Conversation 793-006

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The trouble is, he has to testify, and he had to leave.

So if you'd like, we could delay it to a time when we both can be in.

Sure, I can't be in.

I can't be in.

12 o'clock.

3, if you like.

That's easy.

12.15.

12.15 or 3 or 2.30.

Why don't we do 2.30?

2.30 is fine.

All right, why don't you do that?

I think you ought to.

No, I wouldn't.

No, no, I won't.

And I won't do it.

Well, that's another thing which I haven't really decided yet.

The reason for having him along is to have one mature person along.

Because I feel...

I'd like to go through the three variants of proposals that I have with you.

You don't have to, the individual points I can handle, but the strategy...

I'll hold till 2.30 for Mr. Hayden.

I'll be back over here at 2.30.

Or we might meet over at Hill Beach.

I'll let you know.

Let me take one second to finish.

I'm not sure about any of the points you'd like to give, Mr. Curran.

That press conference, I must say, worked out very well yesterday.

Now you handled Vietnam extremely well.

I don't know what to say about it.

It's just as well to get on with the public here.

That shows that we don't expect anything.

No, it was a big plus all the way around.

I mean that to go on.

We've come absolutely to a hard place, you know, when it comes to the mission.

It's not Canada's mission, it's life at the time.

Yes, that's true.

You read Hayes' transcript?

I read Hayes' transcript, but these guys are here.

And they're desperate.

And they know what's coming.

And Hugh says that, sure, these proposals keep him going, but somewhere down the road, he'll have no choice except to commit suicide, and he'll probably die.

I mean, we have to be honest about ourselves.

You know what I think, though, when you talk about morality,

And we have to do less moral than we're doing.

We've been here for the last three and a half years.

But the Christ, all this is about morality, right?

What about God?

That we don't want to just do it?

No, God isn't the morality.

We don't want to be in person, where there's something that is obvious and he's collecting it.

To commit suicide, or to be murdered, that's all this is thinking about.

And God, after that, is the morality.

I don't see any of the New York Times or other writings thinking about those 200,000, at least it was 100,000, like that asshole in the States that 200,000 per 100,000 people eat.

Yes.

God damn it, they cut their heads off and eat it.

That's right.

Oh, well.

Now, there's no question.

There's no question.

If we didn't have a moral position, it'd be... As large as the moral position has been, again, and incidentally, it must be that the American people have a degree of morality over the illicit sportings.

The thing that worries me is, before we get to the specifics, is that we now got all this team into the border.

Everything that we ever planned for is happening.

The Russians are threatening them, the Chinese are threatening them.

VIP planes going back and forth between Peking, Moscow and Hanoi.

Sabrina was in again yesterday.

I got another message from Li Dazhou yesterday.

I've had five since the last meeting.

And I actually think we can set it on terms however they are.

On our terms, but not Jews?

On close to our terms.

But, and I also think that Jew is right, that our terms will eventually destroy them.

Do you gear them as to that?

Not that they shouldn't, you know, but given their weakness, their disunity,

It will have that kind of...

Fear, fear, fear.

They're scared to death that these people are.

And it will be the country, but it's not... We can defend it.

Now, the thing that makes it anguishing is that supposing we don't send it.

I don't see that we're fed a row of six months from now.

The only other thing we can do...

I would rate this one...

I would say, I would agree there's no, the chances are better than even that we will not be better off six months.

But there is a chance that we could be better off.

There is a chance.

We must not underestimate what we do in terms of military action, what its effect might be.

It might be effective.

We've never done anything military that's worth a shit, aren't we?

But we won't do it this time either.

I mean, we can do some high-disability things.

Let's see.

Let's see what we'll do.

I've had it studied.

They've pulled out air force.

They've lied to us again.

They've substituted planes that they told us were better to take and found out aren't nearly so good.

We're dealing with a sick military establishment on top of everything else.

We're going to have funding problems in January.

But of course, but then the dilemma that additional military operations produce for us is this.

We can improve the situation in South Vietnam drastically, but we can't get our business back.

And before they collapse, they will offer us our prisoners for a withdrawal.

And in that case, we've got – I think at this point we have to take that.

So that is, I don't think that we can do before the election.

I take it November, December, January, any time.

That's the deal we have to take care of.

That's right.

But that will also collapse, except we won't be so responsible for the whole settlement.

So as I look down the road, I think there is one chance and

If they're that collapsible, maybe they just have to be collapsed.

That's another way we'll get into it.

We've got to remember, we cannot keep this child sucking at the tip when the child is 40 years old.

There comes a time.

See, what we can get out of the settlement now, I'm not even sure it's going to help you politically.

You can judge better whether you will wind up like Churchill, having help everywhere.

I'd love it for the election.

Go ahead.

If we keep going, you may have no choice.

You may get it before the election.

Well, let's try our best not to have it before the election.

The better, the more that we can stagger past the election, the better.

You do not want it before the election.

Well, I don't want it before the election, but the Jews will blow it.

If we do, it's going to hurt us very badly.

But we may be able to avoid it, Jews, blow it.

Because what I'm thinking, I'm thinking of another strategy now.

We didn't try to deal with it.

Now, I'm thinking of a strategy in which I present half of our political proposal.

Tell them what else we can do depends on what security guarantees they give us.

Get the security guarantees.

Go out to Saigon and say, you've got all these security guarantees.

Now you've got to come the rest of the way.

I've taken the liberty of sending two letters from you in the last two days.

Because you told me more or less.

And he's calmed down.

He's calmed down a lot.

We have funds every day.

I've told Bunker to see him every other day, no matter what.

That's right.

Because we all want a floor.

Bunker has a calming effect on people they will land on.

And if you have a settlement, well, but even a settlement without a floor might put you in the position of Churchill where people say you've done what you've supposed to.

But I just don't see them voting for McGowan.

You don't think so?

No, but Churchill has much more to do with it.

He really did.

The making of the piece, that was when he was more desperate than he did at any other time.

As it turns out, because that poor damn criminal didn't know anything, Stalin just pulled his hands off of that.

And also, Churchill was known as an arch-reactionary, and he had no domestic support.

On his domestic problems, that's right.

He was considered to be just anti-focus.

We're not considered to be that, and they're not quite.

No, actually, we're horrible because it happens in the work ethic.

the anti-busing and the rest of the river, that we're one of the main streams, and I would say that would focus the average guy that they are.

Well, does he realize he's scathing, Henry, on this business of the allies when he made a speech in Cleveland and said he would, I was the isolationist, and he would restore confidence among our allies?

Does anybody, can they believe that?

Can anybody believe that?

Is Churchill a good son of a thing?

Oh, no, no.

Churchill is totally for you.

But Churchill wouldn't be for you against any candidate.

Well, he's Randolph's son.

Yeah, yeah.

Probably one of his grandfather's friends.

Yeah, that's correct.

And he's more on the conservative side by conviction.

But, uh... You know, I think maybe it would be a nice attempt if I were invited to just say hello while he's here.

I'm not doing an interview.

I'm having none.

This is his grandfather and his father.

His father was a very...

He wanted to see McGregor, and I sent him an appointment, and I asked him to come over, and I'll take him in.

There you go.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'd like to just say, this is Janet.

I thought I would like for her to write it without direct quotes.

I mean, she writes it, it's just in the present.

I want to teach you because I think we have the problem with others, but just because it's on a personal basis, I don't know.

Okay.

Good.

You want to build on the other side?

Come on, Doug.

So this is, this is,

What I see in the settlement now is not your election.

I know.

Let me say the reason that I decided to read the suggested comments, that it was very important to get hit on, the idea that the election would not affect the settlement, either the ceasefire front or the bombing front,

First, it's massive reassurance to you.

Second, it's a warning to the Russians, to the Chinese, and most of all, to the North Vietnamese, that the situation is different than what it was in 1978.

We have got, and also, it's massive reassurance to the American people that we're not going to play politics in Istanbul.

And that is very important.

That's our strength in this.

It's our weakness, but it's our strength.

Now go ahead.

So what do we do?

Well, what I see in the settlement now is we do it the right way.

We can't trust Seymour over it over Cuba, but I would think of doing it to get a settlement, to get half of the political thing done on this visit, plus the security, then go to Saigon again and sell it, and then go back to Paris and wrap it up.

What would you say about the security?

What would you do?

Do you have a school on the field out there, for example?

Oh, yeah, the leak of POWs is part of the package.

I understand, but if you get only half of the political package, you get half of the legal package.

Oh, no, no, half to be finished on this trip.

And then the next week we get it all done.

Well, I... You see, I'm looking at this package, so how do... How do...

No, I mean, I'm saying you ought to be very true about it.

I go there now.

Yeah, yeah, I get it.

I think actually, especially now, Mr. President, I can probably write the whole thing out on this trip.

I'd have a 50-50 chance, you know.

I'd hate to think so, too.

Yes.

But the danger is that you will then get a flu.

So what I'd like to do is get about half or maybe 40% of those I got, get them aboard, then go back to Paris and get it done.

But I suggest one thing that might be helpful.

It's a rather, it's a rather tedious thing to do.

It works many times with others that are going to see you and say, look,

Your proposal that you have made about two elections will not work.

Period.

You claim that what we have suggested will not work.

Period.

Now, we want you to use your mind, and for you to suggest what will work, and to take as much of these points as the President insists that some must be taken, not what we suggest.

What I meant is, I'd like to get him online a few minutes of these agreed to previously.

Does that work, Craig, or not?

Absolutely.

You could do that.

What we will try for is to get international control on all the infiltration routes.

A ceasefire in Laos.

In Cambodia, it's hard to arrange, but because there are no formal parties, a commitment by the North Vietnamese to withdraw from Laos and Cambodia.

I get the connection.

I wouldn't worry about

No, but I'll get it in writing, it looks like.

Right, right, right.

They withdraw from some of their units from the south.

Some of them, right.

They won't withdraw them all.

Some of them won't withdraw them.

And if I look at it from a historical point of view, what did they call you in Algeria?

Everyone thinks a great man.

Basically made a settlement to turn the country over to the...

You have to fill it in.

That's what they were calling it.

Right.

Now, why still he's considered a great man?

Because he left under his own feet.

Now, a settlement, when I say now, not the next two weeks, I'm saying it can be the next four or three months.

I would say a settlement any time before inauguration.

would mean that you have done exactly what you said you'd do.

That you have come out of a... That you have come out as an actor of comedy.

Let me gallivant around a different way.

Vietnam is important because of the course of our business.

And the course because we don't want so many people coming to Congress.

However,

Those basically are not the really important issues.

The important issue is how the United States comes up in two ways.

One, whether or not the United States in all parts of the world, whether our enemies, the individuals, and our allies, after we finished our defense of the United States, went the extra mile in standing by its ground.

That doesn't mean we have to succeed.

It does mean that we have to have done that.

Second point.

Now, the historical process moves extremely slowly.

Sure, somebody can retire.

There could be exile.

There could be a coup.

Somebody could be shot, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And so those things will happen.

They are not as likely to happen, I think, as even two minutes is likely to happen.

Because if there's lots of happy bits, then I think that all three of these are hurting one hell of a lot more.

As the CIA indicates, I think our whole bureaucracy previously overestimated how badly they were hurting.

Now they're underestimating how badly they're hurting because we're going in.

The mining has had to hurt him.

The bombing has had to hurt him.

It's supposed to be pretty good.

It's just got to be done.

And frankly, the South Vietnamese have bound to hurt him.

The South Vietnamese can't be taking two to three hundred killed in action every week.

Let's assume that the North Vietnamese are taking only an equal number.

Leave out the bombing.

Leave out everything else.

Goddamn, that's a hell of a lot of people.

And they're hurting.

They're hurting badly.

Now we come to another thing.

how it comes out.

Let us suppose that we face a situation here where South Vietnam, simply over the long haul, cannot survive on its own as an independent entity.

I don't mean like Thailand, I guarantee, I don't mean like anything else.

But the South Vietnam, because of its

the nature of the South Vietnamese people, the nature of the struggle with the North, and so forth, that inevitably, unless the United States can stay in there, indefinitely, South Vietnam is going to fall apart.

If that is the case, then what we have to look to is the bigger subject.

How does the United States look at the way in which this is going to happen?

So as I see it, then we'll do the story as well as we can and hope and pray for the best.

And then use our influence with the Russians and with the Chinese, which should be considerable at this point, to say, not them.

You push us here, we contribute.

We just cannot.

We push too far.

I almost think that that's what we're looking at.

My own view is this, that when defense is planted for three more years of bombing,

When they want to keep two more carriers out there, three more airwaves and all that sort of thing, it makes me think that the military is particularly interested in finishing the stuff they want.

Military are a bunch of selfish bastards.

They screwed up everything we've done.

Except they did the mining.

If they had bought Laos well, we wouldn't have this problem.

If they had done their farming this summer better,

We'd be that much ahead.

We've done well.

Let me say, that mining and bombing, without that, South Vietnam would be under the...

Right now, it's out there.

No question.

Tiger has been compromised by mining and bombing.

Well, you had with that beautiful, yes.

Well, that means it's true, isn't it?

Absolutely beautiful.

And it was time that once enabled, enabled by name.

I said time.

No, it was time that...

All, all said that there was a specter.

There was another interesting thing at that dinner last night.

Mrs. Harriman.

She still has three others.

He's got a new one.

He's got a random church whose first previous wife is now Mrs. Harriman.

And that's not just why young Wilson gets connected with his child.

The old boy went to a lot of weeks on the left.

And, uh, but they all been raising your pledge conference, and that, in an election campaign, and this...

They couldn't hurt you.

Okay, good.

Let's take excerpts of the news on these things.

Television truth or something.

I'm just saying, Henry, the way I look at it,

I hate to say this, but I don't want to say this beyond any other points.

We cannot continue to allow Vietnam to inhibit us in any way.

And the development play our big game out.

The game of the Russians and the Chinese and the Japanese and the Europeans.

And the big game now becomes enormously important.

And I can mention the Mideast.

It's a damn thing.

I don't know how it works.

And we've got to get this thing settled.

And you can't put it in Vietnam's hands.

Well, I'm starting in the next two weeks.

Preliminary talks.

Thank God they didn't get a question on the meeting.

And they didn't ask about Soviet Jewry or anything like that.

That's good.

It's good I didn't have to ask you.

But we've got Egyptians coming over here for a secret meeting.

I mean, that won't get us anywhere.

But if we can't establish a contest.

But it's time they talk to you, though.

Yeah.

Because they've got to get a cold turkey there.

This business of the coach comes first, the chicken and the egg, and he's in control and so forth.

The whole body is.

But they ought to think, they ought to think, and raise it again, and take a certain age range that isn't worth a goddamn, and give it to the Egyptians so they don't have to worry the damn anyway, and let the others see the rest, and then that's the trade-off.

Huh?

Oh, yeah.

Trade-off, man.

I'm talking about the weight of money.

If I had the time, if you had the time, to work with the Mideast, we'd have settled it now.

It could have been done.

Oh, yeah.

And, of course, we have... We are in a position.

Once we got the Vietnam War out of the way, we are in a position to serve with that.

Now I'm coming off this thing, therefore... Of course, we could have settled it.

What I'd like – well, it may be, Mr. President, that I'm overestimating the possibilities.

It may be – They are possible as far as they are active.

That's right.

What they've offered us up to now on security arrangements is absurd.

Their proposal is that neither side can put additional equipment into South Vietnam, but they say nothing about Laos and Cambodia.

All right.

Roscoe Grumman wrote a very perceptive article two days ago.

He might point out that he is one of the president's closest friends.

For he says his settlement before the election will not be in our interest.

That's what I told them.

You told them?

I told them to come.

But this is the most eager...

It's no comparison.

It's the first time I've ever seen...

I mean, the breathing was in again yesterday, weeping all over me.

Uh-huh.

I had last week, in order to keep them from going public, with their plan, because I didn't want McGovern...

I mean, it's already a miracle that McGovern doesn't have their plan, but he cannot say, I have in my hand here the document.

He's in Vietnam.

But by now, it's... Well, they think that we're going to be around.

That's right.

But the...

So I sent him a little note to lead us towards criticizing a comment by Swan Tweed in the plenary session, saying they should make it more public comments.

I just didn't have an excuse to tell them not to make any public comments without seeming to be afraid of public comments.

Well, he sent me a two-page message yesterday explaining why he had made this statement, how they were coming to the next meeting, determined to make a vital breakthrough.

No, we're going to, uh, and there will be IP planes to Peking yesterday, VIP planes to Moscow.

They're going to come with another proposal.

Van Van Dorn has told the French consul general that his greatest hope was that he could sign the peace treaty.

Now, could I offer them?

It means nothing.

They want the foreign ministers to sign the goddamn thing.

Can I tell them that we agree that I'll just consign it?

Oh, shoot, Jeff.

Oh, well, just between us...

We have to have a South Vietnamese in the field.

Oh, yes.

South Vietnamese, too.

I know.

It's not fair to let him sign it, but we don't care.

Oh, I don't want to sign it.

You should sign it, but you don't want to be the head of state.

I don't think we should do it.

We have to sign it.

Yeah.

Let him write it.

That sort of vanity I don't have at all, he should sign it.

It's a nice concession to make to them, of course, that's nice.

You made it rather ironic here, here we are, sitting up there signing that damn salt thing.

It was a...got here, got that snout loose, or something from wine, or some great bastard.

Of course, Bill didn't contribute a damn thing.

Romero didn't contribute a damn thing.

Oh, yeah, very good.

Yes, go ahead.

But it does show, though, how the letter knows what happens.

The letter knows what happens.

That they pay off on the final results.

And it is amazing how your leadership in foreign policy, now yesterday you took a stupid run at it, but for him to be able to get away with saying, you are the isolationists in each international group, that our allies are unhappy with us, our allies are praying every day,

that you're going to get reelected.