Conversation 719-022

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I don't know.

Okay.

Check it out.

Yes, sir.

Well, Connie, we went through the whole exercise.

Henry went through his whole exercise.

So it was a whole lot of strength.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

Here's why.

I'm sure he knows about this.

I did at the end, but Conley said, his position is first of all, you gotta face one fact, you cannot lose the war in Vietnam.

He said, you put that to end.

He said, don't.

Just, that's the first point.

You've got to go in and bomb Hamlet, not bomb.

And you've got to do anything else that's going to make a difference, including the blockade.

Number two, you're absolutely wrong in your emptiness, in your position, that you should be the one to cancel the Soviet summit.

If the Soviet summit is to be canceled, make the Soviets cancel it.

Don't you do it.

Because if the hope for peace is going to be shattered by anybody in this world, have it shattered by the other guy.

Don't shatter it yourself.

I hadn't thought of that, and he's absolutely right.

And he said, absolutely.

He said, your course, to him, your course is absolutely clear.

You should move instantly to bomb Hanoi Nightfall.

But not just a pop.

A real, you know, whatever it takes.

You should not blockade yet.

Just the bombing.

But bomb Hanoi.

But for seriousness, not just for a signal, to knock out whatever the capabilities are, whatever the targets are there, because if you're ever in a complex, it's important to demolish it.

The force is important to demolish it.

Power plants, communication base, whatever there is.

And don't worry about killing civilians.

Go ahead and kill them.

Because everybody would see, and I think he's right on this, an American public opinion, McCloskey's been running around for years saying you're killing civilians.

Sure.

So people think you are now.

That's right.

So go ahead and kill somebody.

Sure.

And Henry says, Jesus, you have all those pictures of dead bodies.

A dead body is a dead body.

There's pictures every night of dead bodies now.

Nobody knows who the hell's body they are or who killed them.

No, Henry is overreacting to these.

So you can't worry about that.

Because they're going to, they're charged with it anyway.

But his, Connie's point is, in the first place, I don't think the Russians will cancel us on it.

Because I think they want it.

And I don't think they give a damn about what we do or don't do.

Mr. H talked about having written that letter to them.

We sort of forced them that they have to cancel it.

I think you're wrong about that.

Maybe.

But that's done now.

But Congress wants a lot of people.

And then if they cancel the summit, haven't you bombed?

Then you bomb all you want to bomb.

You make your decision now, your command decision, which is the important thing.

You're going to win the war in Vietnam.

Then you go do it.

If the Russians don't like anything that you do in the process of that to the point where they decide to cancel the summit, let them cancel it.

As soon as they do, you go on.

Give the speech you were going to give anyway.

I don't know about that.

Why?

It is going to be named, I think it's soon to be announced today, the J.W.

Right.

The main point is that I don't, rather than having the Congress do the seat, I just want to be sure that it's good.

Okay.

Good.

Okay, fine.

Then I guess I'll sign it.

I guess I'll sign it and then we can deal with that one.

Okay, great.

I just want to speak, you know, you were a general counsel.

It really was nice.

Good, beautiful presentation.

So they come out and they say we're canceling the summit.

So you go on television and you go through the same, you make the same case that you would make if you were going to cancel the summit.

And you say, you know, they've done this and that, and we've done this and that, and we've tried, we've gone the last mile, and then you cut all that case.

And unfortunately, they cut this off.

We regret that, but that doesn't deter us from our course at all.

Then the next day, you blockade High Plum.

You don't blockade until they cut off the summit because that's an overreact against them in the sense where the others aren't.

That's a good thinking.

And also the blockade gives you the chance to take another strong action after they cancel the summit.

So you don't look like you're backing down or weakening after they cancel.

You're taking a strong step again after they cancel.

And put the goddamn squeeze on it.

Then he says the other thing you should do, and he says don't worry about the commentary on it.

Replace Abrams.

If you can't get the stuff done with Abrams, get a man in there who's going to get it done.

Give a man the assignment to win the war and put him in there.

Well, I agree with that.

probably getting it done.

See, Henry implies a letter just calling Abrams on the phone, rescinding orders and all that, so John says, fine, then get rid of it.

Let him do it.

But his point is, you're in very good shape in the country right now.

The people believe you're doing, first of all, the right thing on the war.

You're responding to a massive invasion.

You're not taking any overt action.

You're reacting to it.

What does he think about the bad news about the war?

He says, that's a problem, but none of this is going to change that except make it better, maybe.

Also, if the psychological problem of the South Vietnamese is a major factor, which Henry believes it is, the possibility of an argument collapse or something of that sort, what Abrams said in that memo the other day about their morale and holding power and all that, then you moving hard like this should improve that situation.

Because, as Henry said, my going to Moscow hurt that.

Because the North Vietnamese, I mean the South Vietnamese can't help but wonder what the hell I was doing in Moscow.

The other thing, and then Henry said, well, you're asking the President then, if he does the bombing, to make the decision to risk the summit.

And I said, that's ridiculous.

It's already on.

He's already canceled it, which is not even risky.

It's certainly ending it.

The other way, you're only running the chance of ending it.

You don't know which way it's going to go.

Henry comes off of that totally for it, if it's for real.

Well, if we really bomb, rather than just sending one mission in or something, a symbolic bomb.

And if we are prepared to move to the blockade,

And the point that I make is, Henry, you see, I hope he is to that point.

Well, he says he is, because I'll tell you why.

That's the point I am to.

I am to the point that I wrote out the blockade thing last night.

And I know what happened this morning.

Haig is against the blockade now.

He's got that military for the show.

And Haig is the best of them, but he's against it for the wrong reasons.

The point is that

I think we have to now decide to win the goddamn war.

In other words, they can't get into the South, but we're going to crush them.

I don't know why.

And I mean crush them.

And what that fellow said about taking out the goddamn Dykes.

All right, we'll take out the goddamn Dykes.

You see what I mean?

Yep.

That's what I mean.

I don't mean to screw around.

But, boys, Henry's with that.

I'm for it all the way.

All the way to, I don't know, he's through the dykes.

You get a, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't think he's through the dykes, but I met him.

I heard the Connolly idea.

I heard the Connolly idea because, and it's an idea to show you how you need sometimes to have another good mind working on something.

It occurred to me that way.

I had always assumed, don't let the Russians cancel.

Because we remembered the U-2 when the Russians canceled.

On the other hand, I didn't hurt.

I was fine.

Helped.

But my point is, if the Russians cancel the summit, then they are in the blind for blocking peace.

We regret this, but Cotney completely shares my view that I was talking about the other day.

He says he's absolutely convinced this is right.

And in the general mind of the American public, there are two totally separable matters here.

One is the war in Vietnam, and the other is your summit meeting in Moscow.

That's why they're bombing and the summit.

That's right.

Because they're two different things.

Now, sure, they hope that maybe while you're at the summit you can do something about Vietnam like they hoped in China you could do something about Vietnam.

But you didn't, and they didn't care.

And if they cancel the summit, they don't like that either.

You pick up a lot of marbles from that.

We want to put an end to all that bad in the sense that we will then move to blockade, right?

You've got that one, right?

Blockade, I mean.

The United States at least is going to go out and go down with both guns firing.

Well, don't you think you convinced him?

Yes.

Well, Henry took the position that he was always convinced of this, that this is what he wants to do, but he didn't think we could.

Because first of all, he was going on the premise that we had to cancel him.

I must say that I said that.

And so was he.

Agreed.

Yeah.

That's what he said, that he felt that was sort of new and that he had been operating on that premise.

But Conley just takes exactly the opposite premise.

Canceling the summit, the act of canceling the summit is an act unfavorable to world peace.

So why should you do it?

Make them do it.

That's right.

Let them be the bad guys.

Well, you've got to analyze this.

If they cancel the summit as a result of our bombing, they'll say, we were responsible for canceling the summit.

We go back and say, we weren't responsible for it.

We were perfectly willing to try to do it.

If they were bombing you, we were bombing the North Vietnamese, who you are a spy for, on an invasion that you supplied.

Just what you would say if you cancel the summit.

We can't go to a summit under that comment anyway.

All right, let's go over to the blockade and the militaries.

You see, the blockade of this problem won't work, because they can just sit there and squint and starve and say, screw you.

And then the Democrats, you could say, and then say, as soon as a new candidate, if you've got a Democratic candidate elected, we'll settle a war with him and return him to the prisoners.

Of course, that would be a, we could hammer them on that.

Henry, are you going to blockade if it's a company who would have to quit bombing?

Oh, shit, yeah.

So that you do the bombing that has to get the bombs?

They can't just sit there.

I agree with Connery about civilians.

I agree with Connery.

I do, too.

Obviously, you don't go for civilian targets, but you don't worry about SWAT folks.

I'm not sure they do that.

They make the Boulder Act and cancel it.

I agree.

Connery's got a very strong point there.

I mean, all it does is show that, well,

that you're hating men like what's going on at the bombing.

You see what I mean?

Yeah.

And Henry's reaction about canceling is to a certain extent, because of his great irritation with the Soviet destroyers.

He wants to show something to them.

I think the bombing shows it more.

Now, if you have a problem, if their letter comes back saying, if you do any further bombing of

in order or something, we will cancel the summit.

Then you probably wouldn't go out and cancel it.

You'd use the letter as the device then.

No, I think I'd just bomb and let them cancel.

Let them cancel.

You don't have to say that we bombed in spite of the warning.

Chevrolet warned us, we did it.

No, I wouldn't take this letter.

Let them say it.

It's their job.

And we could say their response to that made it clear they were not going to take any further steps to help.

And so we had nothing to gain from dealing with it.

The county does the same thing as you do, though, by the, it says you cannot take the military to beat Vietnam.

Yeah.

Correct.

The president is now in a good position in this country.

He's got to have the guts to meet the problem, as it now exists.

You've got to make it clear to the Russians that we aren't going to be defeated, that we're not going to surrender.

And his argument is, once that's clear to them, because they're thugs, because they don't give a shit about anything, they won't cancel the summit.

But go ahead with it.

Then we raised the question, well, do you really want to go ahead with it?

He said, hell yeah.

He said, if you're taking the strong action on the other side, then it doesn't matter about sitting and talking to the president like we do in the trade deals.

Does that everybody think you're going to talk about saying the Lord?

We've got to act strongly.

I've been pushing, you know, Henry is not...

Being quite a candidate with regard to last weekend, I got this thing from him.

It's funny, he told you that he was for bombing.

I said, he was not.

Henry, basically, was so passionately interested in the success of his meeting, Tom, he didn't want to bomb.

You know that guy.

But I said, god damn it, we better do it.

I said, the situation needs it.

Well, you were planning to bomb earlier last week.

And then you said, Henry said, you know, we've got to hold up until after this, I think.

And of course, you had Abel, which back then I loved, too.

Roger, you know, just trying to take a clever, appear courageous when it's the important thing to be.

One thing, the other side, I took that one on one of the poles.

Did Percy live?

Remember, because he had come out the wrong way, we're going to .

Yep.

If not, what?

First of all, you said Nixon said he would continue bombing when the president makes it.

Bombing the military targets not in the South, as long as they're invading and killing the South Vietnamese Americans.

Percy feels that protecting withdrawn troops is only an excuse used by the administration to continue the bombing.

Who do you agree with, Senator Percy or the president?

43 with the president, 41 with Senator Percy.

The question is, is it stated too well?

Well, the second one.

It makes it pretty strong, you know.

During the past week, Senator Percy attacked the President's handling of the Vietnam War and called for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. ground troops.

Does Senator Percy's attack on the President's Vietnam policy make you more likely or less likely to vote for him as your candidate for Senator in the Illinois in the 72th election?

More likely, 45.

Less likely, 23.

Percy feels we should withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam now, regardless of the consequences.

Agree, 57.

Well, I'll show you the other side.

So he may have pulled before we did.

Well, it's close, though.

It's a close question.

This is equipment very low.

It may run a few times.

That's all right.

I don't think it would even lock to pull at the present time.

I was wondering about that.

No, it doesn't.

We have to do it anyway.

We can do it.

No, because we're not going to make a speech.

I don't need it.

I'm not going to make it at the present time.

The Illinois people just want to get out of the war.

That's one thing.

On the other hand, when it comes to the questions of, as you put it, in terms of the bombing and so forth, it's a wash, right?

You'll have trouble with it, in my view.

That's how he presents it.

We all know they want to get out of the war.

But we all know that the country can't stand to lose the war.

That's our problem.

And that's God's plan here.

But if Collider's standing, oh well, everything goes down the line.

No graceful way to do it.

And the cancer of the sonar, I just don't think it's a big thing.

I mean, Henry's always so amused with the idea of getting signals.

Screw the signals.

I mean, the bombing will be a signal.

The bombing will be a signal, but also it'll be an act that may do some good.

You know, Henry's pretty good at his music.

And then about, you know, he said, maybe we should have told him to stop it, because that way we could avoid having him play these things.

I said, Henry, for Christ's sake, we don't care about that.

And I said, second, let's have that played rather than ever getting the shit checked out of us.

Yeah, right.

It's, in the name of music, though, that it's a, he just, he really is about, I guess, everybody.

Yeah.

People would feel a hell of a lot better if they thought you were doing something effective than if you're just sitting there getting kicked around.

And I don't know.

And I guess what he says, Vogt says we're creating a lot of, I mean, unbelievable damage, but, but what Vogt says, General Vogt says that we're,

doing incredible damage to our Vietnamese.

They were just killed by the carbines.

Well.

I like that eulogy when you screwed me up.

It was a pretty good one.

It was good.

And it did not lose by reading.

I'm awful glad you decided to read it.

It would not have been worth the effort.

The difference wouldn't have mattered that much.

It was, really, it was appropriate to read.

You're standing electric anyway.

And you're standing before the casket.

I told the jackass I was going to do it.

I figured that I could see you were talking to him.

Staying here a long time was going to make people sit and think it would be a picture.

It would be the best picture you want, other than, of course, that asshole standing with me.

Sorry, this is back, which is fine.

Although, it won't be Nelson.

It'll be a clergyman.

ministering his roles.

I'll use the picture of the President's Bank tribute.

That's a much better picture than our rioting, our, I don't know.

I think those, I would think so.

It has to be that they sure were looking at it when you stood there.

You can also see the giving of making it short.

I had to add about 50 to 100 words at the end, because I had to add that on the end a little bit.

But it was only 700 words long.

It would take about 70 minutes.

You get something below 10 minutes.

It was just right.

You said all that needed to be said, and you made the point on law.

And William Hoover, of course.

Patriotism sent to critics.

It's a good Bible quote.

But it's a perfect quote.

I've never heard it before.

Love belongs to God and you love belongs to God.

That was good heavy hat.

Line up with cops on the under guard thing on the way in.

Oh, that was great.

We did.

Bill Radigan in our place took that over and did a superb job.

We had to turn the military district loose on them.

You know, so we had the under guards.

The Army Corps was superb in there.

Great.

Some damn church choir.

Great.

They used the under guard up at the Capitol.

Did all of them.

Boy, we did this one well.

Paul Bearers and all that.