Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 726-015
Date: Friday, May 19, 1972 at 5:25 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Kissinger, Henry A.
Recording device: Oval Office
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/726-015

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

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