Nixon & Haldeman on Henry Kissinger and Media leaks

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Okay.

I don't believe that, but I, uh, because I, but maybe, uh, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe,

Now, Henry hasn't spoken to you about it at all?

Not one word?

I'm curious.

He's spoken to me about other things.

Back with the Rajesh problem.

No, it's the same one.

He says that you said that I was going to handle it with Roger.

He's asking me what I'm doing, and I said, well, what do you want me to do?

He says, I don't know.

I don't know.

It's just the same old.

Well, it is not the same, but I'm just talking about the router's plot to stretch the energy distance.

Do you think it's all that big at this point?

I don't think it is.

But I still want to talk to Scali again.

I want to start pumping it and see whether there is something there.

Whether or not he's suspicious of being in Scully's practice.

No, I don't think suspicion of Scully's practice.

Whether suspicion of what they're doing over at the stage is correct.

Because I think Scully, I mean, I don't want to say what's being put out.

He's never been accused of it.

The attorney said, he said, I don't know.

And, uh, I, uh, you know, normally in Coles, it's always bubbling around like this, and so there's something funny going on here, I don't know what it is.

Seems to be, seems to be a very good experience when I came back from a very good house, I mean, relatively good.

It's going to Florida, isn't it, tomorrow?

Yeah.

But I think we all leave him alone, don't you agree?

I don't think I'll have to.

We're not going to ask him unless he asks.

He may bounce into it.

He may bounce into it, but it doesn't seem to have any purpose.

Turn that around.

No.

That's no problem.

What I'm trying to do is try to stop God listening.

Yeah, I think so.

Unless he hears from me, I mean, I...

He ought to be able to talk to you about it, or hate you.

I want him to, I don't know if that helps for it.

We've got a problem on that.

You've got to stay for so many days that there isn't anything for you to do.

Well, why the hell we got that many days?

Well, because that's what Henry agreed to with the Chinese, because they wanted to make it a long thing.

And I don't, I'm going to talk to Henry, I haven't realized how really stretched out it is, but you end up, you know, each day you go for a tour of the wall, and then you sit around your house for three or four hours, and then you go over and meet with Joe for three or four hours.

And then you go off to the gymnasium and watch the athletes at night.

And then the next day you go off to the wall or you go on feet for busy pilots or something.

It's very bad though.

Because you end up, you spend three hours in the morning touring.

You spend three hours sitting on your tail in your house.

Then you spend three hours with a chair.

Then you sit around for a while and then you go off to some opera or gymnasium or... And then Rita goes out and then, you know, that's all that he has.

But he's agreed to the time and the problem.

Well, I'm not going to do this for them.

See, they called it a seven-day visit, which he agreed to.

It's really an eight-day visit.

Now, I think we can cut one day, because I've got to...

And we just sit around Shanghai all day with nothing to do.

We get into Shanghai and see the commune they want you to see and issue a commitment.

Well, can't get it cut down in the same way you can boil it down.

Well, it's easy to boil it down and cut out some days.

I don't know whether they'll agree to a shorter visit.

But the thing that worries me, that bothers me about it, is the occurrence.

Because, for instance, you spent 13 hours meeting with me in a day and a half.

You spent nine hours reading the talkative on the day I asked.

Now you go to China and you stayed there for eight days and you only spent 17 hours reading the trail online.

Now, the statistics don't mean anything, I realize, but it's still just decimal track.

What about Mao?

There must be some time.

Four hours of Mao.

They're taking two hours to read one and it became a lot of names.

Chao.

And they expect that those will probably go longer, and they expect, and we do a lot of times, for the chow line meetings to go longer.

You don't want to be locked to work to get out, but you still have six or eight hours of sightseeing, and you're going to come out looking like Richard Nixon's boy tourist, who also happened to run into chow a lot once in a while.

I'm not going to let Henry do that.

You know what I mean?

I'll set that up myself.

Don't raise it with Henry.

Let me worry about it.

I'm going to raise it with Roald first because I think maybe we can persuade, maybe he would even be willing to persuade us to cut out a couple of layers because of the time factor.

And we just arrive later and leave earlier.

That sort of thing.

So it sounds like the same.

It would be much better.

That's right.

I mean, it looked like a much better visit.

And then, I think you probably should, even if you can't do that, you should do less to it, and, you know, nothing else, just sit on your tail, and then, I'm not going to start, I will end it, and I'm going to go, because that's, pretend like you're working with your advisors, and the time you're meeting is retired.

That's right.

I'll just say that.

My rule of work, my advice, you know, I've got presidential things to do.

That's the other thing.

I've got to run the office.

So just say that I'm staffed now.

Now, there's plenty of staff time to get into.

I think we ought to extend that and cut out some of the... Cut the tour.

Oh, what do you mean?

There's one tour a day.

Here's... For Senator, you've got no goddamn comprehension.

Nobody has any comprehension of how to set a schedule up.

Sitting down and setting one up, you know, will drive you crazy.

I've got you busy in the Great Wall and the main tubes one day.

The...

Petroleum factory and others.

Who are you doing this?

Who's got a main day?

Who's day?

Well, it's the advanced thing that they work on.

Now, this is partly what the Chinese are suggesting, but I don't know.

I don't think anybody has ever gone back to them and said, you aren't there to cure, you're there to meet.

No, we're not going to do that.

You've got to do something.

I'm sure they're just a couple of symbolic acts, that's all.

I'm not going to go to Turkey.

I don't do Turkey.

I just don't.

And I'm sure you'll have to do some cultural demo to get out there or something like that.

That's inspection.

Certainly.

I guess that's not a knowledge group.

Thank you very much.

I haven't got so much time in there.

I just have to copy and change.

Well, let me work with it and see if we can work it out.

But I'll try to cut a little off at the end, or it begins by arriving later.

Or maybe you can't do that because it's early or leave earlier.

Sometimes it's early in the morning or something like that.

So we figured we ought to leave a whole day earlier.

Because you get to Shanghai in the morning, and then they have you visiting a commune in Shanghai, and then meeting with Joe.

And then nothing that night.

You spend the night.

And then the next day, all they say is visit the commune if you haven't done it the day before.

And then leave at 6 o'clock.

For where?

U.S. 6 o'clock in the morning?

No, at night.

Well, come on.

If you leave at 6 o'clock the night before, the best thing to do there is to leave.

If you have to spend the night, it's to leave first thing in the morning.

But the best thing is to leave at 6 o'clock the night before.

Yep.

All right.

Do that.

and not spend the night in Shanghai.

Well, it's also, it would be logistically and every other way, it would be a great saving not to have to spend the night in Shanghai.

Because each new time you move into it, there's just one more problem, right?

And it could be a problem for them, since coming back to the Henry and the Roger problem,

We all know it's interesting.

But what about basically the stories of...

I don't think it's that important.

That's the point I'm going with.

I think he's overestimating how much there is being written about this thing.

Or is he?

No, he isn't.

He's going back to the Murray-Martin column.

You know, the Carmel column.

Sure.

And even that, he has to go back to just one study.

There's something in there somewhere where he says it was the State Department.

They are chaptering and destroying.

So he said, whatever value I am, it's been 10% destroyed.

And I said, no, that's ridiculous.

And he said, well, it's been 3% destroyed.

And I said, every one of us gets 3% destroyed every day as people are whacking away at us.

When does he leave?

Well, I'm not sure.

He was going back and forth.

When he would go down to Christmas or go down to Sunday or go down to Sunday night.

He'd go if he'd go Sunday night as well.

I'm not sure what he's going to do.

He'd be around.

I know he's going to be around tomorrow.

He is not going down.

His options are either going down Saturday or Saturday, as I understand it.

No, you go ahead and do the thing.

Go on.

Okay.

Bob, when I get back, can you be sure early when I call the farmer as to whether or not there is going to be a teapot in there or anything on this thing?

Let me put it this way.

I don't want them to...

I would like to avoid... Do you know what I mean?

I don't want to take the steam out of the boiler.

Do you agree?

Right.

I'll check with you to see whether you should do it.

Okay.

Have a little fun with it.

Nixon & Haldeman on Henry Kissinger and Media leaks

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

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Also recorded on December 23, 1971

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Nixon & Haldeman on Henry Kissinger and Media leaks

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on December 23, 1971

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