Nixon, Kissinger & Cook on People's Republic of China and Vietnam War

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript is incomplete. The transcription skipped stretches of speech — roughly 4 minutes of this recording (about 10% of it) is represented by only a few words. Listen to the audio rather than relying on the text below; a corrected transcript is queued.

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

Click a timestamp to play from that point; the page address then links to that moment (e.g. #t=125).

Well, on this negotiation in Paris yesterday, they just couldn't...

I will bet that Li Duc Co is going to join that meeting in Moscow.

We thought that he was going to go back to Hanoi.

Well, that's what I was going to say.

They had the $700 million Kama River project.

Now I have found $160 million we can break out of that, which we could approve this week.

That's for the Mack truck.

Well, the whole thing is Mack truck, but $160 million is for some component, for a foundry, which is Dressler Corporation and something else.

And I thought I would tell him you've approved that,

And in that conversation, I'd say, just reflecting, that if they're really concerned about what we're doing, they think it gives Trump moves urgency as to the war in Vietnam.

I won't say I know that there are people there.

And that we have made an offer to the North Vietnamese now, which is the African Muslim

And it could open a lot of doors.

Particularly in this area.

I just put it .

I said yes.

I mean, we've linked everything together so much by now that it's .

You might look at that CIDI article this week.

I will, yeah.

That's really exciting.

I'm reading over here.

I think that's a good move, Henry, on your part to tell them that.

I thought I'd do it tomorrow or the day after.

Because we may as well play the string out.

But I put it pretty much that, look, isn't it really time for us to go forward on a lot of fields, and isn't this the time to open up?

And really, you're the only ones that can do anything with these teams.

I mean, they're not done.

Well, I sort of only put it on the basis that they'll first drive us further and further towards the Chinese.

That's right.

What option do you use?

I'll put it on that basis.

Houston's got the message.

Oh, yeah.

I called him this morning on this fellow Victor Lurie, which is very interesting, this intelligence guy, has come over and asked to see me.

You know, the fellow they use on these special missions they had in Israel a few weeks ago.

And so I figured I might as well put a little finger under him and ask him what he thought of it, whether I could see it.

And he said, frankly, he had no information.

He's the fellow that masquerades as a loose man, but almost never writes anything and lives in a financial...

Lives by saying he's got information he doesn't really have.

Well, but they use him.

They use him.

Oh, yeah.

He's the fellow that they...

He's the fellow that they used to peddle Svetlana's memoirs in order to feed her real memoirs.

Some people think he got the crucial memoirs.

He's generally thought to be a senior intelligence officer.

And they use him on sensitive missions.

But it's usually the KGP that chooses him.

What we're doing, Steli, with regard to this week, I am going to, you know, I am trying to avoid, I've avoided press conferences now for almost two months now, a couple of days.

So what I'm going to do is to have a little posture that leads to

have one in the office without television next Wednesday.

Now, I told, uh, uh, I told Paul and me that if you could, uh, and I'd like to get this done by Sunday, I just want to prepare for about ten domestic and ten foreign policy things.

And believe me, I'm going to be curt as hell.

and just refuse to answer questions about this and that and the other thing.

I mean, you know what the obvious questions are for a policy area.

On China, I would really avoid it as much as possible, because I do have the impression that they are getting a little jumpy from the conversation yesterday.

We've been very careful.

the Senators have been pretty good at it.

The Senators have actually been amazingly good.

Of course, if I can't say they're in the Senate, we're rockin' up in the Senate.

No, no, we've been in the Senate.

But that's what I mean, I'm trying to say nothing except to, if we're ready to say whether Rogers is going to stake the position of the U.N. Yeah, it ought to be next week.

Maybe that should be wheeled into it so I can say he's tomorrow willing to stake it.

And I said, frankly, you weren't so much a central feature.

We were more concerned with the general world situation.

But then at the end, I had a man there taking notes.

I asked that man to leave.

And I said, I want to tell you something.

We have information that you're going to launch a propaganda campaign against both the president and me.

That is what I personally am concerned.

You're doing me a favor with my liberal academic community, so it doesn't make any difference to me.

But to attack the president, it's really to attack your best friend.

He's the one who's pushed through every military program.

He prevented last March the bureaucracy to do for nothing.

What we're now doing with the most enormous reluctance in the U.S.

There's nothing being done at the UN, I said to him, that wasn't proposed to us long before we even thought of the Peking trip.

Because after all, there's no sense for them to excite the right-wing people too much.

Oh, and you're absolutely right.

It's painful, Henry, that this has to be done.

And I said, I can tell him that

Nobody could have suffered more about having to do this than the president, who genuinely loves the people of Taiwan.

And I said, look, after 72, he's much freer.

But this year, you have to be understanding.

That's good.

I noticed that there was something in the news summary with regard to, and they were trying to interpret what Mao Zedong had said at some time, with regard to,

His willingness to negotiate with Chiang Kai-shek.

Yeah.

Or something to that end.

Oh, yeah, true.

And Lai said that to me, too, at the end.

I'm trying to think.

You heard two of my things.

I'll have it.

You mean the buffet?

Yeah, I think I'll just read the whole thing.

You might want to.

I need it in my mind.

I really can't, of course, when I go into my pressure cooker for the feeding.

I've just read the highlights now, but I want to get to the whole thing.

I didn't all type yet because it's so hard.

But by the time you get to Calico, you'll be well.

No, I'm very busy.

Actually, I don't need that for that time.

I'm just going to read this.

You're a hero.

A hero would work for me.

John, you might want to read this with Adam just to get a sense of the way his mind works.

Yeah.

But anyway, the...

Well, they've been praising, they were praising Jack Kennedy.

But he was all over the lot.

You haven't really flown a question at a press conference, and you've had a hostile press that they flew him easy one.

But I mean, in this case, I don't care if the press is antagonistic about the fact that he wasn't forthcoming.

I'm not going to be forthcoming.

I'm just going to say this meeting is without conditions on either side.

They're laughing.

They're laughing at us.

There are conditions either side, and I can't discuss a gentleman who wouldn't serve the interests of the meeting.

When is it going to be?

That's already been covered.

I mean, I'll try just enough.

I think the thing to do is the only thing I think could be useful to you is the well-armed position with regard to time before the analysis.

Or I could say it myself, that the position being, in general terms, a well-armed position, basically, is that we won't... Do you have a system for that?

Yeah, I was going to ask you, but let me just finish this.

I've got one thought, and as I wanted to ask you, but I just said it like...

The tie of opposition, I think, would be, well, we have concluded a consecutive integration.

We will, as to where the votes are and so forth, look at the situation, the procedure in the U.N., and we will vote for the admission of red China and against the expulsion of the Republican China.

That's it.

I think maybe I said that and nothing more.

And that gives no explanation of the legal basis of why we are doing it.

And I'll say I'm going to go beyond that.

I wouldn't say Red China.

I'd say the people who do.

I'll tell you what I sometimes do say.

Mainland China.

I say that because a lot of people don't know what the People's Republic of China is.

No, Mainland China.

I thought I said Red China.

Mainland China.

I use it a lot.

No, I curse the Red China.

I mean, it's also the best.

Atherton says you should forget about foreign policy.

You've got that leg.

He says, what worries him, he's for your election.

He says he's never seen such a crummy bunch as the Democratic candidates.

That's what he said.

Yeah, he said, I'm set to govern.

But he, for whatever it was, he thinks you should appeal more to the middle class on domestic policy.

He said you should take on the labor unions.

The unions aren't going to support you anyway.

He said you should take them on on the wages, on their wage demands.

I don't know whether he's any judge.

I'm just .

All the people he knows and his secretaries are very worried about inflation.

And he thinks if you've made yourself really the president of the middle class, on the rest of the policy, you'd be unassailable.

The middle class.

You know, uh, but he, he, he, uh, he really is the Democrats here.

Oh, he says that they're awful.

He says, totally irresponsible.

He says the only one with any stature is Jackson, and they won't, they won't nominate him.

Jackson.

What's he think of Muskie?

Nothing.

Lightweight.

Muskie is certainly Henry's.

He is certainly saying that he is.

Well, but he's saying nothing, though.

He's saying nothing.

He's saying, well, I really can't say I'm going to be a candidate until I see whether I can come up to the office.

But that, I think, is a lousy way of putting it.

It's just anybody, anybody can hear me.

It's a guy who hired a huge staff, raised money, and all that.

And if he doesn't know a year and a half before he becomes president, but he's up to the office, he shouldn't even consider it.

That's right.

That sounded like Eddie Stevenson.

You remember where he said, I'm not sure if I'm fit for the job.

Well, he should take the position.

Of course, he's fit for the job, whether he's going to run or not.

That's a later decision.

That's right.

Whether or not he's young too soon.

Look, I'm ready to run.

Of course, I can do it, but I haven't seen the state.

But Muskie has maneuvered himself into the position where his silence doesn't seem enigmatic, but weak.

You think so?

Oh, yeah.

He's lost a hell of a lot since .

Yeah.

Among the public, I don't know.

I can't judge what his appeal to the public is.

But he's against him.

He wants you to be re-elected.

He feels that he felt about the China-United Nations.

Yeah, well, he's not for summit meetings, but he's at them.

Then when he looks over the cast of characters, he says, who is better able to negotiate than the president?

Look, he's doing damn well.

This is going to be a good summit meeting.

That's what I call them.

That's the key point.

There's nobody else who has the authority to set the direction.

He said, incidentally, the Jewish marshal told him the true and lies the ablest man he ever met.

Is that right?

Yeah.

And that was at 46, 25 years ago.

Oh, he's formidable.

He doesn't look it.

He doesn't look at it.

Nor does he show it in his manners.

He's tough.

Well, I had just thought I wanted to mention to you that one of the reasons these letters came to the United States, I had written one to the Australian prime minister.

And one of his ministers said that I didn't even remember writing to them.

And he says the prime minister read your letter to the cabinet.

So you see, we don't realize, perhaps, but I remember we all thought about these areas where leadership and minor regions can write.

This is probably one where we can write one that doesn't say anything, except that we've said publicly, you know, which doesn't make any particular conclusion with regard to the agents.

I know.

What do you think?

Oh, no, I think it's very good.

Very good.

Sato, for example.

Yeah, yeah, to get one.

Sato.

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to write it hand by hand.

Yeah.

And I'm going to write, and if you'll just prepare what I'm going to do.

Yeah, yeah.

With heat, I put it on the basis that you would be glad to.

No, you can't do that, then.

Well, they could fill him in personally, it'd be... Well, I can just say that on an opportunity, he should send it to the doctor.

He'll keep it quiet.

That's the only one I would rule with.

Yeah, yeah.

He would be...

It's good for him, though.

I don't think I'll be in Europe at any time, so... No, at some time, you will.

I mean, you're right, too, about the date thing.

The only reason I raised this date thing is that I do feel we should get it off for very practical reasons before the, I don't know what to say,

Well, I have actually come to the view, Mr. President, that if my thing is in October, that will get us headlined.

That if you put it into the second half of February or the first half of March, this thing isn't going to afford.

That's the point.

Everyone says there's a nature of reporting.

How the hell is it going to afford?

We've reviewed all the reconnaissance tracks.

Nothing is going to fly over there.

Yeah, yeah.

The only thing I see is reporting.

Well, at least we can, of course, is that the longer we wait, the more other people go over there and so forth, the less mysterious it becomes.

But no, hell, there's maybe a difference.

We know.

That's going to be the big thing.

And they're going to save their Sunday brunch for you.

It would certainly help a hell of a lot if we hadn't set the date yet when I go there, because then we can get a better communique and agenda.

And that's got to be the key thing.

That's right.

And then the climate.

We've looked at the climate.

December is just goddamn cold.

january is murderous february it starts warming up march is quite nice first half of march would also be in the primary season if we announced the date say on my return say early in november if then early in december we announced the moscow day health we have and i don't know how late you can take trips i think

We can afford a Japanese trip, too, next year.

Well, I can take trips from then on, except for these two, which I should not, which I should get Moscow out of the way.

That May 1st, as we talked about.

Oh, yes.

In May.

Not until June 1st.

Oh, yes.

In May.

I didn't call you to twist your arm, but just to tell you not to get any older.

Some of them want to spy on you, or you just had a birthday, and I... And, uh... Well, you don't sound like it.

You don't sound like it.

You sound just as tough as ever.

Yeah.

Oh, you can sit down.

Yeah.

Yeah, I...

I did it once, and it rained, and I haven't been back.

But you're great, son.

Yeah, it really is really insane the way it goes out there.

Well, I'm going to watch it.

I talked to them on the phone the night before, and they said, be sure to watch it.

It's just like a golf cart.

They go pedaling around the boat out there.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Don't tell me they won't.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know, I know.

But they have that quite often.

I'm not going to worry.

At least we'll keep saying our prayers today.

Okay, well, don't get any older.

You're old enough.

I didn't think you were 45 anyway.

Yeah.

What's that say?

Locking?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's true.

The locking thing, of course, Marlowe, is so terribly important to

This is a job, he says, a job.

With the gun.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Well, okay, well, let me take a check with McGregor.

No, with McGregor, I'll check.

He's a good boy.

Good boy.

Yeah, right.

Good luck.

Well, anyway, you see, Moscow, we said first, we could say, we could easily go by St. John's first, which is our third one.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there'll be one.

We could say, I guess you should.

So I think I'm totally convinced that maybe we've got to think of the China thing in terms of... One other advantage of doing China in March is, just thinking about it, if we do it in December, we've given them most of what they want, and they can then put the screws on us afterwards, and we'll be in a hell of a spot.

Between March and November, they can do a hell of a lot less.

They can ask less of us.

That's right.

Vietnam will be more surely finished.

But we will have made our announcement.

Well, we will have said that.

Right, but it will be closer to the time they're going.

And it looks less like a payoff for going.

And the weather will be better.

It's got a lot, and it looks less eager because they started out asking us for the summons.

But we don't have to make any decisions on that.

get it back to the important thing.

It really comes to the point, too, as to whether they cross that bridge.

It is a problem.

They won't afford it.

I don't see if they want to.

They have made a major, monumental decision.

There was one article I read over the weekend

I think by Edgar Snow, actually, who said a lot of Westerners have commented on the fact that there was little in the newspapers in China about the visit.

He said they don't understand how these things are handled in China.

He's certain that it was discussed in every commune in the country, that all over the country people are talking about it.

And I believe that, too, because Chu and I said we have a lot of people to inform and we have to do a lot of

of getting it around.

Newspapers to them are not the means of communication.

They're just a way of publishing party ordinances.

They do it by radio and they do it by indoctrination in each village.

And on the whole, the American press keeps playing up all the criticisms.

But they have not yet asked of us anything in Vietnam that I haven't told them we were doing anyway.

They haven't been doing it.

No, we haven't anticipated the American press vote.

They've kind of played the other side of the story, so they'll play every little squib that any of the Chinese say about the visit prior to that time.

No, because they haven't said a damn thing against the visit.

No.

They've occasionally said something against American policy.

But considering the heat they must be under from the North Vietnamese border from Korea sent me today a list of sub-Hanoi radios.

They've been really practically incoherent.

And I said yesterday, for example, at the meeting,

I said, we are not the long-term threat to your independence if you're fighting the wrong people.

There are many countries much closer by you should worry about.

I actually was trying to threaten them with Japan, but normally they jump all over me when I say this.

Yesterday they didn't object.

And they said, don't go on trips.

You can't settle it on trips.

You know, that's a very defensive thing to say.

And I said, well, you know, one problem with you is, did I tell you what they said?

At the end of his presentation, Lee Ducktoe said, you do things so torturously.

You make many trips, and you think there's some solution in some other capital, but you have to settle it here.

And I said, the trouble with you people is you think that the only problem in the world is Vietnam.

The president has many things on his mind and many concerns.

And he sends people on many trips that have nothing to do with Vietnam.

Of course, I've said this for the record, they don't believe a word I'm saying.

But... You know what's happening to the little bastards?

They're rapidly getting out of the news.

And that's what killed them.

Who gives a damn about the seven points today, Mr. President?

Who gives a damn about the seven points?

We almost got let down.

These people are getting out of the news.

They're getting out of the news, and they're having a hell of a time cranking up an offensive.

And if they had any self-confidence, they would plead with me at the meetings that we should overthrow Chu.

Because four years ago, three years ago, when you came in, if we had offered to pull out all our troops, that's all they would have asked.

They would have taken care of Chu after that.

It's because they know they can't do it, or they think they may not be able to do it.

And they're asking us to do it.

It's a sign of weakness, not of strength.

And when I say to them, I don't know what, I said to him, you're making a really ridiculous demand.

Because you're threatening us with continuing a war at the end of which we will physically be less able to do what you're asking us to do.

So what are you fighting for?

Next year, you will be stronger.

Our relative position will be smaller in South Vietnam.

So whatever else happens next year, we'll be able to do less what you want than this year.

And they didn't say, oh, you've lost the war.

There's no chance.

And we'll defeat you.

In 1970, when I met with them, said to me, you've lost the war.

Why don't you recognize it?

You've lost the war.

It's never said that.

And we don't get the credit for it, Mr. President.

But when the history of this is written, I'm becoming more and more convinced.

Laos may have heard the more than Cambodia.

I quite agree.

I really think, and if Abrams hadn't screwed it up, we'd be out of business.

We wouldn't have won.

We wouldn't have won the God damn war.

What this man did to us after all the suffering, if he had worked on it meticulously, if he had had any imagination, because if they were not in bad shape,

Uh, sometime you might want to read one of the transcripts of these meetings, because I am really in love with these guys.

And, uh, I, uh... Well, I'll tell you something.

You know, one thing I was going to say, to be able to please you.

Uh, Hawthorne, uh, had an analysis made of R. Ryan Stone, and told us to, you know, push, push, kill him.

Basically not a big deal.

But the significant thing was the change in the mix.

We lost, as you might have checked, a lot of blue collar, Catholic, grade school types.

That's where our strike was before.

But we gained enormously with the

with the college educated, with the suburbia, the people of that sort, and of course with basically liberals.

So in other words, it's a very significant change.

When you do hear about this,

the fact that people have changed their minds.

It's true, there are some you lose here.

That bounces off of me to get them back.

I mean, it quite isn't as far as those people who are basically conservative and so forth are concerned.

When they get the choice where they're going to live and go.

Exactly, exactly.

We have gained in that group where we normally wouldn't, you see.

That's right.

I mean, these people compare you with something abstract.

They might not be for you.

That's right.

But if they have you against a muskie,

They'll come back.

Teddy.

Poor Teddy.

I'm beginning to think Teddy would be the easiest to beat.

Are you?

I just don't think there's too much dirt around him.

And Hubert?

I don't think.

I think depending on paper, finally, he better come out.

He just looks a little pitiful now.

Yeah.

But Teddy?

Yeah.

And again, he jumped all over the place.

Oh, yes.

I mean, first by saying if he had known that, he would have, it would have changed his attitude on what, what was there in these papers, in the newspaper.

Seems to me quite significant, too, that they, you know, that they now found the New York Times.

The stuff they credit was not much, but it was not Pentagon Papers, this stuff, nothing else.

But they wrote it down, you know, someplace maybe we could see it.

But I think that...

I think there's a real...

But I think Mitchell ought to go easy on trying Ellsberg until he's broken the Vietnam War one way or the other.

Because that son of a bitch, first of all, I would expect...

I know him well.

He was my student.

And he's absolutely brilliant.

I am sure he has some more information.

Yes, sir.

I will bet that he has more information that he is saving for the tribe than an example of American war crimes that triggered him into it.

I don't know, but it would be just my instinct that this is the way he'd operate.

And secondly, once we've broken the war in Vietnam and we can say this son of a bitch nearly blew it, then we have

Then we are in strong ship.

Say, then no one will give a damn about who we're trying.

Oh, I know.

Well, then why not Saul Hager?

Because he is a despicable bastard.

That's Saul Hager, would you say?

What did you say, Richard?

Salt leader.

Somebody gets fired, at least.

That's essential.

Well, anyway, we're going.

All right.

I don't know.

I didn't know that he committed the misdemeanor attack.

He said it was absolutely tributary.

Then he said, let me tell you, you know, Teddy produced a letter in which he, after the Cuban Mesopotamians had written to Kennedy, to Chuck Kennedy, saying something pleasant about his anthem.

And he said, some friend of mine asked him how he spread these two remarks.

He said, that's easy.

It's like telling your hostess that it didn't bother you.

I had you lie to believe me, and telling your wife on the way home, don't ever let me go to the cars again.

You know, uh, one of the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh,

a lot of days away.

And everybody's sitting around looking at the logo.

And if it does, it does.

But at least with this thing, it's real.

And this guy, his ambassador said we've really changed the game.

It has changed the game.

It's changed the mood, hasn't it?

It's changed the mood in the town.

If you look at the papers all over the room, it's completely open.

You know, you talk to people around there.

Yes, you will.

You're going to find people that just don't know what the hell to do there.

We can keep the initiative now because the people, if it's Eric and Craig, it will be by the first week of September.

If it's not Craig, we'll ask the announcement of a new trip to DC by the end of September.

OK.

Nixon, Kissinger & Cook on People's Republic of China and Vietnam War

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on July 27, 1971

Cite this conversation

Nixon, Kissinger & Cook on People's Republic of China and Vietnam War

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on July 27, 1971

Related conversations

Cite this conversation