Nixon phone call with Rogers on George McGovern and Vietnam War

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hello mr president secretary rod is returning your call hello hello mr president nothing to bother you about it except that i was uh uh interested to do uh the mcgovern's talk in cleveland and uh i'm just thinking about having seen the thai foreign minister

and the rest will feel about the idea that the Chinese will now sort of take over in Asia and we'll get the hell out.

You know, it really is a shocking goddamn thing.

You know, it's almost incomprehensible that you say that.

Yeah, yeah.

The thing is that I told Chuck this morning, and he told me that he's already heard of me, that you really are the one that has to take this on.

Mel can take on the military side, but he...

puts that pretty much in terms of how it's the job back in the rest.

But I think this thing is an opportunity, and I don't know what forum has worked out, but we'll have to build up a big audience for it, too.

I thought either what I talked to Chuck about, and I think it makes some sense, but we ought to think about other things, too, is he's going to make his speech on Tuesday, and I thought I might have a press conference on Tuesday.

before he speaks, of course, to take him on on this other thing.

So he doesn't respond.

Right, right.

And another possibility, of course, would be to go to Cleveland, the same place where he made the speech, and take him on.

But I think maybe a press conference is better.

I can get quite a lot of television coverage, I think.

Yeah, that's what you want.

That's what you want.

I mean, imagine, one thing I was just thinking about, I imagine the Chinese Communist going to the Indians and saying, we want to take care of your security.

Yeah, yeah.

To the Thais or to the... Indonesians.

Indonesians.

Good God, they'd be scared to death, or for that matter.

How about the Japanese?

The Japanese.

They'd be happy about that.

It's almost unbelievable that a man would say that.

He must have incredible advice.

Now, we haven't any idea, of course, you know, Bill, as to what he's going to come out on his so-called peace thing, except they'll just attack the fact that we're still bombing and all that sort of thing.

It's a loser for him if we respond strongly to him.

I mean, not respond so much as to attack his own positions.

That's right.

It's going to be their big play next week, apparently, on Monday.

Well, it seems to me that we could do something Monday, but I talked to Chuck about it, and I think maybe Tuesday would be better because I would try to give it a good ride at noon on Tuesday.

Take him on.

Right, right.

And then it's big, 29 is big speed.

They cut into that a little bit.

Exactly, exactly.

I've got nothing else scheduled for Tuesday.

Right.

That sounds good to me.

If you think in the meantime that you could do something sooner, I rather thought it would be better to wait just a bit.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Tuesday is a very good time.

Monday's a holiday.

You can do it on Tuesday.

And then, of course, we have to be geared up to,

on whatever Vietnam—so-called Vietnam peace plan he comes up with and so forth and so on.

Yes.

Well, I might—I could—even then we can decide how to take him on, but I don't mind taking him on every day if he makes this kind of statement because, you know, it doesn't make any sense.

He doesn't honestly know what the hell he's talking about, obviously, taking the case of Japan and the Security Council.

We've already suggested that.

Of course.

That was in my General Assembly speech.

Of course.

We support that.

Of course.

We announced it.

As a matter of fact, I think we talked to Tanaka about it.

We said we supported it.

In my General Assembly speech here, I mentioned it.

Yeah, yeah.

This is the United Nations.

There's nothing new in that.

So, well, it was I.

It was the first time we'd done it, but he must... Maybe he doesn't read the paper.

But anyway, the whole thing is, you know, shops full of...

One thing I would certainly do, because this is a catchy phrase, is to pick up that phrase where he said we should—he's going to padlock all of our bases in the Pacific.

You know, that's a real good one to sort of say, well, now, let's see what that would mean.

What are you going to do?

You're just going to have one on harbor.

And what does it mean to the 300 million people on the mainland?

You know, Mr. President, another thing I think we ought to keep in mind, there must be a lot of Chinese in this country that would resent abandoning Taiwan.

Well, yes.

Well, we found that out when he came back from China.

That's right.

And that's what he proposes, of course.

That's right.

He's abandoning Taiwan.

It'll certainly solidify the people that were concerned about our move.

They'll say, at least we're still keeping our treaty commitments and so forth.

And also, I would hope you would take the—and don't let Jase get off of his original positions, his jackass positions on Europe.

Of course, they're unbelievable.

And on Vietnam, it really comes back to the fact that he is for ending—he is for basically rolling over and accepting the imposition under a communist government in South Vietnam.

the code word that really drives everybody here up the wall.

They don't want to be for two, but they damn well don't want to be pulled this very extensively, and that's the thing that they will never accept.

I think we ought to keep rubbing that in, because that's what he's proposing.

That's exactly right.

I mean, they're not talking about two.

They're talking about a communist takeover.

Of course.

They say two is the roadblock to peace.

They mean, actually, that if it gets out, they can come in.

that man.

Right.

How's he getting along up there?

Is he still seeing foreign ministers?

Very interesting.

I've seen, incidentally, I haven't seen many, but I got the Irish in today, and our foreign minister's a real nice guy, and that Pope Saracen came in.

He's a nice fellow, isn't he?

He's a real gentleman, you know, because he was here for so many years.

You'll be interested, Mr. President, to notice that Czechoslovakia came in yesterday.

We've never had a better conversation with him.

the Czechs.

I'm surprised they'd be so brave.

Well, they want to settle all the disputes with us.

They want a consular convention.

They want to obviously most favorite nation, but they're in no hurry for it.

They'll wait.

They've invited me to visit Czechs as soon as possible.

They want to improve their relations in every possible way.

And

Yeah, did they press the European Security Conference?

No.

It's interesting.

No, they said, first, we've got all these districts with you, and it lasts so long, we won't settle.

We want to be reasonable about it.

We realize the problems you had with our government, but our attitude is we want a new policy.

Secondly, we want to have exchanges of scientists.

We'd like to do it either in the private sector or

any other way, but we'd like to have the same kind of arrangement you've worked out with Hungary.

This fellow, we met in Hungary when I was there.

We'd like to have as much contact and communication with you as we can.

We'd like a consular convention worked out.

Isn't that something?

We realize you've got a problem and we're in no hurry, but if it's possible later on, we'd like to be considerate.

We'd like to have you visit our country.

We know you had a very successful visit to Hungary.

We'd like to have you visit Czechoslovakia.

Isn't that great?

Isn't that interesting?

Of course, if they've been scared to death, they'd do anything up to this point.

I know, and Bulgaria's done the same thing now, too.

Bulgaria?

Bulgaria, too.

So we have really, in effect, we have a good relationship with each one of these European countries.

Yeah, haven't missed one.

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah.

But the fact that now in China we've got twenty-two American newspaper men visiting there, all American society newspaper editors.

Is that right?

They're there, are they?

They're there now.

Yeah.

When you think of the world we see now and realize what's happening.

Right.

You know, another thing that's interesting, which you and I know the pitfalls of the Japanese-China thing, but on the other hand, I noticed the other day when I went and got a haircut, you know, our barber who always, of course, knows more than any of the rest of us, spent the

He said, you know, I was just thinking about how much has been accomplished.

He says, just to think that Japan and China are talking and getting together.

He says, you realize, he says, that you broke the ice.

And even like the two Koreas, I mean, of course, all of us have done a little something on that.

But on the other hand, a lot of this movement, it has to be, we are getting credit for it, even in some cases where we probably wouldn't

would not have preferred it to come out that way.

Yeah, but I think Mr. Brady really deserves credit for it.

I do think that these things have happened largely because of the leadership that you— Take even the Indian Pakistan.

Yeah.

Incidentally, how are you getting along?

Have you seen the Indians?

Yeah, I got along— Well, he reported first about the progress that's being made, and I think it's going reasonably well.

But then I took him on because Mrs. Gandhi had made an attack on us

saying that the RCIA had been interfering with their internal affairs.

Oh, for Christ's sake.

So I asked him what he had in mind, and he didn't have anything.

He said, well, you must know what they're doing.

You've got to prove it.

They're not doing anything.

I took him on on that.

Isn't that amazing?

I wish we knew.

I wish they were doing something.

What I mean is I wish we knew what was going on, but we don't.

Well, anyway, except for that, I will have seen about sixty-five now.

Oh, gosh.

We just run them in how many?

We have eight or nine a day for forty-five minutes or an hour.

So I run eight hours a day, straight talking.

And at night you have a pleasant little dinner.

We had a good dinner with the Chinese last night.

Oh, good.

How's his temperature?

Fine.

Well, I had both the Deputy Foreign Minister and the Ambassador, George Bush, and myself over in my apartment.

Great.

And it couldn't have been better.

Very friendly.

He's the one we saw, isn't he?

Yes, he's the one that was with Henry.

That's right, the same one.

I'm his wife, but the glasses and the smile.

That's right.

Yeah.

Smart as hell.

Ph.D. when he was 23 years old.

Did the Russian thing come up?

No, I deliberately stayed away.

The Thai told me, interestingly enough, that the Chinese had spoken very, very negatively about the Russians to them.

So they're really telling people what they think.

No doubt about it.

And the Chinese are also being quite nice about us, everything they've said about the United States.

And very restrained, considering what we're doing.

I told him last night, I said, one of the things that we want you to know, we appreciate very much, is not only what has been done publicly in the contacts, everything we've agreed to, you've carried out to the letter.

But more than that, we appreciate very much all the things that Chairman Mao and

Joe and I have said about the president and the rest of us this privately.

I said, we hear everything you said.

And I said, it's the private things that are being said that we particularly appreciate.

Very good.

And he said, yes, we're very careful about that.

That's right.

All right, Mr. President, well, I'll be— All right, well, incidentally, I just want you to know that I know Chuck's talked about it.

Sometimes you wonder whether our overzealous guys are— But on this one, we are not going to let them get away with some damn—

I mean, the press, of course, will write it for all it's worth because they're desperate.

And I don't mind, frankly, they're coming way out on a way-out Vietnam thing at this point.

If they want to pick that issue, we'll fight them on it.

Sure.

Beat them.

Absolutely.

Particularly if we can hang the—if we can say that all this means is the imposition of a communist government, that we can't agree to that.

All right.

We'll see you later.

See you later.

Bye.

Nixon phone call with Rogers on George McGovern and Vietnam War

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on October 6, 1972

Cite this conversation

Nixon phone call with Rogers on George McGovern and Vietnam War

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on October 6, 1972

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Cite this conversation