Nixon, Schlesinger & Haig on Atomic Energy Commission and Nuclear Energy

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Are you going to lock me in your job?

Oh, just lock me in.

Absolutely.

Now, see, I don't care.

Now, put your turf here because that's what I need to stop.

Now, you don't have to say no to everybody.

Really?

You better.

No, no, no.

You're right.

We've got a few things we want to do.

Who are the others?

Let me ask you.

Who are the others, Commissioner?

We have five.

We have five commissions in total.

One is, uh... Is that correct?

It's, uh...

It's a Johnson Project sub-state.

Nick, do you agree that some work is a problem?

Speaking candidly, Gavis, he tends to run up to the bill and tell them what's going on.

Go ahead.

Then the other, ah, okay, one is Bill Dowd, who was sworn in the same day.

He was an ex-man.

Bill Johnson and Clarence Larson are quite devoted to the administration, so we've got a working majority out there.

You'll have a vacancy to fill this June.

We will have a vacancy to fill this June.

Yes, sir.

What's the term?

It's five-year term.

They rotate out one meter.

I've talked to Fred Malkin a bit about that.

He said he was going to start to look through the available marble.

That's not a bad idea.

No, really.

You could find one.

It would be very helpful if you find one of these.

Sir, you can find a good nuclear scientist.

I mean, I don't want any woman just because she's a woman.

But if you can look around, you can carry her in the shop.

An outstanding woman.

I don't think it's a very healthy place with a woman in the house when you get out there to buy it.

And if you could find a woman.

Yes, sir.

There's one name I'll throw in the hopper right now, and that's Jane Hall, who's on our channel advisory committee.

She is a Los Alamos scientist.

Well, I'll tell you what you do.

You tell Mallory that, uh, she's using a clover.

I don't give a damn if she's really loving it or not.

If she's selling it, she's not enough.

Well, I think it's just so she can tell her son that there are more scientists than politicians.

If I have that masonic, I have a very good idea.

Thank you, sir.

I want to make a breakthrough in the legal scene.

Congratulations.

Well, uh, one of them certainly came out well on the last page.

Sir, I thought that the critics gave us that advantage.

They had crawled way out on the limb.

Yeah.

And you didn't really have to sell it off.

You just took a few pokes at the limb and they broke it off with their own teeth.

And their objective, of course, was, I think, to disgrace the United States.

Of course.

And the way it worked out, they focused the world's attention on the demonstration of U.S. military and technical capability, which was not their intention.

But I thought, oh, well, I thought we could do it.

I thought, why is the world but not another city?

That's right.

So the worldwide attention, they were listening in Moscow and Beijing.

I'm talking about, you're absolutely right.

But look, you know, the critics are so totally irresponsible.

Yes, I understand critics, the press, politics.

But then the scientists, they know better.

They know better, don't they?

I wish, I wish I could.

Well, I think they know better.

I mean, criticism without knowledge, anybody can, you know, excuse.

Criticism with knowledge, you said.

The scientists, especially Hussein, on occasions of this talk, they allow their local colleagues to rattle on.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think some of those guys that know better just didn't want the United States to do this goddamn thing.

I thought it was a turning point in some ways, other than seeing that the press...

in part turned away after that event from some of the more extreme anti-military postures that they've held.

I've noticed that.

Good.

For example, Gravel was cool enough to say in the presence of about 10 reporters, including the NBC net, that he didn't care at all about this, that he was just doing it because of the Indians up there in Alaska.

Well, they all heard it.

And that's part of the reason I think we've got a fairly favorable precedent for the events.

So he was in the street, for which we must bless him.

Well, he's a national, but not, you know, well, there are a few of them, sir.

But you do like it over here?

You like it?

It's great fun.

I'm most grateful to you for what you've worked on, sir.

It's a lousy job, you have to afford it.

Of course, it's always a lousy job.

A bunch of people, somebody has to do it.

Go ahead.

I have three items.

I have four items.

One of them, the first one of these items, Mr. President, concerns the centrifuge development.

As you may know, over the years, we've attempted to develop some centrifuge technology.

It's been held back for a variety of reasons, which I won't go into, but one of the reasons has been genuine fear.

Is that something the French want from us?

They want gaseous diffusion technology.

They have wanted in the past to have gaseous diffusion technology.

They're extremely concerned about the centrifuge technology because they're fearful that the Germans may get it.

They fear that the Germans might use that to roll some of their own weapons.

And that, I think, is a big question in this area.

We are now ahead of other countries.

Let me ask you all that while you're here.

We used to talk a lot in the old days about the predecessor of Seaboard, who was a guy who was over here.

John Cohn.

About the cloud here.

Everybody's talking about how we were going to make these harbors and dig the Panama Canals and all the rest of it.

That's the basic problem, Mr. President.

Are we finishing the program?

No, sir.

We are, I think, on the verge of a major production deficit in terms of natural gas.

There's 317 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

I heard about this 10 years ago in that room.

And I think what it involves is that there's a hell of a lot down there.

You put one of these damn things down there and you break open a whole area, right?

And up comes the gas.

Now, why in the hell haven't we done it by now?

What in the world has been happening?

Mr. President, our problem right now is the

public concern over the environment and the limitations and... Well, we're not saying you're going to do this under the ground, are you?

Well, you think there would be some trillion in the gas that would be... Oh, is that going to hurt anybody?

No, sir.

No, sir, but they're unbelievable.

Frankly, the Australian deal was on quite hard with construction jobs just about to sign on another line.

You know what I mean, Candid?

Yeah, but listen, on this, I'm for block sharing, you understand?

So let's just not, well, I hope we can get by the environmental thing, but I really feel strongly that there will be better, because I think our Russian friends, they're doing a number of things in this area.

Are they?

Yes, sir.

Like what?

Well, they have been creating reservoirs through significant detonations, and that's water storage.

Think of that.

Take what we can do.

We can change the geography.

Lock down some mountains.

On the excavation shots, the judgment of the Undersecretary's Committee has been that the excavation shots might be in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

All right.

Well, then don't do those.

But you can surely have the natural gas.

The underground detonations.

Now, we would like to move ahead in this area, and it means...

about $12 billion of revenues from the federal government.

Because we won't be importing it from Algea.

Who is... Where is the project?

Who do you have to get approval from to do that?

You have to take that up to the committee and all that business.

Yes, sir.

Right now, we have... Can't you have a test?

Well, the problem is that we've been operating with the state of Colorado

Yeah, and the Governor Love is having some problems out there with his environmentalists.

What we're planning to do is to go into Wyoming, which has more than half of this gas.

Right, and that's halfway as strong then.

That's right.

Well, Tom, go to hell.

Well, the advantage, of course, is you get away from an urban area like Denver, and you get away from most of your criticism.

You mean you could really have a federal hold-up?

Sir, it's there.

It means, for example, just for the state of Wyoming, the present tax rate is about $7.5 billion in revenue.

I told that to Senator Hanson the other day, and he was overjoyed to say, please, what are we going to do?

We will have a shot sometime this summer, but we are planning a shot out there.

Now, we can build up the program, but I wanted to talk to Senator Allen and to the people in the White House.

I've just seen how this would...

damage the electoral prospects out there.

Yeah, yeah.

I agree.

Let me say that on the left of the election.

Let's not have a big environmental issue.

Just a day after the election, get going.

Okay?

Let's quit screwing around.

This is what we need to do.

Have them ready.

We've got to get away from this terrible fright about, I mean, like that damn cheap guy who was in Alaska, you know, the emperor there.

All these little kids carried signs, you know, scared to death and crying and screaming around.

God, everybody's afraid.

That's why we didn't build the SST.

Everybody was afraid.

I don't know what's happened to the American psyche in those last ten years.

Well, it hasn't.

It hasn't happened to everybody, but it's happened, unfortunately, to enough of the people at the top, the people who are supposed to lead the dummies, that they have scared them to death.

Well, well, listen, you get, you remember.

November the, whatever the date, November the 10th, that's your date.

I just wanted as a footnote to mention to you the outcome with regards to the balance of things.

Oh, yes, you said it happened.

This represents what we can see right now as a conservative estimate of annual balance of payments of oil from the atomic energy.

We're running in excess of $3 million a year.

We're starting right here now, the other day we signed a contract with Brazil.

We're running about $700 million a year at the present time, and it builds up to this level.

I'm going to show you something.

We're taking about all the sales I can get, but we are going to need some help at some point with the Joint Committee.

The Joint Committee of the State of the Revolution.

Mr. Craig, for an employee's sake, please.

Not really, Mr. President.

Chet Caulfield is enamored with this because I've talked to Chet and I've told him.

You say you're going to have to talk to Connolly about this?

Yes, sir.

What's he think?

He thinks it's great.

So do I.

Our problem is that we're running essentially an industrial enterprise, and we're trying to do it within the confines of the annual federal budget process so that we are not in a position to put capacity in place to satisfy foreign demands.

The Joint Committee has taken the attitude that whatever we produce should be available to American firms first.

And therefore, any capacity that might be utilized, which won't be utilized, will sacrifice foreign exchange.

Now, Secretary Connolly said that we might be able to work out an arrangement in which we could borrow or guarantee loans to private firms so as to ensure that we get whatever foreign exchange is available and that other countries do not.

The main person here to follow up with is Conley.

He said, I, I, it has to be on the order, not Peterson, who will be in Congress.

So you, through Conley, I hear at the White House on that sort of thing.

The man who worked it was Flanagan.

He said, it was Pete, and I was going to take over the Pete Peterson job.

But Pete, but Flanagan has got Conley on every bit all the way.

This is very important, and I, I would hope he would.

As a matter of fact, that's just enough foreign exchange to maintain the U.S. military presence on the seas.

Yes, sir.

We're spending about $3 billion a year on it.

I think it's great.

Let me just say this.

Is there any other appeals?

here are we for example how how far away are we well of course you've got your reader reactor now right what about the union uh you know business that they've talked about we're doing as far as we can not as far as we can but we haven't made it as much yes sir and it's

The money we put into later fusion this year will provide us with a major emphasis to that program.

And once again, I see it as your main thing to do is to be very sure that in your space of five years of this job, that you don't need anything on a term to be sure that we, the United States, who first made the race for this area,

remain first.

If there are any discoveries, we've got to make them.

We've got to do it from the standpoint of national security of the persons concerned.

If it doesn't involve war or the possibilities of war from the standpoint of America's competitive position in the world, this nonsense of being afraid to do things because of the environment, afraid to do it because it may make the Russians mad, there's no place for that to be done.

Timing, yes, sometimes you wait until after an election so that you can get the people in Colorado mad.

And you wait until after a summit meeting because you don't want to, you want to have a provocation and have some bullet to shoot if they don't play.

But believe me, your job is to be sure that your scientists get off their dust and they get everything that needs to be done, you know.

You see, Mr. President, they might be in the business.

You tell them we're backing them all the way.

And then your job also is to be politically smart.

And that is talking to the Joint Committee and talking to everybody else.

It's all old profile.

Well, it's some piece.

It's just R&D.

You know, it really doesn't amount to anything.

You know what I mean?

But just do it.

Do it.

You know why you're doing it.

You see it.

And you'll have a lot of fun with it, too.

Maybe you'll find out something.

You know, you take the loans.

You take...

This laser.

Did you know that these lasers might be able to do missiles like this?

Just think of that 20 years from now.

If you say 20, maybe you can do it 10.

Maybe 10 years from now, the way you get a missile, you've got an ADM, right?

Yes, sir.

On an unbelievable scale, right?

Yes, sir.

Now this is probably tied in with the Soviet developments in space.

The notion that lies behind this is that you put a platform up in space, and with a high-powered laser, boy, you can just sort of shoot off the reactor vehicles as they come out.

Because essentially in space, a laser goes all the way in the atmosphere, limited to a mile or two,

with the powers that we have in present lasers.

Now, you can get an aircraft, but that will have to be fairly close, whereas in space, you can shoot on the order of 1,000 miles, 2,000 miles, 4,000 miles.

Just, there's no problem.

You guys are all just like, just be sure that you've got all the right guys to drop it in, and if there's any chances, you know, they're naive, you know,

Okay, good to see you.

Thanks for your fine job.

How are all your kids?

Oh, I know you took them all there.

That was wonderful.

Nixon, Schlesinger & Haig on Atomic Energy Commission and Nuclear Energy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on January 31, 1972

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