Conversation 495-023

TapeTape 495StartFriday, May 7, 1971 at 4:16 PMEndFriday, May 7, 1971 at 4:32 PMTape start time03:14:58Tape end time03:31:18ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Siracusa, Ernest V.;  Haig, Alexander M., Jr.Recording deviceOval Office

On May 7, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Ernest V. Siracusa, and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:16 pm to 4:32 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 495-023 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 495-23

Date: May 7, 1971
Time: 4:16 pm - 4:32 pm
Location: Oval Office

The President met with Ernest V. Siracusa and Alexander M. Haig, Jr.

     Greetings

     Bolivia
          -Tin

          -Economy
          -Juan José Torres
               -Meeting with President
          -US aid
          -Economy
               -Current situation
               -1950's, 1960's
               -Effect of death on country

Members of the press entered at an unknown time before 4:32 pm.

     [Unintelligible]

     San Clemente

     Schools

   [Unintelligible]
Members of the press left at an unknown time before 4:32 pm.

     Bolivia
          -Current Situation
          -Bolivians
          -Natural resources
                -Compared with Argentina
                -Iron
                      -Sierra Mountains
                -Transportation
                -Santa Cruz
                      -Compared with Houston
                -Crops
                -Oil, gas, and petrochemicals
          -Torres
                -Relations with US
                -Public opinion in Bolivia
          -Military
                -Status
                -Morale
                -Readers
          -Intellectuals
                -Orientation

       -Compared with Chile
       -Economy
            -Compared with Chile
       -Relations with Chile

Peru
       -Juan Velasco Alvarado
            -Brazil, Bolivia
            -IEC[?]
       -Population growth,
       Social conditions

Brazil
     -Position in Latin America
     -Government
     -Economic growth

Bolivia
     -Economy
          -Compared with Brazil
     -Catholic Church
          -Unknown priest
                -University rector
                -Views
                      -Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR]
     -University
          -Program
          -Rector
     -Medical care
     -People
     -Torres
          -Administration officials
     -People
     -Torres and wife
          -Background
          -Work
     -US policy
     -US embassy
          -Staff
          -Ambassador
                -Media

                          -Meetings

     Gifts
             -Cufflinks

     La Paz

     California

Siracusa and Haig left at 4:32 pm.

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.

Hello there, how are you?
We can't be much for most of these countries like that, but there's a band over down there in Bolivia.
The country is going through a process now of disintegration, fierce disintegration, moral disintegration.
There's been a time when there's so many things that they feel bad, every problem they have, and they keep telling us, if you haven't made the decision you made, to do it again.
And I must say, it's helped me tremendously because both the pillars, which is such a personal response from you, it's amazing which places the United States would take into view.
Well, as a bachelor, you saw me at some reception that we had over here.
As a bachelor, you brought up, I just checked it out, and thought that we could do something on it, and sort of made sort of your concern.
Well, I don't know if it's the country, but...
They're very difficult to predict, but they're also very volatile and very poor.
There was a time during the early 60s after the recovery of the 50s when the military made satisfactory progress, but since President Valiantos was killed about two years ago, it's just been running downhill like that.
The last few months have just been incredible.
Every year they tell you if you don't want to come to New York on the last few days, you can have a few weeks in New York, and maybe that's going to happen.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
... ... ... ... ...
I don't know what he's talking about.
I don't know what he's talking about.
I don't know what he's talking about.
It's pretty close by to the beach, I realize.
It's against a country that has enormous problems, and they very well may be insoluble, as we know.
And so all we have to do, we just have to stand firm as we can and help them.
We have to hold them back.
You just have to have a very patient and positive attitude with a little country like that, because they have enormous problems.
They're naturally born diseases.
They've managed to foul up that country in the most incredible way, and that is very worthy.
It has tremendous wealth, tremendous potential.
You mean minerals?
Minerals, and for any reason, for oblivion.
They grow cotton, they grow sugar, they grow
grapefruit and apple, and then you've got oil and gas and then the potential for petrochemicals.
Bolivia is not a hopeless case in any sense, except it's politically hopeless right now.
They don't have to touch ground because of their, you know, internal strife, fighting, and so forth.
And the President today, and I thank you for the man that we have worked with, I'm trying very hard, I think I've got his confidence now, and I think your health has given us a big boost.
But he has no power.
He has no, there's no organized solution to support for him at all.
Neither the military nor any of the other institutions can be sort of held in suspended animation because of people tolerating him rather than supporting him.
What about the military right now?
What about the military?
We're almost demoralized right now.
We're almost demoralized.
All the people who've been leaders in recent years have been caught up in political...
The new and mysterious office of the Exile, and there's no obvious leaders.
There's the President, but not the intellectuals, so-called.
There's L. Martin.
L. Martin.
I believe that.
I heard this.
This is how the cake was put in the United States.
It was knocked in their way, and there was nothing out of the scene.
Yes, Carl.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Well, someday they'll go that way.
They're going in that direction.
I think we're destined to see all of the American investment nationalized, nationalized, dimensional.
This is a national policy.
And I think that if we go that way, I think there's a chance they will pay in their compensation.
And they'll go through this process, and one day they'll realize that they're going to have to go back the other way, and I'm afraid they're going to have to bring it back before they know the fact.
Is that fine?
Sure.
What about the impact of the Chileans?
Are they working over all of their, or are they just doing their own thing?
They would like to.
The leftists, the extremists would like nothing more than to immediately get into bed with the Chileans.
But they don't have diplomatic relations, and they have this long backdrop of animosity because of the war in the Pacific, and Putin's really lost his decos.
And this keeps them apart, patriotically, at the end of the month.
It's hard to figure out how they're going to resolve this.
And I tell them, you know, hey, I think that's good for the country, right?
What do you see for the future for them?
You follow that, don't you?
I follow it with great interest, yes.
Well, I think we should, we're going to have a lot of stuff come up.
I think he's slowly learning, Mr. President.
I think he's slowly learning.
I think the country's going to do a fraction.
Had they not done what they did, there would have been, in the last two and a half years, a billion, a million, at least a billion dollars of new investment.
I think Brazil is doing, and that would have brought more things, too.
But because of the IPC then and the attitude they had, they stifled investment.
The great worry that I have about Peru is that a country like yours, if you can't tolerate this lack of progress, they have a 3.5% growth of population every year, and they have a
A social condition of misery there, which is, that's unbelievable.
You've seen it.
You know what I'm talking about.
You just can't afford to stand still.
We've got to go ahead.
And I hope these people can learn.
They're well-intentioned people.
I know most of them, man.
They're great people.
They're not bad people, but they...
They simply don't believe that an incapacitated government made in the States are trying to live on rhetoric as we live on rhetoric.
That seems to be a silver in the Latin Territory, or is that the state office?
The Latin Territory, they love to live on rhetoric.
They're beginning to see statistically that they're not getting it.
You know, they coached me about the rights of Latin America's Brazil.
It's coming along, isn't it?
Tremendously.
They've got to keep a good, strong hand.
I mean, the idea is that they, as some of our people know, you know, they don't like, quote, dictator, end quote, unless it's on the line.
But, my God, I think if we got somebody in Brazil that seems to be able to run the place, the place is booming, isn't it?
It's booming tremendously.
I mean, the growth of the investment that they're attracting from the GNP growth is doing great.
More than anything, it's just an industry at times.
The growth is going to be kind of the same thing that it is today.
And Bolivia could too.
Bolivia could if they were to straighten up and attract investment.
And do any of them ever look over to Brazil and look at what happens there and say, well, maybe we could do that?
It doesn't mean anything.
It doesn't penetrate.
This is the problem now.
What is the, what, what, what, what role does the church play on that?
Well, they started joining the march or something.
Yes, but now the hierarchy of the church is trying to maintain the state of the situation.
And yet there are quite a few priests who are very far off on the radical side.
There's one who was, who was a darling at the university, who had children, which in the newspaper, in which he advocates that the soldiers turn their gun on the Americans and kill them.
This is the so-called priest.
Are they buried?
No, they're...
It's probably related in some way.
I always have a question of science.
But maybe they have to go through the egg.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
What the hell are they teaching?
But we know the general was always going to have to do things like that.
The rep to the law university is that he's a utter rascal.
He has no integrity whatsoever.
He's the man who's trying to put his imprint on 11,000 students.
11,000 in that university of Maine, in the class.
My embassy doctor tells me that in all of Bolivia, there are no more than 8 to 10
medical doctors who have even moderately decent qualifications.
And those who turn out to be, they leave the country.
The last good dentist and the greatest doctor studied about two months ago.
And this is what happens.
The good people go away because everybody who achieves anything is a target for being really technical.
But they don't trust each other.
If you had a cabinet like President Flores has today, your attorney generals and the director of the FBI and the chief of staff behind you would be men.
It would be tough to govern in that way, and then these are people we have to watch each other after each other.
They don't trust each other.
There's a terrible mistrust and suspicion.
You always have that in that fuzzy little anymore country.
But it's a sanctuary division.
I hope that somehow it's going to bottom out and begin to pick up again.
And I have a feeling, because although I said the president of Taurus doesn't have organized political support, I think he's making good with the people.
I think he's a man who is very comfortable with the enemies.
He and his wife are lower middle class.
They work very hard at trying to
to establish that portal to the kind of people I think they're getting somewhere, because that's not always going to support, you know.
But maybe that can cancel it.
Maybe that can cancel it.
So I think our policy must be to have a positive, sympathetic, and understanding policy towards it as long as you want it to be permissible.
I think that's a great point.
That's an awesome point.
to continue to meet with them to get along with them.
But I assume you've heard lines and discussions with their parents about what our policies are.
And we understand.
We may not agree with them.
We don't, no matter the fact.
But if you look at us, and they go, well, from there, we'd just do something we think would be all right.
Wouldn't we?
They've got to do it.
They've got to do it for the settlement.
They've got to do it.
It's interesting because, you know, we feel very isolated after the war.
It's kind of a cough down in that dish.
And when something happens, like your generosity is something that's a letter or something, or a reward, which is a bunch of people in the embassy field, or from the White House, the president is watching.
So it's a great boost to watch out, obviously.
Keep packing away.
I am.
They must have been very, very hopeless at times, but I think that's the role we have to play in that county.
I've got a very careful title.
Sure.
People who kill the media, they watch everything I do.
Of course.
And they want to distort and attack me.
Yeah.
The media are terrible.
They'd love to have me thrown out at any time.
The media, what?
Yeah.
The television, radio, and all that.
All of that.
All out of the president's office, they're out there.
They'll meet me, and every one of them's got a tape recorder.
I recorded the answers to their questions, which I handled quite well, I think, and carefully expressed myself.
And I was just amazed when I read the next day in quotation marks, since it was the last time I read it.
And when I looked at some of your own papers, I was kind of criticized.
We very much say, what was that guy here for?
Does he trust the press?
So he asked me, and I said, no, no, no, no.
I'm going to write a book someday, and I want to know exactly why.
for a decent presidential conference that you, anybody that would have deserved that.
Mr. President, thank you very, very much.
Thank you, Mr.
Governor.
Yes, Mr. President.
Thank you.
All right, you should come on again.
You should come up here and give it a go.
I'm not going to let the bus go or anything.
I don't have plans.
I'll send Nick.
I know I will.
I said, what do I need?
I mentioned it when he was there.
Mr. President, we're going to ask if you'd like to keep that California spirit.
All right.