Conversation 474-008

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

Well, I know, I know.

When we get down to the point where in our conclusion, I think we can get by with it quite a bit.

Well, they may suede it pretty hard.

Well, we'll see that, uh, when I spoke to Two about this, First, the Joint General Pat is a little bit in disagreement with Two on this.

Two believes the helicopter force from about 625 is about as maximum that he can support.

He will have the largest helicopter force of any nation in the free world.

He'll have 50 air squadrons.

He's got 33 right now.

And he's going to be in a position where we're building this entity.

He'll have an entity at this time next year.

Uh, so...

It's all facts.

See, I wouldn't want to attack on one.

I mean, it wouldn't be up to me.

I mean, they're a real block of masculinity.

But if we can put more in there, we'll try to do it.

But with the training, what I meant is, from the training and the rest, I just feel that we can get in, whatever you can get in and leave, get in and leave without figuring if we're going to have one hell of a time to get them with.

What I don't want two to do, though, is to start cutting back on this forest structure.

because he feels, you know, that he should make some reductions prior to his election, and that he'd like to make things, that he'd like to make some reductions, and I urge him.

Uh, the only thing we just want to be sure is this, is this, uh, so it's understood that all we're trying to do here is... Well, we're trying to work together on the analysis of these pictures.

Right.

And on this whole year, I think, if he keeps it at 10,000, then 800 is what we're having.

Right.

Okay.

I'm talking about that for 73.

The whole problem with that is 72.

When I talk about 73, we are going, which is not quite...

Well, the, uh, I don't think we'll need it in 73, wouldn't you plan on it?

We'd like to, we'd like to find more kids.

I can't, I can't, I can't try to use 700 to be a 52 for this time of year, and there's no exception if you want 1,800.

Well, further than that, before that, I don't know if there were any chances to tell, and certainly appreciate the others, too.

The first difference seems to be that after this Lyle's and Chuck plantation, you notice

Mark's articulation on the Hill among the Democrats now, who had to withdraw about December 71.

I read that it was December 72.

But they're anticipating the success of these moves, although they decry them.

And I think you're going to see this bill more and more and more.

You know, you have to keep this all kind of minor together to show that they don't just take the play away from it.

Well, I know that that's going to happen sometimes.

It's hard even for responsible people like Carl Hoffman who wants to hold the play on this.

He doesn't know.

They're going to try and delay that decision at the caucus next Tuesday under the motion that Dr. T is going to make that they think we should take no action.

And I talked to him about this.

Well, after the President's announcement, they made it the end of his call.

If that makes it, they're going away for two weeks now.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, but, uh, Carl doesn't know how long he can keep.

Yeah.

When is the last day of the week?

The 31st.

The 31st?

That's the day of the caucus?

Tuesday, I think.

Oh, yeah.

I'm not sure.

It's Tuesday or Wednesday.

What's very important, I know, is that I hold my disabled son in California.

Today is the 26th.

The 26th.

There's five days left.

Okay.

Well, I thought about it when I worked with them closely.

I talked to them almost every other day.

I was up there talking to them.

I talked to Albert while I was just starting.

And they're going to do their very best.

And let me tell you, they're blind.

As far as I'm concerned, we have said categorically that Laos should be judged by whether we continue our withdrawal and what happens also to

the optimization program, and if it helps with those scores, then it can be rated as a worthy building, otherwise not.

So it was on.

Then I went to the key point.

I said, now this was for all of them.

Let's just understand them.

I said, I have a plan.

I know the date that we're going to be out of there.

It's a reasonable thing.

It's one that I am convinced is the earliest possible date we could get out without risking a South Vietnamese debacle.

And also, it's the one that I think is essential for us to have

in terms of our, any possible fire composition with regard to risk or stress.

Then going on from there, we consider the situation, the moment you put a date and you select a date, you're doing two things.

I said, one, you are immediately given the option to identify

who, in terms of, they'll say, well, we'll get out for the 31st if you get us back our prisoners.

That's not going to be a good thing.

They're not going to say, ah, they're going to say, yes, get out for the 31st and throw out Jew and King, and then we'll get you back our prisoners.

That's the way it's been.

That was just a starting point.

Then this is where the politics came in.

I said, now, let me tell you, I know you guys are not going to play politics, but some of your colleagues will.

But let's understand how it's going to be played.

I want you to know very clearly how it's going to happen.

I said, Andy, I think you've stuck this thing true.

We took this war and started it after I left Washington in 1961.

And we have wound it down.

And we have a purpose, Andy.

And Andy, in a way, is all Vietnam has a chance to survive.

If you, on the other hand, decide that you're going to take over and set an arbitrary date over the objections, our objections, then of course you'll have to go along.

But then you will have to take the responsibility for an American defeat in Vietnam and for all these deaths, for the communization of South Vietnam.

I said, this is what is on the line here.

That anybody who wants to step in, you can play one way or another.

You can let me.

And I said, it's a fancy thing to know whether South Vietnam can survive.

Who knows?

It's a fancy thing to know whether or not this withdrawal can go on.

North Vietnam, he will not think.

But I said, I'm willing to take it.

And we're withdrawing on this kind of a schedule.

If it fails, then you'll have no sweat.

You can just say, he was wrong.

He continued his work for four more years than he could have got out four years ago, and we still lost to them.

And that's one game you can play.

If I were a politician, I'd play that game.

But we'll support the commander-in-chief in his best judgment, because we know that he isn't going to keep an American there any longer than he used to.

But if you play it the other way, I just want you to clearly understand that if there is any arbitrary date set, then I will have no choice but to put the responsibility on the Democrats in the House and the Senate, on them, for losing everything that we fought for in Vietnam and for preying on a communist factory.

So if you want to fight it out on that day, we'll beat the hell out of you.

Well, they understood.

Understand?

They're with us.

That is the way to put it.

Don't you agree, Tom?

I sure do.

They are going to man with it.

There's no action to that.

Well, if they don't know, let me say this.

Let's suppose the House and the Senate did pass.

a resolution or a call to funds or anything, bring all Americans home by January, by December of 1971, there would be a better than even chance that then we lose the whole of Amsterdam.

And believe me, if that happened, we didn't want to get blamed.

They are.

That's the point now.

And I talk a little cold politics to these guys.

If you guys want to play that fight, on the other hand, play our game.

It's risky.

It's the victims.

It may not work, but we believe it's the fastest.

We're moving as fast as we can.

But if it doesn't work, then you can kick us.

But if it does work, then you cooperate.

Now, I thought that's fair talk, isn't it?

Sure.

I reckon all that is fair work to you, Mr. President.

I always hope so.

It's the right thing to do, that's the main thing.

There's no misunderstanding, Mr. President.

We can, even if when we get down to say a 50,000 horse level in Vietnam, the way that we have it planned out, we can maintain approximately the same level of air sorties

because of the build-up of the sub-fusion.

As we get into 73, we can still apply a tactical error to sort of these at the rate of 17,000.

And we can still, I've only got 700 B-52s in there, but we can go to the 800 that the chief's wanted.

We can do that.

Well, that's the plan.

There's no problem with that.

Yeah.

We're going to have some more guns this morning next year, too.

The other thing I was going to say is this now.

With regard to this Congress thing, the Democratic Congress, that's important.

And I'm heading them all over for breakfast, all the new Democrats, Tuesday morning before the caucus.

And I think that you should talk with British and say, now look, what else are you doing?

And you can say, you and I are chatting.

There's nobody that wants to get, nobody that has a greater interest

He said, he told that not one American is there longer, one, there one day longer than is necessary.

But I looked it over and I moved it as fast as we possibly can and a little faster than some think is wise.

But we're doing it.

We're taking risks.

We are taking risks for peace.

And I didn't bet you he understood.

I said, now, folks, here it is.

You think we ought to move faster?

All right.

The president is moving in a way that he is convinced can get America out and still save South Vietnam.

But if you have him move in your way, you'll get Americans out and you'll lose South Vietnam, and the communists will take it, and you've got to take their life.

My God, if they don't sit that language, that's going to be, uh...

If I were a politician, I'd listen.

Wouldn't you, John?

Yes, sir.

They would.

Well, I hope to understand, there's no problem with this artist ever.

Well, he's worried about those damn folks.

But he should be very sure that, and also you can reassure him and say, look, we're going to make another announcement.

It'll be a good announcement.

And fellas, why don't you wait?

Take a look at that office.

Well, that's going to be their motion at the caucus, and they may carry that one because they'd rather not have a vote right now.

Well, I guess I could get word back to some of the other members of the Democratic Party.

Oh, sure.

And just along the lines of what you're talking about.

You're idiots for taking on this responsibility.

Yeah, you got it either way now.

And they have to take on the responsibility.

And I, incidentally, I've been very nonpartisan in the past four days.

But I can be just partisan as hell if they want.

But if they think partisan, believe me, they're going to take the responsibility for it.

For every loss that I've ever done.

They're going to know it.

They're the ones that forced it.

Not us.

We didn't lose it.

That's the way it goes.

I'd like to be partisan, but I don't like it.

Uh, let me ask you, uh, the, uh, Admiral, uh, before we, uh, before we go here, uh,

I didn't further the report with the general operations.

I think you have a good idea of the Utah Carinata.

Oh, yeah.

I didn't tell you that.

Oh, sure.

We've got donations of the horses right now today.

We'd like to.

That's right.

We're going to put it right now next to that chair in the crowd.

This is called the Carinata.

The trouble with the parent of Mr. Preston is that he has a little trouble with colors, and he didn't realize that when he mixed green and orange, he got brown.

Mr. President, to the red, the North Vietnamese, and the blue, the U.S., and the green, the South Vietnamese, I pray to, let me report once again that General Abrams says that of the 33 battalions that the North Vietnamese have, that only 17 are now captured, and they have assault occasions.

The other is that of the 17,

9 of them are north of the 9, this road 9 here, and 8 of them are south in this area.

Of course, they've been infiltrated across the border and pushing along this highway 9 here, as we would expect them to do.

The South B2B is

are positioned in air forces and that we are readjusting what they call the area of operations so that the South Vietnamese are taking positions along the border between the North Vietnamese and the U.S. forces.

And so this will continue as the South Vietnamese are taking over here on the DMZ and moving in here.

This is the Airborne Division is here in this area and one of the arrangements from the

uh, first position, which was not involved in the operation.

And, uh, a lot of the profit has now moved into the, the hotspot right here.

In addition to that, uh, we think that there are about, uh, 30 tanks, uh, left off the left, because, uh, from the invasion of Portland, we've got, uh, about 150.

We don't know where they are.

Yes, sir, they, uh, they, but then, uh, we tanked them all the time, but there's somewhat... Do we ever get any?

Yes, sir.

They, they'll, they'll...

As a matter of fact, I think there were seven out there in here just a short time ago.

But there are about 30 in this general area.

And this indicates the

flights being taken by the helicopters sent there to observe the motions of the North, East, and to attack them when they see them.

So, Boris, can you talk about this concern?

As you know, it's been getting some attention.

about 12 hours ago, but no damage.

We would expect that to continue.

Is he some of the action?

King, I'm sure, is what's happening now is that we're withdrawing some of the forces in order to bring the...

the supplies are there and the forces are there in balance with the activity that is taking place from this area.

In other words, we didn't want to leave the vehicles there and just have them in jeopardy when they're not being used.

So what we're doing is moving down the supply level to balance it out with the activity that is taking place in this area.

Now, there's indications that the

And frankly, there's no indication at all of any real force was coming at him, so far as I'll be concerned.

Any additional force was cycling,

high priority on trying to reconstitute this LLC and get it working again.

And as a result, they have directed some of the forces that have been attached to the maneuverable battalion to return and report back to these logistics activities that are pushing the supplies through.

So that is taking place and we expect that now.

During the next

A few days, a couple weeks or so, there'll be, I think, some rural activity against this road.

There'll be some ambushes.

There'll be some shelling of caisson.

And the thing will finally be in the jail and settled down.

Now, so far as the activity of the DMZ is concerned,

We see no change in what has been throughout the levels of operation, mainly that it's been relevant.

What about these stories about the lot of guns being brought and so forth for the purpose of the Kaiserslautern?

Yes, sir, you did.

We were watching this movement.

They did bring in a move, some artillery movement in this area again, the DMZ, and they had a movement back and forth.

and uh, when it's located, we will take it over.

Sir?

We did that with Bob.

We will, yes, sir.

Yeah, sorry.

We have a guard here that uh, we'll watch this.

They are moving, uh, artillery, uh, extract the vehicle reasonably well.

I thought the, uh, first day went exactly well, sir, in terms of the second day.

On the second day, they had some, uh, weather problems.

Now they have, uh, they put, uh, right inside, at this point, they had a

A missile site, as they established, it was knocked out.

And the attack on the missile site, I think, was quite effective.

And if you do this, I think it would be very helpful now to have

I have one of my decontamination plans for another one of those strikes up there, because I think it would fit in well with whatever we're thinking of diplomatically.

I don't know when, but I don't know what the weather is.

What is the weather?

Let me give you an idea as to when you might be able to do it again.

What weather would be lousy for a council election?

What is the situation?

We only have two days, February.

We expect five or six in March.

Could I ask you this?

Could I ask then, on your record, we cause these flights to take those three passes to keep them under constant surveillance and so forth.

When it gets real right, real right,

If you let us know, you know, pass it on, and then we can just have to consider if we want to do it or not, because if we want to, we might want to give them another whack.

The weather gets worse down in the mountains, a little better up in the, it shifts over.

This is something we want to keep watching, because if you get a real good choke in there, then they'll knock the hell out of you.

Tell me about those artillery pieces the president was talking about.

They didn't just move in there.

Oh.

They had been in there for a while.

I think we had the pictures...

Yes, sir.

Well, Mr. President, they were referring to some black-off artillery that was moved over here.

We have the lead-in artillery right here.

Yes, the black-off artillery right here.

But we want this right here.

Mr. President, I'll make a strike if you would do any time and $40 less.

We can lay all these strikes.

We have a good, flexible plan.

So it's quite necessary to make another

I'm talking about is this, which is, I assume you have, but I want you to look for it.

He won't.

Look, and if you think it's real good, be sure you bring it up.

Don't take it for political considerations or anything.

Let me decide that.

But if you think it's real good, real good, good weather and ready to go, because we may want to give them another pop.

This might be a good time to do it.

We keep kind of a protective reaction.

They've been shooting a lot of us a lot, a hell of a lot, and they should get another pop.

We hope that really will happen.

We're going to wonder.

There it is, every morning.

All right, good.

What is the situation, I'd like to ask one other question that I noticed this morning.

What about this EV dispatcher that came out yesterday, the effect that half the arm of the casualty sent out of the whole force.

I understood that it only ran for the first two days.

We called the AP on that story.

That was a guy named Harbaugh.

He's the right mouse.

There's a guy out there, the AP writer, from Laos.

He's a son of a bitch.

He's writing from the beginning this way.

Well, what's the matter with the man?

We called the AP on those, and we tried to talk to him.

What's the matter with him?

Well, he's just no damn good.

Well, has he always been no good?

He's been out there.

He was going to get all the hell down.

I knew there was something wrong.

Remember Al?

I told you to watch that son of a bitch when he was in Cambodia.

Here he is up here.

has been responsible for most of the bad wire shows.

And of course that hits on the TV, too.

See, AP is the wire that's used to use on TV.

And he's the guy that wrote this story.

Well, it's not true, is it?

No, sir.

I know the other night I was very careful of saying four of the 22 battalions have taken them.

That's right.

Why?

The other 18 have come out on good form.

How is that?

That's relevant to the actor, isn't it?

As a result of that, I sent General Avery another message yesterday asking him to as soon as they completed that bus stop, they invited Wilson to let us know.

Yes.

And he kept on.

What do you think is the biggest hit on him?

Do you think this is true?

I don't know what he had to say to me about that.

I don't know what he's pushing on because he doesn't have to.

What do you think of it?

Do you think it's an inaccurate story?

We told them it was inaccurate.

We told them here are the changes.

This is not true.

Of course.

It's a battle.

And nobody reports what's happening in Northgate.

I understand, and I don't want to gloss it over, but I just don't want the real untruth to be out there.

Don't you think it's shocking, this damn reporting?

It's just unbelievable.

The Cold War.

Yeah.

Well, it's worse right now.

Now, what about the... We just think it's worse, though, Mr. President.

If you go back and look over all the reports, it's always been that way.

If you go back to 10 of 1916, if you reread those stories, it's always been that way.

But I don't require that, though.

Now, what we've got to realize is that each year that we're in this, the people get more world than this.

It was true of the Civil War.

It's true of World War II.

It's true of this war.

As they get more and more weary, then, of course, the reporters get a hell of a lot bigger audience for this kind of story.

And there's less and less support.

And now is the time for all of us.

We've got to be just strong and firm and confident enough to be, hell, I'm the last one on the

We're not going to lie about anything.

We're not going to misrepresent anything.

But Christ God, we must not let them misrepresent anything.

And I'm glad you called the AT.

But you really don't?

Oh, sure.

I think that's all we can do.

As a tragedy, if you can't get your reporters involved yet, now, we have no reliable information on their case.

But we know that we really find that good.

Yeah, we said that.

We're going to find out everything.

What I said, the press conference the other day, I said that what I demand is equal time in all people meetings.

Good, good, good.

Well, Mel, I think that you, I'm glad that you and, uh, I have a quote that I asked you to do this.

You're going to meet with the Democrats Tuesday morning.

It was Tuesday morning.

You can do it all week long.

The next week or two, you can keep whacking on this thing.

Or is that going to be overreacting?

I don't know.

We can do it very quickly.

How about Senators now?

What are they up to this next week?

No, they're not going to be doing anything in that area.

You go out and talk to the Senate, as we did, and take the briefing we gave the armed services committee.

They're supposed to be our friends.

Now, they thought it was a hell of a good briefing that we brought up.

You know, the colonel had been fined by everybody in Kansas.

But none of them run out to the TV cameras to talk about it.

The biggest one, whatever, doesn't run out.

But you know what?

They're great.

They're great to get out there.

Please be wrong.

Now, we're not.

We don't have that posture.

You see, the psychology is terribly important.

Why did Hanoi immediately, when they started withdrawing, they beat up that one battalion so badly?

Why did they scream victory?

Because psychologies have this battle.

And we can't do this.

We can't lie and scream victory and arrest them, because we have to be held accountable.

They don't have to be held accountable.

They lose the damn war.

But I think you're doing fine.

You're doing fine.

Now tell me, what about Bill?

Is he up?

Does he come up to bat next week at all now?

I want to be sure everybody in this administration is, you know, is... Well, I think of that issue, too.

Bill's thinking the same, too.

No, but I mean, if he's going to come, I mean, so that you don't go on a date, he does that, but I think he's thinking, too, and it's simply, simply...

Well, I think Bill is going to be having a get-out in the Middle East before the House.

I don't think at all.

And so I think he'll be out in the Middle East.

It is just as well to have him talking about the Middle East.

But we're doing rather well.

Well, thank you a lot, and I got to go to California, and I'll see you there.

I promise to go, and I'm going to see the movie People, which gives Sam Goldberg the Medal of Freedom before he dies.

Have a nice trip, sir.

We appreciate all your hard work.

Thanks, John.