Nixon, Haldeman & Haig on Vietnam War and Henry Kissinger

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I'm just not going to do this.

That's the only thing I want to do.

I'm not waiting.

I have a dinner for all of them.

I don't think I want to call Cooper, and Jordan, and Anderson, and Belcher, and Burns, and Jones, and Springer, and Bowe, and Betts, and McCollum.

I'm asking you, if you feel that you should, I will.

That's absolutely true.

I have a funeral where they find him.

It could have a memorial service if after five days, you know, when they give up the search.

A couple of things that I was, I don't know where he was briefly.

Am I keeping him going home or something?

This is crazy.

Obviously.

He's not in Washington, D.C.

He's in London.

But I talked to him there and told him if he had any talent.

And she said, you know, his grandfather and his father very well.

He was very glad that he was.

I said, excuse me, Arthur.

I said, I said that he wanted you.

That she would have gone and called you.

He was in town.

I said that when he comes back to you,

They're new yet?

They're airborne, sir, and I expect a message any minute.

I'll be over at DOD to get it.

All right, sir.

But they are going to Saigon.

Yes, sir.

They're airborne.

Do you think Henry committed his own mind on this?

Because, you know, I thought that he was going to keep his options open until the end of the day.

Or do you think he has made some progress today over five months?

I think he went to the big issues first, and the ones that he knew he could fall off of and didn't make too much difference, he didn't mess.

And then sent the message that he'd gotten the main thing settled.

What does he get to say?

He'll be there Wednesday night.

That's Wednesday morning.

Tomorrow morning.

I got that.

Wednesday.

Tomorrow morning, right time.

And I've got a

a stack of messages waiting for him.

And he should have a few waiting to come back to us very quickly.

There's been a certain amount of leakage, which I think must be coming from Hanoi.

Because one of the networks called on and said, we've heard that Kissinger may be going to Hanoi.

Ron is denied, of course he doesn't know, and he's denied a flat cold and slams to come back here.

Yeah, but you know, Henry was talking about they're going back to prepare to receive him in Hanoi, and obviously they're getting stuff out of his correspondence.

No, we can fix that.

We've got to do it.

Henry is passionately desirous of going to Illinois.

We've got to keep him out of there unless he resists.

I'm glad to deal that he cannot go to Illinois.

And he's got that, did you cover that in the message?

That and the bombing.

Does he need to hear it from me on that?

No, I think he understands it.

And he cannot go to Illinois under any circumstances unless it's signed, sealed, and delivered to Illinois.

Now, you know, Kenry's rather confident with his abilities through these things, and in this case, we cannot take even a 5% risk, not even a 5% risk on that or any of that.

Christ, with Ramsey Clark and the others we'll comprehend in just a few minutes, I wrote him a memorandum, and told him that if he ever got there, he's got to be sure he isn't caught smiling.

He definitely, absolutely, could have evicted him.

The worst thing that could happen, even,

You don't think he is misleading us on this?

He should not go to Hanoi.

He agonized.

Of course, I started on him the minute we got back.

I said, that Hanoi thing is a loser.

And in his own sense, it's a loser.

God, he's the guy that's going to really be...

If he doesn't go to Hanoi, when would he come back here?

When would he arrive here?

Well, I think...

I think he'll need every minute of that time to work on two, and I think two is going to be tough.

With or without him, he can't commit suicide.

He'll come along.

That we can be confident of.

But what I'm afraid of is these bastards may have just cured this right to the time when they've got these battalions around Saigon, which they can't hold there very long.

Chew knows that.

And hope to get the signature just in time for them to put their flags up and claim they control a good part of the areas around Saigon.

That's why Chew's going to be tough.

He's just going to be tough.

And they've moved in the last 48 hours.

Yes, sir.

They're threatening Route 1, Route 13, and Route 7, which goes north of Saigon.

Well, I've sent messages on it, and Henry knows that he'd better watch his step on this one.

We can't have a ceasefire.

No, not if it's going to unravel everything.

And we're in the driver's seat here.

We don't have to...

Okay.

We're in a better bargaining position after the election before it doesn't like to face that fact.

You know the gas line is true.

I've got it resolved.

And we're in.

And we've won on this issue.

They know damn well that I've got to be in front of them and contend with them for four years.

What the hell do you think you do?

They're going to settle after this election.

And they're going to settle about a day in the past.

The pressure's going to be greater now than then and now.

I think they'll end up settling for just the pure military.

OK, we'll let them all settle.

My brothers are still hiding in the White House.

That could really build.

I disagree with Colson and all the rest on that point.

That could build because I know the media.

The media is going to kick the shit out of us on that issue.

Yeah, but I'm not sure that's kicking us.

That's the thing, the real questionable thought, whether they're saying the president's hiding in the White House helps you or hurts you.

I'm not at all sure it doesn't help.

I don't think, I think it's helped us up to this point.

I'm not sure it doesn't continue.

The last thing I'll say is thank God he's staying in the White House doing what he's supposed to do.

I don't give a damn what it is, but at least he's there doing it.

I agree with that.

That's for people who can't think it's a problem.

The hell with it.

I'll stay here.

That's the last thing.

I think I can go and do the television and the radio things, but then I won't drive.

I don't think

It doesn't mean that much.

But I'm not surprised if my mother also said something about me that she would report to the stories.

I feel like it's that bad.

I don't know.

So would it, you know, if you could make a case that you don't do anything, you can't do anything.

I think, well, maybe we haven't gotten that across.

I thought we had, but Jesus Christ.

The figure pulls it out, doesn't he?

He does all the time, that's what I thought.

Right.

We're going with the budget, right?

I think, and then things come out of it.

The point is the press believes it because, you know, something happens.

It isn't.

I think what we've got to do is use consciousness before any campaign we prepare in the future to have Sigurd say he's going to campaign and in that period of time he's going to prepare this speech and he's going to do this and he's going to meet with so-and-so and so-and-so and we'll have an announcement then, you understand?

So that there's never any question about talking off, well, Christ, you know, we'll be able to talk off some.

And on the weekend, I don't think it's a problem.

I think there's no problem going up there at 39.

Nope.

Or is there?

There is.

What I was going to do on this weekend thing was have Ervin go up, and if you were working with Ervin on all these congressional bills, and Congress has dumped 150 or 200 bills or whatever else you'd say, you'd say, I have 140 bills.

Get the values up, and I'll hook them up, and I'm going to take them up.

I totally disagree with John Irvin.

He said his only value that he saw was that it kept a bad story from leaving the networks.

But John has never understood the tremendous importance of the amnesty issue.

Or failing to bug out of the anon machine.

And it's what you preempted the time with.

You came on, you had one hell of a positive.

I don't give a damn if we had nothing to preempt.

It was a temp start.

It was the best damn commercial we could have.

That's it.

But it wasn't good.

John sometimes says a few things that just feels like, well, the president can just do damn near anything and that's going to be it.

But that is not true.

Don't do a bad event.

Don't go walking to the supermarket.

Nixon, Haldeman & Haig on Vietnam War and Henry Kissinger

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 17, 1972

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