Conversation 519-007

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And O'Hare is looking at the U.S.

I think that you're more likely to hear Tom say something like this.

I want to share with you what he said on hand.

Well, I think on that we should just no comment.

I don't think it's too massive a work, and it doesn't really relate to us very much.

Not at all.

As a matter of fact, there's nothing in it that you know since we came in.

Well, in a sense, though, I suppose that in what it is instructing us is that it casts a very great doubt on the, frankly, on government people.

I mean, the president's lies and so forth.

Both can be nonsense, you know, and actually do.

I mean, there has to be some, there's some kind of, you don't tell everything.

I suppose that's what they were really trying to do.

But, you know, Bill Constance, I think, highly responsible for that defense.

He's going to go on tomorrow or anything, and I haven't seen it.

Yes, this was yesterday.

I wasn't asked a specific question about the so-called language study, but he said...

He set a backdrop on it.

He said, now, look, we're not, this administration's not concerned about past history.

We're concerned about where we are going from now beyond the Vietnam War, the more important issue of peace.

I think that's a good way to handle it.

Good.

Can you talk a little less?

Excuse me.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

No, no, no, no.

What would be helpful for him to say, if he goes on tomorrow,

He was there when all this happened.

How did it get out anyway?

Horrible.

Well, I had a call last night from President Johnson and Walker, both very upset about this, obviously.

You realize, though, what it is?

It shows that Johnson, in effect...

didn't tell the American people the truth before his election.

So that's why they're making it that we put it out.

There's no suspicion of that.

There isn't.

But Johnson doesn't have that suspicion.

No, no, no.

First thing they say when I said, you better get to New York Times and you better read this.

All right.

That's what I said last night.

And he said, no, I don't want to cast any aspersions on who might have done this.

But our strong suspicion is it's Dan Ellsberg.

Dan Ellsberg was part of ISA at the time.

He's a random employee now and a teacher at MIT.

He's a rat.

How did he get the files?

He said that he understood that he had a copy of that study when he was in ISA and probably took it out with him.

He said he doesn't think it's Yelp, it may be.

He said he doesn't think so.

He doesn't think it's Halpern or the other character, the Air Force guy.

He's in California.

He thought Gil was apparently, he thought was the guy.

He was in charge.

But now this fellow, Hellsberg or whatever, Hellsberg, I've never heard his name before.

That's the one I felt.

He said whoever did this could not be a good Democrat.

He said he would have to be a radicalized individual.

Well, if you want to look at it from a part, it is a devil.

Is that the stuff that exposes Kennedy to come out on the thing, too?

Yes, sir.

In the analysis that was done on the Times yesterday, they referred to the fact that

Kennedy had made a number of decisions which faced Lyndon Johnson with the decision of withdrawing and taking defeat or escalating.

So the real impression made is that Kennedy's covert decision led up to the... As a matter of fact, they were fairly good on Eisenhower.

It said that he had a limited... he'd been involved with a limited-risk operation.

And then it made it clear that Kennedy moved so far down the road that it really was no longer at limited risk that it became either... You remember Kennedy's first television speech was on Laos, remember?

I know.

You know, the way the Kennedy supporters explain that is they blame Eisenhower.

They say Eisenhower told Kennedy to do this.

No, this is what they say.

Listen, we all know Eisenhower extremely well in this respect.

And Eisenhower was a non-involvement man.

As a matter of fact, he might be too little.

But nevertheless, that was the way he played it.

He never was involved in what was a great involvement guy.

He moved in that direction.

When he moved in, for example, in Lebanon, he did that only after he got his persuasion.

A couple of tough questions that are being circulated today that Ron is going to get with, such as did the President read it when he's already said no, you have not.

We did our own intense interdepartmental review of Vietnam policy at the outset of the administration.

That was the subject of this one, and we were not going to draw totally on it.

in-house defense study did we even know about it the kelps didn't have a copy i don't think we had a copy yes but no one has access to it without specific authority and no one is

I don't think anybody should ever look at us like that.

We don't want to hype over this thing for a lot of different reasons.

We don't want to applaud each other in the Met Office or something.

Just stay out of it.

All right.

Now, what would you like?

The President was to make a total study of all the departments of Vietnam policy, and that was our first national security line.

We get through the military, the State Department.

I think that's a very good line.

We have to make our own study.

The President will ask for our study.

Our study is welcome.

Well, then they'll also try to get us into the nip between the papers.

A lot of people are outraged that the New York Times did this.

Are they?

Yes, sir.

Why are they outraged?

Because the Times.

Because they've got a system.

They didn't get it, but they're using the vehicle of hiding classified information.

So I think we should stay out of this.

We said when we had discussed this, we're of course concerned.

Is it all classified, is it?

Yes, sir.

He's special.

The Colbert son.

That's a hell of a security breach.

Can you imagine?

Hell, we made a capital case out of his case involving papers that the son of a bitch, you know, turned over here to here.

They're coming over and asking papers to the enemy in a sense because they're publishing it.

Should we take umbrage on it?

Well, I have a feeling that there should be a, I think a congressman or senator should take some damn umbrage on it.

I'm going to probably investigate it anyway.

You don't change it.

Well, I think I should say we are obviously concerned.

If you're not going to comment upon the substance that we, if they ask, what are they asking?

Did we in the administration know that there were, did we have access and did we know there were such studies?

Of course, we had authorities in the administration that were aware of it.

independent study.

I guess that's it.

But what I was going to say, why don't we say that what particularly does concern us is the reckless and highly unclassified information in a new story.

And this is a

uh they do and they think then they're going to say

Now, are you going to make this public?

I think we should take the position that we have not focused on this report.

We are now doing so, and we're not going to comment.

Obviously, we're conservative.

We're a class of the disclosure of unauthorized classified information.

If all of us are going to want to assess this in the greatest detail and just leave it at that and see how it plays, because it's going to get a little...

I think that we have a little bit of a problem now.

Well, we've got a lot of problems, but one of the problems is that

If we don't express some serious concern about this kind of leak of publication classified information, how are we ever going to be concerned about publication classified information?

I mean, when you have this much top-secret information blatantly published in a leading paper in the country, the government...

I was going to say, are you investigating?

Well, the defense this morning has asked if they were

they were started to investigate.

Well, as a matter of fact, the Secretary of Defense Laird said that they had asked the Justice Department to investigate how the New York Times obtained parts of the secret Pentagon study on the Vietnam War machine.

See, my theory is we have overslept in that particular study until we have done what we claim we haven't done yet, and that is to be aware of it and leave that subject.

People will then say, well, that's an emotional reaction.

And you then get the New York Times banning the defensive position.

I think those of us who can express concern about this, and of course, I don't play this.

Well, this is the Defense Department's study.

I'm just not aware of it.

But coming to the other lines, well, the Department and that webinar covered it.

Well, there are a host of questions that are going to get hit.

Ron's going to get hit in this debate, and I'm sure the Secretary is going to.

Do you want to get some of those?

Basically, did the President see it?

Was the White House aware of the report and the fact that the body was?

No.

Hold it.

That is not unusual, but the general awareness and consciousness of the fact that reports such as this existed, which was here, but the first thing that President Nixon did when he came into office was to call for an inter-department assessment.

There have been many assessments done such as this.

Because this particular study has appeared in print, undue attention is being focused on it.

The documents that were contained in this report, that was primarily reported,

that i had available to them were available to the president were available to all the departments and uh so it is not unusual at all that that occurred so no the press i think it was i think it could also say this is being badgered a little higher i think it's like i'm going to rehash the past and we're not going to comment on it we're moving and we're moving on our own program here it's a very it's an effective program that we'd like to focus on

That was the other bridge line that I was going to use.

I was going to say that this is an assessment, an internal Department of Defense assessment, not an entry department study.

When was it completed?

It was 68.

68.

A study which was compiled by the Department, assessing the development of our involvement in South Vietnam.

I'm not going to talk about an assessment.

by previous administrations, about actions of previous administrations.

We have stated clearly our policy, and that is to reduce U.S. involvement, to bring U.S. involvement in and end in South Vietnam in a reasonable way.

You know our policy, of course, and that's what we'll be happy to discuss.

Bill, one thing that would have come to mind, you nailed hard the idea that

P.O.W., the Clifford line, P.O.W.

for prison, and P.O.W.

for that and that.

So, I mean, you can.

Yeah, I, thanks.

I don't know.

I think I'm going to study it quickly and get off on it.

I think that we've downplayed it reasonably well.

I think he, I don't want to fill him up too much.

I think Hill did a pretty good job on Clifford.

My thought would be to say something, obviously, to politics, because if you've been serious about it, you can come and talk to me or Ambassador Bush or someone and talk to us about it.

So we expect this to happen.

You know, you don't need free-floating negotiators.

We ought to negotiate in pairs.

Yeah, I touched it, I thought.

Yeah.

Furthermore, I want to say that his information flies

But in the face of what's lunch, we said, it's quite different.

We have to deal with governments, not with people outside governments.

Obviously, if you read one.

And also, I think if you could leave us a little thing hanging out and say, no, you're not going to discuss in the public press conference all the various channels, I mean, all the various chapters that we're making, every possible channel, to try to find a solution to this.

and all the human, and I think you could say that we're still overseeing the negotiating track, uh, providing it in the pursuit, and that, uh, but that it is, that it does know, it, it's, uh, it's horrible to, to that negotiation to have public discussion.

Yeah, I, I, yeah.

One thing, Al, that I was a little concerned about, and what Mel said is the business about combat role, combat responsibility, that seemed to me got awfully confused.

My attitude on that is this, that we are largely out of the combat responsibility now.

That that's been taken over to a large extent by the Vietnamese.

That obviously we'll have to have combat troops there in some degree for defensive purposes.

But that the primary offensive capability will be

conducted by the South Vietnamese.

I wouldn't try to say that it's been cut off.

No, I haven't.

But Mills, what he said yesterday and what he said in the past are quite inconsiderate.

That's right.

He said about 90% of the territory, he said yesterday, they're doing about 90% of the territory.

Well, that's what he said.

He said we're moving over.

Progressively turning it over.

But he said, but he made a very good point.

He said we must keep miles as long as there are Americans on this area.

We have to defend ourselves and there'll be candidates that could be some.

We don't want a credibility game.

Why don't you put it on that basis that we've got... We talk about combating in terms of offensive operations, that is one thing.

But we're talking about combat in terms of resisting the attempts of the enemy.

And we're reducing our forces as something else.

Well, that's the position I've always taken.

And at the same time, our activities are almost exclusively in the field of this.

Isn't that true?

Another question I'll get is on mutual balance force reduction, particularly as it relates to the Navy.

Do you have any questions on that version of speech?

We've had questions which go to all.

I can handle that.

I'm going to have to see the reunion.

We told NATO, we said we were going to consult with them

to bring him in and talk to him about it and see what he has in mind.

I think I'll have to say it.

Just what I said before we went to NATO, and that is, obviously, we're interested in such negotiations.

We've been interested since 1968, and we've so indicated.

And now they're finally indicating that they're interested.

Fine, we'll talk to them about it, see what they have in mind.

Let's see what else.

Oh, what about McGovern Hatfield?

Should I hit that hard?

It looks like we've got a...

I thought I referred to what Aiken said.

I thought Aiken did that very well.

What did he say?

Oh, he said it's just a political gimmick.

The Democrats are trying to take credit for what you're doing.

He said the president's getting their troops out and the Democrats are trying to take credit for it.

Well, they are very interested in some of our...

This fall...

I'm not sure what the other one was.

McGeorge.

He's called down here.

I talked to Henry last week, and he says, you know, we really ought to have a share of the responsibility now with the Congress and the rest of getting out of Vietnam.

What the hell is that?

They weren't around when we were trying to, when we were handling Cambodia and doing these stuff.

How much the Christ do they want?

You know, they're really right.

They are, I think they're deadly afraid.

It's going to work.

Oh, sure.

But it seems to me I can rely on Senator Aitken.

I can say that, you know, I noticed what Senator Aitken said, and I've always thought he was a very wise, shrewd man, and his comments indicate his wisdom.

Yeah.

He said it was a gimmick on the part of the candidates against you.

They wanted to take credit for your program, a withdrawal.

Pretty good.

I don't want to say anything except, look, I just, it's a great statement.

Everybody knows what he said.

And also, I think you could point out that it's very salutary to note that while some of the candidates are doing this, that a very substantial number of Democrats have joined with Republicans not playing politics in this war.

I think the idea of not playing politics in this war, if you could hit that line, is to play politics with the lives, with the lives of POWs, with the safety of American men.

I think the way to do that is to compliment those who are not playing politics of the war.

A substantial number of Democrats and Republicans in both houses that are playing a very, very statesmanlike role.

One thing, Mr. Burton, I want to ask you about.

I know that you sent a memorandum about anything to say about the Russians.

Brezhnev and Kosygin and Porconi, all of them, have taken really pretty stiff shots at us.

And I wonder whether we should totally acquiesce to it, whether we should...

The question of speech is pretty rough.

You read it?

Well, it's a mixed bag, though, because

He took the tough one.

The next guy was a little more constructive when they got another one.

They were pushing it into the boards.

What do you think, Congressman?

Well, I don't think we should start a Cold War rhetoric.

On the other hand, I don't think we should act as if we haven't noticed it.

No, absolutely.

When I talk about be absolutely firm, this is not how we'll have this kind of talk.

That's perfectly... Our NATO allies watch that, and if it looks as if we're sort of weak, if they can attack us and we have no response, we make no mistake.

I think our response should be sensible.

Well, I agree.

I have a mind of mine.

I think you might say that we trust the U.S.

It needs to be consistent with our joint statement with regard to living in arms talks.

That's what we need.

And you're not going to be engaged in that.

In other words, if it's not what we're up to, we trust that they will show the same restraint.

It would be very disappointing now that this is a hopeful time, but if this kind of rhetoric is escalated, it could be very harmful.

That's a good line to take.

Brezhnev made one statement that nobody's noticed, at least the papers have, in which he said that he doubted that they'd ever have any success in negotiating with us on arms limitation because we're an imperialistic nation and we had to get rid of the imperialists first.

Did you see that, sir?

That certainly would raise great questions.

Yeah, sounds good.

I wonder what audience he was talking to.

He may have been talking to his own.

Well, he was.

It was a political scheme.

No, no, no.

I'm not sure.

He was talking to the world, but he may have been directing that to his hawks.

Yeah.

And on the other hand, it may be...

But I think you ought to take a very, a very firm line and say, well, we're above this sort of thing.

Let's not fool around here.

We'll do what is in our own interest.

But we're not going to do it.

It's escalating the narrative.

It's not useful.

It's not helpful.

And we hope.

Do you think that's a good one?

I think we have to do that.

Otherwise, if we actually had.

I have no intention of indicating that that shouldn't be done.

I just want to be sure we don't bother with things that are not.

Right.

Anything else on China?

I'm going to indicate that you were not aware of it and then follow the line that I covered.

Did you order an investigation?

No, no.

What you just said is not that I was not aware of it.

Mr. President was aware of it.

There were a number of studies.

But they had all been made by the previous administration, and each of them, of course, was defending a position or justifying a position of whoever was making the study.

So the president was the first action

The order by the NSC was administration-wide independent study.

Taking all the old past history should have been to develop a new policy.

And that new policy is the policy of free optimization, which is leading to the withdrawal of Americans and being not strong enough to defend itself.

And that's what we're doing.

As far as this study and the rest, gentlemen, this is one of several studies

I would like to say a little bit.

I wouldn't like to believe that the president was not aware of this.

And now that the New York Times is finally informed to do something, is he ought to know?

Well, that's what we have to do.

That's what we have to do.

I think one of the things on that you can tell is we're aware of all of the content, because the study was made, all the documents were .

As far as the Indians, Mr. President, Mr. Matt, President O'Rourke, they were so, they were all, they were completely, totally.

Not by department.

See, there's a disadvantage to this one.

This is just by defense department.

It's not by department.

Our, the assessors, our government, government, government.

All of the materials that were available to the people who put this out there.

Who were available to us.

Who were available.

uh by the policies and the opinions of the past administrations so

We took the facts that were in the record, all the documents that were in the record, and ordered a complete independent review.

But it was our determination that we needed a new policy in Vietnam, rather than a continuation or a justification of the old policy.

So we took that, and the president, therefore, ordered an independent study, made it the highest level in which all of the departments participated.

And that there became the first national decision

But the idea was that I was determined when I came in, I said, look, I was trying to put an amount of opinions expressed by many people, but this is one of several.

that this and that, but that all of them were arguing a certain point of view.

All of them, all of these studies that we had in the government when I came into office had been made by people who had made the policy and were responsible for our policy.

who had made, who were responsible for getting the United States of the English off Vietnam.

And the President said, if we're going to change the policy, we need an independent, new study based on the raw facts.

Can you explain?

Yes, sir.

And the line where it says that we, the President, when he came into office, what we need to do by C.M.B.

is, I'm worried about the things that we just came through.

I don't want to take a chance on the C.M.B.

Well, that's right.

You know, he said that.

We ignored those who got us involved.

Well, don't be mad.

I'm not mad.

is not going to justify, is not going to build up by common such a reckless and such a egregious army.

What I'm getting at is that you're not going to be able to find these exposures of classified information.

Now, Al doesn't like to take them on, but I think it's the least you can say.

I can't put a comment on any damn newspaper that has the irresponsibility to put out a whole event on classified information.

I know that any editors will put it out, but he can get it because that's his problem.

But the White House is not going to do anything.

They're just not going to comment on it.

I'm sorry.

You see what I mean?

I don't use it much.

I'll take this one.

But I'll say, I'll say.

Kenji just pointed it out.

But not a great deal.

Kenji just pointed that the Texas Department of Defense, they've already said something.

Why didn't you point to that?

I think you've got it.

except on this one point.

We made our own study.

Now, and then they say, well, what comment do you have on that?

The Defense Department made a comment.

I have nothing to add to it.

Keep the time.

Well, what is your study?

No, just a gentleman.

I mean, our policy speaks for itself.

It is a successful policy.

Our policy speaks for itself.

It is successful.

We are withdrawing.

Then they'll say, well, we intend to study or assess this particular document.

Well, we're not going to go on all of them, basically.

All the facts contained in this box were revealed.

We're all, we're already assessed.

They were assessed two and a half years ago, or two years ago when we came into office.

And, uh, and we can take care of an independent policy, new policy, based on those.

And you, we've asked for a copy of it to come over because it is a promise.

And you said that, yeah.

I wouldn't send a copy of it.

Oh, Christ, I wouldn't say that.

I wouldn't tell him we didn't have a copy.

Well, I'm sorry.

But we had asked for a copy.

Well, I don't think it's by over-agreement.

I just wouldn't say anything about that.

Forget the copycraft.

Just say that it's over there.

What do you mean, a copy?

Well, let's see.

Apparently, from some source of information, there was an awareness that there was not a copy of this particular study in the White House.

It's an automatic question that you're already going to be asking for now.

Well, the hell with it.

Just say that this study with all the rest, of course, is where it belongs, in the Defense Department.

Just as the State Department studies are in the State Department.

We don't have everything in the White House.

After all, we can get 80 years of copies of documents in the Defense Archives.

I think that's a good point.

Just a couple other things while I'm... No, I can't.

We've got a couple of personnel problems that I think we want to focus on.

One is Bruce, and the other is Bob Ellsworth.

He's leaving right away.

Now, we've got a good second man.

He can stay there for another month or so without any trouble, but we shouldn't have it delayed too long.

I don't have anybody especially in mind.

If you're going to get a foreign service officer, probably the best one would be Doug MacArthur.

But whether we want to take him out of Iran or not, or whether you might have somebody else or not, I don't know.

I think it's important now with Lund there to get a good man.

Because Lund's been having his problems, and we've got a lot of things coming along to make them.

In the case of Bruce...

You know, we talked about the point with Kohler.

I haven't done anything about that because I wanted to be sure that you had a chance to think about it.

Yeah.

We've got first now through what?

August.

August 1st.

But we should decide this month.

Right.

We shouldn't have a hiatus.

Let me check.

I think we had somebody on our planet that was fighting with NATO that wanted us to consider it.

And he'd be respected, right?

Because of his name.

He'd be respected by the Allies and the military.

Yeah.

That's right.

I think he'd probably be the best one.

Hiltwood.

Well, no, I mean...

I think we'd better let them know that they want to go ahead, and I don't think we can ask them to wait any longer.

They want to go ahead and quietly tell the Chinese that they would change their vote on the important question.

The British will tell them.

What the British do, I think, is just so we tell them that we can't tell you what we're going to do.

Well, did you, I have no...

I wanted to get past the, uh, I wanted to get past the, uh, the, uh, maybe July, I mean, it'd be, it'd be more earlier.

It'd be earlier.

Have you decided on the trip to St. Chew yet?

We're tentatively meeting the 6th, uh, July the 6th.

Uh, we couldn't do it earlier because of, uh,

It is.

Have you talked to him about it?

Or you're going to see him, aren't you?

No, I'm going to see him sometime.

The point, the way that I had committed to seeing you, which grew out of the troop patrol, and the thousands of you as you and all of them, we don't get to go on here.

We have to let it head here in the summer.

That's how it came about.

July 18th to the 6th isn't the latest it could possibly be.

We're going to be too close to it.

I've talked about it in terms of what

I think the important thing is that we don't lose any ground, as long as it doesn't appear to be a retrograde.

No, there will not be, you know, on the ground, on the combat thing.

That's the thing that has to be nailed down, because we're stuck in the summer.

And I've watched your justifications and everything we talked about.

Well, I think he's, I think he's understood and he understands that.

I think that Bunker's got to prepare, he's got to prepare the way for that.

He's also got to prepare the way for that, I'm not sure.

And when I say prepare the way for it, even though Nelson would have been in, he held a lot of people still there.

But the trouble with the combat thing is this, it's like the latest, remember, they don't have one guy.

The moment that we say that we're no longer in combat, we've got to be really precise, say what combat is.

Sure, we will defend ourselves, and therefore there will be casualties, but defense therefore cannot be so static that it becomes dangerous.

That's our real problem.

And although I think it looks fine,

But I think that we can explain that.

I think that Mill's 90% figure probably is correct, that the planning and the operations on offensive action now is handled 90% by the South Vietnamese.

And I think what he has in mind is

phase of it will be completely handled by the South Vietnamese at a given date.

Now, that doesn't mean we won't have people in combat, because if we have combat troops there and we have forces there, occasionally they'll be involved in combat.

But the responsibility for conducting offensive actions or... Yeah, what you really have is basically most of your troops, as it follows the case, are support troops.

What we'll have is support, and a lot of Arabians will have support, correct?

So they're coming back.

If you had an announcement with your meeting that it was either at that time or shortly thereafter, it would be fine.

But if you delay it until, like Dr. Henry originally was talking about December, I think that would be a very serious mistake.

It can't be done.

It can't be done because Melville's pressing for you on that.

I know.

I know that.

That's what we've got to study about for it.

Is Chew absolutely still firm on wanting to meet with you, or?

He is.

I don't know whether that helps him or not, I can see.

I mean, it's going to look like a political ploy in case he's under his criticism enough.

Elderly says he thinks he's quite a bit ahead now, and...

Do you think he wants to have this meeting?

I think he does.

Why do you think it?

God get me.

I'm on some pages.

It's such a relief.

I hate to get it stirred up again.

I think we have enough time.

Let's take a look at it.

The delay has not been certain.

It bothered me a bit, except that I realized it further along.

I just heard one of this from Governor Anfield.

That's why I thought I'd have to push it on.

It had to either be very early in June the 8th, or it had to be late in July, around July.

Thank you very much.

Those pictures of the wedding, if you see them, they're all just wonderful.

I've seen these pictures.

He's a fantastic doctor.

And everyone that saw this, I didn't see that, but it was beautiful.

I know you're watching the arrangement live.

The White House Civil Corps, and we have all three now.

I'll give you a call.

I'll be pretty