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I wanted to mention to you a number of things.

I had to leave that meeting because we had these senators coming in.

And I had to come late.

I thought I could come to show, because all the others were there.

But I had to get a briefing, which I needed.

So first I saw Mansfield briefly and told him that you had personally approved his going to China, that we were personally intervening.

He said, I want to tell you something, he's a friend of mine.

You and the president have always been fair and honest with me.

We have our differences, but we've always understood each other.

So then I talked to this group of eight senators, Benson, Stephens, Cooper.

What Benson was concerned about are people getting too rough.

Now, you understand he's one of the group we can't control.

We can't control these later guys.

Oh, he won't blame us for that.

They're going to kick him out.

Oh, that's because they're going to know what to blame us for the later guys.

I'm reporting to you.

Well, then I had this meeting with these eight senators.

And I had not been meeting with senators on Vietnam for four years nearly.

But this was like, these were, they were like pussycats.

I said to them, gentlemen, I'm not going to say anything.

I will say nothing about the negotiations.

I do not know whether, I do not know, I said, I'll say it in front of Senator Mansfield, I do not see what good the Mansfield Amendment can do, and it might do damage.

I will also tell you if the negotiations may fail with or without the Mansfield Amendment.

So I'm not saying that if you don't pass it, they'll succeed.

I'm not saying that if you do pass it, they will fail.

But I do not see how you can responsibly pass it now when it cannot do any practical good.

Mansfield was sitting there, and he spoke first.

He says,

I want to say to this group what I've just told Henry Presley.

President and I have always understood each other.

We respect each other.

He said, I'm not pushing this amendment.

It's before you.

I'm not trying to round up the votes.

But I tell you honestly, I don't think I have the horses.

So then we face this problem, Mr. President.

Some of our people were trying to get senators to come up with an amendment to the Mansfield Amendment.

Scott mentioned it to me.

To put a ceasefire in it.

Now, I feel very strongly that we should vote the Mansfield Amendment up or down.

Vote to strike it.

And here's my reason.

If it passes, I don't think it makes a hell of a lot of difference in Paris.

What these guys in Paris are working on... That was already created in that ground, the Senate acting.

That's right.

What the guy in Paris is watching is the McGovern percentage.

If you win the election, it doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference what the Senate has voted.

On the other hand, if they voted and the negotiations failed, we can then say the week after the negotiations started, these guys voted the Mansfield Amendment.

We never had a chance.

So I've strongly urged our congressional people to get Spanish off his amendment.

That's right.

If you agree with it.

I agree totally.

They've let up both the man's due amount under count.

That's my view.

Let that take responsibility.

Let that son of a bitch McCarty and these others get on that too.

That's my view.

I couldn't agree more.

Totally.

That's my strong view.

Next, I had lunch with McCarthy.

Absolutely astonishing.

He is

What he's saying about McGovern is so unbelievable.

Really?

Yes.

He said, what McGovern reminds him of, there's a line in poetry about the childish grin of the innocent.

And that's, he said, that's McGovern.

That's McGovern for us.

the childish laughter of the innocent.

And that's McGovern, he said.

And he said there should be an investigation.

He said everyone investigates Catholics or Jews for high office.

He said the most unsuitable religion for high office are the Methodists because that's an entirely political religion.

I'm quoting him.

And it's an entirely political religion.

He said he's violently opposed to their domestic program.

He said all these economic advisors that McGovern has around him hung around the brink of this campaign.

And I said, those are the sort of madmen.

You let write a paper, and then you throw them off your campaign.

He said, and this guy steps right out and reads their programs.

He just couldn't be stopped.

He said, now he wants to pull troops out of Europe.

I'm violently opposed to pulling troops out of Europe.

And he said, let's talk about Vietnam.

He said, I'll do anything to help you end the war more quickly.

And I said, what do you object to in the Vietnam platform?

He said, they are innocents.

They don't know what they're talking about.

They say...

He said, we can't just turn Vietnam over to the communists.

I've never said that.

I said we should get out, but I didn't say we should turn it over.

Well, that happens to be our position.

It's a long time since.

Remember, when he used to say that, that went far.

Now we've come to his position already.

We've come to his position.

And he said, why don't we have an election and fix the election in certain ways?

But I couldn't tell him that we agreed with him.

So he said, anything I can do.

So I said, look, at some point, if we make a real proposition to them, it's premature.

We're not yet at that point.

And I think that might do us some good.

You might want to take a personal trip to Paris and talk to them and tell them that you as the father of the people think this is a good move.

Very good, very good.

And he said, I'll do that.

And he said, and what's more, I will give you public protection in this country for those positions if you take them.

And he said they're a cold-eyed bunch of bastards.

He said they treated him as if he were a total pariah down there.

Very diplomatic.

Yeah.

It's very interesting.

These guys are really stupid.

I mean, I don't know why he's so vain.

He said he wanted to be helpful.

He said he has a contribution to make on Latin American politics.

He said he's keeping his personal plan flexible.

And I said, I can tell you, I know for a fact.

God forgive me.

And I said, I know the president has very high regard for you.

He said, we've always thought of you as one of the most original minds in this country.

Yeah.

Let me show you that with your right hand.

After that, I'm seeing Harald Stein on Monday.

Now, the Russians have agreed to this.

The Russians want me to arrive in Moscow on September 10th and stay there for two or three days.

that then they want to announce it the day after Labor Day.

That's agreeable to you.

About September 7th.

The way I see these talks evolving now, Mr. President, we really got tremendous mileage.

We got everybody totally confused with that last private meeting.

We'll have the next one on the 1st.

Then I thought we'd have to run after that on the 14th.

and I'll bring Porter along.

Everyone will think, you know, it's a pure gimmick.

But with Porter along, and then I won't meet until September 9th, the day before I go to Russia.

Go away?

I just want to tell you my thinking.

You see, we get Porter there, everyone will figure something has happened.

I have a good excuse not to go because the Republican Convention

Then you'll be on the West Coast.

I'll be with you.

Japanese meeting.

Japanese meeting is the 31st.

31st, that's right.

I'm going.

I've told State to make an inquiry, and I've got the NACA position, but I've already got the NACA's approval.

Well, that's fine.

I told everyone that we were thinking about this before he took office.

We'll probably get right back to State if that's all right.

No, that's all right.

I told State you were thinking about it yesterday.

All right.

Now, we're in good shape.

And we'll hear Monday.

So, I think, I talked to Jerry Schecter today at the time.

I said, Jerry, I just won't tell you anything.

I said, you speculate away.

I know yourself about this approach or that approach.

I'll just give you this consolation.

Anyone in this town who talks to you doesn't know anything.

That's right.

I think the more mystery, the better.

That's right.

Let me ask you a couple of things.

What's the situation on the next day?

That goddamn suite that's, uh, got that reports of a bomb in North Vietnam.

Now, that looks to be my favorite.

You know, that stuff is on NBC, and I had to go back there and run that crap.

We hit one loose gate in a dive near Hanoi.

Now, this is the dive.

This is the stuff they're showing.

They're hitting civilian parts of Hanoi and all that sort of thing.

I didn't cross the suite.

Well, then...

I don't know who it is, but they ran on NBC last year in the 1970s.

Maybe there's nothing we can do about it tonight.

I don't know.

I don't think a whole lot of people care.

I think you're right.

Just so we aren't getting killed.

I met the new North and South Indian, and he's a massacre.

If you should receive it yourself, I will.

I think you should.

He's a very nice little guy.

He's got three children.

His kid was about six years old.

He's a boy and girl.

He's pretty white and so forth.

But I couldn't tell him as a student, which is the other way.

I had the feeling that he was telling me something about Jews, whatever it is, who just went down or something.

We don't want that all over town.

I understand.

Marshal Green was standing right there, and I didn't ask him to repeat it.

I don't know what he was trying to tell me.

See, we just, I didn't, he said not one thing.

I want you to see.

Marshal Green has been panicking in many ways.

These guys have stayed there dying because they know something is going on.

I gave Billard enough of an account to keep him happy.

I'm sorry, I think I should say that we can't settle this.

We can.

One other thing I was going to ask you, perhaps it's a thing and so forth.

I was noted in the news earlier this morning that you expressed concern about that argument.

The argument cut off the same thing you did.

No, that's not it.

I looked into it.

Oh, that's not it.

First of all, this report that Highway 1 was interdicted, there was two companies of the North Vietnamese that lost 46 dead and 100 wounded there.

So they lost half of the people.

Highway 1 is not cut off.

The road is open again.

Well, the second point I was going to make is that

I know the battle casualties are in the east, in the east, 577, but then they must be inflicting tremendous casualties on the other side.

What is the situation there?

They're inflicting, they're inflicting, well, they're on the offensive, so they take more casualties, but they're inflicting enormous casualties on the other side.

The others, there's no doubt that the decisive battle brewing up there now.

There's no question about that.

And

But on the other hand, the North Vietnamese have now put in two new divisions.

One, the 312th that fought all winter at the Plain de Jarre and has suffered 50% casualties up there.

And we are dropping leaflets on them as they're coming down, saying, if you think the Plain de Jarre was tough, wait till you come into South Vietnam, because they suffered tremendous casualties to the few people that used them there.

They're now doing all the time what you got occasionally done last year.

They're using as many as 90 B-52s in one class.

Oh, yeah.

Second, they're using the 320th training division.

It's a division that has never fought.

That's always been used for training.

That's coming down.

And after this next battle, if they take away, they may not.

And that would still be useful.

But if they don't take away, even if they take one tree back, which is quite possible, it's just not enough.

It has three-quarters of it.

All they don't have is the citadel.

It's the center of town where they have these heavy-walled fortifications lying in the way.

And they're not making a head-on attack on it.

Yeah.

So what I was saying, I'm not concerned about the 5772.

My point is that if they're taking that launch, they must be grinding hell out of the enemy.

If they are going to be on the offensive, the 5772, without any air, the North Vietnamese on the offensive must be taking 1,000 casualties a week without question.

Oh, much more.

The North Vietnamese, according to our estimates,

have suffered 60,000 deaths since the defensive started.

So we have to figure another 60,000 wounded at least.

And they've taken nothing.

They've not taken contour.

And the road is now really open.

You know, the sad thing about it all, you see these Vietnamese, these plus-ice-faced people, dark inside.

They're all the same.

And you see their little children.

And it's just a goddamn shame.

It's just a goddamn shame.

I have thought up a few, I have thought up a rather, rather, rather, rather, rather, rather, rather, rather, rather, rather, rather,

Then the following meeting, I'll offer them some understanding, such as you won't run.

And with all of those understandings and that proposal, we'll be in a magnificent position.

Either they'll settle, or we'll go public again, shall we?

Yeah.

I think you ought to tell them, perhaps, before we have done that, or we've already applied this, what you've already said.

But I think you ought to tell them to hear it.

That's true.

I mean, I get that.

But really, the time for them to settle was before our ancient .

They really got to get that, I guess, straight on.

You ought to certainly tell the Russians that.

Well, that's the way I'm getting out the word to the press.

If they say, could you really tell me your demands, I'll say it.

Today, I said,

Would you really toughen your demands after the election?

I've been listening, Jerry.

We don't have to toughen our demands.

Every one of our demands has a lot of implementing details in it, like how do you define a ceasefire, how do you define an election, how do you define the functions of the electoral commission.

We'll toughen the implementing provisions.

And since we've never presented the implementing provisions, no one can really hold us to anything.

And... Well, I'll put it this way.

They impress on our side at this point.

If these bastards go on this war until after the election, we withdraw the damn offer.

Oh, another thing.

I talked to the president today.

Talked to the president today.

And

He just confirmed my visit and expressed appreciation.

He brought a draft treaty on this nuclear thing, which we can't quite accept yet, but it's moving towards what the tons of pictures are doing with that treaty.

They've now put in a clause that covers NATO, so that the enunciation of nuclear weapons...

He said, yes, that's the one contingency it covers.

So we've got to fix that.

So you can see what their game is.

But at any rate, I said, supposing we come to an agreement on this treaty, our thought is to sign it at the end of September.

He said, I thought it would do you some more good if we signed it in October.

And we are prepared to sign it in October.

Over the last three weeks.

That's what I'm concerned.

Would you like to come over and run the rest of the campaign?

I just didn't want to be blatant about it.

If this guy offers signing it in October, and if it suits your purpose, what he was, your purpose, and they've agreed, well, they'll put it on satellite.

You were in person at signing it, so I'm clearly announcing.

Good.

This is great.

Henry, I know all this is a worrying thing for you.

I've been talking to you today.

And your time spent with McCarthy and Menzies and with the Doves.

So I just told him about it.

Now, Scott was screwing around about another compromise, and I think that's what it seems like.

It's the Mansfield that went up and down, and it's told him, it's a very repressive shutout, and we lose it, it's okay, I don't care, okay?

Mansfield told me he didn't have to go.

Yeah, that's what it is.

Why does Mansfield despite this?

Because he has to.

But he's delighted about going to China.

Oh, Mansfield, and isn't that what he told me privately here?

He was sitting with ten...

Senators, he trusted the absolute minimum.

He said, I'm not trying to round up votes.

I've had my name on amendments for the last two years.

I can't suddenly take my name off now.

He said, but I'm not rounding up votes.

I don't think I have the votes.

And again, he didn't just say this in my office when he talked to these senators.

He gave no support to his own amendment.

He just sort of said, well, we've got to vote on it because it's in the bill now.

How can I take it out?

But frankly, as I said to the president, I think we're better off if they pass it.

If it comes to that, then if we get a compromise, because if they pass it...

We can kill it in the house.

We can kill it in the house, and we can blame them for having sabotaged the negotiations.

Yes, listen.

The best thing is to have the man feel wronged in the worst possible form.

Have a member vote for him.

That's right.

Now let's face it.

Let's make this mission right.

what he did on the farewell performance he went through his whole career it only takes half an hour period you know he sang two songs from each period every period and it was really masterful then he said i sang the song i did it my way and everyone thought people were crying so much that you could hardly hear them

And when he was finished with that, everyone thought, now this is it, he should have walked off.

But then he was clever enough to put two other little songs at the end of that, and then he walked off and never came back.

And I thought they were going to tear the house down.

I think we ought to ask them to do that.

It's a tremendously...

The Secret Service guys were trying so much that it was... You wondered about your protection?

Well, anybody our age...

and older, if you go back to the history of symmetry, you'd really turn them on.

And it was really, and he did it, he has this personality.

This was an all-star evening, and Bob Hope had been on, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Barbara Streisand just preceded him.

And you wonder, what in God's name can he do, the poor guy, to exceed them, or even to match Barbara Streisand?

And he stepped out all alone on that stage, and he took it over,

And it was the most moving single performance I've ever seen.

He still got his voice, because as you say, and these songs didn't mean anything in my life, because I was a beautiful part of it.

But even I was moved.

And you were here.

Well, 41.

You weren't watching us.

But it was.

Nevertheless.

I was a refugee, you know.

You weren't.

I wasn't.

I was menaced.

Well, Henry, good luck.

Right.

Got your shirt.

I'll keep in touch with you.

I don't know what this crazy bastard is going to tell the press.

You may say I heard it out through the cover.

You can't look well.

We've got our fold.

Very interesting.

Approval is 58-31.

Our last one was 57-33 in May.

That was the last time we did one.

So our approval is down.

That's the Moscow thing, shut it up, all other polls.

Yeah, but Gallup, the last Gallup, which was just a few days before, was 56 at the end of the latter part of June.

So we're a little higher than Gallup.

Hoover disagree with the way the president of Vietnam is 55-35, which is higher than it's been for a long time.

The collection we're being held today by the trial league, the Knights of McGovern, 54-27, with 19 undecided.

Now Gallup's last one is 56-37, with seven undecided, a two-way.

This is better than ours.

Ours is better than Gallup's.

Yeah.

Because there's more undecided.

Yeah, the undecided basically are, you know,

And what's the show of the three-way?

Yeah, the three-way is 42, 25, 21.

Still 12 on the side.

42, 25, 25, 21.

That's 17.

Our goal shows us better off than y'all does.

We lose 12 and he loses 12.

We both lose 12 to the Walls.

Walls hurts me too.

Hurts at least 12 points.

No, no, no, no, I'm wrong.

Hurts at 12 points, it only hurts him two points.

Yeah, true.

Yeah, that's when he was the 37th.

So that's, oh, sure, sure.

Then we have the Nixon-Agnew versus McGovern-Eagleton.

Yeah.

That's 54-29.

This is no different.

It's not one drag, two-point drag.

We asked a straight Gallup question, do you favor the death penalty?

So we could get a trend.

And it's 50-40.

50 favor, 40 oppose.

Right.

That's the same as Gallup got in Marx.

He got 50-41.

Back in 1953, he got 68-25.

But in recent years, it's been 50-40 consistently.

69 was 50, 40, 71 was 50, 49.

Then we said, do you favor death penalty for persons convicted of murder of a police officer?

60%, yes.

For kidnapping, 39.

Hijacking an airplane, 38.

So it goes down.

Then we poked around with this some other way.

We said the Supreme Court's recently moved capital punishment as administered in the U.S. is unconstitutional.

Do you agree or disagree with the Supreme Court?

Agree 32, disagree 56.

Do you think the Supreme Court decision to outlaw death penalty will or will not result in more serious crimes in the US?

57 will, but 29 will not.

And we ask the amnesty question.

Some people have said that we should grant amnesty.

That is, we should forgive any violations of the law to those who left the country or took other illegal acts to avoid serving armed services during the Vietnam War.

Do you agree or disagree with the granting of amnesty to these people?

23 agree, 65 disagree.

It's 3 to 1.

And we got an open ended on the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the original government.

I don't have any answers on that.

But then we said, do you agree or disagree with the following proposals made by Senator George McGovern?

We should withdraw all our troops from Indochina immediately and take on faith that the North Cape will release our POWs.

30 agrees, 62 disagree.

Government should give $1,000 a year to every man, woman, child in the US and pay for this by increasing taxes for everyone earning more than $12,000 a year.

Agree 16, disagree 76.

That's a hard one to hit.

Marijuana should be legalized and controlled along the same lines as alcohol.

We give it to them easy.

We just didn't say legalized marijuana.

We said controlled along the same lines as alcohol.

Degree 25 to security 70.

But there should be no legal restrictions on abortion in the U.S. And we can't insist it because it's the way McGarrett's playing it.

It should be a matter solely between the woman and her doctor.

Agree 60-33, disagree.

And our other poll shows that we're wrong on abortion.

They agree with me on abortion.

This makes us wrong.

No, it makes us wrong.

There should be no legal restrictions on abortion.

They agree.

My view isn't on that.

Right now, I'm going to talk about that.

If you can't be wrong, you should talk about it over and over again.

I don't understand.

We just don't.

We don't know what we're going to do about it.

We should grant additional honesty to those who've done it, not the ones who did it, but the ones who did it.

Yeah.

But the ones who did it personally, because that's the way they worded it.

One of their own desires.

The ones who did it.

only 23.7% of the district.

We should cut our defense budget by $32 billion even if it puts us behind the Soviet Union military's 19.66% machine.

You see the claims from Gallup and Ashford that you want to cut our defense budget?

I know, that's why I put the Soviet Union at a very low point.

Busing school children is essential to achieve racial integration, 18.74% of the district.

And then we got a read, well, a read on the convention.

We asked, in general, how do you rate the reaction to Eric McEverett's acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention?

And Eric McEverett was not okay with it.

So, very, well, 57% said they didn't hear it.

Now that, see, this includes those who saw it on the news, too.

This was how I had seen it live.

So, 57% said they didn't see it at all.

They didn't know anything about it.

So only 43% could answer.

Nine, very favorable.

Eighteen, somewhat favorable.

Nine, somewhat unfavorable.

Seven, very unfavorable.

That's not overwhelming.

Does the Democratic Convention make you more likely or less likely to vote for McGovern?

Twenty-eight percent more likely.

Thirty-eight percent less likely.

Thirty-four percent more likely.

Do you feel that even people like yourself who are really representative of the Democratic National

Yes, 41.

No, 42.

So all their pitching about representation of people didn't get out very much.

Did the Democratic Convention reflect a real change in American politics, or was it politics as usual?

Real change, 35.

Politics as usual, 52.

So they didn't explore it all too well.

I think we've got a lot of questions.

Do you have a quick question?

They could get 25, that's only 17.

How many did we get out of it?

A thousand and thirty-eight.

That's it.

You know, it's enough to get a reason.

He had the guy at your turn, right?

I was wondering, there isn't apparently anything that he can do, and saying, I'm sorry, doesn't help anything.

I'm sorry.

Before he was a man, he quit.

He had asked me to call him.

So if I call her now and she comes around, what happens?

You might have to call her.

You might have to get a call to him and say, you know, I'm just thinking of doing it.

It would be helpful if I come to my head.

Okay.

I'll do that.

Do you know the law?

Do you know the law, huh?

Do you know the law?

Of course.

Is my home a good part of the time?

It really is.

Do you have any further questions?

We don't have a report.

I may get it tonight.

What was the situation?

She's going to get us out of here.

We know what we're going to say about it.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it could have been something.

But I got it.