On February 1, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, Edward R. G. Heath, Ronald L. Ziegler, Henry A. Kissinger, Sir Burke Trend, Stephen B. Bull, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:35 am to 12:12 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 846-004 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
you know, pure downtown Calgary.
And he knows it.
He knows it.
I met Lynch when he was here, and I said, no, let's understand that there, when we look at Irish-British problems, I said, they go back to that.
That's what I said.
You've got to do it.
That's right.
You've got to do it.
The rest you can't.
And that's that.
And Kennedy, I think he explained it.
He says, but...
But we'll see.
There again, it's a question of .
There are reporters in this room.
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All you can.
Well, this is .
I don't know.
Now we can get to work.
With regard to.
We were discussing one odds and end out of the way.
First, the board .
Should we say that one should inspire .
We probably ought to see them to get them to what we will offer.
Everybody does it, but it's just a question of how much of his time.
The second point we made was that this afternoon, that I can get those governors out of here by 4 o'clock.
It's free, but before we'd have another hour of that, and we would have to check through that, but it would be 4 or 5, a little past 9, because that goes to the next to the last week of the day.
So we'll wait and see how it goes.
But the point is that
I have a fear that if he didn't see it, that it might be more than if he did.
My suggestion, I'm not sure, but my suggestion would be to see him not too long.
And what you can tell me, I don't know, but he will use it for a listening purpose.
Do you think you should see Kennedy or not?
I don't know.
It's a mixed bag.
I don't see what damage it would do if we didn't see it.
What can Canada do?
Well, I'll tell you, use your... You know, certainly use it for the blessed desire that he knows it can't do any good.
He knows it's intelligent enough.
Well, that's some spent time that I've said.
You do, I think, damn sure.
Yes, I ask you.
He's up to it.
He's up to it.
He's frankly up to it.
so much of the world.
So we discussed Ireland and all that stuff.
Of course.
Well, I must congratulate you, by the way, on 1,000 percent of this achievement, which it really is.
And I think that's remarkable.
Well, before I say that, I'm not aware of the fact
if you're under considerable environment.
And it did not go on the list.
And it also, what they understood, did not go on the list.
Actually, I don't want anything to do with you or anything else, but it is so awful.
So often in the world they find government leaders who basically, because they're pandering to what they think was their public opinion, which is perhaps even more their view at the moment, that they will jump on this or that or the other issue.
You understand it when it's an enemy.
or an angry servant.
It's somewhat difficult to understand, but it's an ally.
I've seen both of those fighting.
Just like a computer, I accept it.
Just not going to look serious.
But, of course, it's more of an experience.
And I've got a major other, a police officer, a certain new boy on the block, jingoistic, et cetera, et cetera.
But he'll come along, and he's having trouble with it.
The real problem in Vietnam is that four years ago, I had a piece of flushing.
And people will say, thank God, because the world wanted peace, that they'd become a companion to threaten the camp.
Australia, for example, wants peace, and so on.
The difficulty, like I said, is that looking at our allies around the world, if we were not a dependable ally,
What kind of an alliance would you have?
What kind of an alliance would you endure?
I said, well, you had to end this in a way that demonstrated not just the Vietnamese, who could not be too much to us, except for a few.
We had a very tough time.
but particularly to our other allies in the world that we were to handle and that regardless of the public opinion in this country and the rest, we would do what was right, what we considered to be right, not that we are all knowledgeable.
And also, I made the point to the judge and to you
It was very important to get this message across to our potential enemies, perhaps far from it.
Now, if we had bugged out of Vietnam, for example, as many wanted us to do before the P.E.
Moscow trips, we wouldn't have been worth talking to.
And there are certain reasons, there are some things we can discuss, but in terms of the kind of thing we talked about,
Take Moscow.
If you recall, we didn't mind bombing in May, just before Moscow.
The choice then was a pretty tough one.
If we had not done that, it is likely that Soviet tanks would have been roughing through the streets of the way, or certainly in Saigon, perhaps, at a time we were sitting there talking to the Russian army.
But I'm here talking to a ruthless, shall we say, aggressive kind of person.
What's he going to do?
I mean, that's the point.
So what I'm simply saying is that I'm not in any self-justification, because you, I know that you took the firm action, but I appreciate it deeply, and I go on again, and the other thing is that
I just hope that it will work out, and I think it will, and maybe we'll bet on a running horse at a time when most people thought it was a long shot.
I think, Dave, on my side, Paul, because Sheridan's short judgment was absolutely right.
It didn't interfere with anything else they said or talked about.
And, of course, it made all the people constantly shout, if you do this at the beginning of the Third World War, you have to be here soon.
And I think that in the longer term, it in itself was something of immense importance.
It was with me, sir, a standing reputation of the liberal ideology.
My relationship with Peter Doe has never been better than since the bombing.
I'm afraid to be alone in a room with him.
He just can't sleep.
Well, it's a long chapter.
I think it might be worth a second one.
I understand you can't review it or talk about it.
Well, what should we get?
Should we decide what we talk about?
What would you like to take up first?
Well, I think it would be just if we could just hear a little bit of CBN.
All right.
I think we have to talk to the second chair about the conference.
That's all.
All right.
Well, the situation there is, from the standpoint of the paperwork, is frankly remarkable.
When you look at the, and I don't advise this because you're too busy, but when you read the agreement and you read the protocols,
And we had this briefing that she gave, and she explained it for an hour and a half, of course.
If, at agreement, the camera in the piece doesn't reach their goal, it's been shaped up in every way, about such and such things, which perhaps are not important.
But the demarcation line, the DMC, why was that important?
Not because we had to guarantee sovereignty to the Republic of Vietnam II.
It was more important from the standpoint that without a demarcation line, and you have no control over the peace of the negotiation, because our Vietnamese then had a right to move in.
And with a demarcation line, with entry points, it was essential to have that order.
of course.
Take Laos and Cambodia, one thing Henry insisted upon.
I don't think Henry, the damn person, ever understood.
He insisted on bringing, we've talked this all over, on bringing the Laotian and Cambodian peace agreements, which they're not agreements basically yet, but at least the motions in those areas, closer in time plans
for the Vietnam thing.
The North Vietnamese preferred to let Laos lay out there for two, three, or four months.
Cambodia just dragged on.
We insisted on that for the reason that
The piece, as far as South Vietnam is concerned, not only the DMC, but you have the gateway to South Vietnam through Laos, and you have them through the trail, and of course, the potential areas of sanctuaries in Cambodia.
Now, we have, without going into any details as to how we know, we have complete confidence that there will be a ceasefire in Laos soon.
I would say, in terms of time, you say it's supposed to take place within 15 days.
So it should be completed by 12.
You have no reason that it will not take place then?
No.
Right.
But there is a kind of gap.
The whole lot?
The whole lot.
Between the Patilau and Suban, they've gone to see the folks yesterday, which was exactly on schedule.
Cambodia is, of course, a different situation.
But also, the agreement provides that all foreign forces should leave Cambodia lost.
And so again, there isn't any, there's no,
With regard to Vietnam, South Vietnam, one of the foreign forces is deliberately ambiguous because the North is under a decree that they have forces in the South.
With regard to Cambodia and Laos, there is no question.
So if they keep the agreement, their forces, which may be 60,000 in Cambodia, 80,000 in Laos, or it might be the other way around, those forces come out.
If you have a ceasefire, a de facto...
and a negotiated formal ceasefire in Laos, and then you have DMZ, and you have supervisory teams, we can look to a period of peace.
Now, what it really relies on, however, is the will of the North Vietnamese to keep things.
Now, when Henry goes to Hanoi, and this is one that we're going to have some trouble on with our Congress,
that years ago, when I was the young congressman, you were the young, I remember Colin, I remember, I'm sure I can mention him, I remember when he came, it was a great year, I remember when he came, it was the Marshall Plan, I remember when he came in for a program that made Japan and so forth, our enemies, and we went all out for it, and we did it for humanitarian reasons, we did it for other reasons, but we were able to sell it.
Now, we have a situation where this has been a very different kind of a war.
And they're building up a public Senate in the United States.
And that means that it would be, therefore, reflective of Congress to provide economic assistance in order to get out of this country hard.
However, we must do it.
We must do it to the soft heads of people, say, the mandatory.
So the real reason, however, is that it will give us
a carrot, which we could use, as well as the stick, which we would find very difficult to use now.
And a carrot that they desperately need.
And so Henry's going to go there.
He's going to negotiate hard and so forth.
But there isn't any question that he will come back and make recommendations that I want to recommend to the Congress that we have.
We'll make a program for the whole area.
it'll give something for the liberals to support.
Well, we'll do it in two stages.
When I'm in Illinois, we'll agree on an economic commission, a joint economic, North Vietnamese and U.S. commission, which will then make recommendations within three weeks.
This gives us some buffer, gives us a chance to observe how they're implementing it.
And then we will be in the president's office.
Another reason he's going to Illinois is he's only talked to him in October.
He said, I don't know any other thoughts.
But these men, all of them are older men.
They are rigid and razzle.
And he'll be talking to the whole group.
And he wants Frank to sit down and talk about it and hear it.
He's got to indicate that we still have horses in the area and that we might use them.
You understand, of course, that one of the other byproducts of the necessary commentary, which we had to do for the purpose of breaking the deadlock, and which did break the deadlock, is that, and this is where our liberal critics help us a bit, when they say the president is out of his mind and he does foolish things, but they're, or they believe it.
a white house who doesn't care about fools or anything like that.
They have a very good experience now.
That's the reason that we haven't met yet.
We've never met.
Publicly, our question is not going to be a political one.
It's going to be a law.
and the Chinese can play a very important part in this.
As far as what part they may affect at this point, we say nothing.
whether in the case that they could have been involved in these.
But I think we could say something privately on this.
Probably we will not say anything because it would be embarrassing to each and every one of them to deny it.
On the other hand, it was interesting to note, even from a public standpoint and a private standpoint, that both of them reacted
much less, shall we say, to our activities in December than did, for example, the Australians and the Canadians.
And that must tell us something.
Both of them have much bigger fish to fry than what happens to the revolution in Vietnam and the interests of the Chinese and the Russians.
Now in China, we believe
are so contradictory that they have not necessarily been exercising restraint.
So with all of this, we will do it quietly.
Publicly, we'll say the great powers should all exercise restraint.
But in any communications we have, we're going to try to get both the Russians and the Chinese to play
The Chinese haven't said it as much as the Russians.
For example, before we went over to the last negotiations, we couldn't be absolutely sure how it was going to go.
When the first day and a half is ignored within each warehouse, it will be a cruel, hapless night.
We have had private word from John by a message to the President, in which he has had a settlement with certain
We've got this message industry, you know, at the very time that our, uh, our does in the Senate, uh, the Democratic government, the Senate and the House are requesting resolutions, uh, calling for us to get out.
We're exchanging records.
There's something, of course, that the other side is going to do this.
It's, it's certainly, he's, it's psychological, but, uh, to go ahead and make a decision.
We had a message in our pocket at that time.
Uh-huh.
We know the Chinese don't.
We know the Chinese don't.
And we think the Russians don't.
But we can't tell whether they're lying or not.
And the Chinese, I think we just don't know.
Would you agree?
That's right.
And they have .
And we have had talks with both the Russians and the Chinese on .
We also have had extremely courteous messages from both .
Extremely courteous.
Now, here again,
Our people in this country are so hopelessly idealistic that they...
that they think, ah, we've got peace now.
Now that we've been to Moscow, it's going to be great.
We just had to get to know each other.
Now that we've been to Beijing, it's going to be so good to know each other.
This is the truth.
But it does mean that it helps.
It helps as you communicate about differences.
But at the same time, I think it can be said that because the Russians and the Chinese know this,
what now appears to be a direct, conciliable split, this, in an ironic way, helps us in other areas of the world.
And without me and Peter, they would never appear to be in place.
But, I mean, I think it's up to you or somebody else.
It could be an enormous force that could be used for good.
Go ahead, Harry.
Also, we had a conversation with a Chinese
The idea is that .
He had an obligation to go to Kansas City.
Well, he gave his king.
He gave his king.
I said, why don't you go out and meet him?
Well, I don't know if you'd like that.
Well, I don't know if you'd like that either.
But he raised the subject.
Sure, I'm thinking about that.
But you see, there's no reason to go after him.
It's a detail.
But it's interesting that the king would want him, would be willing to, and they would want him to come, right?
Well, that's right.
Well, that's right.
Yeah.
See?
Yeah.
At the end of that.
So he's going to be there.
Guaranteed three months of civil behavior through the service.
I don't know.
We'll give you, we'll barf you off after the first.
That's good for us.
That means that it's done.
Yeah.
Well, they're fish there in Cambodia.
But the problem in Cambodia is that I have the impression that Hanoi is very suspicious of China.
In fact, Hanoi has asked us to use some of the food that she can do.
to quiet down the situation in Cambodia, they assured us that they would do their maximum, and that they would give orders, which they seemed to have carried out, that no offensive actions would be carried out until the 72th, I guess, or the 54th, or the de facto ceasefire.
It has been responded to, it has happened.
And Xi'an, at first, said never.
Why are you voting for him?
I think the Chinese perception of Indochina is very similar to ours, though they have different rulers in the country.
They want four states.
The extraordinary reception that I have been received in Beijing, which exceeded any that the North Vietnamese have received, certainly made South Vietnam
treated South Vietnam as a separate political entity from North Vietnam, and couldn't have been all that welcome in Hawaii.
And in the early stages of the negotiations, North Vietnamese made their withdrawal from Laos and contention on the withdrawal of Chinese.
They're building a road towards both Thakur and North Vietnam.
There's a spur that divides the North Coast over here, Vietnam, and the other coast towards Thakur, through North Vietnam.
But they've not withdrawn any land, and they've withdrawn, or Clayton has withdrawn, even if the Chinese have.
The Russians, I think, would probably prefer to unify China as a country to China as a country.
What is the other point of the migration race?
What gain do the Japanese want right there, except for harping on a few bucks?
The Japanese are so hated in Indochina that they can't carry out all their intentions.
And they have this compulsion to beat us into every place.
And now, Sala raised, yesterday we were driving, raised the point, he said that, I remember this, over a year ago, he said, we'd be liable to where we came from.
My gosh, they forget.
The North Vietnamese hate the Japanese more than almost any other people that I've met.
And they absolutely refuse to have them on the international commission.
They refuse to have them at the international conference.
They refuse to have them in construction programs for the Asian Development Bank because its president is a Japanese.
And to mention the word Japan leads to a torrent of repression.
The Japanese don't seem to...
and they're trying to get in there with economic programs, but actually they're taking their money.
But in terms of political influence, I think that it will not be great.
To the extent that they gain political influence in Hawaii, China will be extremely disquieted.
So this is not a situation in which a Japanese influence is necessary to do a good job.
What would you like to see come out of the conference?
I, uh...
I really haven't, uh...
I haven't focused on it.
No question.
I haven't focused on it because I don't have a very great focus.
We'd like to see, first, that the Conference endorse this decree, and secondly, that the Conference establishes a recording mechanism for the Control Commission to improve, other than the four parties.
I'd like to ask the Commission, what is the report that the four parties have told us?
Yes, either at the conference or to the secretary-general, who is actually a member of the conference, who then had an obligation to inform.
Third, that it expresses a recommendation of restraint and introduction of compliments, carefully phrased, into the area.
Fourth, that it
expresses some general hope or interest in the peaceful settlement of the ocean and Cambodian issues to the extent that they have been settled by then, and that it expresses some, and perhaps establishes some interest in, establishes perhaps a mechanism for the reconstruction of Indochina.
Those are the major economic factors.
Those would be the major objectives we could see coming out.
If it's reporting to the secretaries of the U.S., do you think that will be acceptable to the Chinese and the Russians, or is one acceptable to the other China based?
Well, nor do we think it's going to resist reporting to anyone except the party.
Except the four parties, huh?
Except the four parties.
I see.
I don't think they are.
The agreement provides...
that some other mechanism be established.
But it has to be found that the mechanism is effective at the conference.
We would not object to follow the 62 formula of having two co-chairmen, having two co-chairmen at the conference, as it may be.
But since the Secretary General is present,
We've been trying to think it through without knowing the background to it, whether you knew what the Soviet reaction or the Chinese reaction was going to be, and it seemed to us that on the whole the co-channels being really useless with the procedure, which we've never been able to activate, when there was some justification for it, if one can really shove it into the U.N. secretariat to...
I was trying to figure out how this machine works.
It's a far preferable solution than any other one.
It is literally a co-check referral before you get co-checked and so forth.
That's the prime minister points out that there's no machinery to co-check and have.
You need machinery and so forth to co-check two divisions.
At least in the UN, you have, for what it's worth, the pressures of publicity of the thing being brought forward.
It's a word question, so...
Yes.
But the answer is yes.
Then how do you visualize things presently if it does go wrong?
Hanoi, by one means or another, eventually manages to keep on infiltrating and get greater influence in South Vietnam.
Do you regard them now really as standing on their own feet?
Well, on that point, I am more hopeful than that question.
Here's where our double-track approach will pay off.
Hanoi must be relevantly confident.
infiltrating the invention table itself.
However, they must not be very confident that they can do it for the short term, because otherwise they wouldn't have made the deal.
I think what has happened here is a result of the mining, is a result of the bombing, is a result of the massive failure of their spring fencing, and finally, too, is a result of the separation.
And years of attrition for McCarthy and not is now exhausted.
That's why they hated people.
They didn't like them because they wanted peace, because they came and everything.
People say, well, look, they celebrated victory.
What was their goal?
Why didn't we have a settlement before?
The goal of North Vietnam has always been the imposition by agreement, by settlement, of a communist government or of a coalition communist government in the south.
And whenever we've tried to separate the military from the political issues, that comes back at this time.
Until October the 8th, when Henry made the breakthrough, until October the 8th, as he looked at it, we could have offered a prisoner's withdrawal as a sentiment on the truth.
And they would have said, no.
Until October the 8th, we could have offered a military settlement that stands to cease fire without any inspection.
They would have said, no.
And he would have argued.
They have always insisted that their goal was basically a political sentiment.
Now, what we have done here is to set up this
It's very clever, and it really is the clever people of this National Council of Concord and Consolidation, which is a non-governmental body, which requires unanimity in order to accomplish anything, and which is supposed to reconcile people, and perhaps at some time in the future, set up elections.
But it needs the government, we have not.
in place.
It gives no right, and the agreement does, for South Vietnam to be there.
It cuts off the corridors, Cambodia, Laos, and also the, through the DMZ it has some, it provides it's impossible to reinforce or to infiltrate the rest.
My feeling is that we are probably entering a period, I guess it would be just to throw out there a couple of years, three years, when they, because they are exhausted, when they are going to turn injured.
or at least the rest, they're going to have to rebuild and regroup and get their break.
That's why they're going to want the economic assistance.
That's why they will probably play a more
I do not anticipate, and I may be totally wrong, I do not anticipate that they will go out and on any massive basis that would give us provocation, and God knows, I don't think we don't have the interest whether we can do something about that decision.
But I don't think that's going to happen.
The reason I don't think it will happen is not because the agreement is that great, but because it is a great agreement.
And not because they have changed their attitude about their goal.
The goal remains the same.
But the reason that I do it is because they are so weak.
I think that is the fundamental fact that many people will overlook.
Now, Henry, that's my comment.
I think you shared it.
There are many indications of that.
The most disdainful they had been of us wasn't after the bombing.
They went through one day of marked toughness, and after that became personally very conceited, very tough, very fast, the toughest they've ever been.
It was on May 2nd after they took one tree and had destroyed the 22nd Division .
I offered at that time to start with the president.
see if I essentially would have settled for a better position.
Well, because we offered them the rest of the education.
And also, we had in our pocket an agreement not to run.
That was offered.
The name was never taken, but we had a gun.
But at that time, the doctor treated me like a schoolboy.
He said, look, you people think we started it because we wanted to make an agreement to stop fighting.
We started a war.
He said, you think we started a war?
He said, you think we started a war?
He said, you think we started a war?
He said, you think we started a war?
He said, you think we started a war?
He said, you think we started a war?
And it wasn't until October 8th that they took exactly the opposite path and accepted this transparent formula for a political settlement which is worse for them than what we have publicly offered on January 25th, which forced elections in a definite timeframe and the resignation of two before the election.
This time, they've set up this committee, but this committee
may not even come into being, because all the parties have to do is to do their utmost to bring it into being.
Then once it comes into being, it operates by unanimity.
Then, if it can agree on its actions, when they will, they will have to decide what institutions they'd like to start it before.
In other words, the political issues have all been put in design, and they've accepted any practices filed.
That's really the only detailed provisions that these people are concerned now.
ceasefire.
Secondly, if one was at the pressures, what happened during the bombing was, on December 16th, when we started the bombing, we sent them a list of demands.
They had to meet the technical talks and started them 72 hours at the end of the bombing.
all political provisions had to be dropped from the protocols, because they wanted to sneak into a little structure into the protocols, that nothing could be in the protocols that was not in the basic agreement.
And that the protocols they had tabled on December 12th would be withdrawn, and that they would be serious and substantive.
The protocols they had tabled on December 12th were completely dilatory and impossible answers.
And we didn't even reveal the worst part of it, because we didn't want to make it even more difficult, et cetera.
And the talks started in a week.
They gave us a reply which, in double talk, said they would accept it.
We then came back to them, saying, you have to return these conditions precisely.
And we will stop bombing 48 hours after we receive your reply.
And we thought it would take at least 48 hours to reply to that, which is the fastest we've ever replied to anything.
They replied to that in seven hours.
We went to a path from Paris to Hanoi.
We delivered the message at 10 o'clock at night.
And we received the reply at 6.30 in the morning.
This is a kind of thing that we can't because what it is is basically a cave.
It does tell us what the future can be.
But if they could have held out another week, we would have faced the problem of either dealing with the stressors of the world.
The Congress would have voted us out.
And the Congress would have voted us out.
And secondly, the Congress was coming back on January 3rd.
They caved on December 28th.
They didn't even wait to see what the Congress would do.
Those I don't consider signs of strength and land in negotiation.
to all practical purposes in the League of China we had.
They yielded on every point that was in dispute in the middle of December.
We gave them a few minor face-saving ones, but they were of no substance, you know.
They could have, in fact, they gave us more of the military stuff than we asked for.
You should also be aware of the fact that if we, this must vary,
But we, and I personally, were unsure he ought to, because he was the best one.
The Dark Knight, as Henry says, negotiated with any of our Vietnamese.
I don't know.
I told Sao yesterday, I said that the only people in the world who thought hard enough to negotiate with the Japanese were the Vietnamese, not ourselves.
But if, and I hope it doesn't, three letters, about three, two questions that I sent to you, if you ever come out, but I had to do that.
And because he, the agreement is a great one for him.
Except for the fact that he lacks confidence in his name as to what it is to do as my people have said.
deep air space.
It isn't just the hardware.
The deep air space is a deep bigger business.
In other words, the third base and one of the best air forces.
He's got a better air force, a better name, and a bigger army than the North.
And he's also got a better economy.
And he's got a support of the United States, which is, the way he's really put it, and you might know the prime minister as to how we, how we find the military.
The first we saw was Dr. Henry Worker, the foreign minister.
I think what really got him to San Diego were cold turkey.
I think we used a cold cock right there just before the inauguration.
In the middle of December, we heard, we had difficulty
But both Vietnamese parties were playing chicken with us.
And both were paralyzing us.
And the Tuppence, Illinois became the Tuppence I got into.
And that's what... One of the things he did, if I can interrupt you.
Well, he was a great diplomat.
I didn't mean to say that.
I'm sorry.
I was trying to get him to take off a couple of days ago.
Leave that out.
During that terrible 10 days in December, he went back.
But I thought it would take two days to finish it because there were only two issues we were working on.
Remember you said it would take four days?
After four days, I was in camp.
They were doing the camp over and so forth.
I had a message from Henry.
Henry said, look, there's hope.
He said, I think I should come back and sort it out.
I said, stick it out.
In fact, some of our men were there until before he went.
And he agreed.
And he agreed.
No matter what you did, it was better than going away.
That was the attitude, frankly, of virtually everybody here said, I suppose I agree with myself.
I'm a person of chiefs.
So we kept hanging in there.
And we stayed for six more days.
He stayed 10 days.
He'd eat all day with the North Vietnamese.
And they were, of course, really not .
And then he'd eat all night, practically, with the South Vietnamese.
And it was a whipsaw, just like this.
And every time he'd eat with the South Vietnamese,
It was an impossible situation.
So the second time we went there, we did not do it that way.
The second time, we just made a decision in our own mind.
We were going to make the deal.
We knew what we wanted.
We made it.
And then to let them save base, we got it for them, as you wrote that.
Correct.
But what we then did was, while we started bombing the North, the president sent aid to Vietnam, told them,
He gave them an ultimatum and told them these were our terms.
As soon as they met the following terms, which were, in fact, they met, we would settle and we'd cut them off if they wouldn't settle.
So we really turned and opposed it.
And after we settled with North Vietnamese on the terms which we had always had with Vietnamese before,
Presidents had paid to be nominated, and while they were surprised and proud of their talking, we did a series of things which irrevocably permitted us to start making awards so that you knew that blocking it wouldn't help them.
And we had, we started an army, Mr. Norris, which they knew we would, although I was certainly not here to start again.
We announced that I was coming back to complete the text of the agreement.
That was important.
We planned that for him.
It was the work of us.
Deliberately chose the words.
We released the pictures of the meeting with the North Vietnamese.
We were afraid because we had never done it before.
So every day when Hank was talking to you, we did something irrevocable here.
So that he was finally in a position where either he would break with us,
What he will go on in that place, all these means that I've explained, will never be yielded.
He's not made the great works that were necessary, and in fact, in this all-out wave of attacks that the North Vietnamese came back and launched just before the ceasefire, which has continued the better part of this week, which is now dying down, they've came next to nothing.
So his control over the territory, in fact, they've gained nothing.
At one stage, they had taken 12 men as a military agent, three.
Yesterday, they were down to four.
I'm sure they don't have any left.
And that's the reason where Jude has his lousiest commanders.
He's afraid to have any good commanders close to the Catholic man.
The old Romans.
So for the immediate future, anyway, the greatest edge of Vietnam is not military.
It's not starting to get over again.
The greatest edge is...
It's going to take tender loving care.
It's going to take...
With Saigon, that's one of the reasons, that's the reason I offered to meet you in October, you know, to try to bring him along.
He should have made the deal.
We could have gotten the same deal, although we got it better now.
But he should have made it then.
That's because he wasn't along.
He was trying to conclude his own.
He did try to conclude his own.
He tried to give him a little carrot there.
I would beat him.
He was the fourth in the operation.
He did not respond.
So now, of course, he's very interested to beat him.
So I would beat him probably in the latter part of my life.
His resistance wasn't really that active in terms of the agreement.
again, was to neutralize his domestic opposition, which is totally irresponsible, of making a record at every stage that he resisted, of involving as many of his potential opponents as possible in the process of recommending to him that he yields.
So the record now is, for example, Trampanto, the French have been hanging on to be the neutralist faction.
He's got way out in front.
And at every stage, Trump, and for peace, for example, recommended to him that he accept the president's pressure.
And so really, the process was very cleverly conducted by Pew domestically in neutralizing people who could later use him if any made an unfavorable agreement, even though they wouldn't have had the courage to say so publicly why he was being made.
That was the real issue, as far as he was concerned.
I think there are indications that the French will try to move back into the economic and financial field.
Anything that maintains an independent South Vietnam, the French have done some rough things, but anything that maintains an independent South Vietnam has to be considered a tourist.
That's 42, they said.
That is, they're not forwarding to Chinese states.
Yeah.
So, in general, that's the governing principle as far as it is.
It's sort of economic aid or assistance or medical stuff.
We can't do a great deal because we're so committed in Bangladesh to try and keep them onto any sort of straight path.
That's a very easy other plan.
Well, to come to the actual original question, as I see it, I...
But I think what you have is this solid fact that both sides really need peace.
They need it more.
So I think that is the fact that we can play that back.
Uh, we may have, uh, we may have, if not quite what they want.
Unless it's used around the circumstances, it will turn out that it's technically not possible to clear the minefields until the beginning of the rainy season.
Oh, and then, uh, Debra?
Yes.
Well, sir?
So that means until May and then for six months after this, they can't resupply.
Then even if they want to start again.
They need the better part of next year's dry season to resupply, so this is at least a year from now.
After which time the rainy season will start again, so the earliest time for a bigger winter would be... Well, they missed this gap.
They missed this gap.
They'll miss next year, so we're talking about 74, 75 maybe.
Late 74, early 75.
So they won't carry on the economic program then.
Well, then you'll get to pretty much all.
But we're going to be a part, and also what we give, we take away.
Absolutely.
And we're thinking in rather substantial terms.
Yeah.
I think we can consider substantial of that.
What is this part about?
We have side problems with the new Australian cuisine and companies.
They have companies.
and the Five Power Force, with Central County now, without any of us in that question, as far as New Zealand's concerned, they're remaining fairly sensible in going to keep their share of the Five Power Force there.
And they believe they've had a stabilising influence on Whitlam and the Australian government.
But until he gets there, he doesn't do anything.
But I think what the Australians will do is to keep the Air Force and their share of the headquarters and so on, and then probably rotate the battalion on a trading scheme basis.
We can hold them to that, and I think that's probably the best we can do.
We have said we shan't change air forces.
Well, I think the Australians are going back into control to some degree.
It's difficult, you know.
It's very, it's rather hard to, like I said, it is rather, in a sense, harder to understand the Australian position to be a laborer or whatever it is.
Because
If any country has a great state, first stop it, or at least holding back the flow of the communist Chinese press and through Indonesia, which is about 20 miles from Australia, whatever.
If any country also has a stake in an American presence in that area, or Australia has, from what their prime minister says, he is once there.
We're not going to accommodate it, but I thought it was a very curious comment.
Do you even know him?
I know him reasonably well, I do, a number of times.
Is he basically an isolationist, as I remember?
A pacifist, or bold, or naive?
I suppose generally wet, versus...
I know that he's never thought out the fact that he's an isolationist, but it's just that if there are nasty things around, he doesn't want to have anything to do with them, I think.
They've asked us to come promote the remaining colonial ties with Australia.
I hope they'll do that.
Don't get rid of all the colonial ties.
That's how they seem.
And things like, in the legal system, the order of commonwealth countries tend to keep the appeal to the Tribune Council, which is a big impartial body, so you want to come back to it as a target.
It means probably a row internally in Australia between their states and their federal government, and determine not to get involved in that much.
They have that in front of themselves.
What about the Indians from South Carolina?
What would you say we ought to do?
Well, I was going to ask you about that.
I think we would have it preoccupied.
We've, in our state, as far as the Indians are concerned,
We have, in terms basically of our channel,
It's vital that we continue to stay very strong in Pakistan.
We're not going to lose it.
We will play, you know, a constructive role in Bangladesh and economic cypress, but it is absolutely a key part of that game that we stay in Pakistan.
And on India, we have not moved too quickly.
I think Alec, who might remember from our conversation earlier, was rather strong in that he was on the wrong track.
He thought that he might be on a mistaken track, but frankly, I think Henry and I feel that
Yes, but the pressure, of course, is now much less, because India has established
So we would like to avoid the Pakistan side of the position, and Nepal is a easier maintainer.
They said the Chinese are giving them military supplies, and we may risk over some of the military supplies that were cut out on a contingent timeline.
And we've mentioned that in the presidential channel, the Indians, without having too much
of an uproar, if we're talking about the one-time exception, or at least some of the equipment that was over here, with respect to India.
That would be on a very modest scale.
Oh, it's less than $20 million in one time.
It's all already contracted for here.
It's not a new commitment.
This equipment had been made by the president in 1969.
The contracts had already been led.
It was called the .
And they also would free some of the equipment here. .
The most active correspondent on foreign leaders that the President has right now is my Afghan issue.
I say goodbye twice a month.
I bring him to a secret location.
So the Indians are trying to improve their relation with us.
So we've always had a problem with that.
And that must be getting off with us.
And we're moving gradually in this direction.
As the President brought it up, we don't want to try to get the sense of being encircled again.
But there's a slow improvement, a very civil dialogue now.
And I think we can expect to do it in the year that the elections will slowly go on.
Well, you're certainly not suggesting that you set the security.
that the Chinese have either forgotten or will never forgive what the Indians did for connection.
Because that's really, that's fundamental.
We've got to look at the Chinese and the Indian game, of course.
We've sent Boyd and Ann off to their capacity.
And he wanted to go, and that they considered to be a good signal because they figured that he's going to be your contact.
But he would give us, you know, what if he didn't?
How do you see it now?
I think we see that India has now settled back into a more reasonable frame of mind again.
I think that Uto now sees quite clearly that recognition of angulation is essential, and that as a result of these conversations which, in fact, it hasn't been happening, there have been some exchanges still being expressed in India at all.
But if only we could get the recognition cleared out of the way, then I believe we could really make one of the progress.
Which comes first.
This is the problem which comes first.
But we can't.
Shane Eugene to move to meet Butoh in order to settle recognition.
He won't meet him until there is recognition.
This is the basic point.
We haven't been able to shift him on to this.
I spoke to him in London when he was there after his operation and so on, and said to him, really, it is...
I hope there's been so much more can be done.
If he doesn't meet, he's bound to break the marriage.
You're not giving up anything by meeting him.
On the other hand, we can't persuade Putin to recognize that he needs immunity when this is the deadlock we're in.
What is the situation in Bangladesh?
I think, yes, from a point of view of having any...
I think what's worrying us is that immunity is very, very losing its grip over the civil administration.
for me is to worry about the significant signs of this, you know.
What of it?
Well, what do you see for the future very soon?
I'm talking to you about that thing in the earth.
The danger, the real danger, is for dust to disintegrate, and, uh, I'm confused.
I wasn't going to help.
And as that necrotic opposes to other things, it's going to spill over into West Ventola.
So that's going to be a thing.
I'm going to wish I had a gun.
I don't know who it was.
I don't know who it is.
We hope you look back at what India was.
no common language, no common language, not at all.
And Britain made it, and now they partition it so that these people who talk, get the last messages and come on in, and some are so sweet and so very
All of these
They just find it self-counseling and self-bearable for people that aren't prepared for it.
They have a tradition of it.
It doesn't solve problems.
It creates problems.
I mean, that's the problem.
At first, at some point, you've got to cut the ability card and let the baby in.
The baby walks.
But the need to find someone
relationship there.
So it's quite a common idea that's always appealed.
And why are you, in France, continuing some sort of relationship with ?
Because they put all of the talk on these new nations that now are the halls of the UN, the whole talk about their independence and all that sort of thing.
Most of them just can't run the place.
And if you look at what's happened since we met in Africa and Europe, God, what the British left a place like Kenya and these other countries down there and the way they just tear each other up now.
But they're doing themselves in.
The Ugandan economies can't last much longer at all.
It has produced a terrible problem for us.
And Mrs. Gannon has been very helpful to us, too, very helpful.
And two days was helpful, for one, due to the expulsion of the Asians, but otherwise the rest of the world .
And we've got this problem now, you see, of the British passport holders, which is really the hangover from imperialism.
We've several connections with imperialism, but we're left with this hangover.
And I suppose altogether, in East Africa, there are about 240,000, 160,000 of these Asians with British passports.
And of course, in the imperial days, they had the right to come.
They did come.
Nobody expected them to come.
But they kept their passport because they were afraid of personal persecution in some countries.
But nobody ever visualized that they were going to be expelled en masse.
And when Arlene did it, of course, it put the pressures on Kenyatta and the area next door to do the same thing.
So far, they've stood up against the pressures.
But having to take 25,000 of these people in one go like this, of course, has soured the atmosphere in Britain enormously.
One of the problems being, however large you try,
You just can't spread them, because they all insist on going to the towns, you know, compared to a few number of towns, where they know the operations are.
So you've got somewhere like Leicester, or Bradford, or parts of London, where they just bought in.
And the housing isn't there, and the schools aren't there, and the hospitals aren't there.
And of course, the... How many?
From Uganda altogether.
All together.
A billion and a half.
No, no, no.
Now, set it up.
In the cities, you see, from the normal immigration, until we were able to control it, it was totally in the dependence of these people.
These come in a fairly steady plan, but when you get 25,000 landing in the course of a few weeks, we had to provide camps for them to go to and generally filter them out into the country.
But it's turned the whole atmosphere sour, as far as this is concerned.
So we've had to say, well, we go on with our long procedure of the quota from East Africa, but we just can't take another expulsion.
And, of course, one hopes that by saying this firmly, we can get out of the area of disease.
But we've had secret talks with Mrs. Gandy about it.
She can't commit herself publicly.
But I think what would have to happen if there was another expulsion would be that they would go to India temporarily.
In fact, a lot of them would stay there for a while, and then we'd have to take them still on the quota basis.
But I'm afraid we're going to have to do a free revision of all British nationality and citizenship.
You see, in Hong Kong, we've got four and a half billion people, but they've all got British passports.
And if you've suddenly got some panicking in Hong Kong as to what's going to happen from the weekend, where are the organs trying to get to?
In other words, get somebody from Hong Kong, British passport, come freaking away.
Yeah.
And still in Malaysia and Singapore, we've got the British passport holders, what are called, the English, Chinese,
They can't get it massed.
This is going to come to do it, encourage mass work.
Does that mean they can leave?
That doesn't mean they can go to Wall Street?
No.
Or Canada?
No.
Where you've got the least room for them, they can't come.
They can't come.
You see, they can't get Canada on the table.
Is this the skull?
I mean, he is, basically, is his problem too much education or too little?
Well, it's a logical case.
It's too much, isn't it, probably.
Well, it can be, you know.
I don't know which is which these days.
Or a low IQ, which may be a very good call for him.
Batista was a corporal, too.
These corporals don't underestimate him.
So was Hitler, really.
He was a buddy of mine, too.
Everybody hit him too hard.
Well, as he said, he never even said anything once.
He said some outrageous things, but he said a lot of nice things.
Oh, yeah.
So, what kind of reaction did he have against that?
Was it bad?
I don't know.
because there are some things which are so maniacal, but they're really quite funny, because after Swiss President had a Commonwealth conference with everybody of course, we haven't heard from that, and Trudeau invited the Commonwealth to go to Osborne for the conference in 1973, we haven't heard from him in two or three years, but that was horrifying, because he loved the Commonwealth conference.
But anyhow, after Trudeau's election,
which was hadering around, and he was equal with the Conservatives, Armin sent a message saying he proposed that the Commonwealth Conference should now be held in Camp Parler because of the instability in Canada.
Really?
And then published the letter.
Well, as far as the survey is concerned,
I'll say this about the general relationship to the future.
What I'd say, the Soviet relationship on its surface is very optimistic.
But underneath, it is based on, in my view, a fragile
of practical considerations which could change.
One, of course, is the China-Russia meeting.
And the other is, among others, is the certain needs they have .
And of course, the third is maybe
but one at any particular time is going to be compelling, is that how they really look at Europe, the European Security Conference.
My view, incidentally, and I'll say it to a few of you as we're talking about it, is we are, and I agree with both of you too,
I'm very skeptical about it in confidence.
I think that we're smart.
We're smart enough to be able to figure out a position that we can take the lead on.
And on that, of course, I think sometimes it's much more useful for perhaps you to take the lead.
You can, of course, appear to be
and actually blocking back for us.
We can't, of course, be out there saying, come along, boys, this is it.
But I digress.
Getting that back to the Soviet, certainly in terms of the correspondence, the meetings that I had with the freshman, the correspondence we've had with them, and the meetings that Henry has had with the brain, our relations are extremely good, extremely good, and very positive.
But I have to say that we did meet, and we're going to be back at 4 o'clock.
tell the 5 o'clock group, this fellow, to stand by in their offices.
They're all here.
The career prime minister and I can swap over.
We have plenty of time.
All right, sir.
Well, I think it's very important now that the, and that's why
Somebody was asking me yesterday, the press conference, whether I thought this was the year of Europe.
And actually, that's a line that's developing in the press without saying this is the year of Europe.
So I said, well, it's certainly the year of Europe.
It's not the year of the background.
And I said, that is why I consider the meeting tonight so important, because...
with regard to NDFR, with regard to SALT, Phase 2, and the security conference.
We have the intention of having basically
the Soviet-American relationship at the expense of Europe.
On the other hand, we have to talk to them.
That's the way they talk.
But if we could, of course, at least develop some
I come back to the Russians.
Ironically, during the election, of course, the analysts and the press are never right in doing political stuff.
They don't know why you do things.
They don't know why they do things, rather than looking at the man in the mirror.
And so they say, well, Nixon has changed his views.
He used to be an economist.
Now he says we can get along, right, and change, and so forth.
And all this new era of trust will do well, and so forth.
Well, I am totally skeptical about it.
Chinese voters and Russian voters, if they have a free hand to do what they really want to do, totally standpoint, I have no illusions, but I think you would share this.
And therefore, I will never let that appear publicly.
I think it's very important that we understand privately, and I'm going to talk about this, that we're not
this whole era of communication and we're working toward the limitation of attention and so forth.
I'm sure we will.
But it's for that that we worked on those goals which are more liberal, intellectual,
My skepticism about Chinese movies and Russian movies is, if anything, just greater than it was.
Greater because you see, you deal with, and you realize what it is.
a cold-blooded, self-interest operation.
Tipping of the glasses in China with that horrible montage, and tipping the Russian champagne and the rest.
To me, I don't mean to sound cynical, but it's all that.
But I think it would be interesting to see whether or not he's seen even more of them than I have.
I don't mean to take in debris.
to bring it, probably, in terms of capability, which is one of the best different labs in the world, without it, and they're working on cooperation, space, and all the rest of it, and we work kind of high, so that's way over, but, hey,
He can't even go to the bathroom, basically, without getting a group of men.
And you really come down to it.
You're dealing with a soldier.
You are dealing with a sub-military refugee.
Russia, now, is in trouble.
It's fine.
He's comfortable.
There's not much question about that.
But he's not very sure of his position.
I would estimate that he probably wants somebody to be a, I think he sort of hungers to be a world figure leading toward peace.
He talks always about, he says, I'd like to establish a relationship that we had, he says, we had heard of the Great War, Roosevelt and Stalin and Churchill, he talks about that kind of thing.
Every time I, he calls it the spirit of the altar, which he gave me just a minute ago.
I thought, I said, all right, I'm a new spirit.
But Henry stated, say what you feel on that point, that Soviet-Chinese man.
But I think, how are you going to answer that question?
But I would say,
First of all, our relations with the Soviets are probably better than that of any other administration, precisely because we deal with it unemotionally, precisely because we react brutally to every challenge, because we don't pretend that we are trying to improve them.
And it followed a long series of growing moves to each of which responded very quickly, like Cuba and Jordan and so forth.
So when we deal with them now, we have brutally linked everything together.
And I will take the example of my neighbor,
The Mideast, they raise it all the time.
They push it back every time.
But you see, if they want that, there's a price.
They knew that we wouldn't touch the Middle East until Vietnam was set.
One way or the other, we managed to avoid a real intruder.
without a direct confrontation.
But they knew very well that we would not deal with this police.
This is why, as soon as Vietnam was settled, they came to repeat coming back to us.
And really, this is fair enough.
So I would say our relationships are varied and precise.
They're based on self-interest.
There's no great emotion there.
Our judgment and impression is that he's rather elemental, physical.
personality, who has a great need of proving to his public bureau that he beat some concessions out of that, which on some things, such as on this, and leads to a negotiated agreement, by starting out a high, that he can beat us down.
We've had more than we were willing to settle for.
If I had dealt with the Chinese, we would have also already figured out a way to start with it.
With oppression, there's a great emotional need to prove.
On every planet, they take every cheap shot in their mansion.
It's a visionary work.
You never have any problem with the Chinese, for example, on how do you translate.
With the Russians, they have these things like small pen for their indication, 0, 3, 2.
With the Russians, they'll put out a different text, and then they'll call it a gradient.
Oh, I'm sorry.
We didn't intend to.
It was just a mistake.
It's a right.
But in the direction, he said,
We can give you just in turn a really funny, he said on the topic about the missiles, you know, he said he'd draw pictures of them, you know, he knew what it was all about, the size, the holes, and all that, and what the other things were.
We were talking about the size of the dimensions, and he said, well, now if you want to put a new missile into an excessive size, there are only three ways you can do it.
Actually, four of them, which they, the fourth one, they think, which is the part of the power that they all like to do the submarine.
That's why we didn't throw it over the river.
We got that right.
Do you think he'll have a presence sometime this year?
In conference, there was discussion, you've seen the speculation, possibly in the early summer, that may or may not be the possibility of it being there or in the fall.
is, of course, not open.
We want to see, frankly, how some of the other games work out.
We'd like to see how we get along with the European thing.
And the data is pretty much under our control now.
It's more or less taken care of now.
We have some reasons for wanting later than earlier to keep the one that could behave here in various other conferences for longer.
The big thing that was realized now
To complete the other point with the Chinese, our relations, their motives are less suspect at this moment because they're so terrified of the Russians that for an interim period, we are the only support they can get in case of an attack.
So the day has been rather correct and not stressful.
and indeed have been accepting Japanese armament within the American alliance without any pressure, and we have practically accepted our view on the Japanese military going into it.
So it is, as you know, pressing very much on that nuclear treaty.
Yes.
Yes, yes.
And it gave birth to China, whatever China is, certainly, yes.
If we could find some way to get something on that that was bearable for the West, it would be a good way to get through the rest of this year.
Well, we have to be bearable for the West, but also must not frighten the Chinese.
That's right.
We can take care of the West when we can do it more easily than the Chinese.
But this is the big thing.
They keep coming back to us, and we've been able to, you know, delay, and the DPS will be doing anything.
We must be able to do this.
Mr. Alex, if you would, would you like to wash your hands before you leave?
Sure.
You may not have a great chance.
They work in a pajama.
It's a late day.
It's convenient.
And that's not...
What do you like to do?
What do you like to be?
I'm going to run a college.
Wow, run a college.
Yeah, yeah.
And you're going to teach uptown.
Instead of being a master of, I don't know, what is it?
What do you like to do?
How many years?
37 years.
Where you are?
Oxford.
Oxford, yeah.
What color?
Red.
It's a great place.
I was going to say the same thing the other day.
I was talking to Walter about this.
They would like to do something about it.
I think it's pretty awesome in this country.
Right.
Well, I'd like to go in with him.
Right.
Good.
Good on the phone.
He won't answer.
I told him he'd be late today.
He won't tell.
I mean, it's the next office.
There's one waiting.
Well, I won't let him go speak at Harvard, but if you want to go to Oxford, you can have him.
I did.
I swear.
I promise.
You do.
He went really slow.
But I think this is fine.
Well, I was hoping to stay through the term.
I've only got three years and 300 days now.
The man who I think will be facing is the .
Well, let's see.
Oh, yes, of course.
All right.