Nixon phone call with Kissinger on Vietnam War and 1972 Presidential Election

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Hello.

Mr. President.

Hi, Henry, hi.

Okay, I'm sorry to bother you.

It's all right, yeah.

But I had a phone call this morning that I thought you might want to know about.

Yeah, go right ahead.

And it might have been... Just a minute.

Okay, go ahead.

I had a phone call from Dick Goodwin this morning.

You know... Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And he, first he called to express his outrage that the attack was made by McGovern.

Yeah.

And he said, just as another example,

to defeat.

And he wrote an article four weeks ago in which he said you were doomed to defeat.

And he said it's just hopeless and so on and so forth.

But none of this I would bother you with.

That could wait.

But he then said, look, we've got to get the war to a conclusion.

And anything he thinks that his Democratic friends could do, he said, for example, he knows McCarthy quite well.

And he thinks that if we ask McCarthy, now I know this is true because McCarthy ended that, to go over there and on his own tell the North Vietnamese that this would be the best time to settle, they would do it.

Boy, he thinks, well, he thinks McCarthy would do it, but the North... No, no, he said he thought McCarthy would do it.

Sure, sure.

Secondly, he said he thought Teddy Kennedy would do it.

I mean, I'm...

Teddy would do it in an honorable way.

Yeah, isn't that interesting?

But I thought that this certainly shows their own problems, doesn't it, Henry?

I think.

It's inconceivable that Goodwin would call me.

He's done it twice now, hasn't he?

That's right.

I mean, it's inconceivable that he would mention Teddy Kennedy's name without having cleared it with him.

Mm-hmm.

Now, I think it's a little too dangerous to get Teddy involved.

Yeah, you couldn't do that.

McCarthy, you could.

What would you think of my asking McCarthy for lunch?

It's fine.

Just saying, look, why don't you go over and talk to them?

And just, but, because he wouldn't come back with some, see, Teddy might come back with some flamboyant offer, you know, in other words, be the big, but McCarthy, the main thing to get across to them, if anybody can,

is that they're living in a dream world.

You see, he might give two messages.

One is his judgment of McGovern.

Yeah.

And second, his judgment that it's time to make peace.

Well, and also, he could say his judgment of McGovern.

Second, his judgment as to how the election's going to come out.

And third, and he could say that you better watch out what's going to happen afterwards.

He could say that.

And third, why don't you make peace because it'll be generous now and it won't be generous later.

That's the thing they've got to get through their heads.

That's good.

I do.

Good.

And he'll keep it awfully confidential, too.

He'll...

It doesn't bother us, no.

Because he approached you in the first instance anyway.

Right.

That's good.

Well, that's great.

Well, I wish you were taking another day off.

You're going to see the rain in a day, huh?

I'm going to see the Chinese.

Oh, yeah.

Gee, I ought to do that.

I got your right.

You're right.

Not now.

Well, I mean, even though we gave him the Cadillac, it looks like we're... Well, that isn't for me.

It's for the government, of course.

No, but it's right.

It's right.

It isn't just the thing we want right now.

But I'm going up to talk to the Chinese.

I think I ought to tell them that I'm going to Russia.

To make that deal, yeah.

Well, I've already given them the draft of the Soviet treaty, so that anything we come up with is going to look like a great deal.

It really worried them, didn't it?

We haven't had better communication from them, and there hasn't been a peep in their press against us yet.

Goodwin was outraged by their attack on you, too, huh?

Mr. President, I have no illusions.

If they thought they were winning...

They wouldn't, I know.

...piling it on himself.

Sure.

I mean, this is just his anchor to the windward.

Sure, I understand.

Indeed, he said, at the end, he's quite cynical, he said, look, if it were 51-49, I would do my best to keep the war going, but I think at this stage now, let's just get this thing over with.

He knows damn well that they're talking is what's keeping it going.

Very interesting.

Nelson was very good yesterday.

He said they have the exact communist... McGovern doesn't have a policy, he has the communist... Oh, he was great.

Just right.

And I think we ought to start saying that, not you.

Yeah, I think, Henry, if others could start saying it, I think I've gone about as far as I can, you know, in my...

Because, you know, the thing is, I can't give them the opportunity.

I'm just finishing some of the final work on this draft now.

Not so much on the domestic side, basically, a little on the foreign side.

But I'm just, I'm be sure to hone down anything that can be taken out of context and made to be a peer, to be, you know, a slam.

But on the other hand, I'm leaving in everything that's really tough.

I think that's absolutely right.

It's going to be a very strong speech.

Well, it was very strong yesterday.

Let me say one thing that I did do that I think you'd be interested in.

You know, if you can remember the part on the foreign policy thing, I went through that usual, well, frankly, that usual line, which I, with you, is basically from my rather limited knowledge of the history of nations.

I agree with your analysis.

But where we say that as a result of when we can turn toward peace, that it would allow us to release our great creative energies to all.

You said you'd take that out.

I don't know.

I know, but you see, I listed then.

I listed that we can rebuild our cities, we can do that.

I just took that out.

But what I did do is what I think is just a little, I left just a little place to it.

In America, it will mean that we can undertake initiatives at home that will be just as exciting as the great initiatives we've undertaken abroad.

Just put it that way.

I think that's a better way.

You see, and then not say we can launch a war against the forces of poverty, we can rebuild our great cities, we can move toward our promising initiatives to restore our natural environment, we can have welfare reform.

You know, that's the kind of stuff that the boys have prepared, you know, the domestic council stuff they want in, but I'm just going to leave it out.

Do you agree?

I agree completely.

Yeah.

I think that's a very good idea.

I've never been comfortable with this idea.

Well, you understand, it isn't something that I feel.

It's just the fact, Henry, that if you ever sat in any of these staff meetings, that everybody is constantly telling me, I've got to relate peace to our problems at home.

See my point?

incidentally i was uh i suppose you saw that which i thought was uh really pretty much out of context that the way they tried to blow up in the night papers some interview bill had where he's supposed to have said that uh the prospects of war have been it was mostly her client's fault i talked to uh klein's to bob about it klein arranged bill klein made

I urged Bill to give an interview to John McCartney, who is now a friend to begin with.

McCartney, of all people?

Oh, shit, he's a knifer.

So I have to say, in fairness to Bill, that...

I know Bill didn't intend to say that.

He did say it.

I've read the transcript.

It was poor judgment.

McCartney probably let him into it, though, Henry.

McCartney let him into it, and that was before the game plan.

It was before that.

Anyway, we've now knocked it down, saying that he was expressing the hope, and that's that.

But I think Bill will be very good on that from now on.

No question.

Because we all sat around and yacked.

No question.

One thing I was going to tell you is this.

It seems to me that we have one very, very interesting point here.

And on the bombing halt thing, I think these people are, and I may be so doctrinaire, and, you know, thinking history repeats itself, that they miss the point that there is no possibility of our giving a bombing halt now because they don't have anything to give.

That's right.

You see?

Now, if there were something to give, now let me say, if they were to say in return for a bombing halt or say or do something,

That would be something else again.

But you recall, Henry, the bombing halt, I mean, that's again a misjudgment that the left made about why the bombing halt helped Humphrey and or Johnson.

And the left said it helped them because people said, thank God we're not bombing.

That wasn't true at all.

The American people were for bombing.

I know.

I speak it out in the stump.

The reason that helped Johnson was that the bombing halt was coupled with a beginning, allegedly, of negotiations.

You remember?

And then you remember what saved us only by the scruff of our necks was the fact that you stomped on it the day before the election.

Remember?

And then Poland.

But isn't that something?

Did you get the impression from them that they really think a bombing halt could come before the election?

I think they think that if they hold tight and give the impression of no progress at all, we're going to make a major unilateral concession.

I said to them... Never.

of a stalemate and the reality of progress and they said well in 1968 we made progress privately with Harriman but publicly we kept attacking him yeah that 1972 is not 68 yeah I'll be darned well I don't know whether they must be getting it you must be getting across to them because it's it is so

I mean, there isn't going to be any bombing halt under any circumstances of anything before the election.

We're going to bomb more, believe me.

The mere fact that we are talking to them, that they're talking to us, is a sign of unbelievable weakness.

If they dared, they would really put it to us.

I would think so.

That's my view, too.

The fact that McGovern can't be running around the country waving a piece of paper of their peace plan the longer we...

delay that the better off we are yeah he may come to that and when he does we'll kick hell out of him that's right but right now he's got nothing yeah yeah yeah what is this uh this thing that the uh that they build up today about the north vietnamese and the valley around the ng is that that all that significant well it's uh it's a victory i don't think they can go very far from there

Well, hell, it's no more of a victory than the South Vietnamese have had from time to time, is it?

That's right.

I don't think we should...

I mean, it's an example.

We've seen it coming.

We've told them and told them, and they always gave us their usual crap, that they had it under control.

I told them as late as last week, and they gave me the baloney that it was under control.

Well, on the other hand, it is not as massive as...

uh anybody expected even from what i've read henry is it it's not going to make big waves what's uh what's why what are they doing about it i mean i suppose they've moved into new regiments i i think they're going to contain it more or less yeah yeah well look in in wars of course you don't win all the battles that's the point it moves back and forth the very fact that the south vietnamese are still alive is amazing

You know, it's a funny thing.

Both of these people in Arkansas, they fight awful well when they're surrounded, don't they?

Even in that damn citadel, they still have it, don't they?

Yeah.

Anyway, that's good, and I think your idea is excellent, and I wish you well.

And I'll see you tomorrow in good time, okay?

Bye.

Nixon phone call with Kissinger on Vietnam War and 1972 Presidential Election

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on August 21, 1972

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