Nixon, Kissinger & Haldeman on SALT Treaty and Congressional liaison

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

Did you just call me, Mr. Pellion?

Yeah, come on in.

No, I, uh...

I didn't call you.

Well, I certainly think that's the point, that this very, what Brady calls, this very Christ-like man

They're better than the rest of us.

He's so clean and decent.

Straight arrow in all aspects of politics.

For God's sakes.

You know, I'm just thinking, you know, on our side.

Oh, well, you speak them too well.

And frankly, in the administration.

You know what I mean.

We treat the people with some concern.

That's right.

Oh, that's right.

And there's so much stopping.

There's still something happening.

There's still something about it.

I'm going to go over to this.

We're doing a staff briefing now.

Gregor is campaigning now.

Good.

I think I would go over.

But do you want to go ahead with a couple of those meetings that we talked about?

We could.

There.

What time?

We can start at 10.

Well, Gregor, we'll be back at 10 or 10.30 now.

All right.

10 is fine.

Good afternoon.

Should I bring water in for 10 minutes?

Any time, yeah.

Any time?

The youth, and women, and certainly other leaders that you don't know, types that Malik was putting together, Malik has some policies to serve on, leading out any of this or any other.

I'll go over that.

I just leave those out because I just say that I want to meet people that I haven't met.

Malik.

Let Malik be the sort of the honcho on it.

Like he always used to bring it.

So I just want to bring it.

Get a picture taken.

Take a picture.

The youth one, I'm especially anxious for you to... Oh yeah, this is...

I hear...

Yeah.

Uh, on this business of the, uh, uh, on this business of the, uh, pies, uh, I have something to do sometime.

The house is, of course, I really want to know who the hell threw that out.

We don't know which.

It wasn't in Schultz's office.

It was Peterson, Peterson, right?

Well, as I told you, John, that might be a good trade-off, but it's a trade-off only if we can move before the Congress does something.

The forces can move.

And I hope you can get somebody on it right away.

I just can't believe what I mean is it moves in the worst way.

I think Schultz might not have been there because it moves in a more restrictive way.

It keeps the heights in the United States.

It says you can't export them.

Well, but yeah, in an effort basically to have more hives here and to pull the price down.

But anyway, you've seen what I mean.

Fine, let me know if I've got to go to him.

Yeah, Henry, the other point I wanted to raise with you was that I noticed that you were saying about the reservations on the salt and so forth.

This was very badly handled, Mr. Preston.

Yeah, because we shouldn't have.

Well, as I said, if we were going to do it, we should have at least told him before.

I thought we had to decide.

I don't know.

We should have told Brayden.

Because he called up and Ray's totally came about it.

Well, I... What did they tell him?

I'll tell you what happened.

Jackson called us two weeks ago and said he had an amendment.

I said to him, we've needed a strident vote.

I said, we won't oppose it.

Yeah.

By the time our congressional guys got through with that, they were running around lining up votes, getting Scott to co-sponsor it.

Now we are in a brawl with Fulbright over an amendment which means nothing.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's just a quote on this.

The point is we cannot ever have a reservation for Russians.

Exactly.

The premium says, what are you trying to do, attach a reservation to Brezhnev's signature when he's already orally promised you all these things?

Because there's nothing new in there.

What can we do about it now?

Well, what we're doing now, Mr. President, there's one particularly offensive clause in there to the Russians which says regardless of the agreement, if they do certain things.

Now, we've

I'm working on Jackson to get him to strike that regardless of the agreement.

I've called Travis.

I'll tell you what you can do.

I'll tell you what you can do if you want.

If it becomes necessary, you can bring Jackson down and talk to me and I can give him an absolute assurance.

That's not dangerous.

It's too late.

No, they're voting on it this morning.

I think we can get Jackson to delete the sentence.

If he defeats the sentence, Fulbright will say that's all he wanted.

I worked that out last night.

And then I can tell the Russians.

Senator, I've talked to the president about this.

And he knows all about this.

He says, you know what...

or what his position is.

Frankly, we sort of dropped the ball on our congressional side on this because I thought we'd get Jackson, Buckley, and Goldwater to co-sponsor it, get all the hawks together.

That would have helped us with the Russians because we could have then proved... What the hell's the matter with them?

Well, they didn't mean any harm.

The thing caught on.

Scott asked us, do we oppose it?

We said, no, we don't oppose it.

So he figured, well, what the hell, I'll put my name on it.

He wanted to keep it.

Being just the right one.

He was well-meaning.

He didn't know anything.

All right.

We agreed that my attack would have helped him more with the Russians, whatever, and all that.

But I called Jackson.

And then that bastard, Jerry Smith, of course, went up on the hill and started lobbying against it.

So that's the reason.

Well, it'll work out.

No, it's a tempest on the people.

It's not a match, is it?

Yeah, it kind of is.

That's it.

That's a big one.

The biggest one.

the idea of keeping hides, not allowing any export of hides.

First of all, it doesn't affect the price of shoes.

So that was the piece of work.

He spent about two months making that decision.

I'm sure that this money sends the cattle right up the wall.

So I've got to work on the theme.

Let's turn around on how I can see the cattle.

All the politicians.

for a wrong reason, because they said, well, we did it before, we'll try it again.

And when we say, David, I'm a cryptomastoid, we're going to do that.

And you've done that, so that's just the usual deterrent reaction.

Freeze may not work this time.

It may not have an effect this time.

But anyway, it's certainly going to have the same effect.

But the point is, the question is, do we have anything else to do?

I just don't know.

I know that George Schultz's suggestion

terrorist on the ship.

First that'll raise, that'll raise, that'll raise more hell.

Well, maybe that may even raise more hell.

It'll take the terrorist off, which looks like a permanent thing.

It'll raise more hell with the environment.

It'll put in a freeze on for 90 days.

The freeze, Mr. President, depends entirely on one fact, which you will get total disagreement among your advisors.

The freeze depends on whether food prices, fire prices, are going to decline or if it breaks over the next three months.

If they're going into Kwan, you could put a freeze on them and tell every housewife in America that if the price goes up next week, you call the IRS and tell the guy to tell her that.

And there'll be no bond prices if they're going down.

If they're going up, it's not worth it.

It's just that simple.

The agriculture says they're going down.

Stein asked his wife, he said, yeah, I think prices are on the way down.

I said, well, what would happen if we froze right now?

He said, well, you'd probably lose the benefit of some slight grounds.

And I said, oh.

And we've been okay with it.

But if the consumer knows that it's frozen, and the quarter house stake is $1.99, now it's $1.99.

Or hamburger is $0.65, now it's $0.65.

She knows.

And as a matter of fact, if you give us an address on it this time, I can just look at it and think about it.

Charging the Democrats with normal inflation to save you.

You used to pay $47,000 per buyer.

Now you pay $65,000.

That's the dollar.

He reduces the sum.

He can use some specific details.

Bread.

It's going to do sense of love.

It's going to stay going to do sense of love.

Okay, thanks.

1.8% seasonally adjusted, 2.7% not seasonally adjusted.

Two weeks ago, the stock market was 9.9, 9.10, or just out of their minds.

One thing's for sure, the stock market's got to go over 1,000 sometime.

I mean, it's got to go over.

If a lot of people gain, it won't.

But after the election, if we win, it'll go right through the roof.

Or as I go by, election day.

So what happens?

Because, you know, if you look at those auto sales, you look at those profits.

What's that?

2,000.

I think it's going to take a while.

Sooner or later, sooner or later.

He pulled to the market.

He does the market for kids, the stock market for kids, and he was right on this one.

Absolutely on the platform.

Was he?

Yes, sir.

And he said it would start coming out.

Well, he said it was going to get out.

You know, I personally feel that they say it was because of the motion.

I think it's covered.

Some of them should think about it.

They put that in.

They didn't for a while.

They didn't take it out.

Well, that point is my guess.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

They need to take it out and press it forward.

Yeah.

Senator is going to put out a letter this weekend saying that the market has been rising because people are answering his response to argue about investment stock.

Now, in the affirmative, where it is for four weeks, they've answered immediately.

And the most common, the most frequently given reason is that when allocators look at them more, they're not the first.

So let's get that out.

He's going to do this this weekend.

But beyond that, he says it's true.

He says the little guys...

which create that difference in volume between 12 million and 20 million.

Right.

Now we're buying it.

And I looked at the buying feed.

It's true the buying is coming back down to 17 million.

But on a day when it's only the professionals trading, you're down around 9, 10, 12 million.

But it's a function of people now being convinced that you're going to be like the word that I'm going to hear.

So that's the goal.

So it's at the end of the month.

Same.

I don't know.

It does because it creates some feelings.

It's scary to do it.

I can't help it.

I came down here far up to this paper and found it.

I can't help it.

I looked up last night.

And my wife was just, you know, she was all disturbed.

She watched it.

I told her, I said, my God.

First of all, I wanted to work with God.

The other, just upset the hell out of her.

I mean, it was a reason for people to worry about themselves.

They did.

It was the ping-pong game, apparently.

If you read about it, you know, it had this thing down in the garden.

That person was not a public event that anybody would come in.

So he would have been searched before he got in there.

But he thought it was a public event.

I suppose there's not a bad thing you can do with it, but you're not going to shoot it.

That's all.

I mean, it's about all.

There's nothing to put him away and don't find him.

Criminally insane.

Let him out after four years and kill somebody else.

That's what happened.

That's what normally happens.

I don't think it will in so many cases.

There's no variety in this case.

What's happening?

He was sentenced to, well, he was sentenced to be executed.

He was saved by the Supreme Court.

That's it.

All right.

I don't know.

I don't know what he said.

Oh, did they kill him?

Very well said.

Maybe that's the answer.

It really is.

But it seems to me that we don't have a death penalty.

We certainly haven't until now.

I can't lie in prison without parole.

It's...

I think it's a third, the third time.

Nixon, Kissinger & Haldeman on SALT Treaty and Congressional liaison

AI Summary

Audio

Transcript (AI-generated)

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on August 4, 1972

Cite this conversation