On December 5, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson talked on the telephone at Camp David from 10:05 pm to 10:34 pm. The Camp David Study Table taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 157-004 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Hello.
Yes, sir.
Are you home now?
Yes, I am.
Well, you're quitting early.
After the election, we... Yeah, I went over to... Well, I went over today and saw the Californians.
Good.
You got Bob Central launched with us.
Well, without saying it.
Good.
They're a great bunch, though, I must say.
You know, they raised $9 million in that state.
Oh, they did a hell of a job.
And, you know, they really did, and...
When you think of all the dire predictions that were made, you know, we're in trouble in California, we're going to lose California and the rest, to come out as we did there was really quite something.
I think California was really one of the more, to me, was one of the more spectacular victories.
Right, right, because it's a tough state and it has all the young people and the McGovern campaign that he had his organization there.
He had a 100,000 vote margin, which is...
$1,100,000 margin is not bad.
Yeah.
Well, as a matter of fact, you know, when we think of this thing, I don't think probably looking at comparing with 64 apart from winning the 49 states, but winning four states by over a million was quite an achievement.
Yes, it was.
Yeah.
finally wrapped up and we can get them all out.
That would be an interesting one.
I think they have a lot of historical significance.
I told Connolly, when I was talking to him, I said, I showed him your, what's your latest thing?
He says, oh, he just laughed.
He says, no, for God's sakes, he says, don't say a word about this.
He said, because
whatever's left out there.
He says some of those secretaries of state will jiggle those figures a bit because, you know what I mean?
Oh, that's right.
No, and I think Conley's absolutely right.
He's really a suspect, though.
I mean, he focuses on these things.
He knows what they do.
Oh, well, and if you come from Texas, you know how to do those ballot boxes.
That's right.
He's absolutely right.
Well, actually, the number must be very, very small now if there's only five states.
that all the five states are in.
In totally.
And I don't have the, damn it, I didn't get a chance to check back on what those five states were.
That's all right.
That's all right.
That's all right.
I want to look at Arkansas and Missouri, yeah.
Arkansas won't hurt us.
Missouri won't hurt us.
New Jersey.
New Jersey won't hurt us.
I think Washington is now all in.
All of those were slightly over 60 already.
That's why I think we'll make it over Johnson's.
I don't see how we can survive.
Right.
What I was going about was this, doing some more thinking and what is your, after thinking some more about your reaction as to what we do tomorrow in the event that
We do have this impasse in the talks, which appears to be quite likely.
It's not certain, but likely.
Well, it's very strong, Mr. President.
It is.
My instinctive reaction when you asked me this morning what I thought of that cable was you have to hang tough.
And I didn't focus on the TV side of it.
The more I thought about it, although I did, that was my intuitive reaction.
The more I thought about it during the day, the more vehemently I feel about it.
I just think that this country right now is...
First of all, I think you have it in the palm of your hand.
I think that people are very happy.
It isn't like the 20s.
I mean, it isn't a period of just... Normalcy, no.
Yeah, normalcy.
But on the other hand, it's getting pretty close to it.
And I think people want to be left alone.
I don't think they want to be upset about anything.
I think it would be awful if the first thing that you do is a major nature after your re-election to come out and
You know, we got to buckle down in this negotiation field because their definition of administrative mechanism is different than ours.
And they are insisting on their troops.
Some of the things, of course, are substantive, and you could make a pretty good little talk, but the point is that it would simply—what it would do is it just—
escalates the war issue and puts it right on the front burner again, gets everybody talking about it far more than it would otherwise.
And the point is, if we needed to rally the country, that would be different.
And we can do it later if we have to.
Well, that's my point.
I think basically my reasoning is that that is a tool you've always got available to you, and you've always used it with great effectiveness.
You would use it today if you had to, with probably more effectiveness than...
it would be effective but the problem of using a truck is that on all the previous occasions when I've used it I have done something you know what I mean I have either
And me and I haven't just said, look, fellows, well, November 3rd, I said, but I said, no, I asked to hear all these people march around the White House.
And I had to rally the country.
And I said, I asked for your support for the silent majority.
So they supported me.
But what do we tell them now?
You see, that's the point.
Not a damn thing.
We're just doing it.
Yeah, we say, well, now we're saying now these negotiations that you are all so hopeful will succeed have had an impasse because the enemy has tricked us.
Well.
This is not my area of competence, Mr. President.
I'm not sure it isn't.
I've done a hell of a lot of negotiating in my life.
But I just have a very funny feeling about this, that it isn't quite the big, dramatic breaking-off point that Henry is making.
I think that it is for Henry in his own mind.
I mean, I think he just doesn't want to come back empty-handed this time.
And therefore... Well, it seems to me that he's in a position where, looking at it from his standpoint, where he
It was sort of like that.
had thought, well, we're going to pull it off.
Now, I'm not pulling it off.
It's like when he came back from Russia that time, not getting what we wanted.
He says, well, we'll break off the summit.
That's right.
It's a moment of truth.
And it's a moment of truth.
And he says, well, now I'll go on.
Now, if it was all right then, that would have, of course, been a mistake to break off the summit.
But we did something.
This time, we're not going to do a damn thing.
That's the point.
I'm going to do something, but I don't want to talk about it.
Well, that's right, because what you want to do—
need to be talked about with the American people.
I mean, I think Bob is absolutely right.
People, or Ziegler, I forgot which one said it today.
I guess Ziegler.
I think people think that we're still bombing.
They don't stop to think, well, we're below a certain geographical... 19th parallel or 20th parallel or we're not doing an I-5 and so forth.
There's just a big... Somewhere in this is a big bluff game going on because what... And as I said, this is not my area of competence except on a fair amount of negotiations.
Yeah.
down there from the north in that area without feeling pretty certain that that was the place they had to defend.
I just wonder if they're not testing us.
Well, Henry's point is that they are testing us, and that the answer is for me to go on television and rally the American people, and that that will call their bluff.
But you see, my argument there is that you can call their bluff by what you do and not by what you say.
And also, my own point is you rally our supporters, you also rally the opposition again.
Precisely.
If it were important, subsequently, to the foreign policy,
side of it, the two relative American people, I'd hate to try to do it right now, no matter what the cause.
I would hate to gamble on that.
And there are plenty of ways that you can kind of signal to Hanoi without this.
Because right now, Hanoi cannot but think that we have a majority of public support in this thing.
And if they don't think that, they're out of their minds.
Now, the real problem, I think, though, is that they're clever enough, or they have learned through their own channels, or maybe the McGovernites have
and he can't ever tell what it is, that, well, just hang on, don't settle now, and the Congress is going to cut off the water.
Well, I think Connolly, I asked him about that, what about that, and he said, well, Congress wouldn't do that.
He says, well, I could do that when you won with 61% if you ask them to hang in there.
That's right.
I don't think that's right.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Well, the dove sentiment, though, Mr. President, is a hell of a lot weaker today than it was.
I mean, they have less to build on, and...
left to build on left to build on because people aren't being drafted you know the war is being killed it's depersonalized and really when you stop and think about it one of the major issues in this campaign just passed was do we you know do we seek peace or do we bug out of vietnam that was really uh
That's all that we've talked about in the last 10 days.
I really think, too, that if you just put it in terms, well, now the negotiations have broken down, and so what we will do is to continue to bomb until we get our prisoners, would look like, I just feel, would look like a bug-out.
Oh, absolutely.
When Haldeman Rittner got second cable, remember, my reaction was something of a nut.
political and i couldn't help it but when he read read it to me i said my god you know when i said you throw in the sponge we just won the election and i think on this issue very strongly i mean i think this is one of the major issues of the campaign and the public gave you one hell of a vote of confidence to continue to do what you're doing in the foreign policy area this is an area in which i i think an overwhelming majority of the american people
overwhelming, have enormous confidence in you, and whatever you do, they're going to support you right now.
Right.
And I think that, sure, there'll be disappointment, and the columnists will all jump on it and say, ah, we got tricked, and there was really, peace was not at hand, and all that sort of thing, but that'll pass.
Oh, sure.
I think.
I don't know.
That's true.
The only sticky point is the POWs.
Oh, yes.
Only because it's emotional, you see, and they can play off of
But that's all right.
He's had some great days.
Oh.
And there'll be more.
And you've got to have some sweet with the sour in this business.
You've got to just see it through.
My feeling is that if Henry is able, and that's going to be a question of how you psych him up and Haldeman psychs him up and I psych him up and anybody he'll listen to, if Henry does it right and makes the four or five correct points and then has the guts just to take the heat, because for a few days there'll be heat on him, the thing will pass right over.
I mean, I don't think the American people, I think the American people feel that
that we're doing everything we can then.
You realize, incidentally, that if this comes out the way, I mean, the way at its worst, that what it means is that Henry will come back and without any agreement to meet again, you know.
Oh, yes.
That's what it's going to mean.
But I think there, too, the American people, I don't think the people are going to be asking, well, when are you going to meet again?
We'll say, well, whenever they're ready.
And because, you know, other times we've resumed after a certain length of time.
That's right.
And they all expect it to keep going.
And each step of the way, there's less anxiety built up.
The thing that has impressed me, you know, I haven't since the election spent as much time talking to people around the country as before I felt before the election.
Thank God, no.
That was kind of important.
But no one, and nonetheless I've done some talking around, but no one has asked me,
uh, how it's going.
Not even, uh, except for one, except for Fitzsimmons, who just, he just likes to be in on things, but, uh, he doesn't give a damn.
I mean, he's, but no one has said to me, are we getting a peace agreement or aren't we even Lou Harris?
I hope we are.
I think people do.
Well, but I think they think we're moving towards that.
And I think whether we get it this week, it'd be nice, uh,
Of course, the jackasses in the stock market watch it, but so what?
Well, the market's done awfully well.
They'll take a beating for a few days.
Well, they ought to.
Yeah, let's sweat it out a little.
Sure, it's done too damn well when you think about it.
But your retail sales for Christmas are up by 20%, according to the reports today.
My God, we're just in a hell of a good period.
I think the country is glad to have the election behind it.
I think the uncertainty is kind of,
that was caused by the campaign, especially by the government running kind of a dirty campaign and wild campaign, that's gone.
People were basically pretty content.
And the worst thing you want to do is, the worst thing we could do, in my opinion, is just at this particular point in time, they're feeling good.
They're feeling that, you know, you've got control of the government.
You're getting things going for the second term.
Things are relatively
On their personal front, the economy, there's no big trauma in the world.
The worst thing you could do is give them a great big jolt of excitement at this point.
It was something that I just can't believe warrants.
I think it's an issue that it should be played at.
I mean, just that they were intractable.
They didn't move from their October 8th position.
not one big, the same line you've taken.
As I say, the one problem we have is Henry.
He's got to understand that for a few days they're going to be throwing his words back at him.
I think he can handle it.
I think if he can... Oh, he can say it was at hand, but we can't, because of that, make a bad deal.
Because we're not going to be... Because they just welched on the deal.
I think Ron is absolutely right when he says that the more...
the moment is we're not going to be stampeded into it, I think.
He feels that, doesn't he?
Yes, sir.
And that was the Yankovic point, which is so valid.
You know, the American people got a little resurgence of confidence in themselves and pride in themselves because they weren't going to be pushed around.
You sort of stood out there with your chin out and said, you're not going to do this to us.
And that was a great thing for this country, isn't it?
You know, I did go so far as to say that I'm confident we're going to have an agreement.
I said, I used the word, I'm completely confident.
I mean, I did that because it was absolutely true.
You see, that's when we had had the, as I told you, we'd had that message on Saturday before the election that they were going to meet the next week.
But that still stands.
I still said we're going to get the right kind of agreement.
I think I covered it pretty well.
Oh, I think you handled it fine.
I think that, and the way the press has played it since, they...
They've kind of played it right into our hands on that, too, by trying to knock meat, and by, in effect, trying to say that they've, in effect, I think, said that I have sort of pulled Henry back.
Isn't that right?
That's right.
Or have they?
I haven't followed the press, you see.
I've been reading the damn summer.
Well, the thrust of the press, Mr. President, and they've loved to jump on Kissinger because he's a bit
has been that there's been a divergence between the President Kissinger, that Kissinger went too far on October 8th, that he did so without authority, and that there has been a split ever since, that he's been back trying to patch up.
Well, that's fine.
As I say, the credibility, I think, runs on two separate tracks.
I think your credibility, despite what you said about being perfectly confident that we would have an agreement, which I still would say,
You know, by the way, you threw cold water, a little bit of cold water, that Thursday before the election on Henry's peace at hand statement.
It needed to be done, and it was done just right.
Delicate, the week before an election, but it was right.
And I think your credibility and his are, at the moment, on two different lines and ought to stay there until we see where the hell this brings us out.
But I do think that there is not...
certainly based on anything in Henry's cables.
There's not anything that warrants going to the American people.
Yeah, what we really have here is the North Vietnamese are backing off of the things they even agreed to.
You see, there was the October 8 deal that we cannot go back to because we've gone, we went to Saigon.
Saigon said, no, we weren't consulted.
And so Henry went back to Paris.
And in going back to Paris,
he uh they agreed that uh to 12 changes i mean and now now they back off of that say no we won't go for that well now we're not uh we can't say well now you're we're not going to go back to the october 8 thing you see my point and uh but you know it's almost a classic position i think they they uh they may be drawing the line on us just to see how far i mean they may feel that we took
the October 8th deal and then pushed it, made changes, and then all of a sudden kept wanting to make more and more and more changes.
That's right.
If you want anything, we'll go back to what we started with.
That's right.
And that's not an unusual position if you're in a labor contract or anything.
Right.
You see, I think the point is that Henry may finally be exasperated, not so much by the process of the negotiation, but by the realization that he has to come home and he doesn't have it.
And that may cause him to feel that
time has come to break it off earlier than a more patient negotiator who was not under those constraints time-wise would would feel that well we have to do he's still a negotiator and he says well we uh he comes back and says well very tersely we they've uh the enemy and they'll of course will blast us and they'll say fine they didn't agree they backed off and uh
There will be a hullabaloo about what's the matter, are we ever going to get it and so forth.
We say, yes, there will be an agreement.
But my feeling is that that doesn't mean a damn thing.
Whatever they say, the public will totally...
The real question is how, if, and when they are going to negotiate.
And that's in doubt.
I mean, you can't tell.
I have a feeling myself that they eventually have to.
I just can't see how they can continue to take what we're giving them.
There's more incentive for them to than there is for us.
I don't think the congressional argument is a realistic one, Mr. President.
I think they just don't think they can be dumb enough to think that with a 61% majority, you can't pretty well have your way for quite a while, especially when there's 25,000 men, no casualties.
It's an air war, which is very impersonal, no draftees.
Frankly, I think what they're gambling on is that
that they have sized up the pressures.
They read our press, and they've sized up the pressures.
Henry is a person, and they know the problem he has.
Maybe, maybe.
And they may have a leak out of Saigon that indicates that we've put heat on there, or they may be getting it from here.
And what's the difference to them?
Then they've got the Christmas season.
They kind of play on them.
That's right.
But faced with the stark reality of what they're up against, I would think that they're not going to be battling.
They weren't before.
If they were going to play that game, play it before the election.
I think that they've got to come back to it.
And again, the other possible thesis is that they just would feel that we'd squeeze 12 additional things out of them and keep them going.
At some point, you've got to draw a line and say that's it, and maybe that's just a bit.
points that there are but in any event what you're really talking about is an ongoing process of negotiation you know when one of these things starts uh both sides really have begun to lose the will to keep it up and there's sort of an inexorable trend of events and this one just seems to have all of all the feel of that i just think you get to a point where they even when you read henry's cables you're still at 3am i do yes sir i do because well because i usually i read them as a
I read Henry's Cables as written by the guy who's right in the middle of the heated argument, and he has just been double-crossed by that son of a bitch across the table.
There's a certain intensity to the tell of Henry's Cables that's just very characteristic of what I'm accustomed to seeing people in negotiations feel like, and they kind of lose their perspective sometimes.
We all do.
That's right.
So, I mean, if there were a major change, the invasion at last April was a very significant gamble on their part.
That was something you had to... Had to act.
Had to act.
There was no choice.
But, hell, this is maybe just round three of the ten round skirmishers.
Right.
Or it may be a thrust, and they may just want to know how far they can go.
Right.
Frankly, at some point, you know, the point I've heard you make many times, damn good lesson for people to learn, is that sometimes you hurt a person more with just contempt and ignoring them than reacting strongly.
You know, the best thing we might be able to do is just sort of look down their nose and say, well, the hell with you, and go right on knocking their block off.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right, and that may be more damaging to them than...
with each turn of the negotiations, we have to go back to the American people to re-rally support.
They know damn well at some point you're running a guess.
That's right.
Maybe if you can do the same thing without having to do that, you're showing them more strength, in fact.
I think actually that Henry probably, I mean, I think he sort of feels a need for a blocking back to get out there a bit.
Oh, no doubt about it.
And he thinks he just sort of wants me to step up there and hit the ball and
then he'll breathe.
Well, we can't do that.
No, I mean, that's clear in what he's saying.
And the thing that tells me the most about, frankly, and this is why I reacted to Bob the way I did when he read me that second cable, the thing that strikes me the most is there's a total fallacy in the logic of the second cable.
I mean, the points don't, unlike Henry's normal analysis of things, which is usually very brilliant, this one, the logic fails.
So it's obvious that he's written it with a good bit of emotional esteem and would love to have you go out and play it out and embrace it and justify it.
And tell those bastards off.
And tell them all off and get the American people all excited.
Tell them they're flowing in and then all the heat is off of the position that Henry's in.
But I just don't think that Marvin Kell will spend all of his time
on TV at night talking about it.
The American people do just what our little friend, LaBelle.
They do just what LaBelle said.
They tune out what they don't want to hear.
And they really do.
Right now, if they don't want to think about the war, they tune it out.
And I just really think there's very little public agitation over it.
There's no strength on the anti-war.
side.
My God, they had that thing down here in the middle of November and got 200 people out.
The anti-war movement in this country is dead because the war is basically over for people, for everybody, except the intellectuals who are following it.
Right, right.
But I must say, though, that's the problem of corralling our own forces.
We
you could stir it up again and get the idiots coming down again and saying, oh, boy, they're bombing more.
Oh, sure.
That's the point.
That's the reason that I just think we ought to do it and not say it all along.
Well, exactly, Mr. President, plus the fact that, and this may be another point to keep in mind, the minute you do that, the other side will interpret that as either a weakening of our position or you're feeling the need to rally the people.
Therefore, they will feel that, well, there's more weakness in the president's hand or president's position than
Then he realizes it's a signal that way.
I just think you play this out, and maybe if Coleman, Siegler, and I are misreading the public attitude, I don't think we are.
Tommy's reaction was interesting.
I deliberately had Oliver read it.
I mean, let him look at it first.
He first read it in his first reaction.
He says, well, of course, I guess he's got to do it.
But then...
Then he had a second reaction.
He said, boy, that's really bad news.
He's going to have to do it.
It's going to be rough.
It's really rough.
Because he said, boy, we thought everything was on the track.
But then he realized that that's exactly how it was.
If he felt that way, that's the way the American people would feel if I went out and did it.
And did just that, exactly.
And he says, no, mustn't do it then.
And he came down hard on the other side.
You have to think it through.
And I've done the...
yellow pad two or three times a day, and I just don't see it right now.
Well, we'll let it ride a few days, and we can come to it if we have to.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
It isn't something that's a great urgency, exactly because there is no bottom line to it, because you're not really... We'll get some squeals from people saying the president should come out and explain all this damn thing, report on the war again, and all that sort of thing, but we're not going to this time.
We're not going to be panicked by the Washington press.
We've been
You know what I mean?
Oh, exactly.
They hell with them.
I mean, they, you know, too often, I think even in the past, we've reacted a little bit too much to them.
Yes, I think we have.
You know, or if anything, so I've got to make another report, I've got another crew patrol, or we've got to do this, or I must have a press conference, or I must do that.
To hell with it.
Don't do it.
Exactly right.
If you follow the Scammon thesis, because Scammon is exactly the opposite from Harris, but Scammon thinks this election was decided basically on a social issue.
That's right.
If you follow his thesis, then... Well, I agree with him, incidentally.
Well, there's a lot to it.
But looking at his thesis... Yeah, he wrote me a brilliant...
He sent me a copy of a brilliant letter that he wrote to some friends of his in the labor union movement.
I should have sent it in.
I will.
It's really quite a fascinating analysis.
But if you follow that, what he's really saying is that the country is just goddamn happy with the kind of leadership that the president has given, that they finally feel somebody's speaking for them,
and the things that really touch them in their daily lives, that they really, they're quite happy and content.
And you've got people who finally feel that the country isn't going to hell in a basket.
And I don't think they're really going to care that Kissinger comes back without an agreement.
I think that that's going to be a Washington press corps issue that Washington press corps is going to make a big deal out of.
sure henry's statements but let them i just don't think the public at this point it does not feel that people don't feel they have that much at stake except as you say they build up your things to get in we'll just we'll just we'll just have to feel that i don't but those girls they've been great we'll work with sure okay