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Hi, sir.

How are you?

Nice to see you.

Nice to see you, too, man.

Hi, John.

Sorry to keep you waiting.

I guess you've got the Senator all mixed up on earth that's going on here.

This is all the things I did and all the big secrets.

Say, the business people tell me you might have a hell of a talk over there sometime today.

They're all... See, I just don't...

I didn't believe the standard source.

That's it.

You've got to sit over here, there we go.

You've got to be in a good place to sit again on that, haven't you?

Well, no, it isn't for your colleague.

It's for your business, they call it.

Jazz?

See, we're married to your colleague.

Well, are you married to his colleague?

I better have a chance to talk to you and get your analysis on this thing.

Of course, I've heard from John and a lot of our UK friends, and I greatly appreciate your comments and what's wrong, because your constituency at work, one of the reasons is in their concerns.

And the real question here is, of course, how will we, in the end, is how we come out of that.

and what you were involved.

Let me just say it again.

I suppose there's a difficult problem.

It's that you can't talk about everything that's going on.

Yeah, I believe that.

So it's, second, I think that each individual has got to look at, each individual's examiner's policy has got to look at

David and so forth and so on.

So the next time I run over there, the Chinese Congress and the Conservatives, rice and wine and fancy dishes, take our pants off.

Well, it could be.

The difference, of course, is, and obviously we can't expose what Mr. Jim's talking about in 21 hours, but I can assure you one thing.

No conditions, as I said yesterday, on either side, tough.

the whole trilogy conversation and my instruction because I want to deal with these people the same way we're dealing with the Soviet assault.

I mean, you know, we're not going to, we're even not in Ireland.

The Senate may cut off ABL, unfortunately, but as far as we're concerned, I would never give up ABL unless we get a notation on offensive missiles because that's what we have to trade unless they will trade that.

That's why it's so easy to go fishing.

Berlin is the same thing.

Berlin is going extremely well.

I'm talking about somebody who refused the other day the thing that you were giving away a lot in Berlin.

And we see agreement.

How the hell is love to kill a woman in Berlin?

How is love to kill a woman in Berlin?

Well, it doesn't matter.

The hand Germans, unfortunately, if I may say, they would all do sorrow rather than anger.

character, but they, he's, he's so almost kind of washable in his desire, you know, I mean, indeed, well, he's got a hole, he's got a tree, he's got a tree, but the point is, he's got a tree, and a tree cannot become, it cannot be offered to him unless he works together, and that's the way it works.

Now, now, let me just say what the Chinese say.

Human beings, I can just assure you that what is involved here involves far more, far more than their relations or our relations with Taiwan.

It involves far more than is going to be more important to us than the outcome in Vietnam.

That's going to come out in the end.

And we're going to see it through in our own way.

What it really involves is a very major change in the entire relationships.

And it involves particularly the United States having

As you look at that part of the world, there's Russians.

Southeast Asia is, of course, the original area of support.

There will be a whole line, Thailand, all around it.

But for us to be in a position where we cannot effectively work with the Chinese

When our interests happen to coincide as, and if you will read, I should have mentioned India too, which I mentioned, but I'm content for it.

But anyway, when our interests happen to coincide, they for their reasons and we for our reasons may both be the beneficiaries.

But I should emphasize, and you should tell all of your friends, that nobody is more aware than I am of that.

As long as theirs is a communist system and ours is a Greek system, we are no more, we are no more certain to have a nice sweet day talk with them than we do with the Soviet.

It's going to be tough titty-bargaining with them, the politicians of the Soviet, and this is the beginning of a long process, only the beginning.

eyes are completely open.

No deals have been made.

None will be made.

And it's purely a question of what's in it for them, what's in it for us.

And if we, if it comes off Jim, I think it will.

I mean, I think the very fact that it's happening has already had, and we can't discuss this publicly, any enormous effect on their neighbors.

That must be a good time.

Any enormous effect.

And we...

We frankly needed a chance to get in there.

We were getting frozen in there.

So after that, that bulletin, excuse me.

No, I have confidence based on your track record.

And I can't face it because we don't know anything.

You know, I haven't been to Cambodia, to Laos, to take the demonstrators to the scene.

Right.

I know.

But what concerns me so is the destitution.

Yeah.

Is that I believe these are going to be people who are ideal.

who are looking for reassurance that if they freeze in a sort of situation that says that, hey, they can't reach us and look easy.

Right.

Just do something.

Right.

That you're going to lose the troops that you need.

Right.

I couldn't agree more.

That kind of enthusiasm.

I couldn't agree more.

I mean, that's what it is.

It's in your state and other states.

Now, I've got it.

I've had everything intended against us on it.

I personally feel that you have literally had the option to bail me.

Because you're selling me the job right now.

But I've got to preserve my possibility.

Right.

With these troops, so as to be able to be as special as I can when crunch comes.

But I just, as I said, John, I just hope that things aren't frozen to such a position where, for example, you can save me from that.

Sure.

And I was around a couple of years ago, I was like,

And I think there's one thing that I think is very important, and I know you've mentioned it, and Bill has apparently mentioned it, and each other, the country where I'm talking about, and Bill has, yeah, defense.

Now, you're supposed to raise the problem of defense, let me say it.

I'm more concerned about it than they are.

But, Jim, you're at that Senate.

You know those sons of bitches in 2006, I fought for ABN.

And we won it by one vote, the bankers' vote in the first year.

We held last year by three votes, but I spent hours and hours with our student Republicans who didn't see it.

And this year, we're holding it because we've got this whole thing going along.

But whether it's Asian, let's take strategic weapons.

Uh, that's correct, if you know, since McNamara was a machine.

We haven't built a new offensive weapon in the United States for five years.

In fact, all of our offensive weapons were on the drawing boards and were approved in the ISAR administration.

The nuclear submarine, for example, the Polaris, and the demand van.

All those damn things.

Like in 1958, when I was Vice President of the U.S., the British and the Chinese did you a goddamn thing.

The steel plate froze.

Now, in my view,

and I do, depending upon what happens with our doctrine of the Soviet, and I'm not just saying that, but if we do not get a satisfactory arms limitation on their weapons, as well as the other, and I can't guess if that's the case, the United States is going to have to look at its whole card, and we may well have to move toward an increase in defense expenditure rather than an increase.

Your colleagues up there in the Senate, including those 12 student Republicans, we won't say which 12, because it's 12 out of 14 sometimes, 12 out of, one 12 out of 14 is a student and the other 12, but you care.

But, Jim, they vote, they're gonna vote, they're confident that's much, you know what they're gonna do.

Now, I hope that if there's one thing you can get across to these small Senate, you can tell them,

I believe in strong national events.

I have raised every budget.

The Laird Testaments, John's on the National Security Council, I raise it every year, as you know.

I raised it this year.

Laird submitted it to 73.5.

I raised it to 76 and put it into the Navy.

Pretend.

I have better paperwork.

Today in the Navy, this cannot have a shape, not personnel-wise.

But my young David was out there with the 6th Fleet, and he's an archaeologist, and he said these were Russian ships.

They've been in our parts since World War II.

We aren't building much of it.

And the Navy is the one place where we still have the edge, and I mention it because we've got so many more in the world.

But the Navy and the United States continue to be a great partner.

The Navy has to be a great partner in terms of offensive and in terms of nuclear strategy.

In other words, the balance between nuclear weapons continues with the Russians continuing to build and upgrade

Their offensive missiles, the United States either has to build more, or build defensive weapons, or have controls, one of the three.

And I'm keenly aware of it.

But what we have to do is to get that day in Congress, not the House.

The House is very political.

We've got to get that Senate turned around so that we can win those votes.

I intend to make this, frankly, a big deal.

the 72 campaign.

Now, the United States had a major issue against any Democrat except just to accomplish.

Jackson's not going to be nominated for vice president, but if they nominate the president, their party splits.

Muskie is going to be for cutting the military budget.

Humphrey will be for cutting the military budget.

Teddy will be for cutting the military budget.

He doesn't say, buy Harris, those other cons up there.

I mean, you know how they vote.

And

As far as I'm concerned, you can be sure that John and I, John says in these meetings, that I've been kicking it up every time we can.

Now, it doesn't mean that we're not going to try to get some of our obsolete stuff out of the way.

You know, for example, some of our air defense stuff, defending against air attack on Soviet radios.

Hell, they aren't going to come over there to fly over to hold a bunch of planes so we can reach them in 15 minutes and press the button.

In terms of missiles, we cannot have missile superiority.

In terms of naval power, we cannot have naval superiority.

And I am a strong national defense man.

But frankly, Jim, you weren't here the first two years.

I have to tell you, I have been fighting career guard action in this town.

And we haven't had much support from those fellows.

They just discovered this issue, you know, lately.

And when I fought these things, in fact, we haven't gotten any little support from hardly anybody.

The Hearst Papers were good, the Chicago Tribune, every other publication, Time, Newsweek, CBS, NBC, ABC, knocking their brains out.

And national defense is a darn good issue.

If I could just suggest one thing that would be helpful.

Unitary principle.

I welcome that.

But they should not do it in terms of saying the president is not fighting for national defense.

Goddamn, I'm fighting for who?

Who fought for ABN?

Who did that?

You see what I'm talking about?

But I think they ought to say, take on those damn Republicans, for example, and Democrats, who are trying to force nationalists.

I think putting the anchor to the right here is good.

That will bounce off the ones on the left of this field.

That's right.

I'll tell you a little about that.

They read the papers and say, well, the next administration has proposed a budget of only $75 billion for defense, and that means a cut in this and that, and the various...

in the Air Force, in the Navy, in the Army, or grovel around saying about the crisis matter of the administration.

What they do not realize is that that's something that I was gonna get the hell cut out of.

It really is, and I'll fight it.

that you

uh...

If you could tell all our friends up there,

I use the ADM as an example.

Without the ADM, the degree would be terrible.

It would cost us nuts.

We wouldn't have any department.

Because we either have to build an ADM with all the problems, or we have to build more offensive weapons.

Now, if the Senate, if we say it, if they should say it very much, then we'll just have to go to the country and say, all right, boys, let's go.

We don't.

I would like to suggest, Jim, and I don't know what all of the thinking was behind that press release, that group that they put out, but it wasn't all accurate.

For instance, our forces in the Mediterranean are still three to one with the Russians.

That's true.

What I would like to suggest is that Bill and Russia are a couple of years less than I would like to suggest.

What I would like to suggest, Jim, is that they're all on the same line.

I don't think Bill, Rush, or Meyer, and the party side of you only, if you could make up a list of what you consider to be really the movers and shakers, and we can sit down, and I will authorize Henry to give him the secret stuff, good God, the secret stuff, those are the goddamn New York Times, and I'm talking to our friends here.

I'd like for them to see it.

And that will give them also, frankly, we welcome, we welcome, we welcome, rather than the right.

By the right, I mean the response of the right.

And we welcome it on that.

In terms of the China, you know, it's perfectly all right.

We won't keep anybody.

Everybody in this country is like Scotty Redmond.

I'll tell you the truth.

So that doesn't matter.

But the only one thing is, as far as national events, I'm not sure it would save us at all.

Believe me, we have fought very skillfully to keep it up where we have.

Because we haven't got, frankly, Larry didn't fight very hard.

We just talked about this down here.

Larry Rogers are very strong advocates in this field.

They tend to be good brokers with the Congress.

So I had to carry this life of national events practically alone.

The best man in the Senate on it, incidentally, is Tower.

Tower is fucked like hell.

He's a damn good man.

He'll heal the hill.

He knows how we fall on the station.

But I think if we could get the pulse down, that would be an excellent idea.

Excellent idea.

And I'd be glad to stick my head in and talk to him and then have him take care of the cold cock.

Because I think that's what they ought to do.

And also, if they get frozen, it's hard to get back in.

That's the political side of it.

Can we do this next week?

I got to do it next week.

Well, they'll be back.

I don't know.

I don't know what he's talking about.

Well, they'll be here.

Well, Henry will see Bill separately.

But if Bill wouldn't mind sitting with him, that would be good.

Because basically, he is their sort of intellectual leader.

Tim, there's one more I want you to look at in connection with this.

I recall when the president was saying, I think it was Senate's argument, 55% of the defense budget was settled.

All right.

Now we've got, I don't know how many million or hundreds of thousands of people out there.

So when you take that, those numbers, and I see what the rest of them is going to upgrade.

What do you think?

I don't know that position.

What do you think of this volunteer argument?

Based on the age report.

The age report.

What do you think of it?

I'm wondering if we ought to get off of that job.

I don't know.

Forget that I ever said this, because I'm for it, too.

I said it about the platform, the entry port, and so forth.

But the difficulty that I see of it is that if you really come down to it, do a choice of hardware or volunteer, are we not afraid of having to take the hardware?

Again, I don't know how the hell they're going to get people in the armed services at each time.

I can tell you what you think.

You have to pay them.

I'm here to explain to you that you have no right to tax persons who are in power.

That's important.

And I'd be willing to pay you to increase the defense budget by $4.8 million.

You may have to do this.

Let me tell you, this is an investment.

It's an investment.

That's a final argument for it.

We are not going to allow the United States to become the second-strongest power of war, period.

That's where I'm coming from.

The Volunteer Army, I think that the whole personnel structure of the Army needs an overhaul before you get into the Volunteer Army.

You are a secretary here, I know.

No, I don't think it's a mess.

good reason we have an overhaul of the personnel.

Because if you have professionals that are getting paid, they're going to be more competent, longer service, and so forth.

They perform different tasks and perform them better.

Whether you have three interns or one competent person, you can do the work with the three interns.

This is an exaggeration, but this is the area that needs examination.

If we put it in kind of that Detroit military research, we don't have a hundred jobs.

This is pretty aimless.

I've had guests and assumptions from several hundred thousand who have to impeach Dr. Rigby, and we've just authorized two silly programs for emergency jobs in the apartment.

One of my human jobs, and the guy who signed that,

150,000 people are rake leaves.

It's a terrible bill.

I'm signing it this time because basically people are going to say if you don't.

But I couldn't agree more.

I could have put it into the military, but I wouldn't have that damn thing.

I just had to do it.

Jim approved it a year ago.

You know, the interest rates on housing, I think housing is 7%, and they should go to 7.75% in order to, you know, attract money.

I said, no, sir, not now.

I said that rather than present time, we're going to have an additional subsidy of $600 billion to keep the interest rate at 7%.

And I was a little relieved because I said, well, it takes a lot of the budget.

So I said, listen, it's a hell of a lot better to spend $600 billion to subsidize housing.

And maybe that'd be 150,000 or 200,000 units that would be involved by keeping it there.

And that, I said, I'd rather have those people in those jobs than to pay a bid for $150,000 rate of lease in Central Park, Bunn City.

No, no, but on the thing there, I think that ought to be raised, you ought to raise, I think it depends on where you put it.

You see, if four billion in research and defense

But you know, and also there's startup times and all that sort of thing.

I'm just, you know, not an expert, you know.

I know there's a space program going down.

I've told them to look into other types of, say, basically, not research, but applying research that we can have in various fields, in other words, like desalination.

And defense is another area.

Defense can be sold in this country still.

In 1971, yeah.

If you know there's a great question on can it be sold, the domestic counsel, the law didn't hold.

They bolded on this.

And the two areas where people will not support North Spanning and North Carson Spanning are actually linebacker defense and space.

That's because of all the big art in the last two or three years on the subject.

Yeah, well, take space now.

Somebody told me this morning that one of the cabin officers at the cabin meeting said she did.

I said, I heard that.

I said, I told her she was fantastic.

You know, great, great shot.

And I was probably a little scotched up there.

Maybe, I don't know.

I didn't think it was me.

My wife said, several of them were talking in there.

I remember they had lunch and brunch.

Well, they're terrible.

They paid $8 million for that little car and left it on the road.

Are you with me?

Uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

Let me say this.

A critical time, Jim, and this, as much as we say, this must be just something for yourself.

The moment of truth will arrive when we see what the Russians have agreed to on limitations.

The ring is not one that is real on their part as it will be real on our part.

In other words, they will have their SS signs, their big missiles, as we know about our ABMs.

That breaks it down.

We then have a choice, and our choice then is to go forward and build small weapon systems.

Right, John?

Under those circumstances, then I will have the base for going to the country.

See, by trying to negotiate to everybody, all the disarmers that can be negotiated, fine, we're trying.

We make a real effort.

We won't have a talk.

If we negotiate to go down the extra mile and fail and to reach it, then you go right to the country and say, under those circumstances, I believe the United States should spend more dollars and so forth.

Now, very apart from that, in terms of our budget for 73, we still have to buy the Navy boat.

I don't know what you're going to do there.

I don't know where you're going to land now.

But the Navy, it concerns me, not because of numbers, but because of modernization.

Would you agree?

That's the real thing.

I don't know anything about the Navy.

I don't know anything about what's in it.

But I think John's in it.

You've got to be sure.

If you have direct...

I'm not talking about the industrial complex.

Of course, I don't mind that either.

I'm just going to say this.

The President has started from the premise that you had no foreign policy in Washington, D.C.

Do you remember the Iranian crisis?

The presence of the Sixth Fleet, in fact, the highway that they had taken up there, it took many of us considerable risks.

And the fact that these really were on the low heights avoided the question of the potential Russian intervention through the Syrians and the rest of the people who exploded in the Middle East war.

Now, if we hadn't had the Sixth Fleet there, as it was,

That operation showed some great efficiencies.

Because of our problems with the Greeks, I assume, we've been driven out of virtually every day.

And there are people, John, that do this at the time.

And, you know, we had the airlift stuff.

I mean, you know, if we tried to pull, if we had wanted to do another Lebanon, you know, we could do it.

We could have done it.

Right, John?

Germany to Turkey.

Yeah, that was it.

So, so, so this, this I've covered.

There is no man, believe me, in this world who is a stronger advocate of a strong U.S. Navy at this point than I am because naval power in the world ahead of time, there will be a balance on the big ones.

Naval power is the basis of our policy.

It was in Admiral Mahan, see, the guy that said that thought.

It happens to be true today.

See, the big missiles balance out.

The land forces, the two superpowers, are afraid to run there to get into the missile and kill 70 million.

So here's an haze moving around.

All anybody can say is the Russians want to get into the Indian Ocean.

Put their... Yeah, put their navels, of course.

That's right.

And they are quite fearful of it.

And the...

But if you... That's a great thing to engine up there.

If you can shoot and say, we need that six... We need it in the Mediterranean.

are believing there ain't no way.

They talk about the balance of power in the Middle East.

Now, the Israelis can whip everybody around for the next year, next year, five years from now.

But they cannot ever take the risk unless we're there to check in for Russians.

That's what is involved here.

And we're not there to try to take the Russians, the Israelis, you know.

So literally, you only take one.

Even if you have to use an SS-9, an SS-11 on that, you don't get so on.

Huh?

Of course, it started, it's been out of us.

That's the whole point about it.

All the Russians have to do, we didn't have our power in there.

They're big destroyers, carriers, not carriers, they're not carriers, they're cruisers.

They have guided missiles and so forth that are devastating, you can tell me.

really devastating, terrific stuff.

But I would hit that, what I'd like to tell you is that I like the national events thing, but Tom, for God's sake, at least give us credit for fighting for it.

We fought for the alien, we're fighting for our national events, and we're having one hell of a time getting the Congress to move along.

So you can come back to alert public opinion to this matter.

But in fairness, they should not attack the one individual in the current American political scene, with the exception of Scoop Jackson, who is, Scoop is the only one that you realize of all these ones.

The only one that ran for that vote for ABM.

He's the only one that supported me on the, us on the, on offensive weapons.

The only one that supported me.

Every one of these other guys has pulled a chance.

I mean, every damn one.

It never did come.

You've seen it happen, haven't you?

No, I didn't.

People always around about it, wringing their hands, and can't we change the priorities?

Can't we prove that we are more, you know, you want to say, capable of switching states?

Suddenly discovered, uh, the audience is going, oh, now there you are.

That's right.

If they, then it gets popular.

They will.

I mean, like I said, it's all in order.

They all start to wear the American flag and the police car on the sheriff's badge.

I think I'm the only one that was around in the 70s that still wears the American flag.

Did you, did you, gentlemen notice that George Wallace is starting to talk about national defense?

Is he?

But not in this country.

That one part of the country where it's still a popular issue in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana.

Tennessee, Virginia, Maine, North Carolina, probably, Kentucky, certainly, national events, popular issues, but across the rest of the country, New York, not yet.

That's like two great events.

Well, particularly if our Russian friends throw their weight around something.

They always have, you know, they usually have done something.

And, uh, Marxists...

No, well, I appreciate it.

I appreciate it.

I know, I have great respect for the response and support.

I know that we need, we need, frankly, the, shall we say, our fans on the right, just as we've got our fans on the left.

But in this field, the country, the one area,

where they really have a supporter in this damn place is on the National Defense Secretary.

I will never, believe me, I am never going to sit in this office and allow the United States to become second to the Soviet Union.

It's not going to happen.

I can promise you that.

And it's going to be hard, because at an appropriate time, when we've made the record, we've got to go to the country and get support of it, and get the Congress to vote for it, and maybe it can change.

i think you can't change i think if you get that flag and wave it a bit and say you want to be second and here's the problem the american people will say well tell you what you do talk that and uh and see i mean what kind of reactions you get um

But before, not your conservative audience, just try it on your Jewish audience as well.

Your other, your other people.

My conservative, I have a lot of friends who are skeptical of anything like that.

Yeah, sure.

And they're going to look at some kind of a tool outside of time.

Yeah, yeah.

But they do think that we should.

And I will do it if I can.

And too much to say.

I appreciate it.

If you'd like to have a meeting before the talk, let me sit down.

Let me sit around and I'll go and see.

All right.

We're ready.

We're ready to do it.

And as a matter of fact, I'd say, why don't you say, I'd like to have a meeting on national events.

And I'll go get a reading on national events such as they haven't already had.

And we just go down the line and say, here's what they've got.

Here's what we've got.

Here's what we've got to do.

And, uh,

here we'll be trying to also here's here areas where we hope you guys will push and allow them also to get into the game right i don't mind being pushed i mean we need to i'd like to be able to say this to people look we got some friends here

Do you have a paperweight in it?

You have it.

That's great.

It's a hard one.

As it is, you can tell.

It's very small, the paper weight.

And I always tell people that I said, now, remember that the paper in your desk gets so thick that that won't hold together the paper on the weight.

Okay?

All right.

Thanks.