Nixon, Haldeman & Byrnes on Henry Kissinger and Economic Policy

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I did the Russian at 4 and the Wasik at 4.30.

So I don't know if I can come to his office to make a shift at the 5 o'clock.

I'm afraid it screwed up some here because it was a violent call.

They always put it in, so you must not do that now.

You know what I mean?

I have a question.

People are now leaving the mosque.

I can about get started in 20 minutes maybe on that soon.

And I don't think that they should bring men in with that in mind.

He wants to come deliver.

This idea of having to deliver a letter to me, too, is...

I think it should knock the thing off to begin with.

You think so?

Yeah.

Of course, I guess they're hoes.

You say, well, this is an exception.

He's got to get a personal letter to you.

I guess you'd accept that idea.

Sure.

This is very close.

Okay.

The guy can't get the hell out of here.

It'll take me a half hour.

If you won't get him out in five minutes, then it's, you know, you've got to report the tax bill.

Uh-huh.

Do you think they'll have it here tomorrow?

Yeah.

That's what I understand.

Really?

I talked to Rose in New York.

She said we shall follow you.

You ought to leave here by about 3.30 because if you want to go out and cook dinner to a theater.

Get up in time.

Get changed.

Go out to dinner.

To a theater.

Question, but she doesn't actually get more fat.

Does she just have a snack before the theater and then at dinner afterwards?

Because the theater's at 7.30 now, and it's so hard to eat.

Oh.

Rush off to the show, you know.

She'll eat afterwards.

Are they at 7.30?

Yeah, you get out at 10.

But she, she said that there was, like, I don't know.

That means we have to go back.

She ought to be around 3.30.

Get up there at 4.30 and end town at 5.30.

Go there at 6.00.

That would still give you time to do that.

There he is.

Oh, it's funny.

We get a bigger story out of anything we do down in Florida than we do up here.

I can't stand that.

I'm just saying.

I can't stand it.

I'm just saying.

I can't stand it.

I'm just saying.

Well, and it's known that you're in constant telephone communication.

Yeah.

Another possibility would be to return.

It sucks that you can do any of those options you want without having to make any decision until... You don't have to decide to hear if I'm ready to leave the Azores, whether you go to Florida or here.

We have two planes, the backup planes.

The non-Florida part of the plane.

Yeah.

Well, that was a fine way on the tax thing, Johnny.

and to hold our enemies to less than 100 over the evening in arms and treatment.

In arms and treatment.

Well, that's all right.

That's all right.

I mean, I don't call you very often, but it's the end of the session, so.

No, I know that.

No, but I'm just looking at it.

I was so pleased, and I just hope the Senate does what it wants.

You think it looks pretty good there?

For quick action.

Yeah.

Pretty hard.

Yeah.

That's right.

And they want to go home too.

That's right.

Yeah.

That's right, that's right.

Okay, well.

Yeah.

I'll go out and find me a new car right away.

Okay.

Yeah, that's right.

Okay.

Now we'll see.

But it will.

It will.

I'm sitting down hoping someone's going to say, well, the Christmas retail psychology and all that.

I just don't know what I'm talking about.

There's big signals now.

I think it's right about then.

You should walk well in the middle of it.

Maybe something like this.

Who holds in common today with the economy?

Oh, yeah.

I said it.

He said it's slow, but it's solid and steady, and that all these things are moving in the line.

And the Democrats, he puts it in political context.

They've got a hell of a problem, because the president's got his economic problem, basically.

He said this.

Yeah.

Well, this agreement needs to be seen by the states.

Who's really going to work?

But it's clear that inflation is down, and that the economic growth is on the move.

And that the international economic problem is on the road to solution.

I mean, put all those three together, you've got a million.

The one sticker in there is a goddamn unemployment.

And that, as somebody's pointed out as a super sour note, is that even with the huge auto sale thing, they haven't hired anybody.

We go on that every 100,000 cars is

They will have people work there.

There's 10,000 new jobs or something.

It ripples.

Yeah, that's it.

That's the thing.

That's what Rowan is probably thinking about, that he knows that they don't hire.

But he doesn't throw in the car thing.

It's others who have touched that.

Rowan says basically all options.

He says we don't know whether it pays to work, but that there's no reason to believe that it isn't going to.

Something to that effect.

I mean, that's the closest to negative he gets.

On Henry's situation, is there any way you can talk to him to get him to cut the speaking band schedule for the crowd?

Basically, he's got to get in shape for this trip.

I mean, all the hindrance.

And I think he's taking too many days.

He's out too much socially at night.

He goes to too many receptions.

And I think he drives himself too hard.

He drives too hard.

He should save himself.

Rylan and I just set him up with Don and talked to him.

You might call Rylan and talk to him.

He's really acting scary.

All right.

Scary boy.

All right.

Don, he just got to him.

He's getting constricted on big things.

All right.

I did not talk to him about that time.

He's out of time.

I didn't talk to him.

I mean, as I told you, I...

I know what it was like.

I talked to his voice over the weekend before anybody else.

Well, he was off.

He was up very tight.

It's fucking cold.

It's tension, physical exhaustion, and intellectual boredom with the repetition of the same useless battle.

And what he considers inferior.

Well, they are inferior.

They are inferior.

They're not.

I don't know whether they're that inferior or not.

They are smart people.

a built-in do-nothing attitude about where she has to be.

Instead of crashing this.

And they won't have the floor if they don't kill me.

The place is above.

Instead I was just thinking, bringing Rogers to disappear back there.

You don't have to have that on your hands down there.

Rogers likes it down there.

Henry loves it.

Henry doesn't want to go down there.

He's not keen about your floor.

No, but it might not be a bad idea for him to go.

Might be a way to force him out of it.

And you should see when he gets down there, like when he gets to California, he does sit out in the sun and read.

Loves to sit in the sun.

He came over to that house, and he kind of hibernates, and I...

I can't tell what his state of play will be in four days.

I can just wait and see if we don't just keep it set up.

There's a possibility either way.

And watch the weather.

Yeah.

State of play isn't all that interesting.

What they're doing at the time, even in Oregon,

He said he couldn't get anywhere.

I mean, he didn't have the airplane.

He ran away.

Maybe he had a good job there.

Of course, I suppose I got a Hall-Rodgers.

Maybe the Dan Mato company.

I mean, I don't know.

Probably the company's in.

You're right.

I do want to take a little on the airplane.

I would go on the airplane, but the plan is that they would come back to Washington on the other plane.

You would.

If you could afford it, you could afford it on the airplane.

See, wouldn't be good to have Rodgers on.

He'd better just have Henry with him.

That's right.

See, you've got Rodgers, Conley, and Kennedy who would all be coming back.

So it doesn't look as if he just slid Rodgers off and left him alone.

He's coming back with other captains.

the history of your staff and who goes with you to court and all that.

Why?

Because they don't like it.

They don't like it.

Anyway, we could have a whole damn bunch of them under there.

I'd really rather be on the plane on myself so I don't have to feel like I gotta talk to them.

where there's a big canopy with a lot of active comms on there.

There's a whole bunch of armistice comms before we leave.

You don't have to see any of them on the plane.

We can put them on the other plane, but it's a little actually tough for them, I think, to arrive there.

But you should establish something else.

You don't have Pat there.

Well, even if you did, she's got her own compartment now.

You've got...

They have their seats.

They have the lounge.

We're not assigning lounge seats.

The lounge is open to a lot of... A whole bunch of these lounges.

Well, the cat monsters.

The St. Jerry's.

Tell them.

But if they could all understand, I'd like to see them.

They do.

Well, you do in a way allow you to see them and come back.

This delivery of letters has got to stop.

I can see that.

I mean, I always liked Spanish.

I liked Chester.

He has no idea that he's coming in here to bring me a letter from Castro about the law on the sea.

I mean, frankly, it's ridiculous.

Just totally ridiculous.

And it's who put that in hand or in our hand.

And how did Henry raise it with you?

Hell no, I never heard.

I said, who the hell is this guy?

He didn't know.

No one agreed with me at all.

And Hague snuck it back.

Well, he snuck it back.

But the way it came in was that you would agree to see him.

No.

I never heard about it until I saw it this morning in the sketch.

Oh, that's ridiculous.

Never heard about it at all.

But I suppose it was because it was five minutes.

No, because normally, as you know, I check those with you.

And he snuck five minutes by with his ambassador.

Now, God damn it.

The current way, he'll be able to solve it by his fan here.

He's sitting down.

I've wasted my time and I've got a hell of a lot of important things to be doing right now.

So I've got to work on this before it went horrible on me.

But we've got to go to Higgins to see if we can get him the hell out of here at the time.

If we do have this meeting, and I don't want Bull to come in and try to do it, but he doesn't.

I can't come in and say, look, he's somebody's weight.

We can help him out.

And Higgins would have been a spanker just to come in and deliver the letter.

I have got hundreds of talking points about the right and so forth and so on.

Another question.

President Marcus Kirsten.

Yeah, so if you'd cover that for us.

Yeah.

There is, uh, let's think about it.

Hey, uh, Steve?

Yes, sir.

I just have a picture of, uh...

Yes, sir.

Yeah, yeah, we can get away with it.

All right, sir, but I'm making the line fast.

All right, sir.

I think all is enough.

All right, sir.

Nixon, Haldeman & Byrnes on Henry Kissinger and Economic Policy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on December 9, 1971

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