Conversation 502-019

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Congressman Harris, please.

Yeah.

One, two, three, four.

This is a rubber craft, and, uh, the secret ties on the memorandum, uh, the memorandum to the Secretary of State from, uh, what?

This memorandum.

I may be so.

I was going to say that I... believe that... what we do today is a very vulnerable position.

And I...

You've given me more opportunities to have fun in that circumstance than any time in the last year and a half.

You must realize that you've been a long way to go.

You've started to talk to many bastards that go back and forth and fiddle around and screw around.

From a level standpoint, Mr. President, you're in perfect position because you've shown the

I hear a conciliation vote that Brett Chyna handles.

If you have to get tough, that option is open.

But you build a degree of public confidence in A, your willingness to do it, and B, your ability to do it.

Which I think is a, I think that's the political stroke.

I think regardless of what happens, we should do it.

I thought Sparks had a pitch, which is very exciting.

But you know, I'm having a good time.

The doves are not about to criticize you, but they can't.

They're locked out in the woods.

Some of the stuff we're digging out today, I'm working on this right now because I think the political opportunities here are huge if it is done in a sophisticated way.

February 1st, the President has long demanded that the United States commit itself to the building of weapons systems such as the safeguard idea and MIRV, which could serve as, quote, bargaining chips, end quote, the salt talks.

Last year, a reluctant Senate agreed to support him in Phase 2 of the safeguard system.

Today, however, any value it might have had as a bargaining chip has vanished.

That's February 1st, this year.

Thank you.

We're assembled on the wall, and we've all taken the same path.

I don't have Muskie's precise language, but I understand he did the same thing.

But that's an awful hard position for a guy to retreat from.

Hubert has never minded being inconsistent, but if you are able to make stick, even though we have gotten as far as we have gotten, this is enormous.

And of course, if it goes all the way, then that's a damn hard position for a guy to get off.

The idea of do you want a man who's in presidency who does not really appreciate the enormity of world prevalence to the degree that he would take this as a posture at the very time the United States and Soviet Union had the opportunity of the century to ease world tensions.

That's a bad position.

I'm sure that he is.

Of course, just the APM position alone is a tough side.

I don't know if we all get this right.

I don't know unless you respond to it.

It also makes the policy structure of the judge paper a lot better.

The policy proposes a negative mindset.

Your credibility in not using what you had today as an influence yesterday is just enormous.

Yes, sir.

This kind of goes for a lot of press people talking about the comment that Jacksonville gave you.

I mean, I hope you're going to comment your phone when you have some.

I think I will play it very straight, but that thought is getting around a little bit, too.

The request today, the fact that you didn't use today, yesterday.

The past year shows that you are sticking to your guns, that you know that you aren't concerned about getting a deal with the Soviet.

You were with Lincoln.

That's right.

I was surprised that the Senate came off as well as I did with Rochester.

It's very surprising the numbers of Husky and Pompadour.

I can now try to get back more to the center of the foreign policy area.

At least you'll see Husky here.

I thought that the less that was said about what was happening subsequently as far as the negotiations were concerned, the better.

And we've got to resist very hard the temptations when commentators and critics start going off.

And rather than hit them, let them go.

Let them go.

The more mystique that is built around this, the better.

You've established that we did something that they didn't think was going on.

Now we just say, well, we're going forward in our course.

But actually, the less the public is, as we say, the more the public is going to be convinced that great things are happening and they don't know about it.

And there's a certain mystique that can be built in Europe.

You're going to have to be very brief today.

It was just marvelous.

Instead of talking for 15 minutes about the history of this possibility.

What a great thing I have done.

It's just a little air of excitement about it.

And the fact that you came out and said it and it's being announced simultaneously.

It's significant to me.

So that they understand that it's people who don't understand anything about assault.

No, because I didn't have to.

United States of America, and China.

Big things are going on.

Here's a man who has the capacity to handle these enormous things, and the world powers are dealing with them.

It's exactly the way it has to be.

The thing that has to be done for us, which we have to do very subtly through the process, is a way to deal with you, which are possible, and big things are being

done by a very far-sighted president.

And there is this commitment to very momentous things in the foreign policy field.

That's a massively powerful leverage next year.

Huge.

We're impeached.

And the other thing is for other people to start nailing, nailing, not letting them get back in.

We'll let them get back.

We're going to have to say, well, this is something we're going to bring the vanity back.

Wait, the vote was a complete moratorium.

You know that with the United States, huh?

The first step would be to suspend the safeguard system.

The next step would be to stop the bird deployment.

And he said, then, now we will get an agreement with you.

He did just the reverse, and stayed.

Now, they all scrambled back, but I think they're going to have a hell of a job.

They're going to have a hell of a job.

I think they did it like they wrote it in the lower order issue, except that was easier to get back in this one.

They just put a flag on it.

Put a flag on it.

This argument has reached the proportions that I think these guys will stop the way back in, but I don't think they can make it out of the order.

In fact, I just made a concrete example.

Part of it is that a lot of dubs abandoned the earlier amendments that might have passed because they didn't want to see them pass and lose enough of that vote to pass it.

I don't think the dubs would have passed anyway.

They're asking, you know, people to hold some of that over.

It's simply because he doesn't care with the respect out there that

The sooner the meeting ends, the better.

I was sitting hoping somebody would say that we had the company to do it.

Those two things, Mr. President, I'm careful to say I won't be able to have them.

For a year, you've been working on them.

They're very powerful.

They give hope to people.

They give confidence to people.

People don't need anything more than confidence.

You know that one of the greatest political speeches ever was Roosevelt's 1941 War Freedom speech.

People

the worst possible news.

He told them that war production had gone to hell, that the war was coming, that we weren't prepared.

But he ended up by giving them confidence.

He said, here's what I stand for.

Here's what I'm doing.

And people just believed him.

And that's the posture that these kinds of international developments can put you in.

Because at the rest of this thing, people have to say, well, this guy's really

This man's really in charge of what's happening.

He's a mystery to them, but he's dealing in the upper levels, and at this time in Moscow, the chemical state was being wrecked.

Anyway, it's nice and positive.

This text was all written out.

It's great.

Of course, they must have closed the promise as well.

They can't.

They can't get this far and then back away.

They want to.

Yeah.

One of the insiders is there.

They also would like to still get a tree, but they'd be happy.

That's just fantastic if it did.

These kinds of developments build a solid house.

It's a measure of confidence.

It's a very hard-hitting measure, but it's just kind of the way people feel.

They feel secure.

They feel threatened.

or if they feel secure, those are the basic things that really move people.

So look at who would get the worst of us, you see.

We're gonna get a white paper put together by tonight at boat, which, how are you gonna have it in an end?

It's more of a sadness than a reason.

They're just confused.

What a tragic thing it is that in this era, the white country and Muskie County understood the basic realities of war.

I would say if you could get some of that together so that they could get a call very soon, it would be good.

Instead of that, we really didn't need that.

Here's what we said when we heard it first.

That's what happens.

That's the deal.

That's what it's all about.

I called the town of McIntyre, New Hampshire.

The reason I did is that I went up last year to town.

He switched his vote and voted with us on ABM because of the Civil War campaign.

And if you remember, he announced the day before that that was the reason he did it.

So I called him today and said, you're not allowed to vote unless you attempt it.