Nixon, Kissinger & Haldeman on Vietnam War and Public Opinion Polling

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Well, the only problem is that if we ended and then the damn thing turns communist, it will be...

really have to realize is the what's the problem

It was the move into Laos.

In other words, it wasn't just the fact that it was not too well, as well as we hoped.

The move into Laos, as we noticed, immediately gave us quite a wrap in the polls.

And the reason was that people had sort of figured, well, the war's not going to be ended, and all of a sudden, they thought, here's...

The day was called the evening, every evening, television.

And we wrote...

I don't want to give up.

The only question is if it's going to affect the Baker Manages.

I don't know if it's going to affect the Baker Manages, which is very important.

In the event the others that, whether all the other things we want to do may become impossible.

They are impossible as long as the war thing ends over.

It affects SST, it affects the defense, it affects everything else.

That's correct.

He's not correct in terms of the law of view.

We all know why we have to do what else.

We also know why we have to end the thing the right way.

And we also have to stick to our guns.

And at the same token, too, you've got to remember that senators and congressmen are not always the most, they read mail or they hear from an editor or this or that or the other thing.

And they're enormously affected by it.

They have their own small groups.

based on truth.

No question about it.

This is a tough thing.

What I'm really getting at is this, that we've got to give them some good news, Henry.

I just can't keep crapping around.

They've got to have... What Baker was really saying was not that the war should end this summer.

He said they've got to know it's going to end.

You see my point?

They've got to know it.

And my view is that if they don't...

As I said, let's not be under any illusions that we've got the rest of the year far around here.

We have not.

No, no, but we will know.

See my point?

We will know by September at the latest.

In fact, I think we'll know before then how we're going to do on this initiative, how we're doing with the Soviets, I think, if you will get a summit coming up.

even though it's not directly related to me.

And I don't think we may be left with no other choice, but what I'm getting at is that we may have to make in terms of our own time table situation.

I don't know what I mean.

just to hold their own.

That's all.

They could talk to him.

Those guys didn't have to tell as much bastards as we've got now.

They had to think.

They fought this battle.

But you know, they can only fight so long.

They don't want to lose.

Basically, McGregor was not too proud of his speech.

He didn't talk to these guys.

He was just honest when he talked to them.

He was doing all the beatings wrong.

Now, those things over there, some don't live for a child and don't.

Others, you know, there's still a little more of that stuff in some parts of the country.

I just think it would be such an absolute national disaster, and I'm not a good judge of it, and ultimately also a political disaster, if everything simply disintegrates.

If, say, by the summer of 72, the communists are in Saigon,

so that everyone could say he did Cambodia, he did Laos, and no one will remember what they did.

The main point is this.

I'm simply saying that from now on, we cannot have bad news out of Vietnam.

We cannot have any more adventures.

All we can have is good announcements, and we've got to get them off by God just as strictly as we can.

Now, that's why the meeting with the Jew has got to be one that comes up with one hell of a slam-bang announcement, you know what I mean?

truck, which will basically have to be one-handed, as I'm sure it is the relation between the ball and the semi-point.

That truck, even though it isn't

I was going to say that we may have to, you may have to do some fooling around with that thing in such a way that it will end, say, that our role will end during the year 1972 or so forth.

I don't know exactly how to do it, but we can.

We can talk all we want about continuing our negotiating leverage with the communists and all that sort of thing.

But Henry, you ain't got the courage to get to negotiating leverage.

See, that's right, but these guys have the cards.

If they deserve it, they, uh... See, they can carry on.

Well, we'll, uh... We'll see in the next few weeks, uh... We'll see more clearly what the Soviets have.

We'll see more clearly what Hanoi has.

And, well...

It may be that one of these tragic historic situations, I think the country...

And probably you personally will pay such an enormous price if this thing disintegrates completely, no matter what the pressures are now.

I have no intention of hearing any pressures.

All I am simply suggesting is that we have to be quite clear so that we don't appear stupid.

Oh, yes.

I appreciate the pressures.

Get my point?

Absolutely.

That's right.

That would have been very helpful.

Because they want to get out, but they also don't want to lose.

Yeah.

I said, we're going to stick to our guns, I'm going to do that for sure.

On the other hand, we can find ways to play this game a little more cleverly, too, in terms of our announcements.

Our announcements have got to be, you know, and all the rest of it.

I said...

You know, we had been talking to those guys about it, and some of my brother, my brother was supposed to do this, but this country had not seen the pull and the conduct of the war.

I mean, did that get out or did we push it out?

And the one about turning over the economy to the communists and the other one, yeah?

No, no, the turning over the...

The communists?

No, neither of those.

Those we did not put out.

What we did was the conduct, the shift on the conduct of the war.

Why don't you get the other two out?

I mean, just get it to Dole and have him get it out to... As a matter of fact, that's the ship on the continent of war.

We just gave it to Dole.

We didn't put that out.

Well, we did.

That's the one we put out.

No, what they didn't have... That I'm not sure.

What they didn't have is the unwillingness to turn the country over to the Communist Party.

That's right.

We gave that to Dole, but we didn't give it to him.

We didn't give it to them.

Well, follow-up, we didn't see that Dole gets that each member here and does it with a personal, well, Dole or, yeah, I just said, yeah, let Dole look.

Was Dole here?

Yeah, sure.

Did he respond to it?

No, he mentioned it.

He didn't remember it.

I see.

Well, he didn't remember the numbers or anything of that sort.

Well, he did a little, but not specifically.

Just how though that he ought to just call each one of those guys and say, look here, this is an ORC poll, and this is the Gallaudet one.

Right, right.

I mean, it takes over one.

It's good for them to know this, because they've got to get sure of it.

They're going to hear the warning, they're our own people.

And to that point, Goldwater said to me about the harm and cruelty, he says they've got to act new.

And I said, great, you've got to send another in just before you are going to meet Agnews to do it.

You've got to go back to Agnews and just the vice president.

Is he going to do it?

He's been told to.

He's asked to.

All right.

Jesus Christ, I mean, they can't ask you to do it.

You know, I never see him, do they ever give any publicity to the things he does?

That's the trouble, that's why nobody wants him to do it.

Huh?

That's why nobody wants him to do it.

Well, he'll get that bowl of cognac before .

Okay.

Why don't you get Gallop a cup and sit and ask those same questions?

Wouldn't try.

That's for sure.

What would you think your stock exchange figure would be?

Minus 52.

No, it went down today.

But, I mean, the top bar, do you have it?

Four points.

That's all right.

Should have been up.

You asked what the total value, the increase in total dollar value of all stocks are?

$262 billion.

Increasing value of the stocks traded on the New York Exchange.

From the low last year to the high yesterday.

That's an estimate they have to sum up.

Over $250 billion.

or well over $250 billion increase.

So somebody's got to be able to sell it.

Somebody's got to be a little better on it.

Well, the market price of some of those is next time.

Well, the time, the time now the market's moved so heavily up and it's sold out for a while.

It's been amazing that it hasn't.

I'm sorry, I jiggled a little.

Henry, I'd be interested to know that

to recruit for him.

The FBI, as you might expect, has been watching Congressman Boggs and his movements recently.

I mean, somebody, not the FBI, of course, because they don't have a congressman or a secretary.

Somebody fooled them.

She works for us trying to fix a fraud case on savings and loan banks, which is subject to the State Attorney General, Jack Grimillion.

She actually works for us, told her to get close to Hale Boggs so the indictment on Grimillion could be fixed.

The affair has been going on for approximately six weeks, a considerable number of rendezvous.

in a place in New Orleans called The Village and a professor in Louisiana State came over to the table to talk to him.

Boggs was intoxicated and got into a fight with the professor and the professor eventually knocked Boggs under the floor.

He walked out of the conference room and was always fighting.

He had a room at the Marriott Hotel in Washington.

He was brought up in an oil company airplane owned by J. William Dernan.

That night she told Boggs she wanted him to fix the indictment on Grumillion, and Boggs accused her of loving him only for the purpose of having this done.

They had a fight that night.

Louisiana oil people are also paying the woman so that they can keep Boggs under control of animal oil legislation.

And oil people have him under surveillance to make sure he doesn't drive a thing.

Then he says, one newspaper source has this information already.

And did you say that you did mail these to them, to their homes and all that sort of thing?

Maybe that doesn't work.

Both homes and offices.

We sent it to both places to make sure they got it.

It probably did.

Huh?

You sure?

Yeah.

It probably doesn't.

And that's...

We probably got to broker every one of those poles by phone, by phone.

Personal contact, because it just, those guys get the mail.

Well, it helps.

They read their mail and get a pole out of them, too.

They read these guys.

Even our own guys, you know, they, those guys are, you know, all kinds.

Even Jack Kent, who's a great friend and everything, he was bitching to somebody about he'd tried to reach me to get something taken care of and couldn't get to it to me on the phone.

And so someone told me about it.

So I checked the thing, and all of a sudden I discovered I couldn't find any record of any phone calls.

So I called Jack and I said, I'm terribly distressed because we have one rule here, which is we put phone calls.

He says, oh, I didn't call you.

And who's he mentioned to you?

I said, well, well, anyway, they're just, they say it without really being so, you know, they're saying, oh, you can't get through the white house.

It's a different breed than some of the ones you're talking about.

I guess the best football player would be Ernie instead of Eric.

And Jerry Porter, we're talking about the football player artist.

No, it was Eric Barnes.

Eric Barnes.

Not Ernie Barnes.

He wasn't with the San Diego Chargers.

Now that's a better one, I think.

Because he's an artist.

There's an Ernie Barnes in the Chargers.

He's an artist, though.

He's bad.

Eric, this is a good one, okay?

Eric Bunt is a defensive back.

Defensive back, that's right.

This guy, Ernie, is an offensive guard.

I think that he's also an artist.

I think that's correct.

Eric, I know the word is E-R-I-C-H, whatever it is.

Get out and you do a little better job on the whole business talk.

I mean, get it, when I say do a better job, get it a greater goal and so forth.

Not in the White House.

Well, that's a greater game.

But what's terribly important, you know, you call them up, do it with your cabinet people and the rest.

You have to do it.

Go around and see them.

Some of them, because we've got to play back on them, you don't get everything.

But particularly this one, I think you ought to get this one in the worst situation, because Henry is well aware of the fact that that was a goddamn significant shift.

And those two questions have never been asked by Gallup.

And one guy said, why don't you ask those two questions?

And I said, well, they've been asked, I think.

And I played it dumb and doled and picked it up quite fast.

I said, wasn't that something?

Polls, it says, Marcy and Dole said it.

Yeah, I think it'd be helpful to that group that got out.

Yeah, we're taking them to our friends, sir.

We're taking them to our friends.

See, what you have to do is to set up a, I guess, a quiet room.

If you have a group like this, Bob, rather than some of these students, just breathe more.

Oh, I guess it's more quiet.

We talked about it in terms of what the hell he wants to discuss.

He didn't really know what the hell we were meeting for.

And it was fine.

It was fine.

It was worthwhile there.

You got it well.

It would be helpful, though, to know what the objective is.

What we're asking to do.

You always got a problem.

You got to go on there.

You get to talk a hell of a lot.

Babylon.

Jurassic World.

Their main purpose, of course, is to tell us if we want anymore.

I really feel, myself, that that subject, though, from their standpoint, was, I'm rather surprised that Clark, and either they had a liaison who had done it.

Of course, Ballou's been on the dumb side that way.

No, he's not dumb, but he's not aggressive enough.

But if there's anybody that doesn't know what the sentiment is that they want to handle, Lord Christ, I know that, you know.

And it's really, really, I mean, Baker was strange.

It was all right.

Baker was strange.

But they acted as if this was something that I, you know, I didn't know.

Yeah.

Huh?

That's right.

It's a strange sort of state.

They figured it.

They had some idea for relief.

They go, we've just got to do it.

We've just got to do it.

What the hell is, you know, we know that.

And I said, well, that's what we're going to do.

That's what we're going to do.

Oh, you handled it beautifully and with great dignity and with great strength.

But you can see him babble, babble, babble, babble.

And he gets to be a pain in the ass.

No, I must say, I must say, meetings with congressmen, senators, and that's your elite corps.

Because they've had, oh Christ, you've had Scott, right?

That's my best friend, Bill Rizzo.

But you've got to get these guys strengthened because you can see him or you can get better guys.

So I'm going to have a vote for a while.

That's much like them being our own guys.

You have a vote you're going to have and I'm holding them on a date.

You know that?

That's right.

Absolutely.

I'd like to lose a senator.

Who?

Thelma.

She wanted to make him Secretary of Agriculture.

I would welcome the wish.

Now who's to say that a boy would be a hell of a Secretary of Agriculture if he wouldn't have a son?

No.

Well, we'll see you.

Walk over here with me now.

Go over there.

Nixon, Kissinger & Haldeman on Vietnam War and Public Opinion Polling

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 20, 1971

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