Nixon, Rogers & Baker on Vietnam War and Foreign policy

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Okay, okay.

Yeah, I have an idea.

Can we take a picture sitting outside here?

I'll get one.

.

Mr. President, where are you going?

Thank you.

I had worked it out with her, I had talked with her, that if she's completely willing to do it and wants to, then you will frankly be in charge of the, well, basically, you've got to do this very, very carefully.

And I said, you know, great.

So let me tell you, there were 700,

before Jesus was coming to that mansion, let alone others.

So, the point is, time is very capable.

Now, I want to press happy, so that they remember there's a family there, and I want them to have grace, style, and sex.

First of all,

And the way we will come, I will bring her down the outside steps, and we'll let the press take the picture of me bringing her down the outside steps.

You're coming downstairs to see that steps in the White House before you go to take a picture.

and the bridesmaids are coming down there too.

When the ceremony is completed, she, the young man, will go up the outside steps and then turn and stop at the docks and get on the way.

Then we'll go inside for the reception.

That's the present plan.

The real question is the pool business.

On the television,

I, she's got a very good thought.

She does not want to have any lie, you know what I'm saying?

And I agree with that.

On the other hand, she is going to be filmed.

You know, obviously they can film outside and they can run.

She's not gonna have a way to walk away from her.

No, I think you're gonna hit her.

Because actually, girl, when you're outside, they're gonna, she's probably gonna recognize the zoom lens is gonna get it anyway.

If you don't do it, they'll lose the lens.

If you have one hand, clear the hand, so that the guests can, you know what I mean, right?

And then they fire in.

They get to see it, then they run in.

Well, it'll be a beautiful sight.

And of course, you understand we'll decorate all this with flowers

Now, the main thing you do, I want you to, in a tactical way, to work with Connie and all the others over there in terms of setting the receivers supposed to come see you if they have trouble now.

I want a scene worked out for information.

You know, you've butchered out, you've butchered out totally half of the audience.

I get it.

What we want to have is grace and so forth.

I want to bless her in a nice way, Kirsten.

I want them to handle it in a way that they're well, and that they are free, and give them a little tidbit, and so forth and so on.

She is willing to cooperate.

She will not offer to cooperate, but she'll do anything that I charge her with.

Now, my other thing, sir, is the question of Kirsten.

But you've got to have her give you, at every time, all the requests that are in charge, herself, for the wedding.

You must consider that my view is nothing else is prime time.

Thank you.

No talk show, none of that crap and whoring show or something.

I mean, it's too good a story to just say, well, they want you to have a crime.

You agree?

Yes, sir.

Second point is that, I don't know, is that with regard to magazines, I decided to do for Look.

Look wants to do a cover.

And actually, they want me with her, which is a different voice.

It's like that for a while.

And we want a formal portrait.

And I think that would be a nice thing.

What do you think, bro?

Great.

And that story about her is totally out of control.

And totally out of picture.

And we want to do it for love.

Because we get life-destroying at this time.

They don't serve you.

And love is trending on there, pouring around.

They want to play the fire game.

So that's the end.

She's already got a cover of Lady Sloane Journal.

Look at all the other magazines.

Also, Mary suggested, do not look at the board.

before press treated just as nicely as the other.

You can do that, buddy.

You can do that.

Take my job.

I just said it, too.

It's a horrible thing to go through in any way.

But like you just said, recently, because we did Julius, and that was quite some slam-bang thing.

This thing is going to be non-believable because of the interest of Trish.

She's an individual.

She's sort of a princess type.

And the interest is in arms.

So we want to do it in grace.

We all in our head are going to do it.

My head corps will be Simulacasa and Conte, because I'm scared.

The congressmen are senators.

That's good.

The cabinet, of course.

Good.

The Rose Garden.

The Rose Garden is fine.

That could be the...

Fantastic thing.

Wonderful.

Could be the goodest wedding of all time.

So beautiful.

But particularly with setting up into here, because you know the pillars, when you stop, hit the shot from here, the pillars here make a nice, it looks like an old southern inch too.

Yeah.

Well, the thing about covering matters that the Secretary and I were talking about, a number of matters that were coming up prior to the district to, you know, that just one of our regular meetings.

Okay.

Yep.

This is a Costa Rica organization.

Oh, yes.

I wanted to talk a bit about the Chinese representation matter.

And I don't want to talk about the Chinese representation question as such.

But let me say that I'm, contrary to the things that you read and some of the people I think maybe around you, I'm not as concerned about Vietnam as most people, and I'm not as concerned about congressional reaction as most people.

In Vietnam?

I think it's going to work out all right.

Well, the point is, Bill, we're stuck with it.

And when I say stuck with it, in this sense, I'm quite fatalistic about it because...

I know that having suffered this long through it, I could have suffered this long through it.

We have to give it a chance to work.

Now if it fails, so it fails.

What's he doing, Fred Maroon?

Yeah, he's taking to do another projector's book.

Yes, sir.

All right.

Uh, how long is it?

Did I say I'm, I just, uh, I don't, I'm not, I'm not going to ask.

But you know, uh, I have to, I think you're going to have to read the captions this week.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's good.

We're going to have to watch it.

Yeah.

I don't have, I don't have that concern.

And I think for now, it's a downhill slope.

I mean, up to this point, we've had... ...except field up here.

That's the one I can't...

I don't know quite how to handle.

But if you go this way, you can handle that trip to the bottom.

If somebody asks you, did you know Cleverson Park was down there?

And we didn't try to... Now, I'm curious...

to be able to sign here.

To be sure, I'm ready so far.

But the problem we have is that he's talking, look, you'll just come out for a straight-up trade deal that would be for American, medium-American, for all of us.

And at the end of the year, he says, we'll take it.

Now, first they won't take it.

That's certain.

The point is, if they come to that, the field of view lines, the group that come to that, that would be very .

Well, I think you don't mind putting that aside for a moment, because I think that if we stay right on this course,

I think that what you said the other night in your speech is perfect, and I think we can stay on that.

And when I've been asked about the POWs, I said, look it, the other side is not going to make any deal.

They have made any proposal.

They're not going to do it.

All they want us to do is to say when we're going to get out.

And the President said he's not going to do that.

We shouldn't do it.

It's not in our national interest and so forth.

So I don't think we're going to have a problem on that.

Maybe we will.

But I don't care so much.

I think the important thing is getting out.

And the problem we've had is we've had a lot of interruptions.

Now it's true.

Now we're sliding downhill.

There isn't anything else to do.

And everybody knows it, though.

That's right.

And what I've said, I've had some arguments with people lately.

I said, look it, do anything you want to, protest or pass resolutions.

The president has formulated a policy.

We're implementing the policy.

We have no choice.

Now it's just a matter of is it going to work or not.

We think it's going to work.

If there's nothing you can do that's going to change it, too late to change it.

We listened to all the protests.

We talked to everybody.

This is the policy.

This is what I meant.

The argument is, why not sooner?

Well, that business about addiction can go into hell, of course.

The reason for that is, first, that if you always say, well, I've got a big mind, well, anybody with a great mind can have it.

But my point is that I think the energy of that is we would be very foolish to freeze ourselves and get straitjacket in our own minds, except we do freeze ourselves into the certainty of the things.

We are certainly going to get out.

But as far as the data is concerned, that remains flexible depending upon what negotiations are going to take place.

I even think the people in Washington, the occupation, I don't think the people outside, the people in the country,

are just concerned about, get out.

They're not talking about, why doesn't the president say today, do I, they just want to, now, the reason that they had, sure, but let me go to the, this is not my point, I didn't want to talk about it, my point is, I think we can take care of that, I think it's manageable.

And each month, if our casualties go down and we keep drawing troops out, we just talk about that.

We say we took out another 14,000 last month, and our casualties are down, and just keep talking about the things that we want to talk about.

But the thing that we have not been able to do because of the war here now is to convince people that we've had a total failure.

the occupation of Vietnam.

And no matter what we've said, it hasn't been heard.

Now I think we have a chance.

And I don't think we have to pay much of a price to take the chance.

And now I'm speaking about...

China, if you prefer, Russia.

However, we decided to do it my own preferences, do it as far as China's concerned, because that'll drive the Russians right up the wall.

I know.

Well, now there's... Of course.

Of course.

And we've been doing it regularly on friends.

Now...

and i think we ought to continue oh i haven't gotten that word yet i want the best oh yeah

All right, sir.

Good.

So, with that, I appreciate it.

Well, what will it be?

It'll be...

I don't know what it specifically is, but it's several little things.

So, you know, a lot.

Oh, trade, that sort of thing we recommend?

Yeah.

Additional trade restrictions?

I mean, removing the...

It's the same things in the paper.

It's all agreed.

Everybody's agreed.

Good, good.

It's a question of timing.

I thought about now, this is the Soviet...

Well, what I would like to suggest is that we give serious consideration to the matter of universality or something like it.

I'm not wedded to that.

Talking to John Connolly, he felt that, I think he changed his mind, I think he feels now that we ought to, if we're going to do it, we ought to go ahead and do it.

I think we ought to make our peace with Chiang Kai-shek.

And I'm not reflecting, I think the best way to do that is through McConaughey, the ambassador.

He's very close to Chiang Kai-shek.

But I think we ought to get it in train soon.

And I think we ought to, I don't really have to announce anything, but I think we ought to get somebody talking to that guy, Shag.

It's in our, it seems to me...

It should be done until he's gone, too.

Oh, no.

We can't do it until after the Korean elections, which is the end of the month, end of April.

But even in the case of Korea, I think we should encourage the South Koreans to talk to North Koreans.

There have been some initiatives taken by North Koreans recently.

They want to talk.

Well, why not?

I don't mean they have to come to any conclusion.

But I think the more we can appear to be trying to reconcile these differences, not to pay a price for it.

The Russians, of course, we've got to make some sort of a move on Seoul.

But we've got to do it from here at the right time.

Yes.

Uh, and there again, I think that, I think none of this...

But I would like to have you, uh, get credit for making moves in both directions.

Nothing, don't give anything away.

It's just as tough as we would be without it.

Fight for ABM, get all the money we need for defense appropriation and so forth.

But I mean, as I say, I think that the

Now that the Friday Congress is over.

Do you think, Billy, I wonder if we've got much credit for any of our peace committees.

Hell, I talked to Meg Laskin, and here's the truth.

He said, you know, he said, you know my guy, what's your name?

He talked about Jordan, he talked about the ceasefire.

He said, nobody out there wants a war, you know what I'm talking about.

Nobody wants a war.

He said, I know, stop.

You know what I'm talking about.

But what I'm saying, Mr. Brenner, is that because of the situation now changing in Vietnam, and I think it's got to, it's a downhill, it's a downhill slide.

Yes, and Robin, it's going to be less, less cash, at least we're getting out.

We've got to create that effect when we're getting out.

This is, this is, this is it.

We don't have to save.

The thing though, you know when you think about Eisenhower, he got credit for ending the war in Korea.

We had 64,000 people there when we came in office.

We had Americans being killed in Korea.

Yeah, but they're still negotiating.

My God, they're still meeting at that month, John.

They did meet.

That could still happen, too.

We could still get a cruise.

I mean, I think for the first time, for the first time, I've never heard of a negotiation like this, but for the first time, that time will last only four or five months.

If they want to negotiate, if they want a truce, if they want to buy a little time, they should do it now and get us out of here.

If not, then right after June's election, you know, that's all.

I think that we ought to...

Say to ourselves now that your policy on the area of negotiations and on a generation of peace are great policies.

They haven't been noticed enough because of Vietnam.

I think what we ought to do now is give those two things visibility.

Not to give anything away, but just take advantage of that because as the war in Vietnam winds down,

in our efforts to at least accelerate.

I think you will get credit.

You think you will?

I know you think of all the things we did, though.

You did this.

We did Okinawa.

That was a hell of a thing.

We did the situation of germ warfare.

You know, Edmund's sitting around there for 20 years, and what do you think of germ warfare?

That's a bullshit.

Yeah.

And you're right.

Everything we've done has been good.

But we've gotten very little credit for it.

We put it all out on your report and our report for 20 years.

Yet, a lot of us, it may be that now, I think the real question is whether Vietnam can be out of the news now.

If it's out of the news now, then these other things will be in the news.

We do, our administration, have a tendency to

to spend a hell of a lot of time talking about the press.

We can take the play away from the... We do.

Just look at the publicity the ping-pong thing has gotten.

I know.

It was great.

Tremendous.

It didn't get television publicity.

Oh, yeah.

I just thought it was a great story.

No.

I was not concerned.

They didn't invite the Japanese, you know.

I know.

I don't like the Japanese.

All right, the Americans are there.

They'll beat the hell out of the Americans.

Good.

Do you like her?

No.

They tell me they do.

Nixon, Rogers & Baker on Vietnam War and Foreign policy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 12, 1971

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