Conversation 316-001

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Why don't you talk to him about it?

Well...

Anyway...

This tells the story a little better.

I've asked for this television time tonight to make public a plan for peace which can bring to an end the war in Vietnam.

The operation offers, on behalf of the government of the United States and the government of South Vietnam, a full model of improvement for President Chu, which is both generous and far-reaching.

It is a plan to end the war now.

It includes an offer to withdraw all American forces within six months of an agreement.

Its acceptance would mean the speedy return of all prisoners of war at their homes.

Three years ago, when I took office, there were 515,000 Americans fighting in India now.

The number killed in action was running as high as 300 weeks.

There were no plans to bring any Americans home.

The only thing that had been settled in Paris was the shape of the conference table.

My immediate mood fulfilled the courage I had made the American people to bring about a peace that could last not only for the United States, but for the long-suffering people of Southeast Asia.

There were two honorable paths open to us.

The path of negotiation was and is the path we preferred.

But it takes two to negotiate.

There had to be another way in case the other side refused to negotiate.

That path was called Vietnamization.

This meant training and equipping South Vietnamese to defend themselves and withdrawing Americans as they developed the capability to do so.

The path of Vietnamization had been successful.

Two weeks ago, I announced that by May 1st, American forces would be around to be down to 69,000.

That means only that almost a half a million Americans will have been withdrawn from Vietnam over the past three years.

In terms of American lives, the losses of 300 a week have been reduced by over 95%, now less than 10%.

But the path of vietnamization has been the long voyage home, straining the patients, testing the perseverance of the American people.

What are the shortcomings of the path of negotiations?

The progress there is the discipline.

The American people deserve an accounting of quality.

And I intend to give you that accounting, and so do I, to try to break the deadlock in negotiations.

We have made a series of public proposals designed to bring an end to the conflict.

But early in this administration, after ten months of no progress from the public Paris promise, I became convinced that it was necessary to explore the possibility of negotiating on private channels to see whether it would be possible to get the public deadline.

After consultation with Secretary of State Rogers, our ambassador to Siam, and my chief negotiator in Paris with the full knowledge and approval of President Pugh, I sent Dr. Kissinger to Paris as my personal representative on August 4, 1969, to begin the secret peace negotiations.

Since that time, Dr. Kissinger has traveled to Paris 12 times on these secret missions.

He has met seven times with Lee Doctoe, one of Hanoi's top political leaders.

He has met with Juan Cui alone five times.

That is, this is why I initiated these private negotiations.

Privately, both sides can be more flexible in offering new approaches.

Also, private discussions allow both sides to talk frankly and to take positions free from the pressures of public debate.

Seeking peace in Vietnam and so many lives to save, I felt we could not afford to let any opportunity go by prior to public negotiations.

As I've stated on a number of occasions, I was prepared, remained prepared, to explore any habit of public and private to speed negotiations and end the war.

For 30 months, when I was at Trey Rogers, Dr. Kinser, I were asked about secret negotiations.

We would only say we were pursuing every possible channel, I say to the police.

There was never a leak because we were determined not to jeopardize the negotiation.

Until recently, discourse showed signs of yielding to progress.

Now, however, it is my judgment that the purposeless speech will best be served by bringing out publicly the revolutions we have been making in the past.

Nothing is served by silence on the other side which points our good faith to divide America and to avoid the conquest of it.

Nothing is served by silence that misleads some Americans in accusing their government of failing to do what is already done.

and nothing is served by salvage, and enables the other side to apply possible solutions publicly that it has already rejected privately.

The time has come to lay the record of our secret negotiations on the table.

Just as secret negotiations can sometimes break a public deadline, public disclosure may help to break a secret deadline.

Many Americans who believe what the North Vietnamese led them to believe and charge, the United States has not pursued negotiations extensively.

as the record will show, just the opposite is true.

Questions have been raised as to why we have not proposed the deadline for withdrawing all American forces in exchange for ceasefire and return of our people to war, why we have not discussed the seven-point proposal made by the Viet Cong last July, and why we have not submitted a new plan of our own to move the negotiations off dead silence.

As the private record will show, we have taken all these steps and more, and have been flatly rejected or opposed or ignored by the other side.

On May 31, 1971, eight months ago, at one of the secret meetings in Paris, we offered specifically to agree to a deadline that would draw all American voters in exchange for the release of all persons employed since then.

At the next private meeting, June 26, the North Vietnamese rejected their offer.

They privately proposed instead their own nine-point plan, which insisted that he overthrow the government of South Vietnam.

Five days later, July 1st, the enemy publicly presented a different seven-point, seven-point Vietnam plan.

That was the dilemma.

Which package should we respond to, the public or the secret plan?

July 12th, at another private meeting in Paris, Dr. Kissinger put that question right here in the newsroom.

They said we should deal with their nine-point secret plan because it covered all of China, while the Viet Cong's seven-point public proposal was limited to Vietnam, and that's what we did.

We went beyond that, dealing with some of the points in the public plan that were not covered in secret plan.

On August 16, at another private meeting, we went further and offered a complete withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces within nine months after the agreement.

On September the 13th, the North Vietnamese rejected this proposal.

They continued to insist that we overthrow the South Vietnamese government.

Now, what has been the result of these private efforts?

For months, the North Vietnamese have been derating us at the public sessions for not responding to their side's publicly presented seven points plan.

The truth is, we did respond to them in this plan in a manner they wanted us to respond to.

The full possession of our state response brought the Vietnamese publicly a denouncement for not having responded at all.

They induced many Americans in the press and the Congress to re-equate their propaganda into echoing their propaganda.

Americans who could not know they were being falsely used by the enemy to stir up the business in this country.

I decided in October we should make another attempt to break the deadline.

I consulted with President Chu who concurred fully in a new plan.

On October 11, I sent a private communication to the North Vietnamese that contained new elements that could move negotiations forward and urged the meeting on November 1 between Dr. Kissinger and Special Advisor Lee Doctoe or some other appropriate officials in the town.

On October 25, the North Vietnamese agreed to meet and suggested a memory plan.

On November 17, just three days before the meeting,

schedule, they said we got told so.

We offered to meet as soon as he recovered.

With him, or immediately with any other authorized leader.

Not now.

Two months had passed since they called off that meeting.

The only response to our plan has been an increase in troop infiltration from North Vietnam and Communist military messaging from Laos and Cambodia.

Our proposal for peace was answered by a step-up in the war.

That's where matters stand today.

We are being asked publicly to respond to proposals that we answered, and in some respects, we're set with one zero in practice.

We are being asked publicly to set a terminal date for our withdrawal, and we have already offered one in practice.

And the most comprehensive police plan, a peace plan, is confident lies ignored in a secret channel, while an enemy tries to get from one area to another.

That is why I have instructed Ambassador Porter to present our plan publicly at this Thursday's session of the Paris Peace Talk, along with alternatives to make it even more flexible.

We are publishing a whole detailed draft of the plan.

It will prove beyond doubt which side has made every effort to make this a real issue.

It will show unmistakably the hand-on-out Russian presiding on the Canadian border.

Here is the essence of our peace plan.

Public disclosure may gain its attention, but it certainly will not.

Within six months of an agreement, we will withdraw all U.S. and allied forces from South Vietnam.

We shall exchange all prisoners.

There shall be a ceasefire throughout every China.

There shall be a new presidential election in South Vietnam.

President Chu will announce the office of this election.

These include international supervision, an independent body to organize and run the election, representing all political forces in South Vietnam, including the Communist National Operation Front.

Furthermore, President Chu has informed me that within the framework of the Green Water Agreement, he makes the following law.

He and Vice President Huang would be ready to resign one month before the new election.

Chairman of the Senate, as character of the head of the government, with some administrative responsibility, allow the election, all of the election, to be the sole responsibility of an independent election body.

There are several other proposals under the U.S. plan.

For example, as we offered privately on July 26th of last year, we remain prepared to undertake a major reconstruction project throughout the whole China to help all those people recover from the ravages of the generational war.

We will pursue any approach to this peace negotiation.

We are ready to negotiate the plan I have outlined tonight and conclude a comprehensive agreement on all military and political issues.

Or, as we proposed privately last May, we remain willing to settle only the military issues and leave the political issues to the Vietnamese people.

Under this approach, we withdraw all U.S. and allied forces within six months in exchange for Indochina's ceasefire and the release of all prisoners.

The choice is up to the enemy.

This is a settlement offered which is fair to North Vietnam and fair to South Vietnam.

It deserves the widest scrutiny by this and these nations and by other nations as well.

And it deserves the united support of the American people.

We made a substance of this generous offering prior to him over three years, three months ago.

It has not been rejected, but it has been done.

I reiterate that peace offering not given no longer be ignored.

The only thing this plan does not do is to join our enemy to overthrow our ally, which the United States of America will never do.

If the enemy wants peace, it will have to recognize the important difference between settlement and surrender.

This has been a long and agonizing struggle, but it is difficult to see how anyone, regardless of his past position in the war, could not say, if we have not gone the extra mile, our own settlement has scared everybody concerned.

By the steadiness of our withdrawal of troops, America has proven its resolution to end its involvement in the war.

By our readiness to act in the spirit of conciliation, America has proved its desire to be involved in the building of a permanent peace throughout Indochina.

We are ready to negotiate peace immediately.

If the enemy rejects our offer to negotiate, we shall continue our program of ending American involvement in the war by withdrawing our remaining forces to the south in the opportunity of those defending themselves.

If the enemy's answer to our peace offer is to step up their attacks, I shall fully meet my responsibility to command a few of our armed forces to protect our remaining forces.

We do not prefer this course of action.

We want to end the war, not only for America, but for all the people in China.

The plan I approached was proposed tonight and accomplished that goal.

Some of our citizens have become accustomed to thinking that whatever our government says must be false, whatever our enemies say must be true.

The record I revealed tonight proved the contrary.

We can now demonstrate publicly that we have long been demonstrating privately that America has taken the initiative not only to end our participation in this war, but to end the war itself.

This has been the longest and most difficult war in our history.

Honest and patriotic Americans have disagreed as to whether we should have become involved at all nine years ago.

There has been disagreement as to the conduct of the war.

The hold I have made tonight is one on which we can all agree.

Let us unite now in our search for peace, a peace that is fair to both sides, a peace that can last.

That's the reason.

That's the hell of a point.

What he did was a dead end.

What's this one?

I wouldn't give those bastards any credit for saying some of our people believe what we...

I'd say a few, goddammit.

Some is too many.

In your last page, there was an explanation.

Some believe the other side, but they won't believe us.

I'd say a few.

to say some is because I'm too unsure.

Yeah, I get your point.

The only other thing that confuses me, say the nine point versus seven point, say into a China.

People understand we've got food laws in Cambodia.

That's just what China has.

See, the nine point program they offer includes

into Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

The seven-point public program under Viet Cong moves on to Vietnam.

That's what they asked us to negotiate the money for.

The question that raised in my mind, I think, was the following that I got suggested about in the pretext.

The question was whether to work out through stupid management without adding or to accounts which were to be asked.

You mean all other China peace countries?

Well, yeah.

But you add Laos and Cambodia to that.

Yeah.

But you mean the word into China doesn't mean Laos and Cambodia?

Well, I think people will be confused.

They'll say, well, if that's the case, then why?

What about Manchuria's proposal?

Or what happens in Laos and Cambodia?

Things aren't the same there and there in Vietnam.

That's the question.

And to the extent that that is a reason to question, we may want to sharpen it so that it doesn't come in and prove by virtue of the nine-point program.

That's just a...

I'll have to answer that.

But I think that's going to come up because they'll say, well, I think the nine-point program is well-considered, and what do you do about that?

Here, we just need to get that question.

We would say that's what we want to negotiate, a total Indochina peace fire, which includes Laos and Cambodia.

I'm not suggesting you change the text there, but I think you'll have to treat that.

Well, you know, we've been taking such a go-ahead meeting on this, and we've been spacing the line this year, although we're not trying to break the secret channel.

But we've known that we were offering all these things, and God damn it, the communists returned them down.

But now that they have followed it up enough, and they're starting their last, which is their last gasp of defense, we think the time to do it is to lay it all out on the table.

It is going to be effective one quick time.

except that I think it will tend, first, to take our field up, then they have an answer.

We walk, in exchange for field up, we cease fire, we walk, we turn it down, take our, take the people that want us to set a deadline.

We walk through the deadline.

Of course, we've always, you've got to cease fire, which is essential.

You can never have a deadline without a cease fire.

They get their ash down, you know.

And what about aid to all ends of China?

We've offered to help North Vietnam as well as South Vietnam.

What about to respond to the 7.0 program?

We've not responded to it, but we have responded to the 9.0 program.

And what about a new peace proposal?

What about Pew?

This is a real function.

What about Pew?

He's offered to resign a month before the election.

That's the one that's going to be the first initiative that we have.

I don't know.

We've done this.

We've made this so clear all the way through.

I could be a public regress, but I mean, of course, the price we took on the weapon of Christ, I don't know how many of these we've made, but the fact is we've never ever changed.

And when the whole record comes out, I say, look, all right, I'm excited.

My people are sort of checking out the number of times you've made that mistake.

I mean, I'm talking about the background folks.

And I tell you what I feel.

I'm trying to get my greatest job before you have it.

Christ, you said all the time.

It doesn't because they say, oh, we just stopped this stuff on Friday, Sunday morning and called the House of Commons.

They're actually going to tell you what to do.

They're going to tell you what to do.

I think this has to be done, don't you?

They'll piss off, I suppose, for all we've done.

But I think at least we're also against another environment.

We have to be in a position that when their offensive begins, and they're going to have one.

We can take some very strong, we can kind of use a few air guns.

We've got to use our air guns.

We're not going to have to.

We have got to amend them.

We're not going to get involved that way.

We're not going to have this kind of contagion, but we've got to bomb the hell out of them.

We will.

I don't think we're going to do that.

But it's not just the guy in the back that presides.

You're saying they're an international division.

All of us are national.

With the communists participating, that's the crown, of course.

They're going to have all the time.

It doesn't matter.

They will.

You see, they crack at it, but they won't.

They don't.

Well, anyway, but don't you agree it's probably a good idea to do this?

We haven't.

I'll tell you one other reason why we do it.

I think it's going to blow anyway.

I mean, they've had too many.

Henry did have to take a few of them, and others over and so on.

I just figured that, you know, with everybody, everything's leaking at this point, this kind of thing will not hold.

We've got Air Force pilots, we've got all sorts of people, and I thought we'd better do it rather than have that trouble.

Anyway, we've got about 8.30 to 9.00.

Watch those sunsets, but you can tell we're in downtown.

What I'm saying is I got locked into a

For example, on busting for Christ's sake.

I took that position right at the beginning of the issue.

I was never for busting.

My record on that is, if you're going to give me a chance, as I say, where it counts to get the record clear, I'd love to have a price on that issue.

So I'm not, I welcome that opportunity.

Other than that, sure, I'm going to leave.

I'm going to stand up and scream for the fact.

You should.

I'm going to stand up and scream for the fact.

I'm going to scream for the fact.

But you know, really, honestly, Bob, you realize that that 15,000-word message, the concept that I developed, you know, I developed it at the time, but I didn't intend to do it in the States in person at all.

I was going to go on television at night and make a 20-minute speech and say, now, I've delivered to the Congress a 15,000-word message tomorrow, and so much has gotten in place, but then I find it's under the banning of demand, and it didn't seem to...

But that 15,000 word thing is a hell of a document in Syria for anybody, don't you agree?

For anybody running.

I mean, there's something in it for everybody.

And you know, if they want to talk about programs, you know, people don't get close and say, well, we didn't offer anything in the way of programs as long or everything.

This is the most programmatic goddamn administration in history.

Probably too much programs.

We've got a program for every goddamn problem.

Everything, right?

And, you know, it's funny, I say Andrew Press, because they're here in Mansfield.

It's funny, they now have it in their lives.

There are 90 proposals, 80 proposals that the President has put forward, and they get an election vote from Senator Mansfield.

There are 90 proposals, and who else?

And so we've gotten that across.

It's a good route to bring to 90, to turn 90.

That's all.

So...

I don't need to dwell on this because it comes back to... Now, the other way is... Let me say this.

There's a desperate need for a good Republican in the Senate.

We haven't gotten any good Senators.

Like for today, on this speech, we have to call on the support of Will Scott.

He'll come down.

And Griffin, of course, he's one of them.

He's no tower of strength.

But they still call him Goldwater.

Now, for Christ's sakes, I mean, all of our guys, Cotton's too old.

Curtis is too old.

And, well, Brock isn't bad.

Baker isn't bad.

I mean, he's not too gutsy.

But boy, that Senate is a place, it's a place for a man.

I'm just thinking of the opportunity for leadership in the United States Senate.

Jesus Christ, it is terrible.

The Senate is, it's a wasteland.

It's a wasteland.

You've got a few good men in the House, Bob.

Can you name any good men in the Senate?

You know, Baker, Brock, Percy, you know, they're not bad.

Everybody's having his own canoe.

Pat, you know, he's no great tower in the drink.

Tower?

It's a pretty, it's an amazing United States Senate.

Goddamn, when I went to the Senate, there was a lot of competition.

There was a lot of, you had your iPhone.

Paul, you were here a few times.

That's awful.

There was just a word spelled wrong.

It should be a lot easier for you to read it.

Hello.

It's saying everything, instead of saying there.

The words you were having are still wrong.

Try to get your spelling right.

I thought they had proof that it can't be, but it doesn't work.

No, they do, but they don't.

You do know it's going to bother you.

It's so easy for me to read that.

Never bothers me.

Rose, did you get up to come to the office and put the plate in?

I think that's going to put the drama, and it's going to have an impact, I think, on where it counts.

Just as long as there's no question of what they try to say philosophically.

Oh, yeah, that you left because you didn't like the fact that I was too conservative?

No, no, no.

Or that, well, they liked that you were liberal?

No, that you wanted a power struggle.

Oh, shit, no.

It's going to be...

The stuff that was in the evidence, no, but... Well, what did you... No, I know that.

But I think you should say that Attorney General Mitchell, very directly, campaign committee last year to do it.

I think we can clean that up pretty well.

We could have Klein do a background on that.

No, I mean, on that particular point, you should do a whole press conference on Hillary.

Now, what should you do?

Do you think, for example, the state of the union was too mild?

Oh, somebody, for example, holds out, and they're going to call him, but I was too.

It should have been rather involved.

I'm on that program.

That was not a majority opinion.

Otherwise, it is quite a basic question.

What should we do?

Well, I can do both.

All right.

I have a proposition that your visceral reaction is going to move at some point.

You're going to want to go in.

It's like you might think you should.

The question is going to time.

Remember, the present time you have to stay.

I have to think about how long the stay is going to be in.

It's good.

It's stable and resourceful.

I mean, I'm getting ready to go to abroad and all that.

You look at history.

It's good.

Roosevelt began to fight back hard.

I think it was the fall of speech in 1940.

That was about, I think it was the 36th of 1940.

It was 40.

The Wilkins.

That was the turning point, and that's where he really started to fight back.

It was rather late.

Very late.

Now, Truman, I think, started much earlier to build his case when he ran against the Congress.

Well, he had to because he was about 30% of the poll.

We're never going to go that far.

I understand that.

But my recommendation was that was right because he'd come right out of the convention.

Right out of the convention and call the Congress in the special session.

That's right.

Put that on fucking 11.

and outside the other side.

Now, we might have to deal with that.

It is that you stay on the high road through the convention and beyond the convention, and whether it's six weeks or less, you can't wait too long.

I think you're going to fight for these things.

And this is not to say you're snarling and snapping.

But to be vigorous is to be more in sorrow than in anger.

But you're taking them on.

You don't have to take them on with no gloves.

It's just a case of drawing a line and calling the spade a spade.

So that paper thing you were telling me about, I was just wondering if you were able to find it.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry about that.

I'm sorry.

Sure.

I see one on the back.

I don't think many people disagree, but that'd be crazy, I think.

The one on the back is pretty good.

Both are on the 3, 2, 6, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

Yes, we have to do it.

I agree.

Anything else?

My prediction of 71 would be a good year, correct, but I didn't say it was a good year, you know, after that fourth quarter and all that.

Let's take a strike here.

We're off the impressive inflation cut to even a half percent.

It wasn't four years, but it's eight percent right now.

I'll show you that now.

Seventy-two is what all the people are doing.

You might see it when you're in the morning.

It's probably doing pretty well.

It also runs through some landmines to help get off it and just die on it.

It's a tough game to survive in shock.

You just need to look back and try and leave it in pressure.

It gives us you the courage to die, but they don't finish it.

We have to continue to do this in the world.

It's hard before they change horses and have them.

Sewership thing, sure, that's a hell of a lot going for you.

But that doesn't mean you don't fight to get those things done.

You try to get them done.

It's worth it, but it's not.

The 90 things, exactly.

Oh, well, let me say this, and I think we'll be all over the place.

I think we probably are going to have to end up on the end of the tunnel.

And I think we should try to be shocked to do that.

We should go around.

And this is another reason why .

But if there's one branch they single out, it's that goddamn legislature or state legislature or Congress or whatever act.

And it's in the right.

And it's just a game.

I'll share it with you all.

They ought to have it up.

Load it up right now.

It's just the appropriation process.

You can't let the government be.

They're a half a year at nine months behind on the goddamned dollars all the time.

I just need a police book.

They're boring the way they stood on reapportioning.

They haven't done their job in 47%, so you can assume it's a lousy job.

Yeah.

Of course, government can, you know, do things.

The government doesn't want to do things against something high-spirited and from the money that goddamned made this thing and the government made this thing.

And frankly, that's what the 60s did.

It just revealed this elite function about the ability to show up in these things.

I've been working, running against that title.

I think it was, I don't know, we're getting fortunate to be covering around 50% of the totals in that program of Judaism.

It hasn't, not really because, I don't know, we're in the sixth year.

We've worked really good at managing a goddamn high in the years so far.

It's been pretty solid.

It's like a two-man race.

Europe is really over here.

It's that solid.

It doesn't look like hell.

All races were close.

I was looking back over the years, and it was very close to Lane.

It was after Grant.

After Grant, you know, it wasn't Hayes.

Cleveland killed him in Hayes.

And then came Lane and Cleveland.

9,000 votes on it.

That took Paris to eat food on the second time.

I think we've had a popular majority of people get the funding for it.

And then, uh, in my head, there's only half as many votes for it there.

P.R., the first real landslide was P.R.

's in 1994.

He did very well.

He passed it very well when he succeeded Wilson.

And then it ended up the Republicans split Wilson.

He was a minority for 40.

Then came Wilson Hughes, which is close to

...a landslide for... ...a landslide for Cooper.

In other words, the Republicans were the majority party in the 19th century depression.

In 1932, the land slid through.

In 1936, the land slid through.

In 1940, it closed.

It was very close, 25 million to 22 million.

In fact, New York lost to the same amount, 206 million to 229.

There were close elections.

Truman was close.

It was a horror.

But, after that, she was close again.

The Johnson, Goldwater thing was an aberration, but it came to happen pretty next month.

They missed the point.

Still, with all of our problems, we had a half a million per hour.

It should have been better than a goddamn bomb call.

Well, he'll know and he'll appreciate it.

When will you see him?

Tomorrow.

Thank you.