On October 15, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger talked on the telephone at Camp David from 12:00 pm to 12:14 pm. The Camp David Study Table taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 149-014 of the White House Tapes.
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Mr. President, I have Dr. Kissinger returning your call.
All right.
Go ahead, please.
Mr. President, how are you getting along in your briefings?
Well, I've had an hour with Abrams, and he's fully aboard, enthusiastically aboard.
That's very important.
And he's coming in, and he's leaving tomorrow night.
He thinks he needs a day to work with Bunker.
And he's full of ideas of how we can do this technically.
Yeah.
And, you know, how to shift over the air control and so forth.
Yeah, yeah.
Let me ask a couple of questions.
I was really very heartened by him.
I read him all the provisions of the military.
Right.
What about the political side?
Oh.
I haven't told him any of that, but that's no good.
I'm using that over them in love by telling them what their old proposal is.
Yeah, I see.
He'll go along with the political side.
The political side is a smashing victory.
I mean, there will be no one who will question the political side.
The only problem I see there is, from our standpoint, is...
which I want to be sure we're adequately warned on, is the use of the word coalition in any form, shape, whatever.
Oh, I know it isn't in that, but I meant in terms of what the press says, what is said by either side and so forth.
The point being, I don't mean what the other side says, but the point being that once that is said,
then the indication will be by our critics that, well, we could have gotten this four years ago.
You see, the coalition business, that's why the coalition thing, it's got to be in your own briefing.
If we come to a briefing, it's got to be very, very tough.
This is not a coalition government under any circumstances.
Nothing changes anyway.
The only thing that happens immediately on the political side
It's a negotiation between you and the others.
I understand that.
I understand that there's a Council of National Concord that they are going to come into being until you have negotiated it with the other side.
Right.
And basically that is not a government either.
But the point is, right?
Right.
Oh, right.
But the point that I make is that, as you can see, that is the point.
It has to be very carefully.
We've got to be straight-arming on that issue so that we don't run into any problem there.
I am confident that the political side is an excellent idea.
I mean, in fact, there is nobody in this country who could imagine that we could get this political setting.
Yeah.
Well, that's my feeling.
It's my feeling.
It's my feeling.
I mean, it's the thinnest bay favor.
With regard to the questions you raised earlier with Bob, let me just run over it briefly because I made it
I had a few thoughts on that last night.
First, to keep it all in perspective, we should understand that the major consideration should be the making of a settlement.
The making of a settlement is not going to hurt us in the election, and it isn't going to help us significantly.
You know, who can tell?
But the main point is what could hurt.
really is is to go down the road and then uh and then fail that is why i think even before going to saigon i would i think we have to be fairly fairly sure that well not fairly sure but at least have a pretty good chance of making it go if you go to saigon and it doesn't go of course then
I mean, you can't really consider going to HNOI, because if you do, that escalates it to a point where we just couldn't, we just couldn't stand it.
But if you could go to, and I don't know, but what do you think Abrams can do a little softening up before you get there?
That's the point.
No, no, but he and Bunker can start analyzing, you see, after we get to his agreement.
Yeah.
There'll have to be a hell of a lot of work done.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
then focus Q, not on how he's going to stonewall the agreement, but how he's going to shift good categories of things, who is going to take them over, and so forth.
Right.
Right.
Right.
What does Bunker think?
What's his view about whether, well, he doesn't know what the political thing is, but what is his view about Q's reaction to this?
I have no idea.
But we have... At least you have Bunker's reaction.
I don't mean Bunker's.
I don't mean that.
I meant Abrams's view.
Well, Abrams says it's hard to predict.
Yeah.
He thinks that you ought to accept this, that this is a great opportunity for him.
Right.
He's enthusiastic.
Right, right.
And on the political side, I assure you, Mr. President, there's no sophisticate who will not see that this is the thinnest form of faith there before the other.
Right.
two states, there's no coalition government, the negotiations start, then they form a sort of a half-assed committee.
I know.
If it ever comes into being.
That's right.
Right.
So, we've had another little message from the North.
Last night, dreaming about the five trains.
Yeah.
The thing could fall apart on Tuesday.
Yeah.
In that case, of course, I come back from Paris.
Right.
The thing could fall apart in Saigon.
In that case, I come back from Saigon.
I agree completely with that.
You can't escalate that at high, because otherwise you're... Then remember, the fat's in the fire, and it'll appear that Q is the person that torpedoed it.
I see.
Yeah.
And I, incidentally, say, on the other side,
There need be no concern about the political effect.
We just can't think in terms of the fact, well, gee, would it be better not to have this politically.
Sure, it's risky.
We don't need it.
We're going to win without it, and very heavily.
But the point is that you've got to take a risk to get the damn war over.
And if there's more, if this is the best settlement we can get, which I think it is, and if this is the best time when the forces will be the strongest to get it,
then the thing to do is to push it and get it.
That's my attitude.
You see?
We're in that situation where we've just got it.
So what it really comes down to, Henry, is the merit of the settlement.
If it's the right settlement and this is the best time, do it now.
If it's the right settlement and we should do it at a later time, put it off later.
As far as the election is concerned,
Don't be bothered with it either way.
There's only one thing on the election, as I say, and it would not be fatal.
And that would be to have either Jew or the North Vietnamese to blow it.
Of course, if one risk we run is one point that Mel made to me was when I went into all the refinements we were getting, he said, listen, you have to face one thing.
If they offer us to steal publicly,
You'll be forced to accept it without refinements.
I agree that.
That's why I mean, I'm not sure how far you can really insist on the refinements.
And so you do the best you can.
We know that, just like you did in Shanghai.
From a security point of view, Mr. President, there's absolutely no question that we'd be better off six weeks from now if these guys and whoever would get off their asses.
They aren't going to.
But it's a high-risk thing, because six weeks from now, the other side may feel that they can hold us up and string us along the way they've done for three years in the negotiations.
And as you said, there is a time for settling.
Always.
Always.
It is.
If, too, the horrible tragedy is that if General Tree had survived last year,
we would be throwing our hats up in the air because then the situation in every military region, it is excellent.
Right.
And in three, it should be good.
There are two divisions that I bet have lost 100 men in the whole offensive that have never fought and that have never moved off their guns.
Right.
Right.
That's what breaks your heart, isn't it?
It sure does.
Well, many of us can't be sure that they'd be moving off their behinds in the next six months.
No, but we're not too sure what the North Vietnamese can do.
No, look, the main factor is that they, from everything I can see and from what you have said, the North Vietnamese are under great, great pressures to settle to.
Now, what I'm doing this morning, Mr. President, in the interest of speed, I've asked Sabrina to come in.
Yeah.
And I'm giving him a letter from you to President.
saying that we could get some assurances about the cutoff of military aid.
I mean, not cutoff, but restraints.
Restraining like we do, basically.
Same restraints.
Then we would be in a good position to speed up the settlement.
It was very interesting.
I told you this.
He came in yesterday and read me the table that he had had from the North, East, and East.
where we stood in the negotiations.
Yeah, yeah.
And it was pretty accurate, except it's like that.
They put in some things, and it's still unsettled.
They're not already settled.
Yeah.
So then they can claim some victory, actually.
Sure, sure.
That's always the case in settlements, but it's irrelevant.
Once you settle, people have either sigh or relief in the end.
Believe me.
Sigh or relief.
The damn thing's got to be brought to an end, Henry.
That's what we really come down to, and
And so I know that all these political considerations, you just don't think of those, except for the one point at saying not to think about it.
Don't let political considerations delay it.
The only thing is, remember that the main...
that we have no pressures to push it.
Either way, either way.
We have no pressures to make a settlement, and so you do it on the merits, which is a pretty good position for you to be in.
You do it on the merits.
And the other point is that the one hooker, of course, is that we cannot have a collapse in South Vietnam prior to the election.
That would be helpful.
That would be harmful.
I don't think it would be harmful.
I mean, two isn't going to blow it that high, would he?
No, frankly, if he blows it, I've got to come back.
I don't want to push it to a confrontation with him now.
Where would you come to then?
Then I'll get Lidocco back to Paris and have one more meeting with him and tell him he'll move on it after the event.
Yeah.
It's an unsatisfactory way of doing it because then they'll sit there too.
Yeah.
See, there you do run the risk, too, that they might.
decide to go public and say Q is at fault.
However, that's dangerous for them, too, because even with that, we're not going to lose.
Okay.
Well, it's one other thing I talked about this morning that would be a possible compromise that might have to be done.
You know, Q is absolutely adamant.
Always, if he wants to save his space and wants to be able to pretend he had some role
I might have to come back from there and then start the whole circuit again, meet once more with the North Vietnamese, so that we can attend his changes we're taking into account, go to Saigon, and then to Hanoi.
That would delay the thing by six days.
That'd be no problem.
That has some advantages, but on the other hand, you just do what you can make the deal to it now.
If you can't do the next best thing,
And it's going to be tough, Teddy.
Would it be better for you to do it later?
Henry, don't even think of the politics.
Let me say, either has an advantage.
Doing a little earlier doesn't, well, no, either way.
Politically, it would have an advantage, and only in the sense of the merits, because between October 1st and November 7th, there isn't so much time for it to blow.
Right.
That's the only point that I see there.
But that's on the merits again.
So just do it on the merits.
Everything is on the merits.
To hell with politics.
And if I can have that flexibility that I might go on that circuit again.
Right.
I understand that.
You should have that flexibility and just keeping it all in terms of just discussing the matter.
But I think I really feel that we just got to
Push this now for all it's worth and make it if we can.
Right.
Good deal.
All right.
Good luck.
Goodbye.