Conversation 037-055

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Hello?

Bill, how are you?

I, uh, Steve gave me a rundown, and let me say that, uh, with regard to the thing, uh, if provided they, uh,

The TV fellows are looking over.

If that's what you prefer, you think it's the best thing, that's what we'll do, the plaque.

You think the plaque's better than addressing the group.

Of course, if you do the plaque, you can still have a lot of people around.

Oh, yes.

What we would do is we have that whole area filled, so we try to have maybe 1,000 people.

Oh, good, good, good.

And then your point is to unveil the plaque and then to make remarks there.

That really symbolized it better than my just standing up there talking to people in an auditorium.

That's right.

See, what I had in mind, it turned out that we'd been trying to think of an occasion for this unveiling the plaque.

What it is, on the other side, if you remember, the C Street entrance, not the one where you come in normally, but the other one, the main entrance.

There's a big room, a nice room, with all those flags.

Oh, yeah.

I've been in there.

I know.

And on the other side of that lobby, there is a plaque which...

has the names of the men who were killed in action up to 1966.

So what would happen now is this plaque has the names of about 20 men, most of whom were killed in Vietnam.

It has the one that was killed, Metrioni, in Peru, and a couple of others.

And the names of these two men that are coming back this afternoon will be added to the plaque.

So it fits in exactly with your thought about the combination of men, military men and civilians.

And have your research guys send over to our people right away, the people, you know, what the other plaque is.

I will.

So I can get that.

I will.

And sort of suggest the nature and suggest remarks.

I mean, we'll work on remarks.

Now, the other point is that on the dinner, on the luncheon,

whoever you want that's fine and that's about what i did at defense i had about 20 people that's right and we just sat around and talked about things and so they get the feel of everything and

there we could have some still pictures if you well we can have we can have it by all means no i'd have a camera we let them in for defense okay we should i think we should do exactly the same and uh we could be sitting having a little talk so we won't have anything planned we'll just let the conversation take a course and you can do the talking well actually uh we could sort of let things let things develop right as they go so they get a

participation and so forth.

The only person that I would bring from here would be Henry.

I think I should bring him, but I should not bring anybody else.

That's good.

And I will not have any aid or anything like that with me.

I mean, nobody that has to sit.

Fine.

So we'll go down and do the plaque thing.

Also, let the people... One thing that I was...

When I was over at Defense, Elliot was...

of course was new there when i went in i saw the halls were bare and he says he said we people out but we thought that the security thing that should be bearing i said oh no i said so when i left i said get the people out so uh as you've always done let the people be out because i think one thing one thing about this sort of visit is to show that the you know the state department people are not sitting here and antagonism to the president and all that crap you know these people will be just like the people at the fence well that's fine whatever you'd like

You won't have to stay too long.

We'll try to make it move fairly quickly.

I'll be there at 1, and I can stay until 2.30.

That'd be fine.

Thank you, Mr. Ben.