Nixon, Gorton & Haig on Australia and Vietnam War

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How are you?

Come on over here.

Do you remember that chair?

That's our biggest farm organization.

They just take a little walker and go in there and get off the meet and stuff like that.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

Yeah, a little bit.

A little bit.

You're doing well.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think that's it.

No, I think you're good.

Right on, buddy, right on.

Now, let's get back to school.

Well, I'll get you some tea or coffee.

Well, I didn't want to miss it because you have been a staunch friend of this country, and a personal friend of all of your recent political interests.

What about your system?

The government changes, you stay in the government.

Which is good.

Our system, that doesn't happen.

The government changes, you're out.

Well, we're coming to the same character.

It's the same party, isn't it?

The same party, yes.

Oh, it's a coalition.

I wouldn't have a government if I had a coalition.

And I'm afraid the opposition would have won.

Well, it's good that you got it, because it's so important to keep the people working.

I'm afraid the government is having a chance.

I wouldn't have paid for it if it wasn't for John.

I hope to get down there.

I hope to get down there someday in my career.

That's a great country.

And I'm visiting.

I told him off.

What is this, though?

Where should we go to?

Go to Austria.

You're going down to Austria.

You're representing us among others.

Well, I will.

Who do we find?

What senators do we find?

None of them are going to your desk.

They have us to worry about.

We're worried.

We're worried about her.

Yeah.

And Pat and I and Natalie came as well.

Oh, yes, right.

How lucky you are.

As long as you're here.

And that's a good.

And he said, aren't the biggest people up here not even dry?

Right, right, right.

Well, yours is the land, as I said when we met before, it's the land of opportunity.

The first is the great land of the present.

It's the land of the future.

Do you think that what it is beyond here?

It's just unbelievable what you've done.

Well, you're going to get the water.

By that time, you'll break through and see water.

Everything's going to happen.

Things are going to happen that we can't dream of at this point.

It'll happen even while we're around, perhaps.

And the water will come, and the question is what kind of illustrators are going to be in some people.

For a long time, we read a paper here, or in England, or in the United States, that we're going to have schools, and we're going to have seats, because the job inflation is going to run into the same headlines, the same problems.

What we live in is not true.

In that country, we're going to have to do it in the United States of America.

It's the patch on the planet's end stage among the so-called educated elite that knock everything in the system.

And I tell some of these people, I say, why don't you go travel someplace else?

You know, except a free time.

They go take a look at one of these other places.

I attend to them.

I know what they're like.

I mean, sure, look at the people that are just like that.

Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, I've seen them all.

And I think what they might be, and I think this despicable system that we hear so described in our press and in yours, you haven't been hit.

You don't know how lucky they got.

It was pretty lucky, wasn't it?

Better you're not getting that back.

That's right.

My master thought you might be able to write something about how we could help more on prisoners of war in Vietnam, I think.

But I don't know how we could help more.

Well, I know you're doing everything.

It's a city issue, you know, these people.

If there was anything that we could do, we could do the other thing.

Well, not offhand.

I don't know what you can do.

You've got to get a lot of people like that.

You're dealing with a bunch of barbarians, basically.

They're the idea of only prisoners of war, these hostages.

This is not according to anything else.

But so what we had to do was to play the hard game and to say that we would continue our controls and all that sort of stuff in ways that we would at least market for releasing the prisoners.

Now that there is very little that we set it up, we can put heat on it.

I don't think they care.

They have no, they have no, uh, they get the world to do it.

They don't know, excuse me, they don't know how to do it.

They don't know how to do it.

I know that you remember what the prime minister had to say.

He served you before us.

Mr. Heskett.

Mr. Heskett, you would have been pleased to hear what one of these men said, the head of the Farm Bureau.

You know what I'm talking about.

The Farm Bureau is our largest farmer in the country.

Incidentally, it's on the water.

I said I was going to see you, and I said, you know, I'm supposed to be here in a portion of a minute.

This follows a count, the head of the Farm Bureau, from Illinois, his name is Copius.

He said, oh, no.

He said, let me tell you what I did.

He said, I think it's fine to bring in the Australian beef, which is not competitive enough.

I said, really?

He says, it doesn't compete with ours.

And all it does is .

So you've got one guy on my list for more Australian meat, fair enough.

I remember you talking about the fact that you have the ground.

That's his point.

You see, he grows.

He grows.

Your beef basically is not what we call prime.

Our prime beef is that.

Your beef is more than what we call regular, good, fine beef.

It's not that.

It's steak.

That's what he meant.

So bring it in.

Don't quote it, because it's Barbara who's going to throw it out.

But why didn't you tell me this?

I was wondering, how did you see Vietnam?

How did it go when you were there?

You said you were there for a while.

Well, I was, but I had been to Saigon, and they told me that you and the Vietnamese generals, and you can't really believe what they're telling you because they're not actually going to tell you.

And we had quite some time with the other laborers there.

Then we went out in the field in Iran and promised to work till the end of the sword.

We went out in the farm places and so on.

And in our province, in that province, it's comparatively quiet.

Well, we lost, we lost a couple of helicopters.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.

in a way you've never heard of before.

You can travel, just get in a car or a Jeep or something and travel wherever before you have an escort, wherever it is where you have an escort.

You can go through towns and you don't have to have soldiers standing on the road.

corners and hospitals, the whole thing's peacefulness is very, very much... Great improvement.

A terrific improvement.

That's what it comes down to.

What worries me is this, that nobody can tell me, and I can't fit my hand on it at any time, tell whether this great improvement

whether it's because the provincial church has got things under control and the population has come over on their side, which is what will happen, or whether it's because of the income infrastructure, this, that, whatever stirs things up at this point in time.

Now, either of those could be the reasons.

I don't think anyone can tell you, Mr. President.

So it's like in the bush where they've got an infrastructure there and they can be waiting to, they get food from villages to food cages, they can be waiting to get infiltrators back in and the infrastructure will be there for them and they can have applications and communications and they can cause trouble.

Now, I'm not saying that will happen, but I'm saying nobody in the last track can tell this to anybody else around people.

knows what the reason for this great security is.

I'm sure that anyhow, after Cambodia and the last

They can't guarantee it.

It's up to them.

They can only give them the chance.

It's up to them.

And if they can't attack, they have it.

But I think they will.

Let me ask you something else.

How was he getting along with all of those black guys?

He had a hell of a time, apparently.

Oh, not so bad, but it's a different old problem.

I was sort of fighting with the Asian brothers to get in on this one.

He told me about it.

He said you were a real tower of strength.

But it's now real, if you put it this way.

First of all, it's a public relations job on the part of the leaders of these black countries more than a genuinely film police.

I'd see a calendar there, and he'd press it, and I'd put it away.

And he'd make a speech, a set speech.

He'd break off in the middle of it for the first time.

It was really, really touching, you know.

He was emotional, so good, he couldn't go on.

And he'd bring the water, and I'd take out a handkerchief and mop his eyes, and then get his belt together and carry on with what he was saying about how many of these people were treated well.

And it really was, Mr. President, when he did it in the second speech, the third speech, the fourth speech...

The same act.

The same act, exactly.

He began to sort of, just went out of the way.

And they were all...

The situation there is this, that it doesn't matter a damn about Tanzania.

But he's been kicked out of Uganda already.

Well, they've got a much more sensible chap there, it doesn't matter about the calendar and that bit.

Guy is sensible, he doesn't want any... Can't hear a sensible bit of what they've got.

Nigeria is the real, I don't know, difficulty.

There's an idea, a threatening case that... What kind of a guy is John Collins?

I've never met him.

Oh, never met him.

But I don't think he wasn't here.

He didn't come.

But he's threatening you to stay hard, isn't he?

Oh, well, they've got some thousands of billions or hundreds of billions of reserves held in sterling, and they said they'll take that out.

Britain's getting, I don't know whether it's 10% or 20% of its oil from Nigeria, and they've got to cut that off.

And there's a lot of business activity, which there is cadastral expansion, for which Britain was expecting to get the contracts and the place would be held up.

And that could cause a lot of economic problems to England, this country.

This is the only country, the only country that really cares.

And I don't know that they really care.

I think the very last piece, because of the government and whatever he says, wants to be the leader of the organization of African-American children.

And he's just sort of sitting up to that.

You know, the politics is he could be a hearing event.

But they just kind of let down.

They can carry it.

So whatever they want to, it's there.

It's all right.

But to hand it, have you ever been to South Africa?

I haven't.

I've never been there.

They tell me it's a fabulous place.

I mean, the two cities are.

Yes, of course, we aren't supposed to mention South Africa in this country.

Well, I think the British are having themselves just as long as they can.

They're selling out lawsuits and bailing companies from Penn State.

I don't think that's happening to anybody.

And they will still, I think, be free to say, must begin.

But I reckon in terms of its relations with all the black countries, aren't they doing a reasonable six-month-long job?

The British are free, as you say, in 100 percent.

But the more they do, the more they get kicked.

He was first kicked around the place, and he picked up a paper, they kicked him around the place, and he watched helicopters, and he picked the newspaper up, and all across is France's great triumph, you know, 50 mirages or something sold to South Africa, and they're doing great things, but nobody thinks about it.

I don't know why they're disliking that so much.

Yeah, the other ones, the other ones, they come up to you there and they say, you know, we have to be mindful of this.

We've got a lot of problems that are happening in the local population, but it's put on me.

And there's a thousand down in Peruvia that are out in that city.

Well, the... All right.

Yeah.

God, you know, those, some of those places shouldn't be countries.

That's the real problem is that.

Look at the Caribbean.

The Caribbean is ready to blow.

Don't you think?

I mean, you look around those little countries down there.

It's a volatile area.

Take Nassau.

Now, Nassau's a known country.

I mean, they've actually been exposed to British education and rest for a long period of time.

They've got an enormous tourist trade.

And frankly, you can go live and hear that.

And in the end,

They could be breathing high in the hog if they had let these people come in.

I mean, but the guy, the Prime Minister said he was following, he was being pushed over and over, and I was going to laugh.

And they had the same pushing over.

It's really a sad thing to see these, these countries, they really need a helping, not only a helping hand, but they need some advice and direction at this point.

That's what we have to do.

I said today, everyone that's going down there is expecting to make that.

who said that they, it was a big change to do, that them arrests are not friendly to the visitors now, and before that it was fun and happy.

That's true, all true there.

These places are so delightful to visit.

Now saying race, the confrontation that we see here has most wild and vicious aspects.

We've exported it to the world.

I didn't know that you had one.

It's not religious, it's racial.

It's racial, it's racial.

Indonesia has killed most of the Chinese now.

It was a racial problem before that.

Indonesia?

Yeah, I get it.

It's just that it's going to take hundreds of years, I think, before you just accept it.

Well, all people, of course, what we have to realize too is that progress is not instant.

I mean, people are not going to lie down, you know, like each other.

Not 5 years, now 10 years.

You remember right after World War II, we were there, the United Nations.

And now everybody's saying it's going to be peaceful.

The United Nations hasn't made people more peaceful.

I mean, because you can't just by putting people in organizations, it's going to be peaceful.

They're still going to have arguments with each other, fighting each other.

Take the Israelis and the Arabs.

They're going to hate each other as long as they both live.

They have a different background.

It has nothing to do with boyhood or anything else.

It has to do with a basic historical hatred that goes back even beyond the time that the Receptive Israelis stayed.

And so it is in other parts of the world.

Well, looking at it on the plus side, look at Western Europe.

When you think of what happened, where were you?

You were there.

You think of a terrible, you know, the distressing history of Western Europe.

I mean, this really is the flower of Western socialism.

but how the French and the Germans and the British and the Italians, let alone the Balkan states, fought over that tiny piece of real estate.

They fought over it throughout the 19th century.

They fought the Great War for it.

And then they fought World War II over it.

And now, Western Europe has reached a point where they will not fight again.

And that's part of what we're seeing.

So we've got to look at those areas.

But on some of these great, when we look at some of these great racial conflicts that

It's just like the Vietnams and the Nigerians.

There wasn't a darn thing any of us could do about that.

You know what I mean?

Except get in trouble.

It's not getting anything.

It's because basically there was a religious difference.

And even there, sort of a semi-religion ratio, but it's not going to happen.

Right?

Right.

And so what we have to do is to

is to keep our perspective, but then not to run with those people who say that because something happens or there's wrong in any place in the world, Australia is to blame, America is to blame, Britain is to blame.

At least I think that's the kind of perspective you need, don't you think, this time?

It's a little hard to stop getting to this, where the Israeli Arab was terribly worried.

It is.

I think it's worrying because, to the great powers, particularly the Soviet leaders and so on, what do you have to do to change the state of Cleveland again?

Yeah.

You know, I was there just at the time of the Germanian crisis.

Thank God the fleet was there because it's an intense discourage to those in my service.

But I was also there in June of 67, two days after the war was over.

I was there.

There's no reason for us to be pessimistic about it.

I mean, our nations, I mean, yours and ours, the British, our European friends, I mean, we stand for those.

I mean, we were the colonial powers in times past.

We may have mentioned our records that we're not too proud of, but at the present time, the role we play in the world

We're admirable.

We're not.

We don't threaten anybody's freedom.

We don't threaten the peace of the world.

We're generous in trying to meet all others.

Right?

And we need a little credit for it.

Right?

Is there?

We will.

Is there?

That's what I mean.

I mean, we can.

We look around, you see.

Well, if we don't get it, I guess the historians will just... We'll look back at this period and realize that, you know, that...

I love what is happening on space.

The rebuilding of the two major enemies after World War II.

Who are they?

The terrorists and the Japanese.

And where are they today?

The Japanese are the third most powerful nation economically in the world.

The Germans are the fourth.

Rebuild by those that fought them.

Huh?

Do you have any problems with the rotationist

Yes, again with the Japanese.

The main problem there is only in the textual front.

I mean, there are lots of other things in Japanese.

Of course, they're very tough competitors in the number of textuals.

Well, anyway,

I must say that even though I like this country, that I be living in such a country with all the future that's there.

And it's an awesome country, too.

You know, my friend R. Bennett better tell us about it.

He did.

He always happens, buddy.

That's right.

And I, you know, but believe me, you have a great country.

You have a great country and great people.

That's it.

So that's, that's a little trinket stick with it.

This is only for people who come on unofficial visits, you see.

This is something the NISCAL made up as the presidential seal, as a paperweight.

And I just want to tell you something, Mr. Opie.

This is the guy.

It's a very small paperweight.

Now, whenever the paper in your desk is too much for this paperweight to hold, throw some of them away.

I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to say it.

My best to all your colleagues in the government.

We're always welcome here.

Thank you.

We'll be right back.

Nixon, Gorton & Haig on Australia and Vietnam War

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 26, 1971

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