Conversation 124-002

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Thank you.

Yeah, I know.

Thank you.

We'll be right back.

Thank you.

Here, here, here, here, here.

We are going to have our free meeting this morning because we have to oscillate.

We'll have time for a meeting a little bit earlier.

They're all right.

I know these people.

I would have them deal with probably one end.

Okay.

And all of a sudden, you're left with one.

And I thought you'd get us to one of the things.

We were sorry.

As I said in the last cabin, maybe we couldn't invite you all to a few of your dinner.

But it was getting 1,350 bed and range and all of that kind of stuff.

There was a very famous flag that he made when he was there.

He told his son how they used the fly.

It was only there for the last two years.

It was about two weeks in May.

He got the idea.

Every morning they would get up and put it up.

Nobody was watching.

They would get up and salute it.

And then he was titling it.

He was disputing it.

The day job.

They'd fly it all night long.

But he did.

We had dinner last night.

The members of the camp would have really been there to see what happened last night.

The attitude was expressed by these prisoners and their wives.

support, just the feeling they had about what the president had accomplished and how they felt about him and the decisions that had been made was so encouraging.

If it could just have been, I know it was televised to some extent, but you can't televise that kind of emotion.

They could have gotten that out in the country.

It would have been the best thing for the country if we'd just had a long time.

I was really inspired by this.

It's tremendous.

It really is.

It is because one of the great things about this is the sense of associating the people who

whose devotion to the country has captured an endless faith in this potential for death, injury, in these men's captivity.

And I thought what now British General Flynn said is worth fondly instructing is such a prudent step

You remember, it's important to keep in mind that we were randomly selected by the circumstance of being shot down.

He was saying, in effect, that if you admire us, you must admire all of those men in uniform in these services.

And they all weren't shot down.

The sir who died was wounded.

And he went on to say, we were randomly selected out of the citizenry of the United States.

And he added, he said, you're representative of the country, not just the military.

That was, he said, you know, I remember the AAA, I'm sure, in December, we had to send this to you.

And Clinton put it very well, he said, you know what it is.

The moment we heard those big bombs started, we started to pack our bags.

And then everybody started to applaud.

We said, with honor.

I got on a player that was the president of my wife's youth.

I was delighted to win.

They described this as a great reunion.

And a piece of wisdom she talked to.

Her husband had been in a room, a closed room, with another randomly selected person for two years.

And all they had to look at was a little crack or hole.

And they saw people through that hole, but they didn't ever really associate with them.

So they were .

After they got back to the United States, they were calling it a great reunion.

I suspect you may have some really good future of these people.

So I'm excited to do this speech with you.

I've never seen a more enthusiastic reception than you've had, or a more uniform one.

It's really exciting.

They all send a little notice this morning.

which was done well.

I did that quite on scratch.

This is from a .

It looks like egg.

It could be.

Freedom has a taste for those who fought and almost died for it.

That they protected shall never know.

These fellows think rather deeply about it.

So anyway, I was so sorry all of you couldn't have been there.

We had, we had mostly, only did we get quite a few of the armed service, just the ranking people.

I saw a man on the status there.

That's all we could take over.

And the leaders were too, they all said they were there.

They were there, yeah.

Dennis was there.

We've seen him now.

Wasn't I?

I had an interesting couple of people.

There was no one with me.

I didn't see him.

I had one caller who was talking to me, too.

He's talking about the election, 72, and he says, why don't you know that it dog-packs us 100% for the next night in particular.

Dog-packing therapy, you see, that's something that's horrible.

He says, in fact, he says, if there's one right answer, it's cold water.

But I wish we could have all seen him in the bathroom and so forth.

John, are they going to have that thing in Texas in the second period?

Or is that no deal?

I've not heard of that.

Speaking of the political attitudes, one of the recent prisoners, most of the people that I've met earlier, this fellow was only shot down last summer, I think, or last fall.

And he said, you know, during the bits and pieces that he'd seen and the visits of some of our peacemakers in Hanoi, that he was gonna find a lot of peace and the government sentiment in Kent when he arrived.

He was genuinely astonished to find how solid

The feeling was the other way, he said they conducted a straw vote.

I don't know how they did it in terms of reaching the people, but they polled 300 and the vote was all Nixon except about 13 or 17 of the people.

Well, we will get on with our meeting here.

I thought the most useful thing today would be to give you an indication, not only of what is upcoming with the pump due, but also the older engine that cuts across the whole cabin, particularly in this area.

Yes, sir.

We were hoping to be able to give you some reading on the talks with the North Vietnamese.

Henry will, by my direction, want to discuss very, very, however tentatively at this moment, or shall I say, just across the top.

because they're in a very sensitive state, and you can characterize them and believe everything you can get away with.

But the reason we're not going to go in is that we're still in an intensive talk, so I've just had to solve it down and seek to again.

What we're trying to do is associate with the packing chamber, we have some hopes, but I think we'd rather not know, frankly.

My view is that when it's best for people not to know something, we just want to say it, and then we don't have any problem.

So Henry had to take over and tell us a little about it.

He was an Italian.

His mother was South Philadelphia.

He was in chains for nine months.

They let him loose an hour a day.

Nine months in silence.

The gang was going their day.

He was 40.

He looked at somebody going on.

Something happened.

Boy, they...

I heard some of the same back come along.

He and then there was that great big, you know, big redhead guy who they tortured unmercifully.

And I think these guys become stronger with the torture.

I remember one of them came on the other side of the fight with him.

All right, can we proceed?

Mr. President, you asked me to give a brief review of Meg's part of policy, initiatives of regularity, and how it fits into the year.

And a brief summary of the recent annotations, and also a slight review of what's coming next, I guess, in respect of the president's list.

With respect to the President's visit, I want to say now, the President will no doubt be coming.

The agenda for the visit was essentially set that the President met with the President last May.

Substance was essentially discussed when the President met with Gromyko last October.

Details have been worked out in the interval between October and now.

There has been not one new element added to it as a result of recent events.

It is a part of the basic current President's foreign policy, designed for many years in the national interest, and every agreement that is going to come out of that summit, and that's going to be negotiated at that summit,

has demonstrably been part of this design, has begun to be negotiated last May, and has been carried forward through the years.

And the attacks that are undoubtedly going to be made, that the results of the summit are improvised, can be demonstrated to be wrong.

That is, we have no reason to be not only concerned about it, but every reason to be proud of what has been done.

And as the summit gets closer, as the documents get into sharper focus, we can discuss them with the cabinet.

But this is something that we should know now.

And this is not something that's going to be improvised at the meeting, that we are not under any pressure, that we feel no compulsions to make any concessions.

because the basic framework has been established, and the basic outline, as he said, and the comments that some of the newspapers have been making about the timeliness of the visit are totally inappropriate and will be disproved by then.

It's not exactly the same also.

Since the last time we've had constant contact, not only through

you know, the usual channels, but through the brain for Mikko, and through a very intensive messages for me to that depression that he's had.

Also, some of our own people over there will be back on various signs, particularly economic areas.

What I think is important, too, is as far as the depression of this concern.

He's very interested in having a meeting.

I mean, the idea that this, that the whole purpose of this is to, is simply to urge us, and for some sake, something that we discussed last June.

We agreed that under no circumstances would we need a gap on less than a two.

We had a solid basis that we felt that we could come up with substantial agreements that we would have to hammer out in the summit.

And we now have those in sight.

That's fair to say, isn't it?

That's exactly right.

And in the trenches between the president and Brezhnev all during the year, especially the first quarter of this year, the outline of this agreement was established.

And the decision to vote the summit was then taken in March on the basis of the accomplishments that were then in sight.

and of which the details remained to be worked out.

And for us, even to consider postponing it would be an attack on the continuity of our foreign policy.

It would demand that the confidence that other countries can have in us would be extremely serious.

But we have to fight the Russians bitterly in order to be

This isn't something that they're doing to us.

We have to realize that those people would not want us to move forward with any of our great ventures.

They're trying to desire political goals.

She, as far as we're concerned, we have a responsibility to move forward with those things.

If we had done what our critics wanted us to do, we wouldn't have had the breakthrough in China.

We wouldn't have had the first Soviet summit.

And these people would still be in that big pit.

The fact that we have gone forward and brought us where we are, and we're going to continue going forward, we're going to slam right through there.

And don't end up all of us bringing in

all the other things you've got to be able to do.

That's part of the engine.

So if you were not here, you couldn't handle the addresses.

Then, of course, they built the streets.

Now it's a little different.

The point is that we have work to do, and we must not be deducted from doing that work by extraneous issues, and the end will be a footnote to the industry.

Okay, now on to the... Now, with respect to the European public sphere, let me explain the President's design with respect to the European public sphere, where we expect to go for the rest of this year, and how they visit this meeting when we do this, into this time.

The basic outline of the President's approach to the so-called year of Europe was set

President's foreign policy before the Congress and in the speech which I gave at the President's request for the AP interview.

The basic problem we confront with respect to the Europeans now is this.

The pattern of Atlantic relationships was said in the late 40s, early 50s.

It's been carried by a generation of men on both sides of the Atlantic that are getting out of public life.

on the basis of assumptions which were appropriate to the crisis situations of the late 40s and early 50s, but no longer fit current reality.

At the time that the present Atlantic relationship was set, we were the predominant country economically, militarily, and politically.

The Europeans were totally dependent on us for all economic, political, and military purposes.

In the meantime, the changes that have occurred in Europe, we are familiar with.

And there has grown up a whole series of institutions, many of which created under our aegis, some of which are working against each other, some of which are working on the basis of different principles.

We have the Common Market, which works on the principle, more or less, of regional autonomy.

We have NATO, which works on the basis of multilateral independence.

We have foreign policy, in which each country conducts bilateral

a bilateral diplomacy more or less on its own.

And this plethora of approaches creates a situation in which more and more in the public consciousness on both sides of the Atlantic, Atlantic relationships get to be identified with a series of technical disputes that arise now in this institution with a series of trade conflicts

with a series of dissatisfactions with respect to the allocation of defense groups and with hands about the diplomacy in which each country tries to use, especially our allies, try to use allied unity to hamstring the others, but preserve freedom of action for itself.

Now, we have had, as a result of the president's approach,

a number of comments from our European allies.

Or exactly, that we are trying to confine them to a regional role while we want to play a global role.

Or that we are trying to lump together economic, political, and military factors as a means of blackmailing them to make economic concessions to us.

That we are trying to reestablish American agenda in our matters of this country.

and we said that Europe had regional interests.

We were being descriptive, not prescriptive.

The Europeans would be telling us for 20 years that they didn't want to play a global role.

In every decision in this administration, when Europeans came to the president, whether they should play a global role or confine themselves to Europe, the president's advice, for example, when the British wanted to withdraw from Singapore, was always to remain

globally engaged.

The Europeans will have no problems with us if they want to play a global role.

We've been having trouble with them about playing a global role.

So this is basically a phony issue.

Second, we are trying to tie together economic, political and military factors.

We are not tying them together.

They are tied together.

Europeans can't be under no illusion.

that we can maintain our present forces in Europe while they engage in a threat war with us.

And this is basically, if I may interrupt, because this is a thing that I've talked to several Americans about.

The Europeans, and this is true, and it's true, and it's true, and it's going to be true, and it's positive.

What they want to do is to separate it out.

So do the Japanese.

They said, oh, look, that's part of my trade.

And they want to make the best deal they can on trade and so forth and so on.

Oh, and then they say, but we'd like to talk also about some of the political factors and so forth.

And what are we doing here?

They say, but that's a separate problem.

Now, let me say, I could, Henry, put the whole thing in perspective, including with our Russian friends.

It'll drag them right up the wall.

Remember the first press conference I had in 1969, I used the word linkage.

And, God, the whole, in fact, 90% of the American press said, oh, this is terrible.

You can't link, you know, economics from the very beginning.

We should just do things on their own.

Well, that, believe me, is the most childish, juvenile way to conduct business in the international field that you can have.

Now, the second point I want to make is,

What you say publicly is something else again.

You've got to be very careful not to say publicly that the United States has conditioned this or that or the other thing on this or that or the other.

But the way Henry is putting it here today is pointing out a fact of life.

And the fact of life is that you cannot separate the economic from the political, from the military.

There is no way.

Isn't that really what it gets down to?

And that's the line we're talking today.

You talk basically to your counterparts

at these various meetings, just lay them out on the line like that.

Because you take the American people.

The American people at this time aren't about saying, oh look, we'll make the very best deal we can in the economic field, but we'll continue to maintain more divisions in Europe.

Or we'll do everything we can for Japan in the economic field.

We don't care about anything else but just having the right kind of a deal on that economic thing.

And changing the nuclear deal.

Now that's the thing they don't understand.

But we have to play the game, as I say, at two levels.

A level that we understand in this room, but also the level that we talk public.

Now Henry is really talking about the level in this room at the moment, right?

I think we can say that we are not linking these things as a negotiating tactic.

They are linked by reality.

That this interrelationship exists.

And the fact of life has to be faced, that if we have a dreadful on the one side, if we assert regional egoism on the one side, you cannot then have the American taxpayer to, in the defense area, to maintain the notion of total independence.

This is something that has to be in the back of their mind.

Now, another thing that I have gone on to talk to these and for me to what you've made out with your methods is that

They have to understand that the only way we can conduct the economic negotiations without a confrontation is to understand the political objectives of where the Atlantic nations want to grow in relation to each other.

Because otherwise, each economic agency is almost driven by necessity to push the special interests which it represents on both sides of the Atlantic.

While if one has a political objective, then one is in a position to make the trade-offs that are necessary

for this arch of gold, and one has the yardsticks against which to measure success or failure.

Now, finally, in addition to this concrete problem about compressing these remarks, in order to this concrete problem, we have a vital psychological problem, and it is one.

In every Western country right now, foreign policy successes can be identified with relations with Iran,

and every leader who's in every country now negotiates can get a dramatic impact on his population in relation to dealing with that.

While in relation to his friends, all of the topics tend to be concentrated on a series of technical talks and even confrontations.

What the president is attempting to do in this year of Europe

is to create again a situation where on both sides of the Atlantic people can identify a success in relation to their friends and where they have an emotional state in this relationship.

If that situation isn't remedied, that is, if the adversary relationship becomes the one that dominates the imagination on both sides of the Atlantic, then, with respect to Europe,

The Soviets, in particular, are going to get a psychological stranglehold in which no European leader will be able to face the displeasure of the Soviets.

In a situation which we may be dangerously approaching in the Federal Republic of Germany, the present trends are extrapolated over a period of five to ten years.

It should be said in variance to the European leader.

that whatever we make in our political bases from time to time that varies here, there is infinitely weaker.

I mean, Hitler is a strong man, but his media, his intellectuals, his youth, and so forth, are in isolation for worse, and things of any price, and they can deal with the ones with ease.

The French have the same kind of terrible problem, and the Germans have an infinitely different problem.

The German youth, even 10 years ago, Henry,

It used to have been still the dream of the United Arab Emirates, but it's all changed now.

And therefore, if you take a brown, brown, it takes a very strong man to stand against his media, to stand against his youth, to stand against his so-called intellectuals, and therefore, and also his political, in some cases, brown even, his own political proponents.

I would say also in that respect that these video TVs and these various kinds, if you think ours is bad, you ought to hear theirs.

Because they are following this line almost, I watched Voice of America, I saw a test the other day, and they just say it's murderous.

Is that correct?

Our European leaders, they'll come in privately, and they'll say, well, look, we agree with you on this, but we've got a problem.

And of course, what we have to tell them privately, too, is that, well, we agree with you, but we've got a problem, too.

That's true.

But that's the only place that this is going to get us.

Therefore, what we are attempting to do is to create again a set of political objectives which can give leaders of both sides of the Atlantic, public opinion of both sides of the Atlantic, a foothold on common objectives.

Now, when we talk about Atlantic charter, the grades are important.

What is important is that we conduct our affairs this year in such a way that by the end of this year, we can come up

of principles in the political defense, economic and economically, which are sufficiently specific so that they can constitute the work program for the remainder of this administration, so that by the end of the presidential election, the relationship with the Atlantic world, to which Japan will have to be related, will be adapted to the realities

and capable of understanding the strains that we foresee.

Now this has a number of practical aspects.

Having said it, how do you do it?

If you do it in existing institutions like the NATO Council, the Common Market, all of them have structures that are well designed to absorb any new initiative and to turn it into a set of abstract pedigrees and to produce nothing

So we have to find some way by which the leadership of those who are primarily responsible can be exercised, by which the discussions occur at a high enough level so that some momentum can be infused into the process, and in a forum that isn't so bureaucratized already, that very soon we get absorbed in endless procedural

I think we have a substantial understanding of how to proceed and we have an understanding of the ground on how to proceed.

I think we have an understanding he's not strong enough to stand up to us if we can get the French.

The French thing is so important because of the Germans.

If we get the French, that'll pull the Germans into another position.

But if we don't get the French,

then the Germans are going to play their own games.

And that's putting it quite further than what we're doing.

And that's what it possibly is.

It may not get much of a play, but it is.

It gives the key to the development of a new Atlantic alliance in Egypt.

Absolutely.

And of course, you see, Pompidou's in a difficult position because he is de Gaulle's heir.

De Gaulle's heir.

He's moved away some.

De Gaulle had already started moving.

As a matter of fact, Henry, I think if de Gaulle had lived, de Gaulle, right today, would be with us.

I mean, he would have turned right around.

Pompidou hasn't quite that strength.

But if we can move, and Pompidou doesn't have the best character, and if we can move him to understand this and get away from a parochial view, the trouble is he

like the secretary of the nation, or, you know, or something like that.

Secretaries of the country are usually parochial.

John and George.

But, no, I'm not.

We're bringing in more money every day.

Sorry.

But you're proposing that the administration is an authentic consistent of the De Gaulle approach because contrary to the approach of the early 60s,

We are not asking for all the decisions made to be made in Washington on the contrary.

We are trying to create a structure in which the Europeans play that proper role.

We are asking the Europeans to assume their responsibility to conduct their foreign policy and within that framework to cooperate with us for common objectives, to define with us what things we must do together, what things we can do autonomously, which is exactly what Igor said the Europeans should get into a position to do.

And the problem is that he's primarily an economist.

And what he would most like to talk about is the solution of monetary problems and of the trade problems.

What we feel is that until we know where we are going, it is extremely difficult.

to settle these monetary and trade problems.

We would like to get this cooperation in a design for the Atlantic world and not, and the French can either drag us into an endless set of Netflix over the years, or they can help us create a structure in which case, Dr. George, we can certainly talk on the monetary and trade things with them.

My impression is that Pombidou wants to reserve his position until he's talked to you, Mr. President, as I told you when I reported to you.

And what we went through on that price ago, John, you remember that.

I look forward to this.

And if the French are willing to accept this approach, then we're going to be able to make it go.

By the end of this year, we can have a meeting that's critical to Europe, which can be a really, lead to a very good declaration of market, in the relations of the Atlantic countries, to which the Japanese can be related in the economic fields, and could be the very, very solid way to tie the Japanese and the economic thing in every opportunity.

And we don't want them to be the hot man out there.

And also, we don't want them to have a free hand, you know, to give us the shaft.

That's what we're starting to see, isn't it?

So it's one against the other.

So then, you can see that if we have time to do a vote this weekend, then through June and July, we can get a preparatory vote done.

Maybe by September, I'm told that the president, he would have a few weeks to go to Europe and he could emerge out of this.

But this set of principles, which then would become worked on in greater detail if we would have had a new tremendous in Atlantic.

We placed the whole picture into the last part of June.

And NACA will be here July, so we'll have him on.

So that'll take care of the Japanese for that.

That, uh, that is the, uh, that is the end of the meeting.

Now, could I talk to you about the meeting today and what the meeting is?

Yeah, I, uh, on this I would, uh, uh, I would say the things that they, that they can say publicly.

But my hand is at their hand.

Now, you know, you're gonna have to meet Chris.

But I mean, but also, if there is something you want to say, try to tell us, you know, and there are these people .

In other words, let me put it this way.

In terms of characterizations, we know that it's more hopeful that it's appeared.

Say that, if you will.

On the other hand, we wouldn't want to say that publicly.

Well, no, we can't.

We can't tell them what we can say publicly, but then, build it a little frankly, because it's quite a thing, okay?

So you can certainly stay within that state.

But I suppose we have very sensitive discussions reviewing the whole agreement

and to see what we could do to provide a better interpretation of the agreement through our interchakras.

I said that the discussions were held in a constructive and positive action, that significant chakras was made, and that we had every intention of concluding the discussion successfully.

And the next meeting, which starts on June 6th,

So that is, in itself, quite hopeful.

And it is correct now.

And no, the enemies are very evil.

And we don't speculate.

And that we don't say anything going beyond it because of the fact, because if we do, they'll be forced to say something.

We obviously, I mean, this you could not talk about, but I will explain to you.

We obviously now have to deal, we have allies to deal with.

They have complex situations.

to deal with outside of Vietnam.

And they are engaged in some measures, particularly in places like Cambodia where you have triangular relationships to consider.

Anything that we can say could create complications.

But I must say that we have made good progress.

We hope to come out with a document that we have concluded with it.

Of course, no one can tell whether that new document will be carried out better than the old document.

But the mere fact that we have one gives us another legal basis.

I can't go into that until it is completed and I can explain it to you.

And of course, they .

And this one, oh wow.

This is something where you're right on top of, but looking at it,

But I'd say looking at the positive side of it, obviously these are figures that are taken.

Take the number of ceasefire bail violations in South Vietnam.

You know, every day I read those figures.

Well, you read them every day, it's like treating a CPI coming down to Jensen and Boyd in one month and not in a very long time.

But the other guy over a period of year gave me a summary.

Those ceasefire violations today are one third of what they were right at their height.

Now, that doesn't mean that there's still infiltration.

It doesn't mean that there still isn't a problem.

But there is a gradual settling down out there for reasons that you do not agree with.

But they've actually been jumping since these folks dug.

And that's the point.

They got down to six and 40.

That's six majors and 40 minors.

And minors mean just somebody who's going to pocket somebody, which is almost right there.

I think if nothing happens now to upset Billy up, I think we'll...

Well, another significant point is this.

There was great concern expressed a month ago that the North Vietnamese and their colleagues might try a so-called hang-up program prior to the Russia visit.

In other words, they were infiltrated, you know, very early in the reports.

In fact, the CIA is so reported, I mean, it always reports the worst, and if nothing happens, then you're not through with it at all.

So what happened is that the CIA is reporting very quickly, and the Defense Department as well, even more, that we had a month ago that we could expect a high point before the Soviet summit.

I would say that the interesting thing is that it has not yet come, and the prospects now are from

are not that great but of course

I had a lot of experience with them, but they say three to four months, that means more or less indefinite.

That doesn't mean it will necessarily happen.

In August, the judge said it's not going to happen now.

And what we hope to be able to achieve is to create a situation where they'll all consent to postpone it.

That's what we're really prepared to get out.

All of you in our public statements should make this point first.

The peace agreement that we made with the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong was a good agreement.

Second, we had to accomplish one goal, of course, which is to have the withdrawal of our forces and return of our POWs.

But third, we're not interested in just fighting the war to get back our POWs.

We're interested in peace in the area.

And on that score, the peace agreement has had some serious violations.

The failure to withdraw allows the failure to withdraw Cambodian, the continued infiltration incidentally is an issue that means a great deal on Memorial Day, the failure to comply completely with the accounting for MIAs.

Now, what we are trying to do now, and we're not doing this in any malicious way and all that, but we're negotiating again with the North Vietnamese

We're negotiating not for the purpose of getting into a war, but for the purpose of seeing that this agreement is strengthened so that the force of peace can be strengthened in that area.

And we need support for that.

And what Henry has done here was a hell of a weak one.

We're going to have to go through this.

We really deserve a few thousand points for it.

Whether it works or doesn't, I think it may work.

What we have is the prospects now of ironing out some of the difficulties that we've got to bring you on and so forth.

And the getting an agreement that isn't going to bring peace and I love you and all that sort of thing, but will be.

shall we say, a better position that we are currently in and even perhaps better than we were in right after the first Ukraine war.

Is that what you were saying?

That's our goal, I think.

I would, yes, I would say that.

Cambodia is the most difficult problem we have to agree because there are the three actors.

If it were just North Vietnam and the United States and the locals that we want, but it's North Vietnam, it's China, and it's the United States.

As well as the locals.

And for that reason, it's just a terribly complicated situation.

And also, I mean, the government is so weak that it's rather hard to relax.

You think the Laotians are weak, but this Savannah home, I mean, there's so many beds in here, you know.

There's nobody to sleep with sometimes, but nevertheless, I'm not saying he's a figurehead.

This is a great fellow, and because he is, shall we say, a clever, unscrupulous guy, I think he makes a deal there, because nobody gets out of it.

I think that's right.

But Cambodia is also the one thing about which there really should be no comment whatsoever in those things.

What are you going to say for a couple of days?

Mr. Kelly, would you take a moment?

Will Bill be back Tuesday?

Mr. Kelly, we won't have a chance for you.

I just think you should know I took a look at the reports on the Latin American.

I remember back recollections of my visit there in 1958, which was rather stormy.

And you would think that the only faces you see on such a visit are the people throwing rocks and so on and so forth and so on.

And believe me, that's about all I saw in the last couple of days.

But as far as this trip was concerned, it was important.

I'll let Bill report when he comes back, but he didn't mention halfway why it was important.

The other thing I can say is this to all of you.

There is a tendency right now for our friends in Latin America,

than other parts of the world, other than what are basically the major politicized identities.

Our primary obsession is with the Russians and the Chinese, the Europeans at another level, the Japanese, that they're way down in the bottom, we don't care.

What is the most important thing with regard to Latin America, and there's a hell of a lot we can do for them at the moment, they have to do it for themselves, is to let them know that we consider them our closest friends and our closest neighbors.

They've just got to be totally loved.

And we do.

And that's why your conversations with many of your embassies and the rest, be sure to get across.

Would you agree, John, that you want to come to that deal?

Yes.

And it is actually true.

We are not overlooking Latin America at this time.

I mean, when they talk of the year of Europe, the year of Europe, we're working on some new Latin American initiatives as well.

And they are very important.

Mr. President, I might ask, the Times Magazine article was made out of old cloth.

For example, tell us about it then.

Well, the kind of old cloth I like.

Well, then this is better old cloth.

Okay.

One minute for our audience.

For example, in Rio, Bill had planned all the time to have two days of rest.

Time magazine said that he was being held up with the president, that he was being ignored, and .

They actually came down to Buenos Aires, they said that on Saturday.

They said that?

Yes, yes.

And they also were signing demonstrations.

And the fact is he had very few demonstrations.

He'd seen almost none himself.

And in contrast, in the way of contrast to your experience in 1958,

He didn't see a demonstrator as a racket.

There were some, but they were kept away, away from just a few students.

And he actually had a very friendly reception, for example, in Peru, he had a nationalistic view.

The president, we thought, would not see him at all, because the president is, has been very seriously on his recuperating.

And Bill thought he would make a courtesy call.

He said he'd see him every two hours.

And all of the press here has almost ignored it, because it's had very fine coverage throughout Latin America.

The thing that we're going to treat the Latin American companies as equal partners and fully recognized as sovereign is going over our very good.

And I would call it an outstanding success in Latin America, and in our press in the U.S.

Well, I don't think you should be concerned about that, because the act of fighting the battles, but I think members of the cabinet would think of your own purpose and so forth.

Everybody comes in, and I know so many of you do, and say, gee, I'd like to go to Russia, and I'd like to go to Europe, and how about Hungary, and Romania, and so forth.

Don't go to Latin America, and don't be concerned about the fact that you're going to have an administration and so forth.

That's a way of life down there.

My God, I've got down here some privacy.

In 1967, they demonstrated against me in South Carolina.

A guy threw a rock and says, who is that?

I said, I don't know.

I started running.

We've had two meetings of regional banks in recent weeks and days, and all the inter-American development banks.

And both of those

Paul Volcker and the Asian case and the Miami case and the American thing.

We have gathered the finance ministers together and talked about monetary reform and their part of this, and many of the money that's negotiating that.

And we found them very interested and responsive and have tried to have that done.

Volcker has then traveled around through

Asia, talking with the people in developing countries, and we have a plan to have them go around to Latin America, too, just on this particular topic.

And their response to that is great.

We really like it, and they have a lot to contribute.

And then it helps us when we're meeting with these finance ministers and have a goal to have done that.

Let me say that I had a plan to have Herb on, but I think we will, well, Herb, could you get five minutes perhaps of you?

Tell us a couple of good things.

Well, they're going to take one minute.

Well, I actually got a good balance of attorney blasters.

They were very good big houses.

Well, we have been going through a very major surge in the economy in the first three or four months of this year.

the exact source of which we're not exactly sure of but has something to do in part with the food side we've had an enormous food price increases having to do with poor food supply we've had an extraordinary concurrence of big expansions and economies all over the world i think there's no post-war period with so many countries for simultaneous

Strong shaking has affected the devaluation on us.

We've had, undoubtedly, some effect on our big small ship from phase two to phase three.

And then some psychological factors, some doctors usually describe by the term confidence as contributing to something, to what has been going on in the enormous surge of the economy.

And the only thing about that that's unclear is whether it's the strength of confidence or weakness of confidence that's causing people to go out and buy things, invest, make investment plans.

Some people call this, it kicked me out right just yesterday, and I was on a dispatch.

the run of the dollar, on the other hand, you could say, that shows confidence in the future of the American economy, that people are willing to invest, by their own goodness, and so on.

And so, but undoubtedly, this big surge has contributed to uncertainty.

It was hard to separate how big the trend was in the economy from what was going on very, so strongly in February, March, and April, and there was some tendency to

to extrapolate this and to react as if this was the course that the economy would follow in the future.

And I think this concern has been seen in political circles and in financial markets at home and abroad.

As I think about it and talk with people, it seems to me that to some extent this uncertainty which exists out there has been enhanced by the fact that we, as a government, have now taken such a strong

role in the management of the economy.

The people out there think that everything that happens in the economy depends on what we decide, and that is not a source of stability and confidence, but a source of uncertainty.

I like the case again.

I mean, it's not good for the people out there to be afraid of what we're going to do next, right?

But we have been seeing some signs in the last few weeks that the economy is behaving in the direction in which we had expected and hoped it would, and the surge is subsiding.

We had smaller increases of consumer prices and wholesale prices in April than in the preceding months.

We had some slow down in new orders, some slow down in retail sales, and we need to slow down in that we are forecasting.

As we have assembled other people's forecasts, we see them generally also following the pattern that we predicted with declining rate of inflation, declining rate of this big boom.

And while it's

It's important for you to read upon the consensus of forecasts.

It's at least a little bit of evidence that our forecast is not biased by the fact that we are on this side of the fence rather than on the outside.

So we think that the current state of the economy is measured by what people are really getting out of it, real incomes, real consumption, real employment and so on.

That's excellent.

No doubt it will continue to be.

for a while and we think that the prospects are for a moderation of the boom and movement onto a path of rapid inflation and more sustainable rate of real growth that we recognize.

We have to recognize that there are

There are certain possibilities on both sides of this most probable path.

The difficulty is to get through this period of jitters without kicking away the real strength that we have ahead of us.

Well, the problem we have is a problem.

I mean, it's just a confidence problem.

It's just, it's just for water gain or other reasons.

Basically, I remember at the time, Cambodia, they said there's a hard to merge.

They said if you could just get the horses out of Cambodia and the stock market, that's what we'll have Cambodia do.

But what is involved here, of course, is a situation where, say, we've been holding the hand of the economy for so long that when we let the hand go, there is a feeling of lack of confidence.

I think that's part of the problem.

On the other hand, having held that hand so long, if they feel that you may pick us up again, then something long to wait, I suppose the market reflects that to this day.

Order, let us not leave us impression that we are not concerned about the, for example, the cost of living problem still isn't nagging, despite the slight commuter issue for a regular reason.

And if I may, I wanted to stay in touch with a terribly important energy problem.

I decided that both of these areas were going to have to be working on all this past week.

We've got to take some hard, good looks on the energy thing.

There's got to be some initiatives taken.

They're going to be suspended in the early days.

Not only in any case in terms of what we're going to do, but initiatives in terms of how we do it.

And that doesn't mean that we've got the major oil companies to furnish gasoline and fuel oil and so forth and so on.

But every independent oil producer, every refinery guy, I'd love to go.

I'd love those guys out there who serve the market.

I'm going to try.

But among the people, I think, are about as heartless in terms of this kind of a problem.

and then talk to your blue in the face.

Individually, they're marvelous people.

They're our friends.

I've got a whole bunch of guys when it comes to saying, look, there's somebody that's holding their hands, and he's got to serve a lot of partners.

He's going to go bust if I should give him the little stuff.

And they'll say, ah, no, we've got to send him to our console station.

So we're working on such problems.

But let me just say, first, I don't want the members to get, this is not the time to discuss it.

We're satisfied with what we've done.

We've made a good start.

More needs to be done.

We're consulting with a number of people, including some outside people, John and others.

We took the conscience over the coals, as you know, on the Alaska pipeline.

I don't know what's going to happen there, but I think we've put it on the line there as hard as we can.

I think we did.

I think the idea of that is a good question.

It is a question of that pipeline of Alaska, either or.

It's a question of right now, we've got Alaska.

My gosh, with Trudeau up there, I think that he has five acres.

That's true.

Let's get ourselves in the head camp and go no more attitude.

But we've got to get that going because that's there.

I should also add that we are not multinational in the arms problems in the Middle East.

clean feet of oil on our own materials and some of our own.

And that poses an indebted threat as well.

The other is, of course, the possibility of household area.

We study everything that we're doing there, having in mind that here again, apart from what the realities are, we also have to think of what people think the realities are.

And that doesn't mean that we do something wrong solely because of the public misconception of the realities.

But it does mean that we sometimes do things that we would not do in order to jolt the public and it will conquer the perception of unreality.

And that's what we're looking at at the moment.

So I would say that on those subjects, your thoughts would be appreciated.

Your cost of money, council, energy, and the rest.

I am not satisfied with what we introduced on the other side of the council and I am in disappointment.

I expect to see some new recommendations and I expect to see them early next week before I dig off to ice.

Well, may I just say in conclusion that I

We will now go into the purposes and call 30 for slurring and L.A. Richardson, Chief Justice, will be here tonight to sign a Bible and get a couple of marks.

Now, he's got to get all the developers together.

So, in the meantime, Vice President Ruppers, I, Al Haig, have some thoughts that he'd like to convey to you on the subject of current Christmas.

appreciate it.

Yes sir, if I may, I just want to take a few minutes.

We met here two weeks ago, and we've taken a number of actions in-house here within the government that I would like very much to discuss upon very briefly, and then turn it over to Lynn, because I'd like you to know the current status of Watergate, and as you know, we lost you.

insist from comment.

We're now at another point in this process, and I've asked Lynn to give you a little rundown of what we could say and should say about this subject, not in a pedantic way, but rather to give you some insights that you might not have from your own sets of responsibilities and perspectives.

Now, the first thing I would like to do, however, is to just say a word about what we've been doing, the directions in which we're going, and things that I would hope that each of us could put stress in our own perceptions of the current data.

First and foremost, is the President is here today, and he has resolved to continue, and to continue in the same effective way he has, and to get on with the great manual work that we have before us.

That's a thing that is quite essential.

Secondly, I think we can establish, and I think you gentlemen know it, a new relationship with the Capitol.

with the re-centralization and the strengthening of the role of the candidate and a lowering, if you will, of the profile of the White House and whether it serves more as a transmission belt for the conveyance of your problems to and from the President and for the implementation of the constitutional responsibilities of the government.

And I think

It is very helpful for you to portray that, if you believe it.

I do.

Thirdly, we worked very diligently in the past three weeks with respect to our relationship with the Congress.

Now, it started out, initially, with a Republican side, because there, where the concerns were the darkest, and where our base must be the soundest.

And there, too, I think we've made great progress.

The President's had numerous meetings.

He has accepted, gratefully, a number of suggestions from our congressional leadership, and I think we've started and launched a new relationship with our Republican friends in both the Senate and House.

And thirdly, within the house here, and we've had to give our own in-house columns the lowest priority to meet the problem of order date, to meet the problem of our relationships outside of the house.

But within the house here, we had moved on the assignment and appointment of a number of outstanding personnel appointments.

We have given the candidate officers a greater role, and in fact, the dominant role, if you will, in the selection and appointment of their teams.

There are, I think now, something less than 20 key positions to be filled, from a great number of positions.

And I think you should be conscious of this, and when the question is asked, I don't want to speak positively along those lines.

We have some other things to do within the house, and we'll get to those in a couple of weeks.

Now finally, warranty.

I think you all know that the greatest task facing us in a period of time when we could not talk to the people who probably had the greatest knowledge for another legal reason,

was a gigantic task of pulling together as much as we could from the president's perspective of what the ramifications of current events really meant.

And that was the effort that got major concentration at the expense of a number of other things that I personally would have liked to have done in the context of efficiency and other things within the House here.

But that is behind us now.

And I would like Glenn, if you will, to take over and talk about that specific problem.

And to describe what the statements are not, and what they are, and what they do not do.