Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 042-082
Date: Thursday, April 29, 1971 at 6:32 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Haig, Alexander M., Jr.
Recording device: White House Telephone
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/042-082

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:03] There you are.
[0:04] Mr. President?
[0:05] Yeah.
[0:06] Sir, I just thought I'd better recap this POW thing because the reciprocity term is a little dangerous.
[0:14] First, the 570 to go north.
[0:17] That is not new.
[0:18] We've done it before, but we've never done it in this number.
[0:22] Okay.
[0:23] Secondly, the 1,200 long-held prisoners
[0:26] We made this proposal three weeks ago on April 8th, the GVN did, only in conceptual form, and you endorsed it by a statement the following week.
[0:37] Now this is a new articulation of it in that it quantifies it in terms of numbers and years.
[0:46] Now in terms of conditionality, it's really not good to say that it's reciprocal, but we do expect
[0:55] that it's conditional upon the North Vietnamese agreeing to a neutral country.
[1:01] They don't like to use the term reciprocal with respect to it.
[1:07] Agreeing to a neutral country for sending these prisoners, but... And we would anticipate they would do the same.
[1:12] Yeah, I see.
[1:13] But not in terms of numbers or anything else.
[1:16] We would take, if they'd send five, we'd be delighted.
[1:19] What we really want is for them to agree on a country.
[1:21] That's right.
[1:22] Now, the third issue is the proposal for an inspection.
[1:26] Yeah.
[1:27] And that is brand new.
[1:28] It's never been articulated before.
[1:31] Well, we've never posed this proposition.
[1:36] We have always had our South Vietnamese camps open to the Red Cross, but the North has never accepted the Red Cross there.
[1:44] But this is new in the sense that we've suggested that another nation or other organizations could do it.
[1:48] Right, sir, and we would agree if they wanted one nation for their camps, different from the one in the South, that would be all right, too.
[1:56] Yeah, okay, fine.
[1:57] All right, sir.