Nixon, Haldeman & Connally on Azores Doctrine

3:46Cigar.
3:46Cigar.
3:48Boy, it really is.
3:49I had it.
3:55Last night, I...
3:59They did have that game, you know.
4:00Yeah, no.
4:01So I just... Did you watch the whole thing?
4:06This is real.
4:58What do you think?
4:59Do you want to try to get out of here today?
5:06Yeah, it is.
5:36Oh, boy.
5:41Oh, boy.
5:42Oh, boy.
5:53Oh, boy.
6:07It's hard for us to even know it now, and it's coming through, you know, they're right.
6:15If I go by wrong, the first story didn't get it.
6:17The first story didn't get it.
6:22Now, you're one of the great climbers.
6:24I agree with both of you.
6:25That's coming, that's coming very clearly.
6:27I'm not going to say that because I've actually seen it in a dream and on the basis of it, obviously, both sides, well, Connie made that one.
6:35Both sides had to get it in order to do, at the airport.
6:40Great.
6:40Did he?
6:41And his little, you know, after you put him on there.
6:43I like to put him on there.
6:44But why didn't you carry him live?
6:46I mean, not live, but, you know, on film, on camera.
6:48And I like that.
6:50Sure.
6:50Sure.
7:17But that's starting to come out.
7:19I hope our role this morning starts on the enormous significance of this.
7:25Yeah, because he's making it.
7:26Yeah, and they're not.
7:28The first play was to devalue the dogma.
7:30It was the attack reaction.
7:32Well, it devalued the dogma, which people hear first.
7:37It's a goddamn thing.
7:38It doesn't change anything except the cost of imported wine or something.
7:43It's crazy.
7:50I think it's very beautiful.
7:58Oh, it's up there.
8:00That looks great.
8:01Is that the place, Mark, do you think?
8:19There it is.
8:34He designed it, had it made by, you know, Australian people, student people, and had it sent.
8:45That's, that was Duke in many ways.
8:47And of course, that has a, as you know, it has a press agency.
8:50It's one of its kind.
9:08Look at it from here, the way it is.
9:10It's a work of art.
9:11The inside star, isn't it?
9:13It's something that should always be in the Bible.
9:17In 1950s, you're going to see the seal of the covenant.
9:20It shows how to live and live still.
9:24I was going to put it here.
9:26Then I thought it was just too, you know, it has too much of a, it's just too hard.
9:32You don't get the purity of it unless you look at it from a different angle.
9:35It's not going to be over that.
9:37You've got it on one of the shelves.
9:44while we can move it around.
9:46But that seems to me to have been rather well.
9:47We shouldn't have too much around here.
9:49You might want to think of moving, putting some things like that on the shelves instead of the birds.
9:58It's a change after the year.
10:01Oh, let's see.
10:02I think that's a bird.
10:15It was in my 11th year.
10:18How?
10:20I always keep my...
10:22It's very beautiful.
10:25Oh, on the Today Show, on the CBS morning news, it must have had two-thirds of the hour.
10:31People explaining, what does the evaluation mean?
10:35The first clips were, you know, people didn't know because they were... What happened is the first story was run by wired, recorded type people who don't know what they're writing.
10:45or a local desk, obviously, right?
10:47Then you go immediately into the other stuff, and now it's carrying.
10:52Other than the first little clip, and that wasn't bad, it just wasn't perceptive.
10:57Now it's...
10:58But now it's beautiful.
10:59Everyone is explaining it means no increase in prices.
11:02Or it means an increase in jobs.
11:04They're all kind of on the point of this U.S. job.
11:06Yeah, and an increase in jobs, and then the president...
11:10Did you say that they did have a little bit of comedy now on the air?
11:15Yes, they did.
11:16Oh, yeah.
11:16That's a good idea.
11:17And CBS this morning had an interview with him.
11:20Did they?
11:20Yeah.
11:20God damn, he's good to be on.
11:24He is so good.
11:25He knows it.
11:25And the thing is that he is the one to have the interview because...
11:33Uh, it's the old story.
11:34Anything I say about it could irritate Papadu, the British, the Japanese, or the Germans.
11:41But if he says it, they don't blame him.
11:43No, the British, incidentally, Mr. President, are happy as clams.
11:46Really?
11:47Rolly Cromer, uh...
11:50I understand, David.
11:51You must be lying.
11:52I called him, no, no, uh, they just want to get the damn thing settled.
11:58And I called Cromer at 7.30 when he was going out for dinner.
12:03to put some heat behind the Security Council resolution and he said he was delighted and I was so exhausted I went to bed at 9 30 and I remember he called me up and he said I just came back from dinner I want to tell you we are thrilled it's a statement I may tell him it's a statement like that of the President he said he's in New York he was in New York he couldn't tell him on the phone he said I don't care
12:32exactly how you settled it, but it's a matrix on and on and on.
12:37And he said, we've got to work together.
12:42So I thought we'd pay a price with the British, but that isn't true.
12:49If he isn't strong enough to do this, he cannot blame it on the fact that he's got to go along with the French and Americans.
13:00He had to come out the same way.
13:03If you had done it the other way, if you had done it with he, he couldn't have wielded it with the others.
13:08He couldn't deliver the Germans and he couldn't deliver the Italians.
13:13So he would have been out in left field as the American suits in Europe.
13:19Because I talked to George Shultz this morning.
13:21This is basically a great deal for us.
13:24Shultz said if you didn't give convertibility...
13:27We did it.
13:28I went in with that column that claimed that Conway West, and that's when I told Conley to talk to Schultz, Friedrichs, and Peterson.
13:35He's got to agree with Schultz, Peterson, and Burns on this.
13:38He cannot tell Burns the numbers yet, because that would not be right.
13:44But he can tell Peterson the numbers.
13:45He can tell Schultz.
13:47Schultz, yes.
13:48I agreed with, Conley called me yesterday and suggested that I show Schultz the agreement.
13:54Did you do that?
13:55He's in the office now looking.
13:56Yeah.
13:57Well now, with the agreement, though, Schultz has got a note with five play of words.
14:01It could also read the conversation.
14:03He can see.
14:04Well, Henry, you sat there with me, and you heard me say that, say to him, look, I don't know anything about this.
14:10And you might tell him about where I said Hart and where you saw Kernsey.
14:13Schultz had no political sense, Mr. President.
14:15Schultz said to me, he hadn't read it yet.
14:17I gave him a play where he said, marvelous agreement, very good.
14:21The numbers, he thinks, are good.
14:22The numbers, he thinks, are superb.
14:24He said, on convertibility, we should have put into the agreement.
14:27We'll never discuss it.
14:28Well, that shows he has no political sense.
14:32We did.
14:33Yes, we did.
14:34We had to have that in the agreement.
14:36That was what we needed.
14:37That only two couldn't have survived such an agreement in France.
14:41We had a hard time surviving this.
14:43That's what that son of a gun was working on for an hour.
14:46We had the president to get a French president.
14:49to make a monetary deal which doesn't give him controllability.
14:52After all, he doesn't get it.
14:54He doesn't even get the agreement to discuss it.
14:56He said these things will be discussed in relation to everything else.
15:00Hell, they have the right to put it on the agenda whether we agree to it or not.
15:05So it's a totally meaningless thing.
15:07Supposing you had said you don't want to discuss controllability, they would have put it on the agenda at every G10 meeting.
15:14The thing that Scholz has got to realize is that I, as long as I'm in this place, will never discuss convertibility.
15:21However, I cannot speak for whoever may be the next president.
15:26Well, actually, Mr. President, if...
15:27So that's it.
15:28So Scholz has got his way.
15:29He knows about convertibility.
15:31Mr. President, even that I wouldn't be so sure about if the economy works the way you think.
15:35But I'm just saying that in order to reassure Scholz just on the fact that you're president, you just...
15:48What you did, Mr. President, is refer the issue into a future where it isn't going to arise for two years.
15:56It was the absolute minimum from which you could get out of this.
15:59He couldn't get any less.
16:05And that you'll see after I explain it to him.
16:10On the numbers, he says, superb, excellent.
16:14He says, very, very good agreement.
16:17Yes, but we now have the French for the first time agreeing.
16:25Well, not only, at first they vetoed the procedure.
16:28Now they've not only agreed to the procedure, but they've committed themselves in a gentleman's agreement to be helpful in the actual conduct of the negotiations.
16:40And I think we're going to get something.
16:43Oh, another thing.
16:45in our French-American relations, would you send a message for me to come to just sort of say that the, as I'm sure you have, well, the pastor, but I'll let you say the pastor, say the pastor, and report your reaction in this country to the meetings.
17:06Thank you.
17:07Thank you.
17:08So he doesn't get any impression.
17:12You know, there were stories indicating a great French victory and so forth and so on, but we must, I don't think, that's just a... Joe Kraft called, just as you were coming in, he said,
17:36He said, well, he was very interesting.
17:39He called, he said, all the newspapers say that it was a great French victory, but to me it looks as if the President got almost everything he wanted.
17:50Where am I wrong?
17:51I said, you are not wrong, but what I prefer you to say is it was to everybody's benefit.
18:00And
18:00That's the way we have to play it.
18:01The other interesting thing as we think about this when I catch the mythology is this is being built as being the Azores doctrine and the Guam doctrine.
18:12Guam did it on political policy and Azores did it on economic policy.
18:17And they're looking at it the same way.
18:20Did you see Dan Rather this morning?
18:22No.
18:22I didn't see him.
18:23Because he made exactly this point.
18:25He said the president does all his great, his revolutionary things on islands.
18:30So then somebody asked him, what's the relationship of Nixon-Darkshan to the ASO's effect?
18:38He said, that's too deep for me, but it's very significant.
18:42Well, but some of the columnists are writing, the editorials, making the point that this, the Azores Agreement has the same significance, same low significance in economic policy that the Guam document has.
18:53Oh yeah, that's what he said.
18:54He said he didn't know why.
18:55Yeah, they don't understand it yet.
18:58That's the interesting thing.
18:59These guys are reporting.
19:00They don't know what the hell it's all about.
19:04That's a...
19:05But the people that do, you see all of our relatives, right?
19:08You know, the staff.
19:10But that's important.
19:12Well, he understands it.
19:16I mean, he may not be friendly, but he is.
19:18The market didn't respond to it at all.
19:20But as I had said last night, I think the market's already discounted.
19:24Well, it didn't affect the market a hell of a lot on timing anyway.
19:26You know, you had a couple on block.
19:29Yeah.
19:30Let's wait till today when people have a trend.
19:32When it boosts.
19:33The term effect on the market will be more stabilizing in the long term.
19:37In other words, it removes the negative energy.
19:40That's really what it does.
19:42And not a positive.
19:44That's for sure.
19:46It could go today, but that communicator, Mr. President, is almost incomprehensible.
19:50Well, I don't know.
19:51It was delivered.
19:52And I suppose, probably when I did say much, remember, we agreed that all I went out and said, we've made very productive talks.
20:00We've made very productive talks on the internationals.
20:04And then our partners in the United States will...
20:07Carter, he said the same thing.
20:08That's what he wanted.
20:10You notice he was very sensitive.
20:11He didn't want it to be just that.
20:15Well, that, and he was afraid it would blow his exchange market sky high.
20:20Today, which is, of course, Conway's happy as a pig about it.
20:26The dollar has dropped again in England and Italy, and it's gone way down in Japan, and so he's getting
20:35It's beautiful that way.
20:37When Pompidou had wanted to put it to us, and if he had made it as a straight commercial transaction, he would have said, we'll settle it at the G10 meeting.
20:46That way he would have had the maximum pressure on us.
20:50By settling now, the float is already taking care of most of the devaluation.
20:58And... And...
21:06In addition, he's committed, of course, to helping us at the T-10 meeting.
21:10But...
21:10Excuse me, what's the time today?
21:16I talked to him last... Last night.
21:19When he knew about the marks.
21:20One of the... Well, then you feel, both of you, that I've been calling in here, and then he thinks I'll come to get him in with a cigarette and random kind of skeleton.
21:33Remember, I told you last night, so we get them in position as to how to answer the questions in this field.
21:38We're going to have common answers most, but I don't want everybody to battle on this, and I don't want the wrong people to battle.
21:45Did you want me to end on that?
21:46You mentioned that.
21:47Yeah, we'll have everybody sit down.
21:48I want you to comment on it first, see what he thinks is a good idea, and if he does, we'll bring you in then, because you'll know what the sensitivity is of Pompidou.
21:56That's why I think it might be helpful if I know what Pompidou's sensitivity is.
22:02But I think it worked.
22:04Also, I have to say, it was such a pleasure to work with Connolly on this.
22:11You know, he might have been sensitive.
22:13Who am I to talk to Pope?
22:15But we were up together until three.
22:18He said that's it.
22:19He understands the game.
22:20He said it's the right thing to do.
22:21He's got to win.
22:23I told him the night before I didn't think of that.
22:26I said, I want you to know.
22:27I've been around the President now for two years.
22:29I've never seen anyone in whom he has as much confidence as you.
22:33And the reason he's asking me to do this is because he knows I don't know anything about the financial side and that I should put it on the political framework to get it off a straight commercial transaction.
22:45But you give me my brief, and so we work together till three.
22:48He said, the President is absolutely right.
22:51I would, in fact, he recalled to me, he had recommended to you that somebody...
22:57lay the groundwork for... Yeah, that's right, he did.
23:00He wanted you to go to David Morgan.
23:02That's right.
23:02That's right.
23:04I don't know if you're raising this, but probably another thought is the question of whether he has a session with some congressional people, which...
23:13could be desirable.
23:14We've got a pretty congressional reaction.
23:18We ought to keep it that way.
23:21Well, I'd like to... Well, that brings me to the point that I have, uh, as to, uh, do you think I'd better pass the trip?
23:33No, I would...
23:34I don't think you should pass your Florida trip, but I think if you do the congressional thing, Mr. President,
23:41While Conley should do 90% of it, it would be sort of nice if you introduced it so that your leadership role is clear.
23:48Yeah.
23:50Introduce it.
23:51Well, I wonder.
23:52Conley can build a president as he does, build a president's leadership role, and, you know.
23:59Yeah, but still it's better than his dad.
24:03Well, the point is that the party could be done better than that if you don't do the congressional thing.
24:09But I'm not so sure of this.
24:11If you don't do the Congressional one, there's no reason to be here from the foreign policy point of view.
24:20There certainly isn't.
24:21This story is adequately played.
24:24And it'll go on...
24:25The story is adequately played.
24:27You should do it.
24:28You can't do anything.
24:29How about India at the present time?
24:31Look, what we got yesterday...
24:33It didn't play the same as last night.
24:35Yeah, except that I think we're moving towards an acceptance of the British resolution.
24:38But actually now...
24:41I haven't talked about it yet.
24:42The Russians came in yesterday, giving us their own guarantee that there would be no attack on West Pakistan.
24:49A letter to Brezhnev.
24:51In addition, an explanation of the letter to Brezhnev saying, David, Soviet Union guarantees there will be no military action against West Pakistan.
25:00So we are home.
25:01Now it's done.
25:02Just a question, what legal way did we choose?
25:06Well, what the UN does is really irrelevant.
25:09Well, the bastards, of course, have broken promises before.
25:12It would be better to have it on public record.
25:15But we might be able to do it in an exchange of letters between Brezhnev and you, that is, make public.
25:23Which you say you express your concern, and he says he wants to assure you.
25:27Well, what does that do now with the Chinese?
25:30Oh, the Chinese would be sold if West Pakistan were guaranteed.
25:42You get the, you feel you've got that, the concern about something cool off.
25:50I think, Mr. President, that it was unintentional that it blew into such a fantastic thing.
25:55And if you read the full report, you'll see that they... Well, it isn't that big, actually.
26:00It's still a secondary story.
26:04I think it has its advantages, Mr. President.
26:12First of all, since we now know there'll be a settlement, you will get a major credit for it.
26:18Second, it shows that you're not a politician, that you were willing to put the summit on the line when the peace was at stake.
26:26Third, it is a caution to the Russians.
26:28Fourth, it helps with the
26:32with the injunctions, with the Chinese.
26:34Hell, that fellow Barroso came babbling in here.
26:36He said, can't you give me some reassurance?
26:38I know President is terribly concerned when he reads this.
26:43We need some words of reassurance.
26:46And I'm a great believer in selling something you've already done.
26:50So I turned to Haig.
26:52I said, tell Ziegler to calm it down a little bit.
26:55But you people should understand.
26:57By that time, Ziegler had already agreed to calm it down.
27:03And I told him, but the president has to understand you cannot play such a game with the president.
27:10So I, and that's when he said, well, I've just had a cable to tell the president, we give him, this letter means that the Soviet government gives him the guarantee that there will be no attack on West Pakistan, no annexation of West Pakistan.
27:25He said, no annexation of West Pakistan territory.
27:28I said, no, don't play any legalistic games with me.
27:31We consider...
27:33the dividing line, the existing dividing line, and not disputed territory also can't be taken.
27:39He said, yes, that's the guarantee.
27:43So now it's just a question of how to formulate it.
27:47It's a miracle.
27:48It's an absolute miracle, Mr. President.
27:55It's a miracle.
28:05I think it's a good idea, but we have
30:25Well, how are you?
30:30I just wanted you to know that I was flying back from the Azar just today and I came in this morning and you had a birthday.
30:54Happy birthday, but more happy returns on election day for you.
30:59Are you Walter Reed?
31:02Oh, I heard that when I called.
31:04I hope everything's going all right.
31:08Sounds good.
31:09Very good.
31:37Well, you certainly, let me say, you've been like a rock in America these last months.
31:43It's been hard.
31:43Have you sometimes wondered about how, on those, what our friends have made a side or two on these things?
31:50You know, that contingency resolution and some of that stuff, we've really had to draw on it.
31:55It's been very difficult, I know, for you and others who are trying to be responsible down there.
31:59It's hard to know how that contingency resolution and everything.
32:03It's really strange that they're playing that game, isn't it?
32:08Yeah.
32:09Yeah, that's right.
32:10Everybody's hired.
32:13Yeah.
32:16Yeah.
32:16Well, I appreciate what you've done.
32:20You just take good care out there, and we'll look forward to seeing you after the first year.
32:25Okay?
32:25Okay.
32:26Thank you.
32:28I see.
32:28Thank you.
32:29Thank you very much, Mark.
32:31Thank you.
32:53He says you're doing a wonderful job.
33:00If you had predicted, Mr. President, one of the aspects of your policy is that it always happens a matter of factly.
33:06I mean, no one really saw all the maneuvering in the ASOS.
33:09They all think that...
33:10Yes, you know the funny thing.
33:11I came back and saw the papers.
33:13I saw the New York Times.
33:15Lee started the day before.
33:16Ted Schultz, of course, had something to say.
33:19I know he has a picture of Pompidou and so forth, but Holbrook even fades.
33:25They are based on nothing.
33:27If you, in the middle of November, had said that by the middle of December you'd have the monetary crisis solved, essentially on our terms, which is really what it's come down to,
33:37that the French gave up on convertibility, that they would hold still for, in effect, a 9% American devaluation.
33:47And so on and so forth.
33:48What we're getting is 14% of the Germans and 19% of the Japanese.
33:53These are the things, Bob, that the average person comes down with.
33:59God damn, that's tremendous.
34:02What Congress is getting is his average around 12.
34:07Almost.
34:08He's almost there.
34:09Mr. President, our own conventional wisdom when you stepped into this early in November was
34:16I had bitter battles.
34:19Everyone said, jump the French, work with the Germans.
34:26Well, but once I have to say to Connolly's enormous credit, when you told me to start talking about this, I thought Connolly would be the trouble.
34:37When I talked to him alone, explained the German domestic situation to him, and I said, I doubted that he could get an agreement, but if he did, it wouldn't stick.
34:44From then on, he changed course completely and played your game.
34:50And he's been terrific.
34:51He's a political animal.
34:54George Shultz's proposal, and I don't criticize him because as an economist, he was right.
35:02But George, just to give you the figures, George said, let's get the Germans to stick at 10%.
35:09That's what George was willing to settle for.
35:11If we could get the Germans to settle at 10%, then we don't have to change the price of gold.
35:18The French can stay.
35:19We can say, the hell with the French.
35:21This way, we got the French to where George wanted the Germans to be.
35:25We got the Germans 5% higher and the Japs nearly at 20%.
35:32And last year, as late as September,
35:37when the Japanese finance minister came over here, Peterson's operation did a paper saying if we can get an 8% revaluation out of the Japanese that's doing well, 8%.
35:51No, I'm just saying that on the figures you, what you got is, you got great figures.
36:04But the thing that had always concerned me was
36:07to do it in such a way that the political structure of the West would be strengthened rather than weakened.
36:13And what we've brought up is the amazing thing that we've strengthened the political thing and gotten nearly our maximum figure.
36:19I think one thing we could have done, which I, you know, I'm a consistent elector, I could have sold the party to the West.
36:30written statement, to have written it in a way to say that the President of France, the President of the United States, have reached agreement on the international monetary silver.
36:42You could.
36:43I didn't want to say that horribly.
36:45Now, that would have gotten some more positive leadership.
36:47No, but, Mr. President, that would have cooked you and him with the others because we have...
36:53I tried it out a little bit, but I think he was worried about... You see, what we talked about, remember when I said we couldn't have a frankly American condominium either more than we can have a Russian American condominium.
37:05You see, Mr. President, there are some byproducts of this that won't be...
37:11won't show up immediately.
37:13For example, he has learned a lesson.
37:16I'll guarantee you that he won't.
37:19Oh, yes.
37:20Because he is, after all, he is sucking around foam beetles.
37:23But when the chips were down,
37:25Pombidou had no business making any deal with you on any figure.
37:28If Pombidou had played the European game properly, he would have said, thank you very much, Mr. President, I'm now going back to Europe.
37:36I'll discuss it with my allies, and at the G10 meeting we'll present you a United States deal.
37:42Because abroad, no matter what they do to you here abroad, you are the leading statesman in the world, Andy.
37:50And his being able to come back, standing on a platform with you saying, in effect, we've reached agreement, his being able to come back, he could make the deal with the Americans and nobody else could.
38:04I think it's a complicated deal.
38:09I think we have the beauty of a good personal relation because of my going to New York.
38:15Second, I'm going to Paris for the All-Star.
38:17Second, in other words, we have better French-American relations than we've had since Eisenhower.
38:25And they know you held that view before you became president.
38:29The second thing is that I think Pompidou, frankly, wanted to be a big shot.
38:37And now he's a big man and so forth.
38:39Our setting, his meeting first, was very important.
38:43I think, too, that the French, both Schumann and
38:53But Papadu, too, you know, we're talking about the next American elections.
38:58And whatever they may think here, you know, they say that they are very confident that we're going to win.
39:06Very confident.
39:07I said, well, I said, but Mr. Papadu is here.
39:09He said, you don't have any political problems.
39:11I've seen your Gallup poll.
39:14It's a lot higher than mine.
39:15And he laughed.
39:18No, he said, there's no way.
39:19But they both had drugs.
39:21But what he said is not true.
44:02And in this drum fire of criticism you're getting from the press, where even your best stories are given, imagine if Kennedy had done half of what you did, what orgasms the...
44:15I mean, they report such things as Azores quite accurately.
44:19It's pretty close to orgasms on this.
44:21Give it a couple days and they figure out what they got there.
44:25Yeah, but they don't keep it up.
44:27The trend on the whole is it goes that way.
44:30Well, it's a spectacular thing.
44:31And the beauty of this...
44:33I think you should.
44:58Mr. President, there's nothing in my field that I... Well, you've got another two hot days next week.
45:11Good morning.
45:11Good morning.
45:17I was in New York, but I asked you to come in and call me for permission.
45:45getting your evaluations to how you would be our angle of balance with Lee.
45:55And after you decide what we want, I then thought that we would call Sigler and Scali so that you would tell them exactly what line you want to put out.
46:09Now understand, my instructions to them up to this point have been
46:15except what you told them to do on the airline.
46:16I said, now look here, all questions with regard to the monetary thing are referred to the secretary, so that you take it.
46:26I said, no, same.
46:27Now on the other hand,
46:30to the extent that you want to use them for purposes of feeding any line out, or not having any line, you can do it.
46:39That's what I wanted to say.
46:41So what I'd like to say to get a feel now as to how the story has run, Bob, things have run very well after the first of those few things.
46:49There was a first blip that was confused because it was written by water service people didn't understand what they were talking about.
46:57But as it starts to pick up now, it's being played, first of all, as a, as a monumental accomplishment and it's being put in the context of the Guam Doctrine was the political world's position and the Azores... Did you see that?
47:11Yes, yes, the, uh, water service...
47:14This morning he said, he said this and then somebody said, alright, what does it mean?
47:19And so it's, he said, that's the deed for me, but I have to tell you, it's a monumental achievement.
47:30But that, you're on, it's turning, probably, and all the economists, as they start writing, the whole Barbro, it's the people who understand what's been done, are writing it as being, you know, enormously significant, and to our benefit.
47:43The play now is clarifying completely.
47:45There was a little blip of devaluing the dollar, you know, what's, my money's not worth the
47:49That's shifted now.
47:50That has no real domestic... Did you say that he covered that at the airport and it was covered?
47:58That wasn't at the airport.
47:59He covered it.
48:00Covered it there and also... No, he gave it in the...
48:03They carried you live.
48:04I'm not live, but on film, on the airport.
48:07In fact, on the network.
48:09He had a very...
48:11The illuminating thing with Levine.
48:13Well, I had an interview with Levine.
48:15See, they set this up while I left.
48:17I regretted it when I got back.
48:19But it turned out beautifully.
48:21Where did you do it?
48:22In my office when I got in.
48:24I said, where the hell did you do the interview?
48:29That was it.
48:30That's great.
48:30They are, for example, that's the price for Toyota is going up.
48:37They were trying to get the impression that this means a rise in prices.
48:41We hope that what it means is to find more American products which aren't going to be affected by it.
48:46In fact, the idea of more jobs for American Russians, that's coming through.
48:55What is that?
48:56I think we ought to change the two baselines I think we ought to pursue, Mr. President.
49:01First, we ought to encourage them to go back to their European position.
49:09All they were willing to do was let us be very even 5%, 5, 5, 5.
49:13We haven't given yet, but even the stories now are talking about 5 to 7.
49:18Let them play that.
49:21Let them play that without revealing what we actually got.
49:28So when the facts do come out, that is a major achievement for you.
49:35and there's a phrase that's up all over the place, the hard line that the European community took on trade, we're going to get nothing, we're going to get nothing.
49:44And yet, as a result of your meeting yesterday, you're not going to the last meeting of option.
49:49Well, I take it, if I could add, one, we already have made progress on burger and cherry at the last meeting.
49:57Second...
49:58Secondly, we have now opened the way for major progress on trade with the European community.
50:08And third, we have enormously improved the competitive position of American goods in the world markets, and that means more jobs in America.
50:18And finally, it does not mean that your dollar at the end of Christmas season is going to buy a bit less now than it did before.
50:26Now, those things can be... Are those true?
50:28Absolutely.
50:28It's not true to want to say absolutely.
50:30It's a lot harder to do it cheaply.
50:32It's a lot harder because we want to buy this up.
50:36Did you point to 90% of what Americans buy?
50:39Somebody did.
50:39If it came in to think that 90% of what Americans buy are made and produced in America, well, you know, Paul, I don't know.
50:48The only thing that we should be a little careful about, both for tactical, short-term reasons,
50:56is to probe too much about a victory.
50:59I think because they have the best line to take is that a good system is one in which everybody gains.
51:06I think that as far as it's concerned, this is a deal that is very much in U.S. interest.
51:15And in that sense, certainly...
51:18How hard was it in the interests of our trading partners abroad?
51:23Because that's hard, because it would not be in our hands.
51:27in an unstable situation that would lead to recession abroad.
51:31This has been a very great member of the recession talk.
51:33We have stopped that, and it will create stability abroad, and by reason of that, it will mean better and more trade in the future, you know, some of that sort of thing.
51:46Incidentally, John, I don't know, you probably haven't had a chance to talk to him yet.
51:50I was talking to Cromer last night,
51:54about the Security Council thing, which I told you they're pushing a resolution that we want.
51:59And he said, I said, I hope the reason we had to do this, and you understood why we had to do this, he said, understand how we are happy.
52:09We wanted this thing settled.
52:12And he said, we wanted it settled.
52:14They're not mad.
52:15They couldn't do it.
52:17If they had done it with us, the French would have screamed bloody murder.
52:20It seems to me, John, that...
52:26I usually assume the French are going to tell him, but I'm not sure of John.
52:30I thought he would tell him from an honorable man.
52:33And I think you should tell him, though, that he's the only one that knows.
52:37But would you mind doing that?
52:40You can call him.
52:41He won't be in until noon.
52:43Whatever it is.
52:44But if you could call him, and then you could say that you were talking to me this morning, and then people get it.
52:49Say, now look here, you know we're going to have this meeting.
52:52The President feels it.
52:54that we do have a special relation, and here it is, and we've got to fight for this and that.
53:01All right.
53:02One thing that disturbed me a little bit, and I don't think it's all that important, but Schiller was quoted in a paper this morning.
53:11They say that he did not think that we could probably work it out during the G-10 meeting this weekend, that it would probably take one more meeting, but that I had anticipated that in the wrong meeting by saying that it might be necessary.
53:29This indicates that Brock is...
53:31It only means that Brock will want to get...
53:34The credit will be... See, Brundage... Brundage...
53:36Sorry, I got a Nobel Prize.
53:38But Brundage and Schiller have the same relationship, yes.
53:40Yeah, all right.
53:41I'll be doing it.
55:28The problem may be, Schiller is a doctrinaire professor, and he may have some chart that proves that he can only do three and a half percent of something.
55:38When you meet Brandt, I'll guarantee you that Brandt is a jellyfish, and you'll get from Brandt whatever John tells you you've got to get.
55:48Because Brown told me that he would take 6%, didn't he?
55:53Yeah.
56:57Well, I don't think we can, I don't think the Germans would be involved.
57:05There is a disposition on Royce's part and perhaps some others in the Congress can give you the authority to change the price.
57:16in this section.
57:17In other words, to move down into it.
57:19Well, you've got to signal that on or off or stay out of it.
57:23And that relates to one other thing, John, while you're commentating about that.
57:26McGregor raised the point this morning
57:30He said some of the boys down there called us to the Congress.
57:32He still snagged us out of here.
57:36That, uh, you're giving them a little briefing.
57:39Uh, we don't do that.
57:41Uh, you, you, you should have a positive attitude there.
57:42You've got to hold it to the likes of them.
57:44We ought to give them a briefing today.
57:47But before you do that, you, you better decide whether you want to get this legislation announced.
57:53You've got the Royce Javits.
57:55How the hell have they got it to you?
57:56Because they think they can't.
57:58Well, maybe you'd better do it now before they get their breath.
58:03It really takes a while.
58:05It does, too.
58:06Because everybody assumes that you've got this power that you've already made the move.
58:10It'll be interpreted worldwide that you've already made the move.
58:12You've given them the dollar.
58:14And this has been a tremendous weapon we've held.
58:16I agree that what's at stake is discretionary.
58:19Well, that's what I'm talking about.
58:21That is discretionary.
58:22What is discretionary?
58:24It's the authority to devalue up to 10%.
58:27But what it takes away from you is the argument that John made, and which I believe you made, which is that Congress won't vote the authority unless you have a good deal.
58:39Unless we have some trade matters.
58:41And you've got to remember, we haven't got the trade matters yet.
58:44I think we can get them if we'll hold firm, if we can get some good ones, if they're there, if you can get that written into it.
58:51But when you start playing with it, then you've got a problem.
58:55You've got to build.
58:57You've got to build.
58:58It's impossible.
59:00It's built in variability.
59:03This region might be a problem.
59:04Forrest is the opposite.
59:06And also, Pompidou said, the Congress cannot agree.
59:09Here's the problem.
59:10I see your point.
59:13The Congress then...
59:15I see what they want.
59:16They want to see him in the play.
59:18They would like to get in and indicate to us what we should negotiate.
59:22We must make the deal and go to them and say, now you approve.
59:24Well, no, that's not the bill.
59:26Because that's what would happen if you wanted any bargaining points worked into the bill.
59:30If you wanted clean, you could probably make that.
59:33You could probably get a simple resolution of authority to the president.
59:37But that means you're 20%.
59:40That means you will lose the possibility of hiding behind Congress.
59:44You will be the fellow who either says yes or no.
59:48As it is now, both you and John Hughes very effectively liaise with the argument.
59:53If we don't get a trade deal, Congress will never vote it.
59:57This way they'll have voted it and you will have to say.
59:59Nobody thinks you'll have any problem with the next session meeting.
1:00:03Let me suggest this, John.
1:00:04To get the congressional thing out of the way.
1:00:08It seems to me that we should do that immediately, because they're barking around down there.
1:00:16If you would like, sir, we've got the ranking members of banking and currency.
1:00:21Is this banking and currency?
1:00:22Yes, sir.
1:00:23The ranking members of banking and currency.
1:00:25There's no other... You don't have to have foreign currencies.
1:00:28I would say we probably ought to include financial ways to meet.
1:00:33Paul Volcker is a great...
1:00:35great for them, but they're better meant to.
1:00:37But it probably won't include any ways of naming his ranking members, because this is all appropriations.
1:00:45The only reason you need to have them is they're a good man.
1:00:47Well, don't have them if you haven't, sir.
1:00:50But no, I don't know later if you can tell when they're in here.
1:00:53In fact, they're up without him, right?
1:00:55Yeah, obviously.
1:00:57And you like the big five, right?
1:01:00The big five, the speaker center.
1:01:03Now, if that's the means of your approval, John, we try to aim for that at 11 o'clock today.
1:01:08Yes, sir.
1:01:10I guess we're an hour and 15 minutes, if we'd like to give him a brief time.
1:01:16And do you want to raise, do you want to?
1:01:17Yes.
1:01:18Oh, I think I want to.
1:01:18When I don't want to talk, what I will do, I'll open it up with a very, very brief statement, John.
1:01:26And then I think I will, I'm going to let you, because I am not, I'm not going to do nothing.
1:01:30Well, all right.
1:01:31But let me, first, if I may suggest, why don't you open it up?
1:01:34I'm just going to say it now.
1:01:36We need to play it.
1:01:38This, as far as we know...
1:01:42before August the 15th, we had discussed all these possibilities when we were talking about convertibility and closing the goal and non-convertibility to the dollar.
1:01:52We anticipated a great deal of what's happened since that time, and I have asked John to go to these meetings, realizing that we were, in effect, pitting ourselves against all the other nations of the world because we were asking something.
1:02:06We have taken a very hard line, and frankly, fellows, I think it's paid off.
1:02:11And now we have an agreement.
1:02:14It's an agreement that is very much in our interest.
1:02:17I'd like to be honest with you.
1:02:19That's what I was going to do.
1:02:21Then we can go on all the details.
1:02:22But I think you ought to take credit because you were entitled to credit for all of the discussions, Mr. President.
1:02:28If you recall, we had in June and July about this convertibility point with me.
1:02:34We've been talking about these recessions and depressions and
1:02:37and what it would do to world trade, and we discussed this in this office, we discussed it at Camp David, what convertibility meant.
1:02:45You remember Arthur Burns was talking about, oh God, if you suspend convertibility, we'll have a depression, there'll be chaos in the international markets.
1:02:54Different ones were predicting that there'd be a 300-point drop in the stock exchange in a matter of almost hours, if not days.
1:03:05These were all the things that went into
1:03:08It's your basic decision to suspend an infertility in the first place.
1:03:12Second question, I'll make some of that, but I wish you would make it.
1:03:22It's a little bit pumping for me to say so you can go on and say that.
1:03:28I can see where you're getting at.
1:03:30I don't want to sit there and they'll say, well, the president's bragging about what he's accomplished.
1:03:34But I'll lay the thing.
1:03:36We had a terrible problem there.
1:03:37We negotiated.
1:03:38And I'll play it to you in terms of why you recommend it and how tough.
1:03:41And I said, people have said you've been too tough and so forth.
1:03:44But now I know that we have a good agreement.
1:03:48Now, with regard to Erwin's staff here, would it not be well, and by the way, he was supposed to have Peterson present, but he should be here.
1:03:56Oh, yeah.
1:03:57Would I not also have Schultz, McCracken, and Stein, both McCracken scientists on the street?
1:04:03Well, I'd have all three of them.
1:04:06And I'd have the other by all directors.
1:04:11Now, does that cover your statement?
1:04:15We don't want it too big, you know, because we've got San Henry, of course, you should be here.
1:04:19Now, the other problem is should we have the state people?
1:04:28I don't think so.
1:04:29I don't think so.
1:04:30The difficulty is if we have the state people, then we've got to do the foreign affairs, and that's full-time.
1:04:35And that would bother me.
1:04:38I think...
1:04:40I don't think we better, and also the difficulty is they're likely to get into India-Pakistan or something like that, and I don't want to get this confused with India-Pakistan.
1:04:51No, we better not have a state.
1:04:55I think we just ought to say that we're...
1:05:00other issues other issues at this point
1:05:30Incidentally, I have a thought.
1:05:33How would it be to let Samuels come over and just listen?
1:05:37And I think also that, from your standpoint, let Volker come.
1:05:42Well, I think that's, yeah.
1:05:43It's just, you know what I mean?
1:05:44These are guys who work.
1:05:46And you can tell Bob, the way you can tell Bob, how you can tell Bill, is to send Samuels to come to do the audit, you know, recover to the State Department so he can be there, and so forth.
1:05:58You see what I'm, I just, well, I think, you know, I'm going to open this up to state issues.
1:06:01We're going to be, it'll go right down the tube.
1:06:04Sam has come in, and he can report the bill, and their representatives, and instead of on our side, too, Senator Scott, I should be there to listen.
1:06:11If Bill Everett is here in town, and he probably is, he's probably going to be here.
1:06:16By all means.
1:06:16By all means.
1:06:19Right.
1:06:19And we ought to put out a directive this morning in a gentle way that all public statements
1:06:26And how do we refer to John?
1:06:28You will.
1:06:28You prepare that directly in the house for my signatures.
1:06:32Because when these fellows start traveling over at State, they'll, especially on trade, those guys, they all want to do that.
1:06:40Bob, John, Bob, before you, before you absolutely set the meeting call Mike.
1:06:47and have them call my car and see if that's okay.
1:06:52In other words, you can't come to them and invite them and they say, well, you should have consulted us.
1:06:57See what I mean?
1:06:58And then down the line, we don't care whether they've all come or not.
1:07:06What can you say?
1:07:07I think it's essential, Mr. President.
1:07:09I've seen now enough of these negotiations.
1:07:12And there's got to be one central focus for quarterbacking.
1:07:17But that means also statements.
1:07:19They should just say, refer any questions to Treasury.
1:07:24We will refer any questions to Treasury out of my office.
1:07:28Because while we have a good agreement, there are a lot of nuances where it can fall apart.
1:07:34We've got to drive a hard bargain on trade and other things.
1:07:38And these guys' instinct...
1:07:40is to be the spokesman for the other side.
1:07:43And also, their thing is to try to reassert the press on the press's prejudices, which will screw us.
1:07:52I mean, I just don't want to have a question about that.
1:07:55In fact, I don't want to state that.
1:08:00There's a great deal of trade, Mr. President.
1:08:04People say in the national tobacco industry $150 million a year.
1:08:12We break this sister's thing, and we've got both of those properties.
1:08:18Only to agree informally with me, he said, I understand.
1:08:24California, tobacco in Virginia.
1:08:27That he said,
1:08:30grain, he said, was tough for them.
1:08:32And above all, tough for the Germans.
1:08:38But I think we get the French.
1:08:41The one thing we have to avoid is to get news stories out saying Pompidou was defeated.
1:08:47Because we need his help.
1:08:48If John hadn't been the heavy for three months,
1:08:57you wouldn't have gotten a damn thing out of these things.
1:09:00Well, the president's held firm in the face of a hell of a lot of pressure, a lot of criticism, and I think you ought to take credit for it this morning.
1:09:08But we shouldn't let the steam out of the valve now.
1:09:11That's right.
1:09:12That's why you should do either... We're not through by a long shot.
1:09:17Our tendency is to overact on the thing, and soon it will... John, one thing I was trying to say...
1:09:26When is your meeting tomorrow?
1:09:27Friday.
1:09:28Well, I'll meet with Schiller tomorrow at 9.30.
1:09:32Oh, that's right.
1:09:35Well, I can call him on the phone, but see, I'll have to call him in the morning.
1:09:40John, John, John, call him on the phone.
1:09:44You don't know by whom.
1:09:45By the name of it.
1:09:48So that if you don't have to have it today, if you can wait until happy mid-breakfast with it, you can find it anytime.
1:10:00And we haven't had a stand on too far.
1:10:09James Gilpatrick, John, has a problem with the child care of my new center people.
1:10:16Give me a quote of the day, sir.
1:10:19Would you like for us to send you to the new center?
1:10:23No, no, no.
1:10:24I want to go to the new center.
1:10:25You can't.
1:10:25The part is, I'm saying, you'll see what I mean.
1:10:28It's funny.
1:10:28They start as a country, and then they become more sane.
1:10:33I go all the time.
1:10:35The, uh...
1:10:36at the time they were interviewing me on the story.
1:10:40I said, look, if I got up in the morning and started the day to read the books, I could never get through the day.
1:10:47So I said, I'll just read a quick news story.
1:10:50I said, I've got to deal with the country.
1:10:53I've got to read what they're writing in Dallas, Chicago, and the Washington Post, and I get a better balance picture.
1:10:59James, go back there.
1:11:02Imagine, if you please, a casserole composed of yesterday's spaghetti and Tuesday's duck overhatch, to which a hundred hopeful cooks, bursting with good intentions, had added a smattering of spinach, pickled beets, eggplant, avocado, cream cheese, Cajun maple syrup, malted milk, hard cider sauerkraut, coleslaw, gravenuts, two cans of motor oil, and with any topping, garnished with raw politics, or garnished with crocodile tears, this was the soggy mess deposited in the President's desk.
1:11:28There's an addiction to a strong stomach, but this was too much.
1:11:33On the other hand, John can use, in other words, use what basically
1:11:56to put out.
1:11:58Ziegler and Scali, our good soldiers, will do exactly what you say.
1:12:03So whenever you want anything put out, you give them a call.
1:12:08Say, look, bleep this out or that.
1:12:10Because we want you to use them just like I would use them.
1:12:15Well, I think, too, there's another thought that we've got some tough marketing ahead of us that we also need to be out there in some of these stores.
1:12:24But the main thing we need to do, I think, is to translate this whole thing in terms of jobs.
1:12:30And we've got to get a very simple way to describe it.
1:12:34We've got to say, well, it's kind of like a store that's just been, of course, it's like a family that's just been buying and buying and buying more than this.
1:12:44And finally they had to turn it around and they had to start selling something.
1:12:49Actually, some of the things you said this morning on that NBC thing that I saw this morning, put it in very simple terms.
1:12:58The one thing we have to be careful about is, we were talking about it on the plane yesterday, John, is to get some of our theoretical economists from going around saying no convertibility ever.
1:13:16It's
1:13:17That's our option, but if the French read this, that's a humiliation.
1:13:22No, sir.
1:13:23No, sir.
1:13:24We've got to have it.
1:13:26If you understand what we've got to say, look, we don't know what John Conway's and the President's view is on this subject, George, but for God's sake, don't say it, because...
1:13:40And we, we must not, we must not, uh, embarrass ourselves.
1:13:48He was at me again this morning.
1:13:50He said he agreed to put it into the contract.
1:13:54We'll never discuss convertibility.
1:13:56You can't put... We wouldn't have him.
1:13:58Well, we would not have him.
1:14:00Irving Levine asked me the question last night.
1:14:05He said, does this mean that we'll never go back to convertibility?
1:14:09I said, Irving, never.
1:14:11It's a long, long time.
1:14:13But I'll tell you this, we're not moving.
1:14:15We're in good shape on this with Trump, even on that answer.
1:14:19Because I said, I said, Mr. President, I do not see in the future, in the foreseeable future, I do not see a time when we can even go back comparatively.
1:14:30So it's a, do you remember when I said that to him?
1:14:33So you made the distinction between hard and soft.
1:14:35Hard and soft.
1:14:36You know, I'm doing a great job.
1:14:40All you agreed with him.
1:14:42Supposing we said we won't agree to it, he can always put it on the agenda of meetings.
1:14:47He can force us to discuss it, which is all we agreed to do.
1:14:50That's all we agreed to do.
1:14:51When you're sitting there with nine countries facing you, they all bring it up.
1:14:54What are you going to do?
1:14:59Knowing these things here, as you know, we now, we're all in agreement, but as you know, except for the trade features that you're able to negotiate there, while this, this revaluation of exchange rates is by far the biggest part of the package, it isn't going to help us for quite a while.
1:15:21But now, therefore, we have got to broker this thing from a political standpoint.
1:15:29I think to be brought to the standpoint of first, that we have initiated, it seems to me, a whole new system.
1:15:36I mean, the leadership, the office that Dean initiated has succeeded on the anti-inflation front.
1:15:44It's now succeeded on the international front, that far beyond our hopes and dreams.
1:15:50And also, we have paved the way for success in the job market.
1:15:54So our three-legged stool was beginning to come into shape.
1:15:58I think, too, that the fact that this
1:16:10is enormously important in America's leadership position in the world.
1:16:16It helps create world stability.
1:16:18We're a good partner and all that sort of thing.
1:16:21And it helps us evolve.
1:16:22But what I mean is, I want some good PR on this damn thing.
1:16:26And the way it's gotta be, what I'm suggesting is,
1:16:28I know your lips will be quite sealed because of this thing that's coming up, but don't let the other side dominate the dialogue.
1:16:35I'd like you to talk as much as you can, because you understand, and you come on very well.
1:16:41See what I'm getting at?
1:16:43But one thing we need to do, Bob, and they can do this through something as far as we really understand this, is the United States, since World War II, has been the dominant
1:17:02exceed to the European community as being the financial center of the world, whether in London or Paris or whatever.
1:17:09But in the August 15th move, the President has asserted that he will not only retain, in effect, the political and military leadership of the world, but he's now asserting the United States leadership in the financial world or monetary world, which is true.
1:17:28One of the writers
1:17:30put their finger on it fairly well by simply saying that, you know, we thought the world would kick us around.
1:17:37And they were critical of us.
1:17:40And they now found that we said, OK.
1:17:44We haven't had any exceptions.
1:17:45We're not suspending the dollars.
1:17:47And Europe woke up to the fact that, my God, what have we done?
1:17:51They found that they couldn't get along.
1:17:53We couldn't get along without them.
1:17:57And these stories are our answer, because we've got to be very careful for the next two or three weeks.
1:18:03Oh, absolutely.
1:18:04To give them equal credit.
1:18:07Oh, I will do that.
1:18:09Because that's what's in it for whom we do the deed, the real statement.
1:18:12You're making the real statement.
1:18:14You're really trying to find a line after it gets locked up that you want to move over the next year, over the next year, over the next year.
1:18:22Right now, I'm looking for jobs.
1:18:24Right, that's right.
1:18:25And the thing, we've got to assert what it means in terms of jobs, expansion at home, and more than that, we can't leave the impression that we're going to have enormous immediate effect.
1:18:38Because the truth of the matter is, it's real.
1:18:39I will not begin to really show for 18 months to two years, which puts us far beyond the election.
1:18:46And this is why I have been insistent on trade, trade, trade, because it's the only thing we're going to get out of it that has any political impact.
1:18:55Burden sharing and trade.
1:18:58Burden sharing, I'm just going to pull out of there.
1:19:14You can't do it before 11?
1:19:18No.
1:19:20Oh, 12 o'clock.
1:19:24Can they do it at 12?
1:19:25They can do it at 12.
1:19:26Well, that's fine with us.
1:19:28That's probably the best time.
1:19:33Oh, wow.
1:19:34That makes sense.
1:19:35All right, let's go ahead.
1:19:37Did you want to get the cigarette out of the gun at all?
1:19:41Well, yes, but you better go to the circle.
1:19:43John, tell me the kind of point you want me to get, sir, here to open this thing up.
1:19:49Well, I think you just ought to, not in a possible manner, but you ought to take credit for something.
1:19:56I'm just saying that we want to, we're beginning to see the unraveling of this thing.
1:20:01And we want you to know that we have seriously concerned ourselves with the very problem that we have now, which is the problem
1:20:11The time before, August the 15th, when we were talking here in June and July, we saw what was happening in the movement of money.
1:20:18We were talking about this whole problem, the domestic as well as the international economic picture.
1:20:25When we began to talk about suspending the convertibility of the dollar, we had to try to anticipate what was going to happen to the world market.
1:20:33What effect would it have?
1:20:34What could we come out with?
1:20:36We didn't know for certain.
1:20:38knew, however, that we were going to be confronting every one of our major trading partners.
1:20:43We inevitably had to.
1:20:44We had to improve our trading, our competitive position in order to provide the jobs at home.
1:20:50So, inevitably, this put us in a primitive conflict with our trading partners.
1:20:56And we have found this to be so now that, generally speaking, they all say, oh, yes, we'll help.
1:21:01We'll cooperate.
1:21:02We'll do this and do that.
1:21:03But when you get right down to it, what we're talking about
1:21:08And what we have been talking about is the economic vitality of every country involved, with jobs in Britain, jobs in France, jobs in Germany, jobs in the United States.
1:21:19We've been talking about taking this from every American product that's sold in the world markets, and every other product that's sold in the United States markets.
1:21:27So when you get right down to it, these countries forget all this special energy.
1:21:31They're bargaining for their economic value, and that's what we've been bargaining for.
1:21:36And we haven't necessarily had to be tough because we were aligned against the solid phalanx of these countries who had a common purpose, not to give us any more than they had to.
1:21:46And we've taken a very hard line and a very tough line, and we're still taking it.
1:21:51And this is not over.
1:21:52We just met with France.
1:21:54We've got eight other countries in this group to go.
1:22:00We're going to try to get an agreement as soon as we can.
1:22:02But even then, it's not over, because we're still talking trade with Japan, trade with Canada, and trade with the European community.
1:22:09So we want you to understand what's involved.
1:22:11We want you to know how we approach it.
1:22:13We need your help.
1:22:14We don't want this to be a political football.
1:22:16It just can't be a political football.
1:22:19We're not going to get any political advantage out of it.
1:22:21If anything, then we'll get a disadvantage.
1:22:25Because I'll be the president that devalued the dollar.
1:22:28Well, I have to take that in order to try to improve our competitive position.
1:22:32But let John tell you about some of these.
1:22:34I think you can take off the value of the dollar because it goes up.
1:22:40But I think you, because you have been involved in it so deeply and intimately, I think you ought to at least without boasting at all, just say that you've been considering this since before August of 50.
1:22:56Yes, we've been considering it.
1:22:58Well, we can say everything.
1:23:01We've been doing that internationally for crises about every few months.
1:23:05And just say you all remember that.
1:23:08The Germans floating there, they're demarked in May.
1:23:12And the problem, the problem finally, the old system broke down.
1:23:15And that was one of the reasons that we had to move, because we had an August 15th amendment.
1:23:20The reason it didn't have a great public intent was because our wage and price controls and our tax things had more of a immediate impact on it.
1:23:31But it has enormous implications for the future.
1:23:36And as far as the dollar is concerned,
1:23:39after his relationship with other currencies was completely out of kilter and we're getting our friends beaten up because other currencies were richly controlled and so forth and the dollar was carrying a major person with a great disadvantage in America.
1:23:52We had to face up to these facts and we came into this tough bargaining.
1:23:56Is that the way it was set up?
1:23:58Yes.
1:23:58And that's why the Secretary had to be very, very tough and he was all that.
1:24:02He did that and I had my clothes supported him because we, you know, something like that.
1:24:07I'm going to set up a little long match, you know, because we take a lot of heat for being tough so far.
1:24:13I want to say, why do we have to be tough?
1:24:15Well, you're talking to a friend of the audience, and I think you ought to say you've been tough, because these folks, they like that.
1:24:22Right.
1:24:22See, I can sell that about you, and then you say that you wouldn't.
1:24:26With the meeting, he's coming around.
1:24:29He sounds well.
1:24:32Well, on this meeting with the leaders,
1:24:37You've already, they said pretty good things, I understand the source of it.
1:24:42I thought that we would have a picture on it.
1:24:44It's a good follow-up story.
1:24:47And you could say, well, Scali said it too.
1:24:52But the general, the thing I can't emphasize too strongly, and I want you to force around here, is that there can be only one quarterback on this team.
1:25:06It's a terribly, terribly sensitive thing, the way it's being interpreted and so forth.
1:25:11The Secretary may have ideas as to when he wants to use the White House for this.
1:25:15He may want to use you as a statement.
1:25:17He may want to use the scholars on the list, or leave something out to our advantage.
1:25:22But the point is, let's be sure, without bothering him too much, unless you have previous approval of what you said, that nothing is said
1:25:35which is attributed to the White House, which he doesn't know about.
1:25:40We operate pretty much on the basis of that.
1:25:42Well, if you could do that, well, you know, that's right.
1:25:46We're going to have a meeting, I believe it's 12 o'clock, and then we'll run down on this.
1:25:50Without a question, we're going to do that.
1:26:03It goes on and on in these negotiations.
1:26:07But it is vitally important at this point that this story, which is going to be a long, long rainy story, that we get it out in the best possible context.
1:26:19Our immediate problem over the next few days is to be sure that nothing is said which might jeopardize
1:26:35And on the other hand, the Secretary will use the two
1:26:54If, and when he sees fit, to pump out a line in case we want to.
1:26:59I'd like you to watch the situation to see if the wrong line is getting out in order to correct that line.
1:27:07And then let me just be sure that you're not bothering him too much.
1:27:15at the present time.
1:27:17Take a minute, John, to say what you said to me as to what you would like me to get out.
1:27:23I think the point you made here that you said to us was basically take notes and use any of this that you want.
1:27:29Understand what he's saying now, you can use.
1:27:33How about, John, your various channels?
1:27:35First, this triumvirate is beginning to take shape now.
1:27:43First, we had the wage price freeze that shocked the inflation fund.
1:27:49Secondly, the President had some major initiatives on the tax front, all of that, which I'm going to repeat.
1:27:57That's that time, with the wage price freeze, the nine-page suit, you know, all that sort of thing.
1:28:01Now, the third was on the international front.
1:28:04It's beginning to gel.
1:28:05It's beginning to take shape.
1:28:09that the president's leadership in these three areas looks as if it's going to be a great success.
1:28:17And it's one of the most sweet moves that any American president ever had to attack as many different problems.
1:28:28And this was basically conceived and designed at the time of his pronouncements on August 15th.
1:28:37That's what was embodied.
1:28:38To have all three problems.
1:28:40There's been a tendency by the revolution for many to interpret the economic policy as being solely an attempt to stop inflation.
1:28:46Because that's right.
1:28:48Now we've finally, finally, the broader picture reasserts itself again.
1:28:53We have, this, the fight to stop inflation has succeeded, both days one and day two.
1:29:01that God created through the gods, through the past, has now been signed into law, it will succeed.
1:29:08And we believe in that.
1:29:09A third, and one that is at least understood,
1:29:13In the long run, the most important of all, the whole international monetary thing, we've enormously improved our economic position abroad.
1:29:21And that, finally, is now the time to do all this.
1:29:26That's exactly how it is.
1:29:26Now, the next point we want to make is that devaluation has to be defined in terms of making American goods more competitive.
1:29:39therefore creating more jobs in this country.
1:29:43It ought to be interpreted in another way of saying, as a means of keeping jobs at home, or stopping exporting jobs.
1:29:56That's what devaluation means to the average person.
1:30:04We don't want to, we don't want to be caught up in this particular line that some writer with music disses.
1:30:10It's like being sold.
1:30:12The currency is a commodity.
1:30:14And every country in the world fights to undervalue its currency because it simply means they don't sell anybody else.
1:30:21That's what it means.
1:30:22It means like the grocery store or the block that has the cheapest prices, if he has the same product, he's going to get the business.
1:30:30And on that sort of, I mean, interruption, ever since World War II, the United States has been locked in place with regard to its currency, whereas other countries have been free to move up and down, revaluing all their currencies to help their situation.
1:30:47Is that a correct statement?
1:30:49That's correct.
1:30:49Let's get the figures.
1:30:50But I think there's other currencies of major trading measures have been backed
1:30:56Their currency is burnt to the very last bit of pork, the first thing I'm talking about.
1:31:00Sixty times, I believe, since World War II, that's a combined total devaluation, because all these countries want to try to get their currencies down.
1:31:09Now, the order will go on to say that the dollar is not going to be undervalued.
1:31:15We're trying to get it down to a point where it's somewhere near its value, because, in fact, it's been overvalued in terms of other currencies.
1:31:31The next point we want to make is we really can't expect any great increase in trade for at least 18 months.
1:31:44History has shown that the devaluation of currency around the world, it takes about 18 months to two years.
1:31:52For the federal currency, I think, really, if I get a record, I would say long term, long term.
1:31:59This not only was an indispensable move, but it is probably the most important one.
1:32:07But short-term, it does not have immediate effects.
1:32:10I wouldn't let them think that it's, I'd let them get, I'd give them a little support.
1:32:17I mean, I would expect, for example, over the next few months, you're not gonna see something like that.
1:32:22Long-term, it'll have dramatic effects.
1:32:28Now, there's another major point that I think needs to be made without boasting, and it ought not to come from the administration at all, but some writers and authors in the field ought to write an in-depth piece saying that no one's ever questioned that the
1:32:48political and military leadership in the free world was in the United States to a major extent.
1:33:01This move in the international field now has resulted in the president exercising a high degree of statewide leadership
1:33:17That we can put out now.
1:33:21I mean, that's a good one.
1:33:22Also, in that case, John, you ought to, through your sources, pick up this line that he and some are using.
1:33:40And in a sense, Senator, in a sense, though, there's similar principles that we help those around themselves.
1:33:51And to prove this point, it's mutuality, basically.
1:33:57It means that around the world, it means a more equal burden shared, basically.
1:34:09He spelled this out that the President was advised by a great many people and who he has a high degree of confidence that it was in the national interest of the United States to contain the vote.
1:34:30not go back to things like that.
1:34:32And to take no responsibility.
1:34:34And to take no responsibility, really, for other countries that they had, in fact, abused us, or they had used us, not abused us, but that they had used us economically, and that we really ought to be on the point of intervention, on the point of action in our approach.
1:34:49As a matter of fact, the other satellite I know that I use, we have many problems with Dr. Burns,
1:34:58reflecting the Europeans that this would lead not only to instability abroad, but possibly recession abroad.
1:35:06That would not affect us now, but again, long term, it would be potentially very disastrous for the United States.
1:35:13I wouldn't mention it.
1:35:15I wouldn't mention it.
1:35:16You haven't seen it.
1:35:17No.
1:35:18That shows them up.
1:35:19But I, you know, we took his point of view.
1:35:20Well, go ahead.
1:35:22I wouldn't do it.
1:35:23Well, a lot of Europeans said that, though.
1:35:26That's what I'm talking about.
1:35:27A lot of Europeans said, I just wouldn't give Dr. Burns specific credit, because he tends to draw a curve.
1:35:34Like I said, these people want to say, well, do it by some other way.
1:35:38You get them too close to home.
1:35:43And I would simply say that the President made the decision on the basis of the responsibility and leadership which this nation has.
1:35:55Sure, we've expended more in providing the security shield than perhaps is our fair share on a numerical basis.
1:36:04Sure, we've expended more in terms of aid since World War II than our fair share on a dollar basis.
1:36:12But what is freedom worth?
1:36:16What is stability worth?
1:36:20This world in which we live, it was to provide that basis for us to make this move in the monetary field.
1:36:30So that you try to leave the states in the international monetary field as we have in the political and military field.
1:36:41So that's my call.
1:36:42There's one potential area of difficulty, and I found this particularly among the foreign reporters last night.
1:36:49That is, that there's a tendency on the part of Europeans to see this as a victory for Pompidou as well.
1:36:55Let's talk about that for a moment, because the more you talk about it as a victory over Pompidou, the more it is less evicted by President Nixon.
1:37:06So I think we have to come up with a very subtle line here which does not offend the French, but which at the same time ensures the role that you have played, Mr. President.
1:37:16This is what he's doing.
1:37:18This is a very specific point.
1:37:20Well, I would say that in the Azores,
1:37:30So far as the price of the United States, no one won, no one lost.
1:37:33This was not a bilateral negotiation.
1:37:36It can't be that this was a bilateral negotiation, but the problem is what?
1:37:40The lateral character.
1:37:41We have yet to deal with the Germans and the Japanese and so forth.
1:37:44And I would put it quite bluntly here that we considered the two presidents, Mr. and Mr. Johnson, at the outset, that anything we agreed to had to be
1:37:56in the interests of both countries, or it could not be agreed to.
1:38:00It would not be viable for each.
1:38:03And this is very much in the interest of the Frank people.
1:38:07And it's very much in our interest for different reasons.
1:38:10But it's some of the same.
1:38:11But we consider this very much in our interest.
1:38:14And in that sense, we consider it a victory for us.
1:38:16And John, I would love that.
1:38:20posture of us as being in competition with Russia.
1:38:23And the answer to it is this.
1:38:25As far as we started out, it's been three things.
1:38:27One, to increase our polarized percentage of burden sharing in military people.
1:38:37We just got that in Russia.
1:38:39They've contributed a billion dollars a year more than us.
1:38:41That sounds like I got a lot of money in the air.
1:38:43And the offset agreements
1:38:45We've improved our prevention.
1:38:48The offset agreement is perfect.
1:38:50We can't go into that much detail, but the fact is that it was higher than the high position we had risen into ours.
1:38:59Secondly, we are exceeding our expectations.
1:39:02Secondly, we won't get a major real item.
1:39:04That seems to be in the audience.
1:39:07Thirdly, we wanted to get concessions from part of our trading partners around the world in trade matters.
1:39:12And that is, we obviously are making tremendous progress.
1:39:16I think the realignment of which was Morgan, which was basically, reflected the international realities, but was spared the American gospel.
1:39:24Well, it worried me a little bit then.
1:39:29I don't know what the hell.
1:39:47This morning it doesn't seem to play quite that well.
1:39:50And I don't think we want to get, let me put it this way, I don't think we want to, I think John's got a point, we must get down to the railing in the French.
1:39:57We have a bigger game to play.
1:39:59We've got heat coming next week.
1:40:01And also, I think you might make something out of the fact that we're too big, we're big enough that we're not talking about coronavirus.
1:40:09We're not trying to make petty points.
1:40:11As I put it, the part where I was talking to John, I said that when we were talking about the numbers, I said, now we're going to reason it.
1:40:21I said, no, I've got nothing.
1:40:23But Boyle tells me he was getting right down to the Welch, you know, worth of a point and a half.
1:40:28Well, hell, I didn't know whether it should be 40 points, so he had me right where the hair was short.
1:40:32So I said, now, let me say a present.
1:40:34I'm not going to fire you like a Lebanese drug merchant.
1:40:38That's what you said, but I don't think he ought to put that on.
1:40:41Oh, put that on.
1:40:41Oh, no, no, Lebanese, Lebanese, we're not supposed to be here, except in our gallery, I'm sure.
1:40:47And, oh no, wait a minute, wait a minute.
1:40:51Our friend from U.B.I., he was born in 1911.
1:40:53Didn't say it was an Egyptian governor.
1:40:57Mr. President, let me also say that you agree with this.
1:41:05That it's a victory for the French as far as the evaluation is concerned.
1:41:09But a victory is in the eyes of the beholder.
1:41:11To the French, gold is a major ideological hang-up.
1:41:16To us, it's not.
1:41:18To us, devaluation means that we make our American goods more competitive and we make more American jobs.
1:41:23I think your first statement is better because I don't think we ought to keep a scorecard and say we want to, they want to.
1:41:31It isn't a question of whether we do the history, it's whether the press and we have to be ready to count on God.
1:41:38I think we ought to raise it one level above.
1:41:41It's a victory for everybody.
1:41:50The way, John, you had put it first was we set out to get three objectives.
1:41:55We got those three objectives.
1:41:57They were in our interest, but in the long term, we want to talk to the Franks from their side.
1:42:02They got some things they set out to get, and they got those.
1:42:04I put it that way.
1:42:06And so when you say about victory, there ain't nothing separate.
1:42:08It depends on what we do.
1:42:10But the truth of the matter is...
1:42:11It's an interest of both, but actually, let me tell you the truth.
1:42:14We won.
1:42:15It looks to me as if the French got doctrine and we got practice.
1:42:20The French got theory.
1:42:21Otherwise, they got nothing that I can teach them.
1:42:25That's a little wound they can put out.
1:42:27You know, they can write on it, but the fact is we got what we wanted.
1:42:31If John isn't true, you know what, I'm just going to keep it.
1:42:45When you talk about raising the price of gold, he said that was going to cost us a lot of money.
1:42:51And then I was trying to think, well, how are you going to raise the price of gold?
1:42:57And, of course, he pointed out that the price of gold in the world market is higher now than it is even to the point that we're preparing to raise it.
1:43:13And then I said, well, look, Frenchmen own their own gold.
1:43:15He said, well, yes, we can.
1:43:16But then he came back to the point, well,
1:43:24Tell me, why does he want to raise it then?
1:43:26Well, he wants to raise it because the French have a hang-up on gold, and because individuals have about $4 billion.
1:43:32But my point is, in the event that the world market is higher than what we're prepared to raise it to, how does our race, you know, oh, you mean it raises the floor, and therefore the ceiling will go up.
1:43:43Is that what you want to say?
1:43:45He was pulling my leg on that then, Henry.
1:43:47No, he wasn't really.
1:43:48To the French, it's an irrational thing.
1:43:49The Frenchmen have been hoarding gold since the French Revolution.
1:43:53And they don't understand the difference between the world market and the governmental market.
1:44:00All they know is what they've got in their mattresses.
1:44:02One of the things is they never traded in.
1:44:06One of the disadvantages the French government has is that they cannot get the gold out of their people, no matter what the price is, because they don't trust their currency.
1:44:19They keep it in mattresses.
1:44:22The peasants, right actually, the peasants since the French Revolution have been hoarding gold.
1:44:29They won't put it in the bank.
1:44:39What they've got is their gold they don't draw interest on.
1:44:43It's one of the, it's a mad national psychology.
1:44:46So as far as Pompidou is concerned, as long as his peasants think the price of gold is rising, and they don't know the goddamn thing.
1:44:56So his election next year, it creates a good climate among his peasants.
1:45:00Even though it doesn't mean a goddamn thing.
1:45:03It isn't good political action.
1:45:05What did you mean last night in the background?
1:45:09where you said the French are not going to revalue in the traditional sense, but they will revalue... Well, on a relative basis.
1:45:17On a relative basis.
1:45:21We're going to be affected by changes as far as those religious institutions evaluate.
1:45:24What does that mean?
1:45:27We're going down, let's just say, 5%.
1:45:31We go down 5%.
1:45:32The French stay where they are.
1:45:35So what you said last night there, which John and I were asked this question, and I don't know if we can say it now, that the French have agreed not to move.
1:45:47Can we say that?
1:45:48No.
1:45:48Okay.
1:45:58Yes, but don't say it.
1:46:00They're very nice.
1:46:01Because I get that question based upon that background thing, and I should just say, and I have kind of a case to say, obviously when we deal with these, in the group of people, we will probably, some will be evaluated, some will remain where they are today, others will re-evaluate, depending on what the relative market is.
1:46:22But we have to put the head of the center center between what the relative position of the market is.
1:46:31What's your initial reaction to the Congress?
1:46:34Then the other question, just one that I understand.
1:46:39The ones that do understand your opinion.
1:46:43Oh, yeah, that's the point.
1:46:44The ones that do.
1:46:45Well, John, you've worked with those guys.
1:46:48Yes.
1:46:48You know, I'm with you in this meeting because of the making, because they haven't helped.
1:46:55We could add a couple of guys who have been really pushing on it, like Royce.
1:47:01Rocksmeyer and Javits.
1:47:04They were both favorable to me.
1:47:07Well, that's my point.
1:47:10No, I was going to say, he had a real problem.
1:47:12Well, unless you go...
1:47:14They are second-ranked.
1:47:16You should have the second-ranked and second-ranked.
1:47:21See what I'm talking about.
1:47:30I want to raise a long-term political probability.
1:47:41You know, most of the Democrats who understand this are in favor of it now.
1:47:44Isn't that conceivable that as a political issue later on, the Democrats will seize on it as the President has to cheapen the price of the dollar, which has always been a sacrosanct as mother but an apple pie?
1:47:57That's what they're charged.
1:47:58That's what they're charged.
1:47:59Go back and just say, yes, the President wrote about matching the same position on the dollar.
1:48:07If they want to, I don't think that's too much.
1:48:11Well, we could say this is really something that affects us internationally as far as the prices.
1:48:17It has a hell of a lot more, let me put it this way, this revaluation of the dollar in terms of how it affects jobs as compared with prices, it's 100%.
1:48:32In other words, this is about jobs rather than about prices.
1:48:38If we're a mentor to the mayor,
1:48:41It's about jobs, rather than about prices.
1:48:43It's about jobs and American products and their competitiveness in the world, which relates to jobs.
1:48:48Tom's got a very balanced point, though, from a political thing that you, in that first story, sort of led to that devaluing the dollar.
1:48:57It says to the ordinary
1:49:01Well, in terms of the U.S. economy, your dollar, inflation, you've got to get your dollar here, not the price of gold.
1:49:11They don't.
1:49:12You can take it one way or the other.
1:49:21It doesn't mean you take a trip abroad and buy a little less, or if you buy a foreign product here in the United States, it's nice.
1:49:29But as far as the 95% of the American people who live at home and buy American, no change.
1:49:35It's a pretty good common-man demagoguery on this, which you can say, yes, it'll be a little hardship for those who tour Europe and Nashville and Spain.
1:49:42And it'll be a little tough on those who drink imported champagne every night, but it is a part of the guy that drinks California, Dave Loretta.
1:49:51But also, Dave Loretta, watch out for you.
1:49:54You really can't compare this to the past, because the past doesn't have to be a common market.
1:50:02It has to be a weapon.
1:50:06You didn't have where it is.
1:50:09Of course.
1:50:09Let me say this.
1:50:11I think that, I mean, John, you can see the political effect devalued and gone.
1:50:19I think you better, I think you just got to get it frontally and say that this is, this involved, this is really firing.
1:50:28that affects the jobs, but as far as the price, the value of the dollar, it has, that America, their dollar basically, the Walmart, is gonna be stronger, and less subject to attack from abroad, rather than put it that way.
1:50:45The question is whether the dollar is strong or weak.
1:50:49As far as price is concerned, relatively.
1:50:53As far as the, as far as the, because it always shows that something is reflecting an ancient situation, it's the real value of knowledge.
1:51:00As far as the dollar, its strength will have a stronger dollar in the future because it will not be so subject to attacks as it has been in the past.
1:51:12Wouldn't one line also get off the devaluation list?
1:51:15When somebody made this devaluation list to say, let's get off these races, what we wanted was a realignment of world capitalists.
1:51:24We wanted this reunited world currency to make ourselves more competitive and to keep other countries from taking a free ride on artificial exchange rates.
1:51:34This realignment means that some get devalued and some get revalued.
1:51:38These are loaded words.
1:51:39So the real thing we did is to bring about a realignment of currencies that makes American goods more competitive and therefore provides more jobs.
1:51:50I don't think we should get hung up on the...
1:51:57We've got to get our semantics there.
1:52:01Rather than devaluation, it's really realignment of world currencies.
1:52:06Rather than devaluation of the dollar, it's really spare treatments for the dollar and the world.
1:52:13Or it's realignment, devaluation of the dollar.
1:52:18Rather than devaluation, it's...
1:52:24I think that's a good way to put it.
1:52:25It's a major effort, and a successful effort, to get fair treatment for the dollar in American borrowings, in American goods, in world trade.
1:52:36And that way, that immediately takes away the question, who won or lost?
1:52:42That's going to be a recurrent scene, Henry, no matter how I know.
1:52:46Yeah, I know.
1:52:46All right.
1:52:47We have to, and we just have to say, well, gentlemen, we don't care.
1:52:52It's quite obvious this must be a good deal.
1:52:54The Franks are satisfied.
1:52:55They think they have a very good deal.
1:52:57But believe me, we are satisfied.
1:52:58The Secretary of the Treasury couldn't feel better about it.
1:53:02He thinks he's had a very, very, very successful deal.
1:53:05He's been fighting for it for four months.
1:53:07This is highly incidental.
1:53:09Now, John, one way to get the winner or loss thing across is to get the personality of it.
1:53:13Now, this is what I have to suggest.
1:53:15I think that you could say that the president feels that this is a mean new indication.
1:53:23The Secretary of the Treasury introduced a name to be served.
1:53:27I've gone through the same process as well.
1:53:28I know how to do this.
1:53:30But first, the Secretary of the Treasury ran amends in the August 17th Senate for the evaluation.
1:53:35There were some strongly opposed it.
1:53:36I mean, on 11th August.
1:53:39Second, the Secretary of the Treasury recommended that, with the President's support, took the very hard line in negotiating the crude intent.
1:53:47The people said, he's too tough, too tough on trade, too tough on negotiations and so forth and so on.
1:53:54And then third, as a result of his very astute bargaining and the position that he took, we now have
1:54:04in an agreement that we have now in the beginning, in sight, we think, a final agreement, which will be very much in our interest to normalize what we want.
1:54:16Now, what about other countries?
1:54:19Yes, we never wanted to screw somebody else.
1:54:22We don't have, we don't have, in order to have a good agreement for ourselves, to have somebody else flush down the tube.
1:54:30We can realize a good agreement for us is one that will let others survive, too.
1:54:35We could have put a department a little harder, after all.
1:54:39You know, if you really want to understand the relative position of France and the United States and of England and the United States, you can look at it this way.
1:54:47John was playing something yesterday.
1:54:49Every year, the American economy grows in France.
1:54:54Every year, the American economy grows in England.
1:54:58Every year, every year and a half, we grow in Germany.
1:55:04About every three years, we grow in Japan.
1:55:13The reason that I, this is good, this is good commentary, and Henry, you can get this out too, you know, with some people, put out that the President's relationship with the Secretary, that he was taking this, we know he took a lot of God in him.
1:55:29The President considers that this is a major vindication of the common policy.
1:55:33Do you get my point?
1:55:35I'll get my point.
1:55:36You see my point?
1:55:36This is how, let me interject.
1:55:38I won't talk about it, because if you do,
1:55:43You run into all the disqualifications in the press, sure.
1:55:47You just create more problems for being personal.
1:55:50You run into all the press who don't want to build media.
1:55:54That's the thing.
1:55:55At the same time, he needs a little bit of it.
1:55:58I don't need any of that.
1:55:59Well, I think you do.
1:56:01I don't.
1:56:01No, it isn't.
1:56:02But the first is true, and also they love him.
1:56:05So let us do a little of this with you, John.
1:56:08I assure you, I wouldn't jeopardize it.
1:56:10Also, also, John, the other thing is I want, I want, I want to speak to Scali.
1:56:19I want Connery to go into this meeting on Friday as the, he has the balls, what do they say, the greatest ball on Instagram.
1:56:52I want to get a signal from you.
1:56:54I've been talking to Henry Page, of course, but I want to get a direct from you on the Soviet summit thing that took place last night.
1:57:02After talking to Al and Henry, I put out a comment that said that no U.S. official intended to suggest that we were canceling the U.S.-Soviet summit.
1:57:14Well, I thought we had to go hard to dent the thing the other way.
1:57:18Well, it has a little bit.
1:57:20I'll be fairly hard on the Soviets today in terms of the support of India, but how do you want me to handle the Soviet thing?
1:57:30We don't want to...
1:57:31I mean, I can pull that on the ground.
1:57:34Frankly, it's just...
1:57:36I haven't reached that point.
1:57:40Right.
1:57:40I tend to say... First... What do you want to say when you say hard on the Soviets today?
1:57:49Well, but we're concerned.
1:57:50We have been concerned.
1:57:51I don't know what we can say.
1:57:52Look, at the present time, how about suggesting that we stop the Henry and be sure that we don't suggest something.
1:58:05But I think it is really all.
1:58:09I see that the
1:58:14Their only interest will be, basically, the summit thing.
1:58:18And I think, uh, it's going to be back in.
1:58:21I want to be sure he understands, uh, what the position is.
1:58:28Basically, and let me put it this way, he did not intend to test it on the first month of the summit, and, uh,
1:58:37and then it only went highly theoretically.
1:58:39If we went down the course, and if the Russians did not cooperate in trying to bring ceasefire, and to stop the cannibalization of one member of the United Nations by another, if that did not happen, then we'd stop one member of the United Nations from cannibalizing another.
1:59:10Right, sir.
1:59:24It actually causes major problems in other areas.
1:59:31I mean, it causes major problems in other areas where we are trying to negotiate.
1:59:35If negotiated, but it is done.
1:59:37Negotiated, breaks down in one area, is actually done in another area.
1:59:44However, at this point, we have not yet reached that.
1:59:49And we believe that there may be, say,
1:59:59I can talk to Andrew about this without him bothering you, sir.
2:00:10Well, I want to get him nailed out.
2:00:15We're waiting for him on a totally different matter.
2:00:18The West Coast stock strike made probably recently on the 25th of December.
2:00:24They would like to put out a statement.
2:00:27We don't know where the power is either.
2:00:29They'd like to put out a statement today that says if a renewed stoppage does occur and if an emergency should once again develop while Congress is in recess, I would have no remaining statutory remedies available short of calling the Congress back into session to consider special legislation before I remind the Congress that under existing law that you've accepted myself for no further means.
2:00:57But in reading that draft, if you issue that, you don't issue it cold, and about 18 questions come immediately, which I don't know which direction to go.
2:01:06Will the president call them back in?
2:01:08Number one, are we asking that the- Not to comment on the situation, but he wants it clearly understood now that the only recourse he has, or the only action he can take under law is- Are we asking the Congress to do anything?
2:01:19Are we asking the Congress to pass this legislation before they leave?
2:01:22See, that's just sort of an idle praise.
2:01:24No, all you're doing is putting the blame on him.
2:01:28You say today as Congress prepares to go into recess, emergency strike legislation still languishes deep in committee files.
2:01:33I find it prayerful to call attention to Congress the fact that offshore men are working only because of the judgments
2:01:38They're going to stop as early as Christmas Day if they could.
2:01:41You see, we're not asking for action, but we're threatening... All we're doing there is somebody putting the blame on Congress, right?
2:01:50I don't know what...
2:01:51It's making clear the point that I don't know what the difference is going to make when they go out.
2:01:58You've dramatized the need for the legislation.
2:02:00You've got to know it.
2:02:01They can't live without it.
2:02:04Charlton Coulson's argument is that this will focus attention on the farm bill and on the fact that it's Congress's responsibility to keep the heat off the air.
2:02:22I want to get him nailed out.
2:02:25We're waiting for him on a totally different matter.
2:02:28The West Coast stock strike may probably resume on the 25th of December.
2:02:34They would like to put out a statement today that says if a renewed stoppage does occur and if an emergency should once again develop while Congress is in recess, I would have no remaining statutory remedies available short of calling the Congress back into session.
2:02:59considered special legislation, for I remind the Congress that under existing law, the U.S. Secretary of State, myself, knows what it means.
2:03:08In reading that draft, if you issue that, you don't issue it cold, and about 18 questions come immediately, which I don't know which direction to go.
2:03:16Will the President call them back in?
2:03:18Number one, are we asking that the- I'm not going to comment on the situation, but he wants it clearly understood now that the only recourse he has, or the only action he can take under the law, are we asking the Congress to do anything?
2:03:29Are we asking the Congress to pass this legislation before they leave?
2:03:32See, that's just sort of an idle praise.
2:03:36No, all you're doing is putting the blame on him.
2:03:38You say today as Congress prepares to go into recess, emergency strike legislation still languishes deep in committee files.
2:03:43I find it imperative to call attention to Congress the fact that offshore men are working only because of the junctions.
2:03:48They're going to stop as early as Christmas Day if they could.
2:03:51You see, we're not asking for action, but we're threatening... All we're doing there is simply putting the blame on Congress.
2:03:56Right.
2:04:00I don't know what...
2:04:00It's making clear the point that I don't know what the difference is going to make when they go out.
2:04:05They're going to test the need for the legislation.
2:04:10You've got to know it.
2:04:11They can't live without it.
2:04:15Shultz and Coulson's argument is that this will focus attention in the Farm Bill on the fact that it's Congress's responsibility to keep the heat off the air.
2:04:23That's... Well...
2:04:32You can handle it, Ron.
2:04:34I don't mind.
2:04:35But I can say, I would say that we, we, we, this emphasizes the imperative necessity of the Congress as the highest priority in the past, transportation legislation, emergency legislation, transportation in the next session of the bill.
2:04:48When the Congress resolves, one of the doctors is actually going to have to call back.
2:04:54We will have to see how that ends.
2:04:56I'm not going to borrow trouble.
2:04:58I'm not going to borrow trouble.
2:05:01But it will depend on the circumstances.
2:05:04I need the training.
2:05:07But there is no event.
2:05:08If I can raise one more.
2:05:10Just one.
2:05:10Other questions will come.
2:05:12If we say this now, and December the 25th comes, and there is a dock strike, and I know, I think it's expected there won't be.
2:05:19I'm not sure.
2:05:21But let's say there is.
2:05:22Our expectation is wrong.
2:05:24get to the 28th or the 29th, and we don't feel, the President doesn't feel it's a broad enough national emergency to call it back, and he doesn't, then aren't the farmers who were trying to influence by this going to have a more negative effect at that time than they would... Why don't you leave out the threat of calling it back and simply say, I want to make sure there's nothing more... Leave out the threat of calling it back and strike that out.
2:05:49The idea of calling it back is ridiculous anyway.
2:05:51We don't know what we're going to do with it.
2:05:53See, and if you put that threat out, you don't do it.
2:05:55The necessity for that, I just simply make the bland statement that the effect of it, if it comes, that there's, I don't know for the recourse, but the only recourse is for congressional action.
2:06:09And therefore, I strongly again urge the Congress to end this up in the highest priority.
2:06:13That's all I can do.
2:06:14That's better.
2:06:16That's better.
2:06:17It's very interesting.
2:06:19Henry, in order to get this India-Pakistan deal...
2:06:26zero in, and we don't want that story to get in play, or to in any way be confused with our present story.
2:06:35But they always try to zero in on the danger of some of that.
2:06:39You know, that is, are we doing this or that?
2:06:43He's already fooled his son.
2:06:45But I was suggesting that the way that you cool it some more, it is without hurting our game plan.
2:06:51The question, you get a press one.
2:06:54You issue a press one.
2:06:56I think it comes up.
2:06:57Yeah, it may not.
2:06:58But if you don't run, you don't have a question.
2:07:01If it comes up, it seems to me that what I just gave you in the last area, I really can't see what you mentioned there.
2:07:11What about the... Oh, that is it.
2:07:14That is, but what we, what John Lee simply said, that this is a, as far as the, as far as this in nature, it's not this, you know, we say that was, the remarks that were made were purely in a hypothetical situation.
2:07:28We have not reached that point.
2:07:30at this time, and we are very hopeful that point is answered.
2:07:35But obviously, gentlemen, what we are, that where negotiations break down in one field, they endanger the possibility of successive negotiations in other fields.
2:07:53That's all we're trying to say.
2:07:56Actually, I can use what Henry said to the pool
2:08:00In fact, in attacking the assumption they drew from what he said, because this is basically what he said.
2:08:06Well, first of all, Mr. President, if our game plan works out, it's all going to be moved.
2:08:12I wouldn't like to have a whole range of stories, some of them down the tube and all that kind of stuff.
2:08:19Well, that I don't see.
2:08:20That we can easily avoid.
2:08:22But what I would like to, if our game plan works out on either of the two tracks on which it is now, then by Friday,
2:08:30what was done yesterday will answer the question of what the hell did you do to get this settled?
2:08:35Up to now, we've done it all through tractions.
2:08:39And the British, we're going to... Well, now we're in the middle of it, because he's got a good point there, because so they know we're working on the Soviets.
2:08:47So I think you can look very good on this if either of the two things we're now doing is working, so we shouldn't pull away from it too much.
2:09:01Secondly, and that goes... Why don't you just say that, as indicated in the background, if negotiations fail in one area, it naturally jeopardizes the possibility of a successful negotiation in other areas.
2:09:22But we are working to make these negotiations succeed, and we are hopeful of success.
2:09:28That's fine.
2:09:29And I would say that they very much like to speculate about what's going to happen until we see what does happen.
2:09:38Well, you don't want to stand on my quote from last night, though.
2:09:43Stand on my quote, not on yours.
2:09:46Well, we are on the record.
2:09:48Right.
2:09:49We're on the record at the White House saying after our discussions that we were not contemplating canceling the U.S.-Soviet summit.
2:09:55Now, do I back off of that or stay with it?
2:09:58I think what you should stick with, Ron, is what the President just gave you.
2:10:04Uh, and say we are not now...
2:10:07The issue of canceling the summit does not now... That issue is not yet a live issue.
2:10:14It's not yet a live issue.
2:10:16It's not yet a live issue.
2:10:21What we are saying is that... What Dr. Kissinger said referred to the future.
2:10:30of a breakdown of negotiation and continued Soviet encouragement.
2:10:35We are hopeful that this will not occur.
2:10:37And we are working hard that this will not happen.
2:10:40And we are very closely, I would say to them immediately, the President is very close, is very close to... No, we don't want to get Chinese.
2:10:54We're working toward that end.
2:10:56We're working through all channels toward that end.
2:11:00Look, if you'd seen Vorontsov yesterday, he came in here to give me some reassurance.
2:11:05Please give me some reassurance.
2:11:07They're sweating it out a hell of a lot more than our press is.
2:11:10This isn't a big problem.
2:11:13I just wanted to make sure that I didn't .
2:11:16This is good.
2:11:17If you say, incidentally, this .
2:11:18We do see that we want to keep the section.
2:11:21It's a little steep in the corner.
2:11:22Okay?
2:11:36You know, generally speaking, you know, coming back to the other thing, I was just thinking, Henry, what a hell of a pleasure it is to work with Hunk Huck.
2:11:42You know, you compare him to some of our other captain people.
2:11:46They began trying to think how the hell they could get their name.
2:11:48Like, my life threw out that fence of building him up.
2:11:50He didn't want to do it.
2:11:52But we have to do it.
2:11:53We have to do it.
2:11:55He deserves it.
2:11:55Yeah, but he's coming out fine in this, too, Mr. President.
2:11:58Yeah, but there's so much that he deserves.
2:12:00It is the way we've got some heat for his position.
2:12:05I think we have two places.
2:12:07One is now.
2:12:09The other is one after the agreement is lost.
2:12:12The other leaders don't want to give the impression that Pompidou and you ran something down their throat.
2:12:19If this G-10 meeting works this weekend,
2:12:22Then we could get out so, Mr.
2:12:24Gentleman, we don't talk about victory.
2:12:26All we can say is, this is what we asked for and this is what we got.
2:12:31You draw your own conclusions.
2:12:35Because when John was outside, he's going to call you.
2:12:40He's concerned that we've grown too much now.
2:12:43He doesn't want too much growing before Friday and Saturday before he's locked in.
2:12:48Don't grow.
2:12:49I'll just say that we have a lot of hard negotiating left to do, gentlemen.
2:12:53But we've made a very positive first step.
2:12:55Excellent.
2:12:57He was a very positive person.
2:12:58There's a lot of negotiating to do.
2:13:00He made a very positive version.
2:13:02But all in all, it was clear.
2:13:05And I think that they, that after, you know, I noticed that son of a bitch, Schultz, Schultz got out in Iceland and set the hope for agreement.
2:13:13And his first story had faded, you know.
2:13:15Which was good.
2:13:16But he ran into the trap.
2:13:18He ran into the trap.
2:13:20What I enjoyed a good deal was the fact that a number of guys had to burn up their stand-in.
2:13:27Well, they had, you know, the president came to the Azores, and although he spent a good deal of time with President Pompidou, it appears that very little constructive has come out of me.
2:13:41I forget the relationship of when...
2:13:45We walked out, the president walked out with Pockadoo and laid this.
2:13:47It was good.
2:13:49Did they detect it?
2:13:50Oh, yes, sir.
2:13:51You rode the plane to the house.
2:13:53Well, see, not many of these people knew much about what it was about.
2:13:57They understood that something had happened.
2:14:00Oh, yes, they understood.
2:14:01Well, they do a little bit now.
2:14:02Fortunately, there were a couple of good Germans on there.
2:14:05Good German reporters.
2:14:07We're saying, you know, Henry has often made the point that the European reporters are better than ours.
2:14:12But these German reporters were talking to these things that were coming up this morning.
2:14:17He said the Vice President is in need of all of these.
2:14:21with Skip Isaac and some of these guys and explain this and that to you.
2:14:25So thank you.
2:14:27I'd like to share one thing with you.
2:14:29One is, I didn't have a chance to tell you in the age of, I called Brooke and Kennedy that Sector was going to be released a few hours before it happened.
2:14:40Oh, that's changed.
2:14:41That's the guy that you need from Massachusetts.
2:14:44I said, Mr. President asked me to do it.
2:14:47Here's a letter from Ted Kennedy's mother's statement.
2:14:49President, you may now do it.
2:14:54On this?
2:14:54On the effect of release.
2:15:01I called him only an hour before he was released.
2:15:03I gave him nothing.
2:15:04And that was the middle of the night, so he couldn't do a goddamn thing.
2:15:08Nineteen years in prison.
2:15:12But he gives you personal credit.
2:15:14Resurrection is the highest praise I've ever seen.
2:15:18I want to contribute to the administration's overall foundation, hand-in-hand with the partners of the department.
2:15:24There's also this dramatic military concern
2:15:29You know one thing about Kennedy, he'll say that one thing and the next thing he'll kick you in the ass.
2:15:34But he'll mention those both ways.
2:15:36Sure, but at least it's very important.
2:15:40You know that story about a very good little ride?
2:15:42It's a very good human interest story.
2:15:43It was a good television ride.
2:15:46Because they're fascinated with, you know, the story of the guy who's been in solitary confinement for most of 19 years.
2:15:52It's sort of a fascinating...
2:15:55The girls, you know, too let out.
2:15:57And that's a common thing.
2:15:59Also, I am convinced that it has a very sanitary effect on our POW lives.
2:16:07The very fact that we've got these...
2:16:09The next time they come out, they come in and say, now, ladies, I never said a word to you about what the President did.
2:16:19in this appeal of clemency until the men were actually, until these people were out.
2:16:23I think also, Mr. President, that when you go there, you should tell Mao or Downing, who sentenced a commuter, make another appeal to him, and I think your chances are at least 50-50 that you'll get him during the next year.
2:16:41The military people, they can't release until the war in Vietnam is over there, too.
2:16:53They can release anybody.
2:16:55They said they can do anything for us on our quarrel.
2:16:59And now, Mr. President, what I wanted to check with you, just to make sure you approve, I'm having Barranzos in at 11, sir.
2:17:07And I propose to tell him the following.
2:17:09Look, the Security Council then can go on for...
2:17:15Uh, what you and we have in mind, what you and we can do is...
2:17:19The President was very impressed by these assurances he gave you yesterday.
2:17:23And by his letter of impression.
2:17:25Well, then I've told him already, we weren't impressed with it, Mr. President.
2:17:28I, I feel, I told him that was just words, but we needed something complete.
2:17:34Uh, he was very impressed with these assurances.
2:17:36Now, if we could make these formal, that the President writes you a letter, and you respond,
2:17:43Or they do write out a letter and re-respond.
2:17:46It doesn't make much difference who takes the first step.
2:17:49In which you say that you know there's no military action planned against West Pakistan.
2:17:54Just put it in a letter.
2:17:54And territorial integrity that we both published these letters sent.
2:17:58We have symbolized Soviet-American concern for peace.
2:18:03And the beauty is...
2:18:04I'm telling you, the beauty will only be beautiful if we do it fast.
2:18:09We can then go to the Chinese and say, look, we said that.
2:18:12Gotcha.
2:18:13I mean, if we get out of this with the Chinese...
2:18:16I just like the idea of a Soviet America, our... We've laid it out to set it up by training them.
2:18:24Now, let's go right to where... One of two things are going to happen.
2:18:27It's going to happen today, Mr. President.
2:18:29Either they vote for the British resolution and the Security Council, which case they'll take credit for it.
2:18:35or they will not vote for the British Restitution and exchange these letters.
2:18:39Yeah.
2:18:40But will you tell the President of America that an exchange of letters would be good even if they would vote for him?
2:18:45Exchange of letters is to tell him the President believes that it would be very salutary to our relations if we had an exchange.
2:18:52Well, we have always devoted, but I don't know.
2:18:54It's in the PK.
2:18:55Well, I know.
2:18:56We tell them, you know, what you tell them.
2:18:59You tell the PK, the president, he didn't care what the Security Council did.
2:19:04He wanted to have it directed from the right, but he's forced it.
2:19:09Well, if they're not disposed with us at the Security Council, we have five.
2:19:16Okay.
2:19:17Because we're really, the Chinese thing is almost miraculous that we brought it to this point without them blowing on it.
2:19:28Yeah.
2:19:32Okay.
2:19:32I think it'd be too much collusion if we had an exchange of letters after there's already been a vote.
2:19:38Well, I was going to suggest this.
2:19:39We have found one thing that has been very helpful here, and you should know it.
2:19:46And I think that what I would like for you to do, I think you've got to use him.
2:19:57more entertainment, all the other tricks.
2:20:00Use him.
2:20:01He'll do exactly what he said.
2:20:02He'll argue with you.
2:20:03He'll raise a PR point.
2:20:04Not like he raised a hell of a good public relations point.
2:20:07We cannot allow the political issue that Nixon devalued the dollar.
2:20:11You see, that must not be the issue.
2:20:13He's right about that.
2:20:14That is a PR point.
2:20:15It's enormously important.
2:20:17We have got to knock that down.
2:20:19So I think that we have to use them in the exploring field.
2:20:24You've got to use scouting more.
2:20:26What I'd like to use is bringing in whatever you can to meet with the anti-scouts, but not as little to feed us.
2:20:33And you haven't known him to leave yet?
2:20:35Oh, yeah.
2:20:36He leaves like crazy, but... Well, if he leaves, would you talk him out to him?
2:20:40I don't think he has, and he's been told not to.
2:20:43Well, I can bring him into meetings.
2:20:46Well, he'd like to be a picture.
2:20:48I mean, Ziegler doesn't leak.
2:20:49Ziegler is perfect.
2:20:58Well, this county has more credibility than they ever had, you see, as an expert in some of these fields.
2:21:04So I want to use more.
2:21:05I'm just getting at it.
2:21:07And also, if you don't break it, the problem is, then he's going to talk about things he doesn't know, and we'll screw it up.
2:21:14The PNAR site is so important that I just use it.
2:21:18I'll bring him into as many meetings as I can.
2:21:19See what I mean?
2:21:21We can do it.
2:21:21I have him sit into these other meetings with other leaders and so forth, and he's good at pumping the news out.
2:21:27He pumps it like hell.
2:21:29You know, he knows the Stuart Hensley and some of these guys very well.
2:21:33And there are times that you won't want to do something but have him do it.
2:21:38Oh, yeah.
2:21:38Well, I'll make sure that he gets into as many meetings.
2:21:41But just to, you know, you do call him and Ron and always put Ron with him.
2:21:48Sometimes he won't.
2:21:49He is dying to get into the special action group meetings.
2:21:53That I do not like because that's very tactical, very fast-breaking, and unless he understands the game plan,
2:22:00You put out their own...
2:22:06But the game plan isn't explained to these people either.
2:22:08They're just told what they're supposed to do.
2:22:11Well, if you don't do that, you just get to sit down and figure out a way.
2:22:17What did you and Bob talk about?
2:22:19About how you can use him effectively to pump the PR on him.
2:22:24He is...
2:22:26He's passionately on our side.
2:22:28He knows how the state is trying to screw us, and he wants to get our mind out of him.
2:22:35That's the point.
2:22:36And he can do it.
2:22:38In other words, he'll pump it out, but he's got to, I always start with people who are loyal.
2:22:46I mean, like I use Sapphire this way.
2:22:47Sapphire's a great painter, but he's totally loyal.
2:22:51So I call Ben and I give him something to puff out in order for him not to give out something that he does for loyal intentions, but which chooses.
2:23:00See, my point?
2:23:01Always give a guy a little something to say.
2:23:04That's what I think is the best.
2:23:05Rather than to think he's just out there in the dark and taking his crush with a mouthful of wine.
2:23:10See, don't tell them necessarily the most fundamental things.
2:23:14Those have to be closely guarded.
2:23:14I understand the difference, but you could use them effectively.
2:23:21But I think, Mr. President, on this, this flap, I have to confess, was unintentional and probably a mistake.
2:23:30I mean, on the even canceling of the... No, I know about that.
2:23:34But if you read the pool report, you'll see how they let me into it, because what I was saying is word for word what you were saying is...
2:23:41These things, those things have never really happened.
2:23:43But actually, if this thing, if the game plan works out, I think it has the advantage of giving you credit.
2:23:53On the previous game plan, all that would have happened was that the British...
2:23:59everyone votes for it and then they say the uh the americans were saved by the god damn british now we can make now no one will doubt we're in the game yeah i would say that's why uh we were just lucky we probably wouldn't have intended to have this kind of a play but i think we may get a benefit from it
2:24:23But the shift was intense.
2:24:24We mustn't get too upset about what we call flat or something like that.
2:24:29Things are not perfect.
2:24:30Sometimes those things that turn out to be accidents are a thing of good for us.
2:24:34In any event, you can't change it.
2:24:36Well, you can almost always turn an accident to be good.
2:24:41I frankly think it is.
2:24:43It also happens to be totally true.
2:24:45It helps us.
2:24:46It is exactly what I told the Russian.
2:24:48Right now it helps us with the Chinese.
2:24:51It...
2:24:51puts a little more scare into the Indians.
2:24:53It helps us with attacks.
2:24:55And if we turn it now into a positive, it will help us with the Russians.
2:25:00I'll take it.
2:25:01It helps us with our U.S. conservatives, too.
2:25:03It helps you with the U.S. conservatives.
2:25:06And it helps you with the people who say you're taking this only for political reasons.
2:25:11Because you are going to drive them to lie.
2:25:12No, no, I didn't.
2:25:13But I heard you last night.
2:25:15No, no, you were.
2:25:16Well, I didn't get followed by such things.
2:25:18None of a shit.
2:25:20Now, what's it going to do here today?
2:25:22Do you have any time to double up any?
2:25:26Yeah.
2:25:27Would you have time, if you could recall, to...
2:25:32you'd dictate to Connolly's talking points so that I can have that.
2:25:36You would have that.
2:25:37Yeah, I could do it at this minute.
2:25:40Yeah, you'd dictate that so that I could have that by noon.
2:25:41If you meet with Burroughs off at 11.30, leave.
2:25:44Yeah, that was just dictating.
2:25:45Well, then you'll be ready, available for the other meeting at 12.
2:25:49You won't be quiet, so you just have to introduce Connolly.
2:25:52Got it.
2:25:53If you get under your opinion as to what they ought to be, not too long, just stop at the page.
2:25:58Okay, I'll get that done.
2:26:06He will now say that he really reflects that he ought to treat other people just the way that he was treated.
2:26:11He knows very well that he shouldn't have left that much of a scare to people.
2:26:19Didn't you?
2:26:19It's great to make the point.
2:26:21I didn't want to worry about it.
2:26:22It's done.
2:26:22It's done.
2:26:23I don't know the rest of Canada about it.
2:26:25It's a new world.
2:26:25It's got nothing to do with his people.
2:26:29Well, let's think about Florida again.
2:26:35Probably should.
2:26:36Probably should.
2:26:38Because if I went down, I'd get down about three, four a day.
2:26:42Four.
2:26:43And I'd have to take a swim.
2:26:45And then all day tomorrow, which is Thursday, all day Friday, come back Saturday.
2:26:53So I'd have three nights.
2:26:54The only thing you have impinging is the time interview.
2:26:58That could be moved to Sunday afternoon if you wanted to do that.
2:27:02Could it?
2:27:02Sure.
2:27:05You can do it back here at the White House after you come back from New York.
2:27:09They had to do it by the 20th, on Sundays the 19th.
2:27:12And they'll understand, with all the stuff breaking and the meetings coming and everything.
2:27:18Some of you are, I can do it Monday morning.
2:27:20No, you leave first thing Monday morning.
2:27:22We'll ask them if they'd like to do it Sunday.
2:27:27That would save you having to take time in Florida.
2:27:30That way you'd have all of Saturday morning in Florida.
2:27:34Leave there about an hour.
2:27:36What is your view about the press thing at this point?
2:27:42I don't think you want to...
2:27:44I don't think there's anything to be gained.
2:27:47Oh, Christ, with this thing, you've got another bombshell going.
2:27:50We've got a latent bombshell going, and now you added tax to it.
2:27:53I don't think...
2:27:53Yes, uh... Did I begin to cut it?
2:27:55You... Is it real, Christ?
2:27:57Yes.
2:27:57Come on.
2:27:58Yeah, I can't even hold it, I...
2:28:03It's not reasonable.
2:28:04Let everyone get out of here.
2:28:22You know, one of the things you can't say right now, because I don't want you to ask my father about it, but he didn't tell me about it until she told me about it.
2:28:33And he really told me shit.
2:28:34And I couldn't tell him, well, I could have, but I had to say I was dead.
2:28:38And he told me, I mean, that's a bunch of bullshit.
2:28:41You know what I mean?
2:28:43He said, well, he is, he's, you know, talking about places.
2:28:47I don't know.
2:28:48I've never gone into a store and asked him if I could cut the price.
2:28:51He loves to hang them.
2:28:55He loves to hang them and all that.
2:29:01It was enormous.
2:29:03It was enormous.
2:29:10Well, you were saying about the idea that it was going well.
2:29:12Yeah, it's, you know, it's been rippling out, and it rippled into the magazines.
2:29:18As a result of the outstop story and all that.
2:29:24It's, you know, it's being used as another Nixon, a possible Nixon blockbuster, another big bomb.
2:29:33And it's what the property tax point holds.
2:29:41And it's all positive so far.
2:29:46There's only a little glimmer of an attempt to say that, you know, Nixon has now...
2:29:51It was a highly partisan thing from somebody, a political guy, saying that Nixon's now got all this tax relief for the rich, and the only way he can pay for it is to stock a new tax for the poor.
2:30:01So he's talking about another sales tax to...
2:30:04I'm sure that that's the courage to take it away.
2:30:06But then that has got very good leads to quarrels with just the parents for a change.
2:30:10Yeah, but they're trying to make a point that it's totally regressive, you know, that they don't know the specifics.
2:30:15I mean, there's some other non-regressive features built into it, too, so you know for sure.
2:30:25That's the thing, that's rumbling around.
2:30:26Unless I'm not going to press the thing off, I'm just not going to worry about it.
2:30:31I don't think you want to get into one this week.
2:30:35Then why don't we do a press thing?
2:30:37Well, I'm not so sure you would.
2:30:39I'm not sure you would be a bad man during the course of these meetings.
2:30:42Why don't you give a little to the press?
2:30:43You are not really pulling out.
2:30:46I haven't given a Q&A.
2:30:48Maybe you will after one of these meetings, maybe you want to do a little talk, something prompting to you today, because it just goes on the meeting.
2:30:56And I'm just right with that.
2:30:57And if we go with the one-on-one on the 3rd, or I plan to do that, and then maybe you do your Vietnam announcement, then maybe have a press conference that week, you know, the 14th of January or something, mid-January.
2:31:10I don't think you need it now.
2:31:12I really don't.
2:31:14And I don't think we need to, I don't think they can make a hell of a big issue because they don't have enough press conferences.
2:31:20I mean, I don't think the country cares that much.
2:31:22The country doesn't care, and they've made that issue, and it's gone.
2:31:25You know, nobody, it's not something they should make effectively anymore.
2:31:30Well, it's true, but I don't, I just don't do it because I don't care.
2:31:32I've got too many major issues that are not best discussed in the press conference.
2:31:36Right.
2:31:36And that,
2:31:39We don't have any problem with that.
2:31:40That also loves me off the hook, which is a bad idea.
2:31:48See, I have to concentrate quite a bit to get a press conference.
2:31:54And I don't really think I... Look, another big meeting will make good news.
2:31:59I mean, it is going to be big news.
2:32:00But the fact we meet is the British-American meeting is always good, right?
2:32:04Sure.
2:32:05And the front meeting, well, they're all going to be...
2:32:08These meetings have, especially now, the fact that you've bombed them out of this first one.
2:32:16Now they can't assume anything anymore.
2:32:20And then of course you've got the group of 10, which is another argument for not having hours this weekend, is that you've got the G10 meeting here.
2:32:28And you shouldn't get into talking about things while Conley's in the middle of negotiating.
2:32:40I have a thought.
2:32:41I have a thought about Colin.
2:32:47You know, it's such a burden for him that he might want to
2:32:52down at the beginning of the meeting, arrive that evening and be there the next day.
2:32:57You know what I'm getting at?
2:32:58He's going to have a hell of a time.
2:32:59You know, the brownie.
2:33:01I mean, the EP, yes.
2:33:02He's going to have to finish his thing.
2:33:05And if you can talk to him, I don't know how great he should feel, but there's a downgrading back, his part.
2:33:11But having, being in the middle of the group of 10, you know, give him, it'll help him, and you let him come down, you know, later today, you know, I figured, you see what I mean?
2:33:21Rather than having to go down early in the morning and park around.
2:33:24See?
2:33:25I can't believe that we probably, I probably just want to go to Florida.
2:33:36I think you should.
2:33:37The crappy weather here, Kent is worse.
2:33:40You can't get outside.
2:33:42Well, I guess I go.
2:33:44It's 82.
2:33:45I don't think, it's 82 in Florida, and the ice wind is kind of famous.
2:33:50Is it that people think I should stick around for that?
2:33:53No.
2:33:53See, I'm supposed to have several hopes I will stick around, but what the hell?
2:34:03Not anymore.
2:34:04At least that's not what he said.
2:34:05He wanted you to be back here last night to make his maneuver credible.
2:34:09As it turned out, he didn't.
2:34:10He said on the plane he could go on to Florida now instead of me.
2:34:15Yeah.
2:34:15He always says it's done.
2:34:16Yeah.
2:34:19But as far as the people in the country are concerned, it is going to make any difference.
2:34:23I'm glad I came back, though, because coming back and meeting with the Congress is a tremendously important symbolism.
2:34:29Tremendously important.
2:34:30And that gives you the story for today.
2:34:32We've done that.
2:34:33And you can have a great time.
2:34:37Wraps up this meeting.
2:34:38Thank you.
2:34:46Are there any new kind of things that we could give the leaders today that we haven't made talent yet?
2:34:50You probably know none of this stuff.
2:34:58I can't give the notes because I've given notes on my job.
2:35:00I don't know, but that's not, I mean, I meant something more significant.
2:35:18They all have that.
2:35:23Well, it's a 50 cent thing, you see.
2:35:24What I'm thinking about is what do we have?
2:35:27You see, they have just about everything right now.
2:35:30Well, for example, we'll give them the money clip.
2:35:33We'll give them the money clips.
2:35:34How do we give them the money clips?
2:35:38The money clip is a good symbolic gift for each other.
2:35:40What do you give it to them anyway?
2:35:43You know what they have?
2:35:45I'll just give them another one symbolizing God.
2:35:49I believe it would take five after mine.
2:35:51I don't know if he's the chairman.
2:35:53We're just waiting for things to all line up.
2:35:56And it's another time.
2:35:57I don't know if you have it.
2:35:58Why?
2:35:59I don't have it.
2:36:09Have one in each place at the table there so that we don't have to just have them on each place.
2:36:20Why don't you give it to the other people, too?
2:36:22Everybody in the room.
2:36:23The staff people, too.
2:36:24It's kind of a nice gift.
2:36:25The staff people, too.
2:36:26The money, of course, is about $4 or $5.
2:36:28I wouldn't waste that kind of money.
2:36:30I thought it was at you.
2:36:32Well, it's not that bad.
2:36:36Damn.
2:36:39I think it's just the members of Congress this time that should get them.
2:36:43And the members of Congress are not included.
2:36:48We have to thank the wives, haven't we, for giving them contacts already?
2:36:58Almost all the wives.
2:37:00All these wives, perhaps, haven't been given them.
2:37:05We're trying to pick up something new for next year.
2:37:07We're working on this.
2:37:09The money club is a nice point here.
2:37:10Just put it around for each member of Congress, okay?
2:37:14So, yeah, the only, well, the other thing that holds us back.
2:37:22Well, nothing holds you back.
2:37:24Ehrlichman wants to see it for a couple minutes before you go on the antitrust section on the networks.
2:37:27He's going to get a signal on that, apparently.
2:37:33But he's gone until 1215.
2:37:34So you can catch it for a minute after the congressional meeting.
2:37:40I can do that on the phone.
2:37:42There are three possible bill-signing things that you might want to ceremony on.
2:37:48One is cancer, the other is economic stabilization, and the third is the Alaska claims.
2:37:52Alaska claims, I think, is ridiculous.
2:37:54I won't do that, do anything on it.
2:37:56Economic stabilization might be worth doing, and cancer probably is worth doing.
2:38:01All of them can wait until next week.
2:38:04And with all the stuff we've got bouncing around, I think we should go now.
2:38:07I think we should wait until next week.
2:38:10And by waiting until next week, Congress is gone, and you can invite them without getting any of them there.
2:38:14You might be somewhere to invite them now while they're here.
2:38:20Those are the only things that just, why don't we do it next week?
2:38:24We'll need it next week.
2:38:25Let's kind of do it by the 22nd or something.
2:38:28Also, by doing it now, you make it look like Congress did something good.
2:38:31I don't think you want to at the moment.
2:38:32Yeah, we should do our whole deal and do it next week.
2:38:37So I'm going to be here 22nd, 23rd.
2:38:39Let's do it those days.
2:38:39It's not much.
2:38:42Fair.
2:38:42Okay.
2:38:44Now that...
2:38:46That's it.
2:38:46I think otherwise I'm going to get here and get bogged down.
2:38:49And also everybody feels that they'll have to be in it when I'm going to talk about it.
2:38:55There were several terrific suggestions by Peterson in that memorandum.
2:39:01I want those passed around and they'll get that as quickly as possible.
2:39:06But tell Peterson.
2:39:07Well, Peterson, Bob, the way to impress him is to show him the memorandum, which he will, that I had worked on it on the way back, and that you're going to implement it with him.
2:39:20If I can place it, I can implement it as a commerce.
2:39:22So if you're right, the guy, he can get the best out of it.
2:39:24I mean, he's got ideas there about jobs that are so important.
2:39:29Oh, the other thing did you speak to earlier was about the fact that I wanted to include in the budget the money for the SSG in some way.
2:39:37He's working on it.
2:39:38He says it's a hell of a problem because he probably symbolized it.
2:39:42He's got to get going on it.
2:39:43He's taking a swing at that.
2:39:45I talked to him about the SSG.
2:39:48Really?
2:39:49I think we did something.
2:39:50I think we could pass the SSG next year.
2:39:54You agree?
2:39:55I think probably so.
2:39:57Rose has something.
2:39:58It's just that in the closing of that day in the life of the president, they want to have music playing while you're in the Lincoln sitting room.
2:40:03And they don't have, they want to play the kind of music you would be listening to while in the room.
2:40:09There was no music on at the time, so they're going to super it on the track.
2:40:13And Julie, I thought you ought to select what it should be.
2:40:17And she says, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, or Liszt.
2:40:21Well, it shouldn't be, uh... And Rose is suggesting it should be something that's not too heavy.
2:40:26Well, I don't play, uh... No, but you can take a Tchaikovsky or, well, any one of those.
2:40:34You can get a fairly not heavy... Well, I would say, uh...
2:40:46Why don't they take something, a swan light or a sleeping beauty?
2:40:48Wait a minute, wait a minute.
2:40:50Let's see if we can put it behind an armature.
2:41:00Maybe it sounds better.
2:41:03Oh, it did.
2:41:06Swan Lake, Swan Lake.
2:41:08Of course, you can be either one of the three.
2:41:10Swan Lake, good.
2:41:11Swan Lake, Swan Lake, Pursuit of the Beauty.
2:41:13I mean, in the R&D, in the R&D renditions, or, well, Argo, I don't know what's in the name.
2:41:17Either one.
2:41:17Argo, you know, that's the audience.
2:41:19Pursuit of the Beauty.
2:41:20Swan Lake, Pursuit of the Beauty would be.
2:41:23Also, that's the next rendition, the Russians, yeah.
2:41:34Okay.
2:41:34Now, we wanted to try and get out of one point.
2:41:43Well, I don't think you should go.
2:41:47No argument with the other one.
2:41:52Would you hit me, actually, please?
2:41:57All right.
2:41:58You're going to get a lot of this congressional hassling, bill-signing.
2:42:04Well, it isn't all that, is it?
2:42:06Also, even the staff is.
2:42:08I'm going to get in trouble.
2:42:09I have a bunch of problems to tackle around.
2:42:13And do I do this?
2:44:32I don't think that we would.
2:44:33In fact, on the timeline, maybe I would just sit and do it there.
2:44:38I don't know.
2:44:40Maybe they'd rather do it in the White House on Sunday afternoon.
2:44:45I don't want to take Don, but it's really easier for them to come down here.
2:44:49I don't want to bomb Sunday afternoon here.
2:44:51You don't think so, don't you?
2:44:55Sunday afternoon would be fine for me, so that I could finish the day and come back to you.
2:45:01Let's make it, though, in the afternoon, so that, well, it has to be because you're going to church, and, yeah, come back.
2:45:07I'll make it about four o'clock.
2:45:08About four o'clock would be nice.
2:45:23Why don't you make it five o'clock, if you can?
2:45:26Because I actually want to go to the end of the man.
2:45:29Good.
2:45:30Which is a nice touch, after all.
2:45:30I wouldn't look for a reporter, but this is in publishing.
2:45:33I even have the interview up in Linden City.
2:45:39Sure, sure.
2:45:39I could serve a personal time.
2:45:48If you want to do it here, then go over there for a contact.
2:45:52I mean, you know, see the Christmas in the White House stuff and all that.
2:45:55I can take them on a tour.
2:45:59And there is a staff open house sometime on Sunday, but I think it's earlier.
2:46:05I'm not sure.
2:46:08I'll find out.
2:46:09Well, it is.
2:46:10You can avoid that.
2:46:11I don't really have to do it.
2:46:12No, it's, no, there's one Saturday and one Sunday.
2:46:14It's just so they can see the difference.
2:46:15Sure.
2:46:16They don't know what to do on it.
2:46:18Pat went down there.
2:46:19Pat was really well.
2:46:20Which is a hell of a thing for them to do.
2:46:23It was nice.
2:46:25Yeah.
2:46:25But I shouldn't have gone.
2:46:26Well, you should.
2:46:26And they don't need to.
2:46:28I told them I didn't need to.
2:46:31I just felt that in my case, my gut, I was a little tired.
2:46:34And it would have been a nice thing, but what the hell.
2:46:37If you're going to go, we'd better set it up, because it takes them two hours to get the plane.
2:46:42One o'clock.
2:46:43Is one here too early?
2:46:44No.
2:46:45If you leave here at one o'clock, that's okay.
2:46:50Or 1.15.
2:46:50The problem is that I'm not sure of that.
2:46:52You want them out of here before you go?
2:46:54Yeah, I'm not sure of the leaders.
2:46:57I don't want that helicopter going in here.
2:47:01Why don't we set it for 1.15?
2:47:03But hold it.
2:47:04The helicopter will be here at 1.15.
2:47:06Okay.
2:47:07But hold the thing.
2:47:09Delay that.
2:47:09We want to get the finest signal from that.
2:47:13Pull it to the leaders you're on.
2:47:14Don't bring it in to the leaders you're on.
2:47:17Oh, Frank, you've got to show we don't have to rush that much.
2:47:20It's made at 1.30.
2:47:21We know that we've gone to that.
2:47:24I would think it'd be gone by 12.30.
2:47:27This meeting, it'll take an hour.
2:47:28Really?
2:47:28I've never been to any of the congressional meetings.
2:47:31It didn't take an hour.
2:47:32They'll send questions.
2:47:34They'll call me and have to answer.
2:47:39No, no, maybe not.
2:47:40Since it's 12 o'clock, they may want to get out in the morning.
2:47:43What's that got to do with it?
2:47:47It's 1 o'clock.
2:47:48Should we say 1?
2:47:54Yeah.
2:47:551 o'clock, but we'll hold it.
2:47:57We'll just get out and solve it.
2:47:59It doesn't come in during the meeting.
2:48:02Huh.
2:48:04That's good.
2:48:05VB's not here after all, so that's all right.
2:48:07Good.
2:48:09And Clark's asking on a special and personal appeal that Cook and Corallo must be permitted to sit around the wall at this meeting, so they can be assured.
2:48:19This is one of the very kind of chairmen.
2:48:24That's good.
2:48:24Well, they work like hell.
2:48:25Okay, let me set this up.
2:48:27He says, we could leave him on a ball.
2:48:30Yeah, or, or, as soon as we have a clear command.
2:48:34That's just terribly young.
2:48:37to be ready in one, and you can stop as long as you want.
2:48:44Might as well get there in time.
2:48:45I really think that I ought to be in the right direction.
2:48:50I think that I ought to.
2:48:52I get constantly back to the fact that

Nixon, Haldeman & Connally on Azores Doctrine

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Also recorded on December 15, 1971

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