Nixon & Kissinger on Vietnam War and Domestic Policy

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Well, it's kind of interesting.

We're going to run into a little death boy up here, you know.

I think we're in a situation where all this will

the national sickness, a sickness which really is, doesn't affect the whole body, it affects only arms.

So the experience, I mean, it's very located in the Eastern, the fringes of other parts, in other words, their scabs.

The status of the whole thing is that we just have no other choice.

I mean, if we had any other choice, I mean, like we say, like he said, like the Baker point, perhaps, well, they said they're all going to get to Vietnam on the way, and then maybe the boys will vote for a national defense, perhaps.

I don't think it's out of the way or the wrong way.

They ever will.

I think they're going to have a hell of a time getting a national defense in any event.

That's what I believe, Mr. President.

And that's why I think that you've got to feel, and we've all got to feel at this time,

I think we can hold the staff, Mr. President.

I think this is one of these big historic moments and one can never be sure whether one

isn't going to be engulfed by it, but I do not believe.

Well, you'd be engulfed, but we're still going to be swimming on it.

Yeah, we're not going to be just holding our noses down.

But also, I think what has given you individuality is that you haven't yielded all the time.

These speeches, if you had gone the other way on April 7th, supposing you had said 17,000 truth withdrawals, wouldn't that have changed everything?

We could have said 12.

You could have said 12.

I think it was good to say a little bit.

It was all right.

Maybe a little bit of a not being feeling to it.

But you know it didn't buy us much.

When you really come down to it, I don't think it bought us much.

No, we're dealing with a national holiday here.

And frankly, you see it in this god damn lousy stinking press corps.

They're a bunch of bastards.

Somebody sent me an article from a German newspaper.

which said, what has happened?

I forget what the headline was, but its major point was, what is all this talk about morality?

Is it moral to let supplies go into South Vietnam unimpeded that will then be used to destroy the population?

Is it moral to turn over people that have worked with us for 10 years to the communists?

Is it moral for a party that got us into the war

Not us.

He said President Nixon was engaging in a primary campaign at the time of Milley.

Is it moral that he should now be attacked by the people under whose administration it took place?

That is the insanity of our situation.

There's nothing moral about it.

is to savage a political battle compounded over by a much deeper malaise.

The political battle is always there.

If they attack you on the economy, that's a savage to any political battle.

But the point is, these people are willing to attack us in the way of bringing the country down.

That's the point.

What they do on the economy is unfair, but it won't bring the country down.

What they do on the board may and probably will bring the country down if they succeed.

but you realize that at the time

But just before Jefferson's election, you know, damn it, it wouldn't have been elected except for the Civil Code and the Constitution Act.

But because the country was really in a mess where Jefferson was talking at that time to Jefferson and his supporters, it's like some modern critics are talking now.

They were all for what they called Republican France.

I mean, we were a bunch of goddamn thugs, bastards, horrible people.

Jefferson was fighting back against the Federals, you remember?

And they would have cut the country as well.

They would have shot the duals, resolved the barrier, and all that.

The barrier, of course, was on the bench.

But the whole thing was, if you read Jefferson and some of the things that he said, all the great Jefferson voters, he was talking.

And as a matter of fact, you know, despite the things that I say about Wilson,

He said, prior to World War I and very parts of it, at times he was terribly naive and, frankly, didn't show a whole lot of guts.

I mean, Theodore Roosevelt was right.

Theodore Roosevelt was not right in the way he took him on because he was too vicious and ruthless to be, and so forth.

But it turned out that he was right in terms of the real... And though you don't hear the situation, we have really...

It's a strange thing.

And it gets back to this, you see Jefferson, intellectual.

Wilson, intellectual.

That's the whole Kennedy mythology, intellectual.

Kennedy wasn't all intellectual right there.

But he could play the...

but he wasn't reading it.

He wasn't reading it.

You are much more of an intellectual than he is.

I have forgotten more than can be ever read.

You are an infinitely more reflective man than I am.

But that's irrelevant.

He was a playwright, let's face it.

So, nevertheless, what you really have here is something you've got to give a lot of thought to.

All this, you particularly, coming into the world,

the scholastic world.

God damn it, Henry.

The people who teach America young, you have the clergy, and they teach America young, have a terrible responsibility on their hands.

You know, the blood of this country

and the others have brought it, it's gonna be on their hands.

They're the ones that brought it down.

Not the working guy, not the uneducated man.

Remember H.G.

Wells' great theory to the effect that if everybody were educated, that was where his outline in history went wrong.

And alas, where he developed the idea that education would bring peace and decency and the rest, it has not brought it.

It has brought a certainty.

But what it has, you see, the uneducated man, at least recognized he doesn't know all the answers, and he's so, it's God or something else, and he has some respect for something.

The educated man gains, he develops pride, a certain arrogance.

And basically, and basically, analysis, in Greek, actor analysis means to dissolve.

It just gives you dilemmas, values, gives you a sense of direction.

And you cannot prove values.

I think I'd better go over this with my...

I'll leave it to you.

We're in place now.

If we're going to see this true, we're going to see it true.

But we're going to see it true as ruthlessly as they have.

And I mean not only the Congress, but our enemies politically.

And by God, Rubin and Hemingway, every goddamn thing that happened.

And I believe, Mr. President, that's also what this Truman paper said.

If they had not been so divided, if they hadn't divided the country, we might have had a negotiated settlement by now.

I agree.

The best asset that Hanoi has had is the fact that you were not even given

the minimum one year that a president should have.

They started rioting in June.

They kept it up through October, the first year you had to break it.

Then when it was quiet enough, every six months they had a demonstration.

The president, such as these would have, all the essential elements of these, the People's Peace Treaty,

the attack on the bombing, all of this was being drowned away even without Laos.

Now I admit Laos created the molest.

Correct.

Laos did not really charge up the attack so much as to discourage their own people.

That is right.

But two months later, they would have got something going.

But as far as our own people are concerned, whether we can keep them, frankly, bucked up until we see it through, just remains to be the great open question.

I think maybe we can.

But at least we will try.

We're going to try to do it.

We're going to try to see it through.

We're going to be tough as hell.

And for the best, that's all.

Good luck.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Nixon & Kissinger on Vietnam War and Domestic Policy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 23, 1971

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