Nixon, Preus & Hughes on Vietnam War and Prisoners of War

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript is incomplete. The transcription skipped stretches of speech — roughly 1 minute of this recording (about 5% of it) is represented by only a few words. Listen to the audio rather than relying on the text below; a corrected transcript is queued.

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

Click a timestamp to play from that point; the page address then links to that moment (e.g. #t=125).

Mr. President.

That's right how you do, Mr. President.

It's nice to meet you.

Nice to see you, Mr. President.

Hi, Mr. President.

Good to see you.

Good to see you, yeah.

Thank you.

Travis didn't seem to sit down here.

Didn't seem to do you any harm.

No, they did me good.

Yeah, all right.

You couldn't do more for the company.

No problem.

The, uh, the, uh,

I don't know what to say to it.

We're dealing with it.

It's really a group of international outlaws.

That's what we really have in mind.

And it's interesting to note that I was rather surprised that they did accept back $500,000.

That's the first time they've ever done a damn thing.

First time they've ever admitted they were even at war.

That's right.

That's a very significant thing.

I don't know what's up.

I can't understand that.

I think, you know what it is, I think that shows you, you and others have got cue to themselves.

I'd love to think about it.

Well, in a sense, you realize, you don't accept them back in there.

They appear to be completely intimate.

Yeah.

These are wounded.

These are sick people.

They won't take them back.

Excuse me, the president said, there's a lot of them.

Now, what do we do?

I don't think you get that.

All right.

— 1 min 30 s with no transcribed speech —

Yes, yes.

Would you like tea or coffee now?

Now that you're back, you prefer coffee.

Oh, well, I don't want any tea.

Tea, indeed.

All right.

Yeah, thank you.

Well, go ahead.

Well, oh, I make a note.

Sure.

I'd rather waste your time.

I just take these out so that we don't...

I'd like to give you this that pertains to my aide, who I think is...

and I'd like to call on your attention, sir, but just to pick up on a few things.

You may have been told this, but our main one, the Swedish Foreign Office Ambassador,

Well, the embassy people there in Sweden anyway said that we really got a little more out of them than they did.

They were willing to separate the war from the prison issue.

That's important.

We can get that done.

We're in the middle of a war.

The police would not, but they did.

In other words, they said, well, we're neutralist snickers on this war thing, or possibly any kind of problem.

But on this, we will help you.

And he did a phone call, and this girl, Misa, was the next one to think about.

In India, Master Keating took us over for a call.

I sat with him.

We did all the talking.

And when we left, I said to Master Keating, how did it go?

Well, sure.

He said that's the best we can do with Hanoi.

And he should separate it from the war they want to shoot prisoners in.

Good.

Now that sort of thing helps.

Because you see, the Indians are basically neutral.

And this man calls in that way.

He's very left.

He has very much on the other side.

So if he separates it, he's bound to reflect that to Hanoi.

See?

And the Swedes will do the same.

So don't...

I...

I don't know.

I can't.

I don't know what's going to happen.

See, what they're doing is keeping it now.

But if we can get this thing, just get the heat on, and if you can continue to talk about it, in other words, let's separate the war.

We all, everybody disagrees about the war.

Let's understand.

But this is a humanitarian thing.

Here we turn back.

There, you know what?

They turn back on us.

Right?

Right.

And I'm the same coach.

Well, I don't think they understood your remarks that we talked about for so long.

Thank you.

Remarks you made, and priesthood, and those dealings with your wives, where you had said we could not, we cannot settle the, the, um, with all the matter until they settled pretty quickly.

And then, you know, we tried to argue, we didn't want to say more than we should, but we tried to argue, when did you turn around and say, you settled the prisoner issue?

You already got the word from the president.

Mr. Cabo immediately put this.

Yeah, yeah.

He said, they're absolutely ridiculous that they don't make this deduction.

They can't affect us.

Look here, we're going to hold your prisoners until you withdraw.

We can't do that, you see.

No.

But on the other hand, if they move on the other, sure.

It's just one of those things that we don't say.

We can't say it because if we say it, then we're in a position of...

and traded one for the other to separate the two.

But you let go of the door in what you said, and they seem to have some other connections.

You know, Bruce in Paris said they have made a ghastly miscalculation on this point.

You think so?

Yes.

It is because of his doctrinaire position.

He's everywhere.

Bruce thought so.

public relations standpoint, or what was he thinking?

Well, I think public relations, I think diplomatically or tactically, that the, that the, we didn't, so over the store, and they didn't seem to see it, or understand it, or desire it.

It's partly public relations.

He didn't explain much, but I remember that statement he made, because it was such a strong word, and it was

Yes, yes, yes.

I would say, though, from all the people we talked to, of course, we talked only to these tribes and only to...

He impressed me with the pessimisticness of all the ambassadors.

Well, the football was silly.

He was there with everything.

Week after week after week.

Don't be pessimistic.

No, I wouldn't.

I mean, he has to be.

He's got to be.

And he knows how tough they are.

They're a doctrinaire.

But I don't mean to be any Pollyannish about it.

But we just, we have to keep pounding and pounding and pounding our main, separate the two issues, separate the two issues.

One place that they were going to separate was in Vientiane.

And in the course of the conversation, which went on for three hours, he, somebody kind of inadvertently separated the issue of going to Hanoi and talking to government officials from visiting camps.

And he seemed to shift gears.

He was very minded.

It seemed that he already had instructions.

Don't let them get to see the camps.

But when we said, somebody in kind of an offhand way said, well, if we could talk to your government officials.

Then he sort of took additional notes and seemed to, in other words, separate.

Maybe we let them to Hanoi.

We won't let them see the camps.

And he said, well, I'll have to change that.

Now, the same man in another part of the conversation said, I am personally and officially very sympathetic to your concerns and would like to see you get in.

Now, why he said this... And he was a top man.

But he said, I can't go in.

You know, he made the statement.

The reason they wouldn't let us in was that they would use the term bloody Andy Nixon.

If you're busy in prison camps, President Nixon might stage another Santei.

A raid.

A commando raid and we couldn't protect you.

Right.

And we said, we'll take the race back.

That's right.

We'll visit to get them out of it if you're down.

Well, let me just look at my notes because I don't want to waste your time.

I think, well, we discovered, I think you need to know this, a very great sympathy among the Swedish foreign people, the Italian foreign office, in India, the one I mentioned, and with the Pope.

With Pope Paul.

He was very, it was very interesting.

And the whole diplomatic service of that was just like this from the day we saw him.

He even said to the Archbishop, that's what happens there.

Yeah, yeah, very good argument.

He said to the Archbishop, he's going to speak for me.

And he said, whatever you say, I will support.

Have you met him before?

No, no.

How did he look?

How was he?

He looked good.

Quite frail, you didn't get that from him?

No, his color was good.

He looked like a man in pretty good shape.

He knew all about this.

When the bishop started telling him about it.

When Rogers was over there last week, he also stopped and informed him of the prisoners.

Did he get the same impression?

Yes, and he set the full mention here.

The Catholic Church has a church in Narnia's problem.

There are a lot of Catholics still in Narnia, about 800,000.

And they figured, you know, we've got to worry about that.

Well, this is what surprised us, that he was only taking that risk.

It'll interest you to know, and I just have letters to the Lutheran leaders.

I would say that one of the best letters I got in response to the polls,

He said, I can't do anything for you for obvious reasons, but I know where my heart is.

I mean, the Germans were quite supportive.

They wanted to go along with us.

I think if we were able to follow up on this, if there's anything that needs to be done further, it would have been better maybe to put together an international group.

names, maybe coming from India.

You could have saved us.

I hope we... You see where we've been getting down to the point now, that as we withdraw our forces here, much less talk about accepting prisoners.

That's right.

I realize it.

When you get down at the end of this year to 150,000 left, what is there left to talk about?

They know where they're going to be leading.

They're going to have the South Vietnamese there taking care of themselves.

It was interesting, too, that we were told by somebody that the NCHAM acts as kind of the place where they're most diplomatic.

The man in Stockholm was terribly doctrinaire.

And he gave long tirades on the war for the American periodists.

Sure.

And then all the zealoties were doctrinaire.

Yeah.

But the men in Shenzhen didn't do business.

They didn't do business.

I don't think it's a difference in... Did they talk in French or Vietnamese?

In Sweden they used Vietnamese.

And in Shenzhen we had to have a French interpreter.

from Vietnamese to French to English.

There were two Vietnamese men.

The main man spoke Vietnamese, his man spoke French, and then our man spoke English.

A very fine man, a missionary.

He's been there for 43 years.

The first white man ever to be made a citizen.

Wow, that's very good.

He was also your friend, Congressman.

He's...

Oh, what's that, right?

If you'd like to hear the other side of the Kluski story, we have a quote of Father Maynard, the Catholic priest.

He just disagrees with Kluski.

Totally.

He says there's no similarity between the facts and what Kluski says.

Well, I think I've covered these things, but we did have a meeting with the minister of foreign affairs at the time, Mann, in...

South Vietnam, I don't know if you're all aware of all that he'd say, but he seemed to express great confidence that South Vietnamese could carry the ball.

And he just let the Americans would go as people over here would.

They're going to be able to.

That's the great thing about the fact that the North Vietnamese are not going to be recognized.

They want to make any kind of a video, and that time is running out, and in three or four months or so, there'll be nothing to talk about.

But they've got to make it.

If it isn't where in which we produce it, they'd better do it now, because you see, what we get is our troops go down, and they're calling this out in Vietnamese.

This man said the trouble is that you negotiate at every point.

If you negotiate for a date, then they'll still not release them until you've negotiated for a lot of military assistance, a lot of financial assistance.

all the way down to the line.

That's correct.

He's right.

But on the other hand, the real .

Did you get around the country in South Vietnam, or were you just in Saigon?

No, we got around the country.

They took us through the military to Phu Quoc Island, to the Hoa prison, and to the commissar.

We saw the whole thing, thanks to General Bly and Ambassador Bunker.

Have you ever been there before?

No.

Quite impressive what has happened, don't you think, in South Vietnam?

You stop and think of the...

I mean, you read the stories of South Vietnam, and you'd think the place was a...

Well, we look for the defoliation, this sort of thing.

Also, the work that's being done on those lake-ocean records, I think it's going to be missed.

Well, they told us, now these were not just government people, but church people, that every mother, son, and one else in that area that's occupied by North Vietnam fled, not from American bombers, but from the North Vietnamese

I know that's what happened.

It's very difficult for us to get out that side of the story because in these days, to knock everything the United States does, we're barbarians, we're cruel, this, that, and the other.

All these people working, living under those conditions,

Sure, what do you say?

Well, they put me there that pacification people are very wonderful people.

This whole group of American volunteers, which is 150 out here in the Rose Garden, $550 million is going to be contributed in the United States for helping people around the world.

It began long before we had a program against your church and mine and so forth, you know.

We used to give our pennies to the mainstream fund in the old days, you know, for famine relief, blood relief, earthquake relief, and so forth and so on.

And frankly, in Vietnam, the untold, apart from what we do as a government, there's just a lot of decent people doing it.

And that's part of the military people, Marines and Air Force, on a volunteer basis go out there and they help these little kids, you know, they're homeless and they build schools and roads and so forth.

Did you get a feel of that later?

It's quite impressive, isn't it?

The Americans are not as bad.

You know, we have problems.

You know, you get an atrocity story here.

And war is a horrible thing.

And it's something that they normally would not be.

But as far as we're concerned, we are doing a great deal here.

It's interesting.

No, police number two is here.

All right.

I suppose he's got to meet the press, sir, anyway.

Read another one.

Now, I'll give you a... Did I give you a conference report?

No.

You got a...

He's the president.

I know when you were at the...

But here's the presidential conference.

Let's see.

You get a good... Now, how many were in your group?

There was nine of us.

Five.

Let me give you a number right now.

On your life.

And it's really good.

Thank you.

on the other board, because of my appreciation for your attorney, and I have to say that we're going to get it back, and however it happens, we're going to get it back.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Nixon, Preus & Hughes on Vietnam War and Prisoners of War

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on May 14, 1971

Cite this conversation

Nixon, Preus & Hughes on Vietnam War and Prisoners of War

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on May 14, 1971

Related conversations

Cite this conversation