Conversation 828-005

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This is another hammer-hand, the Hawthorne.

The fucking paper.

Give the original to him.

Give the copy to me.

And make no copies for file.

America, I think it is time that we stop.

America!

I think it is time that we stop for a while the massive presentation of meadows to people who visit us in the Captain's Room or the Oval Office here in the Paragon.

We have given so many of these out that they have been somewhat common and consequently perhaps not too much appreciated.

My feeling is, as we start the next new year, that we simply knock it off for a few months or even longer.

When special people come in or when somebody requests something,

We will provide a gift, but I would not go through the routine of always resenting people who come in.

Just the fact that they were able to come into the office should be enough during this period.

Sorry.

on other matters.

It's very important.

You want to see Dick?

Can you hand us your insurance?

Sure.

Schedule as free as possible.

Come on in.

Well, you feel kind of alone here without Henry.

Thank you.

I'm glad.

They're both away.

Hey, there's a bush.

Yes, sir.

Very tired.

Yes.

Should be there.

He seems to recover fairly fast, doesn't he?

Four or five days.

Right.

How old is he now?

He's 45, I think.

Maybe a little more.

Yes.

But he's got a very good constitution.

Yes, well, he takes good care of himself.

Henry, of course, is not the good new body.

I mean, he's got that enormous energy.

He just goes like a... All but indefatigable.

He's incredibly indefatigable.

And particularly horrible at those things.

He just goes and goes and goes.

His mind stays... His temper goes up now and then, but his mind stays just as sharp.

The thing with him is that one day he'll, I'm speaking out physically, but he'll probably drop over.

That's the kind of person he is, I guess, with a high.

And he said, all those volatile factors work, and it's very easy to keep him going.

They knock him over.

to read about some of the people who, you know, are supposed to have gone on health care in Churchill.

He forgot.

He took good care of himself.

He took long naps in the afternoon.

He worked long at night.

He'd sleep.

He'd work in bed around 10, 11 o'clock in the morning.

Yes, sir.

Everybody's going to do it their own way.

God damn it.

Sorry, God.

He's really good.

He has his problems.

He doesn't have enough to do.

He's

He always finds it.

That's when we have trouble.

Then he finds things for us.

The other day, there were 116.

B-52s, we lost two, as you may know.

No, I didn't know.

They're using very big numbers.

They're not true at all.

We lost two?

Lost two, yes.

After that?

No, sir.

A third was damaged but made it back.

I figure we lost five on one flight of 60.

That was the rough one.

They completely revised the tactics.

They revised the tactics or are they not getting anything?

I don't want us to just fly over there and drop the boondocks.

No, sir.

They're attacking the targets.

I don't want them sitting either.

Do you understand what I mean?

Yes, sir.

In order to reduce losses naturally,

We should not go in on the impossible situations.

But what you analyze this.

Yes, sir.

The biggest problem, of course, is it's an enormously intensive dependent area.

Well, why are we losing less now than we did then?

Because that loss ratio is very small.

That's right.

Less than 2%.

The estimate, statistically, is that we would lose

Not less than, about a little more than 2%, 2% to 3%.

I said 3% to 100%.

That's what I heard.

And it'll run just about like that statistically over time.

And as a matter of fact, I think that the ratio for the entire period, the ratio is just a little bit more than that, not much, just around 3%, a little bit more.

So the one that we do have.

Well, any is too high, sir, of course.

I mean, sir, considering the amount of fire and everything.

No, sir, I think not.

As a matter of fact, it's pretty damn low.

Yes.

It's one of the most intensely defended areas in the world.

And of course, one thing that does help is that the time into the target is relatively short.

Now, they've changed the tactics.

They were doing them in waves, three waves a day.

so that you've got about 30 to 40 airplanes going in at a time, and then two or three hours later, 30 or 40 more airplanes.

Yesterday, they put them all in at once, almost at the same time.

They came from two or three different directions, depending on the targets.

Is that incredible?

Because, of course, at the same time, there are two or three hundred other airplanes in the area, as the mid-cap suppressing the iron-hand aircraft to do the ECM work

So there are probably 300 to 400 airplanes in the air at the same time in the area.

It's really a traffic control problem.

They also did 104 attack air sorties yesterday.

And it was weathered?

It was not good.

There was no visual bombing with Loran and used S-4s for

Pathfinders also for A7s.

Yes, sir.

Now, the accuracy, of course, is not as good as visual, and they can't use the laser-guided bombs in those circumstances.

And we're probably going to have the same problem again in the coming daylight period.

It's going to be cloudy.

No, sir, I looked at the weather map this morning again.

And you can see it in China.

There's one solid mass cloud cover, and it's moving south.

And by this time tomorrow— We're in a great old situation now where we really got down to it.

If we weren't using B-52s, we couldn't be here.

We couldn't be doing— Exactly.

Not very much.

Really, that's the problem.

Yes.

This time of year—

This is the worst weather time in North Vietnam, and will go on now until probably February or March.

The very worst time, weather-wise.

Of course, we've sat down with West Side Sessions sometimes,

And there is no time that's good.

It's just bad all the time.

The monsoons run up against us at the mountain line.

What is the situation with regard to what is planned now for the rest of the week?

We've got a lot of people in that number.

I don't know if we're going to make the top guess today.

What are we running today?

60.

60?

Yes.

Against seven targets.

And they'll go at 11 o'clock this morning, our time, Eastern time.

against seven targets, and there are 226 attack strikes against about 40 targets.

But again, that's right, yes.

Again, that's going to be a problem with the weather.

They're already canceling some, shifting them against other targets.

So just how many of them we get in, we don't know.

We lost two F-4s this morning also, just yesterday.

They were shot down by MiG-21s, which is something new.

We haven't had much MiG activity.

They were doing a SAR job, a helicopter search and rescue.

A helicopter had gone down over in Laos.

And the crew was fine.

And the MiGs got down in 21.

Well, they must have had their eye on the search and rescue job.

It's the only thing, we just don't know anything about what actually happened yet.

It was an ace.

We'll get more information later.

It's the, yes, sir, and we have.

And they're attacking that one again today.

It's the one that's northwest of Hanoi.

We ought to give them an opportunity to get us out of that airfield.

They're going to attack it again today.

God, there is punishment.

Yes, sir.

Well, there's a lot of punishment, I suspect, and...

You know, short of destroying the city.

If you could do that, it would be over in two weeks.

Exactly.

I mean, you could go in there and just plaster it.

I remember some of those cities in Germany and even some in Italy during World War II.

In 1947, I was not in the European theater or something like that anymore.

God, I stood there and watched the heart of the crowd plant.

I just looked.

And it was unbelievable.

Yes.

Not nothing.

I was in Berlin.

Well, of course, Berlin was shot up for other reasons, too.

In Russia, there's demolition.

But it was just the ghosts and people living in bunkers.

Right.

Got everybody with their legs shot off and everything.

It was a cruel, horrible thing.

But it worked.

The thing about it.

Yes, sir.

The power plants are just about out of business.

The power grids are out of business so that even though a plant in area A may get itself on the air with a little bit of wattage, it can't distribute that power elsewhere outside of its own local area.

So the lights are out for all intents and purposes in Hanoi except for little gasoline generators and in high form.

The shipyard in Haiphong is in bad shape.

The big vehicle repair shops close to Hanoi are about 50% destroyed, I think.

The pictures we saw of buildings are down.

And a lot of the railroad yards that they've cut, a lot of the rolling stock has been damaged.

But again, sir,

It takes an awful lot of violence to finish it.

It can beat it up badly, but it's like a railroad wreck on the line.

You look at it, and you think, my god, they'll never get it in shape.

And three or four hours later, they have the train running through again by just pushing it out of the way.

But it does disrupt it badly.

Hours?

Oh, here?

Oh, I think they're fine.

No, I think they're fine.

Oh, they're fine.

Yes, sir.

No, they're no problem.

They're no problem.

No, no, I... No.

Well, no.

Our own little group there in Cambodia was...

It's all worth it.

Oh, from outside of the NFC.

No, I think they're, I think they're, you know, they want to get this thing over with.

And I think they're perfectly clear.

Well, then all you have to do is be done much more, you know.

They, as yesterday afternoon, as I'm sure you're aware, they said come back and talk on the 8th.

So... We aren't talking about that.

We're not testing anybody.

Oh, no, sir.

No, no, that's strictly in this...

I would not...

I didn't want that test on the 7th.

No, no.

Or the other time to stand up because of water.

I just don't want to put out the papers.

Exactly.

And then...

Right.

Run it up, run it up until they agree to the timetable now that we've suggested again.

Well, we, as I understand, have offered to go back.

announced that they're reversed and saw them off, but affiliated.

Does that make sense to us?

Right.

Yes, sir.

I think so.

Well, once it's agreed between the two sides that, in fact, they're going to go back, it would be awfully difficult to...

to announce that fact.

And if you didn't, they would.

And then still continue the bombing.

I think it would be a very difficult thing to do.

Personally, I would like to do it.

I'd like to let it run until they put it down at the table.

That's why I said that.

But I think it's on balance.

I think you... That's not too bad.

We'd like to get something announced before...

first of the year, anyway, where the Congress service is back in.

How do we keep that going?

Well, the plan would be to have the experts go back to work on the second.

That's fine.

Which would, again, show that movement.

And if they're serious, it should be a matter of concluding the thing in pretty short order, if they're serious.

Well, they said there was two issues left.

Right.

The crisis, they have been up and down the hill on those issues so often.

There should be on those issues.

And the signing problem.

Well, what the hell is the signing problem?

I mean, which signing problem?

The question of whether all four sign and whether, in fact, the PRG in signing, then, therefore, is recognized as a government.

Oh, yeah, that'd be funny.

Which is a big problem, or one of the big problems, or two.

But that's always been a problem.

Two can, it seems to me, in his signing, can make a statement that makes it clear that he doesn't accept their juridical right as a government to be signed.

There are other things that the Jews are preaching about.

When you finally come down to it,

They don't have to down the hill so much on those things, 12 changes and so forth.

I don't think any of them should have gotten anything because all that really matters in terms of this war at the present time is whether the enemy has the capacity, one, and two, the determination

to resume.

Now, that's what really matters.

And whether they have that capacity has now been given another while.

That's one of the purposes of this spot.

In certain cases, set them back a few months.

Would you agree?

Yes, sir.

I think there's no doubt of that.

It doesn't take them long.

As we found out, we stopped to think of the Temple of the Lord.

It goes back and back and back every time.

They are going to be able to do them all.

I would think it would be a couple of years.

There you are.

Then you have a person.

Their desire, even if they had the capacity, I can't believe that desire would not be affected in arms by what they think we might do.

And that's, again, why this action perhaps scares others, or at least, and also, their desire might be affected by what the Russians and the Chinese thought that they wanted to do.

There's just an awful lot of factors there, great factors that are under control.

They're going in two cases of these.

The out-of-the-nice and crossing teams, saying every man's got to be out of here, and so forth and so on.

None of that really matters a hell of a lot.

It doesn't really matter.

No.

The thing that matters is that the war gets over in a way in which Chu and his government can survive a

genuine elections can occur.

And if they do, the present structure in Saigon will survive.

Right.

Well, as a present-time person, the likelihood of any elections is very, shall we say, at least in doubt.

Exactly.

If Chu feels this won't work out, he'll certainly screw it up.

But second, if they haven't, they'll win.

Exactly.

They'll win.

They're not going to vote for Congress.

It would seem to me in the circumstances,

that he might want to move quickly, precisely that purpose.

Quite, quite, quite before people began to think, you know, people could get a salary.

Move the electricity.

His whole attitude here has been almost, you know, incredibly.

Well, and after a good amount of years, of course, they recall, I don't know,

what has been an unbroken record of perfidy, the 1954, the 1960s.

On the part of the North.

They recall all that.

And they know that the efforts of the Persian are not going to stop and face all that.

That's right.

But as to winning the war in some

In the traditional sense of an enemy coming to its knees and begging to surrender, it's never going to happen.

Never.

It just won't happen.

Never, because particularly after all these years, with American air and sea power, after a long time with American ground, but with American air and sea power, and they were the most, the biggest and most modern army in Southeast Asia, the crises that they cannot now win.

They are never going to win.

They are stronger than they are.

Are they not?

Exactly.

The one thing that they're beginning to build, hopefully, is the kind of will and guts that the North has shown to give the devil his due.

The North has come down there time after time under the most incredibly difficult circumstances and done well.

Now, that's all a matter of just plain will.

And the second...

The South has begun to develop, I think, in the last couple of years.

And during the summer, against that big offensive, they did very well.

That's why the May 8th decision had such enormous effect.

If that hadn't happened, they'd have lost right now.

I think they would have.

They were ready to lose, because their will was gone.

Not because they should have lost, but their will.

And the May 8th decision.

And they began to hold.

And they held.

tree floor, and they held them on a tree.

And all of a sudden, they had everything up and all the nature stuff.

Then the White House all of a sudden, because they began to think, well, maybe they weren't going to be abandoned and so forth.

But we have tended to erode their will by making them too dependent on us.

Making too many Russians.

Russians and Chinese.

They had never eroded the will.

They had built up the will with our Vietnamese.

They had helped them, but helped them

with moral support and just enough material support, they haven't sent in the men and the invasionists.

They've made the North do it themselves.

That's why the North Vietnamese, I think one of the great lessons out of this war, looking to the future, is that Americans are basically paternalistic in our attitude toward all countries we help.

And we weaken them.

We wait in them because we want to do it ourselves.

And it's only, and the communists bring it up when they talk about people's liberation movement.

It isn't just talk.

It's a way of getting people to stand on their own feet and fight their own battles.

And that's why communists, insurgents, et cetera, are usually better than the others, not because they're fighting for a better idea,

But because somewhere in the middle of the fight, only develops.

When you have that.

And pride in their own self.

That's right.

The things they can do for themselves.

I think it's a terrible lesson, hearing it.

You know, we did the same in Korea.

You remember?

Yes, sir.

We didn't last as long.

I got up in Korea.

In the early times, everybody said, what do they call them?

The gooks.

Yes, the gooks.

The gooks.

They can't fight.

I remember talking, and I was a senator, congressman, yes, in the early years.

These gooks, they don't fight.

They don't fight.

They're going to fight.

And then a man, a man, a man, a man, that wonderful little big bear, a man, he said, by God, they can't fight.

And they did.

Now they're about the toughest people in Asia.

Sure, they still want us to stick around, but they don't handle themselves.

Now that's what we've got to do.

We've got to get out of South Vietnam.

And now, after this goal, unless the party comes back ridiculously, unacceptable demands, we settle.

The South's going to have to go along.

They can make a move.

We don't think the Congress is going to go their age.

If they go along, I don't think the Congress will.

If they go along, it's simple.

That's a hell of a test.

But I think that's something he understands.

Based on his last experience, I keep being optimistic.

I keep being optimistic, I guess.

You keep thinking, I know everybody does, that you, I guess, can't commit suicide.

Is that it?

Both for himself and for his country.

The South Vietnamese simply weren't helpful.

We've gone down the whole road with him.

We know exactly all the things he's asked for.

We've done our best to achieve those at considerable cost in the process.

And he surely understands that.

Considerable cost.

God, yes.

Great cost.

Three flyers.

I guess most of them parachute out, seriously.

Most of them, yes.

Why is that?

Is that they do not explode?

Well, one today did.

Got a direct hit with a SAM, one of the two that we lost, which was near Hanoi.

On the way into his bombing run, he just went up and smoked.

But most of the time, they get bad battle damage, and they're out.

It's a big enough airplane.

I'm not an airplane driver, but it's a big enough airplane, I think, that when it gets a hit, unless it's a hit of the kind we had today or a direct hit that just blows the thing probably bombs and all, it can fly stable long enough for them to get up, and they can tell very quickly whether they're going to be able to control the airplane and fly it back or have to abandon it.

So I think that's what happens.

The other airplane flew back.

Actually, the second one flew back all the way to Utapau, made one pass on a field, and couldn't land.

Something was wrong.

It made a second pass.

It didn't make it all the way around.

It crashed.

So it just about made it to the other portal field.

Yes, sir?

Yes, yes.

But we've had, I don't recall exactly the number, but it's about 10, I guess, which have suffered significant battle damage, but made it back and landed safely with all the crew.

What do they do?

Those are out of commission?

Oh, yes, they'll, well, they can try to patch it back up again in time, but it takes a while, depending on the kind of damage it is.

We've got 400 or anything around the world with this.

Yes.

They're keeping the level up.

Keep the level up.

We have to.

It's going to be long.

What is your reaction?

How will they react to getting whacked again?

How will they react to Paris?

Yes.

And how will they react to Hanoi having all of it in an awkward meeting, being whacked again?

I think that they'll...

I think they understand full well that that's exactly what we intend.

I think nothing will come as a surprise.

You get lots of rhetoric.

Right.

And I think they'll just stick with all that, suffer through it, and hurl that defective at us, but still come ahead and talk.

And I expect that.

I would think that the first thing we're going to have to hear in any negotiating session, be it experts or the principals, will be a couple of hours' disposition on our heinous conduct.

That's just inevitable.

I don't know.

But I think it probably is.

I don't have anything that should not allow this, sir.

I'm not hearing anything.

I'm sure it's settled.

Get the goddamn thing on the way.

I think they have.

My own view is that it certainly has helped them make up their mind that they had not made it up already.

I don't think so.

I think it's helped them make up their mind.

But that's the purpose of the act.

And I think you believe that.

Yes, sir.

I think so.

I'm only surprised that it's come so quickly.

You mean that they responded so quickly?

Yes.

I would have thought that they might have come back and said, we simply cannot even discuss this reconvening so long as you are continuing this sort of attack on us.

Let's discuss how we

tone down this level of attack on us, and then we'll talk about when we come back to the table and what we can discuss.

I suppose they can do that now.

That could be another reaction, I could say.

I would doubt it, sir.

I was simply on the ground that if we do go back... No, no, no.

What I meant is, based on the attacks that they got after they sent their message, they could say, I don't know, how would you...

No, of course, they had been told in the messages what we would intend to do.

That is, a very short time before actually reconvening, we would stop.

We would not stop in the meantime.

That was understood.

So I think they knew what we were about and what we intended.

I would think now that they would come back.

They will have learned, perhaps, the lesson that just playing with us will get them nowhere except hard times, that they have to be serious.

And a break off

will give just that much added support for the kind of attack that we lost.

If we have to do it again, it will not be a pleasant thing at all.

I'm sure it will be a terribly difficult one.

On the other hand, I would think that the record of two intransigent moves on their part would make it even, well, a little bit easier to go back and do some more of it, and I'm sure they must calculate it that way themselves.

Well, we haven't particularly made that case here yet, you know what I mean?

It's a little hard.

A lot of people didn't understand why they would go back to bombing, you know what I mean?

Because we didn't make a big thing out of it.

We just didn't, which I think was the right thing to do, but because we had made a big thing out of it, it would have created a hell of a

debate at this point.

Everybody had to debate it at that point.

We have an argument that made it more encouraging than just having a realm of discontent.

But maybe when we cut out 200 and I brought people on Christmas Day, I mean, what I mean is there's a lot of discontent and people just, it isn't so much discontent that people don't mind bombing strangely enough.

But on the other hand,

in an ironic way, are doing it at a better time.

And in our case, in this time of conflict, she's gone.

And so the Christmas holiday season, et cetera, is not a time for us.

The media and all the rest can stir up as much opposition as they otherwise might.

They squeal at night when people put their headlines up and nobody gives a damn.

Most people don't give a damn.

The citizens do, of course.

Most of them are hanging out on holidays and Christmas, going to the volcano.

I saw some very sensitive traffic that suggested that the networks were

going out to Hanoi to urge him, deliver us pictures, give us material.

Not exactly my idea of what journalism was all about.

Both CBS and NBC were going to Hanoi.

They were wiring people into Hanoi to get stringers of correspondence that they had.

gather material particularly focused on bomb damage and so on.

And I thought to myself that I'd always believed that journalism was an institution in which you editorialize after you've written a straight news story.

Here, you write the editorial first in the guise of a news story.

You decide what your news story is going to say, and then go out and get the news to fit it.

Rebundus.

Maybe they had some of the best interest in having the school banks available.

I can't imagine.

They're having trouble getting stuff out of the mall, aren't they?

Yes.

I have some experience or interest to go out there and get it out there.

There's very little coming out.

Right.

I would guess some of the pictures even may be old material up there.

pulling out the bomb.

The networks, you mean?

I haven't seen anything on the networks, but there have been a few pictures in the paper, but the stuff, I think, is old.

It's not really true.

You should watch for that, I suppose.

There are people who, you know, on the NSC, but some of them, there are USIA members, they can study these things and find what they have.

We caught the barge and broke one of those, you know, or anything like that.

They used a picture that was two years old.

Yes.

Well, they followed that.

What I'm saying is they write the editorial first.

Right.

And then they say, find me a picture of Drew, my appointment.

Rather than waiting for the news.

You write the story before you get the news, and then get the news.

You're supposed to write the story, or the story and the editorial, and follow the fact.

Here, they write the story, or the editorial, and then get the facts.

Exactly.

They rank it out, which is .

Well, it's journalism of a very different stripe than I think most people believe newspapers are doing.

I think most people believe they're being given the news.

Of course.

And some doubts.

People have some doubts.

Well, okay.

Seriously, today, what are the plans for the rest of the week today?

I think it'll be about the same thing.

It's actually, this is the 27th, right?

Right, yes.

It'll be running between 30 and 60 in the north, and a total of 70 to 90, including those, across the area.

They'll be trying to keep it up at about the level of 90 a day, total.

And then it'll vary.

Just going back in the scenery of the park is not as great.

I guess so that they know that the potential is there and just keep them worried is the main thing.

They simply, they're going back.

The big whack was the important thing.

That was a hell of a call to our news today.

Yes, sir.

That was a hell of a call to our news.

That had to be big.

Now you go back.

They must not knock off today.

They go in on 30 or 60 a day and

to worry about.

They're working on targets seriously.

As they get any kind of bomb damage assessment and a recognition that the target still is functional, they're just going back and working on the target again with the objective of not only the psychological effect, but the military effect, including the strategic effect of getting additional psychological advantage.

Of course, I understand the whole purpose.

Unless it's based on solid strategic damage or military damage, the psychology is not lasting.

Just boring holes in the ground.

That's right.

It doesn't last.

It will shake a little bit when we come back.

We could get strategic damage and break the strongest of people.

Broke the Germans, broke the Japanese.

We've also, as I indicated to you,

a couple of weeks ago.

Now, we've turned up the volume again on the psychological warfare with the radios and the black and gray, the regular radios.

And we've cranked up the leafleting campaign again.

We'll be charged with damaging the ecology, covering the place with leaflets.

There'll be so much trash that they'll come for the leaflets.

They play a variety of themes.

Unfortunate that you had to break off the talks.

The boys can't get home.

Why don't you go see your cadre and find out when the talks are going to resume so the war can end and your friends who are down south can come back to be with you?

The government has misled you.

Peace was coming.

They don't want peace.

They look only for victory, which is impossible.

This is the sort of theme.

Pretty simple, straightforward messages aimed at getting the people to begin to ask questions of the cadre, which begins to unnerve the cadre.

up the line, it causes problems.

This meshes together, then, with the radio campaigns, which are doing the same thing, pointing out that everybody wants peace.

All you have to do is move forward to get it.

No problem about peace.

Everybody wants it, except you.

Why don't you want it?

Who meets with you?

Sir?

Who meets with you downstairs in your meetings now?

Who represents the CIA?

Oh, Helms.

Is he here today?

Well, no, he's gone now.

He's gone now.

Where is he?

He's out of the country on a vacation, I think, for a few days.

General Walters, of course, comes.

He's not here.

Alex Johnson.

I assume probably Master Porter will be here.

I don't know who will be in defense, but they'll get themselves.

Probably be .

.

. .

Of course.

We've not had a meeting of that kind.

Russia will still be coming, because they have the same position in the States.

That body has worked pretty effectively through most of it.

Yes.

For you, excuse me, we're doing in Nicaragua everything we can.

Yes, sir.

They had trouble.

They were going to try to take an engineer company down overland.

They had difficulty, so they just went to work and have airlifted it.

It should be all there just about now.

They airlifted it and a whole company with equipment for firefighting, movement of debris.

The aid problem is intense, as far as we can tell, simply because there's

There's so little water, almost none.

Most of that, I guess, is now because of all the water purification outfits that we took down.

We took several big water purification plants down there, engineer groups, with water trucks, distribution systems.

Firefighting is apparently an extremely hazardous, difficult job.

There's no water.

The people are beginning to move out, but they don't want to.

Even some of the ones that went out are coming back now, trying to salvage bits and pieces of their belongings.

Understandable, of course.

The big question remains whether there will be epidemic, and that's, of course, what they're trying to prevent.

We have two field hospitals in full operation now.

I don't know how many total beds are actually operating, but the two hospitals are set up and functioning with a full medical complement with them and additional medical supplies around the way.

As you know, on Sunday, we had ships that were going into Guatemala, I think it was,

with wheat, flour, and rolled oats under regular programs.

We converted those and set them up there so that there are several thousand tons of food supplies that arrive almost instantly.

It'll be a pretty tough operation.

I imagine, actually, it'll get worse in terms of coping with problems, because the problems themselves will emerge and become more clear over the next few days.

After the shock is over and the initial problem goes away, then it's getting down to dealing with the enormous number of refugees, preventing the outbreak of epidemics.

But I think the medical people have that good understanding.

Each day it goes up and down.

It's varied from 1,000 to 5,000.

It doesn't seem to be much more than that.

No, sir.

50, 60,000.

That's right.

The whole village is.

The number of homeless is perhaps.

Almost the entire city.

400,000.

Yes.

The city is about, apparently, 70% destroyed.

And it would be all but unlivable for a very long time.

If we build it back perfectly, you know, it should be done.

Samosa said something.

In a little clip I saw, he was going to build it someplace else if the earthquake scientists told him it was a fault.

This is apparently the third time the city's been almost totally destroyed by an earthquake.

I would guess that would tell somebody something.

do a completely different kind of building or move it.

But I think our people are really on top of this one and going all out and have the word to do whatever is necessary and whatever can be done.

We always do.

If the disasters around the world remain, they will swallow you, let alone Peru.

And every time there's a disaster, you come on Quora, Bangladesh, and Iran.

Earthquakes nearly every year.

This is one thing we were having a little argument about in the House.

The Title II programs under PL 480, which provides for distribution of food through the voluntary agencies, the Church World Services, Relief, and some of the world health organizations.

For those who wanted to cut this out,

We didn't do it that way.

We have appropriated some other way.

Someone was saying, but they're badly managed programs as well.

There are two ways to solve bad management.

If the program is no good on its own merits, then you do away with it.

That solves the problem.

But if the program has merit itself, then you get new management.

There is a lot of mismanagement and waste, and there is a disaster.

But a disaster is...

It absolutely breeds mismanagement.

These voluntary agencies are all already geared up on the Nicaraguan thing, of course, across the church groups.

And they can do a great deal of good work.

They can do a lot of collecting of resources, which otherwise would have to come from the government.

to be able to supplement their efforts then with some government food, for example, gets the job done a lot better than we could do it ourselves, quicker.

You know, that's really quite something here.

This network sending out these virus pictures that we didn't even show it, and bombs coming down from the other side of the aisle.

looked at and I said, you know, that's the most vicious kind of journalism I ever heard, because it is exactly the opposite of what I thought journalism was supposed to be.

You write a story.

give straight news and report it fairly and accurately.

And if you want to editorialize, fine.

But only after you've written the straight story and given people the facts so that the people have to decide whether your editorial is right or wrong.

This is the other way around.

One writes the editorial and goes out and writes a news story, which in fact is editorial, before he gets the facts.

And then he gets the facts to support his story.

which is editorializing them in the guy's news reporting.

What did you say?

Well, I guess we've had this problem since the war began.

Yes, sir.

Well, with Lydia, there'd be nothing particularly to do.

They'll be, as I indicated, they'll be going in about an hour from now.

Two hours from now.

They all go at the same time again.

They run them in two or three different directions at the same time.

All about the same time.

And it just confuses the radars and helps at least.

Good.

Thank you, sir.

See you later.