Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 783-018
Date: Tuesday, September 19, 1972 at 12:22 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Bull, Stephen B.; Kissinger, Henry A.
Recording device: Oval Office
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/783-018

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 Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:20] That's probably a crazy deal.
[0:23] I don't know what those
[0:55] Soviet Union.
[0:56] They will never do it.
[0:56] I know these people.
[0:58] There are so many people.
[1:00] You know what I mean?
[1:01] Mr. President, after all, these bank and debt people aren't letting the heartache out.
[1:07] If we're not making it a foreign policy issue, it's true we don't have to be hard on this country.
[1:16] But it cannot be the key aspect of American foreign policy.
[1:20] It isn't quite five billion right away, but it will be over soon.
[1:25] But it will be over a period of years.
[1:29] Well, just so that we know, you will see.
[1:33] Oh, no, the deal.
[1:34] You will see Rubino in the morning.
[1:36] We may have to brutalize the bureaucracy because State is involved in these negotiations, and I've got it set up now that it goes back into channel.
[1:45] But every deal is made.
[1:46] Sure.
[2:02] One thing I forgot to tell you, Brezhnev, there is a communist party meeting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Soviet Union.
[2:18] I think November 1st or 2nd, and he's going to give a major speech in which he mentions this trade deal, which is one of the great achievements of detente.
[2:28] So we've got to have it.
[2:32] The other thing I was going to mention is that in scanning the news magazines in the summer this morning, I know that the novels seem to be just pretty pathetic.
[3:18] I saw CBS yesterday, or this morning, I guess it was, or yesterday morning.
[3:24] And it made it sound as if it was a defeat.
[3:26] They said, well, it will take a long time for them to reach the demilitarized zone.
[3:30] They don't want to reach the demilitarized zone.
[3:32] They're going to stop about where they are.
[3:37] And...
[3:37] The administration hasn't worked.
[3:41] They've got to prove that they were right.
[3:44] But actually, it's...
[3:46] It wasn't really quite something.
[3:47] They thought it was
[3:54] and they captured 983 arms.
[3:57] Now, when you capture that many arms, that means it's a row that these guys just ran and left their weapons behind.
[4:06] And there were about three or four divisions in there, and they are broken.
[4:11] I think it is a substantial victory.
[4:13] I had the impression you were a cadet.
[4:18] I was looking at the warden, and he said he's going to open the area and the dikes again.
[4:24] Yeah, but that doesn't bother you?
[4:26] No, because that we have killed now, because if the dikes had been hit, Mr. President, there would have been floods.
[4:33] It is a flood period.
[4:35] And we can just... She just figured that their problem is that they just don't know what the hell to do with the war issues.
[4:43] They are hardly raising the war issues.
[4:45] They don't know what to do with it.
[4:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[4:48] So he's having to go into his colleagues and raise him again and so forth.
[4:51] Boy, they're really one kind.
[5:00] Then on the 12th, you know, next week, they're going to be confused again when we announce a two-day meeting with the North Vietnamese.
[5:10] I suppose our problem there is the one that, I mean, the press, of course, is going to have a difficult thing here.
[5:19] They always try to sort of blow it over the back.
[5:24] No progress is recorded.
[5:26] But God damn it, if the damn fools ever had
[5:39] I had a lot of press at his house yesterday, and I said, now, you ask yourselves, what do you suppose happens when I meet with Lee Duck Thomas?
[5:50] Just ask yourself this question.
[5:51] Now, what is it that I'm, why am I not saying anything?
[5:57] Good.
[5:57] Well, they said, you know.
[5:59] Why don't you tell us?
[6:01] On the field, I'll give you.
[6:11] Well, what we've done is we have... Well, I don't... Of course, you can't...
[6:20] But they can't be sure what those three guys are going to...
[6:22] I mean, Hanoi can't be sure what these three guys are going to say once they actually get back here.
[6:28] But if they start exploiting it, if they start exploiting it, I think we should start streaming immediately.
[6:46] It's a gross interference in American domestic politics.
[6:49] You made that point.
[6:50] I trust you make it again.
[6:52] I also think the fact they're sending them through Copenhagen and Sweden is just inexcusable.
[6:57] Well, the reason is because I blocked them sending them through Moscow.
[7:15] I don't think it's an amount that I know initially.
[7:20] Yeah.
[7:20] Doesn't it sometimes disturb you, Henry?
[7:23] Well, I'm just asking if it disturbs you.
[7:25] I was having my evening video out yesterday.
[7:31] You know, his little fallout, you know, was so mesmerized by what we were accomplishing foreign policies.
[7:38] He recalls the conversation I had.
[8:01] We'd like to cool off the committees.
[8:04] We'd like to reestablish our prestige and so forth.
[8:09] And we'd like to have some sort of a dialogue with the PRC.
[8:13] I said, oh, yes.
[8:13] He said, you've done it all.
[8:19] Well, that is quite something.
[8:47] I said, I've had no support from all of their sort of golfers and anything like this.
[8:55] That's right.
[8:56] You know, it is true.
[8:56] They are going to be told, and I'm not going to let them get away with this.
[8:58] They have been wrong, and they know it.
[9:01] And I think that's one thing that worries me about this election.
[9:04] You realize it is, as we said, a public sign of the war.
[9:11] They are also, they know it's a public sign on the media.
[9:15] They are friends with Mr. President.
[9:17] They know you owe them nothing when you come back.
[9:20] And I'll never forget.
[9:21] Now, if they had an ounce of honesty, the New York Times and Washington Post should have voted for McGovern.
[9:27] Yes, sir.
[9:28] Because of Europe.
[9:29] Because of foreign policy.
[9:30] Yes, sir.
[9:31] Leave out everything else.
[9:32] Leave out Japan.
[9:33] No, sir.
[9:34] But today, the New York Times has an editorial saying, Shays was sent to Europe to reassure the European allies and
[9:55] who isn't appalled by change.
[9:59] And this is not a close case.
[10:00] This isn't a case like, say, you and Kennedy, where they were divided and might even have leaned a little bit towards Kennedy, although even then they would have preferred a Republican.
[10:12] But still, that was a relative experience.
[10:16] That was a relative experience.
[10:34] When that was so disgraceful, Mr. President, when Teddy tells me that in talk of shades, the Chatham House was one of the most disgraceful things that would happen on British soil, when a British left-wing socializer...
[10:48] The Chatham House.
[10:50] The Chatham House is their council of foreign relations.
[10:52] Oh, it is?
[10:52] Yes.
[10:52] You've been there?
[10:54] Yes.
[10:55] I've heard of it.
[10:57] It was clear that in their case, the council...
[11:11] that he was embarrassed for America to have to listen to Shakespeare.
[11:15] He said he was stupid, insensitive, and so on and so forth.
[11:22] And he said that the New York Times changed themselves.
[11:25] That they can pick up if they wanted to.
[11:29] What the man says about climate.
[11:31] I mean, he has not yet made any statement of foreign policy which shows this life is confident.
[11:37] Or in this connection, what he has written me in other
[11:56] do it and double-talk it in a way that he'll never know anything.
[12:00] All right.
[12:01] Don't you ever see him?
[12:02] I think it'd be a problem.
[12:03] He's talking himself right out of court.
[12:06] I think I... Do you ever see him under any circumstances, no matter what happens?
[12:10] I wouldn't be surprised if he resurrected the proposal to be preached on me, but I think we should turn it down.
[12:16] It's too late now.
[12:17] Our schedule's full.
[12:18] It's not too late, not too far.
[12:21] And also, there have been two parties.
[12:22] All right.
[12:23] I guess we've got to give it to him now.
[12:26] But we can handle one case.
[12:30] Why do you think he wants it?
[12:33] Well, at least to remove the issue that they're not taking pretty good.
[12:41] Well, Mr. President, I think
[12:55] foreign policy on the Soviet Union.
[12:57] We can't go further.
[12:58] We can't go that far.
[13:00] So we say nothing and don't pay any attention to what we say about Israel.
[13:04] That is a combination of cynicism, naivety, and incompetence.
[13:10] That's not to be believed.
[13:12] And if Dobrynin thought there was the slightest chance that he should get elected, or if he thought there was the slightest chance that he might have to
[13:31] I'm going to New York today to see the Chinese because I want to give them my version of what I said in Moscow before the Russians do it.
[14:07] When do you go?
[14:08] You're going to Paris again?
[14:10] Monday.
[14:11] And then I'll meet with him next week.
[14:17] Oh yeah, this is the 17th.
[14:19] So we'll be going.
[14:21] I'm going this 25th.
[14:23] This is tonight.
[14:24] I'm meeting with him a week from today.
[14:28] So you're giving your IMF speech on Monday.
[14:32] I didn't want to...
[14:36] But what we'll do is announce in the morning that I'm meeting with them, and then around 2 in the afternoon announce that we've extended the conversations one day and that I'll be returning the next day.
[14:56] 2 in the afternoon, 7 p.m., that is time.
[15:05] even if we're much closer than we think it is we should still play
[15:46] Actually, the thing is at a point now, Mr. President, that if they give up their demand for the imposed coalition government, we'll settle it in a week.
[15:54] I mean, all other issues are settled.
[16:04] So through this torturous process, there are ten points.
[16:07] Nine are settled.
[16:08] Of course, the most important is not settled.
[16:12] But if...
[16:27] And we put the heat on him.
[16:29] I'm going to tell him that the president is getting married this year, and this one side of the relationship.
[16:35] I go to Russia, I'm faced with first his attack on Syria, and now then I come back to Lebanon.
[16:53] That's true.
[16:54] And he knows damn well that it was you and my office that kept safe from Sam Keating.
[17:01] Well, it's all the way true.
[17:04] And what he also knows, though, is that he's going to deal with us later.
[17:09] That's true.
[17:09] He knows there isn't any damn way that they want to play if they make this issue a difficult one.
[17:28] American Jewish community is a bunch of self-serving bastards.
[17:33] Yeah, they want to teach you.
[17:35] They want to teach you.
[17:37] You also may have this in it.
[17:39] You may have some in the American Jewish community who are somewhat on the left, on the government line, they're trying to embarrass us in this thing.
[17:49] You take a man like Max Fischer.
[18:00] with Jewish contributors.
[18:03] It was totally unnecessary.
[18:07] Max has the same insensitivity.
[18:14] I don't act as a Jew in this position.
[18:15] I know that.
[18:16] It's done.
[18:41] right on the ground.
[18:43] You can talk to Martin extremely frankly and so forth.
[18:48] You know the elders problem.
[18:49] It's just a very personal problem.
[18:51] The man's coming to the party.
[18:54] Oh, is it?
[18:55] Oh, yes.
[18:55] He's been drunk.
[18:56] He's been caught out of the woman.
[18:58] He smashed up a car and cursed out a policeman.
[19:00] Jesus Christ, he's just coming to the party and saying he can't take the pressure.
[19:06] And so he's not.
[19:07] If he can't take the pressure, then that
[19:22] Well, you know, that one's big now, Henry, but when you come back to it, think of what we went through on the same day you had a kid of interest.
[19:36] Think what we went through on God knows what we went through.
[19:41] Think what we went through on America.
[19:44] Love, love, love.
[19:55] I agree with you.
[19:55] I don't think Rabin and his group are behind the standards.
[20:01] I think that they...
[20:25] I don't know whether you can then talk to Javits or not.
[20:30] I will.
[20:30] I just want to make sure my readers...
[20:32] I get it.
[20:33] I'll talk to Javits, but I'll talk to them individually.
[20:36] I get your point.
[20:39] Percy has offered his assistance, but that son of a bitch...