On July 19, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 12:08 pm and 1:08 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 539-012 of the White House Tapes.
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Amaranth and Kissinger.
One effective line you could use in your talks with the press is how RN is uniquely prepared for this meeting and how ironically, in many ways,
Similar character characteristics and background.
Uh, control.
I'm just listening to the items that might be emphasized.
One, strong convictions.
Two, came up through adversity.
that is best in a crisis, cool, unflavable, for a strong leader willing to take chances where necessary.
Five.
Up.
Well, now I've got to see the brain.
Yeah, over in the bathroom.
And I'm seeing...
I'm seeing Connolly this afternoon.
That's good.
And I'm seeing the press at seven.
That's enough.
And tomorrow I'm seeing the conservator.
I don't think we have any problems with it.
I think I got to Buchanan at the staff meeting.
Well, I said, I didn't mention him, I said, but not him.
I've read in the press that some people think they got a handle on the president by threat of withholding the invitation.
They've given up so much by just extending the invitation that they are the ones who would lose.
We may get some short-term benefits, but they must count on some long-term ones so they never have done it.
And I said, now, you just think
who would have thought that Hanoi would be calling Peking an imperialist.
And if we had tried to arrange this, it would have been considered one of the greatest coups.
But it is incredible.
Sure it is.
We all know it's incredible.
We all know it's incredible.
Well, I've been reading the weekly, the week, the news magazine.
I saw it last year.
Don't you think they are very popular?
the national credit for the political thing in there, which that's inevitable.
One thing I noticed, though, he was in Kramer, that Agnew, Laird, were kept in the dark.
It said that Rogers and several of his aides were at Warrant.
You didn't say that, did you?
No, no.
No, no.
Joe Alsop told me last night that three different State Department guys called him yesterday and took credit for it.
We may have overdone that a little bit.
We've done enough.
Let's put it that way.
We've done enough now.
We've done enough because they didn't do a damn thing.
Except goddamn near screw it up.
And the idea that Rogers...
three of these, but they didn't know a goddamn thing.
Not one goddamn thing.
They didn't.
Mr. President, they didn't.
How do you think that got out?
From state, no question about it.
Well, of course, they would say, Ryder didn't say anything damn well that they didn't know.
That came out from state.
That's what he said.
Somebody out of state, how are we not?
I see, I see.
Sure, they probably said, well, several of us do.
That's right.
Oh, yeah.
Those sons of bitches.
But when Cambodia goes on, even if, where they did know, but even if they hadn't known, you would have expected them to say, yes, we knew it, and we are behind the president.
That's when they all put out the words that they didn't know.
Yes, yes.
Well, and extremely well.
We just have to grow along with our other games.
I think we ought to announce the other one if we ever bring it up just like this one.
To tell them you sent a secret mission?
If we get it out, I'm not going to worry.
It's going to be announced like this, and they're going to be fooling around.
And we'll go to Perino's again and check the hell out of it.
Go to what?
Perino's again.
That's almost it.
I know there's both magazines and Times that said that they checked out there, and they'd be trying to stick with the analysis.
And I gleefully shook hands with people.
Now he remembers I came along here, right?
They were walking out.
We were trying to go out and search on him.
But that's just the usual...
I wouldn't worry about it.
It gives it a nice human touch anyway.
Time to think about it.
They think they've been dealing with it, but it doesn't really... That makes you human.
That's right.
Why shouldn't you be a little gleeful?
That's right.
With one 386-word speech,
you threw the old foreign policy of the world into a new direction.
I'm dictating a very short memorandum for you that we're talking about for you tonight.
And I'll tell you what it is briefly, is that I thought one thing you could do to give something that is new, and you've seen a lot of the stuff that's in here,
is the fact that the personal, how it's ironic and also very fortunate, coincidental, that probably no president in history could be better qualified to do this at this time, not simply to hold the Conservatives, but because of the background, first, in terms of
And also, when you compare his background with Cho's, ironically, a man of very strong convictions, a man that's come up through adversity, a man in school in a crisis, a man who's a student, and so forth and so on, a man who takes the long view rather than the short view, a man who's philosophical in his approach, a man who, looking at a technical thing, works totally without pellets.
I've been at the 73s, heads of state, never had a coat in front of me, just as Cho works.
The man also knows a lot about Asia, and I imagine in other characters you could mention who in his meetings is very tough, but also is subtle and somewhat graceful.
And I think those points, that's something that could give them an entirely new thing to pick up that reveals the man.
I noticed they were playing this
Lincoln sitting room.
Sure.
See, they like that sort of thing.
Sugar says, well, see, these guys haven't had the Lincoln sitting room.
These guys will not hear the interesting things.
These attributes of the president will be serving very well in this meeting.
Okay, I'll do that.
Good luck.
five or six of charity.
A man who takes the long view, never being concerned about tomorrow's headlines, but about how the policy will look years from now.
Seven, a man with a philosophical turning line.
A man who works without notes, dashed in meetings with 73 heads of state and heads of government, has had hours of conversation without any notes.
When he met with Khrushchev in 1959 in a 7-hour luncheon at the Dachshund, neither he nor Khrushchev had a note.
And yet discussed matters of the greatest consequences in covering many areas.
be a man who knows Asia.
Maybe particular point of traveling nation, studying nation.
And I'm a man who, in terms of his personal
is very strong and very tough where necessary a very steely but who is subtle and appears almost gentle very the tougher words he uses the tougher his position usually the lower his voice paradigm
You can point out that most of these attributes are ones that you also saw in the online.
You can point out that most of these attributes are ones that you also saw in the online.
And a two.