Nixon, Kissinger & Eisenhower on Vietnam War and Foreign policy

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We're going to have a reception for the book, depending on about 6, 630 perhaps.

You, uh, are you going to be home tonight?

Well, I don't know.

I don't know.

We could if you wanted to.

I wonder if you want to.

It's too hot.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Of course, you should go.

Well, fine.

That's what I thought it would go.

I think probably tonight we'll pass it.

We might try it.

Maybe in my eye or something.

I'm somehow near free.

Okay.

Well, have a good time.

It's not a great deal.

It's happening.

There's some military activity in Cambodia, and of course they're blowing it up like crazy again.

It's not of any great significance, and it's the rainy season is starting anyway.

The assessment is that the North Vietnamese are suffering enormous casualties.

It's probably true because it's in the open, and they are

They found the hell out of them.

I think we have a crack at settling.

What the hell is the...

I mean, it really is something... All right.

It doesn't really matter.

It matters in the moment.

But they've done it all along, and in the end it comes out...

But the crisis, that's all the announcement, which is, of course, and now only the tip of the iceberg.

has turned the press around.

Don Oberdorfer was in this morning.

He's doing an article on your foreign policy.

And they are very respectful.

They just don't know needling about Vietnam anymore.

Well, they needle on the television.

What I had is television reporters and so forth.

You may have computers.

Of course, the Donaldson announcement had to come out in contact.

I talked to Larry a little about that at breakfast, and he said that

Well, he says the trouble is really Westmoreland's just got a fetish about trying to prove that the army is as clean as a houndstooth and prosecuting every Sunday.

Well, Westmoreland's a traitor to his uniform.

Westmoreland.

Oh, since they pulled him out of Vietnam, he's just spending his life justifying himself.

He's, well, useless now.

The Donaldson thing will just have to be, it'll take a hell of a long time for these ones.

Oh, yeah.

He won't even begin to go to trial.

We have, see, Mr. President, little straws in the wind, for example, of the North Vietnamese.

I sent Walters in saying I don't know about today.

Usually they wait three weeks before they let us know.

I said, I had to know because I had to set up a trip, and if I can't do it then, I won't make it until the end of July.

And they said, well, we're not authorized to give you an official answer, but we can tell you informally that it is certain, and we'll give you the official answer, but you can count on it.

It's on the 26th.

Now, they'd never told us anything unofficially in all our dealings with them.

And what's going to happen now, they're going to communicate this to Peking.

Now, I don't know what Peking will tell them, but the one thing that is unlikely is that Peking will tell them to kick us in the teeth before those meetings.

Mr. Kennedy, Peking only if they were serious concerning themselves.

No, they have in the past communicated everything we have said to Russia, and I assume therefore to Peking.

I don't know that.

They wouldn't dare to turn it down on their own because when you said it's your final offer, that has an ultimatum character.

That's right.

That's good.

That's why it's true.

It'll get an answer one way or the other.

Yeah.

We were still going to do a long, maybe a little bit.

The final offer thing is true.

And they have no great interest.

Actually, from a negotiating point of view, they may decide not to negotiate.

But if they want to negotiate, we've got a clock on them now because then they have to settle it before October.

If they want to get one of the benefits they can get out of it, which is to unsettle South Vietnam internal politics, then they have to settle it by September 1st.

And this summer we've only seen that thing work.

Sheesh.

Well, Mr. President, I want to talk to you about this.

I think I ought to wait till Monday to see him.

And I'll tell you why.

If I see him tomorrow and they come back, tomorrow will be the fourth.

Supposing he comes back in a week and says, OK. And if I then say, well, now let's wait till the end of July to announce it.

He's going to get very rested.

Well, if I say Monday, then we won't hear until the week after, well into the week after.

I mean, we've got it going pretty well now.

And actually, we don't want to make an announcement before around July 20th under present circumstances.

Well, we wouldn't make any under any circumstances that we want.

I'd say the announcement should be made on the end of the second half of July, around July 20th.

That's six weeks before we go there.

And we have to have six weeks in order to get everything done.

Something really tremendous.

People, you have the advantage that most people can't conceive of.

And over and over again, he said, you expect the president to go to Peking in 76.

I did not look down.

76?

Yeah, he said in 72.

I did not look down.

We have just, all we've done up to now is really relaxed trade restrictions.

They've had a thing for a few months.

Let's not jump to huge steps here.

I didn't say you weren't going to do it.

I said let the whole approach of our policy is one step at a time.

Ridiculous.

Goddamn Indians are running around the hills stirring up our position to Pakistan.

Jack Miller, that moron, called me up.

Oh, Christ, he's a moron.

I don't know.

What's he want to do?

Want to introduce something?

I don't know.

He says it's on how it's going to break loose in the hell, huh?

No.

On India, Pakistan, I said, well, do you want us to get involved in another civil war?

He said, well, you've got a good point there.

But those bastards apparently saw Albert and Melvin.

I think on Keating, I should wait to see until he comes back on the 14th.

Yes, I think so.

And you see, now, I'll see.

But I don't know, of course, how much Keating is stirring up.

He's turned into a total fanatic on this issue.

Well, let's get rid of him.

All right.

If necessary.

I have nothing, I know nothing to keep.

I'll be set up with Yaya in there through July.

One of the things I'll do when I'm in China is to set up another channel.

We can't be dependent on that, but...

Either in Ottawa or in London or someplace where it's unobserved.

One thing about Keating is that, can't you just tell him, I don't know what the hell, how do you tell him?

You just don't want to get involved in this thing?

I could not tell him anything.

He can't do anything.

I don't think he can do any more damage than he's already done.

What does Hill want us to do?

He wants us to cut economic aid to Pakistan.

See, the Indians have this great ploy, saying all they want is these four million refugees to go back.

And the way to go back is to make each Pakistan independent.

And they say they don't want to interfere with domestic affairs.

All they want is to get rid of their refugees.

Of course, they're stimulating the refugees.

They are the scavenging people.

They are the elite.

Praise the Lord, Chancellor.

When one thinks of these bastards, how they scream about interference in their affairs, and here they bald-facedly ask us to tell a country to give up half of its territory, or an issue that hasn't the remotest connection with the American national interest.

Even if we didn't have this, you're saying, what the hell?

Do we care who governs East Pakistan from an American national focus group?

In fact, once East Pakistan is independent, unless the Indians are so crazy, it's the ideal ground for communist infiltration.

And in time, it will be a major problem for them.

I'll have to see that stupid thing again, huh?

I'm afraid so.

No, it's a different thing, mister.

That other one has been thrown out.

Oh, yeah.

Played to him against military action.

That's the one on whom you can bring a little way.

Military action against whom?

Just a war with him against military action against East Pakistan.

The way to handle them is to dangle in front of them that a little later you might cooperate with them, but this is not the time.

We have to keep them quiet for two months.

It's hard.

He'll survive these two months.

Oh, he'll survive.

It's only a month, really, that we...

He'll survive.

Well, you spoke beautifully today.

All these guys look so tired.

Moore came to me afterwards and said, I just want you to know we are 100% behind this president.

He'd run up those hounds.

He'd be alive.

Blame the drugs on them.

Well, he would have had a day of national prayer if I'd not be lying.

He would have...

We're doing the right thing.

I told him to get out about 100,000 copies of that West Point.

People are reading.

They don't know how to say that.

That says it.

It's worth a fine speech.

Actually, it's interesting that the press covered it as much as they did.

That's right.

Sometimes they have a little guilt complex, I guess.

But the American press is the

Well, we've really got to jump in now, standing up on that mating thing.

That's what the country's all with, is they've been pressing it just like, oh, this is terrible, this is civil rights.

Well, every time they've raised that, I'm going to come around and write again.

I'm the police.

I think that, Mr. President, the writing press is, at least in my field, you've been marked with trials.

He's written three favorable columns now in a row.

Right.

But it will take a while to trickle down.

I admit that the television guys are still... And murderers.

Well, not as bad as they used to.

No.

Well, on Vietnam, the crisis that we...

I noticed we've...

Denied helicopter loss yesterday by casualties.

Well, that isn't bad.

This week will not be bad, Lord.

Well, it certainly has been.

Yeah, 30.

48 is what we announced today.

Yeah.

That includes the 33.

That includes everybody now up to 33.

It's going to be settled by October.

I agree with you on that because we have no incentive either.

So what do they do?

But you see, as I told you yesterday, I think the Chinese are going to want to make you look good if you're going there.

They cannot.

What good are you to them as a president?

They said in primaries at the moment that you're being humiliated in Vietnam.

I just don't see that doing that.

And her noise has been caused by the realities of big power politics.

As Korea was.

Yeah.

You said it was going to be settled.

You said with Moscow it doesn't make any difference by the big power.

That's right.

We all felt they had to settle it at some time.

Maybe these guys are so up to it.

Maybe they want to.

But they may be too divided to settle it.

But if they're divided, then...

The uncertainty is going to be increased now.

Oh, thank you, thank you.

It is not of decisive importance.

It increases, you know.

It's like another Laotian thing, don't you think?

They did that in January, Mr. President, too, when they started to ramble around a little bit.

The South Vietnamese, in their operation, had inflicted casualties on them on the ratio of about 10 to 1.

Now, it's true.

Yeah.

Well, yes.

To us, actually, the worst loss we suffered this spring was not in Laos, but the death of a tree.

Yeah.

That's the one.

I was sure.

I have a group meeting in Chile, to honor the person.

Thank you, sir.

Keep their feet to the fire.

And, uh, left, uh, left, uh, I don't know.

Left of the Pentagon and the left, uh, I mean, I hope they can keep that.

And I'm not going to keep that with them and play with the Cambodian story.

I mean, you just can't.

But actually, the newspaper, the New York Times, on page three,

uh, straightened out that Cambodia story.

Did they?

Yeah.

I didn't know until they said it.

Well, they gave the Saigon version of it.

But in a conspicuous way.

In a way that they said that they were withdrawing from the area.

Yes.

That the withdrawal had started before there were any attacks.

That it was to go to prepared positions during the rainy season.

That they were all in those positions.

And that they inflicted enormous casualties on the other side.

Nixon, Kissinger & Eisenhower on Vietnam War and Foreign policy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on June 3, 1971

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