Nixon, Haldeman & Kissinger on People's Republic of China and Foreign Policy

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I don't know.

I can't tell what it's going to be.

But if it's even or down for any reason, if it's not over 50, it hasn't gone up.

It was 49 last time.

It hasn't gone up.

I'm not going to release it because I don't want the president to leave for China.

and have a poll showing that he's gone down in popularity in this country.

If it's tough, then I am going to release it on Thursday.

That was nice.

Which is kind of an interesting thing.

Oh, a nice thing.

Well, Klon is at least a little bit patriotic.

Well, there is.

It's a very valid question.

That kind of thing is a very, very important point.

But you know what it shows you?

It shows you that Rahm recognizes the fact that he had a civic, but it also shows you that Rahm is right.

There's a hell of an interesting time.

Oh, this is Christian.

Christian was in...

She was talking to me, she said I could go around about hours.

Jean Richard, who brought in the electrician, had a hand in that.

He made a speech, and they hired Lincoln Sand Club, Eddie's Club.

Yeah.

Her husband was Karen.

He gets market surveys.

He's getting market surveys.

He's supposed to be married to her and not get market surveys.

He's got a good eye.

But she knows why.

He said that Richard came in and he said he was really very very anti-Soviet.

One of the members of the class said, well Mr. Richard, the press is biased in our party.

They're biased against the President of the United States.

They're really busting people.

So I'm kind of angry about the question.

But you know, Ron always considered him to be one of our, at least, sort of halfway friends.

Richard wrote some pretty good things, but he also wrote some very bad ones.

Did he?

Yeah, there were a couple of Richard columns that were really rough.

What kind of subjects?

War.

There was a lot of them.

There it is.

Well, I'm going to have a look.

When he spoke, this was after the peace initiative.

You think the war was there?

Well, it was.

As I recall, there were a couple that we were really distressed about that he did, and we called on him, and he sort of backed off.

He said, I could, you know, carry away kind of stuff.

I just think you kind of said he wrote some awful good stuff, too.

I thought he did.

I read the question.

And a lot of his long, straight stuff, I mean.

They all get off of it.

Cormier will ride it.

And what's her name?

The June Dolly.

Helen Thomas will ride a bat.

They have to.

They have to, you know what?

Keep their editors.

And they're standing in the court, yeah.

Bob, I was just talking to him about the dollar towards the importance of China.

I just told the president- Okay, well, I'll tell him.

Okay.

I'll tell him.

Gallup talked to a couple days ago, two or three days ago, and Gallup said we had a pullout over the weekend of February 4th to the 6th.

And we're still getting the data.

I don't know how, but we did pull presidential approval.

So I just want you to know, though,

If it doesn't go up, it was 49 in there last fall.

That was in December, late December.

Yeah.

If it doesn't go up, then that was January.

We had another 49 in there in January 49, yeah.

We did the printout January 7th to 9th.

Yeah, we released it on January 20th.

49-39.

I don't remember that one.

49-39 on January 20th.

It was taken on January 7th and he released it on January 20th.

That's the same amount as before or what?

Yeah, there was no change.

It was $49.37.

And now it's $49.39.

Yeah.

But he said if it doesn't go up in the $49, then I'm not going to release it.

If it does go up, I will release it next Thursday.

But I will not release a poll that shows him down or even when he's leaving for China.

Because I don't want him to leave on the China trip with an impression that he's decreasing in favor at home.

That's interesting.

Gallop, of course, is a total dove.

His hair is an obsessive dove.

He's worse than Harris.

Much worse.

Because he's not as smart.

He's emotional.

Harris is smarter.

Gallup is just obsessed with, you know, for God's sake, get out of the war.

He doesn't care how or what.

We don't know whether it's gone up or not.

Yeah, 53-36.

So he's going to break that line.

Thursday.

53-36, you see, that's actually a better improvement over the previous figures.

It shows a 4.0, but a 3.0 disagreeable.

That's right.

So you do not live or die by, because the next month they'll be down.

You know what I mean?

That's the way they do it.

But you couldn't have had a better time to have the son of a bitch go up.

And it's at least as important for the reason, I mean, Chinese don't watch the polls so much.

If the Chinese have made the decision they're going to bet on you, and they stuck with it through all, I mean, after all they went through with the trip,

It's probably smart enough to know what Poles do in this country anyway, they analyze it.

But the North Vietnamese said there's going to be a real body blow to that.

It's interesting, you know, Gallup's view that it wouldn't be possible.

I'll poll for Jerusalem.

Well, of course, we're a case in the herd, and the Democrats even do it, I think.

But this is going to affect the country.

It's your speech.

That January 25th speech, I didn't expect it to be such a bloodbath.

It didn't show as much in our poll as it did in the opposite speech.

Well, but it may have been too soon.

Ours was 54.

It wasn't too important.

Yes.

See, we had to pull.

But you're knowing your big lawmen, your gang, that they, you know.

Yeah.

That was to combine.

Well, I should hear it all.

How close to this speech did you pose?

Right here.

See, that's the other thing.

You don't get the effect from the next day.

We know that because if a speech moves you up, if an event moves you up, it takes four or five days for a Gallup poll all the way from three or four times weaker than ours.

That's right.

All of them polls.

We end up with 54.

I'll bet if we polled now, if we had polled the same weekend that Gallup did, we would have had about probably 56, 57.

I think that's right.

If we had.

I don't know what the effect of the flat factory may have.

I think the ultimate flat was an asset.

They're not worried about it for a reason.

Suppose it did affect them.

Suppose 4% or 5% of them got amped.

It's shot across the bow.

Gee, son of a bitch, it's honest.

It turned out to be the people who were against it anyway.

And it helped like hell.

I've done it.

About 700 letters now.

Quite a few wires.

Yeah, about 100 wires.

But the letters are right by the end.

And the letters are all your style majority type people.

There are all these little ladies in Iowa and somebody in Seattle or something, you know, who says, thank God somebody has spoken out against these people.

There are a lot of letters from Birchers, too, the same thing, you know.

Glad you got the dirty communist things.

All that stuff.

Charlie Lyons is very interesting because he writes, you know, in his legal stationery and everything, he said, the defense against libel and slander is truth.

Therefore, what they're saying about you is totally, I mean, your position is totally defensible because you spoke the truth.

You know, he said, it's interesting that these people run out obsessed with distorting what you said to define themselves as guilty of treason.

There's a reason for that in their minds or something, you know.

And you know, on the, with the North, the fact that you came out slugging, they are you, Mr. President, who sit there and get chopped up.

And here you are, theoretically in a vulnerable position, you come out with a speech, your chief assistant... Well, they forget that this is... At least they know I didn't run away from it.

And you didn't run away from it?

And also, as I say, I kind of think that

Well, you killed the two in question, though.

It kind of went away.

You killed the Duke.

Which is ideal, because that is the sure as hell a thing we don't want to be talking about.

And you backed him up, which means that they have any hope of overthrowing him domestically.

You were tough.

All the military moves you made before that last month was a masterpiece of... Now, if we pull this off, we have no right to pull it off with the country we have behind us.

uh, with the Congress, the Cabinet, it'd be a bloody miracle.

Well, it's a bloody miracle we get to China.

Oh, you'll get to China.

That's, that's easy.

Oh, you'll get through it, Mr. President, beautifully.

I just didn't discard a heart on it, that's all.

I just told Henry, Bob, I'm not going to have it.

I have to go through seven, eight hours a day of long talks, and I can't have my peace of mind at all disturbed by Bill hanging around about wanting to help with the communique or something.

Now, God damn it, he didn't help us in the other communique case.

He shouldn't have helped on this one.

And this one, it's such a delicate balance.

If you look at the history of how we went through it,

Well, I'll let him have the cultural and trade.

The only problem is that's also negotiated.

And these guys are going to run around declaring they did it, Mr. Hamilton.

That's funny.

I'll tell you.

I think they're going to have to.

They're going to have to find things and so forth.

But how many people read that book?

What people are going to read is that Nixon went to Peking, met with Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong, and this is what happened.

And what they're going to think back of that is Kissinger went before Nixon and set it up.

But you will.

That's easy.

You can't avoid that.

And if they say, if they also think that Bill Rogers, except Nixon, Secretary of State, went over and got a cultural agreement, got some Chinese ballet dancers to come over or some damn thing, then that's just dandy.

Who cares?

He also stressed the point that you went over everything.

That's right.

Last week he had an article about me in Life when he said that the president didn't bother about the technical arrangements, but he went over every word of every statement and

Well, they painted a good picture of that, that Henry got off his secret airplanes and came rushing right over the White House and sat with you into the wee small hours of the night.

But that's true.

But I mean, that picture comes through better than a technical, you know, the same president consulted on it or something like that.

The fact that you're getting off an airplane, tired from a secret meeting and running right into the Lincoln.

That was on the Vietnam stuff, yeah.

They said you went over everything before and then over everything right afterwards.

And everything that was said in China, you had to spend six and a half hours with me just on the opening statements.

No, that was Vietnam.

The thing I was going to say is that it's pretty hard, but we're there.

Press, I think Henry Pines has been pretty goddamned hard to say that I don't know what else is going on.

You know, they put four or five hundred pieces on that point.

They've never tried to do that with you.

There's no way that they can.

They might.

They've tried to hit you on that one.

There's never been a sign for that.

Right.

No, I've never seen any article.

They would love, I mean, they would love to be able to say somebody is doing this, but they've never done that.

In none of the profiles have they ever said anything other than that you give the orders.

and then somebody else may execute them, but you are in total control.

It's never like the Dulles-Eisenhower relationship where it was used to be said that he did it and Eisenhower just ratified it.

I think that, Bob, that's one of the reasons why when the state does go off, as it does from time to time, some of them over there are that little gimmick to say, well, they did this and that.

No, I believe that.

I don't think people believe it, you know, that they did this and that and that they sort of talked me into it and they did it against my terrible mind and bullshit.

No, I think that your control of foreign policy is

This is stabbing.

I've never seen... Well, you'll find in China that that was the thing that put the China policy over the top.

Also, it's one of the few places where we can look them in the eye and say, all right, when they say we can't depend on you, you say, well, can we depend on you?

They won't say they can't depend on us.

That's right.

They won't even admit they need us.

The thing is to put it to them on the face of... Now, he's one thing that goes wrong.

They need us to make their sewing machines.

He's talking there as basically what he was when he was traveling.

That's crazy.

They will not ask for economic assistance.

They will not even mention economics to you.

They can't do it.

They are too proud.

They won't do it.

It's totally against their principle.

They'll discuss, well, they'll discuss general things with you, and they have to get a sense.

The thing I would get early about, written my successors out, is your analysis of the Soviet Union.

I do it tough and cold.

Well, I don't, the one thing that you had in your talking paper, which I totally agree with, not too obviously,

I don't know whether you, I would think, as I have, you feel that you mustn't make it appear that we're trying to play the Soviets down against the Soviets.

Well... Or you would?

No, I would... You have to thread a careful line.

You shouldn't get the impression you're trying to play them against the Soviets.

But when, in your first meeting with Stroll... You want to know what I think of the world.

You ought to give a quick review of the world situation, and you ought to say...

I'd start with Taiwan because they've got it on their mind as a question of principle and just state those five points and then push it aside.

I'd say one or two things about Vietnam and then I'd say, but now...

I've got to say, in order to prepare the way for the communication, I've got to say that this is a terribly difficult problem.

Oh, yes.

And that we have to stand by our dream to whatever it is that we've done.

Then I would review the situation and I'd say, here's what the Soviets are doing.

moving through India, now they're moving into Southeast Asia, and I'd say something to the effect that we have an interest in your independence, not because we like you particularly.

I mean, we're not doing it out of altruism.

We're doing it out of self-interest.

And that's when I would throw in the possibility that Dr. Kissinger has certain information he will give you whenever you... Let me ask you, how long...

In the Chinese translator, do you usually talk in five sentence by sentence or paragraph by paragraph?

I would two or three sentences and then put the paragraph in the text.

And you have to remember they'll write it down and take it a mile or so.

There are two statements that I think would be useful to the opening plenary statement you might read, but that's not so important as long as you don't say anything very

substantive, but the first one which saw it would be sort of useful if you considered reading.

Will you read his?

He'll have notes in front of him, yes.

Well, let me think about it.

I may be able to get it in my head.

Well, if you can remember it even better.

It might be more effective.

I found a poem.

I never, when I meet the North Vietnamese, for example, I never read.

But I read

My two opening segments to them.

I'm inclined to think I should, but basically not in my style.

I know.

And I'm inclined to think that I'll have it so well in my head that I'll make all the points.

I'll watch the reactions that go on.

I may want to interrupt a bit or, you know, I think it's sort of... Well, you have to be at ease, which is the most important thing.

I will make all the points.

Is he inviting the visitor to speak first or does he speak first?

Yes, he will ask you to speak first.

Is he expected to be formal like that?

Do you want to make a meeting?

It's open today.

Do I want to make one?

Is that the way you do it?

He said what he will almost certainly do is to say, Mr. President, since you are the guest, perhaps you would like to speak first.

And then I'll put...

The major thing to do in the private meeting, the major thing to do in the plenary session is just to list the topics so that he can tell, I will have it set up so that he will suggest which you handle and which should be handled in the other group.

That's how I handled it when I was there the second time.

The first time I've seen him that he hears we will be in a plenary session?

Yeah.

That doesn't make much difference.

I won't say anything else.

No, you shouldn't, and I'll tell them that.

But you should just list the topics.

List the big smoking pot of topics.

And, but I just speak gratitude.

You do tell Rumsfeld that he feels it's a bother that he might get a call and say that I always, I mean, I know Gallup.

I hope he'll always call me as he sees me.

should never have voted for, but I think in this case that I do appreciate the fact that he made, that he was going to do this in the national interest, that I think this trip, I just go over, the trip to the Soviet Union could change the whole course of world history.

I think that it undercuts the president.

He had a good conscience, it can be.

Avoidant?

Should be avoidant.

I don't know how these bolts work, but it should go even higher after the China trip.

Has to.

Can't tell.

No, it has to.

No, but that speaker always has so many questions about the thing that we, the reason we didn't go out during the whole year of 1971 with all the initiatives.

Everybody says, gee whiz, we're doing all these striking things and the president's on television and bullshit.

They all know me.

I don't have to be on.

I think that while those were you just talking about things, they weren't events.

This is an event and it will go on.

But it has to.

Well, I mean, it depends.

I mean, it may have discounted it some.

It's gone up some in anticipation.

Yeah, but the China thing hasn't really hit the news until this week.

This week.

It's because I went in the bookstore over here to get a Valentine today, and the whole front table where they put the best sellers usually and everything is all books on China.

The Doubleday Bookstore or whatever it is.

The table here is the whole house.

4th and 6th, that weekend.

Mm-hmm.

I'm not so sure that people mind that.

I don't think you have...

They did mind bombing the north around the center.

That sort of escalated.

It's funny, for some reason, the press plays that as escalating the war.

Part of the reason was, part of the reason was that we, I felt at the time, because my intuition was going for five,

Yeah, but that's solid.

They're trying to get a big issue, but I don't think people care that much about it.

I mean, you get a delay in the offensive because that's really been built up.

People and the press are both expecting a big offensive.

But one thing about it, I don't know if you've got it or not, but even if the offensive is demolished, we can claim all the reasons demolished because of bombing.

I'd be amazed if they'd had a significant offensive before the 17th or whenever we made it.

I can get your notion.

unless they're sending us a no to flow and so on.

You have to remember two weeks ago you were just hoping the offensive would delay each day.

That's right.

The closer it comes to our being in China, the more they will lose the impact they are hoping for.

I don't care if they take Pleiku and Khantoum next week.

They won't compete with you being in the Forbidden City.

On television.

I think they've made a mistake if they were planning to hit right at the time of your visit.

The time you have done it was last week.

Yeah, it will infuriate the Chinese.

You think so?

Oh, yeah.

You will see, Mr. President, when you ride alone with Joe in the car.

Senator, I wonder whether on those occasions we should stick an American interpreter in so that we get a record.

No.

Because we ought to have a record.

Why do you mean you have to have two people in the car then?

Well, they'll have an interpreter.

Why are we going to use the State Department interpreter if we decided to do that?

Well, they have three along, but that doesn't mean you have to use them, because we have... Do you understand that we... No, no, I'm very leery of using one in our meetings.

My idea is that we may have to say some things in our meetings.

How are we going to give Rodgers the record of this damn thing?

We'll give him summaries.

I agree.

We didn't give him records in previous meetings, you know.

I go to these meetings.

We will have the record.

But then we just use, I just believe we use the Chinese translator.

He's no saint.

I just wish that God damn it would go out and hire one or ourselves, but that would be an affront to them.

He works for Satan.

He'll get the substance out of them.

It's almost impossible for him not to give it.

God damn it, everybody will.

That's a terrible problem.

They'll lay a price on this for letting them just have their own translator, won't they?

Well, except we go with whatever record they give us.

I mean, whatever they tell us in English is the official record.

I mean, we'll have a note-taker there.

Well, we have a guy that will take it all.

That's our record.

It's the English record.

That's all we need then.

I mean, if they misinterpret it, that's their tabloid.

Yeah.

We'll say this is the record.

This is the record.

That's the record.

It'll be ours.

Well, who will we have?

Will we have a shorthand note-taker?

Well, Vincent Lewis.

You understand.

We can't have it all.

We're just getting the sense of it.

No, no, Winston Lord has done it for me.

He gets every word.

He does?

Absolutely.

He gets it per day.

All right.

That's the way it will be done.

I will not have an American interpreter in here, because I cannot have that interpreter taking the whole government.

If you want to protect yourself, one member of my staff, John Aldridge, who's also a law...

He speaks Chinese?

Understands Chinese, and we can say we use him as a check on the Chinese translation.

And he's totally reliable.

And do you mean heavy and a little lower?

It's a little heavy.

Now, lower is better at the note-taking.

He knows the substance better.

So Holdrich, I would not be sure, would get it down word for word.

And also you want him listening for a purpose.

For what the hell?

Let's call them when we need them.

You know, it makes too many people.

No, we can have Holdridge.

We have four on our side.

Oh, they'll have six at least.

That's all right.

Let's have Holdridge answer.

Holdridge.

Let's say that he's there for translation.

Holdridge is totally allowed.

You'll have no problem with Holdridge.

Let's do it that way.

Holdridge is there, and he speaks Chinese.

Let's just say that.

That's right.

You've gone through that Holdridge is there, he speaks Chinese, and also he's good on substance.

And he was present at the previous meeting.

I don't want to have an extra arm in there.

That's their interpreter for the State Department.

And the primary section.

That's right.

And Holdridge, you wouldn't use as an interpreter.

You'd use the Chinese interpreter.

Yeah, Holdridge would listen.

And Holdridge would listen and make notes of any discrepancies.

There won't be.

There is.

Let me tell you, that's the point.

We always hear that there was somebody missing shirt.

Yeah, it's not the other t-shirt.

I have a try to not always think of Khrushchev's language.

I knew that.

But everybody knew that.

So my point is, things are not, I mean, parts are not lost because of missing shirt protection.

The State Department is a state department of crap.

Right?

Absolutely.

So I think what to do is to have Olin there as our, as our, he'll be larger, he'll be there on our side.

He's totally alive.

He has no brain, but he's totally alive.

That's what Mike wants.

He can help take notes.

Yeah, but no, let him help take notes.

And he tells the other, tell him to watch the color things.

And he says, Lord, I'll be watching them.

That's the way it is.

Now we've got to have him do, also make notes on all the codes.

He can make notes.

Otherwise, I smile or her cough or her sprains.

In other words, lots of things.

The owner has got to concentrate on the words.

Now, that way you've got it.

Then you've got the record.

And we just say, Bill, that we'll make a memorandum, a memcon, a memorandum of conversation.

That's what he's doing.

And as I say, that's all we want from him.

I don't think we should say you want from Rogers that word for word is better than anything.

They don't.

Oh, they just don't.

They don't.

Now, all I want to see, this is the more important part, all I want to ever see is the Nemcom.

There are reasons, but I don't know that it's all I want to see.

I prefer to get a big picture than to go over and try to nitpick every God-damned question and answer.

You realize the riddle.

So let's do it that way.

I've been worried about the interpreter.

That actually, over his speech, Chinese.

Really not.

I mean, we got it.

Really not for us to claim it.

That's just claiming she speaks Chinese.

Got it.

And he was there with you before, so I'm going to use him to remind her.

I think most probably these young guys can make a record.

I prefer not to overlook it.

That's right.

And we'll know very soon after we get there.

I think they are out to make a success of it.

They've got the India-Pakistan thing, made them believe it.

We don't know yet what reception they're putting on.

No.

Well, as long as they've got cameras on the square, they've got to be something.

There's now an indication that the motor team may stop at the square.

Yes, that's their normal procedure.

Their normal procedure is that the motorcade starts and there's a formal reception there.

But we don't dare.

Stop.

Don't count on your normal eventing operation.

We don't know what's going on.

Certainly, I would strongly recommend, Mr. President, that in your first encounter with Chinese cars, we remain rather aloof and not try to approach them.

It's got to come.

I don't feel like you have to.

Very, very naturally.

Because they're not used to that.

Plus the fact that you have the ideal opportunities for some people stuck in Hangzhou and Shanghai, which would be at the end of the visit.

The ideal would be if we can get Zhou to agree to put out the communique either Friday night or Saturday morning.

In Peking.

We'll be home free then because then they have an excuse for public demonstrations instead of physical agreements.

It's natural to put it out in Peking.

Apparently they're not putting up the satellite in Shanghai now.

No, they're not.

Being a ground station, whatever it is.

There's some questions as to whether they are or not.

But see, the main one was in Peking, and then they all of a sudden came up with another one in Shanghai.

And now it's not so sure whether they're going to do that.

Which would be good, I would think, because that would mean that you're not going for the... We'll get the coverage anyway.

Oh.

Pipe attack.

The normal procedure for them is to put out the communication.

The normal procedure is that the guest returns to the meeting after the tour.

Somebody was pointing out this is the longest visit of a president of the United States to a foreign country.

No president has ever stayed seven days in a foreign country.

But he wasn't visiting France, and he was...

I think they're going to warm it up every day, unless the talks go very badly.

You told us the first evening, it's very important, Mr. President, we'll read that, because Khrushchev, is that going to be something that's going to be polarized?

Yes, of course.

The cherry is...

Probably.

If he reads, I will.

He toasts first.

There, you've got a problem with lights.

We'll do what we can.

We've got a problem with how much we can do on getting lighting put in.

Khrushchev in 59 made a toast from the same spot.

And that was the turning point.

Toast to toast in the, I assume, third period.

Five minutes.

And from there...

They sort of turned me in.

We have to be careful not to be too aggressive or too apologetic.

No, apologetic I couldn't be at all.

After the two attacks, I've been reordered at nine.

So I don't want to... Are they fine?

Is there a custom that we know that they're going to put out a text to the toast in advance?

No.

I don't know if I have sent him a message, but I have sent him a message saying your toast would be in the same spirit as the toast he made for me when I was there last time, which said nothing aggressive, nothing you would not cover.

Contemporary issues you were just speaking in general about, based on the way they work, it's not likely they would put out a text in advance.

They never service it.

They don't then, it's my view that rather than sitting there and reading something to the newspaper man that is my talk to the American television audience,

Well, on that occasion, you have two audiences.

You have the American television audience, but you also have these Chinese characters with whom you'll then have to deal with the rest of the week.

True, true, but I have a method.

I have a delivery that's important.

I see no reason to... Well, we'll see.

It depends on how long it has to be.

You don't have to read it.

Well, since it's going to be just...

Well, he could speak ten minutes.

I don't know what he does.

In my case, he may do a very grateful toast without notes.

Uh, for about three minutes.

And I'll let you have his text.

And since they've made it a sort of a treasure...

Okay, thanks a lot.

Nixon, Haldeman & Kissinger on People's Republic of China and Foreign Policy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on February 14, 1972

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