Conversation 626-010

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

Ah.

Captain Indian report.

Now the Basterds are demanding the withdrawal of all Pakistani troops from East Pakistan.

That's right.

All right.

Third call.

Come on.

We'll do that.

It's a way of doing it.

One other thing.

Mitchell had talked to Raj and Raj says he isn't going to say anything about fandoms and he isn't going to do this or that, but he'd be glad to have a meeting with you to go over the whole thing.

I think it's going to be painful.

And he's giving a speech tomorrow night, too.

We don't know what he's going to say on that.

Is that on the Mideast?

No, no, that's on the whole subject.

We're about to hear it.

Well, he claims he isn't going to

to say that he'll get them.

But he's already put that out.

Listen to Christ say, it's all over.

The righteous is going to be saved.

The fans are going to be provided.

They've got that now.

That's that.

Anyway, on the injection, on the injection in there, how are you going to do it?

Well, Bill Cox is going to announce it.

When's he going to announce it?

Tomorrow.

He's going to do it?

Yes.

My recommendation, Mr. President, after thinking about it, is that two things we can cut off.

Issuing new licenses and issuing and canceling all old licenses.

Now, my first recommendation to you was to cancel both.

I've reviewed the list.

The things that will really hurt them, like radar equipment and so forth, are on new licenses.

State has recommended cutting off the whole thing.

And they are putting out the word now that we are pushing them into a needless confrontation with the Indians.

So I think we're better off just going the new license route for that reason, plus the fact that that's what we did with Pakistan.

And if the Indians start bellyaching, all we can say is, hell, there's a war going on, and we're just not issuing new licenses while a war is going on.

While if we...

equip, the difference is 70% of it will be caught by the new licenses.

And if then they do something else, the creatures, we can cut off the other 30% the following week.

But then they can't say we shot from the hip and moved faster against them than we moved against Pakistan.

And also we'll be in the position that the state can't claim we pushed, I mean we can claim

I mean, they are already putting out the word.

It's an unbelievable situation, Mr. President, but...

They're recommending a cut line to you and putting out that...

Yes.

Well, with regard to this thing, it's actually really bad.

You're trying to keep hold of the balance of the party, right?

Yes.

Keep it very...

I wouldn't indicate too much about it to be more than previously, and less than that.

I wouldn't even believe about that at all.

What do you mean, depressed about it?

I'm not sure I'd even go that far.

I said, let's see if we're still negotiating about that.

But then I just looked at the first half of the equation.

It will be much less than we had previously.

That's right.

I wouldn't say there's more than they had previously.

I'll say they'll do the maximum possible with the new technique.

But I don't know that there's much less than we've had in the previous system.

That's right.

That's very good.

Now, on the India-Pakistan thing, if it comes up, what I would say is, say, gentlemen, we've given $6 billion in economic aid to India over the years.

There is no question what the United States thinks about it.

Excuse me?

Yeah.

You better shut up a little more.

What about the L-40?

Don't forget the real thing.

The goddamned young people over there don't do that.

I want the economic aid, multilateral aid, in which we have participated, and also BL-480.

Get the whole figure.

I'm sure six billion is entirely bilateral.

Of course.

That is what counts.

I'll give the total figure, then I'll say it.

We've given $500 million since the circuit, you think, started.

There's only one issue as far as we are concerned.

The recourse to military force to settle an issue in Russia.

And that is what we are opposing.

It is against the charter of the United Nations.

It's against the principles of this country.

And make them attack us on that ground.

Right.

Thank you.

On Vietnam, I'd follow exactly the line of your press conference.

Right.

Nothing more to say.

We're watching the situation very closely.

What is the infiltration?

Don't let that build up to a big stir at all.

They say that we see more than we lie to this and that.

I know.

I'll just say there's the usual seasonal buildup, and we have to watch it for a period of six weeks or so.

I'll say that it is.

See, what we want to do is there is to surprise them.

On the Middle East, I'll tend to stay away from it.

The only thing is if they ask me, well, what about the arms balance?

I'll say one, we maintain it.

Secondly, there seems to be some misunderstanding.

There are two ways of looking at the arms balance, I thought I'd say.

One is, is it altered?

And the second is, is it upset?

The Secretary of State meant to say, upset, that the arms balance is not upset, and that is our position.

On the other hand, obviously, when so much equipment has come in, the Egyptian position has been altered.

And what we have to determine is it was stronger than it was, but not yet so strong.

That's right.

Because I have to lay a basis for whatever you may be trying to do.

that is agreeable to you.

This is what... Well, his line is unbelievable because at the same time, he wants to push them.

He told Mitchell, that actually helps us.

It helps us only because of the game we've got with the Russians.

He wants to push them into direct negotiations with the Egyptians under American auspices.

They'll never be there.

I beg your pardon?

They won't be there.

No.

I doubt it.

And if they do it, they do it only for phantoms and then they've deadlocked the negotiations right away.

But that at least keeps some heat on them so that they see they're worse off dealing with Rajas than with you.

So from the point of view of getting that Russian deal started, the reason we need the Russian deal, Mr. President, cold-bloodedly, is first of all it's in the long-term Israeli interest.

Secondly, if we get that Russian deal at the summit, they have a vested interest in your re-election because they know damn well that the Democrats won't honor it.

And therefore it means that you are guaranteed quiet from the Russians for the remainder of 72.

Now, the way we can play that is that we make whatever deal we want, the Israelis don't have to agree to it, and we can control the extent of our confrontation with the Israelis in 73.

If we've got to confront them, 73 is a hell of a lot better.

I'm cold-blooded about this.

Okay, but what we need from the Israelis is some help on the interim settlement, because the Russians won't make that private deal unless there's a little progress.

They will ask whether or not you are optimistic about the international monetary situation.

Well, what I have worked out with Conley, in addition... You worked out a sentence with him?

Well, what I've worked out to let you know, in fact, he dictated it to me to say, we recognize that an international monetary solution requires the cooperative effort of everybody.

The United States is not attempting to impose it.

The United States had to make clear that it was serious.

We are now working...

out a cooperative solution with the Europeans.

There'll be hard bargaining by everybody, but by the time it is finished, we will have something that everybody recognizes to be a common interest.

And if they say price of gold... That's right.

And if they say price of gold, I won't go into any detail.

And I will add a sentence.

that you gave me, if you agree, about Connolly, that everything has been done, not only with the concurrence, but at the recommendation of Secretary Connolly, who is the president's principal advisor on economic matters.

On Latin America.

The interesting result, the Japanese press, I'm having a little memo made for you, has an absolute forecast

about the meeting with you reestablishes Japanese position.

Even the opposition press is praising Sato for having brought up this meeting with you, reestablishes the American, the Japanese position, new phase of relationships.

The Toyota and the Pinto are going to move side by side, and nobody's going to catch the bus to Peking first.

I'm just telling you, that's fine.

They like the San Clemente idea.

The trade in Europe is good.

In fact, it's very good.

But in Japan, it's almost ecstatic.

And the fact that the son of a bitch, Trudeau, who is not our friend,

Uh, if making such a big deal of this in, in Canada indicates the world leadership was...

I'm curious if it's definitely to show you how guys get out and then... Bill Bundy had a big article raising hell about China in Canada in early...

Here's the paper today of the announcement.

Yes.

I'm sure...

The Bundys all have a character defect.

What?

I am beginning to think that the Bundys all suffer from character defects.

Really?

What's he trying to do?

Well, that's, that's, that's...

Well, after all, if I were as responsible for what we are into as he is, and if I had been, after all, who fought for him when the goddamn Pentagon Papers came out, not his cronies from the Democratic Party, you... We're not getting that out.

Sure, but I think we should.

What if they said that that helicopter could go down and they can't?

That is military law.

Probably not.

This week the casualties are seven or nine.

It depends how they count them.

Probably nine.

But still it's less than ten.

And it's less than ten now for the seventh straight week.

We are going to put into the world report... That helicopter should not be counted.

It's lost.

Well, that's what they're going to do.

But I think we ought to have a chart.

That chart you have of troop withdrawals has done more than all the words we've put out.

Absolutely.

And in our world report, we're going to put out a chart of casualties which show how they've tried.

Yeah.

Because they've really, they've gone down even faster than the troops.

Yeah.

And we can put an arrow and say, Cambodia, and you should see a sharp drop after that.

Lous and even sharper drop after that.

Don't you think?

Yeah.

You're right.

Exactly.

But basically, I think the new summary probably tends to highlight the negative a little more than the positive, because they list only, say, one positive comment.

And then if there are ten others saying the same thing,

It tends to get lost.

I think it's good for us not to get it.

No, no, it's... My impression in reading the paper is that the general impact is very positive.

Oh, yeah.

It shows strong leadership.

Well, the question of jumping it around while the rest of it comes on, we do have to watch it.

Well, Derek had the back of the scriptures, the letter of the week apart.

We're in it now.

We all have to watch it.

I don't think it must too much anyway.

But we've got to be careful not to let them get, you know, we're...

They can make some headway that...

I can guarantee, Mr. President, I can personally see to that, that the Japanese, the Germans, and the British are going to put out ecstatic comments about the meetings afterwards.

Can you do any kind of press thing after those things?

I don't think so.

Well, anyway, might you just have a brief communique then?

Well, oh, a minute back, will you?

But, uh, that is what we've got.

I just want you to know that it's just both he and I.

The two of you walk out and go out.

Oh, yeah.

I think we ought to go say some words about some of the beers.

We've got something on the hill and the cable car.

Oh, yeah.

We've got it all.

Oh, that can be done, but on top of it, I could get Burt Trent, who really has his lines out to all the newspapers, just to put out the word, how impressed they all were, which will feed back into the American press.

The British are very good at that.

Yeah, well, that definitely would be good.

But I'm wondering, because you have all the TVs.

Oh, I think we can do that.

You'll have the arrival and the departure types, but there ought to be something with them.

as your very productive means.

Well, you're going to settle the international monetary thing, Mr. President?

Oh, it's better, Mr. President.

The fact is, we have it in two points.

You could settle it this afternoon with a phone call.

If you're willing to go to the gold thing, as you are, then whether they revalue it by 10% or 11% isn't worth it.

If I were Treasury Secretary, I'd fight.

But as a president, it doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference.

So we know exactly where we're going to come out within 1% or 2% now.

And by the middle of January, we'll have the whole thing said.

And by next summer, you will have created a new international monetary system.

And the people who were screaming this fall are going to look silly.

How hard it is to make the people who screamed six months ago look so late today.

Right.

Well, because our weakness isn't it...

They're so easily forgotten, you know, they're... Look at the, you know... Well, our weakness as an administration is that we are too honorable, strangely enough.

We don't... Well, they were screaming about this and now they've forgotten what they're screaming about.

Yeah, but we also don't attack the administration.

We don't attack...

If we screamed and attacked them day after day, we tend to get bored by it.

But after a while, they have to start defending themselves.

Every time they defend themselves, they make our case.

As it is?

We do things to defuse the criticism, but Bob is right.

After the criticism is defused, the critics pretend it never happened.

Yeah, and they get away with it.

But if we had somebody screaming at them every day...

I think that's the end of the law.

I think you all, I think even we get away with it.

There are mistakes, too.

The press doesn't like to let us out, but look where you go.

We want to, you know, have it go away.

It goes away to the people.

Just don't give a damn about what happened six months ago.

We've been counting prices, the greatest issue on the face of the earth for a week now.

Now you'd have trouble finding anybody who knows where he is or what he's doing and why.

One question, Mr. President, is whether we should do the whole thing on the record or do the other part background.

I think we'll get more criticism doing it background.

Go to the record.

They scream, they scream.

It also will force them to stick to that line.

They can't disavow it.

Better go and drink.

Oh, God.

Roger suggests a backpack.

Didn't want to do a backpack.

You know, I'm drinking something, though.

I was eating a fish drink.

The Rockies were lucky to go to Latin America.

They're not that easy to go on.

We'd love to see them.

We'd love to meet you, Adam.

Oh, no.

I'm getting caught down there.

Solely because of the fear of a riot.

He said yesterday he's reconsidering the foreign ministership.

I'm not sure that's a good idea.

I don't think he wants that.

He'll have a recommendation on that in a couple of weeks.

If it works, even if you've done it, they'll take credit for it.

I'm going to see him again.

The obvious thing, you know, in their life, it's quite clear, is the crime is established.

You see, it's very hard to do this.

So to save Americans, they've got to save other.

I change rather than they change.

You know, this crap, who changed the president's mind?

I said, I can't tell you what the president's mind was in 65.

All I know is in 67, he wrote an article on foreign policy.

And from the first day I met him, he steered a course from which he's never deviated.

I showed him the note you sent me on February 1st.

I said, at that moment, I barely knew him.

So you can't say that anyone changed his mind then.

I showed him the list of NEC meetings on China, and so I said, you can see who had the basic, how this thing was worked out, and then he said, well, how about, then I did something, I brought in the book of messages we had sent, and I said, well, here is the book of messages we sent to the Chinese, I can't show you the messages, it's really a

Do you realize we sent 48 messages to the Chinese?

I said, and I said, the thing you may not realize, Jerry, it isn't that I go into the president and say, let's send a message, and he says, okay.

I said, 80% of the channels to the Chinese were thought up by the president and not by anyone else, which is true.

You thought up Romania.

You were the one who thought up the Polish deal.

And you were the one who talked to Yahya the first time you were there in Lahore.

And you even sent that air marshal to me next to whom you sat at dinner.

You may have forgotten that, but the first time we were in Lahore, after dinner, you made me speak to the air marshal who had taken a visit to Peking.

And I said to Schecter, now you take China.

I was basically, of course, I was strongly in favor of what the president did.

But I'd have to be the first to say that I would have been more cautious and have done it in a much more deliberate way.

So you have to say that the whole strategy and tactics here was all up by the president.

I said, now take Russia.

Take the president's first press conference.

Now the way he prepares these press conferences, I don't even know what he's going to say

nor does any department know what he's going to say before he steps up.

You'll find linkage.

You will find the precedence of policy over trade.

You will find mention of Berlin, salt, and all the other things.

You just compare the first press conference with what he's done.

And so I said, I'm not pushing anything.

I'm just telling you what the facts are.

And I gave him a lot of our personal conversations.

He said, well, but he's a historian.

I said, well, he's not an academic historian.

But I have had long discussions with him about the outbreak of World War I.

He's read several books on the subject, the outbreak of World War II.

the problems, and I told him of some of the stuff that I'd given Sidey previously.

And I think, I don't know what the guys will do in New York when they get through with it.

But they can't make a madman of the year and then run it down.

So you're pretty guaranteed...

They will unless they have to make the pieces themselves.

Yeah, well, it doesn't really matter.

In fact, it doesn't matter because that gives other people who have been against it a way to come over to them if they want to make more money.

Senator, the liberals are never, never forgiven for the reasons why we ran this thing.

Very good.

Thank you so much.

The other thing is that they can never forget.

I found one of them, and they know it.

They're putting me on the mend here, because they could have found a way out of it, and I'm just astonished that they didn't.

I can't figure out why they know they're doing it.

It's too divine to be inevitable.

The following week's covered us in the night, and it helps a little for that.

Getting the time covered us, meaning your people, it's getting that covered that has something.

And that's a new story, too, isn't it?

The time of May the 9th.

Oh, well, yes.

They build up a lot of suspense on it.

It's one of their big promotion things of the year.

They're already out there running the letters to the editors now.

The first letter to the editor at this time says, Time can stop and search for the men of the year you have in President Nixon.

And that comes out.

But then someone else nominates your friend, you know, Fakers.

Ellsberg.

And somebody else nominates the, uh, the Adolphe.

I think they're getting messed up.

I talked to the staff meeting.

Clark McGregor is getting them concrete men together.

that I will get Frelinghausen to help me get some concrete with those sons of bitches.

Yeah.

I mean, she just used us when she was here.

Of course, we used her, too.

Yeah, well, we've got to find a way there.

Let's see.

I'll look over our schedule suggestion on that TV day.

The idea was this was the meeting with those intergovernmental types and they don't want you to stay in the meeting.

They just want you to open and have the vice president resign.

It gives them a chance to get you in a thing like that without you getting stuck.

I wouldn't have to be decent and I'm not in any trouble.

If you're looking for a way to get a hand, if we have a domestic counsel, that gets a hand, sure.

I think the company is too short.

Yeah.

I'm going to run that.

I don't think I'll be dictated.

She's going to check with a guest list or something like that.

It seems to be the second colony being out.

If Trudeau is going to go, I'm afraid, longer than an hour and a half anyway.

I think it's better to run the first one and not do the second one, and then just do some little wrap-up type things.

I wonder if the... Yeah, everything is warm.

That's the trick of all that.

And the programmatic piece.

That, incidentally, is a hell of a lot.

This is a 17-year-old kid who's been deaf from birth.

Great superstar.

He can't hear the starting gun, the 442 whistle.

The other people start and then he goes.

He sees them start.

What a guy.

I think they need to transform in the middle of the life.

This is not the right time.

You know what I mean?

Let's pack it in after being through a very empty day.

It's not going to be very good.

Well, it's being very green energy type to the day.

It's not an energy on a

It's an interview relating only to the day, not relating to, why don't you cut it after dinner?

Well, I thought about that, but I wondered if you wanted to wait that late at night.

That has a lot more appeal.

And it would be good, in a way, to give a little break in the middle of it.

Anyway, you can go, just have him come up with you after dinner at night.

If you don't mind doing it later, I think that would be better.

And it should be very brief anyway.

It's not a long time.

OK. Now, what we've got to look for is some interruptions and some sort of stuff that isn't all appropriate.

That just kind of happens.

The crew's going to ask my invitation to dinner.

You want more warm stuff somehow?

Maybe she can go over a couple letters that you've gotten or something like that.

Julie is going to be here.

She can come in and talk about her next trip with you.

Get your advice on a couple stops she's going to make or what she should cover in her talk to the group or something.

I don't know if you can talk about her trip.

If she would.

Thank you very much.

Good luck.

I'm not sure I do is quite.

Right.

He's with the president when he realizes the infinite things.

Sure.

Baker?

Berman?