On June 7, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, Peter G. Peterson, and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:23 pm to 4:10 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 513-004 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I had any tips for them before March came?
Yeah, I was thinking of one possibility.
If you could come, maybe have the pensions come.
Thank you.
Let me see if he's here.
Why don't you send him and not me?
No, I think it would be good for you to come.
Just to give him a little, you know, jabber around a little.
Because, you know, you never know whether Bob is going to be up, beat, or done.
Yeah, he was, he was good yesterday, unless you didn't answer.
I love you.
Should I ask Pat about that?
Yeah, when you go over and ask her, then maybe you'll come.
Christ, come.
Just have me be a nice screw.
And, and I, I don't remember that library.
Is that big enough to let my people?
Call and ask before you go over.
And eat, and work, and stuff.
And I'm sure it is.
And I think Timothy was thinking of a good steak.
I don't know if that's what you'd like.
Do you want me to tell anything special?
Well, they are not really much on the stage.
Well, they do everything well there.
If they have a steak, have it sort of sliced.
Don't get them.
statement so that you can sort of fix it and have it be one of those things where you cut some of these.
Yeah, they don't, they're not going to be.
Do they like this?
They love it.
They're so sure that they never have that experience.
Whatever they usually have, they know they have a razor blade.
They just haven't had the usual thing.
What's involved here is some high politics at home and abroad.
And so let's hear where we stand.
Unless we do this, it doesn't mean we don't get Taiwan sent down.
And that's what David says.
He tells his term economy.
I wanted to talk to you just a minute, except when I'm trying to get out of this situation, I can't do that to you.
Well, yeah, sure.
I mean, I'm just not sure for it.
Precisely, and I told him I didn't take the message.
You know what I mean?
Sure.
You see, people don't get it.
That's why they age, and people get down to it.
Because some of these, it's just as well that I age.
I mean, I know all the facts, and I'll say, all right, fine, good.
The problem, let me give you a brief rundown of the legal situation.
Let me say that a lot of things here have to be done in the context of our relations and our relations with the other China.
Those must supersede.
Yes, sir.
The problem is, I'm having Alex Johnson check the legal history, just to make absolutely sure.
In 1951, when the peace treaty was signed, the Senkaku Islands were made part of the Okinawa administrative arrangement in which we handled the administration and the Japanese received sovereignty.
Alex is checking whether the Chinese at that time objected to that arrangement.
And as a result of that, we treated these islands as part of the Okinawa complex, since we had already granted the Japanese residual sovereignty there in 1951.
And it's never been really disputed during the negotiations.
If we now suddenly, in the last week of the negotiations, surface this, Ratchett and Aichi have already set up an arrangement to sign this on satellite, linked by a satellite,
And it would blow up the Okinawa negotiations.
So we would pay a heavy price with the Japanese, as far as Taiwan is concerned, while we, of course, want to make some money with them.
Uh, yeah, other considerations?
Our consideration with regard to Taiwan, America, is moving again.
On that, I think the point is that Taiwan is part of the bigger puzzle.
Taiwan, the whole deal with regard to Texas is now adjourned.
Correct.
That's right.
So there is...
It is a tough problem from that point of view.
The point is, isn't there something else we can do for Taiwan?
Well, we could promise them this military equipment they want.
Now, I talked to David last night.
He said Laird is going over in, is it early July?
And there was discussion about... We have two Taiwan?
Yes.
There is a trip planned.
He'd have one there, I'm sure.
I have no objection if we do it in a low profile matter of fact way to giving them the military equipment.
As a matter of fact, Larry's going to have to leave him to bed either.
Let's not be innocent.
Say the first two weeks of July.
Let's see whether we can get him to... Should it be after that either, sir?
Well, after that, it'd be different.
That's basically what I'm looking at, though.
Is it in our interest of you to do anything at this point that leads to our timeline?
But at this point, it would be best if we could keep the status quo for two months.
The Senkaku Islands, strangely enough, as far as our relations with communist China are concerned, wouldn't bother them because they'd prefer them part of Taiwan because they could then grab them if they think they can grab Taiwan.
The first and the other have to be from Japan, presumably.
So I can't... My major concern with the Senkaku Island is that this would be seen in Japan now as a deliberate sabotage of the treaty and would profoundly jeopardize our relationship.
The red textbook people are very discouraged now.
I just finished talking to Roger Milligan, so I guess, first thing, Roger says they've gone as far as they could go.
They'd hoped for seven and a half percent.
It's now eight and a half.
He wants to remind you that Wilbur Mills will make political capital out of any deal you make on the lovely grounds that, you know, he could have done better, and that he's not sure where you'd come out if you accept a deal that is much worse than Mills's.
Keeping in mind the struggle, all Mills has is a voluntary arrangement on a few categories with Japan, and not with these other countries.
Milligan says Mills will say, well, I could have done the same thing with the others politically, so that you'll be somewhat discredited there.
If you really feel that you can't do anything about the islands, and you've read David's point of view, I read it, then trying to be constructive about it, what could we tell them about the military?
Because from what David told me over the phone very late last night, that's the number two item on the hit list.
Well, how long does it go by?
When must David know?
Well, the problem is the industry is there, you see, and it's frightening to come back now.
I don't think from your standpoint you want this thing to end up because these things are hard to put together again.
So I would like to have some pretense of keeping this thing alive.
In the next six weeks, an announcement of a big military program for Taiwan.
That's correct, yeah.
You wouldn't have to announce it.
We could tell...
No problem telling him that we, that we'll be very, we'd like to hold it till August when the Congress, but we'll be very positive.
Well, they lied to us, we lied to them.
Well, equipment...
Doesn't bother us, does it?
A little, but at any rate, in August we'll be in a different situation.
Today it would have... We just can't have it announced until August.
No, we can't have anything public on this.
And we've got to clear up that we're on the basis not of our problem.
The main one, our problem with the Congress should be that this would be very bad.
But do we want to do this on a telephone?
Is he telephone?
But on the scramble, I talked to him at midnight last night on the scramble phone in there, the secure phone in your situation.
I was told it was secure.
We found that the scrambler on April 1, which we thought was a cure, didn't work properly.
And we had this broker, and you've all negotiated deals.
And it's just as we suspected, Mr. President, this is 40% of their exports have been grown fast, and their whole life depends on it.
And if somebody simply comes to me and says, I want to whack you back a half billion yards, which is a lot,
Because in August, I'm going to talk to you more favorably.
I'm just afraid that isn't going to cut the water itself.
Can I formulate the problem differently?
Could we make specific proposals now that wouldn't be announced until later?
Do you think you could hold them secure?
Why don't we say this, that we will have Secretary Laird come over in August to discuss the matter?
It is not going to send him over.
I understand that problem.
He'll come over to work on it.
provided what we're talking about is just more equipment.
I mean, it does pose a problem.
That's not what we're concerned about.
I suppose it does.
You have that offensively offensive issue, you know, whether the weapons can be seen as offensive.
And you recall, Henry, there was a discussion about not only F-4s, but the submarines.
You remember there were a few submarines, and whether those were offensive or offensive.
It's not only a voluntary deal with regard to Japan only.
It doesn't cover as much as we would cover.
It doesn't cover the categories well at all, and they can do a lot of shit.
And it's one thing to get mid-age Japan to have a dream or something.
Yeah, but that's already covered.
The thing is, too, that... Perhaps what else?
What do we... Push, push, push, push.
They, Milligan, said, we'll just take our chances back here, which means a full boat of death.
Only this time lined up with labor, of course.
And there's been other items.
I am on a strict goosey to rock that boat until we know where we are.
We may want to do it in August.
I mean, we may have a positive interest to do it in August, but a lot of things would have to blow up at us.
You may, but I think it's a long chance that you may.
It's the chances it's likely to be the other way.
That's my guess.
The Senkakun thing, it said it would severely jeopardize our relations with Japan.
That wouldn't affect mainland China.
No, no, I see that.
The argument against the big shot of new military equipment announced at this particular moment is, well, I don't have to make it clear.
Of course, his point is that it would provide, just to quote him, a badly needed shock effect on the Japanese that we don't acquiesce in all matters requested by them, and they would no longer take us for granted.
This is data check.
About six months ago, this might have been.
Well, it's not the...
You're still working on your automobile deal, aren't you?
Because we're going to be able to shop at that.
Oh, anything new, I'm for.
But the Okinawa thing, you've got your own personal thing.
Yeah, he has his personal thing on the textiles that you wrote.
Right, straight, flat out.
But this has become such a symbol in Japanese politics that to go back on it now,
Would really be...
I don't think we can go back on Okinawa.
I think our long-range relationships are symbolic.
I think we can screw them on trade any way you want.
Any way we can find.
Like automobiles.
I wouldn't give one damn what it is.
Okinawa, now that we've done that, our trade field, if it's automobiles, anything else,
You can find any way at all that we're going to do it.
And we should do everything we can in that field.
That poses no problems as far as Japan is concerned.
That's a new deal.
And we've kept our part of the fire in Okinawa.
They wrote various textiles, and so we give it to them on automobiles, anything else you can think of.
And I hope to God you can think of some other things where we stand up and kick Japanese in the butt.
Uh, the real problem here is making Okinawa such a symbolic... Why did we throw those goddamn islands in anyway?
Well, they... Before we got here.
I have to...
I told Pete this morning, Mr. President, this is one of these examples where the bureaucracy, until they got into trouble, never even told us there was an issue.
And I, frankly, had never heard of these islands.
I never heard of them.
Until Charles came in here to see you.
Oh yeah, he hid those islands.
That's right.
From then on, I've looked into it.
But then it was already down the drain.
The trouble was, these islands were put under...
When Formosa was annexed to Japan, these islands were put under the Okinawa prefecture or whatever Okinawa had.
Therefore, in 1945,
Taiwan was returned to China, these islands stayed with Okinawa.
In 1951, they were made part of the Japanese peace treaty.
And the Japanese residual sovereignty was recognized by us over the Okinawa, whatever it is, prefecture or region or whatever.
Therefore, the big decision was made then, and no special negotiation ever took place about these islands in this context until
In April, the Chinese suddenly raised it.
At that point, they had already been given away because they had been automatically included in the Japanese, in the reversion of Okinawa.
This is the history as I can reconstruct it.
How great are the Japanese?
If you hadn't heard of them, what would happen next week?
Are you sure it's urgently important to leave?
I think it's the sort of issue which had been raised six months ago.
We could have found out, but I suspect if it's done now, it will look like a deliberate attempt to sabotage the treaty.
Because this is an obvious issue that should have been raised, if it was ever going to raise,
any judgment on it, but in fact it means they're going to Japan because nothing short of war is ever going to get them awfully done.
This is just the history of the Treaty of Peace which Japan spoke
The U.S. is the sole administrator of the Ryukus.
In 1953, our civil administrator in Okinawa issued a proclamation on specific boundaries involved in the peace treaty and included the Senkaku Islands.
And the Chinese at that time did not challenge the delineation.
That's the history of it.
You see what you're doing here?
The problem, though, is if we now raise this issue with the Japanese in this context, just prior to the textile deal, it will look as if we've given islands that the Japanese consider their own to the Chinese in order to get a textile deal with nationalist China.
I mean, that's
how it will be presented by the opposition press.
Which we will then impose on the Japanese.
Which we will then use to impose on the Japanese by American law.
And that comes awfully close to breaking it with the Japanese.
I see why we can't use
That I would have no hesitation on.
But remember, the huge growth is no longer in Japan.
They're shifting out of textiles.
Well, over half, now, Mr. President, if you may recall, of the charts is outside of Japan.
So Japanese textiles need to begin to solve your textile problem.
I see.
Red, if we want to be prudent, we have to say that the best we can do for the nation, for Cenk Açık, I wouldn't even promise to lay it.
I'd say a senior defense representative will be there in the early orchestra and we'll take a very sympathetic look at their requirements.
As Ray said, it's probably, I agree with Pete, it's probably not good enough.
I think that's all we can offer.
I think you can say that when the Congress is in recess, it will come there to consult with us and sympathetically on their military requirements.
I think it is really in the Congress
I think we pay an unbelievable price now.
I think, frankly, the bureaucracy had had Pete's attitude towards the textile agreement and had made a list of what we could do.
And if in February or March they had come to us and said, use the islands as a state, I think...
It was a card we could have then played, but ten days before signing the treaty when they've already got riot.
Don't you say the president will send a senior military representative?
I've got a meeting in Cambodia with good people lately.
Are you sure you have to wait until August?
You've negotiated the upsell by, you know, the momentum of the negotiation.
Well, just say that Congress will be, well, they've got the, they've got our word, we're going to send a man.
Just say that we can't, that the best time to do it is the, when the Congress will be adjourned and the first will be recessed on the first of August.
I'd like to do it on the first of August, just say the first of August.
Before the first of August.
as soon as the Congress resists, people should just say they're resisting the last of July for a month, and that would be a very opportune time to, and a very good time from our standpoint, if we didn't get it done this way.
At this time, because of the congressional situation, must be with the utmost secrecy.
There could be no indication that
something that's coming, that a senior person is coming and arrest or blow up and blame it all on the Congress.
Say that the Congress would then likely write a restriction on it.
And we have to do this that way by the most senior representatives.
Discuss that matter specifically directly.
Okay.
I'll have to think through whether they should continue this negotiation.
Frankly, it's worrying me.
is that the industry comes charging back, and the newspaper headlines are it's all blown up.
It's hard to get them into the act again.
I've got to figure out a thing, some way of keeping the industry in the picture.
Perhaps, if I could tell Milliken that there's some things here we're willing to talk about that we're just not ready at this moment to talk about, but we want you to continue with the other two countries.
See, they haven't yet gone to Hong Kong or Korea.
They haven't.
And their current conditions have come
Well, all right, then you should play a little harder with it.
You should say that it's not going to serve the industry and purpose if they want quota.
It's not going to serve their purpose to come home and throw this whole thing in the bank with all the other supplements that are lined up for quota, and that all of the media will just be a mess, as it was before, with no action.
that we've got some other equipment, we've got other things to do.
They ought to run, they ought to show cooperation here, or we will have to indicate that they didn't cooperate.
That's the way it's going to be.
They can play hard, we've got to play harder than that.
They ought to take ten percent.
Ten percent would be great.
What in the name of God?
Forty percent or ten percent?
So they argue about whether it's 7 1⁄2 and now it's gone to 8 1⁄2.
What a whining bunch of people they are.
It's terrible.
It's stupid.
I believe in being tough and negotiating hard.
They know the realities, too.
The other side's got to negotiate.
Bryce Harlow gave me a rumor that might be behind this.
I'm trying to read between the lines on whoever knows.
It's called Bryce Stoney.
His input was,
that a man very close to Mills had said he was going to support a quota bill next spring as part of his presidential boom.
And it may be, you see, that the Texaco guys, what's happening here in this president is that word feeds back to them, and they sit there and calculate their options, and they say, well, maybe I can get a quota deal, and that may be what explains some of this queasiness all of a sudden.
They think maybe they're going to get a, I just don't know, because of those, those, they won't do it.
Of course, it's a line out of the agriculture portions, a lot of other portions, and a lot of other people in the world they don't know a damn thing about that might lead things in the other direction.
See?
I think you're absolutely right.
It's very possible what's being played.
One of the guys who airs and does the rector knows the people and says, oh, come on back.
It would be better for him to solve it rather than you, of course.
He's not going to solve it, though.
I don't think so.
A quota bill is not going to pass.
Understand, I know there's a lot of pressure in the quotas.
I know later it's going to be behind it and all the rest of it.
But there are also great forces that will oppose it.
at one time, the establishment so-called would be on our side.
And they'll oppose it in a far...
In some ways, similar to your NATO.
It's a foreign policy.
The farmers will oppose it.
The NATO, the whole, all the internationals oppose it.
And, you know, when you start down that line, you'll get to be one hell of a mess.
I must say, the growth of the Senate in Florida started, you know, I mean,
They're not on their own ability to compete, drawing up their hands, blaming labor.
So labor says, okay, fine, I'll send you a quota.
And so they're the area of the world, of the United States of the world, where it simply is that the United States simply can't compete with the rest of the world, so we will have quotas.
Our own industry is called area.
And that the consumers vote the bill.
don't think they're one of all the consumers after a period of time to obtain that.
Don't you agree?
I agree.
When the consumer understands what's hitting in here, I'm totally with you.
The other thing the labor people ignore, of course, is what the other countries do.
You see, on agriculture, I'm having to study maybe what Europe does if we put in a book about it, because I think we ought to look at it.
And in my view, the first thing they do is hit us like hell in agriculture.
They've got all the, you know, they're sorry they made that soybean deal, you know.
You remember in the whole Midwest, how important soybeans are.
It's a big cash crop.
And that's the biggest crop around.
And that one was not under that levy system.
So the Europeans, I'm sure, you know, would love to get us back in agriculture almost immediately.
And they can supply all that demand that we have.
Your analysis is just right.
There'll be some other courses here.
Okay, regarding your presentation tomorrow, I think that we, that it presented the problem.
You, of course, will, sure, will do.
And sure, you're just as clear as you can.
But then you say that the purpose of this is to present this problem.
and to alert leaders of Congress in bipartisan cases that we consider this not an immediate crisis.
It is not.
It's something that we've got to look at in terms of, is it going to affect us this year, is it going to affect us tonight, but it's in terms of the long range of this, five, ten years from where we're going to be, that we think this is something that
should be not a partisan but a bipartisan, a matter of bipartisan consideration, that within the administration, under the President's express direction and his leadership, that we are developing some programs to reach to
deal with this problem, that we will be announcing such programs and so forth.
And the purpose of this is simply to alert the Congress and advance us to the problems that they too could be thinking about.
I would indicate, however, on a positive side, that we're not just sitting here, well, here's a hell of a problem, boys, and I don't know what we're going to do about it.
on a positive side and say, look, we do have some answers, and we're going to be submitting them.
And we're doing this at the highest level, and we're bringing the outside people, we're bringing the business people, the labor people, and the non-congressional people to know, because the administration is going to present us with what we think is long-range,
I put it on kickoff and say, here's four or five programs, long-range programs for the future, and we just frankly make it up.
I don't care what you make up.
It's just to leave the impression of them that we are not just presenting the problem, but that we have solutions in mind, that this is the first quagmire, the first cut, so they can realize it.
And we want them to know, and as these solutions come along, as our programs come along, we will need congressional support, and we want them to be in on the takeoff.
Right now, we'll be supporting some of these things and so forth as we go along.
We'll be consulting with them as we like.
They're in this as we go along.
You'll be in touch with them.
The various departments will be in touch with you with regard to these matters.
Are you that kind of a positive talk to the end?
We'll let them think.
You're still planning to do some searches?
I'll be there.
Yes, I'm coming.
And I'll be there and I'll say, sure.
But my point is, I think we should let them claim that we got a lot of our sleep that we do in the rubber building.
And we got some good time.
But we know we're going to get presidential speech.
I want to do, even take it a step further if I might.
If you have a minute, I want to go through this because I'm trying to lay it out now, I'm not sure.
In terms of positives, I thought we should, perhaps you at the beginning, or I'll be glad to do it however you want, but I should remind them that you set up the council.
You know, there's been a lot of vision about this deal, but this was just in time.
I would like to say that you asked me to launch this intensive study of America's position in the world so that it's clear that, you know, I'm operating in a cured direction.
When you saw this, you felt it ought to be shared.
We've already taken some actions.
I'd like to use the Conley Munich thing, you know, as an example of something that's already shifted in a happening direction.
And that's also at your direction.
Now, I want to be sure I put my support, you know, total support.
Now, this is the defense sharing tough.
This is right, and I want to be sure I got that to anyone.
Now, I would like to take your energy program.
Frank, I got into that a little bit too late one morning, and we tried to change it a little bit.
I think we should take that energy program, which I plan to do, and use that as an example of a program that looks to the future.
that builds American jobs, that builds exports, we hand out stalls of environment to anybody else in the world, and something that helps with the environmental problem.
It might take a little on the saline water thing.
And I thought I'd mention we're looking at water, we're looking at this, we're looking at this, and that's kind of a program.
We're going to have a major initiative in the field of water, you know, making plants.
You know what I mean?
That you could point out the fact that we have discovered in the President's direction, we've discovered that in the field of research, we are perhaps ahead of other fields.
I mean, the field was applied recently.
R&D we may be behind, and so forth.
And also, I'd like you to get in your R&D point, your applied R&D point.
If you use NASA, you're going to do that.
Now, NASA, I get NASA in kind of indirectly in the following way.
I say, America's got some great resources.
And let's not forget, Japan's total R&D investment is a little over $2 billion.
Because we are a traded dollar economy,
we can spend more if we do it soon, you see, than other countries could possibly afford.
For example, our NASA program is 50% larger than Japan's R&D investment.
And just kind of over that, I mean, the total R&D is just kind of... Now, you know my views on this, Mr. President.
I think something, when we get these five or six big projects defined,
I think there's a lot to be said for looking at the NASA budget, cutting it back to the minimum, and putting that bit in, a half or two, right into five big projects, which does two things for you.
It's a redirection of priorities issue, and everybody's vision about space programs, and it puts it on jobs and environment and health and so forth, all in the same bracket.
If that's okay, I'll maybe suggest a little bit.
Now, let me, if I take one more minute on the other evening, something very significant came out of that dinner meeting we had, you know, with the last Wednesday.
John Ehrlichman was there, George, and remember, we have the right people, the right people, so-called.
I've been telling you that the thing that worries me about my 90 days here is that I see an awful lot of people talking about goals, and you and I talk about goals, but as a businessman, I see precious little
mechanism for translating goals into plans.
And that's the reason I'm convinced.
I've read all the previous goals.
You know, people stand up and they express ideals and so forth, but nothing happens.
But nothing backs it up.
Now, I don't know if John or George have told you this, but I was dumbfounded the other evening.
There were 15 guys there of every political persuasion.
I think they were unanimous in the deal.
that this government needs to do more of the kind of long-range planning that Japan is doing and that other countries do.
Not the same times, but other times.
Now, I'm writing up something tonight that I want to run by George and John, but I'd like you thinking about this.
One is five or six action proposals I would like to propose to you.
is that since there's such strong feeling America should be doing more planning, so that, Mr. President, if you decide to go after water, you can have the same kind of confidence we're going to achieve the objective that we did in the space program.
Because he had it backed up with something tangible.
There is no mechanism now for doing that.
Roy Ash and Ben Hyman feel so strongly about this.
You know, they both did that to organizations.
They both wrote me letters.
both of whom say this planning and government issue is a major issue that is not simple.
Take one minute and read this.
I've got a proposal to mention.
What do you think about it?
All right, let me tell you what that's what the Divestment Council is all about.
All right, now a specific proposal that I made to John on Saturday.
You got that in your mind?
No, I ain't.
Oh, get enthusiastic about this.
The big question they ask about long-range planning in this country is how you make it reasonably non-political, you know, so it doesn't get so partisan.
One of my proposals that I think I'll be making to you for your approval in the morning after I've reviewed it then is what if we were to ask Roy Ashman, and I'm not bringing long-range business, but a 45-day recommendation back to you saying how should America, given its resources, its systems, you know, its governmental systems,
approach the long-range planning job in America.
We've looked at Japan, we've looked at other countries.
How should this job be done?
Co-chairman, bipartisan, another step you're taking, thinking about post-Vietnam.
But if we could announce that along with a series of .
You're a third man if you put it in the deal.
We could have some of the co-chairmen.
Oh, I see.
We could.
Good.
Let me tell you another thing I want you to take a look at.
You've asked this earlier when I was on the right-hand end of you and not my father.
I was very struck at the meeting of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board by Lanz
First of all, I see Bargain with regard to a broad of existing technology insofar as photographic intelligence is concerned.
He said that we have a very small camera, a satellite or something, a visit camera or something, whereby you can get instant
We don't wait for patients and so forth.
You probably know what he's talking about.
All right.
And so the OBM and so forth had thumped it on the ground because we had a lot of things that were presently adequate.
I had let it run all the way.
I had pointed out that trying to get these guys to come out and concentrate.
that they all still matter, and they do, and they matter very much to the Christian people.
I pointed out that assuming that, and we don't know that any of these things will happen, that either will happen, but both might, and one might for sure, assuming that you have a new, a common, an opening relations with China and with the Soviet Union,
Well, on the one side, everybody will have a tendency to be euphoric and say she isn't the world great and so forth.
On the other side, many of us who know the great powers know that if we think we're having trouble with Japan, we're going to have infinite but more trouble with the likes of the Soviet Union and China.
Their interests are different from ours.
They have a different view of the world.
They want to screw us just as we want to screw them, etc., etc., etc.
And all this modern idea that, well, all this is really about is that we just understand and know each other, talk about our grandchildren, and everybody's going to get along with punk.
The Soviets are going to fight us.
The Chinese are going to fight us.
So for that matter, the Germans, the Japanese, the British, the British, and a lot of other people, the colony right, the United Europe is going to fight us.
That's the way life is.
We don't complain about it.
But in terms of the Soviets and the Chinese, even though we had a little bit of arms control with the Soviets, and with the Chinese, we opened up.
We had no arms control at the moment, but we opened up.
the problems with regard to intelligence become infinitely more important.
Because as their societies open up, and as we tend, you see, they, the Chinese, we have a trade of people coming back and forth and all that sort of thing, and so forth.
And so you have an arms control agreement with the Soviets.
then the whole problem of verification becomes a question of national life or death.
And so it may become the Chinese.
Now, then Lange comes on after that and says, well, the position of the Japs is essential.
It's absolutely essential for us.
not to be satisfied with doing it the, the, what he calls the old way, which is a pretty goddamn good way, to read him these marvelous pictures which tell us everything that's happening.
And it sure as hell is what he's on.
I understand.
He's the only dude who's seen the practice.
And actually, what he's talking about, actually, God is his own.
This goes much beyond actually what his son and I are going to do.
And he explains a little thing, and everybody smiles a little, like this is what this is not up to now.
But then I came back in here and I got in to Kissinger and I said, my God, we're going to go forward with this.
Now, here's the point.
I don't know what the word about is going to be.
The point that I made to you is this.
I have an uneasy feeling that, competent as our people are, and yet David and the science advisory group I meet with every now and then, competent as our people are in the departments, that we tend,
as the society gets older, as we get richer, and more self-satisfied, and more in return for us, we tend to do less inventing, and less, and less chanting, and taking chances.
And what I am concerned about is that I wonder if, in addition to this field, there may be other fields where we leap from the existing technology and open a whole new vista
Now, these are things that I may not even understand what I was up to.
Whoever thought of this sort of thing, whoever thought there would be a nuclear explosion, whoever thought there would be a camera when it first came, right?
Whoever the hell thought there was going to be a tunnel,
But the nuts thought so.
And it took a lot of time for the nuts to get themselves financed.
What I'm getting at is this.
I'd like for you and Archie to discuss this with the rest of the show.
I'd like you folks to get some directives out to the debt departments, and everything there should be about this.
And the rest is on me.
And I'm not satisfied.
And give them harm.
You did.
You are the person who will understand.
Give them harm.
I'm not satisfied with the way, with our attitude.
I think our attitude makes sure that we're willing to be very high on our goals and all this beautiful rhetoric that comes in here.
I'm wondering if in this whole field of science, technological development, I'm wondering if it may be some exciting, very exciting, imaginative, almost unbelievable steps
might be taken if we would encourage them to be encouraged.
I think industry tends to be, frankly, in and around bureaucratic, too conservative, and so forth.
And that's why sometimes some little industry on the outside gets in and makes them in.
It's no accident, for example, that the guy, my old friend Apple, who makes 85% of all the precision valves in the world,
He's a little hungry.
So he thinks he makes the best precision cow.
Why the hell wasn't that done by Colgate-Palmolive or somebody else?
Because they probably got the guys probably prior to that involved with better educations.
But somebody that's really, you know, what I'm getting at is this.
i like to have the approach that one hand takes to cannabis i'd like to have that infused throughout this whole government i want to come in everything but i but it isn't going to happen unless you unless you do something other than the other we've been doing like for example the scientific field and ed david will
just as his predecessor before him, DeBridge, argues, will argue, I'm sure, well, that the way to do it is to continue is just to give another half a million, 50 million to the National Science Foundation.
That isn't going to do a goddamn bit of good.
And I'm just wondering if there is, and Blanton does quite decent, only a presidential, only presidential support,
got the space thing going.
Only presidential support got the nuclear explosion.
And only presidential support would get this new kind of a camera going.
Now, there must be a half a dozen places where there are nuts running around.
We think they're nuts, but they've got great ideas where presidential support is needed.
Now, one thing that occurs to me is this, and I read it on my own, and it says, you know, Bill Baer is popping off about his new combustion engine, and John Whittaker will be along.
I don't want to say, well, he just served in the Department of Transportation.
We all love to build their stuff.
Builders are bitter men when he's really wrong.
Maybe it doesn't matter.
He hasn't thought of all the truth and so forth.
We can start to go on the way we're doing it.
I'm not sure we should.
Bill Weir may be right.
See what I mean?
He may be right because the attitude of those in the establishment may be too goddamn conservative.
Get my point?
That means for me to say, I may be wrong, but I'm not wrong.
But I'm sure that Lenin really shook me.
And I want that, I want Ed David and the National Science Board to do that.
I want that bunch to shake up.
Do you sit in one, then?
No.
You should.
Let me give you a little reaction.
Because you don't know how important it is.
Didn't land on me.
Well, but you've got great insight.
Didn't land on me.
I spent two hours at Dinland, 7 o'clock the other morning, before he'd sell you.
And I was talking to him about this very problem.
Oh.
Just for your information, he wanted me to be chief executive of Polaroid and leave.
He and I are old buddies.
He is one of the great men in the United States.
Let me level with him what Dinland is really saying because Din and I are old friends.
I told John this on Saturday.
Mr. President, I have
watch companies fall on their face technologically.
And when they do, they start mistaking quantity for quality every time.
They think that all it takes is, you know, 100 people doing something.
And you can get a lot of things done that way.
Yes?
But the great inventions of this world, about 60% of them is the exact number, are made by dead lambs who don't know it's possible, you know, that it isn't possible, and they do it.
I said, Dan, what the hell is wrong with us, technically?
What's going on here in the government?
He said something very close to what you're saying, in a very gentle way.
He's a very gentle man, but you've got to hear him.
There's a message in everything.
The only thing, frankly, that disagrees with us on the war, and I understand that.
I said, Dan, how would you approach this gentleman?
What's our problem here?
Because I'm worried about a catalog of eight projects we end up doing in a mundane way six years from now.
Eight other countries have done the same damn thing, and we wonder where America's patents are.
So that is why he ran.
He said, you don't know how happy I am to hear you say this.
Let me tell you what's wrong.
And he didn't say it quite this bluntly, but I don't want to take your time.
He said eight.
In the old days around here, remember when Jerry Wiesner was here in the presence of MIT?
We used to get brought in at the presidential level and other levels.
The greatest scientists in America used to be coming in healthy.
He said, let me tell you how we invented the photographic satellite system, which incidentally, he was the key mover.
It was he.
They needed an airplane.
Remember in the U-2 days, you must have been vice president in those days.
They could fly at high speed.
The whole establishment said it couldn't be done.
They didn't land set.
They wanted to get the best airplane designers.
Remember this team?
It was Kelly Johnson, whom he brought in.
Do you remember?
He got Ed Percedo, who's the Newfoundland laureate.
Do you know Ed?
I presented him awards.
Now,
What Din said is, if I were doing the job you're talking about, I said, Din, I'd like to come up with five or six of the most exciting things this country's ever done, but when we come up with our plan technically, we know it's first rate and not first rate, second rate, if you know what I mean.
He said, all right, what I would do is pick some D's you want to solve.
and get a team of three or four of the most brilliant men in America.
Don't settle for anything less than the best.
Let them feel the President thinks this is important, which is the point he was making to you.
But let them come up with a whole new way to do it, you know, a whole new concept.
And then when you've got the concept, you know, in your mind, then
you know, put the resources.
But he said, what's happening, Peter, is you're not getting the really first-rate, inventive minds now in the top government circles.
And part of this problem is this, and I think, in talking to him again, which you may want you to do, and having pressed, part of the problem has been that during the whole Johnson period, first of all because of Johnson's own
personality.
I mean, you know, I mean, he was basically, uh, the oldest man to have eaten potatoes.
And also, but even more so because of the war from, uh, a lot of the scientists, which they could never have done, got so involved politically, uh, that they could therefore, they didn't, they couldn't, they really couldn't bring themselves to contribute in this way.
That I understand.
what land that the other guys are down on, I don't care, whatever they think that war should have been on, or whether it should be handed to the right, it's being done.
The opening to China is occurring.
Who the hell else could have done that?
No Democrat could have done it.
Never.
Because they couldn't have held the right.
The right was going up to the plains and assaulting it.
None of them did anything on this card.
We're doing a few things.
I don't know whether they'll all come off, but some of them are going to come off.
We're in a very important era of foreign policy where all those, in other words, these guys basically don't want to see their scientific energy and so forth used for war.
can realize that we're entering a new peace that's going to be God-given, and it isn't going to be one where we're going to love everybody, but on the other hand, it's a period of peace that you say you've never seen before, because it'll bring in superpowers, which nobody's ever done before, not really.
Now, so he's to be told that and say, look, the word, what we've talked about for years, done.
So you've got a few people that have done it now.
I am not satisfied with just having come in here, what I call the scientists that are the good people running the school of engineering, or being the dean of the MIT, or Caltech, or Peter Briggs, wonderful guys, you know a goddamn thing.
And David, I think, is a fine guy.
I think he's the first to say that he's a practical man.
He's not a scientist.
But he's damn good at looking it over.
But what you've got to get is get these brilliant guys to take the layers of genius.
He's nuts as hell, and he drives you crazy.
But I am.
I mean, that little lear job is quite a plane.
It paid a hell of a lot of money, as long as people could afford it.
And they weren't so scared.
But my point is, a guy like Lamb is kind of a guy that appeals to me.
I want people around.
I don't want the dumb ones.
When I say the dumb ones, I don't want people that are not dumb.
They're very smart men, but they're men that always come up with the routine.
a quantitative answer, but with no quality breakthroughs.
And we've got to have some quality breakthroughs.
And I think, as a matter of fact, we could beat a lot of people on this.
The great weakness of the Russians, the great weakness, despite all their talk about being a society based on science, is that the bureaucracy itself smothers genius.
And it doesn't feel like space or the rest.
I mean, a lot of the brilliant guys, it's just the wrong climate to work in.
Now, in our case, we can take the brilliant guys and we can let them go off and work.
They've got to feel.
They've got to really feel that if they get some idea, it may be crackpot or something.
And if it's vetted out at some high level,
then they'll have presidential backing, and then maybe we have an organization like what you're talking about in Nashville to do it.
But let me suggest that you, Erleman, and Schultz, I think you are the best three to do it.
Do you agree?
Maybe, but maybe David, should he be with you.
Yes, David.
Well, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know how much he knows.
Why not?
Why not?
You've got to use it.
You're the head of the damn science.
You and I are in control.
This reading doesn't take the basic science.
It takes the politicians.
Politicians have got to start it, and the scientists have got to carry it out.
Do you understand?
So you fellows, what I want you to do, I want you to go back and the next time you guys have a little bowl session, I want you to talk.
The land thing, I'm sure they'll come up and the budget will come in and say, we can't do it.
And I know we haven't got the money to do anything.
But look for Christ's sake, we're spending $230,000 for nothing.
Just running the goddamn lousy bureaucracy in a lousy way.
That's really what we're doing.
It's very disgraceful what we're doing with this money.
Disgraceful, I know.
A lot of it is in the name of the debt and a lot of it is Social Security.
That's about it.
And a lot of it is defense.
So we've only got $50 billion.
But $50 billion is a lot of money to throw away.
It's a hell of a lot to throw away.
What we spend in education, most of it is useless.
It's simply subsidizing.
It allows the educational system
That's why these little blips of the right to read and that sort of thing meant something.
But they drop because what happened?
The professional educators drop them without a trace.
They don't want to change the way you educate people.
They're not making use of devices adequately.
You know what I mean?
I am sure that they can use visual aids better.
Not for my generation.
I don't like them.
I prefer to read.
But the new generation learns that way.
The new math is an idea.
The new math, I can never understand it.
But they tell me, my kids, you give them numbers, and wham, there they are going off there thinking.
Now, some way or other, we've got to get the impression around that, by golly, we're looking for bright people.
I mean, when I say bright people, we're looking for the land.
So really, really look at the geniuses.
And they're never going to be more than 5% of the whole country.
And perhaps there may be 1% of it.
If they are there, we've got to find that.
They have to feel that if they had a better idea, it would be promoted.
Take, for example, let's talk about energy thermal.
There are numbers of reasons why the nuclear reactor will be opposed and hasn't been opposed.
One is people's fright.
about an impossible explosion and contamination and so forth.
Okay, fine.
Let's put that to a side.
The second is, however, a very selfish business reason.
The coal people are against it.
The gasoline people are for it, against it.
The natural gas people are against it.
And they're against it because they don't want this source of power to come.
Now you know goddamn well that's true, too.
They won't say so.
They can't say so.
They can never make an argument.
But in the end, you know, as you know, I think you were, you were, earlier somebody was pointing out, we were going to be in a deficit position with regard to petroleum in 10 years.
Tremendous deficit.
Tremendous deficit.
All right.
Now, I thought we'd better damn do it.
We were proper for that time.
Or else.
But let's come back to land.
When I heard about the nuclear reactor, the fusion thing, I mean, no, when I heard about the breeder reactor, maybe that's old fact.
Maybe really, maybe really we ought to be putting the thing in the fusion.
All right.
At least let's do the breeder now.
That's better than anything we've got.
But by gosh, let's be damn sure we aren't the last to get fusion.
Right?
You're right.
All right.
Now, who in the hell around here is thinking like that?
I don't think that fellow out there, I think Seabird's a wonderful man.
Seabird's been there an awful long time and now all he's thinking about is budget and position and how many slots does he have.
Really?
I really mean that.
I know he's a former head of the University of California.
He's a great guy, great guy.
We both were, we chased each other back in the year 1947.
So it was a big deal.
But nevertheless, now you need an AEC, they need a new man who really is thinking big, thinking in different terms about it.
I mean, the way I think, for example, if I had written the energy statement over again,
I would have put it at a very high level.
I would have picked up Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace.
Remember, he said it through a vibe.
Nothing was ever done about it.
He had something on it.
So he'd say, here's Atoms for Peace.
Atoms for Peace.
Maybe when we go on the sailing water, then we'll call it Atoms for Peace.
The idea, you know, he's got a theme, Atoms for Peace.
Not bad.
But you come back, you go back, and let's be sure, you folks have the responsibility to see that smart men like that in this administration, as long as we're here, get in here, they get in, and that I'm back.
and that they are not submerged, cut off, fenced off, blocked off by the how-not-to-do-it guys, by the fellows that are just part of the establishment, the people that fear that some new technology will threaten their jobs.
You know that's what part of it, too.
That's why they're all against government reorganization and entirely another field.
Hell, they don't run organizations, Lassie.
They're like, Denny, Denny, I don't want to keep what they've got.
Denny would never do this, but I know that company and I don't think.
Dillard has got three technicians working in his back room.
And I've said to the president, he's from Kodak, I'll take Dillard and those three technicians.
You can take 500 for the best PhD, it's fine.
And he'll beat your brains out every time, which is what he's doing.
I don't know if you know this, he now sells more cars than he's from Kodak does.
essentially himself, even within his own company.
What is it better than a small, that small order of Cameron that sells for $30,000, $25,000, $30,000?
It's the most amazing damn thing.
What the hell's the matter with Eastman Kodak?
They can't.
They just can't.
And I know what they're working on in the future, and it's unbelievable what he's working on two years from now.
It's just unbelievable.
And you are right on target.
If we could get a dim lamp in each of these five or six fields, collect three or four of the most brilliant... Take medicine.
Take medicine.
Let me tell you this.
I'm really very afraid that... Like on the cancer thing, they'll bring in some goddamn bureaucrat to run it.
And I think that's what they got in mind.
And that that bureaucrat will...
disorganized, present people that go around testing mice.
Nothing will happen.
And again, there's probably a few guys that are just way out beyond the others in comprehension.
The difficulty is that it's an interesting thing.
This is something that you probably hadn't encouraged you.
You know, you read the political science and the rest of it, all through history and so forth, and they say the stupid man, the dumb man is afraid of the very, very bright man.
Not true.
The person who's afraid of the very, very bright man is the bright man.
what I call the first grade, second grade kind.
They're bright men.
A man who understands everything.
He's always afraid of the very bright side.
Because he knows that he's threatened.
He knows that as long as that other guy's out of the way, he'll run the show.
It's all questions.
It's all seeking for power.
Well, anyway, if any of you get your call back, be told we're going to go ahead with the damn camera.
Or your Disney camera or something else.
Some of you don't, well, whatever it is, he's going, we're going to go ahead, I don't know whether we can find the money and a lot of other things, but the main thing is the concept of Skopel, but I want everything on this, because he's got a wide open mind here, and I don't want him to get burned down in all this.
out of this crap and these agencies, the agencies burning me down.
I mean, look at this Catholic officer turned to agencies.
That's great, fine, that's what they're for.
They should find out, I mean, who's gonna be a GS-15 or GS-17.
But who cares?
Or how many?
Just so we know.
But boy, discovering some guy with genius.
Well, let's face it, you know what we're really talking about?
The history of great societies is, it really depends upon, it is all marked by their ability to discover the new worlds.
In years past, it's been the geographic, sometimes it's been the military of these worlds, the military of the Middle East, all around Europe.
There was a Spanish and a British who discovered the new world, they were Christians.
Here we go to the space where everybody's all intrigued with that, but now we've got that one.
Now people might not care, although I'm to the Mars for a minute because we've got to be for that a long time.
Here we've got a hell of a lot of new worlds.
That's what we're talking about.
New worlds, aren't there?
New worlds that other societies that are a little hungrier than we are
a little hundred, with less power than we have, with less people working on the jobs, are going to be like our friend Lance.
They're going to get it done with three guys in the back row, and we with 500, we'll all be watching each other and showing the dangers of each other.
And the United States now has the great dangers of 250,000 people, and with so many PhDs and so many great scientists, so many great but not very great scientists, so many,
And all the greats are going to get in each other's way, and they're going to keep the very greats coming to the top.
That's my concern.
Do you think this is correct?
I'm pretty sure that there's something wrong here.
I think that they're blocking these guys off.
Landis told me that he is, and don't misunderstand, Lind is too gentle and subtle to say that that was his message.
I said, Den, I shouldn't be saying, he's called Den, but I said, Den, I shouldn't be coming in here this soon and saying, why don't we have programs in these six or seven areas?
We should have them, scientifically.
Why don't we?
What's the problem?
And then he reminisced about the man who used to collect in Washington, and he read off the Nobel Prize winners and the great scientists.
He said, Pete, they just aren't around anymore.
They just don't seem to be with this administration.
And I said, all right.
Oh, they were with Johnson, either.
No, no.
He was going back to the Kennedy, the Eisenhower.
He said, he thinks that he had a relationship with President Eisenhower.
He may remember.
Didn't land it.
That's when he did the U-2 thing with Kelly Jefferson.
these kind of relationships with others.
I know the reason that many of them were not around in that period of time.
Frankly, I think the New Bridge environment was not the best.
I don't think they had enough.
And frankly, respect for the bridge.
The problem was they did have respect for Kachikovsky, who was Eisenhower's man, but Kachikovsky and some of the other men that were on the war issue, they were so torn up by it that they couldn't come.
But now, Land and his colleagues, all those guys, don't forget it.
It's done.
You know what I mean?
And nothing's going to change, nothing.
They've got to start working on the world after Vietnam, on the world of what I call the open world, you know, with China and Russia.
And it's a damn exciting world.
The United States has got to end up being, well, better be behind.
You know, one place I'd certainly like to do for exactly the same.
And you're aware, perhaps more than I should know this deal, among the most, among those with,
The best scientific capabilities in the world are not the Russians or the Chinese.
They're goddamn good as individuals, right?
And we've had some of them, mainly American Chinese.
They're particularly good in mathematics, for instance.
Russians are very good.
But we started, we got the opening in China, and we did some research in science.
Believe me, in the business area, the one area where we are doing something new, you've got to hand it to him.
I hope you had a chance to see Marlon when he was here, the Nobel Prize winner, you know, one of these strengths that we have.
But that guy, I mean, sitting down there in Mexico for 25 years, in fact, he talks English with a Mexican accent for so long.
What did Marlon do?
When Borlaug gets down there and he works with these strains of veins, it's particularly weak, but it stands on its own.
But literally, millions of people eat today, do not die of starvation, frankly, or famine or malnutrition because of what Borlaug did.
In other words, in the field of agriculture, those damn agricultural scientists somewhere in America are the first in the world, right?
We're awfully good.
But what the hell's the matter with us in other fields?
Now, that's a strange thing, that agriculture should be first, because agriculture department is the most integral goddamn thing there is.
Why would agriculture decide this, you better tell me?
Remember, there are two things going on here.
One of the things that has to happen on the station is it has to be used.
That's part of the stimulation.
And remember the field agents.
which are an American invention.
The agricultural field agents got close to the farmers and applied it.
So there you had technology that was used, A, with stimulation back from the farmers and what their problems were, which is all gas import.
Then you remember the land grant colleges that set up the agricultural educational establishment set up very early in the history of this country.
And those are two things.
If you're interested in this field, there's a book written called The Sources of Invention, because you need to be reaffirmed in this.
It studies a hundred most important inventions of the 20th century, and it tells you where they came from.
And 60 to 70 out of the 100, even in this giant era of DuPonts and jazz owners and so forth, came either from single inventors, professors, or very tiny businesses.
Polaroid, you know, Z Rock came from a crazy inventor at the Patel Institute named Chester Carlson, took that idea around half of the business equipment companies in the world, and they all proceeded to tell him, just like they told the land, that it wouldn't work.
You know, the land took his idea to Eastman Kodak first, and they told him who the hell he is in quick pictures.
I mean, you know, it seems like that.
That's the study that mentioned three or four crazy guys that everybody thinks are crazy and end up doing it.
Oh, you don't know how right you are, and I'd be delighted to... All right, anyway, I can't... You and... You carry this message to Garcia, to you and Ehrlichman and Schultz.
They're all broad-gauge men.
They'll understand.
But let's go and get some money.
But be sure.
I don't want to see any more men.
I want to be sure that there are no men.
I want to take another look at the leaders.
I don't know what it is.
He just might be right.
You know?
He might be.
Maybe he just doesn't have a chance to.
Because...
I understand, don't you?
That may be a bad thing, because it may be that he's just old and crazy.
But he might not be.
I know the automobile industry.
You know it well, too.
And it's pretty goddamn in the ground.
Right.
Nobody would have a small car, remember?
Well, you've got to ask George Romney.
He started out a few years ago.
I'm sure he's tall as you can get.
I think we're meeting at the White House, or the theater, I don't know which.
The White House is closed up above because of the wedding, you see.
But if we don't, we'll use the auditorium, meaning the public room in the Black House for the briefing tomorrow, or the theater.
It's a lousy room, you know, it just feels, you don't feel comfortable in it.
So I've tried to get where else we could be nice to the reception, but it would be one or the other.
All right, thank you.