Conversation 517-006

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

It occurred to me that on a comedy that maybe, because of the therapy and other things, you might ask if you'd be able to come over.

You, me, and I may look like this now.

I don't know about this.

I just keep overruling it.

You see what I mean, man?

Does that sound right to you?

It says, though, that he's... Come on in.

It says on the chart that he's supposed to welcome... Uh-huh.

He'd be with...

Well, I can do it, sir.

I can do it, Bob.

I can do it.

I'm just a half army, wherever you and I am.

So that he gets his input on all of these things, because I think that you need to know, we need to know what the trade position is on all of these loans.

Okay?

Two or either two or four.

One of the two.

Either one.

Well, two is fine for me.

All right.

Put your chair over here.

I want to tell you that I've seen a thing, not a germ, half a war.

I mean, it's a little, it's a little, it's a little covered.

I don't know what it's called.

Whatever the name is.

It is the White House, isn't it?

Yeah, it's the White House.

The British got a version of the White House before they put the wings on in 1837.

So it's not like it isn't made.

And the liquor was supposed to be in the White House in good stead, isn't it?

So somebody dug it out.

You're right, I smoked it.

Well, you better.

But you didn't feel at home when you smoked it.

Well, I don't know.

I'm glad we got our super dove in here.

You're looking very good.

You know, you can go to the T-30s without really knowing it.

You don't, you don't, may not feel it.

This is the form of, uh, the, uh, good one.

That's enough.

We, uh, let me say before this conversation, before we get into the other thing, I mean, uh, John, but Henry and I were talking a little earlier today.

And, John, I can't tell you how much you're

You see, when we, as we've talked before, oh, like some of our good friends, like, who gnarly would vote in a certain way, come on, that's, that has, it's, it's appreciated, but it is delightful in some others.

But if you have a high degree of credibility,

both Republicans.

You can poll some of the Republicans.

I think, for example, you obviously have influence.

That's actually a quite good deal.

And you also have a high degree of credibility among some of the Democrats over there.

And I really think that when we look at

You are aware, I'm sure, John, as we have talked before, that it's not possible, it is not possible to inform, you couldn't inform all the Senate all the time, because everything that's going on, otherwise you'd have no success in negotiations.

In fact, just to get the name out of our mutual,

acquaintances, Bill Fulbright.

I would have called Fulbright in and tell him something.

Mike Mansfield will tell anything.

Mansfield never has broken a confidence.

Never.

But I could have told him Fulbright.

So therefore, he's got a line.

And it's like some Republicans have the same problem.

It's not nothing.

But on the other hand, I think we should tell him.

Without getting into the anomaly, which would be bad.

But with regard to the Chinese

And what has happened in the last couple of months has been no accident.

And what has happened is not everything that is going on.

Now, in other words, John, we're moving in the direction that I'm sure you think is right.

And I am the only one that could really do this.

I mean, I draw a hook and hold of the story.

With regard to the, uh, with regard to the Soviet name on salt, let me say that, uh, you know, all the columnists can write what they want.

If we've given away the score, you know very well that if there's no decision going to be made, uh, that is not going to have a political or political or any form of therapies.

Uh, this involves both an offensive-defensive, uh, agreement, uh, agreement about both.

And also, as you can imagine, it was not just an announcement that was made as a result of one contract with the United States.

And with that preparation and that work, you see, we can now look forward to summer.

I'm not, I will say, do you guarantee we're going to have a summer summer at the end of the year?

The answer is no.

But my point is, I'll tell you now, I think so.

In other words, I think so.

And I think that's a fair statement.

I think so.

I think, somebody said to me, oh, we guarantee.

Both sides are committed to working together.

So I have just high hopes.

And the reasons are self-interest on both sides.

Now, the same thing can be said about FDFR.

Bill Rogers is just asking.

He gave a little report on it.

The Europeans want to move just like we do here.

They don't want to move too fast.

You see, if we move too fast, we ought to turn the college down.

It surprised me.

I think it surprised Bill, as a matter of fact.

But it was very comforting to meet him.

The Europeans realize that they have an awful lot.

They've got to get it together themselves, you know, in their own position.

And also, you see, they've got all these parts of the puzzle.

And they don't know...

They don't want to put their situation out there without knowing until their cards before they have some indication what the Russian cards are.

Again, you come back to the fundamental point.

I can tell you that we've been working on the neutral balance force reduction for over a year.

As a matter of fact, we started 18 or 20 months ago as far as our own positions.

Now, this does not mean that we're going to have something.

It doesn't mean that we're going to have something.

Two months from now, three months from now, five months from now, six months from now, you will know that the Europeans, however, not with regard to the EFR, but with regard to the security problems, everybody who goes to the United States or the EU, they have a condition on their land.

Now, so there's what I'm talking about.

What I'm saying is this.

All of these, whether it's trying to work on this forest production, whether it's a salt agreement with the Soviet, or whether it's the movement on the Chinatown, all of these things, I have to tell you, there's nothing, everybody thinks that all we're working on down here is Vietnam.

We've been working on these problems, and now we are at a position to begin to harvest on the grain.

It's what we need, what we really need from you.

And frankly, we have a great audience.

So we just need some understanding of the fact that

One, that we're doing the hell of a lot more than we do the service.

Two, that it would not serve our own goal to tell everybody what we're doing.

Because when you're dealing with these nationalitarians, Tom Henry, tell them about what you're talking about with the Russians.

They did one thing on a sometimes sweet little thing or something.

We've developed a conversation on it.

That's what makes them.

You know, .

Now they, they may be meticulous about keeping things secret.

And once something leaked out because we showed one of our memoranda to the bureaucracy.

And a brilliant camp steaming

The other thing about Saul, they knew this was coming out, and we knew it was coming out, and they were, they made public statements that would indicate they weren't doing a damn thing.

They have a passion for secrecy, so that's one of the reasons, John, we've got to be secret.

January 9th of this year, I made the first offer.

Now, of course, there's been happening around, but we finally came down to the understanding.

Now, how much, as we go along, as we go along on both sides, and as we go along, and hopefully maybe sometime on Vietnam, that negotiating, we will know.

But we want to keep you posted and others posted and consulted and everything all the way along.

And of course, if you ever get to the treaty point, we'll have senators along, you know.

But I think that sometimes there is...

I think Teddy Kennedy talked the other day with his brother-in-law, where he said, well, that the president really doesn't want to have the war.

He wants to prolong it until next year, get the political benefit.

Well, now, you know how silly that is.

So what I want to know, I want you to know, is that we appreciate your understanding of the problem, that we've worked on this thing, and we may have, we may have,

be heard of course this year and next year the most significant progress on the issues with russia with china vietnam right that's certain hell if anybody's right money knows that vietnam was going to be it's just a question of how and what we're able to work out and uh how soon

Uh, the others, the others, nobody is, uh, nobody, no other administration.

So we need some understanding and we need some support.

And that's really what I wanted to say.

You know, you don't see me over and just pick the charter.

I mean, they, they asked me all the time.

Oh, but I can say this, you know, I'm trying, but I'm just saying, I won't make no mistakes.

It's clear in your eyes, but when I'm going abroad, seeing these people, I never need to press conference for that.

Up here, I understand in our committee that the more we should do this, we can't know everything.

We know the trends, but we can't know every detail.

I said this before I went to the National Mastery of Resolution.

I didn't want to have all these things

My speech was heard.

I said, we're talking about the development of the policies.

These are taking place.

This situation in Europe is part of the policy we're developing.

I start to say, I like Senator Fulbright.

I'm not sure if I do or not, since I've been in next to him.

He's a very negative man now.

He still says, here's the deal now.

He doesn't think anything's good.

Now you say, how about that?

Asian Development Bank for two or three years.

And Rogers came up to talk about the policy, and he said, you're just like Kesson back when I spoke with him.

He's not at all.

Nobody knows who he is.

And he just talked to you.

And he said, we ought to know every, every, everything.

But I understand we can't know everything.

We know what the general trends are.

That's the point.

And I think most people in there, where our report came out yesterday night,

He gave a statement which I hope they may use, in which they asked me if I was going to appear to be about to meet on isolation.

I said, no.

And then I did point out all these things that had taken place.

And I said, Mr. Chief, there's a tension in Missouri because of the preoccupation with unnamed all these things.

So I hope you could also, if we have to take into consideration, even though we want to make progress,

Both the USSR and China, they are not, remain free in their efforts to achieve the greatest economic strength and perhaps military strength at all.

Their goals are not China's.

They both, we have no reason to complain about it.

We just have to recognize it.

I'll take a minute to the camera.

You give the camera what I think that is.

Ready to concentrate.

She's been there long enough.

They haven't done enough.

They'll get up.

They should have done more long time ago.

Other than that, I think they have done more in the last couple of years.

You know, I went there to Easter.

He was the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He had some of the same problems we have here.

It was a reaction against the military, not considered socially acceptable.

Now, a lot of young people pick up the military career and they're having a tough time.

He said, well, certainly there's a problem.

I'd agree with him, but this thing's gonna come up again sometime.

And I think there's too much progress to be made too quickly, you know?

What I do think is the thing that you're hanging on more than anything else is about the page.

Now, if something could be done about that, I know there are certain arrangements,

That is a thing which they can continually talk about.

There is a lot of caution that's just not easy to be able to get the rest of the country to want Germany to have any more troops.

Yeah, that's a fact.

It's scary.

But if they could do something more to reduce whatever impact our forces have on the balance of payment, I think that's the most effective thing.

Guard against the other one, please.

We're going to see Brant.

You want to come again?

All right.

Hello, Brant.

Yes, Tim.

Put him on the list.

Could you cover the whereabouts?

I don't know.

I won't count it.

I'm juicy.

I'm being rare, you see.

I'm up in the business.

I'm juicy.

I'm active this time.

I didn't say it didn't work.

That, I think, is what it is.

you could get something, some kind of device, something where they could do more with that.

I think that would reduce the argument there.

But we're going to work on it again.

We're working on it.

Let me turn it over to Vietnam.

The

I mean, he'd be very, very blunt about it, very honest about it.

If I thought, John, that there was no reasonable chance, and I'm using words very carefully, no reasonable chance for a negotiated end of the war, I wouldn't care what the Senate did or the Congress did on a date.

I'd set it myself.

As far as a reasonable chance is

as concerned uh it will evaporate within a matter of months not too long because you see our troop levels as you know as we sit here today they're half of what they were when we came in and they'll be a few thirds of what they were by by november and with the in december first statement announcement but right now john we're at the critical stage they're either

or will not be a possible negotiation.

When I say I don't mean to say that I consider the chance better than 50-50, but I do not consider it to be minimal.

In the last few years, it was minimal.

At the present time, I can say that there is a chance.

All that we really want is the time to run that chance off.

Now, and we must negotiate, not simply withdrawal for prisoners of war.

For God's sakes, if we did that, that would bring a new balance of our forces there.

How do they have that?

How do you protect them?

What about, and also, what about the Soviet needs and their ability to survive, even some chance to survive?

That could all go down the tube.

But I'm simply saying that that reasonable chance, and that first, there is a reasonable chance.

I will not be over-optimistic.

We are running that chance up.

Negotiations are being pursued in all channels, all channels.

And when fellows like Clifford come back and make jackass statements to the inspector, this and that, hell, we talking to them.

It's everybody, you know what I mean?

We don't, but don't worry.

The thing that would hurt us very much at this point

is to have some action taken by the Senate, even though it was reversed by the House or modified by the Congress, which would in effect say to the other people at a time that they are at least considering a possible negotiation.

And at a time to say to them, look, forget it.

They snuck out that reasonable chance.

When the time comes that there is no reasonable chance, I'll tell you this.

And I'll be very honest with you, because I don't want to, we don't want to play the game.

Just as soon, John, you can be sure, as I feel, first, as soon as I think we can make an announcement with regard to the date of our final withdrawal and so forth, I will make this.

I'm going to get the damn issue out of the way.

provided that that announcement is made consistent with our objectives, it must not be made if it destroys the reasonable chance to negotiate, and it must not be made if it imperils either our remaining forces, imperils our financial goal that completely destroys it, and imperils, of course, the U.S.

But that's really where it stands.

And I think that, I understand the, I understand the failure of senators and congressmen.

They're sick of the war, they want it over with.

I understand that a lot of them are smart enough to know that we are going to bring it to an end.

And they want to be in on the bandwagon.

And I appreciate that.

We'll let them in on the proper time.

And I understand, too, that a lot of them think they know better than we do as to what ought to be done.

But the point is that you can only have, in a delicate situation like this, one man calling the signals.

You're dealing with the top attorneys.

And if we start to flee, if they want to jerk the rug out from under us,

I wouldn't do it if I were a communist.

Well, now, that's where you're going to stand.

I...

But I thought I would agree.

And then John Garner, he came forward, and also Mark Hatton, because it was a perfect point.

They say, of course, it's immoral at every date to keep this American boy alive in order to kill him all.

So after January 1st, Gab was responsible to kill him.

I said, John, why don't you tell them about that?

What's the war going on over there?

You see, they're saying they're killing all the rest of these people, and there's some kind of moral responsibility about them too.

They're gonna keep killing all those other people.

The crazy thing is that the most important thing to happen, I have no idea whether there can be a change, but I just think that the whole idea of getting something for Vietnam out of Cambodia now, it's in the boat with the other.

Laos has two brothers-in-law who've been splitting each other for years, and I don't know too much about them.

I understand people do support this government, but there's really no reason why other countries wouldn't want to have an end to this government.

I don't want to see ourselves together with Vietnam.

It might end up being the butt of this whole situation.

It's the only other country.

efforts should be made to revive it.

And I don't know where you're getting at with that.

But let me.

You want me to say what I think?

Sure.

At some point, and this is the unknown, you're the president.

You're going, I'll go ahead and all I have to do is talk to everybody, sit down and stand and get a couple of them up on the stage.

But our intention is to remove all our voices from

Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos.

It would appear to me that other countries, whether our friends or enemies, they were not going to make any efforts to get us out of this moment.

I think we're going to stay there because we can't.

England's journey, I was there.

They were very, they were very busy.

there and all these problems with their students out in the world.

On the other hand, they're kind of locked in.

But I don't think they'll get in anyway, as long as they're going to stay there.

They can.

They're going to accomplish what they're going to do.

So I... You do want to carry that statement.

At least a dick.

That has some appeal.

Oh, I know, of course.

Oh, we know.

We're getting out.

We're not killing any more American boys.

That has some appeal.

We're killing the other people.

So that obviously changed everything.

To say that if we haven't got the privilege of war, at least 60 dead

He said, of course, you have another six days.

Congress should do what it wants to.

They've been saying, well, this Britain war thing is a cynical thing.

They don't know what to say.

Well, I felt happy about it.

I said, well, that's what I want to say to you.

You're saying the same thing as your governor said.

It's something for our committee.

We'll decide whether we put you on Congress or not.

And so they are doing the same thing that they did to some youth.

I had seven lawyers come and see me, and I got the paperwork.

I had Kentucky, one from New York, and one from Boston.

They're a very good organization.

They said they're quiet because of what I said.

Until I listened one day, they were really stuck.

I had to use the spiritual words to communicate.

And also, I think this idea of we could ever do it, even though it's not always satisfactory, because we know we're gonna make a settlement and it's gonna be over-satisfactory to anyone.

I think then, this whole question of moving out, we could move out feeling that we had a country

We had a bedroom.

Parents are still fighting, still with each other.

And a few people are upset that it's true.

Well, not true.

I hope you're forgiven for trying to please my...

But I do think about it.

And I keep studying this business all the time.

And I don't really care.

You don't think so?

No.

They did.

In fact, they did.

I don't know if I should have proceeded, but I have to tell you all the truth, and I'm not violating any conference, but I am talking about the death letter.

In fact, they originally did it.

They introduced it, and I'm going to make it live.

That's right.

I see.

Yeah, I know.

It's a letter to me.

I see it.

How many holes before I forget if you went through all of this, Senator?

But on this, I think the whole proposition of a regional settlement has an artist's appeal.

An artist's appeal.

They kicked it around the world themselves for years.

We can blame ourselves for something.

It's that we haven't kept highlighting that enough.

And we better highlight it now.

Because we did propose a settlement in the Geneva-type conference for the neutralization of all of Southeast Asia.

So we are wholeheartedly in accord with this, and we agree with you that the weakness of the McClellan-Hatfield thing is that it's confined to Vietnam.

It doesn't say anything about Cambodia.

It leaves them all hanging.

It leaves them all hanging there.

And we are happy with this.

It says, get out of here.

It's cruel.

Get out.

Well, it's cruel.

The people are running.

And so it's principle that every steps can be indiscreet enough to say

and we ought to take a look at that positive package to try to make it separate.

That's right.

The only way people ever know we've done anything is to do it separately.

We put it in five points.

We don't just say there are five points.

It's a very good point, though.

If this is a kind of an effective group, the lawyers shouldn't have that kind of an effective group by their side.

They've forgotten the error.

It's a very good problem.

And as he says, it's cruel.

It's cruel to the capital agents and the lawyers and the judges because they allow it.

Mr. President, there's increasing sentiment in the House.

I have not heard this from Senators, John, but there's increasing interest in the House in taking your October 7, 1970, statement to NH5 points and expressing those in a positive way and offering that as a substitute for the Ned Z. Whalen Amendment that comes to a vote probably Wednesday.

But there's great interest in taking those points

saying we want to be forced.

And I said, well, talk about the President's October 7th statement.

And they said, well, maybe we can take that rather than that.

They want to be forced to speak.

Maybe we can take that and get it down, hold it down to a very simple

You know what I mean?

I'll work with Clark on that.

We'll give him a chance.

Mr. Nelson called me just before I came in and said this is what he'd like to do, what he would do if you thought of this.

Well, that's what Nelson would be great.

He was going to be defeated, I don't know.

We don't want to compromise.

On the other hand, we've really offered to negotiate a date.

I mean, we're helping.

Mr. President, in fact, we've offered to negotiate everything that's been

And that's circulated in much less harm.

One page.

One page long.

One, two, three, four, five.

Fair enough.

Do you want me to do that?

Yes, sir.

Let's work on that.

I'll try to get John's going.

All right.

So, news, type of thing.

And, uh, some good avoidance.

You want to be forced on me.

But let me just, let me just say, John,

Soviet-American relations and China-American relations.

We are doing more than we can talk about.

Now, I'm not trying to pull your leg.

I'm not trying to keep you from talking.

But I can assure you we are.

And a few things have happened.

I mean, all these things are not accidental.

Now, Vietnam is the toughest.

It's the most certain one.

But it's the toughest and the short one.

But all we're asking is just for the time, as I said, the time to explore what is now not an even chance, but a reasonable chance, a reasonable chance to negotiate.

Is that fair statement?

That's fair.

That's right.

And it's got to be.

We can't negotiate with letters and go into a three-corner.

I will make payments on these things.

I think we can also say this, because the conference will be through.

What happened to Vietnam has to follow a little bit what happened to the Soviet Union.

So there's a slight hindrance in there, but it's not unrelated.

Let's see.

That's where I come again.

Right.

So how's the violence?

Oh, it's okay.

It was a big last time.

As I said, we just cheated.

We won't get out of money.

I think it's going to get on the side.

Whatever you can do.

That can be done.

If you kill it aggressive, it goes to the children.

It's a budgetary matter, you know.

a little cheaper to patent at home than patent for in Europe.

And also, we've got the problem with our securities.

We've got the problem with the central and some of the mid-eights and all of these problems.

The miles of payments is a real issue.

Second, I went to Vienna.

I was there, and I talked to Ambassador Smith.

And I also talked to Paul Ines.

He's got a different viewpoint, you know.

And I wanted to get his viewpoint, too.

I also talked to a man named Grayfield.

I think you're probably right.

Muskie is, for example, he's now the chairman of the subcommittee in our foreign relations committee on arms control.

He's got his manager here.

He's got Cooper and some of the people working in advance.

And, but on the other hand, Muskie is a little more cautious.

Yeah.

Take one moment.

Well, earlier, when I was talking about NATO, I found the Minister of Defense in Rundle.

He's a very amusing fellow.

Well, he said, angry with the Germans.

He told me that they just lied to him.

He said that they promised to do more.

I've got to make this smooth out.

On the Vietnam, as I said, I told you about my position over on the tape.

To be honest, I'm not going to admit to myself that I don't know.

There's something to say about it sometimes, but I'll tell you all about it.

I'll tell you a little bit about what I've talked about this morning, if I can.

I wrote to you about it some months ago.

I did.

I know.

I had to bear with his responsibility.

He told the staff out there, he said, don't worry about it.

But we won't.

And he trusted me.

He sent me there and everything.

Stretch and I gave this to the State Department.

They just before the election.

Mr. Hitch blocked in the minds of Mrs. Gandy and their

They got it in their head that we were trying to influence the election.

Huh.

And I said, that's going to get out of that election and go all along.

I said, it's an absolute big question.

We need to run through it.

And I said, we're going to have to prove it.

They said some of the staff at the embassy were mixing too much of it up on the opposition party.

And I said, that's what they're doing.

They're talking to everybody.

Roger, I'm not repeating a thing yet.

We can, we should, we believe in it, but perhaps they don't know.

Maybe it was the IAEA.

Oh, I'll... And finally, Joseph Fitches, the second American businessman.

I'm going to say, he's an American businessman.

He's pretty hard-headed.

And they're not going to...

I can tell you on Indian icebergs, hell, we were standing miles away from it because there was no one to choose from.

Good.

I'll tell you what, because what they're really, what they are, we're standing out.

We aren't.

It's not bad.

I'm not having fun with it.

I'm going to get Mike down for next week for breakfast again.