Nixon & Haldeman on People's Republic of China and Ping-pong diplomacy

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I guess Colson stood up and did his tricks.

That's what I heard.

It's very important that this is very, very important.

We've got to be very strong on that.

I don't mind that.

I don't mind that person.

Thank you.

I said, you guys put it together.

The one, two bunch is just, is just, is just, is just, is just, is just, really shaping the establishment.

and he said it's rippling people, they're getting an appeal.

So people made a reaction on that over, yeah, because, interesting point, because it visualizes, if it had just been you making an announcement about trade with China, you would have said, oh, the president, you know, some goddamn government, maybe that's why the Chinese didn't know.

Yeah, right, it is.

Pretty smart, huh?

But it played for us.

People understand ping pong players who don't even play ping pong.

People don't understand trade restrictions and barriers.

That's right.

And I said to Dick, I was curious, I said, I've been very surprised that we haven't had a right-wing violent knee-jerk right-wing reaction on this.

He said, no, you aren't going to get that.

So you've got to be prepared.

You will get, because it will take a little time, they're not sure how to deal with it either, you will get the human event syndrome will start exciting, impacting and saying, gee, we're looking down the barriers, this is a very good thing, we'll be taking in and all that.

But he saw immediately that you've got a very powerful counter-argument.

As long as the Russians don't like it,

Or if you start, if anything develops into Vietnam Russians.

Oh yeah.

Either way.

But it's going to be one way or the other.

Yeah, it has to be.

Either one way or the other.

But either way that it is the Russians are either going to condense, which then all the right wingers will say that was clever and smart, or the Russians are going to come towards us with the right wingers who are going to say, well, it was clever and smart.

See what I mean?

Yeah.

That was Dave's point.

You win either way on whatever the Russians did, and then that's the cards you play.

with the right ones.

And then he said the economy .

Keep going, but you've got to .

We've got a one-day story now.

Well, that's right.

It wasn't just the GNV.

There was a whole bunch of stuff.

Auto production, housing, and retail sales.

Yeah, the whole thing.

As we kept saying, when the sun comes out and the green leaves start coming out of the trees, and just the whole, there is a very different kind of feeling.

People walk in and say, gee, I think things are going great.

And the market goes, is all of America sinking now?

Right?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, you would notice the market, of course, is probably there.

See, all of us, I mean, all of us, we're spending money on all sorts of things.

We're spending money on all sorts of things.

Dick is one of the first world leaders in the United States.

He would like to be in a campaign organization, not in the government, but to work in a campaign.

He makes the point that he'd be very good.

We need to die with some brains to demolish the opposition from not far across.

He said that would be very effective there.

There's an outside opportunity, but we don't have anybody inside to do that.

He said all of a sudden he'd be despised.

He'd be despised on what the opposition's doing.

He'd all of a sudden be despised on what they're doing themselves.

He said it wouldn't hurt you a bit for me to be using some of my ties to knowing what's, what's Henry's people are doing and what's the State Department's doing and all that as you go into the election period.

I'll get him right away and put it down.

He must come because I'll tell you, put him in that outside office, there's a reason to.

And I don't despise

Henry's staff is not trustworthy, of course.

State department is not trustworthy.

And defense is not trustworthy.

All right, I'll let Nick go a little grumbling around there.

He warned us on that whole sentence of business.

If you recall, we got in my office practically in tears.

I don't understand.

And he didn't react when they called out him for doing their spotting, which is what he wanted to turn them on.

We had a confrontation, and I said, boy, they're better than what we've done.

and all this stuff, and then the lighting comes back, and it's good.

It's just excellent.

That whole game resources thing is kind of a couple of things where we've got sort of this, they survived the company, and there's some problems, and, you know, construction, but the game resources couldn't come back the way the markets come back, or something along those game resources.

So it's coming back.

But as they got serious, they've done most of the management.

So games have completely

I think he's an arrogant, difficult guy to deal with.

He's also a dance partner.

He is.

I still say I want a bunch of goss around us.

Let's get some goss.

We've never had that.

We've had it, but we've never had people that would be so hungry, you know, like Alan.

Alan's all out.

He's just leaving us.

He is, but he has private law practice.

I don't remember that.

There's a basic problem with him in here, that fighting, well, fighting Mitchell, Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Newsom, and all the stuff Newsom's interested in doing is stuff that relates one way or another to Mitchell, and Mitchell just won't let in.

He can't be used in that way.

But he can be a resource guy for us.

He was in the private world, right?

He was part of that very circle.

But Allen was a must-have.

He would be a hell of a role model.

He's absolutely right.

That's right.

He's inspired.

Another thing, you know, he might work by your hand, but we also want him.

I'm inspired on all those people in terms of what they do after the election.

My God, they're going to find out where they are.

I like that Charlie Osteen, who is a church.

My God, we're not going to have you on that.

I just decided they all have to go .

The only one, and Andrew won't agree to it, I had just worked with Dan at Cisco.

Cisco's working on the other .

Well, I think we had, it is, we did get a little break, and then we had to have the comics show, and all of the China shows.

to come out of this, that period, and that

with everything.

We've been just taking a hell of a whack on that.

And I think it's about, it seems to me, that shorts up the pace in some of it.

Well, it does for a while.

But I really can't keep down to see how much good stuff that's, whether it's to suffer, whether it's just going to sit and go away.

Some of the good times, and then start edging in.

Well, what will move you up is the summit.

There's no question about it.

Yeah, the summit will move, and it will stay, too.

And if you're basing, you're underlining stuff, that's solid, too.

And if you don't have a grade on the economics side.

Yeah.

I remember when our board hosted, we used to push, you know, everybody to yank around, you know, that.

Oh, and it's a way to approach it, yeah.

Remember that, so fire hose got away, just as we did.

That's what happened.

Definitely, that's right.

Nobody should use that line of conversation.

You don't want to read too much into it.

In case of fear, that is very bad.

What do you mean with that?

What else do you want?

What the hell?

I don't even know what you're talking about.

I don't know what you're talking about.

No, no, no.

I don't have it on hand.

I'm not looking for a question.

Oh.

I'm very confused by where to begin.

just because it was showed that these jurors don't buy the idea of standing firm.

They say it's great.

It shows the need for different types of men in this country.

There's all kinds of men in the staff.

There's not many staff, except in certain areas, there's not many staff gentlemen in the Archdiocese.

I've got to have a few people around here.

I think he did.

And if you get a summit, we'll know it in May or November.

So you'd be working up to it.

I think the cabinet changes in the Senate are coming.

People aren't paying much attention to what's going on.

Have the names ready to submit to the Senate as soon as they come back.

So we're hoping that under the rainbow of the summits,

I suspect he's probably frustrated with the conversation today, and they are much more than they spent six million years at.

I don't know what else he wants out of it.

I don't know.

You have to go way up with it and invest it.

You have to get a very certain amount of money.

There's a lot of American change, and the Secretary of Agriculture told me about it a year before.

The new Secretary won't have long enough to be an advocate, but those don't want to give him a chance.

Maybe with those changes, of course, there's a lot of other questions.

No Secretary of Agriculture is going to win any support.

Except when you get a guy to do fun, it doesn't sound so good.

Then the question is whether you can do something about it.

Well, yeah, I think you just got to work with him.

Yeah.

Because he doesn't have any... Yeah, because he doesn't...

He will go out there.

Praise the Christ.

The difficulty with Brock is you can shut him out.

You can't be in more trouble than you can.

Roger's a layer.

Thank you.

I'd love to get me a secretary of attorney.

I can't put them in an assistant secretary.

I don't know how to do it.

This week was.

Thank you.

They don't show you how the people .

They don't care about Latin America .

They don't care about .

Pakistan is a great, great place.

I know.

It's kind of nice having a revelation.

That's a big line there.

It's got all this depression.

I was a kid, but I just had a problem.

I want to remember bombing.

We're requesting a case if you'd like that.

We don't show up for polls.

It's a hard issue on campus.

On one hand, we're always working on programs, but we believe in the FBI.

That's something we can do, is have the opposition step all the time on campus issues.

Good, good, good.

But they've got a little stuff like that.

They can't, they're fighting the war.

The one book they've got on the war is the date.

I'm going to play that.

You can go.

You can't do much with that.

Well, you could.

You can't.

You don't have any water.

You don't have any service.

You don't have a car.

Check on that.

You don't want to risk the business.

He just doesn't share anything with you.

You just sit with him and it's basically personal.

Well, that's what I heard most of the time.

Most of the time.

And that was too hard.

I didn't.

Apparently, he raised some money.

It's just, he just didn't have a lot of money now.

And also, he makes the decision, you don't want to put your husband

It's like Henry's first draft of the book.

And it's asking too much.

He thinks he's going to do some, get some time, maybe some time.

what he thought at first was the best thing he might do.

They haven't really done that.

Bill would be very compassionate and persuasive.

And it might give him another tie in the Secretary of State.

Or have that done rather than him.

It's giving him all of that heart because he does not realize it.

They've been heroic long enough, but that's the point.

You can't tell them if you can be heroic or not.

Because they think it is anyway.

What else did you talk about?

What about things like following up?

Can somebody follow up with regard to a check sheet?

A check sheet?

Yeah, well, that's working on the test sheets.

We've already done more prisoner police than they have.

Yeah, we want to do some more.

We're good.

I mean, he wants to grow much faster and exploit more

and the way not to get the Chinese to cooperate and just appear to be there to take our time.

And it's got so much momentum of its own which has driven the media to exploit it and it's just been rolling along and people are talking about it.

Next right, Shanghai.

The team is in Shanghai.

First the team's losing every match, which is kind of interesting.

String up a little American chauvinism and say, that's why they picked the paintball team and it's going to be one of our athletic teams in the MVP.

That's not bad.

It's true.

My back is a lot on the paintball team.

In fact, it's a pretty good game.

It's not good, but nobody compares to China in China.

It's a very big game.

I'm sure it's a pretty good game.

It's also trying to beat China.

We will decide this in the middle of the weekend.

So the President of the Commission is going to do his job.

The National Electoral Commission.

I haven't got a hell of a lot to say.

I've got to be cool.

I've got to play it pretty cool for a while.

I've got an apology.

I'm going to have a writing presentation.

It's sort of a good plan.

It's very up-to-date.

It does help me.

I like that.

You read the thing on that, it's really quite a bunch of kids apparently.

We don't have it over here.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Nixon & Haldeman on People's Republic of China and Ping-pong diplomacy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 16, 1971

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