Nixon & Haldeman on William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger

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this problem.

I don't know if it's counted on this.

Solve this problem because I'm afraid there, and he sort of said this to me.

See, he doesn't, he doesn't, Rogers is almost pathological about the China trip.

And, you know, he drops these.

Yeah.

But he drops these cracks at me, you know, he says we've got to preserve China.

It may be of some value, but it's mainly showmanship for, you know, it's a gimmick, but I guess we've got to stay with it.

Do you agree with him?

No, sir.

I think he's just totally wrong.

I don't agree with him at all.

I think he's a liar.

He's a decoy.

And I told him so.

I mean, kind of, it's a long haul kind of thing.

It isn't a, but it's essential to do it.

Yeah, but that's it.

Well, and at certain times now, you wouldn't have to write anything for another thing.

Which he doesn't realize how long that Russian thing was dealing with.

Well, he got the border crisis.

He thinks that he had something to do with the Russians.

He had nothing to do with it at all.

So here's the other side of the coin.

That's the problem with Rogers.

Well, I guess I wouldn't mention it to you.

I'm just going to get into the India thing.

How would you raise it with India?

I'd raise it just with some of these public things that seem to appear.

The stories, you know, in Holland, that hunt on India.

I think there's some disagreement.

I just wanted to check and see whether there was some disagreement that hadn't been brought up in that time.

Well, let's not try that at all.

Let's let it rest for a day, shall we?

Make sure it will.

Probably.

On the other hand, it would give Bill a chance to say what he wants to say if he wants to say something, which might be a good thing to do.

He'll wonder why it wasn't.

He won't wonder.

He'll know you told him to call.

I let him call.

That's the thing that's wrong with him.

If I call him, he'll know it's because you told him to.

I can't.

If I say...

I'm not going to call him about an article.

That's what I meant.

You've got to list an article that comes in.

But I don't know.

I don't think...

Okay, let me look for a specific article.

I don't think he can do it.

If you find a specific article... Actually, if there is one...

He said, well, is there any way we could knock down this damn thing?

We were just coming here.

The staff meeting this morning, they were wondering.

The secretary was wondering.

That's the guy he's at.

So I don't believe it.

He said that he doesn't go to the front line.

He could say, well, he was very proud last night.

He was telling me that he'd been down to see the Congress.

Everybody agreed with our policies.

He was funny.

I guess they wouldn't stay out of the war.

Well, everything, you know, it's a shame that you're worrying about this stuff all the time and everybody ought to be sitting around gloating because of the press and damn magazines yesterday were unbelievable.

The lead story in both time and history was a almost, you know, panting recounting of the president's victories of the preceding week.

And as you probably saw in the history, even Mary McGraw already got swept up in it.

or that's before he'd be in Pakistan, which everybody likes.

It's a huge, huge story, you know.

It's not a huge story.

It isn't like, for example, Henry was going to make it.

It probably might be equated like the U.S. defeat, the U.S. and Taiwan defeat.

I have a different view on it, which is probably totally stupid, but I think, oh, basically the India-Pakistan war is a good story for us in that it sets up a world, another tension in the world that isn't ours.

And the attention away from the church in Kennedy and some of the meetings are blamed on us for it because we didn't...

I don't think anybody bonds that.

I hope, I'll try to, that we should have stepped in and helped Patricks, helped the, and kept Patricks around to tell the director people what Christ thinks.

I don't think we have much support for that we should step in.

Well, it should have said.

We don't have any influence with India.

We never have.

I would raise the name of Bill Bell and still get a third way.

I used to have two fights.

Bill is, he will do what he said, but

Bill is not strong.

I've reached a conclusion when it really comes to the tough.

I don't know whether he would agree or not, but he just will not, he will not fight a tough, controversial matter.

He won't step up there and hit him.

And he doesn't, frankly, find compliment in others who do.

This is not his style.

Bill is a slighter offer.

He isn't a... Henry, on the other hand, wouldn't have the slightest idea how to slide.

Chose what's public, and Henry thought that.

He got a vote in the Congress conference, and it was a very Congress conference, and he was really excited about something he had done, and he talked to Carl next door.

Henry didn't know it.

You know, he's very blind, too.

He thinks that everything he does is very, you know, and he is blind to any feeling that is unborn.

He really is.

You may not realize that he's... Oh, well, let's get off on the journey.

God damn, this business of ours, I don't even know about that.

That is the charm of life, God damn it, man.

Oh, there was another time he said, no, I mean at this time, I mean at that time.

So remember I told you about him.

Yeah, that's right.

That was less than a year ago, because that was after the Harvard business.

That was his friend's time.

Something about, I don't know, Laos, maybe, or I don't know.

It was a rough time.

And I can see it.

I think, frankly, what I think, that Henry's definitely getting off the ship.

But that may be, or may not be, in this case, look, you couldn't drive Henry out of Kissinger out of the idea of resigning at this point.

Before, before, before turning the case.

But then, if he's going to resign, he's going to have to change.

He's going to resign, huh?

I wouldn't agree with that at all.

Not on your goddamn life.

He resigned before the election.

You all know.

At least his campaign is solidly for you.

No bullshit.

He's a great supporter.

That's right.

He means awfully well.

He's mixed up.

Well, he's tormented internally.

There must be something, a bunch of something, I would not be surprised if there's something in the personal life at the moment.

Maybe.

Or, it's a failure here.

I think it's the fact that I do think Harris talks a lot.

Do you think that's the fact, or some of it?

Yeah.

And he does think the state doesn't act as, doesn't give the bureaucracy to do things like that.

For Christ's sakes, though, he should be feeling high that he got this enormous rate of arrest.

Stages, entities are destroyed by that.

All the magazines have grave damage on them.

For farmers, for security forces.

This is Mike Rogers with you.

You have a perfect answer.

We do not have a free-form foreign policy open.

We do not intend to, like you said,

until after you get your Chinese account.

But on China, somebody had to go out and do it.

I couldn't.

And Rochester.

And he was the logical man.

But do you think that he thought about that and why the hell shouldn't he be on the record?

Because I've talked to Bill several times since then on other things.

He's never raised that.

I don't think he'll raise it.

I don't think it's bothering Bill.

I think that one's one that's the little boys at stake.

Boy, the little boys at stake bother me, too.

I may be doing an injustice to my friends there.

My friends.

I didn't want to handle that.

Let me see if I can find an article and use that as a basis.

Also, Henry will bounce back in.

I'd like to send a folk around with him to find out what the hell it is.

It's bugging.

That's the thing I don't understand.

at this point.

I ask him and all of us, I just don't understand what it is here that's got you set off this time.

Because I don't.

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

I really have.

I can't emphasize too strongly.

I have been tougher on India than he has all the way through.

He's the one that said, oh we can't do this.

Well, that's too bad.

But so you did small estate.

It probably wouldn't have worked anyway.

In my view, I don't think anything would have worked with the woman.

And that's the kind of thing, there's no point going back around because you can't... She needs to determine to do these people in.

I think that they've done all the hardest lying in the world.

And the woman was still so barred, the hell with you.

We're going to do this.

And they figured that the Americans would still come to their aid.

You ought to blame Teddy Kennedy and the rest for raising her hopes in Keating.

That's something else.

He wasn't in the show much yesterday.

Well, I bet he was in a lot.

No, but I bet Rogers, who the, you know, when we were in the MSB thing, I told him beforehand, I said, don't worry about that.

Bill, he isn't in anything the other time.

That was enough, you know, whatever Henry was in in that whole morning business here, he was,

I'm not sure if he was in or true, but I thought it was him.

No, no, no.

True or not, I don't know.

He was in the morning thing, but I don't know as much about the... Well, it was not more than anybody else.

Which he should have been, because that comes with age.

You were in hardly at all.

Shouldn't have been.

I didn't have Colson at all.

Shouldn't have been.

That's right.

It was the best thing you could do for Colson.

That's right.

The worst thing that I could have done was kill him.

I think I had to be in just for credibility because they know I am.

And that's good.

But we didn't have Finch.

We did have Gunswell.

We should have had Finch in, not in this look.

What was he in town?

And that's my fault.

I didn't even realize it until you just said it.

I didn't think of it.

Should have run it into something.

Wait a minute.

Was he in any of those meetings?

He would normally sit in a domestic council meeting, would he?

I would think so.

That meeting that we had was sort of a half-assed domestic council meeting.

Right.

The belt is starting to hold.

Well, they won't use very much of that.

They'll use it.

But I hope they use just a little bit.

All you want is to use a little bit.

The kind of things they'll use are the things they heard in the office.

Yeah.

Calls and talk and people batter.

But I hope they'll use little glimmers of all those means just to give the feel of the pace of the day.

It's a terrific story.

Oh, the range.

It started with this guy sitting at this huge console, pulling all these stops and playing this organ.

Could come out of that.

Well, we won't borrow trouble, but I think Henry was probably disturbing a few things when I let Rogers do that thing over there.

And I still got him to call him in last night and get a call on Henry.

Wouldn't you call on Rogers?

Oh, absolutely.

And you've done that before, didn't you?

You don't call on Henry.

And you shouldn't have done it.

That'd be a great mistake to Rogers.

Well, that's just his bad style anyway.

You don't call on your own staff members to do that.

Yeah, unless the staff did.

But you want to remember, we have an overblown eagle here.

Yeah, maybe, yeah.

Maybe overblown eagles slide in on those things.

He could have said it so much better.

He probably could, but what difference does it make?

By the time that gets on television, it's going to be, nobody's going to give a damn.

None of that's on television.

Over there at the dinner, only the toast.

Only the toast, that's right.

No, no, no, no.

He just likes it.

He likes it.

I think the best thing to do is let him background stuff on TV.

The rest, but I hope Bill, Bill is certainly,

on the record thing on China.

You know, we've got some questions.

I can see how we might be disturbed by the way it was played last year.

I thought the reason it was played, that was obviously to get him back.

To get him back, still to get him back.

And to hurt Henry.

And to hurt Henry at the same time.

Not that Henry saw that.

But what it does is every time they play one against another, they should be happy about it.

And I don't know what to do with it.

I saw those stories.

They're true.

Good job.

And we put a background, a direct-to-background.

We're probably even better at that.

Yeah.

Now, this is on record, so they played it up.

And they played it up at this time.

Under Gabe Rogers.

That's right.

I'll look for any way they can drive away.

Sure, stick an eye in anywhere they find this buzz-off spot.

Not because he doesn't deserve it, but because he does.

And it's fake.

But, anyway, Connelly gets about a 25% bigger ploy than he would normally get.

No more than that, but at least not going to be bigger because they're trying to keep him hanging.

Every time they try to save him, he's brilliant.

And this man, he's angry.

Now, actually, he does well at times.

You know, he did well last time.

He never ride it.

That's right.

They never say that he's here with us.

You know, he's well-contained, and he's, uh, you know, dignified and the rest of the universe.

Only for his weight, for one of his gaps, which come along very frequently.

And they play that.

They play that.

But, uh, that's part of the game.

That's part of the game.

On the business of the reservation this time, though, he's walking on the ground.

He can't get along without the process, is that it?

Is it the process?

No, it's the sabotage.

Sabotage.

Supposed that we can't get the right things done because the State Department undercuts that every time.

Well, tell us.

what they're doing and they do things contrary to instructions okay contrary to policy i think that's it let me explore that i don't have the option

The guy's got enough to write today, so this is a good day for the background.

I'm sure I squealed it off, squirreled it off that way.

You understand?

Handle it that way.

This is just a good day with one.

They've got enough to write.

And I think right now there's a lot of things going on.

I'm going to let it rest.

And then if anybody comes in...

I don't panic, but that's what disturbs me.

He's got a challenge that instead of stepping up and doing something about it, he's running away from it.

All of you, take care.

Nixon & Haldeman on William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on December 7, 1971

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