Nixon, Haldeman & Butterfield on William P. Rogers and Middle East policy

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masak masak masak

hai hai hai hai hai hai

30%.

Oh, that's not serious, but there's such a good chance of good weather.

Well, there's just a chance of good weather.

You don't have to move fast, do you?

Watch that.

I said I don't have to move fast.

They're going to decide in a minute, right?

How can they decide in a minute?

Behold, if you just go ahead outside, you can't move this side.

The problem is that the flowers and all that, I guess, is the insanity.

Well, if you have a common heart, that's right.

You start to decide, you know, it's 11.20 now, you can't decide on the basis of this weather.

It's a little before, but it isn't going to rain.

It doesn't rain for hours.

Rain 15 or 20 minutes or so.

It's fine, really fine.

Well, it's much better out there.

You really haven't did it, sis.

It's much better.

It has a certain range, but I think there's no risk.

And is it necessary to lay it?

No problem.

I'm sure the flowers have some problems.

It means for rain.

Okay, but it doesn't look like rain.

There aren't any black clouds.

It's a beautiful rain.

It's an overcast night.

All the weather experts that can be mobilized are studying.

Studying the situation as early as it's ever been studied.

That's an exceptional and beautiful ceremony.

I appreciate it.

We'll throw that out from various ceremonies.

That's real.

Much better than what we just saw.

Thank you.

That's what we did with ours.

We didn't... We wrote our own ceremony, took it over reeds, and didn't use it.

I thought that was a lot of work.

I don't know why I didn't use it.

I kind of paraphrased it.

I saw it in the police code, and I wrote it up.

Great job on this whole thing.

She's... She's appreciate it exactly right, step by step.

It's been done.

Great dignity.

We've gotten...

I haven't heard one.

But it wasn't there.

Yes, it was.

Both of them created big services.

The jeep.

Well, this has been played down.

What, what, there's, what, the, the, the zazazon has been forced upon us, more or less, from outside, rather than generated from inside.

It's not been exploited at all.

It's been permitted.

The main point is the pictures made it so cool.

Yeah.

It is not, you know, self-deprecating the credits made the bashes come after her.

It's very much the lesson for us, Bob.

A little more scarce.

I think that that policy would be bizarre if

... ... ... ... ... ... ...

I need to do some more, but I'm getting it.

I'm getting more parts that I may hurt in each one.

I haven't really gotten into the other one.

The other one doesn't tell you very much.

But I'll tell you what this one tells you.

A lot of it is clear to me at least.

It's the single greatest opportunity we have by a

Thousand mile margin is drugs.

Is it?

Mm-hmm.

And I'm just totally convinced that the more I look at it, it's what bothers people.

It cuts across all the segments of the population.

It isn't controversial at all in the sense of there's nobody who's for drugs.

Nobody.

So, nothing happens, really.

Oh, hell, a lot.

That's why the marijuana answer was good.

I mean, let's face it.

You know, if you were to pull our people out, you could hear again.

At Choshoe, with children, there's about 20% only that would go.

They're overlooked in the drug field.

But if you go down to Eastern, I mean, if you take Garmin, Price, Sapphire, so forth, see, they'd be living in New York.

New York is probably 8% are really lacking in marijuana.

Because, you know, it's a thing.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know a lot.

You know the industry.

Well, I'm not going to put any other, other stuff.

Let me come around to the intellectuals.

Take the IDD schools.

It'll be 80%.

Okay.

It's another thing because our kids have been exposed to it.

Now they have time.

I know.

Now that's my point.

I know.

That on this continent, we're right on that issue.

We've got to be hard.

You can't screw around.

We've got to be right.

It's a chance to do something.

You know you're doing the right thing.

You know that drugs are wrong.

Fight it and do something about it.

Fight it hard.

And you fight it.

You're fighting organized crime.

You're making exactly the right enemies.

The mafia, the dilettantes, the State Department, that's right.

We can't do it on Bill.

Bill is just scared to death on this ambassador, meaning we might offend some of the God-man countries.

We can't offend them the first time around.

But I think we've got to, at some point, be ready to offend, suspend diplomatic relations, and banter, go to war against them.

That's right.

We have to.

That's right.

It's pretty interesting.

Bill's problem is being secretary of state.

I'm trying to reflection on you.

I think

that he, he has an enormous capability of intelligence.

And yet, Bob, he just can't help but think only, and almost, earlier when I was talking about it, earlier, and he, he, he's become, to me, that the Secretary of State must not be the deputy with the superpowers.

And Bill just can't bring himself to

Everything is a, well, how are we going to look?

I mean, it's a goddamn thing.

Why is that thing so supposed to be a maze?

Because he basically is a patsy for buttering up, and those guys are good at buttering up.

Yeah, in that case, they're butter-upers.

If you build up their secretariat, they can figure it out and capture it.

And, you know, what they have over here, they know that I'm getting away with it, so I, because I treat

That's the way Alex Johnson sits in here in all of the foreign services dedicated to you, Mr. President.

I wish you all the best.

You've had one bucket that you can go through.

That's gross.

Well, Bill Sanders talked to... No, you don't want to get into this area.

He left to talk with you.

I'm a Jew, right?

Well, he has been going through the intelligence stuff.

And the gables and what's happening and all that.

He is at a point where he's concerned that he doesn't think he knows what's being done.

He probably did, but he doesn't think he did.

And he thinks we're Henry's out of town.

He's talked to Henry about it.

He's been after Henry a lot too.

No, Henry's talked to Henry about it.

Well, it's...

It's racial both ways.

And he asked for the meeting with Henry yesterday, which I was only a couple minutes up, but he was pumping Henry on, and hey, on what they do.

But his point is that the Jewish community here, he argues, has been told to lay off of us on Vietnam, and they have.

They can really get rough if they swim around, and he's afraid of that.

Point one.

Point two, it's his opinion that it's been obvious from the beginning that the Middle East situation was a foreign loser.

No matter how you went at it, you couldn't win.

His argument is that the whole Jewish press, the Jewish-influenced peddlers and all that, have not pushed hard on Vietnam.

I'd like to know which one.

Except that Yuval Solomon's on our side anyway.

I mean, I just don't, I'm just not sure that he can make it out of the state, Bob.

Mr. President, the second place is in the middle.

Look, look, those are Jews.

The Jewish community are supporting Teddy.

They're supporting Muskies.

They're supporting Humphrey.

All of them are kicking the hell out of them.

They're supporting Tom Collins.

They're supporting Klonsky.

Now what the hell is he talking about?

He's not supposed to have it.

Well, he is.

Henry is meeting with Rabin every two weeks.

And he claims that he

single-handedly by those meetings is keeping them from totally blowing apart.

And that, you know, that's the, he's, that he's keeping his finger in the dike, that he's staying out of everything else, but just putting the pressure there on the basis of that'll keep it from blowing up.

And I don't understand all this.

I haven't read any of the cases.

I don't get it.

That's very normal.

But Mitchell...

He feels so strong about it.

He feels that he's got to sit down and talk to you about it.

And make sure that you know what he knows at least.

And then obviously you've got to make decisions.

To me, his argument now is that Russia says it's out of the ballpark.

That we've gotten to a point now where there's no Russian squeeze on Egypt.

We are squeezing Israel.

And what he's scared to death of is what's going to happen when the aid germinates.

Right.

They were said, and he said that it's intelligently no doubt that the Russians are building up the Egyptians.

That we're stuck in the middle.

Doreen apparently has hit on that question.

Fergus has given the Egyptians an American plan, which the Egyptians have.

Yeah, I know he typed on Egyptian paper and gave them back to us as an Egyptian plan.

The Russians know it and can't understand what's happening.

So, so, well, all right.

The, uh, I don't know if you want to talk to the Irish about it.

Well, I don't know if you want to talk to the Irish about it.

I don't know if you want to talk to the Irish about it.

But he, he's skilled enough to say, look, I, he, let's say, I've got these tables and all that, but I don't understand how he can do it in terms of this.

He says, Bill, he says the President is keeping Henry's history out of this.

Man, can I get that clear, Bob?

Don't tell Rogers that Henry is seeing Rabin.

Right.

Because Henry shouldn't be in every game.

He should not be in this game.

He shouldn't be seeing Rabin.

He's not with Rabin.

I just don't believe that.

But nevertheless...

And he can go in and say, now, where are we?

You better have this in your heart.

I think it's Marshall.

He's concerned.

We'll do that before we sell you any money.

But yes, to learn what our records are.

His conclusion is two things that have to be done.

He thinks you have to keep on giving him a plane or two now and then.

Because you can't use a cutoff that would help to pressure the Israelis.

Also, the Israelis don't speak with one voice.

They're not unified.

Therefore, a squeeze is not going to be productive.

There's a sign.

And the other point is that you should not get into all this wishy-washy stuff.

He says the problem is that there's no one.

In the White House, nobody looking at it for the president.

He thinks you've got to get someone to monitor it for you, not let Rogers make foreign policy in this area, which it wouldn't.

So he doesn't make foreign policy in that area, does he?

Basically, no.

And then John would argue that.

He says Rogers should not, you should, the president should not allow foreign policy.

But by supporting policy, the Secretary of State, Bob, does make foreign policy in other administrations.

That's the problem.

He really is getting down, but he doesn't have confidence.

He doesn't have confidence.

Yeah.

Is that true?

I don't know, but that's true what he gets in.

That's it.

I'll see.

I'll talk to him.

But suppose he tells me all this, then what do I do?

I just say, Henry, get involved in the Middle East down and have a hell of a blowout.

No, he understands that we're going to have a hell of a lot of problems available.

I mean, did you...

I couldn't believe it, though, that...

I can't believe that the state would be so stupid.

Well, first of all, I can't.

Well, now wait, let me leave it at this.

I started the whole thing.

I told him to come up with the list.

They could have said that his list had been approved by the Secretary of Defense, but they had to say Congress too, and Defense.

Everybody was in on this, Steve.

He wasn't Secretary of State.

But I just don't know what the hell's going on.

I'll tell the situation.

Is Bill just a goddamn pathological exposition?

I guess he is.

That's the fact, isn't it?

He had a little bit of business on the phone.

I don't know.

You can't talk about the China thing.

He practically resigned.

He just got to go ahead and do it.

I have a feeling that the only, that what you got to look at is that with you as president, this is different with other presidents, with you as president, nobody else here on the foreign policy, the secretary of state should be a man, a staff man to the president on foreign policy, not the competitor.

Basically, the difficulty is that Rusk was not the right kind of a foreign secretary for Johnson.

Because he didn't tell Johnson.

He let Johnson be.

But Russ would be perfect for me.

Because he'd do what the hell I said.

He'd argue.

But then he'd go out and do it.

So did Elliot Richardson.

Elliot Richardson is great.

Because he would function as a stand man to you.

On the other hand, he would give a tremendous input like the attention.

You've got to realize, Bob, that Henry is going to try.

I kept a chop head down about every three times a day, and I said, now Henry, that won't work, this won't work, you've got to do this and that, and the other thing is, give and take.

The difficulty is that Henry will not.

And Henry and I, it's just, we don't think it can, we don't think it can.

This is the area that I mentioned to Mitchell, I said, are you sure that what information you're getting on all this is right?

Yeah.

He said, no, I'm not.

Can't be.

Yeah.

But I have to feel that what the president's getting is at least not completed.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'll be glad to see you.

But Tom, put it this way.

I think you'd be the broker for the bail.

Can you say it?

Look, Mitchell is very close to this whole situation because of his New York connections.

And of course, you know Bill.

He sits on the 40 committee and the other things.

He's a gentleman.

All he's told you is the president about it.

But he mentions it.

But he, Mitchell, feels he ought to talk to you about it first.

This is a delicate situation because we are not, the president is not, he's leaving this to Bill, and he's not doing, you know, he's keeping, he's basically reducing your operation out of it, see?

For reasons that he's aware of.

And, say now look here, Bill, how about you and Mitchell have a talk, and then you and...

and you and Mitchell have a talk with the president about it, just so that he's aware of it, so that Mitchell can express his concerns, express it to you first.

How's that sound to you?

Now keep Henry the hell out of it.

Don't let him be a citizen of it.

Don't mention the fact that Henry's being seen for being.

That's the kind of thing you see here.

What you can do is give the Jews another $500 million.

That's what Mitchell's suggesting, isn't it?

He sent a couple of planes a month.

I'm sure that's 500 million.

Well, it won't cost us an economic package here.

I'd like a hundred million dollars in the next six months.

God damn bastards who love Cyrus.

I mean, they all be sweet.

Start a war, we'll let them be beat.

That's my view.

But the American Jewish community love the planes.

That's too bad.

If you ever show much of our coal to the Jews...

He knows we have no Jewish support.

I mean, we've got to talk about that.

He thinks we've got some, but no, he's got faith in us and all the rest, so we don't have any Jewish support.

I said the reason, my opinion, because I thought we had a commitment of the fact that the Jews and the press, and therefore we have, but the Christ, what Jew in this press corps is supporting us?

Anyone, except Elsa.

This is...

Yeah, I just want to see Mitchell's argument.

Yeah, he said that some of the Jews in the press corps are not getting into his argument.

That's right.

Not so much the press corps, I think it's the press establishment.

They have not launched an all-out attack on us that they would do if they... What do you think you ought to do about Rogers?

I don't know.

You really come down to the neck, don't you, Bob, on this?

It's not exactly the right time to stay out for a little while, but when they decide to go, then they're stuck.

Well, it's not out.

A cloud layer like that is ideal, because it's a hell of a lot better not to have the sun out over it.

But you know the difficulty is, I suppose when it's like this, at about 430, it could be pouring out.

If it stays like this, this is perfect.

It's much harder for pictures.

The sun makes it clear in the shadow.

And it's awesome that it was comfortable for people to sit down and sit in the back.

Basically, it's something I always hope is.

Really, to be honest, looking at that screen, there are only the out there people who are on the out there.

Now, that was very old.

And then they go back in and into the house.

And this time over there, it rains.

It rains a little while they're out there.

So, it was too goddamn bad.

I don't want to hurt the crescent.

What a good day to remember, huh?

Well, I remember.

My sister had a garden wedding outside my mother's house.

The rain heart has ever rained in LA on the day of her wedding.

No, they had a tent out there.

The tent collapsed because of the weight of the water on it and everything else.

They still did it.

Everybody got bogged down in the mud.

That was 20 years ago.

People still talk about Betsy's wedding.

I don't want him to sit there and just think that everything he's getting from Henry and Ruben is the gospel truth.

There may be something on the other side.

See?

Bob, you've got to realize that Henry is not balanced on this side.

I do, very much.

I never pass it along to you because I don't think he is balanced on this side.

It's clear to me that he is.

No, no.

He's just curious.

He's an advocate here.

Hank bought his name with an N when Hank gets over to the other side.

But also, Henry always says, you know, if you don't do this, we're going to be in war by next Sunday.

We've been in war for six months.

That's right.

He's been saying for six months that we only got two more weeks and we'll be in war.

That signal, that really bothers me too.

You know, we got that signal from three different places.

About the five million dollars for the campaign.

Two people.

Yeah.

So I'm convinced that that was pure blackmail, nothing else.

I hope you told them that we did, as I told you, that we are not to take it.

Mitchell had gotten it from somewhere.

We got it from someplace.

But they were told not to take it.

Not for sale.

They had to come up with it.

What they said is we're going to raise the alcohol.

They always talked about it.

Firm commitment.

We will raise it.

That's right.

That's what I've got on there already.

You see, they hit the car.

Goddamn, they're a vicious bunch.

They're gonna play that with me.

I'm gonna work it out again while he goes to Europe and helps himself well and so forth.

I'm more concerned about him now than I've ever been because I had a boat ride last night really, or the other night.

He's becoming defensive, a blind advocate of anything faithful versus the world.

And when he becomes that unobjective in that department, he is a real problem.

Yet he took on, he took the correct position on the clicker proposal.

Yeah, it's very interesting.

He's taking a very hard line for some reason there in his POW line.

Actually, that's what I meant, that POW line.

Yeah.

Well, the whole Vietnam thing, he's in hard.

Dates are in the POW and all that business.

What's changing there?

I don't know.

Probably a conviction that you're right.

Maybe things made to work aren't going to work.

It's like anything like China.

He wants to be sure that his Secretary of State worked this out.

As he sees it, he's always done that.

Whenever he sees, when he saw Cambodia working out, he was all for Cambodia publicly.

But not at the beginning until it worked out.

It's never been for long.

It's looking pretty good.

It doesn't show as long as it could be.

Well, if we can't, if you mention Scully again, there's got to be a dozen speeches now.

Give it to Colson, he'll do it.

Colson and Scully?

You have to get it, yeah.

Golly, you'll get it to a few columnists and so forth.

Nixon's right again.

Look, you've got a nice little pattern, the Cambodian pattern, the stock market pattern, the Laos pattern, see?

Well?

He sat down on the boat and patched up on stands, calling stands a son of a bitch or whatever he did, and jumping out and conversing.

And it should, Bill doesn't know what he's talking about, because the people he's condemning are essentially safe department people, non-converse people.

Are they the ones, the key ones he's after?

And he didn't know.

How do you know that, Bob?

Well, because of the specifics, he didn't realize that.

that some of the people that he was hitting as individuals were State Department people.

We'll go back and check that.

And then I think Earl had dropped one hell of a money shell on Bill that he never will figure out how to uncover from was with Alan Johnson in Thailand.

When Earl said, when we got to the dope thing, one of your State Department men who was there said, hit the other countries but don't disrupt the basic economy of Thailand.

And Rogers couldn't believe it was a state guy.

Said, who was that?

And Earl said, wait a minute, said Alex Johnson.

Alex Johnson's record in Thailand is something less than... What?

Alex Johnson's record in Thailand is something less than a spectacular aim like that.

Well, you can't blame me.

Thailand is a terrapossum, yeah?

You can't let Thailand down the drain.

God damn it, I must say we can't let the drugs fall down the drain.

It's a...

We're not getting to what the specific thing, what the Christ should do about Rodgers.

It's really a terrible problem for me, because here it is.

I got this thing, you know, I had to go through that goddamn salt thing with it.

And now you're going to have to go through 10 with it, maybe.

And you're going to have to go through, well, it's maybe a Vietnam settlement.

I think it could come up all right.

Yeah, I think it could.

I think it could do a letter or something of that sort.

The Russian thing does not concern me because I'm going to have to bring, ask to see me, and to come in and present some proposal.

And when he comes in, I'll ask Bill to come over so he can participate, and I'll have Bill and Henry both together, and I'll say we're going to stage it, and have it done publicly, and I'll say, all right, we accept it.

We'll make an announcement.

So that's the problem.

If we go to a summit with the Russians, we don't go to a summit with the Russians.

There ain't nothing to work out with.

On the China one, I'm so daring, I don't think it's going to happen on that.

But on the China one, I think Henry's idea that I tell Bill is that Yao Yao wants him to see the Chinese ambassador when he's there.

And I said, fine.

We'll talk about trade.

Right on that basis.

Now, I think Bill is going to get suspicious as hell when we go on the entry trip.

Yes, true.

He was looking at the wrong hole.

He was looking at Vietnam, I think.

Why shouldn't you take a trip when you come down to it?

Here's the, again, that's the policy and answer of the president.

Well, channel the security after that, brother.

So he starts to take a trip.

Once Bill comes to Midway, if he wants to go, if he doesn't want to come, he may want to go.

Henry is wrong.

He says that Bill doesn't understand this.

I don't, I think he does understand this.

I think he tends to sometimes not want to go into a debt because he likes to.

He goes to the cheap shop.

He's smart.

He's as smart as hell.

He's just as smart as Henry ever was.

I know that.

Henry's got it.

And I guess the bottom of the problem in those cases is damn vanity.

I just can't think of anything else.

I think the State Department people are such experts at sucking up to them.

They know a lot.

Well, they're the top experts at sucking up to everybody.

Yeah.

He's unfortunately the worst kind of guy.

And he does have that problem, doesn't he?

You can sure suck up to those.

Yeah.

All you gotta do is recall him and praise him about what he said.

I mean, he...

He now and then will mention what somebody else has done.

But very seldom, if you notice, very seldom he'll say, gee, somebody did a pretty good job or something.

You know?

And it's usually what he, when it serves his interest.

But it's a passion.

Now everybody actually wants to be praised because of their job.

We all do that.

We do it because we need to get a little lift so we go out and do a good job the next time.

Bill seems to be at it every minute.

Doesn't he?

God Almighty, it's definitely speaking of time you do a good job.

I do it an awful lot.

God damn it.

When he comes back from Europe or something, you know what?

You do much more with him than anybody else.

God, yes, I remember calling him Laird and praising him for some damn thing.

I do not mind.

I pray often.

But Bill, it's over and over again.

It's a funny thing.

She liked to have a talk.

She's a son, but apparently she doesn't have the influence, really.

But we see it in terms of advocacy.

You're getting to be a real son of a bitch.

Cut them up.

Bill is basically not an Hispanic.

See, he's not very much as I am.

You know, he's played with the Jews.

Maybe it's a dollar drop-off.

I never had it.

Anybody who's ever in this chair that's had recently had a somatic on him, that's redemption.

And I'm not, you know what I mean?

Actually, I've not accepted, I'm not pro-Israel.

And that's the only difference.

I'm not going to let Israel's pale white dog come on.

That can be done.

I always give you the argument, well, this this month, two months then.

You ask about it, when is it?

It's all going to be.

Sampai jumpa.

Nixon, Haldeman & Butterfield on William P. Rogers and Middle East policy

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Also recorded on June 12, 1971

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