Conversation 617-005

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

I tell you, if you would have let me ride, if you would have let me ride, every hand turns perfect.

Now, they're all saying this is because of the floods.

I said, no.

You notice how they're almost puke when I said that?

Yeah, but I didn't think, I thought they were on the defensive.

I didn't think they were.

They were on the defensive.

Oh, I love your one-word answer.

Oh, absolutely.

I had no explanation.

From my point of view, I can't touch the domestic impact.

If I could have written every answer,

I couldn't have done it as well.

It wasn't perfect.

You see, Clark, we have to leave Hingham out there.

You're going to have to help us on some of these things.

It's $45,000.

You should know it's $5,000 more than they're recommending.

So it's $22,500 a month.

If you project it, and they all do that in the papers tonight, it means we're out of there by the end of August.

What I want you to do, what I want you to be sure to do is to target, is to sort of, sort of, sort of low-key and say, now look, don't project it.

Because, say, look what the president has said.

He said, look, we're going to take a look.

We're going to see what the enemy does.

You know what I said about the infiltration and the... That's going to... That was very... That was very... And also when you spoke about bombing into taxes.

Yes, sir.

The newsman's up in the city.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

You see, for institutions, all of us, all of us,

First of all, we've got the best of both worlds.

The doves are going to be scared to death that we're going to get out on the 1st of August.

Because they don't even know how long I have on the 1st of August.

That's what it figures over the 1st of August.

1st of August, end of July.

End of July, all right.

But you see, so you get what the doves have.

On the other hand, we have got to leave the Ukraine without a president in order because he's so concerned about POWs and the rest.

And he, by God, is going to be destroyed.

I didn't even sell a notion of it.

Oh, yes.

I haven't accomplished that at all.

Mr. President, did you know that I reached my density of views down to Jared Ford?

I know, but that's a good thing.

a couple of others, but their immediate reaction was good.

And I said, the President particularly does not want you to speculate or to draw conclusions as to what this means for Bianca or Lori, but I said emphasize that it demonstrates the accelerating success of the optimization.

and emphasized that more than 400,000 troops withdrawn to a level of one-fourth of what it was when you took office.

That's right.

I'm seeing that.

That brings it up.

That seemed to be over 400,000.

That seemed to be that.

They were going to zero out 400,000 on the one-fourth.

Well, you owe their people the fire.

Because you see, here's the point.

We don't want to leave any fragments on these field rubbies, but we all know, we all know this, that unless we have a cloud left there, there isn't going to be waves of those field rubbies back.

What makes it so effective is you've thrown enough hookers in there so that these paranoids in Hanoi, you know, withdrawal rate, you didn't say, you didn't answer the question, what is their rate?

So they might figure that in February, I'm talking about anointing, anointing figure that in February you'll say a hundred is too much and you'll start to withdraw.

If you notice what I did, Mark, another thing.

I don't have anything to say because where I said that, you know, as I got away from the rating, I said, right, it's not good, but it's not good.

I thought it was good.

Well, that shows, that shows what I'm thinking.

But then, I also said another thing that's very important.

before you got this here.

Or I said, at the next announcement, I didn't say it, I said before the first, I wrote it down, I said it before the first, at the next announcement, the duration of the next announcement, as well as the reason, I know the duration, you get that word down, we may have another announcement, yeah, we may.

I'd like to emphasize, thanks for your approval, during your Q&A, you emphasized that a

a given number represents an increasingly large percentage of the remaining total as that total shrinks.

Well, this is fantastic.

When you take 45,000 out of 184,000, that's a lot different than taking 25,000 out of 500,000.

When you announced 150,000, it was a smaller percentage of the force.

But it was over a year anyway.

That's a good point.

I think it is.

Also, I should say, just as you start to

to speak.

Shelly came to get me to say that the speaker was on the phone and we had a trouble locating him.

He was traveling in Oklahoma.

And he said, please tell the President how appreciative I am of your thoughtfulness in calling me to give me this information in advance.

He is a decent fellow.

He is.

You had a lot of fun on that last question.

You got stuck in everything you wanted to get.

I don't know.

Well, you said all I know about real property.

A good gag at the beginning, don't sell.

And then you play off of it.

And then you just rank up on the water bus party.

You know, you were killing 300 men a week.

You had all those people.

And this is, I like that remark to Helen Thomas.

Mrs. Cornell, great gag.

And the perfectly clear thing was great.

But I had the impression they filmed a lot of this, didn't they?

They filmed a whole panel.

I think they'll use a lot of it.

I just, we should have been on TV.

That is a perfectly clear bet.

That last one, if you only had one answer to use other than the basic point, that last one did it because it not only covered the economy, it covered the goddamn war thing.

I think this was one of the most effective press conferences.

But your last two, I mean, the September 16th and this one, from my point of view, from the foreign policy point of view, were really major events.

Well, if you had one in October, this didn't deal much with.

Oh, yes, yes.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, but that was no problem.

That didn't change anything.

That's the one in September arrested to break up.

I think this is a good way to have a press conference, Bob.

Sure, you would be on national television and banging around.

There will come a meeting session.

But on the other hand, you would be a little more relaxed here after you get to the things.

And we'll get to some of the sessions.

They'll have the opening announcement call, if you think so, by the way.

Because there's only two minutes.

I ran them all fast today, too.

I think that'll add one of the other questions.

Twenty-two questions.

After the announcement.

If you get more answers, like you gave to the MST question, you can get in 50 questions.

The MST question, if you get more answers...

That ends that crap, because they're starting to talk about amnesty now, and I'm glad that's on the record.

They're not going to be battling withdrawals this weekend, that's for sure.

No, I can't.

Look here.

That must be a person.

No, it wasn't.

You bet.

We had the war over it.

Of course we'll get answers.

But you cannot talk of amnesty when there are prisoners of war up there.

And when guys are still alive.

You agree?

Absolutely.

You can't talk of it.

Absolutely.

And this is a clear-cut issue.

And it's about the Lincoln victims.

They talk about Lincoln's amnesty.

How many of you got that amnesty?

He was robbed.

You can't do that until it's very early.

Also, Mr. President, you're still drafting people up.

This trial is very clear-minded between you and the softies like Gene McCartney and others and people like that.

They'd like to be able to see a clear-cut difference between you and your cat, but people are being drafted.

That's my point.

Even more than that.

P.O.W.

wives.

Two and a half million Vietnam veterans.

Two and a half million Vietnam veterans who went and got down to the dam to be very happy to save those couple hundred that went to Canada.

One good line in the anise, if you ever want to do a good one about it, which I'm not going to use, but I think this is a good one to use.

I don't care about this anise.

I said that it doesn't leave them a problem, the problem of serving and being promised in the middle for the non-Americans.

Two and a half million non-Americans chose to serve their country, and 45,000 died for their church.

A few hundred chose to desert their country, and they have to live with their choice.

That's a good one.

45,000 Americans who chose to serve their country had to die for their choice.

The 200 who chose to serve their country will have to live with their choice.

That's a very good point to make.

I'll be all the time.

That's not allowed.

I don't find that .

But perhaps that's because every time I hear this, I think of some of my close friends that myself killed in World War II.

I think this has a bigger rub off on just Vietnam.

That's right.

World War II and Korea.

I remember every time we talked about that.

Yeah, you're right.

You're right.

Well, I saw kids killed too.

No, no.

I wasn't.

I'm not as bad as you folks are.

It's a horrible thing.

I'm going to see you guys.

What do you think of our dead man crate?

It's flying.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I'm going to go to work in a minute.

Have fun.

If you keep the voice of mine out, don't.

In other words, say, look, we're doing the right thing, and let's don't push the President to not let us find anyone else.

Okay, sir.

Oh, let it die.

Let it die.

Did you call him?

Well, I couldn't explain.

He claimed to be at a football game, so I said, hey, give it to Pursley.

Pursley called back.

He said, you're running a bickering with the national security.

He said, we can never take such a withdrawal rate.

I said, I can't suppose.

I said, now listen, Sen. Rosen, what do you mean we can't take such a withdrawal rate?

It's what you're withdrawing.

That's where the president got it from.

The Secretary said, that's your actual rate.

What are you telling me we're running?

You're running for the National Security.

He told me you were running for $25,000 and that's $25,000.

Of course he did.

If you had said 40, Mr. President, he would have announced that he had beat your deadline by $5,000.

That's what the bastard would have done.

So, I think this worked out beautifully.

But it was... Of course, someday, when you write your history, I mean, what somebody has to point out, Mr. President, that these are not just clever press conferences, but that they are diplomatic documents, because the words are carefully chosen.

If you look at it from the Hanoi point of view, what they now confront, you've related it to the infiltration rate, but you haven't said what the infiltration rate is.

So as far as Hanoi is concerned, you can say one truck is too much infiltration.

And so you've given yourself, you won't do it that way, but they can't be sure.

You've in fact created more uncertainty in their mind than I thought you would do.

Well, I just figured that out.

This is new.

I was like, it wasn't space.

I just thought it was really real special.

I mean, it's the long shot in Israel.

It probably won't happen.

Actually, we've now played it all out.

I'll tell you, the way this works, having this big withdrawal,

and say, right, I'm just going to take a hard look, and we're going to watch how much they infiltrate, and we're going to find out, and then we will never desert our prisoners.

There was some awful hard language in there.

Mr. President, it's enough to start talking now about deadlines.

We can say, you're provoking a dead offensive.

What is the President trying to do?

He's trying to hold down military action in this last place.

I think that was very effective to say, no, we're going to watch, we're going to let it go for all these months.

Now that I heard this, Mr. President, you could never have gotten away with four months to say you're going to watch infiltration for four months.

What do you mean, four months?

What do you mean you watch infiltration?

Also, we've been buried away for 1902 months.

That's right.

One, you can do anything next time.

Well, I wouldn't recommend that because you're peaking, Trippett.

I would go two months next time.

I'd go two next time.

You put in another nice one.

which is highly ambiguous.

It doesn't mean a goddamn thing, but it's good for Hanoi.

Where you said, is there the seat by the settlement, aid can be reduced.

There happened to be one of our proposals.

Aid can be reduced, but I also said we could withdraw forces from around there.

It was related to this.

Well, it was related.

That was Peking.

We'll take that.

That's why I said that one, more for Peking, because they know that it's there.

I thought it was a great press conference.

Johnson don't like that, etc.

But, no, you see, I say that a little, but I say, he can't be, he can't be the first one to say it.

And he said that President Johnson made the decision to, you know, bomb the North.

Oh, Johnson won't like it, but... Well, because it's the end of the planet.

Yeah.

And you are running on his platform.

You know, this idea of ending the war, that person in the back there was asking if we could actually end the war.

Yeah, we never touched the end of the war.

We just said, when we start writing, we're talking about ending America's war.

They're not there to help.

He's talking surrender.

That's really what he's talking.

That's what they want.

But we may even end it.

You know, we might.

Well, I don't think this conference hurts you.

No, this conference helps.

No, no, this conference.

We got a lot of tough stuff in there.

If we could have written the script, only here to negotiate.

I agree that the conference had a very high degree of confidence, if you notice.

Always.

And, you know, when you said another thing, you stuck it to them when you said bombing the Tigers.

They're all in North Vietnam.

And they're not in Laos.

I know, but... Of course, but what I mean is it's a nice threat.

The threat figures there at the border, but in fact, all the passes are on the other side of the border.

So you were...

I know I know what you were saying.

That's where our paranoia... their paranoia helps us.

Well?

What are they, strapping around?

It's first rate.

They must be live.

First rate, huh?

That's excellent.

They must be live.

I love that we didn't just find it in Vietnam, but in Vietnam.

I thought you saw anything like that.

Good.

I mean, they get a little bit.

When they get news, they're always smooth.

I'm a little bit dissatisfied with everything on shore.

Oh yeah?

Well, I want you to move it just this way.

The way I want to do it is this.

If you want to take it down.

Here, here, here, here.

What you're saying.

If you can quote the president, and you should call him, the president thinks this matter is handled in a clumsy way and decided the procedure must be changed.

The procedure was set up to the best of intentions.

In other words, we have found, we have found that it's very embarrassing sometimes through a job, somebody would consider it their job, to talk to them about the job and then tell them that we couldn't get an FBI clearance.

And therefore, before talking to you, we therefore, the system was set up whereby in all cases, in virtually all cases, we had followed the practice, which is what you do, of chatting with the FBI first before a firm offer, use the word firm offer, of a job was made so that this comparison could be done.

under these circumstances, that not only, but particularly with the press, but with anybody else, that it should be changed.

That the person who is being considered for any kind of a job should be told so that he, and if he wants to turn it down, he won't go through it, but he must be told.

But the president recognizes this has the hazard in it that individuals

I want to be embarrassed when the FBI turns it down by putting out them.

Isn't that a good way to do it?

I'm going to say that you didn't ask about this today.

Yeah.

That I want to do it.

This is the point that I want to cover.

I'd like to be, uh, I'd like to support Al.

That was great.

Also, to be perfectly clear, don't you?

Amnesty.

That's all I'm going to say.

Yeah.

No, of course not.

It's got to go on.

Okay, fine.

Now, how many workers do you get?

The issue is that... We'll take the pictures right at the beginning, Ron.

Yes, sir.

Just so that we want life very together and wired.

Yes, sir.

is that I went a little bit further than I thought I could be.

No, no, no, no, you may go ahead.

No, no, he likes, that's what Smith likes.

He'll love that answer.

He'll, because he, he thinks you may be stringing it out till the summit, which of course you probably will do, but let's tell him.

We don't.

One of the issues, one of the issues of this, the Russians have not yet accepted our proposal of 2-1.

So,

Now there are big debates.

Should we go back to one side, which is only Grand Forks and against Moscow?

I think it would be very bad because that means we defend 5% of our population.

They defend 30%.

You don't have to settle that now.

I will present the two alternative positions.

One, one-to-one.

The other one is...

is a very complex one, where the Russians have said each side can defend its capital and an equal number of missiles.

Their missile fields are smaller than ours, so they could defend two missile fields for each one of ours.

They'd wind up with three defended sides for one of ours, because we will never get authorization to defend Washington.

Let me tell you this.

Don't you ever work this out, for Christ's sakes.

Sure.

He can't, they can't insist on us taking a deal that we're not going to take, because if I got all these orders, we'll go for more defense.

We won't do, it won't happen.

I was pretty tough on the Russians on that, too.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, boy.

And the other issue is whether submarines should be included in the offensive.

They don't want to do that.

Well, they don't want to do it.

Now, the trapezius, they do want it.

But I don't think they have thought it through.

because it would be in our interest to keep one category of weapons open and speed up the process a little bit.

But the best thing you could do is to say initially they should stick to the existing position, and then you will consider all the arguments and put out a directive.

I would not at this meeting.

The only thing you have to be careful about is to agree with...

I'll present a pretty good statement of the pros and cons of each of these positions.

It's highly technical now.

Should I call on who first?

Well, call on me first to present the issues.

All right.

Then I'd call on Jerry Smith and then on Rogers.

All right.

We scheduled it.

No, no, not the next thing.

But Floyd is going to be at this meeting, isn't he?

Will he buy it?

Will he go or not?

He hasn't told me yet.

What is the situation with regard to, uh... Oh, it's nothing.

The only thing that was a little bit tricky, I had to fuzz up there very, very carefully.

It's about Beijing and Moscow.

Well done.

I read your briefing, and the question didn't come that way, so I thought... Well, we've all been settled before, and we're not counting on that.

We will, of course, appreciate anything that's done.

Well done.

That's what you said.

Now, Mr. President, really, it's getting so hairy now that if you said anything that I thought was wrong or misleading,

For example, Scali had suggested before the press conference that I might give the background of tomorrow.

I do not think I should do it now.

You put it exactly right.