Conversation 784-007

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

I read the paper that Sir Arthur Cade made on what the meaning of the treaty is.

which, in effect, in black and white, I mean, they said, they got the point.

Of course, I said, of course, you know, we had no immediate plans to attack India, if we laughed, if we understood it.

So, uh, we already cooperated with the North, especially with the United States.

It wasn't put on the U.N. agenda by the General Committee.

And so while they have the support putting it on, they're not fighting hard.

And they said they are willing to make a deal with us.

Not to debate it at all during the election.

So if we lose it at the general assembly, try to knock it off the agenda all the time.

But if it's put on the agenda, then the Chinese will work to keep it off the agenda until into November.

But we will still first try to keep it because they're going to send over a medical delegation in October.

There's a scientific delegation in November and an acrobatics meeting in Denver.

We can announce all of that.

Before the election?

Before the election.

That's good.

That's great.

It's nothing major.

It's all good.

Anything on China just tickles the imagination of Earth and people.

They just want to hear something about China.

That's great.

So we'll have those three teams, three groups, coming.

And that shows that exchanges are big.

And they asked us how do we want to handle the scientists who are coming.

Because I had told them informally that the Federation of Medical Scientists...

I was speaking to a very important cancer group in Los Angeles on a week from today, a week from today, Thursday morning.

Right.

You can mention the Chinese medical team.

Yes, I just wanted to throw it in.

Oh, yeah.

They sort of made the announcement like that.

Well, it's not supposed to become a mental exchange, so you shouldn't...

Yes, for example, I can say Chinese medicine.

And I can also say that my congressman, John Ike, expressed great interest in exchanging the medical fee.

Oh, yeah.

Well, he did.

That is probably true.

Sir, I'm going to go ahead and tell you about this.

We've had some information that Teddy Kennedy may go over to Stockholm.

I don't know whether Bob has talked to you about this.

Yeah, I think if there had been any propaganda made, it would have come down very well.

I think we should say that these people who were first accepted prisoners and without the American government getting any access to them and being used for propaganda voiced by Hanoi and partisan voice by the Democrats,

Well, I guess that's actually true, but let's see if we can get the man ready.

Oh, yeah.

I got it all set.

I got it set with the congressional people that will get him a tactic card if I just want to get you okay.

Can I just say that I'm a part of the city before, Mr. Schultz?

Well, uh, no, what he would appreciate is, say, you've instructed Schultz to talk to him, to talk to, to deal with him on monetary matters in the spirit that he mentioned to me.

Oh, Schultz, have you seen him?

No, but Schultz is going to send him a personal message from you about our tactics.

That's very much the deal.

I'll just say Secretary Schultz.

Right.

Do you agree directly with regard to our tactics in the monetary situation?

Our approach in the monetary situation?

That's a little further.

Which we want to deal with.

Right.

Do you...

Shall I say right to you?

Yeah.

Personal.

Through our personal channels.

Right to you, through our...

Through our private personal channels.

Right to the...

the tactics of what was the rate of national monitoring.

The rate of national monitoring.

And I look forward to seeing you soon.

Because he told me that he couldn't see you.

I don't want to see you after the election.

You couldn't be traveling.

You wanted to get a photo with him.

But we have half agreed with the British that you'll see them in the Senate in six years.

I've decided that immediately after the election, I've got a better plan.

I shall as well.

I say aye.

Aye.

The, uh, the, uh, accommodations.

The accommodations.

We're preparing.

Since we are finishing, we're going to take those, you know, those, uh, all the things that are out there.

We're going to have to see if they do the order.

Oh, yes.

We're going to have to finish it up.

You led us to the Sanctum Synod yesterday.

You had a great time.

No, you and the Sanctum Synod, did you ever hear?

We had a shot.

Yes.

That's a lot of people.

There was one guy with a lot of people.

Was it Gary Hirschner?

Now it was an Irishman from Poland.

But the mood, really, they had a tableau in mind when they made the bed.

Actually, you know, they made fun of us, but it was very favorable to you.

Should I say anything about the other thing on this, Chancellor Brown?

I confess to be re-admiring the dignity of Richard Radcliffe.

I, uh...

I, uh... Why?

He's got an election campaign now, so we have to be careful not to give him too much.

Which...

Well, the tragic events have gone on.

A few, shall we say.

Five, shall we say.

See, I put a five there.

You should have seen it.

I didn't.

It was better, Mr. President, because we had a sort of a crappy letter of the hydrofoil, which we would have sent in normal channels, but since I was going, I handed it to him.

Well, he had it translated.

He had sent it to the other people in Peru.

He showed it around.

Let me show you how these letters go.

I was looking over, and I don't want to mention this to you, but this is just a picture.

I don't know where David Yerker sat as well, but of course they ought to be doing this work.

I was reading the Churchill, the Churchill-Stahl-Roosevelt correspondence for

The letters are really damn good.

And the messages are obviously ones that have been served in the early stages.

They prepared themselves.

And the later stages, they're being prepared for them.

They're by somebody that knew them very well.

So they have personal feelings and grace notes and so forth.

That did it.

I know we haven't spent much time.

I haven't been able to.

And I will spend a little more time.

I did that job with you and Dick did too.

But I do think that we should get

get a superb letter writer, one who throws in various notes.

Basically, if I had the stuff prepared by Spain, it was atrocious.

It was just, I don't know, but they are rightly

They take all the heart out of it.

It's just, it sounds like a State Department letter.

Would you agree?

I couldn't.

Your staff is much better on that.

But I think we ought to get a very top-flight person who is not necessarily a foreign policy man, but whose job is to just write beautiful letters to people.

Because, you know, these people around the world, the damn Australians, you know, who send them letters.

I read it to my candidate.

Oh, yeah.

Well, after the tape leaves...

I'm thinking what we have to do is to reorganize that.

Because right now everything is funneling through two people.

You and Hank.

Me and Hank.

And it's too much.

Well, that sort of thing doesn't go to you either.

What you really need is a hell of an editor.

who could do that, and all substance comes to you, but you know, and we can use the letter more often, you know, we could have correspondence with quite a very large number of people around the world.

My God, you can write any Selassie a letter, you can write, you know, people really, and they probably sit there, the shoveling, you ought to hear it about every couple of months, and it's going to be one-half to one-helmet.

In fact, it's a way to lead, we ought to step, and I view, if the election comes up, as we hope it will,

We ought to step in and assert world leadership, and act like it, and send letters, and revoke people when they act badly, and reward them when they act decently.

Actually, I think it would be... One more thing you agree with.

I couldn't agree more.

I think one of your first moves ought to be towards the Europeans, because they're floundering around now.

I don't think necessarily with it.

Yeah, well...

Although that too could be considered.

That's right.

And then a new European charter or something.

And that's the only way you're going to get the economic problem settled.

It's one thing I've learned in this job.

Now, I don't know anything about economics, but every important economic agreement has been done because of you.

The Azov agreement, the Soviet trade deal, the technicians never can settle it.

You know, I was talking on that, economically, to an old professor today, and I said,

Yeah, I've got to flush a lot of things.

I've got to flush the science advisory committee piece up.

I've got to print it.

I haven't done that thing anymore.

That's what I want you to do.

We're going to put another line to Dr. David Wilk when he's over or something, if he wants to say it.

It would be a great call.

But I don't need it anymore.

We're not going to be bothering such people around here in the White House.

In fact, we're going to cut this thing down so that space is going to be thrown out.

We wouldn't get rid of pre-office, but I think it's required roll-off.

And it's a useful place.

It may be useful.

i had a very hard talk with scoop jackson and uh this is something that that i'm going to do now

He said, I know that I haven't gotten through to your staff on this, but I can't tell you.

He said, you just don't know.

He said, the bureaucracy of the Arms Control Agency is anti-American, it's anti-administration, and it's fighting anti-you.

He said, they have been cutting you up and down.

And he said, you have got to get that organization cleaned out.

I put them under state, Mr. President.

The state will be happy?

The state will be happy with that.

Our state will be happy.

It's going to be a very different situation.

Now the other thing is the economic thing.

I told him, I said, this will not work.

And he said, well, the place that it belongs is the state, if you have a new state department organization.

I said, oh, yes, fine.

And I said, right as a man.

Well, he then hollered and said, well, that's the job that Pete Bynum and Gary Love had.

I said, Bob, we've got to be candid.

I said, Pete can't handle that job.

And, you know, he calls them, but, you know, our guys are loyal, but they're a little blind.

But do you agree or not that he can't be handled or not?

I don't think he can.

Of course, you have to decide after the election, basically, how you want to wrap it.

I'm talking about the man, Pete Flanagan.

No, Pete Flanagan cannot handle it out of the question.

He can't handle it in either place.

I wouldn't put him...

Whether you keep it in state or keep it here depends on how you want to run things.

Well, if he finds faith, you have the right man.

Well, it depends.

But if you have the right, yeah, that's...

The right secretary, the right undersecretary, the right assistant secretary.

See, I'm willing to fire all, including Alex Johnson.

We ought to move, but what I thought was Alex had been a loyal guy.

A loyal ambassador.

Yes.

I don't care if you're being a bastard.

I don't care.

I think a lot of us have been bastards.

I'll tell you who could do the economic thing.

Ingersoll in Japan.

Particularly if you do it in the States.

I don't know whether he could move fast enough in the White House.

You see, the way I'm going to tear up the State Department,

And I've just been waiting for this.

I have no idea how much I'm going to do.

The only man that can do it is Carlucci.

He's young.

He knows the young guys and so forth, and he's mean.

And we're going to tear those bastards the hell out of them.

Anybody that's not for us is out of his ass.

Or it will be.

I mean this.

This is the way it's going to be.

There's not going to be no soil anymore.

We're not going to have a CIA anymore.

And we're not going to have a Defense Department anymore.

It's interesting to note that when the governor publishes his defense paper today, look at the names that are on it.

Halpern, Gill, people goddammit that we held over for a while.

It's just not counted.

Uncounted.

Halpern.

Didn't we have Gill?

No.

Well, he was one of those advisors.

Well, I don't know.

Well, they would have held him over if we left, but you know how they go.

And we held Halpern for six months.

Yeah, well, they go from administration to administration.

And we had Cutter, that's a...

I don't think even probably you realize how much we've been cut.

Or maybe you know more than I do.

Because I've had to fight it every day.

I've brought it all to you.

But it needs to end.

You can't do it on the bases.

Well, now we're in and they'll be good.

Bullshit.

If they weren't good...

When they don't make a beat, they are kind of going to depend on that kind of lawyers.

The moment that something goes bad, they'll all yelp on us.

I'm not going to have it anymore.

I'm not going to have it.

I think we...

I mean, people ought to be cleaned out, but also the organizational structure has to be changed in the state so that these guys become presidential and not just... Everyone's going to do it.

They're all going to be appointed by me.

I don't know.

They're solidly foreign service people.

But my little point is that I've got to meet people that we can rely on.

And I'd rather have them done loyal and smart than this one right now.

Because we don't make the policy.

But they've got to carry it out.

And they've got to carry it out loyal.

That's what they have to do.

Now, this is a tough situation tonight.

The Defense Department, truly, is an incredible

I found out yesterday he was going to pull 98 B-52s out of there, out of Vietnam in the next month.

That's one thing we don't need is to pull planes out while we are in these negotiations.

That's not what I should say.

Goddamn, that's all he says to me.

Why doesn't he just put it down?

Shut up.

You tell me.

Because he wants to be able to say that he cut us out of there.

I think he's being useful with going around.

Oh yes, he is feeding up on McGovern.

What do you think of McGovern's new defense plan?

I haven't read it yet, but the son of a bitch.

The mere fact that he's publishing three different plans on every subject kills him.

With?

At the smart people.

And then to say, again I think his whole approach is wrong, to say our program will get to 100 million by 1977.

Americans aren't willing to spend what's needed.

If he said it's unnecessary, they wouldn't listen to him.

The amount isn't what bothers people.

I mean, the statistics are all in our favor.

We are spending a smaller percentage of the GMP, a smaller sum in constant dollars.

So from every...

So he has a... Well, let me tell you the worst thing that's ever been said in a European policy.

He said that he had a policy change so that the London Econ was going to be signed.

I saw the news summary.

He said, well, we really have no problem because we'll have airlift capabilities and within 15 to 20 days after an attack came, we could airlift the tank.

I just saw the news summary.

I said, in 15 to 20 days, the goddamn war will be over.

Exactly.

All of us will be over.

You know, do you have any studies showing that if the Russians were to move, even faint, that the crisis would be over, the Europeans would collapse?

President, first of all, what makes you think the airfields are going to be there?

Secondly, all our studies show that within 20 days...

If you cut the forces less than 20, there'll be a cross that I... And the other point about less than 200 forces, as you know, the Europeans, with their weak-kneed governments, will collapse, collapse, collapse.

But actually the economy took it to pieces.

I thought so too, but I marked that on there.

15 to 20 days, if anybody ever raised that opinion, what does the man get in?

Does he think that we're going to have, like we did in World War II, two theaters to build them?

Anyone who makes apeshit is probably the advisor.

He's a fool.

I had a talk yesterday with Rafin about the Jewish draft.

He said he would help us on it.

It will take him about a week to quiet it down because it's a tough draft for them too, but he'll do it.

And he agrees.

He said it's hard for us to imagine the emotion in Israel on Munich.

They are under tremendous pressure domestically, but he said he would do it.

He's fine.

There are two things that might help.

One is, I thought it might be useful if we created an anti-terrorist committee, a government-wide committee.

There's a good reason to do it for another reason.

Bill is on it.

First, it gives me something to even make talk.

But second, it gives us the, when he was gone, I got a hold of Hague and I said, I want contingency plans.

Because I am really concerned with these.

This is not fair, but Rose talks to the soothsayer in Phoenix all the time.

She was in.

She said, she talked to all of them.

She said, they are so desperate.

that they kidnap somebody, that they shoot somebody, that they create this.

We have got to have a plan.

Suppose they do, for example, Henry.

Suppose they kidnap for me, and then ask us to release all blacks from prison throughout the United States, and we didn't.

They shoot me.

What the Christ do we do?

We're not going to give in to it.

But the point is, you see what our problem is?

We've got to have contingency plans for hijacking, for kidnapping,

all sorts of things that happen around here.

If you would take a look at that, this yellow sheet, there's a rabbi that I've got to call, but the compliments that I know that he's the leader, and so do the jewelry thing, and I just don't know whether I can get on a hook with it.

I don't know whether a call ought to be made by somebody else first.

Now, don't raise this with the president.

We're working on

and they don't get to a point about who the hell he is he's supposed to be a big man he's supposed to be a very big man and I suggest this I said I'll call him and thank you for extending this but what I was wondering is this if you might call him and say I'm calling you the president's going to be calling you

about your very great appreciation for him.

He was asking to call you in advance because of the very sensitive matter.

He knows about it so well.

I just want to assure you the matter has been taken up at his direction, but you cannot say so.

You can only say what you've said to the press, but you say this is like an iceberg, Rabbi, or whatever they call it, a doctor so-and-so, and you can count on this president, but in the event that he makes a public statement on it, the Russians will win.

Could you do that?

If you did that, then I will call him and say, you can say, you want to say how appreciative we are that we're working on it, and you can also say that you have a very good point at, discussion at my direction with the Israeli ambassador yesterday about something.

He said the president, and you've never had a better friend, Israel's never had a better friend than it has right now in the Jewish community.

The president's going to call you, but he,

It's very important that I ask you, don't raise the subject of so-called jury with him, because he will have to take a less positive position to you than he really needed.

Or how would you say it to him?

He's probably a decent man.

But I explained it to Rabin, and luckily the subject published a decree yesterday.

with at least a few administrative loopholes, and I had told them on my own.

And we did.

Well, I said what we are trying to arrange is that they can't revoke the decree, but that they won't administer it fully.

So he gave us credit for that, even though they published the decree.

Now we are having one other... You will call this call.

I'm going to call it today.

I don't want him to get off the reservation.

No, I'll call him in the next hour.

Call him and just say that you're doing it.

And then you send the chart thing back in the meeting.

And I'll call him and thank him for his political support.

We have two problems now with the Israelis.

Peterson has gotten involved with Percy Rivikoff and Chavez.

And he wants to talk to them about the trade legislation and the Jewish problem.

I think it's a mistake to get these three guys together.

Secondly, my... You mean to put a rider on the train?

To keep them from doing it.

But if you talk to these guys together, Percy is never for us when it's tough.

I think Peterson ought not to talk to them at all.

This thing isn't going to go to Congress before January.

By that time, emotions will have cooled.

So it's about legislation to go in January?

Well, he wants...

He wants to make himself a big man.

That's...

Everybody agrees that he should talk to them.

Just tell him I've talked to Rabin and we want to keep it in a low key now.

We don't want if he talks to Ribicov and Peterson.

First, what he really wants is a lot of publicity for his goddamn trade agreement for himself.

So that way, he's a big deal.

And we promise you that the Russians won't come to attend.

Oh, you mean the Russians created it?

Yeah, the Russians.

Oh, that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But for him to get with Chavis and those, he's just talking to people that have got to take the position.

Particularly when they're together.

They all try to outbid each other.

Oh.

Percy, particularly, is slightly faster.

Exactly.

But Percy pretends that he's a peacemaker.

But whenever he makes peace, he comes up with proposals that hurt us.

What does he tell us?

Never.

Never on anything that we needed.

On one other matter, Mr. President, which is that the Israelis have made a request to us for some industrial help in producing their own tanks, which this we've approved, and in producing a modified version of the French airplane.

Now, the bureaucracy

is opposed partly because they're afraid it will get an airplane manufacturing competitor to us.

That, I think, is nonsense.

A country of two million.

And secondly, because they take the views loosely with it.

The counterargument that I feel very much is

If we could get them off our backs with periodic airplane deliveries, it would be a cheap price because we could then say, and secondly, I think if you do it in October, it would do you some political good.

And secondly, it would mean vis-a-vis the Arabs, if you do it sooner or later, they'll drive us into it.

They'll either force us to deliver them airplanes or no harm.

I think if we do it in October, it will be blank on the election campaign, and we won't lose too much to the Arabs.

If you do it in November or December, you lose a hell of a lot to the Arabs.

I agree.

I support it.

Forget the Arabs.

The rest, I'm for letting Israel do everything they can to defend themselves, period.

Well, so, and I'm sure, my judgment is, I was in hate with me.

If I could tell Radin to say, now look, you call off the Jewish sectors, and we'll have your disaster, I guess.

That's a deal he'll understand.

No.

Actually, the way we've got it set up, it will go through anyway, but it will go through in November when we don't need it.

I'll tell you how we'll be.

We can help you.

I think Colter thinks it's lovely.

That's when the president's going to win.

Second, when he wins, he's going to be your friend.

Don't put him in a position where you embarrass him because he knows that.

He's not your problem.

It's the people at home.

And some of our own American Jewish people.

Exactly.

I don't know these guys let me ask this

We hope so.

The only point is how we handle this P.O.W.

thing.

I don't know if I did, but I think the government ought to be tough on people who try to exploit.

Mr. President, here are three P.O.W.s.

They first dragged all of them on.

Then they sent them off to Stockholm and Copenhagen.

No American on routes where no American official can get out of them.

They arrange press conferences.

They bring over opposition leaders.

It's an intrusion.

They bring over hard CDS, left-wing commentators.

I think I would hit them very hard.

The Star had a good article by Warren Kelly the other day, knocking them full gas.