Nixon, Kissinger & Haldeman on Foreign policy and Defense budget

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Well, I've got a letter here to Gretchen, and Sabrina's going away tonight for a few days.

It's basically a new statement, but it's him that's excused, and I do need practically access to you for a time.

I've got some letters in here for you to sign.

I've got some letters in here to sign for you along that line.

Here, I've got five letters in here.

In fact, if you could sign the one to Pompidou today.

Sure, sure.

I think those letters are very important.

Oh, yes.

We should make them for you soon.

There's one paragraph in there which is a pretty clear hint to get to your level.

You want to see it now, huh?

I don't think so.

Well, otherwise, there isn't anything of any great consequence.

I don't know.

But I know he's planning some attack before the election in Vietnam.

But they predict that all the time.

But just go back and read the CIA's predictions.

Oh, God, yeah.

And it's unbelievable.

Now, this POW thing is now revealed as a hoax.

A hoax?

Well, the North Vietnamese have made a statement saying that somebody let his imagination run away with it.

I don't exclude that prior to the 16th, they'll make some moves.

And they have one hell of a decision to make.

I don't exclude that we'll get one by the 16th.

to do.

I mean, there's nobody else.

Nobody's saying anything.

They're not even nagging very much.

I think they, uh,

I told you about that conversation with Arthur Schlesinger.

He says the only issue they've got left is the economy.

He said he's urging all of his friends to stay away from foreign policy.

Because at his judgment, it's going to get better rather than worse.

So is the economy.

Yeah, but they don't know.

They're basically wrong.

You know, they thought they had us on foreign policy.

Well, they do know the economy better than they also know the law and law.

It really isn't.

I had breakfast with Goldwater.

He's actually very positive towards you.

Tell me about the grave that you went to.

That's Tuesday, isn't it?

Tuesday afternoon, isn't it?

Tuesday at 4 o'clock.

4 o'clock.

OK, yeah.

And he's got ability to put together quite an impressive list of some people that we wouldn't normally reach.

Grave?

He's the founder and continues as the director of

I said, damn it, why don't the conservatives attack the liberals?

Why attack the one man who's been standing against the tide?

He said they're hopeless, they're bad as the communists.

He said if you don't support them 100%, they attack you rather than attack their enemies.

I said, if he wants to do something for you, he should organize the consumer.

Well, on defense, he's completely with you.

He knows what the game is.

But strangely enough, on China, he's with you.

I didn't have to do much of a selling job.

He asked a few, you know...

Japan, he said, he was afraid of.

And Russia.

I said, who the hell has this missile saying at us?

Who is going to be a moral threat to us for the next 15 years?

Not the Chinese.

And, well, he said he hopes if

So when you get re-elected, that you'll step up defense?

I said, well... Of course.

I said, that's the whole reason.

I said, can you imagine having any of the Democrats in office because of the conservative... That's right.

That's right.

I think he's going to work.

He said he called Bill Buckley and gave him hell after his announcement.

After his...

He will.

Well, a little talk with him now.

Very good.

And with Reagan.

Right.

Well, I'm going to visit Reagan.

When I called him about the U.S.,

He said he was going to have a house in Malibu, and he wants me to come up for it.

Good.

It's going to be worthwhile.

Well, it's going to spend a day with him.

Oh, well, Henry, it'll give you an intellectual utilization.

He has no brain at all.

I mean, it's just, I find, you know, it's just... Well, you know, I'm just...

I think I'd pick Agnew, but Agnew really, at least it's going to be a tough choice because Reagan is more open-minded.

Agnew has these crackpot ideas.

And Agnew, a man who tells me that the Russians and Chinese are doing this in cahoots with each other,

When the Russians are shaking and the Chinese are building air raid shelters and have all their armed forces up in the north against the Russians, it just, you know, that is a crudeness and you can't shake him once he's...

I explained all this to him, you know, that's just how a sophisticated game they're playing.

Scallion, yeah.

Apparently he scored with that game.

That is.

Well, I've redone it now enough so that it's acceptable.

Well, instead of writing about the trip, which would have been good, he'd have six-sevenths of it over China.

and slobbered over it, which really hurts us with Peking because it gives the impression that our right wing is impotent.

And then he had a few gratuitous cracks in it.

Taiwan had had everything wrong with it.

So I took out all the paragraphs.

Now it's a pretty rapid pace.

And we beat up the part on the rest of the world.

Good.

He ought to say something about the Mideast and something about Africa.

That's right.

That's what he says.

That's right.

That's why he was sent in.

He was sent in.

He probably knows he doesn't know a goddamn thing about China.

And we don't want to make him a China expert.

Well, he's trying to tell everybody to be a China expert.

He can't.

He's got a misconservative analysis.

And his pitch now is that their concerns are not cosmetic and not personal or substantive.

And so we're strategic in conventional arms balance.

So we install them in China.

Yeah.

And he says, by spring, these matters will themselves be resolved one way or the other.

By then, their fears will be frozen into inferiority, and the fears that we will be frozen into inferiority and solved will be alleviated, as should the fears that we're making overtures to Beijing and the expensive R&D now, and all other companies will be evident by the spring.

So at this point, our interests are served by privately alleviating their concerns to the degree possible.

Again, this is one of these nutty things unsolved.

What we are doing is freezing their offensive filter.

We are not making any.

And also, can you brief the conservatives on this in some way?

That's the kind of thing he's talking about.

He says, though, nothing would do more to calm the right than a notion that increases in the strategic arms sector of the defense budget and a presidential address on defense resources.

And for Buchanan, he would put that in, although it's true, is utterly stupid.

Let me tell you, we are going to have one hell of a time.

You know how much they're going to cut the defense budget?

$8 billion.

Doesn't he know this?

And what he's waiting for is...

move into the strategic arms sector.

The strategic arms sector already has the largest share.

We're going to wind up without any conventional forces.

The thing we ought to do is emphasize that.

I know the conservatives as to what we're doing in that area.

That's the one Jim Buckley has really done.

He doesn't know anything either.

He's not very smart.

I mean, what you're asking, excuse me, I mean, Bill Buckley.

Yeah.

Someone Bill Buckley has stepped up.

Yeah.

And I'm at lunch or dinner with Bill Buckley.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, why don't you get, you set up the meeting with the conservatives, but as I say, I just don't have any illusions about what the hell we're trying to do.

I don't think any of our own staff has the slightest idea around here.

What in the name of God we're out with is, well, certainly, ten of us have cracked up.

We're having a hell of a time keeping this budget up at all.

The EDM was saying without it, without salt, they would have stopped this year.

That's the only reason we got it.

They don't understand it, see.

And you've increased the defense budget over what Laird wanted every year.

Yes, yes.

Few would do that sort of thing.

Maybe I can do a little of it with that group.

Well, that group isn't the one.

You just, that group is fine.

Do it with them as your opinion.

Make opinion-type people outside of the healthy chemistry.

Get together a group of, I mean, the jackasses.

I mean, they're not bad, except that they have never done anything for us as a bunch of bastards.

Never.

They've always pitched.

They've posed in the 60s.

They've posed in the 68s.

And they gave us a lot of fake praise for Cambodia.

Those guys, they upset.

Those, there's no point in getting together.

You know, Goldwater admitted that.

Goldwater said those guys are generally opposed.

Who's he talking about here?

He's talking about the more sensible ones.

He says there's a lot of division there amongst them.

Could we get a list?

Let's not talk about it, but just get a list of those.

Go ahead and lay it right and square.

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.

Couldn't have produced the time and blown them for a while.

Yeah.

Well, they just want to be against us.

He said some of these fathers are so bitter they want us to eat badly, but this is not the majority.

Others are just not enthusiastic.

Others are not enthusiastic about a position against the administration.

They say, give us some reason we can be Florida children.

And it's, you know, we give them to them.

It's not like they're never enough.

So we turned.

So we kicked the demonstrators.

drugs, we come for the outlawing of our marijuana, we help the Catholic schools.

You don't get a goddamn line from any of these pastors.

Well, yes, you do.

Kilpatrick was out last night.

I heard him by accident praying.

He was just...

He's good.

He's intelligent.

He's on this group.

He's at the edge of what they're talking about.

No, but Kilpatrick is sensible enough to know that we have fought the battle of APM.

He's got some good pieces on him.

You don't see him in action?

You?

Guess why.

Meyer, I've never seen you write one good thing.

I know those people.

I got back to my head.

You write an inactive version.

Well, of course, Meyer is a former communist, and all these guys had something wrong with him.

OK.

I'm going to do that.

And I've missed the chance to see him.

Right, yes.

I'm supposed to, isn't it?

Yes, sir.

You're not on a tribute message.

It's a waste of my time.

I shouldn't go out.

If you're out now, David, the captain should sit there and I'd ask him to drive.

But he shouldn't.

I'm just saying, I don't know.

Oh, he's not there.

Why?

Fine.

Now, you set up the list of people if you would.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

For him.

And he set it up three times.

He refused to meet with him.

I was not checking.

But he set it up now.

He's meeting with Billy Graham, who got in the same day and got Marks in here.

Of course, I understand.

Here's Doug from Arden.

You want to let us in?

What else do you need to know?

You're a front man.

That's fine.

I know one thing, I know one thing, is that Mills is, you know, stop me, maybe you're already aware of it, but Mills is planning the first jump in industry for the Waste Meets Connect.

I'm going to go to Europe, meet with the European community, and I'll, possibly during the August recess, possibly in November.

Peterson had an hour and a half with Mills yesterday, and he is, I think, convinced that

Others who have been working on other areas of this thing also are.

But Mills' kick is going to be to lay the groundwork for coming back and hitting for a 10% import tax at the opening of Congress in September and come back.

And then you'll be here.

We are laying all these lines for that.

That kind of fits with that.

Now, don't tell Peterson a thing, though.

He leaves.

He doesn't know anything about it.

Well, there's been two or three leaks.

Connelly was very nice about saying it, but he showed it to the Christian Science Monitor.

I know he isn't going to do it.

Peterson does have a compulsion for talking to people.

So I'm not telling him a thing.

I'm just letting things be very, very clear.

I really feel that if you raised your hand and saw that,

I didn't realize it.

It's not intentional.

It's an inability to know how to handle it.

I just don't know how to handle it.

You talk to people you trust.

I believe you.

So that's another chance.

That's what you said.

You said you had another chance.

who sits on the bigger swing.

She had to stand in relation to the theater.

Outside the theater.

Outside the apartment.

And so on.

And what we really need to get across is to follow up the sort of the blind enthusiasm of Colson or Moore

Our don'ts are quite low-key, like Cherrywater.

They don't really... Well, it is necessary now.

But it is significant to know, you know, that you've...

In Ohio, I got across, because I guess we had two or three people along.

So you can share it here, isn't it?

Yeah, but that doesn't work.

There isn't very much that a continuing basis of that kind of guy can do.

What we've got to do is respond.

They're recording it.

They're recording it pretty right away.

They heard it in the New York theater.

Thank God it was recorded just dang well.

They didn't press TV?

No.

Press TV?

There's no way for it.

But it might have been on the white TV.

I don't know.

It's too late.

But it might have been on the morning stuff, right?

Yeah, it was a nice thing to do.

Much the best way, by the way.

Yeah.

All right.

Other than the press, things follow.

It seems to me we've been an awfully good day to do it.

It's been a good day on a lot of bases, not the least of which is that it completely overrode the bridge of public and Republican senators.

All their statements weren't bad.

Well, they worked on it.

They were bad when they started.

I know.

That's what I meant.

I meant it.

I just told them.

I knew they'd try, and I said, well, that's great.

That's the way to do it.

They're doing that at all.

Conley did a good job on it, too.

Oh, Conley.

They had him on the TV, of course.

He went back and did a television show.

Sir.

What about a guy?

I know a guy that'd do that sort of thing.

So what's your general appraisal of the

of the device that you're going to contribute.

But the August 1st Congress, you know, it's a hell of a good device.

I think, really, it's just, it sure is.

You get two or three lead stories out of it in the papers.

And how do you tell them, tell them, you know, it's easy to serve them at the same time.

It's quite a different way.

They all live with the economic story, and you dominated the economic story instead of having the Republican senators dominate it.

That's what happened.

And he set up a big China story, which isn't bad.

He cooled the Vietnam speculation.

There's this crazy Swedish thing.

Because that is, it's already knocked out of the box.

South Vietnam, he said, North Vietnam, he said it's a hoax.

I forgot a lot of that.

No, I didn't.

He did a lot of other jobs.

And now, there's,

as there always is going to be, I guess, there's enough stuff in it that it'll go, you know, rippling on some of the implications of a bunch of columns on China and what your online table is.

Yeah, sure, let's start thinking on that.

Sure.

And the thing about the Soviet, what we're up to.

The other thing is, although it gave an economic play, it also did get back into the Soviet and China thing, and we've got to keep

getting those things in the news so that we can sell them.

The old news isn't riding on the economy every day.

We heard one of the few that sees that.

I mean, the Commonwealth doesn't even see it.

I mean, I didn't mention it, but our others come early and doesn't see it at all.

They say, do that and talk about the economy.

And they wonder why do I always go out to these airports and everything and talk about peace?

Oh, boy.

You know, that's what I'm thinking.

You've got to be, this is, you see what happened?

You talk about, no, you see a lot of little kids down there.

What are you talking about?

About the wage price, Barrett?

No.

Fine, Barrett.

Do I?

Fine.

Yeah.

Of course.

Yeah, they owe it to James, didn't they?

Well, he doesn't show up on that letter, but he's the... Well, he is invited because he was my chairman.

He was the chairman.

I'll get him up there.

Okay.

I'll tell you what I was thinking I would do.

A congress gets out on a Friday...

I guess we get that, uh... Yeah, fine.

I guess we get that economic, uh... We get the buck, that thing, yeah.

Not a buck.

Not a buck, Mr. Martin.

Mr. Martin.

Just too bad, actually.

I mean, it's good.

Well, you know, he played as being up.

Goes up again.

But on the other hand, rather, we're gonna make him eat his goddamn words, man.

Sure.

It stands by the forehand.

There are several things, Bob, that I want to get across.

I want to get across the dereliction of the Congress and the fails to pass.

You see?

I want to get across the...

I want to get across the real whack of the Pentagon Papers.

I want to get that back up in the news.

You see?

Now, your little boys won't understand why, but I can understand why.

You see?

I want to do it about the World War II.

You see?

I'm having all of these deep lessons.

I mean, I'll have this, I'll have things steaming around this place.

And also, I wanna get across also some more of my positive economic things, you know, how things are looking, how I feel about the future.

And I think the thing to do is to throw another one of these.

I don't know what to tell anybody, but I think that's a true one.

The NSC would have to be put off to Friday.

Could you do that?

NSC in defense of Friday other than Thursday?

Yeah, I'll second.

So I'll have to work Wednesday and have it Thursday.

At this time, I'll have it Thursday.

Or I can have the NSC wait at that board if you want to have it Thursday.

All right.

If you could go in and see your friend.

All right.

OK. OK.

Salute.

Nixon, Kissinger & Haldeman on Foreign policy and Defense budget

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on August 5, 1971

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