Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 153-028
Date: Wednesday, November 15, 1972 at 9:08 AM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Kissinger, Henry A.
Recording device: Camp David Study Table
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/153-028

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 Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:00] Hello, Mr. President.
[0:02] Hi, Henry.
[0:03] Did you get the letter down there?
[0:06] Yes, I got it last night.
[0:07] I thought it was tremendously improved.
[0:09] Well, there's no substance, but I just thought we ought to put a few subtleties in there.
[0:16] And psychology is everything at this moment.
[0:20] It had in fact been delivered.
[0:21] I put in a few things that were very tough, like that unalterable, as you noticed, but also I put in some soft things like I look forward to seeing you in San Clemente.
[0:32] And you gave it nice nuances all the way through, but I wanted to be sure you got it because, you know, the helicopter wasn't running yesterday.
[0:40] Well, I mean, we were socked in here, so they had to drive it down.
[0:44] Oh, I got it about 5.30, and we got it off at 8.30.
[0:48] Oh, good.
[0:48] It's already been delivered, but that goddamn Chew is again going through his stalling act.
[0:53] What's he doing?
[0:54] Well, after having proposed task forces, we sent him some changes ahead of your letter.
[1:00] Oh, I see.
[1:01] And Chew wouldn't receive Bunker for 24 hours.
[1:04] Then he received him with your letter.
[1:06] Now he's asked for another 24 hours to study the letter.
[1:10] And he just won't meet, made no comment.
[1:13] Yeah.
[1:14] And we just have to go ahead on Monday if we don't get his reply without him.
[1:20] Put it to him.
[1:24] Well, I don't know.
[1:26] I don't see how, or maybe he can continue to stall it out, but I don't see how he can, Henry.
[1:33] I don't see it.
[1:34] What in the hell is he going to do if he's the way that
[1:40] The way that letter is written, it's put in a context that we have to go another way if he doesn't go.
[1:51] But I don't know.
[1:51] I think what we should do is get the best agreement we can next week.
[1:57] Then if he doesn't accept it, go bilaterally with Hanoi.
[2:01] That would be a terrible thing.
[2:03] That would be a terrible shock, too.
[2:06] Let's face it.
[2:07] We don't want to do that because of the fact that it would be, in effect, they'd say, well, hell, you could have done that all along.
[2:15] You see what I mean?
[2:17] Yeah.
[2:18] No, it's not that good an option, and he's probably savvy enough to know that.
[2:23] But he undoubtedly is, although we will do it.
[2:27] But withdrawal for prisoners after Vietnamization has succeeded was always implicit.
[2:32] That's right.
[2:33] The people who'll get the beating on that are the Laotians and Cambodians.
[2:37] Yeah.
[2:39] Because I don't know whether we can make those agreements stick under those conditions.
[2:43] Yeah.
[2:45] Well, there's no reason to borrow trouble on it at this point.
[2:48] No, no, no.
[2:49] It can't be mad enough to drive it to that point.
[2:51] I think what he wants to do, if he's going to yield, he wants to yield at the latest possible moment.
[2:59] Yeah.
[3:00] You can't get—one of our real problems here is that we don't have any real communication between Bunker and him anymore, have we?
[3:08] No, not really.
[3:09] That's the point.
[3:10] See, Bunker used to go in and be able to talk to him, and the rest—no, he didn't talk to him.
[3:13] Well, that's as long as we did what he wanted.
[3:16] Yeah.
[3:17] The same is true of—Hebrems is not there anymore, and he doesn't talk to Wyatt, apparently.
[3:25] But anyway, it's premature to draw any conclusions.
[3:29] But at any rate, the letter was— Well, the letter is so tough that he's—but he just—I suppose Henrik can just come back.
[3:38] I was looking over again his letter to us with another goddamn song and dance here about, well, I—you know, a debating point.
[3:48] And then it's got to be pretty damn brutal.
[3:52] But I don't think it—I have some ideas on that then.
[3:55] Well, we've given him 15 changes, which we're willing to probe.
[3:58] And that's what they're now discussing, and it's not unreasonable for him to spend 24 hours studying those.
[4:06] What is unreasonable is that when Bunker wants to see him yesterday, we sent him all the technical changes ahead of your letter, that he can't get an appointment.
[4:16] That's unreasonable that he asks for time to study your letter.
[4:20] That's fair enough.
[4:22] Then he asked to deliver a letter and got put off?
[4:27] No, he asked to deliver the changes.
[4:28] Yeah.
[4:29] And he got put off.
[4:31] Then when he had your letter, they saw it.
[4:36] Well, maybe we should have sent the changes by a letter.
[4:39] Well, I thought it was better to wait to give the impression.
[4:44] I mean, to give you a chance to consider it, too.
[4:47] He didn't even know that the letter was coming when he gave the appointment.
[4:52] He almost automatically keeps Bunker waiting twenty-four hours.
[4:58] That happens all the time.
[5:00] Well, the way this leads it is that we're going forward on our course of action and we're asking him to come along.
[5:07] But it comes to the hard point until we've got that next round.
[5:12] Because we may have the North Vietnamese in a pretty tough frame of mind either.
[5:16] We have no reason to suppose that they'll take any or all of these.
[5:20] Certainly not all.
[5:22] Oh, not all.
[5:23] You noticed I changed the letter in that respect.
[5:27] How many they'll take still remains to be seen.
[5:30] Yeah.
[5:32] But I think they are at this moment somewhat less of a problem than so far.
[5:36] Yeah.
[5:37] Well, we'll have to see what kind of a problem they are.
[5:39] Okay, thank you.
[5:40] I'll come up on Friday morning.
[5:42] Bye.