Nixon, Ziegler & Haldeman on Vietnam War and North Vietnamese invasion

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Hi, I'm finished.

Sir, I'm just certain I'm satisfied.

Bring, uh, bring him up.

Well, I...

I'm here, actually, but I don't... Whoa!

Whoa!

I don't know whether you were able to get out, but I have to talk to Roger.

Yes, sir.

Did I say not to blare today?

Yes, sir.

This morning, Secretary of State, I said to the Secretary of Defense, and I said, Secretary, testify.

And I led into that, and I said, well, can you explain why you're not responsible?

I said, well, I'll be responsible as Secretary of State.

I'm not being responsive at all.

What are they being responsive about?

Well, see, they want to lose.

You heard they don't give you $60 on the radio.

But I gave them enough today in terms of asking the Secretary of State.

Oh, that's what they want you to say.

Oh, of course.

It frustrates them.

Let them have it.

Good.

And then I let them go to the ladies, and then I hit the points, and it was a mean end to abuse without negotiation.

I said, a lot of you guys, and I said, a lot of the critics were asking, a year ago, a year and a half ago, I remember full well, why don't you do something about negotiations?

Why don't you proceed with negotiations?

I said, on January 25th, the President made it very clear that he had done that.

I said, look, I'm going to go to other places.

And I said, let me just assure you that we're, you know, I led into it.

They said, well, as long as he says he wants to talk, I said, there's a lot of difference between talking about wanting to talk, and there's a lot of difference between talking and negotiating.

What we're interested in is serious negotiations.

The other side knows full well how to imitate to us, how to begin the process of serious negotiations.

Well, why don't the American people tell us, you guys will pull well, or we cannot.

Then I made the point that this president has done everything that he's said he would do.

And so I'm sure you've heard the problem yourself.

You're not as good as I've been in two years.

We're saying right now that we're taking every step to proceed towards serious negotiations.

And I said, I'll assure you that this administration, on the record of this period, even from January 25th, is knowing that we will not be found running in terms of resolution.

It seems to me that the people who are talking about resolutions, they should be talking about resolutions that support the South.

That's a resolution.

condemning the action of .

And the comparison between condemning the enemy rather than defending the enemy.

The reason I'm here is because I chatted with Henry, but I did want to chat with you.

The message had been delivered to us.

And Henry came.

Secretary Ruggs said they should release that text to the State Department.

The Soviets released their text.

So they probably know you and they'll let you do that.

So it's one hand.

The text is a message to the soldier, right?

If you want to deliver that, have that go out and have that talk right, you're still going to have to get a hold of it.

I don't think they're going to let you go.

I think this is going to come out.

I think that's possible.

We're going to release him tonight after the TV time.

I let the TV go with Rogers, and let this go, and let it go right after this.

And then the TV will be screwed, and they say that it will be there.

Well, what was the text of the message?

The text of the message?

military targets.

And as a result of that, it could have been an aircraft launch.

What's the record, sir?

Yeah.

And we have no obligation to verify.

We can just hold the position that if that was the case, we're not keeping out of that.

That'd be released before the television is on, so it releases right after the television is on.

That's a message you get all the time to leave a message.

You can always save it.

You just have to give it a single time, and the message will be delivered, and the chance to control it will get launched.

It's a long time here.

I don't know.

I think if you left that hanging out there, they're going to have red faces.

So I think we may pick that up.

Really?

It's because they keep pumping it out.

The thing of it is, in terms of their stories, they know that we're not blocking them.

We know that we're not.

It gave me the impression they were saying, what if the resolution is passed and the administration is down by it?

And I said, what we are doing is insane.

Our policy is to do what's necessary to .

Excellent.

Oh, yes.

Well, the health resolution .

.

What about the overall policy?

And I've said it all along.

That is delegated in terms of what military targets are given.

Well, does this mean that in order to get the North to handle the program, how long are we going to be under this existing policy decorations?

You say what?

None of their business, absolutely not.

I said I'm just not going to tell you.

You see, the way you should know is to serve your own guidance.

that we do give specific authorization to that area.

And now, they don't have it now.

But we must not.

I don't want them.

I want the North Vietnamese to have all their goddamn crews out and wait for that next strike.

But we're just not going to save it.

But let it be.

We want to be very, very unpredictable.

Let these parts of the press play their very best.

They don't deserve, no they don't deserve to be called Americans.

Or they will not take on the enemy.

Who the hell is causing all this?

Who the hell invaded?

That's all I need to know.

I just made it to the Senate today, right?

In this wrap up, after the television went off, I helped set this thing to the Senators, that I would understand why everybody here is attacking the United States.

It's getting away from attacking the United States.

And I said, look, we're not.

I said, there's no question in the world.

I mean, who's causing this escalation?

Who's invading?

I said, we're not.

I said, the South Vietnamese are not conducting military efforts, and we're not supporting them.

We're taking it just because we want to do it, just because we want to hit military targets.

It's something that they have done, an action that they have thought about perpetrating.

And that is what we're doing.

I said, no question.

There should be no question about who has caused this action.

Well, they say, well, they didn't really invade into the B.C.

Oh, no, I was able to see that for a little bit.

I was able to say, for years they were lying about having troops in North Carolina.

So now there's a question about the fact that the enclavement of the U.S. was committed.

It was astonished, it was surprised, and the enclavement was actually

I knew they were building up, but I said they were astonished and surprised from the standpoint that months before that they were talking about the fact that they wanted to talk about a solution.

And all that time they'd been preparing for this nasty thing.

So we went through that.

That's good.

I think we're in good shape.

That's good.

I hope they run a lot of routers tonight.

I hope so.

I hope the message went after the police.

I was wondering, I asked one of the Henrys from Paris, from Paris, if you could get, uh, this is a critical break for shutdown of the post office, to see if they could get a number of Republican Congressmen, Senators, who've been Democratic co-sponsors, or those who have been condemning the North, Vietnam, and the Israeli entity.

I don't know.

the fact of getting a... Yeah, I just wanted to know the story.

This is all a good story.

Must be something that probably you might even care about.

But you don't want this revolving.

I don't think the other two Democrats would want to be fine.

Well, hell, we had...

In the House, you had Hebert, and those guys were strong.

Hebert had all these things.

They don't need to be here.

Yeah.

They could get a number of House members.

At the time, the Senate is screwing around with this.

If the House could move on a resolution of this sort.

Now, McGregor will have to, he's busy with other things.

He's got the wheel left out on the board.

See if they think a resolution is a good idea.

At the time, the Senate was farting about a must-do resolution.

I wasn't going to listen.

I don't know the problem.

This must be introducing the reservoir.

He's introduced it already.

That's right.

I guess so.

I said he was going to convert a foreign relation there.

He's reverted the foreign relations committee, of course.

There really isn't anything to be done.

I'd rather leave it than close it.

It's true.

My father doesn't think things will be this hard.

He'll get it.

You kind of followed up on that.

Yeah.

They were busy ahead on those stuff.

They were busy with other things, but I don't want to be too involved in urging things and this and that and so forth.

But the only suggestions I would have was I would get people like Rockefeller and Reagan.

I don't know if you mentioned that.

Not that.

Rockefeller and Reagan.

The only question is for one of the VT, whether we really do want to meet him.

I don't see how it would be constructive, and it might be effective if he gets a good strong thing and gets a play.

If he doesn't get a play, it doesn't hurt.

Particularly if we can unleash the terms this time of attacking the Democrats, the partisan

The partisan is really important for the capitalized future.

You guys are really going to have a good deal of this time.

You just might.

Because the S&E, I'm going to say, if it got on, that would be great to do it.

That's great to do it in the S&E.

to condemn the United States for attempting to help the Communist Party defend itself against the Communist people.

To condemn a massive Communist

that our people ought to be able to do better or worse than that, you know what I mean?

That's their job.

And that's the theme, you know, that's the theme I'd like them to say.

And I'm proud of the business people who've done it, right?

And the president who will stand up for them.

He would be better than Agnew, but having Agnew say, well, it's not bad, I think...

I think Agnew, uh, yeah, I think Agnew ought to take that a lot.

He ought to just take it on.

I don't know quite how to figure out how he should do it, but, you know, I don't see it as far as not doing it.

You know, sometimes he gives you good nonsense, and sometimes he doesn't.

He doesn't, and you're down with your head, and he doesn't.

You haven't lost him before you've been honest.

You know, as I said, you can keep hammering it.

You're pushing through cannon hard to get something out on the rockers as soon as possible.

Yeah.

On the summer, the summer, I thought it was one of those highlights being, I mean, like, massive evasion and, you know, the dissipation of evasion.

And, you know, I don't think it's done.

So, you know, I'm not going to go through it.

I'm not going to go on it.

I'm sure you're pretty well on that.

and those who are fighting the communists.

I'd like to see a member of the Senate stand up and attack the communists who are invading North Korea and South Vietnam, rather than the Americans and the South Vietnamese who are fighting the communist invaders.

That is very close to the way those communists are invading South Vietnam, rather than attacking the Americans

South Vietnamese, who are fighting the communist invaders.

But they've been with us all the time.

We've got a pretty strong team.

I saw a guy who said, you know what he saw?

He said, I'm aggressive, very jealous of you.

Usually you've got an argument.

Well, you already told me what you saw.

It was interesting.

You were saying, you know, you injected it into those discussions.

You couldn't have let this go wrong.

You're not going to solve the problem.

I'll be in on this one, but it's going to be better.

The state cooperation is working very well.

They've got enough control.

Henry East.

Cooperating well.

Yeah.

Henry East.

Well, I pushed Henry perfectly hard.

You've got to have the old Henry.

All right.

Well, of course.

That's what I'm going to say.

That's awesome.

Don't ever think about it.

They made a place where somebody would come and get up and ask for each acre.

I asked his office for the money.

He said, just the money for the morning.

I'm going to run out right now.

That's why I'm going to run out right now.

possible result, is it better going to do it after the Russian summit?

Well, yeah, I'm wrong, Bob.

You can argue that it would be better if it weren't going to do it now.

Well, you've got the war going on, you've got other things going on.

Well, you've got, assuming the Russian summit comes off, you've got it to wipe things, wipe that terrible off the record.

I'm going to make you a notice that he's got a look at what he's doing through and beyond

Just those things.

One simple thing.

How the hell do you confirm that you're Secretary of the Treasury?

You know, monetary stuff and what it is and all that stuff.

How are you going to find a guy that's confirmable to be in there?

How are you going to get it confirmed?

And even if you've got it confirmed, how can the new Secretary step in and pick up all those pieces of information?

The deal would probably be just have that acting Secretary.

But that would be acting Secretary.

Right.

There's one man over there working for him very closely.

Somebody over at the D-Press, you know, so some of the people over here can talk.

The time he was thinking of was to do it right after the trip, possibly the detection time.

He looked it over and said, we'll do it now, we'll do it after the dinner if you want to.

It was a bad time.

I didn't like to create any problems anymore.

You should see now, I didn't think so.

I was sure it would be after the Russian summit.

I guess what I'm trying to do is perhaps delay it so you can be decisive.

Perhaps delay it until maybe I can have your mind to do a little bit of something about it now.

... ... ... ... ...

I really don't think I...

I'm afraid we haven't done it once.

They can say again, I'm afraid.

And as a matter of fact, I'm afraid we've caused this to run out of control.

I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking about this,

Next week, we ought to do a Wednesday, and I'd like to do it.

So we can get him back soon.

I don't know if we have a dinner this evening.

Maybe that doesn't matter.

Well... Basically because we can get the, uh, we can keep the rest of the time clear and also get the, uh, that's not a late dinner on the market.

And it's hard to work Monday nights.

I don't know.

This is more than we can do together.

Hopefully, we will get it.

The idea is that we recommend the laboratory.

That's a real good solution there.

That's how we're going to do it.

We're going to do it.

Go to the house of God and tell them you're going to give them the floor.

They tried.

They loved stone and never got any.

They actually loved stone three times.

Heat, green, totally good.

I'll say it against the truth.

I do.

It's just, you never know.

With love stone, low pressure on me, you just might learn it on some way.

Then aren't the Democrats continuing their kicking each other around?

You know, the Sunday paper, I love reading it, but they have a lot to do with it.

I'm pleased.

I don't know if you're ahead, but that's the way I am.

I do.

I don't have such a list of choices.

I don't know.

They are tending to be screwed up and get more so.

And that's, in general, the one problem they have is that they're on the arms that they sure don't see anything.

The use of this is at least what it is because

you don't see all the screaming about, you know, they began the war, it has something to do with this, you don't see all the, not the terrible high prices, that's kind of like, you know, one of those things that comes and goes.

Prices, they may have said they focused it all so much on these prices, and then these prices went down a little, and they, the opposite of what you see, you can't practice.

So you're aware of that.

I want to see how Bill survives his day.

I've heard a lot from people who've lived with others.

Nixon, Ziegler & Haldeman on Vietnam War and North Vietnamese invasion

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 17, 1972

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