On May 18, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 11:06 am to 11:28 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 500-013 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Humphrey is going to have an amendment.
No draft lease for Vietnam.
So, Larry, so Larry reported today.
So, we need to take you back another week.
I basically agree, except that the study is so that it won't work.
But, uh, but, uh, I...
So, that's the problem.
Yeah.
What breaks one's heart is if this thing screws up, this week it will be the goddamn Senate debate that they just don't want to give you that much help.
Also, I think the State Department made a terrible mistake publishing last night the Gromyko beam conversation.
That's the sort of thing that the Russians hate.
There's a secret conversation.
All they're trying to do is build up the fact that State is doing something.
That's what it is.
They've been called on Gromyko.
State published it?
Yeah, that's the sort of thing they tried.
They haven't tried it before.
Of course, they haven't put it there.
No, but I'm sure.
I mean, my Soviet expert here thinks that that does.
Because they never do that.
They never publish.
And this wasn't even a leak.
That was a State Department statement.
None of this is... Well, Henry, look, I didn't hear.
I didn't know at all.
Oh, it will come.
It's got to come.
It will come.
Absolutely.
There's just no question.
For them to go this far and then afford it would be such an eye at Peterson.
We had first turned off.
They have a mission over here to buy $500 million worth of equipment for truck plants.
And on my recommendation, Peterson had refused to see them.
Then after we made them, agreed on the text, I called Dobrynin and said, I've now told Peterson to go up to New York to meet with them.
Peterson was up in New York to talk to them last night.
And he said they were slobbering all over him.
But Dobrynin, who is no fool, knows that the sequence was after the agreement on the text.
So that's... We'll let that go next week.
So it is just not reasonable for them to infuriate.
If they had wanted to do that, they could simply have turned it off last week.
That would have been the easy way to turn it off.
Also by introducing the old version in Vienna, they at least have built a legislative record to make it easier for us to move that way.
So it's just not conceivable.
It is not possible that they will not.
The only conceivable screw-up is that Semyonov came back to Moscow, looked at the public announcement and said, you idiots screwed yourselves on that.
If there is a screw-up, it's not anything we did.
It's that Semyonov looking at the announcement, because for them to use the word agree for both offensive and defensive is a major error.
It's the only conceivable screw-up.
All the other stuff is... And by this time tomorrow, we must have heard, because they wouldn't be so discreet, as not to agree, not to give us 24 hours.
It's just...
It is one of these tempests in a teapot.
I'm sure there's some bureaucratic screw-up over there that some guy is not reachable or... We're having no solution.
Well, that's a big thing for them, too.
They have to position a lot of people that they're going to do it.
He keeps telling me that we do not appreciate.
He said, we have one man who makes the decision.
They have 15, with one of them preeminent, but still collegiate.
Thank you for saying so much.
I told Ron, too, because I felt that it's scally knowing I didn't want to humiliate Ron.
Oh, yeah.
He thinks it's going to be a tremendous headline.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
But they'll understand at the time of the end, he's Moscow-washing.
They're not.
Well, Ron, I'll go see him.
You told him he was still waiting.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, no, they are.
I told him if he screws this up, he'll never be told another thing.
And Scali, who has dealt with the Russians, has been very good.
He knows you can't say that.
He knows you can't.
You have to be very careful.
He understood.
Really, on this one, he's been good on everything, but he's been better.
He understands this one.
This one, he really understands.
He knows better.
and some of the others are bigots.
It's always a problem.
Wilson had problems with them.
It's better to have problems with formidable people like Old Lodge than with these third graders.
Wilson should have had deal with Lodge.
He could have, you know what I mean?
It wasn't all that unreasonable.
We got a bunch of...
He got a bunch of, as a regular, really they aren't very rich.
I mean, I don't know.
And when you look around that table.
God almighty, I don't want a weak bunch of bastards.
The only man in that room is Ford.
I agree, the only man in that room is Ford.
Well, then the Republicans haven't really been a party of responsibility for so long that they just don't.
What kind of responsibility do you call it?
Name one.
Oh.
They have some of the settlers.
Yeah.
Stannis?
Oh, the new Southerners are no good either.
Yeah.
Oh, the young ones are no good.
That governor in Georgia isn't any good.
With that funny haircut.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I did.
I do.
He's around.
Jimmy Carter.
Yeah, Jimmy Carter.
Well, basically, he's not a serious man.
Yeah.
In French terms.
Absolute.
Right?
Absolute.
He's not a heavyweight.
That's what we really would put it.
That's right.
He's not serious.
The country gets down to it.
You know, he stopped at the American.
So we bailed.
The likelihood now is that Kenny Kennedy would be nominated for the Democrats.
Justice.
You see him sitting in his office.
A man who, when a woman drowned, spent ten hours covering himself, leaving her there, treated on a law exam, was, uh,
Frivolous.
And he is soft.
The others, at least, the other two Kennedys, Bobby especially, was tough.
Yes.
Jim Easton said, he said, Jack was bright and Bobby was tough.
He said this fellow was neither bright nor tough.
Yes.
Interesting.
He is.
He's good looking.
He's there.
He's not bright.
He's not tough.
I tell you, we can't let the country go to sleep.
Let's don't die, as we say, with all these votes-generating things.
Let's don't die a thousand deaths.
Don't worry about it.
They're either not big or not big.
I just can't.
I can't concede they're not big unless, as I say, they're American.
Well, you see, Mr.
Sessions, you see, it's conceivable to me that with the Mansfield vote coming up, they don't want to give it to you on the day of the vote, so that you might be running around the Senate and saying, I've got to deal with the Russians cooking.
That's conceivable.
It is not conceivable to me that they would agree to the text of something and then clear the deal when they could have cleared it over four months, when they kept up the negotiations during Laos, when they continued them during the demonstrations.
But it is also true they didn't give us their final answer until after the demonstrations were over.
Slip until early next week, that's conceivable.
Trust me.
It's inconceivable to me that they have too much going.
They know Rush won't come to another meeting.
If they had wanted to do you in, they would have found some technical reasons to clear it.
They had a good one last week when I gave them the ultimatum, which was really gambling.
They could have said, all right, let's handle it in Vienna.
Let's forget about this travel.
We wouldn't be.
But they, that, that seemed to me was very important to them again.
Oh, yeah.
We said, look here, you want to, you want to deal with us or else?
That's where they got that, that's, that may be where they did that lousy announcement for themselves.
Because we got the answer within 24 hours, sir.
You know, people's,
Why do they have to say they've got to vote for something?
Why do they have to vote for something?
They could say the president is right.
We'll go down with it.
That was Rogers' line from the beginning.
Without those people, that gave you three days headlines over the weekend.
The alternative was to negotiate with Mansfield.
There is nothing to negotiate with Mansfield.
He is a man of principle on this issue.
Overkill is what people say who've lost or who are in trouble.
If you hadn't done it, where would we be?
On Wednesday morning before we moved, everyone told us we didn't have a chance.
By Sunday they were accusing us of overkill.
What, what represents argument is, in a more sophisticated way, is that he feels that, uh, that if we are fed up with a lousy amendment passing, that we can defeat in the House, then with one which we work on with them, and then accept, and then we can't kill it in the House.
I'd rather have the undiluted Messiah's amendment passed.
And then with the salt thing coming afterwards, it oughtn't be hard to kill it in the house.
What's happening to this country?
Because we've got the gun.
This could be the most fruitful period in American post-war foreign policy.
If you had the minimum of support that any president has had since 1940, that is the tragedy.
Put these guys to the torch.
I would not have a reconciliation.
Oh, never.
We've got to build it.
As I say, it's got to be established.
It's got to be done.
The bureaucracy is colluding with them.
We have troubles enough without having a guy like Pursley, who is a close friend of Clifford's, as lay assistant.
The State Department bureaucracy, 80% of it is basically against us.
And if the polls look closed next year or unfavorable, they are going to leak.
It won't be worth sending a paper over this.
I know, but... Let me say, though, that we can play... By next year, it'll be a different way.
By next year, Henry, come hell or high water, we're going to have this thing turned around.
Oh, yes.
Well, I think... Mr. President, after all, we've done...
Although, looking at it, it's worse.
At the very least, we'll have Vietnam done.
It may not have anything to do with the Russians, the Chinese.
Both of them may want to go with Iran.
No.
No, maybe.
The thing that may go wrong is the events in the Middle East with the Russians in the sense that if they figure they're going to lose out on Egypt anyway.
Sadat, sir.
Well, they're not at a certain stage in your political survival because you were less tied to the Israelis than any possible alternative.
That's right.
But if they don't have a huge stake in Egypt anymore, if it should turn out that way, which isn't at all clear yet.
But all of this is speculation.
I think you're going to have salt.
I think you're going to have a summit.
I think you're going to have a Berlin Agreement.
And I think the chances are at least 50-50 that you'll have a Peking meeting.
Yeah, I have the order.
Yeah, that.
We'll be done by then.
I imagine that we won't go Friday.
Worst comes to worst, it might slip till Monday or Tuesday, if I can imagine.
I don't see how it would.
And then it will really turn out to have been tremendously wise.
I mean, if you had talked to Rogers this morning, we would have been hostages.
And I dismiss.
I'll be sure to take it.
We've got the word.
Don't tell anybody else.
I know the people around here leave.
I wouldn't scatter it around here.
Oh, no.
Oh, God.
No, no, no.
They don't know how to keep things.
No, no, I haven't told them even a hint.
By the end of the day, we had a good chance.
By this time tomorrow, we will have heard something.
They may say, let's do it next Tuesday.
I speculate it's just not conceivable that they would hand me a text on Wednesday and want to change it the following Tuesday after I accepted it to update it.
Now, this is not one that's in dispute.
The only text I want to change is the letter.
But the letter isn't going to be released.
He would not have said he had reviewed every phone conversation.
He should have sent Smith back and say there'll be an announcement in a few days.
He played it very cool.
I said, I don't give a damn about this.
You know, I said, we are not impatient.
We just, I don't want Semyonov to start talking to Smith again.
That's another reason why it's better to keep Smith here.
2.30, wait, 2.30.
2.30, you just, uh, you, you, you tell Snap I can't see you tomorrow.