On June 12, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:32 am to 11:11 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 518-003 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Mr. President, uh, Li Dazhou is on the way west.
He's stopping and peaking in Moscow.
He's allegedly going to the East.
German party conquerors.
He's not at the meeting.
He's stopping and peaking in Paris and Moscow.
The CIA, with its usual acumen, says it doesn't mean anything because Ledouin was just in Peking.
So they can't have anything to talk about.
That's great.
This is as close as Lidocto never shows up.
They may say no, Mr. President.
You think he'll show up at your conference?
Certain.
Almost certain.
Eighty percent.
If not, he'll show up there to give them instructions.
That's very good that he's going to Peking.
But he is going through Peking and Moscow.
Lee Duk To is the third man in the hierarchy there.
The only man who can take independent decisions of negotiations.
He travels only when there are crucial matters.
He was there for the bombing halt and he was there for the...
He was there for the early discussions with
Uh, until the fall of Fionnuala.
And then he left.
You remember those meetings we had in the spring of, uh, of 70?
We are in the same area.
And he is formidable.
Yeah.
Just thinking about it, I think that we have...
And you say Johnson's was nothing compared to this, because Christ Almighty, at least he didn't have it within his administration.
Before the meeting, while Gardner left, he never said anything.
He was the secretary of EGW.
My God, he got it, you know.
But the way these people are rushing around, I think it's unbelievable.
Yes.
But I actually think that Clifford... You don't think it's getting through?
No, Mr. President.
I really believe
What's he come up to?
Is he trying to work?
Is he trying to refer to why?
Is that it?
Yeah.
But, Mr. President, the North Vietnamese will lead up to on the move.
Sure, they're trying to draw blood, and they're trying to see whether they can trigger us into making concessions before he gets there.
Very good.
He does not have anything.
I will bet my bottom dollar on it that he has nothing of any significance.
He may have some Delphic hints by some low-level guy.
He says they don't do business that way.
I don't know what they're trying to do.
They are going to do something that they don't, they want to do it through somebody else.
In other words, not let us do it.
There's always that slight possibility, Mr. President, but even then, we're not in a bad position because we can say on May 31st, we made this proposal.
And we've got him out blank that if they're screwing us, you can say,
that whenever you decide that this thing isn't getting anywhere, you can decide on May 31st on the highest level.
We made this proposal.
While it was under consideration in Hanoi, we were forced and Clifford came in with his variation of it.
You can use it either as an example of independent negotiation by Clifford or as an example of
of Hanoi's treachery.
I think we've got them outmaneuvered, but my impression is with the prayers, I saw Henry Hubbard and Schecter yesterday, and I took a very tough line.
I said, I reminded them that on March 23rd, after hours, when they were all sneering at us on the patio of my office in San Clemente, I expressed your conviction and my conviction that
There might be negotiations this year.
And at that time, everyone was saying negotiations were senseless.
All that's left to do is to get out.
I said to them, do you people really believe that we're missing a bet?
Do you really believe we don't look into all these things?
If you do, I said, I admit it.
We won't give you any facts.
We won't confirm or deny anything.
And if you're right that we're missing them, it even helps what we're trying to do.
so you just go ahead and write it.
I'm not going to negotiate publicly with them.
They were really shaking.
They didn't know what to do.
Because, on the one hand, they had this...
I mean, after all, it isn't plausible that we who... No one has talked more about negotiations than you or I in my background this year.
This is not a Johnson phenomenon.
And I don't think they're going to, they haven't hit us in the press very much.
In fact, they haven't hit us at all.
Even the Washington Post had a very ambiguous editorial yesterday, which for it was really quite moderate.
They said both are wrong, both Clifford and we.
Well, that's pretty good for them.
Why is he moderate?
Well, because he...
was implying that there was a solution without giving it.
We were wrong by refusing to recognize that there may be movement.
Hell, if there's movement, we produce this.
We will be able to show that this phrase of swan's way about you was a direct outgrowth.
You remember I spotted it before they even saw it and told you that this is an answer to what we said to them on May 31st.
I really think we have, we have a fighting chance now for a serious negotiation this summer.
Lee Doctoe wouldn't be there unless they really wanted to look it over.
He may say no, as he did in March.
But then we have to decide how to do it, Mr. President, whether
I really believe... You just can't keep running over there.
No, no, I can't do it.
That's... And what if we can't do it without you speaking?
We could do it if we... Well, I've worked out... We've got to have some of you.
We can't just continue to do this.
No, no, no.
The choice we have to make is... Internally, I've worked out a way now by which I can get over there with great safety.
The British have a courier plane that lands at an RAF base.
And they will take me any time I want to go, so we don't have to use American planes.
And they are absolutely secure.
I might have to go once more, or at most twice more to get it done.
The question we have to decide is whether we should let Bruce service it, or whether we should get you to write a letter.
My strong instinct is, Mr. President, that if there is, that you do it.
This is what I meant.
That's the decision we have to make.
Well, that's why I think, Mr. President, that as soon as we know a serious negotiation is starting, you have to get out in front and break the deadlock.
or make something, do something that breaks the deadline.
And that can be easily arranged.
I think that's better than just letting it trickle out in Paris.
I think, Mr. President, that if there is going to be an agreement, and there isn't one,
It will come this summer.
That's the funny thing.
That's always the theory you have.
Well, I've always had the theory, but I think the Vietnamese elections are helping us.
What's your view of the big man key deal I noticed in the paper this morning?
They actually made a deal.
They said that they had made a deal.
I don't know.
Maybe it's true.
Well, my view of this is... Well, I'll put it over there, but I want them to really ride our animals, bastards, and let them all in and get in.
My view of the Bickman-Key deal is that it gives the opposition to Chew a viable combination, but that Chew almost certainly will win.
I suppose they will.
I'm with the President.
If Key is actually a friend of ours, Key behaved with great dignity on the occasion that I saw him to turn on this trade.
Big man is just a gun.
Big man is just a front man.
Yeah.
And so I would think that if we get our deal, and if that Jew is defeated in the election, so be it.
It's the major thing.
But I don't think that will happen.
But it does happen.
What is your one couple of years?
What's your, any judgment on the Cambodian action that was there trying to build that up in terms of time?
Well, uh... How significant is it?
Well, it's significant in the sense that... Not significant to the present?
No.
But, uh, it's significant in the sense that the stamp, that the death of Tree obviously kept us from knocking them out in that area.
And that may have been the worst loss, because we did gain in lands on 719 60 to 80 percent of what we wanted, but at the tree's death, as I told you then, that Cambodian operation just teed it out.
I don't think they're going to topple the situation there.
What they're trying to do is to create, reconstitute the sanctuaries based on a northern supply route this time.
And that's that I think they're in the process of.
But another problem, of course, is another one reason for it is that Hugh is economizing his forces now because of the election.
You know, one thing about it, I can see this problem there because of our chemistry down there.
They're running between 200 and 300 every week.
Our casualties, I didn't want to tell you, Mr. President, but our casualties this week through Thursday night, we only had four dead.
So unless they are going to use this to carry a few more missing in action, and unless on Friday and Saturday they went away...
They run through Saturday.
They run through Saturday, then they compile them Sunday, they get the first thing Monday.
But they're not...
Well, we might get it around 15 at the present rate.
Continued.
Continued, got it too much later.
Well, it was so good to happen to come out on the day of the China thing.
It was on the two networks.
But I think we can ride it next week, Mr. Platt.
Very good.
Does any of you know who that jackass West Pointer is that made a big pass on himself by the owner of Stockholms?
Can you see that in the picture?
A picture of a Westpider who left his artillery unit in Germany with his wife and child and went over to Stockholm.
And you may not know that, but he said that he did it because he was in the army more than the first ones.
Really?
What the hell was he in it for?
But that's just one of those exceptions.
There are bad Westpiders.
Oh, yeah.
I think, Mr. President, we have the one thing.
I hate to keep bringing it up, and I'll write you a memo because you don't want to discuss it now, but the Middle East really is again getting screwed up, and I think they've done too many things that, in my view, will produce an explosion, and they've cut off now.
The airplanes are being cut off to Israel at the end of this month, which is going to produce an explosion among the Jewish leaders here.
and all of this for no discernible objective, but you may want to address that later this next week.
It's not something to worry about.
Well, Mr. President, what they've done on this U.S. is just screw it up in such an unbelievable way.
I had it all set so that after that lock, you'd write a letter to call the mayor.
and she was going to make some additional concessions to you, which we could have taken to the Egyptians as proving that you could get things out of the Israelis.
What I didn't count on was the vanity of these people in state.
They went over to the Egyptians.
Instead of presenting the Israeli class and forcing them to react to that, they never presented any class and started dickering with the Egyptians on their own.
Then our charge in Cairo submitted a written plan, submitted a written unsigned plan, which the Egyptians have now adopted, which in effect, instead of an interim settlement, ties the interim settlement to the Israelis withdrawing from all of Sinai, which they have already rejected and separated.
The Israelis don't know yet that we've submitted this piece of paper.
But as soon as that surfaces, which it will because the Egyptians have already proposed it,
We'll be at the same deadlock as we were at the end of February.
And then they're going to come in here and ask you to cut off economic and military aid to Israel.
But I don't...
The thing we need for the next two months is quiet because we don't want to get the Russians lining up with the Egyptians and get everybody steaming up with the Pygmy East crisis.
And...
I think we should just slow that process down a little bit for the next two or three months.
And not get so much out front.
Frankly, I think we have two ways we should have done it either the way I suggested by working out a game with the Israelis or to do it together with the Soviets.
It has to be brokering around without objective and
Floating plan after plan, which puts us right into the middle of it.
It's going to... Scotland now is to keep the Middle East from blowing up until the end of August.
If we can get the other things going, then they will play back on the Middle East.
Yeah, of course.
Well, and in terms of trying to... Our Soviet is concerned very much with the problem.
If they come back, you know what I mean?
I'm speaking of the summit.
They come back on that.
Have him come in and offer it to me.
Yes.
But the summit is easy.
It's easy because he just comes in and says, I directed my government to invite you.
I just told everybody.
I'm just going to go that way.
I should be.
And that doesn't involve me at all.
It doesn't have to be done.
What I mean, I think you would suggest that we do that.
I guess we could do that, I think.
Your thought is that when you're there, you should send a message.
You see, how do we get Bill for us?
I think once I'm on the way, you might tell Bill that Yaya offered to arrange for me to talk to the Chinese when I'm there.
and then blame, you know, just say I improvised everything once I got there.
My impression of Bill is that he doesn't give a damn what I do as long as I don't get any credit for it.
And for what we could still
consider it.
It depends on what the Russian game is.
If the Russians don't have a summit, then we would just announce a Chinese summit and we wouldn't have to explain how it was arranged.
We would just say, as a result of high-level contacts, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai has... No, I think it's Bill O'Connor.
Yes, you just said it.
We can tell Bill, but
You should say that when you were there, you saw the Chinese.
You don't talk about seeing Joe and mine or anything, or does she have to do that?
I don't think that Bill cares as long as we don't let it out.
And we've now proved to have solved them.
I can't say that when you got in at Yaya, I said, Joe and I would like to see you here if you want to resolve it.
That's right.
You leave, I guess the thing you do is you say that you're going to Pakistan.
Yaya was very anxious for you to see him.
I'll say, well, you're there.
And then it develops beyond that.
And I say, well, I'll go ahead.
Right.
And then it comes from there.
You know, there's not that much good going on.
That's the problem.
If we don't have to sum it right away, then we can announce a mission of Bruce and have to sum it, emerge out of that.
or announce in principle that we are accepting the summit and sending Bruce in the interim.
We have a Russian summit.
There's something to be said not to announce the Chinese summit before you've been in Moscow.
We've had Bruce there before.
No, my suggestion would be to wait.
Have nothing to announce?
No, no, we have to have something.
I don't think the Chinese are going to stand still for half an hour.
No, no, they'll insist on announcing something.
Therefore, my recommendation would be that we announce, say, early first week of August, that as a result of high-level contacts between the Chinese People's Republic, you have decided to present Ambassador DeBruse as a special envoy to Peking.
Whatever the date is, the visit would be... We just explained that, Phil, in terms of...
And Bruce goes in the middle of October.
I will have it all arranged with Drew and Lye, or whoever, that after Bruce's return, which would then be the first week of November, say, announce the summit.
Now, if they want more than that, which they may, then we may have to say that
They have invited you to Peking.
You have accepted in principle.
But in order to pave the way, you're sending brutes.
It'd be a little better if we didn't drive the Russians straight up the wall.
If there is a summit.
We'll worry about it.
The brutes alone is going to worry them.
The Russians are not aware of the fact that we could turn towards the Chinese.
They must be aware of it.
They can't possibly be aware of the magnitude of it at this point.
They just wouldn't believe it.
Mr. President, what we are doing with the Chinese is so daring on our side and on their side.
They've been negotiating.
Dobrynin told me you'll see it in the memorandum that's coming in to you.
Dobrynin told me that their ambassador there never sees anybody higher than a deputy foreign minister.
They've had
a border negotiation going on for two and a half years.
I don't think any Soviet person except Kosykin has seen Joe in life in two years.
So the idea that you might go to Peking and that we might have talks at this level, cutting through all this stuff, to bring in and ask me whether Korchesko is carrying a message for us around the Republic.
I said, I said, I did not say it that way.
I said, you know, Anatole, you're an experienced diplomat.
What can you really say to a third party?
And he said, that's right.
He doesn't believe you.
But that's good.
You just got to worry.
And I sent a half-assed message to Khrushchev, to Khrushchev.
That's in order not to make the Romanians lose face or wonder why the hell we've suddenly dropped them.
But the Chinese are really rough.
They've now published a communique strongly supporting Romania and Yugoslavia.
They're really kicking the Russians.
See, the way this might start out, the Russians could continue to put it to us because of the upcoming election.
I have this in mind.
and not want to go forward on a lot of things.
If they do, then we turn right on ours.
And we also make a straighter deal with the Chinese.
And we play it right out.
They'll give us a pause.
They see the United States with the $800 million Chinese.
That'll scare them a little bit.
The main thing is we have to keep the Middle East quiet as far as the Russians are concerned for the rest of the summer.
If you see Toprega,
And if you then make a deal with Brezhnev, which we both enforce, that's one thing.
But we can't piddle it away on the Cisco level and have a premature crisis.
And the Russians won't dare to turn you down when it's all said and done.
Kosygin gave a fairly hard speech, but Gourney made a very gentle one.
Brezhnev made an even gentler one.
They both, Kosygin didn't make much reference to the salt that both Podgorny and Dresden did.
See, Kosygin dropped one notch in the hierarchy, and he may be wanting to line up the hard liners against Dresden.
It's a bunch of, you know, everyone always said he's a soft liner.
Yeah.
But they're cut loads.
They're using whatever is present at the top.
Getting back to this Clifford Gardner, et cetera, I know this Gardner was on.
Yeah, I saw him.
But after all, he does not know a goddamn thing about Vietnam.
Or about anything else.
At least education.
It gives him some thought to, but for him to say he
that you might still be there ten years from now.
That is so.
I told these guys yesterday from the press, I said, we've withdrawn steadily for two years.
We've never lowered the withdrawal rate.
We've never stopped withdrawing.
What do you really think?
Well, like when I told Cooper, I said, now, John, you know damn well what the situation's going to be next year, don't you?
I said, you're our opponents now.
They just want to get on board.
That's it.
They know damn well where we are.
I see now, Mr. President, why they couldn't come to the meeting.
Because there's the East on the 20th of the 13th or the 20th.
Because there's the East Truman Party Congress from the 14th to the 23rd.
So once we undoubtedly will be there to talk to the doctor.
And so the 26th is the earliest they could possibly be there.
So the reaction of this Cambodian thing, are we doing adequately there?
Is it part of the possible flare that's holding back the airstrikes?
No, the real problem is that McVie is just not on top of its job, either because Laird has a private deal with Abrams or because Abrams has just quit.
They're not making that extra special effort, Mr. President, that makes the difference between success and failure.
I think that is one of the major problems.
Just sitting out there under the breakfast, sir.
I agree with you.
I think that is one of the big problems that we are just not... Yeah.
I just have an instinct that we...
I don't know whether we'll make it, but this is as close as we've ever been.
It's less, it's still far, it's at best one in three, Mr. President.
I don't want to mislead you, but...
But nevertheless, there's a chance.
There's a chance.
There has never been before.
So we'll see how these people will... You can be sure, too, that there is thinking...
If we are ruthless enough, if we don't let them get off the hook again,
Because that's the mistake we made after October 7th.
Now that I look back, I was part of the mistake.
We shouldn't have made the speech, but instead then of wallowing in their approbation, we should have reminded the country that these were the guys who were rioting against us, who were encouraging them and against whose opposition we got to that point.
Instead of letting them... We're working on the five point summary of that prayer.
That's going to be done by Monday morning.
That'll be good.
That'll be good.
And by God's grace, I just think people don't know what to pray for you.
No, they're...
It's the defeat wish that they have in their hearts.
And not just defeat.
Vietnam's defeat for us.
Oh, yes.
But if one compares, Mr. President, the situation in April with the situation today...
I just feel that the press is uncertain.
I'm worried because it's been made uncertain, not by this, but by China.
China and so on.
So, sure.
That must worry lousy dirty bastards.
There's just no reason.
Why should... You know they're worried.
The point is, it's like I started with those NBC people.
I knew they were all cowardly bastards.
That's not true.
I said, I don't agree.
I said, look, let me tell you something.
I said, do you realize that in every place I have over the opposition of 90% of the people in the working press, I said, the fuck are you here?
I said, I have counted your support in six days.
God, they were really stuck in line talking.
Nobody ever had it.
This is the real thing that worries your fellows in the press.
You don't ever get the impression that they're really thinking about the country.
They aren't.
Oh, they aren't real.
Basically, they're thinking more.
They have a morbid, pathological fear that we might do this.
That's what it is.
They would rather see me lose than see the country win.
I believe this.
I believe this very constantly.
Don't you, Grace?
You talk long enough for you to succeed.
If you didn't rush into soft talk, who disregarded every single success, who's behaved toughly, who went into Cambodia, if all of this should culminate into success, they'd be wiped out, not just politically, but intellectually.
I mean, then anybody can go to the undergraduates.
And isn't that, then, too, the problem that they have when they come whining in here and saying, look, look, the church,
He wanted to share this responsibility.
Why doesn't he share this great burden with us?
Balls.
They never want to share it when it's tough.
That's right.
They don't want to share it when it's good.
That's right, Mr. President.
That's just basically the letter to the bureaucracy.
Yes, that son of a bitch, Bundy, has written a letter.
I'm sending it in to you because there are a few quotes in it which we can use against him in which he's sort of oilily flattering you for your historic achievement but saying, unfortunately, no one goes along with it.
Therefore, you should make a partnership with Congress.
I'm just letting you see it.
What?
What achievement?
In Vietnam.
Fundy is just positioning himself so that he can get an appointment in a new administration.
I don't get it.
None of these people are going to get anything.
We survived this.
Listen, they made it through.
I mean, I've got it all set up, too.
I'm having a smell and work like crazy.
This whole bunch of people don't, too.
And I mean, I'm not going to be, if there's any doubt about where they are in it, and that includes the business types.
These business types that have sucked around the wrong side of this side, out.
No, perhaps all the rest, you've got to build a new establishment in this country.
It's got to be done.
These people have lost their character, and they are not fit to run the country.
I agree.
We will get the opportunity.
You can't work with them.
Well, Mr. President, if we bring off...
Yesterday, Harriman, for example, testified before some House committee, and I saw the testimony.
We're just going to wipe them out because he praises you for your China policy and for some other things, and he criticizes you for screwing up the Berlin negotiations.
We're going to have those solved in three months.
And...
They literally will have nothing left to talk about in foreign policy unless the Middle East blows up on us.
But if we do these other things, well, we can overpower the Middle East.
Well, they make no mistake about that.
They're the motivation of the press and the Democratic Party and some Republican politicians.
They're their primary obsession, sir.
And they cannot abide the fact that we are succeeding the China thing.
I mean, they all have, they can't knock it, but they all, but they all, they'll be goddamned, ex-Salt II.
You know, listen, this is happening with the Kennedy.
They'd still be talking about Salt, Congressman.
Fuck.
Mr. Greger, they wouldn't have known how to get from here to there.
If they had wanted to do it, they would have stopped ABM.
When it's now that we have reached this point, you would have seen them up there talking.
All the disarmers saying what a great achievement, this voice is this great.
They said it for one day and then they shut up.
They said it for about two weeks in their defense.
Nothing like the Hosannas that they would have given to Kennedy.
Grrr!
Come on.