On July 23, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 3:08 pm to 3:27 pm. The Camp David Hard Wire taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 196-030 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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?
You in Washington?
Yeah.
Oh yeah, they told me it's hotter than hell down there.
It's even warmer than, uh, Camp David today.
The problem is, was it really, uh, was it alright sitting outside?
I would think it would be pretty warm.
Not too bad, huh?
Yeah.
Around the pool, that's right.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I mean, it's a range.
It's just one of those things.
That's the very first analysis.
The information is that it should be off, you know, in a while, rather than off, because I think we've got to have two hotels.
We can't be in the same hotel.
So we've got to go back and forth.
You know, there's always got to be that little business.
Otherwise, it's just going to work out in other places.
And also, it would look, too, as if we didn't want it there.
That's the other thing.
And he'll be well-received.
I'm thinking that about 35% of all the people in Hawaii have got this background.
30 years ago, we got one of his disciples.
He was very old then.
Yeah, at most.
Yeah.
Again, the problem with the ambassador, but there again, he doesn't know that kind of opinion, and of course there has to be a direct channel.
But we have to have a direct channel, that's not something that's illegal in places.
One thing that is, of course, important to us, I told everybody that I want to, if they do, are able to make an arrangement on this, you know, this trade path to whatever it is.
If it does work out, which I hope it does, that should be held before the meeting so we've got something positive to come out of the meeting rather than just getting to know you, you see.
And I just hope that this can be back around about 26 and so forth in November and our array.
Well, it'll be hard.
Yeah.
Give him.
Sure.
That's all right.
He got hurt in the Italian convention.
Yeah.
That's all right.
In other words, he can't come at all.
Just to show that we're not ignoring the attendance.
Explore having the President of Italy, but having him in the September period.
What we don't need is a defeat.
That's the plan.
Okay, I think we can talk to him about it.
Yeah.
He says we should.
Well, then, uh, it has to be put to him very directly.
We can't have, well, we can't handle what would appear to be a defeat, even though it isn't going to be that bad, but it'll be blown up like hell over here if they, uh, um, uh, I don't know.
And I think, you mean they withdraw from Quantree City, of course that's, well, that's army.
That's better.
That's exactly what they ought to do.
The other side would do what they ought to do.
The Allies did it, the Battle of the Bulge, too.
I mean, the Germans went ahead and they cut in behind them.
It's a classic military maneuver, everybody knows that.
Well, I would, time's a-wasting.
I'm sure you got away from the warning.
Have you?
Yeah, all right.
Well, there's nothing more important than not to have, first, it's important to our negotiations, and it's important to the reaction of Americans here.
They can get damn discouraged with this war.
if we, if they, if the press out there, which they will inevitably try to do, build something and do a big band of heat, you know, and that sort of thing.
Now, I assume, of course, that they're, it makes sense for us to do a pound and a half out of them with the air power and so forth, so they must be, hopefully they can avoid it after the withdrawal.
I called him about it last night.
And then I said, how about this?
And he said, well, as of the present time, the attacks have been greatly exaggerated by the press.
But on the other hand, on the other hand, I said, now you're going to just watch it, because we just, I just used the term, we can take a retreat, we can't take a defeat.
That's the point.
A retreat is no problem.
I mean, particularly if it's, you know, you don't do it in any way.
I think that as far as that's concerned, that's why they're all bright guys.
Why the hell don't they think of this?
Well, for Christ's sakes, we didn't tell them to pick one tree.
Huh?
No, that's not hard.
I mean, that's the Jew's idea, of course.
He wants to regain it.
But in terms of the negotiating position, I think that's what we say.
We want to get in the military in terms of the negotiating position.
The important thing is not to have a significant amount of success at this point.
They cannot have us just put it squarely on that.
We've got to wireline it to that effect.
We've discussed it.
Let's get it moving a little faster than we, you know, for the time molasses gets through the bureaucracy and what we...
So let's just let it go.
In fact, you're going to put the monkey in his back.
So he'll reconsider this.
You know, it's half all of it.
It's not going to last.
It's not going to be for the withdrawals and the like.
But we've got the responsibility.
there, they get exactly what they're doing here.
Remember they outran themselves.
They were going to one of those damn towns we were trying to take to Poland, remember?
They threw everything in there.
That was a stupid thing to do, wasn't it?
They say we're a lot better off now than we were then.
We were in concentration.
We were fighting hell at the time of Lansau.
We were fighting all over the place.
We were fighting in Laos.
We were fighting in Cambodia.
Huh?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But there we were just piddling it all away, you know, just to give it to them.
But now they are, there's no question there, there's no question of what it is, putting it in where it matters and not going just for the non-crime strategy.
That's right.
You're checking a, because I'm not going to look at these, you know, I don't count the surgeons every day, but you and Hank have got to do that.
And if it ever changes, I want to know.
Yeah, yeah, that's great, that's great.
Sure, that's great, that's very short.
I'm feeling that it may not be as, I think it may not be as bad as the quality of that dam that I need.
Well, I may come back and say, look, we can do it.
If he does, fine.
That's right, that's right.
We're not trying to make the family, we are saying, look,
based on negotiations, the effect of negotiations, that we do not want to defeat at this point in the effect on the American support, and that's the important thing.
It's okay to defeat, avoid, which we can, good God.
The defense can always avoid a defeat, if they have a will.
What's the weather factor up there?
Is that going to become a
Yeah, so they'll have a hell of a time putting on a major event after September 15th, probably.
Under October, in other words.
They're going to have a hell of a time for another event.
They're shooting their rod now.
Commander Thompson said that it made a very perceptive remark when he first began.
He said that the enemy had launched.
That's too late.
Uh, for military purposes.
Too early for political purposes.
Huh?
It may be that that's true, that it's too late for military purposes, but it's too early for the election.
They're launching for a very different reason.
They were launching it to affect that social climate.
Follow up and let me know tomorrow, will you?
All right.
Get a little rest.
Bye.