have to leave at midnight to get there in the evening.

And they'll want you to get there about 4 in the afternoon, because that's when they can turn out ground.

If you get that iron thing, you can land it, Shannon, and chop her right over to, uh, well, Katie's place.

You're complete privacy.

This guy will probably kill you.

Or is he?

No, hell yes.

We'll tell Jack that it's got to be with, uh, Hilton.

Well, because it's bad.

Well, if you got there, say, on a Friday night and had two nights, uh,

Get there Friday night, blah, blah.

Get there Saturday night.

It's Monday you go into Moscow.

So you fly on Saturday.

Get there Saturday night, spend Saturday night all day, Sunday and Sunday night, and go to Moscow every morning.

Just one day you spend in there.

You have one more day.

You spend one day there and two nights.

And from there there's only a three-hour time change.

And about a

Five hour flight.

Good.

I could spend two days there if you want to.

Can you no work there?

No.

I prefer one day, two nights.

Can you tell Jack this is a working place, not to be there, no, no, uh... Sir, the Prime Minister would want to come over to Shannon Creek, which would be all right, but thank you so much for staying all over there.

No meeting, I think.

No meeting with the Prime Minister.

Yes, sir.

I think it's the right thing to do, because...

I don't think so.

He was so cooperative.

I think Morgan didn't work it out.

There's no way you can arrive in Moscow in time for prime time of the evening here.

Well, because you can't do it.

Because it made our time different.

Just don't worry about it.

Moscow's a different kind of country.

You can't do it.

You just...

Let it go on news coverage, or special coverage.

There is no way you're going to have any prime time on the right.

It's going to be tough, because prime time...

It's going to be late at night.

Yeah, too late.

See, prime time starts at Eastern here at 8 o'clock.

There, it's 2 o'clock in the morning.

And 9 o'clock in the morning.

It's 1 o'clock at night here.

No way.

You just stop it, that's all.

So what you do there is they do the prime time reviews, the morning, early morning hours.

Prime time is from 2 in the morning until 6 in the morning.

So you just forget it.

You don't have prime time coverage, that's all.

But if you do it, you'll have prime time coverage by sessions.

They'll do gun and tape, you see.

And if you get there at 4 or 5 in the afternoon, you'll be on the team.

All right.

Okay.

We'll see you later.

That's another reason to point to everything we can get out of China, because we're not going to get live crime out of Russia.

We will get it.

Just remember, our European trip had the same problem.

We didn't get any live crime out of Europe to speak of, but we got spectacular coverage because they take all those events and run them in special time here.

Best life, we'll get out of the rush, it'll be in the afternoon, but we'll get it live in the morning here.

You'll get a great woman audience, which is very long.

And we'll see you tonight on the replay.

You know, I've been doing a little more things.

From the art of birds, and also comics, I've done dinners.

And every person, of course, has got to do whatever fits them.

And frankly, I just don't think I'll do them.

I just think that I have dead, you know, for me, the way I go during the day, you know, it's the, I don't like to, I don't like to have to sit around being on stage at night.

See?

And so, why don't we just plan it that way?

I just don't agree, also, either with Conley's political judgment or with Archer's.

Archer's wrong on affecting the business people.

But that having these goddamn people under the White House is going to mean all that much politically.

Well, plus the fact that, one, you've got a real problem in that if you haven't, there's some people you have to have and those are the people you don't want to have because they're here all the time anyway.

All the time.

Business council guys and people like that.

And it really does mean nothing to them.

They think it's their right to come in this place.

If you have the nine entities that it would mean something to, you've got a problem with the others.

I mean, what the hell are we doing?

I don't know.

The stadium may still be working on something.

Well, out there too.

What do you mean, here in the White House?

Either here or out there.

I think you can accomplish almost as much by doing the thing out there, you know, where you do a Q&A.

Yeah.

Come into their meeting in the afternoon.

Horror.

Actually, that's not the question.

Sorry, Mr. Churchill, could I get you to sign this letter to President?

It's such a different sort of nothing in response to this letter to you saying, you know, we work here on this side.

going in after these, going in and ordering the dinner.

But just generally speaking, as I've often said to you, I do not like to take meals with people.

I mean, it's just a goddamn bore for me, you know?

I don't enjoy food, and I don't enjoy sitting around and gasping about it, and I don't enjoy small talk, you know, with people.

So under the circumstances now, this is a problem, but an individual doesn't like it.

God damn it, we shouldn't put it through.

I think the way to do it is not do a dinner, not have a food dinner, have a, maybe even act a dinner.

No.

Because that's a waste of time.

There's nothing to do in the night anyway.

There's no point in waiting.

All of a sudden, you do it in the late afternoon.

The thing to do is to do it at 5 o'clock.

Yeah, 5 o'clock.

Or you can always write an instant Q&A.

They get to go home and tell their wives at dinner and so forth.

Well, I just had a very interesting problem in prison.

At 5 o'clock, they haven't got money to start the Q&A.

Right.

And then at the end, they haven't ever received one.

Shake hands with them.

Then you leave.

Let them have a drink.

Go on home when they're ready to.

But that way they get the feeling they've chatted with you.

They've got the Q&A.

It's better to do the Q&A first.

Well, by all means.

I'm not sure.

Huh?

I'm not sure.

I don't know.

The receiving line wears you off.

Yeah.

Just wears you off.

You won't be able to come right in and do the Q&A and then at the end they tell you, well, gee, I didn't like that.

I didn't like that.

And you say, well, I was going to say, well, I don't know.

Then we'll have just some hors d'oeuvres and cocktails and that's it.

As soon as the seating line's over, you wave so I can see y'all.

And go on up to your room.

You're through.

And that, I think, can be just as enormously effective.

And you can do a pretty good size group for that.

You can do a group of 150, 200 people.

Take a couple hours of your time, but it's actually money.

And I wonder if it's worth doing.

So I think the amount of time Q&A, I just wondered when I did the handshake, it didn't take that much.

I think you've got to have the handshake.

What kind of people you're talking about?

Maybe we're talking about 100, though.

All right.

So if this would go for 70 to 100 people, at least make it really where they feel.

But the thing is, I would get it from around the state.

I wouldn't just have a gun.

I mean, you don't have to go truly.

You can have every local department, all the master dealers, you've got to come in and make it to a group of leaders.

Well, what we do in each case,

is to have someone locally posted so that the blame is on him for who was there.

We give him the list.

We call him to the body.

We work it out with our single strongest guy.

And we do them.

Maybe at people's houses.

No, it's better to do it at a hotel.

It's better to do it at a hotel.

It's better to do it

Well, maybe the one.

I've seen a thing like Paul Miller's down there.

Yeah.

Well, I think the hotel is really better.

Yes, it is.

River neighborhood to the contrary, I understand.

We'll find a way to do that.

Well, you might find an exception.

There might be a place where there's a guy who has a thing like John Rollins or

Or Preston Wolf, for example, has his wig on from Ohio, where he can take a picture of these bicycles around the state.

That's a good thing to do.

Yeah.

This is probably better than calling the people in here.

Also,

calling them in here for a strict political dinner.

I just don't think we should do that.

That's what worried me about the state tenure idea, that it was trying to put an incoloration on them, that it's a disturbing politics area.

But other than that, I'm talking, if I'm out in the country on an event, I just go to the state and go in there and do it.

That's entirely different.

And the press will, you know, says I'd like to get some people together to meet with people.

I'd just like Wally to go to Alaska.

Yeah.

Would you have their wives?

No.

Maybe not.

I sure wouldn't.

You're going to have 100 people here, a hell of a lot better off than 150 men.

All right.

Well, I have to go, don't I?

Well, you see what I feel about that, and I don't want to hear a mess of it.

I'm not going to deal with it.

I can tell everybody in the United States, and I don't deal with it because the White House is the best thing.

The idea is that the idea that, well, let's get in some business, man, and everybody's at once a week, and tell the folks you ought to have confidence in the economy.

Now, what the hell is that going to do?

We've been doing that, and our job is to keep on doing it, and other people ought to keep on doing it, but you shouldn't.

So warehouse dinners do a pretty good job on that.

They're still doing that.

God, that's a hell of a thing to give these people.

Certainly.

And they apparently really enjoy it.

They've had some damn good sessions there.

Whatever it gets down to, of course.

A lot of these businessmen, I know that's what they want.

But we just have the time.

The country's changed too much, isn't it?

And also, there's too much going on right now for me to sit and yak with those folks.

Well, it'd be fun if you'd like to do it.

See, that's the thing they overlook.

They think it's something that would be interesting for you or relaxing for you or educational for you.

And it won't be any of those.

It's working out for life.

Boring, tiring, and it's about that.

You put your finger on the fun.

Well, I think they have it.

They can get something out of it.

But I don't.

There's such an incredible gap between the information that's available to the President and what all those people know.

And what they don't realize is that anything they're going to tell you is almost 90% sure that you already know.

And have it in better form than they're going to get it to you.

Sometimes it is a word, frankly.

And let me say, if I find it valuable, somebody does come in.

And he gives me a sort of a different feel for explaining things like that.

Does that almost have to be individual?

It does.

You could do it with a group of congressmen like when they came in the bus.

You'd think it was good to hear their views.

That was good.

But the point is, I did not like to mix it and do it in.

Yeah.

I did not like to sit with people, eat with them, drink with them.

And you can't sit there like a bump on the goddamn log and say, well, I'm not going to have a drink or something.

You've got to do something.

You can, but basically then you're more bored in there.

The only way you can stand the goddamn thing is to at least get a little bit of the spirit of the party.

It's really the truth.

But that's a ceremony, not going to arrive with a tri-diplomatic credential, or a parade, or a green flag, or anything else.

You see, if you get this moved into the social context, it's a terrible burden for me because I don't enjoy social meetings.

What I prefer is this.

I much prefer to sit down with a group of people and talk to them in the office for an hour.

Just run it in, let them, bring them in, talk to them, chat with them, go on their way.

And there's no reason why you can't do that, that you do the gathering room.

Maybe that's the other thing you can do is put food foods in the gathering room if you want to do that.

But that obviously, you don't have to feed people in order to, you know.

Also, it costs a hell of a lot of money to shoot a natural cannon, you know.

I'm sure it does.

Even those, the dinners there are expensive as hell.

State dinners you don't have to pay for, but the other dinners you do, or some you have to pay on political money or something.

You have a hundred guys here today that cost four or five thousand dollars.

The $20 a person.

It's $49, it's about $40 a person.

Draw it on the line.

I don't have to say they've got to hire a lot of help.

It's very expensive.

Another concrete one.

There are other ways to send the other people.

There are other ways to, yeah.

But with a copy of that, a perfect answer, say, gee, John's a great idea.

We're going to do it in the States.

you can go in and be down-ground, and then just feel that it's a better connotation.

That would bring people in here, which everybody's going to jump on and say, you're using the White House when you're sitting on a campaign for pure political terms.

Without that, they're going to ask very political questions.

Well, I want to be like Caesar's wife in the decision-making process.

Is he still here to go to Texas?

He's going.

I don't know if he's left yet.

I think he's still there.

He was going to a railroad or something, right?

Right.

Now, he said he was coming today.

We know it's a farm.

It's deep.

Soil conservation.

Well, you don't have to do it, I'm not so sure, but maybe it is worth it.

Nixon, Haldeman & Ziegler on People's Republic of China and Media relations

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Also recorded on February 15, 1972

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Nixon, Haldeman & Ziegler on People's Republic of China and Media relations

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on February 15, 1972

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Cite this conversation