On March 27, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 5:46 pm and 5:56 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 044-034 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Mr. President, I have Dr. Kissinger now.
There you are.
Hello, Mr. President.
Hi, Henry.
I was talking to Ron.
He said he had a pretty tough line of questioning on the Cambodian authority thing today at the press conference.
You know, the thing I raised with you this morning.
Oh, yes, I know.
Yeah.
And the point is that we ought to get...
I want you to be thinking about what line you should pick tomorrow on it, you see.
Right.
Or do we just hang solid and hurry where we were today?
You probably read what he said.
Do you have any thoughts on it?
I haven't read it yet, Mr. President.
I told him to say...
They were violating the ceasefire.
He did.
Oh, yeah.
He handled it very well.
He was violating the agreement on Article 20.
That's right.
That's exactly what he said.
And they said, well, how long then are you going to continue?
And this and that.
They expressed him along those lines.
How long are you going to continue?
Until there's a ceasefire.
Yeah.
Right.
One point, of course, which I cannot cover in my remarks on Thursday night, but I'm not even going to refer to it Thursday night.
I don't think you should.
I'm just going to refer to Vietnam.
Absolutely, that is right.
But on the Cambodian thing, it's your view that, because Ronald had the question in the morning, and you should, if you will, give him an additional guidance he needs, but it's your view that we just stick right firm on the view that...
violating the ceasefire.
They have not withdrawn their forces until they comply with the ceasefire where we continue to
You're right, Mr. President.
Of course.
We don't.
We are, in effect, telling them they can do what they want in South Vietnam, and we won't enforce it.
I know, I know.
Well, in South Vietnam, right, I agree.
If it came there, I'm speaking now of... No, but we say the line our opponents will take is that we have no right to enforce the agreement.
Any place.
Any place.
Any place.
That should be left to the international machinery.
That's right.
Which is a total... Total cop-out.
Total cynicism.
That's right.
And that we simply say that we will, of course, enforce the agreement and that we have an obligation to enforce the agreement.
As you and I know, we haven't got much of a standing here, but it's something.
It is an agreement.
It's a little better than saying it's CETO, isn't it?
I think it's better than CETO, Mr. President.
CETO was always sort of a half-assed way to handle it.
What is revolting is the degree to which
opponent cannot leave well enough alone.
They may have a yearning for us to be defeated.
Yeah, yeah.
We'll just have to hang in there on Cambodia until what they do in terms of attempting to deny funds for it.
That'll probably be the next run they'll take out of Henry in the Senate, don't you think so?
Yeah, and if they do it, then we'll blame them for the
in it if it happens yeah but it may not we'll fight them on it after all i think if we can we can fight them on the basis that this is going to endanger the whole everything we have fought for and because uh cambodia is related to the future of vietnam and it is part of the whole agreement part of the ceasefire and of course they'll say that there's a prescription for getting drawn in again
We just have to go on the attack now.
Say, these are the people who wanted us to bug out.
These are the people who've been wrong at every stage.
I think they are vicious, unrelenting attacks against a man who's won by 61%.
It's impossible to conciliate them.
I was wrong.
Well, don't worry.
Don't worry, Dale.
They'll be back and forth.
We'll keep right at them.
And they'll be attacking one week.
The next week, they'll change their tune some.
They go, you know what I mean.
But I think if we can manage to carry out some of the steps that you and I discussed this morning.
That's right.
We'll just keep on the offensive.
The upper hand in foreign policy.
Keep right on the offensive.
I agree.
I agree.
Unfortunately, well, the Russian thing comes fairly soon, too.
That's a weird thing, though.
They haven't yet given us the date.
We had proposed the 25th.
They came back with the 11th.
We couldn't do the 11th because the NATO meeting is on the 14th.
I see.
So we then proposed the 18th, and they've never replied to that.
What do you think's the reason?
I don't know whether they're having some internal problem.
I guess we have no choice but to wait it out.
I'm going to call tomorrow morning.
just call him and say that we're not trying to rush, but we have to get our schedule.
The president doesn't want to put other visits in that would in any way be close to these, or words to that effect.
We'll do what we please.
I don't think there's anything serious in this.
I can't believe it.
uh they they wouldn't be turning around right now unless uh and after all they wouldn't have sent you that note saying that they are not sending any military equipment which is a tremendous i think they're in pretty good shape yeah yeah but let's uh did you send this business on the 18th henry
But we can't have a meeting with the Soviets while a NATO meeting is going on and have Rogers go to the NATO meeting.
It's a curious thing that you haven't heard, though.
It is curious.
I see he was in here, well, I didn't make any difference where you were going on...
I talked to him, or I had Scowcroft talk to him.
They did send us their counter-draft on the nuclear treaty.
When did that come in?
That came in last Thursday.
And we gave them one which was, which you and I had discussed, which was a real tricky one.
Now they've come back and pushed it closer to their original draft, but we are now within range.
That cannot be the obstacle because
They gave us back now.
We can't quite accept it, but it's certain now that we're going to be able to come up with something acceptable.
Yeah.
Sure.
I have no use to borrow trouble on this one.
I mean, I think it's...
I really shouldn't even have mentioned it to you because I don't believe that there is any hang-up because they wouldn't have given us this.
The real hang-up is, Mr. President, that the European Security Conference is supposed to start on the 22nd.
Yeah.
And Gromyko wants to go to that.
Well, there's any other dates we can horse around with?
I don't know.
Well, we can move it to, say, the 8th of June.
Since the, frankly, from our domestic situation, the sooner the better on this one.
So that it's over by the time the NATO meeting.
That's right.
That's another possibility.
And in fact, after President leaves Washington, we don't need Rogers around.
That's right.
That's right.
So why don't you come back on that?
I'd prefer, frankly, if we can get ready to have the 8th, frankly.
I really would.
Well, we are very pressed for time to get all these agreements through.
I know, but... We can do it, Mr. President.
That's just a question of spending more time on it.
That's right, and putting other things aside.
Right.
Well, anyway, feel free to offer that if they'd like that.
Well, let me see whether I can mark it by the end of this.
All right, Henry, thank you.
And in the meantime, you go around just to stay.
You're going to... We have to stand right firm on that Cambodian thing, because that's the next...
Right, that's right.
I'm not going to...
When have we not had something like this, though, Henry?
There's always something, isn't there?
They won't quit.
They won't quit.
They want to get us out of this now.
What the hell?
And...
Oh, I think we'd just say we'd stand there for the same principles which we stood for in Laos and Vietnam.
The same people are trying to press us to do the same thing.
That's right.
And they want to jeopardize peace for the whole area.
That's right.
Now, of course, they'll go into the Congress, and that will take, however, quite a while before it will.
Sure.
In the meantime, we...
I mean, to give them a good pounding there, I trust.
I don't know whether it's doing any good.
Well, no, it's the only thing that's holding it together, unfortunately.
Maybe that's fortunate, too.
I mean, it's good that something's working.
Right.
Well, we'll stand right firm on it.
And I just wanted you to know that Ron had done extremely well the way he briefed it, in my opinion.
Ron, Mr. President.
He just...
And the press is beginning to appreciate it.
It's not only beginning, it's appreciating it.
That's right, that's right.
You know, Henry, don't you get concerned about the press.
They're just in one of their business because of Watergate.
But the time we get through them at the end of the week, we'll turn them around again.
I'm not even slightly concerned.
We know we're doing the right thing.
Mr. President, I know that this year some of these things come off that we are planning.
We'll be as successful in foreign policy as the last year if we bring off this Latin American thing, the Atlantic thing, the Soviet summit, and maybe the Joe visit.
That's right.
I know we'll come out fine.
That's right.
We've always had these ups and downs.
That's right.
Now, this is not necessarily down either.
This isn't even down.
In foreign policy, they're going to.
You talk to Ron in the morning, just to be sure he sees on the same wavelength.
Okay.
Right, Mr. President.