Conversation 334-044

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Larry, how are you?

Well...

Hold it, Barry.

Let's see if there's any other spawn right now.

We'll find out very soon.

I've been doing some thinking.

The major mistake that I have made in foreign policy is failing to follow my

The second point is that I did not follow my instincts during the third speech when I entered the country with a spaceship, which is going right after the

when they had the country rather than pissing around.

The third thing was, I think, that you really caught on to the conversation and started really campaigning, and I said, look, if we're going to go all the way, I can't tell you, we may as well blockade or do it, or they'd just as much heat benefit as we did.

The fourth thing, where I did follow my insurance, both you and I followed our insurance, was on Laos, but there,

Son of a bitch Abrams didn't follow what we told him to do.

We could have won the war then.

If I had acted then like I act now, we'd have had enough bombers up there to cream those bastards.

We made a dry decision.

We did two wrong things.

We sort of tried to sneak a victory by sliding into lava without telling anybody.

That wasn't so bad as we wanted.

Yeah, but secondly...

if you had poured in the resources, if you had not let Blair manage that board, I mean, when I say you, I'm more playing than you because that's my problem.

Well, you told me to send a, I did.

Some bitch, Blair, rejected.

He rejected everything.

Rogers rejected everything, and nobody comes up with the goddamn thing.

There's no question that if we had done well, three-quarters of the energy would be out of the board.

Now the situation now is very good.

I've thought about it all.

I have reached a conclusion before you all have talked about it, and I agree with you on this assumption, which I let you interview.

But if I had thought of this myself, we could not be in a position where the Russians cancel the summit.

I mean, the summit is canceled, the summit is canceled.

We cancel it, they cancel it.

I don't think there's going to be a blow either way.

The important thing is whether it's held or not.

And they cancel Woodland, and we cancel Woodland, and so forth.

I've heard comments like that.

But I don't know what's next.

But I do know this.

I do know this.

What matters, what matters now is not playing for the public reaction, not trying to set it all up.

Let me say, I'm not this time the fact that I have avoided being in Johnson's position.

I think, however, that Johnson's position, anyway, is quite different from one of mine and the military's.

That son of a bitch always did it in a half-assed way and still didn't go explain to the country.

I have explained to the country and appeared like I'm for peace and drawing people, but I've also been very strong.

I've never tried to do it in a half-assed way.

That's the difference.

Now, at this point, as we near the end of this administration, I'm sure...

And I'm not going to go on this case.

That strike is to go off.

Favors won't send it off.

The player doesn't order it off.

I want four in this goddamn office in five minutes.

He's going to get his ass off.

He's going to order it.

And if it's a result of that, we lose a way.

We lose a way.

That strike should have gone to last week.

It didn't go.

But it's got to go.

I want to tell you what I have in mind.

It's to go.

I don't care what the striking answer is.

It is to go.

Then we go for two days.

But not two days and then wait to see if they negotiate.

We go for two days.

And then we'll wait a little because we've got to get back to the battery.

I realize that.

And then, if the Russians cancel, we'll blockade.

We will blockade and continue to bomb.

But we are now going to win the war.

That's my decision.

Mr. President,

I may have lost the election, I don't give a shit, but we're gonna win the war.

You see, we are in this position where if we play this cozy, I mean, I thought of a thing, you know, and I suggested, well, how can we do this, just do enough bombing to get their, you know, we've always said, let's get their attention and all that, and the little shit-ass men do strikes and all the rest.

Well, we should have done more even then.

Nevertheless, they were better than nothing.

Right now, we've done everything to get their attention.

We have as much public support as we can get.

It will deteriorate as the Senate continues to beat us over the head as the bad news comes in from the work.

We have got to do something positive, give some encouragement to our friends at home, some encouragement to our allies abroad that that's still to be done.

It let our enemy know they were good.

But many of them, we got the power.

And as I once told you, I didn't give a damn in the Senate if it didn't restrict me.

Voted 80 to 2.

by God, as long as I had the power, we were going to use it to see that the United States doesn't lose.

I'm prepared to do it.

And if it means we have a confrontation with the Russians, it's too bad.

We're going to do it.

That's entirely the reason that this presents a different way to do it.

You come up with the right solution in canceling the summit and seeing what the Russians have found and all that sort of thing, if we're playing the old way.

But I just decided that I think

And I'm rather interested in how Connolly came to this conclusion independently.

One thing that can't happen is losing this war.

It cannot happen.

Understand?

I don't mean by that that it's all going to be amazing.

What I mean, we are going to cream those bastards.

And we're going to cream them good.

I couldn't agree more with Connolly's proposition.

I don't give a damn about this.

I don't want to try to get into this division.

But if they have it, they have it.

We're going to hit the tarps, we're going to hit the tires.

Screw the railroad yards.

They're pretty good.

The railroad yards, the docks, if there's ships in there with munitions on them, knock the sons of bitches, put them right down the funnels.

And if they're Russians, if they sell a sailor home, let them go.

The other thing is, the other thing is, if you get the military installations around and it spills off and knocks off civilians, that's too goddamn bad.

That's the way it's going to be.

We're playing for it anyway.

We're going to do it.

That's the way it is.

That's the way I feel about it.

I'm very strongly about it.

I hope we have argued out of it at this point.

But let me give you a conclusion to the time accomplished.

In terms of detective on the same issue, I've also come to the conclusion that we must now break that down.

If we can.

In an hour.

That's right.

In an hour.

They are obviously going to destroy you.

destroying you has a profound significance for the whole orientation of this country in terms of the alternatives, and it has a profound significance if those sons of bitches can break the back of two presidents, they undermine the structure of authority in this country.

Right.

And let's not forget, I mean, you are no special in your circumstance, agree with me on all this, but there are

I have to ask the dominoes, by God, if we lose in Vietnam, Thailand, the little Indonesians, frankly, let's face it, the Israelis, some of the others, are going to be petrified that we are not going to let it happen.

And I do not exclude at all that there is collusion between the Soviets because the thing that the Soviets want most

first to get rid of you, and second to get rid of me.

Even if these two big obstacles to them be dealt with, you have not fought for their guns or also over the trade with China.

The China thing, they remain the thing.

They remain the thing.

China, and you get Vietnam off your back, and they're not telling you what you're going to do.

But they can no longer operate on you.

Now, they may not have thought it,

How did he handle it?

Well, he had no choice.

Ten quick questions, one sorted, and the other, no, they won't discuss this, this, this.

They just read their public statement.

He said, I'm willing to come back if either of you are prepared to discuss any of our ten questions.

Or did he get any questions about a bug out for his prisoners?

Yes, I think so.

But I believe that they came back.

Their strategy is to deprive the American people of any hope.

We've gone through these phases before.

We've gone through these phases twice before.

That's when they have a particular approval in these negotiations.

Sure.

So that no one can say there's any progress.

Whenever there's a weakness.

What I mean is, they want to deprive the American people of any hope of negotiation.

Exactly.

Sure.

All right.

That also is an attempt to prove... You see, actually, going back to the plan, it was a rather good move for us, and they have realized that.

So now they put us into one of the positions.

Either we stay in the plan or we stay in...

They didn't do that today.

How could they possibly think, though, Henry, that I'm not going to bomb?

Now, my judgment is they believe you're going to bomb, and therefore, I would suggest consideration of the following.

If we're going to go for a probe, there's no sense playing a why should we not do the blockade first.

Why should you not go on television and say, now, here is what I have done.

I've had Kissinger in Moscow, and he offered the following.

I've had him in Paris, and we offered the following.

I've had Khodad offer the following.

There's only one thing left of us to do, and that is to surrender.

That we will not do.

Now, these are the ones who have their whole army outside their country.

I am cutting them off from military supply.

I think that, just for your consideration, Mr. President, I can see the bombing party will do.

The problem with bombing is they must have all their goddamn peace and troops all geared up all over the world.

And they must have some understanding of the Russians.

I just don't believe that they would act this way.

So, in other words, you understand that the likelihood of the Russians cutting us off

is enormously increased by blockade.

Well, Mr. President, even that you can argue in two ways.

You can say that the Russians might accept the blockade because they don't have to challenge it, but I agree the likelihood of the summit being called off.

You see, George, it works.

Except I'm prepared to blockade because I think what's going to happen if we bomb is the Russians will call off and then we blockade.

You see, you have only two choices with the bombing anyway.

You either give them a two-day bargain strike, which they maintain, or you keep it up, in which case the Russians will just stop and cancel the summit anyway.

The reason why I was leery about the two-day strike was because we're beyond the point where Pax are doing anything good.

So what I would do, what I'm now at least putting to you for your consideration, is to do a bargain strike.

That is at least something totally different.

Right.

And it doesn't get, and it didn't, it doesn't.

Then, you still have to buy.

Uh, you wouldn't be running up against Abrams and Leodra in a way, which is a minor question.

You wouldn't run up against this massive

emotion of leaving the department.

Then when the blockade is established, then I'd start a massive attack on the rail lines to China.

And then I systematically knock off the oil supplies beneath the bomb in order to make the blockade effective.

Otherwise, I don't know how to do it.

I know, because they've done enough there to run the warps for another year.

But the major thing is now the only hope we've got is to get across to them that, by God, they have got this bomb.

Correct.

Anything less than that is going to get you to this pitfall-type situation.

Correct.

Which you cannot survive.

Correct.

I agree.

Well, can we?

On this one, I think I want a very brief speech, though, five minutes.

So you could, you can do it the other way.

You can have a massive two-day strike on the North.

No.

The trouble with, or a three-day strike on the North, the point is, the point UA might fall, that if you lose UA during that period, you see, that way they can keep the planes in the South for a bit, which they may need.

You can do smaller strikes.

You could just send 20 B-52s over the rail yard.

You don't even need the B-52s.

You could then just, what we would then do is surgery.

Once they're blockaded, we just pick up P.O.L., power plants, and above all, cut these rail yards.

Now, you understand.

We blockade, then the Russians.

They'll probably cancel the summit.

Cancel the summit.

But if you bought more than two days, they'd also cancel it.

But if the Russians cancel the summit, then we just... You see, the point is, if they cancel the summit, I'm speaking now in the public relations, if I go on the television to announce the blockade, I can't go on the television again after they cancel the summit.

I can't do it.

You know what I mean?

Why does he have to announce the blockade when he's doing it?

He didn't announce the blockade.

Oh, the blockade, yes.

That's a major dimension of it.

And you have to go on the dustbin.

Why does he have to go on the dustbin?

Why did the people hear him?

I think the action is so strong.

Let's think about it.

How about warning the Russians?

Just make a one-minute statement.

No.

No, no, it has to be explained.

I think you can explain so much in the blockade that you'll have answered the other question.

I think you can explain in the blockade what you're doing in such a way that if the Russians will probably cancel the summit, you don't need a hell of a lot of additional explanation.

He said, I've informed all governments.

They're shaking their hearts here now.

This is not an act against them.

It's an act against our enemy.

And I would say these people are putting 60,000 Americans into jeopardy.

You have done everything.

I was sent with the following officer.

Porter was sent with the following officer.

I saw him.

He got killed.

What has been there?

Of course you dropped him there, secondly.

What has been there, secondly?

The day we informed them of the plenary, of our return to the plenaries, they attacked Khang Phuong.

The day of the plenary, they attacked Dong Ha.

The day before the private talks, they attacked Long Tri.

And at the private talks, they reject this and this.

And as they are there, they are there to destroy not only the South Vietnamese, but to endanger the lives of 70,000 Americans, 69,000 Americans.

And therefore,

The American people have endured too much.

This blockade will stay on until there's a ceasefire and prisoners are adjourned.

And when that happens, you will withdraw American forces.

All American forces within what?

Four months, three months, I don't know.

Let's just say when there is a ceasefire, does that chill too much?

How will it?

That won't happen.

If you've got a ceasefire,

You might grumble.

That's good, you know.

I see you're grumbling.

But by that time, we'll have, we'll have, we'll have ruined it.

Because from then on, we go for broke.

I think from that time on, we'll systematically destroy the North.

I intend to do that.

Well, that's what I want to do.

All right, Henry, if we could just get, if you've got somebody that we can put on the speech.

And I do that in full blood.

I've sent an artist with a hell of a lot more disease than I've seen in the past few years.

Well, there's a withdrawal of our troops he can handle.

But to cease fire, the lot has been lost.

Yeah, but we have to say that, don't we, as he's fired?

Or he would.

He bought for purposes of POWs.

He said, we'll end the blockade as soon as our POWs are returned after which we'll withdraw in three months.

In three months.

Then we'd say...

Then we're doing a whole war of appeal.

I think the ceasefire has to be thrown in.

And a ceasefire throughout Southeast Asia.

And then incidentally, so that it pulls the rod of the Senators who say that we should withdraw America in four months.

Let's make it three months.

Beat them by a month.

No, it's good.

It's better.

You know, Gary, what I think, Mr. President, if you do this, the only thing that matters is that you're going full pro.

Well, look.

Have you ever doubted that I could go?

That we've been going for real time?

I've never hesitated.

I've never hesitated any time.

We have done these things because of your theory and mine, I must say, that we had to appear to be, that we had to do what the public would accept.

You know, all those goddamn withdrawal statements and all the half-assed peace things.

That's always something.

I mean, with this goddamn cabinet we've had and these formats, it's a miracle that we're still in business.

Right.

Oh, I think we've got to go on the blockade sooner.

How about getting the speech ready for tomorrow night?

I would go Monday night.

It can wait a few days.

We're going to lose the way before then.

Pretty sure.

If we're going to lose the way before then, it's better to lose it before the...

Probably we lose it.

We lose it.

It's better to lose it before the blockade is announced.

They won't be ready for an attack for three or four hours.

In my judgment, for ten days on the way.

This is the game.

I decided it.

I said that would be my... Now, there is...

The only advantage of the other is the bombing.

The bombing isn't going to get the Russians' attention.

We've done that before.

I think they must come and try it.

They discounted things.

And I think Bob doesn't commonly believe, Bob, that even if the run is canceled, if we win the war, we're still in business.

See my point?

I'm not quite clear on that.

I know he believes, as I do, and as Henry believes, that it's very useful to have the sonnet clearly apart from Vietnam.

Look at this world here.

Here are those little cocksuckers right in there.

Here they are.

And here's the work of the United States.

Here is Western Europe, that tiny little place that's caused so much devastation.

Here's the Soviet Union.

Here's the Mideast.

Here's the silly Africans.

Not quite so solely Latin, are they?

That's true.

And here we are, right there.

letting them tear down the United States.

Now, goddamn it, we're not going to do it.

We're going to cream them.

Now, that's what we're going to do.

This isn't done in anger or anything.

This little business, you know, that I'm petulant, the rest is bullshit.

I should have done this long ago.

I just didn't follow my instincts.

For once, I'm going to follow my instincts.

After November 3rd, we should have done it and taken all that I think about us.

We've done a lot of good things.

We've survived a lot of insane in this country, but what...

That's right.

You know, the kind of trip-flops here, you've got all kinds of drama, but you didn't have them every third.

That's right.

We withdrawn Americans.

We put out peace offers.

We didn't have that then in the secret.

We've had our secret negotiations.

And we went to China.

Now, a lot of people say, no, Henry, we're in a very strong position.

The man of peace finally said, by God, did you give Henry that line that I told you yesterday?

Yeah.

It's a pretty good line, isn't it?

Well, that would be if we cast the summit, though.

That would be the last line.

That was to say that I was going to Moscow on a journey for peace, but it would not be a journey for peace.

See, the thing that worries me about bombing is, first of all, that's what sets all the nerves on it, but that we can live with.

Why is Hague so much against the blockade?

No, he said he agreed to it.

No, I've talked to him.

Oh, provided you're bound.

No.

You understand.

Now, let me tell you what the enemy is going to do.

They may just decide to try to wait us out through the election.

And if they do, that's too goddamn bad.

I'll be in office after the election for three months, too, and then I will go wild.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I will have bombed them.

I will blockade it.

And then if the election comes, you're going to hoard my food.

And you know exactly what I'm thinking of.

I am totally capable of it.

They may wait you out through the election.

That's one reason why I've been against the blockade.

I know, because you said it would not be decisive.

It might not be decisive, but you have, you still have six months.

I don't know whether they have six months of oil supplies in there.

It's like that week you knocked them off.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, within three or four days.

Henry doesn't have any more confidence in our Air Force than I do to get the oil supplies.

That's the point.

Well, no.

We can get them if we can work on them long enough and they don't get any new ones in there.

And then we would do a surgical operation.

The major thing would be we'd bomb the railroads in the China.

Correct.

And probably all the 52s, the roads in the China,

And then we would go systematically with bombs.

They had POLs, and we would just...

But we could then still keep our air force concentrated on the battle area for another week or so, and then just use a carrier to knock off

Whatever we need not go.

We wouldn't have to have these massive strikes in any one blow then, because... No, I get it.

Because what we would be doing is just wearing them down.

Would you mind if I called in and pulled it down?

Eight minutes?

All right.

I just got to talk to him alone sometime.

Oh, let's get him over here.

I just called in because if you call in, it will get to bed right away.

All right.

Tell him if you want to...

And I like cake and sugar, too.

We have no objection.

Do you mind?

Get me out of the order, please, Mr. Gibson.

You are dismissed.

We have nothing more to say.

Don't be a...

Speak.

Speak, you see.

I was in a bad mood, so I gave you all the money I had today.

You can go and read it.

It's a very good book.

It covers an awful lot of ground.

A few words, seven times.

Very, and it was very good.

It's not yet a level or more that you are going to do it.

I'm just telling you, considering that it's here.

I'll just lay it off.

Well, that we can discuss later.

I think it will be there.

Oh, it will be there?

Yeah.

Monday night is the spirit time.

By the way, we're going to have to go on and ask.

Yeah.

Bob, the difficulty with the blockade is the law.

You don't have to tell your people.

No, no, no.

I don't want to speak on the blockade.

I think I've got to explain why.

That everything is broken.

No, no, no, thank you.

Now you come up with a plan that you should have done long ago.

Now, I probably didn't have it set, but we're going to do it now.

Let me say, I have said to people, you know, we've heard me say, we are not going to do this war.

We, the United States, the South Vietnamese, they will do it, but we aren't.

Now, the factors are going to pay for those.

Well, look, think of those poor POWs that have been there for six years.

They're in changes out there.

They refused to discuss the POWs.

They came in good faith.

You sent me to Moscow, you sent me to Paris, we came forward with a list of questions.

They refused.

Not only did they refuse the questions, when they were informed that we were coming back to the plenary, they attacked on two.

The day before the plenary, they had answered every offer for peace.

with a step up of the war.

That's right.

And that they demand our unconditional surrender.

They demand our unconditional surrender.

And as long as I am there... And they can't position.

And we demand, not that they, but that we impose a communist government on the people of South Vietnam against their will.

Who can I get in the right form?

I can tell you, when I said this last night at the Metropolitan Club,

Because in answer to a question I got to stand in the way.

I said, the president is saving the honor of this country.

Some wise guy asked me a question about why we want victory.

I said, we do.

I said, we want honor.

It isn't a bad word, victory.

Somebody else can use it.

I wish I could.

I'm not the most unsure to tell.

If I said victory.

No, no, no, no.

Of course it could have been.

But Bob Haley is not merely the spy on this bombing.

That draws us over to the Russians.

That's, if you care about what breaks loose here, that's a pretty good argument for the Bob Haley versus bombing.

We've got that one cruiser.

Now that son of a bitch can get up there and start leveling everything soon.

I mean, right after this blockade thing.

I'd put it up there, too, wouldn't you?

I wouldn't level.

There's no point.

If you're blockading High Farm, there's no point in leveling it, too.

Sure matters.

Oh, sure matters.

The docks.

What I would think with the docks, what we should do, Mr. President, is we do this, we ought to be co-fledged.

We ought to say any ship can leave.

And I would bet that nine pence of the ship are going to leave after a while.

It wouldn't make any difference because we're in no hurry when there is a blockade.

No blockade won't stop.

No.

And then when the ships are out, then I'd level the docks.

And why don't you just give him four days to leave?

No, no, no, no, no.

We don't need to do it.

He's right.

You see, a blockade doesn't stop ships from going out.

It only stops them going in and out.

See, no ship is going in, so we can't.

And then after two or three days, just long enough to get the blockade established, and then... And so the blockade will be with money, of course.

Will it not?

You can do one of the things you can find.

I hate that so much.

But the point is, the mining runs the problem of blowing up ships.

Well, no, that isn't the problem.

The problem is that they'll start lighting operations.

And...

The fence is, of course, a combination of both.

That's what I want.

That's what they said.

If you have mining, that gets the ships out of there because then if they don't get out, you say you're going to mine them in harbor.

You see, Henry, this appeals to me so much more than breaking off the summit and then doing it.

So the reason that, God damn it, we're just not using rhetoric this time.

My worry about the two-day bombing strike was that whether you

that the first strike we did on Hanoi, I thought, was to get their attention.

We've given them three weeks to get their attention.

They haven't delivered.

If now we do a two-day strike, and then they say, all right, you've got our attention again, sucker us through a summit, then we are in June, and we are still in an inconclusive situation.

I don't understand.

Henry, I think you should cancel your luncheon.

If we don't have an answer, I should.

If you get an answer, what do you want me to answer?

What are you going to talk about?

Well, there's a lot to be said.

We're just talking somehow.

To suck him along.

Like they suck us along.

Well, they can't suck us along anymore because we... Well, they have to pack something.

Yeah.

They've got to...

This trip to Moscow puts us in a good position for doing this.

I mean, we've done everything to avoid, to get a piece of this.

Well, you realize that if they cancel the summit, I just don't think I can go on television again and say now that they've canceled the summit, do you bother?

Well, that's why you've got to put everything into that speech, but there's a lot to be said if you're just the war leader.

By God.

Cancel the summit and then just have a statement put out.

Soviet Unionist Cats of the Summit.

We're ready to go back whenever they are.

Don't go before the people again on that, Bob.

You're probably right.

Do you mind if we get Conley over to talk about this stretch?

Okay.

Tell him on a urgent basis.

We'll get you out of there.

No, no.

Secretary Conley, please, from home.

I wonder whether we should keep more on the way until tomorrow morning.

All right, fine.

Incidentally,

How do you go to New York?

Well, then you're all right if you go at 5.30.

You know, the people are definitely, you know, 5.30 or 5.30.

Well, I just didn't want to be forward.

I don't know.

No, funny thing.

You know, I tell you, I get ideas that you need, but I don't see how you can do that.

I sleep a lot.

By the time I woke up in the night.

Period.

I bet you have a copy of this for your book.

How about that?

I can only use that term.

Listen, it's fucking Abrams.

At least he's read enough military that you know what we're done is about.

He knows it.

The German and the French, the Frenchman, big man, talking it out.

I mean, the German was right and the Frenchman was right.

And the Germans lost the war because he was a brilliant guy.

But it was a great job.

I thought, you know, he had the, he had the, also, I don't know, I was really, I was talking a lot.

Well, I think that, uh,

Well, it's slow.

It's my intuition.

I wrote it down.

You came from St. Louis.

John came to it from a different way.

He may disagree with this project, but I don't think we ought to fiddle around and try to say that someone's a bomb person and blockade him.

Because you may say it's a summit.

I mean, supposing you bomb for two days and then they tell you, stop the discussion with you in Moscow.

Then you've got another three weeks.

Of what?

Wait a minute.

I mean, supposing half of you found out I had gone for two days.

I can't get in touch with you and test your, uh... Is it ever?

Do you think we could relieve Laird and put Tom in the Secretary of Defense?

Be a strong leader?

What?

What do you mean, in business?

In business.

And let Tom do the same thing as Mr.

Crystal?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I mean it.

apart from the common sense.

My only worry is, first of all, Raj told me that everyone in the Pentagon thinks that Laird talks to you four times a day on the telephone, and that he is in constant touch, and that he's transmitting to you all the time, and more or less thinks that

It would be too much to ask us to let Rush see it.

I swear to you, can you get me the Deputy Secretary of Defense?

That's not done.

Rush, Rush.

Well, yes.

And if I would like Hague, I don't mind.

Henry, there's a loyal poem.

Loyal to you, loyal to this country.

I wish to Christ we could really live for Hague.

That's what I'm thinking.

That's what we talked about in the way.

I did.

That's exactly what we were discussing.

There's nothing to be said for that.

It would drive me out of my mind to have to do it without Hague.

What about relieving him of the vote?

I don't know whether the vote is going to pay for what we say.

But I'm going to have a direct chain of command with Warren.

I am not going to have this fucking around through Laird anymore.

Now, Henry, the best thing to do, rather than relieving Laird from his post, is to relieve Laird from his responsibility for Vietnam.

Under the law, Laird misinterprets the law.

I think, isn't it?

Am I wrong, Henry?

Don't I have a right to talk to the Joint Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or don't I?

You're the Commander-in-Chief.

As the Commander-in-Chief, you have complete authority to do the right thing.

Henry's right.

Don't do the expected.

Churchill's

The thing I gave to Henry one night, I remember Churchill, I told you, is the Book of World War One.

And then if World War Two repeated, strangely enough, it almost did.

And, uh, yeah.

Tell him, tell him, I'll get him out and he'll go over to Lee's Woodsville.

Yeah.

No, the trouble is, you get about it, the Senate won't be able to be in class.

You'll have to pick class.

Hello, brother.

How are you, sir?

How are you?

Social Security was extremely important this morning.

Well, that's the hardest damn thing to write.

You've never done it, have you?

Huh?

I've done two reasons.

I didn't like Bill's country.

I did Eisenhower's, which I think was one of my better efforts.

I did Dershowitz's, which was one of my better efforts.

You know, when they're good and not, you know.

But I, he did not.

This was very hard for me.

I'm sorry.

The point is, I think the main thing about it to me, if I make things right, you know, it wasn't good, it wasn't bad.

But I think John's saying that the seven minutes was not bad.

I said quite a bit.

Or you, I don't know.

What was the price that was there?

Well, I think, of course, you put it in context of what man's life meant, what it stood for.

who watched the theater in the service of what we think of as the law in the state of town and the dedication to the law in the state of town.

I just like the peace officer.

The peace officer is great.

And also the idea that there's an interesting little thought that the great tragedy

One of the great tragedies of life is the true greatness of a man who's seldom recognized until after their death.

He was an exceptionally good woman.

He was a living legend in his lifetime.

He was strong.

He was a man.

He was strong.

He was a hero.

You know who made that man think?

You've got to give credit to old Herbert Hoover.

Herbert Hoover was the guy that called it his little thought.

And I thought it was a good touch job, too, which I did without asking Johnson, but I hope you didn't mind.

I heard it very good.

I wondered if you had any talk to

Well, the fact of the matter was, tell you what Johnson told me.

You know, he was quite emotional at the turn of the last.

And he gets, he gets, he got tears in his eyes.

He said, I want to tell you, I couldn't have been president.

I couldn't have done a job like this.

I didn't know what he had to do.

But he is president.

He liked Jack.

He loved Joe.

He and Joe Kennedy were really close.

And he despised him.

I hated Bob.

Never met me.

I was one of the targets.

It never worked.

So I called the lieutenant.

He also mentioned he would be after me.

I had told him it was an empty court.

I would have gone to shoot.

That's what they had.

What about you?

No, no, there was a, I told John, there was a...

He knows about every comment if you ever met him.

He just said he does have it.

Well, I bet.

That's a lot.

That's what he did.

The only time I had a fight with Hoover, Lou Nichols was like his assistant.

Remember Lou Nichols?

Assistant to Hoover's congressional chair.

In his case, Hoover was in a terrible position.

The Bureau had not done a good job.

They had, to their great credit, found that this was a goddamn communist, but Roosevelt, and I don't think it was Roosevelt, I think it was the assholes around him, they just couldn't let this be destroyed.

And Roosevelt said, he just cuckooed before he came in.

Edgar was very sensitive about it.

I started investigating, I started, he started, and I never got to him.

And I got to him.

when I got the pocket papers.

Well, before that, I destroyed his by proving that he was the one who did it.

No changers.

That's what drove that case.

From then on, the pocket papers were inevitable.

I'll never forget them.

At that time, Truman issued an order that the FBI could not cooperate with the Native American Anti-Case.

We had to get a Catholic over there somewhere, a Catholic guy that had preached and stuff to us, a priest by the name of John Crumman.

Father Crumman.

Father Crumman leaked it to the committee.

He worked in it.

Crumman found out about it.

Crumman issued an order to go to the police.

He cut him off.

I called him, and it was not very soon.

He was cut off.

And I called Lou, and I beat his ass out.

I said, Lou, I think you've been tapping my wire.

He said, well, I said, now, Lou, I know this wire's tapped.

I said, I want you to know, you saw the pictures every week in the mail.

I said, the Hop Creek Bureau fed it to me.

And I got a huge respect and quit tapping it, too.

Sometimes I play pretty hard, too.

You think I'm soft, but I'm really hot, yeah.

You always say stuff that I don't know about.

I'll take your heat.

I came over.

Oh, you want some tea?

Sit down.

Hey, come over here, please.

You okay?

Incidentally, John, Hoover died at the right time.

He was too old.

When he was beginning to make mistakes, when he was beginning to answer his prayers, they were ready to tear him to pieces.

He had a lot of them, frankly.

You know, that's basic.

Your friends, Sid Richardson and others, helped him a great deal this way.

And they should have.

And Hoover left probably a very good state.

I hope to Christ he did.

As you know, some of my most pleasant clients, I don't remember ever seeing one of them, but out there in El Charro, I sat there with Sid Richardson on at least a half of those occasions.

And, boy, did Sid Richardson, Clay Ferguson, and Edgar Hoover, you know, those three men, did Sid Richardson.

Not one of them could swim.

Hoover was afraid of walking on the beach, wasn't he?

I'd go ahead and pick the sun.

Couldn't swim.

Patrick might have swum.

Instead of Hoover,

Oh, yes.

There's only one thing you think of this daredevil, Edgar Hoover, and he would not go near the water.

Never.

He'd sit up.

But they'd sit down.

They did the same thing when they'd get up, eat breakfast together, sleep much together at night.

They'd have their drinks.

They'd go to races together.

They'd go to races together down at Elm Hill, down at Elm Hill, and so forth.

I despise races.

I despise it.

I mean, I just never heard of that.

But nevertheless,

I never went with them for a reason, but I was able to.

But to hear them talk, that's what our old dear friend Sid, the nurse, I'll never forget, I told John this one thing, one morning we were sitting around at Hoover, Sid Richardson and I, and they had a couple of them, they were all talking to each other.

I don't know what the company was.

He mentioned something.

He said, Sid?

I don't know what he called it.

Sid?

He said, Sid?

And they talked to this one guy who was black and he was going to text somebody.

He said, did I just talk to this fellow back in New York?

He said, did I just deal here?

He said, I just died and put you in this box.

He said, no, he didn't.

Later on, we were in Ireland.

He said, no, he didn't.

Five.

Did they do business that way?

Not all the time.

John was their lawyer.

Five.

They had it on each other's word.

That's right.

All the time.

Five million dollars.

This was Bob Young.

Bob Young took over.

That was it.

That was, I was there.

They made the deal.

Robert R. Young.

I don't know whether it was five, maybe it was ten.

Five.

Five million dollars.

Robert Young needed support.

He needed financial support.

Takeover.

New York Central Railroad.

And, uh,

And they're so well-meaning.

Married.

And he called Clint up and said, I've got to have some help.

And I've got to have $50,000.

And I said, yeah.

And that's how it all started.

It didn't make for me to go to the back side of the office.

But every deal I ever made, Clint was over with me.

Or, but in this case, he said, I'll take five.

They said, OK.

I thought about it.

Well, they were high rollers, you know.

And they drove three or four times both up.

And it was an energy shortage, I'd say, really.

And I went to work.

But they left on all of them.

You don't think $5 million is serious?

Well, sure.

They grew up in the hood.

Now it's Athens, Texas.

Athens, Athens.

What part of Texas is that?

It's just east of Dallas.

Oh, yeah.

Over in the city.

It's a sandy land, peanut.

Doesn't that have anything to do with it?

No.

That's in Georgia, sir.

That's in Georgia.

No, no, no.

There's a university that's just near Texas, near Dallas, where I grew up.

Now, that's commerce.

It's such a state of the earth.

It's this little town down there, a peanut, water-bellied country, sandy land, peach country.

Well, Sid Ripson...

I hadn't had any.

Daddy hadn't had any.

Birthday was in the bank.

Underwood's daddy was in the bank.

So anyway, Cedric Celeste Holmes, about 19 years old, 18 years old, went and saw Paul, and this is when they were early, early on.

He had just opened it up.

And this woman who was there the other night, her cousin, asked a question about trade.

And?

Burt Burnett, 24, and her father was Burt Burnett.

So in the town of Burt Burnett, that's his name.

And anyway, Sid went into that country, very young man, made about a million dollars with what he was doing, trading broken oil.

First thing he did, he bought a big Cadillac, a horrible big one.

Once Dallas was a Cadillac Austin for a long, long time.

Went back to Athens one Saturday.

Everybody was doing street jobs over on the square, the quarter square.

Saturday afternoon, fishing, rowing, and so forth.

So he closed that town and drive a big, long Cadillac in front of the city.

A brand new car.

And everybody in town just drove around town very, very slow.

Just made them swear it twice and drove back down town.

Never stopped.

Never should have worried anybody.

Clanton said, my wife and me drove to the car shop.

He said, if that son of a bitch can't do it, so can I.

And the next week, he left town and went to the oil companies.

Quit the bank.

All of them wound up.

All of them.

It was a men's fault.

Archie was a good guy.

He was the last of that crowd.

I know him.

He used to be out there.

He used to come out with, I remember, Paul.

But that was not a very good crowd.

They were good men, too.

They were ruthless men.

They were good men.

But he said, there's a lot of interesting stories to tell.

He said, you know, you have your folks, those men up there, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them, you've got some of them,

Was he the smarter of the two?

No, he was the richer of the two.

Was he not?

Probably the richer of the two, but he was a more stable wrestler.

Yeah.

Less imagination.

Clint put together an incredible empire.

Nobody really knows anything about it.

One time he was operating over 200 different corporations.

All of them.

I've always based here right with the Mark of Washington, the Henry Hope Publishing Company, the Indianapolis Water Works, and all over the world.

Great.

Just incredible.

But anyway, it's a brilliant opportunity.

And Sid was good.

He was good.

He was very good.

He was good.

And the third was the greatest thing that was back then was that I just had some kind of

I just couldn't resist.

That was part of a comfortable, big, small shed.

It was a big, small shed.

But it was this kind of work.

Yeah, this kind of work.

Let's see if the secretary would like a cup of coffee.

I'd love a cup of coffee.

Yeah.

A cup of cold ice cream.

The damn good thing.

Booger's dead now.

He's got all that fire on him.

He's going to send you back to Cuba.

Well, I wouldn't know, sir.

I'd swing him back.

John, now.

Sevently, last night I did a lot of thinking.

As Henry knows, I had a talk with him this morning.

He probably didn't discuss it with John.

But I did a lot of thinking.

Al has a pretty good idea of what my thinking is, the direction of his thinking.

But we'll spend a moment and go over a little history.

and then come to the point that I think we have to prove.

The mistakes I have made have been more obvious.

As far as foreign policy is concerned, I have followed my basic intuition.

But when I have not followed it, I've always been sorry.

You may not recall, but very early in the administration in February, the North Koreans shot down PC-191.

I said, I'm on an airstrike on North Vietnam.

North Korea, I'm sorry.

They got those airfields.

Airfields got down on us.

We were pulled off due to the fact that Rogers and Larry came in.

And they would not support us.

They would have resigned at that time.

Our mistake was in not going in.

The second was, on November 3rd, I made this speech, which had this rather enormous public reaction.

Oh, 68%.

This is the time to go hard.

Maybe not.

There's not much going for us.

We have so much public support.

Maybe that's what it's about.

We've got a little bit more history, but it's pretty fast.

I'll let him regret it here.

What happened?

In the time of Cambodia, I made that decision.

You might call him Henry, but the hairy session I had in the office where I had to call Robert and Larry in and where they... And then the swimming pool event, because your recollection will be very clear.

I want to set the record here so you know that you're not seeing a man go to the surface.

Go ahead, man.

Before we went through a session with John Chisholm, we had a week of sessions, and they'll post everything.

Everything.

John, I should say, I should say this.

Before we did that, I had ordered, and we carried out a series of strikes called the Minton strikes.

Nobody knows it.

I can't believe it.

On the sanctuary.

They were called the menu strikes.

They were called breakfast strikes.

And I said, all right.

So I said, all right.

That's what those unimaginative bastards out there called them.

I said, Henry, the hell with that.

A menu just isn't breakfast.

Let's have lunch and dinner, too.

So we threw breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We bombed the hell out of those men.

Nobody ever knew it, and they didn't say a goddamn word.

Actually, that led to the collapse of Cambodia because it pushed the North Vietnamese people into Cambodia.

And as a result, that triggered Cambodia.

But we then went, and then the president, after about five days of sessions, sent out an order that we leave this Cambodia again.

The archers and Laird came steaming over here.

The archers wanted the order withdrawn on the grounds that he was testified that afternoon before Congress, and he wanted to be able to say that no orders had been issued.

And this is the origin of the fact that he was in ignorance of the Campo of the Invasion.

So the President held up the orders of 24 hours in order to prevent the archers from having clean stewards before the Congress was committed.

Laird said that his bunker and aprons were against the Campo of the Invasion.

that in any event, there'd be 1,000 casualties a week.

So the president asked me to back-channel Abrams and Buckley and say he wanted their assessment turned out that their casualty estimates were about a tenth, and that they were both strongly for the inscription.

That evening, they had sent over a note.

No misunderstanding about this.

Larry told you, Larry, Mr. Parker.

He lied to us.

I was hearing that.

That was clear.

He lied to us.

He said, you understand, Mr. President, that 1,000 calories, you understand that.

He told us that right here, 1,000 calories a week.

Remember, we had to sign up.

He wanted his parents to be the lawmen.

He was in Cambodia, but he was out in the enemy zone.

So that's a big thing.

And what was the other area where he went in and sent in?

the official carrier.

He said if you go in there, you'll get 1,000 casualties a week.

Okay, go ahead.

So Dresden ordered me to track Channel Bunker and Edmonds and find out what they really thought.

Both were in paper, but both said casualties would be around 150.

Which proved to be right.

Which proved to be a little low.

Well, it varied.

It started low, it went a little high, but it stayed in the range of 150, 150.

late that evening sent over a memorandum recommending against both parents being official but recommending operations by the South Beach and his way to the South in the Delaware area.

Half-assed the whole thing.

This was going to be flooded two weeks later anyway because of the monster.

We have that on the record.

And also, I hope you take that goddamn call in.

You made a record of all these things.

Yeah, I'm going to go there.

The next morning, the president called in

branches and legs, together with Mitchell.

And in my absence, when he walked me into town, he was saying to me, he said, I'm going into the United States.

I take full responsibility.

And that's how that decision was made.

Well, I already talked to the president about that decision.

I was on the campaign to go over to the Senate.

And this may seem ridiculous now, but to us, given all the opposition we were getting, it seemed like a really momentous decision to go into Cambodia.

The president was saying to me, look, we're going to take so much heat for this, why don't we go home and blockade Cambodia?

I thought, too.

I thought this was more than the traffic would pay.

I was wrong.

No, no, but I agree with you.

Yes, but I, you know, I said, I didn't think the traffic would fail us, but what we did decide to do was add airstrikes into North Vietnam to take out their supplies that might be going in, and they were quite effective.

So that, more or less, is the history of that particular decision, which gained us, nevertheless, two years.

Without that, we would have been run out of South Vietnam two years ago.

And we paid.

Also cut our casualties in half.

The Cambodian operation cut our casualties from 200 a week to 100 a week.

Then came Laos.

Now, what happened in Laos was that we ordered that.

On this one, incidentally, Laird did not oppose it.

Yes.

The Abrams was quoted.

Laird was opposed to it.

Rogers was opposed to it.

But anyway, on that one, the problem was there.

Was it when it went in?

I hear Abrams dropped it off.

Abrams got sick, went over to the side of Bangkok with his wife and the rest.

And instead of quarreling in the air and the reserves, which we could have, we could have won a hell of a victory as it was, we cut our casualties in half again.

And from 100 others, we could have picked it a week.

Because we chewed up 20 belt, North Vietnamese, and they were unable to invade that year.

That was 71.

The problem there was that Laos, that Abrams had been so drilled by land, the Vietnamese had to do it, that we didn't permit any American advisors to cross into Laos, and he kept on facility seedlings.

that we didn't reinforce, he didn't set up a separate command for Laos.

He ran it out of his normal headquarters so that Laos had to compete with the rest of Saudi Arabia for ten years only.

We smelled the rat after five days and we wanted to smell it.

All of us smelled it and we wanted to send egg out there.

And Laird hit the sheet.

Hit the sheet, I assume.

All right.

Mistake, mistake, mistake.

Now, other mistake.

We now come to the situation today.

Uh, we need to consider law enforcement.

The plan that we discussed with you this morning was one.

Canceling the summit.

I agree with you that our canceling the summit was at stake.

I had sort of gone along with the idea that canceling the summit on our part was wrong.

I felt that we should cancel because if they'd done it, it would be clear that we were wrong.

that we brought him about.

On the other hand, I was thinking back to the U-2.

And on the other hand, I let the record show that when Eisenhower, when the Russians did cancel the Eisenhower meeting with him on the U-2, he went up five points in the popularity poll.

So, thank you very much.

Now we come to the point of the summit.

canceling the summit.

Why, yes, I agree with you.

It's the wrong thing to do.

Because it's a signal.

You can just make a nice little speech.

But then following your mind.

I think what we have to do is to recognize one hope on a single fact.

that under no circumstances can I go to the summit except from a position of strength.

And clearly apart from going to the summit from a position of strength, under no circumstances, even if it costs the election, and it probably will, under no circumstances can I, with all those things I believe in, fail to use the total power of this office with the exception of nuclear weapons

South Vietnam may lose, but the United States cannot lose, which means that basically I have made the decision that whatever happens in South Vietnam, we are going to lose.

Now, to do that, there are two different plans.

One is to bomb.

The difficulty with bombing is that it's totally expected.

Totally expected.

Because we did it before.

Churchill, I guess, before he came in, I didn't finish it.

I was in a regular regime for a few months.

But Churchill makes the point over and over again that a commander must never do the expected.

He can do it once, but he cannot do it twice.

The difficulty with the bombing is it's expected, they're ready for it,

We'll suffer some losses in this and that, but it isn't going to have the effect we see.

Now, in my view, there's only one way to finish an argument.

We ought to blockade and bomb.

Blockade first.

following the bomb.

Now, the bombing was essential for the purpose of taking out the railways into China, the roads into China, and destroying the P.O.L.

and other supplies.

Al, you agree with that?

You're the one who told me on that, right?

You cannot have blockade without bombing, correct?

All right.

Now, let's look at the bombing thing.

The difficulty with the bombing, first, rather than blockade,

blockading first rather than bombing first, which is the chances of the Russians canceling the song become greater because of the blockade, presumably.

On the other hand, if you bomb first and then they cancel and then you blockade, it isn't really as effective a thing in terms of our ultimate objective.

What we've got to do is to keep our eyes on goal one.

Goal one is the summit.

I think it's good.

I think people think the summit is different from this.

They want it, even though they'd like not to lose in Vietnam.

But we know that we can lose the summit and still not lose the country.

But we cannot lose this war without losing the country.

Now, I'm not thinking myself, but I think of the country.

So I have determined that we cannot lose the war.

Having started with that proposition, what do you have to do?

For once, we've got to use the maximum power of this country against this shit-ass little country to win the war.

We can't use the word win.

Others can.

But we're going to use it for the purpose.

And what I would do is blockade it.

We can set the blockade in motion.

I'm going to ask Al about how long it takes, because I've asked him to check on this, and he should have the answer.

I think it could be laid off in two or three days.

It's blockaded.

I would have to go on television and read in a very calm way the fact that we have made every offer of peace that is possible.

We've offered to get out, we've offered to keep off of this.

They've said no, no, no, and they have answered every offer of peace.

this and to this private trip, the plenary session, etc.

Every plenary session was a step up to the war.

And they hold still 400 Americans, some of them for over five years, and still do pick penances as prisoners of war in violation of all international law.

Their armies are invading three neighboring countries in violation of all understandings and the rest.

They ended up in these circumstances.

The United States

must take steps that are necessary to bring, to force these international outlaws.

And that's the term I want to use.

I'm not sure that we want to use the term quarantine.

It intrigues me to say quarantine these international outlaws.

It's not bad.

And this is a connotation that maybe most people have forgotten.

We're aware of one.

It's not to be used.

because Kennedy didn't follow up on his blockade.

Here's what we do.

We blockade, and in the announcement, we say, blockade, and it will be waived.

The purpose is that we will continue to maintain the blockade so that our field can be returned all of ours from the war and a ceasefire in South Vietnam.

Once they do that, we will withdraw all our airmen

within three months.

Now, the thing about this kind of approach is that you have to consider, is will it work?

I think that over a period of four to five months, that maintaining the blockade for that period of time will effectively destroy the enemy's ability

to not another offensive, which is real.

There's three bombs.

I said blockade and bomb again.

Oh, hell yes.

Now, there's another problem with bombing first.

We do have a critical situation in South Vietnam at the present time.

Abrams, over and over again, is capable of subjecting the whole army of the North to the ground when he needs the bombers.

The maximum force around, way untold.

and to a less extended three-quarter point.

Consequently, if we blockade, lay balls, those layers together, the one around it, we lost it by reason of our insistence on some ball bonding.

Laird had made the case to Henry at that time that you can't find any part of it that you could lay down and cross.

Nevertheless, the difficulty of bonding also is that

And yet will not.

For the blockade, you see, the blockade, you would announce that any ships that want to go out, of course, would go out first.

The blockade is not the reference of keeping ships.

You're going out to keep them coming in so the Russian ships can get the hell out of there.

Once they're out of there, they can demolish the dock.

So on your bind, you take out the POL, you take out the docks, you take out the railroads,

You take out the power plants, you're not concerned.

Naturally, you don't try to hit a civilian target, but you can't be concerned if they slump over and hit something.

Now, results.

Russians can cancel the summit.

Russians can get very tough for a minute.

I think they've got a problem with it.

Well, we used to worry about that then.

They have a different situation now on that then.

Remember, Henry, that's one point that you made at the time in Cambodia that was very different than now.

You remember, if we'd have done it in Cambodia, they might have had a Berlin crisis, but now they've got a hell of a problem because they want to get along with the goddamn Germans.

If they have a Berlin crisis, they bring down Iran.

So we're in a better position there.

Now, they went far around Cuba.

But if they want to give us an excuse to go in and knock off Castro, that would be the best thing we can do.

And incidentally, I'll get to that, that bright young walrus over there, get some provocation to Cuba.

If we get some provocation to Cuba, we'll take that son of a bitch out too.

Now, you see that part of this is that, it is true, we're risking some more by blockading.

But, on the other hand, on balance, I think we have to blockade to have a plan which we know militarily will accomplish our goal, which is not losing this damn war.

Mr. President, I am not even sure my Soviet expert thinks that a blockade risks the summit less than a bomb, because the Soviets don't have the challenges.

But probably it risks it.

I disagree with myself.

The trouble with the bombing, as I thought about it, is that no Vietnamese are practically asking us to bomb.

No.

The trouble with the bombing first and then blockading second, because you're for bombing, and we blockade.

Oh, yeah.

The trouble with the bombing first.

Go ahead.

The trouble with the bombing first is that no Vietnamese are practically asking us

There must be some collusion between them and the Soviets at this point, even if there wasn't any .

They must have the whole propaganda machine but leaving that aside.

You bound for two days and then stopped.

For three days and then stopped.

Then the Russians say, all right, we've got to do it.

We'll discuss it with you at the sun.

Then we're again.

But if they don't cancel it, then we're in the same box we were in the beginning.

You can't bomb again until after the summit.

They launch another series of offenses.

That's the box I was in, in Moscow.

What else?

They say, nothing.

And if you keep bombing, then they'll cancel the summit because of the bombing, which is the most morality point here.

Well, on top of that, if there's a bombing here, he called it, brought Johnson down.

So I think that if you blockade first, I think the basic decision you have had to make, which is also the one John mentioned to us, is are you going to win this war?

Are you going to do whatever is necessary to do not to lose the war?

Once you've made that decision, the rest is tactics which works better.

I think blockade gives you a chance to state your case.

It gives the Soviets a minor opportunity to back off if they want to after all they did back off in Cuba from challenging the blockade.

And then you start farming systematically, just running down their supplies.

You don't have to do a horrendous strike because you can operate like a surgeon.

We just put one aircraft carrier out there with no other job.

Then we take out the DOL first.

If we mine the harbor and say, or arm the mines in such a way that they are set for four days from then, that forces the ships out of there because if they are not, they're going to be bottled up in the harbor.

Then we go after the docks.

And so we can reduce Haifa into a shell, and we can systematically destroy the war-making potential.

The thing that killed Johnson was that they were pumping in stuff faster than he could destroy it, and that they were fighting a guerrilla war, so they didn't have to keep large amounts of supplies going south.

And because here the field was open, so they didn't have to weep no matter what.

With fear of ill clothes, with all of this stuff having to come down the rails, the roads, and with high farm clothes and with their reserves being systematically destroyed, something's got to get out.

That's the argument for the blockade.

And I think if we go past that, we've got to get the maximum shock effect and get it over with.

Now, I've got one question.

What are the Chinese doing?

Well, the blockade evidently has the additional advantage that it forces Hanoi closer to the Chinese.

And therefore, what will happen, the Chinese will scream.

The Chinese may even open one of their southern ports as a replacement for Al-Aqara and commit stuff to come in at that port.

That will take months, however, to create.

But there's a good chance that they will... You don't see the Chinese pull?

No, not at all.

How much did the Russians do by air?

Very little.

Well, you can't airlift tanks.

How about that?

We take out the airfields anyway.

Huh?

But even if they had, we could keep them on our airfields.

They could get through trails.

They reoriented their supplies on the train, but it'd be three to four months before they could get that organized.

And I think Europe probably can wear it down now.

On the other hand, the Chinese will have to decide how much Russian intrusion they want through their country.

Whether they really want to turn themselves into a Russian supply chain.

In any event, even if we go to Parliament, we're going to be forced to a blockade if we don't do it.

The blockade is unexpected.

The blockade is, as far as the American people are concerned, would be in the initial stages accepted.

It would wear off over a period of time.

They'd wonder when the hell it was going to get over.

But on the other hand,

It's going to be goddamn hard for people to oppose a blockade which has as its purpose getting our POWs a ceasefire and getting Americans out in three months.

There's the case.

Put your mouth here.

I have talked to all the tactical groups, and I don't disagree with what you've said.

But I actually think they don't want to say what we want.

Let me say why I said three months.

We have a Senate resolution that will be passed, the Mansfield Resolution saying all Americans should get out in four months.

I don't know if my objection is very good or not.

This is 23 months after the sea start.

Yeah, but if you get the sea start, if you get your prisoners returned, then I don't think we'll get out until 9 a.m.

I don't think we'll get out until 9 a.m.

If you get your person to return, I think, frankly, you ought to get out and do something special.

You could have two weeks.

You ought to get out and get out.

Because self-heal or something else can happen.

You ought to get out for what you can get out.

And if self-heal is not good, it's good because you can.

You can't say that it doesn't work.

You probably get up.

That's right.

No longer.

But you have to create an environment where you can get up.

With some honor and some dignity without sacrifice.

Because we don't know if it's that damn little big freak nation over there.

I certainly have no idea.

No problem.

Milwaukee is.

Well, look, the summit is important, but on the other hand, losing Vietnam is fatal.

That's where we are now.

We can't have 50,000 Americans die for nothing.

We can't have...

It seems to me that the whole integrity of this nation is that if we can't stand there and at least come out with a draw, which is by all means what we've looked for in the last several years, then what credibility are we going to have elsewhere in the world, among nations, under any circumstances?

We just find there's no way, there's no way to do it on the negotiated crack at this point.

No way.

But we have to be careful, though, not to give the church the chance to back the country of losing it.

And so that we go through this tremendous exercise just for the result of losing it.

And... What do you mean, sir?

Well, we should think again about this package of...

at ceasefire, at the minimum we have to say that internationally supervised ceasefire, so that we can negotiate it in terms.

Oh yeah, that's right.

I just want that to sound good.

Whatever you put in there.

I don't want to discourage you.

About the length of withdrawal.

Those things are all, the rhetoric can be worked out.

The POW thing is what I would write on hard, though, on the blockade, because I think, John, that has hell of a symbolism.

Well, he had a reason to ask that.

Of course.

He had every reason to ask that.

Every, every region under Geneva agreements, under international court, on any basis, you will probably have a right to ask the attorney's opinion.

I think if we say, after the international, we would supervise these fires in place, and then some unspecified review is going, and all that sort of stuff, I think that would be too much.

Because, well, then you'd stop under these conditions, because they're all in place, and they get a lot, so much of the time.

And by the time you can stretch it out and negotiate with them, they're not going to see the value of the insurance.

If we divide it that way, we can do it.

What premise ever seems to be a challenge from here is whether what you're talking about really is going to be what you think we're setting out to do.

We're not sure.

But we're goddamn sure there's nothing else in the building, so we've got to do this.

What else is it?

What else did you just give me?

I don't know.

It's a little bit harder.

I'm going to get it out.

Oh, there's no question about that.

Well, there is.

You talked about carrier-based surgical bombing.

Oh, that is only as long, as long as Abrams needs those planes.

That's to say, boy, as soon as those planes are available, we're going to use B-52s to crimp those bastards.

No, sir.

I'm assuming that.

By B-52, I mean that if we can't afford them, for the sake...

On any day that you can, throw the B-52s out there.

Designate one or two carriers to do nothing else but hit it in that area.

On top of it any day, you can say, 50 B-52s, send them out there.

The problem is, if we do it the other way, we must do two convulsive days of strikes with 400 F-4s and 50 P-52s, which will then not be on the battlefield.

And when you're through with this, you're faced with the dilemma that if you haven't succeeded, then you've got to go back.

Or the Russians say, we've heard you.

When you come to Moscow, we'll discuss this with you.

Then you are stuck again for three years.

That's what happened last month.

Now, it was useful to go through that exercise because we can use it in our speech, we can say we went to Moscow, we offered them everything.

So I think...

In the meantime, while you're doing all that, menopause will have any effect on the short-term military situation in South Vietnam?

It will have a tremendous effect on them.

Psychologically, that's all.

Yeah, but that's a major problem.

That's a major problem, but still...

It may, it may, look, I have the proposition of something.

I mean, we lost anyway.

I don't think, but I think that they can hold, and the galleries, they ought to be able to hold very poor court.

Now, I'll get a shirt.

No, I agree with everything you said, sir.

I don't know.

The one thing that I don't agree with is that the man was a fireman.

because what would happen is they would accept it.

All right.

You'd get a prisoner's bag and a cop gave you a gift.

And then they'd make over South Vietnam.

Three months before November, South Vietnam was gone, and you had a pretty tough competition for this item.

We wouldn't do it that way.

Okay.

I can put your language out any way you want.

I was only put in that way.

Well, if we say it's an actor who provides ceasefire, we can make it up to him.

I don't think he should lie.

I love it when he's working time with his children.

I mean, to me, the blockade's the place to tell people who's on the trip.

The blockade, at the start of the sea strike, didn't prove it at the end.

I mean, at the end of the trip, it didn't prove it.

Even though he grew up on there.

Talk about the psychological impact of it.

I just want to say, that works on the North Vietnamese in the first year.

On the North Vietnamese here, when they're taking the cream in the B-62, when they hear that their country is taking a hell of a patient with the railroad truck, the utilities out, the harbors out,

And so forth.

And there's a hell of a lot of other things that have been killed.

This has a little backlash to the fact that they don't have the terms they are.

And they don't say, well, the fact that they have a lot of war terms, well, I'll go home, too.

What are we going to do here?

I'm very happy about being down in L.A. And the problem is, you know, if we've gone this far, we can't even consider landing the Marines that went for the day or two.

That's their Marines.

But they don't have any.

Now, can't they, could we do that?

We've got landing craft that can land their Marines.

Well, landing our Marines has been.

That I think, I think getting American ground forces involved again in Vietnam is something the traffic will not bear.

That's right.

At some point, you have to do what you say you have to do.

You're not going to use your forces?

You're not going to use U.S. troops?

Well, I've said I could do everything else.

That's all right.

But you've said you'd do everything else.

It's too much.

Well, anyway, if you do the blockade, that is more than enough.

If we do need something to draw some of these military military units back up, no, that's an idiot, Abrams.

And understand that if he gave us two battalions of soldiers to land in Venice,

It might take a whole snow dream to get the vision off his back.

Well, they don't have the dragon right now.

It's almost anything to do with noise.

I agree that it would be useful I doubt that can be done.

I think a landing operation

The main point is this.

I think we have to go now at 8 o'clock.

I think it's going to go Monday.

Let's go.

Well, it means we've got to make more of a good thing than all that.

Sure.

It's wearing the secrets.

For once, you've got to tell Larry about that thing.

And we've got to get that.

We can't let him run with it.

We've got to get it flying so that he can't start executing it quickly.

We've got to make that sure.

Well, Al, didn't Moore tell us on one occasion that he'd have a blockade ready in 48 hours?

He said that, sir.

I don't know.

What's the reason?

I don't know.

That's right.

We've got to get rules of engagement.

Thank God we've got the passports out there.

We've got the mines out there.

We've got to have the rules of engagement.

He said, if we want to force the ships out of the harbor, we ought to mine the harbor.

And so they set the mine with whatever we want, 72 hours.

And so they set it, and then the ships can leave for 72 hours.

And as soon as the ships are out of there, we just level the harbor.

So they can't break lighters?

They can't light it.

Well, if we blockade, they can't light it anyway, because we just won't let ships get in there.

The lydering they could do only if we did nothing but mine.

But I think if we do this now, Mr. President, the only posture from which to do it is one that we are going all south and that nothing is going to stop us.

If anyone wants to stop us, he's got to do it.

Who's been the one that's always... You consistently are just saying, we'll get a lot of advice of saying under what conditions...

I remember the Cuban blockade.

You get a lot of advice on how softly you can phrase it and how we can have boarding parties on these Russian ships that are not going to break any in China.

The thing to do is to say, rampage it.

Anything that looks like you're out of control.

They're not coming in.

No ships will be allowed to come in, bringing these instruments of death in aimed at American forces.

You see, we could have, John,

How many are in Da Nang?

Americans?

10,000, huh?

16,000 or 18,000.

Could be cut off.

We've got 40,000 in Bin Long alone.

If that's the black people, all they take is one piece.

Divisions do not matter.

They can have their own 40,000.

That's just one province.

We love it.

And they all have non-combat troops.

That's right.

You have the goddamn spare left to get them out.

Well, this is, I think, one of the things that we're talking about.

Some kind of, I don't know, any force in the U.S. that keeps a prey as a security force for U.S. lives.

I mean, you've got to do that as a small force standing in the offshore.

We've got the police out offshore.

That's a very frightening thing.

You say that, I will be against it.

That's our position.

They know that?

Yes, they do.

But if they were marked up a little farther north, psychologically, it would be disheartening.

I know.

I don't think you should make any threatening move until you go.

You're the only thing that matters now that I'm here.

Oh, I don't know.

Yeah, yeah.

Monday night, I go on.

I announce it.

It's got to be no more than 10 minutes.

Not that.

All the records and everything.

Let somebody else put the record on.

I'm just going to hit the high spots.

10 minutes, 1,200 words.

Say, I'm doing this.

We're doing this for the purpose of protecting American lives.

of obtaining our prisoners of war was preventing the imposition of communist governments on Vietnam by the invaders.

And I think you can say, and I'll use the words of him if he's describing the reception, but we've got to go to the police this morning.

If all every piece ought to be made, it has to be recovered.

He just said to say that he's offered for many incidents of arrogance and defiance.

Insolence, arrogance, defiance, and stepping up the war.

I think, Mr. President, we really have no other choice because the other cause is going to be to, if this slow erosion of the south wind and eastern winds and their morale drops, we are going to have to dam this mess.

In the meantime, Al, the main thing is, can the south give me cold over the weekend?

I thought I was going to do something Friday night.

Yeah, and right now, if you remember, my intuitions are so wrong.

They can hold over the weekend.

I think we've got to get up.

You don't think they'll get away over the weekend?

No.

First edition is that good?

No.

There'll be plenty of time.

They get caught too.

All right.

They can take Khantoum any day.

There's nothing you can do about it, Mr. President.

That is what Khantoum will take 48 hours, whenever they are ready to move.

And they are getting too close.

But Khantoum is a good lesson for what they'll do with the way.

They're not going to inch up to Hue, and they'll get their artillery into place, and they'll move between 25th Division and through the Ashore Valley.

They're very methodical.

Their lines of communication are so long.

that they plant these things very carefully and then they do it.

I don't think they'll start attacking the way until the end of next week.

Unless they make a sudden, they haven't got the attacks across that river yet.

I don't know whether you were there this morning, or before you, when folks were just trying to vote.

Folks say it's, it's also going to be your touchdown.

It's got to be.

It's just got to be.

We have an incontinent air force, but you...

They can't... Not the men.

It's the goddamn planes.

They're not made to fight the modern war.

They're made to fight a war 10 years from now.

But they've got flags over these roads now day and night.

They're using flags.

They're using the B-52s in a belt.

They have made a shield.

They have made a survey of all the positions that are out to air so that they can trust them.

They don't have to bomb visually anymore.

And I don't see that the way it's going to fall any further.

Okay.

Then we can wait then.

All right.

I think this must be done in cold blood.

All right.

Until we get together.

Well, I just don't think we ought to wait until tomorrow.

We've got to get in time.

Now can I talk about a couple of other things?

And now this is going to pain you.

I think we have to remove Abrams.

I think we ought to send you out.

John, do you want to add something?

No, I'm sorry.

I didn't mean it.

I was calling the Secretary.

You know what he said?

He said, sir, he says, that's not Spanish.

That's Mexican.

They don't have the word in Spanish.

Well, get rid of them as fast as you possibly can.

Because the president wants to talk to you, but don't tell anyone you're coming home.

Rush.

We can get him tomorrow.

All right.

We have too much commotion.

Now, will Moore do what I say and do this without putting him through Laird?

I'm not going to have Laird leak this all over the place, believe me.

You wouldn't.

All right.

Now, you remember that hairy conversation I had with him in the office four weeks ago where I said, by God, I'm going to manage your chief, and there's a direct line.

He said, right at home.

I said, yes, sir.

By God, does he understand this?

He does not have to clear it, does he?

He's got some things.

All right.

We don't have to move anything.

Also, I want to.

We're going on TV Monday night.

You don't have to cancel the dinner.

They're all doing nothing.

Set it for a week later.

All right, what about acres?

All right.

a lot of commanders.

You ever read about the Civil War?

You ever read about Lincoln as general?

You remember Burnside?

Remember all those assholes?

Hell, if Lincoln had had Lee as his general, the war would have been over in a year.

What do I mean?

Abrams is a great World War II general, and I think he's a fine man.

But God damn it, he isn't doing the best thing here.

Right.

I guess you're right.

I'm afraid that it might create a... Is there any other way we should make them have the command?

With a different feel of command?

Do you think it might be on the part of that son of a bitch to do it?

Ha!

It's the replacing of acres, not the setting of hay.

It's about...

The little guy?

I remember that.

He's a mean fellow.

I'll never forget, Henry.

In 1965, I was out there.

And he had been out there.

He was one of the first gentlemen to be out there.

And I met him.

They brought him over there, and I met him.

And he said, should we just come in?

And I, of course, was out of office.

And I said, General?

I said, what do you need out here?

If you want it straight, if you want it straight, there's more, more.

That's right.

We should have done it then by hell of a lot.

You're right, John.

It's this goddamn gradual escalation that the United States has done wrong.

Right?

Who is April 6th?

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.

General Wines, he's one of the great poultry lovers.

You know, he talks a great game.

He's a soft man.

He used to think he was good.

Oh, he used to think he was good.

I thought both of them were good.

Well, they both, they both were good.

He will be as soon as Averitt.

Averitt is too late.

Jim, smart question if we had someone.

Oh, I'll tell you.

Averitt.

What do you think, John?

All right, can we get a direct line of communication?

We can do that.

I've got another idea.

We could send Al's ass out there.

to look over Abram's shoulder.

You could send Al out.

And Al would communicate with us all the time.

There is the way.

Does Abram, your relationship with Abram, does he know damn well that you're going to be his second?

Uh-huh.

Well, he doesn't know it.

Mr. Besson, if Al goes out, do you want to take over?

Uh, okay.

Why don't you have Abram come back to talk with us?

Well, they could spend a lot of time with him.

But if you send Al out, that's a change.

That's a change.

Now, this, my judgment is, of course, Al will have to do it.

I need somebody on the spot that we can communicate with.

That's all.

I mean, the way this government is now run, Mr. President, you're lucky to be here.

It's your government, not down here.

I know.

Al is almost... Al is really very badly needed here.

On the other hand,

That's on the assumption that you'll get that once Chief of Staff job in the fall.

If he doesn't get that, he could do a superb job in Vietnam.

He knows what you want.

He knows you're thinking.

We could stack it up.

We could package it.

Well, we've got to remember what is the most important thing right now.

Is the Deputy Joint Chief of Staff or winning the war in Vietnam.

But Al's concern is not his taking over.

It's the removal of Abrams.

That's no concern.

I think Abrams doesn't understand.

I mean, Al has to say this.

Abrams doesn't understand.

He's put total insensitivity to the political requirement.

He's lacerated.

He's poured himself for three years.

I hate to say this about a distinctive soldier.

Abrams has done nothing.

He doesn't take care of the Vietnamese properly.

And he drinks too much.

I just think Abrams has to go anyway.

So the only question is... Grant, grant.

I have to add that you will spend an hour on Monday.

I'm sure it'll help with your sickness.

What do you mean?

You replace Abrams with Howell on Mondays until you're good?

Huh?

You're going to replace Abrams with Howell until you're good?

This is Abrams, town report.

Blair.

Blair, did Seth come to St. Patrick's?

Yeah, he comes to St. Patrick's.

It's an odd relationship.

John, basically.

Uh, let me, let me be more direct.

It does come through, Larry.

Every damn time we hear from Abrams, Larry sanitizes his garage as direct.

Now, you know that.

Abrams is not his own man.

Well, and Abrams has done too many things against his better judgment.

He's pulled out too, too fast.

Well, now wait a minute, wait a minute.

We, we, we can help you with that.

Sure, we have to do it, but he never spoke, he never spoke up against it.

Well, now Henry, no, no, in fairness, in fairness, we were on this business of withdrawing, I think it was right, considering what we were up to up to this point, where Abrams was wrong, because his old guy had a Vietnamization.

Abrams' spirit is broken.

He just doesn't think anymore.

Just like Westmoreland's spirit was broken.

It's not even his fault.

The way he screwed up Lars last year, he had never really taken hold of this operation.

I am very uneasy the way...

I mean, they've got a plan now to assemble this Jewish Air Force Division.

I don't bother using stuff like that, which, to me, doesn't look very competent.

They're pulling one brigade out of Khantoum, guaranteeing the fall of Khantoum.

They're pulling another one out of Antlok.

And it just doesn't seem to me that this is the way a competent Jewish will do it.

I'm not a military man, but why not?

What do you think, John?

I think it's too much important.

Hell, I was really impressed.

I heard that Harold would be a great successor, and I don't think it's going to create that much of a ripple, and if it does, who gives a damn?

If he's not doing the job, then we'll lose him.

No one knows better what we need to have.

I must say, frankly, I think they're all great, and I don't know if you should have it, but I think you're a cripple, and Henry Drew, of course, is a great, but that's not to be all that way.

I can't make that judgment.

I just don't know.

I don't know much about the work that you do.

I mean, I see, but, oh, I couldn't get laid back.

He did a good job.

That's a good point.

Okay.

For Harry, thank you.

Oh, I'm grooming another one for my husband.

That's the guy we wanted to run into.

Don't give him any earpiece.

If the situation, as you stated, which is obviously a familiar one, you can't have a commander out there.

He was reporting to you later, when you were trying to do something, exactly what the officer wanted to do.

You have to decide right away.

If you don't remove April before you have a reason, you have to do it tonight.

He's gone a long way, much too long.

That had nothing to do with Al.

I can't even imagine my operation without Al.

Let me ask you this, John.

How do we have a lyric?

I know how it happened on Monday.

I'm not telling you that.

With Laird, I think you should know that every few minutes or so, I called him five minutes before and told him about it.

But what do you think, Henry, on Laird?

I think if we get rid of Abrams, I think Laird's going to be more trouble to us outside than inside.

I think you're right.

He'll be a fight in the spot.

I don't think he's getting outside.

I think the best way to do it is to relay to whoever you put in there, to the SIL, and they go there and assemble what their lines of communications are to the Joint Chiefs, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or Directors, and they can be bypassed and determined to go to reporting.

And they will have time before the thing.

I thought you said something.

Yeah, it's cold in here.

No, no, I think you have to put it in first.

You have to put it in first.

But if you don't call him back, then you're going to go through the whole camp.

Oh, yeah, it's his eyes again.

He wasn't consulted in that.

That's it for you.

When do you call him back?

Your telegraph is in question because I'm sure he's going to have to cancel your telegraph.

He arrives here Sunday night or Monday night.

But he can leave Europe Sunday night and still be here Sunday night.

Sure, sure.

He'll be back Sunday morning and he'll be leaving Sunday night.

He'll be responding.

Good job.

Take over the fence.

Have Al go out there and take over here.

But I don't think, I just, it was scary on them, too.

The only problem is, well, the problem is, I'm not saying that the butter gun, it can't work.

But you see, what we need is a strong, we can put up what you can do.

If Laird, if Laird got out of this, he might because of Abrams.

Then, I just put Russia on the job.

I think if the bow's out there, we can live with Laird.

I just needed communication.

All you need is confidence.

The information that you get is the real feeling and the real information.

How could I?

It's a devil.

If we couldn't bring Abrams back, does Westmoreland have to stay in the Nant job to balance it?

We can't make Abrams.

Secretary of State, if it's necessary.

But the trouble is, Mr. President, the Army is an awful threat.

It's too defeated for man to put in the feet of that, to its competence.

Well, what can you do to save the state?

You're not saying it's a threat to the Army.

Make him an ambassador to the Army.

Can't do it.

I wish McCain were still there.

He'd be invaluable at this point in the hour.

Well, that's what I think.

John, I'm just trying to figure out a way to save him from space.

I guess there's no way.

Well, I hate to bring him back in disgrace.

Well, one other possibility is to keep him in his job and allow him to be released.

That's what I think.

The first two weeks are what are critical.

And I think if Al is out there,

For two or three weeks, and he's there, and he reports to us every goddamn day.

And you write the PIO officers out.

You're the riot agents.

If I get an idea, and my ideas aren't very good, most of them, usually.

But goddamn it, if I say we want a massive strike on the way, put the massive strike on the way, and quit farting around with just hitting two trucks every day.

That's right.

John, that'll work.

Yes, that'll work.

Let me suggest Johnson in two weeks to be part of that through your... Yeah, through the Price Foundation.

Huh?

Through your Marshall Foundation.

Ha ha ha.

Well, you know what?

We don't have an arbitrary limit.

No, no.

We don't have to put anything on that.

Sure, sure.

We'll just have no presidential representative.

We'll give them whatever advice we need.

Yeah.

To act as we have with the White House.

That's what we'll do.

And Bob, I'll have to direct them to the House.

No, you can handle rockers.

I've got an idea.

No, seriously.

Wait a minute.

No, no.

Henry, not that he could do the messengers and all that sort of thing.

It would be a great loss to me.

But how about putting a hole in them in your shop?

No, I'm serious.

I don't know if anybody knows that.

No, but you know, part of the problem is, Henry, that somebody's got to go kiss Roger's ass, and he's not good at ass kissing.

Well, look, I've had, I've operated without any before, and, and, and...

But everything goes well.

No, we'll split it up into two, two or three people.

All right.

No, I'm serious.

John, I was, I really, what I mean is, Al, you just can't imagine the things he's done.

Al has had to have a Roger, he's had to have a Laird,

He's jealous of vain people.

I don't mind vanity.

I've got a bad, bad idea.

But Baldwin can handle Rogers.

That's your job.

Fair enough.

Agree with that, Al?

Fair enough.

We can handle it.

It's Bob.

I don't think it works with Bob.

It'd be my job.

But if Bob and I got together every morning, and I gave him some of the administrative things that come through my office.

The things that the Hague does administratively, you give to Bob.

And some of the... No.

Well, not since we can set your office up.

So you can set up a machinery.

You know the guy that would be perfect for it?

Pat Gray.

For Christ's sake, we just made him head of the FBI.

He was Radford's top man.

We thought the other guy would be superb.

He's already got it.

Temporary, basically.

He knows what it all is going on.

What's going on?

He is top.

Let me think about it, because it's got to be somebody that I can work with.

It's got to be somebody.

Crowcroft is icy.

He's like Al that way.

He's cool.

Mean.

He's like Al.

He's got everything that Al's got.

He's Catholic.

Probably, yeah.

I don't think he's Catholic.

And Morris, I'm coming over.

Well, he's a Chinese national.

I better go, because I have to give a speech on it about the advantages of what we are expecting out of the Senate.

That's nice.

Well, then what do you want me to do?

I'll just tell Morgan to come over here.

Or not even come.

I think we should keep him fairly cool.

The only thing you need to tell Morgan

is that he is to tell nobody.

Well, Al, you and I will talk tomorrow.

That's right.

But we shouldn't.

The trouble is, anything else you tell him, he's going to take very literally, and I think... Hello?

It's the honest way.

And the only other thing we should do is to make sure that...

And the only thing we need from him tonight is an assessment of the forces, make sure he's got enough to work out rules of engagement and to keep his mouth shut.

Then tomorrow, we work out the pieces.

And tomorrow, we get a little work to do together to work these things out, right?

And then we spend the weekend to get every detail tied up, right?

So that when you go on, you can work like fuckers.

Who's going to work on this speech?

You can't do it.

What you can work on, too.

The problem is, of course, I'll have to do the writing, but I do need some help on the dance.

I shouldn't have to do the whole dance.

Bill has a good draft for you by tomorrow night.

But don't bring Andrews in on this one.

I think that you just don't know.

It's better than any of the others.

The difficulty is that he is not.

I brought Mr. President.

Sorry I'm late.

I was got out.

Good evening.

John Saban.

Oh, yeah.

We, uh...

I said, no, I want you to be here.

Unless you've got to.

No, I have no time.

Admiral, what I'm going to say to you now is total confidence in the relationship with the commander-in-chief, the chairman of the chief of staff.

Nothing to do with the secretary.

Nothing to do with you.

That's what I thought it was necessary.

I decided that we've got to go in a blockade.

I'd like to announce it Monday night on television.

I want you to put a word together for me, for the absolutely, for the best people that you've got.

I think you've done a lot of work on it already.

Oh, yes, sir.

We all have.

And if I announce it Monday night, if I tell you now, which I'm now doing, can you be ready that it can be in place, too?

Oh, yes, sir.

All right.

Now, what we have in mind, in addition to blockade, is that I want as much use of our air assets as we can spare from the battlefield.

I don't want to take Abrams' word on this, but our air assets, so that we can, at the very least, take on the railroad unit.

That has to go on.

And at that point, the P.O.L., the power plants, et cetera, et cetera, after the ships get out, we gave out the dollars.

Now, the, uh, the, uh, this, uh, whatever you can imagine is momentous.

I don't know if it was one hundred grand.

I don't know if it was a grand dollar.

I don't know.

What do you tell me?

What can you do?

If you do this, secrecy and arrest and bring this thing off?

I just ask the question.

I don't want you to say anything.

You can't.

Nobody's to be told out there.

Why don't you move?

Well, sir, as you know, we've done quite a bit of thinking about this already.

Yes, sir.

It doesn't have to be a matter of...

birding some of the ships, combining air surveillance of the approaches to I-4 with the position of the ships, making the necessary announcements, giving the ships their rules of engagement, what they do, and I think that would use the destroyers for this purpose.

We need more ships out there.

Well, I think we've got quite a gang out there.

We've got quite a few ships, and we've got some more arriving.

I think we've probably got enough ships to start with.

If you could, bud, tomorrow, give us a rough outline.

And also, I need a rough outline of the air assets that can be spared for strikes.

I understand.

I have not ordered the structure.

We didn't cancel it.

No, we didn't cancel it.

We're going to use those.

But I want, I've already told you, I want once.

I want a massive, I want 50 feet, 52, on the way, forever.

Just one night.

I need to do that.

It's been a while.

I want to do that just one night.

I need to go on the way back.

You've got to remember, the way is like we're not.

The Germans made a mistake.

The French probably won't make a mistake.

But it had to be invented.

And with the German psychology, it had to be attacked because of its symbolism.

The way is exactly the same thing.

You're going to lose confidence.

And there's a hell of a lot of other things you can't lose the way.

And we've got to get one of those 52s in there.

I think if I pick one, then I'm going to whack him if there's enough to hit him.

Yeah, well, they've been, you know, working heavily on the Asheville Valley, which is where we think some of the, again, our talk is going to go in the hall.

They, you know, daylight hours, which by the time you get to the other point, when you put your message to the test, I can have one massive change in that area.

Yeah, okay.

So you get ready.

It will not work much.

Of course, over a period of time, it will not work without very extensive air support.

I mean, no sense of blockade without taking out the pump.

the DOLs, the railroad lines.

I thought we could get to those docks, one of those different ones, at the end of that office.

That was for the sea, but I mean, there are other ways they can come in.

But we wanted to destroy them, the materials.

Materials, so when you think they're on the docks, you thought they were on the docks.

Yes, quite a bit on the docks.

I meant we could just destroy the docks,

Once the ship gets lit up, it's a big way.

Now, my point is, what about the BOL?

See, what I mean is the purpose of this blockade is not just even on great demand.

The purpose is to put it on and then systematically destroy everything that you possibly can that's already there.

They've got a hell of a lot of stuff stored up.

So what I'm thinking of, what I am directing is bombing.

all out in that area.

In fact, we weren't involved in itself.

There were all of our assets there.

And I think a lot of them, if you were to get insurance of your volume, in North Vietnam, in this area, if you were to aim at military targets, you are not to be too concerned about whether it swaps over.

The most important thing is to get those military targets to be swapped over.

That's what it's going to be.

I think what really needs a lot of sound

or the southeast major take some kind of initiative.

In other words, to either use their own aircraft to attack Don Boyd, or to use their ship to shell another northeast major's area, or to use their aircraft to mine the channel, or to do something, for them to do something in retaliation once they haven't done it.

What they've been doing is just simply falling back on these strong points.

And they haven't moved out against the enemy.

Well, find a way that they can play a role in the blockade.

And they do that.

Well, you started up the channels.

I think they can find some of the southern poets.

Now, people used to do that, but I would like a morale point of view, too, that they could get the, you know, publicized that they had inflicted punishment on North Vietnamese, some of that they've suffered for years and years and years.

I don't see any difference at all in the South Vietnamese shooting, dropping bombs in a North Vietnamese city as opposed to this North Vietnamese shotting antelope for 30 days.

I couldn't agree more.

I'm all for it.

The South Vietnamese Air Force has the capability there to do that, definitely.

They ought to go up there and let them drop their damn bombs.

I assume that you would say the South Vietnamese have no amphitheater landing capability where they can land.