Conversation 705-009

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All right.

I would like you to, this is a very important responsibility that you have, so we will be responsible for you soon.

Me, as the Director of the Department of Space,

That is the, that's a nice information.

No.

Huh?

I think it's a bad idea.

No, I didn't.

We don't want to press for it.

I think it's a mistake.

No, it's a mistake.

It's a mistake.

I may have, my office may have approved it, but I've said the opposite from the beginning.

All I can take from here is that you shouldn't take one here.

Because I don't want to distribute it to the press.

It would be good for Bill to have one for him.

I don't know how I'm going to picture all the creepy stories.

All right, I'll let you.

One of the greatest needs in this country at the present time is basically for what I call

And this is true of all the departments of government, not just the Department of State, but every area that there is.

Because the Department of State, too, represents America.

There's so many things in the world.

There's a need, basically, for strong men, now named by strong men.

Like I said, I'm going to put in what they are, the partisan ones.

They're going to be Democratic.

People who, uh, who, uh, who have, uh, which, which, which, which, which, which, which,

But people who will, and we've got a tough problem.

The country is facing a crisis of any sort, small or large.

Instead of taking either that terrible, sickening, mighty central line, which is usually the line of most of our career guys I've met,

Or, on the other hand,

that rather compete, which is the failing of many brilliant people, a slowly tactical line.

What do we do today and how do we look good today, if not thinking of the long term, but men who see the long term, who can take a few shots in the short term and really risk their own careers and anything to do what they realize is in the long term.

There are very few people in the Foreign Service today that I would turn to to have these qualities.

We need to do more.

Now, probably where you're going to have to go for that, there may be some at your echelon.

There are some, of course.

Where you may have to go then is to go for people that are the younger breed coming up.

But there I have serious doubts about it because so many of them are infected with the modern education, which teaches them even the mushy sentimentality on the one hand, which is the plague of all foreign policy as far as the United States is concerned, the reason for most of our failures.

Or they go for the cheap tactical shots, because that's what they're taught, you know.

And now, you should, I'd like you to keep your eyes open for people that sort of people.

Anything else?

Tim.

He was very reassuring.

I doubt it was that many.

I don't mean to laugh.

I'm just saying I'm looking for very unusual people.

A man that's willing to risk his career.

A man that's willing to put it all on the line.

A man who has strong convictions about the destiny of this country.

A man who won't think, oh, God, well, let's be sure that the record looks good as far as what we did is concerned.

Let me say that I could make this very same talk, and I am, no more.

Because the military is shot through now with the people, despite their great training and patriotism and so forth and so forth, that they've done the bureaucratic crap and all the rest and so forth and so on.

And now it's seldom that you find a military officer.

who has the strength to be his own man and speak out with firm conviction on some of these things.

So he's still in the back of your mind?

I won't say.

Now with regard to Paris, let me say that I think you've done an excellent job.

I think you have a really good action which

It has been widely criticized for the wrong reasons of the talk, the so-called crazy public talk.

It was exactly right.

I think that when you look back, your attitude is going to be very closely watched as it reflects what my attitude is and what the attitude of this country is.

Under no circumstances should you create the impression that we're begging for peace.

They love to negotiate.

The line now has got to be quite tough.

On the other hand, we'll talk a little about this now.

On the other hand, the...

by aligning quite at the same time, putting the monkey on their back for having broken negotiations off.

In other words, why was it that the negotiations were broken off?

Because they weren't negotiating.

Why don't we rezone on the 13th?

Because we won't negotiate at the point of a gun.

But we are ready to negotiate whenever there we can negotiate, but we're gonna negotiate peace.

And we're not here to negotiate a war.

This fight and talk business is something that we're not going to go for.

Now, that's a delicate line for you to take.

But I think, do you have any more thinking about how, what he should say, and when he should say it, and when he should be wincing when he should say it?

Well, I think, Mr.

Fish, I talked to Bill Sutherland this morning.

He said, I think Bill shouldn't go back.

to get there before thursday because if he arrives on wednesday they'll immediately be speculation is he going to go to the thursday meeting if he arrives on thursday he can't go to the thursday meeting all right don't go to thursday so i think that settles that problem without having to make another announcement that's right leave wednesday night and get there thursday

because it's too late to call a meeting, obviously.

The delegation will have notified the, automatically notified the French who have to meet these arrangements that there'd be no meeting.

Now, I see no harm but it'd be good to get Bill's view on that in saying, in a very tough, otherwise tough, the general line we've had, McCloskey and Ziegler detainees,

It's rubbish to say we broke up the talks.

We talked for, you should say, after our talks on January, after our peace talks on January 25th, we couldn't even get them to discuss it.

That's right.

We, and it's the peace talks, we watered everything, and even Lansio said we've gone as far as we can go to resign, you know, get the peace talks done, but after we've had any sentences.

And after we had made that deal offer, their response was a constant build-up of their forces, which we were watching week after week, and a filling cluster at the conference.

Now, the thing that's debatable is, we could have said, on top of them, we had told them through private channels, that we were prepared to resume on April 13th.

And their response to that was an escalation of military activity.

I didn't plan to do that.

What do you mind if I sit and do it?

That will add more punch, it will.

I can play this with what you're trying to do.

My judgment is that we ought to do it.

I don't want to put the propaganda money on their back, but you don't want to do that to a 13.

No.

but let people get out more on the limb of medical.

And then by Thursday, they'd be out on them, and you could say, now, General, I can review.

You could say that they get through private channels, directly authorized by the president, and I'm not going to discuss what they were.

We had agreed we were meeting on the 13th, and then they launched this offense right in the face of that.

I just laughed right out there.

That shows that they are not even negotiating their interests.

So in fact...

So I think the way we could put it to them, we could put it, after we list all these, after we put 30 measures on them, there has not been one session where they even discussed all of it.

That's right.

If you can give a very brief, five-minute statement.

Now, can I build it up?

You could say, I want to make a statement.

Get the press over there and say, I have a statement that I have with regard to negotiations.

It's time to clarify that.

It's time to speak.

And you can find a word that would be better and stronger than clarifying one.

Oh, it is.

I want to clear away the rubbish that the enemy has

Yes, sir.

And some people who don't know any better than the United States have been talking about the penalty of negotiation.

One, we made an offer.

That was a very good offer.

I'm covering three sentences.

Two, they refused to talk about the law.

Three, on the issue of the 13th, I now reveal that through private channels directly authorized by the President

that we bothered to resume negotiations on the 13th.

Their answer was, that's offensive, and that's why they have not aspired to our concern.

We're ready to negotiate whenever they're ready to talk peace, but we're not going to negotiate as long as they are waiting to fall out of war in violation of all international law.

I'm not a person who has a statement of self-reliance, but then I would not let myself get drawn into what we mean by peace or anything.

I don't say now, I don't say well now, Mr. and Mrs. Batchelor, they'll say, what should the level of violence be?

I'm not going to go into that.

That means you will not negotiate as long as anything is going on?

I'm not going to go into that.

Mr. President, in Paris, they're well acquainted with my actions, not just any questions.

I think they can say what I want when I get around.

My business is a faulty law.

I've always done it.

I don't get around to it.

I think what you ought to do is to say, you're making a statement, and you have a statement that you want to make, and I will have your press secretary fill out a significant statement.

I have a significant statement to make about negotiations.

I will.

I just called them in because you say significant and they start speculating.

All right.

They'll come.

They'll be all right.

Oh, they'll come?

I've attacked the North Vietnamese again for total cynicism, again misleading the world's opinion by pretending we had cut off the dogs.

Oh, we can.

We have the material.

Uh, to give them, I mean, it's really a good thing they're going because of that.

Well, I mean, I think it's the right thing to do.

Well, the other thing is that I want to get back to one of their processes and, uh,

But the point that I made is that

stick in the past at all times.

The problem is that sometimes you play the role of your host.

I don't know why any of them come around to the press about, well, we shouldn't negotiate or we shouldn't just say we're doing the right thing and we're going to see it through and it's going to come out right.

In other words, a positive, strong, firm line.

Everything's on the line.

Play it very close to the rest.

You know what I mean?

I know exactly what you mean.

Now, how do you feel?

Tell me about that.

I feel like it's just with blood.

I don't feel that there is any use...

committing them to get too far and be ahead in matters pertaining to public relations.

And they're always trying to do that.

That's why we check them every time.

In fact, my delegation won't make any right or wrong noises.

They're in line and with us and talking.

They react the way we do, and it's a good group.

I think we have got to do something like this, going back to Paris, where I have my own manner of functioning with drugs.

I'd like to do it, maybe you can prove that, and I think I'll get out a statement that you'll like.

Sure you will.

That's no question.

You understand what I have to do, but keep it, I'd like you to do it so you're on call.

Are you going to go?

Oh, I'll do it.

Think of two minutes, or a minute and a half.

Yeah, we think that'll pick up.

But our idea is that it is rubbing that they have not, that they have, that we, and that we made it on them, and they turned, and they actually went offensive.

And they do that.

And we agree, you see, because if that was totally the model that's in charge, and we have negotiated, we'll take the heat of the next report, but in the meantime, we'll destroy that, of course, you said.

You made it.

peace offer and they answered with the children.

We made an offer to return to the talks and they answered with an offensive.

That's good.

That's a good line right there.

We made a peace offer and they answered with an unprecedented objection.

And then they had the crutch to say there were no North Vietnamese involved in this operation.

Well, you know, for that they're not BC.

That's right.

They're not BC.

Well, that's it.

Excuse me, we didn't see you outside, sir.

No, but they can't see you.

But they can't see you.

Don't let any of your people get discouraged about this thing.

Let me say that we, Mr. Henry, listen.

Did you talk to him?

No, I don't want to talk to you about it.

Well, I mean...

Well, I thought this would be good.

Let's spend a minute.

Let's tell them a minute now how much we put on the line here over, frankly, driving the military team and streaming and, of course, the State Department.

By the State Department, I'm not referring to personalities.

I'm referring to what I can do.

It's damn Trump or those folks.

You know what I mean?

Go ahead.

We want to do two things.

Minimum to break the offensive.

Maximum to force a settlement now.

We have more than doubled the B-52 fleet out there in the last week.

We've now got 134 B-52s.

We had 60.

we're going to be 52 soldiers from 50 to 90 at the end of the day by the end of this week we're using them for purposes

of hitting them in those areas that are supplying the battle and railcourses.

Another reason why we can build, I have total confidence, another reason why the

The U.S. 750 would be helpful because Thursday afternoon we're planning another P-52 strike twice the size of the last one and 50 miles closer to Hanoi.

Well, it'll be non-attractive.

Yes, but this big mid-air field, they have plenty of ceilings.

And it does make a hell of a lot of difference what we hit at this stage, as long as we show...

But most of our P-52s and everything else will be used in the Ballard area, because now we're on site.

that you can follow up on.

The thing is, we've not only committed to that, we've brought back, we have brought back the two Marine squadrons, three Marine squadrons.

We've also put in a hell of a lot of Navy in there.

And that Navy isn't there just for the purpose of showing up.

We had six, we put in six tactical air squadrons.

We had four destroyers say last Monday we'll have 33 there.

By the end of this week, 33 and four cruisers.

Yeah, there.

And that road down there in the trees down, down at the shore, it's going to be lit for man and beast.

And that's, that's, we've got to get that road.

And I know it's about time.

And they have a strange shell, believe me, all the way up and down.

And we told them, I'll put you in on that after.

Oh, that's great.

The premium was in yesterday.

I said, what can we do?

I said, we're ready to talk.

I said, no, we want, we're ready to settle.

We don't want to talk.

Who's the premium?

The premium?

No.

This is, this is, it's not like that.

For your, for your song?

Yes, sir.

I don't need, but he's right there.

I know, I mean, I said, it isn't that, I know there are several people that, that are right, but I don't mind that you're asking the question.

But, you see, there are reasons, but the Russians were...

In fact, this, this... Did you get the money?

I meant to ask you, did you have a chance to do it?

Well, what I said today, just to give you an idea of the sign that we should have been there and we should have conjectured, that they were in and made a slobbering statement about the hoaxes of salt and carmine and I'm saying about this and that and the other thing.

And I threw away the crack which, not your staff, but somebody prepared and all some nauseating, sickeningly, sickeningly mighty stuff, you know, about

I said, well, this is the third time I've been here in this room.

I said, we started a non-proliferation treaty.

We signed the CFEDS treaty.

Now we're signing this in biological warfare.

I said, as far as these two treaties are concerned, we must recognize that they are all important, but they are not, in and of themselves, their means to an end.

And the end, of course, is peace and also the implementation of arms.

I said, as far as biological warfare is concerned,

We, of course, are all pleased that this science, great universities all over the world, whatever their languages and their philosophical leverages, will now be concentrating on developing, working, not the weapons to be used against other nations, but weapons to be used against the enemy of all mankind.

That's my opinion.

I'm the only author of the subjects.

And so that's it.

Now, as I said earlier, I consider that, as the expression ambassador said, we are looking forward to, we are working toward the limitation of arms and assault.

We hope that we will have made progress in that field because that would be helpful, both in, I mean, reducing pain to work in our two countries, but also in the world.

But then I came back to the end.

Looking at the basic thing, we must realize the greater this progress has been,

that there will not be peace in the world until all nations renounce the use of armed aggression as an instrument of policy against other nations.

And there particularly cannot be peace in the world unless the great powers meet their particular responsibility.

And that means that a great power should not encourage directly or indirectly another nation to use force.

in our progression.

I don't think he, I need to bring him down to the president.

Well that's the ideal arrangement.

That's the ideal situation.

He calls this morning again, he's really bothering me.

Well, he just called me this morning to say that he wants you to know that what I said to him yesterday, he was sent back to Moscow on the most urgent basis.

You see, you cannot, you cannot, let me say, it doesn't do anything to follow the line.

I don't mean to kick it out on our belligerents on the vigil, and I have a lot of the care, I mean, I don't know the crap about, you know, the science, the world work, at least we all want that, everybody believes in that.

Why talk about it too much?

That's all, the remarks were about it, you know.

But,

For an opportunity like this to be missed, with the Soviet ambassador sitting there, having just supported the Indians against Pakistan, and then, and having, over the past two years, supported the UAR, and increasing the danger of war in the Middle East, and now, at the present time, with Soviet tanks and Soviet guns, rumbling through South Vietnam,

And for me to sit there and sign it and say, isn't it great that we've now had three agreements and we hope to have a sovereign, I couldn't do it.

So I just said, by God, when you agreed on that, that you're trying to say these things, the opportunity was there.

If battle reports are true, Mr. President,

Well, you only got one country, but you may get some more.

One, I say, one of the, for all these old, these carboys are fighting in the South Vietnamese.

You know how tough it is out there.

The one in the north, he served in one country before David.

The beauty of that is that

South Vietnamese artillery and infantry knocking out some tanks.

When we hear tanks being knocked out, of course, it's always the Air Force that does it.

Sometimes their Air Force will be doing good.

But as Hayes pointed out, whenever you have South Vietnamese artillery knocking out tanks, then they must be standing and fighting.

Isn't that right?

Absolutely.

And any other report?

Well, we can now comment on

that they're not, that the North Vietnamese are not fighting very competently because they haven't managed to synchronize artillery, tanks, and infantry.

And that's not surprising, they've never done that.

So they're losing more tanks than they should.

And even if you say the South Vietnamese figures are doubled, you have to say on the other hand that we must be killing some with air if we are not counting.

so that the total count.

Now, in military region three,

Well, it's tough, but on the other hand, Mr. Andy mentioned that you would not be alert, especially in the Saigon area.

Can you, Bill?

He'll fight me.

I'm sure he will.

He's got two lousy division commanders there.

The commanders have been changed recently, but the divisions have not yet been shaped up.

He's bringing one up in Delta.

What I'm saying is that everything is on the line.

We lose one, we lose a province, we lose this or that, but the important thing is it's not the wind moves the battle.

The important thing is to break the backs of these bastards.

What I think is that you may, I could never set this to launch, and I couldn't really say it was Bruce, but now, for the first time, at the very time of the launch, you may have negotiations.

You may.

If you don't...

I think it's coming from a negotiation.

I think they hope to grab certain minimum objectives and possibly the maximum objective, which would of course be .

And I think that's why Madame Vinh came back, that she wanted to be in Paris, so that if this trust, the North particularly, picked up Cointre and perhaps Blay,

they'd be in a position to say, all right, they called a ceasefire.

Now the game there, sir, would be perhaps to drive a wedge between us and Chu because, as I asked Chu, he's not going to agree to any ceasefire with them, with them, especially, especially the wedge.

But I don't think he's, I think that might be a very clever thing that they're planning to do.

I think he'd give us trouble.

Well, it's a question of what you have to live with back home.

You have a tremendous alphabet of people all over who are just waking and who are now trying to find excuses for this invasion across the DMZ.

So you would have to deal with that, my guess.

There would be a lot of pressure on you.

What is your situation with regard to the letter that you're going to get away with?

The situation is, it's quite difficult, though, for the creators of this film to find an excuse for this situation.

Quite damn difficult.

They will.

Yes, but they find an excuse in an awkward ceasefire.

That would be rather difficult to explain.

I don't think...

It seems to me just having each other...

I don't think that authority is violated because that, in effect, accepts a few governments.

That's what I think is the critical thing.

They will never accept a few governments.

Well, no, I think... What I think, though, is that...

If they do, we'll have to be prepared to deal with it.

What I think is... See, they have to offer cease-fire.

Suppose they've got a general objective, capital, or a province, or a big economic way.

They have to offer cease-fire just as soon as they have it, because they can't sit there and take it.

Not the kind of thing that will end up.

Yeah.

And this is one of their great problems.

They can't stay in this hole.

They can't stay in this city.

All the population problems...

But that's why we can play it to wait for two weeks and drive them out and then accept the cease-fire.

My guess is that the Russians will not let them run this offensive long into May.

That what they're trying to do is to... is to collapse a tube or so beaten him that they can then accept the basic demand we've made of maintaining some part of the tube structure.

That they cannot do until they prove to themselves that they can't collapse it.

That to them is the toughest part and therefore I

I am really quite optimistic.

I believe that if we don't lose this battle, we'll have a serious negotiation.

And in fact, our toughest problem will be not to accept their first offer, because they'll have a second offer.

If they ever reach the point, the only thing that's really between us now is leaving the GBM structure in some form intact.

And for that, that explains why they do such a tremendous fast.

Because they really, if they don't make it now, they cannot reasonably hope to attack again for 18 months.

With the losses they're going to take, they're going to lose.

The losses are enormous.

And also, you've got to remember this.

We didn't have anything like this in 1970.

You know why?

I can't believe it.

We knocked the hell out of them.

We didn't have this in 1971.

Why?

Lops.

Despite the heat, we knocked the hell out of them.

And now, they ain't going to have anything like this next year.

If they've committed as many divisions as the press has reported, they're in trouble.

That's what our report shows.

If that is true, sir, then they're in trouble.

You see, we had a report.

They're in trouble unless they win.

Unless they win.

But they've got to win by certain terms because of logistics and the hammering.

You see, in Third Corps, it is inconceivable to me in Third Corps that they can sustain this logistically for more than three weeks.

Yeah, they have a lot of stuff down there.

And they have no replacements coming in.

At least across the DMZ, they can shovel in some replacements.

Sure.

But whoever is killed in military region three is out.

But what are replacements if they're committed?

How many have they got?

Have they got anything in reserve on the other side?

They have one division, which is coming south.

Oh, yeah.

That first one.

The 325th Division, which was near Hanoi, is now on the way south, which is a sign of desperation.

Have they moved over the trail or are they in the same country?

They are moving it down Route 1.

Oh, that means DMZ.

DMZ.

So, and you don't see another division formation up there?

There are two training divisions, but not combat divisions.

That's what we hear.

Well, they should in the works.

That's it.

That's all.

That's what appears.

This is why we've heard this story a lot before.

But, no, but, but, no, but, Mr. President, at Tet, they shot the birds with the VC.

At Tet, they didn't use their main forces so much.

At Tet, most of their armies stayed in North Vietnam.

And they just used their main forces to tie us down while all the fighters were down.

This is a main force operation.

That's another thing.

That's distinguished by the North Vietnam.

Now it's heavily involved.

There are goddamn little, very few Easties involved.

Very few.

The only reserve divisions they've got are the two divisions fighting near Long Tien.

And I think what they may have in mind is to pull them off Laos and back into Vietnam as the rainy season approaches.

So that would give them an additional two divisions.

But those two divisions have been fighting all the dry season at Long Chien and they've been taking a battering and they've never managed to take Long Chien.

So the situation now really is this.

They'll either win or lose.

It's hard for them to fade away.

We have this report I brought in for you that you sent out.

I don't know whether it's true.

They have the 320th Division in the Central Highlands.

Now the President, starting in February, ordered something which no one had thought of, although it seems elementary.

It's to put all P-52s and all TAC Air into one area for a number of days, rather than spread it all over the country.

Now we've had, again, I don't know whether you can believe it, but we've had in these patrols, we found 300 bodies one place, 400 bodies another place, and one of the rare times that there were corresponding weapons, such as 300 bodies, 200 weapons.

That's rare.

And they've never gotten the attack in the B3 front off.

Now, today Kew informed us that their information is that the 320th Division has been ordered to withdraw into Laos.

Now, we have not confirmed this independently, but if this is true, then they had a fifth division formation in there that never got off the ground.

That in turn would free the first Airborne of the Aden for

So they really are in a tough spot.

If they don't win.

They're shooting the words.

If they don't win, they must have a political objective behind this military effort.

They usually have.

It has to follow through.

There's something.

The minimum objectives of being militarily

And then comes the big political push.

I think it's going to be designed to grab the wedge of Jim Nesson and Scheer and to take Eaton, Coventry, and Providence, miserable as it is, and say, look, we hold this to whoever we want to see spot.

And then Scheer will react.

What I think they'll offer as a settlement and a big Jew result, they'll just concentrate on Jew.

They'll no longer say,

They'll say anyone is acceptable except you.

That would really drive a wedge between us.

Well, choose either to resign or run.

He might resign.

Who knows?

Well, I think, Mr. President, well, when they make an offer, we ought to bring Bill back and have a long... Oh, good God, yes, good God.

Well, we'll, we'll, something like that is in the office, but they just can't shoot all their, all their divisions and... Well, they aren't going to make an offer.

I don't think all the battle's going on.

Unless they, unless they figure they've got something and they can't hold, then they might make an offer.

I think he's quite about a possible shooter, you know.

What would you do?

They kind of sit, suppose they get their middle objective, all the guys who are essentially swayed, they kind of sit in a way, long, they try to act fast, and the only way they try to act fast is to make it over to the sea spot.

They take it as a win.

They just can't see it.

Thank you.