On May 16, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., and William M. Lukash met in the Oval Office of the White House from 8:14 am to 8:43 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 725-010 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
He was a member of the Young Democrats.
Young Democrats in Wisconsin.
We're not balls to the Democrats.
No, indeed.
No, indeed.
He's turned crazy to us.
Yeah, he must be in there.
I'm not... Well, we've glamorized this nonsense of these damn... You know, a guy like McCarthy go out there and tell those people to build their barricades and... Well, listen, Humphrey and my doctor have been saying horrible things about Wallace Externum.
As a matter of fact, what the hell, they did just even worse to me, called him a murderer, and it's nothing of any...
I don't think they're coming out.
saying he would have used the boys, the muskies, 50,000 Vietnamese that had been killed in the order.
Oh.
What's the situation abroad?
It's fine.
Well, things are very, very quiet.
They've continued operations east of, or west of Hue.
Why isn't the press, I mean, the poster here says the crew will fly?
They're very important.
They killed 80 yesterday.
Oh, absolutely.
Got an ammunition dump in there in the Bastogne area.
Did they?
Yes, sir.
No, they captured it.
They discovered 10 tons of 82 millimeter.
That's the stuff that would have been porting on Kill Lady, the enemy there.
Good.
I think they're doing exceptionally well.
We had an aircraft team at Fire Support Base Nancy, which is just north of Bastogne.
And they killed 30 enemy.
Mortar positions were knocked down, bunkers.
Military Region 2, they're still repelling these attacks.
They got 74 tanks in the last 24 hours.
Seven more.
Seven more than 70 in a day.
Yes, sir.
Those tank counts are probably accurate or whatever.
Well, sometimes they can double count.
Yes, sir.
Sometimes they can double count them, but one was...
They're close.
These new tows that they put in there about a week ago are really nothing these tanks have.
They're both.
They put some in the Cobra gunships and some on Jeeps.
What do they do?
It's a big guided...
Guided rocket gun.
What does it do?
Just go right out of the tank?
Yes, sir.
It locks a big hole in them.
And then they spew all the metal from the inside.
Oh, I didn't forget.
Oh, I didn't think so.
Yes, sir.
No, these guys are leaving the tanks.
This is what they found in there.
They're leaving the tank, then?
Yes, sir.
I mean, this is a pretty frightening business, isn't it?
Well, if you don't fight them right, they're death traps.
That's all they are.
They have to be handled properly.
The whole answer to them is to keep them masked and sudden movement.
You have to keep infantry around them.
How often is the situation there?
It's not the third day.
Oh, it's well into the fourth, sir, and the attacks have dropped off.
Force from the staff is still moving towards it.
They're going in and making fast progress, but they're continuing.
They're about seven kilometers south of the perimeter.
That looks very good.
They got two tanks in there yesterday.
The airstrikes are still about 1,000 level.
Yes, sir.
We're still keeping those airstrikes up.
Great.
I'm sure they had 1,000 yesterday.
That 73 Arkwright's VNAF had 270, which is very high for them.
And we had 627.
Now, in North Vietnam, we didn't get around to noise because of the weather.
Yeah.
Yeah, what is the, uh, the bill this morning that, uh, for guard walls?
Paralysis.
That's after the test, right?
I mean, yeah.
As far as condition, he's on the plus side.
He's expected to live, right?
Yeah.
He's not losing blood or anything like that, sir.
But the possibility of paralysis is more than 50%, I would say.
I see.
But what is the recovery progress?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
How long before he can dispose at the very best?
Is he going to be out one month, two months?
In other words, does that mean that he just can't go out and campaign and that sort of thing?
Yeah.
See, that's the question that they'll all be asking around here.
Not that we're going to quote your name, but I just want her to know for ourselves, our voice, just know what the hell's going on.
It's bad.
It's bad, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Would you talk to his wife and any of the Wallace family that are there today?
And also, let it run out to the press there.
I called at 8 o'clock this morning, too, as well as I did on that call at midnight last night, you can say, too.
Because I didn't call you, but I called her when he talked to her.
I don't know who you talked to last night.
I called at 11 or 11.30 so that I called.
You can say to the president.
Yeah, tell them at 11 o'clock, press the callback sign.
We've got a report in the call this morning.
He's very pleased to hear that his condition is improving and that he's very much okay.
Oh, how's it going?
Yeah.
Yeah?
They all like it, don't they?
Yeah.
Yes, we're going to send him, you can tell him that he and Pena, I mean, the rush trip not coming off.
They can take off Saturday morning for Key Biscayne next day.
They're there two weeks.
And then he could go out there and send his crutches and fish.
Right.
Yep.
Well, yeah, there's one on the island.
I mean, you've got the surgeon and then check for Bozo, you know, maybe your Bozo as to who the doctor is, if he needs one day to help him with anything.
Because they're, they're, yeah, well, they're, they're good men down there and they all love him.
And so, and we want him to have a nice vacation anyway.
So you, you go ahead and call him this morning and figure, are you out helping?
Where, is it out of his walls?
Still at which hospital?
Does he want to move to Bethesda, Michigan, or what?
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you what to do.
If you could do this, you'd tell Mr. Wallace this morning the president called and offered the president's suite at...
But does he like to have it?
See, I'm not going to use the damn thing.
You understand?
So would you do that?
I think it would be a nice touch.
Yeah, he's doing all right.
Yeah.
Yes, yes, follow me.
You say I heard it.
Fine, fine.
But you be sure the walls know that I've walked through the presidential suite.
And you can let it put out up there.
Okay.
What's happening here is it's just, it causes a, it could be a long re-grooming, but it may be for at least close to that.
I think it's a little bit of both.
I think it's a little bit of both.
I think it's a little bit of both.
You're right.
You get my point.
Yes, sir.
I do.
That's all I understand.
It is a strong country, and they'll deal with you realistically.
They figured, well, by God, I'm a kind of strong man.
We didn't put him on a spot.
We said, all right.
The way we got that speech working was pretty subtle.
Yes, sir.
Our bowling people have been in the People's Republic.
They just got back yesterday.
They reported.
They were there doing all during this thing.
They reported being treated warmer than they could ever have conceived of.
Now, this is just...
I just think we've got these guys, I don't think we're... Well, basically they have to choose.
They either have to start treating us with respect, or they have to start kicking us around if they kick us around.
I think another thing, they're probably thinking, I am nuts, because our American press is probably the best amongst what you think.
I mean, how do they start something?
How do they start something with that?
Don't you think that's true?
I think it's true, but I don't think to them that is nuts.
To them that's tough.
Hell, that's the way they operate.
They didn't, they didn't fool around in Czechoslovakia or any place else.
I'm hungry.
I'm hungry.
No, I think they probably have been wondering.
Of course, we had, we had, we couldn't have done this three years ago.
The local TV last night said that they started
an assessment of popular opinion.
In the first days, the results were overwhelmingly in favor of the action.
This is in the District of Washington of the Negroes.
You mean here in the U.S.?
Yes, in Washington, a local TV station.
And you get it in this area.
Oh, you saw the Harris Bowl.
Yeah, sure.
The bowls were all over.
Two to one are better than some of the other ones.
The main thing is it won't grow if the battle moves.
Keep the heat on and keep them moving.
The POW heroes got good play yesterday.
The POW heroes got great play.
Yeah, great.
Tell me this.
That Saratoga got some play.
I told you.
Well, they got the carrier one, the new carrier out this morning.
It's on the news this morning.
It's on the news.
So we sent a new carrier.
What is it?
What's the name of it?
It's a, it's an ASW carrier.
But it was announced this morning.
I bugged them last night and they got it out.
The scribings have not been announced yet.
We'll get those out as soon as possible.
That's the thing is, everyone's been notified, the orders are out.
It's going to have to get the men notified and ready to move before they go public on it.
It causes family turmoil.
But that's... Be sure to be sure we hit her on the north sometimes.
In other words, we all want to let her say, hang on, we want to screw up inside.
And so the rest of the time, we told them that...
Well, they just shifted the Hanoi strikes last night over to the Bankeri Pass area, which is where a lot of the stuff has been coming through.
Do you think they got some stuff over there?
Yes, sir.
They got PRL.
They got trucks.
They got freed missile sites.
And the missile firing has dropped off.
I think they're going to be on their knees very quickly.
There is no other and no alternative now.
Don't, you see, they are going to come, that, that, and we're going to be strong by ourselves if we breathe.
Well, they came in publicly in Paris, and we're very strong.
All right.
For another, another exception.
They had another exception.
Don't take it, and I'll be free.
Oh, I think that would be the worst thing you could do.
I think the way we got this postured is just right.
It keeps the soviets quiet.
They don't get what they want in the plenary.
Well, the plenary is just no soviet entry.
We'll go over to Salisbury.
And they probably won't be able to arrange it anyhow, but it's prevented us from having a print.
We don't want to have any damn meeting before we go there.
We've got to keep the heat on while we're in the soviets.
Absolutely.
We don't want any soviets here at this point.
They wouldn't negotiate with us, and I thought they had us on the run.
We aren't going to negotiate with them.
We think we've got them on the run, or they may be hurting.
Do you understand?
It's just the other way around.
We want to negotiate before.
Now they want to negotiate, right?
Screw them.
That's the best thing that we can do is to take our time and keep coordinating them and destroy their troops and destroy their supplies and equipment.
put their country in a position where it's going to take them some time to get them back in shape.
I hope you get some power from this.
You know, it's a foley with me because I want that son of a bitch, Tony Lewis, to have his lights cut off and can't use his electric rages with a few other people.
Would you mind doing that for me?
I hope you're looking at it.
I've asked Henry about it every time.
He comes in and lies to me and says, well, you get a woman down in Dong Hall in the sky
The main one is right here.
That's the problem.
The chairman wanted to hit it two days ago.
It's just a bad place to hit it.
We'll hit it as soon as it's over.
I don't know if we're going to knock that power plant out.
We'll see.
They had one north of the city.
They did one at the port.
And they also got their main control center for any aircraft for their whole air defense system.
Boy, they just clambered it into an underground.
It's like our Colorado Springs headquarters.
Yes, sir.
They got the photographs that they just clambered the hell out of it.
Well, that's pretty decisive.
It affects their ability to control the meds and missiles.
Now, Donald, as I said, there should be no minor recession, not before we go to Moscow.
They're bringing Porter back, so we'd be damn sure we have that guy under control.
He's a pretty active cookie.
And he likes to do that.
He's coming back today, and we're going to tell him exactly how to play it between now and the time that summit's over.
So that he better be ready to go out there and then just make statements.
That's right.
We don't want any ad libbing from us.
Because we have made that proposition where they got accepted, you know, constantly.
You know, the fact we gave them all the mail.
We said, do something about you.
I'm going to keep this.
And they said, no.
We can't bargain from that now.
That's our last offer.
Often not the first.
People don't realize.
You understand that at all?
Sure.
That's a last offer, not the first.
Well, that's what we have to be careful of.
We...
We've talked about our POWs and that stuff stays in there.
We've talked about a ceasefire.
Guess we won't take our time right now implementing that.
If they were to ask for it tomorrow, we would drag our feet a little bit.
We'll do anything you want to tell me.
Thank you.
As you know, he put everything on the line on Monday.
He got me an all-sign, a promotion.
It won't work.
I'll hear what you do.
You and then I see me in the day.
Good, sir.
You heard Rodney.
Larry's a good student.
Lock yourself on for a little work.
Well, I understand that sort of thing.
I mean, everybody wants to protect his flags, but when you finally come down to it, nobody who really had to think it through faced the alternative.
That is, maybe this won't work.
But if we didn't do something, we were sure, or virtually sure, that what we were doing wouldn't work.
Right?
When you saw those snakes cawing, like, they were sending something to kill or retrieve the Indian.
The Senate was out barking in their heels.
And the Markham Assault Vietnam was going down.
The snakes probably slept with them.
I think it's the best thing that could have been done.
No matter how you slice it, even if it didn't work, we were better off as a result of having done it.
First of all, this is not a guerrilla war.
This is a man-made war.
It means oil.
Second, there are several different things.
We have cut off Cambodia completely.
We have cut off supplies from sea in North Vietnam completely.
And third, we are concentrating on the rail lines and on P.O.L.
as we've never concentrated before.
And it's a hell of a different thing for these people.
I'm sure it'll work, yes, sir.
You support it?
It's going to work.
You're going to be on the lead.
Why is it we're not losing any people?
No.
So I don't want that kind of attitude.
No.
Well, if there's anything they can get up there, if we could put 18 B-52s, not in the air, on somewhere under 20 or 25.
I think they broke out two, three attacks now in B-52.
They are so critical.
All right.
But after that.
We break the back here in the south, and I got a few of them up north on this.
And there are places that they can be used in these truck parks that are out away, but he really needs them where they are, and I think they're doing the best thing they can do at the moment.
It wouldn't have been done at all unless we had, I think, done all the things we've done.
I mean, I don't think we've been perfect, but Cambodia, I know, was totally essential.
Laos helped.
Don't you agree?
Yes, sir.
It wasn't successful, totally, but it was half successful and helped.
It helped.
The other thing was, but this thing was critical.
This had begun, and it has to be, it has to continue.
And I'm just convinced that this is the right thing in every sense.
It's right in terms of Hanoi and Peking, or Moscow and Peking is right in terms of Hanoi.
did the right thing in South Vietnam.
The L.M.R.L.
has been resuming ever since.
They've been attacking ever since.
I could see from the discussions of Q that he's in an entirely different frame of mind.
And of course, the frame of mind of the commander reflected the frame of mind of his subordinates, and Truman could not.
And even today, Olan Dole, who's up to his ass in alligators,
The man that the North Vietnamese pull out, he said, you're defeated now.
U.S. actions.
Oh, yeah.
He was in trouble.
Yeah, but I mean, the divisions that were whacking him are now whacking North and South.
They are, but...
He's got political problems.
Oh, yeah, right.
How about Laos?
Laos is, the pressure's all off.
They're pushing, pushing forward there, and the enemy's pulling out.
They've pulled that one division out.
The other one's pulled back.
So they're very encouraged.
No, I think, kind of quickly, just...
I think they're going to be at their weakest position come the end of June.
You think?
I think so, too.
I think it's going to come quicker.
Well, I don't know.
We always thought they thought we were over 200.
I'm talking 44, and it didn't.
But this is a different thing.
These people do not have the resources, the Germans, right?
The government has the resources.
And by God, with the pressure we're putting on them, and with the Chinese and the Russians still talking to us, it's probably going to have a psychological effect, don't you think?
I'm not so sure that they're going to ask the Soviets to help them negotiate out of this.
You're not so sure what they are?
I don't think that they might have to do that.
Because they don't want to lose them when they're strong, but when they're weak, this is a different situation.
Well, they want to build up equity for the future.
They'll want to come back and fight again.
They fight again, they'll find a different South Vietnam to the South Vietnamese can learn to fight.
This battle, this thing is helping them to learn.
They have to fight.
They have to know they can do it.
This is from the field.
These people, Cambodia, were really raised here.
That's right.
But I think Laos hurts them.
Laos, they, despite our attempts to say, well, they did well, they thought they had gotten their asses kicked off, didn't they?
There's a few of these little things still on.
They're going to think they didn't do it.
And we are not eight feet tall.
Like I know.
In fact, they're performing very poorly in most of the area.
Now incidentally, you say it's impossible to have any kind of a tank structure.
Is that correct?
Do you want us to have a close look at that?
It is, in a massive sense, because the tanks are spread out on the islands and free-floor.
Let's wait for... Did you read this?
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Battle of Ambury had a hell of a time.
There's no way we can get Abrams to get all of his ass and pull his pants together.
That is his fault.
Why not put them all in one place?
All right.
All right.
What work?
Sir, I think we can, we can, we can get enough attention.
I was over 100.
100 small pants.
Tell Abrams, send him over, send him over.
Tell him he probably hasn't.
Don't have a copy of Churchill 1618.
I mean, the 1618 volume, too.
And tell him, just turn to the appendage, tanks, and read it.
He's read it all before.
He must have forgotten mass, what tanks he's got.
Don't have it spread all over the town.
They're no use to anybody.
They're just sort of nice little pigeons out there.
But why not have a tank attack?
They have tank attacks.
Why don't we have one?
Take the small ones, particularly when they have anything.
You haven't ever tanked it, but you've got to put two or three hundred together.
Well, David, you probably don't do it.
You're stressed about it.
But acting like a goddamn bureaucrat, huh?
Okay, if you put that on the wire, act like you wasn't even the bastard, but act like a bureaucrat, you're just gonna be a genius.
Just quit trying to kiss Larry's ass.
That wasn't clear.
That wasn't clear, though.