Nixon, Ziegler & Kissinger on Vietnam settlement and Press relations

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He's staying in there.

He doesn't like that.

I'll tell you, I've had an hour or so.

We'll meet again.

We'll meet tomorrow with Dave and David and so forth.

And that's even the last assumption that they were in on the South Asian accident.

Now, I'm going to also make it clear

that you expressed your appreciation for the understanding and support that the President— Do you think it's out of right to say that that embarrasses him?

Not at all.

Hume, in his meeting, in the meeting with the Secretary, he said we never doubted that the President would find an honorable solution.

He said he had to make many great decisions.

Well, I heard it, and I think I'm going to read that out.

The president said it.

I feel it this way.

He appreciated the fact that when he knew that we might have served their purposes on their domestic political scene to do what some of them did to attack the policy of an ally as some other allied leaders did, that they were strengthened.

I deeply appreciate it.

I did not go to those .

And I thought it took great courage as a part of it, as a prime minister, to not to join the chorus of those allies who jumped at the attack.

Because he recognized that the United States, proving that it was a dependable ally, was there that it would be a dependable ally for its other allies.

But that press conference, doing that on television and radio was a great thing.

It sure did.

I mean, and .

Five to seven minutes or so.

I know.

And then they went back in the show and used, I think, CBS and NBC, within the section of the Senate story, used a clip on the Senate story.

It came over very well, too.

But the part on amnesty was very effective.

And then they used all the key lines, too.

If anybody raises a point on amnesty when you move in, you can say, well, what about compassion?

I might say, I just want to find compassion.

the question.

But basically, the whole amnesty argument is about .

It doesn't have to do with, well, these scholars are just misguided and so forth.

The reason the left is for amnesty is that they want to make these people who ran away moral heroes, because the war was immoral.

And providing amnesty for people who deserted to the grounds of morality

condense the two and a half million who served for Imran.

That's why I contended, among other reasons.

But I can tell you, there was no doubt about what I was going to do, but I was glad I got a chance to do that.

And saying it in a sort of rambling way was a good idea.

Did you ever see that in the wire, the letter from that person?

Right, I did.

Interesting.

I thought he'd be a nice kid.

Probably would help you bank or something.

I thought he would be wired into all of our buddies, boys here, all for what you're doing.

But I said I wasn't going to give him any answer.

The Whitcomber story this morning was good on the press conference.

Talk about the fact that it was yours, Whitcomber.

I didn't say it in the post.

He said it was titled The New Totness.

The New Totness?

Well, I mean, this is Whitcomber right here.

But he made the point that you didn't take any, you know, guff from the guys, that you just laid it right out exactly how you felt.

One of the guys in the press room said, what the president told us in that press conference, although he didn't say it, was, fellas, I don't have to take anything at all off of you.

I have, you know, won the country by 61%.

And you do your, you know, you write what you want.

But I'm doing what I believe is right.

Jack Sutherland came in and he said, that's so great in the press conference.

Tell the president that as a conservative, I'm proud of him.

He did.

Right.

But the reaction out there was, they're a little stunned, you see, because you came on just exactly.

Yeah, I agree very well.

Well, I've got a brief on this.

Yes, I do.

Uh, he would like some bullion.

Bullion.

was just what Anthony said to Courtney Sheldon.

Well, you started sitting on the floor there.

Now, for John and the part where you said, it takes two or something to get the appeal out.

And that is exactly what Anthony said.

I have not gone unnoticed.

And many of those who want to piece the most seem to want the police to turn.

What?

Did you think so?

Absolutely.

Well, certainly the notes that you already sent prepared for me, none of that was, of course, but what the hell?

Why should they not be braced on that sort of thing?

You see, there is a view, which is, and I understand the view, I mean, I can tell, I can certainly, Rocky, of course, if you go to Rocky, he does, and I think anybody else can understand, and I'm sure that some of our domestic people do.

Now that we have finished the war with honor, I very much think that I should take the lead and hold out the Holly branch.

They don't want a Holly branch.

They want a king.

If you did that, Mr. President, I don't believe you.

First of all, I'd be lying.

Well, if you did that, too, you'd cut right through the moral fiber of the country.

Would you say so?

Absolutely.

And I don't mean it.

And you're not.

You don't have to.

And you weren't yesterday.

What they want, in other words, it was handled well.

What they want is to say yes.

The payoff to it is the way you paused after you said the people who seem to have wanted piecemos to receive this, whatever.

But then you paused and you said, we do.

And that, you see, made it clear that you want to see the country moving ahead as it is.

But it's the other side who has to take a step, too,

to heal the wounds of how ever deep they are in that country.

But if you went the other way, if you said, yes, now we must set about the task of unifying and bringing into the, it would come to you.

Well, I had an exploration.

I closed it briefly.

I said, now, I have a question.

We're out on the other side here.

And as we heal the wounds, we're all going to heal the wounds.

I'm sorry Randy didn't say that.

He had to speak to basically his Harvard friends.

But I'm going to say that.

Anybody else created these rules, Ron?

Who has created them?

Have we?

We haven't attacked anybody.

Who's attacking?

These other people have been.

I know some of them will take it on as a problem.

But others will say, well, it's present, belligerent, and uncompromising.

The words that were used were confidence.

Who said that?

Well, no, no.

Whitcover didn't use testy.

But there were some who said.

But there's nothing the matter with that.

But confident, strong, committed, you know, touch of humor is referred to.

But that, for example, Hatfield this morning was just awful in his.

How many people in the circle paid attention to what he said?

No one.

Except I tell you, one of the most, I think, a lot of people, he absolutely, totally destroyed a good moment for Stennis.

Because he turned it into a superficial act.

When he walked up there and he said, I sense a great opportunity to mobilize the force of prayer to apply against Senator Stennis.

You can't mobilize yourself to a moment of prayer if he gives you two seconds.

And it was because of that, he totally, absolutely destroyed that what could have been a very good moment.

And my reaction was, this was just a superficial gesture on the part of a man who was not committed to what he was saying that he wanted done.

Well, as a matter of fact, he... You made at least... His own remarks were, in fact, what he had to take a couple of minutes.

in one part, but even 30 seconds.

But he didn't even give people a chance to get it.

The other point was that I thought he was getting mad at me.

But frankly, it was too high-level for a lot of people to be able to say, oh, there's this.

Who cares?

He's a lightweight.

You can show it to all the lightweights.

And he said, exactly right.

And he's a pony.

Well, I hope they do use them in the correct direction.

I did work on this stuff when they prepared it.

It just didn't happen to fit the mood.

I worked on that back in the day last night.

Because I had to work for two hours in the British and then two nights in the British paper.

This is required.

It's intensive.

You might say this, but it doesn't take as much time.

The reason for this is you have to read the contents of the Russian papers.

But it doesn't come down to revisions.

It has to be discussed very, very detailed.

And the relationship with New York, the need to have revisions, the preparation for the

That was worth playing.

Well said.

It was well said, and I thought it was well said.

This is the audience.

You'll see what they do.

They're all covered with cameras.

Yeah, they sure were all there.

It was a good play.

Henry's on tonight on CBS.

Well, how'd you work it out with Barbara?

Well, I worked it out with Barbara by telling her that Henry's going to Hanoi.

And when he gets back from Hanoi, she will find herself with Henry in the same position as he is now, because it would, you know, be an upswing, and he can give her some color and those type of things.

So she might have that.

That's right.

I said, Barbara, it doesn't matter.

We're trying to duplicate it.

As a matter of fact, you're aware of these .

He mentioned that yesterday.

OK, on Saturday.

What is today?

This is Thursday.

You can't tell her about that.

No, I don't think I have to do that.

All right.

You can, you can, but you can tell her, Sam, the president, give her a half-hour deal on this.

I'm sorry.

As far as call her, you know, so that she can't get on our show.

And so the president wants you to know that he makes your decision to see you in Anchorage.

And because at the time when we did this, we had already decided that a meeting had already been decided.

And you'll now have a really big story.

I'm glad to see you look at both of them now, Andy.

considering this is a very important journey, and his passion for abortion.

That's covered.

We sure have worked him over, Mr. President.

I mean, Bob went over his notes with me that he talked to Henry about.

I've been... Henry seems very subdued these days.

I spent my whole day with him almost yesterday.

When's he going to start coming in?

Five o'clock.

Five o'clock, he's going to do it to time.

He's going to take the time.

Noah didn't take the time.

And I'm personally going to get his office.

Well, I've seen Heath again.

I wonder if we should really not have Henry.

He ought to be released.

Henry should not sit in the Heath meeting.

Yeah, it's possible.

Now, I told Henry that they went out to, this is going to be out to the affiliated stations.

I told them that I've gotten a lot of phone calls and so forth.

There's a lot of people coming in, you know, to the local stations, so he feels that he's talking out to someone other than DeMarvin Kalb.

So he said, really, they're going to do that?

Yes, sir.

And when you're talking, you're not talking to DeMarvin Kalb, you're talking out to the country and so forth.

So he's got that as well.

But he... How the devil am I going to get him on that creation meeting?

We can delay the taking if you want.

I mean... Well, I don't know.

He's just...

If he's going to do that taking, that's more important than the creation meeting.

And, uh...

Why don't you tell him?

Take an hour off.

Yeah, yeah.

Henry Robbins is showing me that you are, and I think that, you know, what I meant is that, of course, we'd like to do a British reading, but...

If you feel that the taping is more important than somebody else, you want to send somebody else in.

Okay, let's put it this way.

You can come inside and have a look at the taping.

Feel the main thing.

I'll speak to Ron.

I'll have you put the taping in and have a look at it later.

And he's nodding.

He says no problem.

So I'll have it taped at 5.30.

How's that?

5.30?

See, then at 5.30, 6.30.

Yeah, we can get through that meeting in 45 minutes.

Okay.

Ah, fine.

Thank you.

Good.

Thank you, Jason.

5.30.

I think this can work out.

It didn't work out well.

We talked to him extensively about it.

Even before, it's not going to be a loser.

It's a question of how great a person.

At least as us talking about our age, you know that we're going to be talking about the fact that we had, like I said to that group, for the first time in 10 years, the president talking.

We had a piece of Vietnam.

Everybody cheered.

So you know.

Well, this gal who was

A close friend of Diane Sawyer and my staff.

No, no, no.

These were people from Louisville, Kentucky, came into the photo opportunity there here for a visit.

And the gal, she's a good, nice person from Louisville, Kentucky, came out of the office in tears.

She said, I didn't think I could ever be that emotionally moved.

She said, I was walking up to man and brought peace to Vietnam.

Now, people out in the country,

had that sense, I think, that was demonstrated in the prayer practice this morning.

But that was an expression.

Someone who just came into Washington, found herself in the president's office and looking at the president of the United States with this great, just following that sense is there.

Now, the main thing I'm going to ask you now, if you haven't seen me,

I think he'll do good with Cal.

I don't think we should look at this, and I haven't, that we're throwing a bone to CBS or Cal.

If we can get on the air from 9 to 10 with him up against an adversary-type guy, I think he'll react.

That's why I'm glad that, actually, we're better off, I think, than having Barbara Walters do it first.

Yeah.

And she'll bring him out, too.

And she'll be .

I'll try to bring him out a different way.

OK.

Nixon, Ziegler & Kissinger on Vietnam settlement and Press relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on February 1, 1973

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