Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 315 › Conversation 315-008
Nixon & Safire on Vietnam War and Peace negotiations
Monday, January 17, 1972 · 3:16 PM–3:34 PM ET · Old Executive Office Building · 17 min
AI Summary
President Nixon met with speechwriter William Safire to refine a public address regarding secret negotiations to end the Vietnam War. Nixon emphasized the necessity of demonstrating that the administration had exhausted all diplomatic channels, including specific peace offers and withdrawal deadlines, while justifying his previous silence on these efforts as a means to protect ongoing back-channel discussions. The primary goal of the meeting was to distill these complex foreign policy developments into a concise, credible 20-minute speech that would convey a narrative of an honorable and inevitable path to peace.
Audio
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Position in tape: 00:21:34 – 00:38:02
part A, 22:38
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315b.mp3
NARA Description
On January 17, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and William L. Safire met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 3:16 pm to 3:34 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 315-008 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 315-8 Date: January 17, 1972 Time: 3:16 pm - 3:34 pm Location: Executive Office Building The President talked with William L. Safire. [See Conversation No. 18-93; one item has been withdrawn from the conversation]
Transcript (AI-generated)
This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.
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Are you coming along now?
How many of you haven't put your...
I don't want to thank you.
Let us say that you didn't have something tomorrow at 3 o'clock.
Well, I mean, it's actually another time.
I'd rather wait until tomorrow at 7 o'clock.
Then that'll give me something so that you don't get off on the wrong trail that I didn't work on before today.
I'm not interested now in this one.
I'm interested in more.
See, the difficulty is, I'm sure you can tell from...
It was fine on substance, totally lacking in the form, and it would have been an utter disaster if it had been delivered that way.
But that's all right.
It's not very close.
We don't need to do that kind of work.
On the other hand, what really matters here is the form.
The substance will carry itself.
Now, the form is lovely and good.
What comes through are just a few basic points.
What we have offered, what they have rejected.
what we offer.
Well, first, as I said, the beginning of reminding them is not at all, it's always a good idea, to keep it as often as we can, but the enormous success that we have, we have to say, don't you agree?
I mean, that, the sophisticates, the sophisticates, of course, all know that.
folks forget forget
We've got the lower key, the basic, the constant record, the records of history, history of history.
We've overdone it, and there's no security, no need to inquire.
I know I've improved over that, developed strategy, and we just have to say it on its own.
Why did I bring the anti-gap information to you?
Well, basically, in the history of negotiations and wars, there's always been a combination of secret and public talks.
For example, the negotiations in World War I were that way.
There was negotiations going on all that time.
Right, I think that in terms of a
Why didn't we offer a deadline?
Why didn't we offer a deadline?
Why didn't we offer a deadline?
That is not our purpose.
That is not our purpose.
That is not our purpose.
That's why I, I owe it to you guys to do this for a long time.
I mean, when we first went back to Michigan, as a matter of fact, three months later, or whatever it was, I had no confidence in the resolution.
As for the very thing that you had called for, that we had offered, and then you turned it down on us, and offered it to us, I mean, that's what we're doing.
That's what we're doing.
That's what we're doing.
The purpose of this is not to be one of the debating points.
The purpose of this is to break the headlock.
Well, what I think you do some, if you say, is to be aware of the possibility,
But on the negotiating front, which is what we had done, we had had blank public meetings that had come about and some private meetings.
In addition to that, as I said, my brother, or my brother-in-law, said that I determined all things.
and we ought to pursue other channels as well.
And I didn't, I mean, nobody has believed this, and I'm pretty good about it.
You have to notice that I have said rather and correct, but we have pursued a number of channels, and I have never been able to say why, because I had to protect the channel.
We pursued other channels.
And so, I, that is the, and the conservation of the Secretary of State, as reported in our delegation to Paris,
uh... the uh...
The progress was made on some of the issues, but the first critical point came in May of 1971, when we offered the
who would give them a deadline, provided they would give us a ceasefire.
They rejected that.
Then, in August, we came back and offered a deadline.
Last October, we made another offer.
And now, of course, as you know, we have a big offer to make.
Now, we have offered a deadline in exchange for a deal that was impersonated on a ceasefire in the election.
So, it's really, the main thing I want to get across here is that all of the negotiating is fun.
We've gone the extra mile.
We're doing everything we can.
I think we should be banking on this offer until it gets backed up.
That's the other thing, is that you put things on them now, and they don't know what they have done.
They constantly come back and say, and they always use the term that they said, they were getting drunk, and say that their condition was the overthrow of the government itself did not, never say to you, that the government itself did not overthrow every other side.
I made several semantics.
that they always rule the government's own design.
This, of course, we do too.
But you say that, and it's, whatever you mean, quite almost dramatic about this last thing.
We offer to resign one of the four elections.
We've offered to resign, and that's sort of a big election so far.
So that's sort of the deal.
The main thing is to remember that we really have, this has got to be kept for 20 minutes.
We just can't go beyond that.
So that's 2,500 words.
That's outside.
That's about 125 words a minute.
And I think 20 minutes is what it would take to read.
You know how long his draft would take?
About 38 minutes.
and then studied the ending of the war over the years, you might say that I may be one who will recognize that that has been the history, the record, and go ahead.
But now I feel that maybe you want to put that at the beginning.
Yeah.
And then when you're taking them into their comfort spot, what do you say?
And I have been idealized that I have had to, in order to protect the secret negotiations with the hold that they might feel, I could not reply when I was under attack or failing to respond to the subject once we had answered the question.
They would offer a deadline.
We had offered a deadline.
You see, that kind of thing.
Is that what you meant?
Now, we believe that now that we have reached this point, now that we've reached the period of an honorable draw, that we can conclude this time, end this war quickly, honorably, and in a way that there will be peace, not only for the United States, but peace for all of us out in the United States.
That's what I'm trying to do.
That's another thing to see.
The idealization means peace for America.
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The negotiations to end our involvement with Southern and bring peace not only to the United States, but peace to the long-suffering people.
40 million people in Southeast Asia who have been plagued by war for 25 years.
It's not a bad thing.
Let's show you what we're doing.
No, no, no.
It's such a beautiful and obviously weak thing to do.
You know what I mean?
I would do it, but I mean, that's a jock song.
It's not credible.
You could say it out there that we have to support the people of this proposal.
We believe it's a good proposal.
We believe it's as far as any of us would want to go.
It will break this war between us by supporting it, by having a united front that will face the day that we don't have peace.
Of course, the South, the North, the Middle East, the Middle East, the Middle East, the Middle East, the Middle East, whatever their reaction is, we're going to press this proposal, press it with the will of the judiciary on the table, something like that.
Yet that is why, as a matter of fact,
I don't want him to start worrying before he has reason to raise it.
Yeah, just say that you want to submit me a rough cut to see if you're on the right track.
Just tell me you're not ready yet.
We just don't have a guy in here yet.
We were bringing back by the talk with me about it at 3 o'clock.
He said, I'll look at it for a couple of hours tomorrow and give it back to you.
Then you can go work on another cut and then show that to me.
Tell me that you want to get something right.
We'll wait tomorrow night.
Turn up.
Up.
Also recorded on January 17, 1972
- 018-091 2:47 PM · 22 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson talked on the telephone from 2:47 pm to 3:10 pm.
- 315-006 2:47 PM · 12 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 2:47 pm to 3:10 pm.
- 018-092 3:10 PM · 8 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 3:10 pm and 3:16 pm.
- 315-007 3:10 PM · 19 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 3:10 pm and 3:16 pm.
- 018-093 3:16 PM · 17 min — President Richard M. Nixon and William L. Safire talked on the telephone from 3:16 pm to 3:34 pm.
- 315-020 3:43 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and William L. Safire met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 3:43 pm to 3:44 pm.
- 315-021 3:44 PM · 4 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Roger Staubach met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 3:44 pm and 3:58 pm.
- 315-022 3:44 PM · 59 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Manolo Sanchez met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 3:44 pm and 3:58 pm.
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- Nixon & Kissinger on Vietnam War and Vietnamization April 6, 1971 · 36 min
- Nixon alone in his EOB office on Vietnam War and Vietnamization April 7, 1971 · 6 min
- Nixon alone in his EOB office on Vietnam War and Vietnamization April 7, 1971 · 5 min
Cite this conversation
Conversation 315-008, January 17, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/315-008 (accessed November 13, 2026).