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No, we don't need it.

We don't need it.

Okay, I prefer not to.

Yes, sir.

What's that here, Scott?

And 12.

Well, they changed it.

Right here is a 10.

Oh, good.

Yeah, they changed it.

Okay.

And based upon that uncertainty, which is good, there's speculation all over the line.

The line that seems to be sitting in is that the hang-up is the fact that Saudi Arabia is over South Vietnam.

Related to the ceasefire in place and the sovereignty and so forth.

I understand how it could be on the mark, but it's fine.

It is very close.

The other point in addition to sovereignty is that Q is hung up on having a third party set aside in the economy, the South Vietnamese, because of his concern that .

On the other hand, I think that the concern about

The war is waiting in the background.

I agree.

I think people have a feeling that they would like to see this end.

But they're not hung up on it.

I think it's true.

We made an effort.

Peace was at hand.

The North Vietnamese reverted back to their intransigence.

You said that we weren't going to sign until it was right, and therefore, we stand ready to talk.

But in the meantime, the policy which you articulated before at the time of the mining of the harbors is in effect, and that policy will be followed.

In the meantime, we stand ready to talk and pursue every channel that we see within the

before, blackjacked into an agreement that's not right.

To me, the American people would support that much more than they would support an impression that the United States, after 10 years being this close, is pushed into something that was not to the best advantage or that the President felt was not to our best advantage.

After all, pieces at hand, after 10 years,

of a war, that there can be arguments on both sides.

And a piece of hand, after 10 years, could be three months, could be four months.

That's at hand, if it comes in that framework.

Well, the other point I would make, Mr. President, is there's no question about the fact that if strong action is taken in terms of bonding

forth that there would be a lot of squeals from the from the uh there would be a lot of squeals from the post and cronkites and they would focus on that and so forth but i also feel that uh you know we've weathered that before and i think certainly this could be weathered at this time because i think it's been proven that that type of squealing does not impact

I think we just ignore that type of parking if that decision is made.

Well, my view on what Kennedy is up to is that he has absolutely no reason to attack.

In other words, my view of Kennedy's statement the other day is that he wants 76.

Sure.

He feels that 76, if he spends 72, 73, 74 attacking Kennedy,

a popular president, as proven by the election, who landed the people's support.

He's going to put himself over here as a carpenter, as a political antagonist, and so forth.

So why not elevate himself and say, I want to work with this president who's doing a lot?

Then in 76, he is not postured into a position of a political attacker and all that kind of thing.

He can go against his real target and will not be a target himself.

And I think those people probably

sat around and said to themselves, a lot of people have underestimated the president.

We're not going to do that, because those who come up against him have lost.

And so they say, why do that?

I don't know.

That's one theory.

My governor, Axel, was still talking about the agreement.

My governor called the agreement and said,

Well, you better.

I mean, it's a great thing, but I...

We talked about yesterday.

You know, we're nice people like that.

But this woman is a man, you know what I mean?

A man who's done it.

She did really something.

She's tough, strong.

Would Julie run that thing over there?

She likes, you know, she's a nice person.

That's a good idea.

She's a nice person.

She knows what part.

She likes Pat.

She likes Julie.

And she can actually know the color of things.

She can feel it.

And she can waddle out and talk to the girls and so forth and so on.

Give the nice things.

And she gets along with Julie.

That's right.

You know, life just fires.

I've talked to the .

Oh, yeah.

But it's not about .

They, of course, .

What they did say, they're a, they want me to come up.

No, no, .

They made the point .

I thought I had a son of a bitch come up this morning.

Boy, you guys are real mean to each other all the time.

It's really incredible, huh?

I'm sorry we kept sending you these up and down reports, but for the truth, they had us on a rollercoaster the first week.

You know, it was gang time.

Yeah.

The first week, they appeared to be perfect reports.

Then about the end of the week, we thought maybe he was picking up the suits and all that.

Then the next week, we decided to screw us again.

But now we're at a point where I think that, yes, frankly, I just thought that you

I think this is so important we ought to sit and talk about it.

And we may talk all day today, by God, because we're going to do the right thing.

And it's going to be at a high cost, one way or another.

But the main thing that's going to come out, this thing's going to end.

Or you don't agree.

Oh, it's going to end.

And I think, Mr. President... And, incidentally, the press, up and down, is typical.

I mean, Scottie Russell writes a piece yesterday where it shows that, well...

I didn't talk to that...

The point is, he writes a piece which everybody else...

The country thinks the war is being brought to an end.

They think it's very difficult.

The conscience of some of the victims is too difficult.

And we're working like hell to bring it to an end.

And they're not excited about it because, you see, they're not seeing it on television every night.

They're not seeing Americans being shot.

They're not seeing American casualties being hauled out.

They're reading that the casualties one week are zero and the next week are one.

And as far as the country is concerned, the war is out of their conscience.

So there we have a very different situation.

As far as the POWs, that will escalate as they do not come back and will be a continuing nagging problem.

What I'm getting at is that in terms of time, that is not our problem.

In terms of time, what our problem is, and this is what those bastards know,

What our problem is, and I, in order to try to get you or deliberately overstate that, is the fact that they think that the Congress will say, the hell with this war once we come back.

Now, if we put it to the Congress straight out on the basis, and that's why I wanted to be sure that one base of it you had a specific

case in there where it was POWs for withdrawal, which they would turn down.

We put it that way.

We can bomb them for 10 years and have support from the Congress for Vietnam after the bombing, provided it is not totally aware, I mean, that Q is flying.

That is the thing.

Now, on the Congress, in other words, we've got a lot more short with the Congress than I want them to know.

As you know, we were fighting.

Now, of course, the problem is you were very perceptive when I read your notes.

I thought I was reading my own notes because I wrote them down the same way.

My view is that the South Vietnamese are infiltrated.

I think that what happened is that exactly everything we know about got to the North.

The other possibility is that whether they were ill-fueled, infiltrated, or not, the North was smart enough to know that the Congress will pull the string on us

Because Laird and others are putting it in their budget and talking about it.

I think that's the truth.

Yeah.

And Henry, there's a third possibility.

The left wing in this country is undoubtedly calling on our Vietnamese.

Hang tight.

The Congress is going to screw these factors.

Don't let them.

You see, the left wing, our friends and friends, can't bear the thought of our enemy in this war.

You see what I mean?

They can't bear it.

And so they're playing.

But we've got to decide how to use those damn chips.

And last night, after we got your message, I mean, I'm not sure how you did it, but the one about 7 o'clock, where you laid out all those two options.

I talked out about them.

And the two options.

I said to talk about what the main thing is.

above everything else, there's no god damn reason for you to be discouraged about it.

There's no reason for you to look back and say, well, we'd have done something different.

It might have come out different.

It might not have.

Who the hell knows?

We are dealing here with maniacs on both sides, Dr. Hughes, your attorney.

And the point is, what we've got to realize, Henry, is that we have hung on to the skin of our teeth.

I told something then.

We had Cambodia, we had Laos, we had neighbors in 1971.

Remember the May Day riot at that time.

We had a November 3rd period and all the rest.

And here we are fighting, winning votes by one vote in the Senate.

We've had the media against us.

We've had the Congress, the Senate against us, not the Congress.

We've had the country sticking with us.

And here we are still in.

And how have we done it?

Well, it's not been done with mirrors.

I mean, what has been done by a skillful managing of the goddamn war, not to mention the bureaucracy, no damn help.

But it's been also by the great initiatives, China, Russia, hypnosis, and frankly, by having negotiations.

Now we're coming right down to the water.

And when we're down here at this point, it's going to be settled.

And we are goddamn well not going to take any crap from people who say, well, if we hadn't have gone too

I can second guess as well.

You know what I mean?

We can say, if we had gone just a little slower before the election, then we could have done something right after the election.

That's true.

We could have found a living with Jesus out of it.

But what's it supposed to be then?

What would they have done then?

I mean, would the Russians, could they stand still for it?

I don't know.

So you see, whatever the past is is irrelevant anyway.

The point is, where we go from here,

The main thing we've got to go forward with is we, you know, as we did at the time of Cambodia and the rest, I mean, you can't look back.

It's a hell of a lot of stuff.

It's a, I mean, not particularly tough, but with the Christmas season coming, the inauguration coming, and they want some sort of a peace thing for the inauguration and so forth, so we've had to strike it off.

It's all that crap.

So what the hell?

Actually, follow me a minute.

We're going to state the things as they are.

We're going to award the things.

All right, we'll have a goddamned can run down there, a few nuclear bombs and devices.

We'll scare the shit out of people.

They'll think I'm going crazy.

And what I mean is this.

I know what you've been through.

You leave those tortuous goddamned things, these goddamned batteries coming in.

And it's unbelievable making and giving you something, what with one hand, and then taking it away, backing off the next day.

They're playing with you.

With us.

Like they were before.

They're playing with us.

Like they were before, those assholes.

They were, Mr. President.

I mean, they are now treating us with disdain.

What?

Disdain?

It served my purpose to have long sessions, because I didn't want the press to say everything was flying apart before I was back here with you.

This is why I let the sessions drag on for four hours.

There was never more than 45 minutes worth of business.

Is that right?

Oh, yes.

After Saturday, we missed it.

After Al came in, we were through.

In fact, we were through.

What made you feel that it was a little better looking when Al was on the way back?

He felt a little bit more of that day.

That is right.

Mr. President, what happened all week long was, first of all, let me give you my assessment of how these negotiations went.

They came back on November 20th.

They came there on November 20th, determined to settle.

When Lidocco arrived at the airport, he said it would not be understood if we had a second meeting, if a second meeting was requested.

We gave them 69 changes, of which many of them were crap, just to go through the motions of supporting Saigon.

Instead of blowing their path, they went through in a very businesslike fashion.

They accepted 12 of them.

We were down to four.

You're talking about what day?

The 1st, November 20th.

Oh, that was the time after the election.

Between November 20th and November 24th, that's when we got the first concession with 12 concessions.

And literally, we were within one day of settlement.

We said if we can get two out of three of the other four that were outstanding, we would have settled for one out of three.

It was easy to do.

At the end of the third day, we got a message.

Read it at the table.

Blanche immediately asked for a recess.

And it's never been the same since.

Immediately then, the next day, he introduced new demands of his own, which he had not done before.

And from then on, he started dragging things.

Now, what was the message?

What's your analysis?

My analysis of the message is that they probably got a readout of what you said to Duke and what I said to their local ambassadors, which is what you said.

No, I didn't talk about that.

No, you didn't.

Oh, no.

That's what we said tomorrow.

Well, we said we didn't play tomorrow night.

Then they've got to read out what I said to their ambassadors.

That was it.

I think they're probably in Bill Gates over there in Paris.

That's what I think.

That's right.

That's even more likely than that.

Not Duke.

I think Duke would do it.

But Duke wouldn't do it himself.

You see, they've got to read out.

I think the Paris thing, like I said, their rules are, and those assholes don't know that their rules are bugged.

by the communists, and the communists passed it back.

And so... Whatever the reason is, they then decided... That's what you showed, that when you saw it, that was the turn of events.

Then there was a turn of events.

Then he introduced two demands which he knew we couldn't meet.

One, that the political prisoners ought to be released.

And second, that we should pull out our civilian personnel serving in the technical branches there, which would have the practical consequence of grounding the Air Force

and gravity radar and, in effect, destroying the album.

That's when I asked for a recess.

Because I had to come home.

This was the first session.

Still, we were quite optimistic.

We thought that if we kept pushing, we could finish it that week, but we had no assurance that we could get you along, so we wanted you to talk the talk.

Now, in addition to

to whatever they may have picked up of what we said to the South Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese behavior was so incredible that that gave them an incentive, because the longer these negotiations went on, the better off they were, the greater the tension between Saigon and us, the greater the possibility that we would flush you down the drain without it.

And the third factor was that every day that I was there on the first trip,

Saigon Radio put out the content of the negotiations which we had given them and was keeping a scorecard on the concessions so that Hanoi must have decided that any concession they made to us would be played in Saigon as a victory for them.

So for all these three factors, they put a quietus on the negotiations.

Now when we take back

It was a roller coaster, up and down the whole time.

And since we thought it should be settled quickly, and since all the evidence up to then was still consistent with settling quickly, it was not easy to tell the truth.

But they were up to, for example, Monday morning, Alan and I saw him alone.

He gave us the first statement.

But before we get that in, we must also throw in an equation, in fact.

Those two, or if there were more than that, the two sessions I had in the history report were built when he was here.

That's right.

Obviously, it was reported back because we put them to him.

And it was put in such unequivocal terms that that undoubtedly got back to him.

That got back to him.

But that could have worked either way, Mr. President, because they could have concluded from that and then the Americans would put the lead on it.

Right.

In the third session.

In the first session, he always asked me what my schedule was for getting the thing done, when you would go on television, when I would come to Hanoi, when the bombing of the North would stop.

But the bombing of the North has dropped off so much now because of these idiots in defense that we've practically given it to them for nothing.

We had 28 tacky air soldiers there yesterday.

That's not to say that they won't pay a price.

So that was the situation.

At the beginning of the session, they wanted to know the schedule.

When do we go to Hanoi?

When is the ceasefire?

And they wanted to know all of this because, of course, they are planning their military actions around it.

Last week, Monday morning, he gave us a very conciliatory talk.

And frankly, to show you how naive or wrong we were, we thought the only question was, there were only four issues left at that moment.

We thought it would be done Monday afternoon.

We get in there Monday afternoon.

He withdraws every concession he's made two weeks previously.

and says there are only two choices, to sign the October agreement or to... Why did he do that privately?

Well, incidentally... No, no, no, no.

He did it privately to establish the fact that he wanted peace.

Then he did it in the... All right, now, why is he trying to establish that he wants peace so that we don't go wild?

That's right.

They had two problems.

They are at the ragged edge themselves.

They are obviously terrified of what we will do.

On the other hand, they also feel they can play us.

And so their problem was how to get through the week.

Now, they start with this very soft approach in the afternoon.

He withdraws every concession.

and says if we want them, we have to give them counter-consent.

So then I can't put the Tuesday meeting in order to be able to work on the Chinese and Russian.

And because we cannot go back to the October draft, Mr. President, for a number of reasons.

If we go back to the October draft, we'll be overthrowing Q.

We've got to get some changes.

Secondly, it has now been, their bad faith has now become so self, so evident

that many things we could have accepted in October we cannot now accept without their being written down.

Thirdly, there are many things we could have accepted on a quick schedule for which there's no excuse whatever to accept on a slow schedule, like putting international machinery in place.

Now, then Wednesday we met

And he was conciliatory again.

And he gave us back five of those ten changes we made.

Thursday was bad again.

Friday he gave us the one real concession he made.

When I talk like this, that's a four-hour session every day.

Friday he gave us administrative structure.

That was the one big concession he made.

No, administrative structure is never withdrawn, but...

But the civilian personnel found two things which he knew we couldn't take.

One is the release of political detainment.

The other is the withdrawal of civilian personnel.

So every day they came up with one form or another.

And quite diabolically, one day he said, remember when Al left that Saturday, he said, all right, we take him out of the agreement.

So Monday, he reintroduces them and understands it, which doesn't do us any good.

We still have to withdraw them.

We don't give a damn whether they're in the agreement or not.

We want them there.

Now, they were never in the agreement.

We had a full discussion on the subject.

It was settled in October.

That concession alone, if we pull out our civilian personnel, it's bigger than all the concessions put together he's made to us.

So on Saturday, when Al left, we were down to one issue, the DMZ.

Or so it seemed.

We made another schedule.

I said, I'm sending Al back.

He's then going to go with the vice president.

So the son of a bitch knew the vice president was ready to leave.

So he puts on a fainting spell, says he's getting sick.

So he has a fainting spell.

Oh, there was a fainting.

Oh, yes.

90% of it.

He's got a headache.

He can't meet on Sundays.

If they wanted to settle, Mr. President, they would have settled Saturday night if it had taken until 4 in the morning.

That's why you kept at it, what you were right to do.

You may wonder whether you should have broken off early today, but I think that over there, I want to bring some grass.

But I think we just want to continue to press, and press, and press, and press.

There's one thing for sure.

Everybody here, they want the goddamn thing over for a variety of reasons, and many for the wrong reasons, and some for the right reasons.

Many think it is over.

But at least we've got to play our string out so that we make the record right out.

We couldn't break off the first set.

You had to weave up, right?

Stay there 10 days.

We had to prove what they were up to, Mr. President.

We had to go the extra mile.

And to prove it also to your colleague, your loyalist, like Mr. Solomon.

He reported to those people, too.

They finally get to speak.

Oh, Solomon said he doesn't understand how I stood him.

They're right.

If you have no idea, when I came over there to work on the protocol, I got into that minute.

So then, on Saturday, we had it down to one issue.

All we wanted on that issue is that they give us back something they had already agreed to three weeks ago.

We didn't introduce a new demand.

The issue Al had explained to you, the TMC issue, the way they prayed it, we would not just leave their troops there.

We would abolish the dividing line between North and South Vietnam.

after which they would have an unlimited right of intervention.

They would be the only legitimate government in Vietnam, while there were severe restrictions on the South Vietnamese.

That, then we might just as well overthrow Pew.

I mean, we've got to keep Pew, not sovereignty.

Reznor is completely wrong.

Sovereignty is not the issue.

Because he can't have sovereignty with a ceasefire.

Reznor, I mean, he has it wrong.

He is wrong in one sense and right in another sense.

The two are the same.

To us, Mr. President, it seems to me to sign an agreement which leaves whatever number they've got there, let's say 150,000 which we think, plus the unlimited right of movement across the border.

Indeed, not just the right of movement across the border, but abolishing the border.

That, I think, is close to a seller.

It's a demand they've never made of us.

They had agreed to the other proposition three weeks ago, so it's not unthinkable to them.

So what did they do?

On Sunday, we had experts' meetings to confirm the text.

It's a purely technical thing.

It's third-level people on my side, third-level people on theirs.

In the guise of language changes, they immediately introduced four substantive issues to make our damn sure we couldn't settle.

For example, all week long, we had fought on the issue.

They had agreed that the PRG shouldn't be mentioned in the text.

On Friday, we made the concession that it could be mentioned at the preamble.

And we had then thought that the

that Saigon could pull off the preamble and sign a document without the preamble.

And they agreed to that.

So on Sunday at the language meeting, they put the PRG into three places in the text.

I don't want to bore you with all these details.

It's just to give you the feel that they immediately introduced something which guaranteed that there could be no settlement on Monday.

On Monday, they told me they had no instructions.

But they did.

Can I ask one question?

Can I ask one question that troubles me here?

No.

Good.

Kennedy, at your instruction, made a call to Reagan.

And we thought that was a good thing to do.

I thought it was excellent.

There's one issue, but the whole point is, excellent or not, do we have the Russians doing this here too?

No.

You don't think so?

No, because Al gave me a report.

Al, you were there when I talked.

No, but Al gave me a report of something that Brevin told him, of where the negotiations took place.

Which is so, it's partly true, and partly so distorted, that Hanoi is lying to them the way Saigon is lying to us.

Do you think that the Soviet is crying?

Yeah, definitely.

Do you think so?

Because they know you, Gresham wants to come here, there's nothing in it for them.

If they wanted to screw you, they'd do it in the Middle East.

There's nothing in it for the .

I was troubled by whether we had, you know, put a play there, where we have a much bigger game.

I used to waste it on these .

No, but neither .

You saw the Chinese, too.

Yeah.

Was that worthwhile?

Well, I don't know.

The Chinese never .

All right.

So Monday they come in just to make sure we don't settle.

They come in with a signing, new signing proposal.

So I figured out a way by which we can accept it, and candidly accept it.

The next day he comes in with a DMZ proposal, which is, however, exactly what they gave us the week before, just moving the sentence one place further.

and withdraw the signing proposal they had made the day before and put it into a form that we can't accept, claiming that he had been overruled in Hanoi.

In other words, his communication for that worked very fast.

Then, again, in the form of going through the language of the document, they introduced four other issues.

Then, now this is December 12th,

Six weeks after I told them we want to bring the protocols into being simultaneously with the agreement, five weeks after they say they want to sign the agreement, they for the first time produced their protocol for the International Commission and for the other commission, giving us just one night to study it.

When you see those protocols, they're an insult to our intelligence.

They have 250 members in the International Commission.

They have each team has liaison officers assigned to it of the same number as the team from the party.

All their communications, all their transportation comes from the party.

In other words, the communists supply all the communications and transportation in their area.

They have no right to move out of their building unless the communists agree to it.

We'll never get anyone to serve on it.

And so the international commission is a total joke.

And everything is insulting.

They had agreed all week long, they told us at the great concession, that there would be a team in the DMZ.

So where do they put the DMZ team?

On the river.

Did you know this?

They put the D.S.C.

female pequotier river, which is at Kwan Tree.

And then they have a proposal for a two-party commission, in which they give the communist member, the international member can't go to the bathroom without communist permission.

Then there's a two-party commission, in which the communist member can run freely around the country

make any investigation he wants.

It's established in every district capital.

In other words, the political, the two-party commission is a way for them to spread the VC all over the country.

And then in the national commission, they introduced this Council of National Reconciliation as one of the parties, as if it were a government.

I wonder if you sit down with that asshole scotty and put the robbery down.

I just don't want to have to spend a lot of time with him today.

I have a little pretty thing.

He wants to come in and talk about the GSA man who was put in there as a lame duck and a moron.

Yeah, things like that.

And I just don't want to, I'm not going to go into the anomaly thing.

I'm not going to go into other things with him because I've got to get, I'm going to have to get into this problem of what Democrats I see and so forth.

And I can see time rushing down on us.

But I just want to be sure that you do it.

Yeah, that you just talk about everything.

The whole purpose of this is for you to come in like the others.

The other thing is that Penance is,

apparently he has put in all the talking papers, trying to discuss with them the timing of the State of the Union message and so forth.

I think you'd better let Tempest in, and without his telling them on the fact that there's going to be one, and just say that, I mean, don't get talked about, how can you do that?

Just say we don't want to, huh?

And tell them, look, we, since there's going to be an inaugural, we may have a written message here in another approach to Congress, and don't raise it, because I don't want them to start singing about it.

OK.

Thank you.

But get it buffered down.

I've got about 10 or 20 percent.

I mean, 20, 25.

OK. Well, then, lest we settle on huge things.

So then the only thing we accomplished was to go over the language of the agreement.

We had it down to two.

There were only two unresolved issues.

One of them, a total, cheap, miserable trick on their part again.

They had introduced the phrase that the National Council will direct the other party.

We refused to accept that, so they said supervise.

We refused to accept supervise, and we finally bargained them down with the word promote, which they had accepted.

They accepted the English word promote, but they kept the Vietnamese word supervise, so in the text that's going to be circulating in Vietnam,

So then I would say on the last day, we had it down to two issues on the text and one issue of substance.

I said, let the experts get together and just compare texts once more to make sure we got it right.

So they introduced 17 changes in the form of linguistics.

by changing the obligations on Cambodia and Laos, by taking out a word on replacement, what weapons we can replace.

We had said destroyed, worn out, damaged, or used up.

They take out the word destroyed.

I said, Mr. Leader, for why do you take out destroyed?

He said, because if a thing is damaged, you can't destroy it without damaging it.

So it's an unnecessary word.

So here we go into an hour's debate on the philosophical problem of whether you...

But you know, now all of this we've already communicated to Saigon.

If we take it out, if this were the freedom, if this were Gromyko in the last hour of this all settlement, I'd run this through and wouldn't quibble.

But you know what the strategy is.

If we accept their DMZ language, which would be a disaster, they've got the signing.

If we accept their signing language, they've got the 17 language changes.

If we accept every one of these 17 language changes, which would destroy again what they granted us three weeks ago in Cambodia and Laos, they've got the protocol.

And they are now saying, all of these things, and if we accept the protocol, which we, I mean, if we did that, we might just as well overthrow Jew and leave

Then they've got the understandings.

On the other hand, he played a very clever game.

He's, first of all, their book must say that Kissinger's a man of great vanity, so keep buttering him up.

So they kept saying to me, you and I are the only man who understand this war, so you go back to your president and I'll go back to my police bureau.

Here he was sitting with ten little guys all the time.

He kept saying, you know...

I'm trying to settle.

I make all these concessions for you, and they overrule me in Hanoi, he says.

Now, when a Politburo member tells you he's been overruled in front of ten clerks, you know it isn't true.

So what they've done is quite diabolical.

They've got the issue in a state where if one phone calls to us, they can settle it in an hour.

But they're always going to keep it just out of reach.

Now, Laird thinks we can just yield.

We can't yield.

They won't let us yield.

Well, Laird has sent you a memo.

Oh, he called me.

I told you yesterday, you called me the night before and said we can't take military action on this in Menlo.

Well, Menlo got here yesterday morning, and it's just that we've got to settle.

And so what, sir?

Any terms of visit.

What's new with him?

We haven't got anything else with him.

Oh, no, none of them.

November 3rd, Cambodia, May 8th.

Mr. President, if I...

I just stood firm on this, hasn't he?

He hasn't stood at all as far as I know.

Well, no, no, but he's never indicated any moving away of Sullivan.

No, Sullivan is completely innocent.

Well, I know.

I think he would if they were.

You haven't heard from him, have you?

You've read from him a couple of times.

He said, I want to know.

He's kind of why we have a meeting here.

Huh?

We don't question him.

No.

Let me put Sullivan's view fairly.

In the text of the agreement,

Solomon would make concessions I would not make.

But Solomon has now accepted the fact that no matter what concessions we make in the text, they're not going to settle.

Now, there are a number of possibilities.

It is at a 10% chance that Doe is telling the truth, that he's going back to Hanoi.

I don't believe it.

I just...

If then, as I have to say, there's a second...

possibility that they now want to see for a little longer how that Saigon morphing split works.

That's the predominant possibility that there isn't enough pressure on them to make themselves.

Now, the reason I wanted to, I recommended and am responsible for the accelerated schedule before November 7th is that November 7th gave them a deadline

from which they could not evade.

And therefore, they had to make rapid movements.

What we are seeing now is their normal negotiating habit.

They are shits, if I can use it.

They are tawdry, miserable, filthy people.

They make the Russians look good.

The Russians make the Russians look good.

And it doesn't make the Chinese look good.

I mean, it isn't just this crime I'm giving you.

It is, they never, never do anything that isn't torturing.

Now, November 7th scared the pants out of him.

Now, I remember talking to Al about this.

And I take full responsibility.

He was in favor of the lower schedule.

No problem.

I get a lot of credit, exorbitant credit when things go well.

I have to take the blame when things don't go well.

Well, not that I was right.

India-Pakistan, I was right.

This one, I wasn't necessarily right.

Who knows?

India-Pakistan didn't bother me.

On that one, I was right.

And that one paid off in China.

India-Pakistan was right.

All these assholes were pressing me wrong at the present time.

The press will say, for quite a while, we were very, very close to peace, and they were wrong.

And so when it turns the other way, they're going to say, peace has escaped, and they're going to be wrong again.

And this is going to make a goddamn bit of difference.

My point is, you've got to remember who the enemy are.

The enemy has never changed.

The election didn't change it.

The only friends we've got

There are a few people of rather moderate education out in this country, and thank God there are about 61% of the people who support us.

The left-wingers, most of your friends, and more than many of mine, are against us.

I'm using the left-wingers, Mr. President.

They're all through with us, though.

And we're through with them.

They don't know what's on the table.

I have no illusions about the left-wingers.

They'll come to pitch it out.

Well, they're still talking.

I understand, Henry.

You know, I told him, I said, what difference does it make?

It's done.

You know, whether it was before we should have done it or the election and so forth and so on.

Looking back, we probably should have let it wait until the election.

The day after the election, whack.

You know, and said, or rather than whack, said, you've got 48 hours, kiddies.

Either settle or get off the earth.

That's probably what we should have done.

But we didn't.

That's probably true.

That's probably.

From the standpoint of the election, we would probably have done even a little better than we did.

We did very well.

But nevertheless, nevertheless, there it is.

The interesting thing is that we've got two interesting analysis of the election.

You've got the Lou Harris analysis.

that we were quite told by the idea that we were sort of in peace and progress and all that sort of thing.

You've got the Dick Stammen analysis, which I think is much closer to truth.

There's a lot of other issues that he said all these things.

He says, oh, yes, this is it.

It helped the president's image.

But you came right down to the issues.

What really was it was a comparison between a sellout, a repulsing,

ain't at any price radical against the South.

That was what I was reading about.

You see, that's why it didn't make any difference.

But the point is, who was to know then?

Now, though, it's over.

Now we've got to look to the future.

How are we going to get another deadline for the entire problem?

What we had to balance then was to weigh the advantage of an unchangeable deadline against the danger

of an endlessly protracted negotiation while our assets were missing.

That's right.

And we lost the gamble, that's what it comes down to.

We lost the gamble 80% because of Tew.

Tew, ah, that's right.

No, but in order to... Tew has gone off.

We could have made the deal quickly if we could have lived.

That was the real problem.

About that, we can't say, due to the fact that we know that Jews' survival is what we're fighting for.

Not his, but we know there ain't nobody else to keep the goddamn place together.

We're in a real boxing match.

We all know that.

But you see, so that's what I mean.

You were basing the whole assumption, we were basing our assumption, on the fact that you, if you remember, you went to Sinai.

You remained when you went in search, until you were finished.

There is no coalition coming.

You have a veto power, and there's no other one.

We've got to have total victory.

That was the thing.

They have passed a misled us.

On the first day, he had told us he couldn't accept it.

We could have still trimmed our relations with Hanoi and imported some of the engines.

But he let it off for three days, said he might have tested it only on the last afternoon of the last day.

But that's what happened there.

I agree.

Well, we are now in this position.

As of today, we are caught between Hanoi and Saigon, both of them facing us down in a position of pro-linguism in which Hanoi is just stringing us along and Saigon is just ignoring us.

Hanoi, I do not see why Hanoi would want to settle three weeks from now when they didn't settle this week.

I do not see what additional factors are going to operate.

I'm making a cold-blooded announcement.

I see no additional factor, if nothing changes, that will make Hanoi more receptive early in January.

I see no additional factor that will make Saigon more conciliatory.

On the contrary,

The process of trying to sabotage the settlement is going to float so many proposals of its own that it knocks out the few props we've got left.

That Christmas truth proposal of Q is a disaster because it removes the few military treasures that we have got left.

Therefore, I have come to the reluctant conclusion that we've got to put it to the test in order to

painful as it is, but we cannot do it anymore from the old platform.

We have to do it now from the platform of what we have to do is .

I've thought about it very hard now.

I think I ought to give a low-key briefing tomorrow of just where the negotiations stand.

Well, Al thinks Ziegler should, but I don't see how anyone else...

I went out there and said they were going well.

If I hide now, it is not going to... All right.

Let's think, Warren.

Let's think about it.

Somebody can give a low-key briefing.

Let's start with that.

I don't think anyone else can do it except I.

All right.

Let's talk about that later.

The briefing should be, is where were we at the end of October, and why did we think peace was imminent?

What has happened in the interval, and what is now in prospect?

We can explain very convincingly that with goodwill, peace was easily achievable.

But every time we turned over a rock, we found a worm underneath.

that if they wanted a ceasefire, they should have had an international machinery in place.

They didn't do it.

That while they were talking ceasefire to us, we have reams of intelligence reports that ordered them to go into massive action on the very day of the ceasefire and to go on for three days after.

They translated the document in a way that was totally misleading as to the nature of the...

or whether it had to direct, or whether it had to promote.

And that the simplest thing.

I mean, the way, let me say, if we're going to talk about this, I'll take these words out.

The way that it should be done, I mean, I've got all this, and it's got all these things about direction being required.

You should say that we had evidence first, massive intelligence had evidence that they were intending to violate the ceasefire.

insistent on translating the document and insistent on a change in the document, which would have made it a coalition government or a communist coalition government of the people of South Vietnam, something we had insisted we would never agree upon, rather than a commission of reconciliation we had for its purpose.

In other words, be sure that violating a communist government and that kind of thing gets them to believe

But then, even though there was extensive international machinery provided in the agreement, they claimed...

They sabotaged the international machinery by making it totally meaningless so that nobody would even search it.

At first, they wouldn't even show it to us until December 12th.

But even after you say that the international machinery, they totally disagreed to set up international machinery to supervise it all in any meaningful way.

Then they told us that the demobilization provision of the agreement would take care of their troops.

Every time we tried to give it one concrete meaning, through de facto understanding, through giving it a time limit, through indicating- They were losing these negotiations solely for the purpose, not for the purpose of ending the war, but of continuing the war.

So we have now bringing peace, but of having continuing war in this terribly difficult part of the country.

War in South Vietnam, peace in North Vietnam.

That was their proposal, peace for North Vietnam and continuing war in South Vietnam.

So we have come to the reluctant conclusion

that you have expressed it very well right now, Mr. President.

This was the peace document.

This was the document for perpetual warfare in which they created... Perpetual warfare in South Vietnam and peace in North Vietnam.

That's the way to put it.

Peace in North Vietnam and perpetual warfare in South Vietnam with the United States and the United States cooperating with them in imposing a communist government on the people of South Vietnam.

And this is why these negotiations, which could have been vetted out and could have been vetted out.

The negotiations, on the other hand, negotiations, we have had agreements throughout this period of time.

We've reached agreement on all of these issues at varying times from which they have first agreed and then withdrawn.

This can be settled in one day if they're willing to settle.

And we're ready to settle.

Just an exchange of messages is very important.

Or another meeting, if necessary.

So this is how we also have to dissociate ourselves from Saigon to some extent.

We have to say, what is the difference between us and Saigon?

Saigon wanted total victory.

The president has always said that he would give them a reasonable chance to survive.

The difference between us and Hanoi is that they will not give them a reasonable chance to survive.

So Saigon's objections never had a chance.

And on the other hand, I would tilt it very strongly against Hanoi, very lightly against Hanoi, against Saigon.

I would say that, as far as Saigon is concerned,

We understand that we expressed concern about the agreement, about the people and the people itself.

But on the other hand, Saigon had agreed on May 8th, at the time we laid down the conditions of a ceasefire, a return of our appeal against an internationally supervised election, that they would agree to that.

And now they have backed off of that proposal and are insisting that on a code of withdrawal, of course,

of course, is not consistent.

But we have to back off a bit from Saigon, Mr. President, in Saigon.

I agree.

In Saigon's interest, because then it isn't Saigon that vetoed it, but it is our judgment that the communists have used another guise to impose it.

Now, I would recommend that we leave open the possibility of this settlement if the other side needs

the very minimum conditions that we have indicated.

I would then recommend that we start forming the retreats within 48 hours of having put the negotiating record up.

And I would then recommend that after about two weeks of that, we offer withdrawal for prisoners about the time that the Congress comes back and say, it is now being proved that the

The negotiation is too complex involving all the Vietnamese parties.

Let them settle their problems among each other.

The South is strong enough to defend itself.

THE PRESIDENT.

Well, we will withdraw.

Now, let me ask a critical question.

Do you have in this record a clear Q&A, if we want that, where you said, all right, if we withdraw all of our forces to stop the bombing of the mine, will you return our personnel to the air?

See, that's the trouble, because I... No, I'll tell you, Mr. President, why I didn't do that, because I think that the one...

They won't...

They don't want that now.

They want us... Oh, I know they don't, but it's the one point that we're repeating here.

You see, when we talk...

But I...

When we talk about going to the wall without a sidecar or anything,

The only basis for our going to war is, at this time, the withdrawal of all of our forces, stopping the bombing and the mining, getting our POWs, and continuing to aid South Vietnam.

That is the only basis.

And they'll never agree to that.

Well, Mr. President, they are not all that strong.

I think if you are willing to go six months, they're going to crack.

Well, and I know if I'm willing to go six months, it is in the cards.

I'm willing to go six months, but that I cannot convince the Congress of, in my opinion.

I mean, I must say that on that, I would have to respect the judgment of some other people here.

We can go for, we can sure go to Christmas.

I mean, we can go to it when Congress comes back.

We want to remember that we're going to have a period.

If you're thinking of bombing North Vietnam for six months, bombing for six months, it's not going to work.

I bet we've had it.

Well, let me talk to you then.

I can look at the card for choices.

Big cards.

It is possible to prison.

We didn't do that.

Provided you made the record.

We haven't made that record yet.

No, but we can easily fix that, Mr. President, by having the two weeks after the bomb.

I would like to bomb for two weeks within this framework because they might accept it by New Year's if they get a terrific shock.

If then by New Year's they have accepted it,

We could, at the first formal session in Paris after New Year's, propose prisoners for withdrawal.

Prisoners for withdrawal and blanked off.

That's right.

And say, no, no, the way I would say it, the indemnization is not included.

That's right.

The American role is not included.

We're going to turn our prisoners of war.

We will put the bombings over time.

Yes, we could bomb for six months.

I agree.

On that basis, but you can't bomb for six months with the idea that we'll go back and have some sort of agreement.

I think we're too close on this one.

In other words, you had that in one of your original proposals last week.

But my point is that as far as this one is concerned, I have a feeling it's out the window.

I mean, I don't want to sound pessimistic.

Al, for the first time, is more optimistic even than you are.

I also think they want to settle, but Mr. President, they are scared out of their minds that you'll resume bombing.

They have taken shit from me that you wouldn't believe.

I here is Ligato, the number three man in this country, and the things I have said to him in front of his people, you would not believe.

about his tawdry performance, about his extraordinary trickery, and then just making fun of him when he came up.

I said, now we get the daily speech.

And the point is, plus the threats from you, the point I'm making is, Mr. President, the reason they were so nice to me

is because their strategy is to make us believe.

Why do they let their experts meet?

Why did he come out every day to shake hands with me so that I couldn't fight him off?

I mean, he just walked up to the car and stuck out his hand.

Why did they do all of this?

Because they want to create the impression that the people... That's right.

The press is playing it very heavily until the day, and now the press is playing it the other way because you've returned.

Yeah, but he's leaving tomorrow, so they're going to play the game the other way tomorrow.

Oh, but he's going home for a long time.

For a long time.

That's what he's going to say.

He's going home for a long time.

All right.

Where does Andy fit in with this?

Well, my own view is very interesting.

I was all bored when we had Agnew with something solid he was good at talking about.

I had to send out a guided missile out there, even with hay, and to have him sit down there and have that clever Jew start to say, well, we've got to have this and this, and Agnew won't even know what the hell he got.

That's what I'm afraid of.

I'm no longer, if we go delude, I've recommended I'm not so much in favor of sending Agnew.

I am in favor of sending somebody, maybe Hayden.

Yeah.

I think somebody has to go.

Because we have to shut these guys up.

That's right.

The point is, I don't want them to think that we've resumed the bombing and so forth, and that they've gotten their way.

And that's the point.

You see, that's what we have to navigate now, is a route in which we dissociate from them, but stay closer to them than to Hanoi.

To lay the basis for your withdrawing, for your offering to withdraw for prisoners purely

I have to make the offer of withdrawal for prisoners.

I feel as if I could make that offer before the Congress could be.

You can do it the last week of December.

I think that's what we have to do.

The way I would play it.

I don't see any other way.

I don't see any other way we could survive this whole goddamn thing.

And in the meantime, what do we do?

Retain the present complement of .

Where?

29,000.

Yes.

I don't think they make any difference.

All right.

I don't think they make any difference.

I think it would be a bad sign, Mr. Chairman.

But what I would recommend, Mr. President, is first of all, we ought to get Hague over to the Pentagon as quickly as possible.

What can he do over there?

What he can do over there is we should put him in charge of a Vietnamese task force.

We've got this chairman of the Joint Chiefs who is a Navy lobbyist.

And who doesn't give a goddamn about the war in Vietnam?

And we ought to put Haig in charge of it over in the Pentagon.

We ought to put one man in charge of it in Saigon.

Because who?

No, no, no, I mean one military guy.

I'd put Vogt in charge.

And then we can get some real banging done instead of having North Vietnam carved up into six little areas.

And then, now, the way I would play it is this.

Assuming we have the press conference tomorrow or Saturday, there's something to be said for having it Saturday, because that gets Lidoch to go out of Paris.

Although he'll be out of Paris by the time I go on.

I worry about it.

Well, I'd just like to... Well, you mean he doesn't have a stage?

He won't have a stage in Moscow.

You mean not to do the bombings or...

No, no, the farming I would then resume over the weekend.

What is it that you don't want to do while he's in Paris?

I didn't want him, I didn't want to give our version of the negotiations while he's still in Paris and kick off his own propaganda machine.

I'd like to gain the 12 hours it takes to check with him while he's moving, but he's going to leave Paris if we have our press conference at noon.

He'll be out of Paris at 6 in the evening.

Today is Thursday.

Yeah.

We can do it tomorrow.

I would not make your press conference if you do it.

I wouldn't make it.

I don't know.

Al and I talked about it last night.

I wonder if maybe we shouldn't do it.

We should maybe more on the Ziegler thing.

I think it's a terrible mistake.

Ziegler cannot answer the question.

It will look as if I'm hiding.

Let's leave you out of it, whether it looks that you're hiding or not.

We may want you to hide for everybody's good, your own and everybody else's.

What do you think, Al?

I don't know.

I hear that there's no question about that.

I couldn't do the bombing announcement.

What I think we should do is that no one else understands the negotiations well enough to explain.

The way we've always known the press is by just overwhelming them.

Technical competence.

All right.

What do you want to have come out?

What I want to have?

What do you want to have the press report after Kissinger gives his three-hour brief with the press?

What we have the press report is, first of all...

In other words, what is the point you want the press to report?

That peace was imminent, that it was communist bad faith, not Saigon, that has prevented it, that...

In other words, you want... Am I trying to get something more fundamental?

In other words, the press will report the peace...

peace talks are broken down?

No, no, no.

The peace talks are still open, but that the United States remains willing to settle it.

The United States remains convinced it could be settled in an extraordinarily short time.

But you see, but then the point is,

I'm trying to give, see, you've got to get, all right, one point is the peace talks are not broken down.

They are an impasse.

The impasse is the fault, primarily, of the Vietnamese who are insisting, who are, that's my second argument.

The third point is that we're ready to resume at any time on that.

But then you've got to get across the fact that we are

not simply quibbling over language and translation that's important but what it is really about is what's not in the faith of the south we have the means it's the faith the faith of peace there and also let's understand we have our pow center and they have not and they have refused we had hoped to get this done before christmas you want to feel that business

And we are, I'd like to get a flavor of stepping up the bombing at this time for the field heavy purpose.

Before any of you come, you should get my point.

Just stepping up the bombing for the purpose of getting them to talk is not going to be a very easy one to wheel.

But for four years we had said we would not sell out.

And what these guys have tried to get us to do, that if they had been willing to implement the agreement of the end of October, it would have been easy.

But every time we try to make it concrete on any issue that would inhibit their military action in the future, they were impossible.

On these POWs, we've asked them for a protocol how the POWs would .

What I'd like for you to do, if you would, would be to sit down later this afternoon or this evening, kind of thing, put down one sheet of paper.

This is what we have to do.

And then let everything play around that, rather than giving the press what they would like.

And that is simply a gory and brilliant analysis of what they did to us and what we did to them.

We had it here, there.

They had it there, there.

This and that.

That'll ruin us.

That'll really ruin us.

If, on the other hand, we

public gets the impression that this is broken because these bastards were involved.

They were opposed to communist government.

They're still holding our prisoners.

We wanted them back.

And consequently, the president is going to insist on taking strong action to get this war over.

This war must end.

It must end soon.

If they don't want to talk, we will have to go there.

If they won't return our prisoners, we want to get them soon.

We're going to take the necessary military action to get them back.

That's what you're going to have to do.

And what I was thinking, Mr. President, is we should not announce the bombing tomorrow.

We should just start it on Saturday.

No, sir.

We're not going to ever announce the bombing.

That's right.

And we've got to get it layered.

And Ron can handle that one.

No.

Just for my peace of mind, we've always been bombing.

The weather has been bad.

Let's be a little bit clever.

The weather hasn't been bad.

They have no better.

But it's known that we've stopped north of the 20th, and I think... All right, fine, fine.

And I think we can even use that as an advantage to show our good will and faith.

But I think...

But I think we should resume that.

I didn't resume that.

Why does he say we have resumed bombing?

We have stepped up bombing.

Why build it up?

Why estimate it that way?

Just start bombing north of the 20th.

I put them on the basis because of their build up north of the point that appears they're going to resume activities.

If you start the bomb for the purpose only of getting them to accept this agreement, that ain't going to work.

if you start the bargain if the if the reason for it after january the first which it must be is only for the purpose of getting our prisoners back that will work but if you at the present time you can start well you say because significant

any middle of activities, nor of that.

Put it on military grounds, not on political grounds.

Don't say that we started bombing because they broke off negotiations.

Don't say that.

That's just the wrong thing to do.

Mr. President, I think there's a 50-50 chance.

They don't know why we started.

I think there's a 50-50 chance if we give them a tremendous lot of, particularly not the sort of shit the airport likes to do.

But if we got all their power plants in one day so that the civilian population would be without life, knock down all the docks and high farms so that even if the harbor is cleared, they can unload there for months to come, then they would know.

What kind of ships are still left around there?

We'd have to do it with smart farms.

Okay, then we'd knock out docks and end up knocking out ships.

They're serving dogs, so he's going to be taking that with us.

I'd frankly take my chance on the ships.

You're a great asset, Mr. President.

I'd take my chance on the ships.

All right.

The other thing is, Novi is the only one that seems to be for it.

If I were over it, it was more.

Yeah, Russia, he stands fine.

Don't worry about it.

No, Russia's fine.

He'll stand fine with us.

He knows we should continue.

He thinks that in the end, if we've got to make a deal, it's over.

Russia will do.

He says, whatever you decide on.

We've got to make a deal.

Whatever.

But the point about the reason I think they got all the goddamn airfields, Christ, the Israelis didn't have quite as much.

Let's do it.

General, let's do it.

Every land in the area, including the base of England, why not the civilian side of the dude?

What kind of planes are there?

Are we going to have a delay of four weeks before they get it done?

These smart bombs can't be used except in clear weather.

Isn't that right?

That's right, sir.

And the weather right now is absolutely bad.

Oh, shit.

So we've got to do it.

We went through this last year, if you remember.

I think the only way to do it is to give them about a, just tell them they have blanket authority to do it.

Because the worst thing we can do is do a half-assed job.

I know, I know.

But, but, but now, suppose the weather, let's talk, suppose the weather stays bad through January 3rd when the Congress comes back.

What the hell does that mean?

Huh?

That one.

We've got to get... Now, the other point is, what about the 52s?

Can't they get in there now?

Yes.

Well, God damn it, let's get them in.

What's wrong with getting 52s?

Well, no, we've got the problem, Mr. President.

Let's face it.

The chairman of the chiefs is a Navy lobbyist.

He's not a military commander.

The chief...

The chiefs only give a damn about budget categories.

Mayhem, you put your neck on the line.

And those bastards carved up Vietnam into areas of jurisdiction.

They didn't give one goddamn about the national interest.

They gave a damn about their service interest.

You were right.

So we put that asshole Wyatt in there, who was worse than Abrams, if anything.

Abrams is just a clot.

I mean, he was a good division commander.

We made it.

You were 100% right.

We were all wrong.

We don't know what it is.

We don't have anybody in charge out there.

Well, Pope can do it.

We were all... Well, but he didn't have the authority, Mr. President.

He can't do a goddamn thing.

Well, because there are four different commands bombing North Vietnam, Mr. President.

All right, how do we change the four different commands?

Can that be done tomorrow, like today?

That can be done today.

You give the order, and there'll be unbelievable screaming.

Well, that's the point.

They've got to get it done right for a change.

We cannot make these military decisions and take all the heat and have them screwed up again.

But we've got to get a guy in the Pentagon who monitors it from a strategic point of view and not a fiscal point of view.

And we've got to get a guy out there who looks at it from a strategic point of view.

Now, my judgment is that if you go bold, if we send a message the day the bombing starts saying we are ready to resume right away, but we want to warn you that if this agreement is not concluded by January 1st,

We will not conclude it anymore, and we will work in a different framework.

That's Gerson.

We have a 50-50 chance of concluding it.

I believe a better than 50-50 chance.

I have to give you all... No, no, it's better than 10 to 90.

It may be 75-25, because these guys are on their last legs, too.

They are scared to death of exactly what we are talking about now, and they can't take much more.

If they do not settle by January 1st, then at the end of December, at the last plenary session in Paris before December, I would scrap this proposal and go for a straight prisoner for withdrawal and end of bombing proposal.

And then you'd be in good shape by the time Congress returns.

Congress cannot adjourn that.

But I would not yet do that, because if you do it now, then we miss the chance we have of wrapping up this agreement.

The proposal last week said that we would bond for six months and just change the proposal right away.

We must not do that.

We've got to play this strain out.

This strain must be played out for the better end.

It may not be better.

I'm afraid it is.

I'm afraid that they think they've done it.

No, Mr. President.

No, if they thought they had it in the crack, Mr. President.

No, no, no, no.

I think one of the reasons they don't break, I think, is much more fundamental than that.

The reason they don't break is that they know exactly the kind of conversation where they fear is taking place now.

If they broke, they'd know that conversation would take place.

And then when they break, they figure they're going to get bombed, but they're going to get bombed even without breaking.

Because, well, they have a program.

We know they have.

And so I think the breaking thing, would you?

Would you?

They want to keep.

They feel that by keeping the negotiations open, by having the peace next, this country's right.

Well, this is very, very close.

Things are going pretty well, this and that.

That is a hell of an inhibiting force on me.

On the other hand, if they break,

They are at fault.

And then they said, oh, Christ, we run the risk of getting bombed.

That's working on breaking everything, I think.

And you think there may be another reason?

They still want peace.

They want peace?

Really?

If you read the instructions they put out to their captors, they have told their captors, just hang on a little longer.

There is going to be peace.

I don't think they can stand for longer.

The factors that made them settle in October, when the mines start going in tomorrow, on Saturday, and they are going to have one hell of a deal.

Well, Saturday's only a day in the life of the way.

I'm just trying to think of anything.

Well, this is pretty fast action.

If you resume on Sunday, you resume the bombing on Sunday, then I would send a guard.

I would not send the vice president under these circumstances.

The vice president can't take this.

The vice president will get out there, and what will happen is that Q will wrap him right around his little finger.

He will, I know.

If you send the vice president...

as a missile with one single objective, with Al there to watch him like a hawk, then he could do it.

But the vice president got there, and Jew will say, but he'll show up now.

He's that shitty imposter.

And the vice president will come back.

He'll say, all right, he'll say the right things to Jew there.

But he'll come back, and then he'll argue to the president.

He could cry at me.

Well, we shouldn't do this, and we shouldn't drop this, and we shouldn't do that.

Trying to make his record for the future.

Josephine, totally unforgiving woman.

Terrible.

Never said a goddamn word of thanks for what we've done standing by him in the press.

He should be told that.

Einstein, fed up with him, totally right up to the eye.

He's incompetent in the whole way.

He's going to enter a way in the foundation where it's going to be withdrawal from prisoners.

That's the point.

And that, they will, you think they will accept withdrawal from prisoners?

Well, he proposed it in the letter, didn't he?

I don't need you.

I don't give a goddamn what he accepts.

Will the North accept it?

Not for three months.

I think there's a better chance that they'll accept this agreement before January 1st than there is that they'll accept withdrawal for prisoners.

But I have laid the basis of our going to withdrawal for prisoners.

And believe me, it scares them.

Every time at the meeting that I said, no, remember one thing.

This is your last chance of negotiating in this framework.

Don't forget this.

Next time, we talk only military.

And every time, he pulls back when I tell him.

This is why I wouldn't play it yet.

What?

Shall we do it again?

I would just be heading, Maddox, to the prison.

Tell me nothing.

I would say it.

You're not going to see it.

I'll see it.

Briefly, I'll save you.

Totally fed up.

I've got a little problem, you know.

The prisoners are going to be there.

They'll treat us marvelously.

Should we cancel?

No.

We should keep our good relations with the Russians.

We should give the impression that they were screwed, just as we were.

As indeed they were, Mr. President.

The account that Dobrynin gave to Hayes is, first of all, one they couldn't have.

I think they've got to cross the bombing.

It will start somehow.

But this is something you can't figure out.

May?

May.

I really want this time, I don't want a long talking sheet, I just want to see one page, like I do before I do a very important press thing.

What are the points we want to pound into the consciousness of these dumb, left-wing animators of ours in the press?

Pound them out.

I'll make all the other points, but remember, we've got an audience out there that's ours.

Talk to the 61%.

Talk to, I know everybody thinks they're guys.

They were smart enough to vote for us.

But they got to hear it clear and loud.

Prisoners, they will understand.

Treachery, they will understand.

Changes of wording, they will not understand.

They will not understand.

But they will understand treachery, and they will understand the imposition of a communist government on the people of South Vietnam.

That, they will understand.

Jews, not going along, they'll understand that if it's said in a way more in sorrow than in anger.

As far as we're concerned, making it very clear, we are not hostage to either of Vietnam.

We are the party that wants peace in Vietnam, for both sides, and let the future of this poor, suffering country be determined by the people of South Vietnam and on the battlefield.

That's what our proposal is.

We call on the South, and we call on the North, to agree to this kind of thing.

Call on the both to agree.

Why don't we show you what's going on out there?

Like today?

No, I think we should wait till tomorrow, give the freedom a chance to get so that these people aren't stunned by it.

What do you mean?

I think the Russians shouldn't be stunned.

Why would they be more stunned today than tomorrow?

Because today they have no preparation.

If I tell the freedom today you're fed up, then Russia will have read it tomorrow, and then by the time I go on,

It will be also...

This is not the time when I should celebrate.

No.

Because I'll tell you why, Mr. President.

All right.

Don't use it.

Let me tell you why.

I don't want to.

Let me tell you why not.

But understand, I'm ready to... We've got to play the big boat and we'll use it.

No, but Mr. President...

I will not play it.

I'm not going out in front of that, in front of these television cameras again and make one of those asshole Vietnam speeches.

This is not the time.

You were right.

But we can't do it.

No, you were right.

We can't rally people when they're out there already.

But the reason you shouldn't have to redirect this is we should not make Vietnam an issue in your relations with Russia.

We should have the Russians in the position where they say these crazy

Stupid, lying sons of bitches in Hanoi have screwed us again.

Now, question.

What are you going to do about what should we do?

I asked Al about this yesterday.

Should we get Roger Blair more helms in?

And we have to have him for vice president, too.

Listen, I would do it Saturday morning.

What about him?

It was layered when they rolled all the orders.

I wouldn't defate it.

I'd say I've got you a gentleman to tell you, your commander-in-chief, let me give them a brief, a short briefing.

I would not ask that.

Could I ask you?

Could I ask you this?

Oh, you can do it tomorrow afternoon.

Could I ask you, incidentally, you're going to do the briefing first.

We'll do it tomorrow afternoon.

But could you, Henry, take the time today to lay the framework for that by enlisting?

Absolutely.

All right.

Now, the one you should enlist, it seems to me...

The Vice President.

You should tell the Vice President, look, the speed of the thing is off, and say the President doesn't want you to get out there on a loser.

And at this point, we're not ready.

Later on, we may have to use you, but because we haven't done the agreement.

Do you understand?

Okay.

Now, he'll talk about the fact we'll let me go out and negotiate with him.

You can say, no, Mr. Vice President, we don't have to negotiate.

We shouldn't negotiate with either of you.

Do you understand?

And the real reason is I don't want him negotiating with even Guatemala.

Because as you know, he doesn't have what we know that he's got.

But you point out, if you could see him or Al, and see either one, or even a second one, I think you should see.

I think there's the Rogers thing.

And I think, I don't know how you handle Rogers.

I haven't seen him since the meeting in Camp David.

But he's not whimpered about anything we've done.

So what do you think, how do you think Rogers should be handled?

I just don't want to face Rogers.

I think Rogers is an ally, Saturday morning.

The fact of the matter is Rogers will try to use it to do me in.

But he will not necessarily.

There'll be two things happening.

Rogers will support you at the meeting.

And he will leak out stuff that I screwed it up.

Those are two inevitable results.

Let me say, all that doesn't matter.

How many times have they done that to both of us?

That's right.

One time I screwed up, the other time you screwed up.

The main thing is winning it.

That's right.

I don't give a damn.

The main thing is, I was at four years from now.

Four years.

We're going to beat those bastards.

And listen, they don't realize.

I mean, I will not do anything foolish.

I won't go on the television or anything like that.

I don't mean to be foolish.

But I don't say anything foolish.

But I will do things that are goddamn righteous.

I don't give a goddamn what happens.

I don't care.

I don't really care.

Mr. President, it's painful for me, but if you don't do this, it will be like the EC-121.

The Russians, you've got more credit than the Russians.

That's right.

And this, they'll pay attention to.

Now we're going to take unsure Italian here in this country.

I can just see the cartoons and the editorial.

Sure, sure, sure.

And let me tell you, over the Christmas period and the rest, it's not going to make that much difference because they ain't going to have pictures of American casualties and they're going to have, they'll hear about a few missing ones.

or is a non-issue at the moment right now sure it's in the headlines about peace and all that but that's the assholes like president the rest like but the average person doesn't give it a hand everybody will have to believe that can be convinced that we made a tremendous effort if it failed

Yeah.

And we will not agree to a peace that is a peace of surrender.

Put it that way.

We will not agree to a peace that is a peace of surrender.

We will not agree to a peace that is a peace that imposes a communist government.

And that we, if you say that, you lay those conditions out.

But that now, on the other hand, we're ready at any time to negotiate the peace that they were willing to negotiate as of three weeks ago.

Now it's time that we find out

But we're not going to be infinite under these circumstances.

At a time they are building up, see, the rationale for the bombing must be a buildup in the north.

Just saying that.

Christ, everybody's going to think it's true.

It's true.

They've restored their goddamn power plants.

So we're bombing the north again.

Because they're building up the north.

They have the biggest, that's another thing, Mr. President.

They have the biggest infiltration, the biggest one in the last year.

going on right now.

I can't worry about that at the moment.

I mean, that's true.

But wait, my point is, without going into infiltration and arrest, I just say, because maybe there's a big enemy buildup in the war, and they're trying to trick us, so we're going to bomb.

We'll take the heat right over the Christmas period, and then in January, it's Christmas, we should withdraw.

You can do that.

I forget when January 1st is.

I think it's a month.

It's a month.

The first day before that, whenever that is, it would be about the 28th of December, we table in Paris, we scrap this plan, and table in Paris, trade prisoners, and withdraw the end of farming, I mean, withdraw the end of farming for prisoners.

That's it.

They'll turn it down right away.

It would be a good shift.

All right.

You've got a week left to take.

Take your time.

Now, Larry will mention about the cost of this.

Now, what I'm sure is a problem.

How much is the cost of this?

That's pretty high.

The real scrub will be about $3 billion, if it had to go through to June.

If it stops short of that, we're talking about $1.5.

I think, Mr. President, these guys...

The Defense Department's going to have to swallow it anyway, because we're not going to end up here to have four intelligence departments, four tactical air forces.

That's one thing we're changing over.

They've got that place when you get there.

They were willing to...

The other side, we must look at it realistically.

The other side was practically on their knees in October.

They'd never have gone as far as they did.

It is not a bad agreement.

It's a good agreement if it's observed.

If it's observed, the other side will be forced to withdraw.

What we have to do, though, is to convince them that we are not easily pushed around.

If we cave now, the agreement will be unenforceable, and we will have signed something that they were going to make.

Well, all right.

This is the way.

Now let's – you will go when?

You just – last night we thought we should go.

Do you agree that we should go now?

It's a tough call.

It is a tough call because there is so much in the business of answering questions.

Well, I think that we have to look for another reason.

Look, and we can't claim that he's hiding.

Or that I am.

No.

Ron has neither the conviction nor the authority.

Well, he has the conviction.

But he can't protect it because he doesn't know enough.

No, I don't know.

Ron doesn't know shit about bombing.

He didn't care.

He's sure to go right ahead and do it.

I don't have any idea.

He has the conviction.

No, he's backed the policy, but he cannot present the negotiations with conviction.

I don't present the bombing anyway.

That Ron should do in answer to questions.

Tomorrow all we do is to explain where we stand.

I think you're going to have the heat and magazines and so forth and so on.

And Severi and Radner and all those jackasses and Cronkite who cried buckets of tears.

Everybody says, why are they bombing over Christmas when it's over?

Can we get one message to the Jews?

Please stop the crap about Christmas and New Year's truce.

Right now.

No, there ain't gonna be no truce.

Absolutely.

Absolutely not.

We're just stopping Christmas today.

I wouldn't stop it.

Once we go, we keep going.

Maybe else got the point.

Christmas Day.

That's all.

But not New Year's.

Except for Christmas Day, there will be no truth.

I don't want anybody to lie on Christmas Day.

People would not understand that.

There's always been a truth.

World War I, World War II, so on.

All right, the main thing you should do to get rested and get all ready for this, go out there, just remember that one of the toughest is when we're the best.

And remember, we're going to be around and outlive our enemies.

And also never forget, the press is the enemy.

The press is the enemy.

The establishment is the enemy.

The professors are the enemy.

Write that in the Blackboard 100 times and never forget it.

On the professors, I have no instruction at all.

And on the dress, I'm in complete agreement.

It's the end.

So we use them in time.

But remember, with the excitement now and then, a Dick Wilson, maybe.

There are two or three.

A Howard Smith.

Yes, there are still a few favorites, but most of them.

are, they're very disappointed because of the weak freedom of the election.

They know they're out of the country.

Jewels, souls, bastards.

They are the enemy.

And we just got to continue to use them and never let them think that we think they're the enemy.

You see my point?

But the press is the enemy.

The press is the enemy.

That's all.

The President, if you don't do this, you'll be, then you'll really be impotent.

And you'll be caught between the Liberals and the Conservatives.

You won't win the Liberals.

And besides, we'll be totally finished by February.

They'll be just dropping this alarm.

There's another one that you've got to visit that I think is very important that I want you to do.

I want to talk.

I want you to have a private talk with Rush.

Rush, and we're on.

And Russia, of course, will be in the state at an eventual time.

Russia, be loyal.

Russia believed last week when we got these messages, when Al was coming back, you know, this is exactly the thing to do.

And he analyzed it beautifully.

He says the problem is here.

He says that Saigon's interests and North Vietnam's interests are different from ours.

So we've got to occur.

He's totally right.

But the point is, we can't make a deal which place either interests.

Russia must be sold.

Now, what about Mars?

He is feasible.

He'll do whatever it takes.

Helms?

OK. Helms is going to be a marvel.

He goes to Rome.

I want him to Rome.

Let him move down under those goddamn sheep.

Let him go around and see the Saudis and the rest of it.

Helms is a loyalist.

He'll do a lot of good.

What I mean is he's going to be an ambassador extraordinary over there.

We won't have any problems with Helms.

It is ideal for Iran because... Well, I want you to tell him that you talked to him at the present visit.

I had a long talk with Scoot Jackson when they gave the scoop, believes, and when Helms goes there, that Helms should do some roaming around, looking at the whole oil problem, the cheapness, the rest, the subversion, et cetera, to give us recommendations to what we ought to do.

I think Helms is ideal to do this.

We'll make him the ambassador, really extraordinary in that part of the world.

He's a lot smarter than the rest.

You're still leading the far-left in the Middle East.

Yeah.

He's all right.

He's a bright, but he's very loyal.

What about shifting the deal?

What about putting Bob Hewlett, who's neither bright, but not very loyal, but will do in a way, but totally loyal, and putting far-left in Latin America?

It's not impossible.

Hill's been in Spain.

I'd rather have Hill in Latin America.

Would you?

He understands the life problem.

He has a Spanish background.

So does Farland.

Farland's very helpful.

Yeah, but Hill, I think... Farland's very helpful.

I think Farland would be better in the Middle East.

Farland, do you think, is more trustworthy as far as work is?

On the day-to-day stuff that we need in the Middle East.

Good luck.

Well, all right.

We'll see you now.

They left.

Will you?

Now, let's get a little reticent.

Who do you see first?

You're going to see Rogers, isn't it?

Could I respectfully suggest that any chance that you and Al sit together as a group?

I'll tell you why.

I don't know.

Thank you, Rogers.

What do you think?

Who?

Or do you disagree?

No, no.

I think for our own protection, Al ought to be there.

I wouldn't say so.

And you could say, now, in heaven, come over here.

Oh, shit.

Now, do we want to have, do we want to have an NSC meeting now?

Friday, there's seven characters.

Today, there's eight characters.

Friday night, there's a four-hour reception in the afternoon.

But I could work it out.

We don't have to then.

I wonder if we really know.

I want to hear about a meeting.

I'll talk to all of them, and you might give a call.

But what do you feel about a meeting?

I mean, an NFC meeting and so forth and so on.

Maybe we have to have it for purposes of therapy.

I mean, not therapy, but cosmetics.

I mean, how do you feel?

I think it just makes sense.

I mean, it makes it too obvious.

I think we ought to just, you know, when you're not going to do anything, you have old people in that picture taken.

We are going to do something.

You just do it.

You understand?

I think we ought to just call them the bastards.

I don't think that's essential.

Now, when you talk to Laird, he's been putting out horrible statements about

himself about how he was the guy that got the indemnization.

He was the guy that got people to change.

You see that piece?

Unbelievable.

But it worked.

It's great.

He's leaving.

But, and it's not.

The main thing is giving Harry credit.

Now, you were a strong man, and you always raised the points.

The president know he was much right, and so forth.

Now, right now, this is our last

We've got to have one bargaining chip in there.

We've got to do it before the Congress gets back.

Don't tell him, though, about the plan that we're going to knock this off before the Congress.

I think you should keep that in reserve, that on January 1st, we're going to offer prisoners withdrawal.

We'll not knock off the bottom.

Let's knock off the feet.

I mean, knock off the feet.

Don't tell anybody about the prisoners for withdrawal and bombing and so forth.

That is going to keep spilling on ourselves.

You can see why.

Because they want to say that now.

And that is right.

There's still a chance for a peace plan.

My point is, give it to them right now.

And then January 1st, we offer that.

And we do it on a positive basis.

The legislation is now completed.

We're ready to withdraw.

They have our prisoners.

But we're going to continue bombing.

We're going to continue mining until they get our prisoners back.

Sure is.

And they'll say, well, what about economic aid?

Of course we're going to help.

As long as there's economic aid.

which you're going to tell him.

I mean, you, it's just, they would have screwed us.

It was the NARC.

They hadn't done that.

Believe me, I should have pulled the chain on you the week after we got back.

I don't want him to think that we were .

They say that's temporary.

But if words comes to words, and it's a Democratic Congress, both in and out of the war, we'd still maintain our dignity.

Yeah, as an administration, but not as a country.

So what the hell does that mean?

Well, that's something.

Well, I think we can go.