Conversation 833-011

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I heard him, your friend.

You, you've been...

Merrick Reckless is one of the most shirts, one of the greatest this year.

All Republicans, and I never got to split y'all.

Henry, I'm glad that you're taking pictures of you and the boys now.

I know what it is to not have pictures taken with girls.

I've fixed it.

I've got a new line of story.

That's my team chat line.

And we had a party till 5.30 in the morning.

All right.

Let's move it back.

Why don't you call Ben and Bob, shall we?

All right.

Good to see you.

Thanks.

How was your trip?

Fine.

Very good.

You lost weight?

No, I didn't.

I didn't.

I'll get Ben to sit down and sit down.

I'll start telling you all the way.

Let me look at Ben.

We, sorry, the state field had to finish on half because we got out eight coming over to the square again.

Is that what it is?

No, it's a presentation.

That was a presentation.

Well, fine.

You are going to have a state board meeting in five minutes because this is a very good season.

It's going to be the best part.

So there you go.

I don't think that's necessarily the fact, Mr. Preston.

I think he'll be quite an initiative .

I thought it would be useful.

We, because everybody was standard in heaven, including most of the Congress, we tried.

over the period, you know, the 18th of December and so forth, we really contacted how many of these jackasses that you talked to, and I gave you a list along my arm.

But I called about 10 of them, and then from, I mean, he called people like Stennis, A-Bear Bell, you know, Stennis, A-Bear, Goldwater, Mansfield, Scott, Scott,

So in other words, I think you all should know that we did our best to keep everybody informed as to what was going on.

Yeah, we made the announcement about that.

Well, the thing is that what you see, because some are gone at this time, some will come back and say, well, so were you the one that talked me six feet?

What?

Anyway, well, you and I shouldn't be running into each other.

The hell we did.

I don't know what to do.

I've got no presence on this guy's name.

Now, the point is that I, uh, I, uh, as, uh, as, uh, as part of it, I mean, he was so important to me.

But then we finished, uh, after, uh, just before the fact, I thought that,

I thought that would be useful for the next round of negotiations.

What I thought would be an excellent role in anything you suggest,

Bill is very close to the situation because of the solution.

He's doing a very good job.

I have some ideas as to what public posture we should take on this.

Let me say that all of you have taken a damn good public posture, and at the very fact that everybody just said, well, I don't disagree.

We're doing the best we can.

That's one of the things that's got the back of the table and what we did to it.

On the other hand, we can't say that what we did to it could get it back, or all hell is going to end.

But everybody .

But I, we will not, and we will announce this meeting, this bill, we'll announce it after we meet .

I thought it would be better to do that rather than to have the targeters build this thing up.

So I'm glad that they're having a great council before .

But we'll simply announce that we have a meeting in preparation for the meetings next week.

That's what it'll be done.

so that there is an indication of general government consultation agreement and so forth and so on.

As far as the format this morning, let me suggest that what probably would be useful would be for Mel and Ed or Admiral, both of them, give us a brief rundown on the bomb stuff.

You probably would look at the land.

I don't regret about the hospital.

It occurred to me that we, that if anybody was punished for hitting any hospitals, somebody would lose his ass over there in this town.

Has anybody heard of it?

There's one thing that I would urge this meeting.

I want it done.

Colonel, some of the concentric is busy, and then you have it.

And I told the NSC staff to do it before, but this time they figured out their tails had been done.

And there are all sorts of material available from Bunker and from your shop on these points.

How many civilians have been killed in South Vietnam?

How many?

How many assassinated?

And then, in terms of the destruction, listing the destruction, Quang Tri was destroyed.

The waves have been badly damaged.

Saigon has been, even Saigon has been rocketed.

But you know what I mean, you can go over a city and you can say 35 cities of a population of black have been almost totally wiped out by the North Vietnamese and their offensive, their latest offensive.

then go into a little more details with regard to how many hospitals, orphanages, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I doubt we can get it played by anybody, but I am going to give to a few people so that they'll try, only for the purpose of pointing out that we have a double-spanning thing, that the theory is just damn hypocritical.

When American airmen

risk their damn lives flying in the heaviest flight in the world, risk their lives, and then do their very damage by, if they risk flying over there,

do aerial bombing, we wouldn't have lost nearly as many planes as we have now.

They could have been aerial.

I mean, if you're just going in and taking an out-of-hand line, no problem.

But you know, they're trying to hit these little pinpoint the dots and pinpoint the railroad station and pinpoint the power station, isn't that right, man?

And that's why we lose 15 people.

And the only accident to a hospital and so forth is not done because it's a deliberation.

They've done many others.

So I just feel that this record should get out now.

Get that record done.

I want that record done.

And I want you to get a copy to Bill.

I want you to get a copy to Mel.

And get a copy over to Coach's office.

And let's get a little bit out.

That's the last point, President.

It's a really strong point.

Otherwise, if you had done bombing, it was not a pinpoint bombing, you wouldn't have lost anything.

They are.

And also, let me just say that we get the devil's tapping.

How many hospitals?

There are 14 hospitals that have been totally destroyed.

35 orphanages.

Let me tell you the story.

Schools.

How many schools?

Totally destroyed.

Deliberately destroyed.

Just in a very personal sense.

I was there in 1967.

And I had been in Vietnam.

I was in an office in Washington with Washington.

And I was in a place over here where I got shot in the head.

And so the World War I, there's many kinds of riot sites out there and so forth.

But I went down, way down to the Delta.

And I visited an American Vietnamese people who passed away.

And, uh, you know, there's some things, I've actually done some things, you know, but going through hospitals is definitely the worst thing, almost the worst thing that I've ever seen, you know.

So I went through this hospital, and I saw the Vietnamese guys and our guys all shot.

And then I saw, I went into the children's ward, and, uh, there was a Catholic nun there and said, would you come see us?

So I did it.

And the doctor asked me to, and so I went in.

And there was, you know these, there's all, all little children, black, white, brown, and so forth, are very attractive.

But Lillian and me's children are angels.

Their faces, their faces are just, you know, candles.

And here sat this beautiful child at about 12 in the hospital.

She had lost one leg.

The narc, to me, was admitted to the operating room.

His condition on a very low level.

She lost one leg.

One arm.

You know, it was a bad operation.

That next day, the doctor was going to have to amputate the other leg, which would leave her with one arm.

And I'll never forget the expression on her face.

saved through and she smiled and so forth.

I came back, bought a dog bar in New York, sent it out to her, went out there.

She lived through the operation.

But I thought of that.

And of course you think about it in the market, too.

But the point that I make is that killing civilians, women, children, maybe, is a deliberate policy of North Vietnam.

It has been for 11 years.

And God damn it, somebody's going to say it.

We said it, they don't use it tonight.

We've seen such things out there, haven't you?

Yeah, the hostels, for instance.

Yeah, there were several hostels.

All those hostels were civilian hostels.

The hospital was full of them.

Yeah, same with that.

Go ahead.

So we'll start, I think it's best to start with the military briefing as to what has happened.

Jeff Henry, do you want to take a little time?

where we stand in the present time in Paris.

Everybody knows where we are in today's Paris.

And then, if we get to have a discussion as to what our public posture should be between now and the time, we have a development.

And that's the word I think we should all use rather than say a breakthrough or an impact.

Just say a development in the talks, which could come in a week, two weeks, three weeks from now.

And it could be up, down, sidewise, and so forth.

So that's what, does that sound all right?

So always think about that, and now you start to like, first I'll just give a brief on the military situation.

I'm sure things are very quiet.

Very quiet.

We are running a maximum air operation.

We had 152 sorties yesterday.

What's that going to be hitting them?

Well, they're trying to hit it.

but we still are trying to hit any target that's uh has some military uh communication roots and so forth that passes in these very serious time you can get some of the targets so we have developed some uh good parties which are secondly uh

stockpiles that they put out in the open in anticipation of the, and also the truck park, so they come in and load the trucks to take them going down through the trail.

Also, we've got quite a plethora of Mastodoni over the bone log, which is about four, so we've been sending about 15, 14 beef issues up there, and the

uh, to help, uh, the miles in that, that place to stabilize it.

We thought we didn't want a place like that to fall while it was, uh, negotiated.

So we took care of that, too.

Well, particularly because, which naturally, everybody is overlooked in this thing.

And, including that, for instance, to, uh, Laos and Cambodia as part of the deal.

God, uh, I mean, it's, uh, right here.

So, if we could get a ceasefire in Laos and Cambodia,

Go ahead.

Well, one of the problems that we currently have, we'll get into in the latter part of this discussion, is that I do not believe, Mr. President, that we have presented and we kind of have hold on talking about what we actually did out there as far as the bombing is concerned.

Now, our congressional friends, some of them have gotten to have some amputation.

And I would love to be able to be in a position where either we get it through side-on or we get it here.

And I would like to read on the positive parts of the bombing activity.

All we're doing is responding to targets which we have against us.

And I would like to be on the defensive all the time on that.

What would you have in mind?

Well, I'd like to show some of the military targets in the Naui Haiphong area that were actually hit.

and destroy it.

And I think that some of those pictures should be released.

The only thing that we're getting is we've got a B-52 down in the civilian area.

It did damage a big section of the civilian area, but it was a B-52 that was shot down by the enemy.

And we can show the pictures of where it was shot down.

And why that?

When you shoot down an airplane, you're bound to have it hit an impact in certain areas, and it did take out a civilian section.

to show everybody, but they don't explain to them exactly what happened in the situation.

I have pictures that show exactly what happened in the situation.

As far as the hospital is concerned, there was a one-bomb grave in that particular area, and when you're dropping 50,000 to 60,000 bombs from B-52s in High Fall and Hanoi, you're going to have a few that aren't going to be

right on target.

You can't help that, Mr. President.

And we shouldn't be on the defensive all the time about these.

I think you have an

but the only questions we get are responding to a negative charge that is made.

And I don't believe that we in the Defense Department shouldn't always be in a defensive position in this area.

I understand why other people in town may have to do that, but I don't think that we should be in a position where we don't show what a fine job was done by our pilots and by our B-52s and our tactical air in the area.

So we have A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B.

that would take the settlement to the cessation of the bond.

And they were hot nails, despite all this talk, Harold.

And they're still charging over the cars that we bought at VOW.

We have IRS accounts that some of the missiles went up to 10,000 or 15,000 feet and then fell right into the city and there was a big explosion.

We have in the papers a reference to the commercial airport at VLOM when they were taking me off all the time at VLOM to intercept the bonds.

And so I think we could build a backfire in this area.

And I was over talking to Mr. Abel last night.

And he said he's ready to charge and he needs some ammunition.

And we haven't had to give him this ammunition.

I understand.

Well, let's talk about that right now.

Actually, before we get into the ammunition, I don't really like to record the cases myself.

I mean, so I hope others see it because they're showing it.

I talked to Henry a little about it this morning, and made that yesterday.

And he sort of leans against it, only because the fact that what really matters to him in negotiations.

On the other hand, Henry, we do have this problem.

We have the problem that the other side is showing no restraint, and just kicking a little bit of Jesus out of us about what happened.

The key, the critical question is this.

Do you see there's that much of a problem about what the Defense Department did put on our land?

I mean, let's put it this way now.

uh we have a first public relations problem apparently but this is about a public relations problem good god i'm aware of that i'm so aware of that if we if i were we were primarily interested we'd never bomb the first place uh we had just caved maybe no not really because we could not have lived with that but on the other hand the public relations problem at home like people say why why don't uh

The president could just go on and explain why we bombed and explain that the bombing brought them back to the table.

And let me say, Bill knows.

I talked to him on the phone.

You know him now.

Henry knows.

That's why they came back.

Within 12 hours or if we sent them a message, we had a response.

It was a record response.

They came back with those 10 hours.

However, if I go up and tell the American people and look

It puts them in an impossible position.

I'll say it sometime, but not today.

Does anybody have a complaint?

Does anybody agree with that?

And that's the one to take the scoop and all these other people that I know.

The other point is, though, on this, this is related to it.

If this will not hurt the negotiations,

I have a point.

I think we do need some information on it.

We have 10 to 12 minutes, and they're going to work last night and scare the shit out of us.

I'm just worried about the theaters Tuesday.

Thursday?

Today's Tuesday.

By the time they get their stuff out, it will be like Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Just as we started on the negotiation.

Okay.

It would be very dark.

I'm no PR expert, but it may be that this thing... We're not talking about PR.

Let's leave the PR out of it.

The critical question, do you think it will impair the negotiation?

My instinct is that I will not now put it to the North Vietnamese in terms of pictures of devastation we have caused there.

A day-old, a day-old event has just kicked out of it.

And...

But can I suggest this?

Can I suggest this as a middle ground?

Suppose Mel, on an individual basis, let's say, take a look.

Oh, I'd like the congressional people to be there and stand up.

If I did, you'd see what Mel's like.

is the line of going out and putting it out publicly if you don't have your television streaming to be one hell of a story.

Now you can go to an individual pictures where you can greet members of the Congress who are asking you about it,

And you show them the damn stuff.

And they'll go out and make their speeches and say, oh, you've seen the stuff, and this is this and that.

Could that one serve your interest?

Go ahead.

Why don't we go ahead and talk about it?

All right.

How about we start with the operation?

Because I wanted more to add to that than anything.

Henry, in particular, should know about that tweet.

uh we actually had 731 to be confused over uh and they were operating against another 40 targets the uh as you recall mr president we estimated that uh we lose about two percent

That was a bad time, too.

We lost six.

Yes, sir.

I thought we were going to lose somewhere around 2% to 5%.

We actually did lose about 2%.

But one important aspect of that was that

The North African media can have assembled about 900 missiles.

Now this is the Missile Availability in First States.

And what they actually did with my missiles, I think that made them as much better than make this quick with mine.

Now if they can assemble, they have the 10 units that can assemble 5 missiles in a 24 hour period.

That's 50 missiles a day, and then they have this beautiful.

So if you look, this was the first day we went in on the 18th.

And then the nozzle of the missile they fired was right down here.

Then we had a crystal standout.

So we went back down on the 26th.

It came right in right on down again.

The last two days we went in there, we had no loss of any of the threat.

prepared to see, on the basis of their recovery possibility,

It'll be the 23rd of January before they're back in the same state that they were when we started, in terms of the sample missiles, provided they can get the missiles over the railroad.

But I'm confident that at the time you did, you did a little damage to the railroad.

Yes, sir.

Just a little.

Can they get that fixed up?

They can probably fix it, but you can have it repaired.

When I said the 23rd of January, I said it was a very deep, I would like to know, do you believe that they can prepare the railroad to get the missiles back to the 23rd of January?

Because, uh, if they had a case on there, uh,

but they, assuming that they had some stockpile in the inside of these animals, that meant nothing.

But there's a difference on that, kind of, with instance, you know, some people.

Their recovery resilience is very impressive.

Except that I'm doing the minimum of damage.

This is a passive benefit in my opinion.

But I am a bad luck event that the reason they responded, in addition to the damage,

was the fact that they recognized that we had saturated their defenses, and they could not provide a response.

It is not only a matter of the extent of the rate, but they've got to distribute them in the right places.

They may have to have enough coal in America to look the other way.

So that's the difference between trucks and yesterday.

I think we have many of us that are saying, well, I don't think we're low on this.

And the environment proves that.

And in my opinion, I'm impressed that we have the potential to crack the flow and all we have in the community.

So whether it be just children or anything, and that's one of the reasons why they were ready to talk.

Well, it was such that there was, we wasn't able to use the tank there like we would have been.

We would have in the summer, then we would just really clean house on them and do the damage.

And so we were only using the instrument, the bombing systems.

But even so, as you will see in these pictures that the secretary of defense has, I think they did a hell of a job.

to that now, to that question.

It's the item of currency.

Has that never been presented?

No, it's day 40.

I figured, can I get to one tangential thing, which is, talk to Haig about this last night.

Hadn't Haig let you handle the lawsuit?

You know, I asked Jacob, I said, what, uh, what happens to the 20 people you just captured?

He just doesn't believe in officers.

These are officers.

This isn't like a parade.

These are officers.

I don't know.

I don't think this is right.

This is not our integration of Charles and these others that came out here.

What they do to them, and we have pretty good information, they take a guy that really needs medical treatment, very, very badly.

And the guy is about to die, and they say no medical treatment for this person unless you sign this statement.

And we have this on these debriefings that Eric got one on July 4th, exactly what they did to a group of our prisoners to get them to sign the statement.

You do not know what my point is.

This is my broader point.

I've talked to these pilots that have been flying over there.

I've talked to them within the last couple of weeks.

Within the last week, I've talked to B-52 pilots that have been flying on these missions and expressed that this

to a situation.

Yeah, I understand.

But your life depends on it, right?

Well, one time you had said that, and you were very impressed with the morale of even the Jewish men.

How they all pray and all that sort of thing.

Well, Mr. President, I didn't know that story until it started for the last time.

Oh, God, not again.

I don't know.

They're the best of both worlds.

So you think this is basic pressure?

Absolutely, at least I can show you exactly what the tests are.

Go ahead, Reggie.

Well, sir, did you know we're cataloging a sound of 20, and I called Bill Martin this morning to ask him for a young one now to sit with and sound it again.

and uh he reports that in general that the uh forces and uh throughout this normally these forces are down in some cases in military three and four thirty-one percent of their authorized they are in the military region one is where they're the strongest

The Marines have been, uh, the Southeast Marines, uh, the Vietnamese Marines have been holding well.

The, uh, Airborne is now crossing what is called the Pompon River further north and has captured quite a few supplies.

The only real, uh, little hotspot, which he considers as local now, is at the pontoon in military region two.

The situation out of place so far is that they've sent an additional regiment from the bridge that is down into the southern part of military region one.

and a recovering military.

Okay.

Well, I just want to ask one question that sticks in my mind.

Henry was telling me that when you were in Florida, I think you said that you had a report from the defense people.

The optimization of the zombie in these airports have reached the point, would have reached the point where they can handle, if it were in South Vietnam, if they can handle their air business.

Is that, is that a challenge?

Right now we've had those F-5s move much longer faster than we, than we, when a lot of our aircraft, they're flying at C-130s.

They weren't supposed to fly those until the end of February.

We've got train crews flying the C-130s already.

Uh, we moved those over there, uh, uh, just...

But in other words, by the spring, they could do the, do the job, in this respect.

In country, they...

In South Vietnam.

They came up to, you know, I don't...

Yes, yes, yes, there is, yes.

In country, they could do the job.

Yes.

You see, that affects Jews, doesn't it?

In a wrong way.

Go ahead.

Here to see if he could do that.

That was a Vietnamization program as far as that's concerned.

Both air logistics and Brown is better than we ever predicted.

Regardless of what happens, that was a helpful program as far as their country's security is concerned.

In other words, that during the time that we were given priority to the operations of North, and that there was no distance that I've been able to discover where the Southeast and East suffered a heavy weight of black magic for me.

In other words, they began to stand on their own two feet, a little better.

That normal tendency, of course, is every time he gets on the hot spot, he will snipe up the tree and yell for more heads before him.

This time, they seem to be able to go better with their own heads before him without getting in any difficulty or losing any territory on his plants.

Which is a good sign.

I'd like to say one other thing, Mr. President.

In the Institute of Operations, of course, we did vary our tactics considerably.

In terms of the way we went in, right, on the 26th, we had 190 Institutes and about 300 tactical aircraft.

Over the time now, we had 30 units.

And that was quite an operation.

I think that our country is the only country that can actually conduct an operation like that.

And it was well coordinated and, in fact, saturated the entire defense system of the North-East and East communication lines.

They never did get a triathlon, but about 60 out of 109 of the B-52s, but only 60 were ever triathlons.

At that particular time, that's a hell of a psychological impact to an area like that.

You got about 10,000 bombs going at that time.

We had 500 of them coming in from all directions.

And they just went on to meet each other on the line again.

You're lucky you didn't lose any by collision.

Well, you had all those tankers out there and all the support package.

And it's a hell of an operation.

You think it was brave, man.

That's why, Mr. President, I'd like to be able to talk a little bit more about that.

Show us a picture of some of them.

I'd like to see them.

I'd like others to see them.

I'd like to see them.

Well, that was very, very easy, Mr. President.

All of these areas were all taken out.

This is the Geelan Railroad.

And you can see that whole area.

These are, of course, graders in here.

I've been here.

16 buildings taken out.

I think it's hard to tell.

This railroad here is almost destroyed.

There's not much left of it.

That's at the cap.

That's all the way up, almost above the runway.

to the trucks.

What does this mean?

Yeah, this is taken out here.

Here's the other one.

It would look like this.

Yes, sir.

And this was formerly looking.

Yes, sir.

But I can't make it.

Do you have pictures of this before?

Yes, we do.

See, we made it the way that...

Yes, we made it.

That's the way we did it.

Here it was before, and here it is now.

Well, we do that.

I don't know.

I don't see it, but I'm not... That's practical.

Those are the craters you see in that target area.

That's very close, that's the one I found.

Here's the warehouse where you can see everything that's on this house.

Those buildings are just, we're not at the walls right now.

You can see that these are concrete buildings.

Oh, yeah, I can see that, sir.

Why not?

That's a good picture, you know, over the sea.

Sir, have a look.

And you see it have fires in here, and things burn out.

The aircraft was, the North Beach Fire aircraft was landing in one field by the fire.

Now this is an airfield.

Let's see if you can understand that.

Well, I think that you're only aiming more there rather than the field you're aiming at the installation.

Yes, but that's more than an airfield.

That's the storage point and also the command and control hall.

The fire direction is right back there.

This is taken out in there.

This area right here, you see the guns are all off.

This is where the runway itself is interdicted.

That is the important thing.

See the buildings over here?

I don't know if you remember this.

And I take pictures like this.

I support buildings.

There aren't any industries to have that.

Well, those are prefabs out of the country.

What they do, they have prefab concrete.

They repair the runways and the bridges and so on.

That thing is very good.

That's completely, that's all they're available.

They go where they do their work.

That wasn't because to do it, was it?

Yes.

That's because to do it.

I don't want to hear it.

I'm sorry.

Here's the power.

Here's the power, Brian.

No.

Thermal power.

No.

I don't know.

It's pretty well destroyed.

There was no time to go up there.

There were less than eight hours when we could use the smart bombs.

You had to direct those visually, you see, those smart bombs.

We had less than eight hours out of 11 days where we had conditions that were suitable for the smart bombs.

Did you see that the smart bombs destroyed their leadership?

We did make a mistake and hit the county's headquarters.

That's a mistake.

You've been checking out the defense department.

It's right across from the...

It's right next to the...

Right?

Yeah.

It's next to the Soviet Embassy and it's next to our biggest deal.

That'd be... Two things that would be real good parts, but they were too close to each other.

Once the telephone changed...

probably the other things, too.

But you just can't be that accurate.

I mean, you're going to be... Well, the smart bombs, you know, they can fall off a couple of thousand feet.

You can have shorts.

You know, Mr. President, when that pilot's up there, you're actually going to find that they're firing at the same time.

He's had to make some mistakes.

I never liked that.

We never raised hell with these pilots that make mistakes like that.

Now, please, don't insult me like this.

We don't know.

Well, that is right to the defense.

That's right to the defense.

That's right to the government.

Next time.

But we, I don't know whether you saw that intelligence report out of Paris, where they were preaching to all the police in Paris and said these hydrants were just killing them.

Well, if this was the first time, it is.

How many targets are left?

We did not stop when we did.

We've gone a couple more days.

We have a lot of good targets.

What we're going to go for, I have a list.

We have those that have been destroyed, those that require restrikes, those that went structural, three categories.

And the next recommendation I'm trying to make was that we go for the training areas, whether it's

We've got one good target within it, that's the Basante, where they assemble all these groups before they dispatch themselves.

And that was what they wanted.

The problem with that point was raised during the first time they came in.

Let's wait three or four days.

The first time it was just...

The New Year's Day.

The main power plant in Illinois, inside this, yeah.

And then this is the water, all the water's gone.

And that will do this white box.

Welcome, Mr. President.

I just would like to get across somehow whether, I don't expect anybody else to, but I think that our department somehow or other ought to be able to say that we were,

or any military targets so that we're not always accusing us of the school.

Unless, uh, Bill, what if you're being an officer and you're seen as a child like that?

I don't even put up a picture.

That picture's welcome.

But my point is, if even a briefing over the press participates, that you could do it with pictures, and most of us would not want to do that, you could go to, uh, or you could go to, uh,

without putting on a picture, you can just breathe.

Or third, you can greet congressmen and senators who are our friends, in other words, our friends, basically.

Well, we've done it.

You've already done it with the pictures.

I'm going to ask two more questions.

What about the enemy buildup?

We take the position that

well we've been supported in terms of the what they call that is

The ability to infiltrate depends on having supplies, so I think this one.

In fact, it wasn't any good luck over there.

Certainly, what you've done has put a crazy load on us.

The problem, though, if you get into the damn hard arguments on that, and I mean, you know what guys like to watch the briefings on, it's a hell of a job because they'll pull out your briefing a year ago, and they'll pull it out a year before that, and jeez, the figures are so much greater in those years.

Did you have it all the time with him, Mr. President?

Infiltration, I saw something.

You know, you get into that argument, and when they've got the figures on you, and it...

It's always, you know, I mean, the infiltration, right?

Well, the point was, the infiltration, just to leave out what was happening.

The infiltration.

I heard something wrong.

Yeah, but you see, in order to replace the tank, they lost in here about 500.

Right.

So they don't have still 110.

I think on that- But I mean, my point is that you go up there with those damn committees, and even Stan, when you're briefing him on the pictures, he goes back and stabs his in the fingers from a year ago, two years ago, and he asks those questions.

We understand.

But you said, no, we shouldn't raise it.

I agree, we shouldn't raise it, but it didn't be raised initially.

And I think we ought to not be too defensive about it.

I think that we can't establish that there was a frustration

I just saw everybody understands this.

I've been giving these briefings to people like Stennis and the rest of them.

And they come back with you.

And they hit you on the fact that we were putting in more damage than we were on our enhanced bus.

And I had to get funds from them on that work.

And we did a better job than they did.

The point is that I think that we've done a better job than we could even possibly have done as far as supporting the subterranean chains on equipment, on supplies, on POM, on ammunition, on aircraft, on tanks.

Every way we beat them.

Everybody remembers this.

It's one of those things that they love to find.

It's those migrations.

I mean, I really don't go back and say this.

How many predicted they were equal offensive?

Not many.

And it was a hell of an effective offensive.

That's what people do around that invasion.

That invasion.

And that's what they were good enough to do again.

What we do, before, before, before, you see, let me tell you how much time is on his eyes, because I visualize it.

I hadn't realized until that Henry was in Paris the last time for ten days.

It was a hard, and Sullivan also told me this, it's a hard but depressing thing, because he would negotiate all day with the North Vietnamese and all night with the South Vietnamese.

South Vietnamese, whatever they got, they would screw up the next day, and so the North Vietnamese, and it was up and down, and it was unbelievably, but believe me, we went to the extra mile.

And we held up for the first week, we could say, and he said that he should come back.

He tabled, and I said, can't they?

You were with them.

And I said, no.

I said, no, we'll go the extra mile.

I said, I agree with every 90%.

It was useless.

every Monday on Saturday, and he got a little encouragement on Saturday.

And he went back in that month, Tuesday, Wednesday, I guess, went up and down the hill.

And any of you, now, if you have any doubts about this, just look at the transcript on the last days.

I don't know if it's what you think of it.

Yeah.

Jesus, you're right.

Were they negotiating?

I don't know.

It was a pure... You thought they were?

And I suspect the press is totally misleading.

The press makes a big fuss.

over sovereignty, DMC, this or that issue.

But the key in December was that they deliberately maneuvered to narrow it down to one or two points in the main group.

But then they were raising so many subsidiary issues that we couldn't even say.

They raised language issues, they raised protocol issues, they raised understanding issues.

So as soon as we settled one, they came in with another.

misunderstanding to say that we triggered them by making certain proposals.

For whatever reason, they had decided in December they were going to settle them.

And they were going to diddle us.

That was the key to it.

And no matter what we proposed, they always... We thought we had it down to one issue on that Saturday.

I know.

By Monday, they came in with another one.

We agreed to that.

Davis drew it the next day.

Then they drew in 17 language checks.

Then they came in with some understanding in relation to our prisoners.

Then they tabled the protocols.

I'm going to read this transcript.

Did you read that?

No, he didn't.

Henry gave me a brief.

I gave a brief.

It was what I gave you.

Do you have a transcript?

I disagree with that.

Sullivan has got a kind of deterministic thing on his history.

And when I went over that with Henry, you see that that gives a much different impression than we had here at the time.

At the time I wrote you a little memorandum, I didn't have this information to bring it back to you.

But I didn't have the information.

I think it would be good if you remember you said that last stage transcript you thought was really the one that...

You gave them the best proof of the picture.

They were just biffling themselves.

But it was perfect.

And I'll send it over to you this afternoon.

Now, having said this,

I would think that any dramatic display of results of bombing

So I don't think you get much more public support by showing a hell of a lot of...

I don't know what we've done, why we did it, what the results were, anything, except maybe a few instances.

So I would think that anything that, well, maybe to some extent I can do almost on the bombing thing, it's really up to you.

But what showed the results of the bombing were terribly two key people, and maybe I

And I think that if you could point out that this has significant military effect.

And without necessarily saying so, the listeners want to conclude that they came back to find the cable buttons and all of this.

That's one following the other, so they can conclude that.

Secondly, that we went out of our way

Targeted military targets had to be done another way.

It might have been safer.

Stands for a lot of pilots.

It's a good point.

So we actually, and it's true that there were a few accidents, but a few related to the total bombing impact.

And what else did we do after it?

We stopped the bombing on the representation that they made that they were bargaining in faith.

We stopped the boycott where it was clear that they were bargaining in bad faith.

And we went back to the policy that we were pursuing when we made Adam Smith.

We didn't make a new policy.

We went back to our old policy.

And it wasn't massive.

I would take some of the instances you cited to begin with that have been used against us and point out that it wasn't true.

For example, POWs.

And that's a good example to say, like, we can't show you everything because it doesn't have anything said.

One of the things that we have the American people aroused is the fact that we bombed our own POWs.

There's been a hell of a lot of publicity about that.

Now, we can prove to you we didn't hear the pictures.

Let them look at all the pictures and say, now, this is a good example of the fact that we're just being misled by believing that we bombed the POWs.

In other words, if we can cite a couple of instances of that kind,

that show what they're saying is false, and we can show that our bombing has been successful militarily, and leave the impression that they've returned to the bargaining table as a result of it, then the policy was pretty good.

But we haven't really had a chance up to this point, I think, as President said, for good reasons, to do very much of this, and I think we should take some of the other people.

Now eventually,

I'm not going to have to testify.

We can't have it forever.

And what I am doing now, Mr. President, is having prepared a statement, which we could use if we decided to at the appropriate time.

Possibly go to the House Water Affairs Committee first, and maybe go to the Wastewater Committee in an executive session, which won't say out any more than we've really said before, with a little more specificity, particularly about the protocols and what we're working on and all of that we can talk about.

And we can see, and we approve it, so it's clear that there's nothing we say here that's going to embarrass the negotiations.

But at least we'll give the House a point of interest in the incentive for an election committee to feel that we've told them something.

Why don't you think that?

Well, I was, as presumed to our discussion, I've been pushing off as long as we can.

I haven't decided, I'm thinking about it in terms of Wednesday or Thursday next week or later if we can get away with it.

But I think somewhere along the line, we've got to go up and tell them something.

We just can't.

I mean, Henry Greer Schumann, we tell

I don't know.

The North Vietnamese know what's happening.

The Russians know what's happening.

The Chinese know what's happening.

The South Vietnamese know what's happening.

Xi Jinping knows what's happening.

Why don't you tell us something?

What I'd like to do is to say, yes, we will tell you.

Here's the whole story.

Now, there's a limit to what we can tell you, because we have an agreement with the North Vietnamese, so we're not going to disclose the matters in any detail that are now being negotiated.

But within that limitation,

We'll tell you everything there is to tell you and tell them what they already know.

Don't put that down.

But in other words, they, the first time, they just sort of, you know, you talk to them, they say, you know what I'm saying.

We don't have that problem with our police teachers.

We have evidence for them.

So it's not just the committees, it's the whole Congress.

We do that behind closed doors to these people.

We show them pictures and everything else, and it works out fine.

That idiot here, I'm used to now that he's a bad example, but he's the chairman of the Boulevard Committee.

He says, well, can I ask you to give me something that I can send out?

If you send out this to support the body and support the targets, you won't give me anything to use.

You tell me all this stuff behind closed doors.

Why can't you take the pictures of them on the POWs?

Maybe you can't do it for adults.

No, we've given him days.

What I'm saying is, why can't you get a Jewish man under somebody who went out, he's been grieved, and he's absolutely convinced based on the grief, and he says, no, we'll give him a cancer.

Well, that's a good thing.

He said, well, can I afford you to that victim?

I said, well, I can't say that.

I'm not saying anything publicly about me.

Well, we're talking about not in the future, though.

I think you could say that.

i see no reason to say you can't see that what do you think before we go over there we play bomb damage stories and target it's i can see that at first you have to be under this attack

Well, you know what?

We'll take it up next week.

We'll know by Wednesday or Thursday whether we're making real progress or not.

Yeah, I think it'll be a couple weeks, maybe.

We've got to keep our mouth shut all the time about just taking it on the chin and not making anything that the guys can use publicly to defend.

I've never been a defensive player.

I like to be on the offensive.

I'm told it did.

My guess would be that they would back it up for a while.

I don't see that they have anything to gain by exposition, I think.

Well, I don't know, Henry, what's better about that.

This storm in this town right now is pretty tough.

I was with our old chowder marching group last night.

President Fathio had a race with him.

since I've been in Washington.

Yeah.

Really, he should get your heart.

Yeah.

Why did he bomb?

Why didn't he kill him?

Well, as far as I'm concerned, what I will plan to do would be to complete a statement and have it ready by the end of the week and let everyone look at it, and particularly in the light of these negotiations and decide whether I want to say something or you want me to say something like that to the appropriate committees or not.

And I think, frankly, it's sometimes better to say something so that they think they've got something than to let them speculate about something that is much worse.

In other words, you cool it that way.

If you can get something that is not going to be harmful.

So what's your opinion on that?

I'd like to see the statement.

I think it's absolutely good to be there.

And then we can decide next week.

If it's dilatory, if they play a dilatory game, I think you've got to go out and fill the void.

Well, please move very fast.

We don't have any problems.

So we'll have to, if it's dilatory, if they go through the same exercises in December, then I think it would serve our interest for Bill.

Right.

Let us understand, Bill, if it's, if we'll know, I think you're going to know by Tuesday or Wednesday, you'll know that it's still going to be illiterate.

And it's, I understand, I don't mean you're going to have to suck on what I meant by Tuesday or Wednesday, but it's still illiterate.

Or you're going to know what's going to last for a week or what's going to last for a month.

All right.

If it's going to last for a week, that's one thing.

If it's going to last for a month, then you've got to go testify.

I think that the advantage, if we can agree on what to say, so we don't say too much, is the advantage to saying something.

Now, obviously, if the negotiations look as if they're going to be successful right away, then we don't have any problem with the allegations.

and the charities that we would have agreement.

But on the possibility that that won't happen, that we... We have to have a second plan.

The repetition of what happened last time, and that is that we were really optimistic that we'd have progress.

And we sort of avoided it for obvious reasons.

And it's true or not that it was doing us...

And certainly from their standpoint, they're under no pressure now.

They doubt it.

We're going to start mocking them and think that the pressures are so great internationally.

They've seen it so often.

They've seen the Congress go on so often.

They've seen the President do unpredictable things so often.

I'm sure they're uncertain.

I'm sure they're uncertain about it.

And also, I think that Tom's point was right.

That's what was our assessment.

They ran out of missiles.

And what are your, what are your, what are your CNN people like, what do they want to do?

What do they, they want just an explanation.

What do they say?

Well, you hear you stand still, you walk about publicly independent.

What you been doing?

And I don't have any problem defending it, at least if you come over and give us a briefing on it, but that won't go public on it.

I don't give a damn about going public on it myself, but I think that from somebody's standpoint, sooner or later we've got to say that we did a good job on this body.

You know?

Mr. President, there are a few examples you could give, which are quite convincing, seems to me, of that faith and that much example.

On the ICCS, for example, obviously, it's of no consequence to have a supervisory group in there.

Absolutely no doubt about it.

Joe, if they can't go anywhere, in the end, the enemy's taking a position on it.

They're in a position to stay with Sullivan and go to the full discussion.

The group can't go anywhere unless the governments involved permit them to.

Well, hell.

In Canada, of course, one of you would take part in those circumstances.

Are there any other nations that we might try to get the whole idea of the supervisory group to be in that group?

They could make an inspection, investigation.

Now, that one illustration shows that they were acting that way.

Henry's whole point of the supervised review was that they would be able to investigate in place to find out whether it was a deliberate violation of the ceasefire or a deliberate violation of the agreement.

Now, this supposed infiltration provision doesn't make any sense if they can't see whether it was a threshold or not.

But you're going to have a hard time getting people really worked up about issues like that.

No, I'm not talking about worked up.

I'm just saying it.

At the appropriate time, give a few examples of how they operated in that phase.

Well, let's kind of do it briefly.

First, as far as the bill is concerned, we should know by Wednesday or next week or so if you can just say, well, there's a lot.

Because he voted, you'll buy that much time for the fact that you're there.

On the other hand, if you know that time, you'll know damn well by Wednesday.

You'll know by Wednesday, I would say.

Well, you're going to do it soon enough in a minute.

It seems to me that I can't see no objection, whatever, to this, to pointing out the fact that we were, that we had military targets only.

That was our goal.

I think the pictures would be back.

I think I must say that.

I will simply add, that's what the TV, I mean the Congress, you could show it privately, I mean publicly, I think they'd be back.

But you could say, yeah, the photographic things and so forth, and to those that haven't seen them, let them see them.

I won't, you won't let them reproduce them.

Then I go on.

I'd say that the, uh, that we have a border, we now have a border, border-granted evidence that it was a, that the, uh, it was a, it was a factory that was against military targets only.

Uh, directed against military targets.

That, uh, what, what silly targets made that, that there were, you know, so, so, whatever you want to call them.

And I have hit very hard at the POW camps.

You can say categorically that no POW camps were hit by this bomb.

I think that ought to be said.

You ought to say it publicly.

That's got to get out, Henry.

That's got to get out.

It would be also helpful if you could get the chairman, either senators or the man or both, to say that they had fully agreed to fund the POW camps between the pictures.

And they were convinced that they were not hit.

This was the fault.

Rather than your sentence.

Yeah, we could both say it, but I'd be good and thinker to go out and say, we've looked at this, and it's not true.

Well, wouldn't you care?

I don't want to say that.

I don't have any problem staying away from negotiations, because I just say I don't have anything to do with it.

But on the bombing thing, it would be helpful if we could make at least some of this wait to rest.

But my concern is, you're quite candid.

I can see where, for defense reasons and military reasons, they want to get their side out.

But every time I see a week briefing, it adds a sort of self-serving tendency of proving what great operations they're doing.

Now, at this particular moment, just before we go into a negotiation to sort of blow over all the things we've done, if it could be done in a very low-key way,

on the civilian side rather than MACB in Saigon and so forth, where there will be a tendency to go.

And I think you should do it.

as a political man this time rather than the other, simply saying in the very matter of fact, look, we're not here to brag about this bombing and all that sort of thing.

We're here simply to state the facts, that there's been a great deal of misrepresentation about this.

You're here to, as a matter of fact, military targets only, we're targeting the, it was successful.

there were no peals on the accounts and so forth.

I think the main thing we have to weigh is whether this looks defensive and how much the replies are going to listen to that.

The replies from our... From the Dubs again.

No, from the Dubs again, but the North Vietnamese and the Sudan offensive pictures.

We may have had them in its last night, but it's just going to keep on night.

Night after night, because we did again.

But I think it should not be MACB.

I don't think it should be anymore.

I think it should be huge.

In a very political matter of fact way, rather than in terms of saying, well, we really get the shit out of these bastards.

I think one way is to take some of their allegations.

I'm not ambitious, and I don't show all the very pictures, but take a couple of allegations and demolish those, and that tends to leave the impression that we understand as most B.O.W.

camps is a good example.

Well, I was wanting to make the same comment.

But I think if we're going to do it, we ought to do it tomorrow rather than do it when he gets here.

Oh, yeah.

How will you handle it?

I think you have to be ready for that double track approach.

Because if you do get into a military story, it's all impacting the tactic again.

You just can't sit here and bombshot.

It's going to be quite, I think that Mr. President, I don't know if I'll happen, but the stories out of the way of someone yesterday were pretty good, and that is that we don't expect a quick sell.

We're not going to be too optimistic, and I think we've got to be careful about that again, because we don't have, we don't have no love that we should have.

We really have.

And if we all sound awfully confident,

about this at all.

I don't like that at all.

I thought very well.

I thought that the fact that you're not thinking about the operation or anything else, it's a serious negotiation.

It's conducted seriously.

We will be serious.

It depends upon the legislature.

So we can make progress or not.

We're not going to express it in the media.

I'm told it with smiling pictures.

We're going to need more of those until we get the agreement.

And they have a lesson that we all have.

You don't have an agreement until you have it.

I mean, there isn't any such thing as almost an agreement.

You get it when you get it.

That's right.

You don't have a thing.

Well, that's the question.

Yeah.

We are withholding several actions associated with the posture we had assumed out of a ceasefire should have come about.

And I think that the decision would be to continue with it.

We have stopped everything that would give a signal to the other side that we could assume

I want to say that.

I want everybody to take a very conscious view of the line that was put out in the White House yesterday.

I hope everybody out there should.

Well, we're waiting to see that.

We've been burned once.

We are going to be burned twice.

I think the best would be no one said anything.

Well, I'm not saying this is not a problem.

I mean, this is an internal stand.

And how can we just hold this and want to know?

We'd better do it.

Yes, sir.

No, I stopped everything.

And, uh, for instance, we were going to say...

I would like it to be very important that you say that.

Excuse me.

Very important that, uh, Mel and Bill, yeah, that, you know, you answer your questions.

Don't let them grab any... And we've done very well on this, but don't grab any wedges as far as we're concerned.

We're all together on this.

You know, in terms of what we're doing and so forth.

So I don't think it's anything like that at all, but...

Well, the only thing that's been, they've tried to drive away from Henry and me, which, of course, is totally false.

But we'll figure it out.

They'll try to go with you, and they'll try to go with you, and all that sort of thing.

And I wouldn't be defensive about it.

I'd just say, well, it's just not true.

This meeting serves a useful purpose in that respect, too.

We've got a meeting.

The strategy is approved, and that's what you're doing.

Yes, sir.

Now, the only, I do think, I do think, on the congressional side, that to the extent that you have trustworthy people, that you certainly can talk to them candidly about, you don't know where to stand.

But it's really up to everybody, doesn't it?

Well, you know, but I'm speaking as a scientist, as a major, and so forth.

You were very wrong to do that.

And if you find anybody, if there is anybody,

because you can talk to him.

I don't know what there is.

But we don't have any time to do that, but he's right now himself.

You know?

But that's what I mean.

I mean, I do never think you've got the congressional posture.

You've got the political problem and so forth.

Do you have any other thoughts on that respect?

No, I think about the politics of the negotiations.

Because as we said, the better laws we have.

Yeah, we all know that.

They would take some of the congressional detail off of me, frankly.

That's what we're talking about.

I mean, I'm the guy that's going to get it.

I mean, I get to see these bastards on Friday morning.

Again, Friday night, and I know all of them, anyone, mentioned at certain points.

I think on that, Mr. Brett, we have to be careful, too, on strong notes.

There was a story yesterday, and it was going to be understood.

But we've got to be careful about those stories, because we're either, either Henry and I are not going to briefly appropriate the videos.

I'm trying to find a way to do it.

Let me try to say a goddamn thing.

Let me tell you how that one, for example, is just joking.

It's one of those moments.

No problem.

It's good.

a seminar for 40 new Republican Congressmen, and that's when they called around and said that we have briefings from everybody.

They called the White House and said, here, and they said, oh, yes, we can have a briefing, but Ervin's gonna do it, and Schultz is gonna do it, so we're not getting briefed from all of a sudden.

See what I mean?

I canceled, I had a lunch date set up with the senator who was briefing us today, and I canceled it just to avoid any impression.

But you see, that's what,

Yes, but I mean, we don't get into negotiations.

The point of my point is, Mr. President, we have to be careful.

Yeah.

But we do.

We all get jealous if they hear that Henry has lunch with somebody.

Yeah.

Everybody else gets mad at him.

I try.

They do get jealous.

They hate him.

Well, he read that you had lunch with a breakfast of a full breakfast.

He's mad at him.

We talked to him.

He said, I'm dead for three weeks.

I think we all should be careful.

That's right.

If we do it, we ought to let the others know.

Just to show you how carefully you have to do this, I saw Scott and I saw Albert Mansfield, which we'll see on some Tuesday, and did another one with Albert the next day.

Now, I could justify that, but both Jerry and the four of them took to

Scott, because I had seen both of them personally in the Christmas period at great length.

See, I mean, that's exactly what I mean.

And so I thought it was a balancing situation.

But I think as far as the two individuals, I think they did.

Huh.

No, just so you know, my employing appropriations, armed services, these are closed.

I don't get into Henry's business at all.

I just break on defense.

And that's all.

And Tom is doing the same thing.

These are our friends, though, and we give them just- I have no concern about that.

No concern about that.

They're here when we want to get out.

The press won't use it, so we'll just go ahead.

It's only the border police.

The border police will get out and protect the-

And what are you going to accomplish with that?

What was the purpose of that?

And that's, I think, that the online QVN bill is a pretty good explanation for that.

We don't have to get into the talk that should have sold to us or anything like that.

I talked to Otto Bessling, and he said the same thing.

He's anxious to help us.

And I think the right amount of time comes within his time.

So then I think we can get some support.

And I think I can sit and play it.

I don't think we have to say anything to most of them, but we'll have to.

Oh, yeah, sure.

All right.