Nixon & Kissinger on SALT and Soviet Summit

3:04:23This is an amazing place.
3:04:58I heard a good little missionary word from Stannis, who is not a friend of Stannis.
3:05:07That's what he was referring to.
3:05:08He said that he'd never leave her to keep the offensive weapons out as the deal.
3:05:12Well, well, can't do that.
3:05:13Look, the first impact of this, a schoolgirl, a schooljack, went through the roof because she said he'd bled to die for us on 8 p.m. Now there's nothing about it.
3:05:23He's more worried about the 8 p.m.
3:05:25He doesn't care about the offensive weapons.
3:05:33What it will take is individual talks by me with these guys.
3:05:36I had a scoop in my office.
3:05:37The town mayor, he went through the roof.
3:05:42He said, I'm through with you all.
3:05:43When I was in my office, he said, no, he thinks we screwed him.
3:05:52But I explained to him how it came about.
3:05:54I showed him the military recommendations.
3:05:57So he said, all right, I won't, of course, I won't oppose you, but before I handle the bill again, I wanted to talk to you as well.
3:06:05I had more to witness.
3:06:07Then as I've gotten the board now, but it will take some time.
3:06:16You're quite right, you're the single instructor that profits with the Hawks today.
3:06:21Only because they're so dumb, so that they don't understand what we're doing.
3:06:26Goddamn it, Smith and Rogers don't understand it.
3:06:29But Smith and Rogers don't want to understand it.
3:06:33Uh, Smith on the center, the board on the center.
3:06:36Carson, I understand.
3:06:40Rogers, I understand.
3:06:41Uh, now, with a friend as a president, I'd be very careful about saying something that can be quoted, that we two great powers have a special responsibility, because... Well, we have standardized the Chinese currency.
3:06:50And I wouldn't give them quite as much as you gave the Congress, because the Congress was very careful, but I wouldn't... We had to give them... Oh, no, no, because you could...
3:06:58The Congress, indeed, is to solve itself, you know.
3:07:03I would go a little easier on space, environment, and so forth.
3:07:09I mentioned one or two, say, poor examples.
3:07:12Which is the best one, space or environment?
3:07:16I mentioned one or the other.
3:07:20I mentioned maybe space.
3:07:22Maybe I'd say you all know about the commercial defense.
3:07:25But they all know about commerce.
3:07:26They all know about salt.
3:07:28How about space, those three?
3:07:29Yeah, I mentioned those three.
3:07:33But these guys, they don't think much is going to come out.
3:07:37I thought this meeting was handled masterfully.
3:07:40They know it's going to be tough.
3:07:43But we had at least, see, one thing we've done is we've got to set it all to see if I'm not putting out.
3:07:53Well, you should have.
3:07:59On the other hand, did you, what was it that you had in your meeting that wasn't intentional?
3:08:05You don't think there's any more you can do before you leave?
3:08:10I've got to work through the evening.
3:08:13I've got to work with Price on his speech.
3:08:16The total for the first evening is coming along in pretty good shape.
3:08:20But really, I'm beginning to think more and more that it's
3:08:24These big shot writers aren't worth it.
3:08:26Andrews is, you know, it's just too much struggle with Sapphire.
3:08:29He's got too many ideas of his own.
3:08:33That's right.
3:08:34You were absolutely right.
3:08:35It's just...
3:08:36Prior to it, with Andrews, he senses what you want and writes it.
3:08:39That's right.
3:08:39Sapphire comes in with something that's totally different from what you ever came up with.
3:08:44That's right, and then he gets committed to it, and then you finally change it after 15 minutes of arguing, but it's terribly time-consuming.
3:08:53Well, we'll get it out of the way, and then from there on, on the big stage.
3:08:59Well, Grice has done a pretty good job.
3:09:01Grice has done a great job.
3:09:03But that should be one that has a sort of a good feel to it.
3:09:06Yeah, that has a good feel to it.
3:09:08Toast, I don't know.
3:09:09I think it's coming along.
3:09:10It's coming along fine.
3:09:12But I think, except for being too specific about the various areas, I think you could...
3:09:20It would stay solved.
3:09:24I'd say we're hopeful that that's solved, because actually...
3:09:26I'll say there's an awful lot still left to be worked out.
3:09:28Exactly.
3:09:29And there's some in the commercial side...
3:09:34But actually the way it stands now, unintentionally, you will have to break some deadlocks in Moscow and so on.
3:09:42We certainly are going to have, but we just can't have a situation of coming back and having the hogs make the police screw the country.
3:09:51Well, I don't know.
3:09:52Maybe we don't want to deal.
3:09:56Now, Mr. President, I really think the one where we screwed ourselves is on the ABN, because we just gave over a period of years, because there's in fact too much, but I told Coop, God damn it.
3:10:10That was the problem.
3:10:12Every year we had a bigger fight in the Senate.
3:10:17So that part of it is...
3:10:23I think the ABM is going to give more heartburn.
3:10:27The offensive one that is explained, John Power is a board now.
3:10:32I talked to him.
3:10:34And it is a board that's... You emphasized, of course, we still got murdered.
3:10:40We still got bones.
3:10:41They're giving up the old ICBMs.
3:10:44We still got our aircraft.
3:10:46That's a thing to do.
3:10:47The president will go through a couple of days, in my judgment, very similar to what we did in...
3:10:53in, uh, in the China community.
3:10:56Can't ever pull it out, but it doesn't hurt us to have a little streaming into the .
3:10:59Yeah, I don't know.
3:11:00I don't want, though, having taken a strong stand in Vietnam, to, to throw it all, piss it all down, simply by, uh... And the only problem is how we're trying to do the selling back here.
3:11:16When you're there.
3:11:18When I'm there.
3:11:33Yeah.
3:11:33You can't come back to the assault.
3:11:34Because I'll be working on the communication.
3:11:36Of course, I don't agree with school on ABM.
3:11:38We haven't got it out of hand.
3:11:39We could do more on it.
3:11:40We could get in more ABM sites if we're flying.
3:11:41And we still are keeping the system.
3:12:04Right.
3:12:04Right.
3:12:04I think it's a good treaty, Mr. President.
3:12:06You also make a very widespread claim, so let's not...
3:12:11Now, you have idiots like Dominic who went out like a rocket, but he's so dumb that it's almost impossible.
3:12:21He said you won't get any money out of Congress if you make any sort of agreement, because, as I said, therefore, when we freeze ourselves, we ruin ourselves.
3:12:29But that has nothing to do with the specific provisions, that's just...
3:12:34Among the ones there, the argument they were making, that Sparkley and Dominic were making was, once you break, they all agreed that it's a good deal if we are pushing out.
3:12:49What they were, yeah, but what they were saying was,
3:12:54Congress was more money for us.
3:12:56Well, that's right.
3:13:00So I think we are in a tolerable space about it.
3:13:04The alternative was not to have the solidarity.
3:13:12There was no other alternative.
3:13:15If you didn't have the submarines in there, you wouldn't face the other argument that they're continuing to build nine a year.
3:13:22The one the chiefs were making, at the end of the breeze, they had 90.
3:13:26This is why the chiefs are delighted with it, and they will be down there arguing for it, and Mortar supported us very strongly down there.
3:13:47Okay, I think that's about it.
3:14:13And we, we will carry on still.

Nixon & Kissinger on SALT and Soviet Summit

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Also recorded on May 19, 1972

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