Nixon, Kissinger & Smith on SALT and Soviet-American relations

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purely technical nature of whether he should initial the English text, and I decided not to because there are some slight divergences between the Russian and the English text, but we are only responsible for the English text.

We're only bound by that.

They're of a minor nature.

Not of the announcement.

The announcement would be verbatim the same.

Now, this delegation does not know anything about it.

No.

Do we have to apply something?

No, I have to discuss it with Smith.

He'll call them together at six o'clock tonight.

I'm going to call them in a way that they won't know that I am.

No, I don't think you should.

I am going to say what I'm going to say.

I'm not going to imply anything.

I'm not going to say we're working on this.

Smith feels you don't have to do it.

The thing to do is to let him report to you what went on at Vienna.

That's the only...

Listen, I don't know about this.

Well, he doesn't think he's much good at holding on to you strongly, shouldn't he?

Do you want me to do anything?

Oh, I don't care.

I'll do anything.

Oh, yeah.

Bring him right in.

Is that better?

Yeah, please.

Henry, this is, do as you do.

If we, if anybody is, uh, Bill and Mel know of the possibility of a trip to the Midway.

Uh, uh, I don't think that we have a bill to say what's going on.

Yes, sir.

We can't spring it.

He won't say anything.

I think we've got to tell him, but I wouldn't tell him now.

I just say that I think we put it on the basis that...

I'm going to put it in for Mark.

How are you?

What's the time?

Don't use lots.

Is it looking pretty good for the road tonight?

It looks pretty good.

Yes.

I think there's no question about that.

There's no question about that.

But they're trying.

There's an additional, there's a deed to be done.

What's the rest of the road?

Now, what is the situation?

You're going back tomorrow with us?

Friday.

I understood you wanted to have another talk.

Yeah, I would like to, if we could.

I thought tomorrow was tomorrow, not today, so let's see if I can have another talk on Friday, if we could.

And, uh... Are you sure?

I actually am.

I got a boat ride and a train ride.

You do pass the line.

Moving.

Can't take a train ride here.

Now, I thought, Mr. President, this is so very important.

I carried the comic in the direction of your life.

You're a mixed concept.

Tell me this is a video.

Looking at a so-called comrade.

What I mean is it's possible in terms of maybe three, four, five years, but aren't you going to have to bite off parts of it and then go from there to there?

Is that therapy?

Is that your experience?

How do you want people to go about that?

In terms of the notion of the motor, we've got to be able to set up parts and manage that part of the way.

I would say that if you make an ADN agreement,

There'll be no reason for any continued Soviet buildup, for us to continue to build up in a comprehensive agreement.

While we're ahead of them in the murder business, they're going to be very willing to make a comprehensive deal.

That sort of breezes me.

Well, it breezes me, basically, and it very hardly touches us.

Just a matter of fact, it doesn't matter for us, too, as far as I'm concerned.

I think they've been pressing this FBS, Forward-Based Systems question.

I'm ready to move George Lamb on FBS for all of you.

Not going ahead with any offensive programs, except for...

But to them, this SMURD program looks very big and very significant.

We tend, I think, to discount it.

And they aren't really going ahead with much in the defense.

Whereas we have major... Yeah, that's... Now, there is... Basically, yeah.

But we want...

They want to control us defensively.

Well, we like to control them.

Jerry, we didn't talk a lot about the ones in D1 that they have to face.

There's a bunch.

Oh, yeah.

What do they say about that?

I know that they...

They constantly say, well, I hear this sort of shaking and beating and all that else, and yet they are really proponents of no interference in modernization.

They're not... Yeah, I know that, of course.

They just matter of fact with modernization and so forth.

Well, now, why is that?

Do they think that's...

Doesn't they know that modernization...

Do you agree on that, that false verification?

Is that the reason?

I think they feel that they don't want to get closed into the technology of 1971.

They've got lots of new programs going.

General Ellison and the chiefs say you can't control technology.

You can't control quantity.

Sounds like a science.

But you can't control quality.

And I think one of the reasons last year they were so strong about it, they knew their... And they, of course, could put a murder in the field of quantum mechanics.

That's very clear.

Mr. President, I think they want to be sure that they aren't kept in a position where they're behind this technologically.

I'm sure in their head we're clearly ahead in any impact on it.

Is it not true, though, that...

I always say this when I'm asked, when I'm in press conferences, which is through your judgment, that they still are treating these negotiations in a very serious way and are not losing themselves.

Do you think they're looking toward a group?

They clearly want an ABM group.

They want to delay the hotel.

Apparently they're willing to pay some price for freezing their ICBM program to get it.

They clearly see the psychological advantage of Germany.

They just couldn't see it.

Right.

We tend to think, well, let's get away with it for a minute.

They can...

I don't know that.

So what?

If they had kept it, I would think it would be a very moderate deportation.

Why?

Let me ask you this.

What reaction versus, you know, from their standpoint...

I think there is really, since the Party Congress, their conclusion, I think, a lot of things based on that.

I was just saying that there were some certain staff working about the Moscow Amendment.

I doubt if you can make the statement that he's known it, but the potential to find it is that he was a witness in Moscow, so, but even if he's known about it, I doubt it.

On the other hand, I do think they've had more trips to Germany than they possibly need.

They know they can reduce the amount of sitting on these people.

And they do the same in Czechoslovakia.

Well, they want the warning report.

I saw that the kids, the state of the kids, they would like to get some of the stuff on Czechoslovakia, have a good reason to.

It's not only a message to them, but it's also a moral lesson to these troops to expose them.

or they'll cut it off and use that post-processing.

The rest of it, they're going to do it.

The post-processing is dead.

They should have had a post-processing.

That was true 24 years ago.

That's not just physical well-being.

It's the whole kind of how they choose their lives.

I think it would even be a smart move on their part to make the interlibrary work out the deal on this kind of thing.

It really has to be worked out.

It has to be worked out at their level.

The idea of having a European Security Council, the idea of having a European Security Council versus separation, the idea of having a European Security Council sit down.

I mean, I think they've given that up now, but if we have this to work, the fact that they took in the economics a lot further, and I mean, just by having these churches there, that really establishes them, and that's one of their main objectives, is to nail down this stuff.

They did, we did this on a brief, and we should be able to do this.

Well, obviously that means asymmetrical drawbacks, and that certainly would not be as encouraging.

Most of the studies that they just informed us of, they would be, this was a couple of years ago, we had them just asymmetrical.

We have to have a conversation there, too, you know.

We can be talking about aerosols, because...

One of the things I think we ought to be prepared for is the mess of both troops and weapons.

I didn't, in the studies we're doing, you know, we're looking for as well as we can, perhaps, have some mathematical class that we can take us on a deal with them, so what's going to happen to us, I don't know.

You're right.

Yeah.

They must know where it's all going.

You know, it's an irrigation plant, and stuff like that.

All of us were around, I guess, and believed, because the States had an enormous club that had nuclear-wise, and 25, well, as a matter of fact, up to about 19.

But even at the time of the Cuban crisis, it was agreed that we had 500, they had 40 or 50.

The tripwire could mean something, because at the present time, the nuclear parity

Our whole attitude changes now.

Now the conventional force, in the event that we're going to talk about anything that's illegal, the conventional force becomes, it seems to me, absolutely.

And we have not changed, but at least if we had to talk about the possibility of, it would just all automatically do that.

Anything would be the assignment, which of course is in our thinking, more or less, was more or less our thinking.

that on his lines, he doesn't feel the rising of the world, to possibly making what feels terribly frustrating.

I've got to say, I want to touch on that a bit.

All these related fields, it seems to me, and I had talked to them very good, and I think to them, just as it should be to us, it's all part of the, not that you can figure it out, it's dialogic in a subject.

The whole package is moving in one direction.

Some day something's gonna happen.

That's all.

As Paul said, Mr. President, here we're talking with Soviets about how to break out our problems that five years ago would have been impossible to talk to these people and have a serious exchange.

I don't know about the others, but I have never felt any sense of responsibility.

You've been around the track with these guys for a long time.

Of course, I escaped most of this last...

I'm sure they've got to make these steps even on a higher level than any of the other students.

Well, and substantively, too.

I mean, when he's talking about the table of military balance and the question of the purpose of strategic military forces and what are your forces for and what's that range you're talking about starting and so on.

So, you know, it serves the purpose to have us think about this and then think about it.

The very fact that we have to go through this exercise

I think about what we've negotiated, and I think it's great that we've got all of our policy considerations, which we otherwise would not do.

We tend to just sit on what we have and say, well, what the hell is he doing?

He's doing the way he did the last time.

The losers fight with the weapons in the last war, and the winners fight with the weapons in the next.

The most striking thing has been the fact that they've learned a lot about what they've done.

I don't think they would have much less of a tendency for re-evaluation of their cumbersome bureaucracy than we have.

We concentrate on you guys because we've got a columnist right about us.

Well, the Foreign Office people at the beginning didn't know many of the details of their deployments that led some of this from Alaska.

They may still not know many of them.

Of course, the West Fork Department realized that what should be a secret organization, what should be compartmentalized, and they really asked them.

They're already the only ones who really know the details of their deployments.

They brought some pressure from them.

The Chinese thing is never raised, we've never had it discussed.

Do you remember one time you said you were talking to the office?

Yeah.

We did one time talk about country A and country B, and I said something about country K, which is the way the Russian word starts for a student scientist, for instance, in college.

You're very careful.

I think I should, I want to see if you want to agree that this is the right line.

He's the, you know, boy.

Let's call it that for, you know, a day or two.

And there's going to be more.

had gone to great pains in my public statements, and also privately talked to both the Chinese and the Russians, even though neither probably believed it, to say that, well, in fact, the last time I threw out the problem has been dated, but the moment that anybody raised the fact that we were going to try to exploit, to try to exploit this problem, this would end up, in fact, it was just the opposite.

I didn't lie, you know, it was to them a son, and now he, and you know, it's a relationship between

agree to, in a sense, agree to talk.

I mean, I know it's, there is, there is the talk, you know, in some circumstances.

But here are two potential entities in the world to engage in a death struggle.

The point is, one, with our dangerous situation, and second, you can't have, I mean, should you talk, my whole view is that you cannot have the confidence of following two powers of that magnitude without having it

and potentially throw others through, and I just, so I can feel it from the standpoint of our own, but our relationship with the Russians and our relationship with the Chinese, that we should be extremely proper on it, and just go on one path and go on the other path, in every way.

Do you think this is the right line?

I feel very strongly honest with Henry the other day.

I would really actually like to see us make some gesture toward the Russians, either in trade or something of this sort.

It would be just exactly that.

like for example, where the opportunities may, may, may open up too, because there's other, other examples.

There's a, uh, there's a, uh, there's a computer testing tools, testing tools, yeah, contraption, so on and so on.

And then they, they want us to lessen the search, the search library, or whatever it is, they're, yeah, 40, which, uh, yeah, that's better than turning it down.

Well, I got that in a very circuitous way, Mr. President.

They flagged it.

The reason I did it, the way I did it, probably the way you did it, was for Marabato.

But anyway, I heard the meeting, the election, you know, he came and said, why won't you buy the yacht for it?

I said, I said, Jesus Christ, all this has been done wrong.

a lamp on a dude's strip.

Sounds good.

I wanted to explore over there and take the fire and people.

So I called the bridge and I said, well, there it is.

You know, I'd like to make it.

And he's now sent me a paper that explains it and I'm going to take it up to staff.

It's a purely technical thing and there was no political decision at all.

The problem was

They want us to take a pair with us, really, so they tell the South American government.

We're not gonna buy anything.

Oh, I see, I see.

In fact, it'll be a head screw that they sell.

He told me he wanted to buy it for Alaska Airlines.

They might not want to do that.

Sorry.

I think they had it, it didn't work out.

But the point is, if they had an American pair with us, which they might not get, as they said to Rick and Kyle, because it means you have to inspect the factory and all kinds of things.

But until they get that,

They can't solve it on the middle seat, which was like in here.

And this was turned down by Gallaudet Congress.

I'm looking into that.

As an example of some gesture that he loved to use, he said, well, you know, we love you, Dan, like a kid.

And he thought, I must say that I...

There's our five SST problems at five.

Well, that's what happened.

And Europe is easy enough now, six, seven hours is long enough.

but also what the SSC does from the north to the south, through the system and the kitchen of life, through the disc ocean.

And then, of course, they've already come up with all the other courses in America.

That's really where the SSC has significance, far more than in terms of transcontinental travel here, or maybe European, if you go deep.

Yeah, Moscow we've learned.

Yeah.

That's all I'm up to, is to put eight R's and eight S's.

There you are.

You cut that to three, and that is a hell of a game.

Don't you tell them.

They don't have your book.

Be glad to take the S this year.

Turn to that sentence.

I'll write it down.

Give them a letter of intent.

I wrote about the planes in 1967, and they were fine.

You did?

I did.

You did?

I have to say, I have a combination of interest here between the Hawkins, as well as the Maybachs, all of you know, the 747s.

Yeah.

I was issued by an assistant or something, too.

Sure.

Well, it was your best interest.

And he said, I grew in, and I was out there, and he said, I'm off the top.

I feel a bust, even, in our protein lines, too.

And they smell like a bust, too.

Don't blow it around, you know.

The thing about it, I notice that Stewart's isn't quite there.

You're a real person.

That's right.

Well, let me say that we'll get together Friday morning.

Let's check this thing out.

If Laird can't make it, then we shouldn't have it.

We'll do, we'll get it over with.

We'll get it all worked out and it would be well for all to participate in the thing.

We've got another beautiful page for you all.

Yes, thank you all.

Now, if anybody wants to go to Virgin Free, I have two sets of gloves here.

Now we're going to get the secretary of agriculture in and send some water to the census.

How do you do that?

I don't know.

Well, we'll see you right back here.

Nixon, Kissinger & Smith on SALT and Soviet-American relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 19, 1971

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