On November 11, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Henry A. Kissinger, unknown person(s), White House operator, and Helmut ("Hal") Sonnenfeldt met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 11:29 am to 1:16 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 298-005 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I don't know what mechanic gets paid for it, I don't know.
He does a very good job.
The thing that Bill has, that usually more you could work with, the thing that he's got also is just an incredible ability to synthesize and to make it breathe.
We'll cut some down and also get some logs when we're done too.
It's an active job.
We have no problem now.
That's great.
And all we do is we don't have to wait.
Because that really helps.
Because that's something we've been worried about.
There's a lot of studies that do that.
I just played the reed with you.
Oh, great.
That was an outstandingly good ceremony he had done, because it was so totally simple.
Fifty years ago today, I'm not talking in there.
And I didn't.
I'm in quite an unethical situation, you know.
I'm supposed to tell somebody.
I mean, you know, you should tell everybody.
There's no more of this color for a dollar.
I don't know the situation.
I didn't do it.
I didn't do it.
Yeah, I didn't do it.
That was a good touch, too, on the guy from the original honor guard.
He was in the honor guard 50 years ago, and they put it in.
And he came to set it over, and then he saw it.
I know at the last, he just had it back in his eye.
Oh, I'll tell you what.
People are all right.
I must say they have the ability to write.
There's so much more.
Better to say so though.
Anyway, I don't think BT is the case at school these days.
I'm sure it will be.
And part of the incident, I think you can see it in the enormous size of bookshelves in the United States and in the Bible, but I don't want to take this of them.
You're writing briefly, personally, and so forth.
I finally know that I am to declare a speech on the subject of mine, but I don't understand this comment.
Working with our research and all of the credit, all of them.
have IQs perhaps 50 or 60 points above mine.
They can't put it down.
I doubt they had IQs, but I think it's a question of self-discipline.
That's what it is.
That's what I mean.
I don't think there's any more to do to cool them down.
Is it because the professors don't push them to do it?
I don't know.
The teachers should make it.
The professors don't force them to do it.
The whole educational system...
And there's a course in Yale now called Poetry in Biology.
Poetry in Biology.
Poetry in Biology.
I've met a lot of people around there doing this subject.
And if you're here, you know what it is.
They're expanding this first two terms on depopulation.
On American depopulation.
In Vietnam, it's a cover.
Henry, look at this.
Look at this kind of thing, this whole business of activism.
Universities here at the Corp, I keep reading more about this Cornell study.
I didn't learn who that probably was.
This was probably left when you're pretty close to being a communist.
He's putting this on.
And they've done it for years.
And what they're doing is they're using figures from the year 1966.
and throwing them into it 67.
And on that basis, they're getting a low average for the period 66-67.
Well, the boundary was higher.
It was very little in 66.
I mean, you know, it was the gradual escalation.
The height of the boundary was 68.
Why don't they take that?
Well, that was Flint's point this morning.
If you take 68, which is the value, perhaps, what has happened?
If you compare it with what we found when we came in, which is what we have to be touched by,
We have reduced it by the figures.
I can't do a little... You know, I've heard of something.
I know the CPS knew something this morning.
They said they lost eight Americans yesterday.
They just told them it was four and a half months.
So what was the telepathy?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It may be that, it may not be anything, it may be just five people in a hospital all the time, all the time.
That's right.
And where it was good, it was good.
I'll tell you, so it's, do you know how much, how many the British lost on March 21st, 1880?
Dead?
Well, I don't know.
I don't know.
I think it was 33,000.
Dead?
In one day?
In one day?
I don't know.
Nobody ever knows.
The slaughter of World War II was not the slaughter of World War I. I mean, cities, you know what?
Right?
My God, those great German and French and British armies rolled back and forth across there.
And they lost them by the thousands.
They didn't actually.
They left them, but they didn't do much of it.
They went five miles and tried.
They sloughed over that ground.
I bet the British lost 33,000 and they burned ten miles in vain.
No, no, that's right.
That March 20th version was a great German victory.
The 10 miles did change hands.
And the Germans lost the war.
That was the biggest move.
Yeah, and the Germans lost the war that day because they lost a little less than the British, but they didn't play great.
The Germans lost 600,000 total casualties in that battle in three months.
When the French lost the war.
On the defense.
On the defense.
It is, it really does get out of perspective.
Now we're talking about seven.
Seven, for Christ's sakes.
But I find now, I get really back to the new speaker, but also the group of yesterday.
You know, they put a plan around the deadline of the debt issue.
I mean, that, I was worried about that.
So they didn't say, how do we answer the question?
I said, I'll tell you how you answer it, you'll have to pay the people.
You ought to know what you're talking about.
You ought to know what you're talking about.
You ought to know what you're talking about.
The North Vietnamese are receiving a billion dollars of aid from communist China and the Soviet Union, and we are supposed to deliver the people who are fighting against them.
What you are saying is surrender on that basis, and not only the surrender that was forced, but a lot of the surrender that was done in Vietnam.
Yeah, well, also, also, when you've given the statistics of what happened in North Vietnam after they had surrendered,
They've got a half a million, but without a question, die.
But the sacrimonious drivel that the killing should stop.
That we should, yeah, the killing should stop.
Yeah, who's gonna, what about, who's gonna stop the North?
That's right.
Huh?
We've made enough of this, and we're not killing, Jesus Christ.
It's, but actually, I can't judge from the opinion, but from the media,
The newspeak people got absolute laces peeling out of my hands on Tuesday night.
And, uh, you know, here's the point of it, anyway.
Matt Gruenbaum yesterday said, you're the man of the year, there's no other possibility.
There's no other possibility.
There's no other possibility.
I was going to say that the problem we have is that nobody can make that much out of it.
You can see what they can make out of it.
You can't care what is wrong.
You can think of the bomb.
You can think of anybody there.
The war is still an issue.
And it depends what happens to the people.
I believe in the president.
I don't think he's going to do it.
A lot of people are fiddling away.
Drawing down the Capitol, which he would do then, by standing there, is unconscionable.
The Newsweek people told me that MacGregor had told them four weeks or six weeks ago that after November would be all good, really, it would look silly.
Well, God damn it, you tell this to Newsman and he goes back to country.
You are stirring up the animals.
Laird has been outrageous.
and we accumulate the capital a nickel at a time, and they spend it, and others.
I don't, I think that the thing that would kill us is if Saigon were communist on the election day, and people would say, all of this he did.
I do not believe that 40,000 volunteers can be a political issue, and no draft case that gives you 200,000 million to murder them.
If we have nothing to do with others at all, on defense, I have no problem with that.
It just means it's not a policy issue.
You're right, it's only a policy issue.
But we've been drinking, though, now.
Oh, I know, that's what I mean.
That's why so much rise in what we're doing.
Let me ask you, Henry, about the press thing now, as to what we should do.
We've got a new starter every day.
I've got to go over and spend some time with it.
We've got to carry it back to home here.
So, you know, we've got to go over and spend some time.
Who in the hell in the cabinet is strong?
Well Richardson, I've got to say Richardson.
And that job has been damned good.
Well, I'm sorry.
I didn't get a chance, Henry, to talk to the patient before, but I hope you did.
If you sent somebody looking on the wall, it would be hard.
It won't do.
And I know all those people admired what you did.
Oh, Meyer.
He's literally got the military side.
Well, I told him to pay attention to our stuff.
I don't know what you're doing.
Charlie Meyer's a very convincing fellow, you know.
Here we are.
Let me ask you, do the French have anything, any place left in the world?
They got nothing in Africa?
The rest of the city?
They got anything?
They don't, we couldn't beat it with Canary Island or something?
some bistro or, what I'm getting at is that we don't think we could go to the South of France to see somebody.
The trouble is that if you go to the South of that, by some point I'm a year out of 12, there's almost a couple that are planning on not going to France.
And look, we get off the other end, if we get the Barnes trip worked out.
Look, let me ask you this.
If we get the Maloney trip worked out,
well then i would do i could do this i could go to france and the london and have him come here you can't do that jesus christ
to manage the bomb that France prepared to be useful to us in America.
It was very, very strong.
One of the other activists, the president of the Virgin Islands, unfortunately, are American.
Well, there's some French activists.
There are.
They don't want to do it.
They don't want to go to the Martinique.
They ought to be in Martinique.
But the president, on the idea of a ground to Chicago, I hate this.
They don't like it.
No, because the way that we put it is rather to do it in a way that if he goes to Michigan, and that's the reason he's taking it.
He just came to his personal long-term student, and so it was nice.
Okay, take him to Chicago.
Then we won't have a state plea with Bush because we won't have a dinner.
And dinner is not a good place to have a dinner in Florida.
It's not the right place for it.
Is there anything you can do to stop them from coming down from the mountain?
You've got a sword, right?
The third facility, if he brings a party with him on the third facility, what will you do?
You're a little bit closer, but could you use the deepest beam, a bow, or one of the lightning?
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
What can I ask of you?
I have no objection.
I have certainly no objection to going to... You see?
Well, the only sensible thing to do is to say, look, if you want him to come to Europe, if you come to Europe, there's no way you can come to Europe without going to other European countries.
On the other hand, you have to talk with him, too.
And therefore,
We are willing to make it through.
And this is a special accommodation to us, and whatever needs to be coming over, or any other needs to be coming over.
I don't know if it is.
I don't know.
Probably not in there.
There it is.
That's what we always do.
That's what we eat.
That's what we always do.
You know that it's very nice down here.
It's a great place to eat.
It's a great place to eat.
It's a great place to eat.
It's a great place to eat.
Whatever, whatever, whatever it is now.
They could do it over here.
What do you think about taking the possibility of going to Europe?
I'm just jumping around.
I don't know.
I don't know.
The President of NATO once told me, and we get it from all sources, the economic thing is really difficult.
The NBFR saying, which you are not particularly pushing, but the state is pushing, is giving them the idea which all of them are opposed to now.
Are they?
Yes.
Yeah, you should at any event say absolutely that you do not feel the best about life.
Oh, I wouldn't want to say that.
So you could, it would tend to overshadow the nature of what you would say would be, you know, every, you know, project that's offered, that you just, once it's been made.
Oh, by December?
Yeah.
the time that Pompidou had set aside to send you to the sea.
Ordinance should be limited, but another thing to do is put in a name, like in another statement.
It's probably dangerous for you to meet all of them together until you've made some preliminary deals with the key figures individually.
Why don't I try this, Mr. President?
Why don't I draft a letter from you to Congress to say that nobody, of course you would do it, ma'am, and you recognize, and would be hurt, and would be good.
On the other hand, we do not want to make a major move on the issues before us without having consulted with them alone.
We cannot go to Europe without going to at least Boston and London also.
This would then make it hard for us to have these embedded under these conditions.
We would not be able to come either to the United States or to the Western Hemisphere.
On a French island, there's the Western Hemisphere.
Or any other, let's say, any other, other than coming to Europe.
The other hand, if he doesn't accept it, then we may decide that we don't want to go to Europe.
Right?
French Guyana, I think it's really a lovely place.
It's a temple site.
Well, we'll be in San Martín.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't think so.
Huh?
100,000 people.
I gave it a written notice and then discarded it on day three.
There's a mission, a chief of mission made it in January.
No, Roger just mentioned that.
He said, no, no, chief of our mission, if you wanted to, you could go and address our chief of mission and then go and see what we do.
But it seems a little bit ridiculous that...
If you want to talk to her, you would be in chief submissive.
Why don't they come to one as well as the President after the marriage?
To talk to her once when I'm back at the door, you know.
That's it.
But it's about the age that you now want her.
Yeah.
Because that can be a huge challenge.
If, if you look, then you might as well go over to the marriage.
It almost seems to me, I mean, you come down to the assessment directly, and I don't think there is a way to go in that way.
I think we perhaps have to go there and just see him right at the time.
He's been here, you know, and I haven't been there.
He has been present forever.
Of course, that's true of Chancellor.
It's true also of Bob.
But nevertheless, we can go to Paris and see him and just work it out.
Not saying anything about it until he's safe.
And now it's all three at one time.
I'm going to meet Brian to see this game.
Even for him, I'm not.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, but all I'm going to do is add the present to the other two, right?
I'm not going to tag them after one or two.
Yeah, I want the present.
They're not.
That's the only difference.
I think you're right.
And then you go to those who haven't been to this event, and they haven't been coming to visit.
I know they haven't.
Every time.
I hope you try.
I love explaining to something.
I hope you do.
I can see that.
I see no way you'll... You're only supposed to come out tomorrow and take me with you.
You've got to watch it.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
You were planning to freeze an engine by the time you found the boat.
You had planned it, you know.
You had the rest of it.
I no longer think that's such a good idea, but I'm going to try to cut it, put it away, and I'm going to do it before you cut it.
You have only two choices.
Either to take it or to kill it.
Leave it all to me.
I tell you, the three together is not a good idea.
I think they should be seen separately.
We have different things to profit off.
Now, let's start with that proposition.
I think Brom, and I agree with you on that in Chicago, is that you say that in a complimenting enough way over here.
I think you know that, and I'm having a big, big...
See, he's never had any, had any reason.
And what I would have in mind in Chicago would be to have, would be to give him a, probably the Nobel Peace Prize winner and go down State Street and get 500,000 Chicagoans cheering and waving flags and carrying on that first day of the war, the eight-hour show.
A lot of the things that we have to worry about.
But can you explain on the basis that he did that, or we did that in Georgia?
Well, anyway, one of the things, one of the things we have to worry about is money.
I don't want to bother you with this hypothetical question, but I'm beginning to think that this strategy of planning on Japan and Germany and Afghanistan is going to wreck a hell of a lot.
The Japanese are not reliable partners to anybody.
The Germans have got the emotional strength to do it alone.
Where is the strength?
Where is the strength?
Well, that's what comedy makes you do it.
um so
My worry is not to exalt that lightweight too much.
Yes, at that point.
And not to, because he is going to be out of bed with no telling what he's going to do.
He may be down in some country before he knows it.
We're gonna have a lot of problems there, all right?
If you don't want to do it now, let's keep escaping.
Make these personal, non-state types where there's been no lies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And that's the same with heat, got no problem there.
Why don't you put it directly in the corner?
And I think the order is irrelevant.
We have no way around it.
We do what we do.
Mama do first.
And that's the chief.
And I'm the chief on second.
Tell Cromer that I'm the chief.
It's only got to be Papa Louie because he was in the United States.
We've got to be deep in that.
I can't compete with you.
I can get an answer from Pompidou that I can get a message off to.
I think we ought to tell Pompidou one or two things.
If he wants to speak, the first one, if he wants to help set the course with you.
Then we got to do it in the Western Hemisphere.
There's no way you can go to Europe.
You can do it any way you can.
In that period, we were told, and then you'll see the other several weeks later, or sometime later, if you want, you can come to Europe.
There's no way you can do it without seeing the other European countries.
I just don't like the idea of space business at this time.
And those places that are not controlled.
And that allows a bunch of business demonstrators and all that sort of thing.
I'm not gonna do that.
But she's got that through her head.
She agreed about it.
No sense going to the Netherlands and getting a lot of shit thrown at you.
Well, the Netherlands is a problem.
What they did to the Japanese.
No, sir.
No, sir.
I couldn't do it.
I don't think...
I don't think we really want to go to Paris.
There could be, you know, our enemies.
I mean, our enemies in this country could go with the whole demonstration.
I just don't think at this point we want to visit any European country or any uncontrolled country.
So let's start with that proposition.
Okay.
And all right, in France, with Pompidou,
If you did go to Paris, there'd be no demonstration against you.
The French police is cool.
There might be no crowd in France.
But it's the French.
They might have lied back down in the side of the street, but they won't.
They won't demonstrate.
The French don't cover anything.
It's none of this road-taking.
If you wanted to take a European trip, my own thoughts, Mr. President, you would have to do that, Mr. President.
You know, when you were riding high on C-10, Moscow.
I don't want to take a European trip.
I don't want to take any trips after the Russian summit.
It's not right for him to do it.
He can't be juggling all over the damn world.
After May...
I'm out of my whole day complaining to any of the people that I knew that you'd be coming around.
That was not the same world thing.
You knew Russia, and the other one you'd done the world thing.
Otherwise, you'd just be a jackass and around.
I don't think anybody's thought of that that way.
It hasn't been.
I just think that if you wanted to go to Europe, I don't want you to go to Europe.
The only purpose of this is to control their goddamn allies, and the rest is critical time.
Or maybe it's just me.
I don't know.
I think it's essential that you do it.
I don't know whether we're going to be ready to talk about it.
Well, we'll have to be ready.
You will be, in my judgment, the second song to do the public figure now.
You'll be driven away.
You'll be driven to state what we want.
Maybe what we want.
But you have to talk to Conner when he first gets back along.
You.
I tell him to address this rather than get you involved.
Yeah.
See, the difficulty is, this is just the difficulty of the first statement of what the crisis is all about.
They'll be on all sides of the goddamn issue.
It's with sellers right down the river.
We don't want to do that.
That will kill us domestically.
Oh, no, we've got to get something out of this deal.
The second thing is, our return is on raising the price of gold, kid.
And we don't get sold on that.
Because that's also, that's the New York banker's kid.
But they, to be perfectly honest, they'd be cold-blooded.
Regardless of what they say.
hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States.
Oh, sure.
And that's what really, what he said in Burns, who is an honest man, frankly, who talks to that kind of people.
I cannot go on that line.
On this specific solution, I hold no conviction to prove it.
Now the other thing I want to say is that Peterson, who studies everything but knows nothing, and not knows, he studies everything, he has a position in everything, but when you come right down to it, what the hell do you do?
You know how he is.
Do you agree or not?
Oh, yeah.
Now the guy that I want you to talk to, frankly, Schultz is an honest man.
Schultz is a bias.
Schultz is a free trader and the rest, and he has a total bias against, maybe he goes biased so far he can't make a deal, and Connolly may be biased so far he can't make a deal.
So it's your, my problem here is for you not to go in there with the Burns line, or the Peterson line, or the Spain line, but to go in there knowing that I lean more to Schultz than Connolly, and I want to go, if I, to the extent I come close to Schultz, he doesn't agree with you.
I've talked to Schultz.
I'm not raising the price of gold.
Oh yeah, that's what I meant.
Raising the price of gold, Mr. President, is such a subsidiary.
Let me tell you, raising the price of gold is also another problem.
It also involves going back to the United States, assuming responsibility for the Virgo that I'm against.
That is what it is.
Are you totally against when we're discussing our economy?
Well, naturally.
On the price of gold, it is something we can bet on.
I don't mind paying a few speculators off, but the convertibility thing is deadly, and that is what Shultz is concerned about.
But what does Shultz, what does he disagree with Connolly about when he says something like that?
Connolly's best strategy, as I understand it, is to say everybody knows he's been away for 11 years.
From what he's got, though, from what I find, his strategy is dead.
We have to get a structural reform of the international system.
I agree with him on that.
Great.
Secondly, we ought to undo all the grievances that we have piled up over the last 50 years of discriminatory treatment against us.
Thirdly, we have to reverse the balance of pain of trade in our favor.
And we have to do all of them one thing in negotiation.
And therefore, we've got to keep them by the balls, not tell them what we want.
uh, until they get so desperate that they have to come to us and heal.
Uh, rather than it is at first glance, uh, a lot of disparate issues, the structural issue, which is important, the, uh, balance of credit issues, a lot of federal interest issues.
It threatens the demand.
For example, he's squeezing the Germans incredibly on the offset.
which has the practical tendency of ruining our best friend over there, the defense ministry.
And I feel those 50 million pleasure miners don't matter that much.
And what the danger is, is that we're getting structural problems linked up with a lot of special interests problems.
that we are not extinguishing what is essential from what would be desirable, that we are therefore uniting all of these countries against us by not telling them what we want.
My feeling is that we ought to state what we want.
That can be very tough, and it shouldn't be convertibility, for example.
but so that we can start talking and getting some people, giving some people a standard to which to retain.
Secondly, we have to ask ourselves not just can we win what we are fighting now.
Most people think we can't win, but I wonder whether we can avoid it because if we screw everybody in this free world and force them into surrender, we are going to give them an incentive so to organize themselves that we can never do it again.
And we will then undermine the whole structure of free world cooperation.
And the Japs are some of the bitches.
And they're not a cooperative nation.
But the Europeans are more petty than they are evil.
And the danger is that at the precise moment that a new generation is coming into power in Europe, we are putting it to them in such an abrupt way.
My judgment is, and you know how much I admire Congress, but I think Texans hate foreigners.
I've seen LBJ operate now.
And Texans think that the way to make a deal is to get the other guy by the ball and fall and squeeze him.
I'm so glad he knows you can do it to him.
Well, your tactic is always to do it with finesse and to maneuver the guy so that he thinks he is doing it in his own position.
I don't agree with Bernd.
Bernd wants to go back to the old system.
Sure.
But I agree more with Bernd's method, which is to make, to draw them into it.
Yeah.
And actually, you are not that replaced, Mr. Preston.
Now that you've talked to these individuals,
You can still drive a very hard target, but give them the sense that they are participating in the decision.
They can't take it politically at home to have me drop beaten into a chain, sir.
The difficulty is, the difficulty is, Bob, as I've told you before, is that we have to be quite honest with ourselves that if Peterson moved, it was a mistake.
We've got Peterson in the crowd.
He thinks he's doing it.
He talks to everybody.
And as a result, I don't have any guidance on this kind of thing.
I'm just as cold as that.
We've got Henry back.
I told him some time ago, Henry's gone.
He's been gone so long.
Schultz knows quite a bit about it, and he's busy with too many other things, including page two.
He's one of those guys, he has just as cold in his staff work.
He's just as cold as that.
The staff work isn't consistent.
It isn't worth a goddamn.
Have you ever read a Peterson paper?
Oh, no.
Jesus Christ.
I mean, it's awful.
I mean, I didn't keep it, okay?
Well, the last version...
Basically, we have to understand.
He had to give him credit.
Textiles and things worked out.
It was inevitable to work out for other reasons.
For other reasons, it was to work out because we put the sleeves on Stalin.
It was clever.
It was clever.
Peterson does not understand, for example, he does not understand
He said, he's a damn good tactician, but he's not a strategy man.
Now, do you agree or not?
Is that true or am I wrong?
He's a good tactician, but he's not a strategy man.
He doesn't think enough.
He can't put it all together.
Now, Connolly is a, Connolly, you see, looking at Connolly and Schultz, you may quarrel with their tactics.
But both are strategy audience.
Both of them have a plan.
Burns is a strategy man.
You may quarrel with his tactics, but he knows what he wants.
Peterson's problem is he doesn't know what the hell he wants.
Because basically, he's like me.
He doesn't know anything about it.
Shultz and I had worked out a strategy yesterday, which isn't really all that far from what I thought I would do next week.
He's going to come back, probably with wrong ideas about what we can do with this.
And you can give him a full load about what the European problem is and the rest.
Now, you've got to understand that we have not seen him personally on that.
And I can help him.
Well, you can see in him.
Yeah.
He'll test before the trip.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, and I can tell you, which is true, that he has made a major contribution.
Yeah, and you can point it out this way, that there should be a two-step program.
Now, the other thing that he's going to say is, he said, well, look, we've got to look at it from a domestic standpoint.
And he is right about that.
So he says it's kind of hurt them more than us.
The point that he does not...
The point that he's got to be made by me is that there are other considerations in the economic.
Yeah, this is something Peterson does not understand, you see.
Well, the few that Peterson would never understand, neither will Schultz.
I don't give a damn what he's doing on the economics.
What I'm worried about is that all these leaders will get into habits that the United States would, which is to lose its own NATO government.
I know, I know, I know.
And it will move over into the foreign policy area.
and kill us with the, on the whole piece that Dan said of mine.
So, John, so economists gotta understand this particular fashion.
Well, he's got a distorted thing on the economics, too, because for only 4% of the DNP is exported.
A great amount of the body and even more of the property of major U.S. companies is in foreign operations, which is different than exporting.
There's still making a hell of a lot of money out of it.
And that's...
The main thing is...
It is not.
It's not Conley's fault.
He doesn't have anybody in his training department.
Volker is a tactician.
For example, what happened prior to the IMF meeting, we had this little group.
Yeah.
We drafted a very good paper for Conley, but he accepted it.
He was part of it.
Then he gave it to Volker to publish it up in his speech.
And by the time we emerged, it was nothing like what we had worked on and that he had used it.
Because it takes us left to go.
That's your problem.
He doesn't have adequate staff, and we don't have adequate staff.
But now we've got a basic job.
That's the point.
I've gone over several times around here, and I don't think there's anybody, I mean, because everybody's great, in fact, the practitioners don't realize.
I'm, I mean, I'm goddamn, he isn't adequate to advise me on this, you know what I mean?
Now, I feel bad, but I know he wants to come in and see me all the time, but every time he comes in to see me, then he figures he's got a damn franchise to go out and do things, and he doesn't know enough about it.
So what the hell are you gonna do about that?
The guy that really wants to do those jobs, he's got Peterson.
We'll just go along with the back-ass staff.
Well, that's what we can do, Mr. President.
Frank, I don't think we should have set it up.
I think it was a Schultz plan.
It wasn't this thing.
It's a Schultz plan and a Nash plan.
And they're all put in there.
But I think basically what we should have done is to have driven state up the wall.
And we probably should have set up a very strong second man deputy to you in the NSC.
He cannot separate economics from politics.
And this is something that George would never understand.
I was born in Georgia.
Yes, I'm sorry.
He would understand if you sat down and talked to him.
But God damn it, he's an economist.
And he doesn't understand the politics.
Peterson doesn't understand either.
That's the problem.
You've got the older right.
You can work with all that and bring Peterson into the fold if you trust Peterson.
But do you?
I don't think I do.
And I know most other people don't.
And there's where your real problem is.
Well, Conley and Peterson.
Conley won't do the thing Peterson tells him to do.
I talked to Shultz yesterday.
Does Shultz trust him?
No.
Are you checking on him?
I don't think so.
Now, Shultz feels, as you do, and as I do, that he's a good tactician.
And he says he can try to keep staff safe.
Very well.
But what should, what we can do to keep staff safe is to stay away from the terrorists.
Well, there's a law.
Not for the president.
We could go to Houston and out on the rest.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, he studies that, I think.
But you've got a real problem.
He's a guy.
You can't kick Peterson around.
We've got to figure out how to...
There's a factor in this.
It's how to deal with him, which can't just be overlooked.
We can't just figure he can do whatever we tell him to because he can't.
No.
He wants to be in charge, right?
He's a... Well, it's...
I think...
I think you've always got to keep him in charge of the other act.
Well, you think it's better than the post you're going to open, huh?
Well, that's what I still think that's...
Well, they probably have to throw him over there.
He'd be a good sailor.
I'll tell you what, I didn't think you gotta get in the hell out of the line of fire.
I think the man who put in that job was Flanagan.
I don't know, the only reason I would say Flanagan is, I don't think Flanagan knows a hell of a lot more than Peterson, probably not as much.
But Flanagan is a staff man, totally loyal, tough.
and I think would have done.
Let's face it, the key to this game is Tom.
Peterson has no, Peterson is not a communist type of man.
Do you see what I mean?
I mean, Peterson basically is an internationalist and a, you know, sort of a liberal type of communist conservative.
Flanagan, on the other hand, is a tough, ruthless conservative.
And I think for that reason, I didn't get along with Peterson.
Who else you got?
Price, you can't put that fellow, the second man over there in charge.
He doesn't know nothing about nobody.
He's like, we don't have anyone else.
And I don't know of anybody else.
I'll just go, I don't know about anybody else.
But I'm not planning.
Oh, Flanagan is told to take his basic direction from Schultz and Meade.
Then I think Flanagan... And you trust Flanagan.
Peterson could do the same thing.
But he won't.
We have never leveled with Peterson.
If we leveled with him, he was in this morning asking, he said, what's wrong with what I'm doing?
What should I be doing to be more effective?
I was concerned.
And I just said that...
Well, that's the way the economy goes back and so forth.
Sure.
That's the answer.
And, you know, keep working with George as you are, and George is the guy that's, you know, on the overall economic thing.
But I think that he's worried that Conley, he has the same concerns that Henry has about the companies, for somewhat different reasons.
leaving the plane floating is, has now become, it was a good idea for a while, it's now become kind of a wrap.
And I do admire them, Mr. President, on foreign policy grounds.
I think we cannot give up the sense of vulnerability.
That would be a terrible thing to say.
On the price of gold, it is strictly between us and the French.
It depends how much you want to pay for their cooperation.
As long as it isn't a beautiful thing to say.
But I have no view on that.
What I do, it might be common and possible or not, but what we do have to have is a sense from their part that they've anticipated it.
And we have to stop this creature thing.
Now, if I can convince Conway to work with that breakfast group, then Shook can take care of his family.
But we'll convince Conway more than anything else, he said.
The feeling of the politics is now a situation where there's danger here and they're starting to look bad.
Well, that's what I would like to do.
I can do it with compassion.
You see, Rodger was there and he raised it and said he met with a group of American businessmen and they were all raising the price of gold.
Well, I said, well, what businessmen were they?
And so forth.
You know, this is the group that advised the State Department.
Well, so he's getting into the act, too.
But that's a tactical move.
That's right.
It doesn't look in the long haul.
I don't know what the hell he wants to do about it.
We may want to do it, but the major thing we need, Mr. Benjamin, is if you could announce, or Conley could announce, what we have in mind.
So then no one will say no to that.
You build that around us.
Well, if we start there, then we end up there.
Now, Conley's announced he's making a major policy statement on Tuesday.
and what was to have been a routine appearance at the New York 8-9 club.
I wonder if he had an outside world office then.
Well, I did wonder if it...
So the way I hear it, the way I saw it, the way speaking engagements go, the people who look by them and say, is there going to be a major statement?
That's what it is, I think.
And they answer it, yes.
And that's very likely what happens.
My guess is Colin would have a hole in his head and want to come back and make a major speech before he talks to me.
He'd have a chance to make it out of that thing.
I'll bet you 10 to 1 that that's what's happening on this one.
You know?
He can't go out there a day after he gets back and talk about days.
He needs two or three days for him to rest up and then say something.
I think that's a bad day to get Walker in to do that.
Is he the man that's put that out or what?
Just say, well, what is it on?
Because we've got to be, can't be in the dark.
Do you understand what the situation is?
Well, Henry, before I get further on this, you've got somebody for lunch or something.
I was going to have done a new challenge in the past, but yeah, I didn't.
I've got Jerry Smith ready, but he can't come back this afternoon, so I've got to have him now.
Why don't you tell him to wait, because I want to finish my press conference with you.
You know, get him.
When does he like to have his bachelor?
One o'clock.
Well, I'll just tell him now.
Could you tell Jerry Smith that I'm detained with the president, and could he possibly make it this afternoon safely?
And would you, in the case of the Japanese government, I'd like you to know that
Oh, fine.
So we can, I can, uh... Yeah, now...
So let's don't continue to beat this around.
It's not fair to Peterson to keep him on the inside.
I frankly think, I frankly think we've got to get Peterson out of the line of fire.
And so let's start with this problem, let's get this out of the way.
You better talk to Mitchell and tell him we've got an impossible situation here in Peterson.
And that we need commerce as a good energy source.
We want to mention it to him.
See what I mean?
I don't think we're going to find anybody else.
He isn't too unhappy about it now.
I mean, he's a great lady.
He would like more access to you.
That's a strong point.
Nobody wants more access to you.
It isn't so much.
He's not like...
He doesn't...
Give the guy credit.
He's not so much, at this point, unhappy because of someone's access.
He's not unhappy because of his senses.
He doesn't want to tell the right thing that he isn't doing what he's supposed to be doing.
He doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
On this issue, you mean?
Yeah.
And he thinks he should be doing something, but he doesn't know what it is.
The other thing is, you know, George is gone.
I tried to call him yesterday night.
I didn't tell him he's in Jamaica.
Nassau.
Nassau.
For the weekend, so...
But the, uh...
But you think the best thing most of his television is to go to Connors anytime.
And then you can follow up there on his international business stuff and all that.
It's the way to get him out of here.
It seems to me here, the only alternative that I see is that you gotta call him in with his triumphal work, probably ahead of time, and then tell him that this House Board of Directors just gotta work under their...
The problem we have here.
is that I said that up before.
I have told, I mean, I've told everybody on the staff that Charleston and Henry, I've given them the job of Andrew Peterson, but both have been too busy.
Nobody ever leveled with Peterson.
I can't level with him on that.
But the problem with Peterson is really an additional one, Mr. President.
Even the executive board of directors
He doesn't know how to work the bureaucracy.
He has had more, he runs around the hill more in the six months that he's been here than I have in the three years.
I know, but he hasn't got the feel.
He thinks he knows that's what he's supposed to do.
He hasn't got, he hasn't paid at least an opera in another six months.
He gets himself
into the direct line of fire.
I don't think anyone in the bureaucracy could tell you what I think on that issue.
I just won't tell them.
I don't say this in my papers, except for you.
He said in his papers that...
I'm inclined to think that the Peterson problem is insoluble, because even though you bring in a number of other directors, he's still going to bounce around my section.
And I think the guy is enormously capable.
He doesn't know how to...
If you have a chaplain Mitchell today, and get the goddamn thing done, get Mitchells approved, and say, look, we've got a problem that's bigger than who the hell is like Harry Pommers.
Peterson will be an advocate of sales, but he doesn't do anything for us politically as far as I can see.
He can go around and fool around with part of the school, but he doesn't do very well with that problem.
Talk to David Rockefeller and try to keep...
We need a salesman for economic policy.
He had Kate Gray in there, literally when I came in and done a lot of business.
I don't know if it was the department or, you know, they don't know.
It's hard that they've done it to folks, but something that we at least know, you know, we've been through, and they trust in the folks, and they brought it from the 19th century.
It's different.
I mean, it's a little different.
But as I walked in, Gary was already sitting there, and he said, I want you to know that President Bush has done his best out of the river.
What he says to you is different from what he would say to me.
And he's never said he's not going to do it again.
Never, never, never.
Well, that's very good.
Let's come back to this one.
Coming back to this, is there any other solution?
I feel for him.
He's a brave guy.
He's wrong to have a man in him.
He's in the wrong.
Because he really wants to help.
I think he can be a good secretary of commerce.
Get over there and see Mitchell and say, now look, John,
Governor, it's your turn.
We've got to work this thing out, but we want to tell Pete now so that he can know that it's in his future.
Now, another thing that Mitchell, I don't know whether we can work it out, keeps talking about it.
I think Stans, Mitchell's talking about Stans leaving at the same time he does this.
I still have a feeling on that they have to leave at the same time together with the campaign, even though they put it together.
It's just not a positive idea.
I'd like Staines to leave after he's returned from his Russian trip.
Mitchell's argument on that is that you haven't been cleared.
I don't understand that argument at all.
I haven't been cleared.
He's going off to Christ, but I haven't been cleared.
But then he's got an actual chairman.
He's not going off to be the next chairman.
He's going off to be the chairman of the finance for the financial committee.
Isn't that right?
I don't know.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Don't you believe that we ought to get stands out of the order?
Yes.
Fine.
And I think it's just awful damn huge to be worrying about whether you declare it or not.
Oh, shit.
That's a technical thing.
It's all assumed.
It's all assumed.
Yeah.
What with all those dinners?
We're running out of all that people.
It's much worse than anybody's mind.
That's right.
Even though I didn't mention the word republic in any speeches.
Everybody was talking about that we must re-elect this man.
That's right.
So I think that's done and I wish you'd get... Nelson introduced you as the next president.
Now if you could get to the National Office and see if you could sell it to him, because you know he's covering his mouth.
And tell him also that I'll go up and find him.
We've got the figures, the findings, and I've just got to be done.
All right.
Now, so I really, Mitchell shouldn't move out until I try to give some basis.
No, Mitchell shouldn't move back to the Declaration.
Now, Henry, coming back to this press thing, I said, hey, you know, about the European thing, it's okay, just wait a minute.
It's your feeling of what you want to do is to have it.
Just to get some kind of the...
No, this won't be good tomorrow.
I'll just lay it out again as it comes to me.
I think that's the best.
We don't want to end.
We won't come here, Bob.
Don't let me see the way out.
It won't.
We don't want it to end with an impasse.
We don't have any other option.
No, because we've ended in such a conciliatory way.
If it fails, we'll have to look to have them going over and...
I've seen all of them in the news.
And that can be done.
They won't be allowed to be done before Paris.
Well, if we did that, then I think it would have to be, we'd have to shove the whole thing into January.
I'm glad you did it for me, because that would be a good thing.
Well, you better screw up Roger's shirt now.
Maybe the best thing to do here is to...
is really not try to have the meetings where they fly here and that may be the best thing.
And I said, forget the goddamn job.
I'm just not gonna go there.
I don't seem to do that anymore.
It's like this business on Jamaica.
I referred to it again yesterday, and I said, no, I'm just not gonna go to Jamaica.
And it's done.
It did work on a better plan, though.
There are 22 of those batches.
Seeing them all, one in two, in three days, it doesn't do too much work.
So if you have them on the way down,
And we would in Panama, and I could provide a bit of anti-security.
And then half of them down to the other place.
The second meeting, of course, would be the big half.
The first meeting would be the jackasses in the therapy and the banana politics.
Don't you think that makes sense?
Except, you know, you're getting together with a bunch of Jews.
Well, it might be a group that have a vested interest in it.
Yeah, thank you.
You can play that now.
You should do that.
The way it would be, you'd be invited to do this.
Yeah, and then while I'm there, he invites the heads of government around to come to the ceremony, and I see them all and have my meeting with them there.
So he'll include Columbia in this, too.
You get Columbia, all the Central American republics, and El Salvador, and the Caribbean, and Mexico comes in.
Well,
Mexico, I will do separately in a later time.
So that's the whole deal to tell the Mexican president that the president wants to see him, which I will.
The president, of course, will want to see you in a later time alone.
Because of that conundrum that comes with the other thing.
Well, then don't happen to this one.
I'm not going to happen to two.
Now, don't get into the package there.
I'm not going to get into it.
But I ruled out Jamaica, which is ridiculous.
For Christ's sakes, the...
uh you were what the hell reason was the only jamaican kid uh i think was out of the park he was he was just arguing that it was a good thing to meet with the caribbean nations
Well, let's leave this alone.
On the European thing, are we not better, frankly, for me, just to take the risk of the situation and fly in and see one in Mac, one in Bonn, one in England, on the basis that I want to consult before my trip's
Oh, shit.
All right, then you've got a two-wheel truck.
You just can't do it, Andy.
Well, that's why I still think it's better if we change it.
Why don't we do it this way?
Why don't we put it upon the roof exactly the way it is?
What we would most like is if the only other alternative we have is to go and see them all by taking a train to Europe.
Then we can't have that.
If he turns to town, if he turns... Then we'll have to see what our options are.
Then we go over there.
Either we go there, or maybe we can send Rodgers over there.
No.
He cannot do that.
We have a confidence problem.
Uh, I know I always sound as if you're knocking it, but, uh, we really have a major problem.
Why don't you just push your button?
I'll get in as soon as I can.
Well, all right.
I take care of that.
Uh, I think that's a good tactic.
Send it over.
Well, certainly, it is a bachelor's smartphone to take that kind of a message in.
Oh, yeah, you can go letter by letter.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, Roger's information on when the Congress is coming back, he's done some checking in.
That's right.
Well, he said the 23rd.
If they don't make it back to the lake, that's a possibility.
It's more likely, isn't it, to have them back on the 17th?
Could you do four, though?
But people have seen the problem a little bit.
We're trying to set up a trip to the game.
That's what I just sent back.
That's what we did at the moment.
I guess I don't.
I guess I wonder if it goes to the other.
It's the only thing.
If we have her go a little further, we want her to go all over there.
We want to see the other.
What we both want to do is we don't care about the program for us.
We want to have a chance to go to the new one.
Don't forget it.
Yeah.
Oh.
No, it's South America that's going to do that.
That's going to be active.
The time to do that is the 30th, 31st, or the 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
All right, Bob.
Congress opens at 23rd.
I'll be direct.
Nothing is to be said today.
We're going to have a national challenge.
Is that great?
And I don't think that is yet.
So you'd have two solid weeks, two and a half weeks, after the other half.
Okay.
Get it off the son of a hoe, like that individual.
He'll know how.
You know, I told Billy, I told him that I was gonna have to take three weeks off and study up with the Chinese.
He doesn't know what I put in when he's done that before I go.
He knows, he knows immediately what I'm talking about.
There are many things you can do and many things you can look at.
You can't do it that way.
You'll see with these guys, you'll have to, he will know everything that's ever been said about me.
All right.
Mr. Jennings, you arrived there on the 23rd, didn't you?
Yes, 23rd.
Well, now coming on, that gets the Paris thing.
That gets the Paris thing out of the way.
I prefer to have that, all of it.
But, uh...
You cannot do it before January 30th.
Well, that's all right.
That's all right.
Are you sure?
Yes.
Well, let's look over here at the details.
You see the problems that we've got.
The best times are the end of June.
Yeah.
I don't think a European champion is just a good idea.
I don't have a good view about it.
If you're talking about going to Europe, I know what will happen.
And the goddamn Vatican.
I'll have to do the Vatican.
I'll have to do it.
I'm not going to do it.
And you'll be... You don't do NATO.
And NATO.
It'll be the same as before.
It'll be a long time at a time.
I just can't do it.
I just cannot.
I just cannot do it that way.
I'm not going to do it that way.
And that's what I've told you.
Now with regard to this, we've got a problem here.
If I make this announcement, you're going to be totally overriding.
There's an echo mark by the announcements today.
Now, I'm not, I'm not sure that there, I wonder if the press think that we just do this thing, might show up for Saturday rather than Friday.
Well, any day is a rock.
Saturday, Saturday, Saturday.
Press that button, you get an enormous play.
And if you want to, basically, this is the, you know, because of the Sunday papers.
They've got plenty to roll.
You know, they give the Sunday papers.
So, you'll lose a truck.
You'll lose one half of the truck.
And a lot of audiences are much lower.
You know, it's going to be nice.
Now, maybe the other thing that I want to do, since I'm going to have to take an hour or so off to go to my auntie and auntie's, and all the rest, and you can't let that force on the fisheries.
Wives come on, butchers' wives come on, you know.
So, since that's set for the day, I think what we better do then is do this thing at 4 o'clock.
Give me a couple more hours to get ready for it.
And don't worry about it.
They'll run it before the announcement runs.
As a matter of fact, they're more likely to run the announcement, not the question.
Do you agree?
Yes.
That means, Henry, you'd have to put your NSC on at 4.30.
No problem, I say.
So, gentlemen, I'm going to go ahead and say I'm really estranged from this conference.
on the brain on me about that, but I'm going to go listen there.
Listen, even on salt.
Well, if we do it in five...
4.30 is fine with me, Mr. Benson.
I'm really thinking of the amount of concentration.
Let me ask you this.
We always go around this track and say, could we shift the damn thing to 3.30?
No, I mean, I don't think...
I went through this once before and he said, well, it would look... How does he breathe at 3.30?
He just says in the morning, how does he breathe at 3.30?
The only disadvantage is it stirs a little unusual interest and it may end up with more people coming in.
It doesn't matter.
Why don't we try it then for 3 o'clock?
Call him now and see whether that isn't feasible.
I don't want to raise this question.
This will depend upon now what I have to get out of Henry and others before this thing.
You call me back on that.
I think three is the best time.
And then let's have the NSC at 4.30.
Yeah.
See, Bob, if you can't, do it at three.
And the NSC at 4.30.
Now, the second thing, Bob, is that we've got to consider...
whether or not you think maybe I ought to do this for pressure.
I mean, rather than try that again.
The idea is just not, not appearing to be not very much of a problem.
The other thing we talked about was letting him get a film thing.
I'm going to talk about that.
That's different.
That's a different thing.
Calling him into the office.
Another way you can do it, whether you care to me, is to do something we have not done before, is to set up a cool camera
in the Oval Office.
Now, the idea being, if the president is going to, don't tell them, not wait a minute, not wait a minute.
You can't do that, though, because the network has to know, okay?
And if they know, we want the reporters all beat out.
Maybe they won't.
They're pretty good at not telling people.
Yeah, the production size is different than the news.
Yeah, just say the production size, hey, the president has announced he wants to make a three o'clock.
Well, no, what I'm trying to do is to get them all in the office then.
You understand?
Yeah.
And do it on the pool camera.
Now, we can do it on a... See, if you do it on film, pool camera, very easily.
But when I'm setting them live, see, you do it on film with about half an hour's notice, 20 minutes notice.
Oh, fine.
How?
With one pool?
Yeah.
But it's just a reel, not a live camera.
If they don't take it, then they don't.
They don't.
If you do it at 3 o'clock, that'd be all right.
Correct.
And then you tell them, look, you can come in and film it, but I can't have 30 competitors in there.
It'll screw up the president.
That's right.
What do you tell them?
One film camera.
That's a pool.
One film camera with a pool.
The president will make an announcement.
Let me talk to Ron, see if we can, I'm sure we can.
Work it out then.
Push it back to three if you can.
Due to the fact that that will give you a little more time to do this.
The advantages of this in the Oval Office instead of in the restaurants.
Oh, yeah.
And, uh, and, uh, you don't know, you saw on camera prior to the question, the focus would be on the president.
Maybe the president, too.
All right, we'll do it in the press room.
I think we better do it in the press room rather than the press room twice.
So that it looks like we're doing.
But when you try to work out feedback, call me back just as soon as you can.
And it's on at a good time.
I'm getting plenty of time to do this.
Now, I mean, with regard to this whole thing.
That's right.
It doesn't give her that much.
I think there's a plus to it.
Frankly, it's my main reason for doing it is .
I think there is.
because they have to move without a bill, without a campaign.
Well, it's running down to the Congress, farting around down there and so forth.
I wonder if we might rather be doing it at 3, if we might make it 3.30 and put the NSC at 5.
You know, that gives them a little less time to run to the Congress to get statements and all that sort of thing.
See, that's the thing, Father.
There was a statement there.
It doesn't mean it's good.
All right, fine.
I'll be prepared for them so far.
I'm not worried about it.
I agree with Mr. Benjamin.
I can see you with these things.
You keep yourself up, and you have to unwind, and you have to go.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I think you better not give them that much notice.
I think 4 o'clock is the best time.
But the NSC will be at 5.
That's a good time.
You ship that.
This will be at 4.
But I think that you don't have to add Ron anything.
You don't have to go on forever.
That's right.
And we'll say that I have an NSC meeting.
Well, no, no, no.
He tells Cormier when to cut it.
Cormier doesn't tell him to do it five or he tells him to do it five minutes.
Well, no, I think we better, I want to be at press conference.
I want them to think that you go 25 minutes.
You don't have to go 40 minutes.
No, well, you can go 28 minutes.
Let's put it that way.
Cut it off sharp at 30.
Fair enough?
You'll know.
That's what they did on the other one, you know.
Sure.
The Russian one worked fine.
All right, 4 o'clock tomorrow.
Actually, they'll want it cut off.
They want to get right into it.
Well, that's right.
That's right.
They'll want it.
But 4 o'clock is a good time.
OK, fine.
If you give them the spot memory, that's the problem we're talking about.
last night, and Dave was talking about this incredible conversation with him, and where we all stand, and whether or not Roger's point has delivered, that we are setting ourselves up in January for having to make the announcement that we may not be prepared to make.
Now there is the, let's talk to that, because now your point is, well, you're going to have to make a NATO, and maybe it's easier to make a NATO.
I don't know.
I think we broke this all through, but I didn't want to be sure.
Let me tell you, you know, we are beginning to the stage now here.
The doctors have had only one shortage for months, for the last six months.
To take the negative of anything that he thought I was recommending, so that if he was going to draw, he can prove that he won.
He's done that with everything.
He's done it with everything.
Now, his mantle, boy, is that model that these negotiations will come out of.
So, no, he said, no negotiations.
Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
Laird said that.
Laird Brown talked us over.
Okay, well, I knew we could save that.
You're going to run, in any event, as you're going down, out in his name, before taking Jack as it was, that
Then, of course, you give her two months to die.
You're gonna want to tell her what the hell you want to.
But if you get two months, then at least you can make it.
Second thing, once the countries came back, that was true of you, which was I agree, once the countries came back, no matter where they came from, they're going to try to get a difference.
Now, you make an announcement to May 1st, and today the 20,000, which would basically be an announcement of 100,000.
That's what you could say, I announce 100,000 withdrawal by May 1st.
That gets you down to $84,000.
This gets you into the $64,000 range.
From that moment on, you'll be in this situation any minute.
And, all right, in January, we've got to remain the same amount.
Well, that is best.
Well, I'm assuming we have no negotiating progress, can we say, in January, except for revealing the course of the negotiations.
which, of course, will be an interesting story for a few people.
But what do we say?
One, no more guarantees.
Two, what you can say in January.
Now, I have to say, there's no good time for any of this.
And next year, they're going to drive us crazy.
What you can do in January is to say, you're now announcing 100,000 by August 1st.
for July 3rd.
In other words, we're going down to 40,000.
Don't say that's the decision, of course.
There'll be 40,000 volunteers there.
There'll be no more draftees.
Yeah, but we can't say volunteers at that point.
Sure you can.
For July 3rd.
Yeah.
Sure, if it's easier to say than to say no more draftees will be sent, you can say by July 3rd or whatever date you want to say July 3rd or August 3rd.
there'll be 40,000 or 50,000 volunteers in Vietnam.
And no more Japanese will be in Vietnam then.
And no more combat ground combat.
And no more ground combat.
The advantage of doing it in January is the country must be somewhat restrained to start a tremendous onslaught on these meetings before you go to Beijing.
It gives you a better talking base in Beijing.
It enables you to surface the link with associations in a way that you can bring pressure on, on how long it can.
It enables you to think of the residual cost argument early in the year, rather than in June, when everything is pointing to the... And frankly, if we are in that ballpark, we have to realize that they will still have a few of those years when we can have them, but just in case, perhaps, because they don't want that charge.
If you do it, if, if you wait till, if you do the fix, first of all, then finally you have to expect that the woods and this dirt, these guys are going to load another piece of proposal all the time, point in that direction.
Really?
Yes.
Because, first of all, their last proposal is running out December 32, so they've got to have a decision.
Yeah.
Oh, you mean the demo?
No, no, the, yeah.
I know.
I know, yeah.
I know his last proposal was that we had it restored by December 32.
Right.
So before then, they've got to come up with a new one.
If you have shot your boss and said $100,000, then in January, you can say nothing.
You'll be again in the process.
And then if you serve this, you negotiate, if they can help you with those defenses.
I admit, every...
It's a good answer, I agree.
But if you want to go to the end of February, that's also possible, but that's quite the...
But then it'd be harder to go money.
I'll let you say it.
I think the $45,000 is better.
I think the $45,000 is better.
What you have to go through, I thought really yesterday, what you'd have to have.
Well, I thought, Mr. President, this was... You know, first of all, they gave me that great big goddamn paper, and I could just see what he was doing.
He was in that paper for the record, saying what the hell he would do.
And that's a... Well, he did already, and I...
The, uh...
First, Blair comes in here.
Now, you told Blair before he ran that you would only make it through month to month.
And he said, why not make it month by month?
Don't you remember?
He said, why not make it monthly?
And I remember that.
I remember that.
That's what he said last time.
So now suddenly he says, you have to make it.
You know why?
Because we may want to provide a personal court at the very time of the event.
He wants to run ahead with signing that.
That's right.
Because he wants to be able to say, he forced you into a long announcement coming back from Vietnam.
He can get pressure.
The way this announcement came out.
The Secretary of Labor did this.
That's it.
The point is, the most he can get out of this announcement is get credit for two months.
He wants to get cut in for the last withdrawal, isn't it?
You are just, you told the whole game plan.
You gave him this ticket, you gave him this run on it.
And he was quite content with that.
He started mistaking it with me.
The day after saying you shouldn't do this negotiation.
But it's great.
His first reaction, if you remember, was, what did he say about services?
I don't understand what he's arguing.
His argument to me then was to do it during the campaign when you kill the Democrats, the more effective it is.
It's too late.
How would you consider that?
I don't know.
It looks too political.
But at that time, his first reaction was, why don't you do it in your State of the Union address?
Oh, I know.
No, but I'm just saying, when he was, before he had second thoughts, and he knew too much, so here you are.
He had a lawyer to talk about it.
His lawyer said he should build the State of the Union.
Well, I never considered doing it in the State of the Union.
Here you are with him.
72 hours of an announcement, what they owe you is to give you self-assurance and the sense that they're behind you.
But it's just right.
You haven't seen other presidents.
Did Dulles come into Eisenhower when a big decision was made and tell the instructors before it's made all the things that can go wrong?
He told me
It was proven.
I saw it.
Laird was proven.
All these guys have been picked up.
I shouldn't knock them out.
But I really thought yesterday that to do this on a Wednesday night, while you have this on top of you, it's wrong.
Of course, as we get into the final phase, everything gets more complex.
The attacks will get sharper.
It's easier to take the negative.
I believe you have done an unbelievable thing.
Yesterday, one who has met a different party that may interest you was, I don't know if you know, Richard Dill.
I don't know.
Dick Dill was in Philadelphia.
No, no, not from Philadelphia.
He had those divine ancestors.
The Ark.
Oh, yeah.
The direction.
Yeah, I know.
He's very talented.
He's a great Philadelphia man.
But Dilbert was a peacemaker, and Nelson had to protect him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How about, how about 345?
That'd be a little, yeah, slender, brown, 2 to 3.
Well, we could, I could go at 45, and that gives me a little bit more time before the MSC gives me a 5.
4.
5.
Oh, yeah, yeah, cut it.
Yeah.
All right, 5.
5.
Okay, don't tell anybody.
Uh...
I don't know.
I don't know.
Both of them said to me...
They're nice people.
Yeah.
They said, there's nothing... Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.
I want you to just stop and call Tom.
There's a delay in 10 minutes.
Well, there's no delay in 10 minutes.
Yes.
We called the judge and he can tell them I'm a little bit delayed under the present.
Good, thank you.
All right.
So, Dilworth and his wife said to me, we were opposed to your lead on policies, but we want you to know the veterans have proved that these kind of tests could be done in one of the times of war.
And I just think the amount is not
This team has come out of the room walk yesterday.
There's just nothing there anymore.
He was the guy that used to say he can't separate himself from Vance and Hannibal.
And yesterday, he said, we only made a try at this argument stuff to kill him, and I don't see any more of that.
You have an obligation on that.
No way.
No way.
We, uh...
So I think about Mark Kelly, but not there.
I would, if I may make a suggestion, Mr. President, I would go out there and not at all be fancy.
I'd be very positive and a little bit cocky.
Oh, yes.
And I just hear it every day.
Mine never affects me, though.
We had a bad week after the U.N. war.
But I told you not to forget it.
I told you to be forgotten.
Is that why you're mentioning it today?
No.
In fact, now people are beginning to say it was... Grunewald said yesterday it was domestic enough to be credited because next year it will be noted.
And also to be noted.
You know, I was interested in the day yesterday.
Bill was saying, where are you today?
And that's another thing I was a little bothered about.
Well, it's showing as wild on Pakistan now as it's gone on the Middle East, that the state is moving totally on the Indian side, moreover, at the wrong moment.
Because, I believe, let's get it in town again, I think that's in violation of what I told them.
I believe it will violate, first of all, I believe canyons within the territory, if we shift that way.
Secondly, I believe people are widening up to the fact that the Indians are being very brutal and aggressive, certainly to the murder of the Chinese.
Well, I'll get it on the, I'll update you with the Pakistan thing on the agenda, and we're going to have it on the agenda for Wednesday, next week.
Well, I, I just had a little, in the summer, a little dinner, and Tuesday night, and throw it right into a line, and I'm not going to explain it to you.
After college time.
But we have sold out the cons before the second day of coming over.
And he's been at peace with me and said he doesn't have any more answers.
I don't see what he's got.
So, uh, I thought of human jobs yesterday.
Oh, really?
I tried to remind him of everything.
You know, that we can talk through this now, but he is a nurse to the law.
Um, but if you had done what these fellows told you, we'd have been run out of data on their time.
And now when we get to the last page, we'll see how people get credit for what.
I have paid last night to run through every possibility that's been in our business this morning.
Our judgment is that it's going to beat up either way.
And it may not work either way.
And these fellows have an opposition to tell us that if anything goes wrong, they can say they told you so, yeah?
But...
On their own, it seems better to do it short enough, and now that you've sorted it out, so that you're prepared for people to say, hey, you must have something obviously.
But if you say, hey, then they've got that whole period to pack away.
In January, you could do another two months if you want to do it, you can do it six months.
By that time, you'll know how to negotiate.
But if you're over, year over, one way or the other, you know that.
It'll be over, they said it'll be over.
And then, I would just say, of course I'm not as barricaded on negotiating with Robert.
Laird doesn't know what's going on, of course, but Robert knows what's going on here.
He said that he didn't know the offer we had made in the last hour or so.
But Robert knows, doesn't he?
What was the name of that?
President, I still think you're right.
I still think this is a very good decision.
But I guess we have to think about whether it's a good decision.
It's got to be something.
I know.
I think that the thought is indeed, I'm not going to lie to you to go and let you be free, let you, and let your hands be in every position you're supposed to be in.
before I even tried to bomb it.
I've got those carriers in Thailand out there to bomb a ship out of, and they've built up those prisons.
I mean, bomb them, everything, blockade them.
Mr. President, after you're in the election, does that position still have a prison?
No.
The mistake you made last time is to let them off the hook for six months.
That's when you should have put a good one.
You would have given them a terrible time, as I've often said to you.
It's still there in the election campaign.
That is why, let me say it, that is why that you've got to have a mind and keep it in mind about everything else, about everything else, about the survival of you, about the survival of those who support you, that even though, of course, it's all a negotiation, that when you leave on the 20th, that is the most important thing for us to get out of this country.
We can survive the fall of the Jewish government.
We cannot.
We might lose on the basis of the POW withdrawal.
So I don't mean that you want to say POWs were present for withdrawal.
I don't mean that.
But what I meant is have that way in the back of your mind as something that is going to be a terribly difficult issue for us next year.
Thank you.
Don't you agree?
Yes.
I can't touch another 450 or 70.
We have to do it all the time.
We make it happen.
We have to get more businessmen among our people.
I know Henry.
I remember the issue with Cueto.
It was a hell of an issue.
It was a boring deal, but it was a hell of an issue.
That's my point.
Having said all that, it's going to be a hell of an issue.
if we don't have anything to do about it, to say about it.
See my point?
So there, just the question is, if you're negotiating to go far beyond that, well, there's no value.
If it came to that business, but they won't settle for business, would be a value.
They won't settle for business.
And I see, and I see.
They won't settle for business.
to be sure of that record, because that record is a show that sometimes people want to review, but other people don't know that we do that.
We just do that in a clear cut, clear cut way to do that.
And then so they do that, then we can put it out and we can rock it and then cut it down.
It really is a discouragement.
I must say, it isn't a discouragement.
It's rock hard.
It actually wasn't pretty good with the speech up there.
It was only 15 minutes, but it was well done.
And he doesn't know anything because I was in there.
And you know, this is not walking into his room, and he doesn't understand anything about you, when he was up.
But my point is, look at this, sir, and remember, we don't get anything, we don't get anything from our bureaucracy.
No, that's what I said.
Bill was saying, of course, I didn't praise Bill on my speech, but my God, let me tell you later what Bill said.
And these, you know, moneylashers that we're there on, I must say, these great people, 50% of them are Jewish, and they're my friends, you know, and they're Republicans, you know, and they're on our side.
In Christ, they don't agree with Russia.
You know, that would have been a hell of a thing if I had invited one down the line.
But, anyway, I've got to talk to you about it.
And it was put for pay to an entity that said, you know,
He greeted me and said I was so proud of the investment he had made.
And since it was family, there was nothing in it for him.
Well, we'll talk about that later.
I think Mr. Bessman is a good check for the money he has.
I wouldn't let these hundred thousand dollars go to waste.
Me?
I've never done it, but the only time.
Only because where?
Because they may have set us up for it.
Because of these fellows coming in.
Well, I don't know what I mean.
They tell this to us.
You can be sure they may have set us up for it with some of the other press guys.
But I'm just on a hard-nosed improvement.
They have no standing in the business because they don't do so.
Don't you believe in... Let me be the devil's advocate.
Why not Sam Rogers on the trip to Europe?
He told the next government.
Mr. President, he is no longer a very valuable to me anymore because I have a chance to help him.
Rogers is a lifeline.
Rogers understands no issue.
Rogers is going to go down the New York Times line with him, not the latter, of course.
And he's going to panic that Irvin was over there, and Watson, who is his brother-in-law, told me that Irvin got them so nervous that...
uh i'll say a word about that i'm going to say a word about the i'll say about european security i want this all directed in an nfc meeting i'm going to say a word about india pakistan i'll say there seems to be some misunderstanding in the government i want clear
Here we understood where the position is.
And we at Pakistan, I'm going to be brutal with it.
I'm going to be brutal with it.
President, if there's any problem tonight on your announcement, we might consider by doing a little background tomorrow morning.
I can handle these guns.
If Rogers had any credibility with these guns, he would be the flipper that he would have been a stretch.
He would have been set up as the signing guide.
The reason they don't take the fact that you can't send him to Europe is so the council for relations had never asked him to give a speech there.
I don't know.
He does his own work.
He's simply...
He's a pilot of the relations program.
I don't want to knock him, but he really is.
Because...
At this stage of the game, the only thing that matters is how you do next year.
Our positions are now set one way or the other.
I must say, but it must be one after another.
Well, I want to tell you one thing.
Now, one thing I'm not going to do.
I'm not going to take scenes.
I don't, I'd probably get him an injustice.
I think he's purely a mechanic.
But I've seen the son of a gun at the Medal of Honor, and all the rest, and I just don't like him.
I have a gut reaction.
Packer, I like, because I think he's a decent man.
But do you think Siemens would be a stand-up guy in this job instead?
How else do you know him?
How else do you know him?
I don't know him as well.
See, that's good.
I don't know him.
I'll handle it.
Let me know in an injustice.
I just had a feeling that Leonard was inhuman, but you're telling me to ask me to approve that?
I didn't mind saying, I don't know whether you want to approve or not approve of that.
Well, that was her power.
Well, the way I know it, I didn't care less.
I let the car go.
I thought it was as good as the president coming and saying, I've already made commitment to all the people around me.
I thought I could make it.
I may have talked it out for somebody, but he's done it before.
And he stuck us to the Secretary of the Army.
He's no longer responsible.
He's an official.
He's not as responsible as the... Huh?
He's not as responsible as the... Oh, yeah.
Listen, it doesn't make any food, dinner, it doesn't make any difference.
You shouldn't even ask that about that.
But that's a, I'm saying, who's stealing something at that job?
Bill, we've got to have a loyalist in that job.
But you talk to Packard about it, what he means, no, I don't care what he does.