Nixon, Haldeman & Kissinger on Soviet Summit and Vietnam War

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Thank you.

Well, you had mentioned, too, you wanted to touch base with John before you go and cover a couple things.

The other thing is that Shultz very much wants to spend a few minutes with you, with John and me there, to make sure you go review his plan of attack and what he's doing while you're gone.

I'll let you know.

Thank you.

the wine was up to him, follow the common policies, and that's that.

But to me, the people that he wants to come in, he's still out there getting on with them.

He's got to, as he's gotten into it and gone over several times, he just wants to be sure he's doing it the way he wanted to do it.

So just, that's about it, Bob.

I just can't do that much more than that.

Why don't we run those in now, though, and get them over with, and then you don't have to do it.

Well, they need to have five minutes.

How about that?

10 minutes?

OK.

But just, I mean, well, get early when it first covered his thing, and then add Schultz 15 minutes later or something.

Let it go to that.

Oh, all right.

All right.

John.

John 12, George 12, 15.

John 12, 15, George 12, 30.

Just get John.

And now I'm about 12, 12.

George told me about the L and stuff.

All right, fine, fine.

You can't come now.

I've got a few little, about three more books to read.

You see, Harry, I've got the last two books.

I know.

Well, that's why I read the goddamn things this afternoon.

We've got to get them out of the way.

Yeah, I know about that.

Right.

Because your last year, I had no time for an extended conversation.

I couldn't get one.

Dan, who he has as his partner.

Yeah.

And it's up to him.

Yeah.

He said three times five.

Yeah.

Mr. President, Bob McCluskey called earlier and the Secretary of State is now calling.

Bob wants the Secretary to go down to his 1230 briefing to generally just give a tone about the...

That's why I wanted to race it with him.

That's right.

No, the president's going to see the compress at 5 o'clock.

I'm not going to have him do this.

I'm not going to hear a goddamn light that's going to do that.

Do you see any good in him?

All it'll do is to just drive everybody.

He'll screw it up.

Well, I haven't.

I didn't want to blow that side of the building off yet this morning, but if... Just one...

What does he want to do?

Brief on the summit?

Well, what he doesn't know is he has to first think about what's wrong.

Actually, what McCloskey said in the briefing paper, talking points for him to use, what he would do is kind of brush over likely where the president's going there, not for atmospheric, but for, as he said, for results.

We've had ongoing, by now, discussions.

Some are made for agreement, some are not.

multilateral things.

We would not negotiate with the Soviet Union.

We would discuss these things.

You know, that would heighten it up, but not get into the... That's my purpose.

all the stuff i don't think he's going to do it again so we have to do it as the kiss's ass is that the problem well one thing well we have the fact that if you want to have history do a briefing in austria sunday

Which, personally, is productive.

In this case, do you want to agree?

Well, not on details, but just on general broad school things where people go in with a fix on it and put everything in context.

It would be more of a building it up too much and so forth.

I haven't had that in my mind a lot of days.

I don't want to build it up too much, and Rogers doesn't understand this.

He doesn't understand what the hell is going on in this thing.

That's all there is to it.

The only element of crisis suggesting this is this being pushed from the left.

No, it is not.

That's why I wanted to raise it with you, sir, because McCloskey called me.

He said that he said, well, Bob called me.

He said, does he know I'm going to do the press this afternoon?

I mentioned that to McCloskey.

It's all on the record.

Does he know that?

Well, I mentioned that you were going to do this, and I said, don't let the secretary move until I get back to him.

That's why the secretary is calling me now.

So, all right, fine.

I see you've got a problem, sir.

Just say, look, I told him I'm meeting with Erdogan, and show us, and come on.

He said, I told him he was coming.

I told him he was coming.

You tell him that you haven't thought to me, you're not going to make the, you know, you can't decide where he goes.

He'll go down and do it.

He'll go down and do it if I don't say that you're doing this at 5.30 in the morning.

Well, then I'm going to do it at 5.30, period.

In other words, the point is we don't want to use any of that.

I think you've got to, the only argument, there's no, nothing to be made of this out of envy or something.

What the hell else does he want?

I think the problem with that is that Bill does it now.

And the story on the news tonight is Rodgers, whatever Rodgers does, which

You won't be on the news tonight, everyone.

President won't let up.

I don't care.

That's the point of this now.

The point is I don't want him to be on the news tonight.

God damn him.

President will be on the news tonight visiting Wallace.

He's got to get straightened up here.

That's all.

I think the idea that, well, if he doesn't then Henry, screw him.

If Henry wants to breathe, he'll breathe in Austria.

That's no problem.

You know, why would he have to say, well, Henry can't unless Rodgers did?

Bullshit.

Rodgers is not running the summit.

It covers a lot of things far beyond the State Department.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that's the other problem.

If Rodgers reads them, why doesn't Peterson and Butts and Rodgers go away?

He's going .

What is he, what is he, what's he, have you told him that he's going to be in the two plenary sessions, that he will see Greshner at the plenary session?

I'm not bothering him.

I mean the private meeting with Greshner, with Rogers.

Oh, God, that , that sort of thing.

It's a waste of time.

Why should he?

I don't see the .

That's all right.

I couldn't recruit you more.

He's going over there.

He's going to be

He was watching to see how it came out.

That's right.

And when it came out fine, he was willing to go out.

And did it right when it went out.

Yeah.

He thought it was honest.

Yeah.

He should not put that, I just feel, I'm sure he's, I'm inclined to, but his tone is so important.

I didn't think that's right.

I just had to raise one, but, but, uh, Rogers, uh, Husky first of all, now Rogers is, is calling, and it says that he wants to go down at 1230 and talk to the president on what we expected to sign, uh, and, uh,

Now here's the argument that Bob, now wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Here's the argument that Bob makes for me.

He says, well, unless we do that, then Robert will object to Henry leaving a background for his son, Salzer.

Both of them, I do.

The point is, I'm going to talk to the press at 5.30 about the background for the summit, and I can't answer to it.

Why does he want to do it?

What earthly reason could we get out of this?

The only thing that's funny is that if you were to recommend it, that's not the same thing.

He wants to be able to say, the state ran the Moscow summit.

You have the Marvin Kell, the story today, saying the White House was gloomy about the summit.

The state always said the summit would go on and would be a great success.

It's not an example of the White House not listening to the state.

I'll say that.

In the name of Christ and our poor little assholes, can anybody take it on?

No, you can't.

But you can take things on.

That's a goddamn lie.

It's a total lie.

Well, the State Department, Bill Rogers, sat in the NSCB store and put it out.

This has got to be done.

Rogers in the NSCB said it was a safe passage.

He said it was a safe passage.

He's not to be invited to that day.

Is that clear?

Are we inviting everybody, or is he not?

Well, we've invited the staff people, but not the staff.

Well, don't invite him.

It's just, this is for the purpose of the press.

Would you agree with me?

Oh, yeah.

I see no reason to rob him.

I'd be glad to stay away if that doesn't work.

No.

I said we invited the staff.

We dropped that.

We told them to come, but we don't have to.

I'm not so sure you want them.

Don't have the Shafts.

And that way, the Rockers can't spend their money to be there.

And if you're going to rock them, nobody's going to come.

Otherwise, they have to stay out.

But I'm going to have them there.

Well, have Henry not come.

No, Henry wasn't coming.

But have the Sapphires and the Clines and the Bicep and so forth.

Well, that sort of thing.

It's equal to work with the press, aren't we?

That's a good idea.

Get him out of the way, though.

I'm going to.

And say, well, the president's going on at 530.

And he's learning to cover.

He's done a lot of thinking about this.

And he wants to cover it.

And then I don't think you should even worry about the relationship that you build in your background.

It's all certain.

Especially from now on, we're not worried about anything but what the hell helps us.

And that's it.

And I'm tired of this bullshit coming in here all the time.

Jesus Christ, I've had a hard time.

about, uh, the fact that, you know, he was a Hawkeye, and, well, he was limiting our targets too much, obviously, and he was, uh, really, uh, that's being put out, and he said, well, why are they putting it out?

Because the fact is, Mr. President, that we are limiting them, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that,

Well, let me say this.

We have given them everything, and they told Andrew.

And why didn't the little asshole get into this?

Because he's our friend.

That's the same guy.

Is that layered again?

All right.

I want the little asshole called on the phone.

You call him on the phone and say the president was shot.

The President is very disappointed in the performance of our air.

I want you to say that.

Do you understand?

I am very disappointed that they haven't had the 4,000-foot season when Israeli planes would go using vantage and do the 1,000 feet.

I am very disappointed in their efforts, and I want them to get off their asses and do what they're supposed to do.

I read the I read last night the whole salt thing and I think that's

You know, you're always thinking of the majority of the same types.

They would suck around anybody.

But you understand the Hawks think we're already too weak.

And now they think they're going to freeze America into the position of inferiority.

That is the problem.

But the point that we can show them, I know, but we can show them that we are going to be inferior, more inferior if we didn't have this.

That's an awful weak case.

You see, freezing them is one thing.

But if we're going to be more inferior to them,

And I know that on this thing, I have to act better because of Christ as Christ for his own.

Because that's his thinking anyway.

What in the name of Christ more could we be doing in order to get out of this?

We've ordered the leaflets, we've ordered the bomb, we've ordered the mine, we've ordered everything else.

Now what in the name of God is the trouble in me?

We better get somebody over here and probably have to run an impact spot.

This has been a total rush-up.

The reason is that we just haven't had, I don't mean at all, I don't mean at all, but I mean in terms of what we're doing, in terms of our propaganda offensive.

It's a ban for Washington.

Instead of telling us to go, I think maybe we've got to let it go now.

I'm so sick of that.

It's not a piece of .

He said he's already announced it.

He said he can't call it off now.

I told him to come this afternoon.

And he said, well, he'll stay away for the summer thing.

And he said, you haven't been encouraged to do it to take on Clifford.

I've been here.

I cannot be interrupted.

The thing to do is to say that as far as some of the concerned plans are going forward, the president is going to be speaking to the

God damn it, that's what he should do.

He doesn't know anything about it.

He doesn't know what's going to happen.

It's not going to be his life's idea.

Yeah, what's he want to do about it?

He still wants us on the phone.

That's all.

to do is try to put out all the agreements that are on the ground.

The president is going to cover the south at 9 to 5.30 and he's going to say he's going to cover that side.

Also, he's just hard on Bob.

I think it's better to call him.

It's better to call him.

And he shouldn't be concerned that everything...

You call him now, and then I'll call him in about 10 minutes.

Yeah.

And back up saying, you know, it's just terribly important that he doesn't get into the sermon at all.

Yeah.

Okay.

I have one thing that's been made out of it.

It's been sabotaged for three weeks now.

However, I think it would be a mistake just before you go to Moscow to drop legalists over Hanoi when we promised the Russians we would do nothing new.

At that moment, I thought it was really going to be concerning.

Well, it's a state now got a whole program

I thought when I said nothing new, we were already doing everything we could do.

I'm so far behind.

Where the hell is that last book?

I haven't done it yet.

I've already told him on the phone, but maybe he's got to be told right now.

So there isn't a hell of a lot of time, because it's other stuff that's got to come.

We can try to leave this in the southern part of Florida, we have not.

But a lot of this stuff, they want to do this.

We have got to do something about that story.

Sign the law.

Yeah.

I think we have to sign it.

It costs a lot of money.

900 million a year for the next five years.

Jesus Christ.

A lot of us got pretty old, you know, but this goes on forever.

This just goes on and on.

And it blankets in brothers and sisters and all that.

The whole point here is this.

If you veto it, we can, yeah, and Bob Bird suggested that there's some things we can do administratively.

But the point is that if you veto the damage, we take a lot of political damage.

We probably lose ours more.

We take damage in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

You might have a part to go in Ohio.

Yes, we sustain it in the House narrowly.

But then, as Bert says, I understand.

As Bert says, hell, go ahead, veto it, be sustained.

When the new Congress comes back, he says, we're just going to pass it over again.

He said that nobody voted against it in the Senate.

Only 120 guys voted against it in the House.

And so he said, if you're really doing this on a budget basis, I think we better do it in terms of basically

That's just one damn thing.

That's the angle.

I have the floor.

Okay, John.

Bert started out.

He said it's a lousy bill.

He said, I'm for the president.

I want him to be reelected.

And he said, I'm just telling you, it's going to hurt him.

It's not just going to hurt him in the western way.

I don't want you to say a word to anybody right out in Cedars.

We should put it out and I think we should do it Saturday for Sundays.

And also, you need to call our agents, right?

We talked to him this morning.

Yes.

He says he's sunk if you veto it.

He says he loses.

And Burke confirms that.

I read earlier that the FBI would work with great interest to come.

This fellow is obviously a little off his rocker, yeah.

But I'm inclined to think he may not have been a lawless man.

He wasn't.

Now, there's something you don't have, and that is a handwritten diary.

It's very hard to read.

When you get back from Russia, I haven't had it transcribed so you can read it.

The guy's smart as hell.

And he didn't really care whether he shot Wallace or McGovern or who the hell he shot.

And he was just out for two things.

He wanted to be immortal, and he wanted to make some money on his salary.

It's just like that.

You've got to retire me.

We've got to.

Was it his idea that he was a Wallace supporter and all that?

I think he just wore the buttons.

Yeah, he had a McGovern button.

Huh?

He had a McGovern button.

He was going to wear that if he got into a McGovern crowd.

I had to do a talk with the old governor this morning.

It's good.

He's a nice man.

Does he realize how bad off he is?

Yeah.

Real quickly, a couple of other things.

Well, I went out on a brief this morning on busing.

I got your memo about the constitutional amendment.

So I said, we can't take the conference report.

It's either fast, fair, or final.

The Congress ought to be able to act within six to eight weeks on this.

If they don't, then we have to take another look at our whole card.

I didn't say it in that ball of terms.

Somebody said, yeah, they said, would the president rather have no legislation than this legislation?

And I said, that isn't the question.

There's still plenty of time in this Congress to adopt the president's legislation, and it ought to be done within six or eight weeks.

And you made clear this is an inadequate piece of legislation.

Very, very clear.

Let me say this.

John, whether we like it or not, and scan the surveys and show this.

And as much as I respect your whole domestic council crowd and all that,

Honesty and integrity.

They don't want their asses first based on politics.

In terms of cutting issues, this is a bus service, and it has to do with, and frankly, we cannot force this country.

It's wrong.

We cannot force it.

I just want you to put down the words, freedom of choice.

I'm the resurrection, and I'm going to use it.

That's going to be our thing.

Freedom of choice in housing.

Freedom of choice for schools.

What's wrong with the code word?

So I thought that's before, not the freedom of choice that had been dispersed, avoiding the end of the dual school system, but freedom of choice.

Would you want me to float that?

Yes.

All right.

I'm going to go up there to Michigan and drive in a week or two.

The president believes that a person should be free to move to any neighborhood that he wants to, free to go to any school that he wants to, but not forced to do anything.

That's America.

Freedom of choice.

Correct.

Let me get that out and around.

— 1 min 14 s with no transcribed speech —

Now, the New York Times bill for the same conference report came out with their lead editorial today and played with the conference report.

What do I do with the conference?

Just veto it?

No, no, no.

You can sign the damn bill.

All I've said, they asked me, would you veto it?

And I said, no.

It's so people that it falls so far short.

Well, I want to veto it.

This is a totally inadequate answer to the problem.

Yep.

It's inadequate.

We put them on notice today that this was no substitute for busting legislation.

That's the line we're going to try and press.

Welfare reform.

Richardson is nearly out of control.

He is furious at me.

And he's written you a memo which says, in effect, he wants to compromise with Ribicote.

Now what I'm going to do is before you leave, we're not going to talk.

That's right.

Well, see, that's the point.

And I sent a memo around, again, at Hudson for that effect.

Now what I'm going to have to do is draw something for you to RN back to him and apply to him.

No, no, just philosophy, just ideology.

H.R.

1, as far as you go, period.

That's it.

And so I'll have that in for your signature.

I don't know what he'll do.

I think he'd be a good soldier.

But now, George is going to hit you on the question of whether his confirmation should not precede Kleine's.

What's the matter with him?

Is he loyal?

And it's through Schultz.

Yeah.

But he thinks that it is supposed to be.

No.

Under absolutely no circumstances.

Just be prepared for it.

No.

We've got pressure on him up there as long as his is hanging fire.

So, uh, the, the... Why would Colin and Chris be so selfish?

Well, I don't think it's really selfish.

I think he thinks that somebody made a mistake and that you didn't know about it.

And, uh, so I think all you need to say is if that was your signal to Clark that, uh, you wanted him taken in that order.

And we're going to gear it up so that if the confirmation comes through, why you're gone.

Clyde East is immediately sworn in just by a court of court, not a Republican or somebody.

And I'm going to swear to Schultz or Clyde East either one.

I think that's one.

Why should I tie into this thing?

I mean, Schultz come down and I said the nice thing about him.

Why do I go over there?

Two other small, well, not small, but quick.

Revenue sharing.

Connolly and I both feel that if the House passes revenue sharing on Thursday, there should be no elaborate celebration.

No, sir.

Just a statement saying, for the one on the floor, something very low key and perfunctory.

And then I just want to let you know that on MIT, that cap has come up with a formula that does the job you want to do with a minimum amount of political damage.

And so I've told him in your name to go ahead.

Well, in the way that it's done, I mean, the money dries up, but we don't make a big show of it.

We don't let him pin it on you as retribution.

And what we do is we quietly have the word to the agency that those contracts are just not to be renewed.

Yeah.

The other thing to do would be to send a memo around and draw the fire.

Yep.

Do it.

Yep.

But don't get caught.

Okay.

Well, that's where I thought you were.

Well, I still got them on us.

Okay.

Well, actually, the guy was in the state with the toughest gun control law in the country.

The thing that the damn gun control law does is it disarms the citizen.

Yep, his arms are seven.

He's a criminal.

Sure.

And that's the problem today.

Nobody's come up with a good one.

What we've done is just say, gee, we think it's one of them.

The Senate's going to come up with this gun control bill.

If they come up with a good one, we're going to be all for it.

That's been our position.

So far, nobody's brought us a good one.

By and for us, it's going to be working.

that we might be, might be getting in a position, I'm saying, that we, uh, we, we, uh, that we, we would urge the Senate to measure some of this matter.

Oh, sir.

We favor it in principle, and we'll look forward to whatever they can put out.

Yes, sir.

You bet.

We've already got the press office position.

Well, the press office is perfect.

In a position, I wonder, you shouldn't, uh, I'll, I'll say something about it tomorrow.

I'm going to make a speech at Philadelphia, and I'll play with that.

You can say that it should be, uh,

Okay, I'll talk about it up there.

See if we can get a little link up for Sonny.

Okay, sir, have a good trip.

Let us know what you're doing.

I'll see you later.

that would be a very bad tactic.

Nixon, Haldeman & Kissinger on Soviet Summit and Vietnam War

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Also recorded on May 19, 1972

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Nixon, Haldeman & Kissinger on Soviet Summit and Vietnam War

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on May 19, 1972

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Cite this conversation