Conversation 820-015

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President?

General Counsel, Mr. President?

Yeah, hi, how are you?

Good to see you.

Mr. President, how are you?

Well, how are they?

They're all cowards.

Oh, thank you.

Well, I used to go to a great time over there.

I didn't enjoy it at all.

I hated it so very much.

I had a damn great job.

Oh, you had a wonderful time.

That's right.

I think the whole place was kind of a jail, like a prison jail.

I really did enjoy it.

It's quite nice.

I think you get a very, uh, you do get a very, uh, psychological vibe.

I'm sorry for those people.

Those people don't know how unhappy they are.

It's a picture of people on the streets.

One of the most interesting things, Mr. President, is we went to the Hermitage in Leningrad, and my wife was alone.

And there's a little lady sitting in every single room in the Hermitage to see that nobody touches anything.

And Patsy made a point of trying to make them smile, and she smiled politely at each of them.

And she never received a single smile back.

They'd look at her, and they'd look away, and then they'd look at her again.

I wouldn't smile.

Fascinating.

They're told to smile or not to, that's it.

Do you have any reaction like that, any fair stuff, if you need to?

Quite different.

I thought the people out there said that we're very interested and more sophisticated.

I think there were an awful lot of Mongolians in our times when we were there.

And I found the people at the exhibit much more alert and interested and interesting.

We went back, we opened it, and we went back the next afternoon so that we could see it in operation.

It really is fascinating.

I think the biggest thing that's happened in the question of your district has changed that atmosphere.

At least the government one.

And the district one.

Because people turned out for receptions and so on, and they said, never, never, never.

And they were very high-ranking members of the Foreign Ministry.

And they were...

And they gave it a four-inch article in the Leningrad Chronicle.

Yes, the translation of the Washington Star CRA page.

That's right.

That's the best thing that happened.

At least it's spelled with a C. I mean, you can't...

The R-A-G.

The Washington C-R-A-G. That's it.

Oh, it's true.

It sure did.

We were very impressed with the guys, Mr. President.

I'm smart, sir.

They were very wonderful.

I'm really excited to have the chance to talk to them.

You've learned a lot.

No, no, no.

This is the guys in the archive.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They have about, uh, maybe 20 of them.

You're Russian.

No.

They're always welcome.

These were the American kids, sir.

Oh, no.

I remember this would be in 59.

They were terrific.

And I don't see anything negative serving the cause of peace.

That's true.

I think they are.

I took a little bit of suggestion.

I spent 10 minutes with a group of these guys coming from that.

Because they are men and girls.

And there's a bunch of young people, attractive young people.

And they got a lot of information.

Well, they went out in December.

I'd be glad to see them when they can come back at a time.

They've been doing that all the time.

I'd love to get more out of talking to them and see what they feel about me.

That's right.

They go back to college and that sort of thing.

They all flew in Russian, and they feel a lot of tough questions from the Russians.

All right.

They gave the guys, and I guess the Russians agreed to this.

They sent people.

Amazing how much the Russians at the fair knew about the United States.

Right.

One of the reactions that the guys gave was,

was they perhaps expected just a little bit more from the fair.

It was on the exhibit that they got.

And perhaps it wasn't quite up to date.

We talked to Frank Shakespeare about that.

Well, he was four years old.

But we had to be quite candid about our fairs.

They were second grade compared to what they ought to be.

When I say that, I'm condemning the people that participate, or the guys, or anything like that.

But you see the Russian government, the Soviet

uh, uh, communist countries, to them, this is a big, short case, and each case, and they go there, and they put on huge, massive displays, and ours look, in the world, I mean, we're in various places where there's an American, and there's Soviet exhibits, and ours may be more sophisticated, and send all the little tiddlers and laughter through Georgetown about how clever they were, but theirs impressed the people, uh,

Whether bad or good, big, strong, this and that.

Part of the reason is that we keep an eye on the crisis funding.

We won't put the money in.

A lot of our information will be worth it and all that sort of thing.

And it isn't.

You can't blame Shakespeare and the rest of you.

It breaks his back to try to get more funds appropriated for him.

The Congress is not too keen on it.

They don't realize that it might be something.

I think we should never spare the horse's nose.

Let them see what is the best for the United States.

Let's see it.

I'd rather plant a boy in a boy.

The world expects things to be...

You notice in Russia, where everything is big, almost no power.

It's useless and big.

Huge airplane terminals, you know, huge with no people in them.

And everything can go, they go for the giant scale and so forth and so on.

Well, there's sort of reasons for that.

They're not supposed to be an indication from Congress.

They're supposed to impress the smaller types and so forth.

However, having said all that, I think you've put your finger on their fundamental weakness, and that is that he would almost call it a depression that falls on the spirit of you than any one of these countries.

I mean, it's, you said, like in jail, it's that.

And it's the, you sense the difference, for example, when you go to court.

It's a classic when you go from Moscow to Warsaw.

Now, Warsaw's a common street, but the Poles go far ahead.

It's not quite as impressive.

Or if you go to, frankly, Moscow, you go to Romania, and the Romanians have always been uncontrollable.

And you can't fight with a man, but they're uncontrollable.

And consequently, the Romanians will be, you know, they'll be like a dead end.

I wanted to know if you had a different view.

That's my point, a different view.

Now, probably one might say that you would have that same different view, whether you had communism in those countries or not, that basically these are Eastern European countries and they're more European.

The Russians basically have always been depressed, except for

questions of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, you know, what are the damn Russians, the people that live under all this kind of, shall we say, terror for so many years, they've had a lot of it.

Yet, on the other hand, the difference between an Eastern European country and Russia, and then, of course, when you move from, say, Prague, say, Bucharest, to Vienna,

Yes, I did that too.

And then we think about our Western European countries and all of the problems and the riots and the kids that are going to miss them on the flag and all that.

And we say, isn't it horrible?

Kind of a system, a sex society.

Oh, boy.

Well, you're right.

They just don't want to travel around.

But you think so?

Well, I've got to say that one of the agencies...

It has to be the United States.

I don't mean to drag you back and say that you're being a demigod, but it just happens to be the truth.

I interviewed some of the students, American students, going to the University of Moscow, and they go through exactly the same process.

When they first arrive, they don't want to talk to the government.

They want to be on the East.

Anybody, even though they have anything to do with the American government, they don't want to talk to the people in the embassy.

And about a month or two later, they began to drift back.

And believe you me, whatever illusions existed before they went there, those illusions were pretty much destroyed within about three or four months.

And you get an ISIS standard that paid off.

When they come back, it's going to be greater than...

than anything else that they do, more than whatever information they are able to penetrate into the Russian society.

Well, after seeing Russia, you go to China, it gets much worse.

And it's much worse particularly when you see it in terms of the Chinese, the Chinese's people,

I mean, you could visit Taiwan, for example, which is a rather dreary place geographically, but in terms of the same, you know, the Chinese are gonna get damn interesting people who are in Singapore or Hong Kong than you go into China.

Horrible rabbits, at least in Russia, they let people wear different kinds of costumes, but they don't bring women in China.

The Chinese woman is one of the most beautiful women in the world, you know, partly attired or unattired.

The main thing is about the fact that the Chinese women in Russia and China are just like the men, you know, their hair is all cut back and they wear pants and, you know, and slop around, sloppy old stuff.

And it's just unbelievable what you see.

Now, having said that, yet when you sit down and talk to a Chinese woman,

and the leader class as compared with the Chinese, I mean the Russian and the leader class.

There is a great gap.

I mean, Chinese are rather civilized, civilized and subtle.

The Russian doesn't have some of the things, too.

They're both tough.

The Russian is tough.

He's not dumb, but he's tough.

and he keeps at it and he's sly and this and that.

The Chinese also is kind of sly and this and that.

That communism has been unable to wash out the civilization the Chinese have.

The Chinese even, the Russian peasant is a much more gross person than the Chinese.

Really rough, really gross.

Yes, gross.

The Chinese, I don't know why it is, but there's a grace there.

And yet, looking at the two systems and the illusion there at all, communist China is something more depressing than communist Russia.

When you go to Moscow, you go to Moscow Warsaw, you go to Warsaw.

But the thing is that these gradations are what people need to see.

And they need to see it not in any, you know, we often try to oversimplify it.

We put it in sort of flag-waving terms, and the rest of God knows we, after you get back here, certainly want to wave the flag back.

But the point is, people should see it and observe it, scholarship it, and say, now look, we talk all we want about what has happened, but the evolution of the relationship between our two countries, that we only get to know each other, to love each other, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It's such a long, long, long way off.

And I don't mean by that, but as between the Russian people, I mean, there is a Russian people, the U.S. people, the Chinese people, those formless, shapeless masses.

There is, in my view, there should be questions on their desire, like the American people, to avoid disasters and wars and all the rest.

But, to come down to it, despite what those people

That's probably what they feel.

Despite the fact that they're very gradually almost there is, for example, any Russian, for example, that may be commanded in a different way than, say, China, because it'll be 50 years before modern China looks like modern Russia.

But looking at, sure, looking at Russia, you must have thought that Moscow

And so that change is not one,

that calls us all to jump up and down with joy and say, ah, they are turning our way and give us another five years or ten years.

You know, that there's that great theory working in the world that, very frankly, that we will become more like they and they will become more like us in two systems eventually, because they're held together in Europe and so forth and so on.

Thinking in terms of centuries, that's probably incorrect, thinking in terms of

a generation is totally fallacious.

It's not.

Absolutely.

Your fellows understand it.

They're not moving very fast.

And we're not moving in their direction that fast, I hope.

On the other hand, one of them made a very interesting point.

I can't recall exactly what he said, but before I went to Russia the first time, I saw it and can't believe it.

And he was on one of his visits here.

And he'd been over there in Nevada.

And he said, you're going to be shocked by what I just said.

He said, but you know, I said, this is a very great place.

You could ask me.

This is very sizable.

And then he made the money.

He said, you know, I took the British

two centuries before they, they, two centuries, I don't know if they said two centuries or three or one, zero, but at least it's a little bit earlier than that.

Especially before they could,

get away with chopping off the heads of their rivals and eventually had to send them into exile.

He says it took the Russians only five years to move to a position where

So there is some change.

Khrushchev would have lived out his life as a non-person.

But the part is that it is a change.

These are changes that are occurring.

But we have to see them in the long term, and that we have to adjust our policies in a very orderly way, rather than being affected by a rather sending sentimental attitude

between Americans, you know, we're really, I've often used the term that Khrushchev used about the Cosmo, when the Cosmo came here as his first deputy, later had a heart attack, or otherwise he might have ended up as Mr. Big, but there was not so little guy, it was Leningrad and so forth.

Khrushchev, after he was described to you as various people, met me on his tribunals of intelligence.

And he says, he says, he says, and he told me to do whatever.

And I was, and he said, he comes home and he said, it's a hopeless communist.

He said that literally.

It was a great comment.

He said, it's a hopeless communist.

I don't know, he, he definitely deviated on it.

He certainly deviated on it.

He, I mean, the, the, the, the nature of what he said was absolutely hopeless communist.

And the thing about the Americans is that when we look at our Americans,

We are, in the European mind, the simplistic European mind, and this is truly true, we are hopeless idealists.

We are hopeless.

It's true that the American Indian fighter used to take the little Indian babies and beat their brains out on rocks and all that sort of thing.

We can be quite cruel at times.

But the Americans,

witnessed what we did after World War I, the tragedy of Versailles, and Wilson talking about all that, and ideas which I totally believed in that for many years later.

And then, after World War II, we said, well, if we got any, if one of the Russians were to go in, for example, they'd want to go out and so forth and so on, and they raced to Vienna and all the rest, and we turned off the trains, and as a result, Churchill

who saw that what really mattered, who saw that what really mattered, particularly after the battery apology, was only, we saw long before that, was only the political future of Europe, not military, and that we had to start dealing with it then.

His advice was rejected.

Europe now is divided.

The Iron Curtain is there, and so forth.

Why?

Because we're hopeless ideals.

Then comes the United Nations, and even in this country today, you take a poll 50% of the people and say,

and most everything that happens in the U.N. because the majority rules, even though 45 of those countries are smaller than Taiwan.

But if you go along with that, now you kind of know at the present time the moves that we've made with people of foreign policy.

I'm speaking now on the Vietnam Road, which is just one of those terrible difficulties.

They must be interpreted in the right way.

In the right way.

But we must talk ideas.

It's very important always to talk about, just like the communist general, what do they talk about?

Do they talk about totalitarianism and dictatorship and so forth?

Hell no, they use the words freedom and liberation and so forth.

They use our words.

So we've got to talk the idealism around it.

But we must realize, we must recognize, what we're dealing with here are totally dedicated, ruthless leaders who are out to do us in.

And we're out to do that now.

And the point is, what we have to do is, there happens to be one of those great breaks in history.

which we did not create, where these two great powers can't talk to each other.

And because they can't talk to each other and won't talk to each other, the United States has that position, which is terribly important, where we can be basically the broker for, shall we say, peace and better relations in the world.

Now, what we have to realize, too, is that

that whatever we do toward the Russians, whatever we do toward the Chinese, every single event must be cataloged in terms of the crass self-existence that is in a room like this, and talked about in terms

of sentimental idealism when you get out in the front.

And that is why you see the regulator in this country has totally no understanding.

No understanding.

And they never will.

And the left wing equally has no understanding because they like it for the wrong reasons.

You were all wrong about the communists.

They were never that bad.

They really love us and all that.

They hate our guts.

And if they ever was the other way around, they would .

put it right in front of us.

What we need are people like yourselves in them.

Basically, the center is a bad center means somebody that takes a position on nothing.

But you need people who can see the world as it is, to get at it.

And this is not bad.

It doesn't mean anything's ever changed.

Nations have always made decisions for self-interest.

They've always been those that survive.

Some have been more civilized than others.

Some have been more idealistic than others.

The Americans, to our great credit, are a hell of an idealistic people.

We do like people.

We want to help the Africans.

We put our pennies in the jars of missionary, you know, you know, the Guatemalans.

See, in our little Sunday school class, what do you do with the Guatemalans?

And it's all a very wonderful thing.

And we want to help the blacks.

We want to help this and that.

And this is all, this is the American.

It's one of the reasons why we do have, shall we say, some sort of moral appeal in the world.

But at the leader level, God save the United States, and only God can save the United States, if you ever start making decisions on the basis of sentimentality,

rather than the basis of what's that guy trying to do, what we're trying to do.

Well, this connection was present.

One of the concerns I developed two weeks ago, you know, we were studying the problem on a similar program in Moscow, was that as we enlarge our relationship with Russia, as we particularly begin to build an enlarged trade and commercial relationship,

I wondered whether he had the machinery adequately developed to manage this in a way so that everything that we do, say, on the commercial or economic level, just for example, or on some other level, is not only done in terms of, say, the goals that the Congress Department might have, or in terms of the goals that our economic policy might have, say, for example, downstream.

We also see the rather crucial foreign policy objectives in terms of information and psychological penetration of the Soviet Union, et cetera, et cetera.

So that we make, in terms of technology, we get back a full measure of the psychological information on other activities.

And I particularly think of a great point in terms of the European

security conference, that is a goal that they've had since the beginning of time.

Sure, we ought to be able to get back an awful lot in terms of maybe elimination of the gym, in terms of we're going to put a large and large cultural and economic exchange there.

Now, the thing I'm concerned about, some of the people that are most acutely aware of all this are the people who are in the embassy in Moscow, and I would like to see, to speak personally,

It might be more effective to work our relationships from here to the embassy to Kremlin.

and therefore build up our team there and then utilize them more effectively rather than the work to bring in and develop mechanisms by which economic initiatives, trade initiatives, even private business initiatives can somehow or other be marshaled in a way that our total foreign policy objectives

or enhance and make Russia, in other words, use those as levers to get some of the things back to the world.

I don't know what that means.

I think it makes a great deal of sense.

How you can use the people, you talk about using an ambassador in Russia, but the people in our embassy, the problem is complicated for the fact that

at all and not talk to the bastards.

They talk to the president.

That's a hell of a man.

He was one of the ableest men in the Foreign Service, and so was Tommy Thompson, but the Russians, they left their messages, but they never sent out a discussion.

Now here, we do talk to a public member, the reason that, and he has one thing that he can do, perhaps, in his own, but we do talk to him, because he, I think,

I see not very often, Mr. Chairman.

The reason is that he was the direct channel to that.

Now, whether you can get that to think in terms of American capacity as a direct channel, it remains to be seen.

It cannot be afraid of foreign services.

It basically is a service to the person, as they would, despite all that message of foreign service firing a hundred every hundred years.

And they cannot have great, one of the advantages of the old Greek channel, frankly, the private channel of the Chinese is that it's private.

But let me come to your point.

You're absolutely right, because they are going to pick us off.

They did it, like, for example, on this big development of their natural gas resources.

The Commerce Department got into it.

And also, the other part is that a lot of the Russians

who speak with one voice to their government.

That Congress guy is probably going to be over here.

He'll take El Paso and take two counties in Tennessee who are mortal, vicious enemies against each other.

And he'll play one against the other.

And we'll extrude the guns out of monkeys now.

That's what has to happen.

And what we have to do, and we have to do, and it's going to be very, very difficult, and probably can't be done through the Congress Department

Due to the fact that we can't have our government take a position between these two moral enemies, what we'll have to do is to find a way to force the Russians to talk to us.

I think what's going to have to happen, too, is deal with the East-West trade problem.

is that we have to have a very substantial allocation of our antitrust laws.

We cannot, particularly the United States cannot, frankly we can't even compete with New York

We certainly can't compete with Russia.

We can't compete with China.

We cannot do that because we have a situation where they speak with one voice, and we can't compete with Japan.

The Japanese state, they have a very private enterprise, the Kennedy Company.

How in the hell they have?

It's one big government, big assertibility, good management.

When you speak with Japan, I'm afraid they're going to think of, well, Mitsubishi or whatever.

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So you don't give the Europeans a bad thing, honestly.

Let me come around in another way to show how all these things are sold in a lot of places in Japan.

The only factor that is keeping Japan from running to Europe is the fact that we provide the security of Japan.

And Japan knows that the moment the United States will give up the security guarantee for Japan, Japan and Japanese either have to go, either the Russians or the Chinese can go, or they've got to go to Venezuela.

That is unacceptable.

So here we are, we've got that over.

In addition to that, we're their best market.

That helps too.

But the fact that we're the best market, we've got that over, we should play to the hilt and have the Japanese play with us to do the Europeans in.

Now, looking at it another way, we're talking about where he is, we haven't told them yet.

But on the other hand, I mean, I have the greatest admiration for Keith, who's a brilliant economist, and the greatest admiration for Dr. Hughes, a brilliant economist, and so forth and so on.

for Brown, who's a great economist, but who has some working for him, and the Italians, who have a government.

But the point of all of this is that Europe, here, the new Europe, is going to be the biggest treaty area in the world.

And debt is gonna beat the hell out of us in going into these various markets around the world and making the openings to the East and the United States.

Unless the United States can find ways to deal more effectively at one grave power of economic use.

Now what does this require?

It requires some bending, if not changing the antitrust laws.

It requires a government

and playing a role with business in which we keep our businessmen from going over again and doing something which may appear to be a good business deal at the time, but which is a bad one, and it's been lost.

Businessmen want to do the right thing.

That's why we're developing here a reorganization scheme.

They have policy, which are economic policies.

our economic policies are recognized, as is the case for the Russians and the Chinese, certainly, and the British, certainly, as something of a tool or force, rather than the other way around.

And the, I don't mean this, you see, you have the other theory, the other theory that you'll find if you move into the upper sections of, where you,

Anyway, how long did you go out there?

You'll find these people, these guys, stand around and say, why is the government interested in all this?

If we can just have good economic relations, as with other good economic relations, the political relations will follow.

Not true.

They must go again.

I mean, we've got to realize the biggest asset the United States has in the world today is not the gas bomb, which is so horrifying that we can't use it.

It's only, perhaps, to scare others.

But the biggest asset we've got is our enormous spread of productivity and so forth now, which is going to continue to grow.

And we've got to use that, and we've got to use it not for the purpose of putting other countries down, but the purpose of opening up the world so that we get a fair shake in the world.

Conley was absolutely right.

Maybe it looked too rough in some people's minds, but he was right.

Shaking up the Europeans and shaking up the Japanese and others and saying, now look here, you've got a free ride going on.

From now on, it's going to be a fair shake for us.

The State Department is practically climbing the walls about all that because they are constantly of the mind that it's their job to represent the views of the board.

That's why we're shaking them out of there and changing the baskets all around.

Once an ambassador, you've been in the country more than two years, and becomes the ambassador from that time.

But you're absolutely right about this.

It's a great, and it's something, we've done some thinking about.

I'm sending Peterson a three-month chapter round.

He's supposed to come back with some recommendations.

about how we can do this as a country, whether or not the United States, you know, with all of our belief in freedom, we're against cartels, and frankly, and so forth and so on.

How can you really compete with, let's leave all, let's leave the Europeans out, or can you go with the Japanese?

It's the brave that are tough, bastards.

My mom and my brother-in-law,

Oh, so I know something about what your pan is doing to us.

Yeah, had been doing it for a long time.

In fact, did you know the former head of Magnavox, you know, died?

Yeah, I didn't know him.

No, I don't know what he did.

He died.

I know him so well.

He was a very good Frank, Frank...

I met him in Japan and saw him in New York a couple of times.

I never knew him.

I've heard many stories about him.

Godfrey McHugh, word for word.

But it might not respect the U.S. diet.

I don't know what your evaluation of that was.

Well, on the personnel, I think it's hard to get that personnel.

You've got some of them.

I do, indeed.

I ain't one of them.

All that you think are good, I want to just give you the names so that I can be sure that they're retained.

They will be.

Well, the person that I was telling her earlier that I used to cover for her 30 years ago,

on the basis of the personnel I saw in Eastern Europe, and particularly in Russia, I would say, in order to see a decrease in the quality.

Yes, and I can speak for both of these.

They're a lot of credit.

He used to be working in two events, and I gave him a list of those people that I thought were particularly good in both Romania and... We could have a list of people who you think are good, and also people who you think are capable of better things.

There's no reason to leave a guy in the name of an arrest officer sitting around, who caressed, or what have you, set fire to him.

I have, you know, fired at him.

We're pushing out younger guys all over.

One of the very unusual talents you have in Moscow for a special life, not as a manager, not necessarily as an organizer, but as a fellow, is an enormous deal with the culture as well as the political side of foreign policy.

It's just, Andrew, you know, it's hard to...

So he's a good man, huh?

Yeah, sure.

His strength and weakness is what his strength and weakness are, as usual.

Incidentally, I do want to come back here.

Frank has a particular plan for him.

I don't know why he's not much with Frank.

He's been all over it.

Oh, he likes him.

Andrew is one of his...

I've seen Frank this afternoon, actually.

We can't get him to stay in government, unfortunately.

I think your operation there is very effective.

quite honestly I think the turnover is too rapid in that particular post because you don't get enough knowledge and I think you need to

come up with a better rest and rehabilitation program for some people that are here, like people in Russia in particular.

Oh, my God.

Do you know, I suppose for the wives and stuff, as well, I'm not sure.

So long, sir, Mr. President, all of these issues are coming, especially in Russia.

To live in Moscow as a wife of someone who is not in a capacity or position is a pretty miserable distance.

And asking no friends, except within the embassy itself.

They don't give us an interesting thing.

They don't even know what in the hell do they do.

There are no golf courses.

There are no tennis courts.

There are no .

Bucharest is, incidentally, the exception to the rule.

They have a beautiful country club given over to the diplomatic groups from all the countries, including Carmel, and Tennis, and they were all in Bucharest.

So that's not such a bad service.

They really are a wonderful city.

In Moscow, on the diplomatic side, I think you do choose to have an ambassador who has the kind of personal relationship.

Depending on how you decide you want to carry a policy, you can go that route or else the point is that you...

You have a DCM there that I think is going to be really great.

I think he has a team.

He's able to pull a team together.

I mean, he's already been a remarkable impression on the individual people, everything, despite dubs.

He has a good feel for the country.

He's not a Rowan Thompson exactly, not a Tommy Thompson, but he's... What I'm saying is that

If you go the route of a personal kind of representative, and we'll feed into Henry, for example, to the general here, he would make an excellent chief of staff if you will, and a whole team there, and make that whole team pull together in a way that I don't think that they have been.

And with all due respect to Jay being in the White House for a long time, I think they'll get some things done.

We're going to try to get more done through the embassy there.

We should.

It's not fair for the Green to get in and for our guy not to.

They're never sure.

It does feel like he's a little bit, has been a little bit.

Well, it's been bad.

As you know, it's a question of, you know, he's got a nice house and everything, but the ambassador, one of those characters, must be untold.

But, unfortunately.

I don't think we have the best possible morale in our Romanian embassy.

Who's the ambassador there?

Meeker?

Yes, sir.

Leonard Meeker.

He's a little connoisseur.

I just can't have a sense of his little problem in Romania, which I did not find at all in Czechoslovakia.

Did you go to the old cemetery?

Did you go there?

I didn't, but my wife did.

They took to me, I guess it's called the Jewish legacy, it is, but they have five tiers, you know, where they are, and so forth.

You know, they throw them all out.

It's a fantastic experience to know that.

I was alerted most of the time, too.

It was the only two things I saw across the river.

I can see why the Czechs, why they must hate the damn Russians.

I don't know.

to impress us that the

Part of this we have to realize is not just communism, for example, but part of it is that had there been no communism, all of these countries, the civilization,

frankly, starts in France and then recedes usually down across the rest of Europe.

Until the time they got to Russia, it's in certain small parts, it sparkles out.

But, and basically the Czechs, the Czechs, everybody knows before World War II, had the highest per capita income in Europe.

And, God, to think of what would happen to those poor people, but of course the Czechs,

If I could just throw in one more policy issue that we will be facing, and that is the future of radiography, for example, as well as West America.

You might be interested in one, Andy, though I spent some time talking to the correspondent, but usually you've got a good feel as to how an organization like the USA is going in terms of how well

they think of the operation, they think pretty highly of it.

I found less negativism among the correspondents there about the USIA.

I usually find in other countries.

But when there was Rick Smith, for example, at the time, said you went over there as a guy completely down on operating the delivery of this sort of an operation.

He took a tour of the delivery.

Eastern Park.

Where did you see him?

I saw him last winter.

I've known him for years.

Which one is he?

Hedrickson.

Well, he used to be here.

Yeah, he was here covering the State of Toronto one time.

He isn't rich in that song.

No, I don't think so.

There are other ones.

Anyway, he came back and says, yes, this is off the record.

I don't know if he wants this quoted or not.

On the record, he said that he has switched his own personal thing.

Things need to be done to improve radiotherapy, but a lot of it's more flamboyant and heavy-handed.

The use of defectors is not very helpful.

There's a lot of opposition to that.

Long distance, he was talking to Russian distance.

That's where he was getting his beat back.

But with a more so-so, nevertheless, this kind of...

negative information, to put it one way, about what's going on inside, which is, you know, a view of a distance is something that ought to be generally, you know, a fairly effective way to get at that is the introduction of Cardinal Crowe, who talked about Cardinal Crowe's back to the report, and that can be an interesting point, that the most devastating way to get at that is humor.

I really think we should look to get more cooperation

from the industry.

I think corporations should contribute their most modern equipment to the USIA.

You went to the fairs.

Exactly, yeah.

And I share the book with whatever I can on there, because I think that's important.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

It was a real privilege.

Well, you didn't gain weight.

You didn't gain, but you think you got to carry everything.

And good bread.

Excellent bread, Mark.

It was well-bred like that.

That's great.

You know, I never eat here, but I did very well.

Can I get you a Christmas present?

Thank you, sir.

Here's a presidential card with the seal.

And if you like, you can go around the floor.

Thank you, sir.

You are the third one, sir.

Well done, sir.

Thank you, sir.

Now you see here, you can feel that you're all the experts.

You're all the experts.

That's the way.

Oh, I don't want to see you get on our show.

Well, I don't want to see you get on our show.

I thought you were here for dinner, Gloria.

I thought you were here for dinner.

I thought you were here for dinner, Gloria.

Just in a case of, it's a question of very tough, hard work on what would appear to be, in some minds, not important issues, but which, in our minds, in some, in our souls, are more important than in ours.

But we're just not getting it to work.

That's all there is.

I'd like us to know there's more, but there's nothing in me that the,

Is that a fair statement?

I was just, just...

They're meeting again right now, aren't they?

Or is that over, that meeting?

They should be ending right now.

What are you going to start doing now?

You know, it's now six o'clock.

There's probably another hour in.

Yes, sir.

But it's just going to be some more of our grinding.

I think that's pretty much it.

But we're continuing to negotiate to get the right kind of deal.

Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you.

All right.

I love you.

Sit down.

Thank you very much for this morning.

We're going to do it.

It's a very difficult thing to do, but we are doing it.

I was interested in what you said about David.

Oh, well, actually, I don't know what will happen when he returns.

He normally would be out in a year for a march, but there may be a number of services of officers and so forth that may be out this march.

And he has a better term.

I don't know what it is.

He's a priest.

So, he could be

He could be a, he has a very good tone.

He writes very well.

I mean, I have seen, you know, he's thoughtful.

He's thoughtful and sees things from a viewpoint, I guess, that some of the rest of us, he's very conservative, which is good.

I don't mean, he isn't enough.

He's conservative.

He's about it.

It's a deep sense of history.

Exactly.

It's a great sense of history.

I don't know what he could do.

I just don't know what he could do for you.

Well, I don't know what he could do.

He could do certainly.

I was thinking of David Sondheim.

You're talking about him?

He can ride about to the volunteer army.

He can travel abroad.

Now, for example, I don't know what he's meant to do, but he's been invited to Europe.

Julia, I mean, Christian and Eddie Cox are on a trip to Europe now, which they are paying for themselves.

They want to take them.

They've been invited by the Russians to come there.

The Chinese have invited David and Julie to go to China.

in the spring.

That could be a very good piece for him to write, something like that, because he will be a keen observer.

I don't want to suggest it in terms of just

I don't know whether it would be good for him.

I mean, good for you, frankly.

Good for him.

But in terms of getting a...

Frankly, the viewpoint of the young, the new generation, it might be very good for the diet.

It might be.

I'm not sure.

I thought maybe he'd be interested in politics.

He will.

Yes.

As a matter of fact, their seat will come open, possibly, in Gettysburg.

They've been in there 74 years of age.

He may not run next time.

And so within a year, he will run for office.

And we would hope that he would.

But the point is whether he should do that.

But he's a very thoughtful... Well, you know, if he had a stint with us for a year or so and then got into politics...

And as you say, he needs something to, of course, in that period of time, so he's done something.

And he had to be a contributing, he had to say, all right, we expect so many articles out of him.

Well, I think, you know, he's done a lot of traveling.

He could be a rolling reporter for us.

And he could go to China and grow the United States a bit, too.

Sure.

Well, I'm going to be a journalist.

And as you say, too, you'll be a journalist.

Definitely.

All right.

But let's just put it aside.

Sure.

He won't be back until March.

No.

He isn't coming to the inauguration.

He came to the election.

Huh.

He's been very good about that.

Yes, he has.

Asked him, especially.

Now he's kept out of it.

And he's right.

He'll be back in March.

I'd be glad to.

Should I drop him a line?

Just right around the corner?

say what he's taught me to say.

Well, if it isn't putting you out, it would be a nice thing.

I'd love to do it.

You see, I'd just like to chat with him about it, and if he gets the thought of sharing, he'd like to carry on.

I'd love to see him.

I'll write as much as I want.

Anyway.

The only other thing I have on my mind at the moment is on the USIA.

My suggestion.

Well, yes, I think whoever succeeds Frank, I would hope could have more access to you and also be in some way in touch with Henry and the Secretary of State.

Here's what we had in mind, actually.

At the present time, we're thinking of Jim Keogh.

The advantage of Keogh is that he would be then an inside man.

He would have access to far more media literature than Henry would trust him.

particularly if he can get that access, because I think the ESAC is a great instrument.

It should be used.

Fire hordes have been used.

Henry has been very terrible in that stuff.

And the reason is he's playing everything in his own secret ways.

Yes, that's right.

It's afraid to tell anybody.

He's afraid of it.

But there comes a time when you've got to get the message across more effectively.

Maybe with a war.

Maybe not.

Well, the wars are, who knows when they'll ever go.

But we hope so.

It's up and down, honestly.

We have a very deep, close agreement.

And they would withdraw there.

And today, if Hugh makes a big speech, he won't go along unless all of the North Indians get out.

But we can't get that, because basically that's not ceasefire.

And ceasefire means in place.

And he's got 95% of all the people anyway.

I think we're at this point, I don't know how you feel regarding Vietnam.

If at this time we get an agreement from them that provides for a return of our POWs, or a ceasefire, or...

uh vietnam for an election supervisor to supervise elections where the south vietnamese determine their future i think if you said i won't go and i will not sign it unless you also have an agreement that all the north vietnamese leave south vietnam i think the american people would say the hell with them i don't think the american people want to continue bombing and so forth but what do you think i don't know i agree with you completely

The sooner we can get it over with, the better.

Without absolutely scuffing, too.

I think the very back of May, I did what we did.

I bombed, we mined, we went to Russia.

We improved now.

We wanted to stand up, but now you can't say, I've got to have victory.

Absolutely not.

I agree.

I don't see how you can give him to him every single thing he wants.

And what do you think if we made that kind of a deal and he said, yeah, well, you just go ahead and make it?

I'd go ahead and make it, and I think he'd go along.

We'll see.

What else could he do?

If he knows you mean better, he's got to go.

Right.

Let me say, too, that me getting back to USIO, that's one of the reasons he appeals to me in this idea.

I know that...

needs to be inside he is a canadian that's right out of a loyal fault that's right but if donnie has a great asset if he's close to you and you've got his confidence in him well i think you know you're so right about russian if these god damn left-wingers in this country are all talking about the great communist society he's ever visited communist countries

They'll never be that way.

A funny thing happened.

I was standing with Jake Beam, and his opponent Zhukov came up, a very important man, not the general, but some other.

I know the one.

And he said, I'm coming over to your country shortly to go to the Dartmouth Conference.

And I said to Ambassador Beam, I said, is that a financial conference of some sort?

He said, no, it's a little bit like the Pugwash Conference.

And the Russians emerged.

He said, well, it isn't exactly like the Pugwash Conference.

But he said, you know, it was something that Norman Cousins has worked up.

He said, do you know Norman Cousins?

I said, very well.

He said, do you know David Rockefeller?

And I said, very well.

And he said, well, those folks have got this conference going for friendship.

And then we had lunch with him, and he understood I was with a bicentennial.

And he said, by the way, who's chairman of the bicentennial?

And I said, David Mahoney.

And he said, who's he?

I said, he's president of Norman Simon.

Oh, he said, I know Norman Simon very well.

So, David Rockefeller, Norman Simon, and Norman Cousins are, you know, these are the kinds they work with and play with.

And they're all soft in the head?

They're all, well, yeah, they're all soft in the head.

All soft in the head.

Well, I thought that was incredible that this highly-praised Russian would know these three.

Was it God?

I think I got a little one.

Is he by the way?

Yes, I'm sure he's not.

He was the director of their information.

Information.

When I was there.

No, that's right.

That's right.

Being said, he used to write the most scurrilous stuff about the United States, and now he's so much changed.

The world hasn't changed, and we can serve in that world if we're doing the very best we can against it.

It's a balancing act for the Chinese and Russians.

But the main thing is that at least in the election day, it was a very, very great pleasure to be here to doubt them if they were nice, good people.

I mean, I wasn't down in the desert.

I haven't done that.

It was just so marvelous.

Yeah, and then I thought it was so good that you were able to stand firm on October 31st and not, you know, not sign an agreement.

Yeah, I don't know.

Why didn't we send them some battery?

Well, they thought they had you over a barrel because it was the week before the election.

Well, anyway, it's good to see you.

Well, I don't understand how he wants to do what your son-in-law requires of him.

And I think that he mentioned that he'd like to write.

And he said, well, first of all, how about writing for the Los Angeles Times?

And I said, no.

Because, you know, they'd use it.

Sure.

They'd use it.

They'd exploit it.

They'd exploit it, right?

What he needs.

He needs to write me a couple of good pieces.

Good pieces.

Because he wrongly circulated them.

because he would actually edit it out.

He would edit it out.

That's a detective.

But he's writing a piece in the chapter.

Yes, he's writing a piece.

How Two Young People Saw China.

So you want to know the details.

Not really detail.

I might talk more about it by September.

Eventually, you're going to need

full-time, high-powered, head of it.

Nobody can do it part-time.

I'm not talking about the commission, I'm talking about the director.

And it's a job that isn't too big for anyone.

I mean, it could be Nelson Roderick, or it could be John Connolly.

If you don't want to go that high, it could be Frank Stanton or something.

But you need a full-time man to run the business.

under the commission.

You just can't do it part-time.

It's the biggest thing in this country.

I mean, it's got to catch fire, but it can't be done without a good staff.

And the staff isn't very good.

And you need a really big man to run it.

Don't you do it with the questions.

He's got to be a little taller.

Bob Moses used to be only a better man than that, you know, to run the whole thing.

He was all right.

We could find him.

You could give him some money for that.

OK.