Conversation 531-031

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Well, of course, we ought to consider whether if there is a filibuster in all of July and we then string a Chinese announcement,

whether that won't be a bad, whether that would be such a bad thing.

Well, I'm kind of pressing too hard.

I'm just doing it so that I can, I'm going to get his feel of it.

He's a great patriot.

You know, we've got one thing about these guys, when you get them off the mark, they fight like hell.

So I'm going to follow that gay bear as an example.

See, he's a lot better at hammering than many of our Republicans, and he's stronger than since.

Oh my, hey there, there's this fellow that says,

I think there's a lot to be said for each other.

Hello.

How are you doing, Eddie?

You were out.

Let me ask you this.

What does it look like?

I just wanted to check, because I had to go to dinner tonight.

Shut the... Yeah.

Right, right, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

I know.

I agree.

Right.

Well, now, let me ask you this.

You're meeting tomorrow at 10.

Okay.

Can I call you tomorrow, just before the meeting?

Let me think about the thing a little bit.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate it.

I appreciate it.

And let me say this first, that the ballot you put up was just great, and I appreciate it.

Because, you know, I have to represent it, and you've got to stand up.

It greatly strengthens what, you see, there is always, there's still a chance of negotiation.

I've told you that.

You can take my word for it.

Whether it does, whether it comes off or not, I don't know.

But be that as it may, we've got to run the chance out.

That's really what it gets down to.

And you helped on that.

And now, yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

You can handle it.

Well, you can handle it.

Yeah.

Well, you're going to handle that.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, if they have a hearing, oh, you'll have one, won't you?

Oh, oh, you did.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that dead floor, I see.

I see, I see.

Oh, that'll be quite a move.

Well, how are we watching you with it?

10 o'clock tomorrow, when do you eat?

No, I don't.

I stick around here.

I'm sitting here.

I'll get in the Security Council people now and talk with them about this.

We'll be in touch with you tomorrow morning.

Yeah.

Bye.

Okay.

Well, I won't call you until a quarter to ten.

Yeah.

All right.

Fine.

All right.

Fine.

Good.

Okay.

Good.

Thank you.

Bye.

He says, whatever you tell me to do, I will make no move.

He says, I'm not going to take it from Crater or anybody else, or Ahrens, anybody else.

He says, I told you I'd do anything you want.

He's our man.

What do you do?

You understand, he'd kill us.

You see, what he would do is not to agree to any compromised language on this particular provision.

That means that then,

conference, the deadline, because the Senate, of course, cannot agree to nothing on this unless they, you see, when you've got that thing in conference, you've got to have something that, something that agrees to something, or then, you know, there's a deadline.

I haven't got the exact language in front of me now, so I...

I don't know what it is.

This is, I understand, a repetition of the October 7th edition.

Is that true?

I don't know what the language is.

No, no, the language takes out the deadline.

It makes a ceasefire conditional, right?

It makes it a deadline contingent on a ceasefire and return to prison.

And return to prison.

But it doesn't set a name.

So many times that we negotiated deadline conditions on a ceasefire.

Yeah, but that's too etched because that means that they, if they say six months or three months and they release prisoners and

If they say so.

But supposing the other side says, we'll release your prisoners in three months and give you a ceasefire, provided you get your troops out within three months.

Uh, or you mean that, uh, well, it's, well, it's that.

So, well, what's the, the alternative is to not have the draft for a while, doesn't bother you?

Uh,

Well, if there's a deadlock, we can still order the compromise on July 15th.

We're changing our moves.

Our actions have been made.

What we announced, well, all we announced.

Well, I don't feel passionately about this, but...

It's really a question of whether you... Basically, if the language takes on the deadline... Well, it's pretty much a support of our position.

One thing that's been taken out is the emotional problem of support of the 2P.

regime, you know, giving them a reasonable chance.

That's been taken down.

Yeah.

You know, it's awesome in that sense.

Yeah, that's right.

It doesn't provide, it doesn't speak to that sense at all.

But it's a sense of sin rather than a cause.

It's just not the sense of the day or now.

It would be the sense of the past since that time.

Maybe, uh, we should negotiate it.

We should negotiate a withdrawal, a ceasefire, and a

It's basically our plan, so we can basically live with it.

Well, I hope that the job I'm getting at is what else, what our option is.

You got something?

There's a question for this.

Well, if you do this, you'll still get a filibuster in the Senate.

They have prevailed.

Some may, some may not.

It may not be able to sustain it.

They check that out, too.

They think that Mansfield has indicated that he would not support a filibuster.

He will not support the cost expense, but he will not support a filibuster.

Whatever that means.

Prevail will filibuster.

But, you know, it takes some support from the leadership.

I need to just revel up the damn thing where I and Julie were just talking.

Not to do it, I'm afraid, but it's not going to make that many difference in the votes anyhow.

Big question.

Better not do it.

I think what they're really saying now is that if they're able to agree to conference to this, that they may be able to get a draft bill through.

That's really what they're saying.

That's what they're saying.

Because I don't know how much our congressional people basically are on the side of, are on the other side of all of these things.

So I can never be sure how much they're peddling on the hill of the soft language.

And the danger we are running is that we'll be discouraging our friends and not gaining many enemies.

But my general instinct, I have to confess, is to be hard-line.

And maybe that may be a wrong judgment in a congressional situation for which I don't have a good feel.

I think most liberals are cowards.

And... Where do they go then?

You see, they can't...

Under the department situation, they cannot support them.

They cannot have... Congress cannot agree unless they take something.

You see, we cannot... That's the rule.

Unless the Senate drops its...

They never do that.

See what I mean?

It's when one house has, for example, if you've got an appropriations bill, one house has nothing and another house has 800 million, you've got to put in 50 million.

Even though the one house wants nothing.

They don't.

It doesn't work that way in terms of...

But then are they forced to accept the conference report or can they start playing around with that again?

They can amend that again.

I don't know.

The conference report...

If you have the language agreed to, then they set it in the House, then put it in the Congress for more against, up or down.

They don't amend it.

You can't amend the Congress report.

The question is whether you can get language as an article.

It's a really good subject.

But they, I mean, that's what, what, uh, A-Bear Americans, they think they've got language that's worked out down here.

Or at least we help them.

Well, we should never have gotten into that position.

I told McGregor what reluctantly in the last eventuality we could barely live with, not something that we wanted.

Well, he wasn't, uh... My worry is if this gets around, if this was worked out down here, then the next fight starts here.

Then we've already accepted a deadline ceasefire.

Then we've given up the queue, the reasonable chance to queue, which we will give up in the negotiations if necessary.

But the concern with congressional action is not that we don't want to do the things they say, but that we don't want to be in the position to have to do them.

Because once we're in a position to have to do them,

We can no longer negotiate them very effectively.

Right.

So your position is frankly to just let the draft latch and hope that developments may be such that if you don't change their minds.

See, let me say, how is it going to be different back on the 15th of July than it is now?

And they'll say, well, people must have something going that we don't know about.

And so therefore, they might just accept

Well, by that time, we could get the word around saying, listen, you guys, we've pulled this one out.

But how do you know that there aren't six other things going on and your policy is killing it and you're going to force me on television to say why it's killing it?

And frankly, if you just want to bug out at some point, I mean, take a drastic step, it isn't bad to have to conquer it in a totally irresponsible position.

Killing the draft.

But if there's got to be an amendment, if it stays there, I just don't know how they'll interpret this.

If they get less errands to support this sort of language,

It doesn't really work that way.

What it means is that the Senate and the House have been arguing and debating and so forth, and this is the compromise language in which the Senate conferees give up the deadlines.

That's the way it'll be.

That's the way it'll read.

It isn't going to be the parents which is advocating this.

It's only that in order to find a compromise, he said, well, you've got to take that deadline out of there.

That's the other side.

The significant part from our standpoint is the deadline comes out.

That's why if they are just willing to do what we want to.

Well, because he may have been told that we want it.

True.

That's what I suspect.

It's a close decision.

I've got to go speak to the FBI county department.

Suppose that I give you her name tomorrow.

Cause I gotta call Aiden here.

Suppose now that I'm in the goddamn thing.

Cause he asked me, he said he wouldn't move, unless he heard from me.

So I can just say, look around and support this language.

Well you better, why don't you check out, check what the situation is with regard to the language.

Have you seen the language?

No.

Well, we haven't needed it.

All they gave us was principles that don't think we have.

Well, all they have is that we would not attempt a deadline.

We wouldn't do that.

Members have developed an amendment, apparently, which they think could compromise that.

Once you get a copy of whatever they're suggesting, and maybe you could modify it, that's the other thing possible.

Modify it, put something else in it, and then say, all right, here it is.

It seemed to me, in terms of the bigger problem with that, the taking out of the deadlines of various...

Except it can work two ways.

What?

It can work two ways.

Supposing Hanoi then has to limit the plan, they give us six months.

They have a ceasefire and it's supposed to be drop point three.

They say six months.

Ceasefire.

And POWs.

Well, of course, we've got that anyway.

We would have that problem anyway.

They still are.

That's probably what it is.

The advantage of the resolution is that this is almost our seven-point plan.

That's right.

And they'll think it's a support for your seven-point plan.

That's exactly what instructions they got.

And that's what they think they're doing, actually.

The only problem is we've then given all our hawk friends at this Congress

Well, then know that you're already agreeable to a deadline.

Why?

Because that's what the sense of the Congress resolution said.

No, it didn't say that at all.

There's no deadline in it.

But to some deadline, not a nine-month one necessarily, but to the principle of a deadline.

Well, once you read the language and see if it is, make it up.

I don't think it says that.

I don't know.

I haven't seen any language.

You do?

Yeah, me neither.

No, I saw some language today, and I don't know if they had that.

Well, that's the main thing.

I mean, you take a look at the language, you're the one that's going to have to deal with it there, and see if we haven't cleaned it up.

And I will only let ADAR agree to support whatever language we agree and want.

And if there's language in there that goes too far on the midline side, we'll trim it up.

Fair enough.

Okay.

Is that the order?

One of the two.

He'll do either one.

We'll just let the thing ride.

That's the headline.

See, that's the cost we have today.

Let me look at the language, Mr. President.

Look at the language.

As a matter of fact, I'll try to look at it today.

Everything else is on cell phone.

I've got the plans all...

I've got the papers.

You've got to... Would you get that language?

Yeah.

Are you... We'll have our talk first morning.

Tomorrow night.

But I'll change it if you prefer.

No, that's fine.

I'm seeing him put in it tomorrow night.

You're going to review where we stand and we'll put out a few carrots.

Not for the summit, but we really have...

Assuming they don't give us the summit, can we do the really other thing?

We need a big, uh... ploy.

We need, we need to have some carrots out there for them so that they don't kick over the traces.

Dangerous game.

On the whole, it'd be a hell of a lot better if we got...

They just have no leg to stand on if they give us a summit in Moscow.

How can they object to our going to Peking?

will infuriate them, but the other one will just shock them to death.

And we just may have a year of absolute uncharted health on them in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Yeah, yeah, let's look at what you're looking at.

You're looking at the possibility that you're not going to get any words.

That's why I just say to you, for the moment, you're not going to get any words.

Well, the one advantage of our meeting on Thursday morning, Mr. President, is that I'll have had to talk with him on Wednesday night.

I don't think he'll have had an answer by Wednesday night, because he, uh, uh, their Politburo meets on Thursdays.

So he'll probably get his answer if he gets it on Friday.

We oughta... Hey, Robert, we oughta go to the summer church.

I think the church is in a brutal, cheap, third-rate way.

They're a miserable bunch of bastards.

I mean, if you look at the way the Chinese have done business with us and the way they do business, you just don't treat the President of the United States this way.

Here is Grimko sitting in here inviting you to Moscow.

And now they've been stringing it along, maneuvering, dancing around.

And basically they've always been forthcoming when we scared the most.

Absolutely.

Boy, if they only knew what the hell was going on, they'd be in the area panting for that son of a bitch.

Huh?

I'm sure.

I told you the Chinese are sending a navigator, too.

Yeah.

Come.

I guess I'm not embarrassed.

If we had this country even behind us the way Johnson had in 67, I'd say we have two chances out of three.

That we've gotten this thing this close is a miracle, Mr. President.

With all the crap of Harriman, he's never been that close.

He never managed to get them to put a proposition on paper.

They talked to him elliptically and then he started to answer and made a series of understandings.

You've got something on paper here.

We've got something.

We've got it in an associating proposal, he said.

To him they were talking unconditional.

Now we, I don't think, I think we will know it as well.

We'll not have it completely yet because I'll be making our proposal.

After the 12th, the meeting after that, whenever that's okay.

That's what it is.

That's what it does.

I must say, you're sure right when I check these things.

Terribly risky, bold, and it is, it is taking good tact on the agent and all the rest.

But Henry, let me ask you a...