Conversation 275-008

TapeTape 275StartTuesday, September 7, 1971 at 12:30 PMEndTuesday, September 7, 1971 at 12:55 PMTape start time00:06:57Tape end time00:25:51ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Kissinger, Henry A.Recording deviceOld Executive Office Building

On September 7, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 12:30 pm to 12:55 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 275-008 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 275-008

Date: September 7, 1971
Time: 12:30 pm - 12:55 pm
Location: Executive Office Building

The President met with Henry A. Kissinger.

     Soviet Union [USSR]
          -Announcement of summit meeting
                -Timing
                      -October 12, 1971
                -Soviets
          -Anatoliy F. Dobrynin
                -Call to Kissinger
                      -Time span between calls
                            -State Department
                      -Michael J. Mansfield
          -Communique
                -Agreement
                      -Place of meeting
                            -Moscow
                                  -Visit
                                  -Progress in relations
          -Andrei A. Gromyko
          -Press conference
          -Summit
          -Berlin agreement
          -People's Republic of China [PRC]
                -Announcement
          -Announcement of communique

                -Timing
                     -United States [US]
                     -Soviet Union [USSR]
                -Questions
                     -Press
                -Kissinger's staff
                     -Preparation of questions and answers
                -Compared with People's Republic of China [PRC] announcement
                -The President's actions
           -Other news

     Kissinger's schedule
          -People's Republic of China [PRC]
          -Kissinger's postponement
                -Attendance at Japanese dinner
          -Japan
                -William P. Rogers, U. Alexis Johnson
                -Takeo Fukuda
                      -Proposed meeting with the President
                           -Kissinger’s attendance
                      -Relations with the President

     Forthcoming United Nations [UN] vote on Taiwan, Republic of China [PRC]
          -George H.W. Bush
               -Security Council
                     -Expulsion
          -United States [US] actions at the United Nations [UN]
               -Albanian resolution
               -People's Republic of China [PRC] admission
               -Retention of Taiwan
          -Guatemala
          -Costa Rica
          -Great Britain
               -Position
          -Background
               -Bush
                     -Voting analysis
                           -Important questions

                             -Issue of Security Council seat
                                   -Taiwan
                                   -Expulsion

     The President's opponents

******************************************************************************

[Previous archivists categorized this section as unintelligible. It has been rereviewed and
released 08/10/2018.]
[Unintelligible]
[275-008-w001]
[Duration: 48s]

     The President’s opponents
          -Wallace
          -Spiro T. Agnew
                -6 (b/m)illion tax deduction
          -Ted Kennedy
                -Income Tax?
          -Pressed for time
          -Kissinger’s opinion
                -Gain Momentum

******************************************************************************

     Howard Stein
         -Dinner
         -Eugene J. McCarthy

******************************************************************************

[Previous PRMPA Personal Returnable (G) withdrawal reviewed under deed of gift 08/10/2017.
Segment cleared for release.]

[Personal Returnable]
[275-008-w002]
[Duration: 1m46s]

     Kissinger’s actions
          -Movie actors
                -Democrats
                -Left, center, right wings
                -Hubert H. Humphrey
                -George McGovern, McCarthy
                -Support for McCarthy
                -Edmund S. Muskie
                -New York City
                -California

     Conversation with Nelson Rockefeller
         -Kissinger’s conversation
         -The President's conversation
               -1960, 1968
               -Nelson Rockefeller
               -Organization
               -McCarthy

     Kissinger’s schedule
          -Talk with Howard Stein
                -McCarthy

******************************************************************************

     South Vietnam Presidential elections
          -Nguyen Van Thieu
               -Referendum effect of unopposed election
                     -Ellsworth F. Bunker
          -Administration's opponents
          -American public
               -Paul N. (“Pete”) McCloskey, Jr.
                     -[Forename unknown] Simon
                          -Dinner

                             -John B. Connally
           -Strategy
                 -Timing
                      -Berlin

     United States [US] foreign relations
          -People’s Republic of China [PRC]
          -Dobrynin
                -United States [US]-People’s Republic of China [PRC] relationships
                     -Southeast Asia
          -United States [US]-Soviet relations
                -Meeting
                     -Possible summit
                     -People’s Republic of China [PRC]
                           -Possible actions
                           -Vietnam peace settlement

     Vietnam
          -Peace negotiations
                -Prisoners of war [POWs]
                -Forthcoming elections in South Vietnam
                -Thieu
                -Effect on negotiations
                -Compromise
                -Temporary government
                      -Duration
                -Thieu
          -Press handling of issue
                -Editorial
                      -Warning against involvement in South Vietnamese elections
          -North Vietnamese
                -Compared with South Vietnamese military forces
          -Casualties
          -North Vietnam
                -Floods
                      -Effect
                           -Supplies
                           -Infiltration

     Soviet Union [USSR]
          -Signing of Accidental War, Hotline Agreements
               -Date
               -Ceremony
               -Gromyko
                     -Signing
          -Public [press?] opinion
               -US position
               -Democrats
                     -W[illiam] Averell Harriman

     H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman's conversation with the President
          -Willy Brandt letter

     Kissinger's schedule
          -Lunch
                -Connally
                      -Soviet Union developments
          -Rogers
                -Kissinger's conversation with Rogers

     Rogers
         -Information about negotiations
               -Summit Meeting
               -Dobrynin
         -Relations with Kissinger

Kissinger left at 12:55 pm.

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.

All right.
That's good.
It's all set now for a total of 12 snooze.
It's the fastest.
The only thing they understand is the capacity.
You know, when... That's a brilliant call, man.
Your instinct of not calling him 24 hours later but not calling him at all was right.
You called me in.
Remember, he called me three days later.
He called me three days later and he said, well, why didn't you call me?
I said, you know, I'll take it strictly off the record.
I hope you record it.
Just to be a lesson to the State Department.
I just want you to know what the President said to me.
He said to me, can't these guys ever do anything?
Can't they ever do anything?
And that's why within 10 hours they accepted the day.
And now that I've offered this new communique, which you may not, just not accept it.
And much better.
It doesn't show who invited the moment.
That's just to create a new Moscow.
And it doesn't say, also, I'd like ideas.
We will visit Moscow.
It may have sounds if they had summoned you.
Sure.
And very much better.
And also, I like the idea that it shows that progress has been made in our country.
It follows up to that thing I said about the equal degree until we made progress.
I've been saying a very personal commitment.
There'd be no summit until we had some progress.
And that's why it's the Apollo with the Berlin thing, the Apollo Earth.
And it's a better state than the Chinese one.
I'll tell you how we won't say we accept it.
What is your situation with regard to that?
That's why the announcement of this announcement will be made at noon here at 8 o'clock in the afternoon.
This is so easy to have questions on.
I'm really good at that.
That will override everything.
It gives me a chance to get a cheap shot at it.
I'm so flabbergasted about it.
You just have that in mind.
All you have to do with your staff is to prepare half a dozen questions in there.
And I'll just walk out and I'll let them tell me.
I'll be the only one that answers your questions.
I have to know.
I'll be the only one that answers your questions.
And so many others.
And it'll override all the other news.
I don't know.
I think there's a lot to be said.
Now, coming out of yesterday's show, you'll go to get your picture.
Thank you.
That's a Chinese man.
I put it up to my business because I thought,
If I'm not speaking, it was a Japanese dinner.
I didn't know this.
They both draw on this, and Alex does wonder whether you could have Fukuda in a town when I was in Georgia, actually.
And Alex thinks it would be good if I participated, actually, if I'm speaking.
Yeah, actually.
And of course, I don't think the language will work.
I'm speaking from a foreign language, so it's a good practice.
I'm not going to do it.
The issue in which I needed to speak, Mr. President, was this representation issue.
It's now the judgment of state, and I've checked it with George Bush, and I'm sure that he shared it.
Unless the war in favor of decent getting the security passes, we won't be able to see the security passes.
They wanted to send a cable over to begin.
Now, you know what they could do to the right.
We wouldn't just act the estimate, but we'd both agree to it.
It means that the tie-on would be expressed.
We do do it at 60-50 chance that it could be saved, but we cannot tell you in good conscience that it doesn't.
60 could tell us that it is to save that thing called some of the right-wing senators.
We don't come out permanently for their expelling.
They will be expelled in the center of the center.
I'm on the front of it.
Then we can get enough sponsors for seeding communist China, and keeping Taiwan there.
Sometimes when I think of seeding them, it's actually not a good reason.
But while those groups are engaged, we're going to be growing it too.
Yeah.
Sometimes we can do it.
I want to follow your age on this, Bill.
They also decided not to.
Oh, we'll see how long they can post about this.
They've got up to now.
It's worth it more than I can post everything.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I think Bush made a voting analysis, and it's really pretty clear that we would carry the important question about the expulsion of 60 to 50 to 70 percent.
Without it, we will lose 4461 .
We can't keep timeline .
If the council has covered the event, .
They're truly irresponsible.
When I said, hey, I don't .
I think as long as they don't have any football experience, they're not so fast.
They're not so fast.
They're not so fast.
I'm sorry.
The other thing, though, is that I want Howard Stein to keep McCartney's race.
That's what I'm doing.
I'm going to be talking into it.
That's what I'm talking about.
This is the race.
And I don't do anything.
And what I'm doing, some of the movie actors I know who have done that.
where it matters it matters
I have the same as Drew.
He's never done it before.
He didn't do it in 60.
He didn't do it in 68.
He went through motions and he really didn't.
You know how Nelson worked himself.
I talked him up enormously to the college guy.
Here you are.
Thank you for watching.
Mr. President, I've hired you to bunker over the weekend to get you to publish some precise conditions on the referendum to indicate that the opposition has a vote.
I always think that our opponents are going to try to hit us with it.
I do not believe that the American public gets much of a chance.
Simon is such a lame maniac.
We always play into number one class, and we're coming up.
And I don't think my chest is allowed to support it, but it's great to be part of it.
So my instinct, well, it was not wrong.
I was building up on the two teams, but a little bit now, my instinct is to go into the whole game, and I'm going to see whether it'll be good.
I think that
in China for a while now, and coupled with the end of combat operations, coupled with the end of draft leads to Vietnam, and both of us, the other Chinese, I guess, have been sent with plenty of delays.
They've been ended by negotiations.
Well, I have had one, so I'm suggesting which I wanted to try out, which is Iran.
And the obvious is spinning, I'm crazy about the Chinese.
So it's been a brilliant time span.
And so our relationship with China, basically, is to Southeast Asia.
And the basic peace settlement is to go to Southeast Asia for a while.
It's a good answer meeting, a secret meeting in Russia.
I'd be willing to go there.
That way I didn't get a secret meeting out of the government.
If the credits were having settled, they would be laying it out for the Chinese.
I think that the Chinese would like this to happen.
I frankly have come to this view as a result of the election, Mr. President.
I no longer insist, and I would not say this to anybody except you, I don't think that we can insist that you must run the election.
I mean, that is now down the drain as a result of this behavior.
But I think the compromise field we could make, if there was a meeting in Russia, would be less.
No election within six months.
He passed a peace act a month before the election.
There is a temporary government for one month that runs the election.
He was committed to run in the election.
You cannot bar him from political life.
That would be treacherous.
He can no longer claim that an election is green and he runs.
I don't think he's screwed up.
In fact, that might work.
Or I can't believe the press now is getting out.
The only thing is actually the press is ambivalent with Washington Post.
That's an editorial today warning us against getting involved in the domestic politics.
They're afraid that we will adopt the policy of democratization that we've been stuck there for a long time.
So that you don't get the same pattern behind it that you did before.
I'll tell you, I don't think that our Vietnamese is a shell.
I think that the South Vietnamese, about a few times, about half of them were in the fight.
And if I say that, I'm thinking, two, three hundred calories a week.
That's quite a lot.
That would be tremendous blood.
They have announced this reverse catastrophe in 30 years.
That, in our judgment, is going to set that dairy supply in front.
It will sit there in filtration for four to six weeks.
Now it's easy to sell it.
It's another great plus for us.
And we've had a bad shape.
I'll help you.
There's this question of getting that down, which is why we're doing this now.
But at least this thing is going to show them, because objectively it means that we could solve this system.
But around the 18th, we're going to go down signing and disagreeing with the board on the 22nd, or the 23rd.
I'm sorry.
They've done a thing to us.
They've done a thing to us.
And the Democrats, they're not going to do anything.
They won't do anything.
They won't do anything.
They won't do anything.
They won't do anything.
They won't do anything.
I think you've got this.
Let's figure out some way to do it.
I don't know.
I just say, I want to do it.
I'm just like, we need to come up and say, here it is.
I think they want to do it.
All right.