Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 251-021
Date: Thursday, April 29, 1971 at 9:31 AM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Haig, Alexander M., Jr.; [Unknown person(s)]
Recording device: Old Executive Office Building
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/251-021

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 Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:00] Hey there.
[0:02] Al, do you have a, did the POW statement go out for, did he get one off yet today?
[0:07] Do you have that now, or have you sent it, or where is it?
[0:15] Fine, let me go over a couple of other things.
[0:19] With regard to this, as you all probably think, that's a South Vietnamese operation, is it not?
[0:26] Not as far as, as far as, as far as any attitude, any situation with regard to secrecy and so forth.
[0:33] That is not with regard to what our people are doing or their usual people or whatever.
[0:38] So, mainly, this is mainly a South Vietnamese action operation.
[0:43] It's going, you know.
[0:48] About the secrecy of it, I mean, it's very...
[0:52] The fact point is, you can't be really saving for others.
[0:56] Nothing to report.
[0:58] What is it?
[0:58] I don't know.
[0:59] They're not making anything else.
[1:02] They're nothing to cover up for.
[1:05] Right?
[1:06] Right.
[1:07] Right.
[1:09] Yeah.
[1:10] Okay.
[1:10] There's a situation with regard to the one thing in here with regard to...
[1:19] Aid to India.
[1:20] Somebody said we're contemplating aid to India to help refugees from Pakistan.
[1:26] I'm sure as hell hope we're not.
[1:30] What was it?
[1:30] We had a request.
[1:33] Refugees?
[1:34] Do we do that through the West Pakistan government?
[1:37] How do we do it?
[1:39] So we will help.
[1:40] What about a request from India?
[1:42] Have we had one?
[1:43] Well, I suppose we can say on that that our attitudes toward refugees were always separate from any other activity.
[1:55] What about the idea that the one question that somebody may raise is that we...
[2:04] whether or not the United States is helping to end the fighting in Pakistan as are the Russians.
[2:09] I don't know.
[2:10] There's not much fighting going on now.
[2:12] It's not working.
[2:15] It's not done.
[2:17] What are they doing, you know?
[2:21] It's not the battle.
[2:21] And then they decided somehow, haven't they?
[2:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[2:27] In the briefing book, I noticed an answer with regard to the committee on which, at considerable length, says that we welcome a breakthrough on Suez.
[2:37] Is that the statement, or is the muscle why?
[2:41] The feeling on that is that I don't want to put the whole trust on Suez.
[2:49] It might be prior to the time Rogers gets there.
[2:53] He just ought to do whatever he wants to do.
[2:56] In other words, is this what the state wants us to say, what Rogers wants us to say?
[3:00] See, in fact, the basic draft of this is we would walk on the break road to Sue Ann's.
[3:05] It doesn't look like we could get one on the general.
[3:10] Well, we all know that's true.
[3:12] But do we want to say that so that when he gets there, that's not all they'll talk about is Sue Ann?
[3:19] But I'm sure that Suez is part of it, but we're not going to speculate.
[3:23] Secretary Schultz is not going to be there.
[3:26] We're not trying to dictate anything.
[3:29] We're just trying to get Suez as part of it.
[3:32] I think it's better to keep it pretty open, though, because it's a miserable situation anyway.
[3:44] Suez?
[3:45] So that's different too, but either.
[3:48] And in fact, the whole, there isn't,
[3:50] There's no indication of any movement on either side, either on any point.
[3:57] I think the problem is that Israelis just aren't, they don't want to make any offers.
[4:03] Their situation out there just isn't what it is.
[4:11] Now, is there anything else new?
[4:14] I've just checked the papers.
[4:17] What did you say?
[4:19] I'm not going to mention it, but I just wanted to use it all for a very short time.
[4:47] He still seems to be fairly optimistic.
[4:50] I'm glad.
[4:50] It's not hysterical or anything like that.
[4:54] I'm going to take a very disavowable China thing.
[4:56] I'm going to take a very...
[4:57] I'm trying to cool everything.
[5:00] We've got everybody talking about this.
[5:04] What are we going to do?
[5:07] When they're talking about, well, we're going to do this, it looks obvious.
[5:11] Let me ask.
[5:13] The New York Times said today that some fellow by the name of Braves made a statement after a long day of consultation.
[5:22] You know what I'm talking about.
[5:24] The statement Braves made this morning.
[5:30] He approved.
[5:31] I'm going to slap everybody on the wrist for speculating.
[5:45] And that scared me.
[5:47] There's something else to it a little bit.
[5:49] And of course, the goddamn access to the other parts of the bomb.
[5:54] I don't think of anything else to get over to get out back to the prisoners.
[5:56] And that's about the only other thing I'll probably need to know is what I already have.
[6:03] But one other thing, if you could get that just sometime in the morning here, every evening, it's either my fingers are still right with regard to the...
[6:12] the figures with regard to the number of people that, uh, the number of people that they've killed in North Vietnam or so, I think it's around that many, the number of people that they've killed in the South, and, uh, in the Hamptown area, I think that, uh, we need a little bit more specific numbers.
[6:37] Dig around a little, get me a little stuff like that.
[6:39] Would you do that?
[6:40] I'll use solid figures.
[6:41] Okay.
[6:43] All right.