Nixon, Haldeman & Kissinger on Public relations and People's Republic of China

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It turns out Mrs. Simpson is having a TV tour and reception for 600 IMF wives on Thursday, the next day.

Of which, of the 600, 200 about will also be at your reception.

Do you care about the duplication?

I was just wondering, would you all suggest your reception be just that?

Just that, exactly.

Which was much the better thing.

Because that, I can chat with them a little.

I can talk to them a little.

And the wives will be coming in next day, so you're not sliding in.

Mine should be bound.

And that, they will go out here to get a few more.

Treasury will go ahead with this reception at Smithsonian of the 1600.

And they'll go from here over to there afterwards.

And you can join their wives there.

Exactly.

So this is just a men's reception.

All right.

That'll work fine.

Then the other question is that newspaper group that now develops, there's going to be 50 publishers, plus Wise and so on, have them in Alaska, which is 115 people.

It happens at the same evening.

Uh, we, we're exploring across the hill, including, but that's too many people to add to his reception.

So the question is whether you want to drop by it or not, and it's really completely up to you.

Instead of you going, we could have Rogers, Morton, Bill Rogers, and Roger Morton, and Scali and Zig would drop by, and Collin will also be there.

There was lots of other demonstration people do.

I don't think you have to receive those people.

You can just go in and say hi to them in some way.

We're always a heck of a hobby.

This production is a couple hundred.

Knowing the world is going, it may go up some.

We told them 200.

I would guess it would be around that.

Or just say, oh, yeah, you have enough time.

So you could do both if you want to.

And maybe it's... All right.

Let's go by that.

Don't promise that I'll speak.

Don't promise that I'll receive.

Just take a little drop by.

I'll drop by.

I might just drop by to say I want to say I've got to go on.

I've got time.

I'll say.

Rogers is coming directly up there and then coming back with you.

Sure.

And Henry is going to come up from Southern California to Washington and ride up.

Yeah.

I think it's better not.

He's got enough of a cast on him.

Can you hear me?

Yes, you can do the press people.

Yeah, well, that's what I was suggesting.

Instead of using them... No, no, no.

I do, too.

But I can promise you... Oh.

All right.

Let's see.

I guess they'd like you to get a bill from him, so he can provide us an award on the plan.

You might do that while I'm at the medical reception.

He could stay at the medical reception.

It may not be a speaking opportunity, because if it's that average residence, I think they're meeting somewhere for the speaking session early.

And then having Bill up there, I think he could well, he might get there early.

I think Bill would go and do that.

I think that's, you know, that's how a lot of this has climbed up.

Why don't you ask Bill if he can do that?

Give them a good shot.

Okay.

We really brought a true mess of these things today.

Yep.

You know, it shows off as what it could be every day.

You go back, I was going on some of the schedules we were on when we first started here, and we'd get up on, and it's like a chipmunk on one of those wheels, you know, you get up and just jump on the wheel in the morning and start running like hell.

And it would be, it was damn hard.

And when you got to the end of the day, it was...

And also, quite often, at the end of the day, we had a reception or a damn dinner, you know, we thought, well, I don't understand you, remember?

Yes.

We had to go through with that.

It was a pretty good thing to establish.

You know, it's the best thing I know that's happening now.

Everybody thinks I'm busy every night.

That's it.

Nobody notices.

And everybody, and the best thing we do, and frankly, it's partly because these people cancel, the best thing we do is to keep my evening straight.

That is the one thing I despise is doing something at night.

Night at night.

I just don't want to, I guess the worst thing to do is to have to at the end of the day go around and get into a black car and then go down there.

Instead of painfully, always be painfully through it and trying to look, you know,

Well, you can't do it, but the rest of us can go painfully through them and be a dozen, it doesn't matter, but you can't, because you're understated.

Everybody's looking to see what your expression is.

You might take these ambassadors and yourselves.

five to ten deals, every one of those ambassadors, biggest goddamn moment he'll have was here.

So I don't think aside from his career, for most of his many sessions, is that a minute that you have to relax?

I get more than I get another time.

I studied every other background, so I speak something about the country.

I don't know whether Mossbacher is smart enough to know how good it is.

Why don't you see if he does?

You don't want to get around him.

He's got that state department people in there.

But I agree, it would really work those people.

I talk about the big men in the world, and I get to talk about their countries, and I talk about their background.

Well, for that guy, that's important.

Good help.

It is.

For almost all of us people, this would be the most important post in their career.

Sure.

And the most important moment in that post is when they present their credentials to you.

That's right.

This is the most personal moment they'll have with you.

The pictures they get.

That picture.

They get a chance to talk to you, and that's what means more.

to a career foreign service type of thing.

We do these things, I must say, awfully well.

Plenty of times.

I talk to these people, and these people have come through this.

But they're staged well for getting them done quickly.

And then you put so much into them that they can only be a chance.

And either of these events that we do here in the stand cabinet, I work those things awfully hard.

I called Virginia Nair, and she and I was very much appreciative.

She also said, boy, those people went out of there floating on a cloud.

She said some of them are not for us, but they still said they were very impressed with how interested the president was and that he cared about what they had to say.

What you might do is encourage language about once a week.

You just might have an hour and a half or less, which would be a way to take care of a bunch of people without starting.

You know, just listen.

Maybe congressmen sometimes, you know, just get in here a little bit again and sit there.

If you wouldn't mind giving it a hell of a device, just listen and say, would you like to come in?

I'd just like to hear your uses and things, and everybody has five minutes.

It's quite a device.

It's set up really better than trying to do it with our here and this and that.

Crack around and set them up there, and they all sit in there.

What do you figure?

About 10 to 15 people.

I don't know whether you're going to get, depends on how many you get through, but if you make it, you have about twenty-five minutes.

Just a hundred minutes.

That's ten on it.

Yeah.

About fifteen.

Fifteen stock right on the same side you kept.

And have a couple of other writers come in.

Presley would like to come in and just listen to you.

But the main thing about her, you're not deluded with just the same farts that I see all the time, you see.

Yeah.

I go over this track many times, but I must say, I don't want to ever see that business council again.

I just don't want to run this again.

It is not worth our time.

Or you don't.

You don't do it.

You're Jesus Christ.

I've done it.

And now they owe us one.

There's others.

I mean, there's Jesus.

Something funny is going on in China, Mr. President.

They have this stand-down civil aviation there for nearly a week now.

And today they've canceled the October 1st parade on their national holiday.

We've had other reports that they've been taking down pictures of Mao.

So, uh, are we to bother?

When he dies?

It's possible that he died.

It's possible that there's a domestic upheaval.

They first had a stand-down on commercial aviation on the 13th of September.

Then they resumed on the 15th.

Then they stood down again.

All flights to and from Cape Payne have been canceled.

As you know, we've had one hell of a time getting answers out of them, which is totally uncharacteristic.

No leader of the Chinese government has been seen anywhere.

Revolution.

Well, could see that the Cultural Revolution Group has struck back.

Red Guard.

Well, it wouldn't be Red Guard if they were destroyed, but see what they have been doing is purging the leaders of the Cultural Revolution.

Yeah, Mao purged them.

Yeah.

If Mao indeed purged them, unless Mao... See, one other possibility is that Mao himself was elevated to godhood, but put out of the play.

In 1960, Mao, if Mao appears, was, after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, was in effect supplanted by Liu, Zhao, whatever his name is.

Then Mao organized the Cultural Revolution in power to get back at him.

Resumed the government.

And then the Cultural Revolution, so now it's possible that Zhou Enlai in effect defied Mao but took him out of the action.

I don't want to speculate too much, but this is what could be happening.

Four mile could have died, which is the complexity of that.

But this, for them to cancel the October 1st parade is a highly, in fact, that's never happened.

That could be another thing that the American initiative gave the

It was too much for him to swallow.

Conceivable.

But those are the guys who are also the most anti-Russian, too.

Hello.

The Cultural Revolutionists were the ones that physically peed on the Russian ambassador.

What did you solve in your position?

Either side has got to play this game with us.

That'd be my guess.

And, uh, except their problem will be if Mao did die.

It's just to pull the thing together, whether they can get themselves organized fast enough to do the visit.

I don't know.

Well, the visit of October.

Well, the visit of October would almost certainly go by the vote.

But they, uh...

I think they could get it done with the vote.

It's too early to expect that you should hear it.

Yeah, but they had not yet heard on any of the other things.

And that's just very uncharacteristic.

When you proposed the 22nd and 23rd, which was our first choice, namely this week.

Well, I thought it was tight, but at least then they would normally give you an answer that it couldn't be done that fast.

They would not normally simply not reply.

And they would not certainly stand down all their civil aviation and to cut off all of Peking.

Peking has been cut off by planes.

My guess is that it's going to just work out.

But it's hit the dress, and we've instructed Siegler to make absolutely no comment, saying, you know, that's a little... Oh, God.

I'm so sorry.

I thought you came up with any of these things.

I was going to ask, and I'm going to yell to this person.

There's a Bible book there.

Now, one thing you've got to get clear about is that we don't have time to discuss.

I just have time to see everybody, check on stuff.

Now,

It's what the boss, oh hell, he's going to come in and talk, and they get all talking papers, and he's the second most powerful man in the country, and I've seen the second most powerful man in every country I have hired before, and I used to go to.

But he has, he has a message for you, for me.

Yeah, but does he understand if it's 10 minutes or not?

What does he understand?

If he thinks it's half an hour.

Well, he's, he's good at controlling the time.

There comes a time, there comes a point in my life where it just doesn't serve our interests for me to spend time receiving some sort of charity.

Well, and it helps me.

I think it does.

Nixon, Haldeman & Kissinger on Public relations and People's Republic of China

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 21, 1971

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